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roydeezed · 4 months

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One thing for those who have watched The Boy and The Heron or will watch it. The Japanese title for it is How Do You Live? And Miyazaki stated he was leaving it for his grandson, saying, "Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film".

The deaths of contemporaries and friends such as Satoshi Kon and Isao Takahata and also the expected successor of Yoshifumi Kondo were things that have always weighed heavily on the back of Miyazaki's mind.

He recognizes the industry and the occupation for how soul crushing it was, grinding up either the spirit or the physical body of those who work in it. He loves and hates the industry he stands on the peak of and fully recognizes how it will probably be the death of him. And he knows it'll leave him unable to say a lot of things to his Grandson.

So How Do You Live? is a lesson. For his grandson. For himself. For his two sons. And probably for anyone else willing to pay attention.

Hayao Miyazaki is a flawed man that makes things so important to so many people. And I think more than any other film of his, in this you get to pull back the curtain a bit and see him at work. And what should be this giant unblemished titan can be seen for what he is, a sad old man who had higher hopes for himself and has even higher hopes for the people he makes his work for.

It's a beautiful thing to see another's humanity in their work. To look past the artifice and glam of commercialized art and find humans behind it. And humans willing to show their humanity and mortality is even rarer. And something to be celebrated. So when you watch it. Or if you've watched it already. Understand that this film is Miyazaki kneeling down, weary after years of weaving dreams and making mistakes, reaching out and saying to you that he hopes you can do better. It's an old man who's made all the mistakes of the world passing it on to you, hoping you do better, and making sure you know it's okay if you don't.

How do you Live? By making mistakes. By messing up. But still moving forward. And still reaching out.

#the boy and the heron #how do you live #hayao miyazaki #i love you old man #i know you'll be back but if we're talking to each other through screens then thanks #if the wind rises was him exposing his mistakes then this is his apology #i really dislike the popularization of ideas like “parasocial relationships” and “seperate the art from the artist” and how it seeps into #the discussion of art. While people should be maintaining a detachment from people they don't know I think blunting arts impact by not #acknowledging the human behind it is a disservice to art. And you lose the beauty behind someone as flawed as you making something beautiful

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soldier-poet-king · 4 months

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Ik halsin was a last minute addition but I kinda wish he had a full romance route ngl. Like. He's not normally my type of man but I am not immune to his treetrunk arms, kindhearted gentle trustworthiness, and stupid whittling of wooden ducks. The old worn sadness in his eyes. The burden of unwanted leadership. The hundreds of years of work to correct a past percieved mistake. The unending compassion for literally everyone, but esp children & the tiefling refugees. The wanderer and free spirit who, without giving up his freedom, finally finds a purpose, a reason to stop wandering, a devoted goal for his heart. He's SAFE and KIND and I like that in a man.

#his epilogue made me cry. ngl. like a lot?????#bg3 #halsin #idk man im just. not immune to giant bear man #also can we please talk abt what happened with him and the drow #its never resolved. and sir. sir. that is a trauma #talk all you want abt the oak father's gifts but like. sir. that is imprisonment and assault. can we please discuss this.#he is also very direct and i appreciate that #like no sir i do not want to talk about sex but at LEAST we're all on the same page #and hes respectful and not pushy gross #IM BAD AT READING CUES. I NEED U TO BE DIRECT WITH ME #i say. as a hypocrite. who only ever previcates bc vulnerability is dangerous

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grendelsmilf · 8 months

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"poor simon. poor simon, i guess? poor simon, sort of? it's like some part of him wants to be a sad wong lord. but why would anyone want that? is there some incentive?" – finn in astral plane

this is one of my all time favorite episodes, of anything ever. it struck me so profoundly immediately, and i have watched it so many times since it first aired. but i never gave this line much thought until now. i suppose if i'd been asked to i would've made the connection that finn is (perhaps subconsciously) talking about his own father as much as, if not more so, he is talking about the ice king. it's only seeing simon grapple with the consequences of regaining his sanity (so to speak) that i truly understand what finn is referring to here. because, of course, there is an incentive.

living in utter denial of one's grief and trauma is far preferable to actually confronting it, living with it and facing the consequences of the loss and the horrors you've experienced. simon misses being ice king not because he liked being ice king; it was its own personal torment and in his brief moments of lucidity it was obvious that he couldn't stand it. simon misses being ice king because the madness came with the silver lining of obliviousness. sure, being doomed to a life of lunacy and idiocy is a contemptible fate, especially for someone as thoughtful and erudite as simon, but at least when he was ice king he had the memory of a goldfish. yes, he does subconsciously remember betty enough to want a princess bride, and he feels an inexplicable fondness towards marceline, but mainly his body is a vessel for the crown, and that's still preferable to remembering and knowing and feeling when you have suffered so much that lucidity is a crushing burden. simon can drown his sorrows with alcohol, but inebriation is no match for the oblivion of the crown.

