#it's more canon than the watchers are honestly

[seawitchkaraoke]

Y'all arguing over whether real life SMP is canon or not, methinks y'all don't know what the word canon means

#real life smp #life series #trafficblr #it's more canon than the watchers are honestly #bc they're just canon for martyn anyone else at most references them #this is like asking wether a football match is canon. well did it happen? yes? it's canon then #anyway i know what y'all mean (whether you want to include it for lore and stats and such) #but that's all fanon. or just personal headcanons... so really entirely up to you to include it or not

[burst-of-iridescent]

Time after time, the official ATLA community on YouTube conducts ship preference polls, and each time zutara loses to kataang and maiko with a crushing score (among Zuko's ships, zutara even lost to Zuko/Jin). Several hundred thousand people take part in the voting, that is, a huge part of the active ATLA fan base. zutara is really rapidly losing popularity.😭

i'm not trying to be mean or anything, but honestly... i don't care.

you have to remember that kat.aang, mai.ko, and even jinko all have the advantage of canonicity to some extent. casual watchers, people who've only seen a few episodes, childhood nostalgia... all of these play a key role in why many people prefer the canon ships to zutara. the average atla fan isn't doing deep dive meta analysis on tumblr, or watching sneezypeasy's 2h video on why zutara should have been canon (excellent watch by the way, highly recommend). they're just going to go along with what's given to them. it's not a reflection of how good or superior zutara is to have more people shipping them.

besides, shipping polls on youtube are hardly a reliable metric on which to judge zutara's popularity. zutara is the juggernaut ship of the atla fandom. this is the ship that invented ship weeks! the ship that inspired new york times bestselling novels. the atla ship with the highest number of fics on ao3, the ship beloved by almost all of the main cast and most of the writers, the ship that people still make art and stories and analysis and edits for more than fifteen years after it was supposed to have sunk.

and personally, that is what i'm here for. that is what keeps me shipping zuko and katara, and keeps me in this fandom. the community that it's created, and the people that it's inspired, and continues to inspire. that's what counts.

so yeah, kat.aang and mai.ko can keep their atla channel youtube polls lmao. zutara doesn't need it, not when we have everything that actually matters.

#zutara #anti kataang #anti maiko

[ammoniteflesh]

My pitch for how to fix btvs season 7 is that the Watcher's Council should've been the big bad.

It is absolutely ludicrous to me that even after s3, even after Helpless, the show cannot fully commit to the Watcher's Council being evil when they SO OBVIOUSLY ARE.

I am personally fully convinced that the Council were going to murder Faith - and I don't know how far that's canon or not but it should have been explicitly the case.

It's infinitely harder to imprison a Slayer indefinitely than to simply kill her and get a brand new impressionable one. And the Council probably wouldn't shed many tears over it - they strike me as the kind to feel very justified in doing so. It's for the good of humanity, after all. And I feel like that interacts so perfectly with Faith's own messed up lives saved vs lives taken arithmetic! It's difficult to justify that line of thinking when it's being applied to you.

It also leads into a better arc for Wesley. Because he's a naive idjit, I can see him calling the Watchers on Faith while fully believing they'll just. Imprison her indefinitely. And then being all 'oh no! D:' when he finds out they're going to kill her. And his stuff with Faith in Angel s1 is way more compelling as a result!

Fast forward to s7. We're deconstructing the Buffy mythos - the perfect way to do that is to have the Watchers Council actively trying to kill Buffy and Faith. Maybe they want to hit the reset button, maybe they've just decided Slayers as a whole are way too much trouble. It just makes so much more sense, thematically.

And you could totally still have the First! Maybe the Watchers Council can be the First's physical hands in the world instead of Caleb (because honestly, what the fuck were they trying to do with Caleb?). Maybe the First is the source of the Slayers' power. I don't know. The possibilities are endless.

#speak faust #btvs #btvs meta #does this count as meta? idk #I just know I have opinions

[coffeegnomee]

I read the Mering essay in the aftermath of ls Sunday, and the shift in the major conflict from what we saw in s4 with Vitalasy and Zam to this new tension with the new players and rp is so fascinating.

With the meeting on Monday, we saw a breakdown in composure from pb&j when the Players refused to show up to the anti-trapping box (so proud of the Players for finally putting their foot down). It was something that bothered me when I first watched it. 

They took such a small conflict, one that they have created for themselves with the arrow cannon (hello the consequences of your actions), and it was the most tense part of the entire meeting.

And it hit me that Minute&co see Lifesteal more as a recording server than a place of Play. Conversations about rules should be done non-canonically, behind the scenes, away from the cameras. But if they have to be in the script (“script”), everyone should show up so the recording can be pretty. 

We’ve seen this before. Conversations on motive shouldn’t be brought up over and over, pvp should be limited for ease of editing, conflicts like blowing up bases shouldn’t be done more than once so it doesn’t get repetitive.

But that’s not Lifesteal. It’s an unscripted free-for-all where every single player gets to have a say in what they themselves do, and it can be wildly unpredictable. The goal is to play, literally have creative fun, within that world and craft a conflict and story within that.

Ro’s line “I feel like- nah - I feel like it’s honestly cooler that like, now there’s no more higher power left. Like it’s down to the players, like this is a human story, not like a let’s get god to revive everyone” 

And Jumper claps back with “and then what do we get out of this”. 

