#honestly the best option for me to stay interested in something is for the plot/lore to be my anchor

[scarletiswailing347]

so the unfortunate thing about me is that, when it comes to the media i consume, i tend to have one 'anchor' (very rarely two) to keep me interested

this is necesary cause i have an incredibly hard time being interested in things in general so i have to purposefully spend my focus on one thing so that i can keep being interested in it cause otherwise i just kinda feel meh about the thing, i mean ill still watch and enjoy it but i wont be as interested as id like to be and may even drop it eventually after struggling to keep interacting with it (this is unfortunately what happened with empires, x-life, yogscast, and the lsmp seasons without mumbo in it)

if i ever drop that anchor whether purposefully or not then i lose interest in everything that ive ever connected to its rope -- i could still enjoy them sure but then at that point theyll just be like every other filler content in my life, like music when im washing the dishes

for hc its mumbo, for dsmp and smplive it was schlatt, for the scrunkly squad its boosfer and baablu

for lifesteal its zam

idk what happened behind the scenes but ill be honest its not looking good and theres a possibility i might have to drop him :/

[pzyii]

Okay in theory, the darkest minds au:

(click for better quality)

Just kidding this stuff basically never stays "in theory" for more than like a day here is lore under cut (things can very well change)

(i am just adjusting a few rants i wrote to @eddiend about this since i dont wnat to write a totally new one)

so i just in theory started thinking about a st the darkest minds au, which is interesting. i think i like the movie but it was a while ago i watched it, but i definitely like the concept for it.

if u dont know wht it is, its a dystipian future film based on a book by the same name, about how there started spreading a disease callled I.A.A.N in people under 18, that doesn't show symptoms or anything untill they die, its just randomly the child will have some kind of seizure like thing, where they start to shake and their eyes start to glow, if they r holding anything it will telekinesisly crumble kinda. and then as suddenly as it started the child is dead.

eventually is 90% of children dead and weird stuff starts to happen to the ones who have survived. and that is where the interesting thing to think about is. bc the children get powers categoried in colours (from least to most dangerous):

green: increased intelligence

blue: telekinesis

gold: manipulate electricity

red: create and control fire (shoot from mouth in movie)

orange: mind control

orange and red are the most dangerous but also extremely rare, when all the children start getting sent to facilities are they supposed to kill reds and oranges on sight. but it seems that some reds dont get killed and instead brainwashed and tourtured to become mindless weapons for the military since they are so distructive.

so yeah thats how the world works kinda, i wont go into the continued plot since that is not that important at the moment, whats important is what colours st characters would be so lets start from the top:

orange: el and will (i know that since el have telekinesis in the show that could be an answer but seriously she would be the most dangerous one and for will it is bc of his conection to the upside down and the signs pointing to him being like Henry/vecna/001. yk its obvious)

red: max (thinks it works well, could do great plot lines with it, and she got rescuded from the facilities before they could brainwash her, bc there are adults who actually want to help the kids of course (joyce and hopper would definitely be helping children flee))

gold: eddie, Jonathan (this is alot simply bc it seemed the best, eddies pretty hyper yk, and Jonathan i thought of cameras and simply thought this one was the best suit for him, but he could also be a blue)

blue: steve, lucas, mike (in some ways this was just the ppl i didn't know what to do with, but i do think it works pretty well, dont have that much motivation for it tho. argyle would probably be here too)

green: dustin, erica, nancy (they r all geniuses, it isnt much more than that)

(i just before I continue want to say that in the actual book/movie personality n smartness before i.a.a.n doesn't effect what colour you become, its random, with some colours just being more common, but when u do an au line this, ots much more interesting to think what that suits the character yk, but still keep that in mind)

...so I didn't mention robin in that , she is kinda complicated so i kinda need a long rant about her, thats what i do, bc green could be a simple option, she is a genius we all know that, but honestly i dont think it suits well. i can be me being biased n just wanting to make her something more interesting but i think i genuinely dont think it suits her. and also like i said in the paranphasis above it doesn't always have to be connected. but just i see the green a more focused, textbook smart (which robin is), they know all the physics in the diffrent dimensions. robin is smart, she is great at conections and has great memorie, but she isnt the person who walk around like they are an textbook for school. more a book of random facts yk.

but anyways the colours i actually thought were gold n red. gold is a bit like with eddie, its just their energy, their vibe, which gives of gold feels. i could see her using electric powers yk.

for red its probably more of the biased stuff n just wanting to use it to make more ✨angst✨, but i do think i can see it. n it help that max is the other person whos a red, bc theyarer still a lot alike, and it works well with them having the same colour. plus she is still a pretty feisty, or at least snarky, kinda jerky person (im saying this affectionately bc im not better). it is very much walls n defense mechanisms just like it is a lot with max. like just the way they act n react to trauma n really most situations is a lot alike so them being the same makes sense yk.

...

And also just another reason why I kinda think robin could be a red is BC otherwise the only Red is Max, which would Hella boring. And the two probably best options for another red is Nancy or robin I would say, Robin i argured before, but Nancy works pretty well too, she has a good relationship with Max n I think U can kinda understand with everything n guns why it works. But I feel that Nancy suits being a green too much to be anything else yk, she is the perfect kind of genius to be a green so it feels weird to make her something else, plus if shes a green she can still use guns instead of using her powers which she would use if she was a red yk.

I also think from a narrative point it doesn't work well, I have an idea of how some things would play out which works well, n with that way, Nancy n max wouldn't even interact untill later n have that realationship as reds that is possible with robin being a red in the story

...

N i have continued thinking about what would like happen n stuff n I thought of some things. one is that barb didn't make it, she died from i.a.a.n and in front of Nancy at that (sorry :)). N then with robin being a red, something I didn't mention is that the reds have a tendency to twitch, an extra amount when they use their powers I think. Which u could do that BC of how it looks when they twitch like A LOT, that Nancy the first time thinks that she is going to die from i.a.a.n BC she stil has a fear all her friends will BC of barb.

...

There is also a character in the books apparently who's a red who gets called "twitch" bc of the whole red thing and I could see robin being called that after Nancy has stopped having her panic attack realising she won't die

...

And Steve have a few burns from robin, BC powers are hard and she has trauma

...

and here are deep dives into the powers of oranges and reds

...

Robin basic story kinda (things can have been mentioned earlier):

‪Got found out and sent to a facility after an accident were the fire departement was called.‬ Got rescured from the facility after not having been there long, which luckily meant they never got actually brainwashed. She is though extremly traumatized since she got sent to the facility at the about same time as Max and tried to protect the kid as much as possible ending with her geting waterboared before her and Max (Steve was also at the same facility) got saved. When Nancy realised Robin weren’t going to die she started calling them ”Twitch” for teasing and flirting.

Nancy basic story kinda (things can have been mentioned earlier):

‪Had to vittnes her best friend (Barb) die from I.A.A.N.‬ Got sent to a facility with Mike not long after 90% of children had died by Ted. Got rescured by Joyce and Hoppers group 6 years after I.A.A.N. She often still thinks her current close friends will die from I.A.A.N, and when she first saw Robin twitch more unconrollably since they’re a red she though they were going to die

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Pharaoh’s Cool New Trick

Digging my way through quite a pile of commission work (funny how these things only come all at once or not at all), nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, was looking forward to some free time to catch up on my many little side projects when I was asked to take off for a weekend to do some cat-sitting to which I would NEVER say no to a cat, so like...Rip this blog I guess, we only update like once a week nowadays, but what do you do?

That’s right, play Puzzles and Dragons! The only phone game worth paying any attention to! Where they just released Pegasus on their Yugioh Collab and he looks pretty great!

So I’m just gonna take a second for some art appreciation, because the Puzzles and Dragons art team is just A++++ honestly, and yes, I did pull 13 times to get a Pegasus in my monster box, and yes, he is a completely insane team leader that is absolutely broken when paired with Yugi (the numbers are so satisfying) but...look at him. He looks so good!

(also I finally got Joey Wheeler, and so now my gatcha cravings are settled. And, don’t worry, I play this game so much that I was there during Christmas when they offered like a bajillion stones for free so I didn’t actually use real money on this.)

Now PAD also released a Weevil and Rex, and I don’t know why, and neither does the art team because they still look pretty good but in comparison to all the mains, they sure do looks like just some shorty guys in some casuals.

though I gotta admit, I want to learn how the hell this art team does swooshy effects, because man, that would make my art so much better to just have flames violently exploding out of all my art. Why am I not doing that more often? I have the technology.

anyway, I didn’t bother trying to pull them. Maybe I’ll accidentally pull them when they eventually release a Duke Devlin. (also, RIP to the fact that Roland will probably never be in Puzzles and Dragons but like...I can only send them so many polite letters covered in stickers pretending I’m some 10 year old child and writing in my broken Hiragana “Roland in PAD?”. Thems the breaks. (They also might not remember who Roland is.))

Shoutouts to the card that Weevil is holding that is censoring this nipple on the booby spider, PS.

So because this is not actually a Puzzles and Dragons blog, and it’s been ten eons since I regularly updated so I could remember episode to episode...where the hell were we?

That’s right, we’re on an island now. This show’s wonderful obsession with evil islands (and spoiler, this is one of the few Yugioh Islands that doesn’t explode at the end. Mostly because Kaiba isn’t here to do it or this place would be cinder)

(read more island stuff under the cut)

Anyway, after announcing “hey guys! Screw islands!” Yugi immediately collapses and without any warning.

Apparently the armor is a big ol parasite, which is something that Yugi is so used to at this point that he refuses to admit that this is a problem. Just normal Muto stuff, refusing to tell anyone that he has a serious illness going on underneath that giant mass of hair.

(the sailor moon vibes coming off this weird orb energy)

Sort of feels like a call back to S1 when Yugi was clearly possessed and everyone else was like “He acting weird to you?” except it’s S5 and everyone has learned to never trust Yugi when he says he’s fine and they are responding like he is about to die. Which is correct.

Outside of the cave falls this scroll that is...glowing, I guess. So they open it up and get a bunch of hieroglyphs that give them the “riddle of light” and like youknow...it’s riddle stuff.

They’re doing this riddle for “wings.” And it’s like...everyone’s monster here has a set of wings or an ability to fly. Every single monster except for I dunno, flaming swordsman? Hell, Yugi himself had two sets of wings when he fused with Dark Magician (which was weird, and I still don’t like to think about what technically was going on there.) But we have to go and get ourselves even more wings.

Weirdly, Joey turns to Tea and does something that in any other show would be completely normal. He was like “you want to stay here with Yugi, don’t you?” and it was the first time Joey has ever actually addressed the fact that Tea and Yugi are close. Uncharted territory. I was amazed at the amount of casual shipping that is happening here. It’s almost like a normal ass relationship.

So the boys decide to go off, and be boys and tackle this themselves. And they shouldn’t have, because Tea is smart for this group, and also has the only healing spell.

Like if you’re playing D+D you wouldn’t typically leave your only healer behind. Just saying.

Also like...Grandpa Muto went with them? I guess he’d have to since he’s the translator but also...kind of weird to leave your grandson dying in a cave, but maybe that’s just the Muto lifestyle.

Do not be fooled by my caps, no one has addressed the Bakura in the puzzle for 3 seasons. I’m starting to think this show will never address the Bakura in the puzzle. Which honestly, that would be hilarious if they made a big deal out of that plot point and then couldn’t use it in the end.

And speaking of plot points that kind of come out of nowhere and don’t make full sense with the continuity of the show--Joey has regressed back to the 4th grade.

Hey show? What?

So like if you love Joey, this is not the arc for you, because this arc he is reduced to a Himbo and nothing else. Straight up didn’t know what an echo is, but is very strong and pretty, I guess.

This inevitably happens with any TV show becuase different people make different parts, and I’ve brought up before that sometimes it feels like some teams only have loose post-it notes of what any character should be like at any given point (ESPECIALLY with Seto Kaiba’s timeline) but like...

...Personally I’m mot so fond of this interpretation of Joey, kind of ignores Joey’s best traits, and makes Tristan look way too smart in comparison (and like I always pinned Tristan to be the Himbo of the group, but maybe it’s because they give Tristan so little else to do?)

And like don’t get me wrong, Joey’s a dumbass a lot of the time and needs to get corrected by his pals...but...to the point he doesn’t know what an echo is? He’s a dumbass in a High School student sort of way, youknow?

Anyway, they get down to this big ravine, and they have to destroy this stone while the light passes over it. Kind of feels like a Breath of the Wild shrine quest, actually. In fact, I think Breath of the Wild recycled the shadow/sunlight pathing quest like 4 or 5 times. (I love Breath of the Wild to death but boy did they run out of ideas at the end there.)

They have to fight a glass monster and it’s kind of like...do you know the game Balls 3D? probably not, but it looked like a bunch of random shapes stuck together like a 90′s animation. They basically went to war with shapes.

Pure Himbo energy, has several pokemon, but punches for his pokemon instead of using them. A power move if I ever saw one.

Youknow that would make pokemon a lot more interesting if you could like throw out your pikachu, and then choose to just physically run up to your opponents Eevee and sock it in the jaw. Raise of hands--I know you all would love a version of pokemon like that. Let Ash Ketchum punch a Ratata.

Bro has informed me that Ash does do something like this in the anime. But I’m not talking about the anime, I’m talking about the video game. Give me the option to physically combat my rival. This is what I want, Pokemon.

They discover a way to break the monolith, and the show thinks we’re like actually 7 years old (because the show is Y7, although I forget because it deals with so many dark themes) so the show is going to hold on to this puzzle for a while...just to fill time. And it’s fine because we gotta switch over to Pharaoh anyway.

Yami has this dream again. He attempts to fuse with Dark magician to overcome the dream, but alas, he is still not strong enough.

Yugi wakes up in this murky cave while Tea is out washing out like...some rag? (he’s also still got a rag, so I guess multiple rags were required for how sweaty Yugi is.)

Yugi says “I feel like I’m a new man!” a lot in this episode, and every time he calls himself a man like he’s some sort of adult it’s very funny to me.

And then this plot lore dropped.

I mean I guess inevitably it had to happen...

But man, end of an era. It was freakin hilarious while it lasted: that Pharaoh refused to read ancient Egyptian because it’s like 2002 and he is a High Schooler living in Japan and he actually doesn’t WANT to resolve the mystery of the puzzle. Maybe the people who made this arc don’t know about how in S2 and S3, the fact Pharaoh couldn’t read Marik’s back tatt was like...a really big issue. He couldn’t read the God card, he couldn’t even read that massive tablet that read “HEY PHARAOH THIS IS LITERALLY YOU”. KAIBA had to tell him how to read the God card for him. Freakin Seto “Magic is a lie” Kaiba had to tell him how to use the God Card because Pharaoh couldn’t read it.

But like...Pharaoh finally gave in at some point after the world was devoured by the Leviathan, and before Kaiba finished building Kaibaland (which was already built in S1 but wtv)

The timelines on this show have always been a mishmash...but this one is just like...

...show are you trying to convince me that at any point in this show after season Zero, Pharaoh had any idea what he was doing? Did he sap that brain energy straight out of Joey Wheeler so he could do this?

Wow.

(secretly hoping he forgets how to read Egyptian after this arc is over and the show goes back to the other development team)

Pharaohs reasoning is that, if this is the riddle of the light.....

....then where is the riddle of darkness????????????

and when Tea was like “Pharaoh that is not even remotely logic. Omg it’s so bright outside, lets go back to gross cave.” and Pharaoh was like “Tea! You got it!” and she was like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Not gonna lie, I saw the Orichalcos green, and I got concerned.

Anyway, Yugi gets very frustrated and was like “ugh, lets go save em. They’re gonna die (again.)” and marches down there as if he didn’t pass out an hour ago.

And he fuses with Dark Magician again while everyone else (including his grandpa) was like “Yugi are you freakin kidding me? The suit freakin kills you omg! Tea you had one freakin job!”

And then we get the plot twist that...I mean it makes sense but it was choreographed in a confusing way.

And out of no where this guy shows up again:

So this mysterious man shows up and says “If you don’t succeed you have to live here forever” which...nice...that would probably save the world a lot of problems if Yami got locked away and took his OP puzzle with him. And then this man also says “if you do succeed you become VERY POWERFUL” and Yami was like. “...”

This whole episode had a theme to it, where Tristan and Joey were trying to prove that they could do things on their own and without Yugi’s help. And honestly...felt a little bit misplaced. Yami’s the same guy who murdered Yugi last season with the Orichalcos so like...

...I mean he is probably more reliable than Tristan who once died and turned into a robot monkey for 10ish episodes.

and then they flew into a glowing door.

Folks, this was wild to look at.

This is wild.

And at this point I closed Photoshop and thought I was done. But then I looked at my timeline on the video and was like...wait...there’s more?

and I’m really glad I kept watching because it went back to Alex, who...is apparently just still at those steps in this haunted ass Pyramid.

Now we’re watching Yugioh.

I forgot for a second when they turned Joey into a Himbo and made Pharaoh literate, but we’re back. I mean...

...look at the liner art on this adult man.

So...I posit the question...has Alex spent the last 2-3 episodes doing nothing but applying eyeliner to his face in the dark? Because he absolutely has. And honestly, the vibe of being in a spooky haunted pyramid with barely any light, just applying eyeliner down the edge of your face...that’s a Yugioh vibe, if I ever saw one.

This arc is wild. Anyway, next episode we do even more fetch quests and riddles? Just going to guess now that we probably will.

(and for those new here, this is a link so you can read them from the top. Which, since we’re in S5, means you got like...hours of Yugioh content to read through. Enjoy the rewards of my weird hobby.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[venteamocha]

Thanks so much for the IF recs! I'd absolutely take a second post of recommendations for Twine games too if you're willing to share! <3

Of course!!

I... actually like twine games better than cog based ones, in some ways, just because they tend to be fancier and prettier, and I am secretly a ferret in the body of a human and I love shinies. ADHD, baby!

I only actually know of like 12 twine games, so if there are any that anyone who sees this knows of that I didn’t list, feel free to let me know about them! There’s a chance I do know about them and just didn’t put them here, but I would rather hear one I already know of on the off chance that I’ll get a new one dropped in.

That said! Another list of games I really like that is again in no particular order!

They’re all on itch.io by the way! They tend to work better if you download them but most can be run in your browser and most are also mobile friendly so you can play them on your phone! I’ll note which ones are.

Scout: An Apocalypse Story: I love dystopia stories, I dearly wish we had more IF based in this kind of setting. Set in a wasteland that is trying to pull itself together with people trying to find out if other settlements are out there while also trying to, well, stay alive. I gotta say, I played only E’s route for a long, long time, but once I tried the other ones I haven’t really gone back. I still love E, you can pry the childhood friend trope out of my cold dead hands, but wow. Oliver. Wow. That dude has serious UST. And Sabine!! I’ve been forced out of my little “play it the same way every time” rut and I’m not sorry. I very much like that you can choose the intimacy level, as someone who’s ace. Sometimes I like reading the smut, sometimes I don’t. Options! (mobile friendly!)

Bad Ritual: I got it baaaaaaaaaad~ I do though, I love Siruud. I have terrible, terrible taste in men. I mentioned Dracula in the other list, and here there’s an actual demon. This is a game with *sass* and I always love a chance to be sassy. I think part of the reason I resonate so much with this one is because of how jaded retail has made me tbh but that’s another story.  Honestly, if you like dark settings, I recommend you play this one first of all my recommendations. It’s just such a good game and there are so many choices and even the pronoun choices are pretty varied.  It’s just good! (mobile friendly!)

Wayfarer: Another for the fantasy list! I love the worldbuilding in this one, and the character creator is just amazing. There are maps, there’s a codex, seriously if you love reading lore, this is definitely a game for you. This is like if Tolkien made an IF. It’s amazing. I’ve said that a few times but it’s true. In all honesty it might count as one that’s not so romance focused, since it does focus more on plot. If I could just sit down and make an IF, I’d want it to be like this tbh. With a beautiful framework, a well organized space of information for the players to just look at and see stuff about the world, a way to develop and build their own character in a clear cut way, and the game immediately tells you what stats are effected by what choices. I really enjoy it when games try to work in character creation in creative ways, but sometimes I just want to sit down and go, “Okay, my character has red hair, blue eyes, is short, and has a crippling phobia of lizards” and this game lets me do that. Well, except for the lizard part. (Not as mobile friendly as the others but I make it work!)

Love and Friendship: It’s a regency game and I love Pride and Prejudice. What can I say? Something about the massive amount of rules of society just gets me. Propriety! This is a game that has a set gender protagonist, female, and it actually is a bit different from the norm in that it has two female love interests and one male, when most of the time it’s the other way around. So that’s something. You can even have a platonic route with a fourth love interest, who is also male. There really aren’t enough platonic routes, but I understand why that is, since a lot of IF players are looking for romance. (mobile friendly!)

Exiled From Court: Also a bit of the same vibe simply because of how constrained everyone is by rules. Nobility, after all. There are a lot of love interests, and one is the MC’s sister’s husband, which is definitely gonna be scandalous. Will I do it? Will I? Eventually. I do like how you can act like an absolute hellion, well, as far as that goes considering. You can try to be a better person but that’s less fun, lol. (mobile friendly!)

