#but it'd be nice if this fandom

[clandestine-j]

okay, still can't access my interview tumblr so I'mma say it here, due to some things I've seen in the tag.

Lets go!

Now, one post I saw, talked about how fans (mainly Louis fans) wanted to pretend like the show runners and etc, didn't say they would revisit ep 5. And while that might be true, I'm not one of them. I'll be honest on my feelings about it.

If they change it, I think it's a bull-shit cop out and I've be heavily disappointed with interview if they went that route. Why? Because I'm tired of black people and poc being made liars and etc! Oh, it's not about race you say? YES IT IS. IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT RACE IN THE AMC. THEY MENTION IT, THEY MAKE A POINT TO MENTION.

I have consumed enough media about black people and black men being made lairs. I have consumed enough media of black women being maligned.

SICK OF IT.

That's one half of it. The only half, is the main reason why I stopped reading the book series. I wasn't a Lestat fan. In fact, the Lestat I cared about seeing grow and etc, was dropped in favor of making him this perfect godly man at the expense of dropping Louis.

And that brings me to Lestat fans. I want the drop to be real because I'm sick of Lestat discounting everything that Louis says, by calling him a liar. That is why I did not continue the book series. Because anything bad Lestat does, can be excused with, well, Louis is lying. It's lazy story telling to me. But mainly.

The drop was the only time I saw Lestat fans (and more so speaking of the show) have to accept and talk about what Lestat did. I'll be honest, I didn't need the drop to feel some type of way about Lestat. I felt that every single time, he dismissed what his partner, A BLACK MAN FELT. Lestat violence was clear to me and made me feel a way, when he was completely READY to make his BLACK husband, be his VALET, so he could see an opera.

Do you know how fucked up that is? Do you not understand that I'd would've left the relationship in a heartbeat? Like why would you put your partner through that? Like fucking hell. That's what was hurtful.

And while Lestat will do long discourse about how Claudia or Louis is the issue, there, weren't, long detailed post about how that was fucked of Lestat to do. The causal racism that Lestat is willing to benefit from and be apart of, no deep thoughts on that.

There should've been essay's on essay's on how telling your black partner that you want him to be your fucking valet to a racist opera house to make YOU happy. When Louis expressed his feelings for Lestat and Lestat laughs? Oh, he's so cute and funny. But this is a character people call emotional closed off (Louis), opening himself up and GETTING LAUGHED AT. But then Louis will get picked at by fans for never saying I love you.

He opened himself to asking his partner if he's good enough and he gets laughed at. Everyone will talk about the 'of course' Lestat says when he's lying to himself but not the minute before, when he laughed in his husbands face. And do ya'll know how hard is for a black man to open himself up like that? Only to be laughed at. Or the non-discriminating scene, no long post about how it's been years but Lestat still doesn't CARE to understand the racism and nastiness that Louis is going through. He just doesn't care. And that is violence to me.

So, I always knew that they would revisit ep 5 but I still think it's a bullshit cop out to change it.

I'm the biggest bo bo the fool bc I still ship it. But I don't need to make excuses to do so. I still love the fucking toxic mess but the fans...it's always the fans.

[kawoshinweek]

Only two weeks left til Kawoshin Week!!! ^_^

[justanotherhh]

what if helluva boss genuinely had blitzø in a non-monogamous setup with stolas and fizz and asmodeus as canon endgame haha kidding.... unless........

[unwinthehart]

He likes more.

[syncopatedid]

Run with the Wind Novel (official EN release!)

The dream of Kazetsuyo fans to finally get the novel in English has MANIFESTED!!! I'm sure it's later news by now to a lot of us, but just putting it out there because you never know!

I'm not a huge fan of the cover arts of western publishers as much so I'm holding my breath to see how the final cover artwork is going to turn out, especially given the USD pricing they'd be asking for. But I'm hopeful it will be treated more as a classic title than YA. I do not think they'd be able to get rights to have the OG cover art to use so I'd expect them to come up with their own, and so I've been browsing HarperC's range to see what they tend to put out (anything but human stock photos please I am begging, pay for illustrators). These are some of their cover styles I'd at least be all right with...

