#because you can tell stories as perfectly as you want

[grendelsmilf]

obsessed with your tag

#he is the same play over and over again every night for a century. forcing louis to watch just to watch

well…yes! the discourse of theatricality is a very obvious lens through which to read this show, especially now in s2 that the premise of staging, performance, dramatic embodiment, wrt narrativization, has been made even more overt with the everything going on at the théâtre des vampires. what it means to inhabit a role, to exist on and/or offstage, to write your own story, to be a good performer (confined to playing the same role for eternity) or a bad performer (get eaten for it) constitute very basic elements of what this show is exploring thematically.

lestat is quite literally an actor, and he’s also very obvious as a performer. he’s outwardly manipulative, doing the dance of seduction to ensnare louis into his cage, but when that doesn’t work, he bares his teeth to keep him in line. lestat has never once employed subtlety in his life, he is very obvious about what he wants and what he is willing to do to get it. on the other hand, armand isn’t lying when he calls himself a black hole, in the sense that he is an actual void. you could also call him a method actor. not so much a conscious performer as someone who sinks into his assigned roles, and clings to them with all he has, because he has no stable sense of self outside of the roles he has been forced to inhabit. he remembers attempting to escape slavers, and nothing after that. he is ridiculously, terrifyingly powerful, and yet he is still enslaved, despite ostensibly answering to no one.

of course louis is bored by him almost immediately. he’s a chameleon who assumes various shapes at will (sidenote: assad zaman is so perfectly cast) but once you peel back the layers of his performance you’ll quickly tire by the realization that there is truly nothing underneath. louis says he’s bored of watching the same play every night 100 times in a row: it’s armand’s play, and he stands there, on that balcony, every single night for centuries, waiting for approval, waiting for someone to tell him that he’s getting a good grade in vampirism, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve. he’s insanely pathetic considering that he really shouldn’t be.

louis also plays roles, of course, attempts to assume a facade of masculinity as a hollow mode of superficial empowerment and agency. he’s lacked agency all his life, both before and after vampirism (before primarily due to racism, after primarily due to being trapped in back to back abusive marriages) and the only mechanism he has in his arsenal that he can employ is an empty and almost laughably obvious embodiment of masculine domination; trying to assume the role of louis the pimp businessman capitalist (maître) top is such a clumsy grasp for power that it’s almost painful to watch. louis resigns himself to this dishonest role specifically when he feels cornered. when armand traps him in paris, louis decides that he will no longer attempt to be an artist, or someone who is at all honest with his desires (how could he, when he’s with armand) and instead be someone who’s “good at running shit” again, because that persona was his default mode of survival his entire mortal life, and how dissimilar is a theater to a brothel anyway?

the play is about abuse. the abuse is happening on that stage even if the actors change between scenes. lestat prances around onstage, making him difficult to ignore, but easier to dismiss. armand does not, as he cannot distinguish between his performance and his “true” self so easily. but either way, they are co-founders of this theater, each informing the other in the ways in which they exercise authority and control their narratives within their respective marriages to louis. armand takes the foundation lestat has already laid to escalate that control, to fortify the cage. but beyond the power he wields, there is nothing truly fascinating about him, and they both know it. louis has seen this play before.

the theater of cruelty, the mistreatment of claudia, the tedium of watching the same performance every single night. armand runs the company, but it was lestat’s idea. by the time louis meets armand, he’s wondering whether lestat didn’t at least provide something original (which is obviously easier considering he came first in louis’s story, was his literal maker), whether at least he had flair. armand has been running a theater company for 200 years and yet he still quotes the balcony scene, which louis knows is deeply embarrassing, and knows that lestat also knows. and armand knows it too, if his reaction to being called a dull, beige pillow is anything to go by. they live in dubai for crying out loud. if nothing else demonstrates what it means to lead a vampiric, cultivated, violent existence, it’s the very stage upon which their interview is set.

[artdolliewishes]

Imagine female Yuu having to cross dress to avoid unnecessary trouble at NRC and Idia finds out through Ortho. Because I can see Ortho finding out if Yuu ever got a minor injury and he was around to play nurse, knowing him he’d do a quick full body scan and find a very high amount of estrogen in her system.

And he blabs to Idia because he’s a snitch who doesn’t keep anything from his brother; if you tell a secret to him, you’re basically telling it to them.

Once Idia finds out, his mind INSTANTLY goes to those otome games and fanfics and gacha life videos about a girl in all boys school. He always thought those were just fun fantasies, but upon seeing that exact scenario happening in real life he becomes curious.

Prior to this, Idia probably wouldn’t think much about Yuu. To him, she was just the odd magicless guy his brother would occasionally run into; the most interesting thing about her was her cat, in his eyes. But now that he knows about her secret, he becomes heavily invested in her school life, he wants to see how this is going to turn out.

He doesn’t exactly stalk Yuu, it’s not like he’s putting cameras in Ramshackle or listening devices in her bag, it’s more like he just pays extra close attention to her when he has the chance, such as during joint classes and lunch. And since Ortho and her are on amicable terms, he encourages Ortho to spill any gossip he learns when around her.

To Idia’s surprise and delight, things end up matching up almost perfectly with what he’s come to expect from these kinds of plots. The ones close to Yuu, who seem to be privy to her secret from what he’s gathered, are all either falling in love or have already been in love. They’re extra protective of her, they’re affectionate and soft with her, and they get jealous when she gives too much of her attention to any one of them.

Idia knows about the overblot incidents, so of course he’d see the pattern in who starts getting closer. Every time someone overblots, Yuu will be there to help and both the overblotter and some other select people in their dorm will begin to fall. It’s a classic pattern.

At this point, Idia would simply see himself as an observer peeking in on this story and, therefore, he can’t be affected by Yuu. He’s not a love target in her story, he’s a side character.

It doesn’t matter that he’s occasionally run in with Yuu and each time he has she’s been a true friend to an introvert like him by making his anxious ass feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter because he’s aware of what’s happening and thus he can’t be affected.

But then he also overblots, and just like before she was there to help pick up the pieces. After that they ended up talking and Idia gets to know more about Yuu, more than he could learn by just observing.

Before long, he’s actually looking forward to seeing her again, to nerding out about his favorite anime’s with her in person because she’s always such a good listener. He’s looking at his manga and game collections and thinking about what she would like.

Idia doesn’t even realize his hearts been skipping beats when she’s around until one day when he’s in class and she walks in. Like a dog hearing their owner walk through the front door, his gaze shoots up and instantly that class gets fifty times more bearable with her around.

…And then he looks around and every other “main character” has had the same reaction.

Which means that he’s also a captured love target, just like them…

Oh how the turn tables for a dating sim loving nerd like himself

[eevees-hobbies]

Suo and Umemiya’s words of praise please (bonus points if you a bad bitch in the streets but a soft one in the sheets)

Author’s Note: Thank you for the thirst/ask, anon! I am not ashamed to admit that I was lightheaded by the end of writing this! I hope the formatting doesn't come out too wonky as I try and figure out how I want my anon thirsts/asks to look!

Content Warning: Fem!Reader x Hajime Umemiya, Fem!Reader x Hayato Suo, smut, making out, fingering, mention of overstimulation, and oral. Minors Do Not Interact.

Word Count: 1.4K

They Whisper About You in the Streets, You Know?

General Background of You

You realized early on that you needed to be able to protect yourself as a citizen of Makochi. It pissed you off seeing the level of delinquency that created chaos and ultimately terrorized the members of the community. You grew up here, and there’s no way you would be intimidated by a bunch of low-lives or run out of your town. 

You’ve built up a larger-than-life reputation for yourself, outfitting your business with security cameras, motion detectors and arming yourself with a right-hook that could put almost anyone on their ass. The only people who fuck with you now are people who either haven’t recieved the message or are too dumb to save.

Hajime Umemiya

Umemiya had met you while out on one of his patrols. You were very well aware of him, and what he meant to Makochi as the previous leader of Bofurin, so you went out to greet him. He was as pleasant as many of the townsfolk had said and just as handsome, too. You exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes–him asking what you sold in your shop and you asking what he liked to do in his spare time. Talking about simple things felt silly, but small talk was your way of continuing a conversation you didn’t want to end.

As he finally turned to leave, he stopped and faced you again: “Hey, if anyone gives you any trouble, I can always stop by and…help.”

Umemiya internally berated himself. Help?! Why not say something cool, like beat them up, or anything that doesn’t make you sound like a middle-aged dad? But he found you so cute; the way you wore an apron around your waist so you didn’t dirty your adorable clothes, the way he towered over you, and how you were biting your lip as you looked at him with big doe eyes. You were endearing to him, and he’d grasp at straws to find a way to talk to you again.

He expected a shy thank you or a cute smile in his direction, but what he got instead was even better—you snorted.

“If anyone gives YOU any trouble, let me know, and I’ll come by and kick their asses.” You ended your sentence with a perfectly timed wink and returned to the interior of your shop.

You didn’t witness this, but Umemiya tells his version of the story to your friends, family, and anyone else who will listen. He swears that after you turned away, he gripped his chest and muttered, “Oh, I just met my wife.”

And the rest was history.

Despite your eventual marriage to Umemiya—someone that others refuse to antagonize out of respect for his reputation or out of fear–you still continued to ruin the day of anyone who decided to mess with other shopkeepers.

It was so arousing to Umemiya that you were an enforcer of the town, but you were still his sweet angel at home. You’d often find yourself making out in bed, sometimes with no intention to make love. If sex happened, of course, neither of you would complain, but sometimes you just need to make out with your partner. As Umemiya's fingers languidly roam across the flesh of your hip, he’d often narrate just how he felt about you:

“My little enforcer. They still whisper about you in the streets, you know? Sometimes, I eavesdrop when a kid from Bofurin visits the nursery, and I can’t help but be so proud because they’re talking about my wife.”

