#but there's this very particular way that he says it and it's SUCH a brainworm phrase for me

[t4tstarvingdog]

tim theres something so so special about seeing you gay yearn posting on the dash when i am gay yearning too but am too tired to post

true solidarity

i've got you <3

[guujikaroko]

I went to read Ratio's messages again and:

He encourages Stelle to enroll on Veritas Prime, a.k.a his very own alma mater, for REALSIES. Not only that, but:

He's willing to personally recommend her. P e r s o n a l l y.

And that's kinda surprising, in a good way. Like, I know Ratio isn't a condescending prick that thinks himself above others (or, well... There's a lot more to him than the condescension, is what I mean to say), but he looked at Stelle and saw potential in her. Veritas Ratio, the man who'd rather wear a fucking plaster head in front of his students because he's allergic to dumbassery, looked at Stelle, our resident unhinged raccoon, and saw enough potential to personally encourage and oversee her pursuit of knowledge.

Look at this! He's genuinely interested in her worldview and her opinions! He doesn't consider a waste of time to discuss topics with her! He spent the entirety of this message batch simulating a debate with her and sharing knowledge on the subject!

Again, it's not like I thought Ratio was incapable of any of this, but I never imagined that he'd be like that with the Trailblazer either. It's surprising, but in a very pleasant way? Like, "wow, I wasn't expecting this dynamic to be so genuine but it is and I like it". Honestly, I'll never not be impressed by Ratio and his particular ways of showcasing kindness to others/seeking companionship. He's such a compelling character.

Oh, and this is my favorite message batch of his. He feels tired by the monotony of his projects and he decides to relax by... Humoring Stelle? He goes and says "Hey, think of something you want and I'll make up a project" and Stelle, huge dork that she is, goes "Make me a cool weapon!" and "Make the Express move forever!" and he just... Does it? Sends a project of transforming the Express into a mecha?? Says he wants to disassemble the Express to figure it out???

It feels like I'm rambling for nothing but this is truly disarming to me. It's easy to dismiss Stelle as a goofball (and she very much IS a goofball) but Ratio actually takes her seriously and seeks to nurture her progress. Beyond that, he honestly likes to entertain her ideas and thinks that hearing her out is a positive thing.

If I had to describe their relationship, I'd say it's all very cute, in a pure and wholesome way, and I cannot believe I'm using these words to describe Veritas freaking Ratio out of all characters. This gotta be a new kind of brainworm.

[hakugin0]

So that new Levi card, woah boy(positive). I get how setting is slightly dubious but unfortunately my brain stopped at the ‘childish jealousy’ part and yeah childish was the perfect word he actually is throwing a bratty tantrum about MC talking about their time with Minhyeok WHILE THEY'RE NOT EVEN NEXT TO HIM. Levi, babey, you're not beating the Tsundere allegations.

Also the part about the sins was very interesting ‘cause it kinda puts in perspective why he feels like there's no King he's close to. Or at least that's my read on that part, all their sins have some positive parts while his is the only fully negative one so of course he couldn't feel close to them. (Personally I do think that part is his viewpoint on their sins and it would be interesting to see the other Kings’ too, Satan in particular since I feel like his sin and depressive mood swings do go hand in hand)

Now for the read more aka wiiiild speculations because he didn't come home in the reduced ten pull aka see you in 3 months bae when I have 500 pulls and you still refuse to show up(looking at you bath Satan), fair bit of character analysis and slight canon divergence(???) plus personal MC involvement.

GONNA PREFACE THIS BY WAVING NY ‘LEVI SIMP’ FLAG UP HIGH, IF THE CARD STORY WAS OFF PUTTING TO YOU OR YOU DISLIKE HIS CHARACTER IN GENERAL THEN MORE POWER TO YOU BUT PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS POST! IT AIN'T MEANT FOR YOU HOMIE (it's meant for me first and then anyone else who wants to witness my 3am insanity)

Aight? Aight! Here we go gamers

Gonna start this off by saying that when they dropped the first teaser for the card my expectations for the story were jelly Levi wants to replace minhyeok and thus enters MC's memories except surprise surprise it was actually some corn set in a high school (don't pretend those aren't a thing, we're all adults here, and with MC’s track record in that game it would not be surprising) in part because the story had to get spicy at some point.

Personal belief is that what we see in the prologue of Levi is the closest thing to a ‘normal’ him aka a version of him that got to experience a normal childhood and not have all the trauma of… ya know… HIS WHOLE PAST. The way he expected an attack when MC initially trips breaks me in a very particular way, he has never known peace, he expects everything to be some sort of attempt on his or his people’s life. The one time he wasn't as uptight ended up with him heavily injured (Bloodshed card).

There is also him ascertaining that they had different starting points. Now this could refer to a lot of things but to me one thing that does is put a definite line between them. To me it sounds like he's reasoning with himself that because of their very different lives they would be incompatible (combined with that thing about his sin being the only negative one it shows he always separates himself from people he would otherwise form bonds with)

Now he's still not nice, far from it, but he can be accommodating and look out for MC when he is not thinking 24/7 about possibly being attacked. Whether he reasons that it would endear himself more to them or out of pure instinct he looked out for MC, those were not Minhyeok’s actions he mimicked but his own.

So yeah, average Levi is horrendously bad at emotions and frankly probably the one who understands his own emotions towards a potential romantic partner(since tbh that is what MC is) the least. (This is a whole other can of brainworms about how aside from Solomon he probably has not been attached to anyone in that way until MC based on something he says in his H-Scene, but that can of worms shall be opened later) please get some therapists in Hell, clearly everyone would benefit from it.

There is also something impossibly endearing to me about seeing Levi in a high school setting even for a bit because that's not something he ever experienced and I wish his time exploring that part of MC and Minhyeok's past was a bit longer. I want to believe MC gets to ask him later in the story how he felt about it.

---

If you were only here for the character analysis then thanks for reading, have a lovely day/night/evening, we are going into wild speculation territory and some personal things regarding my MC Jin in that particular scenario.

tl;dr: After Jin's parents were killed she pretty much secluded herself in their home doing most of her studying through online courses and only showing up physically at school for a couple of days.

I choose to believe she was aware of stuff from the start but in that way you're aware you're in a dream while you sleep, she can tell things are a bit off but not fully what is wrong. She knows the person with her is not Minhyeok, she also knows who Leviathan is, but there's a certain disconnect when trying to piece it all together, but the further the dream goes the more she ‘realises’ and ‘awakens to the truth' if you will.

She cannot help but pity Levi’s situation even if she knows if she ever said that she'd probably get insta-hanged, so a part of her cannot help but wonder if he wanted to experience some normalcy for once. (She's not the brightest tool in the shed so the fact that he wants to replace Minhyeok would not pass by her singular braincell) (I love her I swear, being mean is my love language)

So I imagine after the whole dream thing is over and she next visits Hades she doesn't raise any questions about that event. She seems annoyingly unbothered and not curious at all. If anything this just makes Leviathan more angry because she can't be that unbothered after everything and pretend nothing happened, he should've been the only thing on her mind and yet she still sometimes mentions that detestable human. Oh how he should hang her for it. And then one day she has a conspicuously familiar candy in her mouth. “Was the experience at least a bit pleasant?” She's soft spoken anyway but she sounds almost apologetic. Why yes the experience was quite pleasant if Levi had to be honest but he'd never praise her openly… and then it hits him. She's not asking about that, she's asking about how he felt in a normal human high school.

When she gets no answer she stammers and starts speaking again, trying to fill the void. “I didn't exactly… go there often…” The pauses are plentiful and her shoulders droop almost in shame. “... so I imagine whatever you saw was rather lacklustre… aside from… my pathetic display-”

“It wasn't bad.”

