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thankskenpenders · 7 months

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Amy's fortune cards

The Sonic fandom has long been the kind of fandom that takes minor details very seriously, for better or worse. On the one hand, this means fans will really dig for the diamonds in the rough, latching onto fun character interactions, animations, bits of background worldbuilding, and more in pieces of Sonic media that many would write off as "the bad ones." But it also feels like every week another needlessly hostile debate over Sonic minutia erupts on Twitter, whether it's over individual lines of dialogue, fanart that makes Tails' shoes blue, or the ideal length and volume for Sonic's quills.

So it was probably inevitable that a fandom-wide debate would erupt upon seeing Amy's new gameplay style in the DLC for Sonic Frontiers, which takes the once-obscure fact that she enjoys reading tarot and shines a spotlight on it like never before.

I mean:

The thing is, while I basically always try to tune out Sonic fandom bickering... for once, I kind of sympathize with the detractors? Don't get me wrong, I like Amy's tarot stuff, and people on all sides of the discussion are being overly nasty about their opinions, as usual. (Sonic Twitter remains my personal hell.) But when I set aside the hyperbole and zoom out, I do think I understand why some fans are put off by the sudden shift in focus for the character, even if I think it's cool.

It's complicated. Let me attempt to present the cases for and against Amy's fortune cards

For years, I was always one of those fans who thought it could be fun if they played with Amy's tarot reading, or even leaned into some kind of magic with her. Part of that is my own biases showing, but there's just something that makes sense there, especially when you look at Sonic, Tails, and Amy as a trio. (I would argue that's the real "Team Sonic" these days, especially in the comics where Knuckles is more likely to be stuck on Angel Island or otherwise doing his own thing.)

You could argue that Tails is all about logic, relying on science and technology and deductive reasoning to solve problems. But Amy is all about emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is extremely empathetic, and is very prone to magical thinking - both figuratively and sometimes literally. Her origin story has always been that her tarot cards told her it was her destiny to meet Sonic on Little Planet. She's claimed to be able to "sense" peoples' presences - particularly Sonic's. She's the type to believe that The Power of Love is a literal magical force. So, on some level, it makes sense to mirror Tails's science by having Sonic's other best friend believe in magic. And then Sonic is somewhere in the middle, primarily following his own gut instincts but taking advice from both of them as needed. This isn't totally accurate to how their dynamics actually function in canon stories, but I think it's a mode that could work for them.

Going off of that, it's fun to lean all the way into Amy being a magical girl, or even a witch, using her fortune telling as a foundation. Take, for example, this version of Amy from Diana Skelly's old Sonic cast redesigns from before she freelanced for Archie and IDW. This is one of MANY such redesigns for Amy.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and Amy's tarot cards are, in fact, finally getting brought up again in canon. Which is fun! I like seeing that. I like all of the individual stories involving Amy's fortune cards. This is a fun character trait for Amy, a fun nod to old lore, AND a fun storytelling device, all in one. It's really cool that the Sonic universe has its own thematically appropriate arcana, and that the cards are getting made as physical merch. And sure enough, the official card backs and borders were designed by none other than Diana Skelly, in yet another cool example of an ascendant fan leaving their mark on the series.

BUT... when you step back and look at the big picture, I get why some fans find this shift in focus jarring. At the moment, it's starting to feel like every new story about Amy involves her fortune cards to some degree.

The most recent mainline comic arc to feature Amy as the lead character, 2021's Trial by Fire arc, prominently features a sequence where she reads fortunes while camping with the girls. The Origins version of Sonic CD now bookends the game with scenes of Amy and her tarot cards. Sonic randomly mentioned it in a scene in Frontiers. And now, just this week, we got the (very cute, gorgeously illustrated) Amy's 30th Anniversary comic with a story revolving around Amy's tarot cards, followed the very next day by the Frontiers DLC in which she gets a brand new tarot-based moveset. Even her base melee attack now has her throwing tarot cards instead of swinging her hammer. Again, I like all of these individual things, but after years of it almost never coming up at all, it's VERY noticeable that Amy's tarot cards are suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a superfan who's actively following ALL Sonic media. Casual fans - especially kids - aren't necessarily going to be reading the comics every month, buying the thousandth rerelease of the Genesis games, or playing the ultra-hard new alternate ending DLC for a game that came out last year. Each of these stories is going to be someone's introduction to the idea that Amy can read tarot, and that's probably part of the idea behind this unified push.

But to play devil's advocate, for my fellow superfans, I understand why it feels like a very minor footnote of Amy's character is suddenly becoming the entire focus of her personality. While Amy has always been said to enjoy fortune telling, that wasn't really a character trait in and of itself, but rather an example of her being a typical girl who hopes she'll be able to find true love one day. It's less that Amy can literally predict the future and more like her using a cootie catcher or going "he loves me, he loves me not" while picking the petals off of a flower. So I get not vibing with this stuff, or feeling like it's being pushed very hard out of nowhere.

What I don't agree with are comparisons like "it's like if they made Knuckles' moveset revolve around him liking grapes." Like, I get it. Ian Flynn loves shoehorning in his little winking references for us nerds, and mentions of Amy's tarot cards were previously on the same level as other random bullet points from old Japanese manuals. But a multifaceted hobby like fortune telling that opens up so many narrative and aesthetic possibilities is obviously very different from having a favorite food. It's ALWAYS been a part of her story, not just a random fact, and there's no reason why the fortune telling can't be elevated to something more.

And, hell, even if it wasn't an established character trait, there's nothing inherently wrong with injecting new ideas into a character. One of the best Amy stories in recent years, the Free Comic Book Day special "Amy's New Hobby" written by Gale Galligan, came up with the idea that Amy's secretly been drawing little comics about her and her friends. Is this based on Lore? No. But it's cute, and helps tell the story of a younger Amy who's still coming out of her shell as both a hero and a friend.

Certain fans are also looking at Amy's Frontiers moveset and using it as evidence that once again the Vile American Contributors like Ian are CORRUPTING Sonic Team's perfect vision of Sonic with their misinterpretations. And like. Come on. Ian does not control the gameplay. He's a freelance writer. The tarot stuff is clearly something that Sonic Team likes if they made it the basis of Amy's new moveset - and, you know, if they keep approving comics and animations about Amy's fortune telling. None of this gets made without their blessing, and lord knows how much they can micromanage shit and shoot down ideas over the most minor of details.

Like, yeah, Amy's fortune telling was probably conceived less as a sign that she Knows Magic and more as a pretty mundane hobby for a lovesick young Japanese girl to have. But you're gonna sit there and tell me that using Amy's tarot cards for more than that could only be the result of a cultural misunderstanding? That nobody in Japan uses tarot card theming and aesthetics (or the general idea of magical cards) for the cool factor? Stardust Crusaders? Persona? The Astrologian class in FFXIV? Cardcaptor Sakura?? Hello??? Do you think Capcom put Gambit in Marvel vs. Capcom ironically because they thought using magic to throw cards at people was stupid? There's tons of precedent for this! It's nothing like Knuckles throwing grapes at people, be for real.

Giving Amy a very magical girl-esque moveset also just makes a lot of sense. For decades her hammer attacks have literally made sparkly heart shapes appear around her. Leaning into both that and her tarot cards in her new moveset makes a lot of sense to me.

But, admittedly... I do think it's very odd that her hammer is treated as a secondary element here, rather than having her primarily use her hammer and adding the cards for extra flair. If hitting the attack button made her swing her hammer instead of throwing cards, I'm not sure we'd even be having this discussion right now.

But the tarot-cycle and Amy riding her hammer like a witch's broom are fucking SICK and I will not concede on this point

The thing is, this whole fortune card discourse is but a small piece of a bigger problem. Amy's been a character who needed some work for ages, but there's basically nothing you can do with her without pissing SOMEONE off.

Years of stories where Amy's crush was her primary motivator and Sonic went "Ew, cooties!" have lead many casual fans to believe that being Sonic's obsessive fangirl is Amy's entire personality. At best people might call her Sonic's Minnie Mouse. This isn't just a matter of Amy having haters within the fandom - venture outside of that bubble and you'll realize that this is how MOST video game playing people seem to see her to this day. I don't feel like this is a fair assessment of the character, but this idea didn't come from nowhere. No matter how much good deeply entrenched Sonic fans may see in their old dynamic where Amy perpetually chases Sonic, this is a very real problem that Sonic Team has to contend with for their leading girl. Of course all those games where the way-past-cool protagonist thought Amy was annoyingly clingy and tried to get away from her made people think less of her.

If new stories were to go back to emphasizing Amy's crush on Sonic a little more, they'd probably be taken as confirmation that Amy's just the girl with a crush on Sonic and that this is her entire personality. Conversely, when the crush is played down, you piss off the hardcore SonAmy fans who don't seem to understand that they're Charlie Brown and Sega is Lucy holding the football. You can't win.

And so here we are. In the absence of what was once her defining trait, now reduced to an occasional blush or wink in Sonic's direction, new stories are trying to mine Amy's past for additional material to work with. Having been a thing fans wanted to see for years, right now we're getting a lot of tarot, but we're also getting reminders of her compassionate nature and her desire to go out of her way to help the little guy. This is an ongoing process. I continue to hope that her bubbly, exuberant demeanor can shine more in future stories. Now, I also hope that the tarot stuff gets balanced out a little better with other traits of hers. But I don't want it to go away. I think it's fun.

This course correcting is far from exclusive to Amy. Knuckles is getting stories that remind us that he's a competent fighter, an experienced treasure hunter, and even a self-taught archaeologist after years of him being perceived as either the dumb one or just the guy who stands in front of the Master Emerald all day. And Tails has been getting some stories reminding folks that he's a capable hero in his own right and not just Sonic's timid kid sidekick.

But no supporting character will ever compete with the sheer number of new ideas Sega has tried with Sonic himself. Like Amy, his Frontiers moveset has also given him half a dozen new superpowers that he never had before, from the Cyloop to air-slicing projectile attacks to his own take on Shadow Clone Jutsu and beyond. He's also been a hoverboarder, a swordsman, a time traveler, an Olympic athlete, a racecar driver, cursed with a Flame of Judgment, imbued with alien power, a fucking Werehog with stretchy powers, and on and on and on.

If Sonic can do all that, Amy can try out using a tarot-cycle.

Anyway TL;DR the REAL problem with Amy's current characterization... is where the FUCK is Amy's bestie, Honey the Cat???????

