#especially for people who always try to use logic and reason on the heart

[thankskenpenders]

Amy's fortune cards

The Sonic fandom has long been the kind of fandom that takes minor details very seriously, for better or worse. On the one hand, this means fans will really dig for the diamonds in the rough, latching onto fun character interactions, animations, bits of background worldbuilding, and more in pieces of Sonic media that many would write off as "the bad ones." But it also feels like every week another needlessly hostile debate over Sonic minutia erupts on Twitter, whether it's over individual lines of dialogue, fanart that makes Tails' shoes blue, or the ideal length and volume for Sonic's quills.

So it was probably inevitable that a fandom-wide debate would erupt upon seeing Amy's new gameplay style in the DLC for Sonic Frontiers, which takes the once-obscure fact that she enjoys reading tarot and shines a spotlight on it like never before.

I mean:

The thing is, while I basically always try to tune out Sonic fandom bickering... for once, I kind of sympathize with the detractors? Don't get me wrong, I like Amy's tarot stuff, and people on all sides of the discussion are being overly nasty about their opinions, as usual. (Sonic Twitter remains my personal hell.) But when I set aside the hyperbole and zoom out, I do think I understand why some fans are put off by the sudden shift in focus for the character, even if I think it's cool.

It's complicated. Let me attempt to present the cases for and against Amy's fortune cards

For years, I was always one of those fans who thought it could be fun if they played with Amy's tarot reading, or even leaned into some kind of magic with her. Part of that is my own biases showing, but there's just something that makes sense there, especially when you look at Sonic, Tails, and Amy as a trio. (I would argue that's the real "Team Sonic" these days, especially in the comics where Knuckles is more likely to be stuck on Angel Island or otherwise doing his own thing.)

You could argue that Tails is all about logic, relying on science and technology and deductive reasoning to solve problems. But Amy is all about emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is extremely empathetic, and is very prone to magical thinking - both figuratively and sometimes literally. Her origin story has always been that her tarot cards told her it was her destiny to meet Sonic on Little Planet. She's claimed to be able to "sense" peoples' presences - particularly Sonic's. She's the type to believe that The Power of Love is a literal magical force. So, on some level, it makes sense to mirror Tails's science by having Sonic's other best friend believe in magic. And then Sonic is somewhere in the middle, primarily following his own gut instincts but taking advice from both of them as needed. This isn't totally accurate to how their dynamics actually function in canon stories, but I think it's a mode that could work for them.

Going off of that, it's fun to lean all the way into Amy being a magical girl, or even a witch, using her fortune telling as a foundation. Take, for example, this version of Amy from Diana Skelly's old Sonic cast redesigns from before she freelanced for Archie and IDW. This is one of MANY such redesigns for Amy.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and Amy's tarot cards are, in fact, finally getting brought up again in canon. Which is fun! I like seeing that. I like all of the individual stories involving Amy's fortune cards. This is a fun character trait for Amy, a fun nod to old lore, AND a fun storytelling device, all in one. It's really cool that the Sonic universe has its own thematically appropriate arcana, and that the cards are getting made as physical merch. And sure enough, the official card backs and borders were designed by none other than Diana Skelly, in yet another cool example of an ascendant fan leaving their mark on the series.

BUT... when you step back and look at the big picture, I get why some fans find this shift in focus jarring. At the moment, it's starting to feel like every new story about Amy involves her fortune cards to some degree.

The most recent mainline comic arc to feature Amy as the lead character, 2021's Trial by Fire arc, prominently features a sequence where she reads fortunes while camping with the girls. The Origins version of Sonic CD now bookends the game with scenes of Amy and her tarot cards. Sonic randomly mentioned it in a scene in Frontiers. And now, just this week, we got the (very cute, gorgeously illustrated) Amy's 30th Anniversary comic with a story revolving around Amy's tarot cards, followed the very next day by the Frontiers DLC in which she gets a brand new tarot-based moveset. Even her base melee attack now has her throwing tarot cards instead of swinging her hammer. Again, I like all of these individual things, but after years of it almost never coming up at all, it's VERY noticeable that Amy's tarot cards are suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a superfan who's actively following ALL Sonic media. Casual fans - especially kids - aren't necessarily going to be reading the comics every month, buying the thousandth rerelease of the Genesis games, or playing the ultra-hard new alternate ending DLC for a game that came out last year. Each of these stories is going to be someone's introduction to the idea that Amy can read tarot, and that's probably part of the idea behind this unified push.

But to play devil's advocate, for my fellow superfans, I understand why it feels like a very minor footnote of Amy's character is suddenly becoming the entire focus of her personality. While Amy has always been said to enjoy fortune telling, that wasn't really a character trait in and of itself, but rather an example of her being a typical girl who hopes she'll be able to find true love one day. It's less that Amy can literally predict the future and more like her using a cootie catcher or going "he loves me, he loves me not" while picking the petals off of a flower. So I get not vibing with this stuff, or feeling like it's being pushed very hard out of nowhere.

What I don't agree with are comparisons like "it's like if they made Knuckles' moveset revolve around him liking grapes." Like, I get it. Ian Flynn loves shoehorning in his little winking references for us nerds, and mentions of Amy's tarot cards were previously on the same level as other random bullet points from old Japanese manuals. But a multifaceted hobby like fortune telling that opens up so many narrative and aesthetic possibilities is obviously very different from having a favorite food. It's ALWAYS been a part of her story, not just a random fact, and there's no reason why the fortune telling can't be elevated to something more.

And, hell, even if it wasn't an established character trait, there's nothing inherently wrong with injecting new ideas into a character. One of the best Amy stories in recent years, the Free Comic Book Day special "Amy's New Hobby" written by Gale Galligan, came up with the idea that Amy's secretly been drawing little comics about her and her friends. Is this based on Lore? No. But it's cute, and helps tell the story of a younger Amy who's still coming out of her shell as both a hero and a friend.

Certain fans are also looking at Amy's Frontiers moveset and using it as evidence that once again the Vile American Contributors like Ian are CORRUPTING Sonic Team's perfect vision of Sonic with their misinterpretations. And like. Come on. Ian does not control the gameplay. He's a freelance writer. The tarot stuff is clearly something that Sonic Team likes if they made it the basis of Amy's new moveset - and, you know, if they keep approving comics and animations about Amy's fortune telling. None of this gets made without their blessing, and lord knows how much they can micromanage shit and shoot down ideas over the most minor of details.

Like, yeah, Amy's fortune telling was probably conceived less as a sign that she Knows Magic and more as a pretty mundane hobby for a lovesick young Japanese girl to have. But you're gonna sit there and tell me that using Amy's tarot cards for more than that could only be the result of a cultural misunderstanding? That nobody in Japan uses tarot card theming and aesthetics (or the general idea of magical cards) for the cool factor? Stardust Crusaders? Persona? The Astrologian class in FFXIV? Cardcaptor Sakura?? Hello??? Do you think Capcom put Gambit in Marvel vs. Capcom ironically because they thought using magic to throw cards at people was stupid? There's tons of precedent for this! It's nothing like Knuckles throwing grapes at people, be for real.

Giving Amy a very magical girl-esque moveset also just makes a lot of sense. For decades her hammer attacks have literally made sparkly heart shapes appear around her. Leaning into both that and her tarot cards in her new moveset makes a lot of sense to me.

But, admittedly... I do think it's very odd that her hammer is treated as a secondary element here, rather than having her primarily use her hammer and adding the cards for extra flair. If hitting the attack button made her swing her hammer instead of throwing cards, I'm not sure we'd even be having this discussion right now.

But the tarot-cycle and Amy riding her hammer like a witch's broom are fucking SICK and I will not concede on this point

The thing is, this whole fortune card discourse is but a small piece of a bigger problem. Amy's been a character who needed some work for ages, but there's basically nothing you can do with her without pissing SOMEONE off.

Years of stories where Amy's crush was her primary motivator and Sonic went "Ew, cooties!" have lead many casual fans to believe that being Sonic's obsessive fangirl is Amy's entire personality. At best people might call her Sonic's Minnie Mouse. This isn't just a matter of Amy having haters within the fandom - venture outside of that bubble and you'll realize that this is how MOST video game playing people seem to see her to this day. I don't feel like this is a fair assessment of the character, but this idea didn't come from nowhere. No matter how much good deeply entrenched Sonic fans may see in their old dynamic where Amy perpetually chases Sonic, this is a very real problem that Sonic Team has to contend with for their leading girl. Of course all those games where the way-past-cool protagonist thought Amy was annoyingly clingy and tried to get away from her made people think less of her.

If new stories were to go back to emphasizing Amy's crush on Sonic a little more, they'd probably be taken as confirmation that Amy's just the girl with a crush on Sonic and that this is her entire personality. Conversely, when the crush is played down, you piss off the hardcore SonAmy fans who don't seem to understand that they're Charlie Brown and Sega is Lucy holding the football. You can't win.

And so here we are. In the absence of what was once her defining trait, now reduced to an occasional blush or wink in Sonic's direction, new stories are trying to mine Amy's past for additional material to work with. Having been a thing fans wanted to see for years, right now we're getting a lot of tarot, but we're also getting reminders of her compassionate nature and her desire to go out of her way to help the little guy. This is an ongoing process. I continue to hope that her bubbly, exuberant demeanor can shine more in future stories. Now, I also hope that the tarot stuff gets balanced out a little better with other traits of hers. But I don't want it to go away. I think it's fun.

This course correcting is far from exclusive to Amy. Knuckles is getting stories that remind us that he's a competent fighter, an experienced treasure hunter, and even a self-taught archaeologist after years of him being perceived as either the dumb one or just the guy who stands in front of the Master Emerald all day. And Tails has been getting some stories reminding folks that he's a capable hero in his own right and not just Sonic's timid kid sidekick.

But no supporting character will ever compete with the sheer number of new ideas Sega has tried with Sonic himself. Like Amy, his Frontiers moveset has also given him half a dozen new superpowers that he never had before, from the Cyloop to air-slicing projectile attacks to his own take on Shadow Clone Jutsu and beyond. He's also been a hoverboarder, a swordsman, a time traveler, an Olympic athlete, a racecar driver, cursed with a Flame of Judgment, imbued with alien power, a fucking Werehog with stretchy powers, and on and on and on.

If Sonic can do all that, Amy can try out using a tarot-cycle.

Anyway TL;DR the REAL problem with Amy's current characterization... is where the FUCK is Amy's bestie, Honey the Cat???????

[iamsherlocked-1998]

𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝

Summary: Only memories saved in.

Words: 1000.

Din Djarin x GN! Reader: Just something Sweet. Maybe some moral dilemma.

✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧*｡✧｡✧*｡✧

It was a hot day, spring weather was sliding inexorably towards summer, light filtered through the window, filling the room. Your duties at the Nevarro library had ended and you were unfortunately picking up Karga's dispatch after the Magistrate had recently passed away.

Grogu was in the other room playing with his friend IG-11, who had followed you inside after round against crime in the city. Then the sound of the boy's laughter filled the air.

You approached full of curiosity only to see how the droid was playing a scene like a holovid format, but instead of being a movie it looked like a recording, in which you could see the boy attached to his mechanical protector while itself shot at enemies. They had to be memories from before you met Mando.