Jumper is looking for a recording solution. Her recording has been messed up a Lot. Woogie, Vortex, Planet, and Terrain have all died. Zam and Mapic and Bacon have all died and now Pangi and Spoke are basically dead since they’re being possessed. 

This vision of a peaceful ending is gone. And pb&j Need a recording-server Kingsmp/Civ event-type plugin to add a revive beacon (something, can I say on the side, exists within Lifesteal already. But thanks to the presidency arc has been taken away. They could advocate for the complete removal of all presidential decisions and I would love that, to have a vanilla Lifesteal ending like season 3, but it is too late. But they do have 86-odd hearts. Reviving everyone would be trivially easy)

Or they could be moved by the narrative and see that the peaceful option? It was never possible on this server. But that's an rp solution soooo

(I love them anyway)

——-

Hey guys, I’ve been a vod-only watcher since the Eclipse betrayal, and I’m finally saying hello! Live streams are painful for me to watch since I’m a chronic pause-to-freak-out-about-the-lore-before-moving-on (or when I’m just deaf), so unfortunately I’ll probably never be in chat. 

But mer’s essay has actually reframed my entire mind about Lifesteal this season and I can actually enjoy watching this conflict unfold, all four days we have left of it, so, thank you Mer! 

#the season ended with Zam's death #and that's okay #lifesteal #lssmp #lifesteal smp

[coraniaid]

I really think Season 7 would have worked so much better if Kennedy was a Slayer from the start, not a Potential.

The show is already very clear that Kennedy is, narratively, the most important of the Potentials. She gets almost as much speaking time in Season 7 as all the other Potentials combined (as well as having far more speaking time and appearing in more episodes than Kendra ever did in Season 2).  She's the only one who has any meaningful connection to any other character in the show (except for, maybe, Amanda and Dawn).  The writing already positions her as the main voice of opposition to Buffy within the group -- she's already the one most likely to question what Buffy's doing and suggest she could do better -- so why not formalize that?  Put her on a more equal footing with Buffy to start with.  Make it credible that Kennedy really could take charge and ignore Buffy entirely. Make Kennedy the Slayer who was called when Buffy died at the end of "The Gift".  

Yes, I know that the official canon is that no Slayer was called when Buffy died for a second time because Faith was the "active" Slayer at this point, but I think it's important to note that that was only something the writers came up with between Season 5 and 6.  It didn't have to be that way: there's nothing at all in the show's lore to suggest it's canon before then, and in fact people in the show openly talk about Buffy's death possibly activating a new Slayer even after her first death in "Prophecy Girl". And even in Season 6, I don't think we're told definitively that a new Slayer wasn't called (and wouldn't a new Slayer explain why the Watcher's Council aren't around this season?).  If you look online, the writers were even being vague about Kendra's death calling a new Slayer during the Season 2/Season 3 gap: none of how this works was ever planned out in detail in advance.  More importantly, it's pretty central to the show's mythology that Buffy is "the" Slayer and "the" Chosen One, and it's honestly a pretty silly bit of worldbuilding to accidentally retcon that she was actually only the "real" Slayer for 12 episodes (or even for 56, if you further retcon that Willow's resurrection spell somehow made Buffy the unique active Slayer again).

The idea of Buffy's second death not calling a new Slayer was a mistake, in my opinion.  Yes, I get that they didn't want another Slayer showing up in Sunnydale in Season 6.  That wasn't part of the story that season was trying to tell.  But why would she have to?  The world's a big place, and until the last few episodes there's nothing particularly apocalyptic happening in Sunnydale that season.  Why couldn't you just have the new Slayer off somewhere else, minding her own business?  (In fact, if Faith is the only "active" Slayer, then not resurrecting Buffy means condemning the world to no new Slayer at all until Faith dies, which -- given where she is -- probably wouldn't happen for years if not decades.  It's much better, I think, for Buffy's friends to bring her back because they miss her than because the world objectively needs her to continue the Slayer line and the only other Slayer is serving time in prison for murder.)

And imagine how Season 7 plays out with Kennedy as a Slayer from the start.  The focus of a lot of the second half of the season is on Buffy teaching the Potentials how to fight, which is perfectly fine as a bit of symbolism and helps set up the events of “Chosen” but doesn't really make much sense in-universe.  Potentials just aren't meant to fight vampires. There's never been any indication in the show before this that that was a good idea.  "She alone can stand against the demons" and so on, not "she and a bunch of other people who don't have superpowers yet".  But make Kennedy a young Slayer -- one who's been prepared 'properly' by the Watchers' Council, taught to follow their rules and procedures, the way Kendra was, but who still lacks much practical experience -- and make the focus of the second half of the season be Buffy  (and Faith) trying to teach her what that means ... doesn't that work a lot better?

(And sure, I'd bring the rest of Potentials in a few episodes before “Chosen”, I'd still end the season the same way -- but we really didn't need to see quite as much of them, did we?  Let Robin and Kennedy be the big two new characters this season -- let them represent our links to the past and future of the Slayer line -- and don't let the show get overwhelmed by so many other new faces.)

