#the whole reason i had the game was so that i could get every alt of Daffy and or Porky possible LMAO realizing that’s not a substantial way

[ducktracy]

https://looneytuneswom.scopely.com/2022/11/10/wackynvasion/ This looks neat!

I AM SO MAD I DIDN’T SEE THIS UNTIL NOW!!!!!!!!!!! i redownloaded World of Mayhem in a blind panic yesterday because i just caught the news I AM SO HAPPY THEY’RE DOING THIS! i’m a very passive player i’m not a gacha person and refuse to spend a single cent on any mobile game but man. if my impulse control were just slightly worse than it already is…

i’m so mad i missed the Porky event and it looks like you have to spend a ridiculous amount of money to get Daffy but this event may turn me into a regular player, if only so i can obsessively check to see if these guys ever pop up again and i’m not late 🙏 this is such a neat idea though and 1000000% up my alley!!! Porky’s Duck Hunt, Porky in Wackyland and The Daffy Doc are 3 of my favorite cartoons of all time so this is such a perfect event. AND the naked Tweety/Babbit and Catstello!! i wish ridiculous paywalls didn’t exist but this is a very fun idea and i’m so bummed i didn’t check until now 😤

[asterythm]

on the ending of in stars and time:

an essay from someone who couldn’t sit with it at first, & a love letter to the fic that brought me here anyway. (…spoiler warning for in stars and time, naturally, but you knew that!)

if siffrin isat has taught me one thing it's that vulnerability is cool, actually, and being forthcoming and generous with love when there is love to be shared is how the coolest kids do it.

so. hello isat nation of tumblr dot com. i'm here because even after cutting out several chunks to shorten this significantly, i busted through the ao3 comment section character limit and still had more to say, so i needed somewhere to put it all that would let me go longer.

i’m pretty sure this post is for, like, three people, one of whom is me. but look, it’s been moved here to the webbed site so if you wanna read it anyway i won’t stop you!

=====

i think what it is, ultimately, is this: the ISAT canon ending was beautiful. it was an objectively well-written ending with so much love and hope and thematic satisfaction.

it also left me, for a period, with a deep and unshakeable sense of dread.

:)!!!!

now enter @faedemon's "None Forward & Two, Two, Two Steps Back" (hiya, fancy seeing you here), a two-chapter alt act 5 in which siffrin finds a New, Worse way to break the loops.

despite being, as mentioned, a notably worse outcome for everyone involved, this alt end managed to cut straight to the heart of that dread and settle it — and not in the sense of "oh, i like this alt ending better", or “oh, the canon ending looks better in comparison against this worse alt ending”, so much as "oh, thanks to this alt ending i am finally able to sit in a place where it no longer feels like the canon ending, as a beautiful outcome which felt impossibly lucky to get, is the only outcome in which life can go on — and my ability to accept it, and the game as a whole, is elevated for it."

which!! i mean!! i don’t know that that’s exactly what you set out to do; None Forward is explicitly a tragedy!! and one, as your tags say, written because the canon ending didn't ring true for you.

but I realized that the thing that was stopping me from enjoying ISAT’s canon ending was that ugly hard core that was still so, so scared after the canon ending of every way we (that is, siffrin + i as the player moving in that incredible ludonarrative lockstep with him, holy moly the harmony in this game) had not yet grown to earn it. 

=====

(I’ll take a sec here under the cut to say that when I played ISAT, and then for much of the month that followed, my main reason for engaging with it and its related content at all was that it was a piece of media that came fervently recommended by my incredibly dear friend @iconocat , who it had massively, violently impacted and whose media recommendations in general I trust more than anything.

so i played ISAT, and it was incredible. but even though it's a piece of media that just about hit on every point on my list of Things That Set My Brain On Fire, it failed somehow to. well. set me on fire — at least to the extent I was expecting it to. I still enjoyed myself in the few weeks afterwards of running through fan content and intentionally plunging myself into media analysis, but I was never convinced that I would be engaging with ISAT to the extent I was if it wasn't for the sake of trying to intentionally hack my brain to the point where I could share with my friend something so important to her at the same level of genuine investment. 

I’m telling you all this because, legitimately the same night I posted “nothing but a dull ache” (ie, if you're not charlie faedemon and are somehow caring to read this anyway, the epilogue oneshot I started feverishly writing the morning after reading None Forward), I realized through my rambling in my friend’s discord dms that reading None Forward was the moment the fire finally caught. I spent a month burying myself in ISAT content and asking myself “Is this natural yet?”. after None Forward, the answer to that question finally became a sure, wholehearted yes.)

=====

so anyway, back to the essay.

don't get me wrong. it's really, really nice, to read a story where the moral is less “you should have asked for help", and more “there are people who will unselfishly give the gift of a love that saves even when you cannot save yourself".

but that whole ending also was only able to happen because 1. they broke in a way no one should ever have to break, and 2. everyone involved got lucky.

which, in media, happens all the time!! it is not inherently dissatisfying for a narrative to wrap by saving you with luck and love in the nick of time!! in fact it should be incredibly satisfying, after the unambiguously-negative downward spiral into Director Siffrin who had begun to learn what to say and do to make his family behave exactly the way he needs them to, for a stroke of unpredictable luck brought about by factors entirely out of his control to finally be what sets him free.

but like... I think it's because the story is set in a situation where it's no longer true that luck and randomness is a factor by which anything significant can change.

we're hammered over the head with it: until and unless you do something to alter the course of events, they will not be altered. when you are the only dynamic element the world is reacting to in an otherwise looping course of events, you don't get to rely, anymore, on the idea that at any moment something could happen to save you. you have to assume that nothing will happen unless you make it.

and siffrin?? siffrin's literal motto was "stick to the script"!! they spend the loops with a mouth that kept closing tighter and tighter and tighter until i got to act 5 and watched them implode. and then I’m saved, and I know I haven't earned this. I get to the end and I'm still not telling them anything!! I wasn't supposed to get the good ending!! but I get away with it anyway with open arms and acceptance and unconditional love, and it's. kind of nauseating?

how am I ever supposed to learn and grow, if I didn't manage to change my behaviour even then under the threat of Eternal Looping Torment, and still got the good ending anyway? how can I prove there was an alternative way I could have broken free if things hadn't turned out so lucky in that one terrible act 5 loop?

I can't. and that's terrifying.

(aside: I’m speaking in the first person here to emphasize that the thing that got in my way is not because I don't believe siffrin is deserving of this love — quite the opposite, I think the driving force behind the good ending is that siffrin went scorched earth and saw he was loved anyway — but because this is a game designed to frequently encourage the player to deeply feel what siffrin is feeling throughout its course and. well. as a thing to happen to a fictional character it's beautiful. as a takeaway for the player, it's... harder.)

and that's where None Forward comes in. (i’ve already written thousands of words in comments and epilogue fic declaring my love by now, but i mean. im hoping you won’t mind just a liiiittle more.)

None Forward shows a devastatingly written, all-too-believable version of what might have happened if siffrin didn't get lucky, and the loops continued, and they kept clinging to the script and refusing to Look At It and successfully stagnating and stagnating and stagnating as they were so determined to do. and it's bad, it's worse, it's way way worse — but there's no reliance on outside factors. it comes completely from within siffrin and loop, the only dynamic pieces in the world, finally breaking out.

it was the terrible, nightmarish unfairness of the loops brought to their natural, just-south-of-inevitable conclusion.

and yes, it's a terrible, unfair conclusion, but the loop still breaks.

in a roundabout way, it... gives me so much hope. if the outside factors were different, if the stars did not align just right to allow siffrin's family to get there on time to save them, if siffrin never learned to open their mouth, which by all means seems like the likeliest course of events... they'd still get out. worse for wear, and separated by a gap unbridgeable, but out.

there is a future. there is freedom.

=====

to speak more specifically on dull ache, if you'll forgive the indulgence, just since this was originally meant to be in a reply to the author in my own comments section:

I think I so desperately needed to write it with a focus on the family siffrin left behind because I wanted to prove, if just for myself, that in that barely-dodged alternative there still could be a future for everyone. (isabeau's just happened to be the voice in which dull ache came to me, but the point was to create an epilogue for all four.)

for the rest of the family, who was not quite so deeply ravaged but was still left in a bad way at the end of None Forward, and for whom randomness is not pretty much unequivocally good just by virtue of being better than the alternative like it is for siffrin and loop (more on that in a sec), I could see it mattering more to set specific pieces up precisely, and I could actually imagine the pieces I could set up that could have a meaningful impact in the immediate future.

so. y’know. I set them, in the way I happened to want to. granted, with some extra... divine indulgence, but siffrin's departure from their family's perspective at the end of None Forward was definitely Wrong but not so obviously wrong that I could believe that without it they wouldn't otherwise either (a) go hunting him down to force out the truth, which felt Worse, or (b) just "accept" that it was as simple as Siffrin not actually caring about them/brushing them off and thus intentionally fade him into the distance in their minds to deal with it. which felt like the WORST POSSIBLE THING.

you'd think it might make more sense to have done this for siffrin and loop, instead. they're arguably the ones who need it most, after all, so why not build them up from rock bottom as a sweeping show of "things get better"?

but... i think it doesn't need to be written to have faith that it will happen: the very fact that Siffrin is about to set out on a new journey in a reality where everything is a dynamic player just. immediately gives me hope all by itself. random lucky things that save you are so much more believable and wonderful when random lucky things in general are happening all the time, and you have all the time in the world for them to happen.

and anyway, I don't think this is the kind of future you’d write satisfyingly as a sequence of events at all. to heal from this is something that will take an incredible amount of time and nonlinear progress. 

until one day, through a series of disconnected small quiet gloriously-random lived experiences, without knowing when it happened or being able to trace it back, you realize, oh —

somewhere along the way, you came to know how to live again.

[sunshine-jesse]

Ashley Literally Did Nothing Wrong, Fuck You, Fight Me

Alt title: Ashley Graves: The most convenient scapegoat in the world

I'm going to espouse a take here that will no doubt be controversial, as you can tell by the title. This is a take I've created from my hollistic understanding of the events of the game, and isn't dependent on any one single point I make in this essay. Because of that, I want you to read it with an open mind; if you hyperfocus on one or two smaller details I might've gotten wrong or are fallaciously interpretated, and either use that to discount the whole essay or go into the comment section and immediately try to debunk my interpretation of that event, that'll make it obvious to me that you're not trying to seriously engage with the core of what I'm trying to say. Because unless quite literally everything I've said here is wrong, I feel confident in saying this:

Ashley Graves did nothing wrong.

Moreover, I think Ashley is on the level of people like Rossiu, Shinji Ikari, and Skylar White as far as people who are mistreated by their fandoms goes.

At first this was going to be an essay about how I don't think the demons are evil, using textual and thematic evidence to show that they're just part of a system that deals mostly fairly with humans and doesn't have any nefarious plans, or at least nefarious plans that stand to fuck anyone over. But then I realized that, goodness gracious, that is boring as shit to write! But I looked at what I had written already and realized that I could write something else with it: something better. I could sum up a lot of the points made in my prior essays and elaborate upon them in much more detail, showing why I think certain themes are obviously present within this game. And here, I intend on doing that.

I've spoken a lot before about how Ashley is a scapegoat for all of Andrew's worst habits; and to a lesser extent, her mother's. The game makes it seemingly obvious that she's the bad one, and generally just a Very Not Good person. It shows her and her brother committing many different acts that are, under most moral systems, wrong, and implicitly implies that she's the reason that Andrew ever did those things. It implies that she's corrupting him, that he could be better and refuses- or is unable to- due to her poking and prodding. But… is that the truth? Is that how their relationship actually works, in practice? I don't believe so. I think I've made it obvious by now that I believe the exact opposite!

I'm going to start off by tackling the morality behind their actions, especially relative to the world they're in. Specifically, I'm going to tackle how the game presents the morality of their actions from a thematic point of view, and any statements it may or may not make.

First of all, TCOAL plays with a lot of different taboos- demon summoning, cannibalism, incest, murder- but the game goes through great lengths to muddy the moral weight of the siblings' actions. Every single action they commit is portrayed in the most neutral possible light- killings were done in self defense (with one notable exception), or done to people who greatly wronged them, cannibalism was a necessity to survive (also with one notable exception), incest is shown to come from a marked improvement in their relationship- leading me to believe that this game is taking a hard morally nihilistic stance. Else, they'd be shown to suffer for their actions, when in reality, the literal exact opposite is happening; they are being rewarded for it. This isn't necessarily glorifying the actions, but instead showing that even the worst of actions can potentially be excused, but whether or not you do is up to the reader. Hence, nihilism, or at the very least, skepticism (as noted by Lisafication). There's an existentialist reading of this too, but I think much of that is contingent on the events of chapter 3 so I won't get into that here.

It contrasts this mostly nihilistic perspective on interpersonal taboos with the deep societal ills that drive people to commit such actions. Evil exists at every level of analysis here, but curiously, the only thing that are shown to do direct harm to others without having a justification of some kind- be it self-defense or retaliation- are those societal ills. There is no (morally) good reason to quarantine people, starve them, and harvest their organs. There's no good reason to burn all evidence and then put a hit on the ones who did escape. There's no good reason to extort sexual favors from someone in exchange for food. These are deep structural problems that force people to either retaliate/lash out or enable people's most exploitative or abusive habits lest they just let themselves die.

And thus, the obvious evils become much less obvious. The game makes a point of subverting the obvious or the well-known when it comes to morals, and I think it does so when it comes to everything else, too. Outside of those societal ills (so far, ch3 might have something else to say), every situation where someone could obviously be shown as the bad person in a situation is immensely more complex than it first appears. So much so that I'd argue that displaying said complexity and subverting simplicity to force/encourage people to analyze things deeper is one of the central themes of the game.

So why, exactly, does he blame so much on her? It's because Ashley is the world's most convenient scapegoat, and the game is well-aware of this and displays it in ways both obvious and not.

