#i quote them constantly and they're GONE

[fuckyeahbakumatsu]

PLEASE does anyone else remember those two Hakuouki crack videos that were on YouTube in like 2013 where Kondou was Kermit the Frog and Souji was George Carlin and Itou said nice ass

[welcometogrouchland]

Also in the replies of the Steph concept art on twitter announcing she was gonna be in a new project at DC (posted by Travis Mercer), there were at least 3 comments saying "will Tim be there?" I don't care how hard you ship timsteph I'm exploding you with my eyeballs if you do that on my girls post again

[neverendingford]

I have made my peace with being forgotten

and yet you think of me.

I have made my peace with being unloved

and yet you continue to try.

I have made my peace with this silence

and yet your knuckles rap at my door.

I have made my peace with letting go

but you continue to hold on.

what do you think of me?

what do you love?

who do you speak to?

what are you holding onto?

is it me you perceive?

or a shape of something you thought was real

created from dreams and wishes and the promise of a thousand people before you.

[thearchercore]

wdym they barely interacted before mid-2023 ?? I just joined in this season and the amount of moments they have had me thinking they were besties for years please I'm??

brb gonna touch grass

let's have a lookback at how things looked before mid-2023.

did they interact? sure. they did, but usually the interactions were like... one moment per grand prix. sometimes nothing happened at all. and we have to remember (from what they told us), they did not like each other when they were karting very much, then they were friendly, then austria 2019 happened and they had a falling out and then slowly started talking again. this post-unfollowgate timeline gave us some funny moments of max just trying anything to talk to charles (asking him if the singapore flag, in singapore, was the monagesque one, or when he stopped charles to ask about weather awkwardly in the middle of the paddock).

or just look at this clip from hungary 2021:

clearly, they weren't in the "one austria away from restraining order" mood anymore, but they were awkward and didn't really know how to approach each other with the history they had.

fast forward to 2023, they seemed to get closer but still, they weren't exactly the best of friends and that awkward tension they always had was still around. that seemed to change around the time the infamous padeldate picture dropped. i remember dming my friend "MAX AND CHARLES HUNG OUT OUTSIDE OF WORK" because it was such a big deal. they haven't really done it before. it was an event organised by charles' agency (ran by his brother) and max was the only other f1 driver invited.

that event caused an insane domino effect of them constantly interracting, mentioning each other, clearly being much friendlier and comfortable around each other than ever before. their weird awkward tension was suddenly gone. we know from this time charles was in contract talks with ferrari and also worked on a possible back up plan of going to red bull if things at ferrari went extremely downhill (the infamous "verstappen did not veto the idea of leclerc as an teammate" article) so it's clear around that time they got closer and they did discuss the possibility of being teammates in the future.

this probably got them unlock this huge pandora box of the issues they had in the past that they never openly discussed.

fast forward to 2024, max and charles interact more than ever - max mentioning charles unprompted on numerous occassions, "we get along really well now, but back then we didn't," them hanging out outside of work and playing padel as teammates, max finishing charles' sentences in press conferences.... even their debriefs weren't that intense back then but now they're YAPPING.

we're only 2 races in and probably have more interactions between them than in like.. 2020-2021 already.

a lot of new fans joined during the era when they were already friends but i think it's always good to remind ourselves the journey that makes their dynamic so compelling, they did not always get along that well. they were never THIS friendly with each other. they happened to grow very fond of one another over time and, to quote charles they have joint "memories that were bad but got really good with time."

were they always weirdly obsessed with one another? yes. but were they ever this pathetic and close? no.

what we're seeing now is a complete 180 and we have to remember, they are drivers first. they will always put themselves and their teams first because that's what this sport is about.

the fact that they were never teammates and have this strong dynamic together speaks volumes.

[balkanradfem]

I'm reading the 'Age of Surveillance Capitalism' book by Shoshana Zuboff, and it is haunting me, making me feel uncomfortable and making me want to move offline.

We've all been aware that google, facebook, and all other digital tech companies are taking our data and selling it to advertisers, but according to the book, that is not the end goal.

The book goes into the rise of google, and how it made itself better by constantly studying the searches people were inputting, and learning how to offer better information faster. Then, they were able to develop ways to target adverts, without even selling the data, but by making their own decisions of what adds should be targeted at what audience. But they kept collecting more and more data, and basically studying human behaviour the way scientists study animals, without their knowledge or consent. Then they bought youtube, precisely because youtube had such vast amounts of human behaviour that could be stored and studied.

But they're not only using that data to target adds at us. They've been collecting data in ways that feel unexpected and startling to me. And whenever they're challenged or confronted with it, they pretend it was a mistake, or unintentional, and it's scary how far they've been able to get away with it.

For example, during their street-view data collecting, the google car had been connecting to every wifi available and taking encrypted, personal data from households. When they got found out, they've explained it was not intentional, and a fault of a lone researcher who had gone rouge, and they evaded getting sued or being held accountable for it at all. Countries have created new laws and regulations and google kept evading it and in the end they claimed 'you know if you keep trying to regulate us, we'll just do things secretly'. Which is a wild thing to say and expect to get away with!

Another thing that struck me was that governments, which at first wanted to restrict data collection, later asked tech companies to monitor and prevent content connected to terrorism, and the companies didn't like the idea of being a tool of the government, so they claimed the terrorism data is being banned for 'being against their policy'. Which makes me believe they didn't want to remove that content at all, after all, they could have done it beforehand, they didn't feel any natural incentives to do so.

The entire story is filled with researchers who don't seem to experience the human population as other human beings. They don't believe we deserve privacy, or dignity, or any say in what is being collected or done to us. Hearing their quotes and how they describe the people they're researching shows clearly they consider us all stupid, and our desires for privacy, self-harming. They insist we'd be better off if we just accepted their authority and gave them any data they wanted without complaining or being upset it's being collected without our knowledge.

Even though companies claim at all times that the data is non-identifiable, the book explains just how data is handled and how easy it is to identify anyone whose private conversations are recorded; people say their names, their addresses, places they're going, friends they're meeting, they say names of their family members, their devices record their location and their habits, it is extremely easy to identify anyone whose information has been collected. It can be identified and sold to information agencies.

I believed when it was explained to me that most of the data collection was just for add targeting, and that it would be used only for advertisement purposes, but they're not only collecting data anymore, they're deciding what data is being fed to us, and recording our reactions, learning how they can affect and manipulate our behaviour. We know all algorithms feed us controversial, enraging and highly-emotional content in order to drive engagement, but it's more than that. They've discovered how they can influence more or less people to vote. The mere idea of that makes me go cold, but they talk about it like it's just another thing they can do, so why not? Companies who have experimented and learned so much about influencing human behaviour give themselves the right to influence it as they see fit, because why wouldn't they? Since they have the power to do it, and all lawsuits and regulations can't stop them, why wouldn't they make a game out of it?

I can't imagine how many experiments they did before feeling so confident and blase about this and casually influencing the elections, again, seemingly just for the sake of an experiment.

