so as literally everyone following me in the past 24 hours knows, im fucking obsessed with her. take her shes everything i have

damn this termina update kinda sucks ass

btw design trivia under the cut if anyone's curious 👍

I find it strange that a lot of people are coming forward and saying that the staged finale was a bad play for one reason or another but it really isn’t and I don’t understand where the hate is coming from.

yeah i've seen some of this the last few days--staged finale has always been somewhat "controversial" in the lorehead scene, so a measure of disagreement/discourse about it makes sense. especially bc it was honestly a very big change to what people thought was the story and required people to go back and reevaluate a lot, which. people are naturally resistant at doing

but while obviously i think that some healthy discussion about these things is good, and i feel like i have seen a level of...misunderstanding? about it?? which has gone into the ways that people disagree

staged finale refers to the decision to stage the finale. that's it. staged finale just asserts that based on preexisting foreshadowing and based on the sheer level of suspension of disbelief in order for genuine finale to be real, it made more sense for the finale to be staged than for it to have been genuine. how the finale was planned, when the finale was planned, and to what ends it was planned are all things that you can disagree on w/ other staged finale believers/supporters while still being a staged finale believer/supporter, ykwim? if you believe that c!punz faked his betrayal to c!dream, then congrats! you believe in staged finale. oftentimes i see people say things like "i don't believe in staged finale, i think that c!dream faked the betrayal and all and always had c!punz on his side but i think that the reason behind why he did it is [X]" and it's like. staging the finale is one (1) event, not a comprehensive explanation for everything c!Dream does. that would be more in line with something like the "strategist dream interpretation," which in itself does have different readings as well.

people have listed all of the inconsistencies in the staged finale before, but just to summarize--the guy literally could've dipped when everyone came to "defeat" him, c!tommy leveraging his own life is basically no leverage at all when the mans has the revive book, skeppy cage is a joke, c!dream revealing all of his plans when they were maybe 10% carried out (the entire damn attachment vault was empty of items besides stuff that was literally faked, his own damn stuff, and stuff that he stole recently from c!tommy such as the Axe of Peace and the discs) is ridiculously stupid, why the hell does he have blackmail against c!punz included in a bunker that c!punz clearly had access to???? the list goes on.

(as someone who took awhile to be fully convinced in staged finale, what really tripped me up was the stream punz did the day before: here's a post breaking it down that definitely helped me to see it in a different light.)

as far as foreshadowing goes, just off the top of my head: the original prisoner is a constant question from the day of the prison's creation, being something that's even highlighted on the day of the staged finale itself. c!Dream saying he has "the biggest house on the server" and how it's full of redstone. the entire conversation he has with c!punz, obviously. his holding back on the favor with c!techno, the connection between the revive book and the prison that he establishes the day they begin prison construction.

from a logical perspective, the plan as c!Dream establishes it doesn't make any damn sense. c!dream had opportunities to escape that he didn't take for illogical reasons (if the only reason why he allowed himself to stay in a fucking possible kill chamber was to keep c!tommy from committing suicide, then? what about the revive book? what about the fact that he literally kills c!tommy just a few months later????) -- a level of plot contrivance is expected in the medium, but for a lot of people this was just. Going way too far. Unless he literally lost his whole mind (which, to be fair, was the persona being played) there's just. really no other way to make sense of what was going on there, if it was all genuine.

the other argument is a narrative one--people claim that the story established by a genuine finale is cleaner than the story of the staged one, and honestly. it's like. like that's...a feature, not a flaw? the reason why the genuine finale worked isn't because it was logically believable. dream is Dream Manhunt. he's famously hard to nail down, famously good at escaping sticky situations, famously a man that can outsmart his way out of crazy disadvantageous situations--like. just in terms of minecraft skill, i'd wager that most people would think that dream would've technically been able to pull off an escape even when facing down the collection of enemies that were there. like he had 2 stacks of pearls.

narratively, though, the staged finale has a story that's quite appealing on the surface. the "story" of the events from the spirit speech onwards is one that revolved around the idea of "attachment." c!Dream rejects attachment in favor of control in the spirit speech when he says he refuses to let his love for his dead pet control him anymore, and he focuses on the ability to use the discs to control c!Tommy. the fact that c!Dream's relationships deteriorate at this time seems to support this point, and c!Tommy's strength in his relationships being what saves him and damns c!Dream ties everything off into a neat bow. c!Tommy wins because he has friends and c!Dream loses because he doesn't, moral of the story established, hip-hip-hooray. And so it goes.

