#anyway. that was a rant and a half

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

y’know those ‘x character without trauma’ videos? trying to think of how ford would fit into one of those, but can’t because the only time he didn’t have trauma was when he was like. a literal infant

and stan too, yeah

[cozylittleartblog]

i thought naming myself this would be really funny. and it Is. every time i get into a match i think about gabriel playing Miku Rhythm Game

[bookinit02]

i really do think there’s a huge disconnect on here w/ people who have never used tiktok as to what it actually is and who actually uses it. the number of people i’ve seen call it a “teen dancing app” is actually insane. it has not been a teen dancing app since i was in high school, around 2016 - 2020. the main communities i saw on a daily basis were 1) black history/anti-racism educators, 2) high school & college teachers sharing in-classroom strategies and frustrations with the education system, 3) local/state political leaders giving real-time updates on behind-the-scenes government decisions, & 4) community activism & leadership. like tiktok is an adult platform. almost every person i interacted with was my age or older. and yes it completely depends on your fyp and how you interact with the app, yes there’s still teenagers and dance videos and literally anything else you can think of. but these communities of adults aren’t insubstantial at all, they have literally millions of interactions on a daily basis. there’s about a million other types of communities that i could name just off the top of my head, because the range of users was SO diverse and thriving. it’s a long-distance community tool, just like any other social media—and honestly much better than any other social media, because it relies primarily on the kindness of strangers. i saw at least 5-10 videos today of queer people in rural areas panicking because they don’t have any access to queer community on any other platform or in real life. and before i end this i do want to say i think tiktok is coming back, i think this is a highly orchestrated political move, etc., but i do know it won’t ever be exactly the same. people are panicking about free speech violations because tiktok was a place where people fucking SPEAK. i have never seen mass mobilization and communication in this same way for as long as i’ve been alive. it is the people’s app, not just a silly teenage thing. if you’re not on tiktok and never have been, please stop talking about it like you know anything at all😭

[mal3nko]

No because Dorian becoming Archon of Tevinter should have given us at least SOME inner conflict on his part when it comes to achieving that status since it’s what his father ultimately wanted him to be in the first place when he was younger. Like there’s so many aspects about him reaching that position that should have put into question a lot of things about his personal journey and Veilguard does absolutely NOTHING with it.

I mean, you can choose who’s the ruler of Fereldan in Origins as well as who’s the new Divine in Inquistion and I feel like both of those choices give an appropriate amount of characterization and inner conflict with the people involved. We get a proper look at how whoever is elected truly feels about their position, like an unhardened Alistair feeling very unconfident about being king and is even willing to break up with a non-Cousland Warden for the sake of his country. I guess this is part of a bigger issue with Veilguard in general and how it just seems so uninterested in tackling the bigger picture when it comes to politics within Thedas, and by extension how people truly feel about reaching these positions of power.

Like I’m sorry, but I just needed a lot more from Dorian than just “Oh, I’m going to be Archon? Excellent! I’m a little nervous about it but I’m sure I’ll get the job done!”.

[anewp0tat0]

i lied i had like atleast one more weston thought to expell from my brain, before i miss this boat entirely. we're heading to green lands woooo

[bugtoast]

in light of recent news regarding the elongated musk rat; i didn't think a man could get this stupid

[amphibianaday]

day 1421

[bayetea]

there's something really bizarre about what may or may not be excessive wariness of adultifying black girls that's resulted in not only treating hazel like some moronish baby but sweeping oversimplification of the person that she is. by refusing to observe hazel in a more mature light (and by this I only mean taking her seriously) there's a pervasive dumbing down of her character in the fandom that really does not occur as much for other characters. she's 14 in hoo. not 13. she's 15 in toa. for comparison the second youngest member of the prophecy 7 is jason, who was 15 himself for the first half of hoo and does not experience nearly as much character infantilization by the fandom at large

as a hazel enjoyer it's all pretty disappointing; I see so much to appreciate and unpack in the frankly gothic nature of her story but when I go looking for hazel fanworks (not just fanfics but fanart, headcanons, hazel ships, textposts to reblog, etc) I can't help but sense an unwillingness to just THINK about how her experiences might impact her. there's little more regard for hazel in the fandom than her merely being nico's cute and sweet little sister. and she is cute and she is sweet that much is true. she also grew up during jim crow while black and was violently bullied and killed herself and her mother when she was 13 years old. genuinely I don't understand reading horrific parts of her story like this and thinking that she's just a cute and soft tweenaged girl and not much else

