#anyway. the solution to this is obviously to talk about it with him and either I will or he’ll see this post in which case. hi :>

[sailorsleepymoon]

Latest news in being a person with anxiety is wanting the same thing as someone else but being anxious about why they want it

[andreas-river]

NIKTO HEADCANONS (but realistic)

TW: sexual themes, acute dissociative disorder mentioned, this man has definitely been through a lot.

A/N: I don't think I need to say this, but these headcanons are strictly from my perspective. Like many other people here, I enjoy writing for this character, and I have a lot of projects for the future. Anyway, y'all enjoy!

→ He loves cup noodles. He gives the vibes of eating them because they are quick to make and saves him a lot of time. But he’s skilled in the kitchen. Dmitry once founded him cooking in the kitchen’s base in the middle of the night. A glance from him was enough for Dmitry to turn around and walk away with another secret to hide.

→ He’s friendly only in private and only with his team, and obviously Sputnik. He feels comfortable around them, and he laughs only with them. He doesn’t hang out though. He doesn’t like public spaces at all.

→ Diagnosed with Acute dissociative disorder which may include symptoms of other dissociative disorders including dissociative identity disorder (source). This means that he experienced episodes where he dissociated, but since it’s acute, he had short but severe episodes (no, he’s not out of his mind). In my opinion, he doesn’t take any meds, or he would be discharged from the service. But he probably has periodic sessions with a therapist.

→ Possessing a hyena pet helped him find some balance in his life. For him, it’s like having a common dog, it doesn’t make any difference for him. He always finds it amusing when he uses him to scare Rodion, making him scream like a teenager. That’s how he discovered that Rodion doesn’t like anything that resembles a dog, even if Sputnik is a hyena. And he obviously uses this knowledge to his advantage.

→ He is neither hyposexual nor hypersexual (no, he’s not a pervert either). He actually has a normal relationship with sex and all the things that comes with. He doesn’t like sex without feelings. But if it needs it, he definitely jerks off at night.

→ He prioritize trust above everything, if he’s interested in someone. It will probably take him months to trust someone. Definitely a lot of trust issues, he’s really careful when he meet someone new.

→ Definitely not a religious person. He went through so much in his life that he’s more of a ‘realist’ person. He doesn’t think that there is a god, at all.

→ With the right person, he can be very protective: he has the ‘scary dog privilege’, and no one would definitely mess around with a masked big guy all dressed in black (most of the times).

→ He’s a reserved person and he appreciate the silence, especially if someone respect his own silence. Conversations with him can lead to a whole bunch of different topics at a deep level, and he loves when someone actually understand what he’s saying. He has a lot of knowledge and he used to read a lot of books, especially when he was a teen, and even more growing up and when he was recovering from his trauma. He still reads, and when he isn’t going to be deployed in a short time, he reads a lot during the night.

→ His trauma led him to a lot of insomnia, and a lot of nightmares when he actually manage to fall asleep. So, he usually goes for a walk, or he goes training, trying to take his mind off things.

→ Panic attacks are an occurrence, but he learned to acknowledge the symptoms even before it happens. He usually walks back to his room, finding the silence the thing that calms him the most. When he can’t go back to his room, the rest of the team usually has his back, and always managing to work something out. Every time they find a different solution, and that’s what helps him.

→ No one knows his past (and maybe it's better this way). Only Kamarov knows that he had to endure some bad shit back when he was a teenager. I can imagine living his years with her babushka before enlisting in the military. He doesn’t care about his parents since he lived in a toxic environment. Definitely doesn’t talk about it at all.

[loveandlegacy]

ngl i think there are a lot of cool/interesting things to say about the sex scene between jayce and mel, but i am not wild about justifying it by pointing to its plot relevance. its presence IS justified, i just think the furthering-the-plot argument is using the wrong framework to understand the function of sex in media at all and kind of belies a deeply conservative impulse about what sex is or does or what it's for in art. and like i don't really blame anyone for this. i think this attitude of 'well it has to be plot relevant to be present' particularly in film is born partly out of a reaction to a long history of film & tv having gross attitudes about women and very unpleasant assumptions about roles in sex.

in tv in particular, hbo comes to mind as having been the only prestige network for a really long time where nudity/semi-explicit sex was permissible. and like while it was/is permissible, a lot of hbo productions deploy sex in a way that feels deeply unimaginative and misogynistic. obviously hbo isn't the sole culprit. the whole concept of the male gaze was developed bc of film's treatment of women, and the games industry stacks on top of that by being so misogynistic in its sexualization of women that it feels like a joke. so i get why people balk at that — i do too — but these media properties and outlets shouldn't be the gold standard for sex in media anyway and the solution to them shouldn't be "well sex is only Allowed when it serves the very utilitarian and quasi-calvinist purpose of furthering the plot".

if nothing else, sex is an important part of life and connection for many people. including it in art to demonstrate or reflect that fact is ideally something normal, or could be if we in the united states could at least deconstruct our neuroses about sex. my one friend always says that sex in itself is a kind of character study, which is valuable regardless of how much it furthers the plot. you can even see this with jayce and mel! people joke a bunch about jayce being the little spoon and not to be like too annoyingly into close readings of a sex scene but the entire arc of his encounter with mel tells you a lot about both of them as people that arguably could not really be presented in any other context. mel initiates but she does so in a moment of vulnerability, right after talking about her family, a major pain point in her life (and not lol after she supposedly like...bamboozled him with Sexual Allure and alcohol or whatever people say). jayce follows her lead for a while (she kisses him first, he is happy to have her push him onto the bed) and eventually breaks from this pattern to go down on her, not to demand something for himself.

either this says something about him as a person or says something about gender and expectations for sexual courtship overall in the world of arcane. like in our world men who "submit" (lol) to women's sexual desires or who give primacy to a woman's sexual interest are still framed kind of as a joke in mainstream US culture even though 'mean mommy dommy' jokes abound on the internet. but is that also true in piltover & zaun? is jayce the exception to the rule or is he in keeping with the rule? we kind of don't know ironically bc we have no other information about in-world sex in the whole of season 1. even with the brothel, there are open-ended questions: is trading sex for money illegal? is it illegal in piltover but a weird grey-market activity in zaun? what kinds of sexual mores exist in piltover, zaun, or both, and what relationships to people have to them? vi describes the brothel as 'the one place where all the secrets are spilled' and that seems like it's in keeping with how civilian clients are about sex work irl in the united states but that's more or less all we have to work with.

i'm not saying arcane should seek to answer all these things or to deliver a complete taxonomy on in-world sex and sexuality. the story is dealing with other themes. it just seems strange to me to laud arcane for it's skill in efficient but well-textured worldbuilding and then to abjure the possibility of the presence of sex outside of plot-relevant reasons when sex would tell us as much about the world as the touch that smoking is a sign of power in the undercity.

if the concern is that somehow any non-plot-sex would be too gross in its treatment of women, i guess i would say that it was amanda overton who advocated for the sex scene in the first place, not alex yee or christian linke. so like why not trust that she may be capable of writing/directing further instances of sex without defaulting to something unpleasant?

and if the objection is "well i don't want to be made to feel horny in an otherwise non-horny experience" my answer would be that the point of sex in media can be communicative sometimes, not always titillating. going back to jayce and mel and character studies, i wasn't (and i don't think most people were?) suddenly horny during that scene. i thought the literal art direction was weird, but mostly what i took from the scene about these two characters was that their mode of relating to one another was actually very tender. it cemented that mel was falling in love with jayce, and that the we the audience were supposed to understand their sex as sweet, not particularly provocative or designed to fulfill an assumed sexual fantasy on our behalf.

but there's also no reason to assume that any two other characters in the story would have sex in that tenor, even if they were in love. there's no reason to assume that any two other characters might NOT have sweet sex outside the context of love. the only way we could know that is if it were to occur on screen, and getting a greater diversity of sex and sexual encounters on screen requires the audience to be open to sex not just as a normal part of life, but as a semiotic object in art that has value beyond driving the plot forward.

tl;dr it's nice that the sex in arcane had some greater impact on the plot mechanics, but i don't think that's the primary value of its presence and i'm glad it's there with or without it mattering to the plot. it's unlikely but i hope s2 can give us a fuller picture of how other characters relate to sex as well.

