#did they Know who they were dealing with

[ollie-jpg]

LISTEN. i would like to talk about the fact that there were two gods when the series started. just two gods. mianite and dianite. light and dark. order and chaos. god and his devil. then. somehow. this stranger just appears out of thin air, (which by itself is soooo magic coded) and is hesitant to take sides because something doesn't feel right. there HAS to be more than this. there's always been more than this. and maybe it started in this world but she's always existed, and it was his fault it was his doing. and maybe she lives in this world and dies in the next or maybe she's evil instead of neutral but one thing remains the same and that is that he created her with nothing but a single sentence spoken aloud. he altered reality, changed the entire course of the universe, past, present, and future, just by saying Maybe i dont want this. maybe there is more here, and it is missing.

the manifestation of that power is so prevalent during the entire series too? why else would the god of chaos himself want you on his side. why would the god of chaos want you on his team if you were not otherworldly and insanely powerful. why would the universe target you in every battle wrought against you and yours. why would a king try to gain your allegiance and loyalty if not for your unnatural abilities. why would a supreme being work so hard to eliminate everything you created and then some if you were not a substantial threat to their power. why would you be possessed and lured to the dark if you didnt have a desirable trait or two that an evil entity might want to have in their grasp. what good is a normal being to a god.

jordan's mianite character is the MOST god coded character in the entire series aside from the gods themselves. its so subtle. so so subtle. but its also right there in your fucking face. his very existence and prevalence in the storyline just SCREAMS godhood.

#im gonna lose my mind my brain is in overdrive right now #i want you on my team i will get you on my team.... #do you think the gods were aware of what he created #did they Know jordan changed the fabric of the entire world with just his words #did they Know who they were dealing with #mianite #ollie talks

[mikakuna]

the absolute horror and offence in his face at alfred taking away his dinner is perfectly captured

#ok now let's get sad: jason has food issues from his time on the streets so he doesn't deal well with food being taken from him #he initially thinks he did something wrong and that's why alfred is taking away his food #anyways #i just know as a kid jason couldn't control his facial expressions #he doesn't have to say a single word for everyone to know what he's thinking #if he's pissed at you trust you will know #he gives the best stink eye #the first time jason made an exaggerated facial expression bruce has the laugh of his life #who is this sassy child #for context: the bat logo lit up in the sky when they were just about to eat dinner #jason todd #red hood #batman #alfred pennyworth #second robin #robin ii #robin jason todd #dc #dc comics

[20001541]

I wish the anime hadn't cut this part out. It really highlights how afo presented himself as a savior to those who felt lost during the dawn of quirks which was how he was able to get such a huge following.

we see him do that during present day too as we see how he exploits those, particularly children, who society forgot about by taking them in and caring for them so they'll remain grateful and loyal to him.

#something something about a41 presenting himself as a messiah I'll get into that in an ask #a41 did so well during the dawn of quirks because there were so many lost people who were looking for someone to bring order #which he then took advantage of #a41 works best when dealing with those who have nowhere to go and are struggling as they're easy for him to exploit #and a41 knows exactly how it feels to be forgotten by society and left to fend for himself with no hope so he just tells them what he wante #to hear as a kid so they'll latch onto him #tbh I wouldn't be surprised if machia had some sad meow meow backstory that caused him to fall for a41 so hard #anyways the point is it sucks the anime took this part out #don't even get me started about how they removed his coat when he was walking among his followers either 😑

[skunkes]

i have soooo much more i cld say abt him, and have explored more thru other doodles, but quick summary of talon's whole deal, which is subject to change still as he's only almost 2 yrs old as an oc

