#idk... i feel like putting them in a third person perspective loses a lot of the charm that comes from a questionnaire

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

would it be weird to post character questionnaires on tumblr dot com. would that be a weird thing to do. would people get me with hammers for doing that.

#i've done solaris questionnaires a couple months ago just for ME to get a better feel for her character #and i want to post abt her more (as if i don't already post abt that freak enough) #but i'm trying to decide if it would be better to refactor the questions so they're not directly from her mouth or not. #if i had all the time in the world and knew where my creativity went i would make comic strips out of my favorite ones #idk... i feel like putting them in a third person perspective loses a lot of the charm that comes from a questionnaire #but also. cringe isn't dead. sadly. and if i post cringe i'll die. so #idk

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

[demonfamilytherapist]

I think the main conflict between Lucifer and Duck comes down to control and communication.

Lucifer wants to feel like he is in control. This seems to be a trauma response all things considered - if he can control his brothers, if he can have significant influence over the Devildom, if he can learn every spell and technique to make himself even more incredibly powerful than he already is, maybe he won’t lose anyone else. And this, for better or worse, comes through in the way he expresses his affection.

Lucifer seems to make a lot of presumptions in regards to MC and how they want their relationship with him to progress. How accurate these are depends completely on the MC, of course, but with Duck he misses the mark most of the time. I mentioned it in The Last Pact fic, but Duck most definitely didn’t want to kiss him for most of their relationship, and most definitely didn’t want to escalate to sex immediately after - this presumption (and Duck’s reaction to it) ultimately keeps them apart for the next two seasons.

This is not to say Lucifer has constructed a fake MC in his head, or that Lucifer isn’t genuinely romantic. It’s clear he takes the time to remember and note little things about MC, and in later seasons he puts more power into their hands with being able to say “no” to his advances (this is ultimately a gameplay thing, but anyway). However that confidence of his can get him into trouble sometimes with Duck, simply because she can interpret it as arrogance very quickly.

Duck chafes at the idea of being controlled. Duck simply cannot stand the idea of someone thinking they have authority over Duck’s personal life (workplace bosses and teachers aside). Duck refuses to play second fiddle in her own life, and so many of Lucifer’s initial advances come across as not just unappealing, but actively repulsive to her, as he keeps putting words into her mouth and telling her how she feels (see again Lucifer’s pact scene, kiss route). Duck also does not respond to this in a very constructive way, choosing to avoid and snap back rather than actually discuss the root of the issue.

This leaves Duck and Lucifer in a limbo where every time they get close to each other they’re pushed away again.

From Duck’s perspective, they start to think Lucifer is really making an effort, seeing them for them, but then he’ll make some comment and they’ll realise he really doesn’t have any respect for them at all (he definitely does). Duck is hurt because it feels like Lucifer doesn’t trust them to know their own feelings and she can’t be with someone who will always believe he knows better.

From Lucifer’s perspective, everything is going great until Duck pulls away for no reason. Lucifer has spent centuries, millennia, with all kinds of angels, humans, and demons fawning over him, and it feels like a cruel irony that the one he wants doesn’t seem to be interested in him at all (they definitely are). Lucifer’s response to this is generally pulling back and avoiding Duck until he feels he’s got a signal to try again, and then he gets rejected “out of nowhere” again, and the cycle begins anew.

Duck needs to better communicate her frustrations and Lucifer needs to adapt his communication style if he wants a chance with them. But they’re both pretty… well, prideful, and therein lies the problem.

Lucifer and Duck are basically each other’s Mr Darcy. Hottie who willingly changes for their sake. But it takes two thirds of the book to do so.

Or: Lucifer can be so incredibly soft and that pretty much only comes out with Duck/MC, which seems to tell Duck that he’s being emotionally open and trusting and they respond in kind. Lucifer then struggles with the emotional openness he hasn’t had in millennia and quickly inserts a sauve, seductive comment to save face… which ends up driving Duck away, as it feels like he’s just feeding her lines.

Idk maybe the bros should just lock them up together somewhere for a while it either ends with one of them dead or some damn emotional honestly.

#bleep bloop #meanwhile Lucifer is watching duck get together with the rest of his brothers #probably wondering what exactly they dislike about him #that cannot be found in any of his brothers #it can’t be the amount of times he’s threatened them because Belphie literally killed them #she’s clearly not intimidated by his strength #and duck just refuses to try and ‘prove herself’ to Lucifer because she shouldn’t have to #and she doesn’t have to! #they both just need to be better at communicating! #duck #idk man it’s late I just had thoughts about them

[ainosk8]

EP 11 ADAM WATCH

I have a lot of mixed emotions about this episode. Like, I think it’s goofy that Reki almost wins because apparently Adam didn’t check the weather forecast that day. And that the Full Swing Kiss, the move that put AI SKATER CHERRY BLOSSOM in a wheelchair Reki was able to....just...dodge?? AND the fact that Reki was suddenly able to do the Love Hug?? I feel like there’s a training montage we missed.

But Adam’s near loss and humiliation has to be a catalyst for Something this next episode. And this episode overall sets up a lot of important context for whatever the resolution of his story is.

The episode starts by highlighting all of the pressure Adam is under. We find out that his shady cabal of aunties have set him up with an arranged marriage, supposedly to someone that will strengthen his political standing. Possibly this is a defensive measure taken in response to the increased scrutiny he has been facing with the allegations of collusion.

We also have his political party asking him to take on an even more prominent political position so he can act in their interests. I guess he has the best reputation “after everything that’s happened” so they want to use him to be their guy on the inside. 

Notice how the painting behind the political people is this weird, cold barren cliffside while the painting between Adam and Tadashi features some lush greenery. Kind of like Adam is being pulled away from paradise/potential happiness by the demands of the life he’s been forced into.

(adam can pipe me to the core anytime lol)

In both situations, he is being used as a vehicle for the wishes of other people. There’s no question of whether he wants to get married or take on greater political responsibility, but these things benefit the people around him, so he is expected to do them. It’s sad, his self-made paradise in S can only exist because of the power and privilege he has, but the things he must do to keep that power inhibit him from being able to enjoy his life.

Everyone around him wants something from him, and the only people who care about him he has pushed away (Cherry/Joe). Yes, Tadashi is by his side but from Adam’s POV he is obliged to be as a servant, plus he hasn’t gotten over the betrayal from seven years ago. Also want to point out how in the above scenes Tadashi is steadfastly next to Adam, but Adam is always facing away from him. Adam has always had Tadashi in his corner, and he still does. But he fails to recognize it, so he feels completely alone. If only he would turn around...

I really like this moment with Reki. It’s presented as a him misunderstanding Adam’s use of an English phrase, but also represents their two perspectives. Adam sees himself as alone, so he’s fixated on the idea of an “Eve”, a perfect soulmate who fulfills all his needs. His experience with his family, his political party members, and the general public is such that he doesn’t even dream of having a community of people to belong to, just one person. The time in his life he was happiest was spent with one special person (Tadashi) and he wants that back. That may feed into his fixation on romantic love. It’s the fantasy of a monogamous partnership, where two people are bound together for life. 

But for Reki, who has a supportive family, friends at school, and a community in S, it’s “the more the merrier”. If he had his way, the whole world would skate and he would skate with them. Where Adam sees a “third wheel” as an intruder upon his relationship, Reki recognizes that three wheels isn’t enough. He has a whole drawer full of wheels!

Even if Adam did have his “Eve” it wouldn’t be enough to make him happy. No one person can be everything he needs. He needs to dismantle his fantasy of a secret world for two people and seek happiness in the real world with everyone else.

I feel like Reki would honestly be a better candidate to pull Adam out of his bullshit than Langa. Reki physically embraced Adam during the race even though it was painful. After getting the stuffing beat out of him, Reki’s instinct is still to extend a hand to Adam, to tell him not to pull away from everyone. Even Reki’s original challenge to Adam at the end of episode three wasn’t to punish Adam, but to make him apologize to Miya. He wanted to mend something between them. 

IDK what Tadashi thinks skating with Langa will do. But I guess bc of Adam’s point of view he isn’t willing to hear that message from someone like Reki.

Also interesting to note that, with Adam no longer seen as the infallible “god of S”, he now fits the description he ascribed to Miya in that episode.

I feel like Adam senses things coming to an end for him, which is why he frames this last race with Langa as “falling together”. It makes me worried about what he has planned for this final beef. He doesn’t say he wants to beat Langa, or be beaten by him. It feels like anything that happens after the race is over would ultimately be a disappointment. I guess it would be unrealistic for this show to have him like...k*ll h*mself and Langa during this race, but he might try?? Idk with the state of mind he’s in at this point, he probably doesn’t think he has much to lose. I’m stressed!

Weddings are kind of both an ending and a beginning, so with this being the “Wedding Beef” I hope it becomes a transitional moment for him and not an “end”. I want this to have been a learning experience and for him to come out on the other side with a changed perspective (aka be “reborn” like Langa’s skateboard!)

I GUESS he needs to be held accountable in some way...but also I feel like he’s suffered enough for one lifetime. IDK! This is why I’m an Adam stan and not like, a court justice  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#sk8 the infinity #sk8 adam #shindo ainosuke #adam watch #what am i gonna do with my life when this is over..........

[ruby-whistler]

all /dsmp /rp /nm, a reply to someone bringing up some good points and some i disagree with in the replies of this post

tw // physical & mental abuse, torture, murder

@bellovebug

the point about consent and sacrifice is a good call - ghostbur really didn't want to die, but to be fair, neither did dream.

i think that's the main reason why both the attempts, whether successful or not, were wrong. you don't really have the right to take away another person's life, though dream's life was being threatened, while tommy couldn't be more safe from a man who was stuck being physically and mentally abused - granted, tommy didn't know that, but dream also didn't know ghostbur wasn't aware this was a murder attempt. the point, both tommy and dream were wrong, and their actions are understandable to different degrees.

one could argue it was never mentioned that ghostbur stayed behind, and wilbur slowly getting his memories could be interpreted as them merging (which, that would be a much happier ending than having to choose between the two, wouldn't it), but those are all theories, so let's look at it from the most widely-accepted perspective.

it is true that ghostbur never hurt dream, he's really the only innocent person in all of this (ranboo and tubbo standing by while tommy ropes him into all of this with lies, sam ignoring the danger he was in and dream actually killing him) but dream has been being subjected to giant amounts of psychological and bodily pain for almost 50 days now (exile lasted around 13-26 days in comparison) on top of prolonged solitary confinement, classified as torture (because it is) by the UN, for about 85 days now (i think? might be more).

sam and quackity put dream in a situation where his only escape from possible death and months of constant agony leading up to it was killing someone who seemed like they had just tried to get him killed, and i think that's the best way to describe the situation + tommy getting ghostbur into this position in the first place.

not considering the fact that ghostbur was a hostage and both sam and tommy acted the worst possible way you could in a situation like that (ignorance and aggression), both of which drove dream to believe reviving wilbur was the only way.

"Ghostbur never murdered him three times lmao." to be fair, tommy murdered dream two times as well, and unlike tommy's two initial deaths which were in war context where both had consented to risking them for their ideals, and the third one being a direct consequence of solitary confinement or "double-celling" (i encourage you to look that stuff up, very dark but also interesting), tommy's killings of him were after he had surrendered and followed all orders given to him, and besides that being a war crime (let's be honest dsmp doesn't have the geneva convention) it was very cruel. so i'd say that was probably more than enough payback for that already.

"It's not something tommy WANTED to do, but something tommy that he NEEDED to do for the safety of the entire server." *something tommy thought he needed to do. i think we all can agree he has a bad habit of blaming everything bad that's ever happened on a single individual. like the moment wilbur got revived he went "wilbur this was all because of you" and i'm like. oh cool you've picked a new scapegoat lmao

i know from tommy's perspective he was trying to kill someone who has hurt him, but looking from dream's perspective he was trying to kill someone who was in a terrible situation, never given a chance to be on the good side and slowly losing hope for recovery + ever getting out of the hell that his life's become.

tommy's perspective is the only one from which dream's threatening in any way, from any other pov dream is just miserable and desperate and clinging on to any hope he can find so he doesn't just let himself die to end the pain. that is incredibly dark, which is why dream being treated as "oh look he's a big bad villain again he never changed" because of this incident rubs me the wrong way. he did change, even if not for the better, he was broken and is actively being broken and no one on the entire server is there to help him, while people like sapnap tell him they'll kill him if he tries to escape from the situation and people like sam stand by.

