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nikomedes · 2 years

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(i am sending you writing asks) can i get a uhhhhh... number #1, #13, #19, and a #23 please thank you

[drive thru speaker crackle] ask machine broke

jk thank u luke!!! i am sorry this is so fucking long

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

so adhd is a disorder where--

im joking but uh. off the top of my head:

fallout 3 mlw/charon fic that i just. have put way too much time into mostly as a challenge to myself to understand the ship (13k+ words)

disco elysium time loop fic which is so close to done. its short and sweet. CAN I CROSS THE FINISH LINE? no (4k words)

pokemon swsh trainer/hop fanfic about their friendship during the gym challenge as reflected on by hop as they prepare to part ways for college. another "haha im playing this game this might be a fun challenge" that got so goddamn out of hand (8k words)

murderbot fanfic ive posted about before where ART tries to hold hands. its also short, mostly written, and something i SHOULD finish. but will i? (i keep saying "no" but i mean "hopefully") (3k words)

original story closing the book on a character i played in a dark fantasy intrigue ttrpg. hey! this game ended 4 months ago! why is this still not done (12k+ words)

a visual novel? a whole goddamn visual novel about h3x, another ttrpg character? this game has officially been ended prematurely due to gm burnout so realistically i will prob never finish this. but also, i kind of want to just to teach myself how to make a visual novel? OOPS? (??? words bc figuring that out would require booting three different programs. but it's at least 15k+)

my locked tomb western au fanfic that i started for the 2021 tltbb and then basically dropped due to mixed reception and getting burned out on that fandom. another project i will probably never finished but with the new book coming out who tf knows (22k+ words)

an outlined lesbian southern horror novel about a woman being seduced by a haunted house. this project is so exciting but. please scroll up. when am i gonna start it. and DON'T say nanowrimo i'll cry (2300 words)

worldbuilding for a beam saber ttrpg game i want to run very badly but realistically won't run for 3 years. but yknow. its not like ive got anything else to write (2k words)

worldbuilding im behind on for a magical realism 1930s monster of the week ttrpg game im running this fall. i literally need to get this to the players by the end of this week ideally lmfao (??? words bc its spread out over 3 documents and a google slides presentation)

more. there's more. im just going to stop now but i need u to know there's more

13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?

much to the chagrin of anyone who wants me to, you know. make a living writing, publish again, "do something with my talent," i almost exclusively write WAY TOO LONG stories about the tabletop roleplaying games i'm in on my wordpress. i also write approximately one fanfiction every two years, mostly for wildly different fandoms, here on my ao3.

i would honestly say about 40% of the writing i do is just for me? (unless we want to talk about the nonexistent traffic to that wordpress blog or how often my fellow players have to go "alex i simply do not have the time to read 20k words about the blorbo you created for our game," in which case it could be argued that 90% of my writing is only consumed by me slkdjlfjg) i think it's super important to write for yourself and not attach your enjoyment of writing to engagement/web traffic. the internet will make u insane about that

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

oh man this character has a complex relationship w their mom

characters talking "flatly" or delivering something deadpan

"trudged" (insert paul bettany's monologue about trudging from a knight's tale here)

"the moral of the story is, it's not about building something that outlives you, it's about enjoying the life you're living with the people you love" character arc (i stole this arc from my life)

having characters do fucked up and evil things to coffee bc i can't stand the taste of it

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

i'm restraining myself only to what i've already listed above. the visual novel is the oldest, bc i love my terrible son and i do actually really want to learn how to write and program VNs

#send help this got so fucking long #luke i am drafting a formal apology u will receive it in 2 to 3 business years #LONG POST #ask game #asks #mechanicalriddle #dot txt #my writing

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grannycharles · 11 months

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Hi, so ive seen you post about this minceraft roleplay thingy (?) (I actually have no idea if it is soley that there was some talk about acting being good in the last video and it confused me even more) and was wondering what the hell is the plot? Like what is it about? Ive skimmed some posts and they are always very wild and now the curiosity got the better of me. Also I think it ended? At least some posts sounded like it did ^^;

So take this as your free pass to rant about it and tell someone who has no idea what the whole thing is about :3

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

oooooooooh hehehehehehe you are enabling the demons >:)

i assume you mean generation loss, because that's basically been all i've been reblogging the last few days.

it is not minecraft roleplay (but i can see where the confusion is coming from bc the creator, ranboo was first known for his mcrp on the dream smp)

generation loss is a livestreamed horror series created by twitch streamer ranboo "ranboolive" the beloved. they're really cool, funny as fuck and stream a lot of different indie horror and story games! (and minecraft, when it's time for him to lose another mincraft championship lmao. L)

anyway, the first part of genloss aired in three shows last week: on wednesday, friday and sunday. really messed up my sleep schedule due to time zones, but oh god it was worth it. of course the vods would've waited for me, but there was ✨audience participation✨ during the streams and i was not going to miss that. and also ranboo had been talking about this project and hyping it up for almost 2 years. so yeah.

and holy shit they delivered. tbf i was really perplexed when it started out all sillygoofy, but the slow descent into horror, the realization of what was truly going on, hit like a ton of bricks. that tone shift was pulled off So well omg.

the plot / premise / whatever is as follows: (fictional) media corporation showfall media is premiering a new type of liveshow with audience participation! there is a Hero, who the audience has to guide through different rooms and puzzles that pay hommage to old point-and-click escape room games and the saw movies among other things. and it is hilarious! however, something seems to be wrong with the transmission, it glitches out at times and the characters act strange. the fourth wall seems more fragile with each passing minute of the show.

ranboo and their crew made a really cool meta commentary on what it is like to be a "content creator" (god i hate that word sm). if you share your life online, where exatly is the line between "show" and "reality"? are your decisions really your own? what happens to you when the show ends?

he got quite a few of his fellow streamers and friends to star on the show, and even though i'm only tangentially familiar w most of them, the points genloss was making came across. everything that "ruined the immersion" was very much intentional. like, ranboo was 16/17ish when they started on yt and twitch, and they're 19 now. that is BONKERS to me. i'm so fucking proud of this guy, he made a really cool, impactful thing and i hope there'll be more of this series.

okay i rambled a Lot. hopefully that clears up some stuff! if you want to watch the show, the vods of all three shows are available on twitch.tv/ranboolive and also on yt on the ranboovods channel. it's about 6 hours total :D triggerwarnings include gore, unreality, probably some more i cant remember right now, just a lot of psychological horror fuckery.

and if you want me to ramble more, feel free to poke me again! because god do i have Thoughts tm about genloss. and yeah the entirety of episode 3 left me shook and rewatching the beginning with the knowledge you gain makes it so much worse :) in conclusion i am Very Normal about this thanks for enabling me

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hexhomos · 2 years

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hi! i love your jayce takes so much hes been one of my faves for years now so it always makes me happy to read ppl talk abt him! may i ask what reason do you think jayce had for not backing up viktor with the whole blitzcrank situation? ive always thought it was something like. shrugs. jayce vc 'not my problem' but i love hearing abt others peoples opinions abt this very specific bit lol

This feels like one of these questions w/ multiple answers tbh.

The easy answer:

The writing team wants to make sure you know there is an "escalation" of their conflict, so we go by rule of threes: the problem starts by omission (jayce fails to intervene), develops into friction (jayce intervenes with the diving suits, to stupid results), and then settles into rancor (viktor comes to collect a debt with the crystal, they do not see eye to eye, it all blows up even more catastrophically). Via this setup, you don't necessarily Need to dig into why a character has slipped down the rocks the first time- if they do it thrice, you're building a pattern. You are communicating to the audience that they are a person prone to Slipping Down The Rocks. The important part is that it fits, and even more so retroactively.

The "ok let's get in the headspace" answer:

Jayce’s reputation as an asshole feeds into him consciously or subconsciously reinforcing the image of "Being An Asshole" again and again. It's already how people refer to him and what people expect of him, he's grown used to it so far, so what would be the point of bursting golden-hearted pollyanna this late in the game and pledging faith in the one *other* guy everyone else is against? Would it even truly help? When he's accusing a professor? It might be worse.

Full disclosure: I don't think he knows why he did it either. He's definitely aware that it was a dickhead move, but he's also not the kind of guy who'll ever admit he got paralyzed in the face of fear (or at least not without pushing), so it's not like I'm giving him an easy way out for him here. If asked? He’d probably default to rationalizing it as ‘not my problem’ 100%. But… we know full well that he feels massively guilty about it. You really just have to look at these textbits from his runeterra expansion featuring Jayce + one of the forge workers currently working with him (Axel)

And you can basically taste the way he has been manhandling the conversation towards not letting the same mistake happen twice, even when their superiors want him to be the Head Genius. (IMHO this is also perfectly in line with how jayce talis refers to hextech as a shared dream; i like to think of them as made up of the same character putty but environmental development molded them differently. Nurture vs nature etc. He *wants* viktor to be there - but it seems like he’s the only one who does.)

It's a mixed bag. Jayce sucks at communicating and communicating publicly is even worse. But he could have tried; and that's the point of it being a tip-of-the-iceberg mistake.

#league of legends #arcane #jayce giopara #jayce talis #jayvik #vikjayce #legends of runeterra #viktor league of legends #viktor arcane #viktor lol #jayce lol #jayce arcane #Hexposts

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lilvirgoprince · 3 years

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Robin, Aqualad and Artemis redesign from the Young Justice animated series! Im thinking about doing all of them also Artemis and Robin are a little messier bc I did them a couple months ago when I just finished my rewatch. Notes about each under the cut!

Robin: - first choice: I got rid of the toe shoes, Im sorry who thought it was a good idea to give him toe shoes?? I have him with shoes that elude more to an acrobat - thats a general note too: I tried to keep the elements that felt acrobat-y and also the more “boyish” elements- like the short sleeves those are cute - overall the original look I didnt feel I needed to change much? I just wanted to make it look more sleek? I love the clunky gloves in the original though! also the cape!! - weird choice but I removed the little R which didnt really have much purpose other then making things less crowded but I could probably put it back - Im trans so I say hes trans, there isnt much I changed for that except I figured I’d shift to be an outfit that would make the body more masculine? basically thinking about what I think when Im getting dressed - idk I also made the cape “sharper” or gave it more of a distinct cape? this is in part to contrast my Miss Martian redesign but also to allude to the bat of course - his gloves still have the same function as they did before with being able to project his little screen thing bc that was cool! - I gave him messier hair then I would’ve otherwise to give that contrast between Robin- Robin out of unifrom- and Dick Grayson (I have a Masks ttrpg character that is a Janus so that was just on my mind) - gotta keep the mischievous grin (peter pan ass looking motherfucker) and the domino mask! Aqualad: - did yall know that electric eels dont have gills! yeah thought in his original design he is kind of supposed to have an eel vibe to it? I tried to lean into that more (also for eel facts I was like rapidly texting my roommate whose majoring in Ocean Science about how confusing and strange they are, he was helpful lol) - the eel shifts can be seen in the way I made his look more “stripe-y” (with the chest part) and adding in the blue to contrast - he didnt have a mask before and I get that isnt too important but I thought giving him like a “paint” mask might be fun and look cool, SPEAKING OF PAINT... - with the eel choice I decided that it might be cool for his arm marking to be like electroconducive paint or whatever idk Im majoring in ecology not majoring in engineering or physics (im also looking at his original design and feeling like a dumbass for him no longer having eels on his hands :’() - im mlm and so I think he should be mlm from the start, just a cool older gay for robin to look up too, that isnt important to his design but I think its important in my heart - I gave him shoes, I took on seminar on parasitology this semester and his bare feet just make me so worried about him getting an infection- they are shoes for swimming though! (or he can just pop them off if he wants to use his... toe fins- hes running around on land though he needs shoes) - w/ the hair I get his atlantian but I know that giving a darker skinned character light eyes and hair to imply “magic” or whatever isn’t a great trope so I wanted to give him a different hair style but I also thought the idea that he bleached them just cause he wanted to might be cool. He also has brown eyes (whoops noticing I left the rest of the eye blue though) - he gets little earrings - I didnt like that he has the U shape as like a little belt so I decided to encorporate it into the rest of the outfit- his look is also based off a wet suit!! - trying to think if Im forgetting anything.... OH I gave him a swimmers body too!! so broader shoulders from swimming!! Artemis: - like Aqualad she bleaches her hair too, I like to think she does it in like a rebellious teen way? idk maybe her and Aqualad can bond by them doing it together - I took away the completely low wasted pants... idk they just felt a little weird if that makes sense... - I also made her top more of a sports bra, then instead of just slapping and arrow on there I made it apart of the top - her old mask lowkey felt strange to me??? I was talking w a friend and she pointed at that it feels like a cheesy bank robber mask? (like ski cap with holes) which maybe was intentional to like... ellude to her family and that “untrustwothy”ness??? idk I decided to make it cover her mouth instead to lean into that- it also connected to how both Cheshire and Sportsmaster have full face masks (I havent finished my KF and SB redesign but I dont think theyll have masks that cover the mouths so it singles her out) - also the part of her mask that pulls her hair back is now like traditional art of the Goddess Artemis which I feel was under utilized in her original design? thats also why I gave her a cool braid instead of a pony tail! (I also feel like its a little more practical idk does it make her seem horse girl-ish)- I also made her boots distantly resemble thoughs -shes also trans, bc like Robin I say she is- also it’d be funny for her and robin to bond over being “the team non-metahumans, who are both trans and both love Wally West” - On that note thought I tried to make her look different from Robin and I also gave her nice abs bc she has cropped clothing which nicely show it off - body type wise shes a little lean and lanky - I got rid of her weird belt replacing it with a belt that repeats the overall triangle/arrow motif repeating throughout her fit - gloves function as those little arm guard things you have if you are doing archery- I tried to make those look more functioning also cooler bc they kind of just gave me a strange vibe in the original I think thats all I have! idk I feel like this might flop but TBH Im having alot of fun w it and Ive been talking to an old friend whose watching it for the first time which makes me really happy! Also these arent to say the original designs are bad I just wanted to take my own crack at reworking them!- OH wait- heres my height chart for these three, Aqualad and Artemis are the same height around 5′10″-6′0″ and robin is around 5′3″-5′5″ he was originally taller then I looked at my line up and was like “shoot everyone is too tall” so I adjusted him so I could bump down Meghan, Wally, and Zantanna a little without making everyone too short (if that makes sense)

