#i think it ties into the first point

[djungleskogs]

.

[catmask]

for me at least, theres always been a really stark divide in the 'child character is the main antagonist' sort of stories.

on one hand. theres stories that rely on the shock factor of a child being evil, because we're supposed to believe that kids arent capable of that sort of thing. i guess its supposed to be frightening but the novelty always wears off really quickly for me.

i think 'a child is the villain' always lands most successfully for me when a kid is given power beyond their years (either by adults around them or otherwise supernatural/societal forces) and then everyone is floored when they arent exactly responsible with that power. and sometimes theyre even selfish! not because that kid is evil, but because theyre a kid.. acting like a kid would in their situation.

it means that any sort of story that follows requires a protagonist to reason with someone who may not even understand the harm theyre doing, or worse - not have the life lived to understand why they should care in the first place. and also, i think watching what happens when u have an destructive force seeking comforts that any child deserves doing whatever they can to have those things is (to me) much more interesting than 'child who is fucked up and evil for no reason but being born that way actually'

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: dismemberment / ]

I think a lot about how Leo’s rescue could have easily ended in him losing a leg as the portal snaps shut on the Krang still clutching the limb, or, alternatively, only having Leo’s right arm make it out, still held dearly in his brother’s hand as the rest of Leo is left behind. (The latter hits even harder, as it directly parallels his future self in the worst of ways.)

I think a lot about how so many things could have gone wrong during the course of the movie with even a little bit of a change, but it really is harrowing how much of a coin-flip the entirety of the Prison Dimension rescue was.

[strawglicks]

flint fascinates me bc he comes off as rlly polite and kind

but also. not really. at all

they apologize often and it seems like they try to be nice to others, but then u look deeper and take into account different details

one of the biggest things abt flint that gets overlooked is that he likes drama .

i dont think liking drama itself is bad, why else do we have reality tv shows yk. but i think they actively indulge in it and one of the biggest things that points to this for me is how they treat the satellite investors

he seems to talk bad about them behind their backs, then can't handle the comeuppance of cosmo yelling at him.

this is further implied with cosmo saying they're "goin' around spreadin' lies", meaning flint does actively talk shit on what might be a regular basis. and flint saying "oh, no, I shouldn't have said that" implies FURTHER that they KNOW they're gonna get yelled at for it but continue to do it anyway with the hope cosmo wont find out. like hes not sorry for doing it, only sorry for getting caught.

cosmo gets HEAVILY neglected both in the community as a whole and whenever flint is brought up even though they have a really interesting and honestly hilarious dynamic (but thats for another post..)

whenever cosmo DOES get brought up in the context of he and flints relationship, people defend flint and blame cosmo for being "mean" to him. but tbh, i think cosmo has a fair point in this particular text. Flint can talk all he wants, but at the end of the day can't handle the consequences of it and lacks the confidence to put his foot down. He's a follower, not a leader (unlike cosmo, who flint looks up to canonically. WHICH NO ONE TALKS ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!)

flint also seems to have an interesting habit of apologizing even though he actively and intentionally attacks the toons right after

which i think is interesting. i think it's just a habit of his to say sorry when he knows he's doing/has done something wrong (especially bc he doesnt like facing the consequences), even if hes not actually sorry. Considering this is the same person who claims they like setting toons on fire, i dont think any of these apologies are sincere:

speaking of not being able to handle the consequences, when flint does get defeated by toons, there's a line that sticks out.

Specifically the "i'll be back" feels vengeful. Like he takes the defeat personally, and doesn't want to give up because it makes him feel weak and he wants to come out on top.

something else i find interesting and almost jarring in flint's dialogue is some of their Power Trip dialogue:

this dude is incredibly power hungry. he craves confidence and the ability to be a leader, given how he looks up to cosmo and is drawn to graham, who also appears confident.

speaking of graham, i think it's important to note that earlier, when flint was talking shit abt the satellite investors, he was saying that specifically to graham, who encourages flint not to "let people walk all over him".

graham encourages flint to feel more confident, which is not inherently a bad thing. confidence is great! and its something flint deserves. but i think there's an issue with how they choose to express this "confidence" on the rare occasions they do.

