its really starting to bother me that theres so little to be done for karlach in act 3. like when you first meet dammon he seems so hopeful about finding a solution. he runs through a bunch of ideas and says he cant do anything with the tools he has but he'll keep looking. and then when you meet him in act 2 hes says he cant think of anything but he'll keep trying. and then in act 3?? all he says is that he cant find a solution. theres no way to ask him what research hes been doing. no way to try and do any research yourself.
karlach's companion quest basically ends in act 2. you get that second upgrade and it doesn't make a difference to the way her endings turn out. yeah you can touch her, but that's it. theres still only two 'good' endings for her character.
and it feels like theres so much we should be trying to do? the steel watchers are made of infernal iron. every single watcher has a piece of infernal iron you can collect. some of them even have enriched infernal iron. and apart from the armor dammon can make... there's nothing else to be done with those pieces? even the enriched infernal iron doesnt seem to serve a bigger purpose.
i feel like i should be able to talk to the gondian gnomes for help. they built the steel watchers, which are made of infernal iron and can blast hellfire at you. we can literally go to hell and theres no way to look around or ask about a solution. theres a magic tower with a locked vault and no way to look for magic to nullify/contain the heat.
also we cant talk to karlach about going to stay in the house of hope? i know one of the endings is that she can go to avernus with wyll but shouldn't we be able to suggest she can stay with hope? who's literally trying to make a place of hope in the middle of the hells? theres even portals in one of the rooms to a bunch of places. she could come and go as she pleases. we already have the means to visit if we want.
like i get it the whole point is that shes doomed from the start tragedy etc etc but it still sucks that we can't at least try to do more when it feels like theres so many ways we should be able to
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Eddie hates his hair. It never does what his mom tries to get it to do, when she’s out of the stupor of drugs long enough to notice the state it’s in. Either way, it’s always breakin the teeth of the cheap combs his dad buys him when Eddie’d starts to complain of it getting all gross.
There are only so many times his hair can get wadded into a pile on the top of his head or have a brush torn through it again and again before he starts to shy away, to dread anyone touching his hair at all.
His dad threatens a razor. Eddie might hate his hair, but he hates the idea of his dad getting close to him with his shaving razor even more.
Things have been…ok, for a while. Eddie can feel it though. The inevitable is coming soon, and the longer the good sticks around, the harder it becomes to believe in it. What way the bad will come, Eddie can’t tell, can never really tell, but he tries his best to ready himself for it. This school in Indianapolis has been one of the better ones he’s been switching around to since they came to Indy a couple years ago from Kentucky.
Kentucky feels like a dream.
Kentucky was the best part of his life he can remember. In Kentucky, he’d had a group of friends, all kinda like him, all scrappy trailer park kids, and he’d drifted between all of their trailers. Back then, they’d come to his trailer too, before his mom had sunk down all the way, before his dad had turned out to be an angry drunk. They’d all sleep sprawled out on the floor of each other’s bedrooms, making room for the siblings when they were there. Eddie was only hungry about half the time, and he had never really been scared of much back then.
He knows better now.
They’re in Indianapolis, in a tiny apartment that Eddie tries not to think about how his dad got. There’s no way they can afford it with his real job, even though it’s a shithole. But Eddie’s twelve now. He’s not stupid. So he keeps his mouth shut around his dad and takes care of his mom when he’s not at school.
His hair sits under a hat more often than not. He tries to run his fingers through it, the comb, anything. One night he sneaks some margarine from the fridge and tries to get the knots to slip and slide out from each other. It only makes him look dirtier. A couple weeks pass and it’s not getting any better. A rainy day comes. Eddie has a purple bruise on his gaunt cheek that his mom smears the thinnest layer of foundation over, just enough to hide it and not enough for his dad to notice the makeup on his son’s face.
Annie is sitting in the library during lunch, in front of the window they always eat at. It’s a muggy day for April, but she still wears long sleeves.
Annie’s eleven, a year younger than Eddie but just as smart, probably smarter. All the kids make fun of her hair, which rests in fraying braids across her shoulders. She’d told him once, one of the first times they’d both taken refuge in the library, that her mom didn’t have the time to do her and all her sibling’s hair. As the oldest, Annie helped all the others, but it was hard for her to do her own. It just fell by the wayside. Not all the time, but enough. Eddie and her were the same, she’d said once, no matter that everyone thought they couldn’t be because she was Black and he was trailer trash.
Her dad hit her too. She always told him it was better her than her little siblings.
“Hey Annie.”
“Hey Eddie.”
Annie smiles as he sits down, goes back to her book. Eddie sits across from her on the sill, grabbing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her out of his lunch sack. Wordlessly, he sets it to her right. Nudges her foot with his. She doesn’t pick it up for a minute, and Eddie smirks to himself as he sees her mouthing the words as she finishes her page.
They’re both left behind, but in these moments, the space between them and what they kn ow they lack is smaller.
“Hey Annie?”
Eddie can’t look her in the eye, instead picking apart his sandwich. Annie hums, taking a bite of her PB&J.
“Could you maybe…could you maybe help me? With, with my hair.”
Still not looking up from his sandwich, Eddie pulls off his hat.
“Jesus H. Christ.”
Eddie can’t help butler out a bark of laughter.
“...Yeah, I know.”
Eddie glances up at her, and she’s just looking at him. Calculating, like she gets with books that her teachers say are too old for her. Thinking of the best way to tackle it.
“Meet me in the theater dressing rooms tomorrow after dismissal.”
Tomorrow can’t come quick enough.
