#that would be a very interesting thing to explore

[sinofwriting]

Never - Charles Leclerc

Words: 705 Summary: Charles finds out she’s never had an orgasm. Note(s): Mentions/Talks of Sex, Bestfriends to Lovers, part of a kind of series that explores certain drivers finding out that reader has never had an orgasm.

Masterlist | Emergency Dental Fund

“What?” She asks, smiling around the words as she catches Charles staring at her, his head propped by his hand. “You are just very beautiful.” She shakes her head with a small laugh, eyes falling back down to the coffee table covered in sheet music. “You are.” He insists, giving her a nudge. She looks at him from the corner of her eye. “I think you have to say that. I’m your best friend after all.” He laughs, hand coming up to rub at his chest for a second. “I think Joris would have a problem with that. But I don’t have to say it.” Charles' face turns serious, though a smile is still pulling at his lips. “You are gorgeous. I still don’t know how you are alone.” “Just,” she sighs, the inside of her lip catching between her teeth. “No one’s caught my eye.” She tells him, hoping he doesn’t catch the lie, but he does.

She can tell from the way he sits forward, nearly pitching off the couch in his hurry. “Someone has caught your eye.” “No.” “Someone has. Who? Tell me about them.” “No.” She laughs, shaking her head. “It’s never gonna happen, alright? That’s just not in the cards for me.” “C’mon, they are an idiot if they don’t feel the same way about you.” Her lips press together as she swallows a harsh laugh. “That’s not it. I mean sort of,” she corrects. “But there’s a reason I don’t date and I don’t have one night stands and I don’t have relationships. I’m a nightmare, a horrible, lousy, stupid excuse of a woman.” The words are easy as they fall off her tongue, things she’s heard before. There’s more than wants to fall, but Charles is looking at her, horrified, and she winces. “I’m sorry, Charles. I just, I’m not interested.” “Why would?” He pauses, brows furrowed, jaw starting to clench in anger. “Why would anyone say that to you, about you? You are not those things.” “Not all of them.” She allows. “But a stupid excuse of a woman, absolutely.” She laughs. He says her name and she stops laughing, her smile dimming.

“Charles, I’m not being mean to myself. I’ve come to accept it. There’s a certain something a good majority of people want from their partners, and I can’t deliver it.” “Deliver what?” She stands up with a laugh, shaking her head. “No. I said too much. I shouldn’t have entertained this any longer. New subject.” He pulls her back down on the couch, uncaring of the way she protests, his eyes boring into hers. “Deliver what?” She stares back at him, hoping that for once Charles Leclerc will know when to back down, but he doesn’t. “Orgasm.” She finally says and watches confusion spread across his face. “I can’t orgasm. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never cum once in my life. That,” she laughs. “Happens to be a bit of a turn-off or an ego bruiser.”

Charles looks at her, the confusion gone from his face and instead determination is there. “Then today will be the day you do.” She rolls her eyes, scooting a bit away from him as she tries to ignore the way her heart seems to be beating double time and the burn that is starting between her thighs. “Very funny.” “I mean it.” “Charles.” She tries to continue but can’t. Not at the way he’s looking at her. It’s more than the set of determination lining his brow, the near glare in the squint of his eyes. It’s the combination with the set of his jaw and parted lips, the lean of his body into hers.

“Before,” he speaks, knowing she’s about to say he won’t be able to. “You say something about me not being able to. Let me try.” He then smiles, a giddy, disbelief filled thing. “After all I just did win Monaco.” It makes her laugh, the comparison of him winning Monaco after seven years of trying, with her trying to achieve an orgasm for the same amount of time. “Are you saying you can break another curse?” She jokes. “Monaco was never a curse and this,” his fingers dance across her covered thigh. “Isn’t either.”

[ratgrinders]

So I read this interview of Brennan Lee Mulligan post-Junior Year (really interesting btw, I recommend everyone check it out!!!!) but I wanted to talk about a couple questions that interested me in it regarding the Rat Grinders:

I love the Rat Grinders and how they're just this dichotomy...Talk to me about leaning into not just that they are the opposite of The Bad Kids, but their corruption, because they were really sweet as the High-Five Heroes before they followed Kipperlilly down this path. Brennan Lee Mulligan: There's an interesting question there. I think that for a lot of it, there were hints, and most of the things we've seen of their sweetness are contextual from bits of writing, little things, investigations. But I think that you can see… It's both. There are elements that they were not always like they are now, but the seeds of what they are now are there in the past. I think that when you look at the High-Five and then eventually becoming the Rat Grinders. There's an indication there of Kipperlilly's focus because yeah, the High-Five Heroes is sweet, but it's also sort of a indication that Kipperlilly is pushing them towards, for lack of a better word, do we have something that we're about? The Bad Kids get their name because they've all been given detention on the first day and it's connected to their story. Whereas you get the sense from the High-Five Heroes that it's not actually describing anything. It's like the person being like, "Our inside joke is going to be high-fives." And you're like, "Well, everyone high-fives." So there's an indication there, for me at least, that Kipperlily is trying to make a comradery right away that is not actually there. It's not based in something that happened to them.

So a confirmation that Kipperlilly naming them all the "High-Five Heroes" on the first day is her trying to "force" a sense of comradery, and also possibly an adventuring identity? Like how the Bad Kids already have this strong group cohesion and "story" because they were all given detention on the first day of classes, and Kipperlilly's trying to create something like that without it having a strong basis.