You groan softly into him, partly because of the way his tongue parts your lips as he mumbles into your mouth and partly because you know what they say about you.

“Don’t be so bashful, my little ass-kicker,” he whispers, a smile forming on his lips and against yours. “But if only they knew how good of a girl you are for me.”

You pull away to nuzzle your face into his neck. Your cheeks are growing hot as Umemiya pulls your thigh around his waist, kneading the tense muscle in your calf.

“If only they knew that I get to see you like this, so sweet, perfect, and-”

“Pitiful,” you interject.

“If you’re pitiful, then I’m worse.”

He places a soft kiss against your cheek and slides his hand between you both. His touch is familiar and yet still setting your body ablaze as he parts your folds and rubs gentle circles on your clit.

“God, Ume..” your heart quickens as his fingers make expert work of the sensitive bundle of nerves between your thighs. You find his hold on you after all these years incredible, and you even say so in that moment.

“I can say the same about you, my sweet girl. I feel like I’ve known you in every life I’ve lived and every life I ever will live. You feel so constant to me.”

His lips are back on yours, searching tongues, and hungry groans are shared between you as he continues to rub your clit with his thumb and slips his middle finger inside your sex.

You grip his shoulder as you buck your hips against his palm.

“That’s it, baby. Just like that.”

You run your fingers through his hair, pulling some of the longer strands and earning a soft growl from Umemiya’s throat.

“I love you so much, Ume.”

If you weren’t so enraptured by his fingers and the pleasure he was bestowing upon you, you would have noticed how his eyes sparkled when you uttered those words. Whenever you say you love him, he looks at you as though it’s his first time hearing it–with eyes full of absolute adoration and devotion.

“I love you, too. I knew I loved you the moment I laid eyes on you.”

Your breathing is shallow now; he knows how close you are, so he pulls you closer, the hand that was previously keeping your leg around him now snaking around your waist.

He knows what to do—and what to say—to get you exactly where you want to be.

“Let go, baby.” 

“Come on, pretty girl.” 

“It’s ok. You can hold onto me if you need to.”

“I promise I have you.”

“Let me have all of you.”

“Cum, yeah, just like that. Theeeeere you go, sweetheart.”

After your orgasm, he pulls his fingers away—a brief pang of disappointment radiates through his chest at no longer being inside of you—and raises them to his lips to lick them clean.

Hayato Suo

You lay on your back, feeling as though death would be a welcome end to your current state. You’ve been exhausted for some time, and you will continue to be exhausted as Suo, as naked as you are, hovers over you and places kisses against your back.

“Do you need a break?” His voice has returned to the cool tone you’ve come to know, signaling that there might be a lull in your lovemaking session.

“I think I have one more in me.”

You can feel him smile against the sweat-slicked skin of your back. 

“That’s my princess.”

He trails kisses down your spine, making sure to lick the hickeys that have formed into angry welts.

“What do you think our friends would say if they knew you liked to be called something so adorable?”

“Sakura would laugh at me,” your deadpan delivery earns a chuckle from Suo.

“Sakura is terrified of you, dove.”

“As he should be. Do I scare you, Suo?”

“No, you don’t scare me. But I am scared of the absence of you. I never want to exist in a world where you don’t.”

“You’re being dramatic. You know I can handle my own.”

His hands part your ass, and his tongue slides down to your mound, already covered and stuffed with the previous sessions' saliva and cum.

“I know what they whisper about you. But it’s hard for me to believe them as I only know of you in this way.” He’s circling your tender entrance with his tongue, allowing yours and his thick cream to coat his lips.

You quiver, your body already aware of what’s about to happen to you.

“I’m so fortunate to have the Makochi bruiser under me, coming undone on my tongue.”

“Suo, please…”

He slips a hand under you and massages your clit while finally sliding his tongue into you.

“I’m so lucky that you give so much to me. It’s only fair that I reward you, don’t you think?”

You moan in approval, gently bouncing your hips back and riding his tongue.

“Please let me cum on your tongue, Suo.”

“Anything for you, dove. Absolutely anything for you.”

[onlycosmere]

Brandon Sanderson on the length of Wind and Truth

PumkinFunk:  I appreciate Brandon being self-aware about the fact that he will struggle immensely to keep the word counts down for this series.

KiwiKajitsu: If only he had a better editor

PumkinFunk:  I know this has become a common criticism since Rhythm of War after Moshe Feder retired, but I don't think it's true. One of his editors for his books is Devi Pillai, the head of Tor Publishing Group. The Secret Projects were edited in-house and generally were good. He has a lot of people giving him feedback, both in-house and outside.

jmcgit:  If Brandon wanted to work on revisions for an extra 6 months to refine and streamline the book, he could do it. This is a Brandon thing, not an editor thing. What was Brandon working on up until the last minute before he had to turn the book in? He was working on making the book bigger, squeezing in more content that he wanted to add. Brandon will tell anyone who asks that he likes to write, and dislikes revising.

When an author gets big enough, the publishers and editors lose their ability to rein in the author or make certain demands. Brandon will do what he wants, and if Tor doesn't like it, they can cancel his contract and Brandon can self-publish.

Brandon Sanderson: I realize it's difficult to see behind the veil of publishing, and much is opaque, but this isn't what I was doing during the last few months--I was cutting the book significantly. However, rough draft didn't include Interludes or Epigraphs, which is why it got longer after I cut it down. This draft lost over 60k words, but then I added in the interludes and epigraphs (along with a few key scenes I decided were needed.)

So, let's be clear about a few things. No editor has ever--in my life--cut my books down. It's not what they do. They largely haven't suggested it. Every editor, Moshe included, has always suggested things to change or add--they don't do much trimming. That's all my job, and always has been. Yes, there is a line edit, which does help trim--but I haven't stopped taking those suggestions, and usually go much, much further on a page-by-page case than they suggest.

I dislike revision, which is important for me to explain because I want people to understand that even for someone who loves their job, there are parts I don't like. But I DO it. I do A LOT of it. It's the part I have to force myself to do, but I am very good at it--and if you follow my stories about learning revision, you'll find that I very clearly explain that I didn't get published until I mastered the thing that was hardest for me. I consider my it, perhaps, my greatest strength as a writer--my ability to look at feed back and apply it to improve books.

If they get long, it's not because I've lost an editor. Moshe's strong suit was always diction, not trimming--and Gillian (who does that job now) is quite accomplished at both. She's Joe Abercrombie's editor.

I realize it's odd, because "to edit" means to trim, but an editor doesn't usually trim books--they offer suggestions for changes on the larger scope, and sometimes do a line edit pass to clarify.

Stormlight books are not big because I can't stop writing. You can pick any number of my shorter novels and see I'm quite capable of doing something at a normal book length. Stormlight books are big because that's the art I want to make--and they are not, and never have been, out of control. I am perfectly willing to accept that the story I want to tell has not appealed to some in the last installments! But don't blame my editors. This is an artistic choice of mine, and their job has never been to change the art. I get the same amount of editing now as I ever have--and I take largely the same amount of their feedback.

Note: don't take this as a direct condemnation of you or some of the things /u/KiwiKajitsu said above. It's more that I want to be very clear about my goals, and the process. My stance is one of explaining, not arguing against your opinions, as those are valid and perfectly reasonable ones to hold.

I realize that a long comment reply isn't the best way to prove I can be brief, but I sincerely think the trope of "He got big so he lost the ability to be edited" is not one that I fall into--I am, if anything, the most edited person at the industry, and see more criticism and feedback of my books prepublication than any other author. Editors and beta readers collectively wrote some 800k words of feedback for me over the last two years, which I incorporate. Not just the, "Add this" but also the "this sequence feels slow or unengaging." I am extremely passionate about listening to, and incorporating, editorial feedback.

It's fine to not like what I do. But don't blindly make the argument that I write it, kick it out the door, and don't pay attention to the revision process while ignoring editors.

jmcgit: Hey Brandon, I appreciate the insight! I regret that my post may have come off as if you carelessly "write and kick it out the door", as I know how hard you and your team have been working on the book over the past months and years, and how passionate you are about getting it right.

Brandon Sanderson: No problem and no offense taken! I just see a lot of confusion about these things.

I am edited far, far more now than when I was when I started and nobody cared. Though, admittedly, I think the most editorial scrutiny I ever got was on A Memory of Light a decade ago. I probably get less now, but I also have way more extensive beta reads.

It's just a complex process. And, you also ARE right in your initial post that I could go over it again and again, and some authors do. I'm middle of the road on the number of revisions I do, by my experience. Not as many as someone like Pat R. does. More than a lot of authors. I do not subscribe to the Heinline philosophy of only editing when required by contract that is very popular these days. (This philosophy believes that your initial artistic instinct will be right, and you shouldn't undermine it later on. I am not a fan, even if some people I respect follow this philosophy.)

Anyway, your initial post wasn't far off; I just wanted to offer some more context for this thread.

[vegaseatsass]

The Sol-tuation is a lot more nuanced than that!!

Who knew I, an absolutely feral Mingjoe shipper, would end up making so many posts about the secondary love interest who never stood a chance with our protagonist, but I truly think they're doing some fascinating things with this character and it hurts a little to see so so so many fandom reactions that take what's happening on the surface as the full story with no interest in peeling back those appearances.

I will say before I start: huge credit to @zhouxiangs for so many of these opinions, she shared a few insights about Sol with me today that completely reshaped my interpretation of the character, so thank you x 2389234, this post is not exclusively My thoughts. (Also SolYim as a ship is galaxy brain and the only thing I now want for Sol's future. Thank you for that TOO)

So I very much understand why what it appears Sol is doing - ignoring Joe's clear lack of interest in him to pursue him, taking every opportunity to touch him, and working overtime to prevent Joe from seeing the truth about Ming and his obvious devotion, so he can still "win" Joe instead - is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. Straight up, situations where people I'm not romantically interested in have pursued me despite my clear and direct (and often hard-fought because I used to be a huge people pleaser) "no" are something I hope to avoid for the rest of my natural life. Relentless pursuit can be a sexy fantasy if you want someone back, as Joe does Ming, but for most of us, it's emotionally pressuring nightmare fuel if you don't.

