#just manipulating what is around

[tanglepelt]

Dp x dc idea 163

Danny learns while being held by the Giw that he can in fact make portals. For whatever reason he can call the portal even with anti ecto cuffs. They start out small and unstable. Disappearing with the blink of an eye.

It’s only when he is being dissected it’s a fully formed portal. Only lasting long enough to engulf him. Table and all.

He has no idea where he’ll end up. All he knows is it’s somewhere on earth and he is still strapped to the table.

Some potential places he could end up. The Kent’s barn, in front of Martian manhunter, in the middle of the gala, the middle of a legion of doom meeting, the middle of the justice league, maybe even in the middle of a Wayne family dinner.

[puppyeared]

personal character design headcanons + brainrot

Note: the re-bound!au does NOT belong to me, it belongs to @chipper-smol I’m just not normal about it lol

[introspectivememories]

[skyloftian-nutcase]

TotK DLC idea!

The screen is black. You don’t hear anything for a long time. Then, faintly, in the distance, you can hear it.

Link. Link. Open your eyes.

While the line echoes familiarity, the voice does not.

Or. Well. It does. Because while it isn’t Zelda, it’s a familiar man’s voice speaking gently, so gently you almost don’t recognize it because there’s no way he ever spoke like this in the main game.

But he is now. And instead of a golden light being the first image you see before the screen shows Link awakening… you see gloom floating in the air. The image cuts to a Hylian waking up who… doesn’t look like Link from TotK?? He’s different, still small in stature, with slightly tanner skin, platinum light blonde hair, and red eyes. But… something’s wrong with his forehead. There’s a weird line on it.

This new character you apparently are gonna be playing in the DLC blearily blinks his eyes open, clearly groggy and too weak to really move. But then that line on his forehead moves a hair, it splits apart, and you realize it’s a freaking eye, red and yellow and it’s like the ones on gloom hands and oh gosh what the hell is it doing on his forehead—

Link realizes something is off and his eyes blow wide, his hands reach for his forehead and he screams in agony and terror, only for someone to scoop him into a hug to soothe him.

And suddenly you realize why that voice was eerily familiar.

It’s Ganondorf. He resurrected you from the era of the Imprisoning War. You, who have a history with him and his family. You, who he wants to protect, who he views as his kid, who he calls a prince and says he’ll keep you safe by controlling your body with his dark magic if he has to.

Welcome to Tears of the Kingdom: Hero’s Shadow.

You have to play a long gone Hero who was resurrected. Ganondorf, who is still recovering his strength in preparation for killing the current Hero, tasks you with finding your betrothed, his daughter, as well as his wife. They’re buried somewhere in the Depths like you were. He wants you to find their burial sites so he can use his secret stone to resurrect them like he did you, and control them as well. Which is doubly bad when you realize his wife was the original Sage of Lightning. He gives you free reign to wander once you go through a tutorial (he tests you to see if you’ve recovered enough strength), because he knows you love wandering and collecting things. Your own personal objective, however, is trying to help Hyrule from the Depths, to break free from Ganondorf’s control, because Link would rather set himself on fire than let Ganondorf resurrect and control the love of his life and his mother-in-law. Your best hope is to find shards of the shattered Master Sword to try and stab the eye on Dark Link’s forehead and break the control Ganondorf has on you. Until you can, though, the monsters are your allies, you can teleport across the Depths by manifesting out of the gloom created by gloom hands (just like what Phantom Ganon does), and the world below is your oyster. If you get too close to sword shards when gloom hands are nearby, Ganondorf can see your attempt and immediately takes control of your body, and no matter what button you press Link just walks back to Ganondorf’s location and stays there until you get a chance to try again.

You start with three hearts, all empty looking like when gloom hurts you, and if you get injured they just shatter. Whenever they all shatter, you respawn at Ganondorf’s location because his gloom hands came and rescued you from dying. The only way you can get more hearts is by collecting poes and offering them to the statues in the Depths. You can communicate with the spirits of soldiers, who may give you combat tips or info about the area. If you gain enough of Ganondorf’s trust, he’ll let you command monsters, and he might even let you wander the Surface (under his supervision) during a blood moon.

