#bear in mind there really be potential spoilers under the cut

[areyoudoingthis]

i wonder if the potential spoilers we have for the finale (I saw that screencap going around a few days ago) are going to make izzy's arc more satisfying and give everyone in the show and at least some parts of the fandom the closure they've needed once everything is finally resolved

said potential spoilers under the cut

So after 1x10 we were left with two big questions the show had to answer going into s2: will Ed and Stede be able to find their way back to each other and mature enough as individuals to develop a healthy, sustainable relationship in the future? (The answer was always yes, of course, because they're our main characters and the show is the relationship. The interesting part was getting to watch it happen in a believable, fulfilling way, and I personally think they've done a great job of this so far in spite of having two less episodes to work with.)

The second question was: how will the fallout of izzy's actions be resolved? This was important not so much because of Izzy himself, but because he was the catalyst for Ed's kraken spiral and represents the forces that have been keeping Ed's head underwater his whole life (toxic white masculinity.)

I get that most people have assumed the show simply decided to handwave all of this by never having Izzy own up to the consequences of his own actions and just speedrun his way into being forgiven, but, whatever personal reactions I've had to his arc this season so far, I don't think the show forgot about this at all. I want to have more faith in them than that.

So what if Izzy's death has always been the inevitable answer they decided to come up with. I honestly believed that's what was going to happen to him going into this season, but then everything happened and I thought to myself "okay, i guess that's not what ofmd has decided to focus on, community and grace it is." But what if it's both? What if instead of an empty, purely cartoonish death like Nigel's and Chauncey's, they wanted to give a death that was a little more meaningful, with an arc that allowed him to recognize his mistakes and how his actions impacted Ed and Stede?

What if Izzy's "piracy is about belonging to something" is his exit speech, and what if everything that happened to him this season was a way of allowing him to be able to realize that, and realize that forcing Ed to perform a certain kind of masculinity just because he wanted him to was extremely fucked up, so he could acknowledge it to ed in the end? We wanted him punished, but we wanted Ed to hear an apology, too, and I'm genuinely convinced that that was impossible with the state of Izzy's development at the end of s1. How would he even have known what to apologize for???

So what if the thing that everyone thought was never going to be acknowledged could only ever really be acknowledged by the end of everyone's arcs this season? I am, once again, on the edge of my fucking seat.

[wandixx]

Ghost of fries and hero of cookies part 5

All work words count: 14 643

Words in this part: 1 685

Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay

Or

Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway

This part summary: Steph finally gets to meet Duke's kid. And she comes bearing gifts!

Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like

First part, Previous part

Duke was really glad that Bruce was busy whole previous evening and couldn’t give him The TalkTM Vigilante edition. Maybe he shouldn’t because B being busy spoke trouble but he couldn’t feel too sad about it. He didn’t want to have The TalkTM though.

For now, Dani was running next to him, with a serious look on her face that was kinda uncanny. She wasn’t supposed to not be happy and some weird instincts were screaming at him to fix it and fix it now. But he didn’t know how!

Though some of his jokes caused a little smile, so it was good.

It turned potentially less good when she stopped without warning, lowering herself to the fighting stance (finally proper, which made him so immensely proud by the way). He stopped too, wishing they wouldn’t have to fight but he knew better than to latch on this hope.

“What’s up, Hoopoe?” he whispered.

“Someone is coming. Light, use grapple” Most likely one of the Bats then, they were due to a visit anyway. However better to not lower his guard in case he was mistaken or it was a prank/test. His expectations were proven right though, when purple blur flipped over the edge of the roof. He relaxed and put hand on Dani’s shoulder so she wouldn’t tackle Steph before they could explain anything. She seemed on edge like that whole day.

“Hey Spoiler” he greeted to further show that the blonde was a friend.

“Sup Signal! Heard I can finally meet your little friend!”

Dani straightened herself and tried to float a few inches up to seem higher probably.

“I’m considerably higher than most kids my age” she deadpanned. She really wasn’t though. He was still trying to learn whether her size was caused more by genetics or malnourishment. Her only family member Duke knew of was also small, so maybe it was a family thing though.

Steph shrugged, waving her palm a few inches below her shoulder, approximately where Damian reached, quite few inches over Dani’s head.

“Robin is the family’s smol violent bean and you’re shorter than him. You’re small bean, deal with this”

Little girl pouted, crossing her arms. Steph cooed.

“Oh, you even get angry like he does!”

Young meta looked like she was asking ‘Should I use violence?’ and inch towards the answer ‘Yes’. Duke decided he should step in before she acted on these thoughts. Teasing was the opposite of what girl needed at the moment. Some good fight might not be bad but maybe not with Steph.

“Cut it Spoiler”

She rolled her eyes so dramatically he could tell she did so despite her mask. He still thought it was impressive “Don’t be boring dude”

Dani growled in a way that couldn’t be fully human, just like she did when they talked about her training for the first time. Duke squeezed her arm. Girl glanced at him before sagging so much he was scared she would fall for a hot second. He exchanged concerned looks with Steph over her lowered head. It was not normal nor was it good.

“Alright, you’re not smol,” Steph agreed lightly “Officially at least. What’s in my head stays there. Does it work for you?”

Duke almost hit her in the arm. Not strongly, in a friendly manner but still. He didn’t only because it seemed to somehow work. He let his hands drop.

“Your mind is sacred,” Dani started seriously “what leaves your mouth is not. Can’t diss you on your thoughts but I’ll on your words” she shared like it was some important truth of life. Or folklore proverb though Duke wasn’t sure about the latter. Afterall he was Gothamite born and breed, he knew countryside from movies “And actions. Actions are kinda important,” meta girl added in lighter tone after moment of thinking.

“Yeah, actions are the best” Steph agreed easily “Hey, can I get it on a T-shirt? I’ll love and cherish it”

“First you laugh at my height and then you want my intellectual property for free? For shame, Spoiler, for shame?”

Steph looked thoughtful, theatrically over exaggerating her body language. 

“Valid” she nodded.

Duke decided he would just watch whatever was going to happen and did damage control if needed. He didn’t feel up to anything else anyway.

“Heard your cape went in an adventure,” the purple vigilante admitted after moment of silence. Dani shrugged rubbing her arms awkwardly. Duke knew she normally would fix said cape. It was her way of fidgeting.

“Yup, it’s good way to put it,” girl nodded. “Somebody needed it more, I hope it enjoys its travel. I should get a replacement soon”

“Well, I can’t let fellow caped crusader, who understands necessity of hood, run capeless”

Younger girl waved her hands in a flurry motion of dismissal.

“Don’t-” she stopped when her eyes locked on orange bundle Steph took from somewhere under her cloak. Opportunity to pull tricks like that had made Duke consider adding some sort of cape to his Signal suit back when he had been working on it back in a day but dismissed it. He still wasn’t looking forward to learning curve of fighting with such additional liability. He couldn’t turn it intangible when it was in a way like certain white haired cheater did.

Speaking of Dani, girl stared at Steph’s gift like she couldn’t quite believe it was real. She held her hands close to her chest but her fingers flexed in grabby motion. Her eyes were hidden behind black lenses of her mask but everything else about her face further proved how awestruck she was. Even her muted aura brightened a bit in a way that he learned to recognize as excitement.

It was still kind of weird, by the way. Normal auras haven’t changed, it was kinda their thing.

Steph wiggled her gift a bit. Dani finally took it but had yet to put it on.

“It’s for me?” she whispered so utterly shocked and small that Duke mentally did a double take.

“Yeah, like I said, can’t let you run around without it”

“Oh”

Dani’s hand was gnawing at the edge of the material as if it was some sort of squashmellow.

“Try it on,” Steph encouraged gently.

“We need to check if Spoiler haven’t messed up something”

“Signal!”

Dani snorted, which was all Duke tried to achieve.

She put it on and after a moment of shuffling she once again became orange cloak with feet. She grinned widely looking far more relaxed and settled than she did moments before. She moved around a bit like she was in model show or at least what ten years old thought it could look like.

“You like it?”

“Yup, it’s amazing, thank you Spoiler… Though it’s heavier than I expected”

“Well, I don’t know what your first one was made out of but this is material I use, I found it the best balance between durability, weight and comfiness. Still, it’s quite dense and a bit heavy. Also, I added pockets because you can never have too many of them. Plus there are few glitter bombs inside. You know, ‘welcome to the team’ gifts,” Steph explained eagerly and judging by Dani’s smile, she loved her gifts. Duke would be a little worried on a Gotham crime’s behalf if it wasn’t well, crime and if he wasn’t all there to watch chaos these two would unfold from sidelines with bat-popcorn in hand (though it wasn’t really a thing yet, he would have to mention it to Tim or Jason). For now though, they really should continue on the patrol.

“Now that introductions are over, let’s get going. Crime never sleeps or something,” It was really weird to be the organized one. Before Dani showed up, on a day shift he was a sailor, a captain and a ship (or maybe Gotham was a ship-), We Are Robins days were chaos in purest form and shape and when he was called out for a night he usually was too tired to behave and was just additional mess to organize (on purpose, let him have his goddamn sleep, he wasn’t Tim).

“Okay,” Dani agreed cheerfully “There is a robbery at the greek diner we visited last Thursday. ‘s been going for five minutes or so,” she added unbothered.

“HOOPOE!”

“What?”

***

Spoiler jumped through the open window of the diner with a graceful roll, glitter bombs at hand. Hoopoe and Signal came inside right after her.

“Spoiler alert!” purple girl yelled, throwing two bombs at robbers heads and kicking third one in the ribs.

Dani decided  that she liked Spoiler right then and there as she threw her own brand new, orange(!) glitter bombs at remaining criminal.

***

Three of them were running through the city mostly uninterrupted after diner mishap. Steph tried to engage Dani in quip battle but younger girl for once wasn’t jumping on occasion. She kept close to Duke and his only reaction was smug smile in Spoiler’s direction. That’s what she got for trying to steal his sidekick.

“Oh!” Dani exclaimed delighted, stopping abruptly, a smile that spoke trouble gracing her face.

“No, we’re not busting Joker’s scheme by jumping into the meeting to beat them all up without proper back up, again, Hoopoe. They had guns, Hoopoe.”

“Wha- Wasn’t last time enough? Anyway, I heard there is fan meeting with Martian Manhunter in Los Angeles tomorrow,” Great, so no giving him heart attack right now. Thank God for that.

“Shame he won’t make it, huh?” Steph mussed “He is in Illinois right now, isn’t he? It would take him two days driving to even get there”

Dani’s expression looked thoughtful “It’s quite far”

“Yeah, around… 2,500 miles from here”

“Huh”

“What got you thinking kid?” she inquired, ruffling her hair.

“Not a kid and I thought- there is kidnapping at three!” Dani darted in that direction before finishing sentence. Duke jumped right after her slightly scared. She was not ready to handle stuff like that without back up and she would try if he let her run of like that.

********

Steph: I'm meeting my almost niece tomorrow what should I- *gives a gremlin child an ultimate weapon of chaos*

Sometime before this part:

Steph: So, how is your kid?

Duke: She is not my kid!

Duke: By the way, wanna see video I saved of her doing proper side kick for the first time?

Danielle "looks like 10 years old is 10 months max" Phantom: I am in fact much higher than most kids my age

Duke "whoever is feeding this tiny child does bad job at it" Thomas & Stephanie "it's just a lil baby" Brown: Yeah... sure...

Next part

"Tag list" (i haven't expected to ever make it)

@pickleking8

[dreamingofthewild]

Hi there! I was just reading your post on Mystra grooming and I thought it was very well articulated I just had one question on it. You mentioned that Elminster reached out to Gale when Gale was 8 years old and I haven't seen that mentioned in the game or in other lore for the game. Would you mind letting me know where that was sourced? Mostly because I'm interested on reading on that more, thank you

Hello there kingtycoon13

SPOILER ALERT: EPILOUGE

The reference to Elminster reaching out to Gale comes from a letter that Elminster writes to Gale when he ascends to Godhood. The letter can be found in a basket full of letters the player can read in the epilogue.

