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lesuccube · 6 months

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➚ 𝐅𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑 : ꜱᴛᴇᴠᴇɴ ɢʀᴀɴᴛ — ꜱᴇʟꜰ-ʟᴏᴠᴇ

𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒 — we love a king who knows how to pamper himself .

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 — fluff infection

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 — not beta'd , constructive criticism is welcomed . reblogs and comments are appreciated .

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 — 1.2k

steven grant has been your best friend ever since you wandered into the gift shop section of the museum, wanting to buy a taweret plushie that you've been eyeing since seeing them when you passed by the area during a tour.

he was just a gift shop-ist at that time, nothing really special but when you had asked for a recommendation of what knick knack was the most historically accurate you could buy, he went on a tangent about egyptian mythology. it landed him a scolding from his boss but a laugh from you. maybe it was because he was just so pretty or that he fascinated you with his knowledge that you gave him your number.

ever since that day, you two hit it off really well. one text led to two and then a call, one too many which turned into you visiting him more at the museum whenever you're not too busy to go out on weekends. not too long after that, you invited him to your place and the rest have been history. it all happened in the span of four months.

you and steven made it a ritual to have a regular sleepover at yours on the last friday of the month (even if steven was working overtime doing inventory and the commute to your place added 30 more minutes before he reached you). but why would he go through all that trouble?

well, it's simple. the first time steven slept over, he became witness to your entire nighttime skincare routine. he was fascinated by all the products you used from face masks to serums to creams, anything you applied to your face he was paying absolute attention to the process of it all.

he loved how every single one of your products would have a benefit to your skin's health so much that he asked if you could do it to him too. now steven's actually very meticulous with his looks, all the boys are really, but steven liked to nitpick at his reflection (marc grumbles incessantly about it though neither of you knew that).

he wears chapstick because his lips get dry easily and since he does have that 5 o'clock shadow, he has a well thought out aftershave products. but skincare all in all? he thinks soap and water is enough.

every product you'd lather on his face, he'd ask what it does and you'd ramble about how retinol serums do help with wrinkles but it shouldn't be applied daily if he doesn't want to burn his face. he thought chapsticks were enough to keep his lips moisturized but when you pulled out a lip mask and a scrub, boy he was a goner.

the next time you guys hung out outside, steven dragged you to the mall and had you help him buy his own set of skincare products.

it made you giggle before directing him to a pretty popular clinic in the mall first so you two know what products to use with professional help rather than guessing what to buy and end up ruining his pretty sun-kissed skin.

[the following information is not accurate, i'm only saying what i remembered from when i was a heavy skincare girlie, i've turned to a much simpler routine now]

okay so, according to (me) the doctor, he's got a little bit of dryness on his cheeks and some oiliness on his t-zone, poor baby's got wrinkles from the stress he gets from donna and the heavy purpling bags under his eyes.

she recommended him quite a lot of products which included 2 cleansers, 2 moisturizers, 3 serums, a cream and an spf all with a variation of AHA, AAA, BHA, retinol, niacinamide and more. he bought them all.

steven absolutely splurged that day, not only did he buy everything the dermatologist recommended, he also went and bought stuff he saw you use from memory, the face masks, lip masks and scrubs, everything. hell he even had you buy your own recommendation of good shower products because "you always smell so nice and i know you're not really a perfume person".

that night, steven had you demonstrate each process step by step or can also be read as steven asking you to apply them on him like at a spa or clinic. he fell asleep with a sheet mask on.

when he woke up the next morning, you told him that you actually completed his routine while he was sleeping, much to his embarrassment, to which you replied with, "it's no problem at all, i got to take care of your pretty face and you were sound asleep, couldn't bear the thought of waking you up when you clearly needed that."

now every time he comes over every last friday of the month, you two would have your me-days. you two don't hold back on any of your products even if it rips a new hole in your wallets every time you two shop to restock.

lounging on your couch in a comfy pair of steven's shirt he forgot at yours some time ago and some sleep shorts, hair held back by a fluffy headband with a face mask on you, you surf through channels to find some trashy movie to watch with steven.

said man was in his own pj's, lip mask over his lips with the front of his curls tied up as he lay his head on your lap. he was reading his egyptian mythology book, reading glasses perched on his nose as he highlights bits of information he considers important.

your hand unconsciously runs through the curls that aren't tied up as you find a channel that's showing a rerun episode from the office and you settle for that. steven would occasionally hum and turn his head to watch, laughing at the jokes they'd make before returning his focus to his book. it's all so comfortable and perfect and somehow really late in the night.

steven notices your hand stopped combing through his hair and was about to ask why but only to see you sound asleep, mid-face mask. kind of like he was when you gave him his first spa treatment.

so he tucks his book away and takes off his lip mask. then continues to take off yours. he brings over your items carefully and starts to finish off your routine for you, making sure his hands don't rub too hard to wake you up. in an odd sense, it's like steven was trying to say thank you.

for the first time you showed him the way to care for himself more than just food and shower, for letting him learn alongside you how to feel better about himself as he applies skincare products on his face and so many more reasons pertaining to your friendship.

he finally finishes yours with great care and he makes quick work of his own, throwing away the masks before shutting the tv off, carrying you with surprising ease back to your bed and tucking you in.

he sneaks in beside you afterwards, holding you close to his body as he mumbles his goodnight. steven never had to worry about his sleeping disorder when with you, never needing an ankle restraint when you were always there to keep him grounded.

#👤 — user : kira #📂 — file : steven grant #moon knight #moon knight x reader #moon knight fanfiction #moon knight imagine #moon knight fluff #steven grant #steven grant x reader #steven grant fanfiction #steven grant imagine #steven grant fluff

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inbetweenhours · 1 year

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i did more of my esmp parents doodles specifically because of this comment

[Shrub here | Scott, Sausage, & Seablings here | Roseblings, Pix, & Pearl here]

@thatonehomosexual79 prompted me to think about Katherine and joeys parents! I have names for them all, but very few of them have actual thought to me.

I’ll slap my ramblings about each family / parents and my lore under the cut for those interested :] Feel free to ask for more or ask questions! These doodles are easy so i might just do both seasons! I have names for everyone anyways lol

What I do know about Joey’s family though is his siblings I’ve included. To my vague awareness on LE Joey lore, he had other canon members of the monarchy. The Tiger Blood Prince and Princess. I also saw somewhere that the Princess actually went missing and was replaced I presume. Instead of this being a mistake I’ve made it lore. I'm also too far in to retcon it if that actually didn't happen lol. I can’t say much for them as individuals, they’re all very alike. Kinda aggressive and confident in the way that Joey is. Its very obvious they are related lol. Nickey is the one who breaks the mold most, and is plot relevant to my fanon when she is older. She is actually the ancestor of esmp2!Lizzie and one of her close descendants is the founder of Animalia :]

Anyways, Joey and his family get along about as well as they can given the turbulent nature of how I imagine LE succession to work. Its not so much a right as it is a challenge. Joey challenged his parents when he found himself old enough to care about the power. They met the challenge, alongside Joeys brother Mickey, and all lost to him. Very tournament style. Joey coming out on top claims him as the victor and he took his title. His brother and he get along well, in a way that has a high frequency of sibling animosity. Tammy is a bit young in the main timline (14 ish i think) and has very little care in leading, she's happy to just be princess. Nickey has ran away from the LE, and generally was the black sheep of the family. Wanting a much gentler and kinder way of life than she was used to. Her as a subsect of the people left to far lands, never to be seen again really as they reestablished themselves far away.

Katherine is where things start getting odd. Because of how my fanon uses fairies I must first clarify that fairies are biologically agender and asexual by nature in my fanon. They are born in a very disney-ified fairytale fashion where any singular or number of parents will nurture a flower bulb and from it blooms a baby fairy. Katherines mother did this alone, and so her and Katherine look extremely similar. Any dissimilarities are entirely stylistic lol. Baby Katherine also doesn’t have her wings yet, I must clarify this wasn’t because I forgot. Young fairies look a lot more “human”, and gain things like their wings during puberty. They have a chrysalis phase and a kind of butterfly physiology for lack of simpler explanation.

Katherine and her mother are very alike in many ways I think. I don't have a lot of thought for Kitty in all honesty. If she isn’t dead in the current timeline I’d be willing to bet she stepped away from responsibility when The Spring chose Katherine to tale over. If anyone has any thoughts about her that’d be cool, because I really have very little. She would have known Scott and Xornoths parents, which is significant.

Finally Joel!! Also has some weird notes out of the norm. In my fanon Mezalea’s citizens are majorly composed of Clay constructs, with some humans and the occasional merlings around the coasts. Clay constructs are given lie by being laid at the roots of the mother tree, and are typically gifted life by its after a time. Queen Ariel ruled Mezalea before Joel. The reason “Prince” has an asterix is because it’s questionable if Joel ever was prince of Mezalea. he was created to be king and I havent decided if he was sculpted and lad beneath the Mother Tree before or after Ariels passing. She had a lot of wear and tear after potential dozens of decades, maybe centuries, alive. She had come into a point of disrepair (and a thinning of her life gift) and knew Mezalea would need a replacement for her throne. But I havent decided if she ever actually met Joel. If he was created after she crumbled to take her place, or if she commissioned his creation before her passing and was there to see his gifted life. To help guide him in his duties for a short time.

