#because that reflects poorly on the brand

[scintillyyy]

there is something where. hm. like yes, tim can be condescending towards steph, he was written by dixon, it's inevitable. but also since, for a very long time, he was the only one supporting steph's decision to be a vigilante & the only one giving her any sort of attempt at formal training, tim is also the one who tends to get held accountable for her by the adults in their lives when she does mess up, or acts reckless, or makes a mistake. because the fault is considered to lie with his failure to teach her properly, so even if it shouldn't be tim's fault, because it's the fault of all the adults who are refusing to take any sort of responsibility, her behavior does end up reflecting on tim.

so you end up with this thing where to steph: her and tim are equals in a relationship. they are similar aged vigilates & the disparity in their training and experience isn't that important. because she's trying and working really hard & her methods do end up getting the result she desires/end up working in some way, shape, or form, so she's doing good enough to be on equal footing with tim wrt this whole vigilante thing. after all, they're both kids! there's no real difference between them except tim gets a little more training than her. and she's not wrong in that if an adult were to actually officially sanction her & train her she would be on more equal footing with tim as far as they're just two kids who are choosing to be vigilantes.

where to tim he's operating with the knowledge that that their relationship is one thing, but their jobs as vigilantes is a completely separate thing. and them being equal vigilantes is really not considered the case to any other active gotham vigilante. experiencewise, before steph even showed up on the scene, tim had had at least his six months of dedicated training with batman & occasional training with nightwing. he had also had his weeks of dedicated daily training in paris with the rahul lama & then his speed training with lady shiva. he does have probably close to at least 8-9 months of training and experience and working as robin on steph at her first appearance. he's also at a point where he is considered by the adults around him to be trained & skilled enough to be able to train jean-paul valley at that point. this disparity only worsens during the time before they start dating where tim finishes his training in paris with the rahul lama along with getting even more ongoing specialized training from batman & nightwing and steph...continues to be self taught. so the adults around them have expectations for tim that they don't necessarily have for steph, and since tim is the one training her & the expectations for tim at this point are that he's an autonomous, skilled vigilante in his own right (and has been since he was left in charge of azbats), if steph does mess up & tim is the one choosing to sanction & train her, then her mistakes & recklessness becomes tim's fault for not training her properly. although in a perfect world, she wouldn't be his responsibility in this way, that's just how everyone (batman, nightwing, the birds of prey) views it. & like. as someone who takes students at her job. it's not entirely wrong that while a mistake made by a student is on the student & it's also very much considered ultimately the fault of the instructor for failing to recognize that the student wasn't ready or skilled enough for something that they made a mistake, because as the more experienced professional, it's on you to recognize the limitations of the student & supervise/guide them accordingly. which tim is in the position of everyone feeling that steph is his responsibility to manage, because he's often the only one who thinks she should be given a chance & is trying to give her a chance.

it's an inherent power imbalance, formed the the fact that tim is the only one willing to instruct her for a long time, sanctioned & reinforced by the adults around them.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for missing rehearsals for a concert?

I (17X) play the cello and am participating in my local conservatorium’s string ensembles concert in three days. I have been aware of the concert since the start of term (aka four weeks ago). For the first three weeks of this term, I have been completing my final high school exams (I can’t be more specific because it differs wordwide, but they’re the exams that acknowledge that you’ve fully completed your secondary education y’know) so that was obviously very intense and I had a lot on my plate. At the start of term, my cello teacher S (late 20s?F) told me that I’d be playing a solo in the big finale piece that everyone from every ensemble plays in, as I’m one of the more advanced students. I was given the music for this at the start of term, and we have been practicing it in our weekly lessons so that I am prepared. There will be a rehearsal for this piece a few hours before the concert begins. I was also aware that I was performing in my school strings ensemble (which is a piece I have played before with the ensemble and am familiar with), and S also organised that the four Year 12 students (including me) would play a piece together. She organised to have three rehearsals for this on the three days before the concert (aka today, tomorrow and the next). As by this time I knew I would have finished all my exams, I told her that I should be free to be at these rehearsals.

Since finishing high school a week ago, I have gotten a job at a local café, as I haven’t had a job in high school like most people due to not having time with my music commitments. Unfortunately, I was rostered to have work on the days of the first Year 12 piece rehearsal (aka today), the third Year 12 piece rehearsal, and the day of the concert itself (so I would miss the finale piece rehearsal beforehand and would just make it on time for the concert). I considered trying to swap these shifts so that I could go, but A) given that I am brand new (today was my third ever shift) I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try and get out of it so early on in my employment, and B) I didn’t actually have any way to contact a manager and ask for shifts off until today because they hadn’t properly sorted out my paperwork and information yet. I tried to look for solutions for this, but yesterday I decided that I just wouldn’t be able to make it, so I message S to inform her and apologise. She obviously wasn’t happy about this (she started her reply with “yikes”), and checked to see whether I was still happy to play in the school string piece (which I confirmed) and asked whether I was able to play in the concert with another ensemble that I used to play in (I said yes, and she said she’d get the music to me). I left it at this, with the intention to practice my pieces a lot over the next few days.

Today, both me and my mum received an email from S. She was quite angry about the fact that I wasn’t able to attend two out of the three Year 12 piece rehearsals, calling it bad etiquette and saying that it “reflects poorly in the professional world”. (I agree that it wasn’t great for me to have to pull out of those rehearsals when I had previously said that I should be available, but as I said above, I wasn’t really in a position where I could change this). She also said that I was supposed to be at school strings rehearsals yesterday, and at rehearsals for the ensemble I’m no longer in and was only just asked to play in. In this ensemble’s rehearsal, they also ran through the finale piece that I am playing a solo in (which I wasn’t aware they would be doing). S claimed that I had been told that I was supposed to be at these rehearsals this week — I have absolutely zero recollection of this, to the point where I doubt I was asked, but if I was, it was before or during my exams, in which case it doesn’t surprise me that I forgot, as I was highly stressed and just trying to focus on getting through school. I was never given another reminder to be there, so I had no idea I was supposed to be at the rehearsals yesterday. Because of how annoyed she was, I was forced to speak to someone about leaving my shift on the concert day early so that I can attend the rehearsal beforehand, but I’m still not able to attend the Year 12 piece rehearsal in two days time.

I feel really bad about the whole thing, because I genuinely am quite close with S and I know she’s put in a lot of effort to this concert. However, I feel like she’s being unfair in her annoyance. I was unaware I had to be at any rehearsals yesterday because this wasn’t clearly communicated to me (and even if to others it was implied that I should be there, I’m not the kind of person that will pick up on this — I need to be explicitly told). If I had known I was expected to be there, I absolutely would have been there. And obviously not being able to go to the rehearsals because I’m working is frustrating, but I really don’t feel like I had much choice in the matter. If I had been working there for a while, I absolutely would have asked for the days off, but I feel like it’s unfair to expect me to try and cancel those shifts when I’ve only just started the job. I’m glad I’ve managed to arrange to be at the concert day rehearsal, so that I can practice the solo with the rest of the ensemble, but even if I hadn’t been able to, I’ve been practicing the piece and I’ve done performances where I haven’t had a proper rehearsal before, so I think it would have been fine.

