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arkhammaid · 2 months

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— ˚₊‧⁺˖ THE LIGHTNING ON TRACK | THE LIVERY LAUNCH

fandom. formula one & mcu

about. the stark racing f1 team launches their livery

content warnings. written in 3rd person/lowercase, written + smau, not edited/proofread

word count. 0.8k + smau parts

notes. the main arc begins!!

y/n doesn't do nervous. not as l/n, not as stark- it's simply not in her nature. yet when the lights dimm and the audience starts to grow silent, her heart was up hear throat and she tried to dry her sweaty palms on her race suit.

"there is no need for that", muttered her teammate right behind her and she almost jumped. she glared at him, but he just grinned and gave her two thumbs up.

"don't do that, it makes you look old." he immediately put them down and she snorted.

"alright, you two, are you ready?" a stark employee, more specifically a stark racing employee, ushered them across the backstage all the way beneath it, ready to push them to the big event.

the car launch. the livery reveal. the introduction of stark to formula one, probably the most anticipated event of the year. unlike the other teams, they've been teasing the public for several weeks now, nothing concrete. speculations were all over social media, no one was even sure what main color stark racing would have, something the marketing team was very proud of.

now they would not only reveal the car, which would dominate the season (because- who are they kidding? they definitely will) but also the branding and race suits, and officially appear as drivers in one place.

the music started to play, the room darkened and the lightshow started. but y/n couldn't see anything of it happen. instead she was guided to the platform, which would bring her on stage, and put her helmet on.

a whole minute they would have to wait, a pre-recorded speech entertaining the guests and viewers all around the world, until she and kevin would appear in total darkness.

and they did. the platform brought them up silently, the room blacked out completely, until the lights behind them flashed on, shining on their backs.

the whole thing could be described as dramatic, over the top, but it fit. it fit the name, her father, herself. to show up with a bang.

"introducing... our drivers. y/n l/n-stark, number 95 and kevin magnussen, number 20! a round of applause everyone!" thunderous applause filled the giant room, people started to shout, when they finally took of their helmets.

with a grin, y/n spread her arms, raising her head and then her helmet over it. she stood proud and tall, all stark.

an assistant rushed to the stage, taking their helmets, to allow them complete freedom during their part of the reveal. y/n immediately took over, as it had been planned.

"welcome everyone, to the official launch of stark racing formula one team! i'm honored to introduce to you not only the car itself, but also the team." with a wide grin, she turned to kevin, who nodded to her.

"i'm sure you've all waited for him, our team principal, four-times worldchampion... sebastian vettel!" the room thundered again, cameras flashed, when seb walked on stage to stand between the two drivers. he waved to the crowd and bowed with a laugh, when they wouldn't stop cheering.

"thank you, thank you. wow, what a welcome! i'm very happy to be here, it has been a few years... but now we're back- and i'm thankful for the oppurtunity i've received. y/n, kevin... to a good season. to our fans, we all thank you for your support you've already showed, it's been incredible so far!"

"it's a special occasion, for all of us. and we have something very special for you", y/n winked, while slowly walking backwards, until she stood right in front of the gigantic screen, lightly knocking with her knuckle on it. a ripple animation waved across the screen and the room dimmed again. hushes were heard, when the sound of whirring filled the room, carried by the speakers.

another platform was brought up, the car. hidden by dark, silky fabric, it stood in the middle of the stage, ready to be revealed.

"ladies and gentlemen... the first car completely engineered by stark, for the stark racing formula one team... welcoming to the world, the SR-1!"

with that, kevin and y/n slowly began to lift the fabrig from the car, revealing a blinding white livery. lines of chrome streamlined it, the name stark proudly stood on the sides of it.

"it's mine, by the way", y/n joked and pointed on the number 95, after the crowd calmed.

"har, har", kevin drily replied, but he couldn't hide his grin.

"welcome, everyone... to the future!"

YNSTARK

liked by tonystark, charles_leclerc, mickschumacher and 7'973'331 others

ynstark happy valentine in white ;)

user what a perfect way to end valentine

user MOMMY, SORRY, MOMMY-

lancestroll The launch was incredible 👏

tonystark This is my daugher!

⤷ ynstark this is my dad <3

peterstark ew, your face on my dash....

⤷ ynstark i will block you

⤷ peterstark i will tell pepper

⤷ ynstark *blocked*

user white is such a good color on her??

user i just fell on my knees in the middle of the street

sebastianvettel You're incredible, I'm excited for our future!

⤷ ynstark STOP you're making me cry 😭

⤷ ynstark @/charles_leclerc look at this, your grid father loves me more than you

⤷ charles_leclerc That's not true! You better take it back!!

zendaya what a beauty 🤩

⤷ ynstark no, you!!

user we got the arm spread and the wink, now i'm waiting for the iconic peace sign

user white stark era, white stark era, WHITE STARK ERA!!!

user the bitchfighting with her actual brother and her grid brother is EVERYTHING to me

⤷ user oh my god you're right, charles and y/n are grid!siblings...

⤷ user IM WAITING FOR DAD SEB, YOU HEAR ME I'M WAITING

starkracing Our future champion!

⤷ ynstark hehehe

user red bull has been oddly silent

⤷ user they're all trying to stop christian from committing a crime

⤷ user or drying his never ending tears

⤷ user LMAO I CAN NOT

user half of the grid in the likes... i fear y/n is becoming the it girl fr

user these comments are a goldmine

taglist. @lilypadlover , @adorablezhui , @peqch-pie , @keyz-writes , @obsidianjewel , @aimixx , @themercyverse , @lem-hhn , @akiraquote , @kiiyoooo , @nichmeddar , @nothingfuninthislife , @minkyungseokie , @fionaschicken , @lyrasconstellation , @spideybv28 , @keii134 , @starssfall , @tpwkstiles, @fangirl-dot-com , @nichmeddar , @lady-laura-speaks , @nikfigueiredo , @hinamesgigantica , @brakingboundaries , @almostjollypizza , @yoremins , @raizelchrysanderoctavius , @celesteblack08 , @watermelon-sugars-things , @lighttsoutlewis , @radiantdanvers , @vellicora, @sterredem , @hiireadstuff , @jolixtreesunn , @mypage-myfandoms , @nelly187 @greeneyesandsunshine , @fulla02 , @welovediaaxx , @whyamireadingthis , @67-angelofthelordme-67 , @blueberry64857959 , @winchesterwife27 , @six-call , @skywalker1dream , @mellowarcadefun , @cherry-piee , @peterholland04 , @motorsportloverf1 , @renarots , @msbyjackal , @woozarts , @leclucklerc , @yl90

crossed off tags mean i can't tag you!

DO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE SERIES TAGLIST? please leave a comment on this post or send a non anonymous ask!

ARKHAM MAID 2024

#f1 x reader #f1 fic #f1 smau #f1 female driver #fem!driver #female driver #f1 scenario #f1 fanfic #tony stark x reader #kevin magnussen x reader #sebastian vettel x reader #f1 x female reader #marvel x reader #— ˚₊‧⁺˖ creations #— ˚₊‧⁺˖ lightning on track

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fuckyeahisawthat · 29 days

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Something I find interesting when viewing the two recent Dune movies as a whole is that initially, Paul is more than willing to use the prophecy and his visions for his own gain to convince Liet to help them, while Jessica whispers "careful!" at his side, and she later recommends they leave the planet entirely. But Paul decides they'll stay with the Fremen. Even at the beginning of Part 2, Paul is like "fuck yeah let's wage war on the Harkonnen" and Jessica is again counseling caution: "your father didn't believe in revenge." She goes through the Water of Life ceremony not because she wants to help Paul fulfill the prophecy but because she's forced to: do this or die. And even then, the old Reverend Mother had to use the Voice on her to get Jessica to drink.

That all changes when Jessica nearly dies during the ceremony. After that, Paul becomes more wary of embracing the prophecy, and she just throws herself into it. Paul nearly loses his mother (and his unborn sister) to a painful, agonizing poison - mere hours/days after losing his father and all their friends/allies to the Harkonnen slaughter - and decides it's not worth it. Meanwhile, Jessica gets a direct download of memories of millennia of oppression and goes "yeah let's burn everything to the ground."

It's an interesting, quick reversal at the beginning of the second movie, and it's great.

Ooh thank you for this great ask. I can always count on you for smart and thoughtful Jessica takes!

You make a really good observation about their reversal of positions--I had been struggling to figure out how Paul's line about "I must sway the non-believers" fit into his overall arc, but you are absolutely right that this feels like a continuation of how he talks to Liet. We're seeing the first stirrings of that little "maybe I am special" thought that later takes center stage.

For most of Part Two, Paul has several reliable counterweights pulling against that streak of arrogance and high-handedness that he's had from the beginning. Jessica almost dies drinking the Water of Life, which, like you point out, has got to make him think twice about encouraging people to believe in the prophecy. Then, he spends most of the movie surrounded by Chani and her friends and comrades, who seem the most skeptical of the prophecy and also aren't going to give his ego the time of day. And at the same time, he has an opportunity to pour his desire for revenge into collective political action that seems to be making a difference.

It's only when those countervailing forces start collapsing (the people who had started out as his equals are now becoming his followers; the Harkonnens attack Sietch Tabr and other civilian population centers, proving they are far from militarily defeated; Gurney shows up and immediately offers what seems like an easy solution to their problems that only Paul can access) that the little maybe I am special voice starts winning again.

As for Jessica, her journey doesn't get as much focus in the movie but it's also fascinating. She's a great character because she is so fucking smart at navigating power structures from what seems like an unenviable position. Did she have any choice about being sent to Caladan to become Leto's concubine? I am guessing she did not. But she sure figured out how to work that situation to her advantage. It happened that along the way she and Leto came to genuinely love and respect each other. But I'm sure she would still have figured out an angle even if that had not been the case.

In Part Two she starts out in a frankly quite terrifying position: she can undergo this unknown, dangerous ritual or die, and also possibly put Paul's safety at risk by raising doubt about whether he is the Lisan al-Gaib. But after she survives the Water of Life, she is launched into a powerful position in Fremen society and pretty quickly realizes she can use that to both protect Paul and get her revenge on the people who tried to kill her whole family. And unlike Paul, she is much more cognizant of the intergalactic power structures at work and aware that the Harkonnens themselves were a pawn in all this, so her target is the Bene Gesserit and the emperor.