But I would argue that's really not what's happening. An extremely essential missing piece of context to Sol's behavior is that Joe died because of his relationship with Ming, and Sol spent years grieving him. In episode 9 in particular, they're all face-to-face with the cold hard truth of that grief, and I don't think Sol is any exception, even if he knows Joe is back now. In episode 8, Sol confirmed Joe was back, and he was so euphorically happy, but he was not pushing and shoving Joe to hop into a relationship with him, was he? He was just delighted Joe was alive. But this episode, he's suddenly faced with the very real prospect that Ming and Joe still have feelings for each other. That Joe may return to the man who got him killed. Who Sol, in his own eyes, failed to protect Joe from in his first life, even though Sol so badly wanted to pay back Joe's sincerity to him. And I think the threat of losing Joe again is making Sol (who ran back to Korea instead of processing his grief and guilt over his death) a little insane.

I mean, let's talk about Sol in Joe's first life. After Joe told him he couldn't return his feelings, did we see any inkling of this frantic episode 9 pushiness? Sure, there was the moment where he tried to convince Joe that he and Ming were incompatible, after watching Ming need to hide Joe from his family in what I'm sure read as shame to Sol. I can give Sol some grace for this knowing he struggled with coming to terms with his own sexuality (see: the first time he ran away to Korea), and is now trying to overcompensate for who he was in the past, but you don't have to give him this grace if you don't want to. I can admit his desire to support Joe as a friend is compromised by the tumultuousness of his longing for Joe. Like there's also the fight with Ming on the staircase where Joe gets knocked down and Sol and Ming just keep fighting. Sol is not a saintly unselfish being who keeps his feelings and his desire to protect and support Joe perfectly separate, by any means. (To me this is part of why he's interesting and human, but I get that we all have different character preferences.)

But dinner with Ming's family aside, when first life Joe tells Sol he doesn't want to be with him, Sol lets it go and is happy living in the friend zone. When Joe tells him not to come over and intervene when he's trying to break up with Ming, Sol listens. Sol believes that Joe can handle himself and he respects the boundaries that Joe sets, regardless of what he wants or hopes in the privacy of his own heart.

And what happens without Sol's intervention? Without anyone's intervention? Joe dies. Joe is chained up in a basement - Joe was not safe with Ming, Joe was not able to clear the situation up using just his words - and blacklisted from the industry, driven to desperate financial straits and killed.

So my read of Sol is that he's scrambling to make himself a shield. He thought he was already in a role where he could support Joe, this time around, but this episode raised the threat of Joe going back to Ming and dying again, and now he's frantically trying to change himself into something that can actually keep Joe from doing that. If Joe suddenly decided he wanted to be with Sol and not Ming, would Sol be happy on his own behalf? Of course, I'm not denying that. But I really think so much of the desperation to offer himself as a romantic choice is to try to show Joe he has options that aren't Ming, to try to intervene in ways he didn't in Joe's first life, at any cost.

You can't force someone not to return to an abusive partner, the same way you can't force someone not to commit suicide, or make any other choice where they could get hurt or disappear from your life forever. It's a necessary journey for everyone, to realize you have to respect your loved ones' agency even when they're making choices that terrify you to your core. Sol has not learned that yet, and I'm not defending how pushy and out of pocket he was being this episode. But I'm really, really sympathetic to the absolutely frantic terror that I think was underlying it. If you've never had a suicidal loved one or a loved one trapped in a destructive cycle, it's easy enough to expect Sol to do the right things (the actually HELPFUL and supportive things), instead of the toxic, selfish things. For me he's a far richer and more human character for making the wrong choices, though. For being selfish, but not about wanting to possess Joe and force his feelings Sol's way. About wanting to keep Joe alive and unharmed by force, instead of trusting Joe to make his own choices. Again: you have to let people decide these things for themselves. You have to! If you don't support your loved ones' agency, any other support you think you're offering them is useless and suffocating and will genuinely compound whatever they're dealing with, make it much harder for them to heal, leave, etc - whatever the "healthy" choice is, they can't make it with you forcing them into it. They can't make it without you surrendering to the possibility of them making the "unhealthy" choice; without you accepting that it is their choice. But for a fictional character to go from "genuinely supportive friend" to "publicly announcing you're in a branded relationship a day after your own funeral" because he sees you slipping from his grasp - not emotionally, but potentially literally, metaphysically, permanently, AGAIN - well, to me, that's juicy and compelling.

I'm also more sympathetic to Sol than to Wut when it comes to telling Joe that Ming loves him, frankly. I think Joe needs an impartial friend (Yim!!!) that he can process all his Ming issues with openly, because it is never helpful to feel like because your friends know that your abuser/ex/etc harmed you, you can never go to them to process the moments of kindness and love. Joe needs to be able to look at the full picture of who Ming is and what Ming feels and decide for himself, he doesn't need Sol strongarming him out of accepting that Ming is capable of both great cruelty and great love. But Wut always takes the path of least resistance and it absolutely maddens me. To just say, with no qualification, "The man I and only I know knocked you out and kept you locked in a basement loves you, actually" is absolutely insane and irresponsible. I do not for a second believe Wut was ready to express nuance, to say, like, "I think Ming loves you in his own way, but that love is dangerous and possessive and I hope you stay away." If we see anything in the text that demonstrates otherwise I'm happy to be wrong about this, and then I would be in the "Let Wut speak!" camp. But for now, I do think he was going to play the role of an enabler, just because he finds it easier to let Ming handle Joe's estate and be in Joe's life than to fight it. Lol it still doesn't make Sol right to try to keep Joe from seeing the full picture, but I'm sympathetic to him going wtf, Wut? Do you really think Ming loves him? knowing what Wut knows.

Anyway this is sooooo long so I will try to wrap it up, but I wanted to also talk about Sol and Joe and physical touch. Like I said at the beginning, I totally understand seeing how often Sol hugs Joe or grabs him and feeling uncomfortable imagining yourself in Joe's shoes. But as uncomfortable as EYE would be with Sol's affections, I want to try to analyze how Joe the character feels about all this. Now one of the things I most love about this series is the opaqueness of all the characters' choices, how there is always ambiguity and room for more than one interpretation. So if you watch the scenes where Sol puts his hands on Joe and think Joe looks trapped or unhappy, that is your prerogative! I noticed that the two times he shook Sol's touch off in the episode were when he thought Sol was going to stop him from breaking into his loft, and when he thought Sol was going to cause a scandal with Ming at the press party. Otherwise, from where I sit (my interpretation only!), Joe does not appear to experience Sol's touch as something unwanted or unsafe. I would actually make the argument that having someone he's known for years sharing a bed with him, hugging him, holding his hand, etc, could be offering Joe essential tactile comfort he's not getting from anyone else while he's in the midst of grieving his past life. For all we know, the level of physical intimacy between them is something that completely predates Sol acknowledging his feelings. This could be a normal level of touchiness between them, and not an example of Sol "taking liberties" or trying to force his way into Joe's heart.

To me the upshot of everything is that Joe, to my eyes, seems to feel completely safe with Sol and his professed feelings. When Sol brings his feelings up again when they're getting their makeup done, Joe's response ("how did the conversation turn to this?") pinged me as playful, affectionate, not uncomfortable and pressured. Joe is absolutely terrified of Ming's feelings for him and, significantly, what they would do to Joe's feelings for Ming - he is keeping himself away from Ming by the power of "You don't love me and never did" and when that crumbles so will most of his ability to resist him, I think - but Sol's feelings can't do anything to Joe. They can't make him want things he doesn't want, and they can't make him want things he doesn't want to want. I would argue that Sol is a friend that Joe feels safe around, and his open crush on Joe causes a bit of awkwardness, to be sure, but it doesn't make Joe feel pressured to do anything but be himself. When he's with Sol, he's not afraid of Sol, Sol's feelings, or Joe's feelings. I think that's important to acknowledge! The same way that Sol needs to accept that Joe is allowed to make the choice to go back to Ming and it's never been in Sol's hands, imo fandom needs to accept that if Joe is comfortable with Sol and his affections, we can't argue that he is being pressured by them, or in danger, or anything else.

But that's just my interpretation! I am happy to be disagreed with, haha. I just think Sol is as rich and interesting a character as Ming, but many of us as viewers have more trouble with flawed and selfish kindness (Sol) than we do with complex cruelty (Ming). But I love flawed and selfish kindness. I love characters who are trying so hard to be good and to take care of people they love, and fucking it up and not seeing the ways their wants and fears are getting in the way. So I love Sol. And obviously have a lot to say about him lol.