This seems indicative of a couple things to me, like Kipperlilly having a naturally strong, pushy personality that maybe overrides her other group members, or that she has a certain idea in her head about what makes an adventurer. She wants all the gimmicky stuff like a cool party name and inside jokes, but even then on the first day is trying to force it without having earned it. She's enamored with the idea of an adventurer in terms of them being the hero of their own story, and in her head how good of a "story" you have is directly linked to how good of an adventurer you are.

It also makes her opposing the name "Rat Grinders" later interesting, lol. Rat Grinders is obviously WAY more based in something unique to their party and an inside joke on what they actually do. Maybe it was just because she didn't appreciate her sense of control and her name being undermined.

How do you think they're going to diverge now that they don't have Kipperlilly leading them? Brennan Lee Mulligan: I think that the future of that group is very… I think I leave it to the players, but as you're saying with Kipperlilly, her leadership of that group to me, the moment that is the fundamental, very critical to the season and understanding it I think, is that killing of Lucy Frostblade. Where that is the moment where power and the opportunity for power is chosen over all else. The participation of everybody in that, that the other Rat Grinders came in and that they killed Lucy Frostblade, is the ultimate like, "Oh, we can understand wanting to have the status that The Bad Kids have. This was not worth that. It is not acceptable. Even if you really want to have something, you can't kill an innocent person who is also your best friend to get it. That is evil." And so I think that that's really the turning point for them.

And talking about Lucy being her best friend, and the killing of Lucy Frostblade as the point of no return. I imagine that after killing Lucy the Rat Grinders were deep in the sunk-cost fallacy, that "oh, we've just done this horrible thing, there's no turning back now". Like the text messages the Bad Kids found in Ruben's house.

Canon leaves it slightly unclear the order in which the Rat Grinders were shatter-starred, and just how culpable they are for their actions while under their influence. I'm going to assume that Kipperlilly was the first one, "willingly" taking one (for a given definition of "willingly", as I'd argue she had still be subjected to a year and a half of manipulation and grooming by Porter. She may have been sound of mind, but she never would've done this without Porter encouraging her or validating all her worst aspects). Then, she and Porter worked to kill the other Rat Grinders, an unwilling ritual that put them under the thrall of the rage god. Lucy was the last holdout, and was killed with the assumption that she would come back like they did, but she instead "stuck to her guns" and stayed dead.

I'm also going to interpret the shatter-star as an element of divine manipulation that drives people with rage to do actions they wouldn't do normally, but which are ultimately based on a kernel of truth. Think Adaine in the mall fight, "What would Adaine do if all she ever thought about was rage?" and Siobhan talking about the forest of Sylvaire being destroyed in the search for her mother. We know Adaine would never use such an excessive amount of destruction, but we see the underlying motivation to her actions.

So when the other Rat Grinders killed Lucy, they weren't exactly "sound of mind" as they were under the influence of the rage star, but they were still themselves, they still made the conscious choice to choose power over everything else. The rage star only elevated it to murderous heights; they never would've murdered her without its influence (in fact, I'd argue that the expectation she'd come back is why they did it in the first place), but the motivation still stemmed from a selfish want for power they all shared.

I think, too, that there's a thing with them, there's sort of a you can't have it both ways. The strategy that the Rat Grinders employ to get powerful is to do this grinding. Eventually, they get leveled up also by these powerful monsters that are being killed, they're allowed to join in with, but fundamentally it's like you can't have your cake and eat it too. Kipperlilly as a villain to me is very focused on, "Ooh, I can get by with the letter of the law and not the spirit. There's a better way to get powerful as an adventurer other than going on these important missions where you can probably die." That's the other thing, too, is you look at The Bad Kids, the Bad Kids run into that Corn Gremlin fight, and two of them die. They took a huge risk to save the school and stop something bad from happening, and the Rat Grinders never take that risk. So even as Kipperlilly is like, "Why aren't I getting what they're getting?" It's like, you're not making the choices they're making. Obviously grinding rats in the woods is a safer way to gain levels and the reward for doing it the safe way is you've never saved the world.

And with this last bit, Kipperlilly wanting the accolades of adventuring but without having to risk her life for it. It's interesting that Brennan mentions Kipperlilly avoiding "missions where you can probably die", because I've theorized before that part of the Rat Grinders' motivation for sticking to grinding is them not wanting to risk dying!

This is where genre conflict comes into play for me, because in a normal world I'd argue it's totally acceptable and fine for teenagers to do everything in their power to avoid Literally Dying. However, Spyre is not a normal world and runs on DnD conventions, where Aguefort trains them to be murderous "violent wanderers" who enact their will on the world, sometimes fatally. Death is also comparatively cheaper here when adventurers specifically have an easier time getting revived. The Rat Grinders may protest all they want about the standards of the genre that encourage crazy, violent, fatal behavior, but they're always going to be in the wrong genre and their protests are doomed to failure.

And "having your cake and eating it too". Her adventuring party never took those risks, so they don't get the rewards for saving the world.

