#Level characters: the void

[pineconnie]

“the jump for the beef is so easy how could you fail this!!” have you perchance heard of worldbuilding or fictional stories

[justagaycryptid]

I feel that regarding Morgott/Tarnished pairings there’s an untapped market regarding the transitional period that there would be between the start of the relationship and the point where it actually is healthy

Like it would take a lot of effort on the Tarnished’s part to actually get Morgott to simply just be amicable to them. Like it wouldn’t take too much divergence from canon to keep him alive, simply have him decide to concede to the Tarnished instead of choosing to keep going until he dies; he’d have to realize that he cannot win, but if he stays alive he can figure out some way to minimize the damage the Tarnished poses to the Golden Order/Leyndell, especially since they aren’t Elden Lord yet, so he’s got time to plan. It could be believable since while Morgott is prideful as hell, he’s also fully devoted to his role as Lord of Leyndell; yes it’s more likely he’d die protecting the Erdtree, as happens in canon, but posing a divergence from canon with his concession, depending mostly on the type of Tarnished he’s dealing with, wouldn’t be too out of character so long as you frame it as a long play on his part, which we know he’s capable of given his history as Veiled Monarch for the past few thousand years or so.

So given this kind of foundation, there’s no way in hell that there would be any sort of progress until after the Tarnished becomes Elden Lord. Morgott’s deal is very much ‘the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t’. He’s not stupid; he knows he suffers under the Golden Order, he knows other Omen suffer under the Golden Order, he knows the world had gone to shit. Yet still, this is all he has. He’s given himself to the Golden Order because it’s all he has. He holds a hope that yes, one day the Golden Order will fix everything, that it will hold true and restore sanity to The Lands Between. It is the only thing he has left to give his love to, and by every god above that’s what he’s going to do. And like I don’t 100% subscribe to the notion that the dude is just a self-loathing sad sack. Yes, he holds a disdain for his Omen heritage and views himself as lesser in that regard, but at the same time he deliberately escaped the Shunning Grounds during the Shattering and took the throne of Leyndell for himself. He explicitly refers to himself as ‘Last of All Kings’ during the cutscene for his boss battle. He’s an efficient warmonger and one of the orchestrators of one of the battle on Mount Gelmir, which is considered one of the most appalling battles in the entirety of the Shattering. Despite all his hang ups about being an Omen, he is prideful to a fault.

So then when it comes to the Tarnished, he doesn’t know what they are going to do. (Minor point of contention that I have is when people refer to Morgott as ‘racist’ because of his disdain for the Tarnished. First off, Tarnished aren’t a race, being Tarnished is an affiliation; warriors of Godfrey that were banished with him after they lost Grace in The Long March (pretty sure that’s what it was called) and their descendants. If you’re gonna call Morgott racist then criticize his beliefs about the Golden Order and how they treat lesser races, but not because he hates the player character. Stupid thing to bitch about but I digress) Morgott hates the Tarnished because he knows what they represent. He knows that means that they have been called to repair the Elden Ring and become the new reigning Elden Lord, which is an idea that terrifies Morgott. And honestly given some of the endings you can achieve, he’s right to be terrified. This is something that threatens the state of the Golden Order and the Lands Between as a whole, much less Morgott’s title as Lord of Leyndell. He stands to lose everything he’s desperately fought for, and watch the world fall apart before his very eyes. There would be no relationship between the Tarnished and Morgott unless they could prove to him that they aren’t going to essentially ruin everything. Given that they are able to achieve this, it would likely be slow going to improve their standing; hesitant allies evolving to a sort of comfortable ‘coworker’ (I suppose? There’s probably a better word for it but that’s all I’ve got at the moment) standing given that the Tarnished proves themselves competent in manners of state, or if they are willing to learn (preferably from Morgott since then he’d be more assured that they’re doing things the ‘right’ way). Of course Morgott would be very unlikely to initiate anything on his end. As it stands, once he’s sure the Tarnished won’t bring about the destruction of the Lands Between, he’d probably prefer to be left alone to keep serving as Lord of Leyndell. It’s not that he necessarily wants to be alone, it’s just more comfortable for him; it’s what he’s used to. But given that he’s almost certainly lonely, and if they are tolerable to be around, it would take less effort than one would think to get him to warm up to them.

If it did ever progress to something romantic however, the Tarnished would need to initiate. Firstly, it’s unlikely Morgott would recognize any romantic feelings he may harbor as being such; he’d likely take it as himself beginning to recognize the Tarnished as Elden Lord, which is a status akin to divinity, since for Morgott love and worship are intrinsically linked in his mind. Secondly, even if he did recognize himself as falling in love, he would not act on it unless he knew his affections were explicitly wanted. And even then it would take convincing. Just because he feels he deserves his position as Lord of Leyndell, doesn’t mean he feels like he would deserve to consort with the Elden Lord. He *is* still an Omen. He knows that is something that is undesirable, something that he himself considers undesirable. It would take a metric ton of coaxing and reassurances that yes, the Tarnished does in fact want him romantically.