...with some added caveats I don't care for (though I doubt my feedback counts since I'm not the market they need to appeal to), but can we NOT have those annoying love review bombs plastered all over the covers, please? Who the heck are all these people anyway. If you must, have them on the back of the cover; I swear people do pick up and turn over to read the synopsis. I don't know about you guys, but I personally think they have no business taking up the same space as the author who wrote the dang thing, only acceptable other name will be the EN translator/localizer, as they deserve credit.

But anyway, still good to have an official English version out, it's about time!

[gh-0-stcup]

It's tough being in the ASOIAF fandom while hating both Jonsa and Jonerys.

[aroaceleovaldez]

because i like making lists and community resources i'm kinda tempted to make a list of riordanverse/pjo discords, since they can be difficult to find

would people be interested in that at all?

[moongothic]

i would love trans crocodile but im very cynical that oda would write him in a respectful manner. thats not even thinking of how horrible that one portion of the one piece fandom would treat him

Yeah the fandom sucks and I'm going to strangle everyone (including the cishets who claim to be trans allies and then use "Crocomom")

But with Oda it's weird because like. The more I think about it, the more I'm like... 50/50 about Oda being able to actually deliver good, respectful trans masc rep.

Like I've posted about this before but One Piece does have this on-going theme of having characters "stuck in wrong bodies" or "having one's body changed" (sometimes reversably, sometimes irreversably; sometimes against their will, sometimes consentually). Which, in theory, in my mind, does kind of signal that on some level Oda understands the idea of being "the wrong sex" (whether or not that's a good way to explain The Trans Experience™ is a whole different subject but it's an old fashioned explanation that Oda would probably be/is familiar with) But at the same time, while the concept pops up again and again in One Piece, Oda doesn't really dwell too deep into the idea of what that's like. Like, emotionally. How it feels like to like, get turned into a toy or be a child who gets aged 20 years or to get turned into a cyborg or a giant child or have parts of your body permanently turned into animal parts (sometimes with a will of their own) etc

And like. Part of me understands why, Oda does tend to want to focus on writing a story he thinks teenaged boys would be interested in reading, and he has often stated he wants to have fun with his story too (like that's partially why Luffy's a Rubber Man, because Oda thought giving Luffy a ridiculous ability would make him more fun to write and draw long-term, which is valid as hell) This is why for example Oda has avoided doing any romances in OP, and while there are dark themes in the story, often he has done his best to avoid making them too blatant, as some things would be too mature for his youngest readers (like, for example until Kuma's backstory, it was never explicitly stated what would happen to the slave wives of the Tenryuubito, even saying it was "implied" would be pushing how that subject had been treated until now)

So like. Because of that, I understand why Oda hasn't dwelled into The Feelings™ part much/at all despite the "stuck in the wrong body" narrative appearing time and time again

Either Oda thinks it'd be too boring either for himself or his readers, or he hasn't dwelled into it because he doesn't really understand gender dysphoria and can't relate to the experience (despite how often it shows its face in OP). Or it could be both, even

The thing is though, as OP has gone on, while I wouldn't say Oda has "broken his writing rules", Kuma's backstory alone has pushed them to a new limit with the love-that-never-was story and the all-but-explicitly-stated storytelling.

So a part of me wonders, if Crocodile is trans, could Oda actually like... take a slightly deeper look into his feelings and explore his queer experience? ('Cause god knows, if Crocodad Real, then there really would be a literal coming out-story built into his backstory that would be extremely unavoidable, and as I've mentioned before, the fact that we haven't gotten to learn almost anything about his backstory yet is Kinda Fucking Sus)

Also I do want to mention how... like Oda gets a lot of bad rap when it comes to queer rep in One Piece, but the more I think about it, I think it's more an issue with the terminology and how translators have gone about either localizing it, or more often than not, leaving it unlocalized 'Cause like. Yes the "okama" would be horrible trans rep but... really... they're not trans representation. They're representation for draq queens. Piss poor draq rep, but still, they're draq queens. And just like our very real life drag performers; some of them are cishets. Some of them are gender non-conforming gay men. Some of them are nonbinary*. Some of them are trans women. Obviously lumping all of these people into one group is kinda offensive (which is why "okama" is (as far as I understand it) such an unpopular term even amongst queer people in Japan), and the way Oda often chooses to draw these characters looks no different to how gender criticals choose to present trans women in their propaganda.

