#haven't seen my theme or archive in 3 years

[mrs-gauche]

Vows & Vengeance Episode 1

ALRIGHT GUYS! As always, I'm super late to the party (although for once, I actually have a good reason, which is that I'm currently kinda in the middle of renovating my place lol), and while I first listened to the episode on Thursday, I just wanted to let it sink in a bit and listen to it again a few times, to really appreciate all the details. :D So here are a trillion few notes on the first episode (spoiler, I loved it! <3333) and I hope this doesn't sound too jumbled, I haven't had a lot of sleep lately. 😂😂💀💀

- Ok, so my first reaction to the ending was basically: "OH MY GOD NOTHING CAN EVER GO RIGHT", "DAMN THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY" and sobbing for Elio, I guess. lol

- My general thoughts: I loved it!! ❤️❤️❤️ I felt like it was gripping and immersive from the beginning, but also genuinely funny and moving at times! I think this first episode did a good job of setting up the plot, the pacing was good and I'm already invested in the new characters! The sound design and voice acting was top notch (albeit maybe a bit over the top and a little cheesy in a couple of scenes lol) and I absolutely LOVED the little nuggets of the Veilguard soundtrack we got throughout (Zimmer and Balfe confirmed!!). There are a few tiny nitpicks, but overall this was fantastic and correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard of a game being marketed with an audio drama before? 😂 But looking at Dragon Age's amazing voice cast (and the fact that they all made us develop a voice kink lmao), this makes so much sense and I need like a hundred more of these in the future. lol

Notes on the episode itself:

- The narrator reminds me so much of the ones in these old anime dubs. I was expecting him to be like "LAST TIME ON DRAGONBALL Z". He got lost in the wrong dragon franchise. lol Really cool voice though!

- I LOOVE how it starts off with a minute of just the ambient sounds, chatters and music of the tavern, to really get that immersion, as if you just walked into this place yourself. - That new rendition of "Oh Grey Warden" hit me in the feels ngl.. ;-;

- Nadia just walking it and poisoning Olen to get answers was such a badass introduction to our main character! - I like how the narrative is neatly tied together by making this a retelling of what happened, starting off with loads of questions and by the end we're back in the present again.

- Nadia and Elio are so sweet nawww <3333 - Those sounds of Elio waking Nadia up were straight up ASMR. lol - The tune that's playing in the back here is sooo nice, I wonder if it's part of the new Love theme or something. 🥹❤️

- A sort of forbidden love between Liberati and Altus, oh this better end f*cking well!! 💀💀💀 - Well, that birthday got cancelled REAL fast. lol - I get Nadia's outbreak, but DAMN, she went OFF on him from like 0 to 100 in a heartbeat. lmao I guess something was bottling up for quite some time. - "I'm sorry" Oh no. I notice a certain pattern. *sob* - Again, that track that's playing here, wooow. Goosebumps! It's a super tragic rendition of the main theme. I just know this one's gonna hit so hard whenever that plays in Veilguard. 😭

- I wonder if the docks here are the same we've seen in screenshots. :3 - The soundtrack that's playing here reminds me SO MUCH of Unravel (one of my favorite tracks in recent years! <3333) - I like Nadia and Vik's dynamic. Super authentic. :D

- Nadia's reaction to the gold and then "TRIPLE the bag for delivery??" Yeah, Solas truly is the richest apostate hobo in all of Thedas. Those vaults from Trespasser come in handy now. Good thing the currency of old Elvhenan is apparently still valid. lol - Solas' quest of collecting every ancient powerful artifact continues. - Isn't this like the second time now that Solas indirectly hired someone to break into the Archives? lol They really need to improve that security. (Watch there being a quest in Veilguard where you have to break in there again, but it's impossible due to the amounts of guards now and Solas is like "Yeah, that might be my fault, sorry." lol)

- Super random thought, but judging by the sound design, there's gotta be lots of chickens running around in the streets of Minrathous. lol - NEVE!! <3333 (I'm sorry to anyone who had the wildest conspiracy theories about that teaser image and was expecting someone else. lmao) - So, wait. Does that mean Solas also anticipated Neve to talk to Elio? Or maybe someone else was supposed to do that but Neve got there first? lol

- Nadia and Vik have got to be the noisiest thieves I've ever heard. LMAO HOW did you manage to steal anything until now?? 💀💀💀 - I love how you keep hearing Vik laughing in the distance while distracting the guards. lol

- I wonder if all the turmoil could have been avoided if they just informed Elio about his ancestor's connection to the Eye and the Venatori from the get go. I guess he needed that push of knowing to never be able to return to his life in Tevinter to go along with it, but.. *sigh* poor Elio. - "I trust you." UHGGHH We were on the right track there. 😭😭 - That music AGAIN?? Chilllls!! - Nadia just casually destroying hundreds of years worth of relics. Love it. lol - "FLAME BLAST!!" Oh, this is so anime. lmaoo - Elio going from "WE'RE NOT DOING THIS" to fully enjoying beating up templars and go full criminal in a matter of seconds as soon as he sees his girl in her element. He loves her so much. <33

- "Who's the hat?" lol - That groan after the Dread Wolf name drop? Yeah, that was actually me. lmao - So, I assume this also ties in with Neve already knowing about Solas and his shenanigans in Minrathous when she met Varric in The Missing. Maybe it was this very incident that Neve was talking about? - Noooo, Vik!! 😭😭 (I knew you for like five minutes, but you made in impact. lol) - Sooo... I take it these "assassins" were actually Venatori, since they were the ones going after the Eye in the first place? Or am I stupid now? - "The eye went boom!" Love that delivery. lol - "She's trying to freeze the bay!" Yeah, Neve just DID that. What a boss. - "An elf with a fancy tongue." Oh, I know who THAT is. lmao

- "Me and you." 😭😭😭😭 You two are killing me. - That motif AGAIN. 😭😭😭😭😭 - Oh, for fuck's SAKE. Solas really always has the best flippin timing. They're all sweet and loving and here goes our disaster man "I'm about to ruin this couple's day so good." 💀💀💀 It's her BIRTHDAY, dammit!! - "Ominous looking chap in the road" lmao All I could think of there was THIS (for anyone who gets the reference LMAO)

