#obviously some characters are worse than others

[in1-nutshell]

TRANSFORMERS ONE IS OUT! Unfortunately, I couldn't watch it in theaters because work and money is a bit tight right now. I can't wait for this movie to come out in YouTube Movies to watch it. Since we both know it's obviously gonna have a sad ending, do you mind if I added a bit more sadness in this request? Orion Pax has a younger sibling that he raised named Buddy. Buddy loves both Orion Pax and D-16 as a family. Buddy is willing to bite some ankles if anybody was mean to someone Buddy cares about. Buddy is also tagging along with them in the adventures, much to Orion's dismay and dread. I heard there is gonna be a fight between them at the near ending. Buddy is horrified and scared that those two bots that Buddy considered their family is now fighting each other as enemies. Buddy begs and screams at them to stop, but Optimus and Megatron obviously won't. When Optimus and Megatron shoot each other at the same time, in a moment of panic and terror for their loved ones - Buddy jumps in between them and get hit by both of their shots accidentally that immediately offlined Buddy. They both stopped fighting in shock and grief. Buddy's death was the final straw between Optimus and Megatron's relationship. When Megatron and Optimus went in their separate ways, they both knew the war had begun. Characters: Orion Pax, D-16, Bumblebee, and Elita-one. Please and thank you!

Trying to get the TF1 fics out a bit early so we have something to read.

Hope you enjoy!

Slight mention of spoiler in the movie

Bot Buddy being Orion Pax's younger sibling

SFW, Platonic, Familial, Angst, Character death (you have been warned!), Cybertronian reader

TF1

Buddy was one of the youngest miners in the group.

They did get some special treatment from certain bots but was otherwise expected to act just like everyone else.

One bot in particular took interest in the younger bot.

Orion Pax was his name.

He saw a lot of himself in the younger bot and offered his companionship.

The younger bot quickly latched onto him faster than rust.

It didn’t take long for them to fall into a sibling dynamic.

Soon D-16 was introduced.

D-16: “So let me get this straight. You saw them and decided to be their friend and the next thing you know your siblings?” Orion: “That’s pretty much it.” D-16 shakes his helm in good humor. D-16: “Sometimes I can’t with you.” Buddy swings their arms around him and Orion. Buddy: “Get used to it D! You’re one of us now!” D-16: “As long as you’re not like this rusty bucket its fine.” Orion: “Hey!” Buddy chuckles: “Don’t worry about that D.” 2 weeks later… D-16 watching Buddy trying to drop kick Darkwing after he ‘accidentally’ knocked their energon cart. D-16: “Primus… they’re worse…” Orion pats D-16 on the back. Orion: “Yep… want to help them out?” Both mech’s wince seeing Buddy get punched in the chassis. D-16: “…Fine.”

Buddy always kept their brothers on their pedes with their antics.

Always kept them both on alert.

Buddy loved to randomly jump on their shoulders or try and pick them up.

Despite their antics, Buddy was a good miner and even managed to do something most miners couldn’t do.

Get on Elita-One’s good side.

No one knows what exactly happened between them both for Buddy to get a bit of favoritism.

Elita refuses to elaborate and Buddy likes to see bots squirm for the answer.

Buddy hands Elita a spare jetpack. Elita: “Buddy I already have a jetpack.” Buddy: “We’re going to need it.” Elita raises an optic but ignores it. Later… Elita: “… How did you know—” Buddy: “The jetpacks are old Elita. Its only a matter of time before someone falls from a faulty one.” Elita pats their helm. Elita: “When I get promoted, I might just ask to move you to be my assistant.” Buddy: “No! I don’t want any more work!” Elita: “Too late, already considering it.” Buddy: “Orion tell her to stop being mean!”

Buddy was helping Elita get used to her new role in waste management when they saw who was on the Iacon 500.

They cheered for their brothers with everyone else.

The bot let out a yelp when they saw D-16 get hurt, but quickly smiled seeing Orion try and help him to the finish line.

…Too bad Chromia won the race.

Good news, Buddy was now a couple shanix richer from the betting pool.

 While they were heading to the med bay to go see Orion and D-16, they quickly hid seeing Darkwing picking them up and leading them somewhere.

Orion and D-16 talking to B-127 when something big falls on to the conveyer belt and jumps off it. Buddy dusts themselves from the junk. Buddy turns and waves at the bots. B-127: “New friend!” Orion and D-16: “Buddy!?” They both go over to Buddy looking for any injuries. Buddy: “Hey quit it! I’m not dying!” Orion: “What are you doing here?” Buddy: “Well I was going to the med bay to congratulate you two, but Darkwing got to you first. Then I had to wait a while until the coast was clear and find out where you were sent. It’s kinda fun going through the shoot though.” D-16: “What you did was—” B-127 pushes D-16 out of the way and shakes Buddy’s servo. B-127: “Hi there! I’m B-127, or you can call me B or—” Buddy: “Wait! I can be B and you can be BB!” B-127: “Or maybe we can go by the Double B’s!” B-127 and Buddy start chatting up a storm. Orion: “What just happened?” D-16: “I don’t know but I don’t like it…”

Orion catches Buddy up on the new information on Alpha Trion.

Buddy is ready to go.

Orion and D-16 try to get them to stay, but Buddy ends up joining.

They are having a blast climbing the crates inside the train as Orion tries to get Elita.

Buddy stared long and hard at the landscape when the group reached to the surface.

Is sprinting with B-127 the moment the giant rock formations start getting closer.

Grips Orion and D-16’s servo when they all get tossed out of the train.

Their chatting and B-127’s chatting makes the other older bots consider gagging them for the remainder of the trip.

When reaching the cave of the fallen Prime’s, they gently hold D-16’s servo as they silently mourn for Megatronus Prime.

Hides behind Elita when Alpha Trion comes back online and nearly decks Orion in the face.

Cries a little bit seeing what Sentinel had done to the other Prime’s.

They deserved so much better than that fate.

Absolutely seething with D-16 when the group sees Sentinel giving the Quintesson’s THEIR hard earned energon.

Once everyone gets their T-cog’s, Buddy is the first to try and transform… unfortunately they did not get it the first time.

The group was running down the hill. Buddy’s helm gets tucked into their frame. Buddy: “I CAN’T SEE! I CAN’T SEE!” Orion starts laughing Orion: “HAHAHAHA—AAH WHERE’S MY HEAD?!”

Buddy gets a bad feeling about D-16 when he starts talking to Orion but brushes it off as stress.

They hoped they were right, especially after he admitted to wanting to terminate Sentinel.

Don’t get them wrong, they absolutely hate the bot now, but to go so far as terminate him?

It didn’t seem right.

Was the first one to get tased and wake up.

They get excited the second they see Starscream, Shockwave and Soundwave.

B-127 and Buddy both tell the other’s who the High guard were.

An excitement that quickly turns into frightened when they see D-16 beating up Starscream.

They tried to get to him, but the crowd wouldn’t let them.

Buddy looked over at Orion, both sharing the same look of worry and fear for their brother.

They end up getting captured by Arachnid with B-127 and D-16 after the explosion.

Orion is riddled with guilt the second Elita tells him that Buddy, D-16 and B-127 were captured with some of the high guard.

Thankfully, he and Elita made a plan with the remainder of the guard to help get the others and bring Sentinel to justice.

Back at Iacon…

Buddy was in between D-16 and B-127 on the ground, restrained as Sentinel prattled about having them executed.

They felt their spark stop for a second when D-16 stood up.

Arachnid had to restrain them when Sentinel started branding Megatronus’s face on D-16’s chassis.

Buddy kicks the spider in the back of one of her legs. She lets go. The younger bot then kicks Sentinel in the back of his knee joints before helm butting him. Snetinel staggers back a bit. They stood in front of D-16 with fury in their optics. Buddy: “Touch my brother again and I swear I will send you to Primus myself!” Many of the captured bots looked in surprise at the young bot protecting the fallen miner. B-127: “Buddy just stay down!” D-16 tries to stand up the second he sees Sentinel start to move to them. D-16: “Buddy get out of the way!” Buddy: “Fat chance!” Buddy tries to kick Sentinel again, but this time the Prime grabbed their pede and with a swift movement twisted it. SNAP! Buddy: “AAAAHHH—” WHAM! Sentinel punched Buddy across the face sending them skidding across the floor. D-16: “BUDDY!” He glares at Sentinel. D-16: “Stop! Your fight is with me!” Sentinel: “No, they made it personal when they helm butted me. Its time to make an example.”

Thankfully the train had just crashed into the building.

Orion hops out and helps D-16 and Buddy up.