You learn of Link’s and Ganondorf’s history through discovering ancient relics/texts that trigger memories. This connection between you and Ganondorf stems back to time before the war, well over ten thousand years ago. Link was engaged to Ganondorf’s daughter, but during the Imprisoning War the family fought against the demon king. Ganondorf did love his family, but he loved power more. Link sacrificed himself, letting himself get mortally wounded to save Rauru from a killing blow. Gan held him as he died, and it allowed Link to both beg him to stop and stab him in the heart with a light shard. The shard didn’t kill him, but it was what Rauru connected with when he hit him in the chest, allowing him to seal Ganondorf away. Ganondorf still wants the world, but his love for his family is still present, though now twisted, so he thinks he can control Link and everyone else with his dark magic in order to keep them safe and in line. Once the threat of the current Hero is eliminated, the world will be his, and his family will be safe. As such, he treats you, Link, the player, like a stubborn child, reeling you in, but does so in a horrific way, torturing Link by controlling him.

You have to break free of this and stop him, and the only hope you have is the distant call of a sword spirit…

[sapphic-agent]

The ATLA fandom is interesting. There's been uproar about Katara's personality changing in the live-action... Besties, don't you think there's a reason why they did that? Maybe due to a certain influx of people bashing Katara every time she breathed in 2020? She was shamed repeatedly for being angry, outspoken, and confrontational. Not to mention how many of you defended her being a docile healer instead of a fighter in LOK (hell, some of you preferred Katara in LOK over Katara in ATLA, don't think I forgot). Why are we backtracking now?

(Yes the live-action could have done better with her. But they were probably trying to appease the people who whined in 2020, which they shouldn't have since this fandom would find something to rage about no matter what)

Istg, Renaissance fans and their performative activism. Again I say, the ATLA Renaissance sucked

[ingravinoveritas]

You know what's kind of wild to me? Anna just confirmed they've been together for 6 years. People forget she's still 29, and isn't 30 yet. So they met when she was still 23. Not hugely different from 25, but notable I think. Idk where the narrative that she was 25 came from and how that stuck.

Hi there! So I am still catching up on Asks, and I wanted to make sure I addressed these (grouped together due to similar themes). For those who might not have seen, what is being referred to are two separate incidents that occurred in the days after Anna posted the t-shirt story on Instagram. On Tuesday, she posted this story lashing out at a Swedish publication for sharing a story originally from a UK publication (The Independent) about Michael's answer to the age gap question on The Assembly. The story was originally in Swedish, but the English translation is on the right:

Then on Wednesday, she did the same thing again, this time with another Swedish paper:

Since so much of this hinges on what Michael said in his response, I will post a short clip of that here, so we have the visual:

When AL's stories were first posted, I noticed a few comments on a post from @nightgoodomens from someone who speaks Swedish, and after reading the article, their observation was that all the magazines did was literally translate what Michael said, word for word (which we can then also further confirm by watching the video above).

So Michael's words were translated directly, and on top of that, Anna was not tagged by these papers, or contacted by reporters "for comment"--she seemingly sought out these news stories and shared them on her own social media. What's strange is that most of us would never have even seen them otherwise, and yet she chose to draw attention to them. And if these articles truly are meaningless clickbait, I'm confused as to why Anna would lash out so hard at them, especially if she feels as secure in her and Michael's relationship as she has wanted us to believe.

The other thing for me is that the one voice that is (again) noticeably absent here is Michael's. Nearly every post Michael has responded to/shared in relation to The Assembly was about a moment between him and one of the interviewers, Leo. Not only has the clip of Michael's answer to the age gap question gotten much less circulation/attention than the initial clip of the girl asking him the question, he has not said a single word about it since the show aired on April 5th.

He has especially not said anything about being misquoted (either in UK magazines/newspapers or international ones). And this becomes even more glaring when you realize that Michael immediately jumped on someone Twitter the day before AL shared that first story and corrected them for misquoting him (in regard to his comments about Welsh actors and Welsh roles). So it's very clear that if Michael thought he was being misquoted, there is no reason why he wouldn't speak up about it. And yet...complete silence.

I also find it interesting that for months, Michael was being attacked on social media, first in the aftermath of his comments about the situation in the Middle East, then more recently after recording a video saying hello to Good Omens fans in Russia. In both cases, he was defamed over and over again, accused of supporting war and genocide, and in general had his comments twisted and distorted beyond recognition--in other words, he was repeatedly misquoted (to put it mildly). Not once did Anna defend him against any of this. Not once was there an Insta story or anything speaking up in support of Michael. But as soon as it was something about her/their relationship, here she was posting these stories and letting us know exactly what her priorities are.

To your comments @lookforthelight97 about AL inadvertently saying the quiet parts out loud, that was also something that caught my attention. We could be here all day talking about the narrative and who is trying to change what, but for those who don't know, the narrative of her being 25 came from every media outlet stating that Michael and AL met in May of 2019...despite the fact that she gave birth to Lyra just four months later, in September.

