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justanancientfangirl · 6 months

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A bit of a rant: on Sylvie

Okay, look, as a preface: I do not hate Sylvie. I feel like I see a lot of hate for the character from a lot of people not Sylkie shippers, and I definitely do not hate her, even if the ship is something I struggle to see.

I actually like Sylvie's character a lot. She has had to struggle and fight and flee for something like a thousand years. I honestly don't begrudge her desire to stay in a quiet universe and just live a life. I want that for her, even.

Is she being a huge dick to Loki every time they interact this season? Yes. She refuses to listen to him (though he isn't being entirely straight with her either, to be fair), and she continually belittles his own choices and refuses to take responsibility for her own. She blames him and the TVA for the destruction of timelines, even though Dox's crew was, at the time, acting as a rogue element, and the issues that the timelines and TVA are currently facing are entirely her fault.

Again, I totally understand why she didn't listen to Loki at the end of season 1. It makes sense that she wouldn't want trust anything that He Who Remains had to say, and it makes sense that she wouldn't trust Loki at all. She barely knows him, and she's been alone her entire life. She doesn't really remember her life before the TVA ruined it. She has no friends, no allies. So yes, it was foolish of her to not stop and think for like ten seconds, but killing He Who Remains had been her ultimate goal for centuries. Of course she was going to do it.

HOWEVER. Because she killed He Who Remains, the multiverse is in danger. And just because I understand her inability to accept responsibility for her actions, does not mean I condone it. The lady is incredibly emotionally stunted. Of course she doesn't know how to take responsibility. She's been blaming other people for her problems her entire life (and most of that was 100% justified). To stop doing so now, when she hasn't had a chance to learn, would be bad writing.

I am all for a good character arc and a redemption story. Loki's himself has been...a little rushed. And they haven't touched on the trauma that was his time Before New York at all since that like, thirty seconds in season 1. Sure, he mentions NY a little flippantly here in season 2, but we all know that was just a way to get Mobius to talk. Point is, they have set Sylvie up for a good character arc, and kind of fast tracked Loki's without actually talking about some of the things I'm most interested in, but...eh, whatever. I can rant about that another time.

What I don't understand though, is Sylkie shippers. Like...number one, are we watching the same show? Season 1 seemed to have some unrequited pining going on, on Loki's side, especially before Loki and Mobius made up, but Sylvie has never shown any interest in Loki beyond that of a tentative ally. And really, there's no reason she should. When would Sylvie have had time, ever in her life, to think of romance beyond, possibly, an errant daydream? And this season, it really seems like she can hardly stand him.

Every time they interact, she lashes out, she tries to hurt him. She has told him, unequivocally, to leave her alone, multiple times. She listened to him say that he feared being alone most of all, and then she left him (I assume she has a tab at that bar, otherwise who the hell paid for those shots, and also, I've never met a bartender who would hear 'two bourbons' and just pour shots immediately, if it isn't a common order for that patron, but that's yet another rant for another day).

Like, she just seems to be going out of her way to be cruel, to drag him down, to blame him for everything, and to paint him as the bad guy. Sure, he wants to have his friends back, and maybe that IS selfish, but he ALSO wants to save the TVA because he believes that will save the multiverse, and that isn't, but she knows that once she pokes any holes in the story he's concocted for himself, he's only going to dwell on the bad side. Which he does. Her goal, I assume, is to get him out of her hair and leave her alone. She doesn't want to be involved with all this TVA stuff anymore. And...yeah, fair enough, except that the multiverse is actively disintegrating. Which is at least...oh, 45% her fault. (I'll grant that most of the fault lies on the heads of the old TVA, He Who Remains and Ravonna. And maybe like 3% Loki's fault. Everyone can take somewhat a share of the blame, but she really was trying to do the most. And she is the only one of our 'heroes' who hasn't taken any responsibility for the problems now facing the multiverse).

Look, I have shipped Loki with almost every single character he has had screen time with, if the story is well written enough for it to make sense. I've even read a Sylkie story that I actually managed to really get behind. (It took place before season 2, the premise being that in their fight at the Citadel, there was an accident and they ended up in Westview during the events of Wandavision, and were paired as a husband/wife duo for the show. It made sense, and there was enough of a build of their relationship that I was like...yeah, sure).

The writers of this show have NOT done their due diligence to make Sylkie make sense. In season 1, I could see that he might have a thing for her. But I never saw that being reciprocated.

Sylvie needs friends, she needs to learn how to trust, she needs stability, and she needs to figure out who she is as a person when she isn't on the run. She does NOT need a romance. A romance at this stage would be incredibly bad for her, really, if we give a shit about a fictional character's mental health.

I like Sylvie as a character. I think her arc has been interesting, but she is definitely still in the middle of it, and it is nowhere near resolved. I can't see a single instance in the show where she showed a romantic interest in Loki. (And...what, she kissed him? That was only to get him distracted enough to kick him out a time door so she could kill He Who Remains).

If this season ends with Sylkie endgame, I will have honestly lost faith in Marvel's ability to write a good story entirely. If they want the two of them to be together, they have to write them together. They have to actually be a team, not just constantly bickering (or in this season, Loki begging for her help and her telling him to stuff it). She only comes to help because her own universe gets shredded, not because she wanted to help Loki or save the other universes. She would not be good for him, at least not right now. That relationship would be hella toxic. Has she ever done anything for him? Just for him, not because he was useful to her in some way?

Look, TL;DR, I like Sylvie as a character and I want to see her grow and thrive, but Sylkie makes no sense and if they go that route this season it is bad writing. MCU has always been bad at romance and character development, but this would take the cake.

#loki #loki season 2 #spoilers #sylkie #anti sylkie #pro sylvie #rant #mcu #just show me where she ever once cared about Loki #where she acted in HIS best interest #why do people think she'd be good for him?

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dawngen · 1 year

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having finished reading the first warrior cats arc (bear with me i don't have a dedicated wc blog so im gonna ramble about it HERE!!!), i am amazed by how like, spottedleaf and firestar REALLY had nothing going on. i thought maybe memory failed to recall any intimate moments signaling a budding romance, but no, firestar was a young cat who had an intense infatuation circling around the pretty medicine cat he liked simply for the following things:

pretty.

smells nice.

acts nice.

spottedleaf was the equivalent of a very nice nurse at your local hospital you TOTALLY think is into you but in reality is just trying to do her job while remaining kind and cordial, while firestar was a hormonal teenager who didn't know the difference between love and infatuation.

there is obviously also some author bias (i refuse to look into that bcuz i'll get mad and want to shake the erins) in wanting the ~perfect forbidden/never-meant-to-be romance~ but i have, at this point, written a whole dialogue in my head rewriting this.

i want firestar, on the cusp of sandstorm giving birth to leafpool and squirrelflight, to have a dream of spottedleaf. so that instead of damning leafpool to walk in the shadow of his first crush (and make sandstorm always look at her daughter knowing her mate still thinks of his first crush over her?? his actual mate???? who returned his feelings????? also i do not believe she was named after leafstar lmao that's a cover-up), spottedleaf gently speaks to him to do otherwise.

i want him to have an open dialogue with her, one that is painful but full of firm truth, spoken gently but with the conviction that he must let her go. spottedleaf cared for all of her clanmates, but firestar was no special exception in extra-special feelings. he felt what he thought was love for her, and this feeling is valid and understandable, but he cannot be passing down the burden of his what-if grief to his children and unto his mate. even if she had lived, they would not have become mates. even if he had confessed, she would have refused to break the code.

instead of searching for her in every dream, forcing himself to sleep in hopes of catching a glimpse of what is long gone, he should be fixed on the present, cherishing what he has, and acknowledging that the relationship he had with spottedleaf was a fantasy conjured from the limited snippets of interactions they had before she died.

also i petition for leafpool to be renamed goldenpool. i simply think it'd be neat if she was a golden tabby, the perfect cross between sandstorm and firestar's coats, and a representation of firestar moving forward and letting her walk her own path, versus thrusting her from birth onward into the shadows of other cats.

ok rant over <3

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masterthespianduchovny · 3 years

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Tell me more about how Stuckies are wrong in the What if and why Steve and Bucky aren't romantic, please, I need some sense on my dash.

For starters: assume any analysis I conduct will take CA: TFA into account.

Okay, so I rewatched "What If..." and Steve and Bucky's relationship is one of best friends with brotherly elements. Yet, they aren't as close or as inseparable as believed.

This isn't to say they didn't care about each other or weren't close at all. However, when you look at their interactions pre serum Steve and compare it to post serum Steve, it's remarkably different.

Bucky acts like a big brother of sorts to Steve who is looking out for a little brother who is always getting into shit. Stuckies like to frame it as if they have this incredibly close relationship since the beginning, but it's not in the way that they like to frame it. These two weren't inseparable or it was just them, and then everyone else. And this is important to note because of how Stuckies talk about Steve and Bucky's relationship as well as how they talk about Peggy and her relationship relationship with Steve.

Steve and Bucky became close due to war, which tends to bond many people who are in the same unit together. Although Bucky cared for Steve he didn't necessarily respect him. As a friend, but not as a man. (Peggy respected him as a person)

It took Steve taking the super serum and saving Bucky for Bucky to respect Steve as a man and his convictions. It took him being saved to recognize that this was what Steve stood for when he was Skinny!Steve, which is why he was proud of him. But he didn't appreciate these values and convictions until his ass was on the line.

When Bucky is on the date (with the girlS bc he probably went home with both or hooked up with both. lol) he checks in on Steve, but he's focused on his date. Steve is, for all intents and purposes, a fourth wheel. When Bucky realizes that Steve has wandered off, he finds him and tries to talk sense into him, but again, as a big brother type/good friend.

Hell, even Steve is indifferent to Bucky's behavior because this is his friend and someone he cares about, but his world didn't revolve around Bucky nor was there any indication that his feelings went deeper than that (knowingly or otherwise).

However, Steve was concerned about Bucky because Bucky was his best friend and family. Steve literally had no one else outside of Bucky. Both of his parents were dead and he literally had no other family. He not only grew up with Bucky, he stayed with him for a bit as well.

This isn't to say that romantic feelings couldn't have ever developed, however, Steve was concerned about a friend/brother not the fact that he could be losing someone he had feelings for.

Steve cared about keeping his remaining family (and teether to the past) alive when he's saving Bucky. Again, some may see this as romantic and maybe Steve and Bucky don't realize their queer identities at the same. However consider this, as true as this might be, society overemphasizes romantic love as being the most important and significant (even when it comes to grieving). We trivialize and diminish platonic love and grief. We say that it can't be as powerful or as devastating as romantic love.

The only reason Steve would want to save Bucky was if he was in love with him and not because that was his best friend/brother. Never mind the fact that Steve wagered half of the universe to save Vision (and failed), that he refused to kill Tony despite Tony trying to kill Bucky, that Steve literally risked his life to save every Sokovian citizen on the rock than let one die. That Steve went on the run for his beliefs even before Civil War.

People position it as if Steve and Bucky can't function without each other when we literally see Steve function just fine without Bucky. He just refuses to let someone he care about die or others get harmed in the process while trying to take on Bucky. Steve even willingly took Bucky in to be arrested with no issue whatsoever. Bucky and Steve lived separate lives while either was on the run or in hiding.

"Will you ever get to What if???"

I said in another post that even if Peggy and Steve shared similar scenes as Steve and Bucky, the beat is different because the context is different.

Bucky started respected Steve as a man because of the serum, which made him appreciate Skinny Steve. Steve already respected Peggy as a person pre serum and said her outside finally matched her inside (as in others were now seeing what he's already seen).

When Bucky is encouraging others to cheer for Steve, it's a way of him finally giving Steve validation for his conviction to fight in the war. When Steve is encouraging others to cheer for Peggy, it's him wanting others to see what he's always see in her and also to have people respect Peggy. Steve was genuinely proud of her.

People mention the bar scene, but I believe these are totally two different things. 1. Steve and Bucky don't have a monopoly on bar conversations. 2. It's normal for people who are in the army and fighting wars to go drink. 3. Steve and Bucky's conversation is a very different context and feel. Again, Bucky is validating who Steve was before the serum and assuaging his fears--being a good friend.

Peggy and Steve are just grabbing drinks and he listens to her talk about how people treat her due to being Captain Carter now. Steve is happy for her, but feels down about himself. They both show admiration for each other before almost kissing.

How are these scenes the "same" thing? Or that Bucky and Steve's scene now has a romantic subtext because Steve and Peggy's does? The context between both are different. As mentioned before, Steve and Peggy were already established as to having feelings for one another.

Peggy literally trains alongside Steve while he's is in physical therapy and regularly did so before Howard made her the suit and shield.

Let's talk about CA: TFA and how Bucky was trying to flirt with Peggy as she and Steve eye fucked. And then he said, "I now feel invisible like you." Yes, please tell me more about how this is a reflection of Bucky's feelings for Steve and not his dismay of not being the center of female attention.

Every scene, repurposed Steve and Bucky scenes or not, are tinged with romantic subtext between Steve and Peggy. These two are sooooo into each and they could barely contain themselves. They're so supportive of one another and genuinely believe in each other. And the live action or the animated versions of thee characters felt that way before the serum.

Although I do believe that Bucky would've had more of a reaction when Steve was "blown up", other than that, his interactions with Steve was on brand. That's his friend and he's proud of him, but Bucky wasn't on Steve's ass. He's his own person who exists outside of Steve. Bucky actually behaved like he did before he was shipped off to war--just doing him.

Although Bucky respected Steve more in the Hydra Stomper suit, it wasn't the same as when Steve got the serum. His buddy had a nice gadget, but he was still Skinny Steve--he just now had a way to be on the battlefield despite his medical concerns.

Like, please point of where the romance is here?

#anon mail #anti stucky #what if spoilers #anon is this good enough #lol

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nowis-scales · 3 years

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Headcanons for Hinoka’s Birthday

Of the royal siblings, I find that I see the least love for Hinoka. Given the overall structuring of the story and everything, I can see why that came to be, but... well, to be honest, I still find that I find I love her more and more every day. So! Here are a set of headcanons for the pegasus princess’s birthday. Hopefully someone will find joy in them!

• The common belief among most is that Ryoma is the tough nut to crack when it comes to people dating their siblings. This is blatantly wrong — it’s Hinoka. Sure, he cares to some degree, but nobody cares like Hinoka does. She is very protective of her siblings and insists that their partners treat them like the wonderful people they are. The first couple weeks of the relationship will feel like a soft probation whenever Hinoka is around. She might even set Kaze up on a mission to just check in every once in awhile to ensure the relationship is going well. She definitely tries not to be too invasive, lest she upset her siblings, but she wants to know for certain that their partners are good for them. It’s also worth noting that this is not reserved for Takumi and Sakura. Those who date Corrin, Azura, and even Ryoma will get this treatment. Hell, if you show interest in Setsuna, she might act the same! It’s quite a journey to get her blessing, but once you have it, she’ll treat you like you’re part of her family too.