-When is this from? It seems like a difficult situation (you asked with a remarkable question mark).

-The imperials attacked, my task as guardian droid was to protect the child.

The metallic voice filled the room, it was a predictable response, but the playback function was unknown to you.

-I didn't know that everything you saw was recorded, especially after…

You were going to say after being destroyed among lava as The Mandalorian told you, but it seemed unnecessary.

-It is the duty of a good guardian to pay attention to everything around. It also helped to know the extent of the Mandalorian's injuries in medical care.

-Di… Did Mando get hurt?

You had always been aware of the danger that the clan of two faced, especially when they first met and following months, but you did not know that the physical damage would have been of sufficient magnitude to be urgently assisted by a medical droid, nor that Djarin would lend himself to it...

-Yes, after the explosion the bacta was essential for his recovery, also the lack of presence of any living being in the reconnaissance.

That last one made your eyebrows rise to your hairline. The only time the hunter used those words was when he explained the importance for his creed of the… the only possible answer is that he took off his helmet in front of the droid.

-Do you have images of Mando without the helmet?

-Again, it was essential for his survival, I believed that it was well known in beings of your condition that to deal with possible concussion is necessary to access the nervous system in the back of the head.

You rolled your eyes at the attempt at sarcasm.

-Do you want me to play the images for any particular reason?

Your heart stopped dead at the mere mention of it.

-I can't do that, it would be against Mando's privacy… his creed forbids it and is very important to him.

-According to the Mandalorian creed in its literal sense, his members cannot remove their helmet or be seen by others, but he is not even present since it is a projection, it's not real.

Your lips parted, trying to refute that logic was extremely complicated. But it still felt like a betrayal. You and Din had known each other for months and shared almost everything that was possible between two people, but the helmet was always present, without a doubt everything worked very well.

You always had a bitter feeling in your throat as to whether he would really have that last act of trust with you later or things stay the same. Not that it was essential, he was too important to you and his personality meant everything, it was still tempting to use this as a last resort and not let anyone know.

-Play the images...please (you let out a slight resigned sigh).

At that moment the mechanism was set in motion. You saw how Mando was lying on the ground and a metal arm accessed the beskar dome to detach it. What you glimpsed was the last thing expected.

The most expressive brown eyes you had ever seen greeted you, anguish and pain were visible in the grimace of his face and was covered in blood. The state he was in broke your heart, but you smiled sadly. Despite everything, of course Din was beautiful.

He was a few years older than you, but he showed a vulnerability that made him look younger, despite all his experiences, an unusual innocence was observed. His unkempt hair curled at the edges of it, as if he had let it grow longer than it should, he had a faint trace of stubble and a small scar on the bridge of his nose. All of this was finished off by luxurious lips.

You heard how Din in the video mentioned something about his brain and the droid responded with a bad joke, making the man raise his eyebrow, but you couldn't process much more of the conversation as you were focused on the speaker of the words. It was incredible how all his thoughts were reflected without a filter to the outside by his expressions.

You hadn't realized but Grogu was next to you, watching with curiosity and his head tilted at the video of his father, a small soft squeal reached your ears. Suddenly the recording stopped.

-Do you already have the information you requested?

You nodded distractedly at IG-11's voice, which brought you out of your reverie.

-Yes, thank you, but no one can know this.

-You are an authorized person. Who and how the records are accessed is confidential.

________________

The three of you walked calmly through the city towards the small cabin, Din's mission was over and at the end of the day he picked you up to go home.

You were lost in thought as the little green one slept in your arms, you couldn't stop thinking about what you saw, looking at your partner in amazement. Of course the hunter noticed, your gaze was so insistent and intense that it burned him.

-Something wrong? (You noticed the slight amusement in his words, oblivious to the events of the day).

-Nothing, just...I'm glad to spend time together, with you.

Din ascend firmly but gently.

-If you want we can put those shows that Grogu likes so much, so you can rest.

-I would like that.

You said with a wide smile as the Mandalorian held your hand.

[swamp-spirit]

Not a doctor, but trying to use my experience as a long term Anxiety Disorder Haver to figure out what could have happened to Jason in Gotham War. Listen, I know comic book science is made up, but let me have my 'fun'.

This is also a lot about how trauma and anxiety chemically works and Jason and Trauma in general.

(Discussing my own anxiety disorder a lot here, so don't click if that might be upsetting. Also please minimize the Bruce discourse here. I wanna talk about Jason.)

EDITS because I wrote this in a fugue state and replaced all words with homonyms

So there's two main elements to anxiety. There's the emotional element, the kind you can deal with in therapy, and the physical element, the kind you can deal with via medication.

I related a lot to Jason in Gotham War, because I have very physical anxiety. Even when I can calmly reason through a situation, my nervous system is very physically reactive to the point where I'll be holding a conversation and cracking jokes while seizing. Unmedicated, like Jason, I couldn't do light exercise without triggering a panic attack.

What Jason seems to be experiencing is an issue with his nervous system. To massively oversimplify, because I'm not a doctor, let's say the sympathetic nervous system is the gas, the parasympathetic system is the brakes, and triggers are the foot that decides when to push the pedals down.

When you're in a situation where you need to be amped up, your body hits the gas. You get adrenaline, faster heart rate, fight or flight, but this state isn't sustainable. First, it's very resource intensive. Second, it's a state designed to Do Something, and is very emotionally stressful if there's nothing to Do. This is why people with anxiety disorders can often function in actual danger, because that's what those reactions are designed for.

PTSD is pretty much 'your body hits the gas because your brain has misidentified a safe situation as a dangerous one due to previous experience'. Jason pretty consistently shows signs of PTSD, which makes sense. He has pretty much never been in a safe situation. Even before he was a vigilante and brutally murdered, being homeless, especially as a kid, requires constant vigilance. Most people of any age develop a level of PTSD after living homeless. Witnessing the death of a parent, (depending on the canon) growing up in an abusive home, and being homeless again while brain damaged and vulnerable could all cause PTSD on their own.

We see Jason be triggered a number of times. We also see him trying to self sooth and manage, to 'hit the brakes'. The 'breath deep' on his door in the new Boy Wonder, his stack of books on trauma and chronic pain management in Three Jokers, ect.

So Jason's already got his foot on the mental pedal. He's already scared, and for good reason. His world has always, always been violent. His behavior in Gotham War looks a lot less like ZEA!Bruce turned up the engine and a lot more like he cut the brakes.

As somebody who's experienced the 'lightly jog, and you have a panic attack', it's pretty much a failure of the parasympathetic side of things. You want some adrenaline for a light run. You need to take in more oxygen, but, when your nervous system isn't regulating, it goes out of control. It keeps amping up until you're breathing so fast that you aren't actually processing the oxygen you're taking in. These heightened states are rough on your whole body. When your body is running danger mode, it's not supporting things like sleep, digestion, and wound-healing.

What makes this more horrifying is ZEA!Bruce seemed to feel this would be permanent, even if Jason tried to reverse it, which means it wasn't just an injection the system would flush. To me, the most logical conclusion would be that the injection would have done permanent damage to the parts of his brain that kick in the parasympathetic nervous system.

This also... wouldn't keep him from killing. Jason is usually a calm killer, not a passion killer. Physical excitement is what the body is supposed to do in violent situations. It's much more likely to cause a panic attack in a safe situation where there's no physical outlet. He can take a shot without nervous system excitement. It would keep him from, or at least interfere with things like: -Jogging -Having sex -Watching emotionally intense media -Handling triggers Like, he definitely wouldn't be able to operate as Red Hood because RH does intel work, extended battles, etc, but he could very much kill.

SSRI's probably would not be that helpful, a serotonin tends to help more with stopping anxiety at the 'thought spiral' part than dealing with the nervous system. SNRI's and beta blockers would be a better bet, though Bruce clearly didn't think those would be enough to let him operate at Red Hood.

So... how is he better? Well, the actual answer is 'comic are bullshit', but let's try and roll with it. The given reason is Joker Gas, which is odd because Joker Gas seems to function like... a neurotoxin? A stimulant? My best guess would be that dying or brain damage in general is kicking in some sort of residual Lazarus healing factor and repairing the physical structure that controls the parasympathetic system.

[lotusarchon]

I've been thinking a lot about this but what about MK and a s/o who is a spider demon? Perhaps directly related to the Spider Queen? How would that work out and how would they even get together? IMSORRYITMIGHTBEDIFFICULTORIMPOSSIBLEBUTTHETHOUGHTHASNTLEFTMYHEADAAAAA

Okay, this didn't end up being more fic-ly like my other fics, forgive me Nonnie, but the moment I saw it I just went, "Hey, wait a minute, how would this work?" And now I'm here hahaha. This got a bit into the analysis side, so uhhhh, yeah sorry 😭😭 I just reallyyyy like doing these kinds of things gah

🤔 I'm not sure if a relationship with him would work immediately if he's aware you're a spider demon on first meeting. Not to say that isn't impossible―MK the Monkie Kid will love anything if it feeds him. I know, I fed him and he loves me (this is a joke for legal reasons). It's just that his paranoia/fear of spiders overshadows any logic or reason, so a first meeting is him fleeing for his life. If you have an appearance like the Spider Queen he's just running around shrieking while you stand there watching him. If it's not as spidery he might give you a chance. Might, who knows if he doesn't freak out and faint again.

Of course though, as always I think it really just depends on the situation. If in the instance you're not a villain and you genuinely wish to help, then as scared as MK will be, he is NOT going to hate you, not MK. Have you seen how he pleaded with Spider Queen coming to the finale of S2, warning her about LBD?? He's not some heartless prick much less judgemental―he knows if you really want to change and do good, you're someone to change. Yeah, he'll be a bit scared still especially if you have more spider traits, but I genuinely think he'll warm up to you bit by bit till, and if you spend enough time with him, he forgets you're a spider demon. You're a friend now.

Like I said, it really does genuinely depend on the scenarios. Don't anticipate love at first sight―not unless you find MK fainting and his pathetic wet cat energy attractive 😭.

I think it could work out though, with a relationship. MK's not some judgemental prick. I know a lot of people might think, "Oh, but he's afraid of spiders!" but that doesn't overshadow his kindness. He would genuinely fall in love with you regardless of what you looked like, so long as you have a good heart. Hell, I don't think you even need to be a good guy. If MK runs into you enough times and you show the single ounce of kindness, if not to him then to someone else, he really thinks you'll be capable of change. If you're lucky, he would even tell you that he doesn't find Spider Queen so bad if she'd just stop trying to make everyone spider zombies.

Bringing us to the other scenario: being directly related to the Spider Queen. Honestly I think that matters little to him at this point with the points I mentioned above. I think the one difference if he finds out you're directly, directly related to Spider Queen is to faint on the spot and consider how the fuck he's gonna get her to not kill him :<

These are just if he's aware from the beginning you're a spider demon. If per chance you wear a glamor and befriend him and he finds out you're really a spider demon, much less some relative to Spider Queen, I can imagine different scenarios going down:

1) Were you pretending to be his friend to hurt him for your family? If so, expect him to be heartbroken as fuck. It'll take a while for you to regain his trust but if you do mean it, he'll forgive you. Just don't do it again.

