#bc its very interesting to me; i like thinking of like the more mundane aspects of their characters

[samarecharm]

I am adoring some of the tags i got on that goro ref. They are all correct. I knew what i was getting into when i decided to give him the tumblr sexyman treatment 😭 I do want to stand my ground tho, to say that i do think goro is a wet napkin of a human being. A disaster. Overly competitive to a fault. Exceedingly cocky. This is someone who said ‘i do bouldering’ as like a flex and immediately had haru shut that shit down and say ‘hmm doesnt take much strength to do that :0’. Someone who cant handle spicy food and scarfs it down anyway. He snores like a truck when hes sleeping and scares himself away when its too loud. He claims akira has fake glasses and mocks him for his dedication to his perceived appearance, and then pretends hes not doing the same thing when he does interviews. Nothing fucking fits him so its either Too Big (sweater) or too small (everything else). His idea of unassuming is Big Round Soft, so he is just a teddy bear to most kids. He unironically screams about ripping shadows apart and genuinely thinks he is Fine :)

[unicyclehippo]

so youre telling me basically that robin and nancy are eachothers narrative foils (idek if im using that term correctly but shrugs). i dont blame nancy, emotions are hard to deal with, especially as a teenager and a woman in a society that makes it even harder for her as to live up to the model shes supposed to fit in, not messy and out of bounds as she actually feels. her thriving in an apocalypse that lets her sideline her own feelings, and lets her prioritize her logical action side, its so interesting bc mundanity will be the thing to stress her out. and robin, sweet robin who has figured out how cruel the world can be, keeps certain parts of herself tight to her chest but also doesn’t thrown up a facade nearly as much as nancy and lives and breathes by her own compass, is how you put it. it really is fascinating and i can easily see how someone like nancy would just, not be able to take her eyes off of her, almost be envious if not totally attracted to it.

i think you could definitely argue that they’re narrative foils, it entirely depends what ur trying to analyse in their character.

my understanding of a foil is two characters who highlight the differences in one another; they can either be drastically different & it is that conflict that shows their character/who they are in comparison to the other, or they can be functionally identical (this is my favourite type of foil) & it is one specific aspect to them that shows how they diverge.

maybe it is the same as being foils for one another but the way that helps me contextualise it (their characters, their relationship) in my own head is to view it as a sense of balance—the way they level one another, complement one another with skills & beliefs & actions. nancy’s intense focus counters robin’s hyper tangents; nancy’s tangled relationships counters robin’s single relationship anchor; nancy is plans & written words, robin is patterns & auditory processing; nancy is a gun (direct, aimed, concentrated, one devastating blow), robin is a molotov (area of effect, range, damage over time); nancy is skirts & dresses, robin is shorts & pants; etc etc im sure you could list a hundred more ways that they are opposites. the thing that is most important however is the fact that they’re not enemies—to be so diametrically opposed to another person should elicit conflict, but the truth is that these things that make up their character are all superficial & while they Colour the character & lend them nuance & all that, i think it’s clear that the direction & shape of nancy & robin’s characters are fundamentally the same. they both have a strong desire to help, to be seen & involved. they both set aside their personal issues (nancy & jonathan confusion, robin & vickie) to focus on the upside down—in a very real sense those social relationships are an echo/redoubling of the way in which they put their very lives on the line to stop the upside down bullshittery, in how they rank social/emotion connection in times of stress & danger that shows their instincts in that regard are similar, smth that can be pushed aside. they are both lonely, both fantastically clever, both young kind driven women.

so yeah i guess that you could say their differences are all merely distractions from the fundamental similarities to their characters

[qqtahng]

im going to put some octo2 thoughts here now that i’ve had time to digest it. there will be spoilers

overall i think i liked octo2 as a game more than 1. im sad they (understandably) changed some (kinda broken) mechanics from the first game (sp steal/share on thief and tomahawk nerf..............), but we got some great qol updates, like no more purple chests and the hunter’s monster system got LEAGUES better. all the jobs got more powerful overall despite them nerfing some aspects (i dunno if like a 1.5/1.5 turn kill on galdera was possible in the first game....... insane), the new parts were so fun to use (vengeful blade!!!!!!! arcanist as a whole!!! aaa!!!)

