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erosastro · 7 days

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Friends characters astrology breakdown✨

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Disclaimer*

- This is just for fun. I know their birthdays are mentioned in the show but this is just my opinion based on their personalities and character traits they exhibited on the show. Please don’t take it too seriously and if you disagree that’s fine too!

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Rachel

☜♡☞ Sun - Leo

☜♡☞ Moon - Taurus

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Libra/Taurus

Leo Sun made perfect sense to me. I’m sure other signs would too, but this one made the most sense to me. From her fierce personality to her love for shopping and enjoying luxuries in life. That’s also where I saw her possibly being a Taurus moon, being ruled by Venus, Taurus loves luxury, fashion etc. and I’ve seen so many Leo/libra/taurus placements in the fashion industry. Her stubbornness makes me think she does have mostly fixed energy in her chart. Though she loves being spoiled, she’s also a hard worker and independent, which I absolutely see in Leo sun. Libra ascendant I think is displayed by her fashion sense, being a trendsetter, from her hair to her clothes. Plus she was charming and romantic at heart (Taurus moon).

Monica

☜♡☞Sun - Capricorn

☜♡☞ Moon- Virgo

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Cancer/Aries

I’m pretty sure she also has some Taurus placements in her chart, given her love for the culinary. But for her top three, I definitely see those placements. And I know the Virgo stereotype and I hate it too but the amount of Virgo moons that give me the same energy as Monica. The mum friend, taking care of everyone, a bit neurotic but so caring and selfless. She’s also very competitive and Capricorn placements can be VERY competitive from my experience. She’s also very nurturing and drawn to being a mum and good partner. I’d say Virgo moon and Aries/Cancer ascendant could also be swapped around, that being said. It’s only because Virgo moon felt better than Virgo rising to me.

Phoebe

☜♡☞ Sun - Aquarius

☜♡☞ Moon - Aries

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Aquarius

Wonderfully weird and brilliant, intelligent Phoebe! I loved Phoebe. She was so underrated. She screams Aquarius placements. She had her own unique sense of fashion, wasn’t afraid to be herself and step out of the box. She was also passionate about her interests and flirty (Aries moon). She was rebellious and a badass (Aries and Aquarius placements). Whilst she was aloof and not in a long term relationship, when she did commit she gave her all, which is very much Aquarius/aries. She’s also, like the Aquarius, a humanitarian and always had the biggest heart, caring for all. There was definitely a feisty side to her too.

Chandler

☜♡☞ Sun - Libra/Scorpio

☜♡☞ Moon - Gemini

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Sagittarius

I won’t lie I was kinda stumped with chandler’s sun sign. He’s honestly my favourite and he’s hilarious, witty and dark sense of humour. That’s why I felt like the double whammy air placements in his top three made sense lol. So many air placements have a dark sense of humour, however I do think Scorpio could work for his Sun sign too. One of my best friend’s has a Scorpio Sun and Gemini moon and he’s one of the funniest people I know. Once you get to know them though there’s so much more to them. They crave love and affection but can hide it well with a sense of humour, especially if they’ve had traumas they’ve faced previously, hence why these made sense for Chandler. Ascendant in Sagittarius because Sagittarius ascendants are goofy and fun and laid-back but sweet and caring too.

Joey

☜♡☞ Sun - Sagittarius/Pisces

☜♡☞ Moon - Taurus/Libra

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Leo

Joey was the cutest. Honestly his Leo ascendant is because he exudes Leo energy. Majority of the Leo ascendant men I’ve met are some of the most attractive men I’ve seen. He’s outgoing and he has a love for acting and he’s player. The reason why I said either Pisces or Sagittarius sun is because most of guys I know that are Casanovas have mutable placements. His Libra moon made sense because he’s charming and he can be romantic. Taurus could work too, the Venus ruled signs make the most sense and would also explain his love for food. He could also have a Taurus mars.

Ross

☜♡☞ Sun - Taurus

☜♡☞ Moon - Capricorn

☜♡☞ Ascendant - Virgo/Scorpio

I think he may be the least liked character 😅 and I understand why. He does come across as judgemental and stubborn, hence my top three. As a Virgo rising myself I know we tend to come across as judgey but it’s because we’re so hard on ourselves that we can sometimes seem that way to other way. And the same is said for Scorpio risings, I’ve noticed. The incredible stubbornness is no doubt from his Taurus sun + Capricorn moon. I love a Capricorn moon but man they are stubborn cookies and with a Taurus can be very stuck in their ways. His dorkiness and nerdiness can also be explained by Virgo rising, even Capricorn moon. He’s also very career focused but loves with all his heart, up to a fault.

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Extra notes:

☜♡☞ Rachel and Monica being best friends is soooo Leo x Capricorn. These two are always drawn to each other and make a great pair. They work so well together.

☜♡☞ Rachel and Ross being drawn to each other constantly and having a passionate, lovey dovey relationship is very much fixed sign squared energy. And if Ross’s sun was conjunct Rachel’s moon, that would also explain why despite their other relationships, they’d always come back to each other.

☜♡☞ Joey and Chandler being best friends again, makes so much of sense with either one of their sun combinations. Libra x Sagittarius are best friends. Like I’ve always seen that. Even Pisces x Scorpio they tend to understand each other at a deeper level. Hell, even Libra x Pisces, signs who are inconjunct like Leo and Capricorn that seem to have nothing in common can get on like a house on fire.

☜♡☞ with Monica and Chandler, Virgo moons always seem to be attracted to Libra and Sagittarius placements, one being squared but the attraction is definitely there. I’ve also seen Capricorn x Scorpio combo being common in a lot of couples. Plus, all Libra x Aries placements I’ve met are not feeling each other at first but then make the best couple/best of friends.

☜♡☞ Joey and Rachel having similar placements could also be why they were attracted to each other at some point but because of that, that also could be why they wouldn’t work out in the long term.

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What do you guys think? Always interested in seeing other perspectives so long as it’s respectful!

#friends #friends tv show #astro notes #astrology #astro observations #astro placements

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caprisunandmoon · 1 year

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🧚🏼‍♀️analyzing my synastry with my ex-coworkers - part one

because what else is there to do after quitting a job you had for 4 years?? 🤪

Coworker #1

[lowkey was my favorite, felt the most comfortable with him & we had kind of a father-daughter relationship; we would spend a lot of time talking or joking around at work, he would buy me food/little snacks and drive me where i needed to go (i was the ultimate passenger princess with him lmaooo) + he even helped me with stuff outside of work like changing my tire when I had a flat 🥹🫶🏽]

My Ascendant conjunct his Sun/Mercury/Saturn (but with his sun/mercury falling into my 12th) - At first, we didn’t really click that much; we were friendly to each other but not that close in the beginning… he’d always try to joke around with me and I’d be like 🤨🤨🤨 idk man I don’t know you that well yet LOL. This was probably from so many of his planets falling into my 12th house (his venus was also in my 12h), so I simply ✨didn’t notice✨ him that much at first, but over the course of me working there and being around him more, we became inseparable. We loved to talk and just be in each other’s company. Lots of admiration for each other. And perhaps Saturn here is what contributed to the fatherly vibes lol

My Sun square his Moon - Any time I read descriptions about this aspect online, it talks about how the two will end up fighting and nagging, finding the other person annoying, etc and I’m over here like 🧍🏻‍♀️…. never had that issue with this aspect… I also have this aspect with my bestest friend in the world and we’ve never had even one fight lmao. So I’m not really sure how to describe this aspect honestly, but I guess I would consider it “binding” as it contributes to a deep connection between people

Moon square Moon - Again, this is an aspect often described as leading to fights, fundamental emotional incompatibility, etc but I never noticed this with him 🤔 We were actually able to talk about and express our emotions with ease. Obviously, we were only friends at work so perhaps if we got to know each other more, this square would have become more apparent, but ??? We have other really good aspects to the moon, so maybe that’s what helped neutralize this.

Mars trine Sun double whammy - I think this contributed to the general sense of “liking” each other. Also, we were always really supportive of each other and he was easy for me to work with.

