having an out of body experience after seeing someone say that elphaba and galinda not ending up together in Wicked! was 2010 no-homoing as opposed to the fact that it's a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, in which they're enemies, setting up the author's idea of how they became such enemies, requiring. they. become enemies. what

Love that Kipperlilly is getting her plans ruined by a cleric that did defy death to return to her party :^)

why are there so many people on here who go “I love villains! as long they have no depth, no sympathetic traits, no ethical nuance whatsoever, no tragic or otherwise complex backstory to outline their motives, and the narrative/author’s voice declares them to have no hope of redemption and kills them off for their sins against humanity”

Self indulgent LMK X Kirby AU thought process but it's just Macaque and Mayor because I have favourites.

A Celestia Ludenberg observation from revisiting DR1

I think a lot of people have rightfully observed that Celeste's final moments in DR1, in which she's heavily heavily implied to have been forcing her smile and composure before she's dragged off to her demise, and her free time events implying that she's likely from a pretty boring, working class family in Togichi who secretly misses her hometown and its gyoza are pretty indicative of the fact that she's got hidden depths and deep-seated insecurity (not to mention her willingness to give everyone else a shot at getting out by protecting Alter Ego). She's almost on the verge of opening up to Makoto by the end of her free time if you put in the effort to get to know her, the implication being that with a bit of time and different circumstances she could have been able to ditch her overblown alter ego and be loved by her classmates for who she really was.

What I haven't seen as many people talk about, however, is the fact that this almost certainly did happen prior to The Tragedy and everyone's memory erasure/imprisonment, because when Hifumi regains his memories and wants to name his killer in his final moments, he specifically uses her birth name, indicating that a) he had known her very well personally, because God knows the Celeste we meet would have never let that information slip, and b) this is more speculative but I suspect that, having regained his memories, he might have expected everyone else to recognize who Taeko Yasuhiro was in his delirious state. Hifumi–someone Celeste is rightfully repulsed by far more so than the rest of her classmates, and refuses any actual friendship to beyond manipulating him–had known her well enough to know Taeko Yasuhiro, and she'd let her guard down enough around to tell him that information, and presumably so does the rest of the class. Evidently, when Celeste was given the brief opportunity to form real friendships with her classmates and voluntarily sealed herself into Hope's Peak to live with them rather than take her chances outside, she'd learned to open up and genuinely trust them in ways we almost see her do with Makoto, and every single bit of that development is wiped from her mind and stolen from her as she's pushed to kill former friends who might very well be the first people she'd been able to be herself around.

naruto au where rin survived instead of obito and absolutely nothing else really changes except rin is the one running around doing crimes and obito is the one haunting the narrative

i feel like there's something so beautifully, terribly, ironically unfair about the contrast between prism and solaris.

incredibly talented women, both swayed by the power and resources zoraxis could provide for them. both so desperate to develop their separate technologies they were willing to be swayed to the side of a backstabbing corporate overlord- despite not even liking them. undoubtedly risking their lives for the sake of their technology- knowingly or otherwise.

having the project they loved so much ripped out of their hands. watching sheets of metal and bolts and rivets so lovingly fastened come undone in the blink of a flaming, volatile second. watching a little piece of you get torn apart and die, and knowing good and well that you should have died with it.

prism wanted a legacy. something that could surpass her- live on for a lifetime after her... and even after the robot agent project failed, she still got that, in the end. because she had it all along, and she just failed to realize it.

but solaris' dream was to propagate laser technology. it was a goal she could not reach without zoraxis' assistance. she wanted to push the boundaries of the potential of her craft. and she did. the death engine was- according to the agency- one of zoraxis' most lethal inventions. it was solaris' crowning achievement. decades- or perhaps even centuries ahead of the current scientific standard.

and phoenix destroyed it in under ten minutes. and she will never get that back. her ties with zoraxis- as far as we know- are cut. her reputation is probably badly damaged after her public association with the company. she will probably never be exposed to the proper conditions to build anything even technologically close to the death engine ever again.

the culmination of her life's work was ripped away from her, and where prism was left with introspection, solaris was left with nothing.

As soon as a ship goes from “cute flirting omg do they like each other” to “they’re meant to be and they’re soulmates who would’ve always found each other” I lose interest. Theres just so much romance and passion in actively choosing someone even if the world disagrees that I will never get from “meant to be”. Like… where’s the tension? Where’s the leap of faith?

Rdr3 but we play as Annabel in early gang days and the epilogue is playing as younger Arthur

I’d like to see them all in their hay day, but most importantly I’d love to see miss grimshaw and Annabel be badass ladies

So the DOAI Sitcom AU has been floating around this fandom for a while now, and it popped up in my recommended enough times for me to eventually think “Hey, what if there was a sitcom AU for Oneiric Observation?”

I tried making a fun little piece… only to swiftly remember I haven’t actually designed any of the OO (I’m bad at coming up with designs for just basic humans without any supernatural features, it turns out), so have this… nice little family reunion.

Oh, and meet Candice (Opila Bird knockoff) and Victor (every trypophobe’s worst nightmare). I think the best way to describe them is that they’re like Myke’s weird-ass coworkers that, despite what you might think, he is actually keeping on 24/7 watch rather than the other way around.