A Tale of Crowns: This is literally one of the very first twine games I ever played. Really! It’s got a lot of wonderful intrigue and the setting is very fun. There aren’t a ton of fantasy middle eastern games, and this game is definitely one reason why we should have more. There’s a great deal of customization, and the love interests’ gender will changed based on your MC’s gender and sexuality combination. I like R & D best, and no that’s not a pun. I think. (mobile friendly!)

For the Crown: This is a different game, I swear, they just both happen to have crown in the title, lol. You get to play as an assassin, which is a great deal of fun. The lore in the game is very nice too. I tend to play with they/them pronouns though, and there were a few pronoun hiccups in the game. Seems to be an issue across all of the games made by this author, but I know how much of a pain variables can be so hopefully those will get squashed soon. There’s an explicit content choice in this one as well, and if you turn it on there is an “equipment” choice, so this is definitely gonna be spicy later on! (mobile friendly, but after each chapter the browser shifts as it auto saves. you just have to tap restore game to keep playing.)

-These games aren’t exactly twine games, but I’m putting them here because they’re visual novels that fit the IF format for the most part and are also on itch.io and I love them and for this post at least I will bend my own rules! They all have gender choice MCs and are nonbinary friendly.-

Perfumare: This game is actually being made into an IF, with the visual novel as a sort of preview of what we’re gonna get there. I literally cannot wait for that to happen, this game is so good as it is, and from what we’ve been told it’s only gonna get better. This game has an excellent world, the characters are all messy in the best ways, and ugh it has hurt me quite a bit, again in the best way.  It’s another one on the dark side of things. The powers in this game are just so fun, I dearly want a game set in this world where we can choose what powers we have! Maybe that will be in the IF, but I have a feeling the answer is no. We’ve been teased that there will be a second game with a different MC who will get to romance the characters we can’t in this one, and that alone is enough to get me to jump as soon as it drops. The love interests aren’t gender variable but there are two male ones and one female. I, a known mess, recommend Laurent for lots of repression and pain. (not mobile friendly, you gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Andromeda Six: I’ve recommended this one to pretty much everyone I know, it is such an excellent game. The cast is a mashup of misfits and makes me miss my Mass Effect crews. I specifically set my pronouns to she/her just so they’d all call me Princess. What can I say, I like it. There’s lots of pain, lots of drama, lots of world building, lots of interesting lore, and there is much breaking of cuties. Much. Can’t wait till we get to the next planet. The author has gone out of their way to say that each love interest is gonna get their own arc and will definitely get their own share of attention, so no matter who you pick you’ll have plenty of time to be with them and watch them shine. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

When the Night Comes: Not only do you get to play a badass hunter but it has multiple poly routes! Multiple! It’s rare when you get one poly in a game, this one has three! You can also choose to romance any of them individually if you so choose. It’s dark fantasy gothic, and I really really like that. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Errant Kingdom: Made from the same dev as WTNC, this one is set in a more fantasy middle eastern setting. Very pretty, lots of intrigue. You can choose between three set protagonists, who can have three different storylines depending on your choices, which is very nice for replayability. It’s got two poly routes this time, and it works the same as their other game in that you can romance them individually if you’d rather be monogamous. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

[missnight0wl]

Who do you think imperioed Ben in Y4/5 in the Red Cloak incidents?Was it Pettigrew?If so,was he getting orders from R at the time to do so?Did they threaten to reveal he's alive if he didn't follow their orders?How did they even find him or knew he is still alive?Also,who tampered with the ice/fear/forest vault and avtivated the curses if it wasn't R?If R didn't want MC to go after the vaults at first,surely they wouldn't tamper with those first vaults?Or did Ben accidentally activate ice vault?

Pretty tough questions, but I’ll try my best to explain how I see it.

Let’s start with Pettigrew. Honestly, I really doubt that he responsible for the Red Cloak incidents. In fact, I believe that his role was supposed to limited to delivering the vault portrait to Hogwarts. Yes, his activity in Y4 would technically make sense as that’s when Percy arrived at Hogwarts (even though we officially met him only in Y5), but other things also don’t make much sense. For example, while I don’t believe that Pettigrew had anything to do with any of the Red Cloak’s attack, it was pretty clear that he was responsible for putting the Imperius Curse on Rowan in Y5Ch19. But look how different this situation was. It happened in the middle of a day when there were quite a lot of people in the Courtyard, Rowan didn’t wear the red cloak, and moreover – in one of the option Rowan decides to kill MC!

But it doesn’t make any sense. We know that at that point, R still needed MC for the Legilimency door. They wouldn’t do anything to hurt MC! Yes, Rowan didn’t use anything super deadly (since Barnaby actually took that spell on himself, and he seemed to be more or less fine), but still. So… here’s what I’m thinking.

R find out about Pettigrew somehow, and they blackmailed him to take the vault portrait to Hogwarts. I have no idea how they found out, but we’re talking here about an international organisation that apparently didn’t have much problem infiltrating both Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic. So, I imagine that they have their ways to do pretty much anything. Anyway, Peter was supposed to deal with the portrait, but then Rakepick saw his name on the Map and was hot on his trail. He panicked and decided to use Imperio on Rowan as a distraction from himself. He knew something about the previous attacks, but not enough to do it properly. Also, I don’t think he knew much even about the portrait itself. Like, here’s our interaction with him in Y5Ch20:

I’d say that he seems to be way more bothered by Rakepick and the Map. And maybe that’s just me, but it kind of seems that he’s not exactly aware of what the portrait is. He asked “The Portkey?” as if making sure if they’re talking about the same thing because R told him just as much. Also, he doesn’t seem to be interested in chasing Peeves for stealing it. Sure, he is upset, but he can also tell R that he did his part of a job. Peeves is not his problem anymore.

And I’ll just remind in this place: I don’t believe Pettigrew was with Rakepick and Jacob in the Portrait Vault. He seems kind of clueless here, and not particularly interested in the portrait at all. Rakepick lied to us about him. Why? I dunno, perhaps she hoped that we’ll continue this investigation, but unfortunately, all the kids present to hear her story are too dumb for that, and nobody realised that Pettigrew’s presence has no sense for a timeline. This, or Jam City screwed up.

So, who was responsible for the Red Cloak incidents then? Frankly, I have no idea. It wasn’t Rakepick for sure. Rakepick herself told us at the very beginning of Y4 that we have to continue our search for the Cursed Vaults, while the Red Cloak told us to stay away from the Cursed Vaults AND Patricia Rakepick. It’s not only contradicting, but also, it’d pretty stupid to bring up her own name. I also doubt that it was Merula. Sure, maybe she was able to learn wandless magic over summer, but she’s 17 now. She was just 14 at the time of the attacks – there’s no way she was able to put Imperio on Ben. It could’ve been her under the Red Cloak at the beginning of Y5, though, when we talked with Ben. It’d just mean that she wasn’t controlled, she simply delivered the message.

Anyway, it seems to me that there should be someone else – someone we don’t really know about, probably an adult. They don’t have to be at Hogwarts all the time, but they could fill for Merula where more skills are required. I mean, there definitely was someone who brought a Dementor to Hogwarts in the Patronus TLSQ. Moreover, Jacob moved his research to his secret room to avoid Filch, Snape, and R – meaning that he also might’ve been suspecting that R has their members at Hogwarts.

Now, to the second part.

All right, here’s an important thing: just because R didn’t want MC to go after the Cursed Vaults before Y5, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t want to go after them themselves. The thing is that they wanted to use Jacob for that. What I mean by that is that I assume that the siblings are needed to open the final vault – or at least one of them is. My other assumption here is that you actually have to be prepared for that, and it involves personally going through all the previous vaults. That’s why they were forcing Jacob to break one curse after another. It wouldn’t be enough to get him for the final vault (or one vault earlier for the Legilimency door) – he had to go through the whole process.

I also imagine that there had to be a reason why R had to start from the first vault again. I mean, otherwise, why wouldn’t they just take Jacob to the final vault after his expulsion? One possible explanation here would be that there’s some kind of time limit for reaching the final vault. They didn’t get there in time, so the whole thing reset.

Now, imagine this. R has Jacob, prepared for the final vault. Unfortunately, the cycle of the Cursed Vault reset. However, it doesn’t have to mean that Jacob’s preparation is also cancelled. They just have to break all the previous curses, but it doesn’t really matter who would do this. Maybe it’s even better if each curse was broken by somebody else because then it’d mean that none of those people would be fully prepared for the final vault. So, maybe they wanted to give Merula a chance at breaking them, maybe they were planning to control Ben in order to quickly break all of them. Or they’d even switch students.

But then, there was MC. And MC is a dangerous competition for R. They’re one of the siblings who are able to open the final vault. Dumbledore has his eye on them, and he’d probably be more careful than he was with Jacob. And then, that damn Rakepick comes into play. And R just doesn’t want to be bothered with MC, manipulating them to work with them, making sure that they’re prepared for the final vault, dealing with Dumbledore and Rakepick and whatnot. They already went through all of that once. They just want to break all the curses quickly and use Jacob at the end.

So, I believe that it was R who was purposefully activating each curse. The question would be: “who did they use to do it?”. It could’ve been Merula, or controlled Ben, or that potential unknown adult who was also responsible for controlling Ben. Anyway, there was one clue in Y5Ch3 we unfortunately never returned to:

I imagine that the same person might’ve had something to do with the previous curses as well, they just never were noticed. Although…

There’s one weird thing that might be also connected to that. When Ben was missing at the beginning of Y2, we were asking around about him. This is when we learnt that both Dumbledore and Snape were already interested in Ben for some reason.

But there were some other pretty intriguing lines…

The Forbidden Forest is weird in particular because, in normal circumstances, Ben would be terrified to get anywhere close there. Let’s remember we talk about Y2 here. So, we have “a corridor upstairs” which could be related to the Vault of Ice or the Vault of Fear, we obviously also have the Forest Vault. The Dungeons and the Kitchens might be related to the maybe-not-entirely-removed House-Elves plot. But then… it’s odd that Ben would be doing something with those vaults so much in advance (or that R would make him do that). I’m really not sure how to view it...

See, this is why I wish so badly Jam City would focus on the lore of the Cursed Vaults (instead of dating, for example).

Anyway, none of it is a definite answer, but honestly – I don’t have definite answers. Still, I hope it does make some sense. I really tried to capture my reasoning without making it too long and complex.

[multifandomaddictedfangirl]

The Vampire Diaries Thoughts & Opinions (rewatch)

S1 :

OMG I completely forgot how cheap was this show! The dialogues in s1 feels so forced and fake 🤮 Not to blame the actors, but sometimes it feels really unnatural, like you know you’re in a fantasy young adult tv show. It doesn’t feel like real life, like what real people would do/say. It’s too obnoxious and dramatic and... overly intense ?? 😕 Rewatching it, it might be the biggest flaw of the early seasons 🤷‍♀️

They all look SO YOUNG tough 😳

Mmmm... Stefan acts like a total creep in s1, it’s really giving me Twilight vibes 😅 like if I was Elena/Bella, I would be terrified of Stefan/Edward ! 😰 They’re creepy and stalky and weirdly intense / edgy about ordinary stuff... Their entire personality screams : “I AM A VAMPIRE AND I CANNOT CONTROL MYSELF AROUND YOU” which... #yikes 🤔

Caroline Forbes is my favorite character of the entire show, I love her SO much ❤️ “I’m never the one” is still one of the most powerful lines, for me, and I loved her characterisation throughout the show

Matt has been irrelevant since s1 🙄, honestly he was maybe funny/quirky in the double-date episode and regarding his relationship with Caroline (while not having moved on from Elena)...? But that was like a couple of episodes and apart from that he was just useless. I do not understand why he stayed alive that long

Jeremy.... oh Jeremy 😔 He was... such a cliché! He was what adults see as the “typical” rebellious edgy teenager who does nothing of his life except smoking weed. And no, I don’t like that caricature. His relationship with Vicky... 🤷‍♀️ I mean, sure, it was sweet that he cared for her that way and that he saw more in her than just the “stoned-ass trashy girl” 💁🏻‍♀️ that she was supposed to embody. But Jeremy really acted like “The Nice Guy”and it seemed like he was expecting something for being nice with Vicky. He acted like if Vicky owed him something, while she never asked for him to interfere in her problems 🙅‍♀️ I don’t know, I guess he was just supposed to be a lost teen, damaged by trauma, and I get that.

OK, so if I was Elena, seeing Katherine’s picture would FREAK. ME. OUT 😱 I would run away. So far away. I would tell everyone I love to run away 👀 I would just completely shut down. I would never want to see the guy ever again (who clearly has a fetish and an unhealthy obsession!!). I mean, talk about being clinched to your ex

Damon and Caroline’s relationship was SO TOXIC in s1 !! 💥 And the show never really acknowledged that!! I mean, sure, they did, but I don’t think Damon realised the pain he caused her: he manipulated her, fed on her, hurt her, compelled her, used her to get what he wanted, abused her, put her life in danger, over and over again 🤢🤬😡

LEXIIIIIIIIII 💖💖💖 Finally! I remember I liked her a lot, but she’s just one of the best, purest character! I’m so happy Stefan can AT LEAST count on her 💕

WHAT?! 😱 SHE DIED SO SOON IN THE SHOW??!?? 💔😭 I didn’t remember that at all! I think my mind erased that fact from my mind because it hurt too much!

Ugh, Logan 😑

I hate what they did with Bonnie 😡 In s1 she’s this incredibly judgy character who ruins every single plan by having ridiculously high moral standards (for this fictional universe, at least), ugh. I love her but they used her to create unnecessary conflict in the show and she didn’t deserve that. Also she didn’t deserve all the pain, the deaths & the misery. She’s one of the (many) characters who have suffered SO MUCH throughout the seasons and they really did her dirty and i’m so mad about that !!

The flashbacks from 1864 were quite well done. I always found it interesting to learn more about Katherine’s past and the Salvatore brothers’ tragic origin story.

*sighs* John Gilbert... urrffffgh 🙄

Isobel being Elena’s biological mother AND Alaric’s ex wife was... so weird 🤨

Overall, I don’t have a lot of opinions for that season because I was bored half of the time 🤷‍♀️ I just really wasn’t interested about the plot and/or the characters because it was all so cliché and cheap. This season was really bad. It’s not working at all, for me at least.

S2 :

Katherine is a GREAT character and you can’t fight me on that 💁🏻‍♀️👠👑

The addition of the werewolves was quite a good idea, though it was predictable so far. Werewolves and vampires often come together in fantasy 🤷‍♀️ Tyler’s storyline was interesting though 🤔 The whole idea of a curse that you activate when you become responsible for someone’s death, no matter your intentions, was good.

CAROLINE BECOMING A VAMPIRE WAS ONE OF THE BEST THING HAPPENING TO THIS SHOW : YES ! 👏 She was such a better person as a vampire. She was arguably the best vampire of them all, the one who truly succeeded the most at adapting at her new life 💕

I DO NOT understand WHY Damon would ask for troubles to Mason, a werewolf, whose bite is DEADLY to him 🙄

Elijah was so different in s2 than I remembered. So uptight, and yet so evil ?? I remembered him as the nice brother in the Michaelson family. But the way he relentlessly targets Rose and her family and friends... yikes 😣🥺

Klaus was so HYPED by the show. Even Katherine herself was terrified of him 😱 And when you think about it, he might be one of the most dangerous creature of TVD’s lore... 🧐 But compared to other vilains, he was quite friendly.

Bonnie and Jeremy... mmm.... sure. You know what, it doesn’t scream “soulmate” but it doesn’t have to be. It can be just a messy, complicated, unexplainable crush. It can just be two people liking each other and enjoying each other’s company without trying to look for a deeper thing. Plus the situation is so awkward, with Jeremy being Bonnie’s best friend’s little baby brother, that it was fun to watch! 😄

My heart still feels for Jenna 💔 She had just learnt the truth about vampires and she had JUST figured out why everyone in her life was acting so weird... and then she died. And idk she was a lovely, messy, funny, pure heartface, completely lost gardian... 💕 and I’m gonna miss her. I would have liked to see her react to what happened next on the show (and how she could have supported Elena & Jeremy through all of this, etc.) 🥺

OF COURSE STEFAN WOULD MAKE A DEAL WITH KLAUS TO GET A CURE FOR HIS BROTHER! Is this Supernatural?

So, yeah, same thing here: most of the storylines developed in this season didn’t interest me whatsoever. So I don’t have a lot of things to say about this season, but just bear with me pls 🐻

S3 :

I absolutely adore Stefan as a ripper in s3. Especially regarding his complicated relationship with Klaus... I think his dependency / addiction to blood is really interesting 🤔 Stefan can’t be a regular vampire, drinking blood from humans then erasing their memories / drinking from blood blags. He can’t because he feels so guilty for the lives he takes / the pain he inflicts on other. So he’s like all or nothing 🤷‍♀️ A human blood-free diet guy. Or a merciless killer.

Regarding of the whole delena / stelena ship war... *sighs* 😔 I honestly don’t know 🤷‍♀️ Both relationships seem hella toxic (for different reasons, but still). I do believe Elena loved them both (maybe not at the same time, though). So, I don’t know who she should have ended up with... I remember shipping her with Damon on my first watch, but now I realise that was purely for the bad boy vibes (i.e bad boy, who, deep down, isn’t so bad because turns out he can change and blah blah blah... ugh what a cliché i know 🙄). So anyway, I’m not gonna defend Delena, it’s as messed up as Stelena if you ask me. But that’s where my heart went on the first watch and that’s who she canonically ends up with, so I’m not gonna fight it and try to make a case of whether she should have ended up with another person (or alone?). In my head, she’s with Damon 🙃 Just cause’ it’s easier, more convinient, and I’m lazy that way 😅 But I understand people who ship/prefer Stelena over Delena. I’m just not THAT invested in this freaking love triangle anymore ✋

The show really took off when they introduced the original vampires if you ask me 🧛‍♂️ Their backstory is so tragic, and after that, it makes more sense why Elijah, Rebekah and Klaus are so close, trust each other so much and manage to forgive the worst of each other💖

Rebekah, that poor girl who only ever wanted to have a human normal life and to BOND with people (whether they were family, friends or more than friends...) 💕has been betrayed by EVERYONE 🔪She was daggered more times than I can even count, and I’m surprised she hasn’t killed everyone out of pure revenge yet!

Yeeeeep. Still ships Klaroline. ❤️

My God, what would I give to see Caroline explore this world and enjoy the perks of her vampire life with Klaus...🥰 She wanted that. She secretly dreamed of that. And frankly, she deserved that. She deserved to feel happy and fulfilled and excited about her future! She deserved more than the life she got in Mystic Falls ✨ More than Tyler! More than Jessy. More than Damon. And more than Stefan too, even if she did seem happy with him in the end. I think I liked Klaus as a romantic option for the same reasons I liked Damon back then. For the challenge. For the way they always push their girlfriends further, and make them want more of life than what they’ve got. For the way they make them ambitious.

I think the reason this season feels so useless is because they try to find a way to eliminate the Original family... only to find out that if they do that, EVERY VAMPIRE EVER WILL ALSO DIE 👏

I despised the whole evil alter ego trope that they did with Alaric 😪😴 I liked the idea of the ring having real bad consequences. But here, Alaric can’t take responsibility for wanting to cheat on death precisely because he has a second personality that he cannot control. The blame is just put on somebody else, an entire other person that just cohabits in Alaric’s body. I never really liked the whole Dr Jekill & Mr Hide trope 🤷‍♀️ And I don’t think it was bringing anything to the table, honestly. It’s boring (because SO obvious and predictable) and it takes forever to deal with (ugh) 😑

NOOOOOOOOOO RICK 😭💔 He was one of my favorite character. I really loved his relationship with Elena and Jeremy + his friendship with Damon. I’m gonna miss him really hard. The scene with Damon on his grave was really sweet 🥺

S4:

Elena being a vampire : YES! 👏 We’ve been waiting for this for so long, the show really needed this to go on (realistically the show would have had trouble to move on if Elena would have stayed human for a lot longer). So I’m really glad about that being the premise for s4 ☺️ Plus her transition is well handled, with her memories coming back + her emotions being heightened (the scene where she bursts into laugh and cannot stop was really funny and somehow relatable 😂).

The scene in the car with Stefan, Matt & Elena VS Stefan, Elena & her father was really well done! 👏 I loved the parallel where she wants Stefan to save Matt first, just like her father wanted him to save Elena first. So touching 💕 It’s a tough choice and Stefan will have to live with both consequences for the rest of his life, which will NOT be easy with Damon blaming him for Elena’s death. But, really, Damon kinda has a point : "in what world are you [Matt] the one that gets to live?”. Matt has been saved so many times on the show and it’s legit to ask yourself : WHY? Why him? 🤷‍♀️He’s so irrelevant and useless. But I get that’s the whole point. Human life is irrelevant and useless (in the great scheme of things). And yet, we fight for it ✊ Because somehow it matters.

S4 helped me remember what I didn’t like about Stefan, regarding his relationship with Elena. He really had a big problem with her being a vampire, and he spent half of his time trying to “control” / “fix” her 🙄 He’s got such high standards for Elena when she turns into a vampire. It’s like he expects her to not make the same mistakes as he - or any other vampire in the history of vampirism - did. He desperately wants her to be a “good” vampire right away and avoid the “killer without humanity” phase 🤔 Which is understandable. He doesn’t want her to become a bad vampire who doesn’t care about human life, as he was during his ripper phase (or like Damon).

