#flawed and still love

[ilyiwantusbothtoeatwell]

let me see you and stay

neil hilborn // text post – @rebeccabinch //  naudline pierre – through the clouds, 2020 // flintcoded, 08 –15 – 21 // the first bad man – miranda july // sade alandria zabala // georges bataille // @tristamateer // mess is mine – vance joy // @softhe4rted , i will – mitski // taylor jenkins reid, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo //georges bataille – the dead Man //

[dameronalone]

thinking about how percy jackson is seen as intimidating because of his godly powers from his father but the thing that makes him the most dangerous is his humanity from his mother

[welcometogrouchland]

ANOTHER SKETCH DUMP! Featuring more of me playing with lineless art. Batman reborn era trio (dick, damian and steph) I miss you...when will you return from war. Also featuring Steph designs bc I've seen ppl dissatisfied w/ her current look, some good mom Talia, and Jason Todd poetry club. Duke is confused not that Jason would start a poetry club but that he'd have such mid poetry opinions. (ID in Alt)

[isot1ne]

🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷FRANCE🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷JUMPSCARE🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.

[ariadne-mouse]

I mentioned in this post that I thought it would take a life or death choice about Imogen for Liliana to flip, situationally, as opposed to the party being able to convince her to change her ideology (cult juice is strong), and it seems we may have gotten an element of that in Liliana flying to Imogen's aid against Otohan. I'd be very curious what Liliana would have done if she'd gotten there in time to fight, but we'll never know, so we have to digest the moment we got. I also think FCG's death adds another dimension both in-game and above the table. Since we dropped out literally mid-scene after her arrival this post may get stale immediately after the first few minutes of next week's episode, but for now I think it's safe to say that at least for the time Liliana spends with the party right now she will not be an active antagonist. Her daughter called for help and she answered, and her first act was trying to comfort her. Matt also wouldn't hit the players with another big battle fresh off the first (and with that outcome), so if they do have to face Liliana as an enemy it would be later under evolved circumstances.

To be clear I don't think FCG dying means Matt nerfs the threat of Liliana or that this situation means she has flipped permanently, but rather, it neatly interrupts the established dynamic between Liliana and Imogen thus far and creates a chance for new dialogue that doesn't just repeat all the same things as before. Imogen hasn't needed her mother - not really - and maybe still doesn't, but she called for help and is grieving now and the conversation doesn't necessarily have to be the same old "Liliana renounce your cause" but rather "help your daughter here and now" and to connect with her through that emotion. This is probably the best opportunity they'll ever get to flip Liliana in a more than "last ditch in a crisis moment" kind of way or lay the groundwork for that happening later. Now, the party - and Imogen in particular - may rightly be angry with Liliana as an ally of Otohan, and that FCG died because of the cause Liliana supports. Liliana may want to comfort her daughter while also believing that FCG's death was unfortunate but not ultimately a reason to doubt the cause or escape what she sees as inevitable. It's messy! But it's a very interesting situation and FCG's death is such a visible wound on Imogen that it may elicit Liliana to do or consider things she wouldn't, otherwise.

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[thelunarfairy]

The painful love

Nene's dream is to be loved by someone, because she was always mistreated by boys…. she gave up her life, "her marriage" to save her best friend, and she will give up all of that if she is by Hanako's side , these are all just details, it's not about marriage, it's about her loving him.

He's a ghost, he can't get married, he can't have children, he can't grow old with her, he can't even leave school, she won't be able to introduce him to her parents, she won't be able to meet his family, no one can see him . All Nene has is the great love she feels for him, and what wins over Hanako most is her desire to stay.

One of the forms of love, regardless of whether it is friendship or romance, is for someone to "stay" for you. Someone chooses to be by your side, even with your story, your past, your hurts and flaws. Nene stood by him, even when no one else did, and this contrasts greatly with his relationship with Tsukasa.

Tsukasa wants to leave, yes, to save Hanako, but Hanako doesn't want to be saved, he wants to be forgiven, he wants to be loved, he wants the people he loves to stay. So, when Nene went after him on the far shore, even though he scolded her, he couldn't hold back any longer. Because she did all that because she wanted to be with him, when not even the person he loves most, Tsukasa, had decided to leave.

She is the only person who wants to stay by his side without thinking twice, no matter what she has to do, she will be there. Even now, even going back in time, she still remembers him, remembers the desire she had to see him in the audience watching her in the play.

It's ironic, because Nene wanted a handsome boy for everyone to see, she wanted to use the boys as a trophy, not to show off, but to show the boys who were mean to her that someone can love her, even with this "flaw." "superficial and futile.

But in the end she fell in love with a ghost, the ordinary boy who is not popular, who no one can see. That was something I loved about the construction of the story, how Aidairo didn't give Nene what she wanted, but what she needed.

To be loved by the boy who finds her "flaw" attractive, to be loved by the boy who protects her, who listens to her, who is there for her. Being loved by the imperfect boy who has his own story and who makes mistakes, who is not the prettiest guy in the class, but who truly loves, no matter how much he tries to hide it, no matter how mysterious he is.

He is afraid that she will find out about him, because he doesn't want her to leave, almost like a silent request "please don't go.." Hanako is a boy who seems to have been abandoned a lot, maybe it only happened to Tsukasa, but even Let it just be him, Tsukasa is the love of his life, not in a romantic way, but he is the person he loves most, and he is gone.

The love between these two is tragic, but true, seeing how the two complement each other, even with the "flaws" and mistakes they make. It's an intense, true love, a continuous struggle between being together or separated by destiny.

Yes, destiny, it is he who is manipulating everything, their destiny is not to be together, but they are fighting against it, even if they have to break the world.