*Like Bon-chan, who explicitly states they are both male and female. And Iva-chan, who switches between boy-mode and girl-mode from time to time, could arguably be called genderfluid (though any specific terminology is up to debate). Both are nonbinary draq queens.

And yet, despite all that. It can not be understated how if you put aside the nameless background gag-characters, Oda does treat the actual, proper queer characters with respect. Everyone would agree that Bon-chan is an absolute hero, we would all die for them. Iva-chan (and Inazuma too) is explicitly presented in a heroic light, seen as someone who helps people and fights for justice (with the Revs)

And then there's the first binary trans characters we've actually gotten, Okiku and Yamato. And I'm pretty sure we would all agree Okiku is 10/10 perfect trans fem representation (I am not entirely serious, I'm not trans fem so I can't speak for trans women here, it's just that I can't see anything Horrendously Wrong with how Okiku is presented within the story- not actually perfect but all things considdered, damn good). She is stunning, people around her (INCLUDING SANJI!!) don't just view her as a woman but would go out of their way to date her (as in, she is seen as "desirable", and not as some kind of a disgusting freak to avoid), she is heroic and sweet and kind and just. IDK I love her And while I'm sure many trans mascs would agree Yamato may not be how they want to be seen by the world (though having Yamato ID as a man while having the biggest moobs is surely validating for a lot of people, including anybody who might not want or be able to get top surgery and/or HRT), again, he is only presented as heroic within the narrative and respected by the characters around him, Luffy especially, which is by far the most important part; the protagonist going out of his way to be respectful of trans characters does represent the values of the story.

And like.

Think about how Oda has treated Crocodile so far.

Like, although we're all having a bit of a laugh over the whole Cross Guild thing, Oda is still treating him as a cool character whom he presents seriously and treats with respect. Like Oda wants the readers to see Crocodile as at least a little bit cool. So I can't imagine him pulling a full 180 with how Croc would be treated in the story if he was revealed to be trans, especially when the potential foreshadowing for that was laid out in the story years ago already.

All this to say; Oda is not perfect at all, but considdering the things he has gotten right so far, I think there is hope he could pull it off. Because Oda is for Queer Liberation.

Really, my only concerns would be whether or not there's a risk Crocodile could get somehow detrans'd during the story (I'm praying the Haki theory isn't an option, really Doc Q might be the only true risk here), if he's stealth and that got presented as "a wrong thing to do" (which I'd hope not, like our previous queer characters have been okay with being openly queer but that may have been more for the readers than anything else. At least, I hope, god knows if Crocodile is and wants to be stealth trans then that's his right and he shouldn't have to out if he doesn't want to, and yeah, I don't want him to be demonized within the narrative for being stealth (if he's stealth, for all we know he could be out)) and like, most importantly, what'd end up being Crocodile's "motivation" for transitioning in the first place

Like. God. I just. I don't want there to be a twist where Crocodile transitioned because "being a woman was weak" or because he "wanted to be acknowledged by Whitebeard" ('cause WB doesn't take women into his crew) or "the scar in his face made him so ugly he decided he should be a man instead" (seen unironic Redditors suggest that. Almost lost my mind) or something

Like I hope someone's at least tried to explain gender dysphoria to Oda. Like the man does have actual queer friends in real life (some of whom inspired characters in OP), so I'm hoping at least someone's tried to explain the feelings that come with The Trans Experience™ to him so that, if Crocodile's trans, then Oda can actually try to base his reasoning to transition on those feelings instead of any stupid "reasons" that no actual queer person would relate to

But it all just boils down to... Is Oda willing to actually dwell into those feelings and explore them in the story.