Orion briefly thinks on punching Sentinel in the face but is quickly drowned by D-16 yelling that he was going to terminate Sentinel.

Buddy tried to tell Orion that something was wrong, but their older brother was gone, off to tell everyone the truth about what Sentinel did.

They did their best in battling the other guards with their bad pede.

The bot screamed in horror when they saw D-16 and Sentinel going off the edge.

It took them a while to get to where the fight was.

They remembered seeing D-16 holding an extremely injured Orion over the edge of a dark hole.

They didn’t remember screaming, but their voice box started glitching when they saw D-16 let go of Orion’s servo.

Elita and B-127 were by their side holding them tightly, afraid they would try and jump off the ledge to get to him.

Buddy remembered looking at D-16 giving his speech.

Their audial winced when he called himself ‘Megatron’.

They had to close their optics for a second, not believing they had seen a newer version of Orion, now calling himself Optimus Prime.

The two former brothers fought.

Megatron and Optimus were on the ground wrestling the former’s fusion cannon. They barely registered the sounds of pedes coming closer. Megatron: “Let go!” Optimus: “Never!” Suddenly the cannon went off. A scream. THUD! Both mech’s look over and see Buddy’s frame laying on the ground…so still. Optimus quickly gets off Megatron and runs to Buddy. Optimus: “Buddy!” Optimus gets to the frame. Buddy’s optics were offline and there was a smoldering hole in the middle of their chassis where their spark was supposed to be. Optimus gently cradles them. Optimus: “Buddy! Buddy please! Buddy… please… don’t…” He gently hugs the limp frame, not caring in that moment if Megatron blasted him. Megatron just stood up and stared. He wanted to scream. To yell. Megatron wanted to hug his little sibling frame and pray to Primus that this was not happening. Optimus gently places the frame down, stands up and looks at Megatron dead in the optics. Optimus: “Take the High Guard and go. You are banished from Iacon.” Megatron starts walking away but stops for a moment to take one last look at Buddy’s still frame before yelling for his troops to follow him.

There was a small funeral held for Buddy.

 Optimus made sure to hold it together in front of the others.

But Elita and B-127 caught him alone, sobbing with a picture of Buddy, Orion, and D-16, smiling, without a care in the world.

The two bots held their leader tightly as he continued to sob.

Megatron mourned for Buddy in private.

It was only right.

He cried in silence holding a picture of him, Buddy, and Orion Pax on their first day of mining.

In the safety of his habsuite, he could cry all he wanted before his Decepticon’s expected him to come out with a rally cry.

[iwassupremacy]

Perfect Girl

Sawamura Daichi x f reader

Part one

Summary: It’s been a few days since your night with Daichi and even though you exchanged phone numbers and he texted you, you haven’t yet gathered the courage to answer him and even less to see him again. But you can’t stop yourself from wanting more.

Warnings: smut, aged up characters, softdom!Daichi, sub!reader, inexperienced!reader, sub drop (low key?), age gap of 7 years LEGAL OFC, thigh riding, nipple play,

“YOU HAD SEX?!” your best friend screams and dramatically slaps her hand on her mouth. You visibly cringed and looked away. “Don’t say it. Makes it real.” You mumbled.

“I’m fucking saying it. It’s fucking real, Y/N. You got laid. And looking at the way you’re blushing, it wasn’t bad. I would even dare to say you enjoyed yourself.” She laughed pointing at your neck “And clearly he enjoyed you too.”

You groaned. “Shut up. I’m lost. I don’t know what to feel or to think.”

The look in her face changed to something way more empathetic. She scooted closer to you and wrapped her arms around your fragile figure. “It’s okay, babe. How about you tell me about it first? If you want to.”

“He said all that?! Ohh he’s a talker.” Your best friend was literally kicking her legs in the air and squeaking. You frowned. “What?”

“You know, some guys don’t really talk much during sex. They just do their thing and are pretty much quiet while doing it. Some guys don’t even do anything tho. That’s when you have to take the lead.” She explained.

Your eyes widened. The idea of taking the lead in a situation like that frightening to you.

“But from what you just told me he sounds like he’s got both down just fine.” She calmed you

“Anyway, what next? What did you do? Do you have his number?”

You bit your lip and told her about the night three days ago.

After Daichi made you trink what felt like a gallon of water, you obviously had to go to the toilet. Finally peeing after he annoyed you about that all night.

Not once did he leave your side, checking up on you and asking wether you were fine or not several times.

It made you feel all giddy and made your stomach twist in a very comfortable way. But you still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling inside you.

You just lost your virginity. Your virtue. To a random man you met at a club.

Sure he made it very clear that he was interested in you beyond just sex and assured you plenty of times that you didn’t have to sleep with him. But still.

What if that wasn’t true? Or worse. What if you did go on a few dates with him and all your chemistry got lost after immediately doing it?

How would you explain this to your parents? You probably shouldn’t. Would he ever meet your parents?

“You’ve been sitting on the toilet staring at me for more than 10 minutes now, sweetheart. I can see the wheels turning in your pretty head. What’s going on?”

You got torn away from your thoughts by his voice and only then realized you were actually staring at him standing across from you, leaning against the sink with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh. Nothing. I’m sorry for making you wait.” You quickly wiped yourself and flushed the toilet.

You stood up and now the two of you were just a few inches apart, both still naked and staring at each other.

Daichi’s brow raised. “No need to apologize. You are definitely thinking about something, don’t lie to me. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

Once again his natural dominant behavior and especially his communication skills left you blushing and looking away.

But he didn’t have it. Instead he took your face in his hands and made you look at him again. You quickly realized tonight that he was a fan of eye contact and verbal answers.

“Come on. Let’s take a shower first.” He gently took your hands in his, kissing your forehead and leading the way into the shower.

The hot water soon hit both your hair and skin as well as Daichis and made you relax. Without realizing you had held a breath that you now finally let out.

For a good while neither of you said anything, just standing next to each other, enjoying the hot water.

But for some reason the silence made you doubt yourself. Did he not like your performance? Would he send you home after your shower and never talk to you again? Maybe he was like this with all girls and just did what he thought he had to?

You were clearly not the only girl he had slept with recently and it made you… jealous? Insecure? Maybe both.

He probably had a lot of comparisons he was thinking of right now. You for sure weren’t the best he ever had.

Your thoughts were interrupted by your own loud sob. Your eyes widened immediately and your hand went to cover your mouth. You didn’t even realize you were crying.

Daichi didn’t say anything and instead put his hand on the back of your wet hair and pushed your head into his chest, hugging you to him.

His second hand landed on your back, gently brushing it with his fingertips.

-

Later the two of you were lying in bed, your head on his naked chest and his hand in your hair, both trying to get some sleep.

You hadn’t talked since your little breakdown in the shower and even though you knew Daichi was probably doing it out of respect for you and not because he was angry, you still felt bad.

“I’m sorry about crying in the shower. That must’ve been so offensive to you.” you mumbled, tracing shapes with your finger on his stomach.

“Don’t. Don’t do that. I know all of this is new to you, that alone is a valid reason to feel overwhelmed. And then all that stuff with your family has to be rough. I get it, don’t worry. And you’re definitely not the first girl to cry after having slept with me, I can be a lot in bed.”

You looked up at him with a confused expression “What do you mean? I didn’t feel like it was too much.”

“I said a lot, sweetheart, not too much. Besides you didn’t get the full experience. Or did you think a power dynamic like this was the average experience, hm?” He winked at you, chuckling when your face visibly heated up.

“I- I don’t know what’s average, but I was wondering what all those hints were about…” you mumbled.

“You’ll see soon enough. If that’s what you want of course? Maybe you’d prefer someone softer who’d let you lead if you want?” His face tilted a little to the side with a questioning look.

“I don’t think so? I liked it that way. I mean I don’t know anything different, so it’s just- I am-“ you sighed “confused. I feel exhausted and anxious about what’s to come.”

“That’s okay. Don’t feel pressured. I am sorry to have asked you this when I knew you were struggling. Let’s just sleep, okay? The world will look much different tomorrow.”

You simply nodded but didn’t move, still holding your body up on his chest and looking at him. “Daichi?”

He didn’t reply and instead just raised his eyebrows. Your stomach twisted in a funny way but you still didn’t look away from him.

“Kiss me, please.”

Daichi grinned, wrapping his arms around you and turning the two of you over so that you were now lying under him.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

“Wow. That’s like… such a green flag?? What a man. What happened next? Don’t keep me in the dark here!” Your best friend demandingly snapped her fingers in front of your face.