• The least picky eater in like... all of Hoshido. As I mentioned in a previous headcanon post, the one thing she doesn’t really like to eat is roe. Everything else is pretty much fair game. Of the Hoshidans, she is the most willing to try Nohrian foods. Scarlet even managed to convince her to try the Chevois delicacy that is escargot. Pretty much everyone else at the table was horrified, but she admitted that with a little seasoning, they didn’t taste half bad. Some credit her poor cooking ability to her weird ability to eat most things, but nobody’s sure whether or not that’s true.

• If you’re ever having a rough night and want to sleep in her bed with her, she honestly might let you. Between Ryoma who was terrified of sleeping alone after Cheve, Takumi who suffers from night terrors, Azura who mutters and cries in her sleep, and Sakura who fears being attacked during the night by either ghosts or Nohrians... Hinoka has learned to enjoy the presence of others when she’s sleeping. Her siblings can just crawl into her bed and snuggle up at any time, and she’ll accept them without even opening her eyes. I imagine Elise probably ended up in her bed once by accident, looking for Camilla in the dark but snuggling up with Hinoka instead. Hinoka was very confused upon waking up to discover that she was not, in fact, cuddling with Sakura.

• When it comes to alcohol, Hinoka is a mega lightweight, but she’s also ferociously in denial about it. She will talk herself up and even participate in drinking contests, but she’s really not able to handle much before she begins stumbling all over and slurring her words. The end result of her trying to keep up with everyone else is usually having her siblings or retainers help her back to her room while she tries not to throw up or fall over. It’s just not good for her all around, but everyone else finds it a bit funny.

• If there is one comment she hates hearing more than anything, it’s when she gets angry or embarrassed, and someone says that her face is turning as red as her hair. If she’s already angry and you say that to her, I would run if I were you. If she had a list of pet peeves, hearing that comment would be at the top of the list. Seriously, just why?

• The “haha Hinoka doesn’t have big boobs” jokes is prevalent in fandom, just as it always is when a character’s breasts are sized anything other than a middling cup size. In the anthology comics, I believe they even reference this with Hinoka envying Camilla’s chest... but to be honest, I actually get the feeling she doesn’t. Maybe she might have as a young teenager, but as an adult, I think she probably grew comfortable with her chest size. She finds it easier to fight without having to worry about extra support, so when people tease her about it, she just kind of shrugs her shoulders and makes some remark. Doesn’t really matter to her either way, she just wishes she could find some way to help her friends like Camilla be more comfortable!

• At 21 years old, she still maintains that one of her simultaneously proudest and most embarrassing moments on earth was when she punched her cousin in the face. Now, Hinoka’s not a punch without reason kind of girl. If she’s going to hit, it’s going to be with purpose. She also, like all of the Hoshidan siblings, does not care for most of her cousins. This cousin, Hikaru, happened to be one she particularly could not stand due to his horrible attitude and superiority complex. In this case, the purpose behind her hit was knocking the snot out of her awful cousin, who had cornered Azura and threatened to hurt her. Considering that Hinoka had never once liked him, she had no qualms with hitting him right in the kisser. She probably might have kept going after him too, but was promptly stopped by Mikoto and Ryoma trying to pull her away from him. She admits that she could have controlled her temper better, but she also admits that it was totally worth it.

• There is absolutely this impression among the people of Hoshido that the royals are so cool and perfect, but Hinoka will tell you herself she was an awkward teenager. Growing up a princess meant she still had responsibilities, even with her battle training, so she found herself really caught between the two impressions she was giving off. Couple that with the fact that she had an awkward puberty like so many of us do, complete with lanky body and acne, and she’d admit that she came out of her cocoon as a beautiful butterfly. She was still pretty cool even when she was a self-proclaimed caterpillar, though. She was just also still figuring herself out.

• The people around her are fairly positive that she stopped being a crybaby a long time ago, right? They’re not exactly correct. In fact, Hinoka is still quite prone to bursting into tears. She simply has a better grasp on her crying reflex than she did when she was a girl, so when she needs to cry, she will often hold it in until she’s private and can finally let the tears release. Of course, there are times when she refuses to hold back, such as in Birthright when they locate Takumi after him having been missing. Some things just call for tears more than others, you know? In those moments, she tries to not be as ashamed of them as she might be otherwise.

• I’ve mentioned before that my interpretation of Ikona doesn’t really have her as the best mom. She was resentful of her husband and to an extent her children, but would often grow to love them quickly upon interacting more. Even so, she had a tendency to play favourites. Protective and obedient of her beloved mother, Ikona favoured Hinoka a bit more than the others. It was actually her influence that built some of Hinoka’s negative behaviour towards Mikoto, for her mother would convince her that it was acceptable to treat her in such a way because she was trying to “get rid of” Ikona. Looking back on the relationship between herself and her mother now, Hinoka does not regard it as exceptionally healthy... but still feels a little guilty about how much she secretly misses her.

#I have some of these from back in April for Sakura's birthday that I forgot to post too!#I'll have to try and remember to put those up at some point.#fire emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #fe hinoka #fire emblem hinoka #feel free to block if I am annoying you :)

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neverendingdream111 · 3 years

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GENSHIN IMPACT AS IDOLS

- one of the groups consists of: Zhongli, Childe, Venti, Xiao, Diluc, Kaeya and Albedo

- Zhongli is the leader and the oldest obvsly and his smooth deep voice is to die for

- He's also the visual along with Albedo (tho everyone here is gorgeous, ngl)

- Childe constantly switches between rap and vocal, but he's mostly recognized for his amazing dancing (he's the main dancer for a reason)

- Venti is the main vocal and possibly writes most of their songs (sometimes Albedo helps him)

- Funnily enough, Venti is often confused for being the maknae while in reality he's the second oldest in the group

- Xiao is the main rapper

- He refuses to sing but would do it if asked (rarely)

- and he's the real maknae - even tho he hates it he can't do anything about it (and everyone, especially Venti and Childe, loves teasing him for it)

- Diluc and Kaeya are the other rappers along with Xiao and they are related in some way tho both refuse to reveal anything to the public (but everyone is convinced they're brothers)

- they don't get along most of the time and argue constantly, but it only amuses the rest of the members and the fans absolutely love their arguments bc it more often than not turns into a rap battle

- and let me tell you, they completely kill it

- then, we have Albedo. He and Zhongli are the most peaceful ones and most likely keep the team together bc if not those idiots would've caused absolute chaos eons ago

- His voice is angelic, everyone adores it

- Childe and Kaeya are the most chaotic duo especially together

- they have the stupidest ideas and like to mess around

- and they are perfectly aware of their god-like looks and also have the audacity to use it "against" their fans (not that anyone complains)

- they are partners in crime when it comes to teasing Diluc

- Kaeya does it on a daily basis and Childe found it funny and decided to join him on causing inconvenience to others, lol

- Xiao, even though he's an idol, hates interacting with humans but makes an exception for fanmeetings, concerts, interviews and such because Zhongli raised him right--

- he has a soft spot for cats and would have one at the dorm if it wasn't for Venti being allergic to them (although he doesn't see any problem with it)

- speaking of the dorm, it's the pure definition of destruction

- Childe and Kaeya being the little shits they are room together and they are that kind of roommates that would blast music on full volume in the middle of the night just because they felt like it (but obvsly they do it to summon a demon in the form of sleep deprived Diluc because they know he's a light sleeper)

- Venti at some point moved in with them bc he felt like it and it's totally not because Xiao kicked him out--

- Zhongli and Diluc share a room because they both know how to appreciate a moment of peace and they just like each other's company; their perfect afternoon on their day off is sitting there with a cup of tea each and exchanging stories they've heard and/or experienced

- Albedo is probably the only person Xiao would room with excluding Zhongli (and maybe Diluc but it's debatable) because he's calm and collected, doesn't talk too much unlike the other three and when he does talk it's nice to listen to him

- also, the sound of sketching calms him down

- Venti somehow lives in all of the rooms in the dorm. First he roomed with Xiao and Albedo, but he got kicked out by the maknae. Then he gravitated towards Zhongli and Diluc but after a few days the redhead got so annoyed with him he ended up with Childe and Kaeya. The three of them share a braincell, that's why they get along so well, but even though he lives with them he sometimes ends up in the other rooms but that's just him

- he likes a change of scenery, ehe

- Zhongli's the dad of the group

- whenever someone has a problem they automatically go to him

- also, even though they are a really chaotic group, they are equally capable of working together (main reason why they are so goddamn awesome on stage)

- Xiao might act like he doesn't care but he does. A lot

- every time one of his hyungs is having a bad day he subtly tries to cheer them up. He feels awkward with words in these moments and physical contact isn't really his forte but instead he does things like buying them their favorite snack, or opting to watch their favorite film with them (even if he absolutely hates it he still would watch it)

- everyone obvsly knows what he's doing and they appreciate it

- Childe and Kaeya actually aren't as easy-going as they like to appear on stage. They are really emotional human beings and are probably most affected by hate comments and such

- Diluc, as much as he despises their attitude and teasing he has to endure bc of them, cares about them a lot and usually he's the one to knock some sense in them when they believe the haters or just have a bad day. He may not like their behavior but he's not heartless and deems them as family (even tho he wouldn't admit it)

- Albedo isn't a lot older than Xiao, maybe something around a few months, so everyone thinks of him like a second maknae and just because he gives off the vibe, y'know

- He loves drawing and sometimes does a sketch of one of the members or recreates a fanart of them he saw on Pinterest (cue to the fans going wild)

- He, alongside with Diluc, often cooks for them. They both are amazing cooks and I refuse to believe otherwise

- Venti has a playlist prepared for every occasion and uses them accordingly

- he also has playlists dedicated to every member of the group and it's his way of cheering them up or being there for them when they are separated

- as for the run episodes, well.... It can be described in one word

- chaos

- they're even capable of riling Zhongli up!

- tho he mostly opts to watch the chaos from the sidelines, snickering under his breath, he ends up in the crossfire from time to time

- contrary to popular belief, the most competitive ones are Diluc and Xiao

- they are so set on winning they sometimes forget that it's all a game

- Childe once got an elbow to the face in one episode but still no one knows who did it (it was Kaeya--)

- Albedo is just... There, tho he does enjoy it. More than he would admit

- Childe and Kaeya are dying of laughter most of the time and do stupid things that probably only they understand which makes the other laugh harder

- and Venti absolutely loves being the host: it gives him a perfect view of his friends who half the time have no idea what the hell is going on and, of course, power

- the fanmeetings are just the other excuse for them to make fun of each other and fool around

- fans don't mind it one bit because it is honestly hilarious to watch the utter chaos unfold

- even when they are signing albums and merch they throw comments here and there to provoke the other

- especially Xiao bc he's a softie when it comes to their fans and as long as the girls don't do anything... Weird, he doesn't mind interacting with them and sometimes finds himself actually enjoying the contact

- while we're on the fanmeetings--

- Zhongli is absolutely wonderful. He's the kind to delicately hold your hand, look into you eyes and smile softly while focusing entirely on you and what you have to say, indulging into conversation as well

- if it wasn't for the staff members reminding him that the time's up, he would spend at least an hour with every fan

- Childe is so excited he grins so much his cheeks hurt, and would look at you like you just made his day. You can be stuttering, super nervous and anxious and he'd just say it's completely fine and that you should take your time, even if the staff says that you should move to the next member

- Venti is the one that talks a lot, but would shut up and listen to you. He especially likes playing with your hands or just some games like rock-paper-scissors

- he also loves it when some fans show him their singing and he encourages them to go on, synchronizing with them and making an amazing duet

- Xiao is, like I've said before, a big softie. He really appreciates the fact that people find their music nice and genuinely like to listen to it. Would probably ask you questions like "what's your favorite song?", "What do you think of this album *gestures to the one he just signed*" etc

- he DID wear cat ears once because a fan gave them to him and they looked kind of cute

- he didn't hear the end of it for two weeks minimum and Childe and Kaeya probably have the pic as their wallpapers

- Diluc is the most... normal one? I mean, he enjoys the meetings a lot, but he doesn't show his excitement as much as the others. Conversations with him are like talking to an old friend that understands you and it's just so... wholesome

- he's honestly surprised when he gets gifts from the fans. He does appreciate it of course, but he just doesn't really understand why you would go as far as to give him something for no particular reason please give him lots of love he needs it-

- Kaeya is the one with the audacity to flirt with you. Loves seeing the blush on your cheeks and just enjoys annoying people. Though he sometimes stops it out of mercy and opts to talk with you like a normal human being--

- most protective of their fans. Sees one in distress or being picked on, immediatly steps in or tells a staff member to handle the situation

- Albedo is somewhere between Zhongli and Diluc's behaviour tbh. He's really sweet, loves talking to the fans and gets super excited whenever one of them shows him a fanart - especially if it's an original idea

- now let's get to the best part

- as lovely and peaceful as they are on a daily basis, they turn into freakin devils on stage

- kind grandpa with a calming voice? Who's that? A goddamn satan entered the chat

- ooooh, the cat lover? Sorry, we only have a mf demon available

- don't even get me started on the Childe-Kaeya-Diluc trio--

- all in all, they may be annoying each other night and day but they still love one another like family and their bond only strengthens when they stand in the spotlight

I had this idea today and, well, it turned out like this, hope you enjoyed! I also may be doing some sort of continuation to this with Xingqiu, Chongyun, Razor and Bennett as a trainee idol group so let me know if you'd like something like this and if you have any ideas for other groups!

02.05.21

~Nana

#genshin impact #genshin impact hcs #zhongli #childe #xiao #venti #diluc #Kaeya #Albedo #genshin impact as idols #idol boygroup

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ready-to-obeyme · 4 years

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[OM!] Relationship Alphabet (Lucifer/Reader)

Relationship Alphabet

I feel like I went a little overboard with this (it’s 7 pages) and all the hc’s, but let’s just say this is my official love letter to Luci and leave it at that.

Lucifer

A- Activity (What is their favorite activity to do with you.)

Slow dancing with you-- in the dark, in front of the fireplace, during the rain; just a quiet moment together.

I already HC’d that he knows all types of dances, so he’ll sweep you up on your feet with waltzes and ballroom dances and make you swoon into his arms with tangos and salsas. But sometimes the best part of dancing is holding you close to his chest and just being with you. I believe with all my heart that Lucifer is a man who’s softly in love, and being able to share his favorite past time with you is one of his best ways to show you he loves you.

B- Beginnings (How do they act in the beginning of a relationship)

Considering the fact that you’re a human surrounded by demons, Lucifer would act very protective of you in the beginning of your relationship-- even more so because the last thing he would ever want is for you to get hurt. He takes full responsibility for your physical well-being, though that does get overbearing until you tell him to lay it off and assure him that you’ll take precautions. He’s gone through many hardships to protect the people he loves, and you are no different.

He’d be more hesitant with public displays of affection, though that’s not to say he’s not affectionate towards you at all. Instead, his love is shown through lingering touches and lingering gazes-- and he makes up for any lost touches by showering you with love in private quarters. He just needs to get used to being in a relationship-- and being in love: shifting his priorities to other things besides his responsibilities for others and onto growing and finally doing something that was inherently just for himself.