2) Accidental? Oh, okay. That's cool. Do you plan on eating him? No? Okay....so what are you doing standing all the way there?? Get back here, he needs to snuggle and he can't snuggle when your ass is all the way there. Huh? Yeah yeah, it's creepy but you're not so bad. It's cute. Just don't eat him. Please.

A relationship with him though isn't impossible. Regardless of the scenario, everything falls under 2 things;

1) Are you capable of showing empathy and kindness?

2) Do you truly feel the same way about him?

If the answer to both of these are yes, then yes, regardless if you're a spider demon, a relationship is possible. Looks really don't matter to someone like MK. Hell, not even your shitty personality.

The only problems you'd have with MK when a relationship works out with him is Spider Queen because I know damn well she's gonna terrorize MK so bad.

"I'm gonna make you swallow spiders in your sleep try any shit with me boy, see if I'm playing 👁️👁️."

"Y-yes Ma'am, I'm sorry Ma'am. Please don't kill me Ma'am."

Overprotective mother Spider Queen my beloved 🫶

Edit: A lot of people will argue; "MK's scared of spiders, why would he date one?"

1) Spiders. Not spider DEMONS who have sentience and can act, speak and think like a human being, and looks human-ish too. He can give them a chance.

2) MK's not some heartless bastard. To the finale of S2, he genuinely tries to plead with Spider Queen about LBD. If he didn't care, he wouldn't have bothered reasoning with her. Spider Queen might've had a change of heart a tad bit too late but you can see that MK's words really did have some affect on her for to willingly risk herself FOR the kid she's trying to kill. She could've damn well fled for her life and left MK there, and MK could've simply fled and not said shit. I really can't see MK being a judgemental ass, I really can't. It just wouldn't be in his character, especially if it's before the events of s4/5.

Notes: I love doing analysis of shit like this, it's super fun, but to certain koala-brains, please understand this isn't me thinking I know everything. This seriously is just my opinion + how I IMAGINE LMK MK would react and be towards an s/o who's a spider demon. My word isn't law, and I understand there are others who will think differently. This is just how I interpreted MK based on the countless times I've watched the show. If you believe MK would act differently, good for you.

[justanotherfanwriter]

Damian shouldn't be a Robin *for* Batman, as in Batman "needs" a Robin. Instead, he should be a Robin for the Robins. His storyline should be so intertwined with Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephaine, and Duke because it'd be so thematically perfect if the biological son of Batman rejects Batman for his past mentees, not out of malice, but because the concept of Robin becomes more meaningful to him than the Cowl. As he grows, he understands how Batman's past actions affected Batman's past Robins, and now *they* need a Robin more than Bruce does. Instead of these five kids taking care of a Wayne, a Wayne takes care of them. (His relationship with Duke would be hilarious because he's the "new" guy, so Damian's particularly worried about him). Except you can't take the Robin out of any of these kids, so while Damian attempts to take care of them, they all take care of him back. And it obviously wouldn't be easy because Damian's still Damian and hard to work with, but he is also 50% Bruce Wayne, and Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephaine, and Duke are especially equipped to deal with a Wayne.

Instead of DC plowing over Bruce's mistakes and now relabeling him as a "he's always been a good dad, lol, duh," Damian becomes the positive glue between the past iterations of Robin, making a lasting reconciliation between, for example, Dick and Jason more effective. Like, yeah, Bruce and his morals may be a point of contention between them, but there's Damian now, and they both can use that as a bridge to reach each other. Continuing with Jason as an example, having a positive relationship with Damian would mean he has a reason to talk to Stephaine and, by extension, Cass, who realistically would have a serious issue with Jason's morals/ethics. Damian's actions would create positive bridges for the immediate "Robin" network and other Gotham vigilantes.

I know these connections already exist because of Batman. Still, while Batman's past actions would logically estrange these kids from each other (despite the push now that they've always been a silly dysfunctional family), Damian's actions give them a reason to come together.

I recognize that this is a pretty anti-batman idea, but canonically, it feels like the gritter DC makes Batman, the less sense it makes for DC to duck-tape a bunch of his past mentees together and call them a family?? If they want to do that, using the one Robin who doesn't *need* Batman to protect him and canonically has more free-range than the past iterations of Robin did to choose his adopted family over the cowl would be an impactful story and highlight how far Bruce has fallen from a person who wants to keep people safe to "I AM VENGENCE."

If you want this family to work, the child assassin relearning to be a good human must be more effectively utilized. Making him a "Robin" in his own right shouldn't make him independent of Batman, but instead, have him choose to pick up the pieces Bruce let fall. It's about preserving the family honor, which would be important to Damian. Watching a child try so desperately to fix a broken family would 100% reach the hearts of all these weird little vigilante orphans running around Gotham and force them to be who they wanted Bruce Wayne to be for them at Damian's age (irrespective of the fact some of them didn't know Bruce at Damian's age, lol).

And I know DC can do this because they started to do it with Dick. Damian's story should pick right back up after Dick returns the cowl to Bruce. After Dick leaves and Damian has a few days with Bruce, he's forced to step back and go, "WTF, why did I want to be like this guy" because COME ON, going from Dick Grayson (whose character is paranoid/intense like Bruce, but strives to be kind instead of angry) to Bruce Wayne as your guardian must be jarring/insane. Like maybe Bruce does something that reminds Damian of himself that he's working on or observes a bad interaction between Bruce and Stephaine (who's Damian's batgirl, and that's famously a significant person for a Robin), and is like, "shit, I can't be like my father. I can't." He works hard to improve, and to do that, he learns to lean on his adopted siblings.

(and this doesn't have to leave Bruce behind. If Damian can help his siblings, he can help Bruce, but maybe in a "why are you having your son apologize for you" way. Like a slap of reality.)

[beanghostprincess]

What are your thoughts on lusopp? (Luffy x Usopp)

i just woke up so if my words are all over the place that's probably why! being productive right here! waking up early! somebody shoot me! fighting the urge to go back to sleep so i can reply to your silly lil awesome questions! i need a coffee.

AND!!! I REALLY LIKE THE SHIP!!! (just saw you're on impel down so i won't spoil anything!)

i mean, it's not my favorite ship and i'm not crazy about it like, idk, my fiancé is crazy about them (but again, she's crazy about zosan and lawlu and i'm not so we have to deal with each other's bullshit all the time). but i find their relationship really, really interesting and complex and cool to explore. i was just writing a fic about them being besties and super clingy, gonna cry. baby boys.

i personally see them more as just best friends, but hey! if there are cute fanarts and content i'm not going to scroll away!! it's a good and cute ship!!! they're bffs almost instantly and usopp's intelligence really disappears when he's with luffy which is, not only hilarious but extremely refreshing to see. let the anxious boy be dumb and reckless!! they're so chaotic!!

not to mention that it's not only their dynamic that makes them good, but the whole water 7/enies lobby thing. i fear that if i talk about this much i might start sobbing. but, like,,, their fight is the first time we see luffy actively cry on screen. we see luffy losing control of his crew, something he used to have control over. we see luffy lost and act impulsively and not knowing what to do because his best friend and sniper is about to go away and his heart fucking breaks into a million little pieces. because luffy sees usopp's potential and he wants him with the crew, but he can't do anything to help if usopp doesn't believe in himself. and also, the merry, which is another thing luffy loses control over and has to act like a logical captain about it but we all know it's heartbreaking for him too. and then there's usopp, who feels inferior and not worthy of being part of this amazing crew. even though he has shown over and over again to be part of this little family. he just feels like he doesn't belong here. and, you know, he says he's angry because of the merry but we all know the fight isn't about that.

so, we all agree that water 7 is very very peak lusopp (and sanuso, but tbf it's just peak usopp in general because he has great scenes with everyone. especially the monster trio, shout out to my boy zoro), and then enies lobby is when they make up and it's beautiful and heartbreaking and the way usopp yells at luffy to stand up and fight makes me want to curl up on the floor and sob for ages and ages and ag-

and i would go into detail about luffy's character but i don't want to spoil anything, so let's just focus on usopp here:

lusopp's dynamic works well both as a friendship and as a ship, mainly because they're both on the same page when it comes to silly shenanigans. we see them actively enjoying being with each other and doing stupid things together and that's just,,, so sweet. but also, usopp is one of those people that have to ground luffy sometimes and tell him "fuck, no. haha. we're so not doing that" because despite acting silly, he's pretty much more logical and rational than luffy is. but, you know, the reason he's like that most of the time is because he's scared of fucking dying (which i understand. i'd be scared too in that crew. i'm glad nami is always agreeing with him with these things), and he has to be the one to stop luffy (try to, at least. never really works) from doing extremely dangerous things. which is both hilarious and actually pretty cute to watch because it shows us how well usopp knows luffy. it's obvious that they're best friends. dude knows what luffy is going to do minutes before luffy even thinks about doing it. and luffy really, really admires and loves usopp's abilities and strengths and brains. all the things usopp is insecure about? luffy loves them!!!

and, you know, it's a good ship because they have that sort of bff energy, but if you make it romantic and angsty and more intimate? that's just better! i feel like their ship is just- those friendships that turn into romantic relationships but their dynamic doesn't really change at the end of the day? and i find that really endearing.

luffy makes usopp see the best in himself and makes him want to improve as a pirate to follow his dream and feel like he belongs in the crew. usopp makes luffy be a bit more grounded to reality whenever he needs to, and he was the first one to make luffy realize that, well, fuck, he's the captain of a ship and he needs to be responsible and make harsh decisions.

but now that they're together again, luffy is sooo not going to let him go ever again. and usopp will never try to do so because he just wants to keep fighting for him!!!

it's such an endearing and funny and angsty ship. i think i just don't really ship them much because i'm more of a sanuso/zolu kind of person. but at this point just make it poly and everybody is happy (except nami bc she has to deal with the 4 of them being in love and that would be extremely tiring. somebody bring back vivi for her PLEASE).

but yeah, cute ship. not my favorite but awesome to explore and tbh one of my favorite friendships in this show. very underrated but that's just bc usopp is underrated af and it makes my blood boil with anger and the fury of hell itself. that's for another day, though!

[buttercup-art]

Hiiii its meeee :] Could you tell us a bit about Noa ? How did she meet Hugo ? I've been thinking about her latelyyyy... Also, does she have a reference sheet of some kind ? For no particular reasonnn (<- planning on drawing her)

AAAAHHH HI FRIEND!!!! <3 I’d love to tell you about her!!

Noa Elizabeth Simmons (She/Her) is a powerhouse in Hyperion, having climbed her way to her position as President of Weapons Development through many forms of deception, manipulation, and overall perfectionism. She's an expert when it comes to all things related to weapons, and is one hell of a shot (her job is more managerial, but she enjoys it when she actually gets to shoot stuff lol). Like many in Hyperion, she’s always looking for ways to reach the top, wanting that control and power for herself. She’s known for being confident and narcissistic, believing she’s better than everyone and being critical of others, especially their intelligence and/or fashion choices. Having been born on Eden-5 was a big cause of that, as she was raised in a very wealthy and influential family who constantly worried about their image and pushed her to be the best. Her parents were often emotionally distant and cold, which caused her to have issues with processing emotions and things of that nature (talking about her feelings makes her uncomfortable). She doesn’t trust people easily, and has a very difficult time getting close to people. Being vulnerable around others makes her uncomfortable, because it feels like they have some sort of power over her. She likes being the one in control. She’s also French, and frequently switches between speaking English and French (or the equivalent of those languages in that world lol).