like let's just be candid about this - abused and neglected children are forced to grow up fast (something that will almost inevitably have consequences in their adulthood). they are forced to be mature in ways that other kids aren't. hazel is not written like a "normal" 14 year old in part because she is not a normal 14 year old. you don't spend your life consciously wasting away in asphodel surrounded by ghosts and rejoin the living as a normal teenager. she was mistreated her entire life by everyone but sammy and then she died. and upon her resurrection the nature of her quest is more horrific than anyone else's - she has to "redeem" herself for helping gaea+giving her mom asphodel in the eyes of the underworld judges by killing herself again. that's literally what going on the son of neptune quest is for hazel; freeing thanatos = he takes her back to the underworld. there could not be a more literal confrontation of her discordant mortality than this. the only reason her life doesn't end that way is because of pluto's leniency towards his own children, and the narrative does nothing to justify something so objectively unjustifiable. even positing this as pluto's self-redemption of his failure to protect her in her first life, rather than hazel's own self-redemption, would have been something but hoo simply doesn't resolve this glaring conflict about its messagings on the unchangeable nature of life/death. but that's a post for another day

I cannot emphasize enough that hazel is every bit as deep and angsty as popular SadBoy™ characters like nico and leo but the interest in her sorrow and complexities is simply not there. this is not an insult to nico/leo themselves but a notation of how SadGirls™ (especially black girls) will never receive comparable acknowledgment of their miseries or the way said miseries have impacted them. hazel is deeply contemplative and world-weary and struggles so much with alienation from the world around her - alienation from the modern world as a person of color from the segregated past, alienation from the living as an undead girl, alienation towards her own powers because they ruin lives, including her own. if you just observe her character and her story I think you'll find more meaning about how life is a thing to be cherished than anywhere else in the franchise

[hyperrealisticblood]

random thing i noticed while going through the character bios again: wally's bio now gives information about how his puppet was handled

there isn't any kind of sneaky wording here that would imply he was operated different from the others either, as frank is described the exact same way in his bio.

if it's true that wally WAS in fact puppeteered by someone and wasn't running around the studio by himself like some horrible gay homunculus, he was most likely puppeteered by ronald dorlaine, the creator of welcome home. wally is kind of the "kermit" of welcome home, and kermit was puppeteered by jim henson until his death in 1990. kermit was also referred to as henson's "alter ego" at times, his co-stars saying that it became hard to tell where kermit ended and henson started at times.

i think clown's mentioned the relationship between a puppet and their puppeteers being a topic explored in welcome home at some point (one of these mentions was pre-overhaul, so i'm not sure if it's still true), and has stated that there are going to be more human characters introduced. and since welcome home takes a lot of inspiration from the history of the muppets (and is why we need more horror media written by people really autistic about the topic covered), and "dorlaine" sounds so similar to "darling", it's possible wally may have been ronald dorlaine's "alter ego" in the same way that kermit was for jim henson.

i don't what what any of this implies or if any of this makes sense. i went on this whole rant because of one line of text. is anyone reading this. did anyone see that gnome run by. its so dark in here

[bxriles]

I’m sure that this is not a hot take and that a lot of people feel the same way but like…

The question “does it have spice?!🌶️🔥” makes me want to jump off a cliff. I’m out here looking for gothic book recommendations on Reddit, tumblr, and goodreads and WHY is this the first question so many people ask 😭

Look, I love erotica as much as the next person but come on. There have got to be other things that matter when recommending books or choosing to pick one up, my GOD.

[saltynsassy31]

*drags myself through the floor and slams this down*

I present to you

FULLMETAL BARTENDERS AVIAN AU

Divine Nugget Au

(Rant as to why I chose the White-throated Needletail as Blurr's bird and some minor AU lore under the cut)

And that's not all! It comes with a FULL FLEDGED COMIC!!!!!

I spent a whole fucking week on this

I haven't done a comic in 4 years now, I can't believe this is my come-back XD. Though, on that note, know that I probably won't be pumping out any more comics - not any time soon, at least. But I do got more stuff planned for this au! If you ask about it, I'll 100% rant about it LOL

Tw// ⚠️mild gore in the 3rd panel⚠️

While exploring the woods with his team, Swerve had an unfortunate encounter with a crazed hunter. In an attempt to escape, he got injured, but it seems he wasn't the only one caught in the crossfire...

.

.