C- Communication (Are they good communicators? How do they normally talk about their problems or solve issues)

Ummm HAHAHA

Communication has always been hard for Lucifer. Perhaps not as much when he was still an archangel, but it definitely started when he started going against his Father’s wishes, if anywhere. (I mean, holding in his resentment and anger is what created Satan, so…) His responsibility as the eldest brother, the one who led his brothers to their literal downfall, and his vow to serve Diavolo all contributed to Lucifer’s incapability to voice his concerns to his brothers. When you came down to Devildom, you quite literally forced him to communicate, realizing that he had his family-- and you-- who were there for him no matter what. It’s a work in progress, but Lucifer finds himself being able to confide in you for things he normally would have kept to himself, including your input in decisions, especially if those decisions involve you.

D- Drunk (What are they like when they’re drunk)

Much more relaxed than he would be sober-- which makes sense since alcohol does take away your inhibitions. As a result, he relaxes and is actually quite talkative, his words less controlled, more free and flowing. The type to whisper more “I love you’s” and other words of affection toward you when drunk, which is something he trusts you to keep a secret between you and him. Only you get to see this softer side of him!

E- Emergency (How are they in emergency situations? You get hurt, they get hurt, someone is dying etc..)

Lucifer tries to make sure that you’re okay and that everything is resolved. Calm on the outside but his mind is racing-- especially when someone he cares for is hurt. Acts very composed most of the time.

If you somehow get hurt, he's downright ruthless. How dare they lay a finger on you? They'll regret their mistake for the rest of their life if he can help it.

He's cold and calculative if he needs to be, almost extremely so in emergency situations that are dire, but that may just be a defense mechanism because he feels so strongly about protecting those he loves and prides himself in being reliable and efficient. Reacts quickly and makes decisions without hesitation, sometimes even disregarding his own feelings in the moment.

F- Free Spot (I’ll give you any headcanon I come up with)

Giving up control is the ultimate sign that Lucifer loves you and that he trusts you. (cough sub!Lucifer)

Lovely tenor voice that should be put to use more often!! (in more ways than one 😌)

The type of person who pretends to not be ticklish, but is actually pretty ticklish. He just acts nonchalant long enough for other people to drop it (but you know better)

On the sleepy mornings you call him your morningstar, his heart does a flip and he just looks at you lovingly

G- Gifts (What kind of gifts do they give? What kind of gifts do they get?)

Lucifer gets you gifts whenever he sees something that he think you’d like or gifts that-- when you go out shopping together-- catches your eyes. It always ends up little trinkets-- you wouldn’t know how to react otherwise if he consistently bought you bigger, more expensive gifts otherwise. He’s more subtle with his gifts, preferring to learn what you like and provide you with things. Definitely has Acts of Services and Quality Time as his top love languages.

Appreciates any gift of yours because it shows you were thinking of him in parts of your daily life. Makes him very soft tbh, knowing that he’s in your thoughts.

H- Hugs (How do they show affection/cuddle)

More of a private person for affection, but loves to cuddle when he has the chance-- or rather, when you manage to convince him to take a break. Adores being big spoon, slightly unused to being small spoon and stubbornly refuses to admit that he absolutely melts under your ministrations. The man’s not used to being adored-- idolized and respected, yes-- but the way you love him makes him feel like things will be okay.

I- Irritation (What is something that irritates them? How do they show their irritation?)

Lucifer absolutely abhors seeing unfinished work on his desk, which is why he spends countless nights trying to complete it all and also why he's so annoyed at his brothers for being loud and disruptive. He's trying to work here! (If he was a gamer, he'd definitely be a completionist. The achievement compels him.) And like in-game, has no hesitation to tell his brothers to be quiet or get tied upside down, and the threat usually works because he always follows through.

If you make him irritated for some reason, I don't think Lucifer would hesitate to ask you to stop. He doesn't really want to be mad at you, and he trusts you to understand his plight as much as you know he'd do his best to be considerate of your feelings.

J- Jackpot (How would they spend their winnings if they won the lottery?)

FINALLY paying off Mammon’s debts… at a price that Mammon will pay for the rest of his life. (rip Mammon)

Would also like to take you on a trip somewhere together. Depending on whether you want to go to a particular place or not, you can decide the destination. If you have no preference, he’d honestly just pick a quiet place to be, perhaps near the sea, so the both of you can relax in each others’ presence. He's the type to be okay staying in bed with you the entire week, but if you want to explore or sightsee, he'll research for places with you.

K- Kryptonite (What is their ultimate weakness?)

Online shopping--

Family has always been his kryptonite. He’s willing to give up his pride-- as an Archangel and as the right hand man of Diavolo-- for his brothers: both when he declared war on the Celestial Realm for Lilith and when he lied to Diavolo about Belphie’s dissent. Now that he considers you family, there is very little he would do to make you happy.

L- Laughter (What makes them laugh?)

I actually don't think it's hard to make him laugh. A lot of your antics with Levi and Mammon are actually really amusing-- until they affect his work. But I think the man finds amusement in a lot of his daily life, considering how spontaneous Diavolo and Barbatos are. Lucifer is always naturally soft for his brothers, so just any good times with them (without trouble) is bound to make him throw his head and laugh. He always has a good time teasing his brothers when he can and seeing you interact with them.

Also, the audacity of some lower class demons that try to challenge him or hurt you makes him laugh too. Just not in a joyous way. Definitely has the fake, sadistic laughter before he maims someone.

M- Morning ( How do they wake up in the morning? Are they a morning person or a morning grouch?)

“Good morning. *yawns* Sorry, I’m not much of a morning demon.”

A grouch. A complete and total sleepy head. Constantly pulls all-nighters and conks out when he gets to bed and struggles really badly to get himself out of it. Lucifer has to really push himself to get out of the covers some days. And when you're in bed with him, even WORSE. Cuddles you till the last possible minute-- but he would never actually let the two of you be late for anything. It's kinda cute how not of a morning person he is.

Make a cup of coffee for him in the morning and he'll groggily wake up and try to convince you to come back to bed with him.

N- Needy (When do they feel particularly needy? How do they show it?)

"I would like to be able to talk to you more. Is that selfish of me?"

Lucifer doesn't always request for your affection or time, but when he does it blows you out of the water every time. When he feels needy varies. Sometimes it just hits him in the middle of the day when he's doing work or when he feels like he hasn't had a lot of time to be with you lately. He doesn't make it a habit of needing you, but he becomes more explicit when he does want you, though he's not really specific on how he wants you most of the time.

He probably calls you out of the blue sometimes just to ask you how your day was so he can hear your voice. If you're in the room with him while he's working, he might tell you to come here and you would just let him quietly hug your torso-- but please do sweep your hand through his hand during this time.

For sexual needs, on the other hand, he's pretty straightforward because at the end of the day, he's still a smooth talker when he knows what he wants. Especially if you're shy about it, he'll be even more inclined to be honest about his desire, teasing you and luring you in.

O- Oasis (Where is their happy place? Where would they go if they didn’t have anything holding them back?)

The human realm.

I think loving you is the most selfish thing he could do because it is one of the only things he has done just for himself. If Lucifer were to truly decide something for himself without having to think about the wellbeing of others, he would choose to live in the human realm with you.

P- Pain (How do they handle pain? How do they handle when you are in pain?)

You know those typical anime protagonists that get hurt, pretend to be okay until everyone is safe, and people only find out they're hurt when they collapse?

Yeah, that's Lucifer. Dramatic and prideful af

He used to handle pain on his own until he had you to confide in and convince him to talk to others for help.

When you're in pain, depending on the severity, would find the solution to your pain or try ways to alleviate it. If you had a physical injury, would lowkey fuss over you and make sure you're cared for and have everything you need. If it's something serious, Lucifer does his best to show that everything is alright, though you know he's worried beyond comfort.

Q- Quote (What’s a quote that fits them and your relationship)

“I will love you until the stars go out and the tides no longer turn.”

“Let us flip the coin and see. Head, I am yours. Tail, you are mine. So, we won’t lose.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride.” - Pablo Neruda

R- Reunion (How do they celebrate seeing you after a long time of being apart)

With horny juice

jk love the new chapters <333

Lucifer tries not to monopolize your time at first, because he knows how much his brothers missed you as well. But, god, he'd pine over you the entire day if he could, shooting you glances and turning back, smiling and just overall generally happy that he can see you face to face.

He's missed you so much and he's just glad you're back with them, and he's confident in your relationship with him to know that he'll have his time eventually. It's that or he'll sweep you away from the brothers at night if they keep on hogging your attention.

S- Stress (What stresses them out? How do deal with stress and how do they relieve it?)

Watching his brothers get into trouble is the best way to get his blood pressure rising. He usually deals with it by yelling at them even as he deals with it. (The man needs a break.)

Most of the time, Lucifer is pretty composed. He lives under a state of stress all the time considering the workload he always has, so it's not that big of a deal for him.

T- Terror (What are they afraid of?)

Lucifer's worst fear is to have you become afraid of him. The last thing he would ever want is to do is something that scares you, so he controls himself as best as he can (considering he hasn't done the best at that before). He becomes more aware of his anger and aggression when in front of you, and is keen on absolutely never showing aggression towards you again. There shouldn't be anything the two of you can't talk through anymore and he wants to keep it that way.

I don't think he can imagine anything worse than to reach out to you only to have you flinch back and cower because you're afraid he'll do something to you. It honestly would break his heart.

U- Unique (What is a quirk that is unique to them?)

As an archangel-- a seraph, Lucifer had three sets of wings, which was reduced to two, perhaps due to Satan's birth or perhaps due to his falling. Regardless, his demon form, reminiscent of his Celestial Realm days, on better days, reminds him that he is powerful-- though it pains him still. On the worst days, he hates who he has become. Not to say he regrets falling, giving up his life in the Celestial Realm for his family or fighting for what he believes in, but his demon form reminds him of what he has lost and how he has failed.

You adore his demon form, despite it all, or perhaps you love his form regardless because it represents his love for family, his loyalty, his dedication to something-- or someone. He will never admit it, but having you run your hands through his wings or brush your hand against his horns lovingly is something that makes him fall apart in your arms, on his most vulnerable days. He may have become a demon, but your hands make him feel like that doesn't matter as much. Makes him feel personally invested to see that the three realms are united, if it means he can be with you.

In short, Lucifer is unused to body worship, especially in his demon form but you help him remember to love himself.

V- Violence (Do they fight a lot? Are they a good fighter? What is their fighting style?)

Your man's not eldest brother and Avatar of Pride for nothin', baby.

Probably hasn't fought as much since the end of the Celestial War, but he still knows how to very well. His style of fighting is lethal and quick, much like how he thinks. Fighting is just the means to an end, whether it's for something he believes in or to dish out punishment. Though, it depends on his opponent-- Lucifer can definitely toy with someone he thinks is beneath him, probably a lower class demon who thinks he's hot shit. He is, afterall, still sadistic.

W- Wow (What do you do that really surprises them? What do you do that they really like?)

Lucifer is surprised at the easy affection you provide him. It just seems to come naturally for you to lace your fingers with his on the way back to the House of Lamentation or wrap your arms around him and perch your head on his shoulders as he works. He gets an odd feeling in his chest every time you trace lines onto his back when your in bed together or when you play with his fingers like they're something to be admired. He basks in the way you love him-- like it's simple and easy. He craves your touch, even if he doesn't realize it himself.

What surprises him, and also lowkey scares him, is how surprisingly confrontational you can be when it matters. How brave you are, standing up for or against someone else, even if that someone else was him. It's something that he admires in you, though it worries him nonetheless-- so he'll be there to back you up if you ever need it in the future. His little firecracker.

X- (Explicit headcanon. For all you degenerates)

(///∇///) nsfw

Prefers masturbating in the shower, hand against the wall as the water cascades down his body. Cleaner that way, and if he moans, there's less chance someone will overhear him.

Loves to have and see you fall apart under his touch: Edging, overstimulation, hearing you beg and call his name (his sadistic side really showing though rn), watching you as you orgasm. Lucifer can be rough for sure but what he really wants you to do is tell him what you want so he can do it even better. Kind of smug of his skills tbh LOVES seeing you blush.

On the other hand, a gentle and sensual lover who gives. Also enjoys receiving, burying his hand into your hair as you give him a blowjob. And maybe if you like it, he’ll pull on your hair too.

Y- Yucky (Is there something that grosses them out so badly that they can’t deal with it?)

I don't know why but I feel like Lucifer absolutely hates moldy food in the fridge. shdjskdksksk It would never happen with Beel around, but something about the texture, look, color unsettles him. There's no mess he can't clean or deal with, but he does make a face at it. Honestly, his brothers make such a mess everyday and he's seen so much bloodshed that is there really anything he's fazed by?

Z- ZZZ’s (What are their sleeping habits? Both with and without you)

Sleep is for the weak.

Can go days without sleeping the mad lad, and he often has to with his workload. When Lucifer does sleep, he sleeps like the dead. Not to say he doesn't move when he sleeps, because he does shift and use the entirety of his bed, but because very little can wake him up if he's truly tired. Belphie probably gets it from him tbh

When you're in his life, his sleep schedule becomes more of a regular thing, mainly because it's hard for him to resist you when you ask him to come to bed to you. Falls asleep cuddling you and wakes up with you in his arms. If you manage to roll away in your sleep, he eventually finds a way to snake his arms around your waist.

If you ever mention this to him, he might actually get embarrassed because he's not exactly in control of what he does when he's asleep-- and the fact he seeks you out when unconscious is very telling. Don't tease him too much or he'll never stop tickling you.

#obey me lucifer #obey me! lucifer #shall we date? obey me!#obey me headcanons #relationship alphabet #obey me!#aaaaaaaaaaaaa #(///∇///)

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wither-rose-circus · 3 years

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DSMP Watcher AU

I admittedly don’t know much about watcher lore (and most of what’s in this au is just bullshit I came up with) but I’ve been kicking around this idea for a while

Basically, every server/seed/world has a particular watcher that looks after it and controls who can enter. They can see potential futures and physically look through the eyes of other players. It is generally frowned upon for watchers to directly interact with their players, but it is not prohibited.

There also exists the Listeners, which are to the Nether what Watchers are to the End. They are able to hear the voices beyond (viewers) and the sounds of potential futures. They can also hear players’ thoughts at will.

With that out of the way, here’s the lineup:

Dream: The Watcher that resides over the smp. He has total control of everything that goes on within his domain and can glimps at potential futures based on the actions of his players. Watchers typically use this ability to keep players safe, but Dream has never really played by the rules

George, Sapnap, and (later) Punz: Dream’s chosen Disciples. They keep him updated on events in the server and in return for their loyalty, he grants them special protection and knowledge.

Badboyhalo: A former Watcher himself, Bad became very attached to his first player, Skeppy. When Skeppy died and moved on to his next dream, Bad couldn’t cope, and instead abandoned his world and his status as Watcher to follow Skeppy through his dreams. He now acts as a sort of guardian angel to Skeppy and otherwise remains generally neutral to any happenings in the smp, though he has since taken it upon himself to look after the more neutral members of the smp as well due to a natural inclination to look after players and a fear of Dream’s abilities.

Skeppy: A perfectly mortal player who has no idea he has been followed through his past dreams for generations, as he cannot remember them. He seems to have unprecedented luck when it comes to avoiding danger, though.

