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filipinoizukuu · 4 months

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what comes next though? (MHA ch. 413)

// major spoilers for mha ch. 413 since its leaks, so please stop reading if you arent quite caught up. i havent written one of these in a LONGGG while lmao.

ANYWAY, with all that being said.... this week's leaks huh?

We saw it coming a long time ago, we speculated it to hell and back, we made aus and fics, and now it's finally here. The conclusion we've reached and the one that's been hinted at since the release of Heroes Rising in 2019:

bnha is going to end with deku giving up one for all and becoming quirkless.

(LOTS of words under the cut -- youve been warned.)

For those who are a little lost; the basic premise of the ending we are hurtling towards is that Kudou (the 2nd user of ofa) has a plan to take down Shigaraki. With AfO dead and gone + Shigaraki becoming so powerful he is essentially invincible -- theres no other choice for the heroes other than destroying him inside out; the plan being the equivalent of charging a battery so much it explodes.

the way they're going to go about this is by essentially, feeding Shigaraki bits of One for All until he's given all of it -- then allowing the vestiges of the previous wielders to create a massive revolt similar to what SnS did until they can successfully tear him apart from inside the "quirk realm" and shut him out. Kudou volunteers to go next since danger sense has already been taken, and if Shigaraki uses gearshift again after Deku already used it twice, Tomura's body will likely shutdown and receive twice the backlash Deku does when he uses kudou's quirk.

(sidenote: funny as fuck that deku only understood once kudou equated the strategy to bkg throwing papers at him. bro stupid af.)

its a sensible(ish) idea. one that seems plausible given the context of the last hundred or so chapters with heroes like Hawks and SnS having their quirks revolt against both AfO and Shigaraki in a way that makes it clear that its not uniquely OfA that animates the souls of peoples quirks. Its inherent. Quote, Nana Shimura, "romantic" even.

(let it be known though that i think hori absolutely did not plan on delving into this plot point as much as he is now. ill explain in a bit, but heroes rising was 100% a major factor of why he moved in this direction.)

That being said, the conclusion of the plan (and subsequently, the major plot of bnha) is as follows: Deku gives up One for All to Shigaraki. One for All unites with All for One within Shigaraki and destroys it in one final clash between Yoichi and his brother. The break in the barrier of Shigaraki's hatred will part, letting him find the consciousness of Shimura Tenko behind it after years.

Shigaraki dies, taking OfA and AfO down with him,

and then Deku is quirkless once more.

Sad conclusion aside for now, I firmly believe that no matter what way you look at it; Deku was always meant to end the story without a quirk. Given some of the original drafts of bnha where Deku was never supposed to be given a quirk in the first place, this is clearly unsurprising. What's more is my favorite piece of information relative to katsuki and deku's character development:

the fact that heroes rising was (one of the) ideas for the original ending of bnha.

a refresher for some of you: heroes rising is about class 1a going to the isolated village of nabu island and defending it against an upcoming big bad villain named "nine" with a quirk that is essentially a scaled down version of all for one. katsuki and deku eventually resolve the conflict together via brute force by deku giving katsuki ofa, them rushing in while the quirk is transferring and both of them have it, and then ultimately defeating nine at the end. the movie then of course circles back on deku losing one for all, undoing that consequence by saying the transfer never completed bc ofa chose him over katsuki and they all move on to the endeavor agency arc with katsuki remembering absolutely nothing of the final battle.

many fans often misunderstand one of horikoshi's quotes about the movie in that it was, without a doubt, the original ending of bnha. for the sake of accuracy, that is not what horikoshi really said; what he ACTUALLY said was something closer and to the tune of of how it was "one OF the endings" he planned on using for bnha, but his original idea for how the story ends "has not changed one bit."

obviously disregarding the cop out where ofa sticks back to izuku in order for the series to continue as normal; this can only confirm that bnha was going to end with midoriya izuku quirkless whether katsuki was involved or not.

so what's different this time?

its hard to figure out how far horikoshi had planned the ending of bnha with heroes rising's prototype conclusion in mind. if heroes rising never pulled through and horikoshi had planned on bnha ending with the shared ofa transfer and katsuki continuing deku's legacy -- then that means katsuki wouldve died an early death because of all might's confirmation that only quirkless people can hold on to one for all without dying young, meaning he either intended on katsuki dying soon after the story ends or only planned that plot point after heroes rising was released.

the plot as well of heroes rising's conclusion cannot have been thought of all that early on because of ANOTHER tidbit of information that changes perspective of the entire series: in that,

bakugou katsuki was never supposed to be a major character to begin with. (keep an eye on this link; i reference this interview a LOT)

he was not supposed to have an arc. he was not supposed to become a major focal point of the series. he was not meant to be the hero he is in the story today. bakugou katsuki was not written with the intention of being a major narrative this late into the story -- instead originally only existing as a character that deku would surpass within the first few arcs.

but then katsuki cried, and deku apologized, and then opened his big fat mouth, and then told him a secret he didnt even tell his own mother -- and suddenly bakugou katsuki was not just another footnote in deku's story, but a legitimate character that grew and created one of the most loved (and hated) character turnarounds in shonen history. he started of as a literal EXTRA before snowballing into the very same character horikoshi decided would defeat all for one, the original scariest antagonist of the entire series. someone not even ALL MIGHT could defeat.

but circling back, yeah. heroes rising was definitely not the ending horikoshi thought of first, nor was it the ending he thought of last. ultimately, it was simply another route he couldve taken into wrapping up deku's fate into what it was (probably) always meant to be:

deku was gonna lose one for all no matter what.

it's kind of fitting, honestly -- for this to be the ultimate conclusion to the series. it makes the most sense, since what sent deku down this path so many years ago was his mother apologizing to deku for being quirkless; as if being quirkless meant he was born inferior to those who had quirks. people, after all according to deku's famous beginning monologue, are not born equal.

Even still, i thought to note: deku never stopped wanting to be a hero. we all know this, obviously. this was his driving force -- but then when you REALLY think about the implications, you have to ask. what the heck was deku even planning to do?!

he had ideas. he had hope. he wrote notebooks for the future and thought of his costume for being a hero -- but not once do i remember him writing about his hero experience as if he was suddenly going to develop a quirk. he was planning on saving people quirkless -- an extremely interesting motivation especially when he couldve so easily chosen to walk the path of being a doctor or engineer instead if he wanted to save people so badly. its a story about conviction, about doing the things you wanna do in the way you wanna do it no matter what ANYONE else says and hey wait a minute that sounds familiar

it doesnt quite read that way at first, especially because of how izuku almost listened to all might about "being realistic" when the first met and nearly gave up on becoming a hero entirely, but izuku is a lot similar to katsuki in the sense that no matter what gets in his way -- he is determined to achieve his dreams in the way HE CHOOSES, and not the way that is more "convenient".

even when you look at just his name, "deku" in the way that uraraka had interpreted it (dekiru -- "you can do it!") and the way deku reexplains it to katsuki in deku vs kacchan 1 ("the deku that doesn't give up!") you can so easily tell that deku from the very beginning has only ever needed the slightest push to pursue being a hero, quirk-or-not-be-damned. hell, we even see a glimpse of this possibility in the sports festival race when deku absolutely DECIMATES not just bakugou but also TODOROKI (as well as every single other damn student participating in the festival) with nothing but robot scraps and his balls of steel. it just so happens that until the promise of one for all, no such encouragement or push was ever given to deku in his pursuit of heroicism, most especially in comparison to katsuki who had been receiving praise and validation for his goals his whole life.

i'd argue that deku's conviction is even stronger than katsuki in a way no other person seems to recognize (except maybe katsuki himself). katsuki had received only positive feedback and zero competition for his goals growing up while deku received nothing but discouragement. both of them kept the conviction of being a hero for TEN YEARS; neither wavering til the day of the sludge incident.

that aside; what comes next?

we know the story after that. deku gets his quirk, he goes to school, he fights, he drops out, he fights some more, and now he's standing before shigaraki tomura with every quirk of one for all unlocked and over twice the power that all might had in his prime -- fully knowing he's about to lose EVERYTHING in order to defeat shigaraki.

this is deku we're talking about. he doesn't care. he knows the implications and what that will mean for his dream -- but his goal right now is in front of him. his goal is shigaraki, consumed by hatred, threatening to take down the world izuku loves most into a pit of misery and decay because society failed people like them. does he care? probably. will he refuse to give up his power if it means not saving the world and fulfilling one for all's purpose? absolutely not.

deku has made all might's quirk his own, but one for all does not belong to him. it belongs to yoichi. and kudou. and bruce and nana and all of the other users who built that quirk for generations in hopes that one day, someday, someone would be able to yield it all and bring down the monstrosity that created it in the first place. deku will not hesitate, but also deku knows what he will lose.

i have... a few things i dislike about this.

Admittedly, i do think that this is a better resolution than the simple brute strength approach of Heroes Rising. For one, while i do love heroes rising with my entire heart and soul, i firmly believe it would not have been a satisfying conclusion to the core lessons and teachings bnha tries to impart throughout the story. simply outnumbering and outpowering afo/shigaraki would not be enough to close yoichi's story and one for all -- much less the story of shigaraki himself as tenko, the boy consumed by hatred.

Still, this new ending that horikoshi has laid out leaves me with more questions; as well as large expectations for how izuku's character will close out. its complicated, because deku's evolution and development is subtle and intricate in a way i havent seen from other shonen protagonists and i worry about doing it justice.

but most of my problems have to do with bakugou katsuki.

(aint that the truth)

i know i mentioned that bakugou was never intended to be a major character, but i want it to be known that that was only in the beginning. season 1, maybe even season 2 -- but horikoshi had said it best himself in that bakugou katsuki, against his permission, had gained a life of his own and inserted himself into the very grain of mha's story. you cannot deny this.

he is the series deuteroganist inarguably. one of the most beloved characters and one of the most attentively-written development arcs in the whole series. katsuki in and of himself embodies major themes in bnha that make it so that ditching his development and impact last minute after defeating all for one would reflect poorly upon the conclusion of the story itself. he and deku are intertwined in arcs -- even if they do have separate paths at the end of the day. katsuki is the one izuku told about the quirk. the one who followed izuku during the paranormal liberation arc. the one who understands one for all and is determined to learn about it more than anyone else barring all might and deku himself. the one who is closer to izuku than anyone else.

it can't be over for their arc, no matter what way you see it. friends? rivals? hero partners? what comes next, when the smoke clears? what comes next when izuku gives shigaraki hell, like katsuki told him to?

katsuki's atoned. we accept that, have known it since chapter 285 and have continued to know it until the iconic apology in the rain. that's not where katsuki stops however, because we know that its not all about begging for izuku's forgiveness nor atoning for himself. its about catching up to izuku -- the last words he uttered before shigaraki crushed his heard say it all.

