#no hate i just think it's odd when canon lore says one thing but the fanon is quick to jump onto ships/shipping types that are ooc.

[ultravioart]

Hot take, but i see Zenyatta's and Ramattra's dynamic like Ahsoka's and Anakin's dynamic. Looking at their story, their interactions, the lore behind Null Sector and the lore with Zenyatta. Both are warrior monks, one takes the other under his wing, but the duo eventually finds the dogmatic approach of the temple restrictive and unhelpful for truly maintaining peace. One finds their own path to resolving conflict, individual and distinctly separate from the temple (Zenyatta, Ahsoka), the other proposes authoritarian control to maintain peace and order, rejecting the temple, and hurting those they wish to protect (Anakin, Ramattra). Ramattra is fighting due to fear and anger, scared of loosing those dear to him (Anakin vibes). Zenyatta is fighting due to a desire to help peoples find peace, and to find his purpose (Ahsoka vibes). With that said, I could be completely wrong, but Ram and Zen really do seem something like Ahsoka and Anakin's dynamic to me, like found family siblings, brother and sister, mentor and mentee, eventually breaking away from each other in a tragic loss, and that's why I cannot for the life of me ship Ram and Zen under that interpretation lol. They are brothers, both in the monastic and found family sense.

[shxugx]

my theory academia

also known as “what i wrote in my notes app to explain my mha theories to my wife, who knows the bare minimum of mha lore”

* manga spoilers ahead *

SO i begin with Red Shoe TheoryTM

Red Shoe Theory is basically the idea that Izuku’s trademark red shoes are a specific brand made for quirkless people.

The doctor in episode one explains that quirkless people are biologically different than quirked people. one of the differences is they have a second toe joint in their toes. a very specific and odd thing to include, but go off i guess

then we see izuku’s ugly ass (affectionate) red shoes. he wears the same damn shoes since he was a kid to literally current day. no one else in the series has this type of shoe and he wears them with everything.

theory is basically bc of the toe joint, they have to wear specific shoes to accommodate.

now: this is kinda a dumb theory by itself. however, i lied when i said only one character in the series wears them.

there is two.

introducing the Shigaraki was Quirkless theory.

HandJob McGee is the only other character that wears these red ass shoes. but they’re not just red. they’re fucking identical to izuku’s. again, not super compelling at first.

until you take in account the UA traitor, Aoyama Yuuga.

he was quirkless. his parents, rich and stupid, asked AFO to give him a quirk. he gives him Naval Laser and now basically has his family enslaved and forces him to be the traitor.

something odd about aoyama’s quirk (besides that is fucking stupid) is that it hurts him. not in a “worked out too much” way but in a “can barely use it” way. he gets better with training but he can barely handle using it for a few seconds without being in pain and he is RELIANT on support gear, something people with quirks are taught not to rely on as it is a handicap in case their gear is destroyed. he has no choice and has to wear it because otherwise the fuckin bitch leaks n shit

there are two other characters who’s quirks hurt them like this. izuku and his liquified bones, who we also know was quirkless

and shiggy.

all the characters we have seen that have toxic quirks have a natural immunity or defense against it to protect them (IE: kacchan and fire, mina and acid etc)

however, shigaraki is literally flaking away. we also know that he was originally Tenko shimura and had black hair and black eyes. now tho, he has white hair and red eyes and his skin is so dry he scratches constantly.

his quirk is decay.

his body is slowly decaying itself as a reaction to the quirk because it’s not supposed to be there. he’s basically turning albino.

now. this i feel like is too obvious to not be canon but *shrugs*

AFO manipulated and groomed baby Tenko bc he’s a petty ass bitch

AFO forced decay onto bb tenko, causing him to accidentally kill his family, and be the one to find him after to “save him”, and it was planned every step of the way.

So this is easier just to go in order of tragic events.

Yoichi Shigaraki, first user of One for All, brother of All For One, so obviously All For One is a shigaraki.

Nana Shimura. Seventh user of one for all and All Might’s beloved mentor.

All Might, who is still alive and who AFO hates.

Nana Shimura. Also known as Tenko Shimura’s grandmother.

now.

nana is dead. bc afo fucking killed her.

all might is not dead and is proving to be afo’s biggest asshole to date.

all might continues to be heartbroken about nana’s death to current day. it’s no secret how important she was to him.

afo, an immortal petty bitch, thinks hmm how can i make all might suffer the most.

oh i know.

finds her quirkless grandson and says “hey lil boy i can give you a quirk! :D”

tenko, 4 and stupid, “omg really!! :D”

afo, *gives tenko a super fucking destructive quirk*

*sends him home*

(note: he could have also have it to him without tenko knowing it happened idk. the details are flexible but the main point it the important thing here)

tenko, fucking accidentally kills his entire family bc how was he supposed to know better.

afo, is immortal and rich so has people watching to make sure no one gets close to the boy and he swoops in to “save him”

proceeds to groom him and traumatize him by making him wear his fucking dead family’s hands on his body to constantly remind him he is a killer and evil and afo will be the only one to be kind and care about him

afo brainwashes tenko into forgetting what happened and who he used to be (through grooming, gaslighting, etc) and now he only knows himself as tomura shigaraki.

plans to make him basically the successor to afo and be what kills one for all/ all might is sick poetic fuckery of all might being killed by his mentors grandson.

(also adds a reason as to why nana is the only female user. to show that she is important to the story beyond just being a past user/mentor)

now this next theory has less of a hold bc of lack of evidence but i personally head canon it to be true.

Dad for One

basically. midoriya izuku’s dad, midoriya hisashi is actually AFO.

he left when izuku was diagnosed as quirkless which could be considered hypocritical considering he sought out tenko but i think afo is a dramatic bitch and wanted to fuck with all might but ALSO

tenko is older than izuku by at least a few years, so he would have already had that plan in motion and may have stuck around just to see if izuku developed a quirk worth stealing or not and decided he wasn’t worth it. or could have also just not been able to get away with using him bc of inko and the bakugous. or a little of all that idk. (i GUESS it’s possible that he also actually did care about izuku and didn’t want to hurt him but i meeeannnnn idk man i wasn’t there)

BUT BESIDES THAT

* horikoshi has confirmed that izuku’s dad would be revealed before the end of the series and we kinda don’t have many options left here (at least i saw something that said that at one point, could be bs but STILL his dad is one of the last mysteries of the show)

* afo’s fuckin face is destroyed so we can’t see any resemblance BUT Yoichi looks INCREDIBLY similar to izuku

* it honestly makes the story super fucking interesting?? like izuku is the son of afo, born quirkless, given the quirk one for all by all might, all might basically becomes dad might, and izuku is the one to take his father down with the help of the previous users (including his uncle yoichi) in an incredible poetic justice loose end tying satisfying ass ending

i also wanna add that the Dabi is Touya Todoroki theory being canon gives credibility that this story has a thing for the family drama plot line and why wouldn’t they use it in the main characters storyline?

in conclusion, i held my wife hostage for a solid hour and a half to explain these to her, not dissimilar to this meme;

and i wanted to share it bc i worked too hard on it to just delete the note lmfao

[diamantinasfrilledshark]

Roleplay Rules!

Status: Semi-Open as of November 2nd, 2023

Feel free to DM me or ask any questions in my inbox! I can't guarantee that RPs will start right away, but we can definitely start setting things up.

In order to RP with me, you NEED to send me the hidden phrase in here so I know you actually read the rules. If not, I will not RP.

Literacy Style:

Literate to semi-literate. I like to write in multiple paragraphs, both with detail and somewhat dialogue heavy. If you’ve seen my writing, it’s a lot like that! I expect potential RP partners to follow in suit/match.

It seems as of late that I prefer literate with multiple paragraphs and details.

I’ve been RPing since I was like, 10. If I see *she smiles* it might summon rage 💀 /hj

Where We Can Talk:

Just starting off? Tumblr DMs! I won’t RP in the comment section of a post.

You can now ask for my Discord. It’s where I’m most active.

Slots:

Don’t really have a cap off but it becomes too much at once I will be sure to let you know.

Genres and Plots:

Almost anything and everything! However, towards strangers and people I’m generally unfamiliar with, SFW are going to be the topics I steer towards. Adventure, drama, horror etc. are all fine the first go around.

I’m pretty flexible on genres so like, hey don’t be afraid to suggest it.

NSFW, I like writing smut, I just need to like you as well lol. Not a slight on your behalf, but I will let you know whether smut is a possibility or not.

NSFW will only be done with other 18+ adults who have verified they are in fact, adults. I absolutely refuse NSFW to “ageless” accounts and minors.

