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illwork4anime · 4 years

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18 please!

Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

Yes! So I will use my WIP Done with Love

ORIGINS

ORIGINALLY THIS STORY WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE ShikaSaku.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ONLY ITASAKU. LOOK HOW FAR WE HAVE FALLEN BECAUSE I FELL HARD FOR SHIKA.

Literally never considered the pairing until this.

This story started with the Itasaku oneshot that is the prologue. Then I wrote a drabble that was just the hospital scene, but a little different. It had Kurenais daughter coming in wounded. Sakura saves her and goes to the waitingroom to find Shika a mess. It's the end of her shift so she takes him out for a drink. The end.

Then I decided, no I want to write a proper story. So I combined them, with Shikamaru only there because of his big brain AND THATS IT. NOTHING ELSE. So I added...They talk. Shika owes her one bigtime. Asuma would have haunted him forever if she died. So, Sakura says - I know how you are going to help me out. Help me train and I am going to get Sasuke back all on my own. Work with me on a strategy. The start of the chapter was a flash forward to an event I can tell because its a spoiler! Basically, Sakura is captured and trying to escape. This helped add some suspense to the exposition and make a boring capture time more interesting by breaking it up.

BUT then I decided to redo it completely. Because I fell in love with shikasaku as a later pairing.

Also - all those Kakashi moments - ACCIDENTAL. I wrote that healing scene in the library on a whim and now here we are. Originally, just supposed to be Shika and Itachi.

DELETED/REFACTORED SCENE

One additional diversion was the scene in the art gallery. That originally didn’t have the genjutsu at all. It was an argument outside in a part. But I wanted to make it relevant to her training, so I put it in the gallery. In the alternate scene, it started because Sakura confronted Shikamaru about how he had kissed Ino before and wanted to know what kind of kiss it was. Here it is in DRAFT FORM:

“Oh, Sai!” Ino’s voice shatters through the moment. Ino bounds up behind Sai, throwing her arms around him in greeting.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding from me.” She says sweetly.

“Beautiful, I was not hiding, I assure you.” He says, face looking phonier than before. Why did Ino get a nice nickname, while Sakura got stuck with Hag? Ino beams at him for it.

“I missed you, silly. Let’s go to the movies Friday, so you can make it up to me.” Ino says sweetly.

Sai turns to Sakura, “What do you think, Sakura? Shall we go?”

Ino glares at her, as if she’s invited herself while Sakura puts her hands up in surrender.

“Um, actually Sai, I have training with Shikamaru on Friday night. I won’t be able to go.” Sakura lies.

“Is that what you’re calling it,” Ino grumbles under her breath.

“Apologies, Ino. We will have to try another time.” He says to her.

“She won’t mind if we go without her,” She says sweetly, then grinds out in a threatening tone, “Right, Sakura?”

“Right.” Sakura squeaks.

“According to my reading, the Hag is socially obligated to agree in this situation, though her true feelings could be to the contrary. It would be perceived as a slight to go without her.” Sai responds, looking rather proud at his insight.

Sakura cringes as Ino’s intensified glare.

“Then why don’t you just bring Shikamaru along, Sakura.” Ino offers, “Then we can have a double date.”

Again, the way Ino says it give Sakura no room to disagree, but she does anyway.

“I’m not going on a double date.” She says firmly.

“Forehead, let’s just talk for a second over there.” Ino says, grabbing her arm too tightly and dragging her out of hearing distance.

“Don’t ruin this for me, Sakura. I’m super close to sealing the deal on Sai and I’m not about to give that up because you made some phony sisterhood pact to yourself to swear off men forever.” She whispers furiously.

“It’s not about my completely legitimate pact. I have way bigger things to worry about right now than going on a fake date.” Sakura hisses back. Danzo’s disappointed expression rises up in her memory, along with his gentle reminder of her deadline. She shakes her head, “And don’t kid yourself, Ino. Sai has no idea you’re even interested in him.”

“Then you understand why I need this!” Ino argues back.

“Even if I wanted to, I’d never get Shikamaru to agree to this.” Sakura says, trying a different angle.

“Ha!” Ino lets out a shrill laugh, “That’s what you’re worried about.”

Sakura glares, “Yes. The last place he’d want to spend a Friday night is fourth-wheeling a date with you and Sai.” She’s not sure that’s strictly true, but is hoping his lazy, reclusive track record works to her advantage.

“Fourth-wheeling isn’t a thing, and you know it.” Ino disagrees, “And he’d go if you asked him. He’d show up in civilian clothes with his hair down if you asked him to.”

“Yeah, right.” Sakura scoffs, but blushes at the image that pops in her head of him running a hand through his loose hair. She shakes her head and says with more bite than she means to, “It doesn’t matter who asks. The answer will be no.”

“Then you’d better convince him.” She says, jabbing a finger in Sakura’s shoulder. “You still owe me from the time I pretended to be your lover to get that stalker fan boy to stop bothering you.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you do to that!” Sakura protests.

“See, I did it out of the goodness of my heart, so now’s your chance to repay me, because that’s what girlfriends do.” She smiles with a shrug and turns back to Sai to answer without waiting for Sakura to respond.

“Sai, she’s in!” She giggles, skipping back over to him, “See you Friday, Forehead!”

_____

Even though he said it wouldn’t, Shikamaru’s waiting for her outside the theater out of uniform that Friday. His black pants look pretty much the same, but his well-toned arms are on full display in a mesh tee-shirt and a long green vest that brushes his thighs. It probably has the Nara clan symbol on the back.

“Look at you, Muscles,” She teases him, glancing pointedly at his exposed arms. He lets out an annoyed huff, but his cheeks go pink, “I thought you weren’t wearing your civilian clothes tonight.”

“It would have been more troublesome to stick out that to just change,” He sulks. She can’t keep the smile off her face.

“Ino and Sai here yet?” She looks around but doesn’t see them.

“Not yet.” He’s still blushing and looks to the side when he says, “You look nice too.”

She lets out a surprised, “Oh, thanks,” looking down at the outfit she found in the back of her closet. It had been hard to find something that was fancy enough to say ‘date’ for Ino but casual enough to say ‘friends’ for Shikamaru. The simple cream tank top, with a more generous neckline than she was used to, tucked into a plain red skirt did the trick.

“Forehead, Shikamaru!” Ino calls, jogging up with her arm looped through Sai’s.

“Here we go,” Shikamaru mumbles, pushing off the wall he’s leaning against.

“Hey, none of that attitude,” She scolds. If she was taking a night off, it was going to be worth it, dammit, “We are here to have fun. Even if it kills us,”

“It just might,” he breaths out as Ino bounds up to them.

“You actually showed up. I honestly didn’t think you would,” Ino says with an obnoxious laugh. She eyes Ino’s crop top and short purple skirt and suddenly feels like her neckline isn’t so racy after all. Sai’s outfit is just as bad, also in a black crop top with low riding pants.

“Why am I the only one not wearing a crop top?” Sakura says pulling at the bottom half of her shirt.

“Hey,” Shikamaru says sharply, gesturing to his shirt, “This is not a crop top.”

“Might has well be,�� She jokes, poking his abs through a hole in the mesh.

“Stop that,” he complains, grabbing onto her hand.

“This is going to be so fun!” Ino says, looping her arm through Sakura’s and dragging them inside. Shikamaru doesn’t let go of her hand until Ino pushes him and Sai into the line for tickets.

“Why can’t you just get your own stuff, Ino?” Shikamaru grumbles. “What a drag.”

“You’d know why if you ever bothered to go on dates, Shikamaru.” She answers, sticking her tongue out at him. He flushes pink and glances shyly at Sakura.

“Beautiful is right. Traditionally men are the ones to pay for date activities,” Sai says, no doubt trying to be helpful.

“She’s totally taking advantage of you, man,” Shikamaru says, shaking his head and turning to walk up to the counter.

“I don’t understand,” Sai says, following behind him. “A date is still an equal exchange. Don’t men usually receive payment in the form of sexual favors at the end of the night?”

Sakura hears Shikamaru let out a strangled groan. He grabs Sai by the back of the head and starts whispering something urgently to him.

She can’t help but laugh at Shikamaru’s reaction.

“Isn’t he the cutest?” Ino gushes. “He’s like a lost little puppy.”