For this reason, the art I have drawn is dubiously canon to my own fanon. And Joel and Ariel are not considered family really. They are not mother and son as much as they are at most mentor and apprentice, and at least successor and predecessor. Joel knows who she is, but doesn’t really hold any sturdy connection with her. Ariel herself was a good determined ruler. Confident and brazen in many ways. She likely looked much different throughout her rule, constructs can pass their life between other vessels- this is how they grow. Like hermit crabs kind of, when they feel they have outgrown the body they have they will likely build or commission a new one to inhabit. Ariel has been around a lot, and many of her forms have suffered some severe battering. It has thinned her life gift to be passed around so often and in connection to a broken form she knew she was done.

anyways that is all for now, imma go look into who do draw next :] questions and commentary welcome

#empires smp #empires smp 1 #smallishbeans #katherine elizabeth #Joey Graceffa #hourspost #hoursart #no designs are finale mostly just speculatory i wouldnt consider most my final thoughts lol #esmpFamilyArt

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wren-kitchens · 7 months

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hi i’m very abnormal over the idea of a joel & cleo team so I wrote this lil drabble hjfhd

it’s quiet.

this isn’t exactly weird for the first few days; what with the mandatory grace period before anyone turns red, the initial scramble for resources meaning most people typically don’t have enough to start a fight with much chance of winning, and the bases for each team being built—it all kind of creates a sense of community. which is laughable, because it’ll only take a week or two for tensions (and red names) to arise and soon the whole server will be a bloodbath.

the thing is- it feels weird. the quiet, that is. like it’s suffocating him somehow, which is even weirder because joel is definitely used to silence. whilst 3rd life consisted almost entirely of silence, stretched out over the weeks and broken only by the panting of his wolves, the warm closeness of magical mountain fell like shattered glass the second joel became red. the silence at night on the bridge felt like knives pressed to his throat.

but then there was etho, and then his bad boys, and the quiet was replaced by teasing remarks and unconvincing complaints and loud laughter and warmth. their beds were never cold for long, and their breathing was white noise in the night, and their hands would always find joel’s sometime in the night.

and now there’s.. this. his and cleo’s somewhat uneasy alliance, taken on at the height of day when they bumped into each other as they both tried to light the same ugly build alight (grian could do better than that—joel’s seen it. he was only helping) and decided that two arsonists on a team stand a better chance than two separate ones. it feels a lot less stable in the cold of the night, where they both pretend to believe the other is asleep, and their beds are opposite sides of the small hut they’ve constructed to block the worst of the wind.

joel has been trying and failing to sleep for the last two hours and, upon accepting the inevitable first sleepless night of the games, has resorted to planning various acts of malfeasance he and cleo could do after the sun comes up. he wonders if he ought to let on that he knows she’s not asleep so they can take advantage of the night to hunt some creepers.

all of a sudden, joel realises why this all feels so unnervingly familiar, and his stomach twists; it’s a red alliance. or- well, it’s essentially a red alliance—together until they won’t be, teammates to make things simpler or to reduce the eventual conflict, no actual reason for the allyship aside from a more efficient way to kill people. he can feel the blades begin to ghost his neck again.

it’s quiet. joel wants to scream until his lungs crack, to drown out that awful silence in something akin to cannonfire, to chase the insanity before he can get too attached to anyone who will leave. he wants to set the whole world alight, to obliterate it all- kill everyone who tries to stop him.

but he doesn’t want to disturb cleo.

#wren writes #joel smallishbeans #zombie cleo #trafficblr #the wolf joel saga #this is simply because I want joel and cleo to team #please and thank you?

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hotasfahrenheit · 3 months

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something i've been thinking about a lot since watching the end of Love For Love's Sake is what and who exactly is real in the universe that Myungha is playing the game in.

what do we know about this world? firstly, it is presented to us and Myungha as being the world of the story that Myungha read, but focused on Yeowoon instead of the main characters from the manuscript who are a happy couple that ends up together. they don't enter the picture at all; we don't know what point in that theoretical timeline Myungha is inserted into, but this implies it's before Yeowoon meets them since they're just not there.

the next step from there tho is... is the manuscript that Myungha read even real? he remembers the mysterious sunbae being the one who gave it to him to read, but if the sunbae is some kind of god or angel of death, did Myungha actually read it after he died, as part of a test to figure out what to do with his soul?

really my ultimate question that this whole line of thought is digging at is if Yeowoon is also someone being given a chance at life and happiness again, and is as real as Myungha is (and if the other boys are thus real too). despite Myungha seeing the game interface that no one else sees and having the system errors affect his existence in the world, the interactions between other characters when Myungha is not there are too deep and too real to be just NPCs. they're experiencing life and making decisions like fully really people, and living it outside of Myungha's scope of knowledge and what he can see. we get multiple scenes of the characters interacting and doing things without Myungha, and not all of them connect directly back to him or things he's doing.

knowing that Myungha's grandmother already passed away fills in her existence easily- she could very well actually be Myungha's grandmother's soul actually brought into this world as well. clearly some people are not there because they're also dead- like his ex girlfriend appearing as the agent, or his mother appearing in the cafe- but they have much simpler functions in this world. but there's little things- Sangwon struggling with his relationship with his mother and talking about how his father used to hit him too, Kyunghoon having a boyfriend that is always far away and he can't see until some point in the future- that hint to me that they might be other lost souls that had bad or sad things happening in their lives too, that might have brought them early deaths as well.

was the story that Myungha read about Yeowoon a story about another real, sad, lonely person who made the same choice Myungha did? was the game not just a set up for Myungha to save himself and learn how to love himself and others but a way to save multiple souls?

one of the main pieces of support behind that idea for me is the fact that Yeowoon breaks through the haze after Myungha disappears and not only remembers Myungha but is able to take control of the game to bring him back. i agree with this great post from @wen-kexing-apologist that Myungha (and his depression) is the one controlling the game he's experiencing in general and causing the system errors, because that makes sense for the things Myungha sees. but the others don't see them, though they do see the physical effects on Myungha when things happen like him falling down the stairs when he's with Sangwon. they see Myungha reacting to screens only he can see, and they do notice that's he's interacting with them and clearly think it's odd even tho they don't really comment on it.

and in the most crucial moment, Yeowoon finds the pen and the notebook. Yeowoon pushes to remember Myungha, pushes to find him, pushes to figure out a way to get him back, and i cannot believe that he's just some kind of NPC in an actual game or a made up person in a constructed reality that Myungha gets to exist in as the only real human soul. he has drive, he makes autonomous decisions, he is cognizant and aware. he needs to learn about how to love and be loved like Myungha does; he needs to learn how to connect to others and not be alone and adrift. he has a reason to be placed in this world like Myungha does even if he's not the one in charge of it until the moment it matters most.

could this be an alternate reality where Myungha just hasn't died yet and that's how everyone is real and there? theoretically maybe, but the fact that he is experiencing everything as a 19 year old in the current time and not in 2012 means despite going from 29 to 19 means that this isn't just another parallel earth where he's taking over the existence of another Myungha. (plus where would that Myungha go??) also his grandmother being there and being fully a real person means that he hasn't just been placed back into the real world, since we know she's already passed away there as well. i don't have a solid theory yet for how their world exists, i just have ideas about how they're existing within it.

i feel like i'm hitting the point when i'm just gonna be talking in circles about this from here out, since i've been thinking about it in circles, so I'm gonna wrap this up and go think about it for the rest of forever.

tldr is that i think at least Yeowoon and the other boys are all real. they're all being given another chance, with Myungha as their ringleader. they need to learn from him as much as he needs to learn from taking care of them; they all learn that they're worthy of love and friendship in ways they hadn't known before.

they all get their second chance.

#the likelihood of me spending my lunch breaks this week at work rewatching this show is very high #there's so much to think about and analyze and just... love #i will never be over this show #love for love's sake #love supremacy zone #love for love's sake meta #tae myung ha #cha yeo woon #tae myungha #cha yeowoon

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dr3amofagame · 1 year

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fuck it. c!punz + c!dream manifesto bc what else am i going to do at university. study ? nahhh

the first thing i want to be clear about is that i like c!drunz. they’re a very important duo (they were explicitly paralleled with c!CLINGYDUO for god’s sake) and the point of this isn’t to diminish their importance to each other. i ALSO want to say that the point of this isn’t to be like, super aggressively /neg towards any one character (even tho i am, admittedly, a self-proclaimed c!drolo) or to demonize them. and finally, that this is just the way i see them, not necessarily the views of anyone else (though i’ve very much been inspired by talking to certain friends abt the Blorbos (tm) for obvious reasons.)

all of that out of the way, onto the c!dream and c!punzisms . i have no plan for this post it’s probably gonna be messy as fuck . but i think first and foremost it’s important to acknowledge that c!dream and c!punz, each are characters with their own goals. a lot of the finale is about c!dream’s side of this, especially in terms of how much he lost sight of what he actually wanted (and i still have to do a rewatch of the 3rd finale stream just to parse through ALL THE SHIT HE SAID bc jfc man . what.) and how a lot of what he wanted were a lot simpler than he allowed himself to realize.

but on the flip side of this, obviously, is c!punz. who also has his own motivations, and as is shown in the finale ... these motivations exist in a space that is . in a lot of ways. directly incompatible with what c!dream actually wants. c!punz is representative of The Plan. he calls the desires that c!dream and c!tommy share “simple-minded.” he wants to unlock the secrets of the universe just because he can.