I would have loved more time to explore Jessica's relationship to Fremen society and her POV in general. Because in some ways she becomes as Fremen as it's possible for her to be--she has access to thousands of years of memories of Fremen history and culture and politics; she becomes instantly fluent in the language and she is immersed in Fremen daily life in the sietch. (If there's one single thing I wanted more of, it was daily life in the sietch.) But she's still the same person she was, so she hasn't lost that ability to be ruthless and calculating and see people as forces to be manipulated. In Part One, her love for Paul and Leto provided an interesting counterweight to this that allowed us to see some moments of vulnerability from her (ie. she knows Paul has to undergo the Gom Jabbar test but she's terrified for him while it's happening). In Part Two she is so isolated for most of the movie (away from Paul; surrounded by followers who were never friends; I think we can all agree that talking to your unborn fetus doesn't really count) that we don't get a lot of these more unguarded moments from her. (I would have loved some Jessica/Stilgar action and it seems like the potential was very much set up for that, but I understand why they didn't have time.)

But in general I thought they did a great job of setting up this contradictory tension between Jessica and Paul, where they both want so desperately to protect each other and they both want revenge, but the way they each go about it ends up putting them in direct conflict with each other.

#dune #dune part two #lady jessica #paul atreides #asks answered

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ponett · 4 months

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First New Years Eve anon here! I finished SLARPG after playing it any chance I could get. Literally everything I said held true or got better as the game went on. What a solid game, I felt the love in every moment.

Partway through, I got to wondering what it's like to finish a years-long project. I'm in the process of something like that, and I can't imagine life after The End, so your anniversary reflections post caught my eye. It felt like a future me had written it in a startling amount of ways. (Marketing is so hard ;_;)

A part that really stuck with me is how you described the story growing along with you. There were a few parts toward the beginning that felt distinctly mid-2010s (not in a bad way), but the narrative felt so cohesive that I would've assumed it was planned to the letter. As someone in a similar position, it's comforting to know there was some wiggle room. There's so much more I could say, but maybe not right now.

Wishing you your version of success!

thank you!

making sure the story felt cohesive was definitely tricky since the game was in development for so long. i mean, i knew the broad strokes of the story from the start, including the fact that it would get more serious as it progressed. That Sequence at the end of act ii was planned as a pivotal moment in the game since, like, 2015. but a lot of the back half of the game was only written after the demo was released in 2018, and my creative priorities shifted a lot in that time. so it took some work to make everything line up

i was still tweaking individual lines of dialogue in the script like, days before launch - particularly stuff earlier in the game that i was no longer quite as happy with, just to make sure everything fit together well enough and that things didn't come off as too dated. there are still a few jokes in act i where i'm like "ehh, that isn't as funny as i thought it was in 2016." but what can you do? that's just the linear progression of time for you

actually, if anything, before release i was worried that people would be put off by the darker and more dramatic elements of the game after i'd originally pitched it as being so goofy and lighthearted and cute. i had to fight the urge to insert more jokes into act iv out of a fear that people would get bored if the game stopped being funny, and i worried that people who had already grown attached to the characters through the demo and other preview material would get mad at me if i put melody and friends through the wringer. but thankfully people have responded really well to the more dramatic stuff, and the arc of the game as a whole, like i hoped they would

i'm extremely happy with how slarpg turned out overall, but if i was to write the story today, at age 30, i'm sure a lot of the writing would have turned out different. which is why the new thing i've been kicking around ideas for will probably be more mature and dramatic from the start. but we'll see

#anon #ask #slarpg asks

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goldiipond · 1 year

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ray tpn is autistic and i'm gonna tell you why now

ray is one of the most heavily autistic-coded characters i can think of, and i've been wanting to write up a post going over as many of his autistic mannerisms as i can because there is a lot. this will probably be long because i am also autistic and i am especially autistic about ray, so please enjoy while i psychoanalyze this anime boy with way more scrutiny than anyone would consider healthy <3

body language

perhaps one of the strongest arguments for ray's autism can be made by looking at his body language. ray tries to keep a stoic, neutral expression and voice the majority of the time (though he's often quite. bad at that too) but he is always extremely expressive through his movements and gestures, the most noticeable of which being the use of his hands. pretty much every character uses hand gestures, but ray is ridiculously excessive. it'd take frankly way too long to compile every instance of this (or even half) throughout the manga, so here's a small collection of gestures from s1 of the anime to give an idea:

note that this is not even close to all of them and that he's exactly like this in the manga as well, though the animation and its use of snappy, exaggerated movements does help to make these much more noticeable.

moving away from his hands there's also just a lot of really expressive full-body language as well, such as this friendly chokehold:

this dramatic shrug:

and this even more dramatic flop:

just to name a few. basically, ray has a thing for grand unnecessary movements and no one is surprised.

poor emotional regulation and masking

as i mentioned before, ray tries really really hard to bottle up his emotions and keep a sort of stoic persona during his time at gracefield. he's also really really bad at doing this. not terrible, as he was able to keep up a believable enough front that none of the other kids saw anything odd about his behavior for 6 years, but that's also because he deals with so much more stress once the events of the escape arc actually get going. there is a stark difference between his quiet and detached demeanor while emma and norman are still in the dark about the house, and him nearly having a meltdown every time something strays from his meticulously crafted plans while they actually begin making their preparations to escape over the course of the arc.

just a few examples of this include him nearly having a breakdown when emma insists on taking everyone:

or one of my favorite anime exclusive moments where he strains his voice while yelling at isabella to the point he breaks into a coughing fit:

and it's not just big flashy meltdowns, but little bursts of anger as well. shoutout to this moment in particular where he launches this bucket with enough force to tear up a bit of the damn ground:

this emotional instability can be seen after the escape as well, the most glaring example being how he interacts with yuugo:

their dynamic in general really does a good job of showing ray’s mental state after the escape, because pre-goldy pond yuugo is An Asshole. and ray is so, so easy to piss off and quite frankly tired from bottling up his emotions for so long that every interaction with said asshole is a massive struggle to keep himself from physically attacking him.

as for the topic of masking, that’s what ray’s attempts to hide his emotions feel like to me. ray is constantly in danger of losing isabella’s trust, whether that be by revealing he may be a little more attached to the other kids than he lets on or by showing too much emotion that the other kids start to wonder what the hell’s going on. ray has to constantly hide and cover up his emotions with more palatable ones for others out of fear of looking out of place or being seriously hurt, and well if that doesn’t just describe autistic masking to a tee i don’t know what does.

maybe one of the things that gets me the most about that is that he's essentially been masking for about half of his life, and doing that for any extended period of time is extremely draining. ray has been drained to the point that he will have full meltdowns when put under any sort of stress and when you take into account the fact that he already has pretty severe anger issues as a result of his trauma, it's really no wonder he has such a short fuse.

lack of a filter when speaking

ray is a very blunt person. he speaks matter-of-factly and he wastes no time in getting straight to his point, sometimes with only a single sentence:

the way he talks is also pretty significant, as he generally has a more monotone way of speaking. he really only yells when he gets really worked up which like i said, happens a lot, but there’s almost no inbetween for him. pre-escape, he tries to show as little emotion in his voice as possible outside of his outbursts.

as for post-escape ray, he does seem to show much more emotion in the way he speaks. its a bit harder to judge, as nothing past the escape arc was ever adapted into the anime (s2 isnt real it cant hurt you) but his facial expressions become much more varied and it’s easy to say his vocal inflections likely do as well. however, what we can say for sure is that he remains just as blunt as ever:

no matter how comfortable he becomes with expressing himself, this aspect of his speech never seems to change.

while we’re on the topic of his speaking mannerisms please also direct your attention to these panels:

these need no explanation.

sensory issues. so many sensory issues

briefly moving back to the subject of ray’s hands, i couldn’t help but notice during my countless s1 rewatches that they are almost never just resting at his sides. if he's not using his hands for unnecessary gestures they are either shoved into his pockets, or he's crossing his arms. it's very likely his arms default to these positions because they offer a sort of sense of security, the former keeping his hands covered and the latter keeping him more closed off, almost like he's constantly hugging himself. basically, ray is a 'likes to feel covered and secure' autistic and if he was buried in weighted blankets he'd probably love it.

also tying into the ‘likes to feel covered’ aspect of ray’s autism is this scarf he acquires sometime during the volume 12 timeskip:

it’s a well known autistic thing to get attached to articles of clothing and wear them as much as possible, and boy does ray get attached to this scarf. i can count 2 post-timeskip scenes off the top of my head that have him not wearing this scarf, and the image on the right takes place a full 2 years after the left one in canon. he has no explicitly stated emotional attachment to this scarf and we don’t even know how he got it, just that he almost never takes it off. it could easily be seen as a comfort item, maybe he just likes the way the fabric feels or the extra coverage it offers him. there is post-canon content that depicts him without it, but the fact that he wore it almost nonstop for at least 2 years straight is still pretty significant.

another sensory thing i feel is worth mentioning is that ray seems to have a very specific tolerance threshold for physical contact. he seems fine initiating touch himself, and touches from emma and norman are generally alright, likely because they are the only people he has openly allowed himself to be close with his entire life. sudden touches from others however, are a different story. the one that immediately comes to mind is this interaction with don:

don in particular is someone ray becomes pretty close to, and i would say that besides the obvious growth with emma and norman, don is likely the person we see the most development with with in terms of their relationship. him having this reaction to a hug from someone he’s so close to seems indicative of some issues with unexpected contact.

and finally one of my absolute favorite things the anime added, which is ray experiencing what looks a lot like sensory overload:

this takes place right after the argument with isabella, which ended with him being knocked to the floor and locked up in a room by himself, so its needless to say that he’s pretty shaken up. he gets so overwhelmed that all he can do is yell and desperately reach for any sort of stimulation to keep him grounded, curling in on himself and aggressively ruffling up his hair. i genuinely cannot think of an allistic explanation for this scene.

and basically, he is just so autistic

all in all, theres some pretty damn solid evidence for ray being autistic and whether it was intentional or not, the sheer amount of autism-coding present in ray’s writing is almost impossible to ignore. i love some good projection but i don’t even need to do that much, hes just doing this all on his own. in conclusion:

#skye's ramblings #WELL. IT TOOK ABT AN ENTIRE DAY BUT HERE IT IS. READ MY ESSAY BOY #thank god for tublrs extended image limit am i right. had to switch to my laptop a third of the way through so it would let me add more <3 #and small shoutout to @fullscoreshenanigans for telling me how to make the gifs HGFGKJD #anywyay i had fun w this ray is so dear to me didyou know i love ray. ray #i am going to do something wild (putting a non-art post in the main tags) so hi tpn fandom i talk a lot. here's autism #the promised neverland #tpn #yakusoku no neverland #tpn ray

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one-idea · 4 months

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How will you be handling the whole devil fruit thing in your reverse strawhat AU? Wano arc revealed that Luffy having the gumgum/nika fruit is actually very important, and he woun't have had defeated Kaidou otherwise. So does Ace just eats it in this AU and then Luffy has the mera mera no mi so Dressrosa can go on like canon? How will you do this?