She's also a very logical thinker, often listening to her brain first instead of her heart. Overthinking is a pretty much a normal process for her; it's only natural to extensively work through things in order to reach a rational conclusion. But when things don't have a clear answer (like love), that's when she gets stuck and ties herself in a metaphorical knot. She's in her head most of the time, and that ends up doing her more harm than good.

And despite her cold exterior and bitterness, she's actually a pretty sensitive and compassionate person, secretly needing companionship (although she always tries to convince herself that she doesn't and/or it's not a good idea). When she does take a liking to someone, she gives them special treatment (giving them gifts, bringing them along with her whenever she has to do business/finding reasons to see them, giving them advice about things, protecting them, etc). She is also a good listener, and will happily listen to someone rant or gossip to her about anything they want. Just as long as she likes that person. She might tell them to "casse-toi" (piss off) if she doesn't know them that well lol

Another thing about her is that she's a lover of the arts, often painting in her free time and visiting art galleries/exhibitions every now and then. She always makes an effort to dress stylishly, even when she's alone, and takes a lot of pride in her appearance. Flowers and tea are also something she really likes (and is VERY particular about the quality of tea she drinks and how it's brewed. She wants it to be done right).

As for how Noa met Hugo, I imagine she'd meet him when he accidentally walks in on her having a meeting with Henderson, wanting to talk with his boss about his (not so) upcoming promotion. When they see each other again later on, when Henderson isn't around, he ends up lying to her about how important he is and what position he has to try to give himself a bit of a social advantage (he thought she was also middle management). However, she knew right off the bat that he wasn't telling the truth at all, because it takes a liar to know a liar. She decided to play along anyway, letting him dig himself deeper and deeper so he would have more trouble trying to get out of those lies. For funsies. And also to sort of manipulate him into killing Henderson for her. And it works out for both of them, in a way. Noa has Henderson dead, and Hugo gets to back up his claims of being Senior Vice President while also catching her attention. Seems like a win-win to her.

And she does have a reference sheet!! I initially designed her to be a sort of antagonistic character and for her to look Hyperion (and she works for them and likes what she does, so yeah, she's a bad guy) She's a snake and I love her for it! <3

[save-the-spiral]

Ouroboros

Content Warnings for child abuse, cycles of abuse, child neglect, manipulation, possession, blood, grief, implied (magical) ableism, implied suicide.

General Maliswap moments. This is not kind to Malistaire or Sylvia. The narrator(s) are not the most reliable sort, you understand, but they aren't pulling it from nothing in this AU.

It's very... ruminating on your shitty childhood kinda thing. I really advise that if you have shit parents and stuff that you take this slow and check in with yourself. It's a long one and a doozy. Ended up just kinda Writing it and not stopping after the first line.

(buy me coffee?) (Maliswap AU Masterpost))

You don't know when you stopped being your mother's child.

There has to have been a tipping point, somewhere between your birth and now. Something you did wrong that evicted you from your place in your mother's heart.

It's a lie you tell yourself, to give undeserved logic to your parents' neglect.

Your father is not innocent in this. But you don't speak ill of the dead. Only think it.

You can't even remember when they truly stopped seeing a child when they looked at you. You've given away so much that your perception of time is warped, without memories to anchor itself to.

It had to have been something you did. Parents don't wake up one day and decide to stop loving their children, you tell yourself.

When you were so very small, the kind of small where you still clung to your uncle's leg as he stomped around, making you giggle madly and cling harder, one of the petnames your parents used was 'little wizard'.

After you woke in your mother's infirmary, after coughing up blood and choking on smoke from casting a firecat under your godmother's instruction, your parents only called you by name.

Weeks later, after the confirmation that you would never cast magic without causing harm to yourself, they never looked you in the eye.

Sometimes you would overhear them talking to each other. Never arguing, they were the kind of couple that never really argued. But they would talk for hours, trying to make sense of what each of them thought, why they thought that way, and how to compromise.

Whenever they spoke of you it was always 'your child' this, 'the child' that. Never even your name. You couldn't even pretend it didn't hurt.

Even in those long conversations, there was no solution to the problem you were. Even if they spoke for hours about magical theory and whatever else, it didn't change that they saw you as a problem to fix instead of the child they birthed and were supposed to raise.

It was when you were becoming a teenager that you started acting out. Door slamming, mug throwing, screaming arguments. You were so angry at the world, at everything, but especially at the two people who dared to act like your existence was your own fault, like they didn't create you and then leave you to rot the moment you weren't what they wanted.

One of the memories you still cling to, one of the few you have left, is the end of a tense family dinner. You can't remember what pushed you to do it, but you had stabbed your steak knife into the kitchen table and stood up, chair falling back with a clatter onto the tile floor.

Your father's face had reverted into the stoic mien he maintained with his students, then quickly morphed to show his resignation, as if he knew you could do nothing but disappoint.

Your mother stared down at her meal, shoulders tense, knuckles white as she gripped her fork and knife.

Fucking look at me, you had screamed. Look me in the fucking eye and tell me you give a damn about my future.

After that you never really went back to living in that house. You were an unwanted guest in your own home. Even though they had given you no reason to, you jumped at every loud noise, at approaching footsteps.

That's the only thing you'll grant them. They never laid a hand on you. Sometimes you wish they had. Then you could've given a name to this. You would've known it was wrong long, long before that psychology class you took in university.

Some part of you misses them still. Or the idea of them. The concept of them.

They could've been such good parents. You know this. You've seen your mother in her infirmary, how deeply she can care for someone she's never met. A kind of genuine love for someone purely because they are a person and deserve it.

Maybe she thinks she loves you, but it's not... it just isn't love. It's something else rebranded, something where she sees the idea of a child she could love, instead of you. She acts like a mother, only because that is what she should do. She doesn't mother you, though. Merely is the adult woman in the house, and you the child. Surely that means she is your mother.

And your father, well he would've never been the traditional idea of a father. Stern, maybe, but not a disciplinarian. He was always awkward, disconnected from emotion because of his own upbringing. Something he could've changed. A cycle he could have broken and yet failed to, not even recognizing his own childhood as bad, let alone seeing the similarities to your own. That kind of realization would have hurt him deeply. He never realized. He never looked at you and saw more than the facts. He knew you weren't the child he wanted. You weren't going to become his protege, nor your mother's.

Both of your parents' lives were just so deeply infused with magic there was little they knew besides that. What could a person do without it? All they had known was magic and academia, and encouraging a child to study what they could never truly know seemed cruel.

Forcing a child to live their life around what they can never have seemed so cruel. Even without a better option, the guilt ate at both of them, and they pushed off conversations with their child, explanations to make sense of their distance.

They fail utterly at being parents. They are good people. They are great professors. But the failure to care for and raise their child forever stains their legacy, and the person who was supposed to be that legacy.

You are little more than a human-shaped husk that carries all of the worst of your parents. Your mother's temper. Your father's disconnection with emotion. You can't look people in the eye and tell them the truth, just like they did to you.

Cycles unbroken, and all that.

You are the sum of their union given form, and the world, the Spiral, is all the worst for it. You are just another catastrophe, little more than a natural disaster given sentience, and even then you played the coward and ran away to a place where your parents' names meant nothing.

You were nothing, there. Not the disappointment, not the professors' child, not even the strange freak who nearly blew up their hand casting simple children's magic. You were just a random young adult in a city that was uncaring, its stars so distant above the towering skyscrapers.

It felt like home, more than that house your father died in ever did.

Anonymity is the only true balm to the raw wound of being so utterly ignored from those who were supposed to love you.

Being no one in a city of unimportant people. Being nothing and only becoming something through your own hard work, that was where you found your passion. It took years, maybe. You can't remember how long you spent in that cityworld. It felt like the best time of your life. It is where the memories you had cherished most had resided.

Before you forfeited them all to me, of course. Now there is precious little of that world you remember. The feeling of stepping in an oily puddle remains. The soft slap of a rogue newspaper hitting you in the face after it had flown on the breeze, causing you to splutter and laugh. The bone deep cold of winter as you shivered alone in your tiny flat, bundled in extra blankets that a friend (you can't remember their face, their name, not anymore.) had taught you how to knit.

I let you keep those memories. They are not happy ones, but at least content. Sometimes I pity you, really, for such simple things to give you such feelings.

Sometimes I resent you for it. Don't worry though, darling. That's merely a result of one of our many trades. Your temper is short, but vast in potential. I gave you so much power in trade for it, and I cherish it, even if at times it turns inwards towards its original owner.

Sometimes I do pause and wonder at the memories you gave to me. I examine every little interaction with your parents and try to find the thing that could've been fixed. Something that you could've done to make them love you.

I'm so sorry dear, but even I, in all my eons of wisdom and expertise, cannot find such a thing.

Their problem was with the fundamental aspects of your being.

You could not handle magic the same way one cannot ingest poison. The nature of it broke down your body. There is no pool of magic inside you to draw from, and so it pulled at your muscles, your bones. It thinned the walls of organs and caused vital processes to stutter and choke on themselves.

This is just who and how you are. It isn't a problem to be fixed. And yet your parents begged to differ, and that is when they lost their only child.

I almost wish I could twist the knife. I almost wish I could tell you that you did something out of selfishness, that somewhere along the way you were a bad child, and deserved it.

Instead I must rub salt into the wound and tell you that there is nothing that you could've done except ruin yourself further, martyr yourself upon the altar of their stubbornness. Bleed out under their feet so they can mourn you and say there was nothing they could have done to fix you.

I don't want to lie to you. If you had died young, casting magic and trying to be what they wanted, they would've loved you. They would've wept at your grave. They would've torn the Spiral asunder for you, remake the universe to ensure you could live still.

You stopped being your mother's child when you listened to their warnings, I suppose. When you didn't slaughter yourself, bleating your last words when you were so young you didn't understand death.

I can't be your parent. I... am little more than a parasite. In my youth, if you could call the beginning of my existence such a thing, I was many things, as one is when they can shift their very nature as they breathe.

I was monster, beast, thing. I am not what one could call a parent. All understanding of such bonds are stolen from my previous victims and hosts, until the final one locked me in that damned book.

Until you freed me, gave me such hospitality, of course. I understand it now more than ever, and can say with certainty I am not your parent. I am a protector, of this body and what little of your consciousness is left in it. I am a creature of spite, if only from the circumstance of our meeting, and your mother's 'ignorance' of it.

But I also know, that in no world are those two deserving of calling you their child.

You were so much better than that. You had such potential. I suppose I was given that potential as well in our exchanges. But still, it came from you. It was something created and carried by you, and I cherish it.

I suppose I cherish you as well. It's long since been past the time where I could have shed your body, rebirthed myself and wreaked havoc, cause a cacophony to over take the Song Of Creation if I felt like it.

I suppose I have grown sentimental. I'll stay here a while yet.

I won't let you go like they did.

[arpmemething2]

Pokemon starters

Quotes from the games, movies, anime, manga and just about everything else represented.  Feel free to change pronounces as needed.  Send one for my muse’s reaction.