[rosesdrop]

Pick a pile

What career would best suit you

Pile 1:

For pile 1 most of you don't like to stay under one pace when pursuing your career, you like diversion you also prefer to do side hustles. You are creative so you don't like to be restricted in one area of specialty. You are quite useful and I'm getting that you like to perform practical tasks, those who require using hands or overall building your experience, you like to match your brain skills with physical skills, and you also enjoy going on adventures and doing outdoorsy activities, you also like helping people and doing charity if you can, but you don't like to settle for one thing. Working as a nurse or hospital related jobs might be good for you, alchemy is a thing you might like.

Pile 2:

Working with other people may have it's up and downs, but to you it's necessary for growth. It's going to benefit you a lot and help you to expand you knowledge. You are warm and social, and you like working in a group where people embody the same energy you have. You are good at getting people together and building a great team, a good strategizer and may even preoccupy leadership positions successfully. You like to learn about different cultures and you like to explore the world, you search for knowledge in discovering new things and going farther ahead from your usual thinking and beliefs. Traveling as a way of grasping and collecting knowledge is great for you.

Pile 3:

You are much more secretive than the other 2 piles. You like to work in silent, you're a very patient person and you take time in collecting information and analysing it, you have a very sharp mind that investigates things often and come to accurate and interesting conclusions that can be useful for complicated situations, a position in strategizing or investigating is good for you. Organizing and collecting information, engineering, and data analysis. You're also very creative, some of you are great artists so you would excel in arts as well. Writing books or book keeping even translating, you're also good at cracking codes.

[fluttervee]

one thing that fhjy didn't explore (though fig almost touched it, sideways) that i think is really interesting is this:

Even though she is a deity of justice, the nature of Ankarna's existence is fundamentally unjust

Here's what I mean by that:

Ankarna's nature and circumstances were changed, not because of her actions or even beliefs, but because of the actions and desires of a subset of her followers. And not even ones that arose organically! We see canonically that the idea to shift Ankarna's domain was introduced by outside forces, mortals who were not her followers and did not have her or her followers' best interests at heart. THAT IS NOT JUST. It is not fair to Ankarna, very obviously, who lost her identity, her wife, and eventually her very existence. It's also not fair to the people who would have followed Ankarna in her original domain. Her original followers were ritually murdered. And what about anyone in the intervening eons between her corruption and the bad kids? Anyone who wanted a deity of truth and clarity and justice, who needed such a deity to follow or believe in or find community with, was SOL unless someone else took over Ankarna's original domain (and I would argue that since Fig was able to claim it, no one did). That is not fair. The fact that Ankarna's values are ultimately not hers to determine is not just. And if we get future seasons set in Spyre I would really love to watch her and her followers grapple with that fact.

[lets-try-some-writing]

AU idea.

Orion Pax and Megatronus as the Sam and Coby of Cybertron.

Thats it. Have fun.

Yes to this whole thing.

I imagine in this alternate universe, the whole affair with the revolution is still going on, but it is in dire need of funds and very much on hold for the time being. Megatronus hasn't been able to afford some essential upgrades needed for him to make his way to the position of Champion and so has put himself up as a sword for hire through gladiatorial channels. Orion Pax on the other hand has been assigned by Alpha Trion to investigate supposedly haunted locations in order to determine if it is a relic, a monster, or a natural occurrence causing the whole mess. Naturally, Orion isn't going to go wandering anywhere without some sort of protection, not when he's Alpha Trion's not so subtly favorite student. And so he put together a ragtag team of individuals willing to help him go exploring for the sake of history and the archives.

Orion was required to document his exploration and findings as part of the archive's regulations. But since he couldn't be doing any serious exploring while also handling a camera, Orion hired Ratchet to handle all that. Ratchet, being a medical student at the time, needed the extra funds to get through the rest of his training. Orion might as well have been a walking piggy bank. Too proud to accept Orion's gifts and offers to sponsor him, Ratchet took up the position of camera mech somewhat happily. Steady servos ensured that Orion's explorations were always perfectly recorded, especially since Ratchet did not have a tendency to scare easily. Ratchet and Orion being close friends is a pleasant bonus when it came to their arrangement.

Jazz was also hired, but only on paper. He was gunning for the chance to drag Orion off somewhere less than safe, and so he was more than happy to offer himself up as a guide. Having become well acquainted with the streets and generally knowledgeable on most basic things around the planet, he was the perfect assistant. He was the one who took to scouting out the haunted locations and digging through the files on the places to find their history before Orion arrived. He may have been hired as a guide, but under the table he was also very much involved in the arduous task of keeping Orion out of criminal activity.

As for Megatronus? He was originally hired as a body guard in the event that things went sour. Orion being a living shanix pile ensured that Megatronus was all but willing to throw himself into a grinder if it meant protecting his client. The gladiator assumed that following around a middle caste archivist wouldn't be all that hard. At most, he would be dealing with a few broken floors and possibly a gang or two. Nothing too terrible, especially with legal freedom to beat the slag out of anyone who got too close to his client. He was very wrong, but quickly found himself wrapped into friendship despite the trouble.

This messy group began posting the recordings of Orion's explorations to the datanet in an attempt to bring more interest to places of significance (at least for Orion's part). But the interactions between the four mechs present quickly led to them developing a following.