Philza: A very old Watcher. Phil has had several worlds that have thrived and died, which has left him with two biological children. Said children only being half Watcher, they do not have any worlds of their own, and instead travel through others as they please. When he realized how horribly things were going on the smp, he tried to enter only for Dream to deny him. It took a great amount of effort for Phil to break down Dream’s worldboarder, and doing so has cost him his status as a proper Watcher.

Wilbur and Tommy: Biological sons of Philza. While they possess the immortal souls of Watchers*, they do not possess immortal bodies. As a result, they experience physical aging as any other player would, and typically proceed through dreams together. However, once they have entered a world as physical players, they cannot leave until they die, only their souls can travel between worlds. They are capable of looking into the future and other’s eyes, but it takes a much greater amount of energy and focus, which can be very draining if used too often.

* (This is why Ghostbur exists but Ghostschlatt does not. Ghostbur is Wilbur’s immortal soul, which has refused to move on for unapparent reasons.)

Technoblade: Philza’s adopted son and one of the few remaining Listeners. Techno was found by Phil as a small child and has been raised as his son. It is unknown why Techno was abandoned and he tries not to think about it. As a Listener, Techno is capable of hearing the Voices Beyond, which often instruct him to kill.

Tubbo: Totally mortal and totally unaware of his adoptive family’s bloodline. Tubbo was a natural born player of the smp and was unofficially adopted by Philza when Tommy simply brought him home one day. He is as completely oblivious to their presences as any other player.

Fundy: 1/4 Watcher and completely unaware of it. Wilbur never told Fundy about his bloodline, and thus he has no idea what he is capable of. Fundy cannot intentionally look into the future but he is capable of having short “visions” of potential outcomes, which he believes are stress-induced hallucinations. Only Wilbur, Tommy, and the other Watchers are aware of what Fundy is, which is why Dream has taken special interest in him.

Ranboo: Due to his End heritage, Ranboo is currently the only mortal player capable of detecting the presence of a Watcher, whether that be physical proximity or using players to see. While he cannot detect what Techno is, he and Tommy are in somewhat of a stalemate, as he is trying to subtly get Tommy to admit what he is.

All other players are completely mortal with no particularly special abilities

#mcyt #dream smp #dream smp au #watcher au #dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #sapnap #punz #badboyhalo #skeppy #philza #wilbur soot #tommyinnit #technoblade #tubbo #fundy #ranboo

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anonymouslyangsty · 3 years

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Continuation of the “what if the Ishimaru scandal didn’t happen” idea because, per usual, @Cat-but-bread brought up good points. How would the change affect the Ishimondo bromance? What if the scandal did happen, just later on in Taka’s life?

Read more because my reply was so long I just decided to make another post.

It would definitely affect the Taka Mondo bromance. Taka is still his usual rule following self, but he isn’t a hall monitor or part of the morals committee. Which means that, while he’s probably kinda bossy INSIDE the classroom (he’s a TOTAL teacher’s pet), he likely isn’t going to be confronting kids anywhere else. Plus, he’s way more laid back about rules in this AU, since it’s not his job to deal with that.

That all means that Mondo and Taka wouldn’t have nearly as many fights, since Taka would have fewer reasons to tell him to behave. And that appears like a good thing for their relationship on surface level. But really, would they have become friends if they hadn’t been constantly at each other's necks?

At face value, Taka and Mondo are wildly different people. Rule follower vs rule breaker, orderly vs chaotic. If these differences didn’t force them to constantly butt heads, would they have ever seen their mutual passion and determination? Likely not. Without that aggression, their relationship would’ve just been lukewarm dislike, with Taka seeing Mondo as just another delinquent, and Mondo seeing him as another egotistical boot licker.

The class gap would also make things a tad harder, since Taka’s freaking rich in this AU. Mondo probably sees him as the “slightly nicer, but way more annoying Togami”

That being said, I can still see these two being friends. But we, again, need to force them together to achieve that, because they wouldn’t interact much otherwise. Since Taka’s the Ultimate Tutor in this au, I can totally see him trying to help Mondo’s grades (probably at the request of a teacher, because there’s no way Mondo asks for help).

Which would be...frustrating for both parties. And I can see that frustration leading to a sauna fight.

As for this AU messing with the parallels between Taka and Mondo...yeah it does. Taka wouldn’t have that same need to prove himself he has in canon since his family name isn’t soiled. He also wouldn’t have faced the same struggles to prove himself as good despite his grandfather

On the contrary, Taka would benefit from his grandfather’s legacy. Even if kids don’t really like him much personally, everyone’s going to be hesitant to be terribly mean to the grandson of the prime minister. People would judge him based on his family, just like in canon. That means people assume Taka’s good and smart because his grandfather is seen as such. Having a good family name can go a long way.

So even if Taka isn’t the smartest, or the most charming, people are going to assume he is. Which could lead to Taka having a bit of an imposter syndrome situation where he feels like he has to live up to the expectations placed onto him. Like he has to pretend to be as smart as his grandfather.

Which...could make up for the broken parallel. Mondo feels like a fraud because he lied about what happened with Daiya, and thus acts hyper masculine to hide that guilt. Perhaps Taka tries to appear smarter than he is and studies constantly to seem like he’s not a disappointment to the Ishimaru name.

And it’s not as if this Taka doesn’t have to work hard. I’m a firm believer that Taka isn’t naturally academically gifted whatsoever. To get into HP as the Ultimate Tutor, he’d still have to do so much studying. So hard work would still be an important part of who he is.

The fact that he doesn’t have the genius grudge would actually work to his disadvantage in this situation, because it means he doesn’t have the same appreciation for hard work. He might look down on himself somewhat for needing to work so hard to understand what comes easily for others.

That feeling only gets worse when you see how wildly successful his grandfather was. How does he live up to that legacy? Especially when he has to work so hard just to be a good student. Perhaps that’s why he became a tutor, because he knows how it feels not to understand things as quickly as others.

Both here and in canon, Taka uses his grandfather as a measure of his own success. In canon, he has to surpass his grandfather without falling into the same corruption he did. “I have to surpass lazy geniuses! I have to prove that I’m moral in all things!”

For this Taka, Toranosuke is something to live up to rather than surpass, because he wouldn’t see the flaws in the man. “I have to live up to the Ishimaru name! I can’t be some blot on our legacy!”

So yeah. I think the change does mess with the Ishimondo parallel, but it makes a different parallel in the process. Both are struggling to live up to the legacy of someone they perceive as much better than them. Both to some degree put on a facade of strength (hyper masculinity and genius respectively) to appear that they live up to those expectations.

Now the idea of the scandal still happening, but happening later is...very interesting. I’d say it happens in HP, which means that Toranosuke Ishimaru is probably retired or getting close to doing so (he died a few years before Taka got into HP in canon, but stress and lack of money for medical assistance probably contributed to that, so he’s still alive and kicking in this situation)

It’s definitely worse for Taka if the scandal happens later. Because here, Toranosuke is a role model, someone to live up to rather than surpass. To learn that someone you’ve looked up to your entire life is a fraud, a liar...that’s a lot.

Canon Taka had the benefit of learning of his grandfather’s treachery earlier on, before the idolization of the man could become a core motivation for his behavior. Along with that, he grew up with the scandal, and thus the infamy of the Ishimaru name.

Tutor Taka would be having his entire world uprooted before him. Suddenly the name Ishimaru is a mark of shame. Suddenly his grandfather isn’t someone to respect, but someone to hate. Suddenly the comforts he was used to, having time to spend with his father, having enough money to do what he wants, is gone.

Taka is not the type of person to handle change easily, so it would be a massive shock to him. And suddenly he’d have to deal with the side eyes of the peers that he likely didn’t call friends, but sure were on friendly terms with. Now people are wondering if he even deserves to be in HP, or if his grandfather bought him his ultimate.

Not to mention that Taka would have to actively deal with the situation, not just the fallout of it. Like the news would be releasing every day on the situation, with everything getting worse each time he turns on the television. Imagine the press hounding him on what's going on, suddenly trying to vilify him because of what is happening with his grandfather. He’s no longer the ‘bright up and coming Ishimaru” but someone who benefited from corruption.

He’d absolutely defend his grandfather. He would refuse to believe that he would do something like that, because Taka always saw him as such a perfect man. But once the evidence becomes irrefutable, when Taka can no longer deny that his grandfather’s corrupt...I can see him clamming up like he did after trial 2 for a while. In both situations, his perception of someone close to him was ruthlessly forced to change.

It’s a bad time all in all. Taka would be losing so many support systems at once. The general trust of the school population, his idolization of his grandfather, his father’s ability to regularly spend time with him. Suddenly people don’t trust him as much, he’s constantly being hounded by reporters.

#taka #kiyotaka ishimaru #Danganronpa #mondo owada #an ask tag

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

Note

Do you think the technology/internet/broad access revolution we are in will change things for POC, queer people, racism, etc?

I think it's obvious that it already has? If you're asking whether technology/social media will change things re: marginalised people for the better, the jury is still out, and we're at a critical tipping point (both in America, but also worldwide) as to whether empirical reality, critical nuance, and acceptance of facts that don't fit your preferred worldview are going to have any continuing relevance to our political and social systems whatsoever. The internet has done a lot of good things, but the instant social media became a place where a) competing ideological narratives and outright fake news were all treated as equally valid, as long as it drove traffic and made money, and b) the owners of these platforms absolved their duty to control them with a shrug of "free speech," we were destined to go down this path, where we all inhabit custom-made information universes where we only ever interact with like-minded people, any critique becomes a sign of insufficient loyalty to The Cause, and collective civic responsibility no longer exists, but is instead replaced by downright sociopathic ultra-libertarian selfishness packaged as "individual freedom." (Just witness how some people have behaved during Covid, refusing even the slightest restrictions, even if making sacrifices would help save other, less fortunate people.) Not to sound like a grumpy old woman, but I think the impact on the real world was truly devastating and, in the short term at least, genuinely irreparable.

The internet has done us the service of connecting and empowering marginalised people who would never have met each other otherwise, providing the entirety of human knowledge at the touch of a button, raising visibility, and so forth. However, we are at an absolute crisis point of whether we're going to let people behave, act, legislate (and try to legislate for others) according to their preferred Facebook feed-version of reality, because see again: the monetization of information, no matter what kind of information, was always going to lead to this. We are just now realizing the devastating consequences of large segments of society walking around in their own personal universes and simply rejecting tenets of empirical reality that do not conform to their own ideology. The problem is, when a lot of people (on both the extreme right and the extreme left) live in lulu-land because of what they consume online, it inevitably affects everyone else. Social media makes it incredibly and poisonously easy to enter an entire information ecosystem that reinforces itself, therefore self-justifying itself in an entire universe of total bullshit, and once people get into that echo chamber, it is very hard (albeit not impossible) to get out.

So, you say. This all sounds awfully pessimistic. What would I do about it? Well, this is the part where I have to say that while I have ideas, and they're things I try to do for myself, it's not anything I can pull off alone. I have talked at length about how the humanities (and their attendant critical thinking skills) have been repeatedly, deliberately, and extensively devalued in late capitalism, precisely because they a) don't generate Production For The Machine and b) encourage people to ask awkward questions about power and control. As long as people aren't explicitly taught how to push back on this stuff, or aren't able to reject something -- even if it fits with their Ideology -- because it isn't true, we're going to be stuck in this mess. I'm not optimistic that legislative efforts against Big Tech will have any effect. I'm glad that at least we saw, however completely terrible it was/is, the stark result of alternate-universe grievance politics on January 6, and in the conservative media loudmouths dogpiling on the Covid vaccine as an attempted way to hurt those liberal sissies who believe in science. It's no coincidence that the states with the lowest vaccination rates are deep-red Trump-supporting southern states. It's only now, as the pandemic resurges in those exact places, that (once more out of expediency) the conservative "news" is finally, tepidly endorsing the idea that huh, maybe you should get vaccinated.

Anyway. The relentless monetization of social media at the expense of any kind of moderation for hate speech, the encouragement that you can post anything you want and never face any consequences Because Free Speech, and the way that we have all seen the vast and horrifically ugly prejudices that the social media universe has both exposed and cultivated anew... it's all pretty much a giant shitburger, if you ask me. I don't know how to quickly fix it. It's way too easy to exist in a bubble, to horrifically bully strangers you will never meet, and to have real and terribly detrimental consequences on our offline lives as a result. The internet obviously isn't going away, but if we don't seriously grapple with the kind of anti-citizens it's made us, I'm not sure what's going to happen, or if it's anything we should want.

I would like to think that we will slowly learn to use this awesome power more responsibly, and reverse some of the incredible damage that has been done, but if that does happen, it'll come when we've already hit rock bottom. Again, it has done good things: the worldwide protests after George Floyd's death, for example, would have been completely impossible without modern technology, in any number of ways. But if it's going to be a concrete social good for all of us, let alone the most vulnerable among us, we have so very far to go, and the global systems in place have absolutely no interest in enabling a reversal of the current trends. So. We will see, but I'm not too hopeful.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

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shini--chan · 4 years

Note

What if there was a smart yandere with a smart s/o? Yandere 2p japan with a smart country s/o?

Alrighty, here we go.

Yandere 2p! Japan x Smart! Reader

If anything, Kuro will be elated. It would make your relationship with him all the more exciting and you extremely intriguing. It would start off as an elaborate cat-and-mouse game after he got to know you a little past the surface level. Japan isn’t a social person; he is a hunter that studies is prey. Slowly he’d determine your strengths and weaknesses. Once he gets to know you beyond further than your skin-deep public persona, the hunt shall commence.

A shin sheen of sweat, Kuro sprinted down the convoluted streets and allies of the city, one eye on the way before him, and the other glued to his smart phone. Keenly, he was following the red dot that represented you.

You were moving, and you were moving fast.

Really, at this point he had minor difficulties keeping up with you. Erratic as a deer you were moving patternless through the settlement. It was utterly unpredictable that the afternoon would escalate to this and it made his blood rush with the thrill of the chase.

This was supposed to just be another stalking opportunity, but with all of the fuss you were kicking up he even entertained the notion of confronting you. Maybe even spiriting you away with him.

The obnoxious red dot finally stopped in a back alley. A slight frown decorating his otherwise still face, Japan felt his suspicious welling up again. It nagged at him, even when he slowed down to measure each footstep so that is was featherlight.

Cautiously he poked his head around the corner, fully expecting to see you. Instead, there was just a mangy mutt, sniffing at some rubbish cans.

Confused, Kuro looked at his device again. You should be here, but you weren’t.

Then, he noticed an all to familiar tracked tucked into a plastic bag that was fastened to the shaggy collar of the dog.

How dare you make him such a fool!

You will also view it was a sort of game. To you, he’ll be so cute with his utter confidence. Sure, you would view him as intelligent, a worthy adversary in a way. However, in the end, he’d just be another means to test your mettle. Firmly, you’d believe as long as you wouldn’t let your guard down to far that he’d never stand a chance of besting you since you are simply smarter than him. Oh, false pride comes before the downfall. Your hubris could very well be the end of you.

“As impulsive as always, Kuro”, you slyly remarked upon his arrival. The wind whipped at your hair and drove a healthy flush to your cheeks. It also ignited a wildfire in your eyes. You looked positively daunting and his breath hitched at the thought of capturing and taming something as wild as you.