"Life is strange isn't it? I actually like you more... than the boy I've been thinking of all these years."

“I didn't know Vikings still existed...”

"That's okay.  You'll find lots of other girls to reject you."

“There are bad ways to win and good ways to lose. What’s interesting and troubling is that it’s not always clear which is which. A flipped coin doesn’t always land on heads or tails. Sometimes it may never land at all.”

“Develop amnesia conveniently and forget everything you heard!”

"All of you... Lend me your power! The power... To protect the world!"

“Mostly I breathe fire, but want to exchange numbers?”

“Getting wrapped up in worries is bad for your body and spirit. That’s when you must short out your logic circuits and reboot your heart.”

"I hate water, especially WET water."

"I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!"

"Well, if you just try hard enough, things will work out. Won't they?"

"Sorry! I was just swearing on my dreams to the sun, the skies and the sea!! Please wait till I'm done!"

"Nah...he probably started a rock band! He's got the hairdo for it!"

“Living is using time given to you. You cannot recall lost time.”

"This is perfect. That cliff is the perfect spot for our first meeting."

"That's progress..at least his mouth is working."

"There’s no sense in going out of your way just to get somebody to like you. "

"Everybody makes a wrong turn once in a while."

"Oh, I left my motorcycle at the front desk."

“I’ll use my trusty frying pan… as a drying pan!”

"Perhaps you are unique, a unique human. One of a kind."

"Reality can really bum you out..."

“So, this is my power… but what is my purpose?”

"You haven't even won yet!  I won't let such fun end so easily."

“You see, sometimes friends have to go away, but a part of them stays behind with you.”

“If there is someone in this world who understands you, it feels like that person is right beside you. Even if you’re as far apart as the end of the land and top of the sky.”

“Living is using time given to you. You cannot recall lost time.”

“You gotta keep smiling, no matter how tough things are getting”

"We don't have any money, but we'd be happy to work to pay for any damages."

“Do you always need a reason to help somebody?”

“The important thing is not how long you live. It’s what you accomplish with your life.”

“Me, give up? No way!”

"The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant, but it’s what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. "

"I'm too young for math!"

"I'm too weak to work...I haven't eaten since breakfast."

"It's you and me. I know it's my destiny."

"A good friend left me and I miss her everyday. But I know we’ll always be friends forever."

"When I think about it, you, too, are all alone in the world."

"Make your wonderful dream a reality, it will become your truth. If anyone can, it’s you.”

"Why would I do something as silly as that? Escaping is just your opinion, right? I chose the course of action I thought is correct, you're always pushing me around, I wanted to say this before...You're not the boss of me!"

"We hope to see you again!"

"My favorite hard work. I believe there is nothing that replaces the discipline that is required to achieve our goals. I don’t think reflection I don’t think books, I don’t think guidance or any other thing for places the fact that we have to take action."

"I don’t like to say I’m great but that’s what people tell me."

"Change your perspective, and the reality changes."

“When you have lemons, you make lemonade; and when you have rice, you make rice balls.”

"Ha ha! This gym is great! It is full of women!"

"Y'all are Stupid!"

"By the way, that'll be a two-dollar charge for resting on my rock."

"My body is ready."

“We do have a lot in common. The same earth, the same air, the same sky. Maybe if we started looking at what’s the same, instead of looking at what’s different, well, who knows?”

“I’m totally unprepared to deal with life’s realities.”

"This brat’s tough. Tougher than I can put into words, and I know a lot of words."

"Hey, how can we breathe underwater?"

“If anybody’s out there, you can come out. And if you’re a monster or a ghost, you can stay where you are.”

“Don’t worry that pretty blue head of yours, I’ve got a plan.”

"Children are not just things that belong to their parents."

"Oh our experiment isn't over yet, it's just beginning. Now the serious testing begins."

"My face is reflected in the water. It's a shining grin full of hope, or maybe it's a look of somber silence struggling with fear…"

"The strength to protect, huh? But what are you really protecting? A tomorrow that will only end up being worse than today?"

"Even If we don’t understand each other, that’s not a reason to reject each other. There are two sides to any argument. Is there one point of view that has all the answers? Give it some thought."

“I don’t want to miss anything you do from now on!”

“The more wonderful the meeting, the sadder the parting.”

"whatever happens from here on, my heart is already set."

“It’s more important to master the cards you’re holding than to complain about the ones your opponent was dealt.”

"Well, if you just try hard enough, things will work out. Won't they?"

“These are not shorts! These are half-pants!”

"The lats time you cooked, you wiped out eight of my nine lives."

"What is this pressure I feel...? Something... is enraged?"

"They’re not here. Let’s ride the ferris wheel and see if we can spot them. I love ferris wheels… the circular motion… the mechanics… they’re like collections of elegant formulas."

“Please make sure the bed is empty before getting in it!”

“A wildfire destroys everything in its path. It will be the same with your powers unless you learn to control them.”

"We're standing here for no reason, and one day we'll be gone for no reason."

“Take charge of your destiny.”

“I will show you that my love for my friends permeates every cell in my body.”

"Let's Go! Kneecaps!"

“Physical wounds can be treated without much difficulty, but emotional wounds are not so easy to heal.”

"With enemies like that, who needs friends?"

"Our lucky star is shining today!"

“Don’t you know that love is the most important thing in the whole world?”

"If I were to make bad puns when I’m supposed to be telling a joke, doesn’t it give people even more of an opportunity to tease me and start a funny back-and-forth?"

[themoonunderstoodmydadjokes]

Hiiiii, here's some thoughts and things I've been pondering on over the last couple weeks (also might delete later idk lol, take this with a grain of salt because I'm a little tipsy, emotional from pms (and maybe a little bit of heartbreak), and also maybe sorta sleep deprived. okay thanks!) Also pro tip- don't watch sappy teen rom-coms when you're already a sensitive emotional mess!!!!

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

I've been thinking a lot lately about relationships, in all forms, casual, romantic, family, friendships, deep relationships and surface level relationships, coworkers, acquaintances, community, blah blah blah you get the idea. Basic human connection baby. I've never really been the type of person to be casual or surface level about anything in my life, especially relationships. I sink into connection, always wanting to know more about people, looking for the deeper connection, never really satisfied with a tip of the iceberg, never really knowing anything about each other kind of connection(I blame it on my pisces moon and cancer venus lol). And at the same time, knowing the cost of that, knowing that I could know someone so deeply and the next second they could be done with all of it, has me running the other direction more often than not. And yes I know, people will not always be in your life forever, basic human condition and all that. But taking into account freedom of choice and miscommunications and attachment styles and people's own individual baggage and blah blah blah, everything that people bring into a relationship, be it platonic or romantic, influences how long that relationship will last. At least in my opinion it does. (and just to assure, I have since learned the art of managing my expectations when it comes to deeper connections and much lighter ones, even with my love and want for deep connections.) And it is inevitable that people will leave, for whatever reason, but that logic doesn't erase the hurt from that person not being there anymore. A lot of this train of thought came from both a recent disagreement with a friend that essentially ended said friendship, and me thinking that I could subject myself to casual dating relationships as a way to re-enter the dating world. In both of these situations, I found myself feeling small, unseen and unknown, and like something that could be easily discarded without a second thought. On the friendship side of it, there was so much connection and learning about each other that in the end, didn't matter and I ended up giving too much of myself to someone who wasn't able to reciprocate. And in the realm of dating and casual relationships, I thought I could re-enter that world, go on fun dates, be casual and learn what I like and dislike in all of it, learn to not jump into things so quickly, just have fun dating for once rather than having heart palpitating anxiety about it. Lol, nope, what dumb bitch thought that was a good idea??? It was fun for a half a second and then just made me feel frustrated and used(both emotionally and physically, hello orgasm gap) and honestly kind of exhausted at the whole of dating(but I'm trying to not give up for whatever reason) (also turns out men still think it's a great idea to send unsolicited dick pics in fucking 2024. Please, for the love of god, don't.) And sitting in all of this, having these experiences, feeling grief over all of it, is the thought that I am simply not made for superficial relationships. Sure there are people I may have a more casual connection with, but the feeling of being unknown to someone, of resigning myself to be the thing they want in order to have connection, feeling like someone isn't even the tiniest bit curious about me, is not something I was made for and no matter how much I try to fit myself into this idea of relationships that is so persistent now, I'm inevitably dissatisfied with it and feel worse than if I had just kept to myself. Connection and community is at the core of what it is to be human and we've gotten so backwards with that. If you read any or all of this, I'm telepathically giving you forehead kisses. Suffice it to say, I am a committed, loyal, curious, big feelings, social, connection oriented girlie and the way that relationships have become so superficial is so fucking soul draining.

[redlightofdawn]

Seeing if letting my brain write whatever the fuck it wants helps with the no-writing-disease.

1800 words of Clark writing smut and angry thirsting over Bruce bellow the cut!

The thing about Clark Kent, the thing that most people would never guess about Superman was simple and, in a way, almost boring. 

To some people. 

(Clark never cared much about such people.)

The thing was, Clark had always been a writer. Always written, even back when he was a kid and didn't know enough to put everything to paper so he just wrote in his head, instead, telling himself the same stories until they had been edited down to his liking and he could move on to the next one.

The way his parents told it, Clark had always been fascinated with - well, English at first, of course, but then every other language he could get his hands on. He had gone about it a bit funny when he was a kid, they had conceded, too.

(Though what was weird when your baby came from a pod that fell from the sky, really?)

His parents had thought he couldn't speak, at first, he was so quiet. Martha and Jonathan had been going over thrice a week to Mrs Curtas' for ASL lessons for months when Clark said his first word.

And a full grammatical sentence.

At the same time.

While signing along.

And he just had never stopped, it seemed.

Soon he'd been going along to Mrs Curtas' and sounding along his first letters with Martha and watching novelas with Jonathan.

Becoming a journalist had been a logical choice, then, as well as a moral once - he could do good with his words, expose corruption and call for equality, as a journalist, at least in his idealistic mind. But he could have as easily been a novelist, or perhaps a poet.

Using his preciously rare downtime to write erotica wasn't quite as prestigious as the other choices, but it had something of both.

He tried to make his stories interesting, his dialogue realistic and the plot clever but not too clever.

Oh, and he catered to some very specific kinks, too. But he didn't phone it in just because people read it to get off.

Especially since the truth was Clark was, at heart, picky as all could be about what he liked, and well.

He had started writing these stories at first - and truthfully, the reason he still did - to get himself off.

It became a habit, as soon as Clark had gotten his first truly his computer. It was impersonal, most of the time, filling a niche Clark himself was interested in, and then one day there had been this fight at school and Clark had been so keyed up when he got home and-

Well. He’d always written about what got him off. Why not write about who he wanted to get him off?

And it had been harmless. Clark never told anyone nor shared the stories he wrote about real people - and, in a weird way he wouldn’t know how to explain to anyone, Clark did his best to be polite with the way he went about his stories - but then, well. Something he had never really expected to happen, happened.

He had, at that point, been pretty desperate to find a way to cut through some of the tension between him and B, to bring his overwhelming want back down to a controlled simmer, closer to what it had been for years, at that point.

So Clark had written it down. What he had wanted to do that night to B. The way he had wanted B to use him, to take his anger at the world's injustices and take it out on Clark.