shown throughout this post, flint's way of trying to be confident is being power hungry, talking shit, and fighting toons . i think it's pretty clear that flint has been walked all over in the past and present, and it's caused them to become shy and a bit of a doormat. which he clearly doesn't like (more evidence of this is the fact that he explicitly dislikes belittling.)

and on the rare occasions when they're "allowed" to be confident, they proceed to belittle OTHERS, like toons. in a lot of their dialogue, they come off as condescending towards the toons, even if it's pretty awkward.

i think Flint deserves to feel confident, but the way they go about it is unhealthy. They've clearly been treated like a doormat and is fed up with it, and it seems like they lash out as a result. I think he has a good and genuine heart, but he almost comes off as bitter due to being walked all over constantly. its rlly interesting to dive into flint's flaws and the way they act due to their desperation for confidence, something they really lack.

[prismatic-et-al]

taz ethersea is really just like. hey listen. this story is about grief. it’s about anger. it’s about mourning the things you had to leave, but if you hadn’t left you would not have survived them. it’s about hating where you came from but knowing deep down you can never, will never be from anywhere else. it’s about the need to become better than a past you still wish you could go back to. it’s about “we celebrate the burial of the architects of our unjust world” and “I do not want to be only resentment but when I see your face resentment is all that I am” and “I just wanted you to see it once.” it’s about finding a way to become something new in spite of every weeping ache torn into you by the past. it’s about the stubborn and deliberate persistence of life in the face of a hostile environment. ethersea says this story is about hope. it’s about consequences. it’s about effort. most importantly it’s about how nermal’s pile has a sale going on right now don’t miss out on this week’s deals

[batsplat]

It's a thing I already knew but all your beautiful analysis really made obvious (to me) how much of a grudge holder vale is. That man is never letting it go he's gonna hold his grudges into his grave

you know, I do think this is an interesting issue, because I'm not sure this is true of all his grudges. just sticking here with the grudges he accumulated in his capacity as a competitor, rather than just his general approach to life or whatever... how you judge this will kinda depend on how you feel about the 'reconciliation' he's experienced with some of his rivals - and whether you read the whole thing as sincere or not. now, personally I reckon he still dislikes biaggi, but also you are allowed to just dislike people so I'll give him a pass for that. some of the others, I'm a little more convinced by the whole reconciliation schtick

let's get valentino's take:

interesting that he mentions those three together, isn't it? and like, he's still not messaging biaggi or inviting him to his home - "even with max" kind of tells you all you need to know - but the other two? they said some proper nasty things to each other over the years!! I mean, the casey rivalry, there's some remarks from both sides where quite frankly I think I would struggle just a touch to get over it

I don't know, obviously this could all be pr stuff, but I kind of feel like... y'know, why bother? it's 2022, you're retired, who gives a fuck? sure it's a good look to be all magnanimous, sure it can be a bit of a way of twisting in the knife to the guys left in the cold, but also, who would care if you don't play nice? I think especially with jorge, you surely don't need to do all that, inviting him to your home and dancing with him... (which, again, some of the spats those two had...) and with the casey rivalry, if there's one guy who's still hung up about what happened between the pair of them, it's obviously casey (speaking of blokes who can hold a grudge). maybe this is giving valentino too much credit, but personally I buy it's more or less sincere. there's nothing to really indicate he's still particularly bothered by any of their past disagreements - he's basically going for the 'all's fair in love and motorcycle racing' approach. he knows he was an asshole, he accepts they were assholes too, whatever, that's how these things work. he's generally a fan of drama in rivalries, unsurprisingly, and he was happy enough to contribute his fair share - but he does see it as fundamentally being part of the game

to point out the obvious, check out who he's left out: sete and marc. that's where he can't let go of the grudges... because it's not about the offence itself as much as it is about the betrayal. this is the thing with valentino, right, it's about what kind of bond you had with him. if you weren't his friend in the first place and then piss him off as a rival then, y'know, whatever. obviously he's going to be vicious in trying to get back at you, but also he's really not going to waste his time feeling too aggrieved by it. I mean, think about how all the bullshit between him and casey dropped off sharply post-2012... from valentino's end anyway. think about how jorge and valentino pretty quickly got on again whenever they weren't fighting for supremacy within yamaha. they weren't friends in the first place, then they were enemies for competitive reasons for a while there, then it's over and valentino is basically happy enough to call it bygones

but... if it's a certain kind of bond you had with him and then you wrong him... that little mental list of all his past grievances, all your past transgressions, that's where it comes in. that's where he ices you out. denies you any emotional warmth. ensures that any interaction going forward is conducted entirely on his terms. where even any public 'reconciliation' won't truly be sincere.... or, certainly he's not going to forget what happened. if something else happens... it's like you've always got the potential of triggering this lingering resentment, in a way, where all that past stuff is still primed and ready to be called upon. he certainly doesn't just let it go

or, as he puts it in his autobiography:

Biaggi and I never talk to each other. I mean, we've never had a real conversation, anything that's lasted more than the requisite time to insult each other or put each other down, in the nastiest way possible. In any case, I don't hate him. It's true, we've never been friends, but hatred is something different, and that's too serious a word to describe our relationship. Far too serious. No, we have a reciprocal antipathy. No doubt this is a result of what we do for a living and the fact that we both want to win every single time. And perhaps it's also a function of the fact that we have very different personalities and very different ways of seeing things. Still, I don't think this means we hate each other, as some journalists have written. I think I could feel hatred for someone, but only for someone far worse than anything Biaggi has done. For example, if I were betrayed by a friend, then, yes, I could hate him. But Biaggi will never betray my friendship for the simple reason that we are not, and never have been, friends. Our relationship is very clear: we compete on the track - outside the track, each goes his own way. You could say we detest each other cordially.

... I mean. he said it, not me. and given this book was first published in '05... biaggi can't betray his friendship because they were never friends... I'm not saying he's thinking about sete, but it has to at least be a possibility, right? he's talking about one rivalry here and refusing to even mention the other... and the one he's refusing to mention is the one where he was friends with the other bloke. I don't know, maybe that's reading too much into it! and anyway, even if this passage wasn't really about sete, it's obviously still revealing. "detest each other cordially" is essentially what he was doing with casey and jorge (or from his point of view in any case, not entirely sure they'd agree with that). the grudge comes when he feels let down by you... and then, yes, he'll never let it go

of course, he's willing to set aside his grievances for a while if there's sufficient motivation for him to do so. in 2009, when he had so definitively won that rivalry with sete, why bother kicking up a fuss? in 2016, quite frankly it was just too much, and it was getting to the point where it was obviously hurting him too. on the one hand there was the media furore that had been going on non-stop since sepang, on the other hand it was also hurting his own approach to racing. there's reports from the time how visibly aggrieved he still was in the first few races of the season, and it took until they got back to europe for him to... y'know, have fun again. it's not sustainable to be walking around with a constant dark cloud over your head and broadcasting burning resentment towards your two main rivals. certainly not for someone like valentino - he needs to be having fun! the slight rapprochement needed to happen, in a way, because otherwise those years would have been even worse for everyone involved. but that doesn't actually translate to forgetting any of those grudges. this is about convenience more than anything else

goes to show, really... most of the time he doesn't take these things personally. I talked about it a bit in this post, how maybe it's also something that changed over time for him: the question of whether he was willing to develop these kinds of bonds in the first place with competitors... because he does possess a certain level of self-awareness in terms of what these kinds of rivalries are like and what they do to interpersonal relationships. ideally, you don't want to be hurt by a friend like that, right? better not to have that kind of emotional attachment with your competitors in the first place. how unfortunate it'd be if all those years after sete the circumstances aligned for him to see a competitor as something like a friend again... because, after all, those are the only people who could betray him. those are the only people where he thinks he could truly hate them

[bonefall]

...Something's kinda hitting me, guys. I think something just clicked.

So we all know that BB!DOTC is the arc I'm not staying faithful to, right? A lot of characters are getting total overhauls? I'd actually been dancing pretty heavily around the pro-colonialism themes in the original text, simply because I don't really feel comfortable handling them (same with certain sexual themes, it's not great for my mental health to force myself to engage with certain elements that are triggering)

So I'd made it so there was Park Cats (Wind Coalition and River Kingdom) who arrived relatively recently, and Tribe Cats (Sky's Clan, Shadow's Clan) who nestle into an unclaimed spot in the forest. All groups roughly equal in power until Thunder's Clan which was existing in defiance.