More under the cut

In the Forgotten Realms Wiki, it does say that Elminster took on apprentices from time-to-time. Sometimes they were by Mystra's request.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Elminster#Apprentices

We do not know why Elminster appeared on Gale's doorstop when he was eight years old. We do know that Gale was a child prodigy who could summon rabbits when since he was toddler (I cannot find the dialogue for this on the web). If magic was unstable at the time this makes his power an even more impressive feat.

So Elminster had connection with the Blackstaff and was prominent in Waterdeep.

There is every potential that he heard about a boy prodigy who was living with non-magically inclined parents and rocked up to their doorstep to offer help. He might have been thinking about how Mystra will need more chosen when she returns, or he might have just decided that it was time for another apprentice.

On the forgotten realms Wiki it says that Elminster spoke to Mystra who possessed the body of a bear and asked him to find new candidate's to become her chosen. Gale would have been 22 at the time if we go with his cannon age of 35.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mystra_(Midnight)

I think that Elminster may have suggested Gale as a candidate when Gale was 22. Elminster has helped train her chosen before, such as Sammaster.

There is also a very interesting tidbit I found upon looking him up where he says he left the encounter feeling as though he and Mystra were in love;

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sammaster

I do not know to what extent Mystra's presence could be felt whilst she was gone. But Midnight was said to have felt a 'presence' and her spells which might've failed succeeded and she felt like she was being groomed, before becoming the next Mystra. I cannot find any evidence to support a theory that Mystra was behind Gale's ability to cast magic at such a young age. But it is an interesting theory nonetheless.

Anyway, back to my original point. When I said that Elminster had a part to play, I meant that he is a renowned wizard and former chosen of Mystra. And he inserted himself into Gale's life when he was 8. It is implied that he did help him, and potentially recommended him if she did not already have her eyes on him herself.

Elminster does mention making a mistake in his letter, so could that be the mistake he refers to?

We don't know if Mystra sought Gale out as her chosen because of Elminster or vice versa. She may have set her eyes on him regardless but perhaps at a later stage. Either way, Elminster had a part to play in Gale being selected as her chosen.

My idea also stemmed from a post a read a while back where someone wrote Meta's on each BG3 character;

The final point I wanted to make was that grooming does not always involve one person. It can be an organisation or an entire industry which is set up to suck the souls out of people who have talent. Be it academia, sports, the film and music industries or the fictional industry of Wizardry.

But in general the process of becoming a chosen is exploitative and manipulative. We witness that in game with Shadowheart and Lae'zel. They were all groomed in different ways.

[ayuventi]

So I’m taking a very small break from my tumblr hiatus to literally talk about the new opening and my thoughts about it bc I HAVE A LOT!!!

(Keep this Enso in mind from the opening and how the trail of the Enso continues onwards)

Under the cut for spoiler talks (for both anime and manga)

Okay so I apologize if this is a bit all over the place but please bear with me.

Something I noticed about Wano as that in a whole, is that it brings up circular natures of each character’s arcs and the story of finding as a whole as we saw through the flashback of what started 20 years prior with Gol D. Roger and his crew.

Every character got something depicted in their character arc that circles back to something in their past in Wano. Obviously the red scabbards doesn’t need much introspection I’m this regard outside of momonosuke, so I’m going to be focusing here on The Strawhats, Law, Kid, Yamato, and Momonosuke.

I’m going to start off with Yamato because of a key factor that I think really was subtle but adds so much to it. As we all know, Yamato when we were introduced to him, had chains on his hands. He was chained to Onigashima (a lone island which is important) at a young age. Now obviously, Yamato was meant to continue that theme of wanting to carry on Oden’s will but he was forcibly shackled there and to the past. Even when you see him with Ace, he’s still shackled and can’t break free of it until after Ace’s death when Luffy comes in and breaks those chains.

Luffy breaking those chains, and Luffy as a whole, was meant to be, of course, the symbolism of of freedom by him breaking the chains of what has bound ppl to their pasts and strive for the freedom to do as they please or move forward from the circular cycle or bonds of the past. This, along with Wano, is where the small trail from the Enzo I believe is impactful. Because every single character got some kind of development in their character that breaks them free from something that limited them or chained them to their past in Wano.

Zoro reaffirming his promises by becoming the King of Hell to better protect and carry out the promises that he made. Not only to his best friend, his captain, but also now to himself and his crew.

Sanji coming to terms with his past and moving forward with the knowledge that he may still have been modified as well but that will never define him, but rather have him tools to fight better to protect his loved ones.

Chopper with combating a virus while on the verge of becoming an ice oni (much in the same way Hiriluk was fighting against time to come up with a way to save people) and then find a cure with the chopperphage nebulizer that also was a pink cloud similar to the Sakura cloud that was set off when he left, formerly drum island.

Robin being entrusted by her friends and helping Sanji who called out for her, and thereby unlocking Demonia Fleure by also facing her past and breaking through the thoughts that her life doesn’t matter.

Brook with seeing the ppl of okobore town weren’t allowed to mourn for ppl that were lost but also being forced to face his past and know he’s got new friends to rely on and fight for.

Jinbei confronting Who’s Who and the battle where the Sun god Nika becomes a focus and him literally breaking Who’s Who with the visage of Fisher Tiger when he activated his own armament haki in regards to his past as a slave.

Usopp confronting his fears and becoming more and more brave and choosing to fight when he saves Kin’emon and Kiku, saying he hates the old traditions of simply laying down your life but rather you should fight to live.

Nami with saving Otama but also standing her ground in the face of potential death (much in the same way that Bellemere had for her and Nojiko) along with the declaration that Luffy will be king of the pirates when she formerly hated pirates.

I will get to Franky more in a moment, but the trust his friends had in his creations being something to save them rather than just being used as a weapon when Usopp and Chopper battled Big Mom.

Law not only made the decision that he wants to now live on and find out why he had to live his checkered life but also gave a very stunning tribute to Corazon who fought for him to live and be free.

Kid was forced to face the consequences of making the alliance with Apoo and Hawkins but broke from that by also developing a trust in the Strawhats and Law by fighting alongside them as allied rivals.

Momonosuke of course being the son of Oden and now finding his own will to live on and continue to carry on his father’s will by choosing to live and eventually, in the future, opening the land of Wano.

Now, here’s the biggest thing. Onigashima started on its own separate island, but has now moved onto the main landmass of Wano. What else lies on Wano, or rather below it?

Pluton.

I said I would elaborate more on Franky later but I’m also going to touch upon Law in this part as well. Franky as we know completely ripped up the documents regarding Pluton way back in water 7. I also wouldn’t be surprised perhaps if the Water in Law’s name holds some relevance to that and Water 7 as he is the surgeon of Death. Reason for this connection I’m proposing is because of this shot here in the opening which I don’t feel is coincidental if the them of the opening is anything to go off.

Now that the circular shackles have been broken, we are now moving away from the past cycles and forward into the new paths for each character and the story itself. I think the opening did a beautiful job of showcasing that this is the completion of what was started 20 years ago by Gol D. Roger and is now gearing us up for the path we’ll get to watch as the Strawhats move to find the One Piece.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!

[hamletisintown]

After finishing the story for Genshin Impact's 4.1, I actually have many thoughts. Spoilers under the cut.

Okay so. Genshin continues its long trend of having so much potential and failing to meet it because the people in charge want it to earn money first and foremost.

Here are a few things we could have had from this patch, and didn't get (which i'm mad about, but not surprised, sadly):

1) a social commentary on justice and prisons, and the role they fulfill on society

2) actual interpersonal conflict between important characters, and characters who are actually deep with interesting motivations instead of just being Nice :)

3) a story that is interesting not because it mashes more and more things together in the hopes of staying , but because it actually dares to step out there and give us interesting ideas (and maybe even a good execution)

Once again, we didn't get any of that despite the 4.1 trailer being absolutely phenomenal and filled to the brim with dramatic voice lines.Before I go into more details, please bear in mind that I am only so negative and critical of Genshin Impact because I do love it. I see its potential, and I know it could be exceptional instead of just good. But sadly, it's a game whose entire purpose is to earn money, and so it never takes any real risks, and well, that's the whole problem, isn't it.

Anyways.

1) About justice and prisons.

Fontaine's whole storyline was always going to be revolving around the idea of justice, and initially i wasn't expecting much out of it, but after Sumeru's story my hope was elevated a bit. There's so much to be said about how justice works today, what it means for people, both those who are being helped by it and those who are on the receiving end. You could do so much in a story about justice.

When we first saw the Fontaine trailer and learnt about how in Fontaine, trials are treated like opera, like... entertainment?? Man, I was so interested. A country in which the suffering of others is being ostensibly used as entertainment. How cool of a concept is that? What does it mean about the society of Fontaine? About its people? Except so far, the story doesn't bother to ask those cool questions. Instead it's all about the prophecy, which, okay, that's intriguing, sure, but I'm really hoping it's going connect back around to the whole premise of suffering as entertainment in some way because I'm really expecting cool shit from that and I'm not seeing any of it so far. We participated in 2 trials and none of them even so much as addressed the core problem of witnessing trials as if it was a fun play. We just went in there Ace Attorney style, investigating shit and bringing the truth to light, which was fun but incredibly shallow.

Then comes 4.1, we get to infiltrate Fontaine's prison. There is so much to be said about prisons, how they're cruel and don't fix anything, how they feed the cycle, how they prey on the marginalized. But nooo, not in Teyvat. Here, the prison is not really a prison, it's just uhhh. Gathering grounds for exiled. In a fortress at the bottom of the sea. Ooookay. And it's so nice here that a lot of people actually stay even after finishing their sentence. Ooookay? Ah, we get a throwaway dialogue from a convict about how even if you go back out after your sentence, you'll still be branded a criminal and no one will want to hire you for work. Interesting. Can we get more of that? Nope? Okay that's. that's fine. Maybe later. Ohhh wait hang on turns out they're using the prisoners to built their machines!! Interesting! Oh we're not gonna explore that either? Man.

I MEAN. The fortress is even built like a panopticon. A circle with the dormitories along and the administrator's office smack-dab in the middle. Add to that the fact that it's actually confirmed that Wriothesley was following our entire investigation somehow, watching from who knows where (and all the cameras!! don't forget about the cameras!! They didn't serve for anything important but they sure as hell were there!!), and well. It IS a panopticon, you can't tell me otherwise. How is this not intentional?? And if it IS, then how come it just stops at that. Can you believe it?? This prison is so nice that if you work 3 days straight, the nurse in person will make food for you to help you with your exhaustion.

Do you see all this potential? Do you see how much NOTHING they made out of it? I am so mad about this.

2) Lack of real conflict.

This is not really new and i've actually complained about this to friends several times, but it just keeps happening and I'm now convinced that's just how it's gonna be for the whole rest of the game.

Here's the thing. The conflict in genshin is either a) coming from external forces (the fatui, evil gods, random NPCs who are introduced specifically just for one story bit to be the villain and then disappear, etc), b) very shallow (like for example Alhaitham and Kaveh's relationship, they're always fighting but it never comes to anything substantial, it's all just for shits and giggle), c) incredibly short-lived and often with no real consequences (like the conflict between the shogun and watatsumi island in the inazuma storyline, they fight a bit and then we beat the shogun which somehow convinces her and then she's nice again and no one gives a ashit that she destroyed so many lives with her idiotic idea) or d) under-exploited (the beef between Diluc and Kaeya? Who cares we're 4 regions later now this is irrelevant and will never be brought up again probably).

You know what I want? I want characters with opposing ideals, incompatible personalities, deep flaws, fighting each other because they're HUMAN and that's what being human means. Hell, I even want some playable characters who are ASSHOLES, who do some FUCKED UP SHIT. You know what we're getting instead? Characters who are NICE. They're all so NICE. They get along. They're finally starting to actually make characters interact more and they're ALL NICE AND FRIENDS AND I'M SO SICK OF IT.

The only characters who are allowed to be fucked up and evil are the Fatui Harbingers. La Signora was evil and she died before she could get an actual character arc. Dottore is evil and he fucked off god knows where so I'm waiting to see what they do with him. Childe is fucked up but now that we're past the liyue questline he's just our friend that happens to be a harbinger and we just meet him and we don't even question his motivations all is well???? This guy kills people but no one gives a shit anymore he's friend now. Idk I just wish there was more to this but okay, better than most I suppose. Scaramouche was fucked up and evil AND got a cool backstory about it but then he just erased that actually??? So now h e's just a random guy and no one gives a shit about him, allt he significant ties he had with other characters just stopped existing and possibly don't mean anything anymore. Nahida put a leash on him and now he's the resident grumpy boy. I'm so mad about that I love his character you can't do this to him give him his substance back.

