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o-wild-west-wind · 8 months

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A Biracial Reading of OFMD, ft. Iggy’s Revenge Izcourse

a.k.a. I typed out a sentence that turned into an accidental essay of meta, whoops!

Y’all…I love this fandom to pieces, but I don’t think some of you realize why not all of us love Izzy/may be critiquing him. And major disclaimer—I am in NO WAY telling anyone to stop enjoying him as a character. This is NOT an anti-Izzy post (I will go into more detail on why I in fact encourage you to keep doing so later, and to the people who are sending unsolicited hate mail to Izzy fans & haters alike: please don’t!)—I’m just tired of seeing vitriolic hate against the people writing about him as an antagonist, or critiquing his actions based on canon, or post after post of “why don’t people love Izzy like I do!!” and then aggression when people explain their honest opinions. Look: we all have our skrungly little bad guys. I get it!! I’ve got my own collection!! I too have become a consumer and enjoyer of the Izzy fanon!!! PLEASE don’t take this as an attack—I just want to provide some personal, potentially fresh context from at least one (obviously non-exhaustive) perspective for those who want to know why Izzy isn’t universally adored, and also to make a plea for a safer fandom space where we can talk about our perspectives on these fictional characters without escalating to unnecessary vitriol, especially as s2 be upon ye (bc holy shit fandom is supposed to be fun, we’re having fun and that’s an order 😤)

(Oh, and I know I’m potentially stirring the pot with this post, but this should go without saying: don’t send each other death threats. What the fuck. Nobody do this?!)

So now that the legalize is out of the way: I want to share that the reason I initially imprinted on this show—and on Ed specifically—was because I’d never seen an explicitly biracial character treated with such complexity, nuance, and grace. While our ethnic makeups are vastly different, I too am half-white & half-brown—which means we’re absolutely nothing culturally alike, but our worlds view and treat us as pretty much the same regardless. And like Ed, my dad resents my mom and my racial makeup, and is prone to what I like to call “white violence.” Not going to overshare on the internet, but let’s just say that all this compounded makes Ed feel highly relatable to me (although for legal purposes I promise I have not krakened my dad 🙃).

When I first watched the show (and honestly also until my 3rd or 4th rewatch), Izzy IMMEDIATELY made me think of my dad. He also immediately made me think of Ed’s dad. Their mannerisms, word choices, and tones of voice; the obsessive need for control; the default of violence; the gradual dehumanization until an ultimate kraken-ifying breaking point—it all read to me like an intentional parallel. A shadow of white violence following Ed around that he hasn’t been able to shake, and mirroring to him the things he fears the most, including the things he fears within himself and feels forced to become (he is half-white after all, and this is a whole other post, but tl;dr there can be a lot of baggage that comes with being half-white/half-poc in regards to grappling with your toxic relationship to that white side of yourself, and especially if your white parent was racist and/or violent). And you can claim a different reading of all of this if you want (I genuinely mean that, like I’m in favor of meta & I think it’s great to analyze these things) BUT. that does not change the fact that I felt what I felt as a result of what was portrayed on screen and combined with my lived experience. Because fictional characters are just that—fictional—and are vessels by which you can process the world; we will always bring our personal lived experiences to anything we consume, and that’s okay—that can be the point, even. Art imitates life imitates art. Interpretation is the name of the game!

(more under the cut)

So when I watch this show, it’s a helpful tool for me to process my own feelings of being victimized by the white violence that’s followed me around my whole life, as well as the ways in which I’ve rebelled against it/tried to make peace with a non-toxic version of whiteness (in parallel to the more overt theme of masculinity, which is—ding ding—inexplicably tied to whiteness and western colonialism) via chaos, love, hurt, and sometimes giving up and giving in—and in this process, Izzy is a safe target. And you know why that is? Because he’s FICTIONAL. I can feel rage towards him because he’s NOT REAL. I can better understand and process the pain I’ve felt and rarely seen societally acknowledged by watching it paralleled on screen via actors and writers who have likely also grappled with similar feelings (I mean, I genuinely have made more progress with my personal biracial trauma via this show vs. years of therapy), and if I want to assume the worst of Izzy based on my interpretation of canon to help me through this? That’s fine! Because I can’t hurt his feelings and he can’t hurt mine!! Because he’s not real!!!

And here’s why I still support the Izzy-enjoyment: I am sure that many of the people who love Izzy and defend him to the ends of the earth probably feel a similar way that I do about Ed. It’s why we get all riled up and protective of these characters, why we might take attacks on them as attacks on ourselves; recognition of the self in the form of the other, and all that. Izzy is a vessel by which to safely work through the dark feelings and the pain you’ve bottled up—and he’s a safe way to do that because he’s FICTIONAL. And that’s a beautiful thing imo!! That’s truly the beauty of art—it is what we make of it, and what we make of it helps make ourselves better. It’s good to be open to interpretation.

HOWEVER: that does not give you permission to discount my relationship to this show (as I will not discount yours), and more importantly: that does NOT give you permission to reject the notion that canonically in s1, Izzy is literally and thematically (emphasis on thematically) an antagonist who is purposefully written to cause harm that can be interpreted as a hate crime, especially to those with lived experience of homophobia/racism/ableism/bullying/etc.—and you cannot harass people about this when conversing about theories of canon. If someone sees Izzy’s dialogue as cutting, degrading, and even triggering, that’s extremely fair of them to do so—clearly Ed was written to feel it that way! Con himself has paralleled Izzy with Judas! And can interpret it all differently? Sure! But you CANNOT assume that everyone else will, and then get upset when people don’t. I can’t believe I need to spell this out about an angry white guy in a show about toxic masculinity, but if someone does not like Izzy, it is likely due to a personal history of harassment (or worse) that he is reminiscent of; by making a point to defend him to someone—even if you are well-intentioned—you are very much putting salt in a wound.

I want to take this opportunity to further emphasize some tenets of fandom in general:

you can like characters who do horrible things without needing to jump hoops to argue their morals as pure 👏

conversely, you can critique their actions and still like them (encouraged, even) 👏

you can like characters who do horrible things simply because they’re cool and hot and interesting—don’t worry, we know it’s not the same as liking people like them irl 👏

your liking a villain archetype says nothing about your own moral virtue 👏

you can like horrible characters and see reasons for why they are the way they are/view them as tragic/note sympathetic dimensions of their personality/root for them to have redemption arcs while acknowledging that said redemption arc may not have happened in canon yet and that these are implicit, not explicit, readings of canon 👏

and you can also reimagine canon and change their contexts in fan works so that they ARE morally virtuous 👏 but PLEASE just be mindful and accountable when you do this in a context where not everyone will see a character the same way as you, and where multiple of people of marginalized identities have spoken out about the harm not doing so can cause. Just be honest, sincere, and kind, listen and learn, and don’t harass people for understandably needing space from a character that symbolizes something different to them than it does to you.

Also: blocking tags or people just because they have character opinions different than yours is totally okay and does not mean anything other than “I am curating my online space to have a better time,” it’s NOT personal

And most importantly: FANDOM IS FOR FUN! This isn’t our day job! We come to fandom to decompress. Don’t ruin people’s safe spaces!!!

Like I said, I’ve grown to enjoy Izzy over time thanks to fandom and fanon, and I think it’s fantastic that fandom can have such diversity in the way it interprets canon. I can’t wait for his probable redemption arc (it will likely be a healing thing to witness for many of us) and I’m truly glad that we can all have different relationships to the same characters. But please—when some of us need Izzy to be a punching bag, just let him be a punching bag. No, it’s not homophobic and DEFINTELY not misogynistic to view him as an obstacle in Ed and Stede’s relationship (baffled by the amount of times I’ve seen this take—it’s a funny joke but if you actually think Izzy is treated the way female characters related to other mlm ships have been treated, the point is very much going whoosh). You don’t have to engage; it’s not personal. It’s not about YOUR relationship with him—it’s about MINE. Please let me feel and even discuss rage towards him when I think about episode 10. Please let me throw as many sandwiches at his head as I need to. Because I PROMISE, it won’t hurt him—because he, and none of these characters, are real; and yet we, the fans, very much are.

#woof #did I add enough disclaimers?#this was longer than intended so if you read all the way through I’m giving you a kiss #I wasn’t going to engage but I keep seeing vitriol in the tag when all I want to do is decompress and I just…#I just came here to see gay ppl kiss sir this is a Wendy’s #fandom should be a safe space and I hate getting an ick from tumblr when it’s what I’m trying to use to escape the bad shit #life is hard enough lmao #anyway #please be kind to each other #I could go into the whole other topic of what the trauma of Covid did to our virtual affect and interpersonal skills but #alas that’s a thesis within itself #and on that note I have my actual thesis to work on so i won’t be closely monitoring this post just needed to get this all off my chest #and for what it’s worth I’ve been trying to avoid s2 spoilers so I haven’t seen the Izzy clip yet but that’s honestly irrelevant to this #bc this is in relation to s1 and I hope we can all just have a good time again this season #ofmd #our flag means death #the izcourse #ofmd meta #trauma #racism

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tomwambsgans · 8 months

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I can’t find the post for the life of me but on reddit I saw somebody talking about homophobia in succession and interestingly the person with the second most homophobic comments (after surprise surprise Logan) was Shiv. I just wanted to know your thoughts on this I’m conjunction to tomgreg and in general Shiv and her self characterisation as “woke”

idk if it's the same post you were trying to find but i made a post about that too

my take on WHY it's shiv who is the most guilty of overt homophobia after logan is tbh quite simply that shiv has the most to gain from it. there's a lot of posts on here about gender in succession which i think essentially sum up the way that shiv is kind of required to be "one of the guys" or at least "the good kind" of woman in order to have logan's approval. shiv really is the most like logan in many ways and she's learned from him how to have power over men: it's to deny them their own masculinity. and homophobia is the main way a woman can do that to a man.

shiv's personal "wokeness" i think comes exclusively from her womanhood and basically all the ways she fails to get logan's approval or otherwise have power in a room full of men, because those supposed values are enthusiastically eschewed the moment that she has power. i think this same thing in essence happens with basically every character of course, like with kendall's own very performative feminism and supposed respect for women that he revokes the moment it benefits him personally to be misogynistic. and that's basically ALL it is - that they do what benefits them. sometimes it benefits shiv to be the moral voice of reason in the room bc she has nothing to lose otherwise and it's retaining a sense of superiority at the least. and certainly some things she does sincerely believe are wrong, like mencken being elected president, and in fact most of the main cast clearly thinks so but roman who is a lot more naive, politically. speaking of, there's then the fact that shiv has a career in all this so she's especially aware, basically, about how fake it kinda is. she's a classic rich democrat. that's simply the default horse she's chosen because it works for her.

as for how it relates to tomgreg... i'd say it obv firstly relates to tom and the fact that tom is shiv's partner because he's safe. and a huge part of tom being safe is frankly that he's gay. i don't think shiv is very consciously aware of this (but i don't think she's utterly oblivious either) but it's no coincidence that she's with a guy who's submissive and effeminate and also clearly insecure about those things. and it's not JUST that his lack of objectifying desire is safe, but also that it makes him easy for her to control him, and the thing with shiv is that quite like her dad she needs to have someone around to control.

now shiv being this way def overlaps with tomgreg specifically, since like tom's repression is linked to his stifling homophobic environment and shiv is a part of that, but i think that's one thing that shiv doesn't really know about. i think she has thoughts about gay little cousin greg, and they're all probably along the lines of just, yeah that's cousin greg and he seems pretty gay, whatever. if she has ever had a real whiff of tomgreg (prior to accusing them of double-teaming girls together) i doubt that it was along the lines of tom's desire and much more likely that she saw gay cousin greg sidling up to her man. and even then i really don't think it was on her mind. i think she saw tom having a weird relationship with greg and didn't mentally factor any desire in there, but just saw masculine posturing and respected it, maybe? like tom needs some outlet after being submissive to her and she prob knows that much.

but actually that does make me think of how homophobia in succession is almost always akin to a greek sort of bottomphobia, like being gay is bad because it takes away your manhood, it's the bad thing to take it in the ass or to suck cock, etc - almost never the reverse. the one instance of the reverse that i can think of is when logan is accusing kendall of trying to fuck the waiter in the sense that gay desire is predatory. that's of course the dichotomy of (male) homophobia, that it asserts either an unforgivable personal gender or the perversion that makes you ruin others. but the latter is as self-contradictory as manhood itself is and not nearly as pervasive as it used to be. the latter doesn't interfere with one's manhood at all and that's really what's at stake in the world of succession. logan is just an old, old dinosaur who will whip out any ol' homophobia as long as it gets his sons under his control.

anyway i think shiv could be driven to whip out similar accusations to hurt tom (and the "i hear you fuck models now" stuff did kinda feel along that vein) but isn't very likely to. funnily enough i think she wouldn't even know exactly how much that sort of thing would hurt him on the basis alone of making implications about greg.

#hope this makes sense lol #anonymous #shiv roy #meta #mine

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linagram · 4 months

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[ 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚗 𝚟𝚘𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚊𝚜: 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝟷 ]

(i hope the image isn't too eystrain-y AAAAAAAAA)

wooooooo i'm finally done with these

okay basically these voice dramas are about what happened to the prisoners three days before their crimes and they're supposed to reveal more about their life, what kind of people they are and all of that stuff. they will be separated into two parts bc the voice dramas are pretty short, so this part includes akio, aimi, shun, naomi and kei and the next one will include eiko, asahi, yurika, riku and reina.

warnings: a mention of bullying and an implication of a child being seriously injured in aimi's vd, shun is being a stalker, a description of physical and emotional abuse in naomi's vd, mentions of torture and homophobia in kei's vd (there's also some implications of the latter in akio's vd, but like, if you squint really hard)

[ Akio's Confession ]

(the sound of a school bell ringing)

(the voices of other students can be heard in the background)

Akio: *sighs*

Akio: *thinking* "This class was way too easy.. All classes were too easy so far, honestly."

Akio: *thinking* "Though that's just something I have to deal with as a genius that I am, haha.."

Akio: *thinking* "It's just.. I thought that an elite school like this would be more interesting."

Akio:*thinking* "But when I look at my classmates.. Yeah, I can see why the teachers would go easy on them. How did they even get- Oh, right, probably because they're rich and all."

Akio: *thinking* ".. My parents have worked so hard so that I could attend this school and now I'm complaining.."

Akio: Hm...

(sounds of someone's footsteps getting faster and faster)

Arata: Akioooooo!~

Akio: *screams*

Akio: W-what are you-

Arata: Come on, you promised that we'll have lunch together!

Arata: Come on, get up, get up!

Akio: C-can you-

Akio: *whispering* Can you.. you know.. be quieter? This is embarrassing, everyone is staring at us.

Arata: *whispering* I know, I'm acting like this on purpose.

Akio: Wha-

Arata: Okayyyy, let's go, let's go!~

Akio: I-I haven't even brought anything with me-

Arata: It's okay, as your boyf-

Arata: Uh..

Arata: *clears throat* Ahem, as your best friend, I have prepared something very special for you myself!

Arata: Now let's go!

(sounds of footsteps)

Female classmate: These two are.. really close, aren't they?

Akio: I still can't believe that out of all the hobbies you could have, your hobby is.. cooking.

Arata: What, I don't look like a perfect housewife? You're breaking my heart..

Akio: Ugh..

Akio: C-can't you just act.. you know.. normal?

Arata: Nope. Now say "Ahhh~"

Akio: I am not a child-

Akio: !

Arata: See? Tastes good, doesn't it?

Akio: B-but again, everyone is staring at us..

Arata: And? They're just jealous.

Arata: You know, you look so plain, but you've got someone like me as your boyfriend! You're so lucky!

Akio: Plain?..

Arata: U-uh, I find that cute about you.

Arata: Also, you stole the "most popular guy" title from me! You're so cool!

Akio: We both know you weren't popular because of your looks or intelligence or anything.

Arata: Haha, yeah, being the son of the headmaster kinda makes you popular by default..

Arata: But like, not for a good reason.

Akio: You're still creepy though, obviously they would find you intimidating.

Akio: And you also have a lot of power in this place, so..

Arata: Y-you think I'm creepy?!

Akio: Yes.

Arata: So cold!.. But that's what I like about you!

Akio: Also, about me stealing your title and all..

Akio: .. That title also was stolen from me recently.