A short sentence and it was enough to make the human girl perk up instantly. From anyone else that would be considered nigh an insult, but with Levi's temperament that was the highest praise she could hope for. By the time Jin was next to his desk after he'd beckoned her with a wave of his hand her visage had brightened significantly. ‘Stealing’ the lollipop from between her lips was ‘child’s play’ after that, the girl clearly took stunned to speak and becoming redder by the second.

“Yes, not bad at all.”

[thescarletnargacuga]

Hello again! I've got another Harlequin brainworm to present to you. This one has a bit of a setup. I hope that's okay:

A mysterious signal was blinking away on the W.A.C.K.Y watch. At a loss for what to do, and currently neck-deep in another project, Caine opts to send Pomni out to investigate. Surprisingly, she accepts.

The signal leads Pomni to a dilapidated house, and inside she finds a lone person fiddling with a radio. Their skin looked… uncannily real, and blood was dripping from a wound on their forehead.

Red blood.

There was no doubt about it. She was looking at a living, breathing human, one who's eyes were pleading for help. Pomni knew that they weren't a threat in the slightest.

…she also knew the role that humans played in the present state of things. The world was a hellhole. Her directive invaded her thoughts at every waking moment. She, and all of puppetkind, were built to suffer.

They did this. THEY DID THIS. THEY DID THIS.

A storm was raging in Pomni's mind. She had a choice to make…

FINALITY

A HARLEQUIN AU ONESHOT

AU credit: @iamespecter @tadc-harlequin-au

A/N: in accordance to established lore...there is only one way this can end

WARNING: swearing, angst, death

~~~

"That's all you've got for me?" Pomni leaned against the door frame to Caine's office, arms crossed.

Caine entered information into Bubble as he spoke. "Afraid so. I don't have the coordinates for the next boss yet, nor have I received any readings for nearby charms. Best I can do is this radio signal."

"Does it say anything?"

"No." Caine closed the hatch to Bubble's controls. "It's all garbled mess, but it's been consistent for the last three days. Someone is trying to establish contact. This could be a rescue mission."

"Or it could be nothing." Pomni shrugged indifferently.

"Then I'm sure you'll find a lonesome rat to kill." Caine rolled his eyes. "If it's legitimate, there's a puppet out there enlightened enough to know how to use a radio that could use our help. We can't not check it out. It'll get you out of the house so you can dance those ants out of your pants, and you out of my teeth for a while. I've submitted the coordinates of the last known radio signal into Bubble. He can take you there." He shooed Bubble towards Pomni.

"Fine. It's better than being stuck in this dusty old house anyway." Pomni walked down the hall to the stairs, Bubble puttering along behind her.

Caine sighed heavily and fell into his desk chair. "Be safe. See you when you get back." He said to no one as he pulled out a bottle to drown the pulsing stress headache.

~

Pomni walked with Bubble to the very outskirts of the ancient City of Circuits. Before reaching the wasteland that separated the cities from one another, Bubble led Pomni to a row of decapitated townhouses. The area was dead silent, say for the whispering dusty wind

"In there." Bubble looked to one house in particular. "Welp. My job is done. I'll wait for you here."

Pomni unsheathed her sword and cautiously approached the house. Her hunter senses felt no eyes. She saw no traps. She heard no voices. Carefully, she opened the broken front door.

The dark, broken house creaked as Pomni snuck inside. Sunlight poured in through the cracks in the walls. Crumbled remains of a forgotten world littered the floor. Pomni slinked her way through the house, ears peeking when she heard shuffling and static coming from the back room.

Pomni pressed her ear to the door. A muffled voice. A puppet. She wasted no time. She threw open the door, sword at the ready.

The figure crouched over the radio skittered away in fear, shoving themselves under a low table. They were covered by a tattered cloak, a skeletal face peaking out from the hood.

"Alright, who are you? If you're smart enough to use a radio, you're smart enough to talk." Pomni pointed her sword at the cowering figure, prepared to kill at the first sign of madness.

The figure's realistic eyes looked Pomni over quickly. "Es-tu réel?"

"...what?" Pomni lowered her sword an inch.

"Tu as presque l'air humain..." The figure inched out from under the table on their knees. Hands up.

Pomni got a better look at the person's face. It was fleshy, if stretched thinly over their skull. Their hands were just as boney. Their eyes were sunken. Their skin was scared and aged by the sun. Their hair was matted and molded. A single fresh wound marred their cheek, dried blood caked a scraggled beard. "You...you're human."

"S'il te plaît, ne me tue pas." The lone man pleaded as he squeezed his hands together. "Je meurs de faim. Aide-moi!"

Pomni kept her sword aimed at the crying man. "This is impossible. No humans survived the war. The famines! The plagues! The marionettes! How are you here!?"

"SHHHH! Pas si fort, s'il te plaît! Les monstres de métal nous entendront!" The man cowered and looked around frantically.

"What the fuck are you saying!?"

"SHHHH! s'il te plâit!!" The man hissed, his eyes as big as saucers.

"You shouldn't be here." Pomni lowered her tone, but not her sword. She glared at the man coldly. "Humanity is dead. You should be dead."

"Dead?" He repeated in a thick French accent. "Pas mort. En train de mourir...J'avais espéré qu'il y en avait d'autres."

"What a waste of my time." Pomni sneered. "You already have one foot in the grave, but the looks of you. You're not worth the time it would take for me to wipe your blood off my sword." She spat and turned her back on the sniveling human. "Enjoy what's left of your existence."

"Attendez! S'il te plaît! Ne le faites pas-"

Pomni made all of two steps towards the door when the wall to her right exploded. Brick and mortar showered her as the first of a pulverizer punched its way through. The weak wall collapsed, taking half the second floor with it. The room caved in. Pomni managed to get out of the way of the falling debris, eyes locked on the large gorilla-like marionette.

"Bubble! Why the fuck didn't you warn me!?" Pomni screeched angrily into her com. She dodged the pulverizer's charge by sliding under it.

"Warn you? About what?" Bubbles voice crackled casually over the com.

"THE PULVERIZER, YOU ILL-OBSERVANT MORON!" She jumped over its swinging fist and stabbed its elbow joint.

"I didn't see any pulverizer, but I did find some pretty nice cutlery a few houses down."

"WHY ARE YOU A FEW HOUSES DOWN!?" Pomni kicked out the support of another fragile building, toppling it on the pulverizer.

"I got bored." Bubbled hummed.

"I WAS INSIDE FOR A MINUTE!" She slashed at the pulverizer's gut as it raised its fists for a pound attack.

"Which is about ten times as long as it usually takes for you to kill something. I figured you were talking to whomever you found inside, so I busied myself."

Pomni plunged her sword into the marionette's face as it doubled over from the damage to its abdomen. She ripped out her sword and stabbed it again and again. Her warcry to release her pent up need to hunt echoed down the empty street.

The marionette collapsed to the ground as it lost the ability to function. As a precautionary measure, she tore open it's chest and destroyed it's power source. "There...motherfucker." She shook concrete dust from her hair.

Pomni surveyed the damage. Two downed townhouses. Amazing it didn't domino affect the entire neighborhood. Amongst the rubble, a single, broken human hand protruded, unmoving.

Pomni wiped the marionette oil from her sword. "Never let it be said puppets destroyed humanity. Their greed brought their end. Through slavery of the soul, they thought they ruled the world. Now they all rot beneath it."

~

Pomni ran into Caine as she made her way upstairs to change. He was swaying lightly, holding out a bottle to her. "Heeeey, Pomni. How'd it go?"

"It was nothing. False signal." She said stoically and accepted the bottle, taking a large swig.

"Oh...maybe my watch needs some adjusting...but you must've found something to beat up. You look like you took a dust bath." He giggled.

"Pulverizer. Easy shit. You got more?" She nodded to the bottle.

"You know I do. What are we drinking to?"

"The end of tyranny."

"Cheers to that." Caine picked up another bottle and clinked it against the one he gave Pomni.