Do you see this shit???? The nice guys are simply nice, and the evil guys aren't properly exploited. I am. So. Mad.

In the 4.1 trailer, you get a bunch of cool lines. "Wriothesley, where did you take my siblings?!" "Even if the truth may not be pleasant?" "Since they have no way to dispose of the leftover remains, they have ways to transform them into other forms, and keep them in the fortress forever." Does that sound cool to you? It did to me. Man, I thought, finally some good fucking conflict. What in the hell is gonna happen to Lyney's siblings. What the fuck is Wriothesley up to.

Well. What we get instead is one single cool scene of conflict between Lyney and Wriothesley (with a very mellow build-up to it, honestly), and then that conflict is immediately resolved. Turns out Wriothesley never meant to hurt anyone and just played along to try and get a randezvous with The Knave from Lyney. Everyone is saved and everyone is cool afterwards. Not even a word of resentment from Lyney over how Wriothesley manipulated him.

You know what I wanted? I wanted Lyney to be more of a villain, more of what's expected of a Fatui. He's polite and charming and mysterious, but he's also way too honest and trustworthy with the Traveler. It's no fun. We know we can actually trust him. There was some vague attempt at putting us at odds with him and Lynette in the 4.0 story when they revealed they were fatui, and it was so badly done that it just fell flat. Ok cool you're part of the fatui, that's scary, but my best friend is literally a harbinger, cool story though.

You know what I wanted even more?? I wanted Wriothesley to be more ruthless, more of an asshole, more self-centered. The guy runs a prison, scares all of the convicts, Neuvillette even warns us about him!! But you get there and he's actually reformed the prison to be a nice place, and the only time he actually does some bad shit, not only is it not serious, but turns out it's because he's trying to get help with the secret ship he's building to save the people of Fontaine from the flood. So it's only a "good intentions, bad methods" type of situation!!!

All! Of them!! Are!!! To nice!!! It's BORING. It'S SO BORING. Everyone is so nice in this game that even THE FUCKING MAFIA IS NICE. THE MAFIA. THEY'RE ALL GOOD PEOPLE. I AM LOSING MY MIND. I can't take it anymore. I just want people with actual flaws. I just want people who aren't just good but are actual people, with all that it implies of shitty behaviour and stupid decisions and hurting each other over dumb stuff. Or even less dumb stuff. Just anything but all this fucking sugar-coating over funny colorful little characters who you want people to give you money for.

You're gonna tell me "Castor, this is a gacha game, this is literally the poin-" I KNOW. I KNOW. I'M MAD AT MYSELF FOR ACTUALLY EXPECTING MORE. STILL, I AM ALLOWED TO BE MAD AT IT.

Anyways let's move on before I just throw myself out of the window, shall we.

3) A good story.

See, what Genshin impact is very good at is throwing multiple concept together and linking them in fun, intuitive ways, to make them all new and shiny. What if our game had an elemental system but also the elements are actually integrated into the character's personality, and also they're an integral part of our story? What if we made a region for the vegetal element, and there's actually a jungle there and the jungle symbolizes the interconnectedness of this weird fantasy-internet system the scholars use, and in fact this big connected fantasy-web is itself a literal metaphor for the wisdom of a people, and also the vegetal-element is using very technological and futuristic visuals now because all of this now makes sense in your player's mind and you are ready to just accept it as a normal thing even though we weaved this entirely new ensemble of concepts together in the span of just a few quests.

And that's great, honestly, I think that's really one of the biggest strengths of this game, it actually is very creative with the concepts it puts out in the world.

This game has very good concepts.

The problem is. The good concepts are rarely followed by a good execution.

Take the story of Inazuma. The premise is this: the electro god wants a land where things never change because she's afraid of losing people close to her. Her solution for this is to take away people's visions, which are the embodiment of the ambitions of people. She is effectively breaking the spirit of her people by force to make sure they never want to rise up and change things. This is incredibly good. This is a strong metaphor that exemplifies terrible rulership. There's so much substance in there, so much to be done with this idea, so much that could be said by a good execution.

What do we get instead? A nice start where you're shown a very, very closed off and unwelcoming land (including being unwelcoming through the sheer brutality of its landscape and weather, which was incredibly cool!!), the dire consequences of a person losing their vision, some little pockets of resistance that are planning an uprising... And then it all falls apart because the way you solve the crisis is by following the shady advice and plan of the shogun's best friend, who basically just send you off to fight her and then intervenes to talk to her, deus ex machina style, and it turns out the ruler was actually a shut-in who let a puppet with a very flawed algorithm walk around and make decisions in her place (which, in itself, is also a really good and interesting concept, but it's just thrown out there out of the blue and then never really exploited?). She simply gets out of her magical room and reverts her decision and then keeps on being the ruler of Inazuma and no one is mad at her.

And a lot of this failure hangs on the fact that the writers aren't allowed to make characters who are actually bad because hoyoverse wants to make sure people like their characters and want to pull for them. I don't want to badmouth the writers, I'm sure they're perfectly capable of making great stories and most of why it doesn't work is because they're being forced down a road where everything is shallow and shiny and beautiful so the game can make the money it wants.

In fact we KNOW they can write good stories because they've done it!! With the Sabzeruz Festival storyline in Sumeru! Imagine walking into a brand new region, marveling at the landscape, laughing a bit at how they've got internet here, and then being thrown into a literal nightmare with basically no warning, for the first time of the game cut off from the exterior world for 3 hours of absolute madness, spiraling out of control and not understanding SHIT. Only that's it's going DOWN. The Sabzeruz festival was an absolute banger of a questline and I'm still thinking about it now, months later. It was the bst the game ever had to offer and I will forever be chasing after this high in genshin impact. It was psychological horror mixed with a mystery genre glued on top of a time loop trope. It was a commentary on how putting "hard" science on a pedestal and deeming the arts and social sciences to be a waste of time and resources leads to unethical practices by callous scientists. It was a whole journey and I simply felt dizzy when the quest ended, almost as suddenly as it had started.

The rest of the story of Sumeru kinda fell flat, after that. Even though it was, honestly, pretty good.

My point is. Fontaine feels like Inazuma right now. In fact, I would say it might feel... worse than Inazuma. It has a great basis with some really cool concepts to be used. But it doesn't even start out that strong. I'm, of course, going to wait and see before I make any judgement about the story of Fontaine, as it is far from over.

What I can say for sure is that I am... disappointed by how it's coming along so far. I really hope it gets better.

[fereldanwench]

so i finished my rewatch of s1-s3 and new watch of s4-s7 of the 100 aaanddd i wanna ramble

spoilers and, from what i've gathered, unpopular opinions under the cut lmao

i watched the first three seasons in 2015-16, iirc (binged s1 and s2 on netflix; watched s3 as it aired)--i remember losing interest towards the end of s3 so i wasn't super hyped about s4 and just kinda forgot about it. on rewatch, i was also getting bored with s3, lmao. it starts off pretty strong, and the end revelation is a banger, but the last 4 eps or so just draaaggggg

i really liked seasons 4 and 5, though, with one big exception: giving clarke a daughter-figure to go all mama bear over was quite possibly one of the most obnoxious character development choices they could have given her

clarke in general is kind of a frustrating character for me because on one hand, i fuckin love a female character who does awful things for what she believes are good reasons, and that is clarke 100%

but in spite of that awesome set up, she manages to be so fucking boring

i think a lot of it is the actress' performance, tbh--the acting on the show overall generally isn't anything spectacular, but i find her particularly bad. i cant quite pinpoint my gripes, i just find her very bland

and given that the show is basically one extended trolley problem and there are dozens of characters who are also constantly put in the position of making the most difficult decisions in the universe, that just isn't enough to make her compelling

i found myself really drawn to echo in the later seasons because i am predictable af and i love a character who is loyal to a fault and bases their entire identity off being a loyal follower. i do feel like the relationship with bellamy was a little shoehorned, though. like i see the enemies to lovers potential there, but i think having most of that transition happen off-screen took all the fun from it

and i was stunned when i went looking for echo gifs to find out that most people hate her but love clarke apparently, lmao. hard opposite

s5 also delved into one of my favorite dark apocalypse tropes: what will push people to become cannibals to survive? it's always been a morbid fascination and i wasn't expecting them to get as fucked up with it as they did, but it was compelling shit

s6 had interesting elements to it--the worldbuilding/lore i think is part of the reason i got so sucked into the show, and seeing how becca's influence managed to reach a whole other planet was cool. i also liked the personality chip stuff bc it gave me ideas for valerie, haha. i also liked russel as an antagonist--love a very polite and calm villain being pushed to their limits

but i could see it was starting to lead into a setup for a whole metaphysical aspect to everything that had happened, and i just really don't like that shit

oh, also, kane and abby were my absolute favorite couple and i'm very sad they didn't get their HEA

so s7 was very meh to me. lovedlovedloved echo, dioyza, octavia, and hope getting to be badasses together, but that's about it. the transcendentalist shit was so fucking tedious, and bellamy got done dirty. and i've found myself overly fixated on the logistics of the "finalkru" situation with clarke and her buddies living on earth for the rest of their lives with no hopes of procreation or extending the human race

like at some point there's just gonna be one person remaining, right? and they have to spend their remaining days all alone? unless they do some kind of death pact? or how exactly do the transcendents ensure there are no babies? can the humans undo this? like what if they clone themselves or do in vitro fertilization? i have questions!!!

i don't mind a story ending with unanswered questions--i even really like that sometimes--but ending with a bunch of new unanswered questions is annoying lmao

plus i find the premise of finalkru surviving and maybe trying to figure out a way to continue the human race to be more interesting than 87% of the plot of s7

also two of the big themes throughout the show was never giving up hope and always seeking to rediscover their humanity after doing horrible shit--i just don't feel like this ending really tied those motifs up in a satisfying way. 99.9% of the human population no longer experiencing pain because they basically don't exist anymore feels less like a reward for Good Behavior and more... idk, just unsettling to me.

i mean, it's basically sci-fi rapture, and the whole idea of the rapture always freaked me out too lmao

i know the show is based on books, which i haven't read and don't plan to, so maybe some of this would be better explained there, but i've also seen commentary that it deviates a lot from the novels so who knows

anyway, i do like the show overall. there's a lot of juicy stuff here, but very weak ending. reminded me a bit of how i felt watching lost, actually, although not as egregious

[verothexeno]

I have some more thoughts after finishing Baldur's Gate 3 a second time. I must indulge - warning for potential spoilers under cut because idk how the post will go.

Halsin's romance, oh my dear LORD.

Never thought I'd giggle so much like a highschooler having a crush. What also made this playthrough really special was that Halsin's character is a lot like my partner's current D&D character: A wood elf (although a Fighter, not a Druid) that has people's well-being at heart and actually carves wooden ducks as well (when I say that I laughed so freakin' loud when Halsin mentionned that in-game, Mat and I couldn't breathe). Bear in mind, we've had our Descent into Avernus game running for 3 years now!! And so to have Kara, also my current D&D character, romance him sort of solidified the actual dynamic we have in our real-life sessions.

And the tenderness, the open expressions of love, the wanting to see a greater good in this world - that is also something that reflects the relationship I have with Mat. So that made me appreciate that romance even more.

And to say that I first wanted to romance Gale, but then got locked out of his romance because of a weird bug.... Then again, now I have no regrets - Kara belongs with him - and I will definitely revisit Halsin's romance when time allows. He's easily become a character I love, especially due to his warmth and sincerity. .... Man, I love all the characters in this fuckin' game, I swear... (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

-CRIES FOREVER-

My next romances to finish are Karlach, Astarion, and Wyll (I'm especially looking forward to Wyll's !! He's among my top favorite characters now!). Shadowheart and Halsin are completed, dunno when I'll get to (retry) Gale and also do Lae'zel. It's a lot of time to invest :')

Also I was surprised about the Emperor... I see how manipulative he can be on many instances, but I think there are genuine moments where you see how he truly wants to be free and be his own "person" again - even if in the end it's to look out for his own gains. I enjoyed his character. For most of my playthroughs now I've been rejecting a lot of the Illithid's "potentials", but I may try to go down that path deeper at some point. Who knows... Also yeah, Kara did fuck with him also, woopsie HEHEEHEHE. She's had ... quite the interesting body count in that playthrough LOL.

