#interesting thoughts!

[specialagentartemis]

not sure whether this counts as a podcast women ask, but are there any podcast characters who AREN'T women who you think would have been more compelling if they were? sometimes i hear a story and think wow, these themes would be so much clearer (or more complex & interesting) if the creator hadn't considered men the default

I think this so many times about so many characters haha…

Podcasts tend to be better about it than other mediums Ryland Grace should have been a woman fr and one refreshing thing I love is that there’s no shortage of female protagonists, cool and quirky supporting characters, and villains!

I’ve heard that SI-5 was pitched and tried out for gender-blind and at one point Michelle Agresti tried out for the role of Kepler, and had she been cast she would have been Colonel Miranda Kepler, and that produces an absolutely fascinating image. Kepler as written feels like he could not be anything other than a middle class white man who has never been meaningfully told “no” in his life. Michelle Agresti’s Colonel Kepler would be a more tragic figure in a potentially really interesting way: instead of failing upwards, she would have had to fight and claw her way into the position she has, not just selling pieces of herself away until there was nothing left but actively killing them to fit the mold expected of her. Destroying her own humanity because it was the only way to prove herself. Making herself ruthless because any crack of human feeling allowed to stay would be seen and swiftly punished, and she has a career here in mind. Miranda Kepler hates Minkowski not so much out of demeaning sexism but because Minkowski looks like a failure state to her: THIS is what happens if you let yourself be weak, and emotional, and act like you care. You lose control and someone else gets sent in to kill you and mop up your mess. And Miranda Kepler is gonna be the one who mops up the messes, NOT the one who gets mopped up. There’s an alternate timeline out there where Michelle Agresti played Kepler and this was her whole deal and in that universe I’m probably captivated by her, haha. The Kepler that we get in canon is a very familiar and believable Type Of Guy and fun-hateable antagonist, but a female Colonel Kepler would have gone so much harder on the aspects of “destroying the person you are to fit the mold they expect you to be in order to get ahead in this company.”

Actually you know what, second answer: Ranaí from Travelling Light should have been a woman because I’m pretty sure he was based on me :P can’t believe they gave my concerns and criticisms to a fictional man smh

[evtraininguniversity]

(Yeah, I meant to send them to you-mostly because I don't see a lot of people writing Arceus as Eldritch, and I was curious what you thought about the concept. And yeah, I think Arceus is fond of humans, but like we're fond of squirrels or other small animals running around: they're cute, and necessary, and we might even feed them-but people aren't afraid to kill them if they are too annoyed.)

Oh I see! In that case I’m definitely up for continuing this train of thought.

Cosmic horror is genuinely one of my favorite types of horror behind psychological (I will be honest, typically I’m a whump/heavy angst writer! However I like to tone-match my fic ideas with the media I’m writing in which is why my fics have been a mixture between solemn angst and crack/comedy since Pokémon, while occasionally having mature themes or concepts, is a kids media) and I think the Legendaries have a big potential for that genre. They are very Eldritch when you take a step back and ponder on what they truly are.

I think about how Arceus has a thousand arms almost daily and the form we see is just one aspect of it. The Distortion World sounds utterly horrifying. Your description for how Arceus sees us is pretty accurate to how I envision it thinks of the Player Character. It never promised to send the PC home and why should it have to? Hisui is not a bad place to live in, they’ve bonded and made friends with practically everyone in the region. Arceus got what it wanted and that should be the done deal!

Except, I don’t think it could possibly understand that to a fifteen year old who still needs their parents that it doomed them to a life where they could never return home without it’s direct divine intervention. I don’t think Arceus was malicious while doing this, it is simply at a level beyond our own. After you battle it it asks you to let it experience the world as any other Pokémon so I think on some level it would like to try and understand but I doubt that could ever happen.

I think the same with all the Legendaries, and explored this in one of my fics (The Old Verses Were Not Meant For You) regarding Uxie’s ability to take away thoughts. It’s an aspect of its nature, so of course it’s gonna do it.

[incorrectaceattorneyquotes]

Apollo/Simon Blackquill. They're absolutely a "friends don't judge each other, they judge other people together" dynamic. Also Apollo like semi-canonically reads gore manga, and they bond over enjoying dark shit. Also I think Blackquill might be the only person with a solid enough grasp on Apollo's psychology to ask him out in unambiguously romantic terms, and generally to know when to be extremely straightforward with him. No I have not gotten over "join me in my jail cell" why do you ask

Actually this ship has always been v interesting to me!!

[agdistis-sanctified]

Deadpool 2, Masculinity, and Prison Abolition

"Deadpool 2 is more than just a joke-filled, action-packed follow-up to the first movie. It’s an epic on loss, self-hatred, redemption, forgiveness, sacrifice, and family. Rarely do films say so much about our society; rarely do they say so much about ourselves."

[tinypurplewizardfan]

About Veigar's face, yordles are supposed to have possibilities to go through big changes and mostly there is talk about their psychological changes but I wonder if they would also have appearance changes maybe depending on their experiences... even if they are unpleasant experiences, maybe it would explain a bit the disheveled appearance of yordles in arcane Idk I'm just rambling

That's a really great theory, anon! I like it a lot!

It's mentioned in Veigar's lore that the evil at the heart of the Immortal Bastion not only mentally broke him, but also physically twisted him into something barely recognizable as his former self. It's very possible that this could be a literal, physical change- it would work with the lore of yordles being very spiritual beings.

It'd be interesting to see an artistic interpretation of Veigar's face that's significantly more eldritch than what Omega Squad Veigar looks like. That'd be really cool.

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

I think WBS kinda,,,,,,,,,,,breaks Red's necklace right b4 she steals his powers. Lets him feel all that power and pain and amemories before she takes it away.

He'll have to deal with that every single day if he tries to get his powers back, she says.

Nice of her to make him reluctant to get his powers back so he argues with Wukong ab it,,,

~🐌

Getting Red Son to not want to become powerful is a great way to keep him from becoming a threat, that's for sure.

And the horn idea is kinda interesting

Hypothetically speaking the spell could only keep out those who are meaning to do harm. And Red Son, who doesn't really feel like harming them can walk through no problem, and then Macaque, who very much has been planning on harming them steps through too and has a mini-crisis because apparently this barrier thing says he doesn't intend to do them any harm

[nettler]

Just a note on the hogwarts houses bit of your last post. You said you thought the sorting was silly because of the whole different house thing as you mature and stuff. However when you look at characters such as Hermione and Neville (just examples, aha), you can see how their houses were a better/more obvious fit for them rather than when they were first sorted at 11. While the online tests are mostly biased, I reckon the actual hat was less so.

Yes thats very true!

I sorta forgot about that character development, it has been a while since I’ve properly been into Harry Potter tbh.

But yeah, I find a lot of online tests were very obvious of where you were heading - thats why I like the Pottermore one best. You can’t purposely take it in a way that will get you in a particular house.