#i'll have to post some examples of what it Looks Like in Action but the rp part will require more brain than i have available rn

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

OKAY. I finally managed to carve down an actually simplified version of the offline pocket edition I made for the excellent RPGSolo system. I definitely have more things in mind to expand on as options for players who want them, and this draft is Rough and near entirely unedited because I pounded it out in like half an hour during a migraine, oops, BUT! It should be fully functional as it is currently, and I hope people enjoy it as much as I have been.

(Also, if you like it I encourage you to go give the creator of the original site some support! This wouldn't exist without his work, and there's all kinds of neat extra tools and in-depth explanations to be found there and on the forums. Go check it out!)

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To play, you will need a d100 (percentile dice), a d10, and a Likelihood table. One is provided below, but you may substitute your own percentages if you want to tweak your chances.

• A way to record the events of your game and/or to keep track of bonuses and penalties is recommended, but not required.

RPGSolo runs on the Yes, And/No, But system.

• Yes, and...: Not only is the outcome successful, but it's better than you expected; you are even better off than you would have been from achieving what you meant to do. Situations you are observing turn out to have some extra good news involved, or you gain even more thorough insight than you were looking for at first.

• Yes: You achieve your goal.

• Yes, but...: You achieve your goal, but there's a hitch or it comes at a cost.

• No, but: You fail your goal, but not completely. If you are making an observation, the situation isn't great, but there's a silver lining.

• No: You fail your goal.

• No, and...: Not only is the outcome a failure, but it's even worse than you thought, and/or you're worse off than if you had left it alone.

The Likelihood of a given roll dictates how likely you are to receive one of the above six outcomes. Each Likelihood lists the corresponding results on a scale from 1 to 100.

• No matter the Likelihood you are rolling from, there will always be a chance no matter how small to roll each outcome. Almost Impossible has a tiny chance to roll 'Yes, and...' and Sure Thing has a tiny chance to roll 'No, and...'

Optionally: you may add modifiers to increase or decrease your chances in a given scenario. Your character might be a trained fighter; they might have a sprained ankle; they might have found a flashlight; they may have a bad reputation in town which makes interactions with the townsfolk more hostile.

• Each point on a modifier counts for +1 or -1 Likelihood. A +1 turns a 50/50 into a Somewhat Likely, a -3 turns a Likely into a Somewhat Unlikely, and so on.

• Some modifiers make a bigger difference than others. A friendly demeanor might add a +1 bonus to checks involving interactions with the surly townsfolk, where that sprained ankle might be a -3 penalty to attempts to move quickly.

• Optionally: you may also add modifiers to change the outcome of a roll, not the Likelihood; a 'No, but...' becomes a 'Yes, but...' for example. These have a much stronger influence on your game, and you may want to use them sparingly.

• You may assign modifiers to your player characters--or other characters, or locations, or anything else--ahead of time, or you may add or remove modifiers during play as you feel they are appropriate.

At the beginning of each turn, decide what action you want to take, what observations you want to make, or what happens in the world around you.

Roll 1d10 to determine the difficulty of an action.

• 1: Almost Impossible

• 2: Very Unlikely

• 3: Unlikely

• 4: Somewhat Unlikely

• 5: 50/50

• 6: Somewhat Likely

• 7: Likely

• 8: Very Likely

• 9: Sure Thing

• 10: Reroll with +1 bonus (or just reroll, if you'd rather)

Add any appropriate modifiers to determine the Likelihood of the roll.

If you check the Likelihood of a roll and don't like your chances, you can choose not to pursue it.

• If there are any rolls you might want to come back to and try again later, you may want to make a note of it on the side. You might decide to leave a door with an alarm alone until you can find some tools to disarm it with, for example.

If you decide to proceed, roll 1d100 and consult the appropriate Likelihood table.

Add any appropriate outcome modifiers to determine the result.

Decide how to interpret the result.

• In case of wording you're not sure of ('do the guards notice me?' for example), a lower outcome is generally negative. You may want to write out the translated result next to the 'yes, and/no, but' result, for the sake of clarity.

• If you're rolling to decide between multiple options instead of for negative/positive outcomes, you may use your d10 as a yes/no oracle, or use 'yes, and/no, but' to roll for the degree to which the result falls between the presented options.

• Oracle between 2 options:

• 1-5: No/First option

• 6-10: Yes/Second option

• Oracle between 3 options:

• 1-3: No/First Option

• 4-6: Neither/Both/In-Between/Second option

• 7-9: Yes/Third option

• 10: Reroll, or secret fourth option

If you want to make more than one roll to determine what's going on before you continue the narrative, feel free to make as many in a row as you want before you describe what happens.

Optionally: you can use a Do-Over to redo a roll, or directly choose your outcome, if you really don't want to continue with what you got.

• It's recommended that you limit the number of these you have access to, if you want to keep some challenge in your game (5 Do-Overs per scene, for example), but you don't have to. You can do it as many times as you want; it comes down to what's most fun for you.

Write out what happens as a result of the outcome you rolled, until you reach the next point where you want the dice to show you the way.

Happy roleplaying!

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Likelihood Table

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Almost Impossible/Sure Thing:

-No, and...: 30% (1-30) [...] 1% (1)

-No: 50% (31-80) [...] 3% (2-4)

-No, but...: 11% (81-91) [...] 5% (5-9)

-Yes, but...: 5% (92-96) [...] 11% (11-19)

-Yes: 3% (97-99) [...] 50% (20-69)

-Yes, and: 1% (100) [...] 30% (70-100)

Very Unlikely/Very Likely:

-No, and...: 20% (1-20) [...] 3% (1-3)

-No: 40% (21-60) [...] 5% (4-8)

-No, but...: 20% (61-80) [...] 12% (9-20)

-Yes, but...: 12% (81-92) [...] 20% (21-40)

-Yes: 5% (93-97) [...] 40% (41-80)

-Yes, and...: 3% (98-100) [...] 20% (81-100)

Unlikely/Likely:

-No, and...: 15% (1-10) [...] 5% (1-5)

-No: 30% (11-50) [...] 10% (6-15)

-No, but...: 20% (51-70) [...] 20% (16-35)

-Yes, but...: 20% (71-85 [...] 20% (36-55)

-Yes: 10% (85-95) [...] 30% (56-85)

-Yes, and...: 5% (96-100) [...] 15% (86-100)

Somewhat Unlikely/Somewhat Likely:

-No, and...: 10% (1-10) [...] 10% (1-10)

-No: 30% (11-40) [...] 20% (11-30)

-No, but...: 20% (41-60) [...] 10% (31-40)

-Yes, but...: 10% (61-70) [...] 20% (41-60)

-Yes: 20% (71-90) [...] 30% (61-90)

-Yes, and...: 10% (91-100) [...] 10% (91-100)

50/50:

No, and...: 10% (1-10)

No: 20% (11-30)

No, but...: 20% (31-50)

Yes, but...: 20% (51-70)

Yes: 20% (71-90)

Yes, and...: 10% (91-100)

[wileycap]

So, uh, Netflix Avatar, huh? Yeah. I guess I'll make a really long post about it because ATLA brainrot has is a cornerstone of my personality at this point.

So.

It's okay. B, maybe a C+.

That's it.

Now for the spoilers:

The biggest issue with the Netflix version is the pacing. Scenes come out of nowhere and many of the episodes are disjointed. Example: Aang escaping from Zuko's ship. We see him getting the key and going "aha!", and in the next scene he's in Zuko's room. And then he just runs out, no fun acrobatics or fights, and immediately they go to the Southern Air Temple where he sees Gyatso's corpse, goes into the Avatar state, and then sees Gyatso being really cheesy, comes out of it, and resolves that conflict. Nothing seems to lead into anything. The characters don't get to breathe.

The show's worst mistake (aside from Iroh fucking murdering Zhao) is its' first one: they start in the past. Instead of immediately introducing us to our main characters and dropping us into a world where we have a perfect dynamic where Aang doesn't know the current state of the world and Katara and Sokka don't know about the past, thus allowing for seamless and organic worldbuilding and exposition, they just... tell us. "Hey, this is what happened, ok, time for Aang!" There's no mystery, no intrigue, just a stream of information being shoved down the audience's throats and then onto the next set piece.

The visuals are for the most part great, but like with most Netflix productions, they just don't have great art direction. It feels like a video game cinematic, where everything is meant to be Maximum Cool - and none of the environments get to breathe. It's like they have tight indoor sets (with some great set design) and then they have a bunch of trailer shots. It's oozing with a kind of very superficial love.

Netflix still doesn't know how to do lighting, and with how disjointed the scenes are, the locations end up feeling like a parade of sets rather than actual cities or forests or temples. As for the costumes, Netflix still doesn't know how to do costumes that look like they're meant to be actually worn, so many of the characters seem weirdly uncomfortable, like they're afraid of creasing their pristine costumes.

The acting is decent to good, for the most part. I can't tell if the weaker moments come down to the actors or the direction and editing, but if I had to guess, I'd say the latter. Iroh and Katara are the weakest, Sokka is the most consistent, Zuko hits the mark most of the time, and Aang is okay. I liked Suki (though... she was weirdly horny? Like?) but Yue just fell kind of flat.

The tight fight choreography of the original is replaced with a bunch of spinny moves and Marvel fighting, though there are some moments of good choreography, like the Agni Kai between Ozai and Zuko (there's a million things I could say about how bad it was thematically, but this post is overly long already.) There's an actually hilarious moment in the first episode when Zuko is shooting down Aang, and he does jazz hands to charge up his attack.

Then there's the characters. Everybody feels very static - Zuko especially gets to have very little agency. A great example of that is the scene in which Iroh tells Lieutenant Jee the story of Zuko's scar.

In the original, it's a very intimate affair, and he doesn't lead the crew into any conclusions. Here, Iroh straight up tells the crew "you are the 41st, he saved your lives" and then the crew shows Zuko some love. A nice moment, but it feels unearned, when contrasted with the perfection of The Storm. In The Storm, Zuko's words and actions directly contradict each other, and Iroh's story gives the crew (and the audience) context as to why, which makes Zuko a compelling character. We get to piece it out along with them. Here - Iroh just flat out says it. He just says it, multiple times, to hammer in the point that hey, Zuko is Good Actually.

And then there's Iroh. You remember the kindly but powerful man who you can see gently nudging Zuko to his own conclusions? No, he's a pretty insecure dude who just tells Zuko that his daddy doesn't love him a lot and then he kills Zhao. Yeah. Iroh just plain kills Zhao dead. Why?

Iroh's characterization also makes Zuko come off as dumb - not just clueless and deluded, no, actually stupid. He constantly gets told that Iroh loves him and his dad doesn't, and he doesn't have any good answers for that, so he just... keeps on keeping on, I guess? This version of Zuko isn't conflicted and willfully ignorant like the OG, he's just... kind of stupid. He's not very compelling.

In the original, Zuko is well aware of Azula's status as the golden child. It motivates him - he twists it around to mean that he, through constant struggle, can become even stronger than her, than anyone. Here, Zhao tells him that "no, ur dad likes her better tee hee" and it's presented as some kind of a revelation. And then Iroh kills Zhao. I'm sorry I keep bringing that up, but it's just such an unforgiveable thematic fuckup that I have to. In the original, Zhao falls victim to his hubris, and Zuko gets to demonstrate his underlying compassion and nobility when he offers his hand to Zhao. Then we get some ambiguity in Zhao: does he refuse Zuko's hand because of his pride, or is it his final honorable action to not drag Zuko down with him? A mix of both? It's a great ending to his character. Here, he tries to backstab Zuko and then Iroh, who just sort of stood off to the side for five minutes, goes "oh well, it's murderin' time :)"

They mess with the worldbuilding in ways that didn't really need to be messed with. The Ice Moon "brings the spirit world and the mortal world closer together"? Give me a break. That's something you made up, as opposed to the millenia of cultural relevance that the Solstice has. That's bad, guys. You replaced something real with something you just hastily made up. There's a lot of that. We DID NOT need any backstory for Koh, for one. And Katara and Sokka certainly didn't need to be captured by Koh. I could go on and on, but again, this post is already way too long.

It's, um, very disappointing. A lot of telling and not very much showing, and I feel like all of the characters just... sort of end up in the same place they started out in. I feel like we don't see any of the characters grow: they're just told over and over again how they need to grow and what they need to do.