#oc text #obvs sparse description of the events bc i dont mean for it to be gratuitous #even if i decided to explore it further in some medium the focus wouldnt be gratuitous ykwim #not that there werent awful stuff within that but my focus with talon is also more exploration of like #even stuff that isnt a big deal (which it wasnt at first) can effect someone greatly #and then once it does get a bit worse the focus is still more on the effects of how he views himself and the aftermath #AS WELL AS LIKE. well. did i do this to myself? i went back. do i deserve this? #he's a lot like me and the reason i like the self insert dynamic is bc he thinks of cheye as Me If It Didnt All Go Horribly #bc ive not gone thru the Extreme but i have had interactions with ppl who very enthusiastically thought i was ummmm underage!!! #while they were already being creepy toward me and making me nervous abt my safety ! #so this isnt ''he's umm 400 but looks 12 bc i want to do weird shit with him 😏'' dude drawing him Fed makes me so sad sometimes... #we're also weird eating buddies <3 #and grief buddies <3 he actually further spawned out of my need to deal with a lot of family members passing away in such a short time #severe death phobia buddies... #i still dont know how he really feels about his Old Wrinkly Form btw all i know is he feels safe in it #as much as id love to sway toward ''he thinks he's hot like that. because he is.'' i also dont want to convey the wrong message wrt this #form being due to....disordered eating caused by Issues. ykwim #though! he can shapeshift quite well when he's fed and maybe he'd choose that form willingly if he ever got. Past everything #he does hate that he never gets to actually age...! he wishes he cld age normally like a mortal...(still scared of dying though) #but we cant knoww for certain yet ykwim. maybe he'll let me know soon. #my issue with talon other than i suck at plots is well he has too many of my issues. and. idk how to solve them. #he's growing with me. #oh and have we noticed he's mean to me when *im* being mean to me...MANY such metaphors #ok goodnite

[lord-squiggletits]

"IDW Megatron got a redemption arc and Starscream didn't it's so unfair--"

Do not slander Metalhawk, Bumblebee, and Windblade's hard work trying to fix this man they didn't work for half the continuity (and in 2/3 of their cases) literally die and come back as zombies/ghosts for y'all to be out there saying no one helped Starscream get redeemed and have friends and be a better person

#squiggposting #i'm so fucking confused why people keep saying this honestly #'M got a redemption so why can't SS' HE LITERALLY DID LIKE HE LITERALLY DID #this was the subject of most of his character development in exrid/op and wb/taao did you just not see it? #i don't get it bc like. even if you try to argue that M got to have friends and validation and shit. so did SS #SS lost his power and then died saving the world at the end #M also lost all his power and prestige and then went to his execution at the end #STRICTLY IN TERMS OF IDW1 they literally both got redeemed idk why ppl are piss fighting about this #and i would expect ppl who are SS fans to like. BE AWARE OF all the story content he got in idw1 #mscott clearly liked SS based on how she made him so sympathetic (even dealing with his M related trauma!) #barber said via word of god once that SS is his favorite decepticon #you literally can't even claim that the writers were just biased against him #i dont get it. like of all ppl to know all of SS's lore i would expect SS fans to be the one to know it #is it bc their hateboner for mscott and non-reading of barber is just that strong? i dont get it

[joeythefrog]

Race: one time someone dislocated on stage and I held my pose perfectly still for thirteen minutes instead of helping or comforting her, so that is evidence that I can stand still Davey: oh god was she okay Race: ...I don't remember Race: meet the plastics except I'm just playing all the parts Spot: that sounds like when I slept over at your place Race: and that was the best night of your life Davey: every day our cast re-creates cowboy battles. Every day I hate them more Race: I'M A MAN, I FEEL THE TESTOSTERONE FLOWING, I WANNA GO TO WAR, I WANT A LIGHTSABER Albert: he's just a baby, get him a lightsaber Spot: I love getting to sit down inbetween scenes offstage or in the audience while we block because Race is never technically offstage for longer than a minute but he's not in a lot of scenes so he just sits backstage alone and I get to laugh

Jack: oh what a man what a man what a man what a mighty good man Davey: do you have to be in your underwear and dancing to paint the set Jack: yes, it's a crucial part of my process, Dave

#they're so silly #and the girl did infact dislocate her knee while I held my pose clutching my script and looking straight ahead while she howled and screame #whole lotta crying and I'm just a man who doesn't know how to deal #she's fine though there were other people who helped #newsies #racetrack higgins #spot conlon #jack kelly #david jacobs #newsies fandom #sprace #javid #newsies broadway #newsies musical #newsies live #1992sies #livesies

[e-adlirez]

So this scene in Cloud Castle exists

I love how Will’s answer for “why aren’t you seeing your nightmares in this place specifically designed to show you your nightmares” is “I go to therapy”