Arata: Huh? By who?

Arata: .. Oh.

Arata: You're talking about that guy, right?

Akio: *nods*

Arata: Well, he joined us only a few months ago and he also used to be homeschooled. I think it's his first time actually going to school?

Akio: Yeah, because of his health problems.

Arata: Of course a guy like him would get everyone's attention.

Arata: They just feel sorry for him. Don't worry about it too much~

Arata: I mean, have you seen his grades? A guy like him won't survive in this place.

Akio: Should I remind you about your own grades?

Arata: Ahaha.. At least I have you~

Akio: You're not dating me just because I can do your homework for you, right?

Arata: Well, that's one of the reasons why I like you, but..

Akio: I'm breaking up with you.

Arata: No, no, wait!

Arata: Also, Akio, aren't you dating me because I can make you look good in the eyes of the headmaster?

Akio: ...

Arata: He likes you a lot! He said that our school really needed a student like you.

Akio: ...

Arata: You really are a genius, Akio. I'm sure you'll become famous in the future.

Akio: .. B-but I want to be famous now.

Arata: And you will! I can just make everyone here bow down to you if you want.

Arata: Both figuratively and literally.

Akio: .. I hate him, Arata. I hate him so much.

Arata: I know.

Akio: Sometimes I wish I just could-

Akio: ...

Akio: Never mind.

Arata: Hm? What is it?

Akio: I said, never mind!

Arata: Come on, say it, say it!

Akio: Shut up already-

Arata: Say it, Akio.

Akio: ...

Akio: .. Wouldn't it be nice if he just..

Akio: You know..

Akio: .. Died?

Arata: ...

Arata: Haha..

Arata: Ahahahahahahaha!

(sounds of Arata laughing and falling on the ground)

Akio: .. Yeah, I can't just ask you to act normal again, can I?

Arata: S-sorry, sorry..

Arata: It's just.. I've been waiting for you to say it.

Akio: Huh?

Arata: I don't know, something about you hating him so much to the point of wanting him dead..

Arata: It's just so exciting, you know?

Akio: .. There must be something wrong with you.

Arata: With you too. That's why we're perfect for each other!

Arata: So, how do you want him to die?

Akio: Arata, for God's sake, can you just not talk about murder while we're having lunch and there are other people around?

Arata: Nope, talking about murder is fun.

Arata: Also, you still have some food left. Open your mouth.

Akio: Why would you find talking-

Arata: Anyway, we should head back to class, the break is going to end soon.

Akio: R-right..

(sounds of footsteps)

???: Ah! Akio-kun, Arata-kun!

Akio: ...

Arata: There he is.

???: I've been looking for you two everywhere! I just thought it'd be nice to have a lunch together, haha..

???: B-but it looks like you two are already going back to class.. I'm so slow, haha..

Akio: .. I thought I told you not to call us that.

???: What?

Akio: We're not your friends. Why did you even think we'll agree to spend even the moment of our precious time with you?

???: U-uh..

Akio: Seriously, this is why you always have no choice but to eat alone. You're so stupid-

Arata: Now, now, calm down, Akio.

Arata: Please forgive him, he's not in a good mood today.

???: Really? Why? Did something happen, Akio-kun? C-can I help-

Akio: DON'T CALL ME THAT!

???: ...

Arata: ...

Akio: *breathing heavily* We're not.. friends, Kitami.

Akio: I don't even want to hear you say my name.

Akio: Don't stand in my way. Arata, we're leaving.

Chise: ...

Chise: .. Hey..

Chise: That's not very nice of you, Akio-kun..

Chise: You know I've worked really hard on this, right?

Akio: D-do you think I care?

Chise: Judging from the way you stutter, I think you do.

Akio: ...

Akio: (to Arata) W-why are you still standing here?! I told you we're leaving!

(sounds of Akio and Arata leaving)

Arata: The guy looked like he was about to cry. Are you proud of yourself?

Arata: Not judging you, by the way.

Akio: ...

Arata: Hey, are you listening-

Akio: Why?

Akio: Why does he want to be friends with me?

Akio: He just wants to annoy me, doesn't he? He's just jealous of me and he's trying to make me angry on purpose so that I'll end up yelling at him and ruin my reputation because he's everyone's favorite right now?

Akio: Why do people even like him?! He's so pathetic, so weak, so dumb, so..

Arata: Hey, calm down.

Akio: ...

Arata: You're better than him. Remember that.

Akio: I KNOW THAT, IDIOT! I JUST WANT OTHERS TO REMEMBER THAT TOO!

Arata: Well, I know for a fact that you're better than him. You're better than everyone here~

Arata: .. Hm? What's wrong?

Akio: .. Ahaha..

Akio: He really doesn't know his place, does he?

Akio: So annoying..

Arata: ...

Akio: Hey, can you help me out with something?

Arata: ...

Akio: Come on, I know you like me.

Arata: .. Haha, so now you're accepting the fact that we're a couple.

Akio: Oh, I was just acting shy.

Arata: So.. Do you want to..

Arata: You know..

Akio: I just want to teach him a lesson. Nothing more than that. I'm strict, but I'm not evil.

Arata: ... Oh.

Arata: Well, our school's lucky to have a king like you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Aimi's Confession ]

(The door opens)

Aimi: I'm back!

Aimi: ...

Aimi: Hey? Is anybody here?

Aimi: ...

Aimi: "Haha.. It's like I have no choice but to be alone.."

Aimi: "Just what did I do to deserve this-"

???: Oh, there you are!

Aimi:"Great. Out of all people, it had to be him."

Aimi: Nii-san!

(sounds of Aimi and her brother hugging)

Aimi's brother: Sorry, I was wearing earphones and didn't hear you.

Aimi's brother: If you're wondering where mom and dad are, they went to check on the park, they've heard it's been doing.. not so good.

Aimi: Really? What happened?

Aimi's brother: One of the rides suddenly stopped working and two kids fell off. One of them is fine, thankfully, but the other one ended up in the hospital.

Aimi: Oh..

Aimi's brother: Also, Yori is walking Maru and Mochi right now, just so you know.

Aimi: Oh, right, I got scared for a second, haha..

Aimi: By the way, why are you wearing an apron?

Aimi's brother: Oh, Fumiri wasn't feeling well, so I offered to cook today.

Aimi: You can cook?

Aimi's brother: Okay, rude.

Aimi's brother: You're not gonna eat then?

Aimi: No, I will! I'm okay with whatever Nii-san decides to make~

Aimi's brother: I'm almost done, so you don't have to wait long. Go wash your hands.

Aimi: Oh, right! I forgot, haha..

Aimi: I didn't know you were this good at cooking. It's shocking, really.

Aimi's brother: *laughs* Why are you so mean to me today? Did you have a bad day at school?

Aimi: ...

Aimi's brother: Oh..

Aimi's brother: Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to-

Aimi: N-no, it's okay, it's okay! It's just..

Aimi: It's.. Um..

Aimi: M-my classmates..

Aimi's brother: ...

Aimi's brother: *sighs* What did they do this time?

Aimi: Well, um..

Aimi: Haha..

Aimi: Emi-chan said that I'm too violent and because of that others tend to avoid me..

Aimi: And.. She said she thinks I'm..

Aimi: Scary, haha..

Aimi's brother: ...

Aimi: Am I scary, Nii-san?

Aimi: Am I violent?

Aimi: I always try to be kind to everyone I meet! I would never want to scare anyone or hurt them!

Aimi: I'm not violent! I'm really not!

Aimi's brother: I know. I know.

Aimi's brother: Why do you think she called you that?

Aimi: I don't know!

Aimi: I don't want to say that she..

Aimi: Uh..

Aimi's brother: You don't want to suspect her, right?

Aimi's brother: You don't want to believe that she had bad intentions, right?

Aimi: ...

Aimi: W-why would she?

Aimi: I mean, she's not evil or anything..

Aimi's brother: Well, maybe she's jealous.

Aimi's brother: Maybe she's jealous of your wealth or your looks.

Aimi's brother: Maybe she wanted to provoke you and make you act "violent" in public.

Aimi's brother: You know, like that time with Sao.

Aimi: I-I didn't hit her on purpose, I swear!

Aimi's brother: Of course, I know that.

Aimi's brother: But that's just how the world works. If somebody doesn't like you, it doesn't mean that they will be straightforward about it. Maybe they will just try to make it look like it's your fault for making them hate you.

Aimi's brother: It's not their fault for being mean to you. It's your fault for getting angry. That's how their thought process goes.

Aimi: BUT I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!

Aimi: I JUST WANTED TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM!

Aimi: Would they like me more if I wasn't so rich? Would they like me more if I wasn't so pretty?

Aimi: I always was so nice to them! I bought them so many gifts, I always offered my help when needed..

Aimi: I THOUGHT THEY WERE MY FRIENDS! BUT THAT'S NOT HOW FRIENDS ACT!

Aimi: ...

Aimi's brother: Aimi, dear, I understand you. I understand your feelings so well.

Aimi's brother: This world is full of evil people. You're one of the few people who stay kind no matter what.

Aimi's brother: And most people prefer to just ignore all the evil others do..

Aimi's brother: But I don't agree with that. Honestly, I think people like that don't deserve to live.

Aimi: .. "Don't deserve to live"?

Aimi: So what you're saying is..

Aimi: ...

Aimi's brother: Just trust me, okay? You can always rely on me.

Aimi: B-but then..

Aimi's brother: I'll go wash the dishes. How about you play with Maru and Mochi when they come back?

Aimi: Nii-san, you're not going to..

Aimi:Do anything to my classmates, right?

(sounds of Aimi's brother washing the dishes)

Aimi: Ugh, he can't hear me..

(sounds of dogs barking in the background)

Aimi: Oh, is that-

Aimi: They're back! I'll go greet them, hehe~

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Shun's Confession ]

Shun: I see. Thank you, this helps a lot.

Old woman's voice: You're welcome. To be honest, I did have my suspicions about that boy..

Old woman's voice: But you seem really nice. I'm sure she still misses you.

Shun: Ahaha.. Thank you so much. I hope so too.

Shun: Have a nice day.

(sounds of footsteps)

Shun: ...

Shun: *sighs loudly*

Shun: God, that was so scary..

Shun: Ugh, socializing shouldn't be this hard..

Shun: But at least I've learned more about her..

Shun: .. Shouldn't I have known that already if she was my girlfriend?..

Shun: N-never mind.

Shun: Okay, let me just go through my notes-

Shun: !

Shun: I-I almost dropped my phone..

Shun: Okay, so..

Shun: Inaba Hina, 21 year old. A university student, psychology major, also has a part-time job as a babysitter.

Shun: So she's good with kids, huh.. Haha, they're going to love her.

Shun: Was born on August 28th, lives alone, but regularly picks her little brother up from school since her parents can't do that because of their job and his school is very close to her apartment.

Shun: Come to think of it..

Shun: R-right! She's supposed to pick him up soon!

Shun: I have the address written down, hold on..

Shun: That's it, I'm finally going to meet her!..

Shun: "Okay, I'm finally here.."

Shun: "Huh.. It looks like her brother isn't here yet.."

Shun: "I guess I'll have to wait."

Shun: "Oh, maybe I should try to become friends with her little brother too? If I show her how good I am at taking care of kids, I'm sure she will fall in love with me again!"

Shun: Ehehe.. This plan is definitely going to work..

Shun: I should just wait until her brother-

Shun: Oh, isn't that..

Shun: "Okay, just act normal."

Shun: Hello there. Sorry for asking, but you're Inaba Renji, aren't you?

Renji: .. Um..

Shun: I know this may sound weird, but I'm your sister's.. friend and-

Renji: W-why do you know my name?

Shun: Your sister told me! She loves you a lot and she told me that you're a very good kid so I thought-

Renji: .. And what's your name?

Shun: O-oh, uh..

Shun: I-it's Ishizu Shun. You've probably heard it before.

Renji: Nope. Never heard a name like that.

Shun: ...

Shun: "S-she.. Never told her brother about me.."

Renji: Hey. I don't know what your deal is and I don't know anything about your relationship with my sister, but like..

Renji: C-can you.. leave me alone?

Shun: Oh, uh, s-she asked me to pick you up from school since she's too busy today!

Renji: ...

Shun: ...

Renji: Dude. That's like.. What all child kidnappers say.

Shun: What?! No, no, you got it all wrong! I swear, I really am her friend-

Renji: I am going to scream if you don't leave me alone.

Shun: But-

Renji: *takes a breath*

Shun: Okay, fine, fine!

(sounds of Shun running away)

Shun: *breathing heavily*

Shun: That.. did not go well..

Shun: .. So she.. never told her brother about me..

Shun: .. Did she even love me?

Shun: And if not.. Why did she even date me?

Shun: I'm not that attractive and I'm not that smart..

(sound of a phone notification)

Shun: Hm? What's that?

Shun: O-oh, right, I forgot about Merurin's stream!

Shun: At least I have her to comfort me..

Shun: Did I bring my earphones with me-

???: Here you are!

Shun: *screams*

???: I've been looking for you everywhere!

???: Did you even read my messages?

???: Or did you forget as always?

Shun: .. I-I forgot.

???: *sighs* You have work today, you remember that?

Shun: .. I forgot.

???: Why are you like this..

???: Let's go. We're gonna be late, but honestly, I don't really care.

Shun: ...

???: Don't look at me like that. I'm not doing this because we're friends or anything.

Shun: O-oh, right. Sorry..

???: Hey, what were you watching anyway-

A voice from Shun's phone: Hewwo, my adorable little kittens! How are you all doing today?

Shun: ...

???: ...

A voice from Shun's phone: Aw, I wish I could just give you all loooooots of headpats!~

???: .. You know what, I think you'll be fine without my help.

???: See you at work.

Shun: W-wait!

Shun: ...

Shun: ".. Fine. I'm going to see Hina soon anyway."

Shun: "Or actually.."

Shun: .. Ehehe..

Shun: "Maybe I should invite her new boyfriend instead?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Naomi's Confession ]

(sounds of children laughing and running around can be heard in the background)

Naomi: Okay, okay, everybody, sit down~ We can't have a tea party while you all are running and jumping like this, right?

Naomi's students: Okay, Chiba-sensei!

(sounds of children sitting down)

Naomi: Great! Now, I didn't forget about anyone, right? Everyone has tea to drink and snacks to eat-

Female student A: Chiba-sensei! Natsu ate my cookies while I wasn't looking!

Naomi: (to Natsu) Really? Did you do that?

Natsu: .. *nods*

Naomi: Come on, that's not a good thing to do. If you wanted some, you could have just asked me.

Natsu: .. S-sorry..

Naomi: Here, you can take these. But please apologize to Rimi-chan, okay?

Natsu: (to Rimi) U-um.. I-I'm sorry.. They just looked really good..

Rimi: Hm.. Fine, I forgive you! But never do that again!

Natsu: I-I promise!

Naomi: *laughs* Here, Rimi-chan, I still have some for you left.

Rimi: Yay! You're the best, Chiba-sensei!

Female student B: Chiba-sensei, why other teachers are so boring and strict compared to you?

Female student B: You're so nice!

Male student A: Yeah! You're like a friend to us, but like, a friend that's much older than us!

Naomi: Haha, are you saying that I'm old?

Female student C: Ugh, boys are so rude..

Naomi: Well, um.. I don't know, I just.. I don't want you to see my classes as something.. bad, I guess?

Naomi: I don't want you to be afraid of me or hate me.

Naomi: And also, I try to treat you all with respect, because that's what you all deserve, even if you all are much younger than me.

Naomi's students: Whoa..

Female student D: Chiba-sensei is so cool!

Female student B: How can anyone hate her-

???: .. Ahem.

???: So what you're saying is that you don't want people to see you in a bad way?

???: You're afraid of people hating you, right? Even if those people are just kids?

Naomi: ...

Female student C: Way to kill the mood..

Naomi: Haha.. Come on, Tao-kun, you know that's not true-

Naomi: A-and even if it is true, what's so bad about it? Nobody wants to be hated-

Tao: Yeah, but you're an adult.

Tao: And you're still trying to please everyone and never say no to anyone.

Tao: I don't think it's because you're so kind, but because you're just too scared of being hated.

Tao: Do you really like us? Or do you like us because it's easy to manipulate us and make us think you're the nicest person in the world?

Naomi: ...

Male student B: What's your problem, Tao?!

