#everyone is to blame for this mess

[turtleblogatlast]

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that small moment in “Air Turtle” where immediately after the Daves lose yet another game, Leo says how sorry he is and how he’s doing his best as the mascot. This moment is so short but it’s honestly jam-packed with a whole heap of characterization.

His need to apologize for things clearly not his fault - especially when it feels like he messes up the job he was given despite doing the best he can (the phrase “it’s not about you” takes a new meaning when this is one of the lessons to be learned from that - that he is not always solely responsible for things going wrong), his need to save face and make a connection with an older adult man in his life (something he consistently does throughout the series - he’s got a few daddy issues, always collecting potential father figures, it’s no wonder he jumps at the bit to keep rapport), and the way he sounds and looks and the words he chooses really pushes how he is just a kid (“Mr. the Dunk, I’m so sorry”).

Like I know it’s a one off moment that doesn’t truly mean much, but when put against the rest of the series it works really well with the rest of Leo’s established character and helps in solidifying later concepts as well.

[luckyreds]

Between this and Doc snapping at Winters and Welsh. Dawg... :(

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Sasha using the title "Lord" in RiAAU after taking over Toad Tower and presumably killing Grime and stealing Barrel's Warhammer from him, and other political and military leaders assuming she's a man because, well, Sasha is a gender neutral name, so they hear Lord Sasha and assume they're talking about an adult male toad warrior. The second most powerful person in the known world and only real threat to the Leviathan reign!

Cue princess Marcy fleeing Newtopia and her father seeking refuge with his worst enemy hoping to offer information and political levarage in exchange for protection, perhaps even offering herself in marriage to transfer eventual inheritances and whatnot, and she finds out that Lord Sasha is not, indeed, a dark and domineering toad warlord, but a beautiful, terrifying girl her age that looks like her and oh god her poor little lesbian heart can barely take it.

[thatcatangelwriter]

annabeth doesn't talk about what luke said when he came to her house asking her to run away with him and no matter how hard the others try she won't say anything.

[killertoons]

I had a vision of what Julie was like before she was found to live at home.... literally a cave dwelling monster...hair so big and unkept it was her clothes...she's out here running around acting like a feral animal and is found digging in franks garden

Best way to describe it is that one SpongeBob episode where he lives with the jellyfish and Patrick was NOT having it

[ravelqueen]

I love the comments on my jealous!Martin post that are like "mhmm that's a red flag???"

which I mean

yes?

name the Magnus Archive main character that's not a red flag in some way at the end of the show/their life (except maybe OG!Sasha lol), because I really can't think of one, I thought that's why we're all here!!?

[zellk]

Forgot to share here.... old doodles of when I finally came around to finding a design I like for Qalaari's mom !!

[becauseplot]

Elizabeth Webber send post

[iilmunchkiin]

It's fucking NAP TIME I need to SLEEP but my BRAIN is making me FEEL THINGS and I am a MESS.

[c1trvswurld]

Arms tonite is so jimcurly coded actually

[antiadvil]

imagine if i didn't edit my fics at all and i wrote that phil was too "busy" to get out of bed instead of "dizzy"

[vickyvicarious]

“I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. “What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hiding-place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and rest—a thousand things are possible. “Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth—one makes sounds. It’s of little help—a little help perhaps—in housebreaking and so forth. Once you’ve caught me you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases: It’s useful in getting away, it’s useful in approaching. It’s particularly useful, therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man, whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like.” Kemp’s hand went to his moustache. Was that a movement downstairs? “And it is killing we must do, Kemp.” “It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp. “I’m listening to your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?” “Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they know there is an Invisible Man—as well as we know there is an Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it’s startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways—scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them.”

There's so much going on in this conversation. First, the obvious irony of Griffin telling Kemp how he understands now that he needs a helper he can trust, while Kemp is trying to ensure he gets caught in the next few minutes. Griffin saying that he will be easily imprisoned once caught but that he's hard to catch, as Kemp frets over whether they will be able to catch him now. That's pretty obvious, and both funny and also sad. It's perfectly understandable for Kemp to want Griffin to be caught even before he talks about this plan, but it sucks that Griffin's sincerity is just completely bouncing off him. Griffin is for the first time trying to make a connection with someone (something that could potentially turn this situation around) but he's been rejected from the start.

But there's also... what is Griffin talking about? This goes from 'yeah, Griffin, you shouldn't be going it alone' to 'no Griffin not like that holy shit' real damn fast. And it's really interesting in the context of the rest of his behavior, because... this really doesn't seem to match it throughout most of the book so far.

Griffin has used plenty of violence before now. He defaults to threats or physical harm when he feels too vulnerable or powerless. But while he's been reckless and careless with it, there has never really been premeditated malice to anything he does. He's not scheming evil upon others. He's mostly reacting, again, often in what seems a kind of panic. When he gets most violent, at least. He has done harmful things with forethought, but those are mostly limited to theft, and are informed by selfishness and a lack of consideration/awareness of potential consequences.

