#or flattening their complexity

[pirateshelly]

A thing about me is that when it comes to fiction, including (perhaps especially) fiction that deals with deeply morally questionable characters, I will pretty much always lean towards the most generous and optimistic (or at the very least the most human) interpretation of those characters and their choices. That's possibly naive of me, but luckily for me it's fiction and choosing to see fictional people in an empathetic and understanding light has zero consequences for me as a person because they are, in fact, not real! I feel like there's this weird pressure/expectation sometimes that you must, like, give an exhaustive run through of all of a character's crimes and anxiously reassure people that you KNOW they're a dreadful monster or whatever any time you acknowledge the things about them you find human and understandable, which is extremely silly and something I get zero personal enjoyment out of (enjoyment being the primary reason I watch or read anything)

[mothzi]

act 3 verso is so quiet and every time he speaks his voice gets softer and weaker until at the very end in Alicia’s ending he’s whimpering and pleading and I’m

[shadelorde]

paraphrased from a conversation I had on Bluesky but actually the more I think about it the more utterly insane it is that the major thing Korra is hated for is losing the past avatars. You want to know HOW she lost the past avatars? by trusting an older member of her own family who then proceeded to GRAPHICALLY violate her and destroy an actual part of her in front of her with utter glee - but Unalaq isn't denounced as even a creep and no thought is given to any of the themes behind such a scene, it's just "how could korra let this happen??!?!?!"

life imitates art i guess.

[artbyblastweave]

after reading Peter Clines Ex-Heroes pentalogy I can confidentiality say that Danielle Harris is one of the coolest heroes ever, what do you think of her?

^This lady So what I like about Danielle Morris/Cerberus is that she's a take on the Iron Man archetype in the context of an otherwise deliberately incredibly low-budget superhero universe, a setting where, with the exception of one millionaire, the superhero population consists almost entirely of working-class people in kludged-together wetsuits and motorcycle leathers who only get away with their low-rent costumes by virtue of the fact that they do, in fact, have incredibly potent superpowers. This is a hard circle to square, aesthetically, if you also want to introduce a hero who uses power armor, because that shit's expensive.

The solution? Cerberus doesn't debut after the other half of the book's elevator pitch, the zombie apocalypse, is already well under way. The fact that there's only one set of the armor despite the extensive documentation that must exist is due to the fact that the armor is a prototype, slated for eventual mass production but hastily deployed as a show of force by a rapidly disintegrating military that's at the point of just throwing whatever they've got at the wall to see what sticks. The typically-inadvisable trope of the suit's chief engineer also being the field pilot is initially justified by the fact that she's the only person left who knows how to operate it; and then by her reluctance to train a second person on how to operate it because she comes to be psychologically dependent on the physical protection it provides her. Protection that's at least somewhat illusory, to boot, because if you take a shot for every time the suit very realistically suffers a power failure or mechanical failure at a crucial juncture, you're going to lose your liver. The collapse of the logistics network impedes the armor's ability to work at full capacity almost from the start; those bracers on her arms in the above illustrations are for .50 Caliber machine guns that ran quickly out of ammo after her first skirmish and had to be mothballed. The series is very clear that Cerberus wouldn't be viable in the long run if she weren't on a team with several other superhumans, including an electrokinetic and a technopath, who can help cover the suit's weak points. Ironic, given the implication that the original point of Cerberus was so the army would have an answer to those same people. Overall, the armor is paradoxically portrayed as both viable and nonviable.

One of the really interesting things about Ex-Heroes's worldbuilding is that superheroes numbered in the dozens before the apocalypse, but supervillains only start to emerge in any real numbers after the apocalypse, when the prospect of being able to start a fiefdom or a cult of personality without someone noticing and coming to kick your shit are significantly greater; before that, criminals with powers mostly kept what they were capable of on the down low because there was no sane reason to adopt the kind of comic-book classic presentation that would call a superhero down on their heads. Thus the quiet thesis of the series is that quite a bit of classic superheroic nonsense would be actively facilitated by the end of the world and the collapse of society; the incentives and the restrictions would change, but heroism would remain pointedly necessary. Cerberus is also part of this quiet thesis. The perpetual tension of Tony Stark is that we know him to exist in a world full of cultural, legal and logistical restrictions, against which the specific fantasy of being Iron Man would inevitably run aground. Cerberus, as a superheroic identity, never existed alongside any of that. It's way easier to be a knight errant or a lone ranger if that's the only version of those things left that anyone can be.