But Clanmew isn't JUST comprised of Parkmew and Tribemew-- there's a third contributor. Old Townmew, which mixes with Parkmew and forms Middle Townmew, mixing again with Clanmew to create Modern Townmew.

Since I'm now really thinking about the colonialism themes, especially in my re-read where it starts reaching its narrative conclusion in Books 5 and 6... I think I need to add that 3rd cultural group. I need to make them a player. I think I'm doing a serious disservice by only having the Park Cats, Tribe Cats, and then saying all others mostly lived in the town.

I'm gonna do a BB!Brokenstar with Slash. Previously I'd just cut him completely-- but I think I should, instead, walk him back from being "Pure Evil" like he is in-canon and make him into a real character.

One Eye's a god drawn to the festering stink and rot of the First Battle; Slash is a mortal, leading a group like any other in the Forest Territories.

I think I'm also going to significantly bump up the time the Park Cats have been in this territory. Slash and his cats have been fighting them for years, and until the Mountain Cat influx, were basically spread through most of the Forest.

[ladystoneboobs]

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

[sntoot]

youve hardly changed to my eyes

[caspersickfanfics]

Question Time! What do y'all think it would take for Tighnari to cry?

[aparticularbandit]

Favorite Mugi hcs?

Also if ya need someone to talk to my DMs are always open

Thanks for the question (and the offer)! <3

My Tsumugi headcanon currently falls into two separate things, so I'll share a bit from both!

The Twist Does Not Exist:

Tsum-Tsum! ...because then even her nickname is a reference. >.>;; (Also some people make this zoom zoom to reference a certain Mazda commercial, but she hates that. It annoys her. The only person who gets away with this is probably Junko. Who also probably came up with the original nickname in the first place.)

Always has some sort of show on in the background while she's doing stuff (homework, cosplay, housework; Tsumugi is constantly tuned into something). Her favorite shows, she full in pays attention, she's not multitasking, she's analyzing, she's looking at art design, she's coming up with new cosplay ideas, but most shows are on in the background while she's doing something else. There's kind of a scale with this - the more she cares, the less she does. Creating cosplay during the show is top tier of multitasking before she goes full in.

Has definitely worked in a cosplay cafe. At least once. At least once. (She's not comfortable about being in the spotlight, but it's easier when she's in cosplay as a character who loves the spotlight. Because then she's not her.)

Is drawn to louder, more energetic characters.

If she sees someone cute, she immediately wants to put them in cosplay. Like full-on sparkle in her eyes, will drag them into a bathroom/changing room, need. (If you've seen/read Fruits Basket - like Mine, from Ayame's shop! But Tsumugi and cosplay.) Kind of like immediately dragging Kaede to the bathroom to show off her cospox. That same energy. But for a different reason.

Actually does not have a lot of friends. She knows that the intensity of her interests can turn people off, so she doesn't talk much. But this backfires because it makes her come across as shy. Boring. Plain. She's not very good at fitting in with people's expectations. So she's pretty lonely, actually.

Tsumugi was actually a LOT more popular when she was in elementary school because she could make pretty clothes and kids like pretty clothes so everybody wanted her pretty clothes because she always looked pretty. But there's an age where, like, you grow out of sparkles and frills and big bows and all of that and kind of shove that off into only costumes or only cosplay, and when that happened, Tsumugi just. became. a background NPC in her own life.

Without cosplay, Tsumugi would actually be severely depressed. Cosplay lets her life have color; without it, everything is grayscale and monochrome.

The Twist Exists:

Tsumugi Shirogane is not her real name. It's an alias.

Her real name is Yuki Tsukasa. Yuki - "snow" - because the fandom wiki says that one of the meanings for Shirogane is a metaphor for "snow" and Tsukasa because it means "director, boss".

Definitely dating the girl who got her into cosplay. They are together, they have been together for a long time, they've talked about kids, etc.

Most people don't know she works for Team Danganronpa, and even the ones who do don't know how high up she is in the company. Only her girlfriend knows she's one of the showrunners.

Yuki has gotten death threats from her work on Danganronpa. A lot of the people involved have. That's why her alias exists in the first place: everyone in the credits for a Danganronpa season uses one. Fans can be terrifying to Team Danganronpa, particularly the writers, which is why she just. doesn't talk about it. (She loves her job. She's scared of fans. Reasonably so.)

