#like i got to choose my topic but it still had to be relevant to archival stuff and like...

[longroadstonowhere]

i think i'm good with never doing another lit review again

#i mean maybe if it was on something i'm interested more... i dunno #like i got to choose my topic but it still had to be relevant to archival stuff and like... #i dunno some of the articles i found were interesting but i just don't care for the lit review style of writing i guess #i mean gods they spent sixteen years teaching me how to write an argument and now you don't want me to argue for anything? #honestly very confusing ahahaha

[yukidragon]

Have you theorised why Ian cheated? It was long distance when he did so and he called them right away so it looks like he still loved Y/N so do you think it was a drunk thing or more like he for 2 seconds he got the idea in his head that he did want to "satisfy his manhood" since he's only been with one person and immediately regretted it.

I have actually. I’ve mentioned it a couple times in past headcanon posts as my thoughts about it evolved, but I don’t mind going over it again. Heck, your ask is a good excuse to make a post that’s exclusively about the topic of Ian and his relationship with the MC.

For the most part I’m going to speak in general terms for why Ian might have cheated that can apply to all kinds of MCs, and not just my specific version, Alice. Ultimately, I don’t think it mattered what type of person the MC was - Ian cheated for reasons that were entirely his own... and ultimately selfish. I will touch on a few extra headcanons that strictly apply to Ian/Alice’s relationship and how it affects Sunshine in Hell at the end though.

I’ll be posting some artwork that used to be on Jambeebot/Sauce’s public twitter before it went down for some extra tidbits of information, and linking to the official twitter when relevant. As a reminder, please do not repost any private artwork posted on the SnaccPop Studio Patreon. Doing so is harmful to the team and their livelihood. Instead, please consider joining as a patron, contributing to the Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack kickstarter, or just spreading the word about the game to other interested adults.

As a reminder, this series is for Adults Only. Sex is going to be discussed in this post, and there might be a mature image or two for reference.

Also as a heads up, this post will discuss abusive/toxic relationships, past instances of child abuse, SA, and religious trauma. If you are not in the headspace to handle any of these topics, please feel free to give this post a skip.

Obligatory tag for @channydraws and @earthgirlaesthetic before we get started. If you would like to be tagged in the next SDJ headcanon post, please let me know!

First, I want to address the theory that Ian was drunk, blackmailed, or otherwise did not consent to have sex with someone besides MC. Not only do I strongly believe that this is false, as there is evidence to suggest as such, I find this headcanon to be very... uncomfortable, to say the least.

If Ian did not willingly choose to have sex with someone, then he is the victim of SA.

The reason why Ian and MC broke up was because Ian had sex with someone else. If the only reason Ian had sex with someone else was because it was SA, that would mean that MC dumped the victim of SA instead of supporting him after a traumatic incident. MC would have blamed the victim of SA for suffering from SA. Even if we entertain the idea that Ian was too ashamed or didn’t understand it was SA at the time of the breakup, and as such MC had no idea that’s what happened, the victim of SA would have not only gone through the absolute violation that is SA, but lost his greatest source of love and emotional support as a result.

I am not comfortable with that narrative. At all.

Fortunately, it’s very unlikely to be the case, as Ian is taking all responsibility for his actions, as he himself stated in the demo. He did not blame his affair partner for what happened.

I’m going to try anyway. I’ve known you for how long now? I've known that…This is worse than anything we’ve been through. And it’s 100% my fault. But please…Don’t throw me out yet. Even if I deserve it…

There is also an older piece of art by Sauce that isn’t in the game or on the official twitter where Ian confessed to what he had done in a phone call immediately in the aftermath of his affair.

If Ian did not consent to have sex, then this picture changes into something very, very disturbing... well beyond the official warnings given on the subject.

[Romantic, Sexual, Emotional] Themes of manipulation, mind games, sexual consensual coercion, supernatural influence, soft dubious consent, and persuasive seduction.

Fortunately this picture shows Ian as lucid. He is upset and crying over what he did, but there’s no sign that he is in a compromised mental state where he can’t consent to sex.

I understand the reasoning behind making this sort of headcanon. I’ve seen it many times before, where a fan likes a character a lot, but feels uncomfortable towards one or more action that the character has taken. It can create a dissonance in the fan that needs to be resolved, and most often that takes the form of absolving the character of the blame of that questionable action, usually by making it the fault of someone else instead. That way, the character no longer has the trait that makes the fan uncomfortable, and it helps the fan no longer feel guilty for liking the character.

Liking flawed characters is not a sign that there’s anything wrong with you as a person. You can like aspects of a character but still disagree with certain things they’ve done or believed in. You are not tacitly approving of their flawed beliefs or wrongful actions by liking the character.

Everyone is flawed. Everyone has made mistakes. We are all imperfect, because we are all human. This mindset that a character can only be liked if they are absolved of all flaws is not only limiting when it comes to storytelling, it can be damaging, as it makes our own failings feel that much more unforgivable.

Redemption arcs can be pretty underrated, and I think that’s a shame. We shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes. We should own up to them and learn healthy ways of making amends, or at least how to move on, heal, and grow into a better person.

I believe that Ian’s route in the game is going to be a redemption arc for him. For MC to reach a happy ending with him, Ian will have to truly make amends for betraying their trust. It won’t be easy, but redemption can be a beautiful thing. I eagerly look forward to seeing how Ian will do it and prove that he is truly remorseful and will never make such a mistake again.

Now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s consider the possible reasons why Ian chose to cheat.

First off, let’s start off with the facts that we do know about: Ian and MC are childhood friends who wound up in a relationship. MC was a stable figure in Ian’s life since they were children. The demo touches on a number of memories between them that mean a lot to both Ian and MC, including the afterlife mode.

The two have known each other a long time and know each other fairly well. However, as we’ve seen in the afterlife bonus story, Ian did keep secrets from MC. MC, by contrast, didn’t seem interested in hiding anything. These secrets, particularly whatever it was he hid so desperately under his bed, will probably come out during the game. The only thing we do know is that whatever he’s hiding, it’s not porn, as Sauce tweeted before their twitter was removed.

It’s unlikely that Ian is keeping secrets from MC for malicious reasons. Even when he cheated, he confessed right away rather than tried to hide it. He has a tendency to apologize, which even MC has commented on when describing him.

He was a nerd, and he was silly, and he was VERY apologetically himself, but…What we had was special.

This tendency to apologize and hide parts of himself appear to be the result of an abusive childhood at the hands of his mother. She is someone who not only forces her religious beliefs on her child, but stalks him and tries to control him and his actions.

“...My mom called me.” “Someone gave her our address…Or she might have had one of her friends watching. I don’t know…” “S-She…Uh…She says that…To live with someone out of…Wedlock…I-It’s a sin? And I’m going to hell?” “She said I’m only doing it to…To satisfy…My manhood…” “I-I’m not taking advantage of you by doing this…Am I?”

What’s unfortunate is that even as an adult, even though Ian is aware that what she is “just being mean” to him by planting these doubts in his head and saying such awful things to him, he still listens to her. He didn’t give his mother his new address when he moved, but he still hadn’t blocked her number despite knowing this until MC helped him do so in the episode.

Sadly, I suspect that Ian might have blocked his mother’s number in the past, only to unblock her later. This is purely headcanon on my part, but it’s not uncommon for victims of abuse to block their abuser, only to unblock them in a moment of weakness, especially if the abuser uses their flying monkeys to make the victim feel guilty about blocking them. It would seem that Ian’s mother has plenty of people on her side to do just that if they’re tracking Ian’s movements and reporting back to her about what he’s doing and where he’s going.

This drawing from Sauce’s deleted twitter is presumed by some fans (including myself) to be Ian’s mother. While any art not posted on the official twitter is questionable when it regards to canon, if this is Ian’s mother, and if she’s presumably talking to Ian, then she was verbally abusive and likely insulted Ian’s looks.

Ian was not just abused by his mother over his looks and other reason, but he was bullied by his peers as well.

The only one who seemed to want a friend was the kid who never seemed to have any. That was Ian. Ian wasn’t particularly loud and he didn’t have cool clothes or toys. He just kind of faded into the background. A lot of kids made fun of him.

Years worth of bullying, abuse, and lack of friends would have an effect on Ian. He feels the need to be apologetic and is painfully insecure. He struggles even to accept that MC would want someone like him as a romantic partner, as suggested by pictures like this one.

Scars like these run deep, and it takes a long time to heal. MC is used to comforting and reassuring Ian, as suggested by the afterlife episode. Ian is, in turn, used to relying on MC’s support. MC was the one who would ask Ian’s mother if they could have sleepovers when he was too afraid to do it himself, for example.

Ian has had MC’s support for a long time - since they attended first grade together, which is typically 6-7 years of age in the USA. While we don’t know the exact age of MC and the love interests in the present, it is implied they are all college graduates, which likely puts them in around their early to mid-20s. That’s quite a long time they’ve known each other, no doubt spending a lot of time in each other’s company on a regular basis up until Ian left to study abroad.

When Ian left, he suddenly had to go without his greatest source of love and support in order to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He had to move across the country where no one knew him and handle everything entirely on his own.

With someone as insecure as Ian, no doubt that possibility was terrifying to him.

However, Ian had gone through a “glow up.” He was no longer that “gross” kid who faded into the background; he was successful and handsome. No doubt he attracted quite a bit of positive attention from his peers, which he probably wasn’t used to.

Back in his hometown, Ian had MC by his side a lot of the time. Anyone who wanted to romantically or sexually peruse him could easily be dismissed with his partner right beside him.

But what about when they’re not around to comfort him? Sure, Ian can call MC when he feels insecure, but they’re not there to hold him when he needs it... or help him blow off steam when he gets horny. Long distance relationships are hard, and they can leave a person feeling very lonely...

What I think happened was that Ian started making friends with people at the school. He was inexperienced with socializing with others due to being bullied, and likely didn’t realize when he was being flirted with unless they were overtly obvious about it. Given his low self-esteem, it would be easy for him to assume they’re just being friendly.

It feels good too. It’s hard for someone with so much insecurity to not want to soak up such positive attention. Chances are Ian wasn’t used to it from so many people who aren’t MC. Suddenly, MC is not unique in liking him or finding him attractive.

MC was always there for Ian, reliable and supportive. Ian knows them very well. Unfortunately, this can also breed complacency, which leads to taking their relationship for granted. By contrast, these new people in his life are different, unfamiliar, and exciting.

Staying in his hometown with the same people all his life, depending on someone else, abused by his mother, Ian likely had his growth stifled in many ways, but now he was taking charge of his life for himself. He was chasing his dream, growing more social, expressing himself more in a place far outside his mother’s reach.

It would be easy to make friends at his new school where so many people his age are interested in pursuing an acting career like he is. From there he could even find those who share some of his other interests, like fashion, video games, and manga. Despite his fears, Ian flourishes in his new environment. He opens up to more people and gets closer to them in a way that he never could with people in his hometown who knew him when he was an awkward child.

What harm would it do to just enjoy having more friends for once? In fact, MC would likely encourage Ian to make friends and spend time with them. He shouldn’t have to be lonely; he should be having fun too. Unfortunately, MC is not there and thus would be unable to see when any of Ian’s new “friends” start crossing lines... or how Ian unintentionally starts crossing them himself.

Ian doesn’t want anyone to know he and MC are sexually active in the afterlife episode. He claims it’s not a secret, but at the same time he worries about MC saying anything. Does he talk about being in a relationship at all? Does he tell people MC is his partner or just his childhood friend?

In my personal headcanon, I want to give Ian the benefit of the doubt on this point and say that he did make it clear to his new school chums that he was in a relationship. Unfortunately, for some people, a committed relationship is just seen as a challenge to overcome, something that adds a bit of spice to the chase, or they simply think cheating is fine as long as the person they’re cheating on never finds out.

What I think happened to Ian was like fable about the frog not realizing the water in the pot is getting hotter until its boiled alive.

It started innocently enough with attention and time spent with people who liked him. There was the occasional flirtatious remark that went over his head, but any overt propositions were turned down. It slowly escalates as Ian makes friends. He gets used to making himself vulnerable with other people besides MC, gets used to touching them, opens up more around them... and likely starts realizing they’re attractive too.

This is when his mother’s abuse would kick in. Those thoughts would hit Ian with guilt like a sack of bricks. Was his “manhood” leading him to sinful thoughts? No, no, it couldn’t be. He is only attracted to MC! He only loves MC! He only wants MC!

But that’s because MC was his only option before, isn’t it?

(Apologies for cropping this picture, but tumblr will nuke my blog from orbit if I showed what Ian and MC are doing on the left side of the image.)

Publicly posted pictures from Sauce’s now deleted tumblr might be questionable when it comes to canon, but I find they can be useful to give insight into general character motivations and for building headcanons. I find it very telling that Ian almost makes it sound like simply being with MC was his second choice when compared to his dreams of stardom...

Ian keeps these new thrilling feelings a secret like the thing hidden underneath his bed. He buries these thoughts, denies he even has them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean those thoughts go away... especially not when he winds up spending time with the person or persons who spark these feelings in the first place.

Ian might try to avoid them to deny these feelings, but, oh, his avoiding them hurts their feelings, and he doesn’t want to do that! He apologizes, makes it up to them... and gets closer to them in spite of himself.

Things escalate from there. There’s more touching, more closeness, more deep intimate conversations deep into the night... some friendly cuddle time perhaps... Lines are crossed that he either denies were anything but innocent or perhaps he allows himself to believe them that they don’t mean anything even if they seem to mean more... Friends kiss sometimes too, right? The French greet each other with kisses in fact!

The French really know their kisses.

Eventually, one night when Ian is spending time with one of these friends, he finds himself really enjoying their company. He doesn’t feel lonely or miss MC as much. He barely thinks of MC, so distracted by his new exciting friend before him who makes him feel so good...

One thing leads to another. It’s a night of passion, of just feeling good and wanted.

After all, it’s not the first time Ian got swept up in his own pleasure when he was feeling horny. In his sex scene in the afterlife episode, he doesn’t let MC stop giving him a blowjob. First it’s by holding their head and giving puppy dog eyes, then he gets more forceful.

I wanted to look him in the eyes, but when I threatened to stop he only doubled down and gave a solid, deeper thrust. It was almost as if he was trying to remind me what I was to be doing.

Ian knows that he shouldn’t keep going if MC wants to stop, but, as he says...

“I-I’m so sorry I just…this is the first time you’ve gotten this far…and it really does feel good..”

It’s okay if he just apologizes, right? MC always forgives him when he wants things too much. It feels good and he doesn’t want to stop... MC will understand, they always do. They understand each other the most after all...

MC doesn’t even mind being used for sexual gratification after all.

It was like being used. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t care if he WAS using me.

Because Ian and MC love each other, it’s okay if Ian does what feels good, right? MC would want that for him. They won’t mind if they feel used. They won’t mind blacking out from lack of oxygen as long as he feels good. They won’t mind if he doesn’t reciprocate and gives them pleasure as long as he says how much he loves them and cuddles them afterwards.

They won’t mind if Ian thinks of himself first.

Then the post-nut clarity hits.