“He’s something.” Is all Sakura can think to answer.

Ino’s eyes turn mischievous and swing to Sakura. “So you got Shikamaru to come. Who was right again?”

Of course, Ino wanted to get in her I-told-you-so about it being relatively easy to get Shikamaru to come.

She tries to make it sound more trouble than it was. “Yeah, well you don’t know what I had to promise to get him to come here, Ino-pig.”

“Oh my, Forehead!” Ino lets out a scandalized giggle. Sakura’s face heats, realizing Ino took it sexually. “On the contrary, I want to know every saucy detail.”

“It’s nothing like that!” Sakura says, but Ino is unphased.

“Just as long as it’s nothing naughty in the theater. It’s all fun and games until you’re halfway through a hand job and a worker shines a flashlight on you with your hand down some guy’s pants in front of a theater full of judgy middle-aged women who clearly don’t understand the concept of spontaneous romance.”

“That’s so specific,” Sakura says suspiciously. “Please tell me that didn’t actually happen to you.”

“Yes, well,” Ino waves of her comment, “Learn from my mistakes Sakura. But more importantly, don’t mentally scar me by getting freaky with my teammate while I’m 2 seats down.”

“I should say the same to you!” Sakura says, blushing further, but Ino doesn’t make any promises.

Shikamaru and Sai return. Shikamaru looks more disgruntled than ever.

“That was the most troublesome conversation I’ve ever had.” He grumbles under his breath to her, low enough for Sai and Ino to miss. But as Ino passes, he says, “You owe me two times now for that.”

Sakura flushes. Although Sakura knows he means 2 weekends, Ino doesn’t. She wiggles her eyebrows and Sakura wants to sink into the floor from embarrassment.

He hands her a ticket with ‘Illusion of Silence’ written on the front, and she asks, “What are we seeing? A horror movie?”

“It was that or a sappy romcom. Just remember I chose the lesser of two evils.” He says and takes her hand again, leading her to the theater. It feels a little strange to be holding hands, but she doesn’t say anything. The trailers haven’t started yet, so they have no trouble finding their seats. The theater is mostly empty anyway, probably not a good sign for the movie quality.

She sits down between Shikamaru and Sai.

“Sakura, how is what you pass off as sketching going?” Sai asks.

Pass off. She suppresses the urge to smack him across the head. That kind of thing was frowned upon in these types of establishments.

“Terrible. I think Kurenai-sensei gave up on me.”

Kurenai had barely kept from laughing at Sakura when she’d shown her sketch book. It was pitiful, and while there had been a small improvement in Sakura’s visual genjutsu, Kurenai had decided to move on to a different topic. She still had to keep up the activity, but just not as her main focus.

Now they were working on non-visual genjutsu. Sakura found this a lot easier for some reason. Inducing pain, sounds, tastes, smells, all of that was just chemicals moving around the body. She understood those. She’d dealt with those before.

While she’d been extremely glad for the change in topic, she couldn’t manage to look forward to her lessons anymore. It was hard not to look at Kurenai differently after learning about her secret affair with Kakashi. It was a difficult feeling to explain, but every time she remembered it, her chest grew heavy, like something had reached inside her chest and squeezed a fist around her heart. She grits her teeth just thinking about it.

“I told you giving up was the best option,” Sai says sweetly, “No reason to waste your time improving a hopeless skill.”

“Shut up, Sai. A student is only as good as their teacher and you were absolutely no help.” She grumbles.

“Hey, don’t blame Sai because you can only draw stick figures. Some people just aren’t born to be artists like he was,” Ino defends, sending a starry eyed look at Sai and resting a hand to Sai’s arm. Then she pulls him into a conversation about what his ‘artistic genius’ has be working on lately.

“Is it really going that bad?” Shikamaru asks referring to her genjutsu training. His eyebrows are drawn in with concern.

“I don’t know.” She grumbles. She doesn’t want to admit it, but from Kurenai’s reactions, she felt it was going that badly. She wasn’t improving as fast as she should be. It seemed like something on a fundamental level just wasn’t clicking. “I try to do what Kurenai is instructing, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. We are so different that sometimes its hard to understand what she wants from me. Plus, it doesn’t help that genjutsu is so subjective.”

“Why don’t we work on it together next week. It might help to get a fresh perspective.”

“Really? That would be amazing,” She says with a smile.

“Of course.” He takes her hand again, rubbing a thumb across the back.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Shikamaru.” She says, squeezing his hand back.

“Let’s not find out,” he jokes, try to be nonchalant but he’s beaming from the comment.

Sakura lets out a yawn, “Let’s not.”

“You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?” He teases.

“No, I’m fine.” Sakura lies. She’d had practice with Team Guy this morning at 6am but had stayed up until 2am doing research. Physically, she was running out of steam fast. As the lights dim, she finds it harder and harder to keep her eyes open.

Shikamaru shakes her awake. Sometime during the opening credits, she fell asleep on his shoulder.

“Oh, sorry,” She says, groggily. Then whispers, “What did I miss?”

“Everything,” he answers with a smirk.

“What?” She hisses, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

He shrugs, “You needed the rest. The point was to relax tonight, right?”

“I guess,” she grumbles.

“The movie sucked anyway,” he says standing.

“That was so scary!” Ino gushes to Sai. “I’m so glad you were here with me, Sai. I felt much safer.”

“It was not really that scary, Beautiful. No reason to be afraid of pictures.” He says confused. Ino huffs.

As they leave, Ino insists on a walk in the park across the street, but within minutes, she’s slipped off with Sai. The suggestive wink tells Sakura everything she needs to know about her plans.

Even just being friends with her, this was uncomfortable. Shikamaru actually was interested at some point. She wondered what he thought of all this.

“How is this not extremely weird for you?” Sakura asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well didn’t you and Ino date a while back?” She explains and Shikamaru looks at her like she’s grown a second head.

“Tsh, no. Definitely not.”

“Well, you liked her though, right?”

He’s pouting, and reluctantly says, “Years ago, maybe. It wasn’t a big deal though.”

“But you guys kissed.” She counters. That seemed like a pretty big deal to her.

He stiffens and goes bright red, “Can Ino not keep her mouth shut about anything?”

“See, it is weird,” she says. But he doubles down.

“No, it’s not.” He disagrees crossing his arms, “That barely counts.”

But now she’s picturing the worst. A grating feeling rises in her chest at the thought of Shikamaru and Ino kissing and she has a strange compulsion to ask just what counts as barely counting.

“Barely counts how?” She says. She’s not able to look him in the eyes, so she trains her gaze on an ice cream cart across the park.

“I dunno, it just does.” He shrugs.

“Because it wasn’t good?” She offers. She hopes it wasn’t good.

“No, it was good,” He says defensively.

“That’s not what she said…” Sakura says skeptically, peaking at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Whatever,” Shikamaru grumbles. He’s scowling, “I can kiss just fine. She’s just trying to cover up that she’s the one who initiated the whole thing in the first place.”

“She did?” This surprises her and somehow it makes a difference.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Shikamaru states, picking up his pace. She strides right along undeterred.

“Well did you, like, want to kiss her?”

“I guess. Why does it matter?”

“Because!” She can’t seem to put the why into words. It’s just a queasy feeling turning her stomach. Even though it’s not the full truth, she offers the explanation, “You made out with your teammate, that’s a big deal.”

He stops short and turns to fully face her.

“It isn’t a big deal and we didn’t make out, okay.” He clarifies.

“Then what was it?”

“Just a kiss, Sakura”

“Well yeah, but was it a long, passionate kind -,”

“So troublesome,” he grumbles into the sky.

“Or just a quick -,”

She’s cut off by a warm pressure on her lips and her mind goes blank. As soon as she realizes what’s happening, it’s over.

Shikamaru pulls back a few inches, hands still cupping her face and searches her expression for her reaction. He kissed her.

“That’s all it was.” He murmurs, eyes dark and voice low. Her breath catches in her throat, the queasy feeling in her stomach grows magnitudes greater.

“Obviously I’d do things a little differently now,” He murmurs and his eyes flash, daring her to ask just how.

