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#i care these three a lot
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walk beneath the stars
CN: anxiety, spiralling
[a little birthday writing for Noel (papp_n_paper on twitter). Tony belongs to them, November belongs to @constantlytiredghost. this takes place at the end of our Stormchaser run.]
Found my friends, I'm not dead, here we go again What's the time? How long has it been? Help me come alive, sail across the sky, take me further Can we last all night again?
Hayley Kiyoko - Found My Friends
„Well, who won?“ Tony’s voice was a whisper, but they made up for that by increasing the volume, so it carried down from the crow’s nest to the deck where Wilhelmina was standing.
“Uh…” Wilhelmina adjusted her glasses. “I couldn’t really tell,” she mumbled. “You were both pretty fast, so I think…” She trailed off.
“So it’s a tie,” Tony said. Wilhelmina could tell November was nodding even from the distance, because her big hat was bobbing along with it.
Wilhelmina exhaled in relief. She had almost expected them to be disappointed by the lack of a result, even angry at her for not paying closer attention. Which, at this point, was a stupid thing to think. If they wanted to find a fault in Wilhelmina, they had had so many chances, so why still wait? Wilhelmina had been forced to accept that Tony and November (and Kobalt, and maybe even the rest of the hired group and the crew but she did not want to think about that, she did not want to consider that) actually liked her. And still, she couldn’t shake that feeling, that dread of waiting for the other shoe to drop, like it so often did. In the end, she always expected to be excluded, and usually she made it easy for herself and everyone else by shutting them out, pushing them away, making herself hated before anyone else could hate her of their own volition. She couldn’t do that here, though. Not with these people. Not with people who made it so hard for her to hate them. Not with Tony, and not with November either.
“Hey, Wilhelmina!”
Tony’s call ripped her out of her thoughts and sent that little shock through her body that oh so often preceded an unconsciously called bubble of Darkness forming around her. But she could keep it together this time, though the shadows must be covering her entire face now. She realized she’d been spiralling again.
At least Tony and November didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Do you want to come up here as well?” November asked.
Or maybe they had simply ignored it.
Wilhelmina shook her head.
“Oh, are you scared of heights?” November asked, but Tony already shook her head. They had asked her the same question.
High places didn’t scare Wilhelmina, especially not after what had happened during the storm – what scared her was being up there in a close space with two people, and no polite way to leave if she didn’t know what to say or how to behave and what if she stepped on one of them while scrambling over the edge of the crow’s nest, what if she poked them with her horns accidentally, what if she was a general nuisance? No, she preferred to stay down here, at a safe distance, where nobody could take any issues with her.
She heard quiet whispering exchanged between Tony and November. Good. Let them have fun together without her. That was much more probable anyway.
Then Tony called again: “Wait a moment, Wilhelmina.”
She looked up and saw Tony had stood up. They stepped up to the rim, their wide dark cloak billowing in the wind. Their eyes gleamed a bit lighter, and then they put one foot forward into the air, where it found purchase. They stepped forward, and one foot in front of the other walked downwards like on an invisible staircase. The sight was mesmerizing in itself.
Finally, Tony came to a halt directly in front of Wilhelmina, levitating one foot off the planks of the ship. They smiled at her and held out a hand.
Wilhelmina instinctively took a small step back and then felt her face darken in embarrassment.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Tony’s smile didn’t waver, and they didn’t pull away their hand.
Wilhelmina bit her lip and then took Tony’s hand.
It felt like moonlight touching her skin. A feeling of lightness came over her as Tony pulled her up to them, like she wasn’t flying but rather submerged in a weightless space where she could float, like ink dripped in water. It felt like time had slowed and she was falling, but in slow motion. And then she wondered how many of those sensations came from Tony’s magic and how many from Tony grasping her hand and wrapping their other arm around her shoulder to pull her up into the air. Wilhelmina felt heat rise to her cheeks and for once she was happy for the involuntary magical shadows clouding her face.
“Everything alright?” Tony asked.
Wilhelmina nodded mechanically.
Tony took a step forward and upward. As she was pulled along, Wilhelmina reflexively moved her legs as well, even though logically she knew that there was no place to put her feet. She could feel her heart beating faster and hoped Tony didn’t notice. She wished she didn’t have to be so close, but –
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
Wilhelmina looked up at Tony in surprise and only now noticed that she was holding their hand in a tight grasp. She felt the cold of the shadows join the heat on her cheeks.
