#and instead of people actually paying attention to the fucking plot of the game they just assume Mia is an abusive piece of shit

[crimescrimson]

The Real Mia Winters Struggling with her Grief and Trauma linked to Ethan's Death in Resident Evil: Village

[ladyloveandjustice]

Winter 2024 Anime Overview: Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon)

Premise: Laios is the leader of an adventuring party, and his sister, Falin, got eaten by a dragon while sacrificing herself to save the team. Fortunately, in the dungeon they were exploring, people can be resurrected with magic. Unfortunately, if the dragon fully digests Falin, they probably can’t resurrect her. They have no time to resupply and must traverse many levels of the dungeon filled with monsters to find the dragon. Laios declares that since they can’t get food, they’ll eat the monsters in the dungeon instead-- and as a huge monster fanatic. he's unsettlingly excited about this. He’s accompanied by elf mage Marcille and hafling rogue Chilchuck in his quest, who are much more reluctant about monster-eating. They run into a dwarf, Senshi, who is an expert at cooking monsters, and the delicious race against time to save Falin begins!

...Oh what the hell, I'll say it. FINALLY, some good fucking food.

Memes aside, I love this story so much that writing a review of Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi is daunting, because I really want to get across how great it is. But are there enough words in the English language to convey this? We can only try.

Dungeon Meshi combines cooking and adventure animanga expertly, humorously treating eating monsters with the complexity of actual recipes (and indeed, the recipes for the monsters are based off real life recipes). You can experience the warmth and contentment of sharing a meal and enjoy the way the story goes in depth about the biology of the monsters and ecology of classic RPG style dungeon. But at the same time these characters are on a classic fantasy quest and there’s lot’s of excitement as they work together overcome monsters, obstacles and their own weaknesses to save Falin.

The first thing that stands out about Dungeon Meshi is that it’s immediately entertaining and funny. A lot of humor is mined out of Marcille’s complete disgust at eating monsters (and Chilchuck’s more measured reluctance) contrasted with Laios and Senshi’s bizarre enthusiasm for it. The face game of the series is on point, especially Marcille’s.

The characters play off each other very well, have a hilarious dynamic and tons of quirks. They're immediately lovable. They're eccentric weirdos who push each other's buttons, misfits who just happen to fit together, and that's always the best.

I've seen some first time anime viewers complained about that how the early episodes are supposed to be race to save Falin, but there isn't much urgency as the characters have adventures and meals on the way. I can see that as a criticism (though it didn’t stick out to me much in the manga) but this is because we’re mostly seeing them in between the times they’re traveling, when they need downtime and mealtime. The fact that people should never neglect eating and rest if they want to succeed is a pretty important message of the show. You’ve got to let the series cook (forgive the pun). As it goes on, the urgency and tension increases ramps way up. the plot truly takes form and we see a lot of the world building from early parts pay off.

Phenomenal, intricate worldbuilding is the next big thing that stands out about Dunmeshi. Any viewers paying attention will notice it pretty quickly. Ryoko Kui doesn’t dump her complex world or her character’s detailed backstories on the viewer all at once, instead she lets it unfold bit by bit, so the viewer/reader can watch the world expand as the journey goes on, as if we are truly living this world and exploring it along with the characters.

 Everything is carefully thought out, from the structure of the societies, the cultural nuances and physiology of the different magical races, the conflicts between said races and the ways they integrate, the ecosystem and the different monsters and how they function…I could go on forever. And best of all, Dunmeshi's worldbuilding is never to the detriment of it’s incredibly rich story and characters, all of which are also developed wonderfully.

After all, Dugeon Meshi isn’t simply a story about making food and eating monsters—it’s about the ways we consume and ARE consumed, it’s about the endless cycle of life and death and the pain of struggling against that cycle. It’s about the endless hunger that drives us all and the ways we try to fill ourselves up. It’s about the ways we can find both solace and terror in the monstrous, about our struggle to accept not just monsters, but anyone who's different from us. It’s not just about natural ecosystems, but social and societal ecosystems and the ways they both hurt and help us. It’s about all the things that make good meal, one that can draw people together and help us find essential humanity that connects us.

These strong themes are all expressed through the world and the journeys of the characters. And god, do I love these characters.

Even from the start, the characters overturn RPG/fantasy archetypes. (We have an elf who’s not that into nature and dwarf who LOVES nature and doesn’t like blacksmithing)… but the most special thing about these characters is how they deepen, becoming more and more complex and fascinating as the series unfolds. None of them are quite who you think they are while also being exactly how they appear.

Marcille is one of my favorite characters in anything ever. She’s just an absolute disaster, while also being terrifyingly powerful. She’s a magic honors student who buried herself in theory but doesn’t have a lot of experience with the real world and gets upset it doesn’t work like school (I feel that). Her pride and generally high strung nature can lead to blunders that make her very funny to watch. She’s a total nerd in a way that’s so relatable, she has intelligence in spades, but not a lot of wisdom.

 But on the other hand, she’s an aching wounded soul who’s struggling under the surface, dealing with grief and loss constantly. She's obsessed with control in a world that uncontrollable. She’s incredibly driven and unnervingly dedicated to her goals. She’s also scarily devoted to the people she loves and will cross any moral line, break any taboo, and cover herself in blood and sin to save them. She refuses to let silly things like “laws” and “rules” stifle her research or get in her way .And while she's a neat freak who's grossed out by monsters, she's the first person to dive into the blood and guts and horror when shit gets real.

The contrast between her being a sweet, silly, dorky lovable nerd who flails around and being a powerful badass who has complex motivations, an intricate arc, and sometimes questionable morals is so great. Get you a girl who can do both. She's basically everything I love in a character.

Marcille’s love for Falin and infinite devotion is also key to the story, and it’s so refreshing to see a well-written relationship between women be so central to a fantasy anime like this. And yes, by love for Falin, I mean in a gay way. It’s not technically canon (Dunmeshi is not into confirming romantic relationships for any of it’s characters really) but it’s hard to interpret their relationship as anything else, and honestly it’s one of the best wlw ships I’ve seen in a while. It’s got everything, the softness, the sweet and sensual intimacy, the angst, the tragedy, the raw unbearable yearning, tearing the world apart and defying even the laws of nature for her, crawling through hell and soaking your hands in blood and not letting anything get in your way...yeah, it’s good.

While Marcille is my #1, all the characters in this story are fantastic and I love them all. They all have incredible depth and similarly complex backstories and arcs, and are all fun to watch. For instance, Laios may look like generic human fighter but he’s just the weirdest dude, a wonderfully unhinged man who absolutely has a monstersona. But then we also discover he's someone who struggles socially in a way that many neurodivergent people can relate to, who had a troubled childhood, who grapples with survivor’s guilt, and who, like Marcille, would do anything for his sister and the people he cares about. Chilchuck and Senshi and Falin and all the others the same, really interesting characters who deepen and grow. Everyone's relationships also develop wonderfully.

And on top of all that, it's a show with really well-realized and well-written female characters…who even have diverse body types! We have stocky dwarf ladies with muscles! Huge orc and oni women! They’re allowed to be messy and complicated, badass and vulnerable, and that’s definitely a part of my affection for the series. (and famously, most of the fanservice of the series is focused on Senshi’s endless pant shots (loincloth, if we’re being specific)) and while there are moments with the female characters that make me fan myself, it’s not the obnoxious anime unsexy bullshit way that treats women like objects.

And specifically for the anime, Trigger is doing great work with it. There’s so much cool and vivid animation. There are some small moments from the manga that I really miss and wish they had kept, but it’s been a largely faithful adaptation that understands what makes the story great, and I can’t ask for much more. The English simuldub is also genuinely good with all of the VA’s turning in great performances (and Prozd plays Senshi!)

Dungeon Meshi is honestly one to the best stories in recent years, and it’s easy to let it take over your brain. So come along with me and enjoy the funny jokes, the splendid storytelling, the endearing and endlessly fascinating characters and the delectable world. You don’t want to miss out on this delicious meal.

[fruitmins]

Attention | jimin

➭ summary: in which you’ve been stalking your ex ever since you two broke up. And he’s aware of this, but you know he won’t stop you cause he’s a little attention whore. Until he starts seeing some else so you have to remind him who he belongs too..

➭genre: smut with a little plot if you squint, ex’s au, drabble

➭warnings: unprotected s*x (don’t do that), kinda rough s*x, a wall, cuss words, relationship is hella toxic, stalking (don’t do that), murderous tendencies, he plays into your delusions, more s*x implied, Jimin is still the dominate somehow??

note: i haven’t posted a oneshot in a while and wanted to work on my smut so let me know if it’s readable or not but I actually kinda like this one ⚠︎ this is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. jimin is used solely as a face and a name for the story. this is not a representation of real-life scenarios.

Your blood is boiling.

Your sat posted up across from the small modern cafe he works, in a black cap and all black outfit. He can’t see you right now but you can see him very clearly.

You can see the way he entertained the female customer by biting his lip and looking her up and down. You can see the way the girl hides her face where he speaks, undoubtedly flirting with her and smirking at her pathetic reaction.

This isn’t what gets your blood boiling.

You wouldn’t even think past it because you know Jimin has always had a flirty personality. You’ve watched him flirt with most female customers before, even woman over the age of forty five. It was just who he was.

What’s annoying you is how this is the second day in a row where the same girl has come in, just to flirt with him. And eventually, the girl just took out her phone for him to put his number in. And he did.

Something in you still had faith in him. A part of you wanted to believe that he’d just ghost the girl and get her off his back. He still belonged to you. You weren’t ready to let him go yet. Therefore he wasn’t on the market.

And he knew this. But still, as a warning you lift up your cap and emerge from the bushes. You walk across the road and walk past the window to the cafe, visible through the big see through windows.

And you know he saw you. You know this cause you’ve watched him glance at the window every five minutes looking for you. Waiting for you. He knows you’ve been stalking him ever since the two of you broke up four months ago. You’ve made yourself known every now and then. Outside his house, outside his job, when he is out with friends. He knows you’re there. He’s caught on to your little game.

So you figured he was just fucking with you like he used to. Trying to make you jealous on purpose. After that he would simply leave the girl alone and in response unblock you instead of texting her.

That was until two days later you watched him get into his car and drive to the cafe. Expect he didn’t work that day, and you saw the same girl walk in a couple minutes after.

They were on a date.

He was on a fucking date.

You tired not to panic at first. You tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. He had to be fucking with you. Playing with your emotions to draw you out somehow. That’s what he always did. He treated you like a game.

But then you watch him, his guard slowly melting. His body relaxing as he finally pays attention to what she was talking about. Finally realizing that the girl might have a personality. You watch him stare at the girl as she talked, now so absorbed in the conversation that he wasn’t even glancing at the window anymore.

He wasn’t waiting for you.

He’s so predictable it makes you sick. He sees a pretty slut is giving him all of her attention right in front of him and crack’s immediately. He capitalizes on the effect he has on people and uses to it his own pleasure. Once anyone has every interest in him, he has to suck the life out of them, and then leave them to dry when he gets bored. Like he did with you.

You almost feel bad for the girl. But then you see her do something stupid like touch his thigh when she laughs and you think about burning her alive again.

You need to remind him that you haven't let go of him yet. That you still have your full attention on him. You need to remind him just how good you are to him.

So you watch him. You watch him smile and get lost in the girls eyes. You watch as he forgets about the world around him because of a pretty girl. You know this is happening cause you watched him do it on your couple first dates. So you watch for the entire hour and a half with a sick stomach.

Until they finally leave the cafe, and they finally break apart. The girl walks out of the store, and you think about slitting her throat as she struts down the sidewalk. Obviously feeling good about herself. That she had managed to strike a gold mine like Jimin.

You roll your eyes and wait for Jimin to exit the cafe minutes later after saying hi to his coworkers. You watch as he gets in his car and then you walk to his house as he speeds away in the same direction.

You take your time, thinking about all the fun you’re going to have when you get to his house. You ditch the cap on the way, your hair now flowing freely in the wind. You take off the large black hoodie as the sun shines down. You’re not going to camouflage yourself for this. You need him to see you. To see what he was missing. To remember all the good you to had.

