#i may go back and edit this later

[expelliarmus]

[getvalentined]

Vincent Valentine ❇ FINAL FANTASY VII: EVER CRISIS

Bouncer Suit.

[ screenshots free to use with credit ]

[basil-does-arttt]

hold on wait a second i had a thought

in the DLC prolouge cutscene for DMC 5, when Vergil is in that stone passageway area, he says "its nearly time" (in reference to him splitting himself in half).

We know what day it happens, april 30th. The date is shown in Nero's flashback scene. This is of course assuming Vergil did all that on the same day, which i think is what happened. (He could open a portal to his house to travel, and why would he wait any longer and risk dying first?)

Anyway. Thats not my point, my point is: did he choose to do it on this day on purpose? Is this date special?

Im overanalyzing here so this may be a stretch, but: Could that be the day Eva died? Think about it. Him splitting himself was a "rebirth" of sorts: discarding his humanity to become a full demon in search of ultimate power.

Vergil being stabbed by those demons the day Eva died could also be counted as a kind of rebirthing for him: In the span of a few hours, he lost everything. His family, his life. And maybe even, his full humanity, as he gained his DT form in that moment too (shown by him having the same triggered-style eyes Dante uses when threatening V toward the start, also (half)triggered.) No longer was he a mere human boy, but now half a devil - the things that killed his family - too.

Knowing Vergil, it could make sense. In DMC 3 he's quite proper and a bit sentimental, much more so than Dante and i can see him caring more for these kinds of niche details in his life a lot more than Dante too. I also think he may have still been in that mindset when coming out of the Nelo Angelo body (however that happened), in a way that he hasnt really grown or matured while he was Nelo Angelo due to all the mind-fuckery performed thanks to Mundus.

(Could also be clarification for the reason Vergil still looks so young, quote "because of how much time he's spent in the underworld compared to Dante". He didnt live there, certainly not by choice. But he was captured and tortured by Mundus for 10 years. My thoughts is that he's technically still in his teenage body, as becoming Nelo Angelo and being in the underworld for so long thanks to Mundus halted (or at least very significantly slowed) the aging process. Time could move slower in hell but thats a rant for another time, ive gone off track.)

As such, him choosing such a special (traumatic) date to essential commit suicide on doesnt seem like much of a reach to me. Vergil has always been methodic. He doesn't do things hap-hazardly and never has, even as Nelo Angelo when he invites Dante outside to set up a proper fight rather than just taking the opportunity and attacking in the bedroom.

Of course you can argue it was coincidence, and he just stumbled across Nero by chance and decided to do it right then and there. He had to have found Nero first of all, figured out his plan of attack (probably so he wouldnt draw unwanted attention and possibly be stopped), then actually put it into motion. He couldnt exactly control the date Nero happened to be in the right place at the right time and gave him an opening. Im not trying to convince or anything, just sharing ideas, But wouldn't it just be so in character for april 30th to be a special date for him??

Overall i at least think the reason he chose to do it at the house was intentional for reasons stated above. If it wasnt, then why didn't he just... idk, find an alleyway or something and split himself there?

Those are my thoughts. Id love to hear other people's theories and such on this too.

(EDIT: I REALIZED THE MOMENT HE SPLITS HIMSELF ALSO PROBABLY HAPPENS AT A SPECIFIC TIME AS WELL, NAMELY 6:00 PM.

It mustve taken him some time to get back to the house. Not hours, but not seconds. 15 minutes seems like a good amount of travel time for someone who can teleport using portals alongside a bit of walking. If he got there early he could've just waited too.

A specific date, april 30th, and at (likely) exactly 6:00pm. In VOV while it is black and white, i assume the attack happened late into the evening, since the sky is dark when he gets back to the house a bit later. Idk how he would've known that it was exactly 6:00 but... anyway, Mundus also seems like the type of guy to plan shit, especially an attack like he did to Eva and the twins, if that whole "eva died on april 30th" thing was true.)

[kevinsbitch-panini]

fanfic friday: aftg edition

i don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you by kirakrs (@kirakrs)

Summary: Kevin goes to California for his and Jean's interview. Andrew and Neil tag along. The Trojans have a cultural shock from the Foxes and find out more of the truth. Chaos ensues.