Damon truly accepted her, the new her, vampire! Elena 👐 You can argue that it’s because he’s selfish and he wants people to act as bad and carelessly as him (that’s why he tried to manipulate Stefan into drinking human blood again in s1 : he doesn’t want to be alone and he needs someone else to party with)... But he isn’t selfish when it comes to Elena 🤷‍♀️ The show proved us that. He wanted her to have a human normal life, to be happy, to grow old and have children. He wanted to give her that, and that’s why he would have saved her over Matt on the bridge. He’s not happy that she is a vampire. That’s not what he wanted. Never. But now that she is, and that there’s nothing they can do about it (that they know of), Damon tries to make the best out of it

Anyway, Caroline is such a better teacher then Damon or Stefan 😅 Drop the Salvatore brothers and get educated on the vampire life with your bff, Elena !

Elena being sired by Damon, OMMGG! 😮😮😮 So much drama, I really loved it. It was smart to use that as a way to postpone Delena for a little bit - playing on the general doubt that Elena might not truly love Damon and she might just be under the influence of the sire bond. Which, let’s be honest, was a legit consideration to have. So, yeah... REALLY GLAD that, in the end, the sire bond didn’t create those feelings out of nowhere, it only heightened and amplified what was already there beforehand. Otherwise, it would have been really problematic, especially regarding consent issues 😕

I love that Damon makes the right choice again with Elena and “sets her free”. He doesn’t want their relationship to be fake. And so he uses the sire bond to send her away, to be herself, to live her life without worrying about what makes him happy. You can say everything you want about Damon, at least he gets it right by her ☝️Just like when he confessed his feelings to her, but compelled her to forget because she’s in love with Stefan and he doesn’t want to mess it up. He was not selfish when it came to her.

It was really heartbreaking to see Jeremy becoming a hunter and having the sudden urges to kill his own sister and basically everybody else in his life 😢

Poor Carol Lockwood! 💔 She didn’t deserve to die. She tried so hard to help for Tyler, even when she learnt he was a werewolf, she cared so much for him...😭

Their inability to communicate with each other is INSANE. At some point in s4, they all know Shane is practicing a magic called “Expression”. Damon and Stefan also know that kind of magic is incredibly dark and dangerous (from their little trip to New Orleans when they tried to find a way to deactivate the sire bond and the witch there told them she wasn’t practicing this kind of magic). But NO ONE has still put two and two together. And so, Bonnie keeps blindly trusting Shane and hanging out with him 🤦‍♀️

The whole search for the cure was quite interesting and entertaining to watch! Each one of them wanted it for a different reason : destroy it, use it, share it, give it away, save it for later... Which really well portrayed how people can react to the idea of mortality. The fact that there’s only one dose was really genius! That makes it even more interesting to see who’s gonna fight for it (i.e. Rebekah, Stefan), who’s gonna just drop it because turns out they didn’t really want it to begin with (i.e. Damon, Caroline), who’s gonna exchange/bargain it and for what (i.e Katherine, maybe), who’s gonna get it the end and what will they do with it. Will it all be worth it? 🧐

Jeremyyyyy 💔😭 R.I.P 💀

Honestly, even though I still think Matt is irrelevant to the show, let’s remember he also has lost every single person in his life (his dad and his mom are basically gone, Vicky is dead, Tyler left town again, his goddamn history teacher died too) - and now he can add Jeremy, his best friend, to the list 😭 He’s handling it all WAY better than anyone else. I mean you don’t see him burning down the house he grew up in for instance! However, I agree that Elena have lost more people in her family than him (her adoptive parents, Jenna, Alaric, Jeremy, even John... and Isobel is basically gone too). But it’s not like you can compare their lost, anyway. They boty suffered a lot, but I just wanted to say... I liked that the show acknowledged Matt lost someone important for him too 💕

No humanity! Elena, OOMMMGGG!! 🤯 I was so mad when it happened, because Damon could have just used the sire bond to make her deal with her brother’s death, he could have just helped through the grief and tell her it was going to be okay. He didn’t need to make her turn off her humanity 🙄 Real dumb move here!

I kinda liked the friendship between Elena without humanity and Rebecca! Their little trip starting off in NY was fun!

Katherine is, and will always be, the baddest bitch in town! ❤️ I was quite surprised to see her kill Jeremy so heartlessly, but I guess it fits the character. She’ll always be looking out for herself and the opportunity to take the cure and be one step ahead of everyone was obviously too good to leave out. She always had to fight for her own survival, in a world that’s always been dangerous and ruthless against her, so it makes sense she became who she is 🤷‍♀️

Of all the things that could have triggered Elena’s humanity flip switch, really? Matt Donovan? 🤨😑 I mean, it makes sense since Elena seems to value his life over everything else, including her own. But from what we’ve seen so far, she wasn’t really happy when she was dating Matt 😕 They used to fight a lot, they didn’t want the same thing out of life, they just were really different people. And that’s fine, they didn’t work out as a couple, but they can stay friend... Except you don’t really see them interract THAT much as friends. I mean it’s a lot of "say" and not enough "show", for me 🧐 You don’t feel the bond that two best friends should have... between them. You don’t see inside jokes, common interests, similar hobbies, laughters and tears, serious conversations that last for hours, or small talks over the phone... Anyway, from what we were shown so far, she shouldn’t feel that close to Matt. Not more than, idk, Bonnie, Caroline, Damon or Stefan for instance! So the fact that she cares SO MUCH about him is kinda strange 🤔

“He was your first love, I intend to be your last. However long that takes” LOOK WHO’S BAAAACK 👀 My favorite hybrid! Awww of course he was gonna come back for Caroline ❤️

Btw the ceremony was very cute 💕 It’s the end of high school! The end of an era! And they all graduated 🍾🎊🎉

Awwwwww, when Bonnie dropped the veil and everyone got to see their dead friends and family again! Stefan & Lexi, Damon and Alaric, Elena & Jeremy 💖

BONNIIIIIE, OH NOOOO, WHYYY 😭💔 oh no no no no no no no, she wants to keep her death a secret from everyone, that is such a bad idea!!! 😣

OMG SILAS IS A DOPPELGÄNGER OF STEFAN !!! 🤯 POOR STEFAN IS STUCK IN THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE AND NO ONE KNOWS, NOOOOOO 💔😭

S5 :

The whole college experience with Caroline and Elena was so fun to rewatch😁 I wish Bonnie could have been there though, even if she kinda was.

It feels good to watch Elena and Damon being happily in love together and enjoying the summer ❤️☀️ But when you think about Stefan drowning over and over in that lake... it feels so bad :(

Katherine as a human is devastatingly entertaining! "I’m the freaking moonstone" 🤣 So iconic that she, of all people, took the cure! I loved that twist.

I loved the complicated and messy love triangle between Quetsiya, Amara and Silas. I want to empathise with Quetsiya and support her, because Silas screwed her over in such a supernatural, mystical way... he cheated on her and tricked her. He manipulated her to get what he wanted. So yeah, I’m all team Quetsiya ✊ but then again, she is sort of over-paranoid and obssesive? 🤷‍♀️ And being screwed over by a guy doesn’t exactly justify her quest for vengeance. So... I guess the only one who’s okay is Amara?? We don’t see a lot of her but I respect her wish to die after thousands of year in pain, as the anchor of the other side (which, btw, was BRILLIANT! 🤯 Quetsiya’s a genius! o.O)

"You are my life" ❤️ GOD, Damon always finding the right words!

I hate the travelers storyline 🙅‍♀️ I find it incredibly boring and I’m not that attached to Nadia. The only thing I liked about her was her relationship with her mom, Katherine. But apart from that, I don’t really like them as villains, nor as their storyline with Silas 😑😕

Stefan loosing his memory is okay-ish. It’s such a cliché as a trope, but it sort of works because Paul Wesley does such a great work at portraying different Stefans 👍 and it’s always entertaining to watch. And even though I usually ship Delena, I have to admit Elena recreating some moments with Stefan was very cute! 💕So it works but I’m not a big fan.

What I am a big fan of is the evolving relationship between Damon and Jeremy! 🥰 I mean, you can see that he didn’t really care about him, that he was mostly protecting him as a way to please Elena... But then, something changed 🤔He started caring for him for real, kinda like a big brother would:)

"You’re Katherine Pierce. Suck it up" hell yes 💪 keep fightingt, love !

Awwwwwww Bonnie 💔 Why do you always have to sacrifice yourself and put everyone else’s happiness before your own?? It’s really sad to see her becoming the anchor of the other side, feeling literally every single death of all the supernatural beings out there :’(

The Augustine vampire storyline!! 😮I’ve had completely forgotten about that! I love how they connected Damon with that institution, and how they introduced Enzo as Damon’s old mate. Well done👍

Katherine in Elena’s body: OMG! Love it! She’s such a survivor ❤️ That’s gonna mess things up so bad xD (btw the fact NO ONE notices anything is kinda weird and if I was Elena, I would be offended)

Nooooooo, don’t break up with Damon as Elena !!! 😱😱 Uuuughhh!!! Whyyy 😭

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG CAROLINE SLEPT WITH KLAUS !!! ❤️HELL YAS B**CH!!! SHE FINALLY ADMITTED HER FEELINGS FOR HIM !!! THEY KISSED !!! IT’S OFFICIAL !!! (i know klaus will never come back to TVD ever again buuuut... i’m still so so SO happy about that Klaroline reunion!)

Awwwww my baby Liv ❤️ I’ve missed her, she was so precious in season 5 !

Katherine AGRESSIVELY flirting with Stefan, while pretending to be Elena, was... both fun and hard to watch 😅Katherine was soooo pushy! And the fact that Stefan still doesn’t see she’s not Elena was infuriating! Like there’s just no way Elena would ever act like that!

"You’re never gonna as interesting as the next guy she wants to sleep with” poor Nadia 😭 that’s so true though :/ she didn’t deserve to die, I was really sad for her. She deserved a better life than the one she’s got 💔💔💔

FINALLY! 🙌 Finally they put two and two together and figured out Katherine is inside Elena’s body! Thank God 🙏 Caroline made me laugh so much with her "it’s Elena, we would have noticed something" speech. I was like YES. MY POINT EXACTLY 👏 I loved when they figured out all the little details that have been wrong ever since the beginning of this whole mess, like : Katherine was the reason that Tyler knew Caroline slept with Klaus. And Caroline’s like : oooohhh it all makes sense now. Wow. Congrats for figuring this out just now! 🙄

R.I.P Katherine ❤️ Weirdly, she will be missed. She did deserve better.

Jeremy was kind of a jerk with Bonnie in s5 ? I mean he was okay in the first few episodes i guess but then he completely ignored her... not cool bro, not cool 👎

The whole "Why do people seem to expect more of me?" speech of Caroline felt very relatable 👏 Just because she’s kind, because she’s trying to do good, doesn’t mean it’s easier for her! 😤 Plus, why do people keep slut-shaming her for having sex with Klaus when she’s not the first, nor the last, to have had one night stands with - arguably - bad people! ✋

Damon and Elena breaking up : lol 😆 As if. We know they’re endgame. Please. It’s only a matter of episodes until they find their way back to each other, which is why they are kinda cute as a couple.

Ugh 😑 Markos 🤦‍♀️ I just can’t ✋

Bonniiiiiiiiiiie !! Stop lying to everybody!! I hated how she was pretending she had a spell to escape the Other Side collapsing! Haven’t you learnt anything by now? Talk to your friend, figure out a plan together and if not, at leat say your goodbyes and enjoy your last moments with them!

Did I already say I hate the travelers storyline? Well, I do. I hate it 🤬

Season 5 finale was PEFRECT, I loved it. Bonnie resurrecting everyone, Liv doing the spell, Silas helping them just to be destroyed in the end (a fitting ending), Damon and Elena driving through the Grill to kill all the travelers, Alaric coming back, Markos dying... BUT. But, but, but, I was so upset about Damon!! It was just a matter of time and if they would have just kept going with the spell for a few seconds (damn you, Luke!), he would have been able to come through! And Lexi, omg 😭 at least she found peace❤️

Btw, that’s exactly what I meant about Bonnie’s character. Throughout the seasons she never stops sacrificing herself for other people (sometimes those people don’t even deserve it). She keeps lying to everyone. She lied when she died the day of graduation. She didn’t say how much it hurt her to be the anchor. She lied when she said they had a way to bring her back from the Other Side when it was collapsing. She kept minimising her (big-ass) problems. She kept putting other people before herself. And she’s one of the characters who suffered the most. Her storyline revolves around pain. The show doesn’t allow her to be fully happy. And btw, no one truly cares about her happiness (except maybe Jeremy and then Enzo), at least not when somebody else’s safety or comfort is at play. She’s never number 1 on the priority list. If somebody needs her to do a spell or whatever, they will use her. No matter how much danger she puts herself in 🤬

"Please don’t leave me” 😭😭😭 I felt that... It crushed my heart 💔

S6 :

I loved the way everybody coped with Bonnie and Damon’s deaths 💕 Elena got addicted to some magical herbs that made her hallucinate Damon again because she couldn’t deal with his death. Jeremy left a tone of angry voicemails to Bonnie’s old phone - which he paid for. Caroline got dragged into work and research in order to find a way to get back in Mystical Falls. Stefan moved on completely and started off a new life. It’s just... a nice way to show grief 😊

Ooohh I smell some Steroline moments!! Poor Caroline. To me, she deserved better than Stefan! He was such a jerk to her, especially in the beginning 😤😡

NOOOOOOOOOOOO 💔 ELENA DON’T ERASE YOUR MEMORIES! WHAT! WILL! YOU! DO! WHEN! DAMON! INEVITABLY! COMES! BACK! Elenaaaaa 😤 You have to learn how to deal with grief for real !

The fact she trusts Rick completely to do that was so beautiful though... They’re family and it was nice to see their bond.

Bonnie and Damon were kinda cute ! Like I don’t ship them, per say. But I get why some people do 🤷‍♀️ They had chemistry and they worked as an enemies to lovers trope. Anyway, I personally liked their friendship, how they both learnt how to support each other, how to function as a team, how they helped each other through the worst! In the end, Damon truly cared about her, and that’s why he was ready to do anything in order to save her 💪

Kaaaaaaiiiiii 🙈 i’m so conflicted about ya

I totally ship Jalaric ! ❤️ I loved how Elena tried to fix them up together! They’re really cute together. They both have complicated pasts and a messy family. They understand each other :) And Jo is such a confident woman! She knows what she wants, she’s not afraid of speaking her mind, she’s kinda fierce!

The fact that Elena wanted her memories back JUST when Alaric became human again was just... aaarrghh 🤬

"I think I deserve better than that” YES 👏 YOU 👏 DO 👏 CAROLINE! Stefan treated you like shit and you’re right to protect yourself, sweatheart 💕 I really didn’t like how he tried so hard to make amends... without acknowledging how much he hurt her, how he abandoned everyone, how he behaved like a jerk. I liked that Caroline took some distances for her own good 💖 #SelfRespectIsReal

The Gemini coven was really interesting. This idea of such a dysfunctional family, with a psychopath brother who killed half his siblings to merge with his twin sister in order to get leadership for the coven... it was all very compelling! Loved it ❤️

I think I have a thing for storylines about supernatural families in TVD : the Salvatores, the Mikealsons, the Parkers !

Liv and Tyler... mmm... don’t care 🤷‍♀️

You’re telling me that Damon got out of the prison world, even KAI got out, and BONNIE still gets stuck over there!! 🤬 Wtf ?? Why does this show hate this character so much? Why is she always the one who gets screwed in the end?? I just hate the way they treated her!! 😱

There was literally no good outcome to that whole twin-merging-together mess. If Liv merged with Luke, one of them would die and that’s not an option! If Kai merged with Jo, there was a huge chance he would win, which is simply not acceptable at all. Anyway, what a mess!

Kai literally sucking all the magic from the travelers’ spell, finally breaking it, allowing vampires to come back to Mystic Falls, was just... wOw! o.O

Luke merging with Kai 😭 R.I.P 💔

The ONLY good thing about that merge was watching Kai trying to deal with his feelings like ??? what’s going on??? 🧐🧐Why do i... feel??... stuff ?? 🤨🤨

"So I googled how to process emotional pain", i mean i hear you my boy, let’s not pretend that’s not my usual monday 👩🏻‍💻 "so i start writing and this water literally started pouring in my eyes ?? does that ever happen to you ??”, again same 😂

Jeremy going to art school... meh, it was okay. Clearly they didn’t know what to do with him anymore, so yeah, why not art school? 🤷‍♀️ The going-away party was nice :) Damon giving a joint to Jeremy was sort of sweet, Elena smoking it with him was also cool and quite funny!

Ugh 😑 Enzo & Sarah Salvatore... 🙄 this storyline was so boring, i just didn’t care

First Steroline kiss! 😳😮 Okay, that was kinda cute, I have to admit. But still, I don’t like the fondation of this ship, I think that Stefan hurt her too bad and, most importantly, didn’t respect her enough to get to come back and kiss her.

Sheriff Forbes being sick was KILLING me 😭😭😭 She didn’t deserve that at all, she was the sweatest, kindest, purest, most compassionate woman on this show... and she passed it on to Caroline...

The scene with the bike and little Caroline was so touching ❤️❤️😭 RIP Liz’!

OMGOMGOMG!!! Caroline flipped her humanity switch! 😱 "I just need the pain to be gone" 😭 I get why she did it, and I also thought Elena was being a little bit condescending with her. She had the right to turn it all out. Everyone else did. I get why she thought it was unfair :/

BONNIE’S BACK Y’ALL ❤️❤️❤️

I do not understand why people on this show just won’t accept people turning off their humanity switch 🤷‍♀️ I mean, Stefan, Damon, Elena,... they all did it! And every single time, the others tried really hard to fix that. And I’m like : why? I’m not sure it’s the smartest move here 🧐 Because they usually end up making things worse 😑 Look at Elena : she just wanted to not feel the pain of her brother’s death for a while. She even tried to make a deal with Stefan and Damon : leave me alone, let me do my things and I’ll behave. But of course, they refused 🙄🤦‍♀️ Because they couldn’t accept the fact that their precious Elena would ever be bad and do bad thing 😒🙄 And then Elena became ruthless! Who would have thought? 🙄 Same for Caroline! The poor girl lost her mother. She just wanted to get waisted, sing some karaoke songs, and live her vampire life without any care in the world. She even erased Liam’s memories when she fed on him. Her first instinct was to buy new clothes to start over and come back to her dorm to keep leaving her old college life! She kinda had it under control 🤷‍♀️ And then, she suggested a deal, kind of like the one Elena tried to make with Stefan and Damon :☝️ one year without humanity, and she behaves and doesn’t kill anyone. That’s a good deal if you ask me 🤷‍♀️ Why not let her have that? Why not agree with that deal? Caroline without humanity is still Caroline (sort of) : she’s functional, and to quote Caroline herself : she is not an idiot. She doesn’t want to feel so she’s ready to do anything to not be bothered. I think she would have respected her end of the deal. If you take a good look at it, in both cases, it’s when other people tried to bring them back, when they broke the deal, that Elena/Caroline became killers.

Stefan shutting off his humanity was so dumb 🤦‍♀️🙄 Elena was going to find Sarah, he still had time! And even if she didn’t, and Liam killed Sarah, it’d be one ☝️ dead body. But by turning off his humanity, Stefan practically ensured that there’d be more dead bodies after that!

Damon’s mom... urf, yeah? sure. I guess I should care? 🤷‍♀️ Honestly, even when I first watched the show, I found that storyline super boring. She didn’t inspire me anything whatsoever. Anyway, using her as Stefan’s emotional trigger was sort of smart, but kinda reckless. I mean, they had no idea if it was gonna work or not, and still they still risked it, I-... urf 🤦‍♀️

I liked Stefan’s little revenge 😈😈 He’s like : no, no, no, Caroline, you don’t get to have an elaborate system that protects you from feeling guilt whenever you’ll decide to turn your humanity back on. I’m gonna make your life a living-hell. I’m gonna break you. You don’t get to ruin MY life and keep being the same control-freak, organised, college girl 💁‍♀️

Alaric&Jo thinking about baby names 🥰

The cure is BACK??? Hell no 😤 I mean, sure, it was interesting the first time, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve already watched that storyline. So 🤷‍♀️

Btw, I hate how suddenly, everybody’s like "omg poor Elena will NEVER get the life that she truly wants, she’s condamned to an eternity as a vampire, without ever having the possibility of settling down and starting a family" 😱 like i don’t know Elena’s been FINE about her vampirism for like 4 seasons. She seems happy, she seems to have found a way to make the best out of it. But sure, NOW that the cure is back, she feels like her life is unbearable - how convenient🙄

"For the first time, I’m putting ME first" HELL YES, BONNIE ✊🏿 I wish she could do that more often though.

