#well it will be ok even without the readmore eventually

[thoughtfulfangirling]

2023 Reads

A new year means a new book list! I don't think I can top my 2022 count, but that's okay! I'm not totally sure what my reading goals this year will actually be, but I guess I'll sort it out on the way! XD For future reads, here's my 2024 list!

Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass+

The Bear and the Nightengale - of the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden

The Secrets We Keep - Mia Hayes

Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal - Patty Loew+

The First Sister - Linden A. Lewis^

The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury~

Fin Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn^

How Long 'til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin

Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin^

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin*

Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, and Littke-Known Stories form History - Tricia Martineau Wagner+

The Mysteries of Thorn Manor - Margaret Roberson%

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space - Amanda Leduc+

Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson^

She Who Became the Sun~ - Shelley Parker-Chan*

The Witch King - H.E. Edgmon^

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree*

Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin^

The Adventures of Amina El-Serafi - S.A. Chakraborty

Humankind: A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman+

The Folk Keeper - Frannie Billingsly*%

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens - (Suzy) Eddie Izzard+

Juniper & Thorn - Ava Reid

Upright Women Wanted - Sarah Gailey%

I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary MacLane+

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut~

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights - Molly Smith & Juno Mac+

The Woman in White - Wilke Collins^

King of Battle and Blood - Scarlett St. Clair

Sarah - J.T. LeRoy^

The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros^

Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi

Always the Almost - Edward Underhill

All Systems Red - Martha Wells%

The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Nevada - Imogen Binnie

A Dowry of Blood - S. T. Gibson

The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli

The Second Rebel - Linden A Lewis

Get a Life Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert

The Hero and the Crown* - Robin McKinley

What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing - Bruce D Perry & Oprah Winfrey+^

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorne

The Eye of the Heron - Ursula K Leguin

Artificial Condition -Martha Wells%

The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert%

Crown Duel - Sherwood Smith*

Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells%

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self Involved Parents - Lindsay C Gibson+

Wildcat: The Untold Story of Pearl Hart, the Wild West's Most Notorious Woman Bandit - John Boessenecker+

The History of Wales - History Nerds+%

Ander & Santi Were Here - Jonny Garza Villa

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls^

Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire^

The Gilda Stories - Jewelle Gomez

Irish Fairy and Folk Tails - Various+

The Dead and the Dark - Courtney Gould

Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman and Beth Scott+

The Other Black Girl - Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Ruins - Scott Smith

He Who Drowned the World - Shelley Parker-Chan

Fledgling - Octavia Butler

Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend - Mark Collins Jenkins+

The Vampyre - John Polidori%

This is Halloween - James A Moore

Sorrowland - Rivers Soloman

The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion - Margaret Killjoy%

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey^

One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston*

The Last Hero - Linden A. Lewis

Lovelight Farms - B. K. Borison

Reindeer Falls Collection: Volume One - Jana Aston

Currently reading: One Last Stop (Audiobook to help me sleep XD)

Nonfiction is annotated by + A Re-read is annotated by * A book completed from the list below is annotated by ^ A Read with Empty will be annotated by ~ A Novella %

My current, loose and not that interesting goal for this year is to really work on the books I have current access to right now... at the start of this year. Because it's a lot XD This means books currently favorite in Scribd, on my StoryGraph 'to read' pile, or a book I currently own on my shelves. Main goal is at least one of these a month.

For my own personal reference, I'm putting a list of such books below to hold myself accountable.

Edit: Now the end of 2023, and here's a breakdown of my goal to read books I already had access to at the start of 2023:

I didn't read one a month per se, but I got more than 12 done, so I call this a win. These books are:

-Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorn -The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros -Finn Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn -The First Sister by Linden A Lewis (proceeded by the other two in the series) -Get a Life, Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert -The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls -Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman & Beth Scott -Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson -I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary McClane -The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert -Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin -Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey -Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin -Nevada - Imogen Binnie -The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli -Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire -The Ruins - Scott Smith -The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller -Sarah - J.T. LeRoy -Vampire Forensics - Mark Collins Jenkins -What Happened to You? - Oprah Winfrey -The Witch King - H. E. Edgmon -The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The books I did not get around to reading from this list are as follows: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho; Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye (o); The Book of M by Peng Shepard (o); Charity and Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves (o); The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (a); The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (s); Fallen by Lauren Kate (o); Fanny Hill by John Cleland (o); Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender (s); The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea (s); The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith (o); Helping Her Get Free by Susan Brewster (o); The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang (s); Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (o); The Merry Spinster by Daniel Lavery (o); On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (o); The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (s); Radiance by Grace Draven (a); Watching the Tree by Adeline Yen Mah (o); The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (s); Wings of Fire (o); Witches Steeped in Gold by Clannon Smart (o); The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (s)

23/46 Whoa! That's exactly 50% of the books I had on my list! That's pretty cool! All in all, I consider this 2023 goal successfully done!

#tf reads #2023 reads #books #yearly lists #long post #well it will be ok even without the readmore eventually #reading #my reading index

[lucabyte]

obligatory ramble about postcanon loop ask

also your art is amazing

Hiiiiiiiii :D thank you :)!!

and thank you for the excuse to post the. just absolute wall of text that i truncated down to form the tags of that post. (i did,,, hit the tag limit. i forgot tumblr had one of those...) so let me just paste that and tidy it up a bit...

I am putting this under a readmore because it's a bit long. but:

This is like. The General Context for all* of my postcanon doodles? (Except AUs obviously) Like this is the base idea I've been drawing them all in. So, feel free to backread with this in mind. I've basically had this 'postcanon' timeline set in my brain since finishing the game...

My general thoughts are that I like the idea of Loop (even if through dubiously ethical means) being able to slowly reintegrate with the party as a whole new person, because they are, in fact, their own person.

It's a muddle of thematic threads im pulling on and "wouldn't it be fucked up if", but. (at its core, it's powered by the fact that like, while narratively isat's theme of 'the only person who can truly take the first step to help you is yourself'. (wrt: loop helping the party help siffrin in act 5) which i LOVE AND IS GREAT NARRATIVELY…. would be super fucked up irl to learn that your friend 'learned as a lesson' while you stood by kinda uselessly. I know i'd be upset about it. but thats mostly background here. doesn't really come up. at least not until loop has to explain who they are and the party realises they had to fall back on literally themselves again for help, but i digress,)

The real core concept is: Occam's razor. It is like, inherently, a buckwild thing to accuse a person of being somehow a clone or copy of your friend. Even if they start vaguely alluding to a backstory it's far more likely they were some other person before all that. (I still think Odile has that theory in the back pocket but she's rational enough to know it's a really long shot without a solid explanation. and i think Loop deep down knows this, and would, if cornered into confessing, turn the situation around to go J'ACCUSE and make HER explain it instead. Ever longer dodging being direct with their emotions...)

And the party are nice! And if someone has changed and wants to keep stuff secret it's kind of not their business? (Though it's hard not to speculate… see: the main joke of the doodles) And they seem important to Siffrin so they just try to accept them abrasive quirks and all. And eventually the question of their prior identity just fades away since, well, they're Loop. Their friend Loop.

but yeah. personal headcanon is that a few months/weeks after picking up and getting aquainted with Nille** (since that was presumably the IMMEDIATE TASK postgame), Loop reappears (either after a literal period of nonexistance, or just spending a few months wandering the french countryside alone being attacked by wild dogs). Since Siffrin has had a while to be therapised by the party they're doing mostly okay, but Loop showing up and still being agitated/aggressive pulls them both into a bit of a backslide behaviourally and puts the party on the back foot again.

Hooowever, I do think that due to no longer being literally stewing in the worst pressure cooker of all time together, the two do mostly actually sort themselves out with productive conversation. (Via a cycle of: genuinely distressing argument -> weeeird lovebombing -> ok we're good -> repeat, that gets less intense over time)

Thus, allowing the party to just. Integrate loop as a new person. They and Siffrin shuffle into different ecological niches (Loop taking over stuff Siffrin is now too squeamish for, etc (see: hunting, mostly)), and while it's not exactly what Loop wanted they generally get that beggars can't be choosers and it's a pretty good deal. And the rest of the party does straight up just like them as a friend, especially when Loop quits trying to actively antagonise them after a few weeks of being around them, since they just can't keep up being mean to people they like forever.

As for how I think the truth eventually drags itself out. This is where I invoke The Isabeau Torment Nexus™. So its gonna get shippy here for a bit hold on.

Which is, I think giving them time before Loop reappears long enough that Siffrin and Iseabeau actually manage to become established, Isabeau has to be the one to nudge the pair of them and go. "Hey. You know we're in Vaugarde right. I'm okay with polyamory if we all communicate." Before Loop and Siffrin actually even acknowledge that whatever the fuck they have going on kinda looks a lot like a relationship of some kind. (or have already been agonising about that via fighting and arguing, depending) (Obviously this comes after Isa "Emotionally intelligent enough to keep a lid on the jealousy" Beau has managed to use that big brain of his to Not just go Scream somewhere on the daily because oh godddd they keep talking like theyre suicide-baiting each other jesus chriiist. is it overstepping his boundaries to bring that up?? god)

This, taking a bunch of the tension out of Loop and Isabeau's relationship (Since I imagine Loop is a. being weird for the obvious reasons and b. feeling kinda guilty about 'getting in the way of' Siffrin and Iseabeau), allows them to actually get close in a normal friend way. (I think an interesting turning point could be Isabeau actually taking Loop's side in an argument vs Siffrin, which would absolutely break Loop's brain. Especially if it's an argument that matters. Like what do you mean he isn't just going to play favourites. What?)

Then Isabeau, just actually open minded and charmed by Loop (and maybe even somewhat at Siffrin's suggestion?) tries to close the final open side on the polyamory triangle here and that's the final straw for Loop on "This lie by omission is too unethical to keep up, this is just actually sick and wrong. I can't do this while he doesn't know who I am." Though. Obviously it probably goes. Very poorly with emotions high like that. And the added element of several months of deceit. Getting dark here for a second but that dagger is going MISSING and so are THEY for a hot minute.

Then yaaay everything works out in the end 👍 yippieee!! all it took was maybe a lot of harrowed recontextualisation of all the weird shit your new friend said and did when it turns out they're your old friend. It's fine.

But yeah. this is basically the context all of my postcanon doodles have existed within? And those exist to give other people something to chew on. So this does too.

I suppose TL;DR: Imagine if sloopis almost fucking happens before isabeau knows who loop is. can you fucking imagine. can you imagine having to navigate that. nightmare.