ANYWAY, gotta stop rambling for now. I'm just really grateful that such a game exists. It's been so long since I had such experiences...

[blackaquokat]

Nobody asked me, but now that I've finished the main story of both Danganronpa games (Let's Plays, anyway, I'm going to play myself now), here are the thoughts running through my head. This post will be for the first game, I'll make another post for the second one.

(spoilers under the cut: I know the games have been out for a while but still):

1. It took me a LONG time to finish the first game after the first execution. I really liked Leon and not just because his design reminded me of Kirishima from MHA. I felt really bad about the situation he was in, even if, you know, he still killed Sayaka, his death was Brutal. I stopped watching for a few months because it haunted me, until my sister encouraged me to keep going because she wanted to talk to someone about it.

2. On that note, WHY, of all the available classmates, did Sayaka pick Leon as her potential victim? Why, if your goal was to kill, would you pick one of the Ultimate athletes? I feel like she would have had far more success if she'd chosen Hifumi or even Chihiro (sorry bb, I love you). Is there a lore reason behind it?

3. All that said, I am unfortunately interested in Leosaya content for the dramatic irony and tragedy of it, so if anyone has suggestions, let me know, and I also want to see Leon and Ibuki being best buds because she left her music group to pursue her actual creative dreams and Leon hated baseball and wanted to pursue dreams of being a musician and I can see them teaming up to be in a weird-ass band together. Someone direct me to any Leon and Ibuki platonic (or romantic, I'm down) content.

4. I think Leon is gaining blorbo status for me, but not as much as some other characters from the second game, but this is in no coherent order so bear with me, and also keep in mind, I have yet to play through all his possible dialogue in the School Mode version of the game so this is liable to change.

5. I went from waiting eagerly for Byakuya to die to being devastated that he died in the second game to REALLY HAPPY that that apparently wasn't even him (though I do like the Imposter & would like to know more about them). AND THEN to being so excited that he's apparently in a power throuple with Kyoko and Makoto, OT3s FOR THE WIN!!!!

6. Hina and Sakura were really sweet, and I Loooooove how protective Hina was, because yeah, the whole point of the fourth case was she underestimated Sakura's strength, but I also think Sakura deserved to be protected. Just because she's strong doesn't mean she didn't deserve people defending her.

7. On that note, ya'll, when I didn't know what to expect from this game, I legit thought somehow Mondo and Taka were going to die in that sauna. My stomach was in knots over it. Then they just. Were bros. And I was confused but on board with them (platonically AND romantically) and then the second case devastated me and not just because I had to watch Taka be Sad for so long.

5. I feel...so bad about the whole case with Mondo and Chihiro. They were BUDDIES. I know the whole point of the story is that people betray each other but God, imagine the "motive" you were given wasn't so much a motive as it was a fucking PTSD break and it lead to you killing someone that you were not only cool with, but who admired you for qualities you didn't feel worthy of, just FUCK--

6. If you let yourself stop and think of the Everything about these games and the stories, it really fucks you up, let me live in No Despair Land where everyone's friends with each other and there's no murder--

7. Also, the whole thing with Junko. I remember, before I took a break after Leon's execution, vaguely wondering about her last words? But it was a fleeting thought that didn't lead to anything, AND THEN IT CAME BACK AROUND??? So holy shit, that was cool.

8. Gotta say, as frustrating as a lot of repetitive stuff in the game got, I understood why it was needed for the case solving portion. As some of you can tell from my Clone Wars series with sweetiepie08, I LOVE mystery solving stuff when it's done right, and even if some of them are So SO convoluted, it's satisfying to see how they fall together.

9. The VAs in these games are fucking awesome. Even if some of the shit they had to say was ridiculous (which is par the course if that's your job), they did so damn good.

10. YA'LL, I legit thought Makoto was about to be executed, so when Alter Ego suddenly showed up and saved him, I shrieked, and then KYOKO found him, and I know a lot didn't happen after that except a shit ton of exposition, but I was so psyched.

11. *sigh* I don't know what the public opinion is of Toko, but she drove me insane with the debilitating inferiority complex. And then the Genocide Jack/Jill thing happened and I mean, at least she was...slightly more interesting with that, but still, I think Toko was somehow my least favorite out of the whole gang, next to Hifumi. I also would not have predicted that she'd be one of the final survivors.

12. I legit thought Hiro was going to snap at one point after his long period of denial at the beginning. I thought he'd snap and kill someone or get killed, so when he survived until the end, I was very surprised.

13. Tbh, I did not predict the endgame survivors for either Danganronpa. I think literally all I would have gotten right was Makoto, Kyoko, and Hajime. Everyone else was quite a surprise to me.

14. Not to compare another Danganronpa character to MHA, but I was super fond of Taka right off the bat because he's so Tenya coded, those two are definitely cousins or something.

15. Someone add onto my agenda of doing a Danganronpa x MHA fusion somehow, I'll make thoughts on another post.

16. I really loved Kyoko's dynamic with Makoto, idk why, and I just fucking love Kyoko in general, she's so cool. Sherlock Holmes, step aside.

That's about it! I'll make a post about the second game later.

[levi-supreme]

May I ask, do you have any unpopular aot opinions?

Hi anon!!! Aww thank you for sending me this ask haha I am very surprised but touched!! People don't usually send me asks like this so I am very happy to answer hehe.

Also, no hate, but all these are my own personal opinions and thoughts, so don't flame me!! Everyone interprets the characters, manga, and anime differently so please don't be offended by what I say.

Answering below the cut in case anyone wants to avoid seeing this and any potential manga spoilers!! Also tagging this with my ranting tags just in case because knowing me, I talk too much XD

Eren's decision on The Rumbling

I've talked about this before (somewhere in a reply to an ask) and I know we all don't agree with Eren's choice of committing massacre with The Rumbling, but honestly, this was what Eren decided, and it was what he deemed was the 'best choice'.

If this was how Isayama wanted Eren to act and this was what he thought was the decision Eren would decide on, then we should all just respect Isayama's choice. There's no way he can satisfy every single reader out there. Sending him hate because of this isn't acceptable.

Thoughts on Gabi and the Marleyans

Ah, yes, everyone's favourite discourse. I believe everyone has something to say about this, so I don't want to talk too much about it. Yes, I don't like Gabi, and yes, I don't think I'll like her ever. But do I hate her as a character and for killing Sasha? No.

Gabi was raised as a child soldier and with what was widely accepted as 'correct' in Marley was that everyone across the ocean is a 'devil'. What she did was out of survival instinct and it was just unfortunate that Sasha was at the receiving end of the blow. Marley was under attack by what she knew were the 'devils'. As a soldier, there's no 'home' without your country, and of course she would go all out to defend her homeland. It could have been anyone that was dead; Connie, Jean, literally anyone else up on the airship.

I love Sasha and I'm obviously pissed about Sasha dying, but as what I mentioned above, if Isayama wanted the plot to go this way, then who are we to say otherwise 🤷🏽‍♀️she got her character arc and development, and I'm satisfied with how things turned out.

Idk if I'm going to get flamed for this lol, but I really can't relate to the Marleyans too, and I don't like them, maybe except Pieck, Colt, and Niccolo (and maybe Porco). I don't agree with their ideology and I don't agree with many of the things they do. So yeah, I'm with the Eldians, and don't try to convince me otherwise haha.

Thoughts on character ships

Okay LOL I know I AM probably going to get hate mail or flamed or whatever for saying this, but I dislike almost every character ship out there except for Eremika and Niccolo x Sasha. Yes, character x Levi ships included. I have two popular Levi x character ships blocked because I dislike it so much lmao (have fun guessing which two).

Yes, I do ship Levi with someone, but I'm not saying who (those who know will know. Those who don't... please stay that way) because I don't want to start a discourse here. It's up to your own interpretation on who you want to ship whichever character together, but bear in mind that nothing is actually canon and confirmed by Isayama.

You can ship whoever you want, but don't force your ship on others and shoot them down saying that your ship is the 'best'.

Thoughts on the manga

People have sent hate mail and death threats to Isayama over the manga, and seriously people, DON'T DO THAT WHAT THE HELL????????????? It's all work of fiction, and honestly this is such a disrespectful and low move. If you don't like what you read, then don't read it?? Does sending hate mail to the mangaka make you feel better, or you think something you dislike about the manga will change?

I love the manga and all its spin-offs (No Regrets, Lost Girls, Before the Fall included) and yes there are certain things I dislike and things I don't agree with, but this is a work of fiction and people should just chill and enjoy the manga as it is.

This also applies to people sending hate to fanfic writers for writing certain topics that they don't feel comfortable with. If you don't like what you see, then don't read it??? Writers tag their work with the appropriate tags, so filter those tags away?? Don't send hate to people for things like this.

Thoughts on the anime

I know there's this whole WIT Studios vs MAPPA whatever and I love both animation studios, and both have their pros and cons. In my humble opinion, both animated the action sequences and fight scenes really good, but WIT Studios did a fantastic job with colouring and animation of the character's irises (which I love) and I like the way they animated the titans a little more. I like how MAPPA beefed Levi up (*slurps*), but I prefer the way WIT Studios animated Levi (Season 3 hello??????)

The only thing about the anime that I'm unhappy about was how little we got to see of No Regrets. The manga had soooooo much backstory of Levi, Isabel and Farlan, and there's so much more story about the Veterans as well. It's sad that they reduced eight amazing chapters in the manga to two OVA episodes and they cut out so much story telling as well. And this is why,,, I am always a manga over anime person.

One last thing that I may get flamed for (which I don't really care lol), is that I literally don't care about the English dub. Yes we all have preferences, some prefer Japanese, some prefer English. But similar to what I mentioned previously, don't go telling people how much you like one version and shoot down the other.

Also, I don't care about Matt Mercer and how sexy he sounds as Levi. Kamiya Hiroshi is my one and only Levi and his voice is the one I hear in my head every time I write Levi's dialogues and voice in my fics. Therefore, my choice of words when writing Levi's dialogues, his speech patterns, and my description of Levi's 'voice' is very much based on Kamiya Hiroshi's interpretation of Levi and the Japanese language. Which brings to my last general thought and point:

Thoughts on Levi

WELL I am a Levi blog after all, so obviously I have to talk about my husband and save the best for the last hehe. Also, another reminder that these are just my thoughts and feelings, so please don't tell me how much you disagree with me and how I'm wrong ;~;

I know many people say Levi is a cat person, but I beg to differ. In my head, he loves dogs. And I don't want to elaborate more because I know people are going to debate and tell me how I'm wrong lol.

Also. If Levi had descendants, he would NEVER name them after Kuchel, Isabel, and Farlan. I don't think this is how he would honour them and his memory of them, especially with Isabel and Farlan. I feel that Levi's biggest regret was detouring from Farlan and Isabel and going on his own, which indirectly caused Levi to not be there when the abnormal titan attacked them during No Regrets.

I don't want to talk too much about No Regrets since some of you may not have read it, but in gist, Levi was supposed to do *something* alone, but Farlan told Levi to trust him and Isabel to let them help him. On their expedition outside of the walls, once more Levi told Farlan and Isabel that he was going to do *something* alone and the two of them should stay with the group, but Farlan wanted to follow Levi. Levi told Farlan to trust him and stay, and he will do *something* alone. But when he didn't do *something*, he came back and saw Farlan and Isabel already dead. It was raining heavily on that day, and I also feel that Levi hates rainy days because of this. I feel that he blamed himself for causing Farlan and Isabel's deaths, and he would be guilty about this forever, no matter how many years passed.

By naming his descendants after the closest two friends he ever had seems to be rubbing salt on his wounds, and it would be an insult to his memory of them.