Female student C: That's why nobody likes you.

Female student B: Chiba-sensei is nice to us because she loves us. Simple as that.

Tao: You are not her kids! We're just her students. There's no reason for her to love us.

Female student C: Well, she loves us more than your parents love you, that's for sure.

Tao: !

Tao: Shut up-

(the door opens)

???: Chiba-san? Someone wants to see you.

Naomi: .. O-oh. S-sure, I'll be right there.

Naomi: *stands up* Please wait for me, okay? Don't eat everything without me~

Naomi's students: Okay!~

(sounds of Naomi's footsteps)

Naomi: *thinking* "But who could have possibly wanted to see me-"

Naomi: ...

Naomi: .. Mom?

Naomi's mother: Well hello there.

Naomi's mother: What's with the kids laughing and screaming? I thought you were supposed to have classes today.

Naomi: U-um, we planned to have a tea party today, since everyone's been doing so well lately and we also finished working early, s-so..

Naomi: I just thought it would be nice to reward them with something, you know?

Naomi's mother:Is that a cookie crumb on your cheek?

Naomi: .. Oh. S-sorry.

Naomi's mother: You're so unprofessional..

Naomi: M-mom, I am a 30 year old teacher. Stop visiting me like this. It's embarrassing.

Naomi's mother: You're a bigger embarassment. I have no choice but to check how you're doing.

Naomi's mother: Seriously, you act more like a child than your students.

Naomi: ...

Naomi: B-but they seem to love me-

Naomi's mother: They don't see you as a teacher, Naomi. They see you as another child. You're a friend to them, not a teacher. You won't be able to become a good role model for them.

Naomi: I-I just want them to feel safe, since most of them come from.. families with all sorts of problems.

Naomi's mother: Nobody can be safe with you around. I literally keep visiting you exactly because of that.

Naomi: ...

Naomi's mother: Don't look at me like that.

Naomi: Please, just.. leave. My students can hear us.

Naomi's mother: And what exactly are you so afraid of? It's your fault for being like this.

Naomi's mother: If you wanted to become a teacher to make me proud, then at least act like one.

Naomi: I-I'm trying..

Naomi: But someone keeps distracting me from doing my job-

(a sound of Naomi being slapped)

Naomi: ...

Naomi's mother: Don't you ever blame me for doing this.

Naomi's mother: I'm doing this for your sake. You have left me no other choice.

Naomi: .. Someone could see you doing this to me, you know.

Naomi's mother: Oh, so now you're blackmailing me. Seriously, you should be more grateful.

Naomi's mother: You don't have to "worry" about me. With my reputation, people would never think I'm in the wrong for doing this.

Naomi's mother: .. They never did.

Naomi's mother: Now, go back to work.

Naomi: .. You really just came to traumatize me again? The hell is wrong with you?

Naomi's mother: .. We'll discuss the way you talk to your own mother later.

Naomi: I am not a child-

Naomi's mother: Again, I have no choice but to treat you like one.

Naomi's mother: Now, go and play with the kids your age.

(sounds of Naomi's mother's footsteps becoming quieter)

Naomi: ...

Rimi: Chiba-sensei..

Naomi: Ah!

Naomi: Rimi-chan.. what are you doing here?

Naomi: D-did you see-

Rimi: *nods*

Naomi: ...

Naomi: I'm so sorry. That was.. not a teacher-like thing to do-

Naomi: !

Rimi: .. W-when I told you about my parents, you hugged me. You hugged me, even though I was so loud and annoying and couldn't stop crying..

Rimi: S-so, um.. I-I thought that maybe this can help you feel better too.

Naomi: ...

Naomi: C-come on, an adult should be comforting a child, not the other way around..

Naomi: Let's go back, okay? I'm sure everyone is waiting for us.

Naomi: ".. I just hope Tao didn't see this."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Kei's Confession ]

(a woman's screaming can be heard in the background)

Kei: Shh, it's okay, it's okay~

Kei: Can you smile for me, please?

Kei: Or, actually, never mind, your expression is already perfect.

Kei: Anddddd we're done!~

Kei's boss: Seriously, you're enjoying this way too much.

Kei: I just love my job a lot, is that bad?

Kei's boss: Well, your job is to take photos of people in the worst conditions imaginable. Most people wouldn't really like this job, unless they've got some screws loose.

Kei: Haha, come on, you know that with a father like mine, I'm used to this.

Kei's boss: True..

Kei: Also, I'm sure this cutie over here has already fallen in love with me-

(the woman's screaming gets louder)

Kei: .. Maybe not.

Kei's boss: Anyway, just take the money and leave.

Kei: Oh, you know I'm not doing this for the money-

Kei's boss: Ahem.

Kei: Got it, got it.

Kei: (to the woman) See you later, sweetie! Uh.. If you survive, that is.

(the door opens)

Kei: Ruka, I'm home!~

Kei: Ruka?..

Kei: "Where could he be?"

Kei: "Nothing happened to him while I was gone, right?.."

Kei: !

Kei: RUKA!

Kei: "What if they've done something to him while I was-"

Kei: Huh?..

Ruka: Oh, you're home.

Kei: .. What are you doing?

Ruka: I'm taking a bath. I thought it was obvious.

Kei: .. While fully clothed?

Ruka: Of course. I remember doing so even when I was alive.

Kei: .. O-okay.

Kei: *breathes out* I was so scared..

Ruka: Why?

Ruka: I won't drown or anything. And I won't try to kill myself. I'm already dead anyway-

Kei: I know, I know! It's just..

Kei: Well, uh.. You remember what happened.

Ruka: .. Oh.

Ruka: You can come here, if you want.

Kei: Again, while fully clothed?

Ruka: What's your issue with clothes? Do it, coward.

Kei:*laughs* Fine, fine.

(sounds of Kei getting into the bathtub)

Kei: This feels so weird.

Ruka: Hearing that from a guy like you sounds weirder.

Kei: .. Am I really that weird, Ruka?

Ruka: Yeah.

Kei: But why?

Ruka: Every single thing about you is weird.

Kei: Well, name one then!

Ruka: You're sitting in a bathtub with me right now and we both have our clothes on.

Kei: .. That was all part of your plan?!

Ruka: Yep.

Kei: .. *laughs* Then you're just as weird as me.

Ruka: Probably. I'm dead anyway, might as well do whatever I want.

Kei: .. Maybe it would be nice to die, actually-

Kei: No, no, what am I saying, haha..

Ruka: Nope, you have to live.

Kei: Huh? Why?

Ruka: Uh..

Ruka: 'Cause you have a job and I don't?.. And well, we still need money, so..

Kei: *laughs* How do you just.. Let things like this come out of your mouth?

Ruka: Maybe that's because of your influence.

Kei: .. Ruka, you love me, right?

Ruka: Dunno.

Kei: Meanie.

Kei: .. I don't want to leave this house anymore.

Kei: Everyone is too mean.

Kei: They're too mean to us.

Ruka: Listen, your friends' reaction was understandable-

Kei: It was not! They were so rude!

Kei: I probably should have expected it, they were always saying weird things about guys who like guys..

Ruka: *sighs* It's not because of me being a guy.

Ruka: Actually, I'm not even sure if I'm one-

Kei: You are one. At least, uh.. physically. Your gender is up to you to figure out though.

Ruka: Sure, whatever. Anyway, that's not because they acted like that.

Kei: THEN WHY?!

Kei: Ugh, the water is so cold..

Ruka: You just noticed?

Kei: They were so mean...

Ruka: .. Are you going to cry?

Kei: Shut up.

Kei: I wish I could prove to them that my way of showing love is normal..

Ruka: I doubt you can do that.

Kei: .. I think I have an idea.

Ruka: He has an idea. Great.

Kei: They always said things like "Kei, come on, you're going to steal our girlfriends at this point!" or "Seriously, our girlfriends are going to fall in love with you, if you keep at it!"

Kei: I think that's because they knew that their girls would gladly choose me over them.

Kei: So.. Why not invite them here? I can give them as much love as they want from me~

Ruka: Oh no, I'm feeling so jealous..

Kei: You sound more emotionless than ever.

Ruka: Anyway, I'm against this.

Kei: Why?!

Ruka: You should just forget about your friends. Seriously.

Ruka: Do you even see them as friends?

Kei: Um.. Not really..

Kei: But..

Kei: If I want to appear "less weird", I need to have friends..

Ruka: .. Hey.

Ruka: .. Have you ever had friends? You know.. before them?

Kei: .. I think I had one.

Kei: But I don't really remember him that well..

Kei: H-he probably left me or something, haha..

Kei: .. Hey, the water is way too cold. I'm getting out.

Ruka: You're not actually going to invite them to our house, right?

(sounds of Kei getting out of the bathtub)

Kei: Why not? I can treat those girls better than their boyfriends.

Ruka: Kei, I don't have a good feeling about this.

Kei: Aw, so you really are jealous!

Ruka: .. You already have me. You don't have to try and get those guys' trust back or whatever.

Kei: ...

Kei: I don't like the way wet clothes feel. I'll go change.

#akio's vd is a bit longer than the other ones bc i've figured out the writing format and decided it's okay for these vds to be kinda short #since they're supposed to feel like a glimpse into the prisoners' lives and nothing more #aimi's vd was esp hard to write bc it's like.. i have to be very careful with what i reveal about her #also her brother's identity is still supposed to be a secret so #with YOUR help we can vote shun guilty again but now for acting like THAT! vote shun ishizu guilty today (or when s3 starts) 👍👍👍#one day naomi will beat the “i have an undiagnosed mental illness and my parents think i'm a danger to society” allegations. maybe #“hey what about kei's friend” yeah what about him. i definitely don't have his design or his name or anything in my docs. shut up /silly #sobbing and crying bc rukakei are like. they're so codependent but they also genuinely care about each other and love each other and #fUCK i have to tag them #👑prisoner 001: miyagawa akio👑#🌸prisoner 002: hanasaki aimi🌸#💔prisoner 003: ishizu shun 💔#🌿prisoner 004: chiba naomi🌿#🍓prisoner 005: sanada kei 🍓#milgram #milgram oc #milgram project #ocgram

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daz4i · 4 months

Text

suicidal+generally negative bullshit under the cut 🫡

guys i'm gonna be so fr with you i am basically working on autopilot at this point. ik i am very much on what's considered the right path and i'm doing a lot for the purpose of getting better but my heart's not really in it lol. i just do it bc it feels like i have no choice, dying is unfortunately not an option and i got bored of doing nothing else. but i really wish i had any reason to be doing any of this beyond boredom. esp given how much energy i'm putting into it while still feeling like shit and wanting to kms on a daily basis 🥲

maybe if i felt like i have a shot at greatness. but i know damn well mediocrity is the best i can aspire for (actually that's one of the biggest reasons i want to die lol)

bc of my bpd i can't exactly love people normally, i can either be at 0% and slightly above it, maybe at most 40% of love for my favorite people (which is a lot by my standards, like almost everyone in my family can't break 20%, for example), but i have 100% too except that's just pure obsession. and it feels good even tho i know it's toxic and unstable. that's my only way to feel a positive emotion strongly. so maybe if i had someone i could be (mutually) obsessed with

maybe if i was able to create things i could feel proud of. unfortunately due to me being their creator, i already hate them by default

like i wish i had. anything. beyond the need to stop being bored. it's not sustainable. i know i'm gonna crash hard soon bc this is simply not enough gas to run on, and i'm doing a looooot of running on a device (aka my body. and brain) that was not designed for that as is

i don't even have little things to look forward to bc i can't care about anything 😭 like my mom keeps asking me what i wanna do for my birthday so we can maybe set smth up with my siblings but i genuinely. don't want anything enough to bother. i see people talk about being excited abt a game or new season for the show they like and the whole "i can't die until i finish x" stuff but i was never good at that. i tried it before and as soon as the thing ended i was back to being suicidal as fuck. the whole point of that method is to keep finding more little things so it never ends but i struggle to even find one so that's once again not sustainable at all

i'm gonna be alive until march 25th bc i committed to giving a lecture on the 24th. that's it. i don't wanna screw them over. but after that...? i don't have a lot of things to commit to. i might be in some theater production if i pass my audition this wednesday but that'll just end a few months later too. and it's not like i could get into anything else in the real world lol

there's just no reason to be doing any of this and it's... really hard to be doing stuff when you have no reason, i can't do it for the little things, how am i supposed to do it for literally life at large. i was gonna say it feels impossible but nah it'll be more right to say it IS impossible 🥲 no hope for me 👍

#vent #sorry 🫡

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bonesandthebees · 2 years

Note

ok ok ok. stars time!!!

upon reading the name Myscria in your answers to the ask game, i realized the name seemed super familiar… any chance the name Themiscyra??? supposed home of the Amazon warriors??? also is that partially where the name for the planet comes from??? or is that specifically for the goddess Themis??? care to explain???

way to imply Percy Shelly existed in the Stars universe!!!

Phil calling Wil “little bird” makes me feel things. still not sure what exactly those are, but it’s there. it could just be further familiarity, they’ve gotten so causal now that a random nickname isn’t inappropriate and phil defaults to what is probably a super common elytrian nickname/term of endearment, but that seems unlikely to me bc phil is still playing a game even if wil has partially given up and that’s not the kind of slip-up he would make. he’s too calculating for that.

so, in my mind, that leaves the following possibilities: 1) phil is just messing with him. he’s pushing his buttons, but mostly just for fun to see what kind of reaction he’ll get. it may be entertaining. 2) he’s messing with him for a purpose, continuing to test wil’s limits to gauge his “potential” the same as he’s been doing this whole time. 3) he’s intentionally acting pseudo-parental and endearing not necessarily bc he actually feels that way towards wil (tho it’s not a complete impossibly), but bc he’s trying to build a sense of familiarity and trust. he’s acting this way to influence their relationship to move that direction, at least on some level.

my guess is it’s a combination of all three. #1 seems to be a pretty standard motivation for all phil’s actions, #2 makes the most sense/has the most support from the plot so far, and #3 adds complexity which makes their dynamic more interesting, and makes for some interesting possibilities for tension down the line.

ok i definitely have more to say but i’ll end this ask here. once again thank you so much for all your hard work writing this!!!

- 💜

hi purple heart anon!!!

omg I'm so glad you picked up on that. yes, Myscira is a reference to Themiscyra the home of the Amazon warriors! And that's also a tie in to where the planet name Themis comes from! yes, Themis is a goddess, but also Themis + Myscira = home of the Amazons so it serves a double purpose as a name. (also, Myrina was the name of one of the Queens of the Amazon in mythology, so that's another tie in).

actually stars technically takes place in our normal universe, just tens of thousands of years in the future. so yes, the Ancient Greeks existed as did ancient poets like Percy Shelly. humans have just been exploring the galaxy for so long at this point that they settled on a lot of different planets (most of which didn't have any life on them in the first place) and so you have 'natives' to different planets that are humans. once a species has been living on a planet for thousands of years I think you can say they're a native even if they technically didn't originate there lol

it's so interesting to see what you guys think about the 'little bird' nickname. very fun to read everyones different theories. I won't comment as usual, but I will point out that you said "that's not the kind of slip-up phil would make" and "he's too calculating for that". based off what we've read so far, that's not an incorrect assessment, but also keep in mind that the story is told from wilbur's pov. I'm not saying phil isn't an extremely calculating mastermind, but wilbur's perspective isn't exactly a reliable basis to form an opinion off of. so do with that what you will.