#tkp post

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onceuponaneverafter · 6 months

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Let's Talk About Jacks's Apples

...and especially their COLORS. I wanted to figure out what they could mean, so I made a spreadsheet!

First, DISCLAIMERS:

MAJOR spoilers for OUABH and TBONA + the Caraval series!

This post was written BEFORE ACFTL and does not contain information or spoilers from it.

This post is based on my interpretations and observations, all of them may not be perfectly accurate. The conclusions I make are my theories, not necessarily canon information.

When I reference page numbers, they're from my OUABH UK paperback and TBONA UK hardcover - it's possible they're a bit off for you if you have different editions of the books.

This is a long post, so grab a snack and get comfortable!

I hope you enjoy reading! 🍎

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Why Apples?

A Detailed Look Into The Apples (= explaining everything I say I'll explain later)

The Colors

Where Do The Apples Come From

Conclusions/TL;DR

This is a long post, so here you can see what's coming and skip over to what interests you most :)

Introduction

Throughout the OUABH series, there are 14 scenes in total where Jacks is holding an apple in his hand (sometimes eating them, sometimes not) while Evangeline is there to witness it. All of those apples are unnaturally colored. To look for connections between them, I made a spreadsheet:

For sake of clarity, I will be discussing 13 total apples instead of 14 - I believe the "undescribed" apple (its color is not explicitly stated in the scene) is the same as White Apple #5, but it appears in two separate scenes, so both are included here. I will get into this later.

The spreadsheet contains various details about the apples, such as what Jacks does while holding them, when he picks them up (or if he's already holding them when they're described), what happens to them (dropped somewhere etc.), how he feels during the scene, etc. I will discuss these later in this post.

Then I realized he also has some apples in Legendary and Finale, so I made another list of the ones he has while Tella is present:

Here's a summary of all the apples:

That would make 20 apples in total, half of them being white.

Now let's go over some relevant context! Then I will get to analyzing what these colors mean and what kind of connections I found between the apples, I promise.

Why Apples?

Before we do a deep dive into the details, let's go over the basics on why Jacks keeps eating the apples. The most popular theory (if it can even be called a theory, it's basically canon) is based on what LaLa tells Evangeline in OUABH:

"When we [Fates] feel, it's intense and consuming. It devours us and drives us. And the strongest of our feelings is always the urge to be that which we were made to be." –OUABH page 270

She proceeds to explain that when she sews wedding dresses, it helps her with that urge, and to say that for Jacks it's similar – he has the desire to find his true love, and supposedly that's the one person his kiss doesn't kill. So, according to LaLa's logic, the apples help him with that. It makes a lot of sense, and everything he physically does with the apples makes more sense in light of it.

When Jacks is first introduced to the Caraval series, he is described eating an apple. While I believe the theory above is true, it was also interesting to notice that he seems to already be holding the apple when he meets Tella practically by chance. In fact, there are only four times he ever picks up an apple during a scene, and they are all during the OUABH series. I will get more into it later.

In OUABH, Jacks is described to have countless apples and apple cores in his rooms and offices, so we don't know how many he eats and why when Evangeline isn't around him. However, I found that he almost never touches Evangeline while holding an apple. (With sort of the exception of the silver apple, where he touches his dagger to her lips, and the blue apple, which he was holding before stopping Evangeline from taking the luck stone back from Chaos.)

Now, this could just be for practical reasons, but he touches Evangeline in about 21 of the 25 (I focused on the apples so this may not be the exact count) scenes where he doesn't have an apple and only in 6 of the 14 scenes where he has an apple, and in 2 of them the touch is barely there or brief and initiated by Evangeline.

An interesting comparison is how he does touch Tella while holding an apple (like Blue Apple #1 and White Caraval Apple #2), so it definitely isn't purely about logistics. Maybe it's related to him thinking she's his true love, that's the greatest difference I can think of. It is also noteworthy that he doesn't eat any apples while in the Hollow, which Evangeline also notices (TBONA 284).

With the theory above in mind, the way Jacks touches his apples is pretty straightforward:

He tosses them when he's in a good mood or needs to distract himself

Him biting them is practically his version of self-control

He drops them when things aren't so fun anymore or there's a clear mood shift (I will discuss this a bit more later).

He stabs two apples in total: the Silver Apple and White OUABH Apple #4. the first time he tells Evangeline how Apollo would be eternally heartbroken if she called off the engagement, the second time he tells Evangeline that the Archer ends up killing the Fox. And what unites these? Great heartbreak.

A Detailed Look Into The Apples

Or in other words, let's get into everything I said I would discuss later. After this, we'll look more into the apple colors.

The Undescribed Apple

I believe that White Apple #5, the apple Jacks holds in his hand before he and Evangeline leave to LaLa's engagement party, is the same as the apple that he picks up in the next scene, in the carriage as they travel - its color is not described, but the narration leads to the assumption that this apple is already familiar to the reader:

"Jacks leaned back in his seat and picked up his apple" –TBONA page 184

13 is also a more meaningful number than 14 (and the total count of all apples would be 20 instead of 21), so even though the total number might be purely coincidental, it also could be a fun intentional detail.

Caraval vs. OUABH

There are some very interesting parallels between apples in Legendary/Finale and apples in OUABH/TBONA.

First, we have the blue apple (in Legendary) that Jacks ends up dropping into a fireplace (see chart below). The only other apple that he specifically drops into fire is the very last white apple in TBONA. Before he drops the blue apple, Tella says that nothing could make her fall in love with him. Before he drops the white apple, Evangeline suggests that maybe Jacks could find another true love.

Second, every apple is either last seen still in his hand or dropped on the floor/ground (or fire), except for two: the sparkling white one in Finale (in Tella's dream again) and the pink one in OUABH, which he tosses to Tella and Evangeline. He directly encourages Tella to taste the white apple, and he tells Evangeline that she might need a snack. In terms of color, the sparkling white apple is especially interesting – I will look into the sparkling later along with the colors.

"Jacks picked up his apple"

The main difference between the Caraval and OUABH apples - and the one thing that keeps messing up my theories - is that during the Caraval series, Jacks never picks up an apple during a scene, he is always already holding one when the scene begins (see chart above). However, during OUABH and TBONA, he picks up four apples in total. And they are all white.

White Apple #1: Meeting Evangeline for the first time

White Apple #3: Evangeline says she'd stab Jacks if she got the chance to

White Apple #5: Evangeline forbids Jacks from killing people at LaLa's party

White Apple #7: Jacks lets go of Evangeline and shuts off from her, he's about to tell her the truth about planning to go back in time

All of them are different in terms of why exactly he picks up the apple, but there is more or less a shift in tone/topic of their conversation during all of these scenes.

The Colors

White Apples

I think that white apples are the "default" color, and/or they represent focusing on what's important.

They make up half of the apples Jacks has, and all of the apples he spontaneously picks up are white. So, if something like his emotions or circumstances affect the apple colors (which I think is at least somewhat the case), it makes sense for white to be the basic color – and what would be a better "default" apple than the one who reminds him not to get distracted.

Even though the apple he tosses to Tella is sparkling white, I don't think the color represents her because he was holding a white apple before he met Tella. He couldn't have been thinking of her, but he most likely had plans that he was thinking over as he was hoping to take the throne from Elantine.

Black Apples

I originally thought the black color could mean bad intentions or regret, but I'm now quite sure it represents doing whatever it takes to get what he wants. The context surrounding the black apples highlights this:

Black Apple #1: Jacks offers his help in exchange for controlling Tella's emotions. He wants to find true love more than anything, and this is his last attempt to make Tella fall for him.

Black Apple #2: He's controlling Apollo in order to make him propose to Evangeline. He needs it, again, in order to reach his goal – only this time he's planning to go back in time. Still to find true love, though.

Black Apple #3: This one stands out a bit from the other two. Jacks brings Evangeline to Chaos' castle so she can be healed after Apollo shot her. Here the black apple might symbolize doing anything to keep Evangeline alive (he also needs her alive, so that checks out, but at this point I don't think it's just that), and possibly his reluctance to either ask Chaos for help or put Evangeline through being infected with vampire venom.

Blue Apples

Blue apples seem to represent happiness and success, because we tend to see them after something went just like Jacks wanted. This could also be connected to his eye color.

Blue Apple #1: It's the first apple we see after Tella didn't die of his kiss, and he's obviously more than happy about that.

Blue Apple #2. He got into Tella's dream, for the second time, and he had successfully tricked her into the "marriage thing" before.

Blue Apple #3. He is holding this one right after Evangeline agreed to open the Valory Arch, while the apple he held in the previous scene (only five pages earlier) was white.

The Golden Apple

The apples that there are just one of are the trickiest because there's less context to go by, but I think the golden apple represents Tella. It's the first one we see in his hand after the events of Finale, and Tella's hair color is close enough to it. She is also a princess now, which the color gold could also represent.

It's worth mentioning that it could also be tied to failure, heartbreak, or Jacks's own hair color (as it is often described as golden). He also lives in the North now, known as Lord Jacks, and he's "friends" (?) with Apollo, a prince, so it could be related to that as well.

The Silver Apple

I think the silver apple is like a "milder" version of the blue apple, in which case the apple representing happiness would definitely be intentionally the same color as his eyes: The Caraval Wiki describes his eye color as "silver-blue".

When Jacks has the silver apple, Evangeline has got married to Apollo just like he wanted, but everything isn't perfect yet. He's quite content, but it isn't quite as big satisfaction as when he has a blue apple. However, because Evangeline asked him to meet, the apple's color could also represent for example curiosity.

The Pink Apple

Because of Evangeline's hair color, the pink apple seems to intuitively represent her. Not only that, he's just spent the night holding her before he appears with the pink apple in hand, so it just makes a lot of sense to me. This is also the apple he tossed to her.

The Purple Apple

I've had the most trouble with the purple apple. It being the apple he holds after talking with Scarlett and the scene leading to Tella's discovery that his heart beats, and the only purple apple during any book and scene, I don't even know where to start.

While basic color symbolism is connected to the apple colors loosely at most, purple as a symbol for royalty, nobility, and power could make sense if he wanted to emphasize those qualities while talking to Scarlett. Purple is also associated with mystery, and with us and Tella not finding out immediately why he met with Scarlett, it could also be a storytelling element.