I also don't think Levi has a huge dick please, like my man isn't that long and thick everyone thinks he is. Levi's probably four to five inches max and his dick is slender and pretty. Who cares about how huge his dick is anyway, right? It's the sperm that fertilises the egg so you know, I care more about his balls and sperm count than how huge his dick is because his dick can't give me a baby but his sperm can XD also. His dick can do wonders okay he knows how to make you feel good in other ways so, who needs a huge dick anyway?????

Levi faced severe malnutrition and starvation since he was a kid, and in the environment he grew up in, Levi's physical health wouldn't be at the best. Of course through military training and living above the Underground did him good, but I feel that Levi's immune system wouldn't be the best. He probably would also have a pretty sensitive digestive system and can't take things like dairy, spicy food, or too much meat.

Levi probably sleeps with a candle lit, his bed is near to the window, and he never sleeps with his back facing the door. I feel that he's hypervigilant even when asleep, and he probably has a small knife or blade (the one he used in No Regrets maybe hehe) hiding underneath his pillow in the event that he feels threatened or under attack. His bed is near the window so that he can escape fast if he was under attack. He also probably sleeps with a candle lit because total darkness brings back bad memories of his time in the Underground, and the warm candlelight helps him feel safe.

Okay I think I've talked too much that this is becoming too long XD I hope you like my answers, anon! And once more, these are all my own thoughts and interpretation, so please don't start a discussion/discourse over here even if anyone disagrees with what I said okay ;AAA;

Feel free to send me any other thoughts and asks if you want as well! My ask is always open for Levi and SNK thoughts hehe. If you've read all the way here, thank you for reading through my rambling <3

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

ok some more thoughts on the eps (under read more cos of potential spoilers lol)

starting with the slightly more negative stuff so i can end with the things i like lol

there was a lot of over explaining of some basic who things, which i didnt mind that much considering they were being told to ruby, but but it did definitely feel like 'rtd is trying to introduce this to a new audience so he's kinda spoon feeding them everything' which is a lil frustrating as a long time fan lol...

on a similar note some of the flashback things in space babies were completely unnecessary given they were from the literal same episode pfft... like at least in the 2nd one they used flashbacks as voice overs which worked a lil better, but i'd still rather they just relied on the audience to understand the call backs without having to SHOW them u know?

the cgi babies mouths were weird, i didnt like them... i also wasnt the biggest fan of the music notes as tentacle like things coming from maestro... surprised i havent seen anyone complain about this given how vocal some of y'all were about the use of cgi in chibnall's era....... hmm

speaking of, i think some of the pacing issues in chibnall's era have stuck around a bit because that 2nd episode esp started off really well but then fizzled out in the middle, and the resolution went on for waaaay too long lol (also after maestro said that in ordered to defeat them they needed a musical genius, i kinda assumed the doctor and ruby would turn to eachother like 'hmm who could we go to who's a musical genius in 1963...' and then it cuts to john and paul wondering around the studio or smth... like idk there wasnt much connecting tissue between the sections, it just hung around on the kinda boring 'music battle' between the doctor and maestro... and like i get theyre trying to make ncuti's doctor more of an action-y style hero, but that felt too much like the battle with the toymaker.... also yes maybe i'm also mad there werent more scenes with the beatles in them SUE me lol! like literally most other episode (think of the van gogh one) the feature figures from history, theyre the main focus of the episode so it kinda sucked they were barely there :///////)

the musical number at the end of that ep wasnt my fav i'll be honest.... like it was fine, but in the xmas ep it made sense to have a fun musical number and it worked with the rest of the ep, but this one just felt like 'well the story's over ... but we still have 5 minutes left to fill so random song and dance number!'

final thing that i didnt love was (and bear in mind i know nothing about filmmaking lol) that some of the shots and edits felt a bit off? or didnt feel like they worked in a scene or just could have done with a retake from a different angle ... like especially some of the maestro scenes, like the performance was so good but the camera didnt seem to really be working with them very well? and in general some of the conversation scenes had the vibe of what you see in theatre lol? like where characters talk to each other via looking out at the audience lol... and like i dont mind that kinda theatrical way of producing scenes usually, but in moments when it's an intimate conversation between two characters, it did feel a tad weird lol...

edit: another thing i didnt mention but i did recently see a post talking about this, but i did think it was odd that most of the beatles ep is set in the 60s but it doesnt actually discuss the doctor being a black man in what was a very tough time to be non-white lol... like not only does the beatles music directly come FROM being influenced by black artists in america (smth they even discussed lol), but a part of the episode is about how important music is to humanity, and nothing shows that more than the way music the african slaves' sang whilst on plantations was adapted into blues/jazz and then later into rock n roll/pop... like music was an act of keeping a part of their humanity alive when they were being brutally dehumanised... (and like in part i get why rtd didn't go into this, as he hasn't the best history of dealing with black characters... but it WAS a notable absence and does kinda tell me the doctor being black isnt going to play into anything, which sucks, since chibnall did at least make it so the doctor being a woman DID massively alter the way she was seen... i might make another post about this lol)

ok things i liked!

nan-e was seriously great (cant remember what the actress is called but she does such a great job!!!! in a way i'd love for her to show up again she's such a fab character lol)

the whole resolution of the space babies ep was really great tbh! also the reveal the bogeyman is actually made of bogeys was legit really funny lol! even the fart at the end like yeh it's childish but who doesnt love a fart joke lol?

ncuti is great at acting all suave and confident one minute only to be on the verge of breaking down the next, aka the literal epitome of the doctor lol! also love his relationship w/ ruby ofc

ruby was great too! tho atm idk if we've really gotten a true grasp of who she is as a character u know? atm it does feel a lil like the whole clara mystery thing where her character comes 2nd, but i'm sure as the series goes along we're gonna get more lol

loved that cilla black was in the devil's chord ep!! that's it tbh just loved that

also loved that the doctor mentioned his family this early on, specifically susan! i do kinda wish they had used a flashback sequence when he was talking about the genocide cos i kept thinking 'wait... is this the time war or is this what happened w/ the master at the end of the (???cant remember the number.... 12th?) series??' which was several years ago and would have been great to refresh our memories on.. also meant we could potentially have seen jodie again lol!

i saw someone on .... somewhere complain about the 4th wall breaking but i actually really liked it lol! especially the non-diegetic comment! idk if i want every episode to have that, but i enjoyed it in that one! one thing about rtd's first era that i appreciate is that he experimented a lot with the format of each episode... which meant we got things like love & monsters, which like,yeh, it's..... An Episode for sure, but i appreciate that it's told from a different perspective! so in a way it feels like he's doing that kinda thing again, where each episode feels connected but still distinct from one another, if that makes any sense??

i liked the fake beatles song about the dog lol... partly because it didnt even sound that far off of something they wouldve written on a later album (by paul) pfft... kinda sucks they didnt buy the rights to at least one actual beatles song, even just to play a few secs of it lol...

overall, neither episode blew me away, but they weren't terrible either lol... i'm also shocked how similar this series is to chibnall's era, which is why it's so bizarre to me that people continue to be like 'oh doctor who is finally back!' like bitch for one it never went away lol!??! and for two, a lot of issues people had with chibnall's (and to some extent moffat's) era are still there, but now cos it's headed by rtd again people arent complaining about them the same way they did before... idkkkkk

i've also already talked about this, but i do still think the releasing at midnight thing is fucking dumb, especially for us british fans! i get that maybe that's a stipulation from disney but it doesnt mean i have to like it... also didnt like that 2 episodes were released at once like ???? why lol idkk

i'm still looking forward to the rest of the series ofc!

[the---hermit]

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I have seen this book everywhere in the past year or so. I wasn't super sure about it, but in the end I gave in and got it to see how this novel was. If you have read a couple of my other posts you probably know that gothic horror is by far my favourote genre. There's something about the vibe of those stories that just calles to me, and so anything that gives a similar premise is good enough for me. My opinions on this particular book are a bit torn, I gave it 3.5 stars, right in the middle of the scale. The thing is that I did enjoy my time reading the book, but there's a lot of things that disappointed me. (This is going to be a long one, I have a lot to say).

Let's start with the writing. I didn't mind it, in fact I was excited to pick the book up, and the chapters where perfectly structured so that they weren't too long, and they made the story flow well. Unfortunately I found the story to be very slow. I am not into short paced books, but with this novel I felt that nothing really happened in the first half, which I doubt is a good thing. Plot-wise I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought it was going to be a gothic ghost story, it wasn't. Some ideas of the plot were really interesting, but I'm not sure they were explored as much as they could have (I talk about it more in the spoilery part under the cut), and there wasn't really a gothic vibe. Okay, the house is huge and a bit creepy, but I was looking for that realy gothic horror vibe, and I didn't really find it. A lot of the chatacters were really annoying, but it often served the plot so that's fine. Still I didn't really felt super passionate about any character. So basically it was a fairly good book but it could have had so much more potential.

For those who don't have any idea of what the plot is about here's the base line. The story is set in 1950 Mexico, and our protagonist is Noemí, a young woman with a strong character. After receving a worring letter from her cousin Catalina, who recently got married to an Englishman, her father asks her to visit Catalina to check on her. Noemí goes there to find her cousin in a worrying physical and mental state, in the cares of a family who's vibe is just a bit off. While staying there she will discover more and more about the history of the house and of this family. I will not say more, to avoid spoilers. As I said the premise is really cool, and the result is not bad, but I am left with this feeling that it could have been much better too.

In conclusion I do recommend the book if you are curious, and you want a really (really) light creepy story, but bear in mind that at least for my very humbe opinion it's not a masterpiece. Under the cut I discuss a couple of spoiler-y things so if you are interested read more!

As mentioned in this part I'll write freely and there's spoilers so consider yourself warned.

I want to talk about two main things here. The first one is a very personal opinion, but I am so tired of snakes being used as a symbol of evil stuff. Those who have read a few of my posts might know I am really passionate about symbology, and the ouroborus is a symbol I particularly like (so much that I have it tattooed), so of couse my opinion is not objective. But it's such a meaningful positive symbol, that finding that another so called horror story (which in my opinion wasn't so horrific anyway) uses an occult symbol as something bad. There's a much longer talk we could have on how horror movies fucked up the general perception of other positive symbols like the pentagram, but this is not the time nor place. I just needed to vent and talk about this thing. The usage of occult symbols as something bad in horror fiction has become kinda old in my opinion, and it doesn't really serve anyone. Anyway my overall opinion on the book wasn' t influenced by this.

The second thing I want to talk about is how certain subjects were really interesting but not really developed. The immortality thing is not really a theme I adore, and in this novel I think it wasn't even a surprise, I could have told it was going to be part of the plot quite soon. Still the fact that I didn't love it might be influenced by me not being a hige fan of the trope. The mushroom thing was very very cool. I found it to be very interesting and original, and I wished there had been even more about it. What I was really disappointed not to see as well developed was the theme of eugenetics. When Noemí first meets Howard, their conversation suggested that it might have been a big theme in the rest of the novel and it really wasn't. It was mentioned a couple more times with even less depth than in the first conversation. It was a huge disappointment for me. It could have been a really interesting main theme that could have led to a langer discurse on racism, and I feel like it was such a lost opportunity. It was such a let down, because that first conversation had some really nice historical references, for example to Cesare Lombroso. And when I read it I was super excited to see how the author had used this historical theme to create fictional horror, and then it wasn't done, and it's such a shame.

[ddarker-dreams]

sooo scaramouche aha amirite... everything’s very rough but i have many ideas for him now that we’ve been given more information! everything is under the cut to avoid spoilers, please proceed accordingly. 

so, now we know the pale flame’s artifact is definitely about scaramouche. the one that says, 

He was born with a face fairer than any other, Destined to a long life and a hollow will.

He was a transcendent being, divinely created, but he was cast aside like worthless dross. Yet, due to an error that cannot be known, he roused himself from slumber, And began to wander the mortal realm.

Before the Fatui found him, he had drifted for countless years And in that time, this is what his experience had taught him:

"I am a 'human' who surpasses all others." "Even the gods daren't meddle in my fate." "Neither mortal nor god, nor fate itself, is qualified to be my judge." "I am free to choose how I wish to spend the remainder of my days."