Honestly I’ve thought about this a lot.

Luffy still meets Shanks in this au. He still gets the gum gum/Nika fruit.

Ace still finds the Mera mera fruit after he leaves dawn island.

But Luffy is the one who dies in marineford.

I know we need Nika later in the story. So I have two options that I’ve played with

Sabo gets the Nika fruit in dressrose

Luffy gets pulled into this universe to help them defeat Kaido.

So the problem with idea one is I can’t see any other character as Joyboy.

I think Sabo and Ace still meet in Dressrosa and that they get Luffy’s fruit there. But I don’t know if Sabo would eat it.

Sabo is a revolutionary. The god a freedom and the drums of liberation fit him well. But he’s not the out pouring of joy that Luffy is.

Maybe he eats it.

If he does he awakes the fruit fast. His personal drive for freedom and to liberate others meshes well with Nika.

But I think his Nika would be way more unhinged than Luffy’s. Like a you get in my way and I’ll annihilate you while laughing like a maniac. It’s less joyful and more maniacal laughter. I think he’d also need to be talked down from that form, he’d lose himself to it in a way Luffy doesn’t.

Or he doesn’t eat the fruit.

Both he and Ace decided no one else is worthy of Luffy’s fruit and they won’t give it to someone who is unworthy.

Maybe they eventually meet another character that is worthy of the fruit and allow them to have it.

But in this reality Ace would have to awaken the Mera Mera to defeat Kaido. Which means we get to play with what an awaken Mera Mera fruit looks like.

Then there is always the second option.

Form the very beginning I wanted the Strawhats and the reverse Strawhats to meet. I wasn’t sure how to do that. I figured a devil fruit or a mystic island would bring them together.

But what if during the fight with Kaido someone activates a devil fruit. A final ditch effort to call of help. And it brings the Strawhats to this dimension.

Luffy has no clue why they are back in Wano. Or why Kaido is still around. But he sees Ace and Kaido fighting. Maybe Ace is losing? And while he doesn’t understand what’s happening, Ace is here. And Kaido is hurting Ace and Wano. Luffy’s kicked his butt once before it will be way easier this time.

I think the strawhats get dropped in and before anyone can put together what the heck is happening, Luffy just launches himself at Kaido.

But again I’m still playing with these ideas.

The dropped into reverse Wano has some promise. I’ve been thinking about Law and if I was going to have him remain or replace him with Rosinante. (I still need to make it to Dressarosa so this is just an idea right now)

But if we drop the strawhat alliance into Wano then not only are all the strawhats meeting their counterparts but you get a reunion between Law and Rosinante as well. Things to keep in mind as we build.

But what do you guys think?

Master post

#one piece #monkey d. luffy #straw hat pirates #reverse strawhat pirate au #portagas d. ace #one piece ace #fire fist ace #gol d. ace #revolutionary sabo #one piece sabo #sabo #asl brothers #trafalgar law #donquixote rosinante

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extraordinarilyextreme · 3 months

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the element of fire plays a big role in YeQing's relationship.

for starters, let's examine the "answer" ZGQ divined for himself on Longhu-shan:

(manhua ch. 108; see also LA s1, ep. 13 & donghua s2, ep. 9)

飞蛾扑火 / the moth throws itself upon a flame. this idiom describes a self-destructive kind of conduct, where a person knowingly brings about their own doom. it represents, in other words, both a fatal and fated attraction.

from ZGQ's pov, it was—of course—laying his life on the line to comprehend one of the Eight Supremes:

(LA s1, ep. 13; see also manhua ch. 109 & donghua s2, ep. 10)

from WY's pov, it was befriending ZGQ despite knowing he harbors other intentions:

(LA s1, ep. 23; see also manhua ch. 191 & donghua s3, ep. 5)

as such, i'm not the biggest fan of how Youku tl'ed the line as "a meaningless struggle." because neither of their choices were meaningless. both of them were acting as Zhuge Liang had: 明知天理在但是逆大势而行 / despite knowing full well that divine order and destiny exist, behaving in a manner that opposes the momentum of the times.

indeed, it could be argued that associating with each other was not in anyone's best interest. WY even remarks in Biyou Village:

"In truth, originally I could've not defeated you... No! Rather, it should be said that originally I could've not become acquainted with a scoundrel like you..." (manhua ch. 222; see also donghua s4, ep. 4)

which is what makes their relationship even more special. they were never supposed to meet—yet their meeting was inevitable. they are equals; they abide by the same principles, even if their methods are not always the same.

in the live-action adaptation in particular, 飞蛾扑火 is a lyric in 《戎断反应》, which is the song most associated with ZLH/XH (and also FSY/JZL in s1, ep. 17).

(LA s1, ep. 6)

so... make of that parallel what you will. (this is far from the only time YeQing are directly juxtaposed with other canon couples, but i'm specifically referring to the nature and context of ZLH/XH's "forbidden" relationship more than anything else.)

the element of fire also marks the progression of YeQing's relationship in other ways.

in the Longhu-shan arena, ZGQ launches a ball of fire at WY with 赤炼......

(LA s1, ep. 13; see also manhua ch. 108 & donghua s2, ep. 9)

...which is, strangely enough, the exact same spell ZGQ uses during Biyou Village arc to force WY out of danger:

(donghua s4, ep. 5; see also manhua ch. 228)

so the imagery of ZGQ and WY always being separated by [a wall of] fire is really striking to me.

significantly, fire is also the dominant element of the Zhuge family's ultimate skill, 三昧真火 / True Fire of Samadhi, which ZGQ was never able to master until he triumphed over his 心魔 (WY & the Feng-hou Qimen he possesses):

(manhua ch. 311)

so, fire has always stood in-between these two in some way. but, like moth to a flame, they will always find their way back to each other.

(i definitely think that's the direction the manhua is currently developing in at least, esp. given that ZGQ has now found peace with himself and how he regards WY.)

furthermore, in 五行 / five elements, fire signifies a pinnacle (i.e., combustion), with a decline sure to follow. pretty neat, then, that in the donghua s2 opening 《无涯》 / Limitless, WY and ZGQ are matched with the lyrics 缘起缘灭 / fate begins, fate extinguishes:

by 五行 standards, fire is also associated with the organ: heart. given that WY is ZGQ's 心魔 / lit. heart's demon, and also that (in WYLR's words) they've 推心置腹 / lit. given their heart into the other's keeping, i think that really is just more than fitting.

and—finally—fire is related to alchemy. to tempering, to refinement, and to permanent transformation. hence:

Zhuge Qing: unrestrained as the winds, ardent as a wildfire. Wang Ye is melting. He’ll never be able to go back. (from 青春归你 | my youth and yours)

YeQing inevitably altered the course of each other's lives. (but that's for a separate post～)

#yeqing #cdrama ramblings #异人之下 #i am nobody #一人之下 #hitori no shita #i have too many tags for this IP i need to condense #if u made it this far thanks for reading u are a champ

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jackofacetrades · 6 months

Text

Time is fucked up in OFMD s2 and that's okay

I mean, we all know it. Time doesn't make any sense in ofmd. We saw in ep5 that Stede and the crew had a whole long ass adventure while Ed was just out fishing with Fang. The first arc isn't possible in one day, while fishing couldn't have taken more than 3 or 4 hours.

But what if it's more than that? What if it's a feature and not just continuity jokes or just super long ass days?

In season one, there was an active discontinuity in genre: comedic (some said muppety), romantic, dramatic or real-life like. Each character stuck to their own genre. This season, it's less the case, the genres all blend together to give us one romantic-comedy-drama show. I feel it's not as clear cut as it was, the vibes are more smoothed between scenes and characters.

What is not smoothed out this season is time. It makes no fucking sense. Here, we're made to believe, thanks to some continuity in some arcs, that everything happened in 4 days (one for each ep4-7). What if that's not true? What if each story advances within its own timeline, each arc independant from the others?

Let's recap some of the ep4-7 arcs. We have Izzy's self love/internal peace and discovery arc. Pete and Lucius relationship. Stede's growth as a pirate (with Izzy's help). Ed's own self acceptance. Ed and Stede romance of course. The crew, as a whole, also has its own timeline. We could add the Swede settling at Spanish Jackie's, Zheng's recruitment, or Minor Prince Dude launching a cabale against pirates with some Other British Dudes. And also, the delivery of the clocks in the thousands of Zheng's ship army.

Each one of those arcs/stories should take so much time, ranging from days to weeks or even months. Yet we're made to believe they all happened in 4—albeit very long—days? I call bullshit. It's not that ofmd's days are exceptionnally long. I believe each story took exactly the time it should have taken, but each in its own dimensional time pocket. They just happen to blur and meet sometimes.

Depending on which character you focus on, the time lapse between the scenes isn't the same, it's as simple as that:

Izzy's evolution makes perfect sense if you let him take his time. It's not out of character, it's out of time. His leg and forehead scar healing that fast are also proof of it. He had the time to heal and reconstruct himself. Something like months.

Ed and Stede felt to me as if at least two weeks had passed between their kiss on the deck under the moonlight and them making love after the Ned Low debacle. (It doesn't make it less rushed to them, mind you!)

