#but the “you MAY win a prize” was just too funny

[cattimeswithjellie]

Okay, add this to the growing pile of evidence on "Why Cleo is the best": her museum curation game is extremely on point.

(Her museum accession game is also extremely on point in that she "acquired" a bunch of stuff from other people and put it in her base, but she's owning that and good for her. I'm sure everyone will be very happy with their dabloons!)

[etfrin]

❝ꜱᴏᴜʟꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴜꜱʜ❞ — chapter one | coriolanus snow

「ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ:」 SFW | Coriolanus is his own warning, elitism

「ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ:」 young! Coriolanus Snow x fem! Reader

「ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ:」 Coriolanus finds out the plint prize won't be his, at least for now but the district twelve girl belongs to him

「ᴀ/ɴ:」 here's the first chapter ;)) hope you like it?! Remember to give feedback guys! And beta read by @nowitsmissing

series masterlist | series taglist | navigation

previous : prologue

Coriolanus Snow wakes up to his grandmother singing the Panem national anthem. He quickly takes a shower, trying to ignore the squeaks of rats in his bathroom. He rubs himself clean, turning his skin red from the raw scrubbing. He stops as his fingers brush on the scar tissue he has on his wrist.

He takes a deep breath, not letting his mind wander off to you. It's the reaping day. It's the plinth prize. A prize he was going to win. You were of no importance today, or ever for that matter.

But still, he can't help but imagine that the date was etched on his skin. The numbers were written with ink darker than the night, now all that remained was an ugly scar that gave him a nastier remainder.

He shakes himself out of it. His hands grab a towel to dry himself. He fixes his curls, trying to make them as stylish as possible. He has a reputation to keep up after all. Thankfully, today wasn't one of the days in which his eye bags were obvious, the hollow of his cheeks too obvious due to lack of food.

He looked surprisingly healthy like any privileged Capitol citizen would look like.

He gets out of the bathroom to go to his grandma’ams. He gives her a note on her singing of the national anthem before asking her where Tigris is. Just on cue, Tigris bursts in.

Her voice was excited, her face all smiles. She hands him a shirt, his dad's old dress shirt renewed with tesserae buttons. He wore it, letting his cousin rant about the process of it all. Even though he had no interest in listening, it was a thank you in his way.

He pins the rose given to him on his shirt. Teasing his family members about new dresses and chocolates. He was going to win the Plinth Prize, nobody could take this away from him. It was his right.

In the academy, he chats with his inner circle. Making snide comments about Sejanus and his Ma. That's when you come in, a drink in your hand. Your eyebrows are raised as you look at Arachne with barely hidden disgust.

Fuck, you looked stunning in your dress. He has to dig his nails into his palm to remind himself not to stare. Why are you torturing him by being so pretty? You're just a district girl, you had no business having such beauty.

“Tell us who won,” Arachne said with her haughty voice, “Your boy toy surely would have spoiled it by now.” You laugh in response.

A small giggle escapes your lips. You don't take offense by having Sejanus being called your boy toy. Coriolanus wants to furrow his eyebrows from your reaction. Were you and Sejanus dating? No way in hell. Even if you're district, you're better than Sejanus in every way. He wants to scowl at the implications.

(You're his, his, his)

“I wouldn't dare ruin his big day, Arachne,” Sejanus's voice rings out instead, him standing behind you. His arm around your shoulder. “People may not like my father but they do love his money. Surely you can relate?” Sejanus grins.

“Funny,” Arachne replied with a sneer.

You rolled your eyes, “Don't be mean, Sej.” You sip your drink and Coriolanus’ eyes can't help but follow the movement of your tongue poking out to lick your lips clean of the drink. His eyes also glare at Sejanus's hand on your shoulder, a part of him wishing he could break his arm.

You turn to Coriolanus. “Nice shirt,” you comment with a smile, and Snow can tell it's more genuine than anything you flashed at the rest of your classmates. He feels himself flush at the compliment. Not even stopping you even though he should because why should your dirty hands touch him? But he doesn't stop you when your fingers reach out to delicately touch the red rose pinned to his shirt.

“Such a beautiful flower,” you mutter in fascination, “and fresh too.” You tear away a rose petal, crushing the poor thing between your fingers, the tip of your fingers turning red.

He watched, no thoughts in his mind but he knew he should be offended. It has been ten years of your behavior he had endured, yet not once could he open his mouth to insult you.

How weak had you turned him since day one. If anyone knew, he would be ruined.

“Did you have to do that?” Clementia frowns, “Flowers are significant to the Snows.'' You only smirk in reply to Clementia. “I see,” you comment, before taking Sejanus's hand in yours.

You begin to walk away but Snow sees you turn around for a split second. Your eyes meet his and your lips form a word. Sorry. He mouths back, ‘ It's fine. ’

You smile at him and turn back, walking towards the chair where the top 24 seniors are supposed to sit, waiting for the announcement. You had let go of Sejanus’ hand by then, letting relief fall over Coriolanus.

Coryo's fingers rub the scar tissue over the fabric of his shirt. It was going to be fine. Over the years, both of you have grown up a lot. Despite having district blood, you consider yourself Capitol more than Sejanus did. You had adjusted first, and even if your peers didn't accept you, their families were certainly charmed by you during the galas.

You were smarter than Sejanus. You were better than Sejanus. Certainly, you couldn't be compared to the Capitol citizens, but you were worthy in Coriolanus' eyes. That doesn't mean he accepts you as his soulmate. That's something that won't ever change, however, the pride he felt towards you is something he couldn't control.

Coriolanus sits between you and Sejanus. He liked the fact that he was in between like a border neither of you should cross. Sejanus whispered to him, his voice grating but Coriolanus heard what he said.

“I know you had high hopes for this,” he whispered, “But there won't be no Plinth Prize. Not today.”

Coriolanus freezes as he hears what Sejanus means. What does he mean by no Plinth Prize? Never in history is that possible. Sejanus must have been mistaken. That's it because otherwise, everything in Coriolanus Snows’ life would go to hell.

However, Sejanus wasn't a liar nor did he make a mistake. Dean Highbottom soon revealed that the 10th annual Hunger Games and the mentor who won will win the prestigious prize Coriolanus needs. Livia Cardew, the girl he loathed, got someone from district one. Sejanus, the lucky bastard, had gotten someone in district two.

You had gotten the boy from district twelve. Someone named Jessup. The boy was healthy, fit, someone who could win under your guidance. Anger blooms in Coriolanus' chest, he tries hard to control the urge to not throw a chair at Dean Highbottom.

Even God wouldn't be so petty as the dean is. For reasons unknown why. The district twelve girl was his. Lucy Gray Braid.

Her makeup is jarring, she was wearing a dress that reminded him of clowns if they used more colors than red and white. The only thing good about her was how she captured attention despite the fact she had already insulted Snow by creating a facade in the reaping.

You can't take my sass

You can't take my talkin'

You can kiss my ass!

He looked at you when he heard the last part. A part of him craved your reaction, surely out of everyone, you wouldn't mock his tribute. You were district yourself after all. You wouldn't mock your people.

What Coriolanus Snow forgot was that you were his soulmate. And in no way the fates would allow his lover to be a saint, an angel as he had hoped for. You were anything but.

You had cruel amusement gleaming in your eyes. A smile of triumph on your lips as if you're sure that you will win the Hunger Games and not him. You turn to him, your eyes hiding the cruelty. You lean forward and Coriolanus counts to ten in his head so his eyes don't fall on your lipstick-stained lips.

“May the best man win,” you whispered, a smirk on your face, filled with the mockery all too familiar like the rest of his peers.

He was going to fucking show you.

“And hereby I declare the beginning of the 10th annual Hunger Games. May the odds be in your favor,” Dr. Gaul's voice calls out to the students.

Odds will be in his favor, whether it be willing by the Lord or his brute force.

Next Chapter

taglist : @tristanswildcat @alllriseabove @sushirolliee

@masimptoowth @ppcowboyprincess @lauravanderbooben20 @captainbabybear

@linkcommercial831 @write-from-the-heart

@kodzuvk @arzua10 @frill04 @cremebruleequeen @illmindedyetfamilliar @nan-nie @xreaderandreaderinserts @impeterporker @shoutingcardinal @coffee-tulips-books @555saccharine @insomniac1345 @chaoticcoffeequeen @xyraphine

[astrologylunadream]

Kiss asteroid in synastry💋 house overlays

Hii it's Lunadream💫 This is my first completely astrology based post! This asteroid is exactly what is sounds like, how someone kisses and kissing styles depending on the sign and placement <3

I wish there was more info on this asteroid😭 It's so interesting!! I could hardly find enough on synastry overlays with asteroid kiss so I'll help you guys out with this one!🥰

Check your Kiss (8267) and see where it falls in eachother's charts <3

🔥Kiss in 1st house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 1st house, the way they kiss the house person is intense and passionate. They might really be into the shape of the person's lips and stare at them too. There is a dangerous attraction to the kiss, the asteroid person finds the house person very kissable and they want to kiss them so badly. They kiss them roughly and almost aggressively. They might kiss the house person out of impulse rather than thinking it through, and if conflict arises it is highly likely a passionate kiss will occur. Pushing, pulling, shoving into the kiss. The house person's kiss is like a prize to the asteroid native, they want to win their kiss. This could also be a kiss that is very physical and touchy, they might be very dominant while kissing the house person and the house person is always left wanting more.💥❤

🌻Kiss in 2nd house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 2nd house, the way they kiss the house person is slow and steady. They most likely won't budge if they kiss them, like they're moving lol. They have a sweet kiss with the house person and their way of kissing them is delicate and strong, really beautiful and romantic type of kiss with them. They may kiss the house person's neck often or hold it tight while kissing their lips gently. Gentle grabbing for a kiss. They may kiss the house person when they're eating or after dinner, and they are likely to kiss their nose and ears too. They want to taste the house person's lips, and just know they're so loyal with their kiss. They aren't sharing it with anyone else and they get extremely possessive over the house person's kiss. They kiss them in a slow and passionate way, sweet yet all in at the same time. They consume the house person's kiss completely.💐💕

👄Kiss in 3rd house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 3rd house, the way they kiss the house person is hyper and fun. They think about kissing the house person a lot and they probably talk about it too. The house person may think about it aswell, and their kiss together may get lots of gossip. Hand kissing. They want to kiss in front of people, They kiss the house person in cute funny ways, they just want to see the house person loosen up a bit in their kiss. They may have another side come out when they kiss them, a persona they put on to please the house person. They're most likely the kind to pretend the two of them hadn't kissed even if they did. The 3rd house rules the mouth so they kiss the house person so good like with them, they're a great kisser. They might kiss the house person a bit chaotically and they talk in between kisses with them.💖🌈

🏠Kiss in 4th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 4th house, the way they kiss the house person is comforting and soft. They kiss them in a delicate and caring nature, they want to keep their kiss protected. They may kiss the house person as a way to defend themselves, and if they have an argument they will kiss the house person to make them feel better. The house person will feel healed and comforted by their kiss, and the two will most likely keep their kisses private in a comfortable and safe environment. They may kiss and cuddle, chest kisses are also likely, as well as the skin and cheeks. Hugging before the kiss, during the kiss or after, soft touches during kiss. Their kiss is like taking care of the house person, making them feel cared for and comfy. Soft feel good kisses with them.🧸😇

🌹Kiss in 5th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 5th house, the way they kiss the house person is playful and romantic. They kiss them in the most flirty way lol, lovely dramatic kisses that spoil you rotten. The house person might not want to kiss anyone else after kissing them, the kisses are filled with charms and beauty. They put on a bold perfomance for the house person, and they may bite their lips too. Kissing their shoulders and back as well as their hair. They kiss them whenever they want attention and they can be very needy of the house person's kiss. It is likely that they will kiss them during a date or after a date, or any specific romantic moments. They are very loyal with their house person's lips, and they want to be praised for the way they kiss them. They have perfect timing of kissing the house person, like they're in a movie omg.🌹🧡

🩹Kiss in 6th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 6th house, the way they kiss the house person is thoughtful and precise. They will most likely wait until the perfect moment to kiss the house person, and they overthink when it comes to kissing the house person like they worry about everything being just right for them.💕 Even if the asteroid person isn't normally neat or well put together they will try so hard just to impress the house person in terms of kissing. They may kiss them often or it may be on their mind even daily. They can be very strict about the house person and who they kiss, also how they do so and sometimes it can lead to the asteroid person becoming controlling over the house person's way of kissing. Once they know exactly what the house person likes, they better watch out because they will replicate it perfectly. This is also the house of service so do with that information as you will~👀🛎

💗Kiss in 7th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 7th house, the way they kiss the house person is balanced and delicate. House person will feel as if they found the love of their life after kissing asteroid person <3 The way the asteroid person kisses them is everything they want in a romantic partner too! The two may have very different ways of kissing, but together it feels complete. The house person may feel very drawn to the asteroid person's kiss and it will feel so good omg they will probably love kissing or being kissed by them my lovelies~ Cutest kisses!! The asteroid person has so many charms when they kiss the house person, they probably have the sweetest kiss these two🍨 With some of this overlay it can be very push and pull dynamic aswell, house person could dislike the asteroid person's kiss but love it at the same time. But it's more likely the two will both enjoy it very much.💕

🖤Kiss in 8th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 8th house, the way they kiss the house person is deep and consuming (omg😳). Kisses are so powerful and moving, the house person will feel an unexplainable pull toward their kiss. Close and Intimate kisses, making out, suffocating and intoxicating kind of feel, kissing in the dark, kissing when you know you shouldn't... The asteroid person kisses the house person in a way that has so much meaning and intensity. They give everything in their kiss, if they are betrayed by their kiss it will not be pretty. Jealous kisses are common with this overlay, and they can get aggressive even. Kissing when alone with the house person, their kisses will be private and a deep bond shared between the two of them. This overlay is hot seriously, there will be more than just kissing with this one.😈

🏹Kiss in 9th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 9th house, the way they kiss the house person is adventurous and bold. They have a curious mind when it comes to kissing the house person, and they will have a thirst for knowing every way about house person's kiss! It will be fun and exhilarating, the house person won't be able to contain their excitement either. Kisses will feel like a new journey, a maze to unravel and a new puzzle to solve. The two will giggle about it for a long time, their kisses will be their little inside joke shared between them.❤ They can kiss the house person in an almost wild untamed way since they tend to be daring and explore to the fullest, trying out new techniques and ways of kissing them. Surprise kisses, little smirks while kissing, laughing and fooling around. House person will never get bored, because they will be very surprised and unexpected of what the asteroid person has to offer!🌋

💼Kiss in 10th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 10th house, the way they kiss the house person is authoritative and structured. They might only allow themselves to kiss house person after some time together, and they will not jump into things easily. The asteroid person is very mature when it comes to kissing the house person, they have a very sensual and heavy kiss with them. Jawbone kisses, strong kisses you can't pull away from easily, the kisses that make the house person feel secure and in place. The asteroid person can be very intimidating in a kiss with the house person, kissing them in a way that commands respect or admiration towards them. Kisses where they lean house person's head up, grab their neck, and kiss them tightly. Degrading kisses is another possibility, may say harsh things to the house person while making out with them passionately.🍷

⚡Kiss in 11th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 11th house, the way they kiss the house person is Innovative and unique. The kind of kiss between friends to lovers, they will kiss the house person in the weirdest yet most amazing ways. "Friends with benefits" type of kiss. Kisses that drive you mad, because of how special they are. Making out in strange places, kissing upside down, joking around with a kiss. The house person will feel a friendly outgoing vibe from the asteroid person's kiss, it will make them feel happy and inclusive. Might be the "friendzone" kiss, but also could be a kiss to rebel against those who said they couldn't! Blowing kisses, kiss attacks. Might kiss house person in a way that is said unusual, they may have a kiss that shifts perspective on what kissing should be.💡

☁️Kiss in 12th house overlay: When someone's kiss falls in the other's 12th house, the way they kiss the house person is Illusive and dreamy, their kiss is like a fairytale true love's kiss. The happy ending kiss. They kiss them in a mysterious and soft way, and the house person can feel high off this kiss as they both do. The kiss feels surreal and beyond physical, it can feel like their souls are connecting. And the house person may fantasize about the kiss, aswell as dream about it a lot. Drunk kisses are common, kisses when the others asleep or unconcious (think sleeping beauty💏) Bedtime kisses. Can be a secret kiss or a kiss that goes unnoticed, mysterious type of kiss. The asteroid person kisses the house person in an almost sacrificial way, devoted and absorbed in their lips. Tired kisses. Spaced out thinking about kissing eachother, in another reality when they kiss. "Did we kiss or is it all in my head"?? Type of thoughts, wondering what the kiss really means.🌊🌠

Wanna see more astro notes like this? Check out my tumblr for more astrology info for you!💗🌊🌸

If you found this helpful don't forget to tap the heart!💖 That's all for now!! Thanks for reading! \(*^w^)/💌 -Lunadream <3

[sorryimananti-romantic]

thoughts on this choi san?

(quality is low but)

quality may be low but that's the highest quality ultra 4k hd man ever to exist on this earth and i'm so down for him-

and in this fit?? biker san??? i've got cute little collection too hehe

you wanna know my thoughts? biker san, bad boy of the neighbourhood who comes across you by chance when you're out with your camera, trying to capture a photo of the landscape in the golden hour for a little competition- nothing fancy, you just finally managed to gather the guts and enter a competition with this new skill/hobby.

you can't seem to get the perfect shot. like everything is perfect- the sun looks absolutely breathtaking with the pastel hues of the sky, the saturation is perfect, the main road is mostly empty- lack of traffic which might be what's making this shot look empty. the road is reflecting the sunlight beautifully too, but you just need a little something-

you were so focused on changing the settings of your camera and sulking that you almost didn't hear the sound of the heavy bike rolling behind you until it came to a pause and you realised it wasn't bg noise. you weren't sure what you were expecting but this was not it- the flashy jacket and helmet threw you off.

"looks like you're having a little trouble," the man said as he took off his helmet and you internally wowed when he stopped ruffling his hair and finally looked at you- all sharp angles and perfectly sculpted that softened into something sweet when he smiled a little. "couldn't help but find your sulking cute when i stopped by the signal."