similarly, martin was driven mad with grief, and lived in denial and escapism before being given an out from the universe. he had love, he had a family, and that was ripped away from him in a cruel and tragic manner, so he sunk back into his old habits with even less care and consideration than before. unfortunately for finn, he is his father's son. and his denial of his irreparable grief causes him to relapse into unhealthy behaviors he grew out of in adolescence. at the time, he couldn't understand what the incentive was. why simon wanted to be a sad wong lord, or why martin would take the comet's offer. but i think he does now.

#fionna and cake #finn mertens #simon petrikov #adventure time #at ramblings #100 #don't usually tag my at posts but i figured since we're all talking about the new eps i may as well join the discussion properly #i don't think finn will be a major figure in this show (although i'd love to be wrong) but what we did see of him made me so sad #and simon of course. is so tragic #of course he's an alcoholic. of course

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wolves-in-the-world · 2 years

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thinking about how the one time eliot masterminds something, it's because the circumstances are dire and we don't actually see it happen; how he says he plays chess and nate believes him but we don't ever see it or hear about it again; how we don't even see his most basic fighting skills until they're needed and he has to drop the cerebral and nonthreatening grift he was using in front of the team. and I don't know what to think except that in some ways he's just as secretive as parker is, we just don't see it because on top of that he's this very believable gruff-but-sorta-amiable person who meets up with his vet buddies and goes on dates and cooks for his team.

#not heading anywhere particular with this just.#with parker we see the warehouse and the multiple addresses and it's all shown to us in a way to draw attention to her caution #and how much she trusts the team regardless by letting sophie figure out the combination #and we have to assume that eliot has safehouses too but the show never even flirts with the idea of showing us.#he's secretive in a way the story allows and glosses over.#the difference between him and parker is that he pretends hard to be normal and she either can't or doesn't.#once again reminded of the ship dynamic 'there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me.'#like. I sort of love that we don't see eliot's discussion of the kidnapping. what he figured out and how they'll handle it etc.#because just like in the pilot it's including the viewers in his grift #and this time it's the grift he resorts to most around people who know his job #the one that says he's violent and simple and not especially bright. the one that leads people to underestimate him.#power negativity applied in the best way for a hitter's career.#it's a grift we see multiple times and we're only barely shown the edges of it.#I would still kind of love to see more. because once again #it is fascinating to me that you can watch the entire damn show and still believe the grift of it.#eliot #leverage #hi I've been ignoring tumblr to get writing done and I keep having thoughts. it's terrible.

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horridgoblin · 21 days

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ok hear me out. having insomnia sucks ass but imagine staying up all night with gale (who also sleeps like shit i think thats beyond headcanon tbh) discussing lord of the rings lore and analysis. holy fuck that would be such a fun discussion and you know he's a massive lotr nerd.

"so did you know tolkien hated allegory?" id say to stir shit (i dont entirely believe this statement) and watch him just debate that. oh my god please gale dekarios become real right now.

#yet another mentally ill post #tehee #insert me coping with my insomnia with fictional wizard man #seriously though gale's mind fascinates me and id love to have conversations about nerd shit with him #he could talk about the most complex shit i dont understand and id be enraptured with his words regardless.#but to discuss literature with him? oh my god #now we're on my turf #especially about fantasy novels and romance #foaming at the mouth #bg3 gale #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #lotr #gobchats

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what-do-you-mean-theyre-evil · 4 months

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Highly disappointed in the Aerin stans for lack of acknowledgement we're giving his reaction to us telling him we love him.

#Y'all-#is this not the angst we were begging for?#we were not just discussing how we hc him feeling like he didn't deserve our affection and that's why he left?#why are not freaking out about our assumptions being right #why are we not in the communal cuddle puddle crying about how he thinks he isn't allowed happiness #why are our ten page essays on how we're going to give him the world?#starting with his da's throne 'cause fuck that guy #AERIN !!!!😩#we love you baby #playchoices #blades of light and shadow #bolas #bolas 2

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artheresy · 2 months

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An argument over whether or not Dan Heng is Dan Feng seems to have begun getting sparked again in certain parts of the Fandom and it does nothing but hurt my head to no end