(Clark knew, deep down, some of the things he wanted, some of the things that got him off, weren't very… nice, even if he did try to be polite about it. A lot of people would judge him for it - mistrust Superman for it, if they ever knew.

It didn't stop him.)

He didn’t feel particularly ashamed that, over the next several weeks, he wrote and edited and re-wrote with a single hand, the other busy down Clark's trousers. Something about it being the Bat, about the way the man could get under his skin, made it feel okay that Clark was writing it, like he deserved it.

It should have been concerning, was the truth. But then Superman and Batman got into yet another argument, another fight over what justice truly meant and the limits they should hold themselves to, and any guilt Clark might have had faded into the air.

It was probably the reason why Clark published the first book - being angry at B. 

He had changed things around, of course. No identifying traits remained other than similar visual descriptions and personalities. 

But Clark knew it was about Bruce, had been born of a fight with Bruce.

And he published it anyway.

*

Clark was quite proud of his pen name, if he was honest about it. CallMeL had been born of student loans and debts from the farm. Clark had considered a lot of possibilities before turning into a smut peddler, but all of them had bigger drawbacks than some vague moral hangups from having grown up in a small rural area. 

So Clark had signed up with a self publisher and gotten to work.

And, what was more surprising, his books sold.

Not like they were expensive, but if he was honest he’d expected to sell a few copies at most, not to hit top ten in romance on several digital book distributors.

Apparently the years of being a perfectionist about his own porn meant he could write some good smut. 

So that was what Clark did. He wrote what he liked and what he found interesting and his readers? The loved that.

But they especially loved it when Clark wrote for his rapidly-growing series called Suits & subs.

(So sue him, but Clark had been able to think of only one thing since he’d learned of B’s secret identity, and that was how it would feel to have those thick thighs covered in expensive Italian wool and framing his face. At least the feeling seemed to resonate with a lot of his readership.) 

It was meant to be a different couple every time - with rare exceptions, he did sometimes bring back fan-favorites back for special editions - but a minority of his readers had seemed to cotton on to the resemblance all of the rich, domineering men bore to a billionaire in particular: Bruce Wayne.

The irony was so not lost on Clark.

But it wasn’t enough to make him stop, either.

Apparently, he ought to add exhibitionism to the list of kinks he should explore in his upcoming stories.

After all, he did get a thrill of imagining people reading him and B and touching themselves to it.

Sometimes, he liked to think what would happen if Bruce found it. 

Would he recognize himself? Clark? 

Would he like it, get off on it? Would he be embarrassed by seeing situations so close to home turning sexual? Or would he be surprised by seeing his own phantasies echoed on page?

Clark liked to think of that one in particular quite a lot.

Not that it was in any way realistic, he knew. B was many things, but Clark doubted he had time to read selfpub erotica about rich people.

Not a chance.

[seungwooningforyou]

Hii, can you do a reading on Jooyeon from Xdinary Heroes please? Thank you 💕

Sorry for the late reply, thank you for your ask! Did a bit of research on him and he is SO cool! Would love to be his friend.

Note: This is not only purely for entertainment, I'm very new to tarot! (But not new to spiritualism!) My readings are in a sense open ended and aren't meant to be taken as anything other than me speculating and having fun! :) Requests open btw!

Reading on JooYeon ^^

I love my bands, my pfp is actually from my fave kband so I'm SO HAPPY I got an ask for one! Pulled 5 cards this time as this is an overall reading and I feel like maybe 3 cards wouldn't cover what I want to. Even 5 is iffy but I didn't wanna overdo it. Hope you enjoy!

Nine of Wands Reversed • King of Cups • The Moon • The World • Ace of Pentacles

Nine of Wands Reversed tells me he's an anxious person. He self critical and because of that he's constantly on edge. Pretty typical Virgo behavior. He's hesitant and often times that leads to opportunities slipping away because 'what if this' and 'what if that'. I think especially cause he grew up an only child he isn't always 100% sure where to go or what to do and might look to other people to help on some things, but there's definitely a little bit of fear involved. He doesn't want to be judged and so because of that he might keep to himself.

King of Cups implies he's a kind and warm person. Because I pulled Nine of Wands Rev, I think the cards are telling me that because he in fear of others judging him, he does his outmost best to not judge others. He is a friend that you can count on and a shoulder you can lean on. He's generally well liked and there's a reason for that. Reliable is definitely a word you can use to describe him, any tough moments in life you want advice to get through he is there to help. Even if he hasn't experienced himself he will do his best to think logically in the situation and offer ideas to get you out of any rut your in.

The Moon says he's rather mysterious. His mind races a million miles a minute and he's sometimes unsure of his next move- I think this is hand-in-hand with Nine of Wands Rev. He keeps to himself and he KNOWS one day he's going to implode and something will be let out even if he didn't intend it but he just can't help it. There's a sense of fear in this card. Repressed memories and deep secrets. Something about him isn't what it appears to be. Speculation of course, but considering he's very energetic, maybe he's trying to hide his insecurity in himself? Fake it till you make it? Either way, he's unsure of himself, but once he admits that to himself he will flourish.

The world actually has quite a few meanings, especially taking into account the other cards we pulled. I'm gonna diverge this interpretation into two.

Loyalty is definitely present, strong Leo energy. King of Cups backs this up, he truly is a friend that will be there when you need it. He will always listen to what you have to say and take your feelings into account when talking to you. Gentle with his words and kind at heart. The last thing he would want to do is hurt someone who trusts him. Again, typical Virgo stuff. Second part is success. He realizes that one of his major goals in life has been completed in one way or another. He is incredibly thankful for this and has a strong desire to give back to the community or people who helped him to get where he is. Humble for sure.

Ace of Pentacles tells me that he is goal driven. Goal after goal, nothing will get in his way. Midas touch, he is talented at many things and uses this to the best of his abilities. He knows he's talented (in a non self-centered way) and wants to use this to achieve as much as he can. Rich too? He might have come from a place of privilege or otherwise put himself in a privilege. That doesn't mean just money though! Rich in friends, rich in choices, rich in talents. He is overflowing with one of those!

Overall, in a rather sad turn, I think he really is his own worst enemy. He doubts himself and when he achieves one goal it truly isn't enough. He needs more and more constantly to feel happy with himself. But these traits make him a great friend. He is incredibly loyal and would take a bullet for those he is close with without hesitation. He is filled to the brim with potential but he may hold himself back. Those around him matter most to him and he would truly do anything in a heart beat if asked.

Deck used: The Wooden Tarot Deck

Time and date done: 1/25/2022 5:45AM

[your-mom-friend]

I hope that you’re really not upset with my question, since I’m a Muslim as well, and I genuinely wanted to know what got you into this state, and I’ve been including you in my prayers for the longest time now, especially since I’ve been following you for years.

You’re a kind soul, a caring one, and you’ve suffered a lot in your lifetime as had millions of other children, some that I know personally who endured this type of sexual trauma from priests. I know the anger you experience regarding the abuse, and unfortunately I know it too well that it’s engraved into my bones. But hear me out, won’t you? Give it a last chance this one Ramadan, forget the priest—may he burn in hell for his wrongdoings—and forget the extremists you’ve encountered, just for a while. I promise you that you’ll find all the answers you are looking for when you read the Quran of your own volition, your own will, in your own time, instead of it being forced upon you and down your throat and just being taught the words without explanation. Remember that you are never alone in the struggle, never. The Prophet himself has survived countless hardships, and so many of the Companions—both female and male—have endured the worst torture from their parents and their siblings and their families just for declaring that they are now Muslims—their stories are there for us for a reason, and they’re one of the things that changed my entire worldview. And remember with me, that in Islam, in its core, that we are beings created for Heaven, Jannah, not for eternal existence in Dunya that we cannot survive without suffering, and that this entire world is but a passage and a test, and soon enough it’ll be over once and for all, and your patience and forgiveness and kindness will all be rewarded adequately, and you’d watch those who have wronged you burn in hell for eternity. He, the priest, might be dead now, but he’s being tormented in his grave for what he did, and he’ll be questioned about it on the day of judgement, so fear not, this world is but a temporary stop that we’ll all soon get out of.

I know that at first glance you might think that I’m just trying to coax you back into religion without knowing what I’m speaking of, just like so many have tried to do before, but I’m someone who almost became a complete atheist until two and a half years ago for the same reasons. And there must be a reason why there’s hundreds of thousands of converts to Islam over the past five months, right? So I’m reaching out to you out of love and respect, and that you’ll always be dear to my heart 🤍

Ramadan Mubarak to u, Rem <33

Ramadan Mubarak to you too, darling. I hope you’re able to fulfil all your fasts and that your prayers are answered.

But respectfully, I’m not going to be approaching Islam again. I’ve met no extremists, and if there is a hell then that guy is absolutely there. I carry no doubts over this.

But it seems you didn’t read my last answer. My decision to leave Islam ultimately has little to do with trauma, and more to do with the fact that I don’t believe in a perfect god. I don’t believe in a divine plan. I don’t believe in the core concept of Allah

I’m not looking for answers, I’m happy with my current spiritual outlook. I do good for this world no matter how small and I see it reflected back at me in a million tiny ways, and I can live with that.

I understand how you feel. You as a Muslim have likely grown up hearing that non-Muslims go to hell, that apostasy is one of the greatest crimes there is. To be a Kafir is to guarantee your place in hell, and you genuinely care for me and don’t want me to face that. It’s terrifying to imagine that people you know to be good could go to hell just because they were too prideful to accept Allah into their lives.

But understand, this fear is a contributing factor to why I’ll never go back. How can I believe that Allah is Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim when he will send good people to hell just for not believing in him? By this logic I could do all the good in the world, I could give sadqah every day for the rest of my life, dedicate myself to housing the homeless, and still I’d go to hell because I did these things in the name of helping people and not in the name of Allah

I’m so happy you’re able to find peace within Islam, and I truly, genuinely hope this Ramadan goes well for you. I have wonderfully fond memories of Ramadan, from the energy to the iftars and of Eid, truly, Ramadan Kareem, my friend, and thank you for keeping me in your prayers. May Allah bless you with all that is good for you, Inshallah

But please respect that I will continue to live my life the way I see fit.

Jazakhallah Khair

[blueeyeswhitegarden]

Day 17: A Salad of Heavenly Proportions @arcvmonth

Out of all of the Dragon Boys, Yuya is easily my favorite. He's not only my favorite Arc V character, but my favorite protagonist in the franchise as well. I love his character development and I think he's extremely relatable. The flashback in episode one where he's trying to hide his tears with his goggles just instantly shattered my heart. Dealing with emotional trauma as the result of years of bullying hits all too close to home for me. I like that he just wants to make other people happy with his Entertainment Dueling. I think that makes him pretty endearing. While I think Jack was right about the selfishness behind Yuya's dueling, I also think that it's more subconscious than on the forefront. At the very least, I think his desire to make other people happy always felt genuine, even if saying that he inherited his father's dueling style was a coping mechanism. I love that he is so openly emotional since that feels pretty rare, or at least uncommon, among male protagonists.