It could be now, where he had you cornered. Carelessly, you were standing on the edge of a cliff face with the gales sending up spray from the ocean. It was a long drop and he knew that you wouldn’t risk it.

He inclined his head ever so slightly in greeting and stated: “A very good morning to you, (f/n).”

You tilted your head to the side, like a curious fox. He was acting strange, but then again, that was typical of Kuro. It was likely that he thought he could spirt you away and was just maintaining the veneer of civility as not to scare you. Like how you should move slowly before you pounce on a rabbit.

“Normally, I would say likewise. However, I can’t say how much of a good morning it is for you. I won’t wish you one to begin with”, you replied. You could either play his game of manners and thwart him when the time came, or you could refuse to play along and still ruin his day. Selective as you were, you chose the latter.

His monotone, stoic face didn’t so much as flinch, rather he bothered on injecting a minuscule amount of emotion in his voice: “Why not, I came all this way to talk to you and then you treat me like this.” Annoyed, he clinked his tongue.

With an amused grin that totally didn’t fit your disposition you answered in mock-hurt: “Why, you ask? Because you come here to ambush a poor, defenceless nation like me in a place where I just wish to have my peace and quiet. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

At that, he shook his head in a condescending manner. “Nobody is defenceless as long as they have their wits”, he said steadily as he approached you.

Deftly, you grabbed him by the collar and swivelled so that your vice-like grasp was the only thing preventing him from toppling and smattering on the rocks below.

“Then you’ll know better then to view me as your plaything”, you snarled.

Unfazed, he grasped your wrists to steady himself. “Jumping to assumptions as always, pet. I came here with the full intent of having a conversation with you in a place where your rage wouldn’t spike.”

“They aren’t assumptions since you’ve stated your motives clearly enough.”

“Apparently not clearly enough since you’re evidently misconstruing the situation. You are overeating”, he calmly countered. While everything hadn’t gone as he had predicted there was still a way to salvage the situation, even if it was through blank-faced lies.

“And whose fault would that be. Tell me, what exactly is stopping me from letting you go? Some of my problems would be temporarily solved that way.”

Bold as he was, he laid one hand on your cheek in a weirdly affectionate manner. “Because of international relations, dearest. You don’t want to cause a scandal in this age of peace, do you?”

You snorted. International relations more often than not turned sour and ended in blood and tears. Yet he was right, and you loathed him for it. Begrudgingly, you twisted him around again so that he had actual, stable ground under his feet.

“I’ve had enough of you today”, you snap at him and then went down the winding path back home. A mistake on your behalf to turn your back on him.

Just as you want to call over his shoulder that he should also consider his own words and leave you he, Kuro pounced.

However, he also isn’t infallible and would be bound to stumble over his own feet. While he will adore your smarts and how you make your life more exciting, it would also frustrate him endlessly that you continuously slip through his fingers like water. And in his frustration and anger, he would make mistakes.

In the end, it really waters down to a battle of wits between you two. Kuro will try to wrap you around his finger or catch you and you will do your best to evade him while laying traps of your own. He may try to forge a strong political alliance between you two, maybe with that even going as far as an arranged marriage, while you will attempt to maintain all your strong ties and still be independent. Just know that Kuro isn’t the sort that gives up. If anything, you thwarting his attempts to capture or also woo you would just pour more oil in the fire. Should you be really desperate to be rid of him, then the best option would be to completely disappear of his radar until he has attained some semblance of acceptance and tranquillity. And even then, to also interact with him as little as possible.

#yandere hetalia #yandere 2p japan #yandere 2p hetalia #yandere x reader #x reader #2p hetalia #smart!reader #hcs

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cosmicjoke · 3 years

Text

Okay, I gotta talk a little about chapter 65 of AoT, and really some of the themes being put forth in general in this chapter. This is probably gonna be totally incoherent, because these are some big brain concepts that largely go over my head, I’ll be real, haha. But I’ll do my best.

I want to focus on Kenny’s conversation with his Grandfather, because it’s here that we get into some of the more broad ranging and world relevant themes of SnK, particularly dealing with issues of racism, xenophobia, isolationism, and concepts of homogeneity.

Kenny’s Grandfather talks about how the Monarchy doesn’t hate the Ackerman’s, but rather fears them, because they can’t be controlled. Because the Ackerman’s, along with very few other bloodlines that somehow ended up behind the walls, are all of different races than the majority bloodline, meaning, of course, the Eldians. And because of this, the power of the Titans doesn’t work on them. The Monarchy then comes to think of these other bloodlines as threats to the peace it’s attempted to cultivate among the people behind the wall, because their memories aren’t able to be wiped. So they end up using threats of violence, death, intimidation, and the like, in order to get these bloodlines to comply with their demands and keep quiet about what they know about the truth of the world and human history. Most bloodlines end up complying under duress, but the only two that don’t are the Ackerman’s and the Asians. They rebel and refuse, the Ackerman’s in particular giving up their position as the sword and shield of the Royal Government. Until the head of the Ackerman clan decides to not pass down any of his generations knowledge to their children, and offers himself up for execution in an attempt to protect the Ackerman’s from being purged. His efforts end up being in vain, though, as the Royal Government still finds itself unable to tolerate a group of people it can’t control, and thus the persecution of the Ackerman’s continues, until they’re driven to the fringes of society, forced to into desperation and poverty.

What’s really interesting about this is how it reflects so many real life situations throughout human history, and where concepts of tribalism and nationalism and isolationism come from. It’s usually because some governing power wants to control its population, its citizenship, and they do this by cutting them off from outside influences, indoctrinating them into a certain belief system and way of thinking. We see this, for example, in countries today like China and North Korea. This all is represented in AoT through the erasure of human history outside the walls, and the altering of historical texts to push the narrative that all record of human history older than 100 years has been lost. The ruling government, in this case, has forced generation after generation to be taught that humanity simply doesn’t EXIST outside the walls, thus stomping out any hope or ambition to get outside those walls, and interact with the outside world. If there’s nothing there to find, then why bother? Of course, it’s an imperfect system, given it’s essentially impossible to quell human curiosity and, as another prominent theme in SnK, the desire for freedom, to be able to choose for oneself and have agency over your own destiny, etc... Not only does the Royal Government employ these false teachings as a way of controlling the populace, but of course, also, the threat of the Titans beyond the wall. If the “reality” that there’s nothing left of humanity out there isn’t enough to stop the more curious and skeptical among the population, then the threat of a horrific and painful death should do the trick.

If you study any sort of regime throughout human history that utilizes terror as a means of control, one thing they often do is get rid of the smart people first. They cull intellectuals, artists, philosophers, etc... They kill them or censor them so that they can’t influence or impact the general populace with rebellious notions, or instigate in people any ideas that their government might not be treating them right. They want there to be no contention, no differential in thought, no real ideas or any sort of chance for clashes among groups. They want everyone to look, act, think and feel the same, because when that’s the case, fewer quarrels arise, fewer tensions, fewer instances of rebellion, fewer cases of people clashing with one another, for various reasons, which can lead to critical thinking and ideas forming, to thought patterns and beliefs being challenged. They want everyone to just sit quietly and not THINK. They also, often, will target minority groups, and cast them into a kind of scapegoat role, a target for the general populace to aim their grievances at, to blame all their problems on, directing their unhappiness away from the true source of their woes, that being the government itself. This is something we often see throughout human history. One of the most prominent and tragic examples is the Jews in Nazi Germany. Jews were, at first, skewered and debased through propaganda, painting them as the enemy of Germans, the great source of all of Germany’s plights and woes, essentially working the populace up into a frenzy of extreme feelings of bias and prejudice against them, before that escalated into gathering up and forcing them into cut off ghettos, away from the general population, before it took a much darker turn still, wherein they were gathered up and sent to death camps to be exterminated.

Within the world of AoT, the same thing happens to groups like the Ackerman’s and Asians, and whatever other, unnamed minority groups exist behind the walls. They’re persecuted, badmouthed, hunted and threatened into compliance, their ability to do business and make money, thus make a living, cut off and blocked. Pushed into a corner until they eventually start to die out.

It’s really fascinating, and brilliantly depicted by Isyama, how the Monarchy’s self-delusion leads them to believe they’re preserving peace and prosperity for the homogeneous population by hunting down and terrorizing groups of minority bloodlines and ethnicity’s and races, creating for these subsets of people a world and a life of endless suffering, and blinding themselves to their own, tyrannical exercise of power over a large population. Of course this sort of thing also leads to greed and a lust for power, a need for ever more control, ever more expansion of that power, which in turn leads to the very thing the Monarchy here claims to want to prevent, which is war. Even if the Royal Government, and the Monarchy, and the King, started out with somewhat noble intentions, it eventually morphs into a twisted and persistently corrupting power play.

There’s also the theme here of scapegoating an entire group of people, and holding them accountable for sins they themselves did not commit. We see in Historia’s memories of Frieda, and how she would at times begin acting like another person, how she became vitriolic and almost violent in telling Historia that she can “never cross the fence”, proclaiming that they’re all “sinners” and thus need to be punished by being imprisoned. This is where the original King’s philosophy begins to become deeply problematic and dangerous. In order to control the population, he’s forced each inheritor of the world’s memories to also inherit his philosophy, forcing each heir to labor under the belief that the Eldian’s are somehow responsible for the atrocities committed by their ancestors, and thus should continue to pay for them, even though not a single person at this point living behind the walls was even yet born when those atrocities were committed. The danger here is in the possibility of those people being held accountable for things they didn’t do, realizing the injustice of that, and in turn, growing angry and resentful for being made to suffer for crimes they didn’t commit. This in turn leads to a desire to hit back, to fight, to defend themselves, etc... This same scenario plays out on a smaller scale with the Ackerman’s, with the future generations of Ackerman children continuing to be hunted and persecuted, despite none of them having any knowledge whatsoever of the history of humanity or the world. It’s all a vicious cycle.

Further, this kind of attempt to play God, by dictating to an entire group of otherwise uninvolved people what they do and don’t deserve, and in turn deciding for them that they should be punished for things they did not do, is morally bankrupt. Deciding, in general, for an entire population, how they should be allowed to live is also morally bankrupt. And this exposes the Royal Government and Monarchy as corrupt, among about a million other things in story. Essentially, it’s a condemnation against the concept of any, one person having absolute power. That never ends well, for anyone.

Well, anyway, I’m just rambling at this point, lol. It’s just really fascinating and amazing how Isyama weaves all of these deep themes into his story, I think, and forces the reader to really think about these kinds of things.

Also, I missed the fight between Levi and Kenny! I’m glad they added that to the anime, haha.

I also noticed how Historia might have had an unintentional impact on what Eren later decides he has to do. She keeps going on and on here about being an “enemy of humanity” and wanting to “destroy everything”. And while Historia clearly doesn’t actually mean what she’s saying, and is only acting out in her frustration and anger at her douchebag of a father trying to manipulate her into sacrificing herself for his delusions of grandeur, what she also says to Eren about her “being humanity’s enemy, but Eren being her FRIEND.” is clear foreshadowing of what Eren later decides is his best and only course, to do whatever it takes to protect his friends, including killing the rest of humanity. This probably also ties into Eren’s choice to not reveal what he learns from his father’s memories, in an attempt to protect Historia. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet, so I’ll come back around to it later maybe.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin

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rpbetter · 3 years

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So I’ve been watching this stuff with Raven and everyone else involved, and now I see that you and some others are apparently accusing the mods of that vent blog of being involved? All because they’re seemingly choosing to stay out of it? News flash: I’ve been following that blog for years and them deleting some submissions is nothing new. The more asks they post about this, the more drama it brings to their blog and then it spreads to their followers. No one is obliged to be part of someone else’s fights or fix their problems.

You’re demanding that a third party get involved in drama that has nothing to do with them and side with you. From where I’m standing, it seems like they can’t win. If they say something that isn’t what you guys wanna hear then they’re accused of taking sides. If they don’t say anything, then they’re accused of taking sides or even BEING Raven. Is there anything that they could do in this situation that wouldn’t result in them getting utterly ripped to shreds by one side or the other? Given the behavior I’ve witnessed from both sides of this drama I’m not exactly surprised they’d want to steer clear.

Newflash, I've also been following that blog for years! I stopped so much as looking at it because I couldn't tolerate seeing the shit show constantly going on with drama mod this one is disturbingly reflective of to myself and others. Totally an alright position to take.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

When you're a mod, no, you honestly cannot do anything right sometimes, that's part of why it's an undertaking that isn't for everyone, but since you asked:

Like I've said, and have two more drafts sitting around with exactly this sort of thing in them, there are absolutely things they could have done that would have been the responsible choice. You do realize that they did, maybe still do, there have been changes, have in their rules that the blog was absolutely not to be used as a callout source, and this action would result in being blocked? Since you've been there for years as well?

That included, specifically stated in those rules, taking this off of the blog into one's own space to do so. And again, it would result in blocking.

Fine, don't interact with it anymore, but apply your rules. It's a questionable but personal choice to pick what topics you're going to allow to keep going regardless of the on-blog drama they cause within the parameters of the rules you've set forth, choosing to not act in your position as the moderator is different.

The choice was made to renege on those rules in this case. An actual, unabashedly obvious, in the fucking URL, callout blog was allowed to reblog posts, engage with the comments, in its capacity as a callout blog. Do you see how that was wildly inappropriate not to address as a mod?

Raven outted themselves, took it off-blog in a reblog, to continuing an already present callout situation and start further shit. Do you see how that was wildly inappropriate not to address as a mod?

Even if those rules did not exist, it should have been blocked the second that mod saw them. You cannot run a place like that blog in any other way than keeping it the safest feeling environment possible, otherwise, you end up with this situation. The situation in which your blog has just been used as a callout resource, is the epicenter of excessive bullshit that has negatively impacted the RPC and will continue to for some time, and is no longer being engaged with out of fear, distrust, and anger.

It's not unreasonable that this is a really poor look to choose to allow this drama to continue without taking any action at all, excepting selectively delete submissions regarding it. You get how that could make people feel a little more suspicious when they've been given cause to feel that way anyway? I mean, the blog turned out to be the open source for callouts and harassment it has claimed to be non-supportive and intolerant of. A state that is necessary to maintain on a blog that runs entirely on people getting things out of their systems - that is always going to incite a desire for callouts and bullying. This isn't the first time, it's just the first time it turned into this. It's critical that this not be allowed to happen.

It did happen, and we yet again, got a piss poor response from someone in a position of responsibility. One that included super cool, super weird threats, too!

Listen, I am big on people appreciating others who give their additional time to providing and/or maintaining extra things for this community. That does not mean that every choice they make is great, forgivable, without suspicion. Respect mods because they're giving their time =/= everything every mod does is without reproach =/= extreme, unreasonable expectations.

If I cleaned your room or apartment for free for you out of the goodness of my heart or because I'm just really into cleaning or both, would that make you totally cool with the fact that I knocked over a lit candle and burned half your shit up? I was giving you something of benefit at no cost, but you'd have every right to be kind of pissed off at me for that. It doesn't make anyone some kind of infallible saint, people absolutely can take issue with them, and not handling it properly at any point outside of what they don't want to deal with is a valid issue to take.

