#Direct variations

[ramlightly]

How a relationship got infinitely more complicated in one night

[gollygeedash]

So Alan Wake 2 was a lot of fun. (Inspired by the AW2 achievement art because it goes so hard)

[padofwan]

The Hidden Path in OWK having a set of blueprints of Fortress Inquisitorius that they got from someone who downloaded them when it was under construction...sure would be interesting if there were, say, someone who was briefly an Inquisitor who was there when it was under construction, had severe doubts about the role she was being forced into, and who has been previously established to be capable of memorizing complex building layouts.

[chamaesotis]

Thank you :)

[your-unfriendlyghost]

Andy from breakfast club liked the crazy girl alternative more! We all shout in unison!!

And I don’t blame him ily crazy girls y’all rock y’all make the world a better place fr

if I were a poet I’d write “ode to crazy girls” and so would Andy Clark 😌

[sieglinde-freud]

What do you think Awakening Trio’s spouses call them once they’re back in Ylisse?

hi anon!! thank you so much for the ask 🩷 thats a good question… honestly i think it depends both on which member of the awakening trio it is and also who their spouse is? under cut because i ended up writing a LOT sorry 😭

normally when i think about post-fates awakening trio, im thinking about my preferred pairings for all of them (lucisev, lasnyx, azuodin) and so for all of those i generally tend towards their original names? i think that inigo, sentimental as he is, would prefer his original name regardless of spouse, honestly. whether or not that’s nyx doesn’t exactly change that for me, when i really think about it. maybe if he stayed in nohr, like with xander (when it comes to xanlow im not sure if i prefer them staying or leaving? both sexy… both sad…) he might just suck it up but i think he prefers inigo.

for owain, though, i think it depends! for him with azura specifically, i think they would go with calling him owain, because 1) i think he realizes that azura needs space from everything in nohrshido and a ylissean name as opposed to a nohrian one is already a huge help with that and 2) its HIS name and he holds a lot of value in that! but on that second point, the weird thing about owain is that hes actually… super down with changing his name. its odd at first, but unlike someone like laslow who’s kind of in this feeling of limbo with the identity change, odin kinda jumps at it and uses the change in name to help more strictly define his persona as the “legendary hero of darkness” aching blood and twitching hands thing he’s got going on. not only that, but wheras owain’s identity is already cemented in being the second (or third if lucina has a sibling. yikes!) prince of ylisse who’s pushed to the side in favor of his “better” or “stronger” family members, odin gets to choose what and who he is. and so, i think owain is really just. it depends, because even with all that said, owain is still the name he got from his mom, and it’s the name that saw him through hell and back! i think if he were like with niles or beruka, he’d take owain. if he were with like, charlotte or elise, he’d take odin. i think his relationships and how they come about would definitely influence his pick.

for severa… well, like i said, my favorite pick for her is lucina (oohhh u wanna pine for your lost love while in another world soooo bad ooohhhhh) and so, when she comes back, because lucina has known severa forever, i think she just goes with that. HOWEVER. if she brings back a nohrshido spouse… i think she’d like to stick with selena. she’s in a very similar spot that owain was in in terms of using the name change as a new identity, but unlike owain, she just… goes for it. no reservations, no errors, she dumps severa behind and immediately falls into her role as selena and i think she’s much happier for it. i think for her, severa was too much trapped in the shadow of her past and her mother, so once she’s given the opportunity to become selena, that all just kinda… falls away. not that it doesn’t affect her anymore—it does! in her supports with like, subaki, for example, her mother and her insecurities are still there. and her supports with odin show she does still long for her home, but i also think that she’s a lot better at realizing that, despite everything, you can’t actually go back to the past and fix how fucked up the three of them are, and being stuck in that grief isn’t worth much to her! so she accepts selena and everything that comes with that identity. and once she’s in ylisse again, just because she’s home, it doesn’t mean she’s going back. now that she’s experienced what it’s like to be able to step out of everything that’s restricted her for so long, like her name that attaches her too much to her mom, i think she wouldn’t mind keeping selena. in private, and especially if her spouse is like, lucina or inigo or owain or noire or laurent, maybe she wouldn’t mind hearing severa every now and then. but publically (and probably legally. #paperwork) she’s selena for the rest of time. also i do hc that even if her spouse is ylissean, she just kinda falls back into mercenary work, so. professionally also, she’s def known as selena. she said FUCK that old name im not going back. cordelia calls her severa though.

[sunlight-shunlight]

me poorly restraining my Too Many Thoughts about chantry reformation: "haha yeah.... it would be neat. :)"

anyway i'm glad people liked my "varric tethras accidentally domino effects his pulp novels into contributing to a chantry schism" niche genre of posting... make sure to like and subscribe for more incredibly specific hot takes like "what's memento mori style painting like in thedas" and "was the veil a mass extinction event" and "varric could be sheherzade but to an angry titan" and "solas would stop wanting to end the world if given a watercolour set <3" etc.

