#she is the embodiment of too gay to function

[twig-tea]

Apple My Love Quick Pitch

Apple My Love is the first GL from Kongthup, and I am already obsessed.

As of ep 1, it looks like this show is going to be dealing with:

Figuring yourself out after life doesn't go how you expect

Recovering eyesight after surgery and dealing with that change in ability [so far minimal, I hope it comes up more]

The difference between idolizing someone and loving someone

Great friend group dynamics

Great sibling dynamics

The deep embarrassment of being too gay to function

Starting on a misunderstanding and building back to understanding one another in a workplace context

Identity porn

There are also a lot of familiar faces in this show, almost everyone here has been in a couple of Kongthup shows. Orm (playing Kris) was in La Pluie, Folk (playing Karn) was in the now-maybe-not-going-to-happen Be Mine that we got a long trailer for last year, and the boys in this series are all from Monster Next Door, Knock Knock Boys, Two Worlds, and/or Unforgotten Night.

If you need any more incentive, this show is so pretty. To prove it, here's the trailer.

6 episodes total, airing every Saturday at 11:45 AM EDT (10:45 PM GMT +8) on GagaOOLala and WeTV (check your region) and a cut version is also airing on YouTube (I assumed it was cut but h/t to @yet-another-wlw-shipper in the reblogs for confirming it is NOT).

[djuvlipen]

Hating on Rick Riordan is my favourite pastime haha, so I wanted to talk about how he keeps putting Percy (and Annabeth) into his new stories, as he can't seem to create new interesting characters that would function within their own story - like there was actually a little reason to make them a part of the new prophecy in HoO, couldn't he just focus and flesh out the rest of the characters? It really seems like he can't do that as I personally disliked almost every new post-PJO character, even when they had potential to be intriguing, like Hazel for example

yepp. like even with his other series, he cant resist the urge to dropname percy and annabeth. there was no reason for magnus to be annabeth's cousin in mcga, for example. (but like okay we all know there IS a reason and that reason is marketing and money)

the characters in hoo all had so much potential, he really wasted them by focusing so much on percy and annabeth (and he ruined both of their characters by making them super ooc btw). i also don't think he needed to have 7 main characters. thats way too much. in his pjo series, the only real main characters are percy and annabeth. even characters like grover, who are pretty important, are only really present in half of the series. i think he should have stopped at 5 at most

hazel is so fascinating and he wasted her potential. shes literally a daughter of hades. children of the main three are all extremely powerful and hazel in particular represents the powers of Pluto that are associated with the earth, its soil and the wealth it beholds. NOT with death (that's nico!) and that reversal could have been explored in a much better way than it was in the series. she really didn't need to learn how to control the mist... i think she could have been so cool as a witch who learns sorcery (in the wake of hecate, circe, medea) and learn to master her powers. her journey is so poorly written in the books because she barely gets any of the spotlight and most of her chapters are taken up by that stupid age gap love triangle. she's 13!

also. imagine if the books had been written by someone who actually cares about african american history and who would have been interested in bringing justice to hazel's backstory as a 13yo african american girl who died in the 1930s and came back to life in the 2010s due to a bug in the way death and the underworld work. now THAT would have been interesting!!! she should have been the MC!!!! but what did we get instead? "oh should i date frank or leo?" shes not even attracted to either of them..

same thing for jason and piper. jason in particular should have been just as powerful as thalia, if not more (because he didnt spend most of his life as a tree). and also, the psychological journey of learning all your memories with your significant other were created out of thin air by an evil entity. this is not even really explored lmao. and what if piper realized, after jason wakes up from the spell, that she doesnt like him? "actually if i'm not under the spell of an evil goddess, i really don't like that guy". now that could have made some GREAT commentary on how young girls are always expected to date and love males. it could have also offered some good commentary on heteronormativity (if we make piper bisexual or homosexual for example)

i don't really care about frank. i do think the resolution of his storyline with the stick thing was really underwhelming. i think he should have gone all nerd about roman history, literature and philosophy. because that would have taught young readers about the roman empire and the roman republic

now idc about leo. replace him with nico, bc he is much more interesting as a character. rick could have explored how he navigates grief + being gay when he grew up in 1930s fascist/catholic italy

anyway. hoo is the literal embodiment of "wasted potential"

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

watching mai hime as a young baby gay barely aware of anime was interesting (vague memories of it include-)

-> Yukino self aware tech savvy wallflower barely hiding she’s in love with her dumbass moron childhood bestie

-> Natsuki biker girl not being gay bc she’s focused on her mom’s death or whatever until she turns out to be Uber Mega Gay as in we can literally SEE IT MEASURED IN MECH SIZE

-> Nao the toxic gay who hunts dudes but loves her mom very much

-> Mikoto who decided her soulmate via food and picked an older girl thanks to ramen

-> Haruka miss homophobically gay and totally not obsessed with her female political rival while ignoring how in love her childhood bestie is with her 

-> Shizuru so gay she goes evil as per usual but gets a happy ending anyway when she decides to redo high school to be with her idiot crush who didn’t pass

-> Mai assigned a boyfriend by script but her love for a girl is what saves everyone

-> Akira the singular embodiment of the twelfth night

-> Chie and Aoi, the only stability in this entire show, possibly just friends also possibly the only functional gay rep you’ll ever see in this series

-> that one teacher lady who insisted on being straight to save her work wife

-> Akane and the nun were here too I think

-> that one girl who was toxic straight so hard she sabotaged the main character's own straight romance by hinting maybe the mc didn't love her not-boyfriend so much after all, considering he died and the mc still kept her powers that are supposed to die with the people you love most (as proved with Every Other Couple)

-> I don’t remember what was going on with the pink grim reaper maid but I think it was probably gay too somehow

[atopvisenyashill]

atp i’m kinda fifty fifty on whether dany goes genuinely dark or whether she does similar fucked up shit (ie burning KL, sacking cities with the dothraki, & killing aegon vi) before attempting some level of redemption (in her eyes & her followers eyes) by going out in an ultimately useless attempt to destroy the others. like. i think the idea that she goes out trying to stop the tide of others (probably near the trident) and her people & maybe the riverlands are touched but the north is just kinda like “that was functionally useless & also she did still fuck up the crownlands” would fit george’s idea of “light and dark both” while also fitting with the general anti war, anti violence stances of the book.

because…part of why i don’t think she ever goes north or plays a huge part in the long night is because i think that “dany destroys the others with her blood magic dragons that george has compared to nukes” doesn’t really fit with the story? i think it’s notable that jon treats ghost like a genuine, beloved pet and not a war machine & all the violence ghost has done has been his own love of jon - my dog has barked at people when he can tell i’m uncomfortable! they’re good at picking up at our underlying emotions - and this is similar to summer as well. bran explicitly forgets to treat summer as a war machine bc he’s too busy enjoying the feeling of running & hunting and doing wolf things! vs robb is implied to use grey wind to kill & it’s part of why he eventually sends grey wind away - he’s unsettled by the violence he’s caused & made grey wind cause. i think when arya gets back to the riverlands, it’s not just her mother’s violence she will have to contend with, it’s nymeria’s as well! vs dany…explicitly wants to use the dragons to conquer. so going out in a blaze of glory that does nothing to change the tide of the war, the last scion of house targaryen trying and failing to escape the clutches of a prophecy that has plagued her family for hundreds of years but at least she tries to escape unlike her family…fits with where i think characters like tyrion & jaime are going where the point is even though they do genuinely evil shit, they at least attempt a breakaway even if it’s not wholly successful.

i reserve the right to wildly change my mind on this as i keep reading tho!!! it’s just where i’m feeling in asos. she is very similar to tyrion in that she is very much of her house & embodies her house’s weaknesses & sin while also having its strengths. and given that george is very fond of tyrion and has mentioned being fond of dany…i know a lot of us bitch about how it feels like tyrion won’t get a proper “comeuppance” for like, the sheer amount of sexual abuse he partakes in bc george doesn’t have as great of an idea of consent as the average person under 50 does rn or even like, the average woman/gay has lol, and i’m wondering if he’ll do some similar “an attempt at an eleventh hour redemption” thing with her.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Gonna go ahead and verify that this isn't new either. There's a lot of first person sources of writing on this topic, so definitely don't take my second hand word for it but basically my mom always told me that when she was a younger queer hanging out in gay bars and clubs, it was really normal for there to be visibly young teens in the space who were clearly there to find community. According to her there was an egfort made to steer them clear of explicitly cruising (sex seeking) spaces, but that the overwhelming opinion (adult and young teen alike) was that these kids had no other space where they would be allowed to exist as themselves, and therefore even tho it was high risk and definitely illegal, no one would kick them out unless they caused real problems. It felt a little too much like killing the next generation.

She also told me that this meant there was - at least to some extent and in some spaces with a looser relationship to society overall - a trend of young teens having their "firsts" with older and even adult members of the spaces they visited. First kisses, first cigarette, first sex, etc. Often these relationships weren't romantic, they were often purely mentor-mentee, and she related the way it was seen as like. Hands-on sex and embodiment education in safety as an acceptable risk in context of protecting teens against being taken advantage of in the future. The community (again, adults and young teens alike) seemed to agree that some amount of being taken advantage of might be inevitable given the missing stair effect (recent naming, but a concept I'd heard mom and my aunties discuss long before pervocracy coined the term. Mom always just referred to it byt saying "damned if you do, damned if you don't" to sort of reference the notion of "our existence is criminal therefore we are always going to be making a harmful choice-> criminalization that culminates in our death vs alienation of self that culminates in our death. At a certain point you stop valuing "good choices" and start valuing "sustainably balanced access to survival needs of self and embodiment"). But the idea was that the more these young teens understand about themselves and love/sex models, the better. Mom always said different spaces went about this different ways, and there were two extremes- theory only vs fully hands on. Most spaces landed somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, but some landed on an extreme. And when that happened, the space often replicated some of the risks of standard society (e.g. adults taking sexual advantage of kids or adults denying kids their own right to self-knowledge) but through the lens of the queer space.