"oh," you finally exhaled, not realising you had been almost holding your breath. "yeah, um... yeah," you looked at the camera and then back at him, finding him grinning at you and you felt flustered- he must be finding your inability to form a proper sentence quite funny. you straightened, "i'm just trying to take a shot of the golden hour but it looks empty."

"i see," he looked in the direction you pointed. "i don't know much about photography, but is there any way i can help? i could take you to a better location if that's what you want."

"that's a kind offer... but i'm not sure i would want to get on a bike with a stranger," you politely declined.

"of course," he nodded, understanding.

"but..." you scratched your chin. "there's another way you could help. do you mind being a model for my shot? i'd like to capture your silhouette- it would look perfect."

he raised his brows, wondering if there was a compliment hidden somewhere there. "uh... i haven't tried that but i think i could pose with your help?"

"yes, thank you," you sighed in relief and he finally relaxed. you asked him to just stand in the middle of the road when he's sure it's safe and there's no traffic, and to simply look in the distance. take off his helmet. play with the bike. surprisingly, he was quite good at it and you wondered if this was a flirting tactic in his book.

but you soon got your answer- when you showed him his photos and he reacted with surprise, you knew then that it was his first time actually posing with the bike. "it's definitely you, it can't be me."

"i only clicked a photo, you were the one who made it pretty," you told him for the umpteenth time, cheeks hurting from smiling and laughing as you scrolled through the photos and chose the best shot. you told him about your competition entry just now and he got all anxious, saying if you had told him earlier he would have tried better but you insisted he did a great job anyway.

"tell you what- if i win this, even 2nd or 3rd prize... i'll treat you to dinner."

"on one condition," he smiled.

"what?"

"if you like me by the end of the dinner enough to trust me a little, let me drop you home on my bike."

you considered him. was it something he was used to offering people?

"i get to be your first model, and you get to be the first passenger," he told you. you found yourself smiling at that and you nodded slowly, both of you caught in a trance as you stared at each other, lost in trying to process a gazillion thoughts in your heads. you finally broke the silence and asked for his contact number.

"your name?"

"choi san."

suddenly, you're frozen in your spot and you manage a weak smile, praying he didn't detect that little pause. because there's no way he's the choi san. the 'bad boy' you've heard so much about from your friends-- just what had the told you? something about him being a biker, yes, and then?? you can't seem to recall and you internally curse yourself for tuning them out whenever they ranted about boys. you wished you had actually paid attention, but all you know is that he's not supposed to be good news.

but here he is, with his innocent smile and curious eyes. is this a facade? a trap? you can't tell, because you genuinely don't recall what you've heard about him. you've def seen him ride his bike around- it was odd how many people rode bikes here, you thought when you moved to the neighbourhood a few months ago. if he's the playboy they say he is, you'll have to tread cautiously.

"thank you again," you grinned at him, the suspicion in his eyes disappearing. "i'll text you when they announce the winners."

"you did a great job," he patted your shoulder. "if you don't win, i'm treating you anyway."

you laughed at that- a genuine laugh. "offer accepted."

you might regret that phrase. in the week that followed, you got closer through texts and you learn more about who he is (with you). and then on the day they announce the winners, before you text san, you finally call your friend and ask him about the infamous biker so when you sit before him, you know who you're facing.

but learning that he's a notorious playboy who's way too messy to get tangled with doesn't stop you from having a good time at the dinner you treat him to. and when you get on the bike with him, you think it's the most thrilling moment of your life as he races through the streets and alleys. so thrilling that you ask him to take the longer route and he obeys, showing you how the river looks at night- a blur of colourful lights being reflected on the surface, something you'd like to take a shot of. you tell him that when you make him drop you outside your block.

"can i take you there then, when you decide to go?" he asks. "as an assistant this time?"

your smile is his answer.

[bonus]

[ghastigiggles]

danse macabre

so uh. uhm. hi. i kept forgetting to post this and i feel really bad about it. i'm so sorry tadc nation here's some food for you

npc oc because i didnt feel comfortable writing anyone as a ler - not yet, anyway. but pomni needed to get wrecked so bad. she's so cute. i get cuteness aggression every time she's on screen

usual disclaimer; sfw tickling fic, very soft and fluffy, even a little goofy and silly.

"Given that our last adventure took an exciting turn, I thought doing a rerun would be a better idea today!"

A rippling groan passed through the veteran players that Caine seemed to entirely ignore, turning his attention to Pomni with an exaggerated movement.

"Something a little more calm, I'd say! Should help bring you down from any thoughts of the Void from the other day!"

"Ahh… I don't –"

"You'll love it," He interrupted, swooping back into the air with an extravagant gesture; "It's a fan favourite! Everyone knows it, everyone loves it, it's… 'Where in the World is Sir Wigglesburg?'!"

Pomni, of course, didn't miss the way everyone else in the room tensed up – though she didn't catch the way Gangle actually perked instead, immediately shooting sideways glances at everyone else before poorly mirroring their tension. 

"... You're kiddin'," Jax muttered, his eyes narrowing in annoyance. Caine simply continued as though he didn't hear the rabbit while Bubble floated nearby with an empty look in her eyes.

"Sir Wigglesburg is one of our most esteemed citizens –"

"Not an actual player," Ragatha helpfully cut in with a glance to Pomni, trying to give her context.

" – with a terrible habit of wandering off! His dear wife has, once again, asked us – rather, you – to lend a helping hand and bring him home safe! The first to lead Sir Wigglesburg back to the stage shall win a prize! (To be determined, prize may or may not meet or exceed expectations.) Good luck!"

And, with no further context or instruction, their ringmaster and his companion entirely disappeared. There was a brief silence before Zooble grunted, already walking away.

"... Right. I'm going back to my room, then."

"Aww, somebody too chicken to help the poor guy?"

Jax sneered in their direction, and they shot him a searing glare; "Well, if you want a repeat of last time, be my guest. I don't."

"I will also take my leave," Kinger muttered in a hurried fashion, looking askance; "The last time we did this, it was before… Mngh…"

Ragatha offered him a sympathetic smile, nodding as the other two softened just slightly. 

"It's alright, Kinger. We understand."

"Thank you… If you do take on the quest, give Sir my best." 

With that, both Zooble and Kinger headed towards the living quarters, leaving Pomni to finally pipe up again, looking between Ragatha and Jax.

"... So, um… W-what's so upsetting about the rerun, anyway? Is it, um, bad…?"

"Oh – no, not – not per se," The ragdoll replied quickly, tapping her chin; "I mean, Caine wasn't lying… This is one of the calmer adventures."

"Yeah. You should do it, newbie."

Both sets of eyes snapped to Jax, who simply grinned passively. Ragatha squinted.

"... And I don't suppose you'd be coming along?"

"I will, actually. Could be funny. What about you, Rags?"

Though she grimaced, Ragatha sighed in resignation, turning a little to give Pomni a small smile.

"Well, I'm not gonna let her go it alone… Again."

That much, at least, gave Pomni heart, and she almost smiled back – until she realized one of their party wasn't accounted for, and her brow furrowed.

"Uh… Where's Gangle?"

The other two also seemed to only just notice Gangle's absence, and the three of them glanced around briefly before their search was cut short by a distant shriek from the player in question.

"That sounded like her…!"

"Is she getting hurt?! W-what if someone else abstracted?!" Pomni shot them a panicked glance; "Sh-should we –"

"Let's go investigate before anything else," Jax interrupted calmly, barely keeping the amusement from his face as he gestured for Pomni to take the lead. When Ragatha shot him a glare, he simply shrugged, following after her with the ragdoll shortly behind.

They had little more than a vague direction, down a corridor and two left turns that seemed to dim the further along they went; Gangle made no further sounds, giving them little in the way of direction, and eventually Pomni sighed haplessly, squinting into the darkness.

"... It's no use… Should – should we go find Caine again…?"

She was met with silence, and turned around – only to find Ragatha and Jax were nowhere to be seen, and her stomach dropped with dread.

"... Guys…?"

"Ooh? Who is this…? A face I've yet to see and greet?"

At a new voice, Pomni yelped, whipping around – and coming face-to-face with what appeared to be some kind of massive, cartoonish caterpillar. His body appeared to be covered in green fur, disappearing into the darkness past his neck – or so Pomni assumed at first glance, anyway. His face and what could only be described as underbelly were covered in white fur that parted around his features, such as a long purple nose and big black eyes – one of which sported a golden monocle. And, of course, his hands had the same cartoon glove sort of thing that Kinger had going on, though this time with black noodle arms seemingly attached.

In her shock, she entirely lost her voice, merely stammering wordlessly – and earning a chuckle from the caterpillar looming over her. 

"Such a small thing, you are! 'Tis a pleasure, indeed!" 

Smiling, he extended one of his hands for a shake, a gesture that finally managed to pull Pomni from her stupor.

"I am Sir Wigglesburg! And you, my gentile jester, would be…?"

"A-ahhh…" Though hesitant, she extended her own hand, despite it being barely half the size of his own, "P-Pomni – woah –!"

The moment their palms yet, Wigglesburg pulled her closer, twirling her around so suddenly that her eyes spun in alternating directions – and as she was steadied again, pulled along by his sudden movements, she was abruptly made aware of his overwhelming amount of hands, with a second dominant one taking her free hand to hold her steady while two more settled on her back and hip, respectively.

"Pomni, Pomni! A wondrously adorable and charming name! Please, indulge me with a dance – 'tis a formal greeting between my people!"

"I – I'm actually – ah!"

The hand on her hip pinched her side unexpectedly, making her jerk in an attempt to escape – yet Wigglesburg easily moved with her reflexive maneuver like it was a step in her dance.  

"I'm actually – ehh! – l-looking for s – hey! – some – sohome –"

The hand squeezed again, and again, and again; and every time, she tried to sidestep or wiggle away – and every time, it just encouraged their "dance", with Wigglesburg's gentle but firm grip keeping her upright despite the giggles bubbling in her chest and the involuntary smile that had been pulling at her lips. 

"My dear Pomni," Wigglesburg crooned as though she wasn't struggling to articulate a sentence; "You are a wonderful dancer!"

" – Ghhh, thank you…? But I – ah!! – would you plehease –"

She squeaked again as she was suddenly pulled into a dip, very nearly panicking before she realized Wigglesburg was still supporting her gently. His wide smile was kind and sweet, but undercut by the mischief in his eyes as he looked down at her.

"... That said, you are giggling quite a lot! I didn't think dancing with a wyrm would be that much fun for you!"

"I-It's not the dancing – GyaAH –"

"Is it not?" 

Pomni couldn't manage a reply, stuck in a fit of uncontrollable giggles caused by the fingers wiggling at both sides, forcing her to squirm back and forth with no true escape from the unexpected and overwhelming sensation. Wigglesburg hummed, tilting his head with an adoring expression.

"I say, I was under the impression that it was the jester who caused nobles to laugh, not the other way around! Yet, here you are, practically beside yourself…"

For a mercy, he did release her hands, and she immediately brought her arms in – not that they did much, proportionately, to protect her. 

"Aheheh, I can't – I cahahan't –"

"Oh, my poor dear, does it tickle? Are we feeling a little sensitive?"

She hiccuped through her laughter at that, shaking her head and ducking down; it felt like the teasing sent a shot through her nerves, which only made it worse when he started scratching experimentally at her ribs, prompting a few snorts to escape her as well.

"Ngh – nahahaa, not th - thehehere…!"

"What? Here? Or here – oh, dear me."

His hands shot to Pomni's underarms for just a few seconds, but it was enough to prompt a shriek from her, wriggling and kicking fruitlessly with even more vigour than before.

"NnnoOHOHO – gh – $%^@# – I cahAAHAAN'T –!"

"Yes, I can see that! 'Twould seem that 'tis an especially sensitive spot."

"Plhehe – PLEHEEHEEHEASE!"

She threw back her head with a loud cackle as Wigglesburg doubled down, every stroke of his fingers sending shocks down her arms and through her body – but she only had to endure it a moment longer before he finally laid off, lightly massaging her sides with his thumbs as she gasped for breath – an act that was more instinctual than actually necessary, given that breathing wasn't really a thing anymore – with a goofy, natural smile still stuck on her face.

"I do hope you can forgive my zeal in tormenting you," Wigglesburg offered after a moment, smiling apologetically; "I cannot help myself around the players."

"I – it's… Haah…" With a final breath, Pomni shook out the residual giggles, looking back up at Wigglesburg; "It's alright…"

"Oh, I figured! You never once asked me to stop, after all."

She stiffened at that, her eyes widening as she searched her memory – because, surely not… And yet, he was right.

She had no idea if the digital avatar could blush, but with how hot her face felt upon that realization, she really, really hoped it couldn't.

"But enough of that – you were searching for someone, yes?"

"Uh! Um. Y-yeah. You, actually, but also – Gangle, if you've seen her…"

"Oh! My dear Gangle has been here all along!"

Pomni blinked dumbly, and Wigglesburg chuckled, curling in on himself and cradling her close as his spine arched up to where she could see clearly – and, sure enough, Gangle was splayed out in the wyrm's green fur, seeming a little sleepy and out of it… Yet, content, even as she looked up and waved at Pomni.

"But… Her scream…"

"'Twas a scream of joy and laughter," Wigglesburg assured her; "Gangle is one of my favorite dancing partners – and I, hers! I admit, I went overboard this time, though… It has been too long since the last time."

"Oh."

A lot of things made sense, now. The way everyone had seemed tense and awkward when Wigglesburg's name came up; Gangle's quiet disappearance in the wake of the adventure's start. The little comments everyone was making towards each other… 

"Pomni! Are you alright?!"

Ragatha's voice pulled Pomni from her thoughts, and she looked down to see the ragdoll standing below, looking up with faint relief… And heavy amusement. Shortly behind her stood Jax, smug as ever – yet, notably, keeping a good generous distance between himself and the wyrm.

"Uh. Yeah," Pomni replied; "I found Gangle? And… And Sir Wigglesburg."

"We know. We heard you," Jax chuckled, easily side-stepping to avoid a tiny kick from Ragatha. For her part, the doll smiled.

"That's great! Let's head back to the stage and wrap up this adventure, then!"

Sir Wigglesburg, however, pouted a little, looking down at her.

"Oh, are you sure I can't convince you to share just one dance with me…?"

"Ahh… Maybe next time?"

Ragatha offered him a nervous smile, and Wigglesburg sighed dramatically – but he didn't object, simply setting Pomni on his back near Gangle before he began to crawl along on the path back to the stage. Distantly, Jax grumbled about not being offered a ride as he and Ragatha followed on foot.

In the softness of his fur, Pomni felt a tempting urge to "nod off", partially encouraged by the dance she'd just been through – but Gangle's voice, just barely loud enough to be heard – kept her in the waking world.

"... I'm glad you like his game. I've been the only one for awhile… Knowing someone else likes it makes me feel less weird."

And, with a small nod in response, Pomni hid her smile in the wyrm's fur.

Maybe not every part of the digital circus was terrible or terrifying.

[2manythoughtz]

Barbie has been deeply misunderstood?

The movie Barbie is still topic of many discussions among viewers and their different points of view. The Golden Globes have proved just why this movie was needed in the first place.

Recently some comments have been made during The Golden Globes that have left people thinking. For those who don’t know, The Golden Globes is an annual ceremony that takes place in the US and awards movies, TV series, actors and so on based on their categories and the votes are made by approximately 300 entertainment journalists from various parts of the world. As with all ceremonies, they must have a host who most of the time is someone famous in the entertainment industry and who is meant to make the night funny and unforgettable, sadly this year was not the case.

Jo Koy, who is a famous stand-up comedian and actor, was the host of this year’s edition and some of his jokes left people speechless. While most VIPs in the audience looked somehow confused and uncomfortable as he tried to get a few laughs from everyone. Of course, hosting is not an easy task, there’s a lot of pressure on the person and I’m sure they need a lot of time to prepare their jokes. That doesn’t excuse what has been said and, while no one in the audience said anything about it, the fans at home were not so silent on the matter.

While many lines were not appreciated, such as Jo Koy’s comment about Taylor Swift that left her fans bitter about it, one in particular really struck a nerve and everyone started talking about it on social media. “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.” And if that wasn’t bad enough, he then added. “I don’t want you guys to think that I’m a creep. It was kind of weird being attracted to a plastic doll, just something about your eyes, Ryan…it’s not all about you Margot.” And finally. "The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or what casting directors call character actor!"

As you can imagine, the Barbie cast was not too enthusiastic about these comments as they looked embarrassed rather than amused. People all over social media are criticizing Jo Koy for proving the movie’s point, just because the movie is about a “doll with big boobies” doesn’t mean that it’s something he can comment about so lightly. This misogynistic behavior is exactly why Barbie was made in the first place, to show people that in a world dominated by men, women will always be looked down upon, whether they’re real or just dolls.

But what is the Barbie movie about? Whether you love it or hate it, I think everyone agrees on the fact that the Barbie movie is a way to show people, mostly young women, that it’s hard to fit in today’s society. Women have been fighting for their rights for years, trying to become men’s equals while also feeling the pressure that has been put on them to be perfect no matter what. Barbie is about a doll, yes, but the story revolves around something deeper. The way Barbie slowly realizes that being imperfect is not a bad thing, it’s just a human thing, and the way she manages to understand her feelings as she evolves from feeling perfect to slowly wondering if there’s more to life is just eye-opening.

The movie discusses many topics and, while some of them may be a bit controversial, the main topic is womanhood. What is it to be a woman, what if feels to be a woman and how women are portrayed. So joking about Barbie’s body in a sexual way and the struggles she encounters is not only sickening but also embarrassing.

Greta Gerwig, the movie’s director, remained professional on her end and when asked to comment on Jo Koy’s words, she simply said. “Well, he’s not wrong,” she continued. “She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on. And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll. Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon.”

Even so, the Barbie movie won an award for best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.

Speaking of awards, there’s something else we must address. Another misconception that shows just how everyone has misunderstood how deep the movie’s message is. In fact, most of the movie’s soundtracks were nominated as Best Song at the Critics Choice Awards and, as everyone expected What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish to be the winner, I’m Just Ken ended up winning that title. Yet again, it’s almost laughable as this song is basically a joke about the Kens feeling misunderstood and ignored by Barbie, while What Was I Made For is a song about womanhood and the hard feelings and fears that women live with. The award went to the only song made by a man that was up against the other 2 songs made by women for the same movie.