(and it’s worth recognizing that c!dream’s initial reaction to the existence of supernatural powers beyond his understanding on the server was to freak the fuck out, to the point of the prison’s construction being EXPLICITLY as a result of said discovery. Does c!dream want to understand things in order to Fix Them? Certainly. but i would hardly characterize his initial response to the supenatural as being, uh, impassioned curiosity of the unknown, so to speak.)

c!punz has motivations that aren’t c!dream’s motivations. that’s ,, kind of the point of a lot of what was going on in that last finale stream! c!punz wants to Know Shit. he wants to elevate himself above simple-minded desires. he really,,, wasn’t convinced or swayed the same way dream was when tommy tried to get him to have a heart to heart, and actively discouraged him from continuing to talk about what he actually wanted. and again this isn’t to say that c!punz didn’t care or that he was trying to hurt c!dream or otherwise was trying to act in a way that was malicious towards him but all that still happened you know and speaks to a fundamental difference in the driving forces between these two characters. c!dream and c!punz are each characters with DESIRES and MOTIVES and they’re,, not always on the same page w/ regards to what said desires and motives actually are.

and, yk, it’s not to say that two characters with different motivations can’t work together or have a relationship that’s rendered completely impossible by their differing desires. but a lot of what defines c!dream and c!punz has a lot to do with c!punz As The Plan, which is significant when you consider how much of The Plan is about both outward and self-destruction for c!dream. this in itself doesn’t completely throw their relationship over a cliff, even if it’s a huge disparity that has a lot of implications when we consider how unaddressed it was by the characters until the last stream of the finale, where c!dream and c!punz are markedly NOT on the same page about what they want. but that kind of brings me to my other point of what’s...really important to c!drunz, at least to me. which is how it’s so often defined by inaction.

because, yeah, c!punz was always on c!dream’s side (except for that period of time in Pogtopia where he wasn’t, lol.) and yeah, c!punz was the one person he trusted with a lot of the details about his plan to Save The World and whatever. but also the separation between the two was so important that it was quite literally the cornerstone that ended up ensuring their joint survival; it was crucial post-staged finale that no one knew they were working together. c!punz started on c!dream’s side because he was a mercenary for hire. a degree of alienation has always been a part of their dynamic down to the finale, and is also an extremely IMPORTANT part of their dynamic if we consider c!dream’s silence to c!punz calling them friends.

i find the post-prison era to be most damning about this point in particular, but just look at staged finale in itself: one one hand, c!punz and c!dream were in on a plan to fool the entire server, which spoke a lot to the level of trust involved there. on the other hand, c!punz took a very active and physical role in literally locking c!dream up in his personal hell. c!ranboo took a more significant role after he was locked up than c!punz (which, like, again makes SENSE re. security. but. like. that absence still speaks volumes)--like c!punz as an enabler, c!punz as someone physically cut off from c!dream...that’s a pattern.

and again, when we look at the state of them after the prison, the absence is even more damning. c!punz specifically (even when considering c!dream’s obvious role in the planning) gets c!dream killed twice in staged finale and then you know, has him metaphorically killed when he’s put in the prison. and then AFTER the prison, we have three specific cases at the very least: c!punz’s signal in the scrapped lore is what ends with c!dream being trapped by both of his torturers, c!punz’s involvement in the Las Nevadas revenge plan nearly gets c!dream killed either by the slime army or if he was in c!purpled’s position at the top of that tower, and his running away from Las Nevadas is explicitly what allowed c!tommy to stalk him for weeks and end up breaking in and killing him. Not to mention how that ends up leading up to both of them getting trapped in the prison with a nuke about to come down over the server.

and obviously c!dream almost dying/literally dying in all of these post-prison scenarios isn’t Part Of The Plan or something that c!punz actually wants, right, but also...where was he? what did he do to prevent this from happening? c!dream was stalked for literal MONTHS after las nevadas and we see no mention of c!punz being around,,, at all? (we KNOW he wasn’t visibly around in any way considering c!tommy thought that c!punz was still on his side, even.) c!dream didn’t LEAVE the prison for weeks after LN and c!punz wasn’t around? this is with c!punz obviously knowing that c!dream was going to confront his TORTURER. and he wasn’t watching from the sidelines? like, forget c!tommy, c!sapnap found about c!dream’s place of residence IN JANUARY and was apparently still harassing him outside IN JUNE. people broke into that prison to threaten dream multiple times !! like ?

and god it’s not to say that c!punz didn’t care--his anger speaks for itself--but it’s important to acknowledge that that distance existed and was actively detrimental to c!dream’s safety. fuck, the ANGER in itself was detrimental to c!dream. c!punz’s defining characteristic according to the cc is his anger, when he’s not putting on a persona for the rest of the server,,, and this anger was doing c!dream no favors. we could see that in the finale. we could see that as he literally spent months upon months wasting away in the prison AFTER RECLAIMING THE KEYCARDS and apparently just spent all his fucking time in that place. we can see that when c!punz’s anger leads to c!dream confronting LN which ends up with him staying in the prison without moving for weeks on end, when c!punz’s anger leads to him reviving c!dream minutes after he dies in front of c!clingyduo which ends up leading to the events that prompt them to nuke the fucking server.

like, ultimately, c!dream and c!punz are characters that had each other and only each other in terms of people who knew the truth abt each other’s plans. they care about each other’s safety. they also have inherently incompatible individual motivations and were severely alienated from each other in ways that carried out throughout their relationship into the finale, and these differences are what defined finale c!dream and c!punz the way they ended up being. and yes, a lot of these decisions were exacerbated by the hostility of the environment they lived in and how being c!dream’s ally was a death sentence. yes, a lot of this has to do with the logical benefits of standing apart so that they could revive each other in case something went wrong. and yes, this has to do with c!dream’s being extremely fucking mentally ill and delusional from the beginning of when their partnership became more defined, after c!dream received the revive book, lost every other ally, and went on a paranoid spiral that ended up with him in pandora. but it’s the differences and the isolation that to me, make this pair in particular so compelling and IMPORTANT in canon.

#this is a mess but here. have the dr3 c!drunz manifesto #except it's super fucking scattered bc i was carrying like 3 different convos with friends at the same time #dreblr #c!dream #c!punz #c!stageduo #c!drunz #long post

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fili-urzudel · 11 months

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Dating Elrond Headcanons

When I wrote these, I was kind of imagining more RoP Elrond than LotR movie Elrond, but it's playing out in your head, so picture whomever you desire!

Warnings: None just Elrond being a sweetheart

Word Count: 0.3k

- You once mentioned in passing that you liked a specific species of arctic bird. Well, in his research of this bird, he found that one of the mating rituals you likely found "cute" was the exchange of specially curated rocks, to symbolize the want to construct a home together. Finding this heartwarming, he set out on an excursion. - There are cool rocks showing up on your desk, on your doorstep, in your bag, sporadically for months. - Luckily you catch the reference so you know exactly who they're from and find it endearing - Even though he understands the risk of a human-elf relationship, that doesn't mean he "gets" humans completely lol - At least, not until several years with you - He kinda… showers you with gifts - Like a lot - A month after you started dating, he presented you with a ridiculously expensive pair of earrings - You loved them, obviously - But after a few more like that, you actually had to tell him to tone it down, you didn't need bribery to be with him - You can actually tell that while he is older (by a few thousand years) and wiser (by a few thousand books), he has never been in a relationship before - Or maybe he's just, y'know, like that - He's very sweet and doting, always offering to run errands with/for you "should you wish", escorts you everywhere, and will actually leave or blow off meetings to make sure you're getting enough of his time. - Somehow, even with all this, he's still very pleasantly surprised when you take an interest in him - You thought he was going to combust when you asked him for a much simpler gift--3 or 4 of his favorite books that he had already annotated, so you could see what he thought of them - If you bought/made something for him because it reminded you of him? - he's always really cool and collected but he might tear up a bit - he would be thanking you profusely for weeks, probably whenever he looked at it (or thought of it) - Proposal/engagement/wedding headcanons coming soon

#lotr #lotr fanfic #lotr fandom #lotr headcanons #the hobbit #rings of power #elrond #elrond peredhel #tolkien #lord of the rings #elrond x reader #elrond x you #elrond x y/n #elrond headcanons #elrond hcs #lotr hcs #lord of the rings headcanons #dating elrond

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sirenjose · 6 months

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Analysis of Emil's dish: Croquembouche

Croquembouche is the most popular French wedding cake. It is a mounted pyramid or cone shape made out of choux pastry puffs, which are filled with pastry cream. The whole thing is bound together with caramel, after which it can be drizzled with chocolate sauce, surrounded by sponge sugar, or decorated with various things including icing, fruit, flowers, macarons, and more.

It is very popular in the UK and Italy, where it’s known as croquembouche, though French know it as “Piece Montee”. Croquembouche is an English term but a French word. The term did exist in 19th century cookbooks, but never made it into the 20th Century France. Croquembouche means “something that crunches in your mouth” (due to the caramel encircling it), while Piece Montee means “mounted piece”.

The croquembouche is simpler (relatively speaking) while the Piece Montee is more flamboyant. In the Piece Montee, the choux buns are usually arranged on elaborate nougatine bases to assemble a piece that stands out. While in the Croquembouche, the buns are arranged in a pyramid and bound with caramel.

As for its history, it started with choux pastry, which is the dough that is the base of many French desserts, including profiteroles, eclairs, croquembouche, and beignets.

Pâte à Choux was created by the court of Catherine de Medici when she came to France to marry King Henry II (also known as Henry of Valois) in the 16th century. She was Italian (born in Florence, Italy) and brought a lot of Italian chefs with her, and one of them by the name of Signor Panterelli is credited with making the first choux pastry puff.

The pastry Panterelli made was known as pâté a Panterelli. A century later, it was known in France as pâté a Popelini, a popular form of cake during the Middle ages. Around mid 18th century, Chef de Patissierie Avice perfected the dough and created the choux form we are all familiar with today, so the dough was renamed to pâte à choux due to the characteristic look which resembles a sprout (chou in French). Later, French chef Marie – Antoine Carême had the inspiration to fill the choux with cream.

Carême studied architecture, and because of that he was interested in creating structures out of pastry. This carried over into his Croquembouche construction, with the cone shape eventually becoming the one we all think of today.

Essentially, Pâte à Choux uses the moisture of the water to create a leavening effect. A hole is formed as the dough rises, ready to be filled with various creams or custards.

Choux pastry starts as a mix of salt, sugar, water, milk, and butter. Then it’s all heated up until the butter dissolves. Next is to add flour, stir, then finally to add in eggs gradually as you stir.

It’s difficult to get right because you need to get the right texture (needs to be a little bit elastic). If you don’t, then when you put the choux pastry puffs in the oven, they won’t really puff. They stay kind of flat.

Once made, they’re filled with pastry creams. Usually vanilla flavored but it can be varied. Then the construction begins.

Traditionally, the bride and groom would lop the top off with the groom’s sword, then the pieces would be caught in a tablecloth held by the bridesmaids. Though now people choose normally just use just a long knife. 1 serving is 3 or 4 puffs.