"Since these mask-wearing people are so fun to be around..." "I think I'll become one of them."

well that explains why he comes off as prideful if not arrogant at times. if the raiden shogun is a container for ei, then that must mean scaramouche has the potential to be around as powerful as an archon? that’s what he was made for, originally... if yae miko, the raiden shogun’s familiar (who is comparable to dvalin with barbatos) didn’t feel confident enough to fight him, i really wonder how strong he actually is. 

that means there really would be no escaping him. phew. 

there’s no way he doesn’t feel slighted over having been deserted, cast away for a “better” version that’d become the raiden shogun’s new vessel. aka roots for some major abandonment issues, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it. the alternative wasn’t that great either, serving as a puppet to a god for eternity is the last thing he’d probably desire in retrospect. still doesn’t make the pain of being discarded like trash even better. 

if his darling ever tried to leave him, all that baggage would come to the forefront of his mind. no doubt. he’s probably one of the most possessive yanderes from the genshin impact lineup for this very reason. any possibility of being replaced by you for someone “better” is viewed as the ultimate slight, a repeat of his past that he can’t stand to bear. 

he probably feels even more of a desire to prove himself to his darling as the only one worthy of them, so the hurt of being left behind is never experienced again. 

[miraculouswolf99]

Breaking Into The Watchtower Part 1

Miraculous Ladybug-DC Universe crossovers are some of my favorite fanfictions. They are just a good match. I especially love ones where the Justice League either ignores the Paris situation or one of the League members gets the messages for help and doesn’t believe them. Mostly, it’s the Flash, Guy Gardner, Green Lantern, or Booster Gold.

In this story, some of the miraculous have changed hands for my story. There will be new holders and different holders for old miraculous. All of my OC characters will also be included. Nathaniel has the fox, Marc has the turtle, Rose has the horse, Juleka has the tiger, and Alix will have the bunny.

*****

“This is most definitely not something that I would ever have thought that I would ever do,” White Wolf says.

“We are magical teenagers that use the power of mini gods and mystical jewelry,” Beautifly says. “Your statement pretty much sums up every day of our lives.”

“Trust me, I never thought that I would be doing anything like this before I met Plagg,” Cat Noir said.

“At least I can cross this off my bucket list,” Ladybug giggled.

“Why is the name of the Olympian gods would this be on your bucket list,” White Wolf looked at the teen hero weirdly.

“I put it on after they started to ignore our cries for help,” Ladybug crossed her arms. “Or, when it was made obvious that they were ignoring us, at least.”

“How much sleep have you gotten lately,” Beautifly asks. “You only get this sassy when you haven’t slept in about two days.”

“I remember going to sleep on Wednesday,” Ladybug put her hand on her chin as she started thinking.

“Uh… It’s Saturday,” White Wolf deadpanned.

“Oh,” was all Ladybug could say.

“If you don’t go right to sleep after we get back, I am sending Plagg over to destroy every device you have to make sure you are not distracted and can finally sleep,” Cat Noir threatened.

“But what if there is an akuma,” Ladybug protested.

“Then we will have to make sure that Cat Noir saves his power so that he can Cataclysm the moth when it comes out of the akumatized object,” White Wolf says.

“And the damage,” Ladybug continued to protest.

“We will get to that when we get there,” White Wolf said.

“You are sometimes too selfless for your own good,” Beautifly shook her head.

“Yeah, she tends to be like that,” Cat Noir chuckled. “Why do you think I force myself between her and the villains we face when she tries to protect me because she will take the hit for me. But she needs to be the one that the attack does not hit because she is the one that purifies the akuma.”

“We are a very colorful crew,” Beautifly giggled.

“Says the butterfly girl whose hero outfit is almost entirely black,” White Wolf said.

“Not my fault that Flutter is a monarch butterfly kwami,” Beautifly shrugged.

“I certainly wish that I had some color on my suit,” Cat Noir says. “While the black makes my eyes pop, the color doesn’t match my personality at all. Why couldn’t Plagg be a tabby cat or a white cat?”

“Because he is the literal god of bad luck and nobody thinks of either of those two other kinds of cats when bad luck comes to mind,” Ladybug stated. “Deal with it, Chaton.”

“Yeah, you really need some sleep before you become permanently sassy,” Beautifly says.

“I blame Hawkmoth and his never-ending late-night akumas,” White Wolf stated. “My ears are still ringing from that banshee akuma he created last week.”

“And talk about unoriginal,” Cat Noir rolled his eyes. “Scream Queen was probably the most obvious choice of name in the history of villain names.”

“Even more so than that Poison Ivy woman in Gotham,” Beautifly asked.

“Well, she could have called herself Mother Nature,” Cat Noir shrugged.

“Point made,” Beautifly said.

The four then looked at the rest of their teams preparing themselves for what was going to be done. The Greek hero team had stayed the same throughout the three years of fighting, but the French team had changed. Their current members were Vulpix, Emerald Turtle, Queen Bee, Viperion, Lady Unicorn, King Monkey, Ryuko, Shadow Cat, and Bunnix. The last two being the newest members of the hero team. The Greek team was Gladiator with the grizzly bear miraculous, Tigress with the leopard miraculous, and Ocean Mage with the mermaid miraculous. The last one being the only person to be currently using a magical creature miraculous on the planet.

All of the heroes were getting ready in their own ways. Ryuko, Ocean Mage, and Viperion were meditating. King Monkey, Bunnix, Tigress, and Gladiator were all getting themselves hyped up for the mission. Queen Bee was trying to find a way to take off her gloves to file her nails. Vulpix and Emerald Shell were cuddling, comforting each other, and probably trying really hard not to start making out. The same could be said about Shadow Cat and Lady Unicorn. Those four were always the more timid ones of the group, even though all of them were amazing heroes.

“Alright, does everyone remember their parts of the plan,” Ladybug asked them, snapping them out of their trances.

“I will make sure that everything goes smoothly and no one truly gets hurt,” Viperion says.

“White Wolf, Lady Unicorn, and I take out our biggest worries to being discovered before we are ready,” Bunnix added.

“The rest of us force them into a position where they have to listen to us,” Gladiator said.

The rest of the team nodded in agreement. Some of them were still looking nervous about what they were about to do.

“Are you sure doing this is the right thing to do,” Lady Unicorn asked. “We could get into serious trouble for this.”

“We wouldn’t be doing this at all if they stopped ignoring us,” Tigress crossed her arms. “Even with all these miraculous being active, Hawmoth’s akumas are getting more and more dangerous.”

“He is also akumatizing more dangerous people like con artists, martial artists, and policemen,” Ocean Mage says. “What’s to stop him from going all Scarlet Moth and sending his moths to a prison if he gets desperate enough?”

“That is why we need their help,” Ladybug said. “If contacting them through official means does not help, then we must do what we have to.”

“I just hope that we don’t get labeled as criminals for this,” Beautifly said.

-----------------------------

If there was one thing that Robin currently was, it was bored. He had to stop himself from yawning as he sat in another long and boring meeting of the Justice League.

One would think that a young hero like him would not be a part of one of these meetings. But this was less of a war room and more of a meeting between all heroes to discuss general things involving heroes in general and not entirely league business. It was always the same things being discussed in these meetings. Egotistical politicians trying to control the league, villains breaking out of prison again, as well as discussing potential new members of the League and the Young Justice team.

Other than Robin, the rest of the Bat-family was there as well. Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Oracle, Spoiler, Orphan, Batwing, and even Batwoman. The Super family was also there. Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, and the former Superboy that now called himself Krypton. Robin smirked at how Conner had finally broken the trend of having “Super” in his hero name. He may be a clone, he knew that both Kara and Jon both adored him. The other young heroes that were there were Red Arrow, Artemis, Aqualad, Tempest, Miss. Martian, Beast Boy, Starfire, Zatanna, Kid Flash, and Impulse.

And other than Batman and Superman, there were also the mentors of the other young heroes as well. Green Arrow, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Dr.Fate, and the Flash. The other adult heroes in the room were Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Wonder Woman, Sparton, Black Canary, Red Tornado, all three Green Lanterns, Black Lightning, Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, the Atom, and Katanna.

As Robin looked around, he noticed that he was not the only bored-looking young hero. The entire Bat-family looked to be wanting to be anywhere else, especially since they lived in a city where a crime was committed every five seconds. But the other heroes that looked bored were Superboy, Krypton, Red Arrow, Aqualad, and Beast Boy. They were all probably like him. They were excited to be part of league meetings until it was discovered that there was a lot more politics involved than actual hero work.

“Does anyone have anything else that they would like to add,” Superman asked the room.

“How about we talk about actually saving people instead of dealing with politicians,” Nightwing muttered, making the Bat-family hide their snickers.

“Especially that psycho Lex Luthor,” Krypton muttered from his place next to Nightwing.

“Well, if that is all…” Superman was about to wrap up the meeting.

“Wait,” Zatanna shot up from her seat, her hands on her head. “I sense something.”

All the younger heroes were all now thinking how something interesting was finally going to happen during one of these meetings. But the heroes were also all reaching for their weapons if they had them.

“What is it,” Wonder Woman asked the magician, her hand on her sword.

“There is an incoming magical…” Zatanna was cut off.

A bright blue portal opened up right under her feet. She fell in before she could finish her warning. The portal closed right after she fell into it.

“What in the world,” Flash gasped.

“ZATANNA,” the members of Young Justice yelled their former team member’s name.

“Oracle,” Batman did not even have to say the entire order.

“I’m on it,” the wheelchair-bound hero immediately started typing on her holographic computer. “She’s… I can’t find her.”

“What do you mean you can’t find her,” Captain Atom demanded to know.

“It’s like she vanished into thin air,” Oracle continued typing. “She’s nowhere in the Watchtower, or on Earth, not even on my planet in our galaxy. There is no sign of Zatanna anywhere.”

“She managed to say that it was something magical that was approaching,” Wonder Woman says.

“Dr. Fate, can you do something,” Superman requested of the lord of order.

The master sorcerer stood up from his seat. While he, personally, did not care for Zatanna other than a fellow user of the mystic arts, his current host body was that of her father. So finding her will hopefully silence all the yelling that Zatara is currently doing inside of the helmet.

But before the lord of order could do anything, another portal opened up behind him. But unlike the bright blue of the first one, this portal was a ring of blue surrounding a white portal. Something had quickly reached through and Dr.Fate was instantly turned into an ice statue. An invisible figure sneaked through the portal before it closed.

This caused all the other league members and Young Justice members to all jump and, drawing their weapons or preparing their powers. They all looked around and were on guard just in case another portal opened up.

“Oracle,” Batman ordered her again.

She was typing as quickly as humanly possible.

“I can’t find anyone else in the Watchtower,” she said, still typing. “I’ve run heat scans, x-ray scans, even the program to search for invisible opponents. I still can not find anyone else in the Watchtower.”

A soft tune suddenly played throughout the room. It was like a theme song for a peaceful day in the Fall played on a flute. A ball of light soon soared to the end of the room and brightly flashed. When the flash died down, the heroes were all shocked to see a message had been written in light in the air.

“We Just Want To Talk.”

It floated there for about a minute before Superman and Maritan Manhunter flew over to the message to examine it. But the moment that one of them touched it, it vanished in a burst of orange smoke-like light.

“It was an illusion,” Nightwing was the first to realize it.

“Maybe that is how they are hiding,” Red Robin opened up his own holographic screen over his glove and started typing. “Under an illusion.”

“And if they are magical like Zatanna said, it would not be possible to detect them since the technology that can detect magic has not been invented yet,” Oracle added.

“There is no such thing as magic,” yelled out Kid Flash.

Young Justice rolled their eyes, used to the constant rants that the speedster goes on about his disbelief in magic. It certainly annoyed those like Aqualad and Tempest, who both were born in Atlantis and attended the conservatory of sorcery there. Few other magical heroes tolerated the loud-mouth. Which was why heroes like Phantom and his brother Gold Siren wanted nothing to do with the team. (Reference to my fanfictions on Wattpad, Phantom Music and Home.)

“Try to find out where the illusion came from,” Superman ordered.

“You could try looking right in front of you,” a female voice was suddenly heard.

The heroes all turned and saw three masked teenagers standing there. Two boys and a girl. 