Same for the crew: they're bored at the beginning of ep6, telling stories and rearranging furniture. Jim says things are going slow now. Do you say that after only 2 days of peace after escaping a storm and a death condemnation? Nope. Some weeks has passed.

Pete and Lucius are going at another pace entirely. When it's fast for the others, it's going slow for them (Lucius coming to term with his Blackbeard's obsession). When it's slow for the others (the weeks previously mentioned) it's fast for them (24h).

I'll stop here for the examples, you can figure out some others for yourselves.

Also also. The clocks. It's the symbol of it, really. First in ep4 Mary destroyed that cuckoo, then in ep7 all those clocks literally exploding? The show is literally saying: "time is fucked up, we know, what if we didn't bother with it?" It's honestly the same with all the (brilliant) historical inaccuracies happening.

They wanted to tell a story, which had many other stories within, but it didn't fit. So creators just said fuck it, it's a story, we can do whatever the fuck we want. They know what they're doing with their characters. They're writing their stories.

So yeah. We shouldn't try to take it too seriously and bother about time accuracy. It just won't fit.

#ofmd #ofmd meta #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd s2 ep7 #my meta analysis #my posts

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bonefall · 1 year

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how does the fire scene play out in your redux?

Had a whole thing written out and Tumblr crashed and deleted my post again :/ take 2

The Fire Scene's one of those things that, because of a bunch of my reduxes, can't exist the way that it does in canon.

Adopted kits are valued just as much as regular kits ergo she can't have a reverse psychology "Ok fine kill them it won't hurt me" moment. The Queen's Rights also means that she did not have a social obligation to reveal the father of her kits (though many cats in the clan will think it was a dick move she didn't tell Bramble)

But I do need to preserve Ashfur's motivation that he's scorned by her rejecting him. It's important that he wants to possess and hurt her because he is an incel... though, I do want to weave in something about the "Kin of your Kin" prophecy reaching him and adding an element that they should be dead because their power could threaten ThunderClan (which is from my Villain Thornclaw AU, and imo a much better motivation behind the Fire Scene in general. Especially since it connects thematically to The Broken Code.)

Fragments, rough outline:

-I'm going to change the logistics a bit; Squirrelflight is trying to push a tree down for the Three to climb up. Ashfur interrupts this action

-"My quarrel is with you!" They brawl here, Ash wants to force her to watch her kids die

-I'm thinking she lets loose the secret to disarm him for a moment, "ok. kill them. they aren't my kits so i dont care" "Wait-- what? Wait! No you're lying you turned around go go back into th-" SQUILF KICKKK

-Maybe she even kicked him so hard she launched him into the tree, knocking it over. Girlboss. let my cats do anime battles

-This is when the three start coming up the tree, but Ash obviously is trying to stop that. Lionblaze gets to run up and slap his bald head

-Lion can have a moment here, if it's fitting, that he isn't capable of killing Ash and feels ashamed of his monstrous powers. He was his mentor-- in this rewrite, a mentor is emotionally like another parent. He's overwhelmed by hurt, betrayal, and thinks back to all the things Ashfur did that hurt him

-In general I really need to hammer out what their mentor/apprentice dynamic was like, and how it affected Lionblaze's personality. Thinking about it now, it's super important for this scene

-hmm... maybe I can tie the prophecy-motivation back in here, and have THIS be the moment where they logically work out Leafpool is their parent. "They aren't Squilf's kits, BUT Lionblaze obviously has star powers, so they must be Kin of Firestar's Kin through someone else! Ergo the only logical choice is LEAFPOOL"

-but like... y'know, less smartly worded.

-Anyway Ashfur runs. This is also the last story beat in Hollyleaf's Po3 arc; the last betrayal she can take before she begins her villain descent.

Post-Fire Consequences:

-Ashfur... he can't just walk off scot free, in any case, Firestar or Bramblestar (depending on if Firestar is dead yet) wouldn't let an attempted murderer stay in the Clan

-Maybe Hollyleaf kills him purely out of revenge? For how he hurt his mom, his brother, how he threatened his family. she deserves a lil revenge tbhhh

-Maybe Firestar died somewhere else during the fire and killing Ashfur right now could look like part of the same murder. Especially since Fire could have "black fur" in his claws too because Breezepelt does it. (tfw you and your evil half-bro are drowning two guys in the same creek and there's an awkward silence /j)

-When Brambleclaw/star finds out, he's upset that Squilf lied to him. That's understandable. If he's -Star by this point, he demotes her as deputy immediately because he can no longer trust her and she helped conceal a crime.

-ThunderClan is NOT completely in favor of this. Opinions are super mixed; some agree that a leader has to be able to trust their deputy. Others say Squilf was upholding the warrior code by protecting the kits. Others think it's fair for Bramble to be mad, but that Squilf was the best choice for a deputy and his personal anger is clouding his decision (a sign of a bad leader)

-Overall though, Bramble's reputation takes the larger hit here. The Thistle Law-leaning supporters who don't respect the Queen's Rights didn't like Squirrelflight politically to begin with.

-Also this is the beginning of the end of Bramblesquirrel in my rewrite. She never gets back with him romantically after how he acts in Bonefall OotS, though she does, briefly, consider it in Squirrelflight's Horror. (I think the title of that redux says everything about how 'Great' of an idea that is.)

So In Conclusion

This is the second-to-last major conflict of Bonefall Po3 before we end the arc and go to Bonefall OotS, and the widely accepted end of the Power Era as Inter-Clan political relationships sour, with no proper Fire Alone leadership to smooth tensions.

I would like to have one final Clan battle after the Fire Scene to set that up, after which Hollyleaf vanishes into the tunnels. If I was renaming the books of each arc (which I haven't yet just because none of my outlines are truly detailed enough yet to really outline 6 individual books), Sunrise would become Cruel Season.

In Cruel Season, we also get the birth of Jayfeather's kits, adopted by Lionblaze in a parallel to Leafpool.

Feel free to leave suggestions and feedback on parts that are good, and what's not working about this. It's still WIP territory.

#Bonefall Rewrite #Bonefall Po3 #Bonefall Fire Scene #Hollyleaf #Lionblaze #Ashfur #Squirrelflight #Bramblestar

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morgana-ren · 4 months

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Hi Morgana :)) hope you're having a good day. So I stumbled upon this video and the discourse in the comments https://youtube.com/shorts/cbtSWTjXvZQ?si=8g19VZHJUNI-5niU

And quite frankly got curious as I didn't get to play much of an early access Astarion but I do remember how his attitude at the tiefling/goblin party seems a lil different from early access to launch as well as his noble to charlatan change. So I thought that I could ask the Lore Mommy do you think he was changed that much and or how these changes shifted your perspective on his character. Because personally I do view him as a decadent and somewhat hedonistic as Ascended and those traits do show in his Spawn persona as well.

So just curious about your thoughts on this:))

Okay, I ended up fucking rambling and getting off topic here. This is too long for comfort. I'm sorry I just ended up blabbing, I swear that wasn't the intention lmao. I ended up looking into the comments at aforementioned discourse and it just reminded me of shit, so please forgive me. I tend to r a m b l e with a fuckin capital R. I'm talking in a more general sense and not at anyone in particular, most especially not you, so please don't think that. It's just my observations at large. I love questions like this and I hope this doesn't make you roll your eyes.

So, I got the EA version of the game when it was still fairly early. It was Patch 2, if I recall. It was interesting watching the group develop and grow as the writers and developers decided some things fit more than others because sometimes the patches were so drastically different than the last. Wyll actually got an entire rewrite between the EA and the full release. All of the characters we had went through changes (except Karlach and Halsin because they weren't there but they were likely tweaked behind the scenes.) A lot of Astarion's concept was already written, but his character was absolutely tweaked. The art book and a lot of the released designs are very early. We had them as of patch 2 where he was drastically different. In the beginning, they very much were going more for the stereotypical 'evil' follower. You could play as a good character and he would still like you, but he was very much geared for more debauchery-based playthroughs. It's also important to note that we really didn't get to demo everything. We only got the first act, and some of the more shallow aspects of it.

The thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is it is written so well because no character is good or evil. They are rounded, genuine characters with stories and lives and opinions of their own. You can dislike them, but you have to acknowledge they aren't written to be banal stereotypes. Astarion was a bit more of an evil clusterfuck in EA, but even then, there was a deep pain inside of him, and he was using his callousness and lack of giving a shit as a defense. Even then you knew something was very wrong. He mentioned Cazador because you ran into the Gur hunter, and you knew he was kept as a spawn against his will and was tortureda and had a very dubious past, but a lot of the character development wasn't in the EA-- because they didn't originally intend for it to be there.

But that doesn't fully change his character like some of the comments and other videos and posts I see seem to suggest. It seems like a lot of people have an egregious misunderstanding of his arc-- especially on tiktok and youtube shorts where the audience is younger and more prone to projection and group-thinking, echo-chambery line of thought.

Here's the rundown from what I remember deducing with EA combined with my personal playthroughs now that the game has released:

Astarion was absolutely a shithead before he was taken and turned. We don't know about his childhood, mostly because he doesn't know or remember, but I can say with certainty that he didn't become a dickhead after Cazador. Being taken made him worse, but he absolutely was an asshole before he was taken. He probably wasn't the traumatized, terrified young man he is now, but he was probably a real shit-kicker. He was on the winding path to darkness and they make this clear.

(His childhood was not touched on in the EA at all. All you knew is magistrate, vampire, gur killed him, Cazador, slave, and his dickish, libertine attitude.)

He is a noble though. This much we knew. He is privileged. Elite. He took without caring and doled out where he saw fit. He was your stereotypical rich boy-- or that's the vibe he gives off. He doesn't give off 'I earned my way into power' like Gortash does. He gives off 'I was born into privilege and I'm making it everyone else's problem.' He's educated and very savvy with language in a way that those of higher education access learn to be. He is well spoken and snubs his nose at 'lessers' in a way you see the wealthy do so casually. He was likely living a life of luxury and emerging into his own life in an Elon Musk-esque sort of evil powergrab. He might've always been a pesky little troublemaker, but he very much has 'I'm rich and I don't care about you' vibes, even beneath all of the trauma. This did not develop from Cazador. This was preexisting.