To sum it up: Netflix Avatar is a mile wide, but an inch deep.

[theelvishfiddler]

AN ARTIST'S GUIDE TO HANDS

No, sorry it's actually not an artist's guide to drawing hands. Those are just warmup studies (which I'll talk about in this post.)

This is a guide to Your Hands and how to take care of them when making art.

No one ever sits down and teaches artists how to take care of their hands. They didn’t even teach me this while I was in art college. This is just what I've learned myself through years of pain and scouring the internet for advice.

This is going to be a long one and geared towards illustrative traditional/digital/pen/pencil artists specifically, but artists of other mediums and crafts should take care of their hands too! Well, we all should take care of our bodies in general, but this is about hands.

(advice is below the read more)

First off I'm not a professional or anyone with actual medical advice. I'm just some guy with chronic hand pain who makes art. This advice is free for you to use or discard.

WARMUPS!

Ever sit down in the morning to draw and wonder why your art is so stiff and looks so much worse than what you were drawing last night? It's because you didn't warm up!

You know how for physical sports they all warmup and do stretches before getting into the actual sport. To prevent injuries and all that? Yeah, it's good to do that for art too.

One way to warmup is to just draw lines. Try to keep them as straight as you can. Going up and down and diagonal. Draw squares. Big squares. Small squares. Circles! You are warming up, keep it loose and relaxed! Basically just scribble away.

(examples. I usually keep going until there is no paper white left. This can double as practice for drawing straight lines without a ruler, which is a great skill to have when freehand city drawing.)

Before hopping right into drawing people you can try doing some quick gesture drawings. Line of Action has timed sessions with a large variety of clothed or nude models. I usually do the 30 min class as it has a nice balance of short and long timed poses. The point isn't to draw nice art, but to warm up. Try to get the basic form down, not the details. I find that doing a full class session can really help my drawings feel more loose and grounded in reality for the rest of the day.

Some examples I found in my folders. I suggest looking into what a line of action (not the site) is and giving it a try with some of the studies!

COOLDOWNS!

For sports it's to return your body back to your everyday baseline after a workout.

Example; you are working on a big project! A masterpiece! It's detailed and cool! You have been focusing on this for hours and drawing so intensely. But you need to stop working for the day.

A cooldown is for winding down out of the go go go mindset. Put away the big project and do a couple small doodles and sketches. You are relaxing your hand and letting it stretch out. Keep the sketches loose. Let the art happen slowly. Don't polish anything, that can happen another day. Just ease yourself out of drawing.

...

Cool! Now we get into the meat of this thing.

HAND PAIN

How to avoid it and how to manage it if you already have it.

I love you artists and creatives, I am begging you to please take care of your most important creative tools. I really don't want this to sound like scare tactics like "oooh you better do this or blah blah!" Nope. I just had to learn all this the hard way and I'm extremely passionate about it.

Take this advice or don’t ╮(ﾟ～ﾟ;)╭ I can't tell you what to do, I'm not your dad

Adjustments and Small Solutions

If you are feeling physical discomfort while drawing there are many different solutions to try! Here are some suggestions that may or may not work for you.

Hold your pencil more loosely. Stop gripping that thang so tightly!!! Relax that hand! They make these… squishy pen grip things... I think they are called Adaptive Pencil Grips or Adaptive Writing/Drawing Aids? They stop your hand from being all cramped up by making your drawing tool wider. It's going to take a bit of time to adjust to drawing with it, but it's worth it for those who hold pencils too tightly.

Don't press as heavily. For traditional art, if you find yourself pressing really hard to get darker lines try moving to a softer pencil. Most standard pencils are HB, the B pencils have softer graphite. Experiment until you find the right one for you. For Digital, adjust your pressure settings so you don't have to press as hard to get thicker lines. You should not be pressing so hard all the time, it wears out both your hand and your tablet! It takes a bit of time to adapt to pencil or pressure changes. Try doing some unimportant sketches, they don't have to be good. You are just training your hand and mind to adjust using less pressure.

Draw with your arm and not your wrist! It's small repetitive motions that cause the most strain. You probably hear this one a lot, what does it even mean? It means moving your arm with the motions of your line, and trying not to make too many tiny movements with your just your fingers or wrist. This one is hard! It takes time and conscious thought to change the habit. Tips? Work bigger. Zoom in more. Use bigger sheets of paper.

(Motions exaggerated for a clearer example)

Change the angle of your drawing surface. They make angled tablet holders, angled desks, angled desktop raisers. Experiment, find and angle that is comfortable and the one that causes the least pain. (It's also good to make sure you don't have to hold your head at an uncomfortable angle when drawing. Staring straight down or hunching over a paper flat on the table can cause pain!)

Compression Glove? Wrist brace/tensioners? Some folks use them and I've been thinking of getting one for years now. I can't give advice on this one, because I don't have experience with it. Look into it if you want!

Managing Pain

First things first.

IF YOUR HANDS START TO HURT WHILE YOU ARE DRAWING. STOP! Put the pencil/pen/paintbrush/whatever down. The art will still be there for you to continue tomorrow.

I know from experience that it's extremely hard to pull away when you are hyper focused on an art piece. It's hard to remember all sorts of basic needs like food or bathroom when hyper focused. But you Need to stop when you feel that pain. (Preferably even before the pain…)

Take Breaks! Let your hands rest when you can. Just like a machine, if you don't schedule maintenance, the machine will schedule maintenance for you. Often that means having to wait a few days for it to return to functional. Best to take a day off from heavy usage or take an occasional 30 min break throughout the day to let your hands rest.

Stretching is important! Full body stretches are good; your arms, shoulders, neck, and spine are all connected, but I'm specifically talking about HAND and wrist stretching. There are a lot of stretches and massages for carpal tunnel and arthritis out there. I find they work for hand pain in general. Move into and out of each stretch slowly. Do not push a stretch if it hurts!! Be gentle!!

I am not a qualified professional and I will not be giving out specific stretches (that is beyond my personal comfort level). There are other artists out there who have made helpful stretching info-graphics which are cool, but I will not be because i don't want to be responsible for someone accidentally hurting themself. Ask your doctor for stretches & advice or look some up on your own.

Don't feel bad about forgetting to stretch frequently! Of course it is good to do it regularly and frequently, but I would be a hypocrite if I said that I remember to stretch daily. Setting timers for stop and stretch sessions can work for some people, but also doing stretches whenever you remember is fine! If you are sitting on the toilet you can idly do some hand stretches. On the bus? Laying in bed? At the beach? Do a couple stretches! Even just once a week is better than… nonce a week.

Using Cold or Heat to treat pain. If you really overdid it, put your hands in some cold water or wrap a cloth around an ice pack and apply it to your hand. Cold works best for me, but warmth works for others. This is just pain reduction and reducing inflammation from overuse! This is not a permanent solution.

If your hand hurts a lot! Frequently! Talk to your doctor? Idk mine has never given real advice. Just gently poked my hand and told me there isn't much to be done about it :/ but there are really good doctors out there who will care and give helpful advice!

Again. IF IT HURTS TO CONTINUE DRAWING. STOP DRAWING! This is not a "no pain no gain" type situation. Drawing so much that you hurt yourself isn't noble, it's just… limiting yourself. You only get one set of hands. These things are very handy to have.

Other Advice

Things I couldn't figure out how to fit into the earlier sections.

Your other hand can't handle the strain! Lets say you hurt your drawing hand... the other hand is right there free to use for art. Right? Wrong. Your other hand can't keep up with the demand, it hasn't been trained to the same extent as your dominant hand, it does not have the built up muscle. If you want to use that hand for drawing you are going to have to use it s l o w l y and train it bit by bit over a long period of time. When I tore a tendon in my right hand I decided to just keep drawing with my left and I got Really Good at it. It only took like two months before my left hand hurt too much to move. Then I had 0 functioning hands to pull up my pants. Not fun!!

People who draw on phones. That is extremely impressive! I'm amazed by the things people can create on such a small space. But phone artists are the ones I see most frequently mentioning hand pain. please please please make sure you are taking breaks. Would a stylus work instead of using a finger?

Outside of Drawing. Sometimes it's things outside of drawing that are causing the pain. For me there are multiple sources, but I also have tiny baby hands. Holding a phone too long causes pain. The handheld mode for my Switch causes A Lot of pain. The way my hand rests while typing on my laptop hurts! Playing tense videogames for too long hurts! Find the source of your pain and make some changes. The same things will apply to most; take regular breaks, do some stretches, and find soft things to prop up or rest your arms on.

Change your Artstyle. This one is more of a last resort. You might have to change your art style if you are getting sharp pains every time you draw. I loved drawing tight clean lines and many small fancy details, but drawing like that left me in so much pain at the end of the day. In 2023 I had to take the better part of year off from illustrations just to learn how to sketch and draw more loosely. I had to learn how to be gentle. To stop gripping my pencil so tightly. Learn! Adapt! You might discover a new style that you love even more!

A lot of this stuff gets more complicated in a work setting where you have to draw fast and long in order to get paid. Things like reducing your workload can help, but that can be... financially rough. But outside of that, it’s ok to be a slow artist. Going full steam and hurting yourself is not worth it.

Aaaaaanyway, thats all folks. Today's rant brought to you by me! The guy with chronic hand pain who always forgets to stretch! The guy who got frustrated with a sketch yesterday and decided to push to keep drawing for just one more hour! The guy who woke up this morning and had to spend 2 hours massaging and stretching their hands. The guy who probably shouldn't have typed all of this out because ooww ow ouch

If your hands do hurt, it's going to be ok! You don't need to be a speed demon who draws all the time. It's ok to take your time and take frequent breaks. You are going to do great things! Just be gentle with yourself...

[starlight-bread-blog]

Why Stolas is a Terrible Person/Character

Oh this will be long. In this post I will cover why Stolas is a character that fundamentally fails at everything it tries to accomplish. I probably have to say that you can love Stolas. That's just why I hate him.

Trigger warnings for: Racism, casteism, power dynamics, sexual assault, sa apologism, abuse, and neglectful parenting. A lot, I know, but that's Stolas.

His Actions in S1

Despite the title, there will be two examples from season 2.

Racism/Casteist

Stolas is from the upper caste, a royal. He seem to often fetishize imps, or the fact that he's sleeping with someone who's less than him. I even saw fans pointing this out. He have empathized Blitzø being an imp in a sexual context.

(Notice the use of words: "little", "plaything", to me this is blatant racism and fetishism).

He also showed a certain lack of empathy for his imp butler.

Stolas isn't particularly violent, he doesn't choke people left and right. He's just angry, at Stella, so he decides to.. choke the imp.

Stolas has been dehumanizimg imps. Fetishizing an imp for being an imp, calling him an "impish little plaything", and he has been willing to choke an imp just because he was angry at something unrelated. He's racist and casteist.

Treatment of Blitzø

"Treatment" is putting it lightly. In the first episode, Stolas does something inexcusable that will taint their dynamic for all of season 1. First, he sees Blitzø in a vulnerable position, where he cannot think or negotiate. Thus, stripping him of what little choice he has on what he's about to offer.

What Stolas is saying is, "Fuck me or I'll shut down your business". This deal he makes is just a threat with extra steps. Which, is a real life abuse tactic called Quid Pro Quo:

"Quid pro quo harassment occurs when someone in a position of authority over another directly or indirectly demands sexual favors in exchange for some benefit, or to avoid some detriment in the workplace".

One element I haven't brought up yet, is the political power imbalance. Stolas is royalty, one with a lot of power, influence, credibility, etc. Blitzø has non of that. Other characters have commented on that the fact that Blitzø even has a business is a miracle.

There are so many layers of imbalance and how Blitzø has no choice or agency. A royal is """offering""" the powerless a Quid Pro Quo while he's in a life threatening situation.

And their dynamic looks exactly like you'd imagen. Stolas is consistently sexualizing him against his consent. (As it's been established, Stolas's racism feeds into this). And refuses to do the surface level courtesy, not even calling him his real name (x).

Stolas treats Blitzø as a lesser being, violates his boundries, forces himself on him, and strips him of all autonomy.

