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#idk I just like chess
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i uh may or may not have just binge-read through all of your writing over the past few days...it's so good!!!!!!! im screaming crying throwing up etc. 🥹🥹🥹 can i request: villain challenges hero to a game (could be a card game, chess, tug-of-war lol anything that you want!). the terms are if the villain wins then the hero steps aside and lets the villain carry out their evil plan without resistance. and at first the villain is super cocky because they think the hero is out of their element...but then the villain loses. >:)
Responding with the Sicilian Defense is usually seen as aggressive and the hero had to learn the hard way that this term perfectly described the villain’s play.
Their moves were calculated and anything but irrational. They attacked where they could and took piece after piece. It made the hero think of an unforgiving conquest as they struggled to protect their bishops and knights.
“You seem nervous,” the villain purred. They smiled to themselves when they moved a pawn to threaten the hero’s rook. “Which you should be. Your defense is laughable.” 
“I am sure it is,” the hero said, moving the rook quickly. “I usually play chess for fun and not with the pressure of thousands of lives on my shoulders.”
“Oh, come on. This is fun,” they said as they attacked the rook again. 
“Feels more like war.”
“Same difference.” The hero looked up at their opponent, raising their brows at the delusional impudence. At first, they had been surprised that the villain had chosen black. White always starts, so it was somewhat capable of controlling the start of the game. In the hero’s mind at least. 
But when the villain moved their pieces, they saw in the patterns that they used them to mock the hero. Hunting their queen across the board with their bishops, threatening them with pawns — black was answering white’s calls and it was to embarrass the hero. 
They swallowed. 
“I sometimes forget how violent you are,” the hero lied. They took the villain’s knight and lost a bishop. Definitely not ideal but sadly necessary to protect their queen. 
“You insult me, really,” the villain said. They hummed as their eyes went over the board with a wild interest the hero had never really seen before. The whole game entranced them, brought out a side of them foreign to the hero. 
The hero castled before the villain could check them. 
“Didn’t mean to,” the hero said. If you weren’t a criminal, the hero thought, if you weren’t like that, I would like to be your friend. It was a silly thought, a childish dream that was quite impossible to achieve. The villain was an interesting person but the distance put between them would never allow the hero to actually get to know their enemy. 
They didn’t like going into battle without knowing the one they were fighting but they were also aware of the dangers of understanding someone. Long ago, they had trusted people they shouldn’t, understood their motives, felt for them and if that happened with the the villain, they didn’t know if they could call themselves a hero after that. And yet…
“Oops,” the villain said, placing another piece.
It dawned on them too late, chatting too much and thinking about their relationships was throwing them off. The villain had cleverly put pressure on the hero’s queen and the hero hadn’t been able to defend her. They would have to sacrifice her. Shit, they couldn’t even trade. 
“She wasn’t my type anyway,” the hero said casually, shrugging as they put another pawn forward. The villain giggled and as stupid as it was, the hero liked that they’d made the villain laugh.
As they took their queen, the villain was as cheerful as a kid with a full supply of candies. However, that was the villain’s first mistake. 
In this exact moment, the hero became aware of their own slip-ups. They’d been so afraid of understanding the villain. They’d been so afraid that if they actually got to know them, they would end up miserably. 
The thing was, they already knew them. They knew them ever since their first move.
The battle across the board went on slowly, and concentrating more on the villain’s moves than their hands, the hero forced themselves to be careful with their pieces. One time, the villain commented on the hero’s pawn placement, saying it was adorable but the hero only nodded absentmindedly, slipping into offense instead of defense. 
Step by step, the board cleared and the villain found themselves with a knight and their last rook while the hero could only rely on their pawns. 
“You wanna give up? Would be less painful.” The hero was more confident than before, especially because they had stopped thinking about the villain and started thinking like the villain. 
They knew the villain would chase them across the board again. 
That was their second mistake. 
While the villain had been busy humiliating the hero, the hero had decided to push their pawns forward. One of them had gotten to the end of the board.
“My queen, please,” the hero said politely. It was the first time that the villain didn’t yap a snappy comment. They just gave them the piece in silence and got checkmated in four moves, losing the battle.
The hero smiled as they stared at the villain with their mouth agape.
“Oops,” the hero said. “You were right. This was fun.”