You cleared your throat. “I left. I-“ you closed your eyes and sighed “I snuck out in the morning while he was still sleeping.”

Your best friends jaw practically hit the floor. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. I- I felt bad, I guess? He was so nice and I am new to all of this. I can’t give him what he gave to me. The communication skills and confidence, I don’t have that.” You rambled, playing with your hands.

“Oh baby.” She pulled you in a tight hug, wrapping her arms around you again. “Look, from what I heard, he is very understanding. So I don’t think you need to worry about that at all. And confidence is something that can be gained. And communication can be learned. It’s not like your parents teached you much when it comes to those things.”

You quickly looked at her, eyes blown wide. “That’s another problem. How do I explain any of this to my parents? They will absolutely abandon me if they hear any of this.”

“Don’t tell them. Y/N, you’re 23, they are not entitled to this information. It’s your life. Your body. Your choice. I know you learned that your opinions and needs don’t matter but that’s so not true! And I think Daichi would be great at teaching you this.”

She silently giggled “Among other things.”

You groaned, letting your head hit her shoulder hard. “I have his number.”

She squeaked. “Even better! I would’ve just asked Sugawara for his number but if you have it already, we can text him now!”

Your face heated up. “He already texted me. I didn’t reply.”

“Rude. Come on, let me see.”

unknown: Hey you, when I woke up this morning you were already gone. Are you okay? Please text me once you see this, I’m a little worried.

saturday, 10:06 a.m

“Girl, you didn’t even safe his number?? And you completely ignored him! Not on my watch. We’re replying now.”

“But-“ “now.” She interrupted you. “How about something along the lines of ‘sorry I had a lot to think about. Would you like to meet up and talk about some things?’ How does that sound?”

“I don’t wanna meet up and talk about some things… he makes me nervous.” This was something you so far hadn’t even admitted to yourself. He made you nervous. What did that mean for you?

“Very cute. But you still have to see him again, babe. If you want this to work that is.”

-

Daichi was just heading out of the police station when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Quickly he looked at him expecting an important call.

What he saw instead surprised him.

Y/N: Hey… I’m so sorry for ignoring you… I had a lot to think about and needed some time, but I’m good now. Would you like to meet up?

thursday, 2:34 p.m

He didn’t expect to hear from you so soon or at all to be honest. But that wasn’t to say he wasn’t glad you answered him. One might even say he was relieved.

Ever since he woke up and you weren’t there anymore he had an anxious feeling in his chest because even though he wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t find you, he still wanted to see you again.

The last time Daichi was in a serious relationship, was a very long time ago and although he was content with being single and having unattached flings, he felt at the age of 30 it was time to settle down.

Of course he would’ve never imagined to meet a random girl at a club who was not only seven years younger than him but also extremely inexperienced. But he couldn’t help it.

You were constantly on his mind and he wanted to show you every thing you were missing out on so badly. Not only sexually but in general.

Due to his dominant character, Daichi was used to being the caregiver and in charge in his previous relationships but with you it was different.

He wanted to protect you, provide for you and make you forget every bad thing that had ever happened to you. He wanted to take you away from your unsafe and toxic environment and show you love. Real unconditional love.

Which was kinda crazy and new to him, considering he only knew you for six days.

Naturally Daichi immediately answered your text once he got in his car.

Daichi: Don’t worry about it. I just got off of work, do you have time right now?

thursday 2:46 p.m

To his surprise you quickly texted him that you could be ready in an hour and you agreed to meeting at your favourite café.

Daichi smiled. You would meet again in an hour and he wasn’t just nervous but also excited to see your nervous composure which you would for sure have. You were cute like that.

-

You brushed down your dress on last time, looking down at your body. You were wearing probably one of the most revealing outfits you had ever worn.

Just two weeks ago you would‘ve gasped at the black dress at it’s low cut neckline, that heavily exposed your cleavage, or the fact that it ended in the middle of your thighs, exposing your legs.

“You had sex with this man, y/n. Wear the damn dress.” Your best friend had said. She also made you shave.

Which was only a little embarrassing to be honest.

“I’m not gonna do it.” you had complained. “If he sees it, I’d seem desperate.” She had only laughed at that. “If he sees it, you had every reason to do it, honey”

She was right with this of course but it still felt weird. If your parents or anyone from church could see you like this, you’d be in big trouble.

“You gonna go inside or just stare at the door?” A hand got placed on your lower back and you immediately jumped.

Your body tensed and all the hair on your body was suddenly standing up.

Just when you wanted to turn around the hand removed itself, brushing your hair off your shoulder. “Relax, sweetheart. It’s just me.”

“Daichi!” You shouted, almost too excited. You went to give him a hug, but stopped yourself. How do people greet each other that are romantically involved?!

Daichi raised his eyebrows at your action and chuckled, hugging you to his chest. “How are you feeling?”

This chest vibrated against yours while speaking, making your body tingle from how deep his voice was.

Slowly you broke up the hug by pushing at his chest. Your hands remained on his chest and you thought of how you were touching him there just a few nights ago when the two of you were naked and how much he seemed to enjoy it.

Your eyes widened in shock. What an inappropriate thought. Embarrassed you took a step back, staring at him with blown eyes.

Once you noticed the amused look on his face you quickly looked back down at your feet again. It was almost as if he knew what you thought.

“How are you feeling, y/n?” He asked again, eyebrows raised again, staring at you a little too intense.

“Good, I think. You?” You tilted your head slightly to the side looking at him through blown eyes. Daichi doubted you even noticed the innocent look on your face.

“You think?” He frowned, slowly starting to push you in the direction of the door of the café.

You almost stumbled at the gesture, luckily catching your step in time. “Yes, been a little… in my head?”

“I see. There’s a lot to talk about, hm?”

You simply nodded at that, walking through the door Daichi held open for you. “Thanks.” You muttered.

Daichi bit his lip at that. He just loved how polite you were. So well behaved.

“Where would you like to sit?” You turned around and asked him. Again Daichi bit his lip, this time you noticed of course, staring at them.

Quickly you cleared your throat, shaking your head a little. “Ehm, I like window seats but we can sit wherever you like!”

“A window seat sounds perfect to me. Choose your favourite one, sweetheart.”

You opened your mouth to protest, you asked him to choose, but you figured Daichi wouldn’t give in anyway so you just opted for your regular seat by the window.

Once you had taken you seat, Daichi pulling back your chair and having you sit first, of course, a waitress came quickly to take your orders.

You chose your favourite caramel latte and a brownie while Daichi unsurprisingly sticked to a simple black coffee and nothing else.

“So… how was work?“ You awkwardly asked, avoiding eye contact. Daichi chuckled and shook his head a little.

“Unadventurous, I got some paperwork done for the most part. What is it you do, exactly? You never told me. I remember you dodging the question several times last Friday.“

Of course you dodged a question like that after all he had said about the religious beliefs of your family. You swallowed thickly and just when you were about to spin some lie for him, the waitress came with your order.

Immediately your shoulder relaxed which Daichi realised, furrowing his brows. Still he politely thanked the woman, his eyes never leaving your shy frame though.

When she was gone and he still looked at you, not saying or doing anything, you felt yourself starting to squirm.

And then the inevitable happened. You began rambling.

“Did you know that in some parts of the world it‘s not allowed to call oat milk, oat milk? Because milk is defined by being drawn from a living animal and therefore-“

Suddenly Daichi grabbed your aggressively gesturing hands, shutting you up right away. “What are you talking about?“ He laughed.

“Sorry“ You muttered embarrassed by your own behaviour.

“Were you trying to make me forget my question?“ He still had a smug smirk plastered over his face.

“No! Yes…“ his smile grew at your nervous breakout, muttering a quiet cute to himself.

“But it wasn‘t on purpose! Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed or just don‘t know what to do I start talking about the most random stuff because I can‘t deal with uncomfortable silence and silence is always uncomfortable.“

“You think so? What about when you were at my place, hm? There was a lot of silence between us, did you feel uncomfortable then?“ His head tilted slightly to the side, mustering you.

You sighed defeatedly. “No, of course not, but that was different.“

“How so?“

You sighed again. No way out of this conversation. At least you made him actually forget about his earlier question. “Because I wasn‘t uncomfortable, I guess? I don‘t know.“

“Sounds very reasonable, sweetheart. I feel proud you are comfortable with me. But you still managed to successfully dodge my question, hm. There‘s no job to be embarrassed about or will you be in trouble when you tell me, because I‘m a policeman?“ He tried to lighten the mood.

You managed to laugh a little, but still looked worried. Daichi feared he hit a nerve and just when he wanted to reassure you that you did in fact not have to tell him anything you don‘t want to, you spilled.