*Yes this includes the implied cannibalism comic. Uhh. Comes part and parcel with headcanoning that Loop went way off the deep end similar to A5 Sif But Maybe Worse before giving in. Add weepy half-asleep confessions to murder wherever you see fit in your mind palace. 👍👍👍

**Re: Nille footnote. I don't have anywhere to put this besides here! I have some thoughts on Loop and Nille having an odd dynamic. I don't imagine Nille to be super gung-ho on trusting a bunch of adults (even if they are majority around her age) given their implied backstory. It's probably a big shock to the system, especially since Bambouche is a good couple hundred Kilometers up north from Dormont and these guys don't seem to have trains. She would've been unfrozen and without Bonnie for some time....

Which is to say: I think she's suspicious of them. I think she may be looking for excuses to distance herself, keep Bonnie safe. SO.... A new guy showing up? And antagonising the party? What do they know that I don't...? I should find out.

And since... Loop didn't ever know Nille, they have no ammunition or real reason to be cruel. Plus, if they're trying to stay on Bonnie's good side (SINCE... if Bonnie thought Loop was cringe they may as well kill themselves. In their mind.) they SUPER have no reason to antagonise Nille.

Mostly, they might be able to open up to each other easier than they can the rest of the party?

I feel like this resolves with Loop feeling compelled to apologise for what they and Siffrin let happen to Bonnie, though... Hmm... Depends on how you interpret Nille that they'd be glad nobody else had been told about that yet, or furious it had been secret this long. I lean toward the former.

#PHEW THIS IS LONG. i wrote some extra footnotes and tidied it up a bit. but uh. here you go! my personal headcanon baseline for postcanon. #i could probably elaborate more but that would get unwieldy. like i have opinions on loop's dynamics w each party member but. LONG POST... #lucabytetalks #isat #isat spoilers #in stars and time #isat loop #isiloop #sloopis #WONT be tagging everyone thats absurd. loop centric post though with a chunk about nille at the end #isat act 6 spoilers

[jerreeeeeee]

there's nothing inherently wrong or unhealthy with a platonic relationship being the most intimate and important in someone's life (whether that person is also in a romantic relationship or not). this has been said before but people still treat it like its true. ESPECIALLY that a prioritized platonic relationship belies “codependency” even though no one would bat an eye at the exact same dynamic if it were romantic, because of the idea that a prioritized platonic relationship is somehow immature/unhealthy and something to grow out of/move on from.

the idea that the twins just go, well, you've been the person i felt safest loving and trusting in my entire life, our souls have been bound by fate and magic and our love for one another is one of the strongest bonds in the multiverse, transcending death and unimaginable loss, the motivation behind everything we’ve ever done, but since we're both in romantic relationships now and the story is over, the reasonable and in-character thing to do would be to split up and have separate nuclear families because that's the "healthy thing" (read: expected thing). there's no other form of a domestic happy ending than a marriage and typical nuclear family. you're everything to me, my entire world, my heart, see you later.

ok this got too long i'm putting it under a readmore.

(also why i don't really like the idea that taako adopts angus. "parent" is not the only important, loving role an adult can play in a child's life but people feel that need to shove everything into a nuclear family. also taako has too much going on to be the good parent that angus needs anyway. and magnus and lucretia are right there. but this is another post <- this is actually a fan fiction i’m writing, kind of)

i just find that frankly silly. i truly believe that the twins live together for the rest of their lives and are always each others' most important person (before anyone kills me i do think barry is there too. they also both love him so much. capacity for love INCREASES there’s no need for a replacement or a “moving on” it’s an addition). there's not any reason they wouldn't live together other than that it’s not “normal?” but why would they give a shit about that. their prioritization of one another isn't the unhealthy thing about their relationship. they do have other stuff going on that's actually codependent, but i think they eventually work past it and come to have a healthier (yet no less close) relationship. actually this post was originally just supposed to be about those codependent tendencies but i felt like i needed to compensate by clarifying that there are only a very specific few things abt their dynamic i find unhealthy and that by and large they’re fine, actually.

the main thing is, as is so succinctly put in this post—they aren't able to communicate about big, important decisions. not to say they never communicate about anything, i think they actually do communicate effectively about a lot of things—warning i’m going into a complete tangent here—i see a lot an idea that they’re not siblings who hug or really verbalize affection at all which is crazy to me (<- personal opinion alert) like they’re closed off and distrusting (taako more than lup, but she’s certainly not exempt from their trauma) to other people and the world at large but they have always always been each other’s exception, each other’s utmost safe place, the one person they could be absolutely comfortable around, who they never have to be afraid of. that’s one of the things i find so compelling about them, that they trust each other with their entire selves. they have no reason to ever feel defensive around each other. oh to be known so entirely and intimately and never feel ashamed or afraid of judgement or abandonment. augh. so i do think they hug.

also—i don't think they're unhealthily codependent in the sense that they "don't know how to be a person without each other" like that's certainly not true for lup and i don't really think it's true for taako either. they have their own distinct personalities and identities they just also both inform each others’ lives. they're an integral part of each other's identity the way your family or best friend or partner or most important person in your life is but again i think that's fine.

but back to the topic at hand anyway they DO hide their misgivings from each other when it comes to huge shit with world-changing, life-threatening consequences lol. when it comes to, like, turning herself into a lich, or leaving to recover her dangerous magical artifact, lup feels like she needs to be entirely decisive and confident for taako, and when it comes to his sister turning herself into a lich, or proposing a dangerous magical artifact plan, taako feels like he needs to be unflinchingly supportive and loyal for lup. and those both backfire obviously. because they trust each other so completely that they don't trust each other enough to not trust each other. weird paradox.

but really its not a lack of trust in each other its their own insecurities projected onto each other. lup second guesses herself but feels like she can’t express that uncertainty so she’s alone with her doubts which increases the pressure and stress and creates a feedback loop that only makes her more insecure. and taako feels like he doesn’t have anything to bring to the table other than backing up lup and is afraid doubting her would hurt her which means he never has an opportunity to find out he does actually have good ideas and that lup would listen to him constructively. but it manifests in lup “not trusting taako” to have her back even if she doubts herself and taako “not trusting lup” to take criticism even if his idea is good.

and honestly i think the solution to this codependency just comes with… not being in those lifethreatening situations anymore. the universe was saved and they have normal (magical fantasy world) lives. so now when they’re hiding things from each other the stakes are a lot lower. and when the stakes are lower they’re able to express uncertainty because they don’t feel that extreme and terrifying pressure anymore. lup doesn’t have to make impossible decisions and stick to them despite any doubt because she doesn’t have the survival of entire worlds on her back anymore. taako doesn’t have to always agree with lup and uncritically support her every choice because he’s not the only thing holding her together from oblivion anymore. so they're able to express doubts and nothing falls apart and they're actually stronger for it. and they’re already doing so much work on fixing their relationship just from being separated and kinda grieving for a decade too, so they eventually work past that.

and also because they have to face those insecurities and their consequences. lup got trapped in umbrella limbo for a decade and taako had his life destroyed. if lup had been able to overcome her need to put everything on her shoulders and expressed uncertainty, if taako had been able to overcome his blind loyalty and expressed doubt, would they have gone through with the relics? would they have even gone through with the lich plan? they realize only afterward that they should’ve talked about it, and so they learn from their mistakes.

another tangent—isn’t it so crazy how, by any standard, lup should be the strongwilled, passionate, heroic protagonist and taako her cynical, pragmatic, yet loyal sidekick? and yet he’s the protagonist and she the supporting character in the actual narrative? so subversive and intriguing. i cant believe this was all masterfully and purposefully written. anyway. (<- in the in-universe metanarrative version of the story, lup [and honestly, probably davenport] is the tragic ghost who haunts the narrative and lucretia & barry are the morally gray protagonist foils, and tres horny boys are supporting characters/comic relief who go on to have their own semi-important b-plot arcs that ultimately serve to further the protagonists’ arcs. btw.)

back to the twins. i also think they don't only grow post-canon, i think they grow a LOT during the century, because in the beginning, they're coming from a life where they have been not only the most important people in each other's lives, but the ONLY people in each other's lives. and now they're suddenly faced with more people, which they handle fine individually, more or less—lup is faster to warm up to the others, but even though taako's attitude is very much that he only cares about him and his, he is capable of expanding the people who are "his" (eventually). but they've never had to bring other people into their dynamic with each other before.

i don't think either of them are possessive, their relationship is built on deepest mutual respect and love and trust and "possessiveness" is kinda antithetical to that, but they can both be jealous on occasion. although there is a difference—lup is the only one who will outwardly display jealousy (and maybe a better word than jealousy would be insecurity), again because of the dynamic earlier: taako must always support whatever decisions lup makes without question. so when taako dies one cycle and all of a sudden merle and magnus and everyone else grieve him too, lup feels a sense of ownership over grief (not over taako himself, but over loving taako, just because no one else ever really has before, and she’s never had to think about the possibility that he might love other people too) that she initially may not challenge but does eventually let go of, because it's actually a good thing that other people love him now, and bringing new people into their family doesn’t make their love for each other any less. and taako has a similar experience but tbh i think its a little easier for him bc, like, who wouldn’t love lup, and lup loves other people way more freely than taako does (still not super freely, its a low bar). not that lup thinks taako is unloveable OBVIOUSLY (taako does think he’s unloveable tho) i just think they have different attitudes abt it, like they both have the moments of “but you don’t love them as much as i do!!” which is true, no one loves them as much as they do, but taako’s more willing to let that shit go bc he just doesn’t care as much what the others do as long as they don’t fuckin bother him about it. like lup sees the others equate (as she sees it, but oc they’re not actually grieving At Her) their (comparatively shallow) grief to her world-shattering loss of her best friend, only family, soulmate, silly rabbit, and she gets angry about it, but taako’s reaction is more like, “ok they’re stupid. who cares.” meanwhile and more importantly, all of a sudden lup is falling in love with barry, but taako's not one to throw a fit or demand that he's the only one who can love lup nor the only one lup can love. she’s made her decision. he just gives barry advice and lets it quietly hurt and draws distant, because he has a deep seated fear of abandonment that is now, for the first time, clashing with his unshakable trust in lup. and their relationship irrevocably changes but maybe not for the worse, because taako has, for the first time, doubted lup, a disruption to their typical (codependent) dynamic. but, of course, in the end his fears are unfounded and lup pulls him back in, because their capacity for love increases—of course lup still loves him just as much and yknow what, so does barry, and so does the rest of the crew. so he doubts and fears and is proven wrong. and so they grow and change, and their world increases from two to seven.

but that doubt doesn’t really go away for a long time, exacerbated and strained the more lup keeps secrets (especially with barry) until it reaches a head when lup finally doubts taako and does truly abandon him. but again, of course, never on purpose and never forever, they find their way back to each other despite everything and, again, come away stronger for it. the idea that the twins’ relationship is never as close again after story and song is so fucking tragic and heartrending but really i just think its unrealistic. because the rift between them is what caused their pain in the first place, of course they wouldn’t just shrug and move on. they would do anything for each other, including a lot of difficult emotional work and healing. for a little while they do have to deal with the reality that they’re not as close as they were. but they can be again. it just takes time and effort.