Also, this would let my inner world-building-obsessed pedant stop asking how old Kennedy is meant to be, given that Season 3's “Helpless” establishes that every Slayer undergoes the Cruciamentum on their eighteenth birthday (something that can logically only happen if every Slayer is called at seventeen or younger).  Which is not at all a good reason in itself, but ... look, it does irritate me, I'd be lying if I said it didn't.  Why does this season include “Help”, an episode highlighting how weird it would be for any of the now adult cast to have a romantic relationship with a high school student, only to then pair WIllow off with a girl who -- by the established rules of the show's own world-building -- has to be younger than eighteen?  I mean, the answer is that the show largely pretends Kennedy is older than that, or doesn't address her age at all, but this does contradict what we're told in “Helpless”.

And it doesn't have to. There's an easy fix. I'm not saying that the show shouldn't have had Willow and Kennedy get together. I like Kennedy as a character. I just think she'd make a lot more sense -- both as a character in her own right, and in terms of her place in the broader narrative -- if she was a Slayer from the moment we met her.

#btvs

[charlizekkelly]

So you’re obviously a fan of the Lost Boys (same, same)

I’ve noticed it’s pretty common in the fandom that people believe Dwayne is the second in command to David… where do you think that stems from?

Because in the movie, it feels like the second position is more filled by Marko.

Marko is the one who’s always watching, Marko is quick to become an aggressor, Marko is the one David turns to first when asking for things (like the bridge scene “what’s going on?” And asking him to jump first.) Marko is the one who gave David the bottle for Michael. Marko is the one who tells Michael to not be afraid on the bridge.

There’s more examples and Dwayne is a silent watcher, so it also makes sense that he’s an enforcer for the pack. But I’m wondering where the fandom got the idea Dwayne was David’s second.

hiya,

I honestly think the fandom sees Dwayne as older—closer to David’s age—but I’ve seen head canons with Marko being older.

Honestly, I think Dwayne is that person who people underestimate so he’d be a force to reckon with when something urges him to act. I don’t know if it’s the silence or what, but it could be because he seems so docile. Observing rather than acting asap.

Marko *could* be a sort of decoy second in command, which would make sense on why the frog bros staked him (if they were that clued on, not “ooo, a vampire. let’s stab”). Think about, wouldn’t that be a smart ruse to protect the higher ups?

Honestly, David’s the obvious leader and I see Dwayne as his close confidant but all in all. They’re a tight knit group. David leads them, but they’re a well-oiled unit. They’re equals

#charlizekkelly’s chaos #charlizekkelly #charlizekkelly asks #the lost boys #the lost boys 1987 #paul the lost boys #david the lost boys #marko the lost boys #dwayne the lost boys #tlb

[nono-bunny]

You think the ATLA fandom would have done a better job writing the show?

Thanks for the ask!

Honestly? Absolutely not. Treating the ATLA fandom as one entity here is a bit of a misnomer here imo. When talking to @phoebester, I mentioned that I kinda feel like I'm more a part of the Zutara fandom rather than the general ATLA fandom- !nd that's for good reason! Zutara fans are inherently more critical because we like something that deviates from canon, and I find that the ATLA fandom are large much more closely matches the disposition of casual watchers, who maybe watch the show once and never think on it further- which is also a valid way to interact with media, it's just not my way, especially with media I find lacking in some way. ATLA is great overall, but it has some glaring flaws -some of which are more controversial than others- and I feel that only fans would really bother to ruminate on those in the way I find a lot of Zutarians do. I'm certain some Kataangers or fans of other ships also have issues with canon, but I feel that no one moreso than Zutara has such beef with it.

So if the question is simply about the fandom at large? No, that's unfeasible, a whole fandom can't write a cohesive story when it already has such huge disagreements about where canon ended up... But I gather that's not what you really meant, anyway. I have read fanfics that feel like they genuinely fixed a lot of the bad writing decisions of the show, but there are also many that made it very clear to me that not everyone necessarily understands/are capable of recognizing the core issues behind them, which makes it difficult to fix them. I've read fics retelling the whole story of the show that change one core thing, but fail to recognize that it would then mean that events don't happen in exactly the same way (Zuko joins early and Aang not being the Avatar are frequent offenders here). So like? At the end of the day, it once again comes to individual writers and their ability to write this story in a competent and engaging way- ATLA had good writers on board, which is why it succeeded despite Bryke being shit ones. I definitely believe that there are writers in the fandom that could've done a better job than Bryke, but like... At its core, the issue with them is about control and entitlement- they don't care about being the ones to put forth solid writing, and it shows. Quite frankly, under Bryke's supervision, no one could've made a better show than what we got, and as tragic as it is... Without them there would be no show, so this is all kind of a moot point in the end, unfortunately.

Also, to me "a better show" would've meant Aang getting completely rehauled, removed, or changed to a villain, and that's a bit of an extreme position because I know that plenty of people do enjoy at the very least season 1 and 2 Aang, but like... Yeah that's just not something I can vibe with anymore unfortunately, even if I tolerable him lol. I also believe in Azula redemption and that Aang should've killed Ozai, both of which are yet again controversial issues, so like.. What to me would be the perfect, most sensible version of show would really not jive with others, which is why a lot of different fics exist!

Adding this in immediately after posting: Also endgame Zutara but that's like. Literally my whole bread and butter so I forgot to add that because of how obvious it seemed to me

#avatar the last airbender #atla #anti kataang #anti aang #anti bryke #atla critical #zutara

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

What the Hell is Comms AU?!

Well first of all, Comms AU is a Hermitcraft fic I am writing. If you want to go into it blind, then the link is here!