Honestly I don’t want to RP with minors so if you’re a minor, don’t message me. Don’t do it. Thanks.

Pairings:

Gets a little odd here, I don’t actually ship anything, if that makes any sense? Like, canon character X canon character just isn’t in my repertoire unless they’re already an established couple or the franchise is heavily leaning them that way.

That said, I’m totally cool with self shipping and OCs X Canon characters. (If self ship, it has to go both ways. Sorry I’m a simp too 😔)

Platonic, familial, those work best though especially if I am unfamiliar with you as a person.

Honestly I’m not as veered towards romance unless you’re a good friend of mine.

Do:

When first DMing, send me memes to help break the ice! I’m pretty good about speaking to people, but I understand how awkward it can be

If you’re using an OC, please tell me all about your OC! If you have any reference pics etc, send them so I can describe them during the RP.

If you’re playing a canon character and you’ve changed anything about them that’s notable, feel free to mention their quirks, and the lore building you’ve done for them.

Tell me if it gets to be too much or if you wish to change directions. I want you to feel safe and have a free voice during the chat. If something doesn’t click, tell me.

Please talk to me about the RP plot before we start! That gives me a good direction on what bases to hit and which lines to not cross. Your boundaries are just as important as mine and I want to respect them.

Use brackets or some other notation to let me know you’re speaking out of character! I’m very prone to using []

Understand that you can leave for a while and don’t need to apologize. Genuinely, I know you’ll get back to me. If you don’t think you will or it’ll take longer than expected then let me know. I know people get busy, so it’s honestly no problem.

Don’t:

Do NOT ask to RP if you are a minor. I do not wish to RP with minors.

Send me unsolicited NSFW or a starter without any conversation prior to. It’s just kind of ???? On my end.

Do not godmod HEAVILY. I’m okay with like, “and he helped her up and watched as she walked over to the desk.” But fully godmodding is a no.

Send one liners. Self explanatory.

Wildly deviate from the plot in bizarre ways. Like, making things NSFW all of a sudden or cause angst when there was none. I hate saying “Mary Sue the RP” but do not Mary Sue the RP.

Please don’t be upset when I take a hot minute or two to respond. I’m a person that has a life outside of her phone and is actually prone to migraine if I look at screens for too long. I will always get back to the RP unless I say otherwise.

Be pushy for a character or a pairing I said no to.

Go too OOC for canon characters.

Ask for things like rape, beastiality, common DNI criteria.

I understand RP can be therapeutic but remember, I am not a therapist and the RP we have is not substitute for actual mental health help.

Fandoms:

SCP

Call of Duty

Darkwood

Assassin’s Creed

Grimm

Uncharted

My Little Pony (yeah goin' back to my roots)

My OCs (need to ask about those, there’s,,,, many and they’re all intricate.)

Other Things:

Please use third person, past or present tense. Usually past tense.

I feel it goes hand in hand with literate RP but use “speaking” for a dialogue and ‘thinking’ for thoughts.

Try not to rush anything! Let it happen naturally and it’ll all play out.

Don’t be afraid to talk to me outside of the RP either. Like, it’s a personal thing we’re probably going to become friends.

Some Examples of My RP Style:

Mind you, not all of these are going to be extremely long. Things tend to taper out.

All of these examples were lifted directly from one of my RPs.

November 2nd, 2023: I swear not all of my replies are going to be like this. I'm immensely more busy now.

This is a starter:

A young princess sat on the balcony of her mother’s grand palace. The stars of the night were absolutely gorgeous as her dark eyes peered upwards, tracing constellation upon constellation. There, she could see the proud statue of Amun and feel the loving gaze of the beautiful mother goddess, Hathor. Strings upon strings of stars hung in the sky and bathed the desert in a warm white and blue gold, illuminating the darkness so she could observe the night life of her people. At barely eighteen years old, the young princess had been coming to a very startling conclusion as she stared out at the houses amongst the dunes and the boats and their ferriers on the Nile: that one day, all of this would be hers. The thought scared her, as ruling over such a people with the same authority as her mother and her mothers before her… The burden was crushing in its own right.

Sameera, the current pharaoh of Egypt and seated daughter of Isis and Ra, had been gearing her only daughter up for greatness since she had been brought into the world. The palace had served little as a home and more of a house of education, gearing up the little girl for a future in which all would bow down to her. Sameera has been, and will be considered a bountiful ruler. She ushered in an Egypt in which magick and divine favor rained down on the land, where suffering was lightened, and where pain had been naught but a bruise.

To give her daughter, Tavi, a taste of what it would mean to be the seated pharaoh and begin expanding her power besides running the palace, Sameera had placed her in charge of the Festival of Hathor. The festival in itself being amongst the most important task Tavi has been held in charge of to this date. In the morning, Tavi would be heading out by herself to Dendera, the main site of Hathor’s cult and preside over it, and of course, ensure it passes smoothly.

It sounds so simple: let people get drunk and feast, make merry, and enjoy singing and dancing in the company of others, but Tavi has never been a part of such importance in ritual ceremonies. She’s only ever observed, and even that in itself has been something hidden to her as her mother finds the merrymaking beneath her real education under the watchful eyes of Thoth.

Tavi sighs deeply and rests her arms on the balcony for just a moment more, already intending to head back inside and rest for the night before one of her lady maids interrupts her train of thought.

“My lady,” the finely dressed woman begins. “You have a visitor.”

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise as she crosses the balcony through the cool night air to come to her lady maid’s side. “What? Who on earth would come to my quarters at this hour?” She inquires, more curious than angered at the thought she has a visitor.

The woman bows her head in the princess’s presence as if to silently ask her if she should address the visitor. “I believe it pertains to the Festival of Hathor, but it was not my place to pry,” the lady maid continues, her voice soft and sweet. “Shall I tell them to leave?”

Tavi blinks before shaking her head. “No, you may leave. I’ll handle this,” she replies warmly, her hand resting on the taller woman’s shoulder. “Go, get some rest,” she hums.

The lady maid nods, thanks her princess, then exits out the servant’s entrance, leaving Tavi to her own devices.

The young princess brushes back some of her black hair, wondering who would ask audience with her so informally and so late at night. She crosses her limestone floor quietly, akin to a ghost as if to tell her visitor no one is present before stopping just shy of the door. Mentally, Tavi remembers what her mother has said about acting regally in the presence of others, how to stand tall and like a future queen, and physically rolls that onto her stance.

With a deep breath, she opens the door.

And here is another response show casing what RPs tend to look like down the line WITHOUT me RPING multiple characters:

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up In surprise as the listens to Arya’s words. “That is troubling,” she murmurs more to herself than anyone else as she once again brushes back some of her hair.

Her mind wanders, wondering what the right course of action would be. Of course, they would be moving during the earlier morning before the sun would come up, but with the flowers on the line… “perhaps we should leave earlier,” she hums.

But then that would require waking up the rest of the party—and they needed their rest. “We can discuss this inside, please,” Tavi moves aside in the doorway, gesturing for Arya to enter. “I would despise seeing your work go to waste because of the heat and the sun,” she says, already moving to her table to give Arya a cup of water.

[Howdy, here’s the phrase. “An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.” ]

And here is a response showcasing me RPING multiple characters:

Abasi mentally rolled his golden eyes at Arya’s childish gesture as he led Tavi through the halls. He enjoyed the feeling of the princess’s hands on his forearm—she felt delicate beneath his touch, and it made his heart beat just a little bit faster.

The area they had stepped into was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous in every which way. The air was sweet and warm, like a mother’s caress.

“Great mother Hathor,” Tavi murmured, her head bowing in reverence to the goddess. “What a beauty and blessing you are,” she murmured to herself, slowly letting go of Abasi’s forearm.

“Princess!” A priest’s voice cut through. “What a pleasure to see you here,” he said warmly. “I presume you’ve come to make an offering?”

Tavi smiled and nodded, gently telling Abasi that his guard could lower. “I have. What a magnificent job you and the priests and priestesses have done.”

The priest beamed and quickly nodded for one of the lower ranking priestesses to fetch a bowl full of offerings they’d prepared for the princess. “It means the world t hear it from you,” he said. “We’ve gone all out this time for her festival.”

“It shows,” Tavi hummed, silently thanking the lower ranking priestess who handed her a bowl full of spices, jewelry, flowers and sweet smelling oils. Gently, Tavi came to the edge of the pool, kneeling down and offering silent prayers to Hathor, a blessed mother, before placing the bowl gingerly on the water.