The book compares this type of behaviour manipulation to totalitarianism and surveillance state, and it shows how the population is slowly losing parts of their freedoms without realizing it is even happening. Human behaviour has changed due to online influence, and it keeps changing rapidly, with every new popular website that is influencing human behaviour. They've learned that humans are influenced mostly by behaviour of other humans, and they can decide what kind of content or influence to send our way to get desired results.

I love how the author of the book talks about humanity. She uses the term 'human future', as something we all have the right to, as opposed to future controlled by companies and influences. She describes how regular people were affected by the data collected against their will, and how they fought for their 'right to be forgotten', when google kept displaying their past struggles, damaging their dignity. She also explains the questions people should ask about how society is led: First question is, who knows? Second question, who decides? Third question, who decides who decides? She goes in detail about how the answers are held away from us, and what it does to us. She also touches very deeply on the idea of human freedom!

I recommend this book, even though it will make you feel far less secure and carefree to be online, and using anything google, facebook, twitter or any of their owned services. They are not free, and it's also incorrect to say that we're the product of them, but we are the source of the raw materials they collect in order to gain results.

[joesalw]

This conversation about Taylor's downfall in 2016 and what led up to it, plus this lie that most criticism of female celebrities is just misogyny is really interesting to me because it's something I talk to people about in real life. There's this idea that in mainstream media people love to build female celebrities up and then rip them apart when they get successful, which don't get me wrong is absolutely true, but in some cases it's a little more complicated than that. There are times when certain celebrities brand and present themselves as "the ideal dream woman" of whatever period they're in, and then when the societal image of what "the ideal dream woman" shifts but the celebrity's image doesn't, the facade cracks.

I think a good example of this is Jennifer Lawrence. I was a teenager when the hunger games movies were coming out and was obsessed so I used to watch a lot of the interviews with the cast. Jlaw presentes herself very much as a "cool girl", she was the youngest of 2 older brothers so she was a "tomboy" that loves sports and drinking beers and shots. She also made it a big deal about how she doesn't diet and is constantly eating yet still has a slim body and doesn't know about designer clothes and is so above all this fame thing. Whilst all this was happening the Gone Girl monologue was gaining traction particularly the part about cool girls and how women alter their personality for men's consumption. Eventually people caught on about all the fictional women and celebrities that fall into the trope and were over it, yet jlaw kept up with the persona. Couple that with her continually working with David o Russell, the insensitivity to other cultures, the overexposure and people realising her acting ain't really all that, you have the general public getting sick of her and her having to take a break. She's sort of made a comeback now and people are just chalking her downfall to "misogyny".

I wasn't really following what Taylor was up to in the lead up to her crash because I'd gotten sick of her long before that and avoided her stuff like the plague, but I did see someone on Reddit talk about how her winning album of the year over Kendrick Lemar and then using her speech to shit on another prominent black hip hop artist over something that was a lie wasn't a good luck for her. Add in the racist undertones in shake it off and wildest dreams videos for good measure.

This time around I do think her not adapting to the political and societal change is going to be a major factor if (I hope) she has another downfall. Before I get to the next part I do have to say I'm from England (you may have heard of it but it is a very foreign country/s) so if I'm wrong about the American political atmosphere someone feel free to correct me. After the election of trump there was a whole knew political awakening and conversations happening, one of them being about how Hillary lost due to misogyny (not completely true) so there were conversations about patriarchy, sexism, double standards and all that. This was the perfect climate for Taylor to be able to swoop in and use all these buzzwords she's learnt and blame anything bad that happened to her on misogyny and made all of her problems into "women problems". You had her giving quotes like how women are only allowed to react or some shit and released "the man" (side note but does anyone else find the bridge to the song kind of racist? Especially the way she's constantly compared to black artists?). She was of course celebrated for all this and had successfully rebranded to politically conscious Taylor Swift.

I don't think she expected the political climate to shift so quickly once again. In 2020 we had those viral videos of white women calling the cops on black people and the conversations about how white women use their privilege and tears to harm others and get away with it. During BLM there were talks about how certain white women will present themselves as allies and progressive but still have friends and date people who are bigots showing their politics is skin deep *cough cough*. COVID had us talking about the disconnect from celebrities about the real world and how capitalism is just another plague that is killing us normal people. You had certain companies and people becoming billionaires during this time and this truly began the crumbling of the pedestal the rich and famous were on.

Flashforward to now, where there are multiple genocides happening in front of our eyes. A time where you can't open any social media site without seeing innocents being slaughtered in ways that fills you with a rage and sorrow I can't even put into words. A time where our world leaders are doing Jake shit like some Arab leaders or actively funding it like the UK and US. A large number of Americans are saying they won't vote for Biden next year, others are screaming if you do that we'll get a repeat of 2016. But people are rightfully pointing out that Hilary is also a war criminal and the DNC were told people are not going to vote for her so pick a different candidate, they didn't and lo and behold those people stuck to their word. Women being in power does nothing if they uphold the same system which is exactly what women like Taylor do.

So the women Taylor rebranded herself to is the exact kind of woman whos shit people are sick of. Her face literally being used as the face of the western media ignoring the atrocities happening to brown and black people and upholding the status quo is just poetic justice. Add in the absolute shallowness of that interview and the whole capitalism is okay when you're girl bossing and you've got people wondering who the fuck does she thinks she is.

There's obviously a lot more to any potential crash Taylor may have and this is all my observations that may be wrong, but I do find all this shit fascinating and I wish people smarter than me would look into it to see if I've got a point.

You’ve got a great point

[wordbunch]

The Hobbit re-read: favorites, thoughts and honorable mentions

thank u to my tumblr besties for encouraging me to rant abt this book for a little while, and brace yourselves for a LOOONG post; aka We're Going On An Adventure!

this quote abt Gandalf: "tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion" like. THIS exactly is Gandalf to me ✨✨✨

the whole good-morninged sequence (as if he was selling buttons at the door! can you imagine! By belladonna tooks SON of all people!!!) 😱

"a cake or 2 would do him good after this fright" me too bilbo

"he had a horrible thought that the cakes might run short" me too bilbo 🍰

Gandalf constantly selling Bilbo's skills to the company and just hyping him up and believing in him all the time!!!! most excellent and audacious hobbit!!! 😎

"this was thorin's style... if he had been allowed he would probably have gone like this until he was out of breath" aka he is Dramatic and Important

"bilbo was getting excited and interested again so that he forgot to keep his mouth shut" how many times will i write ME TOO BILBO in this post

"THE EXPLANATION DID NOT SEEM TO EXPLAIN" 💯💯💯

gandalf: i found him in the dungeons of the necromancer; thorin: girl what were YOU doing at the necromancer's??? 🧐🧐🧐 gandalf: finding things out as usual O M G like what else would he be doing there 😚

bilbo constantly wishing he was back home as soon as he left

"off bilbo had to go before he could explain that he could not hoot even once like any kind of owl" yall this book has so many funny moments but like in a very chill humor way

the fact that one of the TROLLS is called WILLIAM 😂😂😂

"i am a good cook myself, and cook better than i cook" okay bilbo rizz 😏🔥

"they had not at all enjoyed lying there listening to the trolls making plans for roasting them" you don't say. i love this deadpan humor SO MUCH jrrt snapped

that whole beautiful iconic description of kind as summer elrond

"their clothes were mended as well as their bruises, their tempers, and their hopes" WHEN will i go to rivendell 😩

