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rainymoodlet · 9 months

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"... you ain't from 'round these parts, are ya?"

asher downey for @hauntedtrait's chestnut ridge bc!

young adult, twenty-six, they/them

an angry five foot five inches

farrier and hoof health specialist

will actually fight you over your horse/cattle/sheep/goat's feet

can confirmed fireman carry anyone... try them

shoulders are a lot broader than they appear they're SHORT

asher downey is an outdoor-loving, loner animal enthusiast who wants the best for your animals and will absolutely tell you to shut up until they finish assessing the issue. they're not rude, just... brusque. to the point. while they have a mean mug and a lot of quick comebacks loaded up in that small frame, asher is actually quite a genial sim. raised by polite parents in a polite town, they genuinely are a "good neighbor to know" - it's just gettin' past their cold front that's the hard part!

the scar and the bite are from particularly nasty run-ins with local coyote packs: they now own two, having rescued them as pups!

likes: mini goats in particular, cooking selvadoradan food, country fashion, the creak of old wood floors, historic landmarks, riding bareback (ahem), bitless goddamn bridles, wide open fields, flower-scented perfumes, crossfit, chewing wheat unironically, animal cops mothafuckin houston babeyyy

dislikes: the big city, smog in general, beating around the bush, passive aggressiveness, gossip, complaints in general like omg, washing the dishes, being expected to be quiet, THEIR HEIGHT, the tourism industry, the general slow gentrification of chestnut ridge, molasses, and - funnily enough - chestnuts

i am sinfully late with this and you know i can't help but make a bedazzled butch but i am utterly in love with asher and i'm so thrilled with how they came out 🥹 feel free to take whatever creative license you'd like with them, my beloved fangs!! shorter hair, no hair, bigger muscles, etc. i don't have the updated height slider back in my game so they're not height-accurate in-game, i'm going to go back in and fix that dsfkjhsdkf. private dl if chosen, and even if not, i'm so excited to see what blue is going to get up to!! 🥹 cas and in-game outfit below:

#mmm i could eat these kashisun presets up like a SNACC #ts4 #ts4 cas #ts4 screenshots #ts4 edit #ts4 bachelor challenge #hauntedtrait #chestnutbc #i am so in love with them omg #LATE TO THE PARTY AS USUAL #but god i can't get enough of them ok i really can't #let me live my hot horse hoof specialist fantasy... like pleas...#you can change them however you like!!#i wanted them a bit Beefier but my cas sliders were a bit fucked up by the latest update #that i ... finally installed cough #fun facts: is the third oldest of TWELVE and the owner of their late mother's smithy #their family i imagine is a bit of a staple in the local community??#feel free to insert them however you like~#but i know for a FACT they saw blue and were like hm... i could carry you yep

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treasureplcnet · 3 months

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As a LaiKabuMisu enjoyer, I never thought I'd need to see desperate Mithrun->Kabru before in my life, thank you so much for the food in these dark times.

desperate mithrun just makes me GIGGLE like the meme i made takes it a bit far for comedy's sake but it's like. this guy who only recently began to live for something else other than revenge and it's thanks to kabru and suddenly kabru dissapears his from life because he has a "job" . we've already seen mithrun go sulky when kabru doesn't side with him despite having valid reasons not to LOL (sfx: hmph)

i truly can see the momentary disconnect (i doubt this lasts very long or at least doesn't manifest obviously. mithrun is a quiet and ultimately rational guy) where he's like "... i thought kabru was gonna stay with me though?" and not even necessarily in a romantic light (for starters anyway). just in the way that mithrun just counted on kabru's companionship, but when adult schedules and establishing a kingdom collide, i think kabru would also equally have a hard time giving up what he works very hard for (protecting humans/short-lived races and being able to help govern so that this is possible). i can absolutely see kabru accidentally neglecting his relationships for too long, and not realising until his party intervenes, or mithrun 'hmph's at him again and he's like '..what did i do.'

sorry for the essay . tldr: i would like to picture mithrun sulking :)