Faliure as a Father

Stolas's role as a father is directly tackled in Loo Loo Land and Seeing Stars. At the beginning, both episodes show Stolas being a good father to Octavia, but does this still hold true in the currect day? Well, no.

In Loo Loo Land, Stolas wants to take Octavia to a theme park. Octavia is 17, and Stolas ignores her when she says she doesn't want to go. (In retrospect, Stolas coud be oblivious because he's projecting onto Via his experience meeting Blitzø).

But that's just the start. Stolas then invites Blitzø to the trip and harasses with him all throughout. Essentially, Stolas is forcing his daughter to watch as he harasses "the homewrecker", all the while he's supposed to be with her, on a trip she didn't even want to go to.

After a whole day of this, as expected, Octavia runs away. Stolas chases her. (And of course, he's still thinking of Blitzø on his way to find Via). There's an apology scene that looks deep, but when you dissect it, it's rather empty.

Stolas never actually provided an explanation as to why he just did what he did, nor of the "drama" with Stella. There is nothing here. Octavia only makes up with him because he said he isn't gonna leave her. Which is bare minimum.

After he realizes that his affair hurts his daughter to the point where she feared he's gonna leave her, what does he do? What practical actions does he take to improve? Divorce Stella? Cut off his deal with Blitzø? Explained the situation?

Nothing. And now we see he's willing to stand up on a stage and let people know.

In Seeing Stars, Stolas bashes Via's mother to her. Which, does she know about their situation? Does she not? She isn't shown to hate or.. anything Stella. Is he hiding the situation (which I'll cover), while also trashing her mother? That's impulsive and negligent.

But that's nothing. She later runs away, Stolas is stressed as he should be, but the second they arravie on earth he's all calm and everything's normal.

When his daughter is missing. When he is shown to be stressed, it's for the sake of plot. But he's willing to just chill, watching Blitzø's show.

Stolas is, dare I say it, neglectful. He might care about his daughter, but he's proven that she's not enough of a priority to focus on her when it matters.

Cheating

Yes, I know what ended up being revealed, I'll cover that. In season 1, the relationship is presented to not be perfect before Stolas cheated.

But there were instances that showed that what Stolas did changed their relationship for the worse. (Some additional rebuttals).

It could have been a loveless marrige, they could hae fallen out of love, they could have been arranged. But their relationship was manageable. Love or no love, it's a committed relationship. and Stella didn't deserve to get cheated on.

Who was Stolas?

Stolas's behavior is common among royals. Stella has no problem throwing said butler at Stolas (S1 E2), and the Goetias are shown to be casteist. They're untouchable privileged assholes.

Stolas was born that wealth, never having to suffer the consequences of his actions. Always putting himself first, hurting others. He doesn't mean to, he wants for everyone to be happy, he does care.

However, when it actually matters, he acts on his worst tendecises with no self control. He never had to learn self control. That is, until Ozzie's.

Before Ozzie, Blitzø and Stolas are at obligation. Stolas's actions had tainted them. There was one redeemable moment: He saved Blitzø's life. Stolas did something for him. But this one act of goodness doesn't magically fix anything.

Stolas's family life have been escalating. Stella hated Stolas for cheating and his daughter just had to take it. In Loo Loo Land, he learns the full weight of the damage he caused. And in the next episode we see him, he proceeds to take no steps to improve the situation. In the end of that same episode, we learn that Stella hired an assasin after him. Because he did nothing.

The season 1 finale, Ozzie's, is aware of all of this and absolutly delivers.

The episode starts with seeing Stolas alone, in his big house, miserable. It appears that Stella finally left the house. (Also he later says "Octavia is with her mother this weekend"). He's eating a bowl of cereal, pitying himself, wallowing in his despair. You feel bad for him, he looks so torn down.

And then Blitzø calls. The one he loves, asks him on a serious date. It's hope, it's honest, and it's exactly what he wanted. It's almost as if the universe handed him is fairytale scenario.

Almost. Reality smacks him right in the face on that date. Asmodeus calls him out on losing everything he had. He had a family, a happy daughter, but gave it all up for an affair.

Blitzø calls him out on treating him like a pet, not earning any of that emotional connection he wants or even communicating it, just violating him, they have nothing.

The show held him accountable and called him out. While it's not perfect, Stolas is a morally grey character. Now, a character arc was set up where he learns to treat people better. Stolas is exactly the character I want to see from a show like Helluva Boss. He's a horrible person, but nuanced, who does care.

Season 2

Yeah... all of that is thrown out the window. Because apparently, Stolas is just imperfect. He simply made a lot of mistakes. He misread a lot of situations, really it's all just an accident. He's an oblivious victim. So, let's get into the woobification of Stolas.

Surrounded by Evil

In The Circus we're given Stolas's ✨️backstory✨️. And we find out he had such a terrible life.

Stella is, and always was, an abusive evil bitch. From the day she was born. Pure evil.

So you see, Stolas did nothing wrong. Let me be clear, you are not obligated to stay loyal to your abuser. We can erase "cheater" off the list. But that's the only reason why it's done. So we can erase that off the list, and that we could feel oh-so-sad for him.

Because Stella isn't written to be an abuser. She's a cartoonishly evil. We see a picture of her as a kid where she's the same person. Spongebob villians have more depth than her, you know, the abuser in the adult show.

Helluva Boss reversed an established dynamic where Stella is the victim and Stolas is at fault, except without any of the depth or nuance.

But that's not all. Stolas's dad (Paimon) is also neglectful. By "neglectful" I mean, of course, a Saturday-morning cartoon villain.

He doesn't remember his name. This is such bullshit. I can buy Stolas having a horrible father. It's also not bad to show Stolas's trauma. What is bad is that the subject matter is handled with less seriousness as the fish fight in Spring Broken. And Helluva Boss did write Crimson as a serious abuser, the episode did have comedy, but not Paimon.

The reason why all of this is happening, is so we could feel bad for Stolas. They do zero of the work to earn a good story about abuse, but still go "Do you see how sad he is? Look at how they're treating this poor baby!!"

"Recontextualization"

In said ✨️backstory✨️, we also learn that Stolas and Blitzø are childhood friends. But also not really, they just hung out for one day. Where did this come from? How does that enrich the characters? I would tell you, but I don't know. However, what I'm sure of, is that it's done to make Stolas look less problematic.

DO YOU SEE HOW CUT THIS IS? He isn't just horny for that imp, he is special, it's absoultly pure! Don't worry, totally safe.

Later in the flashback, we see how Blitzø and Stolas reconnected after over 20 years. Apparently... Blitzø was the one who sexually manipulated Stolas, selling him that he wants him.

All Stolas did was just buying into Blitzø's narrative he was imposed on. It's a role he leaned into, because he thought Blitzø liked it. I.. WHAT???

If this horseshit is true, why did he make this weird r*pe deal with Blitzø? If Blitzø was the one who acted like he's interested at first, and he was sexually exploiting him, why did he lash out at Stolas in Ozzie's? Did it just hold no weight for Stolas? It went from "Don't pretend to have something when you've been harassing me this whole time" to "You misunderstood".

The Stolitz backstory makes no sense, it's cheap, and fixes nothing. No matter what the story is trying to sell, in season 1 Stolas knew what's happening enough to try to force it. And maybe Stolas wanted Blitzø because of a connection, he still harassed, dehumanized and violated him.

Note: Stolas realizing "he imagened the relationship" is completely ignored one episode later in Seeing Stars. This is a huge deal, didn't he learn? Just further evidence that he's willing to violate the guy. (x)

Before this backstory, we had a story of a selfish man hurting the person he loves while explointing the broken system and the power that he has over him for his own selfish desires that he's forcing on him. Now, we have the same thing, but with fanfic tropes – and the story refuses to confront that.

Casteism is Brushed Off

Helluva Boss pretends that Stolas isn't racist, because he didn't want Blitzø for being an imp, but for being his fanfic trope childhood friend. Which fails to adress the disgusting fetishism of Blitzø for being an imp, and he also continued to dehumanize his imp butler in Seeing Stars. He's still racist.

Imperfect Father

In The Circus, Stolas devivers this line: "The only reason I have endured your constant insults and cruelty, was for that girl to have a normal life".

Sounds impressive, he stayed all these years just for his daughter. But that's the thing – it sounds impressive. Every time their relationship is the focus, Stolas is being the scum of the earth. What I see here, is a person. A person who despite being willing to stay passive, acts on his his selfish wants, forgetting to look around him. Mind you, this fact is also being revealed one episode after Ozzie's.

But no, one episode later, in Seeing Stars – that was covered as a prime example of everything I just descriped – Loona says this:

Yeah. He's just a good father "trying" his "best" and makes some.. "mistakes". The Circus did present Stolas as this, but Seeing Stars really solidified how his parenting will be handled moving forward. And I think it's comlete and utter dogshit.

Damsel in Distress

The title is a bit misleading. This section is mainly about Stolas's power being toned down. Both magical and in presentation.

In season 1, he was energetic and enthusiastic, while being able to set his foot down and intimidate when needed. He's still all of those things, but in some instances his characterization made my raise an eyebrow.

In Seeing Stars, he's being weirdly gentle with people kidnapping Blitzø and are later beatting him.

In Oops, he's excited to start negotiating with literal kidnappers. I have no idea why he's so nice.

(He did harass Blitzø again in Seeing Stars and bashed Striker, all of which isn't soft, but it's also the two moments where he should have shut up).

Further more, both of these conflict rely on Stolas not using his powers for some reason or another. Why didn't he just do whatever he did in Truth Seekers to track Fizz/Via?

About Via, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on the "My powers are limited on earth" nonsense because, for starters, kid Stolas is shown to remember the contents of his books and now he's been studying them for years. And two,

There is no excuse for Stolas to not use his powers and whenever the show says otherwise it's bullshitting its way out of it.

Even in Western Energy, before Stolas gets captured he was just aimlessly going in and out of his demon form. Why didn't he turn him into stone like he did in Loo Loo Land?

Stolas has been presented as weaker than he is. He's made to look more vulnerable, less "above it all". He was untouchable, and when he wasn't, it had a harder impact and made sense. Now, I almost forgot he's a powerful demon.

And his characterization is at the core of this issue. At times he's just so kind and gentle with people who should get smacked in their heads.

What about Ozzie's

The big clash, the one that called Stolas out on everything, the one that set him on a genuine path to grow, what about it? How is it adressed while the show tries to pretend he's a good person?

No, not the message Stolas is looking at, the ones in the background he just scrolled through.

I'm not breaking this down. I refuse. The only reason I put it here is to show how fast it goes. I'm not touching that.

Who is Stolas

Stolas is a moral scapegoat – "a character that is bad, but the book/movie/show portrays them as good". It's characterized by the story twisting itself to make one character look good.

Stolas didn't start out as one, but became one over one season premire and it just kept escalating from there.

Helluva Boss takes place in Hell. A horrible place filled with horrible people, the root of all evil. Stolas fits right in there. He was already problematic, awful, fed into Helll's broken system. Why trying to cover up his faults? It's Hell, and it was great. But now, we're supposed to pretend he's just flawed.

With the show actively ignoring everything he did, what's left for him? What does he have to learn? How will he grow as a person? How will he improve? What's his character arc? It's nothing. Because everything that happens to him isn't his fault, and at times could just be solved with one conversation.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hm..im kinda shy about asking this, because maybe it's just an english language thing that i don't get (it's not my first language lol) but ive always wondered what the difference between "prefect" and "housewarden" was,, like, wouldn't the mc/yuu technically also be a housewarden, since they're the only one running ramshackle? aaa sorry if it's a bit of a silly question lol, but i just don't understand the difference,,, thank you, and i love your work very much!! 🩷🩷

So to clarify, Yuu is called 監督生 (“kantoku-sei/kantoukusei”), which roughly translates into “prefect”. Dorm leaders (or housewardens, as they are called in EN) are called 寮長 (“ryōchō”), which refers to “dormitory managers/leaders/superintendents”. The two positions are treated very differently in-game (and generally, prefect is NOT the same as a dorm leader), but it may be different in real life depending on the institution you’re looking at for comparison.