First off: the title screen has Ashley wielding the cleaver, establishing that she’s the violent one. It's covered in blood, too, implying that she's the one more driven to kill. The reality of this is the opposite; Andrew is the one with less hesitation to inflict violence on others, the cleaver is his weapon, and most of the kills in the story are done by him (and fully justified). Ashley might push him to do these violent acts, but… does she?

Her reaction to the death of the first warden is one of utter shock.

And her expression afterwards?

This is not the look of someone who enjoyed the fact that someone killed for her sake. This is not the look of someone who finds joy to be had in violence. It's not even the look of someone who is apathetic towards violence. It almost seems to express shame or guilt, but at the very least, she's timid over it. At the very least, it's an "oh shit, he actually had to do that for my sake" face. Not a "haha, I am making him worse!" face.

Not to mention, not only does Andrew kill the first Warden without a care in the world, he proactively kills the 302 lady to eliminate all witnesses, and because he believes Ashley would want him to. But Ashley actually grills him for it; she didn't want the 302 lady to die, although she hardly had good-person-reasons for it. But that's not my point. The point is that she is not the violent one between the two of them.

The door doesn't open in response to violence, remember?

The game intentionally misleads us.

And what happens when Ashley tries to make him take responsibility for all this violence? To point out that she didn't force him to do anything and that he chose to do all of it, including lock Nina in the box? She lashes out, hits him a few times… and then he goes to strangle her, and doesn't let go until she acknowledges that he has no reason for her to be around. He literally doesn't cease his threat to her life until she acknowledges she's useless to him.

I acknowledge that this isn't the most charitable framing for Andrew, and maybe too charitable for Ashley. After all, she wasn't indignant. She was mocking him. She found it hilarious. But I have reasons for that charitability that I'll go over towards the end. But even with that charitability in mind, I don't think my reading is too off base. Defaulting to laughter or mocking in stressful situations is just what Ashley does. She's not indignant about it; she just finds it hilarious that people keep pretending to be better than her, when they're not.

Andrew killed the 302 lady and used Ashley as a scapegoat to justify it; this is indisputable, stated in the text during the dream. This alone validates Ashley's point of view. There is no interpretation of this event that doesn't paint Andrew as every bit as unscrupulous as Ashley, and thinking she corrupted him into this- when it was both one of the first actions he did on his own in the story and something he explicitly uses Ashley as a scapegoat for- is just ridiculous. It's frankly unreasonable. She has every right to be sick of being used as a scapegoat. And at the very least, whether or not you accept the idea that Andrew only let Ashley go once she acknowledged that she's useless to him, he's still so taken aback by his misinterpretation of Ashley's desires that HE goes to strangle HER.

This is NOT Andrew triumphantly standing up to his abuser. This is both of their masks slipping; Andrew revealing how violent and insistent on keeping up his internal narrative that he is, and Ashley revealing that she's getting tired of being blamed for everything.

And then, when he finally lets her go… she hugs him, and acknowledges that she's happy that Nina is gone, which makes little sense at the face of it. Why would that be her first response to being let go, when it was ostensibly what made Andrew so upset to begin with?

I think, to her, it's a conciliatory gesture. As chapter 2 showed us, she's more than willing to take responsibility for violence to relieve Andrew of stress over it, as evidenced by her finishing off their parents. This is an earlier instance of that; by acknowledging she was happy that Nina was dead, she took responsibility for it. She willingly framed herself as a bad person here, so Andrew wouldn't have to be.

She let herself be the scapegoat, because it's all she ever knew. She put the mask back on.

This alone is enough to challenge the idea that Ashley 'corrupts' Andrew in any meaningful way. How, exactly, can you define it as corrupt when society itself is twisted enough to force these actions to survive? In a more sane world, a lot of their actions would've been bad, sure, but they're also actions that the siblings probably wouldn't have done in a more sane world. Ashley's actions aren't making Andrew worse, they're helping to ensure their survival. You could say that this is still corruptive in its own way, but at that point it seems like your reasoning is motivated by having already had that narrative rather than making a good-faith reading of their dynamic.

At no point did she actually make him worse; he was already like that and just used her as an excuse.

Next up is the Nina situation. This one is obviously cut and dry- Ashley manipulates Andrew into killing Nina because she wants no competition between the two of them. It's not Andrew's fault and Ashley was an evil abuser from the jump. Obvious, right?

No. It's really not.

It's pretty strongly implied that Ashley was mistreated by people her whole life. The Lemon Cupcake scene shows this in more detail, about how people always neglect or ignore her birthdays, but she also says that nobody likes her because she's weird and loud in the Nina flashback too. But unless something big happened in between the two flashbacks, none of this behavior indicates particularly maladaptive or even strange tendencies on Ashley's part. She's a needy, bratty child, and the closest thing to a friend she has- Nina- wants to take away the one thing from her that's a source of comfort and emotional validation.

It's not entirely rational, sure! But it also -makes perfect sense-. NOBODY treated her well throughout her entire life; it's strongly implied that Nina never did either, given Nina's reaction to Ashley being there and the lower left-hand painting past the Questionable door showing her being distant from the two of them. We can also see a star bouncing off of her head, and stars represent closeness in this game, so it shows there was an attempt made somewhere along the line, it's just not clear as to who made the attempt.

At the very least, Nina's reaction of disappointment fed into Ashley's preconceived notions of how people treat her, and how she deserves to be treated. Although, from what has been directly stated, rather than implied, Nina was nothing more than an innocent victim in this scenario; I don't mean to take that away from her.

"But she didn't care when Nina died?"

So? If Nina treated her like trash for most of her life, why should she care? She didn't expect Nina to die. It was just an acceptable consequence. You can say "That's not how normal kids act!" all you want, but there's a level of spite and apathy that comes with intense bullying and emotional neglect that I don't think you really understand unless you've been there to the extent someone like Ashley has implied to be.

Andrew, meanwhile, was the one who told Ashley that they had to lock Nina in the box to keep them in there. He's the one who looked for and found the stick to keep them locked in. You could say he was coerced by an abusive person into hurting someone, sure, but you'd be wrong. Cataclysmically wrong, even. Like, if you actually think that a seven year old girl (nobody wears overalls past the age of seven) can have anything approximating an abusive dynamic with her as the perpetrator with someone both older and stronger than her, you frankly have some issues with women you need to work out. That's simply not how abuse dynamics work at that age.

Andrew wasn't entirely responsible for it either, mind- he was just a kid who should never have been saddled with this kind of responsibility. But that's not my point; the point is that it enables other people, Andrew included, to use her as a scapegoat to avoid his own responsibility. All this scene does is retroactively justify any preconceptions you might've had about them from seeing their adult selves first. But the moment you start digging, it becomes much less obvious who's really culpable here. Andrew was, as evidenced by the blood oath scene, fully aware that he held the advantage over her in strength, and managed to give up nothing when making the oath while he made Ashley swear to silence. He was fully aware that he could've chosen to do better, but he refused, and instead opted to reinforce Ashley's insecurities for the sake of exerting control over her.

I've said before that the 302 lady was murdered without any input from Ashley, but this is also relevant on a meta-level because it's done without any input from the player, either. Both of the murders in chapter 1 were like that, whereas all that we, the player can choose to do in that chapter is either solve puzzles, or hilariously, die. The only person with control here is Andrew, the character, and this is reinforced by the fact that we have no control over him for much of the Nina flashback, too. He locks her in the box regardless of our input, even though Ashley spends a lot of time trying to convince him. The main difference between the Nina flashback and the scenes in the apartment is that Ashley had absolutely no idea that any of that was going to happen in the present, whereas it's something she wanted with Nina- which isn't that big of a difference when discussing how much agency she really has.

As much as the game frames Ashley as a manipulator- and much of the fanbase uncritically accepts- she is given shockingly little in-game control over many of the actions committed. Even in the case of the Hitman- as a good friend of mine pointed out- the only choice the player is given is whether or not to check the closet and be killed; an impulsive decision leading to a swift and unceremonious end. In the end, Andrew is the one given the choice to kill the hitman, and we can consciously choose whether or not his reaction is panicked or measured. No such choice is given to Ashley, as most of her reactions are impulsive and spontaneous rather than planned. This is not the makings of a standard "manipulative evil bitch" trope. She's pretty consistently portrayed as someone with poor impulse and emotional control who loudly and aggressively states her intent in every single scenario she's in.

And you can still call what she says and does manipulative despite that, sure, but at what point are you just pathologizing relatively normal (if extreme and highly emotional) social interactions for the sake of fitting into a narrative you already held?

We see Ashley's status as a scapegoat for people to use to pretend to be normal reach its most blatant with the parents. This time it's pretty cut and dry to anyone that doesn't already have it in their mind that Ashley is evil and unforgivable. Mrs. Graves explicitly brings up the possibility of a normal life without Ashley to Andrew in the basement, and claims that Ashley was at fault for shutting her out. She would've been a normal parent otherwise, right? Well, no; the game wastes no time in showing that this wasn't the case in the Burial ending.

From when Ashley was a baby, Mrs. Graves was already tired of her shit, and too emotionally exhausted to be a parent. Despite her attempts at blaming Ashley, she would've never been a normal parent unless Ashley was a golden child in the same way that Andrew was. And yet Ashley didn't even deny shutting her mom out. She didn't deny the chance to be used as a scapegoat; it was all she ever knew. The fact that Mrs. Graves had the audacity to claim that she was a saint when she was never prepared to be a parent for a child who didn't make it easy, and when she was willing to sell out her children and let them die for a life insurance payment is absolutely astounding.

This alone should've been enough to recontextualize everything we supposedly know about how responsible Ashley really is in all of this, but bad parents have a knack for being great at manipulating both family members and everyone viewing from the outside, including the people playing the game.

And almost including Andrew.

Andrew almost accepting the mom's offer is the single most tragic moment in the game, by far.

Dandy said it best in his video essay: By Ashley leaving Andrew alone with their parents, she showed that she is capable of changing. That she is capable of getting better. She showed that she loves and respects Andrew enough to be able to put aside her usual role as the scapegoat and allow him to make the decision that was for the best for both of them. And make no mistake, it was for the best; if the mom really DID sell out the siblings, and given the two of them were already on the run for supposedly being dead, there was no hope of any of this ever working out. They saw through the conspiracy and knew the truth of how the quarantine operations really worked. They were an active threat to one of the most powerful entities seen in the setting so far, to the point where they had a hitman sent after them.

Mrs. Graves had every reason to sell them out again, for their presence in a public setting was more than enough to put everyone in their family in danger. Mrs. Graves had every reason to believe that the normalcy she wanted was nothing that could ever be grasped again so long as her children were alive, and as such, it was clear that she had nothing to offer either Andrew or Ashley. Ashley trusted Andrew to see through their obvious manipulations and lies, and understand that the parents had nothing left to give them. She trusted him to love her more than the false promises their parents could give.

…And yet. In spite of it all.

In spite of her love, in spite of clearly displaying that she can grow up and become a person that causes him less stress, and in spite of Ashley showing that all she wants now is their safety and security…

Andrew can still choose to consider Ashley the problem. He can still choose to use her as the scapegoat he always has.

He can still choose to see her as the one thing that caused him to be this way, that stands in between him and normalcy, when she, not once, forced him to do anything.

Were he to accept Mrs. Graves' offer, this would've been the single most tragic moment in the game. It almost was, and still stands to be, because he ignores every indication that things could be better for the sake of his own narrative, and a narrative echoed by much of the fandom.

But no matter what ending was picked, things could be better. They could've been better all along. Compared to chapter 1, their dynamic in chapter 2 is already much healthier. Their banter is less venomous, and while they still poke and prod each other in ways that aren't exactly great, they don't get into the same violent fights we saw in the 302 room. By all accounts, what happened in that room was an outlier. Even when they find themselves in their parents' house, where they stand to do the One Thing That Means They Would Never Be Normal Again, Ever (ignoring the fact that this is already a lost cause by then), Ashley doesn't get into any fights with Andrew in the same way she did back in the apartment. All she wants is affirmation and security. She doesn't even lay into her mom like she lays into Julia over the phone, even in their private conversations.

We’re led to believe that she’s still getting worse because the actions she’s taking are more extreme, but her attitudes and behaviors are much, much different. The actual actions they're taking are so obviously the right thing to do (both morally and practically) that I don't think it's until they eat their parents that you should make a double take and go "Wow, maybe these goblins actually are kinda fucked up," because until then, well… everything is justified! Perfectly so! Even then, eating their parents serves a purpose, even if not a mentally healthy one.

Maybe she’s calmer because she’s in control over the situation, but if the calls she made to Julia are any indication (independent of the theory that she didn’t actually say those things), were she unchanged as a person, she still would’ve lashed out at their mother over how much more useful she is to Andrew than their parents were, or something of that nature. Something about how nothing their mom offers could compete with what Ashley gives. But she makes no such claims. She feels no need to prove anything to her parents, or to reaffirm her place in Andrew’s life even in the face of her mother challenging it (or at least implying such a challenge). Regardless of her insecurities, she’s changed. It’s hard to see, but she has.

And then Andrew can ignore that and consider betraying her because he refuses to believe that she's willing to make their dynamic work, when she shows many different indications of being willing to concede as long as Andrew stops giving her mixed signals.

A friend of mine put it best, and I'm pretty much quoting her word for word here, because of how strongly I agree with it. When I look at Ashley, I find very few actual "flaws." I see familiar wounds.

The Burial ending, despite being triumphant and not nearly as "dark" as some people think, is still very, very sad. A lot of abusive dynamics are characterized by someone having to fight every step of the way to get what they need from the other person, usually some kind of emotional validation or relief. This is what happens between Andrew and Ashley for most of the game: Ashley wants Andrew to treat their relationship as special, to acknowledge there's something to it beyond just him going through the motions. And yet for most of the game, he refuses to, especially in chapter 1. And then, in Burial, when he does…

She's confused.

A lot of people view this as her being afraid of losing control over Andrew, since her "Andy," who she can push around, is gone. Andrew has changed, and the same tricks wouldn't work. But that's not what that is; it's not about control, it's about her finally getting what she wants from him without having to fight. She still thinks about using sex as leverage to keep him around, but that's because she's never understood what it's like to have someone actually want to be around her. And I speak from experience; when you no longer have to fight for every little bit of emotional validation or relief, when you no longer have to keep checking your messages to keep an argument going so you can finally be proven right, when you no longer have to force yourself to let go, to stop engaging, the reaction isn't happiness. It's not relief.

