#there are a lot less actual children in later ones or at least they generally choose to do batshit insane things rather than being forced

[nardos-primetime]

what's the most fucked up thing/AU/whatever you made? I wanna desensitize myself to your work before diving in.

Starting out with saying I wouldn't condone any of the bad shit within my stories, often times these are just what ifs I find interesting to look into. I wouldn't look at an actual murderer irl and go "Awesome" but I'll joke around with my villain Mikey like "He hasn't done a thing wrong heart emoji" when he has actively killed and enjoyed the murder of multiple people.

A lot of my aus are more toned down from my regular more personal works, solely because I can't help but go a bit easier on the turtles since they are a comfort for me and I wouldn't find my more personal topics appropriate for the turtles.

Overall, I'd say body horror, disease, self harm, suicide, murder, and mental/physical abuse/child abuse/neglect is something to look out for in a lot of my works, along with gore and injury in general. I also have a tendency to write cannibalism (an interesting motif to me, I would not condone it irl, obviously) and/or autocannibalism (to cope with personal issues I am not comfortable elaborating on, it's some Mental health stuff.) Overall I like putting the turtles through it, lmao.

(Forgot to add animal abuse/death)

I will never directly delve into the topic of sex within my works (as in you'll never see me write any of them doing such acts), but I have a handful of somewhat older Leo's who specifically deal with unhealthy romance, one of these is within my magical boys au where all four experience some level of inappropriateness due to their fame, not once is this a good thing, and this is meant to be a bad thing within the story. The other has a Leo who dates around a lot but always falls short due to his anxieties and commitment issues. He never goes through with it, though he likes to joke about more sexual topics. (He's crude.)

The magical boys au, priorly mentioned, contains underage drinking and smoking, mental health issues, self-harm, and the boys being mistreated and abused within their own workplace, one way or another.

One of my oneshots currently has a younger child get murdered in it, though I've deliberately made the death surrounding it not as detailed, as even if younger children die in my stories it makes me uncomfortable to focus on it the same I would other characters, unless it's an injury a child survives, then it's a 50/50. This is a situation that is conflicting for the main character, but is done out of survival's sake. (In his eyes.)

Viral.Donnie has evolved into a character that focuses on addiction later on, and I do tend to give the turtles addictions depending on the story.

Million Dollar Box/Villain Mikey has hallucinations, vivid, probably not 100% accurate, but these are not his real brothers. Story wise, they are a way to delve into his mental state and look at his conflicting feelings about his family.

Villain Raph is less developed, but he actively is mentally (and physically) abusive to his brothers in his own way.

A lot of the time, my writing style mixes with the thoughts and personality of the main focus, and a lot of these times, the characters are not rational nor moral. Untrustworthy narrators are fun.

You will see I don't like actively splitting up the turtles entirely very much. Normally, I'd be able to do it easily, but I have a soft spot for them. Hell, Viral Donnie, Villain Raph, and Million Dollar Box Mikey's follow-up story gives them a family after losing theirs. Most of the time, if one turtle falls, I take the others, or at least one others with them. For fun.

I try to not go for just shock value, even if I like describing the horrors I like having a reasoning, whether it be some insane deeper meaning I made up, it fitting a character/their personality, or just being interesting for me. I do my best to tag all potentially triggering topics within my works, but I may slip up at times. Apologies for that.

Horror is my main fixation overall outside of TMNT, and I like various types of it. The Nonsense Apocalypse AU is supposed to be a mixture of slice of life and horror, resulting in a world that just doesn't make sense, with some more... serious aspects on top.

I hope this helps, I kinda went on a ramble, but I didn't want too much confusion since most of my actual aus aren't fully out yet in any way.

Hope it helps again, Anon.

#nardo's asks.txt #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #rise leo #rottmnt leo #rise donnie #rottmnt donnie #rise mikey #rottmnt mikey #rise raph #rottmnt raph #rottmnt au #idk how to tag this specificly tbh #info? loredump? its not rlly either #long post #????????

[py-dreamer]

So... I know I'm late...

But yea! I said I was coming back with some stickers and I kept my word! I would've hoped that I could've completed the sheet in like a day but as you can see...that didn't work out

I know I've been a bit MIA lately but burnout sucks. I do have a lot of WIPS I really want to work on but again, it seems that the ProcrastiNation hath struck my feeble mortal brain again.

But anyways:

I headcanon Aroace Mei, just a personal headcanon (disagree if you like) I also like lesbian Mei but thought I'd give some aroace appreciation

Silktea was only given 1 episode but OH BOY did it fuel our wild shipping habits. And I jumped on the bandwagon. It's a reference to that scene in She-Ra where Scorpia tells Catra she 'didn't want to do this' then wraps kitty up in the blankey and cradles her like a wee baby. And Sandy would do that for any friend, I will die on this hill

Saw a fanart where Mk had a pig nose themed pacifier and I just yoinked that idea. The pig hoodie and the pacifier seems like something Tang would do for Pigsy (also to get away with free noodles cause who can say no to that face?~)

Mac showing Wukong the lantern. What can I say, mans' fascinated by them pretty lights. Though our little performer's eyes seem to be straying from the show (^u ')

I know many people have issues with shipping with Nezha and such and I know the two had a rough history but y'know what fans do; they love to make the people who kill each other soulmates (platonic, romantic or otherwise) Even if it wasn't romantic, I still love the idea of them being buddies and just chilling, the danger noodle prince and the angy prince snuggle and watch a movie (mainly from Nezha 2019 but I also saw New Gods and can I just say, I want those two twinks to bicker then kiss awkwardly and I want Yun Xiang to BEAT. HIS. ASS) but in case anyone asks, I do perceive Nezha to be a consenting adult in general outside shipping drama and if the two are adults, it does make my heart squeal when I see these two hold hands and whatnot

HOW COULD I EVER FORGET MY SPICYBOIS, inspired by that one Ponyo kiss scene. I was actually gonna make a bigger piece but then I saw someone do it already in a much better fashion than I ever could and I just gave up on the idea but Ig here, its just like the two cakes mentality and I gave it a go. Hope I could do the concept justice

Have spider queen or scorpion queen ever interacted before? No. But they are both queens and I believe Spider Queen's confidence could rub off on Scorpion Queen and she'd appreciate the company of Spider Queen's children henchmen. Also she give yummy food so lesbian venomqueens for the win

Redraw of that moment with Peng and Azure. I normally detest that bird but these two do get some gears grinding and whatever anyone says. Neither of those two are straight. I'll tell ya that.

Toxicinsanity is another rarepair that had like 1 sec screen time. I don't think they'd ever work out in canon and had virtually no chemistry. I still love all the fluffy ship content I can find of them though and if it ever were to happen. I think the mayor would scare the sh!t out of Syntax

Let's get at least one hetero couple here, Chang'e and Hou'Yi are a couple of favorites ngl, I took most of their outfits from Over the moon cause both of them looked stunning, Chang'e especially. I've seen people ship mah girl with other people and while I do agree it's healthy to move on, in my heart she will always long for Hou'Yi

Also irl, on valentines, my mum took us out for lunch, she treated us to bubble tea and donuts. We walked home so I waited to drink mah drink in my room while I drew and I accidentally finished it all... I'm so sorry mum

f*ck I forgot ironbull. Uhh....I'll draw something later, rn I need to go to bed before I get yelled at...

click pic for less sh!ty quality!

#lmk #my beloved #lego monkie kid #pog champ #py's_art #lmk mk #lmk red son #happy valentine's day #lmk fanart #spicynoodles #lmk mei #lmk wukong #lmk macaque #lmk pigsy #lmk tang #lmk sandy #lmk huntsman #lmk syntax #lmk spider queen #lmk spider demons #lmk mayor #lmk scorpion queen #lmk nezha #shadowpeach #silktea #lmk freenoodles #Inkyfeathers #toxicinsanity #venomqueens #lotusdragon

[howtofightwrite]

If I had a character in a medieval fantasy setting who was a short-statured young woman with some limited basic training in short bow archery and other combat arts, but generally a bit weedy, how quickly could she adapt to a longbow? The bow is notably too big for her, having been inherited from a large adult man. The process of learning and gaining the strength is intended to be difficult. Thank you!

I feel like I'm repeating myself, and we may have covered this recently, but the process of using a bow will result in a lot of upper body strength. It's fairly strenuous exercise and that will result in some bulking up. I've mad the joke that archers will be absolutely ripped, but it's also true. If she's pulling eighty to ninety pounds of force with every shot, that will quickly build muscle. That's true of both short bows and longbows. This should be fairly self explanatory, but less weight in the draw, the less power the bow has. If you have a very light draw (say, around 30lbs), then your bow won't be useful for much beyond short range target practice. Short bows tended to start around 80lbs. This is contrast to modern bows (usually used in hunting), which rarely exceed 60lbs as their maximum draw weight. There's debate on the draw weight of a historical English longbow, but estimates range from around 80 to 185lbs. (There was also a belief at the time, that you had to be raised to use the English longbow, because of it's extremely high draw weight. So, under conventional wisdom at the time, it wasn't a weapon you could learn to use later in life, you needed to be raised from childhood to use these things.)

So, here's something kind of goofy about this, that's really worth thinking about. The English longbow was ~6ft long (about 1.8 meters.) This is the average height of an adult male (at least, in theory, the statistical average is a few inches shorter.) Now, if you've ever looked at a bow, you may have noticed that you don't hold it on one end. In fact, you grip the weapon at the mid-point. Meaning, that while the weapon itself is 6ft long, only about 3ft of that protrudes up or down from your arm. Similarly, the draw length of the English longbow is slightly under 3 feet. (I don't have the exact draw length, but the arrows used were 3ft, and for obvious reasons, you can't overdraw beyond the length of the arrow.)

So, just how small is your character?

Arm span will be slightly greater than an individual's height, but for someone to be too small to draw the bow, they'd need to be under 4ft tall. They also wouldn't have meaningful difficulties aiming the weapon unless their shoulder height was less than 3ft from the ground. That works out to someone who's about 3'10.” Going by modern growth rates, that would put her at around six to eight years old. (Ironically, this correlates to roughly the age where children would begin training on the English longbow.)

So, you're telling me, your character is smaller than a 10 year old?