And, I hope, they break the world together with Tsukasa. Because he loves Amane, because he didn't want to leave him, but he had to, it was the only option, because he loves Amane so much that he wants him to live and be happy, even without him.

But for Amane, there is no happiness without Tsukasa, and now, there is no happiness without Nene either.

[bethanydelleman]

Taking a break from my usual programming to talk about Megara from Disney's Hercules being an awesome, flawed, complex, female character who has a very compelling arc.

The backstory, given by Hades, is that Meg sold her soul to him so her lover could live, but he left her for someone else. This makes her one of the very few Disney women who actually has romantic relationship baggage and experience. She is also older than Hercules (I think unique in Disney) though I think she's still mortal and within a normal lifespan. But the point is, she thought had the "Disney princess" perfect sacrificial romance, but then was betrayed.

She does fall in love and begins to believe that Hercules is a really good person, which inspires her to be better as well. Then Hercules finds out that Meg has been working for Hades the whole time and is heartbroken and betrayed. Meg sacrifices herself to save him, JUST LIKE BEFORE, but this time, she did pick a better guy and her sacrifice was honoured. Hercules probably has a far better reason to abandon Meg than previous boyfriend, but he doesn't: he goes to the underworld, retrieves her soul, and then, in another huge personal sacrifice, opts to stay with her instead of joining the gods on Mount Olympus.

She is shown as cynical, amoral, and sarcastic; not seeming to mind that she's helping Hades attempt to overthrow the other gods. Even though she likes Hercules, she agrees to attempt to find his weakness when Hades offers her personal freedom (that seems to be lifted from the story of Delilah and Samson, by the way). While she is a slave to Hades, that doesn't fully excuse her actions because we learn that she can refuse to serve him. Her motivation seems to primarily come from her not really thinking humanity is worth saving after her betrayal.

I loved this movie so much as a kid and I think I imprinted on Meg like some sort of baby duck. I love her song, I Won’t Say (I’m in Love) and how she struggles to get over her cynical views of relationships and men. But now, I'm amazed that she exists at all. She's a femme fatal who tried to take down the hero of the story and she both survives and gets a happy ending! She commited the Ultimate Narrative Woman Sin: she used her sexuality against a hero! She does make a huge sacrifice, dying to save both Hercules and the world, but in most stories she would have saved him and died (permanently). Instead, she's completely forgiven and Hercules risks his life to bring her back.

I love her. I love her story. She's the best. Can we have more of her please?

[miraclepatty]

Your F/o loves your skin, it doesn’t matter if it’s smooth, dry, scarred, hairy, or freckled. They love to run their fingers on the bumps and blemishes on your face or other parts of your body as long as you’re okay with it. They also love the color of your skin and are more than ready to fight anyone if someone is rude to you because of it.

[Proship DNI!!!]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

D'Arce S Ending: "As soon as I can revive him from the dead, the wedding is BACK ON!"

[team7-headquarter]

ANGRY NARUTO PROTECTS

[daftmooncretin]

its 2023 and people are still hating on boromir and completely misunderstanding his whole point as a character… like babe there is an absolutely revolutionary concept called media literacy that i think you will absolute LOVE.

[lena-cant]

I started replaying fire emblem: path of radiance earlier this week after recently really only playing modern (awakening onward) FE for the past 5 years and it's really hitting home for me how much of modern fe's script is taken up by useless minutiae. camp conversations in por are the thing really hitting it for me. In more recent fe games, there's a lot of little bits of dialogue in the between-level hub but it rarely ever adds to our understanding of a character or interact with the story. It's just there because the characters are in the hub and therefore they need a sentence or two to say to the protag.

meanwhile path of radiance has these wonderful little conversations in the camp. they're not all like, peak fiction or anything but they almost always deliver on short nuggets of story that let you know how specific characters are reacting to what's going on in the story, or otherwise just something about them. I can count on my hands the amount of moments in three houses and engage where characters outside of the "main cast" of those games actually react to story events but they're doing it left and right in path of radiance.

this, along with the fact that most characters only have 3-5 supports means that the characters all feel sharper, more present, and like they're a part of the story. I'm not gonna pretend that every character in por is a masterful study or anything but even the weak characters in por feel less annoying than some of the strongest characters in three houses or engage because they're just inserted into the world more elegantly.

so much of the dialogue in the newer games just feels superfluous by comparison. xander doesn't have checks notes 12 romantic supports because the devs/writers felt that he as a character needed that much fleshing out. he has them because they needed him to have that many girls to kiss for the eugenics mechanics to work! part of the reason why characters in the newer games feel significantly more one note in comparison is that they're stretched thin. there's so much pointless shit they have to say, decided by quota before the writers even got their hands on the characters and it all builds up into a weaker end product

anyway this has been one elitist whinging about the new games that I like less

[jim-kirks-bubble-butt]

hello tumblr i need star trek people to talk to- i just started watching tos and need people that i can scream about it with please and thank you.

also spirk. and mckirk. and spones. and mcspirk.

and uhura i love her with all of my heart

[wierdshenanigans]

I haven't read Heroes of Olympus in a long time but the more I remember it the more it sounds like a fan fiction to me. I mean, we got the-

Estranged lost sibling of a character introduced in pjo (thalia) that gets reunited with them after gaining amnesia.

G a i n i n g a m n e s i a

Seventh wheel character that ends up getting a girlfriend instead of therapy.

Couple that ends up in a super hell full of tortures right after reuniting.

Nobody ever receiving therapy for the things that happened to them, or even considering getting therapy to heal.

Character that is so sad even the goddess of misery doesn't do nothing because he's so goddam SAD.

Characters that were super important and almost main characters in the original series making like...one or two appearances and mentions.

Sunshine x grumpy

And so much more.

But like, it's a well-written fanfic in my opinion.