"genuine proof and logical reasons to believe would break out and hurt him and others." but that's the point of ptsd. it makes you think illogically and be terrified of something without being given present reason to think it'll hurt you. so yeah, as someone who's going through that, i understand tommy in a sense, but i don't think there's anything logical to it.

"He can't feel safe while dreams alive" but tommy can feel safe! there is no reason to kill dream, there has never been any reason to kill dream. that's what recovery from trauma is; being able to move past irrational fears based on past experiences. that is not, and will never be achieved by causing further hurt and destruction.

"purely for self gain, where tommy tried to kill dream for the benefit of himself and others" tommy was acting irrationally and doing something wrong and unnecessary because of his personal feelings and beliefs. the only danger present from dream was him giving quackity the revive book, because oh boy that man would/will do terrible things with it. idk if i'd call getting away from an abusive situation "purely for self-gain", but i digress.

"an abuser killing an innocent to free himself from what happened as a result of hurting so many other people" dream in this situation is the victim. dream was an abuser for two to four weeks, and granted he did terrible, irreversible harm to c!tommy, but at the present moment he's the victim who is trapped with no means of retaliation against those who are hurting him.

he did hurt people, but never even close to such a scale as is being done to him, so you can't call it karma, and even if in some alternate universe he did, no one deserves that kind of treatment. so, to rephrase; "a victim desperate to get away from a hopeless situation and killing an innocent who seemingly tried to help kill him, because his ultimatum in the situation of not being tortured anymore was not met."

"I don't think that excuses tommy wanting to kill dream, but i think it's a lot more justified and a lot more reasonable" all in all, i don't think it's justified at all. from tommy's perspective, the motivation is there, but it's still not "understandable" because it's just plain wrong with no real positives for anyone. dream reviving wilbur and holding ghostbur hostage is justified, and him doing it against ghostbur's wishes is understandable considering his situation, but not right in any way, shape or form.

hope this didn't come off as too aggressive! i'm just invested in the prison arc, and i guess people's bad takes (someone said dream deserved to be tortured more because of this, prime give me strength) kinda got to me so i made that post to kind of contextualize dream's actions, but i appreciate the interest in civil discussion! :]

#discourse #i guess #just tagging for people who don't wanna see stuff like this #tw torture #tw murder #tw abuse #tw dark themes #like really dark #prison arc associated #stay safe

[witchcraftingboop]

@cipotiko said: "Hi, I would like to know more about the third eye <3"

Hello, lovely! I hope the day has treated you well.

As for this particular topic, I think my opinions/thoughts on this might be a bit . . . outside of the mainstream, but since you sent in a request, I'll happily share some of my perspective.

A lot of people associate the "third eye" (in quotes because I can, not because I think this is the wrong interpretation of it), with a metaphysical, eye-shaped focus point on their forehead. Many even see the opening of this point as a spiritual awakening and an irreversible turning point in one's . . . idk, is 'being' the right word here?

I am more used to the term Sight. That is what I'm comfortable with at least.

For me, a person's "third eye" is better known as their inner eye, not necessarily a set, eye-shaped point, but rather the eye within that should be directed out to view the whole - or what can be currently perceived as such - picture. Sure, if your Sight hasn't really been used or experimented with much, then I can see how some view its opening as an awakening. In my hereditary practice, however, an awakening is more. That's the best way to put it, unfortunately, without going into too much detail; it is simply more.

A witch's Sight is very important and often neglected, in my opinion, though I'm sure not in an intentional manner. There is a lot of emphasis placed on . . . I won't say "surface level" components of a practice, but maybe technical is the right way? For instance, I give out steps and ingredients - if I'm feeling generous - but I don't discuss much, if anything at all, about the deeper parts of what I'm doing, none of the spiritual core, significance, or roots. Translating this over to the topic at hand, there is a lot of "breathe and look at this sigil" or "opening your eye will make you see things you might not be ready to see." In this way, the root, or the significance, behind these statements and instructions are lost, and thereby those who try them without proper consideration lose the center of where their mental space ought to be or begin at, and the results they desire are not guaranteed to follow. Some novices then turn and seek out the idea of forcing the third eye open instead.

I will not advocate not forcing your way through. What happens, happens and what will happen, will happen. Also, I don't care much at all whether someone else decides to try it or not; it impacts me not at all.

I can only say that there is a certain truth to the trite old saying that "with great power comes great responsibility." There are many things that go bump in the night and even more in the day.

That all being said, there is more than one way to skin a cat and several times over ways to gain access/control over your own Sight. And quite a few ways too to have it stolen away again.

This is probably not what you were looking for, but it's what came to mind 😂 Sorry if it gave you 0 new information

#witchblr #witch community #third eye #sight #a witch's sight #occultblr

[deathbydarkelves]

I decided to make playlists for Cathala and Tarinne plus explanations for why I chose each song because I entered one of those ADHD fugue states and if I didn't finish this task I would die

Anyway here are the two links (they're youtube playlists because I don't have spotify. I would obviously recommend using an adblocker if you're just gonna watch on youtube) and the explanations for each song are below the cut :) Each playlist is about an hour long.

For Tarinne’s:

1. Foggy Nights: I consider this her theme so putting it first as a sort of intro only makes sense.

2. Here’s a Health to the Company: I think this works as an example of her general disposition. She’s a people person, and always a fan of singing these sorts of songs in taverns, on ships, or what have you. It also kind of feels like a sendoff to soldiers, which I imagine symbolizes her joining the Sentinel Army and quickly thereafter fighting in the Third War.

3. Wartime Prayers: Somewhat self-explanatory, this is symbolizing her seeing war for the first time, but I also included it because the last line transitions SO WELL into the next song.

4. The Hollow: This song is an intro to an album I've never heard so I don't know the context, but I really love it because it sounds like someone praying to their deity and like I mean c'mon. Elune. Tarinne's praying to Elune to guide her through the war. Do I need to elabo-

5. Wave Walker: KILL DEATH MAIM AHAHAHAHA

6. Isil Elun’falo: Just a super rad fan-made night elf song that's basically "wow we sure do love Elune" said in twenty different ways for four and a half minutes. But it ROCKS and I LOVE it.

7. Chewing Cotton Wool: This song is about losing a loved one (I did have to check but yeah that's what it is) and I use it to symbolize Tarinne losing her mom during the war. The last line, which includes the song's title, I especially like. It's referring to how morticians (apparently) put cotton gauze in a corpse's throat and mouth to keep body fluids in and make the face look more natural. So there's a fun fact for you.

8. See U Soon (Song for Dad): Just a short lofi piece to rest a bit, and it was also chosen because the title's in reference to Tarinne growing closer to her dad after losing her mom. She still visits him at his leathers and furs shop in Stormwind fairly often, especially after dangerous adventures. She just wants to make sure he knows she's alright ;-;

9. No Lullaby: Right back into it with a song that I use to represent Tarinne's general feeling of not being able to go home because it's not there anymore. She's felt like this since the end of the Third War, but it's especially strong since the whole Teldrassil thing. But I like the ending, "who said you're on your own," because it contrasts the repeating of "alone" in the rest of the song. And it's kinda like "hey, listen, you're not the only one who feels like she can't go home." I mean that's probably how basically every single night elf feels right now skxnks

10. The Moss: This song juxtaposes classic fairy tales with scientific facts about the world and I love it to BITS. I'm using it here to represent both Tarinne's love for storytelling but also her sort of... part-time historian/archaeologist/conservator career.

11. Rasputin: I just associate this song with her for some reason and this was the best place to put it.

12. Electric Feel: Moving on to focus more on Tarinne's relationship with Cathala now. This is an extremely great and somewhat 😏 song that I also included because the electricity theme is appropriate because Cathala has lightning powers and y'know it's from Tarinne's perspective or whatever.

13. Bedroom Hymns: You know why this is here.

14. Movement: I can't talk about love songs without talking about Hozier, okay. This is just a nice, slower song to relax a bit with.

15. Never Let Me Go: I have an entire goddamn music video in my head with Cathala and Tarinne for this song and it’s very dramatic and emotional and I had to include this song or I’d die. Basically just listen to near the end of this song when she's repeating the title over and over, and imagine the two of them seeing each other at opposite ends of a battlefield after the dust settles and they rush towards each other and fall to their knees holding on as tightly as they can because they got separated early on and each thought the other was dead. Then you'll know how I feel when I listen to this song.

16. Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control: First of all I love the title, and second of all there's a big section in the middle (1:49 to 2:47) that I like to interpret as the two of them grappling with the fact that they're not really quite sure who or what they're fighting for anymore. Their people, yeah, but there's so many alliances and semi-permanent enemies and only-on-every-other-thursday-enemies all intertwined and the world is just so very confusing and they're trying to make the best of it. Elf school didn’t include international, interracial politics in its curriculum. It did however include how to properly plant trees, and AP calculus (this is a joke).

17. In Dreams: I like to imagine this song is something the two of them would say to each other, as a way of saying “even when everything we know is gone, even when the world ends, I will still be by your side. And if I’m not, don’t fear, for I will find you.” It makes a nice note to end on :)

For Cathala’s:

1. muse: Just a nice lofi intro to get us into things :) I don't see this song as her theme, like I do with Tarinne and the first song in her playlist, but I like it quite a bit. I don't actually really have a theme for Cathala yet, I'm currently going with a version of Way of the Monk from WoW's OST but I'm still looking for something better.

2. Frogs Singing: I included this because it's about just appreciating nature, which works because night elf and also mindfulness and meditation is a whole thing.

3. Tongues: This is a song about feeling distant from your peers which is like Cathala's whole existence! She's this weird mix of two cultures and ultimately she feels out of place regardless of where she is or who she's with. Also the theme with not understanding what people are saying works because the poor woman had to learn Pandaren from scratch and that shit ain't easy. I think blizz said somewhere probably that Common is just a language that EVERYONE knows inherently because Video Game but that's bullshit in my opinion. I'll allow spells that let you understand foreign languages to an extent (Comprehend Languages from D&D lets you understand the LITERAL meaning only, which I like), but every culture and species in the universe knowing Common is silly if you think about it for more than two seconds.

4. Kung Fu Fighting: I'm legally required to include this song. Also I prefer the Kung Fu Panda version, I'm sorry.

5. Harder Better Faster Stronger: I vicariously experience having a great work ethic through Cathala and that's why this song is here because she has 999 Determination and does Too Many push-ups every day or something idk. I was gonna say "every morning" but I have a headcanon that elves only need to sleep every couple of days (sort of a nod to "elves don't need to sleep at all" from D&D, and to explain why NIGHT elves are active at all hours of the day) so that doesn't work.

6. What's Up Danger: This song is Cathala's whole Vibe. Almost zero threat assessment skills in this woman's brain. If it can be punched, she will punch it.

7. Eye for an Eye: Fairly self-explanatory, it's a song about wanting revenge so... yeah. Checked that box. It was this or The Vengeful One by Disturbed but ultimately The Vengeful One's religious symbolism probably makes it fit better as a Tyrande theme lol ("I'm the hand of god, I'm the dark messiah." Did you mean: the Night Warrior)

8. Survivor: Cathala's survived a lot of shit and this could kinda be her making fun of herself for it because "Gods, man! Don't I deserve a break!"

9. Ashes: Really the reason I include this song is the last chunk (2:42 to the end) because holy shit. Listen, if I was gonna include a song with fire motifs, it was gonna be a somber one like this.