Awwww Caroline getting her humanity back was really sad and emotional 💕💕The LETTER 😭 The fucking letter 😭 "I’m sorry Stefan, I ruined everything" 😭

Are we gonna address Matt, Tyler and Alaric’s alcoholism or are we simply gonna pretend they don’t have a drinking problem and their behaviour is totally socially-acceptable ?? 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

I know it was her choice and it was probably for the best, but I think Elena taking the cure was a big mistake 😕 The show was way more entertaining when she was a vampire, and they basically erased every possibility of a "happy" ending for my favorite characters 💔 Elena will loose everyone she ever cared about, including Stefan and Caroline. She will have to move out of Mystic Falls and isolate herself from all her former friends. Damon is taking the cure with her so he will have to say goodbye to his own brother, the only family he has left. All of that... for a human life ?? A meaningless job?? Bills to pay?? School?? Money issues?? A house to maintain?? Misery and despair?? Children?? In that messed up world?? With that economy??? And the environment crisis we’re living?? Nope, I don’t get it 🤷‍♀️ I just don’t.

Secretly, I had always dreamed of Elena, Stefan, Damon and Caroline all being vampires and spending eternity together. And double date forever, I guess 😅

NOOOOOOOOO 😭😭😭 R.I.P Jo 💔

LIV !!!! 💔 NO, NO, NO, NO! Whyyyy 😭

AND THAT BASTARD GETS TO LIVE!!! What did do you do Lily? Oh my freaking God, why would you turn Kai into an heretic? He was already such a pain in the ass and now he’s even more powerful! Thanks to you, he has killed his entire family and he gets to live!! 🤬🤬

I ABSOLUTELY HATE WHAT THEY DID WITH BONNIE AND ELENA!! That whole "I linked your life with Elena’s" 😡 Cause it’s like : OF COURSE, we want to pick the main character. Of course we want Elena to come back to life. Of course we would be ready to sacrifice Bonnie if it means that Elena gets to live in the present with her friends and family. BUT BONNIE DOESN’T DESERVE THAT! She deserves to be the one, as Caroline used to say, to be picked upon everybody else. She deserves to live as much as Elena, even more (after everything she has done, everything she has sacrificed for her friends). She deserves to be happy! But now, everyone resents her for being alive, because if she’s alive then that means she is taking "Elena’s place". Now she feels guilty for being alive and breathing. For. Fucking. Being. Alive. Think about that. Again, I’m sorry if I repeat myself but : WHY THE HELL DID THIS SHOW HATE BONNIE’S CHARACTER SO MUCH?? 🤬🤬🤬

I’m just gonna say it once : The show is just not the same without Elena 🤷‍♀️

Btw, I KNOW Kai specifically said not to try anything to undo the spell he casted - otherwise Elena and Bonnie would BOTH die... But I’m surprised they didn’t even try to search for a loophole 🤔 I mean, let’s be real, when has Damon ever listened to anyone trying to reason with him? When did any of them? 🤷‍♀️ Bonnie would NEVER stop looking for a magical loophole to save her best friend. Caroline would read an entire library of mystical books to find a clue. Stefan and Damon would travelled the whole world to meet with different witches, trying to find some kind of magic that could undo the spell. No one would ever listen to Kai and just do nothing! I mean, he could be bluffing for all they know 😵 He could be saying that in order to mess with them. Were they really gonna take his word for granted? 🤔 I’m not saying "try the first anti-spell you find and roll the dices", but at least try and look for something!

S7 :

Anyway, AT LEAST, we get to see some good sweet Bamon scenes ! I love how Damon seemed to genuinely care about Bonnie. He didn’t want her to die, even if it meant he would see Elena again 💕

"You’re my best friend" awwwwww ❤️

I... liked the Heretics!😳 They were a fun new, even if they reminded me of Pearl and her vampire friends (in the "we are trying to coexist with humans but some of us don’t want to" trope). And again, I kinda have a thing for supernatural dysfunctional family, so... 🤷‍♀️ Valerie was very relatable as a depressed immortal being, Beau was so loyal it was really sweet, Malcom was boring but he died pretty quickly so he wasn’t in the show for long, Mary Louise and Nora were... the absolute cutest couple ❤️

How many times can they evacuate Mystic Falls without people realizing something’s wrong? 🤔 How many stories about gaz leak can they come up with?? 🤦‍♀️ Where are all the humans going? They’re moving away because they’re all compelled, sure, but to go where? like how can that many people find new homes in new cities, especially considering this crappy housing market? It just seems pretty unlikely that these people would just start over so easily, find new jobs, new homes for their families🧐

Stefan & Valerie was basically Steferine all over again 🤷‍♀️ I don’t have anything against Valerie herself. I think she’s probably the nicest one amongst the heretics. I even liked her chemistry with Stefan but it’s the same storyline recycled all over again, so I don’t really care much. Plus, I liked the idea that Katherine was Stefan’s first love (💕). First of all, Katherine being Stefan’s first love makes their story... EPIC. We, as an audience, care deeply about Katherine (whether we like her or not). She’s a regular and important character. We want her to have a compelling story, one that fits the legend that was Katherine Pierce. Valerie, as nice and interesting as she can be, only appears in the two last season. Plus, if Stefan had already been in love with Valerie and had already had his heart broken BEFORE knowing Katherine, then he should have acted differently when he met her 💡 He should have been way more suspiciously towards her 🧐 he wouldn’t have so easily trusted another woman, coming at his door with a pity story... if he had already been betrayed and abandoned by THE FIRST WOMAN he ever loved, the one who took his "v-card", his first love.

Hello Oscar... Goodbye Oscar 👋

Are you kidding me ? Bonnie is in pain yet again, because of some mystical element AGAIN, and nobody cares AGAIN. People keep using her, lying to her, manipulating her to get what they want and I- 🤬 Btw HOW is she okay with this? How would Bonnie ever agree to help raise people from the dead? What about her values and morals? What about everything she believes in??

These "Three Years from Now" scenes were just TERRIBLE 🤦‍♀️ Epic failure. I simply don’t care about whatever happens in the "future”. I’ll make my own headcanons, thank you ✋

JULIAN... UGH 🤢🤮 Could you be even more despicable?? Beating up a pregnant woman to the point of loosing her baby?? Poor Valerie, she didn’t feel like she could tell her own mother about that cause’ she knew Lily wouldn’t believe her 😢

Awwwwwww Ric bringing ""Jo"" back from the dead 😭💖 I felt bad for that poor vampire who just woke up in somebody else’s body, after years being trapped in some hell... And It was really heartbreaking to watch him get his hopes up and then realise she wasn’t his wife :’(

OMG CAROLINE’S PREGNANT??? 🤰WITH RIC’S BABIES??? 😱 I... I don’t even know what to think of that. I don’t really know how to react... Good for the twins? I guess? Yay, they’re alive? But... I don’t know, seems kinda rapy to put someone else’s babies inside a woman’s body without her consent ?? 🧐

The fact that Valerie HAD to confess her very traumatic story, to multiple people, MULTIPLE TIMES... because it was convenient to the plot was disgusting! 🤮🤬 She was merely used as a reason to try to kill Julian... Valerie was beaten by Julian to the point she lost her baby! She never said anything because she was afraid no one would believe her/people would judge her/people would hurt her - which is completely understandable considering how traumatic this must have been for her! But then she comes back to MF and Stefan keeps asking her to justify herself like she owes him a goddamn explanation for not having returned earlier as she had promised... um? I get that Stefan had his heart broken back then, but aren’t you mature enough NOW to understand something wrong must have happened?? And that maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about it because it still hurts?? It’s HER life and she is entitled to live it however the hell she wants?? EVEN if she just changed her mind and decided not to come back for an entirely different reason, it’s her choice! Having sex with someone ONCE doesn’t mean you OWE them anything! 🤦‍♀️🤬 Promises were made, sure, but they were both very young and things can change! ANYWAY... And when they need allies to kill Julian, she is almost forced to tell her story again, just to make people feel pity and sympathy... She’s not a damn tool, for God’s sake, respect the poor girl! 😤

While rewatching the show, I kind of like that they addressed Lily’s romantic patterns and how she had a tendency to chose violent, controlling, abusing husbands (first Giuseppe, and then Julian...) 🧐 It was touching to hear her story, and to understand that she only stayed with Giuseppe back then to protect her sons, Damon & Stefan. She had a plan to run away, she wanted to escape because she knew she was in danger with him, she was well aware he wasn’t treating her right. But sometimes you can’t just go away. Sometimes things are more complicated. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ I liked that she realised her own pattern and that she tried to stand up for herself against Julian after that... even though it didn’t end well (which... seriously? 🤦‍♀️ She killed herself? Is that the message you wanna send to all the people stuck in abusive/violent relationship? 🤮)

Poor Lily 😭😭😭 R.I.P. 💔

Damon burning Elena’s coffin... 🔥🔥 Yeah. Sure. As if 🙄 Honestly, even on my first watch, I wasn’t believing it. The show without Elena is such a catastrophic mess! If she had died in her sleep, it would have been devastating. I don’t think the show would have survived that. I think it would have been cancelled before s8, or something like that.

Stefan was... surprisingly not reacting a lot to Caroline being PREGNANT🤰?? I mean... I don’t know... I was expecting some kind of big talk about it. Like "hey Caroline, how are you feeling about all this? What are your thoughts about having Ric’s babies? Do you even want to pursue the pregnancy (cause you DON’T have to carry someone else’s babies!)? What does this pregnancy mean to you? What will happen once the babies are born? Would you consider having shared custody with Ric? Or if you don’t want to be involved at all, would you like the twins not to know you were the one who carried them? Did you ever or would you ever want to be a mom? Would you want to have children of your own in the future? Do you ever think of that?” 🤷‍♀️ And those are just EXAMPLES. He didn’t have to ask all of these questions all at once! But you know, I wish they could have at least discussed some of these points together. Instead, he just let her "handle her things", because good old organised Caroline has every figured it out, of course! 🙄🙄 sure, she can take care of everything on her own 🤦‍♀️

I didn’t like the idea of putting Damon & Stefan in the Phoenix Stone... if it was all JUST to do THAT in the end. They tried to add some PTSD, pain and remorse but failed at making it compelling to the audience. Wooow, Stefan must let go of his toxic relationship with his brother in order to save himself... How obnoxious can you be, TVD? And oooohh, Damon must get rid off his toxic masculinity to face the fact that he loved and misses his mother... how original!! 🙄 I just feel like TVD was trying hard to be deeper than they were, and it didn’t work (for me)

FINALLY JULIAN IS DEAD 🙌🙏🎉

The Huntress was, like, a JOKE, okay? She’s supposed to have killed a thousands of vampires. Even heretics feared her. Stefan & Damon should already have been dead by now! What is she doing? How are we supposed to be afraid of her? She’s not doing anything, she is barely a threat 🤦‍♀️

Am I the only one who kinda saw great chemistry between Nora and Bonnie?💕

I LOVE how Klaus just IMMEDIATELY understood that Caroline was NEVER gonna let go of these kids 😍 I just love how he ultimately gets her, how he’s able to predict exactly what’s she’s going to do because he just knows her that well. Their phone talk was VERY cute ❤️ I love how he teased her with her own words : how she said she couldn’t possibly allow herself to be with him because she was "in college, building a life for herself” and he just wasn’t in the picture... and then turns out... she had kids! 😅 He sounded surprised but not completely shocked and I love how he was very understanding and sweet with her, she needed that 💕

Btw this season is just desperately LONG!

Awwww... Caroline... 😬 I understand why she wanted to stay in Dallas, and why she asked Stefan to consider moving here... but she should have been honest with him right away, the minute he picked up the phone. She should have told him she wanted to be involved in these kids’ life. I know that she was afraid Stefan wouldn’t want to “settle down" with her and take care of the twins... but she could have asked him. Directly. Clearly. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded living with her and raising the twins in some kind of shared custody 🤷‍♀️ Family comes in all shapes and sizes (💖), and as long as they told the truth to the twins, it wouldn’t have been a problem. And if Stefan didn’t want that at all, or wasn’t ready, or whatever, then they could have ended their relationship in a healthy way. By acknowledging they both wanted different things and that it just didn’t work out, as it often happens in life. But here, they’re just stuck in the middle... and it’s awkward 😳😐 Clearly, Caroline wants to live near the girls. She wants to be their mom, and clearly Stefan doesn’t seem THAT into it. But no one is saying anything and it’s just weird! 😤

I understand why Damon would make the choice of dessiccating in a coffin until Elena came back 🙂 He didn’t do it just for love. Not just because he missed her. Not because life was unbearable without her. That would have been really lame btw 😒 He did it because he didn’t want to directly or indirectly hurt people around him. And you know what, for once that was kind of the best, most reasonable - and most noble - decision to make. I was proud of him. The letter he gave Alaric was pretty sweet, but I’m glad Bonnie got to catch him before he left 💕

Bonnie saying "I’m not okay with that”😭 I was soooo glad that FOR ONCE she said what she was really thinking ! 👐Damon is her best friend, and I truly believe learning he left in a letter would have been devastating for her 😞 His choice means she will most likely NEVER see him again, ever, in her entire life 💔 I can totally understand her asking sincerly "are we friends?" cause if one my friends dared to do that, I would be pretty upset. I liked that she asked him to be honest. No joke. No deflecting mecanism. No sarcasm. No insults. Just the truth. ❤️

I REALLY REALLY don’t care about what happens "three years from now" 🤷‍♀️ Ugh I hate this season, things are so slow and boring, the storyline isn’t interesting at all, and frankly... i wanna die💀

NOOOOO MARY-LOUISE AND NORA DIDN’T DESERVE THAT 💔😭😭

Ugh 😑 The whole idea of the vampire souls trapped in the Phoenix’s stone being reunited with the wrong bodies was just lame and boring 😒

I genuinely felt bad for Valerie 😞 you can see she truly loved Stefan and it must have hurt to see he didn’t feel the same, despite having spent basically three years together :/ Again, that’s kind of my general problem with Stefan: he’s so afraid he’s gonna hurt people that he’s never fully honest with anyone! 🙄 Same shit with Caroline. He just abandoned her because he couldn’t deal with this situation. What Stefan fails to realise is that he does hurt people by keeping things from them, by always running away. I’m sorry but women around him deserve better 🤷‍♀️

Bonenzo... I remember shipping it back then, but now, I just don’t feel it 🤷‍♀️ i get why people do, sure they both care deeply about each other and you can clearly see that (the guitar scenes were very cute 💕)... but it’s mostly flashbacks and that doesn’t have the same effect on me. Because I wasn’t there to see them developing a special bond over time. I still think they’re cute and I’m happy to see Bonnie finally fall in love with someone who truly loves her back ❤️

OF COURSE BONNIE IS THREATENED BY SOME MAGICAL ELEMENT THAT IS SORT OF CONVENIENT FOR THE STORY. OF COURSE. 🤬😡 I’m so mad, I’m so fucking mad at the show for treating her this way. She’s always the one in danger. She can never be happy for more than two episodes!!

Ooooohhh nooooo Bonnie’s the new Huntress 😭😭😭 She’s gonna want to kill everyone: Damon, Stefan, Caroline, even Enzo!! Nooooo 💔

OH THANK GOD, SHE DIDN’T KILL ENZO 🙏🙏🙏 I was so afraid. For Enzo but most of all for Bonnie! She would have been devastated if she’d killed him!

“You changed my life” awwww I feel bad for Ric, the same way I felt really sad for Valerie... They both hoped the moments of pure happiness they shared with their partner would turn out to be something more. They both dreamed of starting new with their loved one, to have their own perfect little happy life... 💕 even though they knew deep down the other one didn’t love them back. Not the way they wanted to be loved. And that’s sad 😭

Damon & Enzo being manipulated and brainwashed by that thing in that vault, at the end of s7 🙄 seriously? Who would have seen that coming ? 🙋‍♀️

Ugh, s7 was PAINFUL to watch 😑

S8 :

Yiiiiikes 🤢🥴 whatever that thing is, it’s not friendly! That scene where Damon and Enzo feed it was kinda freaky!

Ric running the armory makes sense actually! I’m quite happy about that :) he’s been wanting real hard to get back to his Indiana-Jones type of life ✊ He would have never been happy with a perfect little family life... even with Jo, I believe 🤷‍♀️ He truly loved her but at the end of the day, he has just seen too much. He knows too much to just stop fighting at all. That’s what makes him Ric.

A SIREN !!!! Cool ! Now we’re talking 😎

I understand why Damon would submit completely to Sybil : he has always hated himself for all the terrible things he’d done, he has always thought he wasn’t worthy of redemption, and now Sybil provided him a proof of that, a vision of literal Hell, of eternal torture... 👺😈 plus she erased all memories of Elena 😭 he has no reason not to work for Sybil. She’s the only one who can provide a way out of Hell. Who wouldn’t take that deal? If I suddenly found out no matter what you do, you’re damned to an eternity of pain and misery and loneliness, and the only way to escape that is to work for Satan, aka Cade, I would probably do it too 🤷‍♀️

The way Enzo resisted Sybil’s mind control for Bonnie was really sweet 💕 I felt bad when he had to shut down his humanity to save her life 😭

Honestly, I know I should care about Tyler’s death but he was never my favorite character and he’s been so... in and out of the show that I kinda stopped caring about him at all (since he wasn’t exactly a regular character) 😕 But he surely didn’t deserve to be collateral damage in that mess :( Also, I thought Caroline would react a bit strongly. I mean, Tyler was important for her and she barely said something? Weird 🤷‍♀️

CAROLINE AND STEFAN ARE GONNA GET MARRIED !! 💍 She said YES! OMG! Tbh I might not ship them (because I think Stefan got away with the pain he caused her a little bit too fast) but I’m happy for Caroline: she finally got to have her June Wedding!! 💛🎉 (though I’d prefer she married Klaus of course!)

I really liked the whole mythology of the sirens 🧜‍♀️ the story about the village girl and the island girl becoming sisters, having to kill and eat people in order to survive, was heartbreaking! But I was so sure Sybil was the “nice” one 🥺 Poor girl

Noooooo, poor Georgie 😭💔 knowing she is going straight to Hell is horrible, considering she’s seen and experienced it before and she knows what awaits her :(

Sebine played her game very well, no one suspected her to be Sybil’s sister 🤔 she’s really creepy and I’m so so so afraid for the girls 😱 she clearly has an evil plan for them and I’m so anxious 😱

"I’m your brother and I love you. Please come home with me” awww Stefan ❤️

Awwwwww Enzo and Bonnie ❤️ “I’m never leaving you” okay now I remember why I shipped them! They’re adorable! She chose him over her own best friend. She picked Enzo because no one else did. Ever. And she thought he deserved a chance, because deep down he is such a sweet, loving, caring person. He might not look like it, but he’s maybe the one who cares the most and who’s actually ready to do anything for his loved ones. I think Enzo might be the big love of her life. And I’m so happy she got to have that. I’m so happy she got to meet him, to enjoy his company for a little while, to appreciate every happy moments ❤️

AAAAAH SELINE TOOK THE GIRLS!! 😱

Caroline finally doing the healthy thing and prioritising her daughters over everything else 💖💖💖 Take that ring back, Stefan. At least for now. Caroline took the right decision. She cannot make compromises when it comes to the girls. She cannot allow herself to add any more variables to this already messy situation. Yes, it’s selfish but she has to be.

WHAT? I seriously hope you’re kidding Ric! HOW DARE YOU telling Caroline she isn’t the girls’ mother? 🤬😡 She carried them, she agreed to pursue the pregnancy and give birth to kids who weren’t even “her own”, she raised them, she put food on their table, she tucked them in at night, she loved and cared for them more than anyone could have ever askef her, she basically had to let go of her entire life in order to live with them as a family... She IS their mother. She will ALWAYS be ❤️

Damon and Stefan’s deal with Cade to take the twins’ place !! 😱😱🔥 I really hope they find a way to get out of this one, but I don’t see how, right now... And Stefan is heading to a dark place :/ I hope Damon will be able to bring him back!✊

Speaking of Damon, I am SO glad he got to free himself from Sybil’s influence! 🙏 Stefan, on the other hand... meh? 😒 I’m not so sure I’m a fan of the old ripper storyline, I mean we already watched it once and we KNOW it’s not gonna last for long cause they have to wrap it up eventually, and I feel like this is just here as a cheap way to create drama between him and Caroline and idk that was kinda unnecessary 🤷‍♀️

ENZOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭💔 NONONONONONONONONOOOOOO!!!!! Poor Bonnie 😭 She was finally gonna get the happiness she deserved! RIP Enzo ☠️

OMGGG STEFAN’S HUMAN 🤯🤯🤯 Wow I wonder how he’s gonna take it, I mean on one hand being a vampire brought him a lot of pain, but on the other, it’s all he has known for centuries... rethinking your entire life, the basis of your existence, after all that time... ouch!

