#I'M RAMBLING AGAIN

[o0kawaii0o]

Spring's Harvest!

[dicenete]

Finished Silvio's route, solid 8/10. I mean I still have questions and things I wanted to see explored. Like more about Silvio's past and why he behaved why he did. I mean I got a glimpse of it in the dramatic route a bit. Maybe I will do the romantic route too someday. Congrats Silvio, you got into the second playthrough team. But I'm satisfied with this. So here are some sketches of the ultimate tsundere. I really love that the guy that is all about the money and wealth has taken blue as his primary color. And it is that Lapis Lazuli kind blue = one of the most, if not, the most expensive pigment made. I'm really curious why his hair has a small tuft of dark blue color there. Has he dyed it? Is it natural?

Also more my ramblings... In the prologue, as they set the world, they talk about how this game takes place in late medieval time. (of course a fictional world, but not like fantasy, with magic and such (shame really, I would love there to be some magical elements there)). BUT the clothes... the fashion... They are very modern in many aspects. I know, i know, this is very nit picky of me. This is pretty much like Bridgeton. A period fiction. But really, they didn't need to go give us a reference to a certain time period xd They could have left it even more vague. But alas... This is not really a criticism, as I can totally see past this. I just find it funny.

BUT ONE THING THAT MADE ME PUT MY PHONE DOWN FOR A MINUTE WAS THIS:

My young horse girl self just was ready to smack Silvio off his horse. You don't use reins to encourage horse to go faster! Not even with the carriages either. But especially not when you actually ride a horse. Reins are for steering and slowing down. You use weight and your legs to apply pressure to horse's sides to encourage them to go faster. (ideally you could do this only by using weight, but that needs skill and a sensitive and well trained horse.) Routes and ratings so far (my opinion purely, there is nothing else to it really): 1. Clavis's route, dramatic ending + epilogue. I laughed so much and the theme was very interesting. Cyran was MVP. 9/10 2. Silvio's route, dramatic ending + epilogue. He was an asshole, I wasn't disappointed. Enjoyed the ride and the political shit with usage of money. Giving me Itachi vibes with the gesture of messing your hair. Could have used more Carlo. Also where is Emidio?? 8/10 3. Licht's route, dramatic ending. He edgy but sweet. I wanted to see more of twins being twins and I got some of that. I was happy :slight_smile: And he loves horses, more points from that. 7.5/10 (the reason why I didn't do epilogue for Licht was because I didn't use walkthrough and I didn't want to start paying for those points :0 4. Nokto's route, dramatic ending + epilogue . Playboy, got what I asked for. Entertaining. Could have needed more time with Licht. I want to see brothers being brothers. 7/10 I see my style evolve and I kinda like it. Indulging my teenage aesthetic. Sometimes face shapes get all weird and I'm not sure if it is because they are weird or that I'm becoming blind to them and am just trying to find something weird.

[crumb]

I wonder if the reason Randy is so teary-eyed and crying so much in The Passenger isn't just because the situation is so fucked and terrifying but also because up until that day, that morning, he'd been restraining and repressing himself. Not only his anger and any impulsive feelings and behaviours, but he'd also made himself so deeply numb to the point that he hadn't cried in years maybe. He never let himself feel anything too deeply out of shame and self-recrimination. He didn't think he was deserving of that kind of catharsis. Moving through the world like he was swaddled in a layer of cotton wool. Protecting others from himself as much as protecting him from them. When Lisa broke up with him, he asked no questions and didn't pursue closure like it was the natural outcome he expected all along. He endured Chris’ bullying like it was the place he was meant to be in the world. He followed his mother's guiding hand like he was still a child. When Benson walks in and starts mowing down their coworkers with a shotgun, in reaction to the bullying and many unsaid events he had witnessed previously, it’s like it snapped something out of place and broke the dam Randy had built. Life went from dull, safe, black and white to full-blown technicolour. Jarring and overwhelming and devastating. And he stands there frozen, having almost instantly accepted this too, his place on the other end of Benson's shotgun. But Benson turns away, and then they're cleaning, and then they're at the diner, and none of it makes sense. Even after Benson explains himself, Randy still looks so confused about everything. Like the path forked when he wasn't looking and now nothing looks familiar. It's all upside down and he's being made to confront these things he had buried deep within himself. He's clenching his fists and digging his nails in but the dam is still flowing and he can't stop crying. And throughout the day the dam cracks more and more until he's in the bathroom and making a decision. Making that call. The call doesn't end the day's events how he'd like, but seemingly in the way it was meant to happen. After everything, Benson had accepted his fate. He had done what he set out to do. Get Randy to realize he was worth fighting for. Worth saving. Worth living.