10. Into the West: This can kinda represent Cathala just trying to fucking breathe and recover from Teldrassil. Also works because I dunno it has stuff to do with the elves in LotR, I haven't seen those movies in a while. It sounds nice and is melancholy so I included it.

11. Like Real People Do: Cathala loves Tarinne a lot you guys have I ever menti-

12. Into the Wild: Tarinne changed Cathala's world for the better and she's super fucking grateful she has her by her side. Kinda goes without saying but you know.

13. Chasing the Moon: I have a vague music video in my head for this of them falling in love and it's very cute so there's that. Also it's in this specific spot because hey she may be deeply traumatized but she's still got a fair number of things/people in her life that make her happy so :)

14. Follow My Girl: I've got a theme going in my head that while Tarinne is fairly certain of her place in the world, Cathala is still trying to find hers. She outlived all her connections on Pandaria because Elf Lifespans(tm) and the only members of her family still alive are distant relatives she never knew very well.

15. Wish That You Were Here: This works both to represent Cathala on Pandaria feeling super homesick, and for more recently after Teldrassil. Either way, it's a message to her parents and sister.

16. Mr. Fear: She does her damnedest to hide it but she's absolutely terrified something like Teldrassil's gonna happen again! That fear drives her to do everything in her power to protect who and what she can. As long as they're not Forsaken, cause she's still got her biases, that compassion even extends across faction lines. She never really got the whole Alliance/Horde thing anyway. Innocent people shouldn't have to die, regardless of who or what they are.

17. Ordinary Day: Not to get super out there but I think this song works as symbolizing Cathala really trying to hold on to her faith in Elune, but ultimately feeling pretty abandoned. I mean she can clearly see Elune's influence everywhere. But Elune sure ain't doing Cathala any favors as far as she can tell! It also ends the whole playlist on maybe a bit of an uncertain/open-ended note, because this "losing faith" aspect is a new thing with her and will definitely be something she continues to struggle with for a while. On a related note, I should say Tarinne is still very much devout but she gets what Cathala's feeling and doesn't force anything on her, and vice versa. And Cathala wouldn't become atheist, the night elves aren't monotheistic and she still worships all the other deities, it's just specifically Elune she's a little :/ on.

#cathala #tarinne #oc playlist

[nicka-nell]

Just one night - Chapter 3: Next night then (END)

Masterlist     |  Chapter 2 - That’s not right (Idk…a bit angst?)  

Words: 3.640 Chapters: 3/3 (END) Pairing: Keishin Ukai x reader Narrative perspective: second person Warning: fluff, a bit angst, NSFW (the part is marked with NSFW) blow job, daddy kink, a bit violence and authority

You can easily skip the NSFW part. Nothing happens here that is important for the story. So if you don’t want to read something like this, you can skip it without hesitation and go on with the SFW part.

***NSFW - PART***

This time, you’re the one who won’t let him finish, bends back forward, wraps his cheeks with your hands, and pleasantly kisses him. A barely audible moan escapes Ukai as his hands slowly move your body down to your thighs. Little by little you feel his cold, rough hands pushing up your dress and finding their way to your ass.

“Mh… Take off your clothes.” he breathes in between the kisses and looks deep into your eyes. “Come on, little girl. Take off your clothes for me.”  he says with more pressure in his voice.

Still looking at Ukai, you bite your lower lip and get up to take off your dress. The muffled sound of the fabric can be heard as you throw your dress on the floor and still look at Ukai. With a quiet murmur he looks at your body and leans back to the couch, his arms leaning against the backrest.

“Everything. Take off everything, little girl.” His voice is deep and his words are like a command in your ears. It’s an order you’ll execute quickly so you won’t upset Ukai. “Oh god…” It escapes Ukai quietly as he sees your shapely breasts. “Get down on your knees and show your daddy how your mouth works. Show me you’re my good little slut.” His voice gives you goose bumps and immediately you get down on your knees. You don’t know why, but this dominant Ukai makes you rub your legs tightly together and to hold back your moaning.

Still, your eyes are on Ukais as the click of his belt buckle is heard, you open the zipper of his pants and then frees his limb from his boxer shorts. When you see his already hard, big limb, you have to lick your lips at the sight. Ukai send out pure manhood for you.

 You just want to use your hands and use them to touch Ukai’s best piece when he interrupts you in your movement. “No. Use your mouth, put your hands behind your back.” he commands. Quickly you put your hands on your back and open your mouth to take his best piece into you. “Mh… just like that baby girl.” Ukai moans and leans his head backwards. “Ah you use your mouth so well little one.” With these words he digs his hand into your hair and causes you to take his whole limb into you.

Quickly you choke up and tears form in the corners of your eye, as his tip repeatedly bumps against the back of your mouth. With his hand he forces you to make faster movements and again you have to choke briefly and give a small groan of you as your tears flow along your cheeks. You lose air, and you use your hands to support yourself on Ukai’s thighs and pull your head away from his member.

   Hastily you gasp for air, but Ukai leans his arms against his thigh and looks at you with narrowed eyes. “Hey! Who told you to stop, brat?” he hisses. You look at him with big, glassy eyes. He looks so much more manly than before.

“Come on, on your feet. Lean over the couch. I think I need to teach you to be obedient again.” He whispers in your ear as he bends forward and embraces your tender neck with his large hand. As requested by him, you stand up without any contradictions and position yourself on the couch.

 A quiet crack is heard and shortly after, you also hear the fabric of Ukais clothes and how they land on the ground. Only a few seconds pass before you feel his cold hands on your hip and his bare muscular upper body pressing against your back. Unlike his hands, the skin on his chest is warm and makes you growl softly. “I think I have to punish you for making me so angry. Right?” he breathes in your ear full of lust. “Yes please.” you moan and lift your hip to push your butt against his body.

   In your movement, you feel his stiff member on your ass and notice directly how a benevolent feeling is spreading within you. “Well? Do you want it? Do you want my cock in you, you stupid little brat?” he whispers with a deep voice in your ear. Immediately you get goose bumps again.

 “Yes, Keishin please! Give me your cock.” you moan and push your body further to him. “Who said you could call me Keishin, brat!” He hisses, and before you can improve, you can feel his hand on your ass. With all his strength, he’s smack it. “Ah!” you shout. A mixture of pain and pleasure spreads within you. “Ukai! Ukai! I’m sorry, Ukai!” you sob and once again feel his firm slap on your shapely butt. Your skin turns reddish at this point and it starts to poach. “No little one, wrong again, use that thing between your ears.” he hisses. “Daddy! I’m sorry! Please Daddy!” you sob again.

     “Are you sorry? That’s good. “Be a good girl.” you hear his dark voice behind you and even before you can say anything, you feel his limb penetrating you with a massive push. “Ah!” you shout. It’s big and warm. You weren’t adjusted to this immense size. A benevolent pain spreads in your abdomen and makes you bite your lower lip.

     However, this great feeling of fullness leaves you after just a few minutes. “Well, babe, tell me, what exactly should I do?” With these words, he hits his member against your ass and make you moan. “I want you. I want to feel your cock inside me.” You answer him with a whiny voice.

 His deep smile rings out in your ears as Ukai bends back forward. “You are so tight baby girl. I’m coming.” he moans, rushing in and out of you. Faster… Deeper… Harder….

“Now come for me. Come with me baby girl.” He’s so deep inside you that you can’t really relate the pain. You don’t know if it’s pleasant or if it hurts. But you know you’re about to your climax. “Ah daddy I’m coming!” You moan loudly as your eyes roll backwards.

It does not take long until your juice wraps his member and the damp sounds of skin on skin can be heard loud. With shallow breath, Ukai falls on your back and pushes your body against the couch. He’s still inside you, and you feel every twitch in you. Ukai’s heartbeat is loud and his heavy breath tickles the skin on your neck.

     “I’m sorry y/n.” he whispers softly as he gives you a loving kiss on the neck and supports himself with his arms left and right of you to stand up. A feeling of emptiness spreads within you as he pulls his limb out of you.

     With shaky legs, you fall back on the couch and breathe deeply. Carefully Ukai caresses the place of your butt, which is still red from his hits. “I’m sorry y/n… I was much too rough on you.” he says with a suffering undertone. “No. If you had been too rough, I would have said so.” You try to calm him down with a loving look.

 With a barely visible smile, he stands up from the couch and bends forward to lift your still shaky body. “Ah Ukai! What are you doing?” you ask in surprise and instinctively cling to his neck.  “First of all, call me Keishin. Second, the bathroom was the first door on the left right? Then let me clean you up, and third, I would like to know with which save word you would have made me stop.” with his last words he grins mischievously.

 You look at him with your eyebrow raised. “I would have just said, stop shitty old man.” As soon as you’ve spoken ‘shitty old man’, Ukai’s face is twisted. “Oh my god… can’t you just say nicotine or cigarette or something? Why do you have to drag my old one into this. Do you want me to never have sex with you again?” he complains, whiny.

   “Nicotine? Really, Keishin you are impossible!” you laugh up and shake your head. “Speaking of nicotine… I have to smoke a cigarette.”, “But not in here! And if you want to complain now, you get the hell out of here.” You call without even giving him the chance to talk. “Okay, okay.” he pouts and opens the bathroom door, still with you in his arms.

 Unlike before, he now gently and carefully washes your body with your sponge and never forgets to give you a few kisses in your neck.

-

***SFW - PART***

“Tell me… that earlier today…” Ukai tries to break the silence between the two of you as you sit next to each other in a blanket on the couch. “I don’t want it to be a one-time thing, Keishin. Sugawara told me to go on more offensive so you’d understand, and well, that’s what I’ve done. But if it is something one and only for you, then-” even before you can finish your sentence, Ukai looks at you perplexed and interrupts you.

“Suga- Sugawara? Didn’t you two flirt together? Wait… Sugawara knows about us? How did he know before I did? Listen, as long as you’re in school, no one should know!” his voice is serious and for a moment you have the feeling that in his look there is a hint of anger.

“First of all, it was Sugawara’s idea to flirt with him because he wanted to lure you out of the closet. And secondly, Sugawara, Azumane, Sawamura and Shimizu know. They all keep their mouths shut. So it’s up to us whether it comes out or not.” sighing, you fold your arms and examine Ukai.

 Sighing, he leans forward and leans on his thighs, his hands in front of his face. “Y/n listen, I don’t care if your friends, my mother or the shitty old man know it. You may only be in school for a few more months but if one of the teachers notices this with us, you jeopardize your graduate. I don’t care if I get kicked out or not. I still have the store. But you still have a lot to do. I’m sure you want to study. So… I mean, I don’t want it to be just something one and only between us. But I think it’s better if we really keep this a secret. Not meet so often, and only after your time at school, deal with it openly.”

     “So now you want to go and talk to me again in a few months or do something with me, or how can I imagine that?” His words make you feel uncomfortable. Sighing, he puts his hand to his forehead. “Keishin?” you bend over and reach out for him. But Ukai stops you. Because with his hand still resting on his thigh, he grabs your wrist and looks at you seriously.

       With a strong jerk he pulls you to himself. “It would be most reasonable if we stopped seeing each other while you were in school. But I guess I’m too selfish… At school, you are the student and manager of our team. After school, you’ll come to my store with the others. Only then you’ll stay with me and put your sexy ass on my lap. In my store, you’ll be my little girl. We just have to be careful. Besides, my mother will be sad if I don’t take you with me for now…” he laughs and buries his head in your neck.

All right. So at school, you’re sensei Ukai, and after school, in your shop, you’re my old, cigarette-smelling Keishin.” you smile and look at him mischievously. “You can call me sensei after school too. I like that.”  he whispers and bites your neck lovingly. “Hey!” you giggle, and smoothly push him away from you.

       “Good. Then let’s keep our little secret as secret as possible.” He whispers, and conspiratorially you look into each other’s eyes. Nodding, you put your arms around his neck and seal the secret with a loving kiss.

-

In school, you do well to avoid each other or pretend to be just a manager and a trainer. In his shop, however, as soon as the students are gone and the doors are closed, you fall over each other.

