#so much exes coded

[kaboom-kitten]

Give the poor triangle their Sixer before they start crying again

/messy sketch!

[foursaints]

talking about the emptiness of barty’s character in canon is making me sad so

Just Barty Crouch Jr Things™️

valedictorian but once fell asleep while dumpster diving for a single unopened blister pack of xanax

very… dexterous? good with anything precise that involves his hands. this means classical piano but also rolling freakishly perfect joints

major bad influence older cousin energy

like he’s driving you to soccer practice with one tattooed arm slung over the passenger seat, ray-bans dangling. he’s bitching about what’s on the radio. his random tinder date is on her phone in the backseat

singlehandedly keeping Liquid Death in business

that fall out boy katy perry cover where it’s like “i kissed a boy (to start a fight) and i liked it (he punched me 😈)”

pierced his dick. sorry

if james is a sports bro with a heart of gold then barty is the polar opposite of this. he looks like the sensitive alternative loner boy and has the soul of a douchey early 2000s dj who will steal money out of your purse after a one-night stand

but he’s also secretly sensitive. okay

””u up””

has exactly two modes: 1) listening to the cure 2) No Hands (feat Roscoe Dash) - Waka Flocka Flame

neither goth nor emo sorry that would be too much work. his edginess is both unintentional and completely effortless

INSANELY observant

has a knight complex but slightly to the left. had to be reasoned out of killing evan’s situationships with a hammer (chivalrously!)

barty has really loud ENERGY but his actual personality is pretty quiet and calculating. however he WILL nonchalantly pick regulus up at the most inconvenient times, everyone is screaming, reg is screaming… he thinks it’s soooo funny

he always smells the way that sparkling water tastes. like….. inexplicably clean

your bartender coworker who is always in the stockroom coaching his adorable tiny mom through her divorce over facetime while exasperatedly hitting a juul

could potentially have a heart under all that grime (maybe put him through a car wash?)

[fagbearentertainment]

He likes to be tall

[coraniaid]

The only thing more powerful than the Buffy writers' reluctance to give screentime to a woman over the age of thirty is the collective Buffy fandom's eagerness to seize on the slightest scrap of canon characterization as evidence that said thirty-plus-year old woman is some sort of monster.

The show: Willow Rosenberg likes spending time with her mother and does so willingly even after moving out (as we see, for example, in Forever) and her mother was keen to invite her high school boyfriend over for dinner to try to get to know him as soon as Willow admitted to her that he existed (at the end of Gingerbread) and her mother was fully accepting (literally "proud") of Willow when she came out as a lesbian (already implicit, but confirmed in The Killer In Me). Oh, but she has a full time job in academia and sometimes Willow wishes she paid her more attention (this despite the fact that Willow canonically does hide things from her all the time) and she doesn't always notice when Willow cuts her hair or properly remember her friends' names and she only met Willow's first girlfriend a few times.

The fandom: well, clearly Willow is as much a victim of parental abuse as Xander Harris or Amy Madison or Faith Lehane. This is a completely reasonable and proportionate conclusion to come to based on one on-screen appearance and some throwaway lines of dialogue.

I mean ... don't get me wrong. Shelia Rosenberg is not a good mother. She's not much more than a cardboard cutout, really. Less of a character than even Hank Summers, and that's saying something.

What she is, really, is the sort of lazy cliche you get in a lot of teen movies of the 1990s and 2000s (something which is true of Joyce Summers as well at times, only Sheila is permitted far less depth or screen presence or other redeeming features). She's a somewhat reactionary take on the idea of an adult woman who dares to have a professional career and therefore cannot "properly" attend to the needs of her children. A woman too busy focusing on the abstract (her academic study of "adolescent development") to care about the practical (the growing pains of her own teenage daughter).

(Get it? See, it's funny, because she's a woman with both a child and a career. What will those crazy feminists dream up next?)

As written, Willow's mother kind of sucks: not because she's a bad person but because she isn't written as a person at all. She's a joke, and not a good one.

But the weirdly popular idea On Here that Willow is somehow traumatized by having what is, by all accounts, a fairly ordinary and comfortable childhood is absurd. There is simply nothing in the text to support this.