He also has been consistently motivated by curing his invisibility. He wants his resources back, and privacy/freedom to work in order to do just that. He very quickly decided making himself invisible was a shortsighted mistake, as he encountered drawback after drawback in the immediate aftermath. He also wasn't motivated by any particular single goal of seizing power when he made himself invisible. He was deeply depressed and clinging to 'seeing it through', and then panicked when he came into conflict with his landlord. His paranoia about his invention was intense, but that too is linked to him seeking control over his own life, not others' as such.

So then, why this turnaround? Well, last chapter he said this:

"I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do invisibly."

So, now it seems Griffin's motivation has shifted. He no longer wants immediate relief from invisibility. Instead, he wants to do things while invisible first. He wants to establish a Reign of Terror, to take over a town by utilizing his invisibility in the only way he can see it being of practical use: murder and the spreading of fear. But he says that as a 'must' as 'judicious'. So it's still not for the pleasure of it. Then, why?

First, I frankly don't believe Griffin is actually capable of enforcing the kind of siege he describes here. Physically maybe (depending on how unprepared others are), but emotionally I don't think he could keep it up. He'd collapse, he'd succumb to the guilt he clearly does feel at times. When he's not in a constant state of high emotion (largely fear, which with Griffin transitions seamlessly into rage) he wouldn't be able to keep murdering people so coldly and logically. He can of course work himself up over time, and can hold a grudge, which might be enough to get him started enacting this plan, but I don't believe he could see it through all the way. Still enough to do monstrous things, of course, just not enough to be effective at establishing his goal. (And even that shows his typical lack of forethought. Does he think that no one else would help them? That this town would just succumb to him in total isolation?)

But why does he even want it? I think it actually reflects all his same motivations until now. He feels cornered and he reacts badly, lashing out at others. As the rejection builds all around him, as his options dwindle, as his fear and helplessness grow - he consistently reacts by escalating and proving everyone's worst assumptions about him correct. And right now, even though he has found Kemp and thinks he can mostly trust him, it's not enough to make him feel safe. There are lots of people actively hunting him, now. And he can't just stay in Kemp's rooms forever. He would hate the idea, would feel imprisoned. He doesn't think much of stealing from others, but absolutely hates being stolen from (and he has so little, that the loss feels correspondingly huger), especially something like his books which contain the key to freeing him. So being here is a brief reprieve but he's still deeply afraid. And that makes him deeply angry. And so he wants revenge, he wants to punish them (in general, who make him feel afraid - and Marvel in particular, who has 'betrayed' him).

He also quite likely knows even with his idea it will take an unknown but likely significant amount more time to perfect his cure. So even if all he wanted was to be cured, he would need a safe place to work until then. And the tension is so high right now, his fear of being betrayed is so strong, that I don't think he believes it would be possible to do the necessary work unless he has the town cowed under his invisible heel.

“I don’t agree to this, Griffin,” he said. “Understand me, I don’t agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you hope to gain happiness? Don’t be a lone wolf. Publish your results; take the world—take the nation at least—into your confidence. Think what you might do with a million helpers—”

This line is also key. Kemp urges Griffin to confide in others. All his considerations of the usefulness of invisibility were from the perspective of a lone man against a cruel world. Very selfish and very assuming of a hostile environment. This too is reflected in Griffin's treatment of the few people he has reached out to - Marvel and Kemp. In both cases, he seeks understanding and sympathy. But he also seeks it at metaphorical gunpoint, by threatening them with what he could invisibly do to harm them. It's because as much as he may pour out his heart to Kemp here, he doesn't fully trust him. He doesn't fully trust anyone. By collaborating with them, all he is doing is giving them power over him, and that means they have power to hurt him. So instead he clings to his own power to hurt them first.

In Griffin's eyes, there is no such thing as an equal relationship. There is such thing as trust rewarded, or even given freely. And so in order to ensure his own safety he has to be the one in charge. He has to convince Kemp that they will both reap great rewards, he has to be able to hurt him and get away should anything fall through.

It all ties in perfectly with his backstory of being an outsider (albino, not socially adept at all), and being poor (in many ways powerless). And of course, it is such a self-fulfilling prophecy of terrible outcomes. If you only give violence, you're only getting violence in return. Someone has to let their guard down first, someone has to be willing to trust and be vulnerable for things to ever change. But Griffin is convinced that would be a mistake to ever fully do. And as much as I want to tell him he's wrong, his experiences corroborate that view. Everywhere he goes, he's experienced rejection and hate, or nosiness and distrust at best, no matter how much he tries to be on his best behavior. Every time he even partially lets down his guard or reaches out to others, they turn on him. And of course so much of that is because of the way he never fully relaxes, the way he always keeps a threat hanging over their heads, but he's not gonna see that. All he's gonna see is that he's been right all along. That he truly is in this alone. That he has to be selfish and he has to hit first and hit harder because he is outnumbered and if they catch him he won't be able to get away.