[also, hey, if you like it, perhaps consider reblogging this post ;) ]

But if you'd like to know a little more before diving into it, I've decided to compile a fun little resource introducing the fic, its format, some of the most basic pieces of lore (so very mild spoilers, but it is stuff you would pick up on by chapter 3 or 4, honestly!) and a few tidbits about the characters. BELOW!

What the hell is Comms AU (For real this time)

I started Comms AU (full name INCOMING MESSAGE - COMM RECORDS) back in the middle of 2023, after reading some really great fics like the From The Archives series. It is a multiverse drama first and foremost, with elements of horror, betrayal, personal agency, and some religious themes [though the latter is mostly aesthetic]. There are also some comedic moments, and some sad moments. There's a lot of moments.

Comms AU follows five versions (universes) of Hermitcraft as they are all just kind of subjected to The Horrors. It is formatted as a series of transcripts recorded from different characters' communicator devices (or comms) which I imagine as sort of like sci-fi wrist watches with touchscreens and buttons. Though each universe could have slightly different models!

Formatting

As I mentioned, the fic is set out like a series of audio transcripts (though I kind of bend the rules to be honest, it can be read as if it is being played back as a recording), so the writing style is more like a script or screenplay than a standard prose piece. Your average chapter may look like this:

GRIAN: I'm saying a line now. SCAR: I'm also saying a line. [square brackets and italics to indicate a non-dialogue sound] GRIAN: Dang what was that?!

I also play around with writing out the communicator's 'screen' prompts such as its logging out message, 'call incoming' functions, etc. These I try to keep consistent between chapters, but I'm pretty sure I lost that consistency in a couple of places. Oops.

You may be wondering how you know which universe a certain scene is taking place in. It's quite simple, really! Each scene starts with a line of text like this:

[COMM RECORD: P#003]

The letter indicates the character whose comm we are listening/reading through (i.e., the perspective) while the number indicates what universe we are in [or what universe that character comes from, anyway...]. So the above example would be Pearl from universe three!

Lore?!

Okay this isn't really 'lore' as that would be total spoilers, but I want to talk about what kind of themes and things come up a lot in the fic - especially in terms of who is 'what'. For example, I've written Xisuma as a voidwalker, a type of end-hybrid which breathes better in thinner oxygen environments.

Scar and Cub are generally vexes, though there are differences between universes that become important later. Grian (at least, the times we see him) is a Watcher, and EvoSMP is canon [to some universes] but I try to explain everything within the fic itself so there shouldn't be too much confusion if you don't know much about all that.

Themes-wise, the fic revolves a lot around conversations and relationships between the characters, obviously. Words are very important, while actions must be left mostly implied through the audio medium. Characters aren't always reliable, and neither is sound. The fic takes a bit of digging and theorising to truly enjoy, but I am slowly revealing more and more as I write, so things will mostly get cleared up!

Also this fic mostly takes place in season 9, and there are references to season 9. There's some reference to season 8 too!

Characters

This is the important bit! I can't write all the hermits, obviously, as that would be too much to manage, so instead lets focus on the names that come up the most often:

Grian, Scar, Cub, Pearl, Xisuma, and Mumbo are probably the most 'recurring' characters, though Etho, Bdubs, and Cleo show up quite a bit especially towards the start.

[I am a Grian girlie and this is obvious from... everything about this fic, but I wouldn't say it is entirely about him! He does show up in most chapters though haha]

Relationships get a little complicated, due to the multiverse stuff, but I will say that there is mumscarian endgame because I love them. The actual 'romantic' side of things aren't that important, though, and most of the other relationships can be read kind of ambiguously. Just check the tags for more info!

It's still gay as hell but the multiverse horrors are more important, to be honest.

Or are they... ?!

YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO READ TO FIND OUT!

[psst, I also did some art, you can find it in my #comms au tag on my blog]

[psst psst, if you ever wanna message me, send an ask, or even make art (!!!!!!) to support this fic PLEASE feel free to do so. I love every comment, every ask, and all the bits of creative work people have made. REBLOG, COMMENT, GO CRAZY, ILY!!!!!]

#ben chats shit on the internet #comms au #hermitcraft #hermitblr #hermitshipping #hermitcraft fanfic #hermitcraft fic #hermitcraft s9

[concerning-everything]

Controversial Opinion

Caramel Arrow is not a proper character and y'all give her way too much credit.

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T HATE CARROW OR HER FANS I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKE HER AND I WISH SHE HAD MORE STORY BECAUSE MOST OF HER STORY BEATS ARE THERE TO FURTHER A MAN'S STORY

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CORRECT ME IF YOU DISAGREE BECAUSE I'D LOVVEE TO BE PROVEN WRONG ON THIS

I'm being so serious when I say this. Like she's not a character on the same caliber as most other people in the main story. She doesn't have a character arc, she doesn't even have a set up FOR a character arc. She's mostly there to serve exposition and world-build for the society of the Dark Cacao Kingdom. She has no character traits that don't relate to another character or aren't surface-level. What do we even know about her? She is loyal to the king and she likes boba (which she is made of so that doesn't count.) What else does she have character-wise? Anything even mildly implied in canon?

She cares for the villages outside of the citadel... But that was part of her job before Dark Cacao shut the gates.

She likes the wilderness or something, which was a bullshit excuse Dark Cacao gave for banishing her.