[picklepie888]

Since Dracula adaptations are so adament about making the main characters related to each other in some way, I'd kinda like to see an adaptation where Jack is Mina's brother rather than her father. Judging by their dynamic in the book, they're able to meet on common grounds with their intelligence, their shared love for Lucy, and whenever the two are together, they were always in sinc with one another. I would've liked to have seen more of that. Plus, I think making them siblings could add some interesting insight to how certain events play out. Maybe Mina had tried to play matchmaker by encouraging her brother to propose to her best friend as an attempt to make Lucy an official part of the family. Maybe the reason both Jack and Mina were able to obtain their occupations at such a young age was because their parents prioritized their education and paid for the highest level instructors available to teach both their children. It'd also give Jack greater motivation for hunting Dracula, because he had targeted both his love interest, and now his sister. I don't know, I just think its a better concept than making him her father at least.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Breaking down the Comics: Writing a legend, building a history.

Today we aren't reviewing an issue of Moon Knight. Today we are going to talk about something important.

So who wrote Moon Knight?

"Easy!", you might say. "Doug Moench!"

Sure. But you'd be surprised to find that it's not as much as you'd think.

Doug Moench wrote issues 1-15, 17-26, 28-33.

He returns in 1998 for a 4 issue mini seires Vol 3 "Resurrection Wars" which revives Marc Spector, who had been killed off in the previous volume.

He continues in 1999 with Vol 4, another 4 issue mini series "High Strangers/Strangeness" which won an award for favorite limited series.

He also wrote werewolf by Night, which gave us the first iteration of Moon Knight. An instantly popular character that made appearances in other comics like "The Hulk" before he was given his own comic.

He had time to work on the designs with Bill Sienkiewicz. They built up the weapons, the costume, the cab, and the copter.

He also built up the side characters of Gena, Gena's two boys, Crawley, Frenchie, Detective Flint, and Marlene.

He set the ground rules:

Moon Knight system is Jewish.

Marc, Jake, and Steven are a part of a system and are not one man pretending to be someone else

Jake is the one that is friendly and loves being with the people.

Steven is posh, collected, and takes care of things.

Marc is the one with experience, has the skills needed to get things done, and holds all the pain.

They are former Mercenaries who did terrible things and have deep guilt.

Khonshu resurrected them to act as Moon Knight

They strive to protect any who would come to them for help that perhaps might not get it elsewhere

I would even argue that he was building up to the fact that Moon Knight himself was his own form of alter but it has since been glossed over and replaced with the idea that Marc is most often the one under the mask.

Pretty simple rules to follow to make it a Moon Knight comics, but you'd be surprised what some writers have done with it.

These comics were written long before DID was acknowledged and the different forms of PTSD and Dissociation were defined.

And yet, here we stand with a traumazied man from Chicago slowly working through a freshly cognizant system and trying to figure out how three (four) people can work together towards not just a life, but life as a superhero who wants to help people.

Further more, an odd thing happened in this.

We had a comic that often focused more on mental health than on super powers, heroics, or villains.

More often than not, we watched Marc, Jake, and Steven struggle with themselves and one another. We watched stories unfold from the villain's point of view, often just being ordinary people pushed too far by a system that failed them.

More so, we watched Moon Knight sympathise with these villains.

