#he fucking slaps as a character when done like he is in canon though i gotta admit

[ruthlesslistener]

For the chose violence ask games 1 for Elden Ring, 3 for Hollow Knight and 7 for Bloodborne.

the character everyone gets wrong

-You probably already saw this coming, but Mohg. I understand why people's kneejerk reaction is disgust with him, but people also seem to forget that he is quite literally clinically insane and was also dumped in a sewer as a child to die, with the only 'person' to give any sort of affection to him being the eldritch horror that is the Formless Mother. One of Okina's item descriptions talks about how he stabbed Mohg and Mohg was like 'excellent! we're friends now :)' which gives a lot of insight into just how screwed up his worldview is. That's not to say he's entirely without blame, dude is literally The Devil, but I feel like most people also don't realize that Mohg just straight-up is not right in the head and thus isn't acting out of malice

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

-I don't have a screenshot of the argument nor do I want to dig it up bc I've blocked the person and I'm one of those petty assholes who retains grudges, but sunlight-moth's argument that the White Lady was an abuse victim who did nothing wrong and that PK was her abuser and a colonizer and that this was canon because he's literally white (ignoring the fact that WL's moniker is much more memed on for obvious reasons) rotted my fucking brain. I wasn't the only one either because many others vagueposted about it in the tags, but I think I was the only one who argued directly with them and the entire thread was a fucking disaster

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

-Alfred!! I admittedly don't hang out with the bloodborne fandom that much bc my fixation on that game isn't fully fandom-y, but WHY the FUCK is he so popular?? I get that he's one of the few people who's nice to your character in the entire game, but underneath it all he's actually a fucked-up zealot whose only motivation is religious genocide, and in my brushes with the fandom there seemed to be a lot of people who ignored that aspect of him. He's not a teddy bear my guy, he's a crusader! And that's not a good thing!!

choose violence ask game

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer park Steve AU part 60

part 1 | part 59 | ao3

cw: reference to canonical minor character death

Max slams the phone down, knocking her forehead against the wall. Sixteen calls in a row and still no answer. “I give up,” she sighs. “You should just go.” “Seriously?” Steve protests. “And just leave you here? Alone? After—?” After all that? He throws his hands out like an umpire calling a safe. “No. No way.” “Look, my mom will be home soon, you can’t—” “—I’m not letting you get hurt—!” “—What are you gonna do? Fight my nightmares for me?”

“Maybe I will,” Steve mutters under his breath, pissed off and replaying the conversation on repeat while he gets ready. Feels like a psycho for doing it; feels certifiably unhinged just going about his evening after everything that happened, putting on a clean shirt and choking himself in a cloud of Farrah Fawcett spray so he can go pick up the sweet-but-stupid girl named Brenda he promised to take to the game tonight; so he can go cheer in the bleachers like he didn’t almost die.

(Or like, very vividly hallucinate his own death, which... Yeah. Doesn’t feel any less horrific.)

But whatever. Max is right. Without El, there’s really nothing to do but wait. Hop’s dead, Bob’s dead, Joyce is thirty hours away. Owens is off the table, too. What’s Steve gonna do? Call the government and tell them to come nuke the boogeyman? He doesn’t have any proof. 

He also doesn’t want to freak Dustin or any of the other kids out without knowing for sure what’s going on and what, if anything, can be done about it, so...

Fuck.

Fuck!

He gets dressed; he goes out. Picks up Brenda and does his best to be nice to her even though she gets on his nerves the moment she gets into his car, and he buys them sodas at the gas station and doesn't say a word when she spills Sprite down the side of his passenger seat.

The school is packed when they show up — the crowd in high spirits, the marching band leading chants. Nancy's reporting from the sidelines, Lucas is laughing with his teammates on the bench, and Steve leads Brenda toward the bleachers and does his best not to think. Not about the graveyard, not Max, not the looming threat of cosmic terrors. Not about the fact that Eddie is somewhere in this building, probably looking all hot and menacing while he leads tonight's campaign. Probably perched on a prop throne drinking Mountain Dew from a painted chalice like a fucking dork; probably making it look sexy, anyway. Tight jeans, legs spread, an air of casual command…

Steve could go find him. He could make everyone else leave; he could get on his knees and crawl between Eddie's legs—

"Does it bother you that we might win the championship, like, right after you graduated?"

Reality comes back like a slap in the face. "Yeah, that's an excellent question, Brenda, thank you so much for bringing that up."

They get settled into their seats, and Steve wishes he were more excited when the ref throws the jump ball, but he mostly just wants to go home. ("You always want to go home," the Robin in his head reminds him, and the Robin in real life throws him a weird look when she catches him snorting to himself about it.) He's just tired. Worn down in his bones, hollowed where he thinks his marrow should be, and he's clinging to normalcy with a sort of sweaty desperation that he’s pretty sure Brenda can smell on him because the date just sucks; it’s so bland, so mutually boring and bored. He spends most of the night mouthing stupid shit at Robin or keeping a sharp eye on the court — anything to ignore his proximity to Eddie; anything to drown out his messed-up head and heart. 

When the game finally ends Brenda gets a ride to a party with some friends. Steve goes back to Dustin’s place and paces a hole into the carpet. Stays up until 3 A.M., humming a Fleetwood Mac song.

In the morning, he tells himself as he drifts into fitful sleep. 

In the morning it’ll be fine. 

In the morning Max will come by the store like she promised, and they’ll keep trying until they get ahold of El, or Owens, or someone, and that someone will know what to do and how to help.

—

In the morning the TV tells him there’s a dead girl in his house.

—

part 61

tag list in separate reblogs under '#trailer park steve au taglist' if you'd like to filter that content. if you want to be added please comment and let me know (must be over 21; please either verify in the comment or have your age visible on your blog)

[buckgettingstruck]

It’s also like… they only make this demand of Eddie. No one is campaigning for Athena, Bobby, Hen, Chim OR BUCK to go to therapy. Tbh some of those characters need therapy more than Eddie (cough Athena and Bobby cough). Even in the context of Buddie, Bucks done some pretty messed up stuff ON PURPOSE and people aren’t saying he needs therapy to be worthy of Eddie. Wonder what the difference there is 👀.

I also think that people don’t have a good understanding of grief. I know story-wise we’re all tired of Shannon’s ghost, but at the same time, grief never really goes away. I don’t know if this is an intentional bid for realism by the writers or if it’s one of those accidentally real things they wrote into the show, but I think it’s very understandable to want to recreate good memories and spend time with someone that you loved (romantic or not) and lost no matter how unhinged it is. And to be slapped in the face with a dead loved one’s doppelgänger? I can easily see how Eddie or anyone would get caught up in the fantasy no matter how well adjusted they are, but i think a lot of people don’t get that or maybe haven’t experienced that kind of grief

everything you said is so nicely put so kisses for you *mwah*

i do think many dont understand the way grief can fuck you up ESPECIALLY with the context of a dead spouse and thinks being left forever unaddressed. that aspect of it is so absolutely real and even if they didnt do it on purpose its something most shows dont do. like the person moves on with life and thats that. you are capable of having a lovely flourishing life after the loss but its not something that shrinks its something you grow and expand around. people dont get that its something that doesnt disappear.

also like. im being so real when i say this but its the fact that eddie has canonical mental illness while buck (and what i think isnt canon even though to me it is) doesnt. so. and people with mental illness are way more likely to be demonized i feel.

the thing that fucks me up the most is that eddie was doing well until he was slammed with such an unimaginable, unfathomable trigger. the whole storyline is a shitshow but its an unfathomable situation nobody irl would ever be in. which makes it a lot harder for some people to empathize with i think.

also especially without any sort of diagnosis i think buck’s issues are more palatable because people see at least a little of themselves in that while eddie’s are so niche.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

ALEX DEWITT (DC COMICS)

1.) The term “fridging” is literally based on Alex and what happened to her. She was killed off violently by a bad guy trying to get at her boyfriend only a couple issues after she was introduced (making it obvious they only brought her in to kill her off for shock value). Her death did very little to the narrative other than hurt her boyfriend Kyle and was done in an exceedingly horrifying and violent way. (Bad guy came to the door with flowers and threatening note, broke in and attacked her, choking her to death, before [off panel] chopping her body up and sticking it in the refrigerator as a “surprise” for her boyfriend. This obviously is really fucked up and she deserves better and should win this actually (a vote for Alex is a vote for all fridging victims [in spirit])

2.) It doesn’t get much worse than being the character whose death originated the “fridging” trope. In Green Lantern Vol. 3 #54, Kyle Rayner comes home to find that Alexandra, his girlfriend, has been killed by the villain Major Force and stuffed into the refrigerator.

Alexandra DeWitt is the character whose misogynistic treatment coined the term where a character, usually female, is killed off purely to make the main character, usually male, feel bad. Even if there are other characters who have been subjected to similar levels of misogyny, Alexandra DeWitt’s treatment has been essentially immortalized.

3.) I know she’s not going to win but shout out to my home girl, literally the trope namer for women shoved in fridges. All anyone ever knows about her is that she was Kyle’s girlfriend and got murdered for his character development, even though she had plenty of potential to be her own character.

LEAFPOOL (WARRIOR CATS)

1.) For context, she’s a medicine cat, which is essentially the priest/healer of an ancestor-worshipping religion called StarClan, and there’s a rule in the living Clans prohibiting anyone from dating outside their Clan, and also prohibiting medicine cats from dating/having kits.

So she’s breaking the law by seeing a cat named Crowfeather in another Clan, and eventually gets pregnant. She secretly gives the children to her sister to raise instead, because the kits would’ve grown up in misery if their true parentage was known. When the secret gets out that they’re her kits, Leafpool became demonized to hell and back.

Crowfeather, who ALSO broke the law and fathered the kits, only got a slap on the wrist, and he’s almost certainly going to become leader. But Leafpool was demoted from her role as medicine cat (by her FATHER), treated like scum by her whole community (aside from her sister and best friend), and her children despise her for lying to them (one even tries to get her to kill herself). The narrative constantly paints her as a liar that’s getting what she deserves, and even has her children insult her at HER FUNERAL, years after the secret got out. She’s a main character and she dies OFF SCREEN between books!

It’s not even over when she dies. StarClan decides to hold a trial for her when she dies to see if she deserves to join them, or if she’s banished to cat hell for eternity. War criminals who abetted in genocide never got a trial, they were just let in. An incel who tried to kill 4 people because he was mad his ex dumped him got let in without question. But the cat whose only crime was dating someone in another Clan and having kids gets a full trial? Keep in mind their sire gets a whole book about StarClan coming down to help him, because clearly only she deserved to be punished.

Leafpool’s life is nonstop suffering because of misogynistic double standards. Treated like the devil for getting pregnant and wanting to give her kids a better life, while all the men involved get excused, coddled, and placed into positions of power.

2.) she went through So much bullshit. squirrelflight (her sister) too. i’m sure she’ll also get submitted. Cat God (starclan) vaguely told her to run away with the man she liked and then got mad at her when she did it. and then she was punished for it the rest of her life. She had kids with him and those kids were like Incredibly Important and wouldn’t exist if not for her but she’s still punished for it. BY STARCLAN. Who told her to have those kids in the first place . and of course the books just treat this like it’s pretty much normal and fair

3.) just like her sister squirrelflight, she does many things that male characters do and faces drastically different consequences. she and another cat, named crowfeather, run away from their clans to get cat married. this is illegal because they’re from different clans. when they get home, leafpool is pregnant. when all of this is revealed(years later) their punishments could not be more different. when they first come back, leafpool is suspected, talked poorly about, and outlasted. we aren’t shown any consequences towards crowfeather at all. after the grand reveal of leafpool having kids(and giving them away to her sister since she’s a doctor and doctors can’t gave kids) leafpool is forced to give up her position as doctor, is disowned as her kids aunt figure, and completely outcasted by the whole clan(mostly the same happens to her sister). crowfeather is just minorly treated poorly and gets a cat divorce.

[cawcawbeech]

SIX OF CROWS AND KISSING !!

(Welcome to this silly but intricate guide nobody asked for)

Just so everybody knows and is fully aware, I literally never kissed anybody in my whole damn life. I dont much care to try (for now) unless your name is Amita fucking Suman (jkjk, or not), but that doesnt mean I didnt do some very extensive research on the topic just so I can write what are hopefully non-generic scenes where all of my favorite characters make out till the following sunrise without a single other thought plaguing their empty little minds (exception being if the said thought is used to deepen 'the plot').

Before I say much else, I would like to note that THIS is just a very detailed bullet point list on kissing for all of my boys and girls separate of their partners assigned to them in canon or by the fandom. We will get to how it would actually go in different scenarios with different ships a bit later on if I decide it wont be a waste of my time. PS: No, not every kiss / kisser has to be extraordinary or unique or have whatever traits I ended up slapping on these characters here, Im just extra like that. And its not like anybody can stop me. Deal with it and simply enjoy (whatever this may be)!

→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→

JESPER LLEWELLYN FAHEY

Jesper has had his fair share of practice in this particular field, we all know it. That is no reason to say that he is a perfect kisser, there are many who have done way more, constantly brag about it, and yet still leave you disappointed. But, this is Jesper we are talking about. Kuwei has said that he is a great kisser too, I choose to trust him on that. That joke he made to cheer up Wylan at Olendaal, the one about kissing Nina / Matthias 'with tongue', it doesnt have to mean anything, but I like to think he is a tongue kind of guy. I also like to think that he is adaptable to any type of person though, he aims to please through-and-through. It saddens me to look deeper, to think about how that may be a result of his low self-esteem, but in moments like these, it makes him happy most of the time, and it is all I could hope for when it comes to my boy.