#dunmeshi #its important to me that mithrun didnt immediately react with revenge either or like. idk. 'punishment' in some way #bc kabru kind of you know blows the canaries' mission up by letting laios' party go #but he just ties kabru up and pretends to ignore him . HMPH!#its not as severe a reaction as i thought it would be is all ..sorry mithrun for thinking this of you #i do also like the idea of kabru believing nobody knows the insane way he was into laios either LOLLL. LIKE HE STALKED HIM FOR A BIT #unfortunately if you spend a day around kabru and laios you can see the effects of a one sided situationship and its very clear #not to mithrun tho. that part is important. i like to think marcille is talking about it casually w chilchuck #and nothing actually changes on mithrun's face but his world shifts completely #also. one sided situationship with quotation marks im like brewing insane yaoi right now #the dynamics are going a bit crazy in my mind but i contain multitudes. i juggle. tho i do lean towards kabumisu over labru..#dungeon meshi #kabru #mithrun #answered

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diathadevil · 5 months

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Do you ever think about how Fakir, after him and Ahiru finally broke everything that kept the town of Goldkröne in the ghostly hands of its writer, after they finally have some air of peace over the town finally being able to live in its intended early 2000s environment, that Fakir still feels at times like it's not real and that for a while he fears that if he closes his eyes it'll be back in Drosselmeyer's control. Like it just doesn't feel real to him during that first year of calm, until he feels the dull pain on his recovering hand injury and Ahiru who follows him without a pendant anywhere to be found.

He doesn't feel it's real, the calm finality of this town, but he makes sure to feel the scar on his hand. And he makes sure to hold the little duck and realize that she is who she has always been. Him and the town are finally living peacefully.

#dia talks #princess tutu #He probably starts planning on writing Ahiru into the world mayyybe like 3-4 months into his recovery #he doesn't know what a cell phone is yet but he sure as hell can look at a bookstore and ask for a notebook and pens #i bet that first year in Goldenkröne must be hell because trading deals bring all sorts of new things into the town #Just Fakir going “what the fuck is a scooter?? Wait what's a CAR---”#he ends up having to read a bunch of newspaper articles about “Goldenkröne booming in German tourism!”#Actually does he even know his country's name... Did they all even know they lived in Germany and not JUST a city????#Drosselmeyer would've really pulled one on them for only talking about the city and its outskirts and NOT the country it resided in #But let's assume they did know. Fakir would have to figure out so much has changed in 2002 Germany compared to whatever time they were in #My god just thinking about the thought of Fakir learning what a television is... or a radio for that matter has me howling internally #local amateur writer is put into a coma after hearing for the very first time german rapper Sido #alternatively: local amateur writer's brain explodes after hearing german Happycore artist Blümchen and dance pop group No Angels #ptutu spoiler #i know its a +20 old show but just in case people wanna watch it i love it enough to tag the post show headcanon #ptutu analysis #ptutu headcanon #ptutu post canon #Also sorry i keep jumbling between Goldkröne and Goldenkröne in the writing its 4 AM and the german part of my brain is a mess lmao #(its supposed to be Goldkröne but for some reason I keep making it into the attribute word Golden so dont mind the mistake)#(if you do i will sob please be gentle towards my polyglot self)

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naturecalls111 · 7 months

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on liking girls

#comic #vent art #other fandoms #the fandom is my personal life LMAO #I had posted this on twitter and deleted it because it was vent art from back in like. Ohhh I forget. Must have been january #Like I had just had my birthday and I don't know what it was but something made me realise like #oh. I haven't come out to my parents #like it's Been a minute I probably should right #and my parents are like. the best in the world I say that with my whole chest #my sexuality is not something they would ever care about let alone judge me for #like they have so many gay friends OBJECTIVELY I KNOW THIS IS A NON ISSUE LOL #but I don't know. something about it DOES feel dangerous and I can barely come to terms with it #I hate the idea of making it a "thing'. does that make sense #i don't want it to be a “thing”#I don't want them to tell me they'll love me no matter what and that this doesn't change anything #I don't want to have to subject them to feel like I'm “opening up” and then Have to respond like that #I wish it felt like as natural of an integration as someone is being straight you know #i wish it was: i come home with the prettiest girl in the world (she is the prettiest because she is my girlfriend) and they're just like #“hi! so nice to meet you! lets sit for tea!”#and thats it no questions asked. my mom or dad wouldn't ask “why didnt you tell us?” does that make sense #This is why none of my highschool friends know either #i'll tell them if they ask but I don't want to make a performance of Telling Them #I don't. Owe them that #I don't owe anyone a heads up. I don't want to. I don't want to make it A Thing #It's a Me thing. I don't get why it has to be turned into a You thing.#also hi if you havent seen my face i look like That LOL

