#the discourse they started still baffles me so much

[dedtoot]

The story i told in the tags of a previous post made me remember a real funny thing

One time i was threatened over making a joke about yoyo, comparing him to ghiaccio from jjba

That person?

The same one who created the tab hot take

On a fucking series anniversary no less

Remember this happening very clearly cuz i just got into jsr back then

So yeah small world

[jesncin]

Honestly, you are like the most based person ever. A Martian Manhunter fan and a MAWS critic? F YEAH!

I'm so disappointed with MAWS' Lois :( Her romance with Clark could've been so good. SO GOOD. But they decided to go for fan service instead. She just gives off Lena (from cwsg) vibes and that's never a good thing.

Speaking of Supergirl, what's your opinion on the show? And on the show's portrait of J'onn. It baffles me how much hate the show got for the same things fans are willing to overlook now on MAWS. Aren't those some double standards, geez...

Aw shucks thank you! 2 incredibly niche but based things to be...

Sob! Call it the ace in me but whenever people think MAWS!Clois have chemistry because they're easily amused by seeing hot characters undress I lose life force. I didn't witness a couple that grew mutual respect and affection, I saw an insta-crush that led to Lois becoming so entitled to a guy she'd known for less than a week to the point of demanding full transparency of his private life before they even started dating. And then the narrative says it's Clark's fault for having reasonable boundaries, and then they're a couple. What is this.

I've briefly talked about CW Supergirl before, but my takeaway is: if people think MAWS is genuinely good writing then they should absolutely watch CW Supergirl because it must look like high art in comparison to MAWS. Maybe people are less judgy when something's animated and that's not fair. If we want to take animation as a serious medium we should hold it to the same standard and not coddle it. As someone who watched a few eps when CW Supergirl aired and then revisited and watched the whole thing years after the show concluded, I feel that the misogyny surrounding people's discourse around the show has led to people judging the show based on a fanon idea of it rather than its own merits.

more under the cut!

CW Supergirl is a show with great highs and lows. This results in things being hit or miss. But when something hits- CW Supergirl is not given nearly enough credit as it deserves. As a Martian Manhunter fan, I believe that their take on J'onn is the most competent and well adapted in not just adapted media, but all of comics canon. That doesn't mean I like everything they did with his lore and character, but I can acknowledge that they actually bothered developing him outside of the comics/cartoon's fixation with making him mope about his Origin Story all the time. He gets to find love, have adopted daughters through Kara and Alex, reckon with what it's like to preserve aspects of a culture he doesn't fully identify with, deal with his dad going through Martian Alzheimer's disease, and most importantly MAKE PEACE WITH HIS BROTHER. CW Supergirl has hands down, the best take on Ma'alefa'ak in all of canon.

I think Lena is a great character on the show. She's dealing with the trauma of being constantly manipulated by her own family, the legacy her name carries and who she is in all that. But because the supercorp ship permeates the way people perceive the show, she's reduced to that by discourse. When Lena has drama over Kara's secret Superhero identity, it's something that's built up to and informed by trauma, trust-issues, and TIME. We are shown that she has these problems. It gets melodramatic at times, but it's still something that was built up to. Meanwhile in MAWS Lois just tells us she has daddy issues and that it's why she really needs the cute guy at work to spill all his personal info to her even though she gets to lie to him for her own personal gain multiple times. I appreciate what CW Supergirl did to bring more attention to what was an obscure character. Whenever I bump into Lena in the comics, it hasn't stacked up to the character I met on the show.

I've called this out before but while CW Supergirl isn't perfect by any means especially with their treatment of Jimmy Olsen as a love interest to Kara and a generally sidelined Black supporting character, they still discussed and acknowledged Jimmy's identity as a Black American man! Sure it was heavy handed many times, but that's way better than MAWS straight up ignoring Jimmy's Blackness and even making an unintentional jab at it!! Like cw Supergirl Jimmy knows bigotry and has experienced it. MAWS Jimmy thinks bigotry is being ghosted for a camping trip. I have seen the exact same critics call out cw Supergirl for Jimmy's treatment while gleefully thinking Jimmy's treatment in MAWS is so uwu perfect. It makes me sick! Am I going insane?? It's the double standards for me.

[xpao-bearx]

Alrighty, my fellow Astarion fangbangers!! I've got a 🔥SPAHCY🔥 oneshot idea~

This is an idea that's been a parasite in my teeny brain for a while now and at first, I didn't wanna share it cuz I wanted it to be a surprise for when I actually write and post it. But to those who follow me, y'all know I just LOVE to ramble so I couldn't keep it a secret anymore 😂

And sooo here it is: A smutty oneshot of Spawn Astarion x Fem!Reader x Ascended Astarion!

Now you might be thinking... How the HELLS would a threesome with Spawn Astarion and Ascended Astarion ever work??? O_o

Well, lemme ramble some more! 😆

AHEM

Throughout your adventure, Astarion ascended and made his lover (you, dear reader ❤️) into his dark consort. After saving Baldur's Gate, you go to live with Astarion in his palace and start anew with your life of immortality.

At first, everything was going well. Astarion relished in the power he's craved so much and you stood by his side as his most prized treasure. And yet... There was a suffocating emptiness in your heart.

You were happy. Or...you should be. You were going to spend a wonderful eternity with your lover and you only gave Astarion what he's always wanted...right?

But as time passes, Astarion changes more and more. You still loved him, you will never stop loving him, but you couldn't deny that his dominance and possessive nature over you...unsettled you a bit.

Anyhoe, long story short, while you are just wandering around the palace one night and rethinking all your life choices that led you to this very moment, some ✨️magic✨️ happens and Astarion appeared.

Only...this was Astarion from the past. Before he ascended.

This story is still a work in progress so forgive me that this is all a mess, but basically this other Astarion is spawn Astarion! Spawn Astarion comes from another dimension where he never ascended. In that dimension, Baldur's Gate has also been saved but at the cost of spawn Astarion's lover's life--your life.

Astarion couldn't handle the tragic loss of his one true love so he became obsessed in finding something--anything--to be with you again, even at the cost of his soul. I'm still working out the details, but Astarion ended up finding something which made him transport to where you are now!

You are obviously baffled by spawn Astarion and can't quite believe it, but he's just so fucking happy to see you--to be with you--again. And maybe...just maybe...

You wanted to be with him, too.

But of course... There's ascended Astarion.

Beautiful, foolish treasure... Did you really think you could ever forsake your master?

Expect quiiite a bit of angst with this oneshot but, OF COURSE, some real nasty smut too! 😉 I plan to hopefully write and post this story after I finish the game and have experienced both spawn and ascended routes!

Also, I REALLY hope this doesn't cause any discourse! I, personally, prefer spawn Astarion but I also ADORE ascended Astarion (✨️nothing✨️ will stop me from simping for this vamp dork)! I know everyone has their own thoughts and opinions for both and which one is "better", but for me I just live and let live! Let everyone be happy with their own preferences, please 🥰

And I hope no one steals this idea of mine! Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anyone else have an Astarion fic like this so I would assume I would be the first to have this specific idea. If you were inspired by the premise and wanna write something similar, PLEASE credit me for the inspo but also tell me if you post it cuz I would absolutely read the SHIT out of it!! \(^o^)/ But yeah, just please don't copy the WHOLE thing cuz, like I said, I do plan on eventually writing this fic myself!

And hey, if ya wanna be tagged for when I post this fic, please don't hesitate to tell me! 💕

[leastdatablebracket]

QUARTERFINALS, MATCH 4

Propaganda under the cut!

Joseph Christiansen

Propaganda

So many reasons. He's already married, he's a jerk to his wife, he's already slept with at least one of the other romance options. That romance option goes to you before a date with Jospeh and damn near begs you not to be stupid and go with him. The worst part? You put up with all this and he leaves you to "work things out with his wife". She deserves so much better than him! One of the writers even said he's a sociopath. 

Married and a youth minister.

Cheater, cringe man, father of creepy children, possibly evil cultist, left a guy feeling used which said guy also became friends with Joseph's wife who appears to be an alcoholic likely as a coping mechanism since she's married to Joseph

He cheats on his wife, has done so before, lies to you by claiming that he's going to leave his wife when he clearly never intends to (and, in one ending, will even cheerfully suggest that you two continue having an affair in an extremely sleazy way), and judging by the fact that the other guy we know he cheated on his wife with, Robert, hates Joseph and is now very close friends with his wife, it seems clear to me that this whole "purposefully mislead someone into sleeping with you and then later drop the bomb that it was an affair" thing is repeat behavior with him. Also, I just find much of his behavior to be very manipulative and controlling; there are many situations where it seems to me that he's actively trying to paint others in a negative light while still coming off as saintly himself, such as an early scene where he subtly implies his wife is a shitty mom because she *checks notes* let their toddler out of her sight... during a neighborhood barbecue in a fenced-in yard surrounded by trusted adults and other kids. Also notice how in this scene he pushes *her* to go look for their son, rather than just looking himself, all while keeping up his "long-suffering husband" act. (and in other scenes can be found letting his other young children wander off into the woods with sharp implements and visibly not caring, but whatever). He does this with Robert, too -- the other guy he had an affair with. Almost everything he says about or to Robert is a subtle jab about his personality or his alcoholism. Classy, Joseph. Meanwhile, the fact that you can't actually end up with him in the end (because he was never going to leave his wife for you) started some of the most volatile discourse in the fandom and had people calling the devs homophobic and claiming they were spreading a message about "gay men needing to stay in loveless abusive marriages to women" (just ignore the fact that there are several other divorced gay dads in this game who all have great relationships with their kids and are not demonized in the slightest). HOWEVER, if you see people claiming he's a cultist or demon or something, that's untrue and was just going to be a non-canon spooky alternate ending that ended up getting cut. So I empathize with him a little bit for getting literally demonized by some fans for that cut alt ending. But he loses all those points by cheating on his wife multiple times and showing clear intent to continue doing so.