Ian might have convinced himself everything up until this point meant nothing when high off of hormones and attention, but after the excitement fades, the person in bed with him isn’t his partner. Maybe they’ll cuddle him, but they won’t say, “I love you.” He doesn’t mean that much to them. They’re not MC.

There’s nothing to justify what Ian did or distract him from the consequences - he cheated. He betrayed his partner for a cheap thrill.

There is no way to soften what Ian did. Even if he might not be religious like his mother, cheating is a sin far, far worse than simply having sex before marriage. It’s one of the big top ten sins!

It’s just like his mother told him - Ian was a sinful man who just wanted to satisfy his manhood with sex.

Ian can’t handle it, any of it. He immediately calls up MC to confess. It’s the only way to fix this. They’ll forgive him, they’ll understand. They forgive his mistakes. They know him. They’ll understand he didn’t mean it. They have to. It’s the only way he can live with himself.

Not even confessing his sins can stop his betrayal from scarring MC and destroying their self-esteem along with their relationship.

In the present, Ian is trying everything he can to get MC to forgive him. Due to MC’s money issues, he likely pays for half (or more) of the rent as a means of making amends for what he did, even if they’re broken up now. MC is a cheapskate who has to rely on cheap thrift store goods and borrowed or stolen clothes from their ex who hurt them.

Maybe that’s why Ian believes that getting a new job, one that likely offers fame and money, will somehow fix what he did. He has money and can buy a lot of video games, systems, and anime merch. His wallet is thick enough for MC to mistake his 8-inch erection for it, which suggests it’s full of money. He seems like he has enough money to spend on apologies too.

What’s worse is that Ian’s betrayal, and maybe even their relationship altogether, did severe damage to MC’s self-esteem.

When Jack shows up, MC resists the idea that they feel love towards him. While they are concerned about what Jack is and whether or not he’s real, they seem more deterred by the feeling that they don’t deserve the attention of someone who loves them.

I don’t feel like I really deserve that kind of attention…You know? It doesn’t feel natural to have somebody just…Ask you to consider that.

MC also doesn’t want to use Jack as an emotional crutch. Perhaps because they felt like they were once used that way by someone...

I feel for him...But something about this is too good. I won’t use him as a bandage, to cover up the feelings I don’t want to feel.

The only romantic relationship MC ever had was with Ian. They are still suffering from heartache by the time Jack shows up. They’ll turn Nick down regardless of whether or not they’ll agree to get in a relationship with Jack.

MC trusted Ian. They loved Ian. They wanted to be with him forever. Then Ian betrayed that promise of forever for a night of cheap lust. Maybe that was enough to destroy MC’s self-esteem to this degree, but I suspect their relationship wasn’t really all that sunny.

But Ian won’t give up. He won’t let MC go so easily. He won’t let them forget him or throw him away. He’ll keep calling them, reminding them of the good times and apologizing for the bad. He won’t let them move on. He’ll do whatever it takes to prove they’re meant to be together...

Ian did a lot of damage to MC. He has a hell of a lot to make up for, and it will take a lot more than just money and fame to fix things.

That’s about it for general theorizing that can apply to all MCs from the clues we’ve been given. I know this post has gotten kind of long, but since we’re on the subject, I’m going to touch on a few headcanons I have that specifically apply to Alice and Ian’s relationship. Just so you know, these headcanons may or may not be tweaked in the future before references appear in Sunshine in Hell.

The relationship between Alice and Ian wasn’t healthy. There were plenty of good times with smiles and love, but there were also problems that only grew more and more toxic as time went on.

Alice has done a lot to please Ian and support him. She felt very bad for the abuse he suffered under his mother and how stifled he was, so she bent over backwards for him, often giving more of herself than was reasonable.

Alice has never done well in front of crowds, but because Ian wanted to be an actor and she wanted to support him, she would participate in plays alongside him. She would help him practice his parts and got good at acting in her own right. Still, her dream was to join the animation industry, but when she struggled under some crappy overly critical art teachers, Ian convinced her to just try for an acting career with him instead.

If it didn’t work out, well, they could just be together.

When Alice dropped out of acting classes after her acting teacher advised her that the only parts she could play were fat, unpleasant characters who were the butt of jokes, it shook up Ian’s confidence as well. He worried he wouldn’t be good enough, or even just good looking enough, even if the teacher praised him in a way that they didn’t with her.

Although Alice felt insecure and ugly, Ian assured her he loved her and that was what counted, not what anyone else thought. Ian didn’t want to give up acting, but he considered it after what happened to her. She didn’t want him to give up on his dream, since she didn’t really want to be an actor to begin with and being on stage with so many people watching her made her feel uncomfortable, but she couldn’t tell him that or he would feel even worse.

Alice did a lot of things that made her uncomfortable for the sake of love.

What didn’t help Alice’s feelings of self worth were all of the husbandos and waifus Ian had. She always acted like they were no big deal, as they were just fictional crushes and she had some of her own while growing up. Unfortunately, she struggled to overlook certain common traits in his choices: large chests, thin waists, and overall conventional good looks.

Alice is chubby, with a pear shaped body that makes her hips and rear much bigger than her chest. No one would ever mistake her for an anime waifu, and she knew it.

It took Alice a while before she could handle getting sexual in their relationship. She suffered from SA as a teenager and had moments where she panicked, especially in certain positions or when being restrained without warning or means of escape.

Ian would feel miserable for triggering her trauma and would apologize profusely for it, blaming himself and thinking the absolute worst of himself. Alice, in turn, would feel guilty for turning something that was supposed to be an expression of love into something awful for the both of them. Moments that should have been just about expressing love physically just made Ian feel like an awful person instead, and she would need to reassure him that he wasn’t. It made her more determined to suppress her trauma and be more proactive when it came to physically intimacy for the sake of their love.

Alice loved Ian, and she was willing to do just about anything for him.

Ian was rough in bed once they got going, and Alice did her best to tolerate it. She focused instead on how flattering and exciting it was that the person she loved desired her to the point that he lost control over himself. She believed that noone else would ever feel this way about her but Ian. What they had was special, irreplaceable. She got better at not freaking out when he took away her control in the heat of passion. She tolerated choking until nearly passing out and the pain that would always come initially when being penetrated.

Neither of them had any point of reference for having sex besides sex education classes, experimenting with each other, and ecchi. In ecchi/hentai, the person on the bottom would almost always be in pain at the start of penetrative sex, particularly during their first time, but would feel good in the end. That was just how sex worked, right? Pain was just an unavoidable price to pay to feel pleasure and express their love physically, right?

Just a quick aside, no, sex is not supposed to be painful unless you want it to be. In that case, it’s BDSM, and it requires a lot of communication as well as safe words to do it in a healthy manner.

Ian never meant for Alice to feel bad. He just loved her so much that he got carried away in the moment, and he was so good at aftercare, which made up for any pain and panic. She adored how sweet he could be afterwards, so loving, kind, and cuddly, so she always reassure him that she was okay... even if she wasn’t really.

Alice learned to complain less and less over the years as she grew up with Ian because he was suffering from so much, and it felt like she had nowhere near as much to complain about. He would feel so miserable if she had a problem and he felt helpless that he could do anything about it. He was dealing with so much, she couldn’t bear to burden him with things that troubled her when he couldn’t handle it, not when he needed her support so badly. She had a big family who loved her and could support her, unlike Ian. Without her, Ian would have no one. He never meant to hurt her, and he always apologized when he did.

That was why, even after being cheated on, Alice tried to forgive Ian.

The woman Ian cheated with was gorgeous, thin, and had big breasts. She was someone who was far more forward and confident when it came to sex, so much more appealing than Alice was, at least in her opinion. She felt pangs of paranoia and jealousy towards this woman’s behavior towards Ian in pictures on their socials and how much he talked about her as well as others even before the affair, but she always managed to talk herself down from suspecting anything seriously. She trusted Ian. What they had was different, real. They knew each other for so long, far more intimately than anyone else. Their love was deeper than anyone could understand, and she believed him when he swore up and down that he only could ever want her romantically or sexually.

It was a mistake. Ian messed up. It’s just how it’s always been - he makes a mistake, apologizes sincerely, reassures Alice he loves her, and she would forgive him. He always has good intentions, he just is clumsy at times, makes mistakes. This was just another mistake.

Besides, it wasn’t like Alice was perfect either. She had a crush on that camp councilor when they were tweens, and it made Ian feel bad because he had been crushing on her while she was gushing about her crush to him, oblivious to his feelings. This was kind of how he felt back then, right? She was just experiencing it from the other side now. Something like this was just a passing fancy. They could recover from this, right? Right?

But they couldn’t. Trust had been broken. All the problems in their relationship that Alice overlooked because she trusted Ian and loved him came in sharp relief, made even worse now by his betrayal.

Alice really did try to make it work, but in the end, she realized, with the help of friends and family, that what she and Ian had wasn’t healthy. They were caught in a toxic cycle of hurt feelings and apologies, clinging to each other for the sake of “love” until their relationship had grown twisted and was slowly destroying both of them.

The hardest thing Alice ever had to do was end the relationship, and even then she cracked under the pressure of Ian’s crying and begging for her not to leave him. She softened it by saying that they were broken up “for now.” Right now things were too painful, too raw. They needed space to focus on themselves as individuals instead of as a couple. If there was any chance of them being together, they needed time apart to heal.

Unfortunately, Alice can’t imagine them getting back together, not when just the thought of Ian hurts like hell.

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #swwsdj #sdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask #Sauce-y Art

[clitfisto]

care to elaborate on the miles venom arc?

YES okay so. the thing abt the symbiote is that (like any good corruption arc) it feeds on and amplifies the worst traits of a character, which is pretty straightforward in peters case - his biggest issue is his anger, usually manifesting via retribution (eg. "i missed the part where thats my problem", hunting down uncle bens killer), so his origin story is always the great power/great responsibility thing so he learns to temper that rage. what the symbiote does, practically, is force him to unlearn that foundational character arc and regress to his worst self

since the symbiote really really loves aggression peter parker is literally its dream guy but miles is a little more complex. hes definitely susceptible to that same anger (eg. wanting to "make kingpin pay", the entire sm2 martin li arc) but not as often and nowhere near as hardcore, so the peter playbook wont work as well for him (and also it would be fucking boring. weve seen that shit like 8 times already (not saying symbiote peter is boring i just think modern iterations need to explore new aspects to avoid treading the same ground constantly (sm2 does this very fucking well (also yuri lowenthal is a great va for peter like right up there with josh keaton (i think this many parentheses means im off topic (the adhd demon got me))))))

SO. whats miles' major issue he needs to overcome in his origin story? full disclosure i have not read the comics (but i heard they had some issues with his initial characterization anyway? which is fair enough tbh writing the successor to such an iconic guy is Fucking Hard) so TO ME PERSONALLY!! spider-verse miles is the definitive iteration of the guy and like. we all remember the whats up danger scene, his origin arc is overcoming self-doubt and learning to believe in himself ("its a leap of faith", "youre on your way, just keep going") which, alongside social anxiety (eg. the itsv "everyone knows" scene, sm2 "are you mad at me? it sounds like youre mad at me" dialog), seems to be part of some general anxiety issues. this is pretty well supported by the recent "the spider within" short film (which funnily enough is very fucking reminiscent of some sequences in kravens last hunt, not relevant but kinda cool) which also shows how miles responds by self-isolating, similarly to ps5 miles when peter ignores him

the symbiote can exploit his self-doubt pretty easily, the inherent power boost will do most of the heavy lifting to make him feel like hes not good enough without it - what if he runs out of web at the worst moment? what if hes not strong or fast enough to save someone? what if hes caught mid-costume change because hes so used to the suit changing itself? the more valid the (inital) concerns the better imo

the social anxiety is a tricky one but i think if miles traps himself in a doom loop of self-isolation he might spiral into genuine paranoia, which combined w/ the patented symbiote rage could lead him to lash out at people around him. "everyone secretly hates me so im gonna avoid being around people" -> "i feel alienated from everyone i know so im gonna avoid them even harder" -> "am i 'okay'? why would you care? what are you playing at? fuck off and leave me alone" -> "nobody wants to interact w/ me so everyone who does must have ulterior motives and is therefore a threat to me/my family/my city" -> "im completely isolated but bad things are still happening so people must be conspiring against me w/o my knowledge" -> "literally everyone on earth is out to get me and i need to fight them about it"

from there i think the ideal conclusion is pretty self-evident - miles takes a metaphorical leap of faith (calling back to the lesson learned in his origin arc) by actively choosing to trust someone, reach out and ask for help w/ removing the symbiote and dealing with the contemporary big bad (potentially his local peter variant bc hes got experience w/ symbiote removal and it would tie into the "leap of faith" motif but idk)

so tldr: a miles symbiote arc would be different to peters arcs in some (very interesting) key ways - rather than unbridled aggression he could be characterized by intense anxiety, manifesting as paranoid self-isolation and a sense of dependence on the symbiote suit, and would end the arc by reaching out for help in a symbolic leap of faith

#autism will really have you writing essays recreationally huh. #idk im just saying shit if anyone else has ideas or anything to add i would love to hear it!!

[beneathsilverstars]

MY ENTIRE ISAT LIVEBLOG

COPY PASTED FROM TWITTER LET'S GO!!!

oh my god i love isabeau

the correct reaction to an incredibly mediocre pun:

when i talked to odile i said i was gonna make isabeau sleep on the floor but that is NOT true

i was about to say i love all the sparkly stars aesthetic but... the game is literally named after them.... i shoulda known

omg isabeau what were you about to confess 😳👉👈

rock paper scissors is being explained to me in such painstaking depth... but the dialogue is cute, so it's ok

wtf i looped back to the town specifically in order to ask the cook about the openphrase for the one door but there's no option to ask!!

it was the shopkeeper 🤦🏼

so curious about siffrin's touch thing... it makes sense other people might be more conscious of a subconscious reaction to touch than he is, but he's so avoidant of the train of thought, i feel like it must be something a bit less.. subtle...?

damn... tryna give mirabelle the fan mail for the second time.... yikes :( so sorry mira........ is that what happened to the island to the north...? something about it got so retconned that it makes people sick to focus on the exact change?

oh.. siffrin's major memory problems.....

this game is sooo good

siffrin seems upset in the observatory.. at first i thought they were just getting tired/grouchy, but the game sure is named after stars... maybe stars had to do with their past trauma..??

i'm starting to wonder if this isn't their first set of loops and the bone-deep burden of all that (along with the practicalities of your memories constantly not matching reality) is why they forget words and shit....

went and looked at the castle again this loop bc i felt bad that sif never gets to sit down...

king asked if sif remembers REMEMBERS WHAT??? i just knowww after i terribly lose this fight im gonna have to go back through the whole game unlocking new rooms that like unlock my memories or smth

"not when i still can't say it" ofc the king is from the northern island... sif is obviously from there too, and that's why he can't remember most of his past... so that's the thing they both don't remember?

defeated him but like. there's still so many locked doors. i bet like sif is gonna go to sleep and they wake up from the nap like WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M STILL IN THE LOOP?? WE WON?? but they didn't win correctly yet, they didn't actually solve everything that needs solved...

head handmaiden ma'am 😳

is odile's research genealogy??

i thought the reference to "colors" being an esoteric/irrelevant topic was a one-off gag about the art style, but it's plot relevant?? fuck yeah

what if odile is trying to figure out the northern island..??