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yomiurinikei · 3 years

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shobai for the ask meme! i forget about him a lot

HIIII u guys look it's my platonic spousea here in my inbox!!! the only one spared from my lectures on why it's "syobai". sorrel recognize ur pretty privilege 🙄🙄

anyways!! under the cut for length + tws: . huh. actually, nothing this time

favorite thing about them: ooo he's just fun!! just a fun man! my beloved little plot device i find it so funny linuj is just like "hmmmm information needs to be revealed/a plot point must be mentioned but i've already done a weird nightmare with akane this chapter what do i do now hmmmmmmmm" and then we get syobai time. ALSO i rlly like analyzing the way he interacts with others. as will be seen later on except not well worded bc i did not plan to get that in-depth. anywayssss. he's also fun to play around with in writing/fan portrayal tee hee

least favorite thing about them: ah... victim to linujs inconsistent writing i think...... linuj seems to shift some in how he portrays syobai. it's not sooo bad but if ur actively looking for it then it's there and it bugs me. it feels like linuj can't choose how to portray syobai, the role he should have in the game, and how he wants the viewer to feel abt syobai. and it's rough

favorite line: okay. but this ask meme expects sooooo much of my memory :/// his vv kind and loving and so sweet nicknames r good. he rlly is just the worlds nicest lad isn't he.

brotp: (note: this is considering both non despair/hpa verse, and like. in kg/despair without age twist bc that makes it hard to judge things, i just kinda switch between settings without saying much, aaaand is written w/o talking abt the exception that is romantic relationships) i just think he and the voids r nice.

like i don't have many feelings on him and non void cast bc i feel like he'd just never rlly have natural interactions with them and would always be viewing things as business/smthn he has to stay detached from and which doesn't interest him bc it's simply. not his world. fundamentally different. he's not interested in changing his way of being and the class doesn't care to try and "save" him

then. u have the voids. who, in kg-verse, are doing the exact same as syobai: in order to live and avoid horrible fates, they're doing illegal, immoral shit. it's sympathetic, but we (referring to linuj and the light he writes these characters in) constantly switch up how we perceive and feel about the actions of the voids and syobai. it's okay to acknowledge they're in a gray sort of area, and i think it's esp interesting with syobai knowing what's going on with them, and how he interacts with them knowing that

soooo back to main thing. i think syobai would, even in non despair (as yk... the CoU (i've been saying voids but y'all know which three ive been talking abt) are still implied to be doing morally interesting things to handle utsuros absence) view them. not as equals, but would definitely recognize the similarities in their circumstance and that which they do. so idk maybe he'd chill with them more. even if not (at least originally) as friends, him being less cold, and less detached from them

shit that got long;; i had to cut myself off sm and i thought i was doing well being quiet

otp: i don't rlly do syobai ships?? idk why????? tbh i just don't think i'm huge on shipping in general. hashimaeyomirin and it's variations for @/dirtykagarinkinnie tho <3

notp: mmmmmm don't have them!!! ships listed above r all that i'm rlly interested in/see tho

random headcanon: can actually clean up really well. he just Does Not care abt looking good for the kisa foundation/is cocky abt things with them, cue the. appearance 😭😭

song i associate with them: cigarette ahegao (penelope scott) is the hashimuri song ty and gn. anyways tho! cant find anything very fitting??? maybe mean (penny roox)???? who knows. who knows.

#sdra2 #syobai hashimoto #is that rlly all the tags???? hm #uhhhh #shoutout to tumblr user rantaroeffigy!!!#hi mr colin here's a post abt one of ur guys (/pos)

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crowsent · 4 years

Text

a fuckton of things i want in da4

a few words censored bc tumblr will swallow this in the void if i dont. long ass fuck list ahead

a romanceable dwarf

more romanceable elves/qunari

more elf/qunari/dwarf companions

consistent writing for once

more nb representation

good hair. please just give me good hair options. give me long hair. give me luxurious flowing locks. give me braids. give me good fucking hair options

let me shittalk the chantry

dalish elf npcs that impact the plot in unique ways

dalish elf companions that are proud of being dalish

if it is set in tevinter maybe uh. maybe address the issue of systemic oppression (and slavery) of elves???????

a return of the friendship/rivalry system in da2 but improved. maybe instead of a friendship rivalry sliding scale its friendship/rivalry/animosity sliding scale. bc rivalry is more like. two people pushing each other to be better than they were before. friendly competition. hes an idiot but hes my idiot kind of deal. animosity would be just regular disapproval. i liked the crisis cutscenes in dai so high animosity would be the same as low approval and might make the companion leave still, but theres more variety with high approval. high approval “friendship” would be the “were best friends and we share many opinions and agree on almost everything” while high approval “rivalry” being “we disagree on almost everything but goddamn it youre my friend and ill follow you into the fade if i have to” so you can have a high approval with someone instead of being a kissass

actions and choices having consequences again

multiple endings again (epilogue slideshows dont count)

dialogue wheels with descriptions that match what you actually say

characters from rivain, antiva, anderfels, etc

gifts. bring back the gifts. i want to give my companions gifts

maybe. maybe a focus of non-andrastian religion for once?

let me shittalk the chantry

i know its a stretch, but maybe. diverse skin colours. please?

nd characters that are written respectfully and treated w dignity

please bring back the talent wheel from dao and da2

more bi romance options

more wlw romance options

more mlm romance options

ace romance options

nb romance options

background romances

let me shittalk the chantry

far fetched but maybe a polycule?

i lowkey LOVED the fast-paced feel of da2s combat so maybe bring that back in some form? maybe improved to mesh with the tactics of dai to give players absolute freedom of playstyle whether they want to be like me and rush into every encounter or play more strategically

companions with unique companion abilities

would be nice to explore cities

would be nice if the open world were a little smaller so it doesnt feel empty all the gd time

more mage spells. mages felt like just another class of fighter to me in dai. they dont really have any awe-inducing wow factor like in dao or even da2. if the narrative wants me to believe that mages are powerful and dangerous and that it takes multiple templars to hunt down an apostate, maybe show that? give me strong mages

remove the jump ability. its pointless

a narrative that addresses the oppression that the chantry and templars perpetuated please

bring back the attributes

make the choices in dai matter. mages governing themselves? i wanna see that

let me shittalk the chantry

please bring back the healing magic for fucks sakes

multi-class system between rogues and warriors?

multiple specialisations that feel like specialisations and not just skill tree+

player-only skill trees

hardening

companion quests that affect their abilities and further dialogue

actual morally grey choices instead of this stupid mage freedom vs templar oppression narrative that is in no way morally grey but is presented as such and thus leaves the conflicts and narratives set up by dao and da2 to be fucking meaningless

bring back the tactics

would be nice to have an origins-esque prologue again. maybe one that would determine future events in game just to give your character better narrative cohesion with the plot

an approval/disapproval system but for companions with other companions. bringing certain companions together may bring them closer or make them pissed off with each other which affects banter maybe quests maybe combat

give me a fucking mabari bioware. give me back my fucking mabari

day/night cycle

a nightmare mode where you have to finish the main quest on a time limit. it is absurd that dai expects me to believe that i have all this time to do wartable missions that can take literal real life DAYS to finish and still thwart corypheus’ plans in time. bullshit

that said. no more wartable missions. waiting for a countdown to finish isnt very fun

let me shittalk the chantry

kal-sharok. ive been hearing about it since dao let me fucking see kal-sharok

dwarven politics

politics in general. my fav dao quest was the succession crisis plotline in orzammar/the landsmeet and wewh in dai

npcs i can talk to. even with generic dialogue like in dao. makes the world more alive

using the environment to your advantage. far fetched but i would love to be able to pull down boulders if were in the mountains or freeze water to get to places as a mage

home base customisation but the customisation choices you make actually. mean something. and do something. or at the very least give more companion dialogue/banter/approval change

laconic and ergonomic codexes. like. sorted by what kind of codex it is, etc etc but then you just get a brief summary of the codex and the option to read more about it so i dont spend eternity scrolling through cards looking for a specific codex entry. cool aesthetic dont get me wrong but real irritating to deal with. also. maybe. the pc making comments about the codex if you do read more about it? like a dalish elf saying “they got it all wrong” when reading a codex about dalish elves written by a human??? that would a) give character to the pc b) incentivise people to actually read the codex to see what was so wrong about it c) summarise the codex for people who want to learn the lore but dont want to spent the entire game reading text

maybe have the merchants in your home base close to crafting stations so you dont have to take a fucking hike if you miscounted the amount of elfroot you need?

let me shittalk the chantry

avvar companion maybe??? interesting lore right there

bring back stat requirements for weapons and remove the class restriction for most shit. obviously a dagger would be better for a rogue than a longsword and a mage would do better with a staff than a sword and shield but its not about efficiency. its about the roleplay. its about the options. give me the option to make a mage with wildly inappropriate stat distribution

bring back sustained mode abilities

traps. bring back traps. bring back the option to stealth into an area, trap the fuck out of it, and go from there

have the three available classes in kind of a rock paper scissors scenario. warriors do real well against rogues who do real well against mages who do real well against warriors. so you can plan your party depending on who/what youll face AND how much their approval will change during the quest you take them on

let me shittalk the chantry

actually resolve the plot points introduced in dai

a more threatening villain. the inquisitor thwarted every attempt made by corypheus in dai. he was not threatening at all

queer characters. background, companions, etc. queer characters

mounts were meh in dai. maybe. make them faster? or less cumbersome? or have your companions on mounts too so theres still banter?