“There‘s no job to be embarrassed about because“ you mindlessly picked apart your brownie like a little kid would “because there is no job at all.“

Daichi only smiled a pitiful smile at that, his thumbs caressing your wrists. “That‘s it?“ He chuckled.

“Baby, you made me think you did something highly illegal or inappropriate. Why are you so embarrassed?“

You frowned, almost angry retreating your hands from his grip. “I‘m not just embarrassed, I am ashamed. I‘m in my twenties and have never worked a single day in my life, Daichi! What does that make me?“

“In your case a young, confused woman. If it‘s so horrible for you, why don‘t you change it?“

You swallowed thickly, now this topic again. You bit your lip, looking away from him and that‘s when he understood.

“Your family doesn‘t allow you to have a job, do they?“ He asked and you slightly shook your head at that. “Poor girl. You really have some issues to resolve, hm?“

You silently took a bite, the fork straying in your mouth for a little so you could subconsciously chew on it.

Daichi watched you for a few seconds before pulling it out of your mouth. You came back to reality and looked back at him with shocked eyes.

Your hand quickly covered your face. “Oh God, sorry! I‘m acting as if my life is terrible or something. Most people would probably be happy to be financed by their family and do whatever they want without working for it.“

“Don‘t apologise, I get it. You want to decide things for yourself and not depend on your parents for everything in your life. You don‘t want to be treated like a child.“ He concluded.

You paused for a second, looking at him through blown eyes. “Yes. Yes! That‘s exactly it. They are trying to make me depend on them, need them until I have a husband I can depend on and stay home and take of our children. I don‘t want that for myself.“

“And that’s fine, sweetheart. You‘re a grown woman, you can do whatever you want. I know that sounds impossible, but it‘s not. I can help you.“ He assured you, taking a sip from his coffee.

You smiled your first real smile for the day. “I think I would like that.“ Your smile dropped “But it‘s not gonna be easy for me… I tend to run away from my problems and ignore them.“

Daichi blew air through his nose, laughing. “I could tell.“

You blushed behind your mug. “‘M sorry.“ You mumbled.

“It‘s okay, I thought this might happen before things even got heated.“ He looked at you, winking. “Don‘t do it again though and don‘t ever ghost me afterwards. I was worried about you.“

“I‘m sorry. I was just so overwhelmed and I didn‘t want to make you feel like it was your fault that I felt this way and I figured it would be best if I handled things on my own.“

“You shouldn’t feel like you have to deal with things on your own. I want to know things, y/n. Talk to me, only then I can understand and help you. The things we did that night can be overwhelming just on their own, especially if done for the first time and with all your stuff on top, I wan‘t to be there for you.“

You put both your hands on your hot, reddened cheeks and simply nodded at his statement.

Daichi raised his brows, urging you to answer. Which you did with a mumbled ‘okay‘. For now he just accepted that.

-

Later when the two of you had finished your drinks and food, it was already getting dark and the shop was about to close.

“Let‘s get out of here, okay?“ Daichi suggested and you nodded.

He stood up before you could, taking your jacket and pulling his hand out for you to take. Of course he paid, too.

You smiled and shook your head a little. Waiting for his change at the register, he heard your laugh, looking back at you with a smirk and raised eyebrows, looking gorgeous in his leather jacket.

You bit your lip, looking back at your phone, where you were texting your best friend about what a gentleman he was being right now.

When he came back, Daichi put his hand on your lower back to lead you out of the café.

“Are you here by bus or is your car parked here somewhere.“ Daichi asked in the parking lot.

You scrunched your nose. It was getting quite cold. “Bus. I don‘t have a driver‘s license.“ You admitted.

Wordlessly Daichi took off his jacket, putting it over yours and said:“Let me guess, your parents said you don‘t need one.“

You nodded and he shook his head. “I‘ll drive you then.“

-

The drive was rather quiet, only the occasional directions given by you interrupted the comfortable silence between the two of you.

For once, you didn’t feel the need to ramble. For once, you enjoyed the silence.

The only thing that got your heart racing, and embarrassingly enough your thighs squeezing, was his hand resting on the inside of your knee every time he had to look back or the car came to a halt.

Of course Daichi noticed you squirming but spared you the embarrassment of saying anything. He couldn’t help but smile to himself tho. Cute.

Once you arrived at your apartment, his hand once again landed on your leg, this time a little higher, squeezing your thigh.

“Meet me again this week, hm? I can’t seem to get enough of you.” He chuckled and started rubbing your leg on the inside with his thumb.

Again you squeezed your legs at that, immediately clearing your throat to distract him from your uncontrolled actions.

“Okay…” you murmured, avoiding eye contact with him.

Daichi chuckled again, slowly removing his hand from your thigh. Without a second thought you grabbed it, looking at him wide eyed.

He just raised his eyebrows at that, smirking a little. But when he didn’t say or do anything except for staring back at you, you all of a sudden felt incredibly nervous, letting go of his hand again.

“Sorry! I don’t know why I did that.”

Without a word, Daichi just smiled and just pulled his seat back, spreading his legs a little.

“Come, sit.” He said, patting his thigh.

Your eyes went even wider. “No, no. The space is-“

“Plenty enough. Sit now.” He said again, this time a little firmer, making it almost sound like an order.

Once you unbuckled your seatbelt, finally did he budge by lending you a hand.

You looked at him, feeling a little helpless but still awkwardly took it and started climbing over the middle console. Daichi watched you with an amused expression.

You clumsily landed on his lap, but only on one of his legs, your core pressing against his thigh. You looked at him with hot cheeks and put your hands on his shoulders to push yourself up again.

When you tried to move and sit on both his legs though, he stopped you with his hands on your waist. “Don’t. Like this is fine.”

Your eyes went even wider, if possible, your hands squeezing his shoulders, still trying to push your weight up. When he carefully, but with force, pulled you down, you could only yelp surprised by his sudden action.

“Are you sure? I know I can be quite hea-“

He interrupted you by putting his hand on your mouth and as if on instinct you grabbed his wrist, with both of your hands.

Diachi took in the sight in front of him with dark eyes, his pants growing incredibly tight. Your eyes were innocently blown, cheeks flushed, thighs squeezed together around his own and hands holding onto him. He had to resist the urge to lower his hand a little and wrap it around your tiny neck.

He groaned at his own, intruding, yet appealing thought. But when he saw the unsure look on your face, he was painfully reminded why he couldn't indulge in such actions with you, at least not yet.

So instead of doing what he so painfully wanted to, Daichi let his hand go through your hair, putting some loose strands behind your ear and giving you an understanding expression,

"Don't finish that sentence, sweetheart, or it will wound my pride." He laughed at your confused look with the little head tilt, you probably never noticed.

But instead of explaining what he meant, he very slowly, very carefully pulled you against him.

Your chest hit his, your arms curled around his neck, having your fingertips play with the hair at the back of his head.

You subconsciously sucked your lower lip between your teeth, biting it.

He car was deadly silent, so was the parking lot and for the moment you forgot that any one of your neighbours could come by and see you like this.

Not that they would care.

Still biting at your lip, you admired the face of the man below you. Sharp jaw, deep brown eyes, a little stubble on his chin, fluffy, short hair.

Your thoughts were disrupted by Daichi’s finger pulling your lip out of your mouth with his thumb, caressing it in the process.

You gasped at that, leaving your mouth open a little, perfect for his thumb to find its way inside.

At first only a little, testing the waters, but when you didn’t resist, Daichi chuckled, this time differently, it was dark and fucking sexy.

It made you whimper and when he pushed his thumb all the way in, you couldn’t help but let out a full on moan.

You can feel your entire face, ears and neck heat up from embarrassment, but you didn’t care anymore, when Daichi, with a hoarse, deep voice orders you to suck.

Without a second thought, you do as you’re told and you wonder if he has you wrapped around his fingers right now, if you would do everything he told you. Probably.

“Good girl. You’re so perfect for me, aren’t you?”

You look at him through hazy eyes when his thumb leaves you with a quiet plop of your mouth.

You can see him swallow thickly, hands wandering down to your ass, squeezing your breasts and hips in the process.

“You tell me if any of it gets too much, okay?” He asks, kneading your ass.

You’re overwhelmed, fisting his shirt but he still has your cunt gushing and clenching.

“Yes. Kiss me, Daichi, please.” You whined, pushing back against his hands.

Your clit rubbed on his rough jeans perfectly from your movement, making you whimper. “Oh~”

“Feels good, hm? Keep moving if you like it, princess.” Daichi kissed your throat as he let his hands wander under the skirt of your dress.