His Mars trine my Moon - He was definitely very protective of me and tried to take care of me as much as possible. Any time I was feeling down, he would always notice and try to make me feel better <3

My Mars conjunct his Moon - I cared a lot for him but also thought he was a lil too sensitive sometimes haha; it never caused any conflict between us though (perhaps since this is a conjunction in Libra, so we were more focused on keeping the peace). And I was protective of him in the sense that I absolutely wouldn’t tolerate any other coworkers badmouthing him in my presence 🔪

My Mars trine his Mercury - The way I visualize aspects between mars-mercury in synastry is the “walk and talk” aspect between two people, like those two people who just like to walk around or do something while they talk to each other & this was very much us 🥰 people eventually stopped asking “where are you guys going” bc they soon realized the two of us would literally just walk around for the sake of walking around, no destination just vibes lmao

Venus conjunct Venus - Having the same tastes, likes, mannerisms, etc. top tier aspect imo 🫶🏽 and since it was a conjunction in aqua, we had a great intellectual connection above all, best friend/partner in crime vibes 🌚

My Venus trine his Moon - I LOVE when my Venus makes aspects to people’s moons, for me it’s literally the best for any relationship, platonic or romantic. In my natal, I have a cap moon square saturn & mars at 0-1 degrees (yes I’m extremely traumatized thank you for asking 🤩), so I’ve always struggled with my own emotion management and tend to get annoyed by most people’s expression of their emotions (I’m working on being better about this smh) but whenever my venus aspects someone’s moon, this isn’t the case, like I genuinely wanna hear about how they’re feeling and if there’s anything I can do to make them feel better if they’re down 🥰

His Jupiter trine my Mercury - He genuinely found my jokes funny, which I really appreciate as a Capricorn mercury bc our dry-ass humor isn’t understood by most 😃 Also we never ran out of things to talk about

His Jupiter square my Venus - Although this is a square, I think the only “problem” that comes out of this is excess aka I think he was excessively generous with me sometimes 🤪 ...definitely not the worst problem to have, at least not on my end lol

My Mercury trine his Uranus - Very intellectual conversations, it was always fun talking to him because we’d end up chatting about the most random subjects

My Mercury trine his Pluto - He simply had this way of getting me to open up and talk about deeper topics with ease, something I usually find difficult to do with people I don’t know well 🤔

Coworker #2

[I ended up having an on-off situationship with this coworker for about a year; the most physical attraction I’ve ever felt for a man LMAO but also definitely the most obsessive and toxic situation of my life (so far 🤪) + we had to keep everything a secret since relationships weren’t allowed between coworkers.. yeah long story short he traumatized me in many ways lmaooo]

His Mars trine my Venus - The main (and perhaps only) source of our attraction to each other hahaha, I love this aspect because it gives genuine physical chemistry + that feeling of butterflies but honestly it can also make you blind to overall emotional incompatibilities but ohwellyouliveyoulearniguess 🫠

Mercury square Moon double whammy - On a day-to-day level, this definitely made connection and communication difficult, even downright impossible sometimes, but also somehow added to the ✨spice✨ idk there’s just something kind of sweet about not understanding each other on an emotional level but still wanting to make that effort to connect 🤷🏻‍♀️ overall, as frustrating/irritating as this got sometimes, I appreciate that it made me aware of how differently other people can process their emotions

His Mercury square my Sun - We definitely had different points of view on so many things and sometimes I’d be a lil defensive with him but I generally try not to be led by my ego so this wasn’t too big of an issue overall (for me at least)

My Mercury square his Jupiter - Lots of laughs. Since it’s a square, sometimes an excess of joking around or joking around in situations that should have been serious like work meetings but oh well 🤙🏼🤪🤙🏼

My Venus sextile his Moon - Like I said above, I LOVE WHEN MY VENUS ASPECTS PEOPLE’S MOONS!!! The sextile is less easygoing than the trine, I definitely had to make more of an effort here, but still a sweet aspect nonetheless 🥰 And I think perhaps this is one reason why the Mercury square Moon didn’t hit as hard

My Venus sextile his Jupiter - Venus/Jupiter aspects are one of my favoritesssss and I think it was a major reason why I got so attached 🫠 Venus/Jupiter is such a nice aspect, it’s truly one aspect I wish for everyone to experience at least once in their lives, you just feel so lighthearted around each other and the energy is so warm, my fave is the trine but the sextile is also quite nice

My Venus sextile his Saturn - With Venus/Saturn in general, I think Saturn has the “upper hand” and ultimately gets to decide if the relationship will last. I knew from the start I wanted commitment and something serious, unfortunately he didn’t end up feeling the same way 😃 And overall I felt quite dependent on him, like he was a source of stability for me

My Mars opposite his Moon - I don’t know how tight this aspect was since I don’t know his time of birth but I definitely thought he was way too f*cking sensitive sometimes LMAOO as much as I cared about him & felt intensely for him, sometimes I’d be like 🙄🙄 by his reactions to things, overall he was easily triggered by my actions and I’d get triggered by his reactions

My Mars opposite his Mercury - Leads to a lot of bickering if not careful. I think it’s important to channel this energy into healthy debates etc otherwise it spills over into the day-to-day, causing bickering, arguments etc. If we kept the debating to work topics, we were fine, but anything outside of that was dangerous territory. Often best to just agree to disagree here. As a Libra mars, I’m not prone to arguments but his Aries mercury certainly tried to goad me into more than a few fights (and succeeded at times lol)

My Mars sextile his Uranus (0 degrees) + His Uranus trine my Mars - Absolute freaks in bed with each other LMAOOO absolutely nothing was off-limits and I’d never felt more comfortable, including being open to doing things I’d never done before. And, in general/day-to-day, we were comfortable being “weirdos” together and showing our more “quirky” sides (yes I indeed cringed while writing that last sentence)

My Saturn conjunct his Moon - On my end, I’m not sure if I felt this energy much, but natally I have a cap stellium and lots of Saturn aspects so this is like second nature to me. If I had to guess, I would say it probably felt oppressive for him as an Aries stellium with mostly trines in his natal 😃

My Neptune square his Sun - Sigh. I definitely felt like he was idealizing me and seeing me as someone I wasn’t and the more he got to know me and began to realize the fantasies weren’t true, the more I think he felt disillusioned and not as interested, which was heartbreaking for me to see, esp since I never intentionally tried to deceive him or act like someone I’m not 🫠

My Neptune sextile his Venus - Again, not seeing the other for who they really are, lots of idealizing. Even though the sextile is supposed to be an “easy” aspect, I don’t think anything involving Neptune in synastry is really that easy unfortunately

My Pluto trine his Venus - Yeah, as more time passes and I look back on our relationship, I can confidently say it was obsession and not love. I felt consumed by him and like our situation was taking over my life, constant fears that he would leave, typical Pluto/Venus lol… And I think as Pluto I was more attached to him than he was to me.

My Pluto opposite his Mars - Whewwww the sexual chemistry here was 😮‍💨😮‍💨 But outside of the bedroom, lots of power struggles. He constantly accused me of trying to control him, perhaps I was without realizing it, but in any case, the constant back and forth became too much to bear. We were both equally jealous/possessive. I felt like I could never fully relax throughout the entirety of our relationship.

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mercymaker · 3 months

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hi so i'm a bit behind on the mal lore why do her and astarion break up? and who's baby is thoriel?

Hey! No worries, Mal's lore only makes sense in my head at the moment, especially the whole post-game stuff!

But what happens is that Maleane spends decades traveling the world with Astarion, both of them sort of getting to finally live and experience everything that they couldn't before. However, at some point she starts getting tired of being on the road all the time, not having any sense of home, and she starts longing for that. Sense of home. She has no family, no community, so the closest thing to the concept of home is her little cabin in the middle of the woods.

Astarion, on the other hand, has no interest in settling, especially in some forest, away from civilization. Naturally, tensions grow and they start bickering over their future plans. Astarion's grown quite dependent on her magic for traveling and protecting him from the sun, so he sort of reluctantly agrees to return 'home' with her, thinking that it's going to be a short term thing and she will eventually realize that it's boring as shit to just sit in some log house in the middle of nowhere.

Unfortunately, Mal's problem is much deeper than simply longing to return to a physical place. It's tied to the realization that she doesn't really belong anywhere. No family, no community, no connections, not even a place or a setting with familiar faces. And that stuff eats her from the inside. This sort of marrow-deep sadness and longing that Maleane can't place a finger on, and when you can't identify the problem, you can't really deal with it, right? Especially when it's a problem that doesn't have much of a solution.

The sadness that doesn't leave soon turns into frustration, especially with Astarion constantly nudging her to go back on the road. He uses her promise to help him look for a cure to his sunlight sensitivity as a leverage, but that absolutely backfires and one night they have a massive fight over everything where Astarion, frustrated with what he sees as a childish pursuit of 'home', tells her that she's chasing something that does not exist. Of course, he doesn't do that in the nicest way, absolutely bringing up the fact that both of her parents are gone and that no one's waiting for her. He's the only person that she's got.

Mal, hurt by his words, in the heat of the moment when emotions are high, decides to bite back and says something that she knows would hurt him. Even if it's a lie. She brings up his own 'childish pursuit' of being able to walk in the sun and tells him that if only she'd known how annoying he would be about it, she would've allowed him to ascend. Of course, saying that is a double whammy because not only does it undermine one of the defining moments of his life, it also implies that he had no say in it and that she made the choice for him, stripping him of agency.

That lowkey turns his anger and frustration into murderous intent and the only solution he sees in that moment is to leave. He's done with her.

For a brief moment, Maleane is pretty satisfied with the fact that she found a way to hurt him back. And yet with days passing, the lie eats at her. But he's going to return, right? He still loves her, right? He'll get over it and they'll talk about it and she'll explain how it was a lie and apologize, right?

Not really. Astarion doesn't return and years pass with Mal's depression just growing deeper and deeper as she's living alone in the woods, just like all those years before the tadpole. The heartbreak, as well as such a deep-set loneliness, leaves her feeling hollow. So, during one of those desperate nights, Maleane has a bit of an epiphany, and it clicks why her mother never allowed her to leave. Because if Mal had left, Ashe would've been all alone. Just like Mal is now.