He's still married when you start dating him. He's also got like 5 kids that are some "children of the corn" kinda shit, and all their names have "Christ" in them

You don't even get to date him he's still married to his wife who he doesn't get along with. Tragic really

Cullen Rutherford

Propaganda

stupid racist cop creep whose fans cry about how hes "changed" and "you can't judge him he was addicted to magic drugs" nah he still chose to be a racist cop and abuse his power over innocent people and i hate him. the writers making him romanceable in da:i after how blatantly horrible he was in da:o and da:2 is baffling but i guess they had to appeal to the part of their audience who watch those "mafia boyfriend" videos on tiktok or whatever

He's creepy in origins, though still 100% willing to kill the female mage pc he's crushing on, as well as all the other mages trapped in the circle with him. He's the second-in-command in an even worse circle in 2, listening to and defending the increasingly obviously insane meredith until literally the end. He's one of the people still pushing for the circle system by inquisition, and yes he's going through withdrawals and working through the traumas of previous games. And to be brutally honest his was the first romance i took and while i don't remember much from it, its not worth all the girls going absolutely nuts over knockoff terrible alistair.

He's basically a cop who thinks being born a certain way can revoke personhood and by Inquisition still thinks mages are monsters to be controlled, not people. He gets a fairy tale cutesy romance that focuses on his personal struggles with addiction while showing absolutely no regard to the atrocities he committed and still thinks were justified. He can be romanced BY A MAGE and his actions and beliefs are just glossed over. He believes mages are 'not people like you (Hawke) and me', but if the Warden was a female mage he canonically had a crush on her and would deliberately hang around her despite the fact that he was her *jailer*. If that Warden romanced Leliana, there is war table dialogue in which he pesters Leliana for news of his 'former' crush despite her repeated statement that she doesn't want to talk to him about her. All this shitty behavior and lack of introspection gets swept under the rug by the game, not even giving the PC the chance to really challenge his beliefs. Like damn even Fenris could apologize when he lashed out due to past trauma with mages, and if anyone has a reason to hate mages it's Fenris. If you want an ex Templar hottie Alistair is RIGHT THERE. Tbh I know Cullen is a popular romance and I'm not here to tell anyone what they can or can't do or like in a video game, I'm just saying I think he is deeply undateable

Spends the first two games as an antagonist, fervently devoted to the cause of subjugating mages, then a bunch of "character development" happens off screen and the games treat him like he's completely reformed. However he's actions make it clear he still sees mages as dangerous and lesser. Not to mention if you romance him with an elf he doesn't pay your culture more than lip service respect like most of the devout characters 

He was a total villain in the first two games who was violently prejudiced against mages and uses one single bad experience as an excuse for it (a bad experience that is pretty much exactly what he in his job subjected graduating apprentices to, mind you, but this is never brought up). Now he says he's changed, but his words and actions say otherwise. He still distrusts mages, sympathises with the rebel Templars trying to kill them, and he never owns up to the terrible stuff he did and helped others do in the past two games. He totally knew what Meredith was doing and says he doesn't, and he still tries to defend her intentions. And you have no option to call him out on it. If you romance him as a mage, he angsts about how he might have seen you as subhuman in the past but NOW you're one of the good ones, and when you ask him if he'll kill you if you get possessed, he dodges the question. And the PC is written as being almost sad that she's a mage? Like 'can you love me despite what I am??' Also if Leliana romanced a female mage PC in the first game who is still alive, he asks her creepy questions about their relationship. Fitting considering his original purpose was to be creepy to the female mage Warden. 

I hate him and want to cause chaos. Plus his VA is an asshole.

Cop

I think you covered almost everything but don't forget that beautiful moment in DA2 - Act 2 where you find out some templars had a petition to lobotomize all mages and Meredith, THE HARDCORE TEMPLAR LEADER, rejects it, but Cullen says they got a point. Despite the fact that we just found out that those templars were using lobotomy (or the threat of) to rape people and get away with it. And then Cullen in DA:I is whining that anything that happened it's not his fault because Meredith kept the worse away form him so he didn't know, but also that anyway Meredith had a point and did what she had to do. Meredith does not go mad until Act 3, before she was of sound mind and Culllen was her second in command BECAUSE he hated mages as much as (or even more) than her. What the FUCK did she even hide from you, Cullen. Oh, but he changed! Because the writers make A VICTIM OF THE TEMPLARS say so. And anyway he only says so BECAUSE HE READS MINDS not because Cullen did anything to show it. Also the narrative wants to sympathise with Cullen for his drug problems while Cullen is openly attacking the only other character with the same problem for...having the same problem. And he's the antagonist, so there were OTHER things Cullen could be mad about. But he is mad about the drug problem. Also I'm not an expert on writing characters with addictions but he is an addict only when it's time to have a cut scene where you pity him. Otherwise it has zero impacts on everything else.

[rulanarinrush]

random ramblings on my thoughts on drdt's world(idk i just felt like it)

*spoilers for drdt ch1 and drdt bonus content and like maybe david's mv if you squint? and dr3...ish..

*not a theory, don't take this as such. just saying stuff that comes to mind. also some facts in this might be straight up wrong, i don't remember stuff very well. as per usual it's just my thoughts and i don't mean to cause any discourse

Drdt's world is. weird. I don't mean this in a critical way of the worldbuilding, I just mean this in the sense that, if we assume all the events of the dr franchise happened(or at the bare minimum, dr1, since Teruko mentions "that past kilIing game", unless that refers to dev's other kg, in which case forget about it), it's kind of weird that society has regressed so far backwards. I don't mean this in a "society and social norms never regress as time moves forward" way(because that is wrong), but in a "why does everything make it feel like this game/show is happening in the early 2000s" kind of way.

L:ike I can buy that (computerized/automated) technology has stayed relatively the same for the sake of writing convenience, and the fact that extremely violent movements often tend to target people who have either wealth or are highly educated or both, thus at least stalling technological progress. What I find weird is that, in the context of dr's world, the fact that corruption and homophobia is not only rampant, but borderline socially acceptable. Setting aside(somehow) the fact that DR3 promotes Hope's Peak again, when it is the very embodiment of everything that caused the tragedy in the first place, it's blatantly "meritocratic" system, the way it places all of society's hopes on the shoulders of kids whose frontal lobes haven't even fully developed yet somehow asks them to maintain the social order that has caused these children so much pain and suffering in the first place, and the fact that like... you know... the tragedy started there, did people just forget that homophobia is at least partially why the tragedy began in the first place?(referring to Juzo, I don't personally think the Tragedy is entirely his fault that's victimblaming, but, like all things, nuance exists, and he had his role to play)

Social and technological progress are intertwined, but they aren't the same thing. It feels strange to me that Eden and Nico's secrets are the way that they are. I don't mean that the secrets themselves are the issue, as everyone should be able to come out when they are ready, but the fact that they even are secrets(worth kiIling for) in the first place. I feel like it sort of implies that homophobia is the commonly accepted social norm of drdt's time. People in every generation find ways to discriminate against each other for being different or for thinking differently, but it feels... off to me that in like the year 2080 or 2090(dev said our beloved kiIler Duke Spurling is maybe??? still alive, so he was probably? a child/teen 70-80 years ago based on the q&a) society has had so much social inertia that it's basically how we treat lgbt people now; the cast respects their identities and doesn't treat them any different(for being queer, sorry Nico they're on their own for the murder attempt tho), but it's still unfortunately not always safe to come out. Especially kinda baffling given the whole Juzo thing. I mean yeah, man took it to the grave, but did no one in 70 years who had the full context(Kyoko could've probably figured it out) think maybe hey uh, we should do something about this? It's not like being queer is a new concept, but it feels dystopian for nothing to have changed since then.

Like I mean yeah. In a post-apocalypse where the world needs people(making babies), I could see some sort of anti-gay law existing(I do not mean that this is justifiable) and people tend to conflate law with what is moral, but in like 70 years, wouldn't the population have at least recovered somewhat from extinction?? Whatever this is making my brain hurt I'll just let someone who has experience analyzing the intersectionality of fiction and politics speak about this. I'm not built for deep discussions.

****

And regarding the other dystopic part of drdt- the corruption. It's a weirdly common trend in the characters' stories to be exploited by wealthier people with more power.(that's called theming, but i never plan out my rambles) We see this with Teruko, Xander, Rose, and Min. All of them are(or were, in Xander's case) held back by the fact that no one will help them out of poverty. (What on earth do you mean crazy medical debt is still a U.S. thing in our year 2080 after an anti-capitalist movement?? Did they seriously learn absolutely nothing after a tragedy that wiped out so many people??) I don't have much to say about this that wasn't explained above, but I do have some thoughts on all of this as it relates to Xander.

If drdt is going to say something about societal progress, it feels kind of dystopic for the Ultimate Rebel to be the first victim of the kilIing game. He's meant to be a symbol of resistance(and change, which is maybe why, thematically, Teruko closes herself off when he betrays her). While not all change is good change, kilIing off anything that threatens the status quo means that we can't hope for a better world. That'd be fine, if the characters of drdt lived in a perfect world, which, as stated above, they don't. (Also notably, after he kicks the bucket, the students are actually more willing to play by MonoTV's rules.. maybe it has something to do with the fact that drdt has a soft time limit?(see the part of the hidden quote on the drdt website where the speaker says that he/she/they knows what "makes them all hope until they starve to dea th"))

I should really start planning these out idk what to say after this but uhhh i could maybe see his demise being spun in a positive light. From footnote 14 of David's MV we can guess that David placed at least a bit of his hope's on Xander(or vice versa, it's not clear who is speaking to who there). Maybe some sort of message about how complete nihilism isn't the answer, and David and Teruko have to find the inner strength to help the world change even without a God(17th student?)?