Megatronus unintentionally became the logical atheist. When entering a building, ninety nine percent of the time, he and Jazz could pinpoint the source of the "haunting" as being in large part due to an issue with the structure of the building. Creaky floors? The foundation was messed up. Screams from the basement? Yeah there was a gang down there. Don't worry he took care of it. Odd heirlooms causing illness? The thing was covered in toxins commonly used in the pits. Megatronus always had a reason for things they encountered, and often Jazz would back him up with humor. But of course, the few odd times the haunting was genuine and a real relic was involved, Megatronus became the comedic character with his firm inability to accept the oddity. Even when Orion Pax emerged from buildings with glowing relics that prompted the archivist to speak in strange tongues, Megatronus chalked it all up low fuel levels and took care to tend to his client. It did not matter if a mech was forcefully possessed or not. He had a reason for everything. His interactions with Ratchet largely amounted to him throwing rude gestures and posing heroically just to agitate the Doctor in training when nothing else was going on.

Ratchet quickly gained a name for himself as the usually quiet but incredibly sarcastic and tired face behind the camera. He refused to show his face when avoidable and instead made commentary when Megatronus was trying to be logical and failing or whenever Orion was obviously being ominous. As the mech responsible for filming, he often put editors notes all throughout each video posted to the datanet. He became known for being totally and completely unphased by absolutely everything. He was too tired and too done to really give a frag when a mech got possessed or a building was discovered to have once been home to a Unicron cult. He and Megatronus were applauded for their snarky commentary and quips aimed at each other. Jazz and Ratchet were not often seen interacting on camera unless something went horribly wrong, in which case the camera was thrown to Jazz so Ratchet could take up Megatronus's job and beat the ghost, ghoul, or whatever the problem was into scrap. His interactions with Orion were quickly regarded as legendary simply because Ratchet did not care and would calmly pull Orion away from the mystical garbage if he felt the need to.

Jazz was the swiftly dubbed comedic relief. Whenever something unfortunate happened, he was quick to make light of it. Actual mystical events were regarded with a whistle and a quick picture snapped. Buildings with secrets were regarded with vague interest above all else, and actual murder cases were swept away. Some called him insensitive, but compared to Megatronus who was forever there to offer rationality and Ratchet who simply didn't care enough, Jazz was a relief. He was also renown for doing Megatronus's job more often than not when Orion wandered somewhere he really shouldn't have. Jazz performed feats of athletics and agility that left viewers in awe, especially with how casually he did so. The mech was the resident mystery and yet regarded everything with a smile. Beloved by the camera and largely liked by the rest of the team, Jazz was a fan favorite.

Orion Pax was the one who started the whole mess that was their ragtag group, and whether he meant to or not, he created the most trouble. Orion usually played the role of walking Wikipedia article when the team dealt with cases where the haunting was a result of actual issues rather than anything mystical. However, he had a habit of finding all the danger and waltzing directly into it within five kliks of entering a site. He was quick to find every secret and reveal it. And when there were actual powers involved, he somehow managed to get wrapped up into it. He was always the one being thrown across rooms, possessed (to which all attempts failed shortly thereafter. the ghosts are unanimously terrified of him), harassed my artifacts, or otherwise called into the fog by strange whispers. He was loved by the fans of his adventures simply because was completely normal right up until he wasn't.

Just a group of four mechs, all trying to get on with life, somehow managing to waltz into every issue Cybertron has to offer. Megatronus became famous long before he became a Champion and it was simply because he happened to be a logical atheist above all else. Ratchet became CMO through sheer force of will which scared the scrap out of his competitors. Jazz shot into the higher ranks of spies due to the fact that while working with Orion, he wiped out dozens of criminal organizations. Orion for his part returned to the archives at the end of it all seemingly untouched. But if anyone looked closely, they could see he quickly became a living repellant for oddities with malicious intent. The things of the dark feared him and the things made in times long past seemed to gravitate toward him regardless of his seeming normality.

[rainba]

Listen, I love, love, love, Luka so much… however…. I feel like he’s missing something. Maybe I’m just having trouble envisioning him in my head. It may be that I can’t read people very well so I don’t really know if he likes me, but I wanna see the look on his face after I kiss him for the first time. I wanna see the reaction to my fear when he threatens me. I wanna see how his body reacts so my touch. I love him, but for me, I feel like he’s missing a little pizazze in comparison to Kairos. Thank you so much! This is in no way critiquing Luka, his character or your writing, I just wanna have a better idea of him in my head.

(Can I be 🏵️ anon? I’ve sent in a few asks before this so yay :))

Thank you for the questions! It actually has me thinking more about Luka and his entire character as a whole.

I think that is a big part of Luka: it's hard to get a read on him.

Luka is a man who typically has something of a flat affect. Nothing in life particularly interests him; everything is somewhat boring. He's mastered the art of faking emotions around other people.

There's a part of him that has always wanted to feel something more. A part of him that yearns to know what it's like to love and be loved, what it's like to feel alive.

When he falls for you, he finally gets to feel all of the things he's been (basically) missing out on.

When Luka first kisses you, he freezes in place, his heart skipping a beat as his lips finally meet yours.

When your hands touch his body, he feels an unfamiliar warmth in his chest. All he wants is for you to touch him even more.

When he sees the way you squirm due to his teasing, he can't help but feel pure adoration, smirking all the while.

All of these things, all of these brand-new feelings... It makes him want to possess you entirely.