[hp-lonesome-actual-art]

Sketchbook doodles with zero context, because my mind has been all over the place and he keeps inserting himself during my low moments to be a distraction. Or maybe I’m the clingy one in this scenario? I don’t know who’s to blame but clearly one of us is attention seeking and the other is desperate for human connection. A recipe for disaster probably /j

Bonus unhinged one which will not be disclosed further lmao

[oldfilmsflicker]

Variations On Discord and Divisions, 1984 (dir. Mona Hatoum)

[thoughtfulfangirling]

One of the things that has me so invested in The Locked Tomb series is that it's got such a vibrant and active fandom. I just want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that some thick, not technically YA novels with no current visual adaptation has the fandom it does. I'm proud of all of you. That's really fucking cool. And FUN!

[vero-niche]

I want to do the ship ask thingy but I don't think I know any of your current fandoms. so. I obviously decided to inflict psychic damage instead

bbc johnlock

makes sense and compels me. unfortunately

[hand-of-devotion]

I keep rotating certain aspects of the Evontra'vir-Ashton conversation and there's one specific thing I see other people taking away from it that is lacking a certain amount of nuance that stuck with me.

Specifically in regards to Ashton's views and how they parallel his fathers.

It should be obvious to everyone at this point that Ashton's stubborn hypocritical "refusal to the call" rooted in his anti divine/fate beliefs need some genuine reflection. They are important and they are aware of it but they don't want any of the hard to grapple with things associated. He needs to think about what it is he can actually do moving forward rather than getting caught up in what he feels he's owed.

However! One very important thing that I keep seeing others ignore or maybe just not even pick up on is THIS.

Efterin's entitlement came from his own zealots ego. The powers he believed he was promised an understanding and control over were NEVER his.

Ashton's entitlement towards the situation is rooted in what was done TO him. Those powers are in fact his. They have been there since he was a child due to a ritual he had no say in. That ritual physically altered his body and killed off nearly everyone in his entire village.

Which. Again. Just because they HAVE those powers doesn't mean they were ever guaranteed mastery over them. Certainly not without putting in effort. It has never been a "gift", even if part of them wishes it was. There is likely never going to be a reality in which the full-blown titan level abilities just ACTIVATE for him with full ease. Moving forward. He has a base level of info. Which he likely didn't find satisfying (but given the situation, there was never really a "satisfying" answer). Now they need to just. Look forward and inward. Make some changes if they want some changes.

But yeah. At the end of the day. Regardless of parallels and a real need for character reflection and growth. Saying that Ashton is "the same" as Efterin seems. Fairly reductive, all things considered.

[chamaesotis]

[ill show the yumetober stuff tmr]

Ai Kouseki 💎 - "Anya... No... Don't kid me..."

Only a few months after the disappearance of Izumi Sycamore, Anya takes Ai to check out an alley Izumi is known to frequent.

Upon further investigation, the dried blood was discovered to be Izumi's. No other traceable evidence was found and a year later, the alley opened up again. Anya stays by the alley and follows around people dressed in red. Nobody knows what it could mean. Team flare was already disbanded.

[dragons-hoard-of-fandoms]

I mean...

At least it looks nice I guess...?

[blood-choke]

Hi, I have a question about mc

So, I’m still in the beginning part of chapter two (mostly because I keep pausing to read other variations of my options I choose instead of just playing the game uninterrupted lol); and I was just wondering about some things.

I’ve gone through most asks on her about V and the way she treats mc when mc doesn’t go her way and I sort of understand her aggressiveness though it’s still triggering as I’ve not really seen the good parts, cuz my mc doesn’t trust her and finds her secretive nature suspicious; but I wonder like, was mc a bad person before entombment?

Like obvi everyone isn’t black and white and has grey areas in personality, but in the beginning Val just seems so triggered (?) that mc is alive again and here again with her. She only seems chill when you pick options that align with what she wants, but outside that, she seems truly disturbed like she needs to take a breather or sth.

This also came to mind cuz of how Hana talks about us TO us. Like saying how she expected us to not be like Val and her seeming disappointed that we were similar to Val, in that scene were we discover phones for the first time. Like, is that just cuz of the choice that prompted her jealousy, or is that because of how mc was a person before?