but when we look at this more in specifics...? it does start falling apart a bit, doesn't it?

although c!Dream supposedly begins his rampage over his existing emotional connections with the spirit speech, his reputation had been in shambles long before that point. c!Dream-as-villain is first established as part of the greater story in the lmanburg revolution, and that's a title that he never really sheds (this point being emphasized in inconsolable differences and the book c!Wilbur has c!Dream write.) Dethronement happens within a day of Spirit Speech, iirc, and on that day c!Quackity specifically points out that c!Dream has no one on his side but c!Punz. the moments where he is more specifically isolated go back to events such as november 16th, where his alliance with c!Wilbur involved blowing up L'manburg, his deal for the revive book, which involved his publicly betraying Pogtopia, or his opposing Manberg to the literal Manberg cabinet. etc. all of these events in the Manberg/Pogtopia era had c!Dream's loyalties erode to end up as just c!Wilbur and later c!Schlatt for the book, two dead men. (and i say eroded loyalties as if pogtopia really believed dream was on their side, like, ever? like he was never trusted in their ranks, even by c!Tommy, who was definitely the person he worked the closest with outside of c!Wilbur.)

if we look at Dethronement itself, it doesn't actually fit the pattern of "c!Dream cuts off his attachment to people in order to make himself uncontrollable" -- in fact, what it does fit the pattern of is. Staged finale? Faking an end in a relationship with people that he does consider important to him, making a public appearance of betrayal + anger to mask an existing connection, drawing attention to their being enemies to hide the fact that they're actually friends--that's not c!Dream cutting anyone off. That's just the exact same ploy that he uses to make people think that c!Punz betrays him (only c!Sapnap and c!George ended up deciding that Nah We're Gonna Kill You Now. Fuck You It's Coup Time. so that's how that ended up.)

Otherwise there's...the Badlands, who were perfectly happy to agree to joining the coup on the day of dethronement if it got them more power and land. c!Techno, who c!Dream wasn't an ally of until later on with the favor established and then doomsday, and who was someone c!Dream was quite openly wary of + afraid of due to his combat skill. c!Dream was alone literally before exile even happened, his remaining "attachments" of c!George and c!Sapnap turning against him like the day he goes on a whole spiel about ohhoho from today onwards i DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY ATTACHMENTS !!! I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE DISCS !!! like congrats you don't even have a chance to cut off any attachment at all dingus they all hate you and want you dead already.

further, with c!punz, he literally says that they're more than just employer/employee in the infamous conversation they have about planning a betrayal. if the whole point of the story is "attachment good," then why is it that what takes down c!dream is...his one remaining attachment? if his fatal flaw is that he didn't trust people enough, why is it that he loses because he trusted someone too much? it's not like c!tommy had any attachment to c!punz--c!punz explicitly "has a reason" to betray c!dream because of money. he helps c!tommy because dream "should have paid [him] more." none of that reflects that spirit of "attachment" that people claim was c!dream's downfall.

(not to mention how the people present in the staged finale to take c!dream down included people who literally hated c!tommy's guts. like. what brought them together wasn't the power of friendship, it was the power of we hate this green bastard.)

this isn't to say that c!Dream didn't have some relationships that go up in flames because he starts acting particularly cackling evil villain (with the green festival being the specific moment where he really goes full in with that persona, going from someone that was framing himself as having a Reasonable Complaint to literally the joker as soon as he gets the disc from c!Tubbo. It's purposefully played as a "mask off" moment that is meant to make him look like a crazy fucking villain in front of a large audience--whether or not you think that was a choice that he made in character or not, the way his personality changes as soon as he receives the disc is jarring.) In particular, his relationships with c!Puffy and c!Sam come to mind--c!Puffy burns the house she made him when she decides that he's too evil (but, uh, c!dream really wasn't even there for that and didn't ever have a particularly close relationship with her) and c!Sam is among those whose opinions of c!Dream become drastically more negative around the period of time that spans green festival->doomsday->staged finale. but it's important to note that c!Dream's relationships on the server aren't...great, at the time of spirit speech. They're uh, really fucking bad, actually. dethronement only makes them even worse, and all of this happens pre-exile. c!Dream had significant reason to be paranoid and afraid for his life long before exile happens, which is Quite Significant, Actually, when you consider that that paranoia is literally what goes into his decisions to carry out the staged finale + put himself in the prison (which isn't the case for genuine finale, where he's more motivated by a desire to control the server without being controlled himself.) staged finale does solidify c!dream-as-villain for a lot of people, but it never would've worked if people didn't already see him as a villain in the first place. c!Dream doesn't make people hate him with the staged finale; he uses hatred that he already knows exists to put himself in what he sees as a safer position.