Hopefully this made sense, I tried to provide as much detail as possible but I’m very tired and am struggling to be coherent, and it’s also hard to explain the situation through text. So, tl;dr, AITA for:

Not being at rehearsals yesterday that I was unaware I was supposed to be at?

Having to cancel rehearsals because I was rostered during those times?

What are these acronyms?

[hanasnx]

https://www.tumblr.com/hanasnx/722047232208142336/you-ever-think-about-how-anakin-fucks-the-anger

anakin would be absolutely ruthless too. he has your head stuffed into the pillows, his big hand pushing your head down as he fucks you relentlessly. i feel like he’d get you so close to finishing and he’d pull out just to fuck with you. you pissed him off so much he’s practically using you just for his own pleasure, to make himself feel better.

— link.

i was actually commentating on how anakin would use sex specifically to make you think he's sorry when that couldn't be further from the truth. he only apologizes when he knows he's in the wrong, and a lot of the time he believes himself to be in the right— contrary to how you perceive it.

he'll distract you from how cross you are with him because in your opinion he was in the wrong. so i don't doubt he fucks you like an animal. fucks you like youre a slut underneath him. fucks you so good you're brain fried because that is exactly his purpose. because he still doesnt believe he was in the wrong, wont admit it, and won't apologize for it. laying terrific pipe was merely a diversion so you'd forget to force him to lie to you, and say he regrets whatever action caused your discrepancy with him. and using you for his own pleasure is definitely a very on-brand and normal thing for him to do. the bottom line is is that you're into that, and he does his best work to you chasing his own pleasure. i swearr

if he's the one mad at you because of your mistake, i can definitely see him considering not letting you finish. but it wouldn't get past threatening dirty talk. when i picture anakin and his relationship with sex, flat out orgasm denial would not agree with him no matter how angry he is with you. edgeplay is fine, it's complete dissatisfaction that he has a problem with. for him, finishing is a healthy and necessary part of intercourse, and he thinks of it pretty transactional-ly in the sense that if he's already gone through the extensive work for him to have sex with someone, and accept them as a partner, i doubt he'd have an easy time walking away from them when he's fucked them to his own completion, but not theris. he believes it reflects poorly on him as a lover, even if he's upset with you for a mistake you made. and yes, he's prone to using your body to make himself feel better and this extends to any number of things. this is my personal interpretation of his character ofc. great ask!

[dk-ghostmachines]

I gotta talk about FourDogs (again)

It's barely about her, though. I think "he's so lucky his dad was brutally murdered" and "people with trauma need a second handicap because they're too motivated" are such absolute-the-fuck-ly bonkers takes, they're not even worth the time it took me to get mad about them, which was immediately. This time around, I have way more to say about audience reception. I'll try to keep it civil.

It feels like a lot of us are responding from increasingly personal places because these are characters with which a lot of us identify, or we see traits in them that remind us of people from our real lives. And hey! Another performance and storytelling slay on the part of one Brennan Lee Mulligan. Who else can invent 50+ characters every year and play them to the point where any one of them can evoke both an "omg that's literally me!" and an "omg that's literally Dani, the girl that bullied me all of freshmen year until I punched out her front tooth in the student parking lot and got in-school suspension for a month!". And whether Kipperlily reminds you of Dani, or reflects your own anxieties about potential, ability, and trauma, an important thing to remember is this: she is not real!

Brennan made her up! Brennan made her up to tell a story, and when he made her up, he made her annoying, petty, antagonistic, and he gave her not just opposing goals to the the protagonists we know and love, but the explicit goal of ruining The Bad Kids' lives, specifically.

Now, I'm not saying she's fictional to be a dick, or dismiss any deeper readings on her or any of the Rat Grinders. I'm bringing it up because the way I'm seeing people talk to each other about these characters is starting to get a little wild and it's in danger of waking up The Olde Gods™ (i.e. the special brand of Tumblr Self-Righteousness that lives inside us all).

It's important to remember Kipperlilly is a character in a fictive work so that different interpretations of her don't get treated as stone law. Each reading of her is personal and valid, but none are gospel. The "Kipperlilly is but a victim" take is not the only correct one, nor is radical empathy for her as a character the only correct reaction. Also, even if I consider her sympathetic that is not incompatible with an opinion like "Kipperlilly needs to get roundhouse'd in the head by a lesbian in a tracksuit and/or a wizard in a jean jacket, posthaste". Sure, you can say that anyone who doesn't feel a deep and eclipsing empathy for Kipperlilly above all other emotions is immature at best and sociopathic at worst, but then I can just say anyone who demands solely empathy for Kipperlilly and excuses her literal crimes and bass-ackwards world view because she's insecure and has anger issues, is probably also someone who has a history of weaponizing whatever minority status they may or may not occupy to talk over, silence, or harass people of color.

They're both just opinions. And also, like. Y'know. A bit much.

To engage in the long and rich tradition of measuring character trajectories against those in the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, let's compare Kipperlilly to Azula. Azula had an incredibly sympathetic backstory and untreated mental health issues. Azula was also a danger to herself and others, as well as profoundly manipulative and abusive (although, it was a children's show so Azula never killed anybody for whatever that's worth). Do I wish that fourteen-year-old girl had an Iroh-type in her life? Literally one adult who loved her genuinely and advocated for her best interests? Of course I do. I saw the Ember Island episode, I watched that one video essay! Does that mean it was any less satisfying to watch Zuko and Katara kick her absolute ass? No! And it was non-lethal anyway, children's show, duh.

That brings me to my other thing; Kipperlilly is a character in a fictive work that is not finished. And I know that point will age poorly, but I'm thinking it won't be the only one (hey-o). Remember the people that were calling The Bad Kids bullies? And then we learned that Kipperlilly hated Riz because his fucking dad fucking died?? And that was a full academic year before getting reanimated by a rage god?? I'll do a tame one; remember when Gilear wasn't cursed?? He was "just a guy"?? The show is serialized, gang, the world is still building! Clerickiller is not done yet, y'all need to let her cook! I'm sure we'll tune in next week to see her graduate from "unhinged" to "unaffiliated with the door frame or any frame-like structure". Reprimanding people on Tumblr will not change the trajectory of this character who, by the way, has not expressed remorse or any desire for a path other than violence. You look me in my black face after your blorbo slits a kid's throat and say "help her"?? Kipperlilly doesn't want get better right now, she wants one thing and that's for Kristen Applebees to go fuck herself and die!! You were there, you heard it!! When the fictional behavior changes, as it often does in stories, so will my opinion. There is no fore-forgiveness. Without an actual redemption arc I will continue to see the villain as a villain.