Today you’re a little tense because you have a game against Nekoma. Besides, today is your last day as a substitute manager. The last day you can see Ukai so much. “There is Kenma!” As the team of Nekoma enters your gym, Hinata’s joyful voice takes you out of your mind.

Quickly their captain becomes aware of you and grins at you with a mischievous look. “Hello you pretty kitten.  I’m Kuroo.” he calls to you as he moves in your direction and takes your hand to leave a short kiss on the back of your hand. “I wasn’t told the Karasuno boys had such a pretty manager.” He still bends over to you as his quiet words enter your ears.

“Yes, I’m only their manager temporarily. Today is my last day.” You answer a little annoyed and pull your hand away from him. “Oh, what? Well, let me buy you a drink later after we win. What do you think?” Grinning, he puts his arm around your shoulders and presses you towards him.

“Y/N! STOP FLIRTING WITH THE OPPONENTS AND HELP THE BOYS WARM UP!” angry and loud, Ukai’s voice echoes through the gym. The sleeves of his jacket are pulled up and his hands clenched to fists as he looks at you and the pretty captain of Nekoma.

“I’m sorry. I have to go. Another time I like to drink something with you Kuroo.”  you try to sound as normal as possible as you go back to your team with a waving hand movement without looking at Ukai again.

The sets you play are quite balanced. Sometimes Nekoma wins, sometimes Karasuno wins. All are focused on the game and everyone has fun. All except for Ukai. With his arms crossed in front of his chest, he looks at the players on the field without even giving you a look or talking to you.

“Stop being so uptight. This looks conspicuous.” You whisper to him hidden behind your block. “What… I just focus on the players.” He hisses and leans forward. You decide to leave him alone for the time being and concentrate on the game.

   After a total of six sets, you decide to say goodbye to Nekoma. “So if this was your last day as a manager, maybe you want to give me your number?” asks Kuroo, who is about to leave the hall. “Eh… Y- Yes… give me your phone. Then I type in the number.” Embarrassed you scratch the back of your head and already feel the angry looks of Ukai.

“Thanks l/n.” Kuroo grins and walks out of the gym. “That was perhaps a few exhausting sets…” yawns Sugawara, who is just hanging the net with Asahi. “That was indeed a lot… You’ve done a good job. I’m proud of you. Now go to the club room, change, pack your things and go home. Eat your food and rest. L/n and I clean up the rest of this place and then lock down the gym.” His voice is serious as he rests his hands on his hip.

       Nodding, the boys also say goodbye to you and only Ukai and you remain. An unpleasant silence spreads. “So…” you try to break the silence, but Ukai takes only the already dropped volleyball net into his hands and turns around. “Come with me.” he commands. Swallowing, you dare not to contradict him and follow him with quick steps.

With a murmur he puts the volleyball net behind the car with the sports mats, when you start to play behind him with your hair. “Keishin I don’t know what I did to make you so angry but if it’s because of Kuroo… Believe me, I don’t want anything from-” even before you can finish your sentence, you feel Ukai’s hand on your wrist and how he pulls you to him with huge force.

       His rough lips land coarsely on yours as he presses you down on the sports mats. “Admit it y/n, you did it on purpose. You wanted to drive me crazy on purpose.” He whispers as he holds your hands over your head on the mat. With his eyes clenched, he starts biting your neck, opening the buttons of your blouse with his free hand, and slowly going down to your skirt.

“K- Keishin…” You’re moaning. You notice how your cheeks take on a reddish color and bite your lower lip. “Daddy will show you what to do with bad girls like you.” he grins and embraces your chest with his hand. The hand that held your wrists just now leaves a cold spot.

 Between all the kisses and bites, you don’t hear his pants fall to the ground, and how he presses against you. “Keishin! What if someone sees us?” You ask hastily when you realize that you are in the storeroom and that the door is wide open. “Then you should probably be quiet and suppress your sweet moans.” he breathes to you while he bites your neck again. “Mh…” you try to avoid your moaning. “Ukai-san? Are you still here?” The voice of sensei Takeda suddenly makes you wince.  You look at each other with your eyes wide open.

 “Shit.” Ukai flees quietly and looks forward. “Come on, get down.” he whispers and presses you down, so that Takeda could only see Ukai’s upper body, in case he should come into the storage room.

 Huddled up, you sit in front of Ukai, whose pants are still on the floor, and only now do you notice that even your bag, which you had put in the storage room so that no one stumbles over them during the game against Nekoma, is in the back corner. Quickly you get your phone out of the chest pocket of your blouse and look for Sugawara’s number.

“Sensei… sensei Takeda. Yes, I’m still here. Don’t worry, I’ll be ready to close the gym soon. You can go.” Ukai’s nervous voice is heard. “Do you need help? Just wait a moment, I’ll be right with you.” Takeda calls him and stands before Ukai can stop him in the storage room.

“Oh…is l/n also here?” he asks, wondering when he looks at your bag. Still nervous Ukai looks at your bag and then, for a short moment, down to you. “I’m sorry.” you shape the words with your lips silently.

“Eh yes… so… no she… She went home with the boys. She probably left her bag here.” He laughs embarrassedly and puts his hand on the back of his head. “Oh, okay… I’ll take the bag and take it to the teachers’ room.” Takeda smiles friendly and walks towards your bag. “Oh no…” you say barely audible. Where is Sugawara?

“Oh there it is!” you hear a familiar voice that lets you breathe out. “Sugawara?” Surprised, Ukai and Takeda look at him. “Hello Sensei Takeda. Y/n forgot her bag and wrote to me. I was still here because… Because I wanted to ask you something about graduation for the third-graders.” Grinning, he walks past Takeda and quickly grabs your bag without even looking in your direction.

“So Sensei Takeda? Do you have a minute to go to the teachers’ room and maybe talk about graduation?”, “Uh… Yes sure. Let’s get out of here, Sugawara. Goodbye Ukai-san.” With a waving hand movement, the two say goodbye to Ukai and leave the sports hall.

Sighing, Ukai rejects his head on the sports mats and then reaches out to your hand to help you up. “That was too close… Sorry about that.” he sighs again. But you can’t help giggling. “Sugarawa saved our asses. Besides, it was kind of exciting.” Still smiling, you put your hands around his cheeks and make him look at you.

“Exciting? So that’s what you kids find exciting these days? That was too much stress for me. I think if this continues like that, I’m not getting old.” He laughs, weeping, and lays his head on your shoulder. “I’m really sorry. I should have been more careful. No, actually, this shouldn’t have happened.”

“I think… We’ll postpone that from today to another time? To the next evening?” you laugh out loud. Now he’s the one who has to giggle and give you a kiss on the forehead. “Yes. Next night then.”

#3/3 #just one night #haikyu #haikyuu!! #haikyuu #keishin #ukai #keishin ukai #ukai keishin #ukai x reader #keishin x reader #ukai keishin x reader #keishin ukai x reader #haikyu x reader #ukai x you #haikyu x you #haikyu x #ukai x #love #fluff #grown up characters #nelas story #justt an idea

[nad-zeta]

Matchup Duo 💎

HOWDY, not sure if matchups for ikeseng are open but here i go anyway?¿ ´･ᴗ･`

-I’m a Leo, and a combination of ENFP/ENTP (if that helps with characterization), but I’m becoming more ambivert as the days go by. But I still act like a crackhead (making up new words, making random sound effects out of boredom and roasting people playfully, having airhead moments, for examples) and a lot of people irl do get put off at how “obnoxious” I can get, but I do know when to “flip the switch” and become serious/quiet.

-I have really low standards for humor idk I laugh at my own jokes it’s honestly astounding, but cursed memes/images are somethin else💀 Dark jokes are always open in my ally👀

-Ironically, I canNOT stand horror, I will legit be so paranoid or freaked out and start overthinking and just cry and DIE—

I’m very open, almost TOO open, but ask me literally anything and I’ll usually tell everyone my honest opinions/thoughts, but I know how to deliver words tactfully and articulately. Debating, (public) speaking, writing, and understanding concepts are my strong suits; likewise I suck ass at math (I have no idea how I ended up in Calc BC ap, I just— 😭)

-Speaking of writing, I write poems whenever I feel like it, I have a whole collection HAH. My love of expressing comes from my tendency to play the devil’s advocate in interpreting and arguing for almost all perspectives in topics. So you can probably guess how I don’t get offended really easily and welcome both playful and serious banter (despite the crackhead persona, I’m very observant of people and their values expressed and how they tick, so I know when to back off especially when they get uncomfortable with my aggressive debating/personality). Need advice? I can use what I’ve gathered from different people and help anyone in their particular situations.

-And speaking of expression, I love fashion and makeup! I love being able to express myself through use of presentation and have fun while doing it! hehe (k-fashion, asian beauty 👀) HECK YEAH I’M DOWN FOR SHOPPING—

-I like to dance yeehaw, and I was on a competitive dance team (well that was before when the corona hit the milly rock a little TOO hard and put all the dancers out of commission😔🤝😭) I’ve also been in my own highschool’s dance club for 4 years!!

-I’m a console gamer :0 Big fan of winding down with video games, but books are the best if games aren’t an option.

-Music is a huge part of my life; I played the flute and the viola for years before and been surrounded by music through dancing as well; while I’ve been in a choir before, my vocals aren’t stellar oof, but at least I’m not tone-deaf.

-Can’t cook to save a life ooooof, that’s where my airheadness REALLY kicks in. I literally burn myself making instant :>

-I’m not phased by sexual innuendos/conversations/kinks because I see them objectively as unique characteristics of every person, but I’ll crack up at a sex joke or a cringe flirt line with friends. And like I’ve said, I’ll share them myself without objection if ANYONE asks. But the moment someone actually TRIES to make a move on me (like what!!¡¿), I’ll first play it casual but then bolt for the door because it’s hard for me to actually imagine that ANY guy would see me in a romantic light LOL but i’d get used to the advances quick and if it’s someone i liked back, i’d tease them the same or raise up the antics ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

Hi, there, dear! <3 Can I just say u sound like a super cool person! Anyway here is your matchup dear, I hope you enjoy it! And thanks for waiting soooooooooo long! ^_^

So I match you with………… Masamune

Selfie Match up

The first time this boi meets you he is ecstatic, finally someone fun to liven up this boring place.

You scream fun and outgoing

Masamune is already imagining all the fun adventures the two of you can go on and he hasn’t even talked to you yet!

He is absolutely captivated by those big dark brown eyes. 

Those big bright intelligent eyes are all telling of the playful mischief the two of you could get up to together.

He absolutely loses himself in your deep warm, captivating eyes, they remind him of home, they are deep and rich like the soil of his home town, soft and comforting, while busting with endless life and energy

HE is absolutely dazzled by the way your soft strands of earthy hair moved so freely in the wind. It low key reminds him of his own wild free personality

If he ever had to imagine his perfect woman you would be it.

You have the same vibe as playful kitten having endless hours of fun, and boy oh boy all Masa wants to do is join in.

He wishes nothing more than to boop your cute nose

His brain goes haywire, all he wants to do is kiss those soft lips of yours

Masamune continues to eye you from the corner of the council room. Gosh if love at first sight did exist than this would describe his exact feelings towards you.

Match up part

You were named as the new princess of the Oda forces and was forced to sit through the rest of the boring war council. It had been 30 minutes in, and you were already losing your mind from boredom, that is when the one-eyed dragon passed you note from across the table. You giggled a little at the joke and wrote back on of your own. The two of you passed notes back and forth, every joke or remark you read made you want to break out in laughter. As the council progressed, the two of you got rowdier and rowdier and the both of you were now making strange noises. You were making all sorts of weird sound effects, and Masamune was howling in laughter. TBH they were so funny even Nobunaga couldn’t help but laugh. Everyone was having a good time except Hideyoshi “Okay that’s the third time the two of you have disturbed the council”. Hideyoshi started lecturing you and Masamune about not disturbing the council any further when Nobunaga announced that the council was over. The two of you couldn’t help but laugh in victory. The two of you continued your conversation in which you were playfully roasting each other. Masamune was right; you really were going to be a lot of fun.