Eh who cares I'm not thinking about this anymore. Drdt's world is weird and I'm sure more will be explained later. No more thinking, only eeping...

[solitaire-sol]

Prongsfoot Week 2023 - Day 1

This... maybe got away from me a bit, but I'll take any chance to present my Prongsfoot ramblings in a semi-organized fashion!

When and Why did you begin to Ship Prongsfoot? What makes you Ship it? Basically, just gush on this ship.

Somewhat ironically, developing a NOTP led me to this OTP: Back when the books were still coming out, I was a Harmony shipper. (Not a crazy one, I swear!) This led to a lot of "discussions" with people who shipped other pairings, but most relevantly with several Sirius/Remus fans who were both extremely disdainful of my noncanon ship and adamant that their ship was, in fact, canon/eventual canon. This led to little Past Me re-reading the PoA and post-PoA books multiple times, trying and failing to see this "proof" of Wolfstar, but in the process paying a lot more attention to pre-Golden Trio characters. "Actually," I thought, "Sirius seems a lot more attached to Harry's dad than to Lupin. Huh." I found myself fascinated by their dynamic, by the hold Sirius' friendship with (and loss of) James had on Sirius, and how much is implied about James that we don't get to see (the Potter lineage, James "maturing," etc). Imagine my disappointment when not only was Sirius/James not popular, but Wolfstar, which didn't appeal to me, was only gaining steam (see: "Wolfstar is canon/eventual canon!"). Shipping wars were more 'maniacal sports fans' than 'political discourse' at the time, but between being deep into then-fandom and not liking Wolfstar, I found myself shipping Sirius/James almost by accident because… Well, it just made so much more sense.

Yes, James is dead before the series actually starts; yes, James marries a woman and has a son; but I've yet to meet a fandom that lets such paltry things as 'canonical facts' stop a ship, and it's always baffled me that Prongsfoot isn't more widely recognized for its potential, if nothing else. I will always believe this stems from a one-two punch of early HP fandom's obsession with canon vs noncanon, Jily being canon, which led to Wolfstar and the subsequent idea that Sirius "belongs" to Remus With the series completed, we have a surprisingly complex character in James, tantalizingly hinted-at if not explored in-depth, and we're given ample on-page examples of Sirius' exceptional qualities as well as his deep attachment to James, who must be exceptional himself to command this kind of devotion and affection. They're the most interesting characters to me, for what we see and what we don't see, and unlike a lot of other pairings they don't require a hammer and chisel to force them into a romantic mold: They're best friends and platonic soulmates, but they could just as easily be romantic partners and the shift feels completely natural. There's an equality and an authenticity to their partnership that I cherish deeply and don't find in a lot of their other ships, which often require them to be OOC… and if a fic doesn't include them as each other's best friend and Most Important Person, I consider it OOC.

In a way, lack of good James/Sirius friendship nudged me towards actual Prongsfoot because other ships de-emphasize the importance of James and Sirius in each others' lives to make the ship work, including outright giving their roles away, ex. someone else being the only person who can rein James in, Sirius running away to [name here] instead of to James. James and Sirius make each other more themselves, for better and for worse, and I honestly believe that they believe it's always for the better: They embrace each other's strengths and weaknesses, love each other for their flaws instead of despite them, support each other even after death (if the memory of James wasn't instrumental in Sirius surviving Azkaban, I'll eat my nonexistent hat). Sirius has so much devotion to James, enough to eat rats and face death for James' son, his godson, who he had a year of knowing before it all went to hell, that I find it hard to believe he had much room for anyone else; and from what we see, that devotion was absolutely reciprocated. Even after marrying Lily, even after Harry, JamesandSirius were such a thing that James' own wife writes to Sirius to say my husband is down and only you can make him feel better, not his wife or child or other friends. They would have buried bodies for each other, and I'd be surprised if that didn't actually happen off-page. What we see of their past makes it clear that they existed together in some rarefied space that would have absolutely continued regardless of who they dated or who they married or where they wound up. I'll always be a little sad that we didn't get more of these two in canon, and I'll always be equal parts frustrated and bewildered that these two are not the Marauder ship, or at least a much much more popular ship than they are.

Over time, the popular depictions of James and Sirius grew increasingly incompatible with the way I saw them, which is generally closer to canon: James is not an idiot jock or an indiscriminate bully (he's very discriminate, thank you) or an abuser, Sirius is not an idiot sex addict or peer-pressured by James into bullying (he's absolutely an active bully of Snape & Co) or there solely to fawn over Remus. This is also where I started to dislike Remus, sorry Remus fans, neither uwu softboi Remus and uberdom alpha Remus are my jam I eventually fell out of fandom in general and didn't think more than the occasional wistful thought until I re-read the books and had that Prongsfoot flame reignited, enough that I started to read HP fic and even write/post stuff again. I'm endlessly grateful for the authors who put such wonderful work out there, and for people who cultivate this little pocket of a fandom that's otherwise become alien to me, as someone who just doesn't get much of New Marauder Fandom and its ATYD influences.

James and Sirius are soulmates and friends-to-lovers and fluff and angst and boyish exuberance and the uncertainty of growing up, they're knowing you're meant to spend your lives together and struggling to exist when your other half is gone, they're sweet domesticity and the darkness of war and Good vs Evil and all the shades of gray, they're loving someone relentlessly and instinctively and maybe unwisely but knowing it's 100% reciprocated, no-strings-attached, because you can't be any other way and wouldn't change that (or them) if you could. There's just so many ways to explore Prongsfoot and all of it works because these boys contain multitudes, and I just want to gather all of it around me like a nesting squirrel and snuggle down amidst the Prongsfoot goodness.

[chocolatepot]

are we finally having a fight with the black sails fandom? has this to do with the pirate battle poll blog, do ppl actually get upset over this? sorry for springing this on you I'm not up to date on the discourse - I just remember very early on a blog I followed back then losing their shit about ofmd being more popular than black sails was (in their opinion, I don't actually think this is true), I didn't know other black sails fans were still actually bittet about this? I never got into the show despite really wanting to; it had more sexual assault in the first few eps than I was willing to put up with at the time. and I didn't like the main character. but whatever just because it's not my cup of tea doesn't mean it's objectively bad.

it's just - idk I find it kinda confusing that ppl seem to insist there's only One True Gay Pirate Show I guess? what even is the problem here those 2 are completely different in tone.

Sorry for ranting in ur inbox uninvited I'm just really baffled. Why do people insist to argue about this isn't the pirate poll supposed to be in good fun?

(okay you are free to ignore this obviously. I just had to voice my confusion to someone XD)

Lmao, yes, it's about the pirate poll, of all things. I only know Black Sails people who are also either into or at least generally positive toward OFMD so I've been totally unaware of any undercurrents of rage/jealousy until just now.

I do remember people getting really upset about the "these characters are based on historical people who did bad things" issue when the show first aired, but I'd assumed that wasn't Black Sails fans because, well ... many of their characters are also based on historical people who did bad things? and many of their characters do really bad things onscreen and are still liked in the fandom? Maybe there's an element of insecurity over Black Sails having so much problematic content for non-fans to object to, so the angry fans are trying to prove that this other, thematically similar show with less obviously problematic content is in fact more problematic.

The ridiculous thing I keep coming back to is that the brouhaha started because Flint was up against Stede. He was winning! This was not a case of "how dare these other people with their blorbo come in and beat MY blorbo, who has more of a right to win" - it was "this other blorbo shouldn't even be allowed in competition with my blorbo, and he definitely shouldn't have anyone voting for him and talking about how they want him to win".

(Never apologize for asking me about a fandom wank, I'm always willing to expound.)

[hazbincalifornia]

(I’m pretty sure the way I type is recognizable but I need to like pretend at anonymity bc I feel. Remarkably silly about this)

I wanted to like idk rant to someone in the HB fandom who isn’t balls deep in the “anti proship” sphere bc like, I’ve been struggling w guilt over enjoying a certain ship that everyone hates and considers problematic (I think Loona and Octavia is rlly cute!) and I’d like to make content for it but I also rlly fear being seen as like a pedophile. Do u ever worry abt that kind of thing? And is there anyway ur able to get over it if u do? I don’t like getting into anti/anti anti discourse bc I feel like it’s a very reductive way to view and interpret media but I still have a crazy amount of worry/guilt

First off, it is still ridiculous to me that this is even a problem in this fandom. This is an adult show about characters in Hell, and the main characters are, respectively, assassins and the eclectic cast of the Hotel which includes a cannibal serial killer. (I am eternally both amused and completely baffled that like half the awful puritanical takes I see are from Val icons. Buddy. Pal. The fucked up fiction is coming from inside the house.) I saw waaaaay more fucked up shit on Zim nsfw twitter than I see on Hellaverse twitter and that show was Y7. Up your game, guys.

Personally, I don't really see Loona and Via as siblings/sisters as much as I think a lot of others do, more just friends (and honestly I think canon moved much too quickly to give them such a heartfelt scene together, they hadn't even met officially before that point?) so it's really only the age thing and even then, the plot of HB has seemed to imply that a fair amount of time has passed since the series started, probably around a year- so Via would be 18 or older by the time anything actually started anyway, especially if they became friends first. Setting aside the 'justification' though... they're not real. They're cute together, I agree, and I think you should be perfectly fine enjoying them just in the lens of 'they're similar, I like how they'd interact, and I think they're cute together'!

