#not me I'm built different

[cardentist]

"steven universe was a good show ruined by a bad fanbase"

no, all fanbases are bad. steven universe was a good show ruined by bigots making video essays about how terrible it was because it had gay and trans people in it that people took at face value because it was the 2010s and they were 13

[hellfirenacht]

Calling Eddie a Freak is the same as modern Eddie being called Cringe and I feel like some of y'all aren't ready to hear that. I feel like a lot of fans would get the ick the second he hissed at someone

[momentomori24]

THEY ARE SO INSUFFERABLE AND HORRIFIC AND AWFUL BUT SO AMAZING AND DORKY AND THIS PART IS SO UNFAIRLY FUNNY AND CUTE AND WHOLESOME-- PLEASE, PLEASE HAVE MORE SCREENTIME IN S2. PLEASE LET THEM TAKE OVER THE SHOW. I KNOW THEY'RE HORRIBLE PEOPLE BUT I NEED MORE OF THE VEES.

And the most important scene of them all (to me):

First of all, how is Vox doing that. Second, you just know that these two douchebags are going to bang so hard with Alastor getting his ass kicked replaying in the background after this. I hate them so much.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

What can I say? They're my favorite.

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay you know what actually yeah. I was tired but I had a point.

Why. On earth. In zelda fics. Do people not shut up about everything being hylia's fault forever and ever.

Like, the one deity out of a dozen odd who got cursed into this right alongside Link. All the focus on one great all being power who then gets blamed or blessed for everything that ever happens. It's just... I don't know, it just seems like a culturally Christian thing. Not even that - American catholic.

Especially Legend omg when people write him he never shuts up about how everything bad that's ever happened to him is all hylia's fault and she's doing it on purpose with no thought to her poor beleagured hero. He sounds like someone who grew up in an American conservative household who turned out to be queer and never bothered to unpack any of it and acts like he's now atheist.

But even then you could do something interesting with that!! The common headcanon that Legend is hylian royalty - of course that family would put immense worth and worship on hylia as her descendants, she who founded their kingdom. And maybe legend could feel bitter about not inheriting the magic, or the throne, or whatever meant he grew up away from the castle. Give him some unexamined religious trauma! Heck, he could bond with Flora over disappointing your family's expectations or something! They could work on unpacking it together! If you must make it part of his character at least think about why!

Because that belief is wrong, because hylia is literally the one deity we can pretty safely understand is not all seeing, all knowing, all being.

Every time she has a voice, a role, we see her make mistakes or be tricked and have regrets.

Skyward sword, she's literally zelda. She's a young protective warrior goddess (she used a sword and lead armies to battle against demise) who was created by the Three to guard the triforce and keep watch over hyrules lands. By the time ss starts she's already made several tough calls, not limited to yoinking hylians into the sky. When she was zelda she hated every second of leading Link around and even then!! It all hinged on him being completely willing! He was never forced to do anything, she didn't even have her memories with the plan until after she'd fallen to the surface! Their relationship was entirely genuine and she very nearly overestimated her own willingness to go through with the plan! And even then she still managed to get kidnapped lmao. That's not what happens when you're in charge of fate.

And in botw and totk - she's in her full divine form, her full divine powers, she's ancient and magic and worshipped in every corner of the kingdom. And (spoilers!) she loses contact with one of her own mf statues. Not just any ten apples high chibi statue you see in the towns, no, it's The Big One. She's got no idea what happened to it, but she's (rightfully) worried, and asks Link to check it out. And in an entirely separate instance, her OTHER big statue in the ToT gets overridden!! By a triangle head! And ol creep in the deep is the one who releases the statue! It's been what 20k years of power and worship - if she's not all powerful then she never will be.

Hyrule - every hyrule - is very, very polytheistic. She's not even a goddess of time to be in charge of stuff like that! There's multiple of them: Naryu, Cia (and Lana), Farosh to an extent, and many artifacts that can cause time travel, like the harp of ages, the ocarina, the big portal in ss, those time shift stones in the same game, the statue in wind waker. Please stop treating her like the magic elf equivalent of Monotheistic American Christianity God.

She was introduced in skyward sword. The game that came out before botw. She did not exist in any of the games that came before that. There was a lake hylia! In the kingdom hyrule! That's it! Her name or even existence wasn't even hinted at before that. It's actually canonically pretty unlikely any of the chain (cough cough legend) have even heard of her! And her assigned job is protector of the triforce. That's it. And she can't even use the thing. She can very explicitly as a main driving force of the ss plot not use the triforce she protects. And the triforce, shockingly, is not even in every game.