Ryan Gosling’s reaction has become viral online as you can see him confused and unamused by this unexpected victory. Yes, I’m Just Ken maybe became more popular because of the memes but to put it above a meaningful song such as What Was I Made For felt unreal. I’m not sure which was worse, Jo Koy’s jokes or this award.

What are you thoughts? Let me know!

[dolce-tenebra-toscana]

La Squadra's halloween costumes 💀🎃

(Cause i am procrastinating mine and so i project on them)

Risotto ✂️: Grim Reaper

He is the type to remember he has to go at the annual halloween party at the last minute lol

So he takes the same grim reaper costume he uses every year and pretends to be original

He just wants the candies and some wine tbh

Prosciutto 🍖: vampire

Another one who dresses the same every year but boi is his costume good!!

Prosciutto knows he looks fine af when he dresses elegant and halloween is no exception!

His refined clothing and velvet cloak, plus the onpoint make up makes him look like he is truly a vampire from a gothic novel and with the " fake " blood on his face makes everything more creepy...just don't look at the weirdly human like mannequin in the alley he just came out..

Formaggio 🧀: zombie

He just wants to scare the trick or treaters and what's best than a too realistic zombie costume?

He will put so much effort in the scarring and makeup and will " play dead " in the alleys nearby the hideout...only to jump and starts running and screaming towards his poor victims

He will come to the party laughing like a maniac cause he knows he traumatised at least 10 people, what a bastard

Melone 🍈: mad scientist

He uses his old university lab coat and all the tools he stole from the hospital when he was in sophomore year( unifi never noticed of course), then his natural bed hair and bags under his eyes do the trick: tadaaah you have yourself the tuscan mad scientist of your dreams!

He is one the few arriving on time at the party, and of course flirts/h*r*ss the ladies with the " gynecologist " jokes, sometimes even works...but the 98% he just gets slapped in the face

Doesn't mean he'll stop trying tho

Illuso 🔎: sadako

Another simple costume but this one will give you actual nightmares..

Illuso knows that his stand is creepy af and if he chooses you as his yearly victim for the evening may Araki have mercy on you...

You can run but can't hide from Illuso, especially nearby mirrors...don't wear heels cause if you see this tall man wearing a bloodied nightgown with damp hair on his face...run, just run

Ghiaccio 🧊: Ghostface

Ghiaccio is here to rapresent slasher culture and will get MAD if you don't recognise his costume/reference

This year he close Ghostface for 3 motives..

1) is cool af

2) the boots he is wearing makes him slightly taller so his ego is fed

3) he gets to actually be unhinged in a cringe way cause his costume is a secret even to his teammates, no one knows what mask he'll wear so he can spend time chillin...k*lling... ( plus the ladies are super attracted by this mysterious party animal and that never hurts )

Pesci 🐟: frankenstein's monster

He has a deep connection with his costume, he knows he isn't the most handsome or the smartest tool in the shed..

So poor Pesci literally wears his emotions as frankenstein's monster and he does an amazing job: the makeup, the stitching, the clothing...everything is perfect!!

He spends the majority of the night nearbh his collegues but when he sees that they are all busy he retires to thw balcony and enjoys some alone time

Funny enough he is the idol of the kids at the party and he even wins a prize for " best costume ", that cheers him up a lil bit

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 31/07/2023

AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A CHUNKY BEAT

Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: DJ Professor K Presents: 24/7 FUNKY FRESH BEATS FROM TOKYO-TO

Ripped by ChickenSuitGuy

*chef's kiss*

If there's any Season that deserved to be extended, I'm really glad it was Season 4. I'm sure its confused a lot of new viewers, but it makes a lot of sense when you consider what Season 4 was aiming to be. Its the tournament arc of SiIva, and just so happened to become SiIva's biggest ever project aside from the channel in its entirety. Thus, we have two parts to the Season - The contest, and the celebration. Wheras Episode 1 had everyone in suspense and hype over the incoming tournament, and fervently excited during the tournament itself, Episode 2 was a year-long celebration of the last year's events. In this celebration, none was more anticipated than the gold prize of the tournament - for DJ Professor K to become King for a Day.

Considering other takeovers on SiIva have recently begun lasting for a week or more, a single day may at first sound poultry in comparison. One 24-hour stretch of one rip an hour...that's 24 rips for winning an entire tournament of fierce competition. And sure, the winner of Season 3's smaller tournament did prove that expectation wrong with over 60 rips made for its takeover, but the second go around was a complete blowout.

Over TWO HUNDRED RIPS were created just for the takeover, and played all-day over the course of a 11-hour livestream that replayed three times. It was an absolute feast - a day literally without a dull moment. The team absolutely outdid themselves with this entire event, and it was indescribably fun to have a live chat react to each new rip for the entire 11 hour run. And todays rip is one I specifically remember being part of that chat for.

Its easy to forget, sometimes, just how much fun the bait-and-switch aspect of the channel is when its no longer actively fooling influencers online as much as it was in Season 1 and 2. These live streams are such a good substitute for that - I was able to see, live in chat, the chat light up in excitement over finally getting the premiere of a AIN'T NOTHING BUT A FUNKY BEAT rip, only for the melody to start up and effectively slap the entire audience in the face. The chat went from complete despair to being even more excitement than before once they realized just how good the rip was - a way too high effort mashup of the original song and various...Big Chungus memes.

Due to various happenings within the King for Another Day tournament, the SiIva fanbase had grown a newfound affection for the meme, and this rip is no exception: Its as absurdly funny as it is genuinely catchy and well made.

[lucigoo]

Weekly Roundup: 7th April - 14th April

So, this week has been a rough one, so im just addig my word count and othing else, will add my fics and recs at a alter day, but its 2:30 am in Monday (def not Sunday which I thought was Saturday ...) So I wrote 17,709 words with 4 fics uploaded. Okey Dokey, time t fix the weekly round up, recs first as always, but if I wait any longer, it will be Suday again lol. far across the distance - LinguisticJubilee - The Hobbit (Bilbo/Thorin, this one is lovely imo) Summary: Balin blinks, shifting backwards. “Laddie, it’s—it’s been a year. Bilbo has returned home, to the Shire.” He looks at Thorin, then says more gently, “I did not realize you counted the hobbit among your treasures.” Where I go, will you still follow? - ghostinthelibrary - Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Geralt/Jaskier, the plottwist is delicious angst) Summary: When Jaskier is revealed to be spying on Kaer Morhen for Redania—a treachery that nearly gets Eskel killed—he’s banished from the keep. But when it becomes clear that there was more to his lover’s betrayal than meets the eye, Geralt will have to race to find him before it’s too late. Fae!Jaskier and Geralt - TheBretonBookDragon - Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Geralt/Jaskier, I adore Fae Jaskier, and I legir re read the entire series today too) Summary:

The Mountain hangs over their heads, but Geralt is sure that if he just keeps trying that Jaskier will know how much he loves him. Jaskier has been quieter than usual, but that just means Geralt needs to try even harder. Too bad Geralt is just a smidge oblivious and emotionally constipated. Guardian of Kings - SunnyRose - The Hobbit by @sunnyrosewritesstuff (Bilbo/Thorin, one of my favs from Sunny, its clever and the world building, its just delicious) Summary: The Company has been having a good laugh as the story of their quest spreads through the mountain and more and more retellings makes Thorin out to be Bilbo’s damsel in distress. It stops becoming funny when Thorin’s honor is challenged, and it’s up to Bilbo to defend it. Thorin may be ready to smuggle his hobbit out of the mountain, but Bilbo will do it. For Thorin, he would do anything. Prize Enough for Me - StrivingArtist - The Hobbit (Bilbo/Thorin, BAMF Bilbo for the win, need I say more?) Summary: After falling in love months earlier with the Dwarven King, when Bilbo sees Thorin stabbed on Raven Hill, he decides to find vengeance. mercy and death on swift arrows fly - authoressjean - The Hobbit (Gen, hinted eventual Bagginshield, another BAMF Bilbo, but also, hes just lovely no matter what) Summary: Hunger Games AU with slow burn Bagginshield.

And now for mine. We have 4 fics I finished last week, and a revealed bonus one. Ive found Frodo ....and he found you? - Lucigoo89 - The Hobbit (Bilbo/Thorin, Animal Au. Badger Thorin/Skunk Bilbo written for my friend @shantismurf's bday <3) Summary: Canine distemper has stolen all of the Bagginses away apart from Bilbo and little Frodo. No he has to find his kit, who has wandered off, again, and keep them safe from "The Sick". If only he wasn't alone doing it. You're Floo Was My Emergency Contact (Sirius Black, Gen, written based off this wonderful video Satellitedide: Sirius after he's arrested... Summary: Sirius is in Moody and Kingsley's custody after Halloween 1981. Dumbeldore is his emergency contct but he isn't answering his floo.... I'm bitter: You were mine first (Jegulus, unhappy ending, mind the tags) Summary: James catches Regulus in an alley after a Death Eater attack. One thing leads to another and Regulus revels in the fact James isnt as good as he pretends to be, he never has been You were to late - Lucigoo89 - The Hobbit (Bilbo/Thorin, Canon comliant ish, mind the tags. Based int he @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt #248 - watching Birds) Summary: Bilbo is watching the eagles fly overhead in victory. With Thorin's cooling hand in his, Bilbo isnt sure what their is to feel victorious over. And final one. My first Mer au, for the @remuslupinfest High Tide Came and Brought You to Me (Mer Remus/Siren Sirius) Summary: Remus was cursed as a child and became a wermerman. 20 years later and he still hates himself and what he becomes once a month. Maybe some new additions to his cove will help him feel a bit more at peace with himself? Once again, I hope theres at least one thing for you to enjoy. Have a good rest of the week <3

[mooremars]

Camelot 2023 Act 2 ramblings about the music and book and also the visuals again because turns out one post wasn't enough.

I still cannot possibly recommend anyone actually read this because it is so absurdly, comically long but I still needed to get even more feelings out.

Act 2, Scene 1: The castle courtyard one year later:

• "We shouldn't be alone together" like girl

• I love how she's almost exasperated by it

• When she fantasized about this all-consuming high-stakes love she probably didn't think about how exhausting it would be to actually live with it all the time

• Like having this conversation every single month does sound exhausting

• The way she's actively trying to drive him out of Camelot, Genny is so much and I respect it

• She's really doing her best in a way that involves truly torturing Lance, he should really do some soul searching about why he loves someone who treats him this way

• "I've trained dogs to chase you"/"And those dogs were fast.. the expression his bark is worse than his bite that wasn't my experience"

• Sorkin slightly breaking the tension of this scene which is so needed

• "You're not English"/"Neither are you"/"I think that changed when I became queen of England"

• I also feel like there is a lot to unpack in this exchange

• "And when would I do that Genny?"

• The angst in that delivery

• If Ever I Should Leave You is so gorgeous

• I think it was Sorkin who basically said that the show doesn't need magic because the songs provide enough magic on their own and this is the perfect example

• Jordan Donica is tremendous

• I knew him from Charmed and it took me a bit to place him but holy shit

• I may have actually seen him before, I'd have to check but regardless I need to be paying attention to literally any theater he does because I want to go

• This applies to all of them, who am I kidding

• Anyway, he's amazing here and I am probably underselling him in this post because I only saw him half the times and so my memories are much less clear

• And my reference is closing which was not him by this point

• And the outro music (? sorry I know nothing about music) is absolutely stunning

• This song is so romantic but also very shallow

• They're fulfilling a version of love that is all big gestures and big feelings but not necessarily substance

• Because they're trying to fill a void in themselves using the other and when you do that, you can't see the person as an actual person

• Just an extension of your unmet need

• Which is too bad because I think if they weren't, they might actually like each other

• But fuck is this song so romantic

• Every lyric is good, the way they're sung, I think I may for the first time have use of the phrase swoon worthy

• Specifically the end

• "I have a thrilling engagement. I'm giving prizes at the potato show. I'm eager to find out what the qualities of a prize winning potato are"/"I'll be at your side Ma'am"/"Thank goodness for that, those potatoes can be dangerous"

• The lines are so funny and her delivery is so heartbreaking, I am suffering

• I do just love Genny so much and she deserves happiness dammit

• "So the rumors are true, the chain of wedlock is so heavy in Camelot it takes three to carry it"

• Mordred coming out with the one liners immediately

• "He's willing to make any old man a knight I see"

• Pelli immediately threatening violence, beautiful

• The whininess of "I shall be busy tomorrow afternoon" and slapping the bench

• Fourteen year old edgelord Mordred

• Very interesting to have him be a year younger than Arthur was when he became king, really underscoring how young he was

• "I was raising by a mother with a fatally broken heart. Makes for a dark childhood"

• Like do we think Mordred is just trying to drum up Arthur's sympathies or is this actually true?

• "And when you speak to the king, you should remember you're speaking to the king"

• Arthur literally never insists on any manner of kingly respect but his son is a little shit that he hates, so he will

• Love that

• "Dispatch to the court, the king has a child he fathered out of wedlock. Problem solved."

• The blackmail just instantly failing is very funny

• Also would love to know how the conversation about this between Genny and Arthur went

• "I'm not ashamed of you. You don't embarass me though it's not for lack of trying."

• That's too generous, Mordred is embarrassing

• "It's always been my wish that you and your mother stay here where I can take care of you both"/"Stay where, in the servants' quarters?"/"In any quarters you like"/"Except the queen's"

• I wonder if Mordred is the one who feels this way or if he's just parroting back what Morgan has said

• "I was a boy when I met your mother"/"And my mother turned you into a man"/"A man named Merlyn turned me into a man"/"That's a new bit of palace gossip"/"No you idiot, he was my teacher"

• Obviously sarcastic Arthur is always a treat and specifically the facial expression and tone of no you idiot

• But just so curious about Morgan and Arthur because Arthur gets pissed at that whole turned into a man bit

• And he has been pretty chill with Mordred being terrible for this whole scene

• He's very much not comfortable with what Mordred is saying and this is the only moment where Mordred gets under his skin and like that is very interesting

• "In this place the law applies equally to everyone"/"Even the king and queen?"/"Especially the king and queen"

• You are literally watching the light bulb pop over Mordred's head and it's played perfectly

• Everyone in this cast is perfect

• The Seven Deadly Virtues has no right to be this funny

• "Making my Beelzebubble burst" is my favorite but really this entire song is great

• It's such a petulant performance and it's perfect

Act 2, Scene 2: The King's study

• Another amazing bit of scene change music

• The intimacy of them spending their evening playing chess together and talking

• Presumably this is just what they do on a lot of nights and I love it

• I feel like there's definitely potential in a their relationship through chess fic

• Someone please

• I firmly believe they are at like a full 50-50 split in terms of who wins

• "Are you really reading while you're chasing me around the board?"/"Sorry I didn't hear you, I was reading and chasing you around the board"

• And his okay in the middle like he knows he set himself up to get mocked

• Making fun of each other is one of my favorite love languages

• Also same structure as Arthur telling her it will seem that she's rooting for Lancelot to lose and she says that's because she is rooting for Lancelot to lose

• It's just a fun little dialouge thing that I enjoy Genny doing

• Makes her lines feel hers

• I love that Arthur has Merlyn's final warning on his mind so naturally he consults Genny

• And then it devolving into a philosophical discussion about what is and is not possible

• "I was 10,000th person to try, how do you explain that?"/"9,999 people loosened it"

• A perfect and funny line that becomes sweet and profound later on, I will never not love that

• "We have greatness in our grasp, humanity does, but for some reason every time we see it we assign the responsibility to some supernatural force. Or to god."

• You would think given the structure of the love triangle that Arthur would be set up to scoff at the idea that god has responsibility for human greatness in contrast to Lance being extremely devout

• And like I do think Arthur and Genny are actually on the same page but I enjoy that she gets to voice that thought

• This is the woman who first ran away and then threw prayer on top after as a little afterthought so yeah perhaps Genny is not the best catholic

• "Perhaps when he died, his soul transmogrified-"/"What did I just say?"

• Arthur immediately needling her and doing that stupid little hand motion on transmogrified

• They're adorable

• "I enjoy seeing you get riled up"

• This is what you say to a woman you're about to call your business partner? In that way?

• I don't know who to blame because I can't tell if the line or delivery is more of the culprit

• No it's the delivery, I have literally put in the audio as proof

• The audacity, I'm obsessed

• He's got it so bad

• Could've had this Genny

• Like Mr. Purity of Soul who thinks women can't possibly understand politics has absolutely never considered the concept of female pleasure, for sure has never heard of foreplay, and definitely believes the clit and g-spot are both myths

• I love Lance but proposition: there's no way that man is good in bed

• Everything else mean I've said about Lance has been out of love but I love Genny and she doesn't deserve mediocre dick

• And yet he's playing by Jordan Donica so it is also valid and understandable

• Sorry, I digress but gotta find the humor in the whole none of them get to be happy business

• But actually I really appreciate that even in this tragic narrative with big ideas and a lot of angst, they get to have fun and be fun

• Even as their relationship is about to hit its breaking point, you can still tell they're not just torturedly in love but they actually like each other so much

• "And while you're enjoying it, let me ask you this... how often do you write to her?"

• Genny is attempting to play it cool but boy is she not

• The little pause between often and write and then to her, oof

• It's so soft but like the hint is there

• The silence while Arthur makes his move on the board, ugh

• "I send a letter a week"/"Every week?"/"Yes"/"For how long?"/"Mordred's fourteen, he came to me when he was ten so four years"/"That's 208 letters"/"I have a responsibility there, I'm trying to do-"/"Do the chivalrous thing"/"Yes"

• It's so painful to hear their deliveries and realize they're having two separate conversations where they're both upset and they don't understand the other person is feeling the same

• Like Genny getting alarmed at 208 letters, Arthur getting frustrated and defensive about it and cutting Genny's last line off, and then Genny delivery of do the chivalrous thing like she's so tired

• It is so besides the point but how exactly was Arthur expecting the fucking soap opera and/or sitcom situation he's trying to create going

• Like his piece of shit kid, his ex who hates him, his wife that he loves whose feelings for him he doesn't have a handle on, and his bestie whose feelings for his wife Arthur definitely does know

• I know castles are very big but I don't think they're big enough to make that situation good for anyone

• "You've never asked me her name"/"Is it Morgan Le Fay?"/"How did you know that?"/"And she's a scientist"

• Genny has been holding this in for a whole year and she's finally ready to use it

• She says it like she's caught Arthur in some kind of lie which obviously she hasn't but I do wonder if she's had this conversation in her head enough times that she's already thinking the worst

• "He blames me for her condition. All the more reason why I want them both to be here at the castle. She needs care."

