Imagine being the first person in the known viking world to train a dragon, a Night Fury no less, master blacksmith, inventor, dragon trainer, etc etc and choosing to stick with these idiots

for the rest of your life

related to that last post that's kinda why i think cpsm revealing that javier had died three years earlier than lloyd is poignant in a very understated way.

javier's original fate was to live when everyone he cared about didn't. he was meant to be the protagonist of that world, to face all kind of threats and survive all of them, but with no one at his side.

he's the narrative's favorite but the narrative's love is not gentle and it is not kind and it will hold you close until you suffocate under its themes and parallels. for the world would bend itself for javier to be at it's center but it would not allow him the comfort of sharing that spot with anyone else.

he was always meant to be the last one standing. fate won't kill him but it won't allow him to die either.

and then comes lloyd with his plot breaking meddling saving everyone around them and shoving his way into the protagonist role, sharing the burden javier wasn't even aware he was carrying. and fate tries so hard to correct itself, it tries by all means possible to put things back the way they were meant to be, but in the end the best it can do is to try and make it so there will only be one main character in the world. the way it was always meant to be.

it concedes. it won't take away everything from its favorite anymore. but it won't stand for there to be two of them.

and the thing is. it wins. it gets what it wants. in the end javier can't save lloyd, he can't take his place, he can't keep him alive, he has to stand and watch him sacrifice himself for everyone else. for javier himself. in the end when the battle is over javier is again the last one standing.

when lloyd comes back and the fate restoration doesn't start up all over again, he thinks it's because lloyd frontera's original body disappeared and he came back in his own body. i don't think it was that. i think the reason fate didn't try to restore itself again is because it had already achieved what it wanted.

the narrative won. not completely. not the way it was originally meant to. but in the end javier ended up as the lone protagonist who watched his loved one die before his eyes.

only then was it satisfied and allowed javier to leave its grasp. only then was he allowed to become a person and not just the main character.

a person who could spend a lifetime with all of his loved ones and when the time came, die peacefully in his sleep, knowing at least the person he came to care the most about will outlive him. at least this time, he won't be the one left behind.

i get why people would opt to say walter was a terrible person since the beginning, but i think that's like, the most boring takeaway you can get about his character. he was already insecure and prideful from the start, and it's what would hurt him and keep hurting him. but like, being insecure and prideful are regular traits any regular person can have. the actions that he makes because of these traits, which in turn keep fueling his ego more and more, are what makes him an interesting character. and he was already pretty capable of hurting other people, but he wasn't doing it out of malice, but more because of careless selfishness at first. what makes walter terrifying is that the more he does it, the more he becomes aware of what he's doing, and the more he keeps going and keeps being more and more meticulous and deliberate about what he does that hurts people and even to the point when it was specifically to hurt people.

i think the traits were there in walter from the beginning—the pilot did a pretty good job of establishing how powerless he's felt all his life and just how susceptible he is to letting this newfound perceived power get to his head so easily. he even says this explicitly in 5x06 "Buyout" when he tells jesse "i'm not in the money business, i'm in the empire business". but saying he was this monster from the start kind of implies he didn't undergo through a character arc throughout the show when it's quite literally what he did. he got worse. so much worse. through mostly the fault of his own fragility.

If there is at least one thing I can credit FE for doing better than Tales in localization, it's not trying to actively go out of their way for an entire game to avoid subtext or direct text between two men that is romantic or implied romantic. Funny when it's so present that the attempt doesn't even work; infuriating that it was attempted to begin with.

So as much as I often have issues with some of FE's localizations, at least they have a leg up on loc Tales for that.

There is something to be said about how whenever people point out Baroque Works "revolves around gender" and use that as "proof" that Crocodile is trans... I guess cis people assume that trans people are so obsessed with gender that they need to make everything about gender, and ngl something about that is a little. It's a little.