You make it to his house and feel a little relief when he’s car is there. He could have easily went out to get some groceries or a snack after. But he was there. You entire his house easily, always knowing where his spare key was. No matter how many times he changed the hiding place.

You walk into the familiar house, taking a minute to glance around and smell the familiar air. Your heart races and thumps as you think about all the times you spent together.

You practically frolic through his house before finally going upstairs to his bedroom. You can hear the shower running as you walk up the stairs and your heart pumps even more with excitement and anticipation.

You enter his bedroom, glancing around the warm space. So caught up in looking at his baby pictures and sports posters that you don’t realize that the shower stopped running until you hear his voice.

“What are you doing here?” He says as you slowly turn around to face him, a picture of him with a pirate suit on in your hand.

He’s stood there, a couple steps away and in nothing but a wet white shirt that stuck to his body and didn’t hide the visible six pack and black sweats. His hair dripping wet and down his face as the smell of soap fills the room.

“I needed to see you again.” You say without thinking, sounding utterly pathetic but you know it amuses Jimin. You know this will only boost his ego.

“And you thought breaking in was the smart way to go?” He asks raising an eyebrow, his voice is soft yet stern and you can’t help but let out a smile when you hear it.

“I’m sorry I don’t do dates like all the other girls.” You respond back, rolling your eyes as you thought about watching the date he went on earlier.

He lets out a small chuckle, masking his amusement with a look of disbelief as he shakes the towel to dry off his hair. “You need to leave.” he says in a soft low voice.

“Oh I will. But first let me make something clear.” You stay sternly, taking a step towards him, causing his eyes to widen slightly with suspicion. He looks at you for a moment as you closes the distance between you, the smell the familiar scent of his soap and shampoo filling your nostrils.

“Just because you broke up with me, doesn’t mean you get to move on.” You say, your face suddenly darkening before leaning against his ear to lightly whisper. “You’re still mine.”

As you lean in to whisper your words in his ear his body stiffens, as he feels your breath on his ear. You can almost feel the tension building inside him.

“That’s not how this works.” he says, his voice still low but you can tell there’s a little nervousness in it, like he was now unsure of something.

You can practically see the thoughts and memories rushing through his head as he stared down at you. You can see his pathetic little heart beating faster as he drowns in your strong words. “That’s exactly how this works.” You say with a slight chuckle, knowing exactly what to make him crack.

“And I’m going to make sure you remember that every time you even think of going on a date.” You whisper with a smug smile and you can see his eye twitch.

His expression changes ever so slightly, thinking deeply about your words till his muscles tighten and he suddenly moves.

He puts his hand out as if he’s about to push you away, but instead he pulls you close.. “Let me make something clear,” he says with a growl, his eyes locking onto yours. His one hand lightly grips the nape of your neck while his other hand lands on your waist as he lifts you against the wall.

“I will be going out on dates, and I will be getting over you. Because you’re crazy.” he tells you, and if he was a cartoon character you are sure he would have steam coming out of his ears.

You know you’ve damaged him, you’ve pushed him to the limit and forced him to remember and care about you again.

“And that’s exactly your type.” You respond quickly with a smug smirk. You can’t tell if he’s still seriously angry but it’s obvious that he’s turned on by all of this. That he is in love with how crazy you are for him.

“And as much as you don’t want it to be true. You love how crazy I am.” You’re an automatic ego booster that you know he can’t let go easily.

“Fuck you.” He spits in return before slamming his lips meet yours roughly, demandingly as he tries to silence your words and his thoughts that he didn’t want to come to term with. That everything you said was right. And that he is just as crazy as you are.

You smirk in victory but kiss him back immediately, the kiss rough and hungry as it deepens. You can feel him giving in more and more, losing himself in your touch just like he always does.

As the kiss deepens, his hand moves from your waist down to the hem of your shirt, the feeling of his fingers grazing the skin of your stomach that sends you into a spiral.

As he touches your skin, he can feel you trembling and shivering underneath his hands, it feels like he’s holding on to a fragile being but he loves the way you shake in his hands. He loves how unpredictable you are and how you treat him like he’s some type of God.

His mouth sucks on your neck as he tugs your shirt up, slowly revealing more and more of your soft skin that is hot under his fingertips. His fingers dance along your skin, tickling and teasing as he kisses his way up to your lips again.

You lean your head back against the wall, breathing heavily as you wrap my legs around his hips to hold yourself up against the wall.

He continues to kiss you passionately as he pulls away again to look at you, this time leaving a trail of saliva across your face. His eyes are full of lust and hungry. His other hand travels southwards once again, touching your thigh gently.

He then begins kissing along your jawline before finally trailing kisses down your collarbone. "God...you're driving me insane." He whispers huskily against your chest.

“Good.” You whisper back, your hands in his hair as he pushes you more up the wall. He growls at your words, his movements become more desperate, his hands underneath your clothes now as he lifts you higher.

He kisses you deeply, as if silencing you again as his tongue pushing past your lips, gripping onto you tighter. You groan into his mouth, his tongue fighting with yours as you do him the honors of lifting up his shirt.

He moans loudly, loving how much control you have over him."Fuck..." he says breathlessly, breaking off their kiss briefly to help pull off his shirt, exposing his toned body. You can’t help but brush your hands over his abs off letting out a breath before he takes off your own shirt.

You move your hand from his abs down to his v line. You can’t help but quickly move your legs higher so you have complete access to slide down his sweats and he is quick to help you undress him, pulling down his boxers along with them.

His cock quickly reveals itself, slapping against his stomach as it escapes his tight boxers. It looks bigger than usual because of how hard he was, even throbbing with some precum at his tip.

“You’re crazy.” He whispers again, almost disappointed in himself for wanting you so bad as he pressing himself closer to you, bending his head down and kisses your neck.

“I missed you so much.” You respond back, delighted that he was back in your clutches. His hands find their way into the waistband of your pants.

His hands slip under your pants, your body jolting when you feel his fingertips rub against your wetness. “Jimin..” you whisper breathlessly and he can’t help but smirk at your desperation.

“I want to hear so much more..” he says in a low husky voice, placing light soft kisses on your neck as his middle finger presses against your slit.

Your back arches letting out a soft moan as you hold onto his hair tightly. Your body shakes an anticipation until he effortlessly removes my bottoms all together. He stares hungrily at your exposed lower half, admiring every inch of it.

He pushes you against the wall, slowly lining himself up before letting out a groan of relief as his hard cock slides into you. You're so wet and warm around him, it feels amazing. His hands move to your hips, holding them still as he starts thrusting slowly. He feels so perfect inside of you, fitting so perfectly and like he was always meant for you.

"Fuck." Jimin says quietly, kissing your neck. He hips buckle as he slowly starts moving faster, don’t being able to resist wanting more as his grip tightening around your hips.

He pulls out a little and then thrusts back in, feeling you tighten around him. His movements become faster, more erratic as he can't control his need for you. “So perfect..” he groans, his hips slapping roughly against yours earning a loud moan from your every time.

Your mind is hazy from the intense pleasure, pulling on his hair tightly as your body trembles. You loose all of your senses and thoughts, soaking in the feeling of him inside of you.

He moans when he feels you tighten around him, loving the feeling as you reach your climax and spill out all of the butterflies in your stomach.

He slows his pace, but makes sure to keep moving inside of you, watching your face contorting from the high of your orgasm with pride.

“I’m gonna drive you as crazy as you drive me, darling.”

[guardian-angle22]

Tag Game Tuesday: 911 Lone Star Fandom Edition

Thank you for the tags! @thisbuildinghasfeelings @rmd-writes & @goldenskykaysani

When did you first start watching Lone Star? Who or what introduced you to the show?

I first started watching LS around the 2nd or 3rd episode of season 1 after seeing some adorable gifs of Owen & TK floating around on my tumblr feed.

I wish I could find out who patient zero was that first brought them to my attention from my follow list, but I think it must've been someone from the Skam fandom? maybe?

Which season is your favorite?

Season 3, baby!! and ngl, I highly doubt anything will top it at this point just based off where the plots have gone since.

Who is your favorite character? (Bonus: If you answered TK or Carlos, who is your favorite besides them?)

I mean - y'all knew what the answer would be to this one, right? Obviously Paul is my favorite. I do also really love TK. I know I have a reputation for loving Paul because I get very animated about him LOL... but I would like to put TK in my pocket and keep him safe forever, thank you.

Top five episodes. Go!

3.13

2.09

3.08

2.08

3.04

If you could pick any character to be given a "begins" episode, who would it be and what would that episode look like?

Paul. One hundred percent, I need it from Paul. I know everyone and their brother is going to or has answered Carlos for this and that tracks for a tarlos based fandom... but my unpopular opinion is that we've gotten quite a bit of character backstory for him this past season compared to some others like Nancy, Paul, and Marj. I feel like Paul has been part of the core group since the beginning but hasn't seen the amount of meaty plots as some of the others have. He's due!

What is a scenario or storyline that you would like to see in season 5?

Okay, I have two ideas for this: - an episode in which some of the characters who rarely interact are somehow trapped together due to some kind of emergency/disaster/storm and must navigate their way out together while the rest of the team helps from the outside. There are a few groupings we could use for it, but I personally would have the potential pairings be one of the following (or all three at once??): Paul & Tommy... TK & Grace... Judd & Carlos. I feel like these 3 pairings are people we don't get to see interact one-on-one often (or at all) and it would be super fun! - a true HEAT WAVE. they very briefly had that heat thing happen in 4x01 but I want a whole episode about a temperature heat wave and how first responders have to deal with them. this is TEXAS, c'mon. Plus the theme of heat throughout the episode could pop up in various character's stories. Tarlos = sexy heat. One of the firefighters = heat in the form of pressure in their job like a promotion of some kind. etc.

What do you think is going on in this still?

I have absolutely no fucking clue 😂 So I will instead direct you to this wonderful little spec fic by @littlemissmarianna As much as I hate everything to do with the Gabriel plot and tbh am not excited to see its continuation... if they manage to pull something off like that fic, I might actually enjoy some of it!

We all know about the elusive 5x05 spicy scene that has been teased, so what is your prediction for how it could possibly top 1x02?

... soooooooo I must confess something here...

*whispers* I don't actually know all about the elusive 5.05 spicy scene. someone needs to fill me in. I have not been paying attention to spoilers & speculation as much this time around since last season's speculation went so terribly for me 🤭🤣

Where was the Tarlos honeymoon in your mind?

Something about Carlos "getting homesick after a weekend in Branson" just tickles me. and the sarcastic way TK talks about the idea of Carlos wanting to travel the world also just amuses me to no end...

so this paired with the way the wedding went down, I think TK wouldn't want to make Carlos travel very far. or leave his mother so soon. I think TK wants his husband to feel as safe and comfortable as possible and so they spend a weekend at a nice spa/resort near Austin. Some place like this: Miraval Austin and then spend the rest of their honeymoon week bundled up together at home.

Shoutout one of your favorite fan creations.

for fics, I'm gonna be a little lazy here and link some of my previous themed fic rec lists:

but truly there are some wonderful fics in those lists!!! For some fanart: - this one by @whatsintheboxmh is one of my faves. ankle grab my beloved. 🥺🥰 - this one of s5 TK by @fitzherbertssmolder is so adorable! - this one of BUTTERCUP! by @greentealycheejelly is absolutely precious. - this one of Paul & Marjan!! by @heartstringsduet is amazingggg. give me all the paul fanart - this one of Grace by @yorit1 is stunning.