The first relationship he had been a witness to, the one his mother and father shared before her death, had been a very healthy one. I wouldnt call Colm the perfect father, certainly not after his wife was gone, albeit he is significantly better compared to the hands the rest of our favourite characters have been dealth with, but he was good to Aditi. Most kids, including myself, were the type to be grossed out by PDA, especially when its between their parents, and while thats not in any way a bad thing, we can clearly see that Jesper was not of that type.

Despite his many faults, he was raised fairly well. He knows how to make a comfortable environment, to recognize a clear invitation, what to ask and what not to ask, what is acceptable and what he shouldnt do without a more in-depth discussion. He knows how to create and opportunity where one could deny him if they so wished. I wouldnt say its some overly high bar to jump over, if anything it is the most basic standard any and all should hold themselves to, but I call Jesper 'the consent king' for a reason.

Its said in the book that his mind empties when he kisses the right person, that thinking of methaphors clearly means something is wrong, but hes still pretty descriptive in his POVs if you ask me. Its also very clear that he likes to kiss deep, slow, and involve other sensations throughout which is the part where Id like to include some of my very own hcs (slight temperature / texture play where he drags his rings over skin, hair pulling is a given but I can see him also liking to touch peoples ears a lot, talking in between and whispering during the few subtly initiated pauses, etc). Jespers favourite type of kiss would probably be those he iniciates as soon as he wakes up in the morning. It rains often in Ketterdam, its normal, so he would also probably be one of the rare creatures among the regular Kerch citizens who finds kissing in the rain romantic.

KAZ BREKKER (RIETVELD)

Kaz will have to go through some major healing first, no doubts about that, but Id say he would probably be one of the elite members of the 'Im keeping my eyes open for this' club (until he isnt). I doubt he does much analyzing during, mentally he is on another planet thats probably many lightyears away as he tends to do with a lot of other even remotely intimate things, but theres lots of squinting, eyelid fluttering... Kaz is basically a personafication of that cliche 'when did I close them' quote. In my own experience, I can barely hold eye contact when talking, but I dont really see this as a bad trait. I also dont see it as a trauma response either like some would assume it would be for Kaz, I think its just a him thing. If this man didnt want to kiss somebody, you would not be kissing him, end of.

He likes to focus on teeth, whether by unconsciously (or consciously) biting his partner, having your teeth bump into each other, or licking his own after youre done. Theres lots of shuddering, youll feel him there more than youll hear him, but he is not completely silent either. I dont think he would like beeing cornered, picked up or lifted in any way except on very rare occasions. Just like the pulse thing where he feels for it on the wrist (or neck once he is more comfortable), feeling his weight including the pain of his leg serves to ground him. Perhaps he might also like feeling of you breathing through your nose on his face for the same reasons? He doesnt like leaving things unfinished, even if its just a peck, he will make sure it feels 'complete', I dont know how else to put it. If anybody could overuse the words "Again?", it would be Kaz motherfucking Brekker.

Im in no way saying he will be good, in fact, theres lots of traits here that many wouldnt like, but he tries when he wants to (and again, you would not be kissing this man if he didnt want it), he will learn and he will remember the smallest of details (so that he can ponder over them later). The only thing we hear about Kazs appearance related to his mouth is that there is a scar running through his upper lip. I never got it when people talked about kisses having a taste, but Kaz seems to often call people light-weight, so clearly, he handles his alcohol well, perhaps having developed such a habit to settle down his own supposedly non-existent nerves. It might not be the main reason, we heard about him being on the receiving end of many fights that in certain circumstances and with the ways they are handled lead to similar results, but liquor does leave one dehydrated and with chapped lips.

WYLAN VAN ECK (HENDRIKS)

Unless he is particulary fired up, Wylan likes to start slow and chaste no matter if you are the first, the thousanth person he has kissed or just a person he has kissed a thousand times. Unlike Kaz, he has some experience, sheltered kids know how to have fun in secret (and Im the last person who would ignore that 'lie' about him being kicked out for bedding the tutor, theres some truth to everything), but he is also nowhere near the level of Jesper or Nina or Matthias. We know he likes when his partner feels calm and like they are actually in their body before he goes in for the kill, we saw it with Jesper, but we also see that he isnt the type who needs to ask every time and will just do it when 'the time feels right'. Look out, he just might squeeze into your shirt while youre wearing it and do a makeshift 'surprise attack' from there if he is determined enough for it.

From that, we could say he might have some other habits, including but not limited to the familiar one of guiding his partner through breathing patterns. Maybe sometimes he likes to hold onto your forearms more tightly than necessary (not forcefully though), have your knees touch and bump into one another, straighten his own / your items of clothing, compare hand sizes while making weirdly-intense eye contact, use his thumb to subtly rub at a random tensed muscle, touch foreheads if he is tall enough or rub his face along the side of your neck, anything that would focus your attention to him and the moment... Ironically, as a follow up to the last point and as the kiss drags on, he forgets that he is an actual person who has a weight to them and has to lean back against something with the help of his partner before he falls down and cracks his goddamn skull open.

He likes to leave an effect on whoever he is kissing, but he also likes to 'clean up after himself' as much as possible after its done, which once again serves to bring both of you back down. So yeah, he would probably do something like twirling a stay peace of hair around his finger before neatly tucking it back in place, running that same finger across a brow, down the nose or along the jawline, nudging you playfully with his shoulder, hips or elbows, swaying a bit to slowly return the atmosphere back to relaxed as he secretely links your pinky fingers together. Lips would be his main focus, and he especially likes the soothing effect it has when he is sleepy, but he could also grow to like eyelid, nose, tummy or thigh kisses when it comes to placement.

INEJ GHAFA

Inej has had many men kiss her throughout her life, and unfortunately, theres no need to debate whether she truly enjoyed any of them. Oh how I would love to say that every shitty person is also shit at every other skill they try to master, however, that doesnt have to be the case. The fact that she was a brothel girl doesnt have to mean all of her kisses were bad (to specify, that refers to the technique). That being said, I think she would appreciate the message more than the way its done. It also might result in her not exactly caring about the placement of a kiss, palm, knuckles, hair, cheek, neck, lips, any of them would be equally as intimate to her, platonic or otherwise. Its somewhat similar to what Wylan also likes, but very different too once you look further.

As is with Kaz, you would not be kissing the Inej we know now unless she didnt want you to. I probably should have said this earlier, no, I dont mean that any of the other Crows would enjoy a kiss that was not what they wanted, they wouldnt ignore the signs and will fight the person off if needed, but I hope you understand why Im emphasizing it for these two in particular. I think her kisses would be short, but sweet, a petite little package that can deliver a punch under a right set of conditions, just like she can, the same going for her ship. Physically, we know her lips have an upturn to their shape. As is true with alcohol, salt water has the same drying effect that is only made worse by licking.

One other feature that might make Inejs kisses unique is a possibility of her aquiring more jewellery during her travels. I always imagined that the Suli find piercings to be very meaningful. Perhaps she had some since a very young age, perhaps they were taken from her too during her time at the Menagerie, maybe the holes closed naturally over the long months, maybe she got more whilst working for Kaz, and although it was not put there for such a reason, a lip ring (just as an example) has quite a pleasing effect for either side.

She holds a special appreciation for people who remember their first kiss, or at least remember their first kiss with her, a courtesy she will offer in return as well. It takes special kind of brave to get close (she knows better than most) and never lets the feat of overcoming fear go unappreciated. For some reason, I can see her counting the seconds, not for any reason at all. I wouldnt say its something particulary good nor bad, but Inej doesnt give me the 'let me kiss your words away' signals no matter the situation. The phrases that would fit more would be "We will get through this", "Stay strong, for you", "Lets face it together" or "We shall see each other once more". She seems like the type to keep her affairs secret, but at the end of the day, I also dont think she would mind PDA all that much.

KUWEI YUL-BO

I know the fandom likes to joke that Kuwei is the bad kisser between the two, seeing as to how Jesper was left 'disappointed' even before knowing the truth behind who he was actually kissing... But I dont think that had to do much with the kiss itself. We were told that Jesper liked Kuweis body plenty enough, but even if it were really Wylan (both in shape and spirit), Jesper wasnt in the right space, and Kuweis silence and mannerisms didnt do much to help.

Now, this is a personal headcanon, but one of the habits I think he might pick up in the Little Palace would be scratching his nose or covering his mouth before he goes in for a kiss. Or well, I like to imagine that being his tell among all the snarky comebacks, vicious flirting and sly glances. And seeing as to how playful he is with his powers and how much he grows to use them for mischief and otherwise in KOS, I like to think that his face is always warm to the touch as Kuwei himself is constantly touching it. Random instert, this man unironically likes lemons and you will without a doubt taste quite an assortment of teas while with him.

Some people care about the emotional setting, some like keeping it casual, and some like having that perfect mix of both. Kuwei might acknowledge that in different ways and act accordingly, but I also think he might care more about the physical setting and connect good actions with places rather than specific people or mutual feelings. This man is a certified tease, unless you pull him towards you which is exactly what he wants, he is 100%, absolutely ready to keep a partner on the edge of their seat, kiss the corner of their mouth, or maybe with the lips barely touching. Instead of licking his own lips out of habit or to seduce, he would lick yours. Kuwei being a tease might also be a way for him to set up walls? In a sense that hes reminding both himself and the person hes kissing that this is just a kiss and it doesnt mean anything. And when hes kissed by someone he loves and trusts, hes downright pathetic, super soft and annoyingly sweet about it.

I dont know where else to put it so it will have to be here, but I like to think he chewed on his lips a lot as a child and whilst in captivity, leaving him with barely visible indents once he reached adulthood. When it comes to the type, Id say he could end up enjoying goodnight kisses next to the fireplace or lit by the flame in his own hand more than he would like doing anything in the early morning. Kuwei tends to get frustrated and bored easily so that might lead to certain effects as well, more specifically the speed, angle and desperation. He has hid for long enough and doesnt much care about who sees what, only whether they got a nice view from wherever they were standing at the time.

NINA ZENIK

Nina has practiced CPR from a very young age (I wouldnt call any of those a true kiss by any means, but it will make slightly more sense in just a moment), we see her perform one on Kaz in the books without hesitation, so I doubt her first 'kiss' was particularly enjoyable or wholly consentual or that she even remembers it. Perhaps from that, her kisses would grow to be particulary breathy in the future, although that doesnt mean its some kind of rule or that its not just a result of her personality being put into how she goes about it. We already know temple kisses are her thing among some other stuff, but she also doesnt seem to have a similar kind of bond with any other type that is not at neck level or above. Shes fine with them, but always seems to go to certain spots herself when she has a choice, singing and laughing through all of it. As Matthias tends to say a lot, the chase is a game to her, whether on top or beneath, she still wins.

Her skin is said to be soft, and supposedly so are her lips, plus the girl is a Heartrender and that surely results in many privileges. Surprisingly enough, I wouldnt say she is particularly experienced in the world of romance, even if her talent at sweet-talking might suggest otherwise. Perhaps shes had flings, one or two, maybe even a relationship at some point, but I dont see much more in my visions of her backstory. "Dont you want to play with me?" and "Cant you handle it?" are some of the repeating phrases in her vocabulary, but oh, it only gets worse once she feels well and truly romanced, swept off her feet as one might say, and that takes lots of effort. Its a good thing we know Nina has some high expectations, that way all of us can be her personal wingmen.

If anybody could obtain the famous movie achievement of leaving a string of saliva to connect her lips with her partners for just a few more moments, it would be Nina. Speaking of such things, she may also be the only one for who the 'let me kiss you against this wall so that they dont spot us' scenario might actually work (in theory), or at least give her enough time to incapacitate them during their confusion since she tends to be quite loud appearance wise. Likes being attended to and coddled, and no kiss has a chance without a firm grab or two. Will die if you do a tango dip with her in your arms. She is one of the biggest fans of mistletoes and finds it extremely romantic. Sometimes, when she is invited to watch a play or show, she will turn around and kiss her partner whenever the actors do. "Consider me madly in love. With the kisses, not you. ... But maybe also you if you did it again."

MATTHIAS BENEDIK HELVAR

And finally, we have our romantic-at-heart of the group, Matthias. Now, his and Ninas romance is the most obvious and out-in-the-open throughout the whole duology, and frankly he is the one I had the most trouble with writing, but the difference between seeing their first kiss from Ninas perspective and the one of Matthias is that theirs was his first kiss ever. All of his actions leading up to it, as well as those after, are a promise in some way or another, and Im not only talking about his vow to her. Nothing could have prepared me for when he lifted Nina straight off her feet and held her there as he kissed her, yet it was also the most in-character thing he ever could have done.

Matthias will absolutely, every time, start an hour long conversation on what led him to this moment, if it is the right time, the right place, the right everything... He will continue up until he himself is basically internally shouting at his own mouth to shut itself (he has very low patience despite everything mentioned above) or his partner takes the initiative themselves. The second option is prefered by both parties and a 5-star whine is the expected plus-one to excellent service. He is the type to gulp when you get too close. Will go mad if you can tell when he is holding on by a thread despite his lack of many facial expressions, especially if told something along the lines of "Just lose control, love".

He is particularly sensitive for textures. All humans are to some extent, the lips have more nerve endings in them than fingertips, but Matthias is the one who is fullfilled by it the most and frequently says stuff related to it like "Are you wearing chapstick?" or "I can feel the dip of your scar". Often acknowledges indirect kisses. Matthias has once said that kissing isnt about romance, that it should be proper and only done as a follow up to a conventional Fjerdan courtship, and while lots about him has changed during his canonical relationship with Nina, I think he might still enjoy going through at least some of these with somebody who might appreciate his efforts. Matthias is still highly religious even if he is now seeing the world from another perspective and there are some cultural things that for him go deeper than just tradition. In a very specific headcanon of mine, he has grown up fantasizing about having to lift up your chin to do it, and so now he does so even with taller partners who can reach his mouth just fine.