the music and art too oh my goddd. i didnt think it could get better but somehow it DID and i just. its amazing, aesthetically, on all fronts. yasunori nishiki could tell me to kms rn and i would. gladly. for all the work he put into the ost. just, chefs kiss. i dunno what else to say.

love love love the new travelers tho. they’re all very colorful and whlie i do like some more than others (hi tem, hi castti) i cant say i actively dislike any of them. thats not much different from the first game.

the writing was overall more enjoyable than 1 too imo, tho i dont get why they had the split route thing when they had progression recommendations for them anyway and it ended up being like... not much of a choice. the crossed paths were really nice. it would’ve been a Lot of work but i wish we had one for every combination of traveler rip. throne and tems was so good tho, definitely my fave of the bunch.

that aside im not gonna lie, i did not vibe w hikari partitio or agnea’s stories very much.

hikari’s story i think just did not fit the 5 chapter format very well. it felt really rushed to me and like it didnt have much depth to it. it was serviceable but didnt feel exciting to me.

paritio’s was... idk it felt a little repetitive?? hes a funny guy i like him but i think his goals were just a little too mundane and also global to be very interesting. like compare “i wanna get rid of poverty” to “im on a journey to unravel the mystery of who i once was”. like one of those is more intriguing and believable :/

agnea’s just felt way too low stakes compared to everyone else’s. i did see someone point out that the game might’ve felt a little too dark without it, which is... fair?? i guess?? the first game was also pretty dark it just took a little while longer to see compared to like, half the cast having a murder happen in their ch1. anyway, my girl just did not have an interesting story arc. it was all “i wanna be FAMOUS” without very many trials and tribulations tbh. not enough character struggle for me personally.

the final chapter was interesting. it was really cool to see everyone band together narratively to fight vide. mechanically, i also thought vide’s fight was cool as shit. all 8 on the field at once!! wow!! i do think the first game tied everyone in to the Big Bad better tho. bc like, wtf are u doing making fucking *npcs* the relevant ones from agnea and partitio’s stories?? like even in the first game the traveler’s that had weak ties to galdera’s revival were still like... idk it was still *them* and it was formative to their characters?? we have a reason to like graham via alfyn, and a reason as to why hes important via tressa, arguably 2 of the most indirect ties to galdera in 1 imo--graham also inspired alf to save others, and his journal eventually helped tressa learn the value of things that arent contemporarily accepted as treasure. idk i also felt like ori’s personality switch was so last minute. same for tanzy’s backstory tho the tragedy as to why she would follow through makes more sense. neither of them really had any impact on their respective traveler’s character either. like they didnt do anything to change their goals or personality. very weak.

i also dont know wtf was up w that alfred hornburg thing. like hello??? wtf are YOU doing here sir, u have gone and messed up my placing of the game in the series timeline/universe

but yeah. that last little bit of negativity aside, octo2 kinda just does what the first one did but better in most aspects. great game would recommend if u played the first. if the first didnt vibe w u, maybe would rec if u didnt vibe w the first bc the second is less frustrating mechanically.

[foulserpent]

(tw for abuse) i dont understand what vivec is conveying in the sermons wrt the monsters and molag bal. he becomes divine so does he mean that stuff literally happened? or someone mortal did that to him and hes recontextualizing it? or is it like a metaphor for something more abstract about violence? the wedding stuff really confuses me. ive only gotten a little into morrowind lore

(putting under cut cw sexual abuse)

um like the thing with that is theres . a couple levels that entire narrative functions on, and it depends entirely on which  of two ways the spear “muatra” is interpreted

like the most obvious level and one that was absolutely intended is that muatra is a phallic symbol which is pretty explanatory when you see how its used. characterizes vivec as someone sexually violent. its really disgusting lol. this WAS intentional and mk gave a (non-)apology/explanation about that whole thing which was him being really fucked up at that point in his life and dealing with addiction and mental health issues which like . if it was just that then maybe id be like “ok whatever” but hes done a lot of other shit too.