~~~

A/N: I apologize if the French wasn't accurate, I used Google

[kings-highway]

God each quad/poly ship you mention just brings me so much brainworms, all those *dynamics* just leave me foaming at the mouth. Great Stuff

A bit out of the way but any feelings on HinaNoya (Hinata x Nishinoya) both as a duo and maybe as a quad bringing in their popular ships?

sorry on the delay for responding to some of these. it's just who i am as a person. but I love receiving them!! never feel shy about asking my anything ever

mmmmm m mm 🤔

I feel like my first instinct is to just freak out at the sheer ball-lightning that this particular couple would induce. I don't think it's my favourite thing, but the more I think about it, the more I can like... kinda see how they could be really good for each other?

I can imagine them first bonding over the obvious, like volleyball and all their favourite competitions and athletics and they're both loud and energetic but I feel like that would be the, like, pre-relationship friendship stage. And Hinata is 100% volleyball but Noya has such an interest in everything beyond volleyball I can really see him broadening Hinata's worldview. Like... Hinata played soccer before he knew that volleyball was a thing. i really think Hinata and Nishinoya would have a lot of fun playing soccer together. And fishing. and baseball. and horseback riding. or whatever the hell else they can get up to.

I think hinata wouldn't really be able to identify his feelings as romantic for a long, long time, probably because this relationship would feel SO much different from his others? Especially post-timeskip. Like... his go-to best friends, Kageyama, and then his MSBY boys, Bokuto, Atsumu, Sakusa - like, they're all really REALLY volleyball forward. And his whole life is saturated in that. but then he has this OTHER friend, who loves the sport and comes to all his games but also just knows so, so much. Like Nishinoya would talk about every wonder of the world he's been to, all the games he's learned, these interesting little alcoves of culture and society and I think this ship could be really could because when Hinata realizes that he's fallen in love with Noya, I think he might take a break from his hyperfocus in volleyball and go globetrotting with his boyfriend. (noya had been waiting for him to realize for years)

I dont have too much more interesting to say with the addition of the polyship. BUT I actually think this one would work really well as a non-polycule polyship. Like I imagine Noya and Hinata could date each other while also dating Asahi / Kageyama. They'd get very different things oit of their relationships, and I dont this Asahi would mind having a second hyper energetic partner along for some of their trips, especially since it makes Noya so happy. They wouls absolutely both sleep on Asahi's chest tho. romantic or platonic. (Asahi wakes up so overheated and sweating its almost unhealthy)

Overall Rating:

Me, Personal Interest: 0/10

Concept/Potential: 3/10, I'd be willing to hear some arguments.

[perdvivly]

🔥 beauty

*abhumanex0, bubbliterally, perdvivly and tranxio are sitting around a fire*

abhumanex0: 🔥 beauty bubbliterally: How are you doing that with your mouth? perdvivly: I'm trying out beauty. bubbliterally: What does that mean? perdvivly: It means that for a long time a particular brand of brainworms I've had comes from the Platonic conception of beauty as this horrible deciever. I'm trying to shed that. tranxio: That's an anachronistic genealogy of the idea. perdvivly: Huh? tranxio: Plato does talk about the interplay between truth and beauty. Notably in the Ion and in The Republic, books two, three, and ten. Plato is worried that the arts and specifically poetry in the Ion, as Ion of Ephesus was a rhapsode, are persuasive by means of rhetoric rather than an appeal to the truth. Specifically, an account of truth that Plato takes to be his idea of Forms. But Plato is chiefly concerned with the interplay between mimesis, from the Ancient Greek mimos, meaning "imitative" and diegesis roughly meaning "narrative". For Plato, the poets are doing a bad job of representing the beauty of truth; they are unable to capture its virtue. But that doesn't mean that Plato doesn't care about beauty or reviles beauty. Plato considers the Form of Beauty to be very important! He talks about it at length in the symposium and does note the associations in many more dialogues. e.g. phaedo, phaedrus, parmenides. I think this is most obvious when you consider what surviving writings we have from Plato. They're dialogues. He was writing creative fiction. He was engaging in a memetic artform, but one that he hoped would transcend the pitfalls of poetry. A "pure crystalline theatre of the mind". I think that the idea you had in mind dervies from the Neoplatonic tradition as it was interpreted by Christianity. The works of Plotinus come to us by way of his pupil Porphyry-- bubbliterally: --wait! You're saying that Christianity takes its philosophical foundations from Neoplatonism? tanxio: That's right. Dean Inge emphasises this point in his book on Plotinus. He says there is "an utter impossibility of excising Platonism from Christianity without tearing Christianity to pieces." Or if that isn't convincing consider that Saint Augustine-- perdvivly: --the saint who fucked. tranxio: That's right, the saint who fucked. Consider that he says of Plato's system that it was the "most pure and bright in all of philosophy" and he talks of Plotinus as a man in whom "Plato lived again". The early church owes a great deal of philosophical debt in this regard. bubbliterally: That's fascinating, so you're saying that Plotinus distrusted beauty and that's where the seed that Viv is picking up on originates? tranxio: Aha, no. Not quite. There is nothing in the mysticism of Plotinus that is hostile to beauty. But he is the last religious teacher for many centuries of whom this can be said. Plotinus founded the Neoplatonic tradition but he wasn't the sole arbiter of their beliefs. Beauty and all the pleasures associated with it came to be thought to be of the Devil. Pagans and Christians alike came to glorify ugliness and dirt. Julian the Apostate, like contemporary orthodox saints, boasted of the populousness of his beard. bubbliterally: But how did all this happen? tranxio: That's a matter of historical debate. The Neoplatonists found themselves in dialogue with the Gnostics for long while. And Porphyry suggests that there is precident in Plato for turning away from the physical world of matter. Perhaps it happened as an extension or outbranch of these dialogues? I'm not certain. But I can go and do more research on it if you would like? bubbliterally: No pressure, but I'd really enjoy the answer if you could find it! tranxio: Of course! *tranxio leaves, presumably to go to the library*

