[tamorapierce]

All Tortall Merchandise back in stock!

All Tamora Pierce merchandise by Dual Wield Studio is back in stock! Show your Tortall pride with officially licensed hoodies, t-shirts, and pins. Keep your favourite character close to your heart by rocking Alanna’s ember necklace, or give Daine’s silver badger claw with custom engraving as an epic gift to the Wild Magic fan in your life (or yourself, we won’t judge). -Team Tamora Pierce 

https://dualwieldstudio.com/collections/tamora-pierce

[thatmightyheart]

i love midoriya inko…. she would keep all of izuku’s stuff ;___;

[thatmightyheart]

tddk doodling

[bumblevip]

I was doodling and this is what happened

[showerthoughtsofficial]

Bones healing stronger after they break is like when your mom does a double knot when trying your shoes. Your body is like “there. Because you’re a clumsy fuck.”

[aqualateral]

conclusion: break all ur bones so ur twice as strong

[silkirose]

[abandooonded]

I  don’t post here much anymore, but man ever since we launched we’ve done some really cool stuff and I’m super happy with it. Here’s some best of photos! You can check our products out HERE.

[sassafrassrex]

I love so much how some Shiro stans are taking two years’ worth of slowly growing disappointment and channeling it into near-chaotic positivity about the Atlas and the new setup.

Black Lion doesn’t want him? We’ve got a bigger robot who does.

Team Voltron had no room for him? We’ve got a bigger team that does.

A-plot doesn’t want him? Well this season’s B-plot called him “Sir” all the time and was all about Earth coming together and pooling our alien and homegrown resources, our global talent, and our will in a massive cooperative effort showing hey universe, humans are space-orks, and hey universe, we held out by the skin of our teeth without Voltron and we went from nobody to winning in 4 measly years and we defend our OWN home

The universe doesn’t want him defending it? EARTH WANTS HIM DEFENDING IT

Stanning this character was constantly hearing how eeeeeverything would be better in a universe where he wasn’t black paladin and wasn’t on the team and YOU KNOW WHAT?  YOU KNOW WHAT MAYBE HE’S BETTER OFF AWAY FROM YOU TOO

Look. You’re Team Voltron and we love you. We love you very much. You’re our heroes. You’re our heroes. And even if you weren’t, Shiro loves you so what else would we do?

But in addition to that

THIS IS OUR GIANT UGLYASS GORGEOUS THICK-THIGHED, TINY-WAISTED LADY DANGER-ESQUE MECHA WHO KICKS ASS IN HEELS AND WE FUCKING LOVE HER

THIS IS OUR LARGELY MIDDLE-AGED CREW OF BADASSES THAT SAVED VOLTRON’S BUTT AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE AND YEAH WE LOVE THEM!!  THE RHEUMY EYES OF TIME ARE COMING FOR ALL OF YOU YOU ONLY WISH YOU’LL LOOK THIS GOOD

AND 

THIS

THIS IS OUR FUCKING COMMANDER WHO IS THE HOTTEST THING IN THIS OR ANY VOLTRON VERSE AND WE LOVE THE HELL OUTTA HIM

[aleikats]

I saw @oceanabluart reblogged this and I immediately thought of Keith.  Alternatively it can be “Keith, You’re Galran” , and that’s how he found out he’s part alien. :^D lol 

[v-0-3-deactivated20181223]

I came a long way to find you.

[kaa-05n2]

[satosipeter]

[arahir]

lance: a twenty-sided die?? how big is that thing???

pidge: it’s normal sized. it just has twenty sides.

lance: 

[deadlilmoon]

and then there were none

[ladydracarysao3]

JUST RIP MY HEART OUT, WHY DON’T YOU?

But seriously, this is beautiful.

[cirquededoom]

wow dick.

[carnelianfoxx]

[pr1nceshawn]

The ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Theme Song on Marimba by percussionist Aaron DeWayne.

[skyr1ms-remade-deactivated20190]

@gamersonic

[hogwartsconsultingtimelady]

When he switched to the dungeon theme I lost my mind

[abandooonded]

this is dope but I’m so ??? about the signs behind? “_amps, kitsune, sea, serpents, kraken, phoenix” yeah ok so fantasy creatures but

brownies?

[danielkesslers]

Okay but something that kinda gets me is when writers characterize 30 year old Noctis as being extremely mature and wise? I mean he’s been in the crystal for 10 years and is missing 10 crucial years of life experiences and personal growth. Logically he should have the same personality as his 20 year old-self, no?