#ask #purple-heart anon #the stars and their children

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c4rr10n · 2 years

Text

tea time or w/e if you want some entertainment lol

so last night my roommate and “friend” (by proxy, i suppose) hijacked a conversation i was having with another roommate. i was going to go out of town tonight to see an old family friend i haven’t seen in years, and they were asking about that, to which i explained that due to unfortunate circumstances I wouldn’t be making it, and that I was really bummed about said circumstances (the 6k min surgery thing F) and not getting to see my friend. anyway, person b, my other roommate, walks in and hijacks the convo. they are going through a breakup (so am i, but to a more intense caliber as we had been living together and essentially married, sharing expenses, she helped mother my cat/child, etc, you get it) and tried to outright state that what he and i are going through are the same. They are NOT. person b is going through a typical break up, I am more or less going through an unofficial divorce with less paperwork and no hearings. My entire life has been destabilized, I lost my housing, my cat lost her mother and is evidently depressed, my financial situation and much of my future plans are in shambles. The only thing still truly completely in my control is my schoolwork right now - and thank god I at least have that and my cat. My now-ex was my end all be all, and she lied to me, withheld crucial information from me, and cheated on me. Because she was afraid of change, afraid of losing me so much she defaulted to illogically and detrimentally protecting herself to the extent of harming me and completely sabotaging our relationship. She and our life together were my everything. Additionally, I only have one friend in this town. My closest friends by distance are three hours away. Person B has many in the immediate vicinity, and also has other partners as they are polyamorous. So, no, our situations are not remotely the same. Their pain is real and I empathize, but their struggle lies in being sad over chinese food because that’s something he and his ex used to do together - my struggles stem from nearly every aspect of my life being evidence that everything I had established for my present and future has been not only uprooted, but all for naught. Not the same. I found it very disrespectful and dismissive among other things, but I am not the type to indulge others in my affairs so their ignorance is on me. So I let it slide. But they kept going on and on about it, forcing the room to be subject to their little petty tragedy. In an attempt to diffuse and redirect the conversation I shared a story of my own. I said, “If it makes you feel better,” and told the most absurd tale i’ve ever experienced in which i was drugged with delaudid while on xanax and overdosed, and the guy responsible attempted to kidnap me - the proof of which was in that i had to get him to return to where he left me (someone stopped him from taking me, thank fuck) because all my shit was in his truck. and a month later, still suffering the mental and physical aftermath of OD bc no one took me to the hospital and even dissuaded me from doing so the following day - my life came unraveled and it was too much, and especially due to the mental effects of the OD, and I was young and dumb, and well... I tried to end it all. my partner at the time responded by dumping me and fucking my neighbor two days later! i mean, by god LOL. I know there’s a lot to unpack here, but at surface level, it’s a hell of a story. It’s so ridiculous it’s funny. Like truly some deranged soap opera shit. I shared this story because it’s RIDICULOUS. It’s outlandish. Few experiences can hold a candle to just how fucking intense and kooky the story is. It’s like a fucking Shakespeare play lol. Also because I know that because person b had been expecting my friend to dump them, they staged a suicide by eating a bottle and a half of tylenol after my friend had gone back home. My friend had come over to support them because they were going to admit themself to the mental hospital - which I respect. It’s good to know when you need help, and do what you need to to get better and get it together. I respect trying. However, earlier in during that night while my friend was still present, they simply... walked out of the house! And the last time they’d done that was about a year prior - to pull a suicide stunt. They lured my friend out to a bridge, acting as if they intended to jump. It’s important to know at this point that there are numerous ways to ensure a successful suicide in this house, especially because almost everyone here is doing HRT - an embolism will easily take care of the light in your eyes with little to no mess, and sleeping pills to ensure you feel no pain. There are also multiple resources for a hanging, to bleed out in the tub if you want to go out with theatrics and REALLY traumatize your loved ones (since, yknow, inflicting trauma and urgency upon their peers seemed to be an important factor in person b’s suicide plan), to list a few. It was a stunt. Additionally, if you have been following me for long enough, you will know that I lost a very dear friend to suicide nearly two years ago and the toll it took was inexplicable - it literally changed my life forever. So, I do not take such actions lightly. But it’s not my place to put them in theirs, so I keep it to myself. Returning to the conversation which person b hijacked, they responded by saying that my friend (who is genuinely one of the most upstanding and genuinely kind and passionate and sentimental people I have ever met in my life, and also really has his shit together - lives independently and works for the city helping disadvantaged individuals in community and generally just being accessible to anyone who might need help of any caliber) had done to them what that particular ex had done. It was such a short statement, it happened so quickly, by the time they’d finished saying the words I wasn’t sure they had actually just said them. Why? Because as formerly mentioned, year ago they pulled a similar stunt - staged a suicide attempt - and my friend, against his better judgement - let this event slide, and has regretted it since. While I told him that he had been sitting on his uncertainty for too long, he continued to extend himself time and time again for person b, no matter the toll it took on him. They have continuously exhibited harmful behaviors - mostly to others, but some to themself (most of which include complacency), and in the past few months I have been the one that my friend confided in about how this person had been hurting them. And ofc, I understand and appreciate that my roommate (person b) and i have almost all of the same mental health diagnoses - but frankly I have about 4 years on them and exponentially more life skills. Not boasting here, just stating a fact. They are very irresponsible and immature. This is why my friend broke up with them. As one does - their places in life were just too different and incompatible to the point of dealing harm to my friend. Such situations are often simply a part of life - very normal, very common. Anyway, so my roommate tried to spin the whole situation differently than it happened, omitted multiple poor and extreme choices of their own, and intentionally implied that my friend (and also the friend of the entire household, and the one who introduced them to the household) had left them because of the suicide. Which... when stated so plainly, is not entirely untrue, but is not entirely true - it is a misleading technical truth. They intentionally obscured the truth to sell a version of the story that painted my friend as “the bad guy,” and themself as having moral high ground. It was never just the suicide attempt, it was never the reason why they felt suicide was an option - to which I can empathize and sympathize. But rather It was all the reasons why not to do such a thing where evident everywhere, and their neglect to all these reasons - including how deeply horrific and painful it was for those of us who care about them. It is also greatly because they never intended to succeed, they intended it as a cry for attention. To say this is inappropriate is a criminal understatement, lol. So when they made this statement, so easily, so quickly - I just... kind of stared at them. They clearly must think I know nothing. Either that or that I’m a fool. Either that or they are such a fool it hasn’t occurred to them that I would reasonably know the details of their relationship, being that I am their now-ex’s best friend and confidant. So I just said that “unfortunately,” I had business law assignments due at the end of the night I had to attend to. I finished loading up the dishwasher and returned to my room. I let the interaction marinate in my mind. Now, it’s crucial to know that person B knows next to nothing about me. Honestly, none of these people really know anything about me besides the fact that I am, in general, on the other end of a major break up and that I’m a mortuary sciences student. This is intentional, as I have extreme trust issues, and live by the saying “not my monkeys, not my circus,” and I apply this statement to and fro; you can’t have mine and I don’t want yours unless you are a part of my circus. And exceedingly few are truly a part of my circus. So person B doesn’t know anything I’ve been through, they don’t know how much I know - which is everything - and they don’t know just how far I’ve come. They don’t know that one of my favorite people was found nearly two weeks post mortem on the other end of a rope, that I was initially lied to about the event for social capital, or that the lie was preferable to the reality, or that the entire event sent me into legitimate psychosis and when I came out of it I was almost a completely different person. They don’t know that entirely isolated myself as a response or that I ended up in this town because I was running from that. They don’t know that I didn’t leave my house or speak to anyone - at all - for at least 6 months following discovering said lie. They don’t know that their ex is my best and only true friend and confidant here. They don’t know how nigh inextricably entwined my ex and I were and how devastating this entire process has been for me. I already had deeply affecting trust issues, and this has only impacted them, if not completely officiated a decision to entirely withdraw from other humans. I do not leave my room except to cook, clean the house or myself. They don’t know that I know the vast majority of the contents that make up the person who is their now-ex, and thus the vast a majority of their relationship. They don’t know that my mother used to beat me or that my father was never there to witness it until one day it boiled over and she had me pinned against a wall because she had figured out I was queer while she was in an ill-medicated induced state of psychosis. They don’t know that I struggle with violent intrusive thoughts to such an extent that I have to take medications for it. They don’t know I have a collection of medical equipment, medical textbooks, and a bowie knife in my room and that if they or anyone else were to overstep too much or I snap, I can make them disappear, and that have access to places that will ensure their disappearance is permanent - though such a thing is outlandish and unreasonable, the facts still stand all the same. They don’t know why I wish to engage with the dead, that I find the biological process fascinating and beautiful and the medical processes involved soothing and cathartic. They don’t know that I used to be just like them but worse. They don’t know that after being on both sides of the fence, I am forever painfully aware that surviving a loved one’s suicide is infinitely more painful than surviving your own. They don’t know that I know that if they knew that, they wouldn’t have pulled the suicide stunt, and if they are aware of this, that makes it exponentially worse. They don’t know that I’ve seen far too much I can never unsee, and that I now have no choice but to live with that. They don’t know that I’m ok with that, now, and I’m using the worst I’ve been through to create my best self and life. They can only see the visible aftermath all this left to forever mar my skin. So yes, it’s an intentional choice to withhold my information from everyone. And in doing so, person B never realizes that I catch them red handed at every opportunity, and how much respect I’ve lost for them in a matter of weeks. That every time they try to manipulate my opinions, they not only fail but are rendering themself vulnerable and more visible to me. They don’t realize how much of them I can see with so little telling - they don’t realize that I know they can’t bare their pain being unknown, and that they know they are pathetic only just enough to lie about their personal situations and events to obscure their nature. They truly have no idea of anything occurring between us. It’s almost funny.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that they truly have no idea that I was literally the worst person in existence to make such statements to lol. After sleeping on it, I’ve decided that while in turn I have closed myself off from them, and as much as I’d like to tell them off and force them to learn better that I cannot, but most of all it infuriates me to hear them talk about my friend - everyone’s friend - like that. I can’t change them, where they are in life, or their poor coping skills, but I can put enough fear into them to hopefully dissuade them from ever trying to spout such slanderous bullshit again. I will address it with them, I don’t entirely expect them to truly cognate what I tell them but I need to make it clear that if they ever fucking make such a statement in front of me, and lest there be others, I WILL embarrass them in front of everyone in the room. Fucking idiot

#the actions of some people really do spawn a plethora of shakesspearian bullshit lol #but god last night i was ready fucking take them out of this world lolllllll #like they have no idea they even said or did anything wrong #like woof bitch #also yes i know i'm extremely normal lol #whats new lol

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randomboo256 · 2 years

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Pac-Man World 3 Review

To say that the Pac-Man World series has been rocky so far is an understatement. Pac-Man World 1, while having some fun concepts, had generally poor level design and bad controls. Pac-Man World 2 meanwhile reinvented the formula to work as a proper 3D platformer, however it left some good things behind in its attempts to improve. Mainly, it left behind the feeling of exploration the original had. Not only that, but the whole last two worlds of the game were complete garbage, which in a game as short as this amounts to a sizable chunk of the overall experience.

This puts a Pac-Man World 3 in an odd position. It should optimally produce a game with all the good of World 2 removed from the bad as well as recapturing some of that lost exploration all while giving good reason TO explore. However, Pac-Man World 3 is not a game interested in giving us a more refined Pac-Man World 2. It, much like its predecessor, wants to completely reinvent the Pac-Man World formula, arguably making it the most different game in the whole series. It's the black sheep, apparently.

Of course as a kid I knew none of this when I played World 3 for the first time on my mom's duct-taped together PSP. World 3 was one of the first video games I ever remember playing, although I never got very far into it. Not sure I even really passed the first level honestly. I sure did love that box art though. Regardless, it was enough to get me to be a fan of Pac-Man from an early age. Him being in Smash For was actually what got me to buy that game, which lead to me becoming as big of a video game nerd as I currently am. So in a way, this game had a pretty big impact on my life, despite never truly playing it beyond the first level.

So anyway, how's the game itself? Well for starters, story. This game actually has one surprisingly. I won't spoil much bc this bizarre plot was actually part of what kept me playing. Overall the writing was decent. I'd say it's on par with a standard Cartoon Network show or such. They actually had some pretty decent jokes all throughout, but nothing must play by any means. The real highlight is Pac-Man himself. He's not silent anymore. He's now a fully voiced proper main character with frequent dialogue with other characters, even mid level. He's written perfectly. He's some a loveable upbeat guy with just a hint of sarcasm thrown in. The voice acting overall is pretty solid for a Gamecube platformer. Overall, this was one of my favorite aspects of the experience. Some people say that this approach to storytelling is too different from Pac-Man World 1 and 2, but is being different really that bad? They still have the same light hearted cartoon tone. It's just that one goes for minimal story and the other leans into it. I think it works honestly.

As for gameplay, it's also pretty different. Firstly, more moveset changes. The kickflip is gone, which is a shame. Yeah it was pointless but it was satisfying. Next, they further nerfed the butt bounce. In World 1, the butt bounce was so much higher than your normal jump that you're basically forced to use it as an awkward replacement. In World 2, your default jump was massively buffed, meaning using the now only slightly higher butt bounce was pretty pointless. In World 3, it now doesn't give you any height at all. However, it does create a shockwave on your third bounce, which helps with how imprecise it felt as an attack in the first two games. Speaking of attack, we now have a three hit combo. Considering he's been wearing boxing gloves this whole time, it's kinda weird he didn't have this yet tbh. Anyway, the combo is quick and snappy. I quite like the controls of it tbh. We also have brand new Wall Jump. It feels good enough I suppose, and they really get some use out of it here and there. Lastly, the best change was to the rev roll. It has momentum! You can now use it more or less the same way Sonic would use a spin dash. You can rev in place for a second, quickly jump, and go much farther. The rev roll in general gets a lot more well deserved use in this game. Overall, I think this moveset was an improvement. It kinda sucks that the bounce is only an attack/quick jump now, but it's not a big deal. Honestly after World 1, I was completely sick of the butt bounce anyway.

As for level design, it's also very different. While World 2 was a 3D game, it was pretty Crash Bandicoot. Running down linear hallways to the end. World 3 meanwhile is much more open. You're in wider areas with a fully controllable camera as you figure out the path forward. It's still a linear level by level game mind you, just not in the literal "nearly the entire game is an actual straight line" sense anymore. With collectables scattered everywhere, many of which being required to open doors or open Pac-Dot chains, World 3 really does a lot to recapture that lost feeling of exploration. The level design on the whole was honestly pretty solid. I thought it had a lot of fun platforming, even late into the game. The game also lacked a world map and rather decided to naturally segway into the next level at the end of the previous. All in all, this game out of all of them truly felt like an actual adventure rather than just a standard level by level platformer, which this game still technically is. That feeling is helped by the game's much longer run time, at least for me. I beat the others in just one or two sittings. I beat this game over the course of a week, although I was taking my time to explore.

Level design wasn't perfect though. One big issue was that because of the more open design, I sometimes had issues figuring out where to go or what exactly to do. I ended up wasting a lot of time just stumbling around. I think this is part of the reason I never got very far into this game as a kid. Although even then, with how challenging a few of this game's later moments were I doubt I would've finished it as a kid anyway. While I'm complaining, a big issue is that all of your non-key item collectables are now even more worthless than before. Everything that doesn't explicitly open a path forward now only gives you points, even including Pac-Dots which you don't even have a counter for anymore. World 2 gave you a free health wedge every 50 Pac-Dots. They could've at least kept that, but alas. However, despite these not doing anything I still went out of my way to grab the extra collectables because it was honestly still fun to do so. I managed to top most of the built in leaderboards as well, although I'm not sure how much of a brag that is.

But I think I should finally discuss the elephant in the room: combat. While the first two games had minimal combat, World 3 doubles down on it. In short doses, I think the combat in this game is honestly fun. When it's just two or three enemies along your platforming path, it's no big deal. However the game also has the tendency to drop you in a room full of enemies as you slowly have to just beat them all. The problem is that there is very little variety. Your combat moveset pool is small and there's only a few enemy types, making nearly every combat encounter of this type boring and repetitive. They do throw in a few power ups, but those also get repetitive. It gets worse though. We also have ghost attacks where you're forced to stand in an enclosed space as you wait for a power pellet to spawn, eat ghosts, run away, and repeat over and over until it ends. It's mind numbing.

Of all of this combat shit is what the game is most known for, and yeah it's bad. However, does it really ruin it? Honestly, I don't think so. Most of the game is spent platforming and exploring. While the combat sections are suffocating, it's only like 20% of the game. However, when combined with the additional maybe 10% of me running around aimlessly to figure out where to go, we end up with roughly 30% of the game that wasn't an enjoyable experience. 70% ain't bad, right?

Overall, I think this managed to be the best game in the series. It has the best story, the best moveset, and the best exploration, even if a large percentage of that time was spent in miserable combat. I'd say this game is a high 7/10, compared to the low 7/10 of World 2 and the 3/10 of World 1. If you can only play one of these games, play this one, although you won't be missing much if you don't play any.

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yukipri · 3 years

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Bad Batch end of season thoughts/ramble, bc it's been a week and I just wanna get it all off my chest...