Speaking of, I think what some people have an issue with is the level of hate Kipperlilly's getting and how aggressive it is. But like.... isn't that allowed?? Because of all the stuff I said but also because like, mama said that it was okay! And by "mama" I mean Siobhan Thompson who said Kipperlilly belongs under the jail. Sure, in the real world, adults don't tell kids they belong in the ground that's crazy fucked up, but all these kids are played by adults and Emily as Fig joked that she was gonna smite the sixteen-year-old girl played by the thirty-something man. You're telling me the antagonist antagonizes the protagonists, and the protagonists go "boo, hiss" and then I, the audience, go "boo, hiss as well" but I'm wrong? I'm wrong, somehow, cool checks out.

"They're XP Levelling*punches a locker*!!"

"That girl is worse than Kalvaxus."

"Littledoggy Girlcollar"

Am I not engaging with the narrative on it's own terms if I say "i'd tell Clerickiller to die mad, but she clearly already did, Jojo Siwa head-ass, in reference to that fuck-ass ponytail and your toxic yuri" Do I need to draw a little caitmay-style OC to say it for me, would that be better?

God-forbid, we have fun? Must we discourse, always? FourDogs is tragic, FourDogs is compelling, FourDogs is Dani from 9th grade. She is Azula from Avatar and Clare from Fleabag and Brennan Lee Mulligan from my dreams and that is something that can be so personal. But no one else has to participate in your parasocial relationship. What's crazy is, I actually like Kipperlilly! As a character. I mean, the "trauma is privilege" obviously hit a nerve with me because of real life stuff, but the image of her over the rogue teacher's grave?? With a backhoe and a "gotcha, bitch" expression??? Come on, that is fresh-off-the-vine Cunt™. Even more so than I imagined that moment to be when we first heard about it. Her ending up in a Ragh or Aelwyn place would be way more satisfying than a Goldenrod or Penelope Everpetal place, BUT IT WILL ALSO be satisfying to see whatever Kipperlilly's version of the locked-in-a-chokehold-and-being-gaslit-into-thinking-you-shit-the-coach's-pants-scene is. In addition to the non-lethal ass-kicking that proceeds it.

Y'all can chuck the insinuation that something so clearly subjective is actually objective and has moral implications that make me bad, directly in the garbage. What is this, religion, hey-o.

[sidewalkchemistry]

simple skincare tips!

🌼eat the foods that love you back. your skin is a direct mirror of your internal situation. if your digestive system is being bombarded often by foods that create a lot of wastes and residues, that does more harm than good. and so, the struggle to eliminate them will be reflected in your skin. your diet constitutes the vast majority of your skin health. change your meals to be whole food plant based (still delicious, satisfying, and exciting) & watch your skin glow and your skincare routine simplify.

🌼be conscious of what's going on your skin. the skin layers can be over-cleansed, imbalanced, and aggravated when the skin microbiome and pH are disrupted. if you wipe out the beneficial bacterial populations with harshly formulated products, you may find that you break out (i.e. harmful bacterial populations begin to thrive). use gentle, simple skin formulas such as castile soaps, natural oils & butters (i recommend jojoba oil for mostly everyone), natural soap bars, and clays. most commercial skin care products disturb the skin cells (introduce too much foreign material to the body, unsuitable pH ranges, imbalance the microbiome, etc). they sell because it's convention to buy them, the brands are well-known, and their sales pitches are enticing. but really, no cream or serum will ever be the magic potion your skin was asking for. it will only be a band-aid, at best. truly healthy skin comes from diet, and the products are just for any other necessary maintenance. if you get a pimple, you should look first to why the pimple emerged, not what treatment will remove it.

🌼keep your lymph flowing. simple ways to do this are through good lifestyle habits. things like doing exercise & sports you find fun, breathwork, dry brushing, eating lots of fruit, avoiding wearing bras & other tight clothing items, lymphatic massage/gua sha can all be helpful.

🌼focus on hydration via fresh fruits and veggies. the water within plant foods is more useable to your cells, and your skin will cease being overly oily or dry overtime (especially if you reduce/eliminate your salt & oil intake). it will also help to encourage lymphatic flow, so you can see problems like blemishes, cellulite, old scars diminish after great consistency.

🌼allow your skin to breathe. this is especially good if you spend time in stuffy (poorly ventilated) indoor environments, like offices, hospitals, planes, etc. one great way is via herbal facial steaming (i recommend it 3x a week or so). make a hot infusion of an aromatic tea, cover it and allow it to cool a few minutes, and, with closed eyes, allow the pores to open and receive the herbal medicine (this is a great time to meditate, manifest, and just feel pampered). getting more fresh air, working up a sweat, and going to a sauna are also ways to allow your skin to breathe.

🌼avoid steroid prescriptions creams at all costs. they are very deleterious to health in the long term, and they can be very painful to come off of. it's not a real fix. it's not worth hurting your kidneys & adrenals for. evaluate your diet instead. do you eat dairy? choose plant-based dairy options instead (they're simple to make yourself too). do you eat a lot of fats? try oil-free cooking methods instead (opt for sautéing with a bit of water, baking, steaming, air frying, etc). avoiding eating out as much.

🌼be aware of what you're putting in your hair as well. your shampoos, conditioner, leave-ins, gels, moisturizers, oils, serums, etc all tend to touch your face too, when your hair touches your face. if they wouldn't be good enough to put on your face, don't put them in your hair. a lot of the best skin cleansers are also suitable as shampoos. a lot of oils and butters can be used for both. plant-based gels like aloe vera or flax seed are simple to DIY, and are dual-use once again. basically, this will simplify your life.

🌼understand the water that runs through your pipes. if your shower and tap water are like most people's around the world, they aren't optimal for our skin. for example, they contain added chemicals to sanitize the water but that can prevent the proper microbiomes from developing on your skin. a weak skin microbiome is prone to skin issues. so, try to use distilled water on your face (if you're not able to get a water filter, a gallon jug at a store is affordable. they're about $1.30 USD in my area).

[g5mlp]

Is there any info on G5’s performance financially? People have been saying it’s been doing poorly since 2021, but there hasn’t really been much evidence. There have been pictures and talk of stores getting rid of it through clearance sales and such, but I find that’s more regional thing; all of stores near me not only still carry MLP, but it rarely goes on clearance, too. To add onto the confusion, Hasbro themselves seems/claims to be confident and investing more money into G5. At the same time, they haven’t mentioned it in an quarterIy report since 2021. I don’t know what think. How do you personally think G5 is doing?