#idv #identity v #idv emil #idv patient #identity v emil #identity v patient #sirenjose analyses and theories

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starflungwaddledee · 6 months

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clearing my inbox of a variety of asks with text replies, or ones that will get art answers later but that i still figured i could get back to now with simpler responses in the interim.

lots of anons, but i'll ping anyone who i can!

topics include: general nice words + people's theories (thank you!!), dededesign, daroach (sorry), sentient ancient artifacts, magolor (sorry...), whispy woods (SORRY...). there's also a decent scattering of awtdy and clockwork heart tidbits but they're all over the place, and a small collection of increasingly desperate asks hoping bandee will be released from morpho dee 😂

oohh this one is actually super old, sorry that i never got back to it! i get a little overwhelmed by the Nice Words ones sometimes and i'm not sure what to say besides 'thank you!!' because it means a lot to me and 'thank you!' just sometimes feels like it doesn't cut it...?

anyway, i'm very grateful!! i'm thrilled if i could inspire you to try out any constructed-language work of your own!! i'd love to see more of that going on in the kirbyverse so if you ever give it a crack feel free to lmk!

i'm glad you like the full penguin dededesign; quite a few folks seemed to enjoy that actually and i was pleasantly surprised! i haven't drawn that much of most characters besides bandee, to be fair, but the next comic will be about dedede and should answer some of the other questions i've been getting about him too!

i should say that it's likely the totally full penguin design won't make it for the comic, because it's hard to draw the sheer length of their bills from many angles or having the expressiveness i need for dedede, and i really only did that one for funsies. but i'll hopefully find a nice compromise!

aaaa the joy of being mentally unwell about The Characters and The Story. thank you, glad i can be of service! 👍

this is quite perceptive of you to notice and it's definitely something that occurs in the timeline. due to galacta knight's influence (and kirby's altered reputation) visitors and threats- both international and intergalactic- start to think twice before risking an approach.

alas, because daroach appears in the timeline before galacta knight's switch-in occurs, he would already be in contact and friendship with kirby. that unfortunately means he'd meet the same fate as the rest of kirby's existing allies.

@i-only-created-this-to-read a little similar to the above ask, yes, the intergalactic picture of popstar is definitely changed by the presence of a violent, otherworldly warrior and a ruthless hero. i also answered your questions about necrodeus previously and am not sure what else to say about him.

i have confirmed before that dedede is not dead, and more about his scenario and overall role in the plot will be revealed in comics. but i will say that he's a smart guy, despite his silliness, and a loving king. he absolutely came to the same conclusion about the frequency of his own possessions as well, through no small amount of heartbreak.

i definitely headcanon the Lor as sentient; in the light novels, bandee also speaks to her fairly directly. i actually headcanon all the Ancient artifacts as having an amount of sentience (this seem in line with what we've seen in canon, so i don't think it's a reach) and the lor herself seems especially benevolent to me.

our headcanons for the novas are different to yours, though that plays more of a role in the clockwork heart au. i quite enjoy your theories about how the ending might go and you've definitely picked up some details!! i won't confirm or deny anything, but i will say the lor is present in the AU, and that magolor has enough knowledge of artifacts to know that a wish on a wishing star could be a viable solution.

it took a while for folks to start asking me about magolor actually, which i found kind of amusing because he's the deuteragonist (second protagonist, after bandee) of the au!

i do definitely think that canonically magolor lives on the lor starcutter; though he does say he wants to buy a holiday home on popstar! however in awtdy, unlike the dream land four three, magolor's entire timeline is trashed from the get-go by galacta knight's arrival

some of these answers will take me longer to get to as i'll provide them in comics (it should be a fun reveal at least), but i will say: he hates popstar. he hates it there. he'd give just about anything to be anywhere else.

until he meets bandee, of course.

the rest of popstar fare a little better or a little worse at various points in the au, kind of like in the mainline canon timeline. for the most part, galacta knight isn't that interested in most of popstar. he enjoys living there, it's peaceful and undeniably pleasant, and frankly he'd like to continue doing so!

he can be convinced (by kirby, and the maintenance of the lie) to perform care to some of its citizens when necessary- such as rebuilding after a crisis. but in general he minds his business in dream land, and occasionally off-world or interdimensionally with kirby and bandee on missions.

whispy, who also keeps to his own in the woods and is just a cantankerous old tree, is probably fine. at least up until star allies, when he, you know. gets possessed.

@pumpkinnkidd oh absolutely.

@torrentialchaos2 that would be a different story to chrysalis au, i think! one i could write, but haven't. chrysalis au is specifically about bandee, you can't really extract him from it? 😭 but if morpho possessed magolor it would depend on a lot of things: like what is everyone's relationship to him when it happens? i think even when he comes back from his redemption arc, magolor and the gang are friends, but it's not the same as bandee, who is a core member of their unit.

we've already seen what happens when magolor gets possessed and kirby has to Beat His Ass to get him back to normal. and we've seen that when morpho possesses others who are capable fighters, kirby doesn't hold back. so maybe that? magolor is a magical little guy; he's got a better chance of getting spat back out unscathed.

i could however probably write a version of this for magicapple if i wanted, which would be much more emotionally pulverising lmao

@trainerbob23 thank you!! this one took me a bit to respond to sorry, but i'm grateful for the warm welcome! the AUs are definitely my primary investment and i'm glad that folks are enjoying seeing them develop! some of them are connected to each other (awtdy + it's various endings/alts) but others are separate.

i also do have some backstory/lore for starstruck dee, which i'll hopefully get to soon as well. i would say that she is... very much related to stars and the cosmos, yes.

@eliastheownerof0axolotls this one was part of a longer ask (that i've answered part of, and still have another part of in my queue... sorry;; ) but i think this part- especially in terms of kirby- has probably been mostly answered by now! both kirby and dedede have significant roles!

i view dedede as having a mentor-like dynamic with bandee as well as with kirby, and they all care about each other very much! but (especially because they are all adults in my hc) he also absolutely trusts them to handle themselves.

referring to this post and the (cw angst) art at the end. i will hopefully answer some other asks about the clockwork heart au which will satisfy more of its overall premise and timeline and all, but in regards to the peculiar image...

why that picture is completely normal!! bandee is super fine and normal in it and everything is great and good and fine and fine and fine and fine!!! hhahaha!!!

(something very bad is happening, lmao. entirely doomed by the narrative.)

speaking of bandee being doomed by the narrative:

some tags here as well, but i just love the frequency of these...

bandee gets possessed one time and everybody loses it... quick!! when will he get unpossessed!!! save that little guy!!! he's sad so we're sad!! (relatable. everyone is so valid.)

the tags on the main posts about morpho dee are just full of people screaming and crying and being like "NOOO I HATE THIS SM I'M IN PAIN /pos" and it's so good hahahaha

sorry to the folks who hate to see him going through the blender, he's being spun in the microwave at like 90mph on my blog. but don't worry, chrysalis au does have a predictably good ending; though obviously bandee has some capital S Stuff to unpack afterwards!!

🌟⭐✨

aaand i think that's all for now! hopefully if you've been hanging out for an ask for a while you're answer is here, and if not (and possibly even if it is), it's most likely taking me so long because i want to do an answer with art.

i'll try not to let these build up again like this, thank you for your patience!

#won't tag all the characters mentioned but i'll tag the AUs just due to the presence of some asks being about them #or plots or storylines or clarifications. nothing too spoilery... maybe. mostly.#awtdy au #clockwork heart au #chrysalis au #asks

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aftermathfanfic · 5 months

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D&Ducks

So, I was originally going to make this post for when I hit 300 followers, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, and I’ve been thinking about this for way too long, so fuck it. I’m just gonna post this now and see what happens.

In case it wasn’t obvious from the hints I’ve scattered through Aftermath, I am a huge D&D nerd. I love playing the game, I love running the game, I love the monsters, everything. And what I particularly love doing is building characters and monsters for the game. I use a lot of custom monsters for the games that I run, even though I don’t end up using all of them, and what I’ve done in the past is that I created character sheets and stat blocks for some of our favourite anthropomorphic ducks. In fact, on my main blog, I documented a solo adventure that I ran by myself, for myself, in story format as I put these duck characters through a premade advennture! (I eventually stopped, because playing a D&D game by yourself is as dull as it sounds)

So today, I’m going to revisit those roots and lay out how I would build the Ducktales characters as tabletop RPG player characters! This is something I’ve given way too much thought to, so be warned – this is going to be quite long-winded, with little to nothing to do with Aftermath itself, and of interest to only a small subset of people.

Let’s begin!

The Basics

I want to preface this whole thing by mentioning that while I’m going to try and describe these characters in a way that can be transposed onto any RPG system, I’m going to be using the Pathfinder RPG (1st edition) as a basis for these characters, just because it’s what I’m most familiar with at the moment. The basics are the same – roll a 20-sided dice, add a number and hope to get a big enough total – but there are more nitty-gritty rules and it's way easier to kill off your characters.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ll be inserting these characters into a D&D setting of my own creation, rather than any pre-existing settings. I don’t have a name for it, but essentially this setting is an undisciplined mix-and-match of characters from different IPs that interest me. The McDucks, in this setting, live as a powerful noble family in a kingdom of united beast-folk families.

Final thing is that even though these guys are anthropomorphic ducks, they’re going to have the racial traits of humans to make things simpler on me. I’ll also be giving them a swim speed of 15 feet in addition to those traits.

Dewey

This spry duck stands with the cockiness of an ambitious hero, a sword in each hand. A bright blue tabard, tattered from numerous skirmishes, flows down his chest to cover steel armour of haphazard construction.