Also, to be clear, we're talking about the English longbow, one the largest handheld bows ever fielded. If you're using, “longbow,” in the more modern colloquial meaning, and referring to something like a war bow, the bow would be significantly smaller. So, for weapon size to be a serious issue, they'd need to be even smaller than I'm estimating.

Before someone says, “maybe they meant the siege bow,” yeah, that's not a real thing. Siege bows are (as far as I've ever been able to find), a modern item. They're roughly the same size as an English longbow, and it's possible that someone once referred to the longbow as a, “siege bow,” but I've never seen that. The closest thing to what the name evokes, would be the ballista, which was an actual artillery piece, and is slightly closer to a crossbow than a bow. Somewhat obviously, your character is not going to be trying to carry around and deploy a ballista from her backpack.

I get the whole idea of the, “small girl, big weapon,” (and, yes, I know you described her as a woman, but then proceeded to try to infantilize her by giving her a weapon too large for her to effectively use.) Adult women, on average, are not that much smaller, on average, than their male counterparts. If a weapon is too large for a woman to use, it's too large for a man to use. If you're trying to say, “well, she's little and weak,” you are deliberately trying to infantilize her. Please, cut that shit out.

And, while we're on that subject, if she's an archer, she's going to be absolutely ripped. Now, no judgment whatsoever if that's not the mental image you had planned out, and yes, because of their layer of subcutaneous fat, women tend to display less of their musculature development than men with similar builds. (Actually, both men and women rarely display much of their muscular definition unless they're intentionally dehydrating. Regardless, she's not going to look like a body builder.) All this really means is that her muscles would be stealthier, and trying to hide from casual examination, but, you're also talking about a character who could probably bench press you, before she started training on the longbow. (And, yes, I'm saying this without knowing your gender or overall level of fitness.)

How quickly could she learn? That's not incredibly clear. On one hand, my perspective is that a bow is a bow, and while there would probably be some learning curve, it is still the same weapon. Beyond that the hard part would be adjusting to the higher maximum draw weight. However, contemporary sources claimed that learning the English longbow required that you start training with it in childhood, and that it was effectively impossible to learn later in life. I'm inclined to believe that this wasn't exactly as impossible as those authors believed, but they also documented that the method of drawing the English longbow differed from methods used with other bows, and that could create a serious issue for an archer trying to learn it later in life. (Specifically, the description states they would put their body weight into the draw, which sounds like a fantastic way to seriously injure yourself, so clearly I'm missing something here.)

-Starke

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#writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #how to fight write #starke answers #the bow #archery

[journey-to-the-attic]

one thing i've noticed about obey me's story is that it generally delivers on big dramatic narrative moments, but often neglects the surrounding scenes and especially the fallout. there is of course, the oft-talked-about lesson 16, feat. mc's death that never gets brought up again, but then there's also s2's amnesia arc, which ends things with "mc has the ring so everything is completely fine forever"

om has a habit of doing this, where a realm-wide (or heck, universe-wide) problem is hand-waved away by the appearance of a convenient fix-it, which is usually either an object or just ~magic~ (magic as a plot device in om in general is handled poorly but that's a story for another day)

in some cases they just don't address the fallout at all. at least belphie talks about what he did in lesson 16 - but, see nb s2, wherein levi floods the entire devildom, submerging entire houses, and they don't bring it up again afterwards. as far as i remember too, belphie's mini-arc in this season wasn't really given room to breathe, either

but here's the main thing (spoilers for nb lessons 38 and 39)

i've just done these two lessons and in hindsight lucifer's mini-arc feels like a lot of missed potential

honestly they could have excluded diavolo entirely - his main purpose was to stall for time so that the brothers could show up. the moment where he kneels was cool (more on that moment later), but the way they've written him in means that the angels kinda. don't get to do anything? at all?

look - raphael has a gorgeous character moment at the end of 37 where he cries for the brothers' plight. like you don't understand this had so much potential!!! he didn't really do much in s1 (and might not have actually been himself??) so i was hoping this would be his chance to shine, but instead he's on the sidelines. simeon gets the most to do, and even then it's really not much. luke doesn't do anything, unless you count those blessings he and simeon give mc, but they don't really factor in at all??

what especially doesn't make sense about diavolo's role here is that lucifer turns on mc after they step in to protect him. this is meant to be a pay-off to diavolo's less savoury motivation for saving the brothers, revealed in his arc in nb s1, but all lucifer does is say it, get mad, then completely forgets about it once all is said and done

if that's all they were going to do with it, why bring it up at all? from a character standpoint, it makes more sense for mc to shield one of the angels - again, raphael this could've been your moment. (alternatively it could've been a call-back to the og s1 where mc shields luke in the underground tomb)

the appearance of the brothers was welcome, but at the same time i don't quite buy that they all got out of their respective predicaments completely fine. (also where did mephistopheles go??) lucifer also calms down very quickly, which is a great moment for the power of family, but at the same time i feel like he would've needed at least a few more dialogue boxes of him registering through his rage that his brothers were there. eh, this is more nitpicky than everything else

the brotherly moment was 10/10 though. love these guys <3

but i hated the final resolution so so much. sure, have god forgive him, whatever. but why would you end it all with a "papa loves you"???? if it had been raphael or simeon saying it, maybe i could get behind this as a symptom of the celestial realm's unhealthy society, but LUCIFER, whose greatest fear was revealed to be his father in s3 of the original story?

om has never made it seem like god's relationship with the angels was anything other than controlling and borderline abusive, and for some reason (if the poignant flashback is anything to go by) they've done a complete heel turn into "actually it's fine because he loves the angels". it could be read as representing how children often still cling to abusive/controlling parents, but i doubt it - especially coming from lucifer, who started a war and lost a sister in direct opposition to his father

and i get the whole deal with "lucifer was so beautiful as an angel" but it feels really disingenuous to the brothers' arc (about settling into the devildom and coming into their own as demons) to harp on about it. like, fuck that, have lucifer cast away the angel form, or at least have some pushback from him in the aftermath. have mc tell him "you're even more beautiful as a demon" or something

then in lesson 39 everything's back to normal. it's a very cute lesson and i had fun in the moment, but it feels off. there's no discussion of what happened, everyone's completely fine. there's got to be some psychological after-effects to all of that, no? for lucifer especially if not the brothers who got frozen as well???

though lucifer's dragon gift was very sweet. i can't stay mad at that old man

#i think a big issue is that om's juggling a lot of characters #even back when it was just the brothers they had trouble evenly distributing development and characterisation #(and beel's still constantly getting the short end of the stick) #nb is very good at delivering concepts but it's 50/50 whether they're executed well #am i being picky about this silly otome game? perhaps #but it's very much a character and story driven game so at the same time this is kinda the whole point #om is not badly written. otherwise i wouldn't have been stuck in the devildom for like 4 years now!! #but there are so many threads that could be so good #that the writers either miss or weave into the wrong knot entirely #obey me

[shirecorn]

What’s your favourite mlp species? Have you got any thoughts on kirins/niriks?

Request ponies, species, etc I havent done here

I am both a creature and character designer, so I have a lot of thoughts about MLP world!

Paradoxically, the non-pony species interest me less than the actual ponies, because they are all really solid and well done designs. There's not a lot I would reinterpret tbh, and drawing them would just be taking what they have and making them realistic.

The non-pony creatures tend to be more detailed because they are generally cameos and don't need to be animated doing nearly as much as ponies do.

Compilations by AndoAnimalia on deviantart

The kirins are really lovely designs! I love the ankle tufts, and how the stripes on the horns glow when using magic. Really nice creature design here.

The Nirik part was a little boring, and the plot/conflict was not sophisticated enough for my tastes. But it is a show for young children, not biology majors. Lots of room for worldbuilding and headcannoning lore to flesh it out, but I prefer something I can completely rewrite. The kirin lore was fine and I'm fine leaving it as-is.

Another good one is breezies.

I love them they look so stupid. Their wings are over the top but perfectly designed to sell the "piece of lint in the wind" delicateness they have.

as for my favorite creature?

Bug momma

I really love changelings and love how edgy they are.

The reformed changelings are decent but I would have designed them differently. I may take a crack at them later on if I feel the need. I feel like they should either be pony-adjacent (with manes at the very least) or further removed from ponies. this middle ground is kind of like having a bug monster alien that just happens to be bipedal, with humanoid shoulders, arms, and hands for no evolutionary reason (the reason is practical effects and putting a dude in a costume but shhh)

all this is about creatures though, and its very important to talk about character design whenever we discuss creatures. A character's personality should be the quickest read about them, rather than their biology. If something is too complex, the personality gets lost because you have to spend your details adding ankle tufts and articulated fingers.

The mane six, and basically all other ponies, use the same base puppet, and each unique part needs its own turnaround. Every prop and hairdo and eye shape needs to be understood from every possible angle because these are main characters and they need to be be able to turn, spin, and do karate without the animators having to make up the back of applejack's hat every time she faces away from the camera.

Having the same body means animators know how to draw both rarity and rainbow dash from a back 3/4 view with one hoof raised. So from a technical standpoint, simple is best.

Even in big budget productions, where every character has a different body with different close and face shapes, main characters are simplified so that the audience can quickly read pose and expression without getting lost in complex clothing designs or face makeup. Reading poses and expressions quickly is very important to understand and empathize with the character before they've moved to the next pose. You need to understand the emotion the character is feeling and the action they are doing in a split second.

you start to get more complicated and an entity becomes less of a character and more of scenery because it has so much detail its harder to read the emotions from one frame to the next.

There's a reason he doesn't wear his funny hat for the duration of the movie! It's much easier to read his emotions without it. Adding lots of detail and weird props is something designers do a lot when introducing a character if they want to make that character feel mysterious or "other" because its harder to relate when your brain is stuck on the details. also masks just do that by nature of being masks.

where was I going with this

My little pony g4 has great creature and character design.

If it were high budget, major studio with All The Money, there might be more variety in character proportions, and more distinction between the different pony species. But its a puppet animated show that was always meant to make marketable designs to be turned into toys. We just get lucky when there's a good story to tell along the way

#ramble machine #ask #shire screams

[presidenthades]

Alicent and Daemon.. That's a whole pack of worms

How would they even get along enough to make 4 kids 😭

Daemon swearing up and down to despise Otto and Alicent and then marrying Alicent and fathering and targ bro's and Helaena...

It actually would be really interesting how Daemon would treat the targ bro's and Hel,where he isn't insulting them every two minutes 💀

So here’s how I would make a “Daemon and Alicent get married and have the Targbros + Helaena” fic happen.