It's confusion. It's discontent.

Because something you've tied so much of yourself up in to is no longer there, despite it being more peaceful, it still feels wrong. The dynamic still has to be this way in your mind, because you've never known anything else. You latch on to whatever you can in order to justify that, and your actions are still heavily biased in favor of maintaining your place in that nonexistent dynamic. This isn't manipulation; it's trauma. And the fact that Ashley almost immediately understands that Andrew is changing is nothing short of a miracle. By consolidating past and present Andrew into a single person rather than splitting them into two, she showing that she can actually heal from that trauma. And all Andrew had to do to enable this is to acknowledge that she CAN change, that things CAN be better, and that everyone who claims to be better than her is full of shit.

I've analyzed the events of the story in a way that may seem needlessly antagonistic to some characters, and overly charitable to others. But I have to ask you, that if you disagree with anything I've said:

Where does that disagreement come from? What about my narrative clashes with your own? -Why- does it clash? Is it because the game presents your interpretation as obvious, whereas mine is not? Is it because you've experienced someone like Ashley before in your life, and you know it when you see it? Maybe you strongly identify with Andrew, and view his status as a doormat with no agency to be obvious? Or did you just accept the narrative that much of the fanbase has taken at face value, without further analysis other than building on top of it?

I don't believe these things to be contrarian; I've held most of these opinions since my first or second playthrough. I don't believe what I do because you don't, I believe what I do because I understand what Ashley has been through. I've experienced a lot of the specific traumas she had, such as deep feelings of isolation and being deprived of the emotional validation I need from the people who need to give it. I know what it's like to be misunderstood, to have who and what I am taken for granted, and to be terrified of being abandoned by the people I need the most. I see what I do because I understand.

And I want to give her that understanding that nobody gave me.

Maybe you should think about it. Why do you take it for granted that Andrew is a doormat who is strung along by Ashley? Why do you find it so odd when the trope of a woman corrupting a good man through leveraging sex is drawn into question? Why is Ashley seen as crazy, when all of her actions are so straightforward and rational? How is she corrupting him, when the single most needlessly violent act in the whole story- outside of the Nina flashback- is done without her influence? Why is Ashley seen as the abusive one when Andrew both threatens and resorts to physical violence and witholds emotional validation?

Weirdly personal tangent aside, Ashley and Andrew are two of the most well-written characters I have ever seen. They're not written like archetypes who interact with each other through a series of tropes; they're written like real people who's words and actions have astoundingly human motivations. They come from places that we can understand and relate to.

And just like people, they deserve respect. In spite of all they've done, they deserve love.

But make no mistake, Ashley is not the one stopping that love from happening. She just has the audacity to still want it in spite of everything telling her that she doesn't deserve it. We're led to believe she wants too much, but all she ever wanted was the bare minimum that she was never given.

And she has every right to be mad about it.

[smokescreenimusprime]

I'm gonna take two of your ideas for Fifth Sigma (Smokescreen having multiple alt modes and him reuniting with the rest of the Rescue Bots) and connect them to make a plot.

Let's say, Smokescreen gets another alt mode that allows him to travel way easier. Something like an air ambulance. This probably happens pretty early on, when he's getting his own

Later on, Optimus tells Smokescreen about how there's a group of Rescue Bots that are also on Earth, but because of the situation with the Decepticons, they can't send him there just yet. They gotta be cautious and safe about this whole thing.

Smokescreen is of course excited, but also reasonable and gets why he can't meet them just yet. However, because Smokescreen is still the somewhat impulsive person that we know and love; one day, when Decepticon activities were low, Smokescreen decides to take his chances and finally meet these other Rescue Bot guys. He can handle himself! Maybe he found out where they're located, or even Optimus could've told him where it is. (What are you talking about, he definitely told Team Prime where he was going, of course he did, why wouldn't he)

So, Smokescreen starts flying and goes to Griffin Rock. Shenanigans ensues because now everyone is wondering why is there an unauthorized helicopter flying around here?? and the Rescue Bots are definitely gonna get involved

GDFFGHUGFFGGFFGGT SMOKEY NO-

however, as impulsive, I do have a possible counter point that would possibly lead to him pushing the meeting off for a while: his capture

while he is going to be able to escape (possibly via pretending to be helpless and weak to get the drop on them), Smokescreen is going to be with them for quite a bit longer than he was in canon. And well...... the Decepticons are probably going to want to check to make sure Smokescreen is in fact a real Rescue Bot instead of someone pretending to be one, meaning it's entirely possible for him to have been Psychic Patched. Luckily they didn't have time to scrutinise every single conversation he had with Optimus before he escapes, but it really puts into perspective for him that he is a target and could put the other living Rescue Bots in danger

(I'll also admit, I'm. SO tempted to have Smokescreen get kidnapped a second time by Soundwave alongside Ratchet in S3. Not sure specifically what'll happen there, but he's Tired and Stressed and maybe manages to talk with Predaking a few times)

but after the war's over and Megatron dies? It's free game and you bet the first thing he does when everyone is in stable condition. Maybe during a data transfer or something he was looking through the Autobot computer and remembered "hey...... wait a second, I can do that thing now :0"

I also love the mental image of him leaving the Cybertronian equivalent of a sticky note on the monitor about where he's going before just. ZOOMING out of the base. He's so excited he completely forgets about the Groundbridge and instead flies across the whole US as fast as he can

and just. Oh god Smokescreen with a flying alt mode is going to give him so much room for chaos which he is going to relish in. I'll admit, I don't really want to give him a helicopter alt because Blades already has that one, but maybe he could transform into one of those ambulance planes instead? but yeah, as you've brought up, the Rescue Bots are going to be very confused about this weird bright blue jet circling part of the island. Maybe Dr.Green tries hailing it to see who they are and what they want, and he only gets a vague response of wanting to speak with Charlie Burns and that he'd like to meet somewhere away from town

and just. God imagine the reunion itself. Smokescreen's basically bouncing on his feet waiting for the apparent new Rescue Bots to arrive, so absolutely elated by the prospect of not being alone anymore after several painful months. Maybe there's some slight anticipation and exctiement over the possibility of being on an official team, but with a tinge of bitterness over the team not being Sigma-17 and also a tinge of anxiety becuase..... well, what if they don't like him? What if they're like all those bots back from his Academy Days who didn't think he was good enough? What if he flubbed the first impressions and they thought he was just a goofy idiot who didn't take his job seriously??? Oh Primus wait, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, maybe he should have waited for Optimus to introduce them, oh scrap why did he have to be so impulsive like this what would the others have-

and then they arrive.

Chase was of course a given, after all, Charlie was the one asked for and Chase wasn't going to let his partner go alone. Heatwave was there to gague the newbie and for protection on the off chance this was a trap, Boulder came out of curiosity, and Blades didn't want to be left behind and wanted to meet a possible new friend

And when they arrive, it's not a stranger at all. His colors, his alt mode, the way he carries himself is all different.......

but it's still Smokescreen. Still their beloved 5th team member who they thought died alone without them. Some one they mourned and missed and reminisced about

never in a million years could they have guessed it would be him

as for Smokescreen.......

he looks as though he's seen a ghost.

Because honestly, for all intents and purposes, he has. For weeks, months, years, his team has been dead. He saw and read the reports, spent countless sleepless nights trying to rationalize their survival, only to finally accept the fact they were gone

and just as he rationalized their survivial before, now he tries to rationalize their death

because this- this shouldn't be possible. They were dead, they died, for millions of years they were GONE, he must be dreaming or hallucinating or being Psychic Patched by the Decepticons, this can't be REAL, it can't, it can't it can't it can't it can'titcan'titcan'titcan'tit-

but it can. They're alive. They're here. They're real.

and suddenly Smokescreen gets crushed with a suffocating grief he never had a chance to work through, but also a small bubble of hope

once both parties get over the initial disbelief, there's a pure wave of euphoria that hits. Finally, after so so very long, they've been reunited. They can finally work together as the team they were always meant to be. He gets along great with the Burns family, but it does take a little time for hi to fully slide in with the established dynamic

however, the first thing he does when he arrives is that he immediately drags them all in for a check up. Who knows what possible health issues have sparked up in his absence, plus it would be good to establish a new baseline for their health on earth

Smokey definitely becomes a more or less permenant addition to Griffin Rock. Occasionally he'll pop a quick visit to help out on Cybertron, but almost all of his time is spent with the team helping out with local distasters. He's absolutely flabbergasted by how much Pure Absolute Insanity goes down on this island, but he low key loves it

Both sides have quite a lot of stories to share from their respective adventures, but Smokescreen's stories have a bit of a tendency to make the others loose their minds because what do you mean you got captured by Decepticons THREE SEPERATE TIMES-

but all in all, they're happy together and reunited :D

(also just for an added pinch of angst that won't really affect anything but could still be Neat, I had a Thought for something to happen before the actual meeting

so like......... what if during the S2 finale when Optimus was sending all the Autobots away, he ended up sending Smokescreen to Griffin Rock. He didn't have time to explain what the place was or why, but if all of this was coming down he might as well guarantee Smokescreen's safety. Him being out by himself is just asking for the Cons to find him, so he decides to take advantage of Griffin Rock's cloaking and at least make it so the number of Rescue Bots won't decrease any further

but ofc...... Smokescreen doesn't stay. He looks back at the Groundbridge and can't bring himself to abandon Optimus. He's a medic, a healer, it's his job to protect people and save lives, he took his oaths and isn't going to break them now

and just maybe some of Dr.Greene's tech picked up on the Groundbridge and Smokescreen's signal. Maybe the Rescue Bots searched the place but found signs of nothing and assumed it was just an error, completely oblivious to how close they were to being reunited)

[tehri]

I love LotRO. I really do.

I love the Laurelin server.

I just loathe some of the damn people on that server.

We have a dude who, no joke, has been stubbornly creating new account after new account for the past frigging YEAR specifically because his accounts keep getting banned. Because he is constantly harassing people. Because he’s convinced that there’s some conspiracy where the Literally Nicest Dude On The Server has riled everyone up against him because he acted like a dick during an RP-event.

LNDotS reported him after that incident, because the Asshole was spewing a lot of horrendous shit at him. Asshole was banned for a month. Came back, immediately began a hate-campaign against LNDotS and against anyone who had the audacity to tell Asshole that he was acting like, well, an asshole.

Constant harassment of people. Constant creation of alts to continue spreading hate and harassment.

Then that account was nuked. And he got creative.

Dude started creating new accounts and new characters. And he started talking up his original character. And I mean, talking up in the sense that he was actively talking like he was someone else, like he was an old friend of... himself.

This failed for a single reason. He has a VERY distinctive writing-style, which includes severe overuse of “....” and random-ass hashtags and referring to himself as “Dr [insert name of first character here]”. Everyone knew it was him immediately, and so began the long and tedious blocking-spree of each and every character that wrote in World Chat like that.

And for about 3 months, we had Peace. Peace and Quiet. Turns out, some people on the server have been stalking Asshole’s twitter, and they realised he got banned. Again.

And then came this last month. Where we’ve had a resurgence of Asshole’s shenanigans, with a whole new flavour.

The first hint we had to Asshole’s unwanted return was a sudden World Chat message. From a character with a name that was very obviously a parody of LNDotS’s main character name. Talking about LNDotS in third person and saying a whole bunch of horrendous bullshit.

Obviously, we all knew who it was, because that distinctive writing style has not been abandoned.

He did this at least twice - could be more, but I’ve only seen two of these.

So Asshole is now back again, and today he resurfaced with Yet Another Alt that was literally his first character name with an x at the end. Still spewing shit. Still calling everyone homophobes and racists and pedophiles. And still insisting that there’s been a hate-campaign going on against him for months.

When I say that I wish this dude could be IP-banned, I am not fucking joking. We have enough trolls and dickheads on the server without Asshole trying to harass LNDotS into quitting the game.

[secretgamergirl]

The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14, with all the expansions, and some serious analysis of how good it actually is. (Part 1 - ARR)

Are you like me? Have you had people talking your ear off for years now about this supposedly amazingly good story Final Fantasy 14 has? And then you noticed that absurdly good deal free trial where you get the whole base game plus the first expansion for free and don’t have to pay a dime until you hit the later expansions? And you played through all of that because you had a serious medical issue and it was the only game you could play while forced to lay in bed for the better part of a year where you could make out enough of the screen to play the grindy bits since you happened to have a wireless controller? And then someone was super nice and gifted you the expansions and like half a year’s worth of time cards, and you decided to just marathon through so you can talk about it on your blog? No? Good because then you wouldn’t have a reason to read this.

Also just to get this right out of the way up front- Does FF14 have a great plot? No. No absolutely not. It is TERRIBLY paced and none of the characters have any personality until you’re into the expansions and it’s really awful with women in places and absolutely terrible at having any deaths stick and it tries to do this Game of Thrones sort of thing where people use “whoreson” as an insult and say “anyroad” instead of “anyway” and there’s some pretty sloppy retcons and TERRIBLE redemption arcs after a point. It does have a lot of well-written bits scattered through it though, it makes some interest choices structurally, and bends over backwards for some references that pander nicely to me, so, it’s worthy of discussion. This is going to be long, by the way. May have to multipart it.

Before I get into anything I have to talk about the structure here. FF14 is straight up written like it’s a single player JRPG. You are controlling a specific named character with a ton of personal backstory, you have a party of named characters who you end up going everywhere with after a while, there are full on perspective shifts later on where you control one of them instead of the main character for bits, there’s honestly probably more dialog than combat, and narratively speaking all those other players straight up do not even exist (with a couple interesting exceptions). In fact, as of when I’m writing this (patch 6.3) it is a legit major design goal to legitimately retrofit the whole thing into a true single player game where you can go into all the dungeons and boss fights with a party of plot siginficant NPCs instead of human party members and they have custom dialog and abilities and quirky little explorative stuff they do.