(end of season spoilers and very disorganized rambling)

First off, I do want to say that I enjoyed watching the show. It fulfilled its primary purpose: entertainment. It was nice having something to look forward to every week, and even though it wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was fun. The animation was gorgeous, I liked all the references and tie ins. I will likely watch it again, and will watch season 2. This is by no means meant to be a hate post.

That being said, it is critical so please just skip if you're not into that!

The thing is...it takes very, Very little for me to love a clone. He doesn't need lines, or a face, or even a name, and the default is that I will love him. He can even be a little bastard, like Slick, and it's fine. I always want to know more about them, and wish they had more screen time and time in general to develop their characters. So given that we were getting 16 (20 eps total if we count TCW S7 pilot arc) centered around these guys, I was expecting to absolutely adore them by the end.

And I wanted to love the Bad Batch, I wanted to love them so damn much, and I tried. But I think one of the reasons why they never fully clicked for me was that their thing seems to be "we're unique, we never fit in, we're outsiders in our own home, among the people who are supposed to be our own family, and so we've found our home with each other."

Which! That's usually a wonderful message, and not a particularly rare or unique one either for stories! I usually dig these kinds of stories!

The problem here is the extremely unique situation of the clones. They are literally created to be identical, brain washed to be uniform. They must conform, or are killed off by their creators, and their conformity isn't a choice in the slightest, but one of fear and necessity.

Their uniformity is something that they are also entirely aware of--it's unavoidable, they're clones. Once out in the real galaxy, they all strive to find and establish unique identities for themselves, struggling against a galaxy that just wants them to be faceless products. It's a shared struggle, and all they have are each other, and their brotherhood is sacred as a result. Shunning unique identity is the opposite of who a clone is--it's what they all want.

So on one hand, it's understandable that the Batch stuck out (when all others who would have also stuck out were culled, when individuality isn't allowed). It's understandable that they would have yearned for the brotherhood shared by the other clones, and when they couldn't have it, they stuck closer to each other. It's even understandable that they would feel bitter, having experienced bullying at the hands of the other clones (but isn't it also understandable that the other clones would feel bitter that the Batch gets special treatment, when their own brothers with less-than-beneficial mutations were taken by the Kaminoans to never return?).

And so we have this batch of clones, who the Kaminoans call "mutated," but also specify that their mutations are "desirable" (implying what happens to mutations that are undesirable...). They have their own unique unit, in which they're able to improvise and act freely with seemingly little to no oversight, so long as they complete their mission. No Jedi to obey, no nat-born officers who look down on them. In fact, they look so different from standard clone troopers that most of the galaxy probably don't even know they are clones. They have their own ship (personalized), they have their own possessions (which we don't really see any other clones have), they have their own barracks (probably also very unique), and they even have access to superior weapons and armor (most of the Batch, minus Echo, seem to be wearing modified Katarn-class armor which is supposed to be for Commandos. we KNOW it holds up better than standard trooper armor).

So I'm sure they had some unpleasant experiences growing up, and I do get it. But at least at "present" end of clone wars, they honestly seem to be living infinitely better than all other clones? They still need to follow orders but they have more freedom, and perhaps most importantly, they have clear uniqueness that is denied almost all other clones. And yes, some of the clones on Kamino bully them, but we've seen NONE of the "regular" clones that we know to be particularly nasty to them, and in fact it's Crosshair who starts it by calling them "Regs."

And how does the Batch respond to this situation? By acting superior. It's Crosshair who says and it believes this firmly, and I do feel that the others are likely mostly influenced by this, but it's also true that Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech don't really deny this either. They don't like the "regs," they do act like they're "better." Poor Echo, who they repeatedly seem to forget is in the room, and who they call "machine" and such...yikes yo

So I guess the point is, I just really struggled to feel sympathetic towards them, and was already on a kinda eh about their premise. They're marketed as "the special clone squad"--and yet they're not nice to the clones I love. I thought that wasn't great, but also hoped that the series would work towards them understanding the other clones better, and I love character development so that woulda been fine--but, nothing. A glance from Hunter at Howzer. Extended camaraderie from Gregor, who I feel they mostly just tolerate for the mission, other than Echo who genuinely cares.

And on top of feeling not feeling particularly sympathetic towards what I saw as a pretty privileged group of clones, the Batch seems to place primary blame of their woes on the "regs" themselves, who again, honestly seem far worse off! There isn't blame directed at the people who demanded the conformity from the other clones in the first place, that made it so the Batch couldn't fit in. The Batch was modified due to the Kaminoans (and implied specifically Nala Se). She's the reason why they don't fit in. And the Kaminoans are also why the other clones have to be so uniform, why they must fight to be people and not products.

Bitterness and pettiness can be fine in characters. But it's frustrating to see in a group supposed to be competent and elite, especially when those feelings have consequences. Sure, it sucks when someone throws a food tray at you. You can throw food back. It's not an equal reaction to feel no remorse when you shoot that guy dead in a blaster fight, when for all other clones, having to kill another clone is one of the most horrible, tragic things that one can do (thanks, Umbara).

Fives was the only clone to actually point a blaster at Nala Se.

We know Omega has deeply personal history with Nala Se. She was Nala Se's personal medical assistant. We see her cry when she takes off her head ornament that matches Nala Se. We know that being back in the lab gives Omega complicated, and probably not entirely positive feelings. But we barely learn more about this relationship, other than these glimpses.

And I get the feeling that to Omega at least, Nala Se wasn't all terrible. If Omega grew up with mostly only Nala Se for company, she had to have gotten her sheltered outlook on life, and her willingness to help others from somewhere. Nala Se intentionally let Omega go, to be "safe."

I think Omega's adorable, and I do like her. But I wasn't able to fully love her to the extent I wanted to, because there was always the fear that she was involved in the creation and implantation of the chips. She knows about them, she would have been positioned to do so. I want to think she would never, and I was hoping the show would reassure us of that, but it never did. We don't actually know how Omega feels about Nala Se, or even the chips and their presence in other clones. Instead, all we know is that Omega doesn't like "regs."

And again, "they call me lab scrubber," and "I helped put (or am complicit in putting) mind control devices in their heads," are kinda, unequal. Again I hope it's not the case. But it definitely kept me feeling uneasy throughout the show.

It really boils down to I don't trust or forgive Nala Se, and the Batch's lack of stance against her and the other Kaminoans, and clear distaste for their other clone brothers, really puts them in a situation that makes it difficult for me to take their side entirely.

And then gosh, Hunter. During Crosshair's whole "you never came back for me," spiel, I couldn't help but think he's kinda right. He had 15 episodes. Sure, it's difficult to get Crosshair back. But they could have done something. They could have done research. We could have had scenes of them wondering where Crosshair is, discussions on how best to find him, even if that discussion ended in, "but we can't risk it right now." They could have grilled Omega for information on the chips, which they really shoulda done either way, but especially since that knowledge is important to understanding what (they thought had) happened to Crosshair. Instead, they just ran every time Crosshair showed up. The show could have done better to show that they cared, and were trying, instead of just, y'know, doing chores for Cid. One, "I kinda miss him," doesn't really count as working on getting him back, at least in my books.

The sole exception to all of this, of course, is Echo. Who really, he works with the Batch fine, he's a former ARC and can more than keep up. Skillset-wise, he fits in well enough. But this season really made me wonder why he's with them at all. Crosshair's revelation and true feelings at the end of the season were no surprise to me, as they're consistent with what we've seen of him from TCW S7. But for Echo, a former "reg" to have to work with someone like Crosshair...even if Crosshair thought Echo was "different" enough to accept him, those are his brothers that Crosshair thinks he's so superior to, and has no issue speaking disdainfully about.

The increasing tension between Echo and Hunter, Echo's interest in helping Rex, in helping other clones, in doing something...I do hope they reach a point where Echo demands they go help, or he's leaving.

They gave Crosshair a chance, despite the fact that his choices were willing. I really hope Echo can convince the Batch to help save the other clones who don't have a choice. Because even if the Batch doesn't consider them their brothers, they're certainly Echo's. They matter just as much as Crosshair, and I really hope season 2 shows it narratively.

To conclude, again I'm interested in seeing what happens next, and I want answers about Omega and Nala Se. I find it interesting that they tied the facility where they took Nala Se in with the scientist dude collecting data on Grogu in the Mandalorian and those cloning labs. All of this is interesting, but at the same time I feel like it's trying to build up to Snoke/Palpatine stuff in the sequels which...I don't care nearly as much about, but who knows, could be neat ^ ^;

I'm okay with, and have made peace with the fact that the Bad Batch probably isn't the "clones-centric" show I wanted, and that they'll continue their own story, and probably continue to not care much about other clones in upcoming seasons. That's unfortunate, but alright. I'm interested enough in their story too.

But at the same time...I can't help but think man, if they have the time and budget to do a season 2, after seeing what was (or wasn't) accomplished in season 1...I wish they'd also make a Rex/Cody/Wolffe/"regular clones" show, because in the end, if you're going to do a "clones show"....that's who I want to see most.

If you got to the end, thank you for reading, and being an ear to my ranting ^ ^; Again this is literally just getting this off my chest. If this take isn't one you agree with, please just ignore. For people who did fall in love with the Batch, I'm happy for you, and regret that it just couldn't happen for me. But, I'm hoping that S2 will change my mind, but we'll just have to see! ^ ^;

#the bad batch #bad batch #YukiPri rambles #really i'm not interested in a debate i just want to ramble

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blackdevilwhitedemon · 3 years

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Writing An Otome Isekai Thingy

Anyway, as the title states, I'm writing an otome isekai thingy! I didn't know where else to post this (besides r/otomeisakai), so here I am. I'm writing one for 3 reasons.

A- I’m very bored. :(

B- My brother rec me one of these things a few months ago; I've descended into the rabbit hole ever since.

C- Writer's block! I wanna write for my fanfics, but my brain said no. Maybe if I write OG content it can get my creative juices going and I can finally go back to working on updates.

Had a couple of ideas for a story and had my brother pick one by random.

The 'guy gets reincarnated as the yandere capture target' idea got picked.

My general idea is that a guy who’s an Otaku and reads/watches romance series as a guilty pleasure gets reincarnated into an otome. He actually played the otome he’s in bc his younger sister basically nagged him to bc she wanted someone to talk to about it.

He realizes though that he woke up as the baby version of Shamus Hendell, the yandere capture target of Yellow Rose of Amarea.

Yanderes don’t typically become yanderes through a loving family and a good life, so of course this character had a tragic anime backstory and goes through maybe hardships in his life before ending up in the academy where the game starts.

The MC realizes this and is freaking out, bc he doesn’t want to deal with the series of horrible events that the OG character went through.

I like series where the Protag kisses up others to survive bc even if they’re appealing to others, typically they are the ones who have others wrapped around their fingers. (And for some reason that’s assuming to me.)

So he kinda ends up doing that. He seeks out the other capture targets, and the heroine and villainess. Mostly to get them on his side. His thought process is, ‘if I can’t really protect myself, why not get ppl in higher places to do it for me?’

And it does work as he gets very chummy with the 2nd prince who’s the one that gets him out of the bad situation first. And bc he has the attention of the second prince, he’s able to meet some of them other characters.

There’s a few characters he won't meet until the academy arc, but most of the important characters he’ll meet around here.

For instance, there’s the commoner character who got into the school through scholarships or bc he has high/rare magic skills or whatever. He’s also one of the capture targets. The MC doesn’t want to find him bc he wants his guy on his side, but bc he knows this guy is actually batshit crazy. He wants to find him earlier to stop him from blah blah that the guy does in all his endings. But he cannot find him until then bc this dude is a commoner and the MC is still technically a part of high society. So it was basically impossible to find him.

This is going to be a big anxiety of the MC once he’s in a more comfortable position. Knowing that this guy in the future will try to do smth very drastic and dangerous, is still out there.

The MC will try to appeal to important characters by acting weak and soft, like, a crybaby a guess? He wants to seem like a little rabbit to others. And to his utter surprise, it fucking works. (He’s taking advantage of his softboi looks, as the character was designed to look feminine and non-threatening so fans during the hype wouldn’t be able to tell the character was going to be a yandere. And therefore making the fact like, a plot twist in the game as Shamus comes off as a quite n’ shy guy at first.)

He forms a bromance with the 2nd prince. After some stuff happens he befriends the villainess who ends up crushing on him. The villainess big bro who’s a siscon is chill w/ him since his sister likes him. But is very much in the mindset that if the MC hurts his sis in any way, he’s never gonna see the light of day. The heroine falls for him very quickly which is actually off-putting for him. (The joke is that she’s airheaded & kinda dumb. She just has a very cheerful personality by default. The reasoning is that that’s how marketing portrayed her and since she’s supposed to be a blank slate that’s just what her personality turned into.) The heroine 100% has her bangs covering her eyes.

The MC leaves a powerful impression on the short cute boy (who’s actually a meanie) and later in the academy arc has this weird anime admiration for him. You know what I’m talking about. The commoner, while harboring a hatred for the aristocrats and nobles, respects the MC to an extent later turning into a crush. (That of which will absolutely give the MC whiplash.)

Two characters who are mobs in the game become the MC’s normal friends when he feels like the personality of the main characters are too much. Maybe he has more mob friends idk yet, but two of the ones he adored as characters the most both end up having crushes on him. One girl, one boy.

5 ppl will like-like him. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.

He definitely takes advantage of this lmao. (In like, a protection squad way, not harem.)

Maybe I’ll even have two of the girls lose interest bc they realize they like each other,,,, Have a lilly aside romance,,,, You know bc,,,gurls pretty,,,,

My need for sapphic content aside, ultimately my goal is to have fun while writing this and confuse the heck hacky out of my readers on who the true love interest will be. >:)

I guess I’ll mostly be writing this with a wattpad audience in mind??? (But it’s mostly just for fun so who knows.)

Since AO3 is more oriented to fanfics, my Quotev is the physical manifestation of a dead goldfish in a bowl, and I don’t think this is smth the ppl on FictionPress would like to read about… So yeah, my Wattpad audience it is. I have no choice.

I’m still on the 1st ch as I keep revising my outline. I at least want a solid outline of the first arc before I post anything. Imma try and attempt constant updates but to do so I need to know wtf I’m doing. So all this jazz is subject to change.

And just to let you know how the tone of the story will be (for most of it, the 1st arc is definitely going to be more serious), the title for chapter 1 is ‘Sorry Truck-kun, You’ve Been Replaced’ since he died by choking on an apple instead of being hit by a truck.

#textpost #otome isekai #isekai #isekai novel #writing wip #my writing #story ideas

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aclosetfan · 3 years

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“It’s just so difficult. Everytime we face him and his brothers, it’s a grueling battle of wits.” Blossom sighed, dunking her tea bag into her mug, “I don’t know how much more I can take sometimes.”

Bubbles frowned and really looked at her sister. It was a rare thing to hear her admit. Placing a hand on Blossom’s, she tried smiling, “Blossom, he’s nothing more than just a another bad guy. We’ll figure out how to defeat him. All three of them! We can’t give up hope yet!”

Blossom glared at her mug, and Bubbles bit back a sigh. It wasn’t like Bubbles didn’t love being there for her sisters. She wanted them to come to her for every problem. But Blossom had been sulking about their last fight for a week, and, frankly, Bubbles was getting a little worn down hearing how powerful, and almighty, and impossible her sister’s counterpart was. Blossom obviously didn’t want any advice; she didn’t want her problems solved or thought out. No, Bloss just wanted to...gab and complain in an effort to drown in her sorrows. And Bubbles was the one (always the one) to hear it.

Brick had apparently outsmarted her in a...puzzle? Bubbles didn’t really know exactly. Her eyes had glazed over by the time Blossom had finally gotten around to explaining what the actual issue was. She would have probably paid better attention if Brick had actually been flirting with Blossom. Who knew though, maybe he was in his own special nerdy way, but Bubbles certainly couldn’t parse out anything romantic about the interaction. Knowing the two of them though, Brick’s offense was more likely akin to some odd riddle or clever word play as the two were oftened engaged in doing, instead of physically fighting.

Of course, her and Buttercup had walked away with bruises galore because their counterparts had no need for idle chit-chat, but Bubbles pushed that small annoyance down, down, down. It was getting harder and harder though to shove the idea away. Because if Blossom and Brick one day decided to keep the word play consice and to the point, maybe, just maybe, the fights with the boys would be quicker, and her and Buttercup wouldn’t be so...on the brink of death all the time?