She should say something, but she couldn’t even if she wanted to. Her mind has snagged on the previous moment. The only additional thing she can seem to process is the warmth of his hands on her cheeks and his calming scent of pine and earth. She’s completely rooted in place by the heat in his chocolate brown eyes. It stokes something inside her. Maybe it is curiosity because she wonders what she would feel if just leans forward those few inches.

They bounce between her eyes and her lips, battling between waiting for her reaction and what she can only think to describe as desire. It only takes a few more moments for the latter to win.

He leans forward to capture her lips again, lingering longer this time. Its careful or rather experimental, testing her for a response she can’t seem to give. Again, he pulls back, studying her face. Again, from the moment his lips touched hers, her mind is just wiped blank, unable or unwilling to process it. Whatever he finds in her expression is enough.

His hand slides to the back of her neck and he kisses her again, deeper. Her eyes slide shut without conscious thought. She feels his other hand ghost down her side, stopping at her waist and pulling her closer. Her hands go to his chest to brace herself.

The pressure has him pulling back, checking over her face. He’s looking to see if she’s asked him to stop, she realizes, and a gentle warmth settles in her stomach. This time, his lips brush softly against hers, begging her to return the pressure and its so sweet, so unsure, that she reacts without thinking, relaxing into him. He pulls her closer, tension she hadn’t noticed draining from him and sighs against her mouth.

Finally, her thoughts are coming back to her, returning each slow, tender press of his lips against hers. The queasiness in her stomach settles into a gentle warmth and she relaxes into him. This is nice, she decides. It’s comfortable. Not great, not terrible.

It different than she’s ever felt before. Her heart isn’t beating out of her chest, she’s doesn’t feel butterflies in her stomach and she isn’t so caught up that needing air is secondary to feeling him against her.

Fine. Just fine.

Suddenly she thinks, shouldn’t it be better than just fine? Shouldn’t she be lit up inside, butterflies in her stomach, reluctant to separate even for air? The warmth in her freezes over.

“Stop,” She gasps, pressing against his chest. He steps back, and the distance seems to return more of her mind to her. The ball of ice in her stomach grows colder.

What was she doing? This was Shikamaru. Her closest friend, and she needed him like she needed air. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t get wrapped up in romance again and have everything between them fall apart. Because it would fall apart. That’s what love did to people or at least to her.

“That was a mistake” She finally decides. It was a mistake and they could forget about it and move on like it never happened. But Shikamaru’s face falls. He looks scared, she thinks.

“Don’t say that,” he begs, but she just shakes her head wrapping her arms around herself.

“I can’t do this,” Then looks into his eyes which are breaking in front of her.

“You don’t have feelings for me,” he tries.

But that’s not right. She felt something for him. He was so important to her and she’d be lying if she hadn’t found him attractive, but it didn’t quite feel like love. At least not how she’d loved Sasuke.

Even if it did, she didn’t want that anymore. Love only led to heartbreak and loss and she couldn’t lose him. Shikamaru was her only refuge in her storm of a life and she didn’t know how she’d stay afloat without him.

Words are pouring from her mouth, and she’s not even sure they make sense, but she can’t stop them.

“I-I don’t know how I feel. I just – I can’t lose you and if we do that, eventually we’ll screw everything up and I’ll lose you. I just can’t, Shikamaru. I can’t. I need you.”

Hope shines in his eyes. It’s a rejection, but not for the reason he feared. “You won’t lose me.”

“I will.” She insists. Now she’s the one that’s scared. She torn between needing the comfort of his embrace and wanting to keep him at arm’s length. She settles with taking a step closer and grabbing the opening of his vest. “You’re the most important person in my life. I don’t want anything to change between us.”

How can she explain it to him? How can she make him understand?

“Nothing will,” He whispers, hand coming to her face again. But she can see the gears turning in his head. He’s looking at her like a shogi piece now, something to outmaneuver, outthink to the outcome he wants. Anger flares up in her.

He strokes a thumb against her face, eyes settling again on her mouth.

“Don’t,” She snaps, turning her face from his palm. She needed to leave. They just needed some time apart and he’d realize he was just caught up in the moment or something at they’d put this behind them.

“I can’t. I just need a minute.” She says disengaging from him and striding off.

“Wait, Sakura!” he calls, but she doesn’t. He swears under his breath.

She needed to put some distance between them, she needed to time to think, but she if she left alone, he’d just follow her. Ino and Sai approach then, Ino clinging to Sai’s arm. She doesn’t want to talk with Ino, doesn’t want her judgy questions, so she strides up to her next best option.

“Sai, we’re getting ice cream,” She says, dragging him toward the stand across the part.

“Sounds enjoyable,” He says with a smile, not at all minding the interruption.

Ino on the other hand lets out an annoyed, “Hey!” but doesn’t fight her past that. Sakura and Sai are out of earshot before she has a chance.

Ino crosses her arms, icily looking Shikamaru up and down.

“You are really screwing this up, aren’t you?” Ino says with a smirk.

Shikamaru scoffs going red and snaps, “Like you’re doing any better.”

To which Ino lets out an indignant “Hmph!”

Sakura stops in front of the ice cream cart and gets them both a chocolate cone. Eating her feelings sounded wonderful right now.

“Shall we make some small talk now?” Sai asks with a smile. She groans.

“You don’t ask to make small talk, Sai. You just do it.” She explains, taking a lick of her chocolate ice cream. Its cold and sweet, but in a different way than Shikamaru had tasted.

Shit. Stop. That wasn’t allowed.

“Okay, so what are you doing after this?” He asks and it sounds like a pick-up line he probably read from a book on interacting with females. She rolls her eyes. Still, she’s thankful for the distraction and reminds herself this is still better than Ino.

“I’ll probably go back to the archives tonight and finish reading a few documents” She answers, talking another taste of her ice cream. Sai steps in front of her and she stops short.

“Did you not find the message I hid for you?” He says looking worried.

“What message?” She asks, confused.

“The one on the picture I gave you.” He says with a frown. Right, the picture of his brother. Is he talking about the numbers and symbol he signed in the corner? “You should go straight home tonight, Sakura.”

“Why would I do that?” she asks, growing annoyed that he won’t just get to the point.

“I cannot divulge that information.” He says robotically. She freezes.

“What did you just say?” she asks him to repeat.

“I cannot divulge that information.” He repeats and his eyes look urgent. It’s the phrase he uses when he’s close to triggering his seal. The message was about Danzo.

“Sai, what’s the message? What do you mean?” She grabs in shirt and pulls him to her, but he can’t answer.

“I cannot divulge -,”

“I get it!” She snaps at him. She has to ask it differently and her mind is racing a mile a minute over the possibilities.

“You said I shouldn’t go to the archives, right?” She tries, going back over his words.

“Yes, you should just stay home tonight.” He repeats.

“So, the message has something to do with the archives?”

“I cannot divulge -,” he begins.

“So, I’m right? You can’t tell me because I’m right.” She deduces quickly. “The message is about the archives. Is it a clue? Can I find it in the archives?”

“I cannot divulge that information.” He says, but this time seems to fight against it. “Don’t go there, Hag. You shouldn’t -,”

“Stop calling me Hag!” She bites out, unable to sensor herself, “I don’t care what I should or shouldn’t do. I’m going.” She releases his shirt and starts down the road.

“Wait!” He grabs her arm, “Listen, you shouldn’t -,”

“Was it important? Your message?” She interrupts.

“Yes,” he says, “but -,”

“Then I’m going to find it!” She says pulling her arm from his grasp and shoving her ice cream cone into it instead. She’s determined and sprints down the path. Sai had finally given her a clue about Danzo, and she’s not going to let this piece of information slip away.

“It’s not safe!” he calls, but she’s already disappeared into the night.

Reading this, I feel like this was better...hahaha oh well.

#ask #thanks for the ask!#dwl #done with love

3 notes · View notes

chaotickincollection · 5 years

Text

I keep getting notes on my “why I don’t like Bigby/Snow” post and I wanna take a moment to revist this, but with how creepy Bigby is as well towards Snow.

As before, everything is under the cut and heads up for comic spoilers.

So, in my previous post I talked a lot about how Snow acts towards Bigby, and I wrote that as someone who was just mad that all she ever did was turn around and yell at him about stuff. But I’ve taken a moment to step back and look at it from her point of view too. As much as I still stand by talking about her toxic behavior towards him in the game and comics, I need to fully address Bigbys creepy behavior towards her as well.