Bonus: Sparkling/shimmering Apples

There are some apples that deserve a special mention, and that's the ones that are described as sparkling or shimmering.

White Caraval Apple #3, "sparkling white": This is the apple that Jacks gives to Tella (in her dream), urging her to taste it.

Black Apple #3, "shimmering black": And this apple is in TBONA, when Jacks brings Evangeline to Chaos' castle to be healed.

The only similarity between them that I've found so far is that they both stand out from the other white and blue apples: the sparkling white apple is the only white apple that Jacks gives to someone else, and the shimmering black apple is the third one that stands out to me (see "Black Apples" above).

Where Do The Apples Come From

A very good and for now unanswered question is where Jacks gets the apples from. Does he pick them from a tree? What tree? What color are they, do they start off as natural apples or maybe white? What makes an apple something other than their default color? For these questions, I don't have solid theories yet, only speculation.

We're all obsessed with how intensely Fates feel when they do feel something (*cough* the end of TBONA *cough*), but I also think that it could have something to do with the apples, at least some of them. When Jacks feels something or spends a lot of time thinking of something, maybe it could somehow affect the apples' colors? Some of the apples seem to be connected to his emotions, such as the blue ones. No apples are seen changing colors and some apples seem to not have a direct connection to his emotions, though, so there is little evidence to support this.

Conclusions

To summarize everything I went over above,

There are 20 apples in total that Jacks is seen holding throughout every scene he is in, seven of them during the Caraval series and 13 during OUABH and TBONA.

What Jacks does with his apples (tossing, biting, picking up, dropping) is connected to his emotions.

The apples have different colors that I believe represent different things: white (10 of 20, focusing on what's important), black (3 of 20, doing whatever it takes), blue (3 of 20, happiness), gold (1 of 20, possibly Tella? multiple possibilities), silver (1 of 20, possibly happiness mixed with something else), pink (1 of 20, Evangeline?), and purple (1 of 20, power? nobility? mystery?).

The origin of the apples is for now unknown, as is the reason for each color (both the colors' meanings and how they take on the different colors).

With all that said, there is quite much room for interpretation, especially in terms of the apple colors. My theories aren't the only correct ones, and I do not wish to present them that way. As I stated in the beginning, I might have overlooked details or noted some down inaccurately. The purpose of this post was to share my findings and to have fun theorizing!

Let's hope that we get some actual answers for these in ACFTL and that the books treat us kindly <3 Please do not give me any spoilers, not on the topic of apples or anything else, I'm actively trying to avoid them!

If you read this far, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I poured my heart into this research and this analysis, and I'm so happy if at least one person besides myself enjoys looking at my little findings. <3 Here, have an apple as a reward: 🍎

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xoxoavenger · 1 year

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hi! I wanted to make an ask for charles xavier x reader but if you don't want or you can't write it, feel free to ignore. :)

basically, the reader is a friend of charles and also a mutant but never really used their powers, and the first time they used was to save him (in the cuba incident). idk more what to write, i just want to know his reaction to being saved and seeing the reveal of readers powers.

oh, and your writing is absolutely amazing!! 💕💕

thank you so much!! this is sorta short but definitely sweet also I don't have the streaming services that First Class is on so it's not completely accurate but its close

Come Through

pairing: Young!Charles Xavier x Fem!Reader

word count: 775

warnings: cannon typical violence and injuries also completely changing canon like the true fanfic writer I am

masterlist

"I told you to stay away!"

"And I told you that you don't make my decisions for me!"

"Oh, you're right, I'm so sorry for caring about your safety!"

"You treat me like-like I'm some glass ball!"

"Oh my God." Alex groans, looking up at the sky. "Not this again."

"Do they normally do this?" Moira asks, eyes flitting between the two. They continued their argument as though it was the most normal thing to do at this moment.

"Yes," Hank starts, crawling out of the wreckage. "Though never after our jet has fallen from the sky." Suddenly, the two have stopped fighting, which causes everyone to turn to them. Y/N and Charles are staring across the ocean, eyes wide in fear.

"Oh shit," Charles mutters as he stares at the missiles heading in their direction. Y/N grabs Charles' hand, and he squeezes it back tightly. Was this it? Was this the end? Suddenly, they all stop in their tracks. Everyone stares as Erik put his hand up, venom pulsing in his eyes.

"Erik," Y/N whispers as she sees them all turn in sync. She knows what he's planning, knows that if he does this there's no coming back from it. Mutants will be murdered on sight; there would be a war.

"You don't have to do this, Erik," Charles' hand slips out of Y/N's as she turns to watch him walk toward Erik. Her heart is racing with anxiety and adrenaline.

"Yes. I. Do." As he says it Moira starts firing, every bullet taking more of Erik's focus to deflect, causing a few missiles to fall into the water. Y/N's heart starts to race as time seems to slow for her, head spinning as she realizes something very, very bad is about to happen.

It flashes before her eyes, the image of Charles being shot, him falling to the ground unmoving. She's barely out of it before she's tackling Charles to the ground, feeling the bullet skim her side but miss Charles completely as they hit the sand. She can't even begin to comprehend what she just did.

The missiles fall as she screams, Erik's attention completely diverting to her. She lets out a wince of pain as Charles immediately flipped over, holding Y/N in his lap and moving his hand to find her wound. It doesn't take long, her letting out a scream as he brushes over it.

"What have you done?" He yells at Erik, who stared wide eyed at the blood beginning to stain her blue suit. He feels sick at the sight.

"I'm fine," She muttered, a small smile on her face despite the searing ache running across her left side.

"This is your fault!" Erik yells as he begins to stalk toward Moira, who had dropped the gun and was covering her mouth.

"No! I didn't mean to," Moira is reeling, guilt clawing at her even though she hadn't been aiming at Y/N.

"Don't even think about it," Hank stops him, raising his eyebrows in threat.

"How did you know?" Charles asks, and before Y/N can even think about lying his eyes are widening. "Your powers." He mutters, smile on his face only because Y/N was beginning to get up, meaning she wasn't as hurt as he feared. The two were completely oblivious of the others around them.

"I don't know how to control it." She groans as he helps her up, the pair not quite sure how they're going to get off this island. It seems Erik and his friends - including Raven, Charles notes with a lurch of his heart - have teleported off the island.

"I can help." He tells her, letting her thread her fingers with his. Her arm was around his neck, his around her waist. "I could have helped."

"It came through when I needed it to." She looks up at him, and he pauses as his eyes flicked to her lips. He was about to lean in as he watched her close her eyes, head tilted up, but then she was flinching away. Charles felt the hurt of rejection run through his body before she let out a hiss of pain and he looked down.

"Sorry, I'm sorry." Hank was kneeling at her side, putting a piece of fabric over her wound. "To stop the bleeding." He looked up at the two, took in Charles' face, and he opened his mouth in shock.

"Thank you, Hank." Y/N muttered, feeling her face heat up.

"I'm so sorry." He got up and moved away quickly, and Charles chuckled slightly, only feeling a bit awkward.

"Where were we?" Y/N said, her forwardness surprising Charles. He stared at her, only hesitating one second before putting his lips on hers.

#young charles xavier x reader #charles xavier x reader #young charles xavier #x men #professor x #professor x x reader #x men x reader #x-men x reader #x-men

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w1f1n1ghtm4r3 · 10 months

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so i like the april fools shuffle units a normal amount. i have done redesigns for almost all of them and i draw them A Lot.

rambling additional notes on all of the redesigns below

a couple notes if you ever want to draw any of these redesigns for yourself at any point: i'd appreciate being credited for these redesigns (obviously anyone not redesigned i don't need credit for lol) and you don't need to follow my specific skin tone + hair/eye color schemes i have laid out. those are how i personally like to draw the characters and i've included them for anyone who might want to stay completely accurate to my redesigns, but you're welcome to use your own preferred color schemes for the cast when drawing them with these outfits!

now onto the fun(?) stuff

aoharu is pretty straightforward with redesigns, its basically just leoni but with a sun theme instead of stars. adding the image for the color palettes for the unchanged designs just because it has the notes for ichisaki too (their changes were too minor to completely redraw them, in my opinion).

ichika remains entirely unchanged design-wise other than adding a sun pin to her suspenders. saki stays mostly the same too, other than changing the design on her armband and switching her pigtails for a ponytail (in an attempt to seem a little more mature/imitate airi's hairstyle/move on from her childhood self since she's started to believe that honami and shiho want nothing to do with her and ichika anymore).

not too much to say about airi and ena's outfits either, i wanted to go a little more cute with airi and cool with ena, but there's minor changes with both of their hairstyles, with airi switching her pigtails for a ponytail as well (moving on from her idol days but still maintaining her usual sort of style) and ena's hair being a bit longer/messier.

yyj is definitely the most drastic, they're the only unit where i changed every single character... i have a lot of trouble drawing the mmj outfits, but also the lighter color scheme and clover theme just didn't really make sense for yyj to me? so instead i went with a mainly black and character color combo for their color schemes, alongside gold and white to accent it and a more spacey/dreamlike theme. everyone's black and white are slightly tinted with their character colors too!

they're split into pairs for matching accessories, but it doesn't mean much otherwise. kanade and an both have the dangling star charms and a single larger wristband (with those being on opposite sides from each other) as well as no buttons on the front of their outfits, while both hinomoris have the large bows on the backs of their outfits, smaller wristbands on both arms, a legband, and star shaped clips (like the other pair, the clips and legbands are on opposite sides from each other) and they do have buttons. they're split differently for the same style outfits though, with kanade/shizuku and shiho/an being the matching pairs this way.

kanade has the most obvious design changes. i swapped her character color to a medium-light blue rather than red, because tbh she kind of stood out too much if she was still red. she's not meant to be the leader of the unit, she doesn't want to stand out. her hair is a lot shorter than canon and she usually keeps it braided for practice and performances (and leaves it loose otherwise) (both the haircut and style were initially suggestions from shizuku). shes the only member of the unit to wear tights and to lack any star shaped hair accessories.

shizuku i don't have that much to say about, i had designed kanade first and then shizuku to match. its pretty straight forward i think? she's got the tallest socks not counting kanade's tights though.

for both an and shiho i wanted to go a slightly cooler/less feminine direction, while still sticking to the general theme i had going. which lead to the shorts and vest combo! otherwise the only notable change with either of them is that an's changed her clips to two regular gold ones and she's got a ponytail now when they practice/perform, much like kanade's braid.