The first boy was a redhead with his bangs covering his right eye. He had on a fox-themed skin-tight orange and white outfit with red boots, gloves, and a red jacket. He also had real fox ears and a real fox tail as well. A flute was strapped to his back.

The boy next to him had black hair with green tips, which matched his turtle-themed outfit. The outfit also had a dark green leather jacket and boots with a green shield on his back, going with the goggle-like mask over his eyes.

The girl was blond with a single black streak in her ponytail. Her outfit was definitely themed by bumblebees. But unlike the shoes of the two next to her, her shoes had a slight heal to them. Like a two-inch-high wedge heel. Around her waist was a spinning top on a string.

“What have you done to our allies,” Captain Atom demanded of them.

“They are perfectly fine,” the turtle boy informed them.

“Why should we believe you,” Robin held his katana in his hand.

“Because we need your help and harming your fellow heroes would not help our situation,” the fox boy crossed his arms.

“What could you possibly need from us,” Black Lightning’s hands sparked with his powers.

“How about for you to stop ignoring us while we have been fighting a terrorist for three years,” the bee girl yelled at them.

“We also are not lying,” the fox boy said. “We have no reason to lie when surrounded by most of the world’s heroes.”

Before they could say anything else, all three were surrounded by separate green spheres that floated them up into the air. The Green Lanterns all had their rings pointed at one of the masked teens.

“This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” the bee girl complained as she crossed her arms.

“I got captured by the original Green Lantern,” the fox boy looked to be almost fanboying inside of his sphere.

“Lucky, I got that class clown Guy Gardner,” the turtle boy almost seemed to pout.

“Hey,” Guy Gardner protested, offended.

“Why are you here, where is Zatanna, and what did you do to Dr. Fate,” Superman demanded of the three as he flew close to them.

“You know, you are a lot less threatening than you think you are,” the bee girl stated with a smirk. “By the way, whoever told you that underwear on the outside of your pants was a good choice needs to be thrown into fashion jail.”

Most of the Young Justice team had to stop themselves from laughing. Even Superboy, Supergirl, and Krypton were trying not to laugh. They had no idea who this girl was, but she was certainly sassy.

“How did you get into the Watchtower undetected,” Superman continued to demand answers from them.

“That is for us to know,” the fox boy started.

“And you to find out,” the turtle boy finished.

The smirks the three had told the league something, alright. Batman was the first to realize what it meant.

“There are more of them,” he said.

As if him saying that was their cue to come in, three more masked teens almost seemed to materialize into the room. A guy in a monkey-themed outfit hit his Ruyi Jingu Bang against the ground and then threw it into the air.

“Uproar,” he yelled.

He threw his now glowing staff into the air, the staff letting out a flash as it spun in the air. With a swift flick of her lasso, Wonder Woman grabbed the weapon before it could fall back into the monkey boy’s hand. But something else fell into his hands that they did not see.

But then came the second masked teen, who looked like he had been born of the ocean. He took out what seemed to be a hilt made out of sapphire. Water came out of the hilt as the masked boy flicked his wrist, the water forming into a whip. Before they could move, the teen whipped all of the Green Lantern’s hands at once. Pulling his whip, the masked teen caused their hands to collide together.

That was when the monkey boy threw the object that he had caught out of the air. Katana was close enough to try and slice through it with her sword, but she was intercepted by a second masked girl, this one appearing out of nowhere and seemed to have a tiger theme to her. Even if she was purple and black and not orange and black. Katana’s sword was met with a metal tiger-claw gauntlet. While they fought, a bunny-themed girl showed up and intercepted Green and Red Arrow, fighting both archers at once. Then, to the shock of the Green Lantern trio, a stuffed octopus child’s toy landed on their connected hands.

For a moment, nothing happened and they wondered why a stuffed animal had been thrown at them. But then their rings all started to malfunction at once. The rings stopped glowing and all three trapped teens were released from their bubbles. And since the rings were no longer working, the Lanterns all fell to the ground without their ability to fly.

“We’re teenagers, not stupid,” the bee girl smirked.

No longer wanting to underestimate the masked teens, the big hitters of the league all started to move toward them. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Red Tornado, and Captain Atom.

“Venom,” the bee girl shouted.

The top in her hand seemed to grow a bit in size and start glowing. As Superman flew at her, she dodged him and managed to touch him with her top. He fell to the ground and did not move from his punching pose. He was paralyzed.

“Confusion,” a female voice shouted.

Wonder Woman turned around to almost immediately be scratched on her arm by a girl in a leopard-themed outfit. The scratch on her arm glowed purple and the hero suddenly became very dizzy and could not seem to focus. She had never been drunk before, but she was sure this was probably how it felt.

Captain Atom’s hands lit up as he aimed one of his energy blasts at the masked teens. As he was just about to blast, another masked teen appeared. This one was themed by a brown-furred bear. Probably a grizzly bear.

“Roar,” a male voice yelled just as Captain Atom blasted.

The bear boy’s fist lit up gold and he punched right into the energy beam. To the surprise of the league, he was able to keep the beam at bay with a single punch.

Red Tornado was about to throw one of his twisters when he was hit on his robot head by a thrown horseshoe. It bounced and flew around like a boomerang-gone-wild until it landed back in the hand of a horse-themed girl.

All of the heroes and masked teens in the room were either fighting or dodging the attacks of another from one of the other groups.

“Enough,” a male and female voice shouted at once.

Even the Justice League froze as the voices boomed throughout the room. Standing on the other side of the room were six more masked teens. Three boys and three girls. The two that had shouted were a ladybug-themed girl and a boy with an icy wolf outfit. The boy standing next to the ladybug girl looked to be related to Catwoman while the girl next to the wolf boy was like a butterfly turned human. The last two were a snake boy and a girl that looked to be dragon-themed.

“All of you, front and center, now,” the ladybug girl ordered.

All of the animal-themed teens stopped what they were doing immediately. They put their weapons away and walked over to join the others at her sides.

Wonder Woman looked at the group for a few moments. The drunk feeling had been lifted from her and she could focus. There was something about them that was making an old memory of her’s rise to the surface. An old story that her mother used to tell her about when she had been friends with, who she had called, an adorable and wise little creature known as a kwami. A creature that she also remembered was bound to a magical object called a miraculous.

“The ladybug and black cat are active once more,” she gasped.

The league looked at the Amazon princess in shock. She actually had an idea who these teens were.

“We thought that you would be the one to recognize our magic, Wonder Woman,” the ladybug girl softly smiles.

Wonder Woman approached the group, putting her sword away as she did. And surprising the league again, she bowed to the ladybug girl and cat boy. The two of them and the wolf boy and butterfly girl bow back.

“It is an honor to meet the wielder of the ladybug miraculous,” Wonder Woman said.

“The honor is all ours, daughter of Hippolyta,” the ladybug girl says. “Tikki says to tell your mother ‘hi’ for her.”

Wonder Woman smiled at that.

“Would you care to explain exactly what is going on,” Batman ordered them, crossing his arms. “Starting with where Zatanna is and what you did to Dr. Fate and Superman.”

The bunny girl got out a pocket watch from her pocket. She checks the time.

“We can answer the first question now,” she smirked. “We’re right on time.”

She put her watch away and then threw her hands forward yelling “Burrow.” Out popped the same type of portal that Zatanna had disappeared through. And seconds after the portal was opened, out fell the magician.

“What just happened,” Zatanna immediately asked.

“The rest of your comrades will be fine somewhere between five to ten minutes,” the butterfly girl says.

“Before we go into the full explanation, do you guys have a bathroom in this place by any chance,” the leopard girl asked.

[pawnshopsouls]

Ooc: Thoughts on the Witch Queen

//Ok so bc I won’t be able to get the Witch Queen DLC I did some looking for the cutscenes to piece together what I can and oh boy I have thoughts. Spoilers under the cut:

Ok so I haven’t seen all the cut scenes but I saw Savathun’s death and the oncoming of the Witness and BOY HOWDY DO I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS

First is that all I can think is that the Traveler was indeed trying to bring in the strength of Savathun and the Hive to fight against the Darkness. That Savathun’s army was literally its last chance and that by driving killing her and driving her away, the Guardians have sealed their doom. But is Savathun really just going to stand by and watch the Dark destroy the Traveler? Probably not. I imagine she’ll revive somewhere else and wait until all the guardian’s are dead before swooping in and taking the Traveler for herself, performing Sword Logic on the most plentiful foe there is—the dark itself.

But I also honestly wonder what kind of person she was with no memories, a hoard of hive, and everything. Who was she really? Was she following her own previously set down instructions? Would she have been an ally if the Guardians hadn’t reminded her of who she was? Did she know or even understand why everyone was attacking her and the Hive who worshiped her? What all did she know and what all did she lay out for us to find so we would be able to know and understand her? Would we have been able to convince her to be better if we hadn’t come in guns blazing too? Will she really leave us, the players, to our demise as the Witness comes?

On the flip side, after finding himself feeling at home on Savathun’s homeworld, I can see Bonely honestly pondering joining Savathun since he and she are so similar at that point. He’d want to connect with her, to understand but also see if he can find a place in this place that feels to him, more and more like home. He wants to know the truth, but he also wants to bring things to a better conclusion and is open to changing his understanding of things.

Bonely would honestly be an advocate for Light Bearing Hive, firm in the position that the Traveler knew what it was doing when it sent a Ghost to Savathun, and that if it was willing to give Savathun a second chance, then they aught to do the same—specifically because if the Traveler is giving Hive Light, then that means something worse than Savathun is on the way and it wanted her to help them stand against it.

Honestly, after seeing her death scene, Bonely is wanting to go out and find her and try and convince her to come back, to protect the Light and ensure her life and other's lives. To apologize for the humans not understanding her actions and trying to destroy her for it, but also chastise her for "dividing the house of the Traveler against itself" In his mind, once one becomes a guardian, all Light Bearers are kin—bound together by the will of the Traveler, and they better start acting like it before their vendettas get them all killed

He wants her around, maybe a little for his own purposes, but mostly because he sees her as the biggest player and potential ally they could have against the darkness. Because if the Darkness kills the Traveler, it’s over. For her, for the Guardians, for everyone ever touched by the Light.

“Yeh were chosen fer a reason, ‘n’ that reason was not teh divide the House of the Traveler against itself—which yeh just did. But it’s not too late! I don’t want this world, this amazing, wonderful universe teh be destroyed ‘cause some humans didn’t know yeh were tryin’ teh play nice—that is if yeh were tryin’ teh play nice.”

He’d want to convince Savathun to come back, to defend the Traveler as she was going to, but this time to fight along side the guardians instead of fighting against them.

Fat chance it’s going to work, but he’s cracked tough cases before and sometimes you just gotta be willing to play the middle man and offer leverage to both sides.

Still, he would be sorely tempted to make a deal with Savathun—one of his deals, where they’re both bound by the terms but he’s the one fed by it. Or rather his darker self is, and he knows that if he gives in to that, he’d be giving in to the Dark and they’d be getting another pawn to put a kink in the works.

[exn0bisstudios]

As a preface: no need to answer if you don’t feel comfortable with it,I know people sometimes don’t like these questions so no pressure if you’re one of them! Who likes kids, who would like to be a parent (if their partner also wanted that of course!), and who is good with kids? Thank you!

Well, firstly, thank you for your concern! I'm okay with these topics so long as it's not about me personally, so don't worry! That said, though, I'll put this under a cut since the topic might be uncomfortable for some people.

CW for: talk involving conception, infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage

Edited 5/16 - Changes to include more inclusive language. My apologies! 

Since we're talking about the ROs and kids, let us talk about MC too for a sec.

It should be noted that it is typically challenging for a Seer to bear children/impregnate someone. The corruption that comes with their Void powers usually renders them infertile, or at least close to. However, it's not unheard of for a Seer to have children. Still, it usually results in a difficult pregnancy and can be dangerous to both the carrier and the child. Additionally, any child born from a Seer (either parent) would be Dream-touched.

That said, as we know, MC is a very special Seer. Canonically, their powers have not rendered them infertile, though their kid would still end up Dream-touched. However, I will be leaving it up to players to decide if their MC can or can't have biological kids for other reasons. And, obviously, adoption is also very much an option!