“Sorry, I…” She trailed off. What was she supposed to say? That she was still kind of expecting them to let go at just the right moment for her to crash on the deck and break and never get up again? That that was what she was always secretly waiting for?
“You don’t have to apologize, Wilhelmina.” Tony’s voice sounded a bit hesitant now as well. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have talked you into this. Do you want to go back down?”
Her first instinct was to nod, but this time she shut that down. She considered it for a moment. Looked up to the crow’s nest that was already so close. November was leaning over the rim, waving her hands at them, smiling. Wilhelmina swallowed down her fear and shook her head, directed her gaze at to the side for distraction. From here, she could see over the railing of the ship, at the clouds below it, and beyond those the starry sky stretching to infinity.
Four more steps and they arrived at the crow’s nest. Tony set her down inside. As soon as they let go of her, Wilhelmina felt the weight return to her body and stumbled. November held out her arms to support her. When she had regained her balance, she sat down, back against the wooden planks, knees drawn up to her chest.
Tony floated down as well now, sitting closer to November. “That was a lot nicer than last time we both got up here, don’t you think?” they said to Wilhelmina.
She nodded her head. Last time had been the storm. She had felt just as weightless then, but in a frightening way. She had also held on to Tony just as tightly.
“It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?” November said, her hand holding her hat as she raised her face up to the stars.
Wilhelmina nodded again and noticed that she was shaking.
November looked over to her “Are you cold?”
“I guess I am,” she lied. “I’m sorry, I left my coat in my room. Maybe I should head down again – “
Before she could even get up, Tony had undone the clasp of their cloak and thrown the wide fabric over everyone in the crow’s nest like a blanket.
“Better?” they asked.
Wilhelmina nodded, a bit perplexed.
“Oh, this is so comfortable,” November said. She edged closer to Wilhelmina, so the cloak was easier to share, and Tony did the same. An internal scream was building up inside her mind, and it was begging to be let out, directed at Tony and November, demanding to leave her alone, to keep their distance, to let her leave and go to her room and lock herself in, so she could… do what? Sit there, all alone, in a sleepless night, paging through the books that barely interested her? Would that really be that much better? Or would she just imagine what it could have been like if she had stayed? Worse, would she imagine November and Tony being happy without her? Would she imagine them doing what she didn’t dare to do?
She held the scream in. And tried to relax a bit. And only now noticed that neither of them were touching her, keeping a bit of distance, like they knew it could become overwhelming for her. Searching for a distraction, Wilhelmina looked up at the stars.
“You know the constellations, don’t you, Tony?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Tony’s eyes gleamed in the darkness, like they were two stars themselves. “Yes, do you know about them as well?” There was that sound again in their voice, that genuine admiration, that was so strange to Wilhelmina. The thought of disappointing them scared her, but still, she shook her head.
“Barely. Astronomy was one of the few subjects my parents weren’t interested in. They said it’s better to keep your eyes on the things in front of you. But,” she said, a bit panicked now. “You could show them to us. If you want. I’d be interested.” And then she shut herself up.
“I’d like to know as well,” November said.
Now Tony seemed a bit flustered, but excited as well. “Well, if you’re interested, let me see, where to start… You see those two star clusters, kind of round?” they called out then excitedly and pointed up into the sky. “We call those Where Selûne Looks Back, though I think they have a different name that’s more commonly known.”
Wilhelmina followed their finger with her eyes and looked up at the oval constellations. “I think I’ve heard them called Eyes of the Watching Woman,” she said.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Wait, where?” November asked.
Wilhelmina pointed up as well. “To the west, right next to that big star.”
November leaned in closer to better follow Wilhelmina’s pointing. Her shoulder bumped against her arm. She shivered, and not just because November’s skin was colder than hers, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, I see!”
Tony continued talking about the constellation, it’s meaning and significance in culture and navigation. Then they went on to the next star cluster, showing them Auroth the Ice Snake, the Centaur, the Sleepless Knights, and many more.
As they pointed out one after the other, the three people in the crow’s nest moved closer and closer under the cloak. November put her hand in Wilhelmina’s, and Tony wrapped their tail around hers, seemingly without noticing. And for once, Wilhelmina didn’t feel uncomfortable. She listened closely to their words and held on to both of them.