and look we could go into a whole discussion about manberg/pogtopia c!Dream (which i do think is way overdue to be fair considering that that's where the paranoia + isolation that motivates him post-november 16th comes from in the first place) but this post is long enough already and i still have to figure out a better way to articulate my thoughts on the matter. anyway. carrying on:

people still have different feelings on why he carries out staged finale in the first place, but what we do know for sure is that it was meant to protect punz and protect the revive book. by firmly establishing that c!punz and him were on opposite sides, he keeps the revive book safe and both of their lives safe by extension: as long as no one would kill both of them at the same time, they had a means of reviving the other if need be and obviously had the information on how to raise people from the dead secure. which was important to them. and otherwise...c!Dream is paranoid. c!Dream is very, very paranoid, and this paranoia goes back at the very least to when he learns about the revive book. the prison, for all the dependence that it required of him, was tailor made (and the construction process controlled by dream every damn step of the way) to make sure that whoever was in the main cell would be safe from external threats. the security of the prison and the prisoner was the POINT. i've seen some assertions that staged finale implies that he predicted everything that happened after he was put in prison and...no? i'd say that c!dream's behavior indicates him being thrown off by c!sam as early as bad's prison visit, c!sapnap's prison visit for sure. c!Ranboo being banned from visitation pretty damn obviously fucks him up, tbh. he has c!punz explicitly out there to keep an eye out on the server while he's in the prison, where he was meant to remain for a period of time that was supposed to be much shorter than how long he ends up being there. likely because, you know, he was supposed to have a consistent and reliable source of information with the outside world in the form of c!Ranboo, and c!sam wasn't supposed to fall off the fucking rails as soon as the prison started. people have also talked about how having the staged finale be true means that c!dream doesn't lose, which...i mean. gestures at the prison arc? that whole thing is a loss so catastrophic it literally destroys him. he's never the same after the prison happens. the false betrayal of c!punz is deliberately like ironically described to c!sam, who was the REAL betrayal that fucking. ruins him. he loses SO MUCH over the course of the prison, which was something he literally designed to keep himself safe from external threat. as far as losses go, i definitely find that a lot more compelling and a lot less contrived than watching c!dream go "whoop de doo guess i have to die now" when he's like 3 pearls away from making a clean escape in the disc vault, tbh.

at the end of the day, i think having some conversation about staged finale is fun! and it's always good to reexamine what you believe to make sure that it still holds water. but i've really not seen much staged finale crit that makes the genuine finale feel favorable as an explanation: logically, it makes a lot less sense. narratively, it relies on a story that the audience wants to be true and acts as a "clean" explanation for everything while not actually taking into account a lot of what was ACTUALLY going on for c!dream (cutting off attachments for the sake of control versus watching people turn against you and becoming increasingly paranoid, for example). and believe them or not, the content creators involved have always asserted that staged finale was the plan from the beginning, not any form of retcon. (and we do know that people have been dodgy about stuff like the "original prisoner" literally since the week that c!dream was imprisoned, so take that as you will.) (okay to be fair theyve been dodgy about the original prisoner since the day that the prison began to be constructed, but the QnA from that first week of imprisonment sticks out to me in particular because cc!Sam had the biggest fucking smile on his face and staged finale would've been planned out and then carried out in entirety by the ccs and the c!s by that point.)

this is a longass post but uh hopefully it makes sense, lmao. tried to touch on most of what i've seen recently 😅

Honestly i dont like sculk spreading/corruption storylines theyre really boring with a few exceptions

Wait 50 followers drawing special?!

CAN YOU DRAW DIS GUY

This is Maria Torres from Trauma Team she is so cool

WE STARTIN THE OPERATION WITH THIS ONE

(taking art requests!)

I don't think Jennette is Athy's foil. Their interests are somewhat opposed to each other, but Jennette is not dramatically different from Athy, nor does her character serve to highlight Athy's character.

A foil is a character that, from a narrative point of view, contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist), to highlight their qualities. The foil usually exhibits opposite or conflicting traits, and they serve to better reflect the other character's traits and motivations.