It... it really could go either way with Oda

So yeah. Anon, I'm with you, I'd be lying if I didn't admit I was at least A Little Worried. But also... I want to be hopeful. Because I do believe there is reason to be hopeful.

Only time will tell how it'll go

[magentameows]

I drew these blobby Catras as an experiment a little while ago and forgot to post! :>

[woodchipp]

I've seen some OMORI fans talk about the "Sunny and Mari's parents were abusive" fanon and this discussion really fascinates me because like. They were certainly not abusive in the game proper because the story doesn't care about Sunny's family enough to elaborate on what kind of people his mom and dad were. I can also agree that a LOT of stories tend to make the main characters' parents abusive as a quick and convenient way to explain their issues, so it's an overused cliche by now.

At the same time, however, as overused as it may be, abusive parents still are quite a solid reason for a kid to end up with significant mental issues. And what OMORI's story lacks is just that - a solid reason why Sunny and Mari were the way they were. Trust me, you don't grow up with low self-esteem or into an overly uptight perfectionist by eating watermelon on the beach, building a treehouse and partying at your besties' birthdays lmao

[undercat-overdog]

A mere kudos would be enough for me.

[nostalgia-tblr]

Here we go, here we goooooooooo!!!

[silentknxght]

Heeyyy looking for Pokémon moots to nerd out and vibe with and also play some Pokémon TCG with!

I'm new to the game and I'd really like some friends to play with and learn more from 🙏

Pls like/reblog/reply to this post or follow me and I'll follow you back! ❤️

(Find me on PTCGL @ SilentKnxght)

[berduskan]

man I wish I had friends to create stuff with

[randomnameless]

Fort Merceus was built back when the Empire was only about the size of Hresvelg territory. They constructed the massive military base in order to subdue other clans in the area. After that, it ended up serving as the guardian of the Imperial capital, and kept getting updated and expanded. The rest is history.

From a Nopes Adrestian NPC

Which means

(graphic design is not my passion)

Between -41 and 0, we know Enbarr existed, but Willy Hresvelg was a Lord/the Lord of Enbarr.

Jury's out on what Enbarr encompassed - if it was just a city or a city + provinces, but in 0, Adrestia is founded with Enbarr as its capital, officially due to the presence of Seiros, but if it was Willy's domain/city to begin with, I can see why they picked it as the capital of the Empire.

Was it at that point that Enbarrian territory stopped being "Enbarr Provinces" and started to become "Hresvelg Territory" or it happened earlier (Willy conquering neighbour provinces before become Emperor, for Enbarr, but ultimately for him/the Hresvelg house?), or did the "Hresvelg Territory" encompass the conquests, between 0 and 32 of the most southern parts of what is now Adrestia, Boramas, Rusalka, etc, with the river with Aegir being a kind of natural border?

32 : Willy wants to unify the world

It'd make sense to have Merceus built around that time, both to protect what was already Adrestian/Enbarrian/belonged to the Hresvelg, and to have a base of operations closer to the new "lands to be conquered" than Enbarr.

Someone on Redshit made a detailed map thanks to Nopes's informations (and some guessing) and placed Fort Merceus here :

At the exit of the sort of "canyon" that is identified as "Merceus" in the general map, near the source of a river (there is a fork thing). It's kind of a strategical point, given how any army, to reach Enbarr, would have to cross the "Merceus canyon", because east of that canyon there is the Aegir River, and west of said canyon there are some mountains.

46 : Battle of Gronder 1

Things were going well for Adrestia between around 32 and 46, if they were able to reach Gronder in 46.

Sure, compared to the fast war that happens in the game, you'd have to wonder why the fuck did they take 14 years to reach Gronder, but it kinds of make sense with the idea of Adrestia building its strength slowly to ultimately be strong enough to challenge Nemesis, or the Empire wanted to make sure the newly conquered provinces were "correctly Adrestianised" before pushing forward, so they wouldn't rebel and stab Willy in the back or turn against a defenseless Enbarr if the main army is fighting up north?