He would 100% take the 'Will you love me if I was a worm' jokes way too seriously. "How am I supposed to handle a worm? I could hold a butterfly, maybe kiss you if you were a wolf (but thats after a very extensive inspection of your molars)". Kisses the back of your neck after putting on a necklace. Pretends that lipstick stains dont turn him on to the highest setting.

→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→

[yallemagne]

Instead of sleeping or doing anything else productive, I'm gonna talk about Monster High.

So like. We all know. About the new generation. I'm gonna get out all my complaining here: wahhhh I don't liiiike it, it's not like the original!!

Okay, that's done. What can we do about it? Nothing. But I can DREAM.

So in the shower, I was just thinking: "This doesn't feel like Monster High. It feels like a yuppie middle school. This is Monster Middle." and is it mostly just because all the characters look like babies? yeah. Also from what I've seen of it... it feels like none of the characters are allowed to be mean. If you're gonna set something in high school, where are the catty mean girls?? the bull-headed bullies?

BUT THEN BUT THEN--- so my major problem is that the characters don't really feel like themselves. I would like them better if they were their own original characters, not burdened with the titles of their forefathers.

Forefathers. Foremothers. Foreparents.

Now, picture you are tied to a chair and I'm showing you my corkboard right now.

Imagine how cool it would be if they made the reboot about the children of the originals! So many fusions also!!

The new Cleo is so nice because she's not actually Cleo, she's the daughter of Cleo de Nile and Deuce Gorgon. Hell, you could keep the name if you want, have her be Cleo II, that fits the original Cleo's vanity. Deuce's kind personality mellows out Cleo's diva and we get this character I cannot believe they tried to pass for THE Cleo de Nile ijoergpoi.

The new Draculaura's whole witch thing doesn't really make sense to me and it never will. (especially her apparently being the bio daughter of Dracula now when she was previously adopted-- also Dracula is scared of witches or smth but if you READ THE BOOK HE IS A SORCERER) Buuuut if Draculaura and Clawd had a daughter and she just happened to be into witchcraft, sick dude. Also, even though it's such an obvious fusion I don't think Mattel ever did a Vampire/Werewolf hybrid. Now is the time, people!!

I don't think Clawdeen would really have children of her own? She feels like... a lesbian aunt. She and her wife are career women and shower Draculaura and Clawd's kids with gifts. Maybe Clawdeen's married to a witch and that's why their niece became so enamoured with witchcraft.

New Frankie would be made by Old Frankie in a lab and... with that robo leg... and blue highlights... hear me out... So one time speaking with a friend, we were kinda spitballing who would be a good match for Frankie with her endless line of suitors... I suggested hmmm maybe Robecca Steam?? I just think it'd be neat! Imagine them married and in the lab piecing together their perfect child ahhhh. Cute?? Right??

It's not a perfect solution because we have so many characters to reckon with. Maybe some drama from older fans mad that their pairing is not canon... but that's just already true. So many ships, characterizations, and backstories have been scrapped :(((.

like... not all of my thoughts can fit into this post but CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY ERASED MY SONS JACKSON AND HOLT??? and made Clawdeen half-human (bitch werewolves are already half-human what the fuck) so they could slap Jackson's/Holt's conflict onto her. They couldn't handle my sons' autistic swagger.

[skaruresonic]

"Shadow isn't always an aggro douchebag, look at all these times where he was slightly chill for three seconds in a row! Sure there are just as many if not more examples of Shadow being a raging knob, but I personally do not like those instances and therefore I am going to say they were bad writing and ignore them in favor of the reading of his character that personally appeals to me more!"

What is it about Shadow that makes people be trippin so much? lol

How hard is it for people to just wrap their heads around the idea that Shadows chemistry is different with everybody? He has a MUTUAL competitive relationship with Sonic BECAUSE they have just as much in common as they have differences. Rouge is probably the most trustworthy person in Shadows life currently but it's more like they're co-workers than friends. Amy seems to be able to tug on his heartstrings and get him to do whatever she wants with her earnest personality even while he acts all tsundere about it. Ect.

The way Shadow is isn't mutually exclusive, but folks seem to want to just disregard interactions they don't like because they're different from interactions he has at other times under different circumstances. If your view of Shadow requires trimming fat and going "yeah well that time he was being 'OOC' so I just ignore it" then maybe your view of Shadow isn't accurate.

>>me @ me: the damage is done. you've said your piece. do not drop the Even Spicier Take(tm)

>>me: instructions unclear, failed step one

Tbh, I didn't want to say this because quite frankly, I didn't know how to word it in a way that wouldn't come across as though I was passing judgment since that's not my intention. But… ever since Shadow dropped that "go help your teammates" line in Sonic Forces Overclocked, this general notion has percolated in the back of my mind...

...Well. I think this idea of Shadow as modern fandom conceives him is... made up. And that's the lightest way I can put it.

Over time, I've come to suspect that fandom's constructed this mental image of Shadow as a noble protector archetype, soft-spoken and who always strives to fulfill his duty, and they've become quite attached to it to the point of rejecting other aspects of his character… like the pettiness and the bullheadedness.

It's possible the reason for the backlash against Sega's current portrayal is because the image doesn't match reality. His canonical pettiness chafes against the grain of who he "should" be. I'm not sure how well I'm explaining myself, but I hope the sentiment is received in the spirit in which it's intended.

That's not to say the archetype or the better parts of his personality are necessarily wrong in every circumstance (mandatory disclaimer that I am speaking in generalities and am not personally knocking your fic), but rather, insisting that noble side is all he is and lumping the less palatable traits under that umbrella paints an incomplete picture of his character. Although nobility and pragmatism do inform important parts of his character, they aren't his only traits.

It's like if people took umbrage with Sonic saying "I have no master except the wind that blows free." What, precisely, is there to take umbrage with? If part of the character's personality rubs you the wrong way, that doesn't necessarily have to indicate OOCness, especially when the character is supposed to be an anti-hero.

I have no legit idea what folks even mean by "Vegeta!Shadow" anymore because, for one thing, never watched DBZ, and for another, he gets slapped with the label regardless of his behavior. I can't isolate the offending variable because there doesn't seem to be one, aside from "Sega sucks." Forces!Shadow is relatively chill but still Vegeta!Shadow because Reasons. Flynn fucks up issue 19 so therefore his portrayal is evidence that Sega wants Vegeta!Shadow, because that's how logic works I guess. Shadow goes on vtube and his rivalry with Sonic gets acknowledged? Vegeta!Shadow. Like, is there no sense of scale or degree with which people apply the label? These are three different portrayals. I don't understand.

Obviously I don't want to be all "you must have a high IQ to understand Shadu Le Hedgehog(tm)" because that's very not much the message I want to convey. Lol and lmao I would be so far up my own ass if I did.

But it is interesting how discussing him specifically results in particular problems of communication. The issues with discussing Shadow appear to be that A.) folks tend to think your personal opinions and gripes are indicative of those of all Shadow fans AKA the SA2 fan problem, and B.) you're always going to miss some nuance that someone else is going to point out, and sometimes you have to decide to take the L for the sake of conserving energy.

I've written about his character at length, sometimes embarrassingly so (he rotates in my brain like a TV dinner. hehe Shadow go brrrr). And I think anyone who follows me at this point knows my attitude on Shadow is always changing in subtle ways, because there are as many ways of looking at him as there are facets of his character.

On the other hand… I get that people flanderize him, and his multiplicity can be difficult to capture in the limited space a post can permit. But also, there are times where I'm tired and can't English(tm) and I just don't feel like including footnotes every time I'm like "hehe Shadow's kind of an asshole <3," you know what I mean? It should go without saying that Shadow's character allows enough berth that "hehe Shadow's kind of an asshole <3" does not inherently preclude those moments where he's not-an-asshole. Or less-of-an-asshole. Whichever. You know what I mean.

Despite being frustrated with fanon, I'm not trying to pass indictment and say This Is How Shadow Ought To Be Characterized Forever. Rather, I'm just expressing frustration at how fandom continuously refuses to accept the most baseline traits, like (checks notes) "annoyed by Sonic sometimes."

Like it or not, he does have some rough edges. It wouldn't be fair to sand down the bad boy side of Sonic, and indeed some subsects of fandom complain about its erasure. So why is it okay to do to Shadow?

[hayleysayshay]

You know I don’t think I’ve ever rly done a post on why I like Mako, my forever blorbo:

He’s just the kind of neutral character I like and I think it’s because I really don’t have a strong personality and I tend to like characters some people think are boringg because they’re the straight man. Scott Summers was my favourite x-man lol.

He has weird eyebrows. It’s a plus for sure.

He has a tragic backstory, but it’s trauma that’s related to poverty. His parents were killed young and he’s been in a caretaker role since he was eight. That leaves him emotionally stunted. Emotional constipation is my jam. There is literally a post compiling all of the characters in the legend of korra crying, and Mako isn’t in it because he doesn’t cry. I think he needs a good cry.

Also his parents were killed by a firebender, he is a firebender, the show never explores this juicy source of angst.

He generally cares and is very protective over his friends. He doesn’t even really hide it, at the start of book 1 it’s clear he only cares about the people he cares about. This changes by book 4 when he sacrifices himself for the city. His world has expanded.

There’s a ruthless side to Mako, he can be a little dark, see how he threatened people for Korra in book 1 (and then Wu in book 4 lol?). He killed Ming-Hua and my own HC is that he was probs fine with because out of the four I think Mako is the most pragmatic (though tbh I don’t think we’ve seen all of what Asami can offer so maybe second most. Think Asami would murder easily).

I like his dynamic with Bolin a lot, and a lot of book 3 slaps because of this (ignore whatever the jail thing in book 2 because it’s just strange.)

I also like his dynamic with Wu which is why I’m a wuko shipper lol.

He is a very bad communicator. I think that’s neat, because communication is actually something people in general suck at talking, and I don’t ever really like people saying ‘just talk!’ A response to characters conflict, because people don’t just fucking talk to each other. Communication is hard.

Mako starts an eighteen year old who thinks he knows everything but really doesn’t. The only person he has had to rely on his entire life is himself, so his outlook on the world is very warped by his own perception of it, so I think he lacks introspection and can’t really relate to many people emotionally so he couldn’t understand Korra’s frustrations in book 2 (though yes to say Korra was also in the wrong). By book 4 he has grown more chill to trust and support Korra implicitly (who has also grown as well).

I love the breakups. Mako and Korra and Asami all seemed to like each other but never really understood one another. A lot of the issues between them were not just started by Mako (ppl forget Korra initiated the love triangle by kissing Mako without asking when she knew he had a gf) and it’s just teenagers being dumb and not being honest with eachother. I don’t think the writers set out do this in book 1 but by choosing to end the relationships in book 2 I feel like there was some awareness to the flaws present in the relationships. It is, accidentally, one of the more realistic relationships squabbles on a kids show. I love that shit because I’m weird.

All of this leads to this incredibly flawed doofus who means well. I think that’s blorbotastic.

Anyway because most of the fandom hate for the relationship drama is towards Mako I feel the need to defend him since it’s just not that bad. I also feel the need to explain every time that Mako dying would have been a very bad way to end the series, please guys, I will fight you in the streets over this.

None of this is very well explored in canon. I don’t think Mako is a blank slate character, a lot of his character is defined early on and is consistent, but it is not well developed beyond the initial setup at all. This is great for fanfic and it’s fun for headcanons. Hooray!

Because it’s underdeveloped your headcanon doesn’t need much time to work with canon as long as you actually watch the series.

[loosesodamarble]

Hello senpai it’s 🖤  anon for the ask game can you answer 2, 4, 11, 12, 19 and 25. I hope it's not too many.

🖤 anon! It's always a delight to have you in my inbox! Thank you for all the questions!

And don’t worry, it’s not too many! 💖🥰 I’m more than happy to answer!

2) a character whose POV you’re currently exploring

A small WIP (that I really should address soon) is centered on Gauche's character and I've only written for him once before and years ago. I find him fascinating because of how exclusive he is with his care (initially, he branches out his love in canon). He's not self-centered the way, say the Dark Triad are. But he's not sociable and giving the way someone like Asta is.

I guess most people are like that, they have their circle of who they care for deeply. But Gauche is a lot more intense about it. And that's what makes him fun.

I really hope I can get him right with the WIP.

4) a story idea you haven’t written yet

So I answered this question earlier but I can answer it again all fresh because AAAAAHHHHH! I have a lot of story ideas that I have yet to write out.

An idea that has been plaguing me recently is the thought of writing different endings for certain dating sim routes. The "Normal Endings" from Radiant Tale have a bit of range to them.

In Zafora's Normal Ending, mc Tifalia and him don't end up in a romantic relationship (which is kinda the goal of a dating sim) but he usurps his corrupt uncle's position of power and Tifalia is his secretary. That sounds normal enough. Meanwhile in Ion's Normal Ending, Tifalia ends up in an indefinite coma due to injuries while Ion has his heart frozen to keep him from being used as a living puppet. So both of them are essentially dead to the world. The ending had me going "the heck just happened in my sweet yet adventurous circus otome?!?!?!" And then Paschalia's Normal Ending just... Fucking slaps Ion in the face with how ideal it is in comparison.

I would like to write alternate endings for RadiTale's routes that fall more in line with the tone of Ion's Normal Ending because, man, I cannot have him suffer alone!

11) a WIP you’d like to finish someday

AAAAAHHHHH! I have a WIP for a second chapter of a fanfiction I wrote for the Cinderella Phenomenon games.