Also, there is a single specific main questline that must be followed from the very start of the game through to the end credits, then continuing through all the free content patches between the base game and first expansion, the next set of free patches, next expansion, etc. and you are just straight up hard locked out of everything until you reach it in the order it was added to the game. Which... I rather dig from the angle of seeing everything grow and mature sequentially, but then they do totally screw that up by doing total rewrites of class abilities without changing class specific quests so you get stuff like the summoner quest line talking about being a tactician and ordering your pets around the battlefield, but at present you don’t really have pets just pet shaped damage spells and it’s weird. Oh and that’s another thing. It goes all FF5 with the classes, so rather than make an alt for every class you make you just kinda have one character, and level up in every class you’re inclined to pick up seperately, which is nice honestly.

Finally there’s the whole “1.0″ thing. When FF14 first came out, it was generally agreed to be Not Great, and concerns with its quality were met in a way I honestly quite dig. Things played up to a big huge climax, everyone’s fighting the main antagonists in this big protracted battle, and then there is a full on apocalypse, absolute trashing the entire setting, killing a ton of major NPCs and possibly all the player characters. Then they made... really a sequel to that game, set like 5 years later I think it was, and that’s the FF14 we have today. All the “1.0″ stuff is backstory that honestly gets really heavily referenced and called back to, but can no longer actually be played through, and... look I tried watching a longplay but it was really boring so this is the one big hole in my research. The intro to the game shows the whole apocalypse bit, fun times.

That out of the way, let’s get into the actual base game, AKA 2.0 AKA

A Realm Reborn

Despite ostensibly being “the whole game” this is the part of the game everyone agrees is kinda just total garbage you just want to get over with as quickly as you can, and it gets much better once you do. I really figured going in that was just stockholm syndrome but no it actually is hiliarious how sharply things turn upward the instant you hit the official endpoint of this and get into the first batch of content patches. They’re just responding to feedback and trying to make characters more likeable, adding the first batch of dungeons and bosses with actual interesting mechanics, etc. It really is night and day. But slog through it I did.

Starting things off, you are Some Person, hailing from an Unspecified Place, to one of the three (really six) major cities in the continent of Eorzea based on what you picked as a starting class, either riding in a covered wagon or a ship. Oh and there’s a bit of an abstract intro before that where you’re floating around in space while a bit crystal says some stuff to you but we’ll get to that. One thing I do really like is that these three major cities remain relevant through the whole game. Most MMOs start you off in Newbie Town and from there you just kinda journey out through an endless parade of new towns until maybe hitting the pre-expansions Main Faction Hub or whatever but here, no, there’s basically just these three cities, you are constantly touching base with them, so low level and high level characters are constantly mingling and passing each other.

There’s a unique quest string in each city up to a certain point where you start regularly traveling between them, but they all kinda boil down to the same thing. Go to the local inn, get asked to do some basic errands by the proprietor, eventually one of these leads into some robed guy siccing a big monster on you, one of the eventual party members you get hooked up with showing up and going “hey nice job” with that, getting the first of these 6 crystals that summons you to almost literally the room with the sages from Ocarina of Time, and introducing the concept that you have this special rare power called The Echo where at usually inconvenient times you pass out and have a flashback to some event involving a person/object/location that’s at hand, which basically just exists as an excuse to exposition dump at you, but also comes with the handy side effect that you’re largely immune to mind control, which will come up.

After that you go back to town, the game starts a rather terrible habit of having every NPC there is talk you up as just the best person who ever lived, and sends you off to meet the other two heads of state to plan a big commemorative event for the whole apocalypse thing. After that these two basically identical little elf twins tag along as all the leaders give speeches, and badmouth them, after which you pick one of the three to formally swear allegiance to which ulitimately effects basically nothing except maybe what team you’re on in some “training exercise” PVP content you’re probably going to totally ignore, and which town you come back to for this one optional questline where you get to put together a little squad of people and send them off on missions. That said though, a quick rundown of things:

We have Limsa Lominsa, a city where a big ol’ fleet of pirate ships ran aground on some rocks and a nice fertile island, and decided to just kinda extend the rigging into the rocks and make this half island half ship and keep calling the leader of the city the Admiral. Said leader is Merlwyb, a huge woman with the sort of sideburns I’ve never seen on a cis woman and despite being told she’s bloodthirsty and racist she spends the whole game taking in refugees negotiating peace accords with “monster” races, and at one point straight up tags along with you to just shoot some cult leader to hopefully avoid a boss fight. She’s honestly great and one of like two likeable NPCs in the whole base game.

East of there we have Ul’dah, the desert city, which is just kind of this ultra-capitalist hellscape where a big mostly-markets city is surrounded by a shanty town full of refugees from the nearby country that’s been occupied by the evil empire for the past 20 years. Nominally the leader is Sultana Nanamo, a member of the race who all look like toddlers and are almost to the last sleazy capitalist scumbags. She’s relatively OK but also she’s a total figurehead while a corrupt merchant council controls most things and her big bruiser former arena champ bodyguard/boyfriend Rauban is the actual functional leader. He’s the other one likeable NPC.

Then finally northeast of that there’s Gridania, the chill hippie town in the peaceful/creepy giant semi-haunted forest where the leadership is a bunch of people born with big ol’ horns who can communicate with primeval elemental spirits at least in theory, and specifically by a woman named Kan-E-Senna who for the life of me doesn’t ever do one single thing I can think of worth mentioning except I think she’s maybe dating Merlwyb. Also the whole communing with ancient forest gods thing, given the main gimmick of the setting I’ll get to shortly seems like kind of just this gigantic red flag and it’s damn weird these people never get called out on this.

Anyway once you’ve settled in and you’ve run through the real early game basically tutorial dungeon set, you find yourself constantly getting called back to this one little nothing town on the edge of the map to have meetings with those eventual party members I mentioned, The Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I say “eventual party members” because once you’re a couple expansions deep they’re actually nicely fleshed out and there’s bits where you run through dungeons and stuff with them but at this point they all just sit around in a boardroom giving you mission briefings and having no personality. Real quick rundown though why not?

From right to left here, we have Thancred, sleazy sketchy scumbag rogue type, Y’shtola, nerdy white mage, Minfilia, leader and soggy piece of white bread who never gets any character development at all (but apparently had a good bit in 1.0), the broken staff of Louisoix, the old wise guy who used to lead these people in 1.0 and nobly sacrificed himself in the apocalypse, the youtuber I stole this screenshot from, Papalymo a stick in the mud dad type, Yda who wears a weird mask and kicks people and Urianger, a gigantic nerd in a hoodie with ear socks who does have some characterization but it’s just constantly throwing out thee and thou and perchange and generally managing to be the sort of creepy nerd who calls you “m’lady” within a fantasy setting which is an impressive trick. I absolutely hated Urianger until I didn’t. Oh and weirdly not featured here are the elf twins, grandchildren of Louisoix, Alphinaud, who’s kind of this dorky blueblood idealistic loser, and Alisaie who.... actually isn’t with these people at all and is kind of off doing her own thing until the lead up to the second expansion.

Anyway these people primarily exist as a little think tank/independent squandron here to do the big damn hero thing, particularly regarding The Most Interesting Idea In FF14, which I’m about to get to, but functionally they literally all just sit around and have you do everything.

So yeah, The Most Interesting Idea In FF14- We’ve got this big buzzword, aether, which is... kind of all matter and energy but mostly found in big honking crystals that’s kinda the elementally tinged lifeblood of the planet and also the basis for any crafting and factors into any and all technobabble. Most importantly though, if you have a giant pile of aether crystals handy, and you pray to your personal conception of a savior, you summon a god (AKA eikon AKA primal AKA recognizable classic FF summon). Said god will maybe try to help you with your problem, but will mostly suck all aether out of the local area, which is bad for the environment, and odd human sacrifice, and also just permanently mess with the minds of anyone in their immediate vicinity to turn them into an absolutely fanatical worshiper. Plus they’re all big set piece-y boss fights, usually with really cool soundtracks.

What’s nice about this is, hey, first off, excuse for a cool boss fight, and there’s even a baked in excuse to have harder refights against them later, because people can always just summon them again after you kill them. But in addition to boiling a lot of problems down to “how about you the video game protagonist go punch this big monster until it explodes?” this also sets up a nice set of long term problem with no easy answer. There’s a conflict between the humans (by which I mean the somewhere between 4 and 7 or 8 races generally agreed to be people/playable character options) and one of what are referred to as “beast tribes” (although later we drop the beast because one of them in a later expansion is kinda literally one of the playable races and people realized it’s messed up) over who gets to live in a plot of land or whatever. Humanity comes in with superior weapons, the kobolds or whatever get desperate and pray up a god, they go fanatic, start doing really depraved stuff to the humans, things escalate more, there’s retaliation, they pray again, etc. etc. It’s an idea that gets taken pretty seriously, really examined from a lot of angles, and sets up what I think are consistently the strongest parts of the game, where you end up befriending various monster-folk who aren’t constantly summoning gods and help them out with their personal self-contained questlines.

Anyway, you waste a bit of time, eventually go off to deal with a violent lizard people problem which ends in them summoning Ifrit, hey cool, you didn’t get mind controlled, and got another of those Zelda room crystals. You sit through a TON of absolute shameless filler, like finding out Ramuh’s been summoned but ultimately not fighting him because he’s honestly being reasonably chill, and which includes a string of like 6 quests where you’re trying to get hints on fighting Titan out of someone who insists on having a big huge wine and cheese party you need to get supplies for and ultimately is a fraud anyway. But eventually yeah, kobolds summoned Titan, you go smack him down.

Then we have more filler, but also a bit of a nice unexpected twist where the evil empire finds out where your base is and one of these four big named Imperial general types with the really over the top helmets just kinda walks in with a gun and kills everyone.

Things go a bit grim for a bit. There’s literally a quest where you have to gather up a bunch of bodies and cart them off to a cemetery on the other side of the country, where you just kinda hang out aimlessly until noticing that wait, one of these people in this church is Cid in disguise. This is kind of a weird bit of writing because while presumably Cid was established a bit in 1.0, in the game we actually have today he is literally never mentioned one single time before you run into him here. But, you know, it’s an FF game. We’ve got a guy named Cid, he’s a super talented engineer, he’s got an airship. We also have a Wedge and a Biggs, they work for him in this case. And oh hey it turns out the massive pile of corpses in your HQ somehow didn’t include any of those party members who suck and who cares but will get development later, which kinda ticks me off but again, get used to nobody staying dead. Oh and there’s also a side trek up to Coerthas, the huge frozen sprawling wasteland north of Gridania that mostly serves to start teasing a bit of how the first expansion is going to be about a bunch of classist Catholic elves having a big ol’ war with dragons but honestly I mostly just remember having to talk to NPCs behind enough doors and stairways to constantly get lost looking for them.

Eventually though you get back to your job as designated god slayer, go fight summon number 3, Garuda, courtesy of some weird bird people, and then there’s a scene that’s just plain fun, where turns out the locals gathered up enough crystals to immediately summon her again and also have some of the other monster folk who summoned the first two bosses and there’s enough crystals around for them to also resummon their gods and... eh it’s worth a youtube link to like the most amusing scene in the base game, sure.

So yeah, we’re getting all set for our big cheesy summoned god Mexican Standoff and then the (local) leader of the evil empire just shows up out of nowhere and airdrops in the Ultima Weapon, which... has always looked like this for all prior FF appearances but only watching this did it really sink in for me what an absolutely ridiculous robot-dragon-centaur it is. Said goofy robot kills and eats all 3 gods, stealing their power, and then gets brought home to the main imperial fortress in the religion to hang out until it’s time to be the final boss.

And then we have more filler for a bit. Not nearly so much as usual, but we do have this 5th country between Ul’dah and Coerthas with the main imperial base to poke around in a bit before the endgame. A bit of this involves Cid and Pals commandeering a fun bit of FF6 fan service you get to tool around with a little before planning your big assault.

So yeah, end of the base game, the pacing stops being so terrible. We get a quick fight against Imperial General #1 which when I first started playing was an absolutely hilarious pushover because it’s the first time you get a party of 8 people instead of 4 and it’s just the one guy, but has since been revamped into a surprisingly tense thing you do solo, then an assault on an outpost where Cid’s playing with the toy shown above blowing down walls for you and you kill the general who killed uh... whoever was in your HQ that wasn’t important earlier, then the proper stronghold where there’s a fun bit where everyone gets to hop in a mech and fire off machine guns and missiles everywhere before general #3, the head Imperial in the region (who gives this real long I am a nazi piece of trash and I love to hear myself talk speech that I have completely committed to memory because it’s unskippable and the game frequently bribes people to come back and fill party slots for first-timers), and that goofy Ultima Weapon. Oh and Lahabrea.

I haven’t mentioned Lahabrea because he sucks and also matters so little to anything I genuinely didn’t have cause to mention him. He’s in that cutscene I linked though. So I should get this out of the way I guess.

So OK, there are three main antagonist factions in FF14. There’s random monster men summoning their gods, usually because frankly humans are doing colonialisms and threatening to wipe them out. There’s the evil empire which really doesn’t do a whole lot on camera? I feel like they were more active in 1.0 but really we just get a couple shots of generals plotting, the one bit where your base gets gunned down, the Ultima Weapon drop-in, and then the series of assault stuff at the end, but they are established pretty well as properly hate-worthy nazis. And then we have the Ascians.

The Ascians suck so bad. They are these cloaked hooded masked mystery weirdos who just kind of watch from the shadows and play evil vizier to... really literally anyone who ends up being an antagonist anywhere in the game. They taught monster men how to summon gods, they encourage the evil empire to be evil and dig up ancient high tech ruins. The... only one who I think gets named properly in the base game here possesses Thancred for a while but not only is he fine after this happens before any real effort is made to establish Thancred as a character so who even cares? And their goals and motivations are shrouded in mystery. By which I definitely mean the writers just through in some generically evil mystery weirdos and hoped nobody would notice they don’t do a single damn thing of substance with the vague plan to maybe do something interesting somewhere down the road. The 3rd expansion eventually gets around to developing one of them as an actual character and giving them a whole backstory and agenda that’s kind of interesting but really none of what gets done with them before, or for that matter after that point makes any sense. We just have a few random scenes where some guy in a black cloak goes all “yes, yes, just as planned, we’ve been watching you” and it’s transparently freaking nothing. And then you kill one as a cutsceney final boss.