It rippled as it flowed on the surface, almost resting perfectly in the middle amongst the sparse lily pads and lotus flowers.

On her way back up, Abasi offered the princess his hand, and she took it.

The priest once again beamed. “The goddess is most pleased with your presence,” he noted, barely able to contain his joy. “Would your companions like to make offerings as well?”

[emile-hides]

For the ask game! Ramattra?

The man who got me my first 1,000 note post. Yeah I got the think thonks on him for sure.

One aspect about them I love

He's not as inherently cruel as you'd expect him to be. In fact, he's hardly cruel at all. He takes time before a mission to get to know his human teammates and is even willing to socialize with them, despite his apparent hatred for the species. Given how we know people who hate Omnics treat their Omnic teammates before a fight... It's rather surprising I think.

One aspect I wish more people understood about them

This is one I see in a lot of X Readers that make me regret making that gif but look. Guys look.

Just because a man is big with a deep voice does not mean he's going to walk you on a leash and call you his mutt.

Ramattra is not a dominator of any kind, sexually or otherwise. He's the only Overwatch character who actively kinkshames that very specific thing. He hates that Genji follows Zenyatta around like a little lost puppy, actively calls him disgusting over it.

He is not a violent person either. He didn't want any of this. He doesn't want to lead armies and have other tremble under his thumb and do every little thing he commands.

I'm just personally very tired of the Violent Dominate Ramattra X Readers... he's a softie actually... I would like more overrun with anxiety because he has no clue how humans work and actively fears hurting them on accident Ramattra X Reader...

Headcanons I have about this character

I've said this one to a handful of friends but one of my instant Ramattra takes is that he is constantly, beyond his control, scanning for threats around him, and all Humans as perceived as threats to his internal scanners. He's always hyper aware of the humans around him, how they're moving, breathing, speaking, their critical weakpoints, any potential weapons they may have, etc etc. To the point that he struggles to distinguish an ally from an enemy human while in the midst of battle.

Everything he does that might seem odd was in effort to appear more... Friendly to humans during his time in the Shambali. He's a very big Omnic, not the biggest, but bigger than average, and his model type being Generals in the Human Killing Army is enough to put everyone around him on edge, which he of course picks up, and it puts him on edge. So he does weird human things like Breath, Stutter, Hum, Cough. Anything to make himself a little more human.

He hates a lot about himself. He hates how big he is, he hates his original purpose, he hates the human traits he picked up and can't let go, he hates that his default is violence, he hates the sound of his voice when he yells, he hates the constant threat display in his head, he hates his creation and his creator and the brother who made him feel welcomed like he could be accepted despite all these things he hates about living as himself.

I don't think he wanted to lead an army or extinguish the human race. But it's what he was built for, and if no matter what he does people will only ever see him as what he was at the start, then why try changing that? He's on a self destructive mission, yes to save his kind, his dying race, his family, but also just to get away from the fantasy he'd built up of being someone different than who he is. Someone smaller and gentler and more... human. That clearly can't happen. It's not an option for him.

I think Ramattra's a Trans Woman.

One character I love seeing them interact with

I really love his interactions with Bastion!! And Zenyatta as well!!! I know it says one character but they way he speaks to them both is so!!!!!! Cute!!!

The little twigs comment in his canon interaction with Bastion!! The lore and bond he had with Zenyatta in the past!!! God it's my everything!!!

One character I wish they would interact with/interact with more

My friend @ow-old-men got me really really into the idea of him interacting with Orisa (curse you OW2) and just. Experiencing the world along side her. Two Omnics made for violence redefining themselves in familial rolls

Does Orisa know what a woman is? No. But she's still the first one to use She/Her Pronouns for Ramattra because she knows.

Headcanons I have that involve them with other characters

Orisa is Ramattra's egg cracker this is why Blizzard won't let them interact

I think he's the reason Mondatta was assassinated. It was part of the deal with joining Talon, he agreed to assist them if they could take Mondatta out. It was a deal he regretted making almost immediately

Because of his hostility to humans, Maximilien is required to be in every meeting Ramattra is in, for his personal comfort.

Do they actually talk? God I hope so. I hope they kiss on the mouth while they're at it. But also I think Ram would hate Max, because he's just too human. Ramattra has no room to talk though, what with his bad habit of breathing and all that.

Akande really likes Ramattra, likes his manner of holding himself and his conviction. Ramattra hates Akande and really really really wants him to leave him alone.

I think the idea of Ramattra figuring out Reaper's identity and constantly threatening his life is incredibly good fanon content that should continue

Zenyatta, for a very long time, hated and was more hostile to humans than Ramattra. This is why Ramattra brought him to the Shambali, to get away from humans.

[pkmnprofloblolly]

ooc post- i wanted to compile the areas where my own personal pokemon lore contradicts with that of the canon of the games!

(also, im a little paranoid of this coming off as vagueing anybody in the inbox whose sent in asks about these topics- please dont take it that way if you have sent in something like that! the whole point of this blog is to provide interesting explanations for odd pokemon stuff, and all of the following is certainly odd pokemon stuff warranting explanation. these topics are just things i can't reconcile with my own version of the canon, or i think are more interesting when changed.)

so the majority of stuff i post here is additive to the canon. extra supplemental stuff that can slot into what we know about pokemon from the games, is the intention. i try to take almost everything the pokedex says at face value, save for perhaps some exaggeration on the numbers (mostly temperatures..). buuuuut for the sake of my own fun and cohesiveness of my own little version of canon, i've changed a few things.

upon reflection like...almost all of this has to do with the breeding system, lmao. so in the game, every single pokemon that's able to breed does so by laying eggs. they all have large eggs that hatch into large offspring, implying few offspring are produced with relatively high investment (k-selection).

i think this really flattens the interesting ways that organisms reproduce. there's a lot of bizarre, neat ways that things make more of themselves and making every single pokemon capable of reproduction have the same reproductive strategy is just boring!! so im throwing it out the window goobyebye

and then there's egg groups. the fact that entirely different species can breed with one another (not counting pokemon like tauros/miltank illumise/volbeat and so on where the males and females of presumably the same species are counted as different pokemon due to extreme dimorphism), with the female passing down the species.

i tried for a while to make a way this works that's interesting to me, but couldn't really land on anything. i'm sure there are folks out there who could create an interesting and cohesive spec-bio world where organisms use a reproduction system like this, but i'm not that person. so, for my purposes here, pokemon can only reproduce with members of their own species. (except for ditto. ditto's weird, and in a fun way. i'm still trying to come up with a reason for ditto's Whole Thing. but i want to keep ditto's whole thing intact, and removing the idea of egg groups makes it even weirder and unique among other pokemon. i'll figure some reason for why it can do that.)

also worth noting here are non-living pokemon. object pokemon, ghost pokemon that are canonically spirits, those sorts. these pokemon can often breed. yamask, for example- my personal favorite ghost pokemon- as a kind anon pointed out, is canonically the risen spirit of humans from hundreds of years prior...but it can also breed and produces eggs. in my eyes, only one of these things can be true, and i prefer to keep the ghosty stuff, because i find it much more fun. so, in my own little pokemon world, ghost pokemon like yamask, drifloon, or sinistea which are said to be actual spirits don't reproduce like normal creatures, and are instead created directly from Ghostses

lastly are Bullshit Gender Ratios. pretty much just pokemon that are entirely male or entirely female without an interesting reason. i absolutely hate the trend of any vaguely "feminine" looking pokemon being an all-female species. tsareena, tinkaton, jynx, lilligant, so on. there are some interesting ways animals can be all-female, mainly via the process of parthenogenesis, when a creature produces offspring without fertilization. this is most famous in vertebrates like the new mexico whip-tail lizard, an all-female species in real life. but it seems almost always when there's an all-female pokemon species..it's literally just because it looks girly, or less often all-male species looking manly (ie the hitmons and sawk+throh). and that ticks me off SO much, i don't like it one bit, so most single-gender species (not counting things with diverging evos like mothim [which is notably based directly on real bagworms, it's really neat] or salazzle) i'm treating as if they had normal gender ratios.