What was her relationship to Dark Choco? They trained together and she looked up to him. What was her relationship to Dark Cacao? She looks up to him as an inspiration because he was her ruler. What was her relationship with Affogato before he banished her? No fucking clue (because it doesn't add to his character).

How did she meet Dark Choco? How did she become a watcher in the first place? Why does she look up to Dark Cacao that much? How did she become first watcher? She was young when she joined the watchers officially, but do they mean young like 20 or young like 15?? And we know that she was training with the watchers for long before that, so exactly how long has she been here? What was her childhood like? Why does she care a lot about helping villagers, because that's her second character trait??

She isn't exactly like a CHARACTER character, and is honestly more of a plot-device than anything.

Let's compare Caramel Arrow to other characters, just for fun.

Black Raisin, another female character who helps our main characters and is an important character in an ancient hero's story.

Black Raisin loves raisins (which doesn't count) she's the leader of her village and cares deeply for the people within. She is quiet because she's the only real warrior in her village and always needs to stay on guard to protect them. In her task animations, she doesn't like doing things with food because her village didn't have much. She has a character arc in worlds 9-10, and further development after that in Cookie Odyssey also. Every one of her character traits has an explanation and every one of her relationships with another character has a justification in story.

Caramel Arrow, as I've just said, doesn't have any of that. She's a static character with a one-note personality.

That's not a fair comparison, you say. They're from whole different stories and that's not a good comparison because Caramel Arrow is fighting for screen time with more characters than Black Raisin, you say.

To that I say, fine, okay, that's fair. There is ANOTHER character in worlds 13-14 besides the main character (Dark Cacao) and guess what? He still gets more character development, screen time, and personality than Caramel Arrow!

Just looking at how much they talk/screen time first (All information taken from the CRK Wiki. The numbers are the cutscenes not the level you unlock them)

Affogato Cookie:

13-1: Ever Closed Gate (7 lines)

13-4: Lost In The Snow (3 lines)

13-7: There's Always A Way (5 Lines)

13-8: Fortifications And Fortifications (4 lines)

13-9: Affogato Cookie's Schemes (9 lines)

13-10: An Interesting Offer (12 lines)

13-11: This Way, My Lord (4 lines)

13-14: The Empty Throne (5 lines)

14-4: All Hail The New Ruler! (17 lines)

14-7: Affogato Cookie Shows His Power (11 lines)

14-8: Affogato Cookie's Defeat (11 lines)

Caramel Arrow Cookie:

13-4: Lost In The Snow (10 lines)

13-5: Snow Lion! Again?! (7 lines)

13-6: To The Black Citadel! (7 lines)

13-7: There's Always A Way (14 lines)

14-5: The King & The Arrow (13 lines)

14-6: Tomb Of Blades (10 lines)

14-8: Affogato Cookie's Defeat (3 lines)

14-9: Raging Storm (2 lines)

14-10: Father And Son (2 lines)

14-11: Belated Realization (3 lines)

14-12: Dawn Of Spring (3 lines)

14-13 Pure Vanilla Cookie's Letter (2 lines)

So, In total,

Affogato Cookie: 88 Lines

Caramel Arrow: 76 lines

and out of that, Carrow gets basically NPC'd after 14-6. She does basically nothing, says basically nothing, and while there's TONS of opportunity for her to do things, she gets totally sidelined. It almost feels as though Devsis wanted to make her chase after Affogato, but for some reason decided not to. She's a total wasted character, and honestly, if the stats haven't convinced you yet, I can go into the differences with how they're treated as characters.

Caramel Arrow and all her stories are put to the side in favor of Men. She's hardly her own character at this point, and if you look at her actual voice lines, she's hardly ever talking about herself or things that important to her. She has no genuine character flaws, no genuine character strengths, she has exactly 2 traits.

Hell, even the bond she's in doesn't give her more characterization. Carrow could have been a genuinely great character but they did nothing with her and it IRKS ME.

Sorry if this was incomprehensible, I didn't revise it. Please, please tell me if I'm wrong because I REALLY would rather me be wrong than Caramel Arrow be wasted like this.

#caramel arrow cookie #caramel arrow crk #dark cacao kingdom #black raisin crk #black raisin cookie #cookie run kingdom #cr kingdom #crk #cookie run #affogato cookie #crk affogato #long post #fandom discourse #anyway I also think she like. committed a micro aggression once but I might be reading that scene wrong

[browngurl99]

I think the biggest reason they tried to make Buddy Daddies as less Homo as possible is definitely because they wanted more people to watch this series. As the VAs said in an interview that "Men should watch this". They probably wanted to attract a larger audience, especially men. If they made Kazuki and Rei's relationship even a bit gay, they would lose so many watchers.

A large audience of Anime in general consists of Cis Heterosexual Men. These men won't watch anything that's even remotely gay. Why do you hear all these anime youtubers people never talk about Yuri on ice or Banana Fish? Both of these anime series are pretty popular. But they don't talk about it cuz they don't watch it. They know it's canonically queer and hence, they are never gonna watch it. They refuse that Ymir and Historia were in love. They hate on people who harmlessly ship characters of same gender. They say gay shippers ruin the fandom. Of course, they won't watch Buddy Daddies if it's even a little Homoerotic.

