#really interesting perspective

[darlingofdots]

my issue with the "dark romance" recommendations on tiktok isn't that they're """problematic""" it's that every time i go to check one out it has the worst punctuation and prose known to man

[tofixtheshadows]

So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.

And I kept wondering: why?

For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.

So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.

But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.

The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.

Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?

That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.

My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.

Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.

Milsiril the puppetmaster.

[scribefindegil]

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.

[hellspawnmotel]

“caroline, please kill me” by coma cinema

[ozzieinspacetime]

Trevor Hills being Pathetic Blorbo #1 and your enjoyment of him being said Pathetic Blorbo #1 just adding on to the games pre-existing meta commentary is,, so good. They made him as miserable as possible and god it really worked.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Instruction on Courtship

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[ipushedthewrongbutton]

i’ve been scratching my head over the whole watcher situation. I’m not a fan myself but got dragged into it cus of the people I follow, i only watched their puppet history series and the buzzfeed unsolved series from way back- honestly, i couldn’t care less if they locked all their stuff behind a paywall. I’m so neutral on this whole thing, i might as well be swiss.

but i’m not neutral? In fact, the whole thing really bothers me and i couldn’t figure out why.

cus i get it, yanno. As a company that thrives on creativity, i understand you’d wanna cut yourself off the mega-capatalist-giant that is youtube to get rid of annoying restrictions, and asking monetary support from your audience so you can really stretch the limit of your creativity. I GET IT.

And it STILL bothers me!

And then I figured it out:

the whole “any future videos they’ll be making will EXCLUSIVELY be available through a streaming service you have to pay a monthly subscription for” comes less across as “please support us monetarily so we can grow as creators”, and comes more across as “if you want to continue being a fan, or even being a part of the audience, you’re gonna have to pay up. You have no choice in the matter. It’s either pay, or you’re not a ‘real’ fan or a ‘real’ part of our audience.”

THAT’S what’s bothering me about it. It feels like they’re gatekeeping who gets to be part of their community with money (that not everyone might have). And knowing where they come from and how they started…. That’s… extremely tone deaf. To put it gently.

[kaltacore]

the way cole makes varric conflicted is so delicious i think. most of the characters are uncomfortable around him because they're genuinely terrified of demons and the fade and magic in general but varric is a completely different case. the thing is, he doesn't see cole as a demon at all because he doesn't want to.

he acts like he doesn't care about this stuff. that's a little weird kiddo around here and he wants to befriend him. teach him something even. why not. that's a little guy who's a little too good with knives and can't pick up a single social clue at the same time.

but there it is. the "he could have been a person" line if cole is made more spirit. varric is so upset about it because it's not like he saw cole as, well, a spirit who got a little too human. for varric, he was a human first, a weird kid second. the spirit part didn't even come into consideration because. well. it would make him question things. you know where it goes.

every time he starts bitching about anders he brings up justice. justice drove him mad. justice took over him. justice this, justice that. justice is a scapegoat because the thought that someone varric was friends with was actually willing to blow up the chantry and it wasn't just some evil demon's wish is a very unsettling one. varric's friends may be crazy but they're cool and make no irreversible life decisions of that extent, don't they? blondie turned out this way because he let a demon possess him and make him do terrible things. completely out of the blue.

it's either varric's ex-friend has never been driven crazy by some inherently evil entity and there was a whole other person around him all along and that anger he used to mock was coming from the same place as compassion's urge to become a killer or that little weird but kind kid he started to care about has never been and will never be a real kid. he can't have both. a bitter pill to swallow for someone who has never picked a side in his life

[everythingcatradora]

adora is generally a kind person but she has such an obvious soft spot for catra and it’s so cute… catra will be all grumpy or just nonchalant or something and adora’s just smiling this Specifically For Catra ™️ smile or even with catra’s antics in the horde in their serious training regimens we see that adora still can’t help but still gaze at her fondly like she was whipped!! she would consistently be annoyed with anyone else but she just folds when it comes to catra

[sysig]

So much experimenting to be done, where to even start (Patreon)

[canisalbus]

you say machete has to be closeted then why's he always wearing them little heels

Maybe he thinks he's a tiny bit nicer looking in them.