I was pretty much forged in my opinions about this from Invader Zim stuff, where people insisted that liking two characters that I'd liked together since I was thirteen made you a pedophile. Obviously, I could tell that wasn't true, because it had never been the case in all those years up to people starting to be bitchy about it in 2019. (Before that, it was that it was bad because it was enemies to lovers and, more importantly, gay. Great hater throne to inherit, guys!)

Unfortunately... as stupid as it is, this fandom is way more puritanical than it should be, so it wouldn't be wrong to engage through anonymity to protect yourself. Find the people in the tag who are using 'proship/proship interact' or something along those lines (I've seen a few, although some tend to lean more on hard/dead dove content), post on ao3 into the anonymous collection which removes your name, make a tumblr sideblog that doesn't connect to your main, find fellow shippers and interact with them specifically. Do whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe from people who can't understand that thinking something is cute or interesting to explore in fiction is automatically bad just because they don't like it. The more stuff that's put out there about the ship, the more likely you are to find kindred spirits, that's honestly part of how I gathered my mpreg weirdos to me in both this fandom and the last.

I'm pretty sure that the callout I got for Sunny was why several mutuals who were a friend group unfollowed (and likely muted) me on twitter. Unfortunately, it left me worrying that the other shoe was going to drop any day for about a week because it got just enough notes to make me worry but not enough to get to anyone with any real reach to spread and get it 'over with'.

At this point, I've sort of reached a state of 'fuck it', because if it happens, it happens. I know that I'm fine, and the people I genuinely care about know that too. I know that what I'm making is entirely separate from my morals as a person, if not from how dumb the IZ stuff was than from the fact that I was an English major. Literature is full of stuff that authors don't make as a 1:1 with their real-life morals! And the one you're thinking about isn't 'bad' comparatively at all.

I think the fandom is starting to see that being a dick about fictional content is bad through the backlash to Poison and 'hey, maybe telling somebody that they need to detail their trauma to the public to make fiction is bad?', but it seems to mostly be centered on dub/noncon, so I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath.

At the end of the day though, remember this: You, as a person, are completely fine, no matter what others might think. Octavia and Loona would probably be seen as a totally normal ship like ten years ago (except for people who'd be dicks about them being gay) and there is no judgement to be made on your character in any reasonable way for thinking they're a good ship. You're not a pedophile for thinking a fictional owl and hellhound look cute together, any more than I was for smacking together two Nicktoon characters, and frankly the IZ argument held slightly more water than 'the almost-18-year-old and the 22-year-old' because Zim's age was so ambigious. Try explaining this 'people think the young adult animals holding hands are bad' to any adult who isn't sucked into fandom discourse and they'd probably be baffled that it's a problem.

I know that the guilty feelings aren't always rational and it took a bit of time for me to unwind how I felt about creating certain stuff too, but try to remember that above all else- exploring things in fiction has been a thing people have done for a very, very long time. What matters is your actions towards other real people, not what you do with fictional dolls.

If nothing else, if you want you can always send me a dm and chat that way, I'd be happy to talk.

[less-than-three-3]

Tears of the Kingdom - a masterpiece sandbox, but a flawed sequel

It really does pain me to say that I thought TotK was just ok, because I did really love BotW. It had its clear pain points but for essentially a first of its type of open world game, it was incredible. But what mattered was that the design choices felt very deliberate, mechanics like durability and shrines were super key and important to the gameplay loop of exploring.

On the other hand, TotK, while it has very clear and high strengths with a very different design direction, has design choices across the board that genuinely baffled me, and I honestly question why this game was even a sequel besides being able to reuse everything. It very easily could have been its own game as it is, a different timeline with inexplicably identical characters and geography, because there is very little of BotW’s identity or even continuity really even present. 

And before you get your pitchforks, I do want you to hear me out - I promise I won’t complain about like durability or the map feeling empty or compare it to non-Zelda games, I’m gonna be discussing things that I don’t really see many people talking about? There will be spoilers! More below:

I want to start off by talking about my experience with BotW, but if you wanna skip this and just see my thoughts on TotK I get it, it’s just context that I think is relevant. I actually didn’t play BotW until about 2 years ago, despite being a huge Zelda fan I bought into that “bad zelda game” discourse so I thought I wouldn’t like it, so when I did play it I was absolutely blown away. I can still kinda get the complaints - some of the elements people love Zelda for were fairly weak, but as a redefinition of the series it was masterfully done. It was a game that not just rewarded and kept the cycle of exploration going through clever map design and durability, but did so by allowing essentially complete freedom of pathing and direction. 

I will always tell the story of how my entire first playthrough I did not know Hestu existed - I climbed the twin peaks and the mountains nearby to get to Kakariko and just totally missed him the whole time. Not that he was placed in a bad location, in fact I’d be surprised if more than a relative handful of people missed him lol, I was just on a completely different wavelength, and that freedom is incredible. But there were limitations - stamina is a necessary evil when you have free climbing and gliding (but not for running - #bringbackwhistlerunning), and it forces you to really actually scope out your terrain to manage your stamina. And, begrudgingly, I will “hand it” to rain for trying to get you to not just climb like a gremlin everywhere (this did not stop me just waiting out the rain, every time. I hate rain.). It’s a beautiful balance of self-motivated free exploration, and the soft limitations you have for that exploration. Without stamina altogether, the climbing and pathing, for example, becomes a lot less interesting when you can just entirely bypass like every cliff. BotW is a brilliant game of exploration, but you already knew that.

TotK, on the other hand, is not a game about exploring. Its design overall has such a strange identity to me. It reuses the main map of Hyrule, that’s totally understandable I’d be surprised if they didn’t, but is there really much to explore again? Granted, yes if you played this before BotW then there is, but from the lens of sequel let’s assume you’ve played BotW. For me, personally, I checked out the major towns from the last game, and it was really nice to see how they’ve evolved, but besides that, like... I guess there are many little shiny shrines placed everywhere again, but, like, I’ve already done that (For me, 2 and a half times over). The carrot on a stick wasn’t really enough for me to care all that much either, because after a certain number of shrines I just kinda felt like I had enough orbs. The motivating factor of exploration should not be the carrot on a stick reward at the end of the shrine, anyways.

And that’s not to mention the opening of the game, which is just so... clunky compared to that of BotW. BotW’s tutorial is genuinely probably the best out there, it essentially lets you loose to do what you want, how you want, and when you’re done learning the basic mechanics of the game, sets you loose again to continue to do what you want, how you want. TotK’s is so oddly rigid. The sky islands honestly weren’t the worst thing, they had fun things to do, but I did feel like it really dragged on compared to the Great Plateau which was about as slim as it could get. But when you get off of the sky islands, you’d think you’d be free to do what you want right? ....no. And that’s so fucking odd to me. They expect you to follow the quest markers for like, a few steps of the quest before you even get the paraglider and towers, and one of those steps leads you into Hyrule Castle which, for a lot of people, would raise alarm bells for “uh oh I shouldn’t do this yet”. If you went to do your own thing by seeing shiny things in the distance, you could possibly just not have the glider or the ability to reveal your map for a really long time. That’s weird, right? That can’t just be me.

Ok but fine, we knew Hyrule would be Hyrule, and the opening is just a few hours, so what’s the big deal, there’s so much more to explore! Well, the issue is that the sky islands are such a fucking bitch to get to (and basically require you to have a nearby jump tower unlocked, or a lot of patience with zonai gear), and getting between islands of different regions is pretty much not possible. And they’re SO sparse. It doesn’t feel like a region to explore, it feels like a few islands you can check out after unlocking a tower and not much else. 

The Depths tho!! They’re basically another Hyrule!!! Yeah, it is like Hyrule, but like, a lot lot worse. Like I said in the context, one of BotW’s greatest strengths in exploration were the landmarks and map design. So, why the hell did they decide to make an entire Hyrule where you have almost no such visual feedback to encourage exploration? You basically just have to choose a direction and commit (or follow a REALLY LONG series of statues), or maybe you see a Lightroot in the distance (this isn’t common). Maybe someone finds this fun but I certainly don’t, and I really honestly expected better from the developers of Breath of the Wild. You do have the actually really neat revelation that Lightroots are in the same place as shrines, and that the mining sites are where towns are. But I think that even further takes away from the essence of exploration? It’s so odd that the Depths are the way that they are, it truly has me questioning whether BotW’s design was truly intentional or if it was just lightning in a bottle that they couldn’t recapture. But maybe that’s just me.

So yeah the game has a lot of content and a lot of area, but I never really felt like.. that rewarded or satisfied by it. I actively just stopped exploring at a certain point, across all the layers of the world (ok I think I did get all the sky islands but that is NOT a hard feat to achieve lol). I wish there were a term gamers use that could describe this phenomenon of having a ton of stuff to do that starts to feel pointless to do... Oh yeah, it’s bloat. 

But let’s put a pin in that one, I don’t want to be so negative about the game because I did still like it. For one, the music is absolutely turned up to 11 compared to BotW, in part because it is a game with much more gravitas and more moments and areas that deserve that music. And BotW already had a fan favorite soundtrack, so you know this shit good.

The powers were a mixed bag, but I want to shoutout the absolute coolest power first, the one that I am the most mindblown by, that breaks the game without feeling blatantly unfair, and the one I am genuinely impressed is so well implemented:

Recall. This is the power that actually makes you feel like 1000 IQ, and I am pretty sure the people who came up with it and implemented it are too. It has so many broken uses in puzzle solving but, even when it’s clearly unintentional, it feels like a loophole, it feels like you outsmarted the devs. An entire fucking game could be made around this single power. And this game has 4. ...sort of.

If you thought I was gonna mention Ultra Hand, I’m sorry but you’re wrong, and that’s a larger discussion I will have later. Because let’s talk about the weird ones first. 