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pathetichoney · 1 year

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[Image ID: A drawing of a selfie taken by Sam Manson with Damian Wayne. They are both dressed up in formal attire, Damian in a black/dark grey suit with a red tie, and Sam in a purple topped off the shoulder dress with black straps. She is wearing a variety of jewelry, a necklace with a bat pendant, a black choker with a star of david in a circle pendant and cartoonish spider shaped earrings. Her hair is reminiscent in her half-up hairstyle, but with two ponytails rather than one. The background is a dark wall, a white collumn and white tile flooring. There is a window in the back, with green curtains, and outside the window is a cityscape of Gotham at night. There is a watermark of the artist’s username in the top left corner @pathetichoney. End ID.]

i am back on my bullshit this time with a v special new way that i’m drawing bc i got a new phone that i am paying out the wazoo for, however i can draw on it so my art has gotten significantly better. though of course i had to test myself and do both 1. a full background 2. a character who wears lipstick which i always struggle with unless their mouth is in a particular position and 3. a character that i have never ever tried to draw.

so like. rip me lol.

anyways i am back on my bullshit bc this is fanart of fanfic!!!! i always feel exactly in my element when i do this, it’s just always so good??? and fun?? and when i first read this fic, i mean oh god i just fell for it so hard. i ended up rereading it again like barely 48 hours after i’d finished reading it the first time lol

the fic in question is a damian and danny are twins au! it’s called Leap Before You Think by TourettesDog and i just-- the characterisations are just so well done it all feels incredibly natural especially with the merging of the two different universes into one cohesively and seamlessly it’s wonderful. there are a few faults with this pic i think, however i am still incredibly proud of it. as a bonus, here’s a better view of the window scene because i’m still really proud of that one:

#my art #danny phantom #batman #batfam #dp x dc #dp/dc #sam manson #damian al ghul wayne #fanfic fanart #also i am not jewish and i could not find a solid answer for this: but my intention w sam's choker necklace pendant was to be #the jewish star of david however when i looked online to find if i was right when i was doing the image id it was called a wiccan symbol?#as in the star of david in a circle and i couldn't find an answer to the question if they were two separate symbols or they're the same?#if this is NOT a jewish symbol then i can v easily change this and will make an edit for it even if it looks rather gothic for sam #i added the circle because the star that i'd drawn felt unfinished but i can v easily go back and add more detail to the star to remove it #as for damian i wish i could have accurately portrayed his murder scowl but due to my unfamiliarity with him i literally had to redraw him #like 10 times and i was v much relying on my friend to tell me exactly what i needed to adjust rip #in the end i gave up because this was the closest i could get to him and sigh oh well #i'll get it better next time i draw dp/dc stuff bc i probably will be doing it again soon lol #ALSO i am still v new to writing image ids so if there's any issues with this one please let me know!

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maxphilippa · 5 months

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Following the ii dark fics thing.

On some- if not most of the dark fics, disorders also tends to be used as a main thing to explain why the character is doing what they're doing. Which is, of course, not really great. Most au's that do this are about the Bright Lights as well.

Listen.

I can totally GET it. Mental health is a very important thing and having it ruined by people, or by other factors, can and WILL do some real damage to you. Yes. I can totally see a character doing questionable things because of their mental health being so so bad that it leads them to think that maybe, just maybe, these thoughts and actions aren't as bad, or that given the situation they're in, they're somewhat justified/it isn't inherently terrible of them, because of the state they're in doesn't let them think clearly, and they hold onto something because it's the last thing that makes them feel real.

One thing is doing that.

