shoutout to AO3 authors who write 100k fics for free while juggling mental illness, academic burnout, 3 jobs, and a deep-rooted need to fix fictional people.
I have this vision where after the movie, Rumi and Celine are at Miyeong's grave lighting incense and putting out offerings.
Celine (not looking at Rumi): your mother would be proud of you
Rumi (side-eyeing her): really. My mother would be proud that the honmoon was destroyed.
Celine (sudden cough): you made a new one. You and Mira and Zoey. You trusted each other and didn't let things get between you three. She'd...she would be proud.
Rumi (thinking jfc we're actually having this conversation like this): That's not...exactly what happened. I would think my mother would be upset that a new honmoon would need to be created at all. Since she's spent her life protecting the old honmoon and all.
Celine: ...your mother always loved you more than she cared about protecting the honmoon. All she wanted was for you to be happy and safe, Rumi.
Rumi (staring up at the sky): oh for fucks sake--
Celine (looking at her for the first time): language!
Rumi: I'm sorry, did my mother also hate swearing?
Celine: Rumi...
Rumi: no no, tell me would my mother have an opinion on Zoey doing a solo album? What about me thinking about cutting my hair?
Celine (looking pained): Rumi.
Rumi just stares at Celine.
Celine: ...what do you want me to say, Rumi? I'm sorry you had me instead of your mother. You deserved to grow up with her. If I could have traded my life for hers, I would have --
Rumi: so I could have grown up hearing about how my aunt Celine would have been proud of me? Or how my aunt Celine would want me happy and safe? And how aunt Celine loved me more than the honmoon?
Celine looks incredibly unimpressed.
Rumi stares directly into her eyes and refuses to look away.
Rumi: since you know my mother so well, do you think she would want her best friend to keep using her as a mouthpiece?
Rumi: Do you really think my mother would be hurt that I'm your daughter too?
Celine can't bring herself to say anything. She deels like if she tries to talk, she'll start crying.
Rumi grabs a stick of incense, lights it, and sticks it in the bowl of dried rice. She finally looks away from Celine and towards the grave.
Rumi: hi, mom. It's been a while. There's...a lot that happened this year. I destroyed the honmoon, asked Celine to kill me, and then made a new honmoon with Zoey and Mira.
Rumi: it turns out that Celine loves me more than she loves the honmoon but you probably knew that already. I mean, you trusted her to raise me for a reason, right?
Rumi: and you probably also knew how bad Celine is at saying her feelings. It's actually really annoying and maybe if she were better at it, I wouldn't have been so hurt as a kid but...I think I'm starting to understand her now.
Rumi: I know she loves me and she's proud of me. Because she keeps telling me how proud you would be and how much you loved me. I don't think she can bring herself to say it directly because she's scared that she's replacing you or whatever.
Rumi: ... ... ...
Rumi: the truth is, I think she already did a long time ago? I hope you're not mad, I mean, if I was going to orphan a baby, I'd want her to have a mom growing up so it would be a little fucked if you were mad.
Rumi: but yeah. I hope you're happy wherever you are. ...Mom still misses you everyday.
She hands incense to Celine. Lights it for her.
Celine: ... Miyeong, I...
Celine: ... ... ...
Celine: our daughter is something special, isn't she?
Celine: I wish you were here to see it. See what a wonderful, brave, and kind woman she's grown into.
Celine: I know you would adore her. ...just like I do.
I think one of my favorite things about K-Pop Demon Hunters is the protrayal of women.
like-
Yeah! Girls can absoLUTELY look like this-
But also! Like this-
yes their makeup can be bold and perfect!
but also- They don't always wear it!
Yes they're dainty and delicate.
But they can be bold and messy!
yes they kan like and dislike people based on silly things!
But also form genuine connections based on important boundaries.
Yes they can be cute and strong and pretty.
But they can be weird, and sad and angry.
Yes they're talented
But they also put in so much effort
Yes. They know what they're worth.
But they're also critical of themselves.
Yes. They can wear something fancy and bold. And do something crazy and tell the world what they do
And they can wear casual clothes, and eat food at a back alley restaurant with their best friends.
yes they work hard!
And yes! They can be lazy!
And they can wear whatever they want and STILL look flawless!
Look-
The point is
I love girls
And I love these girls
Because these girls are probably the most realistic fictional girls I've ever seen. And they're literal profession is one of the most unrealistic ones in the wORLD!
I love this movie so much and I am so eternally grateful that people are learning and loving girls!
Because all of these are are what real girls look like. And how real girls act, sure its unrealistic in the sense that its fictional, but the context and ideas are there. Girls ar girls.
Okay, They're funky and weird and funny and gorgeous and angry and loud and sad and strong and special, and talented, and adorable and hardwroking and lazy and just soooo Awesome!
(I stand by all of this but also i just wanted to post screencaps of the girls cause' i love them and they're so cool and they're such amazing characters and they're so well written and 90 minutes of screentime was not NEARLy enough for me i need more-)
idol awards scene where rumi sobs out “ZOEY PLEASE” and zoey shakily pulls out a single belgian baby browning to symbolize her reluctance to go through with it
Thinking a lot recently about the constant comparison of Oblivion to Skyrim, particularly claims that Oblivion is superior in every way strictly by virtue of quest length and the greater grandiosity of the organizations in Oblivion, and I think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually going on with Tamriel during the time period of Skyrim. Even though it's like...one of the core concepts of the main storyline.