[skepsiss]

Modern Problems, Modern Solutions - pt2 - Steddie

Pt1 Pt3

A modern day AU (2015) of Steve and Eddie in high school. Eddie is out as Bi and Steve has just recently come out as Bi. Steve is 16 and Eddie is 17.

I wanted to explore the genuine, awkwardness of young, queer love. Eddie is doing better in school with modern solutions, but his anxiety I think is worse. Being ignored (like in the 80s) helped him avoid some more intense day-to-day anxieties, but it obviously messed up his education and a lot else. Anyways, enjoy this yearning, young love, slow burn. This chapter is light and softer.

-------

Much like Eddie had assumed, heading back to school on Monday was the same as it ever was. Nothing had changed and there was no one that seemed to be gossiping or anyone who even knew about the little drive Eddie and Steve had taken on Saturday. He wasn't sure why he had vaguely worried about that or why he mentally braced himself to be leered at by some annoying preps and have to put on his tough-guy attitude. Eddie mostly stuck to his own business during school and the teasing had more or less stopped over the last year or so. Still, he could hear people snickering at him when he happened to get loud at lunch or when he let a more genuine him slip out in the hallways at school. He always felt scrutinized by his peers and quietly hated the fact that he had to go to the Special ED room for one of his blocks. He knew it was the only thing that was really helping him to keep up with his grades and graduate, but he hated the ammunition it gave other people to tease him. The nicknames had been relentless when he was in middle school.

This day, school had been quiet and Eddie had started to relax after lunch. No one had said anything to him and he didn't mention it to his friends either so he was surprised when he stopped off at his locker and saw Steve mingling near the end of the hall. They made brief eye contact and Eddie started to look away before he saw recognition in Steve's expression. He patted the guy's shoulder he was talking to and excused himself, walking down the hallway directly at Eddie. 

Eddie felt his body tense and a chill roll over his arms. What was this about? He didn't want Steve talking to him at school. He had carefully cultivated his social circle with the freaks and the weirdos and the last thing he needed was for anyone to think he was friendly with the jocks.

Eddie closed his locker, motioning to turn away from Steve so he could escape the whole situation and save himself the ridicule, but that wasn't to be either.

"Eddie, hey," Steve called to get his attention. He wasn't speaking terribly loud, but anyone nearby would have heard him.

Eddie half turned and Steve was actually jogging up to him in order to catch up. That made Eddie's shoulders tense as he stood there, feeling like he couldn't escape. 

"Hey," Steve offered, moving his book bag over his shoulder and fishing in one of the front pockets. "I think one of your pins came off in my car."

Eddie looked at Steve in surprise and glanced down at his hand as Steve presented him with a latchback pin that was definitely his. It must have come off of his denim jacket without him realizing and fallen onto the seat or something. The pin was obviously his–the little gold skull ribboned by the words "Five Finger Death Punch" was a sore giveaway. 

"Almost vacuumed it up. It's yours, right?"

Eddie looked back up at Steve who was smiling in a friendly way, his hand still open with the pin in it. Eddie floundered for a quick moment before nodding and sticking his hand out to accept the pin.

"Yeah, uh, I didn't even realize," he replied as Steve tipped the little piece of metal into his hand. "Thanks."

Steve was already adjusting his bag back over his shoulder, not prolonging the exchange as he started to turn back towards his friends.

"No problem, later," he offered, half waving and leaving Eddie there to gawk at him slightly. 

Eddie glanced around himself, but no one seemed to be staring at him, and despite Steve's friends giving him a strange look–obviously asking what that had been about–Steve seemed to wave it off without Eddie getting any leery looks, though. It was like... a totally innocuous exchange and Eddie didn't know how he felt about that. 

The bell rang and Eddie pocketed the pin, his anxiety flaring still as he walked back towards his class. That was so... weird. But what did he expect? He had left something in Steve's car, he had found it, and then he had returned it. No big deal, right? But that meant Steve was acknowledging him at school and not trying to hide the fact that they had spent time together. Enough time that Eddie had been in his car. When did a guy like Steve interact with a guy like Eddie? If he had just been trying to be nice he could have returned the pin after school when fewer people were around, or left the pin with Robin to give to him at band practice or something–but no, he had walked it up to him in the middle of the hallway without a second thought. Was Steve Harrington an idiot? Or did he really not care?

The whole exchange puzzled Eddie for the rest of the day which proved to be a nuisance as he was called on in class for not paying attention. His brain just kept drifting back to the exchange in confusion–absolutely fixated on it. He was overthinking, he knew it, but he couldn't help himself. What did this mean for him? Was he going to have to be on his toes and endure annoying questions from his classmates in the locker room after Gym? Was he going to have to be an asshole to Steve to prove to his friends that no, he didn't actually like him, he had just been nice was all?

Eddie grumbled about it all the way to band after school, hating that he was wrapped up in high school politics. He wanted to just forget about it, but couldn't. He felt like his hackles were up the whole time and he messed up more than once in rehearsal, only to snap at the teacher and then angrily excuse himself for the rest of the day. That had everyone staring at him which made him feel worse and that night had been spent mourning the day as he lay chest down on his bed and let his phone cycle through YouTube videos. He stayed up too late and woke up frustrated by his alarm only to drag himself to school again the next day.

His mind did feel a bit clearer though, and he tried to focus on the fact that he had Hellfire after school today. Gareth was going to bring in his new copy of "Out of the Abyss" which Eddie hadn't gotten to look at yet. Gareth had proclaimed that it was a brutal campaign setting, even if Eddie had quietly already changed part of the phrasing in it from what he knew of the setting. He wasn't keen on the premise of the plot being based on the party starting out as slaves, and he'd probably change that to prisoners or something if he were to run it. But this was their first real look at the Under Dark since 5e's initial release in 2014 and he was excited to see how it all fit together. 

Eddie let himself focus on that for the rest of the day, bracing himself for the debate that always popped up about the differences and superiority of 4th edition versus 5th. He liked taking both sides at different times depending on his mood, and he was running through the argument in his head as the club members started filtering in. 

As everyone trickled in through the door–Dustin and Will showing up already in the throws of a conversation–Eddie felt his anxiety from the previous day melt away. He was laid back, sitting so the chair he was in was wobbling on it's back legs and his feet were up on the desk in front of him. His thoughts were a mile away from Steve Harrington and how their proximity would affect the remainder of his high school career. He was even laughing at some innocuous comment Benson had made and was now being ripped apart by Jeff when his attention was snatched away.

"Henderson."

Eddie glanced over, noting that Dustin was exclaiming animatedly at Will, obviously giving an impassioned speech over something.

"Henderson!"

Eddie looked again, staring at Steve who hung off the doorframe to the classroom they were all piled into. No one else was paying attention to him and Eddie could see the frustration on his face. Without thinking more about it, Eddie wadded up the paper in front of him and chucked it at Dustin across the way, hitting his arm harmlessly.

"Yo, Halitosis!" Eddie yelled, not getting up from where he was seated, his feet still up on the desk.

Dustin's attention was pulled away and he looked at Eddie with the most exasperated expression in human history before Eddie jammed his thumb in the direction of the door.

"What? What?" Dustin asked, putting his arms out to the side as he looked from Eddie to Steve.

"You left your stack of crap in my backseat," Steve said, his tone familiar and put-out sounding.

"Okay?" Dustin exclaimed, which got an eye roll from Will.

"Okay? So, go get it or you're not seeing it until next Tuesday, come on, man," Steve scolded which got a sneered look from Dustin. 

"And you didn't bring it in, why?" Dustin retorted, walking towards the door anyway, followed by Will who was obviously perturbed by Dustin's incredulous behaviour. He probably had intentions to help him bring all his things inside, too.

"What am I? A pack horse?" Steve quipped back, stepping out of the doorway for the two boys to walk out to his car. He pointed his car fob towards the parking lot, no doubt knowing that they were close enough that he could unlock it from here.

"Don't forget to lock it!" Steve called after the boys, which got a mumbled reply that Eddie couldn't hear.