It's such a cute idea! Lucette wants to give Klaude a special gift but ends up adding a bit more to the gift so it suits Klaude a little more while still keeping the original idea in tact! KHDIGUAETHIAETH! But I'm hung up on a transition point so maybe I'll skip the transition scene and get onto the real meat of what I want to write and maybe then I'll finish the WIP!

12) a trope you’re really into right now

Aside from the possessive lover trope I mentioned earlier, I will always and forever be a sucker for "I will love/forgive you no matter what" dynamics (one of the core ideas to Nacsele so no surprise there).

Unconditional care is my jam! I do get that some relationships work better with the dynamic one apologizing and the other finding it in themselves to accept and forgive (Silvas siblings, the beloveds). But I will forever prefer relationships where someone has done wrong (and acknowledges/shows remorse for it) and feels like they can't be loved/forgiven, but the other person just brushes it aside in favor of showing love (Finral and Langris, Yami and Nacht, Yves x Ceres [Virche Evermore], Ignis x Kotone [Cafe Enchante], Nacsele).

Love me characters who embrace the one who hurt them because their love is stronger than their pain.

19) the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

🤔 Most interesting topic I’ve researched?

Maybe it was whether or not lye used for soap making was available during a specific era in Japanese history.

I guess recently I did a quick search on terminology used in city planning. Not all that interesting or in-depth though.

I honestly don’t do that much research when writing fanfiction. I know I’m not expected to be an expert in every possible topic that comes up in a fic and readers probably come in knowing my breadth of knowledge isn’t that great. So I end up not putting that much thought into researching and any inaccuracies on certain topics are likely forgivable.

25) besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

Another question I answered before but I can still give fresh answers to.

So I'm not sure how much of a hobby this is but I collect soap bars and then make my way through them. I go to a particular soap shop because I love how big and colorful they make their soap. I sometimes get tempted to bite into the soap because the colors are so, like, candy-esque.

[darlingpwease]

I haven't? :(( (Yes yes!! And give him many many kisses and shower him in love <<3333)

It's the new Yuuta work I'm writing, that's why it's taking so long. I'm writing a few of the worlds so it's looking like it's gonna be a long fic.... LMAO TRUEE, it's always the systems!!! Face slapping system, hero system, second lead system, canon-fodder system, mob system, villain system, caretaker system, etc etc... Sometimes the MC being the system! I'm still a sucker for them </33 My weakness <//333 Oh? Very interested?? It sounds absolutely amazing??? omgomg????

A calf on a leash?? I've never heard that one before,,, it sounds like a green flag to me though.... hey Dove haha what the fuck ahaha <333 that scenario was so specific?? What have you been reading lately?? Hm?? /ht /hj NOO I don't mean to nullify it I promise

Oooo!! They're nice too,,, there are just so many character I wanna hug tho tbh

If he were to cling to me I'd spoil him as much as I possibly could <333 I'd love him and kiss him and bite him and hold him and coddle him and praise him and treat him like he's the most precious little thing in the whole world <<3333 HAHA ME TOO they're my kryptonite, I love 'em so much, they're so lovable,, I never want to let them go <//33

>:□ I think I'm good and sweet already. Maybe a little tangy or spicy, maybe even bitter,, but still nice nonetheless... /hj?

-panna cotta

Xie Lian loves you, that's a given. He always pays attention to your needs, your likes, dislikes, your passions, your desires, you– He's noticed the way you've been acting the past few lives, and it scares him.

He has done all of this for you to stay.

He loves you.

You've said that there's nothing wrong with him, that you love him, that you'll never leave him– But with you acting different, he still can't help but be unnerved.

You would always treat him like a flower, so delicately, as if he could break at the smallest thing despite him being a God, so when you get a bit rough, when you bite him harder, mark him deeper and darker, when you bind him, marking him up more than you ever have before, he doesn't really know how to act, but by the heavens is he happy.

He listens so well, and when you see him laying there pliantly just for you, trusting you even though his muscles are slightly tensed from not knowing what will happen next, you feel a huge rush of bliss. Excitement. Superiority. Superiority over yourself, but superiority nonetheless.

You finally beat yourself. And it feels glorious.

Xie Lian will remember this. He will never be able to forget this, because this is the first time you're doing it, and you will always have that benefit. Not you from then, and not you in the future. You, right now, have finally something new to give him, and you can't help but revel in that fact.

The way his breath hitches over the smallest movement, the way he whimpers softly, you feel like you have all the power one could have and more.

The way Xie Lian leans into you when you kiss and caress his skin, it drives you insane. He's nervous, but he trusts you. He adores you. He doesn't know what's going on, but he can't help but be happy when he thinks about what kind of joy you must be feeling because of that. You still treat him as if he is the rarest thing in the world, the most precious thing,, when you press soft kisses against him, asking if he's okay, petting his hair and telling him how good he is, how perfect he is–,,, but he can't deny that the roughness is wonderful change too.

And when he calls out your name, not the one the people of this life gave you, but your true, real name,, you can't help but slip and drown in the addictiveness of your Xie Lian.

I can't help but think of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng both being cute puppies that will follow you around, always willing to do whatever you want as long as it makes you happy, being the most loyal and the most devoted to only you,,, man I could just go on and on lmao Hua Cheng would definitely tease as much as he can when you're still a will-o'-wisp, he adores you, you would always be there to protect him when you could, but now he's finally doing that for you, "Oh, how the roles have switched!"

no🧐 you're too suspicious, I don't trust my cute pies to someone like you🫤🫤🫤 /t /j (yes!!! tell him how cute he is and how much you love him; after all, even if you're not quite sure if he's a weasel or a rabbit, you still can't help but adore and shower him with everything you can, even knowing how powerful and strong he is<///3)

I'm looking forward to it then!!! >:33333 I also have a draft, but only about the quick transmigrator Yuuta, who is constantly looking for his lover in every world, not knowing that the one he is looking for is the physical embodiment of his system, so you are always in his world</3 I love them too, it's just a light joke on the spite of the day, dear~

listen, but you, the owner of the system, whose duty it is to check the operability and proper operation of the plot without external influence, so that then other players and their systems can take advantage of this world, because due to plot inconsistencies and holes, the world can try to explain everything itself, sometimes making white lotuses lying creatures, and giving villains high missions and creating white sheep out of them, which, of course, should not be allowed. you just have to live the world and follow the plot, correcting it and letting your system record the shortcomings and what was done to make the plot right again, sometimes even directly arranging in creating chains of motivations and goals just to prevent the world from trying to break the plot itself. in fact, you have almost the least restrictions of all existing system owners - neither in characters, nor in attempts to fix the world, unless you count the fact that after leaving the world you officially confirm that the world is fixed and exists as it should.

and although the world of cultivation is most subject to a huge number of holes and inconsistencies, like fantasy, you still loved to visit them, and a popular novel was rather your way to "relax", enjoying the moment until everything becomes intense. of course, you didn't choose the smallest role to be at the top of the hierarchy and relax at the same time, and even when the world started trying to accommodate you with the original characters, considering you an important character too, you didn't resist. and even when you were in an ambiguous relationship with the main characters, finally allowing yourself to experience almost guilty pleasure from your deaths (which do not affect your essence at all and are painless due to the influence of the system) and the easy torment of characters who had ambiguous feelings for you, you were actually sure that it would not affect on the feelings of the characters themselves — and so it was, they reached the right end, even if you had to get in here and there, sometimes deliberately leaving the plot to find holes and returning to fix, finding minor mistakes here and there, sometimes more because of how few players were still in the world, and the world just doesn't understand how respond to interference. in fact, although the characters don't look at you the way they should, it's not a problem — as soon as you disappear, this tenderness will disappear, so you know what you're doing, even when you're silent on their confession or gently hugging, as if drawing a line, indulging your desire to finally be loved.

at least until you get complaints that the characters don't behave that way — and none of the systems can handle it, no matter what type it is; even a "beta reader" can't fix a plot that doesn't match the original from the very beginning, even more than it even has to match in the young a world that doesn't know how to handle "guests" yet. of course, you are immediately forced to go back to this world, starting from the very beginning, to check whether these words are justified and honest, and why the world has gone crazy — in the end, it may be intruders who are trying to break the world to destroy it, and you, as an inspector, must make sure that everything is fine and then decide what to do with the world.

just to understand that your system is functionally suppressed and just as confused as you are, before explaining that this is only possible in one case — if the main rules of the world, "Heaven", forbid such a thing, while your system only helps, not controls, and should obey these rules. of course, you are amazed, there were no words about the limitation of the system in any of the reviews (only about "characters behave strangely", "they talk about a name that is unfamiliar", "the plot is not right at all!"), otherwise you would have taken additional measures, and if at your death you would have been treated in the game space, then everything would be fine, but your death is not a reason to leave, only the end of fixing the world.

only to understand that all these reviews were absolutely true — the characters are definitely not behaving the way they should have,

especially main characters.

are you not??? let me guess, you don't even understand what that means, hwhwhwhwhw "green flag"😨😨😨 /t Specific? Dear, this is the plot of any Manhua or white lotus story🤨 then I'm very interested in what kind of work you read, since you don't regularly see this template there, because for me it has already become so native, like my child :/// "what the fuck" bad white lotus cotta, white lotuses never swear!!! 3:<<< /t /hj of course, dear, but forgetting about it also counts as nullify, and we both know what that means<///3 /t /j

attention, here is a panna cotta who did not reach the 'dark water' arc ajhshshs /t /j /nsrs yes so true😔 wanna mwah all of them😔😔😔

yes!!! fandom often considers him just a baby, but he has experienced so many dark and traumatic things and has grown so much and overgrown with traumatic experience and insecurities and continues to try to stay positive and have a strong moral,,,, I want to see him break down and cling to you because you are the only thing that continues to give him hope in the world and what keeps his mental and emotional stability, and he gives you everything he has, because he can't afford to lose you anymore :((( he looks so cute and innocent, especially considering his altruistic and gentle nature, as if he really is some kind of forest fairy or a helping spirit; this provokes even more to get under his skin and poke at painful spots until you see how deeply and abnormally obsessive and dependent he is on you<////3333 my poor little woof woof,,,, yes!!! I always want to kiss and caress them until they start feeling loved again and will not be happy and will not cry if they are emotional <33333 xie lian is just as unique as yuuta, only if yuuta wanted to corrupt, then xie lian causes a desire to corrupt him and make him even more painful until his real attitude towards you appears in the form of a burning black lump of emotions, feelings and desires,,,, hua cheng, on the other hand, only makes me want to rock him in my arms, I don't want to hurt him shsghdgshd

🤨 dear, if everyone in the world were as sweet and nice as you, kindness would be absent in our world in principle🤨🤨 meanie /t /hj

When you are rude to him for the first time in all your lives, to the point that his legs can't help but tremble, feeling your hot lips slide over his cool skin, leaving bites and kisses, tightly wrapping around his waist, almost breaking it from the strength of hugs if you could, but Xie Lian only purrs, stroking you, encouraging you rather than trying to calm you down, allowing you to pinch and bite, feeling that your emotions become a tight ball that curls inside your body, spreading through your veins like poison, finding release only in the way his body shudders or how he breathes or moans when you find even more skin, you press even closer, bite even harder — when you try to find even more evidence that his body does not belong to "you", but to you, to you, personally to you, personally to you.

When you demand that he looks at you while touch his body, still sensitive to your touch and loving them; looking at you with darkened eyes, and you can't figure out whether it's a blush or the light from the fire on his face when your fingers slide to his stomach, drawing lines and words, which have meaning only for the two of you, like your secret symbols that belong only to you two, memories that only you of the living share. The signs by which only you can recognize each other, outlined on his soft skin, but almost leaving hot brands from which he breathes heavily, are still the same desperate mess for you that hundreds of years ago, that now — as if he is frozen in time, not even moving until you enter, entering into a chemical reaction that only has both of you, able to exist only with each other, no more than the moon and sun that you once had to become, the moon and sun of the Xianle kingdom, when you intertwine your fingers with his, letting his loose hair lie on the floor like tangled threads while his thin long fingers squeeze the fabric of your clothes, hearing there are only quiet moans and sighs around the house, as if everything around you has fallen silent, immersing you only in the sounds and rustle of each other's clothes, a quiet sweet moan when his legs tremble with excitement — just so that you catch it, kissing his hot face, even when your sticky, wet fingers slide over, leaving an imprint on his wet skin, continuing to caress, take, squeezing, touching, stroking, pinching, — and feeling how he greedily kisses your lips, as if giving up everything he has it was, pressing so tightly that it becomes difficult for you to breathe, as if he is trying to eat you, clinging in blind despair and need.

Xie Lian's eyes are dark, shining with delight and adoration, as if overflowing with feelings and sensations, and he is so hot and moist, even if he looks like a smooth white jade, — and his body is so pliable, even if unable to cope when your fingers continue to slide, caressing, touching, groping, making him gasp from the sensations, trembling, awkwardly wrapping his legs around your hips, blindly kissing your neck and face while holding your hand with his hand, refusing to let go, as if this is the only thing that leaves him on earth, not letting you give in to the impulse and be completely absorbed, even if your caresses become more and more passionate, hungry, needy,

just like you.

When he whispers your name, which no one knows anymore, making you tremble with pleasure, still knowing that he remembers it, that it is you now before his eyes, the real you, and Xie Lian loves you like no one else, just like you do him, asking him to tell you again how your name is called; quietly whining your name when your skin touches each other, catching your breath, shared by two, as if you are under the water column, where there is only you and nothing else, enveloped from all sides and locked with each other, forever locked with each other, and you gently, affectionately, as before, whisper his name, adding 'His Royal Highness' when his body warms up again, digging fingers into your skin, breathing hard, whining, searching your lips with his lips, as if trying to find air,

just like he was looking for your gaze before, bringing peaches and other fruits with him to be with you.