Putting most of this under a cut for length, but I just...I think people misunderstand what's going on here. This is not a "One Game Good Other Game Bad" post, it's an analysis of a major, key difference in story basis between the two that I think gets lost in the (frankly asinine) argument about which is superior.
See, everything in Skyrim sucks. Every organization you can align yourself with is falling apart. Literally every single one.
That's the point.
To summarize:
The Companions (equivalent to the Fighters' Guild) are about a dozen strong, literally cursed, and their most beloved leader gets murdered very early in the storyline.
The College of Winterhold (equivalent to the Mages' Guild, not to the Arcane University) has seemingly only been saved from collapsing into the sea because a master of Restoration fused himself with the structure itself when the Sea of Ghosts tried to tear it down a little under a century ago and his presence is constantly physically "healing" the foundation.
The Thieves' Guild has lost the favor of every possible patron deity, having been outright cursed by Nocturnal after one of her Nightingales murdered another and stole the gift she offers her champion, while the boon that the organization's founder claimed from her in ages past (the cowl) is missing.
The Dark Brotherhood has been all but completely dismantled, the Night Mother's tomb in Bravil having been raided and struggling to persist without a Listener for over a decade; the bodies of the Night Mother's children have been lost and she's essentially being smuggled from region to region in an attempt to find a safe place to continue operations.
The Empire itself has been kneecapped, forced into a traumatic treaty by a fascist regime determined to strike the beliefs and culture of anyone not Altmer off the face of the planet; the Thalmor have gone so far as to torture and radicalize the figurehead leader of the Nords in order to use their own nationalism and superiority against the Empire, sparking a civil war that will further weaken the Empire and allow the Aldmerri Dominion to destroy it wholecloth.
This extends out into the rest of the world, too! We have confirmed existence of Hist-deaf Argonians. The Dunmer are floundering to recover after the quadruple-whammy that is the fall of the Triumverate, the destruction of Vivec City when Baar Dau finally made impact, the Red Year, and the Argonian uprising. The Bosmer are literally endangered due to habitat loss following a super-isolationist cultural shift due to wars with the Khajiit and Altmer. The Void Nights were devastating to Khajiit culture and population in ways that have yet to be fully explained.
The world is falling apart. Everything is dying.
And then Alduin shows up.
We all kind of talk about Alduin carrying on as World-Eater through the course of the Skyrim storyline like it's him being a piece of shit, since he'd started it ages ago and was just displaced in time to land on the Last Dragonborn's head in the Fourth Era, but I don't think that's the case.
Based on the state of things, I think Alduin arrived right on time. I think it's the end of the world. The only reason he "should" be stopped is because the Last Dragonborn has the capacity to stop the world from ending in a more down-to-earth sense than just defeating Alduin: they can't save everyone, but they can "fix" every single organization that's holding "the world" together.
They can align with the Imperials and keep the civil war from further crippling them, keeping the Empire from being too weak to push back against the Aldmerri Dominion.
They can save the College of Winterhold, the only group in the right place at the right time to stop the Eye of Magnus from opening, and in doing so make sure that the Psijics are able to put it somewhere nobody else can find it.
They can lead the Companions, cure the curse for those members who don't want to run with Hircine after death, which bolsters their spirits enough to keep doing what they can even when everyone else is trying to kill each other. A single neutral martial force in the middle of a civil war.
They can regain Nocturnal's trust for the Thieves' Guild, restore the Nightingales, and in doing so they can return the luck that was stolen from them as punishment for Mercer Frey's transgression. They can even reclaim the Crown of Barenziah and award the guild with a paragon to increase their newly-regained luck.
They can hear the Night Mother, becoming Listener for the Dark Brotherhood to restore the balancing force of Sithis in the world, purify the most broken Sanctuary the Brotherhood has ever had, and finish a story set into motion way back in the Third Era—Emperor Titus Mede II is murdered under the order of a Motierre, a descendant of a mark the Brotherhood specifically kept from dying during the Oblivion Crisis.
The Last Dragonborn can't do anything outside Skyrim—there's nothing they can do for the Argonians or the Bosmer or the Khajiit, and they can only do very little for the Dunmer via work in Solstheim—but they can work with every single guild or guild-adjacent group, strengthening the Empire to stand against the biggest threat to Tamrielic culture since the First Era, and in doing so they can make it so the world isn't ready for Alduin to eat it.
The Hero of Kvatch exists when Tamriel, and presumably Nirn as a whole is in the prime of its life, that's what makes the Oblivion Crisis such a big deal. This is a world that isn't ready to give up, it still has the strength to fight, it just needs someone standing at the head to direct it. The Last Dragonborn comes into the story when everything is falling apart and nothing really feels worthwhile, when it's hard to see why the world is worth saving. They have the chance to prove that there's still some life left here, that the world isn't too far gone to save—Alduin arrived right on time, it's the Last Dragonborn's job to change that.
I can see how coming from Oblivion to Skyrim would feel disappointing and hollow, but I'm pretty sure that's literally the point of the story.
Oblivion tells you the world is worth saving because it's got so much left to live for, even with the odds stacked so high against it. Skyrim asks you whether a world that's dying is still a world worth saving, and it's up to you to prove that it is.
the pretend plot of bg3: you've gotta get these tadpoles out and stop a giant floating brain with delusions of grandeur
the real plot of bg3: in order to date us (the party) you must defeat our seven evil exes: a half-demon warlock patron, the literal goddess of magic, a vampiric lord, an insane cult leader , an archdemon, the goddess of darkness, and finally, the Trauma
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