OHHHHHH

BWAHHH the bonnie quest 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

first time redoing the mira quest.... siffrin!!! be brave!!!!! not only is your new idea good, even if it was bad you could just say oops oh well and switch the script back next loop!!!!!

is siffrin gonna have to learn how to be brave and normal in order to break the loop jdhshdjf (normal here meaning "not a loop-brained convomaxxer")

i hope siffrin can just ask the baker's daughter directly for the book this time hdhdjfj i don't really think the whole goose chase is necessary for the emotional convo.....

oh thank god

ugh i can't wait till sif tells his friends about the loop. is that gonna be sif's quest

HANG OUT QUEST!! YES!!!

hm.. is loop the deity of the northern island..? if stars and astronomy are like their whole thing....

INTERRUPTED AGAIN!!!!!!! AGHHGH!!!!! i know isa can't actually confess till the very end bc it would suck having to go through more loops knowing he likes you but he hasn't actually told you / if you go through a loop post-confession surely that would change quite a bit of dialogue

but AHHHHHH!!!!

oh my god siffrin is going beast mode on the tutorial sadness?? i had to choose "attack" bc it seemed the most different and thus interesting but also omg... there goes the warm friendship glow 😭😭

but ofc that glow would die a horrible sudden death anyway the moment siffrin is confronted with the fact that he is back on that damn loop grind :(

poor thing 😭😭😭😭😭😭

INSTANT REPLAY??????????

the loop power is getting stronger.. u~u;;

I KNEW IT WOULD EVENTUALLY GET WEIRD THAT SIF'S SUCH A HIGH LEVEL... just a couple loops ago i was like damn when is everyone else gonna notice that sif has like multiple crafts that they didn't yesterday

also i noticed a loop or so ago that their battle portrait is frowning and.. i don't think it always was.....?

oh my god the memory of sadness is kinda fucked up but. so useful jdhshfj im tired of avoiding them in the hallway,,

ok but also how do my teammates not notice that they have new equipment, and sometimes a new craft..... in the case of like a hair bow that's easy to gloss over but how does isabeau not go "wtf i'm dealing paper damage?" ??

the problem w telling your friends you're in a time loop is it must be such a fucking relief. and then you loop again

aw, sif.. tell them about the universe...

lol how funny would it be if i died to the rock this time

oops... i'm doing a big check-everything run, but i absolutely didn't do all the village stuff bc i was too excited to help isa... oh well,

i did idly connect that the "weird sadnesses" smell like sugar same as the king's time magic which makes, but i finally just actually thought about it and realized they're also star shaped....

siffrin having this time loop power... is it anything at all like mirabelle's time-resistance power, blessed upon her by the high priestess? did siffrin escape from their fucked up time island, sent out with the power to eventually save it?

odile is sooo close to figuring it out... she just said "verRrRy interesting"

BWAHH new post-level-2 convos!! so cute!!!!! love bonnie's new siffrin-patting routine..... and odile has it SO figured out, when is she gonna say something!!!

siffrin was afraid that he smells like timecraft? bc of looping or bc of repressed reasons.... probably bc of looping,

time for siffy's daily bathroom stall breakdown!!

they even went in happy this time and still managed to psych themself all the way out hdgshsjf

GHOST SIF??? GHOST SIF ON THE WAY TO THE KEYKNIFE??????

BWAHHH ODILE RUFFLING SIF'S HAIR!!! I WAS WAITING AND WAITING FOR MORE PEOPLE TO PICK UP ON IT BEING OK TO TOUCH THEM!!!

"in this moment, you are loved" god it is going to be so hard waking up next loop 😭

HAIR BRUSHING!!! THIS IS SO PEAK

i'm worried that the king's "isn't this the best moment of your lives" rhetoric is going to slowly gain appeal as sif goes through more and more loops... like. they crafted the perfect loop with their found family. they *can't* change it any more, make it any better. ...

EHAT DO U MEAN "NVM" ISA!!!!!! oh my god i can't believe you won't confess until siffrin is like more emotionally centered and open and ready to handle that kind of thing... why r u sooo considerate -_- ur killin them isa

oh my god why is it even worse why is the end of the loop even worse this time oh my GOD sif is gonna be inconsolable I'M inconsolable not isabeau reaching out im sobbing on da couch

ngl i kinda hope this time siffrin is just defeated and doesn't banter about shit and everyone is worried as fuck. sorry sif i just think it would be interesting. that flash of him slaughtering the tutorial sadness was so sick. esp the unique auto-rewind. more of that shit

they did the first convo w mira fine.. nvm i guess.... if that never happens that's gonna be my first fanfiction

another ghost siffrin... after i looped to unlocked floor one to look for articles....... :o

not beau saying "normally i'd be worried about this, but sif doesn't seem worried at all!" when i'm about to touch the tear specifically in order to die...

did the king used to hang out in the observatory... did he write that word (the country's name?) on the papers, and wear out the spot on the globe....... he did find a new home here in vougarde such that he's decided that he can't lose this one too, at all, ever...

i got to loop 30 and i was surprised bc i figured i was at like 25 tops. and now im at 37? i don't think it's been 7 loops since then...???

i've started dreaming about the tick of a clock.. i'm kinda worried i've started wracking up too many loops... i did just zip back and forth across the house a half dozen times checking various items and dead ends....

AHH AUTO REWIND FROM KING ASKING WHERE SIF IS FROM???? followed by "you do not answer" which. implies that wasn't the case before the rewind.?? maybe more like "you do not think about it" l o l oh sif 😭😭😭

i was about to complain that it won't let me zone out of the dying-and-bonnie-running scene but um. different this time. thank you for not letting me zone out,

YEAH IT'S LOOP 40 NOW!! this is right after loop 37 (with a small auto-rewind between)

😭😭😭😭😭😭 isabeau pleeeeease:

hanging out with loop and - we saw the kings first attack?? but how would the rest of the party even get that far without sif?? they'd die to the first rock trap????

oh good sif noticed too. "who was the king attacking".... did a siffrin remnant help the party, has he looped so many times that he can be in multiple places at once???

was the king kmsing??? who tf would he be attackinggg

does the loop end when siffrin loses hope?? but no, then the very first time they defeat the boss they wouldn't have looped... but no, if the handmaiden is just talking shit unrelated to the looping then that coulda still made sif think the loop was fucked, which fucked the loop?

it's kinda heavy how many times you have to k your s in this game... esp when you don't actually have to but it's, like, more convenient than 5-30 extra minutes of running around

siffrin tripping so they don't seem so creepily overpowered is SO sad 😭

fsr it's sadder than going through the motions of a conversation, or tripping bc you tripped last time... it's a whole new lie to offset a whole new problem...

oh yeah my other loop theory was that it ends when siffrin gets too reminded of the northern island..? the memory of the future or whatever the fuck from the big attack idk

siffrin rewinded after his friends saw the ghost.... kinda matches my "when he loses hope" theory. when he feels alone? when he's utterly lost with no clue what to do next..? (lol sif restarting every loop just bc he doesn't have plans for what to do after winning)

NOOO I WAS SO EXCITED TO NOT HAVE TO GO GET THE KNIFEKEY EVERY TIME BUT I DO HAVE TO... BOOOOO...... where's the consistency, loop!!!

i can use a memory to equip it for the boss fight but idc as much about that.... i just wanted to be able to check out the dead end rooms more often instead of having to use the crest to get the knifekey every time....

memory of ghosts, no effect??

oh, the vision of the future happens on the first attack always.. not when the king kills you always...

having the knifekey for the fight kinda isn't worth it.. siffrin only has one measly paper attack anyway, so i usually have them on potions and items duty.... gotta keep mira brothed up so she can cast the super duper shield every single turn

"it's fine. she isn't real to you right now either" god siffrin is gonna be so fucked up when they get out. siffrin is gonna have "everyone else is an NPC" brain

finished doing all four quests together for the second time, and sif's commentary at the end is reeally hitting my "eventually sif will understand the king's pov of wanting to freeze one perfect moment forever instead of going forward to inevitably worse shit" theory :(

"you've noticed you're starting to forget whole loops" AHA...... i'm so curious tho what was sif doing in those skipped loops. ig presumably it'd be whatever they did in the next loop that they actually remember? sticking to the plan several times in a row till it sticks,

does loop remember the skipped loops??

hm. whenever the loop ends early Not due to death (the little auto-reverses) maybe sif just.. forgot everything after that moment? till the normal king attack moment ....? or whatever death they find?

i wonder if the headache of not being able to say/read/think about the northern island is caused by many tiny loops, sending you back to the moment before you said/read/thought it, happening however many times it takes for the rapid time travel to make you so sick you just don't

i teach kid's music classes, and sometimes i'll practice one or two dozen verse variations, then i get to actual class and when i actually do that song i can't remember which variations i've already done? and it gets worse with each class i teach from that lesson plan. so dw siffrin i get it,

ok but wtf is up with the head handmaiden. what's she got to do with this. she's obviously more involved than she seems, she knows Something about the end. and imo it's sus that she was able to bless mirabelle to be impervious to the curse, how's she able to do that.

assuming that the king used to live in the house (spending lots of time in the observatory), euphrasie would've gotten to know him... perhaps seen the beginnings of him getting fucked up powerful...? thought she could handle it on her own but she couldn't?

are the mini auto-loops a meta "reload from last save"? i think it's the same quick rewind sound as actually reloading... i don't do it super often bc why not just loop back and keep my silly little mistake in, but i've done it 2 or maybe 3 times....

this game does such a good job starting in medias res. level 45!! i'm past 70 now. i feel like there's a definite chance i'll hit 90 which means siffrin will have done as much fighting in these loops as they did with their friends through months of travel and adventure.

choosing all the emo answers to the loop convo about how using your dagger would be faster than finding a tear to kill you. sorry frin not my fault you are depressed as fuck

LOOP GOT POSSESSED IN ORDER TO ALLOW ME TO K MY S MANUALLY??????? ??????? damn i had something actually important to talk about this loop too

I HATE PICKING CONVERSATION CHOICES WITH LOOOOOP I WANT TO SEE THE OUTCOME OF BOTH OPTIONS IM SO SPOILED!!!!

AHHHH FRIN FIGURED OUT THAT IT's THEIR COJNTRY! THEY TALKED ABt JT! THEY TRIED TO SAY IT!! BWAHHHHHHHH that was so fucking sadddd oh my godddddddd sif's poor clueless friends trying to stop whatever the fuck was happenin 😭😭

is the king's 9999 attack just saying the country's name, lol

wish craft . . .

oh my god oh my god he's gonna torture my friends to death in front of me oh my god holy shit oh my god oh no oh no oh no oh no

say the name siffrin!!! think the name!!!!!!! it'll fuck you up bad enough that you loop!

oh... sif is repeating their wish over and over..... like when they carve

well. finally a loop where sif wakes up freaking out so bad that their script with mirabelle gets way way off track. lol. just like i wanted. haha. shit

I CAN READ THE ISLAND BOOKS NOW???????? damn worth it fr sorry bonbon

i forget if i mentioned that i was thinking about how siffrin doesn't rly have much to look forward to, like his friends are about to disband...?

i was chatting w ari about it lol when she helped me defeat the king earlier, she was very concerned about how sif didn't have a home to return to, all his friends were talking about going back to their homes but where would sif go, isn't that sad

speaking of ari. very four year old raised by lesbians quote: "i like isabeau's name but i don't like his gender..."

siffrin dont get emo about how they don't hug you that first evening you literally already know why, they think you don't like it

damn. forgot about the rock

i had been thinking that the way the island was erased must be similar to the way the loops work, but couldn't fathom how time manip could erase a whole island. the magic being more general makes more sense. did someone wish away color as well....

i love magic systems where belief in a thing makes it more real but jeez this is scary

i was pretty on track with guessing that non-death loops happen when siffrin loses hope. it's whenever he goes oh fuck oh god i wish that hadn't happened

gotta say. i'm getting soo sick of running around unlocking doors so that i can go down a tear dead end for the nth time. plssss let me loop to "some doors unlocked; tear crest not used" 😭

i'm also starting to get low on loop-forward sparkles...

oh wow. siffrin had a really bad dream this tear-touch loop-back. i really can't ever use the dagger he would get plagued by the horrors. not that he isn't already, but,

i love to draw characters with horrifiedly blank expressions and very very tired eyes i can't wait to draw siffrin. lol

this game was made in a lab for me

every time i accidentally get into a fight with a sadness i'm like "siffrin is so fucked up at this point he should be able to just glare at them and scare them the fuck off" and then i remember that i literally currently have that mode equipped, me and the sadness just dodged in the same direction

can i at least get a memory that lets me one-hit KO the sadness crests- wait holy shit i just opened my craft menu and i literally have a new scissor craft called (just attack) when tf did i get that

.... was siffron's island erased specifically because they got gud at wish craft, and that's a power that the world shouldn't be able to harness...?

OH FUCK THE "remembering the name" STAR WAS SO SYMBOLICALLY STRIKING THAT I DIDN'T RVEN REALIZE THAT IT WAS ACTUAL COLOR...

nooo.. no one even reacted to being poked in the gardening room squeeze? right when sif needs it the most? let's make this set of the loops the worst set ever 🤗

what the Fuck is up with croissants though

i can't believe loop got siffrin to admit to themself that beau was planning to confess and siffrin is just using it to beat themself up. "poor isabeau, he probably can't help having a crush on shitty ol me".

i wish i could give siff a good loop but doing the missions makes them sad now 😭

wow. earlier i was like "what if the king is actually siffrin, weird-magic-shenanigans style". bc sif does have some similar thought patterns. but i was like no that's silly. but now this sad diary is talking abt making another self to talk to????

i also wondered if loop is some kinda shade of siffy??

i am writing this tweet while i let siffrin look through the big window in the observatory for a while. as a treat :(

OH THANK GOD.. ISABEAU IS TELLING SIF A NEW JOKE...: that's a much better treat 😭😭😭😭

oh no nvm their second thought was "i'll need to remember to laugh next time"

why don't siff's friends react anymore when he pokes them in the gardening room. it doesn't make sense.....

finally.. my "sif is quiet and moody and everyone notices" loop.......

sif has been super hungry in the commentary lately... more than normal i think... all those wish loops taking a lot of fuel?

have ppl not been reacting to sif's pokes bc they don't want to bother him when he's already obviously having a rough day...

i liked when they sat on the floor after bumping into the table. so real

finally got that death talk with bonnie.... i wonder when i'll get talk #2 with the other characters... odile has been quite sus of me for ages when's she gonna come out with ittt

ISABEAU PUSHING SIFFRIN AWAY.... probably bc siffrin was being very... sudden and depressed and desperate about it...?

did the daydreaming one's sister move to the northern island or something...

