#ground control points

[incomingalbatross]

I'm trying out another kindle unlimited author, recommended by a friend from school, and currently I am halfway through the first book of a trilogy trying to process "why don't I care about this protagonist" into something actually halfway analytical.

I think there's SOMETHING there about the difference between a powerless character (fine and cool) vs a passive one (hard for me to get invested). Even or especially if the character has the power to DO very little, I think creators need to show them caring about things! Making judgments! Having internal lines drawn or goals their limited choices are driven by!

But this MAY just be my definite personal bias toward liking characters who enter the scene with strong moral convictions.

[skyeshades]

i hope these chapters kill evil ralsei theories

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

More spider!paranoia!Virgil for this AU

Time taken: 2 ½ hours

(the white writing is from ENA: Temptation Stairway because I imagine him to act quite similar to ENA, especially with the breakdowns)

[maddragonfruit]

In my mind the original Creativity and a Roman/Remus fusion would be entirely different sides

[berryberrytaeberry]

Okayokayokayokay hear me out

Louis de Pointe du Lac 🤝...

Jean Moreau

[maeamian]

Becoming deeply radicalized against the idea of crewed Mars missions, y'know how the Rovers keep sending back better and better data what if instead of that we made an even bigger one and devoted nearly 90% of its capacity to holding a guy in a bubble on top of it instead of sending back useful data, but wait! They'll eliminate like a half hour of latency and also almost certainly contaminate the landing site and possibly the entire planet, so it's not all downside.

[vinyls-and-valentines]

After careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that a romanian Battery City would probably look like a termite nest, but distinctly gray and brutalist from the outside with fully enclosed roads and everything.

On the inside it's be rather quite pretty, though, with glass roofs and green spaces and shop fronts with street access selling food or colorful trinkets everywhere you look. Nicely tiled floors and retro tram cabs. A marriage between modern functionality and the evocative imagery that once earned the moniker of "little Paris" for the capital, meant to be seen only from the ground floor.

After all, it would be arrogance for man to turn his gaze to the heavens and question the designs of God. A labourer may covet his master's lifestyle, yet if granted the same opportunities he would surely make a fool of himself, acting in ways unbefitting of his station. Yes, it is best for the average citizen not to concern themselves with the outside world, filled with confounding practices and ravenous gazes waiting for the poor layman to make a trivial mistake while speaking his mind.

One should always live within their means and leave complicated matters to those who have proven themselves worthy of handling them

[sol-consort]

"The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn’t. My guilt will not purify me"

that qoute lives in my head rent free.

(who said it, btw? I tried to find a source before the tumblr user @/ojibwa posted it and nothing came up)

[kaurwreck]

It's actually really appropriate that bsd happened to me because I learned about the Sengoku period of Japan from Samurai Warriors. I was moé Oichi in the very first dream in which I exercised volitional control over the dream narrative and environment.

[ryukiethebored]

personally i feel in-ho wouldn't be into power, control, dominance and that whole universe of behavior when it comes to the dynamics in his personal relationships. not a list of things i have anything against, simply don't see it specifically for him, at least to significant extremes. control issues when it comes to his emotional regulation & approach to operating the games? yes. but been thinking of how he approaches relationships specifically.

his character comes off gentler to me, which— hear me out— i know sounds off considering he'll stride up to somebody and shoot them point blank in the head, or break the neck of a man with his bare hands (really feeling the irony in using the word gentle for him now), but i'm going by the moments when he's him him, not the masked frontman, whether that’s physical or metaphorical.

not that they're two separate entities. i don't necessarily believe he'd have a complex that has him shifting between two wholly different personas. i do believe it's complicated for him, that the lines blur, that he slips and stutters both ways when it comes to juggling the priorities of his young-il role vs frontman.

but it's in the way he looks at people when his guard is down, when for a moment he's let the old parts of himself resurface. he looks genuinely interested & attentive, genuinely proud or empathetic, and that's because i feel he really did (in his past, pre-game mentality) and does still have the capacity to be all of these things. there's of course all the moments with gi-hun, but another scene that always stuck with me is the way his gaze lingers on myung-gi after catching him and thanos during their escalating bathroom encounter, like in-ho felt something significant in the moment (my hc is that he's reminded of jun-ho and is revisiting memories he may have had to protect young jun-ho from similar mistreatment). but the fact he appears genuine with these subtle emotions, as well as seems to have an innate skill of reading people on a nuanced level, understanding why they're doing what they're doing even if it differs from himself (which i feel is the irony in him, because not everyone has the ability to understand beyond their bubble, even when you are a genuinely good person). i feel him being this way & having that natural ability would segue into, almost paradoxically, being a gentler character. because he sees people.

you can still see people and choose to be cruel, to feel internally superior, to control them. but i feel like this isn't the way his character is portrayed. he meets people on their level, trying to reason instead of harm, trying to test them in real ways that sync with their behavior in order to see if it changes anything in them. he doesn't force their hand, shove an immovable truth at them. it's like he wants them to see it for themselves, come to a conclusion as naturally as possible, because he knows that's the only way it'll sink in. not if he forces it.

i believe he's built a wall brick-by-brick to successfully be the frontman, that it wasn't an instinctive, easy transformation for him. that while he may have gotten colder, he would still have to utilize coping mechanisms to deal with what he does, what he decides to participate in, and even more than drinking to take off the edge of any invading doubt, he shuts himself off.