bubbliterally: That was an interesting historical perspective, but can you say more on what you meant Viv? You're "trying out beauty"? perdvivly: Right. I grew up in a pretty heavily Christian dominated soceity and personal environment. My grandparents were missionaries and I went to Sunday school. And because I grew up in England, you can bet that that sect was Anglican. Protestantism is... Austere. It's in a really sharp contrast to Catholicism. You know, you imagine these elaborate ornate robes, the alters decked-out with gold and you have these huge buildings with complicated architecture... And then you have, what I was raised in, which is, sort of an extreme embodiment of the famous saying "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" so imagine like, wooden pews so upright they could fix quasimodo's posture, plain homespun clothing, nothing ornate or elaborate just this very bare aesthetic. And gradually through a sort of cultural osmosis I think I took some of this in without meaning to or critically evaluating whether or not I wanted to. abhumanex0: So, that's a more personal etiology, it doesn't really answer the question of what you mean though. perdvivly: I know, and I don't want to mess you about, but let me give one more take on why this feels so forceful to me before I expand on what I mean and why I want it. abhumanex0: Go ahead. perdvivly: Have you ever seen something really beautiful and been compelled by it? Or, someone even? bubbliterally: I think we all know about being horny. perdvivly: Right! Sexual desire is actually a really good use-case here. abhumanex0: Not what use-case means but continue. perdvivly: It feels deep down gut-level wrong to be forced by my own body to want something without regard for its... wholeness? Without regard for all of it and all of its interactions with me... Have you ever been compelled against your better judgement to eat junk food that you know will make you feel ill? That to me feels like the same pernicious facet of force that beauty compells. Beauty in this way, sort of forces a passitivy of choice. bubbliterally: the same kind that David Foster Wallace was talking about with Eric the other day? perdvivly: Exactly! Think Catullus 85. I am beset on all sides by emotion and the waves of those emotions are bigger and stronger than I am. I'm afraid of being drowned by them. I'm afraid of being killed by them. Beauty is chief among these emotion makers. abhumanex0: Have you considered that when you say "It feels... wrong to be forced by your own body" that's an extension of the cultural Neoplatonism you absorbed through Christianity? Seeing this sharp distinction between mind and body? perdvivly: I... Hadn't... That's actually a really astute point. bubbliterally: I see... So that's why the issue is so forceful for you. But you want to try beauty out? Okay, maybe I don't see. You love and you hate beauty at the same time? perdvivly: There's no escaping it. So what I mean when I say, "I'm trying out beauty" is that I'm trying to integrate an appreciation for beauty into my life. And there are so many things I find beautiful. That I'm slowly realising I can appreciate without being destoryed by... It''s a long and hard journey. And I'm nowhere near being very good at it yet. But I think it's probably a pretty crucial step on the path of fully realising my own autonomy. bubbliterally: I think it's interesting that this whole discussion has had the locus it's had. That you've situated yourself as the desirer in world of objects to be desired, but you haven't really talked about the effects of being desired. perdvivly: Oh, well. One thing at a time. But I pretty much think that the feminists of the 80s were right about most of it. I could say more but maybe that's a story for another time. *abhumanex0 and bubbliterally both nod* perdvivly: So, how about you guys? bubbliterally: Us? perdvivly: Yeah.🔥 beauty bubbliterally: Okay seriously, how the fuck are you doing that with your mouth?

[lex-jots]

Incoherent post stream YV brainworms

Less me putting on my tinfoil hat and spouting theories and more me just being very excited that all of these threads are coming together. I've only been a fan since February-ish but one theme/motif that I've seen a lot with Finn in particular is the idea of, idk, fragments? facets? multiversal stuff? Ultimately, the idea of having all sorts of "sides." "Everything is not what it seems" and all that. Even before today's stream it's been teased a lot. Hell, Auron's series is going to be called "Shattered" lmfao-

There's the obvious: Finn has several AUs in which he plays very different roles in each world he occupies, like Withered!Finn and EoE!Finn. Garden variety "normal" Finn is a tooth-rottingly sweet cottagecore florist, but we also get to see what he'd be like if he were, say, a violent sadomasochist LOL, or an epic fantasy protagonist with tremendous responsibility.

Seeing all the ways in which each version of him is different is super fun, but I also think the most interesting part of experiencing these versions of him is finding what they have in common. Each version of him gives us parallax to who he actually is.

If you took away all the inhibitions of the tooth-rottingly sweet cottagecore florist, what would be left? Withered!Finn is the answer. If you gave the tooth-rottingly sweet cottagecore florist the weight of responsibility over an entire country (and possibly world[s]), what would he do with it? What will he do when faced with a tough decision? EoE!Finn will answer that.

And while Finn isn't the only one with AU versions of himself, Finn is unique in how thoroughly they seem to be tied into the story. Withered!Finn has mentioned mage Finn several times I think, and obviously EoE!Finn turned back the clock in Bittersweet ch. 3.

Withered!Finn was also described as a "fragment" of in the description of the stalking audio.

i'm running out of steam-

something something the idea of "fragments" also appeared in the EoE teaser but i can't find the timestamp in the stream atm, might make another post in which i put on my tinfoil hat and hyper analyze the trailers and stuff... anyway seeing all the little foreshadowing seeds about fragments and facets come together is immensely satisfying

also the cut from the hyper serious and creepy shattered trailer to a half naked finn with bunny ears going "HUH????" absolutely sent me so forgive me if my memory isn't great, i was laughing too hard

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

On Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

"Lamia you keep saying people should play Hollow Ataraxia but no one knows what that is" okay listen I KNOW that's why I'm making the post

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia is the sequel visual novel to Fate/Stay Night. This is true in a very literal sense as well: the events of HA take place about six months or so after the events of F/SN. If you're wondering which route from the original game Hollow Ataraxia is a sequel to, the answer kind of broadly is all of them. Hollow Ataraxia broadly isn't really interested in answering which of the three routes was canon, because asking that question kind of reveals a lack of engagement in the themes of the original.

Hollow Ataraxia has two protagonist characters: Bazett and Shirou. Hollow Ataraxia actually keeps pretty well to the night and day contrast of the original visual novel: Bazett's story largely takes place at night and involves her own participation in a Holy Grail War with her Servant, Avenger, while Shirou's story is largely a slice of life deal involving most of the cast from the previous VN and takes place during the daytime.

This separation is also mechanical. While Bazett's sections are entirely linear and play out like the original visual novel, Shirou's sections have a tremendous amount of free choice available. You're allowed to choose which events you'll see and when, although ultimately you're still likely to see all of them in order to progress.

When I say most of the cast from the original come back, I mean it. All of the Servants from the 5th Holy Grail War are still around and kicking in Hollow Ataraxia without considerably much in the way of explanation, and other members of the cast get more exposition and characterization to go along with them. You won't find any particularly unique scenes with Issei or Mitsuzuri, but the lunch trio have like their own running plot line. It's honestly an odd choice.

The only character not to return from the original is Kotomine Kirei. The given justification for this is that Kotomine Kirei never survives the 5th Holy Grail War in any timeline since he already survived the 4th Holy Grail War, and instead he is replaced by his daughter, Caren Hortensia. Caren doesn't actually serve a particularly large role in Hollow Ataraxia though, but usually her presence is a giveaway on the primary tension of the Shirou portion of the story: during night time, the darker, gloomier elements of Bazett's story start to creep into the slice of life segments, and Caren is usually there for that happening.

While Bazett's sections are emotionally well-written and powerful, Shirou's are a fair bit sillier than the general tone of Stay Night. Since its slice of life, there quite a lot more silly gags and a greater emphasis on characterization than before: a lot of the characterization you might be familiar with for the main cast actually originates from Hollow Ataraxia in particular, such as Saber not being able to swim because she can just walk on the surface of the water.

It's always something of a hard recommend from me personally (there's a rape scene in Hollow Ataraxia you have to view in order to progress, like thankfully you can just fast-forward through it because its not super plot important but its still THERE) in part because you really need to have read Fate/Stay Night to get it. It's not as well written as Fate/Stay Night and honestly has some real dud characters in my opinion (Caren and Makidera kind of just suck), but there's still a lot of heart to it and the ending genuinely made me cry. Bazett in my opinion may be one of Nasu's best written protagonists ever.

So if you've read Fate/Stay Night, give Hollow Ataraxia a read too, if only because there's like maybe 10 of us out there who have read it on the EN side of the fandom and we need people to discuss our shared brainworm infection this VN gave us.

[misosuper]

So given from the looks of it you’ve read the Talon comic quite in depth;

Say you work at DC Comics (May God have mercy on your soul but I digress) and were granted a good hefty amount of creative control with one particular assignment:

Brining Back Calvin Rose, Casey Washington and her daughter or at least having the reappear in any ongoing book of your choosing before they can get their own book once again should sales work great

Basically, what would you do if you’re writing a Talon book?