- How is it that I knew he would appear in this episode from the teaser, and yet I still freaked out so hard. lmaoo After such a long time, it's like any second of new Solas content makes my heart skip a beat (or several). 😭😭 I still can't believe we're getting all this. 🥹

- Look, I may be a Solasmancer and have my biases, but godDAMN.. GDL is so good. HE IS SO GOOD. That Welsh accent. That rolling lilt. A voice like velvet that can be both so smooth and so sharp. There is just something about his performance that has you on the edge of your seat every time he's talking and I looove these little moments when you can so clearly hear that cheeky little smile in his voice. 💜

And it's so nice to hear him talk so calmly (well, at first at least lol) and kinda playful again, opposed to how super anxious he sounds at the beginning of Veilguard. 🥺 It's kinda interesting to compare this performance with DAI now, because now he's fully embracing the Dread Wolf role, and I keep thinking this is him after being isolated for the past ten years. ;-;

- Anway, so Nadia "unknowingly employed by the Dread Wolf" gets her pay from Richie Rich and girl, that would've been the moment to LEAVE. *sob* - "What other choice do we have?" Well, I dunno, RUN?? lmao - *chuckles* "I will demonstrate." Alright, I'm dead. Why did you say it like THAT? T_____T - Hearing Solas talk in elven after so long.. Dead again. Overkill. And yes, he's saying the exact same thing he said to Sera once. No, we don't know what it means. lol Maybe Sera IS actually an ancient magical artifact and he tried to trigger.. something. lol - That whole flippin dialogue. Solas please stop talking like an old witch trying to lure her prey into her lair. 💀 - "I do not play games." *screaming* - Honestly, I was like "NOOO WHY would you GO with himmm" but then I remembered, SHIT I WOULD FOLLOW HIM ANYWHERE. Hell, I *HAVE* followed him anywhere. To Hell and back. 💀💀💀💀💀 - Solas' persuasion game is at maximum at all times.

- "Energy is neither dark nor light." Speak for yourself, Trickster God of In Between. - "It is the Fade. The Veil is fragile here."

- Solas finally gets to answer questions again, but Nadia is rude about it. 😂 Solas slightly approves AND disapproves. lol - "Kindly remove your blade from my neck."

- Those damn Venatori at it AGAIN with their hunt for magical McGuffins. After TN and the Missing, I'm starting to believe that is all Solas did in the last ten years, snatching one deadly toy out of the their hands after another. lmao - "And it is up to me to ensure we arrive at the best possible outcome." Oh, we're so doomed. - "You're sharper than you let on." Here we go again with the backhanded compliments. lol Ohhh, how I missed it.

"Some people confuse a reckoning as an ending." "I seek... regeneration."

Holy shit. The voice. The long pause. The delivery of that last line. Shivers down my spine. It feels eerie. Like he sounds.. desperate.. and maybe a little.. insane? lmao (That's how you start to talk if you've been separated from your soulmate for ten years 💔💔💔)

Ok look, I've seen a TON of people thinking that, because of the way he says this and him using the word "reckoning" ("For a reckoning that will shake the very heavens"), this HAS to be whatever part he took of Mythal speaking now that has taken over his mind or something. But.. I don't think so? lol

I honestly think this is just Solas who, after a thousand years of preparing to "heal" the world again that he broke, even after admitting to himself that this world and its people are in fact real and he has to destroy it, is SO close to getting there now and there's NO ONE who could possibly understand him or how he truly feels or what any of this or the Blights/Titans/spirits/gods/Veil even truly ARE, so no WONDER he sounds a little f*cking unhinged. 💀💀💀

The choice of words is very interesting though.. "Regeneration" is not something he has ever used, BUT it immediately made me think of the line "But still, some hope remains for restoration" in Trespasser. This is what google tells me:

Regeneration represents a form of upgrade from restoration. If restoration means “to make something well again,” regeneration, for some authors, means “to make it better” than a (supposed) origin condition.

Regeneration: "a renewal or restoration of a body, bodily part, or biological system (such as a forest) after injury or as a normal process/ or a spiritual renewal or revival"

You know.. if I read "restoration of a bodily part or biological system", you know what's the first thing that comes to my mind yet AGAIN.

Look, that Titan's body is SPLIT IN HALF and we know that this was kinda the catalyst for everything Solas did back then, so... I'll just leave that here and listen to rest of the episode now. lmaoo

- "And the eye will make us fix that?" "More or less." dksdjjgdkfvlf THE SMILE IN HIS VOICE. What does that even MEAN? What do you MEEEAN, SIR?? I would've RUN out of that cave SO flippin FAST. - "And you're sure this is safe?" "As safe as we make it." *literally two minutes later* "SOLAS, SOMETHING IS WROOONG!!" This is a goddamn comedy show. lmaoo - "Silence, please." lol at him still being polite. - "This is all to be expected!" *five seconds later* "WE MUST FLEE!" I BUST out laughing. WHY are you such a DISASTER. Nothing EVER goes right and yet you always keep trying, you fool, omg!! - I don't think we have ever heard Solas so distressed. lol Like, not even when Wisdom died or at the beginning of Veilguard. - "Take my hand!" I would've never thought to hear THAT Trespasser line repeated under those circumstances, but here we are. lmaooo - We know Solas is a hopeless romantic, so for him to see that sweet couple torn apart because of him, and him still trying to save Nadia, I'm not ok. - Solas being responsible for Elio getting banished to the Fade and him being trapped there not long after.. Do you believe in karma? 😂 - "I'M SORRY!" WHY DOES IT ALWAYS END WITH HIM SAYING THAT. 😭

- So.. uh... what even WAS the plan, exactly? lol Like, what was supposed to happen?? Maybe they should've asked a few more questions after all. 💀 - That following scene with Nadia all alone. I got chills again. That hit different. ;-;

- "Where can I find this wolf??" Oh, she is about to hunt him down. 😶 "...I'll be back." Nadia in full Terminator mode now. 😂 - How are she and Elio connected now though? How can she hear him? 🥺 And I can't help but think about whoever was left in the Fade in DAI again, too. 😭😭😭 - Not the credits making me almost sob AGAIN because of the music. 😭 It is so so good.