"can i still catch up to you, izuku?"

since the moment katsuki died, we've been given a metric ton of material to read through what he and izuku have become in the story. firstly, the point of katsuki being the person closest to izuku. what does this mean? what does that say about katsuki? is he supposedly the person izuku loves the most? the person izuku believes in the most? i'd argue these two criterion would easily fit his mother or all might a lot better -- not his childhood friend turned bully turned rival turned barely-friend. katsuki sure as hell didn't believe he was the person closest to izuku before shigaraki brought it up as evidenced by the fact that he let IIDA bring deku back to UA -- and neither does izuku as far as i bet. what was shigaraki's intention?

katsuki heard that statement. he hasnt said anything, but he definitely heard it. its an open end that is left entirely unanswered PRECISELY because katsuki fought afo on his own and izuku is about to tackle shigaraki without katsuki by his side. if it was heroes rising's ending wherein they would both fight shigaraki and take him down together -- then that statement would easily be answered by how their strength and bond is the one thing that gave them an upper hand in the final battle. other than that... i'm not entirely sure how they're going to have katsuki and izuku acknowledge katsuki's brief "death" and Tomura's reasons thereof.

But fine, lets ignore that for the time being and move on to what happened when Katsuki came back.

katsuki answered izuku's cry for help. he came back to life in the last moment to save all might when izuku was too busy fighting tooth and nail to win. they are the penultimate example of two sides of a hero; the win and save. not one without the other. every single parallel thus far between izuku and katsuki have always been to draw attention over and over to each of their stubborn convictions to win and save under all might's tutelage.

katsuki has chosen to prioritize winning and fighting over saving and rescuing over. and over. and over. and over again. at every single opportunity from the very beginning of the series. in usj, in sports festival, in the final exam, every choice he's made up until --

chapter 285 - bakugou katsuki: rising.

he chooses to save izuku in this instant. as he says, his body moved on its own -- or in other words, he felt like how izuku has always did since the sludge villain incident. this is bakugou katsuki catching up to midoriya izuku. its katsuki realizing that he needs to save so deku can win, and actually being okay with that for once. it's a major turning point in his character that clearly tells even horikoshi that there's absolutely no way katsuki can go back to being a side character within the plot of bnha after a development like this.

and then, after this instance, we notice it happen again and again. katsuki choosing to save to win instead of winning to save. katsuki protecting best jeanist against the nomu. katsuki coming to chase after izuku when he runs away from UA. katsuki (in a way) saving aoyama when its revealed he's the traitor. hell, katsuki saving ALL MIGHT as soon as izuku -- the savior -- begs someone to save his idol when he can't because he's too focused on trying to win.

so what changed?

what changed since the moment of chapter 285 was katsuki accepting his fears and anxieties. katsuki letting go of his aversity to working with deku. the reason katsuki started accepting the path of saving to win was because he TRUSTED deku to win where he couldnt.

this is katsuki accepting that him and izuku already surpassed all might together.

but katsuki said it himself. it's not over. he accepts that him and izuku are finally on equal footing -- hell, he admits he's the one who needs to play catch up. it's not about katsuki conceding to weakness, but katsuki being able to trust in izuku to finish the job. the point is that they both will break and break until they win the way they choose to, and the other will be there to win while they save and save while they win. moreso, katsuki still wants to be number 1. he still wants to catch up and surpass deku. he wants to fight by deku's side. but ... as we've established:

deku will be quirkless soon.

my problem (or, i guess, curiosity?) with the path horikoshi seems to be going down for the end of this story is what happens to this end? what happens to the wonder duo? i believe in a quirkless deku plot as much as the next person -- but any reader would find it easy to see that once deku loses one for all, he will not be nearly as efficient nor quick nor capable of a hero as he once was. especially not against a developed katsuki with mastery over cluster explosions.

he will lose one for all and he won't ever be the pro-hero he was going to be before the final war arc. katsuki will get number 1 surely, but will he be happy about this resolution? i don't think so. All Might himself had said it when Katsuki spoke to him about his relationship to Izuku; that the twin stars reminded All Might very much of his own rivalry with Endeavor and the bitter feelings it created.

endeavor expressed regret and a bitter end to their rivalry; the acknowledgement of the bitter truth that the only reason he was the number one hero is because all might lost his own quirk. he knew he didn't deserve the mantle all might had held for a long time before him. he knew that he was still only just playing catch up with the wisdom and understanding of heroicism that all might had in his heart from the beginning. endeavor will likely retire from being a pro-hero unsatisfied with this truth and his own victory at becoming the no.1 at the very end -- never feeling like he truly surpassed all might of his own accord. both enji and toshinori -- victims of their destiny.

is this the fate that will befall katsuki once izuku is quirkless for good?

There are many questions I have in wake of the recent chapter. The end of the series is here, and that's a whole can of worms i haven't touched in and of itself. We all saw this coming; some of us know that this was always going to be Izuku's fate since the beginning of the series. But now that it's more than just izuku's character involved in his dreams of being a hero -- i dont know how this series is going to conclude and if it will be satisfying to any means. there's a lot of questions i still have; bakugous arc feeling incomplete ever since he came back to life, the conclusion of all might and one for all's dreams now that they will disappear altogether. where does deku go after this? where does bakugou go? where do any of them?

i guess i gotta wait and see lol

#bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha #bakugou katsuki #toshinori yagi #all might #midoriya izuku #deku #kacchan #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha meta #bnha meta #this was a long one ouf #anyway this is ship free technically; its just mostly me going BUT KACCHAN?

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randomnameless · 15 days

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It's crazy how SoV preluded 3H by making one of the protags have a tremendously contradictory mindset of humanity being better off without gods, while also relying on those same gods to fulfill their goals, the hypocrisy of which goes completely unadressed throughout the game; truly masterful foreshadowing

Who directed FE15?

lol

I've recently tried to think about this "gods BaD" shift in more doylist terms - especially since I've finally played a Squenix game recently and...

FE13 was the FE series last ditch effort, it will either work or end up as the F-Zero series, FE13 worked and FE14 followed suit.

Lolcalisation aside, FE14 had a nice plot and I engaging characters - to some people but not me, different tastes and all - but FE14 and FE13 were still FE games, as in part of the old FE series, aka a niche series. Adding dating sim/interpersonal relationship through avatars might have helped a bit, and yet, imo, it was still the "niche" FE series.

Comes FE15 where we basically have a remake, and can't add the interpersonal thing because Alm isn't an avatar (even if the game spends a lot of time praising his oranges) - how to make the game work? Sure, some weirdo fans of the FE series will buy it, and it was never supposed to sell as much as FE13/14, but if it was a 1:1 remake or just with minor adjustments? It might bomb like the Archanea remakes, and good luck coming after that - will they need another "FE13" to reignite the sales or??

And here I thought about it : FE15 was retconned with the "GoDs BaD" spiel, to make this game more in-tune with what I'd call "traditional" JRPGs where the protagonists often defy a corrupt church and "divine" being.

("Traditional" imo being the Squenix way, because while I didn't play all entries of this series, the Tales series never striked me as being particularly as, uh, vindicative against organised religion, maybe save for Symphonia 1 - Abyss' Church really wishes to help the people even if it is corrupted from within by some dude who doesn't want to let the world die and played by the big bad, Xillia has no church, ditto for Zestiria and Phantasia had Mint and... that's it? - compare this to Squenix's Triangle Strategy and Hyzante being comically EvIl and without any redeeming traits/points when all of the other major parties of the conflict have "token good NPCs" as forced as they are in the game, to make it very clear that they might have done questionnable things like invading and slaughtering civilians from a foreign nation who welcomed them at their wedding, but at least they have "MoRaLs" unlike those bozos in their desert...)

And this "let's make FE mainstream by kicking gods" mentality completely runs at odds with the rest of the FE franchise, and while I know RD basically ends like this bcs "uwu Ike defeated a GoD with the help of another who used the lead of that game as a soul jar and granted him exclusive powers to put her sister to sleep" the morale of RD's story - as seen in the perfect ending but in Ike's speech to Yune itself - is that everyone can and should try to live together, asking Gods not the fuck out to let Humanity alone, but to believe in them just like humans believe in gods.

So FE15 ends as this big, uh, mismatched clash of narrative directions - being a remake it cannot stray too far from the source material and Archanea verse : Dragons and Humans can live together (even if it means dragons must sacrifice part of themselves to do so because fuck them I guess) and dragons can help humans just like humans can, uh, not be asses and not target them because their ears are pointy or when they are weakened...

And we had the new Squenix direction where GoDs BaD and HuMaNiTy fuck yeah, which leads to FE15's hypocrisy : please trust and rely on us Gods/dragons and kindly help us when we're in deep shit, and at the same time "HuMaNiTy FuCk YeAh".

Interestingly, the Squenix direction loses in the post game campaign (the one where we discover Thabes) but is reintroduced in the official (tm) timeline, depicting basically how BaD Duma is and how much of a chad Rudy was, before his very tragic (bring the onions!) death.

But yeah, I agree anon, FE15 was crazy foreshadowing and I guess is part of the reason why Tru Piss has this message "Humanity doesn't need Gods" targeted at... Rhea, aka a Nabatean (while Supreme Leader got there thanks to Sothis' powers!!) because the "Humanity Fuck Yeah" narrative is a staple of Squenix JRPGS, and if FE has to become mainstream, I guess to some devs, it has to copy what sells.

That would also explain why FE16 went so off the rails and forgot the tradition FE series message about coexistence, because what the fuck do you mean by "Humanity doesn't need Nabateans", after parroting for the entire game "Nabateans are to blame for the irrational world we live in" and blame "Nabatean blood" for everything wrong in Fodlan, without ever acknowledging the "evilness that lurks in the heart of men" (who aren't called Dimitri) ?

In a series that, albeit hazaphardly at times (FE8's manaketes feel forced in the lore! and the less is said about Nowi/Panne in FE13 the better we are), tried to push the "coexistence between all inhabitants of the land is the key to peace!" card - this Squenix direction feels all kind of wrong, especially when friendship with the divine beings (dragons) have been a staple of the franchise (Y!Tiki's number of alts, imo, is telling : for better or worse, Y!Tiki is, along with Marth, the figure of the franchise. She is a dragon, and she's a kid who wants to make friends. Sure it brings the loli crowd, but all those dragon children in the different games? They are a direct throwback to Y!Tiki!).

In a nutshell, I'd say the first crack was FE10's writing that made things seem like the Hero defeated a goddess and its subsequent wanking.

But I agree with you anon, FE15's change in direction and retcons were absolutely gunning for that Squenix "GoDs BaD" while keeping the "traditional" FE message which resulted in hypocrisy that showed in the writing but I guess no one really paid attention because FE15 has other issues too (I didn't before happening on FE16... even if I remember wondering why the fuck the game kept on hammering how BaD Duma was when we had people being asses right and left on their own).

FE Fodlan completely ignored the "we can coexist" message - save for subtext you can have where the optional lords who win the war and aren't Supreme Leader can have half/quarter-nabatean heirs through Flayn but her heritage is never ever mentionned in the ending cards - by completely shitting/ignoring the local dragons, they're blamed for everything wrong and don't get their voice to the chapter.

Masterful writing lol

I can't wait for the next game, let it be a remake (pls not Jugdral!!) or a new entry (Engage was developped alongside Fodlan, not after!) to see if IS will continue with the Squenix developments or return to their roots, even if they seem milquetoast, of "humans and lizards can hold hands".