but the other level, which is the level in which that whole narrative isnt terrible, is. “muatra” is an anagram of the word “trauma”. thats not accidental. and when you read that whole narrative through that perspective, it makes a LOT more sense bc the story becomes a recounting of a traumatic incident. the “wedding” and everything within is a recontextualization of something that happened to vivec that is being turned into a narrative aspect of their godhood journey instead

like the basic story is: vivec experiences abuse, and recontextualizes this as a “wedding”. creates a narrative where this very event is what taught him to grasp CHIM, indicating a life changing significance to this. this ahuse begets “monsters” that vivec gives birth to, which functions both as a confirmation on what this abuse is and a externalization of the results- the monstrous children are sort of like the twisted and disgusting results of what happened to them. if you chose to think of it as 100% symbolic, the monsters would be symbolism for the results of trauma and how trauma changes You. what that trauma bore

vivec gains the spear “muatra” from this encounter, which again is an anagram of trauma and pretty much every usage of the word can be read as trauma. in turning their trauma into a spear, its kind of like. an attempt to reclaim strength and autonomy after trauma. its reshaping what happened into a weapon and killing the “children” the abuse bore with it so one can become a new normal again. its a sort of cruel healing where you carry whats with you as something that makes you strong but like is violent and painful

i think all of the above is intentional, but the rest im going to say would give michael kirkbride too much credit. if it was written by a better human being who was writing from experience of how trauma affects you, id say the dual symbolism of: muatra as a sexual object used to inflict violence, and “trauma” made into a weapon, would be intentional. the more overt narrative of vivec being sexually violent with it would be representative of like a fear of having been sullied, disgust with oneself, disgust with ones body, fear of continuing the cycle, fear that youll become like those who hurt you, lashing out with a destructive coping mechanism. 

like it could function on that level but i think it was just MK being awful and putting shit in for shock value. also its just one example of  MK being shitty about vivec being intersex. placing a lot of like fetishistic emphasis on their genitalia. theres a lot going on there and almost all of it is bad

anyway as far as how literal it is. the sermons CANNOT be interpreted 100% literally. they partially exist to shape temple doctrine and maybe partially exist to instruct the nerevarine, so at the very least you have to assume SOME of it is untrue. like a lot of TES lore stuff is pretty damn literal but this is one case where i think its more interesting and valuable for it to be interpreted first and foremost as vivec rewriting their own history into a narrative fitting of what they want to be. 

but that doesnt mean NONE of it happened like, some of it might be real. some of it might have been retroactively made real. etc. it could be that the abuse narrative is 100% mundane with no daedra involved, it could be that they did actually grapple with molag bal (i think they did in some capacity but this isnt what its actually about). 

i think people with more developed Thoughts on this part of lore could say better but i think its less important to worry about the exact facts of it and more important to look into whats being said 

[colloquialcolors]

i should maybe wait till i finish the dlc to do this, but NAHW its okay. having finished the main storyline of Control, a smattering of thoughts, just for future me:

- fucking HELL, environmental design, my beloved. every single environmental artist and level design engineer and etc in this game has my whole heart. the different deparments! the POSTERS! people doing office shit melded with the utter FUCK ALL absurdity, people complaining in correspondences and emails to each other, people being /people/ told through levels and background details. The agents bitching in the executive area. Actual scribblings on whiteboards. The little "LETS DO WORK!" sign with the little "NO!!" post it note under it! Like. Oh. I always love stopping and looking at text around the game, signs and throwaway text and little shit, and by /god/ does this game reward you for doing it.

- the game mechanics and powers are like. wishfufillment to the max. holy shit. the telekenesis and launching is exactly as fun as it looks (moreso, with the lock on!). The gun recharging its own ammo given time is the Best Fucking Thing Ever. and the FLYING. the flying is the best approximation ive ever seen of how flying works in my dreams. (not permanently, cuts out sometimes, but its COOL while its happening). The Anchor fight? Fucking incredible.