I'm not sure who has already done this, but I'm gonna tag some mutuals that I don't think I've seen it from yet (no pressure though!!) @lemonlyman-dotcom @herefortarlos @tkstrandreyes @three-drink-amy @littlemissmarianna @mikibwrites @alrightbuckaroo

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

Controversial Character Tournament Round 2: Kokichi Ouma from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony vs Peter Pan from Once Upon A Time

(remember that these characters are fictional and your fellow tumblr users are real. i will block you if you harass others in the notes, please consider sending your unhinged harassment to my inbox instead)

Propaganda under the cut, may contain spoilers:

Kokichi Ouma:

LOVE: - "hes a bitch and that makes a lot of people hate him and a lot of other people love him. no one can decide on his motives and i think thats kind of the point. i like him personally but hes a raging asshole <3" - "Not a single DR fan I've ever met is neutral about Kokichi, he's perfect for this poll. I think he's a clever character with consistent internal logic, and his interactions with the other characters are as compelling as they are hilarious. He looks like a dog squeaky toy, and he plots like Artemis Fowl. He's one of my favorite characters in the series and I love him dearly." - "NOBODY CARES ABOUT THIS BOY'S PSYCHOLOGY AT ALL. HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF AND HIS IMAGE AND MADE EVERYONE HATE HIM AND CONSIDER HIM A MONSTER ON THE SLIGHT CHANCE HE COULD USE HIS LIFE TO HELP EVERYONE ELSE ESCAPE AND SURVIVE AND NOBODY CARES. THEY SHOW HIS BREAKDOWN AND NOBODY BELIEVES HIM. I'M SO TIRED" - "not only is he a danganronpa character (inherently controversial) he is also the antagonist and constantly lying because That's His Whole Deal. people either love him or hate his guts. he's a little piece of shit. i would submit komaeda but i feel like views on him are more positive, generally. sorry i have bad taste in video games" - "he's a horrible little guy trying his best in not very good ways what more could you want" - "I don't know, people say he's badly written because they don't pay attention to his arc beyond the cartoonish facade he very obviously forces, and they don't like him because he caused someone's death which like..fair (he did feel super bad about it though so its fine.) Some people also don't enjoy his wonderful personality and think he's a mean piece of shit, which he is, but it's fine. They're just sensitive." - "I know people don't like him because he's like. a shittier version of Komaeda. But that's what's so GOOD about him. He's a shitty asshole of a person, playing pretend at being a villain because he's desperate!!! I think that's really fun. He's dooming himself and I want him to be okay after everything ends, but he dies so he can't even have that much :(" - "so i saw you got submissions for him. but not enough i need to submit him myself he is my favorite character from anything ever. he is the silly man he is so funny one time (actually, two times if you count one optional interaction) he asked a robot if he had a dick and it's absolutely iconic i love him"

HATE: - "(dangan spoilers ahead if that matters) look ok i didn’t originally feel too strongly about kokichi. i think his character is interestingly written (can’t say well-written bc danganronpa but yaknow) and he adds a lot of charm to v3. i understand why he’s popular- he’s one of the few characters in v3 to have both a personality and plot relevance. but oh my GODDDDD he is not a good person!!!! and i am so SICK of seeing him woobified into ‘ooh little baby he did his best he wasn’t doing anything wrong’ JUST BECAUSE you find out he was trying to end the killing game after he dies doesn’t mean he wasn’t incredibly fucked up throughout the game!!! like he was incredibly manipulative, a bully, encouraged infighting, Literally Orchestrated A Murder And Protected Himself From Danger By Getting The Big Stupid Sweetheart To Do It which caused TWO unnecessary deaths and- oh yeah- tricked everyone into believing he was the mastermind and the world had ended to make them so depressed that they just wouldn’t do anything anymore bc can’t kill someone if you’re rotting away in your room!!! AUGH like he’s a good character but it’s BECAUSE he sucks that he’s interesting. maybe this is just the komaeda fan in me but sometimes!!! the character is cooler when you understand that they’re a bad person. at least komaeda gets an actual redemption arc. kokichi’s just an asshole that the game tries to make you sympathetic for at the very end but he spends the entire game being an asshole so why the hell would i like him??? and then i go in a fandom tag and it’s constant unending ‘kokichi did nothing wrong’ the whole point of his character is that he does EVERYTHING wrong. i truly feel like the dr team was trying to replicate komaeda’s popularity but it was messy and poorly handled bc he’s not even a bad person in an interesting way like komaeda he’s just got trust issues that lead him to be stupid and An Asshole. then again people eat it up so what do i know lmao. i love to hate that little shit i wanna punt him into the goddamn stratosphere. score a field goal with that asshat. this is all lighthearted btw i love to die on small hills" - "WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE HIM OH MY GOOOOOOD HES SUCH A FLAT CHARACTER HES A SODA I LEFT OUT FOR 3 DAYS kokichi oma is easily the WORST written danganronpa character. it has been a while since i was into danganronpa so the details are a bit fuzzy but my rage has NOT subsided. following the success of Easily One Of The At Least Top Three Best Written Danganronpa Characters known as nagito komaeda, kokichi had some shoes to fill. he instead showed up in clown shoes. kokichis whole premise is that you dont know if hes lying or not, him being a huge clown and causing shit for like a good third of the cast. kokichi was a simple character. hes a bitch, he sturs shit up, he eat hot chip and lie, it was FINE. not GREAT, but FINE. and then he died. suddenly— kokichi was from modest beginnings. he was actually a genius who was actually doing all of this to save everyone. he was a martyr. they TRIED to follow up on the success of nagito komaeda, and failed miserably. the guy literally has nazi imagery he didnt need to be complex he just needed to be an asshole and force the plot. for assholes that force the plot with actual good depth, may i interest you in byakuya togami? for guys who lie all the time with actual good depth, may i interest you in sou hiyori the beanie man himself from your turn to die [similar genre]? seriously. you guys could do SO much better. just... get better taste oh my GOD JUST BECAUSE HES A TWINK DOESNT MEAN HES WELL WRITTEN" - "Omg I hate this guy,,, people either baby him & make him a uwu soft boy or a funky clown dude, & both those types of people forget all the things he has done??? even if he "redeemed" himself in the end (which i don't think he did--) that still doesn't negate all of the things he did before??? actions speak louder than words but he could never rely on that bc all the does is lie anyway-- i have some strong opinions about him."

Peter Pan:

LOVE: - "My propaganda is that like. Half of the OUaT fandom is OBSESSED with this guy and the other half write fanfiction about their self-inserts beating the shit out of him. The tumblr sphere might be a bit too biased in favor of love and I doubt he'll make it far but from what I've seen people either adore this guy or want him dead in the streets"

[eccentric-nucleus]

so, i finally finished (posting) my huge, novel-length teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfic. i just posted the final epilogue over on ao3!

here is my director's commentary on it, if you want to read even more about it. this contains spoilers for the whole thing. maybe read the epilogue first and sit with that for a minute. also this will probably be pretty incoherent if you haven't read the whole thing. it's just a disconnected series of thoughts i have about the story, really

man, this story. this is maybe the longest thing i've ever written? like 'the new hive' and 'hell game' had more words (i think) but they were mostly a disconnected series of sex scenes with thin connective tissue between them. this is ~200k words of a single, linear, mostly-plot narrative. i'm writing scenes that aren't just about getting the two leads to fuck!! that's weird. it's definitely the most ambitious thing i've written. kind of weird that it's tmnt fanfic. that's just how it worked out, i guess.

so back in 2022 i watched the rise of the tmnt movie because people kept talking about the animation quality of the fights and that got me into a spiral of actually paying attention to the ninja turtles. i had never been into them & genuinely i think a huge part of getting into tmnt stuff was that rise actually varied the design of the turtles so that they weren't all basically identical save for color-coding. turns out visual design was the missing mystery ingredient.

also in 2022 i was burning out on writing 'goblin cave', when what i had intended to be a fun little writing exercise ended up getting algorithmically surfaced and getting me hundreds of comments on each chapter. that got a little stressful and i wasn't really enjoying that, so i stopped. but i was like, hmm you know i mostly just write weird porn but maybe i should write something a little more ambitious. with a plot, and everything. 'goblin cave' was (in my mind) all about a character who was created for violence deciding art was a much more worthwhile pursuit. but the main character of that doesn't know what art is. because it's a magical dungeon core. and i was still thinking a lot about dead zones of the imagination, by david graeber. so i was like, okay, let's do this again but in a slightly more self-authentic way and make it weird gay porn with weird animal dicks. let's give michelangelo ninjaturtle a monologue about how the powerful are utterly insulated from any consequence.

(also early on, after watching most of rottmnt, i stumbled across this blog post about the tmnt comics and the end of the world. that ended up being deeply influential on the fic too. i've been kinda in a state for the past few years and this fic is absolutely a part of me working through a lot of complicated feelings about the world and the future. lol people talk so much about people writing dark fic 'to cope' but this was pretty much the first time i've outsourced my emotional processing by having bad things happen to fictional characters.)

so uhhh where to start here. the setting of the fic is this complicated messy mashup of a half-dozen tmnt continuities. it's very rise-heavy, since... that was the only series i had watched(/read) when i had determined the major plot points, but there's a lot of bits and pieces from all over.

to roughly outline the characters here, a huge influence on mikey's personality in this is... mikey's 'dr delicate touch' persona in rottmnt. in the sense that... okay yes yes that is a kid's show and all of his dr delicate touch lines are, you know, setups and punchlines. you think he's going to be nice but actually he's mean! etc. but in-universe it's like, wait hold on a second. mikey is like the most emotionally-intelligent of the four. he absolutely knows when people are on the edge of flipping out and need a calming out to a stressful situation. and instead he freaks them out more! mikey's hobby is: being mean to his friends & family, for fun! what a fun character trait.

i was thinking about this tweet a lot, too. i read some writing advice once that people tend to make characters who are supposed to be likable too squeaky-clean. nothing but positive character traits for them! but actually every 'positive' character trait is exactly the same as a 'negative' one; it's just a matter of focus and degree. a character is light-hearted and comedic? they can never take things seriously, even when they really should. a character is willing to do anything to protect the people they love? so they're violent and threatening and scary if they happen to decide you're something that they need to protect against. etc. i was really dedicated in this to bringing out the worst characteristics of everybody's personalities.

mikey was also very deeply inspired by: all the garbage progression fantasy stuff i've been reading. i've complained about this several times on this very blog, but a constant theme in most progression fantasy is 1. the main character will constantly get more and more powerful and 2. the main character will never really have their relationship with the rest of the world changed via that power. it's just stat-ups. they just have higher stats so they're more powerful. mikey is the most powerful person on the planet and it's fucking ruining his life. he knows that there's nobody capable of actually checking his behavior, & he's in this constant state of thinking he's maybe a few bad days away from murdering half the planet and incredibly aware there's not really anything he can do about that aside from constantly worry. he's kind of an anxious mess.

mikey absolutely thinks it's more ethical to murder somebody out of the sheer glee of seeing people crushed before you than murdering somebody for something as tedious as mob orders. you're satisfying a deep, raw desire felt from the heart! that's good!

what he'd like to do, in some sense, is just hang out in his studio and chill with other artists, but he knows the world is not gonna let him do that. things will come up. a lot of his being a creepy bystander thing while people get murdered is b/c he's very much formulated his morality to be like... it is not his responsibility to fix other people's problems. other people will do what they want and that has no bearing on him. is that a pretty cowardly and self-serving morality? sure! but he was kinda designed to rule the world & his flinch away from that pretty much defines him as a character in this. that's kinda the morality he needed to end up on to convince himself not to be a genocide machine.

he's incredibly aware he could basically be a superhero, & all it would take is... giving up on all his hopes and dreams and constantly engage with his abilities. and being a superhero isn't that many steps removed from living up to his full design spec and just taking over the world and ruling as god-emperror. idk how well i hit all those notes in the actual fic, but, that's what i was going for. mikey as the narrator clearly doesn't want to talk or think about it so it's never really directly confronted.

raph is... okay so i guess a fairly common piece of fanon, for rise especially, is to characterise raph as having multiple personalities? whether that's him just having alters or him having full-blown MPD depends on the fic. my fun little nod to that is that he's kind of a disassociative mess. he has kind of failed to reconcile the disparate aspects of his personality and he switches between one of several different facades depending on the situation. also, you know. the trauma.

(i didn't really mean for it to be as such, but there is this theme in the story about names? despite everything else mikey has a crystal-clear self-conception of himself and has one name, which he gave himself. raph, who has kinda failed to build his own personality, has a collection of name other people have given him, none of which he feels actually fits him. donnie has a more fluid self-identity and also has roughly a million aliases and false identities & constantly slips in and out of character when it's convenient. leatherhead still going by the name mikey gave him goes hand-in-hand with that bit where mikey meanly thinks about how maybe leatherhead's entire self-conception is hung up on something mikey said to him once, etc. this is one of those things that i'd go back and make more present if i did go back and clean up the rough draft, b/c as it is it's there, but it doesn't really do a whole lot.)