And that’s it. That’s the whole base game of FF14. There is a TON of filler, a couple pointless speed bump dungeons, 3 boss fights (that are all total cakewalks), and a big assault on an imperial stronghold with a 4th proper boss fight towards the end. And there’s such obvious blatant signs of cut content too. Again there’s this whole Zelda medallion chamber to track your progress, you fill it with these 6 elemental crystals, 3 of those come from summons you kill, and the other 3 are kinda just... sitting there. We tease the hell out of fights with Ramuh and Leviathan that don’t happen. We don’t really mention Shiva but you always have Shiva early on in an FF game. Those three boss fights do totally make it in the first free patch wave along with a few others, but... you can see where they were cut out and replaced by finding fancy cheese for some random doofus.

It’s MISERABLY paced (count the main story quests on this list! Most of these are just wandering around talking to people as you slowly discuss plans for boss fights), the main villains barely get introduced before you fight them, the supporting cast isn’t fleshed out at all, and the gameplay for this leg of thing is dull as dirt too.

Side content is a bit better. There’s... well two little quest lines actually for every class in the game, a couple of which are a bit interesting. Black mages make a bunch of monster race friends and team up to close portals to hell. Scholars get into this bit learning how Tonberries (the green cloaked little monsters who slowly walk up and stab you with knives) are actually normal people suffering from a horrible plague. The rogue/ninja class wasn’t actually added in until the patches but it’s the one later edition you can access almost right away and has a fun bit with a charming thieves-cant-talking pirate-country-protecting assassin squad, and then there’s those “beast tribe” quests which again, I really like.

We’ve got the Proud Warrior Race guy lizard people, one of whom is a cat girl, and she has a big ol’ chip on her shoulder about it, while you help her resolve issues about her birth mother. We’ve got a fish guy who used to be a badass murderous warrior but became a dad and mellowed out and is dealing with some of his kids growing up to be jerks. We’ve got flightless bird people with a religion that’s basically just Laputa, wanting help building a high altitude airship to search for their promised land. This weird thing with mischievous fairy type plant people pranking each other and fighting for custody of like... plant fairy baby Jesus, and... OK the kobold quests are this dumb romantic rivalry but the mount you get for it is great.

Next time- “It gets good after level 50 I swear!” (and time allowing “The Award-Winning Heavensward Expansion”)

[rivangel]

HELLO, thank you for disecting Levi’s character and the whole manga, i really REALLY *REALLY* like your analysis🧎, and for the aot ask game, 4, 6, 11 and 15: did you have any theories or ideas of where the titans came from or why Eren could shift? I’m sorry if I’m repeating this question on multiple blogs, i just find it very interesting to see what theories other people came up with jsjsjsjs

4: Who is/are your least favorite character(s) and why?

hitch.

and

yelena.

i hate them i despise them. they were written too well (/hj) and so i can't help but hate them as PEOPLE does that make sense.

hitch just reminds me of every mean bitch i knew in school. i get what her character means symbolically but GOD i just can’t stand how petty and up her own ass she is.

and yelena is. the way she is. vindictive, sadistic, painfully delusional, cocky, annoying.

i can understand every other character’s motivations and/or just fall in love with them but not them (and also don’t like them as people).

….i dont like freckles ymir … for the not liking her as a person thing. i like her development and everything, but she’s such a cocky asshole who has no business shitting on those around her.

(opinion that’s my opinion)

6. Most heart-wrenching death?

answered :D

11. Favorite minor character?

aot has so many characters with influences in the plot that it’s hard to say who’s minor🥲so i’m going to say marlo. such a sweet boy :(( he started in the military police and WANTED to actually FIX it???? brass balls as levi would say. then he DOES join the sc and he proves to be charming and a little naive but full of heart then

HE FUCKING DIES. so brutally too.

i don’t just like him, i like the tragedy of the character. it’s the prime example of the role erwin has played that gives him the reason he hates himself so much. i love it that’s all

15: did you have any theories or ideas of where the titans came from or why Eren could shift?

i’m assuming you mean before the basement????

yes i thought (-partly based on the s2 intro with the animals-) titans were basically predatory animals that had evolved from ppl????? but grisha had something to do with eren’s transformation as a doctor/scientist guy.

he wanted to bring about the most powerful form of the human race BUT in a way that the human would retain intelligence n shit which resulted in eren.

oh and the beast titan was like . the king of the titans(💀) who naturally evolved to have human intelligence Somehow and that’s why RBA wanted to bring eren back to him/it.

alt theory: AOT doesn’t take place on earth, but grisha WAS from earth and the basement had his SPACESHIP. he came from earth with others to study the fauna and found titans.

thru artificial insemination and cryogenic freezing or something over thousands of years he cultivated humans behind the walls(💀).

but some of his crew or one of his crew survived which was the beast titan and that’s why RBA wanted to capture eren.

(unhinged idk why i was like this)

[yeehawbvby]

FAWY Minis | Ch. 3 (Sam and Seb alt. POV)

Rating: Mature/Explicit

Notes: This one happens after the first saloon meeting, but isn’t necessarily in any specific chapter(s). :) Enjoy and take care x

Edit: Please check my comments on this!! (and be sure to read in order, since they seemed to post out of it on my end :’D)

Falling Away With You (main story)

Check it out on ao3!

Prev | Next

—SAM POV—

Every Saturday, if his work can spare it, Sebastian comes over and we just jam for a bit. Sometimes we play games too, and usually we spend some time out by the river so he can get his smokes in. But mostly, the first day of our weekends are spent in my room. Doing the same things we always do. It’s fun, though! Personally, I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

But this time, I have no plans for music or games or food or smoking anything. I’ve got some stuff to try and work out. Stuff that I’m pretty sure I could only really talk to Seb about.

Ever since we met (y/n) last night, my mind has been racing. I haven’t felt this way about someone in… ha, since when I caught feelings for him, back in the day. 

Lucky for me, I saw her again this morning. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail, shining alongside her (s/c) skin in the bright sun. More of her body was out in the open, thus blessing my eyes with her figure. She was wearing a cropped black tank top that fit snug to her torso with some baggy, half-buttoned, brown denim overalls on top. Her rubber boots were covered in mud. Brave of her to do farm work, which I’m assuming is the reason for the mess, after all the rain we got yesterday. 

(Y/n) said she was on her way over to Mayor Lewis’ place to ask how shipping boxes work, but I gave her the run-down instead. I’ve learned it a million times just by observing Pierre over at Abby’s house, so I’d like to think I’m a trustworthy enough source! (And I totally just wanted an excuse to talk to her some more. I won’t even lie.)

The way she smiled when she saw me could light up a whole room. The way her hair bounced a little every time she nodded was adorable. The way I could basically see her mentally taking notes about pick-up times and whatnot made me wanna laugh so hard, but I stopped myself, worried that it would embarrass her. Every time she did get embarrassed, or stuttered, or whatever, I wanted to kiss her cheeks to see if her blush made them feel as warm as they looked.

She’s… just so freaking adorable in every sense of the word. Like a little puppy, in a way. 

I thought for sure (y/n) would dip when she was finished getting my help, but she stuck around for a bit. She’s clearly got anxiety or something based on her mannerisms, and seems shy without alcohol in her system, so I was shocked. Her willingness to get to know me better, one-on-one, even for only a few minutes made me feel like I could land any kickflip if I tried.

Well… I did try, and she was there to see me fail almost every one, because it was hard to concentrate with her watching me so intently. 

I flop onto my bed and hug a pillow to myself, groaning into the fabric.

Should I make a move right away? Or is that too creepy? Should I just wait and see how this plays out? What if we become friends, and when I eventually do try to shmooze her, she thinks I’ve been using her? That wouldn’t be good.

Also, how would Seb feel if I tried anything? He seems to have taken a liking to (y/n) too. I dunno if I should get in the way of that. ‘Cause I mean, sure, we’ve both messed around with people every now and then, but I’ve always had more success with landing short- and long-term flings than him.

Or, at the very least, I’ve always been more eager about it… Seb probably manages to attract more chicks than I do, but he rarely shows interest back. 

I’m so used to Seb’s presence by now that I recognize his footsteps when he lets himself in. Too lazy to move, I half-shout, half-sing, “Come onnn in,” once I hear him making his way to my room. The door flings open, and without explanation, I begin airing my troubles to the poor guy.

“Man, I’ve got it sooo baaad.”

“Oh yeah?” he chuckles, tossing a Joja Cola at my stomach. “What’s this about?”

My eyes leave their spot on the ceiling and lock into his. “(Y/n)!” Seb raises a knowing brow at me, opening and sipping his canned coffee. “She’s so cool, dude!” 

He shrugs and nods back at me. “Yeah, she is.” I sit up and crack into my drink, while Seb claims the chair in front of my computer. “You gonna make a move on ‘er?” He casually asks.

“I dunno. I don’t wanna scare her off, or something.” I sigh, flicking around the tab on my can. I accidentally loosen it too much, and it falls into my soda with a plink. I take another sip anyway. “I also, uh…” I rub the back of my neck. “I’ve noticed that you seem to like her a bit too. So I don’t want to throw a wrench in your plans.”

Seb smirks. “I didn’t have any ‘plans.’” I let out a sigh of relief, but my heart sinks when he adds, “Although, I do think she’s really cool. Fuckin’ cute, too...”

“Crud. Want me to back off?” 

“Nah. You know me. I still gotta get more of a feel for her, before committing to anything.” He grins and leans over, elbows on his knees, and can lazily dangling from his non-dominant hand. “She’s really easy to talk to, though. It’s nice. I dunno what it is about her…” Seb’s lips twitch into a lopsided smile, as if he’s trying to hide how much he’s into her already. It’s so obvious. “Maybe it’s ‘cause we have a lot in common, maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”

I grin, shaking my head as I reminisce about this morning. “No, I get ya. She definitely has a… cozy? I guess? kind of vibe to her.” 

Seb sighs, and brings his eyes to mine. “How about this: Whoever gets her first, gets her. That sound fair to you?” 

He reaches out with his free palm to shake mine, wiggling his skinny coder fingers to entice me. Wiggling his eyebrows up and down too. I snort at the motion and go in for the handshake. “It’s a deal.”

“Just don’t try to make it a race. Wouldn’t be fair to (y/n).”

“‘Course not. I’d never.”

“You would,” he playfully rolls his eyes. “It’s literally happened before.” 

“Whateverrr.” 

Our conversation fizzles away, but I can’t bear the silence. Too awkward. “Y’know, I ran into her today. She seemed real into my skating tricks.”

Seb furrows his brows and tilts his head. He teases, “By tricks, do you mean your 80,000 daily kick flips?” 

“Shut up! I know more than just kick flips.”

“Ah. Gotcha. What do you call falling flat on your ass after fucking up a kick flip, then?”

“I didn’t do that!” I did do that.

“Wait, waitwaitwait.” Seb points at me. “Is this your way of trying to brag to me that you hung out with (y/n) some more, and I didn’t?”

“And that she thinks I’m the greatest skater in the world,” I correct him.

“Yikes,” he laughs, “You’re delusionally down bad for a girl you just met. Sooo fuckin’ sad...”

I chug the rest of my cola, just to crumple up the can and throw it at him. He laughs as he swats it away midair. I wish I looked that cool. I gotta seem cool… Oh!

“I saw her midriff and you didn’t.” 

Seb slow-claps, mouth agape. “Wow, you see shoulders too? Didn’t know we were dealing with such a harlot.” 

“Shut up! Her sides and what little of her stomach that I saw are hot, is all I was getting at.”

—SEB POV—

If her stomach’s as nice as her legs are, then he might be onto something… can’t let him know that.

“Good god, Samson,” I murmur. His kryptonite. I accidentally drew out his full name like that once while we dated, and ever since then, he blushes every damn time I replicate it. It’s very useful. “You sound like a pre-teen.”

“D-don’t call me that, dude!” he practically squeals, cheeks ablaze. Told ya. Works like a charm.

“Then stop being a creep. What happens if she wears a bathing suit to the luau next season? You gonna cream your pants?”

“I hope not…”

“Nasty.”

We go along with our usual routine from then-on. Sam and I play some music, order some food, and game for a bit. (Y/n) seems nerdy. I wonder if she’s into any of the same video games that I play... Thinkin’ about the possibility secures me as an easy kill for one of the enemy team members. The final kill, to be exact. When the kill cam exposes me and Sam questions why I’d stopped moving, I just brush it off as if I was zoning out.

Within the hour, I decide to head back home. It’s a bit early, all things considered – only 6 – but I just wanna be alone for a while. I light up a cigarette the second I’m in the front doorframe, earning a mean scowl from Jodi, who’s making her way inside simultaneously. I shoot her a wink as her shoulder bumps my bicep, ‘cause I know she hates ‘em, and then bring my vision forward. As I turn the corner past Emily and Haley’s house, I slow to a halt, eyes landing on a familiarly short figure carrying a takeout bag away from the Stardrop. 

(Y/n)’s wearing a crop top and some baggy gray sweatpants, with black combat boots beneath it all. I wonder if this is what Sam saw her in, too… No wonder he was practically drooling while thinking back at their interaction. She’s stunning. Her hair is down, and looks pretty wet, as if she’d showered before leaving the house and didn’t bother to dry it. 

She’s checking her spoils as she walks. Probably wants to make sure Gus got her order right. My heart skips as (y/n) missteps and nearly wipes out. I silently thank Yoba when (y/n) saves herself, but as she looks around to see if anyone witnessed her near-death experience, she finds me watching her.

Fuck.