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abd-appleboxdog · 3 months
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I love these fools so much. I hope in the end they stay together or keep in touch. I heart them its like the dad who didn’t want a cat but loves the cat
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mumuqings · 5 months
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tgcf book spoilers, but one mu qing and xie lian snippet that I think about a lot is this one, at the start of xie lian’s second banishment when he’s surprised to hear mu qing being described as generous and kind:
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as opposed to this memory from before his first ascension when mu qing started giving out cherries to the kids in the city:
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I think it just really goes to show 1) how deeply mq’s actions truly affected xl and what he thought of him, but also 2) just how different mq and xl are fundamentally in the way that they think and approach things.
I don’t have a lot of commentary on xl that hasn’t already been said, but bc we get the story from xl’s pov, we see a lot of mq’s actions being framed as selfish or suspicious (which is fair, bc again, we know how much his actions hurt xl), but we also see a lot of misconstrued kindness, like in book 8 where it’s revealed that he knocked out fx in order to save him. it’s also pretty obvious how much mq still cares abt xl, with how quickly he volunteers as fu yao and the lengths he goes to protect him when he deems hc a threat, so I also think it’s very likely that mq leaving the trio first was exactly what he said it was — that he thought becoming a junior official, ascending quickly, would be the best way to take care of not just his mother, but also xl, fx, the king and queen, and himself, and so in a way, him leaving was him acting on his kindness. but ofc it doesn’t work out, and he spends the next 800 years fighting w/ fx about it, defending himself, his decisions, and his kindness, and nitpicking the accuracies of his statues while he himself remains completely misunderstood by the two people he probably cares abt the most.
and idk, I guess I just think that’s probably a really lonely way to spend 800 years.
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turrondeluxe · 1 year
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The shoulder touch keeps working
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thatsbelievable · 9 months
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moeblob · 2 months
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What if I straight up didn't explain myself? What if I just said trust me on this? Would you?
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lonizera · 10 months
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i fell back into the fire emblem hole and i can’t escape so here’s some doodles i made whilst still abroad
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Thinking about the KaeyaJeanDiluc friendship where they grew up together and they were CLOSE & sure maybe Jean felt like Diluc & Kaeya were closer since they were brothers & sure maybe Kaeya felt like he had to keep secrets from the two of them bc they would never understand but they were like. A trio! A team!
& then Diluc’s 18th birthday comes around and everything goes to shit and Diluc LEAVES so they’re no longer KaeyaJeanDiluc but just Kaeya & Jean & in some ways Kaeya and Jean get closer because of it but there’s also a pronounced DISTANCE where Jean doesn’t know how to reach Kaeya anymore & Kaeya is even more determined not to tell Jean anything & they both lose themselves in their duties to Mondstadt while also missing Diluc and ALSO, despite everything, offering each other unconditional support
& then Diluc comes BACK & in addition to Kaeya & Jean there’s the shaky reestablishment of Jean & Diluc and Diluc & Kaeya but it’s not THE SAME. they’re no longer KaeyaJeanDiluc; Jean & Kaeya are knights and Diluc will never be a knight again & they all changed while Diluc was away & none of them know how to talk to each other anymore AND YET there’s still an undercurrent of trust!! Not fully, especially between Kaeya & Diluc, but Diluc still calls on Jean during the archon quest, trusting that she will keep their secrets even though as the acting grandmaster she should probably not. Jean says in her about Diluc voiceline that she understands why Diluc hates the knights & is working hard to make them an organization he can trust again. Kaeya covers for Diluc’s darknight hero escapades & fondly reminisces about their childhood in front of him. Diluc invited Kaeya to dinner at the winery & (afaik) never told anyone about Kaeya’s origins. Kaeya tells the traveler that they need to give Jean their full support and planned a birthday party for her. Jean left Kaeya in charge of Mondstadt when she went to the golden apple archipelago! On some level they recognize that their goals still align!! There’s still trust and love there but there’s also this gap between them that none of them know how to cross and I just!!!
