#the dynamic is written so fucking well

[toto-dreamer]

TFW an author you love apparently deleted their existence from ao3 and this screenshot is literally all you have of them now

If anyone knows their socials please please please I need to know they still exist or something

[forcedhesitation]

astarion origin playthrough worth it just for all the extra moments where he does the "sad wet cat" face

[chrisrin]

hell’s comin’ with me.

based on the fic ‘Alternate Universe’ by Unda. 

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[distraughtlesbian]

this might singlehandedly obliterate all my cred as a person with good opinions in this fanbase but across the void is. kind of not that bad.

[randomfansstuff]

just made an impromptu top 5 dynamics (A FULLY SUBJECTIVE LIST BASED ON MY OPINION ONLY) for dark heir/dark rise and realised james and will aren't even in there

[yuukei-yikes]

in the subject of badly written female characters i think kido is very well written (could use more development on their relationships with other characters but all things considered seventh novel is a masterpiece 2 me) but it always made me sad seto and kano get good moments together that kido isn't a part of so i like imagining little mekatrio drama where kido is so pissed off about always being left out and """protected""" by their brothers

[robocops-a-christ-allegory]

Ok Suicide Squad Isekai thoughts for real now genuinely I think this is a good little suicide squad thing AS WELL as really good Peacemaker content. I was right about him just being Kupperberg Peacemaker I dont know what the fuck happened but I was right and he was wearing that bag for the first three episodes

Im so happy its unreal

[aq2003]

how is 42 boring. doctor who video essayer are you out of your fucking mind

[radiaking]

in the end idc too much whether the show makes g.houlcy a thing. all i really care about is that they keep the dynamic interesting and unique. i just don't want them to make it boring. i want it to be undefinable. i want it to be something compelling above all else. i want them to be important to one another. like sure in my dreams i want them to be together. but i'd much rather them have a dynamic that is just so interesting (which it is!!! rn!!) it sort of transcends all of that? romance and that something else can absolutely co-exist. but if i have to choose....i want the latter.

[l0ngtimen0spooning]

Someone tell this man to stop making things into fucking musicals PLEASE

[volfoss]

⚱️<- for volfoss character ask 👍

YIPPEE ok i KNOW the girl u will like so so much <3

tossing veycer there for scale and also because hes important to their fucked up sibling dynamic. but i think sheala would make u go insane analyzing.

sheala has a LOT of depth and theres a lot of politics involved (one day i think i will have to make a heres volfoss' politics in a silly slideshow or something bc there is so much.) so i will do my best to explain why i think you would like her :)

first off. she is very good at hiding her tragedy and well um. theres not a better example of this than on the ikuaipe route (shes part of the ikuaipe army, which is like one of the 3 major countries in volfoss). to simplify it as much as i can, there is a war going on bc asdenia (one of the other big 3 countries) refuses to export rare metals to ikuaipe, who use them to make drugs. there is no reason explained for WHY they stopped this but thats all u really need to know about the war bc its complicated and they get into a lot of stuff w the drugs (specifically on like. how withdrawal is handled and how restricting supply from people isn't immediately going to fix their issues etc, its handled very well) in detail in game but. sheala's older brother is veycer who is the head of the army (he fucking sucks. i hope he dies soooo bad but he is also written with depth and like. kind of even tho he DOES some over the top evil stuff [like well. the incident im about to get into lol], he still is given enough character that he's fleshed out properly. all of the "villains" are but thats besides the point.) plays a very big part in well. why sheala would make you go make so many character studies on her.