If ever found myself in that position, I don't need God's mercy nearly as much as some of the folks at DC if I cross paths with them. Assuming I successfully hold myself back from getting a restraining order against several members of the DC staff and focus on the project at hand:

Casey is the focal point for any meaningful interaction with current comics. By the end of Talon, Casey's group is continuing its former work but with significantly more funding. She's also had her civilian identity restored, along with her position as CEO of Securitus. She already has a team with plenty of personal history with different villains and organizations. That gives a lot of flexibility in how we could bring Talon into Dawn of DC.

One straightforward, easy answer for an ongoing series to reintroduce the Talon characters would be Detective Comics. Casey's team could reasonably collaborate with the usual 'tec cast by bringing their own strike team or intelligence to a case.

The other ongoing comic that comes to mind would be Birds of Prey. Dinah headhunting Casey for her expertise would be a cool way to see her reintroduced without bringing in the rest of her crew. I'd very happily settle for a good short-term cameo of Casey in BoP, maybe one that introduces a hero name for her now that she once again has a civilian identity to protect. Since this ask gave me creative control, I do what I want, and I'm giving Casey the codename Firewall.

But the true dream for reintroducing the Talon cast to an ongoing title, without question, would be the current Outsiders series. Casey already has a strong rapport with Lucius Fox, and in her role as CEO of a tech company with very strong ties to WE, Casey establishing a rapport with Luke in turn would be very reasonable based on her tech skills and professional role.

Just read the blurb for the current Outsiders comic and you will understand my vision:

What better way to compliment the goal of digging into the fictional "forgotten corners" of DC than to bring in characters from past titles? The goals of Luke's organization form an interesting venn diagram with the goals of Casey's. This gives us peak synergy, but with a supernatural twist that would be SO fun to see Casey and Calvin navigate. Anya and Joey would kick ass in this comic. I cannot imagine a more perfect way for Talon characters to re-enter canon than Outsiders, which is something I'd never have considered without this ask, so thank you for my new favorite brainworm. I'm going to be thinking about this forever.

Now onto the goal of a whole new Talon story. Sketching out what that would look like is far above my paygrade and ability level, so all I'm gonna do is outline my selfish wish list:

I'd love to see the end of Talon retconned. I gotta be honest, I think using the Lazarus Pits to perform Turbo Resurrection on Calvin was pretty cheap, and also undermines some of the most compelling and central aspects of his character explored in Talon Vol 2. Now that they've dealt with the Court, how does Calvin navigate freedom when so much of what he is and knows was shaped by their abuse? Now that he doesn't have to run away, what's he going to run toward? I want to see him wrestle with these questions, and a whole new Talon book can explore them in the ways the trite happy ending to the original series couldn't.

Now that the retcon is out of the way, I want this new book to explore Sarah more as a character as she ages - we ended Talon with a recovering but deeply traumatized kid. I was shocked that Talon had ZERO acknowledgement of the parallel that Calvin understands what being a kid brainwashed by the Court of Owls feels like, albeit as a Talon and not groomed to be an Owl. I want to see him help Sarah as she processes what she went through! There was a deeply bad scene at the end of Talon where Sarah was triggered by seeing Calvin in uniform, and Calvin was like "huh wild :)" without ANY meaningful connection and I am still wallowing in the missed opportunities there.

As this is quickly becoming a novel-length daydream session, I'm going to cut myself off here. This was such a fun ask to think over, thank you :D

Tl;dr crossover between Talon and Dawn of DC Outsiders my beloved

[into-september]

MLB Paris special

I've been saying it before and I'm saying it even louder now: these writers are good at self-contained episodes, it's serialisation they can't handle. This is yet another testament to the fact that when they get the time to flesh out their ideas and dwell on their details, this universe is brilliant.

That said, this is by far the weakest of the specials yet, thanks mostly to the way it falls back on some of the mawkiest lines this show has produced. Where Shanghai and NYC had moments of Our Heroes in genuinely dire situations, this one was essentially your normal akuma battle with a few extra bells and whistles, which they resolve by giving their emo counterparts a pep talk about how they can totally be good people like them, just look on the bright side of life! The lucky charm blatantly frames this as some sort of facing-your-inner-demons tale, which would have worked if

a) these had been doubts Marinette and Adrien had faced this very episode, but last time Adrien had a thought about the fact that he recently lost his mum in canon timeline was "Felix", and Marinette's experience in being bitter and alone was, oh yeah, never.

b) we had a bit more background on emoverse ladynoir than their telling us the reason they're angry

In essence: this brings about zero epiphanies to our ladynoir like the NYC special did, and emoverse ladynoir don't have the on-screen backstories like Fei for their turn-around to be narratively satisfying. Marinette's speech at Emobug reads like an inspirational quote our aunts post on Facebook; harmless, and true in essence, but ooooh boy the that's easy for you to say.

It works simultaneously better and worse with Adrien-Emonoir, where Adrien's side is A+ character moment and Emonoir's is jazz_music_stops.jpg because this boy lived better circumstances than our Adrien, but became a trigger-happy supervillain? and here I thought losing a parent and being neglected by the other one wasn't a sympathetic explanation for why you'd turn to violence against the world around you

Where NYC and Shanghai had my heart, this one was just sparkly, but sparkly at least in a way it's been a while since this show has felt.

(I mean, there's the "Gabriel Agreste is a hero at his core and deserved the statue" propaganda and "why yes, their team-up in the end can be taken as foreshadowing of Marinette's decision to side with Gabriel in the S5 finale being framed as a good and kind thing for Adrien", but I'll refrain from going into that wank. We're all strong independent adults capable of grappling with the unfortunate implications of a work of fiction)

Have some bullet points:

I called them "bells and whistles" but emoverse ladynoir carries this special alone, and boy howdy do they CARRY it

Some really nifty scenes here, with particular kudos to the slo-mo akumatisation of Cat Noir

ouch but the parallel akumatisation of father and son from different universes was an unfortunate one (see: "Gabriel is a hero at core" propaganda)

speaking of: ~Cat Blanc trauma~ died with "Jubilation" and this is the funeral

So much lore being made up just to justify the plot beats of this special, gotta love it

Excuse me, I got brainworms from emoverse ladynoir being physically marked by the damaged caused by their misuse of their miraculous and the way this never is compared to Gabriel's shiny new handprint

Or at least named as the reason why they're so desperate and bitter, rather than the diet coke explanation we got

I can't believe what a bitter old crone I've become to roll my eyes when Ladybug has a moment of shoddily set up "oh no I can't do it" so that Cat Noir can put a hand on his shoulder and look her in the eye and say "I always believe in you, milady". To be fair I think this would've touched me if it hadn't been like a year and half since "Strike Back" aired

On the bright side, this one episode does Alya more justice than all the rest of S5 did

did emoverse!Chloé have Sabine deported?

I can't believe Claw Noir didn't at least get rid of the mullet

I can't believe that trailer showed us all we were getting of emoverse Alya and Nino. ROBBED.

The emotional aftermath of "Destruction" really was ADRIEN: Plagg, I think I killed a man and that makes me uncomfortable PLAGG: Okay, but please consider: cheese

Why, IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, was this scene of Gabriel almost going into Adrien's room after the cataclysm not in the show proper

Adrien was so excited to talk about Nino's favourite film. It is now canon that Adrien is that person who genuinely enjoys avant-garde cinema

Best part: emoverse ladynoir teaming up with Hawkmoth to form a visual kei Team Rocket, complete with sarcastic nicknames

Monarch, sorry (something something you're giving into his power by acknowledging his self-proclaimed change in name), but I dig that they kept up the continuity of the fashion disaster he was for these early S5 episodes

Worst part: Superfluous multiverse jumping fanservice. If you needed to pad for time, it should've been spent on emoverse ladynoir flashbacks

I can't wait for the S6 reveal that Chloé personally caused the climate crisis, founded daesh and killed Mother Teresa

[slashhinginghasher]

Lock and Key

I made a final girl for @thesightstoshowyou's slasher OC Lochlan Smith because I have no control over the brainworms.

