#Anyway yeah into the world this goes

[arthur-lesters-spinal-cord]

Ok look I know we all love monsterfucker Noel as a way of working through trauma but also a consensual bdsm relationship would probably also do him the world of good. I doubt it would matter what side he was on, subbing would let him work through the torture on his own terms and doming would let him have the control he never got.

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[randomwriteronline]

btw still not over @crystaltoa 's whole post on narrative and destiny and bionicle characters being aware they're characters but not in a common fourth wall breaking way. Random thinks too hard two electric boogaloo

Like. The Matoran Universe is a fictional universe within the already fictional universe of Bionicle. Like the more realized version of a book in a book. It's a completely artificial manufactured cosmos where essentially nothing is real - most elements are replaced by protodermis, animals and plants are produced, the inhabitants are engineered and built via assembly lines, their sapience was installed post-completion - and the awareness of this is None. Like Crystal mentions in the original post, the characters know they're following Destiny like it's the rough draft of a play and they're actors of the Commedia dell'Arte, taking on certain archetypical roles and adhering more or less closely to their traits and clichés, but that's where the self-awareness ends because to them this is a performance of life, not a pantomime. The nature of the Matoran Universe naturally prevents any knowledge of or contact with the wider "real" universe, so they remain ignorant to how fictitious their existence is and continue to perceive their own reality as the only possible one (ITS THE FUCKING CAVE AGAIN).

Keep this in mind for later.

Now back to Destiny. MU beings seem to have a tendency to conflate or heavily associate it with Mata Nui ("the will of Mata Nui" being used as a synonym for it, the Order of Mata Nui working to ensure it), to the point where it would be fair to assume that the two are one and the same, or that at least Mata Nui has some agency on Destiny; however, while it's true that Mata Nui is heavily tied to Destiny to the point of seeming its incarnation, he just as submitted to it as the rest of the MU beings are, if not possibly more.

In the narrative of Destiny, Mata Nui is at once playing both the Objective and the Ultimate Hero - not in the sense that he's the platonic ideal of the role, but that at the end of the day he is the proper main character, if not the ONLY proper character for it. The concept of Destiny with a capital D is after all a creation of the Great Beings, whose principal concern and endgame is eventually* healing Spherus Magna: since Mata Nui is made for this specific purpose, Destiny exists to ensure he actually follows through with it; since Mata Nui needs to be functional in order to succeed, the narrative of Destiny converges around him and works to compel the MU beings towards keeping him alive. Thus, as mentioned, he is both hero and objective, protagonist and macguffin.

*dont fuckin talk to me abt the great beings and how they provoked the entire plot of bionicle through their tendency towards inaction and apathy. perhaps ill elaborate one day but the jist of it is that i need to bite them in the ass

This duality intrinsic to his character is made explicit by the constant if sometimes faint separation between his soul/spirit/essence ("him" proper) and his body (a "thing" he only inhabits) - causing him to oscillate between being a person and being an object, with the latter often winning over the former especially while he was commanding the Great Spirit Robot. His exile from this incarnation of fiction into the "real" world doesn't unshackle him from the narrative, which is too far above him from him to be escaped just like that, but it does allow him to take a detour outside of it and come into his own self in a way he's been unable to experience until now - because he hasn't exactly been a character at all, let alone an active player. He is first and foremost a tool, a means to an end; he's less reciting/living a part and more doing the job he's been built to do, and this singleminded and utilitarian approach to his identity seems to have been at least part of the problem in how effectively he could perform his task as it prevented him from noticing the problems which then led into the main conflict of Bionicle. By being forcefully exiled from fiction and having to become "real" he finally surpasses this obstacle and gains the mindset and skillset of a proper protagonist, finally realizing his heroic potential to a point where he can put it in practice.

Teridax, on the other hand.

Crystal has said it before because it is true and correct and right, so it's worth saying again: Teridax loves being the Villain. He's enamored with the role to such a disgusting degree that he essentially hoarded it for himself the moment he found out it was an option and nearly everybody else had to be declassed to Lackey or Antagonist in comparison. It's more than a role or a calling - it's a lifestyle. He makes it his whole personality and reason of being, completely abandoning his original purpose as a Makuta (in direct contrast with Mata Nui, who instead focused exclusively on his purpose at the cost of neglecting his role). He revels in the clichés, the monologues, the manipulation, the cruelty, the ominous laughs, the stark shadows, the drama and theatricality of it all. He likes it so much that it literally makes him stupid.

Teridax runs The Plan in tandem with Destiny in order to usurp it, replacing it with his own design in the same way he aims to replace Mata Nui with himself in the role of Great Spirit. In his mind, these are equivalent pairs: Mata Nui coincides with Destiny just like Teridax coincides with The Plan, so by replacing one you replace both, and he gains power not just over the universe but over the story itself.