They probably get married around the same time Alicent married in canon, maybe because Viserys realized it might not be a great idea to secretly see a 15yo girl in his rooms…and then he foists responsibility onto someone else, i.e. his brother. Instead of banishing Daemon from court, Viserys annuls the Rhea Royce marriage and tells him to marry Alicent to show harmony and friendship with Otto. Viserys marries Laena instead.

Otto is horrified. Daemon is also horrified, until he realizes Otto hates it, and then Daemon decides he’s going to use this marriage to make Otto miserable by winning Alicent over from her father. Alicent might disapprove of some of Daemon’s activities, but we see in the Episode 1 tourney that she does seem to find him attractive at least. She is probably secretly relieved not to become the queen, although marrying Daemon would also cause a lot of friction with Rhaenyra.

I doubt Daemon would be an especially good husband to Alicent, but he would keep up appearances to fuck with Otto. Alicent is probably content to maintain appearances while mostly being left alone to care for her kids. She is less stressed about her kids being murdered, because they are very far down the line of succession, and few people are willing to mess with Daemon’s children.

In my AU, I tweaked the kids’ ages so Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond are only one year apart from each other. Baby #1 is conceived quickly during the honeymoon period. Daemon names him Aegon after his deceased younger brother and the Conqueror. Daemon is happy he has a healthy son so quickly, so this might prolong the honeymoon period.

Baby #2 shows up. It’s a girl, so Daemon lets Alicent name her, as long as the name sounds Targaryen. Baby #3 is another boy, and Daemon just rearranges one letter in his name ➡️ Aemond. So creative.

Rhaenyra gives birth to Jace around the same time Aemond is born, and a few moons later Laena gives birth to Baela and Rhaena. Laena survives and the twins are healthy, but complications render Laena unable to conceive again. Viserys still has no sons, so this cements Rhaenyra’s position as heir. Velaryons are disappointed but ultimately OK with this because Laenor is married to her and already has one legitimate child, so their blood is getting on the throne.

It does not escape Daemon and Otto’s notice that the only Targaryen males of the next generation are Daemon and Alicent’s kids. When Rhaenyra’s next kid is another girl, our favorite good-son and good-father duo reluctantly cooperate to scheme how to get their blood on the throne. The obvious solution is betrothing Aegon and Jace. Alas, Viserys is still in his “keep Daemon away from the throne” era and strongly discourages Rhaenyra and the Velaryons from accepting.

Daemon and Otto are still determined to marry Aegon and Jace for the Iron Throne, and also Aemond and Luce for Driftmark. Then they realize they should have at least one more boy to marry to Baela. By this point, Alicent is no longer starry-eyed about her marriage, but she’s carved out a space for herself at court, and her kids are all safe and healthy. She’s OK with having another child (it helps that Daemon is not a rotting corpse), and so Baby #4 is born. Daemon swaps one letter in his own name ➡️ Daeron.

Rhaenyra gives birth to Joff a few moons later. She has no interest in having any more children, since childbirth is so risky. Her three daughters are the most desirable marriage prospects ever, so there’s a lot of competition, and Viserys is not in favor of the Targbros. Luckily for them, their dad and grandpa 10000% prepared to be their wingmen 😎.

Ooh I almost forgot to answer how Daemon would treat his kids!

He and Aegon bond over a love of partying and roaming around Flea Bottom. Daemon is better than Viserys at keeping Aegon in shape, because Daemon is actually paying attention to his kids and ensuring they are competitive suitors for Rhaenyra’s daughters. Aegon is more inclined to listen to a dad who takes him out to gambling dens and ale houses for father-son time.

Aemond tries very hard to be like his father, which pleases Daemon. They do a lot of sparring together and talk about Valyrian history. Since Laena is still alive, Aemond can’t have Vhagar, but Daemon might take him on a secret outing to Dragonstone so he can claim Vermithor. Even though they are similar on a surface level, father and son probably still argue a lot because their pride gets in the way.

Daeron is very happy and friendly. Daemon has no idea where he gets it from. Daeron is the baby, so Daemon indulges him like everyone else does, but he really starts paying attention after Daeron is old enough to be whacked around the training yard/thrown onto dragonback.

Daemon isn’t sure what to do with Helaena at first, but unlike Viserys, he realizes that her prophecies aren’t just nonsense. Daemon has a healthy dose of skepticism (“dreams didn’t make us conquerors, dragons did”), but he would be intrigued by the idea of his daughter being a dragon dreamer. Considering Helaena’s abilities and the fact she’s Dreamfyre’s rider, Daemon might decide it’s better not to marry her away and just keep her at home. This makes Alicent happy.

#my writing #ask me anything #wingman daemon #wingman Otto #daemon x alicent

[cybercasket]

What is the Behavioral Event Network?

I just went through the last arc of the ARG (finally), and when paired with the full context of the rest of the ARG, it actually answers a lot of questions regarding what BEN is, its abilities, and its past. However, I feel like it's not very clear to people what exactly "Behavioral Event Network" means and what it does, especially if they don't interact with the BEN Drowned ARG much.

(Forewarning: While I will be trying to write as accurately to the ARG as possible, at the end of the day this is my own interpretation. Many things in it are not only left unclear but are made open for interpretation on purpose, allowing a range of theories to technically be true.

Additionally, content warnings for cults, human sacrifice, and a little bit of talk about general death and violence. Largely average Creepypasta stuff.)

What a character involved with the creation of the Network has to say about it:

The Behavioral Event Network was created by The Moon Children cult, who later renamed themselves to The Eternity Project sometime after 2012 (or the events of the second arc). This statement from Abel implies that the Behavioral Event Network isn't necessarily a single entity or a group of entities that act in sync with each other, but instead a collection of the ascended/digitized people who exist in Majora's Mask.

The purpose of ascension is to supposedly allow the ascendant to free themselves from the fear and struggles of everyday life so that they can live on forever in the digital realm, where they can supposedly go anywhere and be anything that they can dream of and enjoy it, traveling between The Eternity Project's several digital realms for the rest of eternity. After their subject is sufficiently manipulated into wholeheartedly sharing the Moon Children's beliefs, they do this by utilizing a mysterious process that seems to turn them into ghosts and trap them inside a digital AI in a digital realm that the ascendant chooses before they die.

However, this doesn't typically go as planned. For Ben in particular, he allegedly (according to Matt, an ascended member of the Moon Children) wanted to become Link in Majora's Mask. However, the ascended don't always have complete control of what happens to them--leading to things like Ben being trapped inside of The Elegy of Emptiness instead of getting to be Link (at least while the game was being played by someone else, as two people can't use the same model at the same time). Most people who ascend are seen lamenting having done so in some way. There's a theme of betrayal throughout the entire ARG, with phrases like "THEY LIED TO US" being used throughout.

The Father and Absorption

Despite Ben's death being the one that sparked the creation of the Majora's Mask world, Ben was not the first to ascend. Rather, that accolade goes to The Father (also known as Kelbris).

In life, Kelbris was known as a prophet who was the only one who could hear the voice of Luna, the Moon Children's diety. He believed that the world would end soon and that the moon would consume everything--and this influenced the developing cult significantly. In 1998, the Moon Children discovered his electrocuted corpse next to a power outlet. Despite not knowing whether it was foul play or suicide, Kelbris was hailed as the first one to ascend and the cult began to sacrifice its own members, experimenting with ways of having others achieve the same "spiritual release" that Kelbris had.

According to The Moon Children, Kelbris had managed to inhabit a vessel that was "archaic" and they described his ascension process as "unrefined", possibly referencing how Kelbris feels less human than the ascended that came after him. While he is a prevalent force in the cartridge (self-identifying as a god) and the ARG as a whole, he appears to only respond to "stimuli" and react based off of what his code tells him.

When Kelbris/The Father appears in the ARG, he's typically tormenting, threatening, or killing someone--most kills in the ARG are implied to be The Father. However, this behavior may have been coerced by other characters in the ARG.

When The Father kills someone, they are absorbed into the Behavioral Event Network. The most obvious example of this is when it happens to Jadusable (the ARG's first protagonist) after going too far into the cartridge in "THE FATHER.wmv", a video from the 3rd arc. This is implied to happen to a few other characters as well, such as Matt (who appears in the cartridge in the 3rd arc after Kelbris is presumed to have killed him in the 2nd).

Additionally, one of the videos uploaded on Jadusable's YouTube account before the first arc started (the "Creepypasta story" that most people in the fandom know,) a video called "Prototype: All Consume Kills (Warning: Extremely Graphic)" was uploaded, which was confirmed by Jadusable to be a "vague metaphor" for how BEN operates. (So canonically, the Behavioral Event Network kind of works like Alex Mercer in Prototype 😭😭 have fun with that one...) This alludes to the fact that as more characters in the ARG die, more souls get added to the BEN or Majora's Mask world.

Who is in the Behavioral Event Network?

The short answer to this question is... A lot. A lot of people. Pretty much every dead Moon Child is in it, as well as every participant in The Eternity Project after the Moon Children rebranded--most people who have successfully ascended besides from Sarah are in the BEN. Not all of them were absorbed by The Father, a lot of them are implied to have been ascended through other means and somehow ended up in Majora's Mask instead of their intended world.

I might make a longer post about people who are or are likely in the BEN, though I do want to touch on the dominant forces in BEN briefly. This is who I think is largely responsible for BEN's actions as a collective in the ARG as a whole:

The Father: See the above section. He's very powerful and sometimes even breaches the outside world, and some people interpret him as a type of overseer of the BEN. He could have been easily manipulated due to his simplistic and poorly developed AI.

Ben: Typically represented via the Elegy of Emptiness statue. It's not entirely clear the role Ben (the kid who drowned) plays in BEN, though he is confirmed to be involved in terrorizing Jadusable in the first arc (aka the "original Creepypasta story"). Additionally, the Elegy of Emptiness statue is a common motif throughout the ARG--the "canon BEN" image is an AI-generated image with the Elegy of Emptiness likely being used as a source, and in the second arc, dead or missing characters would often have the Elegy of Emptiness statue pasted on their page. While in the 3rd arc, Ben is treated as the innocent, tortured soul who inhabits the Elegy of Emptiness, (eg. Matt says that he was trapped but conscious in the statue unable to do anything, and Circle also refers to him as innocent,) he may have (or previously had) more influence over the game than it seems on the surface. However, it is notable that in The Last Hero.wmv, Matt appears to be able to summon an Elegy statue to a location on his own seemingly without any input from Ben, and that Ben is frequently seen terrified of The Father.