His fingertips felt a thin layer of lace, making him frown. He looked up again your red face.

“Where are your granny panties? I liked those, you know.”

You blew air in your cheeks, letting out an embarrassed squeal. “I just thought maybe you’d like these better?”

He couldn’t help but smile boyishly at your confession. “So you hoped we might have sex today?”

Your eyes grew wide at his bold statement. “No! I- just in case. My friend- oh god this is terrible.”

Your head fell forward, hitting his chest. You could feel it vibrating when Daichi laughed. “I’m just teasing, sweetheart. Wear whatever you feel like wearing.”

You laughed a little at him and for a few seconds you didn’t look up, gathering your courage. “So about that kiss-“

Before you could even finish your sentence, Daichis lips were already on yours, his tongue licking your lower lip, gently nibbling at it.

You sighed, your body relaxing against him, one of your hands burying itself deep in his hair, the other brushing his face while desperately letting him in your mouth.

Daichi’s hands grab your hips and with a little force, he gets you to move again. Your wet cunt rubbing on his leg.

Your breath stuttered at the friction, your eyes squeezing shut.

But you couldn’t stop moving, slowly rutting against Daichi’s leg.

After he realised, you’d move on your own, Daichi slowly started to pull down the straps of your dress, exposing your bra.

It was lacy as well without any cup, exposing your hard nipples. It probably matched your panties and Daichi would love to see it, but the sight of you humping his thigh was much more inviting.

You were pretty much in your own world, barely realizing him removing your bra until he twisted one of your nipples, making you jump and gasp.

Your hips fastened, hands desperately shaking, fisting Daichi‘s shirt and hair.

He was still playing with one of your breasts, while his other hand was slowly moving up your back.

“You okay, princess?” He whispered in your ear, his hand tangling in your hair, slightly pulling your head back to expose your neck.

You moaned at that, quickly nodding your head.

Of course he wouldn’t have that, his hand leaving your chest and touching your neck and chin again. “I asked if you were okay. Answer me properly, sweetheart.”

Your eyes went wide, lips parting slightly to let out a quiet whimper. “I’m okay. Daichi, please. I can’t~ hah.”

Your hips were still moving, slower than before. Daichi raised his brows at you, hands now cradling your face.

“Fuck~” he cursed under his breath. You were literally perfect, with your blown eyes, messy hair framing your face, lips swollen and face read.

“What is it, sweetheart? Tell me, come on.” He leaned in really close, his lips brushing yours. “I know you can do it.”

Your face went even redder, heat spreading all the way to your ears and neck. “I can’t~” your breath hitched “I can’t- cum like this.”

You let out an embarrassed whine, trying to hide your face. He didn’t let you though, still gripping your face.

“Hmm. Thank you for telling me, princess. Such a good girl.” He said against your lips, lightly biting your lower lip and pulling it.

Once again you whined, your hands gripping his biceps. Your hips stopped, thighs pressing together around his leg.

“Come on, princess.” Daichi chuckled, tapping your thigh. “Spread your legs for me.”

You bit your lip, slowly swinging your leg over his, now fully sitting in his lap.

Daichi started getting more comfortable in his seat, pulling it all the way back, sliding down a little and man spreading as far as this position allowed.

You looked at him with hot cheeks, legs now equally spread. Everything he did was just so attractive to you.

So of course you couldn’t keep in your high pitched moan when he pulled your lower half towards him and pushed your back against the steering wheel.

Your dress slid up all the way to your stomach like this, leaving only your lacy, wet panties to cover you up.

Daichi looked at you, taking the way you gave yourself to him so willingly in, smirk plastered on his face.

Suddenly his eyes darkened, expression changing to something that almost looked like possessiveness.

“Fuck I love your body, princess. Especially your titts, don’t get me wrong. But they’re for my eyes only, do you understand?”

You just looked at him with a frown, head slightly tilted to the side, not fully understanding what he was trying to say.

Daichi chuckled again, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe you didn’t understand him. He looked you straight in the eyes, intensely mustering you.

Without another word he slowly pulled the straps of your dress up again, his fingertips brushing your arms in the process, making you shiver.

When he was done, his hands gripped your shoulders, massaging them just the tiniest bit before moving down to your hips.

His eyes were still on you when he quietly said “I’m going to touch you now, okay?”

You squirmed at the thought of that, nodding and letting out a breath of what sounded like an “okay”

One of Daichi’s hands went even further down, pulling your panties to the side and sliding his middle finger from your hole up to your clit.

You hissed at that, trying to close your legs. Which of course Daichi didn’t have, his free hand was now gripping your leg, forcing it open a little more.

to be continued…

If you ever wondered what the man of my dreams is like. This is it. I made myself blush with this skandnwnskwnqne

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!

I am also kinda embarrassed how long it took me to write this… part 3 will hopefully not take as long… no promises, though it is already in progress

[gatorbites-imagines]

Helloooo, I can request omega bakugou helping his mate/alpha ace reader with their rut? I thought it might be sfw since u don't feel like writing smut atp :3

Omega Katsuki Bakugou x Ace Alpha male reader

Headcanons

(aged up characters, obviously)

Seeing ace requests in my inbox always make my smile because, hey, that’s me. Where my ace homies at. I’ve very rarely written omegaverse before, but I got so much worldbuilding about it, if you guys are interested.

I have too much worldbuilding and ideas about Omegaverse, so this is a little out of the norm for your usual smut filled rut plot.

For omegaverse, I never imagine that heats or ruts turn you into a horny breeding crazed animal. Yes, with your mate you will feel a lot more arousal and might have moments where you become fueled by your desires, but the majority can still control themselves.

For you, who’s Ace as well, the breeding part isn’t present more than your bodies instincts, but its nothing extreme. It feels the same as when you are really hungry. Sure, the feeling is there, but you can easily go about your day and not let it bother you.

But ruts do more than just make you want to have a lot of pups and crawl all over your omega, even if your omega is as hot as Katsuki is. It tends to cause a lot of stress on the body, from cramping muscles to overheating, dehydration, pacing and other factors that could lead to stress.

So, in Katsuki’s situation, his job during your ruts is mainly to take care of you. To make sure you’re eating and drinking enough fluids. That you aren’t overheating by patting you down with a cold cloth or using ice packs, or even making you cold baths.

He treats it a lot like a very horribly cold for the most part. Sure, your scent also makes him slick up a little and makes his own scent sweeter and riper, but Katsuki is still clear headed and more focused on taking care of you. Especially when he knows you do the same for him when he has heats.

I imagine Katsuki is still his usual snappy growly self, but he doesn’t yell, since ruts also makes your hearing more sensitive. Instead, he just grumbles a lot. With a lot of insults that has no heat thrown in, just because its Katsuki.

As an alpha, you don’t really need a nest, but you bet your damn ass Katsuki makes you one. And only with the best rut materials out there. He won’t accept anything but the best, and Katsuki honestly stresses more about your rut nest than he does his own heat nest.

It reaches a point where, during the early stages of your rut, you just kinda have to thrown yourself in it and show him you like it and accept it.

I could imagine Katsuki worrying a lot, since he knows your ace and he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable with his own scent. Does it bother you that he starts smelling like preheat? Does it make your rut worse? Better? Does he need to leave?

He would also fear crawling into the nest with you, at least in the beginning. After you pull him in multiple times, or tell him to get in, he starts to calm down. You can’t stop him from worrying though, it’s in his blood.

Being ace also doesn’t mean you don’t feel arousal and the like, so if you need to get off, he’s not gonna stop you, and wont touch you unless you want him too. Katsuki knows it won’t go farther than just some touching, if it even gets to that, and he’s more than satisfied.

Having and Ace partner honestly probably helps take some of the stress of his shoulders. He knows you won’t have the same expectations as some other alphas, that he needs to give up on his hero career and be a “good” omega.

Which is also why he’s ready to bend himself backwards to make sure you are comfortable during your rut. Even if staying nearby and taking as much care of you as possible pushes him into preheat, Katsuki is strong enough mentally to keep it bottled up until your rut it over.

This does mean you end up having to take care of him afterwards too, and you gotta call in favors with your friends to cover Katsuki’s patrols, since he didn’t expect to go into heat.

But all in all, ruts with Katsuki are a very planned out affair. Sure, you feel miserable and like you’re boiling on the inside, never able to find a comfortable sleeping position, and like you need to claw your own flesh off. But at least Katsuki is by your side the entire time, ready to hold your hand or hold you as a whole if you need too.