Kieran "Ki" Dufresne

Full name: Kieran Desdemona Dufresne

Age: 21

Pronouns: She/her

Orientation: Lesbian

Occupation: College student, intern, radio DJ (part time)

Height: 5'6" (168 cm)

Hair: Light brown, long and wavy

Eyes: Brown

Ethnicity: White

Location: East Coast, USA

Detailed info under the cut:

Bio:

Ki is the daughter of Joni, an ex-opera singer turned vocal coach, and Michael, a marketing analyst. Ki's father cheated on her mother for years, starting when Ki was a toddler and lasting until she was 12, at which time he requested a divorce so he could marry his mistress, who was pregnant with his son. Joni was awarded full custody and cut off all contact with Michael. Ki does not speak to her father and has never met her half-brother.

She competed in track and field and cross country in high school, doing well but not exceptional. She is no longer on a team, but continues to run for fitness and her own enjoyment. One of her bucket list goals is to run a marathon on every continent.

Ki is studying music theory and composition, with a minor in audio engineering. She works part time at her university's radio station and has an internship at a local recording/production studio. Her dream career is to compose film scores, particularly for horror, psychological, and/or experimental films. She has taken a couple of film studies classes in college but found the student body in that department to be largely insufferable.

Personality:

Ki is not particularly gregarious and outgoing, but neither is she shy. She is very comfortable with herself - her appearance, her interests, her sexuality. She carries herself with a quiet confidence in professional settings, gets tongue-tied around cute girls, and has a decent-sized friend group that she enjoys spending time with, though she also appreciates her solitude.

Likes: Live music, indie films, dive bars with too-loud music, record stores, old movie theaters, dogs that look like muppets, anything with cinnamon

Dislikes: Excessive movie franchises, peach-flavored alcohol (courtesy of her freshman year), clef tattoos, men who try too hard to be charming

Because of her father's betrayal, combined with years of the type of harassment that many queer women receive from men simply for existing, Ki often views men with mild contempt. Any man who tries to flirt with her after being informed that she is not interested, or who comes on too strong, gets immediately waved off with a sneer. Until a man can prove that he is capable of interacting with her without seeing her as something to fuck or use as a trophy, she is fairly mistrustful of them. Most of her male friends are also queer, and the ones who aren't were introduced to her through other friends/friendly acquaintances. She dislikes the "man-hating lesbian" trope because of its often misogynistic and transphobic subtext, but would rather fall into the "man-hating" category than be forced to appease some loser's ego.

Ki and Lok:

Ki's saving grace is that she is more resistant to his persuasion/hypnosis than others. (This is due in part to her attitude towards men - she has no interest in hearing what he has to say, so he has to say it much more forcefully to get it into her head - but, like Lok, she also has some supernatural heritage a long way down the line.)

She is not immune, but she is not as quick to fall under Lok's spell and, like a wound healing over, his hold on her wears off on her after awhile. The more intensive the trance he puts her in, the deeper the wound, and the longer it takes to heal, but unless he breaks her mind completely, it will wear off.

Gestures, in particular (like the three snaps Lok favors to return people to a deep trance), do not work well on her. An intensive trance is required to make them work on her at all, and deep, repeated conditioning is needed if he wants it to work more than once or after a longer period of time (i.e. more than an hour). Lok therefore has to mainly resort to verbal commands with Ki, and even then he has to be quite specific and may even have to repeat himself.

Lok is bigger and stronger than Ki. She has to rely on creativity and her slight resistance to his main skill in order to escape him.

[mp3minded]

ALY ALY ALY!!! the people (me) wants to know where did this recently developed interest in liam come from?! what’s your response to this? furthermore, where does your relationship with max stand—if he’s still in the picture? 👀🎤

ah, sweet sweet Max. He stands no chance today, but in theory he should have the best odds, out of all the obvious LIs..

But, that's the thing. All the obvious LIs do after a while is lovebomb to all hell, and that gets stale for me. 🥴 So, one thing I like about Liam is that I know who he is as a person, in the sense that what he says is highly distinguishable from all the other guys in the villa (excluding the sapphic LIs) which, should be the bare minimum, but this is post-layoffs Fusebox we're talking about here 💀 Though, Liam having his own personhood is not enough for me to catch the brainworms for a character 🥴

I can get bored easily like, in general.. so, when the Liam crumbs started popping up more post-Casa? I saw that as something that would've been fun to get to the bottom of, which it has been so far 😌 like, why is Liam the way he is, with MC in particular? That's another reason why I like him, he's like a rubix cube I wanna solve. Hazel said it best;

and yeah, maybe I would've been more jealous of her, if I didn't see what she was talking about myself, which I have 😌 (or at least, I intuitively feel like I have, more than in actuality? It's hard for me to tell 💀)

I do have one working theory on why his graft has been everywhere but MC, literally 💀 it kinda expands on what you thought too, your words being;

"i feel like he’s lowkey rude to mc because he likes her 💀"

and, I was thinking about how his occupation revolves around finance. The business world is known to be a pretty competitive field, and I think he (partly subconsciously, maybe) let all that high-strung energy follow him into Casa. Like he doesn't know how to turn off his at-work attitude, hence his initial gameplaying with Bea, to the point of total commitment to the bit, for as long as he could've gotten away with it, before his slip-up with the Casa boys at the pool. And in that sense.. him not grafting MC when he's putting on that performance, shows that to some level, he'd want to approach her from the right mental headspace 🥺 (And, if he's "on" 24/7 like that, it explains why he got sloppy with his scheming at times 💀)

And walking into Casa, I think his initial gameplan was to earn a quick buck, in a power couple endgame. So, with that being the admittedly very likely case.. once again, him actively warding MC off him like the plague I think was his Liam way of showing that he didn't want to hurt her, really 🥺

And, the off-putting surface level he presents with does add a level of spice to his route that just makes it feel like you're indulging in a guilty pleasure, whenever I dare entertain those "more than friends" thoughts 🤡 (which I've only allowed myself to do more, around 2 days ago I think? So I'm totally still in that honeymoon stage with him in my mind, but 😳)

[anemcia]

𝐑𝐏 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 🌊✨

//Listing these in no particular order, but I will be ranking them from 1-10 on how much I'd want to get a thread going. Some I've had cooking for ages, others I'm simply spit-balling. Regardless, I'd love to collaborate and improve upon them where we can make it equally enjoyable. Without further delay, I present my brainworms.

🌊✨ Bad Ending Cyto (AU name pending) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

I love the idea that he's been so scorned by humanity, so bitter and resentful, that he decides their fates are no longer theirs to control. He embraces a newfound resolve as someone who can reform Earth's society, taking the proverbial reins of by force. He soon trains with purpose; preparing to eliminate all who would pose a threat to his ideals until every target of comparable power are all eliminated. With the Z fighters and allies out of the picture, his vision would begin to manifest with great success. Earth's leaders give up their positions without a fight, appointing Cyto as the planet's one and only King. A crown, and lengthy robes, he certainly looks the part.

While he would see the growth of resistance forces rise, there were legions of humans who had sworn their utmost loyalty, believing in his message for change in a world that was suffering so much without him. To protect everything he cares for, Cyto fights to maintain a new order that prevents further damage to the Earth and his citizens. His armies and supporters grow significantly as he makes his voice known to the world, promising to make a difference that no one else could provide. Anyone who denies his message or attempts to dismantle his position will be killed, invading territories and seizing power without the usage of his own energy. His vision is slowly but surely corrupting, potentially leading to disaster if he's pushed too far.