To some extent, my guess is that this replication via polarized functional ideaologies is inevitable in our culture and will always find some avenue of manifestation. But I do think it's still worth being aware of how it got there and why it persists, especially if we want to have honest and effective conversations about how to ensure young queer kids have consistent access to community, to self knowledge, and to safety of embodiment.

OK like. This one's gonna be pretty dark.

I cannot speak 2 the experience of teenage trans girls specifically, but definitely when I was a trans teen & around many trans teens, basically everybody was on grindr or similar sexual adult spaces, making probably very ill-advised decisions, *and very aware of it*. Like yeah, these kids were 14-15-16 and generally lacking in street smarts, but this wasn't happening because of naivety. It's because they were fucking suicidal and lonely.

It's because from every corner the "good" adults were well...being """"good"""" adults. They wouldn't fucking talk to us. They were hostile towards our expression of autonomy, they obeyed mandated reporting laws, they were afraid to be in community with us. We were kids but we weren't *innocent*. We were already experiencing structural and interpersonally violence, most people only moreso than me. The adult-child relationships we were forced into forced us to PERFORM the role of the innocent child or else face MORE violence from mandated reporting, parental retaliation, the foster system, psychiatry. Like...yeah, the only places we got to be whole, complicated people with autonomy were seedy as hell and when it's already a fucking struggle to value your own life you're gonna take some fucking risks and you're gonna believe some shit that's too good to be true and you're gonna be really fucking vulnerable to people that want to take advantage of that combination of lack of experience and being utterly disinclined to take risk-averse action.

If you want to make a meaningful change in young trans people being vulnerable to violence, PRIORITIZE TEENAGERS. Be a friend, a community member, an accomplice. Let young people tell you their scary secrets without calling the fucking cops on them. Drive them around town, take them to fucking shows, give a shit without getting controlling, support them in having opportunities to act like children and opportunities to act like adults. Help them learn how to exercise autonomy without sacrificing self-worth and self preservation.

Expanding the technosurvelliance state isn't gonna fucking change shit, at most it'll change how some kids die.

[esmeraldista]

mindblowing read. some highlights:

[...] nudity is much more likely to be found in religious rather than secular imagery in the Middle Ages, but it can be confusingly coded. Adam and Eve are represented nude in their prelapsarian state of innocence; in some earlier medieval images, their bodies are often barely distinguishable. It is only after the fall that their nakedness becomes shameful. Images of the Last Judgment often explicitly contrast the blessed, fully robed and resplendent in heaven, with the damned, writhing in their nakedness much as they did in the sexual sins that condemned them to hell. But virgin martyrs such as Agatha and Barbara were often represented partially or fully nude; especially in the later Middle Ages they are depicted as the visual embodiments of the ideal women described in love poetry and romances, with their long blonde hair, fair complexions, swelling bellies, and high, apple-like breasts. [...] Many of the images of the tortures of the virgins depict them with bare breasts; here the breast becomes a multivalent symbol of motherhood, femininity, and erotic longing–in the Golden Legend Agatha herself connects her breasts with all these functions, chastising her thwarted suitor for removing “that with which your mother suckled you,” but also bemoaning to St. Peter “since I am so cruelly mangled no one could possibly desire me.”

Most modern scholars writing about images of the nursing Virgin seem to resist connecting the display of the breast to erotic desire, although the polished white breasts of Jean Fouquet’s Virgin in the Melun Diptych, with Etienne Chevalier and his patron saint looking on in the adjacent space, seem to thwart the connection with food in their practically nipple-less, fetishized appearance. The chain of gazes only enhances this effect – the Christ Child does not look at the viewer, while Saint Stephen seems to look quite pointedly at the buxom breast that has seemingly burst forth from the confines of the Virgin’s blue dress; she herself looks down upon it with an air of cool self-appraisal.

Naked couples, both hetero- and homosexual, grimace and grind on the corbels of medieval churches. Misericords, the carvings found underneath choir stall seats, are a major source for a wide variety of salacious themes – pairs of lovers; bare-breasted sirens and mermaids; men exposing their buttocks and genitals; naked women astride animals. What many of these images have in common is that they appear in the margins, outside the frame; in Camille’s words, “on the edge.” These spaces seem to be areas in which the proper order of things is reversed, the world is turned upside down, and the transgressive may be depicted, perhaps in order to render it powerless, perhaps to harness its power as protective, much like the numerous badges that have been found with disembodied, sometimes winged, male and female genitalia.

It has been argued that women might have taken an interest in the depictions of female martyrs because of their understanding that with their suffering came power, but could more erotic responses have been possible as well? And why is it that the naked men depicted in medieval art, or in any art for that matter, are typically described as homoerotic? Images of Saint Sebastian are routinely characterized in this way, and he has in fact become a kind of gay icon. Thus the male gaze on the male body is taken into account in a way that the female gaze on the male body, or the female gaze on the female body, is not.

The increasing proliferation of bed hangings, separate chambers for sleeping, and attitudes about privacy, and the resultant effects on the activities of bathing, dressing, and lovemaking, meant that what was once out in the open became increasingly hidden. What is hidden then becomes desirable; stolen glances at the private become voyeuristic, and the mundane becomes erotic. [Paul] Saenger suggests that the change from oral to silent reading, from public to private consumption of text and image, led to an increasing interest in erotic writings and art. On the other hand, the fifteenth century was also the time that the isolated wounds of Christ mentioned earlier become reoriented from a vertical to a horizontal position, and become almost schematized in their appearance, as if the more prurient aspects of the vertical orientation now recognized become problematic.

literally go read it because each insight here (and many more) is carefully illustrated and the reference list is long as fuck

[slavicviking]

Dipping my toes in the ‘oblivious Eddie has no functioning gaydar which results in mild miscommunication’ genre of the Steddie experience, hope you enjoy!

Ao3 extended version

“My, my, are my eyes deceiving me? Steve Harrington himself has graced these sinful halls?”

Instead of a sneer Eddie’s been expecting, Steve’s face lights up with a smile. He lifts his hand to wave at him with much more enthusiasm than expected. Which is… weird since they have maybe talked once when the guy picked up Eddie’s new freshmen from Hellfire. Well, almost as weird as meeting a Harington in a gay bar itself. 

“Munson, hi!”

A little dumb-founded, Eddie waves back weakly, his eyes catching the sight of Robin Buckley at the bar behind them. Ah, so there’s the reason Harrington’s here.

“You’re here as an ally, I presume.”

“Uhm, yeah I guess so?” Steve pouts, confused, before smiling again. “You too, then?”

“Sure, let’s say that.”

“Hey, you should sit with us,” Harrington grins as if that’s actually a good idea. Before Eddie manages to think of an excuse, he’s being dragged towards Buckley by the sleeve. “Come on.”

“Munson,” Robin nods at him in greeting, something akin to a mischievous smirk on her face. Why, he doesn’t begin to understand. 

“You look good, by the way,” a deep voice whispers into his ear as they set off towards the tables and Eddie has to do everything for his soul not to leave his body. Steve… is being way friendlier than expected. But that’s what it is, he has to remind himself before it gets too dangerous, just guys being dudes.

The ‘us’ in question turns out to be more than just the bizarre Harrington-and-Buckley duo. There’s Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers and some tall guy with the best hair he’s seen, not counting Harrington of course, bless his hair-sprayed soul. They don’t seem all that surprised he’s here at all which - fair enough, but also that he’s here at this table and that he doesn’t know how to explain. Nancy Wheeler, though, ever the enigma keeps shooting him loaded glances. He’s pretty sure she sniffed out his embarrassing crush on, ugh, Steve Harrington and she’s- Jealous maybe? Probably? As if there is a universe where he, Eddie Munson, poses a threat to someone like Nancy fucking Wheeler. 

Steve sits himself closest to Eddie, maybe because he’s feeling guilty - as he should be - about throwing him into a table full of basically-strangers or maybe for a different, Harrington-unexplainable reason. The point is, he’s close, Eddie can smell his aftershave and cigarettes and it’s the best and worst thing that’s happened to him. 

He keeps talking, too, asking Eddie questions about DnD (and isn’t that a head-scratcher in itself) and what conditioner he’s using because he really likes his hair (as if Steve wasn’t the embodiment of every shampoo commercial ever made). The gin-and-tonic Eddie’s been sipping must’ve been stronger than he thought because he swears he hears Steve saying something like ‘I don’t know, I think you’re really pretty’ at one point. 

Eddie is starting to wonder if Harrington, perhaps, has been replaced with a pod person.

There’s a few more attempts at small talk from Steve but Eddie’s too confused and trying so hard to not be hopeful because a second edition of a pathetic crush on a straight dude (Steve, his mind supplies helpfully) is going to be too painful. Harrington seems kind of down afterwards, sliding off his chair and towards the bar which leaves Eddie with an infamous Buckley glare. Followed by an aggravating assault to his shin. 

“Ow, Jesus, what the fuck is your problem?”

“My problem?” Robin is quick to retort. “What’s your problem? I thought you had a crush on him! It’s frankly kind of fucking obvious.”

Okay, whoa, rude. 

“I don’t,” Eddie sneers back but falters when she levels him with a blank stare. “Fine, I do. Whatever. Way to kick a man when he’s down.”

“Dingus, he’s been all over you for the last hour. He’s been flirting like crazy and you, for some reason, keep shooting him down, what the hell?”