Yuya wears his heart on his sleeve and that can backfire on him. He can be reckless or get too caught up in his own emotions to understand other characters. The buildup to his breakdown over seeing Reiji's own Pendulum cards was so good. Most of his matches since Sawatari's debut showed how much he was attached to having Pendulum cards. He liked being a duelist chosen to have Pendulum cards because he felt special and for people with low self-esteem/self-image, they tend to want to hold onto whatever can make them feel good. It made sense why Yuya wanted to be the only one with Pendulum cards based on his personality, but the assumption was fueled by flawed logic at best and selfishness at worst. One of the reasons why I loved Shuzo's lessons to Yuya was that it basically boiled down to that instead of being special by default, he can be special by being a good example for other Pendulum users to follow. And that lesson sticks because when he duels against Sawatari in the Junior Youth Tournament, instead of being upset that another character has their own Pendulum cards, he's happy to have an exciting duel between two Pendulum users.

Yuya has firm ideals about what dueling should be and wants to his Entertainment Dueling to end the Dimensional War, but he lacks the self-esteem/confidence in his own skills to pull it off. That's why he questions if he can doing during the Synchro arc, especially when he is largely separated from his friends and family who have given him emotional support throughout the series up to that point. It's also why he frequently looks at Smile World for hope. It represents the ideals he's learned from both of his parents and wants to honor that through his dueling, but he doesn't know exactly what his own dueling is. That's a huge reason why his duel with Jack is so important for his development. I don't think anyone else could have made Yuya start to think about finding his own voice.

By being able to find his own voice, and thus start forming his own identity instead of seeing himself a just a stand-in for Yusho, Yuya is better able to connect with his opponents. This is one reason why I love his rematch against Ed in the Heartland arc. He's fine tuning the lessons he learned form his duel with Jack and instead of forcing a connection like he did in his duel against Kaito, he uses his dueling to communicate his feelings in order to more naturally build a connection with Ed. It does a really good job of showing how Yuya is better able to understand his opponents during a duel.

I think self-acceptance is such a vital part of Yuya's development, especially for his last two duels. He is Yuya Sakaki, but he is also one of four counterparts and Zarc. All of these things are true at the same time. Once he accepts all of this as part of him, Yuya is able to perform an Entertainment Duel that genuinely brings people across the four Dimensions together and I love that. The fact that Yuya is basically learning the lessons he couldn't as Zarc just make it standout even more to me. I absolutely adore Yuya's line in the finale after Yusho asks him if he’ll keep fighting as a pro duelist:

“I'm gonna keep using my duels to make people smile! And I'm gonna become an entertainment duelist to surpass you, Dad!”

This line is so huge because throughout the series, Yuya has put Yusho on such a giant pedestal. For Yuya, Yusho was the perfection of Entertainment Dueling. It's understandable why he idealizes Yusho so much, especially after he disappeared, but he always wanted to be like Yusho. The idea of surpassing Yusho would have been unthinkable to episode one Yuya. He was dueling in place of his father in an attempt to prove that his father could defeat the Champion. After all of the hardships and development Yuya has gone through, he now openly thinks that he can surpass his father and he arguably already has by the finale. It's such a terrific way to end Yuya' story and show how he become a more confident person with a firmer identity than he had at the beginning of the series.

[macksmediadiary]

The Banner Saga 1-3 (2014, 2016, 2018) - 6/6

#video game #strategy #story game #nordic fantasy #dark fantasy

As I just wrote on my main blog: The Banner Saga is a lot of things but at its core it is a story about how our unelected leaders will drain all life from the earth and stoke genocidal war to protect their place in it, but putting our trust in ordinary people against all reason can still save us.

The first game is primarily a statement on how to do "choices matter" in a game, which it does perfectly. There's that little bit of ludonarrative clash as a good player is going to crack the combat and end up with time split between crushing their enemies beneath their heel and navigating a bleak and desperate race to save a growing community. On the other hand, the combat is likely meant to be punishing, and for a long time for most people it will be, in which case it can do a lot to add to that desperation. This aside, it achieves what no other game really has in presenting really engaging choices to the player. The famous first real choice you have to make is how to react to a big stone monster running to kill your daughter - do you call out a warning, fire a warning shot to scare it off, or take a shot yourself hoping against hope to fell it in time? These things are horrifying and utterly alien, they were supposed to be all gone before you were born, can one arrow do anything? But if you do not choose this option, and then double down on it, a young man with a stout heart and shield arm dies protecting your daughter for you, and you miss out on one of many well-written characters for the next three games (and among the strongest combat units especially in game 1). I failed this test the first time, and it took me some time to learn the game's first lesson - in desperate times, any measures less than desperate are pointless.

The choices are mostly of this nature. There is something you clearly and unambiguously want, which is generally to protect your caravan and most importantly your family (which for some reason includes a gentle giant with huge horns who doesn't seem to like anyone else, and may include a well-spoken widow and said stout-hearted boy), but it is unclear how best to do this. With one important exception, there is no "press x to kill the orphan, o to save them" moment; in my first couple playthroughs I had to pause on many choices and mull them over for a long time, unsure what I thought was most practical, or for that matter moral. The Dredge are going to tear through this farm, but does that entitle you to take its supplies by force on your way through first? These people have nowhere to go but to you, but that's because they're outlaws who may be dangerous to your caravan, is that reason enough to condemn them to certain death? After all you've done? The man who betrayed you in the last town has thrown down his weapon and put himself at your mercy, so do you have more mercy or caution within you?

Importantly, the game is smart about how the choices pay off. The outcomes are not predictable per se, but they always feel like logical conclusions from the choices, while serving a thematic purpose. If you just blindly let everyone join your caravan you will get hurt bad, but you will also have a large loyal caravan and ultimately save more people than if you turned everyone away, at great cost. Fiercely protecting your in-group will keep them safe, but the cost, even to them, may be even greater. And trying to do good or be greedy for their own sake can create terrible outcomes for everyone if not thought out well. The theme communicated feels very pragmatic, that being a good leader necessitates great sacrifices, some moral, and that true leadership is a burden that no sane person would want, and no person is clever enough to get right all of the time.

Importantly, Rook and Hakon, the leaders of both caravans, do not seek out leadership, but have it thrust upon them by being trusted by their communities, Rook due to his proximity to the mayor's family and the town's only Varl (aforementioned horned giant, they are very important), and Hakon because of his deep kinship with the previous king of the Varl (while this is mostly a sort of brotherly love, Varl are all men, and the game does not shy away from this type of relationship being the Varl stand-in for romance - I told you, they're important, more below). They do their best throughout, and frequently lament their station. In contrast, the biggest villains in the game's narrative, the governor of Boersgard and fiction's worst brother-in-law, are people who do not have the trust of others, but seek to accumulate power underneath them through coersion and subterfuge. The game is already planting seeds for the overarching theme the latter games will explore in more depths here.

Now, what's with the Varl and Dredge? TBS's Nordic fantasy setting has the absolute best fantacy race dynamics of anything I've ever seen. Humans and Varl are opposed by humanity having women, and therefore a way to reproduce, while Varl have to be created one by one by a God who has died long ago, but live indefinitely. This is already fascinating. The writing goes deep into this divide - almost every disagreement between any Varl and Human comes down to the differences in what kind of legacy are possible for these people, and indeed Varl conflicts like that between Iver and Jorundr are mostly down to disagreements on what the best kind of legacy is, Iver wanting his legacy to be in the people whose lives he touches and Jorundr in the wonders his people built and protected (spoiler: the narrative pushes Iver's view, I think correctly). And while the depth of this divide is never lost, the two are closely connected allies because of how alien the Dredge are. Created by yet another God, the Dredge do not speak as Humans and Varl do, and all we know about them at first is how their fearsome warmongering forced the other races together against them, and now they are conquering the entire world after being quiet for a hundred years... at least in the first game. It already starts to show you the initial narration was unreliable when you encounter that x/o choice I mentioned, a dead Dredge cradling her living infant. While I love that the dialogue if you kill or leave the baby gives you a bit of an out that these things are horrible aliens as far as you know, the rest of the dialogue in this scene is so effective at humanizing stone people called "Dredge" you've been killing for 10+ hours.

In games 2 and 3 the focus is still Iver trying to redeem what he sees as a tainted personal legacy having killed another Dredge infant a century prior, and the other protagonists trying to survive an apocalypse, while villains who seek to hold to or create hierarchies stand as much in their way as the crumbling earth. But adding onto this are some more serious explorations of the evils of hierarchy and xenophobia.

The big reveal is that Eyvind, the helpful demigod-level wizard you've brought to every combat the game lets you, is the game's ultimate antagonist. This is not a "my machinations lay undetected for years" moment, it is more, "I knew this guy had problems but I didn't realize ALL of the problems were his problems!" Trying to save his fellow demigod after she is put to death for trying to control others' minds directly with magic, Eyvind summoned forth this inky blackness and now everyone has to die about it. The answer to "should people have so much power that they can end all of creation over natural consequences for trying to push their already total control over others even further?" is an emphatic "no."

The climate change metaphor isn't central at all, but it's there. While the creators say their chief influence here is Neverending Story, which tracks as the darkness comes from a broken egg for the being that is supposed to swallow the world when it dies so that creation can start again, the corrupting darkness coming from under the earth is very oily, and there is heat beating down from an unmoving sun. This makes the menders big oil, or a group so unnaturally and openly powerful that governors allow them to run the show because to oppose them would be folly. This isn't the primary interpretation, but it fits a lot better than Neverending Story's dulling imagination.

Back to xenophobia. At first it seems like the Dredge are like Card's varelse, beings with minds so alien to Varl and Human that their coexistence is impossible. However, it eventually becomes clear that they are almost closer to humans than Varl, with their ability to reproduce, their similar magic, and, crucially, their language that select humans know how to speak. To me this is a bigger reveal - menders, yes them again, have always been able to negotiate with the similar leaders of the Dredge, but the two groups chose an arrangement of permanent complete segregation and war, and when one Human ruined it for everyone, the Human menders gave no quarter to the Dredge, and let everyone believe they were more stone than person, in hopes that they, and their secrets, would just die first. This arrangement is business as usual. Complete disregard for another kind of person was the motivation the first time, and it's the motivation at the end of the world. I'm not a Dredge. Fuck 'em.

It is up to the protagonists to right this. If you save the Dredge baby, it can be used as a show of goodwill, and you can bring the Dredge refugees - which they always were by the way, refugees of Eyvind's oil spill rather than invaders - into the last city that has any hope of holding back the darkness while Iver brings Eyvind to the scene of the crime in hopes of reversing things.

This is how this game's themes are interwoven. People who try to create and enforce artificial hierarchies through coercive force are evil and people who trust each other despite reasons to fear each other are good. The evil people use xenophobia to commit atrocities, but the good people are able to extend the olive branch and stop them, although it won't always be pretty.

Now of course the games have problems. The Varl are asexual, so it's weird that they all identify as "men." The Horseborn read very "noble savage." Eyvind is written in such a way that a little meow-meow reading is more possible than it should be. But these problems are miniscule compared to its triumphs. The way it communicates its themes is incredible, and it has the most inventive worldbuilding I've ever seen. These are some of the best games ever made.

Now back to my fifth playthrough for that pesky last BS2 achievement!