--

this fic was inspired by... i had read a few big aus that were just like, taking the characters and loose bits of setting and going off in completely different directions. some of NeiNing's aus were a definite influence, plus like, this one au where raph is an ex-con mechanic, etc, etc. just like "i am going to play out a completely unrelated drama using turtles as the dolls". maybe most directly influential was Of Knights and Thieves, where donnie & mikey are corporate espionage hacker/thief types and raph & leo are do-gooder vigilantes. the original concept for this was much more heavily focused on the art forgery. in a very early draft the idea was leo would get involved much more actively in trying to track down the creator of the false takenobus. then i was like, "i am going to crash a completely separate story concept about the dark armor into the side of this art-forgery story". the filename for the story is still 'lol grindr hookup art thief'. that is not really where the story went.

oh man, the art stuff. i made some posts about this at the time! that are now several years old. here's one! i did end up getting a traditional woodcut printing of Tokaido 53 stations, no. 11, Hokone. in a lot of ways doing all the art research was more satisfying and fun than writing the extensive downward spiral that was the latter half of the fic. but, hey, that's life too i guess.

also raph in this is... okay, so, i don't mean this in a mean way. i really liked the fics! but cndrow has written several raph/donnie fics where raph is just like... like a repeated theme in them is raph confessing eternal love & talking about how he's like, mentally planning on them being together forever. on the first date. and sure sure everybody has different tastes; i'm absolutely sure that my interest in guys who are mean leads to some stories that are extremely offputting to some people, etc. but it's like, oh man, raph, please slow your roll a little. if somebody said they were planning our future wedding all of ten minutes into talking to me i would flee the room. & the raph in blinded by the summer sun is very much inspired by that. sadly, i never fully committed to that. originally i even had a line in chapter 9 where slash was like 'please tell me you didn't drop the 'i love you forever' on this guy already' to imply that that was, you know, a theme for raph, but i chickened out and cut it. raph as a kind of rolling series of bad relationships characterized by him falling forever in love w/ his latest crush until the relationship detonates and leaves him not really understanding how things went wrong. but i don't think that's expressed well like, at all. but that ideally should characterize a large part of why he keeps chasing after mikey even well after the point where it would be reasonable to disengage. also to convey some of the downsides of a character believing in true love. it's rough out there in the world.

also thank you tumblr user averyterrible for writing this goncharov post. that was the point in the story where i was like, actually i have been writing raph as way too much of a sad boy. if i want to play in the space of crime drama, there needs to be some crime! he's a yakuza assassin. he needs to chop off somebody's fingers with bolt cutters.

--

to me, the central question in the fic isn't really 'will the mikey/raph relationship work out' or 'will mikey succeed in his plans', it's 'why is mikey doing these things'. & i think the leatherhead chunks in chapter 23 finally give enough context to what's going on with mikey to let people answer that? like oh, mikey is a mess.

(lol the initial setup for the early chapters are supposed to give an audience response of like, "oh no, raph has some dangerous secrets" "oh no, raph is a violent yakuza murderer! i hope mikey is going to be okay interacting with raph" "...oh no, i hope raph is going to be okay interacting with mikey")

a lot of the story really is about how... mikey & raph's relationship is in a lot of ways very adolescent? they have not had a lot of prior experience with healthy relationships, and they're trying, but, uhhhhhhh. mikey likes to act like he's so cool and above-it-all and unaffected by things happening, but that's actually just b/c he doesn't really care about most things. when something happens that he genuinely doesn't like he immediately snaps and has a giant meltdown. (we see this once with raph, when mikey has a panic attack and throws up when raph blows him off wrt warning him of bishop, and once with donny about the armor, where mike immediately starts tantruming and threatening to kill himself. mikey is very bad at resolving conflict. he's kind of a brat, actually.)

like every character in this is in some way their worst self. they're all pretty awful people. but they're all also trying to... grapple with their place in the world and try to be better people. to even figure out what 'better' means. this is a story about how 'being a good person' is a constant struggle, not to 'do the right thing', but to even figure out what's 'right'. it's about picking yourself up again after a bad period and going, well, let's keep going. like mikey has a lot of traits but one that i, the author, actually think is fairly admirable is his ability to get back up and keep going after a really bad period. which is funny b/c characterwise that goes hand-in-hand with his callousness. just shrug off all the misery you caused other people, i guess! see above about positive/negative character traits.

(also uh there's another tmnt fic author whose work has a lot of... a Bad Guy is constructed/identified. then helpless children (or teens!) are rescued from him. then the bad guy is ruthlessly & violently murdered. sometimes onscreen, sometimes offscreen. and then it's nothing but chapter after chapter of people being happy and cutesy to each other. and like, i get it. but the, like, recurring theme there of the Bad Guy having done something fundamentally unforgivable that separates from all understanding & mercy, to which the only justice is a violent death, just strikes me as... simplistic. sometimes people do really awful things and part of grappling with that as an adult with an adult moral conceptualization is realizing that you gotta look past your initial reflex to punishment.

or like, mikey's whole childhood in this really fucked him up but a huge part of his identity is him having to form an identity from that. having to make the determination of which parts of him are 'him' and which parts were done to him. lol @ him aggressively and extensively rejecting everything about what draxum made him to do & then blithely being like 'we were engineered to eat humans anyway' as a defense for all the corpse-eating. mikey you just like eating people & have decided that part does align with your self-identity. mikey would really not appreciate anybody being like 'i'm sorry nobody saved you from that' b/c that (to him) would basically be the same as them saying they thought he was fundamentally, irreparably damaged & was going to be forever incapable of being anything other than what draxum made him to be. he wouldn't take it well.)

uhhh what else. i mean there's a lot. fun fact pretty much every time mikey gets mad at somebody else he's hugely projecting. even his pacifism is like... hmm maybe he should have killed draxum. a lot of his talk @ raph about splinter is secretly mikey relitigating his feelings about draxum. oh what's that mikey you think that splinter is only playing happy family b/c he's immortal and he has infinite time to spend humoring somebody's illusions but that when push comes to shove he'll drop all that? gee i wonder if that might apply to any dynamics in mikey's own life. lol at mikey being like "wow red your life is kind of a fucked-up nightmare of weird psychopaths playing like they're happy family" and then two chapters is like "hey come meet my family. we live in my genocidal dad's bombed-out lab and we're treating him like a weird racist grandpa". i kinda wanted something that would complicate mikey just being like "i am a pacifist now and i don't kill anybody"; mikey that's all well and good but like half his inner tension comes from not being sure if he should've left draxum alive. that's kinda the mirror to him debating whether or not actually killing leatherhead would've been better. (in a few years shelldon is gonna go through a period of not wanting to talk to any of them. mikey & donnie are better parents than draxum but that's such a low bar.)

(likewise at the end when mikey is like "this is raph's healthiest relationship so far!" to leo, like, this is more mikey projecting. really the raph/casey relationship was probably better for raph & casey, idk, who can say. but is mikey's relationship with raph the healthiest romantic interaction he's ever had? yes, absolutely. we don't get to see the mikey/leatherhead relationship really up-close and personal but it should be pretty clear that it was pretty awful for everybody involved. compared to that, the mikey/raph is absolutely mikey's healthiest relationship so far. just. low bars.)

lol i am a little concerned that mikey's tendency to monologue, & especially his whole political monologue near the end, will get people to think he's just acting as an author's soapbox. i mean, okay, the little author's note where i'm like "as always, mikey is a perfect role model and everybody should do what he does" was a fun little joke. but, oof, the number of fics i've read where the authors feel the need to loudly and repeatedly disclaim that This Story Contains Things The Author Does Not Condone In Real Life is pretty disheartening. way to have absolutely no faith in your audience. but likie, the part where mikey is pretty much flat-out like, "actually i think my moral framework is whatever is necessary to justify my actions" is meant to be pretty damning. maybe not of mikey specifically as a character, just of, you know. the whole world where that's a pretty common outlook among people with power.

--

lets talk about the rape. part of it is that it felt like it would be inauthentic to go through the entire story without mikey seriously violating one of raph's boundaries. part of it is that mikey here kinda has the trifecta of ASPD, ADHD, & bipolar, and the thing with that is it's very easy to just say that but a little more difficult to convey the personality traits involved. this isn't really something ever stated as such in the fic, aside from various people calling mikey crazy + raph calls him a sociopath once. it's kind of too didactic to just flatly state "and this is what's wrong with mikey!" imo. but. this is a story about violent people. imo you can't just gesture to a character with the background level of callousness for the genre and go "okay this is a clinical sign"; you kinda gotta do something more direct. 'wow mikey sure is CRAZY and WEIRD good thing it only shows itself as him being slightly mean to people'. no. mikey has done some pretty horrible things in the past and clearly isn't fully done with that.

(i did pretty much go straight down the list of symptoms there. impulsive, suicidal, aggressive, violent, risky sex, arrogant, limited empathy, no regard for other people or social norms, difficulty with relationships, arson, etc, etc, etc. but it's not like he's a 'realistic' portrayal here, since... i mean, he is a super-powered ninja. there's a level of 'superficial charm' here but we do get enough of mikey's interiority to be able to tell he's a total mess in a way that's not particularly constructed.)

also it's like. raph graphically tortures several people to death & i didn't really feel the need to disclaim that here. murder is usually seen as a lesser crime in fiction than rape. people love their violent blorbos but the second there's the implication of sexual violence people freak out. the usual line people say is that the threat of murder is a little more removed for most people than the threat of rape, which idk if i fully agree with. but part of it is also to draw a line between raph's violence and mikey's boundary violation. like mikey says, well, raph tried to non-consensually murder him a few times too.

anyway i don't think i really stuck the landing with that either, in part b/c raph's response to it. he's a little too pathetically accepting of things at the end instead of being angry + violent. that could use a rewrite or two.

--

honestly i'm kinda sick of this story now? which sucks a little, since i kept realizing things about the story all the way up to the very last moment of editing. if i had waited to post any of this until i was done with the first draft... well, it'd be a very different story if i went back and turned this rough draft into something more complete. i never really did manage to hit the character beats with raph i was hoping to. oh well. like, i still like it. but i can definitely see all of its weak points. i guess that's just part of the process of writing. it'd be worse if you wrote a giant novel and came out on the other side not more aware of your failings as an author.

i feel like raph isn't super well-realized in terms of character motivations. or... his relationships aren't shaded in as well as they could be. if i were redoing this whole thing i'd definitely include some chunks of raph pov just to lay out more concretely what he's doing & what his life is like when he's not in the same scene as mikey. i kinda included that raph+donny conversation at the very end just for jokes, but actually ending every chapter with a little section of non-mikey pov would've helped ground a lot of the characters. raph isn't super well-developed and leo is pretty much incoherent absent external familiarity with his character's deal. they're not conveyed super well, in part because, well, any time mikey is onscreen everybody is having to deal with mikey. it's a problem.

but something that absolutely could have worked as a secondary narrative to the story is the whole thing with raph working w/ the oroku. that was a bit of a late addition to the story. it's meant as a reference to, you know, all the times raphael ends up being compared to/assuming the mantle of the shredder in the comics. but as it is since we don't get any real looks into exactly what's going on in yakuza town when mikey's not around none of that got developed very well, imo.

--

it was very important to me that mikey not learn any lesson here. where things are at in the end are pretty much the exact same as where they were in the beginning. the bit in the pizza scene where he's like 'you guys get to live and i get a boyfriend' is very accurate. literally the only change in mikey's life through this entire thing is that at the end he is in a relationship w/ a guy who he can tell some of what his life is like to. not that it's a super healthy relationship, but it is there.

well, that, and also now he's maybe out of time. (uh, so the laughter at the very end of the epilogue is mikey realizing he's out of time. the whole epilogue really is about how he's got all these conflicting tensions of who-knows-what in his life, & then right in the middle of the tension it's like, whoops, the utrom aren't coming in 10 years or 20 years, they're coming now. and in a week you're gonna be getting some really pointed questions about how you know the utrom envoy. and in a few years, well, there's gonna be some planetary evacuation) like the whole story is about... anxiety. mikey feeling the weight of the future on him in every moment. actually seeing things collapse would be a relief; you'd get the release of all the potentiality collapsing into an actual problem. the moral of the story is you get what you get and in the end all mikey's actions, good or bad or otherwise, have bought him is nine more months of ignoring his problems.

anyway sorry to all the tmnt fans who were expecting a happy cheerful mikey/raph story. this is actually about the fundamental injustice of existence. whoops!