---

NGL anon, during 2020/2021 and the daily "Supreme Leader was right though" threads in SF, I kind of realised that what I took for granted, aka "coexistence between humans and dragons!" being the message of FE in general, wasn't, even in what used to be the most serious board/thing.

FE as a series came to the West through FE7 where Dragons and Humans were at war, but ultimately the cast learns that dragons aren't evil incarnate and the best ending reveals that the big bad went mad because his dragon wife was killed and he tried to reunite with their dragon-human children he hid away for their safety.

So it was kind of surprising to see long-time, or at least not "Fodlan introduced" members of SF parroting the "well they can't live together" by buying the most ludicrous headcanon/fanon arguments you'd find in other series like "different lifespans" - this argument is pretty much non existent in the FE series, and I've never seen it opposed to Miccy's rule in Daien when, as a Heron Branded, she will outlive her citizens, or what, are we supposed to believe that Myrrh shouldn't interact with humans and remain in her forest because she will outlive humans, or is too "different" from them thus wouldn't have the same considerations?

FE13/14 brought the fandom wars of "new fans" vs "old fans", but FE Fodlan? Brought "casual JRPG gamer" vs "FE gamer" which usually boils down to "Supreme Leader fans" vs "everyone else".

Sure, we had the religion hate boner because the dragons in Fodlan verse made a "Church" with catholic imagery which is a deadly sin to some - but the "dragon blood is indeed the reason why everything sucks in the world" being parroted? "Dragons cannot have power over humans because of the sheer inbalance"? What, are you implying Nergal was forced by Aenir to mate with her twice or what? Ninian was oppressing Pherae in the endings where she marries Eliwood, and humans were finally liberated when she died?

Kana is, by nature, someone who will oppress humans because they're part dragon and their blood will bring strife to the world?

So unless IS doesn't fully commit to one narrative - because yes, for all of its flak, FE Fodlan still takes time, when it remembers, to portray Nabateans in a relative positive light when it comes to them as characters and in the general background, it's just that, they're never given a voice when it comes to discussing about the plot - we're bound to have this hypocrisy :

Dragons BaD bcs Humanity Fuck Yeah

and

Dragons and Humanity can coexist and make babies for scalies/monsterfuckers out there because acceptance/diversity is a way for peace.

#anon #replies #sorry i ranted #FE series #FE15 stuff #rant #watch as the whitewings never bring up Tiki the kid they met 3 years ago #when Alm goes humanity fuck yeah #when the devs could have pulled out something like Ike for Alm or rather return to their roots #they pulled this squenix shit #that imo doesn't have its place in the FE series #sure the series is evolving and maybe that's the direction it will take #if it really does I'll to reconsider my engagement with FE in general #and be stuck ranting about old games lol

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shiftingtomydrs · 13 days

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OMG OMG OMG YOU HAVE A FS DR??? I SAW I COULD ASK U SOME QUESTIONS SO I RAN TO YOUR INBOX

who are you?? when is it??? any particular competition it is based on (I often see people do it with 22 beijing)?? what jumps do you have??? any ultra c elements (3A, quads)??? if you have one, who's your s/o??? what why who where when aaaa another fs shifter!!

xx kat (@xelsmultiverse)

hiii omg thanks so much for asking this <3

okk so just quick disclaimer beforehand, i dont know shit about figure skating except the very very basics (like what type of jumps and stuff) so if smth is incorrect or doesnt make sense its bcs of that haha also as always im hopelessly overpowered :D

In my dr im a figure skater from Germany, i was born in early 2007 and did ballet from when i was like 3 (thats canon btw i did that in my cr too haha) but then quickly got impatient and kinda bored with it (also canon, i regret stopping tho) and my parents put me into figure skating and gymnastics instead. since in my hometown there isnt really a big figure skating team (there is one but its not good ngl) i scripted that my now coach saw me by coincidence and decided i had talent and she wanted to coach me. I can do more on my coach if you guys want to btw its kinda a whole (unfinished) story (shes an oc).

So then she started coaching me in 2014, after a lot of convincing from me towards my parents cos they didnt actually want me to become a professional skater cos its obviously not the healthiest thing to do but after I saw Yulia at the 2014 Olympics I begged my parents to let me get private lessons until they gave in (yulia is kinda my role model and i wanna be like her)

I have an unfinished list of my senior competitions here (for the sake of plot i kinda made it so the covid restrictions on the 2020/21 season didnt happen for the junior competitions, only seniors, also kamila and i dont compete together before the olympic season) and yes ofc i win everything bcs as i said op af (also i know some of the competitions overlap so idk how im gonna do that yet, if anyone has an idea pls feel free to tell me haha)

for jumps i have all quads (yes including 4A cos im just that good lmao) and im playing with the idea (actually i put it already but its prolly impossible so im unsure if i should put it) of scripting i have a quintuple jump as well at some point.

Im really not knowledgeable on different spins i just scripted theyre centered and i dont have a lot of movement on the ice during them idk if thats how you say it but like i spin in one place and dont move to the left or right a ton

Then like some stuff that goes without saying, i have good technique, i dont get hurt badly, i dont have any long term problems from professional skating, stuff like that

My s/o is ilia malinin but since hes born in 2004 we dont get together for a while. We meet either at a competition or during my exchange year in the us in 2024 (my host family lives in the same state he does and we train at the same rink while im there) and then like slowburn friends to lovers pining everyone-knows-except-them kinda stuff (i really do love torturing myself in that aspect apparently)

Some other stuff i can think of rn is that my nickname is 'golden girl' or 'germanys golden girl' idk just smth i came up with (if you have any other ideas pls tell me haha unfortunately im uncreative af when it comes to stuff like that)

also you mightve noticed im technically too young to do senior competitions in time for beijing but i just decided to script that they make an exception for me for some reason haha

I can speak 4 languages, German, English, Russian (bcs of my coach) and Spanish

I get along kinda good (as well as you can as competitiors) with the Eteri Girls bcs we're similar age and my coach gets on kinda well with Eteri (they used to compete together except my coach is actually nice) and also i yk speak russian

oh also when i first get there its january 2022 so right before the olympics cos i wanna experience that not just in memory

soo yeah thats all i can think of for now again sorry for any inaccuracies or anything (wont apologize for op-ing myself cos thats what shifting is for after all ;) )

#shifting #desired reality #reality shifting #shifting realities #shifter #reality shift #shiftblr #shifting diary #shift #shifters #figure skating dr

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ye-xiu · 30 days

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omg al darling pls give me your queen of tears thoughts i’m really behind and need to know if it’s worth finishing <3

tbh i am also behind but i keep up with spoilers and episode recaps for everything i am watching bc i don't really care about getting spoiled. with that being said, where do i even begin? i would have loved if the show ended on a melodrama note in the second half, with the hong family having lost queens group but recouping that through baekhong's work as a lawyer and ceo respectively and with them rekindling their relationship (without marriage or another kid) while hae-in would, well, die due to some bout of medical realism that has to remain here, but with the two of them choosing each other in their lifetime, roll credits, fin. i am putting a read more from here on in bc this is sort of my thoughts on the show in general but also the second half, since describing the second half doesn't really work without talking about the set-up of the plot. plots? whatever is happening here. (also! spoilers ahead!)

of course we did not get a well-polished plot, something as sensible as this couldn't fly with the deranged fans this drama spawned like you wouldn't believe. so in a way this fanbase deserved exactly what they got lmao. this show has been crazy from the beginning bc as much as i love hae-in, people kept acting like she didn't treat hyun-woo like shit for most of their marriage when she did. he was only marginally better off, but my one big issue was that hyun-woo has to apolgize for everything he ever did, for wanting to divorce in the first place, while the show depicted right away how awful his marriage was. so now in the second half we, of course, get hyun-woo doing everything for hae-in to make up for all his audacity, like the good kdrama male lead he is (where is moon gang-tae when we need him? kim soo-hyun can act with some fire in there, so why does he not?) hae-in keeps getting worse and he is by her side, so whoo for tha ti guess and she does apologize for how she treated him after 10 eps of grovelling lmao. anyways.

they grow closer again while hae-in stays in the hospital for her treatment, but in comes mister i-still-want-to-be-cooked-over-an-open-fire-like-a-rotissiere-chicken eun-sung. i do have to say i love park sung-hoon in this drama? not as good as the psychotic bully-slash-killer-slash-second-woman he plays in the glory, but really good. it's giving kendall roy in sucession s2! it's giving this is why rich people tax middle class families until tax evasion or murder become lifestyle choices for those families! it's giving the rite of passage creepy high school boyfriend straight women go through amped up to the max! he is so good at being evil and he shines here, somehow, in all his creepy despondency and obsession with hae-in. at one point he swipes in and tells hae-in, who is losing her memory, that he saved her life and then he does it again, using the times hyun-woo's saved her as his cover story. he keeps rocking brown three-piece suits and a crazy-good blowout and side swoop while he does that, which might be the worst thing. hyun-woo punches him in the face, which is the saving grace of this entire second half of the show. he runs over hyun-woo with a car in the PENULTIMATE episode for the hell of it, because he can't see hyun-woo and hae-in be together again. the man is batshit insane and he stands by it.

as for the plot:

the head of the hong family (hae-in's grandfather) has a slush fund, because that is the second most realistic part of the show. eun-sung and his mother scrounge around to find it to take the rest of queens group, but well, i honestly don't care much about this plot. yang-gi (hyun-woo's best friend and divorce lawyer, who is apparently barred twice over in korea and can also hold up with business law and attorney work in court lol) helps lower hyun-woo's crazy ass charges, so he lives to see another day while everyone is looking for the goddamn slush fund. eun-sung and his mother found it first btw. hae-in keeps mistaking eun-sung for hyun-woo, her memory loss gets worse, we get it. several people working for eun-sung keep trying to kill hyun-woo over the span of the last five episodes. we get another reborn rich cameo from kim shin-rok, which at this point is the only thing keeping me from tuning out of this whacky ass drama. the hong family grandfather kills himself and all of kdrama twt and mdl are mad that the raised rating wasn't an explicit scene between baekhong but seeing an old man die (i kid you not). they keep trying to convince me kim soo-hyun was in the marine corps and i keep not believing it. german hospitals apparently can do life-saving surgeries on non-german citizens, which is unheard off in this neck of the woods but alas. hae-in has to trade in her memories to have that surgery, so that is our 11 o clock moment. or something. hyun-woo gets arrested by interpol right after, so there goes that dream. soo-cheol ends up with his wife again, which i care about as much as a tree cares about a leaf falling in a forest. big yawn. hyun-woo employs yang-gi again to beat the interpol charges and they do (yippie!). eun-sung keep acting like he's hae-in's husband after her memories disappeared and all of us know it's so deeply joever but the death bell has yet to strike. in comes the car crash bc we go two for two on car crashes in this show. eun-sung is now, after 15 episodes of washed up nonsense, pursued by the police bc nothing screams real crime like vehicular manslaughter in a kdrama. tried and true to the very end he goes!

haven't checked into ep 16 yet, but i know it ends with a montage of hae-in and hyun-woo together for more years, marrying again and having a child, and then hae-in dies. hyun-woo as an old man visits her grave in germany (potsdam doesn't allow graves on the grounds of sansoucie so i wonder where they supposedly put it?) and then we get a fade in of young hae-in leading now-deceased and young again hyun-woo to heaven in a field of lavender, goblin style minus the good writing. hyun-woo kept apologising for things until the end but don't ask me what it was about, i stopped caring. i assume that eun-sung lands in jail or something for his five billion crimes and all the times he wore light blue ties in this show. fin.