Kai is BACK ? Seriously ? Again ? I mean I like him, but let’s just say there are other people I would like to see again (#enzo❤️)

Btw I’m really conflicted about Bonnie trying to bring Enzo back : I want her to do it, of course, I want Enzo back, but I don’t want her to loose herself in the process 😱😭 I’m so scared for her :(

Stefan literally killing the Devil like 😎😎 “oh yeah bitch, bet you weren’t expecting that uh” ☝️ I am so so PROUD of my babyface :) also I’m really glad they got rid off Cade (ugh, I was so done with him)

Ahah, Kai’s in another prison world 🤣

OF 👏 COURSE 👏 KATHERINE 👏 IS 👏 THE 👏 QUEEN 👏 OF 👏 HELL 👏

Aaawwww I really really loved when Damon gave Elena’s necklace to Caroline 💕 their little chat was very cute: he knew she was quite sad because her wedding was being rushed and used as an excuse to drag out Katherine; she was going to walk down the aisle without her mother; Bonnie wasn’t gonna come; Elena wouldn’t be there; Alaric didn’t want to come... the MOST important day of her life was basically ruined 👰 and... idk he was being very sweet and compassionate with her :)

OOOOHH THEY’RE ACTUALLY GETTING MARRIED FOR REAL THOUGH! And Bonnie’s here!! Soooo cute 💖 I love how Damon insisted on the “does anybody want to object against this wedding?” part, like “really? No one?”

NOOOOOOOO THE GIRLS 😱😱🔥🤬

Omg they’re fine, I’m so relieved 🙏

Awww Bonnie saying goodbye to Enzo for real... that was so... bittersweet 😭 But he’s right: she’s gotta live her life. She cannot spend her entire life thinking about the people she could have spent more time with: Enzo, Elena, for instance. She has to focus on herself. On being happy. And I’m really glad for her ❤️

Katherine is literally gonna blow up the WHOLE TOWN !! Seems a bit extreme but I’m really not surprised xD such a Katherin-y thing to do, if you think about it

OMG FINAL EPISODE 😱😱😱

Okay, first I was like “I don’t understand why is everybody so obsessed with the idea of saving Mystic Falls”. 🤷‍♀️ Sure it’s their home, their childhood town, full of memories and all... but since Matt helped evacuate the entire town, there was no immediate danger for the population of MF. And at the end of the day, it’s JUST a town 🏙 It’s just buildings and roads and objects that can be replaced. It can be rebuilt over time. So Bonnie, Caroline, Damon, Stefan... they could have all just run far way from MF and then everything would have been just FINE 👍

But THEN Katherine captured Elena and trapped her in the high school 😈 NO WAY the Salvatore brothers would have just sacrificed Elena in hellfire 🔥🙅‍♀️

NOOOOOO I don’t want Damon to die 😭 But I also don’t want Stefan to die! Why do their plans always include one of them dying? Sounds like Supernatural 😅

THANK GOD 🙏 Bonnie’s here to save the day 💖 Damn, what would they ever do without her?? I liked how she fought for herself till the very end :) “it’s not my time” YOU BET YOUR ASS IT’S NOT 👏

OOOOMMMMGGG STEFAN’S DEAD 💀😱🔥 HE CAME BACK!!! HE CAME BACK FOR HIS BROTHER!! HE SAVED DAMON!! HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF!!! HE LEGIT DESTROYED HELL!! AND HE KILLED KATHERINE WITH IT!! 🤯

AND DAMON IS HUMAN!!! 🤯🤯🤯

AWWWWW LEXI IS THERE!! 🥰 I’m so happy to see her! I’ve missed her! Awww he found peace with his best friend 💕 I’m so glad for him! He deserves that!

“I was feeling epic” 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Honestly, it felt kinda cheap and too easy that Bonnie would just suddenly realise she had enough power to do ANYTHING, including breaking the spell that she wasn’t supposed to interfere with in ANY way, because she would be risking Elena’s life (and probably her own). Like, ok, she destroyed hell and that boosted her confidence enough that she decided she would just try it ? 🤷‍♀️ mmm... seems too easy... like why didn’t she do that earlier then ? Why did this entire season even happen then ? What was the point? What was the point of Bonnie realising she was worth living her life and that she didn’t have to feel guilty about Elena? Why would the show erase that wonderful character growth??? I- 🤷‍♀️

“We’ll see him again” ❤️ awwww I really love how they decide to develop Damon and Caroline’s relationship in the end... They both really acted like brother / sister in law. And that was genuinely cute. They both lost someone they loved and cared about deeply. I like that they know they can count on each other.

Awwwww Stefan got Caroline’s message, that’s really cute :) I hope it will help her move on, knowing he heard her, and he will love her forever too 💕

BONNIE’S HAPPY!!! SHE’S ALONE BUT SHE IS FINE BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T NEED SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE HAPPY! SHE LOVES HERSELF AND SHE LOVES LIFE AND SHE’S GONNA ENJOY HER LIFE TO THE FULLEST AND TRAVEL THE WORLD!! YAY! 🌈🎊🎉

The Salvatore boarding school : so it’s basically Hogwarts? Okay why not 🤷‍♀️ It’s not the big ending I was expecting for Caroline and tbh I’m a bit disappointed (but I guess her story doesn’t stop there and it’s more of a To Be Continued kind of ending) but it makes perfect sense for Alaric 🤔 Jo seing her daughters 💖 And Jeremy is a teacher there LMAO 😆

Awwwwww my Klaroline feels ❤️❤️❤️ “however long it takes” I CANNOT BELIEVE THE SHOW GAVE US A “MAYBE” FOR THAT SHIP. Honestly it’s more than I ever wished I would get! I’ll make my own headcanons, it’s perfect!

“I owe it all to Stefan” awww, true :’)

So what I got from Elena’s monologue: she had a great life, she was happy, she became a doctor, she grew old in Mystic Falls, she married Damon (funny how she doesn’t mention having kids? It was one of her biggest dreams, so idk 🤷‍♀️), then I guess SHE died before Damon did (-> what makes me think that is the scene where she holds his hands and says something along the lines of “I know peace exists and I know he will find it someday even though he doubts it” and then he disappears and she finds herself in the after life), and then she found peace and got reunited with her family in death 🧐 So bittersweet, I liked it! 💕 Even if I think it would have deserved to be a bit longer, a bit more explained, a bit more developed than just a “here’s what happened” 🤷‍♀️ It did feel rushed :/

“Hello brother” WAS THE LAST LINE OF THE SHOW! HOW. EPIC. IS. THAT.

[laughingpinecone]

Press Start letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

It’s a long list of character combos so the specific requests aren’t overly detailed, please draw at will from my general likes and general fandom likes in addition or as an alternative to any of those!

All requests are art or fic - for art, the stuff I like is the kind that depicts the characters doing something. I’ll always be happier with a very simple drawing of two characters walking together or sharing a cup of coffee than with an ambitious composition that looks like an Avengers poster. I also enjoy seeing them wear different clothes, getting a feel of what their fashion sense is like beyond their canon outfit(s).

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, canon-adjacent tropey plots, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, sickfic, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships)

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, nerdy canon references, unrequested characters popping up

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay), canon retellings, consent issues

Dark Souls

I’m only familiar with the first game+DLC! It’s probably relevant to mention that I think that linking the fire is kind of a dumbass move and Gwyn is an ass, but on the other hand Kaathe has his own agenda and there’s no winning move in this world, or at least no obvious one. Feel free to deviate from anyone’s canon endings, to make things happen that’ll stave off their hollowing. I am interested in any of these people meeting and possibly striking up a friendship, and also in exploring Lordran’s temporal/dimensional fuckery, where it’s possible to meet people who have been gone for ages…

Group: Solaire of Astora & Siegmeyer of Catarina: so much fanart of Sun Bro & Onion Bro being bros, so little fic. And yet, the potential! How’d they bounce off each other, what about the fact that Siegmeyer is apparently a proper Catarina knight after all while Solaire just painted his self-made insignia and left, what would Sieg think of Solaire’s quest?

Group: Alvina the Cat & Sieglinde of Catarina: dunno, kitty. I love them both and I want everyone cool to go on adventure with each other. What’s left for Alvina now that Sif is gone, Artorias’ grave desecrated? For her part, did Sieglinde, you know, (mimics Ash Lake)?

Ghost Trick

I am very interested in various characters finding about the erased timeline, but not getting their memories back, and having to live with being told about what they did but never remembering it. Exploring the ghost lore is great. All what-ifs welcome (what if they managed an acceptable happy ending but didn’t reset the timeline, what if a different party went back to the past and kept their memories, what if Alma’s ghost stuck around…) Also open to AUs here, especially for generic fantasy or sci-fi settings or the Final Fantasy ones I prompted last Yuletide.

For the non-canon sides of Jowd/Alma/Cabanela, please no infidelity? I’d be good with either setting the fic during the game timeline or some what-if thereof when the other spouse is dead or unavailable, or simply keeping them offscreen and not mentioning them (eg Alma/Cabanela beach day, Jowd/Cabanela precinct shenanigans)

For Jowd in general, I do love my big boy and enjoy milking that size difference for all it’s worth. In gen contexts too, it’s neat. him big.

Group: Jowd & Yomiel: I’d love to read about the intimate understanding that comes from their shared memories and the horrors they’ve mutually forgiven (and a penchant for morbidity they’ve gained from such horrors probably). Cat dads things welcome.

Group: Alma/Jowd/Cabanela: maybe once Alma and Jowd have figured out he’s smitten and that they do in fact reciprocate... they tease him to death, slowly and deliberately? Is it even a Jowd romance if there’s not an exhausting amount of teasing involved, I ask?

Group: Alma/Jowd & Cabanela: Cabs’ life is wild; his best friends’ home is a safe haven...

Group: Emma & Pigeon Man: Emma’s unsuspected beta reader...

Group: Alma/Cabanela: (taps mic) legs. And fashion!

Group: Cabanela/Jowd: a recent tumblr post made a convincing argument for Cabs liking to be in charge (the argument is just pointing at Cabanela, honestly). Jowd is... agreeable, by his own admission. But is it that simple?

Kentucky Route Zero

I love the ending and I’d love to see its themes and setting explored. I’m all for exploration of any of the game’s themes and for including any staples from adjacent genres - wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I love AUs so that’s an option too. Or of course there’s Xanadu at the height of its glory, an infinite what-ifs generator. Were the requested characters part of it, what were their digital counterparts up to? A Xanadu narrative would be great! I’d also love to hear about any new spot along the Zero or the Echo river, or an expansion of some place that’s only mentioned by Will in HATATE or only gets a few paragraphs of text. Mostly, I just love all these characters so much and I’m going through the tagset’s options like a hyperactive cat. Any fragment of their lives will make me happy.

Group: Shannon Márquez & Conway & Conway's Dog: does Shannon get to see them after the ending? Even for a moment?

Group: Lula Chamberlain/Joseph Wheattree/Donald: so Lula went back to Mexico. Joseph is pensive. Did the events of the night shake up Donald, or what will it take?

Group: Junebug & Lula Chamberlain: artists! Outspoken... artists... with a complicated personality. Put them in the same room and...?

Group: Junebug & Johnny: where’s the strangest place they played in, and what did Johnny find there?

Group: Conway & Johnny & Junebug (Kentucky Route Zero): their story is about finding individuality, his is about succumbing and losing it. Would any of them pick up on this mid-Act IV? Or just... talking about limbs and stuff?

Group: Cate & Will & Shannon Márquez (Kentucky Route Zero): a few months later, Shannon finds herself on the Mucky Mammoth again...

Group: Carrington & Weaver Márquez & Shannon Márquez (Kentucky Route Zero): maybe the cousins were trying to bond or reminisce or whatever and Carrington dive-bombed into the conversation, but in the end it was an enriching experience... of sorts?

Group: Carrington & Lula Chamberlain (Kentucky Route Zero): I don’t usually look for college shenanigans but this may be the exception? Or Art Opinions?

Group: Carrington & Clara (Kentucky Route Zero): would she even... get a word in? Maybe with the right topic?

Group: Carrington & Cate & Will (Kentucky Route Zero): Mammoth life! ...what does theater have to say about mushrooms again?

Group: Shannon Marquez & Weaver Marquez (Kentucky Route Zero): at the end of it all, Weaver was waiting. After this end, they can stand side by side again...

Group: Emily & Ben & Bob (Kentucky Route Zero): so what does it mean, like, poetically, that they were temporally displaced and Act I is in their future from Act V? Is it possible they were not aware of it?

Mutazione

The island, the sense of community, newcomers joining the community, gardens and music... I love the mood of this little game. Got ideas for some part of the island we haven’t seen? What stories do they tell each other about Moon Dragon and the first days of the new life it brought? The plants encyclopaedia was great - do Yoké’s archives hide some other cool tome? Please, if Graubert is mentioned, I would much prefer a sympathetic portrayal - he’s got his issues but I felt that the game was much harder on him than anyone else.

Group: Yoké & Karoo: I love the friendship between Yoké and Nonno and filtering it through Karoo feels even cooler to me. When did the big spooky bird first visit, did Yoké know or perceive what was going on?

Group: Yoké & Claire: book club book club book club!

Group: Spike/Claire: they’re so cute! Dinner at Mori’s? Swimming together?

Group: Nonno & Spike: I love Nonno’s role in the community and Spike’s role in the community, and they’re the two people who landed there and decided to stay. Could they bond over this?

Group: Dennis & Nonno: Important Tree Health Business!

Group: Bopek & Jell-A: Jell-A is the absolute coolest and Bopek grew on me a lot. Their friendship is adorable! What could they do together? As a side note, Jell-A’s place has the tightest interior decor in the whole game. How’d that happen, and does Bopek get a flair for vintage shapes and volumes in his weaving?

Group: Mori & Nonno & Yoké: FRIENDS. Friends for a long time, through so much pain. An evening together while The Youths (tm) are at Spike’s bar?

Yoké: catch-all Yoké request because he’s my fave! Doing Yoké things, being a big nerd, caring for books and plants and stuff

Pyre

The burning found family feelings, the revolutionary passion, the tension between topside social constraints and the kind of freedom allowed by the Downside! Thoughts about finding oneself at  the end of an age, as everything crumbles down to form something new. I love all the themes, the solemnity, the heart of this game. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure. Out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. My main interest usually lies in post-canon exploration when applicable, but I’m also into various adventures during canon. Pick a location or a place outside the map and see what happens? As for the ending variables, I’d ask for a peaceful revolution and Oralech alive, but no preferences for who’s up and who’s down, pick whatever works best for any given plot bunny.

Group: Tariq & Soliam: what were Tariq and Celeste like in their earliest days? Were they made or summoned from some sort of preexisting star consciousness? They’re wildly different scenarios! I’m good with either. Does Soliam then see Tariq as a child of sorts, someone he made, or something greater than himself? Did he mean to do that, to have these two immortals around? What does Tariq learn from the First Scribe?

Group: Tariq & Dalbert Oldheart: Any excuse for Tariq to hang out with the Fates for a little while, and treasure and be treasured by dear Dalbert...

Group: Oralech & Vagabond Girl: after all is said and done, Oralech’s view of the Scribes is probably... understandably... dire. So of course I want to see him talk it out with ae!

Group: Celeste & Ignarius: look, listen, if the various triumvirates just camped out near their respective Scribe’s place during the Nightwings’ years-long absence (not the only possible explanation for how you find them all neatly lined up before the first lib rite, but an explanation nonetheless, I think. just let me have my crack), that means Iggy was Celeste’s neighbor for a long time. Neighborly hijinks please?

Group: Bertrude/Pamitha: Pam returning from her travels, again and again, and finding a home in Bertrude’s lab, finding an understanding there... Bertrude’s attitude being thorny in a way that’s just what Pam needs to allow herself to open up... also: snake kisses.

Group: Volfred Sandalwood/Oralech: waking up and remembering that the mourning that’s set deep in your roots is for someone who never died, waking up and remembering that the bitterness that consumed you had made up a betrayal that never was, finding each other through these crumbling walls... 

Molten Milithe: that’s the pov for a love letter to the Downside, right? And/or which Scribe did she bond with the most? Or the least for that matter?

Volfred Sandalwood: catch-all Volf’n’anyone request. I want to see our tree interact with any friend and foe you might fancy! Arguing for his beliefs, being a history professor through and through, finding himself in a tight spot and getting unexpected help, verbally tearing Brighton a new one if they ever cross each other’s path again...

group: Volfred Sandalwood/Tariq | The Lone Minstrel: Volfred’s zodiac sign is Cancer and Cancer is ruled by the Moon, so there’s that.    I love how they both hold the other in the highest esteem, especially on Tariq’s part since he’s the immortal Herald of the Scribes and Volfred is, all in all, a history teacher, but listen to him and you’d think the roles were inverted. I love my nonviolent canon but could anything happen to either of them that may require a rescue, and/or some good old-fashioned h/c? What’s something that could make Tariq of all people lose it? How’s life 100 years on?

Shenmue

This game cares for the little things. I’d love to see fanworks that try to out-slice-of-life canon...

Group: Qiu Hsu & Xianzi Bei: cormorant kung fu adventure! Do they hang out sometimes?

Group: Hazuki Ryo & Shenhua Ling: any moment, discussion, small adventure from their travels together! I love their bond! For all its waifufication of Shenhua, S3 really sold me on their friendship and a shared brand of dorkiness. Alternatively, sometimes I remember that they’d be 50ish in the present day - how and where do you picture them?

The Silver Case

I‘m all for the surrealism, big things being introduced and never picked up again, Rashomon’ing it up with six explanations for the same thing where no single one can be true, people dying and then popping up again like nbd...  maybe the thing I like the most is characters transcending their humanity and looming over the dystopian world like ominous avatars. Correctness’ first ending had me swooning, that kind of mood is unparalleled. I have played TSC, FSR and 25W so far and have vague memories of K7. I’m aware of the “everything’s connected” readings but that’s not my main interest in these games. For FSR-focused requests, I see Lospass as a real island but also a metaphysical  place of transformation first and foremost, where strange things happen that don’t make sense elsewhere.

Group: Toriko Kusabi & Remy Fawzil: What’s Toriko up to when she’s not chasing Chris? I think it could be fun to throw her at Remy and see the island from their point of view!

Group: Tokio Morishima & Edo Macalister: since Tokio stayed at the Flower Sun and Rain... I’m interested in peculiar happenings on Lospass that are not centered on Sumio...

Group: Tetsugorou Kusabi/Sumio Kodai: Tetsu picked one hell of a crush, huh! What’s it like in the aftermath of the games, when Sumio is Like That? How does Tetsu grapple with Parade? Is Tetsu an anchor of sorts for Correctness Sumio, who seems (at best) to be existing on a slightly different plane of existence at any given time and could disappear if you blink too hard?

Group: Tetsugorou Kusabi & Shinko Kuroyanagi: I’m joining the “let these two be foulmouthed friends” masses - who’d be more fed up with the other’s nonsense, and in which ways would they be an unstoppable team?

Group: Shinkai Tsuki & Tetsugorou Kusabi: Both of them end their stories in the shadows one way or another, and defending their protégé may have had a hand in their misfortune one way or another. What kind of understanding could they reach? What IS Tsuki up to anyway?

Group: Christina & Catherine: anthro Catherine, as per the Placebo bonus chapter Yami, was unexpectedly charming. What was Chris before reaching Lospass, and did he also have a chat with her on the plane or on the island?

[wendibird]

If This is a Dream... (Ch. 1)

Fandom: Supernatural Pairing: Sam X Eileen Wordcount:  4,803 Warnings: Canon Character Death (already happened), Angst (eventual happy ending), Sex mentioned but nothing explicit is shown Summary:  Directly following the events of 14X13 "Lebanon" Sam receives a tip about a restless spirit haunting a particular patch of woods in South Carolina, one who is deaf and has asked for him by name. He must now deal with the thought of putting to rest someone he once cared for a lot, but will things go that simply? And in the midst of all the other problems on his plate, is he even ready to deal with the feelings of loss that he's tucked away for so long?  Author’s Note:  This was spawned from a writing prompt given by @becaamm  for a Valentine's Day challenge. We had a list of songs and a list of lines, and we had the option of picking one of each or two lines, but I just zeroed in one of the lines which immediately inspired what this fic has turned into. "If this is a dream, I really don’t want to wake up"|

Also, I'm a horrible procrastinator who procrastinates and I didn't get the whole fic written up in time. BUT, I'd say I have enough done for a fairly decent first chapter. It will probably only be 2 chapters in total, though it may extend to 3 depending on how far down various plot-bunny trails I go. (It was SUPPOSED to be between 500 and 7,000 words, but I'm pretty sure it's going to go over that.) Cross-posted on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/17796449/chapters/41985947

Artist Credit: @idreamofplaid made the wonderful aesthetic board for me to go along with this. She’s awesome! 

Sam's dreams had never really been anything to look forward to. As a child they had often been filled with flames, or shadowy figures moving just out of the field of his vision, or yellow eyes and a voice telling him dark things he didn't want to remember. After Jess there were more flames, but the face within them had become one he knew intimately better, and those persistent feelings of longing, guilt, anguish and anger pervaded everything. Years upon years of fighting evil and not always winning only seemed to add more fodder for his subconscious to torture himself with. Almost two centuries in hell hadn't exactly helped either. So when he sometimes found himself dreaming about one other person he'd failed to save, one other person who'd meant something to him but was now gone forever, well, he honestly hadn't thought too much of it.

 Sometimes when he dreamed of Eileen, she was running through some darkened woods, her breathing fast and heavy with more than just her physical exertions. There was sometimes a note of panic, of desperation in every breath that passed her lips, and sometimes another creature's breathing could be heard, or felt; harsh and snarling. Sometimes he felt searing pain across his own back, even as the invisible predator pounced on her. Other times, the forest was still and the moon was full, and he and Eileen sat together, curled in the roots of an ancient tree, talking with hands and lips and eyes to one another about things he could never remember upon waking. And still other times they clutched each other in a tight embrace, hands gliding over sweat-dampened skin and unfulfillable promises murmured from desperate lips in between sharp intakes of breath and tingling surges of sensation that left him gasping awake, disoriented and aching with the sudden loss.  