i liked the armour tinting. let me have armour tinting from the beginning

i would really like mages to move and attack at the same time bc lowkey standing in one spot is uhhhhhhh kinda boring

let me check companions friendship/rivalry levels

would be nice if the narrative acknowledged that elves suffered greatly at the hands of the chantry and stopped victim-blaming them

more taverns. specifically like tapsters in dao where theres a dwarf just reciting something in a language i cant understand and if you look its a ballad/poet about dwarven culture and that was a real nice touch let me have that

dalish elf clan. dalish elf clan that does not get murdered please and thank you

meaningful quests. more cinematic dialogue

make found gear / quest reward gear more valuable than crafted gear

game modifiers like in dai were real nice. i want more

let me shittalk the chantry

quests that can be resolved in multiple ways. like connors fate in dao. and for those ways to impact further quests

companions with varying moral alignments

companions that are mutually exclusive (like alistair and loghain) but are both good companions so itd really make you think

a pc that IS NOT a “chosen one” vanilla da2 is my fav dragon age game for one reason and one reason only and that is because hawke is just some random refugee who escaped lothering. no chosen one magic at all. just an ordinary person who is a real good fighter. and that appealed to me more than this “you are the only one who can do it” narrative

let me meet more elvhen gods

if the setting is in tevinter, GIVE ME FUCKING ARCHITECTURE. give me the high spires, the archways, the buttresses, give me statues lining city gates and magic infused into the buildings. tevinter is a land ruled by MAGES give me magical architecture. give me floating buildings. give me fire floating as orbs above the streets like lamps. GIVE ME ARCHITECTURE

SHALE

let me shittalk the chantry

PIERCINGS GIVE ME FUCKING PIERCINGS BIOWARE

more main quests, longer main quests

if it is set in tevinter maybe. maybe address the fact that tevinter has been at war with the qunari for a while? on and off war is still war. and maybe give us the option to influence the outcome of that war?

more voice options. instead of just american voice or british voice, do the thing in dao again where there are multiple voices of different tones to further cement the pcs personality

more armour designs

biased but uh. can. can taliesen jaffe va a character?

i already said qunari companions but specifically saarebas companions

blood magic

FINISHING MOVE ANIMATIONS

please do not let it be as long as inquisition. inquisition was a SLOG in later playthroughs

body sliders. what if i want a tall but lanky qunari? what if i want a buff as shit elf? body sliders

more eye options

let me call out companions

btw bioware. if you really wanted cullen to be a good guy. maybe handle his fucking redemption arc a little better instead of retconning all the terrible and creepy shit hes done in the past k thx

can female walk/run animations not have. so much swaying hips? no one moves like that

personality dialogue that affects future dialogue like in da2 but meshed with the wider range of emotions introduced by dai

keep the race/s*x lock on romance candidates like in dai. keep the fact that some characters can only be romanced by certain races or s*xes

nb and genderqueer options for the pc

cutscenes of companions interacting

ngl i lowkey liked the random encounters of dao so maybe bring that back

my fav quest in dao is the landsmeet / orzammar succession crisis questline but you know whats my second favourite? the rescue mission if the warden gets captured and you have to play as your party members. give me that again

more creepy/dark shit. dai was too lighthearted for me esp after da2 and dao

let me shittalk the chantry

broodmothers. in hd.

red lyrium broodmothers. in hd

companions with different backgrounds. different faiths. different statuses. different families. etc

maybe make the pcs appearance make an impact on the story? like how bull says he likes redheads, but even if you are a redhead, he says nothing about it????? maybe keep track of which slider the player picks so that can affect the story?

i love my inquisitors but maybe. dont. bring the inquisitor in as anything more than an advisor/npc in this game? let me fall in love with a new pc???

if theres gonna be a homebase like skyhold where youre not in armor. maybe give us better clothing?

a kind of gear skin mechanic similar to ac:odyssey where you can change how the gear looks but keep the stats. so you can equip that higher level armour and keep the look and aesthetic of your old armour and you unlock the skins/looks of the armours you discover/make so you can be both powerful AND aesthetic

i enjoyed the nobility/underworld/arcane/etc knowledge in dai unlocking more dialogue options so maybe keep/expand on that but make it more accessible by side missions or companions or something that isnt the abysmal perk system in dai

let me shittalk the chantry

customisable walking animations. does the pc walk straightbacked? slouched? with a swagger? please

since there will undoubtedly be an obligatory fade sequence, maybe have an option for nightmare demons that ARENT spiders. thank you

slap on subtitles and conlang some languages. i want to hear elvish. i want to hear tevene. give me the languages

more dragons. esp if they look vastly different

more bard songs

i am completely biased here, but i would like to hear laura bailey as a va for a character. preferably a voice option for the pc

hey maybe have the true ending actually included in the base game and not in a dlc (tresppasser cough cough)

better val royeaux

please remove the had to do it to em idle animation tis distracting

on that note, more idle animations. maybe some unique to companions?

very trivial but. unique stair climbing/descending animation

bring back talking to companions on the road. maybe with some dialogue that can only be said on the road???

if banter is interrupted, make like rdr2 and pick up where the banter left off

more vallaslin designs please?

if theres another formal scene like dai maybe. give us. decent clothing. or better yet, decen clothing OPTIONS. i wanna decide how i look in a ball full of haughty orlesians

mage vs templar conflict resolved and addressed please. it is NOT resolved in dai. what we got was sequel bait and a slideshow. resolve it please

let me shittalk the chantry

a pro-mage anti-circle circle mage companion like anders

religious person who doesnt victim-blame elves in the codex or in game or anywhere please

characters more like leliana who question the chantry and acknowledge its corruption and greed

unapologetically sapphic companion

idc if its tevinter i dont want to fucking see queer people being disrespected

a true tal-vashoth companion, one who escaped from the qun

have quest decisions affect whether or not a companion will turn hostile to you or not

if IF solas will be redeemed, please do the redemption arc right

more horn options for qunari

an apostate mage who doesnt use me for their personal agenda whilst hiding something from me (morrigan, anders, solas) thanks

i really dig the whole “leader of an army” thing dai was trying to go for. but you didnt actually. lead. anything. would be nice to have that option. command soldiers. send them places that affect further quests. would even use the wartable for its intended purpose. planning wars. battles. like. you get sent word that there are bandits harassing villagers. you can set up an ambush with your soldiers or confront them headon, and theres a new mini-location on the map like the manor you meet vivienne in where you can go deal with the bandits and depending on your choices, there are actually soldiers with you in a field, or traps in a narrow pass, or even in a city. id rather the wartable shit dont return but if they have to, at least this way youre not just waiting real life time for a bunch of text to appear

i am real fucking excited for the possibility that da4 companions can just fucking die on you. good shit. give me that angst

missions that certain companions would refuse to go with you to. you know. so you actually have to use other members of your party instead of the same 3 (three) people all the goddamn time

disabled characters (i want a character who suffers from the same chronic bad leg disease as i do is that too much to ask)

kinda touched on by the da2 combat point but let me do close combat damage with the staff

no multiplayer. and if there is a multiplayer, dont tie it with achievements

let me fucking explore weisshaupt

(i dont think solas will be the endgame villain of da and i dont think da4 will be the last da game but still) again. for emphasis. resolve the plot points dai brought up

full-body scars and tattoo options

companions and npcs changing their opinions about things over time. eg: a pro-circle mage wanting instead for circles to be abolished after a specific side mission or a main quest decision etc

keep the multiple companion quests. and maybe change what kinds of companion quests are available further down depending on choices made in previous companion quests

please for fucks sake give us more characters of colour

let me shittalk the chantry

#dragon age #dragon age 4 #da4 #long post #its 3 am and i am once again putting on my clown wig bc bioware will fucking disappoint me again

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sothischickshe · 3 years

Note

😳- your scariest line, 💻- three works of yours that are must reads, ✏️- favorite part about writing (I’m not scared of you)

Qs in the ask?! 😭🙇‍♀️

😳- your scariest line

hrm, im not super into scaring/being scared (i can barely watch thrillers alone lmao, never mind a horror movie) so im going to go with:

“She’s already pushed her way out of the building and is making her way down the street, long legs eating up the distance fast.”

bc it was the first line of the first fic i published and that was v scary to me! (also the whole thing seems to illustrate a deep, deep fear of referring to characters by name lol)

💻- three works of yours that are must reads

oh no. well, i think it’s going to depend on the reader!!!!!

at present time i’d say maybe:

do you like drugs (tonight)

to everything there is a season (which is a series and therefore probs a cheat but w/e i do what i want)

Bringing down the neighbourhood

but hmu again when ive got some more crack fics under my belt afggfgh

✏️- favourite part about writing

WELL YOU SHOULD BE SCARED OF ME!!! but this is an ok faves q. an answer, but also: improving! it’s nice being able to look at my stuff and mostly rather than finding it cringey, seeing how i could improve it/what i’d do differently now/stuff to work on or incorporate in the future. and/so i like challenging myself in different/new ways with each story, and that’s v fun!

lady writer

#writing #fanfiction #idk i really like trying stuff out and and polishing it best i can #then going well this whole thing would be better if you did it completely differently #then going ok well im not going to do that #but i will attend to that the next time #and doing so #and then finding a new one of those lol #it's v fun!#and i really like backing myself into corners and going from there #this isnt a terrible faves q #but idk what the ultimate answer is #i have many fave parts of writing #3 must reads is a much harder q #CALLS FOR SPECULATION #TO WHOM? yknow #have i written anything scary??? maybe angsty nightmares hmm

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catnippackets · 4 years

Note

have you seen/would u recommend pacific rim 2? ive heard some things about newt and idk lol

I feel like Im in the minority that actually did think pru was fun but that being said it ended SO abruptly and with like three separate plotlines completely abandoned that I was really frustrated for days after watching it until I had processed everything and had time to think deeply about it lol it just seemed rly unfinished?? it feels like it was deliberately made as 1/2 of two sequels and there needs to be one more to tie everything up. actually I’m gonna ramble abt this bc I have a lot of thoughts (obvs spoilers under the cut)

the thing about the second one was that I genuinely was enjoying it right up until it ended because I swear to god the moment the end screen went up I yelled "what the fuck, that's it?" out loud into my bedroom bc I was so SHOCKED that THAT'S how it all ended, because it just seemed so incomplete?? Like it seemed like one half of a story, that will only be made whole if there's a third one to tie up all the plotlines that they didn't go through with in the second and if that's the case then I will be completely fine with it but if it doesn't or if they dont have a third one at all I will stay so frustrated lol. one silver lining to this is that the vibe of this movie was so different from the first that it almost feels easy to separate it and just imagine it as an AU if you prefer which is sort of nice; usually if a piece of media I like does something bad I feel all gutted and anxious and terrible that this is the canon I have to accept, but something abt this movie just made it feel like it was sort of a totally separate deal. maybe cuz only 3 of the original characters were in it idk

to start off: I felt like there were a couple of plotlines in it that were just sort of introduced and then never seen through which was very ????? Amara & Vik's weird hate-rivalry thing was one of them; Vik instantly has it out for Amara bc she’s jealous, which is a very interesting concept, and then this prompts Amara to become hostile right back at her, which is also a very interesting concept, and then it never got resolved at all? like they couldve done something really cool with those two but it just never went anywhere. and then there was sort of a weird love triangle thing happening between Jake and Nate and Jules that felt so weird bc it had no significance to the plot at all and it felt like it was only thrown in there for the sake of having ~romantic drama~ idk maybe I wasnt paying too much attention and there was more to it than that but it really just seemed like they wanted to put romance in there and didnt want to bother to put any work into it

BUT the thing about romantic sub plots is that THERE ALREADY WAAAAS OOOOOOOOONE which brings me to the biggest frustration I have w this movie because--and DISCLAIMER, this was also my favourite plot point of the movie bc it was by far the most interesting, the biggest reason for me enjoying the movie at all, and the bit I feel like should have had WAY more attention--Newt and Hermann were like legitimately in love in this movie I swear to god I was watching it and thinking “this is GENUINELY the most blatantly gay thing I’ve ever seen in a feature film and I know that straight ppl are very talented at writing gay romances completely by accident so it’s possible that they just accidentally did it this way but also it is REALLY goddamn obvious oh my gooood?” (and then I did a lot of frantic googling and found out that I was right and Charlie Day & Burn Gorman knew what the fuck they were doing and I felt so validated lol), and yet despite this, the movie had them speak for the last time almost at the halfway point of the film and then spend the entire second half apart and not talking at all and even at the post-credits scene where Jake and Newt talked for a bit Hermann wasn't there?? not even behind Jake to give Newt any searching glances?? Nothing??

dude...Newt being possessed by the precursors is a HUGELY interesting concept that actually makes sense and I wish it had had more attention. I’ve seen a lot of ppl say that pru butchered Newt’s character and I don’t 100% agree bc like...being possessed will change you lmao so while yes I’m obviously sad that he wasn’t himself, I feel like it made sense that he had a slight personality change, because it...wasn’t him anymore. we don’t really see the Newt we all fell in love with in the first movie. we THINK we’re seeing him, but halfway through we find out we’re wrong.

my critiques with that plotline are basically that I wish the reveal had happened a little bit later on, and I wish that it had been a little more obvious I guess?? like, we definitely get hints of it (when Hermann excitedly asks Newt to help him with a dangerous unorthodox project and Newt says “dude why are you doing something so risky when we’ve already got a good plan in motion? just wait for that to be done, it’s fine” and Hermann IS us, he IS the audience when he reacts, because this is a completely insane thing for Newt to say. Newt, who, in the first movie, was so obsessed with finding knowledge that he went behind the marshall’s back to literally risk his life doing something incredibly dangerous just to see what would happen? being given the opportunity to do the same kind of dangerous frivolous act and refusing? this is blatantly out of character, and Hermann is all of us when he’s shocked, “what, you mean you...won’t help me??” which means it wasn’t bad writing on their part, it was purposefully supposed to stand out as something that was wrong and something that we needed to pay attention to. that was a really good scene to hint that something was Not Right with Newt), and I wish there had been a bunch more like it. I think the reveal should have been saved for the end of the second act; I think that should have been the moment that act 2 of a story usually has, that dreadful event that happens that leaves the main characters feeling completely hopeless and unsure what to do.