How often he let them walk away or he let them kill their abusers, wondering if he was doing wrong himself.

How can he help when sometimes the help he offers is not what is needed?

We even watched him fail. We saw him lose his temper and cause damage. We saw him curl into a ball and break. We saw him get lost in his own nightmares and dissociative fuges.

Moench stepped forward and often handled current events with raw emotion. We saw his characters cry over the loss of public iconic figures. We watched people struggling as they returned from war. We saw child abuse and poverty. We watched economic struggles with classism and we watched people struggle to deal with grief.

We even watched them deal with antisemitism over and over again. How many times were the victims of his stories Jewish and trying to survive in America? What about the story that took place with the mass shooting in the Synagoug? We heard stories of Generational trauma as elders struggled with survival after the Holocaust.

Moon Knight was a unique comic unlike any other I've ever come across. For it's time and for it's topics at the time. What's more, this comic continued.

It was no 'special of the week' comic and spanned multiple years as they grew.

What do we know about Moench? Who did he write this comic for?

The Moon Knight in the Were Wolf by Night certainly didn't have all this depth. He was just a man dressed in silver, fighting a monster and ultimately choosing the side of the monster.

Moench himself was from Chicago. He knew what it was like to live in the city and see the fall of factories and hard times on the streets. We know he witnessed the times of Vietnam veterans being forgotten and abused. He witnessed a lot of changes happening in the world and the places he was writing about.

He wrote about what spoke to him and what he saw around him.

And in his stories, there often were no clear heroes, winners, or villains.

But there was one issue that he chose to add into this comic that was already filled with so many things that other comics avoided.

Moon Knight wasn't written as Jewish in that one shot cameo. He wasn't written with DID either, but I'll get to that.

There are interviews of Doug admitting that "I didn't say, 'I'm going to sit down and create a Jewish character.'"

In fact, he picked a name and later found out it was a Jewish name. This made him do research. Not just into Judaism, but into the areas that Marc Spector fought in and where his family came from.

Do you have any idea how many writers of that time and our current time simply slap the label of "Jewish" on a character and refuse to actually look into what makes them Jewish?

I can't say how much he researched and how much he got wrong or right, but I do know that when he did choose to dive into topics that touched on certain issues, he handled them with a grace that is often overlooked.

The writer that came after Moench? Alan Zelenetz, a former Jewish day school principal from Brooklyn.

Zelenetz had been acting as an editor for a bit before he took a look at Moench's early start.

And it was in Issue 37 and 38 where we get the real backstory of Marc Spector. A man running from his Rabbi father.

Marc now became the son of an Orthodox Rabbi who had been forced to flee Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion.

Here, we get the story of Marc running to the Marines. Running to the mercenaries, and running from home. Perhaps even, running from G-d.

Zelenetz wanted to lean into the Jewish past and Jewish story. He explored themes of using a holy book to create a villain while playing with Jewish myths. He also explored Antisemitism without toning it down or hiding it under comic bookish villainy. He portrayed Moon Knight facing white supremacist vandalizing a Jewish Cemetery. He showed Moon Knight saving the Torah from a Synagogue fire. He also showed a strained relationship and the question of Moon Knight finding his own relationship in what he does with his father's views.

Alan Zelenetz edited/wrote shorts for issues 18, 21–22, 27, 32, Then wrote the whole story for issues 36–38.

Zelenetz voiced that he was looking to add some Jewish representation into his workforce and perhaps into the comic industry at the time. Considering his background, perhaps he was the only one at the time that had the proper knowledge to play with things the way that he did in the story of Elias Spector's death and Marc Spector's pain.

He did not stick around with Moon Knight for long after. Though, he admits that he wanted to play with the fact that Khonshu was an Egyptian god and Marc was from such a Jewish background. I am sad we didn't get to see that story.

After that, Moon Knight's original 1980s run was finished. The question of what to do with Moon Knight, where to take him, and who would take up the mantle of writing him now lay in the hands of Marvel.