“Ease for you to say!” Blossom finally snorted and Bubbles eyebrows shot up—had she said any of that outloud?

“S-sorry, what?” Bubbles stuttered out, trying not to meet Blossom’s eyes. Guilt flared in her chest. She hadn’t meant to be mean. It was just that when Blossom and Brick got going, Boomer and Butch had more time to fight.

“Defeating Brick is impossible!” Blossom huffed and Bubbles realized, after a moment, that Blossom was referring to her pep talk and not her inner monologue. A small relief in some ways, a bit disappointing in others.

“That’s not true, Blossom.” She countered, “Everyone has a weak spot. You know, I’ve been thinking, we get more flies with honey, right? I think there’s still hope for the three of them, if we just kill’em with kindness!”

Blossom stared at her for a moment, her eyes turning into icy stone, “Brick isn’t Boomer, Bubbles.”

Bubbles couldn’t stop herself from bristling, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Kindness won’t work with him, like it may with Boomer—” She spat and Bubbles raised a finger to protest because kindness didn’t work on Boomer. He just laughed and continued to push her into the concrete, or the brick wall, or whatever he had her pinned down on as she expressed a desire for his betterment. He’d press against her in funny little ways and say odd little things hotly against her ear like good boys can’t do this, though, can they? And, embarrassingly, while Bubbles would rapidly and outwardly disagree with his actions, a hot kernel of something would explode inside of her that, as of late, made her and Boomer’s fights very concerning.

A kind of concerning that she was desperately trying to ignore. But Blossom didn’t know that. Blossom never asked about her or Boomer. She hardly even asked about Butch and Buttercup, and those fights worried Bubbles more then her own.

And Blossom didn’t allow Bubbles to express this once again, as she ignored her hesitant finger of protest.

“—Brick is a challenge—” Blossom explained in a way that implied Boomer was not, “His intellect is no joke.”

Bubbles could feel her cheeks reddening. While she loathed the idea that she felt the urge to jump to Boomer’s defense so quickly, it felt like he wasn’t the only one being insulted at that moment. Boomer wasn’t the smartest, sure, but he talked in ways Brick could never. She had never seen another villian threaten a citizen’s life so easily and then walk away with their number in hand, like Boomer could, in her life. He was dastardly charming. Truly the young man the Professor had warned them about. Hearts were just play things to him. She knew it. He knew it. He knew she knew it. Everyone knew it. And no one but her seemed to care.

“—honestly, you two should count yourselves lucky. I’m the one stuck fighting the toughest of the brothers everytime!” Blossom ranted on and all her thoughts of Boomer instantly dissipated. She regarded her sister and the ridiculous comment for a moment before something clicked in her head.

Because, oh, everything made sense now! All her building anger was for nothing! Blossom had just been joking!

“Yeah, right, Brick’s the toughest!” She giggled along, “You had me going there for a second Blossy! You need to work on your set-up, I thought you were being serious!”

This time Blossom bristled, “I am being serious.”

Her giggling died and she blinked, “Wait, what?”

“Brick is the toughest out of the three of them. The way he thinks, the way he fights...it’s pure precision! ‘Killing him with kindness’—” Blossom finger-quoted “—won’t work.”

Bubbles continued to blink. Her eyebrows furrowed and her lips pursed as she thought it over, and then she shook her head in disagreement, “No he’s not.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Brick’s not the toughest fighter.”

Blossom rolled her eyes, “Obviously, I’m not counting Buttercup. Just out of the three of—”

“Yeah, out of the three of them he’s not the toughest. It’s Butch, duh.”

“Well, he’s strong,” Blossom conceded, “but—”

The ugly feeling from before flared in her again.

“But nothing! He’s Buttercup’s counterpart! By default that makes him the toughest!” She argued, interrupting Blossom.

“Muscle mass doesn’t make you the toughest.” Blossom sighed, rolling her eyes again, like she was the one acting ridiculous! Like she was the one elevating her dumb counterpart to the level of an undefeatable god!

“Blossom! Seriously?” She gapped, “you haven’t fought him like I have—like Buttercup does! He’s the toughest. No talk, just do with him. He doesn’t let you breathe, he doesn’t give you an edge, he draws a line in the sand and he’d be damned if you pass it!”

“Brute force, brute strength does not make you the most skilled—”

“Oh my gosh! You can not be serious right now!” Her voice going a smidge shrill, “You cannot seriously think Brick—Blossom! Yes! Butch has that brute force, but Butch is skilled. He doesn’t have to overthink like you and Brick. He has a goal, he accomplishes that goal, there’s no persuading him.”

Blossom opened her mouth to respond, but Bubbles couldn’t stop herself and kept going.

“Like sure, sure!” She conceded, “He’s not playing mental chess with you but that’s because in his mind he’s already won! You’re just in the way! He’s—he’s feral! He fights to win! He—Buttercup!” She called out.

“Yo!” Buttercup called back from somewhere in the house, “Sup?”

“Who’s the toughest brother out of the rowdyruffs to fight?”

There was pregnant pause before Buttercup asked back, “Is this like a trick question or something?”

“Blossom thinks it’s Brick!”

Another pause before Buttercup’s laughter shook the house.

“That twig!” She cried back, “That’s amazing! Good one, Bloss!”

She stared Blossom down across the table and called back to Buttercup, “How’d your last fight with Butch go again, BC?”

Her sister’s laughter died down and she could hear her hum in thought, “Well, I mean, the left side of my rib cage was completely shattered and I pissed blood for about five days, but all in all, I’d say pretty average!”

“Did our favorite green bean let you talk him down?”

Buttercup’s laughter rang through the house again. She was in a good mood.

“Butch? No!” Buttercup snorted, “I couldn’t get a word in edge wise. He couldn’t either. Sort of be distressing if he had, though, given the fact that I broke his jaw! You should have seen how pissed he got!” Buttercup exclaimed, “Right before he killed my ribs.”

Blossom winced, but Buttercup either couldn’t hear it or didn’t bother to pay attention to it as she kept babbling on. The last fight they had with the boys certainly did do a pretty number on their sister, at least Bubbles was comforted by the fact that Blossom would readily agree to that much.

“Oh, well,” Buttercup chirped from the other room, “not the most harrowing victory for side of good, but I’ll get’em next time! Going to break his shins! Can’t kick with no shins!”

Blossom’s frown intensified. She wasn’t one for unnecessary violence. An irony not lost on Bubbles.

“Gotta be quick though!” Buttercup continued out loud, but mostly for her own benefit, “Last time I tried, I lost an arm!” There was a deep sigh and Buttercup spoke up again with a groan, “Wish I knew what was going on in that head of his. Make everything easier!”

“Like remember—” Buttercup continued exceeding her word limit for the day, but talking through a good fight was one of her favorite pastimes “—that one time when I thought he was going for throat, but he dropped last minute and got my knee! What was with that? It opened up his back though, so I was able to—”

Bubbles tuned Buttercup out and turned back to Blossom, “Jeez, Blossy! When was the last time Brick made you piss blood again?

Blossom gave her the driest of looks, “I think you’ve made your point.”

Bubbles shrugged and giggled, “Hey, maybe next time you can fight Butch and give Butters a break, yeah?”

“—and the last time I did that he gouged my eye out! But that’s okay because I ripped something off of him too, I don’t know what, but it was definitely a piece of something. Then I thought, hey why not go for his shoulders! That worked out more or less, less at the time though, helps more now—”

Blossom grimaced, “I’ll stick with the arrogant one, thanks.”

“Now arrogant—” Bubbles tapped her chin in thought, “—arrogant is a good word! Brick certainly is arrogant.”

“Right!?” Blossom’s eyes widened as she nodded her head in agreement and launched right back into it all over again.

#ppg fic drabble #i actually write sometime I don’t just make shit posts #it’s not edited #it’s not original #probs delete and fix later #but later may not come around so here ya go!#slight blues #but this one’s for butch #knocks brick down because I like bullying him #tw: violence #tw: body horror #(very slight though not terribly graphic)#I feel like it goes without saying but just in case they’re aged up in this fic! like young adult #my writing

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blacknovelist · 4 years

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sup ok here’s the promised details on uhhhhhh All for One in @guardianlioness‘s and I’s Ageswap Mess, formed by collaborative headcanon jamming on discord and then roughly paraphrased via a run thru the unfortunate Quadruple Lengthening Filter that’s built into my brain bc I’m incapable of being brief.

(something of an expansion on this post and this ask. Nooooot spoiler free, actually pretty spoilers, idk, will pop it under a readmore bc who knows how long I’m gonna go on also)

ALSO!! I can’t at u but @randommly-passing-mia u asked forever ago about Toshinori and AfO’s relationship in this AU and i answered what I could then but I’m pleased to announce this goes more into that bc I knew Very Little back then. :)

So, All for One! Now, I feel it appropriate to note that the previous post I made regarding the history of OfA in Ageswap, as well as just about everything I’ve posted abt AfO and OfA for Ageswap (except for the linked ask above, obv) was made before the arc with the League of Villains and Shigaraki’s backstory all came out. Now that we’ve got some of those contexts, we can go a little further in fleshing everything else out, which we did, a little, today.

Pls keep in mind that Ageswap’s goal is not and never has been to make a direct 1:1 translation of adults to kids and vice versa -- good lord we’d have a lot of empty spaces if we were doing that. So, uh. Anyway. it’s time for “we make a mess of the characters and also the timeline and the plot because it’s Our City Now”

Student AfO is a different creature to small Toshinori of our au. For the purposes of this post we’ll call him AfO, because while I’d love to just jump into referring to him as Shigaraki there’s a lot of confusions that lie down that road. Also, again, we’re calling mr heckhands mcmike Tomura, because Shigaraki is a name with Weight.

Because canon parallels, Ageswap AfO has a little brother who we’re making Kyudai Garaki/the Good Doctor and also quirkless for our purposes (whether he’s AfO’s biological brother is up in the air, we haven’t settled yet). Garaki has something of an intense obsession with quirks, constantly studying and doing research, not unlike Izuku, and the age gap between him and AfO is... about six years. Now, because AfO had already manifested a quirk of his own and that quirk had fearsome potential, One for All was originally going to be passed on to his brother, because before Ageswap Izuku, OfA had strictly been handed down to trained members of the family.

Tomura was a member of the group that had, through the generations, been working to fight against the users of One for All. To hit them where it hurt, he attacked Izuku’s mentor’s (we’ll call them the Mentor) home with a group of League fighters. When he found out there was a quirkless boy, and a second one who was all but quirkless for all that he’d been told to avoid using his own powers, he quickly took them in under the League’s wing -- both in an act of cruelty against OfA and out of some misguided sympathy for the boys.

The fearsome thing is the toxicity of the relationships Tomura formed with the League, and eventually with the boys. He meant well, when he took them in, but whatever this version of him went through... well, just about all his relationships are some level of manipulative and unhealthy by default. See: his tendency for physical closeness and being tactile, as mentioned in the ask.

He’s firmly of an opinion along the lines of “if you’ve got the power, and you know you have the power, and you’re not using it to do whatever you can or want, then why do you even have it?” and, for all of AfO’s childhood, Tomura tried his hardest to share this with AfO and sway the kid to his side. With the Mentor having dropped off the grid and abandoned the Shigaraki name in grief, AfO and his brother had nowhere else to go, but AfO was a smart and cautious kid: he couldn’t just listen without a fight, or a reason.

(AfO didn’t know Tomura meant to kill them, that he attacked their home on purpose. When he eventually finds out, he firmly believes Tomura meant to save them)

But Tomura’s persistent, and he doesn’t stop, and eventually he points out: if All for One is a quirk that allows him to take and give quirks, does that not mean he can seek out the perfect quirk for his little brother? All the reasons he’s suffered, AfO has the power to fix that.

That’s the thing that sways AfO to their side, that convinces him to stay with the League and learn under Tomura. Because if it’s for family, isn’t it worth it?

(AfO sees Tomura as a teacher, as a friend, as someone beloved and important. Shigaraki was AfO’s name, but it can be Tomura’s too, if Tomura wants. Then everyone knows they’re family. And Tomura accepts it -- another spit in the face of an enemy, a welcomed token from a beloved student. Shigaraki is a good name for the rest of the world to use, but Tomura, Tomura is a name for the League and the League alone.)

AfO tries, at first, to find other quirks for his brother while he trains, while his brother studies (while Tomura tries to sway Garaki to their side also, because look at what you know, what you could do with that knowledge, combined with your brother’s quirk, you’re so young and so so smart-). OfA is gone beyond the League’s sight, in the hands of the Symbol of Peace, so there’s no point on dwelling on it, really, surely another quirk would work better?

But then One for All comes back around, in the hands of this blond... nobody. His brother’s quirk, running around in a stranger. AfO continues to hunt potential quirks down for his brother and his brother’s studies, but he has a new goal: to try and claim OfA back and give it to who it really belongs to.

the problem of course being that he can’t take it by force like every other quirk, and killing Toshinori would merely render it lost forever.

Essentially, AfO’s primary grudge against Toshinori is the fact that he’s the current bearer of a quirk that, in AfO’s eyes, should belong to Garaki. And Toshinori’s quirklessness, or past quirklessness... is easy to know when you know the secret of One for All.

Some good stuff gets said abt AfO vs Toshinori in this answer here I think, and I’m drawing on it: Toshinori’s more instinct and heart to AfO’s logic and strategy. That’s not to say, obv, that neither of them draw on the other quality, but it’s what stands out most to me about the two of them and just, kind of their general dynamic (or at least, that’s how it seems).

USJ was a subtle message laid beneath a louder declaration. Two-for-one, if you will. “Wouldn't it be so nice to have a quirk that fit better in your hands? that didn't fritz or go funky whenever you so much as turned your head? A quirk you might not even have to coax and strain and train and change your body for?”

But AfO does not confront Toshinori until much later, until after the sports festival. See, the mall incident in this AU is a scene on bargaining.

He confronts Toshinori at the mall -- his face is not known, and it’s a simple matter to pull him off to the side. But there won’t be fighting here today. No, he only came to talk.

Questions, first. About Toshinori, his experience with One for All, what he thinks of other people’s quirks. About what it was like for him, growing up quirkless, left abandoned by so many people for it. Eventually, his conversation circles back around. I have a little brother. He’s quirkless, just like you. You know what he went through, what he suffered.

All for One even did his research, is even willing to play by rules closer to Toshinori’s own: tucked under his arm is a folder, with lists upon lists of people. Villains with sentences for life, villains under the death sentence, people who would have no life of returning to the world ever again. People who don’t have a reason to use their quirks any longer. People for whom it wouldn’t matter if he took their quirks anyway. “Take your pick,” he offers Toshinori. “I’ll give you whatever quirk you’ve ever wanted. I’ll even take it from a villain so none of your precious civilians have to suffer the loss — but that one belongs to my little brother.”

And, well. We all know he says no.

Why would Toshinori hang onto a quirk that isn’t even his? All the people out there, bearing the quirks that his brother and even his greatest enemy were robbed of at birth, and AfO has the power to grant both Toshinori and Garaki the power that they’d dreamed of, that belongs to them. He knows what it means to suffer without a quirk. Why won’t Toshinori let him fix that?

and idk specifically what Toshi would say, but I think it’s something along the lines of “no one asks for what they're born with or given, but we make the most of it anyway. That's how we're supposed to live.“

Anyway Toshinori and All for One hate each other SO fucking much but. Unfortunately, also just kind of Get Each Other on some level. Like, they despise one another but also, if there’s one thing they can believe in, it’s that the other will always Be The Way They Are. Friendly Enemyship, if you will.

There’s some level of pity that AfO also holds on the percieved coldness of Toshinori’s relationship to his mentor, Izuku. Izuku is... really awkward, in his relationship with Toshi, and while Izuku loves his student very much he has a hard time showing it -- and Toshinori thinks so poorly of himself, it’s hard to grasp how close they are from the outside sometimes. AfO totally tries to recruit Toshinori to their side, even after he figures they’re Tight and also even though he knows Toshinori won’t ever say yes. Like, he hates the guy, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a kickass ally.

