#she’s her own undoing

[midsummerknife]

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[zorangezest]

THE MESSMER/MARIKA ANIMATION IS DONEEEE AUUUUAA it’ll go up tmr i liked the silly doodles i made for an end screen so im posting it on its own take it take it

[trappedinafantasy37]

I just went back over my footage of the confrontation between DJ Shadowheart and Viconia as I edit my next chapter and noticed a pretty interesting pattern.

As I've mentioned plenty of times before, Minthara and Shadowheart do have shared mommy issues and I think Minthara would connect with Shadowheart over that. Minthara also has a habit of using the word "child" when speaking to children or those that she perceives as being in need of guidance, such as Lae'zel or Shadowheart herself. One of my mutuals proposed the theory that Minthara uses "child" as that is more than likely how her own mother spoke to her.

In the confrontation between Shadowheart and Viconia, Viconia repeatedly uses the word "girl" when speaking to Shadowheart. If my mutuals theory is correct, this would draw an immediately parallel between Shadowheart and Minthara in regards to how they were treated by their mothers, and could provide some insight into Minthara's relationship with her own mother. Personally, in regards to the gods and their mother figures, Minthara can easily project herself into Shadowheart's situation, similarly to how she projects herself into Durge's situation (since Shadowheart and Durge have very similar storylines).

This is something that I do plan on addressing in To Be Free From the Gods and my eventual Shadowheart fic. But, just imagine how Minthara feels watching one of her closest allies be treated by their mother in the same way that she was when she was a child. Now, Minthara is definitely one of those people that goes, "I was beaten as a kid and I turned out fine" (when it is very obvious to everyone around her that she is not fine). However, Minthara also does label her mother as her tormentor so it makes me feel that Minthara deep down does acknowledge she was abused as a child, even if she feels that abuse did make her stronger. But Minthara is also extremely protective of those that are in her circle and would not abide witnessing one of her allies being abused in a similar manner.

I'm gonna get a little personal here, which isn't something that I do often. But, I had a parent who often spoke to me with that kind of language. They would often refer to me as "half a person", or "not quite yet a person", or "still cooking", and things similar to Minthara being called "child" or Shadowheart being called "girl". Even as I got older, the language never changed and they often did not even call me by my name and instead opted to use these "nicknames" for me. Because to them, I was always going to be a child. And that type of language made me feel so small and weak. They always wanted to remind me that I was less than them, that I could never accomplish what they could, that I would never be able to understand what they could, and that I would always be dependent on them because otherwise I would fail without them. It's dehumanizing.

Shadowheart is nearly 50 years old (cause remember, she's a half-elf). And Viconia is still calling her "girl" because that's what Viconia wants Shadowheart to feel like. She wants Shadowheart to feel small, and weak, and like a child. Even when she has Shar's (or Selune's) favor, there is just a brief moment, and it is really easy to miss, but for just a brief moment, that is exactly what Shadowheart feels when she encounters Viconia again. And Minthara is just standing there, watching this interaction take place. Throwing her back to herself growing into her own 50's, and then making her first century, and then getting to 200 years old, going through clerical school, becoming a paladin of Lolth, and yet still being called "child" by her mother. Not to mention, the prefix "Min" in her name translates to "lesser" in drowic. For as long as Minthara would live, she would always be less than her mother and her mother would never let her forget it or feel otherwise.

It must be so cathartic for Minthara to watch Shadowheart kill Viconia as that is all Minthara wants to do to her own mother for tormenting her and always making her feel weak.

[juniperhillpatient]

I’ve always been fascinated by female characters that are defined specifically by what they mean to the (mostly male) characters around them in an objectifying way but I don’t mean misogynistic writing because I fully believe the narrative can be aware of the tragedy of never belonging to yourself or being allowed to have any agency in your own life. The mysterious dead girl who is the object of everyone’s curiosity or grief whose relationship with the men in her life is the focus of the investigation. Like…. The horror of having no agency within your own identity & no power to change that or take control of your own narrative.