Both sides cherrypicking or treating it like a strange situation, making false equivalents. "Yknow governments don't consider people who've lost their memories to be separate people" that's a flawed argument to use in favorite of DH = DF because it's not just he lost his memories. He literally grew up, experienced his own childhood, had a whole identity cultivated based on those experiences and that life and continues to live his own life. To treat the situation like it's just him getting a bit of amnesia is wild to me

But also I hate when people continue to insist he's running from Dan Feng and his past and how he's miserable and shouldn't ever confront the past and deal with it as if his and Blade's whole stories aren't centered around rebirth and karma, paying for your past life's karma. He needed to confront the past to ensure a freer future! He literally has!! And he will continue to do so because he realizes this, DH isn't dumb and he's grown since we first saw him. He understands

But yeah uh I'm so tired

This whole thing feels very Ship of Theseus. What makes the ship what it is, the physical aspects of its planks, its sailing history, or both?

For him, the question is what makes someone who they are? Is it the body that makes them up and any inherent genetic factors (like traits)? Is it their experiences, how they've grown up, and the identity they've developed in that time? Or is it both factors mixed together?

Personally in the case of Dan Heng, I think it's both! Yeah he has a lot of traits from Dan Feng. There's a lot inherently there. But we can't disregard his own experiences and the identity that has formed based on his history and what he's seen.

Again I can't stress this enough... It is a false equivalent to compare him to people who lose their memories or get amnesia, he didn't just lose those memories. He started life from the beginning, a whole different kind of life. And even then, the amnesia topic comes with its own debates. Isn't there a whole other thought experiment regarding someone put to trial who ends up with amnesia and what their verdict should be?

I guess in the end, it's all up to people's own philosophical beliefs after what constitutes a person. My personal belief that DH and DF will always be connect but the separation between them is also meaningful is something based on my own ideas of what consisitutes a person and their individual identity, similar situation with how I see Rukkhadevata and Nahida as connected but still not the same person exactly. At the end of the day again, it's personal beliefs

But what I can't stand and can't stand by, is someone acting all high and mighty like they're perfectly right and everyone else is wrong, especially when they're cherrypicking or not holding all their evidence to the same standard. According to some ppl, apparently it's better in the CN fandom where instead of treating it like "I'm right you're wrong" people have divided themselves into "DF and DH one person" and "DF and DH two people" groups and most importantly of all, they treat both like theories and just keep to their space and tag which they believe when it's relevant. Why can't we just do that? Why can't we follow in their footsteps instead of bringing up this argument every so often with the same tired flaws from both sides?

#Lore discussion in this community can be so tiring #I wish more people would be open to their viewpoint being challenged instead of believing they can never ever be wrong #And seeing people throw out wild accusations #Like someone saying people are transphobic if they believe dh is df like what?#I get it if you identity with dh and read it as a trans narrative personally even if I dont #Doesn't mean you can call people transphobic over it #I dunno I'm tired #Everything I see this topic I get mad #“He says you're my past in the ichor of two dragons!!”#He also says right after “But you won't follow me into my future” so your point is?#Additionally if we're being 100% real that animation feels like it's less about his rejection and eventual acceptance of DF specifically #It feels more so like his rejection of the role of Imbibitor Lunae given what I've talked about about the DF being there would never say #Any of those things how it's based on his biased view of him and is a projection of things he was told growing up likely #So I'm tired #One of the only good arguments I've ever seen to say DH is DF is in regards to how he clings to DF's old stuff #I have things to say about it personally #But it's a MILES better argument than some of the other ones I've seen and even then my arguments against it would still be an up for #Interpretation kind of thing like the initial argument rather than pointing out someone is looking at the full picture #Again I respect how people see it! Believe what you want to believe about it again it's all about our own perspectives #Just don't be a dick to people on either side if you don't agree with them #Dan heng #Dan feng #Hsr #Honkai star rail

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afterdeck-ace · 4 months

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[Ch. 1103 - Ch. 573] They're the same picture.

