#but i mostly support their wrongs

[orionsgirdle]

read some (what I consider to be) bad takes about the laudna/imogen conversation and now I have to get into it.

here's the thing: laudna has on several occasions shown a callous disregard for the life and well-being of people she's not close to. does that disregard stem from the lack of value she places on her own life? yeah maybe probably. what's the big deal about death? she's died before and it was fine. everyone she knew from her youth is dead. it happens. she's never expressed the need to save people or to be good. it's a moral ambiguity that she shares with imogen and fearne. i think (setting aside the merchandizing potential of three witches) imogen, laudna, and fearne are connected by the shared knowledge that this is who they are. they care about protecting their own...and that's it.

it's so fundamentally different from how ashton and orym view the world and their place in it. ashton, having experienced death and abandonment, is invested in making sure that no one else has to feel that kind of pain. they will ignore their own physical pain and carry laudna's dead body on their back from city to city because she will not be left behind like he was. orym grew up in zephrah under keyleth's leadership so of course he cares about being a force for good in the world. i could go on about these two because there's so much good shit here, but i guess in a simplistic way on an alignment chart ashton and orym would fall on the good side of the spectrum while imogen, laudna and fearne are more chaotic (i'm leaving chetney out of this cuz i just can't get a solid beat on him).

all of this to say that when laudna says her and imogen's relationship "transcends words", and she'll support her no matter what, i don't see that as just a desperate bid to hold onto to someone because you are afraid of being alone. she understands the impulse to make a pact with less than savory individuals if it means safety or a chance to have a peaceful life. did one of these crazy cultists murder her? yeah, but she's voluntarily made a pact with her own murderer before.

for laudna, who had her agency taken away so violently, the ability to choose your life's path is sacred. it's the best she can come up with in the pro column for keeping the gods around. that they give mortals the ability to choose when they could so easily exert more control. so of course she will give imogen the chance to choose her own path, even if it means the rest of the world will burn.

and finally, that conversation was not just about do we think this cult has a point? they all know they're going on a suicide mission, with less than half a hope of succeeding. with the plan to drop a skyship (the only substantial thing they own) on the malleus key and hope that that works. when imogen asks, "we want this, right?" she's asking whether they are prepared to die to save the gods. and my girl imogen is problematic as fuck but i get the urge to run away and hide from her problems with her best-friend-life-partner-wife.

[stbot]

♡judgmental girlfriends♡ 

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

The girls are fighting

[writer-room]

Honestly the funniest thing about TDP to me is that Rayla for some reason always thinks Callum isn't 100% ride-or-die with her on any given situation. Seriously, she could decide she's jumping off a cliff and he'd do it too--oh wait.

I get that half of it is 'protecting' him but like. Girl he has been ready to die and kill for you since the first snake chain incident. It has not lightened up since. In fact its gotten worse. She's his special little guy and if anything happens to her he will kill everyone in the room and then himself. She physically cannot ever sacrifice herself for anyone because Callum WILL be following her straight into the afterlife in no less than a minute. I'm fully convinced he can and would go even further than Claudia and he'd barely have to think on it for five seconds before shrugging like "damn this sucks, can't believe I have to turn evil" "you literally don't have to--" "no I'm gonna"

And honestly I think that's peak teenagers first girlfriend behavior.

[lnkedmyheart]

This one is in response to @fizzytastic asking

"I would LOVE to know what you mean regarding the light novels."

Dazai in the light novels has been down BAD since the day he met Chuuya.

I know the whole "must be because I love you" can be viewed as a joke but my man actually "whispered with a look of regret" at being shot down.

He also proceeded to cheat during the game by tampering with the machine to ensure Chuuya would lose the bet and become his dog. He was also stated as being in awe of Chuuya's fighting ability, repeatedly refering to him as "incredible". Dazai also flat out admits to wanting to try out living because "Chuuya convinced" him.

He is even described as having forgotten how to breathe watching Chuuya fight.

