#just take it from me that while they're both silent protags

[danidoesathing]

Also 💅🪓💀🔪 for the horror movie asks <3

💅who is the greatest horror movie badass bitch?

Either Ripley or RJ MacReady. Both of them have the "late 70s/early 80s horror protag thats taking no bullshit from the fucky alien" thing and they're both serve cunt for it. It's so sexy

🪓= ultimate final girl/boy/person?

OH THATS HARD ACTUALLY excluding the two above, either Sidney Prescott or Ash Williams. Sidney didnt have any tolerance the slasher movie bs and she absolutely KILLED it (ha) in the last scene. Ash on the other hand....come on. hes THE classic final girl. and of course they both fufill the most important rule of final girls: looking great covered in blood

💀= what horror movie scared you to death?

I don't get scared a lot by movies actually! Horror ARGs/Webseries and games yeah but not too many movies. But one that did actually scare me while in the theater was A Quiet Place. It's hard to explain but there has never been another movie theater experience ive had like the shared fear me and the other movie goers had while sitting in a dead silent theater of making noise. No one made a god damn move because it was dead fucking quiet and even eating the popcorn was too loud. it was terrifying

🔪= who is your favourite horror villain/antagonist?

Non-monster? Stu and Billy from Scream. Sorry im basic but they ate up that whole last scene together. Billy is kinda boring on his own but Stu made it so much more fun. I can't tell if the "peer pressure" reasoning was an actual answer or not what that implies for their relationship. either way i love evil homosexuals fr

but monster wise? Jean Jacket from Nope. Like its not even evil or a villain or malicious its just. an animal. It's a predator animal that was fed and got comfortable with a steady food source. It enters an agreement to coexist with OJ for like 6 months and he never even knew. It's scared by the flags because it associates it with pain. It's got a secondary form that looks like a biblical angel but it also looks like a jellyfish or a bird trying to intimidate another predator, because it was scared of OJ after knowing he had been able hurt it repeatedly and it doesn't know if it can win that fight. It's so well designed and every aspect of it both explains a lot of alien myths while also giving it a reasonable explanation with it's animalistic behavior. its great i love her

[axewchao]

Charmander Dalex is cute :3

Ain't he?

In fact, he's so cute, I drew him again!

...Except he's purple, ahahaha...

Why is he purple? Nidoking genes, that's why. ...I just wanted an excuse to make him purple don't look at me—

Arceus's Wish and the long-dead PMD RAD both got my AU gears turning because of fucking course they did, wherein Dal is sent off to the PMD world during a very specific event in his life: the battle against Groudon. Valerie gets injured because she refused to back down, and instead of being able to flee before they're both crushed under a heap of boulders, Dalex desperately tries to shield Valerie from further harm. As rocks fall overhead from Groudon's Earthquake, everything goes completely white.

Dalex awakens on the beach just outside of Treasure Town with a worried, talking Pokémon standing over him (left vague because I haven't decided whether it'll be a Partner or it's just the perfect angel- I mean Bidoof, leaving Dal to go solo). Valerie, along with the rest of his team, is nowhere to be found, and he's been turned into a weirdly purple Charmander. Externally, he takes this course of events like a champ using the ever-flawless Silent Protag method, but internally he's screaming in fear and confusion.

Meanwhile, Tyranitar of Team A.C.T. is taking a leisurely walk through the woods on his day off… until his nose is suddenly hit by the scent of blood. He chases after it to find a Sceptile badly burned, bruised, and in need of immediate medical attention because said Sceptile's fucking missing an arm. While she recovers, Val replays the battle with Groudon in her head over and over, worrying endlessly about the fate of her best friend and teammates. She's shocked to find that humans are apparently a myth in this… "Pokémon Square," with the only one who has even an inkling of what she's talking about being Alakazam. How the hell is she supposed to find Dal if humans don't exist here?!

Or… or is it too late for that…? Is the thought running through both their minds. What if… what if it really is too late? Given what was happening before, by all means it should be. They should've been killed by Groudon's attack, but…

But a part of them keeps saying that it's not. That if they look hard enough, they'll find each other again…

[saviourkingslut]

I think people have forgotten that the only reason why Byleth had such a “huge” impact on Dimitri’s well-being in Azure Moon is not because of their bond but rather Byleth’s presence allowed Dimitri to survive long enough to see his mistakes. Byleth themself as a person didn’t really matter that much.