Tags: Post-Canon, Canon-Typical AFTG Warnings, nothing too graphic i promise just mentions, Friendship, Healing, Post-Book 4: The Sunshine Court (All For The Game), Soft Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten Being Neil Josten, Neil Josten is a Little Shit, Protective Andrew Minyard, POV Jeremy Knox, POV Jean Moreau, Found Family, USC Trojans (All For The Game), Domestic Fluff, Canon Compliant, Protective Neil Josten, Neil Josten & Jean Moreau Friendship, Humor, Developing Relationship, between jean and jeremy ofc, Canon Continuation, maybe i focused too much on neil and andrew idk, i wanted an outsider perspective at them, Tags May Change, POV Outsider, nothing bad happens, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Humor, No beta we die like riko, Spoilers for Book 4: The Sunshine Court (All For The Game), Light Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Feels, mostly jean tbh, He's dramatic, no archive warnings cause it's aftg you know you warnings, but none of those warnings happen things just might get mentioned, Neil Josten is a Menace

Words: 18,372 Chapters: 2/?

THIS FIC HAS SPOILERS FOR THE SUNSHINE COURT. GO READ THAT FIRST.

i am not one to recommend wips* (mostly because i only read oneshots so i don't really read them at all) but this one is absolutely fucking fantastic!!! it's set post-tsc and it feels so in-character and everything that istg im just gonna believe this is canon till nora publishes the next book. andrew and neil look feral from an outside perspective, there are frequent reminders to speak in english, and the trojans are (rightfully) very confused and concerned. it's amazing and will probably make it into my top fave aftg fics

*i want to acknowledge that this post is queued like 2 months into the future. it may no longer be a wip by the time you are seeing this. currently this fic has 2 chapters so i wish you (and future me) a very happy time reading whatever is published btwn now and late august

also go look at the author's tumblr and ao3 <3

[cathalbravecog]

the cathal artist draws cathal again...!! snuggling a bat plushie similar to the ones i own irl. struggling with art block so i drew something scribbly to still at least get my creative juices out

[samuraisharkie]

the thing about living in the world is that it is filled with hopeless anguish and despair and evil and there’s no way for anyone to defeat it all. but you have to keep on living

[rosewheresheshouldntbe]

Rose in the backrooms? :0

You are currently trying to avoid the scribble monsters.

> Rose: Sneak around the backrooms.

[kenzan-kiwami]

Your malware as requested

Got Damn he really put his entire pussy into that :miku:

[mnh-wrks]

obkk prompt #2

AU: post-canon, alive!Obito

Obito joins a club located near or on the way to the Hokage’s office as an excuse to walk together with Kakashi every morning.

[abyssalmermaiden]

Having recognized Viola’s soul as a shard of Ares, Amon crafts a memory crystal using Hermes’s memories of Ares from the Fandaniel crystal partially for personal amusement, and partially to spite Emet-Selch who has been awakening friends, coworkers, and exes for reasons that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Amon uses this memory crystal to attempt to awaken Ares, going so far as to surgically implant it in the back of Viola’s neck. But the result is fundamentally flawed- a botched awakening where Viola is tormented by visions and nightmares.

[jamiesfootball]

⭐️⭐️ for anything you would like to share!!

OOOH! I have an answer for this one now, since you asked me about it in your comment (THANK YOU LOVE YOU MWAH!)

I have had a few people ask about the couch scene, specifically what fucking show Jamie was (poorly) explaining-

Community, season 2 episode 15, "Early 21st Century Romanticism" aka that one where Troy and Abed both ask out the librarian at the same time

Now I have a certain pet peeve when it comes to using pop culture references in media. If the only reaction it garners is 'look! they said the thing that I like!' then to me that's not a very good utilization of a shout out. References age, and they won't mean the same thing to people later.

But at the same time this is Ted Lasso, and Jamie was specifically trying to emulate a Lasso speech, which means references.

Starters for those who don't know- Community is a tv show. It's about a mish-mash group of students who joined a community college study group. While some of it has not aged well, much of it was made out of genuine nerdy love and it is absolutely dripping in sincerity and love.

(This is where Jamie's confused 'I think they knew they were in a tv show' is from- one of the characters in particular, Abed, is very meta, and frequently calls out the plot of the episode as if it were a tv show.)

One of the main plots of the episode I'm referencing is this: Troy and Abed, the best-friendiest best friends to ever best friend, have come to the conclusion that they are both interested in the same librarian. Wanting to side-step the common tv problem of two guys fighting over the same girl, they decided to circumvent the issue by both of them asking her out to a Valentine's day dance. Together. Like they ask her, at the same time, if she will go with both of them.

Which brings me to the how / why I chose it: because I did not like how this part played out in the finale. In the finale, Roy and Jamie going to Keeley's felt like a last-minute wrap-up, an 'oh shoot we forgot to deal with that.'

So when I set out trying to fix things, one of the first things I asked myself was 'what's a time where I've seen this sort of plot line work for me?'