"there is nothing like looking if you want to find something" thorin life coach realness 👏🏼👏🏼

thoring gesturing at a miserable desolate land: these tRuLy hOspiTabLe moUnTaiNs 😍

then gandalf lit up his wand. oF coUrSe it wAs gaNdaLf, but they were too busy to ask how he got there. 4ever mood

he thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen ME TOO BIL- 🍳

"Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole by a bank by a river" this kind of made me cry. it brings unexpected humanity to such an appalling character; kinda makes you want bilbo to spare him eventually

and the fact itself that bilbo felt so bad for him he decided to just leave him be

"you would have laughed (from a safe distance)" LOVE how JRRT puts random little comments addressed to the reader

gandalf just being like ok i gotta go do other things now. good luck besties. ✌🏼😚

beorn: what are you, a traveling circus? and he is actually right 🤪

"you have got to look after all these dwarves for me, gandalf laughed" and i cried

bilbo being like hmm how will i get down from this tree (except by falling)

bilbo's song while killing gigantic spiders "not very good...but you must remember he had to make it up himself in a very awkward moment"

the dwarves starting to respect him and bowing down until they FALL OVER is such a comical image to me

the whole alluring magic of the elvish feast in the forest which disappears when they get closer!! a whole fairytale mr tolkien!!! 😍

thranduil is a greedy b <3 and especially VERY fond of wine 🍷🍷🍷

"i will lock you all in again and you can sit there comfortably and think of a better plan" bilbo badass mode and we love to see it 💋

tolkien being like WELL u can laugh but you wouldn't have done any better if u were him. real.

when they're in dale i love the numerous references to "songs and stories of old" and all of them basically being a living legend and turning their stay in dale into a public holiday and spectacle

thorin is cocky af

/freeze frame/ "you are familiar with thorin's style on important occasions so i will not give you any more of it" its ok jrrt, let him be a drama queen 👑

bilbo when he takes some gold from smaug being like "this will show them!!!1!1" 😠😠

sassy bilbo strikes again with "did you expect me to trot back with the whole hoard of thror on my back? if there's any grumbling to be done i think i might have a say" GO OFF KING 👏🏼

i just rly love him okay, he stole my heart in this book like a real legitimate professional burglar that he is

"i am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly" etc. basically this whole exchange btw bilbo and smaug is pure gold (pun not intended) 🤫

talking birds that eavesdrop. enough said.

the descriptions of the arkenstone which make you actually want to have it too. genius. there could be no two such gems, even in so marvellous a hoard, even in all the world." 💎💎💎

the harps (untouched by the dragon who had a small interest in music).. WHY is this so funny to me

bilbo putting on some elvish DRIP and being like ✨✨ i feel magnificent ✨✨ (but probably look dumb 😩)

"this is the great chamber of thror" ok thorin the tour guide king

BARD MY KING i love one (1) man 🎯

bilbo being absolutely against any wars or battles and just wanting to go home BUT also being a sneaky lil shit who takes the arkenstone to bard and thranduil BUT also still not wanting to leave his dwarf buddies

when he gives them the gem "not without a shudder, not without a glance of longing" AHHH i want it!

ambiguous gandalf returning. always love to see it

"if you don't like my burglar, please don't damage him" 🙄 ffs thorin chill

"you are not making a very splendid figure as king" yes gandalf call him out

defeat seems "very uncomfortable, not to say distressing" to bilbo. we love.

the fact that he was just knocked out cold during the battle so thur we know very little abt what really happened?? jrrt genius writing hack. might use this one 🤔

fili and kili deserved a better sendoff than just mentioning that they died. come on.

thorin's last words and reconciliation w bilbo... PLEASE I WILL CRY until i throw up. "it has been more than any baggins deserves." "no! there is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly west. some courage and some wisdom blended in measure. if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

i might still be crying

"tea is at 4 but any of you are welcome at any time" my heart... ❤️😭 Guess he's no longer scared of running out of cake

bilbo gifting thrandy a necklace as an apology for eating and drinking his stuff secretly, king shit 😉

bilbo having the absolute NERVE to say to ELVES "your lullaby would wake a drunken goblin". wig wig

he deadass borrowed a handkercheif from freaking ELROND 😳

bilbo arriving home to being presumed dead and his stuff literally being auctioned off

"it was a long time before he was in fact admitted to being alive again…" and sackville-bagginses having sm beef with that HAHAHA

he lost his reputation but he lived his best life so who's the winner here 😌😌😌

the closing lines "you are a very fine person, mr baggins, and i am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all" "thank goodness! said bilbo laughing."

like. THIS. literally embodies everything. he is just a little guy. just some smol person. BUT STILL had a say in how BIG things happened. BUT he remains happy to be just a smol simple person.

overall an incredibly fun read and it was way more genuinely FUNNY than i anticipated. bilbo is a whole mood. thorin is a diva. gandalf is there to start shit and hype up bilbo. jrrt with random author's notes throughout the book gives me life.

[spigosaur]

VERY new to the Hatchetfield-verse. NPMD was the first ever Starkid musical I’ve seen so I’m trying to learn about the rest of the series

Uhhh lemme see- Headcanons…

Richie having an Asuna body pillow makes me think he’d quote the SAO abridged series. “Take the worst thing you can think of and multiply that by cancer” is something Peter and Ruth hear a lot

Ruth is actually well liked in the theatre program. The actors appreciate all she does and invite her to cast parties. Only reason she’s never gone is cause she thinks it’s some kind of prank (projecting as a former theatre kid—)

Stephanie would be into fanfiction culture. She just has the vibes/pos

Grace described Judas’ betrayal to Ruth and Stephanie once and they described it as “Toxic Yaoi”. She doesn’t tell them Bible lore anymore—

Heyoh!

I'm also kinda new to the fandom. I've watched tgwdlm and Black Friday a few years ago, but I didn't find out about nmt and never interacted with the fandom before npmd. But either way, welcome to hatchetfield and thanks for sending your headcanons!

I don't know if that's what you're referring to but in the show Richie only mentions his body pillows of Rei and Asuka (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) but I don't think that invalidates your hc at all! That obnoxious little disaster of a boy is constantly making references to the weebiest shit and when people don't understand him he calls them uncultured. (Ruth and Pete understand so many anime references because of him without ever having seen any of the media they're from)

Your Ruth hc makes me sad because it makes me think that she's been pranked in that way before and now she doesn't trust anyone who "pretends" to like her anymore :c

Steph I 100% agree with. She has that certain something, the alt style, she's totally a fandom girl. Although most people, even among her friends, don't know that about her. She probably has a tumblr nobody knows about where she yells about her obsessions but irl she never shows that side of herself until she starts hanging out with the nerdy prudes. Seeing them shamelessly gushing over their interests encourages her to let out her inner nerd too. When she eventually starts sharing her fanfics with the others, they're very supportive.