(sidenote, and something i'll probably make an in-character post on at some point- mandibuzz was an inadvertent prediction of this, which i find pretty fun.. mandibuzz is an all-female vulture pokemon, and only last year it was discovered that california condors are apparently capable of parthenogenesis. nice call, gamefreak.)

additionally, all-male species just straight up do not exist in nature. like, i don't want to entirely strike them from my canon, i'm sure i can figure out something .. but idk, stuff like braviary which is just a normal-ass bird, i see no interesting reason or explanation for it to be all-male.

anyways, yeah, i think that should be everything. thx for reading and sorry to anybody who wanted a fun explanation about the topics here, i wasn't able to come up with one 😔

[daybreakrising]

(for the canon questionaire) any odd numbered one you haven't done yet, answer it about Wrio!

canon questionnaire | no longer accepting

3. What's the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.?

the lore. i live for it: all the little details you can uncover through reading info on artifacts or weapons as well as the lore that is fed to you through the story. i am a big fan of extensive lore and getting to discover it little by little, so to me, that's the best thing about it

5. What's the best thing about the fandom?

the small corner i have found for myself with all these brilliant, creative people. i am allergic to fandoms as a whole bc they're a clusterfuck, usually, so carving out a nice space with the good people is comforting. i love reading all the hcs people come up with for these characters, all the little details they add that make the characters their own or expand on what we've been given in canon. the people i follow are all so creative and clever and i just. i love seeing it on the dash.

13. Are there any other characters from the franchise you'd like to play?

oh man. oh man. yes, absolutely, to the point where i have a space on my roster that's been reserved for someone for months and will remain there for probably at least another year and a half bc we likely won't get him in game until the s.nezhnaya addition

and i am always open to suggestions people make for characters they think i'd be good at bc....... i have 0 self-restraint when it comes to adding muses, as i've probably made very clear-

15. What are your thoughts on the canon ships for the character, if any?

i mean, there are no "canon" ships, of course (as much as i joke about wrio and n.euvi being married-) so i will replace 'canon' with 'fanon' in this instance bc i wanna talk about the two big ones-

by which i mean, w.rio.lette & w.rio.rinde. obviously, i ship both of these fiercely (though very specifically, for the latter) & i am absolutely weak for both relationships. there's just so much potential with both & i really hate the discourse i've seen in the past over which one is better. (classic example of people hating on a straight ship involving one half of the very popular m/m ship bc 'ew women', mostly, but i won't get into that now-)

17. Are there any ships you can't stand, why?

quick disclaimer to say this is not commenting on people who do ship this, this is just my personal tastes, but: wrio & l.yn.ey

now i am with the people who place l.yn.ey as a young adult at least (short male model =/= teenager, people, there are many adult characters with that model), so it has nothing to do with a perceived age, but simply that............ the fandom is Very Weird about it, and there is a rampant fetishisation of the ship that i cannot stand (largely due to l.yn.ey's design, of course)

also, personally, my wrio has put that very rigid distance between himself and the siblings in general - he calls them children in canon bc that's how he views them, bc he sees himself & his own lost siblings in them. regardless of how old they actually are, he's always going to have that perspective on them, so for me, the only relationship i can see him having with any of the trio is a found family kinda vibe

i don't judge anyone who does ship this (providing they also see l.yn.ey as an adult, of course) but it's just not for me

19. Should people get into the franchise you're writing from, yes or no?

yes. absolutely.

[kingtrash-fox]

regarding the recent events with sonics co creator being arrested I feel like sonic is just Cursed. Not like I’m the “ew that is o cursed who would make that” more in the “some hod decided that if that Blue Hedgehog does ANY GOOD I will rain pain upon him and anything so much as related to him even in the slightest”

yknow what time for a little bit of rambling rants my mutuals:

anything that even slightly is connected or embodies sonic is just as cursed as him

Some Examples include:

Hatsune Miku: a canonically 19year old Vocaloid that after 2 months of popularity was basically erased from the web cause people searched her up so much. And obviously the uncles went apeshit as well

Balan Wonderworld: Made by the Co creator of sonic that got arrested is a really nice looking game and apparently a good book as well and is in the middle of a redemption arc. However after its demo got released people belittled it over its glitchy gameplay and never gave it the chance it deserved

Friday Night Funkin: it’s an odd one to be listed since FNF isn’t a Sega Game but Canonically Boyfriends older sister is Hatsune Miku (now age 20 for lore reasons ) and you can see where this is going. For a while the community was fairly stable via Mods since the official game. Then Sonic.Exe’s mod came around-

Real Quick: Sonic.EXE his Creepypasta was so bad originally that people decided to make better versions and he has officially be acknowledged by Sega a few times now. His community is terrible which provides context to what’s to come for FNF. It’s most iconic Comtroversy is the Revie Controversy (Go look it up for extended context but to sum it up Revie was accused of ERP with a minor when it was really a 2 year difference when Revie was 16 and the one that pushed her into it was 14 and A man by Rightburst Ultra who is an ass framed her for even worse things got her kicked and basically filled the Mod with so many OC’s it killed it)

back to FNF thanks to that one mod it helped kickstart so much controversy it might have killed the main game. But since the main game isn’t A. Finished or B. Have anyone on Kawaiisprites team that done something it’s still living being updated slowly but because of that it continues to have bad things going down in the Mod community.

This Next one is a stretch but I has explanation for it:

Steven Universe: Now you might be asking yourself “My fellow Mutual why the Fuck is this show on here? It isn’t even connected to Sonic!”

and you would be right EXCEPT Sonic Booms tv show was On CN as was Steven Universe and Stevens whole nature of wanting to save the Earth and trusting nature kinda reminds me of sonic. Plus He can Go his own equivalent of SSJRosé and sonic has his super form which looks like Super Saiyan and they both can Achieve these forms via Magic Rocks ( Stevens Gem and the Chaos Emeralds)

okay time for the Cursed Reasoning:

Steven Universe has a pretty bad fanbase (Tumblr seems Chill about it so I think it was a Twitter thing but I don’t know about the past tho) and it was so bad it nearly killed a girl cause they didn’t draw Rose Quartz right. For more context that girl was already going through something and the fanbase wasn’t helping matters. They weren’t the cause but they weren’t a solution.

The show was always belittled as people weren’t happy with Steven being a pacifist and the shows inconsistent art style ( I’m a fan of the show and I never really saw a problem with either I’m just saying the the General hate for it is) to the point where people make art and jokes saying that other show characters would go out of their way to insult him (See the Fnf Mod Roasting on a Friday night for a recent ish example) and that these other characters are better at solving problems than him (even tho most characters of their own shows Like Mordecai and Rigby cause their own problems 90% of the time and they are usually solved after a bunch of people die. Adventure time gets a pass as most of the civilization and deity’s cause each other problems and it isn’t always Finns Duty to solve those ones. Most of Stevens problems were because of his mothers and they became his problems cause she died) and that CN itself hated the fact that there was so much LGBTQ energy at the time they tried to get it cancelled multiple times (Garnets Wedding being the final straw) and that people thought it was Rebecca Sugars way of showing propaganda. Etc you get the gist it’s like the Animation Sonic the hedgehog. Anytime something goes good for it a bitch slap follows

(Sorry for the especially long rant about Steven Universe it just felt like the Most attacked without it being connected to Sega Directly)

even Sega itself gets no respect as everyone assumes that Sega is lazy meanwhile the workers run themselves ragged meanwhile Game freak is getting a nicer treatment even though it has like Triple the workers than Sega

The point is I feel like some fan of Mario or just someone that hated Hedgehogs made a deal with the devil to make Sonic and anything that even shared his energy have major problems and hopefully this year might start to break A Sonics Cycle and B. Whatever curse it has

[lovelyminako]

Thoughts about Daevier + lessons in writing

Note: This was made as of Dae-jung's 6th memory being the latest one for him.

So, I got thoughts. I know this would've been more relevant when it came out but it is what it is.

Let's not kid ourselves. Daevier is a controversial ship to say the least. If people don't hate it, they at least find the ship weird and sudden.

While I personally like the ship and see the potential, I can understand why one wouldn't like it.

Such an odd ship was introduced in the worst way possible.

A big oopsies in Daevier was that they tried to shortcut to the romance immediately or they at least showed the romance first before anything else.

You can't shortcut a romance if your audience isn't invested into the ship already. And no one wanted Daevier when it came out. Hell, Javier isn't even released as a character and the only content we had of him was of his YouTuber lifestyle and how he's a knockoff Mr Beast before that.

So when Dae's 4th memory came out, of course no one actually shipped it and were just making jokes and memes about Ye-jun being jealous, salty, and murdering Javier.

But however, a memory is a memory and the writers were serious about it which threw people off their rhythm because they were unconvinced of their chemistry and they knew that they was going to be more memories of them like Dae's 6th memory and inevitably Javier's own memories once he comes out.

And another reason why Daevier generally isn't liked because there's a question of why. "Why is Dae even dating Javier aside from being a good listener? Anyone can be a good listener, what makes Javier different?"