It was this discrepancy that gave a lot of us the feeling that something was off even back in 2019 (and I would urge folks to check out @problematicwelshman, who covered a lot more of this at the time). In actuality, Michael and AL would have had to have met in late 2018 (when Anna was actually 24, as her birthday is in August) for her to then become pregnant and have the baby in September. All of this to say that if the official PR line for the last five years has been that they met in 2019, it makes you wonder why AL is suddenly publicly contradicting it, especially to show the lack of contentment she seems to feel about the relationship even after five (pardon me, six) years.

In any case, my incredulity is and continues to be at AL so readily showing her insecurities in this way, because all these two Insta stories have done is to draw more attention to her response than to the articles that are mentioned. Articles that again, none of us would have known about if she hadn't shared them. Yet as was said above, I don't think there is anything that anyone could post or write that casts doubt on Michael and AL's relationship the way her own social media posts do.

And to what you @vaguelyomens and @angelsadvocate96 said about Michael mentioning that his greatest fear is being alone, I feel like maybe Michael has such a fear of being alone because he already knows what it's like to feel alone. To know deep down that you are not remotely on the same page as the person you're in a relationship with. To know that they don't understand you and never will, but feeling responsible for them nonetheless, and not knowing how to reconcile those two things. It's difficult to imagine anything that would make someone feel more alone than that.

So, those are my thoughts on the Insta stories AL shared earlier this week. As I have said before, I know that I could be completely wrong, and I'm happy for folks to share their perspective, whether you agree or disagree. A heck of a lot to think about, for sure...

[tswwwit]

I want a bill whump so bad, if dipper falls in love with bill every time he reincarnates but hes also a little bit different in every reincarnation, could there be one where hes almost entirely replused by bill, or already in love with someone else?

We all love to see that terrible little man struggling! Typically hurting Bill is accomplished via Dipper-death, but this is a neat alternate scenario. You know he's definitely going to start out totally full of himself! Winning his husband back should be easy! Until he realizes he has no idea how he did it in the first place.

[podcastenthusiast]

Sure it's all fun and games Tav telling Astarion to "say please" and calling him a good boy before having sex, but he'd have a mini panic attack if Tav explained safewords and like actually gave a shit about his wellbeing in bed.

[shorthaltsjester]

honestly as someone who has been in various fandoms for a long time now and who also watched campaigns 1 and 2 without really getting into cr fandom it isn’t Shocking but it is annoying how often people will look at the stories that cr tells and make absolute claims about the goodness of characters (goodness here meaning Moral goodness, not I Like This character and think it’s well made goodness, which is a separate post entirely). particularly regarding the gods and pc parents. and honestly like, typically in fandom i get annoyed by people bending over backwards to woobify characters who are active in their choice to be unkind and generally horrible but in the cr fandom it’s tended to be the opposite where like. a character is just. a human being (in the sense of being Average not in the sense of Fantasy Races) and huge swaths of the fandom act like that’s the most unforgivable thing someone can be. and maybe it is, but one of the most powerful things about fiction is that it tends to encourage people to expand their empathy and exercise their ability to forgive. because fictional characters, no matter how much people like to project onto them, tend not to cause anyone harm, so it’s easier to learn how to forgive and accept things you don’t understand without also villainizing them.

this is mostly prompted by the recent 4sd and the fact that matt’s response to what’s up with the dawnfather was a very insistent “He’s not bad!” and also seeing the online reaction to the mention that the matron would punish vax for saving keyleth that has taken the as usual completely bonkers tune that the raven queen (Who When Met With A Brother Asking A God To Kill Him In Favour Of His Sister, Gave Him A Job, and Later Extended His Natural Life To Help Protect The World And Have More Time With His Family And Allowed Him To Visit His Sister On Her Wedding Day) is a horrible evil abusive bitch of a god. like. can we grow up? can we understand the world and fiction that represents the multitudes of experiences found in it in shades of grey? is that too much to ask (i know it is).

but also specifically the like Extremely Adamant way that both matt and laura were like no no no no relvin isn’t Horirble he’s average. he’s not good he’s just. he’s A father, not a good or bad one. and on the surface it’s hilarious that they’re both so like. enthused to point out that he’s Average because typically when people respond to a claim of a characters badness with the level of immediacy they both did it’s a rebuttal of “no, this character is good actually.” but it was just to affirm that relvin did harm imogen, but not because there’s some aspect of his character that is inherently cruel or especially Bad. and like. yeah actually. yeah you should react like that to a claim that this average person who Has hurt someone, the way that nearly every single person has hurt someone in a way they cannot repair, with immediacy to say this person is a Person and thus imperfect and capable of great harm, but that isn’t some all encompassing judgment on their morality or capability to also do good or be fine.