Hasbro has much bigger fish to fry, and they have been cutting costs for basically everything that they can. Wizards of the Coast is now the only part of Hasbro that isn't losing money and Hasbro still laid off lots of that division's staff in December 2023.

Because Hasbro is doing inventory reductions across all their franchises, and because a lot of people have switched to online shopping over the past decade, it's difficult to use anecdotal observations to judge MLP's success. There does seem to be a broad sentiment among MLP toy collectors that the franchise hasn't been doing as well.

The reason that MLP isn't mentioned in Hasbro's investor reports any more is primarily that in 2022 they changed their definition of "franchise brands" and started calling MLP a "portfolio brand" instead, reflecting that it was no longer one of Hasbro's seven biggest brands, but there could be any number of explanations for how that happened.

MLP's no longer been Hasbro's biggest "girl brand" since they got Peppa Pig in 2019.

MLP's growth was primarily because of Friendship Is Magic, and that growth mostly happened before 2015. (Hasbro avoids emphasizing revenue decreases, so that's probably why MLP's revenue wasn't mentioned as a dollar amount after 2015.)

The 2021 movie, My Little Pony: A New Generation, didn't have a properly measurable impact, because its originally-planned theatrical release was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Brian Goldner, who was Hasbro's CEO for about 13 years, died in 2021, and was replaced as CEO by Chris Cocks (yes, that's his real name). It's not clear if Cocks has made any good decisions yet.

It's obvious that both Hasbro and the MLP franchise have seen better days, at least financially, and Hasbro's level of investment into MLP has clearly been decreasing. However, the viral success of G4 isn't something that could be easily replicated, and G4 itself wasn't able to sustain its own viral or financial success. It would probably be fairer to compare G5 to other TV shows/toy lines based on standalone movies than to compare it to G4.

[ihopesocomic]

As a bi and nonbinary person i feel like lgbt media that doesn't make romance ina homophobic society or a coming out story is geniunely refreshing. Im really tired of the same old stories that are like that. So i really like i hopeso a lot better than mypride... Like

If you guys want homophobic or transphobic "realism" idk go watch mypride or whatever. Im geniunely tired of having to experience and having media reflect real world prejudice that has an effect on people.

So anyways ihopeso is really good in terms of being an lgbt friendly comic. I hope more stuff like yours comes out soon.

Also I don't know how they did it but they seriously wrote nothing and hover with the charisma of an obligatory heterosexual couple in every piece of media ever. Thats all ill say on all of that

Thank you! Just based on personal experience, enjoying a thing without it having to be bogged down by rampant bits of bigotry just makes it all the more enjoyable. Right from the start I wanted to make it absolutely clear that homophobia/transphobia/ableism/etc was just not a thing in this world. Not only do the readers not have to stress out about whether it's gonna happen, but look at that, the main couple also has a brief Romeo & Juliet moment. But it's because they have different cultures, and not because they're two girls who are romantic.

Since there's no "cishet default", there's no "corrupt religion", so why include something that only exists because one sector of humans decided to hide behind religion to justify oppression? Starts not making sense when you think about it.

Unless the point of someone's story is to deconstruct discrimination or just generally speaking about one's experiences, there's no reason to include it. Animals or fantasy or whatever. Your fantasy world has Off-brand Catholicism in it to justify discrimination against queer people? Then why are you boring, that's my question. It just especially doesn't make sense with animals. It's a good fuckin way to take any queer readers you have right out of the story. Most days I just put it down and never look at it again cuz I'm fuckin tired. It's 2023, queer tragedies are old hat, no one cares.

And if someone's one of those people who thinks it doesn't make sense to not include it, then you need to assess why you think this way because it's not normal. Or if you don't wanna do that, then yeah, go back and watch MP, cuz an off-putting amount of people bug us about why characters aren't ableist or homophobic. Y'all want homophobic lions, go watch MP. That's clearly what some of you want LOL And you're not gonna get MP 2.0 out of IHS, as much as people want it to be.

As for Nothing and Hover, there's a strange phenomenon in queer media where they have to include one or multiple bad sapphic tropes. Specifically where one is the "meek feminine one" and the other is the "boistrous masculine one". Essentially making them a poorly-written cishet couple. MP just has the extra bonus of Nothing being disabled and Hover being ableist. They complete each other/sarcasm.

And to go on a bit of a tangent, homophobia and ableism doesn't even make sense in the context of My Pride lol I know what they were trying to do, but in simplest terms, woman-haters don't worship women. And it just becomes even stupider when you remember that they're trying to explain "realism" in lion behaviors. - Cat

[bumblingbabooshka]

Trying to pull together my thoughts about missing family and Vulcan bonds vis a vis Tuvok

Married Vulcans seem to be joined together telepathically in some manner: “Parted from me and never parted. Never and always touching and touched” These words, as well as being hopelessly romantic and making my damn heart ache;  Seem to imply that Vulcans have a constant awareness of/closeness with their spouse and I would assume a facet of that closeness would extend towards their children.  Thinking about Tuvok specifically we know he loves his wife and children, even though he wouldn’t describe it that way. We also know that his love for them is not seen as something to be ashamed of, it’s not an emotion - they’re part of his identity and he’s not complete without them. I wonder if without his wife and children, Tuvok is different. We only really see him/get to know him while within the delta quadrant. I wonder if there are small changes to him because of the loss of his family. I’m sure if I were a person who was constantly sharing my thoughts with another person for years I would grow in tandem with that person and they would be like a part of me. Like Inosculation. I’m sure it would be strange to be so incredibly alone all at once. Tuvok and T’Pel existed together, with one as an integral part of the other for decades and now Tuvok is utterly alone - not just physically but like...he’s now a singular person. Which I’m sure is brand new. It’s not just immediate family - Vulcans are implied to be connected to all other Vulcans through some distant psychic link web. I’ve heard people talk about an episode where a ship of Vulcans die and Spock[?] feels it. So I’m sure that even before Tuvok was married/had children he had these bonds. To his parents and also all Vulcans. And all of that’s just gone in the delta quadrant. Vulcans seem to put a lot of emphasis on family and pride. When you do something unfortunate you reflect poorly on your family and it’s a problem. I wonder if that’s in some part due to their bonds. Like, for a human it’s not like you can control your daughter at a certain point. She’s fully her own person but maybe Vulcans are never fully their own person - you’re always an extension of your family and by extension of them - All of Vulcan. So when you look at something it’s not just you, so many eyes are looking at it. And I don’t mean literally that when Tuvok looked at something all of his family were also looking at it but more in the sense that he had access to them and knew them. It’s sort of an alien idea so it’s hard to explain but I hope I sort of got close with my illustration. If you’re painting something you have a palette of colors at the ready. You may only use two or three but you have more than that. You always have access to more, you always have the option to use more. Even if you decide not to, it’s there and you can imagine what that color would look like on the canvas. Before every step of the painting you’d be able to look at the pallette and go “Hmm no not red, not green....maybe if I mix these two...no, what about...?” In the Delta quadrant Tuvok only has his own color. I’m sure in the beginning he can remember what his family’s colors were and how they might look but over time wouldn’t those senses dull? Wouldn’t those colors fade, unable to be replenished? If you only have one color, over time you won’t be able to properly imagine what other colors might look like. Over time you probably wouldn’t even consider it. In Tuvok’s pon farr episode he implies that he remembers what T’Pel looks like to the exact measurement of her features. I wonder if he goes over his family’s faces in his head - clinging tightly to facts and numbers as more elusive things like voices and colors fade.  “[My family is] part of my identity and I am...incomplete without them.” And faced with both this and 70 years I wonder if Tuvok strives to find a new “complete” on his own or if he’s resigned himself to being incomplete - and if he does I know he’d do it for the same reason he’d rather die than be with another woman during his pon farr - love. Perhaps (by nature of being Vulcan) being complete again, to be fully at peace would be to stop missing them. It would be the logical thing to do of course, but, like sleeping with another woman - Tuvok wouldn’t. Because he’s loyal to what and whom he loves. Even if that love is going to manifest as lack for the next seventy years, he’ll hold onto that lack. Just like he was prepared to die T’Pel’s husband, utterly each other’s until the end.