THE LIST IN EUPHRASIE's OFFICE!! it's who wished to save vougarde, and who wished for something else!!

bwuh. thinking about the strength behind the wish "i wish i hadn't fucking done that" when you reach out to someone and they push you away

loop confirmed/unified my theories about why siffrin loops back without death sometimes heheh... the specific wording of "something that feels like the world is ending" or whatever also seems in line with my theory that siffrin is scared of leaving their friends tomorrow

they've got croissant trauma. they've got banana trauma. a cheap continental breakfast is siffrin's worst nightmare

poetic that euphrasie finally heard and replied to me on loop 99. waking up on the big double O more hopeless than ever! ☺️

gotta say it so funny that siffrin is forcing themself to try to get everyone's skills in order to beat the king faster when i beat him easily in probably less than half a dozen rounds last time. forgot to even equip the keyknife! these half-assed quests are taking longer than that...

fucked up house??????

i keep accidentally walking right back out of the door i walked into, lol. this is fun though!

also. ghost ✨???

oh.. the ghost ✨ figure i saw was siffrin, with a black hat..?

maybe.. this is the universe's way of granting both wishes...... vougarde is saved, but stuck in time forever. looping the same day of salvation.

i had wondered what would happen if (once?) siffrin totally lost hope, sure that there was no chance of ever, ever getting out. bc when they lose hope they restart. so they'd just. restart immediately. constant loop. with no chance to do anything to regain that hope.

ghost sif time :3c

mal du pays means homesickness...

SIFFRIN TRIPPED AND IZA CAUGHT HIM.. they're touching !

i've been playing at work but i have to stop and actually do some work now.... ty for taking good naps today baby :')

i can't believe mirabelle and siffrin are canonically moirails now

BUT... BUT WHY DOES SIFFRIN HATE CROISSANTS???

also i saw something on a map i was using about a starry hat?? i never got a new hat...

i also never managed to find the book with the tree on the cover again, now that i could read it...

i'm gonna have to find a full 100%ed playthrough to watch on youtube 🫡

---

reading through ISAT socmed... the first time i saw one of the in-world swears in the game i was like "lol stormlight archive vibes" so it's very funny that one of the first posts i see is "my world building advice is to learn from brandon sanderson" i was sooo right. so true

---

makes no sense to me that mirabelle asked siffrin to not spoil her on their convo topics... not spoil on where the convos *went* sure, but how does she not want to know the basic facts that siffrin now knows about her 😭 so wild

if one of my friends was in a time loop i would be like. please sit down and summarize everything we ever talked about so i can be caught up. but thats just me

---

found some youtube video compilations of missable dialogue/events we are so back

AGHH why does this person not show the full cutscenes 😭😭😭 pls i don't want to have to do a whole ass entire top to bottom loop w like 20 object interactions...... maybe i'll just do it at work tomorrow while the baby naps 😩

at least it was pretty easy getting the initial croissant scene ☺️ but i am NOT redoing the entire last two acts to get the related final loop scene or whatever it is -_-

yayy that one's big enough that i found a video of it ☺️ i do wish i'd been able to do it in game myself instead, but. not redoing half the blinding game rn

---

i Am doing a full loop to get the odile thing though... and in doing so i realized apparently i didn't go through the friend quests manually enough times, sif just had a bit of a mental breakdown abt odile's. which does lead up to the last-loop breakdown better!

NOOO I WAS 3/4 OF THE WAY THRU THIS LOOP TO GET A CERTAIN SCENE AND i was on autopilot and meant to use a crest on the tears but i didn't have the crest yet so selecting "yes" meant touching them and dying fuck meee

i hadn't saved at each floor bc i didn't want to touch my save files w this new offshoot canon...

i'm not actually quite sure what info gets carried over from the previous loop when you loop back to the same floor instead of the beginning or forwards? i'm just gonna try and do floor 3 again and see if it works....

either relooping level 3 messed it up or i wasn't able to get enough suspicion points bc the plantain chips didn't make me sick. gonna go slip on the banana five times and try again

---

... i just used the dagger for the second time and now i'm stuck on a plain black screen and i legitimately can't tell if the game is broken or if the game is making me sit and wait for sif to bleed out

ok it's definitely a bug. wow this is so poignant it really does feel like i fucked around and found out

this is so funny i can open my pockets but i can't use the dagger or call loop.

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I DID IT I GOT THE SCENE!! it was good i'm glad i saw it. wish i hadn't fucked up and had to do it all twice but i DID IT

#in stars and time #in stars and time liveblog

[bonestrouslingbones]

why do people keep asking about his brother, this happened with the official papyrus Q&A too

honestly there've been more rodent-related asks than sans asks, so i'm not too bothered! it's just people being curious and playing into ebony's caginess regarding all that, especially since it would make sense to assume he's closer with his brother than the other characters he's talked about. i think most folks are generally understanding the This Aint About Him vibes i'm putting out, but they're also just responding to some of my own cues which i certainly can't find issue with ;>

after this next one that's just gonna be a funny lil one-word de-escalation i'll probably still dial back on answering the ones that aren't relevent to ebony specifically, just to try to move The Lore along more smoothly. same with all the rodent talk lol

also its important to remember that even tho it probably looks like i'm getting a lot of things about the same topic, i'm still the one choosing which questions to answer! i have other options, but i generally go for the ones that I can make interesting via worldbuilding, Funny, or story/character hints. i only bring this up because i imagine the official Q&A likely had similar logic- god KNOWS toby got wayyyy more questions for that than i have within the last two weeks lmao (also there was only 1 question about sans in that anyway???)

#also there's already somebody in the inbox who thinks ebony slamming on the desk was hot so . nature is healing? #anyway yeah with this kinda thing it's important to keep a bit of a balance between “relevent” and “irrelevent” questions #i COULD just stick to the ebony-only-Find-His-Secrets questions but that would be a lotta stuff to establish really quick #and it would def make it harder to communicate his whole Thing about being here fully by choice when he's being interrogated like that #the less-relevent-to-him-specifically questions help me pad out his personality & dynamic with all of you so he feels more “real” #and can also help build a lil more intrigue over what the hell he's doing here in the first place #AH i started rambling anyway my point is people ask about his brother because he is a freaking weirdo about it!!!!!!!!

[collectionoftulips]

My two cents on the season finale of The Way Home

Okay, so thoughts on the finale of season two…

First and foremost, it probably has to have been one of the most rushed episodes I have ever seen. Rarely was there ever a point where a major plot point was allowed to breathe and it felt like they were trying to squeeze three episodes into one. This caused some issues. I’ve already made a post about how absolutely bananas Elliot’s behavior around the coins were, and I stand by that, especially as this show works overtime in wanting us to see Elliot as Kat’s soulmate and/or someone we want to see Kat with. I am personally not entirely convinced by a love interest that either doesn’t seem to catch or (more likely) chooses to ignore the emotional weight of something just because it indicates that the person they are interested in might also have feelings for someone else. Elliot might not have been told everything about Thomas, but he knows that Kat cares about him (enough to feel threatened by a man in the 1800s) and that she was given those coins as Thomas’ dying wish.

I’ve probably said more than I should about that particular plot point, but the way the episode bulldozed through that, for example, felt extraordinarily strange as a result of the just never-ending plot dumping and wrapping-uping that was happening. Most likely they were uncertain whether or not they were going to be renewed for season three, so they were trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible and hint enough about potential future directions (hence the new pond theory, finding out about Colton and Casey showing up out of nowhere), but if that was the case, they really ought to have changed the pacing of the season (in my opinion). The beginning part of the season was far too slow and if they had hastened some of the plot points. For example, Elliot’s relationship to his dad and the whole subplot about his wall could have been given less time and the show could have spent that time actually making the viewers connect to Jacob and not have his sudden 180 on returning to his own time happen off-screen in the most bizarre way possible.

The (maybe) last point I will say about Elliot is that it should NOT have taken him his own timetravelling experience to be able to apologize to Kat for being an absolute asshat about Colton. I’m tempted here to draw parallels to a certain man in the 1800s, but might make a separate text post laying out that particular argument, in case people want to read?

Continuing on the theme of characters treating Kat very badly and getting away with it: Del. The whole Victor-not-giving-the-letter thing was the cheapest possible device to get some sort of reconciliation between Del and Kat that they could have possibly done and I was so angry about it. Particularly because the show sort of half-acknowledges that DEL COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING EVEN IF SHE HADN’T GOT THE TICKET, but the show just go ’oh look over here!’ and chooses to not dwell on that fact in order to get that sense of closure in case the show wasn’t picked up for a third season. Both Del and Elliot are treating Kat badly by doing the smallest amount possible and it feels like the show is letting them get away with it. Particularly as the show really hasn’t shied away from complex and nuanced family dynamics, that particularly annoyed me. #Justice4Kat

Thomas not having a tombstone makes me feel very hopeful that he might maybe do some time traveling in the future (I am still not convinced by the ’you can only go back not forwards’ theory). Plus the flashback with Colton looks way older (in terms of dress and style) to make that theory make sense to me.

If for some reason, in the future, I cannot have Kat/Thomas, I would happily accept Susanna/Kat at this point.

On the topic of my new favorite ship (Thomas/Kat), I think it is highly relevant that (from what I can remember) we have only really ever gotten romantic hallucination conversations between Del and Colton (there are those that are now more recently with Elliot and his dad) and now we get them between Thomas and Kat. We also get flashbacks through Thomas and Kat’s relationship when Kat thinks that he has died (to the point she can’t even look at the Goodwins’ gun any more because it upsets her so much). The show very clearly, I think, wants to position Thomas as a very legitimate rival to Elliot’s affections.

For the record, I’m not one of these people who thinks ships should only be about those two and not allow space or feelings for others; I don’t see Kat loving Elliot as taking away something from Thomas/Kat. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I sort of feel like Kat (to some degree) feels like she ’should’ love Elliot - because he loves her so much and so clearly, and she loves him too, but there’s just something that isn’t working out between them. The feelings she has for Elliot are very complex and nuanced because they have known each other a really long time. Thomas, on the other hand, I think evokes this larger than life feeling in Kat. Their connection wasn’t something she was looking for, not anything that entirely makes sense, but it’s there. When she thinks he has died, there isn’t really a reason for her to go ’yeah no I would have run off with you’ or whatever it would be. It doesn’t invalidate or validate any one ship, I just think it wouldn’t really make sense given the context (and Kat’s disposition). Plus, when she finds out Thomas survived and she gets half a second to react (yes, I am bitter about this aspect of the episode still) she gets the face of someone who thought ’oh shit my life just got more complicated’.

I will never not be annoyed that Jacob’s choice to return was an off-screen decision. #Justice4Jacob

I might write a massive post laying out the case for my pro-Kat/Thomas stance later, even if people didn't ask for it 😂

#the way home #the way home hallmark

[pulchrasilva]

Sorry if this is random, but not many people are in the rswr fandom so you may be flooded with questions for the next week.

how related do you think Roman from sanders sides is to Roman from rswr? I know they address it in the first episode a little, but it’s still unclear to me. They seem very different in terms of personality and goals. It can’t be a coincidence because Thomas sanders wouldn’t just use one of the names of his well established characters for nothing.

sorry again, this was really long.

No need to apologise for sending me asks! I'm always happy to talk, especially about roleslaying

This is a topic that's been rattling around my head for a while so here goes

I would agree with you there, sanders sides and roleslaying with roman are very different. Different universe, characters, message, tone, etc. I think there's probably no in-universe connection between the two series tbh (although it can be fun to imagine the roleslaying universe as the creation of princey, for example).

Some people call roleslaying a spin-off of sanders sides but I'm not a fan of that tbh. It's a show that involves a guy who makes another show, not a spin off. Roleslaying has a much larger cast of entirely new characters, much more worldbuilding and whats looking to be a more complicated plot. Spin-offs usually take place at least in the same universe as the original media, but that's clearly not whats happening here.

Plus if it was a spin-off or if sanders sides had any real in-universe significance to roleslaying, "doc" Janus probably would have had more than 5 minutes screen time and Roman would be more similar to side!Roman

Personally, I think that dnd is the kind of game where someone who has an established oc might choose to adapt them to fit a new universe, because people are very attached to their ocs and it's fun! I do feel that at it's core, roleslaying is just thomas and his friends having fun and telling us a cool story as theu do it.

So Roman was taken from the sanders sides universe because he was an established character who Thomas enjoyed playing, and then he created a new character based partially on side!Roman and partially adapted to better fit the context of the campaign. A prince really wouldn't have fit with the story they're telling here, and changing that part of Princey changes a lot of Roman's character so we end up with a very different person. But they have the same name because rswr!Roman came from side!Roman.

When it comes to doc Janus, some people might say that he was there as a way to grab sanders sides fans' attention and in some ways I'd agree. But I also think his inclusion in the story (and likely any inclusion of other ts characters in the future) probably started from AJ thinking "hey my friend has these cool ocs, and the character he's playing is already inspired by them, I bet he'd enjoy it if we put some of his ocs into the campaign!" But doc janus isn't plot relevant or anything because at the end of the day, roleslaying isn't supposed to be a spin-off or sanders sides focused at all

So. This got a bit longer than I was expecting but to summarise. I think that the roleslaying and sanders sides universes are totally separate, but they have references between them just for fun. It's like the equivalent of putting a character into a private campaign as a reference to an inside joke, except theres an audience who's also in on it

I know my mutuals have a lot of thoughts on this topic too so if anyone else has something to say, go ahead! This is just how I personally think of the 2 universes and what I'm guessing the intentions are behind how they reference each other

#roleslaying with roman #sanders sides #its not really discourse heavy but i do touch on it so I'll tag it just in case #ts discourse #ask

[wild-houseplant]

Have Warden, Will Travel- Chapter 24

Back on my long-winded bullshit again, folks. And STILL they’re not kissing. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. Rhodri kisses Zevran. You’ll see what I mean when you read further. AO3 here, and the rest is under the cut! CW for ableism, it's painful if you're autistic (and no doubt other NDs) so heads up.

Hope you bunch are having a happy weekend!! Please drink your fluids!!!

§

“… Rhod?” Alistair said her name with the cautiousness of someone waking a bear. “There’s… something wedding-related I’m curious about now.”

Rhodri smiled, her eyes gleaming. “Oh-h-h,” her hands– momentarily, before she caught herself doing it– drummed against her thighs. “Have you and Leliana changed your mind about marrying? I know we only left the topic a few moments ago, but it’s never too soon to–”

“No, no,” he waved his hands like he was trying to flag a ship down, and Leliana got a worried look again. “Not us, not us!”

“Ah.” She deflated, if only slightly. “Ah, well. I suppose there need not be a wedding to have cake, sic?”

“Erm… yeah, definitely.” He blinked. “Anyway, that thing you said about marrying someone you don’t like…”

“Mm? It’s perfectly true,” Rhodri said with a nod. “Affairs can only be so distracting, see? At some point or another, you need to see your spouse.”

“... Right. So Tevinters are, erm… expected to marry someone they don’t love, or even like?”

Rhodri shrugged. “It happens often enough.”

“Will you have to?”

Zevran decided, before the panic could decide for him, that he was listening as intently as he usually did to group conversations. If he was paying closer attention now, it was quite simply because he was paying attention to the fact that he was paying attention, which increased the rate of attention paid exponentially. It was inevitable.

Besides, if she ended up in a marriage to some contemptuous oaf, who was to say she couldn’t have her affair with Zevran? Plenty of rich Tevinters had their way with handsome elves– behind closed doors, of course. And Zevran was a man who dwelled in the shadows. It was the perfect set-up. He would have to bring up the idea with Rhodri later.

