#as if trying to make the point

[bronzewool]

Final Fantasy VII: Traces of Two Pasts by Kazushige Nojima is a novel exploring the backstories of Aerith and Tifa, two party members you acquire early on in the game.

Traces of Tifa starts with a young Tifa in the small village of Neibelheim, playing with the other boys her age (minus Cloud) and reconciling over the knowledge their childhood is coming to an end as each boy is already making plans to leave and follow their future career paths. The boys try to cheer her up by promising to write to her, but it soon becomes clear to her that everyone has already decided she will marry one of these boys without bothering to ask her opinion. After Cloud and the other boys leave for Midgar, she becomes lonely and has no direction in life until a wandering material artist, Rashard Zangan, shows up, scouting for students to join his dojo, and finding the perfect pupil in Tifa. Throwing herself into her training, she proves to be skilled in the art form and even starts teaching a morning class for the other villagers. Fast forward to the Neibelheim Incident, where Tifa lost her father and is mortally wounded by Sephiroth, she wakes up in a Midgar hospital that managed to save her life, but she no longer has a home or any means of paying her medical bills. The doctor's son, Rakesh, also a student of Zangan, sets her up with a room in one of the slum container rows, and a job working at a steamed bun cart. Although Tifa is grateful for the help, she is still in the process of mourning the loss of her home while recovering from a near-fatal stab wound and yet still expected to work off her heavy debts. During her time living in the slums, we see how she met Barret, and the rest of Avalanche and would eventually become the bartender of Seventh Heaven.

The segment has a well-paced coming-of-age story of Tifa having no control over her life, and becoming the confident kickboxer and math-savvy bartender we meet at the beginning of the game. The story is slow in several areas, the major one being the attention to detail it goes into regarding her workout routine (to the point it starts feeling like an actual textbook) and her work rota at the food cart and preparing the bao buns (which starts feeling like an actual cookbook). Other than that it has a satisfying twist near the end with how Tifa manages to get out of debt and find a supportive community that becomes her newfound family.

The only minor complaint I have with this story is how little Zangan is in it, considering he is meant to be Tifa’s sensei, but he is only shown teaching her through textbooks that he leaves for her to study before disappearing for months at a time and returning to test her progress and handing her the next volume before disappearing again. This works in the context of the games as characters can level up by reading textbooks, but from a story standpoint, it's rather disappointing how little these two interact.

Traces of Aerith covers the timeline after Aerith and her mother escape Shina and hide in Sector 8 Slums, right before she dies and Aerith is adopted by Elmyra. The game briefly covers how Aerith and Elymra first met, but the book goes into greater detail about how they became a family and that it wasn't as smooth a transition as was implied. Elmyra's husband was a soldier who had been deployed during the Wutai War and was finally coming back home. Elymra would stand at the train station waiting for him with each passing day and on one such day, she finds Aerith weeping over the corpse of her mother and takes the girl in before Shinra finds her. Aerith is in the middle of mourning her mother and Elymra is overloaded with the responsibility of being a single parent while trying to maintain peace within her husband's business. Aerith's presence complicates things for Elmyra and they come up with a fake identity for Aerith which quickly backfires the more people learn of her existence.

The book tries to address minor details in the framing device of a polygon game and has various degrees of success while doing it. For example, Aerith's home is strangely bigger than the rest of the slums, with a two-story house and a garden filled to the brim with flowers. In the game, this area is heavily detailed because it's a set-piece that represents Aerith and the party spends quite a bit of time here. In the context of reality, this area makes no sense when just outside the gate the rest of Sector 8 is a shanty town. The book works around this by giving Elmyra a backstory where her father-in-law owned a construction company and stayed in the slums to oversee that company, as opposed to other businesses that would start a shop in the Slums and immediately abandon it once they earned enough to move onto the upper plate. Her father-in-law employed all those redundant employees and gained a lot of respect from the community for providing employment, hence why they live more lavishly in comparison.

My only complaint about Aerith’s segment in particular is how it glosses over major details in her childhood that fans were probably picking up the book to read about. We know the Turks have been spying on Aerith since she was a child, but they barely have a presence in this segment beyond one vital scene that needs to exist because it happened in the game and the climax where we can assume they saved Aerith’s life. Instead, we spend a lot of time setting up Aerith having a fake identity, and her panicking and using another girl’s name, and this somehow causes everyone to panic because two girls can’t have the same name I guess? (it's as stupid as it sounds and I don’t know why the book dives into this when we know Aerith uses her real name in the present timeline).

Is this book well written? Yes. Did it need to exist? No. There is nothing new we learn in this book that changes your worldview of the game or about Aerith and Tifa as characters. Hardcore fans will enjoy it but casual fans are not going to get anything out of it.

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[mmelolabelle]

“Ares…is a moron.”

I honestly don’t think that anyone is more amused by the whole “this douchebag decided to try and fight the child of the sea god on a fucking beach” of it all than Poseidon.