As I've mentioned in this post, I see dorm leaders as NRC's version of RAs (resident advisors/assistants). They’re students who work with school administration to oversee and to conduct activities for their respective dorm buildings/residence halls […] Similarly, the dorm leaders in TWST have certain responsibilities but are also granted power within their own dorm as well as certain privileges which extend beyond that. Common duties of a RA (I'll list some examples from TWST) include, but are not limited to:

Organizing and overseeing student educational programs and dorm activities (Riddle helps his students study to avoid failing, including Cater in Riddle's Dorm Uniform vignettes; he states that not a single Heartslabyul student has dropped out since he has become dorm leader. Various activities are orchestrated by dorm leaders, such as unbirthday parties, renting out their dorm for events, throwing banquets, etc.)

Planning accommodations for students and conducting new student orientations (dorm leaders canonically assign rooms to their dorm members, the prologue shows the dorm leaders escorting newly sorted freshmen to their dorms and showing them around, etc.)

Cleaning up and conducting monthly facility inspections (under the instruction of the dorm leader, members help with setting up and cleaning after events)

Enforcing rules and regulations, reporting incidents and recommending or enacting disciplinary actions as needed, and resolving conflicts between students in the dorm (most obviously seen with Riddle collaring students in the main story, but we've also seen other instances like Leona and Idia dealing with unruly mob students from their own dorms, each in their respective Dorm Uniform vignettes)

Acting as a liaison or representative between the school and students, or between the school and the community (Vil and Riddle especially stress the importance of their dorm members keeping in line, as it reflects poorly on them as the leaders if their students do not behave)

As you can see, many of the duties of a RA are carried out by TWST's dorm leaders. It is these responsibilities that define what a "dorm leader" is. A prefect is described by the Oxford Dictionary as “a senior student authorized to enforce discipline”. The definition implies that a prefect has fewer responsibilities and power than a RA (ie a dorm leader). We see this lack of responsibilities and power reflected in Yuu (who, again, is often called "prefect" in characters' voiced lines place of their name). For example, Yuu is NOT present in dorm leader meetings and does not participate in planning committees for events such as the cultural festival of book 5 or the interdorm tournament of book 2.

It is likely that Yuu is not acknowledged in the same capacity as a dorm leader for various reasons:

Yuu is not a full student (Grim is their "other half) and lacks magical capabilities at a school that is known for training mages. They are also not from Twisted Wonderland. Therefore, they are not a good "representative" of NRC.

Ramshackle is no longer considered a dormitory since it has fallen into disrepair; even if it was still considered a dormitory, Yuu has no students to watch over since the Ramshackle Ghosts are not students and Grim only counts as half of a student.

Since Ramshackle is not a dorm anymore, it likely does not receive funding for dorm-wide activities, maintenance, etc. Yuu has very few resources to do anything.

Yuu does not command any real authority through their title alone (which largely has to do with their status as a non-mage + otherworldliness and the “illegitimate” nature of their dorm); even the main cast has to be shown their merits through actions before Yuu earns a modicum of their respect.

If we put it like that, Yuu's only formal prefect responsibilities are to basically to keep Grim out of trouble and do whatever odd jobs Crowley saddles them with. I guess you can also say that Yuu "enforces discipline" on the NRC students when they get out of hand, but this depends on your interpretation of what Yuu does in the main story. In my opinion, Yuu does very little to actually "enforce discipline" and often relies on other students to do the heavy lifting for them; Yuu is just the one initially sniffing out the root of the problems.

It should also be noted that while the formal definition of "prefect" refers to a "senior" student, Yuu is considered a first-year student along with Grim. Seniority does not play a role here. (Although please keep in mind that being a "first year" does not necessarily mean Yuu is 16 by default; there are exceptions to the age = grade thing.)

In summary, dorm leaders are presented in TWST as generally "higher up" on the food chain compared to a prefect. They have more powers and tasks to carry out; the prefect, by comparison, does not.

[blitzwhore]

I just saw Blitzø get called Stolas stockholm victim I can't with this fandom anymore😭

😂 As outrageously incorrect and stupid as that take is, I'm going to go on a tangent here. I hope you don't mind.

I think every fandom has annoying people with awfully terrible takes in it. People with zero media literacy. People who hatewatch. People who think they're entitled to the exact show they would've wanted, which has nothing to do with the actual, existing show.

This is especially true for queer media, and especially true for queer cartoons. (Hi, yes. I was active in the Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Voltron, and She-Ra fandoms when those shows were airing, respectively. I've seen some stuff). Some people just can't handle queer cartoons, period. If the queer characters/ships are soft and wholesome, they're infantilising and boring, and if they're complex and nuanced and actually have conflict, they're abusive and problematic. You'll hear the same recycled arguments over and over again. Like, the shit some people are saying about Blitz and Stolas after The Full Moon? Is literally almost word-for-word what they said about Catra and Adora post-season 3 of She-Ra (and even at the end of the show).

Here's the thing, though! Those people and their bad takes are not what I want to think about what I think about a fandom. Those aren't the people I want to call the fans. They don't deserve that title. Not when so many other people are out there dedicating their time to making gifs and art and meta posts, and writing fic, and commenting/reblogging to show support, and sliding into people's DMs to scream and squee together about a thing they love.

At the end of the day, "fandom" is just a lot of people each doing their own thing. Which people you engage with and allow to stay within your line of sight will determine your fandom experience. Fandom can be a huge, convoluted, online space full of people who are constantly arguing with one another and whose takes make you unfathomably angry... Or it can be you and your 5 friends and mutuals who scream gleefully at one another in 2-note posts. You can't control what others post online, but you can control your engagement with it.

How? Well, here's what I personally do to avoid getting upset by people's stupid opinions online:

Filter 'critical' and 'anti' tags (eg. #anti stolitz #anti vivziepop #Helluva Boss critical #HB critical #vivziepop critical). Many people actually do tag their critical posts because they know it's the respectful thing to do!

If I come across a post that has one or more of those tags, obviously, I don't click through to see it under any circumstances.

If I stumble across a stranger's untagged post with hate/criticism that upsets me: I stop reading and BLOCK. Immediately. I don't look back. I don't finish reading. I don't engage. I just block block block. I <3 the block button, seriously.

If I feel my mind reeling from a bad take I just came across: I take a step back, close my phone, breathe, remember life is beautiful sometimes. Go back and watch an episode I really like. Clean my living space a little. Vent about it to a friend (but only if I really need to, because if not, I'd rather not dwell on it).

If I'm starting to feel the need to reply to someone's bad take (directly or via my own post), I instead make the decision to channel that energy into making fandom posts out of love. (I don't do this just with fandom. If I see something transphobic online, I usually react by reblogging a bunch of trans art or trans positivity posts on my main, for example). I like to think of it as putting some positivity out into the world to compensate for the negativity I just saw. So, for example, if I see someone shitting on my blorbo, I may make a silly post just saying how much I love blorbo. Or I'll make (or draft) a post about how interesting I find some of blorbo's actions. Or reblog another person's positive/interesting post about blorbo.

And finally, I stay the hell away from Twitter. Or at least, if I go on Twitter, I try my best to avoid any tweet that has text in it instead of just art. Even the people who have good opinions spend too much time arguing with the people who have bad opinions on there. I don't want to see people's bad takes! No, not even while reading founded and perfectly articulated criticism of those bad takes! So I just limit my time on Twitter. And again, if someone is putting bad takes on my TL (even if it is to counter them), I unfollow and block as needed.

All this to say, yes, it really fucking sucks to read the opinions of people who don't understand and who hate the characters and ships and worlds you love. Gosh it's the worst. But you can curate your fandom experience. You can focus on the things you can control. You have the power to decide if your fandom experience is draining or fun!

And because I don't know how to finish this, here, have a Stolitz kiss to heal you:

We will keep winning and there's nothing the haters can do about it. 😌

[linktotheheart]

I feel like so many people misunderstand BOTW/TOTK Link especially (Zelda too, but that's another topic entirely)

His lack of expressiveness IS a personality trait. It's a direct result of the pressure on his soldiers to be a perfect soldier, hero, and savior. No, he's not Skyward Sword Link, and never will be, because his story is completely different.

"But [other Link] hugged Zelda when he got her back!" and this Link maintained a respectful distance as his princess's subordinate - but ALSO out of respect for Zelda as a person, because she spent her whole childhood having her agency denied and he wants to let her initiate even something as simple as platonic contact whenever possible. He's being kind!

(And yes, I know that primarily only the "he is a knight and she is a princess" part is directly supported in the actual game, but I'll remind the people making comparisons that the dynamic was COMPLETELY different in their favorite comparison game, Skyward Sword. But also... look at the gentleness with which Link interacts with Zelda, the tenderness that he shows so few other characters - Mipha probably being the closest example. Look at the way he looks to her first to see what to do in every scene they're in together, unless he's protecting her from an immediate threat to her life. Notice how outside of that, Zelda IS usually the one to initiate any physical contact)

I also personally hate it when people describe quiet, not very expressive people as "lacking personality" because... my partner IRL is like that. If she expressed herself at all around most people, it's in a very flat, reserved way. I've seen how it hurts her that people treat her like she doesn't have a personality, like she isn't even a full person - and I know that's real life and Zelda is fiction, but come on, do you think all the people that aren't highly expressive and extroverted don't hear that about very popular characters and internalize it?

Being reserved is a personality trait. Being cautious and not impulsive is a personality trait. In fact, I'd even say just because you as an expressive, extroverted person see Link as a blank slate to project your own personality onto, doesn't mean he actually is or was even intended that way.

(I also think this is a very US-centric point of view, honestly. There's plenty of cultures where even BOTW Link would be considered at least close to average - Finnish culture specifically comes to mind, even if he's still slightly exaggerated in that regard as, y'know, a character.)

Idk, this is as much a silly little vent post as anything, it's not that serious, etc, but whatever

(and don't get me started on "oh Zelda got no agency in TOTK and she learned the powers she was struggling overnight". No, it's called a time skip, and just because she learned her powers before the 13th hour this time - which yeah, she would get them easier this time with a mentor who could actually use the same powers, and having already learned to use her light powers - doesn't mean it just "happened overnight". And... she didn't express agency? She was actively influencing the entire flow of the timeline, changing the actions of her ancestors by convincing her ancestors to act, learning to control her powers and fighting Ganondorf, and finally expressing the ultimate form of autonomy in choosing to sacrifice herself to save the world. Some of the criticisms of TOTK didn't even seem to play the same game. Just because a heroine isn't a pop feminist badass who *gasp* wears pants and easily and perfectly kicks every villain's ass, doesn't mean she "has no agency" and is being sidelined. Like, a princess engaging in courtly politics is neither powerless nor "doing nothing")

[blueteller]

Greetings oh wise one! I come asking for advice/analysis.

How would you describe the type of chaos Cale starts? Like, is there a play by play of Cale’s usual migraine inducing shenanigans?

"Oh wise one" - that's a new one haha! I'll try my best for you~! 💖

In the past, I made short joke posts on Cale's typical step-by-step MO, like: "scam, loot, destroy", or "fight with overwhelming advantage, run, smack them in the back". And while those steps are hilarious and quite accurate – since you've asked for an analysis, let's dive a little deeper into the subject.

First of all, why is Cale's personal brand of chaos so enjoyable? Simple; it's because it's always targeted at people who 100% deserve it. Civilian casualties? Not an option with Cale in charge. This man takes his 10+ years zero casualties record completely seriously.

And no, there are no exceptions to this. While at first it might seem impossible – for example there were times when Cale and his group attacked buildings with servants in them or destroyed whole ships with crew on board – and it can make you wonder, weren't any innocent workers there? But no. If you look closely, any time there were any civilians involved (any people who weren't onto the whole murder and torture thing the bad guys were doing), Cale made sure to either capture, evacuate, or leave them alone. From the first heist with Choi Han when they freed Raon, to the Unranked Monster battle at Puzzle City, or heck even robbing the Sekka estate, they always made sure to not kill the civilians. Even with the battle ship, I'm 100% certain there were only armed people on board, prepared to be the ones who would murder civilians without hesitation. Cale left no chances of innocent people getting hurt.

That's what makes his MO so wonderful. Because Cale only screws over those who deserve it. Of course, Cale doesn't see it like that. From his perspective, what he's doing is "vicious", so he must be the bad guy. And while his MO is definitely ruthless… It only matches the weight of the crime of his opponents. Cale only gets involved and makes a s***show when he is really pissed off. And by pissed off, I specifically mean innocent people getting hurt. Because that's what it all comes down to, really. He can delude himself and claim he's doing it for profit, but there's nothing wrong with profiting off well done work. He never cheats his allies off their right rewards, either. Despite him being so chaotic with his actions, he... never actually does anything that crosses the line.