“But-” But he’s straight. Right? He turns to see Steve at the bar and - oh, there’s some guy with curly hair touching Steve’s arm and Steve’s smiling and blushing and- “What?”

That won’t do.

“Go get your man,” Robin says, practically shoving him off his stool to emphasize her point. Eddie scrambles from the floor, ignores the intense looks from the rest of the table and marches towards the bar.

“I’m coming, Stevie.”

[twinkle-art]

I need to know if you have anything more to say on the mary and izzy parallels because like... damn

(sequel to this) thank you for asking! i do in fact have so much to say. possibly too much. izzy hands is a plague on my house and home

so. izzy and mary functionally fill the same narrative function to ed and stede respectively before they meet. that much seems pretty obvious given how episode 4 repeatedly hits you over the head with mary+stede in the past being cut between izzy+ed in the present while they illustrate why they're so profoundly unhappy before the romcom sets in etc etc etc we all know this

the part i think is genuinely REALLY interesting is that, aside from the fact that they fill a partner role to one of our romantic leads out of a sense of obligation stemming from their own complacency with the systems stifling them and their partners alike, they react to the events of the narrative in polar opposite ways. mary grows and finds her own happiness. izzy gets caught in his toxicity spiral and ruins everything.

BUT!! them being pretty fundamentally different people is only half of the equation. because their reactions are pretty clearly tied to the way ed and stede went about altering the nature of their relationships

stede fucked off and left seemingly out of nowhere. i don't have much to add to this because it was very thoroughly explored by the entire show. we know that, as insane a thing as it was to do, a very dramatic and total separation for the two of them was very good for mary's ability to improve herself and what made the eventual honesty and reconciliation she achieved with stede possible.

...so if stede and mary's relationship exists to illustrate that sometimes it's for the best for both people involved to amicably go your separate ways, then ed and izzy are here to be a cautionary tale for the worst case scenario of not doing that

the most obvious and glaring difference between mary and izzy is that izzy DOES want ed (like, really, really badly) and, presumably, DID choose him. unfortunately for the both of them, it's tied up in that pesky Role Of Obligation stuff from before. and, beyond that, there was no clean break of separation demarcating when, exactly, he could consider himself relieved of that obligation.

when i say that ed/izzy is a mutually miserable arrangement i do mean it. like yes, ed is my little princess but he is, in my opinion...also in the wrong here. izzy is a horrible manipulative toxic influence, but also ed's treatment of him swings between kind of flippantly capricious at best and cruel at worst. it’s very unfair for izzy to project this brutal, limiting persona on a guy we know to be pretty sensitive and insecure, but also ed is a grown man responsible for the actions he takes under that persona. izzy is an unpleasant menace on his quest for the Healing Power Of Gay Love, and then ed literally, unhyperbolically fed him his toe and we all watched him do it.

izzy made a genuine attempt to end their relationship even before it became undeniable stede was replacing him and ed was becoming someone else, and ed went to lengths to convince him to stay. and then the exact thing he presumably dreaded happened anyways. oof! wow! that sucks dude! shouldn’t have done all that about it, but damn!

so, where stede made a very clear, if not perfectly clean, break from his old life and the person who most embodied it, ed experienced a slow transformation away from his, and HIS person who represented its hold on him was dragged along kicking and screaming and staring in abject horror as the person he loved was taken from him (note: that person never existed, and stede didn’t “take” that from him, but he sure thinks so!!)

all this is to say i honestly think the only possible route for izzy to improve himself and his life is to disentangle himself from ed, the way mary did from stede. but he doesn’t WANT to do that, and DEFINITELY doesn’t want it to be under circumstances that feel like being replaced without any choice on his part

to cap this off i will call your attention to my favorite favorite piece of set design/shot framing from the single most telling scene with izzy in it: the presence of the lighthouse painting here

lets just soak that in for a bit.

anyways i when i first noticed this i was, shall we say, under an influence and tried to determine what this could possibly mean for the greater lighthouse metaphor red string board style. it’s incomprehensible and incomplete but here it is regardless

(you’ll notice i somehow hadn’t thought to connect izzy and mary yet)

anyways they’re both lighthouses. ed and mary have their own comparisons too. these four are all connected. are we ready to talk about how izzy derided ed for cooperating with the english to save stede when he literallyyyyyyyyy did that too to save ed. like what’s up with that right

[goji-pilled]

Okay @princekirijo you want an essay? Well here it is now, or as I like to call it Felix's "Asumari is great and this fandom has no fucking taste" rambling and infodump. Congrats fellas, thanks to Prince you ALL get an asumari essay. But before that I'll try to give you a rundown of Mari and Asuka. 

(I'm also so sorry for putting this long ass post on everyone's dashboard)

(Spoiler warning for Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time!!)

Alright on one hand we have Mari Illustrious Makinami. Her whole deal? She's a walking ray of sunshine, literally lol. Unlike any other character in the Evangelion franchise she doesn't suffer from her trauma, she's quite literally the only healthy and functioning human being, she's just slightly leaning towards "batshit crazy" with the stunts she pulls 🤷‍♂️. Other than that she just loves living, she loves being with people, she keeps moving forward, stays positive and decides to live life to it's fullest even after she experiences loss and multiple apocalyptic events (Second Impact, Third Impact, etc.) and she really just embodies the joy of living. That's all there is to her, or at least all we know.

On the other hand, we have Asuka Langley Shikinami who is... well it's hard to explain what she is to be honest. She's part-German and part-Japanese and part of a line of clones specifically made with the purpose to pilot an Evangelion and later on be used as a sacrifice to trigger another Impact (ITS COMPLICATED I KNOW-) Asuka is, unlike Mari, very much suffering from her trauma. She doesn't have her parents and has a very deep seated belief that she's completely alone, which she says doesn't matter as long as she can pilot the Eva. She also very much wants to fight and kill angels all by herself, and it's seriously messing with her when she can't achieve that.

Now we get to the more interesting parts (hopefully this so far wasn't too confusing, then again it's Eva and even I can't fully wrap my head around it all LMAO)

In the second Rebuild movie (Evangelion 2.0 You can (not) advance) we get introduced to both of them, Mari's introduction scene (in the original English dub) has her pilot an Eva and singing about how she'll take the world on by herself, while in the third movie's (Evangelion 3.0 You can (not) redo) opening scene she's piloting the Eva again but this time it's together with Asuka (in her own Unit 02 though) and during that Mari sings about how wonderful it is not to be alone. It's nothing big yet, but it's a really cute detail me thinks,,, you know what else I love about them? They bicker and they banter and it's genuinely so fun to listen to shskdhsuwj

(For a quick catch up: During the end of 2.0 Shinji (the protagonist) triggers another apocalyptic event, the Near Third Impact, and was only stopped due to Kaworu (the guy in my pfp) stepping in. Also between 1.0/2.0 and 3.0/3.0+1.0 are about 14 years (without Shinji bc he's like comatose) where A LOT happens AND we learn in 3.0 that Eva pilots don't age physically bc of "The curse of the Eva"... honestly Eva is wild lmao)

Okay okay I'll get back to it!

So one thing that happens is that Asuka during 2.0 develops a crush on Shinji (girl why-), unfortunately things take a turn for the worse. Asuka had volunteered to be the testpilot for a new Eva (Unit 03), she seemed happy at the time and it was a really sweet build up with the "I can smile, I didn't know I could still do that."-line. And then? Then it turns out the Ninth Angel had infected Unit 03 (Angels are basically the Kaijus they fight using Evas btw). The thing goes on a loose and Shinji is forced to fight it (With Asuka inside mind you), he refuses and his father uses an autopilot to destroy Unit 03. And boy did it destroy the angel, well it and it crushed Asuka between its jaws (you can actually hear her scream btw haha pain :)).

Asuka survived though, but the whole incident cost her her humanity and she ended up becoming an angel herself/she took the place of the Ninth. But despite that, there's one person who keeps believing in Asuka's humanity, who fiercely believes Asuka is still a human and tells her as much.

Yep, that one person is Mari and she keeps holding onto that belief until the very end when Asuka uses her last resort, which is using the power of an angel (Doing so was a guaranteed death sentence btw). Mari's own words (in the German dub) were, "Princess, you're giving up being human…" AND IT MAKES ME SO EMO GOD FUCK

While I'm at it, Mari and Asuka are a fucking killer combo as a team. They rely on each other for support in combat, listen to the other's orders and advice. Especially in Asuka's case it's kind of a big deal that she so openly relies and counts on Mari's support. Like these two trust each other with their damn lifes!!! Holy shit!!

Guess what though, they also have nicknames for eachother. Mari always calls Asuka "Princess" or "(Your) Highness" while Asuka calles Mari "Four-eyes" / "Four-eyed chrony (idk how you spell that tbh RIP" Even better though, in the German dub Asuka calls Mari "Brillerella" as in a combination of "Brille" (German for glasses) and "Cinderella",,,,Cinderella and her Prince,,,Brillerella and her Princess,,, man, that was a gay fucking move of the translation team. Spoiler: I owe them my life.

Funfact: There's exactly two times throughout the Rebuild movies where Mari uses Asuka's actual name. These two times being when she watches Asuka "die" and be used as a sacrifice for Gendo's selfish plan and when later on she begs Shinji, "So please the Princess… Asuka needs your help!" And the best part? That wasn't even the first time she did that. The mentioned line came from 3.0+1.0, but she did that too in 3.0 with the, "At least save the Princess!" line (although her tone was much more...pissed, like she was really angry lol)

Remember the crush Asuka had on Shinji? Well due to the Unit 03 incident a whole lot of other shit got mixed into that and her feelings for him in general became really bitter (understandably so). Now Mari being who she is sometimes teases Asuka about said old crush but she really does want Asuka to get closure and sort that mess out. 