but anyway just to drive my point home—we mostly see taako's side of it since he is the protagonist in the real world narrative, but lup is always, always positioned within that narrative as his most important person. (and even then, lup says as much for taako! she loves barry of course but she loves taako so much he’s her heart!!) when thb see their lives after the hunger in paloma's prophecy, taako sees himself cooking with lup. she's textually representative of healing and joy in his future, and she's the main character present in his epilogue too. she's his greatest loss and his greatest love, positioned in exactly the same place as julia and merle's kids. there are a myriad of love stories going on in balance and a myriad of love stories involving taako that are all beautiful and significant in their own right but i really do think the main one in his life is lup!!

well all that to say they’re my favorite little critters ever and i’m studying them under a microscope forever. how do you end posts

#whateverrrrr i’m just going to post this even though its rambling #anyway. promise im still writing my fan fictions. i just have been having too many thoughts been unable to condense them #writing this shit into an actual fic is much more satisfying and rewarding but its also sooo hard #bc i have to employ ‘subtlety’ and ‘nuance’ and ‘thoughtful writing’ instead of train of consciousness word vomit. sad! #i’ll never not be insane about them btw #taz taako #taz lup #taz #taz balance #taaco twins #lup #taako #mine #the twins #analysis #also um i know i mentioned barry and not kravitz. and thats because. well. i’m not sure what to do with him. #i think its chapter 12 of solace? thats literally just about him its already written its like 6k words and it resolves absolutely nothing #i’ll figure out how i think he fits in someday maybe

[rontra]

I have a question about CTDE zatanna's backstory. How do you interpret the medulla jewel? I mean both the impact it has on her story and powers. Also does the hidden city play a big role or not really?

zatanna nation alive and well in my inbox today... welcome... and you're activating my CTDE Ramble Mode 😭 here we go again (puts in a readmore) but thank you for asking!

god the fucking medulla jewel. i mean the thing is.

i MEAN. the THING is.

even DC didn't really seem to know how to interpret that thing. it's shown up like twice or whatever Back In The Day and it was all quite vague and then they stopped talking about it forever. so it never really crossed my mind as something i should factor in to be honest 😭 but now that it's been brought up i'm considering if it might be useful in some way...

well, CTDE Zee's power level has always been primarily a result of her immense experience (never ask a magician her age), which is plenty sufficient for my general purposes. her long training, lived experience, and intricate know-how are the main vehicle, wrapped around an engine of her raw magical power. taking the medulla jewel as a type of magical power source (as presented), it might serve as a means to support the immense pool of resources at her disposal...

primarily i would hate for it to be the Sole Culprit behind her strength since there are Other Reasons she's like this (lol) but i think it could definitely be a Factor (and help explain the truly Zany stunts Arc 3 demands of her, which are so immense they almost kill her lmao)

...i suppose there's a few ways to conceptualize it for my purposes without sundering the 'verse like for example

the jewel is an "innate source of magic" that actively supplies her with a constant flow of power

the jewel is a "battery" that passively stores excess power to be used whenever needed

the jewel is a "philosopher's stone" that transmutes base magic into effective spells directly, circumventing traditional casting methods/costs (essentially, casting for free)

the jewel is a "lens" that focuses magic and gives spells a buff to concentrated power, like a magnifying glass under the sun

something else or a combination

for my purposes and the role she plays in the AU, a combination of #2 and #3 feels more compelling to me than something like #1. Since the CTDE is running "magic always has a cost" rules, a big thing about zee's bad vibe is her non-committal relationship with actually paying—if the medulla jewel provides an innate "bank" of some magical resource, which she can choose to "trade" with the universe in order to immediately cast For Free, that suits her type just fine. her coin on a string for the vending machine of magic, if you will

but it should have a theoretical limit, so making it a "battery pool" that runs low Eventually and needs to recharge (by skimming magic off the world around her) is OK. how to manage her bank of resources—whether to do regular safe invocation or cosmic trickery or just cast from her cheater freebie pool—should be (at least in theory) a choice she makes when bending the universe around her

(her level is so immense that in like 99% of cases she could just freecast without thinking about it) (but the 1% of spells that she needs to Actually Think About is what we're concerned with preserving, so that's still okay)

if she has that funny thing built-in, she probably spent a lot of her training time refining and practicing how to use it and how magic interacts with it. which means she would probably have to Know About All Of That beforehand. which brings us back to the Hidden City Sindella Lore huh.

well when it comes to her parents and stuff, CTDE Zee does play the same general tune--so it's possible some variation of Sindella's Fun Battery Pack plot did happen. this part of the CTDE backstory i havent really delved into bc it hasn't been relevant/important to the main plot of the AU but honestly.... maybe it would be fun to tinker with those components and assemble something

if a variant version of that did happen and sindella was being used to power the hidden city's hidden city-ing, zee would know enough to refine her own Working Relationship with the Magic Brainstone. but also i did Simply Assume and mark sindella as "dead" in my chart earlier, so it probably didn't end much better for herBHJDJMKS

ahhh... we hardly knew ye...

if a version of that stuff happened its probably backstory/not SUPER foreground to her present-time CTDE storyline . since she has some other major shit going on nowadays . but it mightve still been a pretty important part of the backstory...hmm....

it might even prove useful for me down the road, in plotting some of the foggy areas, maybe? i could probably use a hidden city or two, they're convenient to have aroundHDHJBFD

(imagining fondly) the peak Evil Motherhood Theme moment of the CTDE will be when zee takes everyone back to the hidden city and is like Yeah so they sucked my mom DRY here and NOT in a good way. she Died! & theyre all like "ohhh. this is why youre like this"

haha no idk..hm... it's compelling. i'll have to think of a way to use it. if nothing else youve given me something to think about.... in my zee cave...

#CTDE #why is this post so long. for a ROCK? in her BRAIN??? im so sorry #(zatanna voice) of course it goes without saying that I am hopelessly dependent on the jewel

[nyaagolor]

Your SV headcanons are a pure delight to read through. May I ask two questions?

Which ScaVio character do you think or would consider a 'horse girl'? I personally HC Rika as one (she deserves to ride a Mudsdale alongside Geeta and her Gogoat Esmeraldo).

What do you think Arven's Mabosstiff's relationship would be with Nemona & Penny and vice versa? Arven had one-sided beef with Nemona and probably didn't get along with Penny at first, but I wonder how Mabosstiff would feel about those two? At least I do think their interactions would lean towards the positive for the most part. What you do think?

You can ask as many questions as you want i loveeeeee asks. Also WAUGH thank u for the kind words ᏊˊꈊˋᏊ

I thought this would be short enough that it didn't have to go under a readmore but lmfao. Lol even! It got long

Ok so to start I want to clarify that there's like a horse girl classification system. Type 1, to me, is just People Who Ride Horses. Rika is a horse girl in the sense that she has a horse and likes horse-riding, but I think she's normal about it. She's capable of being a functioning member of society without bringing up horses, but definitely goes to and participates in horse shows and races and stuff. To me she just seems like the type to ride around for the fun of it all and finds it relaxing. Type 2 is the horse girl that they make the TV shows and books about and stuff. The one who finds the stallion in the fields and is the only one who can tame its tortured soul. They dream of being the special girl who can see into the heart of this beautiful animal and ride together into the sunset. Nemona is trying to pull this off with Koraidon so badly. She wants it to eat sandwiches out of her open palm and to motorbike across the plains of Los Platos. She can see it in her dreams. Type 3 is the horse girl that all the schoolteachers are like vaguely concerned about because they know far too much about horses and have the social skills of one too. Horse girls that are complete fucking freaks. Weirdos. Losers. This was Geeta in middle school. She doesn't like to talk about it but still loves the horse movies

This ask made me realize that while I've talked a lot about the pre-story, during-story, and immediately post-story interactions between the characters, I haven't talked about afterwards. I think that immediately post-game they're all recovering and learning about real friendship for the first time and so they just don't get along well. Healing is hard and they lash out a bit, especially Penny and Arven, and it's only through the protagonist that they stay in touch. As the months go on and they heal, however, they become closer and closer, eventually becoming inseparable friends who all care so deeply for each other. I'll make a post about it later because Oh Boy do I have ideas about it. ANYWAY. Whether or not Arven likes Nemona, Mabosstiff does. That doggy loves to battle by Arven's own admission, and who gives a better battle than Nemona? I think Mabosstiff, knowing Nemona from Arven's childhood, adores her and is super friendly to her. She always gives Mabosstiff the battles he wants and treats and pets so Arven ends up having to interact with her because Mabosstiff will bound up to her every time he sees her. It drives Arven insane that Mabosstiff and Nemona are practically besties. It's the meetcute that begins the "enemies to friends" part of their childhood friends to enemies to friends again relationship cycle. As for Penny: I think Mabosstiff is just friendly and likes everyone, but Penny is a little bit scared of him. She's covered in eevee fur and smells like old pizza, so when she met Mabosstiff for the first time he chased her and jumped on her and tried to lick her face and she definitely thought that dog wanted to eat her. She's still apprehensive, but Mabosstiff is very affectionate and doesn't do much more than beg for pats and give sloppy kisses. Eventually though, she realizes that Mabosstiff is cute and big and harmless, so when they have picnics and Mabosttiff gets tuckered out he runs over to her (since she's usually sitting away from the group) to nap and get pets. She's still a lil nervous around such big pokemon, but gets along with him just fine. Mabosstiff likes her a lot because she's always down to give him some good scritches and has a nearly endless supply of treats. Also she's quiet and sometimes that's good for an older doggy like him

#nemona #arven #penny #rika #pokemon sv #ask #headcanons #mod vex

[kayzis]

more ideas about my lil stardew family to expand upon this post, bc I realised I wrote mostly about lumi and not leah or the kids and I don’t know if you can do multiple readmores. bc I’m sill inept at tumblr :’D

i touched on it in the caption of that drawing, but while it goes without saying they adore their parents equally, cassie is a mamas girl and max is lumi’s boy. Cassie needs someone who can keep up with her high energy and her interests and hobbies just align better with Leah’s. While lumi is ok with kids, she tends to treat them like tiny adults sometimes - leah is better at indulging their childlike nature. Plus lumi is…. sleepy. Always. Leah can match Cassie’s energy so much easier.

max meanwhile is so lowkey and reserved but also weird that he gels super well with Lumi’s way of socialising. He could bring her a duck feather he found and where Leah would be like, “oh, look at that, that’s amazing, well done, let’s put it on the mantlepiece” Lumi would be like, “yo, sick find lil guy”

The first time Cassie goes to the mines, it’s actually when she follows Lumi despite being told no. Lumi finds her and is about to tell her off, because the mines are too dangerous for a kid!! but then she sees Cassie’s bag is just full of ores and rare gems and mushrooms and Lumi’s like ……… alright clearly my kid is a fucking metal detector. And a truffle hog. how are you doing this

leah is beside herself with worry and does the whole, flip out and scold the kid when the pair get back. and Lumi doesn’t try to bail Cassie out - she’s a terrible liar and knows Leah would see right thru it. so she makes Cassie explain herself. But after they put the kids to bed Lumi shows Leah Cassie’s haul. and then Leah’s all, okay. are you asking me to reconsider not allowing our six year old down into the mines.