The fact that it's about two men raising a child is already a reason for many people to draw back from watching it. So, if it actually turned out to be a gay, so many of them will refuse to watch it. And that's why Rei and Kazuki acted like "just friends" in the timeskip even after all that happened when they were at The Suwa mansion. It's like that meme where a man uses tape to a fix a hole in a filled water tank. They love each other. They really do. But the creators had to prove that it's purely platonic. But on the other hand one of the producers keeps liking all the KazuRei shipping posts on twitter. Remember the rumor in Haikyuu fandom that one of the ships was going to become canon but due to homophobia, they weren't allowed to make it canon. That might be actually apply to buddy daddies in reality.

So, basically my point is: Miri commenting about Kazuki slipping out to go drinking with a girl and Rei n Kazuki being a little awkard at first when Miri was taking a family picture ; It was nothing more than a marketing strategy. They did it on purpose so the homophobic audience (or audience that just don't want to watch gay content) will still watch the show. They did it to assure that audience that it's not gay. They did it to relieve those "Thank God Buddy Daddies is not gay" kind of people.

Now, What they did was right or wrong, that's subjective. I personally kinda understand why they did this this. And Honestly, us as a fandom shouldn't just let a couple of scenes ruin KazuRei for us. I was actually kinda scared when I came across a time-skip spoiler before watching the episode. I was scared if they will show Kazuki and Rei having wives or something. But THIS is a lot better than that. And gay shippers have had worse than this. But that does not stop us from making all this amazing content about our favorite fictional pairing, does it? So, let's just not overthink it.

They look very happy in the picture. It's clear that they are comfortable with each other.

#long post #buddy daddies #kurusu kazuki #suwa rei #kazurei #reikazu

[fiapple]

i have a theory that whether or not a slayer dies a, as the show puts it, “human death,” impacts the slayer cycle, and that the creature-community is, at least to some extent, aware of this.

see, what got me thinking about this is that each time we see a slayer killed on screen, bar “the gift,” they are not killed by supernatural means. vampires repeatedly try to kill buffy through physical injury such as stabbing her with her own stake, or darla shooting at her. the master leaves her to drown. kendra has her throat slit. it’s implied that if killed by the vampire chasing her in “faith, hope, trick”, faith’s death would have been a result of brutal physical trauma rather than being fed upon. a majority of competitors in “homecoming” are human &/or planning to kill the slayers with human weaponry. faith tries to get angel to shoot, beat, or break body parts as a way to kill her. glory (a literal god) tries to physically beat buffy. the trio go after buffy using either a combination of magic & science so that buffy’s death is still a result of human biology, or through magical self-enhancement of physical strength. spike leaves the first slayer he kills to bleed out on the floor, & snaps nicki’s neck. the potentials die of blood loss &/or blunt force trauma, etc etc.

“the gift” is the only instance of slayer-death by non-human means. &, it’s worth noting, that by that point the slayer-cycle no longer runs through buffy.

in addition, though it may seem unrelated, there’s a very sparse amount of pre-abolition-of-the-slayer-cycle “slaypires”, mentioned in even comic canon- and that’s in spite of the facts that a) vampires are deeply bound to their sires, & b) the ability to do that to a slayer would earn a vamp serious respect…

this, to me, says that there is something different about when a slayer dies an “unnatural” death. i can’t say exactly what, there isn’t enough information, but i can say that it isn’t that they’ll come back on their own, as buffy has to be resurrected by magic, & irregardless i think that fact would be something the watcher’s council would be both aware of & willing to use to control their slayers further.

however, that being said i don’t think that it’s outrageous to subsume that this notable absence means something.

honestly, if i had to guess what that something was, it would probably be the amount of slayers called (ie. magic coalescing with the cycle to call more than one new slayer at once), &/or a heightened amount of power gifted to one with a predecessor or who died by magical means. or, potentially along with one or both of the above, if a slayer is killed & resuscitated both through magic, the slayer cycle still ruins through them, meaning another slayer can be called upon if that one dies yet again.

obviously i can’t say for certain, but pulling on this thread sure is interesting.

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #buffyverse #btvs meta #buffy the vampire slayer meta #kendra young #faith lehane #buffy summers

[gammagoop]

saw your ask for the canon/fanon/your design challenge, have you done skizz?

tempting because i love drawing skizz but honestly my design for him isn’t all that different from canon or even fanon

i know the fanon right now is that he’s an angel/part angel but recently i’m not the biggest participator in hybrid designs :p

(i answered this ask and then proceeded to use this ask as an excuse to ramble about some of my design process….)

i do think its really cute though, especially when paired with demon impulse, because their personalities don’t perfectly match what would be expected from angels and demons typically.

skizz is wayyy more chaotic and impulse is betrayed more times than he betrays other people, just as examples, yet i still find the designs fun as a duo!