Like ascend. What the fuck is this power like it’s so incredibly niche and not in a funny way either, like cryonis. It’s not used to get between the Depths and the overworld and the sky, it has such a tight distance limit. And when you’re using it to scale vertical heights (or go through Taluses) it’s so finicky. Its most consistent uses are when the devs clearly designed “an ascend path” or for getting out of the overworld caves, and those are just like, really boring. The fact that most of twitter consistently forgets ascend is a thing is not good. You don’t want a power you entirely forget about. This is what I got in exchange for guardian launching?

Fuse is also a little weird to me, it’s fun but I feel like the novelty wears off a little quickly. On arrows it’s absolutely genius and a very wonderful replacement and addition to the elemental arrows, but for weapons? I know many people see this as addressing durability and collector’s anxiety from BotW but like, it doesn’t do either of those! They nerfed durability across the board for every weapon you get from the overworld except for sturdy wood sticks (which feel lame), and otherwise you have to either get zonai weapons (ok these are fairly abundant) or go underground and look for those statues holding unrotted weapons? This was supposed to address issues? All they did was push the issue of hoarding from your weapons inventory to your items inventory, which is a step forward for sure, but that’s not a solution, that’s them trying to trick us into thinking it’s addressed. You’d previously save your strong weapons just in case you need them later, but now you save your strong monster parts and gems in case you need them later. It’s the same damn thing, you just have actual bag space for it now so it's a little better! I’m a durability defender and I’m still confused by this.

Ok but the star of the show for most people is Ultra Hand, and I totally get it. Building the penis robot, or a mecha, or fucking drones is really cool and really funny. Breaking the limits of the game by attaching together a bunch of different things to solve puzzles in ways that they really shouldn’t have is cool (but Recall does it better). If you love sandboxes to just fuck around in and make a bunch of really cool or broken contraptions and doohickeys, you will love this. I just like.. don’t. Building a tank sounds cool but when I got at the helm I just kinda felt nothing from it, it wasn’t really that fun because the only input you can really give is the direction. I don’t feel like I’m playing the game. And I feel like it really disrupts those necessary limitations I was talking about at the beginning - I don’t find it satisfying to just entirely bypass a climbing challenge by just making a hot air balloon or rocket, and I don’t find it satisfying to just mow down enemies by holding forward as opposed to actually engaging with them. The battery is a limiter but is it even really that much of a limiter when the recovery items are so common (and in the case of rockets and hot air balloons entirely irrelevant)? This is on top of the vehicles despawning when you enter shrines so exploring with them feels AWFUL (easily the MOST baffling mechanic in the game). I dunno, they did really shoot for the moon and I think if you like this I’m very happy for you, but I do also think they really lost sight of what made BotW so revolutionary.

“But you control the buttons your press, if you don’t like it don’t use it!” I agree, and I didn’t really! I’m very happy with being able to use towers as jump towers which, with the wing suit, let you pretty much cover the entire region. But like, you still need to use Ultra Hand for shrines and temples. It’s fairly good in the temples, but I want to talk about the shrines, because some of them are great and maybe better than the best in BotW, but that makes the stinkers really stand out. There are a handful of mid-game shrines (as opposed to like, shrines right around Lookout) which were just “drive the vehicle we gave you” or “build a basic vehicle with the 3 obvious parts we laid out for you” like... that’s not a puzzle. (There was one shrine with a sick track layout and I’ll give that one a pass). I didn’t do all shrines, like I said I got tired of exploration, so I can’t speak to all of them, but this mixed bag didn’t help that either. At least there aren’t really combat trials outside the beginning.

While we’re on the topic, let’s talk about those temples, because one of the biggest talking points right before launch were the “big varied dungeons” that they added to the game, compared to the Divine Beasts in BotW which, while fine, were very samey and ultimately just 4 shrines squished together. So, what about the Temples? Well uh... let’s rank them, best to worst.

1. Fire Temple. Yunobo’s power may suck the most out of the 4 sages but I’d be lying if this temple and the road leading up to it didn’t slap. Using the minecarts the traverse around with changing tracks and figuring out how to guide the very finicky Yunobo Launcher into the rocks blocking your path was fun! Not my favorite temple ever, but it was a very good translation of the format. The boss also felt super traditional Zelda in the best way possible.

2. Lightning Temple. Besides the Fire Temple all the temples kind of take a “go in any direction and do these separate shrine puzzles united by a unique gimmick” and it’s pretty much just a reskinned Divine Beast, I don’t know who they were tricking. The Lightning Temple had the most interesting gimmick at least, essentially being light puzzles that were pretty satisfying, plus a killer boss fight.

3. Wind Temple. This was the first one I did and I was a little disappointed that it was just a divine beast, but the layout was in hindsight relatively interesting, and the whole path up to the temple with the sailboats was actually really really fun (and entirely irrelevant for the temple). People are loving the boss but it’s like ok? I think it’s just because people are just so used to the blights that a huge worm with Giant Enemy Weakpoint is cool by comparison. 

4. Water Temple. Water bubbles are sorta cool and the boss is a little shit. Sidon’s power and the goop was really annoying to use. The temple design does not even try to pretend it’s a temple, it is just 4 different islands with 4 different puzzles.

5. Spirit Temple. this shit sucked I’m sorry, getting the parts back to the center was ok and had some clever puzzles but otherwise it was kind of a slog to get them all, and the reward is a mech that was so slow and a little clunky and I just ultimately walked my ass to the boss. Maybe it’s because I just don’t really like the contraptions. I dunno, this was really meh. Boss was incredibly easy because he just gets instantly staggered by the cannon he drops lol.

And speaking of presenting us the same things as BotW with a fresh coat of paint, the dragon’s tears were also kind of dubiously implemented. They are definitely a clear improvement over memories in a lot of ways, but that really isn’t that high of a bar to clear. But because of the much stronger linear narrative structure of everything, you’re pretty much missing out on a lot by not doing these in the order that you find with Impa and that’s... really limiting? It only reinforces my assessment that this is not a game about exploration because when I see a giant fucking geoglyph I wanna check it out, I don’t want to look at my pictures to check if it’s “the next one I need”. Plus this order kind of encourages you to railroad your exploration of the regions in a specific order. It’s weird. But at least the story is really good.

And speaking of the story, yeah it was great, and it was genuinely tragic to experience those last few memories and have the very sudden realization of where Zelda is. But can I just ask, what happened to like anything from BotW? Where are the Divine Beasts, can they help? Was Zelda a dragon the whole fucking time, and we just somehow never saw her once in BotW? Why does no one outside Lookout, Teba, the Rito remember us? The only things that even remotely reference the very cataclysmic events of the last game are essentially throwaway filler dialogue from side npc’s and that’s weird right? 

Why is this game a sequel? 

I think if this was a Majora’s Mask situation where they were blatantly going in a very different direction in a different timeline and completely restructuring everything, but just reusing maps and models, I would get it. But it’s not, it’s the Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But it doesn’t feel like that upon even just a little bit of scrutiny. If they full sent the sandbox and new world and lore and origins of Hyrule as a whole new timeline and separate game, maybe they wouldn’t have felt obligated to keep so many of the incredible elements of BotW that ultimately either get trampled on or feel a little half-assed, and maybe it’d be even more fun for those who enjoy that type of game. Though to be clear, it’s not a case of mixed identity, I do feel all these elements can coexist, but I think it’s a case of them losing sight of or missing what really made BotW tick.

And again, not to say this is a bad game. I fairly enjoyed it, but to me it doesn’t meet the standards and expectations set by BotW, especially not as a sequel. But that may just be me, who does not care that much about sandbox elements. If you love them, and love the game, that’s great! My issues shouldn’t get in the way of your enjoyment, but I just have to say man, I wish I liked this game more.

[bisluthq]

Swiftdom's collective stupidity never ceases to baffle me. Joever is, like you say, the simplest and most normal boring thing that happens all the time with ltrs: 2 people love each other a lot, have been committed for years and arranging their lives to make it work, then gradually as a result of normal life circumstances (new job opportunities, newfound professional passions etc) one or both parties' priorities change, they start to grow apart in spite of still trying hard to make things work, until one or both of them realizes that the effort and sacrifice being invested is not worth it anymore and wishing for things to go back to how good they once were won't solve anything, and so it ends. Idk it was very clear from Lover era and Miss Americana that she felt pretty certain at the time that her peak as a popstar had already passed and it was gradually moving downhill, so even if the pandemic hadn't happened she would've continued to write and create a bunch but gone for an indie sound and/or writing for other artists.Their plan seemed to be to set base somewhere in north London and he would continue with his acting career and she would obviously still be Taylor Swif, only not 1989 era/2023 levels of fame Taylor Swift, but Lover era levels of fame Taylor Swift, which imho was something that felt manageable to both of them. 2019-2020 media appearances and promo from both of them was more open and in hindsight I think that point was the ideal balance for them. Then the pandemic happen, which halted the previous momentum Joe's acting career had been having, folkmore happened as a direct result of lockdown, which along with the re-recordings catapulted her to unprecedented levels of fame that neither of them could've possibly anticipated and that tbqh Joe didn't sign up for 🤷🏻‍♀️ objectively, it would've been stupid of Taylor to ignore the opportunity so imo it isn't fair to shame her for "choosing her career over him" bc Eras was literally the logical thing to do. And it's what almost anyone in her position would've done🤷🏻‍♀️at the same time, it would've been stupid of Joe to accept being a trophy husband who follows her around (I personally would love to be that for her lol) bc that would've never made him happy bc he yknow likes to act and likes to work. It would've been unfair for him to surrender to the excessive fame that he clearly dislikes just to stay in a rs bc besties that's a fucking lifelong thing in spite of how much Swifties insist that it's not a big deal 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

So neither one is "right" or "wrong" bc no one cheated (physically at least) and neither did anything horrible like dv or stealing so genuinely the discourse at this point feels like a 12 year old's take and idk if it's cos there's a bunch of actual 12 yolds online or if it's just everyone being incredibly stupid and/or cognitively impaired lmao

idk I think it’s a lot of people not being willing to treat celebs as real people. Like no one on a tv show breaks up because shit just gets weird - people know they do but like TAYLOR SWIFT (the character) can’t because it doesn’t make sense to people. Idk. Just accept that she’s a person and it’s way easier to stan.