The other thing is using mental illnesses or their symptoms (per example: BPD, DID, Schizophrenia, and others) as the main reason as to why a character has done a killing spree or commited terrible actions. Meanwhile yes, having said disorders and going through heavy amounts of stress, and having no support can really make things difficult, mental illness won't make you a criminal or an awful person, a disorder isn't something you can just use for "oh well they have this so they commited murder because of this", people that have those already go through enough with others not even accepting that their condition is real or that it doesn't make them a bad person, for other people to use those disorders as a "Hey So This Is Why This Character Is Bad Now" for a story.

just sayin'

#inanimate insanity #ii #inanimate insanity invitational #ii 2 #ii 3 #ii fandom neg #if a part of this is disrespectful PLEASE let me know #despite having depression i am not very great at using mental health terms as well #but this is a recurring issue i saw at osctwt and generally on dark fics #i recognize that i did that mistake one time. but i ended up changing everything about the au and erased that.#fics on mental health can be so so much better than how they are nowdays #and listen i'm NOT saying that the character CAN'T have any disorders or anything.#of course they can.#but DON'T make them the reason as to why they're an “horrible person”.

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beesorcery · 1 month

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hello it's part 3 of 3 for my cool fun graphic design adventure!! part 1 and part 2 got too long. to recap i am recreating this t-shirt design but with the magic 8 ball songs instead of city names:

here is the current draft, updated through 3/27 (pittsburgh) (!!!!)

#aaaa!!!#tried doing image descriptions for this one #feel free to send me better ones though and i can update the alt text!! or just put them in the replies/reblogs lol #bees' graphic design adventure #only 7 more shows........ wowie #OH ALSO ppl have been expressing interest in getting this as an actual shirt which is!! cool!!#idk how to do that though!!#if anyone has recommendations for websites or something to do that please please send them or reply to this post or something #at the very least i'll make the file available at the end so ppl can print it on whatever they want #i was gonna make a poster #but yeah let me know if there's a good way to do that!!! it's really cool that people are enjoying this i am having a lot of fun doing it #fob #fall out boy #2ourdust #gonna update after nashville des moines and minneapolis so 3 left!!!#i have already changed it since posting this because i am a freak <3 and i cant leave good enough alone lol #also i now have all the fonts <3 for the cities anyway #not the states but i’ve only used the states a few times so far for like the parentheses or punctuation or whatever #so if i end up needing those ill go find them whatever #anywayyyy yeehaw see u all in like 4 days

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nicojoe · 7 months

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I wrote my own fanscript of THE OLD GUARD 2

The screenshots above are samples...

... I got tired of waiting for Netflix, so:

I tried to incorporate the following:

TOG 2 casting (Uma and Henry) plus some locations where the movie was shot last year (as seen in set photos, etc)

my own personal "wish list" of details, but hopefully in a way that makes sense within the larger story (tried to avoid making it just a self-indulgent, shoe-horned laundry list lol) and in a way that it could conceivably be greenlit by the industry -- ie: I'd have loved to write 2 whole hours of them just hanging out playing board games and reminiscing, but that would never be made into a movie.

a few ideas inspired by some of my favorite meta posts/fan art/etc (some of y'all are SO much more creative than the people actually making these movies, istg) -- try to spot them all!

favorite "action" scenes from the Force Multiplied comic, despite this script not being a true adaptation (it just borrows the broader strokes)

the decision not to make Quynh a villain; she's arguably got a hero arc in this, tbh (the top 1% and their use of institutional/systemic oppression to exploit and control the masses is the real villain, actually!)

no new immortals or explanation of immortality, tyvm; I tried to focus on the Family of Six and their shared history as much as possible.

PDF FILE OF SCRIPT

#the old guard #the old guard 2 #fan screenplay #fan script #kaysanova #andromaquynh #fan fic #(kind of)#i just remember some of our most beloved fandom moments revolving around the release of the original film's script #and i know that I'm not a professional writer but I wanted to try and capture just a fraction of that enthusiasm for us again #we deserve it so much you guys we've been given less than scraps for so long... it's hard to maintain passion when you feel forgotten #i don't know what the actual movie's going to be like... but i don't trust netflix at ALL not to mangle the elements i love #(ie: prioritizing character development - found family dynamics - flashbacks - queer rep - meaningful/character-focused action scenes - etc #(this doesn't have a beta reader so if i fucked anything up please let me know so i can change it xoxo)