- the worldbuilding is astonishing. genuinely astonishing. idk what to say beyond that

- THE ASHTRAY MAZE <3 ASHTRAY MAZE SECTION MY BELOVED <3 MUSIC AND LEVEL DESIGN AND MECHANICS ALL MELDED INTO A THING OF BEAUTY. <3 <3

- character building im still a bit on the fence about, but i think i enjoyed it. the side characters definitely got more fleshed out as you went along. jesse is... maybe a little flat at points, but still good, well thought out overall. either way, shes mine now. i give her depth. and angst.

- i still. okay. listen. i still dont Really Trust The FBC. Which I think is the point??? but like we seemed to end on a note of "now we are FBC and we are good and FBC is doing good bc we are in charge :)" and like. LIIIKE. HMMM. LISTEN. THIS INSTITUTION AS A WHOLE STILL KIDNAPPED YOUR BROTHER AND DOES VARIOUS UNETHICAL THINGS THAT DIRECTLY RUINED YOUR LIFE AND ALSO WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE BOARD HUH? I think its going foe a thing of "the people matter more than the institution and the people Make the institution" which. hmm. sure. okay, i guess?

- I did Not Know it was going to be so horror/horror adjacent when I first got it. but you know what? it was a good time. nice change of pace. well executed. very nice.

okay enough of the mechanics now for me having a good time:

- jesse my beloved <3 jesse making little sarcastic remarks to herself <3 jesse seeing weird shit and going "fuck?! okay. sure." <3 jesse with imposter syndrome. <3

- jesse jesse they LISTENED to your THERAPY sessions they TRACKED YOU YOUR WHOLE LIFE and you thought you were INSANE jesse how do you feel about that. jesse pls @ me.

- jesse whats up with your right shoulder why do you always adjust it

- i really thought pope was gonna be evil but. i guess shes not! so shes just good and on your side with a little undercurrent of "i am 2 steps away from letting my passion take me TOO far" all the time. fair enough! love that for her

- darling only being shown through videos is a FASCINATING way to frame a character, 10/10. very interesting

- fucking hell i love the containment sector and its little altered items so much. i loved learning about each item, i love the absurdity of looking into the cells and seeing just. A fucking rubber duck or some shit under close surveillance. just.. orgh. maybe my favorite aspect of the game. reading reports.

-- i think its similar to the appeal of SCPs. just incredibly wild and sometimes hilarious shit in a deeply formal tone and scientifically examined. stupidly mundane objects. tiny impacts. idk its really good.

- im trying to avoid gushing more about env/level design but. the use of lights and colored lights to indicate things? work of art. consistently reinforcing the association of red lights with Bad Shit and using that everywhere.

- *cocks my gun and points it directly at the board* WHAT ARE YOU HIDING YOU ASSHOLES. WHAT ARE YOU.

- orig music!!! for the ashtray!!! like what!!!! shit!

- going into the hiss dream sequence section like "is this Imposter Syndrome, the Game", finishing the sequence like "it IS"

- underhill would kill me if she could

- langston is. hilarious. i dont think i trust him bc like. he locked up my brother his whole life and sees 0 issue with it. he LITERALLY runs the Panopticon. but. hes funny. dammit. they got me.

- arish is good. i like arish. arish is my buddy. hes just trying to do his JOB okay, fuck, what is all this shit.

- marshall is.... terrifying. mixed thoughts on marshall.

- pope is... look. i like pope as a person, i think, i just also think that she would 100% cause a world ending event because she got real excited about the scientific possibilities and the research and forgets about consequences. but jesse deserves a friend (👀friend?) and pope is Good and has our backs so. sure.

- im still thinking about dylan. i think dylan is more of a concept or a placeholder than an actual character which feels- right. the story is about jesse. dylan was only ever a driving factor, a name in a quest, a concept, an icon.

- i UNDERSTAND why yanking an explosive object at yourself is BAD but also did the designers consider: im bad at being careful :(

- do the altered items get lonely :(

- i think jesse should be allowed to take a nap. as a mechanic. also be given a hug, as a mechanic. (jesse how touch starved are you. how often have you recieved hugs in your life. jesse.)

- the canonical event of "i picked up a gun and now have a job AND are promoted AND need to clean up a ton of shit, christ" is already hilarious, but its even funnier when jesse comments on it. wild shit, huh girl.