[mollysunder]

Some ask why would Singed turn Vander into a werewolf. What purpose does it serve? In my very sinco biased perspective, I'd say not much, it's just poetic irony.

Singed has known Silco for years working together to advance shimmer for very different reasons, and still built something stable and successful. Singed probably took care of Silco's eye and overall health for just as many years and in all that time isn't it likely he looked at the infection's further encroaching damage to Silco's and just thought, "What an animal"?

I don't think there was any rage to it though, I think Singed saw this as an objective assessment of who Vander was. How else can you describe a person that brutalized a person they considered family to Singed? A man that was willing to cross every boundary to save his daughter, the last of his family? A man that took extreme measures to prevent Silco from witnessing his own daughter in pain.

Maybe to Singed, Hound of the Underground seemed like an apt nickname, because only a beast of a man could turn on their family like that. Maybe Warwick's been conditioned to go into a frenzy of violence against those around him when blood is exposed because that's what happened between Vander, Silco, and Felicia. Why give Warwick knives for hands, because Vander's fists cut Silco's eye in the drowning scene.

This is almost exclusively for Singed btw. It's a toss up if Silco ever knew any of this was happening (he'd probably have a breakdown if he did).

[cuntylestat]

i maintain you are not a real lestat fan if you flanderize him as only the worst or best parts of himself. if you can't hold him in your heart in his entire complex messy glory you are not a true lover

[juneiper-art]

been haunting the expedition 33 tag on tumblr and your posts are always a joy to see pop up. the one about clea (my beloved) possibly painting those "fuckass mimes" has permanently rewired my brain, it's the first thing I think of when I run into one in-game. she's still my fave character tho even if clea (my beloved) is responsible for those atrocities, and it's so nice to see people who appreciate her depth instead of calling her a bitch and moving on.

sending u good vibes <3

wow thank you this was so kind and also im laughing so hard .. they really are clea's fuck ass mimes

one of my favorite parts of the writing of the game is that none of the characters are simple, one dimensional. clea IS a bitch...she also is carrying the weight of her family's pain all by herself and she lost her brother, who she spent her childhood flying around a world of their creation having adventures with... she's so real to me, like the whole family, and dismissing her bc she lashes out with anger is like...a disservice to how much the game gives us of her.

i think it would have been a more boring choice to have clea be someone who was like 'we all need to come together and heal,' you know, like the older sister who is suffering but so Good about it. making her intolerant and bitchy instead of long suffering is suuuch a good choice. everyone wants complex female characters until theyre mean lmao but i prefer this to Good Woman Moral Compass of the Family Saintly Sufferer so. clea i love you. give them nothing. im really tired of the woman archetype thats common rn that doesnt let women be ugly in their emotions and actions.

[jerreeeeeee]

now maybe i just missed it, but as i remember, there’s nothing in canon to suggest taako is particularly slutty. is there something in the text we can point to to show that’s a character trait he has, or did you just assume he’s slutty because he’s a gay man?

[selamat-linting]

also re: prev post while im at it seth rollins is not just the guy who wear funky clothes and talk like the joker. he is Not Just the destroyer of the shield and roman's tormentor. he is not some guy ppl erased in fanfics or write as a one dimensional douchebag so roman and dean can boink without interruption. his feelings for roman is as multifaceted as roman's feelings to both seth and dean.

that chairshot was calculated. its double edge sword. if seth just wants to trigger and distract roman there are other ways that doesnt involve him dying by the chairshot. he said it himself that he made roman that way, he fully acknowledged his responsibility and paints a target on his back on the cody match so roman can have his moment of catharsis and also so roman can lose everything. seth wants to get hurt just like he used to hurt roman. its regret, its atonement, seth is going to hurt himself so he could hurt roman and from there he hoped losing the title could stop roman from digging himself in a hole of obsessive behavior and self destruction. maybe there are kinder ways to apologize but seth is also resentful and petty. the hate is still very real and its cruelty is as intense as the enduring love and care seth felt about him despite all those years and denial. those two guys are fucked up and their love language is stabbing each other in the back.