I hope I constructed those questions well lol, but it just makes me wonder if certain ways they react towards the mc are just cuz of how they are a people or cuz of how mc was as a person. Cuz it seems like she and Val had a pretty turbulent relationship; was that due to their personalities or the times they were in? I feel like that’ll be answered as the story goes on, but yeah; I do wonder if mc’s previous personality majorly influences how H and V act towards us.

this is not solely directed at you anon but i have gotten a lot of asks that essentially boil down to "who is the Correct one in this situation" and i've been kinda vague or ignoring the messages because it goes against the whole point of the story, but i've received enough questions like this i'm just going to do a blanket response to explain what my intention is with writing this and why there will be no straight answers to most of these questions.

i'll put it under a cut because it's going to be long (and i guess if you want to avoid potential spoilers). i'm not going to get into details, mainly just the overarching themes that i'm trying to communicate through the narrative and with characters like the mc and Valentina.

first, to start, let me talk about Valentina:

Valentina is written in a very intentional way. she is meant to be erratic and hypocritical and not very nice. she is hundreds of years old, and at this point nearly the entire last century of her life was spent in a controlling, abusive relationship. she is going to be both defensive and aggressive because she's still in a lot of pain and struggling to work through it. she has trust issues, she thinks everyone is using her for her money, she is very paranoid and sensitive. she, as the kids say, needs therapy. this does not absolve her of her poor treatment of Hana and the mc currently, but i hope this explains it better. she is meant to be a polarizing and challenging character.

i've said a few times now that you are never going to know who is telling the truth about Standard, you're never going to get a moment in game where it tells you exactly who is Right or Wrong. i've written Valentina the way i have because yes, you are supposed to doubt her, but also i'm a bit astounded by how many people seem to just have no sympathy for her at all (again not directed at you anon but just in general.) while you're never going to know if it was her idea or not, if she chose Standard or not, or even really know what happened between her and Julien, the indisputable facts are that she, as a lesbian, had to marry a man out of desperation and was forced to be his wife and daughter for nearly 90 years. she is not going to be well adjusted after this. she is not going to want to talk about this. she has valid reasons for being reluctant to share the horrible things that happened to her, as well as being a little suspicious.

she is a tragic character. she is the antithesis of the "perfect victim." we will get to have a bit of a "confrontation" with her at the start of the next chapter, and i'm hopeful that this will get across exactly why Valentina is the way she is in the text.

as for her relationship with mc, it has always been a bit intense, but they did love each other genuinely before. it's why mc did what they did to end up entombed in the first place. i would blame a lot of the problems of their relationship previously on the time period they were in. it wasn't easy for either of them. like i said before, being a vampire was not a get out of jail free card. it's been hinted at but mc and Valentina were living in poor conditions until the 1910s, where they finally started getting a foothold, by trapping and killing men and with mc themself dressing up as a man. but then what happened, happened, and mc was entombed in the 1920s.

was mc a bad person? i mean they very much did murder people along with Valentina. it's up to you how you feel about that. she murders people now in the demo. she's a vampire, she doesn't really have the same ethics as we do. was she bad to Valentina? sometimes. Valentina was bad to her, too. were they "toxic"? maybe. mc doesn't remember, and honestly Valentina doesn't remember that much either.

the mc waking up with no memory, while a convenient plot device in an IF game like this, was also done intentionally. you're never going to know if the mc was really a "bad person" though playing through you can probably feel that the mc does suspect that they were - is it true, or is this an insecurity around their butchness, a fear of her own masculinity? we don't know. part of the narrative is the mc reconciling this fact, as well as understanding that either way they can choose to be better - she's been given a second chance. she does not have to be a certain way because of who she is - the parallels being drawn between her and Standard are there to acknowledge this negative view of butches as just "men lite" as well as this bioessentialist idea that masculinity = bad. but just because the mc is butch does not mean she will end up like Standard or Atlas or Julien. and those three aren't bad just because they're men, they're bad because they choose to be bad and abuse their power over marginalized people. this is something that will be expanded upon as the story progresses and mc gets more comfortable in their identity and we see more of the council, particularly Sasha and Cassius.

and now with Hana, she's never met the mc before, so she kind of has this preconceived idea of her, and you do get that comment both because she's a bit jealous but also because she's afraid of the mc's jealousy. if you're at the start of ch2 you may have not had the conversation with Hana yet, but her irritation comes from the fear that you will get jealous of her and want to shove her out, despite her close relationship with Valentina, and this being her home, too. she assumes you're asking because you're trying to "sus her out" and decide whether you're going to align as friends or enemies. she says you're like Valentina in that regard because, like we touched on, Valentina is very paranoid and jealous.

to be clear i do understand the game is early on, we're only on ch3, so i don't expect readers to be able to magically intuit exactly what i'm writing (some of the stuff about mc is impossible to know at this stage). but i cannot stress enough that everyone in this story can be considered "bad" in some way, and you're not going to get a eureka moment where everything is clarified. it's meant to be messy and confusing. i'm never going to outright say "this character is the One True Villain, and this character is the Righteous one." hopefully this does clear a few things up, though, and better helps you (and everyone else that has been asking) understand what's going on, and what the deal is with both the mc and Valentina.

[stresskidz]

My reaction lmao