#beware this is MILES long lmao jhzgthju #i have issues with this show hzgfghuj #ongsasuns #ask

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sightofsea · 5 months

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20 questions for fic writers

I got tagged by @leonardcohenofficial!!

I'm gonna tag @fieryphrazes / @moonyinpisces / @hyruling / anyone else who wants to do this!

1.How many works do you have on Ao3? I have fifteen!!!

2. What's your total Ao3 word count? 377,875 words which is. A lot! Wow!

3. What fandoms do you write for? across ao3 and ffnet I've written for doctor who, good omens, mash, it's always sunny, pacific rim, our flag means death, supernatural, the big bang theory, phantom, and atla.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? take the bones, begin anew / small infinities and all that / each flower has wept and bowed towards the east / affection and other cravings / all you left me was a pearl

5. Do you respond to comments? at the beginning of a fic/if there aren't too many comments, then yes! and if someone has something particularly insightful say or they have a question. after that it sort of feels equivalent to writing thank you cards, and I feel like responding with small platitudes is sort of an empty gesture.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? that depends! a lot of people consider the end of small infinities angsty, but I see it more as bittersweet. out of my complete works, I think "a sadness runs through him" is just a complete angst fest. my old doctor who oc fic that will sadly never be complete also had kind of an angsty ending which can be delved further into here.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? most of my fics end with two people living happily near some water but I think "stories for other people" thematically has the happiest ending

8. Do you get hate on fics? not really! maybe one or two weird comments on "all you left me was a pearl" for stede's wooing technique, and then I know a lot of people don't like the whole turned human thing for small infinities, but I feel like that's more preference than hate

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yeah! not pwp but I love a good sex scene and exploring the inner workings of desire

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? very long ago on a different platform I wrote a danny phantom and atla crossover that was never completed, and also in said doctor who oc fanfiction there was a Sherlock crossover. I don't think I'd write any crossover fic in the future unless it was a universe merger or perhaps a multiple versions of canon meshing sort of thing.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I think?? small infinities got translated?? maybe???

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? nope! it'd be Shrimpteresting to try it out, with someone I respected and knew to be consistent.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? hard to say!!! I think anything I've written for is an all-time favorite. maybe johnlock??? since it re-wrote my brain a bit at the tender age of 14?

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? my johnlock magnum opus is always rotating in my mind but the way it's unraveling I doubt I'll be able to put it to paper successfully; I really really wanna finish my it's always sunny fic also bc I have all the plot points mapped out, but I sort of wrote myself into a corner on accident. both of these could be solved if I just sat down and watched enough of either show to pickle my brain in them again, but the mood hasn't come to me yet.

16. What are your writing strengths? i think said brain-pickling is one: I think I try my best to replicate the tone of whatever media I'm writing for and character voice. I feel like I do pretty well with dialogue. I think I have a good sense of humor and teasing out themes to work with. I tend to write a bunch of unconnected scenes until a common thread emerges, and I think I'm good at piecing them together in a way that makes sense.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? like maddie said before me, I also don't write linearly, and so half the struggle with my writing is figuring out how to create actual plot out of a bunch of vibes-based scenes. i'm also not consistent; I have to be in a certain mood to write. i'm extremely fickle. I tend to stick to certain formulas/themes and should try to branch out more. I'm horrible at describing action, and so sex scenes of mine can be a real slog, I think. i use the em dash far too much.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I think it can be done well, but can sometimes hinder the reader and often can be mistranslated. If I'm writing in another language it has to be phrases I'm familiar with enough to have a go on my own. I usually end up doing a lot of research.

(Side note, just while we're on the topic: I think when people write for sign language they don't include any of the physicality of it, which is a detriment to core of the language, and also ignore how blunt it is, which tends to annoy me. People tend to treat it as English+ instead of a whole other language that differs greatly even between English speaking countries and don't put the research in that they would for other languages. I'm definitely not an expert--I'm not deaf/hoh, I only use a little bit when my jaw acts up, but it really pisses me off lol.)

19. First fandom you wrote for? I wrote a big bang theory fanfiction when I was 14 and none of you will ever find it and I stand by my actions

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? all you left me was a pearl, only because it's the most fun I've ever had writing something and also the horniest thing I've written. which isn't saying much, but I take pride in it.

#thank you maddie this was SO much fun!

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badbookworm · 6 months

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Small Cursed Fates rant/appreciation? (overall ZA book 5 thoughts)

For a dark romance/fantasy, the best parts of Zodiac Academy rly are when nothing dark is happening, huh.

Just finished book 5. And like. Within 5 books, they have undoubtly build very solid and detailed characters, and all who have interesting and different dynamics with each other. I love seeing them interact and hang out since book 1.

Most of book 5 is heavily character focus. The heirs and the twins started the book on a neutral ground, entered a truce, and the heirs plot is coming to terms that they actually like the twins' company, and to hangout with them. And that's cool as fuck, it was very fun to see the friendship develop, the plan to get Darius and Tory together, it was straight up good. I ate that shit up.

ALSO RANDOM NOTE, I DID NOT EXPECTED SETH AND CALEB TO ACTUALLY BE A THING?? AND IT WAS GREAT??? I made a bingo for this book with things I thought would happen, and one of them was just "Seth and Caleb do something gay". I marked that square 10 different times, it was wild 💥💥 I saw a goodreads review say that straight Caleb was his flop era, and now I GET IT. BC IT'S TRUE. Sorry Tory, but the Caleb and Seth side plot is much more engaging then Caleb being a 2° option plaything fr.

Ok, going back. With the comment at the start it might instigue a "it's a bullymance, what did you expect", but because the way the saga gone with turning the bullying into romance in taking it's time, along with all the fighting back and the leading to it is interesting, I'm hooked, genuinely interested and caring for these characters. It's all the other edgy fantasy stuff which stinks. The vibe was ruined the moment Orion was sentenced and it never picked back up. At least in this book, it was boring. I already don't love Orion character, he doesn't appeal to me in any way, and the though of him carrying a solo, brooding, plotline is the most boring thing this saga could've come up to me.

And then the ending came, it was like a cold water splash to remind me what kind of story this is, but it felt like "oh, the cool parts are over now?". I cannot give a shit about the whole thing going on with Clara, I'm sorry, I tried, it's so messy and nasty, and having to see Lionel be the villain for 5 books straight has drained him from any intrigue I had. He's just an villain shaped hole of a character. He's signifies a bad omen, not a character, you see Lionel and you know that something will go badly so the plot can progress, I cannot tell you 1 thing about Lionel besides he's evil. Oh, and the ZA finales are always chaotic and cramped with action and twists, the authors halt all the on-going plots so they can solve and drop them at the last 7 very short and fast chapters, but this one felt extra edgy and fast? I was so done with it with 4 chapters left still. And it feels like book 6 will keep on this trail of the edgyness.

I'm low-key scared of entering book 6 and being bombarded with any forced Tory and Lionel stuff, because I can't find any thorough review of book 6 to ensure there's no SA or anything like that involved with this plotline. The 1 thing that had kept me going with this saga was that, despite a lot of the nasty stuff, the sexual content has kept itself in a mostly consentual territory, sometimes vaguely consentual. But Lionel forcing Tory to say she loves him has already made me physically gag, and seeing Lionel and Clara (which also made me incredibly unfomfy and disgusted) makes me dead ass scared to see the next Tory povs. Non-con is my only big nono in taboo stuff.

Does it get the point across about Lionel being evil and all? Yes, ig.

Anyways, gotta finish what I started. BRB.

#This book went from a 4⭐ to like 3.5.#I fucking LOVED the intecartions #Idk if I'll finish the saga this year still. The next books are long boys. But I'll try #bookblr #zodiac academy #Zodiac Academy: Cursed Fates #book rant #This series is a fucking roller-coaster that Idk if I'm enjoying.

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winderlylandchime · 5 months

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Hi! I hope you’re doing well and that your trip is good and fun. But holy shit, i hope you and your partner manage to stay covid free! I’m sending some healing thoughts to your SIL since covid absolutely sucks!

Also a few things i do have to say because you need to know (most of them i was told to tell you guys): we went to the doctor yesterday and he was proudly wearing his new shirt. Everyone found it hilarious and accurate portrayal of him/his year. And then he told the whole office (2 doctors and 3 nurses) that he is now famous on the internet because i told bunch of people about him watching the show. And the doctor who is in charge of his case (the guy who did the surgery lol), looked at me, pointed at him and slowly went ‘you made him other people’s problem?’ And my brother proudly said ‘Yes, she did! *realized what was said* heeeeey, i can be quite a delight, just ask the people on the no porn site’ (yes, that is how he told them about tumblr). And my brother wanted me to let you all know that his cast has to stay on for another week, so he is very sad about that BUT the big news that he immediately looked at me (in the office in front of them btw) and went ‘you gotta tell my new homies about this’ was that in two weeks he has his final check up with his surgeon bc he wants to do all tests one last time and then if all is good which they believe will be, he can officially go home and back to his whatever tf normal life is for him. So looks like I’m losing my two roommates soon. Shit will be boring ngl.

Then the other more important thing! My brother had your blog opened on his tag, but i guess he went to check out the rest of the blog because he walked in this morning and went ‘did you fucking know that they write stories?! About Brian and Blondie? WHAT IS THIS? AND THERES SO MANY FUCKING COOL GIFS TOO. LIKE SHIT TON OF THEM! I saw one where Gale was talking in that interview about Prom and Blondie from that panel and then there were gifs from the episode and behind the scenes with it! That had to take for fucking ever! Do people just make them all the time? See? when *puts out one hand* Fandom and *puts out the other hand* love, come together *puts his hands together* beautiful things come to life.’

So he is currently going through your ao3/bookmarks but i did tell him to read your other fics before the new one.. Btw he didn’t move from the couch for a few hours after he discovered it. His favorites so far are: we didn’t know we could reach the stars (he thought that one was a very accurate portrayal of what Brian and Justin would be like if the writers didnt ruin it), clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them (he really enjoyed that one btw. He especially thought the ‘not the first boy to jerk off to thoughts of Brian in this bed’ was clever as fuck and literally went ‘ooohhh shit’ when he read it)

and Youre like a tattoo (he gasped when he realized the plot and went ‘ITS REVERSED!’). And when he finally made it to your new fic he fucking lost it (he had a tiny report on it)

I did show him your replies from previous messages and here’s the message from the guy himself (read this as if youre listening to a very caffeinated person pacing up and down, for accurate pov): I was a breath of fresh air for them? Fucking hell, so this fandom is in like a hibernation, huh? I’m fucked, aren’t I? Well anyway, thank you stranger for very sweet words. I fuck with this person! I think we’d be friends. I FUCKING LOVE LITTLE EDIE! Me and (his best friends name) always quote the ‘It was quite the scandal actually. It was in all the magazines at the time’ in Jinx’s voice whenever some random shit is asked. Them and their spouse sound like they’re fucking fun to be around. Wait you gotta tell them I read the stories they wrote, i’m still reading other people’s shit, i have a lot to catch up to. But that one that isn’t done yet is fucking brilliant. I mean they all are but I read that one twice! I had to watch the reunion episode from season 3 because it made me all nostalgic when they got back together. It’s exactly how I’d like the show to be. Its nice to read and go mhm thats my bri bri, unlike in the show where it was not my bri but an imposter. I also very much fuck with older Brian who has a beard and glasses. Because he looked pretty as fuck in that little comic con video. I’m excited to see how they end it and i really really hope that they had fun writing these stories because i had a lot of fun reading them. Anyway, tell them, they’re fucking cool, their stories are fucking dope, i also really liked that one about them sharing their clothes AND THE ONE WHERE BLONDIE WAS THE SUGAR DADDY! I fucking told you that will happen..i was just wrong as to where. And im glad to see that the *lifts his cast* ally, is catching on.