So there we are. Everything went wrong, a couple is doomed and Solas is sorry. So, nothing changed. LMAO Everything as usual. 💀💀💀 Solas, I swear, if you don't get these two back together again and pay Lavellan a visit afterwards, my Rook might rethink listening to your advice in Veilguard. lmao

I can't wait for that next episode! This was so much fun and an amazing start, and I'm so excited to hear all the other companions! :D ❤️❤️❤️

[kiratheperson]

I posted 24,119 times in 2022

That's 21,589 more posts than 2021!

8 posts created (0%)

24,111 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@bobo-the-part-time-clown

@elytrians

@edelgard-enjoyer

@fardf150

@ziseviolet

I tagged 2,185 of my posts in 2022

#goncharov - 549 posts

#unreality - 324 posts

#aesthetic - 250 posts

#save - 243 posts

#overgrown aesthetic - 43 posts

#dracula - 41 posts

#dracula daily - 38 posts

#<- prev tags - 18 posts

#this is beautiful - 16 posts

#me - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#i could have gotten ‘total loser of a guy who will never amount to anything’ as a result and it would have been less devastating then this

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

changed my theme >:)

0 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#4

I think u may be stuck on the dashboard of 4 days ago but u should know that martin scorsese himself reacted to goncharov 😳

Yes I do know!!!! It’s amazing this is peak goncharov

The reason Im reblogging posts from 4 days ago is cuz I hit the post limit in like 4 hours on the first day of goncharov and then I filled up my queue with at least 400 goncharov posts. In addition to the normal posts. So now I have 500 posts in my queue. I regret nothing.

2 notes - Posted November 26, 2022

#3

omg that’s adorable I love it

how has your day been btw?

2 notes - Posted October 26, 2022

#2

hey feel free to answer this privately or just . ignore it + I'm not sure how to phrase this well but ... are u Asian ? (LMAO) I don't see a lot of queer Asian ppl in my specific tumblr circle so I'm always happy and surprised when I see other asian ppl on here . sorry if this is a weird question ✋🥲

Yeah I'm Chinese!!! Dw, I'm cool with this kinda question, you know since it's in good faith and all. And I get it cuz it's always awesome to see other queer Asians :D

2 notes - Posted September 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Hello, I'm once again asking you about your OCs because I'm curious! I hope that's okay? Who are Iphi and Jack? I love the first one's name. And if I remember right Jack is aro? That's neat, I haven't really seen a lot of aro characters before! /pos

Thank you for the ask!!! Sorry this is pretty late btw, I haven’t had time to answer it lol

(That’s Iphi on the left, Jack on the right. First is a picrew, second isn’t my art but like. I haven’t drawn Jack yet so that’s kinda their ref for now)

But it is rant time!! Imma start with Iphi! Because I kinda need to explain her to give context for Jack’s lore. 

So Iphi is the god of sacrifice in this little fantasy world I made, Kunyang! She’s a pretty old god, a couple of thousand years old, but she’s still the second youngest one lol.

In Kunyang, gods are born when they sprout from the seeds of the god tree. The god tree is in the divine realm, which is a different realm entirely from the physical realm, but very rarely, a god seed can arrive in the physical realm.

Anyways, this seed fell into the hands of a very magically powerful person. They had magic potential that could honestly rival a god- and yeah, they believed they were destined for great things because of it. So, they were determined to be the person who caused the god seed to sprout.

So in Kunyang, there was once this library called the Archives, run by the god of knowledge himself, Ephius. This person went to Ephius, and they were told that the seed was for the god of sacrifice. Ephius told the person that to sprout a god seed, they’d need sacrifices from thousands of people. This person wanted to do it, all by themself.

And so, they sacrificed everything. Family, friends, fortune, and fame. All gone, in the hopes of making a legacy. The seed did not sprout, because it wasn’t enough. So this person decided that they would need to make a very big sacrifice, one big enough to make the seed sprout.

They decided to banish the Archives from the physical realm into the divine realm, sacrificing humanity’s access to the library of all knowledge. And that was indeed a big enough sacrifice to give birth to a new god!

And that’s how Iphi was created. But the thing is- that’s really not how you’re supposed to create a god. So she was kind of corrupted from birth. This corruption prevented her from having a lot of character traits that one might consider important to being human.

Iphi does not feel happiness, or satisfaction. No sorrow or regret. Nothing of that sort. But she is working towards a goal: and that is creating a legacy. Having an effect on the world. (Her only contributor to her creation imprinted heavily on her.)

And because of that, she is very active in all manners of sacrifice. Every day, she’s constantly getting people to make sacrifices to her, amassing followers in many different lands. This also increases her powers heavily.

The way her powers work, they’re kinda like payment based. She gets someone to sacrifice something for her, and she can create something else of equal value to that something. (The more important that something was to the person who sacrificed it, the more she can create and do.) Like, she could make a giant wall of fire, or acid rain, or bury a country in gold if she had enough magic. Which she absolutely does. But she mostly saves the magic potential she receives for later.

And also, Iphi doesn’t truly care about anything other than making a mark on the world. She doesn’t mind if people die or suffer because her sacrifices took something too important- if anything, she wants to do that, because it’s quite a way of making your mark on the world.

Oh, and I gotta add- she can’t do this all without a little help! And that’s where Jack comes in.

They’re also a couple thousand years old, but quite younger than Iphi. So they used to be a court jester. Mortal and everything. They should have had a life of a normal length, be just another person in the world, but then they fell in love with Iphi.

And yeah they’re aromantic! It’s not romantic love, it’s alterous love. But yeah they felt a deep emotional attraction, and they wanted to be in a relationship (not a romantic or platonic one though). Anyways, Iphi doesn’t feel the same way. She doesn’t love Jack. But she thought it was convenient to have someone in love with her, and to keep them around, so she offered Jack a sacrifice.

