so i'm like. in love with him. if you couldn't tell.

cannot emphasize enough how important 'girls who are just some guy' are

one thing I’ve seen a lot of portwells/ej stans mention is that the wildcats were “bad friends” for not helping ej with his stress/pinning more specific blame on gina for not helping her boyfriend when he was stressed. for one, this is kinda blatantly not true. besides the fact that ej refused to ask them for help (and understandably so) by not revealing that he was director at the beginning of 302 or inviting miss jenn to outsource help, for example, most of them helped him/offered to help in one way or another. gina constantly shared her faith in his abilities and even offered to step back on their relationship while at camp to allow him more free time. val appeared to fulfill a lot of the directing role with casting and helping to organize the readthrough. maddox helped with organizing auditions. carlos (along with val) organized rcosl to help get more drama. I could share more examples but they serve to highlight that when ej was drowning, he was not left at sea. a lot of his stress was intrinsic, and even all the help in the world was going to prevent it because of pressure he imposed on himself. to blame his friends, who were there to have fun, with the only responsibility on their plate being to learn their lines, is a misunderstanding of why he was stressed and how he could be helped. the best thing they could do for him was learn their roles for opening night. in fact, miss jenn literally tells him “if they know their lines, they’ll be fine.” i also wanna mention that ej didn’t really seem to be failing at directing. it was more of a combination of personal doubt and the introduction of the production being filmed. the latter likely placed stress on all of them and there was nothing that they could really do to change that for themselves, let alone ej. anyways, all this is leading up to my main question: what did you guys want the wildcats to do for ej? take on directing parts of the show while also learning their lines in under two weeks? magically find him a way to please his father? the stress that ej was under sucked. but it wasn’t the fault of his friends, nor could it disappear in the presence of sweet words. I just wanted to pose this inquiry to his stans and open it up for respectful debate!

Going back to revisit stories you haven't read in years is such a wild ride, you never know what you're in for. The gamut runs from "whoah this is terribly racist/ableist/misogynist" to "this is a much richer and more transcendent experience than I remember" to "yes I loathed this the first time I read it as an immature twerp and while I can see now that Valid Decisions Were Made...I STILL DON'T LIKE IT AND NOBODY CAN MAKE ME WOOOOOOOO"

not to make a big deal out of a character who we never even see alive, but i just love clay terran’s name. like… in general ace attorney pun fashion, the astronaut should be named Space McGee or something, right??

nope!

because clay never gets to space. even his name ties him back down to the earth, prophesying his failure. his japanese name does this too—the wiki translates it to “blue earth.” (and, i mean, i don’t think how i have to describe how the english version “clay terran” is earth-related. TERRAn? really?)

because clay will never get his dream.

he doesn’t matter.

he’s just another Deid Mann, except his name refers to the fact that he’ll never reach his dreams.

suck it, clay.

somebody needs to restrain me when i start thinking of new dnd character ideas

love how one moron has made it so half a map of a major city hub is more or less unplayable and nothing's been done about it. A+ game completely locked up when trying to load in while working on an alt. i'm just so tired

shitty photo but this is one of my favorite articles and it's so crazy when compared to prev rb

I’m curious as to what the other two bad sol “jokes” are? I’m guessing some variation of repeating the phrase “sol badguy” or “Fred Guiltygear”

Wife dead

Gorilla

Something about being gay for Ky or men in general, usually in a negative light (come on... he's the Freddie Mercury character...)

Like all jokes these can be funny sometimes, in the right context, but they're the most obvious jokes to make for him and after like the 3rd person says one in a thread it isn't even mildly funny anymore lol

OC without a name

⛱The SDR2:GD Gang but 5 Minutes each With No Reference⛱

- - - 

(1/[2]/V3)

Round 2 here we go!! Sdr2 is probebly my favorite game, and i love all these kids dearly.

all the lil trailers for salem night faire got me excited

.

literally roll my eyes when people complain about other people who headcanon the genpact characters as anything but their twiggy in-game models.. that’s why it’s a headcanon.. that’s why it’s fun to imagine body diversity in a game that SUCKS at diversity... when has ripping on people in public for harmless hc’s become so popular 

I really hope that James' comment about Peter and Gamora not belonging together isnt in the pages of the script. It probably wont be, but it seems so close minded as if they can never be anything whether is romatically or platonically when they come to an understanding in the movie and even share smiles. I feel like he wants to make sure of is that these characters are never seen (at least) on screen together again, and I mean the whole team, so he is trying his best to separate them all. Of course, he cant do that really because the ending itself leaves it open for them to meet each other if the future directors want to, even if its them just having a meal.