[imminent-danger-came]

continue being a little mean to toh fans please it is really irritating how some act like its got the best writing of any modern cartoon

Daawwwww I don't have it in me. TOH fans love it for a reason, and there are legitimately good moments! It's just not the most complex or well-written show out there—which it doesn't need to be—but I also totally get your exhaustion. It gets tiring seeing people praise it so highly over and over again when it's just like...fine. It didn't do nothing but it also didn't do something, you know? It's main couple is cute and queer, but that's pretty much all there is to them. It has a fun cast of characters, but they all tend to fall into archetypes. Luz is a sweet main character, but she doesn't have any real flaws and kinda takes a back seat to Hunter and Eda (the white people lol). Her foil with Philip was interesting...but then they kinda backed off and went the "you and Belos are nothing alike" direction.

((I'm also going to answer this anon with another: ))

And It's not that an unsympathetic villian is bad, or that Belos would even be sympathetic with added backstory, it's just that...there were a lot of interesting things to explore with his character that were left hanging.

Like, while he's definitely not at all a good person, it's intriguing that he would bother to recreate his brother over and over again knowing that each time the grimwalker was going to betray him. It's intriguing that he was even willing to kill his brother to begin with (though Caleb was super underutilized in general). Like, you can give a villain depth without justifying or victimizing them (hi Finnegran from tdp, I'll also add Spider Queen & LBD here). So it just feels like a missed opportunity all across the board. It's still surprising to me that we got a confirmation on the Wittebane backstory through an unrelated background character, rather than Philip himself (who had literally possessed a main character, and mindscapes had already been well-established....the pieces were all there me thinks).

And obviously it's like, people can love something despite it's flaws, and they can cherish it for the good it has, but they still don't need to praise it as an ultimate form of media, you know? We don't need to pretend toh was this dark and complex story—it was just a story a lot of people liked and resonated with. Which I'm glad it's there for those people, and I'm glad there are options when it comes to queer pieces of media!

That said the show with the best writing of any modern cartoon is The Dragon Prince (streaming on Netflix).

[crossdressingdeath]

Can I just... okay, there's something that's been percolating in my head ever since the Durgetash patch 6 crumbs dropped and I think I can finally put it into words. Because everyone was getting so mad about Durge (and it was about Durge, not Gortash; it was an origin character getting their backstory acknowledged in the game at a point where it should've been from the start, saying it was about Gortash is like saying... I don't know, any unique dialogue Cazador gets in Astarion origin runs is Cazador content) getting five or six new lines when Wyll got nothing and... well, personally I think that's a little silly, first because adding a few new Gortash lines to Durge runs would not be taking away from Wyll content (the two characters have different writers, VAs and mocap actors, for the most part they would not have been pulling from the same resource pool), but more importantly because... if you want to point at an origin character taking resources from Wyll, don't point at Durge. Point at Karlach.

I mean, think about it. Think about how the game runs with these two characters. You likely meet Wyll first unless you go out of your way to avoid speaking to him until you meet Karlach. He asks you to help him hunt down and kill a devil, and you go and you look and you find her and... now you're doing Karlach's quest. They interrupt Wyll's quest in the middle to do Karlach's quest. And she keeps piping up during the conversation with Mizora afterwards, and it turns out that Wyll got sent after Karlach to begin with because Karlach is Zariel's extra-special favourite mortal, and suddenly Wyll's sharing his post-quest transformation cutscene (something which I think we can all agree should be entirely about him) with a character who wasn't even playable until a ways into EA. You can't even properly commiserate with Wyll afterwards, you can only even be nice to him if you choose to read the lines that way; you spend more time chatting to Karlach about Wyll's transformation than you do Wyll! Wyll's act one quest gets almost completely taken over by Karlach, I'm honestly kind of surprised I haven't seen anyone else talking about it. Even him being turned into a devil is barely about him because Karlach's backstory is butting in! There is a reason why no other origins share villains, but where Karlach's connection to Gortash is overshadowed by Durge in a Durge run here she's overshadowing Wyll in every run except maybe (I say maybe because I haven't done it) a Wyll origin.