[sombra7567]

TF YOU MEAN THAT ESCAPED AND PROFESSOR O'TONAL WERE EXES-

Oh- ex-nemeses- never mind carry on-

[soyboysace]

fourteen's small kiss on donna's hand while reassuring her is making me feral btw. like yes, yes, character development. they're showing physical and verbal affection towards those that they love now after years of being a sopping wet, piney, closed off motherfucker. but i still can't get my mind off that one tweet i saw that said that that small gesture really seals the deal in making u see the remnants of their impactful experiences in recent regenerations. this isn't ten all over again. the physical action is so late eleven/twelveclara experience coded with the added benefit of them being consistently verbally vulnerable, honest, and caring (which is something they lacked in in the past in general).

[butchlesbiannero]

i feel insane

[compulsivereaderluc]

I was craving Suzaku/Lelouch, so I read their fanfic.

Now I contemplate why I am so masochistic.

[yakool-foolio]

If Yakou and Yomi were perfect homunculi, they would play a round of Buckshot Roulette for the satisfaction of their competitive spirits and to settle some scores. The room fills with [undisclosed] tension so thick you could cut it with a knife.

[exoshroommie]

i am making great strides with my exocolonist cook book. next step: try to make soysweets!

thank you @elvexen for making the inspiration for this project!! (this post)

I've decided to make them flavored like various ingredients in the game. only mango soysweets are said to exist i think, but why not have some fun!!! :)

[cherrysnax]

I love it when horror aus for non horror related stuff still fits tonally with canon

[pettydiazmybeloved]

desperately need Bobby to wake up & learn about Eddie’s tomfoolery and look this man dead in the eyes and say ‘Eddie, Shannon asked for a divorce’ bc does anyone else even know this?!

like I really believe this is such a HUGE part of Eddie’s problem processing his grief! she was already leaving him again before she left permanently and he NEVER got closure on that !!! it’s part of why him being so devastated about the letter also hit, and that’s the direction I thought the convo was going! he could think she was the love of his life all he wants but it was not reciprocated! at least not at the time of her death! why is this beautiful mf romanticizing their relationship! Shannon would slap the hell out of him if she were still here

[notmoreflippingelves]

@saemi-the-dreamer asked: Esteban: 2, 7, 18, 19 and 21? :D

As I mentioned in my initial reply to the ask, I made a separate post for Esteban, since--as will surprise no one--I really rambled on A LOT about him. And it wasn't fair to shove all my EsteRamblings into the same, much shorter post with Gabe.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Honestly, pretty much everything about Esteban's character journey in S3 makes me absolutely INSANE (in the best way). But I think the thing that makes me most feral of all is the moment when he falls into the crystal well. His sparkly new outfit and stupid hairdo. The fact that the narrative has visibly and thematically linked him via this shared experience with Elena for the entire rest of the show. The symbolism of him being given the power to run away (literally and metaphorically) from the problems that he has caused. The fact that the show will ultimately end with him not running away but instead running towards something (Elena, specifically to save her from the problem Esteban himself caused). It's just... they did all this to me, an English major, and expected me to be normal about it. The audacity.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like it when Esteban is *included* in things. While I wouldn't say he gets as much focus as the four amigos or Isabel, he still does get a good bit of art and a reasonable amount of fic. And its honestly nice to have a blorbo who isn't just shamelessly ignored (*cough Jean Innocent *cough) or vilified to the point of OOC-ness (*cough Kristoph Gavin cough*) , or used almost exclusively as a plot device to facilitate the fandom preferred ship of which they are not part of (both of the others).

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

"Admire" is a weird way to put it as it makes it sound as though the dynamic is or should be aspirational/healthy. And I'm honestly having trouble coming up with one that fits that particularly description. I guess either Isabel or Francisco would be closest to meeting that description. But I don't really have too much to say about them right now.

So I am just going to go ahead and treat this question as "relationship that I find interesting and enjoy watching." And honestly, there is a LOT of them. Obviously his relationship with Elena is arguably the building block of the entire show and naturally, I love and cherish it with my entire heart. But I already ramble too much about it so I won't do so here.

I also find his history and complicated relationship with Victor fascinating. The two are clear foils of each other and very shippable ones too, and so my little English major brain/rare pair loving self gets a lot of mileage over the little that we see of them together. But we really only get a single episode of the two of them interacting. (Apart from a few moments in "The Magic Within" and Esteban being mentioned a few times in "The Lightning Warrior") so there's really only so much that I can say about them. And a lot of what I love about them is really just head canons/parts of my fic, so it could be totally ooc.)