We're all aware that the blog does not publish all submissions, in fact, that's been a problem in the past when people felt like there was some significant bias going on. It's an inherent risk of this kind of moderating. After all, no one but the mod(s) is going to see what is in that inbox, we have to believe that they're following their own rules and acting honestly, impartially. When the actions taken by the mod do not exactly sell this, no shit, people are going to have problems.

Again, what do/did I want them to do?

Follow. Their. Rules. Be transparent. Not give people reason for this kind of suspicion and additionally bent feelings. Accept the reality, like a lot of people interacting with every blog but mine seem to have difficulty with as well, that they've accepted a position of responsibility and need to act in accordance with what they've accepted.

Know what I didn't accept the responsibility of? Modding this blog as a confessions/vent blog. I'm not running on the idea that there is 0 bias - it's an advice blog, it runs on my observation, experience, and yep, opinion. I still try to be as transparent and honest as humanly possible while maintaining my rules. That's the responsibility I accepted when I created this blog. The responsibility, that no one forced them into, when creating and/or maintaining a vent blog is far more serious.

Getting "involved in drama" is literally your fucking position as a moderator of a vent blog. You're not a random, third-party witness. It's your blog. The drama happened because of your blog, it's your business, you're involved. Just like stepping in to moderate comments. But this kind of take on it does explain the copious volumes of attitude with negative stores of responsibility of that other mod, so I guess, thanks for that.

So, yeah, go ahead and refuse to post anything relating to it, but maybe accept some culpability in the failure to act instead of doubling down on it in justification? Maybe state, in a non-creepy way, that nothing further on the topic will be posted, the callout blog and Raven should have been blocked in accordance with the rules, you're sorry that did not happen, you'll be more aware of what is going on next time and hope that everyone gives you that opportunity?

What is it that you think people are expecting? No one I know of thinks that the vent blog should have gone 'round individually trying to get people to behave, just adhere to their responsibility on their own damn blog. If you can't handle that, you're not a very good moderator. And just as you're complaining to and at me, it's the position you've placed yourself in, people are going to tell you about it, they are going to have issues with what you're doing/not doing. This isn't your RP blog, it isn't your personal blog. There are different responsibilities and expectations.

For the record? I don't think that mod is Raven. I just said I wouldn't be shocked at this point, that I can see where people could get that, and that I felt it was possible there is a connection, as in, they know each other, given the extreme toleration that was had. Genuinely not interested in openly saying what I do think as regards who they are because that? That'd be irresponsible of me. When I can just...not. And not interact with that blog because it already sketched me the hell out on that basis alone.

#hold someone other than Vespertine accountable 2k21 ffs.

#answered #anonymous #drama cw #I know you were mentioned but yes I *do* have the one other ask pertaining to this topic specifically #and an older ask pertaining to it and some other things in drafts. There's just a lot of careful wording on both #that needs to be done for obvious reasons. I'm not ignoring either of you and appreciate your comments ;)

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buckleyydiaz · 4 years

Text

dream boy pt.2

moreid, 1k words

summary: something is wrong with derek. apparently no one else could see it.

Alex Blake had not been a member of the team for very long, but that made it easier to see what was happening, if the rest of the BAU was anything to go by. She couldn’t believe that they were all so oblivious to something that was quite so clear to anyone with eyes.

Derek Morgan was in love with Spencer Reid. And it was tearing him apart. She wasn’t yet sure if Spencer felt the same back, although she suspected he did, despite the girl in the phone booth.

She had her suspicions from not long after she joined the team. But it had been the quickly masked crestfallen look when Blake had told him of the call and the girl had given him away.

Morgan was never going to say anything, was something that she was certain of. It didn’t take a profiler to tell that he had commitment issues. In addition to this, Blake also thought that there may be some kind of underlying issue for him in regards to his attraction to men. He was given away by his closeted status which showed no signs of changing any time soon.

Although tempted to leave things be and let them play out naturally, Blake was concerned for her teammate. She was well aware of the destructive cycle that he was teetering on the edge of falling into.

“Morgan,” she called out, her voice echoing through the otherwise empty floor.

“Yeah, Blake?” He called back from his office, and Alex began to make her way over there.

She looked at him, sitting there, the last one other than her, and she was only still there to wait for a chance to speak to him alone. Despite being so central to the team, part of the glue that held them all together, he was isolated from them, and from everyone else beyond that. He didn’t have anyone outside of the office, not that wasn’t family or a hook-up (not that she believed that he had as many of those as he liked to suggest).

She wasn’t sure how much the others noticed it - Alex thought it, much like the feelings between Spencer and Derek, were ignored, accepted as being the way things had always been, so ingrained in their behaviour that no one questioned it anymore. But she saw he took on much of the paperwork that otherwise would have fallen to Hotch, in order to lift the burden on him. She also noticed that despite it being a popular joke among the team that Morgan liked to slip Reid his paperwork, in the entirety of the time that Blake had worked for the BAU, she hadn’t seen it happen once.

If she was right about Spencer - which the more she saw the two of them interact, the more Blake thought she was - then maybe this would help put an end to the long nights at the office, the over-working himself, and halt him on the path leading to him inevitably burning out. Something needed to, and she hoped that this was it.

“You don’t do as good a job at hiding it as you think,” Alex said as she entered Morgan’s office.

The eyebrow quirk she received in return appeared on the surface to be a good cover-up, but when paired with the concerned look she got immediately, the reaction didn’t seem quite so stoic or confused.

“Morgan, we both know what I am talking about.”

Derek looked up at her, anger in his eyes masking the pain and sadness that surely lay beneath.

Still no verbal response.

“If you asked him, he’d say yes. He may adore the girl in the phone booth, but-”

“Enough!”

The slam of Morgan’s fists against the desk paired seemed amplified by the silence of the floor around them.

“You don’t know what you are talking about. Leave.”

It was tempting, for a moment. Alex had the option to turn around, pretend nothing ever happened, and save herself from the impending emotional outburst of her colleague. But she had never been one to back away from what she believed, from the right thing to do, so she wouldn’t.

“Morgan, you can’t keep going on like this, and you know it as well as I do. It’s destructive, and doing no one any good.”

Her colleague was heavily breathing from behind his desk, “You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about what is happening here!”

His anger didn’t scare her. For all he acted aggressive with the unsubs they faced, he wasn’t the kind of person to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.

“Just listen to me. I don’t want to mess anything up, for you, for Spencer, for the team. I just want to help you. It’s a dangerous thing you are doing, overworking yourself, trying to distract yourself from anything else because you are scared. It will end in you burning yourself out, and nothing good will come of that for anyone.”

Alex hated the look of resignation on Morgan’s face, refusing to listen to her words because he was unwilling to believe that things could change. She realised that the perception commonly held about the team was wrong. Spencer wasn’t internally just a frightened, sad little boy, not any more. He had found his footing, with everyone’s assistance, but in that time, Derek had lost his, and it had slipped the notice of most, if not all.

“I can’t force you to do anything, but please talk to someone, anyone. You guys have something great here, you are a family, and any one of these people will listen to and do their best to help you. I don’t know the rest of them as well, but I know Spencer, and no matter how much he may adore the girl in the phone booth, she will never hold a candle to you in his eyes.”

Although she wasn’t totally convinced he would, he no longer looked as pained, more pensive, and that was enough of a win for her, at least for now. She just hoped that something would come of it.

“Good night.’

#ao3 #cm #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #criminalminds #fandom #fanfic #moreid #derek morgan #derek x spencer #spencer x derek #spencer #spencer reid #sperek #alex blake

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destiny-smasher · 4 years

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“But I can't walk on the path of the right, because I'm wrong.”

So, The Last of Us Part 2 is out. It’s about 25 hours long. I’ve played it. I loved it, but it’s got its flaws. I think the hype buildup was overblown, and I think the zealous hate from the leaks was also overblown. This is a beautifully produced game that is trying to do much more than the typical AAA game tries to do, and in so trying, it’s messier, muddier, and more complicated than its predecessor. I love it for that, despite my issues with how the game ultimately resolves things.

I think Naughty Dog was either intentionally misleading audiences (which, given the marketing, is possible) or perhaps Neil himself has a different concept of the game he directed than what was actually delivered. Despite how it was advertised, The Last of Us Part 2 is not inherently about ‘hate’ or ‘revenge.’ It’s not just a revenge story.

It's a story about empathy, about how human beings and their interactions have layers, and how we are better when we extend blind empathy to others instead of blind hatred. I gotta talk about this. SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME to follow.

Seriously, final warning for SPOILERS.

This game is simply too big, too complex, and has too much going on for me to write a single piece going over everything there is to talk about, but there are some things I need to say that inherently rely on discussing the entire game in a spoiler-filled way.

Let’s start with the most noticeable thing that has hit me over this game’s reception: people like Joel way more than I would’ve expected. SO much of this game’s negative reception seems to be over Joel’s character and the circumstances around his death. I was not at all surprised that he died - I was a bit surprised at when and how he died, in the moment, but even by the end of the next scene, it had washed over me how much sense it made. He died in the same way everyone else dies in this series. He had it coming in the same way anyone else in this world has it coming. He was never a hero. If you truly look at Joel as a ‘hero’ figure but don’t extend that same logic to Ellie and Abby, you do not make sense to me.

I’ve seen a LOT of hate getting thrown at Abby, and frankly, I do not understand it, and if you hate her but do NOT hate Joel or Ellie similarly, then I inherently don’t respect your opinion? You’re being blatantly biased and unreasonable in exactly the way this game is arguing you should not be. Straight up. Get your transphobic jokes the fuck outta here. Get your homophobic takes on Ellie and Dina the fuck outta here. Get your xenophobic complaints about the MUCH more diverse cast of characters in this sequel the fuck outta here. The ONE case where I could see a reasonable thing to be conflicted about is Lev’s character, because they are a transgender kid who gets deadnamed by some NPCs. As a transgender person, I personally found this to just...make sense and feel organic to the world, and none of the actual characters in the narrative with names or roles in the story ever deadname Lev. Lev is fucking precious and I love him, and I think his inclusion adds inherently more to this game than otherwise, despite the understandable conflict some might feel about his backstory. To ME, the fact that all of what Lev goes through and how Yara and Abby do what they can to look for him, that says to me, “protect trans rights” and I am glad it is there. Trans people have to deal with that shit sometimes, I think it’s fine having it be PART of a wider narrative. It doesn’t define Lev’s story, it doesn’t dictate the plot of the game, it’s a spark that sets some events off and I think that adds more than it could potentially take away, as does the overall representation in the game.

Getting back to this element of bias, though, I get that you “went on a journey” with Joel and Ellie in the first game. I get that. But you spend about as much time with Abby in this game as you did with Joel in the first game. And I see a lot of people are SOMEHOW totally fine and chill and cool with Joel going on a murder rampage in the first game, specifically killing at least one man who was specifically trying to save humanity - they cite that Joel is a morally gray person who has done bad things and is trying to become a better person. Sure, cool, OK. And Ellie, sure, ya’ll will think her going on a bloodthristy revenge quest is cool, fine, A-OK, because Joel was murdered. But somehow they are physically incapable of extending that same empathy to Abby, even after the game bends OVER BACKWARD in every reasonable way it could. Why is this? One person tweeted at me the simplistic, reductive idea,

“ I know the sensible thing that naughty dog was aiming at was that we'd feel sorry for abby and eventually grow to like her, but for me I just don't. I loved Joel and I love Ellie. They didn't kill anyone who I loved as a character. Abby did. “

At least they’re being honest with themselves in that they literally missed the entire point of the game. You having personal bias you cannot remove yourself from does not make for “A DEEPLY FLAWED STORY” or whatever the fuck people have been tossing around.

I personally don’t buy any of that bullshit until we get into the final hours of the game during the epilogue, but we’ll get to that.

Everything in the first 20-ish hours of this game felt organic and believable and completely in line with the first game to me, and the fact that ALL OF IT happens as a direct after-effect of Joel’s selfish act at the end of the first game really contextualizes how/why it was called ‘Part 2.’ So honestly, all of this nonsense about this sequel being ‘badly written’ is just...bonkers. I will agree it’s not some master class in writing - neither was the original game. But both games are very similar in writing style, tone, and the world presented is consistent, while character motivations are realistically complicated. Naughty Dog has never been great at plot, but the real quality of their work comes through in how much effort they go to in order to present realistic feeling worlds and characters, and from the environments to the actors to the extra animations on top, I think the details and the context they create are where they shine.

To better understand where I am coming from with this game, let me lay this on you.

During the scene in that basement, when Abby shot Joel in the leg, and Ellie shows up...I realized what was about to happen. Ironically, it was exactly what I had originally predicted was the thing going on WAY back when the game’s reveal trailer was dropped -- that Joel was dead, and was motivating Ellie’s revenge quest. If you’ve read what I have written of Arcadian Rhythms, you will have some idea of my feelings on Joel and Ellie’s relationship -- in short, I think it is complicated, and just as damaging as it is good. That’s real life. That’s how reality is for many relationships, especially ones between parents and their kids, especially in my experience. When I realized Joel was about to be murdered, my feelings and thoughts were not jumping to ‘oh fuck what an asshole I wanna kill these people’ or ‘oh no not Joel’ but rather, my immediate gut thoughts were ‘yupppp Joel kinda deserves this, he literally did this to who knows how many other people, but why are THESE people, specifically, out to get him?’

When Ellie later cites to Dina that there’s ‘no point’ in speculating as to why these people murdered Joel, because it could be for one of many possible reasons, I found that to be interesting -- Ellie herself acknowledging that Joel had fucked over many other people, while still pursuing revenge herself.

I do think the theme of ‘the cycle of violence’ is very core to this game and arguably is its strongest central theme, specifically because violence in wholly integrated into its gameplay. But narratively and structurally, empathy is, I would argue, even more paramount. This game spends about 12 hours of its runtime (so about half of the entire game) actively trying to encourage you to understand, relate with, and empathize with Abby. The developers COULD have had you swapping back and forth between both characters, which might have resulted in better pacing, but I think it would’v taken away from what they were going for. It’s that long, slow burn that makes Abby’s side of the story work, in much the same way the long, slow burn of the first game does what it does, and the way the long, slow burn of Ellie’s revenge quest helps us see just how far gone she is.

But “arghh I hated Ellie she kept making bad decisions that made no sense” some of you say, “they did her DIRTY” some of you say.

No.

Joel did her dirty.

The Fireflies did her dirty.

And it’s this exact concept -- that our actions and choices have consequences and ripple outward beyond what we can initially imagine - that is at the heart of why I think I love this game so much. Most video games depict a pool of water that is either a constant whirlpool, a raging clash of waves, or stone dropped in the middle and the ripples spreading out. The Last of Us Part 2 is more like a series of ripples all happening simultaneously, and not all of them are as apparent or even important, but it’s just...a bunch of ripples all happening all over the place.

And it breaks my heart, during 2020, a year when human rights, systemic racism, a worldwide pandemic, late capitalism, and entire countries submerged in protests because their government is fucking them over...has people shutting off or refusing to turn on their empathy to anyone outside of their bubble. In 2020, when the world needs empathy more than any other year I’ve experienced in my life thus far, a game like this goes SO FAR above and beyond what most games try to do, in a very risky and controversial way, to actively invite its players to fucking STOP AND CONSIDER for a damn moment that there’s more to the world than JUST YOU and what you care about. That your actions have consequences beyond your singular perspective.