Steve looked back at the room and at the other boys there who were all a bit amused by the exchange. Steve seemed exasperated, but in that kind of way an older brother who secretly adored their kid sister would. He was smiling a bit while he rolled his eyes and Eddie couldn't help but smile back.

"Tell me about it," Eddie retorted, chuckling a bit in a good-natured way. He hadn't meant it to be an invitation, but Steve seemed to take it as that and stepped into the classroom to stand near the other guys.

Benson and Jeff seemed confused by his approach, but they didn't look as anxious as Eddie felt by the friendly way Steve approached them.

"He like this during your guy's club, too?" Steve asked, putting his hands on his hips and looking towards the door as if he could see Dustin standing there.

"More or less," Eddie offered, putting his hands on top of his head as he leaned back, trying his best to look casual. Why was he acting this way? Who was he? Why did he care what Steve Harrington thought of him?

"Why do you drive the little hellion around anyways?" Eddie asked, surprised by his own question. 

"Dustin?" Steve asked, looking back at the other boys, "well..." he seemed to pause and think for a while, hands still on his hips as he looked back over toward the parking lot.

"He's a good kid... generally," he replied, giving a bit of a nothing answer. That left Eddie feeling unsatisfied and curious about the real reason. You didn't just know some random kid for no reason, especially when you lived in such different worlds. 

Steve shrugged and smiled briefly, before nodding.

"Well, I better make sure he isn't scratching up my paint job. See ya," Steve offered, half waving, "talk to you later, Eddie."

Eddie blanched as he watched Steve leave, staring after him as the boy walked out into the hall and towards the parking lot. Talk to you later, Eddie? What did that mean? They were going to talk later? Since when?

"You know Steve Harrington?" Jeff asked and Eddie almost broke his neck with how fast he whipped around to look at him.

"As if–" Eddie hissed, his chest clenching hard as he processed all of that. "We've talked like, once–that's it."

Jeff and Benson seemed surprised by his delivery before their attitudes melted into something else: interest in having a repartee at Eddie’s expense. 

"I don't know man," Jeff teased, shrugging a bit, "you two seem pretty close."

"Yeah, you tossing the ball around after school or something?" Benson taunted, backing up a bit.

Eddie felt his face grow hot and he wobbled the chair back onto all fours as his frustration seized him.

"Shut the fuck up–we talked one time!" He hissed, knowing that he was getting riled up and in turn giving the two boys what they wanted.

"It only takes one time," Jeff sighed dreamily, which in turn made Benson catch him by the shoulders and tilt him as if they were swooning over each other.

"Oh, Steve..." Jeff tormented, snickering a little as Eddie stood up fast enough to make the desk and the chair squeak back.

"Cut it out!" Eddie snarled, sending enough energy towards the other two to have them stumble backward over one another and laugh at the display. They were scared, but obviously amused. 

It was all good-natured, Eddie knew it, but it was getting under his skin. Why was he so embarrassed? Usually, when the guys teased him about boys Eddie just retorted with a quick, inappropriate remark and left it at that. He'd lean into the tease and act the damsel or reverse it and purposefully get so raunchy and macho about it that his comment would verge on harassment. They were joking, Eddie would joke back, they always knew the other didn't mean anything by it. 

Eddie was still red in the face when Dustin and Will pushed their way back into the classroom, arms full of books and their conversation from earlier still raging. They both seemed to stop though as they read the energy in the room, Will chuckling awkwardly.

"What's... what's uh, going on?" He asked nervously and flinched hard when Eddie looked at him. His expression was so sour that Eddie was sure that Will thought he was in trouble.

"Nothing–" Eddie snapped, which got a few more chuckles from Jeff and Benson. He didn't need to deal with this, he was better than this.

"Move," Eddie demanded, walking towards Dustin and Will and then forcing his way into the hallway. He walked red-faced to the men's washroom to cool down, eager for this day to be over. PT3

[taki-yaki]

prompt: Tav with a gun lol. Let’s say Tav got abducted from a sci-fi world, like from another sci-fi video game, which solves the ammo issue. Or she’s an artificer class from somewhere out there in wildspace, so she makes her own ammo and steampunk weapons. Whatever you choose.

Either way, Astarion is very interested in her weapons.

Making me think of all those glock mods for BG3 but I agree that Astarion would be 100% interested in an artificer artillerist Tav. Also with artificers usually focusing on intelligence, he would be interested in that compared to Gale.

Artificer Tav (or Glock Tav)

Astarion had never met an artificer such as you before. Sure he may have heard of some gnome who were artificers, but they usually specialised in either alchemy or armoury. 

He never took much interest in them anyway, besides all they would talk about is how their creations were made for non-destructive uses.

However, upon seeing your destructive artillery focus, it quickly gains his interest.

Someone who is intelligent and approves of using destructive force, rather than giving dull lectures about the meticulous details of the weave the magic as a whole, sounds like a LOT of fun to him.

Of course, the first thing he’d ask of you is to have a go at your eldritch cannon, but soon has to be confiscated from him, due to his recklessness with it. 

Instead, he’d try to give suggestions on how to improve your weaponry, “Maybe if you add a lick of poison to your bullets for an extra sting” “What do you mean it’ll cost too much?”.

Whilst tinkering with making small gadgets in your free time, he would observe you from afar, watching your hands skillfully craft each one. You would quickly pick up on this, by offering him to watch you work up close instead.

The tinkering side of your nature would lead to some problems in camp though, with collecting any pieces of scrap metal found on your adventures, old rusted cutlery? They can be repurposed into so many things. This would lead to an intervention at camp with the amount of ‘junk’ you have collected in such as short time.

Eventually, you would start creating small utilities to use in camp, such as a portable shower kit to compact carrying containers.

When you go to fight Cazador, the situation quickly turns into bringing a knife to a gunfight, however in this case you’re adequately equipped and prepared to fight him.

Obviously, you would defeat him, Buffy the Vampire Slayer style, “No weapon forged can stop me”, “That was then” pulling out your modified eldritch cannon and taking aim at Cazador, “This is now”, promptly launching him off the ritual platform.

After the tadpole is gone, you promise to make him a device that will allow him to walk in the sun once again. Stating that he’s better off trying science if all means of magic and gods have failed him so far. Naturally, it takes quite a few attempts to create a working solution, but once you do, he is forever grateful for your help and will go about boasting about how smart his partner is compared to the magic shows that wizards present.

[odusseus-xvi]

Was making a huge post about the Gods, Dorian, Ashton, Orym etc because I'm sometimes very confused by some anti-god takes on here. Like I get where they are coming from and what they hope happens in the campaign but a lot of arguments are just confusing to me, but what marked me is that they are upset about the potential ending keeping the status quo about the gods. (tho you could argue, I think rightfully, that the status quo of the gods is for the most part not the source of suffering in Exandria, and in fact that a lot of it is linked to Ludinus who has been here and scheming and causing wars for more than 900 years), I admit I WOULD be disappointed in the situation just being, we kill Ludinus, everyone happy, everything fixed since the biggest Wizard jerk in history has died. (when I say jerk, I mean in Universe, the guy is almost responsible for half the non natural-deaths in Exandria. As villain of a story tho ? Amazing)

Because at that point we know the Gods ARE flawed, enough than a lot of people want them out, or want them differently. That also causes conflicts with the ones still wanting them like they are currently. Like The Gods and Ludinus scarred Exandria so much that it would make no sense that all tension would just disappear once the Wizard's gone. I don't think killing them or making them go away is a solution here, certainly not a satisfying one to me at least with what we've seen. But perhaps a change in their status, in what they do, about their current prison perhaps. I don't know, but I don't see it just, staying like it is now. (and I wouldn't be surprised if Asmodeus is planning something as well since he did everytime he was involved in a truce of some kind.) (also note that even though I don't see it staying that way etc. I do think the current Campaign's message is less about the Gods, and their situation, and everything else, and more about the Danger of people like Ludinus using real problems to feed onto their own goals, causing much more problems.)

That and also, what about the people of Ruidus ? Like there is no way they stay up there right ? They all want to descend upon Exandria, either peacefully or as warmongers, something has to happen there too right ? How will Exandria react ? How will the Gods react if they are still here when that happens ?