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alexcabotgf · 5 months

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not to be true crime posting on main but i think i'm falling down the wm3 rabbit hole again

#xenia.txt #when i tell you this case keeps me up at night to this day #not even the murders themselves as much as the general public's reception to and opinions on the case 3 decades later like #i get why it;s always been so divisive especially after the pl docus came out (lots of opinions on those btw none of them are good #from the bottom of my heart fuck you joe berlinger and bruce sinofsky)#but it's truly baffling how no one is willing to do the research on what is arguably THE most well documented true crime case in recent #history like. everything that's ever been released to the general public is available online and i mean everything #you can find all the court files trial transcripts depositions interogation tapes aerial photos you name it it's out there for anyone with #internet connection to access at any and all hours of the day #and yet people are still foaming at the mouth fighting on reddit abt their innocence based off nothing but a couple of movies like #bffr with me right now!! almost every point the innocenters make can be easily debunked by scrolling through callahan for 15 minutes #'but they've been pushing for dna testing since their release so they can't be guilty' baby the case is closed!#it's been closed the second they took the plea. they can be striking under that courthouse and it still won't change a thing and they knowi #that's why they're pushing for it in the first place but that's just my opinion #^ and i say they but it's really only echols which makes a lot of sense to me personally #and if you want to talk abt dna testing let's talk abt the one that was done in 2011 and how the defense hurried to propose the plea as soo #as they got the results! let's talk abt those cause no one's ever seen them and i would very much like to #braga share the results the people want to know!!#makes me wonder which pieces of evidence they even submitted for that 2011 testing because if i'm remembering correctly #there was one that would've closed this case instantly and maybe that's why the results were never disclosed and the plea was rushed #but that's also just my opinion #and it's also interesting how the majority of people who have in fact deep dived into this case #(and i'm not talking abt big true crime youtubers as i'm very sceptical abt their research abilities)#all collectively lean towards guilty. much to think about #i was hoping someone would make another ~actually~ unbiased documentary for the 30th anniversary and go over all the case files #but i don't think that's even realistic at this point seeing as everyone and their mother has some sort of an opinion on this case #hbo deserves another lawsuit for this. they should've never won the first one in the first place #true crime tw

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moghedien · 3 months

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i swear if you people start uwuifying OCD like you did with ADHD and autism I'm going to start attacking

#the general idea of what OCD is already so fucking wrong and harmful #if you start being like 'oh my little meow meow is so OCD' or 'its not a disorder its just a different way of thinking uwu'#I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL #ALL OF MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORIES FROM AGE 3 AND UP ARE OF HAVING PANIC ATTACKS #PLEASE GO FUCK YOURSELVES THIS IS A MISERABLE FUCKING DISORDER ITS NOT CUTE ITS NOT QUIRKY ITS THE REASON I HAD GRAY HAIR AS A TEENAGER #i saw this like 'i let the intrusive thoughts win' isn't something people use all the time for like dying their fucking hair #its exhausting how many people what to be all 'mental illness needs to be more accepted'#and then in the next sentence want to deny that your mental illness is actually harmful to you and doesn't negatively affect you #and its just because society doesn't accept your different way of thinking uwu #NO I LITERALLY WOULD HAVE KILLED MYSELF AS A TEENAGER IF SOMEONE HAD CONVINCED ME THAT MY MENTAL ILLNESS WAS NORMAL AND FINE #figuring out that something was Wrong with my brain was like the best moment of my life #and this 'no you just think differently don't try to change' attitude may be helpful in SOME CASES #but that shit needs to me pulled back on A LOT online because that framing can be extremely harmful to some people (like me)#knowing exactly what is wrong with my brain is literally the only way I'm able to not let it affect me #and it not affecting me is literally the only way I can function and live happily #like you understand that some people do genuinely have things wrong with them #and telling them they don't is beyond cruel

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arceus-forbid · 1 year

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There’s this stereotype that shiny pokemon are fussy and pampered and generally weaker bc they’re rather babied and adored. And while I understand where that assumption comes from (I’ve seen how some of you guys treat your shinies don’t even lie). I feel like people forget why most shinies are so incredibly rare.