 They didn't happen that often. Though every time they did, Sam felt the persistent, hollow pain of her death linger for days. With everything that had gone on since her death though, there were plenty of other nightmares vying for his nightly attention, and if he hadn't really noticed that they never seemed to happen at the Bunker, or anywhere else west of the Mississippi, well, he could probably be excused.

 Tonight he probably wouldn't have had to worry anyway, even if he weren't in the Bunker. A crushed pearl and then his father had been fading from his sight, for the second time in his life. Although this time... well, he wasn't exactly happy, but it wasn't the same as before either. Things he'd wanted to tell his dad for a long time had finally been given voice, and a certain feeling of resolution soothed old scars he'd almost forgotten he'd even had. But it didn’t quite take the sting out of the knowledge that they’d had him there for a short while and then had to lose him again, like so many other people in their lives. His brother and Mom had retired to the kitchen some while ago to reminisce over a bottle of whiskey and he'd settled himself back into the library, going through yet more materials on angelic lore. He seriously doubted he'd even be going to bed before the next day dawned.

Once Cas had been filled in on the strange events of that day, he’d offered to heal both him and Dean from the injuries sustained while fighting his alternate self, but they'd both declined, claiming nothing was damaged that wouldn't heal on its own, and their angel's powers had been noticeably affected by Heaven's energy crisis. They didn't want him draining himself on their account when something much more pressing might come up later. Now, Castiel was down in one of the supplementary store rooms, as determined as he himself was to find another way of dealing with Michael than that metal box. He was going through the various books and boxes of relics that Sam hadn't had a chance to get to yet, and would bring him anything that looked promising.

 With a heavy sigh Sam thunked another weighty volume onto the "not any help" pile on the table, which was sadly, much larger than the "might be some help" pile. (Which was still larger than the as-yet non-existent "will actually help us" pile. But, he still hoped, and still had a clear spot reserved for it, just in case.)

 He took a moment to absently rub at his temples, considering the magnitude of the problem they faced. Thoughts of magic golden eggs, metal boxes (a coffin, really), spells, charms, Enochian sigils and an industrial grade fridge door held closed with a screwdriver all floated through his head. So many directions things could go, and most of them not good. But he'd meant what he'd told Dean, that they would find another way, and he was determined to keep that promise.

 Just as he was about to reach for the next book in the "yet to go over with a fine-toothed comb" pile, he was interrupted by a jingle from his phone. With a sigh, he reached into his shirt pocket for it, his brows furrowing when he saw the unknown number listed on the screen. He briefly considered letting it go to voicemail, but then decided against it. Between their Hunters, Jody’s and Donna's contacts, and the few other Hunters they had a passing understanding with, there was too much of a chance it could be someone or something important. (Or just someone they knew who'd had to replace a damaged or otherwise compromised phone.)

 So with that in mind he swiped the "accept call" symbol. "Hello?"

 The voice on the other end came through a bit choppy, apparently not having a good signal, but he could still make out the gist of the words. "Hello? -is Sam Win-ester?"

 "Yes." He responded, still feeling a little guarded. "I can barely hear you."

 "-old on." There were some sounds of shifting around, and then a few sharp swears as whoever he was apparently tried to move to a better location. "Can you hear me now?"

 "Yeah," Sam responded, still not recognizing the voice on the other end, although it did sound vaguely familiar. "Who is this?"

 "It's me!" came the oh so helpful response. "Ed."

 Sam waited, hoping for more to go on.

 "Ed Zeddmore."

 Sam thought his eyes might roll out of their sockets if they weren't attached in so firmly. "Oh... Right. Ghostfacers." He couldn't keep the tiredness out of his voice. "What do you want?"

 "Well..." came the hesitant reply, "Not really the Ghotsfacers anymore... Harry left for good. Got back with that girl he was interested in and married her."

 Sam couldn't really bring himself to feel sorry for Ed or care about his personal issues, not with the main big problem along with a bunch of other little problems all heaped onto his plate. "Look," he tried. "I'm sorry to hear that things didn't work out with you two. But I don't really see how I can-"

 "Oh! No, not... not asking anything like that." Ed interrupted then continued on briskly. "I still look up hauntings you see. Solo though. Still interested in the paranormal and all that but... well, I try to stay away from the really dangerous sounding ones."

 He didn't outright say it, but Sam could practically hear the unspoken "The ones you guys usually take care of." With a shake of his head, he cleared his throat. "Yeah. Um, that's probably for the best, you know."

 "Yeah." The despondent tone in his voice was clear even over the still somewhat staticy line. Sam really wished the guy would just get to the point of why ever he'd called.

 "So..?"

 "Right. Yeah." The other man audibly cleared his throat. "So, I was looking into this haunting in South Carolina. Just some sightings really, and a few odd occurrences happening, but no deaths. No injuries even. Just witnesses saying that this ghostly figure would sometimes appear, running in the woods like they were being chased by something. Sometimes screams were heard. Sometimes it seemed like they were trying to communicate with people but it never seemed to work out well."

 Sam had already resumed reaching for the next book on the table as Ed was relaying the details of the case. "Okay... sounds like a non-violent, restless spirit. Probably either needs closure of some kind or to be put to rest. You should be able to handle that." Sam had to admit to himself, even if the Ghostfacers HAD been annoying, they had managed to get enough of a real picture of the supernatural to deal with something low-scale like that, even if Ed was going solo.

 "Oh, yeah." He agreed readily. "Yeah, I mean, I was going to. Even tried talking to her. But I think this one... well, it's really something you should come down here to help with."

 "Why's that Ed?" Sam asked tiredly, flipping through the pages of the old, leather-bound treatise on the intricacies of the angelic hierarchy.

 "Well, 'cause she asked for you. By name." Sam's hand froze, his brows drawn together in puzzlement. Something niggled at the back of his head. Like, the various threads of information should already mean something.

 "What?"

 "Yeah, she was asking for Sam Winchester. I tried talking back to her but it was like she couldn't hear me. And it looked like she might be trying to use sign-language. I mean... have YOU ever heard of a deaf ghost?"

 It felt like the edges of the room started to white out as his heart suddenly clenched in his chest.

 South Carolina. A wooded area. A deaf, restless spirit, asking for him. By name.

 A cold, heavy feeling settled into the pit of his stomach along with a spreading numbness. A numbness that some distant, clinical part of his mind unhelpfully informed him was a typical reaction to sudden shock, intended to help the individual deal with the present situation so they could sort their feelings out later. With a slight tremble, his hand reached for the pad of paper and pencil he had nearby for taking down notes. "Where?" His voice came out rougher than he'd wanted.

 "Um, here, I have coordinates." As he rattled them off, Sam wrote them down. And yeah, it was the same area where she'd been found. "So..." Ed ventured uncertainly, having picked up on the sudden shift in Sam's emotions.

 "Yeah." Sam said tightly. "I'll take care of it."

 "Want some help on it?" The other man offered, seeming all too anxious to team up with someone again, even if he hadn't had the best track-record in the past of working with the Winchesters.

 "No." Sam didn't even try to soften it, as the lump in his chest seemed to grow tighter. "No, I'll deal with it. I'm... I'm already familiar with... Just, go on. She... she's not going to hurt anyone." It had been well over a year, but the pain of her loss was already welling up inside him, like an old injury that you thought had mostly healed until you managed to wrench it just the wrong way and it made itself known again.

 "Okay. Um.. yeah." Ed stammered, having not expected the emotions he could hear in the Hunter's voice, despite Sam's efforts to keep himself under control. "So, good luck, and all that." Sam ended the call before he said something he'd regret.

 His phone fell to the table and his head fell into his hands as he tried to fend off emotions that now assailed him, reverberating through his mind like a damned echo chamber. The certain knowledge that this was Eileen. The gut-wrenching pain he'd felt when he'd gotten that call from Jody, telling him that she'd been found dead. The even worse feeling when they'd gone there and seen her actual body, cold and still like so many others they'd viewed over their bloody careers as Hunters. The knowledge that she'd been trying to reach them but hadn't made it. The questions left unanswered, until the day he'd cracked into that hard drive he'd taken from the BMOL's base and among other things found her case-file and the cold, clinical explanation of what they'd... of what Ketch had done to her. He'd never directly brought it up to the former assassin, once the man had more or less joined their side. But after the fall-out of Michael’s initial possession of Dean he'd firmly suggested that if Ketch still wanted to help them, to do so overseas. To follow up on leads in Britain and Europe that they had no way of seeing to themselves. Ketch hadn't argued the point.

 Even as Sam was still reeling from the news Dean's distinctive footsteps wandered in from the hallway to the kitchen and up the steps into the library. "Hey, Geek-boy," he said by way of greeting.

 Sam startled a little, raising his head from his hands and trying to wipe casually at his face, as if he was just tired. "Hey... Mom turn in?"

 Dean took in his brother's posture, the quaver he tried to hide from his voice, the extra moisture on his cheeks as well as his red-rimmed eyes and sighed heavily before plunking one of the tumblers he'd brought with him down in front of Sam, filling it half-full from the bottle of Jack he was also carrying. "You know..." he ventured, taking the seat across from his brother, "you coulda joined us. I know-" he paused, rubbing the back of his neck, "well, you and Dad seemed to have kind of worked some stuff out, but it couldn't have been any easier on you than the rest of us."

 Sam shook his head a little, not drinking from the glass, though Dean figured from the look on his face that he really needed it. "Dean... it's not- I mean, yeah, that wasn't easy but that's not why-"

 "And look," Dean continued, having noticed the various piles of books, "I know you're all gung-ho to find some special archangel fix-it in all this stuff, but man, you gotta sleep too."

 Sam's sigh was almost exasperated, though there was still a slight hitch in it. "Yeah... sleep. Cause THAT'S ever nice and-" his head suddenly tilted and his brows furrowed, as he got that look on his face that Dean had become well accustomed to over their lives. It was the look of his braniac brother fitting seemingly random pieces of information together into something that made sense. "Son-of-a-bitch..."

 Dean waited a few moments to see if Sam would continue, but when his brother's expression shifted from dawning comprehension to something distinctly more pained, he spoke up, trying to lighten the mood. "Care to share with the class?"

 Sam closed his eyes for a long moment before pushing the pad of paper over to Dean, who swiveled it around to take a look at it. He saw notations of book titles and page numbers, a few lines here and there that didn't make a lot of sense to him out of context, a few lines of symbols that looked to be Enochian and then larger and away from everything else, some numbers that looked like they could be map coordinates. They were heavily circled also. Shooting a questioning look up at Sam, he shrugged. "Are the coordinates for someplace special?"

 The taller hunter nodded. "Got a call about a non-violent, restless spirit. She's been appearing sometimes, trying to communicate but apparently that's been difficult because she's deaf." Dean started to get a sinking feeling in his gut, one which only got worse as his brother continued. "But she managed to ask for me. By name. And this is where most of the sightings have been."

 Dean didn't keep map coordinates in his head, but even without that, he had a fairly good guess where this was leading. And the clench in his gut only got worse as his brother's behavior began to make sense. "It's Eileen, isn't it?"

 "Yeah, probably." Sam was resting his forehead against one of his hands now. "Those are for the area where she was-" he couldn't quite say it, but Dean didn't need him to.

 "Well..." he knew nothing could make this situation "okay" but he still wanted to find something to help his brother out with it. "I mean, you said she's not being violent. So, that's good. Maybe she just needs closure or something."

 Sam was nodding. "Yeah, that's what I'm hoping too." He straightened up again, seeming to have come to a decision and began to shut down his laptop. "Look, I know there's still a lot to do here, and I don't want you to think I'm ditching-out on you, but I think I need... I mean, she asked for me specifically. I owe her that much."

 "Hey, seriously," Dean did his best to reassure his brother, "it's okay. Look, I'm in no shape to drive tonight, but we can get an early start in the morning, and-"

 Sam shook his head. "I'm leaving tonight Dean. And it's okay." He pointedly pushed the glass of whiskey back over towards the other Hunter. "I'm fine to make the drive. This should only take a day or two."

 Dean blamed the five or so other glasses he'd had already for being a bit slow on the uptake, but when it finally clicked he felt his "Big Brother Warning Bells" going off like crazy. "Wait, hold up. You're NOT just gonna waltz in there alone. If you're that desperate to leave tonight, fine. For this I'll let you drive. But I'm coming with you."

 Sam was already shaking his head. "Dean... look. I appreciate it." Dean could tell from his tone that he meant it, "But I need to deal with this alone."

 "Sam-"

 "No Dean!" A hint of the anger and desperation that he'd seen in his brother's eyes a few nights ago in a parking lot in Iowa was resurfacing as he abruptly rose to his feet, shoving the chair back with legs and almost knocking it over. "This is going to be hard enough as it is. I have to put her to rest, one way or another. And I just had to send our Dad back to the past so he could die like he's supposed to." Dean flinched a little at that. No one had really asked, but he knew that there was no way they would have made their Mom be the one to crush the pearl, and when Sam had set things up to do it himself, he'd honestly been relieved. He wasn't sure if he could have done it either, as much as everyone had understood that it had to happen. But he should have realized it wouldn't have been any easier for Sammy. "And if things get bad with Michael... if I can't find another way in time..." He didn't need to finish that thought for Dean to see where it was going. Not with the promise he'd extracted from both Sam and Cas to put him in the box if things went south.

 Dean shook his head and rose, swiftly stepping around the table and over to Sam to rest his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Hey!" He squeezed, wanting to make sure he had his attention. "Hey," he continued a little softer, "I told you I believe in us, Sam, and I do. And I believe in you. I know you're gonna find something. So, don't let that keep hanging over you. But..." his gut twisted a little, his instincts yelling at him to not say this, but he could tell it was important, "if you really need to deal with this alone, that's okay. I'll stay here and..." he made a vague gesture towards the heaps of books on the table.

 Sam's eyes widened a little. "Seriously? You're going to do research?"

 Dean tried for mock-offended. "Hey, just 'cause I don't usually like to research doesn't mean I can't. I'll have Cas and Jack fill me in on your system here and we'll be all set."

 Sam still seemed more than a bit surprised, but he managed a half-smile. "Thanks, Dean. Maybe you'll see something I overlooked." Reaching up to give his brother's hand a squeeze, he then stepped away so he could close-up his laptop and tore the part of the sheet of paper with the coordinates on it off from the rest, folding it up to shove into one of his pockets.

 Dean grumbled something under his breath about that last remark as he fished in his own pocket, bringing out the car keys which he tossed to Sam once he'd turned back around. "I don't wanna see a scratch on her, y'hear?"

 Again, Sam seemed a bit shocked, but he nodded, giving his brother a tight smile before heading off to his room to get his gear together.

 When Sam was out of sight, Dean sagged against the table and shook his head. "Once, just for once couldn't we catch a break?" He wasn't sure who exactly he was asking though, as he was even more sure than ever that Chuck had skipped the universe a while ago. Picking up the glass left on the table, he downed it, welcoming the burn and hoping it would help numb the ache he was feeling for his brother. The kid didn't deserve this. He hadn't deserved to lose a woman that he'd so clearly cared about, and who just as obviously had cared about him. And he definitely didn't deserve to have to be the one to put her to rest. Though, hopefully it wouldn't turn ugly. And maybe... maybe this would give Sam a chance to do what he hadn't been able to before. Maybe now he could say goodbye. Hell, maybe that was what Eileen needed too.

 He almost considered taking the bottle of whiskey with him off to his room, but resolutely decided against it, instead leaving it in one of the little corner cabinets next to one of the poofy leather armchairs. He'd been serious when he'd told Sam he'd start looking through this stuff, and making his impending hangover worse wasn't the best way to go about that.

 As he wandered back to his room, he scrunched his brows together, realizing he hadn't found out just what exactly Sam's "Eureka moment" had been about.

 ~0~0~0~0~0~

 Back in his room, Sam slid his laptop into his backpack then reached over to the ledge he kept a number of books on, grabbing the one titled "Learning American Sign Language". The pages were well-worn and several slips of paper marked various places in it, but it also had a thin coating of dust on it. It had been some while since he'd picked it up. With a tightness in his throat, he put it in his backpack too. He pretty much always kept a duffel ready with the basics of clothes and whatnot in case he had to head out in a hurry, so it was just a matter of adding a few specific things to it.

 Almost ready to go, he paused a moment, his hand hovering over his backpack before finding its way to a smaller pocket on the side. Unzipping it, he gently took out what was inside, sitting down on the bed without really realizing it as his memories drifted back, almost unbidden, to the last time he'd seen her alive.

 She'd been crushed over having accidentally killed a human, even a human as douchy as that Renny guy had been. After holding her for a while Sam had gently suggested that she try taking a shower to relax, and that they should all get some sleep. Later that evening, after he'd had his own shower and was reading for a bit he'd heard a low knock at his door. Eileen was there when he'd opened it, the overlarge (on her anyway) flannel he'd lent her the previous day now being worn as a nightshirt. "Sam... I..." her eyes had been downcast, so he'd gently raised her chin with his hand before signing that it was okay. "I just, I don't want to be alone right now."

 He'd nodded and pulled her into another hug, softly stroking her still slightly damp hair. They'd slept together that night in the strictly literal sense, Eileen curled up protectively in his arms, and as he'd felt himself slowly drifting off he'd felt that feeling somewhere deep in his chest that he'd always felt when spending time with her, even if it was just face-timing on his phone or computer. It was a feeling that he'd hesitated to define, but right then it was growing, as if it could have filled all of his being. He'd had his share of one-night-stands and random flings, and even though he and Eileen hadn't ever had sex, hadn't even kissed for that matter, he'd known that what he'd felt for her was stronger anything he'd felt for any of those others. He'd known that he would do anything he could for her, known that what he'd wanted most was to protect her. And he'd instinctively known that she was very emotionally vulnerable right then, and pushing her into something physical, something she wasn't really ready for at that point could have truly hurt her.

 That thought alone had been enough to keep his libido in check and just appreciate her presence; the feel of her soft warmth pressed against him, the rosemary scent of her shampoo, the slow sounds of her breathing and the way her fingers had slipped under his t-shirt and held onto his side even in sleep. His last thoughts before falling asleep had been wishing there could be more of all that. More of her. More of them. For them to be a "them".

 When morning had dawned, her look of gratitude had been enough to reassure him that he'd made the right choice. Though her words telling him of her decision to go back to Ireland had landed like a punch to his gut, but he'd tried to hide his disappointment. She'd seen right through him though, and her expression had grown a little sad. "Not forever. I promise I'll come back. I just... I want a chance to connect with who my parents were, and hiding under the Men-of-Letter's noses might be the safest place for me, since they'll probably be looking for me in the States."

 He'd nodded, understanding her reasoning. After a quick breakfast of toast and some eggs that he'd miraculously managed not to burn, he'd helped her carry her things outside to her car, giving her another long hug before she pulled away, but not to leave just yet. She'd spent a few moments looking deeply into his eyes, as if she could fully plumb their depths. "Thank you Sam. For everything." Then she'd surprised him by sliding a hand up to the back of his neck and drawing him down while reaching up on tip-toe, pulling him into a kiss that started out sweet and soft before gaining heat. He'd been a little surprised at first, but definitely not reluctant, and for a few moments that had felt like eternity and yet also entirely too brief, the world around them had seemed to fade away, and all he'd known were her lips and the feel of the two of them pressed as close together as they could have managed to be.

 When they'd finally broken off the kiss, she offered him one last, sad smile before wishing him goodbye and to keep himself safe. He'd done the same, waving at her in a bit of a daze as she'd driven off.

 Later, when he'd gone back into his room he'd found something she'd clearly left for him on his desk; a lock of her dark brown hair secured with one of those little black hair-ties.

  He held it now as he sat there, feeling the softness of it and still catching the faint scent of rosemary. "This is why you visit my dreams sometimes, isn't it?" He murmured softly. "You're tied to that forest, but you're also tied to me through this, and I take it with me whenever I go out on hunts." He found himself having to blink a few times to keep the tears at bay. "Guessing the Bunker's wards keep you away when I'm here though... But I'm coming. I'm sorry... I'm so sorry it took me this long." He couldn't keep his tears from falling this time as his voice broke. "I'll be there soon."

[twilight-adamo]

Author’s Notes: Brave New World, Chapter 4: Through the Darkness

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19709434/chapters/48542555

Hoo boy. Where to begin.

We’re now getting at the core truth of some things I’ve been hinting at since Alice became a hybrid. I had always seen “Alice and Bella delving into Alice’s past” as a plot thread in this book, even when the “book” was still going to be a series of loosely connected vignettes I’d write when I could between the end of As Dreams Are Made On and the start of Forth The Mutinous Winds. I wasn’t originally planning to deviate too much from canon, but the more I delved into said canon, and the more I thought about it, the more I found I wanted to, for a couple reasons.

I guess this started when my heart sort of settled on Becky G as my ideal casting choice for this story’s version of Alice. (This has nothing whatsoever to do with my having a low-key crush on her since Power Rangers, I assure you, you know, like a liar.) I was thinking through what exactly that might mean and it ended up combining with one of my major issues with the Twilight series as written: it’s very white.