Maybe someone closer to him sees what's happened over the years? Do they join his conquest, or attempt to convince him that his path is war-torn and bloody? Become his queen? Make it romantic? It sounds dramatic, fun, and vivid. I want a piece of that pie, but would LOVE to collab the idea a bit further for a clearer look at the AU.

🌊✨ Fire Emblem AU / Pokémon AU 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Feel it in my bones to dabble into other fandoms without leaving this blog. I'm really into these games and to branch out and build lore for any of my muses in their respective AU's would be very fun in theory, but I think testing would be needed to make this work. Ideally with someone who's already familiar with these series (especially FE) but it's just a thought.

🌊✨ Amnesiac Cell threads (Just... More Cell usage in general) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

I'll just be outright and say YEAH I do need to play with my bug husband more, but part of the reason I reset the blog was to get a chance for people to essentially talk to a Cell that doesn't have the slightest clue who you are to him, why he should care / be worried, and kinda pick at his strange brain while he's vulnerable to all who speak with him. Honeydew's presence is sometimes necessary as to not just let anyone blow him up in one go, but having 1v1 convos is the way to go. In fairness, even in normal threads, my Cell will probably never be the same memory wise, but it's just even more fun to mess with him when he's PEAK struggling with his identity and repressed fears.

🌊✨ ANY VIOLENT THREAD 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Not that I'm begging or anything, but uhh... I think it would be really cool if some of ya were to torture any of my muses. Honey in particular, I'm always down for her to fight through shit and get shit on physically and mentally. She deserves it on the basis that she's built to take these punishments a LOT better now compared to a few years ago, and maybe I also want a little bit of toxic shippin' on the side. Make her vulnerable! Break her! Let her bite a few fingers off! Get some bloody smooches in. Don't care man, let me have this I'm an awful human.

🌊✨ Adventure / Mystery / Hurt + Comfort / Shipping threads 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Honestly? Any of these are my jams. Give us something to discover on an adventure! Solve a mystery that might be affecting one or both of our characters with dire stakes. Let us have our characters grieve together for whatever might be affecting them. And, of course, my mushy gushy favorite of softer romance between our muses. Gentle touches, kisses, whispers and holding each other got me on the edge of my seat a lot of the times.

🌊✨ Any AU's that we plot together 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

I've talked a lot about collabing here, but lets get down to the bigger stuff. You, me, and the world we craft TOGETHER to make something truly special. Not just something I've put together on my own and inviting you, I want just as much ideas from ya'll too! I want to make it unique to us in the sense that there isn't anything like it with anyone else. You're just as excited as I am about it, something we can be proud of. I'll admit that this makes me nervous (as I'm terrible and take the steering wheel A LOT) but... Know that I just want to make something special together. Maybe it's a lot to ask, maybe it isn't, but I want to make our AU fun and exciting. Any genre, any setting, doesn't matter. Bonus points for shipping, but that's me being selfish.

[nyxofdemons]

OHHHHKAY I FINALLY WATCHED THE FIRST EPISODE OF HAZBIN ON YOUTUBE AND . HM. HM. MANY MANY THOUGHTS HEAD FULL

okay okay. please dont hate me. i was underwhelmed

LISTEN I CAN EXPLAIN. the first thing that stuck out to me was the,,,, dialogue? in some scenes its GREAT but initially i was sort of jarred by it, i feel like it's going wayyy too hard on the exposition at the cost of immersion. it just feels noticeably clunky in scenes

the SECOND thing, i both LOVE and dislike the music. i love like 65% of happy day in hell but vaggie's sudden interjection, plus the sequence where the background changes and charlie is like rolling along with all the random sinners singing felt. aghhhh i don't have a new word a lot of it just feels CLUNKY to me !! help !!!

i DO enjoy the characterization, from the get go a lot of it seems very very clear and tightly written. alastor remains my favorite character and the implications of vaggie making a deal with him have me MAJORLY intrigued i am SO curious about their dynamic in particular .

i. fucking. LOVE. ADAM. OH MY GOD HES GREAT. his speech style his outrageous personality HIS TAKEOVER OF HAPPY DAY IN HELL MADE ME SOOO EXCITED, THAT WAS THE BEST PART OF THE EPISODE TO ME. ive seen criticism of him as 'uhh the writing is so dumb and lazy if the angels behave just like the sinners' but i literally dont give a fuck he is ENTERTAINING (and if i wanted to be serious about it i COULD say something about the juxtaposition between the angels and sinners seemingly having the same brand of humor but being WILDLY different in terms of worldview and philosophy. the angels who are self-obsessed and think theyre the greatest things to ever exist vs the sinners fully embracing themselves as the WORST things to ever exist, and charlie somewhere in the middle. oooooh i just KNOW this is gonna be a whole thing for my brain to chew on)

okay okay im sure theres more i could say but . hhhh. brainworms only. i think my official stance, for right now, is that i am fully optimistic that the rest of the show is gonna be awesome, but, as for right now... i think i actually preferred the youtube pilot to this first episode. i enjoyed the set design more, the character animation more (it feels stiffer in this one?? hazbin pilot and helluva boss both have a way more BOUNCY feel to them, i think, and i just adore it; i felt like it was missing from this one a bit), and most ESPECIALLY the dialogue. i way preferred the dialogue in the pilot than in here.

i DID absolutely love the expectation subversion of adam and lilith, though. that they eagerly wanted to share the gift of free will with humanity, rather than trying to orchestrate a cataclysm on purpose. i really enjoyed that.

(also, my final note: the voice acting is... okay. to me. i feel like some of the voices are sort of forced, and no matter how good he is, i am sorry, but i can NOT reconcile that voice with husk's face and design. it just feels so jarring every time he opens his mouth like my brain is struggling to connect that that's where this voice is coming from. im sorry mr david)

[allunatory]

@bipbopdepmop Hiya! Hope this doesn't scare you but I'm answering this ask on my minecraft-related art blog LOL

Anyways I have been staring at these asks for the past few days I hope you know that you have a special place in my heart tysm

This is so long, so I'll put it under a readmore- I have a lot to say (And spoilers for anyone who hasn't read Dreams From Within The Cage yet!)

THANK YOU SO MUCH THOUGH!!! AAAA- I'm so glad you enjoyed it!!

AND YES YES!! I have so much I can say.... First of all I have to thank random ambient noise soundtracks for carrying me through the entire fic. Without them, I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep focus for long stretches of time without getting distracted by something.

Fun fact: Fic was not titled until it was time to publish LOL- I was so indecisive

I think my original ambition with the fic when I first started was just writing an Apocalypse AU... but at the same I also wanted to write world-hopping. I was inspired by a comic I had read back when I was in the UTMV (Undertale AU) fandom that explored AUs through way of dreams, and I've been wanting to try my own spin on that for a while so this was the perfect opportunity.

Now the plot wasn't actually supposed to go so crazy, that was mainly me getting extreme brainworms over the concept of an inter-dimensional organization stepping in. Originally, it was going to be mainly exploring the grief that comes with being unable to ever see the one person you feel you connect to most. Having to either accept that fact, or find a way to let go. (Definitely way more depressing, i think)

I was so stuck on the plot for a while, how to wrap it up with everything I'd planned. For a while, I was originally planning to have Grian be the one interrogated, in which he would then hide things from Scar to keep him safe, even going so far as to say they should never talk again. And then the real reason would be revealed when GIGA stepped in.