I don't think Grace would know what "toxic yaoi" means so now I'm imagining her being quite happy that her friends reacted so positively to a bible story just for her to look up what that means and. Yes I see why she wouldn't talk to them about bible lore anymore...

[neonscreenlight]

ok so i was Thinking and then i came up with an idea: what if the new ivory video is a metaphor for burnout/demotivation. hear me out:

the first half of the video is formatted exactly like a typical minecraft video. ivory said on stream that it was meant to be a "playful jab" at them (something along those lines). now, the reason why so many youtubers make videos like this is because, well, they're popular right now, the algorithm gods bless those videos in particular, until it becomes oversaturated and people move onto the next trend. and having to constantly make things you don't like because it's your only source of money, and having that thing you need to make be constantly shifting without you realizing, is like, prime burnout fuel.

so halfway during the video, ivory's persona breaks down a little. she doesn't really like the clickbaity character she's put on and and doesn't even feel convinced by it herself. there's a quote from the video right after this breakdown that i think exemplifies this: "you and i have both seen this a thousand times before. the same thing regurgitated, like a landfill of sodden ideas." as if ivory is recognizing that she wants to make different content, but the algorithm isn't going to like that content, as well as the fact that every other youtuber is probably in the same boat.

and then ebony comes. ebony is actually pretty interesting in this interpretation, because she seems to be trying to make ivory do the good thing in this situation and take a break. she feels the same way about ivory's content being unoriginal ("wow, you take over the world! how inspiring, i haven't seen that one done before.", "but you agree! it's not what i want."), but is also trying her best to get ivory out of the situation ("i'm doing you a favour. just rest, you need it.") there's a few more interesting things in the forest world scene, such as ivory saying she's tired and "this is the part where you try to justify yourself". but despite ebony trying to get ivory to rest, ivory says that she wants to get out. she hasn't killed god yet, hasn't finished making the video. right before ivory hits the candle and the epileptic scene starts, ebony says "last time you did this you nearly tore yourself in half", which implies that ivory has already worked herself to death and experienced the consequences of that, and yet she's doing it all again, because she needs to do that for money.

the epileptic scene could represent something like a moment of over-stress or having a mental breakdown? as you might be able to tell, it's slightly hard to figure out what it means exactly. but it's obvious that ivory is in pain, and trying to keep working when she was exhausted was her tipping point.

and then flashing lights and breakcore and stuff and then bam it's a normal minecraft video again woohoo! for a few minutes, at least. the video ends with a mini glitch effect, which i think could symbolize that ivory has not broken free of her pain, she's just pushed it to the side so she could finish.

yes i have gone insane

[mdhwrites]

If you really don't like Amity having bad parents being a reason why she became antagonistic initially, what do you think would've been a better reason for why she acted the way she did initially? After all, no one is born mean.

So first: Sometimes kids are just mean. Not everyone comes from a broken family or has some sort of trauma that caused them to be an asshole. My twin brother is a narcissistic, abusive dick while my sister is incredibly selfless and caring and SHE is the one who has gone through real abuse and a failed marriage while my brother's biggest whine to make is... Honestly not much. Hell, I don't have some big trauma to explain why I have depression. I just hit adulthood and my brain's reaction to the stresses and changes was to shatter like glass. Humans are complicated like that

BUT to be fair, in a narrative no one needs to be evil just for the sake of evil. It's part of why Belos is boring. Even with Sasha, she's made more interesting by the fact that she doesn't think she's in the wrong for two entire seasons. So what could have been a better reason for Amity to be antagonistic?

Easy: The reason they gave in Covention and then expanded on in Lost in Language. It's actually the Willow stuff, the stuff that is more tied into her parents, that sucks way harder for Amity's character. Amity, early on, is an overachiever who deeply cares about her craft and takes things very seriously. That is just generally opposed to who Luz is in general. The fact that Luz wants to be a witch when there should be no way for that to be possible, made worse by how Luz treats it like something that should be fun. The fact that Luz is constantly messing around while she's working herself into an aneurysm. These are very natural conflicts that could have been explored more by the show but they made a severe mistake.

They made Amity an over the top, practically OOC, villain when she first shows and they show this by having her bully Willow and say this is what she normally does. The problem for Amity is that now she NEEDS an explanation to be such a bitch. It's not something a little understanding can deal with because it's not friction that causes her to be mean or standoffish, it's that she just straight up enjoys torturing this one girl. And mind you: It was still her choice because she only had to stop being friends with Willow. She didn't have to target her for extra bullying as we see is the present status quote.

It's also bad for Luz. Part of why I don't buy that she's some tortured outcast who has been mistreated is because she doesn't blink when it comes to Amity. One moment of cuteness and Luz is immediately going "Let's live out my fantasy and befriend her!" despite Amity being the absolute epitome of the sort of girl who supposedly would have made Luz's life hell back home. By the end of Lost in Language though, their third major episode together, they're effectively friends.

Honestly, with how little of characters Gus and Willow are, mostly serving to let Luz into Hexide and closer to Amity, alongside the fact that Dana herself said she wanted a queer romance as fast as possible... I just wouldn't have given them an antagonistic relationship. Bare minimum, not enemies to lovers (not that the show really tries that hard). Their personalities are enough to make an interesting, classic dynamic without making them hate each other at first.

Honestly, if I were to try to suggest a rewrite: Make it so that Covention is the third episode, Luz forces Eda to take her there because she sees a sign and tortures Eda like in the episode, Gus and Willow don't do anything besides exposition and introduce the concept anyways and then have the episode go the way it was originally but instead of it being because she's comically evil that she steps on King's cupcake, have it be for King's actual personality. She doesn't like the freeloader who she sees as mooching off of things and so stomps his cupcake. Gets across her serious attitude and that she is a pretty severe person. Luz makes her challenge, they have their duel where Luz finds out about Eda's sister and Amity being Lilith's pupil and after their heart to heart (because Luz in S1 had no reason to chase Amity in Covention anyways besides empathy for a crying girl), Luz gets an idea: She's going to befriend Amity and in the process, mend the rift between Lilith and Eda. This gives an actual plot purpose to getting closer to Amity.

Then you don't have the episodes wasted on Gus and Willow, nor the episodes wasted apologizing for Amity's behavior but instead can focus on Luz breaking into Hexide to say Amity. While Amity doesn't like the methods, she appreciates hard and dedication and doing it so as to be nice to her? That... That touches her and she's willing to see what the human does, especially if maybe she can learn some of that glyph magic to supplement her own? Make her a better witch too achieve her own goals?

And as they grow closer, it becomes less transactional. Grom can still happen like it did with Amity expecting Luz to want something for helping but nope! It's just because Luz is nice. And then for the finale, Luz doesn't have to be alone in her heist because while it puts her future in jeopardy, Luz has taught Amity enough about being a good person and doing the right thing that while she'll still want a disguise, she'll come with to try and save Eda's life. An act of early rebellion against what she believed in, the morals taught to her, so as to be able to properly show she's changing to not just blindly accept the EC as the best option. This also allows for the betrayal of Lilith to mean more to Amity if their mentor and student relationship has meant more to the series. Suddenly, her dance with anarchy becomes more fervent because her teacher, the one she saw as the best proof of how great the EC is, was lied to and tricked by the Emperor and now against the coven.