anyways dear god. politics explained and hatred for veycer being put in there in advance. sheala goes on a mission (where shes a commander, so has a decent amount of responsibility there, and more specifically is leading the rear of the troops, veycer is leading the front) and gets ambushed pretty bad. to the point that when shalvas (who you would also love. but it would take me like 3x as long to get into his diseases. i promise youd love him tho, hes the silly protagonist) arrives, theres just one soldier left of her unit bc the rest of them were killed, and that soldier dies shortly after. sheala is facing one of the four heroes (who basically are some of the strongest characters in the world, and are sworn to remain neutral (they are not by the point of the war, so one of them is fighting on the side of asdenia. its a lot of politics im so sorry) and a BIG amount of very tough enemies on her own when shalvas arrives. shes dealing with a ton of guilt about the entire team she was leading dying (which honestly like. she couldnt do much about bc of how strong the guy thats part of the 4 heroes is) and is completely determined to stay, even if it costs her her life. she's someone thats very loyal and very stubborn and this is not so great for her. thankfully, shalvas is able to persuade her by basically saying hey. if you died it would cause more trouble for veycer than if you lived. thats the ONLY way she would go back despite being in pretty bad shape and being completely willing to let her life go there.

on the way back, shalvas clearly is having the very awkward moment of ok. she is clearly upset and i do not know how to make it better (he is like. very very blatantly written as autism to me, so he communicates in a way thats very awkward a lot of the time, or just is silent. which is honestly very cool of him), so after Sheala apologizes for everything to him, he tells her that she can always fight the hero again (because yk. she didnt die lol) and then IMMEDIATELY denies it when she asks if hes comforting him. their dynamic is really nice because its just like two weird as fuck guys trying to be friends.

which um. well you see. veycer sucks so bad. and he is incredibly mad at how badly sheala fucked up with letting her troop get killed (guy that loves to get so mad soooo much of the time for no good reason other than its fun for him). and hes having a little moment of its fun to do drastic punishment and despite another army officer (who youll def see a lot if you play, his name is auveon. hes friends w sheala) begging him to not do it, he orders sheala's execution. (and when i tell you i felt like i was going to puke reading this for the first time, i do mean it. this is the 2nd route ive done, so id already seen a lot of her and liked her a lot, and ofc the more ive interacted w her in this (and the last route) ive cared a lot more about her. so it was like oh ok. we are suffering). veycer basically is just like well um. she fucked up BAD and she cant get any leniency for that. yeah even if she IS my sister, people would see me as a weak commander if i gave her a lesser punishment so um lol. all of the soldiers are pleading with him to not do it and auveon asks if sheala wants to plead her case and um. well she says "I will follow Your Excellency’s orders. I am prepared to give up this life at any time if I am told to die." like. what is your DEAL.

she is fine eventually tho, just got demoted and veycer had the fucking nerve to be like omg i loveee my family thank you shalvas for protecting her. which is then like ok. did she know he wasnt really going to do it. or is he just lying to shalvas for fun. its insane to me they have such a fucking weird dynamic bc sheala worries about veycer a lot and then veycer is like um. ok i kill you with rocks and hammers. but i promise i love you.

ANYWAYS. some of the other things i really like about sheala. she has a quick temper and will NOT hesitate to call someone out on BS (this gets her in trouble a lot but shes very capable. when i fought her in the first route it was the worst fight of the game bc she is THAT strong) but she is also very kind as a person. she and turi-marrya (shes a water maiden but is also genuinely so fucking cool and i could go insane over her. easily.) in both routes ive played, despite being on opposing sides are very kind to each other and very polite (both of them having a lot of respect for the other, given some events in the game.) i think just like the way that she is facing a lot of tragedy (mainly due to VEYCER.) and yet is still brave enough to keep going but also does have a lot of moments where the grief does hit her and she is clearly struggling to deal with it. i think youd love her.