(begs the question though — angel and demon from what? the christian heaven and hell? the minecraft heaven and hell? is this a watcher lore thing that i don’t know about because i don’t keep up with the watcher lore? probably none of those actually, it doesnt really need explained [like how theres no explanation really needed for how cleo’s a sentient zombie, its all for fun])

i don’t really do hybrid designs as much as fanon does because my goal with designing them is to capture their vibe, or how i perceive their personality. like a person who’s watched a lot of hermitcraft but has never seen hermitcraft fanart could look at my drawing and say “i’m almost certain that’s bdubs”. and doing hybrids doesnt always fit in to that for me! you’ve probably noticed i’ve gone super back and forth on my zed design, particularly whether he should have long or short hair and whether he should be a sheep hybrid or not. i’m partial to the ‘not’ but i havent really decided yet— we’ll see!

though if a person’s mc skin is already a hybrid or if that just fits well with their energy (ren the canonical dog ; gem just reads as a deer/similar to me) i do draw them as that! i just don’t always hop on fanon hybrids, like grian is never an avian or any other hybrid in my recent drawings, and etho has become more and more human as well, etc.

i should make a chart or something of how i choose these things. like a tierlist— human to nonhuman. would anyone want that. would anyone be interested. leave a comment below if you are intwrested and dont forget to subscribe and smash that. fucking like button 🫡

#masontalking #skizzleman

[cyanogen-miasma]

so Sky: Children of the Light has been filling a very Fer.al - shaped hole in my heart (granted there's probably a time gap of about a year between fer.al's shutdown and finding skycotl...when did fer.al shut down again?) but I just realised that Sparks and Sky Kids are actually quite similar

They're both beings of light with a crystal on their forehead, who come into the world formless, and can change their forms to reflect their individuality (a lot more flexibility in fer.al than in skycotl, but I digress)

so a fun idea would be to mash up the two worlds

Spark: Children of the Light

so the way that this may go is:

more similar to fer.al universe -> apocalypse -> more similar to skycotl universe

I think an interesting way to tie in an apocalypse with the fer.al universe (and skycotl's Shard Eruptions) is the real-life apocalypse of Cinder.

A massive Spark with malicious intent crashes into planet Feral (is that what it was called) and corrupts the planet. A wipeout similar to the Eden Diamond occurs and dark creatures run amok. side note, I think Light creatures would be called Sparks, and Dark creatures would be called Cinders.

Now we enter the era in which the Sky Kids find themselves in canon skycotl

the Sparks (which would need a more specific name if 'spark' applies to all light creatures - let's just say Spark Kids for now) would go around and relive spirit memories to gain new cosmetics and emotes, but they would also be able to relive the memories of dead Sparks and gain the forms of the different mythical creatures in fer.al. there would be a Spark Senri, Spark Kitsune, etc

and I think the realms could be combined with each other too

Isle of Dawn + Shattered Bay (both beach environments, and rather small)

Daylight Prairie + Lakeroot Valley (both nice, happy grassland areas)

Hidden Forest + Mugmyre Marsh (both atmospheric forested areas)

Valley of Triumph + City Fera (both canonically big important cities for the native peoples)

Golden Wasteland + Blood Tundra (both spooky and bones everywhere)

Vault of Knowledge + Sunken Thicket (honestly, these two are just the last ones left...but...the tree had multiple levels, I guess???)

the ancestors are all different species that you could find in fer.al, like Valkyries, komodori, kobolds, etc

for example, I envision Fainting Warrior as a Kobold and Lookout Scout as a Komodori

the Watcher is a Krill

#fer.al #wildworks #sky cotl #sky children of the light #scotl #tgc #that game company #that sky game #mashup #au

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

i hope you're ready for a long answer.

OKAY, this is a little more complicated. dark souls has a plot that follows all three games, but it's more of a "dark souls 3 is a somewhat direct sequel to 1, 2 has a separate plot but what happens is important". it depends how much you value surprises, and honestly i think that, plot-wise, you can play them in any order. i played 1 and 3 and watched a gameplay of 2 before 3 so i got the "canonical experience", and especially 3 has like. a LOT of shoutouts to the first game, both with locations and characters, and it's a great ending to the trilogy

BUT.

i'd argue that even retroactively, the plot points are still intact. of course you're going to get a much bigger reaction to the abyss watchers in 3 if you know who artorias is while playing 1, but viceversa discovering artorias' story in 1 is going to be fun with the knowledge of the abyss watchers' existence in 3, for example; same goes with ornstein in 1 and his armor in 2 and 3

when it comes to mechanic. that's a little different. dark souls 1 is what i truly consider the "vanilla fromsoft experience", even more than demon's souls (another game of the series that has Nothing to do with dark souls if not certain characters dw). it's very arcade, a little arcaic, very slow paced compared to the others and missing some key elements and refining the rest of fromsoft games have, but it's still an incredible gem; dark souls 2, again, is kind of considered the fromsoft black sheep for many reasons, one of which being the different mechanics. it's a good game, but it puts a lot more emphasis in a LOT of boss fights, ganks and dangerous locations; dark souls 3 is my favorite specifically for the mechanics because, while not as much as bloodborne or elden ring, it requires you to get used to be way more aggressive than the others and hit hard. it's also by far the easiest soul game to me, and maybe the easiest fromsoft soulslike in general along elden ring. at least in my opinion :^)

TL;DR

it's up to you, really.

dark souls 1 is a more basic experience, a somewhat simpler plot, and still quite difficult. a little clunky, but still an incredible experience with a world you get easily lost in. it really rewards taking this slow, bosses included. > i think steam has the prepare to die edition, so the DLC should be part of the package. if you have to play even just one DLC, play this one. it's totally worth it.

dark souls 2 is a much "heavier" gameplay, with big emphasis in combat, boss fights and dangerous locations. a little bit of an "outsider" compared to the rest, i wouldn't recommend starting with this one but it's still a fun and much darker experience. great if you enjoy battles and a more cinematic, hollywood fantasy epic compared to the more vague plots of 1 and 3 > again, I think steam has the scholar of the first sin edition. It adds some extra lore and a different final boss compared to vanilla

dark souls 3 is the true sequel to 1, and an incredibly powerful experience. darker than the first and with emphasis on a more apocalyptic world, if DS1 requires patience this one tells you to be aggressive and fight further. easier than the other two in my opinion.