Moving on to the events of Stormbringer, Dazai spends too long exposing his obsession with Chuuya, telling the big bad that he spends all his "days and nights thinking about ways to annoy Chuuya".

He further proceeds to insist that Chuuya is human because of how strongly he hates Chuuya and due to a specific word it can be viewed as him saying Chuuya would hate him less if he wasnt human as was stated in the stage play of the same.

Furthermore at the end of Stormbringer he offers to come up with a new plan to give Chuuya an out if he needs one when he has to use corruption as a last resort. And he fully intends on coming up with a new plan within 2 minutes.

In general Dazai does a lot of staring at Chuuya throughout the light novels. On a lighter note Dazai jokes about wanting Chuuya as his personal maid at one point and demands that Chuuya let Dazai look inside his head and know everything there is to know about him.

But then we move onto the dragon head conflict as mentioned in Dead Apple where after making light of an executive's death and getting punched in the face by Chuuya, Dazai is so shaken up by Chuuya implying he's inhuman, he actually pulls strings to try and bring the conflict to an end. He also stops corruption by touching his cheek and pulls Chuuya's head into his lap while he is unconscious after his fight with Shibusawa. The following is from the manga.

Now everyone knows about the whole Snow White and Prince reference but in the light novel its clarified that Chuuya's ability was not affected by the fog and Dazai knew this but he still forces his head down. Even more telling is that Dazai cradles Chuuya's face for no real reason because Corruption had already been nullified when Chuuya made skin to skin contact when punching him in the face.

And of course that was how their expressions are drawn in the manga panel

Then we move to the present day and you have Dazai saying this to Sigma about Chuuya

But then his comment about Gide has him claim the exact same behaviour is romantic in his messed up troll brain

Basically Dazai has a history of staring at Chuuya in awe since 15, "jokingly" confessed at 15 and then got somewhat upset about the rejection, cheated to be able to keep Chuuya as his, repeatedly makes remarks that imply he is vaguely obsessed with him at 16, tends to let Chuuya rest his head in his lap post corruption, has nullified him twice that we have seen by touching his cheek (as per the movie and once as per the ln). Is actively affected by how Chuuya views him (which was shocking to me).

Aside from that he has also talked about Chuuya to the ADA off screen because Yosano knew about Chuuya and his ability (though this could just be a random update about the membera of the mafia to watch out for during meetings) and I heard he talked about Chuuya to Oda in The Day I Picked Up Dazai ln.

This is not counting any of the seriously insane amount of wan content because I dont view it as canon or atleast entirely canon but there Dazai admits to keeping 27 journals detailing things about Chuuya and its an exaggeration of the canon fact that Dazai prides himself in being a Chuuya Nakahara Encyclopedia. It also plays with how close they both actually are with several character refering to them as besties, Chuuya being forced to admit he doesnt actually hate Dazai.

(Oh and this is not even considering just how much Dazai touches Chuuya, like in the manga there is a part where Dazai keeps tugging at Chuuya's hair and refusing to let go while complaining about how much he doesnt want to touch him. Just let go dude...)

So yea, I would not be surprised if Dazai has his vows prepared by the time the last pre defection ln drops. Ofcourse this is mostly a lighthearted joke about Dazai being down bad but in all seriousness, Dazai genuinely cared about and still cares about Chuuya and its made extremely obvious throughout the novels. Its actually worth noting that it was actually Chuuya who seemed to be more vitriolic towards him until the end of Stormbringer where Dazai actually gives Chuuya a choice and shows open concern for Chuuya's needs. Hell Dazai was also the one insisting on Chuuya's autonomy, while he keeps insisting Chuuya is his dog, he hates the idea of people using him like a tool, its why he always gives Chuuya a choice. Chuuya always actively chooses to go rescue Dazai in Dazai's plans of getting kidnapped. Chuuya can always go, "nah, I dont wanna use corruption" but he doesnt because he knows since the events of stormbringer that Dazai will always give him a choice even if corruption seems like a last resort.