Eddie goes home and makes dinner for him and his mom, writes his book report, and sneaks beside his mom in her bed to read The Two Towers after she’d been asleep for a couple hours already. He’s just finished The Fellowship of the Ring and he can’t put it down. When he gets tired he sets his book down on the nightstand his dad never uses and presses his face into his mom’s back, feeling the rise and fall of each of heI r breaths as he slowly slips into sleep and dreams of his hair long and glossy, falling around his shoulders just like his mom’s.
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'Nemona isn't an interesting rival/character, her only personality is battling' is a take I can understand pre area zero, but I don't get how anyone can reach the credits and still think that, tbh. My opinion of her SKYROCKETED during the final arc, I think she's tied for my favourite character now.
Spoilers for the endgame, but I'm gonna rant about why Nemona is amazing and far more than people give her credit for:
Nemona has a happy life. Her parents love her, she's from a successful and wealthy family, she's top of her classes and student council president and is pretty well liked - all things that very much work as narrative foils to Penny and Arven.
As such though, it means she's not got deep rooted trauma or fear or conflict to work through as much as the others - but not every character needs this kinda thing. Nemona still develops and has a fleshed out personality - it's just not thrown in your face quite as much as it is with Arven.
She's very obviously some form of neurodivergent to start with - battling is clearly her hyperfixation, and she desperately wants to share that with her friends. The thought of a good fight sends her blood boiling in a good way, and one isn't enough! She needs another battle - no - twenty!
(side note: ppl acting like she's weird/yandere/monika ddlc for always wanting to battle the mc is wild. During the team star battle she's just put out, and saying she's the only one they need to battle is bc she wanted a third battle right as they entered the city and mc needed a break, but now they're up and battling again. She's also not fixated on battling them specifically - just people in general. She's hyped for the idea of mc becoming a worthy rival, that's all!)
She's a very understanding and patient rival, which is kind of ironic with how quickly she rushes into things and doesn't always think things through. She wants to make sure she's getting into a fair fight, especially if she knows her opponent is less experienced. Once she realises she got overexcited and terastillised her pokemon before the protag had an orb of their own, she immediately rushes to the school to pull some strings so they'll be on even footing again next time.
She's absolutely AWESTRUCK by the idea of fighting giant monsters. She's living the dream in area zero. The thought of other people fighting giant monsters makes them the coolest people in the world to her and she sees it as an honour.
A lot of her tactlessness comes in at this point - hearing her friends talk about painful memories and sheer terror involving big scary pokemon just has her excitedly hoping she can meet and battle whatever pokemon it was. She seems to struggle a lot to piece together tone and body language to figure out what's appropriate to say, but it's very obviously not meant maliciously and may even be her roundabout way of trying to help... It's clearly not what the others want nor need to hear, but I definitely think there's more to it than just 'OOOOH COOL SCARY THING':
Nemona is FIERCELY protective. She knows she's strong and she isn't afraid of anything that's happening here. She knows if anything were to happen, she's got the confidence to take on anything and keep her friends safe.
Arven's having a crisis from a lot of extremely painful memories he has of area zero. Penny is feeling pretty jumpy at everything and desperately trying to figure out what the hell happened down here. The protag is worried for their friends AND they're torn up about not knowing what's wrong with Koraidon/Miraidon. Nemona is being strong for all of them. She can show them she's not scared and that she's ready for everything. Hell, she promised to protect them all so. Many times. If she treats this like a fun group outing, maybe it'll become one.
Any time bickering starts in area zero, she tries her best to get them all to calm down and get along again - misunderstandings happen! She's overly optimistic for the dragon 'family reunion' and doesn't even register that it's not a positive one because she wants to see the best in everyone. Sure, that's a trait that could get her into trouble, but she has her friends to drag her head out of the clouds. (Note that she still stood protectively over Koraidon/Miraidon the entire time the other one was approaching, though. Regardless of her words she was still picking up on the danger there.)
She sees how down everyone is once they get out of the crater and her immediate reaction is to coax them all into going home the long way and making it into an adventure. Mc and Penny are generally feeling down and Arven and Koraidon/Miraidon have been through. So much. She wants to get the group laughing and smiling together again, to remind them that they have reasons to smile again, and that they are loved.
Nemona may not have a big deep tragic backstory, but she's the heart of the group. She's their light.
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Closed RP - @sweettifalockhart
Continued from here
He dislikes the way she felt the need to apologise just then, enough for his brow to crease couple with a hard nasal huff in response while he finished up binding her injuries; not for the fact that Cloud felt her words insufficient, but rather that he felt it unnecessary.
The blond continues his work in silence, tightening the gauze to keep the swelling to a minimum and he works meticulously as though he'd done it a thousand times before, and perhaps with a little more force than was truly necessary. He's angry it would seem, at himself for letting his friends get hurt, for not being enough to prevent the threat before it dropped on them, and for making Tifa say sorry for something that she could not have prevented.
An eventual sigh, exasperated when the final tie had been dealt with, and he placed the flat of his palm over that bound leg where her wound now lay healing beneath, hot to the touch, he would need to keep an eye on the healing.
"Ain't about being more careful, Tifa. You know it's not that simple, just..." he feels himself hesitating then, mouth opening and closing again while he scrabbled to find the right words. Cloud was never good at this talking thing, always awkward, always saying the wrong things at the wrong times to the wrong people.
But Tifa... she wasn't the wrong kind of people, was she? The only constant he really had left, if he owed her nothing else at all, then a certainly level of transparency was certainly it.
"... don't hide these things, yeah? Shit like this gets us all into trouble."
His concern didn't come out the way he'd hoped it would, but it was a start, right?"
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