[whon1verse]

rambly thoughts about 'empire of death' under the cut (they're not positive.)

the issue isn't that ruby's mother is ordinary, it's that the execution of the overall arc was poor. ruby's mum being ordinary is perfectly in tune with something that has been thematically established in doctor who before, that anyone can be special regardless of your background. that's a good message and in the context of just this episode, in complete isolation, it almost works. but it doesnt work within the wider context of the season arc, so it doesnt feel like a satisfying resolution.

i understand the metatextual intention of the mother reveal. i understand that it was a self-enforced recursive thing where everyone thought it was extremely important, which inadvertently made it important. but narratively, that's really inconsistent with what has been established throughout this arc. there was absolutely no setup for that revelation. if you want to do a storyline about how adoptees often daydream about their birth parents being special when that usually isn't the case, that's great! that would have been a really good story. and if the resolution was always going to be that ruby's mother was ordinary, the arc should have gone down that route, but that isn't what happened. the entire story revolved around the mysterious supernatural events surrounding ruby only to, at the very last minute, tell us that there was actually no reason for any of that stuff, and that we were silly for thinking the arc would pay off.

but... that reveal doesn't work when the narrative itself framed ruby's story that way. the reveal fails not because ruby’s mother is just a normal person, but because ruby’s mother being a normal person can't be synthesised with anything revealed, textually or subtextually, about ruby or her mother before this episode aired. the resolution seems to have been designed to make the audience feel silly for engaging with the story they've been presented with, while the narrative obscured information that could have tied the arc together coherently. very ironically, this is something moffat is wrongly accused of doing all the time, even though moffat's mysteries were established through foreshadowing and built on character-driven narratives, rather than creating mystery for the sake of mystery. even the moffat arc resolutions i personally disliked had more substance than the resolution rtd has written here. rtd's first era also had setup for its overarching stories, the execution in each rtd1 finale wasn't always great, but i enjoyed them regardless of their flaws because those stories never insulted the intelligence of their audience.

this finale, particularly the resolution around ruby's mother, is completely different. misdirection should be utilised effectively to elevate tension within a narrative, not implemented so that you don't actually have to foreshadow anything. misdirection can be written in a way that adds substance with repeat viewings - or at the very least doesn't detract from a story - but this season, from the very first establishing shot of ruby's mother walking to the church, has been deceitful. there's a difference between utilising misdirection, and just blatantly lying to your audience. now that we have the full story, that misdirection has rendered the entire arc nonsensical in hindsight. the story of this season doesn't make sense with the context of the finale. this story was not told coherently at all. there just isn't much going on underneath the surface, and if you try to sink your teeth into it, it all falls apart. there's a difference between suspension of disbelief and what this finale is essentially telling us, which is that we can't expect any of the overarching plots in this era to make sense. after the nonsensical 'reveal' of the mystery behind ruby's parentage, how exactly am i supposed to trust there will be a good reveal for mrs flood? i don't even want to speculate about mrs flood anymore because considering the fact that there was absolutely no setup for the revelation in this finale, and that the entire arc was built on misleading the audience, i wouldn't be surprised if the s2 finale reveals that mrs flood is just an ordinary woman who has gone a bit loopy in her old age, which causes her to make ominous speeches and address an invisible camera or something.

this arc truly amounted to "you thought ruby was special because every clue we've given you suggested that she was? how silly of you to think about what you were watching!". the finale threw all of the season's logic out of the window for a reveal that doesnt map onto what's already been established in the story. again: my problem isn't the fact that ruby's mum was ordinary, because that could have been a good storyline. my problem is that it was executed badly. the resolution didn't harmonise in any conceivable way with the rest of the arc. it feels like the entire season was manufactured to provoke speculation, while attempting and failing to make a commentary about the power of stories and memory. that sort of messaging has been conveyed very effectively in doctor who before, so revisiting those themes sounds great on paper, but this feels like a flimsy imitation, failing to grasp how those themes should be implemented in a narrative.

there have been frequent but relatively minor writing issues throughout this season that i absolutely would have been willing to overlook if the overall arc was executed coherently - the key term here is 'coherent'. it doesn't need to be a conclusion everyone loves, it just needs to make sense.

the "she was pointing at a sign to name you!!!" thing perfectly exemplifies the wider issue with this arc. the sign not even being on the lamp post in TLoRS and then magically appearing for the reveal in EoD is very telling. like everything else in this parentage arc, there were many red herrings planted, a lot of misdirection, but no actual foreshadowing to make the conclusion satisfying. the lamp post isn't even there in TCoRR. it's literally not there. you can't make everything seem mysterious and intense only to turn around and say "actually, she was pointing at a lamp post that wasn't even there in the original episode, and even more specifically she was pointing at a sign on the lamp post that wasn't there until we made it magically appear after the reveal". this didn't have any setup, and every writer should understand that setup is what makes a plot twist effective in the first place.

it's absolutely possible to marry meta commentary with internal narrative, doctor who has done that successfully countless times, but this just didn't work. now, there are entire chunks of this season that don't make any sense under the smallest bit of scrutiny. the reveal hasn't added anything, in fact it actively damages most of the episodes leading up to it because it introduces a lot of plot holes and other gaps in the narrative. ambiguity can be intriguing, but ambiguity isn't an intentional choice here. it isn't postmodernist or anything, the entire arc just doesn't make sense.

i find it ridiculous when writers intentionally obscure any/all clues about the direction of a narrative, because the natural result is that any eventual conclusion won't feel earned. it's actually good when audiences are able to piece things together, because it means you're telling a cohesive story. imagine reading an agatha christie novel where hints about the identity of the murderer are threaded intricately throughout the narrative, only for poirot to deduce that it was a natural death apropos of nothing. that would be terrible. and that's essentially what happened here; the reveal lacked setup and questions were framed in a very specific intratextual way, only for the answers to be... incoherent. it doesn't work. the puzzle pieces don't fit together. and it's not unreasonable to want doctor who to be narratively satisfying - that's the bare minimum.

i can't help but feel like there was a better story here, underneath the empty spectacle, about an abandoned child who built up this false image of her parents being magical when the reality was mundane. that could have worked, but that wasn't the direction of the narrative. in retrospect, the entire season feels... empty. and that's a shame, because the characters and audience deserved a better story.

[dukku-of-catempty]

Linking my translation of Red Candle's interview yesterday here, also typed out below. I didn't translate everything, but hopefully it's enough for fans to get a glimpse of their game dev process. Interview vod here.

Ninesols was delayed twice. As their first try at a metroidvania, they found out there's a lot more to be done. Their first game play video was actually an accident. Someone clicked the wrong button on the obs and it became a live stream.

For the interview today, we have 2 of the 6 co-founders of redcandlegames, Henry and Vincent/4wei, plus the game play designer Lighty and Art designer Pege/XiaoHe.

Game Dev Process

Back then Yi was a head shorter, pretty close to Hollow Knight. Devs call it the "Hollow Cat era". It took them 1-2 years to progress from Hollow Cat to 2D Sekiro.

Q: You've already set such a high bar for game play (hollow knight, sekiro), why did you have the same high standard for art and story as well?

Henry:(points at Vincent) this is all him. I said, just focus on the game play! Then he decided to throw in the story

Vincent: I didn't set it out to be so dialogue heavy. But simple gameplay doesn't keep gamers playing, they have to be invested in the world to want to play more.

Vincent: I wanted to save budget so I thought, comics, they're simple enough. Turned out they were costly too. Pege got the other end of that. She drew all the in-game comics.

Pege: Comic works in that you can get up close to the characters and see the details, their expressions.

Their initial inspo for the artstyle was Akira... really reaching for the heights of everything

On the designing process:

Vincent: pacing comes first, whether it's story, combat, or the gaming experience

About 35mins in: Lighty explains the initial concept of TaoPunk

Vincent come up with keywords and Pege designs the character. For example, Goumang was "princess, tsundere", Lady Ethereal was based on "Zhuangzi and the butterfly dream".

40min, Pege explains the character designing process

Pege had the hardest time designing JieQuan. Girls are easier.

Vincent: he's the typical straight macho dude

MCs: what do you mean straight? All I see is 🌈

Vincent wanted there to be a low point for the gamer, since the first 3 bosses were relatively easy. He drew inspiration from Bloodborne and MGS, and JieQuan was born as Yi's tormentor.

Pege's favorite character is Ji, based on his character design and gender.

Vincent: I said Ji can be a they, but Pege insisted on him being male.

MC: So we can actually see stuff under his skirt

Henry: Yi had to struggle to not get flashed during the fight

Lighty also likes Ji best, because of his character. He likes his views as an immortal.

Henry also likes Ji best, because of his combat pattern. Out of all the bosses, his combat pattern is the only one thats entirely original. He wanted to make a 3rd stage.

Since all the characters came from Vincent, he doesn't have a favorite, but is impressed by how popular some of them are. Lady Ethereal's fight was actually the least costly. The platforming was a budget choice. Including the jumpscare, Ethereal was the easiest stage to make.

Vincent: Even the bgm. For Lady Ethereal, I didn't need to tell the composer what I want, they finished it perfectly.

Henry: This is a collaboration where everyone provides their expertise, and Lady Ethereal is an example of us working extremely in sync.

They ran out of time and funds at the research center, and were not entirely satisfied with it even when the game launched.

Solarian was based on Middle Chinese. Old Chinese sounds close to Vietnamese and is too hard for the VAs to pronounce. Vincent thinks since the game is sci-fi in ancient times, a new language is needed for immersion.

Everyone's stressed at the end of the project: it's been five years, and the game hadn't been tested by the mass public, so they weren't sure how it'd be received

Solarian language and Voiceover

Vincent: in Taiwanese we have checked tones, libiodentals, we digged deeper into these traits and referenced Taiwanese/Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese and Middle Chinese for the Solarian language. Our Solarian expert, Sheng-Han Lin worked on it for 3 months. He even wrote a program where it converts a word into Solarian automatically, complete with KK phonetic symbols.

Basic Solarian words/phrases:

(Making these up, tone numbers are mandarin)

Bi³ Suen² = big brother

Shuai² In³ = Hello Friend

Why⁴ Song⁴ = Stop right there

Uen Zai² Chok = got it (I think?)

Ket Do³ = thank you

Vincent: first thing I said to the VAs was "sorry". Even after the recording process they still weren't sure what they were saying 😂

Many thanks to our voice director Neven Chang. It's the VAs performance that convinced me that Solarian is an actual language.

The Solarian characters came out of the need for there to be inscriptions on the background architectures, but modern Chinese characters breaks the immersion, so the art team came up with the idea to use the CangJie input method.

Vincent: initially we wanted to use the oracle bone script, but it's too time consuming, we needed something systemized. We do have our own Solarian font tho.

Solarian font has been dicephered here

Fan made font

Q&A section!

First question: are there plans for future nine sols DLCs?