Now MAYBE those are questions better fit for a Campaign 4, the current one being simply, we need to stop Ludinus and Predathos. And the next one having to deal with the Aftermath.

Also

What is Vecna doing ? That's one of the things I'm VERY interested in as of late because we know most of the Betrayers are acting with the rest of the Family to live, but Vecna, unlike for example the Matron who earned her place here, isn't one of the Siblings. He is just classified as Betrayer because he wants to rule everything and kill thousands. So, is he part of the Truce ? Can he even do anything from his own prison ? Does he know about Delilah's situation or does he not care about her usefulness anymore ? That's also what intrigued me about the waves of undeads under Vasselheim where I went "MMMH ???? THE WHISPERED ONE MOVING PERHAPS ???"

I still don't know if we have to include him when Matt talks about the gods rallying their forces alltogether to save themselves and Exandria. Especially since one of his tenets dismisses ALL of the other gods including the Betrayers, so he can rule over everything

anyway just some ramblings. Tho it seems it's a real hard campaign to watch for a lot of the fandom because of it's intense moral complexity (and I'll gladly admit I don't understand even most of it obviously), I am enjoying Bells Hells' journey a LOT, this campaign is my first one live and I'm having a blast, very excited to see where this goes.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

praxeus. episode of all time. yaz episode of all time. radiating self-assurance, showing off all the things shes learnt, wanting the doctor to see how good she is at this. at playing doctor and loving it. relishing having the keys to all places, having Secret Knowledge of Alien Things that she is in no way about to share with either jake or gabriela because where would be the rush of power in that?

jake, the (ex-)copper on a sabbatical. "except i dont go telling people im police!" give it a year or two love and youre using this (ex-)title on each of your self-found companions. which youre practicing now for with gabriela, pretty girl to forcefully introduce to her very first alien planet. well, almost.

both the girl best friends who've known each other for 5 years and one of which dies exploding, and the uncommunicative married/separated husbands who are punishing each other or themselves, one of which, again, almost dies exploding, looking like thasmin from every angle. (looking like thoschei, too, further back. because thats whats behind every picture of thasmin whichever way you cut it)

watching the identities slip and slide changing hands between all these parallels. Adam, sick astronaut, experimented on by aliens, clear doctor figure. or is he? jake, on the beach, sits where the doctor sits, saying he doesnt do emotions, admitting to being purposefully unreliable, unable to commit, disliking travelling! jake who can be summoned with a "help me". jake, who doesnt believe adam could really love him. who are we to apply this sentiment to, then? obviously, both. obviously, all.

"we didnt teleport into an active volcano!" yaz exclaims, too surprised at her own success to really be reassuring, as she holds onto her new friend's wrist, not hand, steering, directing, controlling. "im supposed to be the one saying that to you," the doctor responds, a year or three (or six, for yaz) later, when the destination is an active volcano, when in all these years theyve learnt to fly a spaceship together ("adam lang, your job is so easy!") but still havent figured out how to say the things that need saying, when one of them is dying, and the last time yaz was still pretending to be on sabbatical she knew for sure how old she was. two girls roaming.

the doctor wants so badly to figure this out, needs this win, after the identity shock of ruth, all the unanswered questions. even after the betrayal, after all the bad thats been done. "look at us, suki! two brilliant scientists, we can fix this!" whatever you did, whatever youve done, in desperation, wasnt right, but it's not the end. you can fuck it all up, and then you can help to try and unfuck as much as you can. just think. do not get carried away by fear. thats what scientist means, in the thirteenth doctor's mouth. someone who realises problems have solutions. that can be found. if you delay your frightened desperate furious reaction and just think for a second. she wishes she and suki could have worked together. she wishes they could have saved her planet as well as earth. she wishes she could have sent suki home, safe and sound, with solutions for whoever is left there, waiting for her, desperate and afraid. they will never know what happened. they will die sick and in ignorance.

adam offers himself up. hes dying anyway. they need a clinical trial and he is a suitable body to test on. makes you wonder. the master did not tell us everything, and what he didnt we'll never know, but as graham put it "i aint the fantasist round here" (detective morse, by the way, is not a reference i knew, but from wikipedia this character doesnt seem much to match jake's vibes, the master (and/or doctor) however...) what sense of duty might the child have felt? what sense of duty might the child have been talked into? or is that too patronising a way to frame it? what loyalty to her adoptive mother, a scientist and explorer, an example that still loudly resonates in 13, first-time woman, and what loyalty to her adoptive planet, people? what was life like on prehistoric gallifrey? "sparsely populated" is all we get. nothing about the possible reasons. disease doesnt seem out of the question. why did tecteun leave? "dangerous, unsophisticated space travel". why do something so dangerous? just the quest for knowledge? or was there desperation? was there fear?

"maybe," the doctor says, "i'll never know". and tecteun replies with a phrase the doctor herself has tried to leverage against yaz: the journey of a lifetime. "what do you do, 'Doctor'? pick people up, take them with you? you adopt them, use them, for reassurance, for company. theyre your experiments just as you were mine."

could she have been something else? who knows. but adam offered. and before that adam trained. and adam stepped into a rocket. and adam let himself be shot into space. scientist and explorer. and we're all full of plastic, whether we know it or not. and the doctor's a romantic. which is to say an idealist, here for the lost causes, a virus to kill the disease of our own making. infectious, and aware of it.

[everything--random]

I'm making a story! I decided to turn it into a AU for now!

So I had this cute idea...

Your relationship with Joey.

You are Y/n (obviously!), and you have been with Joey since the beginning of Joey Drew Studios. You were Joey's personal assistant due to your uplifting spirit. He felt he could trust you. You knew of all Joey's top-secret things, mainly because he used you almost like a test dummy to explain what was on his mind when he needed a clear head. Or just for the sake of planning. He mainly did this when Henry left, and oh, the hours of ranting you heard.

The Machine.

When the Ink Machine was created, you certainly had a lot of questions, but Joey explained them in due time. You were there the day he first tried it. As absurd as it is, it was kinda fascinating in a way. (I'm skipping, and you can't tell me otherwise!)

Babysitting...

When Ink Demon Bendy was first created, he was shoved into a room and put in chains (brought to you by Thomas Connor), and to no surprise, he was very loud and angry. Many workers started questioning Joey about this. He needed a solution right away before more workers got too suspicious.

In Joey's office, you and him sat in deep thought... Well, more like Joey in deep thought, you were just there because you needed to be. He was very stressed at this point. He needed something to go down there and keep it entertained and quiet... Or someone... That's when the idea popped into his head, he could send someone down there, but who? You asked him if he was alright because he was making weird faces, And that's when another thought popped into his head, why not have you go down there! You're a kind-hearted person with great communication skills. Besides, you already knew about it anyway, so there would be no need to explain anything. Next thing you know, you have a "Secret job" called babysitting (Yay)! Tom gives you the keys to the door and gives you a handful of warnings and instructions.

Bendy!

When you first walk in, Bendy is all but nice and growls at you. You lock the door behind you and sit down on the floor. You figure he can't talk at all. He probably could, but like a baby, he'll learn with time. You decide not to speak either, and just let him get used to your presence. During the time you wait for Bendy to warm up to you, you'll start bringing books to work with you so you have something to do because you doubt he wants you to stare at him. Unlike you, he'll stare at you almost the entire time, studying your movements and looks (if I make this into a story, I want him to call you out on something simple in the future like if you're nervous, you'll itch the back of your neck)

He'll start getting curious about you and what you are looking at (He can understand you, but can't speak). You'll start bringing fun, and interesting books with you to read to him.

Bendy needs to eat something, so you bring him some bacon soup, which Joey allows (It's also Joey's excuse to get rid of the extra in Storige). Bendy will later get sick of the soup. (That's why he eats ink flesh! :). One day, you'll bring a bag of marshmallows to work with you because you were hungry on your way over. When you get there, Bendy decides to watch you eat some marshmallows, and he instead eats his bacon soup. You notice him staring at your marshmallows, so you decide to walk over to him and give him some. He sits there for a bit and messes with them, gently squishing them between his fingers, finding the weird but oddly satisfying texture fun. After snapping out of his trance, he finally eats it.