Now on to the ROs!

Mira

Mira likes kids well enough, and they're usually very good with them. They struggle a bit with dealing with noble children. Still, Mira's kind and empathetic nature tend to have children warming up to them regardless. They used to help take care of the young recruits back at the Order, both daily routine stuff and some training.

They would absolutely love to have a family one day, but it's something they kinda push to the back of their mind and try not to think about. Their lifestyle doesn't lend itself to the stability and safety necessary for raising children, considering they could be killed in action any day. They think it would be grossly irresponsible to have a family, then end up dead somewhere and leave them hanging. Mira was an orphan themself, and they know firsthand how hard life is for kids on their own. They have no desire to contribute to that lifestyle or put their own potential child through that.

If there ever came a time where they could lay down their weapons for good, though, then yes. They'd want to start a family in whatever way they could. Though not opposed to having biological children, both masc & fem Mira would prefer to adopt. Again, being an orphan themself, they would choose to take in a child. Mira would ideally like 2-3 kids so they can have a big family to grow old with, and they'd be a very supportive and doting parent. They'd probably struggle with discipline.

Nova

Children confuse the absolute shit out of Nova, and the way mortals procreate admittedly terrifies them. Nightmares are not born in the same sense that mortals are; they just kinda pop into existence fully formed. When Nova first learned about mortal procreation, they had a minor mental breakdown. The idea of another, smaller living thing growing inside someone strikes them as distinctly horrific. They've done their best to accept the idea at this point in their life, but mainly they cope with it by ignoring its existence. They see a pregnant person and basically go, 'suddenly I have no eyes.' Babies and children continue to confuse them despite their best efforts, and they have no idea how to interact with them. You put a child around Nova, and you're liable to hear them genuinely asking the kid why they are so small and dumb.

Nova's mortal body is also infertile by design. They chose this shortly after they realized they actually enjoyed sex and would do it again. They don't know if it would be possible for them to become pregnant/impregnate someone, considering they're not actually mortal. Still, they didn't want to risk it.

The only time Nova would consider starting a family is if it was something their partner(s) really, really wanted. They'd sit down and have an honest talk about how it's something that they know nothing about, that the process scares them, and that they are absolutely going to need help learning how to handle it all. But, if their partner is willing to accept all that, Nova would be willing to try. Though again, they don't know if they can procreate with a mortal, so they'd probably recommend going for a surrogate or adoption. Eventually, Nova'd grow into a good parent, very supportive, and surprisingly level-headed.

Stella

They don't have too much of an opinion on children, which shows in how they don't really know how to interact with them. Stella feels super awkward around kids, and they're more likely to tell them to shoo. Their own childhood has tainted their views, and being around children brings up things they'd rather not think about. Honestly, the fastest way to make Stella disappear is to put a child nearby.

Deep down, though, they like the idea of starting a family. It would take a lot of encouragement to get them to admit that. It'd take even more to help them process long-ignored family-related trauma and unlearn a whole lot of unhealthy habits. With the proper support from their partner(s), though, they'd really like to give things a try. Fem Stella wouldn't mind carrying a child. Still, both fem & masc Stella generally don't care if their kid is biological or adopted.

Stella would make for a very nervous parent, and they'd be absolutely terrible at discipline. They'd probably helicopter and be overprotective and would have to be reminded by their partner(s) that things will be okay.

Désiré

So a bit of history: Dez is one of the only two ROs who already has child-rearing experience. His best friend and second-in-command, Alix, was born and raised in the brothel with him. While he grew up to be an errand boy and bodyguard, she became one of the courtesans. He took up smuggling and worked his ass off to get them out of there, but unfortunately, Alix became pregnant before they could escape. Alix's son, Dimitri, was born in the cabin of the first ship Dez ever owned.

Alix eventually married Catarina, the crew's healer, who has acted as Dimitri's other mother. Thus, while Dez is 'officially' Dimitri's uncle, he has always been his only father-figure. Dimitri is 14 by the time of the game and is still a very active part of Désiré's life. You'll actually get a chance to meet him in-game since he's got a place on Dez's crew (he's the cabin boy)!

Now that history is managed, it's safe to say that Désiré would love to start a family one day. It doesn't matter to him how, though going the biological route, let it be known he's excellent at tending to pregnancy needs. He's a wonderful parent, generally gentle while supportive and encouraging, and is comfortable being stern when it's called for.

Vittore Simone

Sadly I can't get into the specifics of Vittore Simone's thoughts on kids and family without it becoming a spoiler. However, I can say that he vowed when he was young that he'd never have kids and has never thought of it since. Going forward, it would never be something that crossed his mind unless brought up by his partner and would be something he'd defensively refuse at first. Later, he'd come back with apologies and to have a more open conversation on the matter to express his reservations and fears.

Suffice to say that the idea of being a father absolutely terrifies him, and he has always taken great pains to avoid it ever happening. Even just the thought is enough to send him into panic attacks. His partner will need to be patient with him and accept that this is something he may genuinely never be able to do for the sake of his own health and any future child's. It would take a lot of time, reassurance, work, healing, support, and understanding before Vittore Simone ever agreed to give parenthood a shot. It will not be an easy road for him or his partner. It would likely be a road that never truly ends, and he'd need to be sure that they can both accept that without damaging their own relationship. He would try, though. He would do his damnedest. And, thankfully, there will never be any doubt that he genuinely does love his kid.

As a father, initially, he would constantly be terrified he was hurting his kid somehow. He would struggle with being overly permissive & overprotective at the same time. He's liable to have a panic attack any time the kid cries for the first several years. His partner will have to help him get through 'I'm a terrible father, this was a mistake' breakdowns periodically. Slowly, though, he'll build some confidence and be more comfortable interacting and expressing himself with his kid. He'll always be supportive, and he'll work his hardest to be sure his family knows he loves them unconditionally. His partner will have to accept the role of disciplinarian, though. That's never going to be something he'll be able to do on his own (but of course, he'll be there to support them in those conversations. He doesn't want to make them the 'bad guy' by any means).

Andrai

The other RO with child-rearing experience! Andrai has 15 younger siblings (yes, you heard me correctly) and absolutely adores them all. They're all grown now, but he loved taking care of them when they were little, and he still dotes on them whenever he can, in his own way. In general, he loves kids. He just thinks they're adorable. And, despite appearances, he's excellent with them. Kids love this man, they flock to him, and he has no problem with that. It confuses most onlookers.

The idea of starting his own family turns him to absolute mush. And, he'd love to, so so much. Adoption, biological, and surrogacy are okay with him. It would be up to his partner to limit exactly how many kids they have since Andrai would just say he wants them all. He makes an excellent dad, albeit quiet, and is unwaveringly supportive. He's comfortable with discipline and is the type to encourage self-assessing behavior. He's excellent at giving advice and genuinely just likes spending time with his kids and being involved in their lives.

He's probably not the one you would peg as the 'domestic bliss' type, but he absolutely is.

Vzridmi

She's very comfortable with kids since communal rearing is very common in ork communities, and she'd love to have a family one day. Some kids unused to orks might find her a bit intimidating just because of her size, but in general, children think she's fun to be around. She doesn't necessarily think about it too much, though, at this point in her life. It's not something she sees as being on the table for quite some time - she has research and exploration to be doing, after all.

Whenever she was ready to settle down for a family, she'd be comfortable with carrying a child herself, surrogacy, or adopting. She would really like to have at least one biological child if possible, though. She would make for an entertaining mother, excited about her child's life and ever-supportive of their interests and pursuits. She's comfortable with all the aspects of child-rearing. Still, She would definitely need her partner's advice if they ever discovered their kid was dealing with bullying. She'd need to be reminded by her partner not to be overprotective - she's not above threatening others with her war-hammer if they upset her baby.

[sorry-rosie]

I keep seeing mentions of drama in Mia’s tags but I do not see it? Being a person who stalks Mia’s tag for fan art and content often. Something about blaming Chris or Mia for Village’s events. 

I’m going to go into my thoughts on the matter anyways since it comes up a lot from what I read online, spoilers obviously under the cut. Probably going to be a long one.

For one Chris was a little sloppy with his plan and honestly he needs to use his words more as a professional, I do think Mia is justified in yelling at him. And who cares if she yells? Leon and Piers (possibly more) have been cranky with him over less. She’s a momma bear looking for her husband and child. She is allowed to be justifiably angry with the person who in the present had obligation to protect her family, even if she did bad things in the past. Because the BSAA did promise. She gave up her privacy and both her and Ethan are presumed missing, so they probably have very little freedoms in their daily lives.

But to blame him for the events is ultimately incorrect, I do agree, and I don’t think Mia herself was blaming him for literally everything, just mad since he promised them safety. And a theme of 7′s last DLC is how Ethan always kept his promises. Perhaps she had too high expectations for Chris. I wouldn’t say she’s incorrect for that either, I mean, Chris’s accomplishments in the series are huge. Heisenberg is very aware of them and I’m sure Mia would be too. He had founded the BSAA after all, so it’s not a leap in logic for her to expect him to keep them safe, keep the deal they made with her. So that’s why Mia acts this way in the prison scene and why I could see people blaming him somewhat. He is the experienced military man in a position of power in this situation.

However, in the end we have to keep in mind the BSAA is probably infiltrated by the Connections. Even he was blind to the BSAA’s plans so I do not blame him much personally, the Baker file DLC makes clear that the BSAA and Miranda were in the same league. I guess we’ll just have to see where that plotline goes on that front, but there’s our villains, clear as day.

On the other hand Mia has been out of work in bioterrorism for what’s going to be a decade in a few years and has suffered the wrath of the consequences of her actions directly in 7. Besides that, the BSAA had promised her immunity, Ethan had forgiven her, and while you may think she’s undeserving of it, in the end she doesn’t have to prove that she has redeemed herself. Because if that were the case, no one would ever be satisfied, and frankly the law doesn’t work that way. Grand gesture redemptions scream artificiality, so she’s doing about the best she could do by making Ethan happy at the very least and living a new life. All the while wrestling her own trauma inflicted from 3 years of living at the Baker estate. 

She’s done bad things. But she just isn’t guilty for 8, in fact she’s barely even in the game. It feels so out of left field to blame her for everything that ever happens. Blame her for 7, sure, but it’s so weird here. While you could be upset about her lying to Ethan about his condition, I can see why she did it. They are already in extreme danger from the Connections with or without Rose, I can imagine, since they are living in Europe without any say. 

While it’s questionable her decision to have a kid, she’s trying to balance safeguarding Ethan from the truth that might get them targeted by both the BSAA and the Connections while trying to make him happy. Happiness for him might include a child. In both 7 and 8 their relationship provides a lot of fill-in-the-blanks for players, which I don’t mind because it lends itself for some more subtle story-telling elements, but oh man do some of these hot takes seem the farthest from what was intended by the developers. 

To be honest, Ethan’s opinion on Mia is the only one that really matters. He still loves her even in death, is sorry, even, for dying. He could’ve left her after 7. By my calculations, they had about a 2 year period after 7 where they were childfree, not expecting either. So to assume he was trapped is very untrue in addition.

Whether or not you personally forgive Mia is irrelevant. You could think whatever you like. And of course, Chris isn’t really blamable either in this game. Potentially there could’ve been little things that might’ve saved Ethan. There’s no guarantees however, and Ethan is quite reckless and ballsy when it comes to protecting his family, so I can’t imagine him going strictly by one of Chris’s plans either. In the end I think Mia and Chris did all they could.

But anyways, as for Mia’s morality, I like her because she does bad things. It’s okay to like bad, messy, complicated characters. No need to defend them, or erase what makes them, well, them. Because that’s life, and morally pure characters are often boring and unrealistic, AND Ethan/Mia’s dynamic of Ethan being more perfect husband material while Mia’s so flawed gives me life. That’s the point of them. 

Psst, by the way Capcom, don’t you think Mia would be a really good horror protagonist since she has a lot of baggage. How about some more psychological horror like people loved in Beneviento’s house? You do like money right? 

I’m kidding, but I do think more people would like her character anyways if she had more content and the developers weren’t so scared of using her. Not everyone has to like her, but just wanted to give my opinions real quick since I’m one of the few people who really likes her on here.