So, Maleane realizes that in order to not be alone anymore AND return to the closest thing she knows as 'home', the drow decides to just get a baby. Her own lil kid that she can raise and cherish and all that. It makes sense in her depressed lil skull.

Mal ventures to the closest town, finds a tavern, drinks a little, until a pretty silver elf catches her eye (listen, she's still very much not over Astarion) and one thing leads to another. And hey! The bun's in the oven, lmao.

Maleane is Thoriel's mother. Her biological father is just some random pretty one-night stand. That, of course, doesn't mean she ends up with zero daddies, but that's for the future dfsfsdf

#asks #anonymous #the bg3 adventures #oc: maleane #oc: thoriel #maleane/astarion #hi i'm mel and welcome to my ted talk where i wont shut up about my ocs for 974 minutes straight #maleane is just my special girlie alright #long post cw

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anghraine · 1 year

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Here's the rambling Hunsford/letter post I've been talking about:

I've often thought it interesting that Austen fandom doesn't seem to share many Austen critics' visceral discomfort with Darcy's letter.

Of course, trends among literary critics and among fans often are very different. It doesn't necessarily signify much that Austen fans don't tie themselves into knots trying to undercut the letter in some way. Various critics have argued that it's out of character for Darcy to write the letter, or anti-feminist, or unfair to readers, or a relic of over-revision, etc. Even critics who don't do these things tend not to engage with it all that closely.

A lot of Austen fandom, by contrast, shares my affection for the letter, at least in a general way. I very rarely see fans arguing that it's inconsistent with Darcy's personality, say, or forced by Austen to tilt the scales towards him. There's a lot of affection for the letter as an object, at the very least.

Something I've noticed, though, is that in fandom/pop culture, the double whammy of Elizabeth's rejection-Darcy's letter is pretty overwhelmingly reduced to Elizabeth's rejection.

This isn't necessarily done to attack Darcy as is frequently the case in the lit-crit. In fandom, it's often to praise him for paying attention to Elizabeth's righteous excoriation in a difficult situation and actually shaping up.

But it's very rarely the case that I see anyone praise Elizabeth for reasoning her way to accepting the painful truth of Darcy's letter. There's not much talk or appreciation about her efforts to overcome her vanity and intellectual self-indulgence. And it's not easy for her. She struggles with the letter, despite Darcy's attempts to soften the later parts of it. It's hard to accept that it's true and that she was misled by her own pride, and afterwards, she still sometimes slips into similar kinds of mistakes and has to keep working at it.

The thing about Elizabeth's rejection is that it starts from a place of absolutely righteous, justified indignation and seems entirely appropriate to Darcy's shitty proposal. She did treat Mr Collins's shitty proposal much more gently, and I think that's significant, but that fact doesn't make her wrong to be angered by Darcy's proposal or to call him out for it. So the fandom treatment of it as this piece of spectacular righteous indignation is right in the sense that she does start with that.

And then she keeps going.

She is right about his proposal. She is at least somewhat right about his general behavior—she has tended to cast it in the worst possible light it can be seen in, in a way which paved the road to greater mistakes with him and others, but he can certainly be an asshole at times. She is at least somewhat wrong about his motives for interfering with Bingley and Jane, but right that he did so. She is utterly wrong about his supposed crimes towards Wickham and thus his basic moral character.

That is, she believed him a terrible enough person to actually ruin the life of a man raised with him from infancy as a dependent of Darcy's family—a man who had virtually no other resources while Darcy is extremely powerful and wealthy, and that Darcy did it with no excuse and no reason except petty childhood jealousy. It would take a genuinely awful person to do that, especially in those circumstances.

With the Wickham thing in particular, it's not just that Darcy is in fact innocent of all Wickham-related accusations in the sense that he didn't do them. He didn't do them and Wickham is a predatory monster to boot and Darcy appears to actually be Wickham's primary intended target. Wickham will use anyone for his own benefit, but the only person he seems to make repeated, calculated efforts against is Darcy.

So Elizabeth's rejection includes throwing Wickham's baseless accusations in the face of one of Wickham's victims, and one who is also the devoted brother of someone even more victimized whom Wickham trash-talked to Elizabeth earlier. Elizabeth is entirely capable of judging and behaving better, but just didn't, because Wickham told her what she wanted to hear. That's ... bad, actually?

She feels righteous at the time of the full rejection, but that doesn't make it true, and once she does realize the full truth, she never seriously shrugs it off. Her most lingering feeling about the scene between them seems to be shame. Her entire sense of who she is as a person is shaken, just like Darcy's. They both realize, in response to each other, that their bad behavior in this one incident is connected to a wider pattern in how they think and engage with the world, even though both are wrong about some particulars with regard to each other.

So the revelations of the letter are, IMO, critical to understanding the ethical concerns of the Hunsford scene. If it were actually this sequence of uncomplicated righteous glory for Elizabeth, as it's so often seen, there would be little of significance for Darcy to say in the letter, and Elizabeth would not be shocked into character growth. The only growth that would seriously matter would be Darcy's. And there are clearly people who do see their dynamic that way.

But to be blunt, that is not the novel Austen wrote. Darcy's growth, his struggles with himself, his pain, are all experienced offstage and only revealed afterwards. Instead, Austen shines the spotlight on Elizabeth. It's Elizabeth who is shown processing what Darcy says in the letter. It's Elizabeth whose shock and horror and shame are made the turning point of the novel, and whose recurrent sense of guilt for her part in the Hunsford scene is most fully explored.

It's not because Elizabeth is more at fault. It's because they are both at fault, but Elizabeth is more important to the novel and its concerns. The narrative cares more about her, whether it's in her moral failures or triumphs—because she has both.

I don't just mean that she's the most central character, by the way. All of Austen's novels have clear enough protagonists, but some of them are much more dominated by their protagonists than others. Mansfield Park splits the spotlight between the core cast quite a lot, for instance, so it can feel less focused than, say, Emma. As for P&P, Darcy is more prominent than many Austen love interests and often considered one of the most compelling ones (I certainly find him so), but it's still very much Elizabeth's show and wouldn't work nearly as well if she did not so thoroughly embody so many of the concerns of the narrative.

So it makes sense that the writing of the two halves of the central set piece basically gives Elizabeth her moment of glory, then immediately undercuts it by pulling out a significant portion of her moral ground and having Elizabeth's epiphany center on her faults, which plainly mirror Darcy's. And I do feel like this is lost in the sidelining of the letter vs the rejection.

So I've wondered where this tendency is coming from, especially considering how literally and figuratively central Elizabeth's epiphany after the letter is to the novel, to her characterization, and retroactively, to the Hunsford scene.

I was thinking it might actually be a fannish version of the same discomfort that so many of the literary critics feel over the letter, even though the push-back against it takes a different form. Maybe fandom downplays the entire second half of this central sequence for the same basic reason—it undercuts the glory of the rejection in a way that people aren't comfortable with.

But I've also considered the idea that maybe it's less that and more that fandom frequently prioritizes the arcs and the pain of male characters over female ones, even when they're more marginal. Maybe fandom is more invested in Darcy's offstage arc than Elizabeth's onstage one for the usual reason, especially given that Elizabeth frequently gets treated as an audience proxy more than a character with her own arc and choices. I do see quite a few takes about how P&P is about masculinity in this or that way because Darcy blahblahblah, and it's like ... Elizabeth whomst??

I do not have any gripe, fwiw, with individuals being more engaged by a given male character (marginal or not) than a female one, or less interested by protagonists, or whatever. But the trend is pretty unmistakable, so that could be at work.

I've also wondered if the heavy impact of adaptations plays some part, since they tend to pretty thoroughly disrupt the structure, dynamic, and contents of the letter and of Elizabeth's response to it.

I mean, I don't know. But at the end of the day, my firm opinion is that the Hunsford scene can't be fully understood without the context of the letter, and that the letter is in fact a good artistic choice. Consequently, I think that Elizabeth's behavior in the Hunsford scene is flawed at best—not more than Darcy's, but in addition to Darcy's. And this does strike me as weirdly absent from how it's talked about.

#anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #ish #long post #austen blogging #otp of otps #it may not seem like an otp post! but.....the mirror hurts #elizabeth bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #elizabeth bennet critical #for an 'elizabeth has significant flaws and an actual arc that is the most important one in the book' value of critical #anghraine's meta #general fanwank #austen fanwank

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thepunchingbag · 11 months

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Should the Atton and the Exile get into a relationship after the game ends, dear lord god it would be a mess. And I say that as someone who actually ships these two war criminals.

Firstly, it'd be the mother of all learning curves for both of them. For Atton, I headcanon this is his first relationship he's ever had that isn't just casual sex or sex for credits or sex followed by assassination. So, there's lot of hangups. Plus he's emotionally overwhelmed despite trying really, really hard to play it cool. He's not used to someone actually... sticking around. He loves it and he hates it (being the messed up, strange juxtaposition of a man he is). He's got some major self-sabotaging tendencies, so leave it up to him to do/say something that would put their relationship on thin ice too.