Vincent: we still have a lot of work, like console ports and adding more languages, plus the crowndfund reawards... so currently we're looking to finish these first.

Vincent: as you know, we are a bunch of overachievers, so if there is a DLC, there's no telling how long we'll work on it... but atleast for me, I do hope to tell more stories in this world. That's all I'll say for now.

Q: will there be merch?

A: Yes, all the crowdfund rewards will also be sold as merch, like the art book and physical game pack, but at a higher price. Not the figure though, they're already finished, to make more we'll go bankrupt.

Unless, there's a really high demand for it 👀

Q: were there any additional plot you had to cut due to lack of resources?

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*SPOILERS

.

.

.

.

A: Chien's boss fight, Ji's 3rd phase, Yi fighting himself in Eigong's soul sanctum, a TianHuo last boss, Abacus was supposed to be Yi from the past, Kanghui, the dragon... we cut a lot

Vincent: There are two plotlines I stood my ground on: the revenge plot, and the relationship between Yi and Heng.

We actually changed Shuanshuan's story a lot. Initially he was supposed to be super energetic and run around all of New Kunlun.

Q: there are a lot of ways the player can fight in #ninesols, were you worried about it being too hard?

A: Yes. It's very parry focused, so if you can't parry, you're dead. The Story Mode was made out of this fear. But from the response we've got so far, it seems to be ok.

Vincent: the real problem is gamers having false expectations. Souls fans get frustrated with the parrying and combat fans get frustrated with the dialouges. So we have to let the gamers know, this isn't hollow knight, isn't Sekiro, this is Nine Sols.

Q: what do the lyrics in the bgm mean?

A: they are all really simple. Like "heroes are forged in agony". For Fuxi and Nuwa, their keyword was "Peony Pavilion", opera related, so the composer incorporated 牧虎關 into their battle bgm.

All #ninesols boss music was composed by @/FFXX_sound. 4-5 of the songs were recomposed after betaing. The boss fight in plumblossom village wasn't supposed to be this hard, but the bgm was too fire, so the team adjusted it.

Vincent: the composer could choose whether to use Solarian or Mandarin lyrics. I was there during recording. We got a talented Taiwanese men's choir to sing for us. Four professional singers singing "Huh! Hah! Heroes are forged in agony!" It looked ridiculous.

For the ending song, redcandle wanted to connect to the international audience, and Collage fit that perfectly. Plus our fans kept recommending them to us. Communication was smooth, apparently Natsuko is a gamer and really liked us.

Taopunk was a mix of Eastern and Western cultures, so it was decided early on that there would be English lyrics in the ED.

There was an ARG on discord where fans can uncover the ED bit by bit.

There are also plans for future interactive games like that

Q: what are some challenges for the EN locoalizatuon?

A: It was pretty smooth, we had a lot of help from our discrod server, including JP proofreading. Both EN and JP TL was actually done in a month before release. We just posted our beta dialougues and everyone came to help us.

Lady Ethereal used to be FuDie, but it sounds terrible in English, so she was renamed.

KangHui used to be GongGong, but it's too confusing to non mandarin speakers.

Eigong too, she used to be Yigong, Yi as in change, but players may mistake her to be related to Yi.

Solarian society trivia:

-they are a matriarchal society

-the average age of death is 140

-cats are evolved from Solarians

They are working on more languages, all of them EU ones. MC asked if there are plans for SEA languages. They say that'll require ppl fluent in these languages, since the other TL are mostly done by community members/fans.

2-3days after release, their text file was hacked. It's a Google doc, Lighty went on there and found someone typing Italian text there, all correct dialougues. They kicked them out then emailed the Italian.

The Italian : I'm just a player, I just want to help.

They translated pages of text, the team was terrified. Security breach!

the Italian said thank you to the team for being patient with them, cause they did the same thing with other games and got severe responses.

RedCandle: thanks but please don't ever do it again.

Q: are you satisfied with the response from non CN speaking players?

A: Yes. Most of the reviews we got were English. It's our goal anyway, to break the culture barrier.

There are of course some surprises.

MC: you mean the furries?

A: the amount of fanart was unexpected

Vincent: I was also surprised by the response we got on reddit. We actually realized our goal, so I was pretty happy with that.

Q: any plans for a new game?

they've worked on nine sols for 5 years already, pretty drained right now, so (as a team) theres no new content planned yet

And here comes the funniest part lol (clip)

Q: any plans for a new game?

Vincent: Having ideas for a new game is one thing, but we still--

(Thunder claps)

Vincent: 😱 Did I say the wrong thing? I'm sorry! OK? We'll start working on it!

Discussing the ending...

Devs consider the true ending a good ending. Its ok if life has no meaning, having lived is enough and all that.

And ED is Collage's take on the ending.

I'll end the thread here, though there are 30mins more to go. Many thank to Wenlobong for hosting the interview, and Red Candle for making the game! Really hope #ninesols will get more recognition

[artist-issues]

*peeks in* hiiii, I know I've sent you like 10 asks or something crazy in like twenty minutes but I have one more whoops

what do you think about The Chosen? I know I have very strong grievances against it (y'know, the fact that they are adding things to the Bible is really sus), but also recognize that unbelievers are watching it (especially with their families) and learning about Jesus and Christianity when they would not be otherwise. I still think that the cons outweigh the pros though.

what do you think of it?

Full disclosure. I have only seen maybe the first three or four episodes of the Chosen. I also attended church with and have met and had conversations with Dallas Jenkins. I supported it.

And I hate The Chosen.

If all of reality is a story that God is telling—the timeline is His, we, the characters, are His, the Main Point/Theme is His—and it is—then that means, that when telling His Story, God chose how to tell it.

When a storyteller creates their world and their characters, they know everything about that story and those characters. But they chose not to tell everything. They choose to cut out some details that are irrelevant to how they want their audience to get to know their characters, for the purpose of perfectly communicating their Main Point. Deleting scenes and hand-picking which details get screentime is part of storytelling.

So God saw and ordered the moments where Jesus was probably laughing with His disciples, or playing with children, and God/Jesus chose the tone of voice that He preached in. Those moments, those things, happened.

But He didn’t choose to tell us about all of them.

He, the Original Storyteller, the Perfect storyteller, told the most important story of all time. And He told it perfectly. And He chose to omit some scenes that actually happened and some details about what Jesus and the disciples were like, walking around together.

And those choices were right. They were the best way to tell the story.

But then Dallas Jenkins comes along and says, “No, God, you cut some of the best scenes. People need to see how like us Jesus was. Yeah, I know You told them how much He was like us—but I think they need to see more. You won’t let me see the deleted scenes? That’s okay, I’ll make them up. And then I’ll re-tell Your story—it wasn’t relatable enough the first time when You told it.”

The more someone thinks Dallas Jenkins was trying to reach people by presuming to tell Jesus’ life story better than God Himself has, the worse the implications are. He thinks he can tell the most important story of all time better than God did?

No wonder he makes so many freakin mistakes. No wonder the Jesus-character in Jenkins’ show goes “maybe”—He uses the word “MAYBE?!”—when He, who is supposed to be TRUTH ITSELF, is PREACHING.

That doesn’t make sense, Jenkins. And not only does it not make sense, but you just contradicted the literal Bible, which mentions over and over the authority and exact words Jesus preached with. And you know what else you did? You got the most important living thing in all of existence, the most important man who ever walked this earth, completely wrong. And that’s what you’re “reaching people” with.

It’s awful. So then when the little interviews where he’s partnering up with cults and people of different faiths that believe vastly unbiblical things about the real Jesus to make this show, or when members of the cast are all “sin is awesome,” or when Dallas Jenkins says something outrageously disrespectful to people who are mad at him for mischaracterizing their God on social media…this is my surprised face.

Because I saw what he was doing and it didn’t sit right with me three episodes in. The most important question any human being can genuinely answer in their lifetime is “Who is Jesus?” The most important story you can ever be exposed to is Jesus’ story.

And The Chosen gets both those things so horrifyingly wrong—but the whole time it’s dressed up like this earnest, God-honoring attempt at evangelism and love. When really it’s a cash-grab, a heartstrings-tangler, and a vanity project for Dallas Jenkins.

Thanks for asking.

[reds-revenge]

My main issue with the conversations we have about media and how moral it is is that there's actual, tangible suffering and death in real life we can work on instead. I don't really care if I'm watching a horror movie that's not giving the women agency because it's not real, but I care very much about women not being assaulted in real life. I only have so much energy, though, so if I focus all of that on how to tell the One Perfect Horror Story, I'm not focusing it on getting women access to healthcare, which is the thing that will really help.