Chuuya has good reason for trusting Dazai. Its cause Dazai has in fact proven to him that he can trust him. Its why he went in to fight a dragon despite being told Dazai was possibly already dead.

(And yea I know the current arc would have people go "lol he tried to drown Chuuya, he clearly doesnt care" and you know what? That's so dumb. Dazai tried to drown Chuuya, yes. But we dont actually know what is happening with this arc rn and what he is doing or if Chuuya is in any way involved in whatever he is doing. Dazai said all those things and there was no need for him to say that but the fact that he even remembered several moments they shared, yea no, he was clearly affected by it. Maybe I am wrong and Asagiri decided to yeet out all of Dazai's characterization we saw with his behaviour towards Chuuya in 2 entire novels of his past but IDK I think I'm gonna wait till this arc ends and everything unfolds before making a conclusion about how Dazai is such an asshole he tried to drown his partner.)

Seriously, vows are like the least they could do at this point.

[keepthedelta]

imagine pulling a move so influential that bitches keep bringing it up a decade later because without you there is literally nothing to talk about

[watchingwatcher]

You burn down your enemies childhood home after months of him tormenting you and suddenly it’s you’ve “committed 3rd degree arson “ and “ are a danger to the public “ like god forbid hangman have passion for pyrotechnics and the address to his stalkers home

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

It always seems insane to me that when Titanic (1997) came out, people said Kate Winslet was “too fat” in the film, “Jack couldn’t fit on the debris because of how fat she was”, etc., because I can distinctly remember being a child watching the film several times when my mum bought the DVD, and that whenever I saw the scene where Rose gets out of the car at Southampton and the camera shows her looking up from underneath her hat, I would ALWAYS without fail think “oh my god that is the most beautiful lady in the world”… like nine year old me genuinely thought Kate Winslet was the single most beautiful woman on the planet, you could have told me that she was a goddess and I’d have fully believed you.

I stand by that opinion by the way, anyone who thinks she wasn’t beautiful can fuck off

[adultemophase]

WAIT WHAT MEDIA ILLITERACY? ABOUT WHICH CHARACTER

Honestly not even a particular character, you could argue there’s bad takes about all of them. The most common one I’ve see is people stuck in the “protagonist = good guy and antagonist = bad guy” mindset. For example, people after season 1 came out saying Vi was a bad guy and shitty protagonist for hitting powder in episode 3 without considering the context and motivations of her character. . Or similarly, that Jinx is a bad guy because she essentially terrorizes Piltover without, again, considering context and motivation. Much like real people they both have good and bad qualities but they’re both protagonists to the story, just in different ways.

I honestly don’t care if someone doesn’t like a particular character in the show because the fun thing about nuanced characters is that they aren’t inherently likable.

[asleepinawell]

basically do you prefer to play solo or do you prefer to get the story run with the scions and then play with others or do you hate support/trust etc etc

this occurred to me when I was making the least favorite dungeons polls and people were mentioning other players as reasons they didn't like certain dungeons which is something I didn't consider for my own choices in later dungeons since I always run them as trusts unless I'm with a friend

[honeybard]

btvs s4 was like okay so they're gonna do a spell to combine all the protagonists into Combo Buffy that has Buffy's strength! Giles' knowledge! Willow's magic! and Xander

[eternalera]

why is no one talking about how innocent lute looks after adam tells her to chill out-

like her little blink means everything to me-

[several-ravens]

thank you tim for telling jonathan what i've been saying for a week

"shut up" and "fuck you" and that a bit of sympathy would have been nice and that he should have been fired weeks ago

but somehow it didn't feel right

[leverage-ot3]

neal caffrey and peter burke are nate and sophie in a different font and here’s why- *gunshots*

[msharmonycobel]

the thing is, Bertha Russell could cosh her daughter on the head and throw her into the Hudson and I'd still be like "tiny baby. princess. angel. sweet little bunny rabbit."