Before I had mentioned how Bigby and Snow met, briefly, and said that it was creepy that he only fell for Snow because she smelled nice but I didn’t elaborate on that any further, so lets elaborate on that.

Bigby and Snow were put under a spell for 2 weeks~ and when it finally wore off they wanted to get out of the situation, but really only had eachother to talk to. They’re hiding out and Snow asks him ‘why do you like me’

Snow says it was ‘all of a sudden’ which seems to mean Bigby was expressing no interest in her for awhile, or trying to hide it (poorly) and then one day just started to like her or started to do his poor attempts of flirting with her. (I say this because in the beginning of the comic he asks her to dance with him for ‘case reasons’ and she agrees and later he admits it wasn’t for a case and he was just too scared to ask her to dance at a party without a reason. She says it was dumb, he said he was hoping for something ‘charming.’)

Anyway, Bigby does go on to explain to her why he likes her, why he can’t ignore her, and what she means to him. Which makes her emotionally and physically uncomfortable, to a point where she asks him to stop.

Please notice how she does say “stop” and “its too creepy” while stating she feels like she’s been stalked for a long time. And who the hell wouldn’t!!! Bigby just casually admits to her that he knows where she is at any given time, how she feels at any given time, and just overall everything she does at any time. Thats creepy as hell for anyone to think about and not even close to ‘cute and romantic’ and then he just tells her to not ask questions she can’t handle the answer to like what hello.

So he just openly admits to being unable to ignore her which means he does in some sort of way, stalk her without seeing it as stalking her. Its probably some sort of wolf thing but as I mentioned before, I don’t know enough about wolves to comment on that but I do know for human terms- Snow’s terms- its creepy and gross.

Visiting the other post I talked about how Snow yelled at Bigby when she found out she was pregnant.

But I did completely forget and leave out the fact that Snow states Bigby could have smelled it, and Bigby admits he just didn’t tell her.

(also notice how Bigby jumps at saying ‘maybe you seduced me’ when we all know Bigby was desperately in love with Snow)

Yes they were in a dangerous situation and it was probably at the moment, for the best he didn’t tell her just so they could keep their heads straight. BUT he SHOULD have told her once they were safe at home. The reason he didn’t though is because when they got home Snow said she enjoyed the time spent with him and liked seeing him in action, and said she’d like to go out with him sometime.

Bigby could have, and should have, taken this moment to confess to her that something happened while they were in the woods together but he didn’t??? Because he thought ‘oh shit maybe I can start something with her and just pretend that never happened’. Which is overall bad and he SHOULD HAVE TOLD HER AS SOON AS THEY WERE SAFE.

Throughout Snow’s pregnancy Bigby stays by her and she constantly does push him away and tell him she doesn’t want to see him or can’t handle it at the moment. She has every right to say that, thinking about how Bigby took the news and how he did lie to her face and then try to accuse her of seducing him when neither of them know.

He waits for her when she comes back from one of her check ups and he confronts her without her wanting it.

Both of them have valid opinions on the situation. Snow doesn’t have to let Bigby talk to her, but Bigby wants to be in the babies lives and wants to talk to her about it. She agrees, which is nice of her to do so because she’s willing to give him a chance to talk and they could work something out that works the best for both of them without any strings attached or a relationship. Something that could work for the both of them.

Snow does not want a relationship with Bigby at this time. As her pregnancy continues she acts closer to Bigby and wants him to be near her and she even puts herself in harms way at a point to hug him because she’s so overwhelmed that he’s keeping fabletown safe that she just wants to hug him. But then after the babies are born that all vanishes, and she wants nothing to do with him again.

Again, as I stated before their connection only grows after Snow has babies with him and she realizes he’s going to protect her and wouldn’t abandon her. When Bigby pours his heart out to her he does say if she turns him down again he’ll stop talking to her and he’s willing to leave her alone completely.

He gives her a choice here, she can push him away for good this time and they can work out a deal with the children, or she can marry him. Jumping into marriage is a bit extreme to me, there was no previous dating and just a lot of bickering and weird confessions tossed out.

Before Snow did say she was willing to take things with him slow and see how it went, to get to know him for him and see if she would like him as more than a co-worker.

Could something have happened without kids? Yeah probably- maybe not quite so fast but he also would have been sitting on a big lie about not having sex with her, and then of course his entire confession of knowing how she is at every given second of every day.

All in all, regardless of who you’re looking at it still isn’t that healthy of a relationship and shouldn’t be glorified or romanticized. Its not the worst one out there by a long shot, but the stalking from Bigby and the yelling from Snow makes for a toxic relationship. And it only did settle after they had children together which was forced onto them it feels. (Snow WAS given an option for an abortion which she could have taken at any time had she really not wanted children so obviously, she did and that was her choice.)

Thats all I think I can say about this one, please check out the other post if you haven’t before and remember I’m open for discussion regarding both posts and anything. I’d be willing to hear out why you agree or disagree with me on the topic.

#the wolf among us #fables #bigby wolf #snow white #rant #opinions #anyway my dm's are open but its like 1am and im going to bed #feel free to hmu

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moseswilhelm · 5 years

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Now that you’re all gone, I’ve got a few squishy bits to air out. I don’t feel normal. Whether that means quirky or broken or eccentric depends on the day or hour or seconds between the particular anxiety of waiting on someone to respond to a long string of text. Internally, I’ve cycled between deciding if I am alien, demon, mutated evolution, a plaything of God, a challenge, or just plain old mentally ill. We can guess the healthier option, but there isn’t much use or fun using that.