As an example for the teasing, in 3.0 there's a scene that goes like this (please imagine Mari with a literal :3 face while saying that):

"Unit! Are you back in the game?"

"I'm on it, your Highness. But first things first, how was our little puppy (Shinji)? Did he sit like a good little boy?"

"He's exactly the same! Same stupid face talking mayhem!"

"That goofy face of his, that's what you wanted to see? Riiiiight?"

"Shut up! I went there to bat him one!... And I feel better!"

There's also a very short bonus manga that was released in Japan for Thrice Upon a Time's release that has Mari trying to convince Asuka to come with her on the mission to get Shinji, given everything that follows, it's just another thing to prove my point. And the final bit relating to that is this:

"Feeling better now?"

"Yeah, I do feel better."

That's the exchange Asuka and Mari have after they talked to Shinji, it's nothing special but I think it's really sweet and this time Asuka actually sounded like she was feeling better instead of when she was screaming after she nearly broke pretty thick glass with her fist (If she had hit someone with that much force she definitely would've broken something omggg #violentimpulsesgang)

To get back on track though: I already mentioned it but during the second half of 3.0+1.0 Asuka "dies" (and honestly that entire scene is worth its own in-depth post because its just one huge parallel to The End of Evangelion), the point is: You can tell that the loss of Asuka honestly hits Mari hard. Not only because of how Mari screams Asuka's name but also because of her expressions. They're pained, like really fucking pained and Mari even apologizes to her that she has to fall back due to the fact that she's injured AND because eveything is going wrong.

After the events of Evangelion 3.0 these two got seperated from eachother, Mari was with WILLE (the organization both of them are with) and on board of Wunder (the ship WILLE basically operates from) while Asuka was in a Village full of (Near) Third Impact Survivors. When they do meet again it went like this:

Asuka, barely back, comes to the door and calls, "I'm back." And within seconds of Asuka stepping into their room after the door opens Mari already runs towards her, arms wide open and she says, "Welcome back, your Highness! Good job. I missed you so much!" And she says that while she literally nuzzles into Asuka,,,like,,,what the fuck gay people real!!! 

Best part? Asuka clearly has enough strength to push Mari completely away if she were uncomfortable, but she doesn't. Asuka merely wanted enough space to look at the room (because Mari managed to horde even more books lol) and play her game. During their entire renunion Mari keeps hugging her, and part of me thinks that perhaps deep down Asuka actually enjoys the feeling of physical affection.

Before we get to the last point though, let me say that Asuka and Mari have scenes in 3.0+1.0 that parallel Shinji and Kaworu's from 3.0. (Fyi Kaworu loves Shinji (yeah, like that, and 3.0 was basically them being gay as fuck for an hour) so like...do I even need to explain? 

And then of course there's also this, the "Take care of yourself, Princess…" line. That is the last time Mari talks to Asuka and as much as that line alone already is so much, it's Mari's expression in particular that kills me. Because this? This soft, almost bittersweet expression she has, as she basically says goodbye? Because she knows Asuka will finally be happy and safe? It just makes me feel so much actually. Man.

In the end it's a fact that Mari loved Asuka, wether that is interpreted as platonic or romantic by someone is up to them. But it is a fact that Asuka was loved enough that someone wanted to hug her, was happy to see her, to praise her, was hurt by her loss, wanted her to be safe, that someone told her "Take care of yourself…" Asuka was really and honestly so loved that someone would tell her, "I missed you."

But Asuka? Asuka was too hurt, too wrapped up in her own head to actually see how loved she was by Mari (and other people) that she genuinely believed she's completely alone and always will be alone.

It makes the "Take care of yourself" line hit even harder to me, because it's not only Mari's goodbye, but it's a goodbye during the one time Asuka allowed herself to be vulnerable and admit what she really wanted.

And honestly? All of this? Its makes me feel so many things and I just love them  so much man.

[dykeza]

So I’m reference to the Jade route post I Just made I think Aizen functions on the same axis as both Jade and Dirk. Lemme explain.

JADE is on an axis of narrative importance vs. narrative propulsion AKA does she have depth in a given scene or does she move the narrative forward at her own expense/no depth. Most scenes in Homestuck (at least later into Homosuck) have Jade as narrative propulsion, such as 1.) the golden ship with June, 2.) June fucking dies (Jade now alone on ship for 3 years) <- this is important to the Narrative, not the Jade. Right?

Okay. DIRK is a suicidal narrator. Not an unreliable narrator, shockingly enough Dirk is Painfully honest with the reader about the point of Homestuck, the Epilogues, and HS^2. He doesn’t lie to the audience, and he doesn’t Need to lie to the characters. This is because while Dirk is an existing force outside of the narrative inside of Homestuck, everyone else (except for Jade, Calliope, and possibly Jake) IS in the narrative inside of Homestuck. Anyways, Dirk is also a prince of heart, which means he becomes the antithesis to the self(ish) (self). Put simply, heart is ego and mind is lack of ego, mind is opposite to heart, Prince becomes opposite of aspect, therefore Dirk is the embodiment of the lack of ego [if we can assume that “ego” in this context means connection to the narrative skeleton and muscle].

To become Ultimate Dirk (it has been 3 years since I have said that phrase out loud or written), our good old fashioned Nor/Mal Dirk loses connection with the people inside of the Narrative, and gains an ascended understanding of their character, and therefore acts upon his own convictions as New Narrator to propel the story via influencing the characters from within the story (because he is fictional). This doesn’t work very well because it’s kind of like talking to a man who once spoke perfect English (assuming you also do so), but he took a fuck ton of drugs against his will because God told him to, and now he has a new version of English that is the Correct Version, unbridled by Human and Social understanding of language, so talking to him is like speaking to someone who only talks in clicks and whistles. But the person with the New English Update is on the better software, and now they think everyone else sucks, and tries to either 1.) get them to get the software update or 2.) pop their brains till they catchphrase and skip town.

This is Aizen to me because he:

1. Exists on an axis of personal growth vs. narrative propulsion. The only time we learn ANYTHING about Aizen as a person, his history, etc. is when the fight is over and the “good guys” won. *You can argue TBTP gave us Aizen Moments, but all that did was tell us that he had/has raw, hardcore gay sex with men and had/has done so for upwards of 100 years. TBTP gave us backstory on Kisuke, Shinji, and why Aizen is so good at deepthroating people who are objectively better than him.*

2. Aizen didn’t want to be all powerful, in fact he wanted nothing more than to be as normal as anyone else. I’d go as far as to say Aizen didn’t even want to be a Soul Reaper, but his power wasn’t something he chose, and Soul Society itself will take what it wants, so who is to say Aizen even had a choice. This is much akin to Ascension in Homestuck, where characters- mostly- don’t want to ascend, and become physically ill and even comatose if they fight it. We see this with Rose, who can feel her ascension taking hold, and spends nearly all of Meat unconscious, and she is freed from this sickness in Candy- but only when Dirk kills himself- effectively stopping the Narrative of Candy, and therefore stopping the ascension of any other character.

3. Funny joke about both Dirk and Aizen being egotistical, pathetic, gay losers who are so obsessed with Funnie Green Guy that it makes them physically ill and their crush turns to hatred because feelings are hard, especially for guys with childhood trauma and too much power to handle.

4. “Pop their brains till they catchphrase and skip town.” is my favorite sentence ever. I’m pretty sure I read it from a Tomatogrator tweet and I’ve been saying it ever since. In nor/mal terms, it’s simply mind-breaking someone until they go Default Mode and hail you as a god despite all you’ve done to them. Case and point: Momo Hinamori, my daughter, Momo Hinamori.

And that’s why. [chekcs notes] dirkjake is endgame, urashin is better than aishin, and Jade Harley is the character of all time. Thank yuo and goodnight.

[notably-rainbow]

okay so

this is a m/f pan/bi couple. first of all, look at their vibes.

morticia is open to anything but the distinctions and nuances are important to her. she holds everything to a high standard and found themself the perfect man. they’d be down to date other genders too, though. but it would be different for her than dating a man. she also recognizes that bi and pan are just labels the are functionally similar but have different meanings to some people, and bi feels best for them. she also has she/they energy.

gomez is familiar with the old “hearts not parts” idea. he also knows that bi and pan function similarly, but he likes the freedom in the label pan. he likes the idea that he falls in love with people regardless of their appearances or genders. also he has major bi wife energy and major queer guy energy.

next let’s look at the aesthetics, because i know that stereotypes are bad, but they can be very fun. as a queer person, i thoroughly enjoy reading into meaningless subtext to find stereotypes that give the impression of queerness.

on this scale, gomez falls somewhere on the ‘mostly goth but somewhat preppy’ side of things. he also has major jock energy with a decent amount of nerd energy mixed in. therefore he is very close to the middle of the chart here. he has a very dark-academia kind of aesthetic, or maybe goth-gryffindor vibes (don’t know how else to phrase it). pan men are (stereotypically) utterly chaotic or utterly nerdy, and he is both. even the dark goth thing is totally on brand for a pan or queer dude.

morticia has so much goth energy. it’s honestly off the charts. she embodies goth. they also don’t really fit super well into jock or goth categories in my opinion. she’s not really on the chart so much as they are just the label goth itself. if that’s not a bisexual person i’d not know what is. also, her femme enby energy is off the charts. i feel like they’re definitely not a lady, but she still likes the elegance of she/her pronouns, so they use she/they.

now.

this is a m/f bi/pan couple.