When Luka falls in love with you, he's willing to do anything to have you, it doesn't matter how horrible it is. By leaving him behind, you're essentially taking his life away.

But also... Luka is just a man who likes to have control; control over both himself and others. It's in his nature.

I think you're right in the sense that he's somewhat missing something- it's probably because I haven't really focused or honed in on the side of him that can't control the new emotions he feels when he's around you.

I haven't really explored the love-struck, obsessive side of him.

I mostly tend to focus on his thirst for control and his deep sense of possessiveness.

I think it'd be interesting to explore that other side of him more! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Luka definitely keeps his emotions extremely well hidden. He could be sweating nervously, his heart pounding in his chest, mind going blank, and he'd still have a neutral expression.

My original intentions for Luka were to have him be a more dominant, stoic, possessive man with a predator/prey dynamic between him and his darling. However, as I kept writing for him, I added on the fact that his darling is the first person to ever make him feel alive.

So, basically: a cold, emotionless character who finally feels warmth and life via meeting his darling, and he quickly grows obsessed with you. I also wanted him to struggle with managing these new-found emotions, but I really haven't done that very much at all...

I'll definitely keep your words in mind as I proceed with writing more stories about him! I've explored Luka's possessive and more animalistic side well enough, but I think it would be interesting for me to dive in to his mind and pick him apart even more.

With Kairos, what you see is what you get, basically. A super obsessive, creepy, doting, emo loser yandere guy... His personality is strong, to put it lightly! ^^;;;;;

While I try to keep my characters consistent for the most part, I also try to remember that tweaking a few of their weak spots wouldn't be such a bad thing.

My ultimate goal for my characters is this:

I want to make characters that are deeply flawed, but still loveable. Characters that could be good people, but the love and obsession that they feel for their darlings ultimately lead them to doing horrible things.

Kairos is someone who's been told his entire life that he's an unlovable freak, so he eventually grows to accept the title, and he's willing to dive into depravity.

Luka is someone who has earned love and respect from others by learning to fake his emotions and fit in with society. He's never been truly loved, and he's never truly felt love either. Luka feels no real attachment to a majority of the people around him, so he doesn't truly care if they think he's a freak when he does something depraved.

Ace is someone who's desperate to get everyone's approval and is absolutely ashamed by his depraved urges. He tries his hardest to be a good person, but ultimately, he is a victim to his impulsivity and desires.

I think with Luka, it's a lot harder to depict his character... Kairos and Ace have something strong right from the get-go, while with Luka, I have to slowly unwrap him...

I'll definitely be making future plans to develop Luka's character more soon. He's a man who's done lots of horrible things in the posts I've made, but there's been very little done to counteract the bad.

To be honest, part of Ace's purpose is to help humanize Luka a bit more, which I plan on further developing in the near future.

But, uh... Really... As much as I love my characters and love writing/thinking about them, I know that none of it is really that serious. ^^;;;;;;;

I have a passion for making characters, I find it to be incredibly fun!! It's- probably a little obvious- so...

If anyone has any comments, I'm open to hear them! I'm trying to get better at taking critiques, too. ╮(￣��￣;)╭

And, yes, you can be 🏵️ anon! Thank you for sending the ask!

Despite everything I've said about Luka and all my doubts with writing him... I still love him ღ He's my silly little creature

[connorsnothereeither]

are there any canon bits/details about ulysses and/or any of your npcs that you wanted to share/expand on in lore but weren't able to?

Honestly a bunch of stuff! So sorry if this is very long haha. But if I had to pick a top 3 things (in no particular order):

Ulysses’ past as a pirate/sailor during the resets was something that was only ever alluded to, and I think could have been interesting to explore. I’ve said I’ll expand on this more in another post, but between October 2023 and early January 2024, Ulysses was in a very nebulous place where his character-plans changed A LOT. And at one point, we were setting up for him to be a very pirate-y character. It was going to establish a stronger relationship to Casus, in the way he had with Len and Vorago, which would have tied in later upon her rescue. He canonically served as a ships surgeon and navigator for most of the resets, and the books “That Sniveling Eel” and “Ships Manifest” were supposed to allude to that time, and NPCs which could possibly return. It’s also where the lighthouse, and his obsession with maps came in. It was something which I still consider canon, and impactful to his character (especially moving into the epilogue) but in the end, his character direction changed again (I think for the better), and it didn’t make sense to explore it when other elements of his backstory needed more attention, to expand on his past with Aax and the Telchin moving forward.

I would have loved to explore Ulysses’ relationship with Vorago more, post Len’s death. I think there’s a lot of really interesting material that could have been explored in how they learn to co-exist. Not just as people in Aax’s life, but also just… as people. As a scientist and an experiment. As a worshipper and a god. As just… two mortals, in a world of dying deities. Unfortunately time constraints between when Leviathan was turned back into Vorago, and when we had the finale, meant that we sort of had to condense that into one or two short interactions. But I would have loved to explore that in a similar manner to exploring his relationship to Len (especially AFTER Len’s death). It’s something I’d love to play with in a canon fic someday, perhaps.