Maybe lumi is, maybe she isn’t. All she’s saying is that she does still have an old dagger she could give to cassie.

leah comes around to it eventually, knowing that cassie will just follow Lumi whenever she knows she’s going to the mines, even after telling her no. she agrees to let her go so long as they never go any deeper than the grassy caverns, and cassie is to stay in the elevator until Lumi has cleared every monster out of the cave first.

on days like that, max will hang out with Leah. he loves to bake, specifically bread. them little hands were made for kneading. he just loves that dough. While max doesn’t really do much art other than drawing, he does like to watch leah paint. he gives her good constructive criticism. this is how her bird paintings usually end up with hats on.

idk how exactly to broach the topic of whether or not these kids would play with jas and vincent. I mean they’d get along fine, but with the way the game’s time progression works, and the fact that I don’t really know those kids’ canon ages?? it’s a tough one. I’d love it if Cassie was their age and max was just a bit younger, but that straight up isn’t how time works lol. by the time Cassie’s born, even at their conceivably youngest, jas and Vincent would be like…. 11. or maybe they’re like ash Ketchum and they stay the same age forever so Cassie can catch up to them :’)

#can you believe it folks I got sick for the 3rd fucking time since September #I have too much time to think about stuff like this #stardew blog

[mwolf0epsilon]

I saw your original clones post and I was curious to know more about each of them if that's ok? I really like the one with purple hair

You're the first Anon of 2023. You're also lovely for asking me about my blorbos, thank you :')

This is gonna be a little long so I'll keep it under a readmore, but like, I'm keeping batchmates together because it's easier to explain who's who if I do it like that. I'll also be addressing them each through order of appearance so it's less confusing.

Anyway, lets do some clone talk!

---

First lets start with my 104th ARCs, Bully and Jawbreaker. They were former members of Krell's Battalion and two of his favourite punching bags, which is where they got their scarring from.

They were pulled into the 104th by Maeleen Eppa, a natborn engineer that noticed their fearful and distrustful nature when Plo Koon's battalion ended up working with Krell's on the same mission.

They're the hard-ass older brothers because, back on Kamino, they lost two batchmates during training exercises, and then had two much younger cadets (Tup and Dogma) introduced into their squad to even out the numbers. It's become second nature to be protective of Shinies, and even if they don't trust very easily they are loyal to a fault (unless they feel like they've been personally betrayed).

They sadly don't make it post Order 66.

Next up we have the tragedy that are Pox and Syrup.

Pox was a clone medic trainee on Kamino that got along brilliantly with his batchmates. Despite the hardships of training, he was always kind, reliable and willing to drop everything to help someone else along the way. Syrup was no different from his batchmate, and while he was training to be a simple foot-soldier, he was going to be acting as a reserve medic as well for whatever battalion he ended up in.

They were finishing training during the last leg of the Clone Wars, when suddenly Sulu Ra called for Pox's squad to partake in some kind of a training exercise. Syrup was, at the time, in medbay for an injury he'd sustained during training, so he wasn't brought along for whatever mystery exercise they were being tasked with.

Long story short... It was a bioweapon test... One that killed several clone troopers that hadn't even graduated yet; left Pox as a carrier of a highly infectious disease that continuously mutated within him, while he went on the run; and which left Syrup essentially without his closest brothers to rely on...

While Pox eventually finds a group of vode to connect with post Order 66, Syrup isn't as lucky. His inhibitor chip was faulty and began to rot inside of him, much like Tup's had, and it obliterates his sense of self to the point where he doesn't consider himself a person. Just a tool to be used by the Empire.

Next up Hyena, a medic of the 104th.

Like with Bully and Jawbreaker, he wasn't originally with the 104th. He was assigned to the 501st with his squad from Kamino, which he never got along with because they were a bunch of unrelenting bullies that thought they were better than everyone else. The disagreements got so bad that eventually he grew fed up enough to request a transfer, and managed to get into the 104th where he felt much more at home.

There's not much to say about Hyena other than, he has quite the sense of humor and love for terrible jokes/puns.

Still unsure what happens to him post Order 66.

We're missing one of them (Goch) due to his face being a little harder to draw than your average clone due to several facial deformities, but next up comes the Long Name Squad.

Lichtenberg, Pretty Boy and Olly are in the 501st, 212th and Coruscant Guard respectively, while Hippo and Cala were never in battalions due to the two of them (and Goch) being confined in Sulu Ra's private lab.

Lich is the accident prone but often optimistic and carefree older brother of the batch, PB is the token pretty boy with a bit of a sassy mean streak, Olly is the responsible but heavily traumatized one, and Hippo and Cala are still getting used to being free at all.

Side-notes: Hippo's goggles are technically a visual aid because her cyclopsia has left her vision severely impaired. Cala needs a cane to walk due to her polymelia making her a little top heavy (she has four arms). Both used to be conjoined twins before being surgically separated.

They have a relatively happy ending post Order 66, even if getting to it is an absolute hardship that tests their bonds repeatedly.

Next up, Seafood Squad! And boy howdy these ones are such a burning trash-fire of a mess...

In order we have Geoduck, Conch, Crayfish, Jelly and Sponge. All of them were in the scuba trooper program before Sponge (who had always been a target of Kaminoan scrutiny, due to a set of circumstances that still make them very uncomfortable) was ultimately pulled from it and forced into the medical training program.

This seemed to cause a sizeable rift between Sponge and the three eldest members of their batch (one that grew overtime due to Conch's pettiness and Crayfish's indifference). Jelly, the most amicable and compassionate of the batch, stuck with them for the long run and refused to grow distant. The two of them were so inseparable to the point where Sponge begged Jelly to come with them into whatever battalion they got assigned, rather than go with the others. Jelly accepted, pulling out of the scuba trooper program and worsening the growing contempt a certain member of the batch felt towards Sponge.

Ultimately, Geoduck, Conch and Crayfish were assigned to Kit Fisto's battalion, while Jelly and Sponge were assigned to the 501st. Jelly then died in an incident that heavily traumatized Sponge, and from there on out the rest of the batch (mostly Conch) blamed them for the death of their favourite vod'ika, and stopped contacting them at all. This left Sponge alone to deal with their trauma, which they didn't do very well...

A lot happens to them throughout the war itself and, at some point (likely driven by guilt and shame of being such a poor excuse for an older brother), Geoduck decides to try to mend the relationship between the batch and Sponge. But, due to his rather unique issue (face blindness so severe that he honestly has trouble recognizing anyone), he never managed to do so during the war itself. Mostly due to Conch actively sabotaging his attempts, and Crayfish simply not caring enough to help because he'd rather not stick his nose into any drama.

Side-Notes: Geoduck, Conch and Jelly have sea creature themed names which they decided on when they first began their scuba training. Crayfish has a freshwater creature themed name instead, because he may or may have not eaten a live crayfish that he pilfered from the Kamino Kitchens during the night.

Meanwhile, Sponge is not named after sea sponges at all. They are instead named after surgical sponges due to a... Rather unfortunate incident during their training... In an ironic twist it just fits their batch's theme in a way.

What happens to the great majority of them post Order 66 is still a WIP, but I know how Sponge's story ends and I'm very pleased with it.

These three next ones are fun... Introducing Medic Canivete of the 212th, Officer Incognito of Krell's Battalion, and Ordnance Specialist 8-Ball. The one batch who can't decide which is the sane one of the group (none of them are).

Cani is essentially a Swiss army knife in terms of skills. She's officially a medic on record, but she also does a lot of flight crew tasks and a spot of engineering here and there. A girl has to keep herself busy after all! And she just likes to learn new things.

Incognito is an anxiety-riddled mess that wishes he wasn't often so unlucky with what life throws his way (he cannot get a break the poor sod), and has a lot of self-doubt that plagues him during his introspection sessions. He's living with a lot of survivor's guilt due to the situation he's stuck in (pretending to be a droid while trapped in a Venator he's trying to stir away from Republic space so the seppie droids that took over don't slaughter any more of his brothers), but overall seems to be in relatively safer hands with the droids than when he was under Krell's command.

8-Ball is a bit of an enigma to most. He's a happy go lucky sort, lover of anoobas of all shapes and sizes, and also a force sensitive clone with a predisposition for precognition that he doesn't recognize as anything else other than "gut feelings". He's a fun guy who doesn't have one mean bone in his body, and who's predictions have earned him both his name and a bit of infamy among other clones, since he mostly seems more attuned to "guessing" less than positive events to come...

I'm not entirely sure what happens to them post Order 66...

[REDACTED]

Before Fox became the Marshal Commander of the Coruscant Guard, the title belonged to Sturm... His predecessor who was met with a terrible fate for caring too much and trying to investigate things he should have averted his gaze away from...

Lets just say there's more than one reason why Fox keeps his mouth shut about what goes on on Coruscant, and Sturm's unfortunate fate is one of those reasons.

Order 66 doesn't much matter in this case. Sturm was already doomed from the start.

Finally we have Mythos Squad, a squad of clone commandos who deserted the GAR after their Jedi General (Vikerius Kwinde) was killed by Grievous.

In order we have Dragon (the defacto leader), Komainu (the designated medic), Basilisk (the sniper), Gremlin (the designated technician) and Kerberus (the demolitions expert).

There's not much to say about them because unfortunately Kerberus is the last one standing post Order 66. He was deafened during torture, so while listening to the GAR radio chatter the others heard the order being called out while he could not (thus they attempted to terminate him for disobeying the order, and he had to kill them in self-defense, something that will never stop haunting them).