And then it would very quickly get unhealthy.

As I said before, Morgott believes love and worship to be intrinsically linked to one another; his parents are gods and the only thing he has ever loved has been the religious system that oppressed him for thousands of years. He had likely never had any sort of healthy attachments modeled for him, and thus would not know how to express his newfound love for the Tarnished in a healthy manner. Like it wouldn’t get to ridiculous levels like ‘Alpha Male’ Morgott, but he would be incredibly jealous and possessive. This is his Love, his very God. He dedicates his very fucking soul to them and only them, and he’s constantly terrified of losing their favor just as he never held the favor of Grace. Because the Tarnished is a God he knows that other people worship and covet them as well. Depending on the Tarnished’s stance on the Golden Order it’s very likely he would at this point finally abandon it, especially if it’s been abolished by the Tarnished. How foolish of him to worship false idols that would never return his love! He’s finally found true divinity! Of course be still holds lingering shame about his blood considering that it takes more than a little while to undo thousands of years of hearing that you are a mistake and a blight on the world. But in this instance his shame would only push him to keep his hold tight on the Tarnished. He knows that he is Unworthy, and yet he still has the love of his God anyways, and there isn’t a single damn person that can take this away from him. It’s very likely he would also become paranoid to excessive levels that the Tarnished will find someone better. That there are worthier suitors than him, that they will decide that they no longer want him and have realized that they deserve better. Depending on if the Tarnished is able to catch this, it’s very likely that Morgott would spiral into something uncontrollable and that the relationship would become something toxic. Taking a more optimistic path, it would take a lot of honest discussion with Morgott before the relationship settles into something healthy, at least on Morgott’s side. He’d eventually calm the hell down and for the most part quell his more negative emotions.

[kacievvbbbb]

So the thing is with Shinsou and his place in the ErasMic family he is so middle child coded to me. Like he just has so much middle child energy it’s insane.

Like my two most favorite ErasMic fics; Wards of AU by FeckedSpectrum (one of the all time pieces of literature I have read truly) and A Heart Grows Fonder by Laroyena both have Shinsou playing the youger sibling to Mirio and Shigaraki respectively and that’s when it clicked for me. It just felt so natural so easy for him to slip into this middle child role.

And it’s because he has all the bitchy confrontational energy of a younger sibling but with enough of the care and consideration of an Older sibling and so putting him against this older figure he doesn’t have to be as soft with as he is with Eri and he can really develop other aspects of his personality is so natural. H is such a bitchy constantly rolling their eyes sarcastic little brother I love it so much.

And this isn’t me saying I have anything against the Eri Shinsou dynamic ofcourse not I love them as siblings but I don’t know the dynamic just feels powered up when Shinsou’s a middle child there’s a more grown child figure kind of buffering a lot of Shinsou’s more abrasive tendencies so we still get to see that familial bitchy banter. A Heart Grows Fond described it perfectly with his relationship with Shigaraki. Shinsou gets a support system but he also gets someone he can practice his responsibility on without the fear that he might fuck it all up irredeemably because Eri is 6 and can’t pick herself up the way a 21 year old Shigaraki can of Shinsou miscalculates (it was explained so much better) but yeah that’s like the crux of it.

An older siblings is a much less pressured relationship that Shinsou really needs and god I just fucking love it. Middle child Shinsou you will always be famous to me.

[cowbandits]

DickKory and DickBabs shippers are actually so frustrating to see fight. I always feel like they both end up focusing on putting the other female character down instead of celebrating the ship they're so obsessed with. I love both Babs and Kory and I genuinely want them to be friends and allowed to be standalone characters without Dick. So often, they just get reduced to what they do for Dick instead of being treated as fully fleshed out characters like Dick. I totally get shipping, lord knows a lot of my blog is ships, but I will never understand getting in fights with other shippers. Fandom is a place for expression and celebration, not putting others down.

[sparklecarehospital-archive]

Sometimes I wonder how I'm ever gonna be able to work on the other Spinch stories I have, I have so many ideas for things but only so much fixation power

[askthekirbysquad]

hey wait a sec

[flowering-darkness]

okay no I’m not done with this

The more I write Clio, the more she ends up coming across as what some would most likely call “cheesy”. She’s the sort of girl who would unironically say your classic quotable one-liners from different sources - in fact, I’ve already written her saying both “light the way” and “may your heart be your guiding key” in Origins, which are iconic quotes from FFXIV and KHUX respectively. But the trick is that she means it when she says these sort of things out loud - and they can still be meaningful even if they get quoted incessantly in fandom and maybe sound forced when added to in-setting content, right? So to some that may be annoying, but to those who can recognise her intent, it’s hopefully endearing.