He was young. He was impulsive and dumb. He never had a chance to emotionally mature. It's entirely possible that, had he been left alone, he might've blossomed into a better person. But do not be mistaken, he was a bad person. Honestly, it's more possible to me that he would have just become another corrupt patriar with the city in his coin purse. Either way, fate played him a different hand than the one his birth had decided on.

You are told that he is a magistrate back in the city, which is true. When you play his origin story, you get options relating to it and it's actually been referred to a lot since the EA. He absolutely was some form of up and rising politician seeking power. A man with high ideas of himself, libertine proclivities, a self-centered attitude, and very much not a good person. Probably not horrible or sadistic for fun to the degree he is now, but definitely spiraling that way with the path he was on. The seeds had been planted already before any of his trauma happened.

I assume he wasn't quite important enough that his death would cause an uproar, but probably an impudent little upstart with his eyes on high political power just getting his bearings in the political world with help from mommy and daddy. The kind of petty asshole who abuses any authority he gets and doesn't care who or what gets in his way because he has some shit to prove and a life to live, everyone else be damned. That kind of person. He had ideas and ambitions, and is probably very open to corruption from the get-go. The kind of politician that dies in the street and people go "Hmm. Shame." and move on because they weren't anything special or grand. Just another corrupt asshole getting what they deserved. Another rich daddy's boy brought to the knife by the populace.

He was mourned. Someone missed him. But it wasn't the people of Baldur's Gate. That's for sure. He was forgotten before he became a true problem. Killed and stemmed. Just. Another. Cruel politician. Just another bastard with a big head. Just another.

In short, he definitely made some enemies and had drawn the wrong sort of attention during his time as a magistrate. Being the peacocking, lovely, arrogant young man he is, I bet he'd managed to make more people unbelievably pissed off than any sort of admiration, which normally for the rich isn't a problem, but... when it is, it really is, as you can see.

Even in the EA, he is very open with you tells you that the Gur, likely unhappy with a recent ruling he made, jumped him and murdered him in the street and you can let him kill the hunter. Thing is, Gur are not a violent people. If they attacked him like that, he did something to warrant it. It had to have been pretty nasty for it to have that consequence. The main difference is in the EA (later, of course, but still) you can find out that it was not Cazador that sent the Gur hunter. In fact, it was someone different entirely. I think it was someone named Maiden Fel or something. I do not remember. They likely switched it up. It was not the Gur looking of their own volition originally, but neither was it Cazador. But the EA was also slightly disjointed and broken so it's hard to tell what was canon at the time.

Astarion, in his shitty early days, isn't shy about his slight racism. He seems to dislike everything that isn't human or elven. It's entirely possible he had racial/cultural biases against the Gur and ended up pulling a ruling that was extremely unfair. It would be fair for them to seek retaliation.

This is never officially elaborated on as far as I know, but I do honestly believe that Cazador was almost more coincidence than anything. He saw a young, beautiful boy and went "Hmm... useful." He smelled blood in the water and saw someone that wouldn't be missed and offered them eternal life, knowing this silver-haired young man would be foolish enough to grasp it. He probably reeked of privilege. He would take it with open arms and without asking why or what for because that is what he was used to. Privileged people do not ask. They take. Cazador knew this.

(The point of me running through his past is to point out that not everything can be blamed on his trauma. He was at least kind of a bastard before this ever happened. And both EA and release have the similar trauma background almost identically.)

As we know, Astarion died that night. In the street. In a puddle of his own blood. He was scraped off the cobblestone and thrown into the cemetary, where he emerged the next night to his new life-- to Cazador. He didn't die. Astarion the Magistrate died. But Astarion, the stuck up, pompous, selfish asshole very much did not. In fact, that very same noble was forced to swallow a taste of his own medicine-- and it was a bitter fucking pill.

It made him worse. Trauma doesn't always make you soft and sweet. Sometimes, trauma makes you hard and cruel and angry and spiteful. Sometimes it doesn't make you apologetic; it makes you venomous. It makes you a spitting cobra rather than a loyal, empathetic puppy.

(Notice all I say about projection) Honestly, for me, it's nice to see that representation. Because my trama did not make me kind. It made me hurt. And it made me angry. And it twisted my mind into ways of thinking that I do not like. And you almost never see that. You see a lot of people who are kind and soft and gentle, but you don't often see those of us that were ripped apart and never managed to sew back together right. We do not bend and break our back and twist our tongues for others. Sometimes we are hurtful and mean and things that people paint as evil. Sometimes you grow claws rather than thick skin. Sometimes you grow fangs rather than a bigger heart.

So, more in line with the actual question, they very much did change up his arc. He was meant to be much more manipulative and shitty. It was datamined in the original script, I believe. That much was confirmed way earlier in the early access. But more or less, they went 'Hey, maybe we shouldn't write such a vapid dumbass character because it doesn't fit with the theme of 'complexity' we're working with here. Maybe we should make him more rounded. Maybe we should make him a person.' His story had been mostly mapped, but his character hadn't quite yet. And I'm glad they did.

Having him be a vacuous, shitty stereotype would have been a massive disappointment, especially in a game that is so deep.

Here's the bit though:

It is a CONSTANT throughout the game, EA and release; Astarion very much is an asshole. He is throughout the entire game. He can get better, but he's a dick. No two ways around it. His trauma didn't make him terrible, he very much already was a selfish person who ended up getting stunted. He learned to lie and manipulate to survive, but he wasn't a sweet boy when this happened to him. He was a 'bad' person who had something horrible happen to him that opened up his body and made him defensive and cruel, because he believes the world is cruel and indifferent to suffering, which goes in line with his earlier pre-kidnap thinking of 'Who cares?' It made him bitter for sure, but he already had those ways of thinking. He didn't care who he hurt. He didn't care about anyone. That's the entire bit with 'libertines' and the elite. He was already bad; it made him worse.

He was a fucking jackass. But notice I don't say evil.

He is not a character that empathizes or sympathizes well. He doesn't care what others are going through unless you teach him to, and even then, he is still learning. He is capable of trying if you steer him there. But in general? He rejoices in cruelty, being a general nuisance, being selfish, being power hungry, and being self serving. These are not solely trauma traits. These are not all defense mechanisms, though they can be. Astarion is a rounded character that is complex but right now is not the stereotypical 'uwu sad baby' shit that people love to do to him either. They made him relatable. Gave him tragedy. And people love to latch on to that to paint us as these pathetic babies incapable of our own thoughts who need to be coddled and babied and defended.

From EA, they made him more rounded. They made him less cartoonishly gimmicky. He's still a very selfish jerkoff, but he is scared, and vulnerable, and they made a point to emphasize that. He is not just evil hot vampire. He is scared, vulnerable, rude, pompous, arrogant, selfish, terrified, traumatized, angry, subdued--

and the list goes on. He is a person. He is a relatable person. But these traits he respects in the beginning? Selfishness? Greed? Self-serving? These are traits he admired before that were amplified by his trauma. These are traits that we condemn as a human race, but we still hone and harbor. These are things we have and we see and we experience day to day.

And that is why it is so easy to judge him and condemn him and try to paint him in black or white and call him banal morality labels like 'good' or 'evil.' It's part of why we have these arguments over his EA versus now. Because you see these good/bad things and immediately need to justify your love or hatred for him and defend or condemn him because you hear them and go "No! Wrong! I know he's selfish but he's not evil and--" and all of those other posts we love. People struggle with nuance. That is why it is so easy for people to make these videos defending their views. They grab keywords and examples and go "See!" and show little tiny snippets instead of an entire person. Hell, we do it in real life too. We point out one facet of someone's life and judge and condemn them based upon it. With Astarion, we see so much more, but even then, people still struggle.

People have real experiences with these values. People have personal feelings and judgments based on those things. They feel a need to analyze it, but most people do not know how. They cannot say "No, I just don't like him" or "Yeah, I enjoy him" and leave it at that. Similar to how I'm ripping this open right now. And I'm not condemning anyone. Clearly I'm going on a tangent right now over it. It's fun to do. But people feel like it's necessary. Like they have to.

In those comments, someone points out that media literacy is dead, and I'm inclined to agree. Everything is black and white and must be tucked into neat little boxes that are easy for people to digest. A bad character is a bad mean evil irredeemable character. A good character is a good character that behaves good and does things we expect from good people. Humans are no longer humans. They are not complex. They are not nuanced. They are one dimensional creatures to be judged and executed. That is why people struggle so hard with games this well written. Because it is not that simple. It is not in real life and it is not in the game.

Also in the comments here, it seems like everyone is arguing over a nonissue. It seems to stem from the fact that there's a lot of discourse over liking a bad character. People feel like his newer design is 'justified' and even though he is 'a jerk,' he is not 'irredeemable.' The entire thing is asinine.

No one deserves redemption. That is the fucking point of redemption. That is the entire whole ass point. Someone who does not deserve it working to redeem themselves. If you deserve redemption, you don't need it. If you need it, you do not deserve it. People forget that.

I see this a lot. People demonizing others who enjoy complex or more nuanced characters that are not wholly good. People saying characters are irredeemable and terrible and if you like them, you're a bad person. If you like villains, you clearly relate and you're a bad person. If you like this person, you're just like them and must be condoning their actions.

It's so fucking stupid. I see it with books too. People jump on protagonists because they think the term 'protagonist' means hero, and people conflate the two. I could go on a whole (new) tangent about this, but the point is people are incapable of processing that now, because we've really muddied the waters with morality and we use shame rather than critical thinking. We operate off of gut instincts like 'disgust' and 'hatred' and instead of thinking about shit, we just shove it away and condemn, condemn, condemn.

A natural consequence of this is people jump like dogs to twist that character they love or hate into a victim or something beyond their actual story. They will jump through hoops. They will do whatever it takes to avoid the stigma of being a 'bad person' in the eyes of some internet tiktok teen with a billion followers or some tumblr mom because they have been raised to believe that makes them a bad person and they will deserve the ostrasizing they get. They will be bullied and driven from the internet and sent anons until they go into fucking hiding. It's not okay to just enjoy something anymore. You have to justify it to some asshole. You have to break it open and twist it and defend it or burn it. You can't just exist.