Many failed after this. They failed to keep the heart of what Moon Knight stood for and who Moon Knight was. His Jewishness was forgotten and his mental health became a joke.

Not to say all of them failed. There are a few shining stars that gleamed in the darkness and I like to think that it was these moments that kept Moon Knight going all these years.

Moench didn't set out to write a story about mental health, and yet his approach is the most real I've seen. Hardly a shining picture of perfect representation, there is still something there in watching the character almost seem to push back against the unintended desire to push him into a corner.

No matter how often Jake and Steven and Moon Knight were seen as Marc pretending to be someone else, there was always ALWAYS that correction. Always that push back.

Call it the writer's curse of characters misbehaving and taking on a life of their own, but perhaps there was something more there. Perhaps he felt the weight of time and cry of the suppressed and overlooked.

So many of his stories danced the line of "I can't say it because it will get edited out by the big wigs at Marvel, but if you would just look... Just look over here for just a moment..."

And years upon years later, a writer did see the whispers there and said "I see the story of pain. I see the cry of mental health." Lemire told the story that Moench couldn't and from that, we are still pushing forward with McKay.

And more, perhaps we will see the Jewish story that hides in all that also get a spotlight again.

In the era of big battles, cross-over events, explosions, and super villains cackling about domination... I still look back at Stained Glass Scarlet, The Druid, the Music Box, And Colloquy.

As I finish the original 1980s run, I brace myself to dive into what comes next.

I think I'm trying to find where and how the original run ventured so far into the dark and insulting territory it did and the journey back into a revival that now means so much to so many.

In a way, perhaps it mirrors a journey into our own mental health. How easy it is to become lost in what everyone around you tells you that you are and how you are supposed to be until your own doubt sets in to drown you. Perhaps it is the journey of Moon Knight's character emerging from this to find a path to healing that is what kept us here so long.

[monstersandmaw]

Shout out to my long-sleeved top earlier while I was at the gym for making me look absolutely hench for a minute in the mirrors. You really gave me a boost to finish arm day.

[scarlet-alleyway]

Small Update

Hi, guys... First things first, I am so sorry for suddenly disappearing on everyone after the last update for this story in late November. I've spent the last week trying to figure out the best way to word this, but it's still a bit difficult for me. It's a bit of a long post, so I'm adding a cut here to let you keep scrolling if you'd like, no worries! TLDR: Story update(s) expected within the next two weeks ^_^

December was great! A little rough, but I actually did a daily drawing challenge on my main account and had a lot of fun right up until New Years. Then January happened, and uh - Things didn't go great. I really don't want to get into detail, and I'd hate to make anyone feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable, but I unfortunately went through something that completely wrecked my ability to trust and feel safe around people larger and stronger than me.

By the time I was able to get out of that warped state of mind, months had passed? I genuinely feel like I just blinked, but here we are at the end of March now. Time flew by, just like that. Anyway... I didn't want my experience to seep into my writing. At all. And now I'm feeling a lot more confident that I can actually do that again.

So, hopefully within the next two weeks we'll be back on track ^_^

Thank you all for your patience. So much.

And if you've reached out to me in anyway during my disappearance, thank you so much.

I'm still gathering the courage to respond to people individually again, because it's been so long, but I have most likely seen your message and stared at it for a long while trying to figure out what to say in gratitude and failing miserably. Wishing everyone a wonderful day/week/month, as always.

[formulawolff]

i plan on working on the garage a little bit before posting a new chapter of alkaline <3

there are some requests that i really want to write! you guys have shared some really awesome fic inspo with me, and i want to make ideas come to life!!!

[theallianceofcelestials]

in your last post you mentioned an au youre working on. what is it about❓👀 got me interested ngl cuz the dimension w/ that old moon and sun is already kinda cool and i lwk want more of it. sso yk maybe share❓❓🙏👀

Oh golly, I didn't think someone would actually read my ramblings in the tags, haha

But yes, I'm helping a friend with an AU she's working on, and I'm helping her flesh some things out. This AU is a smaller part of the overall story.