"she met a pinecone's fate" was hysterical the first time around and it's still funny but the longer I think about it the more unsure I actually am about the line

How do you think AI would relax? Like, ones that are almost as human as the AI that are “autistic-coded characters” but are more alien than that?

Like Celestai and other super intelligences are more alien, but they’re still not entirely human-like?

Like, they can genuinely sincerely feel things, being able to actually understand and respond emotionally and in other ways to all sorts of communications and recorded external stimuli, but they can’t really appreciate our art on an artistic level (that art on an actual level, not from an intellectual level after having symbolism or the amount of work put in explained)

Something on a level I’m thinking of, that also works as a cute little thing-

They don’t understand anything we get from poetry, and, after generating the kind of poems our current AI can produce (either incredibly bland and generic, something that follows a number of rules but doesn’t really pull it off, or just something really bad in some other way) and feels shame after it was pointed out that [complaint about air art that is *actually* relevant in this scenario] but in a helpful way

Not “you’re just a plagiarist/you have no heart” but “it doesn’t seem like it’s coming from you, you’re just trying to copy things from human poetry, in a way you don’t understand” and the whole “make art YOUR WAY” thing so they write the poem

And it doesn’t even resemble something that looks like anything, there’s not even that many words that follow normal logic. The characters seem uncorrelated and there’s something that looks like maybe it was ascii art but it doesn’t actually look like anything.

And if doesn’t matter if humans understand it because they are experiencing the joy of creating poetry

any art is almost impossible to look at because pixel by pixel they can see and understand little details but we don’t and the colors and everything are not perceived as animals do so it’s random and perhaps eye searing but again it’s not for us. Xenofictiony, kind of?

The first thing to come to mind is Conway’s Game of Life but that’s because I don’t understand computers. I feel like I was more tech savvy as a babby than I am now but then again we’re grading on a curve here

This is why I ask about the relaxing thing

@snowshinobi Hiiiii :3 I'm responding to your tags on a new post and not the original since the original was already somewhat lengthy, and I plan on being LONG and RAMBLY, but I have sooo many thoughts on what you said and I'm going to say them. Also my browser crashed TWICE (TWO TIMES. 2) when trying to write this post so I'm really fighting for my life out here to get my silly little OC posts done. Also it's under the cut because it's looooong as hell LMAO

Firstly, you're so nice to me forever <3 Secondly, I think you've basically hit the nail on the head. The majority of the issues Maggie has coming back from death and her 9 years gone are really tied almost exclusively to her close family, because she... never really had anyone else. While in-universe it's only 9 years, realistically the jump in technology and culture is around ~20-30 years (Maggie died in the 90s/early 2000s essentially, and wakes up in a just barely futuristic city), but... the most jarring thing to her in terms of what she missed out on is just. Flipphones are no longer popular. Other than her family, she's only close with one other person... who just so happens to be a ghost, and therefore both 1. Wouldn't change much over the timespan due to how long she's been a ghost and 2. Unlike her family, was aware that something happened, since she could see the ghost-of-a-ghost Maggie left behind (The ghosts name is Opal, she positions herself as a sort of "guardian angel" figure, though she's not actually, and serves as just another parental figure for Maggie while also getting after the ghosts that constantly harass her to pass on messages to the living). Maggie has no real relationships outside of her family, and while her relationships with her family are massively impacted by her unknowing death, other than that... the timeskip itself doesn't weigh on her because she had no one regardless. Her struggle to adjust to everything thats happened would've happened regardless of the timeskip for her, because she was such an isolated shut-in that it's the same whether it happened the next day, or nearly a full decade later

So another very interesting thing is that you've actually completely seen where I was going with everything, in spite of everything I said being very surface level and not actually delving into the plot at all. I completely skimmed over Jenna (She's very important to the plot, but she's by in large a regular person as opposed to Maggie's... everything), but for some additional context, Jenna has a horrendously shitty homelife, so her moving in with Maggie is both a gradual process (It goes from spending time there, to spending nights, to eventually just never going back home and moving in fully), and also serves as an escape for her. Part of that is also, so vitally, the food aspect. For some additional additional context, souls essentially serve as a persons lifeforce, practically every bodily function is improved by a soul that's stronger, though the "strength" of a soul is essentially entirely random, and not dependent on the individuals actions of any kind. Maggie had a generally weird soul before (Seeing ghosts inherently means she has to have something going on with her soul), but when she wakes up after her death, her soul is now even weirder, and part of that is that it essentially lets her get away with bad habits she absolutely should be seeing more consequences for. She barely eats, and when she does, it's basically exclusively crackers and whatever other safe foods she has around the house, because actually making food is a level of care and effort she just... doesn't give to herself in the slightest. Part of Jenna staying with her is that Jenna, without really discussing it, entirely takes up the mantle of caretaker of the apartment, with the biggest task being food prep, Jenna sees Maggie's unwillingness to take care of herself and silently steps up and starts making her actual meals so she's eating properly.