it's the vibe i get in moments like the mingle game, when he kills another player to take over the room and save jung-bae and himself (well, to feed his ruse). that blank, empty look he gets as he stares at nothing in particular after ending the man's life. that he had to jump back into the mental haven of frontman - slam down those bricks before the thoughts of what he's done gets to the man he has hidden away in there - shuts down to cope with the necessity of the situation. you could say he was already in the mindset of frontman because he's actively devising these situations to happen as they do, to manipulate gi-hun into trusting him, but there's some limit i believe he hits when it comes to the bigger moral issue of having murdered someone by his own hands, someone who's (essentially) innocent, was on a fair & equal playing field, and had as much a right to shove them out of the room as they did with him. he could reason killing that man was a part of the game, a part of one's own desperate fight for survival - so it's still ‘fair,’ but he still took direct care of it by his own hand. it isn’t necessarily an integrated part of the game to take someone out yourself (at least until its end). a guard didn't shoot the man for failing. it was him who decided that was the best case scenario.

anyway, gentleness. in my mind his strict adherence to fairness and equality when he's running the games means he has a strict line when it comes to taking advantage of others within his personal interactions. to changing or ignoring the rules because one feels like it. to choosing to be a bully rather than meeting someone where they’re at. its because of this i honestly feel like he would get no pleasure out of someone being in a subservient or lesser-than role, no matter what the context. that he'd find it uncomfortable and demeaning, no matter who the person. everyone's got to be on an even as possible playing ground, and only then will he start playing his subtle games (which are very well still questionable/fucked up/irredeemable, of course, but a story for another day).

i also believe shooting jung-bae, though it was an obvious show of what happens when you break the rules of the game and was something that he felt obligated to enforce as frontman (as was stringing up the doctor and guards in the previous season), it's also something he would have struggled with— in private. he knows it’s a byproduct of for so long following rules with drastic levels of intensity. i believe while he may have convinced himself of the importance behind what he was doing and why he was doing it, he still would've had to shut down in some capacity, because he at the same time understood why they (gi-hun & friends) chose to do what they did. even more because he’d been a direct participant this time. yet he had a mission, and so he placed the bricks, shut off the understanding that would’ve caused hesitation in regard to jung-bae. because understanding, while it is fair and fitting when you're among equals, doesn't change much when you must also be the frontman.

do i make sense? i try but—

[acr3ss-the-cosmos]

so question... chenhua in a crop top and shorts y/n?

[sangrefae]

i Will say it's kind of wild that people are so willing to accept marcille + laios's flaws and understand that they're complicated and nuanced characters while kabru and ESPECIALLY toshiro are torn down and hated for.... being complicated and nuanced. wonder why that is 🤔🤔🤔

[skysquid22]

Mine is soooooo contradictory, it’s fascinating. He prioritizes long term gains to such an effect he got ousted from his R&D job because of it but blows money to an outrageous degree in the short time of Yakuza 3 and his justification for it is that he’ll make up the money later. (Won’t exactly matter if you bankrupt NOW, now will it huh?) His primary goal is to find someone who values people over cash and once he finds that in Daigo he criticizes him for the naïve perspective saying that he should focus on the interests of the Clan as a whole and not on third, unrelated, parties (Kiryu). In his rooftop speech he makes a point that he wouldn’t have spent all of Yakuza 3 trying to keep a hold over the Tojo Clan if Daigo hadn’t ‘failed’ him. Meaning that up to the events of the game Mine had been living proof of his answer by following Daigo through and through WHILE (if we count RGGO) continuously advocating for a ‘Clan first people later’ approach. He’s actually his own worst enemy. Just a constant self sabotage of what he wants versus what he believes is best.

[angeart]

u know there could be doubt but honestly if the love is requited, either friendship or romance, i don’t think i’d be too bothered. i would hope they would trust me with their heart without the use of charm magic, but if they need that element of control i’d allow it. i have a friend with really bad control issues bc of her childhood, and she has specific boundaries that i follow that make her feel safe, and loved. if magic is a part of them, why should i make them feel ashamed of using it, just because it goes against my sensibilities? u know? i love everyone a little bit, i don’t mind sharing more of my heart. it would be different if it would be malicious or cruel, a love curated for possession or vanity, but if it’s simply for companionship i wouldn’t mind. i’d let them write the runes on my arms if it laid their heart to rest easy.

oh i love this take. (and you word it so beautifully <3)

there'd maybe be a period of some internal turmoil, contemplating personal agency and if his wishes are true. if we're talking scarian - would grian want to be here if scar didn't charm him? (without knowing if he's charmed at all) would he want to be by scar's side, of his own volition, or is it a trick? can he trust his own feelings?

but once he's secure in feeling like he's exactly where he wants to be, and that this is what he decides he wants, instead of fighting against it and constantly spiraling... then yes. yes.

i think that's a good dynamic and understanding and way to view it!

[acr3ss-the-cosmos]

h.oyo keeps nerfing j.iaoqui into the ground and I'm incredibly disappointed

[just-a-little-unionoid]

why do I kinda want to eat earthworms

like

why is my brain obsessed with that since a few days now ;-;