And for S2, if her parents aren't the main pressures on her, if it's just because she's a kid who cares about success, you don't need Escaping Expulsion and can spend half of that episode and the entirety of Looking Glass Ruins exploring Amity trying to figure out rebellion, potentially not wanting to put Luz at risk after she almost died in the S1 finale, but justifying it as her always doing things on her own. They have a big adventure climax against Belos that's also exploring rebel Luz and afterwards, Amity gives Luz a peck on the cheek for always being there. Always helping her figure things out when she'd be too stubborn to see clearly herself. Then go into Knock Knock Knocking with little changed if you want to keep that moment of them getting together the same.

It's not a perfect outline but it's what I came up with while writing this. And if you're thinking this is too much time spent on Amity, you need to remember that she already consumes a third of Luz's time during episodes in S1 and 2. Sure, TOH claims to not be a romance but then the original way it's written is unjustified because Amity already has more time dedicated to her as a pure romance without ANYTHING to do with the plot and barely anything to do with the themes at best.

But I will also admit that this is with hindsight and a more indulgent rewrite than I normally allow myself to. After all, I removed two entire characters for this. Characters that hardly matter to TOH anyways but if I was really trying to keep to it, I wouldn't get rid of them. The deck is stacked in my deck regardless to make it 'better' and that's not fair to the show.

But I hope that my point stands clear that Amity didn't need to be a real villain, even if only for an episode. She could have been a light antagonist, if she even needed to be that. Nothing is really gained by it in the grand scheme of TOH besides the Twitter posts who make shallow claims on her arc by using the angry face in episode 3 versus her smiling with purple hair and going "Can you believe this is the same person?"

And my response every time because of how shallow her villainy is, which makes her arc shallow, is why should I care? Because blaming her parents doesn't make me care.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[mementoshay]

Hello. When I read the tragedy about Shay, I could not believe that this was someone else's problem. Because right now I want to be gone. And not only from fandom. I would like to talk to you if you would like. I feel as if I am the only one in the world right now. I have been a Radiohusk shipper for about two years now, posting pictures on Twitter and even interacting with some of them. It has been a fruitful environment and time for me. It was a peaceful time, as Doc said. I have OCD and often feel unstable. Radiohusk and my shipmates were the ones who calmed the waves until now. Since the publication of this edition, those waves have remained rough. My favorite ship is constantly denounced, and even my not-so-great drawings get cruel quote retweets. I hated drawing. Now I don't even pick up a brush. Also, a number of shippers who were my friends have already left the fandom. It is like an island in the sea. My OCD has been tormenting me for a long time, but what torments me the most is that the trend doesn't seem to end. Is there any safer space anywhere? I am despairing because I am sure there is no more. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great time. I hope you will reply to me.

Hello, I'm very sorry for the big delay, but as we said, we all took a break for mental health reasons.

Before we continue, here's a list of hotlines that might be able to help you whenever you feel like there's no escape. Also feel free to reach out to us via DM at any time either here or via Twitter to let us know how you're doing.

Please do not neglect your mental health. Make sure to be followed by professionals and regularly express your thoughts and emotions with them so that you can be supported and advised properly.

This ask brings back strong memories because this theme is a recurring one, first with Shay, then with other people who came to us in private.

The bad news is, we have really no way of going back in time. But the good news is, painful as it can be, we can adjust and make the best of what comes our way going forward.

If these characters and their relationship are important to you, it's okay for you to not let go of them, but it's also important that you try to not connect them to your own pain. Fortunately, they're fictional: no matter what you or other people choose to do with them, nothing really changes, so you can really do whatever you please with them.

I think what seems to have worked for most of those we have spoken to is to form their own little "niche" of like-minded people. Value quality over quantity, so to speak. Find those who feel the same as you (and trust me, they exist), create your own little community, may it be on Twitter, Discord, etc. Draw together, write together, share ideas and build up from there.

What seems to have helped another member is to make their own iteration of some of the characters, with a mix-and-match of Ms. Medrano's old versions, which they liked better. Again, it's fiction, so the limit truly only is the sky.

However, please do not make Shay's mistake to try and find the solution to your personal struggles within internet communities. Reach out to your friends and family, talk to them. Find like-minded people to connect with.

And never forget how strong and resilient you can be! Thank you for your trust. I'm so sorry for the long wait. Hoping to hear from you soon. - Eden

[deathsbestgirl]

christmas carol/emily + melissa's phone calls + scully's dreams

so. something i love about this episode is the way scully hears melissa. i don't think we have a reason to believe it is anyone else. scully saw her father's ghost before she even got the call. when she was in a coma, he came to her. she could feel & hear nurse owens taking care of her, helping her hold on. she had the strength of mulder's beliefs to come back.

scully doesn't say it at first, but she recognized melissa's voice immediately. the thought doesn't fit with her worldview but the voice won't tell her who they are.

the first call, she's alone in bill's house. the others having just gone upstairs. later that night, she has the first dream & the second call (again, when she is alone):

personally i think these are memories. they may not be 100% what happened. this 100% has to do with melissa's call & the little girl scully saw. instantly, she recognizes how much she looks like melissa as a child. scully couldn't take her eyes off of her, until kresge closed the door cutting off her view.

emily appears in the basement after little dana finds her rabbit dead. i think the one who really found her was melissa. scully is putting the pieces together. i think this is a reason she starts to research emily's background, and when she finds emily was adopted, her logic assumes melissa must be her biological mother.

i believe scully is psychic. but i don't necessarily think of it the way people typically think of psychic abilities. both scully & mulder have a gift for recognizing patterns, storing away information in their brain that they're able to pull out when they recognize something. it isn't always conscious, because sometimes that's just how our brains work. there's something within us that recognizes it and until we have more pieces, we can't consciously put it together. like mulder's dream in paper hearts. when scully quotes mulder back to himself "dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask" and this episode is a culmination of that. when mulder was thought dead at the end of season two, melissa wanted her to go into her memories & figure out what happened to her during her abduction. she runs away & can't face it. scully has a dream about mulder and she believes he's alive, that he was somehow reaching out to her. in paper hearts, mulder never let go of that case. he didn't get the definitive proof that they found all the girls and every one of them deserved justice and their families deserved answers & closure.

now, scully's hearing melissa's voice and she's bringing her to this little girl. she almost calls mulder, because she believes it's melissa. she believes she's meant to find this little girl. she's terrified of what this means, and part of her definitely knows it has to do with her abduction, like her cancer did. but she isn't there yet. and so, she tries to adopt emily. because that's melissa's daughter, and she needs a family & someone to love her and scully already does. she thinks melissa wants her to. and then she finds out emily is actually her biological daughter. that's when she finally does call mulder, because now what's coming, she isn't prepared for in any way. she doesn't know, but part of her does.