Thus marks the day you always brought a bag of marshmallows to work...

He finds your touch very wired. Since you're human, you're ten times warmer than he is. It's oddly comforting to him. When you're touching him, the ink on him that you're touching feels all tingly. It shows him how different you and him are... His ink can easily stain you and your clothes, but you can easily clean up his stains on your skin by scrubbing it with alcohol. Sadly, your clothes are forever wrecked. :(

You feel the need to teach him how to speak, so one day you decide to teach him how to say words that would help you both during your time together. Sometimes, he'll listen in on conversations elsewhere in the studio, and slowly he'll start to gain a vocabulary on his own. (By the time you see him in Bendy and The Dark Revival, he'll have a great vocabulary and won't need help anymore)

Why did the place shut down?

The reason why the place went down was because of bankruptcy. Your inky friend didn't belong to you and was still Joey's, so you sadly had to depart. Joey will have somehow shoved him into the bendy realm with the not-real Henry.

After the studio went bankrupt, you had many dreams of Bendy and wished to see him again.

You honestly missed the old cartoons, you missed Bendy, and you missed your coworkers. After a few years, you heard Joey died, and the ownership of Bendy was now in the hands of Arch Gate Studios. After hearing they were hiring, you applied for a job in a flash. Not that you were hoping Bendy would be there, but because you were happy working there in the past (You're depressed). You became friends with Audrey and reunited with Allison and Tom.

How you get to Bendy and the Dark Revival.

You went to work early in the morning and decided to go down the elevator in the morning after Audry disappeared and look at the museum of your old friend, Joey. You soon find the Ink Machine and find ink puddles on the ground. A million thoughts were building up in your head as you were backing up to get the janitor. You then accidentally bumped into a switch, and the doors slammed shut behind you. The room fills with ink again, and you slowly get dragged into it. And now you're in Bendy and the Dark Revival!

My end thoughts.

I'll try to write this at my speed, so please don't rush me! I'm planning on having this story be two books split between the games after Bankruptcy and the beginning of Arch Gate Studios. Hope you guy like it! So long and farewell my Randoms!

[hex-maniac-rambles]

Fuck it, pokemon oc info be upon ye

First up we got Atlas

Hes..... somewhere around his mid-20's, i dont know i havent thought about it

He was a normal pokemon trainer on a journey starting from unova going across all the regions, but he ended up joining team skull and sticking around Alola for a long while.

He joined the team just for the hell of it, really, since he thought it would be fun to let loose and cause chaos. (that, and he thought Guzma looked cool..) Over his time in the gang, due to his skills in pokemon battling, he ended up becoming an admin alongside Plumeria.

Atlas specialises in dark types, and his pokemon team includes: an alolan meowth, deino, zorua, malamar and an alolan muk.

I know he looks like he would be smart, but hes actually really really stupid. He threw his common sense out the window when he joined the gang, and now his solution to anything is to 'set it on fire!'. Thankfully, Plumeria keeps him under control and doesnt let him commit arson. He also cant cook for SHIT. He has multiple times almost set the team skull base on fire while trying to cook. (he has since been banned from having lighters, matches, or touching any kind of device that heats up.)

Next up weve got Z / Zee!

She has the intelligence of a 11 year old, as well as the looks of one

Shes not actually human, shes just a zorua that really wants to be human. She grew up watching people go about their days, and found that she wanted to be like that too.

Even though zoruas ability is called illusion, in most of the pokemon media they seem to be able to interact with their surroundings, so i assume its more like transformation. Thats what im going off of here.

Z is mute due to her vocal cords not being equipped for human speech. (going off of the pokemon anime, zoruas seem to not have the ability to talk, but zoroarks do.) Her disguise, however, is near to perfect. She has spent months honing her illusion ability, and managed to mix and match features from people she had seen to make an illusion she was happy with. an illusion she could call herself.

Ever since she got her illusion perfected, she has spent most of her time in it. She lives in the woods by herself, just like a pokemon would, except she sometimes wanders into town to cause some mischief. I havent decided where exactly she lives, but id imagine her to be well known around there.

At the beginning, she would obviously be illiterate and unable to communicate in anything other than gestures and body language, but she does eventually learn sign language! She learns how to read and write as well, but shes not very good at either of those...

While on the topic of Zoruas trying to be human..

Here we have Fuyu 冬! She resides in hisui

She has the intelligence of a 11 year old as well

She is also a zorua pretending to be human, but for different reasons as Z. Fuyu was hoping to infiltrate the towns of people in order to learn more about them, specifically their weaknesses. Like most hisuian zoruas, she holds deep resentment for people.

Her kimonos collar is intentionally the wrong way, because hisuian zoruas are technically undead. Thats why she looks a little lifeless too. I know their illusions dont seem to work the same way as a normal zoruas, but shh..... let me pretend..... let me pretend she can be a real girl..........

Her plan was to learn humans weaknesses in order to kill them all, but unfortunately for her, she got attached to one of them and abandoned her objective. That someone was warden Ingo, because id imagine he wouldnt be as familiar with the legends of dangerous shapeshifting pokemon, and thus wouldnt be too suspicious of Fuyu. Ingo was nice to Fuyu one time, and she was like ''oh. humans can be nice?'' and decided to just follow him around out of curiosity. Long story short, they get to know eachother over time (the best they can with Fuyu being unable to communicate, anyway) and end up having a sort of father-daughter dynamic.

pretty much everyone in hisui is suspicious of Fuyu, but Ingo vouches for her humanity, even after he finds out her true nature.

Last but not least,

Silas!

Hes like..... somewhere in his 30's... he just got really good genes..

Silas is a retired pokemon trainer. He used to travel around the regions but eventually settled down in unova and started up his own little flower shop in Nimbasa. Its a little two tier building, the first floor serves as the store, and he lives on the second floor. Hes the only worker there, if his pokemon dont count. He was born in Alola, but soon embarked on his journey at the ripe age of 12 like most other trainers. His first Pokemon was actually his phantump, but he kept it secret from professor Kukui because he wanted to get a rowlet. (he got one)

By the time he settled down and started the flower shop, his Pokemon team consisted of; his Phantump named Thumpy, a Decidueye named Cider, a Shuppet named Doll, a Morelull named Marianne and a Petilil named Lily. He likes small pokemon, so most of them arent evolved.

Hes quite introverted, and has a sort of gloomy aura about him. His voice is soft, airy, and quite hard to hear. He pauses mid sentence often, and his way of talking is quite creepy to a lot of people. He looks quite uncanny when he smiles, even though he doesnt intend to, thus he often scares off customers…. phantump always floating over his shoulder doesnt help... Overall, despite his pretty face, his behavior makes him seem quite weird to normal people.

thatt is all. if anyone read through all of this, thank you.... i lvoe rambling......

[psihawaii]

i know nothing about mashup week but i do wanna hear ur thoughts on trans scott

first of all: thank you for indulging me!!

second of all: obligatory LISTEN/READ MASHUP WEEK: MEGAMIX!! ill probably make a separate propaganda post anyway but plsss. mashup tournament that scott won three years ago that he now has to host and interview every1 and i like how he’s written better than most collabs (where hes not just. himself obviously.) write him. host says the tournament is a lot more like wii sports resort now and doesnt elaborate.

third of all: ooooooooookay so. This really got away from me im gonna put the rest under a readmore.

i’m gonna refer to them w/ they/them just for simplicity, but let the record show i don’t think they care that much either way/i switch up pronouns whenever i talk abt stw AHDHDJ (my main hc for a while was no pronouns scott just bc of how the descriptions are written hahahahahaha get itttttttttt)

i’ve Alwaysssss thought scott (the character obvi. do i have to keep clarifying that here too, im always gonna be referring to the character in this postSHDJDJ) was trans ever. since i joined the fandom in late 2021. Partly because borderline forever reminds me a lot of how i realized i was nonbinary (realizing somethings wrong and then course correcting by just… doing the opposite and wondering why that couldnt possibly be the solution.) but mostly because borderline forever is just Like That. . But more on that later

OUTSIDE OF THAT so much of how they act is sosososo deeply trans to me, or at the very least very egg-like and in denial deeply. THE THING that got me deep into stw initially was gifts of gaming because what the fuck man. scott’s very public breakdown because they feel extremely alienated from their peers and that this isn’t an isolated incident!!!!!! (finding other people unrelatable that is (and that’s probably also an autism and/or aroace thing but it can be all of those at once. Smile.) like so often is scott self deprecating abt how nobody cares abt them or their interests or how desperate they are for attention. dude.)

and like. okay so i made an entire nonbinary dysphoria comp already but there are so many. weird throwaway jokes. that aren’t… you know directly about them being trans/dysphoric but about how they hate facial hair or their voice or hated that they couldn’t have ‘girl toys’ growing up or that they shower fully clothed or that they’ll just. roleplay as a girl.

