Mfw I Completely Rejected Harpae In My First Playthrough, Expecting Her To Turn On Me At Some Point And

Kinda ridiculous how every member of the pines family has “selfishness” as a key part of their character but Mabel is the only one that frequently gets attacked by the wider community for it.

Like, Ford found out he essentially created a universe devastating weapon and his top priority was to hide his blueprints for it instead of just destroying it because even though it was a tool of mass destruction it was still his research and life's work.

Stan is... Well Stan, a running joke in the series is him being a massive con-man and thief, and while it was for altruistic reasons, he was still willing to risk the universe's safety by reactivating the portal to get Ford back.

And Dipper is constantly willing to risk other people's happiness and safety for a chance of impressing the ones he looks up to. He manipulated time to get a shot at impressing Wendy, hurting Mabel and getting Blenden falsely imprisoned in the process. He used the size-changer thing to grow taller than Mabel because he was upset she was taller than him and literally raised the dead and almost got everyone killed to prove to the agents that he was telling the truth.

To reiterate my first point, each and every member of the pines family is incredibly selfish in one way or another, but that doesn't make them bad people, it just makes them people. So maybe we shouldn't be too mad at one character specifically for showing traits that they all have.

Nowadays unless I'm doing an evil character run, Edgar from castle Morne has been put alongside the dung eater on my "on sight" list.

I just cannot stand him. The way he acts regarding the Misbegotten uprising makes my skin crawl. No, I'm not going to help you stomp out a slave uprising, why don't you go fuck yourself instead?

It's lucky that he's relatively unimportant to any other questlines because I just have no drive to help him at all.

I actually stopped watching a gaming youtuber a while ago because they were playing a horror game and skipping all the lore notes, saying how it’s the same sort of stuff in every game, all the while complaining about world details that seemed abnormal, which were actually explained in those very notes.

It’s one thing to misinterpret the lore, but it’s another thing all together to go out of your way to ignore it and then complain that the world design makes no sense.

This is something I think about a lot. Hero’s are just not allowed to retire or rest in media. 

Most of the time in these long running “fight against evil” stories, they either eradicate the threat all together or they die trying. They’re never allowed to go “ok, I’ve been doing this for a long time but I’ve got friends and family that need me now, maybe it’s time to pass the torch and focus on training up younger people to tackle these challenges.” which would be a very reasonable and dare I say smart thing to do. But no, they’re just expected to burn themselves out like a candle to keep their society warm.

I think it is really indicative of what our society considers virtuous that 'you have been fighting for so long, why don't you put down your sword and rest' is so often used in fiction by the villain as a temptation against the hero.

Why is "let yourself rest" considered to be the devil talking?

oh this dlc is gonna be so fucking good, prepare for me to be very normal about this for the following weeks

I've already made a semi-joke post about this idea but now that we know that Shulk and Rex's kids are going to be a part of the Future Redeemed party and that they've been reborn into the Origin system as child soldiers I'm really curious as to how the two are going to react to what Moebius has done.

Despite Shulk's track record of violently flying off the handle when the people he cares about are hurt, I can imagine his reaction to seeing (who could be) his child in Aionios being that he’s just happy to see them and to know that they’re safe, even if they’ve been turned into a child soldier that doesn’t recognise him. 

After all, his reaction to Fiora being turned into a Mechon in XC1 was to almost instantly let go of his hatred for the Mechon, try to save her and try to understand what was actually going on. He wasn’t angry that they turned her, he was happy that she was alive.

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Rex however, despite being outwardly optimistic and kind throughout his game I think would fly off the fucking rails the second he realises what Moebius had done to his daughter. 

Pyra and Mythra both have a lot of trauma about their past as living weapons, which they probably carry in some way even to this day. And I think the fact that Moebius would dare subject his daughter to the same pain his partners have been through, being dehumanised and forced to fight to survive as nothing more than living weapons would be enough to tip him over the edge.

I also imagine that N is going to be in some deep fucking water if Rex ever figures out what’s happened to Mio as well.

One detail I really like about Shadow of the Erdtree's final boss is that you can tell he's not fully there... (lore analysis under the cut)

...because his horse isn't with him! What you learn in the base game is that Radahn would never willingly separate from his horse. This man mastered a new school of magic fully so he could keep his horse with him at all times. He's the prime horse girl of the lands between. And yet when we meet him he is on his own, no horse in sight.

For the people saying Radahn being the final boss is somehow a cop-out, i vehemently disagree. This part of the lore was always going to be present, and it was clearly planned out since the start. There's a lore reason Malenia and Radahn fought now. Miquella was always going to be an evil little shit. Long before the DLC came out people had already figured out that Miquella as a character is heavily inspired by Griffith from berserk. Griffith, the quintessential betrayer of hopes in modern Japanese fiction. The guy who murdered everyone he ever loved for a shot at godhood. Sorry Miquella simps, but Miquella is right: it was his very fate to betray you.

Speaking of which! I really like the contrast between Miquella and Ranni in that aspect. Someone else already discussed how they mirror each other in terms of love and how they treat those who love them, but fate is another really interesting contrast between the two. Where Ranni in the base game goes to absurd lengths to escape her fated godhood, to the point of killing the most beloved man in the lands between just to get a shot at killing herself too; Miquella goes to even more absurd lengths to achieve his. Ironically, this, too involves getting rid of his body.

And the narrative supports Ranni over Miquella. She's right to escape her fate, she's right to value the love of others as much as she does, she's right in her attempts to stop people from sacrificing themselves on her altar. But she also deserves to not be alone. She deserves to have trustworthy companions at her side. If you choose to stick with her, she ends the game victorious, with a trusted consort of any gender at her side*.

Miquella meanwhile uses those who love him as tools and sacrifices everyone who ever valued him in his bid to follow the path fate laid out for him. He gets rightfully stomped into the ground at the end of the DLC for his troubles. zombie spouse and all.

*=unless you got the frenzied flame ending, you naked maniac!

Honestly I think my general opinions over the ATLA netflix show can be summed up as "In an attempt to make the show appeal more to older audiences they made it much more violent, dark, serious and gritty instead of actually making it more mature."

They removed a lot of the humour and charm and doubled down on the darker parts of the story, which imo just made it incredibly dull and boring.

funny quirky elden ring headcanon that I might make a proper post for later:

Marika was in on the night of the black knives and was the one who chose Godwyn to be assassinated. She did this because not only did he make peace with the dragons during their war with them (which is historically not the way Marika likes ending her conflicts). But due to Godrick, one of Godwyns descendants calling the dragon in his arena "true born heir" and "kindred" it leads me to believe that… well… Godwyn and Fortisax were probably a lot more than just “close friends” if you get what I’m saying. And I don't think Marika would have liked that very much.

They're dating!? Oh my god that's fantastic! I really need to get around to playing Celeste 64 properly soon. Wasn't expecting there to be such major lore drops!

Some Maddy X Alex art i did for valentines day after hearing the news that shes dating Alex in CELESTE64