People project. And holy fuck, have they projected on Astarion. It's another natural consequence of having such an incredible, well written character. People see themselves in him. In fact, people see themselves in him so much that they inadvertently take away his agency again in an ironic twist because people with similar feelings or experiences feel like they 'get' him better and therefore have more say over a fictional character than the character himself, the person who wrote him and the man who brought him to life.

My point with all of this nonsensical and unrelated bullshit rambling is that I loved Astarion in the EA and I love him more now. I would have loved him if they left him 'evil' but kept him rounded. His ascended ending is him falling deeply into his worst instincts for control coupled with his entitlement and need for safety. His spawn ending is him relenting and accepting and trying to be better within reason. He will always be Astarion. But he can make efforts to be better-- or worse. But he is always Astarion, and Astarion is decadent, and a bit of a jerk, and a stuffy noble elite with standards. He will always be like that. He will always be Astarion. He probably does better there with someone to babysit like Tav, but even a single spawn Astarion made great strides and effort.

I think we take that for granted a lot. We get people all up in their feelings and lashing out at people who like one ending or the other. We have people calling other people horrible people for trusting Astarion in the end of his spawn ending instead of coddling him and taking his fuckin' free will away again. We have people throwing food like kids in a cafeteria and it feels like no one slows the fuck down and wonders why they feel that way.

I like Astarion because he's an incredible character. I like him more in the release because he's more developed. He feels real. He feels like me. (See, projection.) I get it. People are not always pure good or pure evil. These are words we made up because we're an idiot little species that needs to categorize, same as why we name shapes and traits. But I liked him evil too. I just liked him. He just interested me. I always liked him.

He feels better in the release. More fleshed out. Less foreboding and more understandable. He's not Viconia from BG2 who is basically just there to be an evil temptress for 'hehe evil' characters. But guess what? It's totally fine if you wanna engage with him that way! If you don't like him, or you don't want to bother with making him better, you don't have to. If that's all you want to do, then hell yeah, baby.

At the end of the day, he is a model we can use to dissect ourselves. He can help us understand how we view complex issues. But it gets frustrating when people highjack it with an absolutely egregious misunderstanding of the story. Like things are so simple, you know?

In the EA, he was cool. He was really cool. But we didn't know much about him other than 'hehe evil.' We didn't know much about anything, and man, did we like to theorize. I can remember doing it years and years ago before the fuckin' game came out. But ultimately, it was always a projection of ourselves. What we wanted. What we saw.

They made him a more fleshed out being. They filled in the blanks. He is an arrogant fucking asshole, and he is rude, and entitled, and pompous, and cruel, and self serving and greedy and all of that 'evil' shit, but he is also human. He is capable of deep and profound love. He is capable of caring. He is capable of so much. He can be selfless and loving and caring and gentle. He can be genuine and honest. These traits do not define him unless he chooses to cling to them-- and he only does if he does not learn. And when he doesn't learn? He loses himself and fills his destiny of being the wretched, terrible perpetuator of abuse both on the populace and you. And that was the point. That happens when you lose yourself and give in to fear. It can happen to all of us. And sometimes it does.

But it really also isn't that deep, in the same breath. If you like the ascended ending which is a bit more in line with his original origins, so what? It's a cool ending. It's neato. It still has a clear and blatant message, but it's a fucking video game. Do what you like. If you think it's hot? So what? If you just enjoy the goddamned doomed narrative? So?

Not everything has to be a trial of who you are as a person. Not everything is that deep. Sometimes the answer is as simple as 'shit is cool' and it ends there. If other people look deeper into it, that sounds like a 'them' problem. That's their need to justify. That's their desire. Both EA and release are fantastic. Some folks have preferences. I liked both.

He's my boy. I love him for who he is and what he has done for me. And I'm grateful I got to see his development. I'm grateful I get a well written story with incredible characters. If people think he's wholly evil or good, that's their sack of beans, my dude.

#morgana and friends #astarion spoilers #holy fuck I really just sat here and wailed forever huh #I do not expect anyone to read all of this #I think it's my way of compounding my thoughts #nothing is ever simple with me eh

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tempenensis · 1 year

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After watching the new PV I'm haunted by how overall bright the animation team decided to make decided to make what I'm assuming will be part one of season two.

I don't know if I'm hallucinating, but the colours in the PV are so much more vivid and bright than in season one even. To me, it looks more like the colour scheme of a slice of life or a shojo as opposed to JJK lol 😂 I'm also reminded of the chapter 100 cover.

Either way, I think this fits with the mood at the beginning of the arc really well— Gojo and Getou are still best friends, as well the strongest. To them, nothing will rip them apart and their place in the world is still unquestioned by themselves yet. They're trying to help a girl see the world before getting sacrificed to what is essentially an elderitch being, and have as much fun as she can before she'll cease to exist. (I can't wait to see the aquarium scene, those are possibly my favourite panels in the entire series so far, I have so many hopes for what they'll do with that which I won't put here)

Personally, I think it'll be really cool if the events of the arc happen and suddenly the colour scheme takes a hard shift into muted and dark colours as they enter into Shibuya arc, which may actually happen, especially if you look at the train promo art they put out last year. Sorry for ranting here, the PV has launched me deep into JJK orbit again 😂😂

Coincidentally got two asks on the same topic, lol, apologize to you guys for collecting these.

But seriously, the thing is... PV is only first glimpse. And this is only the first one. We usually get at least a few PV before any anime aired. So I think we should see until the actual episode air. I actually agree with the first anon. Maybe they used bright colors to throw non-manga readers off the track (remember Junpei? lmao sobs). But we're definitely gearing up into another traumatic season... even more than the first

#le-ask #jjk #jjk manga spoilers #also they might be saving the dark colors for the second half of the season lmao #our darkest arc yet

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justmightyshadows · 2 months

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Jaheira Enters The Battle

Day 7 of the BG3 Fic Feb.

This is another SFW prompt - prompt # 5 First Time Seeing Their LI In Battle. If you enjoy show it some love on AO3.

I'm a little obsessed with Jaheira right now and I'll follow this up with a NSFW piece soon-ish.

Walking into Last Light Inn feels like entering the embrace of radiance itself, small wisps of glimmer seem to rain down inside emitting a soothing crackling sound. After her initial interrogation, Jaheira had sent the others upstairs to talk to Isobel and you had leaned over her map, taking in the precise notes she had about each sq meter of space up until the edge of the old town itself where it simply said “Do not cross!! Will be shadow food”. Soon you noticed that she wasn’t staring at the map at all anymore, but peering interestingly at you. Scanning every inch of your body as if she we’re sizing you up for battle, thinking of where you would fit in the plans she had to take Moonrise. It was overwhelming and intense, suffocating even. After the trek you had to get here you didn’t have the energy to think into much further. You glanced to the second floor and wondered how much longer it would take for the others to come back from seeing Isobel. At this point you wanted nothing more than to rest, curl up in your bed roll and sleep. It was impossible to tell how long you’d been up in this land without sun and your muscles ached more than they had since the beginning of your journey.

Tilting your head side to side you tried to stretch and shake away the feeling. There was still much to do. “There’s a room across from here with beds. Rest, we will need you for the battles to come.” you look up into her bright green eyes and see concern? Maybe. It was hard to read into her emotions in your current state. Her face was much softer than when she had you bound with vines outside the building but still her voice carries the weight of a command. Even in her caring she is in charge. Above you comes a crash and a loud scream, ‘Isobel?’ You’re not sure of the clerics voice but the sound of swords unsheathing is unmistakably your party.

You turn quickly towards the noise, your head swiveling up with a quick arc but before you can react a portion of the wood ceiling beam pins you, with a loud crash, into the floor. Your vision blurs as large masses of what appear to be winged beasts descend from the now wide open roof, the soft light of Isobel’s protection giving them a glowing backlight. One lands on top of you- it’s claws digging into your leg- breaking skin and puncturing the flesh. It’s breath is icy and acrid smelling like that of a corpse as it hunches over you. You struggle against the beam but your arms cannot reach your sword or bow as it raises its claw to strike you. Terror overtakes you as you hold your breath waiting for the impact, cursing the sleepy feeling you allowed to weaken you and put you in this situation. Overhead you hear a low, deep, growl something akin to a lion you think. Odd for such a being to make that noise you think and you curiosity causes you to risk to open your eyes. You see the fiend is being dragged backward by a large panther. Having dug into you initially it pulls large streaks of your leg with it as it goes, your cries of pain washed out by the sound of its harpy like calls. Fiends and panthers, you think, not sure if this animal is friend or foe but decide it is at least friend for now. Two flaming fists lift the beam off of you as you shimmy upward, rising to your feet, as blood streams down your open wound. You gingerly put weight on it as you watch the Panther crunch down on the neck of the beast and sling it’s head back and forth to crack it forcefully before tossing it aside like an unwanted toy.

Blood drips from its jowls as it turns its big eyes to the next fiend, launching with claws forward to pounce atop it. From the other direction another hellspawn lands trying to attack while the panther is distracted with its prey. Sneaky fuck. The panther is making good work of your unwelcome visitors so having it alive would be best for now, especially with your leg so battered. You lean back against the wall relieving your leg of your weight as you draw an arrow into your oak bow pulling it taught to your cheek. The shaft sails with deadly precision and enters the back of its targets skull with a satisfying thunk. It falls over and twitches a final limp goodbye. At least I wasn’t completely useless, you think. Taking your eyes off the panther you look around to see if there are more animals in need, human or the like. Your eyes trail over where Jaheira had been standing some minutes before and you gasp. “Hey !” you ask the Fist nearest you “Where’s Jaheira??” He shrugs noncommittally as he begins to charge upstairs to check on Isobel instead, his sword outstretched and his armor clinking loudly as he goes. You take a moment to scan the room and forgetting the wound on your leg bend down to get a better view under some rubble. White hot pain blasts through your leg causing you to keel over onto all fours. The impact leaves deep cuts in your palms from the sharpened debris and your bow scatters across the floor out of reach.

Of course you think, bad luck seems to be following me right now. The panther locks eyes with you and you know from this position you look like prey, your training as a Ranger is telling you to look as big as possible.