I hate to say it but when Dae's 4th memory came out, there were more legitimate reasons to ship Dae-jung X Ye-jun over Daevier. They're both idols, they both crushed on each other at the same time at one point, their lore is connected, they had history together before STAR*STRUCK, their conversations and interactions are genuinely cute (without hindsight of Ye-jun's murders and obsessive behaviour). Not saying you should ship it but there are reasons aside from being someone who romanticises toxic relationships and yanderes.

However, at the time of Dae's 4th memory, there were no reasons to ship Daevier aside from being canon and that it's not toxic which is a low bar.

I think if Brenda did the 6th memory as the 4th memory which establishes their friendship and then made the 5th memory a reflection about Ye-jun and Javier (sorry So-yeon, but i don't see your relevance in Dae's personal character arc) and making comparisons between the two and/or his feelings about the both of them and then did the 4th memory as the 6th one, people would be much more invested in the relationship and see it as compelling as well as having potential for sweet, sweet drama and angst for people to write fics about.

But however, I don't want to leave it at that since I can't really change the state of the memories as much as I want to. So I'm going to give some writing tips based on the oopsies of Daevier. At least, take these into mind if you're not writing for fun and instead for an audience.

Do not take shortcuts in writing. You need build up for anything. You can't suddenly kill off a character unless it serves the story somehow like the suddenness of the death is meant to be comedic and provide a laugh. Your heroes can't suddenly just win out of nowhere, deus ex machina style. You need to put time and work into something for it to flourish and succeed.

Have structure in your writing. You don't want to make constant jumpcuts in your writing or place things in an order which doesn't make sense (which is unfortunately is an issue with the memories being out of chronological order.) You can't put the beginning at the end and the end at the beginning.

Don't be afraid to kill your darlings. If a part of the story doesn't serve the overall narrative and big picture then it's best you get rid of it. Every scene should be providing something to the table, it can't be there for fun. Everything has a purpose inside a narrative.

[izayoichan]

Would love to know more about Flynn and Fannar, since I've been more up-to-date with Christian and Hayden in the past. For both, questions 1 until 11, and 18,19,20 :3

(if they've already been asked, just ignore my ask :p)

What is their color palette: Flynn: I guess a mix of black and green, it fits with me somewhat odd skin color I got from my mom, and colors I like. Fannar: I am more leaning toward white, blue, light blue.. lighter colors, and grey because it reminds me of my twin's skin color. - chuckles- Flynn: Your pants do not mimic my skin color!

What does your OC's handwriting look like? Flynn: My dad forced me to learn proper writing, telling me something along the lines I would not be a Vet that was called and asked what I wrote to one of the clients.. so mine has become a fairly pretty loop script I think it is called (google said so!) Fannar: Mine is unreadable, I am the doctor River hates -grins at his twin's chuckle.- I always used to type on a computer, like my dad, so my handwriting is just crap.

What architectural or design aesthetic would best suit them? Flynn & Fannar: Cottagecore -looks at each other and laughs-

If your OC likes art, talk about which piece they like. Fannar: Ehm.. -looks at Flynn that shrugs their shoulders- I admit, I am not that into art, I grew up with movies and music. If we call music art, I would say, Beethoven, I like their sonatas. Flynn: Basically the same here, no one took us to watch art as kids, so if anything it would be classical music, and Beethoven for me too.

The rest will be under a line, it gets long!

5. What Character from Myth or a Farietale beast best represents them? Fannar: Well.. we are both dragons, but, hmh... Flynn: It's oddly hard to say when your brain just goes, But I am one? I guess we represent ourselves? Fannar: Dragons it is!

6.If your OC was a character in a novel from a literary canon, who would they be: (I honestly read the wiki link more times than I care to admit, and I am still stumped, so I choose some character from book series I know.. ) Flynn: Bjørn Belto I think for you. Smart fellow, symbols, math, books. Fannar: Nathaniel from The legend of the ice people. Just generally too nice, and much much stronger than you seem.

7. If your oc could meet any historical or past figure either in the real world or their own canon lore who would it be? Flynn & Fann: See who our grandfather was before he became a reaper. -looks at the other and chuckles- We'd like to know that part.

8.If yourOC were to live in any other time period, which era would they be best suited for? Fannar: Hmh.. Medieval times I think for me. Dragons were known back then if you believe the lore. Flynn: Eh, I dunno, I think I fit best where I am, but well old egypt I think I'd do okay in.

9.If your OC was to imagine their idyllic life, what would that be like? Fannar: With Arlo, back at the cottage and near the lake that was there, watching the star. Simple life with rabbits and some chickens and a small country clinic. Flynn: I guess for me it would be much the same, a bigger house, and no clinic, just working at the two shelters. Simple life really, no big things or so.

10. What piece of moody poetry or novel quote best encompasses your character. Flynn: "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." Fannar: "And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you."

11. Who is your muse's muse? (Who inspires them/drives them) -They point at each other- Flynn: Its always been like this, we always had this between us. Fannar: Yeah, other than that, I think I'd say grandpa Hayle, for holding the family together in the worst time. Flynn: Agreed.

18. What is the one thing that they only let those closest to them see? Flynn: Ehm... anger and frustration I think. (he may not show much of it.. yet, but minor spoiler, it will happen) Fannar: Fear. - they look at their twin.- With all that happened, fear is a thing I learned to keep in check, to keep myself safe.

19. How would their life be different if they never met their partner. Flynn: Ehm.. I wouldn't have been bound to an angry dragon for years, other than that I think my life would be pretty much the same. I might of course have been with someone else. Fannar: Oh wow, very different I think... I wouldn't be missing for years, and almost dead when I came back. I would have stayed here, and trained to be a doctor..

20. What was the moment at which they knew they were in love, or was it a slow buildup. Fannar: I knew the moment I met Arlo, I felt at home, a pull to him that could not be ignored. Flynn: It dawned on me slowly, I admit I half thought it was the bond between us aft first, but seeing who this dangerous dragon once was, and seeing what was still there, under all those layers, it became a thing. I guess it fully dawned on me when we were attacked, and I sat with Brooke.

thank you for asking! I hope I did the questions justice! ❤

[sinistarz]

I'm probably the odd one out here but I genuinely do think that the way Dan is portrayed in Fate's Arrow is perfectly in character for him. There are things that contradict here and there obviously but a lot of canons in a lot of fantasy worlds do that, so it's no bother to me. As a Star Wars and DC fan I'm used to that stuff, anyway.

I've been playing the MediEvil games since I could first hold a Ps1 controller, and before that I even watched my dad play them and read out the lore to me like a bedtime story. And I can happily say that Dan's backstory in that comic doesn't bother me or make me wish it was completely different at all.

The fact Dan was a pompous bastard when he was still alive is... incredibly fitting. Of course I do love the fanon idea of him always having been shy and reserved, but him having been a cocky, self-entitled asshat living off Daddy's trust fund while also being a liar and a massive coward makes for an absolutely perfect story. It makes his redemption when brought back from the dead, as well as his resentment towards his former self feel all the more genuine.

Like... the point is, we weren't supposed to like him. The whole point of the comic is to make the audience understand that Dan (alive) is practically irredeemable and show how absolutely unfit he was to be a captain of the guard... because that's the joke. That's always been the comedy of it. He's a jerk, he's selfish and careless and cowardly. He's awful and thats why his future self is so agitated when reflecting on his past and wants so badly to fix his errors.

It's a way of the writers explaining that if we had known Dan when he was alive, we would have hated him and never wanted him to succeed. Maybe even wanted Zarok to win, but I'm just riffing. But we didn't know him then. We knew his redemption arc only, for decades, and we already loved him. And then we were given the full story, and learn how much of a dick he was. That is incredible storytelling.

I love the fact he was an asshole. Through and through, for all the above reasons. It makes so much sense.

Additionally, his appearance. I see a lot of people ragging on the way he looks, and I get it, but let me just say that the fact he looked when alive was so rediculous and goofy only compliments the storytelling. He absolutely does not look trustworthy, or brave or powerful. He looks wonky and unkempt. When gallowmere retold the life of Dan, it makes sense that when lying about his success, they would exaggerate his conventional beauty and describe him as some sort of demigod, when in reality he was just an average joe among the castle. Also the facial hair is literal genius. It made me giggle. The point of his looks in the games was to look goofy enough to giggle at, so of course that would translate to his living face as well.

I think the problem people have is, we've become so accustomed to the way Dan is portrayed in the actual games during his redemption and how his persona was presented to us then, that we've already sort of developed a version of him in our minds that we cling to. So that when we're shown how Dan actually was when he was alive, it's hard to take in and accept since we already have a fanon to ourselves. Which is fine, because creation sparking creation is the best and fandoms keep media going. We've already filled in the gaps of his past ourselves because we've only ever really known his future, and thats why Fate's Arrow Dan is such a turn off to so many people.

