#using it as an excuse to be manipulative

[hyenaa-euphoria]

hope 2!!!

okay OKAY finally i figured out how to make this😭 it was a messy process to make it but at last!! ajjaajja

yeaaahh maybe catnap is getting in dogday’s head a bit😞

[asurashi]

deep in my enemy, I found my lover

[ Oscar as Carlos's race engineer AU ]

Based on the web weave in @milflewis's insane carcar fic 'all your ugliness'

[ ao3 ver ]

[skyloftian-nutcase]

TotK DLC idea!

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

Link. Link. Open your eyes.

While the line echoes familiarity, the voice does not.

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

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

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

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

And suddenly you realize why that voice was eerily familiar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[notbecauseofvictories]

a wild moment at work today, when my boss (at the end of quite a long speech about why I should track my work better) essentially said, "but you're not getting any credit for your accomplishments!" and I realized I genuinely didn't care.

[v-arbellanaris]

On the in universe dragon age conspiracy theorists post and antisemitism it's wild how they made a joke/parody about it in Inquisition, and then Veilguard earnestly made it true with an end credits cutscene, like it's a compelling narrative. So fucking bad.

that's the thing right. post-game credits means that RETROSPECTIVELY it literally wasnt a joke. since the executors have also been canon since the earliest mention is also in inquisition? what the fuck man

[teh-nos]

when i realised the reason loki is so good at manipulating thor could well be that he's been taught how to do it, likely by frigga whose own job is "talk the king down and/or egg him on"

[freakinator]

vagueing but i think certain ppl need to realize that you can be both manipulative And traumatized 😭

[khaoala]

Bibi I was sooooo excited about us the series it was perfect for me until that episode where pam is being jealous over the most stupid stuff and she's not even talking to rak about it she's just giving her the silence treatment then when they do tal

in my honest opinion, as someone who has watched quite a few gls (and bls too), pamrak are one of the couples if not the one who has the best communication skills despite the big ol' lie that exists between them.

so to ease your heart, no, the jealous over nothing plot line isn't recurrent at all. pam and rak both were extremely understanding and supportive of each other and the others' decisions through the whole show, which to me, felt like a breath of fresh air. they are very mature about things that happened with one or the other.

the way i interpreted that "meaningless" jealous scene was simply that the show wanted to us, the audience, to know the extent of pam's feelings for rak at that point, and that it wasn't a ruse, and she was genuine about it (and also, bc it's a meaningless jealous scene, we've got pam cutely pouting and sulking, and rak being overly indulgent of her girlfriend bc at the end of the day, both of them knew it wasn't serious. it wasn't supposed to stir nothing between them. it was just two girlfriends in the early stages of their relationship being a little possessive and territorial) (also given that rak canonically likes being scolded, that's like, subject for foreplay as long as i'm concerned).

[dreamytfw]

@artificialnocturnc Bruh, your laundry can wait. Get back here and keep cooking!

[birrdies]

i am at the point where i no longer believe a single word that comes out of etho’s mouth

[nerdgirlriot]

More Gaiman thoughts

There is another episode in the Tortoise Media podcast series about NG, this time focusing on Claire, the woman who told her story in the Am I Broken podcast earlier last month. There is apparently a recording of a phone call NG and Claire had, where he sort of "apologized" for his actions and said that he'd pay for her therapy and/or donate to the charity she was working for at the time.

So, did he admit guilt? Innocent people don't apologize or offer to make up for their shitty actions by donating money.

It all boils down to consent. And if the person felt icky about these actions, if they felt violated and traumatized, then there was no consent! Even if they were okay with it in the moment! If they look back on the events years later and don't feel right about it, if they have ongoing trauma about it, it was not consensual! And their doubts about that relationship are valid! Too many people seem to think that just because they were okay with it "at the time" then they can't reverse course on their views of that relationship later. Claire clearly had trauma about her time with him. It was not consensual.

I'm sure NG had consensual relationships. I'd heard the rumors about his "groupies" and I figured they must have all been consensual. Now I realize that quite a few of those were not. And I feel bad that I was lured into his "rock star author" persona and never thought about the women involved because I'd thought they were consenting.

But that's was NG wanted me to think. He crafted this charismatic public persona which charmed me. He crafted a fictional version of himself because he's very good at creating characters that people like. All the while doing awful awful things to women. And I'm angry on their behalf.

I don't necessarily want to keep harping on this but the whitewashing of NG's character on the internet is in full swing and the tag needs more posts that share the truth. NG is a gross creep.

[bleublessings]

Me when “those” MLM shippers and MLF arcane shippers don’t know how to be fucking normal about their ships without being a homophobic/misogynistic fuckazoid.

[does-not-have-milk]

we call this meme monday back where i'm from. or textpost tuesday. i don't know what day it is

(one day i will post something without lloyd bailey or sir lampton in it but today is not that day.)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

if dorian didn't show up, do you think louis would have shot minnie?

I do. I know some people think either he wouldn't have or he would've missed so that's why the writers had him shoot Dorian instead, but mmmmmm no, I don't personally think so. I like to think that if he had taken the shot, his shaky hands would've caused him to shoot her fatally.

Mostly because I'm already so normal about the fact that of the Ericson crew, Marlon and Louis are the only ones with a body count. Well, that we know of, but shown to us in the game, at least. Plus, we know it's Louis' first kill.

Like yeah, Clementine and AJ become part of the crew and they have bigger body counts, and if we're counting indirect kills caused by actions, then Tenn has a count... and I guess everyone has blood on their hands for blowing up the boat... but I'm talking about killed directly with a weapon like....... I lied, I'm not normal about that at all, Louis and Marlon are the ones who have killed someone in Louis' route. I'm also not normal about the fact that Louis kills Dorian and then even as he's clearly in shock, he tries to go with Clementine to get AJ, and then later on when they talk about it, he says it feels like bile but not quite and he's glad he has it in him to do it.... listen, listen, listen... I'm obsessed with that.

Anyway, so if Louis shot Minerva, I think he would've accidentally killed her and can you imagine? He's already enough of a mess after killing the woman who pinned him down and tried to cut his finger off [or succeeded] but he knew Minerva, they were friends before the twins were taken. Even Violet couldn't kill her even though that would've been the smarter thing to do, and we know thanks to meta knowledge that killing her would've saved lives, but Violet couldn't, and I don't think Louis would intentionally either.

Speaking of Violet, if Louis killed Minerva, I hate to think about what that would've done to Vi. I think she might've actually left at that point, like what was planned before it got changed to her being burned. I don't think she would've attacked Louis over it, though, like yeah she attacked Clementine in the cell but Louis? I don't know, but I don't think so just because it's Louis and he'd be a mess about it anyway.

Though if he did kill her, it would be a neat parallel to draw... y'know, because Louis forgave AJ for killing Marlon even though he was pissed and heartbroken, and Violet was annoyed with him the entire time... but could she ever forgive Louis for killing Minerva? Y'know? We already have a similar parallel with AJ shooting Tenn, but still.

If Clementine killed Minerva in that moment, though, then I could see Violet attacking her since in her eyes, Clem proved her right.

So yeah, I get why they added the Dorian kill to his route. It adds another compelling element to Louis as a character, but we also need Minerva alive for episode 4; Louis can't kill her, he can't miss, and he's not going to stay with her because we need Violet to stay on the boat and him to be on shore for all routes.

[captainmvf]

Happy Mother's Day to Golden Time and the billions of years she's put up with her very unruly hires (who she loves very much and thinks of as her own children but shh she will never admit that).

Original screenshot:

[creativity-deficient]

Soooo what are y’all’s hcs on the Tweak family 🤔🤔🤔