I also wish that he had managed to break through more than That One Scene, I think it would’ve been more dramatic if he’d had a few moments where he managed to take control for a second to remind us that he’s still in there and still fighting, and I’m sad they didn’t do that. I saw a fan comic that touched on this idea and I think it’s brilliant, even the idea of him suddenly getting a nosebleed and acting distracted to show that that’s the Real Him trying to fight through would have been sooooooooo good.

I also feel like it didn’t make any sense for Nate to be the one to subdue him in the end, I dont even think those two interact at all so like, why was it him?? it would have been so much more dramatic and heartbreaking if Hermann had been the one to confront him so they could’ve had a little conversation on the roof where Newt could once again break through for a second before getting taken over and then Hermann could like idk have a taser hidden behind him that he uses to subdue him and THAT wouldve been a way sadder and more interesting way to do it. I also think Hermann shouldve been the one to speak to him in the post credits scene, or to have him in the background behind Jake just watching him sadly so we can get a couple shots of intense eye contact like UGH I just wish there had been more interaction between the two of them after the reveal happened!! When the movie was over and I realized they never spoke again I felt so upset!!! they're soulmates!! they're literally in love!! this has been CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and segueing in from the soulmate thing, another thing that made me sad was that nobody came in pairs anymore :( aside from Newt and Hermann, they were the only ones gjdfk but in the first one every character had another character that they were paired up with, both for drifting reasons and just for plot reasons (except Chau and Tendo but I’m pretty sure there's actually significance to that too), and in the second one it just sort of felt like everyone was drifting with each other with no strong connection needed and that made it feel way less special. granted, the movie takes place ten years after the first one so in that time maybe technology advanced to the point where you didn't need a strong neural connection to drift anymore, but for the sake of the story it would have been way better if they'd kept the whole soulmates concept from the first one, it made it way stronger and more special

so yeah in conclusion I did think pru was enjoyable and I probably would watch it again some time but also it definitely pales in comparison to the first one and I’m desperately hoping we get one more so they can tie everything together and FIX THINGS KFGH it’s not too late!!!!! I wish I could write Pacific Rim 3 I genuinely think I would do a good job I love storytelling and I’m very passionate about these characters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#ramblings #Anonymous #ask #this is really long but please interact I've been dying to talk about this for weeks now

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kadywicker · 3 years

Note

Hi! Im same anon from few weeks ago thanking you for getting me into the magicians bc dopamine etc and rn Im watching s4 (near end but im rationing it. kinda) but i dont really filter spoilers so Ive seen stuff from s5 and I have to say... every single thing I read/see sounds like a fever dream and not even a fun one. What is going on? I'm not sure i want to know.

oh my god it’s miserable man i’m so sorry. s5 is..... so bad fasdfasdf i avoided watching it for a year bc i didn’t want to waste my energy trying to p*rate it. but i watched it last weekend and let me tell u..... not worth it! there’s a couple episodes that are like? okay? i guess? but mostly it’s just. terrible writing. sexism. homophobia. nonsensical plots. bad writing. more shitty writing. like. there’s some spoilers below so don’t click if u dont want spoilers but in case u want to know what’s going on (warning for spoilers and a huge wall of text):

there’s too much magic now so spells are going off the shits bc there’s so much magic. there’s a harmonic convergence coming up which will make magic go even MORE wild. a pig man from fillory shows up saying there’s going to be an apocalypse and he needs quentin to help. julia says oh shit sorry quentin’s dead but i can do it but the pig man says only STRONG MEN can do it so he fucks off to try and go find a man for the quest. julia decides to stop the apocalypse anyway, which she thinks is the harmonic convergence. so much fucking shit happens long story short they end up DESTROYING THE MOON. they crack the moon like an egg and eliot and margo get trapped in a timeloop caused by sentient whales practicing magic to keep the kraken at bay. margo gets out of the time loop leaving eliot who figures out what to do! and sends himself back in time to stop the moon from cracking. yay world saved. MEANWHILE IN FILLORY eliot and margo were thrown 300 years into fillorys future where the dark king rules. he’s got? fucking zombies or some shit hes “fighting”? i dont know i wasnt sober for half of this season. they’re hunting fairies. eliot talks about quentin in one (1) episode and cries a little before sending quentin a letter in the underworld. earlier in the episode he tried to fuck the dark king. after that he does not bring up quentin a single other time bc gay men do not get to have compelling love stories and he spends the rest of the season mooning after the dark king he met for 3 seconds before deciding actually HES the love of his life, not quentin. fen and josh are dead in the past and margo and eliot change the timeline like three times to save fen and josh! wow yay! also they can’t save quentin bc changing the timeline would be bad and disrespectful :( they can save fen and josh by altering the timeline though! at one point alice tries to make a golem of quentin to answer some questions about a page in a weird language she found in his desk but she brings back child quentin instead and he dies so it’s whatever. after the moon shit, they’re trying to find this seed that’s depicted on that page of quentin’s bc it’s the World Seed and can create whole new worlds! which is convenient bc turns out that apocalypse was NOT the apocalypse on earth but an apocalypse on fillory they think the dark king is gonna cause. turns out no, they’re going to cause it, they need to destroy fillory to stop the dark king from bringing back an army of the dead to bring back his gay lover bc gay mean are evil and bad >:( and before they destroy fillory they need to get all the fillorians in a pocket world and then put them on a new world they build with the world seed. so much shit happens i don’t even know. there’s a heist. there’s a musical episode that’s also the heist episode. eliot makes out with alice AND kady in this episode bc god likes to see me suffer. there’s a new chatwin! she’s great her name is plum and she can travel through time! she uses these time saving abilities to save hyman- you know, the really sexist perverted ghost that spies on people? yeah well she saves him. even though the narrative forbids saving quentin, they can save that fucking guy. julia is pregnant with penny 23′s baby but it’s a Super Pregnancy bc it’s red monkey month in fillory which means it goes faster. and she’s getting affected by the baby’s abilities to travel and be Psychic. fucking charlton is there he was still in eliot’s head the whole time and he gets out of eliot’s head to bother eliot but no one else can see him so they give him hyman’s body bc hyman wants to be a creepy ghost still. quentin gets brought up a few times but mostly to talk about how he ~sacrificed for those he loved~ or what the fuck ever and also to hammer in more quentin/alice like they didn’t have a like 3 month toxic relationship and he had a FIFTY YEAR RELATIONSHIP/MARRIAGE TO A MAN AND HAD AN ENTIRE CIHLD WITH HIM but ya know alice is the true love of his life bc they’re a man and a woman <3 <3 <3 the moon is sentient? i guess? there’s symbiotic aliens? fogg gets trapped in a magic acid induced drug alternate reality? and evil fogg from another timeline ends up coming through and fucking shit up? regular fogg gets back and has to hold a cat to stay sane bc all the insanity goes into a cat? fen, margo, ALICE?, and josh end up creating new fillory bc thats definitely the list of people that knew and loved fillory the most (definitely not eliot who was high king of fillory and sPENT 50 YEARS ON FILLORY WITH A HUSBAND AND SON no no he wouldn’t know about fillory), and disappear to their new fillory. the phrase “ovary up” is used no less than 7 times during the season and in the episode descriptions. kady’s barely mentioned as to what she’s doing post finale. eliot is a professor now and oh in the last FOUR FUCKING MINUTES WITH NO BUILD UP charlton kisses him and they go upstairs to fuck <3 the dark king was getting catfished by his brother martin btw bc the dark king is actually rupert chatwin and he ends up in a time bubble with jane and that’s fine while martin gets trapped in the library or some shit i don’t know. oh and plover is still alive and doing relatively fine compared to other characters who are like, dead. fen sympathizes with him isn’t that nice. there were at least 5 different opportunites to bring quentin back and they didn’t bring quentin back or leave opportunity for that. it’s bad. santa shows up for a minute? alice gets her fingers cut off and sewn back on and can’t do magic w one hand now but she’s a master magician so it turns out fine. there’s a line about “her lunacy identifies as she/her” talking about the moon, as if the magicians has any room to make pronoun jokes when they’ve had 2 trans characters that both died and weren’t even textually trans. at one point it turns out josh and fen fucked and margo tries to kill fen in a fit of jealousy and there’s a love triangle situation. fen is now a werewolf too btw. in conclusion! it fucking sucks.

#anonymous #*answers

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adrieunor · 3 years

Text

the one where they’re married (1/?)

Fandom: The Good Place Rating: T Pairing: Michael & Eleanor Shellstrop (pseudo-Michael/Eleanor)

amnesia, married-but-not, possibly dub-con bc identity issues but nothing explicit; implied Michael reboot or judge reboot Notes: found this thing hanging out in my WIP and I don’t even remember writing it. but I had fun reading through what’s here, so I thought I’d go ahead and throw it out into the world.

Story summary: It didn’t quite top the discovery of waking up in a hospital bed with potential brain damage, but Eleanor is quite sure of one thing. She’s willing to stake money on it, no matter how out of character or divergent he is from her history:

this man is her husband.

Which, great – wow, whoa and every other questionable w-sound.

Hadn’t thought you had it in you girl, Eleanor thinks.

******************

Eleanor wakes up.

Correction: Eleanor tries.

One moment, it’s the nothingness of unconsciousness and then the sudden clarity of what’s happening? Where am I?— except her body feels like it hasn’t caught up to this decision.

She feels heavy.

All of her feels heavy. From the bottom of her feet to the crown of her head, it feels like every atom of her person has suddenly gained ten extra ounces of new weight. Not enough to be a hardship, individually, but combined together—she’s drowning, suffocated by her own eyelids and the thick, still air that doesn’t give any hint to where she seems to be.

Her eyes feel heavy – the stupid gelatinous orbs feel like they’re suspended in concrete, while her lids struggle to flutter awake.

(It’s a stupid expression, anyway, because it’s more hippos doing ballet than graceful ostriches with large feathered fans prancing across the imaginary stage of her mind.)

Fuck.

It hurts.

It feels good to be able to give a resounding f-bomb in her mind. She doesn’t know why it feels good, just that it does—it shouldn’t, though, since Eleanor has been saying fuck and other double-dog-dare-you words since she was in secondhand velcro shoes. She says “fuck” more times on the daily than her own name, certainly more times than “please” or “thank you.”

Ten seconds of consciousness has her registering how rattled her bones feel. Someone has either taken her brain and expanded it to be too big for her skull, or taken her skull and fractured it, hot gluing the pieces back to fit her brain but accidentally leaving a few behind.