Answer: this Community episode

That was my starting point. There were more things I knew I wanted. For starters, I wanted Keeley to actually have time to voice her opinion on having both of them spring that on her like that (that scene is in a later chapter.) But another thing I knew I wanted was for them to talk about it. Part of the making-it-make-sense to me wasn't just in figuring out how the fight happened, but also dealing with the aftermath of it all. I wanted them to talk about it, and I wanted them to get some closure on it.

I saw someone on here mention that Roy and Jamie have a pattern of initial disagreement -> jump to fighting about it -> admit guilt -> talk about what was actually wrong that started the fight. The whole couch scene is really those last two parts.

But with everything so raw and Keeley already admittedly a touchy subject, it felt like a topic that needed to be come at sideways. It made more sense that it would be Jamie brave enough to broach the topic- not only because of Roy being in a more intense place about it, but also because well...I think after Amsterdam Jamie's become a little more emotionally in-tuned to Roy. This is something else that I tried to weave in, that Jamie knows what Roy is like, and yeah Roy can be a dick, but he is rarely a dick without purpose. Sometimes that purpose is fun, but this was not fun.

Jamie is kind of a mess, our boy, so with Ted's most recent Ted-Talk fresh in his head, the idea of having him try to give Roy a Lasso Speech weaved itself in easy.

From there it was a matter of gathering the strings: the reference I already knew I wanted to use, and the framework to talk about it. This was actually the first part of the couch scene that I wrote. Though the initial draft was in short-hand, the core of the Lasso Speech was always the same: Jamie wandering his way towards softly admitting that a part of him was glad Keeley didn't choose between them.

Back to my earlier point about references, I had some guidelines going in for how to shape it:

Enjoyable by all. It had to be vague enough that someone unfamiliar with Community could still enjoy it, while being specific enough that it'd still feel meaningful. Because that's what I wanted the experience to feel like from Roy's point of view. He's never seen this show, he has no connection to it, so the meaning must be found in how the story is delivered.

Memory blur. Some situations call for a character to have very clear recall of an event or story. While Beard and Ted may have excellent pop culture recall, it made more sense if Jamie's was spotty (the frog in a hat bit is actually NOT from the episode he is talking about, it is from a different episode that happens to be near another dance). Plus given the age he was when the show came out, it made more sense if this is something he didn't necessarily seek out but instead passively absorbed.

Authentic. In addition to Jamie's spotty memory of the story he is telling, the fact of the matter is he is copying the style and structure of someone else, and he's filling in the gaps as best he understands them. He doesn't understand why Ted includes all these little details, but he knows that Ted includes them, and the result as Roy says is....endearing. Jamie is trying, and that's worth a lot, even if all Roy hears is straight up nonsense.

This brings the shape in a full circle for why I think the reference works. Because it's not about the reference at all. It's about Jamie telling the story. It's filler for the greater emotion at play.

It's not a perfect metaphor, but it doesn't need to be. That's not the point of a Lasso speech.

What actually happens in that episode is this: Troy and Abed ask the librarian out to a Valentines day dance. They tell her that they're best friends and they don't want anything to ruin that, so they'd like to give her the opportunity to date both of them at the same time so that she can then decide who she likes more.

Another fun tidbit- when the librarian agrees to the date, she calls them asking her out the most adorable thing to ever happen to her-

-which in itself is a subliminal clue for why Jamie at least thought his and Roy's dumb plan to go to Keeley's might work.

They go on the date.

She chooses Troy.

Abed excuses himself, as they agreed the loser would. Then, just like in Jamie's version of the story, Troy immediately has the realization that him winning means Abed lost.

The part that Jamie doesn't remember is that Troy spent the literal remainder of the date trying to figure out why she didn't pick Abed. Because to Troy, Abed is Abed. That's the person he spends all his time with. That's his best friend.

So why didn't she pick his best friend?

That's what Jamie's sublimated in the corners of Jamie's mind. Somewhere along the way, a dynamic shift happened, and Roy became another person whose well-being Jamie considers in the mix.

So that's the other thing about references: I think if you use them, they shouldn't alienate the audience, but they should also add something for anyone who does know it.

Jamie when pondering for a good parallel to their situation accidentally landed on the one of the two guys who were the best best friends to ever friend. Two characters who once famously, stubbornly, refused to end a pillow fight because the end of the pillow fight would symbolize the end of their friendship, so they planned to just keep hitting each other for hours to stave off the end.

So at the end of the night, there's Jamie. And yeah, he's kind of grateful that Keeley didn't pick either of them. Because what if she did? What if they had to live with that? That would hurt too.

