#whatever end of rant

[strangeswift]

Wait no I think I do like Eddie's character actually. I just don't like fanon Eddie. I was rewatching s4 scenes for writing purposes and I do like him. I just.. forgot.

[quillthrillswriting]

i'm sorry, but the atla fandom is the only place where i've ever seen people unironically use a 12 year old telling his friend that killing someone out of grief is maybe a rash decision and not healthy to argue that that same 12 year old is being controlling and is an unhealthy partner

you guys know that murder is like....a bad thing....right? especially for a 14 year old? you guys know that revenge murder isn't a healthy strategy? you guys know that anyone who would encourage that is probably actually the unhealthy one in that scenario...right??

[usercelestial]

okay but literally what if buck and tommy end up together? like what if we get to see them moving in together or saying i love you for the first time or getting engaged or getting married? what if we get to see buck having a husband? literally what then...

[delicatepointofview]

gonna have to deal with people missing the point of louis singing 1d songs in festivals... don't get me started on the other covers

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[muppetminge]

gd i get so fucking angry when i see crying about "boys are doing worse in school :(" being pulled up to look like a huge problem. you're not upset about boys doing 'badly' - you're upset about girls doing well. blaming it on the school system is so funny because tell me how the school system is suddenly modelled after the girls when we weren't even allowed in when the basis of the current system was being created lmao.

the difference between average grade by sex is about the same as the regional/geographic difference and it's less than the difference sorted by race/ethnicity (not even to mention the socioeconomic differences), yet these aren't the differences creating headlines every year. why?

because you find girls doing well wrong, like it's upsetting the natural order. you're hanging on to this idea that girls are stupid, yet when you're proved wrong you refuse to accept it, hanging on to an excuse of systematic differences that have to be solved now, because won't somebody please think of the poor boys :(

so we're looking at averages. here's the thing: those are never going to level out. we're always going to see one group being above/below others. you're just upset it's not in the "right" order.

the difference is smaller than you'd think, by the way. when i was in high school (non-us system, meaning voluntary/different kinds of secondary) we were 70 percent women. you know what else? the girls, in general, were working fucking hard. every single grade point they fucking earned. there's this story of girls' grades being inflated due to this and that, but all i've seen is boys getting grades for doing less - because they're outnumbered, the poor things, so it's obviously the teacher's job to support them, right? right??

even in trade school where we were a handful of girls per year, i saw nothing but the girls putting in their all and the boys showing up. sometimes. if they felt like it.

but it's a systemic problem, right? how else would girls be doing well? we've got to solve this, lest the boys get their egoes wounded by not placing in their 'natural' position. gd forbid we end up with an overweight of women professionals.

[butwhatifidothis]

I need the people who look at posts talking about Wyll's treatment in both the actual game and especially the fandom and respond with "but i don't like him and I think he's boring" to know that shutting the fuck up is 100% the better option 100% of the time. Him being the only origin character to not have at last 10 hours of content and the existence of mods that literally whitewash him and his dad - among everything else wrong with how Wyll is treated - are not suddenly okay because you, personally, as an individual, don't find him interesting, and your personal individual feelings about him are irrelevant to the issues surrounding his treatment in the bg3 community at large, so like. Stop barging in with your unwanted, unhelpful opinion

[nagitosstolenhand]

okay genuinely i hate the 'have eri or some other plot thing just de-age the league' solution to the lov as a plot point. like. did we even read the same manga. the whole POINT of the league is people forgetting or erasing them and the ways theyve suffered because of the hero system. literally erasing their entire lives all their suffering and all their joy to make them into cute innocent little kids is the exact OPPOSITE of what the ending of that arc should entail. and what about all the other people whove suffered because of the system? big sis magnes friend, all the ppl w mutant type quirks who rallied behind spinner, all the members of the MLA, and all the others we dont see, does eri just have to rewind all of them?? we don't need to reform the system we just need to use this literal child to reset everyone who we've made suffer back into small children so they dont stir up trouble for us anymore! sounds like a great plan! fucking hell

[noys-boise]

i think the most annoying part of amatonormativity is that not only do you NEED to feel love, and not only is there an order your relationships must follow (romantic/sexual partnership above all, then family, then friends) but the fact that other people HAVE to be your top priority. like even if you feel all kinds of attraction, if you dare put anything else above your relationships they consider you evil. god forbid you enjoy your hobbies more than being around your friends even though how much you care about something is completely outside of your control. it's the worst.

[flowersforfrancis]

I adore messy annotations.

A page suffocated by scrawls, scribbles, lines, arrows, circles, highlights, all near illegible. As though the reader couldn’t contain those thoughts. They were overpowered by emotions and ideas. A ruler-less underline because you read that quote and the pen couldn’t be in your hand any quicker. Scribbled sentences that require the book to be turned upside down or on its side to be read again. Exclamation marks, because you’re at loss for words and the author said it best. Books of mine start with ruled lines and perfect hand writing, but by the end are sometimes too messy to be reread. I find messy annotations the most beautiful, the most intimate.

[mallleus]

No one judge or hate me for what I’m about to say.

When I’m reading One piece fan fiction/headcannons about Zoro and they say he’s a bad dad or hates kids, I immediately stop reading and move on to the next fic/headcanon because I remember the water 7 filler arc and how he (begrudgingly yet caring) took care of the baby triplets and children when the big brother role was forced onto him. Like Zoro? Hating kids?

For me it’s a bad take but whatever you do you 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edit: “ You three sleep quietly now :) “

[epiphainie]

i genuinely do not care if the time jump between season 7 finale and season 8 premiere is like 6 months or a year or ten years or that bucktommy will have been dating for centuries in 8x04 or whatever. i dont care about in-show time, i care about the time i had them on screen and i will be pissed af if they move in together that early

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

I think one of the reasons why the theory that Arya will go away at the end of the story because she’s too far gone to assimilate back into society is so unconvincing is because she literally spends the latest two books (AFFC and ADWD) doing that very thing! Like her training hasn’t been about her being a reclusive murderous hermit. She literally spends the two books talking to people, making friends, integrating into new cultures. She’s around people all the damn time! And even if we bring up her ACOK and ASOS arcs which were rather dark in nature, she’s still around people interacting with them, still being a part of society (even if she’s quite low on the totem pole in those books).

Arya is a character who feels so strongly and whose arc is often dictated by how she interacts with the people around her. So to take that away from her is not only a bad understanding of her character arc (not to be condescending or anything), but it’s also not very satisfying as far as character/narrative progression goes. Because if the narrative has proven so far that even in her darkest moments, Arya can laugh and love and be such a passionate member of society, how then does it make sense for her to go away and be on her own?? How does that make sense when AFFC and ADWD prove that she still loves being around people?

[imminent-danger-came]

do you think the writers are being too slow revealing what happened with wukong and macaque? like should the full story been revealed in s4

That's very subjective!

For me personally, I'm totally fine with how it's played out. We get enough tidbits every season/developments with their dynamic that I'm pretty content. I also just think that when the time comes, how they choose to reveal that information to us (and especially to MK) will have optimal impact!

Idk, I just think it's going to work out you know

[reposhillo]

I'm going to say it

Even Bleach's rushed ending is a hundred times better than what Hori served us. Literally the whole themes that were set up earlier just crash and burn with this ending

[notsotoy]

the curse of being busy (and you can't draw your beloved)