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/738837493190934529/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost73871242031#notes Oh it's definitely not. Otherwise I wouldn't be looking for a word for it. That's why I explained what I meant, because I kinda knew that author's voice would probably be wrong.

Interesting to find out more about it though. Heard it thrown around here and there, but was never sure what it actually refers to.

Though I wouldn't even say it's an OOC issue, because it happens in original works too, so technically it could be considered "in character." I have encountered it in both fics and original works, and an additional quirk of that writing is that the character/s will have mindsets that don't match the world they're in, or it will be so over the top that it comes across as an unwanted parody just by the tone of the story.

Weird meme speech, pop culture references, dialogue/monologues that sound like the author just copy-pasted from their twitter/facebook rants, and a lot of that superficial knowledge on topics/issues/problems that is key for all that mouth frothing.

There's also often this weird poorly blended mix between ideas they like and the world, that makes it even more obvious. Like if they write a story where they want to show a the backdrop to be this super oppressive world where everyone has base level education to not have an uprising. Our main lead though, for some reason is the one unique individual with all the knowledge of a modern internet user, and has seen right through everything, but the story never explains why. This is super popular with both further on the edge sides of the political spectrum, and it screams mouth piece to the max and a lack of reflection.

Why does this character know everything when the Government is apparently so effective that no one questions anything? Fuck you, I'm the author and I wanted to show how smart I am and how stupid everyone else is. Here's my facebook/twitter rant!

I know it technically is bad writing, but it's such a specific type of bad writing, and it happens so frequently I would love a simple name for it.

--

Interesting to find out more about it though. Heard it thrown around here and there, but was never sure what it actually refers to.

Re "voice", it's the set of things that make you go "Ah, this sounds like X wrote it", basically. The actual POV might be a specific character, in which case, X is trying to sound like that character, but they still have a particular way of writing that's a little different from other authors trying to write a similar character. It's even more obvious in nonfiction.

Like... on tumblr, I sound like me. Sure, some of it is my actual personality or views, but there's also just the manner in which I write. I could have the same personality but communicate it differently or more poorly. How often do I use big words? How often do I use slang? How many clauses are in my sentences? In my case, I do kind of sound like this out loud too, but that's never a guarantee either. A lot of it is about the writing craft the person has consciously cultivated over time.

I think subject matter can be relevant to voice, like authors who love to describe food in every work or something, but a lot of it has to do with whether the person is funny overall or what kind of sentence structure they tend to go for. It's a broad vibe thing.

(Certainly, horrid PSAs are part of some authors' voices, but you can use the term to describe any general "Sounds like so-and-so" vibe.)

Honestly, the thing where only the protagonist is ~So Special~ that they alone have twitter brain see through the evil government is one of the obnoxious traits readers often brand as a Mary Sue. That's certainly not the term for this whole phenomenon though.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I told my mother her book covers are bad?

I (20s F) used to design book covers for my mother, who is a self published author. I've recently stopped, both due to time conflicts because of work/school, and because it was a pain working with her (she never knew what she wanted and I would have to BEG her to give me enough information to work with, but then would ask for random additions to completed covers because new ideas suddenly came to her head; would give me deadlines for covers to be completed and then complain if I was doing personal hobbies instead of working on her cover even if the deadline was weeks away. also I don't know if this will be relevant, but yes I was paid for all covers I made for her). I did a handful of covers for her over the past few years, all of which she said she loved and would excitedly show to anyone she could. However I recently noticed she'd had some of the covers I'd done for her remade by a friend of hers. Some of them are Fine (not the best, I think the friend just throws stock photos into Canva) but others are very bad. Not quite Chuck Tingle bad, but close.

I love my mom, and she loves writing. It's been her dream to pursue a writing career for decades, and I want her to succeed! But no matter how much we say don't judge a book by its cover, a good cover can mean the difference between readers snatching a book up immediately and skipping over it without a second thought. Especially for self published authors who can't pull readers by name alone. I think it's important to note that she has explicitly asked for my help in this regard in the past (in addition to helping her design her website/developing an "brand" identity for her). She self admits to having no artistic eye and not knowing the difference between what looks "good" or "bad" (yes I know these are subjective, but you could slap a stock photo on a white background with comic sans and she wouldn't understand why that's not a Good cover she should be paying possibly several hundred dollars for) and has asked for my help both when I was a teenager with an interest in art and in the past few years as I'm currently in college for art and design. However she hasn't asked for my help recently, and that's where I fear I may be TAH. If this was her hobby I wouldn't care at all, but she's actively trying to make a career off her writing, and I believe some of her covers (in addition to things like poor web design and other miscellaneous stuff) reflect poorly on her because they look unprofessional, lazy and just. bad. From the way she's spoken in the past, I think she doesn't care/doesn't want to focus on anything that isn't actually writing, and while I understand that sentiment, I think it'll do more harm than good to her career. If it weren't for the issues mentioned above, I'd offer to work with her again.

WIBTA if I told her these covers were bad, despite her not explicitly asking for my input?

What are these acronyms?

[copaganda-clobberfest]

What’s the white fang? Srry i don’t watch rwby

The White Fang is an organization made up of an in-universe minority group, the Faunus, who use violent (but successful) means in the hopes of achieving a set goal, being getting basic fucking rights for their people who, up until around the time the show begins if I recall, were being ENSLAVED.

But while in the first 3 seasons they were treated as Team Rocket Grunt: Black People Metaphor edition for our white mains to beat around, around volume 4 things quickly became incredibly sickening for me.