Byleth as their teacher kept organising class activities to bring the students together, so a Blue Lion class closer to each other made a promise that they would have a reunion at the Millennium Festival. Because of that promise Dimitri (subconsciously?) made his way to the Garreg Mach in Ethereal Moon 1185 (or maybe because the other two classes didn’t make the same promise here and neither Edelgard nor Claude came here on the same day alongside their guards, which was how AM!Dimitri could temporarily take up residence in the Goddess Tower?). Either way, Gilbert and the Blue Lion class followed the clues and were able to locate Dimitri.

Then because Byleth is an excellent commander and a demon on the battlefield (after playing ThreeHopes I finally understand their power and skills. They’re scary lol). Since the Blue Lions are the ones who recapture the Garreg Mach and defeat Randolph and also because of Dimitri’s reputation as the one-eyed demon, this planted the seeds for Fleche to come and get revenge on the Gronder field.

Due to Byleth’s skills and power (they are literally the goddess’ incarnation so it’s expected) the Kingdom army in AM is able to achieve victory after victory, including in the Battle of Gronder unlike SS!/VW!Kingdom army. Thus, unlike his other counterparts, AM!Dimitri is able to survive long enough for Rodrigue to sacrifice himself and give Dimitri the “live for yourself” speech.

Byleth themselves don’t really play a huge role in Dimitri’s redemption. Even if Byleth didn’t come to stop Dimitri from leaving in the rain, Felix, Dedue, Gilbert and the other Blue Lions would also have stepped in all the same.

though i can't say i completely agree with this view i do think it's an interesting one. if you look at the story this way i think it's good to remember that am is also the only route where rodrigue canonically survives until post-gronder, so from this point of view byleth is responsible for his survival, too. more importantly though, i personally find it hard to truly put by/leth at the spill of important parts of the narrative in any way bc i always feel things happen around them, more that that they make them happen.

i saw this post a while back that talked abt how modern adaptations of the sherlock holmes stories will try to come up with a logical explanation for the fact that watson, in the books, sometimes has an old shoulder wound and at other times a leg wound, so in series or movies today one of the two will be psychosomatic or they'll show him getting both wounds at different moments in time. and that's the 'watsonian' explanation, the in-universe explanation you can come up with to make the canon make sense. but then there are also people who say, 'arthur conan doyle forgot where the wound was and didn't bother to look it up' which would be in character of him bc at times he forgot watson was married, too. and that's the 'doylist' explanation: you look at the canon and when things don't really add up, you look at the logical explanation taking place in our 'real' world: the writer(s) made a mistake, or a writer got replaced, etc.

now this post also said that it's not fair to counter the one argument with the other. if someone who has a watsonian point of view tries to come up with a logical in-universe explanation and a doylist comes up and says 'no it was bc [real life writer thing]' that kills the discussion. and if a watsonian only ever trying to look at canon through the in-universe lense and refusing to see the 'real life' reasons makes it very difficult to treat the text as what it is - a work of fiction, made by humans and therefore liable to contain the mistakes and representations of the world views of its writers. of course, these two points of views aren't mutally exclusive at all, so most of the time any person in fandom will have watsonian and doylist explanations for in-universe events - sometimes even for the exact same event, bc even though you know some incongruence stems from the writers messing up that doesn't mean it's no use trying to come up with a way that it could still fit into canon.

the point of all this is that by/leth is one of the few instances where taking the watsonian approach just... really doesn't work for me. for me, things happening the way they do in different routes is bc we, the player, choose to play that route and so the writers have to give us a different story. and bc we play a different route that means we, the player, put our avatar in that story and the writers have to make it seem like that avatar matters, like it has real impact on the narrative and its characters. and with by/leth that has never really worked for me. it doesn't feel like they actually do things that would change the story and its characters to such extreme extents. i never have that problem with a character such as link, for example. playing botw truly has me believe that yes, he is absolutely vital to the story playing out as it does, he is at the centre of things. but then link and by/leth are two very different characters who are written in very different ways and who are from very different franchises with very different stories. anyway tl;dr yes i think you're right that by/leth doesn't actually play a huge role in dimitri's process of redemption/healing. however bc i view by/leth in a very different way i can't really agree with your reasoning for it personally, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

[chibigaia-art]

I agree with some of the points you made about genshins story, especially paimon doing most the talking for us story wise. It makes the traveller we choose almost kinda flavorless as a character? Maybe that was the intended purpose or smth but how is it we've had Aether/Lumine for almost 2 years now and we still know nothing about them as people. Definitely get where you're coming from.