• That long pause before condition and the way he says it like maybe Arthur also blames himself

• And they're still playing chess throughout this whole thing as if they can pretend that this conversation isn't causing them both pain

• The sound of the pieces getting moved on the board while during the tense silences, yes

• And now we get to me being emotionally destroyed

• This scene is a roller coaster and the writing and acting of it is perfect in every way

• "We're more than king and queen, you and I. Don't you think?"

• He's so unsure, he's always so unsure it is torture

• The emphasis on you

• But also he does in some way recognize that she's upset about Morgan and he gets so close but spectacularly fails

• Genny is so hopeful on the "Yes, yes I do"

• Him stammering out and Genny trying one more yes to get him to come up with something

• And then that something is business partners

• In my brain I am screaming

• I have done nothing but make fun of Arthur for business partners (and friends) since I first saw this show and I will continue to do it now

• However I do think that for him, in the context of his experience being thrust into royalty, he is actually expressing a very romantic sentiment

• He meets Genny and tells her about Camelot and she doesn't think she's worthy of that

• But here he's affirming that she is, that she's his partner in this and he recognizes her worth

• They talk in the second scene and she mentions that as a princess she doesn't have friends

• And here he's telling her that they are friends, that she isn't alone

• And we see how uncomfortable Arthur is being treated as the king

• And he's trying to tell Genny that he cares for her as a person and not just the queen he traded for in a treaty

• He wants her to see him that way because if she sees him as just Arthur and not the king, then maybe he can tell her how he feels

• But also maybe it you are a man and your confession of love to a woman contains the words "I know this is an unusual thing for a man to say about a woman but" you have turned down the wrong path

• "Yes. Friends. And business partners"

• Her delivery is so ice cold, it's perfect

• The fact that she says this and even Arthur picks up on her tone and knows he fucked up

• Arthur trying to fix things and being interrupted

• His frustration with himself is so heartbreaking

• I am still screaming in my brain just louder now

• Pelli is great but also he is the cause of so many of Arthur and Genny's resentments and miscommunications, the man's a magnet for drama

• He's so funny in this scene trying to complain to Arthur and Arthur already knowing all of Mordred's bullshit

• And yelling dammit so many times in the most perfect way like me with every person who has ever annoyed me

• "Because England doesn't have a law against limericks"

• The fact that even though they're in the middle of this weird emotional mess, Arthur looks to Genny when he's talking about how Pelli's question is complicated

• His thinking buddy

• And business partner

• Also the idea that Arthur is so chill with the fact that he doesn't have the answer, that he's laying groundwork for future progress instead of assuming it will be accomplished by him

• Which is just inherently a concept I think I struggle with, that the world will not change in all the ways it should in my lifetime but the work now still has to be done

• So I like to see it

• Not going to write out another good Sorkin speech about ideas but I love this one too rest assured

• And we've had a nice little break, now we're back to chess and Arthur trying to force out something coherent and me screaming in my brain again

• I still can't get over the way they're still playing chess I'm sorry

• Genny saying "you're in check" with a different delivery every time to convey her emotional state

• The range

• Arthur just trying so hard to come up with anything again, I am personally suffering

• "What I feel-"/"I thought it was right on the money"/"Oh you do?"

• Then I think he says "oh okay" but I don't even know

• They were so close this is the worst

• Still chess

• "Do you regret being born a princess?"/"I'm confident that most people would gladly trade their problems for mine"/"But you're not talking to them right now"

• Firstly the show does an amazing job recontexualizing What Do the Simple Folk Do and everything around it so A+ for that

• But also Arthur is so empathetic in this moment

• "I know you're sad sometimes. That you miss whatever life you were searching for the night you ran from the carriage. The simple joys of maidenhood you called it. You do a good job of hiding it from the court but when you feel sad you-"/"can talk to my business partner?"/"Well I think I might be good at cheering you up"

• The delivery is so sincere

• He sees her pain and he cares so much

• He feels responsible for the life that she missed out on by marrying him

• And he wants to help

• In many ways, he is terrible at expressing his feelings but again in some small respects, he does absolutely knock it out of the park

• Even if Genny can't see it

• "If there was a tournament for cheering you up, I think I'd win"/"Oh as long as there wasn't a bird nearby"/"It wasn't just any bird, it was a white tailed eagle both times"

• The way they move from emotional conversations and annoyed miscommunications back to humor with such ease

• Arthur's bird obsession continues to be one of the best bits of characterization ever

• Genny making fun of Arthur's various words for peasants

• I love What Do the Simple Folk Do so much

• It's just perfectly constructed and the rhymes are pretty genius

• I love every single lyric

• And I love that this song gives Arthur and Genny a chance to be charming and reconnect after the second half of act 1 and the beginning of act 2 were so focused on Genny and Lance

• And then this scene has so much going on that it reminds you why they're the couple of the show

• I didn't need reminding because I'm trash for them but other people might

• All of the little jokes between the lyrics are so funny

• The delivery of "the very last thing you should have is encouragement" is so much funnier than on the cast recording

• Like what is this? So charming

• "My father used to say I sang like an angel who'd been blessed with a particularly pretty singing voice"

• I'm so glad this is at least on the cast recording

• She plays it so straight, it's so good

• This may be my favorite of the songs

• And the dance, they're so cute, the squeeling kills me

• I can't adequately express how much I need to find a bootleg so I can witness this again, the whole scene really but mostly this

• I cannot handle the way they say "Genny"/"Your Majesty"

• Fuuuuck

• The groan in the audience at "a letter from my mother", the pure expression of fuck Mordred

• "He's been waiting a long time."/"Yes"/"My mother was his first, you know"/"I had that sense, yes"/"They say you never fully get over your first love"

• Genny hates Mordred so much and she's right

• He's hitting her exactly where it hurts but Arthur can't even tell

• Also fascinating that Mordred can actually see the dynamic between Genny and Arthur and Lance so much more clearly than the people involved

• "You think you might possibly be spending the night?"

• Like her deliveries were getting more panicked but then this one

• Like she can't even believe what she's hearing and he doesn't even get it

• The long silence after Mordred says Lance has the queen's protection detail

• As people make mmms in the audience

• And then their last little exchange

• Ouch

• Genny telling Arthur what she herself actually needs to be told and Arthur having no clue

• "His queen's in danger"

• Mordred is the absolute worst and it's perfect

• The reprise of the Simple Joys of Maidenhood, so sad and I can't handle it

• I think this is her moment of just fully sitting in the idea that her husband doesn't love her and sees her so completely separate from that that he doesn't even understand why she's so upset to see him dash away overnight to see another woman

• And that he therefore doesn't and won't love her in the way she's singing about

• And thinking that she has the knight pining for her but it isn't enough and sets up her trying to make it enough

• She's grown so much since she first sang the song but she still can't fill the void of wanting this kind of love

• But also knowing that kind of love isn't enough

• I love her

Act 2, Scene 3: The home of Morgan Le Fey/Guenevere's Chamber/ Castle corridor - on that evening

• The into music to Morgan is gorgeous, perhaps my favorite

• It's hard to introduce an important character this late into the show and make them so memorable, even if they've been hanging over the narrative for a while now

• And still have them knock it out of the park but once again, this show is perfectly cast

• The tension of this whole scene is everything

• Morgan's laugh and then "Jesus christ it's the king of England"

• Immediately sets her up perfectly

• And we get something totally different out of Arthur

• I love their dialouge which I am once again trying not to just fully write out, I love their chemistry, I love how quickly their friendliness breaks down

• He does sound genuinely happy to see her at the beginning but as soon as he asks if she's feeling well, they start to cool

• I can't even pick specific lines because everything is such a vibe

• You feel the history and complication and the years apart where everything has changed for both of them and the way that she's the one person who knew him as just Arthur

• "I know exactly who you are"

• Like of course this one was gonna have a line reading that lends itself to multiple things but that's always good and I like it

• Genny ranting to Lance about the number of letters Arthur wrote to Morgan

• She finally gets to be pissed and Phillipa Soo plays it so well

• "Don't review my arithmetic in your head, it's 208"

• Even at her most angry, she still must make sure Lance knows she's right, very relatable

• "I questioned the king, we've all questioned the king"

• This adaptation has built in the knights discontent so well that it's believable that they've just been growing more resentful over time

• "Because one cannot legislate goodness Pellinore, which at the end of the day, is the mission of the round table"/"And what say you Sagramore?"/"Well tell me, when we're all equal will peasants live like knights or will knights live like peasants?"

• Their entire speech is amazing

• The knights growing angrier as they realize they're all on the same page

• The way that it all fits seamlessly into the story we see on the stage but there's also no denying it's about the time we're living in right now

• But again, not in a way where it feels out of nowhere or too heavy handed

• "I throw away the letters, I give away the money"

• I love the way she delivers her lines so dismissively

• I wonder how much of it is her feelings and how much of it is trying to hurt Arthur as much as he's hurt her

• "That part gets left out of the legend" I think is the first moment where Arthur gets under Morgan's skin just a bit

• Like I'm not sure what she wants/wanted from Arthur but maybe it was just that she doesn't like being erased from the story

• "What wife could possibly object?"

• I love her bitterness mounting leading up to this line and actually hearing her call herself Arthur's wife which is I don't think is something she does before

• "I admire the king's commitment to doing the right thing no matter what. That's what a man does, and god knows it should be what a king does."

• I love watching Genny justify her anger because on one level she knows it isn't fair to be angry

• That she really does admire Arthur's goodness and believes he's doing the right thing

• That it's not that he's going to see Morgan, that he wants to bring her to the castle, it's about his actions with Genny

• Or I suppose the lack of consideration of her feelings in maybe the most hurtful way where there was nothing deliberate, it just didn't even occur to him

• She's so hurt

• Everyone in this scene gets to be extremely mad and I love it

• "When he ran out of here, he didn't think it would trouble me at all. He didn't think the letters would mean anything to me. Or staying overnight. Mordred said his mother was his first true love. Business partner. He said it right in front of me as if I wouldn't mind"/"Do you?"/"No, of course not. It's just that it was the first time that it's been demonstrated to me that-"/"Your husband doesn't think of you as his wife"/"Yes"

• Everything is on her face and in her voice

• She's so hurt, so angry, so tired of not being loved

• And when she says of course it doesn't bother her, when she pulls back her feelings in front of Lance

• And her delivery of yes like something clicks in her brain, probably their entire relationship is flashing in her brain and she's building up evidence that it's true

• Lance has articulated exactly what she didn't know she was feeling

• And the music under it underscores each emotion perfectly

• Again Phillipa Soo is just emotionally devastating in this scene

• But also gotta go back to "Your husband doesn't think of you as his wife"

• Like right now I'm just thinking back to Arthur referring to Genny as French to Lance when they first meet and again when he asks her to tell Lance he's being invested

• While Genny in that scene and in the first scene of act 2 keeps referring to her country as England while Lance claims her as French like him

• I wonder if that distinction is one of the things that feeds into her (and Lance?) feeling like Arthur doesn't think of her as his wife

• That she's trying to keep proclaiming her loyalty and he keeps putting a border between them

• At least in her point of view

• While he's as always trying to show her that he sees and respects her as an autonomous individual and not a thing he owns

• Am I reading too far into this? Probably

• (You're not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending now - honestly that it took me this long to make a Taylor Swift reference is a marvel)

• Anyway back to this tremendous scene

• Part of me does wonder if Lance really doesn't know how Arthur feels or if he's in denial because it's easier for him if Arthur doesn't think of Genny as his wife

• Like he does make a point to tell Arthur in the last scene that he and Genny aren't together

• He's gotta realize in this scene how Genny feels about Arthur but curious about the other way around

• Or ya know, maybe he doesn't, maybe he's just as emotionally inept as everyone else in this show

• Don't really have a point, it's just an interesting thought

• How do so many versions cut Fie on Goodness?

• Like not only is it an amazing song but also it's sort of the whole damn point

• If you cut it, the ideals of Camelot are barely even a plot, it's all love triangle

• Also just want to take a moment to appreciate how gross the lyrics to this one are

• This is for sure my favorite sequence

• The intro speech to the song is perfect

• Them just getting worked up about how England is special, it is better, that they're the ones who should be listened to

• "Don't dare question our loyalty to the king"/"A king who encourages debate"

• Again I just love the knights' conflicted feelings about Arthur

• So it's easiest to shift all the blame to Genny and Lance

• This song is so good, this cast is so good

• "That day that I became king, my cousin gave me his tutor, a man named Merlyn. And Merlyn spoke to me of a great cause that I could lead. But I would have to stay unmarried until a young princess in France came of age"/"And you left me unmarriable, a woman with a child"/"I didn't know about the child until he came and introduced himself"/"You raise your voice to me? Have I displeased you your majesty?"/"Stop calling me that"/"I know all about the French princess-"/"The queen"/"and the grand cause-"/"great cause"/"I don't give a damn"

• This is a stupid amount of text that I've typed out but I love their back and forth here

• Arthur trying to justify himself and not wanting to take responsibility and them both getting angry at each other

• Morgan and her relationship with Arthur have been changed pretty drastically to the point that she's not even the same character and I like it and her so much

• I do wonder what the intent was here because I feel like you could read a lot of different things into their dynamic

• And to what that means about Arthur

• I mean I get the sense that she's maybe always been maybe a bit of an outsider, maybe always was a little more world-weary (or maybe not, maybe getting left pregnant while he became king hardened her)

• And maybe their power dynamic has been completely flipped but also maybe Arthur still has a hard time not letting it flip back

• Because like there's no doubt for me that for whatever reason, she was the one holding the cards originally and he doesn't know how to deal with her now

• Like I don't know if she's older or Arthur was always bad at love so she would have just been the more confident person but there's something there

• She obviously has a completely different point of view than anyone else in the show which I love

• And she gets under Arthur's skin so easily

• I guess because she's the one casuality of his great cause, the one wrong he can't right

• Also "stop calling me that" is so petulant teen

• And he was that when he knew her so of course it comes out

• "You seem quick to betray the king"/"I would die before I betrayed King Arthur"/"Yet here you are"/"I can't rise above being a man, a human man. I can't transcend it no matter how hard I try"

• My favorite Lance line

• Ugh it's perfect

• He's so tortured and so good at conveying that in his delivery

• He's getting some character growth

• Genny being both not wrong but also putting it on him so she doesn't have to think about her own behavior

• "My duty is to god, King Arthur, and the round table. I can best serve all three with my absence. It's a small price for one person to pay for a greater good"

• Ooh the self-loathing hits so good

• And Genny panicking because she's about to get left for the second time tonight

• The playing of If Ever I Would Leave You

• Because he is, or he's at least trying to

• To do the right thing

• Genny and Lance speaking French together, always good even thought I can't understand shit

• "No more talking"

• And the bed just being pulled out of the scene

• I just love how the song is interspersed with these scenes, this sequence is truly brilliant and the energy of it in the theater is truly unmatched

• "All the letters that followed-"/"All the letters that followed offered me room and board along with the cash. Imagine how moved I was by the chivalry"

• Ah mocking chivalry, a family pastime

• Again, I just love the way she goes in on Arthur's attempts to do the right thing over and over

• And again I don't know if it's because he wouldn't give her what she actually wanted or pure vengence

• "Guilty and alive once more" is probably my favorite line from the song

• "Let me ask you this question and I'm entitled to the truth. If there hadn't been a cause, a great case, would you have married me? No."/"I was fifteen years old that night and the next day I was king. I was anointed by the archbishop of Canterbury in York and those men think they put me in direct contact with the divine. There was a cause."

• Clearly in her mind he was never going to marry her but we know from Pelli that when he met Arthur when he was already king, he was still very much in love with Morgan

• More than 10 years (plus then a year that's passed in story) before this could be lots of different amounts of time but it could have been up to a few years into Arthur being king which is a long while

• So the answer was probably yes

• But he doesn't say any of that because his feelings don't matter, he's too focused on justifying his cause, that it was important enough to make up for her life

• And ya know Camelot is what's important now, Camelot is what he and Genny have devoted their lives to, he can't fail

• This is the scene where I just conspiracy board Genny and Arthur's relationship

• This is fine, I'm normal about this show, that's why I wrote all of this

• Either way I think it must really bother Athur that Morgan might think he's not a good man

• We saw it with Genny and the courtesans thing too

• Like obviously part of that was being in love with her but also I think it fucks with his self-image as a person who does the right thing which is his entire life

• And Morgan's the biggest crack in that in his mind which is why he gets angry pretty much constantly in this scene

• At least that's my theory

• I love that we get see him cracking a bit under the strain of being good and trying to rise above being a human being just like everyone else in this scene

• He's got a lot more moral fortitude than the rest of the characters so it just manifests as him getting to be angry and express it to another person for once but still

• He makes excuses, he gets mad, he won't accept that Morgan's version of events is also true and he can't force her to be okay with it

• I don't know, there's something nice about narrative not saying that making the choices of the knights or Genny and Lance is inevitable, Arthur does make the right choices but he still isn't perfect here

• "And I won't live in a spare room in a castle and be the used and discarded former mistress of a king... but I will be the mother of one"

• So like how much of Mordred's plans are Mordred and how much is Morgan?