But, like I said, it fits, it makes sense and I'm glad the writers went with it. I have seen so many fan portrayals of living Dan throughout the decades from so many different talented people I still did, do and always will love them. But I absolutely love the canon we were given and I wouldn't have it any other way.

(Also- I saw some comments about how Dan looked different when alive in Resurrection- and just allow me to point out that so did everybody. Every character and thing was redesigned in the PSP version, including the story. That's a whole different universe, so it's unaffected by the comic entirely.)

Anyways ramble over. 💀🗡🏹

P.S., I absolutely agree with the fandom though that Tim is trans. I know the comic said it was "crossdressing" but come on. In a world where magic can bring scarecrows to life and fire breathing dragons exist, a trans man simply existing and being happy in the 1200s is beyond normal.

[marvalouslynerdish]

D&D prompt/thoughts/theory (this is copied from a comment)

its really hard to come with why there are not more dragons of other types (asides from the creators/writers of DND just not coming up with them; i would not say they're lazy for not trying but truth is it's hard to think/write/create this stuff) especially with all the expanded and obscure and inconsistent/never explained writings of the lore of dungeons and dragons; that it is probably indescribably hard to make any of it "canon". (sorry if this typing come off inconsistently or ranting.)

 but so far in my attempt to take a crack at this, i've been coming up with some different ideas just using what i know/have discovered or have come up with so far, though we call tiamat chromatic but maybe what she actually is; is prismatic. when it comes to tiamat lore; we only get so much information about her, we know her as the imprisoned in hell five-headed terror and we mostly assume she's always had five heads but what if she didn't; the ROT book classifies her as a gargantuan Fiend; Fiend? why not a dragon? or a dragon fiend? FTD gives us aspect of tiamat and she's classed as dragon but aspect, aspect is the word they use for defining her, meaning this is not the real tiamat. when it comes to bahamut he's described as the creator of the metallic dragons and is platinum scaled; meaning one, one color for him and he has no extra heads, tiamat is described as having five-heads with the body of a red dragon; since one idea is that bahamut is tiamats BROTHER why are they not very similar to each other?! since another idea is that dnd is a MAGICAL world that creatures/gods/monsters are born/created/shaped by the different worlds and environments; i think tiamat looks the way she does is because she has been changed by the environment of hell for living there for so long that she lost her true form!    

 so let's just try to go back way before tiamat was in hell, to a different time and place during and before the dawn of the "First World" and theorize this idea; that when tiamat was born her True form was that her scales were so indescribably colorful, bright etc. that when one sees her, her scales seemed as though you could see all the colors of the world through the reflections of the scales or that the scales had such a shine to them that if you walked around tiamat you could see her body in any/all the colors maybe even mixed, so what if the reason why we have only red, blue, black, white and green for her colors/form and the chromatic dragons is because after the first world was destroyed and tiamat was probably badly defeated/injured; that there was only a handful of her and bahamut creations that survived while the rest of them were destroyed! (and also maybe they didn't get that far with making orange, purple, pink, mercury, steel and Titanium dragons cause they were creating a world full of things and when the outsider gods came there was only what they made so far so maybe the 'First World" was an incomplete project so to speak) 

 so now that tiamat is in hell, her first work of creation is gone, Sardior is fucking dead, possibly has feelings like her brother betrayed her (i mean something had to have happened there and somewhere in between that made the Dragonfall Wars happen), she fought against impossible odds but lost and had the crap beaten out of her, hates the "gods" and their followers, wants revenge and now seeks to become more powerful than ever so she can destroy the world and the gods! hell hath no fury like the wrathful vengeance that this "woman" now seeks upon the universe; she is DONE with all of this! no wonder why she has been changed into what she is now as a reflection of the events that have changed/shaped her life; for as we know, to paraphrase: ONE BAD DAY can CHANGE YOUR LIFE. . .forever. damn that was a lot of text to type i did not expect this to be this long, sorry about that. but if anyone enjoyed this, glad you like it and hit me up, take care now.

[ariminiria]

When will bootlickers understand that alot people have no problem with diversity in RoP. The actual problem is the fact that Amazon disrespected Tolkien's legacy and tried to change alot of character's backstories and personalities. Not to mention making a cash grab out of it.

Fair warning, this is going to be a bit long simply because I have a lot to say on this.

I don't know how many people I've blocked over them calling everyone who hates RoP a racist. It's ridiculous. I don't know how this started.

But Hollywood has tricked people into defending the worst possible media in the world, tooth and nail, fighting for it like their life depends on it... simply dependent on if it has POC or women even mildly featured.

Instead of making good media, they tokenize minorities like a shield against all criticism. And I'm sad to see it actually working on so many people.

The thing specifically about RoP, is that there is some valid criticisms regarding the specific way the casting was handled, but Amazon has the easy out of calling everyone a racist in order to ignore the nuance. If they lump the genuine criticism in with the people who are just mad that there are POC, then that's how I get ignorant asshats in my notes calling me a white supremacist and telling me how I support Harvey Weinsten (tf?) all because I said that the show is bad.

Further breakdown under the cut, criticism of how Amazon the racist megacorp handled diversity in RoP.

I'm not an expert in Tolkien by any means. I'd say I know a bit more than most casual fans, only because I obsessively research the lore for my fanfiction, but I'm no Tolkien scholar.

That being said... I know that Tolkien already has built in diversity to his world. So right off the bat, it's inherently problematic to racebend characters and claim that you're "adding diversity" as if there never was any. You're flat out ignoring nonwhite nations, which... seems pretty racist to me.

The main issue of the specific way that diversity was handled for RoP is just another indicator that nobody involved in this manure pile has ever actually picked up a Tolkien book because...

There are tan/brown-skinned Hobbits mentioned. There are two proto-Hobbits as the main characters in RoP. Why weren't one or both of them POC? It would be canonical.

Or did they think that making the two filthy, hungry, idiot, moron buffoon characters POC would be too offensive? Though they had no problem making them stereotypically Irish... really makes ya think.

The showrunners are crowing about adding diversity that Tolkien supposedly "never did", yet they ignore the people groups and lore of entire POC nations he created in favor of poorly created OCs, and "representation" in the form of sloppy seconds by taking an originally white character, casting a POC actor/actress, and calling it representation. Maybe it's just me, but I think POC deserve original characters... and ones that are better written than the ones in RoP.

Not to mention that there is less known about these other nations, so less lore to screw up. Of course, making a series about the tragic story of how the Haradrim, the badass people group who tamed freaking Oliphants, eventually fell under the will of Sauron would mean they didn't get to use the names of characters that Everybody Knows. They'd actually have to be creative 🤪

Another huge thing is the specific implementation of "diversity" in RoP: It isn't diversity. It's tokenism.

The way the now-POC characters and OCs are treated is very odd. For some reason, the xenophobia/interspecies tension between Men and Elves is apparently all directed at the singular black elf?

And that's another thing.

One. Singular. Character.

Of each race.

Realistically, unless it's a coastal trade town or a large international city, the region will homogenize in about 3 or so generations. So either these characters are colonizers/the result of colonization in-lore, or... the more likely explanation... they're being used as mascots by Amazon. Because let's say that the "adding diversity that never was" argument actually made sense, despite the fact that we've established Tolkien already has diversity written into his wolrdbuilding...

Is it really adding diversity if it isn't reflected in the whole culture?

Why aren't a portion of the elves caucasian, then some are black, some are east asian, some south asian, some indigenous? Maybe the diversity is even based on the subcategories of elves, like the Silvan vs Sindar divide. Why not commit fully, use some creativity, and implement it in a way that is both interesting and complements the worldbuilding?

Because Amazon doesn't care about diversity beyond tokenism. As long as they check off their boxes ("make sure we get one dwarf, one elf, and one of the race of Men, the ladies can be royalty!"), they don't care about exploring what that would actually look like in the lore and worldbuilding.

And just a final note, but the Tolkien fandom has battled racists claiming that "orcs are black people" for so long. Only for Amazon to essentially canonize it (as much as this manure pile can be called "canon") because they couldn't be assed to know the barest bones of the lore.

(Or even watch the PJ movies apparently, because the Orcs coming from dark magic-twisted elves is explained by Saruman in Two Towers.)