Knowing you’ve lacked socialization in your youth doesn’t really mean much in trying to solve that problem in the same way that knowing you were just shot won’t help close the wound. What I am trying to say is I wasn’t socialized when I was young and that consistent distant feeling from your peers comes from that. Hearing that you think differently, or have an interesting brain is a nice little compliment albeit a little condescending. Unfortunately, you can’t really monetize excellent explanatory metaphors without the true meat and potatoes of capitalist society: focus. Arguably, effort and hard work and all that, but the measurement of how much you’ve put into something gets a bit blurred when you’ve somehow acquired detail knowledge of the economic turmoil that initiated the Pontic Wars. Someone please give me money for that. Easily an entire week got a bit lost in trying to understand centralized economies in the classical era and not one person paid me. Outrageous. I think writing was my way of trying to accomplish that level of usefulness that we are all trying to achieve. I knew that whatever I went through as a kid helped me develop an approach to understanding things in a unique way, but this is arguably not even useful to myself let alone the world as a whole. Unfortunately this hobby/career is top tier ADD nightmares and require a level of focus and drive comparable to Stephen King just ripped on coke. I neither have the proclivity for weird child orgies and dog monsters or coke. Well thats a lie, coke suits me just fine but my scantron has enough bubbles filled out and I’m already late turning in my “how much of a trainwreck are you” buzzfeed quiz. I see you, red squiggly telling me that “thats” needs an apostrophe. Fuck off, this is art and I refuse to change. Hey, what do you think happens when you’re told that confidence has to come before... y’know... actually being proud of yourself? Arrogance and self-absorption, obviously. You learn very quick that empty confidence is just as meaningless as no confidence, so to kind of fake it you have to really inflate things you have no right inflating and they are inflated on a scale comparable to those around you. Which is arrogant! Its awful! People can do different things at different levels and still be valid! Confidence is valued at an extremely high level to the point where the confidence to present yourself is a bit more important than the character you are supposedly proud of... evidenced plenty by the folks in the public eye known specifically for their charisma and yet somehow failing to actually be a person worth being around. That said, it can get tangled up in actually being proud of yourself. Shocking, I know, but you can’t really lump people who have characters worth being proud of to those just decent at faking it. Faking it. I know imposter syndrome is a thing. I am certainly not really alone in the concept of “oh god I’m faking it” so I won’t really pretend I have some magic insight on the concept (I’m lying I’m absolutely going to present myself as someone with Answers welcome to the fucking show) but when does “holding it together” and “how you present yourself” become imposter syndrome. “Hi this is me who has to be this way in order to balance between seeming different enough to stand out but not so different that you feel disgusted at the concept of change, nice to meet you” I mean what the fuck is a person anyways. Thats not a question. Not even a rhetorical one so if you answered aloud in your head I’m sorry but my psyche is not emotionally prepared for audience participation right now so clam up. Finding yourself is always a precarious as hell phrase because that often means one of two things: 1. Learning not to care about how others feel about who you are, despite all evidence of existence point out that this is the absolute most important aspect of your life 2. Presenting the parts that you were afraid to present to people. Look, I get it, you can’t please everyone and I’m not really here to talk about how to please anyone. In fact, I’m not even here. This is a lucid dream you’re having in your chair and shortly you’ll wake up and not remember if you were sleeping at all. Its fine, you’re fine. You have to please someone though. I think we underestimate the value of the tutorial level of life regarding this. You are given a set amount of people who are, usually, just going to be pleased by your existence. This always sets up your expectations of how that looks, how it feels, and how important it is. I mean imagine if right now I decided to criticize the immense value society puts on children. You’d hate my fucking guts! “Look at this asshole, kids deserve to be cared for” To be clear I don’t disagree with that. I think a lot of the current “you are valid” rhetoric is based on the concept that adults deserve to be cared for as well. This sorta rounds off my point that attention and reassurance is an important part of being cared for. In my opinion, this gets overlooked very often in favor cheap performative actions like hitting a heart button and oh my god I’m like a baby boomer writing for the new york times okay hold on I promise this isn’t a cynical criticism of millennials. People want to be heard. Importantly, people want to be understood. Spicy hot fucking take. Its a bit more than “this person knows who I am” although thats precisely how its framed. People want to be cared for, and this means knowing the... other person knows who they are caring for. Ah holy shit this is why I use metaphors. You have a snickers bar and you are hungry. Congration, you done it. Its the middle of the day and you never had any breakfast and frankly your bank account could use a break from pleasuring Starbuck’s atm reader so you somehow found the last snickers bar in a box you bought off of impulse bought off of Amazon and immediately regretted because it was gone two days later. Or so you thought. As you threw away the cardboard you hear the tell-tale tumble of a forgotten rod of peanuts and caramel that must have gotten jammed in the back of this thing. It was, however, 7am and you had to get to work and maybe having bubbleguts while dealing with people is not your recipe for a good day so you throw it into your purse or bag or whatever the fuck and move on. “Lunchtime” rolls around and as you do the mental gymnastics required to find the conclusion that food=energy in between bouts of fury over why your workday insists on starting at 8am and how you can’t seem to cope with falling asleep early enough for that not to matter, you remember your snickers bar. Reaching into whatever bag you put it and coming to the horrifying dread of realization that you left this bag in your car in fucking July, you find the sweet sugared respite in a corner. Squeezing it a bit just to test, you are surprised to not find it in the horrible (and yet delicious) state of melted confectionary. Your stomach grumbles a bit as you fidget with the perforated candy wrapper, vaguely thinking to yourself that it might be interesting to read the ingredients as you eat this thing like that isn’t going to fill you with inexplicable Eldritch dread. Nobody needs to know they are ingesting something that might have been made in a facility that also processes every other nut you can think of, delightfully shortened into “tree nuts”. I wonder if anyone has cross referenced all the allergen warnings to deduce which candies are made in the same factory, or if that information is just freely available. What if we kissed in the snickers production facility??? haha jk but...? Anyways, as your mind cycles through a list of stale memes you manage to unsheath this uncut chocolate delight from its wax(???) plastic prison and proceed to take your first, and arguably best, bite into this lunch. Your teeth sink softly into it, as you would expect. In fact, expectations haven’t really filtered into your skull soup you call a brain, so all manner of things can just slip through your recognition. Not this, however. Instead, fireworks of electric signals screaming “BITTER POISON” shock your brain from its previous state of vaguely functioning. Now you truly see the color of light, feel the air cocooning your skin, the squirm of your organs in your belly. Full panic ensues. You are not human, you are animal, and you have taken in a poison thing. You spit it out right there on your lap. You stare at the sad and ruined chocolate mutant nestled grossly in between your legs as your brain high fives itself for saving your life before frantically scouring your subconscious for whatever Vine gives it enough dopamine to not just fucking kill yourself right here. What happened? The fugue of panic washes your perceptions with a mixture of justifications for this travesty. It probably just went bad, but that didn’t taste spoiled (you consider yourself a mild expert having scraped clean many an old collection of halloween candy collections in August the year after the fact) so maybe it melted and rehardened? Baking stuff is weird so maybe that broke down some of its components. You pick it up (holy shit that is slimy. Of course its slimy, just touch it) and its insides look fine. I mean, how often do you examine the insides of a partially chewed bite of snickers? No weird colors. The remaining chocolate lasagna brick also looks exactly what you’d thought it be. You jokingly think to yourself that maybe you had a stroke but despite the apparent hilarity of that possibility you do the smile thing in the selfie camera of your phone. Everything seems fine, but now you’re getting mad that some turn of events has just ruined your perfectly good slab of sugar and fat that surely would have made the rest of the day bearable (and full of indigestion) Now that is a metaphor.

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beverlyr0ad · 6 years

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crimes of grindelwald thoughts

alright obvious spoilers not that it matters bc i have one follower lmao but !! i need somewhere to scream abt this movie

first of all i love jacob and newt so much. best parts of this movie honestly i love them and i want them to be happy

but to be fair i actually rlly rlly enjoyed watching this movie!! like,, there are a looot of things i dont understand about it and i have no idea how they happened or why theyre happening but thats Okay i would still recommend everyone watch it! its so good!!!

good things:

- grindelwald !! i mean,, no hes not a good thing but i really liked how they wrote his character. like i can UNDERSTAND the power he has over people and how hes manipulating them. hes really not just a Voldemort 2.0 and i respect that a lot bc thats not what an entirely different villain should be like. but casting issues and all aside i really liked this

- i also liked the interaction between leta lestrange and dumbledore that was some good stuff and the actors were rlly good too !!! - i like the direction queenie is going in. i mean i dont actually of course but it seems realistic and i think its important and its good character development n stuff so hhh hope that works out later tho !! i am Suspense

- jacob walked into that movie and i was like !!!!!!!!! :DDDDDDDDDDDDD i love him so much and it was rlly nice to see him back even if i dont think it was that neat to have him lose his memory of everything that happened for significance and in this movie have everything go like WHOOMP hes back but i uhhhh loved it anyway so this is not a complaint its a good thing - i still loved newt and having a good main character makes the whole movie a better watch in general. ive seen sequels where i just Cant get attatched to the new characters but wow i didnt really have much of a problem with that here

- it was also never boring and i really just loved n enjoyed this movie a lot!!! okay hhh bad things/things that i personally disliked:

- ive seen different opinions on this but??? what was that blood pact????? what are u doing??????????????? i cant even be coherent properly so here are the main reasons that was rlly dumb

1- w-who does that in a romantic relationship ever :o and yes jkr has literally said dumbledore n grindelwald were in LOVE HELLO feel free to correct me if im wrong on anything but if ur gonna say it u should show it,,,, Continuity Please. anyway separate issue but if u love someone youre not gonna be like “hey lets make SURE we dont fight each other ever” because youll trust that the other person?? isnt gonna fight u???!!!???? im

2- thats literally not the reason he “cannot move against grindelwald” okay like it shouldnt be. this conversation literally happens in dh and dumbledore says he was scared of facing what rlly happened when ariana died!! there was no actual physical thing stopping him!!! the only acceptable justification is that he doesnt want to face this ghosts of his past and that moment and he is SCARED okay so COME ON give dumbledore his faults! hes scared of his past and that IS the reason!!