#one piece manga spoilers #op spoilers #one piece 1103 #portgas d ace #bartholomew kuma #Oda is giving it his all those past few weeks gotta give him that #it's funny tho we we're discussing Kuma's destination with friends and I was the one suggesting he'd pull an Ace and land #right on time on Egghead for an emotional sacrifice/rescue #I wish I'd shut up ahah but it's beautiful and ties in perfectly with the rest of the story and the repetition motif #I felt a lot for Bonney Kuma and Ginny #right when we thought Oda had already mastered the tragic backstories he comes back with something crueler #Bonney is currently 12. She. Is. Twelve. Read it again.#that poor girl #OP being in part about parallels #she's like Momonosuke

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monstersinthecosmos · 7 months

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As a fellow Marius lover, I always find it kind of disheartening how most of the content/fandom talk about him (meta, fic, fanart, etc.) revolves around m/m ships (Marius/Armand in particular but I’d even go as far to include Marius/Daniel here) when, in my opinion, Marius is like the one male character in the VC universe whose relationships with women are far more interesting than his relationships with other men (the only other character might be Lestat but even then it’s pretty 50/50). They’re so monumental and so full of complexities and pain and so much love and they define him and inform his character in ways that I think, his relationships with men simply do not. Interesting/hot under the right circumstances? Sure but like ARE YOU GUYS SEEING THIS MAN??? AND HOW HE RELATES TO WOMEN??? It’s one of the best things Anne ever wrote and I can never get enough of it and it makes me sad how little content there is of it and I feel I can never say this out loud because I would never want to make people feel bad about what they ship (truly not my intention here) but ugh SO MUCH potential there for life changing discourse and meta about Marius and the women he’s loved and lost and have shaped who he is and there’s like… nothing.

Tl;dr the reason I’m sending this ask is because I’m a firm believer that you must be the change you want to see in this world and because YOU get it! And every time you post or write about Marius/Pandora (or Marius/Akasha! Or talk about Marius/Bianca) an angel gets its (black) wings. You are seen, you are loved and appreciated tysm <3

OKAY FIRST OF ALL THIS WAS SUCH A DELIGHT TO GET IN MY INBOX, SECOND IM GOING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST AND ADMIT I FEEL TOO INCOHERENT TO TACKLE THIS TOPIC HAHA. I don’t feel articulate enough to do it justice. And I don’t say that to be obnoxious and self deprecating but like in all honesty idk how to synthesize it neatly but I think you’re sharing some GREAT IDEAS.

I have to say this in bullet points because I don’t feel equipped to string this into a cohesive post:

Marius was based on Anne’s husband, and Marius/Pandora was based on their marriage!!!!! And I think it explains a lot about why their relationship feels so fuckin POTENT to me, like it’s so genuine!!!!!!! And like knowing that I think it makes sense why she wrote him so HOT lol. Like she’s just writing thirsty stuff about her husband right? LOL

Also like insofar as there’s a lot of genderfluidity in VC there’s also something vaguely misogynist about it at times. And Anne Rice was a mega feminist and her work had so much womens lib in it!!!!! So I don’t think it’s intended as misogyny at all vs. Anne having conversations about gender and maybe her own relationship to gender. I think enough characters have said vaguely misogynist stuff that it makes me think it’s an Anne Problem vs being Watsonian. (This is also a historical/time period issue and we can discuss another time if and when vampires are supposed to break out of that when they transcend humanity and social constructs even when they’re still saying weird sexist shit at their big ages.) But I say that to say all VC characters are a tad sexist, even if perhaps she was writing with the intention of her own male power fantasy/male superiority/penis envy. AND THAT MAKES MARIUS VERY INTERESTING.

Cause like really the three main ladies in his life (Akasha, Pandora, Bianca) DO define him so much! And we don’t see him pine for Armand the way he did for any of them! Why!!!

Like there’s that aspect of sexism where women can be infantilized by men who don’t think they’re being unkind and it makes me wonder, especially when the author is a boomer, like where is that line between condescension and respect? I don’t have an answer here, this is too big-brained for me LOL but like he is SO devoted to the women in his life and I just wonder like if he sees them as creatures unlike himself, you know?

This is headcanon territory but I bet he’s such a fucking sub to Pandora lol and it just thrills me that he spent 2000 years begging Akasha for affection and she ignored him the whole damn time wow. And he continued to simp!

AND ALSO LIKE, I think people DO NOT DISCUSS THIS OFTEN ENOUGH, but did we forget that he chose Armand because he needed a Bianca rebound? He was absolutely TORTURED by his love for Bianca and picked Armand because he didn’t want to kill her oh my god. Oh my god!!! HE KEPT HER LETTER IN HIS POCKET OVER HIS HEART OKAY??? HE DIDN’T WANT TO DRAG HER INTO HIS COLD AND FATAL DOMAIN????? Fuck lol

It’s so fucked up that he didn’t go after Armand but spent like actual fucking millennia trying to find Pandora. HE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE ARMAND WAS AND LEFT HIM THERE LOL BUT PANDORA HAUNTED HIM EVERY NIGHT OF HIS LIFE FOR CENTURIES.