Added to that, he probably feels like ANY moment Meetra's going to come to her senses and break the whole thing off. A really screwed-up part of him kind of wants her to. Because, who are they kidding, this is never going to work out. Because he's getting tired trying to camouflage that he breaks out in a nervous sweat at even the thought of her running head-first into battle - sure, he's always been concerned but now it's gone into hyperdrive. Because this is some sort of warped perversion of karma where he gets rewarded for all the fucked up shit he's done; he should be face down in a ditch somewhere, not sharing a bed with a woman way out of his league. Because he's painfully aware Meetra's standards are pathetically low, and he sort of wants her to do better than him. Then again if they ever did break it off - he would never, and I mean literally never, get over it.

I bet there's a lot of "I'm going for a smoke, I'll be right back" moments where he goes off and just breaks down.

And, I headcanon, thanks to her upbringing in a religious cult the Jedi Order, Meetra's over here seeing the Darkside in everything. The Catholic guilt Jedi Order's hangups - strong with this one, it is. They argue over who's going to clean the flux capacitors, she cusses him out, and she worriedly checks her face to make sure her eyes aren't glowing red. She's leading him astray (Atton's rolling his eyes in the background). She's a selfish, sad excuse of a failed Jedi and she's dragging him down with her. Etc, etc, I don't know, despite the fact she's so absolutely done with the Order, she still spent her childhood in a Jedi monastery where she had been indoctrinated/taught in that tradition and the mindset is hard to break. Also, the Force bonds have been an ongoing existential crisis for her since she learned about her fun little "talent" - she's always side-eyeing the situation, secretly thinking that maybe she's mindfucking him into loving her. Even after they grow close, it's always in the back of her mind. Maybe she's just using him to leech life/power off of him like some sort of ghoulish Force vampire.

Still, I think Meetra's the confident one in the relationship and she's ultimately not the sort to back down from a challenge. I think she's more than willing to call Atton out on his BS, and he's good at giving her perspective/a reality check on her martyr complex.

And that's not even getting into the ex-combat veteran PTSD double whammy, or Atton's misogynist vibes.

They obviously are shippable but my god they'd be a hot mess.

#atton rand #kotor 2 #knights of the old republic #atton x exile #atton rand × meetra surik #meetra surik

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deafeninggardenerpanda · 7 months

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Here are 3 different suggestions

Metalor

Metasusie

Metadedede.

I know sort of obvious choices, but I'm curious to see what opinions you have on these ships.

did metadede so its time for metalor and metasusie! putting both of these under the cut because youre getting my double opinion whammy. obligatory "its not every shipper obviously im just generalizing based on personal experience" dont let my opinions stop you from shipping something unless its like problematic obvs lol

theres nothing wrong with metalor but it unfortunately does fall into my "red flag ship" category

ill reiterate my definition of that again for people who didnt catch it in my last rant: what i call red flag ships are ships that are totally fine on paper, but for some reason the shippers and fandom culture surrounding it are just rancid and it throws me off liking the ship all together. and then i get kinda sussed out by people who ship it

honestly i have never gotten the appeal of this one or understood the dynamic at all. and thats fine of course. i did try reading a couple fics about it even, and in them its usually like. meta doing some shit that makes absolutely no sense under the guise of "he has a good reason for it" that just Coincidently happens to land him and magolor into some relationship-implying situation. and also the "good reason" meta knight had for doing whatever was not a good reason and was in fact a huge stretch of a reason for sake of moving the relationship along quicker. which you know i dont shame at all, i get that sometimes you just want to get to the juicy shit and people are absolutely allowed to do that, but that really just sums up my feelings on the ship entirely lol. stretches and stretches of reasonings for them to get together that dont entirely, or sometimes even remotely, make sense but okay they end up together in the end somehow 🤷

the fact that the ship is the two most popular and thirsted over men in the series together is the reason why this one lands into red-flag territory im so sorry. it attracts some um. interesting people who end up being somewhat pretentious about their own interpretations on the characters and some people get a little scary or intense about it. also of course occasionally their relationship being boiled down to whoever ships them nonstop thirsting for both of them but thats like just fandom culture for you, i really cant judge. people do that with metadede too to be fair. also a lot of metalor shippers ive seen are just downright mean for some reason. anyone else notice that or have i just been running into bad people

as people might be able to tell by how fairly neutral about it i seem, this one is yeah one of the less red flag-y of what i consider red flag ships. its totally fine. i personally really dont like the ship but its only like 60-70% of the shippers who i squint at compared to the Abysmal rates of other red flag ships. speaking of, by the way...............

ah the fandoms problem child. its metasusie

i Do think its possible to ship this one in a healthy manner. actually even in a not healthy matter as long as youre explicit about it being not healthy and its just one of those ships you find interesting due to the drama. ive read metasusie fics where it was explicitly about how fucked up the relationship can be and theyre very very fascinating from a story and character perspective if you want to explore a tragically evil but still nuanced susie. i would say highly recommend, but i dont actually because a lot of them just lean into weird unnecessary torture porn. its somewhat of a fine line between tasteful and untasteful

ANYWAYS brief tangent aside, i think its possible to ship this one in a healthy manner because you know me i would be a hypocrite to bash an enemies to lovers ship, but it obviously relies on susie needing to recognize her faults and make up to meta knight in some way, plus improve as a person in general. its somewhat of a grey area depending on various factors, both game and real life perspective-wise, how redeemable one considers the whole mechanization and dehumanization though so i dont blame people who absolutely dont trust the ship

speaking of lets get into the way this one is Definitely the reddest of the red flag ships ever. metasusie shippers what are you doing oh my god

the. the. the the when you the when you woobify susie. i do not use that word lightly in regards to susie in particular because of how often its misused by people who hate her just to mean "im mad that people are making cute friendly content of a character i dont like". no im using it in the actual proper way as in why in the world do i go around and see some metasusie shippers saying "people who hate metasusie are so stupid, susie literally never hurt meta knight in canon!!!" i shit you NOT that is a legit take ive seen a Lot of people have nearly word for fucking word and its like. what are you ON did we even play the same game?? did you even play the game at all??? are you as white and dense as a sack of flour and thats why it went over your head?????

people will try to make the excuse that they have headcanon or interpretation differences that lighten the whole endeavor, which yeah that fair. you can imagine mecha knight was just some suit they put over him rather than anything invasive like a lot of people think. thats absolutely fair. you can imagine that meta knight still retains parts of his super star personality where he was kinda okay with the mechanization in some twisted personal ambition way because hes a power hungry guy who will take any means necessary to be stronger. thats also pretty fair. ah you think this is sounding favorable to the metasusie shippers huh. WRONG. WRONG. YOU CAN THINK ALL OF THIS BUT NONE OF THIS EXCUSES THAT THE WHOLE MECHANIZATION WAS STILL WRONG NO MATTER HOW YOU TWIST IT. tfw mecha knights theme is called "inner struggle" definitely implying that he did Not like being mechanized and was trying to fight against it. tfw the elephant in the room being mechanization is of course a metaphor for colonization which is not a good thing to do to someone regardless whether or not they seem cool with it. tfw THE DEHUMANIZATION. TFW METASUSIE SHIPPERS GO HEEHOO HEEHOO CUTE SHIP AND POLE VAULT OVER THE DEHUMANIZATION. HI.

regardless whether or not you have interpretation or headcanon differences, you Cannot ignore the fact that the game does not exist in a vacuum and its themes are undoubtedly tied to real life parallels. in ignoring those parallels or sidestepping them when theyre so blatant and in your face Yes you kinda are being a huge asshole. susie calling mecha knight an It and being like heres our newest product :) while also having the dissonance of being like hes such a cool strong handsome knight is supposed to directly refer to how colonizers will fetishize the people they colonize while fucking over them and their home because they only like them as a surface level Idea rather than actually respecting their culture and them as fellow human beings right im not just being insane making all this up??? huh???? ive gotten away from my original point i feel but tldr IF YOU PRETEND LIKE SUSIE NEVER HURT OR DID ANYTHING TO META KNIGHT I WILL THROW YOU INTO A GRAIN SILO. NO!!!

anyways if you have susie getting a redemption arc yes youre so cool. if you have them getting together okay thats cool. if you draw susie/mecha knight art and act like its cute im throwing you into the grain silo too. if you dont have susie properly redeeming herself and ship her with meta knight even though shes still weird about him and still colonizing people then i dont trust you and thats the category most metasusie shippers fall in

i also want to bring up the people ship it out of spite, because theres been a big spite-shipping metasusie resurgence in the past year thanks to weird stalking drama sparked by a very certain someone people might remember. yall need to realize that going harder on something that understandably makes people uncomfortable and trying to push back by pretending the ship is (by default) more harmless than it is and pretending that everyone who dislikes it is automatically being unreasonable just because Some people are yikes to metasusie shippers is Not the play to take. it just makes you look like an inconsiderate asshole. two people being assholes to each other does not cancel out it just makes an even bigger fire. get some critical thinking skills yeah

its not the fault of anyone who wants to make cute metasusie content that susie is very explicitly a colonizer and a lot of people have strong feelings about that, bbbbbbbbut i hope it came across in this whole tangent that if you try lessening the blow of her actions against meta knight people have full right to hate your guts imo