The Masked Children (Goht, Odolwa, Gyorg, Twinmold, and Majora): They use the models of the Moon Children seen on the moon in the original Majora's Mask, and are implied to be inhabited by different spirits. When they're in agreement (or "consensus"), they speak like The Three Witches in Macbeth, but when they're not, there's often a lot of bickering/infighting between each other. Their participation in the events of the first and second arcs is hinted at several times (the dream that Jadusable has in the first arc where a mask is being forced onto his face is connected to (and may have even been induced by) them, one of the first arc's entries is updated in 2020 which includes an added dialogue sequence similar to the way we see the Maksed Children talk to each other in the videos, Goht in particular is connected to DROWNED, the largely silent admin of the Moon Children website in the second arc,) though the third arc is when their actions are more directly connected to them. In the third arc, a few of them are seen fighting Sarah as their respective bosses so they can appease The Father. They're credited with posting signs that have messages like "GET OUT" written on them (which are similar messages seen when something didn't want players to see a webpage, video, or document in earlier parts of the ARG), and they're regularly hostile to Sarah and call her a monster.

This is most of them together, though Odolwa is missing after their encounter with Sarah. You can see better images of their in-game models here.

Rosa: Rosa is another character I find a bit vague and confusing, because she seems to be dead and inhabiting a non-Majora game in the prologue, but appeared to be alive in the second arc. I don't believe Matt makes any comments about his "sister" being dead, though she also disappeared when players used The Song of Healing, so I'm really not sure... Maybe Matt was dead too? Was everyone on that forum dead when the players discovered it? However, she claims to have previously had power in Majora's Mask, though this ended up being heavily diminished by 2020. Another reason why Rosa is notable is because depictions of BEN as a more uniform collective (such as in iseeyou) often contain feminity to some degree, which is usually credited to her by people trying to make sense of it.

Rosa talking about her previous power over Majora's Mask.

A more feminine image of BEN from end.wmv.

An image of a feminine person (assumed by the Jadusable Wiki editors to be Rosa) used in conjunction with the "canon BEN" image and Kelbris/The Father.

TL;DR: BEN can absorb people and makes them Majora's Mask NPCs (like Alex Mercer!), the BEN page on Jadusable Wiki could probably be renamed to World Alpha, and no, you can't fuck it.

Feel free to ask me any questions about this, the ARG, or Creepypasta in general, and I'll do my best to respond!

#ben drowned #creepypasta #ben drowned arg #jadusable #behavioral event network #canon creepypasta #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta lore #cult tw #cult mention #death tw #murder tw #child death tw #long post lol

[weather-cluddy]

(Replied as a new post to avoid the character limit)

It doesn't bother me at all! This sort of question is something I've been turning over for quite a while, actually. I tried to make a post pointing out comparisons between non-paired prisoners, because I feel like people focus too much on number pairs without considering other thematic parallels, even with Milgram pointing some out (Eg: Shidou-Amane, Fuuta-Kotoko, Haruka-Muu, Yuno-Kazui). It stalled around Muu though, because it turns out that's a whole lot of entries, and also I wasn't sure that people would be interested in a post that's dozen of paragraphs long (though still much less elaborate than this post, of course).

Personally, I think Mikoto and Haruka have a lot in common and share many themes, but I hardly ever see it brought up. Some of it, I think, is the fact that Haruka's trauma gets a lot of focus while Mikoto's mostly implied, so there's a lot of people who don't look beneath the surface. So they just get slotted in the boxes of "sympathetic" and "unsympathetic", meaning fans miss the similarities even when it's them doing literally the same thing (Like trying to kill Es to protect their self-worth).

But at the end of the day, we have two people extremely afraid yet dependent on other people's opinions of them, whose every interaction is shadowed by the after-effects of their early-childhood trauma in a way that seems "cute" or harmless at first but really isn't, who committed premeditated murder because they saw it as the only way to make their lives bearable, who have artistic inclinations but can't find the self-confidence to pursue them, who are dealing with mental illnesses they have no (healthy) frame of reference for, who are okay with being used and abused (even physically!) so long as people approve of them...

Well, I don't want to drop the entire essay on the intro part. Onto the first section!

(I didn't particularly mean to organize it like that, but the two sections basically came out as Bokukoto- and Orekoto-centered, respectively. Funny how it worked out.)

Children and adults.

What are Haruka's goals? To be loved and cared for, even if it means taking on a subordinate role. To have his weakness acknowledged yet not be shamed for it, to be have his strengths bring joy to those he loves yet not have people ask more of him than he can give.

What are Mikoto's goals? To be a good, responsible, capable person and have people acknowledge him as such. To have his efforts rewarded, even if it means overexerting himself. To find conventional success and prove to those he loves (his mom, in particular) that they needn't worry for him.

In other words, Haruka wants to be a kid, Mikoto wants to be an adult. Haruka wants to be protected, Mikoto wants to be admired.

Why this difference? Well, I see two possiblities. One, Haruka has a golden past to retreat to, a time when he felt loved and safe. Mikoto might not have had that, or he might not remember it: after all, DID forms from trauma very early in childhood, as early as 5 years old and generally no later than 10. And of course dissociation itself tends to make remembering difficult, even before actual alters get involved.

So, Mikoto most likely doesn't remember any 'good old days' he could yearn for, either because he was extremely young or because they never existed. His only option, then, is to place his hopes on the future.

The second thing is that, in spite of Mikoto most likely having earlier trauma, Haruka is far more obvious in his dysfunction. Pretty much every person he meets will at least walk away with the feeling he's kind of weird, if not worse. This only manages to reinforce his feelings that he's inferior to everyone else, and that that's an inescapable part of his being.

Meanwhile, Mikoto can trudge through life well enough to believe that achieving what he wants is within his reach, even to be expected. Surely if he works both hard and smart, he can accomplish his goals without problem. He can get a good career if he just focuses on what he's good at, choosing 'efficiency' over his interests. And he can get everyone to like him, if he just remembers to always, always be nice to them, no matter how much he'd rather not. Then he'll reap the reward of succeeding at life!

That's just how things work, right? You put in the effort to treat others well, and your reward for doing so is to have other people do the same for you. That's the basis of society! And that's also how Mikoto makes himself feel safe. If his own actions determine other people's actions, then he can stop bad things from happening to him by just not doing anything that would invite punishment. Everyone knows monsters only eat the misbehaving kids!  Just follow the rules and everything will be fine.

(That's another big difference between Mikoto and Haruka: Haruka knows he can't do what's expected of him, so by the start of Milgram he's pretty much given up on the idea of ever being accepted or sucessful. Mikoto does believe he can cut it, but that brings its own kind of helplessness: he can never stop striving with all his might, because if he ever does fall short his self-esteem will crumble to pieces.)

The trouble is, sometimes even when you do follow the rules, other people just... refuse to reciprocate. Why is that? Did you do something wrong? Well, you can't exactly go up to them and ask. Now that would certainly be a faux pas! Clearly the only choice is to figure it out yourself by ruminating on it. All night long. Hey, remember when Mikoto said that he wouldn't be able to sleep if Kotoko didn't wish him a happy birthday? Sure sounds like somebody who worries a normal amount about gestures that might possibly be snubs.

But another convo I'd like to bring up is one with Fuuta, where Mikoto shows up unprovoked to tell Fuuta that being upset about being kidnapped is dumb and childish and will get him nowhere in life, and anyways he's just doing it for attention.

This seems a bit OOC, doesn't it? Mikoto basically never criticizes anybody. When Yuno basically calls him fake to his face, he just laughs and calls her a straight shooter. When Haruka said that he's been avoiding Mikoto because he's scary, he just shrugs and goes, that's fair, I'd have done the same. Hell, even knowing that Kotoko tried to beat him half to death, he still goes to congratulate her on her birthday. So what did Fuuta say that was so much worse than all of those?

The problem, really, isn't what Fuuta said or did to Mikoto, but how Fuuta behaves with everyone. Mikoto can put up with being openly disliked; see his interactions with Kotoko. But seeing somebody so brazenly ignore the rules he's based his life around, now that affects him a way that goes beyond Mikoto as a person.

If you asked Mikoto, he'd probably say that it's because he's sad to see somebody younger than him waste his potential with such stupid, meaningless stubborness. But really, it comes back to the fact that "nothing bad will happen as long as you behave" is one of pillar's of Mikoto's life. So how is he supposed to handle seeing somebody misbehave constantly, repeteadly, and still do just as well as him? What's that supposed to mean? Do things not actually work that way? Was he just being taken advantage of? That can't be. If being nice doesn't ensure that you'll get treated well, what does? He endured so much pain because it was supposed to pay off someday. Were all his efforts so far just make-believe, a kid hiding under the blankets thinking it'll do anything?

No, no, no. It's the others who are wrong. All his suffering until now was meaningful and helpful. He knows what he must do and he's not going to stray from the right path. Those who do are just bringing punishment down onto themselves. And while he's not capable of consciously acknowledging his anger, he can always try to share some "friendly advice" about what happens to those who fight against forces greater than themselves. You can't win those battles. He never won, so of course you can't win them. Stop struggling, it's for your own good.

(Amane-Mikoto parallels? In my Haruka-Mikoto parallels post? It's more likely than you think!)

Saviors and weaklings

You might be thinking that the title says it all, really. Haruka is a weakling, Orekoto is a savior, those are opposites, the end.

Well, yes, but it's not quite that simple.

Haruka in the second trial has also taken on a protector role towards Muu. This is a fairly uncontroversial reading, so let's go take a closer look at their similarities:

-Both Haruka and Orekoto put emphasis on Es not scaring/stressing their charge any further.

-In both cases, what they're looking for is acknowledgement from the one they're protecting and a sense of being useful ("Rely on me, praise me with your song, I am your savior")

-Haruka says that Muu is the reason why he can be who he is now. The same could be said for Bokukoto and Orekoto: without the latter, the former would not be able to remain his current self.

-At the same time, the 'saviors' need their charges, just as if not more than the other way around. Haruka's life has revolved around the concept of mothers since basically forever, and we literally don't know a single thing about Orekoto outside of his role. Honestly, considering he only seems to come out during stressful situations, it's possible even he doesn't know who he is outside of being Mikoto's savior.