(Yeah you could try and argue that torture crosses the line, but uh… At least Cale never ordered torture for personal pleasure? The first time it was to help a child heal from their trauma, and every other times since it was to extract information from particularly nasty and stubborn murder cultists. It might be morally grey of me, but I don't believe it was wrong of him. That's a matter of personal opinion of course.)

So, the starting point is always Cale facing people who pissed him off through messing with innocents in some way.

It can't be some petty political squabble either, Cale doesn't mess with those – remember how he reacted when the King of Whipper Kingdom wanted to agree and give up 100,000 citizens of his country to Adin, just to save his own skin? Raon offered to loot the king's safe… and Cale totally could have done that out of pettiness? But Cale left it alone, because it never came to that. So yeah, Cale only messes with those who already hurt people on a large scale, not just crooks or cowards. Even the bandits who messed with the Super Rock Villa entrance, he just had the leader beat up and made them work for him – he even had them formally employed and educated. Which honestly, probably improved their living conditions drastically, now that I think about it. …Cale is such a freaking softie, I swear.

But we're going off track – Cale and his specific brand of "migraine inducing chaos", that's the main topic here.

First, Cale always gets information. Who are his opponents? What have they done? What kind of powers they have? What dirt does he have on them? Where is their money located? Stuff like that.

Next, there's the planning & preparation phase. However, we rarely see that part because of the "no repetition rule" of storytelling. The only time we ever see characters make plans and explain them to their allies is when things are about to go south. In case of TCF, we only ever find out what kind of plan Cale has is when either 1) it's already ongoing 2) something went wrong and Cale wonders how it happened, for example when Cale set up the trap for the White Star in the Dark Elf city.

Then, with a solid plan and allies all prepared, Cale infiltrates the combat zone. Be it Real Arm uniform, priest get-up, pretending to work for some unnamed scary higher-up; you get the idea. Even during open-field battles like the Maple Castle, Cale made sure to have multiple hidden assets and key players disguised. It's a very important part of his MO; making sure he and his allies are as safe as they can possibly be.

Once everybody deals with their designated obstacles, be it simple head smashing or straight up scamming his opponents, Cale loots stuff. Sometimes the looting comes before the combat for the element of surprise, but usually combat happens as a distraction for looting anyway. Naturally, this is the part Cale enjoys the most, because according to Cale's logic, nothing feels as good as pissing off the people who pissed you off first. Not to mention how money is extremely useful, and Cale whole deal is that he always makes sure to take full advantage of anything and everything he finds useful – be it people or treasures. Classic Cale behavior, really.

After the looting stage, here comes the destruction! This part gotta be Raon's favorite, as he's usually in charge of it. Considering how his first destruction spree happened without Cale's input – the cave he was trapped in – I think it's a natural draconic trait lol. Everything that cannot be looted and can be still useful to the enemies must be demolished, that's the rule. After all, the revenge can only be complete when the enemies are left totally furious and powerless.

As for clean-up… pfff, what clean-up? Cale doesn't do clean up! That's the job for the janitor- I mean his dear Hyung-nim 🤣 I bet it's Cale second favorite part about making a huge mess; that he doesn't have to clean it up himself thanks to Alberu hahaha

So, a general play-by-play of Cale's chaotic shenanigans goes something like this:

Cale finds out there are troublemakers "messing up his slacker life", aka. people are getting hurt and his soft, squishy heart cannot ignore it

he gathers his team, info and gets down to planning

cue in hilarious scamming and Mission Impossible flavored undercover shenanigans

looting for fun and profit

destruction mostly for fun but also profit

when things go awry, Cale gets to overuse his Ancient Powers and spill blood like chocolate fountain spills chocolate at fancy events, it's just the same never-ending cycle really 🤣

retreat if necessary, but that rarely happens (I think couple of times throughout the whole series, really)

the enemies are left furious and/or utterly defeated

Cale's fam is left generally more worried over Cale being reckless again, than whatever epic chaos is going on around them, causing lots of delightful misunderstandings and comedic moments as a result

Alberu Crossman gets a headache once again

…aaaand that about sums it up! 💖

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Dialogue Tags and Action Beats, Pacing and Scene Development; a Brief Overview

I've seen a few "dialogue tags to use instead of 'said'" posts now, but most of the tags provided by these posts are trying too hard and are much more distracting than "said" would be. "I'll kill you," he declared; "It's okay," she exonerated; He remarked, "He shouldn't have done that." These are clunky to varying degrees, and if you don't recognize that now, you will with practice.

The truth of the matter is that "said" is pretty much always blank space that the reader will skim over without a second thought. It's maybe the only word we have with this function, and it should be treated as such! So why don't we use dialogue tags that add meaning to the dialogue? Something like "argued," "rejoiced," "remarked"? You can, and these should be used now and then (maybe not "rejoiced"), but overusing them weights down the prose, and in general, they should be replaced by action beats or description.

In much the same way adverbs and adjectives should be avoided if the noun they modify already has the qualities of its modifier, wordy dialogue tags should be avoided if you can show the character's emotions through other means. Dialogue tags are telling; action beats and description are showing. Look at these examples:

He remarked, "I can't believe it's not butter."

His eyebrows rose. "I can't believe it's not butter."

"I told you not to do it," she cried.

Her body shook; words rasped her throat. "I told you not to do it."

"Cried" and "remarked" here aren't bad, but they are weaker than they could be. In the first example, "remarked" indicates tone, but it doesn't do anything else. "His eyebrows rose" indicates tone and also develops the scene. It places the character in the reader's mind's eye, and we understand how that specific character reacts to margarine. How would a different character react differently? This dialogue feels embodied; it belongs to a specific body, a specific host. The second example is embodied too, and a little flowery, though not excessively so. We see how a character reacts to whatever "it" is, and we aren't told how they react. How does she cry in the first sentence?

The debate about dialogue tags, however, misunderstands what tags are actually for. Probably 10% of it is imbuing meaning where there is none (a simple word like "whisper" is a great replacement for "said" when used with restraint), but 90% of it is about tempo/flow/beat/pacing/whatever you want to call it. Read these sentences:

She said, "This is none of your business, and you aren't telling anyone about it."

"This is none of your business," she said, "and you aren't telling anyone about it."

"This is none of your business, and you aren't telling anyone about it," she said.

These sentences convey the same information, but to the careful ear, they carry a world of difference. The first reads snippy, like a terse command; the second gives some added gravity to the second half of the quote, landing hard on the last clause; the third one may be effective if the character is responding immediately to something another character said, since there isn't anything to preface the dialogue, and there's nothing halting it in the middle. All this happens in the two syllables of "she said." Use this word to affect the flow of your writing; use this word to affect how people read your writing. Another sin of other dialogue tags is that they may have too high of a syllable count to warrant use. "He expostulated" is a wild distraction from otherwise smooth prose. "She interrupted" is also clunkier than just having the character interrupt with your choice of dialogue tag/action beat placement or omission. In general, I'd be wary of any dialogue tag longer than two syllables.

Wordy dialogue tags can also be avoided by seeding description in your conversation scenes! Just as the world still operates when we have conversations, so too should it for your characters. Here's an exchange from a story I wrote:

He smiled. “Sleep well?” “Girls were up late.” “Is that a yes—” “No. I didn’t sleep.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “They were screeching.” The crowd caught up with them, swallowed them, and they were carried along the cement. “Oh.” Carmen paused. “Sorry.” “It’s okay.” “Is it all bad?” Bodies shifted in the crowd, and Piper glimpsed Beatrice again. Familiarity warmed her chest. Here was the world outside the camp; here was everything Piper knew. She stood between Beatrice and Carmen and lived again in band class, lived again on the bus home, let public streams flood her roots and grow her as a social monolith, an independent and undisputed landmark in her social circles. But at camp, she was little more than Beatrice’s friend, than Carmen’s apocryphal lover. “It’s not all bad,” she said. “Bea is here. And you.”

Description can easily mold into a character's internal monologue, as it does here. You can also go straight to the monologue if you'd like:

Was she sad, Piper thought, or coy? No, it was the start of a joke. “You didn’t think you were a big deal?” But Beatrice didn’t smile. “I didn’t think people cared that much.” She drew her hands close on the table, covered right with left, and looked into her knuckles. This was defeat, Piper recognized. Beatrice conceded, but of her own will. Piper won, but her score was sour, and Beatrice seemed to crumple her arms into the abject statue of her body. And Piper felt as she never had before, as if a storm of locusts ate at the border of her stomach, as if her skin turned to deep and polluted waters, as if moving one hand or twitching one muscle would irrevocably alter the course of life; the drumming of a finger would set off some idle paranoia in Beatrice, or a sniff of the nose would throw her from the wide window, drop her thirty feet down the wooded hill, and crack herself in two on the base of an implacable oak. This was grief, Piper felt, or something approximating it, something resembling internally a dark and blank horizon, something feeling as a stone feels in a pond whose size may only house that stone, something taking shape in the woman before Piper, shrinking now to a girl, now to someone uninspiring in a world of couplets. Piper sat still, because she did not know how to affect the world without ending it. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Imagine if the second example read:

"You didn't think you were a big deal?" Piper said.

Beatrice frowned. "I didn't think people cared that much."

Piper frowned because Beatrice was sad. "I'm sorry."

Much weaker! Why is the description so long in the second example? Because it's a big emotion! In the world of pacing, big things get big descriptions. In both examples, you feel exactly what the characters are feeling, even though I never used a dialogue tag besides "said." And I used "said" a few times to affect the pacing, which adds to how you perceived the characters. You understood the characters because stronger, more descriptive, more pacing-aware things replaced what could've been clunky tags.

Still, you can do whatever you want with tags, beats, and description. I've read incredible prose with zero tags and sparse beats, prose with paragraphs of beats and plenty of tags, and anything in between. It's all a matter of style, which is to say, experiment! Writers will be stubborn and say things like, "I don't use anything besides 'said' in my prose" or "I'll never use 'said' in my prose again," but neither of those are your personal style. They're declarations that you'll die on this hill you don't fully comprehend, to take a stand on an idea you've never genuinely played with. Go full maximalist; go full minimalist; find what feels right for the pacing you want to incorporate into your style, and recognize how pacing changes depending on the context and content of a scene. Nearly every word is permissible somewhere, it's just a matter of finding the right scene for it. And "said" is permissible always.

[illym]

Hi, hello, if you like reading about localization choices be sure to check below the cut because I Had Fun Here (not being sarcastic. It was enjoyable learning about vinegar in Japan).

Translation Assistance: @masked-and-doomed + @solradguy

ID in alt.

Cleaned and original comics below the cut.

Specific Assistance:

@.masked-and-doomed: transcribed what I couldn't pick up.

@.solradguy: Verified the translation of what the npc was saying in panel 4, offered a line for it.

Fun fact: The Japanese department of a college all got together to work on this one.

I hated redrawing the back of Ky's head. I'm glad I was able to hide most of it behind the text (lol).

Anyway, let's get on with the localization (and process) discussion!

In the original text of this comic, Ky was drinking vinegar.

"But Illym," you ask, face twisted in confusion, "Huh? Who drinks vinegar as a drink for fun? Is the joke that being compared to Robo-Ky made him go mad and believe that vinegar is delicious? Did you change the joke? Why are you writing me to be so verbose?"

I'm a very verbose person. To answer the rest of your questions, here's what DeepL gave me when I put the transcript in.

[

npc:

Captain… it's only the body that gets soft from drinking vinegar.

ky:

I… This is for your health!

npc:

If you drink it without diluting it, you'll get a stomach ache.

]

At first, I assumed that DeepL has misinterpreted some other drink as vinegar, such as cider, sake, or general alcohol. In this example, even, it translated Ky as saying "For your health" when within context he should obviously be saying "For my health".

I went to [ https://jpdb.io/ ] to check the line. Lo and behold, it still translated as vinegar. Hm. By this point, I'm fairly sure it's a cultural thing that I'll have to localize, but I try to be thorough in these things as, again, I don't understand the language and rely on machine translation. I search up vinegar in English in jpdb and find the Japanese character there immediately. So it's obviously the same word, not a messy translation.