her next dream is the only true abstract dream she has (until the beginning of emily), the others are very straightforward. a memory and a connection to emily. this one causes scully to suspect mr. sim of killing his wife. this one isn't a memory, but it's scully putting together pieces unconsciously, that will lead to conscious answers. it wasn't mr. sim, but there's a connection she hasn't yet found. her true connection to emily, the connection to the government conspiracy they're constantly tangled in.

i also think it's actually a way of mr. sim showing scully the truth. bringing little dana to see emily's adoptive mother, and passing the responsibility to her to be emily's mother & protector, because they won't be able to.

in the next dream, melissa & scully are checking out their gifts under the christmas tree. maggie comes out and lets them both open one, it's their cross necklaces. (again a memory, but maybe not completely accurate because maggie scully tells mulder she gives scully the cross necklace for her birthday)

then we see scully putting emily on a car. emily is transfixed by her cross necklace. emily wasn't in this dream, but it seems like a clear sign to me & it's one reason scully puts the cross around emily's neck. it's a symbol to scully of her family, and belief. we see emily holding the necklace, looking wide-eyed back at scully as the car drives away.

this dream of scully's, the one i think is the full reality of the memory, she talks to melissa about her choices and how ahab feels about it and what feels right to her and how it's not fate, it's choices. i love this conversation because i actually think they have the same viewpoint, but they talk about it differently. this is something melissa understands that scully can't quite see (mostly because she fights most belief with skepticism as a form of protection). (to me, this also lends itself perfectly to what happened in the field where i died. even if scully knew for certain, she wouldn't change anything. she would make the same choices. because they were always her choices.)

i also think this lines up beautifully with what mulder says at the end of emily.

he feared what emily was created for, but she's just a little girl and he loves every child. especially a little scully girl. they didn't save emily's life in the way they hoped, but they saved her. she died with scully next to her, scully's cross around her neck, surrounded by love.

i also love "she found me" so much. melissa lead scully to emily, because emily was reaching out to her. emily instantly loved scully, the way scully instantly loved her.

at the end, all she's left with is her cross, like her dream at beginning + scully's voiceover tells us.

but scully isn't as alone as she feels. mulder is always there. he was there with her every step of the way once she called him, what she allowed him to be there for. and he always will be. he fought hard for both scully & emily, he held nothing back. until scully said she wouldn't put emily through what a "cure" entails. they've already used a "miracle cure" on scully and they haven't yet learned all the consequences of that. but with the way everything has gone, something in both of them suspects there's more to come of scully's abduction. they're constantly waiting for the next landslide to sweep them off their feet.

this is the only dream in emily, because she has the pieces and she has mulder to help her put it together. there's also only one phone call she received, and melissa doesn't speak this time. the only time she isn't alone, the only time mulder is there. the phone calls were specifically for scully, and mulder is going to help finish what scully started so she can focus on caring for emily & being there for her.

[gingeredmink]

what are your age hcs for tatsuki and soutarou? and misc hcs for urotsuki?

Gonna be blunt, head is a cluttered junkyard and I'm a rambler with zero self control when right conditions are met [you ask about Special Interests]. plus am tired and really out of it from work cause we had inventory and i ordered too many lunchables [oscar mayer can go to hell]. Will do best to make this coherent, or at least intelligible, but apologies if it's a bit of a mess.

Age Headcanons [If we're going for what they are in game]

Short answer: Soutarou is late 20s-early 30s, Tatsuki ranges between 15-18. [tho ofc when I draw shippy stuff it's an AU and they're both early 20s]

Long answer: Actually thought about this on and off a decent bit and could never really get more than a vague, "Somewhere around this area" for them.

Soutarou is somewhere between late 20s and early 30s. He's old enough to have experienced some shit, try to get clean and back on his feet and get some manual labor experience, and have that ripped from him. Plus some time to isolate and have those thoughts wreck havoc on his mental state.

Tatsuki on the other hand is messier and harder to really give an age to. They could be a kid escaping into fairy tales to avoid reality, or a young adult [18-20] that was forced to grow up too fast and is now suffering from dealing with their fractured identity [have thought about Debris endings occurring around Tats 18th birthday, because they have the "You're not a child, so why do you hold onto such stupid childish fantasies?" thoughts to go on top of everything else and it sorta just breaks them.]

Misc Uro Headcanons

Big Deep angsty Uro hc/kinda what shapes her core for me

You might've heard the quote, “I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that." by Robin Williams. This more or less summarizes my view of Urotsuki at the core. She may not be weighed down by what other dreamers have gone through, but she knows what it's like to be trapped in darkness and though it may not show, she is doing her best to make others happy because she doesn't want others to go through that. [side note: this is huge part of reason for shipping her with Tatsuki. Feel like they'd be the same, tho Tats is way more introverted. That angsty, "You see through the smiles or notice the little things and softly nudge me to say you understand and are there." sorta thing].

Going off that; for the longest time have hc'd that Uro has struggled with an ED and self image issues in the past and a big part of why she loves food and is okay with being herself, and is so supportive of others doing the same, is because she had to fight to get to where she is and is doing her best to make sure others can simply see the joy in life without experiencing the hell she went through.

More lighthearted/Uro's a goofball hcs

Uro is somewhat lactose intolerant but keeps getting sick because she won't. fucking. stop. eating cheese. Or questionable foods in general. "It smells alright so it's probably fine." [narrator voice: It wasn't fine] sorta things.

Probs mentioned this one before but eh, Uro and Sou are one of few dreamers with a drivers license, and Uro's driving doesn't exactly leave most passengers feeling safe so Sou is constantly stepping in when she offers people a ride. The two bicker at each other like an old couple a surprisingly good bit when eyes aren't on them. This paired with them both being older and able to get drunk makes for quite a scene. [Sabi's laughing, Tats is on the floor trying and failing to hide it.]

She did have a dedicated dream diary at some point, but during a depressive period would start to fill and decorate it with random stuff [silly doodles, poems, stickers , ect], and it's now more like a thought scrapbook or therapeutic outlet for her. Pages that are just her jotting down memories that make her happy have little sticky note bookmarks so she can flip through them when feeling down.

Her head is a mess and all over the place, and her counting sheep is like a ritual she semi-depends on to fall asleep since it gets her to focus on one thing and relax [its a sorta behavioral dependency that if she was somehow barred from doing, she'd probs stress out and not be able to sleep.]

Hope you enjoyed or were at least satisfied with rambling anon ◠⸜⸝◠~

[fioras-resolve]

What Is Fire Emblem About: an explainer for the uninitiated

this is gonna be a bit of a weird one. i feel like fire emblem fans are gonna get angry at me for mostly sidelining the story, so i'm just gonna say: i'm a game designer, and a very ludocentric person. this is just how i'm going to talk about things. but also, you can't talk about FE story without the contexts of what the games Are mechanically. with that out of the way...