#geronimo stilton #thea stilton #thea sisters #one thing that either didn’t translate well or age well is how will gets thea to calm down #like he just says “concentrate” which #lord (and all people who deal with anxiety) knows how well that works #“try to concentrate” on WHAT the fact that MY WORST NIGHTMARE’S RIGHT THERE?? #also we never get the girls’ nightmares and what they were like smh #all we know is that vi was so scared she was reaching out to hold thea’s hand the moment she found her #so like #what did they SEE edipiemme #what did they SEE huh ‘:/

[pherre]

thinking about it, apollo might be the only defense attorney in the ace attorney franchise who became a lawyer to actually be a lawyer, which explains a lot about him

#mia wanted to expose redd white #phoenix wanted to find edgeworth #edgeworth got pressured into being a prosecutor by von karma #franziska wanted to prove herself to her father #diego probably actually did want to be a lawyer for the sake of it but godot had a revenge mission of whatever #klavier does it as a side gig #kristoph just wants power #seb did it to impress his dad #athena wanted to save simon #i don't know what simon's deal is tbh #or anyone in aa6 for that matter but none of their reasons for practicing law are normal #asougi did it to find the truth about his dad #ryuu did it for asougi #barok's reasons were probably initially normal but then his brother died 😔✊ #and this leaves klimt grossberg and apollo. lol #out of all the defense attorneys apollo DEFINITELY is the only one who actually just wanted to be a lawyer #aa #unless i'm forgetting a detail from one of his 10 thousand backstories #WAIT i forgot about whatshisname from aai2. we don't really know what his deal is though either

[remyfire]

#sorry i just love him and i love that they packed so much fucking character in a three-second segment #we know sam has resided in california which is very interesting if he was there during wwii #the question is did he just live in the bay area or did he actually attend uc berkeley for any reason #was he TEACHING at uc berkeley and this was one of his students #i love that he has close relationships with people there who were little when he knew them but have grown up now #and i love that he doesn't even flinch when using yiddish which suggests to me that he was in some form or fashion #involved in or rubbed shoulders comfortably with the jewish community there #also that he just fucking showed up with a salami as what like a gift to the co for inviting him? #sam i want five million episodes with you in them #you fascinate me and i also want to write five million fics with you in the center of them #trapper john mcintyre #sam pak #m*a*s*h #deal me out #s2e13 #mashposting #mashblogging

[skullsandcorals]

https://www.tumblr.com/skullsandcorals/738285799236321280/im-dyslexic-im-not-stupid

1. Holy shit I am so happy I found another person who gets how smart Percy is, and gets that every instance of Percy looking/getting called stupid is due to his dyslexia or people not telling him anything.

2. Which book/chapter is this from? I need to bookmark it ASAP and start shouting it from the metaphorical tumblr hills.

3. We really don't talk about how good a mom Sally is? Like yeah she's badass and gentle but like. She respects Percy. When the school system failed Percy, she's the one who still not only believed that he was smart but still acted like it and probably taught him too. Queen mom Sally Jackson right there.

1.) YEAHH EXACTLY. Or his ADHD 😭 It drives me NUTS whenever Percy is treated as the dumb + comedic guy. Like I get what they're saying and why they're saying it, but sometimes his character gets reduced to JUST that and it hurts my soul. I get that he's funny as a narrator and as a character and sometimes he can be a little "clueless" but it just feels like some people like to think of that as either all he is or a huge part of who he is. I believe I've also seen Leo get this treatment despite literally being insanely smart at such a young age so. that's...fun. They can be funny and smart too 😞

2.) It's from the 10th Anniversary edition of The Lightning Thief! It's Rick's cover letter for the first readers of the manuscript & a note from the narrator. I don't have a copy of that edition myself, but I've seen some pictures of it on Rick's blog and someone posted one of the pages on Reddit (where I got it from).

Here's the full page from Reddit (source) & the picture from Rick's blog where the page is visible (source):

3.) YEEEAHHHH I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!! What I would do to get adopted by her rn. The way she talks to him makes me kinda teary-eyed because she's just so...you can just tell how much she loves Percy and that she would do anything to make sure he grew up resilient and kind in a world that's always out to get him. She believes in him so much that it just makes me lose my mind a little. It's just so sweet and I can't help but feel so moved by it.