fts was both very fun and an absolute pain to redesign because on one hand, i can do whatever i want, on the other hand, it's like vbs there's really no consistent theme to carry through everything. except a lot of layers i guess. so my goal was to kind of merge their casual aesthetics with something more vbs-like.

tsukasa wearing his jacket incorrectly was inspired by my own tendency to do so whenever i get too warm. i think he just does it because he thinks it looks cool though (its a little silly and a pain to keep it on but he's committed to the look). also leaving his middle layer as his fish jacket from his casual sprite was a funny little thing i thought worked for him.

with rui my goal was just pockets. lots of pockets. they're probably hiding little robots and tools in those pockets. i should have put more pockets on their pants too but oh well. combine that with wanting some obnoxious bright greens and blues and at least one item that kind of clashed color-wise with the rest (their pants in this case) and this is the result. the sketch doesn't convey it well but their black jacket and pants are both kind of loose, while the green hoodie and tshirt underneath fit okay. also their hair is kind of long if they ever untied it, but no one ever sees that.

hapisen for the most part sticks to their canon sprites, just simplified slightly for my sanity. mafuyu's costume still drives me insane to draw though, that's so many layers to think about.

other than questioning my sanity every time i draw mafuyu, there's only one change from her sprite, which is making her hairtie one decorated with pompoms much like a lot of other parts of her costume. i just thought it tied things together a little more.

the upper half of haruka's outfit is more or less completely unchanged (other than making it fit in a way that looks slightly more masculine), but then i replaced his skirt with pants and gave him boots (wxs meiko, who is the sprite haruka's outfit is originally just a recolor of, wears heels). i figured if i was going for a more princely sort of design for haruka then changing those felt fitting. beyond that he's obviously got shorter hair (a choice he makes after seeing kohane decide to change herself, wanting to embrace the genuine person he wants to be beyond the idol people knew him as) and that's about it. hits this guy with the transgender beam.

kohane's outfit is really just a bit simplified from the original with sizing/proportions of elements adjusted to (in my opinion) suit her better. the ribbons in her hair felt like a cute addition (and i like to give kohane ribbons in general), while her hair length is an in between of her two standard canon ones, longer than the usual one we see but shorter than pre-canon/early mainstory. her glasses are optional, she changes between them and contacts with how she's feeling for the day and what kind of shows hapisen is planning. the more intense the show, the less likely she is to wear her glasses.

kyushumi was kind of intended as niigo but without one member in a mostly white outfit since they don't have someone like kanade who is intentionally trying to save people. although they're also a little happier off anyway, so they don't need someone like that. they're my most drawn shuffle unit, so also probably my most thought-through redesigns.

each design takes slight inspiration from a member of niigo (nene/kanade, minori/ena, honami/mafuyu), but that was just kind of as a personal guide for what kind of vibes to go with for the outfits. they've all got personal touches to them.

nene's hoodie is very loose on her body and arms, but a normal fit in the length, and her shorts are actually long enough to be seen. she just wants to be comfy, she's tired a lot, very low energy girl. glasses because i think nene should wear glasses anyway, so as opposed to canon nene who i like to believe just favors contacts, this nene does not.

minori is pretty obviously similar to ena's outfit, but there's a few nods to mmj in here. she's got clover shaped earrings, the pattern along the bottom of her dress is meant to resemble the tips of the clover leaves from mmj's symbol, and her shoes are just the mmj unit outfit shoes in different colors.

the goal with honami's outfit was simply "how little skin can she have exposed" because i imagine her being more worried about that than usual here. so long sleeves, long skirt, high collar, etc. her hair is longer (for no particular reason tbh, i simply liked how it looks) but still styled the same, and she's got a solid red scrunchie now. the four buttons on her outfit are all meant to look like the moon, two full moons and two opposite facing crescents. also i will never stop joking about the fact that she's naturally the second tallest girl in the cast (not counting vs, then she's third tallest) and i gave her tall heels on top of that. she is towering over all of her unitmates here.

while you're welcome to use these designs for any (non-incest) ships you'd like, i do have a personal list of ships that are canon to my own au with the shuffle units, which is what i originally designed these for. the "canon" ships are

ichika/saki

ena/airi

honami/kanade

akito/touya

mafuyu/rui (qpr)

haruka/kohane

mizuki/nene

however you are not by any means required to follow these specific ships! i have no desire to enforce the ships that go with these, so draw whatever ships you might prefer with these designs. i'm happy to see anything!

anyway if you made it this far congrats on surviving i know this is a lot of text o7 i hope you've enjoy my silly little character design insanities ^^;

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olreid · 1 year

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riverdale is.. schrodinger's show? ??

lol re tags on this post i assume? this is actually alfie @hypokeimena's phrase #alfiepilled and literally just means that he does not watch the show but does watch us watch the show and so always at any time any plot point or series of events is possible because riverdale exists in a state of totipotency right up until the moment of viewing the footage to see what actually happened which again he crucially never does.

HOWEVER i have adopted this phrase into my own riverdale lexicon because i think it helps to get at something which is usually kind of difficult to articulate about riverdale's method. riverdale, more than your typical tv program, IS a show where anything can happen, and that quality has not changed or diminished over the course of its run. typically, in tv, as you build out the world and the characters, you become better able to predict what will happen next; the window of probable events grows smaller, even if only slightly. people pair off, foreclosing other relationships; they pick a career, choosing one life over other possible lives they might have lived. even shocking plot twists are operating under a set of basic rules that govern how the setting and the genre operate such that the overarching parameters of what is possible in the world don't change. but not so in riverdale! it's not committed to the sanctity of its own canon, which frees the team up to create a show that reminds me more of a collage; different narrative pieces get swapped around to see what kinds of meanings they might produce with very little preciousness about continuity or canonicity compared to other programs. different storylines are repeated by filtering them through new genres to see what emerges. season 7's premise is a perfect example of this!

the other thing about riverdale that makes it schrodinger's show to me is that it is always operating on multiple registers of reality simultaneously, so that any number of things might be happening at once depending on how you're reading it. for example, in the season 3 g&g plot, many episodes are framed by games of g&g that precisely mirror real-world events going on concurrently in town, e.g. jughead accurately describing archie's prison break as it's happening even though he's not physically there. maybe this is just an extradiegetic narrative device; maybe particular characters are omniscient or psychic in some way; maybe the game itself has powers that allow it to shape the world or the story; maybe riverdale itself only has a certain number of pre-set stories that it can tell. the list could go on. the point is that all of these are equally likely; riverdale does not privilege realism or groundedness, really the opposite, but neither does it often confirm for certain that something supernatural is happening. rather, the viewer is left to interpret for themselves; to choose between these options if they want, or perhaps instead to hold them all simultaneously. indeed, riverdale never forces you to pick, to narrow it down; in riverdale, more than any other show i've ever watched, you can have everything you want, and you can have it all at once, because there is no definitive reality, which means everything is pretty much equally (un)real. the cw is pioneering quantum television and we're here to witness it! what a time to be alive!!!

#asks #anon #RIVERDALE

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benrybenrybenry-chr · 8 months

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Could you explain how bbc ruined john? I grew up with that sherlock

yeah sure!

basically, to put it simplest, BBC's John Watson is not anything like John Watson as a character. As a standalone character I think I wouldn't have cared nearly as much? I mean I still personally wouldn't like him cuz he was kind of a piece of shit at times but I can still find the appeal in that. no the main issue I face is that he just acts nothing like Watson and tbh like- a lot of his actions even go against Watson's ideals??

first of all his relationship with Holmes (im gonna be using their last names here because calling them by their first names feels wrong to me) is just- weirdly negative? I don't know, him constantly making Holmes out to be a total asshole and a villain in his life is SO out of character. (though to be honest it's warranted given how out of character Holmes is in that show too, he's a total asshole for no good reason)

I think honestly the best example of this change with Watson's personality and how drastic it is, is The Empty Hearse/The Empty House

in The Empty Hearse, John's immediate reaction is to PHYSICALLY HARM Sherlock

in The Empty House, Watson's immediate reaction is (and I'm not even kidding) to faint, be woken up, and be incredibly starstruck and just happy that his best friend is alive

(I don't have a clip of BBC Sherlock but I do have one of Granada Holmes, which is the most accurate to ACD/book canon)

this also very much highlights the difference between BBC Sherlock and ACD Holmes, but that's besides the point

I'd also like to mention something that really especially annoyed me and that's that he?? is literally useless in that show???? Watson in the books is really intelligent and helps Holmes in numerous cases as well as gives his input (WHICH HOLMES TAKES TO HEART AND DOESNT JUST COMPLETELY IGNORE, BTW 🙄🙄 that always ticked me off with BBC) and does more than just get kidnapped a couple times and take notes.

ALSO ACD WATSON WOULD NEVER CHEAT ON HIS WIFE!!! OR BLAME HOLMES FOR MARY'S DEATH!!! NEVER!! would absolutely never happen. (though to be fair, ACD's equivalent of Mary's death happened in the 3 year gap between The Final Problem and The Empty House, so, yk)

if they met BBC Watson would not leave that room without broken bones lmao

idunnoidunno its a lot of "WATSON WOULD NEVER DO THAT" moments and gut feelings, it's difficult to describe properly, I found it very difficult to root for him when I felt like he was an un-likeable protagonist idkidk

(additionally they removed his fucking mustache and that is their worst offense /hj)

#acd canon #acd holmes #john watson #dr watson #I think its fine if other people like him or like that characterization!#its entirely fine its just personally my least favorite #and I promise I dont judge anyone who likes him #I watched all of BBC Sherlock? and it just kinda made me mad the whole time so I dont have very possitive feelings abt it

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thechekhov · 5 months

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So I just recently got caught up on WD!Steven and that little rant that Pearl went on about humans speaking sumerian and using animate/inanimate gender classes to refer to gems (EE Bomb: Friday) and I was wondering if you had resources where I could read more about that? It seems super interesting.

Hey! So I'm assuming you mean this comic.

In terms of resources, I'm afraid all I've got for you is basic work-ups on Sumerian as a language. I believe at this point it's pretty much agreed that Sumerian had two grammatical genders - human and other. (source 1)

I extrapolated a lot, for the sake of the comic because I am admittedly not well versed in ancient Sumerian grammar, but it felt fun to me to consider the idea that ancient humans initially saw gems as something so OTHER that they did not even place them in the same category as human-classified nouns.