Fire Emblem started as one of the earliest examples of a Simulation RPG (or Strategy RPG in the west, but, you know). it was trying to take a wargame framework and apply that to a fantasy rpg. so unlike most wargames, every unit has a name, personality, and unique attributes. but unlike most rpg's, you're moving across a battlefield. units are defined by wargame functions, like "ranged," "high movement," "flying," etc. and if one of your allies dies, they're gone for good. it creates an emotional heft, one found in most games with permadeath. to quote jon bois, talking about xcom,

in a way, fire emblem simulates war in a way that a lot of wargames don't. it makes you care about each of your units, not just because they're unique characters with lives, but because losing them means losing what they did for the army. you only get so many healers in fire emblem, so many thieves who can open a chest, and if you trained someone up for ages just to see them die to a random critical hit, it hurts.

"it immerses you via accountability. if your ranger dies, you are left with a feeling that ultimately, they counted on you to lead them, and that even in a game that is often decided by chance, it was all your fault"

or at least, that's how it works in theory. in reality, most players will just restart the chapter if they lose someone important. strict "ironman" rules have never been implemented in fire emblem, so while theoretically this is a game about living with your mistakes, in practice it's about constantly redoing a fight until you get the right results. modern fire emblem has even made rewinding to specific moments an actual game mechanic, a design choice i call "embracing the bastards." (i say this with affection, i am one of those bastards)

to make up for the fact that you can lose characters, you get a lot of them over the course of the game. a lot of these characters, especially in early FE, are just kind of there. like, you get so many characters of the same class who are clearly just backup if the other ones die. some of these units are great, with amazing stats or the ability to use some cool weapon, and others suck. if you talk to fans of "classic" FE, you'll find that a lot of people's favorite characters are decided by gameplay. as the series progressed, characters grew to be more fleshed out narratively and more balanced mechanically depending on who you ask, so a lot of modern fans are more into a character because of their personality or character arc.

which does lead us into talking about how the series has shifted over time. because when people think of "fire emblem" now, they're not thinking about the games from the 90s. they're probably not even thinking about the games from the 2000s. so let's talk about the changing identity of fire emblem. i like to split this into four "eras," broken up by major mechanical changes and shifts in who's leading the charge. i'm sure some fe fans will disagree on on this, but this is the framing the works the best for me. so!

The Kaga Era: This was an era of fire emblem led by a single guy, Shouzou Kaga. this is, i feel, where the essence of Simulation RPG is felt the most strongly. the games are hard to get into these days if you don't already play fire emblem, but there's a real artistic commitment here to trying to capture ideas through mechanics. aside from FE1, we also got Gaiden, which leaned way harder into the RPG angle with grinding, magic, and dragon-questy towns. we got Mystery of the Emblem, a direct sequel to the first game that put familiar characters in new contexts. we got Genealogy of the Holy War, an incredibly ambitious game that plays out a story of war on a massive scale. we got Archanea Saga, a very short game consisting of four incredibly potent one-shot chapters. And we got Thracia 776, an intensely challenging game left so up to randomness that even healing can miss. some oldheads view Thracia as the height of the series.

The Renaissance: After Kaga left due to a squabble with Nintendo (which is its own story), the dev team had to pick up the pieces without its auteur director. This period is arguably when Fire Emblem was most "itself." The Kaga era was foundational, but too experimental to have a consistent identity. The Renaissance was when the idea of what A Fire Emblem Game was solidified, to the point where if you ask most older fans what they think of when they imagine Fire Emblem, you'll probably get something from the Renaissance. Probably the biggest innovation from this era was the Support Conversation. Basically, if you put two characters next to each other for long enough, they might strike up a conversation with each other. You can usually do this two more times. This fleshed out the characters beyond their first impression, and made personality more of a sticking point. Later games would expand on this further.

You could maybe argue that this period was intensely safe, but I'd say after Kaga's departure, safe was probably necessary. Binding Blade was essentially a rehash of FE1, for better and worse. Blazing Blade, a prequel to Binding, was the first FE game to be released outside of Japan, so it has an extensive tutorial, and is generally a lot easier to accommodate. But also, it features some really solid and creative level design which makes it worth playing to this day. Sacred Stones did similar to Gaiden with its skill system, world map, and grinding. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn... I actually haven't really played those or heard much about them but a lot of people view them as the height of the series. And Shadow Dragon was a remake of FE1, that actually tried very hard to encourage you to ironman it. Like, you can reclass freely, you get replacement units if you're running low, and the prologue ends by forcing you to pick a sacrifice. Unfortunately, people didn't really get the message. It was my first FE game, and I still reset whenever someone died. Caeda, my beloved.

The Maeda Era: This starts, oddly enough, with a remake of the third game, called New Mystery of the Emblem. It adds a player avatar that you can customize, support conversations, a new plotline about assassins, and crucially, a Casual Mode. Yes, you can now start the game choosing either Classic Mode, which has permadeath, and Casual Mode, which doesn't. This fundamentally changes the experience, as you can imagine, and it's still a pretty contentious topic within the FE community. A lot of new players struggle to get into classic Fire Emblem because the forced permadeath is just too punishing for them. But it's also core to the identity of the series. It was contentious within the dev team, too, with people fighting over whether or not to include it. Ultimately, it was decided that if the FE series was going to survive, it would need to be more playable to a casual audience.

This leads us into Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was a massive success compared to anything else before then. It featured the player avatar and casual mode, it featured a world map and grinding, and it also really leaned into the support system. It even combined this with the marriage and children system of Genealogy, adding a fourth support level which got characters to marry and have a child, who would then join your party by time traveling from the future. You could even marry someone with your player avatar. This did make Awakening more dating sim than tactics game in some people's eyes, but it really helped give the game a fandom that exceeded the existing FE fandom by a longshot. This kind of design was continued with Fire Emblem Fates, a game that was actually three different games you could choose between. Birthright was basically more Awakening, but Conquest took that paradigm and made it into a focused, polished, and tightly designed tactical experience. (Arguably too tight, I don't like it that much but I get why people do.) And the Maeda era ends with FE Heroes, a mobile gacha game with as much creativity as power creep. And honestly, how else could this end?

The Modern Era: Since Maeda is mostly working on Heroes now, we're in a similar situation to the Renaissance, where the series has to pick up where its leader left off. But instead of playing it safe, the new directors have experimented with it in a way we haven't seen since Kaga. It started, of course, with a remake of Gaiden, called Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. I have a soft spot for this game, but what's important for you to know is that it introduced 1) full voice acting, 2) special moves, and 3) turn rewinds, which finally just makes resetting a deliberate game design tool.