Ellie is fueled by rage for a number of reasons, and we don’t even understand all of them until literally the final moments of the game, which I found to be appropriate as it ends on a note of reminding us that there is ALWAYS something we don’t know, something we don’t understand, motivating someone else’s decisions.

Ellie was robbed of agency, of purpose, by both Joel and the Fireflies. Joel robbed both Ellie and the Fireflies of their purpose. And the Fireflies robbed Ellie and Joel of theirs. In return, Ellie is left without purpose, and all she’s really left with is a broken man who desperately wants to be a dad again, to the point that he will murder and lie to hold on to that. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t necessarily hold it against Joel that he murdered people to save Ellie. I will always defend the idea that it was a fucking selfish decision that would realistically lead to consequences. But in the same way Marlene points out to Abby’s dad, ‘What if it was your kid?’ ie ‘What if it was someone you loved?’ I get that, that’s the beauty of how the first game ended. It presents a zero sum game where there is no ‘correct’ choice that everyone can agree on, but in the back of our heads -- and Part 2 actually states this as a point of fact -- we all know Ellie would have CHOSEN to sacrifice herself, had she been asked.

So it was deliciously realistic to me to see Ellie grappling with the frustration, distrust, and anger of Joel having not only robbed that purpose from her, but having lied to her about it. And in the end, it was also wonderfully realistic that part of why she hated Abby so much was that Abby inadvertently robbed her of her chance to try and rebuild and repair that broken relationship.

But here’s the thing, though - the thing I see fucking NO ONE talking about, and I can’t decide if it’s because no one is picking up on it or what.

Both Ellie and Abby are haunted and driven by broken men making selfish choices. Their selfishness keeps both characters kind of locked in to desperately grasping at violent acts to justify a purpose.

Some will play the flashbacks with Joel and will feel warmth and nostalgia and admiration. Some will play the flashbacks with Owen and feel disinterest or disgust because ‘why should I care about these people?’

For me, I couldn’t help bu draw parallels to how both Owen and Joel were men trying to be good, you know, not being specifically evil people, but men who were a bad influence on the women around them, who were great and good and charming and all that until things didn’t go the way they wanted, pushing and prodding with passive digs and pressure to reaffirm their own hopes that despite their mistakes, they’re ‘good men.’ Owen is admittedly much less well developed in this regard, partly because his arc just isn’t as deep or interesting, partly because he didn’t exist in the previous game. But I still could not quite shake it. I grew up with men like Joel and Owen as my father figures, so there’s personal bias there.

I literally had an actual nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night partway through playing through this game because Joel was in it and I said or did a thing he did not like, and his reaction spooked me awake, in part because I LIVED that growing up. (not murder, but violence, passive aggressive manipulation) I absolutely adore the depth given to Joel’s character, that he has LAYERS to him, and I loved seeing Tommy similarly expanded upon. (him passively prodding at Ellie to try and make good with Joel felt a little manipulative, given that he KNOWS what Joel did; and even his wife’s prodding at Ellie at the game’s outside to ‘make good’ with some old jerk who seems all expectant about being rewarded for basic apologizing, ech)

Last of Us is a horror game, Part 2 even moreso, but it was the feeling of men like Joel who do bad things and then try to justify them after the fact that actually creeped me out more -- all the more creepy because I KNOW Ellie and Abby will give up on better choices to try and ‘do right by them’. I was relieved when Abby began to break free from these old, poor choices, even shortly after making more fo them during her half of the story. This brings me to another fascinating aspect of this game: how Abby’s story is a combination of both Joel’s and Ellie’s.

Dunkey (of all people!) recently praised this game and compared Ellie’s and Abby’s narratives to TLOU1 and Uncharted 4, and I agree with him in a lot of regards, there, but I think what the team was more going for was for Abby’s story to feel like a combination of Joel’s and Ellie’s while simultaneously being directly impacted by Joel and Ellie’s story.

Abby grew up in a military community, even though she expressed an interest in science -- just like Ellie. The death of her father drives her on a quest for revenge -- just like Ellie. She does some horrible shit to people all in the service of trying to protect a kid as some desperate attempt to feel better about all of the bad shit she’s done -- just like Joel. She starts to let herself be empathetic to other people and tries to become a better person because of the kid she takes under her wing -- just like Joel.

In a way, you could argue Part 2′s overall story is kind of repetitious. Ellie’s quest for revenge is a bit too narrow-minded and blind in her rage, and Abby’s story kind of recycles many components we have already seen up until that point. I think what’s there still generally accomplishes what it set out to do: get us to question and try to understand why people do what they do, and consider our own place in that cycle, in those ripples.

I think many aspects of this game that look circumstantial on the surface are not accidents.

I think the recurring imagery of water is an allegory for how we can let rage, anger, and hate drown us. The game’s title starts with a boat drifting in water, and the title changes after the ending to a boat that is beached. The Seattle arc shows a gradually increasing focus on water flooding the environments, culminating in a big rainstorm with crazy waves. The final fight sequence (which tbh I hated but we’ll get to that) takes place literally IN water, involves Ellie trying to drown Abby, and ends with the two of them going separate ways in their boats.

I think it’s no accident that Abby and Ellie’s desire for vengeance is ultimately caused by the same specific moment, and I think it’s interesting that many people seem to skip RIGHT OVER the idea that Ellie feels such a deep sense of rage at Abby killing Joel only because Joel made the decision that caused Abby to kill him in the first place -- and the good and bad that came from that. It’s just a brilliantly complicated web, I think, and that further highlights that none of these characters are inherently good or evil, which is pretty much the entire point of this world in the first place.

I think it’s interesting that both Ellie and Abby grumble insults all of the time over the people they’re killing, and both try to justify their violence with thoughts like “well we’re better then that, we don’t do THOSE kinds of things,” which is, ya know, literally the kinds of mental hoops actual real human beings jump through to justify doing bad shit to each other.

I liked the idea of the trading cards until fairly early on when I found the ‘Dr. Uckmann’ card, which...made me roll my eyes a little at first, until I read the description, which then made me feel more actively uncomfortable than maybe anything else in the entire game, to be quite honest. Partly because it rang of entitled self-importance, but partly because of the reports of Naughty Dog crunch culture.

And on that note, let’s talk about how this game arguably crunched its employees way more than it needed to while simultaneously making its story more bloated than it needed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I love indulging in more STUFF than it required. I can totally see the appeal of writing extra stuff to a story like because you can, because it’s interesting, because it’s fun to MAKE shit. But when you are a AAA game development studio who is potentially crunching your employees into burnout, maybe a fairly pointless epilogue on top of a game that is already arguably a bit too long in the tooth is...maybe not the best way to go?

On the upside, I enjoyed playing the Santa Barbara location, I loved getting some more Abby/Lev time, I liked seeing Ellie a bit older, I LOVED the scene at the farm with her, Dina, and JJ. I loved the gameplay challenge that was the Rattler’s base. I loved that this game had noticeably larger environments to explore.

But tbh a LOT of content could’ve been cut from this game to make a smoother, better paced experience while simultaneously putting less strain on the developers. I do think the extended flashback sequences focused on non-violent gameplay is important enough to justify itself, but I think a lot of the more violent or unnecessary parts of the game (like the entire sequence on the Seraphite’s island and the Santa Barbara sequence) all feel like...EXTRA? Which on the one hand is great because hot DAMN more beautifully rendered locations, content, etc. but on the other hand I’m not sure it adds as much to justify the real life pain and misery I’m sure some developers went through to create it all, and in a way, it doesn’t quite justify its own existence if we’re being critical.

I get what they were going for with the Seraphites and the WLF but neither group is developed enough to really accomplish the goals of empathy. I think focusing on specific members OF those groups is better, because that is ultimately how real life people break down their walls of bias, -isms, etc. -- they just interact with and befriend people from these groups and realize organically “oh hey we’re all...people, huh.” The game’s attempts at naming NPCs and dogs don’t do much when the game actively rewards you for killing them (speaking of which, I played on Normal and there were way too many items imo, we’ll see how that is on higher difficulties). We could get into the role of violence and gameplay but that’s a WHOLE other can of worms.

But the Rattlers in the final act are even worse. After this entire game of being actively encouraged to empathize with other people from other groups and let yourself consider they aren’t evil, the game just...shoves an objectively worse group of people at you, asks you to murder them, and then...discards the whole thing without a second thought. I found this to be fun from a gameplay perspective (sorry Neil, playing your game actually IS FUN when you put so much work into making the violence fun to engage with) but I found it weird and frustrating from a storytelling perspective, as if the whole thing was an undercooked, unfinished final act that they cobbled together because they just...wanted enemies with helmets and an environment depicting southern California. Hell, tbh I don’t even get why Ellie had to be there other than the developers didn’t think players would be OK just...letting Ellie live a life in peace on a farm or that players would be OK NOT playing as Ellie at the end and letting her beat the shit out of Abby.

I actually LOVED the farm sequence, it felt so...weird for a while. Like you’re just waiting for the hat to drop. And when it does...it’s just PTSD. And that felt right. That felt good, that even though Ellie was spared, after all the shit she did, because she let go and spared Abby in return, she got to live this peaceful life...except life’s not that simple and old scars can still hurt.

I loved when Tommy showed up and we got to see that darker side to him we KNOW has been there this entire time, but Ellie maybe hasn’t been forced to see it. All the way up until this point, I felt I could understand where the characters were coming from and what motivated their decisions.

And then Ellie decided “no, actually, maybe if I throw all of this away I can maybe get rid of this PTSD I got from throwing everything away before.” And then it got worse when after she breaks into this fucking slave house to free people, after she saves Abby and Lev from dying on posts, she STILL wants to fight. ANd Abby’s where I’m at -- that ‘fucking REALLY?’ feeling. I utterly disliked the fight scene in the water. It was the one time in the whole game that actually felt like misery porn to me. I was honestly going into it expecting that maybe Ellie’s stab wound from the trap would cause her to be too weak to fight, and she’d literally drown from bleeding out because of her own unrelenting pursuit of revenge. But nah, we’re put through a pointless, brutal fist/knife fight that...doesn’t really have purpose imo. WHatever you wanted to accomplish here, you could’ve done back in the theater in Seattle. (on that note I LOVED the Ellie boss fight, what a fun gameplay thing and also just tense all around since you really couldn’t tell what was going to happen, but I LOVE that Lev stopped Abby from killing Dina, even though she had every reason to)

I can imagine different versions of the Santa Barbara sequence that offer a more edifying conclusion while still working in the environmental and gameplay components they seemed insistent on working in. It’s the one major portion of the game that, now that I’ve had time to process, I feel the most conflicted about.

Neither Ellie nor Abby “deserve” a happy ending in much the same way Joel didn’t “deserve” a happy ending. This game has no true protagonists or villains (anyone who is presented as a ‘villain’ is minor, and we don’t find out much about them anyway). I think Joel was lucky to get the time he got to live in community once again, to rediscover his humanity (look at all of those flowers they left at his house, this man who fucked over humanity and murdered countless people had a chance to live a few years of peaceful life again), I think Ellie was lucky she got time to even live what she did on that farm with Dina and JJ, and was lucky to still be alive at the end of the story. I think Abby was lucky to have been able to break free from a life of militaristic bullshit and rediscover some of her own lost humanity.

I think a lot of people admire Joel as a hero when it’s clear he was never one.

I think a lot of people admire Ellie and try to idolize her as the smarmy kid she could never permanently exist as.

I think a lot of people hate on Abby for EXISTING (and being a woman -gasp- WITH MUSCLES) and I’m pretty pleased with Laura Bailey getting to play this role (and Ashly Burch getting a supporting role in this game, too, for that matter).

I think The Last of Us is not ‘about Ellie and Joel.’ I think The Last of Us is about humanity, and exploring it through different angle. Sometimes needlessly gritty and dark ones, but Part 2 gave us even more light-hearted, pelasant moments than I could have expected. I think people who look so reductively at this game -- now officially a ‘series’ -- as ‘Joel and Ellie 100x forever’ and literally anything outside of that being bad and a waste of time fundamentally missed the entire purpose of this game, ironically ignoring what it is trying to passionately to convey. I think Naughty Dog’s marketing of the game actively misled people in ways that are rare for the industry, and I do think that is a bit shady - but on the other hand, being misled actively improved my experience with the end product (which is arguably why they did it). I think the way Sony has latched on Joel and Ellie as ‘Playstation Icons’ and encouraged people to buy up TLOU merch depite there not being much TO turn into merchandise says something.

Also? Frankly?

I am SO FUCKING TIRED of “angry sad dad” games.

Like. I loved TLOU 1, I loved the new God of War, etc. etc.

But God of War took basically NO RISKS and had NOTHING TO SAY that countless other pieces of media have said to death. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next. But this game actually has challenging thoughts, complicated things, it is trying to get players to consider, and most everyone I see shitting on the game either hasn’t played it or doesn’t seem interested in games that exist for something beyond making them feel good about themselves? I dunno.

I think at the end of the day, TLOU as an entire series, and specifically the sequel, isn’t about Joel and Ellie, that was just the more focused lens the original game had. For its messier, muddier experience, Part 2 strives for nothing more than many pieces of media have but for something that is still rare in the space of AAA video games.

It takes some risks, it makes some missteps in getting where it goes, for sure, and it’s by no means some holy gift to mankid, but it passionately goes to GREAT lengths to explore and express a fairly simple idea:

empathy is a choice, understanding others is a choice,

and we are all inherently better off when we choose to blindly accept understanding than when we blindly choose hate and violence.

Just because we can’t walk ‘the path of the right,’ and just because ‘we’re wrong’ doesn’t mean we should let the phantoms in our lives continue to keep a hold on our future. Just because someone does some good things doesn’t erase the consequences and ripples of the bad they have done, and just because we do bad things doesn’t mean we can’t do good.

The way to end the cycle of violence is empathy.

It’s simplistic in concept, but if you look around at not just the reception to this game even before people could play it, but just the STATE OF THE WORLD IN 2020, you will see that maybe we still need such basic, simplistic concepts to continue to be explored in big budget media.

#tlou part 2 #tlou #The Last of Us #The Last of Us Part 2

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sage-nebula · 3 years

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Game Review — Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

In the past, I was never really one for farming sims. In fact, I used to pass on every single Harvest Moon game because the idea of farming just didn’t seem fun to me. Then I heard you could have same-sex romance options in Stardew Valley, so I played that, fell in love, and thus got very excited for the newest Story of Seasons game, since I knew that Story of Seasons was Harvest Moon previously, and Harvest Moon inspired Stardew Valley.

And all I have to say is . . .

Overall Score: 5.5/10

. . . oh boy.

Well, I actually have a lot more to say than just that, but that should give you a general idea of what the rest of this review is going to be like. I do want to say up front that I have played through the entire first in-game year to give the game a fair shake, so please trust me when I say I did my due diligence to give this game a real chance before I reviewed it. If you’re ready, jump under the cut (best read on my blog for formatting reasons) and let’s get into it.