3- wait how did grindelwald, aberforth, and albus fight if they had already entered a blood pact. like i dont think albus would aim for his own brother EVER but could he even attack grindelwald if they had a blood pact?? not sure how this works lol but who was he aiming for then??? just firing everywhere randomly without intention cause that sounds,,, significantly harder to believe and makes that scene loads messier esp if grindelwald couldnt aim for albus either so

4- the blood pact was so frickin unnecessary im sobbing. like there was the scene where its all like “oh some say you were as close as brothers” and dumbledore is like “oh we were closer than brothers...” and im like OK! the little scene in the air doesnt explicitly reveal anything either so thats ok but the closer than brothers line was rlly revealing for me. at least for like two minutes and then dumbledore looked in the mirror and saw himself making a blood pact w grindelwald. like ok is That what u meant by closer than brothers bc thats what everythings pointing to but it shouldnt be and i.............ugh

5- im honestly just kind of hhhhhhhhhhhh. i can concede that the blood pact might be significant in later films and i look forward to watching them! but. at the same time i. wish that if you were going to say dumbledore was gay it would actually be explicitly referenced in the movie, instead of dancing around that and dropping it in hints and pieces that fans of the series who know this information will understand and others can just dismiss as friendship! there were So Many good places in this movie to include this fact (altho feel free to disagree w me haha) and i think that not including this fact was honestly tiring.

- nagini...........obv this isnt a huge problem bc idk where her story will go next n it might develop n become important but as of rn, i have no idea what her role in this movie is. i wonder if her reappearance in the harry potter series will actually be of significance and if itll be explained how she will end up under servitude to voldemort bc i genuinely dont understand right now. it just seems like a cameo to draw attention in the trailer ghgdjh

- leta lestrange’s death didnt feel right or impactful and im sad . definitely a huge opinion here but it felt like a mandatory character snuff to make the movie sad and ghdsjgfh oh well :(

- little continuity issues?? dumbledore being DADA professor instead of transfiguration bc Boggarts Are Important For Foreshadowing. also how is mcgonagall an adult or actually how is she even alive and um of course the fact that this movie doesnt confirm what jkr has said about dumbledore and grindelwald beforehand.

- im actually going to totally repeat myself bc this deserves a separate point umm why arent dumbledore and grindelwald actually shown as in love with each other as young men. its completely relevant to the movie and its not hard to put it in there instead of the bLOOD PACT (ask anyone irl ive been screaming abt the blood pact ever since i came out of that movie). anyway i know david yates said he wouldnt be including that as part of the movie as fans are aware of that aNyway but its not that hard to understand. people are asking for actual representation?? not smt vague??? because this is just here to Please People. if u refuse to see this ship, ure just gonna see them as having a friendship! maybe u havent heard about what jkr said or maybe ure choosing to ignore it bc,, idk that says smt about u, or maybe another reason idk! but if u go into this knowing they were In Love and hoping to see confirmation of dumbledore being canonically gay, youre going to hear that “oh, we were more than brothers” line and be like oh yeah we been knew, or more seriously like hey! maybe we’re getting a canon confirmation, not just floaty young people leaning towards each other! like when he looked in the mirror i was like okay This Is It this is gna be confirmation but then it wasnt oop. it was the !!! bloooood paaact !!! which means that people could interpret the “closer than brothers” line as meaning oh we done did a blood pact that means we blood related look at us go! Wow! so this is basically just a half azzed attempt at pleasing people w stereotypical viewpoints and people happy to see representation. hmmmmmmmmmm.. (psst if u actually ship older dumbledore n grindelwald tho What Are You Doing Stop !! thats not a healthy relationship, grindelwald is an awful person and dumbledore deserves to grow from the person he was before!!! he deserves so much better!!! im not saying to ship them but im saying that if we’re gonna say they were in love as young men and if we are going to confirm that dumbledore is gay well,,, lets put that in canon pls!!!! we need canon representation but we dont need to pretend this ship is healthy or good bc its representation either. this isnt shipping this is asking to acknowledge that dumbledore was gay and in love with grindelwald and its confirmed that grindelwald was in love with him too. in the place the story of tcog is now, that relationship is not ever going to happen again and if u actually think it is ure suffering from some next-level delusion. just be definitive and acknowledge that your characters are LGBT tho pls!! u said they were!!! actually i would be so much happier to see a Happy And Healthy LGBT Pairing can we have that? please?)

- big spoiler but hOW IS CREDENCE ALBUS’ BROTHER WHAT IS HAPPENING DKFJDKSH i need to separate my thoughts again

1- AGE DIFFERENCE........apparently dumbledore is like 46 in this movie right?? credence doesnt look over 20. okay percival dumbledore is put in azkaban before albus starts school right?? so the maximum age albus can be is 11. now im gonna say that kendra was not having any more kids w anyone else after that incident fs so the oldest albus can be when ariana is born is 12, leaving room for some other stuff okay. ALBUS AND CREDENCE DONT LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE A 12 YEAR AGE GAP WHAT IS HAPPENINF

2- i saw people theorizing that credence is ariana’s son and NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO PLS NO

3- not an actual issue but i thought grindelwald said his name was berrylius dumbledore which i later remembered as berrylium dumbledore and anyway thank god for the internet

4- okay at this point i cant tell if this has just been brought in for shock value or smt like. is this relevant to the plot. is grindelwald even telling the truth. w-why did the movie end there. help....... i think thats it but i do want to say that i respect the rights of the creator jkr to do whatever she wants w these characters. its her world! but i can have a whole bunch of opinions n feelings about this movie and still support it. after all, i love harry potter and the whole wizarding world w my whole heart.

did anyone even read that LOOOL that was so long sorry

#feel free to disagree w me tho #im completely open to hear other opinions #and mine are subject to change anyway #i used so much !!!!! in this sorry #crimes of grindelwald #harry potter #hp #fbawtft #fantastic beasts #tcog #tcog spoilers #crimes of grindelwald spoilers #spoilers #hp spoilers #fantastic beasts spoilers #tcog opinions #crimes of grindelwald opinions

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tohrusthoughts · 6 years

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Entitlement.

The problem with social media and game development is that in the beginning of all this.

People made games and design choices with a through abd through complete package. Yes. Developers made games so that people can enjoy them to the fullest. But it was done in the sense of a novel or a movie.

Once it came out. And experienced it was already out. There was no changing, there was no listening to fan feedback or social justice mediocrity. That was to be adjusted and adapted and made better in the sequel or the next game by the developer.

You can't please everyone, it isnt even fucking quantifiable to attempt it. But you could attempt to make the best product possible and see your intended story and character development through and through with the use of an interactive medium and a type of experience that is impossible to get with anything else.

Now. With the abillity to interact with developers and content creators on easily accesible platforms. The idea is that we can give them feedback on things were looking forward to or would like to see happen. What ideas are good, what ideas are bad.

The innate problem is how oppinionated human beings are. Every single individual believes that the way they see things is the only singular way to view an outlook over design. And some people can share this "singular outlook." Collaborate the notion with no challenging approach or alternative perspective. What they intially see and or think is the only way....cause they didn't like it.

This negative outlook will continously be reinforced either by lack of desire or more commonly by other people who are similiar minded and just go "Yeah thats right! Fuck this thing I don't like it."

Well let me be real with you for a second.

I don't care.

The developers shouldn't care.

No one. Should care that you don't like a design choice or a storypath that you disagree with or don't like.

The reason I state this is as entertainment goes. You're developing a product. Whether its niche or not it fits a specific style and audience. This is defined by genres.

People who like rpg's more often then not, don't like shooters or action games. (Or atleast not in the same way as you can like multiple genres). The point of mentioning this is that when formulating a product within a genre it follows a set of mediums and thoroughfares that fit into that genre as all of these things have been predefined at this point with tropes and junk.

And secondly(but technically more importantly) they follow the creator/developers vision. Their storylines, character concepts, gameplay types, etc. etc. Its their individual vision and ideas become realities.

Not.

Yours.

You didnt make it.

You in fact didn't have anything to do with it.

At best you are exactly as intended a fan.

Fans when it comes down to the bare basics. Do not get to decide what a developer should and should not do with their vision. Whether you as the individul, as the fan, as a collective, or alone like it or hate it with every fiber of your being.

When it comes down to it. Truthfully. Even as a fan and something happens within a medium or a product you just, barebones morally disagree with. Stop supporting it. Move on.

What you shouldn't do. I want to say can't but thats never gonna be the case at this point....shouldn't do is harass, be vile, or hateful, send death threats or the worse style of harassment to people who

A. do enjoy these choices and can find some sense of joy or fun from the product.

Or worse B. do this to the developers.

Telling someone they should go die because of blah and blah is flat morally wrong and makes you a shit person and not worthy of an ear to listen to.

And No. you can't call blabbering like a child over your distaste as criticism.