First of all, introductions of characters such as Fennec, Corsac, and Ilia— all of whom are non white characters even outside of their Faunus heritage, the former two being Muslim-coded and the ladder Lakota respectively— and said Lakota girl coming from a not-too privileged standpoint of someone who was orphaned by human doings, when her parents died in a mining accident that was never prevented by the company they worked for.

These characters are BAD Faunus, portrayed as violent and with the two Muslim-coded characters being portrayed as weirdly cult-y? (one basically kills himself/gets himself killed for the cause. I wish i was joking*) and the indigenous girl needing to be tamed by her much whiter friend due to her having been protesting “wrongly.” Indigenous people who protest against their treatment are to this day (as the bigotry and oppression faced by native peoples hasn’t gone away one bit) labeled terrorists.

The White Fang… are written to be terrorists. Terrorists who just want to take over the other and rule because “they (Faunus) are the dominant species.” This straight up sounds like propaganda you’d hear on the news during 2020. Shoot me.

The allusive leader of the white fang is barelt a character because she gets fridged the moment we see her and yet there is something to be said about her allusion. She is based of Shere Khan, a character from The Jungle Book,

written by the same guy that wrote the infamously racist “White Man’s Burden” poem in support of colonization and social Darwinism.

And then we get to Adam. Arguably the character apart of the white fang we saw THE MOST of, who in season 5 is suddenly this cruel, heartless asshole who only wants the Faunus to take over the white people I mean the humans.

And then in the season AFTERWARDS it’s revealed oh he never cared about the Faunus AT ALL HE JUST WANTED POWER BECAUSE HES JUST AN ABUSIVE ASSHOLE CUNT AND BTW you know the scene? The scene the writers included so that the viewers REALLY got just how evil Adam truly was?

They revealed Adam got fucking branded in the eye like a slave would be in 1800’s America. I wish I was kidding I really really wish. Branded with the initials of a human-owned, rich white company with… a German name. Schnee. Why do I point this out?

The name, Adam, is a Jewish name. It’s Hebrew. Fuck this show.

(sorry this is super rambly Anon just this topic makes me really mad in particular. Again, sorry!)

Edit:

*I worded this wrongly. He simply died for the cause, not outright offed himself or anything. My mistake. Still not a good look at all, but mistakes are to be corrected when I see them.

And no, this is not me trying to be some… “abuse apologist” for fictional characters. I am simply pointing out the fact the character was written this way, but also, what such a decision reflects onto the rest of the story. Plus… the (frankly poorly handled, that’s another day’s discussion) abuse storyline isn’t what we’re talking about. It’s the fucking racist writing perpetuated in this show.

But similarly to how it went in the show, the abuse storyline was able to cover up the racism for most people, as it nearly did me on an initial rewatch. Just like how Hama’s justifiable feelings towards the Fire nation were covered up by her blood-bending other people. The Flag-smashers’ ideals being covered up by them being terrorists. Killmonger wanting to improve the lives of black peoples globally being partially covered up by… you get the point.

Reblogs are turned of on this post for the meantime because I don’t want to start drama on what is meant to be a fairly harmless poll. Sorry for that.

[theender36]

Recently watched Superman: The Movie (1978) for the first time in well over a decade and it really is a great movie so I got some thoughts that I want to put somewhere before I forget.

The cold open of theater curtains showing a mockup of an old Superman serial featuring Action Comics is a great nod to the character's past. Then the title flying out of the old theater screen is a fantastic visual as well as a good transition to kickstart the credits sequence accompanied by the iconic music

The set design of Krypton is phenomenal; the glowing clothes, the crystalline look, and the streamlined technology feel alien and futuristic in a unique way, although it is a little odd that everything is so white except for Kal-El's baby blanket.

The trial of Zod, Ursa, and Non has the striking combination of visuals that are the trio being held in a spotlight by spinning rings and the stern Kryptonian judges' faces being projected onto the otherwise dark dome surrounding them

Marlon Brando keeps pronouncing it "Kryptin" for some reason. Like when I'm joking about watching "The Batmins"

Genuinely very sad goodbye scene from Kal's parents

Pretty much every wide shot in Kansas is super beautiful

As is the custom, Ma and Pa Kent bring Clark up right. I appreciate the moment where Clark tells Pa about how he gets so mad at bullies that he wants to tear them apart because first off, you can tell from how he says it that he knows it'd be wrong to do that. And second, Pa doesn't yell at him for having those feelings, he tries to help him deal with them.

Clark doesn't just bail on Martha to go find himself, and he makes sure she'll have help on the farm while he's gone

The sequence of the Fortress forming itself has amazing practical effects and editing

Maybe it was because I was watching the Blu Ray version with extra scenes but the abstract montage of crystal Jor-El teaching Clark about the universe and his abilities and giving life lessons ran a little long but it was cool

Clark is very much playing up his meek, clumsy identity but him being Reporter Clark Kent as a person is not totally an act. He makes sure half his paycheck goes to Ma back home because he wants to make sure she's taken care of and he tries to be polite and helpful around the office, which tracks with who he is at his core

I think Lex being a business tycoon/scientist is pretty integral to the character but I don't mind this version's "Napoleon of crime" shtick. I like that Gene Hackman's hair being a wig in-story is hinted at when Otis is poking around the spa and he finds a spare hairpiece

I know everyone knows this already but Christopher Reeves is a perfect casting choice and he does an amazing job at making Clark and Superman superficially different but obviously the same person at heart. Even when he says something a little corny as either one, there's so much sincerity to it

Clark feeling a little guilty about enjoying being a hero is on-brand. I like that Jor-El reflects Johnathan Kent by encouraging him but also giving guidance so he doesn't lose who he is.

The moment of Jor-El saying "I've sent them you. My only son." is veering very close to the common Superman-as-a-Jesus-allegory mistake but it's the only time in the entire movie I remember it doing that, so I can't harp on it too much

Lois is just a force of nature and the only reason Clark can keep up with her as Superman is because she's starstruck

This version of Superman and Lois are down just HORRENDOUS for each other

The flying date scene is great and I think the poorly-aged flying effect is countered by the nighttime background and the chemistry between the characters. That being said, the "can you read my mind" poem is just. What. Why is this

The scene of Lex, Ms. Teschmacher, and Otis attempting to tamper with the nukes and then having to do it again because Otis screwed up is so goofy I forgot they were villains

Great moment when Superman shows he can be intimidating by just staring down Otis.

