I've found that if you just state a harmless opinion on tumblr without explicitly couching it in a whole bunch of "but it's okay if you think differently everyone is valid!" type language there's always some people who find it rude and get angry because they think that you're trying to tell them what to think.
Which, like, okay, I think maybe everyone on the internet would be happier if they stopped reading everything that people say in the worst possible faith?
You’re 100% correct, but I couldn’t hear you over drinking gallons of mayo because I love it so much apparently.
@alexkablob replied to your post “Me: Huh I should go into Mel's tag, see what cool...”:
Mel is THE BEST CHARACTER and fandom has no fucking clue how to handle her because they're racist assholes yeah
Mel: A complicated woman who desires to handle things through politics and is good at it, who also has a complicated relationship with her mother and was exiled for not being bloodthirsty enough. She pragmatically aided a brilliant young inventor and his partner to let them have a chance to put their money where their mouth was, and used that to help propel her city to new heights. She then fell in love with said inventor and mentored him in politics while enjoying his sincerity. Her one political failing was having the same blind spot towards the undercity that literally everyone else in the Council had.
Fandumb: Is this a manipulative witch? Or a girlboss who don't need no man? Is she a monster?
Mel is so damn good and cool, I just wish her tag had more... her... in it.
please forgive me my sloppy-at-best photo editing skills, once I read Aquarius my brain would not let me rest until I could PROPERLY ENVISION short-hair Pyrrha
What are askboxes for if not for shamelessly enabling your friends so please do tell us about Winter's technician vs Weiss's performer
what’s so interesting about Winter and Weiss specifically wrt this trope is that it’s usually the performer who is the Prodigy while the technician is, idk, some hapless second banana who has to work twice as hard just to keep up and has to learn to Let Go and Have Fun or whatever the fuck
it's not that Winter DOESN'T need to learn those things, but the subtext is fairly overt in painting her as the prodigy out of the two of them. she's the oldest, the paragon, the chosen heiress (though in retrospect as the Heir and also Not the Boy she was probably the Unfavorite for both Willow and Jacques). her little tutoring session with Weiss in season 3 reads very much as "why isn't this coming naturally to you it did for me," and every scene she's in during that season paints her as "Weiss, but the Finished Version, who can make it look easy."
Weiss certainly sees (or...saw) her that way. even beyond incredibly obvious hints (mirror help me who am i--Winter!), it's amazing to return to episodes prior to Winter's introduction after we meet her, because only then does it become clear that her fingerprints are all over Weiss. remember i'm not perfect! not yet? or her first combat encounter: head up, shoulders back, right foot forward--not that forward--early Weiss placed so much importance on having the Exact Right Technique, Executing an Attack at the Right Moment, not a hair out of place, and now that we've gotten a fuller sense of Winter's fighting style...
we can see exactly where she got it from. (i made a gif y'all!)
this entire sequence lasts less than four seconds. Ironwood halts her Summon in its tracks, forcing both Winter and Oscar off; Winter pauses her momentum in midair by...idk, the power of anime, fires three icicles from a Glyph, simultaneously pushing off it so she lands before Oscar, even though Oscar DIDN'T stop for a counterattack, and then--without even looking--sends another Glyph to catch Oscar and propel him forward.
some of this bullshit you can definitely just attribute to Rule of Cool, but the point is that this is Winter at Her Best, the Winter that Weiss wanted to be: not a single second or gesture wasted, not a hair out of place. i've already waxed pretentious on why it's so significant that we only see her like this now where in every prior fight she's been ruffled and defensive, but it's relevant here too; Weiss wanted to believe that the Winter we see here is Pure Uncut Winter Schnee, but WE know that's not true.
this has nothing to do with talent. Winter definitely has that in spades, and who knows? maybe she IS more naturally gifted than Weiss, but the point is that she had to discipline it. Winter at her best is Winter honed to a sharp point (the point of a bullet, or the tip of a sword); streamlined and optimized and stripped of all excess, all maddening sloppy touches. she is above all controlled, but her control, as far as we can tell, extends (just like in out of combat situations) to one thing at a time. she is either attacking herself or helping others attack, and she does not give ground. every second is used to press the offense.
so it makes sense why she's dismissive of Weiss and her at least three strikes missed, but it also makes sense why Weiss a) had so much difficulty doing what Winter does and b) has since given up on it to pursue her own style. Weiss was never intended to be anything more than the spare, meant to generate press and money through her artsy performer gig. this was deeply damaging to her self-image, especially when she compared herself to Winter, but it also gave Weiss more room to be the unruly creative, and that's the part she ultimately chooses to nurture.
Weiss Schnee does not move laterally on the battlefield. she spins and pirouettes around in a FUCKING DRESS, she stabs and slashes her sword with relish (though one suspects Winter taught her that part, along with the yelling), and despite months of practice now her Summoning (in contrast to her sister, who once Summoned a Manticore while plummeting to her death) still takes time and a lot of Intense Posing. but she is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, because she's compensated for those flourishes, and then some. Winter controls the players, with herself as the principle; Weiss controls the entire stage. she creates environmental hazards. she obfuscates. she buffs her friends. she does a twirl before nuking Marrow with four fireballs at once, because she trusts her own ability--and that of her team--to keep the enemy occupied for the duration of the performance.
and at this point performing is a choice. if Weiss had wanted to keep emulating Winter, she could have done it, but at some point she decided not to. at some point she decided to turn what she'd thought was a weakness into a strength. at some point she decided to take the ways her family wounded her, the role they forced her into, and make it her own, and make it willfully, joyfully, into art.
Winter...hasn't allowed herself that luxury. for Winter, her Semblance--and the family, the name, that are inextricable from it--it cannot be anything more than a tool. to think of it as anything else would mean letting it control her, hurt her, but it is too valuable to discard entirely. the only thing she can do is put it to good use.
it's how she thinks about every part of her, in the end.
I never considered Autistic!Miranda but it's a DELIGHT especially with the whole "created by literal eugenics to be Perfect(TM) and Normal(TM)" thing like way to just absolutely eviscerate that
See, even the "I am genetically supposed to be better than this" is such a fucking mood thanks to media hammering home autism as "well you're socially awkward but you're really intelligent".
Because I started just bombing at school in my later teenage years (because executive dysfunction), and my brain was constantly going "you're autistic you're supposed to be intelligent" and just...
"My success are because of my genes, my failures are my own" is such a fucking mood.
A recording of the contents of @mylordshesacactus‘s Adam Taurus Appreciation Post reposted here for convenience of view
You know, obviously I’m usually pretty negative toward him as a person, but I did want to take some time to talk about Adam and the things he does right. Because while many of his actions are widely criticized, it’s important to recognize that there are skills he possesses and uses that are simply unmatched in-universe and need to be acknowledged, not ignored in favor of relentless negativity.
It ties into his allusions and how those allusions help weave narratives. Especially Blake’s narrative, which would be very different if Adam wasn’t extremely good at a lot of valuable things. After all–in a lot of ways, Adam stands alone in this franchise. I just feel like he deserves to be appropriately talked up.
Compared to every other character, no one:
SQUAWKS LIKE GASTON
GETS COLD-COCKED LIKE GASTON
NO ONE DIES LIKE A BITCH ON A ROCK LIKE GASTON–
mylordshesacactus
OR GETS HIT IN THE FACE WITH A MOOOOOOOOOTORCYCLE QUITE LIKE THAT DEAD GUY GASTON–
alexkablob
Jo you’re the funniest bitch in this fandom do you know that
mylordshesacactus
See I don’t know about that but what I do know is that