[rist-ix]

https://www.tumblr.com/rist-ix/749015401700229120 not you reblogging this when you ship bloom with the man who murdered her family 😭

Bloom's into ppl who slay! Hope this helps :3

[pisshandkerchief]

allow me to indulge my gay theatre nerd side for a moment. now if i'm being perfectly honest, i normally don't like jukebox musicals. they usually feel too forced to me and i prefer a musical that actually has songs, y'know, written specifically for it and isn't just trying to fit songs into a story they weren't made for. it just feels more creative to me. if i wanted to listen to preexisting songs, i'd just listen to them at home without the extra story. i don't need a musical for that. HOWEVER. if anyone wanted to write a jukebox musical using fall out boy or mcr songs i would eat that shit UP no questions asked. in fact if i had any talent i'd write one myself 

[bluffmotel]

I always LOVE your character analysis', so random question!!! Would you indulge me about your thoughts on the Romeros (both paul and dante)? You can be as vague or as detailed as you want!

oh i absolutely love this question, thank you! and the timing was rather perfect, given the release of the black book, so it’s safe to say these two ( and more specifically dante ) have been haunting around the depths of my mind … and while i’m a vince & tyler fan first and foremost, i do have thoughts on everyone else and the general story! so without further ado, let’s talk about the romeros :

while as dusk falls is about two respective families ( the holts & the walkers, as we come to find out pretty quick ) i think it’s irrefutable to deny that paul and dante are tangled inside this little web themselves! they’re two figures that help bring the past and present together : paul recognizes jim, although not well, but more importantly if vince allows his father to leave for the hospital, he makes a rather pointed comment about not letting dante see or recognize him. jim also seems rather interested when asking our protagonist, “so you met the sheriff? what’s he like?” before doubling down rather hard on not trusting the law, and this opinion of dante is so intense that ( depending on dialogue choices ) if vince sides with the holts over dante, jim can potentially agree with his choice, in a way he won’t with dante. and given paul’s entanglement with sharon for decades and his bond with bear? these two are in the frying pan right there alongside our leading families! it’s rather easy to dismiss their importance, i think, but give the two enough thought and them being there while the desert dream goes down, as passive and aggressive forces respectively, really feels fated. of course it’s dante the holt boys stole from, and of course it’s paul’s place of work the walkers stumble upon, and of course it all comes to a head and leaves us with one of our final choices in book one : which of these devils are you trusting? dante or the holts? i like to imagine this echoes whatever went down all those years ago with jim, or at least serves as a continuation of whatever he refused to finish.

but that’s getting a little more into general game territory & it’s themes, so back to my thoughts on the romeros specifically, which can be summed up as … i love them! dante in particular grew on me a lot throughout the constant replays, even though i always adored his character! and paul was fantastic in his background role, casually revealing the more heavy hand he had in things ( which you don’t expect! ) with throwaway lines and oddly loaded advice. paul’s a good man, and if it’s not obvious by how protective joyce is of him, then it’s proven tenfold when he either tends to an injured vince at the very end of book one, or tries giving cpr to his dead body if tyler drowns him. like?? what a sweetheart! there’s nothing to hate about paul, but he’s a great example of a character who’s more than what he seems without taking away from the main narrative, another role joyce serves right along with him. these two did their thing as ‘random’ people in the desert dream and the devs took great care to lay out some good groundwork for them in spite of their non importance. and, in general, they act as good voices for vince to consider when it comes to the final choice! joyce trusts dante, talks about him with respect and all of her slightly biting remarks are full of affection ( sentiments that mean a lot coming from her, someone who’s shown herself to be stubborn and no nonsense ), but on the other side, paul warns vince against dante, lamenting on their family’s low opinions of him and his position as sheriff ( an important opinion because paul is dante’s family ), and so on so forth. paul and joyce balance each other well, and i always make sure paul gets his pizza. he has low blood sugar, dale! give him some food, god damn it!

and to talk more about dante, he’s an excellent character in a gaming world full of pathetic villains or straight up irredeemable monsters. the ceo of interior night has been very vocal about making sure nobody in as dusk falls felt like anything less than a human being, and dante ( as well as bear, i’d say ) proves she mostly succeeded … in the case of book one, anyway. it’s very easy to villainze him in the moment and even away from the game if you only give him a passing glance : he’s ruthless, he threatens vince, someone who could’ve been nothing but obedient this whole time, and his abuse of his badge is supposed to be as revolting as it feels. but! he perfectly encapsulates one of the main themes in this game, which is that he doesn’t want to do this, but he feels like he has to. dante is looking at what is clearly multiple crossroads and just like the holts he only sees one path forward, which just happens to be the most violent one. it’s the path where he survives and he is safe, unscathed, and he can return to what his normal is. i’ve been meaning to make a big web weave about adf and this theme in particular but to perfectly sum it up, here’s a quote that feels like it was almost made for this game :

hansel, by richard siken.

like! this is what adf is about! dante may be one of the more awful parties, yes, but he is still just a man who truly believes in his little black heart that this route is what’s best for him -- and so he’s gotta take it. it’s rather easy to not notice his humanity in the midst of this high stakes situation ( and because his counterpart is paul, of all people ), but it is there, and this is exactly why i enjoy seeing him on my screen and would love to do more with him himself someday! dante, in particular, cares about the holts … and i mean the holt boys, not just sharon. despite his spiraling mental state and the time limit he’s under, the sheriff exercises a rather immense amount of patience when it comes to the holts, like, it’s rather obvious he didn’t want them coming to harm in the way that they did. when dale comes out for the iconic sniper scene, dante attempts bargaining with him after his initial instinct to annoy and pry -- and it’s clear that he wants dale to just hand him the book, and he wants dale to surrender and give dante what he needs so everyone can make it out alive, at least. in his moment of blind need, he fails to actually notice that dale’s confusion and fear is genuine, mistakes it as dale’s usual playing around, and goes “have it your way,” before signaling his sniper. he could’ve just shot dale the second he stepped out of the door, and then looted his corpse for the book, or whatever else. but no. he takes the slightly longer way, for as long as he can, and since dante believes himself to be above the law, who is he holding back for? it’s for the holt boys, kids he probably saw grow up! and it’s for sharon. and it’s for joyce, and paul, and maybe even vince and his family, at first. dante becomes colder as the night drones on but given his immense power trip, it’s clear he had no real qualms ending things with police brutality, even at the beginning. makes his attempts at trying to end things peacefully at the start of book one a lot more interesting, in my opinion, because we quickly find out this was dante’s way of showing everyone mercy. which is scary! but again, showcases he’s more than some villain.

and his face after killing dale, if you choose not to save him, also doesn’t scream that this is someone who’s particularly enjoying this. the expressions made between the shot firing and dante looking at the kid’s body bag corpse is … grim.

like, this is not a victorious look at all! the way he just watches as dale’s body is picked up and taken away, expression never changing … he probably feels numb, this sense of : i did what i had to. but he doesn’t like it, and maybe it’d be easier if he did, and maybe he wants it that way too, you know?

i also find this scenario particularly tragic because i believe dale was probably dante’s token favorite out of the holt boys, at least before their falling out. it’s just bizarre to me the amount of hatred dale holds for him in a rather pointed manner -- it just feels personal, and it wouldn’t be personal if dale never cared for two rock’s biggest pig to begin with. how i think the juvie thing went down, in simple terms, is this : dante, who was still a close friend of sharon’s at the time and enjoyed visiting & hanging around the house here and there, someone who saw the first two holt boys through their infancy with paul, got a call about dale ( who had pushed past his usual amateur crimes to commit literal assault ), and had no choice but to actually act this time. he had probably let dale off the hook beforehand, covered up his petty theft and underage drinking and what have you, and this fostered some unhealthy opinions about dante and his generosity, so when dale landed himself in genuine hot water, hot water that even the sheriff himself couldn’t cool down, he couldn’t do anything except give him juvie. WHICH! i like to believe dale committed this crime as an eighteen year old, which could’ve landed him in jail i’m sure since his actions were so severe. so dante didn’t leave dale hanging, technically, but him not letting him off with a slap on the wrist like the holts expected ( like dale thought he would ) fostered a hatred and finally cut dante & sharon apart for good. dale’s loathed dante ever since for his betrayal and dante responds with equal amounts of vitriol back. but his fondness and favoritism remains and shows itself in tiny ways even still, like his almost palpable disappointment that dale came out of that motel instead of tyler, for example. he was like damn, i was prepared to shoot tyler, not dale … :( and i think this is so fucking funny!

( i will say that after reading the black book, none of the above paragraph is canon anymore technically. but i don’t really care at this point because what they did do with dante and dale’s assault was so baffling and borderline stupid! so, like i said when i first got it, i’m viewing the book with the same mindset one would consider a writer’s tweets of ‘canon’ facts about their favorite book on twitter … meaning i can just pick and choose what i like and dislike. there is nothing in game that contradicts the above headcanon, so it’s still canon compliant to me -- anyway! just had to add that little note, just in case )

and this goes straight into headcanon territory, but personally? dante’s the one who got dale a tombstone made, the one we see at the very end of book two. it’s certainly not bear who got it made, someone thousands of dollars in debt and someone who could also be dead at this point … and everyone else either straight up wouldn’t waste their money on such a thing ( like joyce ), or just wasn’t there long enough to make such a memorial. it’s small and it’s ballsy given the holts and their awful reputation, but it’s still something. i’ve always wanted to write a fic about this -- dante going through the process of burying dale and getting him a nice plot of land as well as an actual tombstone … i wouldn’t be shocked if he thought of it as an apology for how things went, in the end. i cannot for the life of me think of anyone else who’d have the money and the desire to give dale, and potentially bear and tyler, a tombstone in their memory. maybe he thought it’d absolve him of any wrongdoing or lingering guilt he felt? maybe he thought it was enough, when in fact giving these people a proper burial was the least he could do. it’s a fun thought of mine that makes me quite sad regardless!