[murderandcoffee]

got in trouble at work today for uhhhh *checks notes* using the bathroom.

can I start throttling upper management now? please?

[coconut530]

BITTERSWEET REUNIONS

[starryjkoo]

ARMYs are really just burnt out and I don’t think the rapid fire pace of releases has helped anything. It’s amazing as a fan to get all this music, but the expectation to chart everything I think is unrealistic and kind of overwhelming. People just don’t have that kind of time, energy, or money to go all out for every comeback when they happen every other month, sometimes several in a single month. It especially doesn’t help if ARMYs aren’t feeling the song, and I don’t think they’ve felt quite a bit of CH2 music.

I have longer thoughts on all this, but I just have so much annoyance towards some chart ARMYs and their unrealistic expectations and their refusal to acknowledge that the current organized fandom streaming power isn’t what they think it is. Another big wave of HL victimization (but sometimes TH is also included??) from ARMYs and it just opened the doors for so much resentment and hatred to be thrown towards jkk but especially Jimin. It was really disturbing to go and block these people & find I had 5-10+ moots following each time. It’s really out of control.

I’m just tired of this RL discourse while they ignore the twenty elephants in the room that explain why the streams are where they are (and no it’s not because “ARMYS hate RL”.). Instead they just throw these tantrums that further divide an already deteriorating and toxic fandom. I don’t know what it will take for them to understand that a fandom that doubled with Dynamite is going to prefer pop music, and that the majority of ARMYs are in fact not zombie streamers but fans who casually listen to the music that appeals to them. Not to mention the fact that a lot of ARMYs aren’t even active right now, so many of them have been dropping off and waiting for BTS to return as a group.

It really just keeps getting worse and worse in ARMY spaces. I’m pretty sure active ARMYs are about 90% diet solos at this point. It’s extremely messed up what a lot of them can get away with saying and not get canceled or called out for. It’s also just this hyper-fixation on drama, shooter accounts, NewJean’s, MHJ, raging against whatever fandom approved villain of the month, trending pointless hashtags for random reasons, and then being shady and resentful because of these arbitrary goals they set that are often influenced by using Jimin as a goalpost.

[volkoss]

Hi, for the WIP folder game:

7. Olivier Ingellvar - My Favourite Mistake

That one I would love to hear more about

Hello! Firstly tagging @nerdanel01 because she also asked about this fic. I've briefly mentioned Olivier here as a character I was excited to write about this year because I want to dig more into writing OCs. Basically, he's the father of Rook Ingellvar, and he and Emmrich dated back before Rook (Klara) was born. Anyway, I've done more outlining of this fic since the last time I've talked about it, including something approximating a loose outline but with some significant changes to Emmrich's personal story line, because given Olivier's existence, Emmrich is now relegated to Nevarra's second-most eminent meddler 😌 Cases in point: 1) Johanna and Olivier are the first living people to find Klara, and Olivier is highly suspicious that Johanna Hezenkoss--not known for her maternal instincts--wants anything to do with an infant. Emmrich can't help but feel like Olivier's putting the baby above their own relationship, which is already strained because of how Olivier's basically tenured and Emmrich is still at the point where he's pumping out research. 2) Olivier advocated so fervently for his daughter post War of the Banners he actually got himself exiled from the country (hence Rook also needing to get out of dodge). Feeling awful for getting his daughter kicked out of the only home she's ever known, he... arranges for her to adventure with Varric while himself laying low in Orlais with his mother, trying to reason that it's because Klara is an elf and would thus be mistreated in Orlais. (His mother has some choice words for him.) But for the better or the worse, the entire story is planned to be told from tight Emmrich POV, so despite Olivier's name being in the document title, he spends a lot of time just haunting the narrative through his daughter who bears such a striking resemblance to a man she cannot possibly be biologically related to. According to my planning doc, core themes are: nature vs nurture, The Eternal Question (in the Mourn Watch sense of whether some shade of the departed returns when a spirit possesses the dead), intersectionality, and finally: getting Nevarra's Most Indecisive Man to Make His Own Goddamn Decision About Something Important in His Life For Once (a mission Klara intends to pursue with as much intensity as destroying the elven gods 🫡)

Anyway, given that this will most likely be the fic I actually write should I actually genuinely attempt a multi-chapter this year, I am incredibly amused to find myself returning to my fandom roots of exploring dysfunctional Family of Choice dynamics incited by a father's bad choices that he made out of love. (WIP Folder Game)