Masa love chatting and spending time with you and honestly, he loved the fact that you understood and laughed at all his jokes. What he loves the most is times just before your about to deliver the punch line to a joke, but you burst out laughing for 20 minutes before you can even get it out. And once you finally coke out the punchline between laughs, you continue to giggle at your hilarious sense of humour for another solid 30 minutes. Masamune can’t help but laugh at you laughing at yourself. When the two of you goofballs are around its always a fun time, but beware of some occasional dark humour i.e. the two of you got scolded one day for joking about some dark topics in front of the kids *cough* Mitsunari *cough*

The first night you arrived, and Masamune barged into your room, and Masamune being Masamune, ignored any boundaries of personal space and started to page through one of your books that were laying on your writing desk. It was your fashion portfolio that caught his eye. He loves all the different looks and the way the colours and patterns seemed to complement each other. You had explained to him that you were heavily into fashion and makeup and considered it as part of your self-expression. Masamune smiled his big cat-like smile at you asking if you wanted to meet up with him tomorrow. You honestly didn’t have anything better to do, so you agreed.

You and Masamune spent hours in the market looking at different fabrics, clothes and makeup products. Everything was so different in the past. After spending the whole day shopping your grab both of Masamune’s hands in your, you beam up at his with the brightest smile stating that you had a fun idea. Masa is pretty much keen for anything, so he goes along with your strange idea. The two of you make your way back to his manor. And that is when the two of you hold a fashion show, to show off your new clothes and accessories the two of you bought. It was a lighthearted fun game, filled with banter and giggles. It had actually become somewhat of a tradition now for the two of you to do this little fashion shows in his room after a long day of shopping. You would always bust out laughing at the strange poses Masamune would do. 

Another fun activity the two of you have adopted is poetry slams. Both of you would spend the week writing your best poems and then present them to each other. Just like the fashion shows, these evenings are also always filled to the brim with laugher and banter. The two of you had gotten to know each other fairly well like this, as sometimes the theme of the poems would be dark and depressing, and after the two of you would discuss the emotions behind it. U guys would in those cases always be there for each other lending a friendly ear to listen to the others problems.

Needless to say at this point, Masamune was head over heels for you and somewhere in between the fun poetry slams and fashion shows, his flirty jokes stopped being jokes. He was serious about you. One night he actually kissed you, you were honestly so shook, you ran, you legit sprinted away. Little did you know the tiger was on your heel running after you. He caught you and tacked you to the ground. The 30 second run actually gave you time to sort your feelings, as you too had realized that you had also fallen for the one-eyed dragon. He stared into your eyes questioningly, and that’s when you snaked your hands behind his neck and pulled him down to return the kiss.

The two of you made such a sweet couple. After work, Masamune would always be on the hunt for his kitten to spend time with you. He was super shocked when he heard singing coming from the kitchen. He snuck up to the kitchen and peeked inside. He had to chuckle when he saw you singing your heart out and dancing like nobody was watching. He never knew you could sing and dance like that, he watched you for a while utterly awestruck by you. He was pulled out of his reverie when he smelt something burning and saw a cloud of smoke coming from the oven. You panicked at seeing the smoke and swiftly opened the oven. You didn’t even think when you took the baked, well-burnt goods out the oven without mitts or a cloth. You had legit burnt your hands to a crisp. 

Masamune rushed to your side to evaluate the damage. He got a bag and filled it with ice, putting it on your burnt hands. He then proceeded to rub some medicine on the burns and wrap your hands “Best leave the cooking to me from now on Kitten”. He then took over from where you left off, making you the best meal you had ever tasted. You sat on the kitchen counter to keep him company. The burnt buns and your burnt hands were long forgotten, as the two of you were laughing and chatting away. 

Now, whenever Masamune cooked, you would sit in the kitchen with him and keep him company. The two of you would laugh and dance together in the kitchen. It was always so much fun spending time with him, you especially love it when he sings in his most false off-key voice it is honestly hilarious. You couldn’t help but think he complimented you perfectly. He could cook when you couldn’t even make toast successfully, and you could sing beautifully, while he sounded like some cat in pain.

Another thing Masa absolutely loves, is to sit and listen to you play the flute or viola. The soothing music and the amount of love and emotion you pack into the songs as you play, washes away all the stress and tiredness from his day. He could sit four hours and hours just enchanted by the sound of your music. Even more so if you sing along to the song, you are playing. He loves hearing your beautiful voice. This boy will legit drag you to sit in his lap and nuzzle and kiss you until you agree to play or sing him a song.

Masamune is always by your side supporting you and showering you with love. Whenever you get sad or insecure, Masamune is always there to lighten the mood. Like one time, some maids pissed you off. “ why is my kitten so angry today” Masamune literally came up to you and pinched your cheeks, he then squished your face “Common lemi see that beautiful smile.” When you still had a grumpy expression, he pulled you up and started spontaneously dancing. You couldn’t help but smile at the goofball and join in. Soon your big wide fast movements slowed down, and Masamune pulled you into his arms by your waist. He then dropped his head down and rested it in the crook of your neck. You honestly love quite moments like this just slow dancing in your lover’s arms. He would ask you about your day and would tighten his hold on you, enveloping you in a warm embrace, while you talk out all your frustrations of the day. After he would nibble on your ear whispering how much he loves and adores you.

Masa is like your fun knight in shining armour whether it is comforting you and helping you get to sleep after hearing some crazy scary ghost stories or spending hours upon hours bantering with you while you playfully insult each other, He is always there for you, loving you from the moment the sun rises till the moment it sets. He has truly met his match with you and never has in his life been happier, or laughed so much. The two of you can always be found snuggled together with Masa’s lil tiger cub in the futon after a long day of laughs, fun and adventures

Perhaps it truly was love at first sight after all 

Other potential matches…………….Mitsuhide 

 Hope you enjoyed it, love! and I hope you are staying safe and well🍭 @smol-vy

#ikesen masamune #masamune date #ikemen sengoku masamune #masamune matchup #ikesen matchup #match ups #ikesen selfie matchup #selfie matchup #selfie match-up #submission

[orsino-the-enchanter]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent (the mere existence of a post-canon verse is diverging from canon)/ fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. It depends on what you mean as popular. Whoever has ever played DA2 knows Orsino because he’s important to the plot (especially in act 3) but the opinions on him are conflicted. like they are on any morally gray character. Still, he is a side character who has like 5 scenes in the entire game, so I believe he’s not getting the attention he deserves.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. Orsino certainly is not everyone’s cup of tea, I can say that much. Physical appearance-wise he is very attractive for what he is: a stressed/depressed middle-aged DA2 elf who has seen SomeShit™ in his life. He has aged way more graceful than what he could have, but still, he is in his late 40s/early 50s, which can be a deterrent factor to some; also, the elves in this game have distinctive inhuman-like features that people either love or hate. Personally, I think that there is harmony and beauty in his features, which makes him weirdly pretty to look at and i love the fact that they gave him an hourglass body shape. However, Orsino’s true beauty lies in his personality and his calm, collected, polite demeanor. His voice is another huge bonus.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. I mean... he’s a First Enchanter who keeps his knowledge on blood magic and necromancy a secret, there are hints that he’s a somniari mage throughout the game, he has some very badass scenes where he kicks the asses of bigger/stronger opponents than himself when he’s outnumbered AND he has one of the 2 boss battles in the finale of the game. There is no doubt that he is a force to be reckoned with in battle.

Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK. I think he’s criminally underrated not just by the fandom, but even  the creators of the game, who gave him no backstory, only a handful of scenes and butchered his character just to add another boss battle.

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO. Meeting him along with Knight Commander Meredith and Viscount Dumar earns you an achievement (the “friends in high places” one). He is one of the main antagonists in the third and most crucial part of the game and you can either choose to side with him or oppose him.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. Lots of elements in the storyline depend on the protagonist’s political views on what’s going on in Kirkwall, and since Orsino is a prominent political figure, he is relevant to the protagonist’s views. He can be either an ally or an opponent, depending to what the protagonist’s views are. Also, he had been involved to the protagonist’s tragic loss of their mother -albeit indirectly-, since he was an informant of the murderer.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. He’s a controversial but VERY well-known public figure, to the point where he can be recognized in the streets -even if people have never seen him before, they can recognize the staff he carries, his distinctive robes and the fact that he’s an elf (an elven first enchanter is news in itself, so he doesn’t go by unnoticed). The protagonist has heard of him -along with rumors and gossip surrounding him- before he had the chance to meet him in person. He has such influence and people skills that he even carried out a rally to overturn the Knight Commander’s rule of the city and almost succeeded.

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. Depends on who you ask. Mage sympathizers see him as a brave advocate of his people’s rights who wouldn’t hesitate to put his life on the stake for them. The common folk and the city authorities see him as a potentially dangerous troublemaker and rebel.

How strictly do you follow canon? — I try to follow canon mostly in my canon verse, while taking some artistic liberties due to the lack of a concise backstory. In post-canon verses and au’s, I have taken all the insights on Orsino’s personality, views and way of thinking and I have adapted them to fit each verse’s context.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  For him ‘mage’ is not just a term describing his abilities, it is also a term describing his personality as a whole. He has that elegance, cultivation and mystical charm about him; he is morally grey yet charismatic; witty yet cunning and certainly not one to be toyed with. Despite the exterior of a powerful yet restrained scholar he maintains , however, there are many layers to him and each is darker than the last. He can be both the erudite conversation partner you’d like to have an existential conversation with over a glass of good wine, a trusted advisor you’d confide your problems to and a force to be reckoned with who would obliterate you or your enemies in battle, depending on the situation. Still, the First Enchanter has some very vulnerable sides too, but he tries to keep them to himself.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  — In the main verse he’s a minor character; with not as much involvement in the protagonist’s life as other characters (such as the companions). He’s also kind of secluded and not in touch with whatever happens in real life -not just because he lives in the Circle, but because he has been institutionalized, like any other person who has been brought there from a very young age. Also, there is the age gap which can make him a bit harder to reach than someone younger.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  When I played DA2 for the first time, Orsino piqued my interest because he was the very definition of a tragic figure.  He was the only voice of reason in the madhouse that is Kirkwall; yet he was fighting alone for a just cause that was doomed. He had the whole city and the authorities against him; still, he did not give up trying to protect his people; and he did his best to refrain from violence until the bitter end. His death -a suicide, no matter how you cut it- was equally tragic as the life he led; it was seeing the bringer of hope for mages losing all hope himself and deciding to go fighting and not on his knees. That, combined with his sarcasm and sophistication convinced me that I had to do justice to this poor underappreciated soul and dig deeper into his character -even try to write an alternative ending for him. Hence, this blog was created.

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  My amazing roleplay partners with all the good work they put into their characters and the love they have shown me and my character so far. I love you guys <3

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? i have my doubts sometimes, but i think i do ok. Still, I would love to have more feedback to see how i can improve even more.

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF Headcanons, metas, the works.

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. I am not sure what is meant by ‘drabbles’ but sure, I’d love to write more of those.

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. All the time, especially before going to bed. That is where all those rp ideas come from.

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? Again, i don’t really get much feedback, so i am not that sure if I am doing any good and if my Orsino sounds genuine

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO / SOMETIMES. I like how i have written some threads more than others, I’m not gonna lie.

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO / SORTA. I am a sensitive person in general, but not someone whose feelings are easily hurt/triggered or someone who takes things that are not my business to heart.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Criticism is welcome only when it is constructive; in the sense that there are clearly stated arguments as to what I do not do right and suggestions on how to improve. If someone sends me an ask like “i don’t like x just because” or anon hate, I am just going to ignore it.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  — YES!!! YESS!!! YESS!!!!!!! I cannot stress enough how helpful it is for me to receive suggestions and questions that help me explore sides of my character i have not thought about so far! Even if your questions are the randomest things ever, i’d still LOVE to answer them. I have received some asks like “what would Orsino do in x situation” in the past and they were SO fun to write!