Somewhere there, underground, your ancient kingdom sleeps, keeping its secrets in pristine silence, which no one remembers now.

You loved each other, that's why you were saved.

And you don't think it's an accident.

ahhh!!!! yes!!! gosh, we're really on the same wavelength, aren't we? they would be your most devoted and loving followers, ready to do anything for you and your happiness, and the fact that their adoration is ancient and unchangeable, unconditional, makes everything even better and worse at the same time, as if you are both in heaven and in a demonic reality, experiencing all the intensity that they can give and that they stored until you were able to accept it<3333 I mean??? is someone stopping you??? I don't see anyone for some reason???🤨🤨🤨 /ht /pos /gen

imagine that you were the former spouse of the crown prince, who was supposed to become your husband — so that he would then ascend, and you could live as the future monarch in his absence, simply observing celibacy, but then he returns against the rules of heaven and you are broadcast for being the spouse of a demon-god, only to have a child whom you once caught because, like a vulture, you watched the festival go well while your spouse was performing, and then you meet this child after you found out that he was born under the star of misfortune and tried to give him comfort, and then you meet him so often in all places where you can, to the point that you can't help but be gentle and affectionate to him, trying to protect him until your Prince begins to need your support and you don't have time for the child anymore — and now this 'child' takes care of you and teases you when you are fully awake from the exhausting hatred, pain and anger, having previously managed to burn people who harmed your Xie Lian. only now he has become much taller, with a blindfold over one eye, too powerful than he should be (why is he a great demon, while you still don't even have enough energy to transform into a human body? isn't he having too much luck??) and you don't even know where your lover is??? at least this kid promises to take care of him and take care of you, and you don't really have much choice in following him until you find your Xie Lian — sort of...

[yourdeepestfathoms]

Ride the Cyclone Kids Performing The Crucible

i have no excuse for this one. i just have had an unhealthy addiction to The Crucible since i had to read it in 11th grade. it’s been three years, and it still has a chokehold on me.

also i know they’re a choir, not a theater group, but shhhhhh

Ocean is Mary Warren

Noel is Reverend Hale

Mischa is John Proctor

Ricky can’t perform, but he is a stagehand, so he’s around quite often!

Penny is Abigail Williams

Constance is Elizabeth Proctor

All the other characters are played by random students

Noel, playing a priest: i feel like there’s some irony here

He’s pretty damn good at pretending to be religious, though!

Ricky, to Ocean: Ocean! You’re already so prepared for the role!

Ocean: Really?

Ricky: Yeah!

Ricky: Ginger

Get it? Cause The Crucible is about the Salem Witch Trials… Gingers were/are called witches/demons…

Ocean isn’t amused

Noel in movie!Hale’s getup

Penny, whenever Noel has to interact with her: hello, gay boy

Okay okay, Penny as Abigail? ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING

Like, Holy Shit

She’s so scary, in fact, that she makes Ocean sit down like a fucking red heeler during her whole monologue about Abby’s dead parents

Penny: Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and l have seen some reddish work done at night, and l can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!

Ocean, who’s in the same scene:

Mischa as Proctor is terrifying, too, but not quite on Penny’s level because he’s already an intimidating dude

It’s just daunting seeing Penny act so cruel

She’ll finish a scene where her character literally shattered the psyche of another character and forced said character into a mental breakdown and will be like “great job, guys! 🥰”

(The other character was Ocean’s lmao)

(If you’ve read TC, y’all know what scene I’m talking about)

You know the part where Abigail hits Betty? Yeah, Penny is merciless with that scene

The actress of Betty damn near saw god that day

Poor girl went SPINNING off the bed she was on

The script literally says “smashes her [Betty] across the face” and Penny took that WAY TOO SERIOUSLY

The duality between Penny nearly decapitating a kid with her hand alone and Penny being like “i’m so sorry!!! are you okay?!” immediately after

After that, the director tells her to lighten up a little lol

The slaps are still real, though

Just less likely to One-Hit KO Betty’s actress straight into the afterlife

Noel, when Penny does Anything: whore behavior

And speaking of whore behavior

Penny and Mischa. Their characters fucked

These two have NO interest in each other whatsoever, but that doesn’t stop them from acting as slutty as possible because they think it’s hilarious, especially when the other choir members react in the most disgusted way

Mischa: I can’t believe my character is an adult man fucking a teenager.

Penny: I am the teenager

Mischa: Thank you, Penny. I did not know that

Meanwhile, there is NO chemistry between Mischa and Constance, even though they’re supposed to be married, and it’s really funny

But honestly, kinda fitting

Since, you know. Proctor cheated on Elizabeth, and there’s meant to be a noticeable rift between them

Ricky, holding an imaginary microphone up to Constance: Constance! Constance! What’s it like playing a canonical milf?

Constance: Pretty cool

One time when Constance and Mischa were sitting at the dinner table set piece for act 2, waiting for the scene to begin, Constance whispered “I can’t believe I bred with you” and Mischa LOST IT

Constance wore Birkenstocks for some time. You know, before their costumes came together

Constance: They’re my Jesus slippers!

Mischa: I don’t think Birkenstocks were around in 4 BC Bethlehem

Constance: Go eat a fridge

Meanwhile, Ocean had an absolutely VISCERAL reaction to these fucking Birkenstocks

Ocean: I’m onto you, Elizabeth, you slippery weasel. I see those things. My mother eats, sleeps, and BREATHES Birkenstocks. I can smell those uncomfortable, mold-soled jerks from a mile away. I can SEE your footprints in them. I know what you’re hiding. I swear, my mother has a pair of those in that exact color, but I don’t know for sure because I’m not at home to check right now, and I’m not allowed in her closet anyway. I bet you stole them, didn’t you? Well, you doubt my willpower to rat you out, she-devil. I know. I see everything. My quietness makes me watchful. I’m practically invisible. I know you paid 99.95 shillings or more for shoes that feel more like solid stone than proper footwear. You snake. You fool. You absolute devil woman. You deserve no rights. Why would you make this purchase if you know what our world is like? You’re a woman in the 1600s for god’s sake, Elizabeth, you’re making chump change! You can’t spend your money on freakin’ Birkenstocks. Go to the general store and get some slippers because at least they would be cheaper and MATCH YOUR DRESS. I may be ace, and I may be aro, but even I know those two colors DO NOT go together. You are pure evil. Purple and that color? That brown? What were you thinking, woman?! You deserve no rights. I hope the shoe mold harvests every last one of your toes. Rapture is nigh, lady, and I don’t think your feet are prepared for judgement.

Meanwhile, the whole theater is SHRIEKING with laughter

At one point Mischa asked the director if he can just pick Ocean up instead chasing her in act 2 because it’ll “be easier”

In response, the director says, “It’s not going to happen because it’ll kinda ruin the illusion of terror, but I would like to see what you would do.”

This then led to Mischa throwing Ocean over his shoulder like she’s a sack of potatoes

In retaliation, Ocean grappled onto him with all of her limbs like a rare species of red koala

“YOU CAN’T BEAT ME IF YOU CAN’T PUT ME DOWN!!!!”

Ocean can cry on command, which is good because of how emotional Mary Warren is

She spends more than half her stage time sobbing uncontrollably

Ocean: oh yeah, crying on command is easy! i just have to remember my Whole Life

Ricky: so have you ever considered the school counselor

“Mary Warren is holding the weight of my mental health on her tiny, Puritan shoulders” -Ocean

Mischa gets to use a REAL WHIP for the play

He once accidentally hit himself with it when trying to crack it

The others have never seen him crumple to the floor like that before

He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t even manage a scream, so he was just silently shrieking in pain

Noel, coming up behind Ocean during this, whispering in her ear: that’s gonna be you soon

Ocean isn’t nervous, though

She trusts Mischa!

Anyone else playing Proctor, though?

Nope

Before the whip came in, Mischa would take his belt off and threaten Ocean with it

But 3/4 times he couldn’t get the fucking thing off quick enough

Mischa: I’ll official y— Uh. Hang on. Sorry, just— fuck, this thing is on good. COME OFF!

He just starts fighting it

Meanwhile, Constance and Ocean are just there like 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️

They decided to start using a stick instead (pre-whip era)

They call it the “Beating Stick”

Mischa accidentally hit Ocean with it once

Ocean folded like a goddamn chair

When Mischa gets the whip and is like “I’ll official you!” Ocean jumps on the WHOLE DINNER TABLE to get away from him and ends up flipping the entire thing

Ocean, hiding under the dinner table while Mischa prowls around with the whip: i feel this on a personal level

Mischa: W H A T

It’s method acting 😌

During Elizabeth’s arrest at the end of act 2, when everyone starts yelling at each other, Constance pushes Ocean behind her like she’s trying to keep her safe from the mayhem, and Ocean Almost Cried

You know what she DID cry at, though?

When Elizabeth is actually arrested

Ocean takes it WAY TOO PERSONALLY

She’s acting like Constance is actually getting arrested and put into jail for witchcraft 😭

Great acting, though

Mischa, to the director, about the arrest scene in act 2: Hey, so you know how Proctor is threatening everyone and is really angry?

The director: Yeah?

Mischa: Okay, so, hear me out. What if he had a gun?

The director:

So Mischa gets a gun

Unlike the whip, this one is fake!

But still

He feels so POWERFUL

Ricky has made it his personal mission to condition the actors into acting and staying in character through Anything, so he just does random shit in the wings during practice

Even the very emotional scenes

Mischa: l will bring you home! l will bring you soon!

Constance: Oh, John, bring me soon!

Mischa: I will fall like an ocean on that court! Fear nothing, Elizabeth.

Constance: I will fear nothing.

Ricky, in the wings: 🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺💃

Ocean is so short compared to Mischa that the scene between Mary and Proctor at the end of act 2 looks like the violent assault of an elementary school student

This is the scene

Mischa, holding Ocean by the throat: I could break you like a potato chip

Ocean: Do it then

Mischa fuckin FLINGS Ocean to the ground so hard there was this loud ass THUMP

A visual representation of what this would look like from an actual version of The Crucible online

(Side note: the version this comes from is fucking AMAZING. Mary is SO GOOD)

Okay, so, act 3? Ocean’s acting? HOLY SHIT

She puts her fucking SOUL into this performance

She cries so hard during act 3 that Mischa, who is with her most of the time, is genuinely concerned that she’s having some kind of episode

She keeps holding her head in her hands, curling up on herself to seem smaller, rocking back and forth, breathing shakily, whimpering and sobbing, and Mischa can’t tell if she’s just a really good actress or is in need of psychological assistance

(The answer is both)

She’s constantly being told to drink water afterward because she gets dehydrated from crying so much

There’s this one point in act 3 where Mischa and Noel are standing around Ocean because she started crying again, and they looked like her gay colonial parents

Ocean, to the director: Hey, so the script says, “They all watch as Abigail, out of her infinite charity, reaches out and draws the sobbing Mary to her, and then looks up to Danforth.” Does this mean that I get to be hugged by Penny?

The director: Yes, it does.

The director: Why are you crying??

At the very end of the play, they actually have an execution scene, where they pretend to hang Mischa with a harness and stuff

Noel: Did you guys hear about that one wardrobe malfunction during a school play?

Constance: No, what happened?

Noel: Well, they were doing a hanging scene, as we’re doing now, and apparently the harness broke or something because the kid started to actually hang. Nobody knew he was dead until after the scene because they just thought his struggling and stillness was just acting.

Penny: That sounds awful. Imagine getting into a school play and inviting your whole family to come watch you, and then you fucking die.

Ocean: His parents were probably out in the lobby with flowers afterwards, waiting to congratulate him, and then someone had to go out and tell them that not only he was dead, but they also watched him die without realizing it. Probably got videos of it and everything.

Noel: It gets worse. He was an understudy. The kid who was supposed to go on got sick and couldn’t perform, so this guy went on for him and died because of it.

Mischa, in a harness above them, about to be hanged: I’m feeling a little unsafe

THE KIDS IN COLONIAL OUTFITS

THE GIRLS IN COLONIAL DRESSES AND BONNETS!!!!!

[twilightguardian]

New review from Lilith Fairen where I really begin to wonder if she has reading comprehension so poor that I should feel guilty for being harsh to someone with a mental disability. The lack of fundamental comprehension is that bad.

Either that or she does this on purpose because like CanonSeeker, she thinks that "criticizing the critics" aka bullying, is a sane thing to do.

But of course Lilith doesn't comprehend the first thing about criticism because it has to come from some sort of intellectual place. But she doesn't do that. She's just hating because she hates Celtic Phoenix/Raymond, and not for anything that he's done, but because he's a fan of a show she dislikes: Madoka Magica. She is peak petty and childish.

Where as most so-called "capital C Critics" and "RWDE" are genuine fans of RWBY and look at it through this lens of being a fan, Lilith is not a fan of FRWBY. She doesn't understand the point of it, doesn't comprehend it. It's rather sad considering she's a writer and should know how writing works, and that it can involve editing. Someone who is more artistically inclined takes their criticism to an artistic level, but she doesn't understand this.

Anyway, by now it's clear that I'm not really responding to Lilith or any of her pathetic ilk because they're going to keep doing this no matter what. My goal isn't to communicate with those who have gouged out their ears in order to keep hating. My goal is to make sure anyone who talks about Fixing RWBY and becomes curious about it will see how Lilith and people like her twist things around to lie about a fan project done out of passion, telling people its done out of spite because people like her cannot stand it when people are more successful and popular than her. Especially if it's a man, doubly so a Madoka Magica fan.