Similarly, I think his dynamic with Dona Paloma is fun to watch and has a lot of interesting potential, but we really only scratch the surface of it. The narrative lets them be temporary allies or business rivals for the sake of a given episode's plot, but its rarely done in a way that adds something new or interesting to their relationship. (When Esteban + Paloma political shenanigans happen, its rarely used to advance either of their character developments and when it is, it's usually just Paloma's..as Esteban gets most of his development in other episodes).

So, I feel like I have to say that the most-interesting-and engaging Esteban relationship (apart from Elena) has to be Naomi. The two of them have a really interesting dynamic to watch and their relationship specifically (as opposed to just the two of them as individual characters) gets a good amount of direct focus. Whether Esteban is sniping at Naomi from across the Grand Council table, begrudgingly accepting her as a capable colleague by the end of "Finders Leapers," teaching her to waltz (in order to show up Paloma) in "My Fair Naomi" or clinging to her when Valentina's carriage goes out of control, the two of them don't just steal the scene but positively abscond with it in the most delightful way. Plus, I love the parallels of Naomi ending the show in Esteban's former position as Chancellor. (I like to headcanon that she's gonna end up seeking a lot of advice from him for her new role and may even recruit him as her number two. He has 41 years of valuable experience that it would be shame to waste).

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

This is hardly a surprising answer, but...I do not particularly care for his relationship with Luisa. Esteban was orphaned when he was 9 at most, so he barely remembers his mother. The closest thing to a mother that he does remember is the grandmother who raised him. He needed lots of love and validation and attention, and based on what we see in canon, Luisa didn't give him nearly enough. It took years for her to realize they'd left him out of her "favorite" family painting, the flashbacks in "Dias de las Madres" suggest that she was unaware of just how lonely and vulnerable baby!Esteban was even knowing that he had just lost his parents, she gives a pretty clear impression of Elena being her favorite grandchild ( even before Esteban's secret comes out) which I am sure did *wonders* on baby!Esteban's already fragile self-esteem, and in "Coronation Day," even after she knows that Esteban helped save the kingdom (including both her and Elena), she still side-eyes Elena when Elena says that she has forgiven Esteban. tfw you sacrifice your life for your cousin's (who is also your grandma's fave) and risk it again to banish the evil time spirit, but it's still not enough to earn a long-overdue hug from your granny.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

Give him very specific and sexual Shuriki-related trauma. I mean to be fair, it's not that I enjoy it so much. It's just there in my head and it happens even when I try to make fluffy and silly little plot bunnies. I would say my favorite thing that I actually enjoy doing and make an effort to do is just aggressively validate him and his feelings since he doesn't really get much of that in canon. I like having characters tell him how much he means to them, and I like for them to genuinely mean it. I like to tell him that he is capable of being loved (romantically and/or platonically ) and has the right to be loved. I like for people to recognize that he has been through so damn much and is still living with the scars that the Dark Times have left on his mind, heart, and soul. I like for other characters to come out and tell him that he's important to them, that he's fundamentally a good and worthy person even if a flawed one who lost his way for awhile, I like having characters tells him that they enjoy his company. And perhaps, most of all, I like having characters (especially Elena. but also Victor, Naomi, and probably anyone else) feel protective of him. To have them promise to take care of him and make sure that he never has to feel alone, forgotten, unloved, or helpless ever again. So basically, my favorite thing to do is aggressively project onto him and give him all the sorts of things I would want for myself as wish-fulfillment.

My least favorite thing that I sometimes see done in fic is when past (or present) Shuriki/Esteban is genuinely romanticized (as opposed to treated as inherently abusive/dubiously consensual). When their feelings are assumed to be mutual, genuine, healthy (if admittedly unconventional/unexpected), and redemptive. Particularly when Esteban tries to "save" Shuriki from Elena and/or "redeem" her from her prison cell, because he loves Shuriki/knows that she isn't really "all bad." Because no, in my view, Shuriki is far beyond any hope of redemption, and no one in Avalor would know that more than Esteban, who was forced to stay by her side and serve her for 41 years.