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fandomchokehold · 5 months
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Ima just say if you don’t like Gale or the only content you make of him is mocking him maybe, and hear me out on this, keep it out of the Gale tags 😍
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txttletale · 1 year
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In what ways does undertale's themes drop the ball? I feel like they do as well, but I only really see the criticisms you mentioned in your post by the online fandom at large.
the sans fight is cool and fun and has a sick music track. it should have fucking sucked it should have been literally on the same level as the stanley parable baby game. it should have been impossible without an autoclicker and been super fucking tedious with one. it should have been desert bus.
like i don't think that what undertale is every trying to say is 'killing video game characters is morally wrong in real life'. i think it's clearly, in chara and flowey--who are obviously positioned as Players of video games--is trying to explore what (at least to toby fox) is an unhealthy and unsatisfying way of playing games. the need to maximize the amount of 'content', the need to experience everything in a game even when it's not fun anymore. i think the way that flowey talks makes this very clear:
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like obviously diegetically this kind of stuff is meant to go towards making a point of how detached flowey is from his moral reality but i think non-diegetically this is pretty clearly speaking to a way of engaging with games that toby fox thinks sucks the fun out of them. flowey isn't connected to the contents of undertale because he didn't play it for fun, he played it to extract the maximum amount of Content, to see every possible combination of events, to get all the endings, etc.
the rest of no mercy route isn't fun. killing enemies once you've levelled up at all is boring and barely interactive, walking around in circles to spawn every single random encounter is boring, you miss out on substantial amounts of content--the humour and dialogue, etc. and that's the point! i don't think the intended emotional effect of the empty misery of the no mercy route is to make you think 'i'm a bad person for killing video game characters' it's to make you think 'is this even fun? what am i even getting out of this?' or in short--
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unfortunatley i think the sans fight being very cool and becoming iconic of the game kind of fumbles that very very hard becaues it does make the murder everybody route ultimately rewarding--it gives players the Content that i feel like the entire writing and metanarrative of the game is setting up to not exist, and so i think it absolutely fails to stick the landing.
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cozylittleartblog · 7 months
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so which side did y'all join in the faerie festival this year?
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b4kuch1n · 1 year
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hahaha wheee haha
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scificrows · 8 months
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Today I'm thinking about this:
Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.
And about how Murderbot slowly starts calling its humans its friends in Exit Strategy, tentatively at first:
Were they my sort-of human friends? My clients? My ex-owners, though legally that was only Dr. Mensah. Were they going to see me and yell for help, alert security?
but also more confidently later:
Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me.
The only tag I can access on Ratthi is a partial that says my human friend. That’s strange and unlikely, but the pre-catastrophic-failure version of me seemed sure about it, and I don’t have anything else to go on.
and Mensah confirms this at the end of the book too:
I just want you to know you already have options here, and I expect you’ll have more offers for your services or advice as a security consultant. And that you have friends here you can discuss things with, whatever you decide to do, or wherever you decide to go.
The thought that a bot could see its humans as its friends (and because they treat it as a friend too) made Murderbot so emotional in Rogue Protocol that it needed a minute to process it. And later on in the series it starts to understand that its own humans are its friends too - and how much they care about it and that it can go to them for help if it needs them and I just. I think I need to withdraw and have an emotion about this in private too.
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endlydraws · 1 year
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Lettuce family have a picnic ✨💖🐉
Inspiration taken from the painting “Holyday” by James Tissot
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zarla-s · 1 year
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I’m back from my trip! I had a good time but I also got Covid along the way. D: My symptoms are so far pretty mild, but it might knock me out for the next couple days, haha. I’m going to see if I can focus a bit to get some work done, but I dunno... we’ll see, haha.
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worstversionofme · 1 year
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After spending so much time watching dimension 20 I seriously don’t think I’ll ever be able to tolerate regular tv. My little gay heart has never seen this kind of queer representation in tv and it is nourishing my soul. And queerness is never the butt of any joke and the characters experiencing and figuring out their sexualities isn’t always sad and dramatic.
I have never related to something so much. This silly show of just a bunch of cool actor friends playing D&D has probably changed my life: I feel like I know who I am better now???
I am eternally grateful to Brennan Lee Mulligan and literally every person involved in Dimension 20 for giving us this show and this outlet to figure ourselves out. Also gonna be eternally annoyed with Dimension 20 every time I have to watch a straight romcom - give me gay wizards and fairies and candy people any day
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