It should be noted, of course, that simplifying Sumerian nouns into simply animate and in-animate is not altogether accurate, as per this paragraph from Daniel A. Foxvog's “Introduction to Sumerian Grammar” (Source 2)

Sumerian features a kind of grammatical gender which has nothing to do with the natural gender categories masculine vs. feminine. Instead, nouns are viewed as either personal, referring to individual human beings, whether singular or plural, or impersonal, usually referring to persons viewed as a group (collectives), animals, places, or things. Some grammars use the linguistic terminology "animate" vs. "inanimate," which can be misleading, since the impersonal category is used not only for lifeless objects, but also for animals, groups of persons, and "objectified" individual persons referred to scornfully or dismissively such as slaves – all of which are certainly animate, living things. (*emphasis mine)

My initial thought was admittedly just based on the gems' inhumanity, but another interpretation could be made that the gems, which function as a mass unit and often come in near-identical groups of the same gem, were thus interpreted by the Sumerians as a collective rather than another individual.

Aside from that, the rest is just me speculating. If you're asking for sources from the canon text (original SU) then I'm afraid I've got nothing - that whole comic was just speculative! I made it all up.

As for genders in grammar - if you're asking this as a general curiosity, I do want to mention that Sumerian isn't particularly WEIRD for this. Grammatical gender is not the same thing as cultural and social gender, and is a whole other beast of its own. Many non-Western-European languages classify what we call 'genders' in grammar by things that have very little to do with masculine and feminine traits. You can read about it more on the Grammatical Gender wikipedia page!

Cheers!

Sources Sited:

http://www.eltereader.hu/en/kiadvanyok/english-gabor-zolyomi-an-introduction-to-the-grammar-of-sumerian (Lesson 1, Page 15, page 167)

2. https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/articles/cdlp/2.0.pdf (Page 22)

#chekhov answers #steven universe #linguistics

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beanghostprincess · 2 months

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What are you most controversial/unpopular OP opinions??? Sorry if it was answered before

You want me to get canceled so bad-- If I speak-- But idk, I guess I'll say the controversial opinions I can say publicly without a bunch of people coming at me!

Zo$an is a bit... Overrated? And by overrated I mean extremely/annoyingly overrated. I like the ship and its canon dynamic but I think at least 80% of the fandom portrays them in a very mischaracterized way. Not to say that... The ship is literally everywhere and the shippers always look for every little thing to prove they're canon, even if the "proof" has literally nothing to do with them. It's not that I don't enjoy the ship (although I must admit I prefer other dynamics a lot more) I just can't stand shippers that go to extremes. It's funny because I think Zo$an's dynamic is way more interesting and romantic in canon than it will ever be in the fandom. It's a bit sad, ngl. I liked them a lot at first but it got so tiring and now I am pretty exhausted from seeing it everywhere. The people force it to be more than it is when the canon is already pretty fucking great.

Adding to the Zo$san thing. I think that relationship would only work if Luffy is there somehow but it wouldn't last a day without him in the relationship. Unless there's like, a ton of character development most of these people don't make them go through.

One Piece Film Z is my worst enemy. It's such a boring movie. The only good thing is the soundtrack and maybe the suits but God watching that was torture.

Boa hate is uhhhh weird. I mean, I get why the joke about her being in love with Luffy might be annoying, but I think most of you need to learn to understand that Oda's sense of humor is sometimes a bit too exaggerated (and not funny) and it has basically nothing to do with the actual canon dynamics between characters. Boa likes Luffy because he's one of the first men who has ever treated her right, so of course she confuses that feeling with love. And of course, yeah, it isn't canon. Whatever. Just read between the lines, maybe? And also, stop using words like "pedo" to describe her because using that term so lightly about 1) a fictional character and 2) somebody who's clearly not a pedo is fucked up. Lmao. Do you even know what that word means???

Once again complaining about Pudding hate and saying that it's stupid. I won't overanalyze because I always do it with her, but the only reason people hate her is for misogynistic reasons and because they're babying Sanji. Evil male characters are okay and hot and very traumatized but the second it's a woman she's the most evilest person ever! Because God forbid they make mistakes! Suddenly their character development isn't valid because they hurt their babygirl!

Now that we're talking about my dearest Pudding. Not tagging anybody of course, but I saw this post with so many interactions of people agreeing about Sanji considering violence as a sign of love which??? Doesn't make sense at all?? OP said it was because he couldn't tell the difference between love/abuse because of his family, but that's just... Not accurate. That could only happen if they had manipulated him into thinking abuse is a type of love, but he had healthy love growing up. Even when he was with the Vinsmokes (Sora and Reiju, I love you). And yet OP said Sanji considered Pudding's behavior flirting (wrong) and that's why he let her attack him (nope) and that it was proof of Zo$an. And okay, it's not a hugely popular theory, but a lot of people agreed with it and it bothered me a lot because it's both out of character and also using Pudding (complex female character) once again to try and prove the canon of a ship (that doesn't have anything to do with WCI either???). It just bothers me. People can perceive the story however they want but... Y'know.

OPLA isn't that good. Or good at all? I only like it because I like the cast and it's funny seeing my blorbos irl. But the script is simple and dull and just stupid most of the time. The characters are either simplified, mischaracterized, or forgotten. And tbh most of the shots are very awful and could be a lot better. The directing is also nonexistent. It's 6/10 and 3 of those points are because both the Zolu and the cast.

Apparently this is a very common theory about Nami's origins, but, uh, I don't think we need to know? What else do you need to know about her? People say she's a lost princess or something like that as if we didn't have a lost princess already (Sanji ily). Repeating the same plot would be boring and underwhelming, but also? It'd be extremely useless for the plot and it'd go against everything about Nami's story and the way Luffy reacts to it.

Luffy isn't canon aroace. In fact, the reasoning people use for him being "coded" is the same Oda uses for Zoro too and Zoro is almost never portrayed as the "idiot who doesn't know what sex is" the way Luffy often is. If you're calling Luffy canon aroace for what Oda said about him being focused on adventures, the same goes for Zoro being focused on his dream. They could be coded arospec but there's nothing confirmed and the constant discourse about it is stupid. Attacking others because of their ships just because you don't agree with them and saying it's wrong using our identity to do it is very fucked up. Especially since most of the time people complaining aren't even aroace. The only reason people do it (attacking others saying they can't ship Luffy and that it's "weird" and "wrong") is that they infantilize Luffy/Don't want him getting in between their ships (<- aroace person writing this) (also, it's very ableist since people agree on Luffy also being neurodivergent coded and treating him like a kid bc of that but this isn't about that now).

Somehow this is very common. Some fucking how. I can't believe I have to say this. I'm tired of people blaming Usopp for what happened in Water 7. Or in general hating Usopp. Actually, he's one of the best-written characters in the whole show and he's so underappreciated it's so frustrating.

Sanji's perv jokes are annoying af and we all know that, but people who hate the character and consider him a red flag for that are missing the point completely. The point being "Oda exaggerates jokes to an annoying extent and most of the time they don't even reflect the character". I understand they can make you uncomfortable (same here tbh) but reducing Sanji to only those jokes is a waste of his character. You need to take jokes less seriously.

If I see one of these "red flag OP boys" TikToks adding Law/Ace/Zoro/Sanji next to fucking Doffy I will riot. Also, stop adding Crocodile there. He's a mafioso, there's NO way he won't be a sweetheart to his lover.

Baron Omatsuri's artstyle and animation is amazing and it fits the plot and aesthetic of the movie perfectly and people saying it's ugly will forever bother me.

"Usopp is suddenly hot after timeskip!" He has always been hot what the fuck are you talking about.

People reduce Nami to her "mean"/"sarcastic" personality a lot when she's quite literally one of the most kind-hearted characters of all. That being said, morally speaking she's probably one of the worst. I could explain how that works but I don't want to do it now, the point is-- Let the girl be sweet instead of making her mean all the time. And also, let her be mean and selfish without making it her entire personality. There's something called "balance".

Film Red was kind of bad. Like, the songs are amazing (thanks, Ado) but the ending is awful and the plot is very meh. I'm only here for Uta and Shanks but the rest of the characters are just useless. I do appreciate Sanji's hair in the movie, though.

#i am aware that most of these aren't that unpopular and i think i've just been on tiktok too much #some of my opinions should stay hidden from the world i don't want to make people angry lmao #anyway here it is hope you like my hot takes hidden in between mild takes #one piece

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laundrybiscuits · 1 year

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Just curious and i like hearing your thoughts on this stuff. May i ask what aspect of steddie fanon you're referring to (which don't fit IRL queer culture so accurately)?

Ahaha...okay so. IMPORTANT NOTE: fandom is not that crucial, do whatever you want, run free through daisy fields of whatever headcanons and characterizations you please. Also, fic is not real life and that's okay!!

That being said, fandom can get slightly weird about sex, especially queer sexual cultures and especially historical queer sexual cultures. I mean, I get it! Our current hegemonic understanding of sexuality is actually pretty recent; I studied sexuality from a sociological perspective as part of my undergrad degree, focusing on moral panics (gosh I wonder why Eddie's character arc appeals to me! so mysterious!), and I know just enough to know that I don't know shit. So I certainly don't expect anyone to be doing paradigm-shifting sociohistorical research for a fic. That would be ridiculous.

All of this is leading up to say that based on 1) the relayed experiences of queer mentors who were in the scene in the 80s 2) the secondary sources I’ve researched 3) personally having many gay male friends who love oversharing through the last ~15 years, I believe that if canon-compliant gay Eddie Munson is a virgin, it’s largely by choice.

I've seen it suggested that Eddie's poor academic performance and nerdy interests would be, essentially, a dick deterrent. And like...I enjoy Eddie’s weirdo loser vibe as much as the next fan. I fully support him not being in any way smooth or cool with boys. But even when I myself was in my late teens/early twenties, many of my closest friends were awkward nerdy twinks who absolutely managed to get laid every weekend because MSM* hookup culture is eternal.

And in the early 80s, when Eddie would’ve been in his late teens, MSM hookup culture was at its peak. AIDS still wasn’t being taken that seriously, and transmission etc. wasn’t really understood because…well, you know this story. It’s not a good story. Fuck Reagan.