okay buckle up because we’re still talking about dante and the holts kinda, however! dante strikes me as someone who really, really wanted kids, but becky was probably unable to have them for some reason ; be it because of her accident, her being infertile, or what have you. i think he always dreamed of being a father and never fully was allowed that experience! which shows in how he interacts with zoe and ash, where there’s an overt awkwardness but also this sense of eagerness, a little display of tender heart and real worry. for example, he never once threatens zoe’s life! he may endanger her if she stays in the motel, and he has no qualms trying to kill her dad, yes, but not once does he use her as leverage against vince -- despite the fact that said kid could be firmly in his grasp, if she’s the one released! and i’ll have to post the scene when i replay, but if vince tells dante about zoe while in the back office and then takes her out as the hostage, dante bends down and talks to her and is stupidly sweet about the whole thing! so it might seem ironic for him to have a line, but he does, and it’s kids … another example is that when joyce calls him about ash being missing, he sends every available officer out there to search for ash, and when he finds him, he’s nothing but cautious and gentle and worried. it’s almost odd to see from him! when he quickly sheds his cool composer to show the intense rage underneath in most situations we see him in! but he does care deeply for kids and i like that his life’s punishment is him not being able to have them, be it because of them not actually being his own or circumstances making him not being able to raise any he might have. for someone as ambitious as dante i find it sooo endearing that he just, kinda wants children the most? adds to him i think, and it’s something that somberly reminds you that even the most evil seeming people could have the most mundane desires. seriously, there’s such an empty vibe to the big romero house with a wife who hardly leaves her room and some dog in the spacious backyard … ( and spoilers for the black book : but seeing how much dante wanted a dog and a big house really gives you ‘white picket fence’ american dream! with the missing component being the, y’know, kids, and said missing componet carves out this hollow feeling the entire time you dwell on it )

and this want makes me think he was probably around for the holt boys’ upbringings! i mean, not to be crude, but he was banging their mom and seemed to genuinely have loved her at one point in time, so i can only imagine he’d hang around the house here and there. same as paul, i’m sure! and maybe some part of him enjoyed doting on the boys without actively having to be their pa, allowed to just do the fun things most wannabe parents dream of doing rather than the actual hard work and responsibility, and maybe this once there bond contributes to his reluctance to kill the holts immediately. idk! i could see him being around for tyler and dale’s childhood, only to slwply begin fading when jay was brought into the picture -- and then he didn’t help dale out when it counted, and all the bridges between him and the holts were swiftly burned with that. he definitely talks about tyler and dale like he knows them well, which isn’t as weird for dale ( who has a reputation ) but for tyler? someone who notoriously fades into the background and keeps his head down? it implies a bond, i think, where he knew them young and even after him and sharon fell through he decided to keep tabs on them. would scope out where tyler was doing his odd jobs and had officers keep an eye on dale, etc. he’d keep trying to wash his hands of the holts but he never truly puts them behind him, which can be said for everyone else in the game, honestly! they’re like an infection ( something jay even describes them as! ) to where even if you think you’ve cleaned everything off, there’s always one spot you miss, and then the growth process begins again. anyway! he is unhinged for this by the way. man said : two kids without a stable pa figure? sign me up! and then he’d go on to potentially kill one of them on purpose after antagonizing them like he’s a teenager, which he has the nerve to act sad about in the aftermath. insane!!

( also quick timeline here, that i keep in mind whenever i talk or think about the romeros : so sharon and paul definitely knew each other first, but given paul’s energy towards sharon in the desert dream and obliviousness to her and dante’s affair, i don’t think they stayed close -- not after paul married, anyway. paul probably still came around, given his bond with both sharon & bear, but while dante was probably there a lot for the them as kids, i could see paul becoming a more strong figure when they were teenagers and young adults. their behavior towards paul in the desert dream is … strange! though if i had to guess, i’d say they just didn’t want to act like they knew him as well as they did, in order to protect him from any potential danger as well as themselves. wouldn’t want the other hostages to realize they wouldn’t kill paul, you know? it’d be a weakness, which is something the holt boys try very hard to hide in the desert dream situation )

though to focus back on paul a tad, i’m always obligated to talk about him and bear! like, i love paul and bear, so so much, and they’ve grown on me tremendously once i realized they went into vietnam together as soldiers. there’s something delicious about their predicament, where paul is forced into navigating a war with someone he’s jealous of, and someone who he believes to be a pretty shitty guy. and not only did they go in together, they came out together too … went through the flames and trauma and horror as one of those rare duos that actually got to go back home, with all their limbs attached and all! it’d certainly change paul’s views on bear i think, to have seen him in action like that, and to foster what would’ve been a profound understanding, what with their bond being forged in intense warfare and all. his bond with bear is something i wish the game commented on more ( besides an offhand remark ) but oh, it’s quickly become one of my favorite things. bear is so incapable of making friends, and here’s the only one he probably has, someone so unlike him in personality and also someone who wants his wife carnally! like, jesus, the holts can never catch a break, they’re always involved in the most complicated relationships known to man as the town’s locally cursed family and as the town’s most wanted, i guess! but yeah, paul and bear <3 i view paul actually being closer with bear when they come back, electing to spend more time with him over sharon, since it’s easier and safer for him and his marriage … until that crashes anyway. and then paul decided to go sober, which is probably what destroyed their hangouts, leading to paul’s odd holtless time! would probably see the boys around town, as well as sharon and bear, but might just greet them and ask how things are ( typical small town stuff ) rather than actively making an effort to hang. that kinda thing. like he’s still present in their lives, and i think all the holts respect paul a lot more than words can say, and in their own warped ways, but he was. distant. before things went awry.

also totally unrelated to the romeros, but it’s crazy that tyler is born during the last round of american drafts for vietnam, aka 1973. just find it fascinating that bear would’ve either a.) had to have already served his time, b.) hasn’t been drafted just yet, or c.) came back after one term only to leave again for a second one. i can’t remember which one i personally went with, but it’s fun to think about regardless! that, and the fact there’s no mention of dante serving in the war … which i don’t think he did, personally, and given his extreme macho energy, that’s an absolutely fascinating aspect of his character. but i digress!

hm, some other quick thoughts on the romeros include smaller scale things! like how i usually view the rest of the romero family to be more like paul, more meek and silent, almost an entire herd of pushovers. we know the family shares paul’s point of view where it concerns dante’s title as sheriff -- and while this does paint an unsavory image of dante, i can see another picture that implies dante as the romero family’s black sheep. someone always looked at oddly and gossiped about, disapproval aimed at everything dante does because he’s dante, someone unlike the others. the rest of their blood probably doesn’t bother with him at all outside of paul, a family member dante orbits despite his jabs and vocal distaste towards paul’s peaceful nature. i mean, they share friends, a friend list which is only comprised of the holts and joyce, dante’s officers notwithstanding. two rock is a rather small world ( or, at least, it was supposed to seem that way ) but i still find it telling how tangled up in each other’s lives they are! they even liked the same girl, how crazy is that? and dante also makes a passing comment about how paul shouldn’t lock himself away ‘like grandma did’, and he says this remark with disdain … again! i can’t quite back this up with hard canon evidence, but the other romeros ( & hayes’, paul’s actual last name ) have that sort of meek vibe. this black sheep position dante fills also serves to give him and dale more ground as a narrative pair! which, if it wasn’t obvious from the tyler/vince and jay/zoe pairings in the story, this game loves it’s foils and parallels! another minor thought is that paul gives massive queer energy in ways indescribable but i’ll never forget how he can be like ‘maybe it’s mine and i wear it!’ about sharon’s bra if dante finds it in his trailer, and then can hold it up to his chest if i remember correctly?? the fact his extemely masculine cousin doesn’t even bat an eye at this only makes it more queer! he was like yes that tracks, you would wear a bra /derogatory ,,, i just rotate that scene in my mind a little bit, i will not lie.

my very quick final thought is that jim totally helped dante kill sheriff clayson, an action that would then finally put dante in power. which the black book confirms, because dante did in fact kill that guy! just not with jim, but oh well. jim was there and he helped and he hates dante for it now, trust. what they actually did with jim & dante was boring so this is still canon in my head!

ahh, i think this about sums my thoughts on them up? i probably have more lurking around in my mind and, like always, a lot of these points could suffice as posts on their own with more detail, but! it was fun to pour my general thoughts out there, so thanks so much for that opportunity! hopefully this was coherent and made sense lmfao <3 i’m tickled you love my character analysis for this niche ass game!!

[hecksupremechips]

Girl like. The reason he said "this is how it should be" and faced death with a smile....is cuz he wanted to die. For 2 years he sat there thinking he was worthless and deserved to die. If he hadn’t be shot, his death would’ve been suicide, he was fully planning to die in a gutter somewhere undetected. When saying "this is how it should be" hes literally saying "don’t cry because I’m dying, my death is a good thing actually because I fucking suck and you are better off without me". I don’t think that’s badass even slightly, it’s actually really sad and really shitty. Shinjiro is so convinced that he deserves to die and hates the idea of anyone giving a shit about him because he literally can’t wrap his mind around the idea that he will be missed when he’s gone, that his death is a bad thing actually. And his last words were meant to be comforting because he fully did not intend for anyone to be there when he died, he intended to die alone, so he says them as a reminder that he’s not worth crying over

Personally, if it were me, if I was holding my dying best friend in my arms who was deeply depressed and suicidal and he said "this is how it should be" uh. I wouldn’t admire him for it??? Like am I losing my mind when I say the way this game handles Shinji is bad or is anyone else seeing this too 😰

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

2 & 3 from section 1 for peri and 7 from whichever section has a more interesting #7 for diodore -moss

oooh these are fun ones!

2. Describe their tent set-up (outside and inside) (Peri)

I think Peri's tent is constructed similarly to Gale and Astarion's (boxy, fabric walls, little covered area outside). Deep blue fabric w/ golden astronomical embroidery, mostly the sort of thing you see on star maps. Little golden tassles around the edges of the tarp (?) and the doorframe. He'd have a small, circular, dark wood side table short enough that you can use it sitting on the ground, and a dark blue pillow next to it; there would be some parchment and a bronze miniature astrolabe on the table. The inside would be just. full to the brim with the gaudiest night-sky-themed pillows you've ever seen. No bedroll, no palette, just a nest that would put those cube pits in trampoline parks to shame. There would be two bird perches for his familiar Medani: one taller one next to his tent and one shorter one under the overhang. The shorter one would have a crow-sized bow-tie hanging from it. Rugs on rugs on the outside area ofc. 3. What would their character quest be titled? Why? (Peri)

This is a hard one! His tav ending involves taking over the Waterdeep arm of the Harpers, so I think his arc would have something to do with that. He'd be pretty bitter about being dropped into another near-apocalyptic mess when dealing with the last one a few years prior was supposed to be a one-time thing. Something-something ptsd in a world that doesn't have the words for that yet, something-something 'once a hero always a hero', something-something the weight of responsibility...he's a planeswalker so I think part of it would be whether he decides to stay on Toril long-term and directly help rebuild the Waterdeep Harpers or if he continues to run travel around afterwards, so maybe The Far Traveller/The Far Walker?