mavis is just a chill vampire lady. she’s open to anyone who makes her happy, and luckily for her she found jonathan. she’s very cute and sweet and just loves people for who they are. to her, bi and pan are different and she relates more to the label pan. also she’s either a trans lady or is a cis lady who questioned her gender a lot around high school and tried out she/they or they/them pronouns. she is happy with she/her and likes being a woman and feels like a woman though.

johnny is a dudebro. but not like a straight dudebro. he has big broski-who-drinks-respect-women-juice energy. also, he’s for sure trans. and he’s definitely bi. he definitely had a few long-term relationships with men and a few with women. he likes people for who they are and doesn’t really worry about it too much. he uses the label bi because it’s easiest and people get it so he can be who he is without having to explain it. he doesn’t really care anyway and is good with gay, queer, bi, pan, omni, etc.

on to the stereotypes!!

mavis is goth but has some prep vibes. she is also kind of both a jock and a nerd. now that i think about it, she’s probably more jock than nerd and i should fix that but i’m not going to, so we’ll just live with it for now.

johnny is jocky obviously, and not super super nerdy. he’s definitely more preppy than goth, but he’s more on the side of skaterboi or bro. he listens to cavetown for sure, but also likes grungy music. bi guys are stereotypically either masculine and chill or more flamboyant and feminine. i think he fits really well into the chill and manly category, and people usually go “wait you’re bi???” when they find out. but then they see him with a guy and it makes more sense. like he just has the vibes. but most people don’t notice until they see him with a guy or masculine person.

now obviously this is a joke and you’re welcome to your own opinions!! also please understand that stereotypes are not helpful in most cases and can do more harm than good. bi and pan people, nonbinary people, trans people, and boys and girls are not confined to some kind of box. they are all free to look, dress, act, speak, etc however they want!! stereotypes are fun to play around with in media but please don’t tell someone that the way they act isn’t gay enough or bi enough or anything else that relies on stereotypes!! also, i might not remember the characters perfectly so feel free to add if you have anything i forgot about or just want to say how you feel about it!!

[fromthedeskofthecaptain]

Ghosts Empire Online Spoiler Special final part...

Ben, Larry and Martha.

Martha notes Fanny’s character development. They are planning to show more of her soft side in series three.

Ben wants to hold back from the Captain’s death, partly because it’s not the most interesting thing about him. He’s very aware that the tone needs to be quite carefully balanced between comedy and genuinely heartfelt emotion and doesn’t want to get too “heavy” with the Captain’s storylines, while still injecting drama and focusing on why he is as he is. Larry says they knew very early on how Cap died, but some of the characters have not been worked out fully or have changed because they realized something else has more dramatic possibilities.

Episode 1 -

Larry makes the point that the ghosts are like toddlers “with their hands tied behind their backs” in that they can do very little for themselves and Alison now has a morning routine revolving around setting them up for their days. He felt they had to do a ghost hunter episode at some point because it was obvious and a reversal of series one’s “cynicism” about the existence of ghosts from the living characters.

Cap’s fitness obsession is in there in part because Ben is really into running but Larry points out that his own run through woods in episode five was harder on him than filming the Captain’s short jog was on Ben! Ben had a stunt coordinator to help him do a tiny jump onto a crash mat when he was leaping to save Lady Button from being seen. They all found this hilarious because it was such a minor stunt and they’d all done loads of falling over in Horrible Histories.

Episode 3 -

They talked about the level of explosion they needed to have to warrant the Captain’s concern about the buried secret (once we discovered it wasn’t wholly a metaphor) without it being something that would’ve killed everyone. Larry finds it funny that Ben was so into war films as a child that he immediately said “oh, you’d need a limpet mine!” (These are attached to ships to create holes below the waterline).

Captain’s viability as a character comes from his internal conflict over being gay. He thinks the Edwardian era until the 50s was probably harder for gay men than prior to that. He doesn’t elaborate on why, but seems to say there was something about that time period in particular.

(Ed: He doesn’t say why he thinks this. I speculated on a few ideas

1. Perhaps the late Victorian surge in the power of the national press and use of the camera reduced people’s sense of privacy and enabled people to be the subject of campaigns and notoriety, e.g Oscar Wilde.

2 Perhaps he meant the 1885 Labouchere Amendment to the criminal law that made “gross indecency” short of proven anal sex a crime as well. Prior to that the law on male homosexuality was from Tudor times and required evidence of anal penetration proven to a legal standard. Any other sexual or intimate act between men had been legal (albeit not necessarily socially accepted). The amendment meant anything that could be considered foreplay or “coming on” to someone was now illegal. No definition was provided in the Act, which made it easier, not harder, to prosecute.

3. The First World War and all that surrounded it led to the particular construction that can be summed up as “patriotism requires battle-readiness, which means skills and virtues of traditional masculinity which are predicated on heterosexuality.” This is a drastic simplification, of course.

Aaaannnd back to Ben...

He says he never expected the degree to which the Captain has been adopted as significant character that embodies how so many people feel. Larry says that he thinks this is because Cap is a character who is gay, not a gay character and the majority of his story is about his functioning as a personality. His personality affects how he processes being gay and how he processes many other things too, but it isn’t that being gay IS his personality. (Ed: This is so important! As a gay woman I really struggle with characters who are written as “scene” because often that does mean that their entire personality is their sexuality, which I find reductive and alienating. It’s also exhausting when people have this self-portrayal in real life.)

Larry says he thinks the Captain would never have “allowed himself the possibility” that he’s gay because what could he have done about it in his time with his personality and attitude to risk, etc. Ben says Cap’s sexuality has never been treated as a joke in itself.

Fanny has a sexual awakening over Mike that the host described as “going Benny Hill”. Martha can’t watch it because it’s too much. They had to edit it a bit because she went over the top.

Larry says Robin being a conspiracy theorist is because he has no frame of reference for any of the things being discussed so he just believes everything that auto plays on YouTube.

They have to check about swearing and sexual references with Compliance. Ben says it’s funny what they will have problems with and what will be fine. (He seems to say it seems to lack internal logic.) Larry thinks being a quite daft show with a lot of overt silliness helps them get away with e.g. Pat saying “bullshit.”

Martha and Larry love that Simon puts a word in when he is making a noise of exertion when he’s moving things. He’s done Shawaddywaddy, Nixon, and has moved on to footballers’ names. He ad libs them all. They realized that with the burglary episode Julian would have to do everything because otherwise the plot wouldn’t work but thought it’d be ok if they had him be overtly annoyed about it and showed him to be the work shy layabout he thinks poor people are.

Initially, in their first pitch, Julian was dressed in PVC with a ball gag etc and they realized (Ed: thank god!) that they just couldn’t put that on television, so suggested what had happened in a much more likely to be allowed on TV before midnight way.

The hitchhiker Alison meets gave them pause due to its bleakness. Larry says they kept it to remind the audience that ghosts are everywhere and it is a horror comedy. He likes to keep the tone shifting and keep things unexpected. They reference how eager Fanny was to help the burglars, in that she can’t bear to see people do a task badly.

Mary and Kitty work as a team because the actors get on together, plus Kitty is so naive and Mary is such a “wildcard” that “if they only have each other to keep themselves on track” it’ll all go wrong (Larry). They joke about Cap being excited to have a moment to fight off insurgents. Ben calls it “frontline stuff!” and notes that Cap is an appalling military leader “in the wrong job.” This is partly because of leaving those two to do an important job, but generally, too. (Show some respect, Willbond).

Kitty’s song for Music Club was going to be “Saturday Night” by Wigfield, but they couldn’t get clearance. Larry also mentions not being allowed “Come on Eileen.” It’s clearly affected them all very deeply!

The End! (Until the last episode of the podcast, which I think is just about the Christmas special.) x

[gascon-en-exil]

Dark Deity Pre-Release Character Opinions

This isn't actually a tier list, but someone helpfully created a template for this game and it's as good a way as any to do a little visual showcase for this cast. Characters are listed by their class sets, which are fixed but offer a nice variety in terms of promotion options. My opinions on each are as follows, from left to right in each row. Most characters have introductory profiles written up on the DD subreddit, if you'd like to check them out yourself.

Warriors

Alexa

You know those buff female blacksmiths in Echoes and Three Houses that some people wish were playable characters? That's pretty much Alexa. Can't say I'm too hyped about her myself, but warrior + tomboyish female character will do that for me...or not do it, I suppose.

Benji

Seems to have been written to become a meme, and I still can't decide whether that's clever or stupid. Kind of like Raphael only with a bigger emphasis on training than on eating, and with brotherly devotion replaced with brotherly angst that might theoretically go somewhere if the character isn't reduced to being a goofy joke all the time.

Fenton

Doesn't have a character profile, so as far as I know he's just a generic dwarf because DD swaps out its inspiration's loli dragons and other vaguely fetishistic shapeshifters for the two most cliché non-human races in Western fantasy. I wonder whether his VA will voice him with a Scottish accent, to go all in on the (ironic?) laziness. There are a handful of elves in the playable cast, but Fenton is the only dwarf so for better or worse he's representing.

Helena

She's the embodiment of the FE exotic swordswoman archetype, but curiously DD seems to have turned that broad ethnic brush inward. Helena's last name is apparently a Japanese verb, her art shows her with a spear (as in the association of the naginata with women), and she studied and trained in a monastery that seems to blend elements of Buddhism and Shintoism. Not sure how all that fits into the larger setting yet, but at this point she's still got more background development than Petra.

Irving

Our Hero, the one front and center on the cover art. He sounds a bit on the blander side as far as lords or lord equivalents go, with his most promising hook for me being his established friendship with Garrick (see the ranger section). At best I can hope for a bit of a romantic friendship dynamic, although they sound a bit rougher overall as they're military academy schoolmates I wonder why DD went with that instead of lordlings of different territories.