In short, I really can’t emphasize enough how certain types of sexual contact were extremely available for men seeking sex with men. A pretty young thing like Eddie could have literally as much sex as he wanted. Nobody is asking him for a high school transcript or anything about his hobbies, they’re asking if he tops.

Now, would Eddie actually participate in the hookup culture of the time? That's a more complicated and speculative question, and not actually what you asked, but I'm going to talk about it briefly anyway.

In the 'yes' column: he has his own vehicle**, zero supervision, and a penchant for risky behavior.

In the 'no' column: the boy has at least three extremely involved hobbies eating up his spare time and energy; he's also a not-so-secret romantic.

Personally, I can see the pseudo-intimacy appealing to Eddie's tendency to keep people at arm's length, and I think it’s very plausible for him to be curious and experimental enough to want to explore a bit. I tend to land on 'tried it a few times, doesn't make a habit of it' in my backstories. I also tend to hint at the softer, friendlier side of hookup culture in my fics, just because I don’t often see it represented.

Of course it’s like any other scene, there are bad actors and generally shitty people/situations, and sometimes the MSM scene specifically can be a bit of a soul-draining meat market. (ETA, because I am not white and neither are the vast majority of my friends and I felt increasingly weird not mentioning it even though it's not relevant to Eddie's situation: the scene is often also super racist, among other things! But that's a whooole other complicated kettle of fish, and again, not relevant to Eddie's situation.)

But there’s also space for casual sex to be part of a friendly relationship, in a way that I don’t really see in hetero circles. It’s hard to explain. It’s one of those dynamics that basically never shows up in mainstream media at all, so I absolutely don’t blame fics that don’t show it either. It’s just one of those things.

This is a step to the left, but I recommend checking out Dykes To Watch Out For: it’s practically an anthropological document depicting dyke culture in the 80s, it’s often funny as hell, and it’s just a fantastically detailed and relatively accessible window into a particular way of life that doesn’t really exist anymore.

*MSM = men who have sex with men. It’s a sociological designation; not everyone in this category identifies as gay, bi, queer, etc. It may be useful to think about sexuality as having three distinct components: behavior, identity, and desire. The term “MSM” puts focus on the behavioral aspect, because it’s most relevant in this context.

**As someone who has experienced several other countries' driving cultures, I just want to emphasize to non-Americans how willing many Americans are to drive for multiple hours for basically any reason whatsoever.

#askbox #GOD this got long #I will absolutely delete this and go on a blocking spree with zero notice if it sparks any discourse whatsoever #I'm not even tagging it as meta #I just get so freaking paranoid when talking about sex/sexuality publicly on this hellsite #ETA new tag:#ST meta for TS

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cryptocism · 4 days

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I love the comic book writing sensibility that Frequency has, like how Three and Five's ending is great for the story being told but if it were a published comic it would still leave them on the table for if a future writer wanted to use them.

whats funny is that despite doing my best to keep in line with dc comics/comic writing sensibilities throughout the fic (staying as comics-accurate as possible in terms of continuity/tone/characterization/story elements etc) that particular comic writing reality was one that was like. kind of a genuine anxiety that i didn't know i had until i started writing this thing.

ive said before that in the original concept for Frequency all of the clones (besides Thad) were going to end up dead. whether it was via killing each other or unintentionally being the instrument of their own demise (disney villain style). obviously it changed because creating an entire narrative about this one character's redemption arc and then not allowing any of the other villains to have a shot at redemption felt hypocritical and like. mean. not to mention antithetical to the whole ethos of the story.

but the reason why killing off all the other clones was my first instinct is partially because i had this kinda subconscious recoil to the idea that any of them would actually continue on after the story was over.

like, because i was trying to stick to canon so much, while figuring out the story a thought came up a couple times that basically went like, "okay, well, if this was a real comic, then...". and inevitably i had a realization that if this WAS a real comic, my original clone characters would be canonized, and therefore available to any future writer who wanted to yank them out of their respective endgames and inject them into other stories. which i Did Not Like the Idea Of.

classic "making up a guy to get mad at" except it was more "making up a reality to get anxious about". because obviously no matter how much it sticks to canon, Frequency still exists in a fan-created space.

but! i'd never made up original characters to put in my own fanmade stuff before and was definitely feeling protective. because all those original clones i made had yknow: a story purpose and narrative function to facilitate the actual key characters, Thad and Bart. the idea of them being removed from that context in any capacity, even if it was in the hands of a good writer, made me have this gut "no STOP you're ruining it!!!!" reaction.

they were all made for Frequency, and to foil Thad as a character, i didnt like the idea of Three being brought back as a one-note villain or Jude and Nathaniel getting folded into the wider Flash cast of allies. and none of them were made to be main character material. plus the character roster at DC is already uhh Extremely Stacked i genuinely did not want the takeaway to be "and here's the nEW ADDITIONS TO THE FLASH FAMILY!" because that wasnt the intention

anyway i got over it lol. i still did my best not to leave any loose ends, and have each ending be wholly satisfying on its own, and ideally the oc clones basically continue on offscreen while the true adventures are based around Thad and Bart. but yeah it felt right to leave off on that note (and served the story much better than killing everybody off)

#duke-nitro #asks #realizing that i felt kinda defensive about Literally The Hypothetical Nonexistent Possibility of other ppl writing my characters... wild #like genuinely very surprising i did not think i was that precious about original characters #especially OCs created for an existing universe that i did not also make up #what probably helped was all the cool fanart i kept seeing of frequency #and seeing other people make their own AUs either based directly off of Frequency “lore” or based on the Multiple Clone AU #u gotta realize when you're taking your fun machine too seriously #like chill its fun dude we're just playing in the space #otherwise u end up committing to stuff that would ruin the story ie killing all your original characters #to safeguard against the hypothetical nonexistent possibility of other people writing those characters #''oh you'd rather smother your baby than see it raised by someone else?#well my name is solomon and i have a sword with an innovative solution to your paternity problem''#anyway thank you yeah i think it worked out

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jadeyarts · 1 year

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summary of what i’ve been doing with these guys (details subject to change)

SO BASICALLY: in the first episode of sonic underground you can see a statue of king acorn before it is demolished by robotnik’s rule, which means that king acorn still exists in sonic underground at least until somewhat recently, and would have been a major ruling force in mobotropolis prior to robotnik’s takeover. now, since aleena isn’t even originally from mobotropolis that means her ruling power would have been through king acorn in some fashion. either she overthrew him, or she married into his kingdom.

since aleena would still be of noble blood separate from any connection to king acorn as we know she is a descendant of a pharaoh, we can assume that the two having an arranged marriage is entirely plausible given how monarchies operated to secure alliances and keep bloodlines noble. now of course there’s TWO king acorns: max, pre-sgw, and nigel, post-sgw. and both of them have wives - mothers to sally acorn - that are seen, and do not resemble aleena at all. so safe to say that if one actually explored aleena co-existing with the acorns, she probably didn’t actually marry either of them.

how or why she would overthrow him without immediately reforming the entire system given what we know of her origins and her values don’t really make sense imho so i’ll just say that in the context of underground canon, i do think she did probably marry king acorn and gained rule through the relationship. i don’t think he’s the father of her children, but uh... i’m not going to get into that right now. anyways, in the context of a more satam or archie based setting... well, the clear answer is that she may have been engaged to him, but she’s not married to him, so clearly things fell through.

as a noble it would be considered her duty to go through with the marriage - but as sonic’s mother, i strongly feel that just like her son, she would strongly believe in freedom and making your own choices - and she doesn’t love max. so instead she runs off with someone she does love, a commoner - so my aleena isn’t actually a queen, though still of a noble bloodline - mostly because while i think aleena having a royal background and being sonic’s mother is cool, i don’t care much for sonic himself as a royal? so she gives up her noble title, has the triplets, becomes a freedom fighter, ect.

now, what a lady in waiting is actually depends on the specific kingdom and its system - they can be a personal assistant, OR a monarchy-assigned best friend to a noblewoman who is also noble, and depending on the specific kingdom’s system, a monarch who is married to a noblewoman may be entitled to marry her lady in waiting as well. since the acorns rule over a fantastical fictional kingdom that is AT BEST taking place on a post-apocalyptic earth i figure the functions of a fictional lady in waiting doesn’t need to be exactly accurate to a specific real life kingdom - SO! with aleena and max engaged but aleena bouncing to hook up with a commoner, and alicia being max’s canon wife, i’m going to go ahead and say that in these circumstances it would make sense for alicia to be aleena’s lady in waiting who took over her duty to marry the monarch she was engaged to as she was also a noblewoman.

but because of aleena and max’s former engagement, she managed to have a weird and complicated friendship with max and locke.

anyways, i actually like both king max and king nigel, albeit in two very different ways. max is... complicated, controversial, and sometimes not great - but i find that his flaws make him a fascinating character, and i like to watch him struggle making the right choices as a parent and as a leader because of the circumstances he was born into and dealt with! and nigel is a genuinely loving and positive influence in sally’s life that i feel she deserves, elias could benefit from as well, and contrasts well with max’s everything. so i kind of want them both to exist. so my solution is to make them brothers - max was the ruling monarch until, you know. nigel is his younger brother, who eventually takes over the kingdom. which means elias gets to stay in the woods with meg and alexis, lol.

also nigel’s dead wife doesnt have a name which is sucks but i havent come up with my own for her yet >:( anyways since i’m making max fully a chipmunk and alicia a hamster (instead of both being chipmunk/squirrel hybrids) then nigel and his unnamed wife are swapping species - nigel now a chipmunk to match max, his unnamed wife now a squirrel.

meanwhile locke and max’s affair need no real explanation. i think they were fucking around on that island even if sally and knuckles didn’t know it, argue with the wall.

#jadeydoodles #sonic the hedgehog #archie sonic #sonic underground #pauleena

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night-unfurls-its-splendour · 9 months

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Susan Kay's 'Phantom' Read: Part V (Erik, 1856-1881)

Before we start I feel that I need to talk about a perspective shift that I've had. More than half-way through the book now with the completion of this episode I've come to a realization.

Phantom is not what I thought it was. This epiphany has been slowly dawning but here we are.

My impression of Phantom, based on how I have seen it talked about in the Phandom (and certainly how the reviews on the back of the book present it) was that it was Leroux's story but with the blanks filled in and a few small liberties taken.

I had this impression because I was told that for quite a few years, Phantom was basically considered Canon and also because I have often seen Kayrik (or Kerik) and Lerik (or Leroux's Erik) conflated in discussions.