#star wars #the clone wars #clone ocs #infodumping about the blorbos

[calmlythrilling]

if venomous could live his ' perfect dream life ' , what would that entail ? would he be single , be in a relationship , have children , pets , an ideal career ?

watch the final episode of ok ko /hj

A more serious answer, though? This is going to be a long ramble. I'm putting it under a readmore link because of the amount I've typed. I'm also assuming this "ideal reality" fix would happen like, right this second as if it was some weird magic anon thing. But I'll leave in a couple paragraphs for LB too :>

While it is confirmed that PV's ideal life is going out and causing destruction with Fink at his side, I do like to ignore that detail. I don't really have a good reason for it like I usually do for my other headcanons, it's just preference really? I just don't like it and that's enough for me to say "he actually felt very meh regarding that part in his life" and the real reason why that was so fun was truly just because Fink was there with him. They do get every other detail right though in my head. Fink is definitely part of it and they do villainous things together. PV supports her esports career. PV does eventually marry Boxman. I think retirement is on that list of things as well - he hates being money(well really power) obsessed so the moment he can finally chill about things regarding that he'd probably quit working pretty quickly. He still is a menace to society though no matter what - so while he'd not on the grind anymore he'd still do things like destroy people's stuff or fight people for kicks. As for children, definitely reconnecting with K.O and being forgiven is on his list, and then there's every single Boxman bot he'd be step fathering(I guess is the term?), and Fink. Roleplay wise, you also have to add Varian to this list of kids. Finally being able to say he's a good enough parent so he'd be comfortable with stuff like this. I also like to think PV's favorite place to be is a greenhouse. I think he'd have a mix of regular plants and then the freakish horrors he makes in there. He really likes plants. So the house he probably retires to has something like that, or is just a really good, ideal place for gardening and such. Regarding Shadowy Figure... PV sadly has it convinced in his mind that he'd be better without him. If you could yank that guy out of him, great! Do it! Kill him! This is also where I stray from canon a bit. If you remove Shadowy from PV he will have difficulty when it comes to feeling things like anger. While Shadowy is pretty much just PV's power hunger personified, I like to write it as being negative emotions in general in a way? That powerless/hopeless feeling people can have, specifically. PV has himself convinced that Shadowy isn't this, however, so part of this dream life would be pretty much removing the ability to feel hopeless or powerless. Which I think would also remove the ways the brain is supposed to feel sadness and such. Also, while we're here, I like to write PV with hating the fact that he likes the idea of being powerful. So while it's tempting to say his dream life he'd be the most powerful person to ever exist, he also acknowledges that this want and desire has caused him SO. MANY. PROBLEMS. He'd rather have the desire to be powerful taken out of him too currently. So his dream life would be him being capable of judging both having power and not being a shitty person + having his loved ones safe.

Now. If you ask Laserblast this, the answer I think would be different. I think he'd still really like to garden, but also he thinks he doesn't hate the job of being a hero. He's not about to wish for world peace but he also isn't going to go around asking for fights either and cause destruction like PV. He just wants to show that he can be as good or even better than his teammates(especially Carol). So just give him more power. Nothing bad could come from it. Also, I think LB has issues with being considered a villain. After "dying" in front of Carol I think one of the reasons he would have never considered a villains' "market"(PV's word not mine) is because he doesn't like villains, he doesn't want to be considered one, he does want things to get better and help... it's just his desire for power comes top on everything else. So, again, just give LB more power and he's happy I think.

#out of these shadows(ooc) #answer emails make calls(asks)

[weirdcursedvaultkid]

The vegacoppersnyde angel demon au needs more content. Here’s my 2 cent idea: Vega and Snyde, being celestial beings, are wildly overexposed to hets/monogamuggles so there’s a loooong arc of them both assuming that there’s some Magical Goal in place about hooking Ben up with a girl. Ben, meanwhile, is a college student. He sees them acting like this and is like “get a room you two” every five minutes during the entire arc

I've actually talked about this au so much in my friends dms (sorry y'all dhshhs) so I'm right ahead of u bro dhdhhd

under a readmore bc i rambled for a bit

This was actually similar to one of my ideas dhhdhdhd I imagined one of the things Alex tries is setting up with ppl (I say ppl bc my ben is bi!) Bc Alex just starts meddling with bens life trying to have good things happen to him even if it does want always work out in the way she thinks it will djjdjd she thinks setting Ben up on dates will help him get out more and make him more confident and if he finds love along the way all the better!! Aaaaand Ben goes along with it bc yea he's kind of a pushover still at this point. And well he also has trouble saying no to Alex in particular.

I imagine merula tries to mess with these dates at first and try to get Ben to embarass himself in some way and ruin his chances altogether but at some point she stops bc "the Ben human does a good enough job at that himself and it's funny to see him suffer without me having to lift a finger !" But I also like to imagine merula actually becomes helpful?? In her own merula way she actually gives ben helpful advice sometimes dhdhd

As time goes on alex starts being rly picky on who to try setting Ben up with bc she had started falling for him (and doesn't quite realize it yet ) and none of the dates work out bc bens an anxious mess, merula messed things up, or maybe his date sees him and Alex together and anyone with eyes can see there's something going on there

Eventually Ben would ask alex to stop setting up dates and that hes ok with his love life as it is and alex happily obliges bc honestly it was getting more and more difficult trying to find Ben the perfect partner!!

#also ben realizes hes in love with alex 😂😂😂 #hope yall enjoy my clownery #mella speaks #asks #vegacopper #vegacoppersnyde #angel/demon au

[gamespritearchive]

yes i like fullmetal alchemist brotherhood a normal amount (<- lying) this post is going to be long so open the readmore at ur own risk

ok this is genuinely going to be a mess because im really terrible at summarizing things and organizing my thoughts so if ur actually gonna read through this then good luck!

here are just some short thoughts before the longer paragraphs

- i absolutely LOVE the note that plays right after the alchemists clap their hands together that indicates that theyre abt to use alchemy. the sound of the clap + the note that plays is incredibly satisfying

- the strong and well-written female characters in this show was a really good touch and i loved how they brought them (izumi and olivier) together at the end :') also their beefy husbands together was super nice too

- my favorite part of the story was actually the part where ed and al go to briggs because thats wher they introduced olivier. it was super nice to see her talk about how strong-willed she is and her army and all of that

- lan fan is another example of a strong female character but a little less favorable since she serves ling yao. that doesnt make her any less cool though she was super badass and i definitely cried over her more than once

- the details in this show was really nice. alphonse's body being malnourished was something that seemed really obvious, but the fact that when ed got his right arm back it was noticeably less muscular and had longer nails than his left was such a good detail

- in the last episode there was a scene where alphonse made a dumb face that was animated just like how ed's faces looked and that made me really happy that we finally get to see al emote just like his brother :')

- im pretty sure i cried through the entirety of the last episode because being able to see the characters laugh and smile without feeling burdoned by anything after youve seen them go through repeated heartache and physical pain for 63 episodes is a super nice feeling

- "i'm a terrible father but i want to make you two proud" .

- "i'll give you half of my life and you give me half of yours" UGH

- also right after this when ed was laughing at how flustered winry got because normally hes the one who gets flustered :') that was so sweet

- i literally guessed that it was morse code whenever they showed selim banging on al's head because its like why would they put so much emphasis on that and let it go on for like 10 seconds without any music over it. this happened like multiple times too and i guessed it before they made it incredibly obvious bye im the smartest guy alive

ok heres where i talk more besties lets go

fmab was absolutely worth watching 64 episodes. i was convinced that i probably wont finish it because i have trouble finishing 12 episodes but as it may be obvious i got super invested. fmab being this long allowed there to be enough time to explain aspects of the story separately and to watch them all come together at some point. it also allowed for a ton of details that even though they're small, they're still important to the story. they rehash a lot of points because it was a simple detail that could get lost through the story but when its rementioned and you recall the time, it's such a nice feeling to have that click in ur mind.

also the character development was really good and ill get more in-depth about characters later but the length of this anime also allowed for a ton of really good character development. it ties into the whole thing where you learn about a characters backstory and you don't understand why it's important to the show until later on and then you're like ohhhh holy shit that makes sense now! also all that time for character development also lets you get attached to more than just the main characters and makes you care more about the role they play in the story.

roy mustang. at first i liked him, but when he started to speak about how he wanted to become the fuhrer president before he knew the military was corrupt, i assumed that he would just become as corrupt as bradley was ("starting wars for no reason"). i was convinced for the longest time that he would eventually just turn out to be the second bad guy and that nearly came true whenever he was trying to kill envy but riza helped him :) i loved the entirety of their relationship they're so sweet and compliment eachother so well. the scene where roy demonstrates the sheer amount of trust he has in riza's abilities by blindly (heh. he was blind during this if u didnt know.) following her directions and hitting their target ... it was just so good. also even though i didnt trust roy i thought he was super badass the sound of him snapping was always super satisfying as well

i almost want to rewatch fmab because it would be really nice to pick up on things that were later referenced in the anime. because of how long it is, its super easy to forget about things that happened early on in the anime (especially for someone with memory issues lol) so being able to watch back with the second half of the show still fresh on my mind would be almost an entirely different experience. the first thing that comes to mind is whenever we were shown kimblee in prison super early on. i know he had dialogue but i remember nothing about it because i was focused on thinking "literally who the fuck is this guy lol" but now i know. wow.

edward elric. im aware that this is going to be incredibly biased but i literally do not care. anyways. character development is always important and needed within a story but i genuinely feel like ed's character development was interesting to watch. it was never super obvious and his core values never changed. he did somewhat have a change in attitude when he nearly died to kimblee, but thats like expected you know ... being that close to death and all. i think that event was essentially the beginning of the end of his naivety. he was always consistent with the people he cared about though :) he never stopped calling them stupid and weird and he never stopped threatening to punch hohenheim whenever he was frustrated even if they were like in the middle of like a life or death situation. i just think he's neat

when ed destroyed pride('s vessel) i felt my heart well up with. pride LOL. that was his very first explicit win against someone who has been against him this entire time, and seeing him defeat pride with his own two hands was such a nice feeling. it wasnt technically his own win since he was only able to get to that point because of his friends and family around him

episode 60 was suuper good it was the part where the father was gonna swallow god because of the solar eclipse. its super hard to explain if uve never seen it but basically the scene was super cool simply because of how well the animation showed the sheer scale of what was happening. like this guy was literally reaching to the moon. theres a lot of unnatural things that are shown in fmab and although this scene didnt introduce any new concepts, it was still incredibly captivating because of how well the animation was

aand thats it i think! i regret not writing down how i feel during the earlier episodes but i think watching it with little to no distractions was a better experience. if u actually read this im giving u a kiss on the cheek rn ilu

#i dont expect anyone to read this btw this is purely for myself #i hate proofreading shit so dont look at anything too closely

[deltarune-pagerau]

hi,so um just came across this blog and it seems really neat! I'd like to know more about it if you don't mind

sure thing! this might end up being a little long so just in case heres a tldr: wanted to make spam a new outfit and it just kind of spiraled form there

putting this under a readmore because this is gonna be kinda long im probably infodumping OTL

i made spamton a new outfit and starting coming up with a reason he’d have it so essentially, about a year before the events of ch 2, the phone randomly goes dead and the connection between spamton and gaster is abruptly severed. at this point, he still the spamton we have in game but all of the sudden its like someone turned on a light in a dark room and hes just kind of like???? whats going on??? he knows something happened, with everything starting to get bad at the mansion, but he can’t really remember the rest

im not so great at exposition(def better at drawing than writing lol) but eventually he bumps into swatch and they notice just how different spamton is and how weird that is but they decide to help him out and get him somewhere he can actually rest up and figure out what the hell is going on (neither of them actually figure it out though but the phone is something that comes up enough that swatch makes a mental note of it) so while hes resting up, spamton washes the black out of his hair because something about it just...rubs him the wrong way but, its some of it is permanently black no matter how much he tries to get rid of it (after a while, bleaching it gets annoying)

once hes all recovered(which isnt much, but honestly he’s so much better than he was before) spamton’s next goal is to get a job so he can “stop [[MOOCHING FREELOADER]]” off of swatch, swatch suggests setting him up with the gift shop job (which works out for him because he can focus more on being head butler) which spamton reminds them that one of the few things he does remember is being evicted and banned from the mansion but! hes got a plan! all that amounts to his changing his name back to spam. spamton may be banned, but spam isn’t.(swatch isnt sure how much that’ll work, but with how different he looks and acts, and figures that queen wont pay him much attention anyway, so it should be fine. maybe.)