• And you know used and discarded former mistress of a king is killing Arthur

• "And he didn't"/"What?"/"Put you in direct contact with the divine"/"That is made clear to me every day"

• Morgan did a good job of pretending indifference at the beginning but the more she lays into Arthur, the more hostile things get between them, it's so clear that if the opposite of love is indifference then they haven't managed to get over loving each other

• It's just soured and rotted but won't die

• More so for Morgan because she paid the price, she couldn't move on in the way he could

• "And I wouldn't want to see your face when you realize it didn't make a difference. There'll be greed and injustice and hate and horror. You can change the stuff but people stay exactly the same. No one whose opponent was human nature has ever won a fight. Human nature responds to-"/"Inspiration"/"Fear. And that's it"

• It's so cruel but also a great illustration of the ways that they're fundamental opposites

• "I don't forget anything"

• Another extremely loaded line delivery

• (Don't make an All Too Well reference, don't make an All Too Well reference, don't)

• The panic and realization of "he's not stupid" and the music that builds to it and Morgan's laugh ugh perfect

• The intro music to I Loved You Once in Silence is gorgeous

• Lance and Genny in white feeling guilty as hell is a good visual

• So much regret

• Just instantly

• I feel like the moment they've actually acted on their feelings, they know that it's not only a mistake but also that their feelings aren't actually what they thought

• Well maybe Lance doesn't quite have it yet in this scene but he gets there

• Not to repeat what I said about the first scene in act 2 but

• My take is that they intentionally deepened Arthur and Genny's relationship and Lance's character but not Lance and Genny's relationship

• They intentionally left it shallow

• That these are two people who are missing something and the easiest way for them to get that is to frame what they have as love

• I mean for Genny it's sort of obvious, she's married to a man she's in love with but that she thinks doesn't love her

• Lance makes her feel certain about his feelings for her and that's validating

• But Lance, I feel like I have thoughts but I'm not sure

• Lance has never been forced to reckon with temptation before

• And instead of facing that in himself

• He just makes Genny part of the list of things that define him

• A goddess on earth and a god above

• Along with the table

• And he can worship them all to avoid having to figure out who he actually is

• It's not him admitting he has a human weakness, it's a grand tragic love story that he can suffer for

• And suffering, well that's what lets him cope with whatever about himself he feels is so terrible that he needs to punish himself for it

• He's so terrified to look inward, so afraid of something in himself that he just finds his identity in other people and institutions

• And he can't hide behind that anymore because he's betrayed it all, every single thing

• I feel like this makes it sound like I don't like Lance and I very much do

• He's just particularly flawed because he's the only one who doesn't start the show knowing that about himself

• They all make choices out of self-loathing and fear of unworthiness but I do think Lance thinks consciously he's above that for most of the show even if subconsciously he knows he isn't

• He's the only one of the main three to not really finish his character journey within the confines of this narrative

• Arguably he only starts right now and finally realizes he's not the man he thought he was

• Again fic potential somone???

• Well that was a tangent

• Jordan Donica's performance of I Loved You Once in Silence is so heartbreaking

• "Lance I made a mistake. I'm sorry but you're a good man and I should have been nicer to you."

• I love that, I love that she takes her responsibility (even if she's already trying to cover up what happened)

• But also it's just the clearst indication that acting on her feelings killed them

• She doesn't need to push Lance away anymore to stop herself from doing anything

• I love that Lance tries to surrender peacefully

• He's willing to take responsibility not for his noble suffering anymore but because he is a good man and he knows he's done what he's been accused of

• And he only attacks because he has to

• Mordred's evil laugh

• Lance being slightly disheveled and grabbing Mordred's sword to fight off the guards and escape

• I don't have any kind of intellectual take, this is just a personal problem for me

• My jaw was on the floor when Lance started yelling back about coming for her if he survives

• Such a tense ramp up into Guenevere

Act 2, Scene 4: The trial/The Battle

• Guenevere has such amazing lyrics

• The entire "more than love met its doom"/"came the sundown of a dream" verse destroys me

• And I love every word of added dialouge, so correct to put it on the cast recording

• I feel I must explain my love for the staging of this song some more because it is so simple and I understand that some people are not into it but I so much am

• I love the way they close off the back of the stage for I think the only time in the whole show and it becomes claustrophobic all of the sudden

• Now Arthur is stuck in this little box in front of the audience while everything falls apart for him and that's what you have to look at so there's no getting away from how devastating it is

• We just get some full force Andrew Burnap acting and I love it, I think by now it should be clear that I would

• In other versions that I've seen, there's a lot more happening and we see Genny

• And we see Arthur see her tied to the stake and Lancelot show up to rescue her

• Which I do like in theory

• But we don't really see Genny have any actual role or even seeming to have any particular feelings about what she's done or what's about to happen

• Like she's about to die and I've yet to see a version where I have any idea if she's got a single emotion about that

• Despite the name of the song, I think this show decided this scene isn't about Genny, it's about Arthur

• It's about the consequences of his laws

• It's about the beginning of his new war

• Arthur screaming "Pelli I know" like we see him start to crack

• Oh to know who told Arthur and how he took it

• "Well do something"/"She's under arrest. She's been accused of treason"/"Arthur I understand that you're angry but"/"She's been accused of breaking the law. She has to be judged"

• The delivery of that last line, ugh

• He keeps it impersonal, it isn't about what she did to him or his pain, it's about the law

• The law they lovingly crafted together

• "What a magnificent dilemma: let her die and you're a monster, let her live and you're a fraud. Which will it be? Do you kill the queen or the law?"

• Fuck

• The delivery is so good

• Mordred is having the time of his life shrieking about Arthur's pain

• The killing the queen or the law bit seems to be mostly unchanged and it's maybe the best single line from the original book

• Although it went from kill the queen and your life is over to you're a monster

• Mordred has to know Arthur is in love with Genny, right?

• Maybe he just can't imagine Arthur could love a person more than he loves his ideals which I guess would make sense given Morgan and Arthur's relationship

• Arthur drawing his sword on Mordred!!!

• "Ooh careful your majesty, you wouldn't want to be barbaric"

• The fact that Mordred thinks that's going to work, that he can continue to poke at Arthur and he won't respond, he really does believe in Arthur's goodness doesn't he?

• "You are exiled from this court. Return and I will show you what barbaric looks like"

• Arthur screaming at Mordred with his hand around his throat is so intense

• It's so good

• Another gasp out loud in the theater moment

• Arthur is fully unraveling and I'm obsessed

• "I know my way out"

• It's such a teenage delivery and like Mordred is just a kid who feels abandoned by his father

• And as much as this is a tragedy for the three main characters, it's no less a tragedy for Mordred

• Aging down Mordred, also a great choice

• And again, just another stellar performance

• Every single person in this cast just knocked it out of the park in a way I never could have anticipated

• "Arthur please, I'm an old man and I know I'm ridiculous but for the love of god, it's Genny. She made a mistake, she knows that."

• I love that Pelli loves her too

• That he isn't judging her

• "She broke the law Pellinore. A law signed by the king. So say the people"

• He starts trying to be calm but then the fact that it's his law brings up the anger and then he breaks on so say the people

• He's written his own destruction

• And empowered others to take the decision out of his hands

• I love the dialouge in this scene so damn much

• "Neither you nor I nor god himself can stop this terrible thing that's been put in motion"/"What are you waiting for?"/"I'm waiting for what's inevitably coming next"

• The delivery of coming next...

• Like obviously he wants Lance to save Genny but he knows that no matter what

• No matter if she lives or dies, peace is over and the round table has been destroyed

• And he needs to prepare

• Also the way he frames what's happening

• It's not what Genny and Lance or even Mordred caused

• It's just what's been set into motion by all these tiny and giant choices throughout the show that have bubbled over into the death of Camelot

• "That's Lancelot du Lac out there and he's brought a battalion. Double the guard, triple the guard, those guards are going to die tonight"

• How many times can I just copy a bunch of text and write the delivery

• Because yup

• The lack of hope from Arthur is chilling

• Arthur getting dragged back into the war he worked so hard to end

• Just every line delivery in this scene is perfect

• Every lyric of the song

• Every acting choice

• And I love to see it visually

• Preparing for war isn't an exciting spectacle, it's tragic

Act 2, Scene 5: Outside Joyous Gard - on the eve of war

• The way they fade in on the eve of war just broke my heart every time

• I would love to know how much communication there was between Arthur and Lance and how

• Like how much of a role did Arthur play in the whole Genny not getting burned business?

• And the fact that his first question is whether they've been injured

• Even after everything, he's a good man who cares

• And Genny and Lance too, being willing to come back and die

• They're all good people who made mistakes but still good people

• "I assure you, if I thought it would end all this, I would light the fire myself"

• Absolutely brutal but like after he lays out all the death and rebellion that have already happened I guess brutal is fair

• Ya know, if I thought he meant it even a little

• "Lance, come morning some of your countrymen are going to be at the end of my sword. It's not personal, it's just my job. Stay safe Lance."/"I can't do that. And neither can you. Godspeed your majesty."

• I just love the idea of Lance and Arthur as these two people who love each other spearheading this war neither of them believe in

• It's so tragic

• Their goodbye is so understated which for Lance is like truly a great bit of contrast

• They've had enough big declarations, these few sentences just distill everything perfectly

• And then we come to Genny and Arthur, fuck fuck fuck

• The first time I saw this I spent like all of intermission and act 2 with a loop in my brain of but they love each other, right?

• I am unrepentant trash for them in this version as though that wasn't abundantly clear

• And Aaron Sorkin delivered for me so hard in this scene

• "Please let me die, Arthur"

• The pause before his name

• And now we get to the part where I start to get like teary-eyed in the theater

• "Two very powerful men did this to you... not Mordred and Lance, your father and me"

• That long pause before and me

• I love his whole speech, I almost typed it all out

• And they allow so much silence during it

• And the way he's like trying to hold it together but he can't by the end

• "You were treated like a queen but you were my hostage Genny, what the hell did we think was going to happen?"

• That he recognizes and actually admits the ways that his choices have harmed Genny, the unfairness in the entire situation he's put her through

• That he can see even through his own hurt and the enormity of what has been set into motion, his own responsibility for what's happened

• Like he's not right but he's also not wrong

• "And for it's worth, I've been in love with you this whole time"

• Not even looking at her so we have to see it instead ugh

• And then watch that long silence while Genny just like rearranges her entire view of their relationship

• "For what it's worth? Did you just say for what it's worth?"/"Well I thought maybe you'd like to know that. But I wasn't sure."

• Just smashing my heart into tiny little pieces

• After everything they've been to each other, after all they built together, he still doesn't even know if his feelings will matter to her

• While Genny is getting ready to lose her mind after for what it's worth

• They're so absolutely emotionally inept

• "You weren't sure? Why didn't you ever tell me before?"/"It doesn't matter"/"Why?"/"How could I? I'm the king of England. You'd have been forced to pretend you felt the same way"

• Again they are delivering lines in a way that is continuing to smash the little pieces of my heart into complete dust

• Like Arthur is again not wrong but not right

• His life is so lonely because of this crown he didn't want and his desire to actually be responsible with that power

• And even now he tries to get out of explaining that to her

• I love him so much is the problem

• And then her mmm like all the pieces are coming together in her brain that they've both been suffering for nothing and she is pissed

• I love her so much which is also the problem

• Incidentally, both of these things are also their problem so very relatable

• "Out of curiousity, if I had told you, what would you have said?"/"That I loved you from the moment I saw you, from the moment you spoke, from the moment you sang me that stupid song about the weather"/"It's not about the weather it's a metaphor"/"I know it's a metaphor"

• The way Genny overlaps him asking, she can't even wait for him to finish

• The way she says stupid song

• The way that she's like, I did fall in love with you over that song but also I still hate it and think it's dumb

• She says it with such contempt

• Icon

• Even standing before the wreckage of their lives, they still can't stop bickering about the song, I'm obsessed

• "I prayed every night that one day you would see me the way I saw you. And then you told me I was your business partner. Yes I was and I am in love with you"/"Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse"

• She prayed every night???

• For two years???

• That he would return her feelings???

• Fuck

• Like I don't know if I can convey how much them being in love with each other and thinking it's unrequited for two whole years ping pongs around my brain and just lights up all the synapses

• "Do you really think 10,000 people loosened that sword for me?"/"I do"/"So do I. That's a nice thought isn't it?"

• It is a nice thought

• I love the philosophy of this show, I love that there's no convoluted Arthur is actually the son of the last king so he was destined to be special

• These are just two people who though birth or circumstance ended up in this position of power and chose to do good with it

• Genny begging for just a little more time like the only reason I kept anything together was being in a theater but if feel confident that if I ever get my hands on footage of this show, I would have already been sobbing by this point

• "They won't let me let Lance save you twice so you have to go Princess Guenevere"

• Hearing him call her by her name is so deeply distressing

• Literally not once before in the show does it happen and it hurts

• And then they're playing Before I Gaze at You Again what an amazing choice

• Turning a love song she sang about Lance into this romantic moment for her and Arthur because theirs was the love story the whole time like brilliant

• That they chose the show's first love song and brought it back for Genny and Arthur being unable to leave each other without that hug and that kiss

• Like this song that is originally about the pain of unfulfilled love for the wrong person and then flipping it to the pain of fulfilled love with the right one

• I am so not okay

• Also people did very loudly applaud at closing when they kissed and I was so glad because truly in my head I was doing it every time

• "I love you"/"I love you too"/"God save the king"

• I mean these are some good last words to say to each other, I'll give them that

• The thing about the original version of the musical is that the ending was already a perfect concept

• Here it just feels more meaningful because they lay that groundwork about inspiring the next generation throughout

• Tom trying to con Arthur about his age is very funny

• This kid is so good and adorable

• "You're speaking to a king"/"I'm twelve years old"

• Like his comedic delivery, very impressive

• "And when did you decide upon this nonexistent career?"

• We get a solid 60 seconds of cynical Arthur and that's about it

• The entire concept of this kid being inspired by the stories of Camelot is just deeply moving and beautiful

• And just the entirety of Andrew Burnap's performance of that realization hitting Arthur

• I love a story that's about the power of stories

• People also applauded at the last show when Arthur says the stories were all true which I also just deeply love

• Arthur's I know exactly how you feel when Tom says he's not ready to be a knight and putting his arm around him, so cute

• "And you will return to your home alive"

• The way he says alive

• Like I think Arthur knows that he's not making it out of this

• Even if he would manage to survive the battle and Mordred, he knows his time is done

• But the the future is still there

• And there is about to be so much death

• Some of it from his sword or his orders

• And the rest of it of his men

• But at least this kid, he's going to live

• The reprise of Camelot... I just love it so much

• "I've won my battle, here's my victory"

• Not a new line but just such a gorgeous one

• The entire idea of the story of Camelot as a tragedy but a hopeful one just gets me

• It's such a beautiful conclusion that this version sets up so so well

• I love that we end on a speech again, just like act 1

• Also that last bit of music as they walk off, stunning

• I have attempted to track down as many older productions of this show as I can including the movie which was good but I am biased and I do sort of think Sorkin and Bartlett Sher and the actors and everyone else involved had the more interesting take on the themes and characters

• A Broadway musical is best when it has simple but impactful themes and big emotions

• And that's exactly what this version gave us

• The highest compliment I can give this show is that not only have I not stopped thinking about it, not only did I tell everyone I know to see it, not only did I want to see the show again (and again and...), but it also just made me feel inspired to see more theater in a way I haven't in a serious while

• I just love this show so much and I'm so glad there are some people here who can't get over it either

• This is what I have to offer, the longest possible unhinged rant and bad quality closing audio, that is all

[inkbutterflyuniverse]

Some random thoughts about Grease Rise of the Pink Ladies, before Paramount+ removes it, because I liked the show so much:

First, Buddy. Honestly, I never really cared about him, so his character development about his dad doing everything for him, didn't hit me. Like yeah, good for you that you finally know it, but it was kinda obvious that it wasn't the first time he did something to help you.

Second, Jane. Ah Jane, nice Jane, sweet Jane... How can I say this nicely? Okay listen, it's not that I hate you, but I didn't like you either. She was so annoying, she had moments were she was a good character, but overall she was so annoying. "Oh Richie pushed me back and Buddy's here... Oops I kissed him". "What do you mean you're angry because I kissed Buddy? But it's you that I chose, Richie!". Yeah not a fan of her character. Maybe because the show was too much about Jane and her family...

Third, Hazel. I loved her. So happy she got her jacket! She deserves it! She also faces a love problem, between Wally and Buddy. Buddy may know her better, but I prefer Wally, just because of the song and the things he talked about, like finding a middle ground. But let's be realist, whoever she chooses, it won't last long. After graduation she will go to college, become a great scientist, win a lot of prizes for her work, and maybe then she will meet a great person who likes her for who she is and share some of her interest!

Fourth, Nancy. Her character development took some time, but it was worth it. I love her, she's so unhinged, so funny, and such a great character. I love how she was there for Cynthia, and how she stood up for Olivia by slapping the teacher. YES GIRL, you're right, she's a child! And her discovering that she has a crush on Potato was cute! I would have love seeing more of them...

Fifth, Cynthia. And Lydia. Or Lynthia. They were so good together, I really love how their relationship progressed! The way they were on edge with each other at the beginning, and how they slightly began to like the other, to the point of Cynthia confessing... It was one of the best relationship written in the show. I would have been so down for more of them in a second season, and to learn more about their life, especially about Cynthia's mysterious dad and her mom who apparently left?

Sixth, Susan. I like her. I really do. She's kinda mean, but I understand. And I loved the little development she had after the driving test! I was a little sad that after that she threw her development away, but I can't blame her after everything Olivia's said and done. It was a shock to learn that she aborted and that she never talked Buddy. And the way her mom talked about soooo casually in the hallway, when everyone could hear you... It's honestly shocking that no one heard that! It could be a very valuable information!

Last but not least, Miss McGee, aka the true queen. She was the star of this show. Forget about the girls and their teenagers problems, this woman deserves more respect. She is the principal, not the other dummy who plays golf in his office. She does ALL the paperwork BY HERSELF, she's the one who talks to the students and their parents if needed. She literally kept most of the kids into the school when it wasn't safe for them to go out, almost by herself. None of the other adults helped her, she had to rely on kids! This woman deserves more recognition.

[ramonag-if]

It's a little funny, but I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts on the Danzor first encounter and that first meet up, particularly with what was going through my MC's mind and how that translated through their behavior. Going to save that still for a future ask, but I will say I was kind of amazed how quickly downhill everything went. Then again, my MC did straight up say "I do not want to meet Danzor" and Salrya still chose to disregard that, so it almost felt like a case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" with the High Priestess. 😆

All that aside, I did want to say something about something about Salrya's latest revelation. Now, a lot of what she's revealed did get me to raised my eyebrow, shake my head, or even grunt out a sound of disapproval. But the moment that got me to pause the game and verbally go "the AUDACITY" was when Salrya tried to pin blame on Anu for what happened with MC. Because, in my honest opinion, Anu is not the first person who Salrya should be blaming for what happened.

The first person Salrya should be blaming is the one who stares back at her from a mirror.