Criticism is analytical, constructive in both postive and negative and has a purpose of creating a better product.

If social media worked like this towards developers and content creators it would be ok I like to think.

But its not. And we're not going to pretend it is.

I look at development in video games and anime as a hobby. I don't work in the industry but i throughoughly love watching creativity unfold.

And please believe me not all of it I find positive. In fact its a healthy middle of both. Somethings I get really excited about. "Oh thats really cool." Somethings its like...."Why?"

Investigate the reasoning and decisions, and decide for myself whether or not i wanna continue to support or be a fan.

Easy example. Any game that has lootbox styled orientation mechanics in anything. I will never buy. Something that has happened to many of franchise I have loved. But once it happened. It didn't matter that I was a fan. It dont agree with that concept as a gamer. I moved on.

And when talking about these games that has had this happened to them. I explain my choices. i won't support it and let others decide for themselves. But my money will never touch that product.

But this is where the real issue lies.

Fandoms.

Fandoms as a collective tend to think products belong to fans.

But they don't.

The only people who can lay claim is the people that made it. Full stop.

Right now. Which is what started this rant few will fully read, are complaining about the redesign of Sheila from the Spyro trilogy remakes.

Why?

She went from a bald kangaroo to a kangaroo with red hair. And she looks more feminine.

Feminity is not a negative. Girls can be the typical style of feminine if they choose to be. They can also choose to be butch, androgyness, or anything else. None of those are negative character archetypes but its not we "want" so we make them negative....and thats not only the wrong way to look at it but wrong in general.

What I wanna describe it personally as they added visually a fully realizied characterization. Which is what they've been doing with every single redesign. From her to the dragons.

Hell all the dragons went from generic pallet swaps of the same model to fully fleshed out visually. None of them even remotely similiar to the original designs.....AT ALL!!!!

So why is this ok for them and not her?

She looks like she has a ridiculously tiny waist now and they're sexualizing her.

Ok?

I don't get the sexulization argument. Cause i've looked at this same image. I am attracted to females. I like furry characters. I took one look at Sheila's redesign and went "oh hey thats a lot more vibrant visually contextulizes the character better. Why'd they change the eye color tho? The original i think was better."

Yes..that was it the eye color was the only thing worth noting that was upsetting in the slightest.

Annnnnd then I moved on. Still hyped for the game. It wasn't a huge deal, and even if it was. whats my options harass a developer....nah man don't buy it.

I didn't design it. Nor do I work.on the staff that is developing it.

My opinion on it regardless has no trinsical value one way or the other.

Cont.....one post up.

#spyro reignited trilogy #voltron defender of the universe #voltron defender of the future #spyro the dragon #video games #anime #discourse #entitlement

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chimerabal · 6 years

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I think this is session 12?

We open the session in a small huddle talking about The Plan. We realize that Cassiel knowing all of this is probably a problem. We ask him to leave and he... doesn’t want to. I have “shenanigans at Aurelia” written here and I can’t for the life of me remember what exactly he said or did. Fox is pretty sure she had to flirt at him to get him to leave though so- yea. He eventually agrees to get outta here for a little bit and we PLAN.

Uriel tries to argue against The PLAN. It’s crazy, we can’t actually trust these people, life in Thraben is actually GOOD between missions... she’s pretty thoroughly shot down. Mikaela says that the church isn’t going to let this go, and that we can’t trust the church any more really- others agree. Sibyl says she has faith in the scientists (well... the necro-alchemists at least) and what they are working towards. She also gives us a rundown of the necro-alchemist’s side of their mission and all- building better tech and doing research to help protect everyone. Some doubt shows through in Sibyl’s expression though :eyes: :eyes: :eyes emojis:

Sibyl goes and relay’s our plan to Cleofe and is given the go ahead. She does mention that, although she cannot force Uriel to do anything, that without leaving a body for the skaaberens she cannot guarantee the party’s safety. This makes us all very nervous but Uriel is a piss and says she’s prepared for whatever. Shes not. She gets a look at the group’s monsters (one skaab with a design we fought before, Cleofe’s puppet nightmare, and the last skaap has a gross tentacle cape thats probably hiding weapons.... Margret kept her monster hidden... ⊃゜Д゜;;;)) just to see what we’re up against should the worst happen... it ain’t good. Sibyl and Cleofe also discuss what Romana had shared, Sibyl is intentionally secretive, though I wish I had written down what was said because it was slightly more than what we usually get outta her. When asked about codes she plays dumb successfully.

Aurelia takes a moment to speak with Uriel. She says she cannot STAND Cassiel any longer, and that if forced to she’ll probably stab him. Cass offered to pay to ruin some guys that were making Aurelia’s life hard, and that’s way WAY too important to just... not deal with. IF Uriel could pay these people off- its the same money source right?- then no older brothers have to get stabbed. Well... stab was the Wrong Word to use, and Uriel is instantly pissed off by the whole convo. Uriel counters with her own deal, which is ‘how about you DON’T stab my family, accept Cassiel’s generosity, and I WON’T stitch all your fucking fingers together’. They go back and forth a bit. ‘We’re FRIENDS aren’t we???’ (I see what you did there- using the F word against Uriel- yoU TRIED) ‘Well I would LIKE to be your friend, you seem fun, but here you go threatening to STAB MY FAMILY’ ‘you KNOW he deserves it’ ‘>:(’. Mikaela intercepts and tells Aurelia to stop heckling her girlfriend- which is an interesting word choice being that in game time the kiss stuff happened probably two hours ago- tops. Uriel fails a wisdom save and has to end the argument b/c shes an emotional blushing mess ag a i n. Uriel tells Aurelia that they’re going to revisit the subject.

The party, sans Sibyl, she wanted to stay behind and learn more about her colleagues, return to the Bleyhall estate with Cassiel. Cassiel brings up The Plan and how he doesn’t like that we’re faking deaths- ESPECIALLY his beloved’s. We try to just get him to drop the whole damn thing and let us handle it, and fail. Aurelia and Cassiel come up with an arrangement where Aurelia will use her experience in faking her own death and making a new identity to get a job in the Bleyhall estate as a maid- so they “won’t have to be apart” (a part of Aurelia died trying to plan this :’) it’s so fun to watch). She also get’s him to agree that the job is really only in writing and salary- and that she won’t actually be working. Not done being a nuisance, Cassiel starts asking about Uriel and Mikaela’s status. He thinks it would be hilarious to tell the parents; both highly disagree. Mikaela stresses that for now the relationship is a secret, the parents and more importantly the church doesn’t have to know, and that he should really just pretend nothing even happened- Uriel readily agrees.

At the estate the party is greeted by a long time servant of the Bleyhall’s, Sigmund, who is introduced to us as ‘more of a father to Uriel and her brothers than their own’ :’). Sigmund is very emotional to see both Cassiel and Uriel, and uncharacteristic hugs are had between them all. Aurelia, while we’re all happy and reuniting, is making obscene hand gestures behind Uriel’s back and pointing to Mikaela. We don’t catch her. One day we will though- you’ve got it coming to you, you piss. He tries to insist we see Uriel’s parents Right Away, and, between the lines, tips us off that if we don’t see them right now we’re missing out on a Lot Of Cash Money. We are able to convince him into letting us see Michael first.

We find Michael in his room with this CRAZY ELABORATE C.S.I. style photo/string web set up detailing the skaaberen group and it’s members- although mostly Cleofe lmao. He had held onto one of Uriel’s journals and was getting all kinds of descriptors from it and he had... a stupidly large amount of info. He even did some illustrations, the ones of Cleofe were ‘very accurate, however like... 10% angrier than she usually looks”. In the mess of papers and string and all, he also had set aside some shiny new weaponry and animal traps for the ~hunt~ he had been planning. The whole damn party OOC is like, fuckin’ enamored with Michael. In character Aurelia is like, head over heels, super into this though. Uriel and Mikaela express their gratitude (Uriel also gives him a shot about Continuing To Take And Read Her Journals) but tell him that this really really isn’t necessary- please don’t go hunting them down Cassiel is FINE- we want them alive for a while. At some point their budding relationship is brought up again, Uriel gets teased about suspected necrophilia from her bros, it is stressed that we are keeping shit secret from the church please stop talking about it. Michael also mentions that the reaction the parents would have would be Fun- especially seeing that Mikaela is a church member... I didn’t mention it in game, but HOO MAN Uriel is not nearly as ballsy as her brothers are with prodding the parents (it’s not so much in fear of a bad reaction- which isn’t Great but she can deal with that- it’s that she’s SO SURE they won’t react at all and that kind of... nothingness just crushes her so she rarely even risks it any more). We go to return the weapons we borrowed, he lets us keep whatever we really feel like keeping.