Age: 16 Alignment: Chaotic Good Class/Level: Fighter 3/Bard 1 Ability Scores: STR 16, DEX 16, CON 14, INT 10, WIS 8, CHA 14

In this world, the triplets were raised by their uncle Donald in a quiet fishing village on the outskirts of the city of Duckland, in the providence of Calisota. They never got so much as a hint of their caretaker’s history as an adventurer, not until they found their uncle’s old adventuring gear, stowed away in the attic of their house. Among this gear was two finely made swords, both of which Dewey snatched up and started swinging around – resulting in the destruction of several family items and the near decapitation of Huey. Donald was forced to tell the triplets of his past as an adventurer, and the revelation shook them to the core. To make up for it, he decided to teach them how to adventure properly, in the hopes that if they wouldn’t be persuaded out of their trouble-making instincts, he could at least teach them to be safe while doing it.

Dewey remains the chief chaos-monger of the triplets. Ambitious and eager to live up to his family name, Dewey often throws himself into danger without hesitation, giving no thought to possible traps, uneven terrain, or indeed, the strength of whoever he’s fighting against compared to his own. He makes up for his recklessness by being virtually untouchable in a fight, deflecting swords, claws and spells with his twin swords. The longer blade, named Helios, was once wielded by his Uncle Donald. The shorter blade, Asteria, was his mother’s.

Against intelligent foes, Dewey never fights to kill – a trait unique to the McDuck adventurers – but rather, he tries to disarm and trip his foes, intimidating them into surrender. He’s remarkably acrobatic, and his fights are often performative in nature – hence his level in Bard. The sheer bravado he displays in combat inspires his family to fight even more fiercely and distracts his foes long enough for him to knock the wind out of them.

Huey

This anxious duck wears a heavy breastplate and a red cap, a collapsible spear slung around his back. He holds a large, heavy book bound in red leather with the letters ‘WJW’ imprinted upon it.

Age: 16 Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Cleric 2/Wizard 2 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 10, CON 12, INT 16, WIS 15, CHA 13

Though regarded as a do-gooder by his brothers, Huey Duck is just as brave, ambitious and adventurous as the other McDucks. He took the role of the older brother quickly, seeing himself as a caretaker of his brothers and, prior to moving into Manor McDuck, the fixer-upper of torn clothes, broken furniture, and the like. With a resourcefulness and intellect beyond his years, Huey takes the role as both the primary healer of the party and – when the occasion calls for it – the firepower.

Huey originally had his heart set on joining the Woodchuck rangers, a group of survivalists and wilderness protectors on the outskirts of the world. While there, he met clerics and priests of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, with whom he made a rapport with. He even began to learn the ways of these wilder clerics, learning magic that could heal, magic that could wound, and magic that let him shape the natural world around him. In the end, however, he was rejected by the rangers, for while his survival skills were impeccable, his fighting prowess left much to be desired. Disheartened, but determined to make use of what he’d learned, he continued his studies of the ways of Artemis, delving deeply into his survival skills and the art of restorative magic.

At some point during his escapades with his uncle, Lord Scrooge McDuck, Huey became enamoured with the other side of magic – that of the arcane. He poured over arcane tomes, taking on wizardly studies in addition to his clerical practices. He has recently begun leaning more heavily towards wizardry, for while he’s grateful to Artemis for his abilities, he considers the goddess to be more of a tutor than an idol to be worshipped. He’ll never be the strongest of Artemis’s faithful, and he’s made peace with that – wizards get more exciting spells, anyway.

Louie

This youthful duck leans against the alley wall, his head concealed by a dark green hood. He smirks at you, absent-mindedly flipping a coin up and down in the air.

Age: 16 Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Class/Level: Rogue 3/Sorcerer 1 Ability Scores: STR 9, DEX 15, CON 12, INT 12, WIS 13, CHA 18

Thief. Charlatan. Snake. Louie Duck has been called many things, and he’s never let any of it stick. He’s out for himself and his family first, and what he’s out for is treasure. Coins, gems, jewellery – he doesn’t care. He loves it all. He’ll do the right thing for his family (though not without a fair share of grumbling), but he always makes sure he gets something out of it, and he isn’t above guilting or threatening the other party into upping his eventual reward.

Louie is a rogue. Obviously. He specializes in deceit, coercion, lock- and trap-picking, and even forging documents, if the opportunity is ripe. He tries to avoid combat if he can help it, but when he’s eventually forced into it, he relies on being able to feint against his opponents to catch them off-guard. When this doesn’t work, his alternative strategy is to bamboozle his foe, trying to convince them that he’s on their side, or that there’s a bugbear behind him, or that they don’t really want to hurt him. And when that fails, he panics, runs away, and then takes potshots from afar with his crossbow.

During one of the family’s adventures, Louie came really close to death. A screeching owlbear had ambushed the party and cornered Louie alone. Disarmed, wounded, and terrified, Louie tapped into something dormant deep inside him and – with a pop – vanished. He re-appeared a mere five seconds later, but that five seconds was all his family needed to redirect the beast’s attention and save his life. Since then, Louie has continued to delve into his hereto unknown sorcerous powers, learning more and more about them each time he calls upon them.

Webby

This wild-looking duck girl wears a loose-fitting pink blouse and a purple skirt, with a matching pink tie in her headfeathers. She gets into a battle stance, grinning eagerly.

Age: 15 Alignment: Chaotic Good Class/Level: Ninja 4 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 17, CON 14, INT 13, WIS 12, CHA 12

Webby is as wild, excitable and knowledgeable as she is in canon, raised in the manor of Lord McDuck and trained by her grandmother to be a silent and deadly assassin of House McDuck. To Lady Beakley’s disappointment, while Webby has proven to have mastered the arts of stealth and disguise, she's really squeamish about killing people for some reason.

Webby takes after her granny as a highly skilled ninja – a class somewhere between the monk and the rogue. A master of stealth, disguise, martial arts and more, Webby may not seem like it, but she’s one of the most accomplished spies Lady Beakley has ever had the privilege of training. Moreover, her training allows her to access a limited well of mystical energy that allows her to perform impossible acts. Her preferred method of attack is to overwhelm her foes with quick, rapid strikes before retreating into the shadows and hiding before they realise what happened.

Aside from being an incredible warrioress, Webby also fancies herself as an amateur historian and lorekeeper – particularly when it comes to the McDuck family history. The arcane and the occult may be guesswork to her, but ask her to name an ancestor of Clan McDuck, and she’ll give you the entire genealogical tree. She knows about every single historical event that happened in Duckland, and she can name all the native monsters in the area, right down to their weaknesses, habitats, diets, and the best method to befriend them (just in case).

Scrooge McDuck

This elderly duck stands with the pride and confidence of an experienced adventurer. His cane, cloak, top hat and bright red plate armour all combine to make an imposing figure out of this old duck.

Age: ??? Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Fighter 6/Rogue 4/Duellist 10 Ability Scores: STR 11, DEX 10, CON 8, INT 15, WIS 15, CHA 16

Ruling from McDuck Manor, Scrooge is the Lord of Duckland, and one of the most powerful and influential figures in Calisota. With a manor full of artifacts, treasures and magical items, he is known throughout the land as the Richest Duck in the World, and you’d be hard-pressed to deny it. This Scrooge is mostly unchanged from the one we all know and love from canon, except this Scrooge has an army of trained soldiers, a cabal of ingenious wizards, and a small cabinet of assassins who have one loyalty and one alone – House McDuck.

You may not have heard of the Duellist class if you’ve only come in from D&D 5th edition. Honestly, you might not have heard of it even if you haven’t. The Duellist is a prestige class, one you can only take levels in if you meet the specific prerequisites, whose abilities allow Scrooge to fight with a flourish. He fights like the heroic swordsmen of old, parrying aside the blades of his foes and deftly moving around them before they can even pinpoint where he is. He fights not with a traditional blade, but with a sword concealed within his cane – a gift, from the late Ludwig Von Drake.

Other D&D aficionados may also notice that Scrooge’s physical abilities are a bit low – that, unfortunately, is due to his venerable age. In Pathfinder, your physical abilities reduce with age, while your mental abilities improve. In his prime, Scrooge’s ability scores were STR 17, DEX 16, CON 14, INT 12, WIS 12 and CHA 13, but the days of his prime are long behind him. For this reason, before going into battle, he typically equips himself with a Belt of Physical Perfection, restoring his physical prowess to what it was as a young lad. I know canon Scrooge doesn’t like to use magic (and he still doesn’t here), but that’s… really not an option in a fantasy RPG like this.

Donald Duck

With an incoherent squawking sound, this sailor rushes into the fray, swinging his fists wildly and leaping onto his foes.

Age: 42 Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Barbarian 12 Ability Scores: STR 15, DEX 11, CON 13, INT 10, WIS 15, CHA 13

This good-natured, short-tempered, and risk-averse fisherman may not seem like much at first glance, but he was, in fact, once an adventurer. And as far as the rest of his family are concerned, he still is. Once a sailor for the House McDuck navy, Donald retired from his adventuring life after his twin sister, Della, was lost to the Astral Plane in an impromptu expedition gone wrong. Though he was pulled back into the adventuring life by his triplet nephews, he has never lost his cautious edge, and he remains as the most responsible member of the McDuck family.

Donald fights as he does in canon – by flying into a rage and launching himself at his opponent. He punches, kicks, bites, trips, and attacks every part he can get a hold of. In the old days, he used to use an enchanted sword, though it has been so long since he picked up the blade that much of its magic has disappeared. Nowadays, he relies on a pair of enchanted cestuses, which are essentially medieval boxing gloves with metal plates and rivets.

Mrs. Beakley

This enormous, bulky woman looms over you, her cold gaze peering into your soul. Despite her housekeeper attire, she stands tall and rigid like a soldier, and the sheathed sword on her belt does not escape your attention.

Age: Late 70s/early 80s Alignment: Lawful Neutral Class/Level: Ninja 16 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 8, CON 8, INT 15, WIS 17, CHA 11

Mrs. Bentina Beakley, unmarried, is the silent right hand of Lord McDuck. On the surface, she is merely the housekeeper of the manor. Beneath that, however, Beakley becomes a terrifyingly effective spymaster who has her eyes everywhere throughout the realm. Though her days as an assassin are over, she remains a cold, clever, yet surprisingly empathetic figure – so much so that she was willing to give up her career to raise a young Webby Vanderquack.