My next course of action is to look up "drinking vinegar japan".

To summarize, according to the articles/blog posts I read, the process of making vinegar is just adding an extra step to the process of making sake. After that, if it's to be drinking vinegar, it's blended with sweeteners such as honey or fruit.

It's an extremely old drink in Japan, and it's seen as a health drink there (along with, I assume, being pretty tasty). You should go read up on it yourself.

But in the western world, drinking vinegar is... Not a big thing. While I could leave it as is and just write a translators note explaining the drink, I decided that given that Ky is French and Japan has been exploded for ~100 years, it would be more lore accurate to have him drink something else. If it was Anji or Baiken, I would have left it.

Also, it's more enjoyable and easier to understand to make it ambiguously alcohol instead of requiring a 4 paragraph explanation.

So to localize, I removed mention of vinegar and made the joke into Ky drinking too much alcohol. The NPC's worries apply to alcohol as well as drinking vinegar (drinking it makes you soft, it affects your body poorly, drinking too much is Seen as bad for your health) so it made for the smoothest change.

As I write this, I'm debating whether to add a translators note between panels saying that the bottle reads 'vinegar'... It'll get people curious, at least!

Original translation of the comic below.

[noneorother]

The grand unified theory of Good Omens S2, Hangs on a double meaning - Answering why .5 + .5 = 25 lazerii *The end?*

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 l Part 5 l The end?

Welcome to the end of the Bonkers Meta Series featuring your favourite Art Director/Clue detective. This is it! I'm going to wrap up this series as well as I can with what I think really happened, the final 15 and why Crowley says the things he says. Meta, Spoilers, Beware! All that. “Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don't let you go around again until you get it right.” 

If you've read my Metatron post you'll know that I thought there were *at least* two time loops with tweaks to achieve different outcomes, seeing as we seemed to be presented with two versions of events a lot of the time, two similar lines of dialogue, double meanings for lines etc etc. If you want a really good recap of a lot of the Clues that have already been compiled already you can go through them here. Yesterday I added my own : The columns in front of the bookshop get stained by a demon, and the stain stays and goes. But why do we care?

Here's my final thesis using the context I'll put together below :

The Metatron is changing the past and the present on earth using the book of life. He's forced a time loop of the last few days at least 50 times over a period of (realtime) months to get the outcome he wants : the separation of Aziraphale and Crowley to allow him to complete the second coming. It only worked once. Let me explain.

1) Not time skips, but stitched loops

My theory about the columns goes like this : a demon touches the right column in the attack on the bookshop, and dirties it. The problem is, in every episode we get multiple versions of the column that are dirtier or cleaner. Why? Because a demon has been touching that column in *more or less* the same place and getting it dirty over time, but the effects on the bookshop only layer every loop and reset, instead of being erased. The layering aspect is super important and I'll get back to it. For now, if we take it that the column gets dirtier over many loops, we now know what we are seeing : a bunch of different time loops stitched together to create a sense of time moving forward in a way that we can understand the story, but that skip forward and backward through the loops. Cleaner column = earlier loop. Here's discussion about clock hands if you want evidence, some even saying the hour hand seems to be going backwards in the first episode or the last, or even that the minute and hour hands must be backwards to make sense. If we think of time skipping ever forward and actions getting deleted (as some have said), then clocks going backwards makes no sense. But if we think about it as a time loop where things and actions are ever being tweaked and changed, then OF COURSE the times won't make sense anymore. People don't show up at the same time if they don't do the same thing they did before. The biggest time discrepancies I've seen in a single scene are A) Crowley's phone and watch being an hour apart in S2E1 and B) Inside the bookshop between Gabriel's fly flashback in S2E6 and him and Beez holding hands, there's an hour difference on the clock. I think that by the time we get to very late loops, some things are happening up to an hour later in the day. A simple example we are shown up top is the Eccles cakes. They are there in the first part of S2E1, but then they are no longer there somewhere along the way. In the first loop we see an ordering action/receiving Eccles cakes action, which takes *longer* than just not doing that and going straight to the shop, so that loop will be slightly later. It gets infinitely more complicated the more loops you are looking at, and we have at least 50 of them. How do I know that?

2) A 25 lazerii miracle

If we know that effects on the bookshop are cumulative and don't reset (because columns), then let's try this idea on for size : Aziraphale and Crowley have been performing the same half miracles on the same spot for 50+* loops, and each times they are layering and getting stronger. .5 demon + .5 angel = .5 angelic miracle x 50*ish loops = 25 lazerii miracle goes off in heaven on the latest loop. Shax then confronts Crowley in his car about a mighty miracle, so we're in a loop here where we've layered quite a lot, but not the last loop because he still has the original glasses/ *but also* Crowley's sideburns are long. Compare it to the scene directly after, and how sunny and bright it is. We're in a later loop and and earlier loop simultaneously.

3) Crowley's been testing So I've been searching for a *reason* that Crowley wears a turtleneck in S2E2 and thren new glasses and changes sideburns, and he seems to be up to some pretty crafty spy stuff, seeing as 1) he seems thrilled by it, and 2) he won't shut up about it (How will our hero cope? Jane Austen, nasty piece of work, master spy) There's also this Clue :

Crowley has a secret, as we know everyone with their hands deliberately in their pocket does in the series. I think Crowley knows before Aziraphale that something is wrong, because he's getting little snippets of memory and feeling, and so he's going off to try and change things about himself, the Bentley and the shop to remind himself in the next loop and leave himself clues or change outcomes if he fails to escape. In the early loops it seems like a fun spy mission, but by the end he's pretty tired and jaded that he doesn't seem to be making any headway on his own.

It *also* explains him throwing books and canapés on the floor in the bookshop to see if it changes in other versions. The problem being that Gabriel keeps cleaning everything up and reorganizing the titles to Crowley can't tell if it's his system or not. (lolsob)

It makes this line seem like he can't fit the loop pieces together anymore, and is trying to make headway without any information, rather than a pre-fall reference.

And this line probably much later in the loops (New sunglasses, long sideburns) :

Okay so! To recap : Everyone gets reset every time, and they make different choices because of past and present edits. But, most heavenly and hellish things don't obey earth laws, and therefore things like miracles start layering, and memories start seeping through the loops. (Point 4 is optional but absolutely hilarious, so I'd like to think it's worth speculating about)

4. The flaw in The Metatron's plan

There's a huge flaw in The Metatron's plan however, and it's that Heaven and Hell don't work like earth does. He's spent so many loops trying to get the result he wants, that he doesn't know that something crazy is *also* happening in hell. Every loop, Shax is emptying out the legions of demons until they barely have enough low level lackeys to go up at all. Hell is understaffed because no new people come into hell in the loop from earth, and they're sending all the demons that aren't subject to the reset into battle. This isn't a negotiation, it's a montage.

So the attack on the bookshop isn't one attack, but waves, and the waves get less powerful each loop. Stitched loops would also explain why Shax now hands Crowley his mail again in the last attack after *just* handing it to him on the park bench, like, 4 days ago in an earlier loop.

I don't have evidence for this directly, but if The Metatron put Maggie together with Nina successfully only in the last few loops, then she's fighting in the bookshop only a few times, and doesn't invite the demons in any other times, which might be why the only evidence is the column, and not books being ruined. But, it might also explain why the demon Eric gets discorporated a bunch of times in a row, he's doing it later and later in each loop. (These are kind of contradictory thoughts, I know.)

5. Aziraphale realizes too late. When I wrote part 4 of this series I was pretty awed by the fact that Aziraphale managed to figure out the Metatron was rewriting things after only hearing him say ONE LINE of dialogue. However after more thought, I think that he's been getting close to the truth a bunch of times by communicating with Crowley in previous loops. In each successive loop he tells Crowley later and later, and it's been getting them reset as punishment each time they figure it out together. By the end they barely communicate at all, because they can feel the danger. Watch his reaction here, in what we can assume is a *very late or last loop (because of the time on the clock)*

He stops himself from interrupting and telling Crowley something important he's just realized : that he's seen Gabriel and Beez get together before. "I know what this means..." 6. Saraqael is helping both sides without them knowing We see Saraquael helping Crowley immediately with the trial when she finds him in heaven. Why would she help Crowley without having ever met him before as a demon? The exchange of "Crowley I remember you, we worked on the Hosehead nebula together" and "I meet a lot of people, (*he doesn't say* I don't remember you)" is a code. They are both trying to communicate what they remember like spies on a bench in St.James park. Who recognizes who, who's trying to stop this madness. Maybe once Crowley gets to heaven this time he's seen multiple trials with multiple endings, and Saraquael has seen them too, I don't really know. BUT she's also communicating with Aziraphale at one point. Look at Saraqael in this scene again about the 25 lazerii miracle. She *remembers the book slap* and then the *looks* at Aziraphale in regards to Gabriel.

Yeah Gabriel, IT NEVER F*&?%ING WORKS IN ANY LOOP SO STOP DOING IT. - Saraquel, probably. Are Saraqael and Aziraphale testing later/earlier in the loops as well? Is this when the miracle was weaker? Who knows! 7. The Metatron job offer was many, many offers

It's really hard to tell with all the pieces of the puzzle moving around, but I think I can count 7 job refusal loops by Aziraphale in the last fifteen minutes. Here's a summary 1) Chinwag with Crowley in the room 2) We should go for a walk instead, here's a coffee 3) You don't have to answer immediately 4) Go tell you friend the good news (This is the important one), it's the last one where he tries to convince Crowley to come with him 5) I need to take care of my bookshop 6) The Metatron puts Muriel in charge of the bookshop, but Aziraphale wants to take something with him 7) Aziraphale straight up runs out to Crowley with "I think I-" 4, again) The Metatron takes him out of the bookshop. "Ready to start"?

Trying to screenshot all that would be insane, so just go rewatch it with all this in mind, and look at how the lighting changes inside of the bookshop and the jump cuts to different angles, and how his face resets every time. It's HEARTBREAKING. 8. The argument

I'm so blown away by the acting and writing (as well as the art direction) in this show, and it all comes to a head in the final argument. Many important lines have double meanings in series 2, because everyone is trying to speak in secret code to not get caught. Especially in the final loops.

In the last loops, we have an Aziraphale who is moving ever closer towards accepting the Metatron's offer, with the straw that broke the camel's back being he could restore Crowley as an angel**/save him; and Crowley who is moving ever farther away, by having to hide all of his Clue gathering, and confiding less and less to Aziraphale in each loop.

Check out the double meanings going on in this whole exchange if you consider that they are trying to save each other using secret codes neither one of them can hear. It's so shattering. Especially when you consider they've probably made it to this argument at least twice, and Crowley convinced him the first time. Why do I say that, you ask? 9. No Nightingales

Because I think Crowley remembers a loop where A Nightingale Sang was playing when they kissed, and Aziraphael didn't leave, but he knows they aren't in that version anymore. 10) I'm a demon, I lied. I'll probably post more abut the secondary characters because Shax, Furfur, Michael, Uriel and Nina etc all have roles to play, but for now, this is it.

----------------------------------------- Thanks so much for reading the gigantic post. If you disagree with my thoughts, or think this is terribly wrong, that's totally fine! I won't be offended. Without a real season 3, everything is just ether. Fingers crossed. I'd also like to thank The Ineffable Detective Agency, @embracing-the-ineffable, @cobragardens, @indigovigilance, @yowlthinks and more for inspiring me and feeding my brain with posts. *Loop numbers could actually be 25+ if you think that .5 demon mircales + .5 angelic miracles pour register as 1 whole miracle in heaven, I just didn't want to go into that in the main review. **The Metatron's meddling in the past seems to me trying very much to highlight to Aziraphale how *good* and righteous Crowley is, despite being a demon, in order to convince Aziraphale that joining him in heaven is a real possibility, and he should push for it.

[babyrdie]

ALERT OF HADES II SPOILER

Okaaaayyy....seeing a considerable number of people act shocked at how Odysseus is in Hades II and think it's something against Odysseus, and now I'm wondering if they actually paid attention in the first game…I know everyone talks a lot about Hades' art, but I didn't think that was because it was the only thing you guys were really paying attention to.