[mishkakagehishka]

Honestly, the moment they started putting triggering content in the main tag, I lost all sympathy I had for them. At this point, it's noone's fault but their own if they get shitty anons. Guess what I'm trying to say is, while I kinda get why you'd feel bad, I definitely don't see you being at fault here.

Also, from what I've seen, most anons they're getting are just asking for them to stop putting that stuff in the main tag or suggesting a break from Tumblr for their own mental health? I honestly haven't seen much harassment at all, just people either trying to help them/others or just expressing frustration with the whole situation. Or asking them to stop playing victim when they're potentially exposing vulnerable people to stuff that could make them spiral. Sigh.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, the whole situation honestly baffles me to the point where I'm just sitting here, scratching my head, trying to make sense of it. Either way, I really hope you're doing well. Still Korka loving hours btw <3 <3 <3

Oh don't apologise for ranting tbh my toxic (mediterranean) trait is that i do like hearing others' thoughts and rants on anything and everything, so it's not a bother to me. I just wish i knew what to tag it with so that others don't have to see this unless they want to;;;

But, yeah, it's just. Not okay to put content you know will trigger people in main fandom tags where anyone could see them. I said, "I don't know what they're going through so I'll have some understanding", but similarly they don't know what others are going through, people who might open the tag just to see their lil blorbos to feel better, and such. And it's foul to make random folks suffer just because I wronged them, when it's highly unlikely they'd have anything to do with me (they're calling me a big blog, Neo calls me a big blog, but I think I only have about a dozen active followers; a majority of mine are likely those who followed me for my writing (i'm so fucking sorry) and have no stakes in this discourse, in fact, they probably have no idea what's even going on, never mind the broader enst fandom)

They've deleted the posts, so I hope they're getting support and such and will be able to realise that they don't have to quit enst bc a handfull of folks in it blocked them.

[asexual-means-no-attraction]

I used to have a discourse account and still follow some people I followed there on my main, but I've recently (read: in the past year) had to unfollow about 3 of them because they'd turned either into terfs or just became transphobic in general, and I just can't help but wonder what happened? They were transmeds (whether they considered themselves part of the group or not idk, but their beliefs alligned) which makes me think, you were so close. You had it all right there. How did you turn from seeing it as a legitimate medical thing to seeing it as people with mental problems or attention seekers? It baffles me because I always thought knowing the medical side of being trans is something that keeps people as allies. That something like seeing it as most of tumblr does, a vague feeling or just not subscribing to gender roles or whatever, was something that makes it easy to turn to transphobia because it's so loose and undefined. But seeing my former mutuals who I knew to be trans allies and who had a decent grasp of what being trans is turn to transphobia leaves me sad and so very confused

Thats the thing about the internet, it's an amazing place to grow more and more radical ideas. And you'd be shocked at how similar radical ideas are to each other, especially when they claim to be opposites.

You have to be really careful online. It's not hard to go further and further down a rabbit hole to the point of being unable to climb out. A lotta people start with very clear and understandable ideas about the world and other people. But the more time you spend the more things you see. The more posts that are specially written to make you feel anger, that leave out details, that use the worst faith example imaginable, that just straight up lie. And we've always been a society built on trusting others. Built on being social. All someone has to do is wear you down enough with "not everyone in this group. But looks at this person. And this one. And this one" to shift your idea of right and wrong, push what you think a group stands for, make you angry at them. You see enough shitty examples and you start to think it's everyone.

It's similar to the representation discussion. How much it can help a child's confidence to actually see characters they can relate to doing good things. Part of discourse is talking to people with other viewpoints. And when they keep showing awful examples it's easy to start falling for them without realizing it.

That's why it's important to also talk to people that agree with you. Look for posts that are positive. Look for good examples. Bot online and irl it's important to step back and take a break from discourse. Because when you dig too deep it's easy to get buried by shitty people.

You said you're wondering how this could happen. And it probably happened something along the lines of getting worn down from all the negative trans stuff online and all the transphobic shit from TERFs and tucutes alike. It makes you tired. The more you see it the more you forget it's not accurate. Humans are very susceptible. And we tend to go to extremes. These old mutuals probably fell into that and kept shifting their ideals to one direction little by little until it was a whole new idea altogether.

Much like my other post about how you're not gonna stop making someone transphobic overnight, you can't make someone transphobic overnight either. Changing someone's mind takes time. And unfortunately, the internet is a great way to do it since your posts don't go away. Discourse is a very easy way to start to fall into this too, which doesn't help. It's important to be able to step away, know when to listen and when to call bullshit. Not everyone can tho. It sucks. But the fact that they used to be supportive means they might come back eventually. So that's something.

[flutishly]

Spoilers for House of the Dragon season 1

I was a bit late and backwards with House of the Dragon. While I know a lot of people who have read Fire & Blood, I had not. This was in contrast to my experience with Game of Thrones, where for its entire run I watched as a book fan who much preferred (and continues to generally prefer) the books. I came into House of the Dragon with no idea what the story was going to be about, nothing about its factions, nothing about its characters, nothing about its narrative arcs. I also watched it with a few weeks’ delay, meaning that I was fully out of the loop on discourse and its live reception. In a way, I felt like I was watching the show in a bubble - I knew no one watching it in real time, nor anything about where the story intended to go. I simply... watched.

And I liked what I saw, for the most part. My takeaway from the early episodes was that I - surprisingly - liked almost of the characters. My second takeaway was that the show felt so much tighter than Game of Thrones; while A Game of Thrones starts out mostly focused on the Starks, the story does include other (distant) narratives from the onset and it widens remarkably fast. House of the Dragon (and again, I cannot yet speak to Fire & Blood, though I do want to read it; no spoilers, please!) is much more of a family drama. While two continent-wide factions emerge by the season’s end, the story is still anchored by two sets of contrasting characters: Viserys versus Daemon, and Rhaenyra versus Alicent.

It’s the latter relationship that really defines the show. Part of what I loved about this first season was the way the show took advantage of its time jumps to convey a lot without necessarily saying it outright. The fact that this very aspect was criticized by most reviewers is baffling to me; the show managed to stay nimble while still establishing everything it needed, before reaching its intended climax. Game of Thrones stumbled most when it started dragging its story out. House of the Dragon simply moves onward to the next checkpoint, with the viewer cleverly left to fill in the blanks. We don’t need to be told everything! We can see the effects laid out so clearly.

I once posited that every television show has a “central relationship” around which the rest of the show revolves. Sometimes it’s a romantic relationship, sometimes it’s a familial relationship, sometimes it’s a hero-villain tension, and sometimes it’s a friendship. In House of the Dragon, it quickly became obvious that though the first episodes were teasing Viserys-Daemon, the central relationship is Rhaenyra-Alicent. The intimate friendship turned imbalanced rivalry turned tentative reconciliation turned outright war appears in every episode, even if one of the characters doesn’t. In the final two episodes, we see either Alicent or Rhaenyra (and not both together), but the other is still wholly present. Alicent refuses to allow the men around her to murder Rhaenyra, despite what it means for her family. Rhaenyra, on her end, refuses to simply leap into a war that would pit her against Alicent (and younger siblings, though I highly doubt Rhaenyra really thinks of them as such...). Their broken friendship doesn’t drive the plot, but it’s the emotional pillar.

I have lots of other thoughts about the show, but this is the part I keep returning to. Against the promise of war, against the backdrop of a factional succession battle, against the constant tension between different power brokers, the show continues to tell one real story, that of the House of the Dragon. It tells of two (arguably three) women who hold some power, but not the power that the could (or should?) hold, whose power keeps being redefined by the men around them, who are often trying to make the best out of terrible decisions, who care for their families above all else. It uses time skips to continue telling one main story, despite teasing other, “wider” threads which may or may not have a deeper impact on our core cast of characters. It focuses so neatly on its characters that it’s hard to deeply dislike most of them (Aegon being an exception...), even when they’re antagonistic, because they’re still interesting.

It’s not a perfect show and I have loads of questions as to where it’s going. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m going to read Fire & Blood after watching this season; the story is interesting and very clearly on the upswing. But having finished it several weeks ago and finding myself still thinking about it, I can’t help but give it credit for what it’s done well and recognize that I enjoyed it quite a bit, almost against all odds. I truly wasn’t expecting that.

[heloflor]

You know, the more I think about it, the more baffled I am that Jimmy is sometimes forgotten when talking about Craig’s gang. I mean, not only had he been part of said gang since it started becoming a thing, but Jimmy is also probably the sixth more important kid character behind the main 5.

(I’d like to point out that I haven’t gone through the tags of those characters in a long time so I have no idea if this is still going on. For all I know this issue is old news. On that note, my intention here is NOT to start any discourse. Actually I think subconsciously I just wanted to point out how present Jimmy is in the show because I find it interesting to notice 🤔).

After all, on top of seeing him with Craig, Clyde and Tolkien (“Ginger Kids”, “Fun Times with Weapons”, “The Magic Bush”, “Lice Capades” etc), he’s also been seen hanging out with the main 5 as part of the sixth friend like in “Pee”, “Super Fun Time”, “W.T.F.”, “The China Problem” or “Band in China”.