I'm not sure if you've read Chalice of the Gods, but there's this scene where (spoilers, kinda) Sally talks to Percy after the whole thing with Hebe and honestly this scene makes me want to sob and cry and weep

“You are a lot of things, Percy. But helpless isn't one of them.”

#personal mail ♡ #long post #pjo/hoo #percy jackson #sally jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #the lightning thief #chalice of the gods #don't get me wrong tho. i know percy can and had acted clueless or oblivious or whatever. #but my gods. at least think about it for a hot second. #adhd + dyslexia + people just not telling him shit + other characters treating him like he's stupid + gods know what else #i wouldn't have said anything if they were just talking about the book #and about that one specific scene where percy called his teacher an old sot #because he did admit he did not know what the hell that meant. #but c'mon :/. percy will say anything relatively smart and people will discredit the shit out of his intelligence and knowledge 💀 #has acted*** just ignore any typos I'm sorry 😭 #the impertinent thing isn't even that big of a deal 😭 it's like...one relatively “big” word. but gods forbid right 💀 #but anyway I love sally she's great and awesome and no she is not perfect but she sure tries her damn best to be who Percy needs her to be

[sonknuxadow]

just opened sonic forces speed battle to see if they did it again. They did it again

#they did this last year too btw thats why im saying they did it again #the way they made them the valentines deal and then were like Nooo theyre best freinds actually. Galentines offer #or maybe its an actual intentional reference to the ship and they just put galentines on it #sobthey could go Nooo theyre totally just besties if the higher ups said anything about it . like the idw team does. who knows

[paperlovesadness]

I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying anything.

All I'm saying is:

-> 2007 french-countryside-shritless-bike rides-summer happened. (And then lots of making love eyes)

-> (then possibly along with their TLSP times ending they put a stop to not just the gigs... But maybe other ✨developments✨ too 👀)

-> But then? 2015 recording-of-their-second-album and moving-in-next-to-each-other-being-glued-together happened (resulting in even more of the love eyes)

And we got this:

And possibly this:

And then a lot of unknown things happened. (Possibly potential ✨developments✨ being stopped part 2.)

And in 2022 we got this:

That's all I'm saying.

#okay so now that were in the privacy of the tags I can reveal that I am in fact saying a lot of things #but mostly..... #like they've got something special going on since the very day they met. we agree about that; #but then those two TLSP eras were just... so much more intense #so... did something happen during those? did they try twice and didn't end up figuring out how to work shit out? who knows who knows. #also #while writing this unhinged post I ran into the realization that if we stuck to this pattern it would mean recording tlsp3 THIS YEAR. #and if we're being pattern-strict #THIS SUMMER #and I can't quite deal with that image #// #my posts #lyrics theories #lyric parallels

[doctorwhoisadhd]

hmm thinking about the idea of love songs. i think the idea of what a love song is that we have in our culture is inherently a little bit flawed because we have the idea that any song written about romantic feelings is a love song and im thinking thats not exactly true because there is a difference between "romance" and "love". what i'm saying is not that love is a broader category and applies to things that are not romantic in nature. this is in fact true, but it's not what makes the important distinction here. the true distinction between "romance" and "love" is that romance is a societally defined type of interest in another person, whereas love is, essentially, a promise that you make when you build a relationship.

as such, what i call "love" here might be better defined as "care", as that implies more time and effort, but that's a different suitcase to unpack and largely unimportant to my point here, which is more about the societal conventions of what we call love songs. the point is, relationships can be built with other people, yes, but also animals, places, organizations, ideas, so on and so on, whereas romance requires another person, hence the difference between the ideas of "romance" and "love".

with that in mind, there are two types of songs we in western, english speaking, society call "love songs":

1) songs that are about a person's romantic interest in someone that is either definitively known to be unrequited (existing monogamous relationship, sexuality that doesn't align, etc) or simply not requited (aka romantic interest being unknown); and

2) songs about an existing relationship (keeping in mind my points about relationships not just being with people, but also places, things, etcetera) as is.