Rhodri hummed thoughtfully. “I must marry, and fairly soon. That’s non-negotiable if I want to be the heir, which I do. I'm happy enough to do it. But Tata has always said I can marry anyone I like, so long as it isn’t a woman.” She wobbled her head a little. “I never bothered looking, though, so I’ll probably have him find me someone once I go back to Tevinter.”

Alistair’s eyes (and Leliana’s now, too) were like dinner plates. “You… really don’t mind if he puts you with someone you’re not in love with?”

“It’s not so unthinkable in Tevinter. The point of marriage for us is to merge two households, create new family connections, make children. Dozens of people are affected by it, so whether two people are romantically tied…” she shrugged. “It’s not so relevant. No strong family is built on throbbing hearts. The one with similar values, who will work with you and not against you, that is the spouse who will bring you through life in one piece.”

He blinked. “I… well, I s’pose it’s good to be with someone like-minded, but forever’s a long time to be stuck with someone you don’t feel anything for.” Alistair shook his head. “It just sounds like Tevinter parents don’t give a damn how you feel, so long as the marriage suits everyone else.”

Rhodri raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that, did I? Most parents look for someone they know we’ll  get along with, and we’re usually listened to if we veto their choice. Some parents choose the most politically advantageous person, certainly, but I think most are very considerate when matchmaking.” She chuckled, “Do Fereldan parents let you marry someone who is patently bad for you and your household, just because you’re in love with them?”

“Well– well it’s their choice, isn’t it?” Alistair blustered. “And what if it turns out they’re wrong, and you’re a perfect match?”

Rhodri shrugged. “What if it turns out your mother and father chose a good partner for you, despite your initial misgivings? No system is perfect, I don’t think. Many Tevinters are in strong but romanceless marriages and pursue affairs to plug the gap. Many Fereldans go to pieces four years into the marriage because the passion has faded and the true incompatibility can no longer be ignored. Which sounds worse to you?”

“Both sound pretty awful to me, to be honest,” Alistair winced a little. “I hope I don’t end up in either one.”

Rhodri gave a good-natured laugh. “Let’s hope you marry someone perfect for you, then. For me, I’ll be extremely pleased if my husband and I are friendly and we raise plenty of happy children together.” She rubbed her hands together and grinned, adding, “Ideally in the not-too-distant future!”

“Maker’s breath…” Alistair shook his head.

She laughed again. “Definitely don’t do it our way, amicus, if that’s how you feel, but most of us are satisfied. Stick with your romance, sic?”

Alistair sighed. “You know what, I think I’d better…”

Zevran couldn’t help but ponder the curious fact that, going by Rhodri's standards, he was a suitable marriage candidate. Her father’s sole criterion was no women, and Zevran was a man– and that seemed unlikely to change. He and Rhodri got along well, the two of them, and there were certainly worse ways to spend life than rearing a cheerful brood of children in good company. After all, life did not begin and end with oneself, and it would be quite the shame not to pass good looks and charm of his level on to the next generation. Who would be able to resist a fat little infant– or a league of them, even, with a winning smile and bright grey eyes? No-one, that’s who.

In all, it was arguable that if Rhodri hadn’t accidentally omitted other requirements issued by herself or her father– no elves, no assassins (even if not actively trying to murder her in particular), no Crows, no people with no notable families… well, it meant they two could– in theory, of course– make a good fist of it together.

And that was really all there was to the thought. There was no need for panic to creep back in and accuse him of feeding some sort of hope that only led to danger for all concerned. His had been a perfectly sensible notion, and really , it was well to have considered it. Indeed, what might have occurred if Rhodri happened upon the idea herself later and brought it up? Had he not mulled it over himself, he would have been caught by surprise, and what then?

No, it was perfectly reasonable. A sensible marriage, unlikely as it was to occur. Were it to happen, though, Zevran would prove himself a capable father, and whatever needs Rhodri might have in the capacity of a spouse would no doubt be easily met. And marriage would bring the benefit of permanently securing a lifetime away from the Crows!

Which she has already guaranteed, without wanting marriage or children from you.

Zevran’s fingertips went cold. Even if that were the case, idly pondering the concept of being legally bound and with offspring wasn’t so dangerous, surely. Not when there wasn’t any emotional attachment required– Rhodri explicitly said there wasn’t. Any fool could see this was purely practical.

But why had he even entertained the thought?

He could have laughed as the answer hit him– he nearly did, in fact. It was so very obvious: why did anyone think of those sorts of things? Sex, of course. Encouraged in marriage, and a necessary step in procreation. A natural, healthy impulse if ever there was one, and after Maker-knew-how-many months without so much as a wet dream, it was no doubt a sign that that part of him was ready to be brought out of dormancy. Emotional attachment indeed! Why would there be any risk of that when Zevran was obviously incapable of it anyway?

He sighed with relief. All that fluster for nothing. This was why it was well not to lose one's head and read too much into flitting fancies, when it all invariably came back to the simple and the obvious.

Zevran smiled to himself and pondered the going rates in Denerim brothels.

§

There was something terribly, deeply filthy about forests. Perhaps it was the fact that the only thing separating the foot from a layer of dirt going all the way down to the core of the planet was grass. Hair scarcely separated skin from whatever was touching it; why would grass be any better?

The answer, of course, was that it wasn’t any better, and that dirt in all its states– dust, silt, mud– would plague Zevran and his gear for the rest of his days. 

And it wasn’t as though Zevran was a snob. No, indeed, he had eked out an existence in some of the most squalid slums imaginable, but he took permanent solace in the fact that once the mould and bodily byproducts and other mysterious filth had been scrubbed away, the walls and floors beneath were perfectly sanitary. And they kept the worst of the elements away. The outdoors didn’t have a leg to stand on in that regard.

“I do not suppose there is any way we could tempt the Dalish to come to us, is there?” he croaked miserably as he took in the endless, uninterrupted stretch of trees ahead. “Surely they would benefit from a brief stay on the outskirts of a town. I am beginning to forget what buildings look like.”

“Zevran,” Rhodri said gently, raising an eyebrow at him, “we passed a hamlet shortly after lunch, and we haven’t gone more than twenty paces from the Imperial Highway– the heavily paved Imperial Highway,” she added with a chuckle, “since leaving Denerim.”

From behind him, Alistair scoffed and Leliana giggled, and Zevran was quite sure he had heard Morrigan and Wynne rolling their eyes. He heaved a sigh and kicked a nearby rock.

“Ah,” Rhodri clucked her tongue sympathetically. “You are not enjoying the fresh air?”

“It smells like fresh dirt,” he sulked. “And my boots, they are dusty."

He glanced up in time to see Rhodri’s expression go suspiciously neutral. Glazed, even. A small vein was rapidly gaining prominence on one side of her head.

“Ah,” she said again after a moment. "The ground is too dry, is it?"

"My boots speak for themselves," he lamented, kicking one shod foot up indicatively as he walked.

"Is Antiva not dusty, Zevran?" Leliana asked through a smile he could hear. 

He sighed and turned around, walking backwards as he faced the party. "Not my Antiva City," he returned, permitting tenderness to creep into his voice. After all, there was no shame in loving one's country. 

"Perhaps out there in the Drylands there is dust," he waved a hand dismissively in the direction he guessed the Drylands to lie. "And the sun burns hot in Antiva City, to be sure, and everything dries out quickly, but it almost always storms in the afternoon. Big, heavy rains that wash away all the dirt, and so the next day starts fresh." He kissed his fingers. "You could eat your breakfast off the ground, it is so clean."

Amid the doubtful looks from the Fereldans, a nostalgic-sounding sigh issued from Rhodri and, to Zevran’s intense surprise, a hint of a smile flickered over Sten's face as well. 

“You paint a very romantic picture, mon râleur, I must say,” Leliana chuckled. “But I do not think all that water would be very welcome to the people who end up flooded with it.”

Zevran beamed. “You flatter me, dear lady. If an Orlesian calls me a complainer, then I must be very good at it.”

“Yes, you are,” Rhodri chimed in cheerfully, and he, Leliana, and Alistair snorted in unison.

“It’s true,” Alistair added, somewhat less blithely than the Warden. “You could complain for Antiva.”

“Oh, now the praise is going to my head,” Zevran cackled. “You’ll find I am nowhere near as talented as my countrymen in that regard, but I am a suitable enough representative in the South. We Northerners complain like we are getting paid to do it!”

“He isn’t joking,” Rhodri said over her shoulder when Alistair raised an eyebrow. “Tevinters, Antivans, and Orlesians are all born whiners. It’s good for the health.”

“Good for the–?”

“Oh, yes,” Leliana linked arms with Alistair and smiled up at him. “If you let your troubles bottle up in you, you’ll fall over dead at some point.”

Alistair’s eyes widened. “Is… is that true? I mean, really true, not some old wives’ tale.” 

There was a clamour as the Orlesian, the Antivan, and the Tevinter all made to vigorously impart how many people they had seen or– and the numbers were far higher here– heard of expiring from an acute lack of complaints and the complications thereof. 

Leliana declared that she had witnessed a handful of stiff-lipped Orlesian nobles die suddenly and violently as all their complaints consumed them at once, a harsh result from years of playing the Grand Game a little too well. And Zevran, well. How many times had he been given a mark who had made a point of not complaining to anyone, and then, in a moment of urgency, blurted the wrong details to the wrong person? Their deaths, after all, weren’t really caused by Zevran; he was nothing more than the last sentence in the book, when it all boiled down to it. The true result in such deaths always lay a few chapters back.

“In fact,” Rhodri announced after relaying her own anecdotal evidence, “some three years ago, my mother told me that there was research from the University of Orlais, warning of the dangers of not complaining enough!”

“Mmm!” Leliana nodded vehemently. “I think I heard about that from a friend. An especially big problem long-term, is it not?”

Rhodri nodded gravely. “It is. The constant discomfort imbalances the four humours, you see Alistair, and then over time places a great strain on the organs. Then one day,” she snapped her fingers, “something gives out, and that’s the end of you.”

Zevran clenched a hand victoriously. “HA! I knew it!” he cried. “I said it to Taliesen often enough! ‘Mark my words,’ I would say to him, ‘scholars will find it is bad for the humours!’ Too much of the biles. He called me a fool, but who is the fool now, I ask you? Who?”

“Not you!” Rhodri said in a near-shout, grinning at him like the victory had been her own. Leliana and Alistair started to laugh, and everyone else rolled their eyes. Zevran’s chest swelled until it was fit to burst.

He swivelled on his heel to face the front again, his long-forgotten dusty boots all the way down on the ground while his head was up and up and up, past the treetops and clipping through the clouds. His laughter rang like bells and his voice came from his chest, “Not me!”  

Oh yes, him. Yes him, coming back to them again and again with his hands out like a dog begging for scraps. It was wrong and he knew it, and there was no escaping knowing it.

Zevran breathed through the stopper in his lungs, forced the air in until there was no chance of them collapsing. His fingertips were tingling. 

Ah, but Leliana had asked him a question! Stale by now, but still unanswered. He seized it anyway.

“Ah, and about the flooding, Leliana,” he waved a hand with all the nonchalance he could muster, “we have gutters. Big ones, deep, on the side of the paths and the paths are all angled just a little, so that the rain runs straight into these gutters. You should see how many people fall in those things and break something. Oh!” He chuckled. “Just dreadful.”

The Chantry Sister took in this information with a hum, and made another when Rhodri vouched for a similar system in her own country.

“But where does it go then?” she asked after a moment. “Who gets flooded at the end of all that?”

“Oh, no-one.” Zevran smirked. “All those gutters drain into an enormous reservoir, where we bottle the water up and sell it to the Orlesians.”

Everything seemed to happen at once: Rhodri laughed so fitfully she sank to her knees; Leliana cursed Zevran; Alistair gave a surprised squeak. What the others did was beyond Zevran’s notice or care, not least when several fat, icy drops of rain plummeted into his hair. Through deep, body-wracking guffaws, and as of a few moments later thick sheets of torrential rain, the Warden directed them into the canopy for the fastest camp set-up in existence.

 §

 “You really ought to get a move on, you know, Zevran.”

Zevran looked up at Leliana over the potato he was peeling. While everyone else went about setting up camp amid the downpour, they were tasked with making the supper together, and it had to be said: Leliana wasn’t making that much more headway with the carrots she’d been dicing.

He gave her a flourished inclination of the head anyway. “Ah, forgive me! I was overcome by your radiant beauty. Shall I move and sit in the rain so I am not distracted while I work?”

She snorted. “You know perfectly well I’m not talking about potatoes.”

“Oh?” He waggled his brows, already dreading wherever this was headed. “You are being a little ambiguous, my dear. I suppose I will simply have to live my life at twice the speed to ensure you are not disappointed. Will that do?”

“Now, now,” she smirked at him. “No need to be flippant. All I’m saying is Rhodri won’t be on the market for much longer, and once she’s taken, I don’t think she’ll have much time for the affairs she speaks of.”

Zevran allowed himself a single, peevish sigh. “Are you still on about this, woman?”

Leliana chuckled. “And why not, hmm? You’re still her shadow, still blushing up to your ears when she so much as smiles in your direction. And still not saying a word to her about it!”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he diced the potato and tossed it into the water.

“Of course you don’t.” Leliana threw him a shit-eating grin and ate a piece of carrot. “I didn’t see you trip over your feet the other day to get over to Rhodri when she realised you weren’t walking beside her. Not at all.”

Zevran’s stomach threatened to escape via his bellybutton; it took two goes before he had tensed it back into place. “There was a rock in the road.”

“Mm-hmm. And I suppose there was another rock right after that when she said that it didn’t feel right without you walking next to her, no?”

“It is possible, my dear lady, to trip for more than one step,” he said brusquely, and snatched another potato from the bowl.

From his periphery, Leliana rolled her eyes. “I don’t see why you don’t just make a move. Even if she’s not interested, she’ll be flattered, and you can move on.” She winked, “Of course, the best case scenario is much more likely, and then we’ll have one each.”

Zevran raised an eyebrow. “One what?”

“Oh, Zevran,” Leliana lamented. “Keep up, darling. One Warden each! Think of it! We could compare notes, no?” She reached an elbow up and dug it into his ribs with another, much more lascivious wink.

He tsked and gave her a withering look. “Does your gentleman caller know you are encouraging ‘The Assassin’ to seduce the Warden? Amid her grief?”

“Pish tosh,” she waved a hand airily. “Obviously you aren’t about to kill her. If you were, you’d have done it already. And as for the grief, it’s been two months now. Didn’t she go to a brothel last month? Besides, if she doesn’t want to, all she need do is decline. She’d take it as a compliment, even if she weren’t interested.”

“Hah. Well, I’m glad someone is being sensible, at least.”

“Unlike you!” Leliana nudged him again. “Come on, I want to see if it’s true what they say about Grey Wardens’ endurance.”

Zevran raised an eyebrow, privately pondering if said endurance reflected the number of prostitutes Rhodri took into that little room with her. “I am surprised you think it would be prudent to talk of such things given how private our dear Warden is.”

“Hah. I know for a fact that Rhodri and Alistair talk to each other about just about anything going on between their legs.” Leliana smirked as the potato in Zevran’s hands slipped free, and he barely caught it before it landed in the mud. “Interested, are we?”