I understand that some of this is extremely specific lore based stuff, but I suppose I'm used to adapted works of Tolkien having actual passion behind them, enough to care about the small details like the patterns on armor or the specific fabric of costumes. Even the notoriously awful Hobbit trilogy had more passion behind it than dollar signs.

The diversity itself is by no means problematic, and thats not what I or (most, I would hope) other critics are saying. But the ignorant implementation utilized in RoP winds up actually being offensive, and it's because everyone making this Product™️ went into it not with the mentality of passionately expanding what Tolkien had already created, but instead arrogantly thinking that they were surely making something better than the original.

[andthedaysthatnevercame]

For the Doctor Who themed ask game:

I want to hear all of your incredibly detailed and thought out opinions on all of the questions 👿🔪

300 word minimum per question (lol jk)

oooooo boy. strap in for a long one boys. i answered a couple already, but i'll do the rest here.

(2) what was the first entire series you watched/remember ?

series 1. the revamp, baby. the first ep i watched was from series 5, but i was a completionist even when i was 11, so i started the series from the beginning. (didn't know about classic who back then, or i would've been in for a ride lmao)

(5) any complaints about the show? (20) if you could change anything about the show, what would it be?

i'm gonna combine these two bc i feel like theyre the same kinda. i kinda wish it had a more consistent lore? sldkjfds okay i know this is a ridiculous request and like obviously if something shite happens ppl want to retcon it. or just the fact that it's been going on for 60 some odd years and things slip through the cracks. but i think SO much about the show changes when the showrunner changes, and i know thats a good thing that keeps the show fresh, but it would be interesting to see it all weave together just a tad more cohesively. idk i don't have any REAL complaints overall. doctor who, my beloved.

(6) nuwho or classic who ? why ?

nuwho only because i haven't seen enough of classic to have an informed opinion.

(7) the tenth doctor or the fourth doctor ? why ?

ten. see above.

(8) favorite outfit of the doctor's ? why ?

literally a flawless outfit. it's simple but so fucking effective. first of all, it just looks good. it's reflective of twelve as a character i think, and it has a charmingly classic feel. twelve's era really felt like we were maturing and taking a step away from the doctor that was a young, foppish, dandy, and this outfit SHOWS it. that flash of red in the coat makes me go FERAL. stunning. showstopping. thirteen also looks good in it. (second place goes to eleven's first outfit tho. cus of the nostalgia)

(9) least favorite outfit of the doctor's ? why ?

i like all of them tbh! is it cheating to say six's technicolor dream coat?

(10) favorite companion ?

martha jones. i'm so normal about it, though. (uhhh i've spoken about why i love her at length, and i don't feel the need to elaborate on it here. if you want to hear more thoughts about martha tho lmk i'll make another post)

(11) favorite romance involving a doctor? (12) what is your favorite romance involving a companion?

i'm also gonna answer these together. OBVIOUSLY tenmartha takes the cake. hence the url. i love their fucked up little relationship. i love the way the characters parallel each other and the narrative implications of this. i both think it was depicted perfectly in canon AND that martha jones and the doctor should have fucked on screen. the unrequited aspect is so gutwrenching and compelling. i love it and hate it. i also think ten was in love with martha for real in canon, so i must be fucking delusional. tenmartha hits too good tho.

i'm also a fan of thoscei in all iterations bc i love narrative foils <3

(16) who is your favorite doctor/companion duo ?

take a fucking guess. (tenmartha, my beloved) (11amy close second)

(17) what is your favorite alien species ?

hmmmmm. i don't have super strong opinions on this. maybe those like record keeper boys from demons in punjab? it was a super interesting concept for the doctor to be making assumptions that these guys were evil just to have the script flipped on her.

(18) what is your favorite alien planet ?

gallifrey, i suppose. that burnt orange sky.

(19) cybermen or daleks ?

daleks! they're lowkey kinda funny. there's that scene in daleks of manhattan where two daleks have a little office gossip moment in the sewers talking about how dalek sec is off his shits. it's hilarious. i also own a couple dalek shirts lmao.

[polyhexianchicken]

1,11,19,20,21

I have so many questions about the giant chicken.

1) What made you pick up this character?

This is gonna sound odd considering those that know me closer will know me by my bright and positive personality, and my answer may be morbid buut:

I found his complexity of a character fascinating. When I first saw him, I didn't know he had Empurata, or what that even was. At first he also annoyed me a little bit with his selfishness, but once I actually got through the two comic series, I was completely enamoured of this product of neglect. Small tidbits in the comic made me go 👀, like Rung dismissing his self harming, the entire crew bar Rodimus wanting to punch him, the only reason they even took him being that he was too dangerous to leave anywhere else; after a while, all I saw in him was a lonely, broken mech completely engulfed in rage of the absoloute unfairness life had given him, all for wanting to make clocks.

I personally believe he was a different mech before Empurata, as the brash and violent Whirl we know in the comics wouldn't have been able to make a name of himself as a chronosmith with that behaviour. And it's just, really interesting to see how he interacts with others?

He tried to kill himself multiple times, and had a rather soft/uncharacteristic reaction to Cyclonus' self harming tendencies, to a depressed Trailcutter, even encouraging Rodimus, helping Chromedome with Rewind-

All, small blink or miss moments where you realise that this mech absoloutly cares about this crew, despite choosing most of his waking moments to cause harm.

But still, he keeps going. He's still trying to make clocks despite being unhappy with the results everytime, but he just. keeps. going. He has nothing left to loose yet he's still kicking despite being suicidal as all hell.

What made me actually of course want to write him, was that he was fun. He's unapolagetic, he's out there, he is impulsive and chaotic and I wanted to write a fun character.

Originally.

It then morphed to me wanting to explore how someone would behave if society absoloutly had hated this guy's guts since the beginning, and how a guy like that would react to genuine care he has not felt his entire life- how would that affect his psyche, his behaviours?

I find him incredidbly fun and interesting to write because he's so darknmorally gray. He does what he thinks is right, no matter if its a terrible choice or not. And hell, he's smart and strong. He cares about others, but being shunned by society has made him clumsy and unaware of his behaviour to others, so he may be saying something out of kindness but really it's hurtful.

He's absoloutly chaotic which is so fun to write because I finally have an excuse to be gremlin :3

11) Are there some things you dislike about how the show/series/etc. portray the character you have picked up? If so, what?

I am very biased because the writing he got was made me love him, flaws and all. I dislike that he's such an underused character, I really wish there were more morally gray autobots being given showtimes or deeper lore dive ins. I want to see more of him :<

I must say I do notice a trend in fanon where he's just portrayed as a mech who only knows violence and absoloutly nothing else, which is a pity because he is a well rounded character. Each one to themselves of course, everyone has their own interpretations :D!

19) Should people get into the franchise your writing from, yes or no?

YEP. It's wild, it's longwinded, yes, but oh my god do you get amazing insight to social structures, to CANON interpersonal relationships, immense history deepdive and a different light on the Autobot/Decepticon mecha. IDW More than meets the Eye and Lost Light are such good series to read I honestly can recommend.

20) If you could sum up your character with one sentence, what would it be?

He's an angry, violent, broken and distrusting mech with so much care still about others.

21) Which song do you feel describes your character the most and why?

AGHH there's so MANYYY I have!!!

I'll have to go with this one for now:

as the lyrics remind me of what I said before: He's been mutilated, violated and shunned by everyone around him, but he's still here.

Since I rarely find myself being able to talk about this Lemme ramble about the lyrics real quick:

I was born in a thunderstorm

I grew up overnight

I played alone

I played on my own

I survived

Now this is the first verses and already it reminds me of him being from a higher caste but finding himself not wanting to be what he was, and never, (I believe at least) having any actual support from anyone but himself. He's only ever had himself to rely on and he's come through it all.

I wanted everything I never had

Like the love that comes with light

I wore envy and I hated that

But I survived

The next ones remind me of his anger and violence after Empurata, and wanting everything he never had (he lost his home and ability to craft, alongside his body)

But he's still here.

I have made every single mistake

That you could ever possibly make

I took and I took and I took what you gave

But you never noticed that I was in pain

I knew what I wanted, I went in and got it

Did all the things that you said that I wouldn't

I told you that I would never be forgotten

And all in spite of you

And I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing

I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing

I'm alive (You took it all, but I'm still breathing)

These lyrics hit home so hard because yeah often he wonders if it was really worth it doing all of these things, he often believes he's made every wrong choice possible in his life, nobody notices or cares that he's hurting (in his optics and actually proved by others behaviour in the comics), but DESPITE all of that.

He's still alive.

[sunlitmcgee]

not to start discourse over something no one has cared about ever, but it always confuses me how this fandom in particular has such a big issue with people swapping around or applying different dynamics to characters outside of the canon dsmp.