That’s not unrealistic for the Pacific Northwest. But it stands out when the Cullens gather their allies from around the world, and the vast majority were of white European descent to begin with. Even the vampires who are canonically not white are rendered pale by the transformation, maintaining an “olive tone” at best. (I think that’s bullshit - it was ignored for the films and I will be ignoring it as well.) And there’s a recurring issue where any characters who aren’t white...aren’t really given a great deal of consideration. Names are chosen with no apparent thought to their origin, the actual cultures involved are cast aside, and so forth. I’ve spoken before, briefly, about my discomfort with how the Quileute and Makah are portrayed - how I feel badly about going with the book’s canon when I started writing this, and how I want to do better by them in future Twilight fic. But that discomfort extends well beyond the bastardization of the local Native people, into how people of color are rendered invisible and/or not given respect or due diligence in general throughout the Twilight series.

So this is the start of a broader trend: I plan to expand on existing PoC in the books, to do what due diligence I can and try to write them more authentically. I also plan to add new PoC, particularly among the allies gathered in the course of the World Tour over the summer depicted in the opening chapters of Brave New World. And when I saw this chance to expand on Alice’s story, to change it, to add new wrinkles to the whole thing, I seized it.

The lesser motive here is that I’m trying to reinforce the idea that this world isn’t a carbon copy of Twilight. A lot of stuff went into making it, and sometimes that means the story won’t be perfectly predictable. That’s a good thing, I think, particularly in that it makes Alice’s backstory something new, something we can explore together, no matter how much Twilight lore we know.

What will it mean for Alice to be Latina, in the long run? I’m not sure yet. She has no memories of her human life. It wasn’t something that factored into her life as a vampire. I think it’s something she’s going to spend time thinking about, and exploring, and I’m going to do my best to do that respectfully. I don’t have all the answers yet, and even if I did, I would want to share them organically through the story. So...stay tuned.

On a slightly tangential note, I’m spending a lot of time in the writing of Brave New World grappling with the fact that even the kindest vampires from the books have killed human beings. Carlisle is the only one who never has. Alice’s history is painful, and she feels a deep and abiding guilt for what she did in her early days as a vampire. She probably should. I don’t believe it was her fault - newborn vampires are, with the exception of Carlisle and canon Bella, not remotely in their right minds, and Alice’s turn was particularly traumatic - but it still happened. That’s something I’ll probably continue to explore and try to work out in the story, along with grappling with the question of how and why the Cullens have good friends who continue to eat people without reservation or remorse.

Oh - and Alice gaining the power of postcognition? Something I’ve been planning for a while now. It seemed like a natural adjustment for Bella to make. Honestly, it probably should have happened sooner, but I couldn’t find a good place for it in the previous chapters.

Moving on: Rosalie is a witch now. That surprised me. Honestly, the whole ritual to protect the campsite surprised me. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like Bull Bay would be haunted to some degree, and that was when the part of my brain that speaks for Bella insisted that the campsite be warded, one way or another. I considered a few different ways of making this happen. One: have the others help Bella with the ward, and it works because it’s pretty basic and even if she can’t do magic, anyone else theoretically can. Two: have Bella borrow power from the natural world to set up the ward. Three: just let Bella get some of her magic back. And, well, you saw four.

I rejected options two and three because I’m not ready to give Bella magic. Her inherent power is already potent, and giving her magic as well opens a can of worms I want to keep sealed for the time being. Stuff is going on with her. It will be revealed in time. In the meantime, no magic beyond the power she’s already got.

I rejected option one because it felt like “yeah, normal people with no prior magical experience can just set up a ward without building magical reserves or anything” was also opening a can of worms, I thought. I don’t think magic is restricted to those like Jessica who have a natural talent for it, but if you don’t have a natural talent, I think you have to work for it. (Even if you DO have a natural talent, I think you have to work for it, but it comes easier.) I just couldn’t see my way clear to Emmett and Rosalie being able to put up wards without natural talent and without practice.

Option four presented interesting possibilities. I could see the chain of logic that would allow Bella to extend Rosalie’s power (introduced in the Rosalie story that serves as Chapter 2 of These Our Actors) into a natural talent for magic. More, I could see how much pain it would cause Bella one of her best friends, her surrogate big sister, a talent for magic when she herself is still disconnected and can’t modify her own power the same way. Like most writers, I do occasionally find the pain and anguish of my characters to be a nummy treat. So I decided to go with that for now.

I’m a practicing witch myself, and much as I’m trying to set my vision of Bella apart from the self-insert she originally was...well, it’s true that wards were one of the first things I learned and practiced. The incantations Rosalie uses at Bella’s direction are not the incantations I use myself, though I did borrow some language. We will not speak again of the myriad tongues/mine own lungs rhyme. It served. My actual spells are a part of my personal religious practice, and I was unwilling to insert them verbatim.

(Incantations are not always half-baked rhymes, but we’ll get into those discussions as Rosalie learns and adapts to witchcraft.)

I think I have a somewhat better justification for Rosalie knowing how to pick locks, giving her canonical mechanical inclinations. But I’m probably going to refrain from giving her new talents after this.

The town of Bull Bay, Mississippi does not exist, but it’s based on a couple of towns, most notably the ghost town of Rodney, Mississippi. Rodney was abandoned because the course of the Mississippi river changed, not because of a vampire massacre, but I still drew some inspiration from it. I considered calling my town Magnolia, but of course there already is a Magnolia, Mississippi, so I went with one of the names for Magnolia grandiflora instead. The asylum similarly does not exist: there were no suitable abandoned asylums “two counties away” from Biloxi (where Alice was canonically sent), so I made one up. And I adore the Kirkbride Plan - look it up, Kirkbride buildings are awesomely creepy and evocative - so of course I made it a Kirkbride asylum.

I wanted to finish the exploration of the asylum in this chapter and start the next one in New Orleans (another choice that has a great deal to do with personal preference - New Orleans is one of my favorite cities on the planet), but it was getting very long. So Alice seeing her actual birth certificate in a vision is where we end things for now, and we’ll pick up from there in the next chapter.

As always, thank you for reading. I hope you’re all still enjoying the story now that it’s moving in unexpected directions.

[dent-de-leon]

i know that a lot of negative opinions on s6 come from antis, l@nce stans or from people who wanted Good Boy lotor. personally i never expected vld to be very deep or to deliver any complex story lines so i wasn't hugely disappointed by it (i kinda always go into things with low expectations; worked well for me so far). still, the fact remains that some of the writing is not great and i'd like to read your opinion on the things you believe vld is handling badly (characters, plots, etc.)

Unpopularest Unpopular Opinion:

I don’t think Lotor’s arc ended badly and I think his thing with Allura was always going to briefly lived and end in Disaster. I like him as a character, I really do. But the boy led with “The masses are easily manipulated” in his intro episode, and then proceeded to hunt down and personally try to destroy Allura in his first meeting with her, not to mention how he knew he could manipulate her using her love for Altea (the distress signal in A Hole in the Sky.) I’m literally not surprised he turned on the team, and we were already given every indication that he would. 

Even when things between him and Allura were going “Good,” he never had her best interests at heart. When Allura is horrified by Haggar’s lab, “I shouldn’t be here,” when she’s clearly deeply uncomfortable and hurt, Lotor grabs her hand and acts like he cares. Please, Allura. I can’t do this without you, Allura. But it’s never, “Okay, I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” He never really takes her own feelings into consideration, and guilt trips her by appealling to her empathy and intellect rather than actually comforting her or taking her into discomfort into account. 

Lotor doesn’t console her when she cries about her father and her own insecurities either, he doesn’t show support until after the map activates and he gets what he wanted from her. The thing about Lotor’s “love” for Allura is that it has always been conditional. Allura unlocks the secrets to Oriande, and he’s enamored by her skill and brilliance. Allura is deemed a worthy Altean, and he praises her for it. Allura makes entering the quinessence field possible–something he sacrificed literally hundreds of Alteans for–and he thinks she’s the light of his life. As soon as Allura is no longer willing to be used by him, he turns violent. Their relationship was a direct antithesis to what allurance had become, wherein both were mutually supportive and cared for each other before themselves and their own ambitions. 

Anyway, as for some of my other opinions–I honestly think a lot of the writing in VLD is amazing, especially for what it is. There’s not any western cartoon I can just turn to on TV right now that would give me this level of depth and cinematic storytelling. So, with that said, just some things I wish were different:

Hunk’s arc with the Balmera happened very early on, and there’s not much solo focused content for him between that and the diplomacy arc he’s easing into now. The fact that the episodes were chopped into shorter seasons only makes this absence of content seem even lengthier, which is unfortunate.

I wish Keith could have gotten to say goodbye to Red the way that Lance got his farewell to Blue. I would have also loved an explaination for why Red seemed so personally invested in Keith alone but then was fine with Lance–despite never demonstrating the same degree of autonomy with him that she did with Keith. 

A lot of the alternate universe stuff in season 3 felt like it hit out of nowhere, and I feel a bit similarly about Oriande. I wish those two things were hinted at earlier on. Even just Allura absentmindedly recalling a fairytale about Oriande she used to love when she was little–that would have made such a difference I think, and would have really emphasized Oriande’s importance. I wish when Lotor dropped that name it’d be like,, oH SHIT!! THAT’S REAL!! Like this was a very real concept with lore built up to back it in the story so you were Hyped for the reveal. 

The BOM story with Keith feels a bit disjointed–again, because we have seasons chopped into lesser episodes, but also, because the decison didn’t seem to have much buildup. I wish there was an episode where he considered training with the BOM first before we were just hit with that story arc. Overall, I think there are some off transitional things with VLD, but that strikes me as more that they were pressed for time than anything else. Which also explains why certain scenes that you would think would get touched on more are just cut, but still. 

JUST,, EVERYTHING WITH ACXA AND THE GENERALS,, LMAO,, like…I’m so sorry but…I’m still laughing about the fact that they switched sides 5 times. Went from Lotor to Zarkon, Zarkon to Haggar, Haggar back to Lotor, then went off on their own, like!! There’s keeping your options open, and then there’s just…flipflopping whenever you feel like, to the point where any sense of loyalty loses all credibility. I just hope the next thing that happens is they stumble upon Kolivan and he’s just like, “hELLO,, YES,, WE ARE HIRING!! ALWAYS HIRING!!” 

I mean, clearly Acxa also has this thing for Lotor, but we don’t even know why, so it’s all very vague?? I would just like an episode set aside to explain to me what the generals are trying to do here exactly, because at this point, I’m very lost. They feel more like loyaless mercinaries that are some kind of running joke. With Acxa there’s something deeper there, you can feel it, but it’s never actually touched on. I hope we get some development with just…whatever it is their entire deal is,, 

Again, these are just my own personal opinions. But overall I think VLD’s story is just so fun and engaging and compelling to me and like,, honestly I wish people would more so just sit back and enjoy it than claim the writing has somehow gone extremely downhill every time something happens that they personally don’t agree with. 

[sternenteile]

★*･ lovely ooc meme.

TAGGED BY:  y’all i stole it from multiple ppl on my dash TAGGING:  idk just take it from me and let the thief train continue

NAME:  nikki NICKNAME:  nikkibun, bun, assturd AGE:  26 weeps......... FACE CLAIM:  my bunsona!! my bunsona’s icons are so old and crusty tho so i’ve just. been using geno’s. rip. PRONOUNS:  she / her, but they / them is fine, too! HEIGHT:  5′3″ i am berry tinie BIRTHDAY:  april 4th

AESTHETIC:  cute animals (namely bunnies and cats), a basic n64 with a purple controller, pastels, piles of tasty chicken wings, and. and. more terribly charismatic buns.

LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO:  y’all listen the lavender town theme from pokemon lgpe is absolutely destroying me and it was absolutely the last thing i listened to. i love it.

FAVORITE MUSE ( S ) YOU’VE WRITTEN:  my boy papyrus ( @outbraves ) was easily one of my favorites ever. i just had... so much fun with him and had a lot of development for him, and just. i have such fond memories of rping him. i love my bone boy, even though his muse has long gone.

tbh, tho? geno is climbing up there, too. in so short a time, i’ve already got so many ideas and so much development plotting going on. given how expansive the mario universe is, too (esp. compared to undertale’s), there is just... so much room for different things to do with him?! i’m really excited. the potential is bananas.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE ON YOUR CURRENT MUSE ( THAT YOU ARE POSTING THIS ON ):  ok i’m not going to lie. this is a bit of a story, and it starts off in a very interesting way. at first, i actually... didn’t really give a single floppy titty for geno? seriously. i didn’t care. i played smrpg and i just fell for mallow that much more. i was like, gee, i wonder what people see in him. he’s cool and cute, but mallow has all this development and stuff! basically, based on my memories of smrpg and how ‘overrated’ i felt he was, i just didn’t really give geno much of a chance.

now, rosalina is my favorite mario character. ever. i used to rp her a long time ago. i absolutely adore her. thanks to smash speculation really bringing geno to the forefront of peoples’ minds again, i was like, huh. i wonder what kind of lore could come from her and geno? a lot of stuff i saw was implicating ship stuff, and i was... not impressed LMAO. i was like, naw, i see them being like mother and son. he’s a star spirit, after all, very similar to a luma. she’d totally be his superior + mom figure.

and then i started headcanoning more between them, which... via causation, started the headcanon train going for geno in general? i was like, no, i’m not going to get attached to this dumb doll, he’s overrated, blah blah. then i started thinking of him more, started doodling him, seeing why people liked him so much, and i was like... fuck. shit. damn. i used to have a weird disdain for you, you fuck puppet, why are you wiggling your way into my heart. no. get out.

needless to say, he didn’t get out, and i had to unleash my creativity with him. i missed rping, too, and i was like... this, this will do. voila. here we are.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE ASPECTS OF YOUR CURRENT MUSE:  where do i even begin omg... ok. let’s see.

first, his design in general is just? really great. he’s a design that fits in the mario universe while also feeling so unlike it. mallow feels more integrated, yet geno feels... so... otherworldly? so different? his design philosophy hinges on round, soft familiarity while also being colorful, complimentarily so, and encapsulating it in a way that comes off as both cute and mysterious. i just love his design. even in all of my disdain for him initially, i’m pretty sure i always liked his design.

with that shallower bit out of the way, let me tell you about the virtues this boi has that i love (or, at least, in terms of my version, most of it not being canon oops). i love how courageous and forward he is, even if at times, it results in some fumbling. he’s fascinated in the world around him and has an innate desire to explore, to experiment, to experience. he gets pretty into it, but it does result in some very silly moments where his cultural differences play a large factor. he’s so distant from the modern world in a lot of ways, and it shows. between this and his curious nature, he’s just... god, he’s just a dork. he’s just a huge dork.

but boy, his vices. he doesn’t have much of... any at all in canon, but it’s clear how attached to his duty he is, even in what little we see. building flaws off of that has been a blast. i love how he feels so tied to his purpose that he feels branching out isn’t an option, yet it conflicts with his desire to break free and just be. he’s still figuring out how to be his own person, how to be geno and not just ♡♪!?, the protector of star road. even then, he’s trying not to fail his most precious person, rosalina, and those who depend on him. it’s a lot of conflict that pulls his heart in a lot of directions at once. chances are that he’ll progress and then harshly regress multiple times, going through a bunch of shit before he finally manages to find a happy medium. it’ll be a long road ahead, and what can stem from this has me soooo excited.

also he’s just rly cute. did i mention he’s cute? he’s so cute. he’s literally a doll and i need to cuddle him.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATION WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING:  honestly? steven universe and undertale have played huge inspiration into the way i write. undertale is obviously because i love it (and deltarune) and have written a muse from it. it’s just kind of integrated into my writing to the point that it feels natural. it’s... it’s something that’s just there now, lmao.

steven universe, however, is more particular. it hasn’t really influenced how i write in general, per se, but some aspects have inspired my geno, actually. garnet’s cool demeanor with inner conflict and a goofiness that she often shows? yeah, that definitely inspired a good chunk of my geno’s exterior personality. 

in terms of his inner self, those bits of garnet, plus the pearl + rose and steven + rose conflicts, pretty much shaped that up in my head. pearl + rose on its base level minus the romantic aspect definitely touches stone on how geno feels about his duty, his dedication to rosalina, and how he’s trying to become his own person, not just a star spirit in servitude. steven + rose more represents the mother + son aspect, the way geno wants to live up to her and what she wants, the way he views her as a parental figure that’s just unattainable (even if in a more figurative sense than steven and rose). there’s also a tiny, tiny bit of lapis in there, solely the tendency to flip a switch and bail if he thinks it’s best, just for less selfish reasons and more dutiful reasons. it’s. it’s very minuscule and very base-level, but it’s there.

in terms of geno himself, those two have to be my biggest inspirations at this point. ye.

FAVORITE TYPES OF THREADS:  god. anything is great, but these two are especially important:

slice-of-life. given geno’s distance from earth traditions, customs, and general livelihood, slice-of-life threads are immediately that much more interesting and even a bit crazy. being able to show how much of a curious little nerd he is and Hecking Things Up is always a good time.

finally, anything that draws out his insecurities. something that conflicts with his view on his purpose in life, that stirs his longing for parental recognition, that turns his beliefs on their heads... things like that. just. yes. gimme that.

BIGGEST STRUGGLE IN REGARDS TO YOUR CURRENT MUSE:  honestly, the fact that he’s such an old character that nintendo and square doesn’t care for is easily the worst part of playing him. it’s rough knowing that, even with all of the fan demand, he’ll likely never get a revival. he’ll just fade out of a lot of peoples’ memories more and more, and he’ll be even more irrelevant than ever. every time someone so much as knows who geno is, it just makes me giddy. i want that to stay alive, even if nintendo and square won’t do anything with him. the fan base keeping him going makes me feel so warm.

[snkpolls]

SnK Chapter 95 Poll Results

The chapter 95 poll closed with 1,069 responses. Thank you to everyone for participating. Let’s do this!

RATE THE CHAPTER (1,019 Responses)

75% of respondents had a  favorable reaction for “Liars”. Less than 1% expressed extreme dissatisfaction.

I actually loved this chapter! I was kinda meh on the Marley arc at first, but this completely changed my feelings on it!! Seeing everything from the Warriors' perspective is a refreshing change of pace.

Bertolt is the God of Destruction, RBA deserved better, Magath is actually a nice guy, poor Porco has a terrible name and deserves more love

This is the first chapter in the Marley arc I've wholeheartedly enjoyed. I was always looking forward to getting the Warriors' perspective, but the way in which it's been done has been terrible pacing wise, if definitely interesting story-wise; consequently I've had mixed feelings about the recent chapters. But this one managed to really make me feel for the characters and their tragic, terrible circumstances for the first time in awhile.

Good chapter in terms of lore although kinda meh in terms of story development

I liked the chapter, and the Marley thing we are going through, but I would still like to return to the walls

Not the strongest chapter, feels the same kind of "recap-y" that 63 did, but still a solid outing. I'm convinced we're staying in Marley as the main location for the final arc of the series, with the main cast's appearance kicking events into overdrive.

IN A RECENT INTERVIEW, ISAYAMA REFERRED TO MARLEY AS AN “ARC”, NOT A VOLUME. WOULD YOU BE HAPPY IF THE MARLEY PERSPECTIVE CONTINUES FOR AN ENTIRE 16 CHAPTERS? (1,046 Responses)

We are a fandom divided.

I feel guilty about complaining too much but I really am bitter that I have to wait another month to potentially be disappointed again

I'm kinda concerned where the series is going‚ it seems like Isayama's taking it slow as he's running out of time

As much as i am loving all of this marley pov i do crave for just...idk something else. Like don't get me wrong i love finally getting more explorations of Reiner but it would be better to have some variation: like what about bertholht, why is he a warrior?? and annie; is her dad still around?

I can see why Isayama's doing this, but it feels v e r y  s l o w.

I can't believe I'm saying this but I kinda miss eren.

  HOW MANY MORE CHAPTERS FROM THE MARLEY PERSPECTIVE WOULD YOU WANT TO SEE? (1,043 Responses)

48.6% would like to see the Marley Files end in 1-3 months. 25.8% of the fandom is much more flexible. Judging from the write in comment, trust in Isayama is still high.

I would be happy if Marley took over the whole manga

I want the main cast to reappear, but to see them from the Marley perspective

I would've like to get back to the Walldians by now, but I think I'm good for another chapter or two of the Warriors.

I'd like the perspective to switch between marley and paradis

Depends if Pieck is often seen.

Looking forward to seeing the fall of Shinganshina from the warriors perspective

I'm starting to think Isayama will troll so hard. Marley Arc to the bitter end. Sasuga Isayama.

If this means we're going to remain in Marley for a while, I hope we'll at least get to see something exciting soon, like maybe at the festival. So far we've been getting more information than action, so I'd like to return to that action soon. I also can't wait to learn more about the Tyber family and meet the members.

  WHICH STATEMENT MOST CLOSELY MATCHES YOUR FEELINGS FOR THE MARLEY CHAPTERS AS A WHOLE? (1,044 Responses)

Nearly everyone who responded has enjoyed the Marley focus. 39% would be happy with a little more, while 31% liked it but are ready to return to the main cast.