I can imagine I look just as awkward as she feels. Her face is completely red, and the poor girl looks like a deer in headlights. I feel heat creep up my cheeks as well, realizing that I still haven’t addressed the fact that I’m just watching her.

“You alright?” I shout, a playful hint in my tone, as I approach. Hoping it’ll ease any of her tension.

“Y-yeah!” she stutters out. 

It sounds like (y/n) tried raising her voice for me to hear, but she just isn’t very good at… being loud, I guess. That, or she’s too shy to speak up more. Cute. She fidgets with the handles of the plastic bag in her hands, and won’t meet my eye now that I’m closer. 

“How are you?” she meekly asks, glimpsing at me for just a second.

I thought she’d nope outta here right away. Hopefully she doesn’t feel obligated to talk, just ‘cause I met up with her. 

“I’m alright,” I grin down at her, even though she isn’t looking. “You?”

She nods. “Me too,” she responds, her lips curling into a smile. She bravely meets my gaze again. Why do I feel proud of her for holding it? “I’m, uh... I’m gonna get going,” (y/n) says. “Had a long day.” “Sure, don’t let me keep ya.” As I walk past her, I wave, and she turns to face me so she can return it. Still looking up at me with her pretty, bright, (e/c) eyes; rosy cheeks; and an adorable, lazy grin. Fuck. “I’ll see you around, (y/n).” 

“See ya, Sebastian.”

Hearing my name roll off (y/n)’s tongue so easily short circuits my brain for a sec. Her voice is so nice. She’s so nice. I’m not used to clicking with someone so easily… It’s not often that I have a strong opinion on someone so soon after meeting ‘em either. 

What is it about this girl that’s so special? 

I run a hand through my hair and heave out a sigh, tossing my finished cigarette into the dirt next to the river. Can’t even do that without feeling guilty anymore. (Y/n) calling me a “litterbug” last night echoes through my mind like my very own shoulder angel. I puff my cheeks, hoping a more exaggerated sigh will relieve me of these feelings. But who am I kidding. I’ve got it just as bad as Sam. I tore him a new one for simping so hard, and now here I am.

When I approach the house, I hear mom call out a greeting to me from her usual evening spot on the mountainside with Demetrius. I return it, and head indoors and down to my room, promptly drowning myself in a module that’s not due ‘til Wednesday. If breathing exercises and a long, scenic walk home won’t help get (y/n) out of my head, then maybe this will.

[hypaalicious]

I honestly don't even need to dress up AS the characters to be happy. I just want their clothes 🤣🤣🤣 Ignis especially. I just want to feel that fancy 🤣🤣🤣🤣 but yeah I've seen all the crap people give cosplayers these days and it really irks me. Like. If you don't like it, move on? It's not like you HAVE to look at them? And 90% of the jerks couldn't even do it better anyway.

Omg yes please. And Ignis has to wrestle with the logic that Noct might still be alive somewhere despite all the facts. And Gladio has to work through his emotions better this time damn it! He needs and deserves the same amount of growth as everyone else!

Exactly! Like. The female mcs can be fun without being annoying. Soft without being weak willed. And cool without being emotionless. Like come on. If your males can be, so can your females! There's literally no reason it has to be treated differently.

I agree. That's why I said I don't think I'd count Noct as "broody". I've just seen a lot of people outside the Fandom call him emo and broody and stuff and I'm like. Nah. He had legit reasons for his pain. And he didn't wallow in it ALL the time. Just the second half. BECAUSE AFTER ALTISSIA HE DIDN'T CATCH A DAMN BREAK TO BE ABLE TO COME BACK FROM EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED.

It sounds horrible but I love blind!Ignis and Nocts growth to much to not play to the end each time. Not like I'm happy that Iggy is blind but the way it affects the story and the way he takes it in strides really impresses me from a narrative POV. It hurts. But it's beautiful in a way, if that makes sense. I'm on my 3rd new game+ in like.. A little over a month I think? And I'm gonna go to the very end again 🤣 even if the alt ending is the only true end to me lolol

I kinda want many fictional characters’ clothes, but I fear it’s gone be like… how something looks good on a mannequin and then I buy it and it looks like garbage on me 😭 Because I mean let’s face it, they have the power of anime on their side 😂 Some of these outfits stay plastered to the right spots on their body at all times, some defy physics in ways we don’t realize until it turns out you need body tape to keep some shit looking good… stuff like that.

I think that’s why I like FFX-2; it was an entirely woman-led FF and it was just a group of chicks kicking ass with full personalities. And while Yuna was focused on reuniting with Tidus, that wasn’t her whole thing. Idk why Squenix can no longer do that 😂

Noct in the OG concept was broody and emo, and tbh I am so glad they didn’t go with that. Yeah, it would have been in line with what folks apparently wanted, but I’m over the stoic protagonist trope. Seeing the boys hang out and just be a bunch of dudes on a road trip was a great choice, imo! And no offense to Lunafreya, I’m so glad that the romance was an afterthought in the game, cause tbh square doesn’t really do romances well enough to shoehorn it in almost every damn game.

You are stronger than me cause I can’t take the pain and the disharmony the group had after Altissia 🥲 I know it gets better but I was in PAIN going through all that! I could only play through the whole game once, and the DLC once. I still haven’t played Ardyn’s DLC and I highly doubt I’ll go back to do it at this point either, it’s been years 😂 But the good thing about being on tumblr when it dropped is that I pretty much got the gist of it all through gifs and screenshots and discourse so I don’t feel I missed out in the end.

[the-great-lightwood-bane]

starshine and moonlight

Chapter 3 of 4 (Chapter 1 | 2 | 4)

Malec | Rated general | no warnings for this chapter 

Day 30: alt prompt: touch starved

Summary: Magnus stands inches away from Alec, close enough to touch, the wall between them made of nothing but Alec’s will.

aka three times Alec isn’t enough and one time he doesn’t need to be. 

A/N: SECOND-LAST DAY OF WHUMPTOBER Y'ALL 

Read it on AO3 or below the cut.

Magnus stands inches away from Alec, close enough to touch, the wall between them made of nAlec’s will. 

Alec wants to lean into him, breathe him in, bask in the light he emits. Magnus pulls him in like a lodestone; he’s the new brightest star in Alec’s sky, and Alec can feel himself following him, pulled in his wake. 

He stays still, face as impassive as he can make it. 

“Emotions are never black and white,” Magnus is saying, still so close. Alec’s skin seems to crave his, longs to be pressed against him. Alec holds himself back. “They’re more like symptoms. You lose your breath every time they enter a room.” 

Alec doesn’t know if he has any breath left to lose. Magnus is circling him now, so close, so very very close, so impossibly far away. 

“Your heart beats faster when they walk by.”

It’s true that Alec’s heart is beating onwards like a rabbit’s. Despite what he said a few moments earlier, he knows perfectly well that he doesn’t love Lydia; more than that, he knows that if he tried, or even if he just let himself fall, he could try to make something with Magnus — something bright and brilliant like a supernova to illuminate the whole night sky. 

But he’s engaged to Lydia for a reason. He needs to keep the Institute, to remain in control, for his siblings’ sakes more than his own. He needs to keep up the facade of being straight, or else the Clave will never accept him, never let him make change. He can’t have both — can’t have Magnus and the life he wants, the life he needs. Can’t be happy and protect his siblings. He simply can’t. 

So he doesn’t let himself react visibly when he feels Magnus’ breath on his shoulder. “Your skin tingles when they stand close enough to feel their breath.” 

Alec turns to face Magnus, to put a bit more space between them. 

“I know you feel what I feel, Alec,” Magnus says, and Alec wants to scream. Yes, he feels what Magnus is talking about — yes, he wants to hold on to Magnus and never let go. Perhaps, if there’d been nothing standing in their way, he’d agree to try something with Magnus. But too much is riding on this, too much will fall and break if Alec can’t keep up his careful balancing act. He can’t let the world crash down around his ears for a fascinating warlock who looks at him like he means something. Like he’s important. 

Alec’s never been important, and he can’t afford to fall into the glorious trap in Magnus’ eyes, baited with whispers of you are enough, ready to snap closed and sever apart Alec’s life. 

“You don’t have any clue what I feel, so back off,” Alec hisses, letting anger rise to his lips, better than all the other emotions swirling beneath the surface. “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it? You flirt, you laugh, you use magic, but at the end of the day, what do you risk? Even if I did feel something for you, you want me to give up my life for you? I have to do what’s right for me. I could lose my family, my career, everything! You just don’t get it.”

“You have a choice to make,” Magnus says. “I will not ask again.” 

When Alec turns around, Magnus is gone. Whatever he could’ve had with Magnus is gone with him, vanished into the air like it’d never been. Magnus probably hates him for the cruel words he’s spouted, and in all honesty, Alec doesn’t blame him. 

Just one more person for whom Alec isn’t enough. It really shouldn’t be surprising anymore. 

~

Alec’s never exactly had all the human contact he wants. Maryse and Robert don’t hug much, aside from the perfunctory ones in front of people to keep up the illusion of a cohesive family; he can’t remember the last time he’s sunk into a parent’s embrace and let them take the weight of the world for a while. He stands alone, always. 

There are his siblings, of course. He’s tried to make sure that they get all the touch they need, that they don’t feel as he does that they’ll break apart at the lightest brush of fingers, so he holds them close and takes the weight of the world off of their shoulders. 

It’s not the same. It’s not what he wants. 

He has strict personal boundaries, lines drawn sharply in the sand that keep away physical affection from all but Izzy and Jace. Izzy will hug him sometimes, but only briefly; touching Jace is confined to sparring, manly pats on the back, and the occasional forearm hold that echoes the stance they’d taken to become parabatai, nothing more. Nobody else comes anywhere near him. 

Alec can still feel the phantom grip of Magnus’ hand in his, the night of the failed demon summoning. He can recall with perfect clarity that shiver that’d run through him at the touch, the constant desire that’s plagued him ever since to hold Magnus’ hand and never let go. 

He remembers the comforting weight of Magnus in his arms after they’d healed Luke, the longing that stabbed into Alec’s chest as Magnus smiled up at him. 

Despite the knowledge that he can never have this, that it’s all nothing more than a dream of a life that he’s not enough to grasp, Alec wants it. 

Magnus outshines the stars, and Alec can feel his gravity pulling on him, breaking his usual orbit, yanking him out of alignment and sending him spinning out into space. He wants to imagine that Magnus could catch him, could balance him out, could make his life brighter — but he’s already given up any chance he could’ve had at that life. 

He’ll fight to stay where he is, in security if not in happiness, and try not to mourn when Magnus’ light moves inevitably to better skies.

[grasslandgirl]

MAYBE YOU ALREADY DID IT IDK BUT. SWEET TOOTH 👀

hiii benny beloved i meant to answer this ages ago, i'm assuming this ask is for the give me an au and i'll tell you 5 headcanons about it ask game ??? either way that's what youre getting skjfnbksfjb <33

not really a headcanon but i wrote the gorgug pov of sweet tooth verse BECAUSE i had a lot of tid bits/thoughts about gorgug's headspace/journey in the fic that you don't really see because of how clueless and obstinant fig is in her pov so i wrote a gorgug pov so i could share the lore in my head

so like i wanted to explore things that are established in the fig pov that you don't really get the follow through of- what happens to the sweatshirt she leaves behind in his appartment, what's the deal with the sunflowers gorgug ended up giving to lola, what does gorgug talk to jonah the intern about when fig thinks they're flirting, what is the context of gorgug writing lyrics and emailing lola but not fig about them, etc etc. those were all little questions that i knew the answers to while i was writing fig pov but couldn't really integrate in a way that felt natural, hence: gorgug pov

in my head, fig and gorgug only missed each other by like. mere minutes. like fig left pretty quickly after waking up alone and gorgug didn't take that long to run down to the corner store and if fig had been a little bit slower in running out, or gorgug had been a little faster in getting back to his building they would have run into each other in the hallways/elevator/lobby and both been like 😳 what. but they didn't! so they didn't <3 but alas what could have been.....

again not really a headcanon but some sweet tooth verse lore for you: the idea for the fic started with exchange between fig and gorgug where they both think they're being let down easily by the other, and fig says "it was a one time thing, right?"-- which is actually the original working title of the fic in my gdrive, before i decided to title it w a lyric from sweet tooth-- but that beat was the idea hook for the whole fic, both fig and gorgug terrified and certain that they're alone in their feelings and desire for more than a single night, and misunderstanding that the other person thinks it was a mistake, because both of them are too scared of further ruining their friendship to be honest about how they're feeling

i wanted to give fig a coffee order i felt was too sweet and objectively disgusting- caramel and peppermint- but ive since been informed that some people think that's a reasonable order to have. please get some help <3

bonus: a cutting room floor snippet i found while skimming back through the sweet tooth docs for lore/headcanons jfvksfnb; this was an alt ending to the fic, after they've reconciled. it didn't end up vibing the way i wanted it to, which is why i went with them making pancakes instead, but it's still a cute moment

“So…” Fig lightly punched him in the chest. “Take me out for dinner then, hot shot.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. Or… I kind of told Lola we were gonna work on a couple songs tonight, if you wanted? She told me about the lyrics you emailed her, so…” “Oh.” A blush crawled down Gorgug’s neck, and Fig had to fight the urge to tug his shirt off. To track his blush down his chest with her fingers, even though they were both still standing in the hall of his apartment building. “She told you about that?” “Yeah… is that okay? You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to. You’re allowed to write lyrics, too, you know.” “No, yeah, I know, it was just- more the content of the lyrics than the writing itself, you know?” Gorgug grinned at her, sheepish and fond, and the lightbulb of Fig’s heart burst with a flash. Gorgug had been writing a song for her. About her. Fig remembered the years of journals tucked under her bed, filled with sappy, heart sick lyrics. Almost every one of them, about Gorgug. “Yeah,” Fig ran her hands down Gorgug’s chest, catching one hand in hers. “I know what it’s like to write songs about someone and not being able to show them.” “What if I wanted to show you?” “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” “Gross,” Gorgug laughed. “Yeah.”

awww :)))

you can read the series in question, sweet tooth verse, here on ao3!

send me an au idea/ an au i've written and ill tell you five headcanons/ideas about it !!