[eyfey]

The final Origins OVA!

we are WAR!!!!

okay why in the world did they make a giant space axe??? like???

and just for the ONE guy too?????? did he request it????

yknow what i bet he's gonna do like a cool robot beheading or something with it later and that's the whole reason they put it in the show huh.

I forgot this is the first like- actual big battle where they're employing the mobile suits.

It's interesting to see the contrast between them and the like fighter jets, which is what they would've been effectively replacing.: A small quick maneuverable ship with guns, but this one can also just kick you

War (TM)

oh he really does look like a red comet out there huh

love when she dresses like an actual supervillain

LITERALLY ON THE RED CARPET

WILD

i like how Char was surrounded by fangirls who all backed off the SECOND Garma showed up

also they sure do love lingering scenes of these two staring into eachother's eyes- wonder what that could mean :3c

wait why are we reviewing art now. Whoms't is this man.

okay hold on now there is NO reason to make a paper shredder be a guy

hello?????????? literally just walking into an enemy ship like???????? what is the plan here??????????? worst strategist ever?????? the second you got on board your gunship can no longer threaten to destroy them because they have a hostage now??????? like your enemy is free to just grab you and fire on your ship at will????????????????????????????

oh right nvm i forgot this is Char he's got plot armor

y'know Kai feels like a completely different character in Origin. In the original series he was kind of a little shit but not a BULLY- self centered if anything, but otherwise morally neutral. In Origin though he's like proactively being malicious?

sir.... you can't just walk up to the military and ask them about military secrets....

WHY EVERYONE MEAN TO HARO

STOP IT!!!!! STOP KICKING HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

literally a MIRACLE they did not throw you in prison

:^(

lol they fukin robbed u dude

fucked up your whole house

I think I missed out on the plot points where this political twist was explained/set up - I do not rember who this man is, nor do I fully understand why he is saying these things or the full Implications

Like uh, my (probably incorrect) understanding is: he's an important general(?) from the non-zeon army, but was held hostage by zeon, and then freed as part of Kcyllia's(?) plan(?) I totally missed what her plan was tho: is it just to keep the war going????? I'm p sure mr oldie wasn't briefed and is just a pawn in their weird 5 dimensional chess game the Zabi family is playing .

(this is what happens when you do your neopets dailies instead of paying attention when characters start to ramble)

this is like the 3rd time a character has said "humans looooove war" this episode.

ITS WEIRD TO SEE THESE FUCKERS ACTUALLY SHAPED LIKE PEOPLE INSTEAD OF WEIRD EGG BEINGS

weird 2 me how he can close he eyes without closing he eyes

and I guess it ends on "btw we will NOT stop a war!!"

oh wait no we also get a post-credit peek of the boat!!

actually it is ending i think...

(they never did anything with that giant space axe from the beginning for the ep...........)

-

Final thoughts on Gundam: The Origin

I think I went into Origin without any real expectations. I maybe thought it would be entirely Char focused? but in the latter half it shifted to a more general "what's goin on with this war" type vibe. I guess it accomplishes what it sets out to do: give us more backstory on how the war from 0079, fleshing out the the politics around it and the characters who partake. There were some wild things happening but mostly it was a lotttt of people talking about War. Felt kind of like a lorebook rather than an actual story, especially for the latter half, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Up Next!* MS Team, Thunderbolt, and War in the Pocket (side stories that took place during the events of 0079) Looks like Thunderbolt is a movie but the other two are series so this is going to be infinitely easier to schedule time to sit down and watch.

*I'm following a watch order rec from reddit, which seems to be more or less chronological order

[gcldfanged]

Meet the Writer

ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘɪᴄᴋ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴍᴜꜱᴇ(ꜱ) ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ?

(CANON MUSES) -

Genesis: I actually HATED Genesis initially in the og CC game. I thought he was a lame addition and just like… idk, they wanted Gackt in the game so they made his presence plot relevant? OOOUGH, I was so mad… But then I saw how the rpc and fandom treats him, which is honestly even WORSE SOMEHOW??? So I decided to try writing him seriously and what do you know, I actually kinda like it.

Verdot: I literally have to make the content I wanna see in this rpc, such is my burden. my curse...

(OCs) - I wanted to write about the themes I have on my pinned and honestly, there were so many Tseng rpers who I am friends and mutuals with that knock it out of the fucking ballpark- I just didn't feel like I'd have ANYTHING new or good to contribute to the exploration of his character? So I made an OC :P And he's really changed so much! I remember when I was still making my own art for him and he wasn't QUITE like there the way I wanted him to be, but I didn't have anything better to employ as a faceclaim or reference to draw from. And then Cas was like "btw here's a manga about your HYPERFIXATION" and Kokonoi's general appearance and vibe was a great starting point to go off of instead.

Anyway, There's always things I had planned for Jae in the works or on the backburner, but he has really evolved over the span of years I've been writing him, so I really appreciate every person who took the time to check him out and build something with him.

ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ?

You know, I have been becoming more lenient with allowing myself to write certain things. I always end up being afraid of how people will react to certain themes I explore because... let's be real, a lot of people are pretty intolerant to opinions that are different than theirs. So long as whatever I and/or my partner explore is handled with the care and respect it deserves, I don't really see an issue with much anymore. Hell, I was terrified to post that one drabble fleshing out Jae meeting Veld for the first time because I was afraid people would see Jae's reaction to killing someone as somehow 'excusing abuse' because he wasn't dancing on the guy's corpse and actually showed remorse for what he did. It's fears of what I write about being misconstrued like that that really makes me hesitant to even talk about certain ideas with partners. But I'm getting over that, little by little and step by step.

ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ?

I actually love writing (as you can tell) introspective pieces. Something where you're really getting inside the character's head for a moment to see past all of their walls and facades, or sometimes you're still seeing what they tell THEMSELVES is the real undiluted truth, but isn't. I just love that kinda stream of consciousness really dig deep into the VOICE of a character exploration. Makes me feel lots of emotions.

ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ?

Usually I'll be doing something else like watching a piece of media or listening to a podcast and start to think "Ooh, my muse would love this" or "this makes me think of xyz muse wow", and it just kind of expands organically from there.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ɪɴ ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴏʀ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʟᴀʏ ᴍᴜꜱɪᴄ?

Music helps get me inspired initially, especially since I make spotify playlists for all my muses (and ships :P), so generally I'm cool with music, but usually I zone in too much on my own writing to pay attention. It's like my sense of hearing turns off.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʟᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇᴘʟɪᴇꜱ ᴏʀ ᴡɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇᴍ?

Both- There's always a general sort of... idea or outcome that me and my partner would LIKE to shoot for? And sometimes we just don't get there, because it really depends on what the characters do/say and how it's taken by the other muse.

For example, I was roleplaying a thread with @steeleidolon's Kunsel where he and Jae are trying to broker a deal and Kunsel ends up saying something to the effect of "your people" and he means the Turks. Jae, on the other hand, hears 'your people' and assumes Kunsel was bringing up his race and the perception of fellow people from Wutai or Hanuel being unfairly insular. So, it kinda went to shit, LOL.

It's little things like that that can color your muse's reaction to sometimes very different degrees than what you plan for!

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ ꜱʜɪᴘᴘɪɴɢ?

I like complicated dynamics and no, I will never shut up about them. Ships for me don't even have to strictly be romantic or sexual in nature, so like- I have some interactions I'm still feeling out with @saishuu-heiki that are platonic but leaning in a distinctly enemy/frenemy/challenges other person kind of vibe? And I think it's great! They don't HAVE to be like "we're friends, we're lovers, or we hate each other'- Like, limiting all your interactions to one of those three options gets really boring for me...

ᴡʜᴀᴛ'ꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀʟɪᴀꜱ/ɴᴀᴍᴇ?

King_Kkeungi is my mangaka pseudonym for the Silent Manga Audition that I tried submitting to last year. People have called me just "King" (if they didn't know how to pronounce Korean) or "Kkeungi" before, so I tend to go by these handles now.

ᴀɢᴇ?

30s, I'm like Dagon: ancient and evil, spoken about in hushed whispers that the zealots who follow my dark lore worship-

ʙɪʀᴛʜᴅᴀʏ?

May 10th

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀ(ꜱ)?

Blue-greens like teal and turquoise, soft pastel mint, and pinky-purples

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜱᴏɴɢ(ꜱ)?

Currently? PRIMADONNA by Kedarui! It's a sequel to their other song, Femme Fatale and has amazing lore and characters. It's just got fascinating kinda themes and imagery when you watch them back to back.

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜᴇᴅ?

The 2nd DUNE movie, holy crap, I was blown away!

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ꜱʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜᴇᴅ?

Hell's Paradise, which I am still TRYING to finish.

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ꜱᴏɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪꜱᴛᴇɴᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ?

Philip by millenium parade, my new go-to Jae song

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜰᴏᴏᴅ?

Thai or Vietnamese food *drools*

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜱᴇᴀꜱᴏɴ?

Summer... I just love the heat and the sun and the iconic imagery/sounds/themes like eating watermelon and wearing floppy plastic sandals, melting ice cream, hearing the chime of our furin while sitting outside on the porch of the house.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ ʙᴇꜱᴛ ꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅ?

I talk to regularly (like near every day): @ceaselxss, @annjiru, @phoenixshards, @sadistpet, @nightiingaled. Like talking with a lot: @speedchasing, @ofdeference, @hisnewera, @cwarscars, @contemptim, @steeleidolon, @altrxisme, @hxbiris & @hxvemxnd

The people who have known me the LONGEST are mostly discord only rpers now, but Tricky, HD, Kit, and Vixen I consider to be extremely close to me since we've been friends for... like over or around 6+ years and are still ongoing buddies who have met face to face before.

Then there's my ex-fiancee, but he doesn't do tumblr rp anymore.

This list also doesn't even cover ppl I write with/ooc interacted with over a long period of time like @ivory-paragon, @poeticphoenix, @reapersxfolly, @endweapon, @chthonicsurge, or @dcviltriggcr, so- I like reaching out to people and developing bonds! We don't even have to be on discord capslocking at each other, it's really cool when you can come back to an RPC and still have that connection without any awkward small talk?

[exoid-the-locomotive-monarch]

The more you get updated on modern Homestuck drama the more you realize that Andrew Hussie just sucks.

He sucks. He can’t run a company, he hated the work he was making since 2012, he tried to sue a youtuber for talking about investigative journalism into a video game Hussie kickstarted and hasn’t even finished yet, and was by the way NOT WRITTEN BY THE YOUTUBER, nor did the documenter know the Youtuber.

He wrote epilogues that almost made the fandom implode from how needlessly controversial, meandering, and uncomfortable they had to be, and the reason Homestuck didn’t miraculously die when they released was because enough people could find something good from that cluttered mess of a dual epilogue.

Then the sequel is made. Poorly paced, poorly produced, decent writing at best but boring and out of character at worst, at least the art is good. (And then Xamag left the art team!!!)

So Homestuck^2 gets actual fanart and fans even after controversy after controversy, writers being cringe in public, poor writing decisions, pointless dialogue, people were fans because *eventually* it will get better (even though from following the epilogues we should have known it wouldn’t)

Yiffy finally crashes all support for the comic and now we have no sequel. Surprise! 2 years after it’s indefinite pause and 3 after the worst twist in all of Homestuck^2: it was all a money scheme to pay off the debt of the epilogues!

Meaningful continuation of the epilogues? Sure, tell the readers and producers that, if we can keep their attention once a month maybe we’ll exit the debt trap, even though there has been disdain for this project since *day one* and the content of this sequel gas just been scenes to get fans to draw fanart of and plot angst!

But fans didn’t like it, the sequel didn’t have a plan, it couldn’t even find footing, and all that fanart, fan works, animatics, music videos, it was for NOTHING.