[mycovenisasoongandroid]

yeah there’s a lot of dissonance there and it bothers me that square didn’t touch on this more

[domesticfluffsimulator]

There’s some sort of “maturation” involved in the process though, isn’t there? He doesn’t just stay ten years inside the crystal for no reason, if I remember well he stays as long as he needs to accept his fate. And I’ve read a good meta about how Noctis has a “dream world” where he can sort of interact with the outside world, so maybe that’s what happened - a ten years long dream where he can learn about himself and his duty while being protected inside the crystal so nothing can go wrong?

But yeah, it’s all speculation and it would be nice if square had given us a little more material to work with, here.

[voxiferous-deactivated20171119]

Omg you linked my post!!

Okay, so I think the answer to the question “did Noctis mature” can only be answered if you know what’s wrong with him and what he needs to do to grow up. TL;DR: Noctis fears becoming king because to him it means relinquishing his identity and personal autonomy in order to become a perfect symbol of power. Figures of authority in his life place a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders, while simultaneously implying that he isn’t capable of handling them. This causes him to struggle with low self-worth and feelings of powerlessness. This, aside from mourning for his dad and Luna, is what causes him to be depressed during the game.

So what does Noctis have to do to get better/mature/grow up? Answer: two things. 1. Noctis needs to learn to balance his identity and his role as king. Not to accept his role as king, but to be able to balance his personal identity and his kingly identity. (This is something Regis never really managed to do either, I should mention.) 2. Noctis needs to come to terms with his own impending death - something he was already struggling with at the beginning of the game because he sees the kingship as a slow death sentence (because it killed his father).

Do we see any evidence that Noctis has accomplished these two goals after the 10 years pass? 1. He definitely, on some level, managed to do this. He is able to tell his friends that he loves them (”You guys are the best” in the English dub), though he later acts regal and composed when saying goodbye outside the palace after Ardyn’s defeat, showing he can slip in and out of both identities at will. He has not become a king with no heart, nor does he appear to be playing the king “role” without being a king. But we don’t have enough evidence to say whether he’s balanced his two identities in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. The question is whether he was able to take on the mantle of king by subsuming his personal identity to an imaginary ideal, or if he used his personal identity to grow into a strong king. 2. Noctis absolutely did not come to terms with his own death. Sure, he fulfills the prophecy and dies. But the campfire scene reveals that he really, really doesn’t want to do it. And I would argue that this is what shows that he did not use his personal identity to shape his kingly identity. If Noctis saw his death as a way of saving his friends - that is, if he saw it through a personal lens - he would’ve done it in a heartbeat. You know he would die for any one of the chocobros, so he would certainly do it for all three. If he saw it as a duty to fulfill, required of him because of an accident of birth and nothing more, then he would resent and fear it - and I think this is what we see in the campfire scene. He says that seeing his friends makes his resolve waver, makes it harder for him to fulfill his duty. But seeing his friends should have made his resolve stronger, because it should have reminded him what he was sacrificing himself for. Not a throne, not a kingdom, but the people of the kingdom, the people he loves, his brothers. This is why I think the game dropped the ball on the theme of brotherhood towards the end. But I digress.

So how could Noctis have matured or not matured inside of the crystal? I think @domesticfluffsimulator brought up a good point - Noctis wasn’t just sitting around in there, he was dreaming. I don’t know if he could access the Astral Realm/dream world from inside the Crystal Realm, but we know from the montage that he was at least going through his own memories (all 70+ hours of gameplay, thank you Noct), maybe in a similar way to New Game Plus. Or you could be right and he was running around in the dream world the entire time. Either way, Noctis’s personal growth depends on the conclusions he came to while doing… whatever he was doing. I think being alone would have been good for him - lots of time to think, to be free of the pressure Regis, Cid, Cor, Gladio, Ignis, & etc. put on his shoulders. But he was never free of the pressure of his destiny, which I think must have been crushing. We also see, when he leaves the crystal, that he doesn’t know how long he’s been in there - makes me think that time is faster in the crystal, but I don’t think 10 years passed in the blink of an eye, it was just condensed.

Anyway, all of this is a fat lot of speculation. Personally, if I were Noctis’s psychologist, I would’ve sent him back for another year of therapy at least. Campfire Noctis seems really broken down. Regal, but broken down - that’s the sacrifice he made. If Noctis did grow up, he grew up a little crooked - strong but so imperfect. It could’ve been different.