“Eleanor? Are you awake?”

Trying to be.

Even in her mind, the words she wants to respond with feel slurred, fumbled by a dull tongue that’s trying to unstick from the roof of her mouth.

She’s not sure if the keening sound is just bubbling frustration and pain she’s creating in her head, or if she’s really making it. Eleanor wants to open her mouth and let her sad, animal crying out, but it seems, between the last time she was awake and now, someone’s affixed her jaw with lead, super glue, and the caramel they use to cover those cheap, green apple pops.

Eleanor settles for a whimper.

It’s the trembling of her bottom lip that makes her realize something’s brushing against her face, threaded across her nose and mouth and affixed by sticky tape on her cheeks.

Dry fingertips, warm and calloused, brush over her temple. The stray, lanky hair that had been plastered to her forehead, tickling her brow and her nose, is brushed back and tucked behind her ears.

“Hold on,” the same person says, and something clicks or beeps beside her ear. She hadn’t thought of her wrists and hands yet, had only registered them being as weighed down as the rest of her. Now, she’s minutely aware of the tender clasp around her left wrist – a dry, warm steadiness that makes her joints ache painfully.

Eleanor wants to wiggle, wants to shake, wants to fucking jerk her arms and legs about until everything pops back into feeling, but she can’t. Something from inside must be conveyed outside, some twitch or snarl of frustration, because the warm hand gently turns her wrist. Unfamiliar (familiar) fingers slide and brush against her pulse before settling into a new position: her own hand cradled in a larger one, while a thumb that’s not hers gently strokes the tops of her knuckles.

The next sound feels like a land mine detonated in a pocket of silence. A heavy door opens with the force of five hundred hangovers, followed by heels clicking sharply and smartly against a linoleum floor. Rustling fabric, a pen clicking, a folder being dropped down onto a table surface all has her wincing, as if it’s been amplified right by her fucking ear.

Her companion does not let go of her hand, but he grips it until his thumb is a firm, anxious pressure that presses on the space between her ring finger and pinky.

“Is she in pain? She looks—“

Eleanor doesn’t catch the rest of it, but the voice has only picked up in volume, a little, harried but direct. Whatever answer the new body has, she doesn't hear it.

Amidst the skull-splitting pain that pulsates from her crown down to the rest of her, like a tree suddenly struck by lighting, she registers only one thing: a dry press of lips against her fingers, solemn and unbearably present sensation, before she’s swarmed by other voices and sounds.

******************

Eleanor is only catching every fifth word that is coming out of the woman’s mouth. The ice chips had alleviated the fuzziness on her tongue, but it hadn’t fixed what was wrong in her head.

Her head.

Words like damage, injury, sustained bleeding,

The wailing in her ears had subsided, a bit, since the last time she was awake. It was now a low, thrumming pitch in the back of her mind, like a loud fluorescent light bulb in an office space. She can ignore it, after a while, but it’s there.

Other things that are very much there and present: the man.

******************

Her eyes drift towards his hand, the one that’s not holding her own – long fingers woven loosely to catch her own, between the gauze and IV line – where it rests on his knee. She's not sure what the glimmer is, at first, until she realizes it's two gold bands on one hand, a comically smaller one slipped onto his pinky.

“Ah,” her eyes drift back up of their own accord to watch the way his brows furrow, mouth open in thought, “I thought it’d be better if I kept it, in case the tests and the machines…”

His mouth purses into a thin line, which only emphasizes the ones carved into the corners of his mouth and his eyes even more – he looks like the type that would frown a lot, Eleanor thinks. He seemed like the bookish-type that would have resting bitch face while deep in thought; a heavy oak desk with a tiffany lamp and a pen tipped in gold wouldn’t be out of place in a room with him, or a really fancy fucking wall of degrees and a sharp suit.

Her shameless eyes stray towards his thin lips, the defined line of his jaw, skipping back to the worn crinkles in his skin.

There’s a lot of something to him that seems to command the presence of whatever space he occupies. The corner he occupies wraps around him like a well-tailored jacket – even in his unassuming navy and pale blue.

Well, she revises her thoughts; he looked like he might laugh a lot, too. Eleanor bets he laughs with his mouth wide open, or smiles to show nearly all his teeth.

He wasn’t laughing now, of course. Given the circumstances.

******************

He is a man-shaped absence in her memory – she of the forgetful faces and even more forgetful names has seemingly forgotten her own husband, spouse, and partner-- legally bound tax accomplice, all of the above. Michael.

He’s got a face made for

He does a funny

Oh.

It didn’t quite top the discovery of waking up in a hospital bed with potential brain damage, but Eleanor is quite sure of one thing. She’s willing to stake money on it, no matter how out of character or divergent he is from her history:

this man is her husband.

Which, great – wow, whoa and every other questionable w-sound.

Hadn’t thought you had it in you girl, Eleanor thinks. She takes another second, ten, fifteen, a minute, to look appreciatively up and down.

******************

She’s not sure if the muscles in her face contort into the expression of surprise like the light bulb that’s gone off in her head – her jaw is still a little slack and her eyes are slow to blink. He might not have noticed, in between one second and the next, how utterly thrown off she is.

******************

It doesn’t look like a fake; Eleanor has seen a lot of fake gold jewelry in her time to know the difference. It’s beautiful in the way that all the ostentatious rings she would pick for herself would not be. She keeps turning her hand this way and that, until one of the nurses asks if she's having wrist pain.

Despite protests, a tall nurse with too much arm hair pushes her in a wheelchair towards the curb where a burgundy crossover idles.

“Hopefully we won’t see you too soon,” Gary, Gerry, Gerald – or whatever – his name is, says cheerfully. She squints up at him, and he falters. Eleanor supposes that one good thing about being brain damaged was she now had a legitimate reason to forget people’s names.

******************

The good news: if she had woken up too brain damaged to remember her own name, Michael would have fixed that problem easily—it would have been two minutes, tops. She’s pretty sure he says her name more than he uses any other noun or pronoun.

(Which, by the way, the fact that she still has a basic grasp of grammar makes her, again, want to keep track for curiosity’s sake what her loopy brain has decided to keep and discard. She’d stared at the red plastic dome on her hospital plate before, after a pronounced beat, Michael had reached across and pulled the foil top off of her gelatin.)

******************

It just sounds funny – something in her brain itches like a scab underneath a cast, present but unreachable. The way he says her name. It’s been her name for over three decades, so she knows what Eleanor sounds like, usually, coming out of other people’s mouths (when they’re coming, even!). Even knows what it sounds like sung in different accents, thanks to that fucking song.

(All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Fuck. Her brain couldn’t have erased that?)

******************

It’s not the porch that surprises her; it’s the honest-to-god porch swing, pale wicker and decorated with springtime cushions. That throws her for a loop; breaks a little part of her brain that isn’t already struggling to function.

(“This…. This broke me.”)

(Something tickles her brain, there, too, but it’s gone.)

It’s a good porch, too. The kind that doesn’t fully wrap around the house, but gives enough room for someone to day drink and – ah, there it is, the little tea table that would be beside the—the ___________. She grasps for the word, shapeless and vague. It’s blurry in her head, the thing she’s thinking about also blurry and distant. Her mouth puckers in a frown.

Michael rolls the car to a commercial perfect stop. Eleanor still jerks in her seat. He unbuckles his seat belt and bounds around to her side, opening the door before she’s even lifted a hand to pop it.

“Here, let me-“

She wonders how often she’s let him do anything, in contrast to allowing him to – her hand moves to rest on the release of the seat belt, staking territory.

Her stomach does one, two, slow flops – a fat pancake turned by an amateur line cook.

******************

She doesn’t need an entire love story’s memory to make an easy conclusion, not when Michael’s eyes sweep across her face with a slow, longing softness while his mouth twitches, again, as if it has something to say he won’t let it:

Michael is in love with her.

Eleanor thinks this should be a good thing, if they’re married, but the conclusion settles uncomfortably on top of her chest – it doesn’t sink in, doesn’t settle into a slot of rightness, and she ignores the feeling of disappointment.

Stupid of her, honestly, to think this observation was all it would take to remember why Michael is in love with her. Or how Michael is in love with her.

(What Michael is in love with.)

******************

They have a cat. She doesn’t know why this is something that trips her up, but it does. She’d nearly tripped up on it, literally, when the thing had slunk up to rub itself against her legs, making figure eights around her legs and Michael’s. Michael had nearly stepped on its tail, foot stopping just before contact as if compelled by muscle memory or a glitch in the system.

“Oh,” he hisses, fumbling with the duffel bag, complementary hospital pillow (the socks she’d decided to “wear out” as she’d joked at the nurse, wiping drool from the corner of her mouth), and reusable water bottles, in his arms, “Vicky, stop.”

“Vicky?”

She hopes she hadn't been the one to name it. Vicky sounds like a bitchy girl name, and in Eleanor Shellstrop's book of past experiences she could confirm this. Twice.

Michael gives up on trying to carry everything into …wherever, instead dumping his load onto the love seat in an adjourning room.

Her fingers trail along the table in the entryway, eyes flickering up to give the large, round mirror at eye-level a glance before she’s turning away. She’s pale as a ghost in this strange grey-blue home.

There’s a kitchen island with real, actual stools that swivel plus a wooden dining table with upholstered chairs. She wants to hiss at how excessive it is – eating a bowl of cereal over a dirty sink was enough for her for years – but she bites her tongue. A voice in the back of her head asks if maybe she had picked some of these, had selected them herself. You don’t build a home for two from only one person’s purchases.

“What would you like first, Eleanor?” His expression is hopefulness strained through a sieve. He doesn’t seem to realize how he leans towards her, curves his entire, tall being to look down at her. “Anything you want, just- just let me know. If you’re hungry, I could fix us a snack before you’re due for your next round of meds.”

It should feel annoying and towering, claustrophobic, but instead, looking upwards at him, she feels watched. Seen. It’s an uncomfortable feeling for someone who has always depended on being able to grift just under the radar, but it also isn’t unpleasant.

His hands are pressed together, fingertips touching, long and lean, like prayer.

“Can I just lay down for a bit?”

Michael’s expression softens. “Of course, Eleanor.”

And he offers his hand, palm upturned, as if the hallway was some long, arduous passage instead of a short walk towards a few doors or a climb up the stairs. Eleanor’s hands are so small in his, but his fingers wrap around hers like old acquaintances—hers have forgotten the intricacies of where to go, his have not forgotten her shape and his thumb brushes, familiar, across her knuckles like hello.

It is a warm and dry hold, and what Eleanor has managed to scrape, glean, and covertly steal in her observations about Michael all lead to the conclusion that this is a good descriptor, the most basic, for Michael himself: warm and dry, like Arizona, but the postcard worthy-parts, not the dumpster fire, trash-bag parts that made her.

At the foot of the stairs he pauses, one hand on the rail, the other holding her hand lifted in the air like a debutante. Something flickers, for a moment, and Eleanor imagines a tall, dark woman in a gown and evening gloves, of all things, poised at the foot of the stairs as if to give a toast. She blinks and the image is gone.

“You know,” Michael says, looking up. His brows furrow. “Maybe we should use the guest room downstairs instead. Avoid the stairs.”

“No,” she says, surprising herself. “I want my room.”

******************

She gives the pillow a sniff, leaning down until her nose brushes against the cotton.

Yeah. That’s her. It smells like the scent of her hair, a little to the left of unwashed and greasy. Faint, but there.

There’s stray, blonde strands of hair that curl, pale and almost invisible, in the space where the pillow had been just before—like sunny, thin worms caught only in a certain slant of light.

Eleanor is playing excavation isn’t she? She is rooting around, examining and putting together all these clues left behind for a relationship, a love; building some semblance of understanding for the ghost of a woman—is she an anthropologist? Or is this a forensic-type investigation?

Is Eleanor Shellstrop dead?

She’s here but not here—the pictures and the gold band around her finger tell her these are her memories but they’re not. Her dumb lizard brain hasn’t ______ it out yet.

Oh. Another word that’s fallen through her fingers before she’s even remembered it.