The Tuskly’s!!! We honestly never got to explore their full relationship with Ulysses in canon as much as I wanted to. A lot of it was going to be explored in a potential server event concept I pitched: the wedding of Wilkins Tuskly and Marcus (the piano player from Festival of Lights, and Tony’s father). It was conceptualized as a full telenovela-style event, with vengeful exes appearing to object, raids, etc. but it was honestly too much and didn’t fit the tone of the later half of season 3. I also didn’t want to detract from Ocie and Jerry’s wedding, if it were to happen, since that was more important narratively. The story of Ulysses being saved by Wilkins was going to be fully laid out there, along with the story of how Ulysses saved Willow. We also never got to explore Ulysses relationship with Wanda as much as I would have liked. The idea of Ulysses rediscovering he was good with kids through healing the Tuskly children was always baked into his backstory. Canonically, before zombification Willow (the daughter) and her father Watkins (Wanda’s husband) had a congenital heart condition, which I personally suffer from, and both it and how Ulysses helped them treat it was going to be explored, but the chance was never right.

I definitely didn’t expect for this post to be this long haha, but like I said, there was a lot of lore and little things which for the sake of time and the story had to be put to the side 🫶

[aceptical]

Honestly I would love a Splatoon game geared at a 13+ / older audience- or even one still aimed at the same audience that really addresses the topics it brings up.

Splatoon covers darker / more mature topics. Child soldiers shooting each other, invading the land of another species for profit, suppressing another species for over a literal century, how extreme fame affects people, being ostracized / “found out” for being different, being terrified of change, etc. but it never really covers them.

They are there: especially when you look into things like the sunken scrolls or resources outside of the game, but that’s kind of it. And that’s fine!! You don’t have to address them more obviously if you don’t want to. It’s a kids game first and foremost (and even if that isn’t really a great excuse, whatever).

But I would love a game that delves more into these topics, or just getting into these characters heads more. Using outside information and reasoning stuff, we can analyze basically every character well, but we never really see any confirmation in the game for most of it. We know from the relationship chart and the squid sisters stories and whatnot that Callie willingly went to the Octarians, likely due to the pressure of fame and being on her own, but this is never really explored in the game which sucks because there’s so much potential there! Comments on how fame affects people, escapism, and Callie’s, essentially inability, to be alone (since she’s able to step back into the spotlight again once she has Marie with her, both with the squid sisters performances obv but also the news/map announcement thing). And I get that that’s not the story they were trying to tell, but it would be so nice to have a game that delves into this stuff rather than leaving it off to the side where most of the playerbase probably doesn’t know about it.

Splatoon has a really big problem with exploring character’s darker parts of them / adding complexity to characters. Take Callie again: hypnosis cannot make you do anything that you don’t want to do, so hypno Callie’s personality was still Callie, just those darker parts. And that’s just- kind of ignored, past a few one liners (deep cut’s introduction scene.) Then the same exact thing happens with Marina, except we don’t even get to delve into it as much because it is literal brainwashing or mind control or something where she very obviously has her free will taken away. Which sucks!! Because it would have been so interesting to delve into that desperation that comes with wanting things to stay the same, unintentionally hurting the people you’re trying to help / protect, all of that kind of stuff, and then it’s just shrugged off for the rest of the DLC. Which, again, it’s fine that they didn’t want to tell that story: but it’s still missed potential regarding Marina.

This even affects antagonists, too: mainly Octavio. This is kind of remedied by him helping us in Splatoon 3, but it’s never really explored. He does what he does to help his people because they are literally dying from a lack of resources + power. I like the fact that the Splatoon 1 story doesn’t address this, but it could have been really interesting to see- even just a bit of this- in Splatoon 2, especially since it’s the introduction of giving the player that mentality shift from “Inklings good Octolings bad” to “Well, it’s more complicated than that.” This one is explored in the sunken scrolls a bit, but it would be nice to get a little something more regarding Octavio’s motivations (beyond just steal the Zapfish to help his people)

I really hope that, come Splatoon 4, whichever characters it focuses on (since the inkling / octoling conflict is over at this point), it really focuses on: give us more of their flaws, that complexity, and do it in game instead of through easily ignorable twitter posts.

[sky-scribbles]

It is such a Sam Riegel thing to do, keeping his friends and the entire fandom waiting on his new character for so long. I personally think this is iconic. And while we wait, I had a Think about what kind of character I'd like to see introduced:

(Disclaimer that this is based less on what I think Sam would be likely to create, or what I think he specifically would do well; it's entirely based on what I think would be fun, or would add something to the party. If anyone has more thoughts based on Sam as a player specifically, please do add them!)

A reilora, or any Ruidian. I talked about this a bit already, but now the Hells are going to be off Ruidus for a chunk of time, this would be such a great way to bring in new Ruidus lore in a way that would feel personal to the players and characters. It would give both the characters and fandom even more reason to care about the fate of the Ruidians. There could be some exploration of what it could be like for the Ruidians if they do get to come to Exandria. And Matt has definitely had time to brew up the stats for reilora PCs by now.

A character with a positive, healthy relationship with an Exandrian god. Now that FCG is dead, the rest of Bell's Hells are aggressively neutral toward the gods, or negative toward them; the other cleric PC we had, Deanna, loathed her god. Team Issylra encountered some of the worst aspects of Exandrian faith on their vacation from hell. I'm not saying any of those attitudes are bad or unjustified! But this campaign has been an examination of the gods' impact on Exandria, and by the coincidence of what characters everyone has rolled up, we've largely only seen one side of it. Even FCG was very new to their faith and the other characters... didn't always take it all that seriously. It would be fascinating to have a character thrown into the mix at this stage who's more akin to Caduceus or Pike, in that their faith is a positive, integral part of their life. It could be an interesting shake-up to the conversations the Hells have had so far.