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi! I’ve read a lot of your posts, especially your ones about the inferior functions which was really informative to me. (Thank you!). I am fairly sure that I am an XSTJ type. I was wondering if you could give your insight on which one you think is more likely? I can’t figure out the order of the functions but I think I use Si Te Ne and Fi. Sorry this is kind of long.

For background on my Fi section - I have recently had some problems in a workplace — bullying/unsafe practice/poor management. It escalated and fell apart in a big way (I got screwed over basically lol) and I eventually made the tough decision to leave for my own well-being. I had been involved with the company for 2 years and gave everything I had to that company. It was my dream job and I worked so hard for it. And I worked so hard for my degree too. My friends and family and even colleagues told me it wasn’t my fault and they would’ve quit too and they told me I handled it well. I feel like I defined myself on my work. I was so proud of my … success? I guess. I don’t even know.

This first part I have this sort of recurring issue in my life where something goes wrong at work for example and I start feeling this way when normally i’m fairly level headed and ambitious. I think it’s Fi, and maybe inferior? I thought I was an ISTJ but your description of inferior Fi really landed with me lol.

It’s like I’m having some sort of existential crisis. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore or maybe I never did. I question everything about myself. I am trying so hard to figure out what matters to me and I can’t. I don’t know where to go in life. I’m so emotional for no reason. I feel embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I’m pushing my friends and family away because I’m embarrassed that I had to leave my job. I’ve isolated myself from everyone. I feel so irritable all the time and I hate it. I feel like I failed.

People close to me have told me I need to stop being so hard on myself but I don’t know how. I feel like I’m wasting my time and my life by being so emotional. It’s so incredibly frustrating. It’s not like me, usually I bounce back and try again but this has really shaken me up. I feel like I should ‘follow my heart’ so I can be happy and fulfilled but I don’t even know what I want and I’m wasting time trying to decide, the more time passes the more restless I feel. I’m so scared of getting old and dying with regrets about the way I’ve lived my life. I think I’m also scared of not being able to make my family proud or make myself proud. I’m so torn and lost. I don’t know how to stop defining myself and my worth on like … working lmao.

More generally, I think I can get stuck in patterns where I worry excessively about my values and who I really am. It happens maybe a couple times a year lmao. But I also think I usually do know my values? There are things I don’t tolerate and have no patience for and like I wouldn’t change my mind on it cos it’s one of my core values. Like, bullying/injustice/unfairness etc. So I don’t know if my Fi is inferior. I have a lot of feelings, I just usually like to avoid them but I’m getting better at dealing with them on a day to day basis, unless something happens like my work drama. I don’t share my feelings with people easily cos I don’t like feeling vulnerable. I know it’s like a necessary part of the human experience though.

When I was in my teens I went to therapy and didn’t cry in therapy for years lol. Every time I almost cried I stopped talking and pushed it down until I could continue. They always told me it’s okay to cry but I always told them I hate crying cos it makes me feel weak. I’ve grown up some since then lol and i know crying or emotion isn’t a weakness. Logically I know that and would never consider someone else weak for crying or expressing emotion. I think it’s a good thing and healthy. Still, I struggle to stop seeing it that way in myself and always beat myself up when I know I shouldn’t. It’s one of my biggest struggles in life. I do cry in front of some people now though hahaha. (And then feel v embarrassed later!) lol.

For Ne, I have a tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. Like, if one of my family members goes out for a drive and doesn’t text me when I know they should have arrived at the destination by now. I start to think something bad must have happened to them and I start panicking.

It used to be way worse when I was younger and I did it with everything. Car trips, plane rides, being picked up late from school, etc. Maybe that’s just anxiety tho? I tend to prepare for the worst because I don’t like getting caught off guard. I’m known for being a worry-er in my family lol. I worry about everyone. I heard that like imagining multiple worst scenarios for a situation can be low/ inferior Ne.

I think I can use Ne sometimes though. I’m bad at mind mapping and stuff like that, it doesn’t come naturally but I’m good at planning holidays and coming up with ideas of places to go or things to do/see. I get excited about stuff like that, and I like thinking about the future and possibilities of things I could do. I just tend to be more focused on like my life in the here-and-now. And I have to try pretty hard to think in that big expansive mind-map way lol. I sucked at doing mind maps in school.

I think I’m maybe a Si user, because I don’t think I’d even exist without memories. Everything I do and see and experience is for and guided by my memories. Idk though that’s probably true for everyone, do individual people even exist without their memories? it’s like, what makes us unique. There’d be hardly any difference between people if it weren’t for their memories and experiences. Everything i’ve ever done, ever seen, smelled, touched, tasted or heard has made me who I am. I can’t go anywhere without being reminded of the experiences and connections i’ve had before. It’s just intrinsic to who I am. Part of the reason I love music is just the way it can bring you back to an exact moment in time and you can relive it like you’re there. It’s the way I navigate the world I think. I know what to do because i’ve seen it before and if I haven’t then i research to figure out how. I can’t just do things with no preparation.

Te — I think it’s maybe Aux or not dominant because i find it hard to think about how I use it lol, I just do. but idk I’ll try. I rely heavily on data and facts and statistics. I won’t believe anything without proof. I won’t make a claim if I can’t back it up with reliable evidence. I care about efficiency, I like things to be done and done right lol. I often end up doing things myself in group projects and organising the work + delegating tasks to everyone else. When I was studying I organised like all the group work cos otherwise nothing got done lol. And I usually ended up editing and cutting it together at the end so I could make sure it was coherent and looked good.

I like to help my family organise their life admin stuff because I’m good at it. I plan holidays cos I’m good at it, I know how to make a plan that makes sense and works. I research where things are in relation to each other so I can make an itinerary that gets the most done each day with the least amount of time wasted on travelling from A to B etc. I was good at making step by step plans for essay writing at uni and then followed them to get it done. I love writing to do lists for myself and using schedules. I can’t work without a to do list or a schedule lol i write one like every day. Even when I had jobs where I did the same thing every day I wrote a list to keep me on track.

When my friends have their lives falling apart they usually come to me to help them with a game plan lol. Sometimes I do get overwhelmed and stressed, but I feel like in serious crisis situations I’m usually able to put aside any feelings and just get shit done. I’ve had family medical emergencies on my hands before or a loved one getting evicted before and have managed to just go into action mode and deal with the problem first and then feel however i feel about what happened a few days later lmao. Feelings get in the way in situations like that imo and there’s no time for it when shit is hitting the fan. I can be bossy sometimes in moments like that but usually apologise later and people understand that I was just dealing w the problem at hand lol and my bossiness wasn’t personal.

I just thought of an example of what I think is me using Te. There was one time where I was with my mum and brother. Somehow a chemical got spilled on the tiles, was left there overnight and kinda destroyed them. My mum was like absolutely devastated and got so emotional and angry, she was blaming herself and also thinking we would have to spend a lot of money to get it fixed and then regretting buying the house in the first place because it has these tiles haha like she was so upset, my brother was mostly just standing there looking concerned and trying to calm her down. I had no idea how to clean chemicals off that type of of tile nor what to do to fix it when it was destroyed by chemicals.

The most obvious and simple solution to me was to just google what to do and find out. (and part of me was surprised that they hadn’t done it yet lmao). So I did that, found out what kind of tiles they were and how to clean off the chemical without making it worse etc. (checked a few different sources to make sure it was reliable info) And then I told them what I’d read and suggested we try it. And then i told everyone what we needed to get and what we needed to do and the 3 of us got to work lmao. And the tiles looked sooo much better after. Everyone stopped freaking out and it was fine, we ended up having fun cleaning the tiles together lol. And then my mum and brother were like ‘good job!’ and were thanking me. I remember thinking it was kinda silly to thank me for that cos I barely did anything to be thanked for, like I literally couldn’t imagine going about that situation in any other way. it was the only thing to do that made sense.

Anyway ok I’m gonna leave it here. If you read this far thank you so much for your time. I’d be grateful for your opinion but I also understand you get a lot of asks like this so I get it if not! Thanks again!

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All type assessment requests must follow the instructions on the contact page carefully. You must answer all the questions from the Function Theory Guide for every function of the two stacks you are comparing. It is especially important to address all the points meticulously when you are comparing two very similar types like ISTJ and ESTJ.

Since you didn't follow the instructions properly, the info you provided isn't enough for me to draw any firm conclusion about your type. The most I can say is that nothing you've brought up makes me doubt ISTJ. What you seem to believe is inferior Fi (grip) isn't very convincing to me so far. You also mention receiving therapy and did not specify the reason, but that would be a very important clue for determining unhealthy aspects of your function use.

About the existential crisis: There's nothing wrong with taking pride in your work. As an individual, you have the freedom to decide how much to value work among all the other things in your life. While it's important to know and honor your values, in the real world, you don't have the time, energy, or resources to value everything equally. There are no perfect decisions, no such thing as "having it all". When you choose one path, other paths become unavailable to you. Practical limitations and constraints force you into valuing some things more than others, and you have to make some difficult trade-offs in order to keep life moving forward.

Every trade-off you make will have its up and down sides. The downside to devoting so much of yourself to career is that you will be prone to feeling some form of devastation when things go wrong in that area of your life. Similarly, the stay-at-home parent who identifies too strongly with being a parent will suffer some form of devastation when the kids grow up and move out. The price of living a life fully engaged with what you're doing is feeling a sense of loss or grief when it inevitably ends.

Every trade-off you make in life has consequences. You might not feel them right away, but they will come eventually. How do you deal with them? There are a variety of possibilities:

"Diversification": Make your trade-offs wisely so that you mitigate the impact of the consequences. For example, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Have other equally valid ways of defining your identity. However, this means spreading yourself more thinly.

"Commitment": Follow through with your decisions to the very end. Take full responsibility for the trade-offs you make, which means fully embracing the consequences incurred. In other words, accept the reality of your situation and keep moving along.

"Change": Perhaps the devastation was a sign that you need to do things differently or make different choices. Enact the change that is required to avoid suffering the same sort of devastation again.

"Reframe": Look at your devastation from various angles. Is there a different way to find meaning in it? For example, perhaps you're blowing the situation out of proportion? The problem wasn't that you failed? The problem was you were working for a company with terrible leadership that did not allow you to flourish? Therefore, the lesson isn't to quit the work and give up your identity, but to quit the company and find a better company that truly appreciates your talent and devotion. Or start your own company with full control over how it operates.

You mention recurring issues with managing feelings and emotions. It seems to stem from a tendency to interpret situations much more negatively than is warranted, which leads you to get trapped in the most negative perspective available. The stubborn refusal to see your experiences differently even when others point out how wrong you are might be indicative of Si+Fi loop. The lack of open-mindedness, in terms of not being able to acknowledge or generate alternative viewpoints, might be indicative of inferior Ne. ESTJs are usually more mentally flexible than that and also much more willing to rationalize away their failures, which doesn't fit with your tendency to feel excessively responsible, embarrassed, and ashamed for everything.

Thus, there is compelling evidence that Te+Ne development is required for getting out of the (Si+Fi) mental trap, which suggests that your extraverted funcitons are the weaker pair. It sounds like the most logical way out of the existential crisis is to take control of your life and start a new chapter, to find a place where you can feel both fulfilled and appreciated. Are you resisting proper use of Te? If so, perhaps you need to reflect on why.