Because you know what? Fuck Hussie. He could have left Homestuck in 2016, done with his long-ass webcomic. He decided to drag it through the mud instead.

[mrpenguinpants]

let me put EVEN MORE PRESSURE ON YOU! Our second session is TOMORROW NIGHT!!!! And yeah 100% all the times as a player (my DM, before the campaign was scrapped, was a SAINT and I'm so happy he's at my table as a player this time around) was mostly just to see what shenanigans uncovered plots or that I could get away with. I was chaotic in trying to dig up plot (it didn't help it was my second campaign EVER so I was not the best at picking up plot hints that were dropped in front of me) I played two characters in the campaign, a druid and a wizard/rouge. My sweet children, I love them both dearly. The campaign may have ended but they live rent free in my head.

Druid - Uncover a plot hook early as a cat dramatically trying to get attention from a stranger in an alley, sneak past guards without being questioned as a cat mysteriously in an underground villain lair, CONVINCE AN OWLBEAR TO SPARE US???, Strike up a deal with a dracolitch (though I think the DM wanted That outcome, but no one else did), Strike up a deal with MOTHER NATURE, and try to hide a murder by burning down a house (it did not work)

Wiz/Rog - instead of writing out the list, I'll just write to you her introduction to the party: basically my PC steals baguettes from Sargent Armstrong (but french); runs into the group but gets snatched TM by our shifter fighter, interogated, has the best conversation ever ("You know, other people sell food here!" "I am the! Only! Baguette! Person! Here!" "Mmm."), two of the party members are about to pay on her behalf just to no longer be implicated, she casts cause fear on the guy and he sprints (and the party blames the wizard for it), and then SPRINTS INTO A SCHOOL SHE DOES NOT GO TO, GETS FOLLOWED BY WIZARD AND SAID PREVIOUS FIGHTER, DISGUISES HERSELF AS A STUDENT (THE BUFFEST ORC KNOWN TO MANKIND) AND FUCKS WITH THE FIGHTER JUST CAUSE as in the fighter rolled SO LOW

I'd recommend dnd but ONLY like,,, with your friends - new tables/playing with strangers is scary, especially bc the game's... old; I could go off on the racism and sexism baked into 5e and especially the earlier editions for WEEKS asdfghj so you gotta find a table/group that agrees with you, yk? ALSO!!! I saw on twitch/tiktok FOREVER AGO someone actually made a Genshin TTRPG System! Aka you can play DnD in the world of Teyvat as vision holders! There's a few, but the one I saw is "Roll to Ascend" on Youtube

-Lucky

Answering these out of order but how did your second session go if you remember? Aww, I'm sad that the campaign ended but I guess every story needs an ending. I think bittersweet nostalgia is the worst and best feeling ever because you're happy it happened, but sad it ended.

If I ever brush the dust off my Baldurs Gate save file, I will put all my stats into charisma because speech is the most OP thing ever. But I think the funniest part of listening to DND stories is that you take all the crazy events and condense them down. So to me, this sounds like you did all of this in a day rather than several campaign nights (or maybe you did do all of this in a night. That would also make sense).

I have a friend group that plays DND but I don't think I'd "fit in" with them. Not that they are bad at DND or I think they wouldn't accept me, but I feel like I'd need to find the right people to be okay with it. New tables are scary as hell because I have no idea how much rp they do or if I'm doing too much rp. I will check out that youtube channel tho :0 my friend actually recently recommended me a DND podcast that he listens to.

[seerofmike]

Mike's Media Medley--June 2024

things i watched and played FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME this June 2024 (belated due both to hurricane beryl and also cuz im depressed <3)

2024 movie/show releases: Young Woman and the Sea, Inside Out 2, The Bikeriders

non-2024 movie/show releases: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999, recommended to me!), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), La La Land (2016), One Piece (2023)

games: Chillquarium (2023)

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

this was recommended to me by a friend who swore up and down i would like this and tbh, i did! it was way funnier than i thought it would be, but kinda towards the middle (maybe more 2/3rds into the movie) it starts becoming more romance and drama heavy and kind of loses the comedic edge i was really liking about it. i also thought kat liking and disliking heath ledger was based more on whims sometimes. like i understood why she'd get pissed with him sometimes but i'd be confused other times, and also equally as confused as to why she decided she liked him again. idk maybe i just dont understand straight people

75/100

The Bikeriders

this movie meant nothing to me and i have already forgotten everything about it except for this thought which i was having the whole movie:

idk i feel bad rating it incredibly low since it didnt piss me off like Civil War did but also, is it worse to get pissed off by a film or is it worse to get so utterly bored by one that all of its details lapse from your mind as soon as you stop watching it?

idk. i guess it could've been worse. 20/100

Inside Out 2

okay so controversial opinion perhaps but i actually liked this one better than the first. HOWEVER, its not like i was necessarily the biggest fan of the first one. it's not like i hated it, i just never really clicked with it, i guess.

i think generally speaking the first one is more cohesive and more creative with its concepts, and has a bigger 'Pixar gutpunch' in the form of Bing Bong, but I thought Riley herself didn't really feel like a character and I found Sadness to be really annoying. so it was very appealing to Me, Specifically, that Sadness wasn't a main character and the other emotions got to play a bigger role (I am especially a fan of all the new emotions, even the ones that don't do shit like Ennui) and also that Riley feels like a PERSON

even if i think the first one had a bigger heartstrings-pulling moment this one overall made me feel way more. mostly cringe and secondhand embarrassment but it was out of recognition like "ohhh fuck ive been like that before". i saw this opening weekend amidst a sea of kids and there were some moments that i (and mostly other adults) were the only ones laughing.

ESPECIALLY a big fan of the vault with all of Riley's secrets. Pouchy was the best character actually. idk I just had fun with this one. I probaaaaaably wouldn't watch it again for a while but if my little brother put this on I would pay attention

70/100

La La Land (2016)

i did not like La La Land

i am not at all an expert on music nor musicals so i don't really feel like i can critique the musical aspect of it too deeply, but i CAN tell you that i didn't really vibe with any of the music and at times i found myself like. daydreaming instead of paying attention to what the characters were singing. i didn't really believe in her and ryan gosling's chemistry and i generally found his character to be irritating.

the most enjoyable parts of the movie to me were probably the musical sequences without any actual singing. i do like them tap dancing in the street and then their date where they start flying. i thought those were well-directed. in fact i thought there were a few well-directed and well-edited sequences in the movie. unfortunately i just never found the actual plot music or characters to be on par with the visuals.

i have not seen pretty much anything else that released that year re: Best Actress nominations (although Elle has been on my list) but i really find it hard to believe Emma won her first Oscar for this. idk i know a lot of people love this movie but it truly did nothing to me.

i guess i will say one of the things i DID like was the ending. how it didn't really work out, the silent musical scene at the end over a montage of what could've been. i like that there wasn't a happy ending just because generally i like when movies do that (if it feels believable anyways lol). but it didn't hit for me as hard as it should have because like i said it's not like i really cared for them to be together nor did i care for ryan gosling's jazz journey. i was a bit more invested in emma's acting journey but not enough to really say i truly cared about what happened to her.

idk. pretty visuals but weak everything else. 40/100 maybe

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

soooooo they put on the LOTR movies (the extended editions, specifically) which are the ones i watched. and i have something to admit. i have TRIED, several times, to get into the lord of the rings. i tried reading the hobbit. i ordered a fancy boxset of the LOTR trilogy and tried to read them. i watched the first movie but it took me 3 tries to complete it.

so i thought, okay. everyone raves about these movies. they HAVE to be good. maybe my attention span is fried. recently i've been getting tickets to movies that i could technically watch for free at home but buying tickets forces me to actually pay attention to them since i paid money and i won't be reaching for my phone or stopping to do something else. so i got myself 3 tickets to all 3 movies, back to back to back.

the first one was okay. i've seen it before. i found myself daydreaming midway through because i'd seen it already. i don't HATE it. i think a lot of the characters are generally very charming and likeable. i love samwise gamgee. i really liked borimir. frankly i could do without the elf lady because the way she speaks drove me insane and made me physically uncomfortable. the plot was a slow burn to build up the Fellowship, which I appreciated. surely the second movie would build upon this.

i do think, generally, that I liked the second movie better. i think Gollum is an interesting character and he was being performed and animated VERY well, especially considering the time when it comes to CGI effects. i liked merry and pippin's journey becoming more like heroes. the big battle at the end was done very well. and obviously i thought frodo and sam were a highlight.

that being said there were parts of the movie that i just did not care nor did i understand. im already hard of hearing and having to listen to british accents without any subtitles means that i legit didn't know what characters were saying maybe 1/3rd of the time. the new subplot of the. kingdom of guys. didnt work for me. i cant even remember what the hell the random kingdom of guys was about or named or anyone relevant because i didnt understand what was even going on. it was very fun seeing karl urban though

despite liking a lot of the movie, a lot of it just weighed down on me to the point that when i walked out i was like, "do i REALLY wanna sit through another 3 hours of this tomorrow?" and i decided i didn't and got a ticket refund.

at least the directing is fun. a lot of fantasy movies feel kinda boring and without personality but peter jackson really had a specific flair when it came to directing these.

60/100

One Piece (2023)

i didn't finish it so i wouldn't be rating it yet but i actually thought this was pretty fun! this could've been way messier but i think so far it looks like everyone is having fun and its juuuuust wacky enough. my only complaint is that zoro is waaaaaay too serious but idk maybe it gets better, i only watched maybe...4 episodes? i dont remember. i do look forward to finishing it. eventually

Young Woman and the Sea

well this was the sleeper hit i wasn't expecting to like as much as i did

i was bored one day and wanted to see a movie but nothing really jumped out at me that i hadn't seen yet. i ended up picking this one because I have seen Daisy Ridley in NOTHING. i will not watch Star Wars unless someone pays me actual money so I was curious to see her acting in something and picked this one. ive seen sports movies. i figured this one would be like a cheesy inspirational story but hey those arent necessarily bad

and yes, it IS cheesy and inspirational, but i liked it. a lot? it's 'based on a true story' which probably means that there are some embellishments but i found it genuinely compelling, between her childhood after surviving the measles to the way she and other young women were treated as swimmers, even during the olympics.

i thought the swimming seasons were decently thrilling. like, idk as someone who has attempted to watch competitive swimming it's just not really a glamorous sport to watch but the way this was shot and directed and the fact that they literally filmed it IN THE OCEAN, *in the English channel*, means that i was actually really invested in her managing this feat, both as a personal character motive and also for what it represented more widely when it came to women's physical accomplishments.

idk i guess im just kinda in shock i enjoyed it as much as i did. this was probably the movie i walked out of with the most positive outlook of all month. i'd watch it again.

80/100

games:

Chillquarium (2023)

i only played one new game this month, and that was Chillquarium, which is an idle/clicker kind of game where you manage fishtanks and grow fish by feeding them pellets.

fishe. what can i say

[fated-normal-767]

I love all your characters sosososoososoooo much and is like to know more about Athanasios. In my head he’s like the straight man so Id like to know what batshit insane hijinx he gets caught up in

Ohh boy ‼️‼️‼️ for the duration of the post I will be calling him Niki (shortening of his last name, nikitas) because I cannot type his full name properly 90% of the time 👍

Right! He believes he’s straight for the majority of his life, and realises he’s actually aroace very shortly before he becomes a ghost (he also thought he was homophobic for a bit because he was repulsed by the idea of any romance). This is not important to the plot at all but I like it being known because it’s important to him 👍

In his childhood, his family was not necessarily abusive, but very rarely payed attention to him, bordering on neglect, meaning that Niki spent most of his time with Ares, Shimmer, Letalis, and slightly later, Python. Python is the only one who’s family never had a high role in the government and later mentions feeling slightly isolated due to this, though it isn’t a large plot point, just an influence. All of the main 4 kids are about 12 when they all meet, ares is linked due to being shimmer’s older brother. They also all have nicknames (letalis umbra; Lucius or luci, athanasios nikitas; Niki, Alexis Harlowe; python. It’s suggested that shimmer had one but never brought up.) Of course, Ares ran the organisation (though everyone thought Kronos did other than people ares had told), Letalis’ family ran a branch of it, having the second highest role, and where Niki’s family still had high roles, they still worked for the other two’s families. Letalis’ family and Ares both made it very clear to Niki’s father that he’d lose his job if Niki got hurt, and it’s slightly implied that this is why his family was neglecting at worst, but never violent.