Of course, as explained above, this is completely wrong: while he can and does run The Plan as parallel to Destiny in a way that makes them effectively overlap, and he does succeed in gaining Mata Nui's power, he remains a character subjugated by a narrative which is completely out of reach for him and continues to influence how the consequences of his actions will ultimately play out. This is immediately obvious to the reader the second he decides to get rid of all his problems by shooting them into space, completely unaware of the fact that the narrative has already made it so that Mata Nui will have the means to reach his objective, get another physical form, and eventually find a replacement for the body he needed for his quest, rendering the Great Spirit Robot mostly obsolete (which will be part of the reason why, again in tandem with Teridax's need for gratuitous cruelty, it will eventually be bested by the technically much worse Prototype Robot), all while Teridax is too busy learning the commands and terrifying his blood cells to realize his genius idea is going to get back at him and curbstomp him into the surface of a moon in roughly a couple of weeks.

But there's more!

Because the Great Spirit Robot is in and of itself a sort of physical manifestation of fiction as the container of the fictional Matoran Universe, it's effectively the most gargantuan vessel of Destiny available in the Bionicle Universe. As such, it is intrisically tied to the rule that dominates both of the stories centered around it: in Destiny's case, that Mata Nui will always succeed; in Bionicle (a story for kids)'s case, that the Villain will always fall to the Hero.

Teridax proudly, confidently and without doubt turns himself into the embodiment of his inevitable defeat.

[kirkwallguy]

sorry thinking about this because of a reddit post (never a good sign lol) but the fact that da2 and dav actually have really similar approaches to romance but one works well and the other falls completely flat needs to be studied. i think the issue is that even though you could argue they have similar levels of content (no repeatable kisses, only a handful of cutscenes), da2 hides bits and pieces of extra development in its quests that make the chosen romance feel like it has a presence in hawke's life, while dav romances feel almost like they disappear whenever a scene isn't specifically about the companion / romance. tiny moments like aveline judging hawke on their choice of partner or the romanced companion comforting hawke after leandra's death all add up to make it feel more significant and constant throughout the game. if you're lucky with dav's romances you'll get a banter and an extra cutscene but the time between locking in and the cutscenes in act three gets EXTREMELY dry.

[booksandmore]

saw someone say half of eremin content is them fighting or talking about mikasa… first of all rewatch season 1-3, second of all… okay? big surprise, armin and eren love mikasa, we KNOW this bro - mikasa loves them just as much. people act like eren can’t love them both - that one of them is automatically more important to eren than the other, that he has to choose - but that just isn’t true at all. just because he loves them in different ways, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love them both equally. their love for each other is so vital and intrinsic not only to the narrative itself, but also the foundations of their charchter that it genuinely blows my mind that people argue over this. remember that when grisha speaks to kruger before becoming a titan, kruger doesn’t say, “to save armin”, or “to save mikasa”, - he says “to save armin and mikasa.” AND. BOTH OF THEM. INSEPARABLY.

[ygodmyy20]

Floating kisses

close up under cut

[astranauticus]

soliloquy

(edit once again i drew something with my ipad screen brightness too high and now that i've posted it nothing is visible. sad!)

[randomminty]

I heard its her birthday and had a sudden urge to draw kirararararararrara

[pseudophan]

my aunt's being a cunt so now my mum's sobbing in the living room everything is so awesome all of the time

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 226

team charge got me feeling emotions

[littencloud9]

ik isagi is probably going to be captain of japan’s wc team but. captain karasu…

[stolen-blossoms]

so i just read teeth, and i’m now reading teeth pt.2,.. 🗣️ ROSEKILLER IN THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER 🗣️

so is jegulus and marylily and dorlene and wolfstar honestly every single relationship in this fic is so perfect

but these quotes specifically made me sob uncontrollably

[rigginsstreet]

actually i think billys the type that in 20 years he would be found living on a houseboat in the florida keys, a string of men coming in and out but never settling down because billys never found The One (he compares every man to his high school rival and they never quite stack up)

[septemberlikestea]

beginning to like brumm has been the mark of a downward spiral in my ability to think because without fail, every single time, forever, until the end of time my speculation and loreposting about the bug game devolves into mentioning him or even talking about him at length. everything becomes a thoughtpiece about nymm because hes like the crab of lore. the ultimate form.

[seaofreverie]

I was tagged by @carcarrot to share 9 perfect road trip/travel albums! Yippee thank you ❤️

Tagging @become-a-robot @marrasmoon @find-your-way-from-here @crystalblast @where-did-the-groove-go and anyone else who wants to do this!

[puppet-limbo]

Hi it's like 11:30pm and I accidentally made myself emotional over the thought of PNF-404 mourning and grieving and missing a time when humans still lived on it, even if not all of those times were amazing. And when Olimar and everyone else starts crashing on it throughout the series (it tries to guide them down but when people resist and fight it then all goes terribly wrong despite it trying to lead them down relatively safely) it's delighted to see people again and while it won't hand them a super easy time, it knows they're capable of overcoming anything and is genuinely proud to see how they've all come along after all this time by the time of Pikmin 4