Harpson/Fae-son are also potential options. "Fae-son" nods to him being a changeling without it being super obvious (like Astarion's "The Pale Elf"). It would also mimic his backstory reveals from RoT ("oh he's not 'from here' so, like, the Feywild" -> "OH he's not from here"). 7. Describe their arc. How would a player help resolve it? What choices can be made? Can your Tav be turned down a dark path, or pulled to a lighter one? (Diodore)

Buckle up because we're in for a long one here. I've thought about Dora's story arc a lot because she's the first of my tavs that I truly made for the game while having full control over her backstory, etc. (versus Corentin, who had their arc baked into the story as a durge). Dora's a paladin of Corellon (oath of ancients) and her story arc as a companion would have to do with whether or not she should accept capital-r-Redemption, the process by which a drow can be truly "freed" from Lolth and rejoin the ranks of the rest of elven society. It involves all of the Redeemed drow's memories being erased and them being reincarnated as a surface elf. The implication seems to be that without that, regardless of a drow's actions, they'd be thrown back to Lolth when they die? Or at least that their eternal fate is unknown (which is the way I prefer to think of it for. personal reasons). Under normal circumstances, Dora would be a long way from Redemption being presented to her at all (she's not even 200 yet and has only been on the surface for a couple decades), but like with the other gods' Chosen among the companions, near-apocalyptic circumstances tend to speed up those sorts of things.

Of course, you'd have the themes of faith & relationship with deity when they're all unequivocally real and are also mostly all assholes; maintaining or breaking generational cycles; facing the unknown; morality when none of your choices are "good" (and how that interacts with morality vs self preservation); power vs freedom; identity outside of the people who made you; etc. The choice would first be presented to her sometime in late Act I/early Act II, likely the first long rest after the group resurfaces from the Underdark and you've probably gotten some of her backstory already. I have no idea how Larian would have characterized Corellon, but he's considered one of the more benevolent/open-minded deities iirc, which could be interesting to see contrasted with Mystra, Vlaa'kith, and Shar. How much that open-mindedness would extend to a drow, even one who has been a faithful follower even before she escaped to the Surface (and who inherited that faith from her father), is unclear. At the beginning of the game she would be leaning towards accepting Redemption, despite her own misgivings about whether or not she would still be her in that case.

Her final decision (at the ending pier scene) would depend on the relationship she has with the PC and the other companions. Her best ending, imo, would be her not accepting Redemption but continuing to be a force for good. If she has a good relationship with the PC, she would have something to lose. I think seeing the House of Mourning would affect her too. After all, the thing Corellon is offering to her as a way to find peace is the same thing the Sharrans are using as a way to manipulate and control others.

She's viscerally aware of how she was socialized and very actively chooses "good", so pushing her towards a darker path would be incredibly difficult but not impossible. If you side with the goblins she'll leave immediately, and turn on you if she's in your party when you attack the grove. But if you decide to try and control the cult in Act II, depending on your over-all actions before then and how you've interacted with her, you could disillusion her to the point of convincing her to break her oath. That path would entail convincing her that controlling the cult is actually the best idea. I'm sure there would be other times that her oath could break that wouldn't necessarily lock her into an "evil" path, especially with how Oathbreakers are handled in the game. Knocking out Minthara instead of killing her outright and letting Auntie Ethel go in Act I instead of killing her are two things that come to mind.

If she doesn't choose Redemption she would be at the epilogue party, of course. I'm a bit undecided on what would happen if she does choose Redemption. She may not be there at all, w/ Jaheira, Halsin, Minthara, and/or Astarion mentioning running into her in her new, reincarnated state. Or she would be there, confused, and mention how the PC seems familiar in a way she can't quite place. In that case, she would ask them how they know each other and mention something about feeling a twinge of grief looking at everyone, but that she doesn't know why she feels that way. It would be up to the PC how much they tell her (if they tell her anything at all).

[ambrosiagourmet]

I want to talk about why I think this is the one of the most important Falin panels:

So, Falin is really nice, right? It's one of the first things we really learn about her. She's kind even to the monsters of the dungeon - choosing to ward the party rather than fight spirits and cause them needless harm.

In the above early flashback in chapter 11, we see Marcille fawning over Falin's kindness, calling her an angel. Namari calls her soft-hearted. We see Falin choose not to fight even when a zombie attacks - instead she resolves the confrontation with a hug. After the flashback, the first thing Senshi says is that Falin "sounds like quite the person," which Marcille strongly affirms.

At this point in the story, all we have seen of Falin are these impressions; she is a healer, an angel, a caretaker with an infinite well of kindness towards everyone she meets - both friend and foe.

And honestly, that remains most of what we have to go by to understand her. The only times we get to see Falin on the page, alive and just herself, are in the opening and closing pages of the story and in the brief period of time after she is resurrected.

Nonetheless, we do have some more details to work with. For one, there is the scene that The Panel is from - a short memory in chapter 75, when Marcille flashes back to while she's dying. In that scene, Falin prepares to teleport them all out, and says that she's sorry "if there is a person at [their] destination." And that's when we get The Panel.

If you teleport someone or something into another person, the person teleported into is likely to be, at minimum, severely injured. They could die.

We can see a lovely little horrifying example of exactly why in one of the Daydream Hour doodles:

So, hmm. That's not... that's not SUPER nice. Certainly not displaying the same "kindness to all, friend and foe included" we saw represented earlier. On a basic level, this adds some nuance to Falin's kindness. We see it break a little, when pushed to the limit. We see her chose to protect the people she loves above all else.

Which makes sense! As Laios says when the Winged Lion accuses him of similarly being motivated more by his friends' safety than everyone else in the dungeon, "...most people, aside from virtuous do-gooders, would feel the same way."

So, we can take The Panel as simply showing a moment of weakness for Falin. A time when she was pushed to her limits, and that "most people" selfish side of her shone through.

However... I think there's a little more going on with Falin than just her being an angel 99% of the time, except just that once. I love The Panel because I think it helps us understand that Falin isn't just motivated by kindness - she also has a desire to avoid seeing people in pain.

Isn't that the same thing?

No, no it very much is not.

Let's look at a short comic from the Falin section of the Adventurer's Bible, because I think it illustrates this point perfectly. The group is complaining about how much Marcille's healing hurts, and comparing it to Falin's, which "doesn't hurt a bit." Marcille retorts with the following:

Now, the punchline of this comic is that, despite Marcille's sentimental assertion that she's "thinking of [them]" by letting her healing magic hurt, they all still prefer to be healed by Falin.

But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that Dungeon Meshi hides a very real character beat or insight in a gag, so let's think about this somewhat seriously.

If Marcille is right (and she knows a fair bit about magic, so we can assume that she has at least somewhat of a point), then what Falin is doing isn't kind. I suppose if someone specifically requested to not feel the pain, it could be kind, but that's not really what happened here. She is the one who felt badly about the others being in pain, and she is the one who decided, without telling them or giving them a choice in the matter, to take away that pain.

Both Marcille and Falin are healing the party, but Marcille is doing it in a way that accomplishes the task in the most straight forward way, without any additional interference. Falin is going out of her way to perform the healing in a way she is more comfortable with. A way that avoids pain.

Going back the The Panel, I don't think its a coincidence that the only time we see Falin (well, non-chimera Falin) willing to do something that could hurt someone is when any potential pain will be far away from her. If she got someone hurt or killed by teleporting the party to the surface? Not only would it be far out of her sight, but she'd be dead before she had to deal with any consequences of that action.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She doesn't push when Marcille won't tell her the truth about the resurrection, and she comforts Laios about her own death - both of those things happening in the only full chapter she is alive and conscious in the whole story.

We also know that she considered accepting Shuro's proposal, despite not having any special feelings towards him, and that Falin never explained to Marcille that she wanted them to share a meal together. When she brought Marcille various foods at the academy, she just accepted Marcille's confused rejection and gave up.

And lastly, we know that she is still in contact with her parents, despite the neglect and abuse she suffered at their hands. Although the way someone chooses to handle contact with abusive or bad family is a complicated topic, which I don't want to overly simplify, I do I think this fact gets at the heart of how she handles conflict.

So many people that Falin loves have hurt her. There are understandable hurts, like Laios leaving the village, or Marcille not understanding the food. And there are bigger, far less justifiable hurts - like her parents neglecting her throughout her childhood, and sending her away to be alone at the magic academy.

It doesn't seem like Falin has ever confronted any of it directly.

And the unhealthy aspects of this kind of avoidance of pain and confrontation is one of the things that the story of Dungeon Meshi is all about. We see Laios grapple with it before he goes to kill Falin, and we see Marcille acknowledge it at the end of the story, when she tells Laios that she has come to terms with Falin's death:

Eating is a part of life. Consuming other living things is a part of life. It isn't really possible to avoid that pain - you can only hide from the truth of it. You have to be selfish everyday. You have to eat - to choose to live. To choose to take up space.

And this is something Falin embraces, too. She comes back to life, after all.

We see her choose to come back to life.

And how does she make that choice? She eats. She consumes, and then she is asked a question by the manifestation of hunger itself:

Do you want to eat more?

There is a double meaning in the Winged Lion's final words on the next page.

When I first read this, I took it as him saying: life is cruel. You will suffer. You will feel more pain.

But perhaps, especially for Falin, this also means: you are choosing a path where you must cause pain. Where you must consume. Where you must take, and must be selfish. Because eating is the special privilege of the living, and it is their burden, too. In order to stay alive, she will need to keep eating.

And she chooses that. Chooses to be selfish. It's why her resurrection scene is so important, and it's why The Panel is so important. Because Falin coming back isn't the ultimate reward for all of the party's hard work.

It's her choice. Just like it was her choice that started everything in the first place. But this time, she doesn't choose to accept causing pain for the sake of Marcille and Laios. She does it for her own sake.

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.