It feels wrong to roll around, smell, and sleep in someone else’s marriage bed—it’s not the first time she’s done it, but it’s never been her bed.

What other intimacies can she find just sitting in the small-person-shaped dip of this bed? She doesn’t think about the dead flakes or skin, but she breaths deeply and her body nearly lurches into that place between awake and sleep—the familiar smell of bed that can only belong to ones own so strong.

The pillows on this side are fat and soft, just the way she likes them. She knows her head would sink into an orgy of clouds if she were to flop down now. It is tempting to do exactly what she had told Michael she wanted to do.

Eleanor resists—there’s another side to explore, still.

******************

It is during one of these days, where she rolls around on the bed (their bed) like a dog left unsupervised in an empty home, that a thought strikes her. It strikes her so suddenly and with a force that she has to press the palm of her hand to her temple, eyes wincing—

Dummy.

What’s under the bed?

She’d been thorough examining the faint layers of dust coating boxes and folds of laundry on the higher shelves, where someone like Michael would keep his things, that she hadn’t thought to drop below to see where someone like her—past Eleanor, GSTGSD-Eleanor, might have hidden and holed away her own treasure.

The only thing she finds, disappointingly, is a shoe caddy with shoes as big as her head, some dust bunnies, and a laptop still charging.

******************

Vicky the cat goes downstairs into the basement on a daily basis, almost always for half an hour to one, and cries for attention. It’s a bizarre, attention-seeking, and almost resentful performance and, despite being dead ass annoying, Eleanor can relate. What a mood, right?

******************

Forgotten your password? She clicks it.

The prompt doesn’t help at all: you know it, bitch!!

What? Why would she do that to herself? Except, that is so on brand for her and Eleanor hates, hates, hates Eleanor (herself) and loves Eleanor (herself) and hates Eleanor (herself).

She scowls, flexing her fingers. Vicky takes this opportunity to leap into her lap, tail high and crooked for attention, with her unabashed asshole right in Eleanor’s face.

fuckyou! She types, exasperated; before clicking enter, she scowls and adds an extra exclamation mark for good measure—using two exclamations is just enough to push something over the edge, enough to look off balanced, but three would be too much. She wants to send the right amount of recalcitrant bastard to her past self. And if she’s only got one log-in attempt before the laptop bricks, then, fine. Fuck you, GSTGSD Eleanor Shellstrop.

The little ball whirrs for a moment, before the screen flickers, the desktop loading in seconds.

******************

end thoughts: haha okay so I haven’t watched TGP for a hot minute, not since that finale broke me. but I legit don’t recall what GSTGSD stands for (if that’s a show ref) so fuck, haha, help me out here past-adrie. if there’s interest in this I’ll continue it.

#The Good Place #The Good Place fic #hellstrop #eleanor shellstrop #Michael the good place #TGP #my fic

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riceccakes · 3 years

Text

Earth, Wind, and Coffee: Chapter Three Analysis

chapter one analysis | chapter two analysis

back again for another chapter analysis. i think ive been looking forward to this chapter the most, it’s where some big decisions were made!!! this analysis is a long one, i hope that’s all right! i kinda got carried away. so, let’s dive right in, shall we?

some fun stuff before we start!

chapter three was supposed to be the last chapter of the fic

idk if any of you were there when i first started writing this fic, but it was only going to be three chapters with a possible epilogue. however, everything changed when i finished the end of chapter two. (lil atla reference there for ya) (sorry i know that was bad, moving on). like i said in my last analysis, i had an idea of what i wanted to happen (the separation of korrasami) so that they could come back together. it was just a matter of what separates them. so, i’m not sure where i got the panic attack idea but once i did, the rest of the story changed. i realized i couldn’t quite possibly finish the story in one chapter so i split the ideas i had and decided on it being four chapters

now, this being said, maaaaajor changes were made in my story outline. most notably: korrasami was going to be a couple in this chapter

this was originally going to be a full fledged “they meet, they get to know each other, they fall in love, happily every after” but the thing was, i planned on treating their romance as korra’s recovery; that being with asami is what made korra better, that all she needed was a partner, someone to love, and that is not what i wanted to portray with this story. i’ve never been a fan of stories that give a character a love interest and all of sudden their problems are fixed and they’re completely happy, and here i was about to do just that. i knew i’d never respect myself if i continued down this narrative, and when chapter two ended with korra’s panic attack, i realized her growth needed better love and attention. so, i changed what happened and gave her some therapy

this change in the storyline also let me explore more of kuvopal !!! (is that their ship name?)

so, back to LOVE WITCH for a second (because that glorious fic really did steal my heart) not only did it make me love kuvira’s character more, it also got me into the kuvopal relationship! and yet again, i wanted my own go at it. with the original timeline, there was just no space for me to include the lil bread crumbs of their relationship. however, however, however; by splitting the ending between two chapters (and adding some stuff in between) i was able to lay some foundation for them, which im very happy about :)

into the chapter we go:

let’s talk about the meeting! the whole reason this fic came to be! i’ll start by saying i always knew the project was going to get pulled out from under asami. 1) because thats some angsty/hurt shit right there and im a sucker for writing angst 2) i didn’t feel like creating a whole ass presentation because knowing my ass i would’ve made a powerpoint about it so i had every detail down to the font asami used and 3) getting the presentation taken away from asami was a pivotal point in her character arc.

i actually started the chapter in two different ways. at first, i’d written her whole entire morning with there always being one thing that was off. like, instead of a perfect omelette, it was going to split and asami would’ve had a scramble, still good, but not her favorite. instead of going through all green lights on her way to work, asami was gonna meet every. single. red. light. i would’ve gone through with this if it hadn’t felt strange; i wanted to give the impression that something bad was going to happen but i felt like having something go wrong with every thing in her morning was gonna be a dead give away that some even bigger big bad was about to happen, if that makes sense. so instead, i went with the picture perfect scenario, almost too perfect, if you ask me. and indeed, it was too perfect, because hiroshi was too much of a coward to tell his daughter any sooner that his board agreed to get a new presenter

im just gonna cite a bunch of my favorite lines/bits from this chapter because i really enjoyed writing it xD

Iroh has already begun but Asami hears no words, only a blaring ring in her ears. Her face feels hot and she wonders how red she is. She stares at the black binder, notes the natural grooves and curves of the material, the plastic covering over top of it, the metal spine peaking out at the bottom. She’s only brought out of it’s dark trance when she feels a hand be placed on her arm; Kuvira.

when you’re upset, do you ever just, hyper focus on one thing and its like you’re analyzing it under a microscope for the first time? yes? no? well, i do that, and personally, i do because if i focus on my anger/hurt emotions any more, im going to explode and i dont want to explode. so, this instance about looking at the grooves in the binder and each of the components of it just hits with me, idk if does with you too, but like bruuh.

Asami has her hand over her mouth, silently sobbing, feeling as if she’ll throw up. She leans her head on her wheel, her mind wanders to what could’ve been, what should’ve been. She feels as if her car is closing in on her, that the metal is compacting. The seatbelt keeps her locked down to the driver’s seat and she can’t leave if she wants to. The Satomobile holds her hostage and she lets it. Even while it’s hurting her, even while it’s harshly molding itself onto her, she stays at her father’s heel because, what else is she to do?

this is one of my favorite things ive ever done with asami’s character, is using future industries/satomobiles as a sort of vehicle (heh) for her relationship with her dad. this paragraph just kind of hurts, but the good hurt? but also not good hurt? it’s just, (and not me over here boasting about my writing or anything) it’s so poetic that she has this breakdown and she’s so upset with her dad, i mean “what should’ve been” like, asami KNOWS that the shit that’s just happened is more than wrong, yet asami is still somehow wondering how she can please her dad and it’s in the literal legacy hiroshi built for himself. “she stays at her father’s heel because, what else is she to do?” i remember writing that and being like “shit, am i really gonna do this? yeah” ugh, i could go on forever about how i love this section, but i’ll stop here for now.

Asami begins yelling, screaming at the top of her lungs, letting all the thoughts, all the insecurities her father gave her finally be released into the world. Kuvira lets her, simply nodding and following along on the couch while Asami paces her living room. She spews out word after word, about the work, about the presentation, about Iroh, his position, her position, the company, the CEO, and she only stops when she feels the weight of her father rest on her shoulders.

back with more diction; i really love this paragraph because of how we circle back to hiroshi. note how i first say “the CEO” and then a few words later say “her father” because, in a way, this is asami’s confession that hiroshi is CEO first and father second, if i haven’t already explicitly said so. it’s so heart wrenching and sad but my favorite thing about it is this isn’t even about korra. like THIS right here is a prime example about how i realized this fic became more than just a love story. in the planning stages of this fic, asami was going to go through getting the presentation taken away from her, but what was she going to focus more on? the fact that korra wasn’t around anymore. and yes, asami still does think about korra after this, but so much more happens for her. asami gets to know kuvira more, asami gets to know her lab partners more, (and my personal hc is that they’ve all been lab partners for two years and only NOW asami is getting to be friends with them in their senior year, but hey, better late than never!) and to me, what’s even better, is that a bunch of realizations come to asami w/o korra being there. asami is growing and the idea of being able to grow without needing to have a partner in order to grow is so important to me, not only for the fact that growth should be endless and something you do all the time for yourself, but asami literally wants to share it with korra. not boast about changing and growing and becoming better, but just be better with korra. sdlfakds i swear, im fangirling over my own writing, oops

okay, moving on from The Meeting and onto the rest of the chapter

this dock scene was also another part i wrote beforehand and it had a completely different ending in that asami was going to ask korra out on a date. of course, korra would’ve said yes, and then yay yay happy ending. this didn’t happen and i’m glad it didn’t. in one version of this dock scene, asami was actually going to be upset with korra for disappearing, and even worse, mad that korra wasn’t there to comfort her after the presentation. oof, i know. so so glad i didn’t continue down that line, cause it is toxic, and my girls aren’t like that at all.

Once Korra’s eyes meet hers, Asami says, “That doesn’t mean you always have to be on your own.” She smiles at Korra, at the girl who’s turned her world upside down. Her hand remains on Korra’s cheek and she feels the girl sink into her palm. “I’ll be here for you, and it seems like Tenzin will be too, what with saying he was calling you more. And you have his family, and your own family, even though they’re away, they’re here to support you, we all are. You can still be strong and turn to other people for help. It takes great strength to ask for help and I know for a fact you’re strong enough, those bags of coffee beans were nothing for you.”

i like this line of dialogue here for a few reasons, mostly because asami is so soft and so right and the joke at the really helped lighten the mood but didn’t take away from what she’d just said before. i don’t have too much else about the Reunions section, though if you guys have any questions or anything you wanna point out, please do so! i think what i will say is that i tried to be as real and gentle with korra’s progression. i was so nitpicky about everything i wrote because i didn’t want to get any of it wrong or over dramatized or fake. recovery from anything is so important and it takes time and it’s not a straight line so i hope i did a good job with it the rest of the fic.

moving on, i love the found family trope and this leads me into the next section, New Friends

when i think about this section, i like how soft it is, and i really enjoy the ending bits: korra recounting memories from the south, asami meeting tenzin. i think what i like about the end of this chapter is that, it kind of leaves the question: what’s next?

asami has grown, she’s changed, she sees the errors of her father’s ways but she’s not excusing them. korra has grown, she’s changing, she’s taken the first step in recovery. now it’s just a matter of, what happens with this growth now. and i really loved how i wrapped up the fic in the next and last chapter, so i hope you enjoy it too :))

honorable mentions:

there were a lot of changes in this chapter and one of them got changed twice! korra was gonna get a therapist but then i was like, we gotta get the krew together, and then i was like supppppoorttttt grouuuppppp, because lets be honest, all the krew has stuff they need to work through, and i know therapy isn’t for everyone, but mental health is so vital and important. asami is an advocate for therapy in the chapter but there are also other means to take care of yourself and your mental health and while i’ve never been to a support group, i understand finding comfort in knowing you’re not alone.

i guess what i’m trying to say is please take care of yourself and dont be afraid to lean on others. i know not everyone has the means to get a therapist/psychiatrist and i know that your friends aren’t made to only be your therapist. buuuut, don’t be afraid to reach out, there’s nothing wrong with needing help and support :)

anything i would’ve wanted to change?

honestly, i think the only thing i would’ve wanted to change was mako’s speech during the support group meeting. for me, it was a lil bit too poetically out of character. not to say i want to change the content, but rather the manner in which it’s presented. other than that though, i really loved writing this chapter :)

so this analysis was reeeaaaalllly long, i understand if not everyone made it to end. anyways, thanks so much for reading this analysis and the fic! once again, i’m very much open to questions and any comments, i love them very much! i’ll see you guys in the next analysis of the final chapter :)

#ricewrites #earth wind and coffee #coffee shop au #chapter analysis #writing analysis #korrasami #korrasami fic #korra #asami sato #lok

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tempesrature · 4 years

Text

Dedicated Emotions: Colt (Part IV)

PART I | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

Pairing: Ride or Die | Ellie x Colt Summary: An imagining of what happened months after RoD1 where it’s only them and the days beyond. (This is an accompaniment to the Logan Series with the same title, you don’t need to read the other series to understand this series don’t worry!) Word Count: 281 (story alone) 944 (w/ creative process note) Warnings: None

Colt groans when the sunlight hits his eyes. It’s too early.