Like Scrooge, Bentina has suffered from reductions to her physical abilities from her old age, in exchange for bonuses to her mental ability scores. Her abilities in her prime were STR 20, DEX 14, CON 14, INT 12, WIS 14, CHA 8. Unlike Scrooge, she does not have any magic that can improve her abilities, but she also doesn’t see the need to. She fancies herself more of a ‘behind-the-scenes’ person these days, managing an intricate network of spies and blades for hire, gathering blackmail and intelligence for use against the enemies of House McDuck.

Launchpad

The friendly airship pilot waves at you from the cockpit, oblivious to the fact that he’s flying you directly into a mountain.

Age: 31 Alignment: Lawful Good Class/Level: Commoner 5 Ability Scores: STR 12, DEX 11, CON 17, INT 8, WIS 11, CHA 13

Launchpad remains the happy-go-lucky guy he is in canon, save that he now pilots an airship instead of an airplane. And rest assured, he is just as unqualified to fly it as ever.

#ducktales 2017 #ducktales d&d #dt17 #huey duck #dewey duck #louie duck #webby vanderquack #scrooge mcduck #donald duck #mrs beakley #launchpad mcquack #pathfinder #d&d #I even made a map for the D&D world this is set in #never finished it though #I also made character sheets in case anyone wants a look

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focusontheheart · 8 months

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Meet the Team Lead - DinoKieran

Give a warm welcome to the passionate Lead for the Seyka route, it's DinoKieran! You can find them on AO3 as DinoKieran!

Hi! The name’s Kieran (you can call me Dino) , long time nerd and longer time Fanfiction writer. I played Zero Dawn for the first time a few weeks before Frozen Wilds came out, and I’ve been enamored ever since. Before playing Burning Shores, I was a solitary fan just keeping to myself, but I finally decided to take a step out into the wider community and now look where I am! I’m knee-deep in Horizon Fanfiction WIPs, 3D printed Machine miniatures and the beginnings of cosplay, not to mention this huge project. I’ve never been a part of something so collaborative in a fandom before, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve made!

Q&A with Dino under the cut!

What is a favorite piece of work you've done (completed/ working on/ in-concept)?

Because I’m still such a newcomer to the Horizon fanfic world, almost all of the works that I’m most excited about are all works in progress (keep an eye out though, I’ve got a lot on the way! I love a good rare pair ship and it shows!), so instead I would like to draw your attention to a fic that connected me to an unexpected ship: "Snowburn" by OutOfRetirement. Ask anyone in my social circle and they’ll tell you just how obsessed I am with that fic!

What are some of your favorite tropes (to write/ draw/ read)?

Give me a slow burn, honestly. Getting the opportunity to detail the long and complex construction of a relationship from first meeting to falling in love speaks to my soul! It’s a perfect opportunity to carry out in-depth character studies. A good Modern AU wouldn’t go amiss either. I enjoy being able to take characters out of their world and creating a less chaotic, simpler world. Gives me a break from writing drama, I guess you could say lol.

What is an unexpected thing or fun fact about you?

Outside of writing, I have what I like to call my ‘roledex of hobbies’. These hobbies are a mix, from whittling and embroidery to wildlife photography and houseplant collecting, I know I never have to worry about being bored!

What has been your favorite thing about working on this project so far?

Honestly? Just getting to be a part of it! I’ve been a fanfiction writer for over a decade, but have never had the chance to work on anything collaborative outside of a singular joint fic I wrote a few years ago. Over the years I found myself watching other writers getting to be part of projects like Zines and believed that was something out of my reach, but now I’m here, surrounded by a wonderful community, and part of a project I never saw coming. Words cannot describe how thankful I am for this opportunity!

#focus on the heart #foth #foth dating sim fangame #foth visual novel fangame #meet the team: leads #team lead (seyka): DinoKieran

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daakjenaar · 8 months

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Sci-fi writers not being racist and unimaginative challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

I had a dream that I tried to write this recently and accidentally replaced it with footage of me playing Deep Rock Galactic when I tried to post it, so I’ll try my best to not do that.

I know saying that a lot of fantasy and science fiction worldbuilding is barebones and bland is a pretty tepid take. In many fictional settings, the idea of nationality, ideology, and race are conflated. One and the same, effectively. Mass Effect has the Turian Hierarchy and the Salarian Union, galaxy-spanning governments made up of almost singularly the species turians and salarians respectively, who all believe in roughly the same things, have the same broad personality, and have seemingly been stagnant for thousands of years. Deviation from the turian mentality is treated as a unique trait worthy of ascending a random NPC to a supporting character. To all other races, the idea that humans can believe in different ideologies is fascinating. I think it’s an uncontroversial take to say that this is pretty bland writing, and at least a bit racist. Outside of the special and unique (and overwhelmingly European) humans, all other cultures are monolithic and simplified.

I should stop myself here because I genuinely have at least half a dozen essays’ worth of Mass Effect topics I would want to go on a rant about. I should move on.

Orson Scott Card’s writing beyond the original Ender’s Game is also emblematic of this approach. In his sci-fi universe, all of the countless worlds that have been colonized are entirely monocultural. Specifically, they are takes on cultures from the point of view of a 30-something center-right mormon in America in the 1980’s. Highlights include a world colonized by the Japanese which bears the name Divine Wind, which translates to ‘Kamikaze’, which might be in slightly poor taste. There is also a world with a predominately Chinese population that is notable for a) being largely covered in rice fields, and b) not knowing what neurodivergency is. It gives overwhelming ‘I read a Wikipedia article and skimmed a really racist history book and am now an expert on all other cultures” vibes. He also wrote Xenocide and Children of the Mind, so maybe we should stop taking him seriously.

So often, worldbuilding in fiction refuses to reckon with the idea that the nations they depict can be anything beyond overwhelmingly monocultural stereotypes of real-world people. After all, it’s much simpler if all of the aliens are just caricatures of other people that really exist, right? No work needed. Oh no, what's this picture of a T'au doing here?

This took me a while to write because I’ve got a lot of takes on the topic of writing and worldbuilding, and it was hard to figure out what to include and what to save for a more focused post later. On that topic, I do have another one planned focusing on my personal, insignificant takes on the ingredients to make a coherent backdrop for a story, and some hot takes and blanket statements to make about worldbuilding as a whole. It’ll hopefully be something more positive and constructive than this.

EDIT MADE MINUTES AFTER I POSTED THIS: I forgot to include the funniest example of all time, the world of Warhammer Fantasy. There are some incredible examples of this kind of worldbuilding. Kislev, the Lizardmen, Cathay, Nippon, Araby, the Tomb Kings, Bretonnia, all comically transparent carbon copies of the most obvious, stereotypical parts of real-world cultures that managed to become a relatively successful media franchise that helped to launch Games Workshop into the company it is now.

#mass effect #mass effect is actually kinda bad #worldbuilding #orson scott card #ender's game #warhammer #sci fi #short essay #okay but seriously mass effect is baffling #did we all forget the line about autism from the dlc #orson scott card is a hack

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nmoroder · 2 months

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Hello, I just wanted to ask about the Neverhood AU. Do you have any headcanons related to it, that you could share? For example, how does Crown or its corruption work? Because it seemed to influence corrupted characters quite differently. I'm just wondering…

hi! ohh my headcanons sadly aren't compiled into some list or group for convenience, but i can try to remember smth about the crowns

while thinking about Crowns and Revelations, i presumed that each creator's crown kinda resonates with their desires and overall personality, in case of Hoborg that would be creation itself cuz he set himself a goal of constructing a perfect land and gave quite a lot of time and effort to it. and if one puts on the crown, they get overwhelmed by, forgive me for this word, its vibes and turn to sort of fulfilling the crown owner's will (original owner i mean, Hoborg in our case). so in CaR Shuffle puts on his crown and turns into a creation machine, expressing that urge through transforming everything he sees into something he knows, before the delirium kinda ceased and he realized what he's done to the land around him.

but there's the thing about being overcome by a crown's influence - if your own desire is strong enough, you retain your will and can kinda uhh... feel the inspiration, so to say, like thoughts about cool things you could do but not very intrusive. that's why Klogg didn't dive head first into it as he put on the crown, he had his own plans and was I think pretty determined about them. i mean, he DID create some atrocities later, see the Clockwork Beast and Engine Number Nine or whatever its name was; but it wasn't something he couldn't fight, it was his own desire and he had it even without the crown (see the Engine).

in case of Shuffle, he had no strong desire apart from protecting Hoborg i guess, and considering how he built a shelter underground at that land and hid hybernated Hoborg deep inside, the desire did manifest in those actions. however he still wasn't driven by something personal, he wasn't egoistic in his drive and thus the crown replaced his non-existent egoism for a while.

i guess it can be all described by this sentence: for those lacking a driving force, the crown becomes it instead, otherwise it's a helping hand in achieving your desire.

for corruption itself it's much simpler in my opinion, even though Hoborg strived to make his creatures perfect, they're still his close to first attempt at creating someone, so yeah they just wouldn't handle the power the crown gives. perhaps Klay as a material isn't good enough, who knows

#moroderasks #neverhood #crowns and revelations #i loooove explaining shit. cant do nothing about it

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bestworstcase · 1 year

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one key thing about fairytales of remnant is that it’s quite easy to discern which fairytales are ‘true’ in the sense of mythologizing real historical events; with the exception of ‘the two brothers’ such tales are noticeably more grounded than their pure-fictional counterparts, driven by interaction between human characters and only incidentally fantastical, and more crucially it is possible to connect the historical fairytales to specific periods of ozma’s or salem’s pasts without too much trouble. ‘the warrior in the woods’ harkens to salem’s miserable hermit era; the infinite man covers several of ozma’s lifetimes in between the end of the lost fable flashback and his life as the king of vale, likely after ‘the story of the seasons.’ ‘the indecisive king’ is vaguer because while it is clearly historical in nature it also does not seem to be about ozma; we can probably place it sometime before ozma managed to collect and conceal all four relics, but without a clear timeline for when that occurred in relation to scenes in the lost fable it’s tricky to get a meaningful sense of when. regardless, the point is that you can fit the historical fairytales together like pieces of a puzzle, using the context provided by rwby itself, to construct a loose timeline of remnant’s past.