I like that Superman is saved by Ms Teschmacher because she believes in him which is a surprise to Lex because he only believes in himself

Really great effects in the scenes of the destruction from the San Andreas fault

This shot is underrated

The moments of Superman realizing Lois is dead have so much weight to them and are amazingly shot

I kind of wish they explored the consequences of him "interfering in history" because otherwise it is sort of just a convenient deus ex machina

Everything ends tied up very nicely (except the Zod squad but after two hours, nobody's thinking about that) and sometimes that's all a movie needs

It's astonishing really how much they manage to fit in this movie considering they give a lot of scenes more time than you'd expect

Overall, movie good.

[greentrickster]

a_real_nowhere_man: All of this is great. I love the idea that Chloe is smugly manipulating her team into having healthy schedules. Nino probably helps, he might not know what he's helping with but he knows it helps the team so by gosh he's gonna enable the fuck out of it.

greentrickster: ^U^ Thanks! And yeah, if Claw's the medic, Hesperia's the leader, Nino's the heart, and Alya's the data expert, then Chloe's somehow gone and turned herself into the team secretary. She's got everyone's schedules in her planner and also at least halfway memorized for the reoccurring stuff, sometimes better than they themselves do. It's kind of funny, because she's the sort of person who tends to aim for leadership and authority and that sort of thing, but I think this role actually suits her really well - she gets to be up in everyone's business, have a thumb on events and organization, and - probably most importantly for her - it means she's rarely left out of the loop. For a kid whose parents ignore and placate her on a good day and who doesn't actually have much power on her own besides the ability to 'call Daddy,' I think she'd really enjoy that. Pollen helps her figure out good organization techniques (bees are very structured, after all), and is openly approving of Chloe's efforts to keep the team functioning healthily as a whole, excellent bee behaviour.

And yes, Nino absolutely helps her with this. In fact, all of them do. Not even out of faith in Chloe or to support her, but for the simple reason... she's being really helpful. Seriously, she's in the perfect position to just be so incredibly helpful and useful with all this, since she's the only person who both knows everyone's identities and has strong reasons to interact with them in both her civilian and resistance member activities. She's in the same class as Alya, Nino, and Marinette, so it's natural for her to interact with them on a daily basis and plausible for her to decide she wants to start spending time with them, since they know Marinette, Marinette's interning for Gabriel, and Gabriel is Chloe's new boss, with Marinette having already made friends with Nino and Alya and thus being a pre-established friend group for Chloe to join. Likewise, since she's Gabriel's new top model and the face of his brand, it makes sense that he'd want to interact and spend time with her to test new potential looks and get a sense for what she's good at and what needs work, and being at his house (since his main studio is there) means it's natural for her to run into Adrien (and also Marinette) and thus start interacting with both of them as well, especially since Adrien's mentoring her in her new modeling career. She even coordinates with Nathalie, since Nathalie's the one organizing photo shoots and fashion shows. Girl's landed in the perfect position to just coordinate everything with almost no effort and she's taking advantage of it.

And this doesn't just mean in regards to coordinating schedules for resistance meetings. Chloe's whole life has been one big (and sadly ineffective) lesson in how to get and hold peoples' attention... which is a surprisingly useful skill when it comes to creating a distraction to cover another resistance member needing to leave a situation quickly or cover for them for whatever reason. Marinette didn't get enough sleep and forgot her homework? Good thing that (as far as Mari knows) being coworkers means any embarrassment that falls on her would reflect poorly on Chloe, and also that Chloe's bought the line that Marinette's 120% devoted to the Gabriel brand and image 24/7! "Of course she didn't do her homework, Ms. Bustier, we have an enormous show coming up at Gabriel, naturally she has to devote the majority of her time to planning how to make me and M. Agreste look good, it's her job. Are you implying that a literature assignment is more important than an internship that's going to open doors her poor, commoner little heart could only dream of without it? Maybe I should tell Daddy that this school doesn't support students pursuing formal careers-!"

Adrien's going to need a block of time to get through a task Chat promised to do or get in some extra studying? Schedule him to come watch over her for an upcoming photo shoot, have him there until five minutes into the shoot, then claim she's feeling super confident thanks to his brilliant teaching skills, and "Adrikins won't you please let me do the rest on my own so I can show you how well I can do without you here, I want to make you proud! <3" and boom, Adrien's got a free afternoon to get his stuff done.

Gabriel's schedule for the next month is in Alya's hands without the two of them having to do a thing because Chloe just already had it, Nino's able to actually plan the occasional group hang-out session with the whole resistance for moral and team-building exercises to help facilitate better teamwork and mental health, somehow scheduling changes and conflicts are being passed along and communicated more efficiently than ever before, and no one's pegged the changes as being a result of Chloe because she's managed to transition from 'entitled brat' to 'efficient yet overbearing secretary' with a smoothness hitherto unseen by man.

By a few months in she's reflecting that she should have made her vigilante name 'Busy Bee' instead of 'Lady Bee,' and she's going to be so incredibly smug when someone else finally catches on to what she's doing (aka, she's dominating, but for good instead of evil).

[c-is-for-circinate]

Yes, I'm still thinking about Laerryn, of course I'm still thinking about Laerryn, she frustrates me so much on the level where it very much says more about me than it does about her. In the way where the question is, "what about this character do you not like to see reflected from within yourself?"

And I think the answer is, god, I feel her goals so, so hard. I feel them in my soul.

I'm an academic! I'm a scientist. And I really do believe, deep down, core-deep, where logic has little enough to do with anything, that fundamentally, no knowledge is forbidden. There are things that it is so, so dangerous to try and learn. There is an absolute imperative to be ethical in pursuit of that knowledge, to be careful, to refrain utterly from doing others harm without their informed consent. There is proprietary knowledge, traditional knowledge, secrets that belong to specific people or cultures and doesn't affect anybody else, which is nobody else's business -- but somebody still holds that knowledge. The knowledge exists. The unthinking universe keeps no secrets. Ignorance is not a moral imperative.

People are allowed to want to know, people are allowed to work to find out. The desire to open the doors to other planes -- why shouldn't they be able to explore? Just to find out? Just to go there? Just to know? The goal is beautiful. To open the horizons of your traveling city in brand new directions where nobody ever thought it could go! To see the wonders of the universe laid out before you! How wonderful! How incredible! How beautifully, glowingly human, the curiosity, the desire to strive!

(After all -- why is it ethical for Vox Machina to traipse across half a dozen planes, scouring for weapons to claim as their own, and not a city? Who are they, except main characters, our vehicle for exploring all of these different places that we want to see just as much as Laerryn does?)

And so I get so frustrated! With myself, with the narrative, with her, with the inevitable tragedy of it all, with the way stories like this always get told -- with the fictional thirst for knowledge that goes so, so badly, because that's what makes the good story. Because the tragedy needs to happen. Because greed and haste and bad science always ends in this fictional disaster.