[caeslxys]

Zephrah actively postpones ruidusborn births. It is believed that the actual number of ruidusborn in exandrian history is much larger than has been officially recorded because the stigma of it was so intense that people lied about it. Alyxian, one of the few recorded ruidusborn heroes of the calamity who received direct blessings from three different prime deities (our very own Changebringer, the Archheart, and the Moonweaver) , has been all but forgotten (read: likely erased) by history.

The Archive of knowledge that revealed the truth of Predathos and Ruidus was never some forgotten thing—it was intentionally hidden by the elites in Vasselheim. And we have no idea how long they have been operating with that knowledge. We have no idea what they have been doing with that knowledge, what silent wars have been waging for years or decades or centuries. But we saw what they were willing to do, in Hearthdell. We saw the violence and suppression they were willing to commit. We saw the pettiness of the exandrian pantheon in the Dawnfather’s response to Deanna’s: “Are you worth saving?”. In the Changebringer’s manipulative change of course in her pleas to FCG. In the Wildmother’s rejection of Opal. In the knowledge we have that Imogen spent so much of her miserable time in Gelvaan begging the gods to aid her to no avail—just for Kord to reach out only to demand that she not let them down.

Liliana’s point that Vasselheim and the other faithful elite of the world will hunt ruidusborn down to negate even the potential of this happening again isn’t new, it isn’t something this solstice and the machinations surrounding it caused, and it isn’t some unsubstantiated, fearful claim—it has been happening.

The vanguard—and Liliana—are unequivocally wrong in their means. But can you really fault them in their desire? Can you really fault the conclusions they have drawn from the experiences they have lived? If you spend your entire life being rejected by the people and the pantheon of your world for means you could not possibly control, would you not seek out someone and somewhere that would accept you? And if you found it, if some being that has been connected with you your whole life welcomed you home and wrapped you in an embrace that felt like your mother’s and says that it is starving; well, aren’t you, too?

There is likely a holy war brewing. At the end of it all, is it truly the sole fault of the people and not the organizations and society that expelled them?

[lgbtlunaverse]

Life as a JGY stan is so hard because sometimes I want to make posts about the ways his very justified paranoia turns against him sometimes, rare moments where I think being more trusting or vulnerable would have helped but he felt like it couldnt, or talk about how his brutal survival instinct intersects with society's existing bigotries in a such a way that most of his violence is actually aimed at people lower on the ladder than him, with people like Jin Guangshan being the exception not the rule. Because he's a fascinating character and these parts of him are interesting!

But when I do that I have to live in perpetual fear of the moment that it escapes its target audience and someone takes it to go "Yeah he's a monster who fucked over everyone and is incapable of love! I wish he was killed earlier and his death was a thousand times more painful 🤪"

I mean, take my last example. Due to existing hierarchies it is, at any point, easier and safer for jgy to harm people less powerful than him instead of more powerful than him, even if the more powerful are the ones threatening his safety in the first place. Even knowing how it harms him and while working against it, Jin Guangyao is not immune to internalizing the mindset of the world he lives in. Even when killing Jin Guangshan- one man- it ends up costing the lives of 20 sex workers. You think I can bring up the sex workers in this fucking fandom? You think that will go over peacefully? The well has been so thoroughly poisoned here it feels like any conversation around morality automatically turns into a courtroom to determine a sentence for this fictional fucking character who's already dead.

[cinnamonsikwate]

i'm really curious about what marcille's mother's deal is. seems like she's not too big on the rest of elven society. here's what we know about her so far:

mage at a human royal court (adventurer's bible)

courtship with marcille's father donato lasted 17 years (adventurer's bible)

specialty is roast pork, which was also donato's favorite (chapter 81)

had a cheerful personality up until the point donato got too sick to eat his favorite food. her extreme emotional reaction to this left a lasting impression on marcille (chapter 81)

remarried to a gnome and moved away from the city at some point after donato died (adventurer's bible)

several portraits of her appear in marcille's nightmare (chapter 42); this is the second time we see marcille dream of her (chapter 3)

preferred non-elven food and didn't introduce marcille to any traditional elven dishes (chapter 74)

from the canaries' reactions in chapter 74, it appears elven society looks down on elves who go to live among and work for short-lived races. they seemed especially put off that she would have a mixed-blood child. when they're talking about the lyrikmumare to get marcille to trip up, marcille envisions her mother saying that the food "here" (i.e., the northern continent) tastes so much better. so the picture we're getting here is of an elf who has removed herself from elven culture, but the question is, did she do it willingly or was she forced to?