Niki was (for most of his childhood) the least likely one to start conflicts or actively choose to do stupid things, but he’d always stand up for the others without much hesitation at all after things would go wrong. He was also the oldest by a year or two. He had the most knowledge of how the entire government system worked, and was the first one to ask ares why python’s family never interacted with other’s families, as well as the first to ask ares to help. Him and Shimmer interacted with Ares the most and knew how he actually acted, unlike Letalis, who only knew Ares as the persona he used in meetings or presentations, or python, who didn’t seem to care for a while.

He also held grudges the most, and was extremely stubborn, he’d stand by a point if it killed him, and did for his entire life.

When python ‘disappeared’ presumed dead at 17, Niki entirely held the blame against ares, who was too upset to say otherwise. He slowly isolated himself further from ares and shimmer, associating with Kronos and working on some highly morally questionable projects. The cut one of these was a science experiment on a young child with a powerful skill in which she was put through the worst situations possible to test responses. I believe she eventually either died from shock or ran away and died or disappeared somewhere else, but I didn’t write that bit so I can’t remember.

The first time he’s ever shown in the game he is introduced as Ares’ assistant (assigned by Kronos), and immediately tries to convince him to kill shimmer instead of finding them and bringing them back alive. He mentions as a ghost that he had wanted to test if there was any semblance of humanity left in ares enough for him to defend shimmer, or even attack Niki for saying that, but due to being almost entirely caught up in an act, ares just goes “well I’d rather not kill them myself but we could consider it if they keep causing problems. Not yet though”.

From this point to directly before his death, Niki is exclusively painted as evil, he has entirely given up on shimmer and ares, and seen reports of what the fuck letalis has been up to since python ‘died’*, meaning he ruled everyone he used to care about as ‘fucked up and evil and murderous’, so he decides to get on that train fully too; no one would be able to tell the difference anymore anyway.

*met Eris, was a serial killer for a bit, 100% killed and ate people (the reports are confidential and not public but Niki saw)

Just before Ares fakes his death for the first time, Niki tries to confront him, calling him an idiot and a coward for not killing shimmer. Unfortunately, ares is having a nervous breakdown, and stabs athanasios in the stomach, leaving him in a burning building to die. Ares does not actually manage to get out on his own, he has asthma and collapses from the smoke inhalation until shimmer drags him out of the building.

It’s never described how Niki is brought back any of the times, but it’s mentioned that it is always linked to Kronos/Kronos chooses for it to happen. The first time, he looks slightly rotten and burnt, but you wouldn’t immediately go “he’s been dead.” He just looks horribly injured. You meet him again before Ares returns thinking dolos is dead, and he helps letalis with their plan of find and killing ares, during which they almost torture shimmer to death (thinking that they know). After this happens, Dolos shows up for the first time, with a man called Mars who is completely unrelated to anything at all and gets almost beaten to death by Lyssa for saying that ares deserved to die. ‘Mars’ finds letalis and tears her eyes out, then both him and dolos disappear again, never seeing Niki, nor knowing that he was alive and involved, which Niki was very thankful for.

When ares comes back, Niki makes it his role to antagonise him as much as possible; made very easy by how fucked up ares is, having repetitive flashbacks to watching dolos die. Niki’s final straw per se was when he stole a necklace from dolos which ares had kept and threatened to destroy it, and after a violent fight, Niki has ares at gun point and makes some comments about everything around ares dying. With little to no warning he puts the gun in his own mouth and pulls the trigger, which ares takes as ‘proving his point’, but was actually caused by dolos.

When Niki is finally brought back, he is visibly a corpse, and completely drenched in blood. He is brought back to supervise ares, who grew significantly harder to blackmail and more unstable after finding out dolos was alive. It’s never explained whether he started trying to destroy things hoping he could get back to dolos even after telling him to leave, or if he entirely gave up and started breaking things to lash out at something. But Niki is told to watch and make sure that ares doesn’t destroy the building again or leave. Niki has almost given up on his stubborn point of hating ares, making slight jokes about how ares should kill Kronos this time, how he hates that he’s back.

Ares pours them both a drink. He never even touches his cup. Niki knows what is going to happen. He tells ares that he was sorry for how everything turned out, and it is barely even acknowledged.

Niki talks about how the system had always worked, anyone who works for them has one engineered weakness to get rid of them if they try to leave. Letalis’ legal record, shimmer’s addictions, and ares was never taught to swim- he’d drown from even falling into a river. Ares asks what Niki thought his weakness was, the way they’d get rid of him if they had to. Niki says that he thinks it was Ares. He sends a message to Kronos, setting up his murder for ares, and tells ares to burn the place to the ground. His body is never found.

As a ghost, Niki spends his time attempting to get people to see him so he can finally leave, but every time he is actually visible he exclusively spends the time saving other people. He tells ares that he needs to protect Corvus because they are Kronos’ child and that knowledge might be dangerous. He saves someone’s life by showing them the way out of a building they were trapped in. He leads Pluto to someone who is dying so that he saves them. He makes no progress in saving himself. He has not yet been written to ever make any progress on it, actually.

I know I missed something im so eepy but um The 👍 I can answer questions if something doesn’t make sense

[ac-liveblogs]

(1) I finally played Scaraquest after months (listen man, purple fates activate something in me) and Hoyoverse's priorities fucking stagger me. In the skeleton, you have an incredibly emotional, even angsty story going on. This is a traumatised immortal. They fully believe that other people only ever betray them. Even if they aren’t betrayed by others, those they love will die before them.

Their only driving motivation is revenge (against gokaden and shogun), which they pursue with the help of a shadowy bastard. They successfully commit an unforgiveable act against those that betrayed them, only to find that they had it backwards and actually just chumped the descendents of some of the only people who ever loved them.

Realising this unearths their covered up but still super evident death wish, so they start trying to erase themselves. After all, the acts they’ve committed are unforgivable, but they may be reversible, and it’s not like they’re worth much anyway considering they’re such an evil person who literally, on a philosophical level, was a failure from the start. The game, obviously, proceeds to make this character erase themselves OFFSCREEN.

How hard would it have been to condense the two irminsul sequences into one by writing the trav managing to follow Scara into ‘the past’ and be forced to watch as he erases himself more and more, memory by memory. We could even write in some ass pull to see how, no matter how hard he tries to change history, it’s not actually taking back what he’s done, resulting in a desperate emotional breakdown ONSCREEN as he burns himself up more and more?

He and the trav/paimon/ugh, nahida could even fight about it! But instead they put almost all the heavy emotions offscreen because it is imperative we find out how irminsul works. It’s imperative we spend 5 minutes at the start of the plot talking with an essayist and a novelist about Tatarasuna instead of learning it through a less unsubtle, more interactive form of exposition.

It is imperative that, after all is said and done, nahida becomes Scara’s therapist for 5 minutes and just lays down his character arc. The only upside is that he only walked from one death wish to another death wish, so there’s still some possible growth, right? right? God the execution.

:))) My sympathies, anon. It really is an impressively bad quest, isn't it? I don't even think the ScaraQuest is the worst part of Scaramouche's writing, though.

The entire chain of events throughout Inazuma is staggering to me. We spent an entire year seeding the truth about what happened to the Raiden Gokaden as well as Kazuha specifically's feelings about it - and, wow, what a coincidence, Kazuha's character quest involves him interacting with a villainous character clinging to the past to whom Kazuha's response is "I don't care what you did, I care who you are now."

Which, to the uh... average player, might read as "oh, Kazuha and Scaramouche are connected via THIS EVENT, and Kazuha has laid his opinions on this sort of thing down, this is gonna go somewhere."

Like. Say. Kazuha's attitude once he actually meets Scaramouche, for some crazy example.

lmao

imagine thinking kazuha and scaramouche's shared backstory elements that the game deliberately drew attention to, after specifically hinting Kazuha and Scaramouche would meet and this would all matter back in the Iradori Festival, might actually pay off with regards with Kazuha and Scaramouche. Two characters that seem to have been rather deliberately paralleled, between their Dead Friends, their completely opposing grief responses, their polar opposite approaches to how to deal with the past... In any other work, this would've been a character conflict that mattered when it came time to deal with Scaramouche's backstory! All of those elements you mentioned!

Except this one, because that sounds hard, and it's easier to just write the implications of a more interesting dynamic, and what everyone really cares about is Irminsul, right? Scaramouche can just say he's had a character arc and that's totally the same as writing one, right?

This game is nuts. Imagine setting up a chapter where you can see a character's memories but spend barely any time doing that. Absurd.

[greenerteacups]

Following up on the side characters ask -- hi same person -- thank you for the thorough answer and honestly I admire the background stories (and research!) You've done for them!

Idk if this would matter, but really I was curious to get a little peek at your brain when writing these characters as I really thought you're doing a consistent job on their voices because really it is hard! I'm actually working as a show runner/writer for - uh - a published tv show and even when doing a second season right now me and my coworker in my writers room would get confused once in a while when writing in different voices and we have 11 people on our team!! That being said I really really think aside from talent, you're just a really hard and consistent worker in your writing. Please know you're doing an amazing job.

Wow! First of all, congratulations on being a showrunner/writer and on landing a second season — you're doing an amazing job, man. Game recognize game. And thank you for the kind words! It's a special treat to get a compliment from a fellow artist.

For me, side characters got a lot easier to do when I started thinking of voice in kind of clinical terms. I get stressed out when I think about big concepts like Voice and Plot and Atmosphere, and my brain works better when I think hyper-technically: it's not Voice capital-V, it's just — what type of contractions do they like? Do they stutter? Are they wordy? It's not Plot capital-P, it's: set up Element A, hit Reinforcement B, hit Payoff C. Cool. You've got a subplot. It's not Atmosphere capital-A, it's: how much attention are you gonna pay to the weather in this scene? How much time have you spent talking about light, temperature, noise? Literally, CTRL+Shift+W, what are your word counts? Is the pacing of a conversation wrong? Cool, CTRL+Shift+W again, check the ratio of gesture/narration to spoken dialogue, that's probably it. If your normal writerly gutfeels aren't helping you out, fuck em, we can brute force this shit with Rules.

Specifically, and I don't know if this works for everyone, but I picture voice as essentially a set of parameters: Ron uses slang a lot, Draco will generally say "that isn't" instead of "that's not" (sounds older/more formal), Hermione speaks in full sentences unless interrupted and likes her run-ons, Daphne's overfamiliar and loves an endearment. I just give them these things I can lean on. And then, when I want to have a Character Moment, I can have one of them break those parameters, and the audience goes !!! because it's surprising but the trend is so consistent that it feels real and earned — for instance, Draco doesn't swear a lot, at least out loud (in the early books anyway), so when he says "fuck" for the first time in Book 4, it underscores the moment. Anyway: best of luck from one writer to another, I can't wait for your project to come out, it's gonna rule.

[robins-den]

hi hellow i've been planning this post for two months anniversary today so

HERE ARE MY OPINIONS ON THE RELEASED CHARACTERS OF ENGAGE but i might not do all of them and this is only their blurb and physical appearance unless i know more ty

Something I’ve noticed while doing this is the sheer amount of siblings there are?? Is there going to be a plot reason (I hope not honestly) or did a writer go ‘wait, it was pretty rare for royals to only have one kid because of the high chances of childhood death and stuff’ or did a twincest writer win the kink lottery or ? Why are there so many siblings… It makes me wonder if the Alear you don’t pick is going to be evil or something.

Why are there so many mount users in the desert? Can horses traverse sand now?? I always hated that mechanic but it was because it made you work around it. Except that you never had enough fliers or mages to actually work around it. Why are there wolves in the desert?

everything taken from serenes forest because its convenient godbless

image and text formatting is to make it not godawful on mobile

CHARACTERS IN THIS: Firene / Firenese characters, the three dragon guardians + Anna

Céline (VA: Akari Kitō) is the first princess of the Firenese Kingdom and Alfred’s younger sister. She’s a kind and innocent philanthropist who always strives to solve things peacefully. However, she won’t hesitate to fight for peace if necessary.