[helloarchivist]

okay listen here are my long ass unprompted two cents:

The popular fandom concurrence that Luffy doesn't bathe often, and only usually when he's dragged in there or in a group setting, is correct.

The popular fandom concurrence that this is because he's a dumb stinky baby that doesn't understand hygiene and scratches his ass and sniffs it in public, is categorically false. (and also annoys me and feels in line with other ways that the fandom tends to infantilize Lu and downplay his intelligence, but that's gonna have to be a post for another day.)

Think about That One Thing that happened to you when you were a little kid. Maybe you fell down and broke your arm. Maybe you got stung by a wasp. Maybe, just maybe, you fell into a pool and almost drowned.

Bad things that happen to us in childhood will stick with us well into adulthood, and likely for the rest of our lives. Fears and traumas from our formative years shape the way we think, and require a ton of effort and, often times, professional intervention to unlearn the coping mechanisms for.

Luffy had a ton of really traumatic shit happen to him as a child, and a LOT of those things revolved around a consistent series of near-drownings. With the bandits when Shanks had to come save him, which involved nearly drowning AND, as a result of that deeply frightening, very painful event, the witnessing of his mentor and father figure getting his fucking arm bitten off saving him.

Then, over and over and over again, in the jungle with Ace and Sabo. The first few times he really did nearly die, because the boys didn't realize he couldn't swim, and just stood up there, jeering and laughing at him until the bubbles stopped coming up and they realized something was wrong.

Every time they went over a bridge or fought some animal or had run-ins with dangerous adults, the chance that Luffy would have a near-drowning event was ever-present and always non-zero.

It's shown in canon that, during the rare times they came back to Dadan's hideout for baths, Luffy was hesitant to join in, not because he enjoyed being dirty, but because he was visibly frightened to get into the water barrel, and needed support to do that.

Even into his adult life, this problem has persisted, and it doesn't matter how strong he gets or how many techniques he learns, there is nothing he can do but hope someone saw him fall if he ends up in the water again.

Getting water in your nose and lungs hurts. Getting it in your eyes hurts. It can take ages to run out of your ears, it can make you sick, we're not built to have water outside of its designated metabolic areas.

It's the only real weakness he has, and nearly every non-beverage run-in he's had with water in his entire life, since the age of like 5, has been some level of dangerous and traumatic. The kind of mental fortitude involved in pulling his Water Luffy stunt in Alabasta is, for him, just as much a show of the ferocity of his loyalty as anything else, despite how objectively silly it looks (and how comically angry it makes Crocodile).

Luffy doesn't bathe often, not because he's stupid, not because he's lazy, not because he doesn't "get soap" or whatever nonsense reasons are floating around, but because water scares the shit out of him, and he's not very good at articulating that emotion, nor the need for support that fear entails.

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

[wintaebear]

okay but for real great did nothing wrong and i will die on this hill. he is not the best person and he has his flaws, but most of the bad things he has done were done in situations in which he was running on panic, legitimate fear for his life, trauma and/or not knowing what the fuck was going on + we know that if he actually knew that a bad thing was going to happen he would be trying his damnedest to change the outcome. even in the og version of events he still goes in to try and find nan. he still stands up to his family and wants nothing to do with them when he learns about their crimes. he's a fucked up person making fucked up decisions in fucked up situations, not the scum of the earth that a lot of people seem determined to paint him as

[eddiediazenjoyer]

can i speak. i think that eddie Catholic Guilt is hard to believe and dare i say. not real. for many reasons. one of them being Not All Latinos Have Catholic Guilt especially not in the way that white catholics conceptualize it. and TO ME it’s a bit of a cop out . and i don’t think we should believe eddie when he says that’s the reason for literally anything bc it’s a really convenient excuse for being insane and repressed but i just don’t think it’s true . and i think that something much more nuanced is afoot (aka a complex racial identity and relationship with expectation).