but it works out and eventually spam is doing better and the job is working out really well (although the counter may or may not be built with swatchlings in mind) and as soon as hes truly on his own, swatch gives him a pager (re; [[REQUEST: NO PHONES]]) and after that, everything is somewhat normal until we reach the events of the chapter.

kris still meets spam in the same place in canon, but instead of actually living in the dumpster, hes trying to get behind it because he dropped his keys. whether or not kris helps him is kinda important but if i get into that this post will be longer than i want it to be lol (helping him earns kris a [[Friends and Family 50% Off Discount!]] at the cafe, though) neo is still a possibility too, but he’s not as insistent about it. 

at first.

some other (not so important) spam details include:

-can no longer see without the glasses (which can do fun things like Static™️ and Bluescreen™️)

-doesn’t talk [[LIKE THIS]] all the time anymore, but any sort of heightened emotion (excited, stressed, ect.) can bring it out

-lost his glow after the acid river

-his pager has a new number and not his old one (Gaster-B-Gone™️)

-harboring anger at his siblings(maybe)

-sometimes has dreams where he can hear a phone, somewhere, ringing. he always wakes up before he can find it. he doesnt know why hes even looking for it

-changing his name back to spam is purely a business strategy and totally not because he wants to go back to normal as much as possible totally not the other thing he swears

-salt route au and snowgrave are still possibilities(im a sucker for angst ok)

i might update this post if i want to add anything, but for now i think thats about it! im going to draw more eventually, but my ipads on the charger right now. im happy you’re interested!

and yes i did call it pager au just because he solely uses a pager now im bad at names

#pager au #deltarune au

[kyokkou]

( // ok this is me being a curious, but I really want to know how your muses were like the 1960s! As in how did your muses react to the economic miracle, increase of consumption, and a post-war memory? ;v; )

I love receiving questions like this! Actually, I’ve been thinking about something along these lines a lot lately, not to the point of brainrot but pretty close... haha. I predict this being very long, so I’ll slap a readmore on it.

I want to start by saying Kiku was a bystander of sorts from 1945 until 1989. Though he doesn’t realize it at the time, he ends up being in a sort of spiritual limbo (this is something I’m still trying to put into coherent words for the most part, the why of it relating to being half-inugami but it’s still very vague right now and I apologize for that !! ) so he’s stuck watching life go on without him, and while he can go out and about, no one can interact with him.  

Eventually, he just isolates on his own, since the situation seems so hopeless; he can’t communicate with Hikaru, and the only one who seems to see him is the personified fighter aircraft he favored. There is one other time where he had company throughout this, but the problem with Reiji is that he cannot speak. He couldn’t even tell Hikaru about all of this, so that’s why he just stays in and misses a good decade and a half from the 70s until 1989.

That said, for Kiku, things are completely different. He stagnates as a person and does not grow along with Japan / Hikaru, though he has little choice but to accept the changes as he watches them happen. He goes through a lot of emotions about things like Anpo and the resulting protests. At the time, he’s angry about it because he simply does not want Japan to befriend the US. He’s still angry about things from even before the war, even as far back as the Perry Expedition. He’s angry that Hikaru simply goes along with it because he wants to avoid conflict, even though just a decade prior he was pushed into allowing a self-defense force, with the remnants of Kiku’s army and navy. 

On the other hand, he’s glad Hikaru isn’t starving. He isn’t unaware of what happened to his wartime allies, particularly the Soviet-occupied half of Germany, and Kiku has to admit that he’s relieved it’s only the Americans who are occupying Japan. Sometime in the final weeks of the war, the USSR did declare war on Imperial Japan (specifying this only because of the two of them being one and the other) and did take the Kuril Islands and south Sakhalin along with a partial occupation of N.Korea. So, they were always right around the corner, and since things had changed so much since the Russo-Japanese war, he obviously wasn’t too comfortable with that, either. 

I’m digressing but anyway, Kiku’s experiences during the 60s were very different than Hikaru’s were, and he was stuck watching as Hikaru slowly started to adjust to being the main rep again. It was easy during the Edo period, until the end. He rarely had to deal with outsiders, but now, he constantly had to deal with the US occupying forces and all of the bases that are still in operation today. He had to be present for things, but he avoided anything having to do with the JSDF, as he still does today. 

During this time, he isn’t swept up in the consumerism, because he’s still afraid of change and afraid to just go along with everything that the citizens are. He never picks sides; while he doesn’t particularly enjoy the fact that they had to enter a mutual defense treaty (it goes against Article 9, in his opinion) he also would rather not be left on his own if something did happen. As far as he knows, he is all alone, has no one to consult when he’s filled with self-doubt about the direction he’s going as a nation. 

While he remains humble during all of this, he doesn’t completely shun the modern conveniences that begin to come about. The first shinkansen line came about in the early-mid 60s, and it is something close to his heart for two reasons. Not only was it the first high-speed rail line in Japan, but also the world... and the predecessor to this was something that was conceived in the 30s. The truth is, for as angry as he is (still, even 20 years after the fact) at Kiku for everything, he misses him. He has no one to really share these achievements with except the rest of the world, and he’s pretty sure they’re all still angry with him (which isn’t totally far off.)

Still, Hikaru has no reason to be too sad, because he also hosts the Summer Olympics the same year-- Japan is the first Asian nation to host the games. He’s learning that he doesn’t need someone to help him make decisions, and that he can be successful on his own, as the whole nation overall has been finding success in new ways and recovering from a devastating war. Hikaru finally feels at least somewhat confident during this time, a reflection of how well the economy is doing. Japan’s economy even manages to overtake West Germany’s economy in the late 60s. 

In spite of being hesitant at the beginning of the decade, Hikaru is more inclined by the end of it to engage more with the consumer economy, he might or might not purchase things he doesn’t necessarily need, but wants to have to make life easier now that he leaves the house to work with the rest of the government on the daily. By the end of the decade, he stops being as dependent on the lifestyle he knows, and starts gravitating more toward how his citizens are living in their everyday lives. (This is going to be important for the 80s when there is more rampant consumerism and his attitude actually trends toward being somewhat snobbish and materialistic.) 

He starts engaging more with western culture, where before he was reluctant out of fear that he would abandon his traditions, a fear that was instilled in him even more during the Imperial era, and this is likely when he becomes as fluent in English as a native speaker of the language. Honestly, this is probably the period of time in recent history in which Hikaru was the most open he’s ever been.

If asked, their memories of this time would be very different; Hikaru would remember how much he came out of his shell, but Kiku would remember how angry, depressed, and alone he was while serving his sentence in what I jokingly call Demon Jail™. He certainly deserved it, but his anger (as mentioned) comes from having to do a 180 and play nice with the US (and remember, he’s still pissed about things as far back as 1853-4... so this isn’t just about the war, haha.) He’s depressed about the rapid changes and how Hikaru doesn’t even need him around, so why am I still here like some sort of ghost? Why can’t I just disappear completely, then?

It isn’t that Hikaru is completely happy and healed from everything that happened, either. He’s simply too distracted by so many new and interesting things happening to him to think about it, and he’s more than busy with his new role, too. 

This was really long as predicted, and I had to stop for dinner in between, but I hope it covered everything / answered  your questions! If not, I’m more than happy to have another round. 笑

#bozii #✺ 「そんな風にも考えていたの。」 || answers; #✺ 「深い闇を俺は抜け出した。」 || headcanons; #[ cw occupation ? ] #[ content warning: occupation ? ] #[ just in case idk how sensitive people are to this but i don't want to take chances. also: ] #[ cw: war ] #[ content warning: war ]

[wakeupthewublins]

ok that’s it I think I solidified the basis for my slasher oc...... hoo. i am excited and have many ideas but I think I have semi-solid groundwork right now? details may eventually change but I think this could be the barebones skeleton for how she’s set up. readmore set up for discussion of abuse + christian religious abuse themes + manipulation maybe. also very minor blood for an image thinking of her design.

the character was heavily HEAVILY inspired by two vocaloid songs and their general religious themes as well, those being Honey I’m Home and this gumi How Deep Is Your Love cover

as reiterated the other day, she’s a devout follower of a goddess/deity of some sort that only she can see, and she attached to heavily and takes order directly from, going as far and as hard as she can to complete the tasks requested to her from them. she goes so far as to base every task and even bodily feeling/reaction around how the deity approves or disapproves of it. “are you happy with me? did I do what you want? is this something you approve, goddess? should I feel happy? want me to be sad and cry?” etc. extremely dependent on being useful to them.

she was raised under heavy and harsh western christian religious abuse, especially from her father. this trauma in turn developed this unhealthy coping mechanism to desperately please others, regardless of how, which was often used to mentally detach herself growing up. after years and years in this hellish environment, the deity (demonic entity, unknown origin) only visible to her appeared, offering what appeared to her as positive attention, comfort, companionship, love, and validation that she lacked and craved terribly.

one day at an older age, the deity was talking to her after a day of the usual hell and said “you don't need this, you never have to take this again if he's gone. rip the thorn from your side” and without question “...yes.”. so she killed her father and left to never return. she does what the deity asks without question, desperate for ONLY the deity's approval and validation, no one else's matters, not even her own. said things often involve violence and yadda yadda, slasher stuff ensues.

the deity is a little less developed than her in comparison, but claims to have appeared to others. however, unlike the others, my oc doesn’t hesitate, ignore, and/or deny what they ask, regardless of the danger it could possess to herself. the deity grew attached to her, seeing her as their most devout follower, and later started focusing orders more on harm to others instead of herself. default reaction to defiance from past humans probably ends up in harm/doom to the person and/or their loved ones.

in terms of physical appearance, i’m not solid on much yet. I do want her to have an almost always pleased, relaxing look, usually smiling in any situation unless ordered not to. probably almost always has heavy, half lidded eyes. her hair is short, maybe blonde? messing around with picrew like half a week back to practice with it I made this (unrelated) hitman-esque character, and I think I enjoy the hair on them for her possibly? (picrew source 1 https://picrew.me/image_maker/268253, picrew source 2 https://picrew.me/image_maker/43267)

either that OR this one I managed to dabble with AFTER coming up with her general concept and having short hair in mind

basically something short but with little side tendrils at the front, IE: gym leader gardenia from pokemon. I don’t have a solid grasp on her appearance or form yet, but I really want to come up with a character that has a solid, recognizable silhouette

OK PHEW oc infodump over. i’m kinda attached to her because we share the Wanting To Please response to trauma and also the songs that inspired her are some of my favorites  just listen to them on repeat and then heavily HEAVILY daydream about her while I do so. i’ll doodle her one day whenever I have the attention and energy to lmfao

#slasher oc #ocs #slasher fandom #vocaloid #abuse mention #religious abuse mention #christianity mention #blood maybe #my ocs #slasher community #honey i'm home #unnamed slasher oc

[blacknovelist]

sup ok here’s the promised details on uhhhhhh All for One in @guardianlioness​‘s and I’s Ageswap Mess, formed by collaborative headcanon jamming on discord and then roughly paraphrased via a run thru the unfortunate Quadruple Lengthening Filter that’s built into my brain bc I’m incapable of being brief.