She’d give them eternity, and they would be her servant.

Jack honestly didn’t want to do that at first, but then they had a near-death experience, and agreed to her terms.

So Iphi took their physical body, and also their independence.

Because it would be inconvenient if her servant got bored or wanted to take back the sacrifice. So Jack quite literally cannot think unless she wills it. They’re barely conscious until Iphi needs them, and only then can they think again.

Jack isn’t even aware this happens. To them, it feels like they just woke up, or they just simply forgot what happened during that time

Iphi also messed with Jack’s mind a bit, to amplify their devotion. And yeah, Jack is completely, utterly devoted to her. They would die for her, they’d be tortured for her, they would kill for her too. Nothing is off the table. They’d do anything she says. And they truly love her.

Jack mostly stays in the divine realm, usually, until Iphi sends them to the physical realm to do something for her. That something is usually extorting people to get more sacrifices. Jack pretty much curses people, and then offers to remove that curse in exchange for a sacrifice. (That’s how Janessa got cursed, actually [have I talked about her?] but Jack forgot they cursed her lmao.)

Anywayssss there is some more lore, but this is pretty fucking long already lmao so Imma just end this here. Unless you’d like to hear more!!

3 notes - Posted September 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[jessjustplay]

Ranked: 11 Video Games I Finished in 2022 (New Games Only)

December 19, 2022

I got back into gaming this year and I finished 11 new-to-me games! I'm going to rank them from my least favorite to most favorite. "Finished" means I completed the main story line/main quest.

Note: I'm only including the NEW-TO-ME games that I played and finished for the very first time. In 2022, I also finished Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, and Princess Maker 2. I've loved those games for many years and including them would throw off the results.

#11 - Cat Quest (PC)

I really enjoyed this game. Cat Quest is a cute, colorful, cat-centric action-RPG game. I think it had the weakest story of the total list, which is why it gets ranked last. [Click here to read Game Archive]

#10 - Carto (PC)

Carto was a very fun puzzle adventure game with beautiful watercolor graphics. Some of the puzzles were easy, others were more difficult. I enjoyed the seasonal and geographical changes in each area, and I think the story was simple but strong! [Click here to read Game Archive]

#9 - Final Fantasy I (PS1 Classic on PS Vita)

This is a simple, to-the-point RPG adventure and I loved that about it. You always knew what to do next because the NPCs were helpful. Truly a classic and I had a great time! [Click here to read Game Archive]

#8 - Final Fantasy II (PS1 Classic on PS Vita)

The "Town" theme from this game is one of the most beautiful songs in the entire FF franchise. I have nightmares of the last dungeons but it was still very fun and beating the final boss was one of the best moments of 2022! [Click here to read Game Archive]

#7 - Final Fantasy VII (Switch)

The music in this? Fantastic. I am glad I got to experience this beloved game. While not my favorite, it was truly an adventure! Having seen the remake, it's amazing to go back to the OG roots and see how far video gaming has developed over the years. [Click here to read Game Archive]

#6 - Princess Maker 3 (Switch)

I loved Princess Maker 2 when I was a kid. This is the first time I ever played Princess Maker 3 and while it definitely had a learning curve, when I got the hang of it, I had so much fun! [Click here to read the Game Archives]

#5 - Dragon Caffi (Switch)

This was a random purchase, but definitely a great purchase! I didn't know what I was getting into, but it's the cutest adventure. This game is FULL of adorable art - the backgrounds, the characters, and the FOOD! I loved it and can't wait to replay it. [Click here to read Game Archive]

#4 - Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses! (PC)

I haven't played a Nancy Drew mystery game in YEARS, so this one was extremely fun and also sentimental. I thought the gameplay mechanics were easy and enjoyable. The mystery was also intriguing! [Click here to read Game Archive]

#3 - Final Fantasy VIII (Remastered, Switch)

This is such a special game. I really like Squall and I enjoyed seeing him open up and develop as a character. The music is wonderful, and there's just an aura to this game that is indescribable. As cheesy as it sounds, it's magical. (Literally?) [Click here to read Game Archive]

#2 - Star Ocean First Departure R (Switch)

Ahh, my first Star Ocean game... and what a game it was. I loved the pixel art in this game. The battle system was so much fun, and the voice acting was excellent. I was always excited to jump on the Switch to play more of this. That's when you know it's a good one! [Click here to read Game Archive]

#1 - Final Fantasy XIII (PC)

Oh gosh - this game. This game is epic. This game is amazing. The storytelling??? PHENOMENAL. You see so many sides to the same story, each character filling you in just a bit more. It's fantastic. And Lightning? Absolutely amazing!! This game is everything! I can't wait to play the other games in the trilogy! [Click here to read Game Archive]

[xx-b34utiful-dr34m3r-xx]

Fk it, dropping all my Bitstrips comics

Because I want to clean out space on my computer, obviously.

For those of you who don't know, Bitstrips was a comic-making site that existed in the 2000s and shut down in 2016. It had quite a versatile (in my opinion) character builder as well as a comic maker which I haven't seen in any other comic making site. It had this whole little social aspect (comments, followers, putting other people in your own stuff) incorporated in it as well, and I really enjoyed using it! Bitmoji is its successor, and I could care less about it (I absolutely hate that it's incorporated into Snapchat, a platform I also hate, and I'm just annoyed that I also I see it everywhere - even in real life, in PROFESSIONAL settings).

Sometime in 2018, Bitstrips actually reached out to me (I think via the email I registered when I signed up) and sent me all the comics I created on the site so I didn't have to actually go in and screenshot/archive anything before it shut down! I can only hope other former Bitstrips users received the same thing...

Another reason I felt like dropping this is because I joined Bitstrips in 2014, literally a decade ago. Felt like recognizing it for what would have been my account's ten-year anniversary, you know?