Cases that hylia often gets the most flack for (links awakening and all the trauma from that, Link failing in botw, the events of totk) hylia has absolutely zero part in. Hilariously. And she has zero power over wishes made to the triforce or who makes those wishes or what the triforce does about it.

She even gets all the blame for the cycle of the hero, the reincarnation! Which? We know exactly how that happened. Blaming her for a curse she herself is a victim to?? Demise, in skyward sword, explicitly, on screen, doing it ON PURPOSE, cursing the spirit of the hero and the blood of the goddess.

Hylia, I don't know if you've noticed, also has her own blood. Whether or not she lost that blood upon return to her divine form, she still couldn't break the curse. Link, spirit now tied to whatever demise had cooking up, is basically to reincarnate in time for whenever the Interesting Times happen. And it's demise's fault, who, again, did it on screen, on purpose, explicitly, pointing at the camera with text bolded and everything.

So why do people even blame her? I think it comes down to this:

Her name matches the kingdom. Whatever her connection to the people with the same name, I don't know, but she did found the surface kingdom as a mortal. Being named zelda at the time I wonder who chose the name XD!

Her worship in botk as a high ranking deity. Again, not monotheistic, there's temples to the Three and there's Malanya and Satori and the great fairies and the yiga worship ganon, but hylia is the most widespread for all she's basically a side character working for the new heart piece situation. Again, this is only the case in ss/botk, she doesn't appear in even aoc.

A misguided belief spread in fanfiction that in linked universe, hylia is the one opening and controlling the portals. To my knowledge, lu canon is that the portals are opened by dark link, or at least that's the working theory. I think it's assumed that hylia is the one who gathered the heroes together to combat it? If that's true? Congratulations! We have one (very plot necessary) act of hers in a fan comic. That is not canon to The Legend Of Zelda series.

An american Christian (I hesitate to say evangelican?) cultural understanding of religion. The differences between polytheism and monotheism. How one might feel if the divine was proven real on earth. Zelda is a Japanese property, it is not a Christian country. Though it draws aesthetic inspiration from western medieval fantasy it is not and never will be culturally western. The majority of ao3/tumblr users are American or at least English speaking, and that will always affect interpretation. It's giving 'be thankful to God no matter what for he always has a plan. Trust in him and your suffering will be rewarded' which is not a universal religious belief.

Something I've noticed to be surprisingly common in fandom, is where a mentor or figure of authority who is anything less than perfect or all forgiving can very quickly have their reputation ripped to shreds by the fandom. And then newer authors come, read those works, internalise that about the characters and produce new works that assume that character's cruelty to be par for the course. I will not be listing those characters or fandoms for a variety of reasons lol. But it is amazingly common and very hard to untangle, especially in larger fandoms. It's character bashing in a way near identical to cancelling people irl. It's not 'giving them depth' or 'making it more realistic' (grittier equalling realism is an ice cold take proliferated by dudebro comic authors and wrong besides.) Have some critical thinking.

Lately, I've also been running into a great many fics (not so much comics) that make hylia do some fairly heinous stuff... And then unironically blame her for it. They do remember they're the ones deciding what the characters do, right? She's not an abusive master playing with her puppets until they break, she's quite the opposite! Use the right tags (dark hylia/ooc characters/character bashing/author made them do it, idk) or dial it back. This is a growing percentage of fics and I'll never restrict content but yanno, if you're going to make hylia evil or manipulative at least understand it's a canon deviation (and do something interesting with it, I once read an amazing botw fic with evil hylia and fierce deity!).

TLDR, To summarise, hylia is canonically incapable both emotionally and physically of doing the majority of things characters in fics blame her for. Stop using her as a scapegoat especially when demise is right there. Please give your whumpees deeper characterisation than hating on hylia. Please give legend deeper characterisation than hating on hylia every time he or someone else is sad. Please remember wild can talk to hylia if he wants. Please double check anything you're not sure about :D!

[jojo-schmo]

Just Admit It- Part 1

I've been playing around with possible friendship dynamics of the Beast Council for fun!! I love imagining what kind of childhood they could have in the Forgotten Land all together.

What if Carol and Sillydillo are the fun-loving extroverts? Leon is the introverted one who's been smitten by Carol for a really really long time but he's too shy about it? And Gori is the friend who is an excellent observer and will bluntly tell you what he thinks (and maybe has a tendency to get grumpy when things aren't easily going his way).

Somewhat of a prequel to this other doodle comic about Leon and Carol- everyone here is still a kid ^_^

Part 2

[xxlady-lunaxx]

The Hashira all failing to save someone ⮷

Gyomei - the children of the orphanage

Tengen - his siblings

Giyuu - Tsutako, Sabito

Kanae - her parents

Sanemi - his family (including Genya)

Kyojuro - in a sense, his father

Muichiro - Yuichiro

Obanai - himself (from his family, mentally), his family (in his opinion?), Mitsuri (w Muzan)

Shinobu - Kanae

Mitsuri - ...

