#connect to really strongly !!

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

as someone who's been a big nerd for a bunch of hbo content since i was a youngin', i feel like it's just so bleak and depressing to scroll through max now and see how much vapid, stupid reality tv stuff is in this catalog. i miss hbo getting to have its own streaming service with just hbo content on there!!!

the news that the strategy is to basically cancel everything that doesn't appeal to "middle america" (i.e. diverse storytelling and honestly maybe just thoughtful scripted storytelling at this point) is not a surprise, but gosh, it's still such a gross bummer!!! blahhhhhh!!!!!

[bonefall]

oo snowkit becomes snowcarve?

He does!

In StarClan, you can use the names and appearance that you could have had, if you died young. It's very rare that you get permakits or permapprentices. I lifted from the COTC story about Smallstar and his siblings.

(Though, in BB those kits actually survive and it's MAPLESHADE’S kits who lead to the law on protecting children, Darkstar's Commandment, the Queen’s Rights. Smallstar is the leader of WindClan and xey're super chill. Xey own a lovely shawl.)

So Snowkit chooses to appear as Snowcarve, an Honor Title he would have earned for the creation of a full written Clan cat language, expanded from the simple glyphs. I'm not sure if he's a popular patron, but I do know that Bramble and Tawny invoke him sometimes.

Unfortunately though he's more invoked for general guidance by the two of them, not for possibilities like I think he'd like. He watches over them though, like a guardian angel. A lot of cats secretly have those.

I'm not sure who he follows around more often though. I think he LIKES following Tawny more because she's a better listener to his omens. But he feels like Bramble NEEDS him more, y'know?

Also notably, Snowcarve was technically their uncle, but the relationship is best described as "1st cousin." Rabnir in Clanmew, a familial role about somewhat distant but parallel growth, seen also with Brightpaw and Swiftpaw.

[kisaraslover]

like for kisaras fat ass, reblog for Joey's magnificent, well groomed, shinny, poofy mane, comment for Kaiba's long face

[penn-dragon]

Kyoko still regularly visits the Corn clearing because it's her happy place, and early into the production Ren goes to visit the spot for nostalgia and happy memories. They run into each other there and Ren immediately realizes who she is

[vulpinesaint]

staring dumbstruck at these tags on one of my little saint sebastian posts. what kind of life are other people living

[asw4ng]

ylfa snorgelsson is trans and a wolf girl and follows caterpillars following butterflies and needs to obey authority figures and is going through the worst horrors ever but remains a preteen girl in her heart and she met death and death wanted her to live and she is my everything

[fist-amidst-the-hands]

hi hi okay imagine. stede wants to brush out ed's hair the way izzy always does. maybe izzy is busy on deck taking note of damages after a raid. maybe they had an infestation and he's going over ration spoilage and inventory with roach. ed is tired and cranky and absentmindedly separating sections of curls and tugging them apart at the bottom where they get stuck together in knots. stede offers to help with the tangles, says he would love to give it a go and help ed relax

izzy walks in a few minutes later and immediately comes up and tells stede he's doing it all wrong but also gently takes the brush from him and shows him the right way - where to hold the hair, how to start at the bottom with little sections and work his way up, when to start with his fingers instead of the brush. neither of them can see it but ed is smiling so much his face might actually burst

[todayisafridaynight]

sorry if you've already been asked this but what did you think about eiji in iw? like idk i feel like they were trying to recreate a masato and ichi moment without actually having any of the elements that made their relationship narratively compelling.

as a whole, i thought eiji was at least a nice 'how he wished things couldve been' for ichi in regards to masato, but still being independent enough from the masato comparison to stand on his own as a character (or at least as an antagonist. his actions wasn't what was reminding me he was a masato parallel, but more so ichi's insistence he help him). i think thats why ichi and eiji's relationship don't have the same 'elements' that make their relationship interesting like masato and ichi's

[dimonds456-art]

Oop Spider OC

Also for no reason at all here's my Artfight

[beelzzzebub]

hello i just wrote a poem and for some reason it feels important

[you-usuratonkachi]

about El's character arc and Mike's monologue

so i went back to rewatch the parts of the show that had Mike and El and El and Brenner, because I had noticed parallels between Mike and Brenner, and I wanted to single those scenes out to make sense of them. I might have gotten what they were trying to do with that...? Maybe. I'm not sure myself because the whole thing is kinda convulted, but hear me out.