- i unlocked multiaunch and im gonna go fucking HAM with it tomorrow.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi! As someone who’s literary opinion I really trust, I was surprised that you’re a twilight fan? I know almost nothing except commen knowledge things about that series, and I always assumed it was actually bad/un-feminist. What is it that you like so much that others seem to miss? I’m just genuinely curious about your take on the hate it always seems to get vs. it’s actual quality. I’m not gonna judge bc animorphs is also one of those books where you see it and assume it’s bad.

In over 14 years of loving this series, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me why I enjoy it instead of simply trying to convince me that I’m wrong to do so.  So thank you for that.

First and foremost, I love the Twilight saga because of the vivid detail in Stephenie Meyer’s writing style.  The descriptions are so lush and dense with sensory information that you can practically bite down on them as you read.  Bella and Jacob aren’t just sitting on the beach; they’re sitting on a gnarled log of driftwood, worn smooth at the top from where so many Quileute teens have sat upon it during bonfires but still uneven enough to rock on its branches when Bella suddenly stands to rage at her own mortality.  Meyer describes that log in Twilight, so tangibly and with such economy of detail, that we recognize it immediately when Bella and Jacob return to that spot in Eclipse.  I’ve always disliked the movies, because I’ve always felt that the best part of Meyer’s writing simply did not translate well to the screen.

Secondly, I love the feminism.

Okay, let’s take a quick pause to let everyone gasp and clutch their pearls over me calling Twilight a feminist work.  I will address the criticisms later.  For now, please just hear me out.

Twilight strikes me as a premier example of what Hélène Cixous means when she calls for “women’s writing,” or writing for women, about women, by women, with a strong focus on the concerns and strengths and desires of womanhood.  This is a series about building and maintaining close relationships, both romantic and platonic.  It celebrates beauty, and love, and care.  Bella moves to Forks because she recognizes that her dad is lonely while her mom is quite the opposite, torn between family priorities.  She doesn’t simply subsume her interests to those of other people, but instead actively chooses how and when and where to express her love for her birth family and her found families.  Most of the other major decisions throughout the story — Alice “adopting” Bella, Carlisle moving the family to Alaska, Jacob becoming werewolf beta, the Cullens going up against the Volturi, etc. — are motivated by care and devotion for one’s family and friends.  Even the selfish or morally ambiguous character choices are shown to be motivated by love.  Rosalie tells Edward that Bella died because she genuinely thinks it’ll help him move on.  Victoria creates an army that nearly destroys Forks because she’s avenging James.  Alice abandons Bella and the others before the final battle because if she can’t save her entire family, then she’ll settle for saving her lover before letting him die in vain.

Not only is there a striking concern with love and care, but there’s also a strong commitment to avoiding violence.  Bella’s eventual vamp-superpower proves to be preventing violence and protecting others, an awesome character decision that I’d argue gets set up as early as the first book.  She lives in a violent world — this is a YA SF story, after all — but she has the power to suppress violence and create peace, both in herself and others.  I was already sick of “power = ability to inflict damage” in YA stories well before I knew the word “patriarchy.”  Twilight was one of the first books to convey to me that power could be refusing to do harm in spite of hunger or anger, that power could be shielding ones’ family, that power could be about building enough friendships and alliances to have an army at one’s back when facing an enemy too strong to take on alone.

Closely connected to all of that love and care, I love how much Twilight is about navigating teenage girlhood.  Is it empowering, intersectional, or all-inclusive?  Hell no.  Does it still dare to suggest that a completely ordinary teenage girl could have valid concerns about the world?  Yep.  The main conflict of the story, as Stephen King so derisively explained, is about the romantic entanglements of a teenage girl, and the book therefore has no literary merit.  (To quote my dad’s response: “Bold words from the guy who inflicted Firestarter on the world.”)

There is, indeed, a lot of romance in Twilight.  There are a lot of clothes.  Alice and Rosalie especially spend a lot of time on makeup, and hair, and choosing the prettiest cars and houses.  Twilight embraces all the stereotypically “girly” concerns of adolescence, and makes no effort to apologize for or condemn them.  Bella isn’t particularly good at performing them — she likes but doesn’t excel at shopping, fiercely defends her ugly car as ugly, hobbles through prom on crutches — but she can still enjoy the feeling of being pretty in a sparkly dress while dancing with her sparkly boyfriend.  And Twilight, like Animorphs with Cassie, takes the daring step of treating that feeling as valid.