A paladin. Just... any paladin. It's the only class that has never been used for a main campaign character's base class, with Vax and Fjord multiclassing into it later in their arcs. I want to see a paladin who's always been a paladin! Paladins are fun! And from a mechanical standpoint, FCG's loss leaves a space open for a general healer/tank/support character, all of which paladins can cover.

An Aeorian who's been freed from their bubble. Look, I love Aeor. I want the Aeor lore. And seeing an Aeorian, someone who has lost everyone and everything they knew at the hands of the gods, but also as a direct result of what happened last time someone tried to kill the gods... would be interesting. (Also make them have known Bolo)

Again, would any of these be Sam's vibe? I have no idea, and I trust that whatever he does will be amazing! But if he rocks up with a reilora paladin, at least I'll know that I have the gift of prophecy.

[shinyzango]

So, about that "A Steampunk Carol" graphic novel...

I totally did not forget to make the post about it like I promised I am so sorry.

For those who are not familiar with it, long story short a while ago I came across a Kickstarter project for what seemed to be a steampunk adaptation of the Nutcracker story and was bummed that I missed out on it and wasn't able to support and secure a copy for myself, but a fella made me aware that it did actually get published in Italy a few years ago, and that it was sold on Amazon. And after discovering that there was literally only one copy left, I bought it on a whim to both read it and to hopefully attract more attention to it for reasons I'll discuss in just a bit.

I'm just going to say that I'm very back at writing reviews so apologies if this doesn't say anything at the end or if you didn't get the answers to your questions dkfjgn

Alright, now for the book itself.

First things first, the story. I won't go into details right now as I do not want to spoil folks in case this does get released in english to a wider public, but I can add a Spoilers section in the future where I explain in detail what happens if I get asked about it.

The story, like I said, is an adaptation of the Nutcracker And The Mouse King, but it is quite different in many elements, and spices things up quite a bit, especially after the introduction.

Sadly it feels quite rushed in its execution imo, I assume it's because they had to fit everything in a single volume. Which is a shame because there are many concepts and ideas that are very fascinating and interesting, both for the plot and for the characters themselves.

Speaking of the characters, they are quite unique and interesting.

The main kid, Caitlin, who is the Clara/Marie of the story, can be a little sassy, but she still feels grounded and has a good balance between putting down her foot and being nervous about the situation. I don't mind her character.

The Nutcracker, who is only called Schiaccia (just a shortened "Schiaccianoci" which is nutcracker in italian. I assume he's called Cracker in english if they kept that logic), feels solid. He's a loyal soldier, skilled but does show hints of insecurities. A good lad.

The mice are great as well, I'm really intrigued by the lore they cooked up for them, and the Mouse King is actually not bad, and I like what they did with his character.

There's also another supporting character, a tin soldier who goes by Sergeant Idle. He is basically a companion to the Nutcracker. He is basically a plot tool, helping with the backstory and moving the story forward, but not in a bad way. He's very enjoyable.

I would have loved to see them all explored further, but like I said it all feels rushed probably because it had to stick all in a single volume. I don't know if the authors ever considered this to become a series or if it's just a one-shot story, but I would honestly love to see this evolve into a series, if only because I love the characters and I would love to know more about the lore they cooked up for it more in detail, letting all the elements have the time to shine.

Moving on to the graphic...

I love Lorenza's art style. It looks very sketchy, with a clean roughness to it if that makes sense. And I really like all the designs of the characters.

(Apologies for the glares, I tried my hardest to limit them as much as possible. also ngl I'm giggling a little seeing how Schiaccia looks similar to my Hans skdfkjhn)

All in all, I really like this adaptation. It's unique and enjoyable, if only a little rushed.

Like I mentioned before, this was Kickstarted a while ago to get properly published in english. It was successfully funded and as far as I know, they're currently in the process of printing copies if not even shipping them for the backers. I still don't know if the folks at Last Ember Press are planning in making it available to purchase outsite the Kickstart, but I really hope so because I do think this deserves to be available to everyone.

[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.

[oldshrewsburyian]

I've been reading Patricia Wentworth for the first time and have become a dedicated fan of Miss Silver and I'm feeling sad about her being underlooked, so, fellow golden age mystery fan, do you think that I'm right that the reason she was never adapted to screen is because she's always a supporting character in the story? And do you share my feelings that we deserve to see Miss Silver on our TVs anyway?

What an interesting question! (Or, really, questions.)

I agree that the structure of most Miss Silver novels would require significant adaptation. But there are several Poirot novels or stories that are structured that way, and the David Suchet magnum opus made it work. Also, the most recent Miss Marple adaptation managed to put her into novels she wasn't even in. Not, I would argue, with particular success, but the point is that it can be done.