Rogues

Brooke

Looks like Camilla; has a backstory like Niles. Cleavage aside though the sexual element of both is toned down here, and there might be some sapphic bodyguard shenanigans to be had as her current employers are a pair of highborn sisters further down this list.

Cia

For some reason she reminds me of Tressa from Octopath Traveler, only bustier and a bartender rather than a merchant. She's still just a small town girl with big city dreams, and this being a tactical war game following those dreams will inevitably involve stabbing people.

Corvan

Hard to judge him at the moment, as his profile was only the second written and so isn't terribly detailed. He's a moon elf with scholarly interests, apparently. Still, as of right now he's the only rogue who doesn't slot loosely into either a ninja/assassin or pirate aesthetic, so that's kind of neat. Also, he's one of several characters to have FEH-esque beach fanart made of them already, so clearly someone's into elf twinks.

Ford

A former officer at the military academy Irving attends and a smuggler who dotes on his niece, Ford has major dad energy. Per developer reveals he's also bi, and as I mentioned before I'm totally fine with that. More bear sex, please - but what guy in this cast would hop in the sack with Ford? Only time will tell. His personal skill makes him extra dodgy, which combined with the mug of booze in his art makes me think of WoW brewmasters who dodge-tank through the power of being wasted.

Wren

Like Brooke, he's an assassin from a foreign nation - in his case the same one as Helena so presumably he's a not!Japanese ninja. I'm not really feeling him at the moment. What is it about Hao'Fen (the city/territory he and Helena come from) and massive families? That comes up in both their backstories.

Rangers

Caius

I feel like this is the third or fourth character to grow up in some slum or other; at least they've all been in different towns so far. The relative rarity of noble characters is certainly different from FE, but it reduces the political stakes which leaves me wondering a bit about the story. Anyway, Caius is a small town desert hunter who learned how to make arrows out of animal bones. How aerodynamic is bone, I wonder?

Garrick

Irving's BFF and seemingly the Hector to Irving's Eliwood, only with more flirting (his intro doesn't specify that Garrick is flirting with women, but I'm not going so far as to say that indicates anything). He's the academy headmaster's son, with a strained relationship with his father for some of that hotheaded lead tension. Notably, his VA is the one I'm most familiar with in this cast, as he's the voice of Revali from Breath of the Wild as well as love interests in two different erotic gay dating sims I've played. In other words, I know what this guy sounds like making awkwardly simulated sex noises...and I have no idea what to do with that information.

Maeve

She's a half-elf with a very storied background, so much so that it's all rather hard to follow her exploits when little of what's being described has been fully revealed yet. I'm expecting her to be a mid/lategame recruit, unless she's dropped in early on to reveal that (sun) elves exist or something.

Rose

Imagine if Bernadetta were a commoner, although we can only hope they'll be less screaming. Alternatively, Neimi without an obvious boyfriend. She won the beach contest so now she has official swimsuit art, which I guess makes her a top-tier waifu in the eyes of players who care about such things.

Sophia

A ranger in the "has animal companions" sense, although whether that will come into play mechanically aside from her personal skill - Butter the ferret can attack with her! - remains to be seen. Her preference for the company of animals is explained by a lack of social graces, so prepare for klutz-related humor. Of note to those interested in F/F is that her introduction specifically brings up her connection with Sloane (see the mage section) and how close the two of them are.

Clerics

Faust

Doesn't have a profile yet, so not much to go off other than his decidedly unhinged look. The cleric class set does feature some darker-flavored options, so presumably he's more naturally aligned with those. His VA was announced to be the YouTuber behind So This is Basically Fire Emblem and other similar videos, so I'm picturing a kooky and somewhat demented Henry type.

Lincoln

Also lacks a profile at time of writing...clerics get so little love. The Discord has identified him a bland blond paladin sort, but as we know from the likes of Perceval and especially Dimitri that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be boring (or not gay).

Maren

The soft-spoken healer type, and also a childhood friend of Garrick although her intro sibling-zones him but then this game is inspired by FE so who knows if that'll stick. She may have some interesting thoughts on the theology of the setting, as there seem to be several faiths and she's said to have a complicated relationship with her own. I will be utterly shocked if she's not either Irving or Garrick's eventual love interest.

Samara

One of two princesses of the country of Aramor, which appears to be loosely inspired by the Middle East. Heaven help us if the Khalidstans ever get wind of this game. Unfortunately aside from her bond with her older sister (in the mage section) and the knowledge that Brooke has been hired as their bodyguard there's not much to Samara at the moment. Hopefully the clerics all do some comparative theology in their bond conversations, and this isn't like Sacred Stones where none of the clergy characters from different countries ever compare notes. The succession crisis involving Samara and her sister vs. their less-loved cousin the king's son might be a major plot hook? It's still too early to tell.

Vesta

Much like Maeve her backstory has entirely too much going on to really follow at the moment. Basically she's a human who grew up in a sun elf city because Reasons (seriously, I don't know what they are) and was called to a clerical vocation and also something about taking a journey. Has an unfortunate case of silly boob armor, which unlike a certain other character probably won't be rectified this close to release.

Mages

Alden

Maren's precocious younger brother, also basically Ricken up to and including the comically oversized hat. As a unit he follows the tradition of Donnel, Mozu, and Cyril of having a personal skill that buffs his stat gains, so it's safe to say he's a growth unit. At least he'll probably join early.

Liberty

Comes with dead brother angst and a connection to the "aspects" system that will hopefully make more sense once I've played the game and know how it functions both mechanically and from a storytelling perspective. Otherwise she looks to be a busty older - as in, not a teenage - mage in the vein of Calill.

Monroe

Got the first ever character profile, so it's really short. He's the son of a duke and sounds like a bit of a snob, albeit one that can make explosions happen to back up his haughtiness. He's got some scarring around his eye that surely must come with a story. Someone also made featured fanart of him in Heroes summer banner style, so I guess he's got somebody horny already.

Sara

Samara's half-sister, with comparable fantasy Middle Eastern flavoring. Has an interest in discovering magical artifacts and being a just ruler in the event she winds up on the throne (so, almost definitely), and she and Samara travel around with the assassin Brooke as their bodyguard. There's maybe some lesbian possibilities there? Either way, Sara has enough development where I could see her as a major supporting character.

Sloane

Comes with a genuinely fascinating backstory involving manipulative double-crossing parents, an education in the cruelties and deceptions of social life (reflected in her personal skill), and disinheritance - and yet it's all likely to be overshadowed because she may go down as DD's equivalent to Fates's face-touching. Her initial art is even more revealing than Camilla's, and while the developers later gave her a more modest redesign after negative feedback I get the feeling that this controversy may live on. Her introduction mentions her hunting for both heirs and heiresses and she's now been linked to Sophia, so safe to say she's another confirmed bi character.

Adepts

While the other class sets are standard fantasy fare adepts require a bit more explanation. They have innate magical abilities and appear to be feared and distrusted most places in the setting. Functionally they remind me of adepts from the Golden Sun series, if anyone is familiar with those games. The classes in the adept group tend more toward physical/magical hybridization than those of other sets, so that will probably be their mechanical niche. Oh, and their default weapon type is lances, which is a plus in my book.

Aurima

Along with Caius and the royal sisters, he's another one from the desert nation of Aramor. An arena fighter who got touched by a god in what I assume was a non-sexual way and came out of it with a new appearance and adept powers. Also, he's confirmed to be over 40 - how often do you see that in games like this?

Bianca

Looks like a more carefree Mathilda from Echoes. She's a ranking officer in the Delian army which sounds like it'd sit uneasily with her adept powers. Her profile describes Lincoln as her close friend, which is still about the most we know about him at this point.

Elias

This guy's writing plays more into the fairly standard coding that comes with adept powers, as we know they manifested shortly before he was going to confess his feelings to a male paramour and afterwards he was forced to flee his homeland and wander the world. He also spent time among dwarves, so insert short bear jokes here? In the present he's attached to Cia in what seems to be a platonic way; maybe she's a fruit fly, or maybe she just likes having a friend who can light drunken assholes on fire? Elias is definitely into guys, but I would still be a little surprised if he turned out to be totally gay as that's such a rarity in these sorts of things.

Iris

Oof, another lengthy and rough backstory. Iris had better parents than Sloane, but she also had to deal with permanent facial scarring (hence the mask) after a bandit kidnapping and the stigma of manifesting as an adept pretty much eliminating the prospects of her making a good political marriage. Also, she and Elias both come from Neullais, which is prominently featured on the continental map on the DD subreddit but doesn't seem to come up all too often in backstories. I think it's a not!France? Hard to tell.

Thae'lanel

A World of Warcraft blood elf, flowing anime hair and apostrophe'd name and all. I like WoW so that's not terribly grating, but as he has no profile yet there's little else I can say. Thae'lanel is mentioned in Maeve's introduction as a member of a sun elf group called the Exiled, which I'm guessing is tied to his adept status in some way. He and Maeve form yet another adventurer/bodyguard duo.

[anamatics]

so i’ve been watching rwby

and as I’ve been doing so I’ve been posting reactions to my friends. After S5, S6, and S7, in particular, I had a lot of thoughts and opinions. More under the cut. I’m going to write fic aren’t i?

