#arcsblades

[anneapocalypse]

rvb fandom for the choose violence ask game! 1, 12, 17, and 24.

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm a few years out of the loop on RvB fandom at this point, so take anything I say about "the fandom" with that in mind, and a huge grain of salt.

1. the character everyone gets wrong

I freely admit that I've always been brutally picky about depictions of Carolina, and I think I've griped about most facets of that in one meta post or another over the years! There was the Freelancer-era hate for her of course, writing her off as caring about winning above all else and ignoring her demonstrated concern for her team members (something even later seasons seemed to forget happened), the awful bitch who broke precious perfect York's heart, etc etc but there was also a sort of overcompensation that happened later, where people liked Carolina and wanted to portray her sympathetically but seemed to struggle to reconcile that with the fact that she is, in fact, prickly and difficult a lot of the time! So you'd get these sort of smoothed-over versions of Freelancer and present-day season 10 Carolina that were certainly well-intentioned, but still, for me, kind of off-base in terms of who the character actually is.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Since I just talked about Carolina, and since I think she is in fact fairly well-liked these days as female RvB characters go, I will say instead that Kimball is a wonderful, complex character who deserves so much love always and forever. I don't think Kimball is unpopular in the sense of being hated, but more in the sense of having fallen out of relevance in recent canon and becoming, along with the entirety of the Chorus arc, tragically overlooked.

My hottest take about Kimball, I guess, is that for a lot of season 13's conflicts, she is objectively right and Doyle is wrong. The arc she has to go on in season 13 isn't realizing that Doyle is right about combat strategy (if you listen to what he's actually suggesting, his ideas are almost universally terrible) but recognizing that he, as an individual person, is not responsible for what happened to Chorus or to her people, that most of the surviving Feds are inheritors of the conflict rather than instigators of it, that the people they were originally rebelling against are all dead, and that working together to fight back against Charon is Chorus's only hope for survival. Flattening that into "both sides are wrong" is kind of insulting to Kimball and I think misrepresents the nature of the conflict. Also, I think her season 12 characterization is so important and everything she does in 13 needs to be read in light of that. Her greatest strength is the faith she has in people.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

More love for Chorus in general!

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

Mental illness headcanons as a cover for "my fave is the best/woobiest/poorest little meow meow and your fave sucks and is an abuser/war criminal" slapfights. (Please note I am not saying mental illness headcanons are bad in and of themselves, just that I've seen them tangled up in so much terrible discourse over the years.) If there's one thing I can confidently say about RvB, it's that everyone's a war criminal and they all have PTSD and are wet and sad. Let's move on with our lives.

[kdinjenzen]

“Two people who can initially, at best, barely stand each other but also compliment each other so shockingly well that, because of the circumstances, are now forced to work together and slowly bond..."

OKAY BUT. Can I mention tho that it takes them literally all of two cutscenes before they're opening up to each other about incredibly personal topics. Fang laments about her lost Focus and messed up brand and waxes poetic about doing anything to save Vanille (watch Lightning's face after Fang says this, she gives this very "oh..." expression of understanding about it bc of course she would). And Lightning admits she'd pull the trigger if she was ordered to after refusing to answer Sazh on that very topic at the beginning of the game, and she laments about not having a future without having anything to fight for (to which Fang has a beautiful answer and shows us pretty much from the get-go that she understands Lightning on a fundamental level, and Lightning clearly demonstrates the same for Fang in chapter 9).

Like!!! This is Fang and Lightning we're talking about. Lightning's a private person by nature, and Fang has so many emotional issues it's insane. But here they are talking about their feelings and shit almost immediately after they meet. Double points to Lightning after spending the first half of the game being standoffish with almost everyone she met lmao. I swear these two were made for each other.

AND THIS! MY DEAR ARCSBLADE IS WHY LIGHTNING/FANG/VANILLE IS PERFECT!

If not for VANILLE I highly doubt that Fang would have opened up.

If not for VANILLE I highly doubt that Lightning would have become more honest.

Vanille is THE GLUE! THE CHANGE! THE LOVE!

Lighting and Fang without Vanille is a violently passionate and destructive fantastical love.

Lightning and Fang WITH Vanille becomes a much softer, much kinder, and much more truly loving dynamic.

If not for VANILLE... Fang and Lightning would have been at each other’s throats from the jump and they would have stayed there.

Fang cannot emotionally communicate well at all, her heart and mind are not built for it, she’s been beaten down by a world that claimed it was only trying to “protect its people” and watching people die and despite having already PAID HER DEBT she has been dragged back into a war that already saw fit to use her as a human bullet and nothing more.

Lighting mirrors this but from the opposite perspective. Her military training is burned into her DNA by this point and she’s COLD and HARDENED by everything... except she is not so far gone that she doesn’t miss who she wished she could have been.