(some examples of the latter category: mountaintop by relient k, which defines the relationship in question as non-romantic; or i miss my mum by cavetown, which is - as the title implies - a song about the singer missing their mother.)

now, the thing that makes distinguishing these two difficult is the fact that songs about an existing relationship CAN be about wanting certain aspects of that relationship to change. in these cases, determining that a song is one or the other will hinge either on a) authorial intent or b) whether the song is more about what the singer wants (thereby implying #1) or the lack thereof in that relationship (which would imply #2).

to get back to the subject at hand: the term "love song", as we think of it, is an umbrella term that include both of these two categories, and i think that perhaps it is reductive to do so. with that in mind, i think perhaps it would be more appropriate for "love song" to mean only the latter, whereas the former is a category of its own. WHICH is not to say that the two can't overlap — just that if a song is about a person with whom the singer has no relationship, it cannot be considered a love song due to the fact that it is a song about infatuation, not love.

(another interesting wrinkle this provides is the fact that a song might start out in the first category and, as the writer develops a relationship with a person, might move into the second category as they write more.)

#anyway. just some of my thoughts on this as an aromantic songwriter #ari opinion hour #this goes a good deal to reconcile my constant writing of love songs with the fact that none of them are romantic #which im fine with as long as im keeping them to myself but it DOES feel dishonest when i hide that theyre love songs. #however this did also go some way to convince me that maybe care songs is an alternative that i SHOULD use because it is more applicable to #me than the concept of love which MOST people do not have the same perspective on as i do and having different definitions of the same word #is an important barrier to consider in communication #i will admit i do think im clinging to my care songs being love songs due to my relationship with an organization to which love is very #important as i dont want to go back on my promises to that organization as it IS very important to me #anyway. can you tell ive been reading house of leaves by the fact that this appeared fully fledged in my head in fully academic language #but for real like thinking about it now and even my old love songs like most would probably think to see them that they would go in the #first category and they just. DO NOT. at least not the ones that were written after i was like Yeah im aro again #its interesting the ones i wrote in the brief period where i thought i WASNT aro in like mid hs those i WOULD put in the first category #even though like i do NOT think i was right about it being romantic #but the ones after i was like Yea im aro again are like. Thats definitely the latter #part of it is i did find a voice that was like genuinely Mine and wasnt just writing sort of generic love songs #love songs in the typical usage i mean so they were really more infatuation songs #but like i was still with the last person irl who i wrote these about divorced from like... my aroness because of how much i liked him #and i would still put those in the second category #so part of it is awareness as well #so. yeah. its interesting #i probably should just suck it up and start calling them care songs. even if people dont know what i mean to say that

[presiding]

formerly an essay in tags but - billie lurk. half-nameless, misremembered woman. her powers derived from the things taken from her, without any catharsis or empowerment. the rat charm, tied with deidre's hair, her lover's voice in the mouth of rats. her arm and eye, taken, given back only to cause her chronic pain, then lost again. foresight seems a cruel gift for a woman who botched the timing of her takeover of the whalers, and bet wrong when it came to delilah.

she never bore the outsider's blessing; his first visit to her was more like an assault. every other dishonored POV character gets the choice to be selfish, and for that selfishness to mean something, but billie's actions have no effect on the world at large, either, in a game without a chaos system.

some say that corvo is the ghost, but he can reach out and change things. billie's buried herself twice and come back and nothing she does seems to matter - she is less a protagonist, more a convenient full stop in the narrative.

try this: open doto, start a new game. sit in her cabin. notice how little of billie there is. even the woman she loved more than anyone has the face of another named character.

she sits amongst the assets of other games: empty canvases and a dressmaker's mannequin that wears nothing.