Speaking of sparkles, I love the commitment to the fantasy concept in Twilight, including the myriad mundanities that Meyer brings with that commitment.  If you have super-speed, why not use it to play extreme baseball?  If you’re a mindreader with a clairvoyant sister, why wouldn’t you two play mental chess games?  I couldn’t tell you, after seven seasons of Buffy or eight of Vampire Diaries, what Spike or Damien or Angel or Stefan does all day when not brooding or lurking in the bushes to creep on human women.  I can tell you what the Cullens get up to.  Emmett and Rosalie work on their cars, usually by holding them overhead one-handed.  Carlisle and Alice read plays, and sometimes talk the whole family into home Shakespeare productions.  Edward and Carlisle debate theology, Emmett and Jasper have dumb athletic competitions, Edward and Esme play music, Alice manipulates stock markets, the twins go shopping online, etcetera.  The Cullens feel real, feel like the vampires next door, in a way that Louis and Lestat simply do not.

To get to the elephant in the room — I just described Twilight as a feminist text! — let’s talk about the other thing the Cullens do for fun: they have sex.  Weird sex.  Kinky furniture-breaking sex.  Sex that Emmett (who would know) compares to bear-wrestling.  These books suck with regards to queer representation, but they are sex-positive.  They feature an old-school Anglican protagonist offering his daughter-in-law a medical abortion.  They treat Edward’s desire for sex only within marriage and Alice’s desire for sex outside of marriage as both being valid.  Like I said, not groundbreaking, even by the standards of 2005, but still more than most teen novels do even today.

There’s a passage from Breaking Dawn that people love to pull out of context as “everything wrong with Twilight in two paragraphs” because it describes Bella waking up the morning after sex with bruises on her arms.  That moment is shocking out of context, to be sure — but in context, it’s the end result of an in-depth consent negotiation that lasts four books.  Bella says that she’d like to become a vampire.  Edward says okay, but only if she spends a few more years living as a human and considering that choice.  Bella says okay, but only if Edward, not Carlisle, becomes the one to turn her.  Edward says they can use his venom, but that Carlisle, who’s an MD, really needs to supervise the process.  Bella doesn’t love the idea of Edward’s stepdad cockblocking what’s supposed to be an intimate moment, and so agrees only on the grounds that she gets to have sex with Edward as a human first.  Edward’s hella Catholic, so he requests that they get married first.  Bella’s super horny, so she demands that the wedding happen within six months.  Edward says that he might hurt her during sex, and Bella says that she wants a little hurt during sex.  They marry.  They bang.  During the banging, Edward makes every effort to be controlled and courteous and gentile, while Bella goes wild and crazy.  The next morning, she has bruises and he does not.  Edward apologizes, but Bella’s actually really into it.  She spends a while admiring her sexy vamp-marked self in the mirror, touches the bruises many times, and reminds us yet again that Bella Swan’s whole M.O. is being a monsterfucker.  Her kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.

To be clear, I think there are other aspects of the romance that get criticized for good reason.  Edward does not negotiate with Bella before sneaking into her room to watch her sleep, and he does make unacceptable use of their power differences when he thinks she’s in danger of being mauled by werewolves.  The text condemns Jacob’s “don’t wanna die a virgin” ploy to manipulate a kiss out of Bella, but not the wider conceit of all the male characters as possessing uncontrollable urges.  Bella’s struggles to adjust to a new town feel very feminine and realistic; her amused tolerance of Jacob’s and Mike’s sexual harassment as the price for their friendship does not.  Werewolf imprinting might be mostly platonic, but that doesn’t make it okay for Meyer to depict it as a form of soulmate bonding that happens with child characters. Those are good points, all around.  I just wish that most of them didn’t come up in the context of post-hoc rationalizations for loathing the femininity of a feminine text.