(and i was gonna have a whole bit about… i think you could make some kind of point about how scott ‘roleplays’ as a girl in specifically romantic/flirting contexts (tinder + speed dating) and how that could play jnto their dysphoria, but i also do just think they’re aroace. but there’s something there)

and no matter the intention of the jokes they’re still like. canon. (and i was gonna do a whole thing abt how scott the woz (the show) treats continuity basically being that. jokes + ‘throwaway lines’ establish canon things because they keep being brought back, and that lore is (with few exceptions) consistent. it’s fun. and meaning that these things are (assumedly) things scott thinks/does/how they act even off screen.)

and also i guess if im gonna talk abt trans scott i could At Least dedicate an entire paragraph to borderline forever because holy shit man. Before i rewatched a bunch of episodes this year, i of course had it in my head that borderline forever was totally trans coded but i sorta reasoned that that was my own headcanon clouding my perception and that it wouldnt be that blatant (<in quotes because im sure The Man Himself didnt intend for it to be read this way, but its fun to interpret it as such) but no it really is.

what do u mean theres been an unseen force in your life that’s always been there but you hadn’t noticed until you experienced internalized transphobia talked about something tangentially related, that’s now preventing you from living your life and doing the things you want to do. That isn’t directly harming you, and that other people can’t notice so they dismiss you. What do u mean.

Closing in is literally a song about how they can’t believe they’ve been living their life like this and how they feel like they’re suffocating from the idea of continuing to live like this. They saw the border glow. If you will (sorry.)

The ending of borderline forever is pretty… its… well i guess for me to really have definitive thoughts on it i would have to decide on what i think the allegory is because scott taking the border back serves different purposes for different ones, good and bad. In terms of the trans allegory, I initially considered that it was like him. Accepting transness as part of themselves and learning to live with it and move on from that (effectively transitioning just not. Outwardly (?)). Until my boyfriend (forced to watch every scott the woz lore episode for (for the most part) the first time with me) pointed out n. No it kinda just seems like they can’t imagine themselves as any different/better and thinks This Is As Good As It Gets so they retreat back to their status quo. And like. Huh. Yeah. 100% it’s still affecting them negatively and they hate it but they’re ignoring it now they saved the world and they never have to succumb to the horror of being understood and perceived i mean no one else has to worry abt this ever again.

like… two years ago i wrote a fic about nonbinary scott called Abiura Di Me (it’s never getting finished, i was originally gonna do a little comic to end things off but it felt kind of ehh. the only way i’m finishing it is if i completely start over. which who knows.) and, despite not rlly having this interpretation at the time, i did want to kind of explore scott like that, thinking they’re ‘content’ with their life now and wondering why they still feel unhappy/unfulfilled.

In general scott feels like a character that’s so… rigid and strict with their identity/attributes of themselves in a way that, often, makes them miserable, or at the very least in a way that they’re self deprecating abt like i said b4. (i.e. their virginity, and how it oscillates something they take pride in vs. something that they’re ashamed of (b4 accepting it in barrel blast)(youtuber slash tumblr user prim m, in description of their barrel blast mashup did a rlly interesting lil. few sentences of analysis abt this in particular!!), but is, to them at least, a key part of who they are that they have to keep asserting + how they talk abt themselves liking video games and how, similarly it oscillates between smthn that brings them a lot of joy and again, smthn that they’re ashamed of thats another reason they feel isolated, but is nonetheless. Probably THE defining thing about scott.)

And while this^ feels like a general internalized transphobia thing, it’s probably THE reason i think they’re nonbinary specifically, although i fuck with transfem scott severely. I really like the idea of scott unburdening themselves from any kind of labels and kinda just being happy Existing, it’s essentially what they already want/think they already have just with less expectation put upon them to perform. You could say. Preventing themselves from being put into a box or. Or yknow… some kind of blue borde-[i am killed.]

But anyway to answer your question trans scott is my lifeblood i love them a lot. I like… half joke their egg has been fully cracked now bc of the bits they’re pulling now (mainly. Changing their name in same name, different game and. all of gamer products.) (and side note even though i can glean Transness from any1 of these jokes and that… in a lot of cases scott Is the butt of the joke in them they don’t rlly feel meanspirited most of the time. whether thats bc im in denial ro theres smthn to it thats any1s guess. Tee hee.) i think they’re figuring stuff out and how they want to be perceived and if this is really something they want for themselves (is, but going abt it weirdly/making a joke of it and not taking it seriously (again, goes w the whole self deprecating rigid identity thing!!)

I don’t think scott changes much upon transitioning. Even though i think in the stw universe hrt/gender affirming surgery does… pretty much whatever you want it to and none of what you don’t want (i’m going off the… one ama where he said smthn along the lines of the stw universe is a perfect bubble where nothing bad happens + being able to get treated for murder + how i think scott the real person would think that kinda stuff works AHDNDIJDDJ and also cus i think its funny) i dont think scott would Want to change much physically. But i really like the idea of them keeping dyed blue bits framing their face (get it.) + slightly longer hair. and boobs cause i think thats awesome. personality wise they’re exactly the same and still suck though. But w/o shame and i love them

[grindy-cog]

How can you ship Malex or like Maria after what she and Michael did to Alex? It's disgusting! Didn't know you were into non-con, just filter them.

Hi Anon,

Well, I’m sorry to see that something is obviously triggering you but there’s a simple solution to that - unfollow me, block me, forget this blog exists. I’m not going to filter them in any way but you certainly can on your Tumblr - you know, your safe space?

But well, since you actually came to my blog and made it my problem, I’ll bite. What non-con are you talking about? The infamous threesome? Well, guess what? I didn’t like it either! Not the way the writers decided to deliver it, anyway. But to say that Alex was actually forced to participate by either Michael or Maria… Have we even watched the same scene? Don’t get me wrong, I wish I had known it was coming, I wish I could unsee it somehow but wtf, Anon?

Why some of you are acting as if Alex was some fragile little boy with no way to protect himself? News flash, out of the three of them, he was the trained killer there! And like it or not, it’s canon that he always had power over Michael. I fear to know what it had to be like in the RNM fandom when that scene was first aired, if this is how some of you are still acting 4-5 years later.

The reason why I personally hate that writing choice, is because of how unhealthy it was for each and every single one of them, yet it hadn’t been talked about by them later on. They were all in a really bad mental state that night, Maria included! You lot like to forget about the fact that she was losing her mum and learning upsetting things about herself and her family. Michael was the worst of them three at that point and Alex, while being hurt that night, was in fact in the best mental condition, though that doesn’t say much, given how he did let his demons and insecurity do a number on him. It had been shown the morning after, when he was the only one to say that - feeling loved or not - maybe they shouldn’t have done that.