**P3R spoilers**

picking up this game again, and Ken's dialogue there made me think, him and the protagonist share a whole lot in common in terms of what happened to them as a child. Coming to think of it, those two lost their parents around the same age too. The truth behind it was covered up and no one really took responsibility for that, they were rendered orphans with no proper explanation of what happened

Do you think the protagonist(and the FeMC) would have felt the same way about their life, at least at one point? Looking at Ken reminds me again that it must have been really rough for them.

sum ppl really need to learn the difference between sexualizing a person and being lowkey unhinged on the internet. Talking about hearing a word once and abusing it, completely out of context even, like...go out touch some grass and relearn to enjoy things in your own circle maybe? lol

For panel of the funeral, I think the guy behind the flowers on the coffin might be Asa? The head shape and face markings fit, and it'd be fitting for him to be there directly opposite Mitzi.

oh word, this guy, right?

didn't spot that, i think you're right....ft. what i believe is asa's first appearance otherwise, for comparison:

design sure seems to match in structure and markings, even got the darker ears visible in the funeral pic. and definitely adding Placement relevance too like you say, to be standing opposite mitzi....with Maybe Mordecai between them.

Top 5 favourite Vernon eras?

ask me my top five anything !

( @ikigaisvt asked me the same thing [ wondering about your top five vernon era 🤲-sammy <3 ] whehjgrghsdjg i love u guys. i am smushing these together just so i don't post the same thing twice <33 ) ( all of this is retroactive becauseee fml was my first svt cb so i wasn't around for any of these but i have consumed an ungodly amount of content so i can reasonably confidently make this decision )

FEAR.

home;run

don't wanna cry (look. blond vernon can just be so deeply personal, okay)

black eye

hot

Dimitri + Edelgard

Azure Moon -> Azure Gleam/Scarlet Blaze Parallels

brain is just mii waiting room music as i consider where i've ended up in my supernatural fandom journey

laying on the floor. jester is so young. it's all a coming of age story for her she's so young and they were all tired and scared at the end but she's so young and she stepped into that circle and asked her question and had years taken from her. she didn't know. ough

i want ike to be in three houses

for science

the thing is you start out making jokes about diabolik just being a silly little guy with 1 facial expression and 0 emotions and then months later here you are having genuine emotions about diabolik's backstory

Wait, WAS Tony even trying to make Iron Man anything like him? Like yes in the “the best parts of me are in Iron Man” kinda way, but he’s so focused on making him GOOD, would he even expected for there to be any identity crisis' from either the Robot or his friends? His friends who feel like they know Iron Man somehow? Like, we know can make (when he has the tech) basically a 1:1 version of himself he makes an alcoholic and everything, but that wasn’t the goal here but he left some of his soul behind

Like how sometimes a writer or artists pours so much of their heart and soul into a work and people see it and are like, oh it’s you! And no, the poem/painting/character/song is not about/is them, it’s a universal thing! But no it's them oops. Like the artist thinks, no I would know if it’s a self portrait, but the face you know best is usually your own and oops you gave every character your own nose.

i think he was intending for iron man to be like... enough of him to continue doing his work. like building things. to keep the suit in repair, to keep upgrading it. i think he'd want him to be close to him, just so that he knows that like... iron man is going to have the same drive to keep being iron man that tony did.

i also think that like, you need to start from something, and the something he has on hand is... himself.

i dont think a lot of it is intentional, in that i do not think tony would've made the AI exactly like him, or tried to make it too much like him (see: not putting in the alcoholism like he does when he is Just making an AI of himself) i think he can't help but put in enough of his own values that... it does turn out like him. he's the one making it. of course it turns out like him.

i think.... honestly i think a lot of the consequences that the AI faces due to being what he is are things that tony just. did not have the time or bandwidth to consider. he was dying. he did die. he had the time to make sure that the thing he considered most important could continue on.

but yeah!!! there is definitely Something his friends notice, about him being similar to tony. i don't think it ever crosses their minds that, like, they're the same person (kind of, again, not really) because, like, iron man was at tony's funeral. but there is this kind of quite... awkwardness. about this man who maybe knew their friend better than they ever did. who knows things about him that no one else does.

and yeah!!! there are issues about it, but it isn't like tony intended any of it. which is almost worst, in a way. there isn't anyone to blame. it's no one's fault. no one intended for this ai to turn out like how he did. the way he is isn't anyone's fault.

it's just how he is.