this makes ‘the girl who fell through the world’ an anomaly. the story takes place in a fantastical other realm and is about a wholly unfamiliar new character named alyx. the narrative even loudly draws attention to this difference between ‘the girl who fell through the worlds’ and other fairytales that we know to be real, through the disbelief and (for weiss) exasperation with which team rwby responds to the ever after. they know of course that fairytales can be real, but not like this. hence why they continue to conceive of their present circumstances as ‘we fell into a fairytale’ rather than concluding that the fairytale must be a historical account.

the general assumption (mine included for a while) has always been that the repeated references to the story in V8 combined with the obvious fact of the ever after’s existence indicated that ‘the girl who fell through the world’ had to be true, a mythical account of events that really happened—but i think that poses a serious narrative problem for the sheer amount of explanation it would demand. why, nine volumes in and poised over the narrative turning point, would rwby suddenly and with minimal warning reveal an entirely new convolution of history with no obvious direct relevancy to the ozlem story? in order for a reveal of this scale to work, alyx would need to be closely connected to salem and/or ozma (one of their daughters, perhaps) and that poses its own set of problems because short of inventing someone new whose existence and impact hasn’t been hinted at prior, there simply are not a lot of candidates who fit that criteria—especially not if the ever after arc concerns salem rather than ozma, which effectively narrows the field down to “one of her daughters, Somehow.” this is, i want to be clear, Not Impossible to pull off but it is a rather complicated thing to do at a time in the narrative when you want to be focusing on introspection and emotional growth rather than historical exposition.

the simpler possibility is that ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is, in fact, fictional. that it has no basis in actual historical events. that alyx isn’t and never was real.

ozma uses fairytales to make sense of his past; this has created, in the audience, an expectation that any narratively important fairytale must correlate literally to some moment in history—but there is no reason to presume that principle will hold true for fairytales that weren’t written by ozma. perhaps the question we should be asking is not “who is alyx and what happened to her?” but rather “who wrote the story and why?”

considering ‘the girl who fell through the world’ from this angle sidesteps the narrative headache of historicity but raises an important question of its own: if the story is a work of fiction, how and why does the ever after exist?—but answering that question is quite a bit less complicated than integrating a historical alyx properly into the story and, crucially given when we are in the wider narrative, the answer is one we can figure out based on the information we already have—indeed it’s rather obvious—and in answering it we can identify with confidence the author of the story itself.

if ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is entirely fictional, then it follows that the ever after must have been created by the story. (if the ever after is real and the story’s author knew of it and set a fictional story there this wraps us back around to the historicity problem again and is also, i feel, unnecessarily convoluted.) the only reasonable way for this to have occurred is if someone with a lot of power, well beyond that of the maidens and even the divine relics, made it happen. the brother gods have that kind of power, but no reason whatsoever to bring to life the made-up setting of a human fairytale.

there is exactly ONE character who plausibly both could and would invent a fictional world—and that character is salem. consider that:

1 - the god of light made her immortal by submerging her in the “fountain of life and creation,” the heart of his domain, and this transformed her into “a being of infinite life” (and, one presumes, also of infinite creation).

2 - salem had children, which is to say that at one time she had four powerful motivations to be fabricating silly nonsense worlds out of thin air.

whether she deliberately created the ever after to entertain her daughters or simply brought it into being as a side effect of imagining it remains to be seen—both seem plausible but i am right now more inclined to think the latter—but in either case this origin would go along way toward explaining why the ever after is… the way it is, both in terms of the cultural importance of narrative role and ‘purpose’ (the ever after’s people are characters in the literal sense, with the limitations that implies) and things like the ever after’s ‘foundation’ being an empty white void (things that are not narratively relevant do not exist) or the apparently odd passage of time (stories do not experience time the same way reality does).

the more salient question of course is not how but why. both in the character sense (why did salem write this story?) and the narrative (why drop half the heroes into a fictional story written thousands of years ago by the hitherto big bad?).

broadly the point of V9 is largely to lay the groundwork for salem’s villain->hero arc and it accordingly needs to reveal some things about salem herself. thus:

if salem wrote the story then the story is fundamentally a reflection of salem herself, directly reversing the projection and presumption that has so far been utilized to keep her interior opaque; for the last eight volumes salem’s character has functioned as a mirror, reflecting back the desires and fears and beliefs of every other character who comes into contact with her, and the narrative point of view has now flipped such that we are sitting inside her psyche and looking out.

taken in this light, two things about the ever after immediately stand out: first that the ‘monster’ does not want to hurt anybody but is caught in a vicious cycle of relying on his fearsome appearance to protect himself from harm provoked by his fearsome appearance; and second that the ever after is willing to accept individual humans who fall into it yet also afraid and resentful of humankind. alyx “lies and cheats” her way through the ever after, causing trouble wherever she goes because she is ignorant of how the world works and apparently unwilling to learn for most of the story. alyx is also a lonely girl trying to survive a journey through an unfamiliar land, making friends and losing them again, learning to overcome her mistakes. the simmering resentment of humankind that bubbles out at the beginning of 9.3 is countered by the cat, who appears when ruby identifies herself as human and intervenes to rescue them from the red prince’s tantrum. there is this… tension between apprehension and affection, sympathy for both the frightened human and the persecuted monster, that locates the narrative of the ever after overtly inside salem’s point of view. when she first told this story, she had found acceptance and love after millions of years of isolation and rejection, and she has since then been rejected again, ostracized and buried in secrecy. those experiences map very intuitively into the ever after’s fraught relationship with humankind.

by the same token, the character of alyx potentially expresses some complicated and contradictory feelings salem might have about herself; it is difficult not to read alyx’s catastrophic journey through a world she doesn’t understand and which changes her beyond recognition to herself (“who had she become? would she still be the same back home?”) as at least metaphorically autobiographical, and of course there is her loneliness and melancholy contrasted against the villainous role alyx plays. again, it maps very intuitively onto the things salem has lived through as long as you do not take seriously jinn’s implication via ozpin’s narrative that salem has never once reflected on her own actions or tried to change in two hundred million years. (hint: all of one episode later rwby sets up a parallel ‘salem loses her temper’ scene where This Time nobody gets hurt because she sends everybody out of the room and even once she’s alone makes a serious effort to restrain her fury before she explodes.)

the utility to the narrative of exposing the interiority of salem’s character like this is self-evident—if this is how she perceives herself and her world, the emotional surface area for potential change is quite large. but even more interesting, i think, is what we have so far seen of how the ever after handles conflict: the hunting mice apologize and make amends once they learn that blake and weiss are not going to hurt them, we see jinxy ‘refunding’ the hug to the customer he cheated, the toy soldiers listen and readily compromise, the cat gently cautions the prince against hurting people in anger while empathizing with his pain (and the pain is very real—the prince is a young child who is expected to fulfill the purpose of his dead father and, lacking the experience or insight to understand that these strangers are much more fragile than himself or any of his subjects, he does not understand why they reacted this way. in his mind these people asked to play with him and then trashed his game and yelled at him on his birthday. of course he’s distraught he’s like four.)

the cat, especially, is interesting because they’re alyx’s guide through the ever after, and of course they intervene to assist team rwby as well. i do not think it’s coincidental that this role is played by a character whose purpose is to be curious. the key to the ever after is a cat who asks questions, who seeks to learn and understand rather than acting on first impressions. (notice too that the cat arrives when ruby identifies herself and her friends as human, but they don’t act until they’ve had time to observe and get a clearer sense of the situation.)

in other words the narrative of the ever after itself is shaping up to be a practical guidebook for HOW to negotiate a peaceful resolution with salem. this is actually true regardless of whether she wrote it or not, but if she did write the story, then her choice to structure the narrative this way says some interesting things about what she she might want and how receptive she might be to negotiation if approached in good faith (i.e. not what yang did in V8, which was a deliberate attempt to provoke her; yang’s goal was to divert salem’s rage away from oscar and she made a smart and very brave tactical call there. an effort to *reason* with salem would obviously look very different.)

the last piece i want to touch on is theme, because “storytellers have great power over their audiences” is the central thematic conceit of salem’s character—hence why the lost fable is framed explicitly as a fairytale, why ozpin explicitly identifies his rendition of ‘the girl in the tower’ as propaganda, and why the narrative has made such a particular point of establishing that nobody really knows who salem is or what she wants. she is, as noted, a mirror. if the ever after is a story and salem is its storyteller, then we have on the one hand a lot of stories other people tell about salem, all of which portray her as an unambiguous evil (including ‘the girl in the tower’ through ozpin’s commentary!)—and on the other a fictional story told by salem that is not about her, and insofar as she is indirectly represented by alyx she does not seem to be trying to exonerate herself. (it is also possible that alyx is instead an indirect representation of ozma, but that seems far less likely if only because salem would have begun telling this story at a time when they were still happily married.) this is congruent with salem’s behavior generally; she has never tried to explain or excuse herself and she notably didn’t argue or retaliate against the accusations yang made in V8, so in comparison to every other villain in the cast she seems to have shockingly little interest in rationalizing the things she does or even just correcting people’s misconceptions about her. within the context of the storyteller theme, salem surrendered control over the narrative long ago and seems reluctant to even try to speak in her own defense; if the ever after is her story and alyx a representation of how salem sees herself, then it seems likely that the reason for this reticence is grounded at least partly in a feeling that she does not deserve defending, and if alyx instead represents salem’s feelings about how other people treat her then the structure of the narrative and importance of the cat suggest a sense of helplessness because no one ever asks and a correlating desire to be asked; and because the ever after is a fictional story and the characters therein need not be directly literal it isn’t outrageous to think it might be both options at once.