[danielkesslers]

Aaah!! Thank you all for your replies, I appreciate it so much! I’ve really enjoyed reading all your theories and meta. I’m absolutely loving how you explained the Platinum demo and Launch Disc, I’ve missed a lot of information from those. I feel like that helped to explain a lot for me!! I knew that dreams and the idea of dream-worlds are an important theme in the game of FFXV but it never really connected in my mind like this. The point of the Carbuncle charm was something I had completely forgotten about!! Wow! I’m now confident that the presence of Carbuncle at Moogle-Chocobo festival meant that was to be intrepreted as a dream-episode and explains why the party wasn’t with him at the festival. (Prompto would’ve loved being there.) I also knew that Noctis and Regis had some severe problems with their father-son relationship but I never realised the full extent that it effected Noctis. From FFXV Parting ways I saw that Noctis felt very neglected and disappointed that he couldn’t see his father the day before the group left Insomnia for Noctis’s marriage to Lunafreya. Like a, “Oh, that’s typical, he’s always too busy to see me. He’s still too busy being king and doing kingly duties to even see me once before one of the MOST important events of my life!” kind-of feeling. I feel that’s also why he was so short and dismissal to his father in the introduction and parting scene of Regis. Something that I felt was odd and rude of him at first but now makes perfect sense. I also got a sense that he probably didn’t want to become like his father.

[voxiferous-deactivated20171119]

I’m glad to know you like my meta! If you wanna reply to any of it feel free, I love talking about this stuff. I actually didn’t think of the Moogle Chocobo Carnival being a dream, but now that you mention it I would totally believe it. It’s really useful, actually, cuz it gives us another canon example of a dream aside from the Platinum Demo. Then again, you can wear the chocobo t-shirt during the rest of the game, so maybe it /was/ real… I don’t know O.o

And OMG, yes, Prompto would’ve loved being there, if it was real. I wanna make Prompto happy so I really wish you could take him there…

Re: Regis. His kingly title is The Father, while the other kings all had names like The Wise and The Wanderer. So you would think that Regis was the absolute best dad any prince could ever have. But in fact what “The Father” means is that he was apparently the only dad any Lucian prince ever had, because all princes other than Noctis were raised strictly to be kings, without parental love… including Regis himself. What this means is that Regis does not know how to parent, because he was not parented himself.

He also doesn’t know how to be a person apart from being a king, which is the same thing that Noctis struggles with, as I mentioned before. Actually, I think that becoming a father was what made Regis realise that “king self” and “person self/father self” could not be the same thing. So the second problem here is that Regis never really learnt to put his “king self” aside and have an independent identity. That’s why he never has time for Noctis. He is too busy being king and doesn’t know how/when to say “I need to stop now and take some time for myself/my son.” Because he can’t do that, he could never teach Noctis how to do it, either. So Noctis is confused about how he’s supposed to become king, which to him means becoming like his dad and not being himself and not being free anymore. So yeah, you’re totally right about Noctis not wanting to become like his dad.

((I think Regis wanted to see him off in that scene as king and as father to give him a double blessing, but you’re right - Noctis totally misinterpreted it :/ ))

Not only that, but in an effort to protect Noctis from the future/give him space to grow, Regis told him exactly nothing about any king stuff at all, leaving him underprepared and worse, feeling like his dad didn’t trust him. Some of the stuff Regis does say to Noctis is kinda toxic (ie: “You place a great burden on those who would bear with you”) and worse than giving him no information at all. But it’s also stuff that Regis probably heard from his own parents, so make of it what you will.

In sum, Regis is guilty of: 1. Not knowing how to maintain a personal identity > leads to him neglecting Noctis and failing to communicate with him and setting a bad example for how to be a person and a king at the same time 2. Being overly protective and failing to tell Noctis about the future > leads to Noctis feeling dis-empowered and underprepared, even betrayed, like his dad doesn’t trust him 3. Passing on bad lessons from his parents, lessons which tell Noctis he is not allowed to have a personal identity > this is the thing which messes Noctis up the most imo

What Regis did right: 1. Making Noctis feel loved 2. Letting Noctis go to school, live independently, and have friends

Regis is not a bad person. He is honestly something of a victim, the problem is he kinda fucked Noctis up so it’s hard for me to feel sorry for him. But he was a single father, with no idea of how to parent, simultaneously running a kingdom, and his kid was The Chosen One. So yeah, Noctis’s relationship with his dad was bad, but you can’t look at it as a simple problem of Regis being a bad father. The bad parents in this situation were Regis’s parents and all the ones who came before them.

Phew! I hope this wasn’t too much talking from me. I kinda had a lot more thoughts about Regis than I thought I did XD

[catsofinstagram]

[the-stickers]