Tomura would like Toshinori and AfO says as much to his face. “You’re more like him than I am, anyway. You can act without overthinking. And he wouldn’t care if you were quirkless. He doesn’t with my brother.”

(Toshinori hates that. He isn’t, he isn’t he isn’t like him at all.)

Tomura has also more or less promised AfO that, at the end of his lifespan, his student should take on Decay. AfO, of course, doesn’t want that and is on the hunt for a good longevity quirk to give to his mentor

In the end, the way All for One is kind of being played in this AU is something not so far off from Anakin Skywalker.

In Lioness’ words:

Noble in his desire to keep his family alive

But horribly misdirected

#Boku no hero academia #BNHA #My hero academia #mha #Ageswap AU #Blacknovelist talks #BNHA AU #BNHA Spoilers #long post #fukc this is long #All for One #AfO #Shigaraki #also technically #Toshinori #yeehaw yall

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years

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hxh RESUME

back at it again w/the hxh, heres my recap of the last few eps

ok so i totally forgot to recap that one ep at the end of the hunter exam arc lets see what i remember from like 3 wks ago lollll

i thiiiiink i left off in the middle of ep 21 lol. i really dont remember much tbh so im gonna skim the ep to refresh

exposition time! its so wild that if you lose ur hunter card That It like u cant get another or retake the exam hgabjdfuhasjf Ls

also the fact that you can sell it is rlly interesting

leorio & kurapika backing up gon as he confronts illumi again :’) good lil family

illumi u fool. gon is a shounen protag. he can do anything he sets his mind to

the fact that gon thanks illumi for telling him where killua is....hes literally THAT polite like...what a perfect boy

hisoka just fuckgin stepping out of the shadows....ok bitch

the fact that gon fucked up illumis arm that bad with one hand....boi is STRONK

AUGH AUGH AUGHHHH HISOKA IS SO CREEPY AUGHHH I HATE THIS BIIIITCH

ok but like is illumi implying that hisoka is a fr p*do bc uhhhhh thats so nasty oh lord. pls stay away from gon, and killua, and like everyone as a matter of fact

EWWWWWWWWWW I HATE HISOKA HES SO NASTY. PLS STOP MAKING P*RNO FACES IN RELATION TO 12 YR OLD BOYS.

no but rlly what IS hisoka gonna do now. im assuming he’ll show up p soon (tho probs not in the zoldyc arc like i thought bc its shorter than i thought)

ok the fact that they have the internet is hilariously wild to me for some reason....it just seems like this would be one of those fantasy shounen worlds with very little tech (a la one piece) but lol nope we can just google shit hvbhjdhjdfks

gon: it was fun when you beat me up for 3 hours and broke my arm! seeya dude!

i love gon he is so chill and doesnt seem to hold grudges except when it really matters (like hisoka and illumi)

hanzo has.....ninja business cards....thats amazing hvbhsdjkujfnd

dont worry pokkle, leorio was basically carried thru the hunter exam by various people and also won by default. he still deserves his license tho

an exotic game hunter sounds pretty cool! i wonder if we’ll see pokkle again. kinda doubt it? that sounds pretty firmly non-combat based, and therefore probably pretty far from any plot lol

so gons dad is a bigshot huh.....whatever hed be a bigger deal if he didnt abandon his son tbh

gon swinging his feet on the bench....sooo cute

so ging could restore a bunch of ruins but he couldnt raise his son...ok

im just gonna be bitter at this guy for abandoning the most perfect boy vhbhjfbsjhdhbfsk sorry dude but being a good hunter doesnt make up for being a shit father

gon is so precious ;_;

WHAT WAS SATOTZ GONNA SAY TO GON???

why does it look like theyre googling things on MS paint

ah yes, padokea, on the continent of Africa But Sideways

idk if i talked abt it before but the world map is WILD lmao i love how its all the continents/landmasses scrambled around.....im super curious abt that weird island in the top center of the map, thats the only thing that immediately sticks out as not having a real life equivalent

the music in this show is so charming :’) i love the main theme sm

gon is sooo precious i literally cant get over it. and his hurry to rescue killua is so sweet....and i love how naturally charming/charismatic gon is....pretty much everyone he meets likes him, especially leorio and kurapika, who basically adopted him after knowing him for like a day, and continue to be completely taken by him

ok wtf is satotz & co talking abt......do they know something abt ging that they arent allowed to tell gon???? shouldnt gon have access to the same info now that hes a hunter? i need ANSWERS

i bet this whole thing abt the hunter exam not rlly being over is a metaphor abt the hunter exam NEVER truly ending bc youre always being tested, or st

ok the ED continues to be So Much like especially the last shot where the 4 main characters look like theyre posing for a JC Penny catalog while the singer goes FULL metal-screamo

ok ruth and i just rewatched the next two eps woohoo

i love that there are tourist busses that take people to the front gates so they can like pose for pics and stuff vhbhjafdsfkj and its like ‘ah yes here are where the local assassins live!’ thats so funny yet it makes so much sense

i love that leorio passed tf out during the bus ride. big big mood

gon is so cute...hes like ok yes i understand that we’re not supposed to go in but i think they can make an exception for me bc im very polite.

those 2 dudes r so ugly and so dead god bless

that bigass buster sword....sir please

ruth and i rlly thot that the old guard guy was gonna turn out to be grandpa zoldyk or st lol

the fact that the dog managed to eat All their flesh but left some clothes....skill

also the dog is named mike but it sounds like the guy is calling him miku hvbjdfssk

this cant be the first time some morons have been killed here likeeee

i cant believe nobody has visited the zoldyk estate in 20 years damn they all rlly b havin no friends. depressing

the whole gates thing is wild. also that part where gon gets the math wrong on the weight.....BIG mood kiddo

ok the part where gons on the phone w/the butler is soooo good oh man. i love how gon just calmly dials the phone again after hes hung up on the first time and then YELLS....and leorio and kurapikas faces r so good

also the butler guy unfortunately has a point, it isnt foolproof that gon is here Legit....but he IS let him see his tiny bf :(

as ruth pointed out, the butler guy is reminiscent of kuro from one piece. same vibes

maybe if leorio was jacked like he is in the manga/1999 anime he couldve opened the gate that first time around....Ls

god i love this shows approach to Everything so far,....as ruth put it, half the time its like ‘oh wow they should do [x]/i wish theyd do [x] but ofc they wont cause its a shounen’ but then they DO do [x] and its like damn thats dope

anyways i love how gon is increasingly approaching situations with his Plucky Shounen Protag Attitude in full swing, and he pretty much gets shot down every time. BUT his general determination to see killua bc killuas his FRIEND and hes gonna RESCUE HIM is still a good and pure motivating force

like here, when hes climbing over the wall and hes like whatever i dont wanna have to deal w/being tested thats bullshit, i wanna see killua, my intentions are pure, im gonna try my luck with the dog....i was like ok yeah he’ll get over and like tame or defeat the dog and the guard will be suitably impressed bc nobodys ever done That before, and then gon will continue on to get killua

but NOPE instead the guard calls him down and explains that gon Will Die if he tries that, and then the guard will die too for letting that happen. and gon is like oh shit my actions have consequences for people other than me, wow.

and THEN the guard takes them in to meet the dog. and hot DAMN that is a scary creature. not even really a dog tbh. they did an excellent job making the dog Legit Scary and not just like, big and flashy looking....those eyes are so soulless, and the proportions are freaky

and the guard says exactly what i was thinking - that gon would use his Country Boy Woodland Creature Skills to workaround the dog....but then the subversion - this creature is NOTHING like the woodland critters gon is probably used to dealing with. theres no way gon stood a chance here. the guard just saved him from a really unfortunate death

i love all the Super Heavy Stuff in the servant house that seems so inconvenient vbhjdkfasjfld. also forgot to mention earlier but the guard guy being Absolutely Ripped was wild and kinda funny

training montage! gon continues to be so cute. and i love so much how leorio and kurapika are like no, you rest, we’ll take care of this. good parents!!!!

and then!!!! they sync up and use the power of gay love to almost open the gate. but then gon uses the power of Improbable Shounen Protag Healing Speed to toss that arm sling off and help out

i feel like leorio was side-eyeing gon like w8 a sec u broke that arm like a few days ago that aint right.....

oh man i almost forgot abt that scene with the zoldyks torturing killua :( :( this poor kid he doesnt deserve that

also mom zoldyck seems truly awful but i must say her aesthetic does fuck. the victorian-lookin outfit paired with the futuristic cyclops visor thing....excellent. also im betting this face bandages are from killua cutting her face

this family is so fucked up hvbsjdhjfbakdfn

killua telling his mom that gon is definitely gonna make it there :’) hes got such unshakable faith in his bf thats so good.....

back w/the gang, and immediately they run into more trouble in the form of the young girl butler, whose name i dont know, but i love her....her design is SO good oh man. a non-caricature black person? who also isnt sexualized? in MY anime??????

i love how gons approach to conflict is currently ‘let more powerful person beat me up for hours straight in hopes that they get tired or something idk bro’ like....i love him lol, is it in an effort to show how determined he is? he doesnt even try to dodge her blows or get around her....id be tryin to hop that fence lol

oh shit the tiny zoldyk kid from earlier is spying on them....she was w/the mom so im sure thats not good

when he punches the rock part and it breaks....strong boiiii

oh man that little flashback from when killua first came back and told her that he made a friend ;_; bruh

i love butler girl :( she wants to let gon but knows it isnt allowed....and as soon as she starts to waver BAM here comes mom zoldyck JFC that was so sudden and jarring....im assuming butler girl isnt dead cause that would be lame and anticlimactic

also IS THAT NEN??? NEN>>>??? NEN??? HM? NEN?????????

im so annoying abt nen i need to make one of those ‘is this a pigeon?’ memes w/’is this nen?’ bc thats me anytime anything remotely weird happens lmao

i do think its rlly nen this time tho

anyways shit is wild, cant wait to meet the full zoldyck family

PREDICTION CORNER:

as i said above i doubt hisoka will show up now bc this arc is a lot shorter than i anticipated. also im doubting that illumis even gonna show up honestly

i think we’re gonna have this OP for a while, as the part just at the end shows gon and hisoka fighting in what looks to be an arena, and ik the next arc is the heavens arena arc, which im assuming is the tournament arc....

also i have no idea what that weird building in the OP is but my guess is that its the building w/the heavens arena in it bc its tall and,,,,heaven

i predict there wont be much fighting in this little arc bc how tf else is it so short. at this point i rlly think gon is just gonna grab killua and go lmao. im super curious abt how thats gonna go down, considering that killua is currently strung up just bc he wont apologize...so i cant imagine his family would just let him leave w/gon. i wonder if killua will fight them, or if gons determination will impress them and then theyll let killua go (doubt it)

thats basically it....we’ll see abt the next few eps holla

#lj watches hxh #hxh #woohoo continuation

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common-blackbird · 4 years

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I’m not good with gaming and i never really imagined myself finishing any game, so this was a whole new experience for me... I really sucked. At one point i remember even crying when i just couldn’t fight smth. I hate asking for help (i’m infinitely grateful for it), or even looking “how to do this” bc i feel like i cheat, while when i just can’t beat smth in the game it makes me feel dumb. But i learned that usually happens bc i’ve been playing for too long.

So where to start.... The thing i liked most is the lore. Not just the content of it (which is very entertaining) but also the way it’s portrayed: through conversations, through various notes you find around, and it’s not just “well this is how it is” but rather sometimes contradictory claims that reflect different cultures. I love how you only ever see one country, but hear a lot about the others (well mostly Orlais, but there are tidbits from other countries as well), but also various cultures. I also love how the complex situation is in the game. The question of mages, the repression of elves, the dwarves and their culture, the question of religion.

The game is really good at setting the moral ambiguity and make you have hard choices. Once you realise there’s a pattern it does get easier, but some just make you wonder a lot what is the better choice.

While we’re at it let me talk some quests and decicions.

Free the elves?

So the easiest choice (though i don’t really think there was much of choosing) is the elves-slavery in denerim. Free elves, free citizens, i don’t even understand how did they get to be second-class citizens (or maybe i just forgot, i’ look it up), but they literally did nothing wrong, aren’t dangerous and frankly, there’s so much wilds in ferelden, i don’t see what’s the problem. However, though i don’t know if that was implied, if you go strictly against slavery, but this was a deal made between ferelden and tevinter, you risk a decline in diplomatic relationship as well as economy i assume, so it could be a setback. But again, if you have free citizens elves that are not just piled in one place, you can freshen up your own economy with capable workers. Like, even if you regret breaking a relationship with tevinter (that doesn’t even happen but i was thinking about it at the time), and the elves riot and go against you once you do give them freedom bc lot of bad history between ferelden and elves i guess, it’s still a morally & practically easy choice.

Free the mages?

This was... hmm... mage rights... I LOVE how they went about this problem. So the mages are problematic bc doing magic also means you can get posessed by a demon which results in a catstrophe (like that kid that demolished redcliffe). So they’re locked into a circle tower where they are trained and have a rigorous discipline and are under the watch of templars who might kill them if they try to escape? Mages who actually do escape the tower get hunted down and are forced back, or they get killed, especially if they attempt the bloodmagic (immoral dangerous magic practice?).

It’s kind of obvious that the game leans more to the mage rights (i mean, i wish there was a more memorable templar who isn’t like “mages are bad” by default, but they are kinda trained that way. tbh i just wish we had more templars...). At first, the only mage (other than that one in ostagar) you acutally meet is morrigan, who... who is not a very good example of “why people think mages are bad”. She’s cool, she handles magic really good, yeah she seems to be against the world, but what can you exepect when templars would kill her on sight? Even when alistair is constantly suspecting her, he’s basing that on her being a mage, and not on her saying really creepy immoral stuff. So initially i was all for mage rights. Then things didn’t really help much in the circle tower bc all templars were for just killing all the mages bc things got out of hands. Retrospectively i get where they’re coming from, but still, they seemed really incapable at the time. But then i met wynne, and she told me her backstory. And what really stuck with me is that

1) they find out she’s a mage bc she set someone on fire = mages are dangerous

2) while one templar ignored her completely, the other templar that brought her to the tower was nice to her and carried her on his shoulder (which is very cute) = templars don’t have to be so antagonistic towards mages and

3) the circle tower does not only protect the people from mages, but also the mages from people, bc people are bigoted and scared and will kill a mage = a social/cultural problem.

In any case, i feel like simply freeing mages just like that would turn out to be a terrible mistake bc they are kinda walking time-bombs and they’d be ostracized from society which would make them turn desperate bc no protection, then you get easily corruptible, and so it brings lot of trouble. That being said, obviously, it’s bad to keep people locked up in a tower for life. So i guess i’m more for reforming the circle with mages being treated as humans and not walking time-bombs, templars not being taught to be antagonistic towards mages, but rather their partners(?) bodyguards(?), mages having right to employment once they prove they’re capable of handling magic well, and if needed take one templar with them so people can feel safe. The Circle is already institution made for the rights for the mages, it just needs a lot of work on it. Idk. there wasn’t much of the ~what’s it like to live in the circle~ since you walk into a disaster, so i don’t want to be all in for the mages or all against the mages. I’m a dwarf. Magic is domain i don’t bother to understand.

Orzammar social problems

Tradition vs. reform, at the cost of a monarch or a dictator. That was actually a really easy choice if you’re playing a dwarf. If i played a noble dwarf, i’d defintely choose Harrowmont bc he’s 1) nicer, 2) looks more capable, 3) doesn’t seem that powerhungry. But this also means that current system based on castes. Equality is not even a myth there, it’s an apocalyptic outlook. Which takes another form of a bad side when you have the ostracized casteless dwarves, stripped of all rights and treated like dirt (and that was my warden). So, harrowmont is the safe choice for a current state. Nobody really cares who’s on the throne bc nobody expects the system to change. But if you choose Behlen for a king (who’s accused of murdering his father), you get a reformist who is open to including the casteless in some form into the system. As canon fodder. Despite the grim outlook of being used as a canon fodder, it does open a possibility of upping your status based on the merits. The paragon system is already such a leeway to better your status (bc if you do something outstanding that the drawves, you are revered as a god), but it’s virtually impossible to do something of that scale as a casteless (unless you.. finish the game). On the other hand if you choose Behlen, it’s pretty obvious he’s powerhungry dictator. But i chose behlen bc my sister was his concubine and prospect of including casteless in any form would be a good offer for a casteless dwarf.