The Pros:

The character customization, while not perfect, is definitely several leaps in the right direction. None of the clothing or hairstyle options are gender locked, which is amazing. There is a variety of skin tones to choose from. You pick your pronouns independently of everything else, voice included, so you can 100% have a trans character if you want to (or a nonbinary character if you don’t mind using gendered pronouns for your nonbinary character). I do wish the clothing selection was better (especially at the start, when you only have two outfits to choose from) and having different body types would be cool as well, but the fact that you have so much freedom with regards to gender presentation is a definite plus.

Likewise, being able to have same-sex relationships is a huge plus as well. Honestly, it was what convinced me to pick up the game; I might not have gotten it if it didn’t have that option in there, but that pushed me over the edge. I mean, the fact that it’s 2021 means this sort of thing should be expected, but with Japanese games on Nintendo systems it’s really not always guaranteed, so the fact that it was included still does deserve to get a mention as a plus.

It’s easy to raise affection with the villagers by just talking to them, which is an improvement over Stardew where you pretty much had to give gifts to raise affection (because I don’t think talking did it, or if it did, it was abysmally slow). I was able to unlock heart events pretty quickly just by running around the town and talking quickly with the villagers each day, which is particularly nice since the preferred gifts can be pretty expensive at first.

I enjoy that not all of the heart events necessarily involve the farmer, especially for characters that aren’t romanceable. It’s nice to see the villagers interacting with each other more, to see that they have lives and relationships outside of the farmer’s sphere of influence. It also gives you unique insight into the characters, because how they act around or with each other isn’t always how they interact around or with the farmer.

Being able to sow seeds in multiple patches of dirt at once is nice, especially since otherwise it takes much longer than it does in, say, Stardew. I mean, in Stardew you can hold the A button and sow everything at once, whereas in Olive Town you have to do it one press at a time. So to be able to do a multi-plant is very nice.

The pet and mount selection is pretty great, too. I love how many different types of breeds of dog there are, how many different cats and different types of horses, and of course the unique mounts like the unicorn or the wolf.

The farm has a lot of space once you unlock the different areas, and is divided into neat sections to make organizing easier.

Having not played a Story of Seasons game before this one, and knowing that Stardew Valley’s developer was inspired by Harvest Moon, I can’t say entirely which features were unique to Stardew and borrowed and which ones Stardew borrowed first. However, I have seen others claim that the tool bar at the bottom of the screen (which is nearly identical to the one in Stardew) was unique to Stardew, so I can say that this is one area in which they copped something from Stardew and did it well. The fact that you can put your tools into a separate tool bag to make some emergency room in your bag is nice too.

The Neutrals:

While there are a lot of villagers and they all have their own heart events and interactions, the day-to-day dialogue can get very repetitive. I can’t tell you the amount of times Laura has told me about losing track of time during Laura Things, or how many times Jack has told me about how his mom told him about planting different crops and he thinks that’s just too much work. The dialogue only really seems to change around festivals / after plot changes, and it can really make characters that might otherwise feel fleshed out feel more like . . . well, NPCs. Which they are, but you don’t really want them to feel like that in a sim game. So while the characters are (mostly) unique, sometimes they can feel a bit repetitive.

The plot is a bit weird. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s weird that the plot focuses on wanting to turn the local town into a tourist hotspot. I get that the idea is that they want to bring commerce into the town (I guess), but that everyone is on board with it and the fact that it’s essentially gentrification just feels a bit . . . weird, for a game that’s supposed to focus more on nature. The tasks associated with it also get very repetitive, and that’s not even talking about how you literally have to improve the roads and lamps twice to make a difference.

The holiday festivals are also pretty average. It’s either a cutscene, or a tiny minigame (or sometimes not even a minigame, but I’ll get to that). The minigames are charming, but they’re not something that I’d want to do the following year. You’ve done it once, you’ve done it a million times. It’s also strange that there’s not a festival to celebrate your farm at all, whereas at least in Stardew we had the Stardew Valley Fair and I hear that in past Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games they had farm celebration festivals, too. It’s just a bit strange.

The music is hit or miss, and mostly miss if I’m being honest, but I’ll still put it here. The songs are too short; they loop far too fast, and often sound no better than you’d expect a game on the GBA to sound (especially that first cave theme, ugh). There are some nice melodies, but again, when I compare it to Stardew (which I know isn’t exactly fair, but also Stardew is made by a grand total of one person when this game had an entire team so I feel it’s at least a little fair), it’s a pretty big letdown in the music department.

The bachelorettes are not very unique. Like, they are different, you can tell them apart, but . . . the primary difference between Bridgette and Linh, for instance, is that Linh is Korean (and also looks like a child which I don’t like at all if we’re being honest) while Bridgette is white. Otherwise they’re both sweet and shy and have basically the same personality. Reina and Blaire are also pretty similar, in that they’re both outgoing party types. The main difference between them besides their hair color (brunette and blonde respectively) is the fact that one works at the museum while the other is a waitress. The only one who really stands out is Laura, and while Laura is great (and the one I chose to marry), it’s still disappointing when you see how varied the bachelors are. It feels like not a lot of effort was put into designing the bachelorettes, which is sad when you consider they’re kind of major characters since they’re part of the dating pool.

The Cons:

This game is AWFUL to play. How, you may ask? Well, let me count the ways:

To start with, the loading screens are atrocious. There are loading screens between everything that you do. You go to town? Loading screen. You leave town? Loading screen. Start your day? Loading screen. Go in and out of barns or coops? Loading screens. And they take ages, or at least in this day and age it feels like they take ages. Particularly when you go into town, immediately realize you forgot a resource you needed for an upgrade, and go back so you get back to back cutscenes, they’re fricking awful. I cannot believe that loading screens this annoying were necessary for this game. I refuse to accept that as truth. They absolutely could have cut out the time it takes to load had they spent more time on development instead of rushing this title out for the anniversary, and speaking of things they could have ironed out in development . . .

THE LAG. THE FREEZING. THE CRASHING. THE POP-IN DISTANCING. If I didn’t know that an entire development team worked on this game, I wouldn’t believe it. This game is, put simply, a mess. Even when my farm was brand new and had pretty much nothing on it, I was noticing framerate drops both in docked and handheld mode. I’m talking, I had maybe one coop and two planted areas for crops, and the framerate was noticeably dropping. And now that I do have more stuff on my farm? Not only is the lag atrocious, but the game can’t load everything on the screen at once and so things have to pop into view after a few seconds. You can see video footage of this here, which also features one of the delightful loading screens. And this doesn’t even get into how the game will randomly freeze, or how I’ve had it crash once already. And from what I hear, I’m not unique in this. The fact they had the nerve to release this game as finished when it performs like this just boggles the mind.

Despite the fact that the Switch has two control sticks, this game plays only with one. This means that you can’t, you know, aim your tools with anything but the main control stick. And when you’re both controlling your character and aiming with the same control stick, the latter gets pretty hard. This leads to me missing things with my axe or hammer even when they’re right in front of me, as well as taking a lot of damage from the cave enemies simply because I couldn’t get in the sweet spot to both hit them with the hammer and also not get hit myself, particularly before they escape. It adds a lot of unnecessary frustration because the controls are so flawed and imprecise.

Similarly, there is a sweet spot when it comes to harvesting or picking up items off the ground, and it’s impossible to determine what that sweet spot is because you don’t get a little aiming box for that. So you can be right on top of an item and unable to pick it up because you’re not in that sweet spot.

Apart from the framerate drops, there is input lag as well. This is most noticeable when swinging axes or hammers, or trying to pet cows and other animals after milking them. And yes, I know it’s the game and not my Switch, because it’s not consistent (and also doesn’t happen with other games). Again, this is something polish and more time in the oven probably could have handled, but now it’s too late and just makes the game frustrating to play.

Technical, mechanical gameplay issues aside, though, there are still a ton of other issues. For instance: makers. Again, I can’t say if previous Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games had these, or if they were invented by Stardew and copped by this dev team, but what I can say is that while makers also exist in Stardew, they are handled way better there than the absolute nightmare they are here. Again, to count the ways:

In Stardew, the makers can sit flush against each other and buildings, as well as flush against paths, making everything nice and not taking up too much space. Here, not only are the makers gigantic, but they can’t be flush with anything. They can’t sit up against each other, against buildings, or against paths. This means that not only do they look ugly, but they also take up a tremendous amount of space that therefore can’t go toward anything else.

In Stardew there are a handful of makers that do things. You’ve got furnaces for making bars, mayonnaise makers, cheese makers, fabric spinners, etc. There’s a variety, but it’s not so much that your farm becomes nothing but makers. By contrast, Olive Town is drowning in makers. You have all the above, but also more that contribute to those because . . . okay, let’s take the fabric spinners for example. In Stardew, you can put any type of wool onto the fabric spinning wheel, which will make one kind of fabric. In Olive Town, you first have to have a thread maker to make thread out of grass, AS WELL AS a yarn maker to make yarn out of wool. THEN you have to have a thread fabric maker to make fabric out of thread (and the thread differs depending on the grass used, which means you can make many different types of fabrics, but only one at a time), AS WELL AS a yarn fabric maker to make fabric out of yarn. So whereas in Stardew you have one maker if you need cloth, in Olive Town you need at bare minimum two, at max four, and that’s not even getting into how slow the process will be if you only have one of each kind. Because each maker only makes one of an item, and then you usually need multiples of that one item to make the next item in the series. So for instance, your thread maker makes one spool of thread, but it takes THREE spools to make one piece of fabric. Then you might need TEN pieces of fabric for a recipe. And the makers all take literal in-game hours to make. When you consider that the costs for some things are very high (the house upgrade I’m on right now requires 80 ingots and 120 pieces of lumber), you pretty much have to have at least four of each type of maker to get things done at any kind of reasonable pace, hence the factory hell my farm is currently in as seen in the above linked video. It’s a fucking nightmare. And yes, maybe it’s more realistic that you can’t go immediately from wool to fabric, but this is a farming sim where you interact with spirits, ride unicorns, and befriend wolves. This is not a game where you need to push realism.

The mining is also just . . . not fun. At all. Not only do you have the “it’s really hard to aim properly, especially when you’re trying not to take damage” issue mentioned above, but there’s also the fact that there’s just no variation. In the first mine there are no enemies at all, you’re just breaking rocks. The second mine introduces enemies, but only one type of enemy (basically little moles that you have to whack with the hammer). The third mine has the same enemies, but they’re stronger and appear in multiples. And that’s it. Unlike in Stardew, where there were tons of different monsters that did different things that made the mines exciting, here it’s pretty boring because the enemies are easy to avoid (and it’s best to avoid them because of how much of a pain in the ass to hit them without taking damage from running into them is) and the levels all pretty much look the same. Whereas I loved dungeon crawling in Stardew, here it’s something I purely do to get ore to make ingots in the stupid fucking makers because there’s literally no entertainment value to it otherwise, especially since the music is subpar at best.

Related to the mining, when you defeat enemies or drain lakes you can find bags of items that need to be identified at the museum. You can only have Reina identify these bags one at a time. So it’s a bunch of spamming the A button and hearing her go “oh!” over and over and over again because they, for some reason, couldn’t implement identifying items more than one at a time. And the best part? Identifying items comes with a LOADING SCREEN between you selecting the item to be identified and Reina identifying the item! How fun!!

You can really tell that they cut corners in this game, content-wise. For instance, the first festival in spring is an egg hunt. You would think that it would be a minigame where you look for eggs (again, like Stardew). You would think that, but you would be wrong. Instead, you get to watch an extended cutscene of your character finding eggs. That’s it. That’s the “egg hunt.” I skipped the mushroom hunt in fall because I assumed it would be the same, but apparently that one actually was a minigame, so joke’s on me, I guess. But either way, the fact that the egg hunt wasn’t an egg hunt at all speaks to cut corners and rushed dev time, just like the myriad of other problems that plague this game. It’s pretty bad when you can’t even include an egg hunting minigame for whatever reason (or at leas come up with unique events for spring and fall).

There is a ton of furniture with which to decorate your house, which is great! Or it would be, if you were actually given freedom to decorate, but you’re not. You can buy whatever furniture you want, but there are very specific places where you’re allowed to place it, and nowhere else. For instance, furniture and rugs can only go in the little space in front of your counter in your house in the first two house upgrades (Log Cabin and Small House). This space is very small. Despite there being a GIANT ASS FLOOR with which to cover a rug, I wasn’t able to use it until I got the third house upgrade. You have a huge empty table that you’re not allowed to put anything on. You can’t move any of the furniture around, nor can you rotate furniture that you buy when you place it. You also can’t place furniture on rugs either. Seeing so much furniture in the game is pretty exciting until you realize that you can do basically fuck all with it. Apparently they didn’t have enough time to implement real decoration into the game either. (Then again, imagine the lag in your house if they did.) As a final complaint, you can buy picture frames that claim to let you place framed memories in your house. You have a camera as an in-game tool, so you’d think that you could place pictures of your pets or your love interest in your house. You would think that, but you would be wrong. There’s no way to change the pictures in the picture frames, or at least none that I’ve been able to find just yet.

Just like Stardew, when you first arrive at the farm in Olive Town you find that it has been completely overrun with nature, and you have to spend time clearing away the debris so that you have a place to build your farm. Unlike in Stardew, the debris comes back at a ridiculously fast rate. Several in-game hours, if not more, of each day are spent cleaning up puddles (even if it didn’t rain), breaking rocks, clearing weeds, and chopping trees. Your farm can easily become overrun with nature again in just a few days’ time, meaning that a lot of your time that you would spend doing things like scavenging the mines or talking with villagers is instead spent doing basic, boring chores around the farm so that you still have livable land. And while farming sims like this one are games that are basically built around doing chores at least in part, the extent of the damage in this one (given that it happens all day every day, instead of just at the start of each season like in Stardew) really kills any fun or enjoyment you’d otherwise have as a player.

Farm upgrades come as entirely separate buildings, rather than expanding on the current building you have. So while in Stardew you could turn your existing Barns into Big Barns (and then Deluxe Barns), in Olive Town you have to buy an entirely separate building, and then painstakingly move all your animals to the new building one by one. Similarly, you can buy a silage to upgrade from your silo, but you’ll still have the silo on the farm. It doesn’t upgrade your existing development at all, despite being an upgraded form of that existing development.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Pioneers of Olive Town has some good ideas, but ultimately the terrible gameplay and lackluster execution of those ideas leaves so, so much to be desired. I will say that a patch was released recently which improved the loading screens a little, and for that I added the .5 to the score. (I took notes on things I liked / disliked / was neutral on as I played, so that I wouldn’t forget anything.) But a slight improvement to the loading screens doesn’t do much to help it when the lag is still terrible, the game still has freezes, and overall the gameplay itself just isn’t very fun. I probably will keep playing it for a bit longer to get to the marriage scenes at least, since I’ve almost maxed out Laura’s hearts. But honestly, there are so many better life sim games out there (the oft-mentioned in this review Stardew Valley being one of them) that if someone asked me if I recommended this game to them, I would have to say no.

Let’s hope the dev team does better with the next game. Maybe not feeling the pressure of it being the series’ anniversary will take some pressure off of them while they make it.

#story of seasons: pioneers of olive town #2021 game reviews

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