You do have to put up with his nagging though, but you know its just how he shows affection, so in the end it makes you purr at him. Which just gets Katsuki to get all flustered and pretty.

[mikuchan]

@bardoveryonder

My response on the infographic post itself got long, so I'm answering in a new post.

First, yes! I'm specifically talking about fandom attention, versus others like casual players and non-fandom players. AO3 is an accessible source of fandom-heavy stats + a platform I myself use and am familiar with, which is why I'm focusing on it (versus other fandom-heavy platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, etc).

The rhetoric of male characters being focused on because there are just more straight women on AO3 (/in fandom) is a myth. AO3 user centreoftheselights has some good data on this - here's their 2024 demographics post, where 81% of users identified as LGBTQ+, while only 12% of users identified as straight.

Obviously there's more conversation worth having here - being queer =/= attraction to women, and it doesn't mean unattraction to men. These demographics are also from polled AO3 users, not every AO3 user and not everyone in the BG3 fandom. But it offers a great basepoint.

Secondly, the tags I used for my graphic are all tags - not only main character or main ship tags, but also including every background, mistag, and side character appearance tagged across every work in the Baldur's Gate tag. Obviously, romance is a huge facet of fandom behavior, but that's why I chose to look at flat tags versus main character tags/etc (which I did in my character-specific deep dives). It isn't that there are less people shipping their Tavs with Mizora than Raphael -- it's that Mizora is showing up in all Baldur's Gate fanworks with less frequency than a male character with a similar role, even in side roles and other nonromantic/nonsexual roles -- and we can point to similar situations often enough to see a concerning pattern.

I want to clarify that this post isn't me saying the men characters are worse than the women, or that every m/m fan needs to write an equal amount of f/f fic or else. I also hope this isn't coming off as combative. I've been semi hands-off with long responses because I don't want to come off as just arguing with everyone who dares disagree with me. But since this is a question that keeps coming up, I wanted to post my response in full.

[mllemaenad]

It always strikes me as weird that there’s no point at which the Brotherhood and Minutemen automatically come into conflict that I can find. One would think that the Brotherhood’s methods of gathering supplies (basically racketeering) would automatically lead to issues with the Minutemen, whose job is to defend against such raiders. I know the game mechanics reason for this, but can you think of anything in-universe to explain it?

I think there are a few things going on here – some gameplay related, some thematically related. But to be honest I don't think it's always easy to separate those two things.

Point one - who's in charge?

If you follow Fallout 4's opening quests then you are the General of the Minutemen. That means that your Sole Survivor gets to make big important decisions like "do we go to war with this new group?" You do not lead the Brotherhood, Railroad or Institute (you may, of course, inherit control of the Institute at the end of the game, but that's after all these decisions take place) and consequently decisions about who your enemies are take place over your head. You can pick a side if two factions you belong to come into conflict ... but you can't ultimately change their politics.

There is no point in the story where you are forced to go to war with the Brotherhood as the General of the Minutemen ... but you absolutely can go to war with the Brotherhood as the General of the Minutemen.

So this is both a gameplay and narrative point: what does your Sole Survivor think of the Brotherhood of Steel? Maybe they are also a dedicated member of the Brotherhood, and have no problem with them "commandeering" supplies. Maybe you work with the Railroad, and their attitudes frighten you. Maybe you're a pure Minuteman character and just resent another group of raiders causing problems for your settlements.

Every other faction makes the decision of when to invoke "War never changes" for you. This one's on you.

Point two – who shot first?

Obviously, the Brotherhood of Steel does end up in forced conflict with the Railroad as part of the main quest. There's no way to make peace between them, no matter how many quests you've done for either faction.

But. Well. I mean – there's an obvious aggressor in this one. It's not like Desdemona wakes up one morning, finishes her Sugar Bombs and coffee and says "Hey, guys, given that we've just barely clawed our way back from extinction, doesn't picking a fight with a group of heavily armed thugs sound like a great idea?"

There are no Railroad quests that require you to directly attack the Brotherhood until after the Brotherhood tries to murder them. While Brotherhood and Railroad ideals are pretty clearly in conflict, the Railroad absolutely does not want to start another war. They're up to their eyeballs dealing with the Institute. The Brotherhood impose that conflict on them.

Why? Well, they tell you. The first reason is that the Brotherhood are intent on committing genocide, and they are aware that the Railroad's mission would require them to rescue and protect synths.

Even with their relatively small numbers, the Railroad is a constant threat to our operations. They've already proven to be resilient against superior forces, with a knack for disappearing when cornered. Worse still, they possess the capability to help synths flee the Institute. If we intend to end the synth menace, we need to plug the leaks. – Lancer Captain Kells Dialogue, Fallout 4

The other reason is because the Railroad has PAM, and the Brotherhood wants to steal her.

Our sources tell us that the Railroad has some sort of experimental or prototype robot in their headquarters. They're calling the "Predictive Analytic Machine," or "P.A.M." for short. Cute, huh? They use the robot for complex strategic calculations that are much more efficient than anything we can generate here. If you could use this holotape to decrypt the security on P.A.M.'s terminal, it will force the unit to return to the Prydwen. I'm certain we could put P.A.M.'s computing power to good use. Otherwise, destroy it. We wouldn't want it to fall into the Institute's hands. – Proctor Ingram Dialogue, Fallout 4

The conflict between the Brotherhood and Railroad occurs purely at the Brotherhood's instigation. While the Railroad doesn't like the Brotherhood they don't want to fight them unless they have to.

Which brings me back to the Minutemen. As an organisation, the Minutemen are pretty well indifferent to synths. Oh, they're one hundred percent opposed to the Institute sacking settlements with Gen 2s, or people being replaced by synths, or any other scenario where the people they've pledged to protect get hurt ... but there's no official policy on synths themselves.

Preston is broadly pro-freeing the synths because he's a good guy:

I never really thought about synths that way before, but it's hard to argue that they don't deserve freedom like everyone else. – Preston Garvey Dialogue, Fallout 4

But nothing about being involved with the Minutemen actually forces you to help a synth. So they are not on the Brotherhood's radar the way the Railroad are.

The Minutemen is also a pretty low tech organisation. Their signature weapon is the laser musket. Their big rebuilding quest, Old Guns, is about setting up some very old-school artillery. Nothing about that is going to make the Brotherhood start salivating and plotting to steal their stuff. Now, obviously that artillery can turn out to be very effective at dealing with the Prydwen if it comes to that, but that's a very Brotherhood mistake: they think shiny tech will protect them from superior numbers and rational tactics. They made the same error at HELIOS ONE.

So unlike the Railroad, the Minutemen are unlikely targets for Brotherhood aggression at this stage. They aren't forcing a conflict. But like the Railroad, the Minutemen start the game a hair's breadth from annihilation. Most of the game is spent rebuilding both their forces and their credibility. They clear raider strongholds and nests of feral ghouls. They're not much more likely to be actively pushing for an all-out-war than the Railroad.

Point Three - who the hell are these guys, anyway?

After all of that, I recognise there's still a problem, though. Because Feeding the Troops is still a pretty obnoxious quest and it does feel like a thing that would cause issues.

Fallout 4 does a lot with misinformation; appearance versus reality; what someone says and then what they do. I know I've brought it up before, but a big one is the difference between Diamond City and Goodneighbor. And one of the key points about that is that things change: Diamond City wasn't always run by the Institute; Goodneighbor wasn't always setting itself up as a haven for the lost. Things change. Bad things can improve, and good things can slip into evil.

Earlier games had a karma system associated with them: this is good, this is bad. Fallout 4 replaces this with companion opinions, which fits pretty well with its themes and ideas. It's not going to tell you which one is the good karma option. You've got to play the game and figure it out. And yes, sometimes the answer is "there's no good answer".

Two things about the Brotherhood: they arrive relatively late in the game, at the start of Act 2 ... and they were the good guys in Fallout 3. They were very explicitly the good karma option in Fallout 3. While, obviously, each game is going to pick up a bunch of new players who haven't played the older ones, it's also important to recognise that Fallout is a series, and the narrative continues from one game to the next.

By the time Fallout 4 starts all the various factions in the Commonwealth have been locked in conflict with the Institute for decades. Asking them to pivot and immediately start fighting these guys who turned up last Tuesday is a lot. While the Sole Survivor could never have heard of the Brotherhood of Steel, there's a really solid chance that you, the player, have heard of them. And you might make some assumptions, based on that.

They were the good guys, right? Okay, yes, kind of arseholes and a bit of a problem if you were from Underworld but ... they fought the Enclave! They defended Project Purity! They protected people from super mutants! It's a whole thing!