“My dear woman,” he chuckled weakly, dicing the potato as quickly as he dared, “what on earth were you doing to pick up information like that?”

“Oh, nothing sinister. Just accidental overhearings. Why do you think those two insist on going to chop firewood together, hmm?”

Zevran silently cursed Leliana and the curiosity her remarks were imbuing. “... Ah. Not to exercise brute strength for the good of the party, then.”

“That too, of course! But enough of that,” she waved a hand. “My point is that they confide in each other about these things. I don’t doubt Alistair will confide in her once we get around to that, as well. And what problem is it?”

“No problem,” Zevran shook his head quickly. “It is good to have a third party opinion about these things, I think. I am surprised to see a Fereldan doing it, but well and good.”

Leliana snorted. “And don’t I deserve someone to confide in?”

“Naturally.”

“There, see? And if you hurry up and get to business, she’ll have Alistair, and you’ll have me. Is that not a fair deal?”

“... I am astonished we are discussing this, but yes, I suppose it is.”

She clucked her tongue. “Come on. Surely the Antivan seducer isn’t a prude beneath all that salaciousness.”

He gave a wan smile. “Perhaps you have gone where even I dare not follow.”

“And where is it I’ve gone, hmm?” Leliana arched a brow at him. “Gentle encouragement to flirt with someone who’d suit you well? What a wicked, sinful place that is!”

“Hah. Never mind the other remarks, then?”

The good Sister smiled warmly. “Exactly. We need not talk about anything, if you don’t like, but my original point still stands. She’s fond of you, no? I think perhaps not quite aware how fond she is yet, but with the right kind of suggestion, I think she’ll wake up to herself.” 

Leliana winked, apparently blissfully unaware that Zevran’s life essence was haemorrhaging out of him, and added, “Take it from me, though: don’t be subtle about it, otherwise you’ll be in for a long wait– ah, here comes the firewood!”

Beaming now, Leliana rose to her feet and offered all manner of stomach-turning compliments to a sopping-wet Alistair, who grinned and reddened like a sunburnt child as he set his armful of wood on the ground. Rhodri, who was equally drenched (and Zevran was not looking at anything below her neck or even vaguely considering Leliana’s suggestion of what she and Alistair might have been discussing while chopping the firewood), deposited her own load next to his and straightened up. She and Alistair shared a look, the latter suddenly becoming far more nervous than the former. 

“Go,” she nudged him. “I’ll handle the firewood. Go on.”

Alistair’s face was purpling, but he took the instruction with a nod. “Right. Erm… Leli, are you free for a moment?”

The man making the request almost jumped as Leliana touched his forearm, and when she had declared that she was and carefully bent his arm so that her hand hung off it, Alistair took his cue and escorted her away. With his back to them, a single rose with signs of thumbing on some of the petals could be seen sticking out of his back pocket, bobbing a little with each step he took.

By the time Zevran had looked away, Rhodri was already industriously wicking the moisture out of each piece of wood, sending small clouds of moisture into the chilly night air. Not of a mind to interrupt her, or that fetching little frown of concentration she was sporting, he picked up another potato and returned to work. It wasn’t as though there was any hurry for him to do this flirtation Leliana spoke of– indeed, it wasn’t even compulsory. No, there was nothing to do for the moment but enjoy the silence and attend to the task at hand, and so he did.

Right up until Leliana’s astonished yowl tore through the camp: “SO YOU’RE THE ONE WHO PICKED MY PROPHETIC ROSE!”

A deeply-absorbed Rhodri didn’t notice the noise, even when Zevran– quite ungracefully– snorted. If Leliana’s proposal today was anything to go by, no doubt he’d have all the dramatic details before the night’s end, whether he wanted to or not.

And what sin was there in being content enough to know? Only fools wished to be unaware of the goings-on around them. Zevran could cope with the accusations of nosy fishwifery that came with being someone who knew things.

He took another potato.

 §

 In the heart of the forest, after dinner, Zevran sat by the lake with his poisons belt open and vials ready for re-filling. It was a simple enough task, but a damned fiddly one, and best carried out with close access to fresh water lest an errant drop find its way to him and require immediate washing-off.

From somewhere back and to his left, behind the enormous rock he was leaning against, Rhodri’s voice carried. He glanced over his shoulder, but upon seeing no trace of her, he returned to work.

“We need to leave this until I can get a new staff, Wynne. Our progress is minimal in the current conditions.”

“Hm,” Wynne said. “If you are inclined to use your staves as a bludgeon, Warden Amell, I think it may be well for you to adjust to spellcasting without.”

Rhodri scoffed . “There are few people so single-handedly responsible for the murder of my students and peers as the one I hit, and fewer still who would think it clever to insult my house on top of that.”

Wynne gave an unimpressed-sounding little harrumph. “And what if you don’t find another staff? The Wonders of Thedas had nothing free of lyrium. Will you simply give away the training altogether?”

“You seem not to have noticed, Madam,” she said coldly, “but since leaving the Tower, I have only cast imperfectly during our training sessions. Is it so unthinkable that when you have me vividly picture my slaughtered children while unspent mana burns me from palms to fingertips, that I falter? The pain is excruciating! How much must I be expected to suffer in the name of nominal progress?”

Zevran paused, guts roiling. Evidently, this conversation was not for his ears, but the situation put him in a difficult position. Standing up and announcing his presence now would see him accused of eavesdropping, which he certainly was not doing. He had heard things, to be sure, but keen elven hearing was hardly a moral failing.

And he couldn't gather up all his things and run away, either, not when all of his things were carefully spread out on the ground. It would take longer than a round of Wicked Grace to clear up. Perhaps he could emerge from behind the rock, stab Wynne, and thus end all possibility of the conversation continuing. He would do his utmost to look remorseful if Rhodri scolded him for the act.

Oh, now he was being ridiculous. There was nothing to do but keep an ear out for the end of the conversation while he worked, and that was precisely what Zevran resolved to do.

“How much you should suffer is for you to decide,” Wynne replied. "How keen are you to avoid a recurrence of what happened when we were fighting Uldred? That fireball could have killed someone.”

“A recurrence is highly unlikely.”

“You cannot be sure of that.”

“I can, actually. Uldred and Greagoir are gone, and if I may be a little grim here, they saw to it that I have almost no children or peers left now. Any would-be mass killer will be terribly disappointed in Kinloch Hold’s current offering.” 

“Your flippancy does you no credit, Warden. You know that isn't what I mean by a recurrence.”

Rhodri groaned irritably. “What do you mean, then, Wynne? The circumstances are different here. My party consists of proficient adults, and I’m not two weeks away if they need my help.”

“And suppose you were separated from them and they were incapacitated? Some of them killed? What then?” Zevran could practically hear Wynne standing with arms akimbo as she spoke.

Rhodri sighed. “I would give my very best efforts to protect them, as I always do.”

“Well, to be truthful, Warden Amell, I think that as it stands, your best is insufficient, and you owe it to your party members to improve where you may. How you will stop a Blight when you cannot keep your temper enough to safely cast a fireball is beyond me. You cannot even resist the urge to rock and slap your legs like a lunatic, even when it obviously disturbs others. You are far, far too self-indulgent. In fact, if I may be blunt, I find myself wondering what persuaded Irving to apprentice you at all.”

Silence fell. Zevran caught his fists clenching rather than adding the deathroot to vial number five, and relaxed them. And, because he was unable to resist, he threw a quick prayer heavenwards that the lack of noise was due to Rhodri having frozen Wynne to death, only to find his hopes dashed when the latter prompted the former with a 'Hmm?'

“If you consider yourself a better leader, Madam,” Rhodri said stiffly, “you're more than welcome to say it to the rest of the party and take it to a vote. If you're chosen, I will stand down without trouble.”

“I’m not interested in leading,” Wynne replied plainly. “I want you to put this petulance behind you and act like the leader everyone thinks you are. Control your emotions. Cast spells properly. Adapt to your circumstances. Exercise a little discipline once in a while.” The heel of a boot squeaked as it spun on the wet grass. "I think we should train in the mornings as well, ideally starting tomorrow. Good night to you, Warden Amell.”

Only one set of footfalls reached his ears, and they didn’t match Rhodri’s gait. They went around behind him, looping back toward the camp. Zevran glanced behind him and caught sight of Wynne shaking her head as she marched back toward the tents. She reached her own and, as she turned and stepped inside, caught him watching her. Perhaps he had meant her to, perhaps not, but the flash of anger searing his guts upon meeting her eyes had been entirely unplanned. They stayed like that, him staring her down and her watching back haughtily for what felt like hours. When he finally remembered to, Zevran gave her a smile that no amount of self-flagellation could force to touch his eyes. Unease crept into Wynne’s face, and it tasted sweeter than a swig of honey. She disappeared into her tent, and Zevran called it a victory.

From his right, Rhodri heaved a sigh and a thrill surged through his spine and out to his fingertips as her footfalls drew nearer. Zevran looked up as the Warden came into view around the rock and caught him sitting there with his hazardous things spread out in front of him like a Feastday arrangement.

Rhodri stopped dead. Zevran pinned on an ineffectual smile that faltered as soon as he caught the shame creeping into her own face. He rose to his feet, carefully and slowly as he could manage, but she still watched on like he was going to belt her.

Such displays were nothing new to him. There was always the odd mark who cottoned on earlier than expected, watched him for the first time with the appropriate level of fear given the circumstances they’d allowed themselves to be eased into. The difficulty, of course, was that he had always resolved their fear by making it come true– and thus expedited their journey to that next place, where such feelings were either nonexistent or, by that point, unnecessary.

Zevran racked his brains for a solution that didn’t involve murder, only to pause as Rhodri spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“You heard all that,” she rasped.

With a wince he didn’t quite manage to stifle, he nodded once and half-wished he hadn’t as Rhodri hung her head, her eyes fixed on the ground.

What was there to say to that? An apology? A distraction by means of a filthy poem? Offering a helpful, ‘Do try not to be so ashamed of yourself?’ What, for heaven’s sake?

Nothing came to him, and when the silence grew suffocating, Zevran slipped off his gloves and reached a hand out toward her. A friendly pat to the arm, a more than suitable response, and far less intimate than other things he had ice used to put his marks at ease. Rhodri’s eyes went onto the hand as it edged closer, her body tensing, and when he caught her eye and smiled, comprehension of some sort appeared to strike. She almost stumbled over herself to take the proffered hand, her long, warm fingers (and never the thumb) slipping under his and gently guiding his hand toward her.

Zevran’s mouth nearly fell open, heat creeping into his ears as Rhodri bowed her head all the way down to where she held the back of his hand, and kissed it.

“Parce,” she said, and kissed it again. “Parce, non dignus.”

Have mercy, I am unworthy. Zevran knew of the apology from a book he’d stolen years ago, some dramatic stuff and nonsense shipped straight out of Minrathous. The book hadn’t mentioned how to reply, particularly when an apology of any sort was not called for. And certainly, he wasn’t in a fit state to speak or do much of anything beyond trying to keep himself from keeling over.

He would have to say something, though. It didn’t do to just gape and go weak-kneed at a time like this (or at any time, really.) Before he could so much as croak out an ‘ah...’  Rhodri had released his hand and was walking away, pulling the hood of her robe over her head as she went. 

The urge to follow was strong. To say something, do something– though what, precisely, Zevran couldn’t imagine. That, and the fact that his feet were rooted to the ground, held him in place, rendering him as utterly useless as ever. He conceded defeat with a sigh and sat back down.

Something would have to change. It didn’t do to have his protector consistently injured and ashamed of herself, especially unnecessarily. Kisses were best given for pleasure, not apology, and Maker knew misery had no place in peak performance.   

Perhaps Leliana had a point after all. Flirtation lightened the hearts of all sorts of people, eased their burdens and puffed up their egos a little. And Rhodri was a proud person, there was no doubt about it. Proud like a show horse. The right sort of remark could well lift her spirits like nothing else, restoring that crucial sense of self. Not to mention the ways one could reinflate that pride between the sheets if she accepted! A worthy task, and it was indisputable that Zevran, master seducer and verifiable satisfier of all and sundry, was just the man for that very job. Once a little time had passed and the harshest parts of that distress had eased, the action would really begin. 

With a pleased nod to himself, he turned back to vial number five, and to the other fourteen vials awaiting attention.

#Have Warden Will Travel #HWWT #PSA: Complaining is good for your health. Complain today! #Rhodri Amell #You know things are bad when Ninjamance Leliana is telling you to get a move on and put the good word on the Warden

[spoonfulofwhoopass]

I feel like as a drag queen, I should share a somewhat recent story of how I almost made a big mistake. Because I think it holds some relevance to recent and ongoing conversations about drag in childrens’ spaces, and “age appropriate” performances.

The long and short of it is that I misread the venue for an event, and planned two very raunchy numbers for a gig. I thought we were set to perform at a bar where I’ve helped to host bingos before, but we were actually at an all ages outdoor stage for a street festival. I was intending on doing a big old “dance fucker dance” to a crowd of 20 somethings, and instead saw we were going to be performing for a lot of 10-16 year olds.

Know what I did?

I spoke with the organizer and DJ about my music. I hadn’t prepared a backup officially, but I asked what songs the tech folks had access to, and we made it work. I did two songs I wasn’t prepared for, with slightly mismatched clothes to the vibe (goth rock look for an ABBA song). I was prepared, if the situation demanded, to not perform. I wanted to help put on a good show, but I also knew I had made a mistake and was willing to re-construct our slot and do what I needed to so folks got the show they thought they were in for.

At the end of the day, the venue mixup was my fault. I was helping to coordinate the booking, and was still fairly new to the process. I was handling organizing a lot of gigs for my friends and coworkers, and information got missed. However. We had an understanding with the producers of the show and with each other that we choose music to fit the audience and vibe of the show, to the best of our abilities and knowledge. And I’m lucky enough to have worked with such flexible and compassionate people.

So on the topic of Drag Queen Story Time (or as it’s called with WPL branches where I am, Read By Queens) and all ages events —> we know how to behave. We understand nuance and tone. A lot of us have kids, or work with kids, but at the very least we know when to tone down the raunchy humour. We know how to have mature and honest conversations about our identities as well, and how to adjust the content and tone for the audience we have. Ive been doing drag for almost 4 years. I’ve done a lot of all ages events. I’ve also worked a lot at bars. Nothing exists in a vacuum. We’re all people, drag artists just wear significantly more clown makeup than your standard party princess or travelling improv theatre troupe.

Anyways this is me at the last two drag story time events I did at Red River College (left) and Little Brown Jug (right).

These are from an all ages outdoor event with Manitoba Underground Opera where I got to lip sync to live music and the singers incorporated the audience into some of the pieces.

I love being able to do this. I love being able to talk about this. I truly wish I had had access to drag when I was a young queer kid growing up.

#jude speaks #my face #drag queen #okay to rb #many thoughts this week

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts: 360, Despite Everything...

HEY GUESS WHO HAS MORE TO TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK THAT'S RIGHT IT'S ME.