#billie lurk #even the wiki is wrong about her its infuriating #pulled this out of tags because fuck it #in daud's DLCs even the stories that weren't about him were about him #but billie's stories are the scrapheap. they're the stuff they couldn't squeeze in elsewhere. cheap jokes and macguffins #i'm not even roasting the devs for this i think releasing dishonored in 2016 then DotO in 2017 was a feat (derogatory) #games should be made slowly and with love #and i know that everyones talked about this endlessly #but billie is my fav and it sucks that she got a game that only causes me to grieve for her as a character #not FOR her as a person #only the potential story that never was. that she never got. #you can have your strong black woman and not turn her into a trope. give her depth and range and heartache and agency. yes there was traged #but how did it SHAPE her? #dont get me started on her being designated caretaker of a former god and dying assassin. what the fuck #some of this i'd be more okay with if she was younger - i mean. the blank canvases? really? #this game could have been about wyman and there's not that much that would have changed in terms of the core story #“found out the asshole that killed your mother is still around. gonna go deal with that.” #emily who is stoned: “cool.bring me snacks on the way back” #wyman: “oh he's saying actually it was gods fault and that its possible to kill him. well i have literally nothing in my schedule” #billie's not surprised by anything anymore but maybe wyman would freak out over most of it. could have been a lot of fun #also you cant fuck up wymans characterisation. they barely exist. #local empress sends her enby girlboyfriend to kill god #pres writes increasingly deranged essays in the tags #death of the outsider spoilers #i have to complain about doto once every year or so or i die #but i'm not really gonna let arkane hide behind dev excuses when it comes to racism like. its not enough

[relicsongmel]

Was doing some thinking today and realized that one of the reasons I'm really drawn to Kieran is because he's a rare example of a character that's shy (and usually good-hearted) but still has some rougher edges to him.

I feel like all too often shy characters are shoved into being portrayed as either "smol bean who would never hurt anyone and just wants friends uwu" or "brooding loner who snaps at people to cover up the fact they don't actually know how to socialize" with not a lot of wiggle room in between. While I can and do enjoy characters that (arguably) fall into those respective categories, they're a bit reductive in the sense that things are very rarely that black and white in reality. Even the kindest people have a limit to what they can tolerate. They have bad days or respond poorly to events around them that cause them stress. And the same can be said in reverse as well—point being, people are multifaceted and don't always behave as predictably as we'd like to think.

And I think Kieran reflects that dichotomy perfectly. When we first meet him, he's meek, timid, and relies heavily on his more brash and forceful older sister to help him navigate social situations where he would otherwise lose out on something valuable because he's too afraid to come forward and ask for what he wants (like how she has to ask the player to battle him on his behalf). He's often quick to cower whenever she starts to get heated, but he's also not afraid to point out when he thinks she's wrong and sometimes even gets sassy with her himself. He's undeniably sweet and gentle and shows eagerness to make friends with the player, but he becomes much more curt when he notices we're lying to him about Ogerpon. The rest of the Teal Mask storyline shows him fluctuating even further—yelling at Carmine and the player for keeping secrets from him, punching things in fits of anger...then backpedaling and apologizing for the trouble he caused a few scenes later. Spreading the truth about Ogerpon to everyone in the village to help make her happy...then selfishly demanding a battle to see who's worthy of being her Trainer when she has already clearly chosen the player.

After being lied to and suffering repeated losses at our hands (including the Pokemon he's idolized all his life choosing us over him), he leans even more heavily into his bitter side during the Indigo Disk—being cold and ruthless to pretty much everyone around him, but at the end of the day it's primarily overcompensation for what he perceives as his own personal weakness (because he's still just a kid trying to be taken seriously). He's shown to drop the act on multiple occasions—most notably when he's caught off guard by our appearance at Blueberry Academy and at a few points during the Area Zero expedition. He antagonizes the player up until the moment of his defeat and tries to catch and use Terapagos in a last-ditch moment of desperation that ends up going horribly wrong, but after everything resolves he's quick to admit his mistakes and asks the player for forgiveness and if they can still be friends. After the epilogue he's mostly back to his old self, but still seems to get worked up when provoked (e.g. when he yells at Drayton for refusing to stop calling him "ex-Champ" in one of their League Club Room interactions).

And I think this varied and sometimes contradictory behavior is precisely why Kieran is such a cohesive and believable character—because it shows how even kind, well-meaning people may have a hidden darker side that can show itself under the right circumstances. How they might let their insecurities get the better of them. How a shy, timid kid might not have the experience to know how to deal with sudden feelings of frustration and/or jealousy that are far too strong to keep to himself, so he lashes out as a result. How despite all this he remains kind, sensitive and loving at his core and shows willingness to learn from his mistakes. And that is what makes him so compelling to me.