PS, we both got all ‘awwww’ and a little emotional ngl, when we read your response how you’ve been thinking of us while writing. And just so you know we spent all day today discussing your fics (when he got to the cliffhanger, he went ‘i am once again being teased just like with the love confession’) and some other fics from other creators that he read and enjoyed. The man is in awe. Every time he’d read a new chapter/fic he goes ‘this is the best thing ive read’ over and over.

Hello hello hello dear sweet anon and brother anon!

Thank you for your well wishes. My SIL tested negative this morning so we are officially in the clear (and can abandon our masks). I think we did a good job being responsible within the circumstances. Luckily, my SIL’s symptoms never got bad and the cold I arrived with (was it a cold or an intense allergic reaction to cleaning my apartment and kicking up all that dust?) never evolved into anything more unpleasant.

I love that we’re not the people on the “no porn site.” And we do all think he’s delightful. I’m glad he’s recovering well and can soon live independently from you but I imagine life will be a lot quieter and less chaotic without him and feline BriBri.

Yes! Gifs allow us to relive every moment of the series, draw parallels etc. Let’s give a hand to @sophsun1 who is basically carrying the fandom on her back with her beautiful gifs.

I am absolutely floored by his reaction to my fics. Thank you so much for passing along the kind words he had. I’m glad he like the 5+1 clothes sharing fic (I have such a soft spot for it), and We Didn’t Know We Could Reach the Stars is such an overlooked fic (I forget I wrote it!). AND of course Tattoo was my beloved fic this year.

The fandom isn’t in hibernation so much as it is small and basically zero new content has been released in eons and so it is a small fandom with nowhere near the works produced that large currently or recently active fandoms have (tbh those fandoms intimidate me - I will read GO fic but joining a discord or writing fic in there? so scary!).

“It was quite the scandal really…” is the other quote I say to my spouse on hair wash / hair turban days! I like to think we *are* fun to be around. Especially if quote RPDR S5 is your idea of fun. Then we’re a blast!

I do have fun writing fics. I bitch and moan and complain, but I love writing them and getting to put them out into the world. I’m even more excited to write and post the last chapter of Fireflies now that I know your brother has read it. And I’m delighted to hear that he thinks I kept his beloved BriBri in character (if we ignore WTF happened to his character in S5).

I’m honestly a little bit emotional from your PS. I write fics because I love to write them but hearing that you’re sitting around discussing them? I love writing them but I do want an audience (otherwise I wouldn’t publish them) and there are fics out there that I feel that way about (written by other people) so for my fics to be that to someone… just, I need a moment and a tissue.

*makes fist* ally

#ask winderlylandchime #dear sweet anon #queer as folk #a straight man watches qaf us 2000 in the year of our lord 2023

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trickstarbrave · 11 months

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what do you mean by ""reylo dynamic""??

okay. first thing to understand is when i say "reylo dynamic" in a ship or pairing or style of writing romance it isnt unique to reylo. a lot of popular fandoms have some variation of "the reylo dynamic" its just reylo has popularized and kind of mass marketed what used to be a niche fandom ship dynamic so its what i call it as shorthand

The Reylo Dynamic™ usually has specific traits (note: it does not need to have all of these, just a significant amount). canon characterization does not matter either, all it comes down to is the fandom portrayal of the ship by and large (think dramoine and kacchako). the only hardline one is this:

>spunky female character (usually protag of the story) who is at least a little combative with the male lead, and a male lead who is otherwise grumpy/brooding/mysterious

for the common traits:

>female lead is usually brown haired, shorter, with emphasis on being petite and small. idk why even reylo stories they do this even tho daisy ridley isnt that short???

>male lead is usually dark haired and typically described as "unconventionally attractive" exactly

>female lead usually has to prove herself or feels like she has to prove herself. like. as a big thing. it can be one big moment or her constantly feeling like shes being condescended to for some perceived weakness (like: being a woman, being small, not knowing how to control magic powers, whatever). important thing to note is she will often not get over this until like the very end of the story if ever

>usually bc this dynamic can be hard to accommodate for and write around (bc the two romantic leads DONT WANT TO BE AROUND EACH OTHER) there is usually some kind of plot contrivance keeping them together. fated lovers, soul mates, class project, you name it. i feel this is usually a cop out bc i spend most of the plots feeling like they should just fuck and get it over with

>there is almost always miscommunication. and the annoying kind. every time i have tried to suffer thru a story with The Reylo Dynamic™ in novel format i find myself annoyed. bc i dont believe most of the time this is a real, normal, very human break down of communication. i constantly feel like one of them is being an unreasonable or frankly stupid brat in the situation purely for the sake of plot convenience. do you know how dumb it is to see a woman who has lost her job, her only friend, her boyfriend, and her mom get told by some hot guy "hey due to circumstances outside of ur control that i dont blame u for we have to get married also im rich and will take care of ur every need and im not asking for romance i just need magic powers back of mine that u technically have and if u dont marry me they'll also go out of control and kill you" and the woman. is mad and pissy abt it and deliberately makes problems for him. bitch u were at rock bottom and this guy is offering u free rent and food and answers to all the questions you had since chapter 1. and ur mad abt it. theres no moral objections she has to him she's just annoyed bc????????????? i guess she is being asked to do something????????? bc she doesnt wanna look weak?????????? bc shes cranky??????????????? i dont know. id cut her some slack to start with but she just keeps deliberately antagonizing him until they fuck. i gave up reading it was a slog

>lots of bickering and jabs at the other. depending on the rating of the story this will only be resolved with hatefucking. even then it usually wont fully be resolved. while i am a fan of hatefucking there is smth abt how much of a slog it is to watch it in the reylo dynamic bc of the next point:

>usually the author never commits to them having a real, genuine, non-imagined reason to being combative with each other or hating each other, NOR having a real, genuine, non-imagined reason to be together and make it work and be happy. they live in this limbo between dislike. a constant "will they wont they" but instead of the will they or wont they in question being hooking up its instead if they will break up or not. it's like watching a very incompatible couple refuse to work things out by talking and sorting through their own issues AND refusing to just break up and see other ppl more compatible. id rather there be genuine dislike or even hatred they have to sort thru and actually make progress in. dont half ass making a guy horrible. give me a reason why the mc hates him. or if it is imagined by the mc, show the mc processing it properly and working thru it and having proper character growth. but they dont bc the bickering is part of the appeal and making one or both of them genuinely bad ppl breaks the fantasy. or smth.

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spuddy-buddy · 1 year

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scattered notes from a hypothetical Jak and Daxter series re-write of sorts because i have fucking brainworms now i guess

THE GIST

The story kicks off two years after TPL; Jak has been training his channeling to become a proper sage as implied by the sages at the end of TPL, Kiera has still been inventing things, and Daxter still has no pants. Sometime near the beginning of the story stuff goes down which causes Jak to need to take a hit for someone and gets hit with some manner of dark eco. It doesn't kill him or turn him into a furry, because thanks to his being more experienced with channeling he actually manages to channel it. However, dark eco is still dark eco and therefore still wrecks your shit no matter what, so Dark Jak happens. It's taken a lot more seriously than it was in Jak II so instead of having like no story relevance it's actually the main catalyst for the story since everyone is very rightfully horrified and worried about Jak's well being, Gol and Maia still fresh in everyone's minds. Since the only people on the continent stupid enough willing to study dark eco are kinda floating at the bottom of a vat of the stuff the Sandover crew gotta look abroad for help. Samos recalls rumors of another continent on the other side of the world, so the Sandover crew sets off and, after spending time at sea, end up in Haven City. One thing leads to another and they all get mixed up with the Metal Head war and the Underground, all the while having to appease the various Havenite factions to try and get Jak the help he needs.

WORLDBUILDING/MISC STORY BEATS

I've only thought as far as Jak II story-wise.

The 100 power cell ending is ignored for now bc I can't think of anything for it.

Not sure if Gol and Maia come back(yet?).

For now I've decided that maybe it's a dark eco bomb from the Metal Head war that's washed up on the shore that kickstarts the story(from who's side? wouldn't you like to know weather boy).

Jak's worsening condition plays more of a part in the story, serving as the Sandover crew's main motivation.

All our faves are still there, albeit altered to better fit the re-write.

Since this re-write nixes time travel Haven's just a new city; the culture's way different, with a society that's less attuned to the world and more dependent on technology because of the Metal Head War(though not as technologically advanced as Haven in Jak II).

Haven’s development convergently led to something close to Kiera’s a-grav zoomer.

It appears at first that there are no channelers or sages, but in actuality it turns out there's coincidentally and conveniently three sages secretly operating in and around Haven: one red, one blue, and one yellow.

Mar is still a revered hero and founder of Haven City, but because there's no time travel there's no confusion later on if Jak is Mar or not.

The Precursor Stone and Mar’s big-ass gun are still plot macguffins.

There aren't guns yet; the closest things are the Guards' shock staves. Tess is working on it though.

The Krimzon Guard have some sort of artificial channeling suit technology and are split into the Krimzon Guard(red eco) and the Ambyr Guard(yellow eco). Their "tattoos" are actually scars resulting from from using the suits.

Barron Praxis’ mechs are cobbled-together Precursor bots.

After Gol and Maia bit it(?) the Lurkers make a sort of peace w the Still Unnamed Main Race. Because the latter would-be conquerors never made their way over to Haven some have even integrated into society there.

By extension, Barron Praxis' enslavement of them is less so systemic and moreso a very recent development and/or dirty secret to be used against the Barron except the sharks the sharks are true neutral bastards who heed no master(inspired by astrathechinchilla's good takes).

At some point in the story when everything starts getting out of control the Sandover gang almost decide to pack it in and head home until it's revealed that the Metal Heads plan to invade the rest of the world after conquering Haven. Around the same time it's also revealed that Baron Praxis wants to capture Jak for himself to use him in experiments(basically to start the Dark Warrior Project instead of effectively ending it).

Jak and Samos(and maybe Kiera idk) are all from Haven originally. Samos was part of Damas' court and was charged with hiding Jak to ensure his survival; this is why Samos knows about Haven. Domino-ing off of this Barron Praxis has been in power for far longer than he was in Jak II. When this is discovered Jak decides it's better to leave Ashelin in charge after the Barron is deposed since he's not the leader type and she knows better what her people need than he does.