I'm yapping. TLDR, I'm posting links to comics I made on a site I was a part of ten years ago that happens to be nostalgic to me. Feel free to read and cringe along with me.

If for some reason you can't see any of this stuff, Postimages (the image-hosting site I used to upload everything) probably hates your wifi network - I know for a fact I had difficulty accessing stuff I uploaded on this site using a more public network compared to my own personal home network. Can't really help you with that, sorry.

Also, if you see anything scribbled out in black...... I'm ashamed to admit I referred to myself by my real name on the site. -_- In hindsight, I kind of deserve that shame as I picked a pretty cringy username.

CLICK READ MORE FOR THE LINKS!

→ Remixes (think of this like reblogs/video responses, where someone would make a comic and you could "remix" it and put your own spin onto it)

→ Cosmic Club THE SERIES (a series based off a concept I had featuring alien girls themed off the planets of the solar system. This series was never actually finished and I was working on Episode 1, Part 3 when the site announced it was closing)

→ Cosmic Club EXTRAS (stuff I had originally made to be a part of the series itself, but once I started actually making series comics with a story behind them, these just became one-offs)

→ It's All About Moi (a little series thing I made later in my Bitstrips career, meant to feature things specifically relating to myself and my friends)

→ Original Characters (the "Sugar Rush OCs revamped" comics are WIPs that I was making right when Bitstrips announced they were closing)

→ Prima Ballerina (a series based off of characters and concept I came up with when I was like, 9-10 years old. A girl aspires to become a ballerina. It was never actually finished and was on hold by the time the site announced it was closing)

→ My Little Pony (don't judge, this fandom occupied my childhood for a good long while)

→ Theme of the Day comics (Bitstrips would post a random theme/word/concept each day, and users could submit comics related to said theme. There was definitely a lot of competition to see who could submit their comics the fastest, as those would tend to get seen earlier and thus voted up into higher rankings. I definitely tried to be one of the first people to post my comics, with varying results lol)

→ Random assorted comics

[calidrisminuta]

So far, I haven't seen any "my year in review" tags for fic writing, so I'm going to do one for myself. Nothing fancy, just my three favourite fics I've written this year. I'll add links to them, just in case, but otherwise this is just for fun. :)

I'll put it under a "Keep Reading" thing, so it doesn't take too long to scroll through.

1/ Falsely Accused. Basically a "Missing Scene" that suggests what happened between certain scenes in the Master of All arc.

2/ Keeping back the darkness. The theme of the fic was Light, and what happens when a cleric needs to choose between using their light magic in order to see, or healing magic to save the life of a gravely wounded companion.

3/ A Holiday to Remember. My most recent fic, and a gift for an amazing friend. It's a Modern AU with no magic and an unlikely couple, and it was an absolute joy to write.

So that's it! I don't usually do this sort of thing, but I've really enjoyed writing this year, and it's nice to note my favourites, if nothing else. :)

[sukme]

hey! really dig your blog, do you think you'll be posting much in the future? hope you're having a good day/night!

Every post I make on this shithole platform gets auto-flagged as porn, then I have to click the appeal button over and over again at different times of the day for the already "approved" post to actually show up, for the 10 followers that still check tumblr to not even see because by then its a day old.

The experience here is so punishing that it just isn't worth spending more than a few minutes on posts I expect to get auto-denied or deleted a day later. Spending hours on a gif/image or a day on a video is out of the question. Jeff D'Onofrio's tumblr clean up and its arbitrary continuation honestly extinguished most of my personal creative drive for making+sharing things online. I still get inspired sometimes, but what made this site fun for me is really just gone forever. Now I just share youtubes or the tamest of no-effort pics/clips once a month. I'm scared to ask them to unmark my account as explicit, cus I don't trust whatever sad souls still working at tumblr to know the difference between a porn blog and a blog that references porn.

Every time I'm reminded of tumblrs past and how aggressively they destroyed gay internet culture on a whim my day instantly becomes worse, but thank you for the likes or whatever.

[ybcpatrick]

i was by @nerdangels thank u amanda i am holding ur hand rn <3333

1- why did you choose your url?

he's my boy. my fucking lad. my DUDE. my little guy. he is me and i am him. i was blessed by the whoevers to have snagged this url

2- any side blogs?

TOO MANY, BRO. i have a wrestling blog, a supernatural blog, a muppets blog, a poetry blog, a nostalgia blog, and an archive for the post!ybc au (which isn't dead, i promise, im so sorry to all the anons in my inbox i love you im just so tired all the ike akskajdskjf)

3- how long have you been on tumblr?

that april fools joke blog from a couple years ago says i joined on february 22nd, 2014. but, i did have another account before this one, so i'll just loosely say mid-2013 for that one

4- do you have a queue tag?

i've tried keeping a queue soooo many times but honestly i am just like. not the sort of person to use one lol. if i'm online you'll know it, if i'm not i'm not

5- why did you start your blog in the first place?

because i needed somewhere to get all the danny phantom stuff out of my system

6- why did you choose your icon/pfp?

bc he's ybcpatrick. i am Also ybcpatrick.

7- why did you choose your header?

oh it's still my halloween theme lmao, haven't had time to make a new one. my headers are just chosen to match my themes, i loooove makin pretty themes

8- what's your post with the most notes?

that GODDAMNED green day post. im too lazy to grab it rn but it's got over 100k notes. if u follow me u have seen it

9- how many mutuals do you have?

y'all are keeping track? ajdjejfjwuri i have lots of friends on here but idk how many

10- how many followers do you have?

1239 at the moment

11- how many people do you follow?

354!

12- have you ever made a shitpost?

babygirl that's all i do that's all i'm here for

13- how often do you use tumblr each day?

i will close tumblr and then by muscle memory i will open it again immediately. hotel california

14- did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

never with an actual person, but anons try to start shit with me REGULARLY. back in the day, some anon tried to accuse me of pretending to be canadian because i made one (1) post about liking the tragically hip. like HELLO?

15- how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

don't guilt people into reblogging shit; furthermore, even if it is important, tacking a "yOu NeEd To" onto your reblog is a surefire way to get everyone else to ignore it out of spite lmfao

16- do you like tag games?