EDIT: extremely last minute edit but i just straight up forgot that people who arent lgbtq+ exist in this fandom and thus didnt mention it: can we bring up the amount of homophobes who love this ship purely because its strong cool masculine man x cute pink feminine girl. does anyone remember that one guy who was big on metasusie and had "christian" in his bio and also had "will not do lgbt+" in his commission sheet or is that just me. its so fucking funny. it makes me cry laugh whenever i think about it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

#asks #anonymous #dgp askgame #ask to tag

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redcliffed · 1 year

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since you said to be more specific if i wanted to know more then can you talk abt what youve mapped out of grells and madams relationship? redcliff is my otp so i would love to hear what you think of the red murder wives

ok so!! my biggest thing w them is that to me they are just. horrible for each other. they are soulmates they are tied together by the red string of fate but god is it unhealthy. like if u build a relationship off of brutally murdering ppl ur not gonna have a healthy dynamic i’m sawrry (ESPECIALLY when it ends with murder. u don’t kill ur gf that casually if ur relationship is healthy). there’s so little content of them but the bits we see seem pretty tumultuous (i base a lot off that one rainbow butler one shot bc that shit was so gay but sooo toxic it’s scrumptious) so i just run with it! they’re both very mentally ill and homicidal that shit was doomed from the start

the whole relationship like a slow build from their first meeting bc anne is immediately like Live With Me and they’re inexplicably drawn to each other (read: horny) but it’s a slow evolution from yearning and going marginally insane and probably like drunk making out they refuse to talk abt after to insane love confessions and kinda just running with the idea that they’re basically married. and the whole time it’s just a constant flux between desperately needing each other always and divorce worthy fighting. so much divorce worthy fighting.

grell falls HARD like really fucking hard like despite being the world’s worst gf she’s also more invested. she has insane tunnel vision for anne like she abandoned her whole life for her so ofc she does!! it’s a genuine obsession and it’s so unhealthy and she’s desperately needy and anytime it feels like it may be crumbling she goes hard on trying to sabotage bc she will not leave until the bridge is burnt to fucking ASH (she’s also insanely impulsive abt it like the minute she regains common sense she’s just like “why did i do that” and then wants to rekill herself so bad).

anne is very very infatuated but she’s kind of the normaler party in the sense that she can have a life outside of grell (and grell does not like that). she’s a workaholic abt the murder and also about the Being An Aunt and she’s having a crisis of morality at all times and this makes her very preoccupied but also lowkey without grell she’d kill herself. grell is like her key to being able to live with herself morally it’s like. “no one will love me with how horrible i’m being but this bitch not only loves me but also condones my atrocities!! if she leaves me i’m blowing up the world.” but the thing is she’s confident enough that grell Won’t leave her to not be as invested in her. and she’s also not afraid to be a frigid bitch when she’s pissed at her and can be so extremely hot and cold about everything it’s absolutely insanity inducing.

they’re stuck in this insane loop of being madly in love, anne kinda zoning out of everything and getting cold, grell vying for attention via acting out or manipulation or cheating or something, Big Fight, and then back to being madly in love and they NEVER WANNA STOP bc they understand each other so deeply and fundamentally in a way no one else ever will!! they enable the worst parts of each other and they feel so safe with each other. they’re each other’s home but god that home is the worst place you’ve ever stepped foot in.

there’s also an internalized homophobia layer going on for sure that definitely does not help things. esp bc anne was probably grell’s bi awakening. i always write madam red as a lesbian who has already unpacked that and dealt with it so while she has like. period typical internalized homophobia it’s way less of a Thing for her. but for grell it’s just like Oh God What Is Happening Why Do I Want To Live In Her Skin What Are The Gender Implications Of This I Am Having A Bad Time!! so like the double whammy of a full blown sexuality crisis and first time doing commitment r driving her a little insane the whole time.

it also makes grell nerfing anne a lot less random in my brain. she just snapped in that moment and it was a 2.5 year buildup of frustration that she just let loose bc she felt like she was being rejected and like all her fears of abandonment were being confirmed and she kinda just lost it. i don’t even think she fully gets why she did it tbh it kinda just happened and she ran with it and processed it all two hours later and was like “oh shit i’m going to pretend that won’t make me wanna die forever” but it’s also just a response to a constant pattern of Fucking Everything Up So Bad Now, Kiss And Make Up Later except oopsies it was fatal this time!!!

basically when the relationship is good it’s perfect and idealistic and amazing in every way and when it’s bad it’s the worst fucking relationship you’ve ever seen. it’s a mess they’re a mess it’s so fun!!

#sorry if u wanted more lovey dovey romance for them #they’re both Not Good People the relationship is gonna suck i fear #they r lovey dovey tho. toxically #i like my sapphic ships a little bit rancid and horrible #redcliff #black butler #grell sutcliff #grelle sutcliff #madam red #angelina dalles #asks #headcanons

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twinanimatronics · 2 years

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Who's got insomnia and brainrot that's right the Analysis Anon!

I did notice that Sun always listened when told to stop- except for the shower scene. I assumed it was also in part with how upset he was. He cares very deeply about this person, and this is the first time they've been seriously injured. He wants to take care of them! And not having human concepts of nudity, not being taught bodily autonomy of himself throughout most of his life, and also having it normalized that with someone you love if you need care you just strip down and do what you gotta do...

Yeah it made sense to me that he kept pushing it. The protagonist said the exception to their rule was being seriously injured! Why are they going back on that now!? What if they hurt themselves worse!!??

And Protagonist was understandably too fucking tired and in pain and upset to do any amount of detective work needed to figure out why he was acting like this so they just yelled about principles and threw the soap at him. Hopefully later they have a real talk about it because Sun was absolutely not in the right there at all but once again it boils down to a lot of 'you idiots didn't care to socialize this living being you made with fellow adults and teach him the rules of the human society he'd be forced to live in.'

I also kind of figured that them being so touchy was largely due to being so horrifically starved for love and affection but it makes sense that being made for kids also plays into that, since many kids are also very touchy-feely.

Insomnia gang!

Yep yep ^^ Sun’s personal feelings and emotions were too also part of it.

And yeeeeep

Sun and Moon just weren’t properly socialized/trained AT ALL.

They also ARE horrifically starved for love and affection

So it’s actually a double whammy for why they’re so touchy

Childcare programming/being designed for hugs and cuddles AND being touch/affection starved even before getting isolated for LITERALLY over a year from any contact.

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ingravinoveritas · 2 years

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!!! Amyyy, I was in the audience for the show with my sister, I'm still reeling thinking about it and so happy that it's out. Have you seen the episode? I've actually yet to watch the telly cut but the show was SO good & I hope that they didn't cut too much (I was in the live audience once before and we were there for about 90 minutes, yet the final cut wasn't even an hour long, sadly). Anyway, maybe that's just the rush of the live experience speaking but I thought that David was especially, especially lovely, he was SO. sweet. God. Plus, and that's one thing that stood out for us, Robbie was really touchy with him on the sofa. Quite fidgety, putting his hand on his back, shoulder, leg, knee, especially when the filming was done, hugging and talking, he seemed super enamoured haha. Which made me think of missing David & Michael doing promo together, I just want them enjoying being in each others space again and us being able to scream about it!! ❤️

(Grouping the Graham Norton anons together, since they’re related.) Anon #1, that is so cool that you were at the taping for the show! I sometimes don’t even realize that I have people following my blog from all over, so I absolutely love that you got to be in the audience and have shared all of this with me.

So yes, I did indeed see the full episode of David on Graham Norton this past week. For me, this episode was a double whammy because my love Eric Idle was also on the show, so I could hardly wrap my brain around both of them existing in the same space (as was the case when Michael Palin suddenly turned up in the first episode of season 2 of Staged). Absolutely delightful.

But focusing on David, I did feel this was such a toned down/more serious appearance as compared to the many others he’s made on GN in the past. I think this is due to the present state of the world more than anything else, rather than anything happening with David personally, and I was glad that GN gave him and Jamie Lee the space to talk about climate change and the things that matter (or should matter) to us all on a global scale.

It was touching to see David so vulnerable, though, especially when talking about his dad. I get the sense that--especially with his recent turn in Inside Man and now the play he’s about to star in--that David has been thinking about his father and “goodness” a lot, and feeling in some way like he will never be as good as his father was (which speaks to what you were saying, Anon #2). Part of that is just the result of that Scottish Presbyterian upbringing, but I think it’s a piece of David that will always be there, that still shows itself in his career and in his life and how he blossoms and preens whenever he receives the slightest bit of attention.

...Which then brings me to the other part of David’s appearance that caught my attention, which--as you mentioned, Anon #1--was all the touchy-feely action going on with Robbie Williams. A few gifs:

The first one got me because of course David doesn’t even flinch when getting groped by another man, and you love to see it. I do wonder how much of this had to do with Robbie being sleep-deprived and just grabbing on to David to keep from falling over with exhaustion, but it still was quite a sight to behold.

With the second one, I couldn’t help but think of Michael giving Chris Hemsworth a death glare when he tried to put his arm around David on GN three years ago. I do wonder what his reaction would have been like had he been there when this happened, or if David engineered a little bit of that jealous response (because he likes it) by texting Michael after the taping and telling him to watch the show on TV.