[sga-owns-my-soul]

this is something i have been thinking about basically since i got back into fandom and it feels especially relevant right now with some of the posts i've seen floating around

something that's very common to hear in fandom is "there's no ______ explanation for this" (fill in the blank with straight, normal, platonic, non-sexual, etc) and i get it, we're all guilty of it, i do it all the time, i think it's part of the fun of fandom is having a space to go insane about something and that's fine!

but i think it's also really really important to remember that there is literally endless ways to interpret something because no two human beings are the same, and the same thing can mean different things to different people

let's use me as an example. in my last relationship with my ex, we would regularly tell each other that we loved each other and wanted to spend our lives together and in that context, it was a very romantic sentiment. however, in my current relationship, we tell each other constantly that we love each other and we want to spend our lives together and there's not a single ounce of romanticism in either of us, because neither of us want or express romance to each other. most of my friends are convinced we're boyfriend/girlfriend, because to them our relationship WOULD be dating, but that doesn't mean we are

the same can be said about fandom. you can take a scene that is VERY romance heavy and one person might genuinely see that as a sexual expression, and someone else might genuinely see it as a platonic expression, and someone else might genuinely see it as a hateful expression, and i think it's really really important to remember that all of these takes are valid.

there's no one right or wrong way to interact with fandom (unless you're deliberately being harmful and hateful towards the characters and the community at large but that's a different topic of conversation) and i think people get really hung up on their takes and headcanons and forget that there's always going to be endless ways of interpreting fiction and that other interpretations are just as valid.

and this isn't to say you can't go insane about your blorbos or ships and you can't say they're obviously in love or whatever, because that's half the fun of fandom!! i just really wish people would realize that, no, there are actually multiple ways to view that scene or relationship and that's entirely valid

[doctor-octiddius]

hey, you may have contracted a deadly virus, but at least i'm deranged enough to like men covered in blood

[tvckerwash]

random head canon I just came up with: tucker complaining about the meta suit being tight in the crotch is supposed to be a dick joke, but I think it's way funnier if it's supposed to be tight because that's how armor works: if its too loose you risk being injured because of things being knocked around when impacts are made, lessening the effects of the armor absorbing and distributing the force, so you don't want a bad fit. tucker wouldn't know that though because he's been wearing flowers armor, which was custom fit for flowers, and when they got new armor in s6, they used the measurements of the old armor, so tucker's been wearing improperly fit armor the entire series—which is a level of stupidity only the reds and blues could accomplish.

[mrghostrat]

" with star ratings to two decimal places if possible." is a sentence that once again proves Postcards From Paris has never left my brain. Did you ever explain that scale, i feel like you did but can't recall? I also feel like I should mention again how much that fic changed my life both in the "Oh my gosh this fic is life changing" way but also I fell in love with how you/Aziraphale described wine as a (at the time non-drinker) and fell down a rabbit hole of the process of making wine, and then finally tasted it and got interested in that., I also got a pen pal which I wouldn't of done had I not read it. Now I am toying with getting a diploma in viticulture once I finish my bachelors (and am in the processes of getting a level 1 wine tasting certificate) which I never would've done had I not read Postcards. Thats a lot of words to just say BNF remains great, Postcards was great, you are very talented and an absolute gift to the fandom thank you <3

sorry but your pipeline from non-wine-drinker to viticulturalist bc of my fic got me crying real ass tears shut the ufck upppp?? 😭💛😭💛😭💛 and a pen pal? i'm walking into the actual ocean

aziraphale will never tell his wine scale secrets, none of us but him stand a chance at understanding. but maybe you can come up with an even better one after your diploma c:

thank you for such kind words about words that are so dear to me 🥺💛

[yesmissnyx]

Not gonna lie...it's hard to even pretend to be into small penis humiliation when like...

Sorry but I am an absolute slut for tdick lmao 😌🙏💞

[takkamek]

seeing those videos of tifosi serenading charles whenever he shows up at the hotel--the hotel that's closest to the track so more than likely most other drivers are staying there as well--reminded me of alex saying that all the other drivers know exactly when charles arrives or leaves the hotel because they can hear the "olé olé olé olé leclerc leclerc" chants

[phantommuze]

Can't wait for LN3!

[totally-not-peter-parker]

For people who claim to be uninterested y'all seem very invested in adult bouncy castle time with others during wildly inappropriate moments

[redwinterroses]

headcanon that Scar is the only one we don't see die after winning a Life series because time is a loop and he moved on alone in the world, which then became the start of his The Crafting Dead series.