[quaranmine]

spent most of my flight rereading firewatch au. which is great, because i was enjoying my own writing and i write things that specifically appeal to me. it was also awful because i kept finding incredibly minute inconsistencies that are now driving me up the wall--

[lilypixels]

Been working on the townies people suggested remaking (upgrading?) and will start posting those soon too~

[deus-ex-mona]

Even Our Private Lives Are Great Too!: Chapter 1

i gave up on the title (true story)

next part (chapter 2)

Yujiro and Aizo, namely the members of the idol unit LIPxLIP, would hang out with the members of Full Throttle4, a dance-vocal unit, in private.

One day, upon YUI’s suggestion of “Let’s get some ramen together!”, several of them met up and…

Yujiro: (This is… where we’re supposed to meet up, right?)

Yujiro looked around at his surroundings, to find Aizo and IV standing together a short distance ahead of him.

Yujiro: Good morning, IV.

IV: Yeah. Good morning, Yujiro.

Aizo: Oh, you’re finally here, Yujiro.

Yujiro: “Finally”...? But it’s not like I’m late or anything, right?

Yujiro: Thank you for… inviting us out for ramen today.

Yujiro: So then… where’s YUI?

IV: He’s not here yet. Seriously, he’s so…

Everything started back when YUI and Aizo went out to eat super spicy tanmen together. Aizo had a hard time with handling the terribly hot spice levels of the tanmen, and, as Yujiro had been unable to make it, IV had to be called in his stead. 

As they seemed to be meeting up for normal ramen that day, Yujiro felt safe enough to tag along with them.

Aizo: I had a pretty rough time last time. Isn’t YUI’s spice tolerance way too high?

IV: You may be right about that… I heard that you were on the verge of fainting, Aizo.

Yujiro: I can’t believe that… you almost fainted because of spice.

Aizo: You idiot! Only those who have eaten it would be able to understand! That thing wasn’t on, like, regular levels of spice or anything!

Aizo: It was so spicy that it burned to extremes! It wiped out half of my memory, for reals.

Yujiro: You’re exaggerating.

Aizo: Am not! I’m telling the truth here!

IV: Haha, sorry, sorry. I did tell him not to take it too far, though.

IV: As a form of apology for that, we’ll be going for normal ramen today. So there’s no need to be on high alert, okay?

Yujiro: Thank you very much. But it’s kinda unexpected for you to accompany us for it, IV.

IV: Haha, well, I guess so.

Yujiro: (IV sure is a man of many mysteries… I wonder what he’s like in his private life.)

Yujiro: (YUI probably remains the same throughout, in both his private and public lives, but I can’t picture what IV is like in private at all…)

Yujiro: (I’m curious… about what kind of guy he really is.)

Yujiro reasoned that he would be able to learn something that he could apply in his future activities, if he could just catch a glimpse of IV’s true self. The reason why he had even decided to tag along that day had been to take advantage of this golden opportunity to find out more about FT4, after all.

Yujiro: (Alright…! I’ll be sure to uncover… the reasons behind their amazing performances today…!)

Yujiro cast a glance at Aizo, to see him grinning brightly, as though he was merely looking forward to the ramen that they were about to have.

Yujiro: (He’s so… oblivious… I’m so envious of his carefree personality.)

Looking away from Aizo in exasperation, Yujiro caught sight of a person making his way towards them from a distance.

YUI: Hey guys! Sorry for the wait!

IV: YUI… You’re late.

YUI: Ahaha. Sorry, sorry. I was so excited that I couldn’t fall asleep last night, yannow~?

IV: Just like a kid on the night before a field trip, no?

YUI: I’m not some brat! But, well, I guess I kinda felt like one though!

YUI: Oh right, thanks for coming today, Aizo and Yujiro!

Yujiro: No, rather, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you very much.

Aizo: We’ll be in your care for the day.

YUI: Yeah! Let’s head straight off then!

YUI: …IV, is it really okay for you to eat ramen, though?

IV: Yeah. I’ll be fine for today at least. I’ll tag along.

YUI: Awwright!

YUI: To be honest, I’m really happy that you’re coming along to get ramen, IV! But don’t overdo it, okay?!

Yujiro: (“Overdo it”...? Is IV trying to maintain his figure or something? As expected of Mr. Stoic over here—.)

[longagoitwastuesday]

Something about the way Roxane with the cadets lifting their mood parallels Cyrano with the nuns lifting their mood

[orcelito]

Ok I reaaaaally really really need to stop reading so much fanfic. I read another 30k ish fic this morning and it was SO GOOD but I keep squeezing my brain thru binge reading (bc I can never read things in moderation I guess) and it is leaving no room for writing brain

Vaguely tempted to go back over ITNL for edits tho. Especially the first chapter. Since I'm gonna need to reread it anyways to get back into it, it'd be nice if I could smooth some things out with it...

Hmmm