(something of an expansion on this post and this ask. Nooooot spoiler free, actually pretty spoilers, idk, will pop it under a readmore bc who knows how long I’m gonna go on also)

ALSO!! I can’t at u but @randommly-passing-mia u asked forever ago about Toshinori and AfO’s relationship in this AU and i answered what I could then but I’m pleased to announce this goes more into that bc I knew Very Little back then. :)

So, All for One! Now, I feel it appropriate to note that the previous post I made regarding the history of OfA in Ageswap, as well as just about everything I’ve posted abt AfO and OfA for Ageswap (except for the linked ask above, obv) was made before the arc with the League of Villains and Shigaraki’s backstory all came out. Now that we’ve got some of those contexts, we can go a little further in fleshing everything else out, which we did, a little, today.

Pls keep in mind that Ageswap’s goal is not and never has been to make a direct 1:1 translation of adults to kids and vice versa -- good lord we’d have a lot of empty spaces if we were doing that. So, uh. Anyway. it’s time for “we make a mess of the characters and also the timeline and the plot because it’s Our City Now”

Student AfO is a different creature to small Toshinori of our au. For the purposes of this post we’ll call him AfO, because while I’d love to just jump into referring to him as Shigaraki there’s a lot of confusions that lie down that road. Also, again, we’re calling mr heckhands mcmike Tomura, because Shigaraki is a name with Weight.

Because canon parallels, Ageswap AfO has a little brother who we’re making Kyudai Garaki/the Good Doctor and also quirkless for our purposes (whether he’s AfO’s biological brother is up in the air, we haven’t settled yet). Garaki has something of an intense obsession with quirks, constantly studying and doing research, not unlike Izuku, and the age gap between him and AfO is... about six years. Now, because AfO had already manifested a quirk of his own and that quirk had fearsome potential, One for All was originally going to be passed on to his brother, because before Ageswap Izuku, OfA had strictly been handed down to trained members of the family.

Tomura was a member of the group that had, through the generations, been working to fight against the users of One for All. To hit them where it hurt, he attacked Izuku’s mentor’s (we’ll call them the Mentor) home with a group of League fighters. When he found out there was a quirkless boy, and a second one who was all but quirkless for all that he’d been told to avoid using his own powers, he quickly took them in under the League’s wing -- both in an act of cruelty against OfA and out of some misguided sympathy for the boys.

The fearsome thing is the toxicity of the relationships Tomura formed with the League, and eventually with the boys. He meant well, when he took them in, but whatever this version of him went through... well, just about all his relationships are some level of manipulative and unhealthy by default. See: his tendency for physical closeness and being tactile, as mentioned in the ask.

He’s firmly of an opinion along the lines of “if you’ve got the power, and you know you have the power, and you’re not using it to do whatever you can or want, then why do you even have it?” and, for all of AfO’s childhood, Tomura tried his hardest to share this with AfO and sway the kid to his side. With the Mentor having dropped off the grid and abandoned the Shigaraki name in grief, AfO and his brother had nowhere else to go, but AfO was a smart and cautious kid: he couldn’t just listen without a fight, or a reason.

(AfO didn’t know Tomura meant to kill them, that he attacked their home on purpose. When he eventually finds out, he firmly believes Tomura meant to save them)

But Tomura’s persistent, and he doesn’t stop, and eventually he points out: if All for One is a quirk that allows him to take and give quirks, does that not mean he can seek out the perfect quirk for his little brother? All the reasons he’s suffered, AfO has the power to fix that.

That’s the thing that sways AfO to their side, that convinces him to stay with the League and learn under Tomura. Because if it’s for family, isn’t it worth it?

(AfO sees Tomura as a teacher, as a friend, as someone beloved and important. Shigaraki was AfO’s name, but it can be Tomura’s too, if Tomura wants. Then everyone knows they’re family. And Tomura accepts it -- another spit in the face of an enemy, a welcomed token from a beloved student. Shigaraki is a good name for the rest of the world to use, but Tomura, Tomura is a name for the League and the League alone.)

AfO tries, at first, to find other quirks for his brother while he trains, while his brother studies (while Tomura tries to sway Garaki to their side also, because look at what you know, what you could do with that knowledge, combined with your brother’s quirk, you’re so young and so so smart-). OfA is gone beyond the League’s sight, in the hands of the Symbol of Peace, so there’s no point on dwelling on it, really, surely another quirk would work better?

But then One for All comes back around, in the hands of this blond... nobody. His brother’s quirk, running around in a stranger. AfO continues to hunt potential quirks down for his brother and his brother’s studies, but he has a new goal: to try and claim OfA back and give it to who it really belongs to.

the problem of course being that he can’t take it by force like every other quirk, and killing Toshinori would merely render it lost forever.

Essentially, AfO’s primary grudge against Toshinori is the fact that he’s the current bearer of a quirk that, in AfO’s eyes, should belong to Garaki. And Toshinori’s quirklessness, or past quirklessness... is easy to know when you know the secret of One for All.

Some good stuff gets said abt AfO vs Toshinori in this answer here I think, and I’m drawing on it: Toshinori’s more instinct and heart to AfO’s logic and strategy. That’s not to say, obv, that neither of them draw on the other quality, but it’s what stands out most to me about the two of them and just, kind of their general dynamic (or at least, that’s how it seems).

USJ was a subtle message laid beneath a louder declaration. Two-for-one, if you will. “Wouldn't it be so nice to have a quirk that fit better in your hands? that didn't fritz or go funky whenever you so much as turned your head? A quirk you might not even have to coax and strain and train and change your body for?”

But AfO does not confront Toshinori until much later, until after the sports festival. See, the mall incident in this AU is a scene on bargaining.

He confronts Toshinori at the mall -- his face is not known, and it’s a simple matter to pull him off to the side. But there won’t be fighting here today. No, he only came to talk.

Questions, first. About Toshinori, his experience with One for All, what he thinks of other people’s quirks. About what it was like for him, growing up quirkless, left abandoned by so many people for it. Eventually, his conversation circles back around. I have a little brother. He’s quirkless, just like you. You know what he went through, what he suffered.

All for One even did his research, is even willing to play by rules closer to Toshinori’s own: tucked under his arm is a folder, with lists upon lists of people. Villains with sentences for life, villains under the death sentence, people who would have no life of returning to the world ever again. People who don’t have a reason to use their quirks any longer. People for whom it wouldn’t matter if he took their quirks anyway. “Take your pick,” he offers Toshinori. “I’ll give you whatever quirk you’ve ever wanted. I’ll even take it from a villain so none of your precious civilians have to suffer the loss — but that one belongs to my little brother.”

And, well. We all know he says no.

Why would Toshinori hang onto a quirk that isn’t even his? All the people out there, bearing the quirks that his brother and even his greatest enemy were robbed of at birth, and AfO has the power to grant both Toshinori and Garaki the power that they’d dreamed of, that belongs to them. He knows what it means to suffer without a quirk. Why won’t Toshinori let him fix that?

and idk specifically what Toshi would say, but I think it’s something along the lines of “no one asks for what they're born with or given, but we make the most of it anyway. That's how we're supposed to live.“

Anyway Toshinori and All for One hate each other SO fucking much but. Unfortunately, also just kind of Get Each Other on some level. Like, they despise one another but also, if there’s one thing they can believe in, it’s that the other will always Be The Way They Are. Friendly Enemyship, if you will.

There’s some level of pity that AfO also holds on the percieved coldness of Toshinori’s relationship to his mentor, Izuku. Izuku is... really awkward, in his relationship with Toshi, and while Izuku loves his student very much he has a hard time showing it -- and Toshinori thinks so poorly of himself, it’s hard to grasp how close they are from the outside sometimes. AfO totally tries to recruit Toshinori to their side, even after he figures they’re Tight and also even though he knows Toshinori won’t ever say yes. Like, he hates the guy, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a kickass ally.

Tomura would like Toshinori and AfO says as much to his face. “You’re more like him than I am, anyway. You can act without overthinking. And he wouldn’t care if you were quirkless. He doesn’t with my brother.”

(Toshinori hates that. He isn’t, he isn’t he isn’t like him at all.)

Tomura has also more or less promised AfO that, at the end of his lifespan, his student should take on Decay. AfO, of course, doesn’t want that and is on the hunt for a good longevity quirk to give to his mentor

In the end, the way All for One is kind of being played in this AU is something not so far off from Anakin Skywalker.