But. Well, there's clearly been a change in leadership since then. And they've specifically reintegrated the Outcasts, i.e. the anti-helping people Brotherhood faction.

Also, the Commonwealth is not the Capital Wasteland. The conflict there was Brotherhood-versus-Enclave and the Enclave was so very bad that virtually anyone could look heroic opposing them. The super mutants never coalesced into a coherent faction who wanted anything; they operated more like a plague. Simpler times. In the Commonwealth there are more factions, more differing ideals. The water needs purifying, sure, but if we could solve the political problems farming wouldn't be a major issue.

You see all this difficulty and ambivalence in the game's characters, too:

The Brotherhood. In Capital Wasteland, they really weren't bad. But now. – Deacon Dialogue, Fallout 4 Those Super Mutants are a threat to everyone in the whole Commonwealth. I'm glad to have the Brotherhood's help to take them out. – Preston Garvey Dialogue, Fallout 4 Long as the Brotherhood of Steel keeps the heavy artillery out of the city limits, they're welcome here. – Diamond City Security Dialogue, Fallout 4 Flying that ship into the heart of the Commonwealth. Mark my words, the Brotherhood's here to start a war. – Nick Valentine Dialogue, Fallout 4

Characters are aware that the Brotherhood did good in the past. They're concerned about the giant airship in their space. They're grateful when the Brotherhood does something that happens to be helpful, even if their reasons were selfish. The decision about what do about them is floating in the air, from the day they turn up.

So now I'm back to my first point. You're the General of the Minutemen. Odds are, defending the Commonwealth as a Minuteman was one of the very first pledges you made at the start of the game. And sure, you're visiting all the factions and doing their quests, because that's how these games work.

Cool. So – I mean, they've asked you to bully and steal from the farmers you swore to protect. If you take your non-human companions to the Prydwen they will say the most horrible things about them. They've sent you to murder your friend Danse, even though he hasn't done anything and it's not like he can choose to not be a synth. They're powering up this really scary robot they can use to terrorise people. They're sending you to slaughter the Railroad, unprovoked, because they want their robot. At what point have you had enough? At what point do you go "Ohhhhh. This is the bad karma faction"?

There's a warning, right at the beginning of their quest line, from Haylen:

Field Scribe Haylen, personal log entry 324A. I'm starting to wonder if joining the Brotherhood of Steel was a good choice. I originally signed up seeking protection and comradeship but I'm worried that I've traded away a bit of my humanity in the process. The Brotherhood's message of hope for the future is idealistic and noble but their methods leave a lot to be desired. The leadership seems especially misguided. Instead of diplomacy, they wield violent confrontation to exert control. Despite all that, I've been successfully avoiding the fighting by following the career path of a field scribe. I suppose only time will tell how long I can stand the sight of spilled blood over my own moral fiber. – Scribe Haylen's Personal Log, Fallout 4

If you can recognise some foreshadowing, you can see where this is going.

I think the game doesn't force you to fight the Brotherhood with the Minutemen because you are the General of the Minutemen. It doesn't have karma options, it asks you to review the situation and make a decision what to do. You can fight the Brotherhood, if you choose to. In fact, you kind of swore that you would.

Yeah, they're running a protection racket. What are you going to do about it?

And I think that's very in line with the sort of story Fallout 4 wants to tell.

[tossawary]

So, Force-users in "Star Wars" appear to have their telepathy and empathy powers mostly only when it's convenient for the plot. (And obviously different characters naturally have different natural talents and different trained skills.) The "Jedi Apprentice" series that I am slowly trying to read introduces more concrete telepathic elements than the vagueness of the films, such as both intentional and UNINTENTIONAL mental bonds between characters.

And it keeps making me thinking about the accidental Force bonds that must often exist between young Force-sensitives and their non-sensitive parents. (Note: This post is mainly about Anakin Skywalker and Xanatos witnessing the violent deaths of their respective parents.)

I used to do a lot of casual reading on toxic and abusive relationships, because I stumbled on a quote from some book and thought that it was just fascinating from a character perspective (I did also use that information for reflection on other stuff, but that's not relevant here). Children usually become deeply attached and attuned to their guardians, even if those guardians are intentionally cruel, or even if those guardians have toxic behaviors because they are stressed and a little self-absorbed or whatever. Children spend the early years of their life with no way out and just trying to survive by keeping their parent (who provides them with that survival) happy. People in abusive relationships are often made to feel responsible for the reactions of their abuser. They often have panicked instincts that demand fight or flight or freeze or fawn reactions to someone getting upset with them.

(I am summing up a LOT of stuff, I know! Unhealthy relationships are very complicated and varied! People all react differently. I'm trying to quickly establish a few points to make a later point here.)

Even adult children trying to establish boundaries with their toxic parents often meet a great deal of resistance, and are sometimes accused of being disloyal and ungrateful and disrespectful and sometimes even abusive themselves, just for doing things like asking their parents not to show up without calling first, because their emotionally immature parents regard any sort of disagreement or conflict as harmful to them and their authority. A lot of adult children talk about the mental struggle that comes with learning how to stand up for themselves against their parents, whether that parent has been intentionally or unintentionally abusive.

Which has all made me think about how much worse any relationship could get if one side of it has telepathy and empathy. Especially if that side of it is a child who doesn't know it! And the parent probably doesn't know about this either!

The Jedi Order is already kind of set up so that a cruel or neglectful Master could potentially do a lot of damage (a few months, at least) to a Padawan before hopefully being caught. Being able to literally feel your abusive Master's intentionally projected / focused disappointment or anger sounds nightmarish for a child. Most Jedi who are decent people shield themselves and do not project negative emotions at vulnerable / impressionable children, but we know from canon that there are plenty of Jedi who fail at being decent people.

(And oh, man, everything about Sith training sounds SO BAD. The mental and emotional damage that can intentionally be done by a Force-user projecting bad vibes is truly off the charts.)

Non-Force-sensitive guardians probably won't have any kind of mental shielding. Even if the guardian is outwardly the nicest parent in the world, it has to be hard that your child is (potentially) apparently constantly unhappy, and you won't know that it's because they are telepathically sensitive to all of your internal tiredness and anger and sadness. There would be no emotional privacy. And if the life situation is bad for the family, then that child is potentially going to grow up being hyperaware of the mental and emotional states of everyone around them, knowingly or unknowingly using the Force, because being able to read the room like that has been imperative to their survival.

Shmi Skywalker seems to be a remarkably even-keeled person for her circumstances. I headcanon her as being (perhaps unconsciously) Force-sensitive herself and having taught herself some degree of mental and emotional shielding due to her hard life. If someone as powerful as Anakin had been raised by someone who was constantly stressed and willing to scream about it, lash out at their child about it, then he could have been even more of a mess. He seems remarkably well-loved compared to what could have happened.

I do think that Anakin and Shmi must have had some accidental mental and emotional bond with each other. If Anakin is as gifted in the Force as everyone says he is, he probably would have naturally reached out to the minds around him, because that's what baseline senses / existence are to him. (It's fun to think about Anakin's existence being wholly unique and WEIRD, and how this causes him to clash with everyone else. It's possible that one else experiences the universe quite like he does.)

Being separated from a parent will cause anxiety in ANY child, but it's interesting to think about how things might have been heightened for Anakin, if Shmi's mind has been an unconscious cornerstone / foundation of his mental reality and his emotional keel since his birth. Due to telepathy / empathy, Anakin may have been unconsciously using Shmi as his mental and emotional ground to stand on for as long as he can remember. Losing his mother, even by separation, when he's been halfway into her head all his life, might genuinely feel like losing a piece of his mind to Anakin. He doesn't initially have the teachings to deal with this kind of catastrophe to his baseline operating system.

He DOES get teaching for these things over the course of the next ten years. (I don't think that he was too old to be trained (Luke was famously 19 in the original "Star Wars") but I do think Anakin could have probably been trained better. Anyway, if he hadn't been trained, Sidious probably would have scooped him up immediately.) But then his mother dies in a very violent and painful way when he's RIGHT THERE, when his control probably already isn't very good due to the situation, and it cannot feel good to be inside the mind of a loved one when they're dying, especially if their own mental and emotional shielding is limited.

Like, yeah, I can see why someone who has telepathy and empathy might have some kind of mental break there. Anakin is permanently losing someone who has potentially been a mental and emotional cornerstone all his life, literally. I don't think it makes his thorough massacre of the Tusken Raiders, down to the last child, in any way excusable, that kind of vengeful, murderous collective punishment is horrifying, but I understand why it might happen from a character perspective.