Also at the end Jak comes to the conclusion that he probably can’t be cured, but that he’ll be fine as long as he’s got support from his friends and loved ones.

Spargus and Kras City still exist, albeit slightly altered to better match the rest of the rewrite. Lurkers are even more present in those cities because A: there isn't an active war going on, and B: they aren't being secretly used as slaves. Instead of cars Spargans utilize less intelligent beast-type Lurkers as mounts for traversing the wasteland and adjacent areas. Kras has more of a remote floating city vibe and is still known for its lawlessness and night life, though has more of a pirate spin to it instead of an avid racing scene.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay is once again more exploration-focused than combat-focused, with players being rewarded with orbs and parts for exploring and returning to areas with new abilities.

Haven itself isn't as fuckoff huge for no reason as it is in Jak II, but still bigger and more developed than anything in TPL. It’s still the central hub of the game.

Places like Haven Forest, the Precursor temples, and the mines still exist, though some are altered to better fit the re-write.

There are subquests equivalent to TPL's power cell missions for things to do outside the main story.

No guns. The gunplay in the Jak games is not very good y'all we're getting rid of the guns.

Combat adds a sort of lock-on that can switch targets for better utilization of ranged eco abilities, as well as a dodge.

Kiera gets to be important again and is the reason Jak gets to use whatever eco whenever he wants instead of having to collect and use it right away; she invents something he can use to store it until he needs it because fuck love triangles and shelving. She can upgrade this device as Jak and Daxter collect parts for her.

Skull gems are still the main collectible, orbs are still the super secret hidden items that unlock goodies, and parts are rewards for side quests.

The d-pad is used to cycle through eco types like it was used for gun mods in Jak II/3; this is referred to as the "eco wheel" for now. All ecos have three abilities tied to them with the first level for each being the basic functionality from TPL with some added functionality: blue eco now also affects all momentum when active for higher/longer jumps, red eco gets knocks enemies down further and for longer, and yellow eco gets a minor moveset tweak(square's punch is still the projectile, circle's kick has an AoE affect).

Green lvl 2 can heal on demand, and lvl 3 can heal the environment.

Blue lvl 2 can be used to parry if dodging is timed right, and lvl 3 can power machines for a time.

Red lvl is a passive buff that adds concussive AoE effects to hits, and lvl 3 adds a charge attack that can break through damaged structures.

Yellow lvl 2 is a passive buff that increases projectile speed and tracking, and lvl 3 adds a charge shot that can break through damaged structures.

Jak learns the lvl 2 and lvl 3 abilities from the Havenite sages and Samos through story progression.

All eco regenerates passively up to a point, but can be replenished faster and further by eco pickups. Kiera's upgrades can affect these aspects as well as max capacity.

DARK JAK

Aspects such as passive buffs to speed and power and the arcing dark eco are maintained.

To emphasize that Jak's exposure is very much so Not Good, instead of being a panic/win button Dark Jak is more of a high-risk-high-reward kinda deal: Dark Jak takes more damage, can't dodge, can't use normal eco abilities(most notable being green's self heal), and drains eco and health. These negative affects can be mitigated as the story progresses, but not outright removed. As a compromise the game wouldn't be as ball-bustingly unforgiving as Jak II is.

The eco wheel changes while playing as Dark Jak; the typical colors and abilities are replaced with abilities exclusive to Dark Jak. These abilities are analogous to their colored eco counterparts.

Green is replaced with a life sap that kills and corrupts wildlife.

Blue is replaced with a sort of bullet time kinda thing.

Red is replaced with something analogous to the Dark Bomb and Dark Blast, but less extreme.

Yellow is replaced with piercing bolts with minor DoT.

that's it that's all i got

#Jak and Daxter #Rewrite #Fix It fic #sort of #not really though #Spudd's JaD AU

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maskspurpose · 7 months

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for superhero fic: 2, 8 (besides wtei), 9 for fine reunion: 7 for tori, 20, 22 and 13, 21 in general

Oh my god hiiii who are you <3 Putting these under a cut bc of how much I wrote LMAO

Superhero AU

2: How did you get the idea to write this?

WataEi week on twitter had a list of prompts and one of them included hero/villain au which made me think about how those are like... complicated and interesting roles for wataru and eichi respectively since theyve both played the protagonist and antagonist and how this could be an AU where you can explore that and another theme (masks) in a really fun way. It kinda like. appeared in my head fully formed especially bc superhero comics are a past special interest i've come back to a couple of times now.

8: Which character is gonna have the biggest storyline?

I meant to follow the broad strokes of ES1 main story and just retell it in this new framing device or rather like... see where it goes from there, so it would probably end up being Tori or Hokuto depending on where the dice of my focus falls. In a version of the story I was thinking about doing a type of monster of the week format similar to how many magical girl shows do it where the monster in question is like... the manifestation of the Mental Issues someone is having so I think in that version a lot of them have the potential to get a day in the spotlight.

Thinking about it some more though I really enjoy the worldbuilding I did for Yuzuru so. Honestly he's also a big candidate. It just feeds really well into a lot of the stuff that's happening.

9: Is there anything in the fic you're not so excited about writing?

I got extremely stuck on the worldbuilding and overarching plot and how to make it work without it being boring (bc of how much of it is retelling the main story) and also just... making the kinda complex morality stuff I wanna highlight work in a kinda cartoony setting?

The other thing is smaller but Wataru alternates pronouns depending on their identity in this story (at least in Eichi's POV) and keeping that straight is a headache and a half for me tbh.

fine reunion

7: What are your plans for Tori?

Okay so the setup of this fic is, essentially, what if EP:Link bad end where fine ends up disbanding, which means... you kind of have to imagine Tori's development re: the rest of fine as being stuck in that specific point in time? The last selfish thing he asked for didn't come true, so what does that mean... in this case it means he's suspicious of Wataru and passively pissed despite being aware that it's not fully justified.

I think at the same time he's grown more independent. He's grown up in a lot of ways that we can also see in ES2 and I think has become a lot more savvy and aware of unsavory business practices both by his own family and others. I think out of fine he's the one who seems like he's changed the most simply by virtue of being the one who had the most growing up to do. I think he's both become a bit more like Eichi in the roles he fills and a lot less like Eichi in how he does it? And where it all goes... we shall see!

20: Give a vague description of something that will happen without revealing too much

fine reunion album tour. four people with pent up emotional issues. in one bus and/or hotel room.

22: Will this fic include more angst or more fluff?

The reason I'm like willing to write it is because ultimately I want to lean towards fluff? I think there's ways to do this that get angsty really quickly and my original concept for it was leaning into that but ultimately I wanna focus on like... the fact that yes if fine split up these characters would stay the same in some ways but just how much personal growth is up to you as a person and imo one of the now most important things abt fine which is that they are together as a unit because they like each other and want to be.

There's still gonna be some angst and some topics are unavoidable just bc it will touch on like. idk a large part of the premise is that Eichi is doing the whole reunion bc he's doing an early retirement as an idol because of his health (no acute reasons and more of a precaution but it's still. yknow) and that Wataru left after EP:Link to become an actor. So there's issues.

General Questions:

13: Is there any unwritten/unpublished fics you haven't mentioned you're gonna do?

No promises but I still want to write something about Wataru and Keito working together on a script for Dramatica and what that would entail. I also wanna do a 5+1-ish (4+1?) thing/series about Wataru kissing the other eccentrics or something.

Part of me wants to one day do a collaboration on something with my boyfriend but we'd have to figure out the mechanics and I haven't brought it up to him yet, soooo 🤫🤫🤫

21: Is there any unwritten fic that you don't know if you ever will write?

Originally I was going to do a proper sequel to the Watareichi fic I wrote that's been shrinking in scope for a variety of reasons (less interest in writing wtrei as anything but exes, dissatisfaction with the fic it'd be a sequel to). There's a longer version of the Wataru & HiMERU drabble I wrote that'll never be done because uuuuuuh I really don't care for HiMERU anymore.

I have this whole AU i plotted out at some point where Wataru and Mama have a unit together bc I thought it'd be funny for a unit swap prompt but ultimately that's probably never going to happen.

IDK I have WIPs from fandoms I'm no longer in does that count?

#enstars /#ask meme #thank you for the questions <333

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bugsbenefit · 2 years

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i don’t know if anyone has pointed it out yet but it’s not leaving me alone.

so s5 is supposed to be a return to form of s1 meaning there will be some parallels, either plot wise, character arc wise, references, etc. (s4 also had a bunch of refs to s2, literal horseshoe narrative, bla bla we know we know)

right, so looking back, very big part of ST is the way the story is told through multiple povs, which makes sense since the show has an assembly cast. but just like any other season, s1 isn’t focused on all the characters equally it has clear main characters. (like how s4 focuses on characters like, El, Max, Dustin etc. while the whole Cali crew has Very little actual plot relevancy).

and right off the bat after Will goes missing, E1 makes clear which characters are going to Tell us the story: we have Mike, almost everything we see the kids do is from his perspective. then, after S1E2 El becomes the other primary kid pov (she stands out as only getting a pov from E2 onwards, since she only shows up in the woods at the end of E1), we see her past at the lab via flashbacks and her general perception of the world outside the lab. meanwhile the teens have their own plot and two primary povs as well, Jonathan and Nancy. first revolving separately around Will and Barb and later merging into the same goal they work on together. the same goes for the adults were we get Joyce and Hopper, at first investigating separately and then ending the season going into the UD together.

there’s three overall plot lines (kids, teens, adults) that end up merging in the end. (Will is his own party here in the UD who makes appearances for all groups occasionally but who’s pov we don’t get. however, he’s still THE central character that’s started the whole plot to begin with even without us seeing his perspective)

all other characters that are in the show by then get a different treatment to those main focus characters. we only see their povs when none of the other main narrating voices are present. (e.g. Dustin taking over as a focus only Once and it’s after Mike jumps off of a cliff and we aren’t supposed to know if he’s okay yet (this season does him dirty poor guy). Lucas going on his sick solo mission where he abandons both Mike and El which gives him a few minutes of screentime that’s centered around him and him only. or even Brenner, who’s pov we actually get 3 times this season when he’s alone and evilly stalking and scheming and we have no other way to see him be silly and evil than to hard cut to him)

(unrelated tangent but Steve is pretty funny actually because we get his pov multiple times but he’s COMPLETELY removed from the plot, he doesn’t even know something weird is going on. he’s just busy trying to save his relationship with Nancy the whole time and doesn’t even catch a Glimpse of the supernatural hell demon haunting the town. until it tries to eat him in the finale. which also only happens because he wanted to go see Nancy again and ran into the trap... this guy is on a completely separate mission the whole season. everyone is living sci-fie mystery and Steve still thinks he’s in a coming of age romance movie... the lad is going through it this season he’s so clueless)

so TLDR of all of this bc it’s really just a general observation of the way S1 is told which might be boring if you watched it recently:

season one stands out by having 6 main POVs: Mike, El, Nancy, Jonathan, Joyce, and Hopper

right

sooo. now why...

that’s literally just all our s1 povs. nicely lined up and even split into three way kids, teens, adults formula. the only difference being that Will is actually included here, standing with Mike, instead of being stranded somewhere in the hell dimension.

like... that feels INCREDIBLY intentional. they even went out of their way to drag Nancy (and Nancy only) away from the rest of the Hawkins crew who went to the school - just so she could stand on the hill with them here. it’s those 7 characters for a reason, the narrative goes out of it’s way to make sure all of them are here. and all of them just happen to be the exact same characters who Started narrating this whole story to us?