The way that was set up though, it basically meant all the cool stuff was happening where the readers couldn't see it. So after a long conversation with my good friend @/boxofwasps, I had a stunning revelation on how to swap it around- which is where the fic stands today. I think I remember literally stopping in my tracks and going "Wait. I know how to fix this. I know what I need to do." and Sprinting for my doc to write it down. Imagine me with a cork board and a bunch of red string- that was me putting this fic together

Another fun thing was that, I had so much fun writing the apocalypse world in chapter 1 that I partially wanted to just keep writing that instead of moving on with the plot LOL. I think if I had more time I definitely would have fleshed out some of the AUs they were in, as well as Scar's travels in the waking world and his own lingering trauma

Another fun fact? Me and @/cuteiemonster actually have a whole alternate timeline tree exploring the various ways the plot could have differed if things were just ever so slightly different. There's three main ones, though. Dreams (canon timeline), Nightmares (scar's awful no-good very bad day), and Delusions (grian's awful no-good very bad day) with varying degrees of angst. Please talk to me about them, because I'll likely never write anything about them but I have so many notes.

OKAY AND NOW TO ANSWER THE SECOND PART OF YOUR QUESTION!!!

I'm guessing you're asking about the cage from the hanging cages chapter? I love that scene so much btw there's so much symbolism there.

Every one of the main characters in the fic is stuck in their own cage, in a different way. I think in that chapter in particular, the cages themselves represented the fact that Scar and Grian were both trapped in separate universes. Leaving the cage wasn't an option, there. All they could do was reach across the gap and try to make do that way. Scar fiddling with the bolts of his cage is a show of his motivations and ambitions to escape the confines of his universe to get to Grian, far before he even says it aloud.

Grian stays in his cage because to him, there is no other way out. He's weighed the options, seen the dangers- and even the smallest movements out of line cause the cage to sway. It's just not worth it to try anything different, even if it means being trapped for an eternity...

I AM SO FLATTERED THAT YOU NOT ONLY READ IT BUT RE-READ IT??? HELLO?? I'm sobbing

I am so so so excited to write more for this series, I'm not going to lie. I've been writing notes and gathering ideas for what exactly I want to focus on for a potential sequel. Thanks to help from @/cuteiemonster I have a lot of headcanons for their roommate (yes, roommate) behavior. As well as what they're up to post-fic!

I will say, there is a chance there will be something I put out before the sequel fic- depending on where my motivations lie. I've been thinking about writing the story of Scar's family, and what happened to them. After all, Scar wasn't always alone out there, in the wastelands... Ooh, just thinking about it just makes me excited

The main reason I haven't immediately jumped to write more already is mainly due to school taking up a lot of my time atm! Not to mention I've been getting into a new minecraft server I've been playing in (if you see the art I've been posting to this account LOL), which is basically just every trope I'm obsessed with (Multiversal Purgatory...)

AND!!!! INSPIRATIONS AND STUFF! The anomaly was originally going to be a Creature of uknown origins, but I felt it would be more fun to make it someone with a name and face. Mumbo was a character I've been really interested in writing, so it was a bit of a no-brainer when it came to picking him. Though, it did change things slightly, because the anomaly was originally going to be an irredeemable villain character. But the more I wrote about Mumbo, the more I was like "dude this guy is too wet of a cat to be a villain on purpose" so instead we ended up with the Mumbo in the fic, who's just ever so slightly too casual about world corruption (against his will)

As for universes? I'm going to be honest, pretty much all of the universes in this fic were pretty much straight from my own noggin. I just wrote whatever felt right! There was that Pirate AU with renchanting and navy captain Grian, the Graveyard AU with a groundskeeper Scar and vampire Grian, the Superhero AU with Hotguy and the unnamed villain Grian (who's either named Xelqua or Poultry Man lets be real). A lot of the universes I wrote in-depth about were universes that I would love to write standalone fics of, so this fic itself was partially a collage of various ideas that I may or may not ever write about.

MAN I wrote way more than I was expecting. Tbh I could've written more but I don't want to keep you for TOO long LOL! If you want to talk more about it I'm so chill to chat on discord or through tumblr messaging (im crazy)

Ok one more thing

This snippet from chapter 1 is Lizzie from Empires season 2 okay goodbye

[sowthetide]

heyyyyyy *saunters saucily into your ask box* congratulations! you have written a character so appealing that i cant stop thinking about her! and considering shes an alternate version of an already fictional character, i literally have no one else to bother about the brainworms she gives me. so, youre stuck with me. (side note if you do get sick of my endless asks just say the word and i will limit myself to like. two per chapter. probably. i can be normal i promise) ANYWAY i was listening to incredible amazing bigbrained theon playlist this morning and foreigners god by hozier came upand. the way i see it, in asoiaf canon theons one of the characters with the most interesting relationship with religion. he has the conflicting background, and doesnt really seem to connect with either. which isnt bad, not every character needs tk be spiritual, yet he is also some sort of mesiah figure??? like he has visions and talks to the weirwoods and has SO MUCH religious imagery like im not gonna get into it all but dude literally got crucified?? at a stake??? shit idk man. i like it. i like the part where he swears by the seven WHILE AT THE ISLANDS BEFORE HIS DEATH BAPTISM CEREMONY bbg theyre not pagans. but but but back to quenn- i feel like this is more emphasized in her story? maybe thats just me being delusional but (she lights insence in the sept after cat leaves hahahha im normal about this i swear) shes been abandoned by ALL the gods but still prays??? and for what??? stability???? hope?????? shes can seem like such a pessimist at time, a down to earth realist at best, but SHE STILL PRAYS. to what god???? im not very eloquent with words but you should listen to foreigners god the end byeeerer

-TeaInABowl

Why, hello again ;-) You're so nice to me 🥺 I really appreciate it cause I've been dealing with some Family Issues lately ❤️

Also, you do not have to tell ME about the pain of Quen brainworms!!! Thank god I have goddcoward, Ashen_Onion, and, of course, Y'ALL to scream with about Quen with, because otherwise I'd have probably lost my mind by now. Never worry about being normal because I've spent the last year being increasingly Unnormal about Quen, with extensive daydreaming about all of the Saw traps I have/will put her in.

You've reminded me to update my Quen playlist (the link is around here... somewhere...), but I also reallyyyy need to finish my Theon playlist too... eventually...

But back on topic! Yes, Theon's relationship with religion is such an interesting part of his character, and it's something that really drew me to him while reading (as someone with a complicated/agnostic outlook on religion). He has an unusually strong connection with the North's old gods, which is especially apparent in his ADWD chapters (which are some of GRRM's best-ever chapters, I will die on this hill), and I can't wait to see how that (hopefully) intersects with Bran's journey in TWOW.

I took this aspect of Theon's character and ran with it for Quen, as she has a lot of exposure to all three of the main religions in Westeros: the Drowned God during her childhood on the Iron Islands, and the old gods + the Seven during her time with the Starks. Quen has a closer relationship with the Seven in particular, due to her closer relationship with Catelyn/Sansa/Arya/Septa Mordane (by nature of being female in this 'verse), but she oscillates between all three when the occasion calls for it.

What is she praying for? Does she even believe in any of these gods? Who knows! Quen certainly doesn't. But she'll pray to the gods of the people she loves, so their gods might protect them. Also, as my dad would put it: "there are no atheists in foxholes". This is to say, Quen will cling to whatever gods get her the hell outta this clusterfuck in one piece. And, unfortunately, she finds herself in an inordinate amount of clusterfucks. She's clusterfucks Georg, really.

"Foreigner's God" is Thee Theon song fr. We all listened to it and collectively went THEON 🫵 If anyone has any other Theon song recs, I am always open to suggestions... 👀