Then there’s also his involvement in season 5, the season he was introduced, + several episodes centered around him like “Fishsticks”, “Erection Day”, or the last few episodes of season 19. Also, while Clyde tends to be the character used when they need a secondary character talking in a scene, Jimmy was shown pretty often talking in scenes like those as well, like him being the one doing the talking to Craig in “The Magic Bush” or him being the person Stan asks to talk to Wendy in “Raisins” or even that one deleted scene from “Reverse Cowgirl”. And let’s not forget the few episodes he has with Timmy and Nathan.

Seriously, I’m pretty sure Jimmy is more of a major character than Tweek, who became part of the main cast for half a season !

  Tbh, I think the reason why it bothers me is because, the more I think about it, the more I start thinking that it has less to do with Jimmy possibly being harder to draw/write to some people and more to do with him being disabled.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m very much aware that main/major characters aren’t always fan-favorites or even the fandom’s priority (just look at T//OH fandom’s interest for Hun//ter or the P/n/F fandom with Do//of and Per//ry for example). Hell, I’m part of this crowd as well sometimes (Cav and Dak from M//ML, with my fics almost never mentioning Mi//lo).

But given the fandom’s liking of Craig’s gang, it does raise a few questions when such a major character gets forgotten without much explanation (again, if someone simply struggles with drawing or writing him, I can understand. Though it sucks if he’s not even mentioned or acknowledged as part of the group).

(And yes I know Jason is constantly forgotten, but tbf he was pretty much only part of the group for one episode. Plus, as of S23, he’s canonically dead)

[theminecraftbee]

Re: your winged!Grian origin post

I joined the HC fandom circa early s7, and I just want to say that I think we as a fandom are sort of retroactively putting importance onto the whole bird symbolism. Yes, it's important and does make some sense, but back then it definitely felt like probably 80% of winged Grians were Watcher Grian (inspired by ATUS) and parrot or chicken or any other wing was the outlier. I understand not wanting to place too much importance on any one particular fic, but it's hard to overstate just how much ATUS was THE watcher fic. No one except the most niche fans had watched Evo, but suddenly this was The One Thing About Grian (the most popular hermit) so everyone in the fandom had to read that to understand any fanworks, basically. And a huge amount of Watcher knowledge that became fanon, especially back then, was extrapolated from ATUS, full stop.

TLDR. yes it's good not to raise one fic on a pedestal but I also think we shouldn't be trying to erase ATUS influence after the fact. Feels like a weird attempt to change history

(Also I swear this isn't ATUS propaganda I only read it the once. I just legitimately think it's an important part of hermit history and am trying to help, so sorry if this comes off mean or anything!)

so, disclaimer, i wasn't there in the fandom at the time, but my own like, editorialized thoughts on this, as opposed to informative (which means my own opinions are in here and you may not agree with them, this isn't meant to be a factual accounting of fandom history anymore):

i don't think you're entirely wrong, which is why i went out of my way to include it; at least on tumblr, i think that fic probably had an outsized influence on how people write watchers and the winged grian stuff. as someone who wasn't around, the main way i know that is "people still discourse about it", "specific design elements that weren't super present in canon (or present at all in hermitcraft canon) are really present in fanworks", and "i know full well that, while people claim cleo said she read atus, she only said that she read a fic where grian had wings and something about how he was sad a lot if i remember right, and the fact that people extrapolated that to mean atus says some pretty strong things to me". like, all of these things together is why i think atus clearly had a lot of influence here.

that being said, i do have people in my comments like "oh yeah i realized he liked flying so i drew him with an elytra a lot, and then i saw people adding feathers so i started doing that". that seems especially common with people who were, say, on the reddit at the time - they didn't have the fandom context that was causing it on tumblr, so they either A) originated giving him wings on their own or B) picked it up from other artists and made assumptions about where it came from.

the thing is that while atus clearly had a huge influence on the older fandom... i bet, show of hands, most of the newer fandom members who joined late season 7 and beyond? have not actually read atus. or, if they have, that isn't their main influence for the winged grian art - other winged grian art is. that's how stuff like this ends up spreading in the fandom. hell, that's what we're seeing with things like xb's fish properties - one or two people who were big in the fandom liked it, and other artists picked it up from them, and it wouldn't surprise me if it really does become a ubiquitous character trait of his that people are baffled by at this rate. the hermitcraft fandom does that a lot.

that newer grian artists don't have that fandom context so they are drawing him with wings because they know he is meant to have them, and are making up the reason they think he should have them. atus has, at this point, been mostly removed from the wings equation. the watcher thing hasn't - he's never losing that association - but specifically atus's influence isn't really a major factor so much anymore. besides, as i said: i see him with parrot wings far more often than i see him with purple ones these days, and it's a little silly to say that that's not because of season 7, when it absolutely is.

all of this is to say that when it comes to the wing stuff atus is absolutely important which is why i included it but i sort of get the sense grian would have ended up with wings even without atus, if only because of the parrot stuff in season 7 when combined with the fandom's specific love of non-humaning people.

as for the watcher stuff... so here's the thing. i think fanon watcher stuff is absolutely heavily influenced by atus and it wouldn't be an inescapable part of grian's character without it, if only because evo just is not that popular compared to hermitcraft and people wouldn't be dragging all the evo stuff up in the specific way hermitcraft fans do if atus hadn't happened. so many of the watcher tropes people use originate clearly from that fic.

and like. okay. i agree with people when they say a lot of those tropes would have cropped up around watchers anyway. i know the "the watchers are evil" thing is a massively debated plot point but it's such low-hanging fruit people would have grabbed it. i have seen the watcher statues, people would have grabbed the angel imagery. people would have grabbed the purple. it's more the specific confluence of ideas that seems to have originated with atus, and more specifically, the popularity of doing watcher stuff in the first place.

once again, to be clear: the watcher stuff has undergone a LOT of fandom mutation. i think most new fans hear about it and don't know about atus, and even maybe watch evo themselves, which is neat. but evo... is not as big as hermitcraft! evo is an old series! and like. yhs or even vault hunters don't get as integrated into the characters as evo does, and that's almost certainly because it blew up at one point. and while i think most current watcher people do their own thing, i think it would be disingenuous to say that atus didn't have an influence on the fact that the fandom does not let go of the watcher thing for grian, just like trying to claim that the superhero fic trend in dsmp didn't come from tommy's unbeatable method. like, yes, the people doing it now aren't necessarily doing it because of that fic, or using the tropes because of that fic; they've picked them up themselves. at the same time, it's hard to say the popularity didn't start there.

i also know it sucks to say that, since a lot of people have some shitty memories related to atus, which i won't comment on because i was really not there for that discourse and i don't want to put words in people's mouths. it also sucks because people hear that and think people are saying they aren't being original/they're making things up, or that it's bad that they do the watcher things, and they want to defend it. i get that. like i said, a lot of the tropes that we attribute to atus probably would have been associated with watcher stuff anyway. its just that watcher!grian would have been a lot more niche without it, i think.

(with the possible exception of if martyn had still done his thing at the end of last life; we have no way to know how much he was influenced by fanon or not on that, given that he and grian were the actual writers for evo lore and all that. that's a different can of worms though we're talking about hermitcraft here.)

this also comes from me as an outsider, someone who really only entered the hermitcraft fandom early season 8, and only started watching mid season 7 (after the turf war, even). this is my observation of the trends as i've seen them. it probably feels different when you're an insider, as well, and were there at the time this stuff came about. and i admit some of this comes from being someone who joined the fandom late and has had trouble picking up the why for the watcher stuff. i get it with the "grian has wings", that's constantly reaffirmed as a headcanon, but a lot of the weird specifics of watcher tropes continue to baffle me as someone who isn't really interested in watching evo and mostly just wants to do hermitcraft stuff. (i use the watcher stuff sometimes as it suits me, as i do with basically all the fanon. i'm mostly neutral to it i actually have stronger opinions about hels stuff than i do watcher stuff when it comes to 'things that are largely fanon', lol.)

anyway atus is also fascinating to me because it's like. reading it now it's like, okay? it isn't bad, i'm not saying that, but it's also not a masterpiece, and it very heavily reads to me as "this fic got lucky to be in the right place at the right time to have the influence it had, by being the first to do a trope other people would latch onto later", and i think that kind of way fics work is interesting as someone who writes fics myself. (for the record, that's kind of how i consider black box too - it's fine, it does what i wanted it to do, but also it is as popular as it is because it happened to be in the right place at the right time and was the first decently-written thing to do a trope other people would latch onto later.) i can see why people would be annoyed to have the stuff they do that they consider unrelated to it constantly attributed to it, especially given the amount that it's just become established fanon by now that people don't have to know any of the original context to be able to use.

uhhh that was long the tl;dr is that the wing stuff almost certainly would have happened eventually anyway from what i can tell and a lot of the tropes we use for watchers probably would have also shown up anyway, but it's also silly to pretend that atus isn't a huge part of why it's as popular of a set of tropes as it is, because it is a part of that. that doesn't make any of the tropes bad or unoriginal though and i think people should keep doing them they're cool

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 314: ...Or You Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain

Previously on BnHA: Some random assholes were all “let’s throw exploding spears at All Might and see if it activates his Conqueror’s Haki” and SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKERS, IT DID!! Elsewhere, Lady Nagant confusingly tried to capture Deku alive by shooting him in the stomach, but to be fair I guess that’s what happens when you send an assassin to do a bounty hunter’s job, so yeah. Deku was all “ouch”, and then because this is a shounen he basically just straight up forgot about it, and did a big fancy Smokescreen thing, and then activated his mildly incomprehensible new ki-blasting quirk which he got from the Third. En and the Third were all “hey Deku maybe let’s not just impulsively activate all this shit in the heat of battle when you don’t know how to use it yet and you’re already injured,” and Deku was all “thanks for the quirks guys but I’ll take it from here” and snuck up on Nagant and grabbed her arm and so now what’s going to happen I wonder.