If were arguing that Anakin is innately more telepathic than most people, he should be able to feel the people he's attacking as well. And it's interesting to think about how someone incredibly naturally empathetic might choose to adapt an apathetic perspective to the suffering of anyone he doesn't personally care about. Yeah, of course he might try to close himself off as much as possible. The universe is already constantly screaming at him with its death and pain. If super-telepath Darth Vader cuts someone down with his own hands, then at least they're quiet now.

Anyway, this post was also about Force-sensitive children who have shitty parents who aren't in any way Force-sensitive. Which, funnily enough, brings us to Qui-Gon Jinn's other potential Chosen One: Xanatos. Xanatos even witnessed his parent's violent death, like Anakin, because Qui-Gon semi-accidentally killed the corrupt Governor Crion for trying to start a civil war and threatening Padawan Orykan.

Like, I just finished reading "Star Wars: Jedi: The Dark Side", a 5-part comic that depicts how Qui-Gon and Xanatos broke up as a Master-Padawan pair. (I wanted context for the "Jedi Apprentice" series.) They're sent there to investigate a murder and are cooperating / protecting Governor Crion, before it is ultimately revealed that Crion has been intentionally stoking the conflict and local xenophobia for his own benefit. Xanatos spends almost the entire time telling Qui-Gon explicitly that he wants to go back to Coruscant, he doesn't want to be here; all but outright saying that he's emotionally conflicted and that there's a conflict of interest here.

It's not made explicit that Crion was abusive before, but he does seem to be a little toxic, and Xanatos clearly has a very rocky relationship with this man who is trying to start a fucking war. It is very clear at the end of the story that Xanatos resents being tested like this, having watched both of his family members die violently.

And I couldn't help but relate this to Anakin: that uneven, childhood-deep Force bond with a parent (which I am presuming exists, there's no specific canonical proof of this for either Anakin or Xanatos that I have yet read) snapping back on a telepath presumably isn't great for a person's mental state. Even though he clearly wasn't too close to his sister, watching Nason die first couldn't have helped either. Merely standing in a room getting blasted with whatever bad emotions Crion is pumping out was probably bad for Xanatos. Xanatos may be vulnerable to psychic damage from this shitty guy specifically.

I get that Jedi are supposed to rise above their attachments and fears, Yoda is clear in that he thinks putting Xanatos on this mission to his chaotic homeworld is necessary to "prove" his status as a Jedi. And I get that maybe someone even presumed Xanatos's personal connections might help the bad situation, more than it might be a flagrant "conflict of interest" in any way. But MAN, does it fucking suck that the Jedi (Yoda) are kind of like, "No, you can't do literally anything else to help people in the galaxy. You have to go face your past right now or else you can't be a good Jedi. We ARE going to judge you if you bow out and cry 'personal conflict'."

To be somewhat fair to the Jedi, Xanatos WILL need to be objective to be a good Jedi Knight and they don't KNOW that Crion is a warmonger, but Xanatos is clearly not ready to see him again, and apparently only goes on the mission because he's afraid that Padawan Orykan will replace him as Qui-Gon's student. He repeatedly accuses Qui-Gon of trying to leave him on Telos IV with his father, which is obviously a fear that's weighing heavy on his mind. Usually when a kid doesn't want to go "home" that badly, it's... indicative of something unpleasant in their home life?

At the end of the comic, Qui-Gon is like, "Oh, this situation is BAD. I was wrong to bring Xanatos here. We need to get out." But Crion is killed, Xanatos apparently has a mental break, scars his own face, and then disappears into the riots? And Qui-Gon apparently assumes that Xanatos has been killed? The execution is more than a little confusing. But yeah, Jedi need to rise above their personal shit, of course, but maybe prematurely exposing this supposedly telepathic / empathetic kid to what's potentially a bunch of deep-seated triggers to "test" him was a bad idea. (And personally I think that the comic is saying that it was a bad idea. Qui-Gon clearly regrets it afterwards.)

As far as I can tell, Xanatos's main crimes here were 1) being a huge snobby brat, partially because he has glaringly obvious rejection / jealousy issues, 2) like everyone else, not really knowing what his father was up to until after things had gone to shit, and 3) having a mental breakdown and attacking both Orykan and Qui-Gon, and ultimately failing to kill or injure them.

Xanatos is flawed, obviously, but he looks pretty young thoroughout these comics. Like, he looks like a teenager? Sixteen-ish? (Every shitty thing that Xanatos does afterwards in regards to Offworld Mining and trying to kill Obi-Wan will be on him, of course!) And I keep thinking about what a child being telepathic / empathetic does to their relationship with a Force-null parent... Especially when that parent is a piece of shit. Especially when watching them die violently. Involuntary magic has really got to suck sometimes...

[eenochian]

the way this fandom treats characters is astounding. like y’all do realize that every single character is shitty, right? literally every last one. your blorbo is not an exception. no, “but my fave—” no exceptions. literally the only character that i can’t think of any issues with off the top of my head is farah.

[onaperduamedee]

I don't know if it's show bias, but I struggle to understand the reading of Moiraine as someone who is so driven by her mission that she doesn't care.

From the get-go, she flees the White Tower for fear of ending up Queen of Cairhien and as cruel a leader as the rulers in her family, although it would have meant control and power;

Getting knocked down and unable to channel, she stabs a former teacher to stop her from killing innocents who have little to do with her mission;

She rushes to the Blight to bond Lan and keep him from basically killing himself, even if again it is a gamble, and later on, the bond transfer is about saving him, albeit cruelly;

She uses her body as a shield to hold off a Forsaken in order to help Rand, sustaining serious injuries in the fight, although her sacrifice is mostly useless considering how overpowered she is;

Many times, she heals villagers, soldiers, Aiel, wolves, sometimes until she is on the brink of passing out;

She fights Shadowspawns in Tear, in the Waste just as bravely as Lan, despite not being battle Ajah and often being surrounded by Aiel who can do the job by themselves;

She tackles Lanfear, toppling with her inside a collapsing ter'angreal, effectively dooming herself and cutting herself from the narrative, to help Rand, Egwene and Aviendha.

Obviously, you could argue that each of these actions would bring her an advantage and in acting so, she was only playing her part in the pattern, without a care for the people she was helping, but that's such an ungenerous reading of the character given what the text provides.

Her mindset is utilitarian and pragmatic, but to see her ever-present doubts, her growing despair and raging hope in Rand and still interpret her as uncaring is mind-boggling to me.

Her whole speech in TSR regarding "People [fighting] for you who do not know it, any more than you know them" tells of someone who believes saving the world will require a lot of collaboration and awareness of each other, not merely machinations and control.

She is a hard woman, but uncaring she is not.

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[fistfightinganxietyandlosing]

I love media where all the characters are shitty people. There is no good guy because everyone is flawed as fuck and I think that's beautiful. I really wish there was more of it.

[vonkarma2]

ultimately my enjoyment is hampered because it is low key sexist bc it takes place in an alternate universe where Sigmund Freud is real. though I did still like it for the most part but I hate Sigmund Freudddd Utena better

[lisbonsteresa]

knees weak, arms are heavy

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

🔥 BJ Hunnicutt

My opinion on BJ Hunnicutt is whatever one of my mutuals last posted about him. My opinion on BJ Hunnicutt is whatever will get me notes. My opinion on BJ Hunnicutt is whatever Mike Farrell said in whatever his latest interview is because that man has so much love for this show and this character and his longstanding support of the queer community means so much to me and I like to think it meant a lot to Mr. Stiers too if it’s not too parasocial to say so and his interaction with MASH fans even decades later is so kind and sweet and the way he played his character even when the writers admitted he didn’t have enough to work with textually still has such an impact on so many viewers and I think that’s really powerful especially when you think about how it’s contributed to the recent boom in the general MASH fandom economy which no matter what I absolutely consider a net positive to the legacy of the show and to the world in general and even just to me personally given the way that being a part of this small community has changed my own life.

But mostly my opinion on BJ Hunnicutt is just. Whatever.

[doppelnatur]

to a certain degree i don't think there is such a thing as purely internalized and internally directed bias. i don't think directing bias at yourself is morally much better than directing it at others it's just a lot harder to stop. that said, as soon as your self cruelty begins to affect anyone else it's just cruelty. a gay man being homophobic is not any more justifiable than a heterosexual man. then again, maybe this entire way of thinking shows a lack of compassion for myself and is a form of bias.

[femmefaggot]

genuinely very very happy about maya still Do Not get me wrong. I simply wish... the world was better and less cruel. and that I was not complicit in that cruelty. and that honorspren in shadesmar werent such hypocrites.