I’m not calling Twilight an unproblematic series.  I’m saying that it gets (rightly!) criticized for appropriating Quileute culture, while Buffy’s total absence of main characters of color and blatant anti-Romani racism are (wrongly!) not remarked upon. I'm saying that I’ve been told I’m a misogynist for liking Twilight but not for liking James Bond.  I’m saying that there’s a reason people tend to go “oh, that makes so much sense!” when I let them in on the fact that reactive hatred for “Twitards” started and spread on 4Chan, later home of Gamergate and incel culture.  I’m saying that Twilight depicts problematic relationship dynamics as sexy — but then so do Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, Supernatural, Vladimir Tod, and Vampire Diaries.  All of which take the time to stop and thumb their noses at Twilight, smug in the superiority of having vampires that fly rather than vampires that sparkle, and for thoroughly condemning teenage girls for being girly while continuing to show men inflicting violence on them.

After all, as Erin May Kelly puts it: “we live in a world taught to hate everything to do with little girls.  We hate the books they read and the bands they like.  Is there anything the world makes fun of more than One Direction and Twilight?”  No one has ever called me a misogynist for liking the MCU, in spite of less than a third of its movies even managing to clear the low-low bar of the Bechdel test.  Because people are still allowed to like Harry Potter in spite of its racism, or Lord of the Rings despite its imperialism.  Because hatred for Twilight was never about its very real sexism, or the genuinely silly sparkle-vampires, until it had to justify itself as something other than hate for everything that teenage girls have ever dared openly love.

I enjoy the novels, and I enjoy the fan fiction that tries to fix some of the problems with the novels.  I appreciate the extent to which Meyer has elevated fan culture, and made an effort to acknowledge her own past mistakes.  I would love to be able to talk about my love for the series as a flawed but beautiful work of literature, but for now I’ll settle for asking that the world just let me enjoy it in peace.

[flockofdoves]

actually its like i really love seeing how you can abstract peoples faces into shapes and how so many people have so many different features and i can take inspiration from people around me all the time and create people who i havent seen in real life based on what i’ve learned from abstracting people and combining that in new ways and then learning from there how that abstraction of a person in my stylized art can be parsed even while drawing them moving and expressing themself

i’m not actually very good at that but i find it so fun. i love when i have opportunites to draw people all around me in every day life (a lot of the time that feels weird but when it feels less weird and more ethical lol) i wish i was doing studies like that more often. also by extension of my love of this i want better outlets to study anatomy for art!!!

there are other aspects of character design that i’m not as big on. of course everything has implications always but character design big on visual shorthand for not correlated things sometimes overwhelms me even if its totally harmless and mundane. why am i getting myself stressed over whether i should draw martin and jon with glasses or not because maybe it feels right because of tropes about dorky and/or studious people wearing glasses. theres absolutely plenty of things worth thinking about with personal biases in character design but like. this one probably doesnt matter i’m just being weird always getting hung up on totally superfluous stuff. i just wanna not limit my ideas without realizing it bc of even just dumb stuff like that

its also just gonna make me go in circles in non visual media fandoms with strongly established fanon appearances when i get most excited about character design as a way to make new faces i havent seen before but also simultaneously of course ive been influenced by fanon and of course i want my art to be parsed by others and its not like i have any real justification for any appearances i could draw beyond canon description anyway so its just easier to draw within that vague fanon. i’m not complaining or anything its just an interesting thing that happens is all so i’m thinking about it. its been a while since i was in a non visual fandom

[bthump]

top 10 berserk quotes?

lol this is a tough one. ok i’m trying to think of quotes that are good in and of themselves, bc it’s way too easy to pick lines that are just representative of scenes i like. but here goes.

10. “Not good enough, just two or three broken bones. If you wanna stop me, you’re gonna have to crush my skull or pierce my heart. Just like you, slug!“

That double whammy of badass and delightfully on-the-nose wrt Guts’ black swordsman monstrosity.

9. “The power to protect someone and the power to be with someone are different.“

So in part this is just selfish lol because it’s one of my defenses against the “Guts, protector of the branded girl” shit. But more generally I do love this as a distinction and it’s a theme that we see a lot of in Berserk - protecting/saving people vs actually being at their side.