Anu was not the one who looked at MC as a baby and formed a plan to make them a tool for the war. Anu was not the one forced MC to gain a blessing through a deal with gods. That was all Salrya; she has no one to blame but herself for what MC went through and may experience in the near future. That she tried to deflect that blame on someone who, not too long, didn't even know about her first child's existence and is one of the many still in the dark about the nature of MC's conception, actually made me very agitated with her. That Salrya, can not even for a second, take full responsibility for how something she actively chose to do ended up negatively affecting MC is just...wow. Combining this reveal with what went on previously with the meeting whole new family, I think Salrya used up practically all the goodwill my MC had left (not that there was much left in first place, considering what happened with her before all this) and I don't know if there's much that she can do anymore to recover it now.

I think that whenever you see Salyra and play through her scenes, it's best to prepare for the worst and hope for an okay result 😂

Is it surprising that she blamed Anu? I think it's very much like her to blame others for things that she should take responsibility for 👀

[maremote]

Black Sails Monologuolympics BR4.1: SILVER'S MONOLOGUES: ROUND 2 🥈

7/8: 303 vs 207

Silver, to Flint, in 303: I stole it from you. The Urca gold. told you we were deceived about its having been recovered by the Spanish. Wasn't entirely true. You were deceived. built the lie... enlisted the scouts, arranged the sale of the information to Captain Rackham. I conceived it all. You know, 've had my fill of hearing you go on about this crew being too weak to keep up with you. Some of them may be weaker than you, some of them may be less smart, but don't you for a second believe fit that description. Whatever happens out here, one thing is certain. You will account for me. So you can decide... to fight me, maybe kill me, and figure out a way of hauling yourself back to that ship alone or acknowledge the fact that you and would be a hell of a lot better off as partners than as rivals."

Silver, to Max, in 207: "Trust is a funny thing. When pledged my support to Captain Flint, believed the trust between us to be of the strongest kind. We both desperately wanted the same thing. And that makes for good partners. But over the past few days, it's become clear to me that the prize we both wanted is becoming less a prize to him and more an obstacle. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? The Urca gold. I have feared for days that Flint might not want that gold to ever be found, that it would interfere with plans he held more important than gold, more important than wealth. And have felt the ground rushing towards us ever since. And my greatest fear has been that in the moment he decided to end the hunt for the Urca gold, the moment he decided it was in his interest to betray my trust... that he would find a way to do so by deception, by force, by who the fuck knows how. But whatI do know is that he would ask my help to make it happen. And by that point, the gold would be as good as gone. Any resistance offered would be futile and would be just another tool that he'd used and then promptly discarded. [...] A few hours ago, a launch arrived. Two of our men who were scouting the Urca gold were returning to the island against their instructions. You see, they had been told very clearly by Captain Flint to remain with the Urca until we arrived to help us prepare our assault on the Spanish beach. So the moment saw them approaching, my first thought was that the only reason they'd be returning early was if the gold was no longer there. And thought, "My God... did Flint do this? Through some kind of luck or guile or fucking sorcery, did he reach across an ocean and make $5 million in gold vanish?"

polls tagged #bsm42

[daekie-gw2]

Your IBS/SoTO post is really good and I would love to hear your opinions about asura writing that got cut for time

OH, UH, OKAY. SURE. Disclaimer that a lot of the thoughts here I picked up from my friend @ratasum. (I honestly didn't expect that IBS/SotO post to get read by anyone so waking up & seeing it appears to have gotten onto the main 'circulating' version of the post and having people agree with me is a little wild, haha.)

As always, cut for length, I've never said in five words what I could say in twenty and trust me I've tried.

"Surely it can't be that long--"

I know. I'm a parody of myself. I'm sorry. Just like you cannot blame the scorpion for what is in its nature you cannot blame me for writing five and a half thousand words on funny goblin rat video game narrative.

ANYWAY. [CRACKING KNUCKLES] THE ASURA

OKAY. THIS IS GOING TO BE A MULTI-POINT -- I'm not going to call it an essay. It's not an essay. That implies a level of organization going in that there isn't, I'm slapping points in as I recall them (I am going to cite my sources, though). But there's a lot of miscellaneous things I'm going into here. Also this is shorter than it could be because I wrote a big chunk of it right after getting home from work, got distracted by making Limbus Company OC IDs for hours, and by the point I rotated back I was getting worried something would happen and I'd lose this post.

You may be able to tell which points I wrote later because I get progressively less informative and more AGGRESSIVELY WAVING MY HANDS.

EDIT THE NEXT MORNING: Added more stuff into Point B that I didn't realize I skipped over, my kingdom for a table of contents

Point A: "The current writers don't like the asura."

When was the last time you heard any character talk about asura tech or society in a way that wasn't derogatory? Just in SotO alone, from my memory and some very shallow wiki checks, we have:

Uenno: But we're... stubborn, our kind. Bureaucratic. It's all so stifling. Uenno: Zojja and I had the same realization. Expecting satisfaction from that city is like expecting a skritt to win the Snaff Prize.

...and, from Zojja's Journal:

Before I left Rata Sum, they considered me a battery without any juice. Well, I feel the same about them. ... The technological advancement of this place is far beyond Rata Sum. Seeing this would give the Arcane Council a run for their money... I bet they lost it after Cantha opened its borders. What I'd do to be a fly on that wall... ... If the council learned about any of this, ESPECIALLY the wizards' ability to create fractals, they'd try to quarantine the entire region. Rip it apart, piece by piece.

...and, from Zojja's journal from Tower of Secrets:

The council is too scared to put me back on fieldwork, and the colleges seem less than interested in having me teach. No talks. Nothing. Past my prime, apparently. Send me straight to the retirement facility. ... She used to be a professor in the colleges, but she left after years and years of frustration with the system. Students set up for failure, refusal to grow or expand (sound familiar...?).

Now take a quick jaunt to the wiki's summary of asura culture:

The asura value intelligence and intellectual superiority over all other attributes. Individual asura will dedicate an entire lifespan to building a portfolio of successful projects or becoming the foremost expert of some tiny aspect of the arcane. They constantly seek to prove their own intellectual superiority, and by extension the superiority of the asura race.

The writers are really trying to tell me that Zojja was damaged goods post-Heart of Thorns, but, like. She was one of the foremost geniuses in Asuran society and one of the two surviving students of the genius Snaff (or one, if you count us killing Kudu in Crucible of Eternity). She is the absolute foremost expert on Elder Dragons (Taimi wasn't this until LWS4ish, imo), was directly involved with the Pact offensive on the Heart of Maguuma, and has a "connection" (I'm not going to say friendship but yknow.) with the Sylvari who stole Glint's egg. And you want to tell me nobody would want to hear from her because she was disabled? They'd be breaking down her door to get her to teach.

I feel like a lot of this perception comes from Phlunt's overbearing smothering of Taimi getting spotlit during LWS3, but Phlunt is an obstructive, small-minded bureaucrat, even by Arcane Council standards; he doesn't want to be there, he sure as hell doesn't want to be busy chaperoning a twelve-year-old with polio in his "free time", and if he dissuades her from doing anything then he can kick back and relax. His chaperoning is not a microcosm of All Asuran Society's Relationship To Solo Geniuses Who Are On The Younger Side (afaik he was also supposed to be Inquest anyway, so that probably bleeds into some of it). Take a quick walk around Metrica Province or listen to ambient dialogue in Rata Sum! Even taking into account comments about bureaucrats in ambient lore in Rata Novus, which makes it a cultural thing, I honestly still don't really see what that would have to do with 'Zojja would be a pariah'. The fuck she would. I would excuse the Zojja diaries if it was Zojja is completely shutting herself away from Rata Sum society and convincing herself they don't want her, but it's... it's not! It's 'Rata Sum threw Zojja out with the bathwater'! In what world!!!!

EoD (I go into this a couple of points down the post) is also just like a conga line of asura going WOW CANTHA IS SO ADVANCED WE'RE SO BACKWARDS and it just feels baaaaaaad.

Point B: "Since LWS4, it seems like nobody on the writing team has really actually understood the asura, and they're either written as 'basically children' or 'crazy comedy gremlins'."

When was the last time we got an asura NPC who was, you know, actually involved in asura society or had asuran attitudes? Professor Smoll from April Fools doesn't count, don't give me that. Uenno in SotO only really talks about asura society to comment about how backwards it is/was compared to the Astral Ward's tech/setup, and although the Inquest are a genuine threat... since LWS4, when was the last time the game actually remembered that? They're cartoon goons.

(The Arcane Council is actually really interesting, too! Their job is to deal with all the mundane shit and bureaucratic matters and City Things, and nobody wants to do it, to the point it's common to trick others into accidentally taking the job or replacing you so you can quit. They sometimes try to kill each other. The Inquest is considered a bunch of criminal assholes by the average asura, but they're pretty distinctly a tool of the Arcane Council who uses them to work on projects that might be 'unsavory'.)

I'm not saying the asura aren't funny. They are. Even at GW2's launch, they were smack-talking little gremlins -- but they weren't comic relief. And I'm not saying everything Angel McCoy ever said was right (I am refusing to read the interview where she says cells don't exist on Tyria and everything is made of magic <3) but they're snarky little shits. Back in GW1 they were partially Invader Zim references. Asura are researchers and, I'm gonna say it, sapiosexuals first and foremost -- they're monogamists in the sense that romantic relationships are often between two asura fixated on the same idea.

ANYWAY. Asura are weird freaks and they're kind of memey little bastards about it but they're also insanely intense SCIENCE bastards, who prize being an asshole. During LWS4 the Inquest had live samples of the fucking scarab plague, were experimenting on the Olmakhan with it -- they're a genuine danger. The Inquest can be both funny Team Rocket villains and genuine threats due to their lack of morals!! They can be both!!

But what they're reduced to these days is... they're either childlike and need care (Dagda calling Zojja little one would be fine on its own, but combined with everything else...) or they're just Haha Funny Quip Guys. They're not dicks anymore. When was the last time an asura was an asshole to you in a way that wasn't immediately condemned by the story/narrative as them being an unreasonable small-minded jerk? I don't even necessarily think Arenanet has ever had a real consensus on how to write them, but there's enough content from basegame to LWS4 where you can absolutely write them with just as much... genuineness? not seriousness, but, yknow? as the sylvari or the norn. Like -- imagine if every sylvari we met was either a wide-eyed innocent or a Nightmare Court irredeemable asshole who was torturing babies and cackling about it. If every norn we met was a one-note jovial party drunk or a Son of Svanir who just went JORMAG JORMAG JORMAG.

That's what it feels like has happened to the asura.

Everything in this section from here on until Point C starts is a lot of really misc. disjointed thoughts but I couldn't make them work anywhere else and they seemed relevant still, so. Sorry. You get what you pay for.

...circa End of Dragons --

Taimi: Yes! Xunlai has an entire MedTech division. They make braces for conditions like mine. Taimi: They're incredible. I feel almost no pain when I'm wearing them.

I can buy that asura don't really have a lot of development into assistive devices as a whole because they're generally all pretty self-focused, but there's gotta be a krewe somewhere that's got physically disabled asura, right?

In Icebrood Saga, Phlunt and Taimi's focus during Champions on fighting Primordus -- even if they have to ally with Jormag to do it -- is kind of portrayed as... petulant? Ignorant? But, like, it is very reasonable to say that asura are culturally traumatized, I'd say. Their entire culture and people, over the course of fifty years, were pushed into involuntary migration from their home and into a completely new environment. If the Kodan are traumatized by doing the exact same thing but due to Jormag and that's taken fairly seriously, especially in Bjora Marches. The writing is bad here! Champions struggles a lot on a lot of fronts, and I know it's because that was because a huge chunk of the devs abruptly got dragged off to go make EoD, but they could've at least left someone senior to handle narrative and I don't think they did.

(That honestly ties into a bigger frustration, which is that for a season/expansion where we take care of the Asura-associated dragon and the Norn-associated dragon once and for all, it sure is about Charr. I don't think this is what they meant to do going in! I think the writers meant to have you deal with Jormag in the next season/expansion, and have them be an everpresent force puppeting people around who you never actually fought in Icebrood Saga. Fuck, I don't think you were even supposed to encounter Primordus here, it's not called the Fire and Ice Saga. But the mandate? orders? came down, and suddenly they had to figure out how to get rid of both twin dragons by the end of the season, and they didn't have enough space left to change direction from the charr (who did actually get some great narrative here, I think that was at least preserved).

Point C: "Existing content from LWS4 and earlier establishes that asura tech is extremely advanced."

Anyway I think EoD was generally pretty cool, but I also think they got very worried about potentially making Cantha come off as 'less advanced' than the asura and unintentionally seeming racist in that way, and they swung real fucking hard in the opposite direction. (If anything they probably would be further advanced than Cantha, though -- they were using dragon-magic to power their waypoints & cities back during GW1, and swapped to independent? ambient? magic when the Great Destroyer awakened & pushed a lot of them to the surface. I personally would've gone for the idea that it's deeply impressive that humans, alone, have created something on par with but not better than asuran tech, especially when using a powersource that the asura historically never got as far as the Canthans with.) Asuratech created fractals and a device that could completely destabilize fractals in order to fish up real entities stuck in them (I expand on this further down on my last point).

Moto built an entire fucking immersive videogame with a hammerspace teleporter.

Rata Primus in Sandswept Isles in LWS4 has a satellite dish, implying they've gotten asuratech into orbit.

Asura have had holograms and solid light for ages -- they were developing immersive VR all the way back in Rata Novus. Oola has a hologram. There's multiple hero points where you fight hardlight projections. What Do You Think The SAB Weapon Skins Are.

They're experimenting with radiation.

They have elevators.

They have televisions.

They have sous vide!

They've got holo-clipboards!!

Okay yeah sure it's one random throwaway line from a miscellaneous Rata Sum NPC but THEY HAVE NEWSCASTS, this guy's probably been here since the game RELEASED

HOLOGRAMS

Blish uploaded himself into a golem and he's just Like that now!!!

What the Canthans and especially Joon are doing with jadetech is incredible! But asura tech is not inferior to it. You could say 'dragonjade carries incredible magical power because Soo-Won is awake and actively filtering her power to create it, as opposed to the GW1 asura skimming some off the top of Primordus' and I'd go yeah, okay, that sounds completely fair. Joon having tech that can evaluate the drained Aurene? This makes sense! She's been directly interfacing with Soo-Won's magic for years and probably has a better understanding of the biology and process of Elder Dragons + how their magic works within their body than anyone else alive, including Aurene! If anything, her dragonjade could well be tapping directly into Soo-Won's domains of Water and Life, making dragonjade tech especially good for healing or creating assistive devices. You could potentially insinuate this, but I really don't think the game actually ever says this, so I don't know if I want to give it credit for that. (In fact, the game specifically says that the magic in dragonjade is stripped of all signatures, it's pure dragon magic, so really it says the exact opposite of 'Soo-Won's connection to her domains is so powerful that she infuses the jade she empowers with their essence').

Ankka's stolen Extractor even has a note on its wiki page that it acts similarly to existing asuratech from basegame personal story -- just scaled far, far up. It's not new tech! They've had this, just weaker!

ALSO SNARGLE'S AGENT SAYS ASURA DON'T HAVE, LIKE. VIDEO GAMES? MOVIES? MOVING PICTURES OF ANY KIND? YOUUUUUU HAVE HAD HOLOGRAMS FOR HUNDREDS OF YEAAAAARRRRS. HE'S LITERALLY PUBLISHING SUPER ADVENTURE BOX THE NOVEL. WHAT DO YOU THINK SUPER ADVENTURE BOX IS, LITTLE MAN

Kippo: You bet. But that's not all! D'you know Cantha's living in the future while the rest of us mopes are still eating dirt? Kippo: That's coming from an asura. They watch theater projected from their jade technology. Moving pictures! Kippo: I want K&M at the forefront of new media. Cause pretty soon, ain't nobody gonna be readin' books. Kippo: Maybe one day, the audience could even control these move-ies. An interactive experience. Feel like you're really there!

I hate this guy

Point D: "Gorrik and Taimi have both basically undergone character assassination over the years and had all their edges smoothed off, and SotO Zojja is Zojja in name (and voice actor) only."

LWS1 Taimi was such a fucking brat. Precocious, sure! But she was an asshole of a child who was constantly chafing against any adult in the vicinity and idolized Scarlet Briar. She was a deeply lonely girl who only had Zojja and she was kind of shitty! She was awful to Braham! And, like, I will repeat this again, she idolized Scarlet, the insane mass-murdering terrorist who poisoned and destroyed the entirety of Lion's Arch.

She was a kid. She was a brilliant, lonely kid, and she sucked as a person. After HoT, Zojja is basically comatose, and Taimi decides she has to step up as the Commander's asura tech expert, to prove that she's not just a child who has to be corralled, she's just as much a part of this as you are. And the way she tried to prove herself was by taking on as much responsibility as people would let her, and even some they wouldn't, and she kept being brilliant and she had to keep improving and improving and why didn't Rata Sum see she wasn't a child, and you never realized that maybe she was taking on too much because you didn't have anyone else who could do this research, and she was keeping all her vulnerability to herself -- because if she told you you'd tell her to stop and rest. Everyone would. And she needed to keep proving herself and being the best, the smartest, indispensable to Dragon's Watch,

and eventually it got her caught by Joko. He doesn't torture her, exactly. He traps her in her own assistive device, with limited air and no control, and then he sets Scruffy on you, and this teenage girl has to watch her only safe haven try to kill the only person who can save her as she slowly suffocates to death.

And she's fucking traumatized. And she's trying to put on a brave face but it really, really fucks her up. No time to cry. She has to be helpful, and useful, and if you make her go lie down and rest she's going to fucking scream. The key of Taimi, to me, is that in a lot of ways Zojja probably saw herself in her? An incredibly brilliant and desperately lonely child with nobody to advocate for her, turning all that frustration at her life and herself right back out at the world. If she never shows weakness and if she can be just as rough and tumble as the adults, they'll see she's not a baby. She's not a poor sick victim who needs to be protected.

She's Zojja's protege and Zojja was Snaff's protege and, like -- Zojja is not that old. She's maybe ten, fifteen years older than Taimi? No more than fifteen, I'd say. She's barely an adult when Snaff dies, and she has to be everything Snaff was and more. Zojja remembers what Snaff was for her, and she sees this impossibly smart progeny girl, and she thinks to herself Snaff was my lifeline out of that. and she's that for her.