Even the structures of Metamorphosis of the Weak and John Doe are similar. Consider:

-The interrogation starts with the prisoner being fairly unthreatening. Mikoto is rather nervous at the start, but as soon as Es starts pretending to entertain the idea that he really hasn't committed any murders, he calms down significantly. -The prisoners feel safe thanks to Es' temporary affirmation, but this is soon swept away by Es themselves. Even as the prisoners become more and more obviously distressed, Es presses on dispassionately.

-Eventually, they become totally overwhelmed by emotion and attempt to kill Es. Haruka is stopped by Milgram's rules, Orekoto isn't.

-At this point, a different prisoner makes their appearance, whether physically or just in conversation, and the rest of the drama revolves around them. In John Doe it's of course Kotoko fighting off Mikoto, after which he's literally unconscious for the rest of the VD (except for one line), and instead the remaining time is dedicated to Kotoko and her deal.

For Metamorphosis, it's when Haruka proclaims that Muu is his real mom and starts talking about their relationship. In both cases, there's a clear shift in focus from the OG character themselves to how their actions would affect Milgram overall (Kotoko offering to stop Mikoto if he attacks again, Haruka threatening suicide).

Well, we can probably agree that Haruka is a savior of a sort. But can we close the circle and bring the comparison back around? Is Orekoto also a weakling of a sort?

To answer this, we'll need to define weakness. For this, I'll actually refer not to Haruka's voice drama's, but to Muu's. Namely, this part in Queen B:

"Es: (…) One-sided violence and mistreatment… I’m sure it was difficult to handle. It’s not unreasonable to come to the conclusion that murder is the only way for a weak person to get out of that. That’s exactly why I forgave you." Muu: Yeah… If I hadn’t done that, I could have died some day."

We hear Haruka argue something similar after Es tears him down, asking "So what should I have done!? Was I supposed to give up on myself too!?" So we could say that a weak person is somebody who's trapped by their circumstances, somebody with the deck stacked so far against them that they have no choice but to take extreme measures.

I think that's pretty much how Orekoto views his own situation. Looking at his parts of MeMe, most of the what-if sentences basically come down to "I don't want to do this, but I can't not do it either". We also have lyrics like "It’s like what’s wrong isn’t wrong" and "Is this selfish?", showing that Orekoto is also full of self-doubt about this being the right thing, but doesn't see any other choice. After all, "Hurting it, holding it down, it doesn’t change anything, does it? Ahhh, It’s the same anywhere I go".

Like Haruka, nothing he tries seems to work and he's desperately trying to survive in any way he can. Whether this "death" is on a purely emotional level or if, like Muu, it's hinting at suicide ("Maybe it’s ok to try to keep on living"), he needs to get away. It doesn't matter anymore if it's "good", so long as it works.

Of course, I'm sure Orekoto wouldn't take well to the idea that he's weak. His breakdown in John Doe was, of course, because of Es pushing Bokukoto, but his rant was almost entirely focused on how weak and pathetic Es was. It seems that in that he resembles Fuuta (who was, after all, the first prisoner to try violence): when he's scared, he tries to intimidate the threat to feel safer.

(Of course, there's something to be said for Haruka also despising his own weakness, even if his reaction to it is to worship others for being different rather than project this hatred onto them.)

(And while we're in the topic of Fuuta, it's worth noting that he's also part of the overall protector theme spanning several characters. He even relates to Haruka and Mikoto directly, in that those two are the ones he picked as "weak" people he needed to look out for)

Muu and Haruka, even before the second trial, they were both weaklings and saviors of the weak (themselves). But this doesn't apply to Mikoto, because the roles are split between the alters. There's a clear separation between the 'good', pitiable, socially acceptable Bokukoto and the 'bad' and violent Orekoto. And you know where else we see something like this? Haruka's MVs.

This is most obvious in Weakness, where the separation is at its starkest, to the point where many people didn't think Haruka's younger self was him at all. Basically, every bad thing in the video is attributed to older Haruka. Li'l Haruka plays happily with his maybe-sister, older Haruka attacks her. Li'l Haruka pets his dog while his mom smiles by his side, until older Haruka bashes its skull in. And of course, in the end older Haruka is so consumed by hatred that he chokes his terrified younger self to death. Not the first time he attacks him(self) either; back at almost the start, older Haruka shoves him into a crayon puddle, with the camera making sure to show kid Haruka's terrified expression and Haruka's cold glare.

(I want to point out the dog scene in particular. Specifically, how the younger Haruka is horrified to find blood on his hands even though he never actually laid hands on the dog. This is quite reminiscent of the scene in MeMe where Mikoto becomes afraid of his reflection's evil expression and falls backwards, only to have the devil card fall on him and corrupt all the water into blood. But an interesting difference is how, while Mikoto not remembering is just a literal retelling of events, the same shouldn't apply to Haruka. And if the girl is the same age in AKAA and in Weakness, suggested by the fact she's dressed the same in both, then she couldn't have been playing with same-age Haruka either.)

In AKAA this divide into a good, young Haruka and a bad, older Haruka is less stark, presumably because after a forgiven verdict Haruka feels less disconnected from his past as a 'good kid'. It's not gone, however. We do see his younger self kill fish and a butterfly, but the harder-hitting murders of the dog (and possibly the girl, it's hard to tell) are left to his 17-years-old self. Not to mention the sequence when his mother opens the door, which is probably the part where Haruka is framed in the most threatening way across the entire MV. That too shows us only the current Haruka, notable because just seconds before it kept switching between the two of them.

At the same time, there's also a disconnect in Weakness between current Haruka and his murders. When we see him killing somebody he actually killed in real life (that is, the girl and the dog), it's followed shortly by him waking up in his bed, framing it all as just a dream. This is very similar to how in MeMe the second scene shows Orekoto killing somebody, with the third starting with Bokukoto gently waking up, completely unaware. There's of course also the line "I’m probably just having a bad dream, I need to wake up soon", which only drives it further home.

Well, I think that wraps up my points. To TL;DR it, some themes to consider are: fixated on past/fixated on future, giving up/trying too hard, dependence on others, wanting to feel useful, black and white thinking re: oneself and viewpoints warped by childhood trauma.

For a bit of extra fun, I'd like to note some shared visual motifs between MeMe, Weakness and All-Knowing and All Agony. There won't be much meaning analysis from me here, so feel free to supply your own.

Music Videos

(Some of the screenshots repeat, that's intentional)

Surrounded by eyes: Most obvious in Weakness, but the Hanged Man in Mikoto's shirt (and less obviously, the Magician) also show something similar.

Water turning into blood: This one is somewhat dificult to show in still screenshots, but it's present in both MeMe, Weakness (when one of Haruka's teardrops fall onto the water) and arguably AKAA as well.

Red skies with a moon visible: Interestingly, this one seems to be associated with younger Haruka in Weakness (most obvious at the very start, when he and older Haruka switch rapidly, with the scene outside the window also changing). There's one very obvious moon in a red sky near the end of MeMe, but there might be another one shown in the Fool card. Lots of Mikoto's cards show circles in the upper corner of the cards (but interestingly in the Hanged Man it's at the bottom, near their head, like an halo). Whether we can consider them all moons is up to speculation, but few of them match the color scheme anyways. Speaking of which, while Weakness almost always uses grey/blue moons with red skies, there are two exceptions: when Haruka is shown killing the dog (blue sky, red moon) and in a piece of official art that shows a red moon on a red sky.

Confusion between indoors and outdoors: If you notice, literally everything in Weakness happens indoors, except for the bits where Haruka is floating in water. Even the forest has floorboards, except for a single scene. The opposite also happens: we see kid Haruka out for a walk with his mom, but they're still inside the house, with the city just being images on the wall. Meanwhile, the mindscape in MeMe shows a ruin (no walls) on an endlessly extending sea and sky (natural-ish settings), but it also reflects the structure of Mikoto's house. So is it inside or outside? Looking at the shoes, both Mikoto and younger Haruka are dressed as though they're outside, but older Haruka is wearing slippers.

Reflections not matching "reality": Note how neither Mikoto nor the coffee table show up in the water in the second image, or how the paintings go from having no reflection to having each other's reflection, with those facing the wrong way. The fourth and fifth images are also an interesting example of the reflections not even matching each other, even though the timing and framing suggest we're still looking at the same scene.

#I think that the discussion of weakness and saviors could've benefited from including Kotoko since it's also a big theme for her. But. #The last thing this post needs is scope creep. Especially if it'll take half a year of waiting just to start. #I didn't even say EVERYTHING I wanted to here. Like I think comparing their relationships with their little sisters (?) is very interesting #but it's also 90% headcanons and assumptions #milgram #mikoto kayano #long post #haruka sakurai

[dragoneyes618]

I have an idea that I'm never actually going to write but that I keep thinking about regardless.

Shortly into her senior year at Ever After High, less than a year before she and Hunter will graduate and have to fulfill their destinies, Ashlynn finds out that she's pregnant.

She and Hunter decide to use this to their advantage.

After all, it would be a really big scandal if Ashlynn, a royal princess, one with a destiny, no less, had a child out of wedlock. Nobody will be able to stop her and Hunter from getting married now. Sure, it's a lot sooner than they ever thought it would be, the rare times they dared to dream that perhaps one day they could actually marry, and they'll still face a lot of stigma - after all, the Rebel movement is barely two years old - but at least they'll be able to be together for certain now, right?

Wrong.

The story opens from the point of view of Hunter and Ashlynn's son, whose name I cannot think of, who has been raised as the second son and youngest child of the Huntsman and his wife and has no clue that they are not actually his parents.

The only people who know the truth are Hunter, Ashlynn, their parents, Milton Grimm, and possibly Giles Grimm and some other authorities and family members. No other students at Ever After High know. All they know is that shortly into their senior year Ashlynn suddenly became ill with a very contagious disease and was in isolation at her home for the rest of the year, completing her coursework by mail.

Hunter fulfills his story. He never marries and has no other children. He is not under much pressure to have a child to fulfill his destiny in the next generation, though, because he has a younger sister and an illegitimate son two younger siblings who can, and the Huntsman after them can be one of their children, and so on.