The thing is, much as I enjoy Patricia Wentworth novels as light reading (I recently nabbed a first edition of The Allington Inheritance), I just do not think that Wentworth is really exploring issues of gender, class, and sexuality and how these change after WWII, even though those things are present in all her books. Whether I find this mildly irritating or absolutely infuriating depends on the book and the plot. I also often feel as though they are romance novels with a bit of mystery stirred in, rather than the other way around. Which is a value-neutral statement! but my genre of choice is the detective novel, and I mostly bounce off romance as a genre (though @kivrin has, as a generous friend, striven to broaden my horizons.) And I think that these work against adaptation. Also, while I love the particularities of Miss Silver's character and milieu (The Stag At Eve!) it's very easy to read her as a Miss Marple knockoff, initially.

Anyway: there are several sets of Wentworth characters whom I would love to see on screen. I love The Case of William Smith, despite the cliché in the murderer's identity. I really like the one where Marion (?) is wearing a dress called Triste Journée as the only way she can openly mourn for her beloved husband's imprisonment while working as a dress model to pay the bills. I really like The Allington Inheritance. I liked what the most recent Marple adaptation did with playing up the pulp genre elements of the time in which the stories were set, and I think that could work with Miss Silver. And after seeing Hugh Laurie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? I'd be delighted for him to do anything (but especially Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar.)

My point is... maybe? I'm not sure how effective "Christie epigone whom most people don't know" is likely to be as a marketing strategy.

[roobylavender]

Do you think Steph and Dick would get along?

it would definitely take time. not to draw a comparison but one thing i really dislike about what bruce and stephanie's relationship eventually devolves into is it runs pretty parallel to the destruction of bruce's character in general. he's steadily stripped of his ability to empathize; his tendency to shift the weight of all burdens onto his own shoulders so as to spare the people he loves is reinterpreted as him being a commandeering control freak; he's cold, cutting, cruel. not to say dick should be any of these things, or at least not to the extent that bruce is written to embrace them comparatively, but if anyone was going to be exasperated with and critical of stephanie's tendency to jump into things headfirst and learn as she goes without necessarily any regard for protocol or safety, it would be dick. dick thrives on an organized operation and an understanding with his peers that they will not cross lines or act recklessly to endanger themselves or others. obv they do cross lines, the whole crux of teen titans comics lies in various sorts of unprecedented rogue elements when it comes to a mission. but the titans do also try to improve and be consistent and accountable where they can bc they know it's the key to a happier dick and a more well functioning team. stephanie's not really there yet mentally. she's eager to learn, and she's clearly capable of putting in the work when someone she respects is at the other end of the line, but she's also impatient, and she doesn't react well to orders. that's why you have to dialogue with her. if you respect her, she respects you. if you let her take the lead in manageable steps it will mean the world and more to her

and i do think dick is capable of being that person, but with extensive time and effort. he's spent so much of his life training specifically to do this job that he kind of overestimates what people in the same line of work are capable of on a disciplinary level, despite the fact that their experience might not match up with his own. that's something dixon's portrayal of dick during the prodigal era really takes for granted, bc dixon makes the assumption that tim easily follows dick's lead like a sprightly boy scout and dick responsively is the coolest guy ever rather than the uptight guy whose marriage recently went up in flames and left him feeling absolutely aimless with respect to his own aspirations and vigilante work. like yeah, dick is principled and he won't let real life shit get in the way of doing his job, but he's more than capable of being the most emotionally bitchy person ever while he's at it as we see from how he blows up at donna when she temporarily takes over the team. any interaction between dick and a young sidekick should be colored by an initial inability from him to reconcile the fact that he is working with a vigilante with the fact that he is also working with a child. it should bother him and frustrate him and push him to actually evaluate himself and his sometimes ridiculous expectations. and while i obv don't think stephanie exists to be the sounding board off of which various men work out their control issues or misogyny i do think it would be fun to see her sort of aspire to someone of dick's level (bc lbr. she totally would) while nonetheless putting him in his place as to how he's holding totally unrealistic expectations of an amateur teenager with no training facilities to her name

[aeirithgainsborough]

the real tragedy of tlou is that in saving ellie’s life, joel dooms their relationship. it’s not tragic that he killed a hospital of ppl and prevented a cure bcus we have no emotional attachment to any of those people or the notion a cure might actually work and fix the world. we’ve travelled across that world with ellie and joel and seen how it’s in pieces and how unlikely it could ever be fixed the way the fireflies imagine. but emotionally we ARE with joel and ellie and as we see them in that car and hear joel tell his lie and see ellie’s face, we know that things can’t be the same for them again. i am now and have always been of the opinion that joel lies in that moment to protect her from her feelings of guilt and the burden of thinking she has 2 save the world (and ive always said too he should have told her the truth eventually instead of her having to force his hand to get it), but regardless of that the choice joel made and the lie is always going to be between them. things will always be a little different now. an unspoken thing that eats away at the space between them, making it bigger and bigger. and that’s why it’s really tragic because joel picked ellie’s life over and above anything else cus he loved her and thus knew her life had value independent of being a cure to save the world and she should get to live it, but whilst she is living it (something she is only able to do cus he saved her), he has to watch from afar. he saves her and loses her at the same time.

[lazycranberrydoodles]

its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3

all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):

hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also

his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.

the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)

a whole lot of AU stuff

the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.

cases include:

Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)

Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)

Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))

The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)

Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)

The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)

Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)

Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)

the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao

there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.

the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.

for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.

it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.

tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me

Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost

[sarsaparilla-star]

playing fallout 3 for the first time means oscillating between "this is a really fun game and is reminding me why i love fallout" and "this is the worst thing anybody has ever written"