YOU UNLOCKED THE ""SILENT"" PROTAGONIST RANT LET'S GO (I'M SO SORRY ITS LONG AGAIN??? SORRY)

100% agreeing with what you're saying anon, and I'm going the extra mile to explain why I think they did this and also why it makes the main quest feel shallow at times

Okay so, first thing first, traveler isn't strictly a "silent protagonist" because they do have dialogue, they do have some kind of personality buried underneath, but the main problem in my opinion is that traveler has to act both as a blank vessel for the player while also being somewhat of an interesting character to get the player invested in the story, and at the start, it works, for a bit! Because you're given a character that has lost their sibling, and their objective is to find them, you get interested in what's happening - but then you hit the dialogue wall. The dreaded Paimon wall. You have to read long conversations and when you get to interject, there's the fo4 wheel of choice with the normal and sarcastic option and that's it, it has no effect whatsoever; the only time your answer actually matters is in some daily quests and hangout events, which... yeah, they don't really influence the main story, so it's kinda eh.

And sure, a big game like this, it would require a lot of time to have different outcomes for every dialogue tree, but it doesn't have to be like that, it can be something more akin to Zero Dawn than a Fallout, have the dialogue choices only matter in a few quests without having repercussions to the whole world! But even without that, it would still be nice to have some little changes every now and then in the dialogues, like in Persona - not huge ones that change the story, it's perfectly fine if you want to tell ONE story and not have it branch out, it can still be enjoyable, but have the characters react differently* (it'd still require the option of a skip dialogue button)

Bringing back the gacha mechanic into this, because you can't talk about genshin without taking into consideration that it IS a gacha first: genshin is pretty much a character collector simulator. Characters get introduced, most of them get tossed aside, but they're there, and they have to be interested in the traveler somehow, even if they feel like a cardboard cutout -> traveler has to be blank enough to allow being a self insert while simultaneously being... a main character. And as you said, we pretty much know nothing about them as people. I couldn't for the life of me tell you one thing about Lumine or Aether that isn't the emergency food gag with paimon or the rock paper scissor thing they mentioned in one of their voiceovers

I think it would have helped a bit to have some more info about their siblings? Even just some memories or experiences they shared together every now and then?? Stuff like "I miss my brother/sister" every now and then, make the loss feel more present, I guess, while simultaneously giving us tidbits about the traveler that might get us invested. There's also the fact that they are from another world and... no one asks anything about that? Same goes for Paimon, no one knows what it is but they never start investigating on it and I know it is because they don't wanna reveal she's the final boss but eh

I'm gonna bring P5 protag in this for a sec: he's a silent protagonist, he has the "normal" and the "sarcasm" options for dialogue, and he has to work like a blank slate both for making the player feel immersed and also for the romantic part of the game because let's face it, that's also one of the reasons the protag is silent lmao; that said, we do have his backstory, we are invested in seeing his name get cleared up, it's not too hard to care about him as his own character rather than just a vessel for the player (at least for me) and the little things we can get about him from the game aren't a lot, but they're enough to get invested and build on it

I think traveler is kinda weak as a "silent" MC because it has to serve this dual purpose of self insert/actual character with their personal objective while giving us absolutely nothing about who they are - which works in favor of one of their purpose while kind of undermining the second one

Possible fixes: since traveler has a set of responses to every dialogue that A) do nothing B) are the same for both twins, I think it would have at least been fair to either have the answers voice acted, to make them feel more involved in the conversation with other npcs (or even just to hear their voices, the VAs are solid) OR you know!!! Take away the fake choices, give them voice lines, make the dialogues cutscenes, and have the traveler be a fleshed out character who actively joins the conversation and doesn't have Paimon take 80% of their possible dialogue

[solibrie]

fe3h musings, spoilers for basically All of it ir2 byleth

my problem is that i like byleth a LOT. like i think their backstory is sooo fuckin cool and i love how it justifies their stoic personality. like, YES, byleth is a player insert. but the justification for it in-universe is very cool to me!!! like!!! YES!!! the fantasy pope (who is also sort of our grandmother) did a heart transplant on a newborn using the heart of her dead mother which was in our dead mother's chest!