Today on BnHA: Nagant is all “[shoots Deku again]” because of course she is lol. Deku is all “tell me about AFO!” and Nagant is all “why would I tell you anything?” and then proceeds to tell him her entire life story which is FILLED WITH SO MUCH MURDER, YOU GUYS. Holy shit. So basically she was an assassin for the HPSC, which we already knew, but somehow it’s one thing to know that, and another to actually see her running around capping dudes in the forehead and being covered in more blood than the elevator from The Shining. Anyway, so you’ll never believe it, but all that murder had a negative impact on her psychologically, and eventually led her to question everything she believed about hero society, and so she killed her creepy boss and was promptly sent to Tartarus. This extremely fun chapter ends with Overhaul showing up all “HI, HELLO, I’M STILL HERE”, because for some reason he is still here. Why are you still here, Overhaul.

“the beautiful Lady Nagant” oh you know your audience don’t you Horikoshi

well all right then! so I’m guessing this means that she is not, in fact, going to roll over and die just because Deku’s out here all “GOT YA!” like they’re playing a game or tag or something. ffff may the manga gods have mercy on our young suicidal protagonist

lmao so Deku is all “GOD I’M SO SMART, WHAT A GOOD STRATEGY I HAD, CAPITOL JOB THERE OL’ CHAP, CAPITOL” and lol, okay. I mean, it was a good plan though. but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop here

“I’ll make you give me information on All for One” well there you go, lol. Deku Angst arc still fully engaged. still no light in his eyes either of course. just a lil chaotic ball of sleep deprivation and rage

lol, fucking THANK YOU though

oh my god what the hell did she do to him lol

did she shoot him with her elbow??? fucking look at this?? THIS IS WHY WE LISTEN TO HAWKS oh my god Deku are you dead

WHAT’S HAPPENING, IS THIS GOOD OR BAD, WHO’S WINNING

things that I wish I could tell from this panel which I unfortunately cannot tell

did she stab him or shoot him?? can you imagine if it was the former lol. why does Horikoshi keep stabbing all my kids. look Kacchan now the two of you can match

did she actually hit him or did he get away??

or did she hit him and then he jumped away?? just, what

well anyway, so now Deku is asking her why she sided with AFO, but he seems a lot more pissed off than when he was interrogating Muscular, though. probably because she shot him three times. fair enough

oh my god

does Lady have a blog here on tumblr dot com?? -- does Horikoshi have a blog here on tumblr motherfucking dot com?? why do I suddenly feel like this man is out here sneakily reading up on all our discourse

oh my god Deku it’s almost like getting up close and personal with someone who can shoot custom bullets from any distance and any position with deadly accuracy was a terrible fucking idea

IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD WARNED YOU NOT TO ENGAGE WITH HER AT ALL COSTS. IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD HAD THE FORESIGHT TO DO THAT sob. can you imagine how much shorter this series would be if characters actually listened to Hawks. Hawks, and Momo. why do we even let anyone else run the show ever

OH MY GOD

DEKU, RUN

OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING

this looks a lot like what happens to me whenever I play One’s Justice. those fucking combo attacks that you can’t fucking escape from and so your character just has to stand there getting their ass whalloped repeatedly while you wonder why you paid $40 for this

but anyways though. so Lady who did you kill?? I bet they deserved it, don’t worry I forgive you

(ETA: ANYWAY SO FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT LADY NAGANT DID NOTHING WRONG EVER IN HER ENTIRE LIFE. aside from murdering all those innocent people and shit. but there were CIRCUMSTANCES, and THEY WERE EXTENUATING, OKAY.)

-- holy shit

looks like the HPSC arc is back on the menu boys

so are we about to learn that the HPSC was going full Hydra on people’s asses? secretly dispatching anyone they deemed a threat to society?? “taken care of” as in you fucking shot them??

so then was the “hero” she killed actually one of the guys who was giving or carrying out these orders?? holy shit Lady, up until now I’ve mainly just been stanning you for your flawless eyebrow game and metal af quirk, but this shit could actually get real very quickly, and I am prepared to genuinely and sincerely love the shit out of you depending on what we learn next about your backstory

oh my god?!?

so wait, hold up. am I reading this right?? basically the HPSC started murdering vigilantes because they were worried they were gaining too much of the public’s favor?? holy fucking shit???

oh my GOD oh my god

“it’s been a while since I scarred you all with the dead dog and the graphic slaughter of an entire innocent family, huh,” Horikoshi says thoughtfully. “anyway so what do you all think of my new creation, the Spaghetti Bullet.” well, Horikoshi, so you know that squished-up face that Kermit the Frog makes sometimes? yeah. that’s what I think, if you must know lol

holy hell the juxtaposition

I’m actually kind of surprised to learn she had a lot of fans? what with her M.O., I was expecting her to have been an underground hero like Aizawa, but apparently not? then again I still have absolutely no idea how any of that works. I really need to read Vigilantes already

oh snap

nothing like a sweet dose of assassin trauma to finally round out our BnHA Trauma Bingo!! well done guys, we finally collected all of the traumas! hooray!

noooo Ladyyyyyyy

holy shit what a fucking chapter. like, this man promised us an assassin, and went and fucking delivered. I was not expecting it to be this dark, lol, but holy shit I am here for it

you know, at some point you have to start questioning the logistics of this, though

I mean, how do I put this... her quirk isn’t exactly subtle. that murder scene from a few pages back looked like the first season of Dexter for fuck’s sake, that’s not exactly “disappearing” people now is it?? and I mean, her bullets are literally made from her own fucking hair; it seems like it would be impossible not to leave any evidence behind. did no one start to wonder who the fuck was going around murdering all these people? or did the people who asked too many questions wind up getting conveniently “disappeared” themselves??

and hey, speaking of asking too many questions

holy shit is he blackmailing her??!? or no, wait -- what the hell is he reaching for in his pocket boy you better not

(ETA: what exactly was this man expecting fdslkjd. “uh oh my unstoppable hair trigger assassin who is literally always armed is asking questions, better announce that I am going to shoot her and then reach into my pocket veeeeeery slowly while she stands there all of two feet away.” how did this guy ever function as the head of a shadow government with these decision-making skills, I’m genuinely baffled.)

OH MY GOD LADY YES

this. right here. is why “run the fuck away” was damn good solid fucking advice. oh shit. but my god did this dude have it coming

so wait lol has she just been narrating all of this out loud to Deku this entire time

okay but can we just stop for a moment and appreciate the fact that they’re having this deep conversation about the dark secrets of hero society right in the middle of their intense mid-air sniper free-for-all lol

holy shit you guys, Nagant’s the one that should have made the tell-all video. I mean, no offense to you, Dabi, I’m sure you worked very hard on your video and did a ton of crunches every day so that you would look good with your shirt off while you told the world all about how your dad was a jerk. but seriously...

this is already like 100x more convincing than what he put out. also, gasp, is it another flashback

yes it is oh my gosh

so the HPSC Chairladyperson whom ReDestro killed used to be this guy’s direct subordinate, huh? I wonder if she kept the whole assassin program going after she took over. can’t say I was feeling any particular kind of grieving way about her death before, but certainly not now lol

but unfortunately Nagant has finally lost me at the same place where all of the villains inevitably do, which is to say when they somehow make the dubious mental leap from “society sucks and is bad” to “let’s just be openly fucking evil lol, worth a shot.” because when heroes murder innocent people and cover it up, that’s obviously bad (and I mean, it absolutely fucking is lol, don’t get me wrong); but when villains murder innocent people straight up out in the open without giving a fuck, they’re righteous revolutionaries? just -- is there really no non-murdery middle ground here?? I guess that’s what Deku and co. are for, hopefully

anyways oh shit Deku seems to have spotted something?? and he’s doing something weird with Blackwhip what

oh, he spotted her, I guess

lmaooooo

new favorite Deku panel right here. a masterpiece

oh my god you guys our little boy is starting to grow up before our eyes

you love to see it. and you can tell with those elipses that he’s gearing up to say something really cool and determined and badass like the shounen protag he is, yes please, Deku ilu so much please do your thing

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

IS THAT A TEENY TINY LIL EYE SPARKLE THERE OMG. still not anywhere close to his usual standard, but that’s some clear resolve there in his eyes there at long last! it always shines the most clearly when he’s being true to himself and his ideals, so I love that it finally shows up again here, when he’s reaffirming his resolve to help others no matter what

uh oh so what’s Lady going to do now

is it time for a trump card?? kinda sounding like it’s time for a trump card

???

I lied btw, this is my new favorite Deku panel. but anyways what is she up to now lol

ohhhhhh, lol

why does she seem shocked, lol. here I thought this was part of her plan, but apparently she forgot all about ol’ “Look Ma, No Hands” back up there

and so I guess that’s it for this week! so we’ve learned basically everything now about Lady and her quirk and her history with the HPSC and why she agreed to work for AFO. pretty much the only question that still remains is why the hell she decided to drag this asshole along for the ride! because I still cannot figure that out dsklkjlkf

(ETA: actually now I’m kind of wondering if they maybe have some past connection we don’t know about yet. when exactly was Nagant sent to Tartarus? is it possible she was ordered to track down and kill Overhaul at some point before that, but never got around to it? or something else along those lines? idk but now I’m curious.)

anyways Deku, I know that your empathy has no bounds and that you’re on a “saving villains” kick right now, and good on you... but also, if you decide to just like, skip all of that shit just this once, absolutely no one will hold it against you, I’m just saying. just, all I’m asking here is maybe let’s think twice before we start trying to reform guys who imprison and torture little girls for profit. I think maybe that’s a good place to draw the line. next week is going to be a very interesting chapter lol