And I’m with you, Anon #1...I, too, miss David and Michael being in each other’s spaces and touching the way they do. I always make a distinction, though, because while David clearly enjoys being groped and manhandled by lots of people, he does not react to any of them in quite the same way he reacts to Michael. I gave an example of it in this post from a while back, and I see the same thing here with Robbie: That David goes with it, but he doesn’t soften and melt into his touch the way he does with Michael’s.

Robbie is touching all over David and David is enjoying it, but there’s no “intimacy,” so to speak. It’s fun and friendly and a lovely moment to watch, but it’s something that exists mainly on the surface. But intimacy speaks to a close connection between two people, which is what is so evident and so powerful when we see Michael and David together.

It’s Michael who reminds David of how lovely he is. It’s Michael who brings something in David to life and lets him know he is safe, that he can enjoy the attention, and that he is and always will be good enough. Michael couldn’t stop gushing about David during the last GO press tour, and I truly can’t wait to see it all happen again when they start doing promo for the second season.

Thanks for writing in, Anons (and especially Anon #1, since you were at the taping!). I hope we’ll have more to scream about soon... xx

#anonymous #reply post #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #the graham norton show #robbie williams #there's also the fact that Michael doesn't even need to be touching David #to show exactly how he feels #i love how Michael manages to convey 'he's mine' without saying a word #David is also soft with Michael in a way he isn't with others #you love to see it #ineffable lovers #discourse #gifs by me

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astriiformes · 2 years

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as an aromantic person, your post about hunter was a big mood. when i was younger i didn't understand why couples who broke up sometimes couldn't be friends anymore after that.

High-five and same. I've gotten vaguely more aware as time has gone on, but back in high school I was always the last to find out friends had started dating (or, worse, had broken up, which occasionally got awkward....) and to this day just cannot pick up on or make sense of most romantic/amatonormative social rules. Fortunately, my social circle is such that that's, like, fine, but it does still get a little embarrassing at times.

I know for me personally, the not picking up on stuff is also a double-whammy of being aro and being autistic, which is absolutely what I imagine for Hunter as well. That boy is so full of autism.

#aroblogging

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tailsrevane · 2 years

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[movie review] justice league vs. teen titans (2016)

“you dare disobey me? have you forgotten your heritage? you are an al ghul.” “no… i’m a titan!"

yeah they knocked this one out of the fucking park. just absolutely crushed it.

i was actually a little sad to discover that this one wasn’t based on a comic, because i was really looking forward to reading whatever it was.

damian gets some sense knocked into him and stops being such a selfish little twerp without stopping being damian, and it is such a joy to see because i am so protective of him and i am so over people just constantly hating on him. hate on, haters! and i love how earned his developing relationships with the team feel.

raven is the fucking best, and i need her civilian outfit omg. the choice to tie her story and trauma into the central villain/conflict of the movie is an inspired one and having that kind of character-driven conflict in a movie where you’re building a team dynamic from scratch is just such a huge asset, like usually this is the movie where you kind of throw an uninteresting villain in there because you need all the narrative space for the team but this movie is smart enough to understand that having the villain be actually meaningful to the characters helps create that space and i just wish storytellers would realize this rather obvious thing more often. and then tying damian’s relationship with his grandfather and personal growth back into it too to make it a double-whammy is just so inspired.

i love how lived-in the relationships between the already-established titans feel. jaime and garfield channeling their gayness for each other into constantly trying to one-up each other obviously highlights, but the whole team really does feel like a family. i love how earned the relationships damian forms with them feel. i love that he can actually play well with others now. i love, love, love cyborg being unwilling to leave the justice league but also just boom tubing in because it’s pizza night.

dick checking in on starfire because he’s the daddy of the titans and she’s the mommy is the best thing and i’m kind of willing to concede at this point that my dick/barbara shipping has probably been too inflexible in the past, because these two are really good together.

honestly, i kind of just want more of these movies forever. i know they rebooted the whole damn universe AGAIN after i stopped watching these, but please can you just give me like twelve of THESE? BEAST BOY KICKS A BAD GUY AS A KANGAROO AND LANDS ON HIM AS AN ELEPHANT, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT TO MAKE MORE OF THESE?

THIS MOVIE HAS A DDR FIGHT BETWEEN ROBIN AND BEAST BOY THAT IS PLAYED COMPLETELY STRAIGHT, I NEED THIS TO HAVE HAD MORE THAN THE ONE SEQUEL IT GOT. PLEASE, I ASK FOR SO LITTLE.

a-rank

#justice league #teen titans #justice league vs teen titans #dc universe original movies #movie review #reviews #movies #robin damian #robin #nightwing #damian wayne #damian wayne rules

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inventors-fair · 2 years

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Name of the Game Full Commentary

Hey everyone! Here’s the full commentary for the Name of the Game contest! There were a whole lot of good entries this week, so really give yourself a pat on the back. I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

I’m not surprised that more of y’all chose to go with “gathering” than “magic” but I am surprised by just how high the ratio ended up being. And frankly, I was expecting more of you to try and use both words, I’m surprised only one of you did, though I think “tragic gathering” counts in spirit if not in body. (Relatedly, I was also surprised by the number of murder mysteries I got but that’s neither here nor there). Anyway, I’ve had a really hard past couple days already and I’m up late so that’s enough of the intro. Let’s get on with it.

Gathering Storm by @fractured-infinity

This runs into similar issues to Obscura Ascendancy, it just feels so slow to get going. I do think the spell-copying is a much better reward than the Ascendancy’s spirits, and I like how it draws you into more spell’s when you’ve gotten going. The problem there, I think, is that after you’ve already made it up to cmc 4 it’s gonna feel real bad going back down to one. I think at that point, it should really just sacrifice itself not remove the counters and start over.

Family Gathering by @snugz

I think some kind of cmc restriction would do a lot to help this card. As-is, you’re too often gonna be trying to game the system by cheating out something really early and I think it does that too easily. Especially in commander. You’ve really gotta be careful with tutor-to-the-battlefield effects.

Gather the Flock by @wolkemesser

This is presumably in a set with bird tribal and this looks like quite a strong card for that. It can act as removal even without being kicked, which I assume is the intention since otherwise it could just be “deals X damage” or something. I don’t love that sometimes you’ll pump a bunch of mana into this only for your opponent to sac the creature you target or something and then you’ll lose out on all the birds; it feels like you should be able to get the birds no matter what. But other than that tweak, I think this is quite a cool card.

Magical Gathering by @scavenger98

Art Description: A dark cave. Five figures stand around the far side of a scrying pool, beneath which a menacing shadow can be seen. The warlock, who appears to be a vampire, has pricked his finger and held it aloft over the water, blood dripping onto the surface. The wizard's right eye glows with blue magic as she kneels, observing the ripples. A snake is wrapped around the orcish druid's shoulders, facing her ear as if whispering to her. The goblin shaman observes the ripples much like the wizard, only they have tapped the water with their fire-tipped staff, further disturbing its surface and generating steam. Between them all, the cleric holds his hand aloft, casting pale yellow light for the party to see by.

Mood: Shared wondrous discovery

Eyy, you went for the double whammy. This is a cool card, and I absolutely love the flavor, but I’m less enamored by how it plays. You’re encouraged to collect a all five of the different creature types, which I think is a fun challenge, but I think you’d be better off encouraging having them on the battlefield rather than in your hand. As-is, there will be a lot of times where you’ll be keeping cards in your hand trying to cast this later, and that tends to not be especially fun.

Recursive Magic by @industrialsalad

I don’t know if this quiiite works within the rules? It might, but it’s a little weird if so. A way to accomplish something very very similar to this though that works a lot better might be “Whenever you cast spell, you may pay that spell’s mana cost. If you do, copy that spell. You may choose new targets for the copy.” Minor wording tweaks aside though, I quite like this. The name makes sense and the “magic” doesn’t feel forced at all. (I was a little worried about that with this contest, but everyone did quite well). It seems like a fun card to play but it makes you put in the work to get the payoff. It might need to be bumped up to 4 mana, cause it does a lot, but honestly it might also be okay.

Tragic Gathering by @hypexion

Love the rhyming lol. And I like it! simple and flavorful. Who doesn’t love a murder mystery. I really don’t have much to say about it; I don’t see any play pattern issues, or power level issues, or flavor issues. It seems like a good card.

Boggart Gathering by @hiygamer

This reads like it’s building up to a big effect, but really that effect is more of a downside. If you’re sitting around with eight goblins, things are probably going the way you want them to and you don’t want the board wiped. And I’ll admit, that did sour my opinion of the card at first just cause it didn’t read the work the way I expected, but on reevaluation I think I quite like it. And I love the flavor here- when you get too many goblins in one place, things tend to get rather destructive. All around, fun card, fun flavor, a bit weird that it’s probably at its worst in a goblin deck. That feels off.

Gathering Dust by @memnite-shyamalan

This just seems quite weak, all things considered. For one thing, when I have no cards in hand is probably most when I want to be drawing cards, so I’m not even sure how much I’d even use that effect. And even when I do use it, it’s just a token and a random card back, which very well might not even be better than whatever was already on top of your library. It’s all just kinda… meh. It definitely doesn’t have the splash or the power i’d hope for in a mythic.