.....................and personally. DS3 is my favorite fandmsg

#gio replies

[tw-neo]

Character Intro: Orath

Meet the first (and only) Durge I've lorecrafted for (frogovich calls her Our Durge which is pretty accurate as well, shoutouts to him for helping so much). She uses she/her pronouns, and is probably my most fleshed out Tav/Durge. She's a Wild Magic/Vengeance Seldarine Drow Sorcadin during the course of the game, and romanced the Rizzard of Waterdeep. She's around 350 years old during the events of the game (she can't quite remember but she thinks around there is right). She was my first character I finished the game with, and the first character I played multiplayer with someone with! Her multiplayer friendo was Tin Copperkettle, a little druid/rogue/fighter deep gnome… thing? Frogo said his build came to him in a fever dream and Tin somehow became a one-man artillery. The 'main team' on this run typically consisted of Orath, Tin, Gale, and Wyll.

Originally, I planned her to be a much more serious character than she ended up being, similar to Niseke. But the Urge (ha ha i am hilarious) to make a serial killer into a Silly Guy(tm) was far too strong, and here we are. I've described her as a weird combination of Astarion's pickup lines and the 11th Doctor's immaturity with a very loose cannon attached, and I have yet to come up with a more precise descriptor for her.

Her ending is good. She rejects Papa Bhaal and moves back with Gale to Waterdeep. She continues down the path of a paladin, now switching her oath from Vengeance to Watchers, as her "I hate this specific mf" oath was fufulled upon defeating Gortash, Orin, and the Netherbrain. She picked up Watchers to both help Lae'zel in her fight against Vlaakith, and for her own fight against the remaining Bhaalists (and honestly she just has a grudge against gods now...).

I have so many intricacies plotted out for Orath, far more than Niseke or Bugg, and she is easily my favorite. She is also the one the longfic-in-progress centers around, although Niseke and her son feature in it as well. Therefore, I consider the Orath universe my 'canon' universe. Different characters are in Orath's fic, such as Qanexes and Niseke, however they were not tadpoled, nor did they run through the game.

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 durge #baldurs gate iii #bg3 #the dark urge #dark urge #i want her carnally #i want to be her #i need her #need her

[coraniaid]

Season 5 isn't my favorite season (it's honestly not even my second favorite season, and it might not even be my third). Glory isn't the best Big Bad the show would come up with (I think Clare Kramer's performance is ... fine, but she has basically nobody to play off of in the way the arc villains of the earlier seasons did, which really makes her job a lot more difficult than it had to be).

The season also devotes a lot of screentime and narrative focus to several characters I don't particularly care for, there are a couple of episodes this season that are definitely in the running for some of the show's weakest ever offerings, and while The Gift is very impactful as a season finale as a putative finale episode of the whole series it's kind of conceptually a disaster. ("What if our young adult protagonist told everyone how sad she was and how hard it was to be alive and then killed herself?")

And -- if I'm being totally honest -- it still irks me quite a lot, even a full season after The Harsh Light Of Day, that the scripts keep having Buffy talk about Harmony "becoming" a vampire as if that were some particularly silly lifestyle choice she'd made (and continuing to show no sign at all of being sad that the human Harmony died while trying to help Buffy save the whole town from the Mayor). This is both not something Buffy should canonically believe -- she's descibed in detail before how she believes "becoming" a vampire works, and nothing has happened since that should have changed her mind about that, other than the writers having some worse ideas -- and something which would, were it true, fatally undermine the entire premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That being said, I do think that objectively Season 5 might be the best season of the show. Not necessarily as a collection of episodes (though it does have some very strong episodes), but as a deliberately planned story told over the course of twenty-two episodes. It just feels very structured and carefully arranged in a way that none of the seasons that came before were and none of the seasons that come after will be. Every episode has a very clear purpose and the writers obviously knew from the start where the story was going (which I don't think was true for any of the previous full-length seasons).

So Real Me foreshadows The Gift (with Harmony and her self-described "minions" capturing Dawn and so auditioning for the part of Glory and her minions doing the same), and The Replacement (re)introduces the idea of a split between Buffy's human and Slayer sides, and Family and Fool For Love and Blood Ties and Intervention all help to set up the choice Buffy will make at the end of the season, and Triangle and I Was Made To Love You introduce the weapons that will be used to defeat Glory, and there is a general sense throughout, which the high school seasons especially don't always manage, that the characters remember what happened from one week to the next and you cannot afford to miss a single episode if you want to understand what's going on.

The Knights of Byzantium are still utterly shit though.

(If you want a powerful ancient faction who know about Glory and have reach all over the world and who employ teams of people who know how to fight and who might plausibly have found out about Dawn and who don't really have anything else to do in the plot after Checkpoint and who consider themselves entitled to make pragmatic decisions about other people's lives -- especially young girls' lives -- in the name of saving the world from demons ... I mean, guys, come on, the Watcher's Council were literally right there.)

#btvs