I hate the weird lace stuff and the fact that she just ... does not have a shirt. She looks too young for that to be interesting instead of 'girl what the fuck' and the sheer lace texture would be a genuine nightmare. she's another 'kind and innocent younger sister princess' which like, i feel like we've had at least one in every game, but whatever, the people like what they like.

Alfred (VA: Ryōhei Kimura) is the first prince of the Firenese Kingdom, a brisk young man who battles alongside the Divine Dragon. He’s a kind, disciplined and flower-loving pursuer of happiness.

I like that he has lace as well, it ties him and his sister together. I like his little leafy crown and that he has a love of flowers strong enough to be mentioned in his mini blurb. I don’t like that he’s Dimitri’s little brother, basically. Having one of the first companions look so similar to a protagonist from the last mainline game feels annoying. Also, the yellow white clothes, pale skin, blond hair, and black lines of lace make him look like a bee to me.

Chloé (VA: Saori Hayami) is a palace knight from the Kingdom of Firene. She’s easy-going and adores her liege, Princess Céline. Loves fairy tales and pretty scenery and is always seeking a picturesque combination of the two.

i dont like the boobed breastily down the stairs vibe of her armor (which really isn't armor) but if she's one of the few like it then i can accept it as a character trait. i don't like the armor period, though, it has a lackluster feel to it. I'm really hoping for an s rank between her and Celine. Chloe likes Fairy Tail Aesthetic because she likes Celine, who has a Fairy Tail Aesthetic. This is my most beloved and sapphic headcanon.

Etie (VA: Tomomi Mineuchi) is a palace knight from the Kingdom of Firene. She’s a noble lady who exudes elegance. Has a positive and active personality; devotes all her time to body-building

I like her facial expression, and I think her hair is cute without being overbearing. I like that she's stated to be noble and extremely elegant while also doing bodybuilding. I like how it's a 'yes and,', not an 'even though'. I don’t like that what I thought was a dress is a crop top, though. I think it’s better as a dress.

Louis (VA: Haruki Ishiya) is a palace knight from the Kingdom of Firene. He’s a gentle servant wearing massive armour. He always pays attention to how his friends are faring and seems happy whenever he sees them at peace.

Hello Kellam with curly hair. His arms remind me of Ruin Guards from genshin impact, actually. I don’t like armor knights much (i really value mobility and the sheer defense of armor knights has never been necessary for me to beat maps, even in the GBA games), but maybe his personality will convince me to use or reclass him. From what I’ve seen, I doubt it. I like the pointer clicker on his armor.

Boucheron (VA: Toru Sakurai) is a palace knight from the Kingdom of Firene. He’s a polite and kind young man. Born with a good physique and highly tolerant of others.

Logically the green accents on orange shirt is fucking hideous, but they manage to make it work with his armor, which keeps the orange from being extremely loud and the green from looking horrendous. He’s not that striking physically but for some reason I want to sit on his stomach and stare at his face for an hour. Also touch his face ??? I like that his tolerance of others is important enough to be mentioned here; I hope he has supports with people from other nations and when they do something not commonly done in his nation he’s like ‘oh, that’s pretty neat’ or the like. Maybe they did western market research and he’ll be a himbo lol.

Framme (Sayaka Senbongi) is a 33rd generation Dragon Guardian, protecting the Divine Dragon at the Land of Lythos. She’s Cramme’s younger twin sister and more determined and lively compared to her brother.

I like her shirt and gloves. I think they're fun. her hat nd scarf don't feel battlefieldy but y'know what, sure, go styling. Honestly I think she looks really cute with the soft bob cut so I wish she didn’t have that braid of hair(?), but the ribbon braided in makes it interesting. I like lively kid characters as long as they aren’t annoying about it, and twins / siblings can be fun if the writers aren’t annoying about it. The contrast between simple sleeveless shirt+skinny arms, and the huge thick gloves, scarf and hat gives her an energy that I really love. All the colors pair together extremely well.

Cramme (Kōhei Amasaki) is a 33rd generation Dragon Guardian, protecting the Divine Dragon at the Land of Lythos, alongside Vander. He is Framme’s older twin brother and was by Alear’s side when they awoke. A gentle priest who serves–and is also a fan of–Alear.

The fact that he’s outright a fan is…. Odd? I’m not going to say bad but we’ll have to wait and see. I love his braid and that it pairs with his sisters. I think his colors pair together less well than his sisters do, but I’m always a slut for arm cuffs. I like that he’s green, black, and beige to his sister’s white, pink, and beige. It’s a fun way to contrast and compare them. I wish the outfits themselves matched a bit more.

Vander (VA Yōji Ueda) is a 32nd generation “Dragon Guardian”, protectors of the Divine Dragon at the Land of Lythos. Cared for Alear who was asleep for ages and a reliable ally who’s sworn loyalty to Alear. Very serious and strict; the guardians’ mission is at the forefront of his mind.

Our jagen!! I really like his beard and hair. How many families got conscripted into staring at my bedroom? I wonder if the care was anything more intensive than standing guard at the doors of wherever it was and running off bandits and treasure hoarders. I’m curious if they entered the building on a daily basis [ for cleaning and making sure everything is okay, or maybe they live there? ], only on special occasions [ deep cleaning every few months or year or for festivals ] or fuckin never and only patrolled the perimeter. We’ll get the answer I’m sure, but I’m curious regardless. Relatedly, I’m curious if there were any signs of Alear waking up? If they knew it was beginning to happen or if it was completely out of the blue. 30 generations of your family getting paid to do nothing, and now you have to fight a cross continental war for the planet or some shit. 

Anna (VA: Saori Seto) is a merchant-in-training. It seems she’s traveling around each country, in search of treasures that can be sold for a high price.

She’s a lot cuter than her FE3H incarnation, thats for sure. It’s probably the posing but she’s actually super cute. Nice outfit that is visually solid without being overly complex and puff sleeves. I dig it. I’m interested to find out what merchant means as a class. We likely aren’t getting a separate convoy again, but (bold take) I actually found it fun. In training is fun; I wonder if we’ll see the endless amount of Anna’s again. I hope so. I hope she has supports again, and it’ll be great if it’s with people other than Alear. It’s interesting that her job / class is first and her name is below it, unlike all of the other character cards.

[dogshit-enchantment]

thoughts about totk

i dont know if its just me, but does anyone else feel like the story direction for this game is kindve ... bad? like the actual plot itself was interesting at first but everytime the characters try to deliver a serious line of 'my secret stone' I can't help but laugh at them. It sounds like a mistranslation you would see in a 90's port of a game, not a multi-million dollar triple A title in 2023.

Not only that goofy nature of it but like, why is Zelda so british? No one else is, not even her dad. Why did they chose a VERY british direction for her voice and no one else? It's so distracting and every time she talks I don't pay attention to what she's saying cuz I wish she would just stop talking. (I still hold a grudge over her for feeding Link a fucking frog and then people have the audacity to be like 'oh theyre in love' like no thats fucking sibling behavior at best.)

There's so many aspects of the game where it feels like they want a very specific series of events to happen and there's a very intended player experience. But then... you can go anywhere. Do anything. You can EASILY miss important things (I missed several of the Dragon's Tears because I wasn't aware there was something I was supposed to be grabbing from them I just thought it was scenery) and you can easily find yourself in areas you're not meant to be in yet. "Just teleport out!" Why didn't they just make a linear game that wasn't built as a wanna-be DLC expansion pack?

Having to re-explore a world I'd already put 200+ hours into is frankly tiresome. And to make it THREE TIMES as large??? Exhausting.

I wanted to like this game so much. I preordered it. I went to the midnight release. I played it for six fucking hours the first full day I was able to play it. And after leaving the Great Sky Island all I'm left feeling is... frustrated.

Frustrated at the unclear, hidden direction of where you're supposed to go. Frustrated at the massive size of the map that doesn't have That Many Changes to make it worth going through the nooks and crannies. Frustrated that they turned botw -my favorite climbing simulator- into a gimmick-based game that doesn't like you to use its own gimmick.

The constructs break apart too easily. If you build a flying construct that works well it breaks after about a min and a half of flying. If you build a car to traverse the land it despawns if you hit any cutscene trigger - which are often invisible and unavoidable.

This felt more like a Zelda game in the general flavor of it; you get the classic enemies back, you get actual bomb flowers again, Link is wearing green for fucks sake, and you get actual temples. But the actual heart of it doesn't feel like a Zelda game. The plot feels sloppy at best, rushed at worst, and the voice acting is so genuinely bad it's distracting and embarrassing. The only voice actor I didn't hate was Rauru (Chris Hackney, Legend) and Tulin (Christina Vee, also a Legend), even Sidon felt incredibly stilted.

It feels like the game punishes the player for using the mechanics it gives you to use and play with. Even the fuse mechanic feels like such a back-hand. "Oh we heard the players got frustrated at weapons having a limited usage, so instead of extending it or offering a repair service, we just made Every Weapon Shitty" like wtf. And even for the fuse mechanic theres only ONE PLACE that lets you unfuse and it's through a clunky dialogue menu! (my favorite!!! totally not the reason I stopped playing acnh!!!!) I played for 50 hours and was positive you couldn't unfuse weapons. Wow.

botw was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it and the fact that your tools were simply on a cooldown. totk feels like a resource-scavenger except the resources are so hard to actually acrue. Not only that, but I've seen other ppl complain about how much harder it feels to upgrade your equipment. As if they needed some way to bloat the game even more.

This is just me rambling about my feelings and maybe talking in circles about it but I feel annoying trying to actively discuss my feelings with anyone so I guess this will do.

I've only beaten half of the bosses and 3 of the temples, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep going. I got stuck at the fire temple boss and I would argue its the worst temple in the game and I haven't even gotten to the Gerudo one. That's just how strongly I feel about the fire temple. I hate the minecart layout, I hate the lava puzzle mechanics, and I literally rage-quited after my 10th attempt at the boss. The water temple boss was annoying but it was mostly just learning patterns and having good reaction time. The fire temple boss is JUST rng.

which sucks cuz the wind temple was sick!!!! it was so cool!!! and the boss was probably one of my top 20 bosses!!! and then I did the water temple and Sidon kept glitching out and wouldn't accompany me for half of the trip up to it, and the GRAVITY!!!! UGH!!!!!!

I'm trying to think of points of the game I've truly enjoyed and I think the highlights of it have been: got to keep Epona from my botw save. But then that turned out to be a nothing burger since you can't have her tow anything. (also the fucking towing minigame that feels so insulting. "please take us to the great fairy!" YOU COULDVE JUST WALKED ITS LITERALLY A FIVE MINUTE WALK)

uhh, other good points uhhh, the new armor is pretty cool. I really like the Ember and Miner set. I really like the cave system. (shouldn't really be a feature but whatever) and uhhhhhhhh, yeah idk. I'm struggling to find points I truly enjoyed past the introductory level. like yeah building a car is cool! ... until it despawns and you lose 40min and work, and yeah I know autobuild can rebuild it but I'm not made of spare parts. And like, the korok puzzles were cute! Until you find one every 15 min and they take at least 10 to get them to their friend.

I think the most enjoyable minigame was the one with the sign dude on the side of the road where you help him hold it up. That was one of the better, more enjoyable parts of the game for me so far. It felt like it actually tested your building skills while not being truly punishing. Just start over if it doesnt work.

botw was a strong like 8/10 for me, and I think totk is gonna unfortunately be like a 5/10. The direction is janky at best. The gimmicks of the game are viable for most of the game. Exploring the same world with minor changes is frustrating and boring. Exploring the Depths makes me want to personally throw up since I have a phobia of dark, open spaces with Things lurking inside. Exploring the sky is fun but I didn't realize you could *reuse* the sheikah tower until 45 hours in because why would I think it would let me do it again??? So it felt inaccessible and frustrating.

The ability to fuse anything to anything and have it run and work well is a technical marvel! I'm not saying its not. But does it make a good *game*? Does it make the story direction work? Does it make the boss fights and dungeons work? imo... no. It doesn't. It makes a good tech demo. It makes an impressive piece of programming.

maybe i'll have more thoughts but I just needed to get all that out.

if you read it all thanks if not you wont be seeing this lol