He turns to his left, to shield his eyes from the offending daylight, when sharp ends of hair stabs his cheeks. He opens his eyes, ready to be annoyed, when he melts at the sight of her in his bed once more. Sleeping, comfortable, adorable, sexy, stealing all of the sheets—he chuckles in disbelief. But he’s relieved that some things never change at least.

He props his head on his hand, his elbow digging into the mattress, as he looks down at her. Soaking up the sight he hasn’t seen in six months. She’ll have to drive back tomorrow, maybe even today, so he has to use this opportunity to ingrain this view to the depths of his unconsciousness. That way, perhaps even the nightmares of fire on a bridge can be doused by the memory of this moment.

His eyes latch on to the indents of the pillow on her cheek and he brings up his finger to poke it.

Soft.

So he does it again. Incessantly.

Ellie stirs in her sleep and wakes up in confusion. She squints her eyes, half in an effort to stop him from being blurry and the other half to glare at him. He smirks down at her and she groans, pushing his hand away and turning to the other side.

“You’re annoying.”

He smiles brilliantly. He knows that. But he knows something better.

“You still love me though.”

She sighs in bliss, a smile tugging on the edges of her lips when she feels him lay delicate and purposeful kisses on the back of her shoulder.

“I really do Colt.”

END

~*~

Creative Process Note: *This is the same write up for the Logan Series. Slight spoiler warnings for the other series.

Thank you so much if you’ve reached this far into the story! If you’re not interested in how the series started and what the steps it took to get here—then you can stop here. I just really want to share this because this isn’t how I normally write and it takes a conscious effort on my part to write with this style (I love writing this way but a 1k story will take me hours) so I thought somebody might be interested in it.

But of course, you don’t need to read the rest of this so thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed the stories as much as it was a joy (and pain lol) to write them!

I’m really happy that I got to write for Colt and Logan. Colt is a fun and interesting character to write but definitely a challenging one and I hope I did him justice. Compared to Logan where my heart physically hurts to write him in any scene other than happy and loved because I want only the best things for my sweet boi.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I’ve used six of Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs from three different albums. Some of the lines of the songs are peppered in the dialogues and descriptions in the story (can you spot them all?). The songs are as follows:

For Logan: Run Away With Me (Emotion) Automatically In Love (Dedicated) Felt This Way (Dedicated Side B)

For Colt: Making the Most of the Night (Emotion) Right Words Wrong Time (Dedicated) Stay Away (Dedicated Side B)

For both series, I intended it to be a contrast between the fire and the almost heart-pounding edge to Colt in comparison to Logan who is more water and softer around the edges. I tried (and hopefully succeeded lol) in varying my writing styles for both stories to reflect that. While Colt’s story is more dire, angsty, and has a tight dialogue—Logan is more wistful, bittersweet and has a loose dialogue. That’s why both story’s more or less start out the same way, a job gone wrong, to set their journey in parallels.

And of course I’m going to end it with a happy ending, I’m not a monster.

I got the idea from Carly’s “Stay Away” and “Felt This Way” songs where it’s essentially the same lyrics but the genres are completely different (seriously, it’s amazing!) and so I thought—hey I could use that for RoDAW! And that’s where parallels with Colt and Logan came in.

Writing this also gave me the opportunity to focus on my imagery more and explore the ways I could play around with words (I’m sure you noticed my love for alliterations and repetitions). They’re very short pieces of writing but I wanted each chapter to capture a moment into their life where the theme of separation and coming home was the focal point. The afterward is just the indulgent shot of sugar needed after a full meal.

The biggest challenge had to be working out how to use the lines in the song and inserting them naturally into the story without altering them too much that it would be unrecognizable or sound awkward and stilted. I’m also not American so I tried to keep the details and scenery a little bit vague so I didn’t have to go into details that could be wrong and disrupt the immersion (google helps but only to a certain extent).

That’s about it.

Once again, thank you for reading this far and have a great day!

#rod #colt x mc #colt x ellie #choices #playchoices #my writing #choices rod

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zevlors-tail · 4 years

Note

Hi! Could i get a match up with any mha male character. I’m a female about 5’2 and ive got long straight hair. I’m not too shy like i still find it hard to talk to people but if im more comfortable im really talkative. I’m a capricorn. I am really impulsive I once woke up and decided to get three ear piercings. I’m a dancer that specializes in ballet and I love playing the piano and the violin. I also am really clingy and love to cuddle. For the autumn drabble could I get scary movies and rain

I’m SO sorry this took so long. Matchups are so hard for me to do and I was a little too ambitious with adding the drabbles at the end. ;w; Here it is! I hope you like it!

I match you with: Denki Kaminari!

-Maybe you sometimes find it hard to talk to people, but this boy is going to make it incredibly easy for you to feel comfortable with him. He just has that aura to him; it’s like you’re meeting up with a long lost friend you haven’t seen in ages when in reality you barely even know him. But he makes it feel like you’ve known each other since kindergarten, like you two were best friends your whole lives. You two are cozying up to each other in no time.

-Impulsive? PERFECT. Kaminari is that friend who will push you around in a shopping cart through the middle of the store on a dare you made 3 months ago that the two of you suddenly remembered. Honestly, you two wreck so much havoc with each other, even Mina struggles to keep up with your shenanigans. And anything you want to do? He supports it. You want 3 ear piercings? Go for it. Wanna get a tattoo while you’re at it? “Do ittttt!” Honestly, if you need someone to hold you back or keep you in line, don’t expect Denki to be that person. He’s gonna be the exact opposite. If you really need someone to keep you in check, make Bakugou tag along with you; he’s really the only one who can stop the both of you from destroying the whole city.

-Kaminari loves to watch you practice your dancing. He thinks you’re absolutely graceful and could watch you for hours at a time. He never gets tired of it. He gets mesmerized every time you move and wonders how you manage to make him feel like he’s lighter than air. He will 100% come to any and all of your shows if you have them, and will always support you no matter what. Catch him in the front row crying tears of joy because, “That’s my babe up there, that’s my Y/N!” He can and WILL drag the whole Bakusquad along btw. You’ll always have support from your friends. :)

-Also very supportive when it comes to your instruments! Listening to you play makes him very emotional, but in a good way. He could be sobbing while you practice and if you stop and ask him if he’s okay, he just chokes out “I’m fine, please continue!” and gives you his signature thumbs up. He looks anything but fine, although he’s telling the truth; he just wants to hear you play. Kaminari is an emotional guy, and he expresses it freely, so tears are natural. He also has favorites out of the songs he’s heard you play! Sometimes he might request a certain song if he hasn’t heard it in a while. Better yet, if you write him a song of your own or learn a new one in secret to surprise him, he will melt. You’re gonna kill him. No really, you’re going to make him feel so loved.

-Denki is also very clingy and cuddly, so you better prepare for koala hugs and lots of kisses and cuddles. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had the best day of your life, the worst day of your life, or if it was just an average ordinary day, you’ll still get cuddles every single night. And he gives really good ones too; the way he wraps his arms around you and holds you close to him makes you feel the safest you’ve ever felt, like nothing can touch you while you’re with him. He’s also a fan of playing with your hair and giving you head pats. Of course he likes them too, but he likes giving them to you much more than receiving them. The best feeling after a hard day is Denki running a hand through your hair to relax you while you snuggle into his arms.

Fall Drabble: Scary Movies/Rain

This drabble kind of got away from me so now it’s less of a drabble and more of a scenario but oh well-

Heavy rain swirled outside in the wind, water droplets sticking to the window and sliding down slowly as you listened to thunder rumble in the distance. Lightning accompanied it a fraction of a moment later, the flash of light illuminating the whole sky for half a second so you could see the gloomy clouds in full. You and Denki originally had plans to go to a fall festival of sorts, but the two of you had waited too long to get ready to go, and now (a whole half hour later no thanks to charge bolt himself) it was too late; there was no way either of you were going out in this. Even if Denki was immune to lightning, you were not, and the wind and rain both proved challenging foes to your clothes and hair. You would both look like a mess by the time you got there, if you hadn’t fried on the way there.

“Soooo, I guess we’re staying in for the day. No way we’re going to the festival in that,” you said dryly.

“I’m sure we can find other ways to pass the time, babe. We can always catch the festival tomorrow!” Ever the cheerful one, it seemed. That was something you really loved about Kaminari. No matter the situation, he was always willing to find the silver lining.

“I suppose you’re right. Well, what can we do in the mean time then?” you wondered aloud.

“No idea, but this storm sure is getting spooky...” Denki subconsciously scooted closer to you as the wind howled outside, a high pitched sound reverberating through the room as it picked up speed.

“Yeah...”

You both went quiet, Denki’s focus on the storm outside while you thought of ways to pass the time. You would have invited the squad over to hang out, except this was supposed to be date night. You loved your friends, yes, but date night was special to you, and you weren’t exactly in the mood to share your boyfriend with anyone today. So friends were a no go...and you couldn’t go anywhere outside either. That only left a handful of activities. You looked around your room for something useful, anything exciting that you hadn’t already done today. Suddenly your eyes landed on an old ticket stub, namely the one from the very first movie you and Denki had seen together on your first date, and you were struck by an idea.

“Do you wanna watch a movie?”

And that was how the two of you ended up laying on the floor a half hour later, a giant blanket draped over your shoulders and pillows in front of you, popcorn pieces strewn about and cans of soda off to the side as a horror movie played in the background. It had been a while since either of you had seen a proper scary movie, so you agreed on one you hadn’t watched before and started it up without a second thought. The rain in the background helped to enhance the spooky mood for the night, a different sort of darkness seeping in and washing over the room after the lights had been turned off.

A jump scare startled you both a little, causing Kaminari to bump into you gently. You dropped a few pieces of popcorn, and your boyfriend couldn’t keep himself from poking fun at you.

“If you’re scared, Y/N, you can always hold my hand!” He gave you a wide grin and giggled, his tone teasing yet lighthearted. He could never truly give you crap about being spooked by a scary movie, especially when he had been startled himself.

“We’re already holding hands, you goofball!” You nudged him playfully and laughed with him, lightening the mood a bit after the jump scare. Eventually you both returned to watching the movie, your fingers lacing into his as you held hands still.

Fifteen minutes had gone by before the storm really started to pick up outside, wind howling relentlessly and rain pelting against your roof. You and Kaminari were so engrossed in the suspense of the movie that you didn’t notice anything at first; the woman in the film crept closer and closer to the basement door, pitch black coming from open entrance, and the both of you huddled close together as you watched in suspense for something to jump out from the darkness. Suddenly something hard fell against your roof with a loud Thump! followed by several other similar sounding noises, and you and Denki whipped around to look behind you for a culprit, spooked by the horror movie and the strange noise you had just heard. Just as you were about to ask him if he also thought that was hail, the TV shut off unexpectedly with a soft powering down noise, and the both of you were left in complete and total darkness as the storm raged on outside.

“Denki?” It was hard not to notice the tremble in your voice as you spoke quietly.

