OK AND ANOTHER THING
I have to give credit to Amen and Evthys’s enemies to lovers plot and Amen’s character. How many times have I read “it’s enemies to lovers” and it’s just two people who sorta hated each other but now it’s fine. How many times have I read “he’s brooding and bad and has done horrible things” but he also saves kittens from trees and helps orphans in his spare time?
Like she pulled no punches. Amen wants to kill Evthys, he thinks about it often. Evthys knows he will kill her, knows and loves him almost against her will anyway. They know what they are, they know they’re destined for tragedy but they can’t help themselves. That is what enemies to lovers should be.
And the follow through with Amen. She told us the man is a monster and the man is in fact a monster. He doesn’t have a heart of gold, he doesn’t secretly help orphans or donate money in his spare time. He is a hunter, a killer, and he does not pretend or act otherwise. He tortures and he kills and he isn’t kind about it even when she asks him to be. There’s no way to excuse his actions and there shouldn’t be. There should be no “but it’s ok because” — it’s not ok, it’s fucked, and that’s the point.
Their relationship is fucked, but it’s what enemies to lovers is supposed to be. He’s what a morally gray character is supposed to be. These are not supposed to be happy or kind things. In scn they’re not sugar coated in any way and that’s part of what makes it just so freaking good.
If you hate Amen, good you’re supposed to. If you love Amen anyway, good you’re supposed to. That’s the trap and tragedy of enemies to lovers—it’s a car crash you can’t look away from, because no matter how bad it gets you’re always hoping they survive. You’re always hoping that somehow all of this will end and they’ll be happy, no matter how unlikely that is.
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the fact of the matter is that given the current state of both the art industry and the legal landscape of copyright/ip law, there will not ever be legislation around AI image generation that restricts companies while benefiting independent artists. rather than pushing for formal legal weigh-ins on what does or does not qualify as theft by generative outputs (i still think there could be something to be said about what companies are legally allowed to input into their generative models) we really just need to continue to. well. use our brains.
i may be in the minority in that i believe there are plenty of ways to use generative models as a tool in your artistic process (rather than being a replacement for an artistic process) that doesn't infringe on the work or livelihood of your fellow artists. and rather than wasting energy on trying to shove this genie back into the bottle, which, will not ever happen, we should work on publicly discussing where these boundaries lie. and we should also, without question, continue giving major shit to companies who are using AI generated images to avoid paying artists.
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I’m like… already pissed at Yassop. Cuz like, we have no idea what he & Usopp’s relationship was before he left, if Usopp even remembers him or only has stories from his mother, but you just know, YOU KNOW that when they meet Yassop’s gonna be all like…
“Look at the man you’ve become, you’re a full grown warrior-of-the-sea now, I’m proud of you-blah blah blah” and pull that classic shitty- anime-dad-thing were he’s like ‘I left to make you stronger’ or whatever.
Or…
He’ll challenge Usopp to a sniper duel & when Usopp wins he’ll say all that…
…and ACT LIKE HE HAS THE RIGHT to make any sort of judgement about the aptitude of the son HE ABANDONED!
Cuz we all know that’s why he left, regardless of whatever circumstances. He saw the chance to go adventure on the sea & thought nothing of leaving his young son & dying wife behind.
I can only hope Usopp trademark integrity comes into play & he SMASHES HIS DEADBEAT DAD IN THE FACE and tells him off before challenging him to a sniper duel. (And here we find out the whole reason Usopp started sniping in the first place was so he could shoot Yassop in the face & balls repeatedly without mercy)
FUCK a tearful reunion & a heartfelt speach. I want some justified ass whooping!
Bonus: If Shanks tries to intervene & Luffy stops him because he knows this is the way it should go down.
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a very quick doodle of my main charr, Taistel the Unforgiving, which got me thinking about her and her frozen heart, and how delighted i was to discover the frost legion for the first time
some ramblings underway (its a bit long. whoops!)...
taistel was the second character i ever made on gw2, and was my gateway into the charr themselves. she's a blood legion order of whispers combo, so she's a bloodthirsty warrior with the open nature of a stuck glue jar. i didn't dabble with the idea of her being ice themed until way later, but it seemed to fit her pretty well. the idea of her being like ice, cold and frigid and certainly deadly when you aren't careful around it. the cold is often described as fierce, and blizzards are unruly and unforgiving (much like her name!). it all tied in so well with her.