YEAHHH i love them so muuuuch please tag me in anything and everything i don't care if we're mutuals i don't care if it doesn't seem applicable to me please. tag. me. anyways.

17- do you like ask games?

ALSO YEAHHH but i'm terrible at remembering that i reblogged one, so then i'll get distracted and forget to answer them in a timely fashion ajskajdwkndme

18- which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

bro i don't KNOW. possibly some of the fic authors? or some of my bandom mutuals? one of my mutuals (who doesn't have many interests in common with me so idk why she's still here but i think she's super fuckin cool) is probably "tumblr famous" bc like. all her posts get notes?

i think tumblr is great just bc you have NO IDEA who's "famous" and who's not. like, unless ur mutuals with fuckin setheverman or pukicho, it's just a mystery

19- do you have a crush on a mutual?

........i liked her long before we were mutuals and i'll say nothing fucking else thanks

tagging: @sleeping-dead-dying-sleep @greatesthitz @residentjoth @lunathemacron @softnsquishable @ibidflash and litchrally anyone else who wants to!!

[gunnerpalace]

hey there! so i used to be a huge fan of bleach, and loved ichiruki, and i was reminded of them today but i haven't been involved with the fandom since the series ended. however, i've heard of different variations of why the series ended/ships happened the way they did, and was wondering if you knew or could direct to me a post that explains that? i apologize if i'm bringing up bitter feelings, but i've always been curious if bleach's ending was a big FU from kubo or if he always intended rr/ih

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post that really goes over it structurally in that kind of way (from a shipping perspective). I’ll get back to what you actually asked me after some asides, because it’s not so simple to just analyze the ships in a vacuum.

I’ve had my own post about why the ending was a fuck you moment, thematically, because it failed to resolve any of the themes and momentum of the series in a way that would be appropriate (either internally or in the context of the supposed genre of shounen.)

I would also say that the ending was a fuck you moment in terms of lore, backstory, and mystery, because all of the historical and political dimensions (i.e., things involving the Soul King and Great Houses) were unceremoniously shuffled off to Can’t Fear Your Own World. Not that any of those things were ever brought up properly in the manga to begin with; the proper and natural time for that would’ve been at the conclusion of the Soul Society arc, when Ichigo and co. spent a week there, which we saw none of. So I would say that everything in CFYOW is basically retconned bullshit hung off prior convenient plot hooks, and that the same was true of TYBW and LSS/TLA/Xcution as well. There may have been some notes and forethought, but it’s about as “valid” as Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert’s Dune works are compared to the original Frank Herbert ones; it’s second-hand, at best.

(This is setting aside that Bleach was clearly made up as it went along. For example: Noriaki literally admitted that he didn’t know who had killed Aizen in Soul Society until he realized that Aizen not being dead was the most shocking answer; the clear baiting and abandonment of Kisuke as the villain hinted at through various means such as his unclear and later retconned reasons for being exiled, and so on. Bleach was very much a J. J. Abrams-style mystery box work that was made as it went with, at best, rough notes, which is why its themes and focus change, for the worse. I also have a post about why it stopped being special, which is part of a running series I intend to write on how to rewrite it to fix and preserve that)

The best recent thing to compare it to is, really, HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones, wherein D. B. Weiss and David Benioff openly admitted to removing or deemphasizing story elements, and ignoring themes in adapting the work. The difference is that Bleach was not being adapted from anything; it degraded due to its own creator not understanding what he had created.

(To put it very simply, because this would be the point of Hyperchlorate Part II and would take a whole post to explain: the ending of the Soul Society arc did not properly establish and flesh out Soul Society as a place with a history, space, and purpose. Instead, the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs decided to be a thematic inversion and deconstruction of the Karakura and Soul Society arcs. This again had an ending that did not establish or flesh anything out after Aizen’s defeat, with an even greater diffusion of focus onto ancillary characters. The Xcution arc tripled down on this by addressing something entirely new and retconned in, only to abandon it midway through in favor of going back to invoking Soul Society. And Thousand-Year Blood War took all of these problems to 11. tl;dr: Noriaki tried themes, people hated it, and so he just shoved in more and more dumb sword fights between people nobody cared about, half of whom hadn’t previously existed.)

So, let’s get back to your question. Let’s talk about ships. I’ve clicked a lot of keys and spilled a lot of ink on this subject over the years, but I no longer particularly feel like searching my own archives (really ought to go back through and organize them better) beyond this post and my own follow-up to it about the chronology of IR interactions, so I’m just going to repeat myself.

First, let’s say that Bleach was not ever a manga about ships.

I’m not disavowing that what Rukia and Ichigo had was special. That was called out multiple times through the focus of the art, the dialogue, and by the characters themselves. (Directly by, for example, Orihime’s outright statement to the effect in Soul Society, and her later jealousy regarding it. Indirectly by, say, Uryuu’s acknowledgement that him saving Rukia first would piss Ichigo off. In fact, the biggest indirect indicator doesn’t even involve Ichigo and Rukia; Shunsui asks Chad why he’s there and Chad says he wants to save Rukia, Shunsui calls bullshit that two months isn’t enough time to risk your life for that, and Chad agrees and says he’s there because Ichigo wants to do it. Shunsui moves on, but his argument is left hanging: why was two months enough for Ichigo? Because, as Orihime will later say out loud, Rukia is special.)

What I’m saying is that that was never the focus. It was explicitly constructed that way.

How do I know? The Grand Fisher fight. The Grand Fisher fight is emotionally charged, bringing up both Ichigo and Rukia’s greatest traumas, and is their one real moment of not understanding each other for a time. It was a triumphant moment that made them truly glad to know one another, and you can see it in their reactions afterward (Rukia thanking Ichigo for not dying, Ichigo asking Rukia if he can keep being a Shinigami). There was a lot to unpack there, and you can see it in the way they look at each other.