Fang and Lightning have similar goals, similar purposes, but they do things so differently that under any other circumstances they would be at each other with tooth and nail... even though they want the same thing. PEACE.

Vanille balances them out, even in a “non-romantic” sense.

If Lightning hadn’t gotten to know Vanille, if Vanille hadn’t BEEN THERE, Lightning would have been on a very different path through the game. Lightning would have happily become a murderer for her goals if not for the change Vanille (and to a point some of the others) helped make in her.

And Fang is not responsive to anyone, given what happened to her who could blame the woman, but her lack of responsiveness to ANYONE ELSE was leading her to a path of self destruction that she would have welcomed. Vanille snaps her back to reality.

What I’m saying IS...

What I’m saying IS...

Fang/Vanille/Lightning is not just a GOOD OT3, but a DAMN NEAR PERFECT ONE because they compliment each other in a sense of PURPOSE and PERSONAL GROWTH.

They have the ability to help each other HEAL and push each other to DO BETTER.

[agentsokka]

i am. apparently lacking in impulse control. 

[mooglepalooza]

Masterlist has been updated!

Be sure to check out some of the blogs we recently added! Go here to see the full masterlist and go here to be added~

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[anneapocalypse]

11 and 16 (heehee)

11. How do you come up with your fic titles?

I think my best/most effective titles are the ones that come to me with the story concept (The Drop was like that; so was After You), or early in the writing. Sometimes, a title just comes to me that feels perfect for the story and its main character, and I think the Sera fic I just started posting, A Pot to Piss In, is one of those. ;) I do use song lyrics or lines from a poem occasionally, but generally the song or poem needs to have been a major inspiration for me to go that way (Between the Daylight and the Deep Sea, If I Speak for the Dead). Most often, if I don't already have a title in mind, I will look within the fic itself for a line to pull from it as a title (Not Yet, No Woman Rules Alone). I especially like it if I can connect the title to some text or concept that is important in-universe (Cast Your Bread Upon the Water, Gifts of the Hunt). If all else fails, I'll go with a one-word title that at least somewhat gets at what the fic is about! But those tend to be the ones I like the least.

16. Do you research for your fics? If so, how deep of a rabbit hole have you gone down by accident when researching?

I will go down absurd research rabbit holes for fic, not necessarily because I'm a stickler for perfect realism or anything (I'm not! especially when the setting is fantasy or science fiction that doesn't abide by the rules of our world anyway), but because I'm curious and I love the opportunity to learn about something it wouldn't have occurred to me to look into otherwise. Fic is the reason I discovered that there's a whole subcommunity on YouTube for tasting and reviewing MREs. (And so much other stuff related to military culture when I was regularly writing for Red vs. Blue.) I've researched the real plants of the Mojave that appear in Fallout: New Vegas, throat and lung injuries and various other medical stuff for Red vs. Blue (where you really can't take medical realism too seriously all the time but you can certainly throw some in for flavor), historical modes of address and various other historical things for Dragon Age (where, again, realism is not a priority but can help to add flavor).

I do think you have to find a balance and not let research distract you from actually writing, but also research is fun as hell, and can help you find ways to enhance the worldbuilding and add detail to your stories.

[anneapocalypse]

arcsblade replied to your post: Tbh in regard to the “problem” of the Freelancers...

Remember when people thought the Meta should’ve won the Death Battle cuz he was “stronger” and didn’t account for Carolina and Epsilon’s teamwork even though it was laid out flat in the episode that that was why they won?

I sure do.

[agentsokka]

@arcsblade and I are playing FFXV for first time

I think it’s going well

[anneapocalypse]

17 for AO3 wrapped (:

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

Oh man, it's such a close call between Sera and Briala. Very very different characters with very different voices and histories but I just love them both so much, and writing both has been a blast and a half.

[glacialhero-blog]

Rules: Tag 10 ( or not 10 ) followers you want to get to know better.

● Birthday: january 11 ● Gender: female  ● Relationship status: flyin’ solo ● Favourite color: blue ● Pets: bella, roy, and tyson -- my 3 cats. aka the lights of my life. aka i would dIE FOR THESE ADORABLE BEASTS.    ● Wake up time: a sensible 9am alarm ● Love or lust?: ?? ? both pls??  ● Favourite food: sweet potatoes FITE ME. ● Met a celebrity?: nope  ● Last song listened to:  africa by toto. yes the sick 80s jam. IT’S A LONG STORY OK. ● First kiss: i legit ?? don’t remember????   ● Tall or short: average tbh (5′5)

Tagged by: @arcsblade *finger guns* Tagging: @valeiss, @lockethart, @blindingstrike, @salvatiss, @hopeful-android and ANYONE ELSE!