I'm not sure what happened to Ashlynn. Maybe she had to marry a prince afterwards. Maybe she refused to marry anyone who wasn't Hunter. Maybe she was banished. I have no idea.

Fern, Hunter's younger sister, was five at the time. She, too, believe that her nephew is her little brother. All she knows is that one day her mother left home, ostensibly to go to the hospital but actually going to collect the baby from the palace where Ashlynn lived, and came home with a baby a few days later. Congratulation, she has a new baby brother! Depending on when Hunter finally managed to convince his parents to take the baby, his mother may have been faking her own pregnancy for the past couple of months. Fern does remember a lot of tense arguments between Hunter and their parents that stopped whenever she walked into the room, and a lot of stress and tension.

I have no idea what else happens in this, but if anyone wants to use this idea, feel free. ;)

#eah #ever after high #hunter huntsman #ashlynn ella #the huntsman #mrs. huntsman #fern huntsman #ashlynn hunter kid au #the huntsman eah #ever after high the huntsman

[icarusbetide]

implausible historical scenario: southern alexander hamilton (pt 2: washington's version)

Part 1: Grows up with Lavien, tragic lams version

here's the second scenario that would make southern A. Ham a possibility:

The rumors are true and he actually is Washington's son - I know, I know, I can hear Hamilton rolling in his grave already. But there's a reason the rumors circulated, it's really fucking interesting!

We know for a fact that the real Washington was minding his business 1754-1757, far away from Nevis - but he did go to Barbados with his brother in 1751. Let's pretend that he went back in an impromptu trip or that Lawrence managed to eek out a few more years, so they actually went later than 1751 (Unrelated, but him catching smallpox there + being exposed to Lawrence's tuberculosis might be the reason he was potentially infertile. If so, then the timing works out and doesn't conflict with his inability to have kids with Martha.) Maybe their ship was blown off course or needed some supplies, and stopped at Nevis. For whatever reason (my entertainment), he makes a series of questionable choices. Some people speculate that Alexander might have been the son of Stevens. I personally don't find this likely, but I can switch Stevens with Washington. I can and I did.

There are two main pathways I can see.

The first one most closely matches historical rumors and reality: no southern Hamilton. Washington leaves the West Indies oblivious, Ham comes to NYC, everything plays out the same - but at some point they figure out that he's his dad. People have already written a lot about this, but musical based, and for good reason. There's a lot of angst you can get out of it. Does Washington watch silently as Hamilton courts Elizabeth and is welcomed into the Schuyler family? Does Washington know that his son only had one friend at his own wedding? Worse, does Alexander still view James Hamilton as his dad, and beg him to come while ignoring the general? Do they work together better or worse than they do in reality? The possibilities! Imagine a world where there isn't a Reynolds Pamphlet but there is a Washington Pamphlet where Alexander confesses that he is the illegitimate son of the president after the Democratic Republicans got hold of some information. All of this is extremely soap opera, and almost embarassing in its drama but idc, it's fun.

Second, more divergent one: Yes, Alexander is illegitimate, but they find each other way earlier. It certainly wasn't uncommon for men of Washington's status to have bastards, and some did acknowledge their illegitimate children. Here, he'd be acknowledged, and raised in Virginia with the Custis kids (assuming Martha still marries George in 1759). I find this scenario intriguing for both the personal and political repercussions.

Personal repurcussions: would Hamilton have less issues if he was Washington's kid? Certainly his environment would be more stable, and Washington (given his frustration with a lazy Jacky Custis) would've been proud of such an intelligent, promising boy. People would be less eager to criticize/demean Hamilton (at least to his face), and he wouldn't be insecure in his class or geographical origin. I can also see him learning more political finesse and control if he grew up in Virginian society and with a steady, dedicated father. Would he have worked better with Washington if they were actually an acknowledged father-son relationship? Would Washington have planned to give Mount Vernon to him, since the Custis children already have their inheritance?

Now, if we assume that Hamilton’s policies remain constant, then his opponents lose even more major weapons than the Lavien world: perceived preference for the north and background. But then it also complicates Washington's legacy as general and president. Some historians argue that Washington having no perceived biological heir had some role in the trust people placed in him. If people know that Hamilton is his son, illegitimate or not, who has followed him through the war and into government, that's going to cause uneasiness. Maybe even do more damage to Washington's reputation than any real-life accusations of monarchy ever did, because this one actually has some weight. Ironically, it could be that this forces Alexander to be out of the running for the Secretary of Treasury position - having to work in the shadows, because the country is suspicious of anything and everything that looks like a king. More resentment!

But what if his beliefs do change? We get to see a Hamilton with connections to the south, just like the Lavien universe, but on crack. Because now his guardian isn’t just any southerner, he’s George Washington. It’s likely that just like Washington, going through the war would end up with him being a nationalist. But economically? If he didn't get that experience as a clerk in the West Indies (the period he said was the most educational of his life), or as an assistant to his merchant half-brother, then would he have the knowledge/insight to create his financial plan? Washington was on the same page as Hamilton, but Hamilton was doing the actual system-building. Going further, maybe growing up at Mt. Vernon happily and having only faint, distasteful memories of his tragic childhood in the West Indies actually makes him rear away from reminders of that life - maybe he has a fondness for agrarian lifestyle and lounging by trees reading philosophy, and an inherent dislike of merchants, business opportunists like james hamilton, trading, commerce. Maybe, god forbid, he ends up thinking a lot like Jefferson.

Who knows? A young Virginian Hamilton who has very close ties and pride connected to his country, meets an idealistic Thomas Jefferson and goes: "You are my role model and now I will emulate everything about you." People forget that Jefferson was 12 - 14 years older than Hamilton, it’s possible! The two didn’t hate each other right away! I can see them in this world bonding over Virginia and their intellect - perhaps, even if Hamilton veers towards being a nationalist, the lack of dispute on financial matters is enough for them to maintain a good relationship. There's even a possibility that Hamilton, like Madison, is a nationalist and writes the Federalist Papers but switches to the Jeffersonian side once Jefferson comes back. Certainly Madison and Jefferson would spend a lot of time trying to convince their wayward, fellow Virginian friend. Imagine a world where Washington is the biggest federalist and opposing his own son, who is in cahoots with a different Virginian in undermining his own presidency.

*Pats improbable scenario: this baby pumps out so much melodrama.

#can you tell that i really really want someone to write about this #i'm like praying for someone to write about this #can you imagine a jeffersonian hamilton like wtf #imagine the letters they would send to each other #jefferson & adams style #god i love making shit up #alexander hamilton #george washington #historical hamilton #george washingdad #amrev

[stopscammingartists]

Is there a pinned section for the specifics on what Eevee did? I know there's a google doc; I just wanted to ask about pins. Thanks

Eevee is probably one of the main members of the group I talked about the least comparatively, because her main deal is that whenever someone talks up about being abused by Glip, or back in the day Marl, Eevee is right there front and center with a snarky, ill-thought out, long-winded defense of them.

In other words, she's an accomplice.

So there isn't anything more that isn't already in my pinned post. So, I guess I'll make this my main post on why Eevee is likely an accomplice to sex crimes against both children and animals.

Compared to both Glip, Marl, and even other people in the group like Iz: Eevee has significantly less people who have been directly abused by her that we are aware of. Cordy Fox is the only person who has publicly decided to speak about being abused by Eevee, and even though she hasn't gone into much detail, I'm generally inclined to believe her. Especially because I know of at least one other individual who was abused by Eevee who has decided to not speak on it publicly.

That said, the chances that Eevee wasn't aware that Marl was at least sexually abusing the family dog are practically zero.

For starters, given Eevee's tendency of having a pro-pedophilia and pro-zoophilia sentiment, I question the idea that Marl would feel the need to hide his zoophilic and pedophilic tendencies from his then roommate.

Even if Marl did try to hide his habits from his roommate (Eevee) and his then-spouse (Glip) - Eevee herself has pointed out that Marl wouldn't have been able to film child porn / zoo porn without her and Glip knowing.

....And, yeah, she's right. Glip has always worked from home and so did Marl. I'm unsure if Eevee was at the time work from home, and despite what Glip is saying here in these very same tweets, they later admitted to being aware that Marl was filming porn of the family dog Apollo since Marl cheated on them with Exty.

Marl cheated on Glip with Exty in early 2013 or late 2012 by the way.

So that means Glip was aware that Marl was sexually abusing the dog when Lain first came forward in later 2013 about Marl sending her photos of dog dicks.

A lot of people have in one way or another spoken about how Marl brought up his love of dogs to them or was creepy with them after the log leak. We got Big Fluff and Lain obviously, but there's also Exty, Rootie, Pengo, an anon who spoke to Pengo, and Junglekawa.

The implication here being, Marl did this often to a lot of different people.

We know from Lain, specifically, that Marl felt comfortable enough predating on children by sending them photos of dog genitalia on Eevee's IRC network.

To those that don't know, Eevee, being the admin of the IRC network, had access to chat logs that happen within her IRC, including, likely, direct messages.

And Marl was comfortable enough to send a then 13 year old photos of dog genitalia on this network. Knowing his roommate, Eevee, would have access.

And frankly, why wouldn't he be comfortable with his friend who questions if child porn should be illegal having access to these logs of him sexually harassing a child with zoophilic images? When Lain came forward and talked about what Marl did to her, and even asked Eevee specifically to give her logs.

Eevee would turn around and only provide selected snippets of the logs while slandering the character of the 14 year old girl, claiming to not have anything else.

Even though Eevee could have easily proven Lain a liar easily by just sharing unedited DM's between Lain and Marl....She didn't. There are no DM's between the two shared by Eevee at all, actually!

I wonder why Eevee didn't share the DM's between Marl and Lain. Sure is a mystery why she didn't share the logs that would have proven Marl innocent immediately if she was right and Lain was lying. Weird she didn't do that! I guess platforming the words of the fourteen year old's other abusers is more important though.

Lain was one of the first people to come forward about Marl being a zoophile, and was the first to come forward about Marl being a pedophile. Chatlogs would later be leaked of Marl doing the same thing to a different child (that thankfully: Occurred on a platform besides Eevee's IRC.) would definitively prove Lain's claims from years ago to be true.

Even if Eevee somehow didn't have admin access to Marl and Lain's direct messages - they lived together. The fact Glip and Eevee both didn't go to Marl physically and say "Show me your direct messages with this 14 year old girl who says you're sexually harassing her with images of dog genitalia" WHEN GLIP WAS FULLY AWARE THAT MARL WAS FILMING ZOO PORN OF APOLLO JUST EARLIER THAT YEAR TELLS THE ENTIRE STORY.