Claude, Lucas and in the manhwa Anastasius have ideas and values that are very different from Athy's, especially regarding family. However, Anastasius is clearly Claude's foil, and Claude is more of a deuteragonist than anything. I could kind of see him contrasting with Athy (because of reasons similar to Lucas', those being, how they chose to deal with their grief), but I think his role is to be Anastasius' opposite.

Lucas fits a little more. He has an extremely similar backstory to Athy's (rejected and neglected by his biological family, kept away from the main house, then abandoned by his teacher, he chooses to "go to sleep" instead of facing his depression). Because of his traumatic experiences, Lucas chooses to freeze his heart instead of risking getting hurt again, which is the opposite of what Athy ultimately decides to do: Accept that she loves Claude and considers him her father, get hurt over and over, but nevertheless try to build a healthy relationship with him based on honesty and trust. This is what changes Lucas, (metaphorically and kind of literally) melts his heart, and makes him fall in love with Athy. However, Lucas is never truly put in a position where he is opposed to Athy. On the contrary, he is the character that stays by her side unconditionally, helps her reach her goals and protects her. That's why his role is the love interest.

I have thought about this topic before, and I always concluded that Athy simply does not have a foil. However, while answering this ask, I realized that there's a much better candidate for that position: LP!Jennette is wmmap!Athy's foil.

They both wanted to be loved by their family, but while Athy wins Claude's heart (at first by acting but shhh) by the sincere feelings of love and the relationship they slowly develop over time, Jennette never truly wins Claude over, unbeknown to her. The thing that makes Claude "love" her is the manipulation of her black magic. Moreover, while both LP!Jennette and wmmap!Athy know that their own good situations hurt the other (LP!Athy, wmmap!Jennette), wmmap!Athy goes very far in trying to befriend Jennette and help her, which can't be said for LP!Jennette (to be clear, she was never actively cruel to LP!Athy, but she also never tried to help her). What reflects their contrast the best is that, both know or learn the truth of their parentage, but Athy ends up telling Jennette the truth. LP!Jennette stays quiet and acts as if she is ignorant (which, as she herself admits, further hurts LP!Athy), because she feels Claude owes her the family and good standing she has, as he killed her real father.

I think the fact that wmmap!Jennette explicitly tells Athy that, if she were in Athy's place, she wouldn't have done what Athy did (comfort her, reach out, and talk to her first), is the novel's acknowledgement of how differently LP!Jennette and wmmap!Athy acted. While both had innocent and understandable desires, and you could say both were selfish in their own ways, LP!Jennette always prioritized her interests over anyone's (this is another conversation, but she also knew Ijekiel didn't love her and was unhappy, but she still kept him as her fiancé because that was her desire), which is the opposite of that wmmap!Athy did. More extremely put: wmmap!Athy saves Jennette from being executed or punished in any way because of the black magic storm she caused at her 18th birthday party. LP!Jennette does not do that for LP!Athy when she is framed. LP!Athy is executed, the day of her 18th birthday.

I have an exam in like half an hour and I am Stressed. Everyone that already had an exam with that professor is fear mongering and fueling my anxiety and frankly I just want it to be over with. And then we have a second exam on monday ;_;

This is gonna be so bad but I Need to pass this and I have no idea how In gonna do that ;_; Y'all wish me luck this is gonna be a mess, oof

No pressure enstars prompt - maybe anything with Rinne or Niki's underground partners from the twewy au? Or maybe something with HiMERU and Kaname? Sorry if these are too vague

partners au tag I wanted to write a scene where Azusa and Ren (Niki's former partner) showed up backstage at a Crazy:B live but I just didn't like it for some reason, soooo instead here's a possible scene from when they were in the Game! Assume this happens somewhere in the middle/nearing the end of the week and uh don't. don't worry too much about the details

Azusa watches Ren pace with growing agitation. They’re stuck here for the foreseeable future, and while Azusa is certain they’ll get out eventually, it does no good for her only companion to worry themself sick.

“For goodness’ sake Ren-san, stop your pacing and calm down,” she says, frowning.

Ren whirls around on her, wild-eyed. “Calm down? I can’t calm down. I-I am not a calm person!” She sighs and they continue, “Aren’t you worried? We could die here! We probably will die here!”

“We won’t die.”

“How can you be sure?” Ren starts biting their thumbnail, prompting Azusa to stand and wrench their hand away from their lips. They stare at her, still buzzing with nervous energy, and with a huff she tugs them to sit on the cold floor, keeping their hand in hers so they don’t start chewing again.