8. “Those who die on the battlefield are not royalty, nobility, or commoners. They are the defeated, who die.“

This is just a really cool line lol. I mean it’s relevant to Griffith’s focus on equality from an interesting angle, like it’s great as an insight into Griffith’s mentality. But mostly it’s just cool af.

7. “Don’t talk to me in that same voice!“

It’s an obvious little line but to me it really sells Guts’ inner conflict and how agonizing this reunion is for him because he still loves Griffith. And it highlights the way Guts draws a distinction between human Griffith and Femto/NGriff. Also it was this or the “I’d forgotten my urge to kill” bit and I went with this for the sake of variety lol.

6. “Because people fear the unknown, they speak the same words to one another. Because they fear the unknown, they distrust words they don’t understand. Because they fear the unknown, they believe in a doctrine. Because they fear the unknown, they reject other gods. People must cope with their world because of the unknown. Because of fear, they label outsiders. Paganism. Foreign languages. Different races. All manner of social classes. Everything that separates people is here at this place. And so is that which proves that all this is mere child’s play. The ultimate unknown. Yet… why is it? My chest is filled with… no. Everyone here is filled with exaltation. What a radiant chaos this is!“

This is a nice climactic speech to usher in Griffith’s utopia, and a pretty good illustration of why it’s not going to turn out to be secretly evil lol. At the very most there may be positive and negative aspects, but this is p emphatically portrayed as positive. Also it’s just an epic speech to punctuate humans and apostles teaming up, and I dig this whole sequence.

5. “Even so… incidentally… I found someone I really wanted to have look at me.“

Oh Guts. This is the heart of Berserk right here.

4. “May we run rampant with hatred and wild joy just to crush with these fangs the true light that burns us.“

The true light that burns us is such a fucking line man. Guts wants to kill Griffith for the same reason Griffith made the sacrifice. To escape their feelings.

Like, yk how Ganishka and Griffith’s final confrontation had that whole high fantasy, spiritual connection between godlike beings who are the only beings that exist on the same level vibe? Complete with the whole apostle instinct to love their god, yk kind of like some takes on angels’ relationships to god/god’s light, yadda yadda yadda? And the climax of the MF arc has that grandiose line about “it’s within darkness that true light is discovered”?

Well I picked this version of the true light line because I swear all that intense thematic fantasy stuff is straight up just a metaphor for Guts and Griffith’s mundane, very human relationship. Like NeoGriffith’s magic aura that draws people to him is symbolic of what Guts felt for him, and he felt for Guts, completely without magic influence. It’s a not uncommon way of heightening the intensity + significance of a relationship/love in general by paralleling it to world changing fantastical magic stuff, and imho Berserk is playing completely into it, with Griffith and Guts’ relationship specifically.

3. “The life you couldn’t take by your own hand, the life of the person you loved the most and hated the most! You gave it to us! So that you could bury your fragile human heart.”

The purpose of this line is to tell us why Griffith sacrificed Guts, and I love it. I love going into the Golden Age knowing this. I love how the Black Swordsman arc sets up Guts and Griffith’s relationship so effectively. It’s so good.

2. “Man takes up the sword in order to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in some far-off time beyond perception.“

Berserk.txt. I love it when a story lays its themes out for you like a welcome mat, and this is a great one. Swords as coping mechanisms is right here.

1. “Among thousands of comrades and tens of thousands of enemies… you’re the only one. You’re the only one… who made me forget my dream.”

This was the inevitable first choice lbr. It’s basically a description of my number one favourite romance trope as the immensely satisfying climax to an all around fantastic arc about these two dudes and their feelings for each other. It’s perfect.

Bonus:

“I’d forgotten that the night was this vast, this deep…”

especially paired with the title of the following chapter, when Griffith ruins his life: “Start of the Everlasting Night.”

I just cannot get enough of that light imagery in relation to Guts and Griffith, and vast, infinite night as an illustration of their lives without each other is ideal.

(Also just include Griffith’s torture chamber monologue in this list in spirit. I didn’t add it because there’s like 5 separate lines I could consider faves in it lol, and also it’s obvious and I’ve talked about it plenty before. But yk, that whole monologue is side by side with #1.)