#Drawing the comfort characters for sanity yup

[monsterfloofs]

I have given my spicy mans Mersion some goth outfits to wear :3c I have been brainstorming and wanting to design this for a w h i l e.

The more suggestive one is under the cut COUGHCOUGH

[nightofnyx8]

I posted 740 times in 2021

82 posts created (11%)

658 posts reblogged (89%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.0 posts.

I added 521 tags in 2021

#royai - 214 posts

#riza hawkeye - 65 posts

#fma - 59 posts

#roy mustang - 50 posts

#fic rec - 30 posts

#rachelrambles - 30 posts

#writing - 22 posts

#asks - 20 posts

#fmab - 17 posts

#fanfiction - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 126 characters

#deep profound and unconditional love is hard to find and harder to keep but its a choice we make every day once we've found it

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I’m Only Me When I’m With You

Royai Week Day 2

Summary: She was there for one thing and one thing only--and nothing was going to stop her from achieving her goals. 

Especially not a certain Roy Mustang, who seemed to show up at all the wrong places at exactly the right time.

Rating: T

Words: 10,461

Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff

Read on ao3

34 notes • Posted 2021-06-09 04:51:55 GMT

#4

Misfire

Summary: "You put out a hit out on my Lieutenant?"

Rating: T

Tags: Character Study, Protective Roy Mustang, Italian Mafia, Angst, Chess Metaphors

Words: 2,518

Read on ao3

34 notes • Posted 2021-09-14 01:13:13 GMT

#3

Thank you!!!

Gahh I just wanted to say thank you very much @royaiweek for giving me the opportunity to participate in such a wonderful event this past week! Writing about Roy and Riza has both broken my heart and cursed my soul all at the same time, and I really can't get enough of them!

I also wanted to say thank you very much to everyone who has reblogged or liked or left a kudos or comment on one of my fics this week! I'm trying to get through the replies with finals and such, so I'll get to yours soon!

In case you missed it, the pieces I wrote for Royai Week 2021 are listed below (mostly for my organizational sanity), and please please please don't forget to check out all the other wonderful fics and art (and songs!) that people have created this past week, because they've all really outdone themselves. Have a fantastic day! ❤❤❤

Royai Week 2021

nightofnyx8

Endgame (G)

Royai through Wrath's perspective

I'm Only Me When I'm With You (T)

Royai College AU (because I can)

The Distance Between Us (M)

Paranormal Romance

All That Really Mattered (G)

Royai had a baby, Ed's along for the ride

Where You'll Never Reach (T)

A Lust!Riza oneshot

41 notes • Posted 2021-06-14 00:03:00 GMT

#2

You know what I love about Royai? The possibilities are endless. Arakawa just created this masterpiece with such a rich world and fascinating characters that you can really go anywhere with them. You want a wholesome family fic with Roy worrying his mind over a pregnant Riza? Step right up. Spicy undercover with mutual pining and jealousy? Yup, got that too. Tooth-rotting fluff? Darker themes and moral philosophy? An entire slew of AUs? Full multi-chaptered fics that will rip your heart out and heal it all at the same time? FAM WE GOT YOU.

And that's not even mentioning the entire rest of the FMA cast.

48 notes • Posted 2021-09-17 21:32:02 GMT

#1

I commissioned @chewytran to draw this scene from my Royai Father's Day fic In My Loving Care and I don't think I'm exaggerating in the least to say that this blew me away and exceeded all my expectations in every way possible. ❤

This fic was very raw and intense to write, but also very healing to express the kind of love these two share. This scene in particular is very dear to me and a turning point in the story, and I don't think anyone else could have captured this moment so well in their art.

I very highly recommend commissioning this amazing artist with all my heart--she was always so very kind and I got soooo excited whenever she updated me! Thank you so very much again, my dear friend!

173 notes • Posted 2021-11-10 05:50:57 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[lethesomething]

Ghost of Tsushima and the Hands of Fate

I see we're still trying to prove that games are an art form by making everyone feel bad.