Would absolutely live in her office if she didn't have a girlfriend to go home to. She's a bit of a workaholic. (She and her girlfriend definitely have fought about this. It didn't change anything.)

Since her co-showrunner's passing, Yuki has been under a lot of stress. They were very good at covering each other's writing weaknesses, and now she's under a lot of pressure to make the show just as good on her own as it was when there were two of them. (She has refused to take on another partner. Danganronpa is theirs. She has very strong opinions about this.)

A lot of characters in the shows have references to people she knows in real life, whether that's personality quirks or traits, or appearances, or even using their names. Most of it is stuff you wouldn't know unless you know.

Despite, as a writer, hating the unknown of having an audience-controlled character, Yuki doesn't hate K1-B0 as a character concept. She just hates the potential for destruction he has. (So she baked it into him from the outset.)

Her use of K1-B0 is actually really smart because Yuki had to accurately predict the way fans would react to any situation where they were given options to do things (I assume polls for major decisions or FTEs, and then those decisions set him on a specific script) - like she had to know they would spend all that time with Miu so that K1-B0 could get those upgrades, she had to make sure that those decisions wouldn't fuck up the script but instead lean into them and give him a good arc and involvement in the story regardless what the fans picked. Like Yuki has to have her thumb on the beating pulse of fandom to be able to do a good job with that, and I applaud her.

[puppyeared]

Atla live action 😐

[zuala-bear]

Them but edgy - sadly no Paimon tho 😔

This fan-theme was good inspo so listen or I will steal your snacks >:0

[forever-eternal]

@freshwolfhell

They can take turns beating him up :)

Based on

[cuteniaarts]

Small drawing collection of my latest creation Emran as a teenager/freshly minted Air Acolyte, for my dear partner in unhinged OC shenanigans @katkastrofa, as promised <3

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

genuine question but is there any fandom where a character is well written by the majority. im thinking about fandom culture and the spread of frustration when people dont write characters well but. honestly in all the fandoms ive been in there's only like, a Select number of authors who i trust to write Well, let alone write Well AND In Character. character analysis and writing and getting inside characters' heads are all separate skills (all of which are trained by roleplaying fyi can CONFIRM playing pretend with your friends is good for you). there's been more than once where I've disagreed with an interpretation that others agreed with, and then I turned out wrong. or i turned out right. like it doesnt matter WHO is right it just matters that differences in character analysis exist, so even if you DO write well AND write in character, your in character is still going to be someone else's out of character

there's this sort of. vibe. that to play in the sandbox you Need to be able to make a castle, and if you can't make a castle then you shouldn't bother, and it completely dismisses the idea that youre in that sandbox to PLAY in the first place. there's this Weight of disappointing someone if you can't build something that they like, but that forgets that you aren't there to build them a castle. like, be KIND. if you disagree with someone then please make an effort to do so kindly. i dont give a shit about fandom discourse but there is a reason kids get removed from sandboxes if they keep throwing sand in people's eyes. but if they don't like your misshapen sand pile, then youre not obligated to change it. even if you yourself end up hating that same sand pile later- youre not building a legacy. youre playing. and sometimes the result of that play is out of character drivel. theres a reason there are so many authors and so few who i like to consistently read and thats because everyone is Fucking Around in their hobby space. hash tag brag or whatever but i can build castles. ive built several that im v proud of. ive also dug holes in the sand for fun and then tripped on them when trying to get up. I often dug a hole and then got up and fucking- whoops, its a castle now, and i didn't realize i'd made something to be proud of until after the fact. the whole time while creating shit i was Convinced it was bullshit that didn't make sense. and then other times i was Convinced it was bullshit and then i was Right and i can look back and go. huh. ew. but it doesn't matter what the end result was, because i had fun playing in the sandbox

this wasn't meant to turn into a ramble but i have Feelings about bad art and art that's badly perceived and how public perception can screw with your head and how making art youre proud of is fucking. it's so difficult!!! it's hard!! it's really fun, which is why i try to make it, but i promise you it is Okay to not tryhard creativity. even if you CAN, it's okay not to do it all the time. or ever, even. fuck around find out have fun etc