After everything he wound up spending like 200 years with Bianca or something and ?????? CORRECT because Bianca was the fledgling he actually wanted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it’s odd, I know I’ve said this 337589235 times, but Marius like. Has an idea of the person he wants to be and he tries SO HARD to live by logic & reason and he just can’t reconcile with the fact that he has EMOTIONS. And so like part of the person he wants to be like, open/empathetic/wise and he begs his lovers/students/fledglings to CHALLENGE HIM when he’s not actually healed enough to be challenged? And to me there’s something kinda like, extra spicy about it when you’re in Rice World and you’re a lil sexist; how much that burns EXTRA when it’s Pandora or Bianca sticking up to you or AKASHA FUCKIN IGNORING YOU.

Just really incredible that this person who is like the epitome of a patriarch has such fucked up relationships with all the women in his life. And like he underestimates these women, like the way he tries to manipulate Bianca and she leaves him! PANDORA AND AKASHA ARE UNAVAILABLE TO HIM AND BIANCA FUCKIN LEAVES.

akasSHA JUST IGNROING HIM!! JUST STRAIGHT UP FUCKIN IGNORING HIM FOR 2,000 YEARS!!!! HE'S OBSESSED WITH HER!

Anyway Enkil is ignoring him too but he doesn’t give a shit about that guy tbh lol

Also the amount of space he gives Eudoxia and Zenobia in his book like there’s more here too but tbh it’s midnight and I can’t start unpacking. I just think like, in 2000 years it’s interesting how Eudoxia wound up having such a lasting impact on his life.

I did just peek at the Eudoxia part and I’m dying, he goes “Her face was small, oval, and as close to perfection as anything I've ever beheld, even though she bore no resemblance to Pandora who was for me perfection itself.” CERTIFIED WIFE GUY.

What kinda mommy issues are we dealing with here? HIS MOTHER WAS A SLAVE THAT DIED IN CHILDBIRTH AND HE INHERITED HER GENES AND LOOKED LIKE HER AND DIDN’T LOOK LIKE HIS FATHER & BROTHERS? AND HE’S SORT OF AN OUTCAST AS A HUMAN LIKE ? THE STIGMA HERE? AND THEN HE SPENDS 2000 YEARS WORSHIPPING HIS NEW MOTHER??? PERHAPS YOU COULD SAY ENSLAVED TO HER? IDK MAN.

IS THIS ALSO WHY HE WAS SO OBSESSED WITH LOSING PANDORA?

The irony too, and something I think a lot of people miss, is that he DIDN’T WANT TO MARRY PANDORA LOL. He wanted to be betrothed to a child so that he could FUCK OFF and NOT get married because she wasn’t old enough to get married! He fucked off! He went exploring! He said this is not for me!

AND TO GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND BE MURDERED BY HIS MOTHERS PEOPLE???? IDK.

I’m not sure how these last two points tie into anything but I just wanted to mention his complicated relationship with Pandora and his own heritage lol. And then Akasha like DELIVERS Pandora to him because she’s like “wow this guy needs somebody lol and I am not emotionally available” — Akasha who was famously a violent genocidal radfem and who would not approve of his relationship with Armand but explicitly allowed him to have Pandora and Bianca. IDK WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!

Did Akasha approve of these women because she knew Marius was completely pussywhipped and would worship them and she wanted to see someone mommydom the fuck out of him and she knew that Armand would never be that person? 🫢

And again I want to say like, taking the author into consideration!! Anne Rice had a HORRIFIC relationship with her mom so you see these themes pop up occasionally in her work. DESPITE ALL OF THAT SHE IS STILL A FEMINIST AND WRITES ABOUT MATRILINEAR FAMILIES like The Great Family or the Mayfairs. But thinking about Mothers in Anne Rice Works makes me think a lot about this like, the damage they can do and the voids they can leave even when you’re a feminist and love women! You see a TON of this with Gabrielle and I always think that Lestat & Marius are such similar characters that you can do a lot of extrapolating or backwards engineering to ask questions about them and how they work, since we get SO MUCH Lestat POV in this series to work with and how we can zoom out sometimes and ask like, what is common across her entire body of work and what is more specifically common between Lestat & Marius and WHAT EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY is a result that they were both based on her husband in their inceptions.

Like how much of this has to do with Marius’s actual feelings towards men vs women on purpose, or how much was subconscious author bias, how much was simply that Anne Rice based him on her husband and she was THIRSTY, idk. It’s always hard to say in VC because Anne was such an intuitive and self-indulgent author and the stories are so weird!!! So your mileage may vary!