[autumnrory]

sometimes i think i should just publish some of my little stories if i could cobble a whole thing together bc like. it's basically all i write now and some of what i'm doing is infinitely better than other chris evans/ofc shit out there

[marsbotz]

BTW ive been watching a bunch of life on mars (UK VERSION 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧‼️‼️) and its sooo good. crazy funny and awesome too

[lightdancer1]

Now that I think about it:

It really is striking given everything with that one episode that there's no plotline where Tara accidentally kills off her love interest with that blindness spell early in Season 5 and Glory steamrolls everyone because the big gun went missing. It's basically one of this 'so this is how we done fucked up, don't do that shit' storylines that's seemingly begging to be written and.....nobody actually has. It'd be a perfect knife twist and it's not like the Scoobies would let Tara just leave with her obviously evil family even after that because they'd not want to lose someone ELSE after it.

So what does happen if they have to go through the Glory arc but there's no Willow (especially twistedly funny given later seasons if the Powers That Be cough her up again at the start of the equivalent of Season 6)? Would the butterfly effect mean she'd even brain-suck Tara, which was a pretty clear bit of her power boost that made her as formidable? If that never happens and they just use the hammer sooner, does anyone actually have to die?

I can also see if the PTB did decide 'oh wait, no, this one DOES have a destiny and she needs to get on with it' that a resurrected Willow after all that would be in the usual situation most of the 'Tara comes back' fics go of having entirely valid trust issues and having the 'wait HOW much time happened oh holy God WHAT is Glory and wow' reactions to a normal year on the Hellmouth.

Canon-wise Willow's an unkillable, fanfic exists precisely to do what canon wouldn't. And ultimately Tara was, after all, meant to be the replacement goldfish for Willow's old niche, so one can very easily see the Scoobies acting at a meta-level like that and creating something of the same dysfunction from a different route because she is very much NOT Willow in any of the ways that define her. She has a rigidly defined sense of ethics, she gets a backbone that has a more consistent sense of 'happens to me bad, happens to you because I'm traumatized nobody ever remembers it for the rest of anything ever'.

It would also be a suitably ironic knife twist given the 'big gun' thing that the very expectations here that set up the ultimate Dark Lord Rosenberg thing never happening lead to the Gang winning because Buffy beats the shit out of Glory with a magic hammer when she never gets her mitts on Tara because there's no Willow for her to argue with that one day and the butterfly effects are big, she never dies....and then the PTB have Willow turn right back up in the Magic shop alive, well, and utterly ocnfused at the end of the equivalent of that season going "What the Hell was that."

I would admittedly have the Dark Willow thing happen anyway as a result of overcompensating for realizing she was killed as result of relying on someone else's wisdom with magic and it's more Dark Lord Rosenberg, as I mentioned, rather than its canon aspect and Tara gets to be the replacement Willow and it does not spark joy while Willow in turn quite reasonably has major trust and communication issues and doubles and triples down on increasingly powerful magic sans magic crack analogy until she's full-scale Dark Phoenix and people belatedly have the 'oh shit we probably should have tried talking before now' reaction.

This may well end up the one other Buffyverse fic I write, though I'd basically breeze through the rest of Season 5 in the first chapter from Tara's POV and then at the tail end Willow comes back and the hilarity ensues.

Then again it's also equally possible for Willow to simply go 'nah, fuck magic, magic killed me, y'all already got a witch, computers it is' and then the Hellmouth Hellmouths and her destiny won't be denied and the paranoia of living on the place makes her take the same path while actually struggling against it when she gets a Monkey's Paw version of her own desire to be the big damn hero, but to be able to do that she has to be able to reach the power to do so and since she is who she is, it's impossible to have the power to abruptly start being capable of making reality do what you want without it going to her head.

And given that she did at least seem to be easily replaceable (with Willow and Tara equally unreliable narrators and the truth not quite matching up with what either of them think here and the two narrative POVs here) Dark Lord Rosenberg gets to be as much a case of venting that she in a sense was the replaceable sidekick on a television show and not a main character.

Almost every other canon possibility here has done this and having 'the person I love cannot see the demon for who she is' and then 'wait, she died, I didn't mean that' because the magic misfires a little harder in a laser-guided fashion and having Tara meet her intended niche a little harder than otherwise is....surprisingly under-used.

[waywardsalt]

:3