So yeah, Anon. It was unhealthy, maybe even disgusting in some ways; born out of deep self loathing, pain, loneliness and desperation of each party involved, but was sure as hell FULLY consensual. Cause if you want to see it as non-con on Alex, then you must see that he did just the same to Michael and Maria.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[pommunist]

Yes, it's the same penguin anon from earlier haha (obviously signing anonymous asks doesn't really mean anything because anyone could use the same signature, but I don't know why anyone would bother. I just did it so if i ever need to refer to a previous ask it's gonna be way easier)

Anyway, something I keep coming back to is how while I obviously don't know anything about Q's thought process, the fact that his immediate reaction seemed to be to treat his lower level workers as if they were enemy spies (whether it was intentional or not! That's just how it came off!) is just a good example of how not to be a good leader and how not to de-escalate

That's where this all really went wrong for him, right? Sure, the whole thing becoming public was the inciting incident for the controversy, but it could still have been salvaged at that point because Q himself wasn't being accused of anything and public opinion was still largely positive towards him. They could have negotiated a solution, or at least a path to a solution, or at least agreed to negotiate at a later date after he'd had a chance to seek legal counsel if he wanted to be extra careful

I guess it might be too late now so it's kinda pointless to talk about it, but maybe pointing this out will help someone else avoid the same mistake in the future

If you treat someone like an enemy, they're more likely to become hostile, and if you treat someone like a spy, they're gonna get more determined to find out what you're hiding

(Obviously that doesn't justify the other side crossing the line and escalating further, but it shouldn't come as a surprise either, especially if it's the only thing you ever respond to)

- 🐧

Well that worked bc I recognised you hehe ! I also find it super cute that people sign with their favorite emoji I should start doing that 🧐

Thinking about the alternate universe in which, after Q’s first stream about it, he and the admins in charge would have contacted the victims, listened to their demands and solved things amicably. Would’ve been way better for the admins, Qstudios and the server as well but, alas 🥲

I mean there’s still a chance for them to do so, if legal procedures haven’t started (and in case of french law, even if they have, cause legal process would start with negotiations) but who is to say they’re gonna take it now.

And about seeing the victims as enemies yeah…. We have to remember that while we talk about how some things can be difficult to say because of legalities, at some point you have to ask yourself what the priority between genuinely wanting to fix your wrongs and trying to avoid a lawsuit at all cost. And of course tensions are gonna rise when you treat your victims as if they were haters coming for your project instead of trying to mend the bridge between you and them 😵‍💫😵‍💫

(Btw whenever I talk about legal issues its always in the context of admins vs Qstudios and never about Q vs that one higher up who allegedly is the root of all problems)

[vigilskeep]

#1 purveyor of divorced headcanons cruelly anti anders/justice divorce

i like divorce narratives not ripping the poor guy in half narratives 😭

okay to be clear. i’m not fundamentally opposed to exploring the concept, i just personally strongly dislike it being presented as idk a solution or a happy ending. idk if this is universally true but in my experience the desire to separate them tends to go along with a kind of “awakening anders was better and justice is the problem/what’s wrong with him/the part of him i don’t like” line of thought. also, as clumsy and cruel an analogy for neurodiversity as the anders/justice plotline is, it’s obviously playing with that idea and i can’t help but be automatically turned off by the optics of being able to idk rip part of him out and thus zap him back to normal. i’m not explaining this well and i’m not getting into all that and there’s other reasons but anyway. in summary. i dislike it and i’m not interested in it

i do characterise anders and justice once bound together as very much sides of the same guy. i’ve talked about this in more detail before but suffice it to say while it’s obviously more complicated than them being one person they’re not two separate people in one body either. i take “he’s gone now. he’s part of me. it’s not like we can... have a conversation. i feel his thoughts as my own. not even the greatest scholar could tell you where i end and he begins” pretty much at face value because who would know more abt what it’s like than literally the guy experiencing it. i don’t think justice is ever even momentarily absent in anders’ dialogue, actions, whatever, you can always hear him imo. even if you could somehow attempt to cut justice out of him, you’re tearing the guy in half when there’s no clear line of separation and hasn’t been for years. i think that outcome would look pretty horrific, to be honest

[illegiblehandwriting1]

wanna ask this cause i really like your fics, and wanna see how you think on this 👀 so a lot of fanon has other links being bitter towards hylia, but wouldn’t it make more sense for sky to have a bitterness/fear of Hylia? considering it was confirmed to his face that he was legit MADE to be a hero, fight demise and had his entire journey manipulated by hylia? and would that cause conganitive dissonance with his relationship with zelda?👀👀👀

HI hi hello :D jksgrzfnhieaklmgrjihdkloifndk THANK YOU SO MUCH, I'M SO GLAD YOU LIKE MY FICS I APPRECIATE YOU SO MUCH <3 <3 <3

you just asked, like, one of my favorite questions ever rjghskgbvjkdehgijk sorry if this gets...long

Ok ok ok ok I COMPLETELY agree with you!!!! I think sky is a man of extremes - he either loves you or he despises you. For the most part, he adores everyone (other than a few key people cough cough ghirahim and demise cough cough). His whole convo with Zelda right before she sealed herself away fucked with him SO MUCH, because suddenly he is trying to cope about the fact that the goddess his entire culture idolizes manipulated him, and what makes it worse is that Zelda is the reincarnation of her.

ANYway, i think he absolutely hates Hylia, yeah! I think he despises her and is so bitter towards her and would be completely fine if she straight-up died! In my mind, he doesn't like any deity, really. He's had enough interactions with gods that he is absolutely comfortable telling them they all suck and he hates them lmao, but that's a tangent. It makes a lot more sense to me if he hated Hylia, but what might make others to disagree is the fact that Zelda was Hylia. Fortunately, I have a solution for that as well!!

When Zelda talks to him right before she seals herself, she mentions that she didn't know, she was happy to be his zelda, etc. So in my brain, after Demise dies, she has a full-on identity crisis (and probably also a "oh my gosh Link probably hates me" Moment cuz she knows him so well) where she's not sure who she is, if she's a goddess or just Zelda, cuz now she has all these memories that she remembers but she didn't experience them (Sun and Wild would be besties and you can't change my mind lol). So i think that Sky couldn't hate Zelda, and so they both work it out and they can both separate Hylia from Zelda and see that they're two different people. So would there be dissonance in their relationship? Sure, briefly, but they love each other and they work it out and both of them dislike Hylia, they're such a power couple and will fight god :D

As for fanon having other Links be bitter towards Hylia, I guess it works?? idk it works at first glance, but then i always remember that they have no fucking clue who Hylia is. Wild knows, obviously, but he's on good terms with her. I just think it's occasionally a little funny to see the Links ragging on Hylia when they canonically don't know she exists.

(my personal hcs are that the Links, especially Ledge and Time who are typically the most outspoken about it in fanon, pretty much just want nothing to do with the gods. They're more focused on the immediate "i can save this person and the world" part. Also, Time has his whole Master Sword thing. but in general, i think that any bitterness towards the gods (most likely the golden goddesses) is pretty surface-level and they don't think much about it. Not a single Link would regret saving the world. I think that's something I don't often see - they chose to be heroes, and they would do it again without hesitation. They just wish it didn't cause so much trauma. However, Warrior having religious trauma due to fighting a war and feeling like he and his soldiers have been abandoned, similar to WW1 soldiers, is just something so important to me :P)

uhhhhh i feel like there's something i missed but idk. I've thought about this A Lot. Actually, if you want to see a really clear-cut example of how I think Sky feels about Hylia, you can check out Smoke & Ashes, which is a LOT of angst so PLEASE BE CAREFUL, but chapters 13 and 14 are very prominently about how they feel about each other (in my head). yes i am shilling, but i love this fic lmao.

hope you have a lovely day, anon!!! tysm :D

[nientedal]

my phone is being annoying but BOOK EMOJI

ahahaha omg 😂 ok so book emoji, talking about a fic i have in my head but have never written down!

stereotypical amnesia fic beneath the cut, lol

Roxanne gets into some kind of accident and hits her head. Wakes up in the hospital with her mother dozing in a chair. Mom is OVERJOYED Roxanne is awake; it's been sort of touch and go for a while as to whether she would wake up at all. She's had people working on a solution but this will be such good news, hooray, she's lucid, she's feeling mostly fine--

And then Roxanne sees the ring on her finger, and oh. Okay. She is not fine, actually. She's lost nearly all of the last three years, and several prior to that are exceptionally spotty.