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  Of course! As I said, so far the opinion is supported beyond the ‘just because’, I will be happy to consider it. Anything that helps me broaden my perspective is welcome.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  same as the above.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  — I do not really mind; i am the first person to recognize that Orsino is a controversial figure and people may hate him for whatever reason. I might not agree with the hate, but each to their own I suppose.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  — If they do not do it in the typical ‘grammar nazi’ style i’m chill with it. Grammatical errors tend to happen more often than not, just because i almost never proofread. *shrug*

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  I think so, yes. As I said, I am not easily annoyed, triggered or have my feelings hurt, and i am very excited to interact with new people. Still, i do recommend reading my verses/about/rules pages, if anything, to know what to expect from my portrayal and activity patterns.

tagged by: stolen from @theharellan tagging: @of-enormous-girth @oftevinter @the-old-and-the-hapless @soldier-of-visus @lathsuledin @redtemplarcommander​ @hisfavoritewolf​ @the-champions-of-the-just​ @lowtownbutcher​ @elderone​ @sworntoprotect​ @altuspavus​ @starkhavenprince​ @aqun--athlok​ @hornedchief​ @iamcole​

#meme

[upslapmeal]

So I’ve been thinking about how much potential JtV had and how it’s ended up like.......this, and there are two things I keep coming back to:

the world the show exists in feels a lot smaller than it did at the start

the time jump wasn’t equipped to bear the weight of Jane’s grief

This got longer than I planned and whether it makes sense or not is debatable but I’ve just had Thoughts so I’ve stuck them under the cut.

Losing a main character, along with the section of the show that they were the lead of, is definitely a part of that first point. And along with the role of the crime/detective plot being dramatically reduced, Luisa and Rose also stopped being in the show as much. It’s funny going back to watching s1, because the cast and the world just felt so much fuller. The show gave Jane friends, there were mentions of people we never saw on screen, whereas now it doesn’t really feel as though the characters have a life beyond what we see. Characters that are introduced into the show as Jane’s friends seem to vanish as fast as they arrive, and there are cases like Dennis where he more or less disappeared once he was ruled out as a love interest. I know that ‘so these random people are apparently Jane’s friends?’ is something the narrator has joked about several times, but by this point in the show it makes things like a whole bunch of people turning up for Jane’s 30th feel hollow and doesn’t help at all in the richness of the world. It’s not exactly the same thing since the premise of Crazy Ex Girlfriend involves someone moving to a town where they only know one person, but if you look at the cast at the end of the show, they excelled at getting characters to go from ‘random side character’ to ‘I can’t imagine the show without them’ in a way that makes the world of the show feel so much bigger and richer than it did at the start. Yes, JtV has added characters (a favourite of mine being Darci) but it just........idk to me it feels smaller.

And that first point applies in terms of the scale of the story, or of the threat. I think this is a problem that came with losing the detective plot as a main part of the show. Imagine if the show had gone in the direction where we would look back at s1 and think ‘remember when we thought Rose was a big threat? ha!’. @aparticularbandit made a great post pointing out how Mutter could have easily been Bigger and Badder than the show let her be, and then for so long the show didn’t really have a ~villain or mystery, at least not on a bigger scale than Anezka/Magda. And the lack of that, the fact that the show did away with a plot that had the potential to keep getting bigger and wilder meant that containing it more or less to a cycle of drama with Rose/Luisa a) made it feel repetitive and b) removed a lot of the potential for twisting and turning plot developments to complement the more restrained and character-based Villanueva plots. And, looking at s5, I am aware that kidnapping your lead character’s husband and torturing him until he has amnesia is a Big Villain Move but that plot was badly done and I’ve already talked about it endlessly so I won’t go into it here. And maybe s5 has some big plot left planned, but this is about missed potential more than anything.

A third and final thing that makes the world of the show not feel as developed as it could have been is the writers’ seeming reluctance to vary the characters put together for plots, only exacerbated by the show removing a main character. @petramos, @solanospetra and @jetrafied have already said a bunch of good stuff about this, but it’s just so strange that we’ve got to almost the end of the whole show and there’s been what......one? proper Petra/Rogelio scene? Have we even had a proper Petra/Xo scene beyond a brief exchange of hair/shorts compliments? Imagine if we’d had An Adventure In Aunty-ing starring Luisa and Anezka (I know they had a plot together but....still)! Or Luisa and Honorary Aunt Lina! Imagine if we’d got The Lawyering Adventures of Michael and JR! Give us Darci and *spins wheel* Rafael! Idk, going back to the point about lacking characters there’s a limit to how many you can pair up, but even with pairings we’ve seen many times the writers seem reluctant to change the dynamic. The Rogelio/River stuff is feeling old and repetitive, even Jane and Petra who have had probably the best development often seem to loop back to arguing. Going back to Michael, the Michael/Alba dynamic was something I always wanted the show to get to go into more, and then just as they managed to break him and Rafael out of their pattern of rivalry in s3 they killed him and undid everything when they brought him back. We were robbed of The Great Rogelio Rafael Michael Matelio Father’s Day Extravaganza we deserved! There’s just such a feeling of regression and repetition at the moment, rather than genuine progression. 

Putting together this lack of strong growth between all the characters and the lack of a big external threat means that, five seasons in, so much of the drama is still from internal conflict, rather than problems being faced by a big Villanueva-De La Vega-Solano-Cordero(-Factor-Santillan-etc) unit. And I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any internal conflict! That would be unrealistic and it’s good to keep the dynamics moving and changing! But I feel like it should be a bit more Big Family vs Life And Its Problems than it is at this point.

And now (this is a lot shorter I promise) the second point: the time jump. Honestly, a jump was exactly what the show needed at its halfway point. It would shake things up, put the characters in a new place while also giving them theoretically several years of relative calm in-universe, and from a practical perspective it would let them age up the child actors. Maybe it would have been more like the multiple smaller jumps in Chapter 28 than what we actually had in s3, but a jump would have been great. Provided that it was the jump itself that was mixing up the show. The problem was that it wasn’t the time jump that was the big change, it was something that happened immediately beforehand. And I’ve already rambled on enough (you know, looking back at that post I’ve........I’ve just repeated most of it here whoops, there I was complaining about the JtV writers being the repetitive ones lol) about that didn’t give the viewers enough time to deal with something very dark, nor did the continued lightness of the show really feel it did the grief justice. And obviously, they weren’t going to let the show get bogged down in sadness, so honestly I feel the jump should have been the twist on its own. They should have let it freshen up the show without having it bear the weight of something so traumatic.

So. That’s them thoughts written down. 

#who knows if this is coherent and idk if anyone else feels the same way about the show feeling ~smaller~ but anyway #jane the virgin #jtv #ramblings

[lateviews]

Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ●       Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

●       The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

●       Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

#Absolver #lateview #lateviews #fighting games #spectaclefighter

[soulsxng--a]

hi, i hope you don’t mind getting an ask like this, but ive been in the process of making an oc that has mpd and from what ive seen in research its the same as did? and i was hoping since you have it that you might be able to tell me things to keep in mind to make it more accurate? sorry if its too personal i totally understand if it is!

I’m going to put this one under a read more just because it is pretty personal, and while I don’t mind sharing it too much, (and I’m actually really glad you asked and have been doing your research!) I know there are some people that follow me that don’t really care for posts like this, and I don’t want to clutter people’s dashes with this really long thing (I’m not kidding, it’s really long). I’m pretty much just going to give you my whole 8 years of experience with it. ^^;;

Okay, so as far as I know, Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder is the same thing now. When I was first diagnosed, they were two separate conditions, with DID being people with 2 distinct “personality states”, they called them, and MPD being people that had 3 or more distinct “personality states”. Like I said, I’m pretty sure they just merged the two, and they’re pretty interchangeable now.

Anyway, I was first diagnosed in 2010, but have never been on meds for it because nobody believed me or my psychologist when we talked about it. Almost everybody I knew thought that I was just being difficult and rebellious and didn’t want to own up to my actions. So eventually, I just agreed with them and have been hiding it from pretty much everybody but my fiance and a very small handful of people outside of that. 

Because of this, I also declined any medication and stopped seeing a psychologist completely. Which means that even though most cases of DID can be pretty different and present different symptoms and such, mine has never been treated, so it can be even less like the majority of people with the condition.

My secondary personality state, or alter, because I’m lazy and don’t want to say (or type) that every time I talk about it is named Rey. He showed up as a result of something traumatic that happened when I was 15 (and I’m not going into specifics because that’s not what you asked about) and he showed up violently, though not all of them do. What I will say about the traumatic experience is that it wasn’t just some little thing, and though it wasn’t as serious as it could have been, it was also happening during a really tough time in my life, and things just kept piling up, and then that happened and bam, there he was. 

So it takes a lot of stuff to happen before the mind is suddenly like “Wait, I can’t handle this, but I need to do something!” and creates an alter, or alters. It also usually happens to people when they’re young. I was 15, and my psychologist said that even then it’s really rare for it to appear that late. For a while, that kept her from diagnosing me because she was like “I just want to make sure that it isn’t something else because you’re older than the usual age group.”

For like 6 months after that, I had little to no idea when he was “in control”. I would just start to get a headache in class or at home and then it was like I would blink and all of a sudden I was somewhere else. People would mention something that I did or said (usually bad) and I would have no clue what they were talking about. 

After a few months though, I started to notice that I would start to get these headaches when I was experiencing (or about to experience) negative emotions, particularly anger or fear, or extreme stress or depression. They were always on the right side of my head near my temple, and shortly after they started was when I would “wake up” somewhere else.

So I convinced my mom to make a psychology appointment for me and she (begrudgingly) agreed. Shortly after that I was diagnosed and I started to get a little better about noticing when Rey was “awake” or when he was about to take control. I also didn’t lose time so much anymore, but I started having “out of body” experience type stuff, like I was pretty much watching somebody else live my life for me? It was really scary for a long time, especially since he was always mean and violent and I hated the thought that people might think that I was actually that way.

I also tried that thing that happens in TV shows and books and stuff all the time and wrote notes to him a few times? It worked sometimes, but mostly he just ignored it. I suppose it could work with an alter that’s less…difficult?

For the past 8 years he’s been around, I’ve pretty much had to figure out his triggers, and I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten them all by now. Experiencing negative emotion, (though now it has to be far more extreme than it used to) someone else touching my right temple or touching/getting close to touching the space between my eyes, anything having to do with the trauma that made him show up, extreme pain, exhaustion or sickness, driving longer than an hour, surprising/sneaking up on me, (though he doesn’t auto-punch people for sneaking up on me anymore; a change that had only happened in the last year or two) hurting or upsetting my loved ones, (that’s his fastest and longest lasting trigger) and sometimes thunderstorms will, too.

Rey started out as an asshole and treated literally anybody that wasn’t a loved one like absolute shit until he’d been around like 3 or so years? Now he’s capable of being civil, but he’s still cold. So I mean, I guess that an alter can change and “grow-up”, so to speak like regular people do. 

My fiance is the only person he’ll talk to regularly, (and the only person he’s nice to consistently) so I’ve learned a lot about him since being with her. Like the fact that he’s aware that he’s an alter, why he’s around, and that I’m around, and he always has been. He also says that he’s around to protect us, and that’s why he acts the way he does. He has periods like I do where he feels like a backseat driver; watching me in control, (both of us call it him being “awake”) ones where he doesn’t see anything (”asleep”), and in control (”active”) and he’s pretty much in control of all of it? Pretty much, he’s a regular person, he just doesn’t have his own body.

Which brings me to the next topic, which is things to avoid. These are things that people have done (or still do) or say that always always always put me in a bad mood. First off, people telling me that he’s not real. People used to tell me all the time that he wasn’t real. That he was like an “imaginary friend” or that I was faking it for attention, or whatever, some of them even going so far as to getting angry at me when I told them that I wasn’t lying or faking it. That made the condition way worse.