keeping her other actions in mind, i'm leaning more towards the former. the most intriguing thing for me is that she eventually married a gnome, despite elves and gnomes having infamously waged war against each other over differences in the practice of magic and presently tending to discriminate against the other on sight. (one thing's for sure — marcille's mother is winning the idgaf war!)

marcille never talks about her gnome stepfather though, and it's unclear what she thinks of her mother's remarriage. the timing of the remarriage is also a mystery. donato married marcille's mother when he was 32 (after having courted her for 17 years) and died at 82, meaning they were married for 50 years. marcille is also currently 50 years old, but we know she wasn't born immediately after the marriage: in chapter 81, donato's doppelganger says marcille was born when he'd started "getting on in years." based on marcille's memories of him and the established fact that the average tall-man lifespan is 60 years, i'd hazard that he was in his 50s then. this gives him 30 years or less with marcille — definitely less than 35, which we know is the age at which she left for the magic academy.

we don't know if marcille's mother remarries before or after marcille leaves (if before, than that's definitely a shockingly short time), but it's interesting that she chose to marry someone from a long-lived race this time. maybe this is her way of ensuring she spares herself another heartbreak? or maybe she *is* still heartbroken and is trying to cover it up.

but. i can't help but kind of agree with chilchuck in chapter 81, that marcille's parents are not blameless for marcille becoming the dungeon lord. since it's apparently well-documented, they surely must have known — as well-educated people — that mixed-blood children face not just discrimination but also mental anguish that comes with their unstable aging (not to mention the sterility). so the way they raised marcille feels frankly irresponsible 😭

anyway. i'd love to get spin-off content where post-adventure marcille and her mother meet again. i feel like there's a lot of unresolved issues there (that can of course be hashed out over a good meal).

[yukipri]

Was poking around AO3 for kicks and giggles, and I find it fascinating how so many folks can just go ah, yes, this story Inspires me to Create, while this…not so much.

I know this isn’t entirely fair given the discrepancy in the amount of media per franchise, but here are the AO3 works counts for Dune, Star Wars, and Star Trek, all sci-fi classics that also have new additions to their respective franchises.

Especially given how Star Wars itself draws heavy inspiration from Dune, I just find the differences in these numbers interesting! And I feel the same! SW does appeal to me a lot more than the bloodline obsession/freaky eugenics/religious manipulation themes of Dune, which also exists in SW but far less.

(Also, while I really loved Chani in the new film, I definitely personally did not feel any shipping sparks between her and Paul, I just wanted her to get away. The guy does NOT deserve her in any way. (then again, I also felt no shipping sparks between Padmé and Anakin, so this could just be a me thing…))

This also reminds me of how the James Cameron Avatar films are a huge fandom flop, despite the budget and blockbustery fanfare they got.

To be clear, I don't necessary think media needs to spark fandom creativity in order to be good or worthwhile, and there's plenty of stuff I enjoy without feeling the need to create, so this isn't meant to be a criticism per se.

But I was just contemplating about different media and themes that inspire me and makes me want to engage in a community, versus stuff that doesn't.

If you have any thoughts, feel free to share!

[br1ghtestlight]

oughh the new hfjone short was so good. parker's story is so sad and you can tell he's mentally fucked up not to mention that their FRIENDS think he's responsible for her disappearance and unless the police actually puts together a case of all the victims he'll never know peace or have proof of his innocence. there's no proof of what happened & he blames himself. and charlotte is never going to come back, she's never going to be okay again and will never have the chance to apologize :( also fuck that one asshole cop. How is he even employed (ACAB but still he's a fucking pyschopath)