The whole issue with Eleven this season is a fundamental insecurity: she does not feel like she's worth it without her powers. She doesn't know how to live as Jane. Not to mention she is having flashbacks/dreams about something she might have done in the past that she forgot.

So before Mike comes to California she's already feeling vulnerable.

She lies to Mike in her letters because she feels like she lost the only interesting part of herself (the part that she feels Mike likes her for) and she tries to make up for it by telling him that everything is fine and dandy and she has lots of fun and she's popular and everything she feels like he might like in a girl (who does not have powers).

When she strikes Angela, she triggers her own trauma.

It's her highest insecurity moment.

She's scared that she might have done something far worse than stricking Angela. Mike is already freaking out over a "small" cut, how would he react if he knew she had murdered children at Hawkins lab instead?

She was hanging onto the hope that none of it was true, that it was just some kind of nightmare, but seeing Mike take it so badly fueled her insecurities: she feels like a monster.

He says he "cares" for her, not love. Not like last season. Because she has no powers anymore? Because now she just strikes bullies in their faces? Because she is not able to make them pee their pants anymore? She's not cool anymore, she's just scary.

So when he says "you're a superhero" she does not believe him. Because she doesn't believe in herself either.

Was the issue truly stemming from Mike?

I think all considered he had a fair reaction. Kinda insensitive towards her feelings but fair. No matter how shitty Angela was, what El did was not cool either. So I know it's not a popular opinion and we all think Angela deserved it, but Mike has quite an adult reaction to it. Insensitive towards El's feelings, but fair. He basically calls her out for her bad behavior at the dinner table (albeit a bit passively aggressively... 😅).

It's not that Mike was scared of her, he was displeased with her behavior (plus the fact that she lied to him the whole time).

What she thinks she saw in him, it's what she saw in herself. She's projecting her insecurities.

(Now, while this is true, it doesn't change the fact that Mike couldn't say ILY when she needed it the most. Would it have solved the problem? Probably not, but perhaps she would have opened up to him about how she truly felt. But he couldn't say it anyway).

Later in the show, she starts training with Brenner and she has a whole conversation about Monsters and Superheros.

He says that people cannot be so easily defined and just by accepting the bad and the good we can become whole. To which she answers "what if I don't want to become whole?"

She does not want to accept the bad in herself, because she wants to be able to stay a superhero.

Later she learns that it wasn't her that killed the other kids in the lab and she realizes that the only reason why she opened the gate at all was because Brenner made her search for One. It wasn't her, it was him. So she rebels against him. Asks him if he even cared about the children.

He says he loved all of them. That he tried to help and understand Harry because...

So Brenner manipulated and abused her to get One back. So she would somehow open the gate. It was not her. It was him. He's the monster.

With this and by leaving Brenner behind, she finally feels like, after all, she might still be that superhero she wanted to be.

So yeah, rethinking the whole situation with El and Benner, I do feel like what Mike told her in the monologue was actually what she wanted to hear.

Because when she argues that she wants to go save her friends, Brenner tells her:

"you came to me broken, but you've learned how to walk again. but if you want to defeat one, you'll have to do more than walk. more than run. you will need to fly"

He's doubting that she can do that.

On the other hand, when Mike calls out to her as she fights Vecna, he says:

"you can fly, you can move mountains."

which is in direct contrast with what Brenner told her. So Brenner didn't believe she could do it. Mike did.

he ends it with "you're my superhero" which is what she wanted to be.

So, in truth, the monologue wasn't THAT bad. There is some sort of continuity with the storyline. While Mike did not evolve at all and told her exactly what he told her the first time (minus the ILY), El did change.

In that moment, coincidentally, it might have been exactly what she wanted to hear.

Except she loses. Max isn't saved (or I guess partially) nor Vecna truly defeated.