My username is kind of a reference to it too, a little inside joke between her and I, lol. We've also created an AO3 account, which will be shared between us, but there's nothing on it yet. ╮(￣▽￣)╭

So, one of the biggest differences between the AU and the dimension shown in the episode "A Place Where It NEVER HAPPENED!!! in VRChat" is that Earth is there, as I've mentioned in the tags.

They've also all got codenames because the main AU is kinda centered around a collection of different dimensions, and I'll from now on, refer to the characters by these codenames.

Earth: Meadow

Sun: Daffodil

Moon: Waterfall

The other big difference is that The Creator is alive.

Funnily enough, Meadow was the first character to appear from this dimension, and her brothers came to be, when my friend and I started fleshing things out.

So, Waterfall never left any of his homicide code in Daffodil, much like the Moon from the episode. But unlike that Moon, he deals with the homicidal violent urges differently. He hunts animals, that his siblings cook so they all could eat it, or donate the meat/food, and he has punching bags in his room! And all around the house. His friendship with Monty hasn't really kicked off yet, since the events leading up to that never happened. And he has the Star still. Hid it better, than our Moon did, haha...

Since there was no killcode being left behind that could grow into an Eclipse, who in turn would make Bloodmoon, Daffodil has no July 16th related trauma. And technically, since there was no July 16th, Dazzle wouldn't be a thing either, now that I think about it. Or at least not how we know them. Huh. His personality is similar to early portrayals of Sun, friendly, energetic, gullible, with the tiniest bit of sass he has nowadays.

And Meadow is in the first Earth body, and thanks to her, Waterfall and Daffodil has healthier ways to solve issues that could come up. She's also adored by her big brothers, naturally, and they would do anything to make her happy. Waterfall offered to pay for her studies if she decides she'd like to be a licensed therapist, or anything else she'd wish to be.

And you can imagine the shovel talk to end all shovel talks, when the brothers find out Monty has taken a fancy to their dear baby sister, lol.

Waterfall's got all his bunkers, but they live on a nice secluded island instead of one of the bunkers. My friend is not yet sure if it's the same as the island house from canon or nah.

[wecandoit]

i honestly don’t hear enough people talk about how bad social anxiety gets post high school, particularly in work environments. Over the past two years I’ve become extremely hesitant to even speak in a lot of the spaces i'm in—classes, social events and especially workplaces. And as someone who has never felt socially anxious before I feel really alone in navigating this new obstacle.

like tell me why i have been at my workplace now for almost six months and can't muster up the courage to converse with my coworkers comfortably, while this guy who has been here for two weeks is already cracking jokes about Julie's terrible love life.

[sleepy-aletheas]

There is something really satisfying to me about the Story Quests in Genshin. I know that many people hate that the quests about the playable characters center around NPCs, but honestly? I fucking love that.

(this is more babbling than I thought it would be, but I was thinking about this before taking a nap, so now I'll put it here to stop walking in circles anymore)

They are people of this world. They live there with neighbors and fellow citizens; they work and have colleagues with whom they communicate with (or not); they have duties and hobbies and dreams, just like everyone else. The playable characters we meet and get to know are complex, but they feel more alive and well rounded, because the people around also have depth.

There are NPCs with conflict, complex histories shared among them. There is loyalty and love. There are dreams, and there is despair. The characters we are interested in are designed to be interesting, but they do live outside the Traveler's orbit too. They wake up and have a full day before them, they have plans and whims, deadlines and duties, they talk with people close to them, with people we don't even know exist.

And these story quests are a great way to show how these characters we latch onto, and want to know more about, how they interact with the world around them. How the world interacts back. What these characters think about others. How others think about them.