Shit. It’s yellowed eyes narrow as it lowers its head, blood and pieces of carcass dripping from its jowl. You try to raise your head, lift your body, something and only find another shooting pain to greet you. The panther opens its mouth moving closer to you quickly before dissolving into a radiant light. You think you are seeing the light that proceeds death and close your eyes in acceptance. It had of course, been a high probability at this point anyway. What with shadow zombies, flying ghouls, undead godlike men, Githyanki warriors, a worm in your brain and now a very large panther was going to bring its jaws down over your skull. Not the way you expected to go but it might be the best option all things considered. “Good shot on the lurker behind me! Must have been hard without your legs under you. Let me have a look at that wound.” Jaheira’s voice is warm and teasing and urges you to open your eyes. She’s there, kneeling near you her hands aglow as she presses them into the deep wounds that trail down your leg. You feel the familiar washing sensation of healing magic, but the unfamiliar feel of her warm and surprisingly soft hands pressed against your leg. She smells of rain water, for trees and at the moment blood. The lower half of her face is covered in so much blood and gore that even when she goes to wipe it with the back of her hand she is still stained with it’s touch.

Of course. She’s a druid. As a wood elf you are embarrassed at the misunderstanding but write it off as sleep delirium. Another day you’d have had your wits about you. Hell, tomorrow would be that day.

“It couldn’t keep its claws off me I guess.” You say sheepishly trying to eek a smile out and cut the tension from the closeness of your bodies. She takes the bait and gives a chuckle “I’m sure they’re not the only one giving you that problem. There, that’s the best I can do. I’m afraid you’ll have a nice collection of scars from now on, but you’ll be back to running and bow shooting in no time.” She lets her hand linger on your thigh for a moment before standing and helping you to your feet. You admire the shining new scars that trail down your thigh and lean against her. “I think they look quite good on me. What do you think?” She looks down and then up into your eyes. “My opinion doesn’t matter in this case, ask someone else to inspect you, Cub.” She holds your arm tight as you both head up the stairs

“I am, far older than you, hatchling.” You toss the phrase at her in jest. “Plus you’re sure to give me an honest answer. It is your way, or your oath or something you Harpers believe in.” She gives another full laugh tossing her head back and shaking you along with her. “Hatchling is it? I’ll go with High Harper from such a smart mouth. I have taken no oath to be truthful but have no reason to lie either- they look good on you, great even. The mark of a true warrior. Next battle though, try to stay off your rear end for most of it. You let an old woman out fight you.” As she speaks you notice a small piece of carcass that she missed hanging limply from her red soaked chin. You pause your steps bringing her to a stop to look at you “Are you in pain?” She asks her eyes filled with concern looking down at your leg. You lift your free hand to the side of her chin and wipe it away with a soft touch, her face remains stoic but she blushes at the tips of her ears and pulls away. Already poised to make a joke it seems she pokes at you a bit “With all this rubble around us you’re worried about a tiny bit of flesh? I make quite a mess in battle, if you are this picky you will be cleaning for days.” There is a pause and she mutters in an uncharacteristically soft voice “But I thank you.”

#bg3 #ao3 fanfic #ao3 link #bg3 jaheira #last light inn #bg3 tav #bg3 fic #bg3 ficfeb #bg3ficfeb #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic prompt #tav #jaheira

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scruffyplayssonic · 1 year

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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episodes 1 - 5: The Origin Story!

It’s been awhile since I first teased this, huh? Sorry, but this ended up taking me a lot longer than I expected. Life got in the way. And Sonic Frontiers. And Pokemon Violet. And I only have up to episode 13 or so actually written up at this stage. But I wanted to start getting this out there, and considering I’ve already written so much on this, I thought it might be easier for everyone to enjoy in smaller segments. So I’m going to attempt to release this one episode at a time on a daily basis and see how that goes.

So, to business. Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80’s/90’s syndicated cartoon? Obviously the answer to this question is, “What? No, of course not. ArchieSonic was a comic book, not a cartoon. Are you thinking of SatAM? Or Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog? Are you just high? How did you come to this ridiculous conclusion?” And okay, that’s fair. But consider this - syndicated cartoons from the 80’s and 90’s shared a lot of the same story tropes. Gotta pad out those 65 episodes, right? And interestingly, the ArchieSonic series happens to have used a lot of those same tropes across the 20 plus years it was running. I refer you to the following Discord conversation:

Well, that sounded like a challenge to me. When I first saw this I replied with yays or nays to each item on the list just off the top of my head, but I thought it would be fun to do a more in depth analysis. So let’s have a look at our list here, shall we?

There’s a lot to go through, so let’s get straight into it with today’s episode! Or in this case, episodes.

1 - 5: Origin story. Make it a week-long event. Really pad it out. Can sell it later on VHS as The Movie.

There’s actually several instances that explore the origins of Sonic and the Freedom Fighters. Naturally, the first instance is the very beginning of the comic series.

Issue 0 was released in November 1992 - holy crap, that’s now more than 30 years ago! - and was essentially the pilot episode for ArchieSonic. It was the first issue of a four issue mini series with the main series later launched in April 1993 with Sonic the Hedgehog #1. The mini series isn’t a continuous story arc, like this trope suggests the first five episodes of 80’s and 90’s syndicated cartoons were, but it did introduce Sonic, Robotnik, and the Freedom Fighters (except for Bunnie, she wasn’t brought in until issue #3 of the main series). The second story of issue 0, “Oh no, Robo! No Mo’ Mobo’!” explained in a flashback how Robotnik took over the planet and Sonic joined up with Princess Sally and the other Freedom Fighters.

This history would be eventually retconned in the main series, but I’ll get into that later. This story by itself doesn’t fit the multi-episode requirement, but if you include the entire mini-series as the origin story then I think it works well enough. There’s also a story in mini #3 that recounts Sonic and Robotnik being raised together as kids…

…but that turned out to be a dream, so let’s not dwell on it.

Interestingly, when the ArchieSonic series was cancelled after Sonic #290 in December 2016 - over 24 years after issue 0 was released - the final issue was also telling the origins of that world. When ArchieSonic underwent a soft reboot in issue 252 the entire backstory of the world saw a lot of changes, and this was explored in the “Genesis of a Hero” arc that was supposed to run from Sonic the Hedgehog issues 288 - 291.

As you can probably tell from the covers, the post-reboot comics’ backstory was much more heavily linked to the story of the games. The first three issues explored how the events of Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive/Genesis version), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive/Genesis version), and Sonic CD happened in the comics.

The final issue of this arc would have been about Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but to the despair of many a fan (including myself), the series was cancelled after issue 290 and so issue 291 was never released. There’s some incomplete art of the issue over at the Sonic News Network if you’d like to see it for yourself though.

As sad as it is that the ArchieSonic series was cancelled after lasting for so many years, it’s interesting to note that both the first and the last comics that were published both told part of Sonic’s origin story. It actually makes for a pretty neat bookend.

There’s an argument to be made that the Sonic Genesis arc that ran from issues 226 - 229 also counts as an origin story.

This story was the result of Dr. Eggman rewriting the world with the first Genesis Wave. Like Genesis of a Hero, this arc also showed what the world of ArchieSonic could look like if it was more heavily influenced by the games.

This history re-write was undone by Super Sonic in issue 229, but it’s still worth mentioning for this category, I think.

There are two other instances I can think of that explore the origins of the characters, but I’m going to save those for another episode. I think this one is beefy enough already. But for the record, I’m thinking of Sonic #43 and the two Sonic Kids super specials.

Tomorrow’s episode: body swap! Stay tuned for the chaos and shenanigans!

#archiesonic syndicated

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farchanter · 1 year

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For All Mankind (season 3)

This isn't about God, it's about NASA.

Two episodes into the third season of For All Mankind, I did not have a good feeling.

In the final season of Parks & Recreation, the characters all become successful beyond their wildest dreams. In order for the writers to accomplish this, those characters become distorted, caricatured versions of themselves, bringing perhaps one or two notes of their earlier characterizations while having those notes blown up to wild proportions.

Whether we like that choice or not, we have to acknowledge where Parks & Recreation was in its lifecycle (they were, effectively, taking a victory lap after a run as one of the greatest comedies of its generation) and also what Parks & Rec was (a comedy). For All Mankind isn't supposed to be either of those things: it's a hard sci-fi with no particular end in sight.

The tone of those first few episodes, then, was really off-putting. Everything was just so exaggerated in a way that felt like a parody or fanfiction of For All Mankind instead of a new season. For example, the incredibly awkward, uncomfortable, but palpable romance arc at the end of season 2 has metamorphosized into a stalker arc. Ed— whose growth was one of the main driving factors in the resolution of the conflict at the end of season 2— has backslid, and at first blush it seemed like that was just to fit him into the "reactionary Greatest Generation member" hole the show requires.

That sour taste never quite goes away, but once the show gets rolling into a multiparty race for Mars, we get back to what made the earlier parts of For All Mankind so compelling. Where Ed's initial state this season felt like a needless regression, his nonlinear growth throughout the season feels remarkably human— and, hopefully, it sticks. The interpersonal conflicts, dramas, and romances of the Mars journey feel quite authentic.

The science fiction— the world part of the show, as opposed to the character piece— experiences a similar split. The alt-history proposes some pretty thoughtful questions (in this world where NASA is a powerful government agency, its commercialization of nuclear fusion has induced protests around the country when the fossil fuel industry collapses overnight, and we also get to deal with the ramifications of trivial orbital and even lunar travel and the dangers they might pose) but also feels a need to ground itself in the real 1990s, when the show is set, which felt jarring. I kind of wish it had committed more fully to the alt part of alt-history.

The space missions are just as pulse-pounding as we've grown accustomed to. There is an unfortunate tendency to what I'm doing to call "tension creep", where the writers feel the need to push the missions one step further than where they went before in terms of their impossibility. It reaches the point where, when the head of NASA reminds us of Apollo 11 just as the daring end-of-season mission is about to launch, I startled. The relatively staid act of landing on the Moon feels like a completely different show from the absurd mission about to take place. The characters are more important than the space portions, but it still took me out of the moment a bit.

We've already been renewed for season 4, but I think For All Mankind needs to start winding down. Part of that is that, if the showrunners want to "tension creep" even further, the show is going to become a farce. There are also important in-fiction questions of where we go now that the race for Mars is over. And, moreover, we have to acknowledge that a lot of time has passed between June of 1969 (when the show begins) and 2005— where the end-of-season roll suggests the next season will take place. Many of our characters are dead— and, even for those that aren't, there's only so much longer they can reasonably be effective. I don't personally believe the show has done the necessary groundwork to invest us in new characters yet.