“I’m right here, love.” Kaminari’s voice wavered slightly as well, though he tried to be strong for you. Both of you were scared, but the least he could do was be there for you.

Down the hall, you could hear your fellow students mulling around in their own dorms and asking if everyone was okay. You put two and two together and realized the storm must have knocked the power out. Without warning, Kirishima thrust open the door to your bedroom and shined a flashlight in, causing the two of you to scream in unison as he finally focused it on your shaking forms.

“Why are you guys screaming?” He tilted his head in question while you tried to gain your bearings, and you secretly decided you would never watch horror movies during a storm ever again. “Yo, Kaminari. We lost power ‘cause of the storm. You think you could give the generator a jump?” The redhead rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, clearly sent over to ask for Denki by someone else.

“Nah, you guys are on your own. It’s date night with my baby, so no can do!”

“Awe, dude, come on! If you send me back with that sort of answer, Bakugou is gonna come storming in here himself!”

“Sorry, man. I’m sure the power won’t be out for that long, anyway. Bakugou can deal with it.

“If you say so. I’ll try my best to sugarcoat it, but expect an angry looking Bakugou sometime in the near future.”

Kirishima turned away with a wary look, trekking back down the hall the way he came. You turned to your boyfriend and snuggled into him, thankful for having such a loyal person as your partner.

“You could have given their generator a jump, you know,” you said softly.

“I know. But then I’d miss out on date night with you, and that wouldn’t be very kind of me, would it? Date night is just for us. They can figure stuff out themselves.”

The two of you sat there for a moment as you held each other before there was a loud crash from down the hall followed by angry stomping sounds.

“KAMINARI I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! OPEN UP!”

#kaminari denki #denki #kaminari #300 follower event #bnha matchup #matchup #anon #anonymous #300 follower special #mha matchup #answered

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smutav · 4 years

Text

Behind the scenes

Part ( 1 - 2 - 3 - here )

oh boy the characters!! Part 4!! the final one for the good at being bad collab assets We’re mostly going to focus on the building of the vagabond since with his hair he just has more bits to him ((if youve seen my character building streams this might be familiar))

so this is the buildup of the base sketches ((his face is still there the facepaint is on the overlay layer so it blocks it out mostly))

also here’s his shirt design w the original sketch without anything blocking it

there still tends to be slight differences when the build gets finished

granted I cant go in depth on all his bits since theres a lot

but since his bangs are chunky i had to build him an actual hairlins which is the first time i did this

((ignore that he got crooked I wound up playing while thinking of what i should focus on))

so normally i have hair layers on top of the base head but since its a tight bound ponytail I just have the back of the hair and then the green cuts out of the skull oh!! and its controlled by deformers

so the bottom moves where the hairline is and the top one can adjust the zone thats cut

now i’ve done a few jackets, mad kings whole upper body toppings are wild I dont even know if i fully get how it works anymore like here let me show you a spoiler of a thing im working on currently ((08/16/2020))

he going to be holding things this is VERY rough. so you see that arm?? thats half detached??

thats because of this motherfucker “oh tav why is it red?” well you see its disabled “well why would you do that is that the problem” oh ho ho,,,

if its on HE DONT HAVE AN UPPER ARM now why,,, why would that be?? well the collar cuts the sleeve right?? i guess?? i dont know why??

so this whole thing ((even tho most of it isnt visible)) is cutting the sleeve but verily!! we just need to make it so then it cuts from AFTER the collar is being cut

so thats the entire jacket,,,

ah yes progress. honestly i’ll probably have some solution for this specific scenario and have this animation posted by the time this part comes out which is why i included the date.

so we’ve got a bunch of confusing cutters and such in the jackets and back to vagabond

his jacket is split left and right, the collar is a separate piece but they can both be effected by the same deformer ((which is something i learned from the fish

so the collar moves with the jacket woo!! an incredible win!!and if the top one stays straight normally it doesnt mess with lining up with the back collar too bad

this is our full lineup though

((yeah vagabonds posed from me playing shush)) now GAVINS arms i think are a bit long?? but its hard to tell because THE BOY DONT GOT LEGS

also i tried a similar collar trick, this cutter cuts the shirt but also can move the collar

with mixed results ((really i think if i add some deformers specifically for the tips of the collar but gavin will only deserve touch ups like this when he gets legs

also under the hood he has the same hairline cutter

and his bangs are in three parts for floof control also he’s the first character i rigged with an actual nose

and his shirt is very lumpy but its separate because its supposed to be tucked into his pants and those’ll be able to sit over. I set him up with like the intention of if need be i can give him legs

now Rimmy tim is very interesting since,,, ive rigged him before

there are some differences right off the back like colours and uh, fahc rimmy tims sunglasses are gradiented side to side?? I straight up forgot how to fix that and now i remember so maybe it’ll be added to the fix list

And tiny tim has the same style of jacket as mad king ((see that was a totally relevant tangent)) and big rims got the same style as vagabond

there used to be some fixes i needed to do with tiny tims hat but I actually went through a lot of my notes before moving because i had to start fresh with my stickies

the main issue is since tiny tim’s got just *the smallest* legs his boots cut into bending his leg too far and thats why im not sure i can use him as much its very limited mobility altho aesthetically those booooots *sob*

Thanks for reading this through though, its been fun to break down my processes and if you’d like to see more I could probably do breakdowns on some other projects/rigs in the future so let me know!!

now here’s the bonus i teased in the props part, originally i was intending to release this as a bonus context but i never got past the sketch stage

I had trouble figuring out a style for fahc since i hadnt drawn them much before so i doodled up a jeremy and rimmy tim filling the duffelbags im going to toss it under the cut because its slightly nsfw

yeah they got bags of dildos ((well over the legal limit)) it was needed for the plan of course this is a fahc heist after all

#btsanimooted #tav dot txt #long post

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slumberinglabyrinth · 4 years

Text

okay maybe ill make that post actually.

here’s a quick rundown of how i think heroes could have worked better.

im not addressing game balance or gacha stuff. intsys gets money without having to, so why should i be the one who has to do it?

also i lied about it being quick.

surprise.

you can only have one playable instance of each hero at a time

duplicate heroes become combat manuals

if you make your only copy into a combat manual, your next obtained copy of that hero becomes a playable instance (still can’t unmake a combat manual)

pro: actively forces more diverse team comps. no more loading your ar team up with the same mythic to get dumb levels of hp and a single stat

con: cant do dumb meme stuff like Oops! All Infantry Launch Heroes

combat manuals function like seals for the purposes of merging and skill inheritance

They’d non-permanent and modular, so you can mix and match to suit your needs

merging and using units for skill inheritance are no longer a commitment, there’s no drawback to playing around to figure out how to approach challenge maps like abyssal GHB/LHB and experimenting is not longer actively discouraged

like honestly what the fuck. why would they punish you for experimenting (it’s so you pull more. thats why)

Seals (and now combat manuals) are assigned on a team-by-team basis

convenient! no more having to navigate through a million menus if you want to use the QP seal on two different units in two different game modes, and no more suffering when you forget to swap it back

uhhh. the way it’d work is that any given character would have a bunch of user-made builds that’d act as presets, and you’d choose a preset when you use them on a team and it’d draw from the pool of manuals/seals with that weapon/skill/etc. until you run out. if you are using, say 3 copies of armor march when you only have 2 sources, it won’t let you start the map

every unit comes with a weapon, assist, special, and three skills (they still have to learn stuff)

doesn’t have to be something they’d actually use

just make stuff more available

remove the level system

like. who cares. you’re never going to use a unit that’s below level 40 unless you’re trying to do some weird bullshit to get around stuff that targets low stats like even pulse tie or whatever it was called

does not provide meaningful progression because you have no reason to use a unit before the level cap if you’re not actively feeding them exp

it’s literally just a pointless time sink that means you can’t use someone right out of the box

sp system stays. more on that later.

remove the iv system

literally only exists to give you a 3/4-4/5 chance of a unit being ‘suboptimal’/less-than-ideal even if you manage to get them

changing ivs is a step in the right direction but it’s now “oops, you got a bad dice roll, grind so your character isn’t suboptimal” instead of “oops, you got a bad dice roll, give us money”

pointless if you cant draw duplicates anyway.

completely revamp the rarity system

all units start at 1*

functions as a ‘uncap system’ instead of a ‘only relevant when youre spending orbs’ system

each level increases the number of inherited skills (combat manuals) you can use by one (up to a max of five)

each level after 1* adds a ‘boon’ to a stat of your choice, up to a max of four

uses materials obtained by playing through maps, but obtained at a rate that isn’t mind-numbingly slow (unlike dragonflowers/grails). maybe this could be what the training tower would drop or w/e

creates actual significant game progression outside of “get orb, spend orb”

combat manuals also have a separate ‘rarity’ system

also uses some in-game material

comparatively more expensive since it’ll do stronger stuff

only goes up to 3*

1* is default, 2* unlocks inheritance of fourth tier skills, 3* allows inheritance of a second skill/weapon/etc. line from that manual

more progression that isnt just number go up

new sp system since some stuff involving it has changed.

still get sp from kills and healing

sp can be spent towards leveling up a skill, weapon, assist, or special slot,

each level alternates between unlocking a new level of the skill that unit has in that slot and unlocking a new level of an inherited skill in that slot, with roughly the same sp cost as in heroes right now

once you unlock everything, sp goes to hero merit or whatever. it shouldn’t be useless

hero merit stays, but it should do something other than give small amounts of feathers that must be manually harvested

dont really care what

kinda leaning towards something more lore-related instead of a gameplay reward?

maybe a few new voicelines? maybe an extra ‘support’ scene? maybe a new map animation or two?

uhhh right we got rid of leveling. throw the 5* lv 40 in there too

stop making new units share a color on banners

seriously

nonseasonal healers also come with a staff learned by default

god this was so annoying

like okay this was pet-peeve level but 1 sp per heal with a cap of 8 per map when mr sword man over there is getting 3 sp per kill with no cap? hated it

you can assign a friend unit of each color

no more Oops! All Greens in VGs

can still only use one unit from a given friend at a time

also make them usable in more modes. like. who cares. its one unit. if the game cant handle one good unit it’s hasn’t been balanced. that’s intsys’ problem not mine

you can spark a focus unit as many times as you want, and on any banner

its dumb to punish f2p people who hoard orbs so they can get merges for That One Unit They Really Love just because whales exist. let them get 20 copies of some awful launch 5* if they really want to

most of the above changes also already disincentivizes or otherwise makes whaling give diminishing returns so like. who cares. nobody loses in this situation

units dont block ui elements when in the top row of a map

self explanatory

why did they do this

bow hinoka this means you

bring back that “everyone does [task], everyone gets [reward]” promo they did like right before they added grails

“fun”

cooperative! heroes needs more community stuff that isnt pvp!

great way to distribute bonus resources

made me actually use different units

you can set one alt of a unit as a costume for another alt of that unit

why not

stole this from gbf

remember that thing where a handful of launch units had a live2d animation the first time you summoned them?

they should have continued that

maybe not for every hero, but like. rateup exclusives maybe? make them extra special

more map objectives

gameplay variety is good

they totally could do “defeat target”, “defend unit”, “defend throne”, “seize throne”, etc. as objectives in the heroes map format and make it not suck

streamline menus

please

technically part of streamline menus but mission progress didn’t need to be a window that interrupts you between/after maps

make it a little notification that pops up to say “killed 10/20 units” and then goes away or whatever

also there’s no reason why missions shouldn’t autocollect the rewards. they should have done that

let me switch between en/jp VAs on a case-by-case basis

i have preferences. im sure other people do too

would’ve been cool but not the end of the world that it didnt happen

might have been licensing issues. idk

have more content that isn’t just “repurposed story maps”, “pvp”, and “procedurally generated event we run every month with minimal changes”

itd be cool to have stuff to do that isn’t something you’ve seen a million times already

i think some people call making that kind of thing “game design”

might add more later. probably not though lol.

#to be fair they have like. improved since launch #the rate that it happens at was just too slow #and a lot of the problems are more... intrinsic #also sorry ive been dead #i found a vita for like $50 #so my backlog tripled in size #oops #fehsl

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