#rwby v9 spoilers

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jrueships · 5 months

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Okay i caved to the questions. welcome to ted's omegaverse except there's like no omegas in the verse. Pls don't kill me

Omegas Exist, but... the sportsworld is far too toxic for most to exist Normally, i mean. Male sports especially, but even the wnba had a streak at the start of their development where it was originally believed that only female alphas would just Barely be strong enough to commit to a sport ( a bad mix of misogyny and secondary hierarchy ) . Male-dominated sports have the similar feel in terms of outdated stances plaguing public opinion, but keep it simpler with ' only Alphas are strong enough for Sport.'

However, this has started to change.

Not in favor of the omega, no, don't be silly! Nothings ever in favor of Them.

It's not Exactly favor of The Beta either, but the betas do at least get to keep their name. You see, betas play fundamental roles in team sports especially. They may not be as valued (not in a star sense, but a 'i need a wheel that'll make this car move (team gain traction/fans) and a beta would be perfect' valuing kind of sense. You're just a worker, but hey! At least you CAN work, right? Unlike The Invaluables.) in independent sports like boxing, but good betas are Critical to a TEAM that needs a Championship -- that needs Roleplayers .

Team rulebook 5. Betas are the Best roleplayers. That's the best fame they'll ever seem to get, it seems.

Although some delusional fans and sometimes gms may try to construct a team of mainly alphas (either a lot of young alpha top picks or veteran alpha players hungry for a win ) for the raw power, intensity, and.. cool factor.. it usually falls apart pretty sadly. They need a mediator, someone who won't get greedy or frustrated with the fame or lack of it. Someone who's willing to pass, willing to come in and be the clog rather than the mechanic, someone who's a Beta whose only sense of belonging Is belonging.

Sports rulebook 6. Betas Stand Second.

Most betas have accepted this before entering a sport, ever since Scottie Pippen embarrassed himself for trying to flip the Beta narrative and failing laughably .

Betas can be bad. Bill Laimbeer will beat the breaks off anyone. They can also be good. Pippen would try to middleman Jordan's frustrations with his team, especially the rups (rookie 'pups', men playfully called pups because they're new to the sport). Shaq and Magic both have humorous charms that make them Feel like alphas.. but they needed more to get a ring. They needed alpha teammates, ultimately. no matter how big or bad or good a Beta may be, they are always Second. But they should never, never be considered first. That's an alpha's job. Orlando made that mistake drafting a beta to win them a ring, a beta that would eventually leave to ringchase with any alpha he could. Shaq's a bit shameless for a beta, but being shameless is maybe the only path to 'fame' (becoming a simple shtick to an easy-to-remember title, either being Sidekick, Dumb, Helpful, Funny, Enforcer, etc) for the life of a beta. Why? Because

Sports rulebook 1. Your Alpha Must Take Over.

Alphas can come in different shapes and sizes. Not all alphas are big and burly. They're not all hyper-confident or aggressive for no reason. But they Do have to come and take over a team. They DO HAVE TO feel possessive over their players, obsessive over their plays. Betas are there just to work, PICKED just to WORK, but alphas? Alphas are different. They Have to be the spark.

Michael Jordan was an alpha who presented very, very late. No one is exactly sure when he presented. Even Michael's story changes from before getting cut in highschool to after to college to the 'flu' game. But Everyone, at one point, thought he was a beta. ( His siblings laugh at this. )And then he wasn't. And then he won. And then he became a dictator .

But, again, there's a lot of alphas that haven't won. Charles Barkley, hilarious and prickly, perhaps too prickly at times, can be his own downfall from either sheer laziness or stubbornness. Some didnt always 'Win' in life like alpha fanboys or alpha egoists might try to persuade. Wilt was great, but personality-wise? .... other alphas like Kareem butted heads with him.. and even betas like Magic would then butt heads with Kareem! Allen Iverson played by his own self-indulgent rules and won through his fashionable impact, self-oriented liberation, and also lost by playing his own self-indulgent rules through trouble with money. Isiah Thomas defends his team and their troubles like a bull, oftentimes a hypocritical.. near-sighted bull. Larry Bird? Competitive. And fucking Rude.

Sports rulebook .....: Alphas Can Be Double-Edged To Either The Team, or Themselves

Alphas whose talent alone failed them by being either not enough, not determined, or entirely different to the subject become disgruntled sports 'analysts' who criticize betas or 'wannabe alphas' aka alphas whose behaviors don't seem 'alpha' enough (too docile). Others become known as busts. Others disappear. Others refuse to give up on their alpha birthright, scratching tooth and nail in the gleague, a disaster league of rups, failed alphas, struggling betas still trying to learn their place, and a few undercover omegas on suppressants. They can bounce around trying to take over team from team, or try to act more like a beta just to gain a secure job, only for their old trained instincts of Stardom to swoop in and make them seem stubborn and selfish (hog the ball during crucial moments). Many become coaches whose attachment to the game is almost parasitic as a purpose. Commentating is another option to fuel that parasocial fire.

You live as an alpha, you die as an alpha. It's a Sport.

That is, until Rodman happened.

Hes not an alpha, some thought he was, during his bulls era. But at the beginning, he was a beta. A gangly pistons player during the dirty work of defense. A beta who blended into whatever his team was, a bad boy, a nitty gritty, a winner, a loser -- whatever his team needed, he became. And then, his team needed him traded.

He started taking more, at first. Started becoming defiant, becoming aggravated. Paranoid at Popovich's overwhelmingly alpha abuse of power, of persistence, of Perception.

Isiah begged him to keep it easy, it's not safe to take so much, it's Untested. It's got side effects, he's seen them from players who wanted to get as far as rodman could but couldn't. They weren't strong like rodman. Another alpha giving him his unsolicited opinion. Bill told him to suck it up. Betas can be so bitter. Pop's yelling. Such a dusty smell, red sand that made your nose itch and not in the fun, just snorted ski slopes way. And now he's gotta deal with Pippen's wary, flipflop scent of calming then chilling hormones soothing then spiking the air as most betas do. And now, he's got Michael telling him to--

... Michael's pouring his pills down the toliet, both his heat suppressants .. and his Rut Inducers. He's skipped from telling and has gone straight to Doing .

One look from the ??? and Rodman realized.

Rodman realized he was tired of wanting to be wanted like a starting alpha but personal enough to be privately pressed like a working beta. Rodman realized a lot of things about himself and others that day. 1. He was tired of always crumbling to others' norms. 2. 'ROIDing' is an action that can be used primarily by athletes because they can afford it. 3. Other athletes besides himself have/can do it. 4. He's just the only one that's made it now known to the world that He is Dennis Rodman, He is an Omega, and He's used ROIDing to void his omega symptoms with suped up suppressants then Replicated Rut with raging inducers & created a Beautifully sensitive Beta, then, increasing both doses heavily, an abstract Alpha.

In short, yeah, he's used ROIDs. But he's stopping now. He's playing completely without the doses. Not too little, not too much, it's done. Zero. Isn't that great? Isn't that what sports always preach in the end? That it's You who wins or loses in the end. Not just your Talent, or your Drive, your Reach, it's You. You, crazy culmination You, who matters ultimately in Your world.

So why is everyone so horrified.

The sport changes after this. A few, just a few, omegas can show now, like, actually Show and not curtain themselves behind overloaded prescriptions. Apparently, even betas could ROID back then with just rut inducers to enhance alpha behavior and appear or Become alphas as long as they continue to doses. But most scrutiny lies in omegas ROIDing into betas, since it's a much easier dose to take in comparison to an omega -> alpha jump, which can have devastating side effects -- the most harmful being mental. Only those determined enough, Insane enough can commit themselves fully without cutting too abruptly and creating even more damage through their hesitancy. And even if the process is completed, the effects may be harsher than expected.

Betas start to become the new scrutinized spotlight, either torn by criticism of doing too much or too little, or skepticism on whether or not they're 'Real'. Alphas, in turn, get desperate to outshine the shiners, whether accomplishing that feat via negative or positive means. It's rumored some have even started turning themselves into Betas now, hard dosing rut suppressants when they're that desperate to try and tame the ego that torments them. Some say it's for the better, some respond brilliantly to the dose, it was made for them, it was Them. Old packs often rip these kind of thoughts to shreds, not caring for empathetic stances, just their black & white view of what was once written. New packs accept the dosing, but the worst of the new packs pick and choose which to, either Everyone Has To or only The Good Ones can. Old players get their legacies questioned because their secondary hierarchy is questioned. Was Magic Really a beta? Or was he a self-conscious, self-compensating omega who craved the lure of feeling needed? And then even went an extra step with the rut inducers to make him a Shiny beta, charismatic enough to peacock? Or was he just that Magic to be a really flashy beta? OR OR.. is magic all of that at once? Maybe, if he did do it, he needed to?

ROIDing is a necessary medicine in sport now, newly designated as necessary using overstimulation risk as a reason to protect too many players from imprisonment & eventual shut down of the sport since suppressants were part of every player ( keeps betas clear-headed and alphas consolable ). But it's still debated by any side a group may conjoin as. The threat of its illegalization is looming. Violence, fear, envy, hatred. Trust no one.

Fuck Everyone ?

oh, yeah, anyone can top or bottom here. That at least remains the same. Positions can just go against the grain in less secret now.. however, that doesn't mean they're all exactly Comfortable to, though .

But you know who's mighty comfy?

Dennis is doing just fine. Eccentric, quiet, grounded, true, omega, stubborn, beta, alpha, callous: Dennis.

#in SUMMARY #dennis started the fire #and no one knows whos who really #in my world i wanna leave a little room for outside interpretation #was mj a beta who roided into an alpha?#or was he an omega who was just crazy enough to make the leap #or was he really merely an alpha who presented late?#im neither confirming nor denying anything ! it's open for everyone to speculate !!#im gonna make another post expanding on the different ppl in this verse and their assignments later #i just needed to set the scene yanno #if u read all this ure insane and i love u but ure insane #ted longer #ted drabbles

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