You have an illness. You are mentally obligated to make yourself unhappy. Dislike FRWBY all you want, but no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to watch a fan video. Having gone through all the saved logs of your previous tumblr, I know for a fact that you have a visceral need to be unhappy. You can't help yourself. Seek therapy or at the very least unplug your internet. Go outside, breathe some fresh air. The internet has obviously not been good for you.

Mistral is canonically meant to be based on Asia. How dare the worldbuilding actually reflect that. No, it should be more Western or else you're fetishizing. Because erasing other cultures from existence for no reason is totally a logical route to take, right? Absolutely bonkers insane fucking logic. This woman is stupid or racist. Pick your poison.

Also keep in mind the only fandom Lilith regularly partakes in is still a Japanese anime. It's fundamentally Asian. All the characters are Japanese and they likely partake in Japanese culture. You write stories based on these characters I guess you're automatically "fetishizing" Asian culture. That is Lilith's twisted ass logic.

Lilith wouldn't know what a good reason was if it slapped her in the face and stole all of her possessions.

Plot isn't the only important thing to the story, and as a writer I'd HOPE that Lilith knows this, but unfortunately it seems not. That doesn't bode well for her story, which I've been struggling to get past the first twenty or so paragraphs.

Essentially what she's complaining about is the fact that characters take some time to actually be people. We get time for the characters to breathe, but more importantly for character relationships and dynamics to be established, enforced, reinforced and enhanced. But no, it's not plot, so it's not important. No wonder she likes the canon show, which neglects this. If she does this with Glints Saga as well, I can't see many people actually caring about the characters or the romance she's so interested in writing for in the first story. Then again, I'm sure she's perfectly fine with it if it's in something like Precure. Though she only seems to like a la mode.

Look at how the logic here doesn't follow. The girls are aided a little bit by their companions which means they aren't protagonists.

Apparently according to Lilith a protagonist is someone who doesn't get assistance from anyone ever, who doesn't interact with anyone. Effectively what Lilith wants is a mary sue protagonist, which canon RWBY never was nor will Fixing RWBY Team RWBY ever be. Plus the girls in canon get help from other characters all the time, and rarely do anything for themselves unless Jaune brings up an idea first and if they do it's after sitting around a whole lot and the only thing they manage to accomplish is getting a lot of things destroyed and people killed.

Raymond also hates the female protagonists so much that he makes them more active characters in their own story than canon. Because he hates them. Makes perfect sense.

Lilith once again showing she knows nothing about anything. Changing the location of a scene from a train station to a festival and expanding upon it isn't padding. Unless Lilith is actually a critic after all. She's using Fixing RWBY as a way to critique the canon show but hide it behind the guise of hating on a "critic" so she doesn't lose her friend group. Because heck knows she doesn't have friends anywhere else from the look of it.

She doesn't understand what padding is in a story. Padding is useless fluff that adds nothing to a story. If there are important character dynamics going on, and worldbuilding being shown through the setting, it's not padding. Simple as.

Raymond's writing of Madoka fanfiction has nothing to do with this. Lilith is trying to label Raymond a pedophile, I suppose, which is incredibly cunty behaviour. Salem is canonically 16 during the setting of The Lost Fables and yet her design makes her look like she'd fit in with the cast of Grease. Making a 16 year old actually LOOK like a 16 year old isn't gross, Lilith. Grow the fuck up, I implore you.

This is what happens when you only scroll through the video. Neo, Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Roman and Qrow are all framing devices. Neo just happened to be the first one, followed by Yang. But she wouldn't know that because she doesn't pay attention. Her goal, despite calling Fixing RWBY a "spitefic" is to act spiteful and to lie and be a massive bitch in service of defending a show that she barely cares about and likely wouldn't if it hadn't been for hearing through the grapevine that RWBY had a massive "hatedom".

Also really telling how obsessed Lilith is with the idea of subservience. I'd think she's projecting quite a bit. Just like how obsessed she is with complaining about Fixing's Shiloh or Roman. Raymond lives in her head rent free.

Ahh. So she does know that Neo isn't the only framing device used. Love that she implied that but then had to admit that's not true. It didn't even take her a full paragraph to admit she lied.

You can dislike the framing device all you want, but it's more engaging than what canon did. It also wasn't pointless, and her saying that it was doesn't make it true. The point of it was to show that these are stories that the girls know, possibly modified over the millennia, to show that these stories are all interconnected. These are fairy tales of Remnant, but also those fairy tales weren't the whole truth. Lilith can't comprehend anything unless it's directly spelled out to her, and she admits it by calling it confusing. If it requires her to rev up a braincell, it's too confusing. Just sit back and consume product, that's how you watch RWBY, this is bad because it makes you think!

She doesn't want to summarize the rest of it because it's actually good and that ruins her narrative lol

Yes, I repeat, a child didn't look like a child. It's like those really cheap 80's movies where a 14 year old is played by a 38 year old. Yes, I totally believe you're a high school student, sir.

It's apparently wrong to want Salem to look as old as Ruby was during volume 1. Because she looks like she's 30. She looks no different than she is now when you take off the special effects. She looked no different in age than when she had children, which is unfortunate.

lmao she's mad

Like what does she want? This isn't an AU or a full rewrite. It's a reconstruction project with the goal in mind to show how RWBY could be a lot better with a couple of little tweaks and changes. Like I said earlier, what Raymond is doing is essentially developmental editing. He's not the author so he's not going to do any major changes to the story. Ozpin still has a host at the end of the day. Vernal was still a little servant of Raven and died. These preserve the overall plot beats of the stories while being different, but there's nothing that fundamentally changes by design. That's on purpose.

There's a difference between hating or being frustrated with aspects of a show and hating the entire thing. Raymond falls into the former camp. He likes RWBY. Doesn't mean he can't have problems with it. That's too much for some people's little pea brains to understand and that's very unfortunate. It creates unnecessary division and toxicity in the fandom than there should or really needs to be.

Some people have this revulsion to others actually wanting to engage with their fandoms in ways those people don't like and have this sense of entitlement to the fandom and what goes on in them. It's a disturbing trend, especially with those that have a problem with discourse and critique. Some think that any kind of fandom engagement that isn't wholly, unquestioningly positive is automatically hate and that's disturbing.

It's really not. Raymond has only watched the first episode and he disliked it, though couldn't put his finger on why. This has nothing to do with that spinoff, and I have no idea why Lilith would think that. The episode was recontextualizing a bunch of fairy tales in Remnant's world that everyone would have known.

Raymond has said a few times that he doesn't want to touch Fairy Tales of Remnant because he has no interest in it at all, so there would be no sense for him to do it in episodes 6&7 of all things.

It's commendable that Lilith is trying very hard to use that dusty old thing in her head, but she's still got a ways to go. Her logic doesn't follow, the speculation that she has doesn't come from anywhere and has no follow through.

She loves repeating herself, doesn't she? Girl, this isn't twitter. Saying things over and over and over doesn't make it more true.

Just because you can't comprehend why something was done doesn't necessarily make it bad lol

Also can't say that I've really come across anyone except for Lilith who says it's disorienting, which leads me to the conclusion that until further evidence of someone who isn't an "anti-Critic" says the framing device was confusing, that it's said deliberately to have something to complain about, because otherwise, there would be nothing to complain about. She's already struggling so much with this review because she knows it wasn't that bad so she has to look for things. I am so happy that Lilith is so boringly predictable that I said hours before her 'review' came out that she was going to focus on Neo being the first in line for the framing of the story.

What's telling about it, Lilith? The point of words is to actually have meaning behind what is being said.

She says the emphasis isn't on Team RWBY, but they take up the majority of the transitions.

Neo to Young Yang, Adult Yang to Young Blake to Adult Blake, Young Weiss to Adult Weiss, Young Ruby to Adult Ruby to Teen Qrow to Adult Qrow then finally to Young Roman. So she's not even correct that Qrow ends the section. Neo and Roman bookend the segment, but the meat of the segment is taken up by Team RWBY+Q.

Now, could he have started with a member of Team RWBY? Sure, definitely. But if you look at the bolded names you'll notice a pattern.

1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6

The bookends get the first and last, but the middle portions get double focus. It balances out.

Only Ruby's weapon is damaged, but it's presumed to still be able to fight in gun form. She just cannot transform it into a scythe. He said nothing about Blake's weapon, Yang's weapon, Weiss' weapon or any other weapon. Not only are none of the other characters are impacted due to their weapons. Yang and Neo are injured. Blake, Weiss and even Ruby are still readying to fight.

Also really ironic she's so bent out of shape that she thinks FRWBY doesn't have the main characters do anything when canon doesn't allow them to do much, either. Why aren't you complaining about that, Lil? Could it be that she doesn't actually care? She just has such a hateboner for Raymond because he likes Madoka.

Raymond has never insisted that everything about RWBY is 'horrible and terrible'. It's heavily flawed, and frustratingly so. Raymond has consistently been the more positive person of his reaction friend group over the years, often saying he likes many things of the show. But Lilith doesn't know this because unlike me, who tried to understand Lilith before speaking about her, she's only seen his skits and videos specifically for Fixing RWBY. She knows nothing about him, and thinks nothing of trying to pin every terrible thing she can think of onto him, from pedophile to racist.

Lilith doesn't understand the concept of deep editing. Not anything beyond the basics of spelling, grammar and maybe attempting to change a few minor points around. Comparing the beginning to her older draft of Glints Saga: Papillon to her newer version, she doesn't do much significant to change it.

Don't get me wrong, it's BETTER than the older version, but that's not saying much. Lilith is too precious with her story to do something like what Raymond is doing: a developmental edit, a large edit that might change a lot of things but make the overall story better.

And Matrixdragon decided to chime in as well.

Yang is trying to stave off hypothermia with Neo. She can probably move, but it wouldn't be the best thing for her. But like I said above, Yang's weapons are not damaged.

I think this is actually a fair criticism, and one I've seen a little bit with other people. To each their own, really. It's not like RWBY didn't try and do the same thing with Volume 1 and the whole background NPCs, keeping the events isolated to a small group of important characters. What Raymond is doing here is cutting out background characters that don't need to be there and can be filled with other ones, ones that can lead to better character dynamics and interactions than if they were strangers. Some people are going to like that, and some people won't, and that's fine. It's certainly not unique to FRWBY and no one else complains when coincidences for story happen in any other franchise, though. So it's a little eyerolling when it's suddenly a problem because a fan did it for a fixit fic.

Do old ladies have a stereotype of being curious? Maria didn't wander into the middle of a battle zone during her first introduction in canon, either, so what's your point? The whole train was being attacked so it wouldn't matter where she'd go she'd still be in the middle of a battle zone. We know from context that she's a former huntress but it makes no sense otherwise why she'd wander in other than to have a contrivance that she's there, which makes the contrivance more noticeable. We don't even learn that she can still fight until late into the Atlas arc.

At least with Fixing RWBY's new introduction of Maria, she is shown off the bat to be a capable fighter and we know right away that she likely came to the area to help fight. That makes the contrivance more understandable as a reason why she'd be there. She's a character that got a lot of focus in canon even if she just walked past the camera because she has a highly unique character design, so it's not a secret she's going to be important, and some people even rightly pointed out she was likely a silver-eyed warrior due to how they framed the opening to the anime.

The characters don't trust Roman. Blake certainly doesn't. But they acknowledge he's in this with them for better or worse and now they're all stranded together, so there wouldn't be any point in lying to everyone.

Yang is not someone I would call 'mature' in canon. Being an angry little sourpuss when things don't go her way or someone challenges them is not what anyone would consider mature.

It's also not that Yang is unwilling to give Blake a chance, either. She hasn't completely forgiven Blake for what she'd done, and Yang is under no obligations to forgive her, either. Forgiving someone has nothing to do with maturity, and the fact that this seems to imply you think so is unsettling. It means that someone cannot have feelings about something traumatic that happened, and the more 'adult' thing to do would be to just get over it. Things like this don't resolve overnight. They take time, and before Yang and Blake can become a proper couple, they need to properly work things out, not sidestep the issue and pretend like nothing's wrong until there might be, then step on eggshells around each other, wondering if the other is mad at them for no reason.

I don't think Adam gave a shit about being detected. It's not like he was trying to ninja his way through the train car. It also wasn't just Cardin he had to deal with, but Qrow and Russel at the same time. I honestly don't remember whether Cardin was a competent fighter in canon, but we know he was at least tactical and not an idiot. So 'the likes of Cardin' only means someone thinks he's an incompetent fighter because he's a bully. But Cardin in Fixing isn't like Cardin in canon. He was more competent in the scenes where he fought and he likely became stronger during aftermath of Beacon.

The only ones being spiteful around here are you two. It's seriously pathetic.

[cookinguptales]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💙

You know... I put off answering this for a while because I just could not choose five. And I still can't?? I have so many fics I've written, many of them for fandoms of one, and I find that I actually love a lot of them.

So... if you'll forgive me, I think I'll just talk about a whole bunch of fics that I love for a whole bunch of reasons.

(cut because... I really do talk about a lot of fics lmao)

I think these days a lot of people follow me for WWDITS/nandermo fic. It's one of my current loves, and I've really enjoyed writing for this fandom. I do wonder if I'll keep writing after nandermo becomes canon (or gets sunk for good) but in the meantime... I guess I'll just keep having a good time?

I think my favorite fic I've ever written for WWDITS is Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Too. I was looking at a bunch of prompts for the Trick-or-Treat Exchange (more on that later) and I ended up smushing several of them together in my head. But then the story really got away from me, I guess, as I really started to delve deep into Nandor's mind (a WILD place to be, I'm telling you) and it ended up not being posted for another month. Whoops?

Either way, though, I feel like I was really able to get at some of the ideas I'd been juggling with the characters for a long time at that point, and I think the prose itself was very nice at times. I did complicated things with that fic that I haven't done before, and in the end... I think I did a good job! It's probably the fic I'm proudest of in this fandom.