(also sorry but did they just abandon Argyle out in the woods picking mushrooms for this?? i get he isn’t part of the og gang but Damn, just because they want to go stand on a hill doesn’t mean they can just fuck off when the evil spores start raining from the sky. they literally switched Argyle out with Nancy for this)

if i were to make a guess, I’d say s5 is going to have them be the main pov’s just like in s1 to close the story off in a circle. (even the narration would be part of the horseshoe narrative then lmao)

and that would also make sense for the characters. literally half of them were trapped in the stoner van for the whole of s4. they’ve been excluded from the plot for a reason and it gave others like Max and Lucas the room to shine as the main characters. i think the next season will have the same 6 povs closing the show that started it, with the exception that Will is now part ALSO a part of these povs. (the main character, according to what the Duffers say, even)

I’ve seen people say this shot looks like group ups for s5. and i agree. the different plot strands we’re going to get will definitely be centered around these 3 groups (maybe 4? El standing on her own could mean a Lot here, she could potentially fill a role similar to Will for example, where he would occasionally pop in with all of the 3 parties and make appearances everywhere. so it could also be 3 groups but El swings around between them?).

but yeah anyways. i’m calling it now. those 7 are going to be the main povs of s5.

#literally rolling back into town just wanting to narrate and then seeing Hawkins like DAMN that's what i'm working with?#the town's FUCKED #but seriously it being these exact 7 characters is SO intentional especially since we're already being TOLD how s5 will parallel s1 #stranger things theory #st5 predictions #st analysis #st5 speculation #stranger things #mike wheeler #will byers #el hopper #jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #joyce byers #jim hopper

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rt-lots · 7 months

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Joining in on the Ian and Rammy ask train… 🌂✏️ (and 🍎 specifically for Ian!)

TW for a fair bit of suicide talk!!!

umbrella - i assume this doesnt need an answer for both of them, bcuz they belong 2 the same story. i imagine ian and rammys story being a vidya game, and i guess itd b a psychological horror? which feels like, pretentious to say but the main scaries of the story are how much ians life sucks and he wants 2 die. so... i think itd count. thats all overarching stuff tho... most of ian n rammys time spent together is lightheared, i think. theyre two dudes hanging out and one of them is slowly coming to terms with the fact his suicidal thoughts won. whatever genre that is

pencil - WAHHH it depends a lot of the time... ian and rammy have definitely made a big resurgence in my brain recently (past month) bc im 18 and can post bout em, but also just cuz i love them sooo much and want to chew on them constantly. id say i write abt/draw them pretty frequently tho!! i doodle them on my school work and in notebooks a lot and they have some of the bigger galleries on my toyhouse lawl. i dont write much directly for their universe, but ive typed... many paragraphs to my friends just braindumping the shit i think about them. so, yeah, less often than id like, but theyre up there in my priorities of ocs :3

apple (for ian) - GRAHHHHHHHHHHH u dont know what demons uve unleashed w this. i already twed this post for suicide but im gonna move this part under the cut bc mentioning ians dad specifically ties a lot into the suicide aspect of the story

OKAY SO. ians family consists of his mom, sister, and him. his dad was in the picture when he was a little kid, like early elementary age, but ditched after some time. his relationship with both parents was relatively normal, they definitely couldve done a better job raising him, but they were never intentionally hurtful nor did they scar him at all. (well, correction, his MOM didnt scar him at all)

after ians dad left, though, his side of the family still kept in touch... they gave very flimsy reasonings for his fathers absence, why he couldnt make it to holidays, why he wasnt saying all these things directly, etc. it kept things strained and tense as the family knew things were being kept from them but never got to know why. the last interaction ian ever had w his dads side of the family was on his 18th birthday, where his uncle gifted him a silver handgun with his name carved into the handle. it was a hollow attempt to connect with ian, a display of violent masculinity that ian would later use to try and take his own life.

i dont have it fully figured out what this *means* for ians character, but its something i go insane about. ians only memories of his dad are him doing stereotypical masculine dad things w him, like fishing. maybe he didnt interact w ian ass if he was his child, but if he was his son, and that improper socialization is part of the reason he hates himself- why the gun is what kills him. but... i dunno really. ians social anxiety, addiction, and general collapsing in on himself are cuz of a life time of mental illness that went unchecked until he successfully isolated himself to the point no one *could* care, not just cuz daddy give him gun.

okay! that is NOT what u asked at all but now u know it. hehehe. of course ian and rammys story is a big wip forever so excuse me for any side tangents and/or general plot points w loose ends

but! as for his actual relationships w family (ill include sister since his relationship w mom isnt rlly fleshed out yet):

he and his mom havent spoken in 6 years, nor have he and his sister. he slowly faded out of their lives when he moved away, partly out of a subconscious desire to isolate and partly due to just not having the social confidence or energy to maintain regular communication w his family. his mom is the first person he talks to when he escapes his Puter, and she's his rock in his remaining months of recovery. shes very underdeveloped as a character atm, but what is certain is she tries her hardest to understand her sons struggles and support him, offering to pay for therapy for him. ian loves his mommy lalala

ian and his sister are... dddifferent. ian also had an average relationship w his sister, but shes a lot more upfront with him when it comes to talking about how his 6 year absence effected her than their mom. their mom, while wanting her children to seek help for their respective struggles, doesnt really want to actively talk about those things with them. shes terrified of saying the wrong thing, and it doesnt help that she doesnt even have a clue what *to* say. ians sister, though, isnt afraid to tell him "hey man we fucking missed you. your absence hurt a lot because i didnt have any friends either, and i wish we couldve had eachother. jackass" post main-story they are friendly and hang out. during his time w rammy, ian does talk about his thoughts on his sister before he left, that being that shes a "crazy bitch"... family <3

#walkie talkie #ian #ask game #would u believe me if i told you i missed multiple details i wanted to share here #i typed this for like 45 minutes AHHHH #i keep fucking answering these like totally unrelated to the original question sorry guys #can u tell i love my ocs #tw suicide mention #tw suicide #suicide mention #ask 2 tag also !!

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rev3rb · 8 months

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Aah sorry I’m so late this month! I really appreciate the way this chapter explained things to us super clearly. And I was pretty spot on about how Mika and Yuu are basically the same soul. They both come from the original Yuu orb but one is Mikaela incarnated in new bodies known as our Yuichiro, and the other entered og Mikaela’s vessel. I guess it makes sense that the Yuu orb is an independent soul since it created Mikaela who is also an independent soul. Would that make our Yuu and Mika the only ppl on Earth whose souls weren’t directly made by God? And where is the Yu orb currently? Is The First still using it in his plans? Could our Mika connect back to it? Is the power of the orb why only Mika or humanity can be resurrected? Why hasn’t God gotten rid of the damn orb of darkness?!?

Anyways, I’m curious to know just how successful Guren and Ferid were with their memory search. I mean we’ve been knew that they were working together, but seeing Guren plotting in the vampire city really hammers in how much he manipulated Yuu. Poor Yuichiro really saw him as a rescuer when Guren is the one who put Mika and him in that situation :(

Side note: It’s so funny that Yuu is having an existential crisis and Mika is just like “Obviously the two of us are gonna runaway and be together 🙄 duh.” But it’s also kinda heart wrenching bc Yuu realizes that Mika is changing and I have no idea how they’re gonna deal with that.

And I'm sorry this response is late! I was all ready with thoughts but got busy.

Are they the same soul though? I didn't see it that way. They're two separate beings who have basically just swapped identities. Their souls are tied together, yes, and there's definitely some element of the Yuu orb being the one allowing at lest Mika to reincarnate. Not sure that makes them the same soul. But really, I think it leads into your later questions. Where is the Yuu orb now? Because if it's still living as a separate entity somewhere out there, I guess this wouldn't make our Mika that Yuu exactly.... but that Yuu wasn't an angel or anything like that, so how did it become human? Same way the angels did in that it just put its soul in a human body? How would Sika Madu react to that happening? Also, you point out something really interesting because yeah. I think you're right in that these two are the only ones who weren't created by God. They're both Sika Madu's creations. Huh. Lastly, you're so right. Why did God not obliterate the Yuu orb? Did God and the enforcers just not know about it? Wild.

I'm also curious about Guren and Ferid's memory search. Do they know the truth about the past? And yeah, it's sad to think about. Yuu really has just been a pawn this entire time. Then again, a ton of people in the story have. But yeah. It's a bit different here.

However, there's something I wanna point out timeline-wise about all this. Unless I'm remembering wrong, Yuu and Mika were snatched up pretty much immediately after the catastrophe happened. At the time of the catastrophe, Guren knew nothing. He was just a pawn. Krul is the one who snatched up all the kids, and the one who talked to Krul and brought her in on all the plans going on was Mahiru. Unless the timeline is being sorta retconned (entirely possible), there's no way Guren could have planned for Yuu and Mika to be in the vampire city. It'd have to be Krul and Mahiru's doing. This can still work sense since all four of them (I'm including Ferid) are working together. It would just mean that Guren wasn't involved all that much in these early plans. HOWEVER! At this point, we have no idea when those two sides joined up (Guren and Ferid vs Mahiru and Krul) and Resurrection at 19 would sorta indicate that that alliance seemingly hadn't yet fully formed since Guren's really only talked to Ferid about things.... so. Yeah, really this scene confused me a bit. I'm thinking there are minor retcons afoot, but I guess we'll see ANYWAYS this is all to say that I'm not trying to be a big "Guren did nothing wrong" voice. He's done a lot wrong, but with what we currently know of the timeline, Yuu and Mika being in the underground is probably one of the few things he isn't responsible for and is just taking advantage of instead.