[luxetrust]

Wow azurite strong together

Like shadow wont be affected at all because the only thing that isnt already on the gcd is silence. The GCD change will only really affect specs that have a bunch of cooldowns that they just slam all at the same time. I really don't want to have to shell out 20k to get a single piece of heirloom gear in some expansion past BfA. With the gold quests being once a day, it means people will be pulling out characters because they want to play them or gear them and not because it's a quick payout. Also might force them to make some more interesting content, ideally some class WQs to fill the void. Also means removing some of tedious content in regards to leveling alts because Blizz is liable to lock something important there. Except the mission table gold rewards make it worse because unlike the Argus quests, the player can do all of that in less than 10 minutes and that is a bulk of where my gold comes from these days.Īccount wide war hall means less inflation, assuming they don't fuck things up another way. 10k a day could be bad for inflation, but gets even worse once the player can run a minimum of 5 characters through all of that. Then the player runs out to Argus and does about 5 quests that get them another 2k-3K. Right now it's possible to have a day where you have 3 missions on a character and you get 200%, so that ends up being about 8k. The war hall and gold quests being account wide would do wonders for that. It literally takes an extra week max to get HoA lvl 30 and thus unlock all your traits.Yeah, if Blizz was serious about dropping inflation. I don’t understand why you can’t just see AP as an extension of that leveling process. You needed to grind 100-120 levels to get to max level. If you don’t enjoy ANY of it, indeed, why are you even still playing? Raids, IEs, questing, M+: They all give AP. If you don’t enjoy the grind currently in game, the door is that way ->Īnd once again, as has been repeated many, MANY times in this thread: You “grind” AP by playing the game. AP is an arbitrary number on a page that measures only how many seconds you spent logged on, and nothing more. Gear is tangible levels are tangible, abilities are tangible. You might argue that you need a grind to keep people invested in their characters, and I would argue that that is true to an extent, but only insofar as they actually want to be invested in that character for that reason. If there is a grind for the sake of a grind, then it’s time to give up the ghost. You don’t need something to grind just for the sake of having something to grind, because otherwise it isn’t an MMO. The core tenet (the core tenant of an mmo is a 36 year old neckbeard in a basement, just saying) of an MMO is, like every other game, having fun. The extra 5ilvl is the only thing you really need to work at to get it, but that’s hardly needed. Just play the game, do your daily emissaries, and you’ll have both core traits in a week, and all traits unlocked in 3 weeks from when you hit 120. It’s not even like you need to actually make an extra effort to grind it out. And honestly, what’s wrong with that? It’s just another form of “leveling”. If you had nothing to grind, Blizzard might as well start removing all character progression the moment someone hits max level.Ĭharacter progression is no longer linked to just gear and character level. If it’s not gear, because as you said it yourself since it falls from the sky, then obviously the HoA works as an alternate form of it. You need SOMETHING to grind out to stay relevant. AP is the least engaging part of character progression and the only one that maintains any part of its relevance into future content, even if greatly reduced.īut that’s literally the whole point of an MMO. You get gear raining from the sky, my new druid is already my highest ilvl character… but I still had to grind out that neck. Because Blizzard has designed a system where you feel like you arbitrarily need to “prepare” a character to be ready for future content, even though every other aspect of the game shouts the opposite.

[lucy90712]

telling the viewers (hc)

George:

He is very nervous about it and he's not sure if he even wants to tell viewers about you and not because he's ashamed or doesn't love you because he does but he just isn't sure how his fans will react and he doesn't want to subject you to unnecessary hate. Being one of the ones that fans make edits about all the time he just isn't sure about upsetting people by telling them he has a partner.

If he does decide to tell the viewers it would be nothing big he would just get you to 'accidentally' walk into one of his streams and he would say a few things but then leave it at that. The only reason he wants to tell the viewers is so that if you were to walk in the background or be heard it wouldn't be a worry to have to explain it and it can be on his own terms.

When the stream started he felt much better about the whole thing, having you there with him smiling helped with his nerves. From what he could see the chat were reacting well but you can never be sure but either way you were happy so he was happy.

If there was any hate he wouldn't really know what to do but he does say something on Twitter telling the viewers that he won't tolerate the hate on his partner and from then on there is definitely less hate. He will definitely block certain things on your phone so that you don't have to see the hate and if you do he will be there to make you feel better.

Dream:

Since Clay doesn't show his face he wouldn't show yours but he would definitely get you to come in during a stream and talk with his viewers. Doesn't make a big deal out of it at all because he doesn't want people to see it as a big thing. The whole thing is helped by him having talked about previous girlfriends and even mentioning you but only as a friend.

His main resounding for wanting to tell his viewers about your relationship is so that in the future once he does face reveal you can go out together and it won't be a big thing if people see you holding hands or something. He also wants to be able to post the odd picture of you with patches because those are the cutest pictures and he wants to share them.

When the actual stream comes around he has you sat with him and introduces you to the stream before ignoring it as if nothing happened and playing bedwars with his friends and you just chiming in every now and then. He also let you play a few games with him helping you by having his hands over yours.

With Clay being who he is there is definitely seen hate and it is trending on twitter for a while but he won't hesitate one bit to talk about the hate as soon as he sees just one tweet because he just loves you too much to let people get away with talking about you like that. He also makes sure to keep you off twitter for a while until it passes so that you don't have to see the vile things people said about you.

Sapnap:

Sapnap just wants to show you off because he thinks your gorgeous and the people need to appreciate you. Would obviously make sure you are ok with it before actually going through with it but once you're chill he would think about actually showing you off.

Decides to do it through Instagram because he knows that from there is will spread to every other platform but he has less followers on there. Plus a big bonus is that all he has to do is find a cute picture of the both of you which isn't hard because you always look good. In the end he posts a picture of the both of you with him stood behind kissing your cheek while your smiling, its his favourite picture that he has of you so why not share it. The caption is something really sweet as well because Sapnap can't joke about you.

As he predicted the picture was all over twitter within minutes of him posting it to Instagram and when he next streamed a lot of people asked about you so he got you to come in and talk to the chat for a little while and they all loved you, possibly more than sap. There is very little hate because Sapnap simply won't stand for it and makes it very clear even before he mentioned you that he doesn't want to see any hate on things he announces so there just wasn't any or at least nothing noticeable.

From then on he brings you into streams whenever you agree to be in them and posts the odd picture with you if he likes them enough. He loves having his viewers know about you because he can tell stories about things you've done without having to worry about exactly what he says and its a huge weight off his shoulder to not be hiding something.

Quackity:

Just so very chaotic, it would be planned but so unplanned like he knew he wanted to say something one stream after many rumours went around twitter but he had no idea how to do it. He had a lot of ideas but none of them were quite right so naturally he combined them all to make the weirdest fever dream type stream ever.

The stream pretty much sums up your relationship because between the two of you nothing is done normally and there is never a dull moment. There was a lot of yelling for no real reason but you got your point across eventually so who really cares. George, sapnap and Karl joined at one point just to see what the hell was going on and they definitely contributed to the craziness by talking over the both of you.

After the stream Alex was surprised to see just how many people didn't like you because you were being you, they thought you were putting on an act to be like him when you really just aren't he just found his perfect match. It bothered him so much that he put out an alt tweet with an old video of you both acting just like you did on stream just so he could prove them all wrong, he was so petty about it as well literally just captioning the tweet with 'I told you so' . With that it died down and people were embarrassed that they just got proven wrong by the person they look up to.

Karl:

Karl loves you with all his heart so he would be excited when the time finally came to tell his viewers you two were together, they already know you because there is no way he wouldn't stream with you a friends although secretly he would hold your hand under the desk.

He was so excited to stream with you as partners that he was bouncing off the walls all day even though it was a simple alt stream he was still so excited. He didn't even really have anything planned and hones wasn't quite sure how he was going to say it but eventually he just kind of introduced you as his partner rather than by your name at the start of the stream.

The chat goes insane when he does that thinking it was by mistake but then the both of you just laugh, the rest of the stream is spent telling the chat about fun memories you have together and telling them the times you may have lied to them about in the past. It was a lot of fun especially when some friends joined and made fun of the both of you telling stories they remember which aren't as sweet as the ones you were telling. All of the viewers were so nice and there was really no hate which is probably helped by the fact that everyone was familiar with you so not much changed other than the label on yours and Karl's relationship.

Wilbur:

It's an accident that it happens because otherwise he was never going to officially tell his viewers about your relationship because he likes to keep his private life private. You have been seen outside together before and pictures have been put on Twitter but nothing ever really came of those.

One day when he had just gone back to streaming at home and not an office he didn't tell you he was streaming so you walked in by accident. Straight away you realised what you did and were mortified but somehow Wilbur was calm and just took it in his stride getting you to come over and just clear things up. To start with you could tell he was stressed but just having you there made him much happier to the point that he didn't even mind that he was having to share part of his personal life because now he can share more things about you.

From that day on every now and then he would tell fun stories from your lives because a lot of weird things happen to the two of you. Plus then he doesn't have to worry so much about being seen out with you in public because that was always a huge worry that someone would catch you two kissing or something and it really spread through twitter not that he looks at twitter but it would reach his stream chat and he just didn't want that. Now he doesn't have to worry and honestly is quite happy that the people get to meet you because you are such a wonderful kind soul.

[volcanokids]

Hey idk who needs to hear this but the shit going on with Robinhood and Gamestop right now should make you really fucking angry and I’ll tell you why

If you’re not up to speed on the situation, here’s some good posts explaining it. The gist is that using completely legal means, a bunch of individual retail investors (fancy words for normal ass people who, like the rest of us, have very little money) who invest on online brokerage apps (like Robinhood) bought stock in Gamestop after hedge funds worked hard to manipulate the market for their own gains. These average people interrupted the plans of these much larger hedge funds to essentially drive Gamestop’s stock price into the ground by buying all of the stock these companies had and holding onto it, which has now costed these hedge funds BILLIONS of dollars, and for once has disrupted their long standing practice of market manipulation to fuck people over and maintain the wealth of the 1%.

Otherwise average people with accounts on Robinhood, Fidelity, Webull, etc., have now taken and held a ridiculously huge amount of control over GME stock and the rich corporations invested into it and caused it’s growth to absolutely explode. I’ve seen COUNTLESS stories in which many of them turned hundreds of dollars into thousands, made enough much needed money to pay off debts, medical bills, or just to put into savings that they wouldn’t have gotten under other circumstances. They accumulated small fortunes and gave power back to the people, and best of all took that money directly out of the hands of greedy and corrupt billion dollar hedge funds.

But of course, there had to be backlash for this.

Last night (1/27), Robinhood took away its investors’ ability to buy any more stock in Gamestop than they already owned, and today has made its user base fully unable to trade Gamestop stock AT ALL unless it is to sell their already owned shares, like literally fully took away the button that lets you purchase GME stock, period. Straight up preventing trade like this to any degree in the free market, much less to favor billion dollar corporations, is incredibly blatant market manipulation which is very illegal, hence the class-action lawsuit that has already been filed against Robinhood. Hedge funds have lost literally BILLIONS of dollars to normal people trading stock legally, and Robinhood halting trade and making selling the ONLY option for Gamestop, AMC, and similar companies is their attempt at helping the hedge funds gain back their fortune after they failed to manipulate the market in their favor, and fucking over the average people who are invested on their platform in the process. 

Retail investors—regular people—when this happened, lost THEIR ability to buy, and therefore continue taking back the wealth held by the hedge funds, but this restriction on Robinhood has NO effect on hedge funds, who have now been able to buy and sell all day today (1/28) freely. They used the opportunity to drive the price of Gamestop down again, essentially trying to bail themselves out after they manipulated the market and fucked themselves over in the first place. So, Robinhood, several other trading brokers, CNBC, and any other large corporation who has pissed on Reddit for “manipulating the market” have also now revealed their alignment with these companies, who are the reason the wealth in America is as disparaged as it is. They’re complaining, shifting the blame, even making up straight up lies about retail investors being involved in the alt-right to defame the people who have beat them at their shitty game.  

People on Reddit saw the manipulation, played the game fairly, and hedge funds are STILL trying to fuck them over for daring to touch the fortunes that they have gained by their shady as hell practices and fucked up the economy by hoarding. Reddit saw an opportunity to actually literally redistribute wealth, and these companies are trying to put us all in our place and keep that from happening by extremely corrupt means.

Market manipulation has been going on for a very long time with very little pushback from the people who actually take the blow when the market tanks—i.e. lower to middle class people who can’t afford bailouts and end up broke and out of jobs when the market crashes. The crash of ‘08 was caused by big brokers doing illegal shit and fucking around with people’s money with absolutely no personal repercussions. No lawsuits (or at least no lawsuits that did fuck all about it) no jail time for anyone responsible, nothing. Not only has this Gamestop movement taken back some of the wealth, we are beginning to finally hold these companies accountable. Again, as of right now, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Robinhood for their blatant market manipulation, and hedge funds invested in GME have lost over 5 billion dollars.

We always talk about eat the rich, fuck the 1%, redistribute the wealth. I know the stock market is confusing—it’s made that way on purpose—and I understand anyone’s personal reluctance to participate in the stock market directly because of the hatred for it’s capitalistic nature and everything it’s done wrong and every way it’s failed so many people. But, if you want to actually be a part of a movement that is literally taking billionaire’s wealth and redistributing it right now, show support on social media for the people putting in time and money to make this happen.

I am not qualified at all to give financial advice, and I can’t in good faith tell anyone to buy stocks, ESPECIALLY knowing many, many people do not have the disposable income to be able to do so. Do not spend money you don’t have. But the media is going to and has been altering the narrative, making the small investors look like they’re being corrupt. Do not believe them. They’re often paid out or owned by these big corporations in the first place, they do not give a shit about any of us, about ruining our lives, about taking everything we’re worth. They’ve done it forever. But the HUGE number of people buying GME, supporting, and cooperating with each other with the solitary goal of fucking over these hedge funds, fighting them and beating them at their own game is scaring the absolute shit out of them. It’s becoming a movement that’s being compared to another occupy wall street. It’s showing people they have the power to instigate change and could legitimately lead to an entire restructuring of the system if we play our cards right. Of course changing one capitalist system into another capitalist system is not ideal nor is it the goal, but this whole thing has very quickly become a movement backed by A LOT of people who have knowledge about the system, have seen it work and seen it get corrupted in real time, acknowledged exactly where it fucks us all over, and are beginning to break it down by exposing a huge and obvious instance of corruption at the hands of billionaires.