The way I want to characterise Clio is a “trendy older sister” type of person, if that makes sense - someone who’s outgoing and friendly, passionate and energetic, and knows how to have fun while also still keeping an eye on everyone and making sure they’re okay. A sporty extrovert who nevertheless is perceptive enough to befriend and be close to people who aren’t anything like that (such as myself) - she likes to bring the energy but is good at turning it down, and sees the bright side of things without actively trying to dismiss a serious or solemn moment. I’m not saying she’s perfect - her optimism can steer into naivety, and her determination lapse into stubbornness. But I hope that the way I envision her comes through to others, too ^-^

[inkyantace7]

I played Dandy’s World tonight (I was gonna play Pressure but then it got recommended when I booted up Roblox and I decided hey why not give it a try). Great game

Anyway I love and cherish Twisted Glisten

[peanutbutterandsadness50]

MAJOR Spoilers for Stardust Rhapsody ep 10 below the cut:

I thought the beginning was sad enough, but the ending? I’m truly devastated. Rett and Pyke’s reactions to Dandy being taken, Kavir’s sacrifice… I’d had his death spoiled for me by the comments (by accident no less; youtube skipped to the next episode and I didn’t notice until it was too late), and thought I’d braced myself for it, but Leboosh begging him to stay had me in tears. And Rett leaving Leboosh to try and free Dandy so that he could bring Pyke back to the ship, even though it killed them both to do it? Chuckles standing behind the rest of the group crowding around Kavir, for once lost and afraid, as if unsure if he belonged in this moment, as a part of this family?

What an incredible episode. Now take it back Mace:)

[cruelnemothesis]

[kyliafanfiction]

I sometimes feel like characters who do truly monstrous things while also having been victims of some pretty insane shit themselves are sort of an exercise in empathy. Or at least, should be seen as such.

Like, in real life, if a person who has been horribly broken by their experiences and failed by society than proceeds to rape someone - it's hard to feel the justifiable sympathy/empathy for that person (without excusing their rape, never do that) because well, you can look at this actual human person they hurt, or worse, and it feels gross and disrespectful to the rape victim.

And this is understandable. (And applies to more than just rapists/rape victims of course, that's just the most visceral one and thus picked for that reason)

But a fictional rape victim is... fictional. You can't 'disrespect' their trauma, and while obviously rape/whatever else is real, and people may related to the rape victim and thus see your comments about the rapist also being a victim as somehow being about their experience...

Well, it's not.

Because the rapist here, didn't actually hurt a real person. Fictional characters are objects. They're objects that often grab us by the throat and refuse to leave our fucking heads, yes, but they're objects. They are tools used by writers to tell a story, and readers to tell a story.

And one of the things fictional characters are good for is allowing us to consider experiences we never had, and imagine ourselves in other circumstances and lives. (Also just fun and fascinating and interesting to watch their stories).

It's very easy to feel for the rape victim in fiction, and rightly so. That's Level 1 Empathy there. Granted, some people IRL fail that, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Advanced Empathy, hard Empathy is feeling for the rapist. Not for the rape, of course, even if they feel guilt about it, but if someone really was failed on multiple levels and was broken and damaged and went through the sort of psychological wringer that would leave most of us here on tumblr catatonic - they do deserve the same Empathy any human (any person) who went through all that.

Even after they also do the bad thing, critically they still deserve Empathy. And that is fucking hard. I very often have a hard time feeling bad for truly awful people who also deserve empathy and sympathy, real and even fictional (despite all this, yeah, I'm not perfect on this) for what they (separately) went through.

It also becomes even harder when what they went through is utterly bound up with what they did. How what they went through and experiences is in part responsible for what they did - because they still made a choice. The circumstances may have left them not in their right mind, may have left them feeling without choice, may have driven them to things they normally might not think of or do, but they still chose to do that bad thing. And that's not okay. They still hurt someone.

And yet - one cannot remove the action from the circumstances. So you can still feel empathy, and elucidate all the factors and circumstances as to what led up to their choices and why, and it doesn't change that they did the horrible thing. The rape, or the murders, or whatever.

But circling back - with a fictional character... they didn't hurt a real person. There's no one who is real that suffered. The things the character did IRL are bad because they hurt real people.

So you're not being disrespectful to the victim by feeling that empathy, or sympathy. By exploring the things that they were a victim for. Even by wanting to focus on those things - fictional characters should be compelling in all their aspects, if they're written well.