On the negative side, 3.4% said that while it was necessary they didn’t enjoy it. Only .4% said it ruined their enjoyment of the series.

I like the Marleyan perspective, honestly if the rest of the series was like this (with a few chapters focused on the main cast of course) I think that would be great!

I felt the Marley perspective was necessary but I was bored most of the time. And now I'm just desperate to head back to the main cast.

I enjoyed the Marley perspective and I'm fine with more of it but something has to happen because I'm starting to get bored

This series has just been a series of peaks (Piecks?!) and whenever I think that it's surely gotten as good as it can get, they surprise me. The 30 day wait is hellish lately, more so than ever before.

  HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT TO RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL CAST ON PARADIS? (1,040 Responses)

While the previous questions have shown we are patient people, a solid 50% would sell their soul, or at least consider it, for a return to the original cast.

Lemme see the main cast again, but keep the best girl

I would still love to know if Jean has grown some ill-adviced facial hair, but I also love the Marley chapters.

I at least want a glimpse of the Walldians post-time skip!  I especially want to see Colossal Armin and if amputee-kun is Eren! I'm okay with a couple more chapters in Marley since I trust Isayama that this part of the story will be important (plus the characters are interesting and I enjoy seeing RBA flashbacks), but I just miss the old crew and want to see what they've been up to the past few years!

I feel like in all honesty, I enjoy the Marley perspective but I'd like to see how our 104th cast is doing. I'd really hate for them to do the same thing to Reiner and Co and recreate Shiganshina.

BOI I want to see the original squad again PLEASE

I love the Marley Arc!

Wake me up when the main casts return

   WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE CHAPTER? (1,038 Responses)

Judging from the write in comments, Pieck is the best girl. 33% of us had a favorite moment that involved her. Seeing the Paradis mission from the perspective of the warriors and the reveal of the Tyber family had 17% and 18% respectively.

tag yourself im zeke being super enthusiastic over pieck

Boooring... except for sasuga pieck.  That part made me laugh.

Zeke's subtle way of warning everyone that the room is bugged, and Pieck and Reiner immediatly understanding.

I was excited to learn about the 9th titan, the Tybar family and Zeke praising Pieck. Very heart-broken for Reiner though.

Tired of seeing Marcel get eaten. Its a little repetatitive

  HOW MUCH WORSE CAN REINER’S LIFE GET... FROM THE NEW CHAPTERS, WHICH OF THESE IS THE MOST TERRIBLE MOMENT FOR HIM? (1,032 Responses)

Each new event of Reiner's life is like beating a piñata of misery. Everything is terrible and the sadness candy just keeps spilling out. When the piñata is done, they beat Reiner with the bat instead.

Learning of Marcel's lie, immediately followed by Marcel's death, giving him no chance for closure or resolution

Tough one.. but i say his mom's pressure & the conflict of seeing pradise ppl as normal human being & still having to kill them.

I want some form of lasting happiness for Reiner Braun

#ProtectReiner854

Reiner seems to have inherited Ymir's real titan power: the Complex and Depressing Backstory Titan

I would like everyone to hug the shit out of Reigner.

Being Reiner is suffering. Seeing his face the page after his own father refused to acknowledge him as human broke something inside of me. Also Galliard is still a dick but I'm disliking him less.

  NEW CHARACTERS MEAN NEW SHIPS. HAVE ANY CAUGHT YOUR INTEREST? (1,040 Responses)

Someone please remind me to never give “Other” as an option for a shipping question :/  I do, however, appreciate that almost 60% of you would like Reiner to have a bit of happiness.

Annie x freedom from her crystal, Pieck x being exactly right, porco x death,  Isayama x vague hints, Zeke x tea, Everyone x Happiness (except them motherfucking Marleyans) and my personal notp, Zevi, were a few of the many write in answers.

WHAT IS THE MOST INTERESTING NEW REVELATION FROM THE CHAPTER? (1,034 Responses)

Last month learning the identity of the 9th titan was high on everyone’s wish this. This month we got it. 52.5% were most happy to learn about Warhammer.

At least we know the 9th titan. Just a decent chapter, Not my favorite of this arc though.

Really enjoyed this chapter, did not expect a mention of the ninth Titan. The montage of the Warriors was really awesome too.

Tybur family's new plot introduction is very intersting! I still think zakrus in pradise is shady as hell.. maybe he'll play a role in pradise fall.. pradise cant be too unified. Marley is not unified either.

I'm so excited to see more of the Tyber family. Their brief scene is drawn in an epic and mysterious fashion - symbols of seashells, flowing robes, a man with a clenched fist and correspondingly flowing golden locks standing before a crowd. I expect them to play a pivotal role in whatever comes.

  MAGATH IS SO FAR THE ONLY MARLEYAN WHO HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THE WARRIORS AS HUMANS. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT HIM? (1,027 Responses)

Magath is perfectly meh. About 50% of us place him in the dead center between “tiniest gold star ever” and “swell guy.”

Magath is on the Eldians team. He loves and cares about all the Warriors, is possible he loves them as his children...I thought it was cute how he asked them to finish their mission and come home together! Hes like a tsundere "I-Its not like i care about you eldian demons!"

FAVORITE CHARACTER THUS FAR IN THIS ARC? (1,043 Responses)

Reiner wins by a landslide. I think it comes as no surprise to anyone that Pieck has a solid showing with 17%. Zeke came in 3rd with 9.3%

Zeke's unique & bizzarre nature.. immense cruelty + cleverness + immature nature + bizzare obession of games, playing & his twisted concept of fun! This guy is a very interesting mixture indeed.

Pieck is a great new character.

Tbh the series is kind of getting boring but Pieck is Bae

Reiner has become my absolute favorite character in the series.

LEAST FAVORITE CHARACTER THUS FAR IN THIS ARC? (1,029 Responses)

Reiner’s dad edged out his mom for least favorite character, but the real news is that 24% of people hate Gabi and Porco even more than Reiner’s  terrible parents.

Can i just pick both of Reiner's parents?

Reiners father and mother are both trash i'm taking him away i'm his mother now.

Asshole marley soldier who made bomb noises @ the disabled soldiers

Karina Braun doesn't deserve the hates she gets, she wasn't tricking Reiner...she legit believed ths they would live with his father one day, she really loves him and you see her pain filled face when Reiner lies and says "It was hell"

I like Porkboi more than I'd like to admit.

If I was the Colossal Titan I would find Reiner's father and flip him what would literally be the biggest middle finger ever.

Can't stand Porco. Won't ever forgive him for Ymir. Won't ever forgive Reiner or Bert for Ymir either tbh

  HAS THIS CHAPTER CHANGED YOUR FEELINGS TOWARDS THE WARRIORS (1,023 Responses)

51.2% say yes!

I'm far more sympathetic to them than before, especially Reiner. That poor boy only wanted to have his family together.

Last chapter changed my views about them.

Not much - this is pretty much how I though things would be once we found out about the ghetto and Marley. The only really interesting bits are the new pieces of info, like the Tybur family and the 9th titan.

I've gone from 100% love to 110% love

I feel that this "arc" is being dragged on for the purpose of readers gaining sympathy with them and for me last volume was enough to make us sympathize with them. I have no patience left for this especially when I know the end is closing and there is more to cover and I’m afraid it'll be rushed or that I would lose interest before we reach that part

I feel invested in Porco against my better judgment... and I wonder...if there will ever be a moment when Pieck is not exactly right as expected... :o I wanna see Bertholt's past!!!!!!

  RATE EACH WARRIOR IN TERMS OF HOW THIS CHAPTER AFFECTED YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF THEM

The Winners: Reiner  - 840 people view him more favorably Pieck  - 708 people view her more favorably

The Losers: Gabi  - 151 people view her less favorably Porco  - 161 people view him less favorably

I love RBA. Zeke is interesting as ever. Falco looks like he'll probably end up being a character I'll end up really liking, but he's not there yet. Don't really care about Pieck currently. Hate Gabi and Galliard.

Pieck is love

I wish we'd met Pieck earlier because she's everything.

porco the best

Bardlot is best girl

  WHICH CHARACTERS DO YOU GENERALLY ENJOY THE MOST (1,032 Responses)

Looking back over past polls, support for the 104th has stayed consistent. The real change is with the vets. In early polls, 30-40% of people preferred them. That number has fallen to 12%. I suspect some have left the series or aren’t interested enough in the story direction to take the poll.

  WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES (984 Responses)

Tumblr 364 (37%) Reddit 626 (63.6%) Discord 55 (5.6%) Twitter 12 (1.2%)

  FINAL THOUGHTS

There were more than 500 additional write in comments. I wish I could publish them all. Thank you for sharing all your thoughts!

I'm still not over the serumbowl and how much the paradis cast showed they're really no better than the ones they're fighting against, so I'm really happy to see the side that's been less favored by the narration so far. Bless the warriors, they're all full of personality and I already love them.

It was rlly heartbreaking when Marcel tells the truth to Reiner and he deludes himself saying: ""wtf are you talking about Marcel? I WAS CHOSEN BY MARLEY, i don't believe you"".The Armored Titan is the only thing hes got...

Next chapter is a recap of the old arcs with Warrior POV I can bet my seafood on it.

This and chapter 94 have been my favorites so far. Please give me more Reiner, more marley, more warriors, more everything. Isayama I love you.

LOVE THE WARRIORS! On a more serious note, im very curious about zeke and his true motives.. what is he trying to accomplish? I also really wish that his relationship with eren can be expanded on. Zeke told eren that he would save him. Does he to some degree care for eren's own life? Or is he just after eren's powers? Regardless, i find zeke fascinating.

Good but background could have been better incorporated with both sides

I'm loving the Marley arc. We need the other side of the coin and this really shows that evil can be grey. Neither the islanders or Marley-Eldians are really bad...they're just all raised/brain-washed in different settings. I really enjoy the added layers fo Reiner.

These few chapters have been really interesting, but I hope to see our guys back on Paradis, unless Amputee-kun turns out to be Eren and the other Survey Corps have infiltred Marley. Would love for the story to continue from that point of view, but with flashbacks as to what happened in Paradis. Really interesting chapters overall, learning about the 9 titans was really hype.

I hope that Isayama gives us an ending almost as great as ATLA. Each character gets a proper conclusion & the entire story is satisfying. I want AOT to go down as one of the top 10 solid anime/manga of all time. I have faith in Isayama but still the future is unpredictable.

I hope we get to see the attack on Wall Maria from the warriors pov next chapter. And I was disappointed that Amputee guy wasn't in this chapter.

More Marley please. Even if some are salty not to see the Walldians, I think it's very enlightening to see Marley and Warrior perspective on this. As would say Bertolt : "no one is at fault" and, in the same time, each side has their fault.

I've been rocking with this arc and loving it, although I've generally had little complaint with any arc of this series, I love everyone :) But I think some development for my favorite characters and their side of the war is backed up by some subtle set-up for the climax of it all. For all that some people are desperate to see the main cast, I think this kind of exploration is necessary, not just for emotional investment, but because it gives us a look at the world the Walldians are so desperate to get to. It shows that the battle is only just beginning; Marley is not the endgame boss, and in fact it might be the only thing standing in the way of total destruction for all Eldians. How do they deal with that? Seeing that from the Warriors' perspective gives it reality and weight.

I am enjoying the Marley perspective, but I'm having trouble with the pacing. These past 2 chapters are moving so slow. And even though Reiner is my favourite character, I wish we wouldn't have such a huge focus on him chapter after chapter. It's becoming a bit repetitive, and I would rather learn more about the other warriors. I am looking forward to seeing RBA's pov of the attack on Shiganshina however. :)

Shit's heatin' up! Woo!

I am such a fuckin' slut for all the Marley stuff. I have been dying to see everything from the Warriors' perspective since the initial reveal of Marley and honestly I live on the tears of everyone bitching about how there's too much Marley. EMA are pretty much...... the most boring characters in the series so I am livin' this up. Give me more.

MORE MEMES PLEASE (and a bit of main cast too)

can i see more bardlot creating titnas???? please answer this one question!!!!!!!

Waiting for Annie to come back. Any moment now.

It's a good chapter, I'm enjoying seeing the flashbacks and the distinction of the Titan powers. On a smaller note regarding that, I wish they'd tell us what makes the Female Titan "female."

Very good chapter, but it feels like one that's setting up for the rest of the volume. I'm looking forward to this festival as well as getting even more details about the warriors' mission on Paradis

Headbutt of Love copyright Isayama

A relatively good chapter, but I reallllllly want to see the main cast again. It doesn't have to be from their perspective, but I just want to see them again after a 4 year time skip.

We will most certainly  remain on Marley, but the perspective will soon shift to the main cast when the rest of them arrive to backup Eren and trash the festival in which the Tieber family will present the plan to capture the Founding Titan.

I can see why Reiner had all that plot armour now! Learning more about the warriors (RBA etc, not the new kids :/) has been really interesting and a much needed flesh out of their characters.

I enjoy seeing more of Reiner (cause he's da best) and learning more about his past and the world outside the walls. I would love to see him decide that he's done with Marley and doing things against his moral code (cause let's be real he probably is totally against this shitshow). I know he'll die and that makes me sad so I'm trying to enjoy whatever time we have left with him. ;_;

No doubt next chapter will show the Wall Maria breach from the Warriors' perspective. I only wonder how much of the flashback will be shown in a single chapter.

I hope we get more backstory on Zeke. There's still so much about him that's mysterious. More of him interacting with the other warriors is always good. I really really REALLY need to know what his thoughts on Eren are. Does he still plan on "saving" him, whatever that may mean? And how much does Pieck know?

When will we see giant naked people punch each other again?

I feel sorry for all the warriors but they killed so many people that I cannot see them as pure cinnamon rolls that need to be protected, for me they will always be morally grey.

I love that we are finally getting details about the warriors. This was something long in the making. I can understand where fans of the main cast are coming from, but you just have to have patience until we see the main cast again. For a story like Attack on Titan, which is supposed to be morally grey, we have to have insight on both sides of the conflict. It would have been extremely stupid if Isayama never delved into the warriors background after all the stuff that they had did. The timing of the switch may have been wrong, but I would rather have it now than not at all.

More Marley, but not at the expence of our heroes. It's Shingeki no Kyojin after all; not Yoroi no Kyojin

This arc has introduced the grey into the world of snk, I no longer see any one main character as bad or good because they all have the reasons with them, although perhaps some unjustifiable it still causes me to think about whether this person is a truly bad person or not. It really makes it quite difficult to favour or not favour people, however I do find that it makes it a lot more interesting.

I love these chapters, I really like the depth isayama is going for the viewers to know that this war isn't black and white and it really shines light on the complications of war and who really is the victims of not only war but also being the victims of a manipulative government.

I think this was a very powerful chapter, it had a lot of revelations and hints about the near future events. It is more clear than ever that the clash with the Paradis people is coming very soon. I am not sure how much more of RBA and Marcel heading towards the wall are we going to see though.

I can't shake the feeling that the "Tybur" family is connected to both the Tiber river (i.e. the fertile crescent--Garden of Eden imagery galore!) and Thor's hammer. Isayama likes to pull from both biblical sources and Norse sources for his world-building and I'm curious what's going on with this name.

this might have been my favorite marley chapter (which still isn't saying much but there you have it)

Seeing as I love the Walldians and Warriors equally, I think it's fair to give the Marely side attention. How can we have a dazzling final battle with no build up, including parallels and foreshadowing in this arc? Worse comes to worse I'm sure Isayama would just add the extra chapters he needed to in order to finish the story. Let's enjoy it while it's still being published.

Isayama is trying to make us think that there aren't good sides or bad sides. And he fails. We have already seen the perspective of Marley and they are clearly the villains. Not the Eldians of Paradis. The reasons why the mainland Eldians are supposed to hate Paradis Eldians are absurd. No real life social group/ethnicity is that stupid to believe what mainland Eldians believe. Or what they do to other Eldians.

As usual with every first chapter of an SnK Volume, this chapter was kind of boring, but we did learn about the ninth titan and the family thats been in possession of it. Also, seeing all 6 of Marley's titans on the battle field at once is interesting.

I think this volume will focus on the build-up to the reveal of Amputee-Kun in the present day, whilst also showing the road to Trost from RBA's perspective, which will be awesome

The perspective change felt rushed. I wish everything about the inital time-skip to the ocean had been handled differently. We got no closure whatsoever on so many important happenings and character developments re: serumbowl and basement, and that really frustrates me. The second - 3 year - just rubbed salt in the wound. I want to enjoy the Marley arc, I really do,  but this just frustrates me a lot.

Snk? More like Attack on Game of Thrones.

I really do like the perspective of the warriors and as interesting as it is, I just can't get myself attached to the characters, and that makes it tiresome for me. At the beginning I was hopeful, but so far the only Warriors I can relate to are Pieck and Falco and even that's a thin line. I am eager to see them interacting with the main cast though!

This chapter in particular was great. There's so much subtlety in every action and foreshadowing of things to come. We got a lot of interesting info (the Tybur family, 9th titan, shifter memories, TONS of Reiner background, and Porco feels ahhhhh), and also saw how the warriors are operating under the stress that Marley is putting upon them. I especially loved the Zeke's tea meeting. Zeke's aware that they're being monitored and is able to subtely warn the others, who all get it except Porco, and Reiner then saves him from saying something dissident about the Tybur family and possibly Marley. The interactions of the characters are wonderfully done, with a lot of side glances and small details to pick up on. I think Isayama's character development and world building abilities are shining so brightly in this arc. And I can't get enough of the warriors, new or old. Overall, this is swiftly becoming one of my favorite arcs so far. Also please Isayama, stop torturing Reiner, give the poor man a break ;-; My heart can't handle anymore....

Less flashback plz

I just want to find out if Amputee-kun is Eren that's all I freaking want Isa.

I don't want to spend the entire rest of this arc with Marley, but I think it would be cool to first be reintroduced to the main cast through the new character's eyes. Of course, then we'll need to see things from the main cast's perspective again and find out what they've been up to this whole time

Love the new memes. =P thanks pieck and zeke

to be honest, i expected the 9th titan's reveal to be more epic art-wise

I think I am now more on the side of the "Warriors" than the main cast on Paradis and this thinking of mine is keeping me awake at night. I hate Isayama for this because now his "there's not bad or good side in the story" statement hit me in the face. Also fuck I have the need to hug smol RBA and know finally seeing their backstory and situation withe all the hometown and warrior thing was all I was asking for so I am loving this Marley arc but at the same time I wanna see the main cast so badly.

I want to see amputee Kuns plan.

Poor baby Armin is the god of destruction no soft boy :(

I want to learn more of Bertolt's backstory... He's my fav next to Reiner and we know next to nothing on his backstory and motivations.

There won't be an invasion of the island. The islanders will invade, instead.

Knowing each titan's function is good. But I feel isayama could have used the page more efficiently, like not drawing large, single-panel images of titans. I feel it's kinda wasteful to use up your pages that way with not so dense information given out.

Confrontation between Warriors and SC will be super interesting but I'm kind of apprehensive about actually seeing it. It can easily turn into another serumbowl since we don't have clear enemies and everything is relative.

i feel isayama is just making some poor decisions in an attempt to make reiner more likable and while the new perspective is interesting it was introduced far too late in the game

I do find this arc interesting and I would be okay with it going for a lot longer, however I'd hope for a few chapters which go back to the 104th's in between those chapters, just a little show of where they're at during all this, I miss those guys, its been nearly half a year since we had a chapter with them. I love reiner yo he needs to be protected at all costs. But i do wanna know more about berholdt and his family. Please i need some closure on my tol boy.

I can't wait to see Historia again and see what role she will play throughout the rest of the series. To be honest, I'm concerned for her because now that she is publicly known as the queen now, Marley might try to capture her if they find out. And what will Reiner do if that happens? Ymir is no longer around to protect her so now it is his turn to owe something to Ymir. I wonder if Historia will ever meet Porco, I hope she kicks his ass, I will never forgive him for ending such a beautiful relationship.

No one is talking about this but the part where Magath says something about Zeke saying unnecessary things in the meeting has me very intrigued. I wanna know what he means, I'm overall very interested in the role Magath may play in the story. Looks like he is the only one suspecting Zeke at the moment. These chapters have been interesting and I'm in no hurry to get back to most of the main cast, but I would like to see Jean again soon. And Armin.

You know, this was a pretty boring chapter, all things considered. However, I did enjoy seeing Gabi look a bit more "human" for at least a couple of minutes and hope the Falco vs. Gabi bit isn't drawn out for too long (I feel it could get tiresome after a while). Reiner's father honestly surprised me; I didn't think we'd get to see him at all/that Reiner would even be aware of who he was, and yet...we got his perspective and I could not have been happier with what we got. Poor Reiner, but considering his scheming selfish mother (who may also be pretty delusional), it seems fitting.

Pieck and chubby cheeks baby Bertl are the only good things in this depressing arc

Reading Isayama's interview about wanting to change perspective to blur the line between hero and villain made this arc less jarring to me. However, I really want to go back to the main cast. Also, the basement reveal ironically made the series less epic in my eyes. Mainly because the idea of a war

AND FINALLY

As expected of poll-chan, excellent questions!

I enjoy these polls and i have nothing else to say

Come back Momtaku!

<333