(The crime wasn't cloning dinosaurs. The crime was creating a poorly-appointed zoo of a theme park, trying to patent and milk your brilliant discovery for money, cloning dozens of species to adulthood all at once without bothering to watch and learn about the enrichment and welfare of the animals, to create safety protocols for the guests, backup plans, employee background checks. The crime was careless, selfish greed. But it wasn't wrong to want to see dinosaurs alive again.)

And yet we say: Hubris! It was wrong to want so much. It was wrong to ask these questions of the universe, to challenge the gods. It was wrong to try.

Laerryn wanted something beautiful, something dangerous to try and achieve but so, so wonderful to want to try. And that desire overcame her sense, overcame her caution, overcame her patience and ethics, and drove her to the same place that so many fictional (and far too many real-life) scientists have arrived at before her: poised to do so, so, so much harm, negligent of the welfare of those around her.

And it makes me so angry, it makes me so frustrated, it makes me so sad. It's infuriating, to see the yearning for freedom and discovery once again turned into a weapon of greed. I hate seeing it. I hate seeing Laerryn decide that this thing, this beautiful thing, the thing that I also fundamentally want to see succeed, is more important than actual living people around her.

I hate how the deck was stacked against her, against Avalir and the whole world, such that even if she had been cautious and careful and kind, they'd still all be doomed. I hate how much the finger on the trigger was hers and also how much it doesn't actually matter. I want to blame Laerryn. I want to blame the story. She makes so much sense (she's such a good, dense, layered, beautifully-rendered character), and it makes me so mad.

Which. Y'know. Art that can give you that many feelings is probably pretty good art.

[waywardavatarenthusiast]

Ozai would never, ever have burned Azula

Under any circumstance. Not even if she was 10x the trouble Zuko was. I’m not sure why we completely ignore the several hints that the Fire Nation is a patriarchal society just because it has female soldiers (look at the US!), but it is. And because of that fact, it is extremely unlikely that Azula would have faced that sort of punishment, despite several fan works and think pieces on it. I was reading The Will to Change by Bell Hooks, about the patriarchal manner in which society negatively brings up men (sorely damaging them in the process) and how it backfires on everyone else. Two lines from chapter four sorely stuck out to me:

“...men have been programmed to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men.” 

“The way we ‘turn boys into men’ is through injury: we sever them from their mothers, research tells us, far too early.”

The first line is perfect description of Ozai. I find Ozai to be more of the “man raised in rigid and violent culture” sort of cruel rather than most people’s “sociopathic world burn for me” cruel (these concepts meet at his extreme lack of self-esteem). I don’t believe Zuko, crown prince, speaking out of turn to a man that wasn’t even a member of the royal family would spark enough rage within Ozai to mutilate his son. Look at the DoBS interaction: Zuko says several insultive things to Ozai and though he provides a deadly punishment, it is understandable considering Zuko might have made an attempt on his life if he wished. Failing to discipline Zuko in the war room fiasco wouldn’t have reflected poorly on Zuko, as princes are expected to be spoiled. It would have made the Fire Lord seem like a weak man who cannot discipline his own child, let alone the enemies of the Fire Nation. And when it came to the point of the Agni Kai, Zuko refused to fight. In a culture like that of the Fire Nation, arrogance is always chosen over cowardice. Zuko’s branding was not just a message to him, but to the entirety of their country: I do not condone weakness, even within my own family. Yes, the second quote perfectly summarizes that scene, but I would rather put fault not on the man we often forget is just a cartoon character, but Bryke. They used Zuko’s branding as a catalyst for the maturity he underwent throughout puberty. They even had Ozai banish Zuko from his home, tantamount to the severing of a boy from his mother (oh wait, they did that too!) By the end of Zuko’s journey, he finds himself in the role of a benevolent patriarch (just a step up from the malignant patriarch), which makes sense as he is mentored by one. Bryke’s favorite character to create is actually the benevolent patriarch (this role can be played by a female). And if we want to go into the comics, Zuko visiting his father in prison is evidence that deep down, even he accepts the scar as his badge of manhood.

[omniblades-and-stars]

Future and secret for the OC ask?

I have a lot of OCs so I'll answer for Lou, Nilea and Inonsi

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

Lou: The worst possible future Lou is someone who was not able to overcome her traumas and continued to experience a downward spiral of depression and fear and just holed up in her parents house and stayed on Earth and probably developed a substance abuse disorder. She is aware that this was a possibility, and with some encouragement from her father, she goes on to experience a very full life.

Nilea: The worst possible future for Nilea is one where she lets her anger and dismay get the best of her and decides that it's not even worth trying to do something good. So maybe she just keeps on with the shitty merc band she joins, and she just continues to grow more and more jaded. And then she becomes harsh and bitter and violent.

I think Nilea is well aware of how she tends towards that sort of embittered apathy and looks for ways she can make a difference in the word around her very actively to avoid sinking down to that.

Inonsi: Inonsi doesn't make it a habit to plan so far ahead for her future. She is a creature of the here and now. If the worst future was to happen she would become cruelly greedy, but it's so hard for me to imagine her as cruel, I'm not even sure what would need for her to become cruel. It's just so antithetical to her whole personality that I don't even know if I can conceptualize it.

This isn't to say that she's a perfect little ray of sunshine who has never done wrong. She tends to be selfish, so if things go to the dark side, there is a capacity for cruel behavior. I just think it would take a great deal to push her there.

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

Oh this is a good question that I had not really considered at this point. That's why answering this one has taken me so long.

Lou: I think Lou less has some sort of dark secret and more that she doesn't want people to identify in her a tendency toward episodes of depresssion and getting caught up in dysfunctional and codependent relationships. She knows these things about herself, but would vehemntly deny it if someone just said it out loud.

She'd rather most people just believe that she's totally fine, damn it.

Nilea: When Nilea was still an active part of the turian military, she very seriously considered going AWOL. Eventually, she just did what she always did up until PtK, and that was grit her teeth and keep doing it. She will probably never admit it because she feels like it would reflect very poorly on her. And somehow be another way she failed her mother (who's expectations never aligned with Nilea's, but even a couple of years after Juna's death she still has complicated feelings about that.)

Oh also she really likes kitschy little statues and memorabilia, but she would never, ever, ever admit it out loud.

Inonsi: Inonsi is a star-system hopping thief. Her brand of secrets is less shameful world-shattering information about past deeds so much as trade secrets. Her most personal secret is definitely her father's identity and location. Ever since the fiasco she caused as a teenager trying to emulate dear, old dad, she has taken extra care around protecting him and his interests.

Even through some .... interesting times in her family's history (that were definitely pop's fault) she remains quite loyal to him. And would, in fact, put herself in harm's way to keep his location and identity a secret. It is kind of a two person mob situation.

She doesn't worry too much about protecting her mother’s identity since her mom long ago divorced her dad and moved on with her life. Inonsi has a good relationship with her mom, and goes to visit her and her slightly age inappropriate boyfriend every once in awhile.