Like just as an example, I often see people pushing against AU fics where c!Tommy joins c!Beeduo's marriage by saying it's wrong because in canon they're family(should note I've only ever seen fics like that where the relationship is platonic/queerplatonic in nature, so there's never been issues raised over it being romantic, which is a whole other mess I don't have the energy to talk about so yeah please don't ask me to, I am very tired). And yeah! That's correct! In the canon lore, c!clingy have a very sibling-style relationship that doesn't contribute to them being together that way.

But that's the thing: people only create content of that sort in an AU context.

It's normal for fandoms to play around with relationships and write them as being different than how they are in canon. It's not like they're using that in canon meta analysis. They're just playing with their blorbos. Just having fun, which is the point of fandom in the first place.

Obviously there are exceptions for this when something violates a boundry. But I don't think it's so bad to have an AU where cbeeduo are siblings, or to write c!wilbur as c!clingy's parent, or any other number of dynamic swaps I see get hated on so often for no other reason than "this is bad and I hate it, how dare you go against lore, that isn't how it is in can, bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh"

IDK.

tis just odd to me

[baixueagain]

The Gendo & Rei Question: Intro & Part I

Introduction

A couple nights ago I received this question and ever since I’ve been working to answer it, except it turns out that I have a hell of a lot more to say than I originally thought I did. It’s thus turned into a multi-part series, so stay tuned for coming installations. I have been curious about the odd relationship between Gendo Ikari and Rei Ayanami ever since I was a fourteen-year-old myself, but my latest Evangelion rewatch at the ripe old age of thirty-three has brought it all surging back and provided me with a lot more insight that I had in my past watches (first as a teenager, then as a twenty-something). It's also really the perfect archetype of a type of fictional relationship that has always absolutely fascinated me, which I'm sure anyone who's followed this blog and read my work for long enough can tell. In an anime that really centres on characters' relationships it's definitely the one that I think is the most interesting, and part of that is its deep ambiguity and flirtation with being openly taboo.

I should first note that I'm mainly going by the canon for the 26-episode anime and End of Evangelion here as that's mostly what I care about in terms of the franchise and it’s what I’m personally most familiar with. There's been lots of things given Word-of-God since, and there’s plenty of additional detail in the manga (once I’m done reading the manga I may do a separate post on that, since the manga really makes explicit the implicit), and that’s not even counting the many alternate universe stories and the Rebuild series. For brevity’s sake I'm thus primarily using what we see in the anime. Also, I may get things wrong since the lore is so uncertain and at times contradictory.

Gendo's textual treatment of Rei from the anime and EoE alone speaks volumes about the nature of their dynamic, even if many of the exact events that developed that dynamic are unclear. And to understand Gendo’s relationship with Rei, we first have to understand his relationship with his dead wife, Yui Ikari.

Part I: The Girl Who Got (Absorbed) Away

Gendo’s story with Yui starts when he is introduced to Professor Kozo Fuyutsuki, who says that he knows Gendo Rokubungi by reputation and then goes to pick him up from the slammer. Gendo is (presumably) a PhD student like Yui, and take it from a PhD: this is definitely unusual. Us academics aren’t really the bar brawl sort. And yet here’s Gendo, his face bruised, arm sprained, and looking like he’s had quite a long night in the drunk tank. He states that the other guy started it, that he’s not exactly a people person, and that he’s used to others’ disdain. On their first meeting, Fuyutsuki finds him “thoroughly unpleasant” even though the intense young man has apparently been excited to meet the professor ever since he heard about Fuyutsuki from a “mutual friend.” Gendo is a stark contrast to the charming, kind, and well-presented Yui that we met alongside Fuyutsuki earlier. To Fuyutsuki’s shock, he soon learns that Gendo and Yui have been involved for a while despite being apparent polar opposites.

Despite his rough appearance and almost arrogant mannerisms, we already know three things about how Gendo views Yui: he automatically values and trusts the mentor she admires (enough to ask Fuyutsuki to come pick him up from jail), he doesn’t call Yui his girlfriend even though they probably are already involved by this point, and he asked his girlfriend’s mentor to come pick him up instead of just asking his actual girlfriend.

Now, this seems on its surface a pretty odd cluster of facts, and some of them could have multiple valid explanations. For example, perhaps he doesn’t tell Fuyutsuki of their true relationship simply out of a sense of privacy or decorum. But it all comes together when the final piece of the puzzle is revealed in EoE: Gendo hates himself. Deeply, passionately hates himself. And just as much as he despises himself, he adores Yui and sees her as the only person capable of loving him for who he truly is. And that kind of self-hatred starts young. My theory for this scene is that Gendo doesn’t feel worthy to call Yui his girlfriend and despite his casual swagger, he doesn’t want her to see him this way. After all, this is a prestigious university and Yui is a rising star among her colleagues. It’s clear—and we see this in Fuyutsuki’s reaction—that Gendo is a step down in terms of dating. And I’m certain that nobody believed this more than Gendo himself.

Also important to note is that once they get married, Gendo Rokubungi takes Yui’s name via the practice of mukoyoshi, which occurs when a son-in-law is adopted into his marital family. This is frequently done when the head of a corporation lacks a male heir, but so far as we know the Ikaris weren’t a business family. However, mukoyoshi can also happen when the groom is lower-class than the bride, his biological family has a shameful background, or he’s been disowned by his biological family. So while it tends to go over the English audience’s heads, this detail would have signalled to the original Japanese audience that Gendo is probably the one who got very lucky in marrying Yui—lucky enough that he gave up everything of his background to be with her. Again we get the sense that he views himself as unworthy in this relationship.

Immediately after revealing that he’s now Gendo Ikari, he reveals a new detail: Yui is at home, caring for their newborn. And when he says this, he smiles in joy. Earlier, Yui had said—to Fuyutsuki’s surprise—that she was open to a domestic role as well as an academic or research job. Thus, her staying home with their newborn child is already framed not as her being the submissive half of the couple, but simply as a woman doing something she’s always wanted to do just as much as scientific work. And Gendo, bless him, looks incredibly proud of her (he is, as I’ve said before, essentially a wifeguy gone bad). Just as notable is the fact that once Shinji is old enough, Yui happily returns to work alongside her husband at Gehirn, and they seem to function as a team. Throughout the show, their relationship is implied to have been incredibly equal and balanced…outside of the rumours that he murdered her, of course. Yui is Gendo’s redemption from a murky, unpleasant past, and now they’re working together to save mankind from coming doom.

And then, just like that, she’s gone. The redeeming light of his life blinks out in an instant, and Gendo becomes a man obsessed with recapturing that light. He disappears for a week without giving notice, and when he comes back he is a man transformed by a new purpose. The symbolism in the scene is obvious: he is not only bearing a cross, but impaled by it.

The Gendo we meet in Episode 1 of Evangelion is thus a man trapped in an endless grief cycle of hoping for reunion with the love of his life on the one hand, and on the other, despair of ever connecting with anyone else or finding meaning without her. His entire world is built on this obsession over grief and his refusal to grow past it. As a result, virtually all his other relationships grind to a halt, and he holds everyone in his life at a rigid distance...except for Rei Ayanami. Rei becomes a "safe space" from that grief cycle even as her existence enables him to perpetuate it, and I'll dig into that in coming installments.

I should also make a note here of Gendo's immense guilt, which goes hand-in-hand with his grief. It's surprising to think that someone like Gendo, who expresses virtually no remorse for the majority of the story, is in fact wrapped up in guilt as well as grief, but he is—at least according to my reading of him. I think a large part of it is survivor's guilt: both he and Yui were working on Project E, but she's the one who got killed doing it. What’s more, despite their equal footing in a lot of things, he seems to have been the one helming the project, which in turn would make him directly responsible for his wife’s accident. I sincerely think that he is unable to reconcile himself to the fact that she died instead of him, and that he was sitting at a safe distance watching as she was destroyed. This is accentuated by the rumours that spread about Gendo murdering his own wife, and it is very likely—based on his behaviour—that he thinks he did, too. This becomes his excuse for every other atrocity he commits. After all, he’s already committed the worst crime he could’ve ever conceived of: he got Yui killed. No other cruel, brutal, or vicious act could ever possibly compare to that. All other wrongs become justified in the pursuit of undoing his single greatest sin.

And just as with his grief, Rei becomes a simultaneous escape from and excuse for his guilt and self-hatred.

To be continued in Part II: Wife Husbandry, or the Genetic Pygmalion

Like my meta? Buy me a coffee!