And then she kind of sucks at it because she's Zojja and she's really not very good at communication that isn't her being a bitch, but, like, she was trying, probably. And Taimi was-is just as attached to her as Zojja was to Snaff.

But Taimi, unlike Zojja at that age, isn't alone. She has Zojja. She has everyone in Dragon's Watch. She has people who take her seriously and believe in her, and her greatest enemy is herself. The older she gets the more she levels out -- partially from the trauma but partially because she's just... growing up! She's still kind of a jerk, she's an asura and she knows she's the smartest person in the room most of the time, but especially when compared to Gorrik (who is admittedly amoral even for an asura), she's got a conscience. She's a firebrand of a girl who pushes herself too hard and she ribs you when you take yourself too seriously, because you've seen her at her most vulnerable, and she knows how hard you take it when you fuck up.

And she's your friend. She's a bitch but like the rest of Dragon's Watch she's your friend.

And by the point of EoD, all that assholery she was capable of has been shifted over to Ankka (who exists to die, unfortunately), and she has now been fully transformed into The Commander's Tech Support Who Says Funny Things And Listens In On Your Conversations. There's no bite to her. There is nothing uniquely Taimi about her anymore.

I wasn't a big fan of her losing Scruffy 2.0 either -- it feels like they were trying to go she's all grown up now, she doesn't need her security blanket anymore! but, like. She has an incurable degenerative disease. That was her assistive device who just also had a personality? Give her a hoverchair or a cane or something. They eventually gave her leg braces in EoD, which I think is fine and honestly works really well (& I wish we'd gotten to see her talking more with Joon and Yao about tech than we did), but. Mmm. It felt weird, you know?

-- ANYWAY BEFORE I MOVE ONTO GORRIK. I do want to touch base with Champions, because Champions was really where they started flanderizing her the most notably. It is completely reasonable that she suggests siding with Jormag, honestly, reasonable in a way the game doesn't treat it as and neither does the Commander, because she's kind of selfish! Jormag? Who cares? She hasn't been really dealing with the rest of the Icebrood Saga so far the way you and Braham have, she just sees 'Jormag's willing to work with us to kill Primordus and hasn't caused mass horrific destruction, they're a completely sentient person'. She sees a solution to a problem and she wants it now, you can talk about Jormag later, her entire race had to diaspora because of this thing and she was there the last time it almost woke up and things got really, really bad after that, what with Balthazar. Jormag is a problem, yeah! But they're not a problem that's hurt her. They're a problem she can look at and understand and speak to. Primordus? Primordus is a monster. It's a natural disaster. You can't convince Primordus to hold off on killing people, it's just what he does. But she can make a deal with Jormag to stay away from these people, maybe, and Taimi even now thinks she's the fucking shit and she's smarter than she is, and she thinks she can outwit Jormag.

Champions could've been a really interesting look at Braham and Taimi basically trying to kill each other because they both have incredible cultural trauma layered on top of personal experiences that means they can't even consider not killing that specific dragon so super dead as a first course of action, and neither of them would be wrong about feeling that way, because if you haven't forgotten -- Taimi is barely an adult at this point, if she is at all, and Braham was a teenager during LWS1 and HoT. He's barely an adult either in the grand scheme of things! A scenario where both dragons are represented by one of your friends would've been really, really cool, and the challenge is 'how do we fix this without the dragons going out of balance'. And It Was Not That At All In Any Way.

I actually had this idea as I was writing this post but, like. Man. I understand the point of Ryland, Champion of Jormag, but I would've loved to see Jormag really gaslighting the hell out of Taimi and convincing her she's just as special as he is. She deserves special power and she understands Jormag, she's so clever -- just that slow horrible corruption through persuasion, through appealing to her pride. That's the asura cultural flaw! They know they're smarter than everyone else! Play to that.

This is partially because IN THE MEANTIME, FIRE ALARM makes me want to punch a table. I hate that voiceline. I hear it so much. Dragonstorm, why.

ANYWAY -- LWS4 Gorrik was barely ex-Inquest. Bioterrorist weirdo. The most autistic man in the world (love him for this). His argument against 'YOU WERE EXPERIMENTING ON THE OLMAKHAN WITH THE SCARAB PLAGUE?' is just 'I didn't vote for it but the results are FASCINATING also btw it's actually a pestilence, not a plague--'. His morals are entirely about what will let him do the most Bug Science. Sure, the Scarab Plague is one of the most horrifying contagions in history, but he is a scarab expert and he could infodump on this shit for HOURS. Do you remember that time he got arrested for bioterrorism after exposing himself to said plague, and his main concerns are 'people calling it a plague, not a pestilence' when they want his fucking head? Even when you get him out he just goes 'am I supposed to anticipate the neuroses of everyone around me?? Them freaking out was totally unreasonable'. Yeah, man, the fucking Elonians losing it about the potential of the Scarab Plague coming back is an unreasonable hysterical reaction. He doesn't care about people! He only cares about bugs! (This is an exaggeration but you get what I mean.)

The Commander: Joko intercepted the ship. Exposed all the crew and passengers to the Scarab Plague. Gorrik: Oh my, my, my—a full-spectrum outbreak! This is incredible! Taimi: Gorrik... Gorrik: Oh, right. Sorry. Tragedy. Terrible.

He's a freak! He's a freak of a man! I love him! COMMANDER HOLY FUCK DID YOU SAY CHAK from Jahai Bluffs lives in my heart. Weirdo guy. Incubated the roller beetle in his own body under his skin just because he thought it'd be cool. He never really grows a conscience even after Blish's death, because that's not who he is, that's not how he perceives and interacts with the world. He has a completely different perspective from you, and his priorities and predilections make him an impossibly brilliant scientist... who should probably not be allowed to talk to anyone he doesn't already know ever again.

Now circa EoD he's... what? What is he? Haha he's funny detective guy who can't read social cues and is dragging Rama into things. Oh, I guess he's an asura, so sometimes he says tech things. They have removed this man's deep freak nature from him :( The man I knew would've been out there doing fieldwork and dissecting void creatures yesterday. He would've been fascinated by the Dragonvoid glitching reality! Sorry, no, he doesn't do that anymore, he's just Funny Detective Guy, sometimes he does science things with jade tech because Rama is around and that means Gorrik is also there because he's Those Two Guys with Rama now. Sure. I like their dynamic but man did things happen to Gorrik to get there. I wish it could've been Very Normal Man Rama and a little goblin man who has decided Rama is his bestie.

(Also I'm deeply weirded out by the narrative pushing TAIMI IS AN ADULT NOW SO SHE'S GOING TO DATE GORRIK BECAUSE ADULTS GET IN RELATIONSHIPS unironically. I really do think the writers have forgotten there's like... a 15 year age gap between them and just remembered 'Gorrik's brother was Taimi's classmate, and he was close? in age to his brother, probably?, so it's fine' he's like 30, man. And if Taimi/Gorrik didn't feel so slapped together and like a way to pair them up so they're busy with each other and no longer narratively relevant outside of Tech Support, maybe I would be less bitchy! But I really don't like them symbolizing 'Taimi's not a little girl anymore, she's all grown up now!' by having her immediately display romantic interest in a guy who, like. You cannot tell me Gorrik fucks. I love him but I don't think he has ever contemplated fucking as a thing he would do.

They're research partners! They're good friends! But they are absolutely not in a romantic or sexual relationship. I don't believe it.)

Zojja... god, they did that woman dirty in SotO. They did her so dirty. I talked in my original post about how her narrative role here is actively sabotaged by it being Zojja and Caithe (or even Logan!) would've done it better, and I'm sticking to that. Anyway, the Tower of Secrets story summary includes:

I've never seen her out of her element or so unsure of herself; I'm used to the hypercompetent and defiantly confident golemancer of legend. This is an entirely new side.

Even taking into account the idea SotO wants us to accept that she's gone through character development offscreen and a full arc, Zojja would never. Zojja gets fucking mean when she's stressed or unsure, and even if it's been years and she's grown past that... she's still not going to wibble about it. This is part of the big problem with her writing, even in the base content for SotO: Zojja is very, very passive. She's nice, even! She mediates between you! She's your good friend Zojja (even though she was maybe friends with an asuran Commander, and she sure as hell was not making friendship bracelets with any other Commanders and wouldn't go YOU'LL FIX EVERYTHING :D after not having seen you for ten years). ...But asura in general, and especially Zojja, have a chip on their shoulder and they will prove themselves. There are ways they could've shown Zojja growing past that asuran cultural selfishness by really listening to and cooperating with other people -- the way they did it isn't that. I'm gonna call back to that Angel McCoy interview I linked earlier:

Sit back and watch the sass fly! A side effect of asuran intelligence and self-confidence is that they’re masters of the zinger. They don’t suffer fools lightly and don’t believe in sparing feelings. Workers expect to get snide comments from their krewe bosses, and progeny expect it from their parents. Teen asura, of course, give it back as good as they get it—it’s part of growing up. This verbal abuse may seem mean-spirited, but the asura don’t see it that way. They don’t take it personally. Their competitive natures drive them to greater heights of achievement. Remember, asura have survived against terrible odds, including their tiny statures. They’ve earned their attitudes, and a certain amount of bravado keeps them from being victims. With their jibes, they’re telling it like they see it, and if you can’t take the heat, get out of the laboratory.

Yes, this is asura overall, their cultural standards, but everyone in Destiny's Edge is/was -- to some degree -- a prototypical example of their race. And beloved Zojja was a prickly son of a bitch if you weren't the asura commander. She would never wibble. I really, really do think they gave her amnesia via wizardification so they can justify both 1. her never referencing your past adventures and 2. doing a bit of moeblobification. It's not gap moe if she doesn't have moments of being a bitch, Arenanet, it's just sparkling woobification.

They can have her talk about 'I used to be so mad at everyone' but there's a point where it's not 'reasonable offscreen character development', it's 'the writers telling us ACTUALLY it's lore-justified why she's written this way now, and she's telling you it, so she's a reliable narrator'. Zojja would be a completely unreliable narrator!! She's a bitch!! Like I said in the Taimi section, there are ways to write a character growing past being a total horrific bitch in ways that make sense! This isn't it.

This dialogue actually really frustrates me more than anything because it wants you to just... accept that nobody went looking for her, and that she didn't ever reach out because she didn't feel worthy of us. Nobody went looking? Not us, not anyone in Destiny's Edge, not anyone noteworthy in Rata Sum who would've cared about Snaff's brilliant progeny-cum-legacy and perhaps the best Dragon specialist in the world going completely off the grid and disappearing? And not even Taimi, an orphan whose mentor figure Zojja was so horrifically harmed in Maguuma that she was basically comatose. That Taimi? That Taimi would've only checked in on Zojja when she was in hospital, would've let Zojja turn her away when she wasn't ready for visitors, and wouldn't have looked for her or told anyone she was missing, not even the Commander? (okay she told us once but it was kind of a casual throwaway line. i don't count it.) Not only is it shoddy writing, it makes the Commander, Taimi, and all of Zojja's guildmates look like horrible people. We didn't check on you because the writers wrote you out of the narrative, girl.

Also Zojja doesn't say a single fucking thing about Snaff relating to Mabon at any point. A mentor who saw her for her and took her in and gave her a home? A father figure? This part does drive me insane actually because given SotO's writing I don't think they even thought about it. I don't think they meant to imply that she's basically having flashbacks to Snaff's death and that's why she flips out so badly at Mabon getting possessed and dying. I really don't think they did.

"But c'mon! Make a life-changing decision just after Mabon died? If it came from anyone but Dagda, it'd be emotional warfare." IT LITERALLY IS. IT'S LITERALLY EMOTIONAL WARFARE. THE GAME IS SO CLOSE TO POINTING OUT HOW CREEPY IT IS FOR DAGDA TO DO THIS, because with the base content drop for SotO they were at least partially interested in exploring the idea that the Astral Ward had a benevolent front but was ultimately culty and doing some horrible shit in the name of the ends justifying the means.

AND NOW SHE HAS AMNESIA AND WE SAW HER, LIKE, ONCE BEFORE WE WENT TO NAYOS. LITERALLY WHAT WAS THE POINT OF HAVING HER IN THE STORY AT ALL. THIS COULD'VE BEEN A FRIENDLY LAMP. Coulda been DUCHESS CHRYSANTHEA or someshit. Faren!! I don't know!! It's 2:30 in the morning I'm very tired, this post isn't getting any proofreading it is going out as is.

Point E: "This is actually just about Fractals, sorry."

I know they were thinking about continuing the Arkk storyline at one point, apparently that was the original draft for Sunqua Peak. Dessa's implied to have some deep connection to Uncategorized, which is explicitly not Rata Sum. When some prerelease images mentioned 'fractal' in the URL for SotO and it was apparently going to be about the Mists I was like 'oh, shit, are we getting closure on Arkk'? He's out there!! In the Mists!! Where is our fucking boy!!! (He's nowhere, the current writers' room don't know he exists. :') )

The major interactions with the Mists are generally Asura-developed -- Dessa and her krewe developed fractals as we know them, 'capturing' these Mists-echoes and preventing them from dissolving (and she also 'studied' at Rata Sum (though it 'didn't work out'), implying to me she grew up somewhere else and moved to Rata Sum for college before dropping out). And then Arkk managed to somehow break into the Mists physically, disrupt your transportation back from one, mash several Fractals together, let Mist Beings into the Observatory,

It's implied (to me, anyway) that there is or was a real Dessa who created the Fractal Observatory and then... got out. She had a kid before making the Observatory -- Arkk mentions she looks very young during Shattered Observatory, she recognizes him, and she has some unspecified connection to the Raving Asura -- who has an unsent letter to her which makes her deeply sad to read, and, also, yknow. The kittycat golems. He could be Arkk's dad, is what I'm saying.). And never knew her fractal echo was trapped inside the Mists, repeating forever and forever and forever. And then she died, or she disappeared (maybe something happened when fractals-Dessa tried to leave during LWS1 and reset?), and Arkk found out that she was still in the Fractals, and he managed to destabilize the fucking Fractals in his attempt to rip in there and get her out.

And the version we meet of him in Shattered Observatory is just an echo, too, trapped in the loop forever and ever and ever. Maybe there is a real one out there -- or maybe the Mists destroyed that one as he tried to escape the Shattered Observatory, and the only versions of these two that exist are their shadows endlessly looping (which is honestly what We only exist in the Mists…echoes of ourselves. is meant to mean, but hey, it's not specific enough, I read it as 'the versions of ourselves that we are now aren't real. we're just shadows of our real selves, who aren't here any longer'). Fucked up, man. Anyway they should've made one of the archwizards in SotO an asura

Asura. They're little bastards. Love 'em. In my universe my asura druid Svess is holding Taimi's hand and talking her fucking head off about how to make nitroglycerin and they're having a GREAT time

[talenlee]

Decemberween ’23 — Dweebovision

We live in an age of external participation in games. Watching people play games is so long-lasting a practice that I literally cannot imagine a place it started. Even the earliest games have examples of people caring about the outcomes of games they weren’t playing, one way or another. The immense video firehose that is the internet and its significantly lowered cost to engage is a way we can take formerly niche games and present them to their audiences.

David Webb is Very Good at Scrabble and word games. In the ecosystem of British Television, he is a serial prize winner, showing up on various TV shows, and winning you know, teapots and houses, and whatever else British TV gives people as rewards for winning on their particular kind of game shows. If you don’t want to watch for reruns of 90s TV shows to see Mr Webb at work, though, you can tune into his Youtube channel, and watch how every few days, he presents a new Scrabble match against high-level players, with extremely detailed, clear step-by-step thinking of him trying to win the game aggressively and how he does it.

Scrabble Grandmaster's Showdown: Expert Insights

Watch this video on YouTube

If you’re used to videogame Lets Players, or streamers, you may be used to a lot more trash talk than Webb’s going to give you. He opens things with the same phrase (Scrabble, my opponent/I am on the play, let’s go), and then it’s just thoughtful, slow, methodical play of Scrabble. It’s with an online tool, which handles things like automatically checking terms; you can’t play invalid terms, and the game shows you the points return of a play, or the remaining tiles in the bag. There’s a lot of information and no real ability to bluff (more on that later). And Webb wins a lot of the time, but he also loses often too — when you’re playing against the best, in a game where outcomes can be influenced by random chance, what other options do you have?

What I find the most fun, and often I skip to, is when Webb finishes a match, he gives his seemingly-habitual analysis of the game (huge, huge, win for (me or my opponent)), then pulls up a move analyser. This involves replaying the game step by step, and he reasons through his choices, even honestly indicating where he gave up points and whether or not he thinks that’s a good idea. In this section there’s a shocked sound effect he plays any time he misses a bingo, where he realises there was a way to score a huge pile of points and didn’t get it. And he does! This is a guy who’s very good at Scrabble, he’s in the top rarified levels of this game and wins money playing it, when that’s an option, but he still misses seven letter, eight letter, and nine letter words.

Reassuringly, he also mentions how yeah, he’s really good at Scrabble, but the game is too hard for a human to play perfectly. It’s a very gentle attitude.

Join an Expert on a Journey through the Times Cryptic Crossword

Watch this video on YouTube

One of the funniest things on this very sedate, very British channel focusing on language puzzle games, is that Webb has expressed a concern that his audience, his fans, are made up of two separate streams of interests, and they don’t overlap much. See, in addition to playing Scrabble against other high-level Scrabble players on the internet, he also does a weekly solve of the Times Cryptic Crossword.

And like, I know it’s funny to me, but it’s also kind of true. I watch him solving the Cryptic Crossword and find myself getting angrier and angrier at the Cryptic Crossword. That’s meant to be solvable? That’s a thing a person is meant to tease out of understanding? How! How was that even vaguely tenable as an explanation of the term budgerigar?

It’s still good for learning how cryptic crosswords are made up of technical language, that you have to become familiar with to play. It’s not just a matter of looking at a puzzle and seeing what words fit, you have to learn how those clues are trying to justify being a clue for the word they are, and how little they want you to imagine that word.