(an old image. i loved taking pictures of her in frostgorge)
the juxtaposition of her being a guardian sat very well in my head. guardians of course have means to protect, but she isn't protecting others by any means. her selfish, guarded and frankly quite nasty nature shined through all these little tidbits of storytelling that really just told themselves as i played the game. something clearly happened to her that really was so unforgiving that it twisted her deeply, her mentality driven to this state of being constantly on the attack (or in this case, on the defense. haha).
then HoT dropped, and i classed her into a DH, which i still can't quite let go of (im sure firebrand is better in some respects, but boy do i love smacking buttons and doing instant damage)
dragonhunter has a bit of a ring to it. in her story i had so far, she was friends with my main commander and his funny rat-tag group of friends in their in-canon guild known as Vagabond's Trek. now my commander is a sylvari dude, chipper guy who's a bit goofy. Taistel herself isn't easy to win over, but when faced with an idiot who dives into danger head first and comes back with trauma and a funny quip to go with it, it's hard not to want to see him a little safe. my hardened characters can have a soft spot as a treat.
so when the threat of mordremoth comes about... becoming a dragonhunter feels like a direct threat toward the threat itself. its like a command, a promise, a sworn seal of vengeance for corrupting (or, attemtping to corrupt) a friend. ice burns arent common, i dont think, but boy would she burn the jungle to its knees if it came to it. kill the pest and torch its house, so what if the pest is a dragon?
PoF brought its own issues and problems, of course, but man. the icebrood saga. mordremoth and kralk were easy to mash like mincemeat
but jormag would have been a real problem for her.
(i wish i had this permanent infusion in the game ): its so cool)
whipsers and promises of power and glory must be like gold candy for charr. whispers of protection for people you care for would have been exactly what taistel would have wanted to hear. nevermind that her friend had already nearly fallen to corruption, this was different, you see. for her whole life she knew that slithers of ice could cut the skin and make you bleed out, chunks of ice could bludgeon you and leave you concussed...
but jormag's ice could fortify and could protect. what a wonderful change of pace that would be, to go from this ferocious, deadly weapon to the protector she always could have been. an actual, true guardian, one that could live up to the name of the class she picked up as a young cub. well, it would have been perfect! it would have been the perfect path for her to follow. her vision of ideal couldn't have been colder, couldn't have been more perfect. the dragons claws were at her shoulders...
but of course, we all know how that eventually turns out for the other charr, like the unfortunate ryland. its a good job she had people to fall back on when it all fell apart. so much shame she would have felt after that. so many allies she had slain in the process, too. (the cache champs being charr you met along the way still pulls at my heart tbh...)
... but anyway, i just love how some of the stories in this game tell themselves. its easily why ive been playing it for so damn long.
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Every day I see someone on here asking how much cannibalism is too much for a sympathetic character and being told across the board that any cannibalism is too much, and I see people doing their literary analysis hinging on the unexamined prejudice that cannibalism is some kind of unforgivable crime and any character that does it is unequivocally evil and was probably born evil and IDK
LotRO recently introduced a character who has very definitely canonically eaten several people and IDK about everyone else but my reaction was, "Well, all things considered that seems like a normal reaction." This is not a villain BTW
Anyway point is it's all in how you sell it
Also I really wish more people writing literary analysis would examine this assumption they have that cannibalism is like the one Unforgivable Sin
DISCLAIMER because I've been on this hellsite long enough: everything I just said applies to fictional characters ONLY I do not condone eating people in real life
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Soo tempted to get to working on that Fyozai reverse soulmates AU...
And after seeing that reverse tropes list a while back, I'm thinking along with Fyodor's real ability, not only they could be soulmates destined to hate/kill each other, but an ending where Dazai dies by other means and in this AU, if one half of a soulmate pairing dies, the other person dies as well.
Fyodor's ability not only means he's cursed to outlive all his soulmates as they die over and over, but Fyodor ends up reincarnating as them
How many deaths of a 'loved one' can one man withstand before he snaps?
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