It's an interesting little dilemma isn't it. It kinda feels like Yuu learning the truth about everything made him more serious on the surface, at least for a little bit. Prior to them jumping into their memories, Yuu was so "idk what we're gonna do but we'll figure it out no problem!!" and he's still like that, but his whole "if we die we're dead even if we're reincarnated" thing just felt so much more serious. The thing with his feelings about Mika changing goes along with this too. I wonder if it's something that'll persist. I kinda doubt it since Yuu's whole thing is being carefree on the surface, but I guess we'll see. Side note: They don't know how they're going to fix things any more than we do LOL

#sorry this one got long bc of all that timeline stuff #glad to see you back!#Owari no Seraph #OnS 130 spoilers #Yuuichirou Hyakuya #Mikaelas Hyakuya #Guren Ichinose #Asks #Anonysis Asks #My posts

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raayllum · 1 year

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cube hostage exchange theory from a meta standpoint is exceedingly funny to me because one of the reasons i talk about it as often as i do is because there’s just... so much to talk about regarding it? like

at this time, callum and viren are each other’s primary foils, with rayla and aaravos being each other’s primary foils. this was true even before S4, but especially afterward, with rayla and aaravos both hunting mages as prey (viren and callum respectively) and with the viren-callum parallels being ramped up, just as a quick example.

the cube glowing with the star primal, and indeed rayla having a pet monkey that’s connected to the star arcanum, just happens to show up in a big dramatic halo of moonlight moments after callum says “in darkness” but we know the cube also has negative associations so it can’t be wholly positive framing, and soren explicitly spells this out for us with rayla’s return: “now you’re back. that’s kinda good. and kinda bad.”

for s1-s3 the cube was the primary carrier of the game motif, with only one (1) mention of a game directly to aaravos. now in s4, that motif has moved from the background to being more directly and overtly connected to aaravos. rayla is the first person to call it a toy and in an episode in which we see an elf toy that is explicitly supposed to look like her.

callum’s suffocation / drowning motif was because of dark magic in s2 and then brought back in s4. rayla has always been connected with water. they almost drowned together in TTM. the “you will discover the cube’s secrets” line pans over earth and ocean only, indicating the cube’s secrets will first start to be revealed in ocean. the moon literally affects the tides

if rayla flat out refuses to kill callum no matter the stakes (“you let him live but you killed us all”) even if she frees him it still meant she put him over the world / they can’t get off completely scot free. they’ve always been very mutual (rayla saving him from sol regem in 3x01 at risk to herself / callum saving her in 3x09 at risk to himself in an even more extreme way, arguably) so callum would have to ‘repay’ that in some capacity to keep that mutuality: “i hope it was worth it to you putting everyone’s lives in danger”

the fact that rayla’s drawing and her getting the cube for him in the first place is even the reason he actually has it in show deserves to be a point on its own because like. callum could’ve found it while looking for her in the lodge. ezran could’ve nabbed it. the cube never helps them plot wise until 3x08 it could’ve even just been presented with harrow’s letter and let 2x08 do the symbolic heavy lifting with the keys like. but no. they decided it had to be 1x04, the immediate ep after the very start of the story’s main arc, and it had to be rayla.

one of callum’s core flaws is that he’s reckless in pursuit of what he wants (magic) but even more reckless when it comes to protecting the people he loves, cue: running into what he thinks is a trap in 4x01 to protect ezran, jumping off the mountain for rayla, when he thinks he has even the barest trace of saving either of them. his tales of xadia bio quote (which i originally took with a delighted grain of salt but since feels more valid given other things that have already come to pass as mentions/foreshadowing for the sow itself) is “i’m beholden to my inner circle, not some silly kingdom” and “i value those close to me more than anyone or anything” which is 👀 bc thus far the only time we’ve seen that really play out is when he bent his morals in doing dark magic and when he chose to leave with ez & rayla in 1x03 to protect the egg and his baby brother. but it hasn’t come back since and certainly not on as big a scale as the quotes indicate (more than anyone means more than any other person / people after all)

rayla and callum still have unresolved conflict and 3/4 finales (with s1 being the sole exception) have always featured a very important moment and/or turning point in their relationship. while aaravos’ release could be pushed to s6 (either early s6 or late s6) for a more traditional plot structure it makes sense for him to be released in or by the end of 5x09 so that S6 can give everyone a chance to defeat him once he’s actually out (11th hour / darkest moment failure thing) and then successfully defeat him in S7. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

like oh you watch 1x04 and it’s their first bonding moment because “you called me a mage and that felt right.” you watch 1x05 and they have multiple instances of disagreeing whether something is worth something (the cube, rayla’s bravery, the boat) with callum always believing it is. you watch 1x09 and it’s foreshadowing callum’s connection to the moon arcanum. and so on and so forth

and almost none of this is touching on theme, or the way rayla (and basically only her) is woven deftly into callum’s journey as a mage in ways that ezran or any other character firmly is not, which is an entire other can of multi layered worms. thematically, the theory has even more evidence if you start pulling on generational parallels, and patterns, etc etc.

there’s a reason this has been a theory of mine for over two years now, precisely because what started out as a simple “huh what if” thought was something i kept founding new merit for, even - or especially when - i wasn’t looking for it in the first place

it truly is just me over turning every rock i can like “maybe i’ll find an alternative down here” and instead it’s just more

#tdp #rayllum #cube hostage exchange theory #feels like my own personal occam's razor #u know that bo burnham 'fuck it's the scarecrow again' bit? yeah #me calling the game motif a year in advance #me calling the salvation vs destruction dichotomy in rayllum's relationship since s2 #me noticing the light and dark motif and thinking 'oh that's neat' and not that it would be a major part of #s4's marketing or the season's thematic makeup either #like idk if i have (or even can have) all the right pieces #nevermind the right picture #but there's Something brewing that's gotta amalgamate all this y'know?#was thinking this over bc i do have a meta about the light and dark motif and that's mostly thematic #also not per se related to the cube

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russianyoshkinaneko · 1 year

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So after finishing Bioshock i for some reason remembered Bioshock Infinite's plot and the headache it gave me (especially the Burial at Sea DLCs) all those years back, and, now that it all came back to me, i gotta put out all my thoughts about Ken Levine's multiverse of madness in a blog somewhere, or my head's gonna explode. So, here's a long long long post. tldr Elisabeth is an idiot and the endings are stupid

What we have at the ending of Infinite is basically this: (despite the existence of the Lutece twins) the multiverse came to be when Booker was faced with the choice of baptism (millions of Bookers went through & became Zacharies, millions didn't & stayed as Bookers), and in order to prevent Zachs from coming into existence Elisabeth goes back in time and eliminates Book before he gets to make a choice in the first place. Thus, all Zachs & (his floating town) Columbias no longer exist, all Books & (his daughter) Elisabeths no longer exist, and the multiverse is collapsed (bc the reason it came to be no longer exists). None of the events of the game happened, bc the key people that made those events possible don't exist now. Maybe the universe keeps on going without Books/Columbia/Liz, maybe not, but the main characters of Infinite are done. Their story's ended, as they don't even exist.

Now Burial at Sea DLC comes up and says: "Somehow, Book and Liz have returned". Ken Levine was the lead writer for Infinite and both parts of BaS, but i'm not sure if he actually saw what the final, released story was, or if he even read what he was writing. I have a feeling the devs and/or the execs simply wanted to stuff Liz into the Bioshock's city of Rapture no matter what, and they spent not so much time thinking about how instead of ever thinking about why.

What we get by the end of BaS Part1 is: this one Book/Zach who isn't supposed to exist (and his universe? and the uni of the Book whom he stole a Liz from?) still exists, and so does Liz who isn't supposed to exist either (and her Columbia's uni? and her Book's uni?), and there's also "the universe where Booker never existed" even though he now never existed anywhere in the only one uni that's left now that Book got axed from existence. Or is there a whole multiverse where Book never was? And why's the no-Book uni the one with Rapture? How's Rapture supposed to oppose the existence of Columbia, if the creations of those aren't related at all? Either way, the writers f-ed up, or it's Liz who did and the Infinite multiverse of madness actually works in a way that opposes the logic behind the ending of Infinite and destroys the whole point of it (the Lutece twins' existence proves this). Since iirc at some point Liz said that this Book/Zach is the last one and she is also the last Liz, i suppose then it's either the writers didn't read what they wrote prior or Liz is an idiot (maybe both).

BaS Part2 came up and made things more stupid. Now in Rapture there's a tear in space-time-multiverse that leads to Columbia. Somehow. Its only there so the writers could sew Bioshock's and Infinite's worlds together. Even though they don't need to be sewed together at all. The scene with Fitzroy is there because fans who didn't keep track of Infinite's plot or which uni the characters were in (can't blame them tbh) were complaining about another scene in Infinite, and the new BaS scene made Fitzroy and the Luteces more stupid. The explanation of what the Birb was wasn't needed for Infinite's plot, or at all, and neither was the whole [read in Rich Evans' mocking voice] "SEE THE BIRB IS JUST LIKE THE BIG DADDYS FROM THE FIRST BIUSHOCK ITS AAALLLLLL THE SAAAAAME". Every scene with Suchong made him more and more stupid, and the bonding scene ruins the sci-fi-horror aspect of Bioshock by going "SEE IT WASNT THE HORRID SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS AND THE UNREMOVABLE MENTAL CONDITIONING THAT MADE THOSE MUTANT GIRLS LIKE THOSE UNDEAD GHOULISH DIVERS IT WAS ACHTUALLY EEEEEMPATHYYYYYY". All the Fontaine/Atlas scenes are there just bc someone thought the antagonist character was too cunning and skillful but not enough pathetic and stupid, and decided to fix it. I thought things cannot possibly get even more stupid in every way, but then the BaS ending happened.

I'm not even too butthurt over Liz looking up "would you kindly" in the letter, at this point. It's how the BaS's (and also Infinite's) ending fits into the Infinite's concept of a multiverse. See, the Lutece "twins" being one person from different unis means there's more multiverse-creating reasons than just Booker's baptism as the Infinite's endind suggested. Thus, offing Book right before the baptism couldn't possibly erase all Books from all of existence ― simply because way too many variations of him could get infinitely varied baptisms at any other time or even just turn into Zachs for infinite number of reasons, plus the could be infinite variations of no-Booker unis that still have Columbias and that whole "cycle of violense" thing, plus all the other infinite variations of everything ― therefore, everything Elisabeth did at the end of Infinite was completely pointless and the logic behind it was flawed and stupid and the ending of Infinite makes no sense (from this perspective, at least).

And then the BaS ending is like: Liz did what she did during BaS so that, even though she couldn't save that one girl (or herself) herself, her actions make it possible for Jack to arrive to Rapture, do the whole Bioshock's plot thing and save all the children including that one girl. Even though, in Infinite, we have a multiverse of infinite possibilities. And now ― even putting aside all the unis where Jack died on the plane, or never got on the plane, etc etc ― just the choice of saving or harvesting the very first mutant-girl alone spawned millions of unis where Jack saved all the girls, millions where he harvested all the girls, and millions more where he saved some and harvested others and never touched some of the girls at all. Basically, instead of saving this one specific girl, Liz had actually put the girl in a Schrodinger's box, in which the girl is simultaneously rescued, harvested, and grew up to be a grown-girl-diver from Bioshock 2. Following Infinite's ending's logic, Liz had to go back in time and remove the event that caused the girl to end up in Rapture in the first place ― except BaS in a way confirms that we have an infinite multiverse of infinite madness where everything is possible, thus in a way Liz had infinitely saved the girl & all the other girls and had equally infinitely doomed them all in an infinite number of universes regardless of what Liz did in this one universe (bc Liz more or less freely walks through the multiverse and affects/ interacts with an infinite number of unis), and she can't do anything about it because infinite number of universes (and also bc she died).

So, to sum up, having a multiverse in your story is a dumb decision that only gives you problems. The only thing that can make this kind of story worse is adding time travel (which is a whole set of problems in and of itself) on top of a multiverse. Just don't.

Also, i know one can look at Infinite as a deconstruction and/or reconstruction of the immersive-sim genre of video games. It does make more sense to look at Infinite this way ― but BaS just doesn't fit into this reading.

#bioshock infinite

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