But I agree with you that these are FASCINATING relationships!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I like Marius/Armand too (I recently made a post about how I didn’t “””””ship”””” them but then I spent 2 months working on a M/A fic every day and now I think I’ve corrupted and converted myself LMAO) but yeah like. There’s such a lack of substance between them in the end. He treats Armand like he’s temporary, fucks up and moves on, and it’s such a departure from how DEVOTED he was with all his other partners.

Wow I didn’t think I had a lot to say, sorry about that. !!! EVERY TIME I BROUGHT A POINT UP I THOUGHT OF 5 MORE POINTS GOSH I COULD TALK ABOUT MARIUS ALL DAY.

#tldr he has mommy issues #marius de romanus #vampire chronicles #thank you hekateinhell for discussing this with me in DM so that i could scream and yell and make sense of it!#hekate is mommy issues expert she helped unlock some bonus points!#deep ass thoughts about vampires #also i wanted to keep fandom discourse out of this bc i dont got time but this is like #such a timeless topic in fandom spaces about the popularity of mlm ships vs het or wlw ships #and like what that all means #it's been discussed to death and i don't think it's a condemnation of fandom at all #it just is what it is #so this is always going to be the case when it comes to fandoms & female characters #but i think people need to stop complaining about shit like that HAHA #fandom is a potluck yknow #like you gotta participate and make your own contributions too #marius is already such a divisive character i'm not gonna split hairs about who we're shipping him with LMAO THE POOL IS ALRAEDY TOO SHALLO #but i would love to put more bianca & pandora content into the world!!!#and like you i do not want this to sound like i'm being salty abotu what anyone ships! it's all good my dudes!#akasha #akasha/marius #bianca solderini #marius/bianca #pandora #marius/pandora

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anarchy-and-piglins · 2 months

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If prev ask is talking about whump I'm going to laugh my fucking ass off though-

#delete later #we're not having this discussion again #'oh techno is so strong and powerful it's OOC to write him in pain'#first of have we even consumed the same content?#secondly help this man can't even escape the fandom dehumanizing him #ask yourself why you think writing a strong man crying or breaking down after being in extreme pain is 'infantalizing' i dare you

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boimgfrog · 4 months

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boy I'm seeing thanked me for helping him reconnect to his religion and feel comfortable exploring spirituality n stuff which is really sweet but his religion is catholicism. he's dating a gay trans person and it's somehow made him more catholic.

#jay says a thing #context is we're both religious so he feels comfortable discussing theologies and stuff w me #and we both are pretty relaxed with it #but its so funny. his mom is like. proud of him. and likes me bcos im making her son more catholic.#like she doesnt care that we're having insane premarital sex bcos hes going 2 church now #boytoy tag

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stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage · 27 days

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Are there any companions you can't stand?

I wouldn't say I have any that I can't stand. Something that's so engaging to me about DA is that the companions have good, bad, and a lot in between. Honestly, I don't hate any of them. There are companions that I have more issues with than others, but I like them all; even, and sometimes especially, the ones that tend to be heavily hated on by the fandom.

The only companion that might fall into this category for me is Sebastian, but I totally acknowledge that I've yet to make an effort to use him when I play DA2. I legit just forget about him. How am I supposed to have a good grasp of his character when I don't engage with him outside of his companion quests? Plus I usually romance Anders so Sebastian always leaves my party in the end with threats of bringing an army down on Kirkwall for not killing Anders, soooo... yeah. Not the greatest impression he's left me with.

I would like to have a more well-rounded opinion of Sebastian because the concept of him is interesting; he's this chantry brother who is also a prince, but his family was murdered so he puts up a bounty on the chantry board [which admittedly is SO funny] and his companion quests are about avenging his family and helping him decide if he should take back his lands or remain a chantry brother. But then I talk to him, I listen to him talk to the other companions, and it's like... oh, the chantry has become his entire personality because the dude was brainwashed and now he's saying shit like the maker was actually the one who freed Fenris from slavery, and when Fenris tells him a story about how Denarius killed a child in a ritual for more power, Sebastian just doubles down that the maker has his reasons, like....babe, c'mon now.

I feel like I've read pieces about him written by fans who love him that are more compellingly written than he is, if that makes sense. Really, I would love to be educated by those who love him, especially Sebastian romancers because of all the love interests in all of DA, he's the one I look at and go, "....okay but why?" I have a lot of fun with character discussions and other perspectives so I mean that sincerely.