      On Shigaraki and Body Horror:

I hadn’t taken note of this until Bakugou’s muttering at the end of the chapter made me go back and check, but through this entire fight, it’s always been Shigaraki’s left arm that’s all Akira-ed out.  His left hand is the one Re-Destro maimed, the fresher injury compared to, say, his facial scars, which certainly don’t look to be healing.  Is it more unstable than his right?  Back in the cave, when Spinner and the audience got their first glimpse of the body horror that was to come, it was still that left arm.

It’s interesting here that he doesn’t revert his arm, choosing instead to use his toes to fling Bakugou around by the hair (on which note, ShigAFO, please, could you have chosen a weirder way to show off?).  I wonder if he’s still having some trouble controlling it, such that it’s just easier and faster to use his feet rather than wrestle the arm into compliance.

...Well, if nothing else, as a shipper who was a touch miffed at the suggestion that Shigaraki was going to heal the injury RD left him, I’m not displeased to see that it’s the injured arm giving him more trouble.

Still on the topic of the body horror, though, I do want to call specific attention to this:

I always wondered what in god’s name was up with the horrible monster feet in the background of the flashback to AFO’s fight with Nana!  I’d assumed it was just a gross quirk he had at the time that he later cycled out, but with the clear similarity here, now I wonder if the monster feet back then are Ujiko’s work, some pitiable early guinea pig for his and AFO’s work on developing “a body that can overcome quirk singularity.”  It would certainly explain why AFO has been so blasé about the incredible horrors his new vessel has been undergoing.

     

On Bakugou and (Not) Friends:

As far as what AFO says to Bakugou this week, I don’t have a tremendous amount to say—it’s calculated to hurt, and I’m sure the vestige believes it.  If anybody following me more meta on the kids than I will likely ever provide, I recommend class1akids, who’s got some great posts on this chapter here and here. (Also this one, a bit more relevant to villain fan interests.)

Anyway, one thing that does catch my attention is the fact that the physical body speaking these cruelties to Bakugou—“Midoriya Izuku’s hanger-on,” “a minnow of One For All’s wake”—is himself a person who has been pulled into All For One’s wake, so much so that he’s been pulled under by that tide.  Will Shigaraki Tomura—Shimura Tenko—never be more than an accessory to All For One?  If we don’t believe that of Bakugou, why should we believe it of Tomura?

It’s an interesting parallel, and I wonder if anything will come of it.  Shigaraki has—regardless of what the vestige said last week—always been more interested in Bakugou than in Midoriya, after all.  Something to keep an eye on!

Jumping to the end of the chapter, I like the Jeanist/Bakugou scene a lot.  Jeanist might be my actual favorite Pro Hero; he’s just about the only one who’s been shown to think about the lived reality of villains, who has a concrete awareness of the pros and cons of the performative nature of heroism.  Jeanist comes off like someone who really has thought about the system he lives in and the pressures it exerts on people who don’t fit in, and even as he’s come to some questionable conclusions about how to help those outcasts-in-the-making, he is trying to help them—alone among the Pros, he’s portrayed as going out of his way to look for those people who are in danger of falling through the social safety net so he can guide them back towards the right path.

Jeanist brings a considered decisiveness to his scenes; he’s stringent, not simply because it’s his personality to be so, but because he has thought through every scenario he can and decided that his severity will lead to the best outcomes.  I’ve always liked that air of perceptive deliberation.

So, that all being the case, what we get this week is vulnerability like we’ve never seen from him.  We’ve seen him physically on the ropes before,(1) yes, but before now, he’s always kept his sense of self-possession. So here, while I like his visible tremor when he lands beside Bakugou and sets a hand on the kid’s back, what I love is his wide-eyed jolt at Bakugou’s tears, his fumbling attempts to break out of his brisk, matter-of-fact pragmatism long enough to find something sincere and reassuring to say to this grotesquely injured teenager he personally trained. 

His realization that Bakugou is still in the game, despite everything, is all the more rewarding for those moments of fear that that might not be the case.  Jeanist and Bakugou are great, actually; I wish we could get a ton more about their regard for each other.

     

On Mirio and Asking the Right Questions: 

YES GOOD GOD BLESS THIS BOY.

Mirio.  Mirio.  THANK YOU.

Finally.  Finally.  A hero who asks what Shigaraki wants.  I want to shake this kid’s hand, give him the key to the city, and shove a picture of him in the face of every idiot who responds to people talking about the villains’ complaints with, “Well, what do you expect the heroes to do, just let the villains do whatever they want?  The villains are trying to KILL PEOPLE; they have to be STOPPED.”

God.  GOD.  Mirio shows up here and completely fucking nails it.  He rescues the person in immediate danger, he defends himself, and he gets his opponent talking about his motivations.  That’s it!  That’s what I want to see heroes doing!  Asking why the villains want what they want!  Engaging them in conversation!

Contrast this to the last time Shigaraki tried telling a bunch of heroes what he wanted, and Endeavor thanked him for the breather while attacking him again, with no one there making the slightest of attempts to intellectually refute him, much less ask him any follow-up questions on why he felt the way he did.

THAT ALL SAID, I’m not entirely without some quibbles here.

While I love the course of this conversation, and especially its potential future directions, the structure does feel a touch contrived?  Like, the whole thing feels designed to get to the end-point it reaches without necessarily considering the knowledge and perspectives of the characters involved.  Following are the problems as I see them:

Who is Mirio addressing his question to?  Does he know about the AFO vestige and its current control over Shigaraki?  Aside from Deku and the vestiges, Bakugou seems to know, and All Might brings up a “mind meld” in discussions with the taskforce, so presumably they have some idea.  I’m much less clear on how widespread that knowledge is.  This matters because, if Mirio knows he’s talking to some version of AFO, the question makes no sense.  That’s because…      

“Destroying” isn’t AFO’s modus operandi.  Both the question and ShigAFO’s reply feel much more geared to Shigaraki than they do AFO.  And sure, the AFO-vestige is melding with Shigaraki, so there’s a lot of Shigaraki in there, but that answer to that question just doesn’t feel like it’s coming from AFO at all.       AFO doesn’t “destroy,” not in the sense Mirio is asking about, and he certainly doesn’t destroy because of the failures of the system.  AFO “controls,” and he does it because he desires control.  The last time he talked about systemic failure being a motivation for him, as opposed to just a fact of life that makes reaching his goals easier, was the OFA dream flashback, and I’m not convinced that the AFO we saw back then is even reconcilable with the version we have now.       The systemic failure answer is entirely in keeping with Shigaraki’s motivations, but Shigaraki isn’t in charge right now, so who is this answer even coming from?  (More on this in a sec.)      

Mirio’s response suggests a knowledge of Shigaraki’s aims that Mirio has no reason to have.  Consider that he says that Shigaraki has no friends, otherwise he’d know that there are things worth keeping around.  This feels like a response to, of all things, Shigaraki’s answer to Ujiko’s challenge way back at the beginning of My Villain Academia.  He talks some about the destruction he desires at Jakku,(2) but there, he’s really just talking about the society heroes have built, which he could easily seek to destroy without also destroying any friends he might or might not have.  It’s only been to other villains(3) that Shigaraki’s laid out just how far-reaching his hatred is, how he wants to obliterate everything that annoys him, and everything that breathes annoys him.       Not knowing that, Mirio has no reason to assume that Shigaraki’s target is anything other than what Shigaraki has told heroes his target is, what Hawks in his information-gathering capacity assumed his target was—the Hero Society status quo.  The destruction of which, again, would have no bearing on Shigaraki’s friends or lack thereof.

Again, I very much like the places the conversation goes!  I consider it a fantastic step that makes me very hopeful that we will eventually get to see the importance of the League to Shigaraki, because I consider it of paramount importance that the narrative acknowledge Shigaraki as someone whose feelings and relationships matter, that he is more than the victimhood of his internal five-year-old.

And I do think it’s a fantastic callback to that bit with Ujiko, because, hey, Mirio is not saying anything Shigaraki doesn’t already know.  Shigaraki has friends; he explicitly makes a conscientious exception for them in his apocalyptic desires.  AFO is the one who—regardless of his protestations to the contrary—doesn’t have any friends.

And therein lies the intent, I think?  Several times now, Horikoshi has tried to tell us that the AFO vestige and Shigaraki are becoming muddled, that there is no firm boundary between them.  So then, I could buy this being intended as a jolt to Shigaraki to disturb his synchroneity with AFO.  If AFO has him trapped in his hatred for heroes and the status quo, unable to resist because he’s so caught up in the fight against his and AFO’s common enemy, then the reminder of how differently the two of them treat their allies makes a fine boulder to drop into that wave pool.

My only qualm with it is that, regardless of what the story has told us about the identities of Shigaraki and the vestige blurring together, ShigAFO is still mostly written to talk like AFO, act like AFO, desire what AFO desires, with very little in him that “feels” like Shigaraki.  I’d feel better about the exchange with Mirio, then, if it didn’t feel so much like ShigAFO is written to be only as Shigaraki-flavored as is convenient to the story at any given time.

…On a totally separate note, it sure is Something that Mirio’s response to an accusation of systemic failure is, “Oh, I get it; you’re a bitter friendless loser!”  Mirio, I love you for asking the question at all, but your follow-through leaves a lot to be desired.

It is, shall we say, not putting me at ease that the story is going to engage with Shigaraki’s real complaints, rather than handwaving them like it did Lady Nagant’s.(4)

     

Odds & Ends: 

As a certified Suneater Appreciator, I would like to note that I Appreciate this panel:

I like that, this time, Mirio doesn’t come in with a “POWAAAA” gag and his face popping out of something; he just comes in fast and serious, because there’s someone there to be rescued, not just someone to punch.  (Which is as good as saying, I like it when the heroes don’t have the leeway to run around making light of villains their society has failed.)      

“Your stupid face,” ShigAFO, don’t be rude to people from other countries’ comic traditions.  XDD

Fingers crossed for more good stuff next time, and see you all then.

----

1:  [Rimshot sound.]

2: Which Mirio wasn’t there for, but I could believe some debriefing of it went around.  Color me skeptical, though, that said debriefing included much of anyone talking about Shigaraki’s professed motivations instead of just confirming his stated desire to bring down Hero Society.  Certainly if Mirio heard about the latter, no one told him about the former—that or he’s even cannier than expected, and has observed that, since Shigaraki obviously will talk if one gives him the opening to, it can’t hurt to get him talking and see where it goes.

3: Principally Ujiko, though Re-Destro got a bit of it as well.

4: And using the exact same rhetoric, no less: “A few good people exist in the system, so even though the system is horribly corrupt and dehumanizing, it must be worth preserving after all!”  Barf.

#bnha #chapter thoughts #shigaraki tomura #bakugou katsuki #best jeanist #togata mirio #bnha 360 #my writing

[audrinawf]

Whenever I keep a good mental diet and a good food diet I always get this incredible downloads from the universe. You could say it’s from God as well, if you believe in that. Some people believe it’s the Akashic records and I just like to call it source or universe.

Think of it like this, do you ever just have this incredible idea and you don’t know how you got it but you just write it down?

and then you get into this state of flow where you just keep getting lots and lots of ideas and it’s just flows out of you naturally and you’re not even sure how it happened?

That’s basically what I’ve been experiencing for the last two months. I’ve just had these incredible ideas that I’ve been writing down and then acting on them. And each idea that I’ve acted on, has successfully manifested, and turned out exactly how I wanted it to. And I believe that that is our super power.

I’ve studied this topic intensely for two months this phenomena happens every day to people. The best way I can explain it is just to look at writers and musicians and artists. Whenever you ask these people how they got the idea or how they wrote the book. They’re all gonna answer that it just came to them.

One of my favorite examples is of James Cameron, who created avatar, and he told us in one of his interviews that it just came to him in a dream, and he had to write it down. And sometimes source comes to you in a dream and sometimes it comes to you when you’re awake. I mean just look at the universe of Harry Potter. How the hell does a human come up with that? And you know that J. K. Rowling wrote that book all by herself as well.

All of these people have one thing in common and it’s that they’re plugged to source.

I mean, I think, we’ve witnessed that with you know, artist that go on live television, and you ask them to freestyle and they just come up with the most amazing thing on the spot - that’s because they’re always plugged in to source.

If you’ve been to a concert, you know that it’s a spiritual experience. That’s what it is. Its otherworldly. And I truly believe that every person on this earth is supposed to do something divine with their lives, and with their limited time on this earth.

But the scary thing about that is that we all have free well, so even though we’re on this earth with a greater purpose, we can still choose not to fulfill our dreams, because we have the freedom of choice. But let’s also acknowledge that the reason people choose not to chase their dreams, is cause of fear. It’s because of laziness. It’s because of lack of self-confidence, and the biggest reason is of course distraction.

And whenever I talk about this, I always go on a tangent, and I’m gonna try to keep this as clear and as concise as possible but the reason we’re so damn distracted is because they want us to be distracted.

Bit you see, if we all collectively utilized our powers, and we followed our intuition and fulfilled our dreams we would not be good consumers. And they need us to be good consumers, they need us to be constantly scrolling on social media and watching ads which makes them money which then makes us addicted to scrolling which then deplete our endorphins and the only way we know to fill the void is through consumption and online shopping.

And who are these people that want us to be stuck? It doesn’t matter I mean, it could be Illuminati, it could be big corporations it does not matter, but I think we all know by now, that 1% of the world owns 99% of the wealth, and they want to keep it like that. I mean there’s this whole discussion of how we should not even have billionaires how come there are people making $12 an hour and then there’s also billionaires in the same damn universe?how does that make sense? And well that’s a completely different topic which I’m not gonna get into more than I already have. But I think we all know it’s relevant. Bottom line is that it’s not right.

At the cost of our entire lives just passing by. And while I can’t change the whole world and save everyone. I know that the people who are meant to see this will.

#glow up #femininity #self care #girly blog #self development #law of assumption #neville goddard #the void state #manifesation #manifesting #digital detox #digital discipline

[quibbs126]

Aight, so a while ago I had an ask about a theory that Dark Enchantress Cookie was the one who made the Strawberry Jam Sword, intentionally trying to bring Dark Choco Cookie to the darkness. And while I think it’s a cool idea, as stated in the tags, I have a few personal narrative problems with it, and now I think I’ve got my thoughts better articulated, so I just want to discuss them in greater detail.

Disclaimer to @cessmaga who sent this to me, I’m not trying to rag on you or your headcanon I swear, I just feel like explaining my thoughts a bit more. Also it’s relevant to my next post but I thought it was too off topic to include there, so I’m making it its own separate post. That’s kind of the main reason I’m doing this. Also I’m not sure how popular of a headcanon/theory that is, but I’m approaching it as if it is one, or at least a known theory amongst the community

So first off, like I said, I feel like it’s too easy. By having Dark Enchantress Cookie be the one who made the Strawberry Jam Sword and thus directly responsible for Dark Choco’s misery, it means that all that suffering can just be pointed to the main villain being responsible. It wasn’t some tragic accident, just the main villain trying to get another follower. It gives us an easy target to blame, and we don’t have to think about nuance in the situation, you know?

