#but also. horrible horrible morals.

[fiovske]

the vast horizon is like. Hannibal for sapphics. it's what killing eve could've been. should've been. but it's human & ai where the human is a full-blown war criminal and the AI is not really an AI but solar radiation from another system here to girlboss gaslight and manipulate the human it has imprinted on so now it wants to raise 40 thousand kids w her.

[stxrry-dxys]

“we need more complex female characters” y’all couldn’t even handle bloberta puppington

[margueritestjusts]

what pisses me off the most about the jekyll and hyde musical is that robert louis stevenson explicitly said to NOT make the inner conflict about sex but meanwhile frank wildhorn was like "lol bozo" and made it about jekyll/hyde choosing between a virgin and a whore like HUH.

[worldendercharles]

I love how like the most notable yugioh villians are like. [sole survivor of genocide][mentally ill cult escapee][traumatized child abuse victim who's trauma is only ever reinforced]

[xinesthetic]

Link Click and the logistics of time-traveling

After reading through more than half pages of fics on ao3 and browsing the fandom for a bit, I got really curious why people keeps calling LG "LG from a different timeline", because truth be told? I don't think we ever got confirmations that there are different timelines at all!

The thing is, there's usually two ways time travelling works: one is hopping between timelines, and the other is just. Rewinding time, erasing everything that was. Like this the same damn timeline, not a different one, and I think it makes more sense for Link Click than the "hopping timelines" idea. Because if LG is hopping timelines, then why "a death node cannot be change" is a rule? It makes sense to exist if it can cause butterfly effect, but if you're hopping different timelines instead of the same one, technically you're not even changing anything. You appear in a timeline where events went differently, you're not changing anything in the original one. So this rule isn't applicable. Like at all.

And also since LG inherited the ability to travel from CXS, then does that mean every time CXS dives, the CXS that comes back is from a different timeline? Or does LG gets magically transferred w CXS to a different timeline too? That makes so much less sense than simply "rewinding the timeline" all together.

I'm also personally a big fan of the idea that LG made up the rule about death nodes only because he knows too damn well what happens if you treat something as horrible as death as something mundane and avoidable, which will also make sense for him to have the "let the past and future be" rule — if CXS changes things, LG cannot control how the events unfold and therefore cannot be certain that CXS survives.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk I have a 9k words long fic that explores this idea further because I genuinely think that death nodes can be erased, added or swapped (because I'll be damned if that scene of Li Tiachen running away and Li Tianxi being tangled in film tapes didn't make me think that originally it was Li Tianxi who survived, not Li Tiachen. It's just that this time loop LG messed up and swapped them on accident)

[kierancaz]

Thinking about how Gwen was living at the spider society for SO LONG. Like I’m betting somewhere between like 6-8 months or more.

There’s a year and 4 months that passed for MILES in his dimension, but in Gwen’s dimension she’s like a week or so behind. She says that in the first movie when she’s telling Miles and Peter how she ended up there, that she was “blown into last week, literally.”

When we first see Gwen in atsv her hair hasn’t grown at all, it’s still the same as when she left Miles dimension so she hadn’t been home for very long. And then when she first shows up in Miles dimension her hair has grown A LOT (yes I’m basing this purely off her hair growth).

It looks like it’s grown like 3-4 inches and it the average person like 8 months to grow 4 inches (says google). And also when Gwen is forced to go back to her dimension and she sees her day he says that he looks skinny, so it had to be been a decent amount of time for him to lose quite a bit of weight (but that’s not as obvious in his character design, even tho he does look more unkept when he sees Gwen again, so I don’t really want to focus on that).

So yah just thinking about how long she was homeless and living with the spider society and crashing with Hobie and missing her dad 🙃

(also Hobie was definitely the one to help her dye her hair and re-shave the side of her head. Older brother Hobie for the win 💪)

[bogkeep]

saw some lego dinosaurs today :3

[caliburn-the-sword]

i keep seeing opinions about tvd on tiktok without my consent. make it STOP i've had ENOUGH. i will no longer be taking ANY opinions about juliette cai from anyone that isn't from asian diaspora unless they're correct. like yeah juliette did all those things. and???? one of the main complaints i see is "she's too annoying" "she's a brat" stfu you don't get her like I DO. there are INTRICASIES and LAYERS and i'm explaining NONE of them. i am juliette cai's number one defender

[randomnameless]

Genuine question, not trying to start a fight, why do you get so upset about gods and churches being presented in a negative light in fictional works?