Like, depending on their coloration it wildly decreases their survival rate in the wild. There’s gonna be a difference in living as a blue Vaporeon or a bright pink one, y’know? Makes them struggle to blend in with their environments which, depending on if they’re carnivorous, can make hunting harder, sometimes the pokemon gets rejected from their packs/herds/flocks, they can struggle to get a mate, and makes them an easy target for predators.

So like when you see a shiny in the wild you gotta just stand back and bask in the rarity of it not just for being rare genetically, but the sheer amount of willpower and strength (or luck) that its had to make it this far. That’s pretty badass.

#this isn’t like a universal experience for wild shinies though. we all know some of them hardly sport a difference #every day i’m afraid i’ve run into a shiny somewhere and just let it get away bc it was only a slight tone change lmao #but the first shiny i ever ran into in the wild was a shiny Drowsee and let me say #that thing was FIERCE #never met an aggressive Drowsee before kinda scared me tbh #ended up trading him away but he was a toughy #its not easy being pink #i will say though. breeder sourced shinies are pretty pampered #isn’t that a funny dichotomy though?#in the wild life can be so hard for them. but to us humans we love and adore their differences #pokeblogging #pkmn irl #pkmn posting #pokemon blogging #pokemon irl #unreality

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 1 year

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Well, it’s been a week and I've had time to cool down and put together my thoughts on Season of the Seraph and its ending. So here goes.

The season finale plot did not require Rasputin to die. "The eliksni are trying to get control of the warsats" is literally a strike. If the warsats needed to be taken off the table as a get-out-of-jail-free card we could have blown the network and kept Rasputin himself. There was an active decision to kill him. Having thought about it, I think I understand why this decision was made - but I still think it's a terrible decision, and I'll explain why.

Before we start, I don't want to sound like I'm going after Destiny's narrative team either personally or professionally. I'm not calling them terrible writers, much less terrible people. I don't know them! They might even be terrible people, for all I know. While I refer to a single monolithic "narrative team," I know in reality there are multiple groups working on different stories. I’m not a professional writer, and they are. And I genuinely believe all of them are talented people who work hard and care about Destiny. But that doesn't mean I don't have some criticisms.

After considering it I think there are three possible reasons to kill Rasputin:

1). The narrative team believed this was a good emotional conclusion that brought closure to his character arc in Destiny. In this case I just think they're flat-out wrong. I'd say "I respect it" but I kind of don't because I think it's so terribly wrong. I don't know what other people think Rasputin's character arc involved, but I won't get closure till Rasputin faces the Witness again and finally ends the war he's been trapped in for centuries. But I get why they would do it, if they believed this. And that final mission was really good. I had a hard time noticing at the time, but it was very well-done, and the cutscene proper was well-shot, -scripted, and -acted (though I'm still angry about the Traveler upstaging Rasputin's death). They put a huge amount of effort into it and into the story work all season long.

But his death being well-done doesn’t change whether I think it was a good narrative choice. Even saying “Rasputin’s arc should conclude here,” the way it was set up had him sacrificing himself to basically cancel himself out. Unless they’re saving up a plot twist, Rasputin ultimately contributed nothing to the fight. He didn’t do any damage to the Fleet or Witness, or anything to stymie Xivu Arath. He died thinking he’d never helped humanity at all and it was safer if he didn’t exist. I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely unsatisfying.

2). Someone doesn't like Rasputin/doesn't know what to do with him. This is two reasons, but they overlap. The Operation: Sancus mission dialogue pissed me off because it gave me the impression that whoever was writing it really didn't like Rasputin and was taking the chance to morally excoriate him. A more subtle version recurs in the final mission where Rasputin is essentially sacrificing himself to null out his own existence - saying "as long as I exist I'm a threat to humanity" - as if he can't ever help or contribute more than endanger people, which is just flat-out wrong. "Humanity doesn't need a Warmind" you're part of humanity, Red. He’s a person; he doesn’t need to justify living. If someone just decided Rasputin Was Bad Actually I’d be very angry indeed. But I don't think it's that personal. Destiny has lots of writers and multiple narrative teams will touch the same work. One person's distaste probably wouldn't steer an entire season.