and because sothis was dormant, byleth was dormant too. all of their emotions were locked behind what byleth could never understand. and i just, i really like that. esp in verdant wind where byleth smiles the most after their powers awaken.

im a big fan of twin byleth au's—im always into male/female versions of protagonists being made into siblings, and fe3h in particular has a LOT of sibling relationships that are integral to the plot. take it one step further and apply it to the protag!!! fyleth is the one i usually let keep the crest of flames, while myleth (who i call ayel, short for yomayel since yomayel, byleth, and sitri r three demons typically depicted in a triad) is like, just a normal dude.

in my brain byleth is the same as canon (or at least has the same backstory) while ayel has the crest of seiros from jeralt. the twins having totally different crests and both of them being major crests def gets them a lot of attention from ppl in the academy and all but cements to rhea that these mercs are the kids from that night.

like i dunno obviously the byleth in my brain is fanon but i think silent protagonists/blank slate characters are SO interesting for what they imply in-fiction.

and to touch briefly on few3h i think shez managing to secure a seat at garreg mach (in the golden deer, ofc, since they're from leicester + commoners have an easier time getting into the school thru the alliance + Verdant Wind Is The Best) is SO funny in the three houses timeline. like i might start a wip for that, or at least use it for my starting point in my vw rewrite

shez's whole Thing (vessel for the agarthans) is conceptually very cool but i think could be executed a bit better. idk how shez factors into a twin au though, because shez having a sibling is more complicated since their whole thing is that they were Alone, while byleth always had jeralt so adding ayel to the mix doesn't drastically alter her character. probs would do nonbinary shez to just mix them both while fyleth and myleth are separated into two distinct characters.

i also struggle a LOT with ships in fe3h because of byleth being a professor... like i DO like claudeleth but ONLY post-ts... most fics spend a lot of time in pre-ts which suuucks though. if i ever go through with my vw rewrite i 100% would do byleth/gatekeeper LOL. i think gatekeeper is so fun. i also think ayel/jeritza would be funny from a standpoint of getting jeritza out of el/twsitd's clutches. claude/petra is one of my favie claude ships though. lorenz/claude is also really fun, one of the only "enemy" to lovers ships i really care about. and dmcl i dont care about really but i think its so funny that its so popular. like it makes sense (two popular male characters + the AM mission) but it's still so funny to me.

if the vw rewrite goes anywhere i think i would do:

byleth/gatekeeper (i would name him, naturally)

ayel/jeritza

claude/petra OR claude/lorenz (not both tho. it also depends, thematically. i lean either way a LOT of the time)

marianne/hilda. of COURSE

lysithea/cyril. i can't help it. they're so cute and cyril deserves nice things

raphael/bernadetta. i loooove their supports and their ending is so cute esp in terms of bernie's character development <3

lin/caspar... sorry for liking childhood friends. as if i can help it. also because i think lin is a character who would be so easily recruitable in-fiction due to a fixation on byleth+ayel's crests, and where lin goes caspar follows :)

on that note i am always so conflicted ir2 the faerghus four. like sylvix and dimigrid are funny bcos i think they'd all be so miserable. ingrid/dorothea is fun BUT ingrid's dedue supports sour me sooo much she doesn't deserve dorothea. but also ingrid actually being confronted for her racism by dorothea is so interesting conceptually PLUS dorothea wants to marry for money but falling for ingrid, who hails from poor land, is rly good + ingrid who is meant to marry to pass down her crest falling in love w a woman is also rly good.

plus i acknowledge my hypocrisy a bit ir2 hilda and ingrid. but i think hilda's cyril and claude supports are a lot more indicative of her being initially closeminded but willing to learn while ingrid uses her trauma as an excuse to be awful.

ferdinand's flayn supports are also kind of cute. i don't love a lot of flayn's supports but hers with ferdie are so like... classically adorable im kinda obsessed w them. it's also interesting from a narrative standpoint where seteth remembers the aegir family from forever ago and sees where they've wound up and how he would react to flayn's entanglement with aegir's descendant.

anyway i know ships arent everything obvi but supports are the lifeblood of fe so it's kinda important LOL and not all of these would even get that much attention but i like to think about the recruitment feature a lot!!! the BE in vw all seem SOOOO genuinely recruitable. even ferdinand!

anyways i have so many thoughts. sorry for thinking about fire emblem.