Season 5:

1. Where is the first/autumn relic?! Like, we've established that Ozpin hid it well, yet for some reason it doesn't feel like that's the whole story - given where the relic was hidden this time, in some sort of n dimentional desert (where, if you looked closely you could see similar ##chemtrails - could people just walk through that desert to get to all of them? 2. I find it hilarious that Weiss just got out of Atlas only to go back, I'm very curious as to what sort of ~~damage this reveals about her in the coming seasons, but I'm also very intrigued by how reintroducing her to her father with the rest of team RWBY will shift/alter the narrative of powerlessness that he seems t be pushing toward her. I'm esp. intrigued as to what his reaction will be to Blake (as he seems very anti-faunus). 3. WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN FOR THE #YANGST. 4. The show has been pretty constantly showing us that most of Ruby and Yang's family seems like chill folks, but the ##absentmother trope is strong here. Given that it seems like only Blake has a mom, does Blake's mom adopt everyone? 5. Blake having a fairly functional nuclear family is fascinating to me, because it makes a lot of her choices seem way more political (at a very young age) as opposed to just a kid who got in over her head with a boy who was a bit older. I'd love to know more about this. 6. as a multishipper, I hurt all over.

xx

Season 6:

Item the FIRST: Weiss barely making it out of Atlas only to be dragged, albeit somewhat willingly back to the source of all of her ~ trauma & family drama ~ I am curious to see how this plays out and generally hope that Weiss somehow stabs her shitty dad and Draco Malfoy rip off brother while being reunited with her 100% Cooler Than U sister. Also that Cooler Than U sister works on the unresolved sexual tension she CLEARLY had with Qrow.

Item the SECOND: The show's thoughtful handling of Qrow's alcoholism and Ruby's gentle efforts to push toward sobriety without like being annoyingly moralistic about it. It could have been handled so differently and I really, really enjoyed that it was handled in the way it was.

Item the THIRD: Weiss' new red scarf. adsfajshfaksdjfhthatsgayweissaksdfhaksdjfh

Item the FOURTH: The various Poor Life Choices Salem made during our brief sojourn to the Department of Backstory. Also Jinn is amazing let's keep her around. She can join Jaune, Ren and Nora as a 4th member of their team and just hilariously be naked all the time. 10/10 would watch for hijinks adventures.

Item the FIFTH:  Ozpin sulking that he got all his relationship drama put on main like that

Item the SIXTH: Jaune's gay sister and sister-in-law and their baby and and and and (idk I just loved this).

Item the SEVENTH: BLAKE AND YANG HELD HANDS AND MURDERED THEIR TRAUMA TOGETHER PRAISE JESUS AND CAN I GET A HALLELUJAH? NOW KISS.

Item the EIGHTH: My multishipper ass saw that moment between Weiss and Yang when they were stuck in the basement and I'd just like to say I would be happy to see that too.

xx

Season 7:  Item the First: Weiss has a mother. Which we all logically knew she did but that scene with her in Jacques' office was just... a lot. Also raised some very interesting questions. When will Weiss and Ruby bond over alcoholic parental figures, I ask you. On this front, I am also now supremely, supremely curious about Winter's relationship with her mother. 

Item the Second: Leftist Weiss. Well we all knew that Weiss wouldn't have voted for her dad anyway, but I think the tension between Weiss's clear orientation toward helping people and government for good and her father/sister's appealing to/embodying other forms of authority (corporate/military). This also raises an interesting point of contention between Weiss and Winter, as Winter's sort of this embodiment of what I'd maybe call a conscientious soldier – where she’s clearly in possession of independent thoughts and opinions, yet also seems to want to appeal to a higher authority whenever she feels conflicted (e.g. “Ironwood is making the hard decisions so we don’t have to.”). This actually draws a very stark line between Winter and Weiss – as Weiss has always been a freer thinker, who can and does think for herself and operate from her own moral compass. The moment at the end of the season between Weiss and Winter was just so delicious as I hope (HOPE HOPE) that they’re setting up for a ~~moment of clarity~ for Winter where she has to make a decision on her own that defies orders in some way for the greater good that Weiss can see so easily. (Also, please, my good gay sisters: Hug. It. Out.)

Item the Third: Leftist Bees (well really, leftist Yang, Blake was always a revolutionary). I absolutely loved the Everyone Is Lying moments in this season, and I do hate that the Bees were the ones caught out in it first. Black and Yang telling Robyn the truth also struck me as something that the pair of them would do anyway – the only other character I could see possibly slipping and letting info get to Robyn is Weiss, but I also got the sense that Weiss understood the politics of the situation better than anyone else and because of this was playing it pretty close to the vest. The Bee’s decision really jives with their partnership. As did getting to watch them fight together so much this season, they’re evolving together, and seeing them fight in tandem is a delight.

Item the Fourth: Splitting whiterose. I like Penny. I actually love Penny. I love Penny and Roby’s dynamic. And their friendship. And how ridiculous they are. But it really struck me that how the whiterose partnership kept on getting split until the final fight against the Spice Force Five. I’m sure there’s a reason for this but I don’t like it and I won’t hear it or respond to it.

Item the Fifth: The Not Spice Girls/Spice Force Five. Love these idiots, but they’re all cops. Marrow is the most delightful of them and seems like he’s about to go on a journey similar to Winter, Harriet sucks a lot, Clover was a delightful almost rip but also mmmwhatchusay. I sort of hated the juxtaposition between team RWBY and them, with the ‘just following orders’ mentality and the lack of friendship/cohesion between these guys. I guess now Winter can join them and they so they can have their Posh Spice.

Item the Sixth: Schneewood Forest. I feel like I could write a whole elaborate backstory with these two. There’s something there – the unstoppable force meets immovable object of it, plus the idea of someone who challenges Winter’s entire belief structure just by being an okay person ~with a merry band of queers~. I feel a lot of things. I want to explore this. Stop me I am in a PhD program. 

Item the Seventh: The Tinman’s Heart. Having read all of the Wizard of Oz books, as well as the Wicked series, I actually appreciate that this series is taking nods from both sources for these characters. James’s decisions are … not great but I can see his logic – well right up until the part where he shoots poor Oscar. That was just rude. Also I do love watching him fight because he’s so very, very good.

Item the Seventh: Bisexual Bobs. How very Bi of you Blake. And how useless lesbian of Yang to be all flustered about it. Please kiss.

[fxreverfame]

Kai Anderson

information provided by : [xxx]

Kai Anderson is a cult leader from a Michigan suburb. He is a character in Cult portrayed by Evan Peters. Before he was radicalized by personal trauma, he was a typical internet troll who hadn't realized yet the power in manipulating emotions. His following was known as FIT, which expanded as he continued reeling in new recruits with his gifted charisma. What Kai started as a small group of locals had metastasized as he became increasingly prolific in the political media. He was hellbent on spreading chaos to take over the world, only to have his ego be his ultimate undoing.

Background

In 2014, Kai returned home after getting a degree in religious studies. His father was a lawyer who was injured in a motorcycle accident and was paralyzed from the waist down. This caused him to abuse his wife and accuse her of an affair. He is also seen verbally abusing Kai. He spent of his time there alone, lurking on website such as r/RedPill on his laptop.

Kai states that before the accident his father was firm but fair with them and his mother. One night Kai hears muffled arguing and gunshots. He finds that his mother, no longer able to stand the abuse and accusations, has shot his father she then turns the gun on herself and pulls the trigger in front of Kai. Clearly in shock, Kai calls his older brother, Dr. Rudy Vincent, who convinces Kai that the best course of action is to cover up the murder-suicide. He reasons that they will have to sell the house and that their sister Winter will not be able to finish college due to the loss of their parents' income. He has also just started his practice and doesn't want to explain to clients that his parents murdered each other. After locking pinkies, they put their parents' bodies in bed, cover them with lye, padlock the door and leave them to decompose.

When Kai asked what he should say to Winter, Vin tells him to wait and tell her when she returns home for Thanksgiving. When Winter returns home she is understandably upset that they have kept their parents' deaths from her. She threatens to turn them in but Kai uses Vin's logic on her saying who will pay for Vasser. Three years later and the bodies are still in the house. Kai admits to Beverly that he still talks to his mom. Despite their status, he still talked to his mother's decomposing body, usually holding her hand. He also talked to the corpse of his father, still blaming him for what happened and that he gets pleasure from watching him decompose. At one later point in the season he promises his mothers rotting corpse that he will become something for her.

Sometime after the horrific death of his parents, him and his sister both fall of the deep end. They both practically live in their basement, where they spend most of their time venturing on the dark web trolling alt-right extremists, often posing online as one of them. They'd test the limits of how crazy these extremists could be by proclaiming beliefs they'd pretend to have as part of acting their role. One night while doing this, an ad popped up for "Pastor Charles Judgement House." It's an evangelical hell house, led by the crazed Pastor Charles.

On Election Night, Kai walks in on a bound Gary Longstreet urging him not to scream too loud in his current predicament lest he attracts the wrong kind of attention. Kai manipulates and riles the humiliated man up and convinces him to sever his own hand with a saw so he'd be able to cast his vote. Kai accompanies the injured Gary to their local voting booth. He watches with some amount of glee as Gary shouts: "Welcome to Trump's America, motherfuckers!".

After Election Night, Kai begins drawing all kinds of people to him. He requests Harrison Wilton as his personal trainer and calls him strong. Kai is quick to point out the humiliating aspect of Harrison's work situation: being constantly humiliated by his boss, Vinny, for being gay. He wins Harrison over by advising him to reject labels and promises to always be there for him no matter their differences. After Kai's first session with Harrison, Kai masturbates in the gym shower and lures Harrison in to watch him. As his sessions with Harrison are ending, Kai notices that his trainer sounds a lot like Vinny. When confronted Harrison almost tearfully admits that his life is in tatters, that he's nobody going nowhere. Kai convinces his first devotee that 'nowhere' is the ideal jumping off point. That night Kai assists Harrison in murdering Vinny and disposing of any evidence linking them to the crime. Meadow walks in on the pair of them dismembering Vinny's corpse. Kai is able to sway Meadow to his side by praising her artistic abilities (designing eerie ghoulish clown masks) to the sky.