Second, I dunno, it feels like it’s just too cruel for Dark Enchantress Cookie? Like yes I know she’s the villain, but she’s not like Palpatine or the Overlord where she’s basically evil incarnate; Kingdom has shown her to be a more complex character than that. Her motivation is in some ways right, trying to make a better world for Cookies, she’s just going about it in the wrong way. And you can understand where her motives come from. And from what I’m able to gather she’s a relatively chill person/boss, she just loses it when people don’t see the truth of the situation and seemingly choose to stay ignorant. Why then would she go out of her way to create a sword that would cause endless torture to the son of one of her oldest friends? Yeah she hates them now but nothing says she’d go that far. And from what I can gather, it’s not like Dark Cacao Cookie did anything to warrant that rage, and Dark Choco on his own is completely innocent here, he’s not responsible for anything that happened with the Ancients. So why do all that? Just to gain another follower? No one seemed that bothered by him leaving the CoD, other than the fact that one of their members betrayed them. Also she doesn’t seem directly responsible for any other members turning to darkness (aside from maybe Pomegranate), so this would be an odd exception. She seems to mostly just find people to join her group

Edit: upon looking at more stuff, maybe she would be that mean. So maybe disregard reason 2. But I think the other ones still hold up

Edit edit: okay so I was basing that off of events from Ovenbreak, but upon further thought that might not apply to the Kingdom version of DE. She seems to be portrayed in a more grey light (a dark grey, but still grey nonetheless), whereas Ovenbreak DE seems more inherently villainous, if that makes sense

Thirdly, if Kingdom ever decides to go with a redemption for Dark Enchantress Cookie/White Lily Cookie, then there’s gonna be a problem here, specifically with Dark Cacao Cookie. Because (assuming he learns the truth of what happened with Dark Choco, which I imagine he will) the Strawberry Jam Sword is the thing responsible for what happened to his son and all of the misery they’ve been through; to find out that there is someone directly responsible for creating that sword and putting his son through all that torture, you know his rage would know no bounds. And for the one responsible to be Dark Enchantress Cookie/White Lily Cookie, there would be no forgiving her, no matter what, because this is personal. Because she had the audacity to go after his son, who had no involvement in any of this. Yeah basically what I’m saying is that Dark Cacao Cookie would never be able to forgive her for what she’s done. And as I feel like one likely way for her to have some form of redemption is to have her old friendship with the other Ancients come into play, and that wouldn’t work as well if one of them hates her. Not to mention, it’s a point of no return for her, it’s crossing the line to a point where redemption becomes difficult to believe. It’s like how in Layton, Bronev is responsible for the death of Sycamore’s family, a character we’ve grown attached to and like, and thus we have a hard time accepting Bronev’s redemption, as that’s something you can’t really ignore. Though at least there, the narrative gives Sycamore no reason to forgive Bronev for what happened, whereas in Cookie Run, Dark Cacao would likely have to, or at least be willing to accept her willing to change and give her a fair chance

So yeah, while the idea is interesting, I personally don’t subscribe to it because of its narrative consequences

Though that’s not to say I don’t want to know what’s up with the Strawberry Jam Sword, because I do

#just thoughts I wanted to get out #I should probably be studying but whatever #my other post I mentioned is gonna be just some personal speculation on what the lore of the Strawberry Jam Sword could be #I just wanted to explain myself in greater detail #again not knocking on anyone who thinks DE created the sword #cookie run kingdom #strawberry jam sword #dark enchantress cookie #speculation #theory #ramblings

[bonesandthebees]

*Brusts in through the door* I have had a realisation!

So when Wilbur asks what ‘little bird’ means, Phil has a few options. He could lie. Maybe he did lie, though it seems unlikely. Techno has confirmed that he cares, so it is probably what he says it is. But there’s a pause before he answers. Because there’s a risk to explaining it. I think Phil might not be sure how Wilbur will react. There’s a difference between the progression of their relations in the background and having to adress it with spoken words.

There’s a difference between calling Wilbur ‘little bird’ knowing what it means and having to explain what it means so he knows too. Phil’s force to accept the weight of those words when he explains it. And Wilbur might not react well to them. Which would hurt if he does care and use the term of endearment with genuine affection. That’s the risk in telling him, but the alternative is continuing knowing that Wilbur isn’t sure if it’s an insult or not.

And that’s the first thing he addresses. He goes from saying that it’s not an insult, to saying that it’s a term of endearment, to essentially revealing that it’s for children, with the underlying meaning that he thinks of Wilbur as his kid. Every sentence is deliberate as he does so. He does not look at Wilbur, but he does pause. Maybe to see if there is a reaction. See how much he can reveal or if Wilbur will protest. Maybe even debating how much he wants to say himself.

Meanwhile, Wilbur has no energy to think about the implications. He doesn’t address the meaning because he’s not ready to deal with them, but he does not refuse the implications either. So to Phil that lack of refusal might feel like acceptance.

Instead, Wilbur starts talking about the things he was called back on Eldingvegr. He changes the subject, though it’s still relevant to the topic. I think the combination of Wilbur not denying the meaning of ‘little bird’ (he doesn’t even try to fight it or call it a manipulation tactic) + Phil gaining a better understanding of how shit Wilbur was treated (and this is only the tip of that particular iceberg) is what pushes him over the edge to put Wilbur in the personal wing and give him access to the dining room.

And then there’s the coat. I can’t remember what kind of clothes Phil and Techno wear, so I can’t compare if it’s closer to their design than it is to the normal clothes. I do know that the normal coats are for ambassadors. Everyone has the same, right? So Wilbur getting a different can't has a meaning. And it’s just been put in his closet, so he can choose to wear it or not. It probably signifies whatever new status he got without realising it cuz his mind is somewhere else entirely. Also, does Ranboo wear the same coat as the ambassadors or does he wear something different. I can’t remember.

-🌲

ohhhh spruce this is some good analysis!!

I will say you're not necessarily wrong, but also there's more to it than just phil worrying about what wilbur's reaction was going to be. it's hard to hint at without outright saying it since we're not in phil's pov, but you're on the right track for sure

every sentence he said when explaining little bird was extremely deliberate. there was so much going on in phil's head there and tbh after answering this ask i might go and rewrite the scene in phil's pov just for my own personal enjoyment. who knows maybe one day after the fic is done i'll even post some phil pov scene rewrites :)

the thing was, if wilbur wanted to reject the implications, he'd just reject them outright. he doesn't want to think about what it means, but he didn't have a negative reaction to it. therefore... :)))

won't confirm what pushed phil over the edge to put wilbur in the personal wing, but that was definitely part of it. also, yes most of the ambassadors tend to wear similar teal or blue coats that tend to fall around the hips. that was the kind of coat wilbur was wearing before. phil wears a dark blue cloak with silver embroidery that's cut to expose his shoulders so his wings can stick out the back, along with a sleeveless button up shirt under the cloak. techno wears a thick, dark blue coat that falls to his calves that's belted at the waist and has similar silver embroidery to the embroidery on phil's cloak. ranboo doesn't wear the ambassador coat because he's not an ambassador. he wears a white blouse that has blue and purple embroidery along the sleeves.

#ask #spruce anon #the stars and their children

[tayarthur]

Is Media Biased?

In my opinion mainstream media, in all platforms, has a slant. I think that this stems from local and hyper local communities that these platforms cater to, to survive. In America we like to think of the media as being free from the sway of politics or ideologies etc… but the heart of it, media actually stems from strong philosophical beliefs put into writing to sway large swaths of communities one way or another. For us originally, this was to sway the colonies towards American independence. Nowadays, the media is definitely used to inform objectively. We look towards reporters to dissect large un-sexy reports and statistics about topics that will affect local communities. We look towards reporting to uncover dark truths about government officials, people and entities - for example the Catholic Church. However, in the age of MAGA politics and fake news, media organizations can also be used to inflame rhetoric vis-á-vis national political organizations or people. Cough, cough, former President Donald Trump - or liberal talk show hosts like Rachel Maddow. I would argue that when we consume this kind of media we are choosing to swallow our own pill of choice and that decision is largely made without reason, analysis or informed consent of the general public. As a journalism student, I am constantly reminded of what media organizations are present in our world, what they stand for, how they survive and why it is or isn’t important to value them. My neighbor, who is about my age 25-27 years old, thinks that it is thrilling and amazing that I work for the Los Angeles Times. However, I often wonder when was the last time she read an article from my “thrilling” and “amazing” media organization? And if she did read, even a single article, did she have thoughts about it? Was it anything other than an acknowledgement of the crazy photo that we got of a goat on a surfboard in Huntington beach? Maybe, Maybe not. As mentioned in the “What do the numbers say about U.S. web/news sites & social media” presentation by Aileen Rayas, Danny Solano, Guadalupe Garibay and Jessica Phan, the top news site for generally all consumers is Twitter (X). This platform, which is highly chaotic and unfiltered, can and does address newsworthy topics that a wide range of people can access. However it’s followed by The New York Times, arguably the most prestigious and trustworthy news organization still operating that stems from the western world. This saddens me greatly. Especially because Twitter (X) has also become a safe haven for racist, hateful speech, egged on to continue by its most recent owner Elon Musk. One of my best friends had to make his profile private because QAnon conspiracy theorists began harassing him online because his nickname is Q. Q as in Q from Star Trek, not the head of a right-wing conspiracy theory from the dark web. Other organizations, not holding extreme views, are also losing viewership in steady numbers. As stated in the presentation by Jose Fraire, Lauren Hannah, Micah Hall and Emylie Avelar, PBS’s viewership declined by a staggering 1 million viewers from 2021-2022. I think this speaks to the platform not being able to reach viewers where they will consume the media and the network's ability to rise out of extreme rhetoric and be relevant to those viewers. 

#media #bias

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

What brought me to write about history?

rsamls asked:

What brought to write about the cou tries and their history like you do? I find it fascinating.it sucks me in like a tornado. I have always loved history but only recently discovered fanfics with history and a love story combined, which I have found to be one of my best guilty pleasures.  

Thank you for your question rsamis :)

         As I write these lines, the almost life-size portraits of two men, whose names form the answer to your question, look down at me from the wall above my desk. The names of these men are Howard Carter and Heinrich Schliemann.

         My love for and my interest in history started in the 7th grade, at age 14. The topic of our first history lessons was Egypt. Later that year, my grandma asked me (like she did four times a year) if I wanted to choose a book from her book club. As I was paging through the catalogue, Philipp Vandenberg's book "The Golden Pharaoh" caught my eye. Only days later, I got the book and couldn't stop reading. But it was not the thrilling story about the discovery of the tomb of Tut Anch Amun that fascinated me so much. What captivated me was the character and personality of its discoverer - Howard Carter.

         Carter was a nobody when he started digging. None of the well-known names of archaeology trusted him with anything. Countless other men worked against him, trying to undermine his work and discredit his reputation. Before his discovery, his name had become a joke. But we all know how it ended: Carter made the greatest discovery in the history of archaeology. Not only did he find an almost completely undamaged pharaonic tomb, but he also found burial objects of hitherto unsurpassed beauty (and value). A few years after reading Vandenberg's book, I had the great fortune to visit an exhibition of Carter's finds.

         Shortly afterwards, I became acquainted with the work of Heinrich Schliemann, the German pioneer of archaeological fieldwork. And again I met a man whom no one believed could achieve what he did in the end despite all odds: the discovery of Troy. One can read a lot about these men and their work, but it was only when I wandered through the excavations of Mycenae years later that I realised the full extent of it.

         I studied history because I was inspired by these two personalities, their characters and the immense resilience expressed in their lives. And as I focused on researching the history of the Levant, especially the six Syro-Egyptian wars, their aftermath and relevance until today, there was one question that always resonated in the background: what makes people resilient, what makes them survive such wars, famine catastrophes, indeed the demise of their "world"? This question also resonated when I later turned to the history of Prussia, especially the Seven Years' War, but also the history of the Reformation, the persecution of the Huguenots and other topics.

         Carter and Schliemann inspired my interest in history, but even more an interest in the story behind the obvious historical facts. We often think that history is made by "important people" (a.k.a. politicians) and yes, in a way that is true. But if we focus that way, we deprive ourselves of the great lessons of history. Because politicians might start a war. But they neither fight nor decide it. History often is written by ordinary people at crucial moments. If we think, for example, of the German Wars of Liberation (also known as the Napoleonic Wars). It was at some points women who contributed decisively to the victory over Napoleonic troops (for example, the women of the Lützower Freikorps, Eleonore Prochaska, Anna Lühring, Johanna Stegen, Friederike Krüger, Luise Grafemus, Maria Werder, Nadeshda Durowa and countless unknown women). The history of such - ordinary - people is important. But there is still far too little research. It is not the big wheels that keep something going or make it happen, it is the many small wheels that in the end decide the good or bad of a thing. Babylon would never have been taken by the troops of the Medo-Persian army had there not been a 5th column within its walls. Without the devoted efforts of Johanna Stegen, the Prussian-Russian troops would probably not have achieved their first victory over Napoleon on April 2, 1813.

         It is this story behind history that fascinates me. I consider deriving lessons from it for our present and future to be one of the most urgent tasks of the present.

         Unfortunately, most people, especially young people, think history is boring. So what better way to get a new generation interested in history than to combine historical facts with a well-known love story and wrap it up in fan fiction? :)

Thank you so much for reading my little pieces and for asking. I hope I could answer your question.

#Personal #Question about history #history

[berryunho]

This is so random

but I remember stanning ateez back during their day my name era (so like 2019)? After a friend introduced me to the mv. I really loved Yunho and even used him as the cover of my biology notes for my finals exam TT I was cringe but I was free TT around 2021 I sort of fell off of kpop but I in late 2022 got REALLY back into them! (I swear this is relevant) I’m a writer myself and usually delve into darker topics and loooove horror, so I never really felt like kpop fanfics resonated with me; most of the creepier ones still had that element of sexy romance steamy hunk (which I can appreciate! It is very camp)

But after stumbling across the answer I was FLOORED. I was so immersed your storytelling, the way you effortlessly borrowed ateez’s names and personality into these amazing, fleshed out character- it didn’t even feel like I was reading fanfiction at some points. There’s something about atiny writers that are so good at the more macabre side of things, and I think that’s why I’ve stayed in the community a lot longer than I thought I would :D

Maybe one day I’ll start my own series, but it’ll be a far cry from how gripping yours is. As a jongho stan (the only one in the universe it feels like sometimes) I really appreciate the snippets of personality I see from the paragraphs he’s in! Makes me excited about his character, even if the role is small; I’m usually happy when writers choose to acknowledge him at all TT the way you’ve written Hongjoong and the reader’s relationship is so fascinating too! I cant quite describe it but it’s one of the main reasons why I can’t help but refresh your account every few days to see where the story goes (ofc this is not pressure for an update! Greatness takes time)

TLDR; I adore your writing, and I’m someone who rambles on for a bit too much. Fantastic work, and I can’t wait to see where it heads! Cheers :)

screaming and crying over this oh my god ... ehehe its always special when a fellow author likes my writing so thank you sm for saying all of this !! ehehe sometimes i feel like what im writing is silly or like im trying too hard to make it tense and it just comes out wrong but asks like this make me realize that other people look at it differently and that's really reassuring <33 hehe if you start writing a series im sure itll be amazing !! the answer is my first fic and i never thought it would get to be so popular bc the other super popular ateez fics were nothing like it but i was very pleasantly surprised ! hehe thank you sm again this is so kind and alkjdfkjsdlfksd <333 :]

#anon #answered #feedback