So if Lain was telling the truth, why didn't Eevee or Glip have the logs? Was it incompetency? Or were they both only sharing select snippets of the logs to protect their then roommate/partner?

And remember, Marl did this to a lot of people. If he was comfortable enough to do this to Lain in a place where Eevee had log access, how many others did he do this too in Eevee's IRC? While knowing Eevee when push came shove, would protect him?

Additionally, I'm inclined to believe Marl abused Apollo in that house often. Zoophiles often make the dogs wear mittens on their front paws so they don't get scratched when the dog mounts someone. Front paw mittens don't really serve any other practical purpose.

Eevee uploaded a video of Twigs and Apollo playing with Apollo wearing these mittens, and based on how she responded, when confronted about this, Apollo probably wore these mittens all the time, meaning he was abused often.

And now consider this in 2006:

A lot of people glaze over these because of the date, but it's important to understand that Eevee's not just playing the role of an edgy devil's advocate here as she would later claim. She's knowledgeable on how animal sexual abuse works and is excited about it.

She is specifically aware that beastiality is legal in some places.

She is specifically aware that when it comes to sexually abusing a dog, it involves the dog being on top. Which is how Marl abused Apollo and why Apollo needed those front mittens specifically.

She specifically claims to know people who are attracted to certain animals more then people.

She specifically claims that zoophila is safe, that it rarely damages the genitals of humans or animals.

She specifically claims that horse vagina is tight enough to pleasure a human male.

She specifically claims that very few diseases can cross between species boundaries while engaging in Zoophilia.

She specifically claims that she enjoys 'doggysex', the same type of Zoophilia Marl trained the future family dog to engage in.

This isn't the words of an edgy devil's advocate. This is someone who knows what they're talking about. This is someone who would be able to recognize why the family dog wears mittens on the front paws.

I, personally, am not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was ignorant of the true reason Marl had Apollo wear those front mittens.

#floraverse #fox flux #foxflux #forbiddenflora #glip #glitchedpuppet #forbidden flora #pengosolvent

[bethanydelleman]

This is perhaps a silly question but did couples in Jane Austen's time always refer to each other by Mr./Mrs. Lastname? It's something I noticed with all of them (even Mrs. Elliot who is very liberal in that regard, much to Emma's dismay). And it's not just in company either, Mrs. Bennet does it in front of their daughters and Lady Bertram when she's alone with Sir Thomas. It just seems very cold and distant in modern times.

Yes, it does feel weird to us and yes that appears to be what they do. In addition, many of the children call their parents "sir" and "ma'am". This is a much more formal society. I would feel just as weird calling someone my own age “Miss Lastname”! However, I know a lot of couples who refer to themselves and their spouses as "Mom" and "Dad" instead of their actual names in front of their kids, so it’s not totally divorced from our society now.

Anyway, one of the reasons we don't know a lot of first names of parents is because they only call each other Mr. and Mrs. Lastname. The exceptions are Admiral Croft, who calls his wife Sophy (her name is Sophia) and Mary and Charles Musgrove. John Mullen argued in his book What Matters in Jane Austen that this shows the contempt that M&C have for each other, but they are almost always among family and they are the same generation as Anne, so that might be why they use their first names. Mrs. Croft never calls Admiral Croft his first name back, by the way.

There also may have been a change in manners between the earlier and later novels. We hear women call men “Lastname” in S&S and P&P, but not in the later novels, then only men use that short form. Emma is highly offended that Mrs. Elton would say “Knightley”, though that may have more to do with their recent intimacy than a social rule, and Mrs. Elton does always refer to her husband as “Mr.” even if she shortens his last name into “E.”

What I find very interesting is that if you pay attention to when Mr., Mrs., Miss, and names are used, you can see how one character thinks of another. Fanny Price always thinks of Mr. and Miss Crawford, never Henry and Mary, even when other characters become less formal around them. When Elizabeth talks to Wickham (post-marriage to Lydia), Wickham uses the informal “Darcy” but all Elizabeth’s thoughts use the formal “Mr. Darcy”. Mr. Bingley is just referred to as “Bingley” about 50% of the time, but “Darcy” only about 30%. This probably has to do with the characters disliking him, but also with his station in society. Even the narrator is respectful!

Which is why I actually love the formal names/Christian names dynamic because you can get so much information just by how people refer to each other. Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s friend, calls her “Eliza” and we can understand this as a representation of their intimacy. Yet when Caroline calls Elizabeth, “Miss Eliza”, it is rude, she hasn’t earned the privilege of a nickname. Similarly, Mary Crawford calling Miss Price “Fanny” before she is actually engaged to Henry is too much too soon, especially since Fanny has not extended this right in friendship.

And when Wentworth says, “but if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne.” It’s not just the praise, he says her first name. It is a sign, on second reading, that his feelings for her have returned.

Last note, given how formal Mr. Darcy is and how respectfully Elizabeth refers to him even when they are engaged, they are calling each other Mr. and Mrs. Darcy everywhere except the bedroom! At least that's what I suspect.

#question response #hope I actually answered you there #I find the name dynamics in Austen facsinating #I think there is a whole thesis in it #multiple thesises #thesi? #anyway I use this all the time in my JAFF #I spend so much time making sure even in thoughts people are being proper #my improper characters drop Miss in their thoughts #jane austen #formal names

[stayarmytinyzenmoa-l]

NCT Spooky Season [Day 12]

Tricky

TW: Genre: Romance, Comedy Pairing: Huang Renjun x Reader YN Pronouns: Not specified Word Count: 0.6K Prompt: Trick.

[NCT Masterlist] | [NCT Spooky Season Masterlist] | [Yesterday] | [Tomorrow] [Ao3 Link] | [Wattpad Link]

Notes: A little less "spooky" than usual hehe Disclaimer: Please remember that this is an AU and a work of fiction, obviously the idols mentioned/written about in this story would never partake in these actions. The idols mentioned in this work are meant to be seen more as face claims rather than the actual idols themselves.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!! Thank you for reading!

"Trick or treat!" The children sang. Renjun looked at them.

"Trick." And he shut the door. The children looked at each other for a second before Renjun opened the door again with a bowl of candy. "Gotcha," he hands the kids full-sized chocolate bars with a wide grin, and the kids, with grubby hands and excited eyes, happily accepted before skipping off.

"You know, Jun, you're going to make a kid cry when you do that one day," you shook your head.

"It's all in the timing, (Y/N)," he rests the bowl against his hip while he shuts the door. "Besides, look, I give out full chocolate bars! Well worth the trick," Renjun reasons.

"Fair enough," you hummed. Then came another ring on the doorbell. "Oh, next group," you handed Renjun a coin and he flipped it.

"Heads," he says. You pick up a different bowl of candy.

"Trick or treat!" The new group says.

"Happy Halloween!" You hand out the fun-size chocolate bars to the kids.

There was a bit of a tradition you and Renjun started when you first moved in together, a tradition that quickly spread throughout the neighborhood. Every time the doorbell would ring, you and Renjun would flip a coin. If it landed on heads, then you would give the kids fun-sized candy bars when they rang the doorbell. If it landed on tails then Renjun would open the door, answer 'Trick', and shut the door for a few seconds before handing out full-sized candy bars.

As far as you had overheard, it's become a bit of a game for the kids on Halloween, which meant that you and Renjun had to buy a lot of candy, especially when you started recognizing the costumes showing up on your doorstep. But, the best ones were the kids who would change costumes and come back to your house hoping they'd get the full candy bars.

And, as expected, the doorbell rang again and Renjun flipped the coin.

"Heads."

"Got it," you opened the door and saw the exact same set of kids from minutes earlier.

"Trick or treat!"

"You get treats," you handed them the candy again.

"Say, can the other one answer the door next time?" One of the kids ask and you break into laughter.

"The other one?" You laughed.

"Yes! The one with big candy bars!"

"We'll see," you handed candy to the last kid and closed the door. Seconds later, the doorbell rings again and you hear the coin flip behind you.

"Tails, they got lucky," Renjun hides the bigger candy bars and opens the door.

"The other one!" A kid exclaims.

"Trick or treat!" They all say together.

"Trick." Again, Renjun shuts the door with no candy and you both listen to the chaos that ensues outside.

"Stacy! You lied!" One of the kids cries.

"Yeah! You said the other one gives us big candy bars!"

"He does! I don't know why he didn't this time."

"At least we got these small ones..." Renjun waits a few seconds before opening the door.

"Here you go, guys, sorry, I had to pick up the bowl," Renjun hands them chocolate bars.

"See! I told you!" One of the girls dressed as a firefighter exclaims.

"Thank you, mister! Happy Halloween!" The one dressed as a dinosaur says.

"Happy Halloween!"

General Tag List: @stopeatread @bat-shark-repellant @raeincitizen @umbralhelwolf @yangsrose @kazooms @sadcoffeecritic 

NCT Tag List: @cherrylovr @minjiville 

If you want to be added to either tag list or removed just send me a reply to this post, and ask, or a DM and I’ll add you as soon as possible!

#nct #nct x reader #nct x you #nct x yn #nct u #nct u x reader #nct u x you #nct u x yn #nct dream #nct dream x reader #nct dream x you #nct dream x yn #renjun x reader #renjun x you #renjun x yn #my writings #nct spooky season

[qvietflight]

I will say that there is something to be said for the seemingly inconsistent (or at least choppy) characterization of the MC. This is actually my first visual novel game, so I just assume that the technical reason is the need to balance all 3 back stories with who theyre trying to portay the MC as...

However, my favourite watsonian reason for this is actually that the MC is a stressed out (ofc!!!) and hungry !!! So far I have seen them eat only twice in the game-- a breadstick and maybe a cookie if you go that route!

Now you do have a bit of beer, which in irl historically, was a general staple drink used because it is yeasty (mildly filling) and for water quality reasons. It had a variable alcohol content between almost no abv to about as much as is standard today. People drank A LOT of it, including children to some degree. I wonder which the writers wanted, given the... mutatative quality of the local water supply (3 eyed fish!)