Kai becomes interested in news reporter Beverly Hope. He discovers that after repeated live 'pussy grabbing' taunts Beverly assaulted one of her hecklers and was forced to seek psychiatric counseling. He catches the frustrated reporter slashing a rival's tires and advises her on how to do it more efficiently. Kai invites Beverly to dinner and impresses her by accurately stating her problems. The aspiring leader next explains his philosophy to Beverly and offers to make her his spokesperson and partner. Realizing that as a reporter Beverly requires proof, not just words Kai requests a few days to deliver said proof. After having seen footage of her hated rival Serena Belinda's gory demise, Beverly realizes that Kai made it happen. The rage-filled reporter seeks Kai out and proclaims she's ready to believe in him. Kai hugs Beverly close and once again promises her an equal partnership.

Personality and Appearance

Prior to his parents' gruesome deaths, Kai appeared to function normally and was, by society's standards, an average teenager. After witnessing his mother and father's murder-suicide, and then the Biblically-motivated violence of Pastor Charles, Kai snapped and became mentally unstable, obsessed with the lust for power. By the events of Cult, he is 30 years old and has shoulder-length hair dyed blue, which he sometimes ties back in a bun. He appears to be very muscular and has a lean build sporting toned abs and biceps. He is fair-skinned and frequently switches between the attire of a cult leader and, when in the face of the public, the suit of a professional councilman.

Embodying a terrifying blend of toxic masculinity and manipulative charisma, Kai is obsessed with the concept of fear and aspires to use it to manipulate people. He states in his speech that his desire is to release chaos to achieve change, suggesting he is delusional. He is noted for holding the mentality that "not everyone can be saved", and that in order for the world to flourish and regrow, "the world should be burned down to rebuild another one".

Kai tested as a genius when he was a young child and was invited to join Mensa, but declined because, according to him, he was also very troubled. This would appear to be true, as Kai has demonstrated all the signs of a sociopath: he is extremely manipulative and charming, is devoid of a moral compass or a conscience, and has absolutely no feelings of empathy or remorse towards other people. He appears to lack fear, as evidenced by when he harassed several Latin-American workers on the street in order to intentionally be beaten by them, employing Harrison and Meadow Wilton to record the inciting violence as a means of furthering his political agenda, which revolved around gaining the racially motivated fear of the public. Despite this, he is described by his sister as having severe paranoia - a fact supported by Kai's exceeding detachment from reality and inability to distinguish between what are his hallucinations or actual people, including seeing and communicating with visions of other cult figures in history, such as Charles Manson.

His harassment towards ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ community are incisive elements for him being perceived as a racist and homophobe, although it is not entirely clear whether he is actually biased against them, or just exploits pre-existing prejudices and tensions to create chaos in the surrounding environment. He is, however, openly misogynistic, viewing women as inferior to men, and holds the belief that they are incapable of holding places of power and importance in society. Despite this, he has displayed a sexual interest in both males and females, though it is unclear if he is actually attracted to them or just uses sexual orientations as a means to further entrance others into following his deranged viewpoints. He intentionally masturbated in front of Harrison Wilton in a gym shower as a means of attracting him to join his cult, and later shared a one-night-stand with Detective Samuels for the same reasons, who he was able to convince that "sex with men is better than with any woman"; additionally, he describes Samuels to his sister as being "quite attractive". Interestingly enough, he is responsible for neither of these men's deaths, unlike other members of his cult that he directly targeted.

Kai may be aroused by the concept of incest, as he attempted a threesome between himself, his sister, and Samuels as a means of giving birth to a "Messiah baby". After Samuel's inability to become aroused by the situation and his sister's refusal to partake in the act, Kai has since come to believe that his son is Oz Mayfair-Richards (per the influence of Ally Mayfair-Richards, who has fed him this lie as a means of self-preservation).

Story

Kai was watching the 2016 election alone in his basement and was delighted by the news of Trump's victory, while his sister Winter was devastated by it, having worked for Clinton's campaign. Kai went to Winter's room to gloat about the win and they proceed to lock pinkies.

Later, Kai attended a city council meeting, which Mr. Chang serves on, about security for the local Jewish community center. Kai states his objections, talking about using fear to control people, though the council disagrees with him and the motion is passed. Kai is later seen harassing a group of Hispanic men on the streets by filling a condom with his urine and throwing it at the men while yelling racist slurs. The men beat Kai up while an unknown person records it.

After his vicious beating Kai, wearing a suit and an endearing armbrace is interviewed by various reporters in front of city hall, as he intends to propose himself as a city councilor. The Trump supporter is quick to point the finger at those 'dangerous illegal immigrants' for his mishap and further stokes the fires of ignorance and hatred. Later Kai just happens to show up at Ally's newly fortified house. Sensing that she's very uneasy he does his best to augment the woman's sense of unease even more.

Kai shared a moment of kindness with Ally as she was attacked by protesters outside her restaurant, stating how he took care of her as promised. Subsequently, Kai recruited both Meadow and Harrison Wilton, performing the pinky ritual with each of them individually. The young man spurred the couple to reveal their deepest fears and desires, but not before unleashing his own anger on Meadow, accusing the woman of wasting his time. Kai Anderson is sent to jail as Ally submitted him to the SWAT team. Kai recruited a fellow inmate and used him to simulate himself and escape prison. Kai then visits Ally Mayfair-Richards at her senate campaign, only to be shot by Beverly.

[z-nogyrop-draws]

another pantheon, this time fully my own for my own campaign! and because it’s me all of them are in gay love. don’t be offput by how odd some of them look, they’re all genuinely really nice and care about folks

more details under the cut:

Cadvier - goddess of decay, also associated with life, death, growth, harvest, and plague. Perhaps the oldest of the gods, it’s said she brought all universes into being out of nothing, but ensures all universes eventually return to nothing, too. Mushrooms sprout from the ground she treads, and life withers in her presence only to grow back stronger. Each life and death is precious to her; she loves her creations as much as she loves their inevitable ends. Stigmir is her betrothed. Also known as Rot, Mistress of Miasma, Elder, The New-From-Old.

Stigmir - deities of swarms, also associated with nature, survival, sport, war, and home. They are cooperation incarnate, a community unto themselves, more than the sum of their parts, each part equal to the whole. Every living being carries a fragment of Stigmir within them, so they say, granting the will to live. They are found in the help given after a disaster, in sharing a meal with an enemy, in leaving no one behind. Also known as Plural, Strength in Numbers, They Who Are We, The Many-As-One.

Phoston - god of fire, also associated with light, order, spring and summer, and the land. He burns brighter and hotter than any sun, could raze worlds with a careless thought, but his prudence is unparalleled. He is not unstoppable wildfires or towns set ablaze; he is the control of something dangerous, wielded as a precise tool and not a weapon. He long ago wrapped himself in damp cloth to seal his flames so he could be with his lover, Quinzhy. Also known as Sir Infernal, Ashes, Sealed Star, The Extinguished.

Quinzhy - god of snow, also associated with storms, chaos, autumn and winter, and the sea. An unpredictable god, his presence is felt as much in quiet snowfall as in violent blizzards. Legends say he commands each cloud and wave and snowflake with directions he alone can understand. The ice preserves what it will, and the rest is blown away; he abides no stagnation. Only Phoston can temper his anarchic tendencies. Also known as Upheaval, Deepest Below, Glacies, The Sudden Chill.

Axythia - god of emotion, also associated with deceit, theatrics, dance, and memory. Fury and terror and elation and heartbreak, all of these are his gifts. He doles them out whether they are wanted or not, and he favours none. He is fickle with the truth, concealed beneath his mask; he charms and persuades and strikes fear, but gives up nothing easily. Kinmati alone knows his true face. Also known as Euphoria, Silver Tongue, Weeping Laughter, The Faceless.

Kinmati - deity of invention, also associated with teaching, lightning, logic, and diligence. Every innovation, every problem solved, every step of progress is a sign of their presence. The sparks that fly from their eternal forge land within mortals as flashes of inspiration, to create and assemble and advance. They smile upon those who dedicate themselves to their craft, who work tirelessly for the sake of improvement. Also known as Grand Constructor, Unbreakable, Function-o’er-Form, The Iron Will.

Metimyr - goddess of colour, also associated with art, fortune, magic, and light. Clever, passionate, the gift of sight embodied. She is a joyful goddess, who grants every leaf and feather and flower its colour. The slightest glimpse of her can move one to tears, and she happily pulls the strings of fate for the benefit of those who have earned her love. The colourful robes worn by mages in many worlds are attempts to garner her favour. Also known as Prism, Living Canvas, Our Lady of Vision, The Glow Arcane

Onneira - goddess of sleep, also associated with dreams, darkness, time, and the sky. A quiet goddess, she is the safety of nightfall, the half-remembered dream, the shadows mistaken for monsters. She is elusive, and brings peaceful slumber where she travels. She does not stray from her path but keeps steady, ensuring the sun sets but that it rises as well. She follows her beloved Metimyr patiently, hoping to catch a hint of her colours. Also known as Farewell, Starshadow, Distance, The Silhouette.

And there’s one more, not pictured here...

Amelios - deity of perfection. Generally a forgotten god, little is known of them. Some say they sequestered themself in a world of their own to avoid the flaws inherent to mortals. They don’t respond even to clerics who worship them, perhaps out of disgust or perhaps because they can’t. Those who try to achieve perfection, hoping for them to respond, inevitably isolate themselves and disappear. They are not known by any other names, but some claim they were once called Eternity, Ideal, Correction, The Stillness.