Second, people thinking that he’s like some cute little thing that they can “fix” and be best friends with and TRY TO TRIGGER whenever they please because “No, no, he won’t hurt me, it’s fine! Seriously!” (or worse yet, they would treat him like he was some kind of kink for them to get off on.)

It’s not fine. That used to be one of the quickest ways to get him to come out seething. That still happens a lot, but both of us mostly ignore it at this point. It’ll happen to your OC if they decide to tell people, I can almost assure you of it, and I’m not going to tell you how to write your character, but please, try not to just turn them into “that cute little thing that can be fixed as soon as someone is nice to them” because that’s not at all how it is.

Third, if your muse has it on their medical records, there are jobs out there that can see that they’re “mentally unstable” and will not hire them, or will fire them if it’s found out about. Especially if it’s untreated. Luckily, it isn’t on my medical records because I stopped seeing the psychologist before it was officially put on any of my health charts, but that can also be dangerous, because if your OC’s alter just randomly pops up at work, that can be a HUGE liability.

Fourth is that there’s no set schedule to when they come and go. Like I said, he pretty much does what he wants, but that doesn’t mean I always just let him. Though I couldn’t at all first, now I can usually take control back from him if I want to, but it isn’t a very easy thing? It causes a lot of migraines, or sometimes even nausea and dizziness. He can also take control from me if he wants to, and that hurts like hell when he’s really trying to come out if I’m holding him back.

There was one time I even passed out because he wanted control so badly, and I kept trying to keep him under. (he was going to hurt someone that I really didn’t want him to)

So pretty much, there will be conversations that I’ll be in the middle of, and then he’ll get active and just turn and walk off, or start talking about something else, and the same will happen with him when I push him back. 

One thing that also always gets on my nerves (and his) is that there are plenty of times where it feels like there are certain emotions that I can’t feel anymore because as soon as I feel them, he comes out. Like it used to be that I felt like I couldn’t feel anger. (which seems like a good thing, but after a while it’s really irritating) Anger was Rey’s, not mine. And he used to feel like love or pride wasn’t something that he could experience, because it was mine.

It’s a struggle. Not as much now as it used to be, but it is literally a constant struggle that I have to be aware of all the time if I want to keep him under control. I know this is a lot to throw at you, and some of it might not make a lot of sense, or might just be babbling on my part, but it’s stuff that I deal with or dealt with on a daily basis for 8 years now, so…idk. This is just my perspective of it.

I’m also going to add that my fiance went to college for psychology and says that I’m not at all an “average” case of the disorder. Usually people have a lot less control over their alters than I have over Rey. She says she believes that part of it is because he’s been around for so long, probably mostly because we’re so aware of each other, and a tiny part because he’s the only alter? She also says that alters typically don’t “grow-up”, I guess. A good amount of the time, they’ll manifest even more alters instead. That didn’t happen with him. (thank god)

I’m just gonna tag her in this so when she wakes up, she can add to it if she wants to. She can give a more medical perspective to things that I can’t, as well as probably throw in details I’m missing.

@thexuntamed

#~What is she getting us into now? OOC~ #//mental health #idk what to really tag this as tbh so if you want me to tag anything else just lmk? #i'm sorry this is so long but he's been around for a long time #i considered letting him write this because it actually caught his attention #but his explanation of himself and all of this is super confusing and i don't even really understand it tbh

[purge-that-urge-rhackathon]

Fanfic Author Interview

I was tagged by @dokt0rgunn​ and @thirtysixsavefiles​ awww yissss baaaabes

1. What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.)

No. Fucking. Clue. My own neediness to read things I can’t find? That’s the whole reason I’m even in this fandom ya’ll (and why I’m getting into some Fallout fic writing). I’d say the biggest inspiration comes from tiny tiny things. Like a turn of a phrase in someone else’s work, or a random word or sentence. The whole reason I wrote Efficiency was because I saw an AU imageboard/gif thing (idk wtf its called-- I saw a single gif) for a teen wolf thing (i don’t follow that show so I dont know about it) but the gif said “Look at him. I’m gonna have his babies” and i was like YUP OKAY WE’RE DOING THIS THIS IS HAPPENING. 10 fucking chapters and 70k words because of a sentence on a gif. That’s pretty common for me.

2. What is your favorite fandom to write for?

Borderlands yaaaas. Also I may or may not be getting into writing some Fallout fic... I have a soft spot for MacHusband and cynical liar-face mcgee in a hot polyamorous relationship with the ss yep. So that’s happening.

3. Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person)

Always third person. Can’t even read first person unless the writer is like insanely good.

4. Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs?

I had to look up what ‘reader’ meant, cuz back in my day we just called it self-insert/2nd person AHAHAH JFC i’m old. I’ve only done the reader thing once, never finished the fic, half of it’s on livejournal from the grand migration, and I still get emails asking about/for the rest of it AHAHA...I need to just post that shit.

5. Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots?

I prefer one-shots if only because I have a very short attention span, and I also think I can stay truer to characterization if I go one-shot. I get lost pretty fast if I go longer and start doubting myself. But I’m a HUGE slut for comments and if I think I can get more comments (or if I’m having fun with the smut/relationships) I’ll write longer pieces. It’s about the reward system for myself haha. Once I start to lose interest in a longer piece, it’s only the comments that keep me going. Ahahaha I.M. A HACK.

6. Do you take requests?

Always, but I don’t do all of them just because I’m a hack and don’t put any effort into things I write so if it requires brain power then I sometimes turn them down just based on that xD I’m also picky about what/who I write about, so I’ve gotten some really good prompts but just haven’t been my cup of tea, but I’ll always acknowledge them! Fic writing is my escape right now so I’m less-inclined to do things that’ll be challenging (AKA I’m L A Z Y).

7. Do you enjoy getting random Asks?

YAS fuck yeah I do. I don’t get them often though. If they’re requests, I leave ‘em back here with me a while to ruminate unless I know I won’t fill it. If it’s a random ask, I generally get to stuff same day cuz I love that shit. I was the kid that used to get excited over spam in the mailbox growing up HAHA

8. What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix?

I just try to think of a name that’ll sound good, and then question if it’s giving the feel of the character the right...uh, feel. Haha. Like if I call ‘em Melvin, they’re a nerd (apologies to any Melvins out there haha). Sometimes no names work way better though.

9. If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who?

Any background characters I write I try to leave intentionally vague because a lot of meaning (this person being described as gorgeous/handsome/etc) is subjective person to person so unless they’re important, they don’t get much of even a smear of an idea from my brain. I also try to be generic-enough with descriptions that people can picture background folk their own way without forcing my own white ethnocentric view on that shit even subconsciously. I like diversity in my fic bitches, I’m just a lazy fuck.

10. How long have you been writing fanfiction?

Geez we’re coming up on 15 years now o_o started late in high school doing round-robin type things with friends haha I was writing original stuff much longer though. Fun fact: I’m the one to have exposed my freshman-college-year English professor onto fanfiction. She didn’t know what it was and was intrigued.

Hope you’re doing well Professor Nava hahaha

I tag @thethespacecoyote, @bigevilshine, @frog-batter, @ofstrangeshadows, @feralprince, @erinchu and anyone else who wants to (say i’m the one who tagged you, betches <3).

#poisonjack jabbers #it's gonna be really confusing for everyone subbed to my ao3 for borderlands shit suddenly getting fallout bullshit >_> im holding off on it #AHAHAH I NEED MY EXTREMELY SELF-SERVING INDULGENT FIC TO READ OKAY #yeah yall can send me requests/asks whenever you want :) i feel bad saying no but i dont always! HAHAH #merp this shit has been fun :)

[bellarosepope]

You said to ask #all the questions. I decided not to do that to you, so I picked four of them. 1, 22, 44, and 45. :P

Hahaha!! I appreciate that. I was just, you know, excited when I said that :p These are great questions!

1. Tell us about your WIP!

Right now I’m working on thought-dumping and plotting a 5 person POV story that takes place over an entire world-ish area. It’s fantasy in its own universe and it has a medieval-ish feel to it (though the culture and customs are very different). Meaning, there’s no technology like we have. It’s all candles for lights, castles, homes built by hand etc. There are lots of different types of fantastical creatures (my own making or altered from ones we already know). The first book follows the 5 MCs on the journey to either protect or kill the girl who may be the only one able to release the Gods (there are 6 of them) from their “imprisonment”. 

So basically, the Gods have been “gone” for almost 300 years and it has caused massive issues among the once peaceful lands. A girl is born who can change that, but not everyone wants to “fix” it (because they’ll lose power).I hope that made sense. I’m still working on some type of synopsis. lol

22. Tell us about the books on your “to write” list

Oh good god. I have a lot of ideas. And truthfully, I’m not sure many of them will be written, as I might outgrow the idea. Anywho, the book I was previously working on, Of Defender Descent, will still be written but I’m making massive changes (like, making it 3 person POV) that’ll require a rewrite of the entire 9 chapters I already have (which is why I’m going ahead with this new idea first since it’s already almost ready for outlining and ODD will require a lot more time to go back and change things).

I have a futuristic world idea that’s a Fantasy/Sci-Fi following a male MC after hundreds of years of the earth was almost eradicated of human life. People had no idea what it was and concluded it was the Earth actually fighting against humans cuz we were destroying it (like a disease the Earth spread). So people hundreds of years from that outbreak live without any technology/abuse to the earth since they figured that was what caused it. Anywho, that’s not what actually caused it. This sounds super overdone/cliche as I’m writing it but it’s really not as it sounds? lol There are aliens and special powers.

I also have a futuristic idea about a male MC assassin, only his job is to kill those who don’t have a soul. A new technology was developed that can detect those without them (because the world has too many people and not enough souls to accompany them and those are the people who are murderers, rapers, etc.). However, I think this will be a split perspective with a female MC whose job it is to put an end to those killings because the organization isn’t actually only killing soulless people. (idk, still thinking on this one, though I think it could be very cool with more thought put into it so it’s still on my list)

I also have an idea based on the multiverse. It would be set in its own universe that’s similar to ours, though there’s another “earth” that is very, very different. The idea is that there are certain people whose “lone” souls belong to the other world but somehow slipped past the barrier and took a body on that earth. Those people have the ability to move between the worlds. The worlds have to be kept “balanced” or the barrier would crumble and one world of people would basically die. Basically, each world has one of the same person (doppelgangers?) who have twin souls but those souls cannot exist on the same plane. Anywho, this follows a girl and her finding out she’s one that can cross the barrier and has to maintain “balance” on the other world. And by “balance” I mean that if a plague strikes one earth, something equally as horrible must happen to the other, but the worlds are VERY different. This idea I will definitely probably write since it’s been exciting to me for like 2 years now lol.

Hmm...I also have a time travel idea that could be pretty cool, but I haven’t developed the idea too much and I don’t gravitate toward sci-fi specific writing very much. But who knows! It’ll follow a male MC genius guy who creates a time travel machine to the future, where time travel exists but you can only go to the past. So he ends up on some watch list and is hunted down and “asked” (very much forced and threatened) to recreate it. The kicker? He was trying to go to the past to begin with and has no idea how he got to the future. 

(I have many, many more ideas. These are just the ones that have a few pages of notes in my idea notebook and are the most developed).

44. Why (and when) did you decide to become a writer? 

Why? I realized I loved telling stories and my high school creative writing teacher was all “you know you’re actually good at this, right?” (I thought writing wasn’t something people couldn’t do. I thought everyone could write like how I was, so he made me realize that wasn’t the case lol).

I decided I wanted to be an author for sure about a year ago. Probably a little over a year ago. I’d toyed with the idea for years but wasn’t sure it was something I could do. Then I started jotting down book ideas and was like, “holy shit. I’m creative as fuck. I can do this.” That’s when I started researching and BAM, now I’m going to be writing books that’ll be published someday.

45. First or third person?

I used to prefer first but I’m third person all the way now. First is far too limiting for the stories I want to tell, basically.