Kill/let the mother kill the child or do this bloodmagic-not-so-bloodmagic(?) ritual to save him?

Ah, my disaster. So, of course, i wanted to help the kid, and when the bloodmage said there’s a ritual that can be performed, i just needed to get other mages there, i chose that, i went to the circle tower, i did the whole damn mission there, got back to the kid and, like the fool i am, went straight to the boy instead of talking first to mages, which resulted in me alone dealing with him, which resulted in me making his mother kill him, get yelled on by alistair and there’s no option “it was on accident” to say to him (which frankly would be a terrible thing to say), and then he starts putting himself down bc now my warden is trying to justify herself, which is another level of misery bc i’m fighting a really nice guy who hates children being killed and feels bad that he’s angry about that. anyways, that was a mess from start to finish.

speaking of other messes,

Haven village mission

well, there’s no hard choice in this mission, it’s “side with fanatics who worship a dragon or be reasonable and find the urn”. (i do wonder what do you get from siding with fanatics now). but this mission was such a rollercoaster for me. I did everything backwards. You come into this creepy little isolated village where nobody likes you and they are some kind of fanatics of older gods. So it turns out that first you’re supposed to walk into one house and find a corpse there, which i totally overlooked so instead i killed the merchant in the village, went to the church, killed everyone there, then went out and killed everyone in the village, i found genitivi (a researcher who got captured there), but i still couldn’t finish the mission until i got into that villagers house and saw the corpse that was supposed to be my first inkling of supicion for the village. So the whole storyline didn’t make any sense. And later, when i was supposed to walk humbly to the urn, i was supposed to first leave all my belongings on an oltair, so i did, but didn’t realise i was actually supposed to do that so i took them back and then i couldn’t put them back again on the altair, so i had to fight that guard there and died lol. I hated every part of that mission. it was creepy, hard and i’m lucky i didn’t smash the urn in the end.

The werewolf problem

That one was easy, like, the whole problem of werewolves is bc the head elf lives for too long and there’s nothing so fitting as holding grudges for eternity which endangers the whole clan. I have only one complaint and that is my god the forest is confusing. Each time i go into the forest i get lost.

The golem quest was fun bc that end with Shale randomly killing a chicken always gets me. I love it. Return to ostagar was on the other hand very uneventful for me, but i did see a video with what banter you have if you have wynne and loghain in your party and it’s really intense how wynne keeps attacking him.

Random thought, but today i watched this video about dragon age origins and the guy said that mages are best for combats bc they can do most damage in range, which is probably true, but tbh most of the time for me it was usually the mage who dies in the battle. Morrigan is super useful for attacks, and Wynne for defense, but they’re both as frail as daisies and i’m left with low-stamina melee fighters. And that happens when you’re fighting an archdemon. You’re crying as you drink your last health poultice. You wish you brought wynne. But wynne had been dying just as often, which renders her power of revival pretty useless.

And now, the characters. Lets start humbly with my own.

This game made me realise i’m bad at roleplaying. I scroll through tumblr and see how people just love the character they’ve created and they are so cool and seem so interesting. Me? let me show how i create my character: i don’t like using magic bc magic is often complicated so mage is out of the question. warriors are usually strong so i can’t relate, so i’ll be a rouge and talk people into doing the dirty work for me. i loved elves so fiercly as a kid i got fed up with them and can’t stand them so i’ll not be an elf, but humans seem boring so i’ll be a dwarf. After all i’m short, i can relate. Bonus points, they are imune to magic. Since i’m casteless, i decided to look ugly (i’ve been told my warden looks like the crying cat meme). In the end, compared to the rest of my warden’s family, she looked like an adopted child. At the beginning i had the idea that i would make this character grow from “in it for herself” to “a hero” bc it’s a typical hero story anyway, but in the end it was just a self insert with really dumb mistakes who doesn’t get what she’s signed up to. I guess it’s easier to actually make interesting characters once you already know the stories and the choices so it’s easier to choose according to the characterisation you make and not “what if i screw up?”.

Alistair

So after you get chosen by Duncan (a cool honorable guywho gives you chance to make something of your casteless self and then makes you drink poison), the first guy you meet is alistair - a fellow grey warden who used to train to be a templar (which is as far as we go in meeting templars) and happens to be a king’s bastard son. He is dorky, funny, a genuinely nice person and on level of insecurity that even surpasses mine. He’s impossible to dislike. What i really like about the characters is that they’re super simple, which makes them both their charm and their annoying trait. for example, he often puts himself down, which i relate and am symphatetic and am all “nah you’re really nice”, but the next time he does that i’m “mate, you gotta stop doing that”. But it’s still kinda cute.

What did irk me throughout the game is him being my senior, but making me the leader. I literally pass the test 1 day before everybody gets killed and he is the only grey warden who knows what grey wardens do. Not only that, he’s like the only guy with me at the beginning who knows where’s what and knows the culture. I’m a friggin dwarf who is afraid that i’ll fall into the sky, have no interest to get myself killed, but now i’m a leader. But that’s not even the issue, bc i am already the main character. The problem is when every character in the game acts as if i’m the only surviving grey warden when alistair is right there. “Only you can do that, oh you’re a grey warden”. Alistair knows more about grey wardens than i ever will. I wish they just mention “can either of you two”. It’s like he doesn’t exist lol. I didn’t take him often to missions and pretended he’s doing some grey warden business i know nothing about. The only character who makes sense to completely ignore alistair as a grey warden is anora. But whatever, he doesn’t want any spotlight, so i guess he’s happy being considered “that sidekick grey warden”. Even as frustrating as it was, i really liked his avoiding of responsibility whatsoever and his low confidence, it really makes room for character growth.

Dog

the best character in da:o.

Morrigan

She’s obviously a polar opposite to alistair - overconfident, kind of mean, kind of selfish, her jokes are mean. I mean, when i imagine alistair i imagine a dog, when i imagine morrigan, that’s a cat. And while as a person i don’t really like her that much, but her dynamics with other characters are really fun. What really made me love her is that mystery “is she evil or not”, ( which I guess she’s not considering she’s still a buddy in later games(?)), but combined with her relationship with flemeth who also might or might not be evil. she keeps opposing her mother while being compliant to her. She does what flemeth asks bc she knows that flemeth is more powerful. It makes you wonder how terrible her upbringing was if you’re certain your mom has some fishy plans in which you might get killed in the process. But instead of just running away and doing exactly the opposite of what flemeth commands, even after hearing she’s dead, she still goes on with flemeth’s idea, so i’m guessing she just wants the demon baby for herself(?). In any case, her (justified?) paranoia with flemeth makes her really compelling.

SPEAKING OF DEMON BABY, turns out the reason flemeth saved the warden and alistair was so that the warden could convince alistair to have sex with morrigan. which means that if the warden is a guy, and let us assume a straight guy, she’s counting on at least 50% chance of the male straight guy hating morrigan so much he would sooner convince the other guy who definitely hates morrigan to have sex with her than doing it himself. Yikes.

Sten

Sten is a character you respect. Some things he said really resonated with me and it made me think a lot. His regret over killing that family totally flew over me at that time (bc zevran was talking his head off how he killed this guy and that guy so who cares about sten killing some family, i’m already going to hell for tolerating assassins and making a mother kill her child), but later it was quite peculiar that he’s so ready to kill me and he’s pretty ruthless at everything he does, so you’d think this big guy has no problem getting over this. His regret made me more interested in his culture and his rigorous honour-code. I’d really love to see Par Vollen. At the end i even told him i was going to be joining him on his way back to Par Vollen (i wanted a new character for awakening), but that didn’t work out sadly :(

Leliana

I think most endearing part of Leliana is that she truly seems to believe all the right things, even though you’re made suspicious considering she was (or is?) a spy. That woman talks so much. And she’s always in the right. Always. Making a spy become a hardcore believer in god is cool, bc i always doubt her. She knows her way with words, she always says what you want/need to hear. Of course she would be playing a religious girl if that meant she could convince me that she’s harmless. But it’s also fun that she truly believes it and has a hard time convincing you that considering you keep doubting everything she says. I really like her.

Zevran

I was really surprised when i saw that Zevran is a fan-favourite. I guess it’s that he has a tragic-slave-turned-assassin backstory. I... am completely indifferent towards him. I’m sorry. He was just that one bisexual hedonist assassin who happens to have been a slave long time ago. I guess, by the time i got his backstory, i was already immune to angst... But thinking back, i really like that he’s the bad guy in his backstory, he’s the one doing betraying, while leliana for example got betrayed. And i’m a little bit sad that all he learned from that episode was that assassins are expandable, while, when you look at it, he fails to realise everybody in antiva is expendable. That’s a really crazy country right there. I mean, he’s killing people right and left, and never really thinks back about them. Even if he doesn’t like to do it (which he never really said he does, but it’s not like he had a choice so let’s give a benefit of the doubt), he never really thinks about his victims. The only thing that made him realise that he was expandable was his killing of his partner/lover. (or if he figured that out, i didn’t notice it). But yeah, bragging about sex and death doesn’t do it for me i guess. I did love his banters with Wynne. You can see how she’s trying to get him to open up, to see that there’s more to him than a hedonist, and she just giving up every time when he makes it about sex.

Wynne

Wynne is my top 3 faves. She’s also the reason i’m not against the Circle. Before i met her, i was all “yeah mages should be free and don’t need any control” bc there’s just morrigan and a bad case of not-taking-care-of-your-child-mage posession thing. But then Wynne starts talking about her life in the circle and you see that it’s not just “we hate mages so we keep them imprisoned”. You see that learning magic is hard (morrigan makes it look easy, ok?) and disaster can happen in a blink of an eye. And you find out how flawed she was, and it feels like she really learned from her experiences. And she’s so openminded and genuinely nice, typical granma-mentor-character. Best human in the camp.

Shale

Another one of my top 3 faves. Shale won me over the moment they murdered that poor chicken. I love having shale in my missions, they’re useful, they’re snappy, they’re perfect. And finding out that shale used to be shayle, a dwarf noble who willingly became a golem was one of my fave missions. I was so focused on the myth & legend of branka, that shale took me by surprise. And imagining a dwarf lady with shale’s personality makes me want to go back in time and meet shayle ;__;

Oghren

He’s pretty much like zevran: i like him, but too many alcoholic-jokes. Out of all characters, he looks like the biggest comic-relief. I like how insanely loyal he is. And I liked being his wingman x)

Loghain

I really like him. I shouldn’t like him as much as i do. i wish he could have been in a party earlier or without alistair-walking-out consequences. You start seeing that he’s not just a bad guy when you see that he’s always sad there when anora is scolding him. And I really loved that anecdote with him ruining every rose he touches so he found a rose and brought it home himself. Awww. If he didn’t order me executed at sight, i’d be his best friend. His paranoia (or justified fear?) of orlesian invasion made him do lot of political mistakes, but you can see he has good intentions. He’s not a bad guy. And he’s really clever. But also i will never understand how he didn’t get rid of Rendon Howe.

I’m so conflicted over him abandoning Cailan. I hated cailan, but to him, cailan was almost flesh and blood(?) I mean, he’s everything that’s left of two people he loved so abandoning him must have been terrible. I’m still trying to wrap my head around why he would go to that length to betray cailan rather than forcefully take him back by the means of drugging him and carrying him back to denerim. Maybe cailan was so problematic with his ideals before and this was just one decision too much. But then again, loghain was dealing with idealistic maric since forever. I don’t know. He’s just such a compelling character to me. I wouldn’t recruit him storywise bc i feel like his time was over. He had to die there. you know how in stories, the hero can’t live too long, bc there is no being the hero the second time. They’re always tragic. And since he attempted to be the hero again, he had to pay the price and become a villain. And he needs to tragically die. Which makes him more memorable than saint marric.

Also i watched a video with what happens if you go back to ostagar with loghain and wynne and it’s whoa... wynne is merciless with her attacks on loghain.

Anora

MY QUEEN. I was debating a lot whether alistair should be a king or not and then anora showed up and everything became clear. She’s such an amazing person. You can see her as righteous, as powerhungry, as manipulator, as terrible or wonderful and all of that would be true. She’s ready to do everything to keep that throne. You can see she loves her father, but she is going against him and is relying on your mercy for his life, and accepts his death so quickly. She implies that, while she did love cailan, her marriage was arranged and her husband an idealistic fool and she’s not surprised how he ended up. And sure, she’s telling you all you want to hear: that she loved him, that she was warning him about what his idealism will get him to, but can you really trust her? Especially with cailan’s correspondence between arl eamon, where eamon is trying to get rid of anora, and empress celene, who’s suspicious to say the least. I could easily imagine she did not warn, but support cailan in his idealistic views bc he hinders her rule with his blind idealism. I could just as easily accept that she truly did love him, and she did warn him, but alas, her husband is a fool. Everyone is against her in the game, and if i didn’t get her to win that throne after everything she’s done to get it, it would just be sad to watch. which brings me to the mission:

Choosing a ruler

Anora proved more than anyone that she’s the best candidate. Setting alistair on that throne would feel so ungrateful, he had no agency whatsoever in becoming a king and if i married him to anora, then i’d just get another pawn in her - or eamon’s - hands bc it’s obvious who’s playing the game here. I’d feel bad for alistair. He should get his own development based by his own merits rather than ~king’s blood~. Also with setting him on the throne you change nothing bc he can’t have kids anyway (unless you count the demon baby which would get this to another level of really messed up succession stories), and anora (according to eamon) seems to not be able to have kids(?) so they’re basically the same. Also, anora has unlimited time to rule, while alistair will die in what like, 10 years? and what then? Morrigan becomes queen regent bc she’s the baby-demon’s mother? That’s a disaster. And anora is right when she says that setting up a grey warden after they’ve been proclaimed enemies of the state only makes it look bad. I have learned that grey wardens, it turns out, are very political, but i just didn’t want to be. Also, alistair devotion was literally never towards marric and only for duncan. He even kills Loghain for duncan, and not for cailan. I really like anora being a queen. I know i can’t count on her bc she is ruthless like loghain, but also loyal only to the kingdom. It feels like, that’s the only thing she got to choose in her life and she’s willing to sacrifice everything for it. And that makes her a good ruler.

the ritual

oh man. that was... awkward. I knew it was gonna happen but... you know what i think? Sure, flemeth told morrigan what she’s gotta do, but, i doubt morrigan really knew what she’s getting into. I know the kid is a normal kid in the end, but i like to think that at the time, morrigan had no idea whatsoever what is this ritual going to turn up with. First, this this ritual feels like a fanservice. Second, on the matter of dub-con, i’ve seen a lot of people saying that alistair was non-con and morrigan is... a bitch? i thought about it and all i saw was this: your mom, whom you hate and are convinced she’s going to kill you one day, tells you you’re going to have a sex with a guy you don’t know, who hates you, and have his child, and you probably don’t want children, who will definitely be possessed with a god-spirit-thing. So, you got two choices, while you’re traveling with your merry band: you won’t do it or you do it for yourself. So i guess morrigan saw an opportunity and decided to go along with it, but use it against flemeth. Which is a really sad thing bc the moment she decides to have the baby for the power for whatever reason, she is basically becoming flemeth herself (or at least her idea of flemeth: someone who uses children for her own gains instead of loving them). So knowing that, i can’t see morrigan being a bitch either way for deciding to take the ritual. She definitely doesn’t like alistair after all, and she’s becoming the person she hates the most + she acts like she doesn’t care about anything, but she also wants to save the warden. So yeah, i definitely went overboard with this, but i don’t see morrigan enjoying the ritual.

I do wonder what she’s planning to do with the demon baby tho. or how terrible is she at raising a baby. I mean, her tolerance and patience levels are really low. I also wonder whether she’s right to be wary of flemeth or is she only paranoid. Flemeth seems like much wiser and sees morrigan as a kid with her paranoia. She pretty much dominates. I would love both morrigan being totally off the track with her suspicious about flemeth and her being right to be wary of flemeth.

So yeah, that was a huge ramble. If you made it this far then i bow to you. Idk where i was going with this... i just wanted to get out my thoughts and have it in one place. I probably said bunch of things wrong and misinterpreted the characters, made typos, forgot to say bunch of other things so, sorry for that. i’m a newb. But i loved it! It made me go into fantasy mood.

#i'm just rambling about dragon age #and it's really long and i don't say anything interesting

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