5 OUTRAGEOUS nonwords that stayed on a Scrabble board

Watch this video on YouTube

This is a focus on online play, though. Face to face Scrabble (and other, non-dictionary-checking) Scrabble games involves an extra layer of strategy that involves not just playing words but lying about them. The rules in tournaments run that it’s the job of the opponent to monitor the board to ensure your word are valid. You play a word, and your opponent can challenge it, and if they challenge it, and the challenge is valid, the tiles leave the board and you lose the points. But if they challenge it and the challenge is invalid, they lose a turn. This is to keep people from just challenging too much.

Problem is this means that there’s an actual strategic element to choosing when to bluff, and when to lie, and that’s where this kind of gameplay comes up. I’m sure this feels unpleasant to a certain type of player; the idea that playing your opponent in a game that otherwise feels very asocial and technical is, no doubt, concerning!

I think I talk about Scrabble a fair amount. It’s a really interesting game because while its core principles are pretty stable, its pieces are really dynamic. For example, the scrabble dictionary used to reject a lot of alternate spellings of words. It also used to permit slurs. Now, it includes neopronouns and has opted to exclude words that are predominantly only meaningful as slurs. The pieces change, the core game stays, and top level play isn’t about understanding words as much as it is seeing words in terms of their relationships. There’s anticipation of potential pieces, there’s an awareness of a huge arsenal of possible terms, and there’s even room for bluffing in a game that ostensibly is about the most basic form of technical challenge.

It’s an incredible game!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[detectiveichijouji]

Case 23 - Kido Joe’s strict rules of madness

[AO3 version]

Briefly, Ken and the others found Noel around Taichi’s university. But the moment his eyes encountered theirs, Noel decided to run away. Maybe he was still scared?

“Ken.”

Daisuke stopped walking and glanced at Ken, “Noel had a fragment, but he got it stolen from him. He was going to give it to me so we could keep it in a safer place and without hurting anyone.”

“... I see.”

“I told ya, Noel is a good guy. You gotta apologize to him.”

“... I will, but next time ok? I have to go home.”

And then Ken left. The group went back to their own homes after that too. But Ken wasn’t going home… He really found odd Noel Leblanc being there, right there… Casually and all of a sudden… He was kinda curious about Noel’s alibi to being there…

… But he didn’t find Noel.

… Noel Leblanc was definitely there -- Ken was musing as he returned home. The moment he arrived at the Ichijoujis residence, he realized his parents weren’t at home yet so he just walked to his room and started musing about the information gathered so far.

“... Something does not sound right…”

“Hm?” Wormmon blinked, “What’s wrong?”

“Noel confirmed he’s a distant relative of Arsène Lupin’s creator,” he was reading the messages Takeru sent to him. 

It felt like Ken and Takeru had become some kind of Sherlock Holmes and Watson for this mystery. Funny though, because of the Lupin books having its own take of the most known British detective as ‘Herlock Sholmes’.

“Huh, is it?”

“Well, it can be possible… But it might mean we’re on the right path,” Ken rested the phone on the desk and looked at Wormmon, “It could mean the hypothesis that Noel Leblanc created Arsenemon is plausible.”

“Hmm…Ah, I see!” Wormmon nodded, listening to Ken’s musings quite interested.

“Maybe he sent Arsenemon to help us out. Noel was present when Hikari-san received Koushiro-san’s phone call…”

“Hmm… True true.”

“This means… Espimon might not be Noel’s only digimon partner.”

“Oh??”

“He’s Arsenemon’s partner too.”

Joe and Gomamon usually go home late, because of the activities at the medical school and his internship there. Also, they were still helping the Digimon Arena -- which changed its localization to a better place, and kept training and challenging digimon and tamers. Except this time King Shoutmon had legit real prizes for them, from their village’s cuisine and crafts after all.

“Soooooo… Do you think I can beat TeslaJellymon next time and win the all-you-can-eat ticket from Delumon’s cafe?”

“It would’ve been nice, but don’t forget we’re not there to just compete,” Joe smiled, “we’re helping to keep everyone safe and treat their wounds.”

“Of course! But… Ah… I’d like to try out the Village of the Smiles’ cuisine someday…”

They laughed lightly, walking in the streets. Until they found the eyepatched Impmon… lying on the sidewalk.

“Huh…?” they blinked.

“Help… Me…!!”

In the morning…

“Aaaah I can’t believe I’m turning 17 soon!!” Daisuke seemed pretty… excited?? “Just a few more days… Uh… 18 days!!”

“Why? Do you want to get your presents already?” Hikari giggled.

“N-nope! I mean… Takeru, Ken and you are already 17! I’m always the last one of the 1991 kids to get older!”

“True…” Takeru smiled, “I’m the oldest. You can call me ‘Takeru-san’ now”

“No way!” he pouted.

Noel was also walking with them to school, again. At least this didn’t feel tense this time.

“... Ah! Noel,” Daisuke grinned, “When is your birthday, dude?”

“... June 15, but why?” The boy looked back, directly to Daisuke and with some curiosity about what Daisuke would do with that info.

“Oh! So you’re…”

“16 years old already. I was born in 1992… I think.”

“Makes sense…”

June 15…? -- Takeru thought, but this time he kept quiet. To not make Daisuke mad at him again. But why was that date interesting for him…?

“This makes him a Gemini!” Hikari commented, “Like Miyako-san!”

“Hm? Inoue-san… is a Gemini…?”

“Yes, her birthday is on May 30th though”

“Oh…”

“Mine is December 1st!” Daisuke added, with another grin, “This means I get presents twice in a month!”

“Oh… Christmas presents too…”

“Well, there’s the ones who just give only one present for two dates” Hikari teased Daisuke with a giggle, “Right~”

“H-hey…! Don’t remind me of that!!”

The classes were completely normal for them all. But something kept bugging Takeru… Something wasn’t right… Something… was off.

Then, after class he just witnessed (by sheer accident of fate) Lune talking with Noel and Soleil:

“You shouldn’t be befriending those punks!” She said, “Remember, we have a goal.”

“...” Noel, however, did not say anything in return.

“Well… Let him be, Lune.” Soleil sighed, “Soon or later he will stop.”

“I made predictions, they won’t stay on your side at all!” she continued, “If you keep trying to be Motomiya Daisuke’s friend… You’re fated to misfortune.”

Takeru wanted to intervene and defend Daisuke, they were saying something so awful about his friend! And now saying Noel couldn’t stay friends with Daisuke?!

But Takeru’s phone rang, and he had to leave before the other three noticed him there. It was Miyako, asking him and the others to gather at the karaoke booth.

He, Daisuke and Hikari (plus their digimon) left the school and went to the usual karaoke booth. There, Miyako explained them the details:

“King Shoutmon said… Joe-senpai had gone crazy and took control over the Digimon Arena. Then, Izumi-senpai sent me a message saying he detected another fragment and a bizarre amount of data around this area here,”

She pointed to a marked area in the map of her laptop.

“Then, I went to check which area is and… Bingo. It’s the new place our friends picked to host the Digimon Arena’s activities.”

“Another fragment…” Takeru clenched his fist.

“Now they chose to attack Joe-san…” Hikari frowned, “First Sora-san, then Taichi… What are their goals now?”

“... I can’t see the pattern here” Iori commented, trying to connect the cases to each other, “Only that Arsenemon was right to warn us about the enemy targeting us now.”

“Hmm…” Ken mused.

“Did you notice something, Ken?” Tailmon asked.

“Miyako-san, please search for Ornismon data. I need to check a little detail.”

“Hmm??” They all looked at Ken, and then Miyako started checking the database about Ornismon.

“Hmmm… It is an ancient bird, possibly linked to… hatred?”

“Hatred??” Patamon repeated, “So this means…”

“They were exploiting our Crests’ power negatively” Hawkmon added, “isn’t it what you were thinking about, Ken-san?”

“Yes, as I suspected… Previously they were enabling the seven deadly sins, but now…”

“They’re goin’ after us and using our Crest power wrongly…” Armadimon mused, “So, this means… Takeru and Patamon can be targeted again, dagya?”

“... We need to catch those remaining pieces as soon as possible�� Daisuke clenched his fists, then asked: “How many shards are left?? How many do we have? And How many Arsenemon have?”

“Whoa whoa, calm down Daisuke” Miyako said, “Hmmm… 7 for us, 9 for Arsenemon, and there’s only 4 left.”

Iori was recapping all the previous incidents with the fragments: “Taichi-san’s case was possibly exploiting the Crest of Courage. So if Joe-san has one…”

“Well, he was kinda acting cowardly don’t ya think?” V-mon commented, “So, what’s the opposite of Reliability?”

“Hmm… Deceitful, disloyalty, dishonesty, treachery, unsteadiness…” Wormmon answered.

“I think we shouldn’t go too literal here,” Daisuke sounded annoyed, “Let’s go stop Joe-san before things get worse.”

“Alright!”

But someone else was listening to them… And before they could catch him , the one spying on them left quickly, not even meeting with the group when they left the booth and headed to the Digimon Arena.

The Digimon Arena was covered by… water!? At least it was a bubble filled with water shielding the building. The 02 group were confused about it though -- would they need to swim to get inside? Should they just send Iori and Submarimon?

But…

Sending Iori alone sounded too troublesome…

So Ken had a strange feeling and approached the water barrier. He examined it for a second and then put his head inside it for a few minutes. Miyako and Daisuke gasped in horror and they were ready to go there when Ken took his head off the barrier and looked at them, deadpanned. 

“It’s not real, we can breathe inside.”

“NEXT TIME DON’T DO SOMETHING THAT RECKLESS!!” both Miyako and Daisuke hissed.

“A-anyway… Let’s go,” Takeru tried to interrupt their fight. They all nodded and got inside the building.

And then they just met Joe and what was supposed to be Gomamon, perhaps? A Neptunemon was next to him and they watched the Arena, TeslaJellymon and other competitors like Tenno Yuu’s Sparrowmon were… writing something on paper sheets!?

“What, is this a cram school now?” Daisuke blinked “Everyone’s doing homework??”

“No, it’s not homework it’s…” Iori commented as they approached the arena. Then he just glanced at one of those sheets and realized what they were, “... a contract.”

“A contract?!” The others (but Ken) exclaimed.

Daisuke immediately took a paper from one of the kids filling it and read it, “Huh…? It’s about the arena rules?? Wait, you have to agree with ALL OF THOSE to be able to participate in the battles!?”

Ken yanked the paper from Daisuke’s hand, and the others read it over his shoulder, “... ‘No running, no using projectiles, no weapons, no shouting, no chatting, no singing, no rough play, no drinks or food, no swearing, no tossing junk, no diving’… ‘Don’t break the equipment/building, use the stairs, play safely, use slippers’... ‘Please inform your phone, Digimon Arena ID, blood type, digivice type, digimon type, digimon field, digimon category, allergies, goals’…”

“What is this, a public pool??” Daisuke squinted his eyes. (※ he clearly didn’t read it at all)

“I think this is going too far,” Iori commented.

“Joe-san, please stop!” Miyako ran towards her, but suddenly a horde of Marching Fishes came in, blowing a whistle and wearing security hats.

“DON’T RUN INSIDE THE BUILDING!!” Joe shouted from a high lifeguard chair.

“A-ah!!” Miyako stopped immediately. The others came in, but walking calmly. Then she looked at the group and whispered, “How can we do something without breaking the rules?”

“... Have Imperialdramon deck that fish-like digimon?” V-mon commented.

“That’s Neptunemon,” Tailmon clarified, “I didn’t expect to see one here…”

“The rules didn’t say we can’t fly, so…” Daisuke grabbed his digivice, “Let’s go, V-mon!”

V-mon nodded and then… “V-MON EVOLV--”

“NO SHOUTING!!” Joe ordered, shouting again; then he snapped his fingers. 

“W-WHAT?!” The Marching Fishes came in swarms and then dragged Daisuke and V-mon outside -- “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaah, helppppp…!!” they shouted until their voices faded. Then the fishes left them outside the building.

Daisuke and V-mon tried to get inside, but… no success. Now the barrier was made of water and they couldn’t dive into it -- “DARN IT!!” Daisuke punched the barrier.

The other five couldn’t even react to that… Oh no, they’re in real serious trouble. If they can’t snatch the shard from Joe and Gomamon…

“Joe-san,” Hikari frowned, and then walked calmly there, “Why are you doing this?? Weren’t you helping King Shoutmon and TeslaJellymon to get stronger? Weren’t you here because you wanted to help the contestants to not get badly hurt??”

“Those fights ARE dangerous, so I put an end on them. If they follow the rules, no one will be hurt. I’m doing it for them, but I won’t allow anyone to disobey my rules.”

“That’s wrong!” she snapped, but still not raising her voice, “You know deep down that you’re setting too many rules to the point there’s no fun anymore! Yes, you’re preventing someone from getting hurt, but you’re also not allowing no one to do anything!!”

“You’re like them, disobeying norms and running amok in this place!”

“Aren’t you disobeying the rules too, at this point?” Iori said, deadpanned.

“H-huh?!”

“You clearly said ‘No shouting’ while shouting,” Takeru commented.

“Kh--!!”

“He also shouted when telling Miyako-san to not run too,” Wormmon nodded.

“The rules say no weapons, but Neptunemon is wielding that big spear right next to you,” Patamon added with a shrug.

“We can do those things! We’re keeping this place in order!!” Neptunemon hissed.

“That’s a lie, you just want to drop a ton of rules on us to ruin the fun” Miyako squinted her eyes, “How can the Digimon Arena work if you can’t even battle?!”

“Yeah,” Armadimon wagged his paw, “Bet y’all can’t beat us fair and square here, dagya.”

“You all are--!!”

“Checkmate, Joe-senpai” Ken smirked, “You know we’re right. You broke the same rules you made.”

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! I… I…!!!”

“Should we go retrieve the fragment from him now?” Hawkmon asked them.

“Mhm! Miyako-san!” Hikari grabbed her D-3.

“Ok!”

Hawkmon evolves to… Aquilamon!Tailmon!Jogress Evolution! Silphymon!!

Silphymon then used their visor to pinpoint where the shard was, so they could get it from Joe-or-Gomamon. They identified it as the whistle on Joe’s necklace.

“There” Silphymon shouted, but Neptunemon attacked. They dodged the spear and stared at the opponent, “Miyako-san, The Digimental fragment is the whistle” They (Aquilamon side) said.

“I won’t let you get him and ruin our dominion!”

“Since Joe-san broke the rules…” Takeru nodded, then used the Digimental of Hope to evolve Patamon into Pegasusmon.

“No!!” Neptunemon shouted, and then threw the spear at the boy and Pegasusmon. Everything was starting to get extremely BAD when…

“Un, deux, trois~”

Someone snapped the fingers and teleported Takeru & Pegasusmon out of the range of the spear.

“WHAT?!” everyone exclaimed.

“C'est l'heure du spectacle” Arsenemon appeared in the middle of the arena, “ Pardon, I’ve been appearing too early recently~”

“Arsenemon!!”

“STOP RIGHT THEREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!” Daisuke and V-mon came in, running after they had been unblocked from the barrier.

“Oh, my favorite Chosen Detective was outside this time,” then he snapped his fingers and a calling card popped in front of Daisuke, which was caught by the boy:

Hello, mon ami. I’m here to steal the wicked fragment from Kido Joe. Enjoy the show~

“I won’t sit and let you steal it!” Daisuke growled.

Then suddenly, Kido Joe started to laugh. Quite scary, to be honest.

“Ah, you want this?” Joe showed them the whistle in his hand, “Well, I’ll give you if you could beat Neptunemon.”

“?!?”

“What? Do you think I’m not a trustworthy person?”

“Ken… We have to use Imperialdramon right now” Daisuke whispered to the other, who nodded in response.

“Then I will--” But suddenly a robotic arm sneaked in and stole the whistle from Jou’s hand “W-WHAT!? HOW?!”

“You’re all bark but no talk!” Miss Espimon appeared from the ceiling, “Now go back to normal!!”

“… He let it be caught,” Armadimon blinked.

“?!?!?! HOW COULD YOU--”

“He might not wake up like this. So allow me to help you, fine gentleman…” Arsenemon shrugged, “Oeil de Chat” he snapped his fingers and a small black cat with green eyes magically popped in front of Joe, having the glowing cat eyes synchronize with Joe’s and then making the man fall asleep.

“I… um… Sleepy…” Joe fell asleep, and with this Gomamon returned to his original form.

“H-huh?!” Gomamon blinked, “Ah I’m back to normal…?”

“ You. tried. to. kill. us.” Pegasusmon appeared behind Gomamon with a deadly glare. He was already charging his Silver Blaze when Takeru patted the back of his head.

“GAAHAHAHAAAA SORRY SORRY SORRY!! 💦” Gomamon hid behind Daisuke. 

Daisuke took Gomamon with his two hands and lifted the digimon, “So, you we’re really into it huh…”

“I’m soooooooooorry!! That Impmon inserted one of those shards on Joe and it also corrupted me!!”

Everyone stared at Gomamon, “Suspicious…”

“D-do you really think I’d try to hurt y’all!? I’m a good digimon!! B-Besides… There was something else that night…”

“Huh?”

“A pair of eyes… They definitely cough Joe and me into some hypnosis spell… I recognized it… It was… Dracumon’s eyes.”

“Dracumon?”  The kids and the digimon exclaimed, but not Ken or Tailmon (neither Epimon and Arsenemon) (※ Silphymon jogress has undone and both Tailmon and Hawkmon were back to adult and child forms, respectively)

“Dracumon… that name…” Ken mused, “It surely sounds familiar…”

“Dracumon are vampire-like digimon, probably one of Vamdemon’s old acquaintances” Tailmon explained, “Might be… related to… That one digimon we met before…” 

“Hmm…”

“Ugh… I felt like I had a hangover…” Joe woke up, kinda dizzy though… “But I didn’t drink…”

“Are you okay now, Joe-san?” Hikari asked him.

“Yeah… Thank you guys… And sorry everyone…”

“Oh don’t worry you’re fine now right, Big J??” TeslaJellymon grinned, “we gotta catch those two digimon and snap their necks!!”

“No neck snapping!” Daisuke said, then he looked around and… “GAH, ARSENEMON AND ESPIMON ARE GONE!!”

Ken didn’t mind the lost fragment though… He was mostly interested in the fact that Espimon came out of nowhere. It only reinforced his theories that Arsenemon is linked to Noel, as partner or as some accomplice.

As for now, Arsenemon has acquired the 10th shard, while Team 02 has only 7. Only 3 are yet to be found, or to be used by Impmon and Dracumon.