But as I'm reading I have finally realised that I don't think this is ever what Kay intended.

Don't get me wrong I hate most of the decisions she's made, but this book is a complete re-working of the source material with many elements of the book, some from the musical and some original folded in. For Erik's history she mainly follows the life-history detailed by Leroux, but in terms of Erik as a character, he more closely resembles Musical!Erik than anything (except that Kayrik's deformity affects his entire face, not just half). When we arrive at the Opera, she again adheres to Leroux's history. But once we catch up to the canon events, this time line is swiftly abandoned.

Nadir and Erik bump into each other and resume their friendship.

A few weeks later, Erik finds Joseph Buquet's body in his torture chamber.

A few weeks after that Erik hears the news of the Opera's change in management, and hears Christine sing for the first time.

In the source material, Buquet's body is discovered on the same night as Christine's initial triumph (so three months AFTER Erik began to teach her), the same night that the old managers, Debienne and Poligny, have their farewell celebrations and hand over management to Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin. Leroux describes Raoul rushing across the stage, "On which Christine Daae has just triumphed, and under which Joseph Buquet had just died." [This excluded from the original translation.

Why Kay chose to alter the progression of events I don't know, but that combined with a final nail in this coffin for me to realise that I had been approaching this book from entirely the wrong perspective. That final nail is the fact that Christine Daaé, in this book, is dark- haired and not blonde.

Kay does what most Phan-author's do: she cherrypicks her preferred elements from both book and musical (Erik general erudite comportment, his mis-matched eyes, Christine's dark hair) and combines them with her own headcanons to create an AU fic that, because of the reclusive nature of Fanfiction at the time and the fact that this work was published and widely circulated, became, for many fans not interested filling in the blanks themselves, erroneously synonymous with actual canon for a goodly number of years, despite its open contradictions to the source material.

Does that mean I like it any better? Haha fuck no. My irritation with Kay's choices persists. It's just that my ire for this book's influence is more accurately directed at the Phandom at large for making it something of a Golden Calf.

And like the Biblical Golden Calf I am here to pound it into dust and make everyone drink it.

So at this point I was going to complain that Kay never made mention of Erik being Christened "the trap-door lover" in Persia. There's even a CHAPTER of Leroux's novel called "The Masterstroke of the Trap-Door Lover". And this didn't come up even ONCE in Nadir's narrative. In fact the Persian and Leroux's narrator both talk about how Erik "rigged the palaces". Which is to say he made alterations to existing buildings and "turned the most honest construction in the world into a demonic house where one could not speak a word without being watched, or betrayed by an echo. How many family quarrels, how many bloody tragedies had the monster left in his wake with his trap doors?"

In Kay's narrative, Erik doesn't alter any existing palaces, he only constructs the Trick Box inspired palace described in Leroux's epilogue and his love of trap doors? Apparently it just isn't a thing.

Moving on

So of course we have to come back around to his mother. That was inevitable and I do actually appreciate it because we know Erik's furniture in the lair was his mother's.

The part where he views his mother's body is... eighhhhhh.

Erik describes the ravages of time in Madeleine's face and also the ravages of death. He talks about the irony that there's actually some resemblance between them now. And we get... this

And as I looked at her, I suddenly understood her revulsion at last--because now I shared it!

I felt no anger or grief as I looked down upon her . . . nothing except a disgust which enabled me to forgive any act of cruelty that she had ever shown me.

[...]

I did not kiss her, now that I had the opportunity.

I knew that she would not have wished it.

And I no longer felt any desire to do so.

I'm deeply confused as to what Kay is trying to convey here. Is Erik really saying that he doesn't want to kiss his mother because death has made her ugly? He goes on a lot about how death is gross and ugly and like... you just found out that your mom never re-married after you left. Never left the house she raised you in.

The misogyny REALLY steps up to the foreground here as well. He says of his mother's friend, Marie Perrault (the only person in this entire book with any rights imho)

This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex.

Which, simply by calling them the "weaker sex"... you clearly don't? And after proclaiming is respect for ALL MEMBERS of the weaker sex, in the NEXT sentence he puts in a caveat about how he's never harmed an innocent woman, and also says something about the Khanom that really made me very, very queasy, and also reinforced my squicky suspicions about why Kay chose to make the cruel and capricious female figure in Persia an older woman (a domineering mother) rather than Leroux's "Little Sultana".

Very annoyed how Kay has graduated Erik's voice from "Automatic Aphrodisiac" to "Literally indistinguishable from Jedi Mind Tricks".

Erik regails us with how, using only his voice he is able to "reduce certain men to a trance-like state of obedience" (once exhibited on Nadir and his son Reza). When he meets Nadir again in Paris we are treated to this observation:

"Do you understand, Nadir? Keep away!"

His hand slid him it carriage door and he stood back with a trance-like obedience. He made no effort to prevent the brougham moving away, but although I knew my secret was safe for tonight, I felt no sense of complacency.

Once before he had broken free of my control, torn down the swaddling cocoon of sound with which I had bound him. Unlike Jules [Erik's lackey], he was not a natural subject; his will was too strong, his sense of identity and purpose too well developed.

Whenever he chose to fight my voice, I knew I would be unable to hold him.

That's a Jedi Mind trick. I'm sorry it is.

This section is actually quite enjoyable where the building of the opera house is concerned, but it takes a downturn, both in terms of the story and just the quality of the writing.

There are two instances of redundancy.

His death excited little excitement.

"My old interest in divination had never left me, and from time to time I still consulted the tarot cards in desultory fashion. It had been a long while since they had revealed anything significant, but now of late, each time I picked a card at random I seemed to turn up Death...

And this latter example leads me to something that really made me want to throw the book.

Since Nadir's narrative I have looked askance at something that has come up repeatedly: Susan Kay goes to GREAT LENGTHS to ensure that the readers know that Nadir I 100% straight. NO HOMO HERE, DEAR READER. ABSOLUTELY NOT. She shoehorns in a dead wife that Nadir never got over losing, and went into unnecessary detail about how when Nadir feels "the itch of manhood" (🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮) he avails himself of a prostitute or an odalisque. It comes up SEVERAL times. And when Nadir pops back up in Paris she makes sure to tell us that he has a mistress that he sees regularly. All of this to bring us to THIS infuriating line:

And so even as I walked with Nadir, talked with him, rejoiced in the warmth of communicating directly once more with a human soul, there was a part of me that looked at him with suspicion and wondered what part fate had assigned him in this new, unrehearsed opera.

Not the Lover, that was for certain. I'd seen enough girls leaving his apartments in Persia to be reassured that all of his instincts were purely heterosexual."

I'm not generally into gay readings of PotO. I don't ship Erik with either Raoul or with The Persian. But I will say that if there is an argument to be made for anyone in this book being anything less than 100% heterosexual, it's The Persian. Leroux makes no mention of him having a wife or anything of the sort. Tie that in with the determined responsibility and complex bond he seems to hold with Erik and a case can be made for our dear Daroga feeling something rather more than just sympathy for Erik. (I don't personally subscribe to this, but the case can certainly be made--I'm more of a DaRaoul girl tbh. I think that's an untapped gold mine).

But not here. Kay bends so far backwards as to have Erik say outright "Nadir is defo straight", while (even more bafflingly) implying that, perhaps, Erik is not. WHY, SUSAN. WHY?

Christine’s introduction is the single most "reads like Fanfiction (derogatory)" thing I've read in this book so far, but I find it very interesting how, when Christine sings for the first time Erik says that she "possesses a near perfect instrument". He says her technique is faultless, and that there's no weakness in either register. My first problem is that Leroux's Erik only ever calls Carlotta's voice an "instrument", because that's all it is to Carlotta. My second is that, according to Christine, her lower register was muffled and her upper register was shrill and her middle register wanted clarity. Maybe that's just Christine being too critical of herself, but I doubt that she had "flawless technique" when Erik began teaching her. Incredible latent talent for sure, but I do believe that she needed help with technique as well as motivation to reignite her passion.

Lastly we have Erik's description of when he first sings to Christine. His narrative regarding his motivation is actually very similar to my own:

She wanted an Angel of Music--an angel who would make her believe in herself at last.

[...] There was no reason in the world why I could not be the Angel of Music to Christine. I couldn't hope to be a man to her, I couldn't ever be a real, breathing, living man waking at her side and reaching out for her. . . .

But I could be her angel.

Is his motive here altruistic? No. But the sentiment is sweet enough. The notion of inspiring Christine's self-confidence is present.

Pity then that he takes a sharp left turn in the very next paragraph and utterly compromises any positivity in his intent.

I could not steal her body--but I could steal her voice and weld it irretrievably with mine; I could take it, and mold it, and make it mine forever...

Softly at first, infinitely softly I began to sing an old, heathen, Romany song. The Hollowed bricks carried the haunting melody relentlessly to her, permitted my voice to envelop her gently like a poisonous mist, seeping inexorably into her mind and staining her soul with darkness.

Well, well.

Once more unto the breach I go...

Masterpost

#phantom of the opera #poto #commentary on 'phantom'#susan kay phantom #phantom susan kay

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picapicamagpie · 1 year

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Sing Marine Life!

I’ll deal with you at the end.

As promised, here’s the follow up post including the marine animals! We don’t see many in the film, so I’ve broken it down by each species.

Squid

I love these guys. They don’t do much, but they look cool. The most notable thing about them is their bioluminescence, which is indeed a trait some real squid have, though not to this degree. Based off their size, bioluminescence, and spotted patterns, I believe these are firefly squid. The bioluminescence is very inaccurate in Sing, but it’s probably exaggerated for dramatic effect and it’s totally fair because the scenes they’re in look amazing. In real life, only the spots on the squid light up and they are only blue, I don’t believe they can change the colour.

Something worth pointing out is that the anatomy of the squid in Sing is completely wrong. And I mean royally messed up. Squid have a mouth that is more like a beak, no lips, certainly no teeth, and it’s located in the middle of the tentacles. The eyes are also further down the body, basically on the tentacles too. What Illumination has done is use the mantle as the squid’s face, when that’s actually their body. It’s the equivalent of putting Buster’s face on his torso. Soooooo something happened to the Sing squid to completely rearrange their bodies and essentially swap the locations of their head and body. Wild.