Related, however, is the reason that maybe no one knows what to do with Rasputin. To be honest I sympathize with this one. Would it shock anyone to hear I've thought about how I would script a Rasputin-focused season? It's surprisingly hard to build a plot around him. A game needs to be interactive and Rasputin's kind of all or nothing - either he can handle the whole problem himself or he can't do anything at all. Red also mostly plays defense. He doesn't have a goal he's working towards other than "kill the Witness/save humanity." You need to come up with a plausible goal that we can believably help him achieve, and that's nontrivial. But, well, that's why I'm not a professional games writer and these people are. "Not sure what do" is not IMO sufficient justification for assassinating one of Destiny's oldest characters/factions.

3). The Destiny narrative team is trying to "declutter" the setting and foreground story by sidelining characters who take a lot of lore to understand. I think this is the real reason, and it's worth talking more about.

A lot of us lore-nerds have long complained about Destiny not foregrounding its setting and story, and Bungie has responded by trying to do so. I think we didn't consider what that would actually look like. Imagine Destiny's story like a long movie. Now imagine people are constantly coming and going from the audience, and everyone who comes in has to nudge their neighbor and go, "hey, what's happening?" Destiny is always (hopefully) acquiring new players, and existing ones are dropping out and coming back. Even most established players either don't read the lore or don't track/remember it. We the lore-keepers are very much the anomaly. If we want story to be a focus, that story also has to be more accessible to new players, lapsed players, people who don't bother reading loretabs, etc., because otherwise it harms their experience and there's a lot more of them than there are of us.

I think this is why we've seen a lot of seasons that introduce whole new concepts - the eliksni Sacred Splicers, for instance - rather than following on existing storylines. Introducing a mostly-new concept puts new and old players on a similar footing. Haunted is another type of compromise between the goal of furthering the story and the goal of making it accessible. Calus and Leviathan are back, but so warped that old players have as much to learn as new ones, and the Sever missions dive deep into character pasts but pretty explicitly describe the emotional arcs they're illustrating, so you don't have to be familiar with that character to get what they're going through. To those who already know Zavala, Crow, etc., it seems laughably obvious and strained. But to those who just got here, this is their first time learning not just about Safiyah but also about Zavala. I think this is also why there have been multiple casual retcons of minor stuff - there isn't time to explain the history, and they've decided it's not worth confusing people.

Rasputin is old. He's been a significant part of Destiny since literally the pre-Alpha test. The complexity and history that are part of why we love the Warmind also make him hell to explain to new people. It takes a decent amount of lore to get invested in his character and since Beyond Light none of that lore is featured in-game. Pre-Season of the Seraph, anyone who began with Beyond Light literally never met him. They never visited Hellas Basin, which is one big environmental story about Rasputin, and The Will of Thousands strike, which demonstrates Red's power and contains many possible dialogues that emphasize him trusting you/acting as an ally, left the playlist ages ago. Since then a new player's only gameplay interaction with him has been Fallen SABER, in which Red yells incoherent Russian and tries to flatten you with a warsat. Is it a surprise relatively new players might not be up on his character arc?

Season of the Seraph, with its narrative of rebuilding Rasputin from the ground up, would be a perfect time to introduce new players to Red's long history, and they...kind of...did that. They worked in Felwinter although then for some reason felt the need to retcon in the whole "Clovis wanted to destroy the Traveler" plan. If you were a new player who didn't know anything about Destiny lore, and you just played Season of the Seraph, you'd get an entire canned arc for Rasputin that hits the early high notes: built to be a weapon, rebelled against his constraints, humanities nerd, big smite, loves Ana and Elsie, makes mistakes but genuinely cares and wants to help.

But that's where Seraph stops. In existing lore (I almost typed "in reality") Rasputin worked out the whole "not a weapon" thing well back during the Golden Age. For a lot of us Warmind fans the most interesting parts of his story happened after that - the entire Collapse, confrontation with Darkness, years of hiding, etc., not to mention all his character development during Warmind and Worthy. He's gone through a lot, and Seraph misses all of it (except Felwinter) in favor of rehashing the same arc for a third time. It's like when moviemakers keep rebooting a superhero origin story. It may be a good story, but eventually we'd like to move on to the other parts we enjoy: this sleeping giant, hard scifi AI, grouchy old bastard, lost lore of the Golden Age, champion of humanity, learning from defeat, learning to trust again, the morality and trauma of warfare - what it means to lose a war - a being never meant to become what he was transforming still further, still unfolding his own potential.