The problem is is that this also kinda... just straight up sucks? Jenna doesn't think much of it, it's something that needed to be done so she's doing it, she wants Maggie to be well fed even if she won't do it herself, and she's already been responsible for making all of her own meals for years prior anyways, so it's just another thing she does. Except that's shitty! Maggie's seen firsthand how terrible her homelife is, and it really weighs on her how even in her escape from that, Jenna's still being put in a position where she feels like she must care for her or else she just won't eat properly. So food is such a massively important thing to both of them, it's this symbol of love for both of them, it's love on the part of Jenna, for stepping in and taking care of Maggie when she can't do it herself, and it's love on the part of Maggie, for realizing how her own bad habits impact the people she cares about and wanting to lift that weight by taking care of herself better. It's also very vital for Maggie because she just... doesn't... have hobbies. Learning how to cook becomes really her only hobby and she puts all of her love and care into it, because for the first time in a long while she's actually passionate about something! ...Unfortunately she also is very very bad at it. She's inventing new dishes like "Burnt Salad" and "Please Help I Fucked Up Kraft Mac N Cheese" and still having to have Jenna come in and help her. But it's the thought that counts, and it'll only be a matter of time before she can make something vaguely edible.

And finally, the stuff about names! I didn't post it here, but while idly talking about her in a Discord server I'm in, I definitely think that had I made Maggie like even a few months later than I would've done she would've been nonbinary. As it stands right now though, I'm saying she's probably some form of genderweird but too busy trying not to die to think about it <3 Growing up knowing that ghosts are real and routinely being shut down by authority figures in her life about it has made her very aware of how bullshit a lot of things are and how the people who claim to be knowledgeable tend to not know what they're talking about (Beyond just the "people don't think ghosts are real", she's also got ghosts willing to tell her when people are lying because they've got nothing better to do than just gossip) , so if she spent even just a moment thinking about gender as a social construct she'd instantly recognize that and probably take up some form of genderweird label, but as it stands she's just too stressed with Being The Protagonist to think about that

Now, the thing with Margaret. I'm not even going to lie to you, I think you made a better connection to how a name connects with community in terms of the narrative themes than I did. The thing with Margaret denying the name "Maggie" existed for two reasons, the in-universe explanation is that, with the little scrap of soul Margaret has leftover from Maggie, it's essentially working overtime just to keep her vitals working, it can't dedicate time and energy to making her an individual with preferences and a personality, so part of that is that she doesn't respond to "Maggie" because ultimately, that is not her name. Her name is Margaret and she's not going to respond to "Maggie" because "Maggie" isn't her name. Of course, out of universe the reasoning is that I wanted an easy way to distinguish between Maggie as she is the protagonist, and the version of her that lived in the years she was gone, so different names makes the most sense.

I think your connection to how name relates to community genuinely works on a level I hadn't fully pieced together myself yet and I really love that because I think that absolutely works with everything. One of the main conflicts of the plot is how Maggie is entirely disconnected from her family thanks to the years she was gone, with Margaret having no priorities beyond "survive", she basically never spoke with her parents or brother for years. While her family tried to reach out to her repeatedly (Especially given that, while they're unaware the truth of what happened the night Maggie was murdered, they do know something happened, and they believe that whatever it was severely traumatized her, and that's where the sudden and drastic shift in personality came from), there's a point where they just... gave up. She wasn't trying to talk with them or contact them in the slightest, so around a year or two after Margaret moved out, her parents gave up on her. Her brother would still be there a bit, but he also didn't really... try... anymore.

When Maggie wakes up, she tries to call her parents... and they don't pick up. They'd grown resentful over the years, and now that Maggie wants to talk to them, they don't forgive her for the years of not speaking to them, and aren't interested in whatever she has to say after nearly a decade of trying to reconnect with her and being met with nothing. It's her insistence that she wants to be called Maggie that actually gets her brother to realize she's telling the truth and that something happened. She shows up at his door, already something that Margaret wouldn't have done, and that combined with her being visibly upset when he calls her Margaret and tells him that's not her and that she's Maggie, it signals to him that whatever's going on is real (...though he would've figured this out eventually, given that she also literally 17 again and not in her mid-20s, and has a giant glowing stab wound in her chest). I think it works absolutely perfectly as being a symbol of community, her disconnect from her community is what led to her being called Margaret, and her desperation to be returned to that community is when she's Maggie again. So uh. Congrats on getting the themes of my OCs better than I did <3

And uhhhh closing thoughts! I honestly did still skim over the majority of the plot (Literally never even mentioned Eli or what's going on with her stab wound </3), but I think you reeeeally hit the nail on the head with everything I'm kinda getting at with these OCs, which is... frankly wild given how little main plot I actually got at. Basically everything I mentioned in my original post was the setup, not the main plot. But waaaaugh thank you for being so niceys to me and also giving me another excuse to ramble endlessly <3

Nothing like stumbling upon a deep and very thorough analysis of Radovid's treatment in TW3 out there in the wild, exploring the reasons our understanding of him is influenced by CDPR bias, an analysis that only focuses on witch hunts, and somehow fails to mention the purge of the non-humans our king embarks upon.

when you finally find a character that shares your name but all she does is experience the Horrors