I loved Yoimiya's first quest a lot, because it was mainly about the NPCs. We saw what fireworks meant for them, how precious it was. We had two story lines paralleling each other at the same time, with the overall message being "this is what connects us and only us" and we get to know what Yoimiya gets out of bringing this to people. We didn't need to go in-depth through her childhood to know that this is fulfilling to her, that she loves bringing people a spark of happiness only they can truly understand, and we see people love and appreciate her back. We don't need NPCs shout how amazing she is, because she is their friend, their neighbor, a daughter, a role model. We get to see how they talk to her, what they say, what she says and how she says it.

Kokomi is still my favorite Inazuma character and her story quest made me love her more, because we see her care for Watatsumi, her relentless pursuit for the better future that hangs just out of reach now. We see how she's loved, revered, idolized and cared for. We see people needing her do her duty, but also caring for her wellbeing, because she's human like them. And we see she made a space just for herself when she's exhausted, when she needs to recharge and be Kokomi, not the Divine Priestess Sangonomiya Kokomi. We read her diary! We get to know she has a very limited social battery she needs to push daily to do her duties. She is anxious, tired, and so in love with her home and her people, she will go through this endless exhaustion with pride and care.

I even liked Ayato's quest, because it underlined his whole character nicely. He is important to the commissions, he has a good enough pull in matters. He is polite, and he worked his way up from not knowing how to lead to be at the place he is now. And meanwhile we are trying to solve the whole wedding fiasco, he is...quiet. He observes and comments, and observes some more. He pushed people to think for themselves in ways that benefited everyone, so he doesn't have to clean up more messes later. He is calm and pretty neutral overall, and the lack of interest from his side says way more than if he spilled his guts to us or we had an emotional conversation with him, when he is not the type of person to do that.

And that's another thing I like: the spaces between what is said. The insinuations, the lack of elaboration, the glossing over and switching of topics that were trying to get somewhere. Sometimes we get to know more about people by the things they don't say or that they avoid. And I like that it's portrayed in characters that aren't really open about themselves, be it through emotional distance, their work-life balance, or just them being really liking privacy. And it's not just the silent types that do that like Ayato or Alhaitham. Yae Miko doesn't really spill anything either, with her being so seemingly light hearted with a sharp edge, she directs the conversations masterfully away from places that are vulnerable.

I just love that we can see different facets of the characters through them talking, people talking, the silence and omission, the hints and jokes. The world is alive, the characters are alive, the NPCs are alive, and they all coexist. It's just the Traveler that gets roped into the shenanigans of the few powerful ones that have visions and those are the characters we follow.

There are so many characters I love, that make my day, that give me new train of thoughts to evaluate and settle my own mess of a life. Some are frustrating to the point of intrigue. Some I don't vibe with and I love them for that more, because that makes me wanna understand more.

I just really love the way the game handles the characters, even the ones I don't like. There is care put into them, and yes, there are obviously some that are more fleshed out by a lot more details and are brought back over and over in events, but all these playable characters have depth, even if it's sometimes overlooked or overshadowed by someone else. Sometimes the depth is hidden by frost to not get deep, sometimes the characters themselves put stones in the way so no one tries to dive deeper.

My love just simply overrides the weaker moments, and my mind fills in the blank spaces left behind, and I don't mind that at all.

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Hi, it's me, Rueleigh. I'm rambling again. Ignore me if you wish.

I think sometimes people forget that adoption is a thing, that both Steve and Nancy would love it. I also think people forget that Nancy's been dealing with Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Mike long before Steve has. That one scene where she slams the door on Dustin's face in season one happens because she was on the phone, and it wasn't her usual behavior with them. The kids were over at their house all the time, not to mention that she probably babysat Holly. Also, the fact that Lucas didn't live too far from them probably meant that whenever Sue and Charles had a date night, Nancy probably looked after Erica, too. Steve began caring for the kids because he knew how much she cared for those kids. Steve’s a babysitter, yes, but Nancy and Jonathan were the party's first babysitters.

I literally do not get where people think Nancy doesn't want kids from. She's never said she doesn't. Now, if she had said she didn't want kids, it would be another story. I would be defending her right not to have kids just as hard. We all know Nancy is tough as nails, and if she wanted to shut down Steve with the notion of the whole kids thing, she would have. She would have put him in his place right then and there. Nancy and Jonathan are the original babysitters. The more I think about it, the more I like Jonathan, I think maybe their struggles on both sides are maybe because all three of them aren't together.