In Lioness’ words:

Noble in his desire to keep his family alive

But horribly misdirected

#Boku no hero academia #BNHA #My hero academia #mha #Ageswap AU #Blacknovelist talks #BNHA AU #BNHA Spoilers #long post #fukc this is long #All for One #AfO #Shigaraki #also technically #Toshinori #yeehaw yall

[dragimal]

ok this is like. MAJORLY self-indulgent, self-psychoanalyzing rambling so I’m putting it under a readmore, but my thoughts have been spinning in circles over this for like. practically my whole teen/adult life. and I just need to put it down somewhere

idc if anyone wants to read this or respond or anything, again I’m just basically trying to vomit out my thoughts until something makes sense

so like. anxiety. I know I have it, that’s the ONE Problems Disorder I’m 100% certain I’ve got, to whatever degree it matters

but that’s kinda the thing-- to WHAT degree, and DOES that matter? at what point can I say it’s a legitimate part of me, and at what point is it something negligible and unobtrusive?

b/c here’s the other thing-- anxiety is, in fact, a strong aspect of my self-image. it’s something I associate strongly with as a character trait, and I tend to relate to ‘meek’ characters

I know part of it is a defense mechanism. I had to make myself small, being raised by my mom. she’s a whole other rant, but essentially she’s a very defensively prideful person, and any attempt to steer a conversation towards your own accomplishments/needs/interests is met with a blank look and a swift topic change back to herself. (and god forbid u bring up her faults, that would guarantee manipulative guilt-tripping at best, screaming and crying at worst)

but there’s also another convoluted level to this defense mechanism. I recognized at a young age, on some subconscious level, that pride was/is my mom’s greatest downfall. so I internalized that as, “pride (and even more broadly, confidence) is bad and and a danger to those around you” 

not to be Homestuck on main, but Dave’s first conversation with Dirk struck me on a level of personal experience that few other pieces of media have ever hit, particularly this bit

obviously the physical aspect of this abuse is beyond me, but the emotional manipulation, and Bro subsequently ruining a generally positive concept (the concept of heroism, in his case) hits incredibly close to home

my mom exuded confidence and always told me that confidence in myself over all else would save me, but she ultimately ruined confidence for me. I know there will always be this underlying thread of fear that if I’m not afraid-- that if I allow myself confidence-- that I will become like her. that I’ll hurt people with my pride

now this is all shit that I’ve known abt myself for a long time, and I know I’ve even mentioned some of this in passing before. but here’s what’s fucking me up nowadays: what happens when you cling to anxiety like this? what happens when you craft a disorder into your personality? where does subconscious reaction end and deliberate masking begin?

b/c here’s the other thing: I don’t truly hate myself. not rly-- not on the level I would say is dangerous or clinical. some of it may very well be real, but I definitely play it up. like play-acting at under-confidence

and it’s not like I don’t have pride either. I have tons of pride for various things I do or accomplish, namely academic studies, crafting/art, and just like working standards in general. when I can eloquently describe/argue my point, or accurately craft something to my inner image, I feel very real pride

but pride hurts. I feel pride, but equal to that is the shame I feel at feeling pride in the first place. it’s genuinely painful at times to accept a compliment without argument NOT because I necessarily disagree (tho there are definitely times where I DO actually disagree), but to accept a compliment is to admit I have pride in the thing being complimented, and THAT is unacceptable

and it’s not like my fear is unfounded either. I’ve hurt ppl w/ my pride before-- and this isn’t my anxiety making me self-critical, I KNOW this for a FACT. it simply comes with the territory of all that “gifted child” bullshit in school. yeah I was one of those. thankfully not a very outspoken student (the anxiety in my younger days was a lot more real and visceral), but I do still distinctly remember moments where my academic pride gave me an... inflated sense of presence over those that didn’t get the material, I guess u could say

I know there were times I made ppl feel small, due to my pride. hell, times I got overly, fearfully defensive of my knowledge or artistic skill to the point of talking over others and making them feel stupid. no one deserves to feel small, and it fucking tears me up to know that I did that to ppl. that I still knee-jerk react in that way sometimes, even now, and it still slips out

and isn’t that just proof that I can’t appropriately handle pride? that I’m not mature enough for confidence?

and it’s not even all about making myself small for others’ sake. half of it is this incredibly selfish knowledge that not living up to my own standards will fucking kill me if I let it

I feel like every ‘gifted kid’ experiences a chain events that starts at, “wow I’m so smart, I’m great at every subject!” and ends at, “christ I’m fucking garbage at literally everything.” we’re taught that success is in being able to do something well the first time (or at least quickly and with little effort), so if we’re not immediately good at something, we shut down b/c we were never taught that success is actually in the effort at the task

this has been talked to death by others so I don’t want to bother w/ it too long, but the critical thing to note is that there’s there’s this eventual sense of defeat in everything you do, when ur brought up w/ this mindset

I used to be somewhat competitive in certain things when I was younger-- the rare sports I played when I was RLY young, academics obviously, etc. or at least, competitive with my own personal standards, if not necessarily against other ppl. but every failure and mistake made me so upset that the angst was like. genuinely dangerous to my health

I used to play golf on a team in middle school, and every time I whiffed it I would get SO angry at myself that my dad literally told me that that level of upset would kill me someday and that I rly needed to stop

so I took that to heart and just. stopped caring

every time I whiffed it after that point, I was just like, “ah, well, what can ya do ¯|_(ツ)_/¯ ” this attitude definitely lowered my blood pressure, but it also rly killed my motivation to like... improve. b/c the thought of even trying to improve brought up all these feelings abt trying to meet my own standards of success, and how much it would hurt to fail

when u don’t set any standards u gotta meet, then when u fail u don’t rly fail, y’know? “well I didn’t even try, so it’s actually fine”

obviously I couldn’t give less of a shit abt golf anymore, but sometimes I wonder if my cold-turkey drop in confidence played a part in killing the interest itself? I know that sports and physical activity were never rly my thing in the first place, but did I perhaps give up so hard that I convinced myself that I didn’t even like those things in the first place?

I know it happened w/ academics at least: start to struggle with math? now I hate math. chemistry? that sucks too. etc etc

I kinda side-tracked here w/ all the talk of ‘gifted kid’ stuff, my point is that I have a vested interest in humbling myself-- to actively craft the persona of a meek, humble person

and I’ve been wondering if that, in and of itself, is manipulative. like, is it manipulative to let others think I rly lack THAT much in self-confidence? that I rly hate myself that much?

it certainly feels that way when I knee-jerk reject a compliment abt something I do, in fact, feel pride in-- when the shame at that pride is too much. but my friends don’t know it’s that reactive shame-- they think it’s that I rly don’t have confidence in that thing

but god, how do I even explain this fucking tangled, convoluted bullshit over my reaction to compliments? that I have to be small or I’ll hurt someone? that I do feel pride, and that’s the problem? what does that even MEAN to someone outside my own head??

and that’s not even to get into whether that manipulation is like, actually some subconscious tactic to get MORE compliments! am I fishing? when I make a post like this, am I actually just fishing for more compliments? is that what I’m doing??

I feel like I’m running in circles here, nipping at my own goddamned heels abt pride and shame and what is real and acting and does it even matter if nobody gets hurt?

do people get hurt? ppl get hurt when I allow myself pride, it’s happened before. but now I’m realizing that my self-hate may hurt ppl too-- my self-deprecation often goes too far, and it hurts the ppl who care abt me

how do I explain that self-deprecation is safe? a shield to hold back my pride? hell, it’s more accurate to say it’s a safe way to EXPRESS my pride in a way that ppl don’t detect. I acknowledge my faults, and if I frame it in a socially-acceptably comedic way, I get the pride of making someone laugh! it’s SAFE pride!

but is it? but is it, when it hurts ppl to hear me self-hate?

is there any way to feel pride safely?

I’ve never thought of myself as an actor, or as someone who can lie well (or at all). but can I lie, when I also believe the lie? is it a lie that I have anxiety? that I hate myself? that I have no confidence?

how much of me is real? how much does that hurt others? how do I carve out the parts of me that hurt others how do I make myself smaller in ways that are genuine and lasting and don’t hurt people??

I want to be small. I like being small. but am I small? or am I playing at being small?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

(cashing in on that safe comedic validation babeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy)

#long post #shut up ashley #also @ my friends who may read this: #if it feels like I'm vagueing I'm not like. trying to do that #it's just genuinely easier for me to lay this out in an open format #rather than bring it up in a conversation #I have no idea what the FUCK I'm talking abt right now

[maxikha-ffxiv]

Dazkar, Pt. 2

Alright so, now that I’m home, let’s clean up this story some. Part one can be found here, and here’s the second half/part. Still haven’t decided on if that third part idea I got will happen, so don’t hold your breath. Readmore is in place between sections to save your dashes

________________________________________________________________

Three weeks later

Drumstick chirped nervously. The chocobo was not thrilled about his momma entering an unknown camp. Maxi leaned down and patted her bird's he'd, scratching the back of it in the place she knew he liked. 

"it's ok buddy. I promise I'll be fine." 

Maxi patted Drumstick's side, getting him to move towards the campsite. As they approached the Dazkar campsite, Maxi dismounted, looking about. It appeared that just the males of the tribe and the elderly were the only ones around, which lined up to what she was told. The women were probably out hunting. She approached slowly, hoping that someone would eventually notice her. One eventually did, a taller Xaela feeding some dzo. He walked over to intercept the two, hailing her in the Xaela dialect Maxi was used to growing up.

“Hail there, stranger. What brings you to our borders?”

“Information, hopefully. I’ve been told stories about a Ghoa of the Dazkar, and I was hoping that I have found her tribe.”

“You are right, this is the Dazkar tribe. But what makes you think we are willing to just let you meet with Ghoa?”

“Well, I come bearing a package for her as well. Apparently someone had something for her at Reunion, so I offered to deliver it.”

“Right then. I’ll show you to her yurt. But I ask once you are done you depart. We are not interested in having visitors.”

A few minutes later, inside the yurt

"Forgive me, child. You just remind me of someone who was very close to me. Someone I lost years ago." 

Maxi had spent a couple of very awkward minutes standing in Ghoa’s yurt, being looked over by her after getting welcomed inside. What threw her off more, however, was her first words being in common Eorzean.

“Is there a reason you are choosing to speak to me in this tongue, or are you trying to show me something? I don’t really understand what’s going on right now...” The elderly woman let out a small chuckle, “No one else here knows the language, so we can talk without fear of eavesdroppers understanding us. But once again, you must forgive me. You just remind me so much of my Narani, there’s no other explanation I can think of except you being her daughter.”

Maxi thought for a moment about trying to hide it, but instead she chose to just accept she’d been found out. "You are correct. Then is it true that Baatu is the man who fathered me?" 

The elderly woman had turned her back, slowly rummaging through some sacks that were laying at the side of her yurt. “That is true. He is still the khan of our tribe, and unless I am mistaken, still unaware you live.” 

“But would he suspect I’m...”

“If Baatu suspects you are here for something beyond meeting me I would be surprised. He’s never been known for being smart. Although us speaking in a tongue that most of the males in this tribe neither know or desire to know, it will keep him and his spies from knowing what we are discussing even if he did. Ah, here they are.”

Ghoa turned around, holding a wrapped bundle. She walked back over to Maxi with it, handing it to her. Maxi unwrapped the bundle, revealing a bow. It was black, with gold accents. But what caught maxi off guard was the blue and red decorations, almost akin to a butterfly's wing. She’d never seen anything so amazing before. She gripped it, the metal and wood feeling warm to her touch. Holding the bow, it felt perfectly balanced to her. With no explanation, holding this bow, it felt right.

“This bow is mine, I was given it when I was your age. The man who crafted it claimed he used a wing of a God from west of Eorzea, but considering his drunken state at the time, I assume he just took inspiration from one of the local species of butterfly. It's also where I got my nickname, the Butterfly of the Dazkar. Don’t need it anymore, my reaction time and strength have left me years ago. Besides, I always intended to pass the thing down to your mother. It is just yours now my dear. Something tells me that you'll find more use of it."

Maxi smiled, rewrapping and putting the bow into her pack," I can't thank you enough. I will do my best to honor you with it."

"You are my granddaughter. You already are so much more than I could ever ask for." 

Maxi hugged Ghoa tight, the tears she had held back since seeing the bow finally getting the better of her. 

#maxi kha #ffxiv #au ra #xaela