Okay

So when you look up what the fastest bird in the world is, Google with show the Peregrin Falcom

But there's a catch

The Peregrine is only fast when diving

When it dives to catch its prey, it can go up to 389km/h

Which yeah, pretty fast

But when casually flying, it only goes up to 120 iirc

The Needle Tail?

It can go up to 170km/h

Some have even recorded going over 300! (Close to the Falcon's dive, I believe)

Additionally, these birds only fly. Their habitat is literally listed as "the air," and some even believe they sleep while flying! They only ever land to brood and mate, and then they're off again. Their legs are so short that, if they ground, they can't fly again because it doesn't give enough room to flap their wings.

It fits Blurr perfectly!

It also has a blue-ish colour pattern I can work with lol (it's green, but it looks blue, lol)

Though, also, he isn't 100% like the Needle Tail, just based off of it. I still want avians to be sorta their own species and doesn't have to be exactly like their bird counterparts cuz they aren't them, they're their own thing.

That said, Blurr is one of the shortest from Avians population, still.

They're pretty big.

Another trivial detail of the design!

I was stuck between having his arms be his wings or have them be separate

Until I saw a drawing where they had both, and I realised, "Wait, why isn't that done more often! That's so cool!"

So that's sorta what I did

It's mainly to catch small prey when grounded and to stay better perched up on trees since they're much bigger and having extra fingers helps a lot. Or when they're climbing against a tree to pick up fruits, it gives them an extra boost and can better hang from it

But they're pretty much useless besides that lol

Just neat lil design choice

Other lore stuff. The time in which the au takes place is vaguely modern? But with fantasy aspects? I still haven't decided lol

Technology exists, but not in the way we have it sort of deal, idk, this au is pretty bare bones right now, so go wild with it XD I don't mind it, I love brainstorming it with people. I know this au isn't as big or complex as some others out there, but it's fun, and I hope yall like it too fjsjajaj

[formerprincewille]

Something that really sets Wille and Simon apart from other queer ships is that when we say their love language is physical touch, IT REALLY IS PHYSICAL TOUCH. And I’m not speaking of just sex. Over the course of the show, the amount of touching between them is astronomical. And that’s really something rarely seen in queer media. There may be moments here or there, but often times there’s a lack of physical contact unless it’s for “the plot”. Wille and Simon feel like a real couple in the way they’re always physically reaching out for each other.

[ana-cantskywalker]

There is maybe nothing worse than loving a piece of media but not being able to interact with it in online spaces because the fandom sucks so bad

[flying-fangirls]

Can I be so honest with y'all? I think Malevolent has a consistent habit of introducing allusions, building them up to be high-potential wells of story and character depth, and then just deciding to use them solely for aesthetic in the end. Like, most of the references and metaphors just kinda end up as set-dressing and nothing more.

Season 5 had layers of allusions to Revelations, which all had pretty obvious potential to be drawn on. And I fully expected the huge build up of all those metaphors to go somewhere meaningful, but they just- didn't? They just kind of... floated vaguely away, with no pay off? Maybe the Day of Wrath event will get more in the season finale, but I really don't see that happening with the ending of Part 51. The horsemen plotline looked like it was going to mean something, but then everyone died before they could take a role in that plot, and the metaphor's potential fizzled out right alongside them.

And while s5 is what's freshest on my mind, it's definitely not the only instance. I mean, I wrote a whole breakdown of the untapped potential of the "Solitude" allusion in Arthur's story on the train, and that's just one more case out of the whole show. There's plenty of mythological allusions throughout s2, there's a million different times when a character quotes some random song/saying but doesn't do anything with it afterward, and honestly several of the poetry references have legs to go a lot farther than the show ever bothers to take them. I don't know, I don't even think it's that big of a deal since I still enjoy the show overall, but it annoys me when art claims depth for simply mentioning an idea without actually building the depth itself

[adamanteine]

tired of fandoms being annoying wdym a masc character can kill 532432432324 people and be a freak and they'll be like omg it's okay he can do no wrong SLAY ME NEXT KING <3 but a femme character is dominant once and they're like i hope she dies violently SHES EVIL

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

It’s just that Fingon’s like that stereotypical son who calls his mum and walks old ladies across the street, mows the lawn for his neighbours, brings home nice, pretty girls who want to be kindergarten teachers or something and is really passionate about some niche compassionate topic like children in poverty’s access to multiple sclerosis treatment and who everyone says is ‘such a nice boy’ but then he goes and dates the eldest kid of Mr. Stay Away From My Boys, Son, a flaming ginger who most people haven’t heard speak. And this is hilarious.