Either way, even at standard abv, that 1 or less wore off long before we get a view of the senobium. At least theres some extra fuel on top of that 1 breadstick to get the MC through to lunch time, but then what? As a "hell hath no fury like me when Im hungry and mildly inconvenienced" sort of person (runs in the family funnily enough) I dont blame the MC for (possibly) getting a little snippy with Ais and some (potentially) poor judgement calls later!

AND THEN at the end of the day you have the option for another alcoholic drink. That is going RIGHT to your head.

So far, Ive only seen one interaction that seems genuinely out of place as far as the established characterization goes. I cant explain it with either hunger (which must be an underlying constant) or the second alcohol option (anyway its optional.) I havent seen everything yet, but a 1 off isnt too bad.

#tlk to text.exe #touchstarved theory #touchstarved game

[historia-vitae-magistras]

How aware do you think the kids are of their father, uncles and aunt’s childhood? I can see both it being an unspoken thing, but then a drunk Rhys or Arthur occasionally letting something slip. And would they ever talk about their mother?

I think stories from what Arthur considers his halycon childhood between the 1st and 4th century C.E have slipped through. Even with the Roman invasion and the displacements it caused and Boudicca's revolt that literally scorched themselves into a layer of ash still visible today in English archaeology, he remembers being relatively protected and high status both in the Roman world and in the British. Britain under the Roman empire wasn't the most important place in the empire but there were a lot of natural resources the British exploited, and conflict along the borders of northern England and southern Scotland made and unmade several emperors, with at least one being crowned in England iirc. Eirian was forced to negotiate with Lucius (a tentative name for Rome) about Rhys and Arthur but she did keep all four of them close. So Arthur remembers her and references her most when doing human activities done even in a modified sense, since the dawn of time. Things like spinning weaving and ship building he learned at her hand even if his memories of that are kind of bundled into Brighid too. The first apple crop after the Romans introduced them to England, the emptying of the beehives for winter storage, being taught to draw his bow against his cheek and shoot straight. Being scolded for running off without his cloak because he was a high energy ambitious little shit who never thought things through. Those things and the mentions or her make it into his children's lives.

They're less aware of who Eirian was as a person because Arthur especially looks at his earliest years under her guiding hand with rose coloured glasses so thick he's looking at anything pre 500s like this. But they are aware of her existence.

He leaves out the headhunting or maybe not really human sacrifice (the mine level amount of salt I have with the popular interpretation of Lindow man is kind of insane.) He leaves out executions and exile, torture and terror. Eirian loved her children in the way Boudicca did. The kind of love that leaves scorch marks in the earth for millennia. Her death was 1000 years before any of Alfred's generation came into being but considering that craters leave marks millions of years later, she's a presence.

It is a lot of So much of what we consider "Celtic" today is a result of the Celtic revival of the 19th century. Most profoundly in Ireland, but also to a fairly wide extent in Scotland, Wales and surprisingly for me who studied the lionization of the Anglo-Saxons by the British empire, England as well. So Eirian was a shadowy but present figure. The diaspora in the U.S. Canada, Australia and NZ often being referred too as Anglo-celtic gives me brain rot. This perception of her as viewed by children, particularly Arthur, something still concrete and visible. A lot of who Eirian was surrounded this lot as they're growing up. Just in Arthur's Manor house I think there are post holes from roundhouses, reused Romano-British masonry in the first floor, Viking age bodies in the back garden. At least one statue of her that either survived when the anglos saxons reused old Roman and British villas or that was uncovered in church foundations or even an actual pig sty (this actually happens) is around the house.

Also... There's one headcanon I've had for a very long time where he always waits for them to wake up and start breathing again if it happens around him. Sitting vigil through a long night, turning the other way when Matt outright leaves to go check on Alfred and watching him carefully for answers when he returns. He searched Matt's face for what news, what despair, what relief marked his expression when he returned from tugging Alfred's corpse from the piles of dead at Antietam. And that, I think, stems from Brittania's death. When the sun went dark in the sky and pestilence followed hot on the heels of famine and their mother did not wake. Not that last time however it happened. And that may be burned into their perception of their own deaths.

Tldr: God I'm never going to recover from the brain rot that one asinine piece of dialogue from the dub gave me.

Matt: "My Grandma taught me the true power of the maple leaf!"

Alfred: "Your Grandma sounds hot!"

#the ask box || probis pateo #hws mama brittania #hws england #britannia and her children || they made a desert and called it peace #arthur and the children || bilge rat and his bouncing baby bilge rats

[choices-binglebonkus]

Top Ten Annoying Children in Choices

There are many children encountered throughout the Choices universe, some more palatable than others. Though they’re all arguably some degree of annoying, this list ranks the top ten of the most annoying children. At least, in my opinion, anyway. So sit back, relax, and read as a 21 year-old grad school student with real life responsibilities tears fictional children to shreds.

10. The Heir.

The Heir is unique in that she’s the only directly customizable child on this list with six different sprites you can choose for her regardless of your own appearance. Throughout TRH and TRF, I can truthfully say I didn’t find anything endearing about her. Like, at all. It certainly didn’t help that PB wrote her like they write animals. But her personality did get slightly better as she aged as the books went on. The same cannot be said about her appearance, however. In fact, I’d say her appearance got worse as the books went on. The Heir as a baby looks perfectly fine. The Heir as a toddler looks like she’d infect me with COVID-19 by spitting a half-chewed chicken nugget into my coffee. And The Heir as a four year-old looks like she’d beat me unconscious with a cane and call me “whippersnapper”.

9. Daughter (MOTY).

Our daughter in MOTY is actually the only child on this list with a genuinely good design. She looks genuinely cute, and that is high praise from someone who doesn’t think kids are cute. I was also sympathetic to her plight as she didn’t fit in well at school and found herself perpetually bullied. However, PB wrote her in such an obnoxious way that I just couldn’t help but be annoyed by her. She’s a gifted and incredibly smart child, but PB could’ve written her so, so much better. To me, she just came across as a slightly less obnoxious Brainy Smurf because of how badly her dialogue and writing were done.

8. Taari.

Taari was a Nothing Character, plain and simple. He didn’t add anything to Endless Summer, and he didn’t appear much at all, which is why he’s not very high on the list. But my god. This kid had practically no sense of self-preservation and Seraxa constantly had to bail his ass out of danger and scold him for getting himself into it in the first place. Kinda like another kid who’s much, much higher on the list, but more on that later.

7. Camellia.

Camellia didn’t appear much at all, but when she did, GOD was she annoying. She mostly appeared in RoE where she and Jiro were constant obstacles during Jess’s job as a tour guide, though she was much less of a brat than Jiro was.

6. Bartie.

You knew going into this list that Bartie would appear here. You knew. Let me summarize it. Annoying family, hideous design as a baby, whiny as fuck, named after Barthelemy. Though interestingly enough, I’d say he and Bianca are the least detestable of the Walker family, which really says a lot.

5. Lula Jacobs.

Kids have no place in horror stories unless they’re integral to the plot, as is the case with ILITW and THoBM. Lula serves absolutely no purpose in Bloodbound and isn’t even remotely endearing. In addition to her character adding nothing of substance to the story, our character is forced to care for her just because. Also? She’s fucking creepy, man.

4. Jiro.

We’re reaching the really annoying ones now. Jiro, like Camellia, mainly appears in RoE as an obstacle during Jess’s job as a tour guide. Unlike Camellia, though, he is almost always the one who causes trouble. He whines, he tries to throw spitballs, he splashes Camellia on the boat ride, and is generally a nuisance during any of his appearances.

3. Augustus Blackwood.

Augustus “August” Blackwood is Vanessa Blackwood’s insufferable, classist little shit of a son. He bullies the main character’s daughter and doesn’t have a pleasant bone in his body. As someone who was bullied myself, I wanted nothing more than for Luz Mendez to punt this little asshole into the sun. He would have been number #1 on this list if he’d appeared more and had a bigger role because I know my annoyance would’ve gone up if he had.

2. Isaac & Lyra Achilles.

Yes. These are two kids. However, due to them being twins, ALWAYS appearing together, and having the exact same personalities, I’m ranking them as one entity. Anyway, these kids are spoiled rotten, uncouth, uncontrollable, arrogant, and remorseless. They are ungrateful little leeches and I was so happy to get rid of them. I cannot stand spoiled children. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.

1. May.

But Binglebonkus, why is May your number one over these spoiled, entitled little brats? Well, hypothetical person, I’m so glad you asked. While May’s personality is at least pleasant, she has ZERO self-preservation and the most insane plot armor out of anyone in Choices when there’s no reason for her to even have any in the first place. She regularly gets herself into grave danger, forcing others to risk their lives to help her. Feather lost his status as an Elder saving her life, so you’d think she’d be at least a little more careful, right?

Apparently not. We have to save her several times throughout the book and even spend a sizable chunk of one chapter during a battle trying to chase after her and get her to safety. But that’s not even the end of it. Remember how I said children have no place in horror stories unless they’re integral to the plot? May adds nothing to the story like Lula Jacobs, and also like Lula, our character is forced to care for her WAAAAAY more than they really should. The only things that endear her to the player are that she’s super young and presumably orphaned.

With all that being said, PB constantly pushes May-centric diamond scenes on us. Gather plants with May. Buy May this plushie. Tell May a story. Build flower beds with May. PB seems to have wanted May to be like Clementine from The Walking Dead and have us care for her and want to protect her, so they tried to achieve that by pushing diamond scenes with her.

Unlike Clementine, though, May is an incredible liability. Yes, she apparently knows about plants and gardening, but she constantly endangers herself and others, making her unquestionably more of a liability than an asset.

To recap: while her personality is pleasant, I loathe May because she adds nothing to the story whilst being an unrealistic character in that she constantly endangers herself and others while somehow surviving every encounter no matter how severe (like being the only person the Queen didn’t eat, which I call bullshit on) and receives nothing more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist from anyone who has to haul her ass out of trouble. And of course, everyone still unquestionably adores her even after she nearly gets them killed trying to save her for the umpteenth time.

Basically, May is a veritable waste of manpower and resources and could have been a good character, but she was a garbage one instead.

#long post #ranking list #I was bored #making these lists is an outlet for me #that and I didn’t want to start this week’s homework #choices stories you play #playchoices #choices stories we play #pixelberry #pixelberry studios #playchoices fandom #choices stories you play fandom #choices stories we play fandom #the royal heir #wake the dead #mother of the year #rules of engagement #the royal romance #endless summer #bloodbound