Shrimp

This is fairly accurate because some crustaceans can survive on regular air for a short time and don’t need to be constantly submerged. Like the squid, these guys have been given a more mammalian body type and can even wear clothes. I don’t know the specific species of shrimp because my God, they all looked the same to me. There’s also this concept art crab who is just chilling about on land. He’d either be dead in a few hours or Sing crabs can now live on land. But I won’t explore it much as it’s not something that’s actually appeared in the films so it’s not canon.

Whale

He doesn’t appear very much, but he’s there. We don’t see enough of him to determine his species but he wears a neat hat. I have nothing else to say about him. Why is Buster in the sky

Fish

Again, super brief appearance and oh my God this screenshot was so hard to get?! I had to load up the film and grab it myself because no one cares about these fish at all. It’s too blurry to tell what species they are, and again, not much to say on them.

Walrus

I have beef with this walrus because his design interrupted the old, more realistic style of Sing. He really cemented the feeling to me that Sing 2 is no longer using the “rules” set by Sing 1. I remember first seeing him and thinking how odd and out of place he looked. While I thought he was a funny character, his design just bothered me so much, something about him felt so off. The sheer audacity of this man to walk on two feet and basically look like a big ape. Generally, Sing was quite realistic with its body types. Ok except the squids. Although technically four legged, walruses and seals have flippers and such a unique way of moving that I really kinda expected Sing to stick to this, or at least make them more hunched over or do something to make them a bit more real, instead of the weird “walrus head on gorilla body” design we got.

To start with, walruses are insanely heavy and huge. A male gets up to 12ft long. To put it into perspective, a walrus standing up would be roughly the same height as an elephant. Mason really should be as tall as Meena but he’s like, 2 Busters.

Real life walruses could never stand on their rear flippers because of their sheer size, and because flippers are not legs. They’re too large and heavy for their adapted limbs to support. That’s why they do that weird flopping about thing that walruses and seals do. So it’s not a case of just making them stand on two legs like every other animal. However now that I’ve looked at him a bit more, Mason is a lot smaller than he “should” be, which makes me think maybe Sing walruses evolved quite differently. They’re much smaller, lighter, and thus able to stand. Maybe also their rear flippers never reached the stage of being super short and small, and are some sort of weird leg/flipper middle stage rather than just being flippers.

Ok Mason, you’re not as bad as I thought you were. But I still don’t like your design.

Also according to the Wiki there’s seals in some advert somewhere but I can’t find it. I’d love to see if they are designed the same as Mason so please if anyone can find it, let me know!

Here’s the canon “rules” I can gather for aquatic animals:

🐳 Honestly there aren’t any

🐳 ok ok, they generally only wear accessories rather than proper clothes but some do also wear full outfits (shrimp)

🐳 They still need water to survive and it hints that there’s an aquatic biome for them to live and work in, with regular cities having waterways as a method of transportation for them. I like this idea and hope it’s explored more

🐳 Bioluminescence can do whatever you want it to do as long as it looks nice, but it’s still limited to animals who have it in real life (which is basically just some fish and invertebrates)

🐳 Some, like the whales and fish, are essentially just the same as real life ones. Others, like squid and shrimp, are more mammalian now. Somewhere, evolution went wild and completely changed the body design of squid completely, reversing their heads and torsos

🐳 Walruses are smaller than they are in real life, and now able to support their bodies on two… flippers? They are much, much more humanoid now and are incredibly different to their real life counterparts

My main take away from this is that mammalian body types have become the norm in the Sing universe. Take (almost) any real animal, make it sort of humanoid, and it’ll belong in Sing. I reckon it’s some kind of convergent evolution thing where animals end up looking similar.

#this one is LONG #if you made it to the end I’m proud of you #note: I do not really hate Mason I just like hyperbole humour #and he’s just further evidence that Sing animals can do whatever the heck you want them to #sing #sing 2016 #sing 2021 #Buster moon #sing 2 #sing movie #sing buster #sing Mason #sing headcanons #sing ash #sing johnny #sing mike #sing meena #sing meme #clay calloway

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mdhwrites · 4 months

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When I watched Amphibia, I kinda had a hard time understanding how certain headcanons were developed in the fandom. Especially Grime being Sasha's 'toad dad' and Olivia and Yunan being Marcy's 'newt moms.'

Like...by the end of the series, I totally bought Sasha and Grime as close friends (heck, they sold me as friends partway through season two), but Grime never gave 'adoptive dad' vibes to me. Putting aside the fact Grime's the reason Sasha spent her first month in Amphibia in a cell, he's also a pretty toxic influence on her, indulging her worst traits and only really improving as a person when he and Sasha form the resistance in season three.

And I'm confident viewers only started the 'newt moms' headcanon because of the episode Olivia & Yunan. Which is pretty ironic, since in that episode, Yunan initially objects to saving Marcy (she didn't even refer to Marcy by her name, just 'the human' XD), and like you said, Olivia explicitly states she's motivated to save Marcy because she trusts her and thinks her intelligence will help them defeat Andrias, not because Marcy is someone she's emotionally attached to.

Sure, in The Hardest Thing, Olivia and Yunan hug Marcy goodbye, so there was clearly some fondness for her by the end, but nowhere near familial feelings. And yeah, maybe you could argue Olivia cared for Marcy since she insisted on being 'gentle' when Marcy was being pulled out of the tank, but that's just basic decency; hardly 'adoptive mother' behaviour.

With all that in mind, why do you think so many got so hooked on the idea of these people being found families for Sasha and Marcy? Did they think Sasha and Marcy both 'deserved' a found family just because Anne got that with the Plantars? Did they just like the idea, even if canon did almost nothing to validate it?

I personally think it's because a lot of people thought Sasha and Marcy's parents were abusive (another headcanon I can't get behind), and believed they deserved to find 'better' families in Amphibia. But that's my take; what's yours?

So there's a LOT here to potentially discuss because you're not wrong in saying that it's a dubious claim. Let's start with just my thoughts on them being found families: I like Grime as Sasha's father figure in works but it is much more a mentor and student relationship but where who is doing which is very dubious. The two need each other but how much one or the other need each other is constantly shifting and it's part of what makes their dynamic interesting. Trying to place a specific label on them is rough and I'd agree that saying that Grime is Sasha's first healthy friendship would be accurate because of the push and pull there.

Yunan and Olivia are great in fanworks as having had a real relationship with Marcy but the show just doesn't support it. Yunan seems to look down on her and barely know her while Olivia is a very normal archtype of the proper, Victorian woman who has to deal with childish antics. Neither are bad characters for it but it does mean that the moment in the end with her hugging Yunan and Olivia is more for the sake of a curtain call than it is a big relationship being wrapped up. They honestly symbolize Newtopia, which Marcy definitely should still love, rather than their actual characters in that hug and I think that works.

Now, why are they called found families?

Well, the first reading for why is honestly what I'd probably put my money on: It's a popular trope and people liked the dynamics enough to want to push it into the box they wanted it to be. Like how TOH is praised for its found family despite the family doing so little together, it's a trope with poor definitions, is hard to disprove and is just roaring through fiction right now so its overuse as a term isn't surprising. The fact that it gets used to describe so many people with just dynamics in general (frankly, it feels like it's becoming harder to write best friends in fiction partially from this) makes me unsurprised that it is getting used here since Anne does absolutely get a found family with the Plantars.

Which does bring a second part in: It makes Sasha and Marcy more important. If they're going on similar journeys as Anne than they totally aren't there to help with the themes and the like, the journey is about them too! It brings them closer to being the focus of the story and as narratively important as Anne which, as we've seen, was a big deal to the fandom. I won't even call this bad, fandom will do as it does, but it does also end up diminishing just how big a deal it was for the Plantars to so thoroughly integrate Anne into their family and then how the Boonchuys recognize that work and accept them readily too. If it's as easy as it had to have been for Marcy, Yunan and Olivia, it kind of cheapens the core thrust of the show, almost like it focused on Anne for a reason.

The last one is... KIND OF what you brought up but I think it's a lot deeper than you frame it. I recognize that nowadays I am an outlier. I literally go and take a walk with my mom every morning, or I'm supposed to, to try and help her be more physically active. My problems with my parents are mostly due to my brain not being able to accept anyone actually approves of me, let alone people who's approval I care about. I am so very lucky to have good parents who I am happy to call my parents and who I am glad to have the support of.

All too many kids, even those not in the LGBTQIA+ but ESPECIALLY if they are, have bad family homes. They dream of being able to escape to a new world that's better than theirs, meet people who accept them for them and let them do cool things and be themselves. Escapism, especially isekai, is EXTREMELY popular for a reason, especially as just the world in general sucks, regardless of your relationship with your family.

So then we get Marcy and Sasha still going back. Them ALL going back because sometimes change is inevitable and not always can you bring the ones you care about with you. It's a powerful message that spits in the eye of that escapism and for a lot of people, that HURTS. Like for as much as I defend the choice, I do understand why so many in the fandom reacted negatively to it. For as much as they potentially didn't care about the Amphibians, they don't want to lose the froggy world that they wanted to live in themselves.

And so we get the projection of abusive parents. We get the toads and newts also being found families because it's so much worse to give those people up in your life than just saying bye to your friends. We get reasons why they should have stayed or at least been allowed to travel between worlds. This isn't even all inherently wrong, especially if you are willing to admit that there was a reason why the show chose the ending it did, even if you wish you could have the one that makes you happier.

Hell, we even see some of that with how people treat angst right here. They want Sasha and Marcy to have abusive parents... Because then they can be told it's okay to reject reality, be given a hug and then move on. Not to explore that abuse but to be given the wish fulfillment of that abuse being met with kindness which is admittedly how you should meet that stuff, please take abuse victims seriously and help them, but life is more complicated than that most of the time.

These are arguments I can understand and sympathize with though. I wish I could see someone using mental illness as now their superpower to be something that makes me happy because it WOULD be nice if my depression made me better than others. I just... don't quite engage with media that way though. It's actually part of what I think makes scripted content harder for me because I engage too genuinely and don't just want a pat on the head and a juice box.

And that isn't to say people who do want that are wrong. I still don't want to be actively hurt by the media I consume. I am still there to be entertained and happy and how that happens will be different for each person. That's part of the joy of life.

So I won't tell people who want Yunan and Olivia to be Marcy's lesbian moms they're bad for wanting that. Just don't tell me that's objectively what happened in the story since analysis and headcanon are genuinely different.

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I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#amphibia

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