If you can do nothing else, educate yourself about all the fuck shit these companies are doing, rally support on whatever social media you use, keep posting diamond-hands-we-like-the-stock-gme-to-the-moon-memes, put pressure on the brokerage apps like Robinhood who are manipulating the market and let them know there will be hell to pay. Robinhood is sitting at a well deserved one star review on the google play store for their shitty actions and has gotten burned over and over on twitter, lots of investors are planning a mass exodus and closing their Robinhood accounts when all this shit is over, as WELL as the lawsuit, and all of it has garnered the attention of some very influential figures who now have our backs. All of the repercussions they’re facing is the direct result of our outrage and backlash. Be outraged with us and let’s make real fucking change.

GME to the fucking moon everyone 🚀

[sometipsygnostalgic]

that post about entrapta's classpect is DEEPLY fascinating and i was wondering if you had any other thoughts on the aspects? I've been thinking about how Heart, in the context of being heavily linked to identity or want, would be excellent to model an OC or two on, but i thought you might have some ideas on the aspects that could prompt an interesting idea or two?

In reference to this post here

I am not sure. I am able to pop off if you say "how does x character relate to Y aspect?", but if you asl mea more general question like "what do the aspects themselves mean?", i don't know what direction to approach that question, nor do i have any tantalizing ideas for it.

because there are 12 aspects and 14 classes and there are so many options to cover, not just in terms of combinations but in terms of what sort of PEOPLE would bring out what SIDE of each classpect (Prince of Hope Catra would be different to Prince of Hope Eridan)

and Heart in particular, as youve seen, it's a bit less abstract than some concepts like Space, but Heart applies to EVERYONE. I mean that not just every She-Ra character, but also every Homestuck character can be tied to Heart. Because Heart is the "self".

The reason I'm interested in tying someone like Entrapta to it is because not many people choose her for it, and her storyline screams Heart out the wazoo with how she helps so many develop or discover their identity, and she has the Dirk robots and covering her face with masks (which is dirk AND terezi) and the LUVD crystal, but other people will say she's diehard Space (her character is so much like Jade), or diehard Breath (unhealthily detached from reality), and that Entrapta doesn't have the key identity struggles as someone like Adora who may be a better representative of Heart, or Bow who wears the damn thing on his chest, though personally I see Bow as a Blood player since his ties to themes of identity are pretty nonexistent (outside of coming out as an archer yadda yadda).

So, here are what I think are the differences between Heart/Mind/Blood/Hopem since those are the 4 that get mix and matched the most often.

1. Heart relates to your own identity and soul. Destroyer-class Dirk Strider struggles with splintering his own soul into many fragments, some of which end up into real villains. Dirk's problems are being constantly confronted with the reality of his Self, no matter how much he tries to escape it.

Rogue-of-heart Nepeta likes to ship off her friends into many pairings, and understands them well, but is a bit off-key with her own identity and prospects, not being able to fulfil whatever violent role was set out for her on Alternia... and it is implied this is because she is autistic, hmm? But let's not get distracted again.

2. Mind relates to the the decisions people make and the structure of their thoughts, rather than who they are. We only have one solid case study. A good Mind player, like Terezi, will be good at understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, but may struggle with identity issues of her own. Terezi wore lots of masks, and puts aside her own desires, sparing Vriska, in order to fulfil her duty of protecting the Alpha Timeline. She kills her instead, and has a full mental breakdown over time. Alpha Terezi also thinks the choices a person has made in a specific timeline override their whole, so she doesn't credit herself as being the same person who killed Vriska and then saved everyone from GAME OVER, despite having the same Heart. This is the OPPOSITE of Heart player Dirk, who thinks all the terrible decisions his alt selves made apply to him as well.

A good example of a Mind player in She-Ra would be Double Trouble, who is able to understand the insecurities of others at a glance and figure out what buttons to press to make them follow a specific set of actions, calculatedly destroying the enemy from within, just like Terezi Pyrope.

Heart vs. Mind

As you can already see, Heart and Mind are two sides of the same coin. Dirk could pass for a passive Mind player with his many splintered selves and calculated understanding of his friends, while Terezi could pass for an active Heart player with her identity issues and journey of self discovery. Dirk creates robots to throw parts of himself in for entertainment, while Terezi builds scalemates. They are both sword ninjas with a skewed moral compass. They are intrinsically similar characters. I would say that Mind represents order and predictability while Heart represents chaos, and characters in those aspects will dance with both. And it's no coincidence that, in the HS Epilogues, Terezi is the only character who can challenge Dirk in terms of narrative power, being able to read his control over the story and retain some of her independence. But that's a bit too abstract.

To further jest about this, in She-Ra, DT (Mind) and Entrapta (Heart) could be interpreted as the opposite, with Double Trouble being able to see straight into the heart of their opponent while seemingly having no fixed identity or wants of their own (we never find out anything about who they are), and Entrapta having a very fragmented mind and all of the Terezi masking (but for her it's unconscious), especially with her cheery disposition that she sometimes pushes when upset, but her decisions - as unimportant as she initially thinks they are - being key to basically everything that happens in the show with how she influences others’ paths. Both of them thrive in the chaos of Heart and participate in the sheer power of Mind, Entrapta unconsciously, Double Trouble consciously, which is the definitive difference between the two.

And an additional note: Double Trouble invites other people’s characters into themself, taking on their personas, while Entrapta puts a bit of herself into everything she makes for other people, including the LUVD crystal, Emily, and the colour-coordinated space suits. 

3. Hope relates to faith, to the act of believing. We have several representatives of Hope, but none of them are nearly as vital as Dirk or Terezi, so it's a bit less examined, but here I'll try to deconstruct it. Hope, to me, follows the Pratchett logic of if you BELIEVE in something hard enough then that belief in itself will grant unimaginable power. So, every Hope character has something they want to believe in, and may struggle with that faith. In particular, themselves - all 3 Hope characters see themselves as "hopeless". It actually has ties to Romance. They are all hopeless with their relationships, with Jake having "false hope" in terms of everyone being interested inhim and then all those relationships falling apart.

Eridan ends up "destroying" hope, when he turns evil, kills Feferi and blinds Sollux, and most importantly, shatters the egg where the futures of the entire Troll species lie. He dooms his species.

Its suspected "opposing" aspect, Rage, is represented by Gamzee, who as we know has blind faith in the Messiahs, and his Hope is shattered into tiny pieces by Dave Strider, and then Gamzee loses his shit and immediately latches onto the next cause he sees (Lord English).

Adora, I think, would be a strong example of a Hope character in She-Ra, much stronger than Jake or Eridan. Adora has the Hopes of all of Etheria on her shoulders, and it is such a mounting pressure that she lets it get her down. But at the same time, she also has a blind faith in both the Horde, when she was still a cadet, and in the cause of Light Hope, who she doesn't understand has bad intentions for her. Adora's Achilles Heel is how she is so desperate to find something to believe in that she is easily manipulated, and willing to dehumanize herself.

Adora's growth through the show is letting go of this faith in a false cause, and developing some in herself instead. Believing in herself and her own capabilities, not in She-Ra as some alter ego.

And, as a side, Hope tying into relationships - if she is a Knight of Hope then she has been guarding away her feelings for Catra this whole time, and as a fully realized player, she is finally able to use her feelings to PROTECT Catra.

Also, Hope is the most powerful aspect in terms of raw power, and let me tell you, She Ra is the most powerful character in the universe.

4. Blood is represented by Karkat and Kankri Vantas in Homestuck. Because of Kankri’s life as the Sufferer and how he said he was able to see into his Pre-scratch life where he worked together with all his friends, and because of how Karkat was able to get everyone to work together,  it is commonly theorized that Blood is the BONDS between others. The Blood of the Brethren is thicker than the Water of the Womb, as they say!

Karkat is able to safeguard his team as a Knight of Blood, and he also physically stops other people from seeing his own Blood, covering up his mutant hue with an iron grey, which it was revealed later is the colour of the shackles that held up his ancestor Kankri (Troll Jesus).   Kankri meanwhile ended up becoming a real asshole in his pre-scratch life, constantly pointing out the differences between his friends and trying to open rifts between them, as his unrealized self.  

Karkat’s shining moment is when he is able to pacify the terrifying Gamzee into submission.

A strong case for Blood in She-Ra is Bow, who works hard to keep Glimmer and Adora working together, as well as having some of Karkat’s anger issues....

....the key Blood moment for Bow in She-Ra is when he is able to pacify Scorpia - someone he barely knows, and who has been mind controlled - using their kinship as the friend who always puts others first.

Scorpia herself would be another strong case for Blood, because of her heritage and ties to the Fright Zone, and how they had been taken away by Hordak.  Scorpia is also the only person who unequivocally supports Catra through to the middle of season 4, where, like how Karkat cut ties with Gamzee, Scorpia cut ties with Catra and it ended up in her having a mental breakdown.  

Blood players are underdogs in their own class because Karkat had never unlocked his Blood powers, he didn’t have any connection to them in the same way Terezi did to her Mind powers, but he was always passively using his aspect in the more abstract sense. Bow and Scorpia are both underdogs because unlike the other people in their friend groups, they lack any remarkable abilities or ambitions of their own. However, they keep their squads tied together, just like Karkat.  

I think Blood deserves a better writeup, but honestly, I was never that interested in Karkat.  

What’s most important, however, is the key differences: 

Heart has more to do with the Self, and Blood has more to do with connections to other people. Heart has more to do with who you are as a person and your relationship to your identity, whereas Blood has more to do with the ties that bind, whether that’s your heritage or your friendships.  

Hope and Heart both have a connection to romantic relationships, but with Hope this is far more pronounced and integrated into the characters’ relationship prospects. With Heart it amounts to a few shipping jokes and that’s it. More evidence is needed for this area. Hell, even Blood may have a connection - Karkat is super interested in relationships and in preserving the quadrants!!! 

Heart and Mind follow different philosophies - Heart is what ties you to all aspects of yourself across timelines, and Mind is what makes you different from those other selves. Dirk thinks he’s like all Dirks, Terezi thinks she’s different to other Terezis.  

Hope and Blood are often mistaken for each other as well, because of how abstract they are as concepts, but Bow doesn’t tie back into Hope, or Heart, in any fundamental way besides the surface level, whereas he has strong connections to Blood as described above.  Bow doesn’t just believe in friendship - he works to maintain it. 

Anyway that’s all my thoughts for now, I hope this was fun to read.

[whetstonefires]

8 & 9 for the ask game!

8. What kind of document do you use to you write? Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Straight in the AO3 text box?

I have been using an expired copy of Microsoft Word 2010 this whole time--we bought it as a two-disc bundle in actual 2010 and then 6 years later the second copy was still there when I got a new laptop, and now it's 6 years after that. And they stopped supporting the software when it was 11 years old. Eesh. Time.

The fact that it kept nagging me about not being supported didn't worry me too much, since I don't think even a widely utilized word processor is a major hacking target, and Microsoft having pivoted to a subscription model had every reason to be a bitch about using an obsolete version.

But its autosave feature was getting less and less useful, so after losing a lot of work a month and a half ago in a computer crash I finally got around to switching to the open-source LibreOffice, which autosaves restoration data of your current workstate every ten minutes, and also has this nice little floppy disc icon at the bottom of the page that turns red when you've modified the doc since your last formal save, and you can click it to fix that so it turns soothingly black again. Which is nice! Working great for me so far!

So now it's LibreOffice.

I also have Scrivener, but so far I'm exclusively using it to draft one single novel very slowly. All my fic so far is done in a basic word processor.

I can't handle Googledocs ideologically lmao, I don't like trusting Google with my data and I don't like not having backup copies of past drafts Just In Case and I don't like trusting Google to not lose my data and I really don't like needing to have internet to access and alter my files.

And the fact that it strips formatting when you copy-paste is extra motive to not rely on it for fic, because having to either use a special import widget or manually re-enter all my italics would drive me to drink. No google docs.

I tried drafting a chapter straight into AO3 textbox once to see if it helped overcome writer's block. It did not.

9. What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?

I...this is definitely a moving target? Can people normally answer this? I think if I knew what my favorite thing I've ever done is for sure it'd be really depressing because everything else would naturally be measured relative to it. My personal Mount Fuji.

Also I'm going to be real there's like a 90% chance whatever it is has never seen the light of day because it's good enough I can't bring the surrounding narrative architecture up to par so it's Unfinished Work.

I have over a million words on AO3 how am I supposed to????? I can't.

...also my current focus project is this hilariously long E-rated smut fic on my shiny new nsfw alt, where I'm systematically figuring out what you can do narratively with a sex scene, now that I've challenged myself to figure out how to write them and succeeded. So even if I determined the current answer at this moment, there's a non-zero chance it would turn out to be a really tidy piece of porn choreography.

Currently the technical challenge of describing the relative positions of bodies in space both accurately and engagingly is still entertaining me, though the fun is wearing off so I will probably have finished my erotica phase by autumn lmao.

Let's see. A fave, chosen at semi-random. Recently I was rereading Top Guide to try to get that updating again and found I still get a weird amount of joy out of the bit where Tifa throws tea in Genesis' face and books it, after determining through conversation that his morals are hella janky and they cannot be friends.

That whole sequence with the weird tea party wasn't a huge technical achievement or Perfect in any way really, but the experience of writing it was nice; it just came together really smoothly and I didn't second-guess myself or have to stop and seriously rework it or anything. I could feel the benefit of experience working for me as I put it together and it was nice.

I also liked it for the character because she didn't make a huge production of it but it's such a dramatic thing to do.

Thanks for asking! :D