“You know I don’t like Rinne,” Azusa starts. This is no secret; she and Rinne were arguing when Ren and Niki came across them for the first time. “I don’t respect him and I don’t particularly trust him either, but I do trust one thing about him.”

“What?” Ren asks warily.

“He would not run away from someone else’s game, especially not when the odds are against him.” She clicks her tongue as newly-familiar irritation rises in her once again. “It’s one of the things I hate most about him—he will go against impossible odds so long as he gets the last laugh. He will not be told what to do. He will not allow himself to play by another’s rules. He does not like me nor does he care for you, true, but he will make sure we all get out of this alive because it is exactly what the Game Master does not want him to do.”

Currently, they are hostages for their partners. Azusa does understand Ren’s worry: Niki is nice enough, but between the two of them and Rinne, he would likely pick Rinne; there’s no question as to who Rinne would choose. There is every possibility they could abandon them here.

However, Ren and Niki have been spared some of the enlightening confrontations she and Rinne have had, so Ren doesn’t know as much as them. Moreover, they were not forced to be Rinne’s partner, following, dragging, being dragged by him. They do not know that Rinne has been planning since the day they woke up dead.

Azusa does not know the specifics of these plans. She doesn’t trust Rinne, and so she isn’t even sure she trusts whatever he has in mind, but she does trust his ideals. She trusts that he hates authority more than he hates her. She trusts that he would not allow them to die, if only because allowing any of them to die would be to admit defeat—and Rinne would never do such a thing.

She squeezes Ren’s hand, looking them in the eye. “They will come for us,” she tells them firmly. “We will not die. You do not have to trust Rinne or Niki-san to trust in me, yes?”

“I trust you,” Ren says. Azusa smiles.

She watches their shoulders start to lower, comforted by her own certainty. She has discovered over the past few days that their anxieties are best laid to rest with facts, and luckily, Azusa is better with logic than platitudes. She would not speak empty words.

If they had been dropped in the same area, they would have made good partners, but perhaps it is for the best that they weren’t. They would not have worked well enough together to avoid being Erased.

Instead, they are bound to Rinne and Niki.

Despite everything, the ending is clear.

where are the girlies who don’t ship darklina... in this house we ride and die for malina

I don't care what the poll results are, TG is NOT monster fucker and it never will be oml 🥴

You're right Anon. It's not about the monsterfucking. It's about the vore.

I like smoker ace ONLY when it is smoker realizing he’s gay because of this annoying fucking pirate cowboy and not knowing what to do about it. He’s still trying to arrest ace and will never do anything about his stupid ust crush but he’s trying so hard not to stare at aces tits and is stressing at night about how he CANT find this guy hot he’s a pirate! (He doesn’t even care about the gay thing it’s just a new bit of info about himself his issue is entirely the pirate thing) smokerace is good only if smoker is a mess and it’s entirely one sided and will never be acted on but raises smokers blood pressure to startling levels.

I just can’t decide if it’s better if ace has no clue while everyone else can tell smoker is internally falling appart over this or if he knows and is nothing more then vaguely amused but ultimately apathetic. Like he’s aware but does not care while smokers life is being ruined by him just existing.

Consider onesided marine au smokerace but Ace defects and still joins the wbp and ends up with fucking marco the fucking damn blue chicken and Smoker is like real bitter

finding out a fandom interprets a character as like, a mostly traditional robot. Where i completely do not

Why are you having a reading ban? I think I missed something

Hhhh I am at the end of my master's degree and need to focus more on my thesis, but recently work has been tough and I had no strength to write the thesis after it, so I fell into my escapism mechanism which is to just read read read read, until it got to the point that i obsessed too much about the novels and started avoiding going back to The Thesis........

So i banned myself from reading to avoid the risk of sinking too much into the books :')

pls dont expect fgo art from me again bc ill never go back (but prob draw asclepius, karna, arjuna and the artorias some day since i love them sm)

saying this bc i notice every now and then ppl going through my fgo tag and then following and im like..... sir (genderneutral)..... this is a chilis..... like literally 👇

(actually both zc and ttl but u know)

Every moment that ggf doesnt blow up is a blessing I think. Like I'm like damn I wish for some virality! And less than a second later im like no that would be a terrible idea. This might sound like that fox who want the grapes but bc its outta reach he says its green but do remember my accounts are very hackable and I gptta do smth about that before the internet gets its grippers on me