It makes sense to be disappointed that the characters weren't treated the way a fan would have liked (for example, I'm not a fan of Hades, but I don't really like the idea of him in the game although I understand why he's the way he is), but I think it's weird to be that surprised by it or treat it like it's personal. Hades never fully followed the myths. They didn't do this because they haven't read Homer or because they don't like Penelope or hate Odysseus…it's simply because they don't follow the myths authentically. They don't specifically have anything against Odysseus or Penelope, it's just the way they do things. If this were the first game, I would understand this being unexpected… but it's the second game, we already know that they won't faithfully follow the myths because they didn't do that in Hades I.

I'll admit that I also didn't expect what was done with Penelope and Odysseus, but it's not really such a "wow! I could never imagine!" when it comes to Supergiant (I'm playing the technical test, for context). And I hoped they would already be together without relationship conflicts, because I really wasn't looking forward to a repeat of Nyx and Chaos, Patroclus and Achilles, Orpheus and Eurydice. I know most people wanted this, but I think it would be lazy to repeat this and I'm still hoping to not have this quest, whether with Odypen or other characters. And yet, even if I didn't expect it, I don't think it's as unexpected for Supergiant as some are making it seem.

Examples:

Melinoe and Zagreus are children of Persephone and Hades, and in mythology they aren't children of Hades.

Zagreus and Dionysus aren't the same person. The game makes humans believe that they're because the two played a prank on Orpheus, which made him invent a song with that story. Clearly a joke on the Orphic hymns.

Theseus is proud to be a demigod, but Poseidon denies that he's his father. Clearly a joke with the different versions of Theseus' birth, in which some he is Poseidon's demigod and others he's mortal.

Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and a mortal, not Zeus. For that reason, she and her children bleed red rather than gold.

Persephone isn't actually kidnapped by Hades. The kidnapping was an act that went wrong. Yeah, Odysseus wasn't the first character to have his non-con and dub-con aspect erased.

Achilles has a different personality than in myths. The game explains this as him maturing in the afterlife.

Patroclus is distant instead of communicative as in the myths, also explained by post-death events.

Asterius (Minotaur) is much more humanized than in the myths and he and Theseus are best friends.

There is a character heavily implied to be Medusa (Dusa) and she definitely doesn't behave like a monster.

Sisyphus is a kind and helpful guy, which is explained in the game with him having regretted his actions after his years of punishment.

Artemis and Callisto are on good terms even though they ended tragically in mythology.

Hades has a much more difficult personality to deal with than in mythology.

Thanatos, Megaera (one of the furies) and Zagreus are in a romantic relationship, which definitely doesn't exist in the myths.

The last aspects of the weapons to be unlocked do not even make reference to Greece, but to other figures. For example, the Twin Fists have the "aspect of Gilgamesh", a figure who is definitely not Greek.

Aphrodite says "You do know that I'm married, don't you love? I forgive you if you didn't. For my husband, he's always... busy with his work. I'm grateful that you are there for me to talk to" about Hephaesthus...her husband, she says. Hephaestus and Aphrodite are often divorced in mythology, including in Homer. And it's not because it wasn't yet at the time they got divorced, after all the Trojan War had already happened and they were already divorced at that time.

Also, they clearly don't use Homer as their only guide, so I don't know why you guys are saying "but Homer!" Patrochilles is there and not really canon in the Homeric tradition, but in Classical Greece they were considered a couple in certain sources (Aeschylus mainly). They use the name Asterius for the Minotaur (something Pausanias mentions, for example) although it wasn't the most common, they play with the various versions of Theseus' lineage, they reference Orphic hymns, etc. Like…it's really VERY obvious they took inspiration of more than one source.

On the Supergiant website, part of the Hades presentation is "Greek myth comes from stories of ancient gods and heroes filtered through new points of view; we’re excited to share ours." This already makes it more than evident that certain aspects were purposefully changed. It wasn't a surprise even before Hades I was released, for anyone who bothered to read it.

On Twitter, Kasavin (Creative Director) has already said that "it is a concerted effort over time, although Hesiod and Homer were very significant among the many authors we explored", which makes it clear that they don't focus on a specific source, although he recognizes that Homer and Hesiod are very influential.

In an interview available at Rock Paper Shotgun, he even said that he read more than one translation of the Odyssey and cites other sources like Diodorus Siculus.

Also, Odysseus cheating Penelope isn't even a modern invention, there were already versions of this in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus (I'm talking about Callidice). And giving an unpopular opinion here: while I agree that Calypso in The Odyssey is undeniably an SA situation, Circe is more debatable than you guys like to make it out to be, it isn't undeniably. Both the interpretation that there was SA and the interpretation that there was no SA are valid, because the text itself doesn't make it explicit as it does with Calypso. In Circe's case, not necessarily not making it a relationship with SA makes it something that deviant from the myths.

Again because I don't want to be misinterpreted: what I'm taking issue with here isn't the disappointment in how Odysseus was portrayed. This is valid! I'm questioning the idea that this was done because they don't know about the myths or that it was something specific to Odysseus and Penelope. They know the myths, they just purposefully choose not to be completely authentic. They have nothing specific to Odysseus and Penelope, which is precisely why they aren't exempt from the changes they also made to other characters. They are no more special than Persephone, Hades, Zagreus, Melinoe (to name a few who had changes), that's why they receive the same treatment (that is, being changed).

I would never recommend Hades to someone who wanted complete authenticity to the myths. I wouldn't do that because I KNOW that's not the game's purpose. I thought everyone else knew too. You don't go to a vegetarian restaurant that you knew was vegetarian because you had eaten there before and be surprised because they don't have real meat dishes, be serious.

Edit (01/05): guys, you're talking about Epic, but I admit that I've never even heard that musical and I'm not part of the fandom. So I don't really know if Epic has an influence on that mindset 🤔and also my reblog develops a little more what I think based on Hades I if anyone is interested in theories for the narrative.

[trans-axolotl]

hi! saw your recent posts and wanted to ask for some advice, if that's okay. I'm a wheelchair user and I really want to get more involved in protests, but I feel pretty out of my depth. A lot of protests seem inaccessible and I just have a lot of questions about how things would work as a wheelchair user. I guess, do you have any tips about protesting as a wheelchair user and how you deal with inaccessibility?

Thank you!!

Hey anon! completely okay to ask for advice about this--I feel very passionate about this topic and am happy to share some tips! disclaimer that not all of the tips I share here are going to be applicable to everyone's situation--even among wheelchair users, we have so many unique situations, types of wheelchairs, health variations, other medical devices, etc etc. and many of us are multiply marginalized, which can also shape our experiences pretty significantly. so i'll share some general tips, and feel free to take what works for you and ignore the rest! most of this is based on my experience in the type of protests I go to in my city, so I also understand that this advice might not be applicable to every type of protest in every location. i've been involved in many types of protests for the past 9 years, from marches to die-ins to encampments, and have dealt with many situations including tear gas, riot cops, police brutality, fascist agitators, getting arrested, and many different types of high risk tactics. i don't want to position myself as an expert or anything, because i'm always learning and growing, but I do just want to share that for context!

I think the first thing I want to say is just to affirm that it is absolutely possible for wheelchair users to get involved in all kinds of protests, including higher risk and escalated protests. I'll focus on actual on the ground protests in this post because that's what you asked about, but know there are many many ways to get involved with organizing if protesting in the streets is not accessible for you. There are many of us involved in these type of actions already and figuring out ways to make it work for us, so you are not alone in that. I won't lie that it can be complicated, there's a lot of inaccessibility, and some shit might not be possible, but a lot of stuff can be made possible if we get creative.

Before the Protest

For me, one of the most helpful things is trying to find out as much information as possible before the protest, so that I can have a really good plan going in. Sometimes this might be more difficult, because there might be legitimate security culture reasons that a march route can't be announced publicly, for example, or specific tactics aren't posted about on social media in order to keep people safe from police surveillance. But when it is possible, this is the type of information I like to figure out:

What is the location? is it a stationary protest like a sit in or an encampment? is it a march? what is the route? how long is the route? are there obstacles in the route? are there curb cuts? is there hills? construction? other barriers? are there easily accessible exit routes? is there pavement, grass, gravel, etc? are there accessible transit stops nearby? are there accessible bathrooms nearby? if it's indoors, are there elevators and ramps?

A lot of times, to find out this information, I look through google maps street view, ask friends, or go in person if i can beforehand. for me, as a manual wheelchair user, I can deal with a lot of of nonideal circumstances such as hills, curbs, rough terrain, especially when I have a protest buddy who can help push me when needed, but it helps to know if i'm going to have to deal with those situations. Often times, protests are held in pretty inaccessible locations. Sometimes, this is because organizers are not considering accessibility which pisses me off, but sometimes, there are legitimate strategic reasons that we might need to protest at an inaccessible location because of the specific circumstances of the protest. (maybe we're even protesting at it because it's inaccessible!) You'll know best about what geographic features are inaccessible deal breakers for you and having that kind of information can help you make a decision about whether it's possible to attend.

What is the risk level? What tactics are being used? Are people intentionally risking arrest? What patterns of repression and brutality are most commonly used by cops in your city? How high is the risk of chemical weapons?

This can be really hard to predict--there's no way to ever say for certain how cops are going to respond and we can't see the future. But paying attention to how cops in your city have been responding to protests and learning the patterns of what types of protests are more high risk can help us make more informed guesses. We can reasonably estimate that a silent vigil in the daytime is likely going to be lower risk than a occupation of a building, for example. And for some of these things--there's no real way to make getting tear gassed an "accessible" experience for anyone, but for some of us, the consequences might be more severe than others. I have a comrade who uses a ventilator who cannot come to protests where we think there's a risk of chemical weapons, so that can be really important information to try to figure out beforehand.

What do I need to practice? Do I need to teach my comrades how to de-arrest a wheelchair user? Do we need to practice lifting me and my wheelchair over a barricade? Do I need to teach my comrades the safest places to hold onto my wheelchair if we're locking arms and moving as a line? Do I need to practice wheelies to get over curbs? How will I plan to protect the electrical parts of my wheelchair from chemical weapons? etc.

For higher risk protests there might be a lot of different tactics that we can use to navigate things like barricades, arrests, facing down a riot line of cops, etc. It is so, so helpful to be able to practice these skills with your protest buddies before a protest, so that when these situations start happening in a chaotic, fast moving environment, you and your comrades are prepared to navigate the inaccessibility that can come with a lot of these situations. You'll know what is possible for you and be the expert on what feels important to prepare for before an action.

2. At the Protest

Navigating a Crowd. To be honest this can be one of the most frustrating things for me to deal with while at protests. A lot of people are not aware of their surroundings, areas will get very crowded with little space to navigate, and people will block my view. The main ways I try to deal with this are by trying to be in the front of a march or on the sides of a march when possible, to try to have the most space to navigate. As we move, I continually scan our location to find the closest accessible exit route, paying attention to where cops are, curb cuts, etc. My protest buddies know that if we're in a middle of a crowd, they need to provide me with updates about cop movements or any other information that I can't see. I get loud and tell people to get out of my way when I need to. I try to stay near other mobility aid users, bike marshals, or people with wagons because they often leave more room for me to navigate.

Roles. There are lots of different roles we can take on at a protest that might make it easier for us to navigate. I sometimes like to join the bike marshals and help block off roads and intersections. Maybe you have medic training and you act as a street medic. Maybe it's more accessible to act as a scout and communicate police movement to your comrades. Other roles could include leading chants, handing out supplies like water and masks, acting as a legal observer, filming the cops, organizing art builds beforehand, etc.

Community. It's been super, super important for me to always go to a protest with a protest buddy so that we can watch out for each other and keep each other safe. Oftentimes, situations can change rapidly at higher risk protests, and we might end up in an inaccessible situation that we didn't plan for. If I don't have a protest buddy, I usually just turn to the nearest person next to me and start saying loudly "I need you to help me exit this situation/grab my handles and get me up this curb/tell me what the cops are doing etc." It can feel really scary and vulnerable to have to rely on complete strangers in these type of situations, but I've found that a lot of people are really willing to help if I tell them exactly what I need from them.