Myrrdin

Ignatz notes how the Bridge of Myrddin was made during the War of Heroes - it has the same strategical value as Fort Merceus, making a fort in the only chokepoint (mountains on one side and huge river on the other) both to protect what is already Adrestianised, and to have a new base of operations.

91 Tailtean 1 : Rhea turns Nemesis in a pincushion

Between Gronder - which more or less took 14 years to reach from Merceus to Tailtean, the Adrestian army either accelerated their pace, or stopped taking a crap lot of time to "pacify/Adrestianise" the newly conquered provinces, given how in 45 years they managed to cross the Alliance and a large part of what is now Faerghus.

However, given how in 98 it is said the Empire is in control of "most" of Fodlan, I suppose they also spent time "conquering/Adrestianise" the Eastern parts of the continent, like Eastern Adrestia and Eastern Faerghus, because I sure as hell don't see Willy+Lycaon+Seiros rushing to Tailtean if half of Fodlan is still siding with Nemesis, and "pacifying/conquering" this half in the 7 years following Nemesis's defeat.

(and given how this other half encompasses Rhodos, where Cichol lived and how Seiros met him and his family there per Flayn's support, either she went like a ninja to meet them, or it was "safe enough" for her to walk from Enbarr to Rhodos - or Seiros the Warrior, just after Zanado, first went to Rhodos before going to Enbarr?)

Tl; dr : Adrestia started slowly, at least until the new Empire reached Myrrdin. Willy Seiros built forts in strategical positions/chokepoints to protect what was already Imperial Land, and also to have new bases of operation as the army moved up north.

However, we don't have any clues or info about forts and bases being built post Myrrdin (which can only have been built post 46), so it can be assumed post 46, when the Adrestian Army started to fight the Elites and their allied clans, they didn't have the same motivation anymore, even if taking roughly 50 years to reach the Tailtean Plains, given how fast the war happens in the Fodlan games, either means they were all foot units and had a crap mov stat back then, or the Adrestian Conquests of back then weren't just "kill the leader and move forward" like we see in Tru Piss (and Supreme Bullshit?) but might have been something closer to "kill the leader, bring enough 'order' to the newly conquered lands and Adrestianise them so they won't rebel, maybe let Seiros do her thing with her church stuff, ask people around if they know about "golden weapons", and then move forward".

It's all conjecture, of course, given how we don't have enough intel, but with the presence of those forts and the abnormaly long time it took for the Adrestian Army to conquer Fodlan and deck Nemesis, even if he and his Elites put up a fight with the help of Mole People, I can't really explain nor understand why it took around 65 years for Willy to conquer Fodlan.

In comparison, Supreme Leader "only" takes 5 years in FE16 (and that's only because she was "very sad uwu" when Billy fell in a ravine in Tru Piss), but Nopes shows how starting the War of Unification when her home base/state isn't "orderly" enough bites her, in Nopes Aegir Sr who wasn't "dealt with" rebels and we have bits of pseudo civil wars (even if it's always subdued thanks to the Supreme rule of thumb regarding the Fodlan games), in AG she ultimately becomes Supreme Puppet because dealing with evil lizard lady was more important than making sure Uncle'n'pals were "dealt with", which also happens in Supreme Bullshit.

So, in a way, Supreme Leader conquered Fodlan way faster than her stupid ancestor did (5 years vs 60) but she had to face opposition and rebellions within her own forces, let it be by people she deposed and called a day (Aegir Sr) or her embarassing allies - she either "deals" with them after the Conquest, or forgets to deal with them and it destroys Adrestia (AG) or is another surprise force she has to fight against (but ultimately succeeds because she has a plot mc guffin siding with her, or an imbecile who does all of the heavy work for her).

[arisatohamuko]

man, new fandoms just don't have SHIT for fanfiction like older, more established franchises do...and it really does seem like 90% of it is smut, where there used to be way more plot relevant/lore expanding stories and just a wider variety of things to read. it just ain't the same...