And yet, of course, if you do that empathy and do talk about what the bad person went through and all that context, people come at you. They call you evil, just as bad as the (again, fictional) character, or they say that you're treading dangerously close to the arguments people use to defend the real people who do these things in real life. Or you're disrespecting all the victims of these crimes IRL. Especially of course, if the person coming at you has a reason this comes close to home.

But again - fictional.

In an ideal world, we'd all feel sympathy and empathy when it's called for, regardless of what the person did. Even the worst most monstrous people deserve human treatment in prison. And if you don't have empathy, that's hard. Even if you do have empathy, that's hard.

So if you look at a fictional character (who doesn't hurt a real person by virtue of being fictional) that does horrible, vile things, but went through so much, and you still can't empathize or sympathize with them... I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person, not even close, this is still fiction, and there's people I should empathize with in fiction that I don't, but...

It's still a failure of your ability to be empathetic. And we're all humans. We're all failing at that, among other things, all the time. But... it's good to be aware of that. at least?

At the very least, bear that in mind when other people are talking about that context, and that victimization. And please, for the love of god, don't fucking pretend that the victimization didn't happen, that this person who did do terrible things (in fiction) suddenly didn't also (in fiction) experience awful shit, as if doing a bad thing erases all the bad things done to you.

Again - it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but like... the horrible state of prisons in our society is a real, actual problem. The way we as a society dehumanize people who do bad things is a real actual problem for a lot of reasons (not least because it creates an incentive for authority that wants to dehumanize a person or a group to expand the definition of 'did bad things' to make their dehumanization now acceptable, among other things).

So yeah. Fictional character who suffers but than also makes others suffer - that's a useful exercise in Empathy. And doing that doesn't make you or anyone else a bad person, or actually defending the sorts of crimes, IRL or Fictional, that this character did. Contextualizing is not whitewashing, empathy is not erasing, and humanizing is not disrespecting the victim(s).

So yeah, they fictional character did bad things. But there's more to them than that. And you can say but and talk about what comes after but without disrespecting the fictional victim. Because the fictional victim... is just as fictional. Just as not real.

Is it possible for this to end up being taken too far? Yes. But that's a reason to be mindful of yourself when it comes to real people, not to never do it. And when it comes to fictional people - again, fictional. Nobody was actually, really hurt.

(I really do want to make clear, before people read the tags, that this applies to all crimes these sorts of characters do, rape was just picked as the one to use as the example.)

[akkivee]

so like, i was thinking about how bargain bin posse parallels the member they’re copying??? rabuta with his name meaning big love (to give to ramuda) and ramuda’s pink coloured love verse ‘everyone’s love given generously,’ and kentaro copying gentaro because he wants to make gentaro’s stories a work of art, and that’s why gentaro threw away his identity; to write his brother’s stories

but since dice’s backstory is arguably more untold than gentaro’s lol, it’s hard to see the angle daisuke is paralleling but what stood out to me was when he introduced himself, his way of speech was very formal and the most formal of his posse. he also has this mannerism very similar to otome, so i wouldn’t be surprised if daisuke’s dice parallel was a hidden, more formal upbringing

[eosofspades]

my hottest writing take is that if your character writing is good enough i literally do not care about how detailed or significant the worldbuilding is. the reason tiktok trope-list books suck isn't inherently because they lack worldbuilding it's because the character writing is bad

[whoiskt]

there's nothing that can fill this void. i was born wrong, incomplete.

[girlbob-boypants]

*rereads the synopsis of Chains of Harrow and Rell's bio*

Oh yeah that's why I didn't like Margulis

[isanesshilarity]

I think what's also funny about my preferences is like a good 9/10 times I truly prefer Isagi as the top/seme. I think it's sort of a waste if he's a moeblob uke regardless of who he's shipped with (KIIS/RNIS/SEIS what???/etc)

Like I didn't struggle through BLLK Round 1 of Isagi searching for his ego and growing a backbone just to give up on all of that. I LOVE Isagi's latest ego where he's cocky and confident and devouring bitches on the field left and right. I think the parallels being set up between him and Sae as insane players with loving familial backgrounds is going to come down to a difference in influence (Re Ale vs. Ego/BLLK) and Isagi is going to "win" by being allowed to keep his ego vs. Sae who had to surrender his dream of being a striker. It matters so so much to me.

My one exception? HOIS. Frankly it's the same thing where it's a BIGGER waste if Hiori is an uke. Listen to me, LISTEN. Hiori is the last of an extinct breed in shonen manga. Moeblob teeth-licking sadists are being hunted to fucking extinction. I used to like KRHO but I frankly don't believe Karasu can handle him anymore sorry. I don't even really rally behind HOIS where Hiori breaks Isagi into his little striker toy (because see above) so even though I love love LOVE Hiori I don't know who to ship him with currently it's ruining my life. Sigh. Anyway forreal I have an Isagi is 1/seme/top/left agenda everyone live in my house please.