I might be wrong, and I dont know if I am just super mad at his treatment towards the characters compared to Rockets, but I feel like of how vague James is, he sometimes might say the most generic stuff without any specific detail and then when someone calls him out for lying when the truth is reveal (because he claims he doesnt lie there are those occasions where is clear he is trying to cover his tracks) he is like "I didnt lie, I just said [statement]" and it frustrates me because ok? Say then specifically what you meant instead of trying make everyone guess if you wanted to say something about it? Ex: Daniela Melchior being in Vol 3. So I ask myself sometimes, if Peter and Gamora do get together in the future for some reason, why do I have the feeling he would say "I never said they dont belong together FOREVER" (since someone brought up an example of this specifically before)?

yeah i've rly disengaged with what he says irl abt gotg in the last few years and have def paid a lot less attention this time around with vol 3 than i was with the vol 2 thru endgame era. like i haven't followed the dude on twitter in years wlknlsdkfnb

plus even if gotg canon goes in a different direction in the future (should any of these specific iterations of the characters ever even be brought back in any way more significant than a cameo), i don't even see why he'd have a place to comment on it bc it won't be written or directed by him. he can have the opinion that peter and gamora don't belong together, then someone else can put them together in a future marvel project, then...that's it. he doesn't need to cover his tracks or correct himself when it's literally out of his control anyways, and i'm not expecting him to. it wouldn't be his place at all

Le Rite sacré de l'amour magique - The Sacred Ritual of Magical Love.

Mild NSFW

I feel so sad whenever I read about how this scene was 'cringe' and 'unnecessary' and 'awkward' - given it's visually and narratively a feast of subtext, and full of delicious tidbits about the essential nature of Hex-tech as a magical system.

It also wonderfully highlights the fusion of a pure source powered by the crystallization of celestial bodies with the viscerality of blood as a sacrificial link to esoteric knowledge - but at the cost of forfeiting one's 'tether' to humanity.

We have Viktor literally having a brush with death and nearly transcending the physical plane, while the Hex-gem takes away his life force and infuses it into its internal matrix - a literal melding between man and magic that, sadly, also requires the forfeiture of his fundamental humanity.

All while simultaneously, Jayce and Mel are making love, in a gorgeously animated sequence which is allllll about prioritizing female pleasure (and showing a female orgasm onscreen in a PG-13 kids' show - like, y'all, that takes balls, given if it were a mainstream Hollywood film, it'd earn an NC-17 rating or get slapped with a big ol' R for its trouble.)

And there's so many wonderful interpretive lenses we can apply to the juxtaposition between Viktor and Jayce - all while sex, death and magic are happening onscreen. On one level it represents Jayce's seduction, and by proxy corruption, at the hands of Mel - all while the Hex-core is corrupted by human blood that belongs to a man who has grown up in toxic environs and carries their lived legacy in his body to the point it's killing him from the inside out.

And on the other hand, we can see it as a divergence between the two routes of magical power as a means to channel transcendent knowledge - one through the brutal solitude of Viktor's path, which will ultimately set him in Machine Herald territory, and have him casting off his 'earthly ties' - right down to everything that makes him human. For him, the Hex-core is knowledge to be penetrated and absorbed, and its secrets require a sacrifice of the highest order. And on the other hand, we have Mel and Jayce literally melding together with astral imagery in the background, to show a different route that magic allows one to take, namely where two life-forces come together and engender something sublime between them (or possibly even make a baby? It's a popular fan theory and I can certainly see the potential.)

Magic, for Arcane, seems to be a means of interconnecting different facets into a unified whole (not unlike the way the series mirrors and makes parallels between a host of characters and circumstances, almost like they're different faces of a Hex-gem). And this scene sums up so powerfully what that system of science and magic is about - and the extreme highs and lows it can take you to.

And of course, right at the heels of this intense interplay between sex and death, two different types of la petite mort, we have the ultimate confluence between the two:

Rebirth.

And who better to embody it than two characters who carry their dead selves behind them like corpses shackled to their heels, in different ways?

Tbh I read these scenes as a trilogy for explaining Arcane's magic system - with Jinx being that final spark - literally the Powder - that blasts Hex-tech in all its destructive and yet empowering potential wide open.

Also a separate aside, I find this scene way more uncomfortable than the earlier two, simply because the interactions between Silco and Jinx are so fraught and charged. The first time you watch it, there's that almost-kiss Gotcha! that makes you spit-take, like: Wait are they...? And then the whiplash is so extreme because in a blink it goes from uncomfortably full of romantic undercurrents to strangely tender, verging on reverent. A moment of perfect and pure trust between two monsters whose entire conception of trust has been trampled into shards that they now use to cut others with.

But for me the pinnacle is this scene.

Other fan theories have also stated that they see Jinx as sort of the unwitting embodiment of the Hex-crystal's power paired with the dark potency of Shimmer, and for me this is one of the biggest visual metaphors. This girl, caught in a blissful gyre of fulfillment and serene frenzy, unmade and then remade, as she deciphers the codes of the Hex-gem and feels, for the first time, at one with herself and with her potential to unlock secrets and usher in miracles.

And madness, too, but that's a whole 'nother analysis.

tl;dr - Please Fortiche. Release an art book. I will shell out the big bucks<3