What happened immediately after the Grand Fisher fight? Noriaki skipped a whole month. We go from June 18th of 2001 to July 17th of 2001. He deliberately skipped all of the emotional impact of that event, and Rukia being around for Ichigo’s 16th birthday. Just never happened. We never hear about it. Wasn’t his focus as a writer.

Now, I’m convinced that was because he was scared of what he had on his hands. He wasn’t willing to commit to either a couple’s battle shoujo or a shounen with male and female seemingly-heterosexual co-equal deuteragonists who clearly had a strong emotional bond. More specifically, he wasn’t willing to make Rukia a centerpiece of the manga despite having designed her first, having made her the moral and philosophical core of his manga, and having based Ichigo entirely around completing and complementing her. But hey, that’s just my opinion, right? Except it kept happening.

From the Grand Fisher fight onward, the name of the game in the manga, structurally, became keeping Ichigo and Rukia apart.

The moment she was taken back to Soul Society, her prominence dropped. We got emotionally charged scenes of them regardless. Right at the conclusion, after yet another emotionally heavy set of Ichigo and Rukia interactions, we again skip almost a month, from the end of the first week in August of 2001 to September 1, 2001. (Due to some completely unnecessary timey-wimey bullshit with the Precipice World.)

In the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs, they have roughly a day together over the course of three months. What happens after every meeting? They’re shuffled apart and split up, and we cut away. This time, for over a year!

Ichigo and Rukia again have a very emotionally charged meeting in the Xcution arc. And what happens at the end of that arc? We skip ahead another month to TYBW. (Xcution ended sometime in May of 2003, TYBW starts June 11, 2003.)

And in TYBW, Rukia and Ichigo barely meet up at all. Indeed, the focus is scarcely upon them.

In CFYOW, neither of them even appear, let alone have any relevance to the plot.

The implication, in my opinion, is pretty obvious: Noriaki was deathly afraid of dealing with the outcomes of their interactions, and that ultimately became him being deathly afraid of allowing them to interact at all to begin with. Why? Well, as I said in one of the last linked posts:

As an author, sometimes you will find your characters will do things you didn’t anticipate or plan for, and you’ve got two choices: you can go with the flow and do what’s natural and deal, or you can fight it and try and impose your vision anyway.

He refused to let his art take the direction it needed to go in.

Now, some people might say he got bored of them, or of having them together. I say that’s bullshit. And the reason I say is down to three things:

He didn’t ignore them, he did his best to keep them apart. I outlined this above.

He did not emphasize anything or anyone else instead. His focus was all over the place. While, admittedly, Ichigo’s prominence also declined, so did everyone else’s.

It would have served him well to focus on their interactions to expand his universe and explore its lore. The things that were detailed in the databooks and CFYOW could’ve been presented naturally and easily if they were together. But that came with a cost of shifting the focus. A cost he refused to pay.

Let’s talk more about (2) and (3) now.

Regarding (2), Chad and Orihime are inextricably linked in Bleach, because they essentially have the same relationship to Ichigo. “But Orihime loves Ichigo, and Chad is his no-homo bro!” someone proclaims. So what? They’re presented as equal and parallel at every step.

They both gain their powers at approximately the same time.

We are told they gained their powers due to the Hogyouku (in Rukia at the time) interpreting their wishes (and no one else’s, such as Tatsuki, Keigo, or Mizuiro), meaning they probably had the same strength of desire.

They both go to Soul Society “for Ichigo.”

They both utterly fail against Yammy and Ulquiorra.

They both spend most of the Hueco Mundo arc doing nothing.

They are both featured prominently in the Xcution arc, and both fail to see through Tsukishima’s powers despite their love for Ichigo. (Meanwhile, Byakuya coolly tries to murder someone who he thinks is his mentor, in Ichigo’s name.)

They both get sidelined in Hueco Mundo with Kisuke in TYBW, doing little to nothing.

They both are utterly ineffectual in the final fight in TYBW.

They are often portrayed together, they are often as effective as one another, and they are equally as developed in their relationship to Ichigo going forward, which is to say: not at all. The loss of focus on IR did not come with an attendant rise of focus on IH, any more than it did with the sudden rise of IchiChad. Nothing was built in IR’s place. There was no emotional or human content which filled its gap.

This is where the IH ending coming “out of nowhere” stems from: it indeed came out of nowhere, because Ichigo was never shown to have any interest in Orihime in all this time, nor an especially close relationship with her. He never hangs out with Chad or shows a bond with him either. He never hangs out with anyone, in fact. (Indeed, “friends” in Bleach do not do any of the things that friends actually do in real life. Nor do parents. You might say that interpersonal relationships and communication largely don’t exist in Bleach. But that’s its whole own topic.)

I would honestly say that more time and emphasis was given on Ichigo’s pseudo-surrogate mother relationship with Ikumi than was spent on him interacting with Orihime. (I would say Noriaki has serious hangups about relationships of any kind, be they romantic, familial, or friendly, and also has some severe hangups regarding mothers and fathers, but that is also its whole own topic.)

Regarding (3), Noriaki apparently wanted this big, Game of Thrones-style world with a long history and political machinations and so on. This is the whole point of TYBW and CFYOW. Trouble is, early Bleach was successful because of its small-scale intimacy. So how do you go from one to the other? You have to lay the foundations at every step. And Noriaki steadfastly refused to do so at every step. Having Ichigo and Rukia interact, and focusing on Rukia while Ichigo was sidelined without powers, would’ve permitted that organically. Indeed, if RR was the endgame, it would have given time to establish that, were it his desire. (Because Rukia never showed any interest in Renji, and frankly Renji always seemed way more preoccupied with Byakuya.) It didn’t serve his goals, but he did it anyway.

It’s much simpler to say he lost focus, and that he started to hate the manga as a whole. Why else would you have Mayuri fighting a giant hand when that achieved nothing, and Kenpachi fighting Thor when that achieved nothing? It became empty. Hollow, you might say.

But that takes us back to the question you posed: where did the ships come from? Nowhere. IH, RR, and fucking TatsuKeigo weren’t established anywhere. They just appeared. Why?