Now, I do think it's possible that Esteban may have developed a little bit of Stockholm syndrome towards Shuriki, based on the length of time they worked closely together, how utterly dependent on her that he had to be just in order to survive, and how desperate he's always been for just a little bit of attention/affection. But again this wouldn't be real, genuine love. At most, it would be physical attraction, and a conditioned learned dependency on her as a survival mechanism. And given the huge power imbalance between them, there's also this inevitable question of any physical and/or emotional relationship being built on a foundation of dubious consent and sexual harassment (at best).

Given that Shuriki does seem shocked and genuinely hurt when Esteban finally stands up to her in "Secret of Avalor," I think it's also possible that she did grow to care for him as much as she could possibly care for anyone. But I also think that the closest to "love" that it's possible for her to feel is casual affection (similar to what one might feel for a favorite toy) or possessive lust.

And um... so no, I do not think Shuriki is capable of love and even if she was, I don't think it would be possible for her to be rehabilitated by/through love. And even if she was, Esteban is the absolute last person I would want to do said rehabilitation work.

Shuriki personally murdered multiple members of Esteban's family, conquered and terrorized his country, and then made him do all the work of managing Avalor while giving him none of the credit. He was a stupid teenager when they met (and from what we can tell, she seems to have been at least 5-10 years older than him...possibly a lot more if she'd already started magically de-aging herself), . As such, she easily manipulated him by preying on his youth, insecurity, and naivety. (Honestly, they give me BIG "Edmund Pevensie and Jadis the White Witch" energy. Baby!Esteban was a bit older and presumably *a bit* smarter than Edmund, but still very naive and very vulnerable and therefore very susceptible to the corruptive powers of someone significantly older, crueler, and more powerful than he. )

So, it makes me super sad and uncomfy to think about Esteban wanting to be and being responsible for personally saving the life/ soul of the person who has corrupted and controlled every aspect of his life since he was 17-18. He deserves better than that. Even if I still like giving him extra trauma and having him wrestle with it.

[lesbiradshaw]

i wish nonlesbians could be Normal about lesbian headcanons or characters

[dearinglovebot]

in my opinion, claire’s journey in FK is extremely based in self-focused desires and that’s okay! she’s not doing anything JUST for good of animalkind. she much more morally complex than that. which makes her a more interesting character.

she isn’t saving the dinosaurs in fallen kingdom purely because she’s an activist now. she developed a martyr complex and thinks her “redemption” is inherently tied to saving the dinosaurs from destruction.[“we could all use a touch of redemption”]. she’s fundamentally not an activist at all. she’s just on a self-sacrificial high because she’s tied her entire self-worth to being valuable to others.

her self-esteem was built on the park before. running the best park ever no matter the human or animal cost of that. consequences didn’t matter as long as she had her perfect park because if the park was perfect then she was too. but then those consequences make the park fall and she is forced to face every single bad decision at once without any support beyond the family she just traumatized and the co-worker she u-hauled with.

with nothing left, she latches onto what’s left of the park: the dinosaurs from her park. if her park cannot survive, then she survives through the dinosaurs she created. it’s an all or nothing mentality with her. she either doesn’t care about them or they’re going to consume her. so, now her entire self is based on the survival of these dinosaurs and if they die then…

and that’s why she’s selfish enough to consider pushing the button and letting them go free. she’d be temporarily absolved of this duty she’s placed on herself. JW!claire probably would’ve done it. but unfortunately she has MORALS or whatever now so she can’t put herself above the needs of the many anymore when it comes down to that direct decision. she can justify her own death (very easily) but not mass casualty.

dominion puts it plain and simple with “are you doing this for them [dinosaurs] or to assuage yourself?” and claire can’t answer it. she’s absolutely seeking absolution via self-sacrifice. her value is determined solely on her ability to suffer for the greater good. danger for the sake of saving dinosaurs is something tangible that she can use to measure how absolved she is from her actions at the park. but it will literally never be enough. which doesn’t mean she won’t keep trying.

does she care more? yes. but is that the MAIN factor… that’s extremely debatable. ultimately she’s just a woman coping with trauma in an extremely eccentric way. she’d rather visit an active volcano than go to therapy or take antidepressants

[orcelito]

Took a few months but the situation at work is finally truly blowing up

I may or may not join in a workplace abuse claim against my old boss using old blog posts and discord messages of me venting as proof ☺️

It'd be me burning the bridge of having him as a reference later down the line, but honestly I think I can get by without him.