#completion list #tv #completed #todo #review #for all mankind #alt-history #sci-fi #sci fi #scifi #apple tv #NASA #space #knight #ronald d. moore #alternate history #Matt Wolpert #Ben Nedivi

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

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Fitz needs many, many hugs. I feel like he gets the short side of the stick in the fandom, everyone's always talking about him in relation to Sophie instead of him being his own character with his own flaws and opinions. It hoenstly annoys me, it's not like he even has glaring anger issues! He only yelled at Sophie (and people in general) when he was going through the most traumatic parts of his life! His dad straight up died! (Or at least. Didn't know he could be healed, but to him his dad died) and He's expected to not only /not/ go into his own way of dealing with emotions, but to cater to others? People are expecting a 16 year old boy to be the pinnacle of emotional maturity? To hear about how his father died and go "Ah yes, what a shame, are you alright Sophie? I know that Lord Alden was close with you" as if it wasn't his fucken dad omfg

I could just be remembering it wrong and I personally don't like Sophie all that much (I just find her very selfish and overpowered, especially since she's launched into the highlife of society. I would've preferred to have Sophie cut out or at least reduced and have Fitz and Dex be the main characters as they are /brilliant/ mirrors of each other and could solve lots of the issues. That way we would also get a feel for how the world was, immersing ourselves in the fantasy when someone weird comes along, but that "weird" is our normal. I also don't like how she kissed Dex to say "See? Nothing" like omfg-)

Both Fitz and Keefe's characters have gotten almost irreparable confuddled with Sophie, and while she is a critical person in their lives who has permanently affected them, she is not all they are! I'm certainly guilty of this, as a lot of times I'll draw on relationships characters have and Sophie is an important one for them, but there's so much to each of them! Actually I think all three of them are permanently tied to each other, as I've brought them all up now...

You're so right though, Fitz needs so many more hugs, and your critique of the anger issues he's attributed to have is accurate. The term "anger issues" come with a whole host of assumptions and stigma, and I just don't think they fit him. I believe it's more accurate to say that he can struggle with his anger, not that he has anger issues. And yeah! His worst moments have always come during some of the most stressful times of his life where it would be absolutely unrealistic to expect him to be rational and in control. That doesn't mean that he's excused or justified or that his behavior is acceptable, but it doesn't make his behavior into some huge character flaw to vilify him for.

Fitz's dad effectively dying is a very understandable reason to lose your shit! One thing that always slightly baffles me is how Sophie herself specifically says that (saying she understands and that he can be mad at her, etc) and has that attitude throughout the whole event from the beginning, yet people portray it as a negative count on his character. Sophie saw Alden as a father figure, but she didn't have the same relationship or reliance or conceptualization of him as Fitz and Biana. She's allowed to feel however she needs to about it, but at the end of the day it really wasn't about her.

Also that's an interesting perspective! I haven't considered Dex and Fitz as the main characters before, as it would be a very different story. Not that that is a bad thing, it's a matter of personal preference. They do have an interesting dynamic and parallels, and their arc learning to set aside their prejudices and come together to work towards whatever goal they'd have in this changed story would be wonderful! I do wonder how it would work, as I think there's a strong argument that the reason both of them changed and came together/got over the rivalry they have is because Sophie is in the story as a bridge, so I'm curious how their interactions would be navigated without her.

I agree though that'd I'm super curious to see what the world was like before Sophie came crashing into it. I swear I made a post about that exact thing I just don't know when, but I want to know what it was like when everyone was going to classes and without Sophie's human lens and with Fitz disappearing and Keefe pulling pranks, you know?

I've also talked about the Dex kiss thing here so I won't say more here, but that's a fair way to feel about the situation!

anyway what I'm getting from all this is that we should love Fitz Vacker some more and that is a message I can absolutely get behind <33

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #quil's queries #nonsie #fitz and sophie: *get into an argument in legacy*#some people: ah yes this is proof that fitz isn't a good person for her despite this being a consequence of /both/ their actions #and also a valid argument from both sides #i simply love everyone in the series okay #long post

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sarah-sandwich · 2 years

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what's a scene u edited a lot that felt less like battling a creature and more like planting a garden? <3

I love you for asking <333

All of the ones that immediately come to mind are from Lemon Boy because I'm editing it right now but I've shared so much of that fic I'm scared to share more until it's up lol

BUT the scene where Peter and Harley finally freaking talk to each other is going the garden route. I wrote it out of order, way before the story actually got to that point so it doesn't quite mesh up with the scenes before and after and their interaction is totally off.

My notes call it "confusing, melodramatic, and weepy" so you can imagine what kind of work I have ahead of me lmao but I'm going to transplant it into a cozy indoor pot, give it a good watering, and prune up the wilted bits. Then it'll flourish.

For a published example I'm going to go with the entirety of the first chapter of Paradise (spread out with a butter knife). I babied it to life and then babied it some more until I couldn't baby it any longer and posted it even though I hadn't finished the fic yet and I very rarely do that.

Idk if you like spideypool at all?? I'm very bad at keeping track lol but it's a really fun fic if you haven't read it! Rave reviews. Stupid humor and LOLs abound. Turns non-spideypool shippers into spideypool shippers. All my friends say so.

Excerpt below the cut if you need some convincing?

Deadpool sits up and a heap of hamburger wrappers cascade off his chest. “I know a job you could do.”

“Being your sugar baby isn’t a job, ‘Pool.”

“No, not that. A real job at uh, Pym… whatever it is.”

Peter sits up. “Pym? As in Pym Particles? As in, Hank Pym? The scientist? The research lab? That Pym?”

Deadpool snaps his fingers and points a finger gun at his chest. “That’s the one! I happen to know they’ve got an opening in R&D. Or they will soon. You made your tech right? I bet you’d fit right—,”

Peter jumps to his feet as his heart jumps into his throat. “What the fuck? Are you taking out a hit on one of Pym’s scientists?”

“Nooo,” Deadpool says unconvincingly.

“Dude!”

“I’m not. I just happened to catch wind that someone is.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Listen, I looked her up. This lady is bad news. Like, experiments on puppies bad. She says shit like ‘All Lives Matter’ and—,”

“What does that have to do with anything?! We have to stop it!”

“We?”

“Yeah, we. You let it get this far, now you’re on the hook for saving this woman’s life. Come on.” He squats down and gestures impatiently at his back.

“Am I dreaming? A Spidey-back ride?”

“I will drop you in traffic if you say that again. Hurry up before I change my mind.”

Deadpool doesn’t waste another second before clambering up onto his back and wrapping his arms and legs around him.

“You’ll need to hold on tighter than that,” Peter says and then launches off the building.

Deadpool squeals in his ear and his grip turns suffocating as they plummet. Then Peter shoots a web and they swing up and away from the sidewalk. A breathless laugh ghosts past his ear and then Deadpool’s breath catches audibly as Peter releases the web and they begin to fall again. He thwips out another web and they begin another arc.

“WOOHOO!” Deadpool crows at the height of the arc, loud enough to make him flinch and to catch the attention of the people on the sidewalk below.

A reluctant smile tugs his lips. Yeah. Web swinging is pretty awesome. It’s kinda cool that someone gets it, even if it is Deadpool.

~*~

Peter flips back and pinwheels to the side to avoid the flurry of deadly looking laser beams. Red, violent, and wicked fast, it’s all he can do keep from getting hit while he’s the sole target of the beastly machine squatting in the corner of the lab.

“You said puppy experimentation! Not mad scientist bent on world domination!”

“I was starting with the worst offenses!” Deadpool snaps back, stabbing a katana into a bank of computers. They spark and the screens go black but the death lasers don’t stop. “You’re the one that wouldn’t let me finish! Besides, if you hadn’t webbed up poor Marty and had let him do his job, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“He was going to kill— Ugh! Whatever. For future reference, next time someone builds a Death-Ray-Inator that’s the first thing I wanna know about.”

“Noted.” With a grunt, Deadpool rips free his katana and sheaths it.

“Screw this!” He rips his pistol out of his thigh holster and aims it at the death ray.

“Wait—,”

He fires several times in rapid succession. The noise is deafening and the bullets ricochet around the room, rebounding off the metal-lined walls with deadly force.

Peter twirls, just barely avoiding a bullet to the abdomen as the heat of a laser skims past his nose.

“Dammit, Deadpool! That didn’t work the first time, why would you do it again?!”

“I got frustrated.” He holsters his gun, pouting through his mask.

“No more shooting! I have an idea.” He webs himself up onto the ceiling, shifts to the left just in time to avoid a laser to his back, and then scurries toward the far wall.

“What do I do?”

“Don’t move and don’t get hit.”

“Those are very contradictory instructions! What if I need to move to avoid getting hit? I don’t think you thought this through.”

He growls under his breath. Yeah he didn’t think this through alright. He should have left Deadpool on that rooftop and cleaned up this mess on his own.

“Just stay where I can find you!”

“Where you can find—,”

Only a few feet remain between him and the wall when his Spidey sense warns him to dodge. He leaps forward, avoids the deadly beam, and latches onto the electrical box hanging on the wall. Another flare from his Spidey sense has him dropping to the floor and throwing his arms over his head.

The laser beam collides with the electrical box.

Bang! The box explodes in a flare of green light and then the room goes dark. Hesitantly, he gets to his feet and breaths a sigh of relief.

“Uh, Webs?”

A laser fires from the Death-Ray-Inator, the red beam illuminating the white of the eyes on Deadpool’s mask before slamming into his chest and knocking him off his feet.

“Shit!” Peter stumbles over an overturned table, scrambling to get back across the pitch-black room where he left Deadpool. “‘Pool?”

“Still alive,” Deadpool wheezes. “Fuck, that smarts. Not much of a death ray though, huh?”

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#i am physically restraining myself from oversharing #lemon boy #i failed to restrain myself from oversharing #but i managed to curve it into a different fic so it's all good #seriously tho thanks for sending this <333 even if you don't like spideypool lol #spideypool #fic rec #shameless self promo

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