And it gets even better! Remember how originally you couldn't save Karlach at all? Remember when it was death or mind flayer? Remember what Larian did when people complained about that? I'm fucking amazed I didn't see more complaints about that, given the number of complaints I saw about Durgetash getting five whole lines. Do you want to keep Karlach alive? Do you want to end the game with all your companions still breathing and reasonably happy? Well then fuck what you think is a good, happy and/or narratively satisfying ending for Wyll; you're packing him off to the Hells, because that's the only way to keep Karlach alive if you don't want to go with her (which you probably don't if you romanced someone other than her)! Like, I want you to really let that sink in; they made Karlach's survival completely reliant on how you end Wyll's quest. If you want Karlach to survive and don't want your character's epilogue to be "go to the Hells" (which, again, odds are most players don't) you have to end Wyll's quest accordingly. They could've put that into Karlach's quest! Give her an actual character arc (instead of the line-with-maybe-a-slight-curve she got) where you can encourage her to choose life and go to Avernus on her own or... I don't know, go with Dammon or something! Especially since as it turns out Zariel apparently doesn't actually give a shit, which the PC should be able to point out given Zariel's track record in this game of giving barely enough of a shit to make a token effort at getting Karlach back or killing her! But instead the climax of Wyll's whole damn arc has to share space with Karlach. Maybe not in the game's text proper, but from a meta perspective? If the player doesn't want to go to the Hells but wants Karlach to live, that's likely going to be if not the deciding factor in Wyll's quest then certainly a major one in—as with the transformation cutscene—a situation that should be entirely about Wyll.

I don't really know how to end this. I guess... I fully admit part of it is me being super petty about the sheer number of posts I saw getting mad about Durgetash getting literally five or six lines (crumbs! Barely crumbs! Crumbs that didn't impact Wyll in any way!), but it also really is like... people complained about that but I haven't seen anyone complaining about how Larian warped Wyll's whole story around Karlach. And I think more people should complain about it. Wyll's story got dragged off-course the second they started rewriting it, but they wrapped the whole thing around Karlach when they made her an origin companion to the point where at times it feels like Wyll's playing second fiddle in his own arc, and that's... well, honestly it just pisses me off.

[rillette]

Star sapphire redesign for warmup today 👍

[demonir]

threw down the nastiest most rushed pride icon I could for my discord pfp but thought I'd share in case anyone else wants it 👍

I got the transparent Pauling image from @tf2gallery (blog is inactive but they got a good amount of posted stuff I recommend checking it out if you need transparent pics for edits and stuff)

[teen-spirited-away]

I was having so much fun reading about cersei's failgirl behavior that I forgot about the prophecy that basically drives her entire actions and motivations. Like this girl has been in a paranoic state of mind all her life.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

And if I make a full post talking about how Abby, Shannon, and Taylor were actually really interesting and compelling characters that were just wildly mishandled by the writers and weren't allowed to fully explore their own motivations or personalities outside of being a love interest then what?

This is a threat.

[evewasheretoday]

“You know, this could've been avoided if you just handed over the book.” Veronica said as she stared into the eyes of the black-haired girl underneath her with a slight smirk.

Duke groaned. “Or if you learned to respect personal space.” She responded.

“Now get off me before someone decides to make this disaster a school legend.” She tried getting Veronica off of her but the brunette wouldn’t budge.

Veronica smirked before leaning closer to Duke's face. “No.” She replied. “And besides, you look good under me, Heather.” She whispered.

Duke's eyes widened slightly at her words, a mixture of surprise and irritation crossing her features.

“Get off of me right now.” She demanded, her cheeks tinged with a faint blush.