No pbs!

I guess it's a mix of being too common, too forced and having, in general, the cast use common tropish arguments to fight /defeat them.

I rant a lot about this game, but take TS where we have three sort of factions opposing each other, and each are supposed to suck. Who is the faction who never receives any "positive traits" or "pet the dog" moment?

The game force fed us a scene where an Aesfroti soldier - when Aesfrost is depicted as a highly militarised nation with a cult of personality towards their current ruler, that invaded the protag's home and slaughtered several civilians and NPCs in the process - say goodbye to his wife and kids before going to "war" to defend his land against, well, the protags who are invading it to kill their warmongering leader.

As force-fed as this scene was, it, I believe at least, tried to tell us that even the Aesfrosti who pillaged villages and killed their inhabitants are humans, and care about their loved ones, sure it's corny, but it's all about not deshumanising any party.

When we attack Hyzante? Niet, zilch, nothing. No similar scene where random soldiers, or NPCs, worry about what is going on and if they're going to die when their wall has been breached. They just, don't exist in this context.

I think the cherry on the cake is the Golden Route scene, where, apparently, nationalists Aesfrosti decide to turn back against their ultra charismatic leader because, uh, he "lied" when he declared the war and used a false pretense, so the soldiers and people who were butchering babies and invading a city where people were preparing a marriage apparently now have morals and rebel.

There's no similar scene for Hyzante when the cast reveals that the teachings of their Goddess were made up and salt wasn't exclusively given to them by divine intervention, because rock salt exists everywhere. Sure it would be a bit weird and forced that people thinking they're chosen ones and looking down on everyone else suddenly, hm, don't break down when their entire system of belief is shattered, but hey, if the Aesfrostian Gregor can have morals after washing his hands of all this Glenbrookian blood, why shouldn't religious npc #55 not make the same heel face turn?

And then, we have the slavery/human experimentation plot - in general, when TS tries to give nuance, they more or less explain/justify why something that "sucks" is done, it's basically Silvio's character.

Aesfrost' Gustadolph manages to push his "freedom" mentality because his land is a harsh place where people are desperate to survive, salt smuggling is reprehensible, but it's the only way to give some to the ones who cannot afford it. Of course is everyone is free, no one is because, as Gustadolph puts it, they're basically free to die for his ambitions.

Hyzante? Follows a racist creed where Rozellians have to pay for some great sin, and are slaved away in a lake to recover salt until they die. It's, later, justified by Hyzante wanting to keep its salt monopoly else they don't have anything, and wanting to curb down the Rozelle people because they know about the exitence of rock salt (and I guess getting free workers to harvest salt from the lake + having state enemies make his own population docile/not willing to rebel ?).

And then, we have the human experimentations, that are just done for, uhh, Idore's lol. When Hyzante is known for its "advanced medicine" and we could have had the usual dilemna of, idk, having those humans experimentations used to develop this medicine that is reknown in the world (idk, sacrificing a Rozellian to save someone else's life?) - it's not the angle the devs picked. Rozellians are sacrificed to power up an idol, Idore wants to control the world through his idol and soft power (compared to Gustadolph's hard power) and manipulates his people (just like Gustadolph) to do so.

The two are very similar, but who is the final boss? Complete with a transformation in an eldritch monster? The war-mongering imperialist or the jaded old man who is leading de facto a religion?

Hopefully there's the entire "human experimentations for no other purpose than the lols" to settle them apart.

---

I recently watched Dune, and even if I have some issues with the adaptation, the Bene Gesserit isn't portrayed as "comically" evil-er than the Harkonen Empire, I reckon the comparison isn't adequate, because Dune is multi book series when I'm mostly talking about video games.