Gatewatch Gathering by @gollumni

This is rather blunt- go get a planeswalker and an “Oath of ____”- but I don’t think that bluntness is a bad thing necessarily. Being able to go get certain oaths seems rather useful for a superfriends deck, so I like putting the effect on a card you might want to play in superfriends. I do, however, think it doesn’t quite fit the flavor. This feels more like “join the gatewatch”; I’d expect “gatewatch gathering” to be able to nap multiple planeswalkers

Wolfpack Gathering by @deejaymasterflex223

I quite like the design, but I don’t think this should enable itself. It makes it a bit too trivial to get a large number of wolves- always a minimum of three, and very easily more. And since this card can have a high ceiling, I think it should have a lower floor. I like this card more limited to specifically wolf/werewolf decks. (And it might be worth bumping down the cost a little in doing that). Otherwise, I think this is sweet. It seems like a fun card in wolf and werewolf decks, and is easily something i could see printed.

Illusive Gathering by @beandrea99

This is a good name for this effect, and vice versa. Make a couple illusion tokens, Sure! I do think this should only trigger on combat damage to players though, not to anything. I think it draws you just a little too easily. Otherwise though, this seems like a fine, printable card.

Gathering Clouds by @nine-effing-hells

Seems like a cool little control piece. You tap down a bunch of stuff to buy yourself time to build up a bunch of counters and go for the win. I do worry that it’s a little too slow at building up to the win, and since control decks love using as few wincons as possible, since they can and that’s technically optimal. So that seems a bit problematic. The other thing is that this just has a whole big wall of text and doesn’t work the way I’d expect it to (counting total power equal to the number of counters instead of simply tapping a number of creatures equal to the power, though I do think that’s a good choice balancingwise), but really that’s more of a me issue than it is an issue with the card.

Blood Magic by @starch255

So first of all, great name. It’s hard to use “Magic” in a name, since everything you do is technically a spell, it’s all magic. But “Blood Magic” is a very evocative phrase so it works well. I quite like the card mechanically too; madness is a cool mechanic, and this is a fun way to enable it without requiring it. My main issue is with the Blood making ability. I’m quite worried about the fact that this can come down early as turn one and make you a whole bunch of blood tokens. That seems extremely abusable. Sure it costs you a bunch of life, but if you’re really abusing a huge influx of artifacts that won’t matter too much. That ability really wants a limitation to make it a slower influx of blood. Otherwise though, this is quite cool.

Gather Round by @nine-effing-hells

This requires a veerrry specific set to exist in, what with the verse counter and all. And even in that set, it requires a very specific board state to use to its full potential. However, you’re probably pretty happy with it even if you can only get two of the modes (assuming verse counters are a useful mode here). And if you can only get one you don’t like it but you might do it. So all in all, this seems like a good way of going about with this effect. Having +1/+1 counters as a minimum means this’ll never be 100% dead which I like.

Gargantuan Gathering by @grornt

I think this is just a bit too much card draw for not enough hoops or investment. Even if this only had the first part of the first ability, it would be decent (though on par with some other stuff we’ve had, even below par). But the added ability to double up on the effect for really big creatures just feels like too much. And that’s not to mention the additional mode of being a creature (which admittedly I don’t expect would be used all that often).

Gathering Swarm by @helloijustreadyourpost

This seems solid. There’s been various stuff kinda like this over the years but never this exactly, and I could easily see this being a thing. It’s possible the numbers might need tweaking? But it’s also possible they might stay right as they are, I could see this being fine. It’s probably a bit more of a rare than an uncommon, but otherwise seems fine and fun.

Gather the Suspects by @horsecrash

I think the cost reduction ability has just a few too many possibilities, I’d narrow that down a skosh. Not from a mechanical sense, but from a flavor one. When you’re batching stuff together, it’s always tempting to include more for the sake of flavor, but with stuff like this, less is more. I could see “Assassins, Rogues, and Ninjas” easily, or any one or two of those creature types + creatures with flash maybe, depending on what the set looks like, but not all three + flash. And shapeshifters feel like a bit of an odd one out, though I see the flavor your going for. That nitpicking aside though, this is another good demonstration of a murder mystery whodunnit. (We got a lot of those this week, huh).

Gathering of the Archmagi by @curiooftheheart

I’d change the cost reduction ability from revealing a Wizard in your hand to having Wizards on the battlefield (with some changes to the overall costing- maybe 5UUU, at a random first guess?). For a couple reasons. One, flavorfully this just doesn’t feel quite like a “gathering”. You only need one wizard. Two, mechanically, asking you to have stuff in hand just doesn’t feel right for this card. Generally it’s just better to encourage having stuff on the field than in your hand cause that way encourages you to actually play your stuff; there are 100% many exceptions to this guideline, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think this card is right to make one. Cause this is clearly a late game card, for when you have a lot of mana and not enough stuff to do with it. The other thing I’d change, more minorly, is just to add a “for the rest of the game, you have no maximum hand size”. This is a mythic, it can afford it easily.

Gathering Storm by @azathoth-the-bored

I quite like the idea. I’ve always been a fan of generic tribal effects, and this card uses one of those effects in a very neat way. A board wipe which requires you to already have a large board state that it’ll then wipe out is always a bit odd, so the part about the graveyard makes for a very interesting addition. I’m unsure if it’s enough though. What might work is to rework this a bit so that it doesn’t just count your creatures but instead looks at the greatest number of creatures any one player controls that share a creature type. (I’m unsure how to word that but I know it can be done). That keeps a similar flavor, but makes it a tribal hate card or a card that could still be used in the situations it works in in the current form. The name also isn’t working for me, I don’t see where the “storm” comes from.

Animate Magic by @minopug

This looks like quite a well made 1 mana counter spell. It seems useful, but has a significant enough downside that it’s not better than all the alternatives. Early on, they’ll make a 1/1 or a 2/2 that hopefully shouldn’t be hard to deal with in combat, and later on you might snag a big haymaker spell, and they’ll get a big vanilla beatstick but that’s probably better for you than whatever they were casting. That’s the downside you get, for only having to leave one mana up. Seems fair, and really I’m surprised this hasn’t already been made. I don’t quite get why the elemental is green, but I don’t think that’s a bad choice either. And you might be able to get away with this at uncommon? Cause limited is where that creature is gonna matter the most, generally.

#mtg #magic the gathering #inventors' fair #name of the game #commentary #monday blog

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astros-turf · 1 month

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I'm watching one piece. I'm on episode 512. Major spoilers for the marinefort arc so if you don't want that spoiled don't read.

I have made a literal blog post blogging about my feelings when it comes to one piece. If you wish to read an essay of how emotional I get about one piece and how much it makes me cry written by a tired, high, queer guy... Then this is the post for you.

Okay. I have been incredibly emotional watching this show. It has the perfect ebb and flow with the major arcs. They build stories up so well. I could talk about this for hours. I sobbed watching the enies lobby arc. I think about Robins I WANT TO LIVE! Fucking constantly. At least once a day. I kinda want it tattooed but I don't know if I want the manga panel or just the words. And then also maybe that's a weird thing to tattoo. Anyway. She's my absolute favourite anime "girl" (quotes cuz she's a woman and it feels weird calling her a girl but this feels fedora-y i hate this). Robins just so cool and I wanna sit and hear about the lands history from her and I want her to tell me about all the theories that the archeology world has going.

But anyway I've been watching this marinefort arc and I had spoiled Aces death ahead of time for myself. So I was really struggling because I was really anxious to see it? Not because I was particularly attached to Ace, but because I'm very protective of Luffy and that's his brother so of course I care like he's my own brother. (I feel like I'm not making sense, I am high and also I have adhd lol)

But I didn't cry for Ace's death somehow. I think I was just so... Not shocked but like stunned? And also so angry that they worked so hard to get to him and Ace just had to stand his ground and I can even respect that but then the double whammy of he ultimately died to protect Luffy. And I just couldn't process that at the time. So I didn't cry. But the whole mini arc after that, the kid one? I was crying left and right at every single thing ace said. I wanted to punch Garp cuz he's an idiot. I wanted to punch Garp more for punching literal children. But mostly I cried because you learn about ace standing up to danger even when that's not the best option and you find out Roger did that too. And it turns out that ace has done it before, also to protect Luffy. Like bro Luffy is Ace's world man, like that's his baby brother and Ace is the fuckin best big bro ever. Made me miss being a kid with my brother when we used to wrestle and roughhouse all the time and have play fights and stuff. My brother is 10 years older than me, so it wasn't much of a fight ever but I remember having a blast. We don't talk anymore and that really sucks, but shit happened and I don't think the relationship will be quite the same unless he gets some therapy or a divorce or both. Anyway. Maybe that's why Ace's death is hitting me so weird, it's like too relatable?