Well, why did every single character wind up doing the exact opposite of their intended and stated goals in the end?

Why did Soul Society revert to its previous attitude and rebuild the Sokyouku?

Why did nothing get resolved?

Why did nothing change?

Why was it all revealed to have been completely and utterly pointless?

In my view, it’s because that ending was a giant fuck you to the readership and Shueisha. There is no other way to interpret an author pulling a 180° and completely nullifying their characters’ arcs, and their work’s themes. Aizen’s little speech at the end is the cherry on top. I read it as Noriaki saying that he’s showing “courage” in telling us all to fuck off.

As to why? That’s an open question. His relationship with Shueisha was contentious, so maybe he was mad at them. (They gave him a deadline once he was dragging his feet, and reclassified Bleach as a joke manga.) His readership was on the decline after the Soul Society arc ended, so maybe he was mad at the audience. I don’t know. I also don’t really care. What I am convinced of is he decided to blow up his franchise and to not leave a single stone unturned when he did so.

That’s where that “ending” comes from, which is why despite it featuring IH and RR, both are thoroughly unsatisfying and without setup: it was the only way to piss absolutely everyone off, including people who wanted that outcome.

In a way, it was his greatest success since the early days of the manga.

Anyway, this was messy, but it’s not a simple topic to address. The tl;dr is that Bleach was a trainwreck from the very beginning that only succeeded on the merits of its characters, and that Noriaki deliberately avoided the promise it had to be something unique and grand. The ships are just a part of that, and cannot be understood in isolation from it.

[geekeryisafoot]

I posted 6,426 times in 2021

176 posts created (3%)

6250 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 35.5 posts.

I added 2,882 tags in 2021

#the magnus archives - 772 posts

#marvel - 740 posts

#art - 368 posts

#loki - 180 posts

#mineminemine - 170 posts

#dc - 157 posts

#rusty quill gaming - 156 posts

#the penumbra podcast - 118 posts

#music - 117 posts

#pokemon - 104 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#it's trying to push both us and jon into ‘’seeeeee being an avatar and doing terrible things to innocent people is understandable and not t

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I've seen a few stories now feature malicious narrators as the villain, and I'm growing really fond of the trope. I'm sure you could make a very solid argument about it being appealing because it's a metaphor for taking control of your own story, but mostly I like it because it comes with delightfully campy villains who are just in it for the evil lulz

178 notes • Posted 2021-01-22 23:31:33 GMT

#4

There's meta out there about how part of the tragedy of the series is that Jon learns his lessons too late or applies them to the wrong situations, but the tragedy of the finale in that Jon is the only one who learned the lesson. He's the one who knows the full horror of the Entities. He's the one to know what it means to subject others to those horrors. He's the one to internalize that you can't harm others just to save yourself. He's the one who knows not to trust the Web because he knows exactly what it's capable of. He's the one to know what it's like to carry the guilt of something that monumental. He's the one who knows exactly how every single person is suffering, who can't just look away or brush it under a rug in another universe and go "not my problem."

And he's outvoted by people who haven't learned those lessons.

306 notes • Posted 2021-03-25 18:20:48 GMT

#3

The Silt Verses does a masterful job of introducing you to these lawless serial killer protagonists and making you think oh these are terrible people and if this story was any genre other than horror they would be the villains. And then it gradually pans out to a wider view of their society as a whole as you gradually realize no these serial killers are the only vaguely decent people literally everyone else is so much worse. Sure they run around drowning people, but at least they’re not CEOs who literally melt employees alive just for a company rebrand

406 notes • Posted 2021-04-21 23:10:01 GMT

#2

Damian Wayne should be aroace because he's got the vibe of like, a kid who scoffs at anything vaguely related to dating because he thinks it's gross and he's above all that and then all the adults go ohohoho you'll understand when you're older except Damian IS above all that and still thinks it's stupid even as an adult. Like when he's 13 he investigates a murder that turns out to have been a crime of passion and he's complaining about how stupid that is and Alfred's like you'll understand someday but fast forward 10 years and he's solved yet another murder that spun out of someone cheating on their partner and he's still like God you're so stupid all of this just because you couldn't keep it in your pants you're pathetic.

635 notes • Posted 2021-10-30 20:04:15 GMT

#1

Podcast recs for Magnus Archives fans

So, the Magnus Archives has reached its finale. If you’re looking for a new horror podcast to turn to next, here are some recommendations to fill the Magnus Archives shaped hole in your heart

  The Silt Verses

Two worshipers of an evil god go on a pilgrimage. Along the way they come across other gods, the human sacrifices they are offered, and the gruesome “miracles” they bestow in exchange.

Features lots of ambiance, body horror, commentary on the commodification of devotion, and an aspec main character

Old Gods of Appalachia

Eldritch horror set in the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1800s. This podcast feels like sitting around a campfire deep in the woods listening to scary stories.

Features nature and witch themed horror, and an aroace major character

Spines

A woman wakes up in a literal pool of blood with no memories, so she goes in search of who she is and what happened to her.

Features cult and superpower themed horror, gradually building stakes, and an unexpected yet satisfying ending

Among the Stars and Bones

Xeno-archaeologists investigate an ancient abandoned alien mining colony in hopes of figuring out why it was abruptly abandoned.

Features hard sci-fi, gradually building suspense, and creative sci-fi twists on archeology themed horror tropes like mummies and pharaoh’s curses

Desperado

Three people become avatars for death gods from their respective cultures, and they join together to help protect themselves and their heritage from superpowered genocidal crusaders. Desperado is more adventure + found family than true horror, but there are some really chilling scenes that are elevated to terrifying by its amazing sound editing.

Features found family, magic, death gods, bloodbending superpowers, and PHENOMENAL sound editing

Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery

A woman moves to a small town to help take care of her aging mother. The town is full of weird happenings, conspiracies, and ghosts, both literal and interpersonal

Features haunted house horror, familial and found family relationships, and an endearing and eccentric cast of characters

1095 notes • Posted 2021-03-26 23:29:38 GMT

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