Symphonia's church of Martel is a font for the Big Bad (tm) to put in motion his nefarious plans, and yet, through the game, we see how random clergymen use their, uh, religious buildings to help people around. Ultimately Martel herself is reincarnated through plot device and tells the big bad to stop being an ass and the story is less about "church and gods evil" but "big bad distorts Martel/church's teachings and role for his plans because he has a tragic backstory"

(but then Symphonia ends with the biggest whitewashing from every Tales I've played for its big bad so I'll stop talking about it because otherwise I'm going to be salty).

Abyss' church is more or less the same thing - the Church is supposed to help people deal with the fact their verse has "predestination stones" where the future is already written, and in the course of the game, we see how it has several factions and one opposes the group (who has the pope as a NPC!) - but it's not a story about "gods bad church BaD".

I remember playing Suikoden Tierkreis a long time ago, and while the game seemed to go through familiar "church bad gods bad" route and we end with defeating a god-like entity... I pretty much loved the twist that, in a game that relied on alternate dimensions/universe, the god-like entity was actually the protag if he made different choices!

In those games, if you fight a religious body and someone pretending to be a God or what not - it's not because people fight against an eldritch creature who wants world domination and to erase puny insects, or is the reason why everything goes wrong, but because, at the end, the conflict/fight is ultimately caused by someone, generally a human or at least a non "god like" entity, wanting to destroy the world.

I don't remember if FE was my first JRPG series or not, but I always liked the idea that if the world is doomed in those games and the heroes must prevent said doom, it's not because a god-like being wants to destroy the world, but because people, humans/randoms are the most shitty ones out there.

---

As for the "tropes" often used to deride fictional churchs and religious people, well, I will again point to TS - which did a splendid job in the Benedict Route where you smash Hyzante after allying with Aesfrost.

There's one battle where out protags diss Hyzantese because they worship a goddess and have no free will, listening to Her teachings and Her says (the traditional "religious people have no free will and listen to their churches who tell them how to think!") - which is immediately countered by one of those Hyzantese characters asking Serenor if he's not the same, but instead of blindly listening to a Goddess, blindly follows Benedict. And it ends with the final chapter title referencing automatons/puppets : who is that title talking about ? The fake "idol" Idore created, or the fake "king" Benedict created?

Anyways, the usual "religions people have no free will because their church/religion tells them how to think" trope reeks of r/atheism and the double standard - bar in this route of TS, but I guess, in TS itself in the Roland route! - is never called out, blindly following a charismatic leader is okay, as long as charismatic leader isn't religious?

Regardless of my IRL thoughts about religion, usually those tropes are presented as a "gotcha!" when they are... not at all, but the games/books leave it at that and we're supposed to roll with it.

I'd say it's lazy writing or, as we saw in Naruto, a quick way to end a story without having to dwelve in characters and their motivations : "you're a god/alien/other being and you're bad, so let us do what we want!" - end of the story.

Hopefully some fillers and to an extent, Boruto gave her more meat bar being the 11 hour villain we had to defeat quick and who manipulated the previous sad'n'lonely antagonists - but it still felt rich from Naruto, known for his famous "talk no jutsu" and trying to understand people he's fighting against, to drop the ball with Kaguya, calling her pure malice and ending with some "let us live the way we want" to wrap up the plot so he can wrestle with his boyfriend later on.

In the end, we often end up with "religion bad bcs the big bad manipulates people through it", as if those mangas/animes/vg never have other examples of charismatic people not using religion to manipulate their randoms/people or "gods bad they should let humans do what they want" when we've read/seen/played through various, uh, really fucked-up shit humans did - but on their own! and ultimately, but it's more in fandom spaces, with have Projection 101.

TLDR : church/religion/gods are too often used in those works as the ultimate scapegoat to either wrap up a story in a rushed ending or to pretend to have "nuance" but still have a common enemy where all the "nuanced" characters can grow/be whitewashed and side together against that "common enemy".

Just like in all things I guess, I prefer when something isn't painted as purely negative and all of the positive traits are erased because there is a need for a perfect scapegoat - sure, bring out too much "nuance" and writing/designing a game/manga/anime becomes harder because there's no "clear cut" antagonist, and yet, the one who always gets fucked in this scenario is the religious/church side.