[kaijusaur]

[arabella-s-arts]

Scenes/Things in Supernatural that genuinely don't make sense to me if Dean was straight:

The confession booth scene.

Sam just rolling with the fact that Dean's siren is a guy while still thinking sirens infect people through sex.

Dean being flustered by several men: Gunner Lawless, Aaron, Doctor Sexy, etc.

All the parallels between Destiel and other couples. (A big one being "last night on Earth" bc how do you do that accidentally.)

Having all the gay jokes be on Dean instead of Sam.

Paralleling Sam meeting his childhood celebrity crush with Dean meeting Gunner Lawless.

The boner Dean got when Cas cleaned up.

Dean gulping after Cas does an impression from a Western movie.

Charlie, a lesbian, calling Castiel "dreamy."

The way Mary looks at Dean and Cas when they hug.

Dean wondering why everyone assumes he's gay, while Sam not caring.

The logic that Charlie can't flirt with guys because she's only attracted to women, but then having Dean flirt with the guy for her.

Dean seeming disappointed when learning that Aaron's flirting was fake.

The amount of time Dean and Cas spend staring at each other.

Dean canonically having an orgy with Crowley.

A woman saying that she knows when someone's pining for someone else to Dean, just for us to learn that Dean was never in love with Amara.

The set design and script choices that lead to a cross in the background while Dean said "I do." to Cas after he came back to life.

Edit: To the people who say I can't use the siren as an example because the siren is supposed to be his brother, and therefore his siren being a man doesn't work. If you reread that bullet point, then you will realize that I didn't put it down as just simply Dean's siren being a man. I recognize that the siren is supposed to be his brother. It's the fact that Sam still thinks the siren infects people through sex, not knowing that it's actually through saliva when he realizes who the siren is. So when he sees that Dean's siren is a guy, he had to assume they had sex, and he does not seem surprised by this at all.

[jitterbugbear]

malanya the horse god - mixed media

[bluerosefox]

Uncle Damian Mode ACTIVATE

Twins Danny and Damian but! They both know where the other is (Damian going to Bruce and Danny being sent to the Fentons on a mission at a young age), has kept in touch and all that.

They just...never got around to telling anyone about the other.

That is until Danny comes interrupting Damian on patrol one night in a panic, pushes a bundle into his arms and hurriedly says "Read our texts! It'll explain! I gotta go, got a fruitloop on my tail! Be back when I can!"

And rushes off. When Damian looks down at the bundle in his arm, ignoring the yelling on comms and Nightwing rushing over, he is stunned to see a almost identical face to that of his brother staring back at him, only he can tell its female from the more delicate features.

When he later reads the texts his brother sent during his patrol... well he's tempted to go fruitloop hunting but he has a niece to take of... and inform his father of his granddaughter he's currently holding.

[mumblesplash]

in honor of last season’s poem being called “”end poem”” (all quotes mandatory) this season i made one out of pieces of the actual end poem

[mangozic]

michael shelley I would die for you

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

[kelocitta]

Anthro Au Survivor drafts feat. too much worldbuilding because I cant just put pants on a slugcat like a normal person & my godawful handwriting

The Survivor (Their full, scavenger-given name includes the 'The') was separated from their family while traveling between colonies and stranded in the dangerous unpopulated wilds. Against all odds they managed to survive (and wander) far longer than they should have been able, but rather than reconnecting with their (or another) slugcat family, they instead made contact with one of the many wandering scavenger troops- But unfortunately not one that had ever met a slugcat nor had any idea what to make of a stranded one. Regardless the group gave it their best, ended up committing to the role of slugparents, and The Survivor and their troop still consider themselves close family long after Survivor finally reconnected with their sibling. (They're a bit of a mess though, understandably)

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

[tenowls]

teacher getou au...... wauh

[egophiliac]

HEY guess who's being completely normal about episode 7 :)

anyway it sure ain't me, so I made myself a baby Malleus! I used the single-headed version of Choly Knight's hydra pattern (link will be in replies ↓↓↓) as a base, and just messed with some of the pieces to make him more Mall-y. including sewing all those little claw pieces, then pinning them on and realizing I actually liked him better without them...oh well. to heck with accuracy, I want stubby little dragon legs!

unfortunately, he doesn't photograph very well, especially his forehead scales (they're there! I promise!) (they're made of glitter HTV so they are actually SPARKLY in real life, yet apparently they come out completely invisible in photos, woe). but he is super cuddly and soft so I'm happy with him! just as in canon, he is a product of LOVE. :>

[punkstylerecovery]

“It could’ve been worse.” It could’ve been BETTER. It could’e been EASIER. It could’ve been lovely. It could’ve been beautiful, it could’ve been fun. It could have been simple, it could’ve made you HAPPY. 

You can drown in two feet of water just as simply as you can in an ocean. Stop downplaying what happened and neglecting your feelings. Kill that idea with fire. Or at least acknowledge that what happened was bad without immediately trying to justify or dismiss it.