Veronica, seemingly unfazed, finally got off of Duke and stood up. The brunette grinned down at the ravennette before offering her a hand.

“Come on, Duke.” She said. “It was just a little harmless teasing.” She added. “No need to get all worked up.” She laughed lightly.

Duke swatted Veronica's hand away, standing up on her own.

“Go drink drain cleaner, Sawyer.” She spat back before turning around and walking away from the brunette.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

At this rate, current X-Men comics are proving Spiderman/Peter Parker cursing the X-Men as he leaves them in one comic right when they have moments like Emma Frost and Wolverine/Laura Kinney literally telling Ms Marvel/Kamala Khan that she doesn't know what its like to be oppressed like they are... ...Yes, they telling someone who grew up as a Muslim post-9/11...she doesn't know what its like to be oppressed...and even act like they more oppressed then everyone in the world I guess.

[mamahex]

I've been thinking a lot about Molly recently (trying to write her). I've seen people point out just how awful Dutch treated her - and he did - but I'm starting to see her as her own destroyer. She felt that she was above everyone else, so much so that she alienated herself from everyone, and that wasn't Dutch's doing. She did that herself because she felt that she was better than them, perhaps. She seldom interacted with the other women, did no work, didn't go out with the others, she made herself Dutch's posession - which was his doing as well - but I doubt it was through coercion and manipulation that she was distant from the others, it was more likley she thought herself better, being the boss's woman. And then, after Blackwater, when Dutch began to lose himself, he simply no longer wanted her, but instead of letting her go, he kept her there, and all the people who would have caught her on her fall from grace simply let her fall, because she had essentially made herself a ghost. Once Dutch lost interest, she had no one, she was no one, because she had built herself an existence that centred around that one man, looking down on everyone around her, and when he was gone, she was gone too. She was nothing without him, and that was as much her own fault as it was his. She must have felt like a ghost, invisible, unwanted.

[n4rval]

ough. toriel my beloved

[swordmaid]

having shri’iia thoughts as one does bc GUESS who’s save file completely died when the new patch came out nooo we have to replay her again 🤭 alas. just stewing on the thought of how she never got to fuck her Mistress even though she wanted to…!!!! like she was out there getting psychologically tortured and mind broken but she was just like WHY won’t you fuck me im literally doing everything for you. which is so bad for her, woman who already has an excruciatingly low self worth because she missed the mark on the standard for lolth’s children (and that’s worse than not fitting in the standard at all) by something out of her own control btw (not being born in a noble house) but she’s been recognised and blessed by her goddess, and she’s been invited to join a drow house so everything should be good right?? she should be desirable right?? finally everything is correct and well and good and the way it should be right????? but no..!! it’s not..!! and so she’s doing everything for this woman, no dignity left, literally doing anything to get her approval, to be told that she’s finally enough, and she’s finally fitting in - and she gets it sometimes, she gets ignored most times tbh and it’s just this painful excruciating stew of self loathing and insecurity that she’s in, and she’s in there for a century but the thing is she can’t even give up. it’s not in her nature to. and she’s done too much to just give up , and she’s been doing this for a long time that she can’t give up and lolth didn’t raise no quitters so she sticks by it, trying to achieve that hopeless praise. but then one day she gets dropped like nothing, everything she’s done and suffered and worked towards and sacrificed gets thrown out bc her goddess isn’t pleased with her and good luck going home btw you’re not welcome here anymore bc ur pathetic. the rug gets pulled under her feet and she’s left in this strange world that she can barely navigate in let alone speak the language and u expect her to b fine with that…?

[did-you-fall-for-a-shooting-star]

I love my niece, but every weekend I swear that I have a new reason to wish that if I ever have a child, that they are also, at least slightly, autistic. Because if I end up with a child who behaves like a neurotypical teenager I think I would simply lose my shit because HOW. SIMPLY HOW. DO YOU GET YOURSELF INTO SITUATIONS THIS OFTEN???