Want a generic stock villain who will destroy the world so the heroes have to fight against them? Just create a "religion" in your setting, and have the big bad either hell bent on resurrecting Chtullu to destroy the world because Chtullu BaD, or have them be the most corrupt piece of shit who manipulate everything in the shadows, so the rest of the world, even the ones who slaughter others bcs they feel like they must start a war, can be whitewashed at the end.

I mean, there's a saying about diverting attention from a fire by starting a bigger one near, or a trope of "aliens made them do it" : who cares if Madara started a continental war and targeted a village full of random civilians he swore to protect because he lost the elections? Did y'know he was manipulated by a woman, I mean, an eldritch thing created by a woman, regarded as a God, who ultimately wanted to get out of her fridge to kill everyone?

Roland must get over his hatred for Aesfrost for barging in his kindgom and killing hundred of his people while they were preparing for a wedding, because hey, Idore is evil and plans on ruling the world through his sham religion!

I'll forever be salty at TS for not giving Kamsell the occasion to rise against Idore, or not even have minor NPCs get the same treatment as Sycras suddenly going all "u lied to me gustadolph so i won't listen to u anymore + sad goodbyes to my wife'n'kids".

Extremism of all kinds can lead to wars/tragedy/fucked up shit - Sure I don't want to get my History lessons in video game medium when I play lol, but what I really don't like is how it feels like depicting "they're extremists because they're religious" feels like the default/easy answer : want a bunch of brainwashed people the heroes must fight against and can't talk no justu their way out of this fight/will fight without looking too BaD? Depict those people as "misguided" members of a corrupt church/believers of a religion, no one will givea fig. If they are instead supporters of a charismatic leader who throws them through the meatgrinder to further their goals? Well, there's no automatic loyalty so either you have to show/depict it on screen, else it can be challenged at key points to demonstrate how those people - who follow the charismatic leader - aren't completely "mindlessly listening to their leader" or how their leader "isn't that bad after all".

[hussyknee]

Every once in a while some professional parade-pisser comes along like, "oh you like dolphins/chimps/otters/orcas/seals/<insert wild animal species here> do you?? But did you know that they're murderous dicks that kill, maim and torture other animals horribly just for shits and giggles??"

Dude, the internet is built on cat pictures, being a sadistic serial killing asshole is not the PR blow for the animal kingdom you think it is

[siilvan]

i am once again disappointed but not surprised at the COD fandom only caring about “sensitivity” when it’s convenient for them

[kelbunny]

I feel more people within the tristrat fandom need to understand that Roland's chapter 17 decision is not bc he actually believes Hyzante is correct but because he's gotten to such a point of desperation where he sees that as the only option left.

Like, his main motivation does not change, and it's the reason why he's the one that represents Morality. Because that motivation has always been to protect and make better the lives of as many people as possible, and this is clear in basically every decision of his aside from maybe when deciding to reveal his identity to Svarog or not. Even his chapter 17 decision is out of a desire to help people, it's just no longer as noble when you're not part of the few being sacrificed for the many.

And it's why he willingly renounces his 17 decision in all other endings and admits to his own cowardice.

[obsob]

ik you use to draw a lot of harry potter...i was wondering what your opinion of it is now?

this

[timeisacephalopod]

The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

[cantsayidont]

Uh, so, according to THE ACOLYTE, before the fall of the Republic, the Jedi not only coerced and abducted Force-sensitive children in indefensible ways — even when operating outside the bounds of Republic law that apparently gave them free reign to do whatever they wanted to kids — but also practiced systematic cultural genocide, with Jedi academies basically operating like outer space residential schools? That's sure, uh, an interesting creative choice, particularly since the witch coven included more women of color than in most of the previous movies and shows combined, and particularly after ANDOR's subplot about Cassian Andor being an indigenous boy that Maarva Andor literally abducted.

[moobrvoobl-moobmoob-oobmpoobroom]

I just find it mind-boggling that some people will reblog things like “Anakin didn’t care about Rex and his men, he wouldn’t listen to Fives just because he was friends with Palpatine” and then in the next post be gushing over Rexwalker/Rexanidala like???? so you agree. Anakin does care about Rex?