That said, I'd like to give Honorable Mentions to both When We Sway (I Go Weak) and Five Times Guillermo Helped Nandor Collect Semen (And One Time He Didn't) just because both of those fics involved me getting wildly out of my comfort zone. I think both of them seem a bit... outdated, maybe, after s4 and s5, but I think they match the tone of s3 nicely.

Sway was heavy on pining, something I feel like I'm good at writing, but also very heavy on physical action. As many of you know, I'm disabled! I have never waltzed. The kind of movement I described in that fic is not easy for me to do myself, and action scenes have always been difficult for me to write fluidly. So the fact that I was able to write both dancing and fighting convincingly in that fic made me really relieved. I got several comments from dancers telling me how well I'd captured dancing with a partner and like. PHEW. I did a ton of research and bro I was RELIEVED. So I do feel very proud of that.

Even more outside of my wheelhouse was both 5+1 things fics. I'd written a little bit of porn before this, even some for nandermo, but not much and I was largely dissatisfied with it. But boy did I get a lot of practice with those fics. lmao. It was essentially 11 sex scenes of various levels of filth loosely strung together with longing, and like... honestly, I'm very pleased at how most of them turned out! And I think I'm a lot better at writing porn now, even if it always turns out very fucking weird and introspective.

Speaking of weird.

The other fandom I love dearly these days is Sleep No More, which I've been writing for for several years. For a long time, I mostly just wrote this one for exchanges? Mostly ToT and Yuletide. I love writing for SNM, an interactive theater situation in NYC, because I can really fuck around with writing styles. I can play with ideas about religion and folklore and magic and blood and storytelling and tradition, and I can do it while writing some of the most fucked-up relationships that exist. I can play with a show that has very little spoken word, where a slap and a kiss might be in the same loosely choreographed dance, where I get to be a part of this haunted house, but only as a ghost...

While I'm sure the very few people who usually read my SNM fic might disagree, I think my favorite thing I've ever written for SNM is It's A Sin to Tell A Lie. It was my first time really trying to assemble a semi-coherent narrative from the show (largely inspired by some things that I realize now were not always common experiences in the show lmao) so I'm not sure it always aligns with how I see the characters now, but I feel like I wrote a really haunting fic that used the source material in interesting ways.

The Honorable Mention this time goes to The Consequence of Sounds, which is probably the strangest thing I've ever written. A friend of mine joked that she'd like it even if someone wrote like a haunted space hotel AU for the show and that apparently scratched something insane in my brain, so... I wrote a fic that combined space opera, Macbeth, Scottish folk magic, and the music of the spheres.

It's....... very weird. But it was also so fun to write, and I think it was fairly successful. I think the point of fanfiction is weaving together a familiar canon in a brand-new way, and I had fun bringing odd little allusions and old ideas into a new AU. I had to get really creative and that was so fun.

Speaking of weird AUs... I wrote a lot of them when I used to write karabita. haha. This is another one of those fandoms that I picked up a lot of followers with, though idk if any still follow me. Osomatsu-san was a weird comedy show that threw itself into surrealism and AUs very often, and that allowed me to do the same. I think... out of the many, many karabita fics I wrote, my favorite might be Love's Carriers, which is a flower shop AU I wrote out of spite after someone told me that all flower shop AUs are terrible. I worked really, really hard to make the AU suit the characters rather than the other way around while also incorporating flower language, one of my favorite stupid tropes. Again, I think this one came out surprisingly well, especially considering I wrote it in like... 24 hours in a fit of pique. lmao.

Other fics I remember being very proud of in that era... uh... The odd karabita KH AU that no one read because there is basically zero crossover between those fandoms... The soulmark AU because I am WEAK to those... The wingfic... ah... the wingfic... I don't know if I'd use words like "best" or "favorite" for that wingfic, but... I do think it's probably the most I've ever put of myself into a fic. The anxieties re: love and disability that I put into that fic were so real that I still cry every time I look at certain parts of it. I've grown as a person since writing it, but... yeah, those are still fears that haunt me. So I guess I could say it feels the most "me" of any of them I ever wrote.

Other than that... I guess we end up in my exchange fic era. I spent many years writing fic of extremely variable quality for exchanges lmao. I think the most successful was undoubtedly there's not a word yet (for old friends who just met), the muppets slash fic that launched... god, honestly. like. I know I did not create a fandom, but being in at the ground floor and being the one that everyone came to talk to when the pairing DID get off the ground was surreal. lmao. I created that tag on AO3! Everyone said I was crazy for writing that fic! Then they read it and they fell in love a little bit! Then the pairing became canon and everything went bananas! What a weird, surreal, delightful fandom experience.

That Muppets fic really came from the heart and really just came from me writing a fic during a very difficult time in my life and wanting to create a love letter to the characters that got me through it. I wanted to make other people feel the way The Muppets made me feel, and the fact that I succeeded in that (against all odds!) really does make that one special to me.

But... I wrote a ton of exchange fics for tiny, tiny fandoms that most people have never considered! Weird spooky crossover f/f ships, like my Crazy Rich Asians/Ready Or Not Astrid/Grace fic, or my Stoker/Sharp Objects India/Amma fic! Rarepairs like my Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) f/f Mitsuha/Miki fic! An unhinged lost episode of Puppet History! Character studies of dear little elderly murderers in Arsenic and Old Lace!

I also wrote sort of quasi-original fic, especially for the ToT exchange. Ghosts of dinosaurs falling in love with each other in a museum (inspired by a real historical case of the wrong skull being on a skeleton -- and god, that one has a hilarious IRL story attached to it) and a pet shop full of the ghosts of animals longing for companionship and grim reapers grappling with life and death and forbidden love. Mann I loved writing those.

And honestly??? I could write entire posts about any of the fics I'm talking about here. I love them, especially the ones that weren't really loved by anyone else. Hell, I'm turning that pet shop into an extended f/f origific right now.

Writing fic for tiny fandoms of one or two for an exchange feels so bittersweet because you can make that person really happy (and, not to toot my own horn, but I tend to make recipients really happy in exchanges) but it just kind of... fades away. Those stories sometimes have very short lifespans just because they're really just for one person. It's not a good or bad thing, just the nature of exchanges. I love designing a fic that's tailored to one person's likes, dislikes, and deepest desires. It's so fun for me. But it is kind of sad to see those fics fall by the wayside after. So I have to love them enough to make up for it. haha.

Finally... a fic I adored writing, that absolutely consumed me, and it's for a fandom that is basically nonexistent. I loved going to Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return and experiencing the work of hundreds of artists all coming together to make something great. I wanted to add my art, too. No one is out here looking for HoER fic, especially not for the pairing I wrote, but like. BOY, if there's any fic I've ever written that's the definition of "I wrote this for me", it's Gnosis.

Anyway, yeah, I've been posting fic on AO3 for *checks* almost 15 years now, so I guess it makes sense that I can't narrow this down to just five, lmao. But I'm also trying not to go on too much.

But seriously, seriously, if anyone wants me to talk more about these fics or any other that I've written, I would be so incredibly happy to give you a play-by-play of what I was thinking, what I was trying to do, what I liked, what I disliked, what I'd change now, what changed me, etc. I think any author would be haha.

But I'll cut this short now!! As for who to tag... honestly, since I read so much fiction for a living these days, I don't really read fanfic anymore. I'm not sure who I follow writes it anymore. I have most fic tags filtered, being real with you. So... how about this. If you are a writer and you want me to tag you, just lmk!!! And I will send you the message.

[afniel]

Nevi Infodumps Upon Request: MMX2

Because god damn let's just make this its own thing and stop doing it on some other poor bastard's post, what did they to do deserve me happening to them.

Also I have to make a correction! There is no Z-Saber in X1, I just remembered that goofy. Zero doesn't give you shit if you upgraded your arm parts, he just dies. It doesn't even exist until X2. I have no idea why I thought that considering I played it recently enough but despite appearances I'm not known for my great recall of chronological order shit.

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST AND I HAVE REMEMBERED THAT "MANNERS" EXIST SINCE YESTERDAY SO. I am using a cut. And lowering my voice. This too is "manners."

@longshotlink I have done the thing! It does not stop from happening.

OKAY SO TO RECAP.

Mega Man X1: *slaps X* this bad boy can hold so much survivor's guilt and self-loathing.

There, that's it, that's the recap you get.

My second favorite game in the series is X2 and you're about to find out that I like them in the order they came out in, so this is going to look chronological. It is not! Not really. This is a coincidence.

Six months after X got PTSD real bad from everyone he knows dying/being killed by him (except technically Dr. Cain I GUESS, I forgot he existed for a moment there) he's still tracking down Sigma's followers and presumably shooting the hell out them. He goes to an abandoned reploid factory with the Maverick Hunters, where Green Biker Dude dies after a glorious ten seconds of doing nothing but popping a sick wheelie on a Ride Chaser and getting shot to fuck.

Rip to a real one, I guess. Pour one out for Green Biker Dude while we're here.

(Because we source our art here, this is by Springqueen on DeviantART.)

X tears through the factory and kills a huge-ass mechaniloid—wait, you say, the hell is a mechaniloid, we got reploids but that hasn't come up yet? Well, see, there's normal robots, and there's people robots, and mechaniloids are the normal robots who aren't really self-aware, and you literally cannot predict who the fuck is which:

This is a sentient being, with a rich inner life and emotions equivalent to a human's! (Only the C-15 model from X1, though, after that they're mechaniloids.)

This man is just a really fancy computer who can't actually feel anything!

I am not even joking. This is canon. Figure it out! I sure can't. It is a mystery. Nothing makes sense and everything is confusing and quite possibly bad.

There are three dudes ominously watching X and talking about some kind of nonsense bullshit crap, and these guys are Agile, who is tall, smirky, and pointy; Serges, who is short, Dr. Wily, and pointy; and Violen, who is huge, dumb as a sack of hammers, and pointy.

No really, they're all kinda pointy. For some reason they specifically have pointy feet. And they're talking about 'the control chip' and being all m~y~s~t~e~r~i~o~u~s but let's just get it out of the way. These mofos are reassembling Zero for nefarious reasons. Why? Well, you see, when you're Keiji Inafune and you just made a game, even though you teased a sequel in the post-credits, you totally did not think this through (because you have never thought anything all the way through in your life and you are not beginning now!) and now you're stuck, because you WANTED to make Zero the main character, got talked out of it, and then somehow ended up killing your intended main character. And everyone else. The only surviving named characters are X and Dr. Cain, and like...now what, right? Shit. Fuck. You fucked it up. You were supposed to leave some guys for the sequel. Well uhhhh they're all robots, just...reassemble someone real fast. Like Zero. You wanted him to be the cool one anyway, let's try that again but not wrong this time!

But never mind that! It's all fixable. Everything is fixable. Even Zero! Well, no, X isn't fixable, he's a goddamn mess, but details, man.

This gets a LITTLE fucky to summarize because there's some branching paths, so I'm gonna flip back to the actual game side for a second. X2 actually fucking slaps as a game. It's got an extra math coprocessor in the cartridge! Did you know that? The Cx4 chip showed up again in MMX3, and was the reason X2 suddenly had WAY more onscreen sprites, transparency effects, and even 3D wireframe enemies. This shit was amazing on the SNES.

Also, X2 is another case of "oh no, these Mavericks are ex-Hunters again," so like. ACAB. Not all of the Mavericks are, but still more than none, which you'd hope would be the number. They have not learned shit about shit for vetting members. The call is coming from inside the house, guys! Maybe Hunter HQ should think about the implications of the fact that—*I am shot in the head by Keiji Inafune, who has never once thought something all the way through in his life and is not beginning now, killing me instantly*

In X1 there were basically three kinds of defector:

I'm So Bored Please God Kill Me Now

I Just Love Hitting Things

and

Whatever You Say Chief!

Well, and Storm Eagle's unfortunate little thing of

I Got My Ass Beat To Hell And Back Until I Said Fine I'll Kill The Humans With You Just To Make It Stop And All I Got Was This Terminate On Sight Designation T-Shirt

X2 is a little more varied than that. You now have the new exciting backstory flavors of

I Love Money More Than My Life And This Guy Promised Me A Raise, Sooooo... (Bubble Crab)

The Bad Guys Are Somehow Less Ableist Than The Good Guys (Overdrive Ostrich, who USED TO be able to fly, lost the ability in an accident, and retired because the Hunters were kind of treating him like damaged goods and he was over it. Editor's note I do not blame this dude at all, what the fuck!)

BLOCK OUT THE SUN (Flame Stag)

I Love Trash (Morph Moth, who was not a Hunter)

Idk I Was Already Doing Crimes, Might As Well (Crystal Snail, also not a Hunter)

Sigma Is My Literal Dad (Wire Sponge, made in one of Sigma's reploid factories. He came out wrong even for a Maverick. Good job, Sigma. Great quality control.)

There's Still No Virus In The Continuity But I Sure Caught It Somehow Anyway?? Help Me (Magna Centipede, who used to be in Zero's unit, but got 'brainwashed' somehow.)

(This happens a lot. This will keep happening. Zero collects subordinates who are just WAITING for an excuse. Also this will make a whole lot more sense once they retcon in the Maverick Virus and then MORE sense once they retcon in that it is coming from Zero specifically but we aren't there yet so right now it's just weird and kind of unfortunate!)

And you still have at least one I Just Love Hitting Things (Wheel Gator).

Also why are so many of these guys invertebrates? This is like the invertebrate game. X1 has two, but X2 has five of these things. (X3 has three, X4 has two again, X5 has three again, X6 has three, X7 only has one, and you will not see another game with five again until X8, the last one. I don't know why I went to count that.)