Also I think it's worth noting that when I play, I tend to get super into the roleplay of my warden/hawke/inquisitor, but while they have party members they can't stand, I have opinions that are separate from them, y'know?

For example, since I've talked about it a lot recently, my mage Hawke and Aveline butt heads constantly. By the end of Act 3, they're rivalry is heated and Ed's surprised Aveline even sided with him in the end because THAT is how much their relationship deteriorated over the course of the game... but then there's my warrior Hawke who adored Aveline. The two of them were best friends and Aris always gave her the benefit of the doubt, like she had Aveline's back through and through.

I've complained about Aveline a lot in my posts so it probably does sound like I can't stand her, but that's not true. Aveline's actually a companion that fascinates me, like she makes me go, "God, you're such an asshole, tell me more right now." and it drives me crazy how she and Carver are foils, like I love it so much, I could go on and on about how foiled they are, it makes me want to bite something.

It's very easy to look at Aveline and think she's just a bitch, she's a cop, she's a bad character, #Aveline-critical, bad companion, etc. I see it all the time, and not just with her, but with every companion in dragon age, y'know? I'm not saying that's wrong or anything; some characters just don't vibe with you or you have legit reasons for hating them and that's fine. I'm just saying some of it's very surface level unless you make the effort to elaborate.

If you don't like a character, you're less likely to make an effort to understand or see anything positive about them. You're more likely to have confirmation bias, so whenever they do or say anything, you go looking for the worst interpretation. I try not to do this just because for me, that's the "boring" approach to games like this but as we've seen, I'm not immune either... y'know, Sebastian.

But Carver gets this a lot, too, and I think I've made myself clear that Carver is my favorite, I love him, the Hawke twins are S-tier companions and I would throw everyone in Kirkwall into the ocean if it meant Bethany and Carver's happiness.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the characters a lot of fans can't stand are some of my favorites?

Like a lot of people shit on Sera, and I'm like "Nah, that's my girl! Listen, she's got a LOT of internalized issues, but we're working through them okay! She's getting better!"

And Vivienne? Oh, don't get me started on Vivienne, I have a whole deal about her. She's also an asshole and I love her.

My canon inquisitor is Surana who escaped the circle and joined the dalish, becoming Lavellan. Vivienne is a reflection of what Ash could've been if she hadn't run away with Jowan. She played the game of the circle, she stepped wherever she needed to step because Ash knew she was at a disadvantage by being an elf, for one, and for two, not coming from a family with wealth that would give her special privileges. Her downfall was buying into her own hype and believing she couldn't be wrong about Jowan, believing that she could either prevent them from making him tranquil or help him and Lily run away, and believing she was above punishment because she worked her way into being Irving's favorite. Yet it all bit her in the ass and she had to run… so then years later after living outside of the circle and realizing just what the chantry is, how it conditions and abuses mages and shit, she meets Vivienne who also played the game well and came out on top, who now spouts the same shit Ash used to spout and it's makes their dynamic sooo chewable.

Then there's Cullen who's not a companion but I lump him and Josephine in with the companions anyway. They're advisors, they're in the inner circle, they count.

He's such a spineless ass in DA2 like believe me, I get all the criticisms he gets... but he's also fairly polite to Hawke even if they're openly anti-templar, he's softer spoken, and he's unwell after what happened to him in DAO and Meredith's clearly taking advantage of his state... but then he becomes an advisor in DAI who is so done with people's bullshit and blatantly honest about it, like he looks at Chancellor Roderick like "this fucking guy again" and he's so ready to just go for it, y'know? Well... unless you're a pretty lady who bats her eyes at him, then suddenly he doesn't know how words work. Like sometimes I feel crazy because I find him to be so funny in DAI, and overall a compelling character that I enjoy interacting with even when he's being a total asshole. Yeah, there's issues in his writing but I appreciate the vision the writers were going for, even if they stumbled... except for Sheryl Chee, I don't appreciate her contribution of those few posts on the DA forums that everyone uses as a smoking gun to "prove" awful things about him. Nothing gets under my skin more in character discussions than bad faith arguments and there's so much of that when it comes to Cullen.

Actually, while we're on that, can I just add a note that when I first got into this fandom, I saw someone's post about Chee doing an interview where she said all those bad things about Cullen wanting to assault the mage warden and I was like, "What? An interview? What interview?? Where??" and I couldn't find shit until much later when I read another anti-Cullen post that cited a DA forum as the source for her saying those things... so not an interview. I went digging for the forum, went into the way back machine to find it.... only to discover that this smoking gun comes from a fanfiction forum where Mary Kirby was also talking about Sten and catgirls and y'all expect me to take that seriously?