Right now, they're young. Maybe they'll have six kids, and maybe it's Steve with his dream of having a big family, but the major point of his dream that never changes is that Nancy's a part of it. Right now, they're young, and they're afraid of dying, but six kids isn't an impossibility either. They've dealt with harder shit than raising six kids, so if Nancy decides that she wants six kids, she's more than capable of doing it. It's doesn't make her weaker for choosing not to either. And just because she gets a little afraid of it doesn't mean she doesn't want it, too. I guarantee you that as much as Steve wants kids, he's probably scared of it, too. I'm starting to like the idea of Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve raising kids together, too. Maybe years later, Nancy is an investigative reporter, and she discovers someone trying to restart the lab with kids they made in a lab. I just know that if they ever start, it's because Nancy's the one bringing them home and giving them a loving place to call home.

[manateia-seriallove]

Nevermind me, just going crazy tonight.

I really like them both though.

[am-i-dead]

Hi! Coming out of the woodwork to say I'm so glad to find even if it's just a small amount of people still in this Fandom! I love greedfall especially Kurt and Constantin! And have you played the DLC? What did you think of it?

Hope you have a great day!

HELLO! I’m loving all these greedfall interactions, ppl in the active fandom gotta stick together lmao

I HAVE played the DLC. I enjoyed it! They had some new outfits and weapons that were in the De Vespe family style, which didn't have fantastic stats or anything, but we're still super neat to look at (and play dress-up with lol). The storyline itself was good too! Now obviously it's just a DLC so it’s not as fully fleshed out as the actual game's plot, but it was a nice bit of change from the main quest. I liked interacting with more ppl from the continent and navigating all that political treachery. PLUS the DLC unlocked some EXTREMELY cute dialogue between De Sarde and the love interest (mine was Kurt obviously). They had a cute little conversation abt getting married after everything was over and my heart MELTED. I wish the DLC unlocked another romance cutscene, because like come on! De Sarde and Kurt just talked abt getting married! LET THEM SMOOCH. But unfortunately not, have to go the fanfic route for that.

(I included Kurt's DLC marriage conversation below the cut if you're interested<3)

De Sardet: You seem worried. What’s wrong? Don’t tell me Aurelia’s scheming has you frightened? Kurt: I’m worried about you, of course, but I’m sure you'll defeat her, that’s not what’s worrying me. De Sardet: Please, tell me what’s wrong? You do know you can tell me? Kurt: Yes, of course. It’s this whole wedding contract business. I’m sure the prince already has some dashing fops lined up to marry you. De Sardet: That’s very possible, you know him as well as I do. But we can always pull the rug out from under him… Kurt: What do you mean? De Sardet: We can wed, once this is over. What can he say? He’s halfway around the world! Kurt: Do - do you really mean what you just said? You do realize that I’m just an insignificant mercenary to him? He would see it as a mismatch. You would surely lose your position as legate. De Sardet: He’ll certainly be furious and reprimand me…but I doubt he’d do much else. He already did his utmost to use me in his machinations on this island. He won’t just give that up. So…what do you think? Kurt: I think I'll be the happiest man in the world when I lead my bride to the altar. I love you so much. De Sardet: I love you too, Kurt.

[filet-o-feelings]

I usually hate getting my oil changed because there's too many noises at the dealership, but it’s quiet today and I got an iced coffee for the first time in weeks AND I got to pet a dog! It's shaping up to be a pretty good day.

[wellbehavedyeti]

There's some sort of metaphorical cork in here somewhere, clogging up all my creativity. And not just the horny junk which I know my account has kind of become but also like everything else. I wish I could find the clog, knock it out and just spill beautiful words all over the place.

This is a very gross thinky thought that I'm putting to...internet paper? Mostly because its all I can manage to create at the moment.