#mel's musings #kieran #pokemon #all this to say i now have brainrot and you all are going to suffer for it #me: *sees any pokemon boy with attitude problems* son? son boy? he my son boy? ;_; #kieran is also. oddly relatable to me in a way #in the sense that i was a neurodivergent kid whose overstimulation issues among other things weren't taken seriously #and it made me really bitter and angry at both the people who caused them & the people that didn't know how to deal with me #i lashed out a lot back then. i yelled and hit and said things i didn't mean and lied so i could stay in control #and while i still think i deserved better than the shit the adults who were responsible for me put me through #i do regret a lot of what i did. and i try to make up for it by being as patient as i can with others #ALSO. oc tangent time. kieran and denise are very similar in this regard #dena felt a lack of control w/ her dad leaving but couldn't blame him bc then she'd have nowhere to vent her anger #but she's also too young and too hurt to blame herself. so she lashes out at her mom instead (granted. jen made some poor choices too) #but after her treasure hunt and her first trip into area zero she sees things in a different light and is able to reconcile with her #and that's the exact reason she's able to forgive kieran so quickly. bc she had been through a similar thing with jen #i am filled with a whole WHIRLWIND of ideas for my au denise and this cast are a match made in HEAVEN #forest for the tree #mel plays scarvi

[nostalgia-tblr]

one problem with getting into Fiction Franchises like, oh let's say the MCU, long after they started is that 1) there are things that refer back to things I don't know about and 2) i don't know what i don't know about, and in a way that latter is more of a problem at least for me.

i managed an episode of wandavision and was left thinking "this seems like it's good, but i have no clue what's going on here so it's not going to work for me is it?" and i am reliably told it's supposed to be Mysterious Mindfuckery but i, a noob, was unable to work out without external clarification what i wasn't supposed to know. if you see what i mean.

i notice the mcu movies (at least as it progresses?) don't have numbers on them, and we know when they're direct sequels because there's a subtitle. and if you come at these later you need to get a chart to work out whether you should watch thor: ragnarok before or after thor: the dark world. which is easily done if i am determined to get things in the right order, but any effort is too much for someone.

so while i am willing to consider the idea that the later mcu films/shows are just Less Good than the early ones (personally Doubt so far but I'm not opposed to the idea) it's very easy inside a fandom to lose sight of what your thing looks like to the casuals who make up most of an audience, and frankly the mcu is currently Very Large and confusing.

who are all these Mrs/Captain/Miss/etc Marvel ladies and which of them have already been in films I might or might not have seen? how many ant men are there prior to this one? am i supposed to know who the baddy in this or that film is? which of these side-characters are from something else?

doesn't-seem-related-but-it-is: i was surprised to discover that the general mcu fandom view of the loki series was not that it was some sort of AU situation that could be thought of an entirely separate from the main series of films. because that was pretty much why it was the one to hook me, i think - it explained the relevant backstory with clips and yet also this is a different loki so if i don't want to go and watch however many films he was in i don't have to. i would expect him to be to some extent "out of character" because it carefully explained to me that this is not really the same character as that identical guy with the same name who was in some number of films. there's a woman one and an alligator one but don't worry they're all from AUs anyway.

#that said i did actually assume the alligator was from a comic or somesuch thing #because richard e grant is CLEARLY wearing a comics costume of some sort despite me knowing nothing about comics #but it felt like if i didn't know that it'd be okay cos they're from some Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence thing anyway! #anyway it's very easy to discount the Noob Experience with anything but for older ongoing stories it's crucial to their future #for ex: i didn't know what an infinity stone was but i did get that they were A Big Deal and that the TVA had a silly number of them #idk how that scene worked if you did know but for me it was the right level of 'referring to a previous story' #and i have in the past year-and-a-bit come to terms with the fact that Proper Loki is not an alligator in ANY of the movies :( #thor ragnarok's also pretty noob-friendly from what i recall though it didnt lead to me looking into the rest of the marvelverse back then #hottest take: the problem facing tumblr loki fandom currently is that the newer things are NOT actually completely terrible #so they did bring in a newer audience who didn't know the older material and certainly didn't know The Tumblr Consensus on things #and as mentioned half of them came in via an AU so our perspective was different from the start #and then OH NO DISAGREEMENT AND CONFLICT ENSUES!!!!!! #mcu tag i guess