For the record, Ghost of Tsushima is one of my favourite games in a very long time. It is extremely pretty, the aesthetic and general … polish is *cheff's kiss*. You can pet foxes and backstab people. The fighting mechanic is decent and there are just So Many Hats.

But also, it has the kind of story that pulls you in to the point where you have to drop the controller to hide behind your fingers going 'ohgodno'.

It is an absolute bastard of a game, is what i'm saying.

So let's talk about that, and specifically about Straw Hat Ryuzo and how I feel bad for him.

I am, by the way, going to be talking about the narrative structure of a video game about medieval samurai, so expect like, a bunch of spoilers.

The narrative is one of the big draws in Ghost of Tsushima. Like yes, it's an open world rpg with fighting and flower picking and all the important stuff, and also yes, some of the bits are sloppily written (looking at you, specifically, 'Ending to Norio's Arc'), but the game definitely sets out to Tell a Story.

And because this is a Serious Game that openly bases itself on samurai movies like Kurosawa's, it is a Drama.

In many ways it is an utterly brutal Bildungsroman, a narrative in which a young man finds his identity.

I have joked with friends about the clear intent for this game to make Important Stories, in that it actually tries to tick all the boxes of hotbutton subjects: childhood trauma? Obviously. Gay relationships?  Yup. Survivor's guilt and PTSD? Oh yes. Domestic abuse? Several. Suggested pedophilia? Damn, even that.

The foxes are there to soothe the soul

It's interesting to note that from a writing point of view, this bildungsroman is even Very Classically Structured. It goes so far as to be a three acter, with a pretty standard build-up.

 Jin Sakai, traumatized man that he is, spends the first act slowly getting to grips with the bit where you don't fight an army by yourself by  just walking up to them and challenging them With Honour, like he has been taught his entire life. Instead of getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest and set on fire, he  discovers guerilla warfare and creates this persona of the Ghost, a literal vengeful spirit seeking justice for the island of Tsushima.

It gets him some big wins and in the second act he slowly embraces this identity until things get to a head where he clashes with his entire old life. The third act starts at the hero's lowest point and is utterly gut wrenching (i am Still Not Over the horse, game), forcing him to pull himself together for an ending that is, well…fitting for the narrative. It's an ending that is needed, but perhaps not what Jin deserves.

 But anyway, this is about Ryuzo, and how until that ending, I was very upset about his role.

You see, this story is told in part through the lives of Important Npc's, who contribute to Jin's journey of self-discovery. This is pretty obvious with someone like Yuna, who is the one to introduce him to the Stealth Life and who is a driving force behind the marketing of the Ghost.

Someone like Masako, meanwhile, portrays vengeance and self discipline, but Jin also kinda tries to make her fill the mother-shaped hole in his heart.

Lord Shimura, meanwhile, is an Obvious Father figure but also stands for Jin's past. He's rigid and ineffective, which pushes Jin to further look for alternatives.

Ishikawa, that other mentor figure, is more moderate and flexible, but he also represents a possible unwanted future. He literally warns Jin at one point not to become like him.

Norio, then, is as mentioned not the best written, but he too is a person that searches for his destiny and tries to become like his hero, while only barely holding on to his sanity. 

Kenji, I'm sorry, I love you but you're just comic relief, that's all you do. It's an imporant job in the story, because god does it need it, but you're not teaching Jin anything other than how to make different 'resigned sigh' noises.

So what about Ryuzo? From the very beginning, Ryuzo's story didn't really sit right with me. There's the obvious class issue: he's one of the few important npc's that are poor, and he's an Antagonist.

It has always rubbed me the wrong way that his original intentions were good, depending on how you read it. He's trying to feed his men. He essentially made the decision that this one man's life (even if it is an old friend) is worth the price for the lives of his band of ronin.

It's a lot more complex than that, of course. Ryuzo partly blames Jin for his predicament in life, and he also knows that samurai treat their soldiers as chattel, which the game goes out of its way to show you they DO.