From this point on we have Three Houses, which did a similar split-path thing to Fates, but letting you choose based on preference for characters rather than gameplay. I think its mechanics are a really nice synthesis of a lot of different games, but that's not really why people care about Three Houses. People care about Three Houses because it features a hot girlboss voiced by Tara Platt, a school setting that's easy to project onto, multiple queer characters with subtext for each other, and a morally grey set of factions that people can argue passionately about for years. It is THE fandom-ready Fire Emblem game. After that is our most recent game, Engage. Now, this is structured like a traditional Fire Emblem, but it plays pretty substantially different. Now your units can summon past FE protagonists to give massive buffs and execute super moves. My favorite is the one that lets you rush through enemies in a straight line. It's also incredibly anime, like bright colors, power of friendship, character designs a bit too outlandish. It's great if that's your shit.

so, I've been talking a lot about how these games play. and if you're a big fan of these games, especially of the modern ones, that might frustrate you. you don't play rpg's for the combat, you play them for the story, which i have avoided talking about for the most part. and first of all, that's a very reductive way of looking at rpg's, and games generally. second, these things are intertwined, you cannot disconnect story from play. but third, i'm of the mind that what a game is About is decided by what happens when you interact with it. talking solely about what happens in cutscenes and dialogue is treating a game as something to watch or read, not as something to play. and i think we owe it to ourselves, and the medium, to do better than that.

but, last few notes before i finish the post. first off, there are a few games i missed, particularly spinoffs, like the Warriors spinoffs or that weird MegaTen crossover that isn't much FE or MegaTen at all. second, the setting, characters, and lore shifts with each entry. sometimes you get games in the same universe, like Awakening's continent is just the FE1 continent but a thousand years in the future. but you don't particularly need to worry about playing the other ones if you want to get into a specific game. third, there's a fair bit of Weird Anime Shit. particularly the consistent use of the thousand-year-old loli trope which has been around since the first game. Fates lets you marry and have children with your siblings, and it's really funny how each of their S-Supports have the other character pull up a letter from their mom saying you're not actually related. Break Glass In Case Of Incest. the games are almost always about royalty finding sacred weapons to kill a problems dragon, and i'm honestly not big on stories that valorize nobility, but it's a fairy tale, so whatever. i have in the backburner a game i've been working on that does this kind of story from the perspective of civilians, so keep an eye out for that in the next few years. also for the love of fuck, if you're a fire emblem fan please play other tactics games. the fe series is good, but there's a whole slue of games out there if you want to expand your horizons. i recommend triangle strategy, xcom 2, into the breach, my own catalogue, and walk with the living.

-Angie Nyx

[brsb4hls]

With the writing sometimes being a bit chaotic I wanted to make a very simplified (very very simplified) short list about the 'villain' and or 'threat' / 'problem' in the Loki show from ep to ep.

That might help with philosophical and moral discussions.

This is my personal take:

Avengers 1: villain - Loki (Thanos, Chitauri)

problem - mind stone, portal

Loki 1x1: villain - tva, Sylvie

Loki 1x2: villain - tva, Sylvie

Loki 1x3: villain - the time keepers ( since the tva now conists of brainwashed abductees and we got to know Sylvie and her motives)

Loki 1x4: villain - the time keepers (Ravonna)

Loki 1x5: villain - HWR (unknown) (Ravonna)

threat - Alioth

Loki 1x6: villain - HWR (Kangs in the

future, also threat)

Loki 2x1: threat - Kang variants, time

slipping

Loki 2x2: villain - Doxx, X5

threat - bombed branches

Loki 2x3: threat - the loom exploding

problem - opening blast

doors (Timely required)

villain - Ravonna, Miss

Minutes

Loki 2x4: threat - loom exploding

villain - Ravonna, Miss

Miss Minutes, X5

Loki 2x5: threat - loom failsafe

deleting new branches

problem - tva gone

Loki 2x6 threat - loom failsafe,

Kang variants

The goal posts constantly shift back and forth for narrative reasons.

Season 1 was pretty clear:

The tva is technically bad, but the audience needs to sympathize since Loki will keep working with them. So variant reveal, leading to splitting tva agents into good (Mobius) and bad (Ravonna) and tva being more morally grey. Sylvie as villain was a red herring, the time keepers a front, HWR as actual villain reveal.

Then drama, Loki vs Sylvie based on possible Kang threat in the future.

Season 2 should have logically followed the Kang threat.

But couldn't, cause budget and possible use of Kang in future movies.

So, it needed other threats. Plus the tva beeded a purpose. They tried a reforming approach (B15 vs Doxx), tva monitoring for Kangs in the future and for drama added loom possibly exploding and closed blast doors (connected to the Timely story with Ravonna as villain).

When they decided to want to 'elevate Loki from god to capital G god' (interview quote), they needed a sacrifice. So initially Loki was supposed to keep the loom intact by going out there and staying there.

They only later on decided the loom needed to go and added the fail safe narrative, which makes more sense, since the multiverse existed just fine before the loom, so the loom isn't needed. But it couldn't just go, vecause then Loki wouldn't have to need to make a sacrifice, he could just blow it up. Hence the deleting of new branches.

So, tl; dr: everything that might confuse people about Loki is a fictional problem. It is simply due to narrative reasons.

So if MCU productions just used a fucking show bible and actual show runners, it might have prevented chaos. (I read they're now planning on doing that, fingers crossed for future projects).

[naivesilver]

things that only happen in the 1987 tmnt italian dub for no discernible reason

(with special thanks to retrotaverna for collecting them, as there were many I wouldn't have thought to include - go give them a watch if you know italian!)

they only make references to italian pop culture. this does not mean, and I can't stress it enough, that they're in some parallel universe where the story is set in italy - they go to italy, some seasons down the line. they go to venice, florence and rome, they dress up as catholic friars and splinter gets to geek about art. what it does mean is that these american turtles live in american sewers, pay for pizza with american dollars and still make jokes about pippo franco.

a notable exception is gone with the wind, because apparently, they ALL love gone with the wind. donnie quotes gone with the wind. shredder quotes gone with the wind. everyone quotes gone with the wind. beats me why.

mikey does a passable neapolitan accent constantly and unprompted. he also has the same voice actor as ash ketchum. a man of many talents.

cowabunga got translated as other stuff for like three seasons straight and the first untranslated one was not said by any of the turtles but by shredder.

upon having to take care of an injured alien, donatello's first demand is for someone to bring him boiled water, to which raphael replies "what are you talking about??? it's not like he's about to have a baby!!!"

people keep bursting into songs........except it's never something related to the story, but only a vaguely appropriate pop tune. the kraang leader hums frank sinatra. there is a robot singing a blues brothers song. other notable mentions feature lucio battisti, vasco rossi and the kessler twins.

they also consistently break the fourth wall to acknowledge the fact that kids are watching them and that they should hurry up before the episode ends.

bebop is from the province of milan and he makes it his whole personality. his accent is the most lombard accent you'll ever hear. he allegedly accepted to work for shredder instead of taking a steady job in milan because "he didn't want to commute". rocksteady hijacks a train and he demands to be dropped off at the municipal square (of milan). upon being asked where his boss is, he earnestly says "I don't know, maybe he went to milan". commitment to the bit 101.

they are always a cautionary bleep away from cursing. always. especially april and raph.

shredder can't drive on his own because he only has a learner's permit. he also promises kraang to bring him coffee in bed if he helps with a mission.

usagi shows up and has to disguise himself as a friar. this is, of course, unrelated to the friar disguises the turtles use in vatican city, and they say it makes him look like a character in the name of the rose.

last but not least, vernon enters a pub and asks for hot cocoa to recover from the disappointment of seeing april on live tv. he gets the cocoa, drinks it, complains that it's "sparkling"(?) and leaves.

close-up on the sparkling cocoa.

it's beer.

get 4kids-ed idiot.