Anyway. I've been off and on crying because of all the crew members finding out about the war and immediately trying to get the fuck to sabaody even if it kills em and I just was like oh my god everyone cares so much. Oh my god and when Jinbe was tryna get Luffy to snap out of it so he'd stop hurting himself and he was like don't you have something worth living for?? And Luffy is remembering his crew one by one I was like "Your crew! 😭" "I've missed our crew too! 😭😭" Bro I really wanna be a pirate on luffys ship. I have no idea what I'd do, I'm not superhuman smart or strong or have some sort of gimmick... None of my SpIns are useful in battle or could be adapted to be useful in battle lol. I'd have to eat a devil fruit for sure cuz there's no way I'd accidentally stumbled ass backwards into haki how I am now. Anyway. Crying.

The whole reason I made this post. I thought I was good. I thought surely, this is gonna be a time when I don't cry. They're finally telling us the full meaning behind what luffys message was and giving us a better look at the photo of Luffy. Cool. Ooo, crocodile. Oh shit? The new gay lovers are going to the new world? With what crew?

Awwww oh my goodness. Everyones home towns... Oh my god Dadan! DADAN. "REST IN PEACE YOU BRAT!" had me HICCUP CRYING. IT STARTED WITH A HICCUP TOO. I had to pause and do a reality check when you're like too deep in the media ya know? Cuz I was like holy fuckin shit get ahold of yourself man. And then I realized that this show feels like free therapy with how much I fuckin cry. And then I was like I gotta ramble about this so here we are.

#one piece spoilers #op spoilers #personal #long post #a literal blog post okay #I'm high #and emotional #dylan be ramblin

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jeremy-ken-anderson · 2 years

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Rachel’s Faerie Tale: The Villain

The early plot of the novel, in very broad strokes, goeth thusly:

A coven in a magical realism world close enough to real that they don’t know magic is a thing is doing a spirit calling spell to feel close to magic-ness and a powerful old faerie pops in, admonishes them for doing the spell badly, and kidnaps Rachel, one of the members.

Its members scramble to find workable actual magic, which isn’t easy in the setting, and also we’re introduced to how Arthur - the one technically most responsible for botching the spell (he’s the one who physically broke the circle to go pee) - works as a reporter for a tabloid.

Rachel is returned unharmed. However there are four lasting impacts of her time in the faerie realm. First, she received some offhand training in magic from the old faerie. Second, she made a deal with another faerie and due to word-trickery the sneaky fey decided this means she gets to wear Rachel’s body to hang out in the human realm. Third, she met and immediately fell hard for Tem the Bridge-Keeper, a kind of fey giant entity. This feeling is mutual although both sides of it - how either of them began to have interest in the other - are absolutely unexplained in the course of the novel. And fourth, she was asked to carry a dress back to the human realm by an old lady.

This old lady was the villain of the story.

God-DAMN is that oblique. That is some From Software levels of telling the story by way of an item description in the corner of the room.

The dress turns out to be a magic trap that will let the old lady possess the wearer, which is both awkward and gross because the wearer ends up being a girl who has a huge crush on the villain’s grandson. So he’s being enchanted into this demi-romance with his grandma? Man villainy’s great. The wrongness of this works fine because a villain’s doing it. It’s twisted and horrible and story-wise that is fine.

Anyway the coven works out a way to pass to the faerie realm, uses its mentality-based topology to track down their possessed friend, they all get whammied by the villain’s enchantments, but Rachel’s issues with her own mother end up saving the day because she hates being coddled so much that the idyllic scenario the villain sets them up with grates on her enough that she tries to escape it. She returns less enchanted, they get the coven’s high priestess un-whammied too, and together the group takes down the villain - it’s immortal, so they settle for containing it.

There’s a sense of the character as very powerful and as a threat of what one of the characters could become if she’s not careful, and that’s definitely a positive in villain writing. I feel like I’ve been ragging on the writing so a few positives are worth laying out. The way the magic system works is at once really interesting and possibly too flexible. Basically the Ketterly witches can say things within reason and make them true by saying them. The villain uses this mostly for mind control, but in theory it applies to other things. The limiter is that phrase “within reason,” where they can’t just tell a dude, “You’re about to explode in a shower of gore” and have it happen (unless he’s recently eaten a bomb); Instead they’d suffer a kind of magical backlash from lying. The result is I can write a scene where the two of them are trying to quickly work out what they can say to gain advantage while not being fully aware of what the other can do (and if the other can block their effect, again, that’s backlash city). But there’s also this sense of artifice to it, where a lot of the powers and effects are based around half-truths, intentional double-meanings, and other sneaky wordings that render the whole thing weirdly close to some kind of pun-magic. Which is a really weird place for such a dangerous and self-serious villain to be.

But the biggest two problems are just: She’s introduced poorly, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I don’t - even now - really know what her motivation is. Her interjection into the story appears to be an attack of opportunity; It’s not like she opened a way between the fey and human realms on her own to craft the inciting incident. No, she made a deal with someone who happened across her path and who by coincidence was a friend of her granddaughter’s? Was she just waiting around to do that? How long has she hung out around that bridge waiting for someone to cross so she could make her sneaky deal?

This is all largely a side-effect of how the first chapter was a short story I wrote, and it didn’t have the villain who ended up there at all. It was just “coven fucks up, Rachel gets kidnapped, everyone panics, a couple days later the faerie returns her no harm no foul, turns out he’s a nice guy.” That, in very short, was the story.

I feel like the layers of what happened to Rachel while she was in the faerie realm are...really weird to have all layered up. Received tutelage, fell in love, made two terrible deals. Fairly reasonable as part of the story but oh wait they aren’t, all of it happens offscreen and we find out about it later.

I think there are two good reasons to keep Rachel’s first visit to faerie mysterious: The wild nature of the place and the coven coming to comprehend it as a group is really fun later in the novel and is kind of important to have where it is in the story. Also, the drama about what’s happening to her would be extremely undercut if we had a chapter from her bemused, mildly enchanted but generally fine perspective.

But it means the easiest first point of contact where the villain could be introduced is occluded. I’d need another opening.

More than that, though, I can’t really define what that opening ought to be unless I first come up with what the villian wants. The reader can make guesses: she seems to be trying to keep some vow at all costs, she might be trying to take over a younger body permanently to live again as a human...but we don’t know, and as the readers we ought to know. Having the protagonists unable to understand what the villains want is no problem. Having the reader unable to understand is an issue.

#writing

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kaorikarma · 2 years

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LET'S TALK:

The Undertaker/Cloudia theory.

Oh my. We're off to a good start, are we not?

So, we all know how this goes. Undertaker has a mourning locket for her, he has some kind of deep connection to the Phamtomhives, Cloudia's husband's name doesn't have family behind him, undertaker mentions he's been 'present for Francis' birth', which... come on, he has ABSOLUTELY no reason to be there.

On the flip-side, many argue that it makes no sense for an Shinigami to be able to have children, as death shouldn't be able to create life. Okay, fair point, I can understand that. There are also strict rules for dispatch reapers not to interfere with human lives, so getting a human pregnant would be absolute hell for a reaper if their higher-ups found out. But, we know Undertaker's already broken the rules by deserting and taking his death scythe with him, not even getting to the bizarre dolls. So, if he really did desert 50 years ago it's totally plausible that he could have decided to break one more rule and fall in love. We don't really know a lot about Cloudia, she's not been mentioned terribly often; but maybe that's in purpose. Assuming she DID fall in love with and get pregnant with Undertaker's children,If someone found out, maybe she was basically shamed by the family. After all, Ciel once mentions that he doesn't really know much about her (forgive me if that's wrong, I don't actually have many volumes of the manga, this is just my hard-core research speaking), but maybe that's because no one wants to speak of her. If Cedric k. Ros-- WAS her husband and WASN'T Undertaker, then understandably it would be a double whammy to find out that A, your wife is cheating on you, B, the man she's cheating with isn't even human, and C, those probably aren't your children.

You may be wondering, in this case, why didn't her husband divorce her? Well, my current theory is that in that time, It was kind of a shame on a man's reputation to divorce a wife because she's an adultress. You think about the reasons why, they're quite awful. Then, we know Cloudia died fairly young. If divorce wasn't Cedric's preference, maybe he murdered or poisoned her. Even if he was unaware exactly who she was cheating with, he might have sent her body to Undertaker's, as we don't really know when Undertaker opened his doors. Whether it was out of spite because he DID know or he was unaware and just sent her to the local undertaker, it's impossible to know. This may have spurned Undertaker to start working on his bizarre dolls. We know, from rCiel's body that he can perfectly preserve a body for years. In the Weston College arc, (I think, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) Undertaker mentions something about Agares only being his current masterpiece. Why would he mention that unless he had something better? Even after rCiel was presented I get the feeling that even for his 'masterpiece' he's still improving as he goes along, and maybe he'll never be done.

Still, this entire theory is based on whether or not A, Undertaker had relations with Cloudia, and B, whether shinigami are sterile or not. I do enjoy the mystery of this theory. Sorry, I know this went really far out, in fact I hadn't even thought this far until I started writing it and the pieces fell into place.

May you have a nice, Black Butler filled day!

#black butler #black butler grell #sebastian michaelis #undertaker #crack theories #theories #yana toboso #rciel #ociel #weston college arc #kuroshitsuji reapers #kuroshitsuji #kuroshitpost #vincent phantomhive #rachel phantomhive #francis midford #claudia phantomhive #cloudia phantomhive

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