Brenner was right. She wasn't ready.

In the last ep, after the time skip, Will asks Mike if she talked to him at all. Mike says no, then corrects himself and says "a little" and right after that Mike and Will sit down and Mike tells him that she told him that Brenner was right, that she hadn't been ready.

So the parallels between Brenner and Mike are basically about one person who didn't believe in her and one person who did. Except the person who didn't believe turned out to be the one in the right.

So right now it doesn't really matter whether Mike loves her or not, the same way it did not matter whether Brenner loved them or not. At the end of the day, Brenner failed them all (which is why she does not acknowledge him as he dies). At the end of the day, whether she is Mike's superhero or not, she failed Max.

"There's more to life than stupid boys" because after all this wasn't about Mike. It was never about Mike. It was her trauma, her insecurities, her feelings projected onto Mike.

This said, while Mike's monologue perhaps had some kind of sense after all, it also failed in so many ways.

1. Yes El was projecting mostly, but the fact that Mike cannot name a single quality of hers that isn't her powers is also very true (bad writing? I guess even the writers forget that she's an actual person and not just their magic caster) so it's not surprising that between Brenner and Mike she doesn't feel like she has any worth without her powers

2. He still couldn't say ILY when she needed it the most and his excuse for it still sucked balls. Truly. Especially because he was never shown to be angsty about losing her for shit. He (the writers?) just pulled that out of his (their?) ass. Bad writing once again? Possible.

3. Mike quoted Will's confession and basically responded to it, thinking that was what she wanted to hear.

Everything else I can shrugg of as partial bad writing, but the parallel about "needing" after Will reminds Mike that he's the heart and therefore about his whole confession and therefore about the fact that El will always need him is not random. It was intentional. The whole thing hurting Will was intentional. They made it a point to show him throughout the monologue because his feelings are important for the plot, I assume.

So yes, I do believe that the monologue could say almost whatever because it wasn't supposed to work. The point of it all, it's that it failed. It's that by the time everything is done and is over, El realizes that it wasn't Mike, it was her all along. It's not Mike that has to believe in her. It's herself.

She has to find herself, accept herself as a whole, with or without powers. Believe that she's the superhero herself.

She doesn't need to hear that from Mike.

She does not need him.

This is where her arc is truly going. Her entire plotline it's about learning that she's sufficient. That she does not need to be validated or pushed by anyone else.

She did not need papa to love her. And she does not NEED Mike to love her either. She needs to love HERSELF.

This is what she's ultimately learning in this last part of the story.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

What she's learning and what Mike wants right now go in opposite directions (he wants her to need him). She's working on herself but he's suck in whatever his issue is. Either inferiority complex or internalized homophobia or general insecurities or all of the above.

What does this say about M*leven and where they are ending up? I'm not sure. It all depends on how Mike develops next season, truly. Will he be able to develop with her or will she ultimately decide that she's better being on her own as she finds herself?

Plus let's not forget that while everything might feel linear and orderly and very sensible written down like this, I have taken out one important piece from the picture, so that I could single out her journey, because that piece is not part of her journey, but is very much part of Mike's. And visually? It's been part of M*leven's journey throughout the season: Will.

After all, Brenner was still El's catalyst for her character development, while Mike was kind of collateral demage.

I think ultimately, Mike's catalyst will be Will (and viceversa). Because it kinda... always has been.

The writers made it a point to hammer Will in our heads throughout the season. Even if El's journey makes sense and so does M*leven, the visuals kept reminding us of Will over and over.

The monologue quoted Will's confession and this will have repercussions.

Lies were told and sooner or later the truth always finds ways to come out.

I think ultimately, Mike being sincere or not is still in question, because despite the whole narrative following through for his monologue, he just so happened to say what he thought she wanted to hear. And he thought so because 1. she said she wanted him to say ILY 2. she told him she was gonna be a superhero again 3. he believed what Will told him

The fact that he was only able to confess to her when she was on the verge of death? Still true. The fact that he thought that she wouldn't "like the truth"? Still true. The fact that he has behaving out of character with Will? Still true.