Her mom is left with the unenviable position of navigating some...ah...fairly major news. Yes, you're very happy together. Three rings, right, wedding band and two engagement; you're sort of...well, also married to his best friend? What's that word your brother is...? Aromantic, queerplatonic, yes. Neither of them is anyone I would have ever picked for you, but you're happy and I do know when I'm beaten, so... well, anyway, the only reason your man isn't here is I made him go home to take a shower and a nap. And to start putting together a better MRI scanner so he would stop fretting over your charts. Yes, he's building it himself. And no I haven't said his name yet, and... yes you do probably already know him, it's just-- well, you see-- um-- tell, tell you what, let's call Wayne, shall we? I think this will probably sound a little better coming from Wayne--

So that's a thing.

Roxanne takes the news...not well, but not totally poorly either. Mostly she's just stunned. But if her mother can admit she's happy with Megamind, that says a lot. That's...promising. Reassuring. And Wayne confirms everything her mother has said, which is similarly reassuring.

Megamind, on the other hand, takes it VERY poorly. Wayne says she's awake and his heart leaps, and then Wayne says there's a slight problem, her last clear memory of you is from early 2009, and his heart sort of collapses in his chest. He's been working on his self-worth and has come a long way but he's had a long two weeks and right now, from where he's sitting, all he can think is that Roxanne was a miracle that is not going to happen twice. This is absolutely the end for them. He'll start researching divorce lawyers immediately.

(Roxanne is initially of the opinion that yes, that is probably for the best, but Wayne convinces her to at least give the little guy a chance. Come on, Roxie, for Minion’s sake. Please?)

From here it's sort of...Roxanne slowly regaining her footing. Traumatic brain injuries are a helluva drug; her mind works differently from how it used to and it's a struggle sometimes in ways she doesn't expect. And she can't remember things she wants to and it's SO disorienting, and Megamind and Minion are obviously both struggling as well for other reasons but they are being so lovely with her, and she keeps shying away and it's awful, she hates it. Megamind gave her a photo album to maybe help her put some things together, and it isn't really working yet but maybe if she just keeps at it she'll be able to remember just a little more-- okay, Wayne was right, he is worth trying, but come ON, brain, fucking WORK--

Megamind wanders down to the kitchen in the wee hours one morning a few weeks later for a snack or something and Roxanne is there with the album. She's...having a little bit of a moment. Little bit of a cry. She's sitting at the kitchen table looking at this one picture that someone took of all three of them-- Megamind and Roxanne and Minion when they were on some vacation somewhere together and Roxanne snuck up behind the other two to pounce on them and hug both of them at once. So she's in the middle with her arms around their shoulders and all three of them are laughing. And she's like, "I can't remember this and I WANT TO, we look so HAPPY and I don't know if I'll ever get any of this back-- you're so sweet to me now and your bed smells like home and I don't know why and I want to, I want to--"

He's been keeping his distance since she came home. Has been waiting and letting her initiate whatever contact between them. But he goes to her now and pulls her into a hug without thinking because he cannot fucking stand it, and she just wraps her arms around him as hard as she can.

"Okay," he says, patting her hair and trying to think of what to do and mostly just wanting to burst into tears right along with her. "Okay. It's okay."

It's not okay. It's not okay and she doesn't know how to make it be okay, but it's been a few weeks and Roxanne is tired of waiting to maybe remember and tired of hoping for something that isn't coming and tired in general, and so she asks him to come to bed with her. Just stay with her, please; she's freaking out and she wants to be held, and fuck it. Fuck it. Come to bed.

In the morning at breakfast, hearing all this, Minion says, okay. So, photo album isn't working, or if it is it's not working the way we were hoping for. New plan: let's go on another trip? Let's all go somewhere together. Traveling. Maybe go see some places we've seen already, definitely go see some places we've never seen. Maybe your old memories will come back and maybe they won't, but either way we'll make new memories and have a good time making them. Let's go.

.............And idk if that's the end of the story or if there's more story that's just them going around places. I haven't played much with the traveling itself

[tobiasdrake]

Yuma's found his nerve.

Creed says you're supposed to be a lone wolf and rely on nobody. But hey, maybe the creed's full of shit. Maybe you should take it down and burn it as soon as you get back to the agen--

Oh, wait, Makoto already did that for us.

Thanks, brother-from-another-test-tube!

Just. Don't. Lose sight of the "to make everyone happy" clause of that. The truth doesn't necessarily make everyone happy in and of itself. Like all things, what matters most is what you do with it.

I think it's worth trying. Why don't you? Better to reach for the stars and fall short than to keep your feet on the ground and never strive for more.

The reveal that Mystery Phantom Yuma was Mystery Phantom Makoto all along is a clever twist. I like that.

It was a sitcom-esque Wacky Misunderstanding! I called that! I just thought he was going to be Real Yuma.

Also, fuck you and your adherence to the Great Man of History philosophy. I don't think either Yuma or Makoto can singlehandedly save Kanai Ward. But I have faith that Kanai Ward can save Kanai Ward.

Yuma: Yuma Kokohead quit to go make ramen! That means his name and identity can be mine now, for good! No backsies! Makoto: Wait, so you're forsaking the name and identity of Number One entirely? Yuma: You heard me. Makoto: Oh cool. That means we don't even need to fight anymore. I get to be Number One now, for good. Yuma: Wait, that's not what I-- Makoto: Ah ah ah, no backsies. Yuma: I'm not going to let you take over the WDO! Makoto: Be quiet, Yuma. I don't think a rookie detective should speak that way to his boss. Now go make me a pot of coffee!

Danganronpa's always struggled with making its climax feel intense. For a series that is essentially just people standing around talking at each other until they can figure out the solution, it's hard to give it that CLIMACTIC. ACTION. FEEL. How do you make a Final Boss Fight in a mystery-solver?

Ace Attorney runs into similar issues, having to strike a careful balance between dynamically fighting off an archvillain with words and oh my god when will it end why is he still going.

But here? Here, we get to punch the bad guy right in his fucking face.

It's a nice bit of escalation with some genuinely cool imagery.

That ultimately does little to disguise the fact that this fight is still just Yuma briefly summarizing the facts of the case, then smacking the facts with his sword to make them bean Makoto in the face.

Sounds fake but go on.

That sounds more believable. Makoto wanted to do all of this in the Mystery Labyrinth so that he could take another look at everything he's done and reassess himself and the decisions he's made. I can believe that. That sounds like a thing he'd do.

You took too much on yourself, man. That's the problem with the WDO's creed. It discourages cooperation.

As I've often said, there is no greater problem-solving resource than another human being. Kanai Ward doesn't need a Great Man of History to save it. It needs a chance to crowdsource a better solution.

I don't know what the answer is. I don't have a PHD in genetics or culinary arts. But someone might.

Hold up, are we talking about turning off the cloud generator right now? Because that's not the right answer. Definitely not.

Your options suck and I hate you. Let's do something else instead.

Oh shit, they really are going to make us choose. The metaphysics demand it.

I mean. Obviously we reap Makoto's soul. It's the only way to leave and it's not like it will matter anyway. It has been firmly established that homunculi can regenerate from soul-reaping. If the defective homunculi can do it then Makoto can too. This wouldn't kill him in any way that matters.

I don't want to kill Makoto. I think he has good intentions and just needs to learn to see past his own bullshit. Fortunately, this won't kill him so let's bounce!

I mean, it probably will actually perma-kill him despite violating the internal consistency of the game's metaphysics. Writers tend to forget what they've already established when they try to write these Cruel Choice conclusions. That same problem hit Life is Strange like a ton of brick with their poorly-conceived final choice.

But I choose to hold the game to what it's previously established. If soul-reaping could perma-kill homunculi then we wouldn't have seen Yakou and the other killers in the Restricted Area.

If your metaphysics will allow that, sure.

Yuma's coming around. Discarding emotion to reach a logical conclusion is a bad way of helping people.

My dude, idealism solves everything. No progress would ever been made if it weren't for idealistic fools believing it could be done. We wouldn't have planes today if some dipshit hadn't gone, "I'm gonna try to fly, and fuck you if you think I can't."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA YES

I did not think we'd actually get Yuma this far but he made it! Let's crowdsource this shit! In this complex moral debate between Yuma and Makoto, I fucking won!

This final chapter has been extremely validating for me. ^_^