Wow. This was very long. Thanks for the questions :D 

[ts-seychelles]

EP. 7 - “It’s Not What I Wanted, But It’s What We Get” - ASYA

https://youtu.be/KygetX1CM98

This is a short confessional as I’m in sunny San Clemente California. This DTC gives me anxiety. Jared’s been very quiet to me since the Zach boot but I gotta put my trust in the ginger. I love our third wheel alliance though. And Roxy is targeting me first like wtf. I had nothing to do with Zach going so don’t try and put it on me. And regan knocked me out of the challenge first so I’m also nervous about that. Overall I could be going tonight and it stinks that I need to put my fate into someone else’s hands. It’s not fun.

Okay so honestly this round is going to be a whole bundle of yikes. I am really trying to make sure that Ashen goes this round. Love Ashen to death, they seem like a very very nice person, but they haven't spoken to me at all, haven't attempted to form a game relationship or a connection, and I have a feeling someone from the OG Lazare is going to go home at their tribal tonight, so I've gotta make sure it's an OG Malabar, and I cannot lose an OG Lazare because then we're going to be going into a merge 6-6 with original numbers, and I lowkey don't count Nicole as an OG Lazare at this point, so I'm not feeling too confident. I also had a long talk with Augusto last night, and we spoke about a lot of things, particularly what we're going to do when we get to the merge, and we know that there are some demons we're going to have to face,,,, we spoke about Regan potentially being an ally of mine (which I actually really want to happen), and then people wanting to immediately go after the power couple of Jared/Nicole, so idkkkkkkkkkkk I know Ricky is another option because Augusto was trying to split up relationships with the original OG Lazare ladies, who apparently had an alliance bc Nicole told Vilma, and then Vilma told Augusto that there was an alliance between Asya, Nicole, Ricky and Roxy, so I know that's definitely something to worry about, letting all four of them get to merge..... BUT I am semi confident in my relationships with all of them. I'm just not too sure. I know I have my own four person alliance to combat this, because I am trying to get something together between Vilma, Dan, Augusto and myself, which I think is just really smart because all four of us seem to be middle of the road players, and we aren't drawing too much attention to ourselves in general, and there are no obvious ties that are being talked about that involve any of the four of us (or so I think), so I think it's a good foursome. I really do feel kinda confident in the merge, but I also know that there is a very good chance I'm one of the first few toast at the merge (even with my idol), but I also know I have the skill to go very deep.................... idk. This merge is going to be interesting, especially with my worrisome relationship with Jared AND Regan, so it's going to be interesting because I see both of them making the merge. SOOOOOOOO back to the plan tonight. I gotta just rationalize with the other OG Lazares (which won't be too hard) to make it seem like we're 4-3ing this bitch, but I know that Dan and Augusto are already down to get Ashen, and I just need them to go simply so I can maximize the amount of relationships I have going into the merge. I am not feeling the strongest about where I am in the game right now, but I am still alive and breathing, and if I just make myself an option to a lot of people, I think that I can make this go well for myself to at least get to that mid jury range :))

(A LITTLE LATER)

It seems like we've gotten to that point of the day today where we've all come to the general consensus that Ashen is going home today. I know we didn't get to talk, and you seem VERY nice, but you've gotta TALK to people after being on a tribe with them for 12 days or so? It isn't the fact that you've been removed from the community this whole time that is causing you to go home, it's your social game :/

I got tons to catch up on cause your resident flop here didn’t make any confessionals last round, so there’s that! From the tribal where Zach went home, I’m surprised that it went the way it did but not at the same time? The way I perceived their tribe when we first swapped was Nicole and Jared grouping together alongside Regan and JG as Malabar was low in numbers, plus Nicole felt a connection to Regan and Jared/JG have been on every tribe together so far. That being said, I totally expected it to be Alex Crooks since Nicole spoke about him really negatively when we were on NuLazare together. I am incredibly happy that sending Ruben to Ghost Island paid off because being honest, I was terrified that Regan would go home since she’s one of my closest people out here, personally and strategically so it would’ve been a massive loss. What the future holds for Nicole/Jared/JG/Regan will be interesting because I can also see Nicole/Jared flipping to the Lazares on that tribe since they are so much in the middle, moreso Nicole than anyone else.

(AFTER NUMEROUS ATTEMPTS TO RETRIEVE OUR CAMERA)

As far as the tribal council I went to last round, Vi leaving was not my PREFERRED plan, but I am also here to play a long term game, so I can’t be hellbent on making crazy moves that benefit me in a short term setting. I did think it was a good time to get rid of Ricky as Vi could’ve been used as a scapegoat for that vote and we could’ve kept Asya on her toes and gotten rid of Vi right after, but it is what it is. Will I try to keep going for Ricky/Asya ths vote? I’m not really sure because I don’t want to seem like a limited player that doesn’t see every perspective, especially if we’re heading into a merge soon.

(WE OBVIOUSLY FAILED)

Tea, tea, tea, tea, and more TEA! I really think my alliance/Final 2 with Johnny is paying off because he STAYS telling me information, so that’s exciting! For starters, there’s an alliance between himself, Vilma, and Asya. That worries me just a tad because Asya also has Ricky, so she’s kinda well protected but ngl, her social game with me is kinda ass so I’m wondering how that’ll be with other people if we merge. Johnny also let me know that Vilma found the idol clue in her beer, which she totally lied to me about but I’m not surprised cause I’d do the same thing. Said clue led her to find the Takamaka Idol however, which makes me sad because I was super close to finding it myself as it was at the Wheel at the Shipwreck, a location that I’ve been looking in for quite some time so yay for me being an unlucky dumbass. I am aware now that both Johnny and Vilma have idols, which is good for me since I’m the only person outside of Johnny to know who owns 2 idols. When I went on call with Johnny, he was telling me about his good connections with Ruben, his somewhat okay relationship with Crooks, and how he thinks Roxy is shady which was good to know. He also told me tea on how Zach tried to initiate an alliance early on in OG Lazare. It’s good to have all this tea, but Johnny is my supplier and that makes me a bit nervous that in our Final 2, he holds the reins. That’s like late game thinking and it’s too early for that, but I just gotta be realistic and keep it in the back of my mind.

(GOOD GOD)

Get your popcorn folks because tonight we’re having a Double Tribal Feature! Yeah, Double Tribals really spook me since a large part of why I have unfinished business is because I went home at a Double Tribal in Great Lakes. Hopefully, I can move past this little speedbump to race closer to the end! <3 As much as I would’ve loved a clue to the idol, it’s already been found so being put on the spot and exposed for getting a clue didn’t seem all that worth it to me, but I guess everyone else on my tribe felt the same! With no one having immunity, my odds of staying increased a bit so that’s cute, but for whatever reason I’m nervous. With me being the messy ass that I am, I did talk to Ashen about maybe voting Ricky last round and Ashen very much tried to not do that by even telling me that Ricky and them discussed how Ricky is only close to Asya from OG Lazare and how he doesn’t really fuck with anyone else. Ultimately, we all voted for Vi and that discussion died down, but I am afraid that Ashen told Ricky. Johnny also told me that Ricky was beginning to think I was the reason for his tribal anxiousness and I fear that has to do with what I told Ashen. Thankfully, Johnny deflected and Ricky isn’t TOO spooked by me. It just further shows that I can’t be trusting people with valuable information; another part of my unfinished business.

(JEFF PROBST RECAP WHO?)

Finally, a sis is in an alliance! The one with Ashen, Drake, and Samantha doesn’t really count imo so yeah. The Golden Girls is an alliance with myself, Johnny, Dan, and Vilma in it and like, I love it? It’s been in the works ever since the first or second night of this swap since we all just sorta vibed with one another but I think it’s good that we formally came together, especially for this vote as it determines the potential merge. The consensus we’ve agreed on is doing Ashen this vote, which is like good and bad for me? The only negative is that it gives Johnny and Vilma more flexibility to go between The Golden Girls and the alliance with Asya, plus the fact that we’re keeping a duo in the game. However, Ricky/Asya can be a meat shield during the merge (or a key component in a move but whatever hbgfjdks) so there’s that. Ashen is someone who has always been shady to me, so getting rid of that should lift a weight off of my shoulders. It’s been two votes where Ashen has sort of put their foot down and caused me to go in another direction, so heading into a merge with that type of player is a spell for disaster. I could also use this vote to build a bridge with Ricky and Asya since like, I might need them! Communication is a two way street and I’ve tried to cross it many times, but they usually put a stop to any convo in the past so let’s hope we can build that a bit more. As for the other tribe, I hope Ruben or Crooks leave so that I can have more options at the merge since it’s looking like I might not have all that many.

https://youtu.be/xWiMmEe2QYo

well idk what to do. I want to keep Alex but JG does not. jg is not budging like tf

So me and Johnny are playing everyone HA my life is good. I don’t feel nervous which probably means I’m donezo. I really don’t like playing the middle but ts the safest bet rn. I just am doing my best not to get caught but I’m sure I’ll be found out soon enough!!!

So going into this round I’ve been a huge ass fucking mess. First I wanted to get Jg regan and Roxy together to split up the duo but because of JG not helping me win immunity I went to Jared for help. He told me if I voted Roxy then I’ll prove my loyalty. Only thing is I risk being at the bottom of that trio by doing that

(A LITTLE LATER)

On the flip side of it regan JG and Roxy begged me saying they are loyal to that 4. They say they wanna vote Alex. So unless I’m being played which there is a huge ass chance of that I’m the swing. Part of me wants to vote out Alex but the issue is that if any of those 3 don’t vote Alex and he stays I lose my chance to prove myself and if they aren’t already voting me I go to merge with nobody

(EVEN LATER)

But I’m a risk taker and honestly this trio needs to be divided ASAP

So this round has been... wild. I'm playing so risky this round because I don't want any votes against me. I would have a lot more room to play if I didn't give a shit about that but I'm crackt and uhhhh.... here we are. I had a call with Ruben last night where I basically forced him into voting for Roxy, because I said she will already have a majority of the votes on her, so voting her would be a sign of loyalty to me, and then I will have his back in the future. I told him I was being honest and it opened up more options for him. - 1, he can take that information to gather votes against me, and if it works, good on him! - 2, if he tries that and it doesn't work, I can't trust him and he will be super fucked at merge. Then, I was honest with Alex about who I wanted out, because I want him to see I am true to my word. I told JG and Regan the plan. Roxy is voting Alex TO MY KNOWLEDGE, and Ruben has a chat with Regan and JG where he said he will vote me or Alex. I told Regan to make him think it's Alex, so I can see where his loyalty lies, AND because Alex is not actually going home----- Alex will hold a bigggg vendetta against Ruben. And IIIIIIIIIII didn't lie to Ruben, SO WE GOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!! That's if it all works out. There is potential for Roxy to play an advantage and the votes to actually be on me. If so, good on them.

https://youtu.be/LKXlhMBUhyw

Tonight is the double tribal night and it has been strangely quiet these past few hours even though tribal is already starting in a little over an hour. As far as I know Ashen is getting voted out tonight, and I was originally against the plan because Ashen was the main person who wanted to help me stay in the game a few rounds ago. I know I'm going to feel really shitty voting for them after all that happened. :''''''''''''''''''''''( It sucks. But upon reflecting I decided that I'm not going to go out of my way to save Ashen because both sides (Dan&Augusto vs. Ricky&Asya) were surprisingly okay with the idea of voting out Ashen tonight, and I want to stay on everyone's good side going to the merge. I don't want to make any big enemies just yet, since I'm sure the first merge rounds will be super intense and the alliance lines seem to be really fuzzy right now. I'm currently kinda trying to play the middle with Johnny, and it's definitely risky, but exciting at the same time! I've never really been in this middle position before. I'm still paranoid that I'm going to get blindsided tonight, but that's nothing new honestly. I'm pretty sure I'm going to hold on to my idol for another round. But I will play it as soon as I start getting any weird vibes, I definitely don't want to go home with it! Respectfully yours with sincere gratitude, Vilma666

https://youtu.be/S0UjIBwTsiE

I TOLD JARED AND THEN NICOLE I HAVE THE IDOL WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. ugh

#itsgametimekids