Even more than before, after analyzing the whole thing, I'm convinced that it's a mediocre confession because it was supposed to be.

Because ultimately what El learns from it, is that she thought she needed it, but she didn't.

[bonefall]

Are you doing anything particularly interesting with Sagewhisker or Raggedstar?

(also I love somebody else who appreciates Stormcloud, should've been a pov, I mean the Firestar parallels-)

Erins stop neglecting your side characters challenge. Stormcloud gets done soo dirty ://

Anyway!

Yellowfang’s Secret is getting redone into Brokenstar's Cataclysm. Much as I love Yellowfang, Brokenstar is getting suuuuper reduxed in BB and he needs to be the POV so I can tell his story. She has the opening and the rest is him.

What I want to set up in that opening, though, is at least a little bit of how hard people have made Yellowfang’s (Shroompelt at the time) life. Raggedstar isn't AS bad as he was, but their relationship was still pretty volatile. Sagewhisker pressured her into the role, just like canon.

I don't regret gutting YS though, to be honest. The original book is pretty freakin' miserable exactly because of Sage and Ragged, without any catharsis for how much torture the main character goes through. I think it works a lot better as an opening, thematically.

"Here's the culture which Brokenstar is being born into. See how his mother is absolutely miserable under this system, being forced to give up her child, pressured into her position. Happiness is offered between friends but there are deeper issues here that love won't fix."

So even though I'm pretty fascinated by Sagewhisker and think the fandom really sleeps on how terrible she is, I'm planning to use her as a minor but emotionally significant character.

And RAGGEDSTAR is going to be explicitly used as the father who Brokenstar loved very much, but someone he is willing to kill in the end. His enabling is also going to get exploited by Runningnose and his schemes. He's a major supporting character in a different way from YS.

[tariah23]

Well, I’m still glad that Gojo was always a character who was growing and learning at least. He’s literally one of my favorite characters of all time now. Like, he’s never been as perfect as how the fans would make him out to be despite canonically being viewed as an absolute nuisance to everyone around him (I don’t think his peers necessarily hate him but a lot of them probably hate to see him coming and the ones who’ve dealt with him long enough to consider him a friend, tolerate him and groan whenever he opens his mouth, too 😭… out of love. He’s extremely childish so there is only sm the other adults around him can take and to an extent, his students. I think the only characters in canon who adore him and their eye’s sparkle whenever he’s around, and being a silly teacher was Yuuji and Miwa (she asked him for his autograph (he’s the most famous sorcerer in the jjk world) and when she was alone, she did a little dance in the empty hallway 🥺…) from what we’ve seen even though the others still care about him, too. They just find him rather annoying, which he most definitely is. And he does it on purpose. He plays too much.)

[curiouschaosstarlight]

On one hand, I'm super happy my one post about my boi is taking off a bit

On the other, I can't help wondering how many people fully comprehend it's about sympathy/tragedy, and the cruelty of expectations; the fact that so many people take for granted certain kinds of "common sense", and being even just a teenager, let alone an adult, without knowing "common sense" stuff will get you at best treated poorly or judged, or outright effectively punished for not knowing any better And thus, one is shamed for "not knowing", but can also be shamed for daring to ask because that admits to not having known, and paints one as stupid or oblivious, or intentionally ignorant

So if someone wants to just be "scary" and not be shamed, it can be easier to just lean into "oh I'm a totally bad person and everything I do is with every ounce of forethought and I've decided I'm above your societal expectations" rather than try (with a high likelihood of things going wrong) to ask for help from someone

Especially if the person who needs that help is really, really used to being rejected

It's about society-made monsters and the way a person can wind up continuously being pushed further and further into "then let me be evil" and nnnot about "oh heehee look at this character, he thinks he's so great but he's actually incompetent!"

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

i was going to crack a joke about how the only thing on my lore wishlist for the dlc was that they would finally explain why the hell marika got impaled and crucified on the elden ring. and then it occurred to me that our one canon named boss so far is an archetypical erdtree traitor-styled demigod quite literally titled the impaler

[neverendingford]

.