But oh my god ok the important part: AURELIA. She goes into Full Flirt Overdrive at Michael. She compliment’s his “art”, how sophisticated the setup he has going is, his array of weaponry (again). She mentions that she probably has a new job lined up at the manor and that she cannot wait to ‘polish his weapons’ (I can’t even fuckin type this I’m dyin x’D). The flirts WO R K, which is a big deal considering the rolls she usually gets, and Michael is into it in his... own weird way, ‘I’d like to get them a bit... messy before polishing them’. I’m pretty sure the heir thing was mentioned again, which wasn’t enough to totally repel Aurelia this time so???

As a note: my character is deeply disturbed over Aurelia’s thing for Michael’s gleeful willingness to kill shit. She’s uncomfortable with how murder-y Michael is too, but like that’s just him, she’s accepted it by now. Sometimes he brings back nice dead things to stitch up. It’s Fine. The fact that Aurelia finds that trait desirable (a turn on even???) really REALLY makes Uriel question What The Fuck kind of person Aurelia is.

All of this happened right in front of Cassiel, who is just like... pissed and mortified and so fucking confused??? He snaps at Michael, asking why the only time he’s ever been interested in a living- breathing- actual woman is when it’s cUCKING HIM? He tries, and fails, to get Uriel to take his side on this (hell no I’m not touching this shit lm fa o). The brother’s argue for a bit, Cassiel tries to suck Aurelia in briefly which also fails. Picking up on Aurelia’s total disinterest in Cass, Michael asks if their ‘relationship’ is an actual thing Both of them agreed upon. Cassiel fumbles and gives some shitty non-answer- Aurelia is like... sweatin. Uriel calls Cass out on his crap answer and asks where he met her- he says it would be inappropriate to talk about that. Aurelia is fed up with all of this and tells some her tragic backstory as a poor stripper, that Cassiel is just gross and obessed with her stage persona, and that Cassiel was bribing her with funds to pay off/revenge on one of the noble families she is indebted to. She storms out of the room, Michael scolds Cassiel and follows, Uriel and Mikaela ALSO scold Cassiel (LMAO) and go watch Aurelia and Michael from the doorway all sneaky (but no so sneaky) like.

Michael sorta half/not really apologizes for Cassiel’s behavior, and the two just McFuckin continue flirting. THIS IS WHERE THE HEIR THING WAS MENTIONED what bad timing, c’mon Aurelia that’s such a red flag. Pretty sure Michael offered a different kind of revenge, more... active... than the type is brother is experienced with, on the family Aurelia’s indebted to. Swoons. Uriel and Mikaela decide they’ve seen enough and take Cassiel down to speak to the crone and the deadman.

While bringing Cassiel down to the office, he shares with Uriel and Mikaela that he’s been doing some deep thinking about what just happened between him, Aurelia, and his brother. He has come to the conclusion that monogamy and romance are a scam, the absolute idiot. Uriel tells him that, it’s good he’s been soul searching, but that his conclusion needs some work. Cassiel in response tells Uriel not to make the same mistakes he did, and to get out of the thing with Mikaela before it’s too late, incredible.

Uriel takes the lead to speak with their parents. It’s awkward, per usual. Uriel is prodded into actually asking for the money which... worked but still doesn’t feel too great. The party gets a couple thousand for bringing Cassiel back, and more money is on the table for the info we can provide. They ask for whatever we can give, who did the kidnapping, where they are, how long they will be there etc etc... Not wanting to give up the science camp’s deets, we say that because it was a part of a ‘church investigation’ our hands are tied for the time being. I... had also told something to Sigmund and also here that.... I don’t remember. I think it was that the kidnappers were skaaberens who we didn’t recognize and that they seemed mobile and are probably un-trackable? That doesn’t feel right? Whatever. Uriel tells her parents that, as soon as the info cleared, she will return and tell them everything, and that the families reputation is one of her primary interests here. They tell her she did well (!!!) and the party is excused with 2500gp. 625 gold PER PERSON. hhhhwow.

Off-camera, Aurelia and Michael had ironed out some details about Aurelia’s fake employment at the estate and her secret-identity-to-be. When Uriel and Mikaela go to get Aurelia, all serious talk is over with the two are drawing portraits of all the people at the clearing. The likenesses are spot on, and Aurelia is telling who can be stabbed and who cannot (for now), and are just generally having a great time making battle plans (xD). She also had drawn the skaabs at the camp; Michael was able to add what the probable functions of the monsters were as well, and circled some weak points- very useful. We wait until we’re outside and on the way back to the training grounds to give Aurelia her 625gp, she fuckin’ BOLTS with it to go find her family.

Back at the clearing with all the scientists, Sibyl has a talk with Prof. Ebner about the status of her old colleagues. I apologize Ollie, I had spaced out some, but what I got was: None are dead. Yay. Blair is excited to be doing science again. Otto is more somber than he was b/c of EVENTS but is still good for morale. Elodie did... something that didn’t sound too great. Something about ego and competition getting in the way of work? Ebner is super worried about Romana. He says she seems like she’s changed- which might just be a symptom of the church persecution and shitty-traveling-woods-camp living conditions- but still. She’s been super paranoid and very stressed and her plans are going slowly.... plans I think Sibyl knows but I don’t... Gathering forces was mentioned, the church being a pain in the ass was mentioned; apparently there is something that is a Bigger Concern than church persecution right now too and???????????? HHHHHHHHH??????

((I spend all this time excited to learn Sibyl backstory and just- zone the fuck out when it happens? I’m mad at me. >:( ))

At the training grounds, Mikaela and Uriel are really, REALLY GAY. Mikaela has to know if her feelings are mutual, and if the two of them are a couple or not- Well... yes. But before giving a proper yes/no Uriel has Mikaela confirm that she isn’t just using the kissing and feelings to manipulate her- Of course not. Mikaela’s anger with the church is mentioned (Uriel almost makes a lewd comment about that) and she say’s she’s not letting anyone make decisions for her any more and also makes it very clear that she is willing to dive head first into this ship like- right away. Despite this they agree that the church should probably not know; workplace/personal life conflicts and all... we’re pretty sure that the Lunarch will NOT like one of his clerics being involved with a criminal she was supposed to keep in check. The two make out for an undetermined amount of time, but DM implies that is was a long while b/c of some above average chr dice rolls... so long in fact that Aurelia had made it all the way back from giving her family the cash and walked in on the two.

Aurelia, being herself, made a comment that set Mikaela off (which, isn’t too hard to do) and she gets chased out of the room. The two decide to just sit and talk and snuggle a bit after having the mood thoroughly ruined, and Uriel goes all 20 questions on Mikaela. The most important take away from the questions is that Mikaela feels SUPER betrayed by the church, she put in so much of her time and work and life and got what? Assigned to something she never wanted to do and then LIED TO? Whack. Mikaela asked 1 (one) question, which was why Uriel makes her ‘sculptures’ and got.... a less than noble answer; basically just because she likes doing it. Mikaela said that it’s cool Uriel does what she wants, and that she hasn’t done anything for herself in a really long time, which, set Uriel off a bit... Uriel asks what is something that Mikaela has been wanting to do- Mikaela said that a nice sounding day would be to take a walk and visit a bakery or smthn... so now they’re at a bakery and its like... midnight... and Uriel is bribing the baker to just.... let us sit here and give us whatever things he already has made. Note: The whole cuddle session was being watched by Aurelia who had decided to be a fuckin’ voyeur and peep through the window. She blew her cover by pointing out an accidental innuendo (what do you want to do- ‘YOU OBVS’) then bailed again; lbr she probably followed Uriel and Mikaela to the bakery...

Uriel is going to tip that baker like... an entire gold coin... next session.

#long post #Fantasy RP Campaign

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