to me he was really like. barely raised catholic tbh. he was raised AROUND folk/cultural catholicism which ofc impacted how he was raised and his perspective. but this kind of catholicism is so different from institutionalized (and white) catholicism it's difficult to even compare the two. and i honestly don’t think that the catholicism is the main problem. like his parents just don’t strike me as being devout in the way that imparts guilt onto their children (they have fun OTHER ways to do this). i think they are traditional and crucially. catholic when it’s convenient and when it allows them an avenue for control (biggest example here is eddie getting pressured into getting married to the girl he impregnated as a teenager.) but to me. this stemmed from complex cultural traditions and beliefs. which catholicism is an easy simple explanation for . but isn’t really the root of the problem. it's a part of it ofc but honestly i think things are often ascribed solely to catholicism bc catholic guilt is a widely applicable perspective when it honestly doesn't make much sense. like i think that eddie being a mixed race mexican-american has more to do with anything than catholicism does. and again. these things are interwoven. but not in a way that it makes sense to blame capital c Catholicism for things where culture (and cultural catholicism) makes way more sense as an explanation

like ik that eddie talks about how he was raised going to mass every sunday etc etc. but even the way he says that he just... stopped... says so much. like the fact that he was even allowed to do that tells me that his parents honestly never really cared that much about that kind of devotion. and the way he talks about it really makes it sound to me like he was one of those kids that never really bought into it at all and so the institutionalized teachings of the church never really got to him. what did get to him however is the folk catholicism/mexican-american teachings of Right and Wrong (aka you get somebody pregnant you commit to them. you feel emotions you tamp them down in order to protect others etc.) and this is not necessarily Catholicism in it's classic conception.

i have no idea if this makes sense and it is really hard to explain how this interplay works if you haven't grown up in it but basically.... hegemonic constructions of catholicism are vastly different from the kind of "catholicism" that i think eddie was raised in. and bc of that i think that "catholic guilt" is a weak explanation for eddie's perspective and best and just. inaccurate at worst. and we should NEVERRRR listen to eddie when he gives too clean of an explanation for his repression. that man is a liar

[angelsaxis]

I understand people are very scared of Moralizing Media but now you have folks swinging too far in the other direction and acting like what you like can almost never or even IS never a reflection of your actual morals. And combined with that, that what you write =/= what you believe. And I get that but at the same time I don't think y'all are aware of how obvious some of y'all unconscious biases are lol

[sun-marie]

🔥 dragon age, if you dare

ohoho, coming in HOT right out the gate with Dragon Age, I see

Well, idk how unpopular this is nowadays, but I think acting like Marethari only had malicious motivations for her actions in DA2 does a disservice to Marethari's character, Merrill's character, and the thematic tragedy that's present in nearly every other facet of the game.

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

[peripaltepsy]

So. Do you have any cartoony/silly fetishes or are you boring 🥱

[nefretemerson]

How far are you into The Pitt? There's another bit of Santos characterization that Isa Briones has confirmed but it's a bit of a spoiler.

all the way thru lol. if it's the sexual assault aspect and abuse by an authority figure, been there done that got the ribbon for that too. like. I understand the character on a molecular level. it's just an exploration of a slightly different reaction to similar life circumstances. I went the substance abuse, self destruction route. She went hyper competitive make yourself so strong no one can hurt you again. Idk. it's sort of why the Langdon vs. Santos discourse pisses me off. Because while I Highly doubt the Langdon backstory is similar to mine lol his personality, behavior, and possible mental health struggles mirror mine. Santos and I share a backstory, but we coped in different ways. I think analyzing a character thru the lens of 'but do u like her and support her 100%' is reductive tbh. She's a well constructed character that I Care about even if she personally pisses me off. I relate to her, and hate her at the same time. This is in contrast to say Whitaker who I don't give a shit about. At all (sorry). I'm reasonably sure this was longer than you were expecting but whatever. I'm avoiding work lol.