After X whacks a few of the Maverick stage bosses, there's a little cutscene at Dr. Cain's lab. The three shadowy weirdos from the intro call Dr. Cain to say like, "Hey, X, we named ourselves the X-Hunters for reasons you'll never be able to guess, and also we have Zero's parts. Meet us at the wherever the hell on the map we visibly teleport to after this in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking." They hang up, Dr. Cain is like, "Well, it's fine, we still have Zero's control chip here and they can't really resurrect him without it, plus this is obviously bait, so maybe don't do anything too hast—"

X declares he's got to get Zero's parts back at any cost and runs the fuck off, because he's fine, okay. He doesn't wanna talk about it.

This scene is way more interesting in Japanese, where Serges and only Serges slips a bit and calls him Rockman X, which is sus, because nobody really mentions Rockman in the games, except for some reason Dr. Cain in English who calls him Mega Man X. Dr. Cain has actually read Dr. Light's notes so he's got at least a historical reason to be doing this, but Serges wouldn't know that shit, right? It is definitely unrelated that the Japanese materials describe Serges as having comparable intellect to a certain unnamed mad scientist. It is also certainly coincidence that despite Zero being an absolutely undocumented black box of a Wily creation, Serges somehow knows how to upgrade him too.

Let's assume for the plot that X does go through and collect all of Zero's parts, which is his head, torso, and legs. Now correct me if I'm wrong but his head did not actually fall off in X1...but meh, details, right? Once you have all three, Dr. Cain says he needs a little more time to get Zero's control chip installed, so go deal with the other Mavericks until then. Then, once you do that, he tells you it's going to take even MORE time, but hey, the X-Hunters are hanging out at the North Pole, like some kind of shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and murder you. So X fucks off to the North Pole to do some violence, and shoots the hell out all three of the X-Hunters, like you do. In Japanese, Serges is kind of pissed that "Light's memento robot" defeated him, which again...yeah, that seems normal, nothing to see here!

Once X murderhobos his way through the rematch fights, he gets a random zoom call from Sigma, who invites him to come to the central computer in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking, and once there he gets a nasty surprise: his buddy Zero is there, chilling, and Sigma is like, "Lol he's so mad that you let him die. Look at how upset he's getting. Look at his fists. They're balled. He wants to beat you up so bad." Except, assuming you collected all of Zero's parts, this is a shitty dollar store Zero with a palette swap, and the real Zero is offended as shit and shows up and kills the fuck out of his copy, saving you a fight. Sigma is like, "WHY are you not on my side though man you should be. You should totally be on my side and fighting him instead, it's your destiny." Zero's like, "Maybe so, but I still don’t like you!" <- Unlike almost everything else I keep putting in quotation marks, that's a real quote. I'm not making that one up. It's even better in Japanese because it's SO DISMISSIVE the way he says it. It's literally, "It's because I don't like you," but you'd almost have to localize it to something like "It's because I don't like your face," to convey the don't-give-a-singular-fuck disdain. He's just like, fuck your stupid destiny thing, do I look like the kind of person who cares.

I feel like this game is just kind of less interesting at the end than X1. Sigma did actually run off to Magna Centipede's level for his final stage for some reason, which is unusual. A lot of the implied angst in the first game exists, and X basically ignoring Dr. Cain's attempt at warning him to be careful because OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE CAN FIX THIS ONE THING AND MAYBE AT LEAST ONE PERSON HE CARES ABOUT WILL BE OKAY is pretty good. And once you blow up Sigma, he does have a little foreshadowing about Zero being "the last of the doctor's creations," or MUCH more specifically in Japanese, being "the last of the Wi...num...ers..." aka the Wily Numbers, aka Dr. Wily's robots, which is like...where'd you hear that, hm? Were you talking to that shady Serges guy again who was also basically your lieutenant? Couldn't be he's someone from the past who would know all this shit.

But I'm not gonna touch the epilogue just yet because let's say X decided that actually he should focus on the mission at hand and ignore these guys clearly trying to goad him into doing something stupid. Good call, X! You have finally learned a little self-preservation. Except, this goes badly actaully, because the X-Hunters will break into Dr. Cain's lab, not butcher him for some reason even though that would have been the logical thing to do if they really wanted to fuck with X and hamper his efforts, and steal all of Zero's parts, including his control chip.

I have a little headcanon about the reason they didn't bother, but I'll save that for a second or three later. For now...

X fucks off to the North Pole as before, deals with the X-Hunters (who are now shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and STEAL YOUR DEAD FRIEND'S LEGS??), meets Sigma at the central computer, and Zero is there, only that's the real Zero, and X has to fight him. Maybe for the first time, but not for the last time, because reasons! X wins, which apparently slaps some sense into Zero, who for some reason apologizes for causing so much trouble (probably having been resurrected, reprogrammed, and then kicked in the head by your bestie until you're unreprogrammed makes you stupid) and says he's going to go destroy the main computer.

Wait, what main computer, like do you mean this entire stage? When did we ever establish about there being a main computer that needed to be destroooooh fine whatever go destroy the main computer and X can just fall down this hole where Sigma is. X is like, "Take care of yourself, Zero. I don't have time to put you back together again," and once again that's a real quote and I'm not just being flippant. Was that an attempt at humor? In Japanese it's just, "Do you intend to die?" which is like. God damn, X. I know this is the point in the game in which Zero exploded himself last time, but he JUST got here, he's not going to Death Hug the computer too. But ya boy is evidently having a flashback.

From there things proceed as normal, X defeats Sigma, and this time,

Two of them.

Joined by his friend Zero, Mega Man X gazes out over the sea. Sigma has once again been destroyed, but X wonders if the fighting will truly end. Was Dr. Light’s dream of a world in which Reploids and humans lived together in peace merely a dream? The price of peace is often high, X thinks to himself. Who or what must be sacrificed for it to become a reality? And when the time comes, will he be able to do it? The future holds the answers or…

It's a lot less of a downer than X1 was. The music is tense and kinda gloomy, but it's not the endless despair party that X1's ending theme was. X is like, okay, maybe this will work out. Sigma's defeated again, this sucks and all, but he's clearly the bad guy in this situation so there's less of an internal conflict about Was This The Right Thing To Do. Obviously so! It's less, was this right, and more, can I do this? And Zero's back, so maybe even some of the mistakes are fixable. It's not going to be easy, sure, but it at least feels possible.

Or maybe it's hopeless after all. Will the fighting truly end?

Haha, no. But don't tell him that right now, I don't think he could handle it. Can you imagine. Let the poor dude rest for five minutes. Just let him have this one little victory. God damn.

Anyway, let's leave those guys on their cliff and go over here instead for

HEADCANON TIME oh boy let's do it!!

So, it is not at all a stretch to say that Serges is probably some kind of AI incarnation of Dr. Wily. The game is not explicit about this, no, but it's heavily implied in the Japanese version, and Keiji Inafune, who has never thought anything all the way through in his entire life and is not starting now, is on record as having left it intentionally vague so that you can draw your own conclusions. Weird thing to tease, if there weren't a little truth to it.

This takes some of the later games' plot existing to make sense, but I don't think the X-Hunters really exist to be subservient to Sigma and just carry out his funny little genocidal reploid rampage. It's established that Zero was created by Dr. Wily, and if there's one thing that you can count on with Dr. Wily, it's that he is the kind of guy who will create a whole guy whose personality is summed up by, "I exist to kill this other guy and then after that I have no idea." He definitely did this with Bass. He definitely did this with Zero. In fact he went so overboard with Zero's Kill A Guy programming that Zero wanted to kill EVERY guy upon activation, which Sigma had to beat out of him (X4), making him weirdly normal.

(In fact the original recipe Maverick Virus was just a day-one patch for Zero's omnicidal bullshit tendencies to make him fucking stop it, dude, you have things to be doing that aren't creating new Pollock works all over the buried lab every time like a rat or something wanders in. But then because Wily is kind of a shit programmer but a really good scavenger of other people's shit, the day-one patch went, fine, you suck, I'm doing a world tour and getting stronger and coming back and FIXING YOU. Maverick Virus out.)

Now if you were some kind of AI version of Dr. Wily watching this—your favorite and final murder machine that you made specifically to kill Dr. Light's little baby-boo-bop hugs and love machine—and he is NOT doing that, he is in fact BECOMING BESTIES FOR LIFE with his enemy, this is not cool! This is just more proof that you are a bad programmer. Or, your original meatsuit self was a bad programmer, and now YOU are a program made of and by a bad programmer, which is arguably WORSE. It's enough to give a guy a FUCKING COMPLEX. Which is also a common thing to happen to any given Wily creation.

So your goal, here, because you think you're Dr. Wily or close enough to count, is to manipulate the situation into getting Zero to remember that he's supposed to be biting X to death with his teeth, not whatever the fuck pattycake he's playing with him right now, what the FUCK. WHAT the FUCK. Ahem.

If you have the X-Hunters kill Dr. Cain, well, that's not going to incentivize this happening at all. X is going to be so mad he kills you, and that's not optimal for shit. So fuck that guy. We ignore him. Unused variable. Just get Zero's parts and scram, because the important thing is rebuilding Zero, not fingerpainting with the innards of some human. (Even if Violen would probably be into that, but he's an idiot whose text box dialogue even appears more slowly than anyone else's, you can't listen to him if you want to get ahead in life.)

Sigma is really secondary to this too. He's very conveniently placed, and kind of easy to manipulate: just tell him that you know all about Zero (which is true) and that he's supposed to be on Sigma's side (which is close enough to true that he won't question it) and you can make this happen (you think you can. IT SHOULD WORK. Dammit. How bad of a programmer was your mental predecessor, anyway?). So Sigma kindly sets up everything for you, and you do your thing.

And they fight! Finally. It is glorious. Of course you are dead by the time this happens, probably, but maybe you aren't, because you have probably vacated your trashed-ass body into some other convenient system. (You will definitely not show up in X6 as some guy named Isoc, who upon finishing his work, goes absolutely inert like his whole-ass self just left his body, which you have definitely not just done and will not do again.)

EXCEPT GOD DAMMIT ZERO X HIT YOU IN THE HEAD HARD ENOUGH YOU CALMED DOWN AGAIN. GOD. DAMMIT. WHY THIS. FUCK. Okay, yeah, you're leaving. See y'all in X6, this sucks.

Anyway the real takeaway here is that Dr. Wily was just such a big fan of percussive maintenance that Zero occasionally needs to get beaten in the head with a wrench for a bit and then he's great for a while. If he starts twitching, that just means it's Wrench Time.

Anyway, that's X2, my second most favorite one.

Wire Sponge is a luffa, by the way. Loofah. However it's spelled.

This thing. That's what he is.

And I will not stop calling centipedes 'hyakuleggers' now because Magne Hyakulegger is way funner than Magna Centipede as a name.

[adviserbylove]

there's nothing wrong with aging up characters, sis. as you said, if the character is ~1-2 years away from adulthood - that's fine, like, people get old, yknow

and I'd like to asks those people a question: if I was shipping myself with, for example, Korekiyo when I was 16-17 and he's canonically 16-17 too, when I turned 18+, what should've I done? stop self shipping? really? that's stupid af

I agree! Especially with a character being 1-2 years away from adulthood. Cause I have a rule of thumb that anyone under 16, it’ll feel weird to age them up, so I’ll always see them as minors (unless they actually do age in canon)

I will admit though, it’s hard being on “this side” of self shipping, cause ppl that do this get shunned a lot or get slapped with “proshitter in disguise” label. I do believe there should be some legroom to see characters that are 16-17 as adults and age them up since they should’ve been emotionally mature by then. Sadly lots of self shippers (that never had this “issue” therefore throws shade like it’s candy) want to play hero and say “Ewwww, mid twenties and being attracted to someone that’s canonically a minor???” when that minor has been fucking 17 for three years in their media

Sorry for going off on a tangent but this always bugged me

[godstrain]

What’s something your muse has done, in canon or in a thread, that just makes you Love ThemTM?

listen ... albert wesker has become my special interest the man's an entire disaster but i unironically love him as a character (i'd slap him if i met him irl my GOD and then id put him in a headlock and force him to go to therapy)-

my intro to RE in any way shape or form was in the "a lounge" of my community college in 2012. i was having a conversation with a classmate who really liked RE and wesker and all i remember of it was her saying "wesker and muska from castle in the sky would either love each other or kill each other on sight" and then she told me a little about RE5 and i was like ok. over time, i gathered bits and pieces about RE lore in fragments that made no sense, and honestly i never would've remembered jack shit about this if my brain hadn't panic scrambled itself because i Have A Crush And Can't Handle Emotions (for real if i react to liking people with panic attacks theres something goin on but thats a story for later- reference, the dude is super nice! we are going on a date on wednesday)

i've never been good with gore- trypophobia makes me want to exit reality, and mutations scare me lmao, but RE has been my exposure therapy. it's easier to handle this in low poly RE1 videos and then move forward, and let me tell you RE1 wesker is the funniest character in all of RE. man's smart but also what an idiot i just... it's sorta endearing how dumb half his lines are ... my favorite "chris??? stop it!" ... how can i not find that oddly endearing ...

his character arc in general is fascinating, he's truly the result of some other evil guy fucking up a bunch of kids, and its like, here is our cautionary tale. wesker was never really given a chance to be anything other than what he became, and even though he had his time in S.T.A.R.S., he was put there when he was 36 ... all the time before he was being groomed by umbrella, and the view of the world was Already There and hard to break- and it's just super fascinating and i love character psychology so i guess that's where i am-

in general though, i've also just really enjoyed writing him??? y'know??? he's something else for sure :)

headcanon questions! ➤ accepting!