  Essentially, he's a complicated character who makes bad decisions for arguably good reasons.

Ryuzo did everything he could to save the lives of the people he cared about. He went so far as to abandon his honor and his childhood friends, to try to make this happen.

Does that ring any bells?

It kinda clicked for me at the very end of the game.

Jin, being the protag in an assassin game, does a lot of killing. But some of these deaths are given more meaning than others. Some of them are there to make you feel like shit (the Horse Again, but you lose several friends along the way), others serve a more defining purpose.

You see, there's a fair amount of what i'd like to call 'intimate violence' in Ghost of Tsushima. It's an old trope. The 'if someone was gonna kill me, it had to be you' kinda scene that hails from a worldview in which some deaths are better than others, sure, but some deaths are better even than living. It's a worldview in which life itself is less valuable than your legacy. You die for your place in history. For your clan, for your family, for your honor.

Bushido is full of that sort of thing, so it makes sense that a game building on that worldview, would use the heck out of that trope.

  The first is Ryuzo's death. You fight him in a duel, in which he tries to plead for some resolution. You could let him go, come up with some story. But Ryuzo is a traitor, so Jin ultimately defeats him and sends him off in what would be a touching moment of bro friendship if it wasn't for the blood and my 21st century sensibilities.

You grant him a warrior's death, is what I'm saying.

  It happens again with Shimura. The game actually gives you a choice here, but if you go through with it, the scene almost perfectly mirrors Ryuzo's.

You fight in a duel, and Jin tries to get his uncle to just let him go, come to some kind of resolution. But Jin has been branded a traitor, and the only way for Shimura to restore his honour and clan, is to take his life;

This being a game in which you have the power of bamboo strikes and also save games behind you, Jin ultimately wins the duel, and has the option of granting Shimura a warrior's death.

It is utterly heart wrenching and that whole scene has no business being as pretty as it is. The swelling music? The fucking strings? The anguished yell?

Fuck.

  But anyway.

That's about where it clicked with me, that Jin never had a choice.

Ryuzo's whole role wasn't fair, but this is one of those stories where life itself is just not fair at all.

Both him and Shimura are there to show us Jin's path.

  What if, the game says, Jin had listened? What if he'd taken one of several offers the Khan made and surrendered?

What if he'd cooperated?

Well, we see in Graphic Detail what would happen. He would get pushed into doing horrific things. He gets manipulated, again and again, until there is no way out anymore. At some point it becomes clear to him that he's on the wrong side but whenever he tries to devise some plan to turn things around, things go Badly. He's firmly stuck in Khotun's web and the only way out is death.

But what if, the game says, Jin had stayed true to his honour? What if he had listened to his uncle, not defied him, if he had dropped the Ghost before it was too late?  If he'd gone full bushido and repented for the shogun and done all the groveling and the proper stuff.

Samuraihood is just another straightjacket, says Shimura's fate. The tenets are so rigorous you would take your loved ones life, while fucking bawling your eyes out. Shimura knows damn well it's unfair but he also has no way to leave this path. It's a ride he cannot, and will not, get off alive.

  Jin never had a choice.

There was only ever one way for him to go.

Like let's be real: pretty much everyone in this story was dealt a bad hand. It's a narrative about resilience in the face of utter horror, of reinventing yourself and giving up entire structures of faith. People like Masako, Yuna, Norio are finding peace in dealing with huge levels of trauma and regret.

The goal isn't to start a family and live happily ever after, it's to Survive.

Submitting to the mongols would have killed Jin's spirit. Standing tall and rigid as he was taught to do would have, ultimately, killed him as well.

  "I've given up everything to save these people", he says near the end. "And I would do it again."

That's someone who has no regrets.

Jin never could have taken another path and he knows it.

And this is why Ryuzo needed a fate as shitty as his. He fell, so Jin could walk.

I'm sorry, it's still not fair.

This game needs some comfort fic.