We can have discussions about whether or not Cullen's a bad person or a bad character, but the moment you bring Sheryl Chee into it, I know you're here in bad faith and your argument is void.

Sorry for the tangent and the long answer but this is the stuff I enjoy. I could talk about the characters of DA for ages unprompted that when someone does throw me a bone, I will discuss and gush about them all.

#asks #dragon age #dao #da2 #dai #sebastian vael #aveline vallen #carver hawke #dai sera #cullen rutherford #vivienne de fer #i have to stop myself before i go on tangents about morrigan and wynne and anders and isabela and merrill and dorian and varric and-#literally everyone sksksks i can't help it #also on the flip side of this type of discussion i also love looking at characters that most people adore and discussing their flaws #like i love alistair he's my favorite companion in dao BUT it's easy to forgot that he can be just as petty and selfish too y'know?#if you don't execute loghain he can straight up just abandon you and leave and you'll find him in da2 as a drunk like... babe really left #and let you deal with the blight because he was so blinded by revenge and thirst for loghain's death and that's not great??#not really something that gets brought up because it's unflattering it's an ugly part of his character but it's there mingling with the goo #and if you have a good relationship with him but don't know how he'll react when you spare loghain that can be devastating too #but it's also super understandable WHY he reacts like that WHY he leaves even if it's a selfish move on his part and hurts you #i dunno i think sometimes we're scared to talk about the ugly parts of our favorite characters because we love them #and don't want them to be wrong especially in fandom with a lot of pissing matches and bad faith arguments y'know?#i dunno this is my spiel of the night: i love all my companions except sebastian who is just a character that exists to me #i wasn't joking when i said i'd like to be enlighted about sebby and his romance like....... explain elaborate educate

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inhuman-obey-me · 1 year

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Okay, I’m just going to say it frankly, but in lesson 11 of Nightbringer, I just wanted to slap Belphegor so badly.

I want MC to be able to ask him bluntly, “Do you think blaming me is going to solve anything? That it will bring Lilith back? Or, are you just jaded about the fact that she chose to save a human life, over loyalty to you, and the rest of the Celestial Realm? Because I am not your scapegoat! Humans aren’t your scapegoat!”

Bluntly speaking, we've never exactly been Belphie stans, just personally, and season 1 was part of the reason for that -- even if he did ultimately turn it around and come to accept MC once he learned the truth of everything. We never liked how it was basically brushed under the rug and moved on from so quickly, and we have always wished that there had been a more proper resolution to him, y'know, violently killing us, than we actually ever got.

(continuing spoilers for Nightbringer)

Unfortunately, this is a return to basically exactly how he was about humans in that very first season of original OM, because of course he would feel that way. Especially with the trauma of war and ensuing loss of his sister so fresh, and therefore also his guilt, which is the true cause of his emotions underlying the hatred of humans (it wasn't about loyalty to humans vs angels), there was simply no way to reveal MC actually being human without confronting this from him again. But unsurprisingly, it's an unpleasant reminder of the events of the very upsetting Lesson 16 in the original.

So, we would have loved for MC to be able to, either figuratively or literally, grab Belphie by the shoulders and just shake him and yell at him this time. But sadly, that's still not what we got here -- and understandably so. The situation didn't really allow for it, what with Beel's rampage and the confusion of the brothers having their power drawn, and considering this Belphegor doesn't know MC like that, whatever MC said would probably have zero effect (or, make him even angrier as he continues to push his own guilt and grief down in denial).

But on a maybe(?) brighter note, perhaps revisiting it and having him get angry and violent at MC again actually will give the opportunity for the devs to resolve it better this time, whenever this current conflict reaches its end -- though, considering this last cliffhanger, it may well escalate to much bigger problems before we get to that. But an actual apology would be nice, whenever we resolve it, and a proper conversation between MC and Belphie talking out his hatred and guilt would be even better. So, here's hoping that they don't forget about it in this mess, which they might, considering past OM writing, and that's all we can do for now.

Seriously, please, because we'd really like to be able to like him more than we did the first time.

#of course then there is the 'how does this affect the timeline' lol #though we're just going with this whole trip to the past is already a branched timeline until canon says otherwise #pls don't come for us belphie stans we understand him we do!!#still would shake him #obey me #obey me!#obey me swd #obey me shall we date #omswd #obey me nightbringer #obey me nightbringer spoilers #obey me nb #obey me belphegor #obey me belphie #om! belphegor #om! belphie #ask and ye shall be answered #weirdowhodoodles #nightbringer discussion

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