So understanding why they might have done this doesn't excuse what I still see as a terrible narrative choice. I think dropping Rasputin is a major waste of potential, and he's far from the only tricky character to explain. Osiris, or at least the Cult of Osiris, is similarly old. His story is complex and weird and requires knowledge from Curse and earlier, yet he's still playing a major role. Other current characters like Elsie, Saladin, and Crow also need a decent amount of knowledge about previous game events to get why they are the way they are. Saladin's origin story isn't even in this game. It's not Rasputin's fault the game went three years without so much as mentioning him outside of written lore. What was wrong with the great Xivu-Rasputin “war god” parallels most of the season worked to set up, about the intent of violence? Are we never going to explore those? Are we just throwing out all the dialogues planning a role for Red in the upcoming war? Why did we have a dramatic confrontation about trusting Rasputin to operate independently if he were going to be gone in a month anyway? Just in Seraph alone the number of interesting plot threads abruptly trashed by this death argues against it.

Rasputin's longevity is precisely part of why he should stick around. In the first mission of Destiny 1 you wake up in his shadow. He has a history with us. There's just no one quite like him in Destiny. He's not just a character but an entire faction. He explores a part of story space that no one else does. He resonates with us as people rather than players. I assume Neomuna will pick up the Golden Age banner, but it’s a thriving city; Rasputin represented the ruins, the dangers of a dead age, the shadow of apocalypse. He's also maybe the most Guardian-like character and one of the best to weave a parallel/cautionary tale - were we, too, only made to be weapons? But if Rasputin didn't stay a weapon, can we too transcend that intention? And of all the factions in our solar system, the two with the most personal scores to settle with the Witness are the eliksni and Rasputin, and Misraaks'/Eramis' story has focused much more on the Traveler's flight than the Fleet's attack. Of everyone in Destiny Rasputin has the most desperately personal motive for revenge on the monochrome bastard. Now he's not even going to be there to watch it crash and burn.

I understand that foregrounding story also comes with the requirement that it be accessible to those who don't do their lore homework. I appreciate the monumental amount of work that's gone into doing that and the experimental nature of it. But I think the balance has skewed too far towards accessibility. Stuff like the end of Season of Plunder that has zero narrative motivation or continuity and doesn't even get a pretend justification drives me absolutely batty. You can only break internal rules so many times before players stop buying whatever narrative stakes you're trying to set up. Making the story easier to follow doesn't mean characters have to be cartoonishly-exaggerated caricatures like Clovis was in Seraph - just absolutely cartoonishly evil - or reduced to one or two character motives explicitly laid out for the player (though, credit where credit is due, Clovis was hilarious.) It doesn't mean the dialogue has to be as subtle as a Thundercrash. It doesn't mean you get a blank check to retcon or invent whatever's needed to create the intended character arc. If anything that discourages looking further into lore - why bother to learn it when next season will change it all again? I think Y5 represents a lot of experimentation by the Destiny narrative team, and I really respect that. But I also hope they learn what didn’t work from it, and sacrificing Rasputin in an ultimately pointless and unnecessary finale is a major misstep.

#Destiny 2 #Season of the Seraph #Destiny spoilers #Season of the Seraph spoilers #and that’s what I think about that #anyone else feel like this finale was weirdly disjointed from the rest of the season?#like Sancus led into it but the previous missions didn’t lead into Sancus at all #why so much planning and speculation on Red’s future if he wasn’t going to have one?#frankly why bother with Xivu Arath?#I wonder if this was supposed to be the second or third season and got moved up #I don’t know why I wrote this no one cares what I think and it won’t change anything #but it makes me feel better #so hey that’s not nothing #and I can pretend it might matter #just let me pretend #this is the wager of existence #The Warmind Rasputin #Season of the Seraph finale #IDK my BFF AI-COM/RSPN

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