Surveillance. A lot of us really can't bloc up or hide our identities, because our wheelchairs are easily identifiable. This might shape what tactics we use, and also means there might be added surveillance concerns after a protest. When thinking about your own risk tolerance, grappling with the fact we are visible in a crowd is a really important consideration. This might mean we need to be even more careful about security culture, use encrypted messaging to communicate, avoid cameras, stay in a middle of a crowd to block visibility, and other things like that.

Unique advantages. There can be advantages and skills that we bring as wheelchair users! In flat locations and downhills, I'm much, much faster than my comrades who are walking--I can easily pass messages or get in front of a line of bike cops. I can usually carry a lot more supplies on my wheelchair backpack without getting tired. In my city, there's only one cop van that has a wheelchair lift, and at a recent protest where there were multiple of us in wheelchairs, I heard a cop say on their radio that "There are too many people in wheelchairs and we don't know how to arrest them all." In situations where it's logistically difficult to arrest us or the cops think the optics are bad, that can allow us to cause a LOT of logistical delays, act as a front line, get in between the cops and other people, and just generally make the cops lives a little more difficult.

3. After the Protest

Arrests. If we're risking arrest, there's a lot of wheelchair specific information we need to know. Theoretically, under the ADA, cops are supposed to arrest us with our mobility aid and let us have access to our mobility aid in jail. In practice, this doesn't always happen. Cops might arrest us with our wheelchair but then take it away from us in the holding cell, make us use the jail's standard transfer wheelchair instead, or just completely take away our mobility aid altogether. Cops might zip tie our hands so that we have no way to independently move. The cops in your city might have a van with a lift, or might try to get you to fold or disassemble your wheelchair and put it in a standard car. If they don't have a van with a lift and your wheelchair doesn't disassemble, they might have a contract with a wheelchair van company. Once we're taken to a holding cell, there's a lot higher chance we might get put in solitary. We often won't have access to wheelchair accessible restrooms. We might get separated from all of our comrades--at my last arrest, all my other comrades were taken to a location that processes mass arrests, while I was taken to a separate, wheelchair accessible location and held in solitary. It's super important that whoever's running jail support knows these things and can advocate for us and also track us in the system, especially if we're taken to a different location. If your area has a chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild, they often have a designated person running a hotline. It can be super important to memorize that number, and also to reach out beforehand and explain your needs as a wheelchair user if you're risking arrest.

Overall, there are a lot of considerations for protesting as a wheelchair user, and you are going to be the expert on what is important for you! My general approach is that I want to have as much information as possible so that I can make an informed decision about if I want to attend a particular action. Then, when I'm at an action, I expect my comrades to respect my autonomy and support me in making sure that I can participate and that all of us can stay safe.

Also, for any abled people reading this post, I want you to read this very carefully and understand just how many barriers there can be at protests for wheelchair users. You have a responsibility to your community to whenever possible, mitigate these barriers, choose accessible locations, communicate with your disabled comrades, and support us in the moment. If your excuse is that "oh there aren't any disabled people at our protests, so we don't need to think about these things," you're wrong, and this attitude ensures that no disabled people can show up to your protests. and if that's the case, you're missing out on so much meaningful experience and knowledge that your disabled comrades could bring to the table. "We keep us safe" means that we actually work to meet everyone's needs, including the needs of your disabled comrades.

anyway, this turned into a very long post, but any other wheelchair users feel free to add on your own advice! love to share as much community knowledge as possible, especially advice from people who have different access needs than my particular situation.

anon, please let me know if you have any other specific questions that i didn't cover, and best of luck!

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

You're saying that zutara wasn't supported by the writers and shouldn't have been an endgame. That's a lie! and you can verify this, for example, by reading this post. Zutara has a huge support of writers and actors, she was supposed to become a canon! We were just robbed.

https://www.tumblr.com/crienselt/744143410729041920?source=share

I can show you lots of videos of Grey Delisle saying Azula and Zuko are totally fucking (including one she recorded for my birthday), and there's an infamous clip of Bryke proposing Azula and "The Blue Spirit" as a potential ship in a pannel. Somehow I don't think you'll take that as meaning my OTP is canon and was just robbed of it's endgame at the last second - but apparently tumblr posts are solid proof, therefore my argument is perfect and all you Zutara fans are now gonna have to accept that you ship Katara with a guy that canonically (by the standards YOU GUYS are trying to set at least) loves incest even more than Jaime and Cersei Lannister did. And oh, would you look at that! During one of the times Grey mentioned Zucest, Dante said "The Fire Nation are a bit like the Lannisters." See the links if you don't believe me. WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?

The creators/showrunners, writers, and lead writer have all said a billion times "Kataang was always the heart of the show and by the time the first episode aired we were set on it being endgame. Some people in the crew liked BOTH Kataang and Zutara, but Zutara was NEVER seriously considered as a real possibility for endgame or even temporary romance. The only love triangle ever considered was Aang, Katara and MALE Toph."

It doesn't matter how many interviews yall fake, how many clips you take out of context, how many deleted scenes you claim existed without a shred of proof to back it up, how many times you go "but this actor whose job is ACTING not WRITTING says he likes Zutara" or "This writer that wrote tons of Kataang episodes said the word Zutara once when writting a scene between Zuko and Katara" - your ship is still fanon. That's not a dig at you or saying it's bad, it's just a fucking fact.

Write some fanfic if you like it so much, but don't turn the production of the series itself into your fanfic just so you can lie to yourself about how there was ever any chance of you getting what you wanted in the actual canon.

And for real, you're gonna try to use the LIVE ACTION as proof? The thing the creators disowned? Netflix's over-glorified cosplay session that everyone keeps saying "It's mid at best" is THE argument you go for? Have some goddamn standards, I'm begging you.

[syscardinal]

hihi!! i love your art sm !!

im curious on how you draw your chibis? they are so squishy and theyre like mochis and blueberry muffins (in the best way o m gee) !!

like hows the anatomy/posing work for you? tips would be super super helpful wow

Hi! First of all, thank you! This is a hard one cuz I dont usually draw chibis ehe, but I will try to aid you with the few knowlegment I got. As you can see, I have a lot of styles when it comes to draw cheebs but I think i can resume it in one word: SIMPLIFY

For example, here's a drawing of Gaming I did. Let's dig into it!!

First I tried to replicate the same pose Gaming has in his official art, notice that this not have to follow exactly the same guidelines. "Why?" Well because when drawing a chibi, theres some limitations since the body shrunkens, there is a variety on how cheeb anatomy works but I'll get to that point later-

Forget about detailing too much, like putting in the cheeb every wrinkle of the clothes, every strand of hair or every little costure. With this I am not saying that you have to get rid of ,for example, Furina's decorations in her hat, instead you can simplify them!! If you consider that detail important enough just draw it! (See the image for a example on how I do it)

Negative Space oh man my art teacher used to talk about this a lot and in chibis this is SUPER relevant. A good negative space always leads to clarity, and since cheebs are a really little thing,what we want is exactly that, clarity. Try to make a clear silloutte of what you are trying to convey in the chibi, this will make it look 10 times better for starters.

Lastly, dont forget that cheebs follow the same rules as a normal drawing(like line of action, perspective, etc) In case of cheebs though is usual for the heads, eyes and mouth to be bigger, I'll explain in more detail this below!

Here's the speedpaint for more detail:

Lets go now with Anatomy and Proportions, as I was saying above, there is a lot of variety in cheebs anatomy. I dont think there is a wrong or correct way to draw a chibi here, there is just a lot of ways to draw them altough usually it follows these points:

Chibis are no more than 3 heads in height, after that it just stops feeling like a chibi drawing.

Eyes tends to be bigger, generaly eyes occupies 1/3 of the head. In my case I like to make the ears also just as big as the eyes with the shape of a bean or simply a circle. Moving to the mouth, I draw a simple shape of a triangle, just including the teeths when they smile.

Depending on the proportions you choose, it will give you different results, here you have to choose what you want for your chibi, for example: A proportion of the size of 2 heads + It gives you the liberty of draw more details and complex poses. On the other side a proportion of 1 head or less makes the chibi simpler but at the same time more cute to look at(see my examples at the end of this post!)

Last but not least, use this chart just as a reference, you can draw the bodies roundier, taller, tinier. Its up to your liking!!

Hope that this was not too overwhelming haha, I am not an expert on drawing cheebs but they are fun to try! I tried to summarize my own knowledge and mixed it with some google search(ehe)

Please dont hesitate to try as much as you want, there is a lot of ways to draw the tiny ones and none of them is incorrect. Hope this helps you and thanks for reading!!!

Here are the examples I mentioned above!!

[coolbeesbro]

TGOFC Leshy Facts (Chapter 6 Spoilers)

There's so much that goes into each character in my au, and the last chapter I dropped had a bunch of lore for Leshy's character, and I just felt like compiling the minute facts that might be overlooked in light of the story that genuinely bring me joy.

Unlike the other siblings, Leshy was just a regular chaser worm who was evolved into something more human (even though humans aren't a thing in this universe, I can't think of a term that would convey the same thing here) through the power of the Green Crown. The others were like regular people already capable of complex thinking, bipedal etc., who came to find their crown one way or another (I'll go into them more in their own posts), so in comparison Leshy is more unpredictable and overall feral in his actions and mannerisms. He also still has a strong connection with the worms and can communicate with them perfectly fine, giving him an advantage over prior gods of Chaos who couldn't control them at all.

Some examples of him being more animalistic is the fact that he's being prone to biting just because, and still having urges like burrowing underground being more comfortable for him than sleeping in an actual bed, and randomly making strange little noises. He also thinks nothing about eating through and ripping up the floorboards in his house, and has Heket bring him spare lumber to store as a "little snack" when he's too lazy to get up and go to the dining hall and raid the kitchen. Every sibling's homes are reflective of their personalities, and where Heket, Kallamar, Narinder and Shamura have furniture and decor, Leshy's home, though normal looking from the outside, is literally just an empty room with the majority of the floorboards ripped up or gnawed through, looking like a storm ripped through the inside of his home. He has no furniture or decor outside of a few potted plants gifted to him by Tebryn (au yellow cat).

Another thing, and this might be controversial, is that he's actually terrible when it comes to taking care of plants. Almost every plant he owns is either dead, or on the brink of death, but he doesn't really know it since he can't see for himself that they are. He use to be good at it, but that ended up being 100% the Green Crown's power. Having not been capable of thinking past basic animal instincts prior to becoming a god, he can't fathom that he might not actually know what he's doing. Tebryn teases him lightly about it, but also doesn't have the heart to tell him that the plants in his window died months ago. There's one plant that's hanging on by a thread, an overwatered camellia bonsai that's now really just a stick in dirt with 3 leaves, and it only stays alive because Tebryn repots and tends to it when Leshy isn't paying attention. That doesn't stop Leshy from attempting to unintentionally over-trim the tree, much to Tebryn's dismay.

When he was still just a baby up until his toddler years, he would often just run around naked (only covered by leaves) and Heket would struggle to just get him to keep at least his cloak on (there'll be a flashback to a scene like that later on). One second he would be fully clothed, she would look away for just a moment, then look back to see Leshy running away on all fours with his clothes in a trail behind him. Now, if not for the fact that he'd get a lecture from the others on why he needs to stay clothed out in public, he would probably be in the nude 24/7.

As a product of his rapid evolution, his appearance from what chaser worms are in present day is drastically different; since while they evolved over time, he was like a preservation of their past. Like how he burrows into dirt, where they no longer have to due to evolution giving them large horns and a larger/tougher build for protection. Instinctually, he still attaches sticks to his head, which was both a defense mechanism of sorts along with helping with hunting. Being partly burrowed in the ground helped him feel vibrations of things walking near him; and with his head sticking up past the dirt, he looked more shrub-like so predators wouldn't go after him, and also prey would be more inclined to walk near him or use him as shelter, making for easier meals.

I also decided to make him a trans man, because why does Shamura get to be the only trans one (also as a youngest child who's a trans man I decided that my comfort character WILL be trans as well.)? With the help of Kallamar he's able to transition with HRT and other surgeries. Nobody but his siblings know he's trans, and is 100% passing as cis to everyone else. He's also the shortest of all the siblings, followed by Shamura, then Narinder, Heket and Kallamar.

There's definitely more than this, but my god I realized just how long this was getting so I'll end it here unless people want me to make a continuation.