anyway this is kinda just a rant post but also is just me saying i’m very grateful that when surrounded by a fandom that tends to paint characters as Good or Bad and even while using a game that can encourage that with its alignment system, cr has always told stories that see goodness as a persistent choice that might sometimes falter and that can be chosen even after a lifetime of Badness. i can’t remember exactly what the quote was so forgive me if it’s incorrect but when jester is talking to caleb after he claims he’s not a very good person and she says “good people do bad things sometimes. even bad people do good things.” that’s it! that’s one of the most consistent themes across campaigns. and yet.

[off-brand-adorabbit]

Tress scratched the best itch for me, I’ve been craving a good fairy tale and it was just perfect. I kept slipping so hard into the fairy tale aspects that I kept getting caught by surprise whenever a cosmere thing stopped beating around the bush and revealed itself, actually. While I’m sure that wasn’t fully the intention, it was a really fun way to read some brandermansanderman coming fresh off of sunlit man and how intensely locked in I was with the Connections. Genuinely Tress is such a fun little romp. I love girls who sail in fucked up seas and this is a genre I want more of please thank you.

[ciggiestash]

I’d probably let a guy hit if he made me a cool enough mixtape

[essekthelysssideblog]

Re: the forearm squeeze. The take I've seen floating around these days is that Caleb was out there doing his damned best to honeypot Essek while Essek's demi ass was just happy to have a study buddy, and I concede that that IS a very funny and not-completely-inaccurate way of framing early Shadowgast.

HOWEVER, I don't think that's the full truth of it. Liam, at least, has said of the forearm squeeze that Caleb genuinely was trying to comfort Essek and did feel badly about the group pushing him to his limits. And Essek did not respond well to that! He saw Caleb openly trying to ingratiate himself to Essek and did not tolerate it!

I think what the "Essek was oblivious to Caleb's honeypotting" takes miss is that while Caleb was certainly attracted to Essek from early on, it was never anything that he acted on in either an obviously romantic or sexual way. For all that the joke now is that Caleb is a bisexual maelstrom, and for all that that is true in its way, the other truth is that especially during that period of time, Caleb had repressed his romantic/sexual interests extremely hard (see everything about his attraction to Jester and how that played out).

So while the manipulation and the attempts to impress Essek were definitely there along with the attraction, I don't think it's so much a case of Essek "missing" Caleb's advances out of demisexual naivete (a narrative I resent a bit, to be honest); rather I think on Essek's end, he WAS aware that Caleb was trying to ingratiate himself to him, and was cautious of that, but ultimately was won over because beyond Caleb's attempts at manipulation, there was also genuine shared interest and chemistry between them.

In other words, imo, early Shadowgast wasn't a case of Caleb trying and failing and then eventually succeeding to seduce Essek. It was a case of two people who are very cautious and distrustful and manipulative by nature feeling each other out and realizing that they genuinely enjoy each other's company, and, eventually (very eventually, as it turns out) figuring out a balance between them that accounts for the complicated relationship they each have with intimate relationships.

[veronicathegoddess]

thinking about telling them you're in mind games and being manipulated and they start off slowly gaslighting and manipulating you but eventually keep going until you don't even know who you are anymore and when you beg and plead with them to stop, they just laugh at you and say "but i thought you wanted this? you asked for this don't you remember? and now you want me to stop? well you're out of luck angel, i'll only stop when i've made you completely lose who you are"

[jheselbraum]

Much like how the majority of people who wanted totk Zelda to stay a dragon at the end actually wanted Zelda to be a big tiddy dragon girl, I feel like what a lot of people who say they wanted a more complex Ganondorf for totk actually just want a Ganondorf that's a tumblr sexyman, and are too racist to realize that he already is one

[feedingicetothedog]

god that conversation about louis and the photographs and the way that louis tries to sell it as happenstance or luck, he's just in the right place at the right time, he's just observing, talking like he's henri cartier-bresson and claudia immediately calls out the fact that he's using the mind gift to vet these moments. it's not spontaneous, he read their minds and knew what was gonna happen. it's the illusion of authenticity while not being so far outside the concept that he can still feel like it was random, it had nothing to do w him. her asking "is that how you sell yourself yourself?"

[natjennie]

kabru not wanting to eat monster but always being polite about it anyway and then listing a bunch of cities in his head to distract himself while he eats... everyone in this place is autistic huh.