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linktoo-doodles · 1 year
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Las nevadas concepts
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weaselle · 4 months
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i really like the lock picking in Skyrim because it's an actual skill that i, the player, have gotten good at.
like, i have never put a single perk point into the lockpicking tree, but i can pick any lock in the game in ten picks or less because i have a system that i developed into a practiced skill i use on all the locks.
That may sound like a useless or broken game dynamic, but it's one of my favorite things in the game actually -- the locks in Skyrim are built a certain way, and i, as a player, have developed the skill to pick them based on experience, practice, and the development of a process.
i actually wish more things in more RPGs were like that.
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somnol · 8 months
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I believe in old texture-new texture solidarity
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childrenofthesun77 · 5 months
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Assuming that the whole 'mahiru is the vessel needed to bring back the count and the 9th servamp will be the servamp of vainglory' theory will be correct, it's interesting how both mahiru and touma can be accused of this sin even if the way it applies to them is opposed.
What touma wants is to be acknowledged and to that end he was willing to become the villain who destroyed the world before mahiru and tsurugi managed to change his mind:
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Mahiru's way of being vainglorious seems a lot more positive at first because he wants to be a hero who saves others, but it's self-destructive and encourages laziness in others:
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But thankfully we see mahiru starting to let go of the need to make other people proud of him and to prioritize making himself proud in his conversation with tsurugi:
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and later when mahiru has a meltdown because he fears his uncle might be dead and suggests sacrificing his life to save the world kuro rightfully yells at mahiru for acting hypocritical and not listening to his own advice:
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(I want to mention here that I really love how horrified kuro looks as he realizes that mahiru's reckless hero behaviour comes from a very self-destructing place:
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because not a lot of manga I know really acknowledge that maybe the way a lot of their protagonists try to be heroic is actually pretty unhealthy and shouldn't be encouraged? Like Sigurd pointed out at the C3 meeting, it's kind of shameful that the children have to save the day)
Which is why I love that mahiru decided to trust kuro to handle tsubaki without him going with him:
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He decides to stay back with everyone else, showing that he has learned that he doesn't need to be the one to do everything and can stay back with the others to buy kuro time.
Interestingly we see touma doing something similar. Opposed to his old need to have the whole world acknowledge him he now wishes for everyone to believe he's dead and he's helping to protect the city by creating a huge barrier without making it known that's he the one doing this:
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He's helping the protagonists seemingly with no intention of earning acknowledgement for it.
I think in a way it could be cool of servamp to subvert the shouned trope that for the finale battle the only one able to defeat the big bad is the protagonist while everyone else just watches on from the sidelines, not allowed to do anything because this is the protagonist's moment of glory.
What if lily's plan when he put kuro in mahiru's path was that if kuro tried to stop tsubaki at the gate surely his eve would need to be there with him, right? Because of course he needs his eve to fight and then there's also the distance limit. So why not make the vessel you need at that gate for the ritual to work kuro's eve? Then the vessel would be at the place where you need them without you even needing to do something because naturally they would be thinking they are doing the right thing by going with kuro to fight tsubaki together. And surely someone as vainglorious as mahiru would never pass up the opportunity to be the hero who stops tsubaki. It's foolproof!
Unless of course before the ritual the vessel learned to let go of their vainglorious nature, accepted that it's okay to take a step into the background and trust in others. And additionally also found a way to break through the whole forced proximity thing that the servamp and eves had going on.
I don't know, I feel like it would be a neat bow on mahiru's character arc and a unique way to thawrt the antagonists' plans if the creation of the servamp of vainglory failed because the 'it has to be me' guy they wanted to use as the vessel decided against glory and stayed back to let his partner handle things with tsubaki alone because he trusts him. Kuro on the other hand wants to make up for his past regrets and resolve the conflict through communication this time. Learning to trust in himself again by managing to talk tsubaki out of going through with the ritual on his own would be a logical conclusion to kuro's arc.
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spitblaze · 7 months
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Gold and Silver are good kids and Gold likes to show up unannounced to Lance's house post-game to bother Silver and Silver is like 'ugh great just what I need a loud annoying weirdo' but they are neither loud nor annoying while they hang out they just quietly sit on the floor reading magazines abt pokemon or playing video games and sometimes Gold will shove something in Silver's face like 'WHOA CHECK THIS OUT' and Silver will be like 'can you quiet down. What stupid thing could possibly get you that excited' as if he wouldn't also be equally excited about the very cool article about Sharpedo Gold just found
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jaskefer · 10 months
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Obsessed with the idea of Extraordinary Things being a back and forth between Jaskier and Radovid, with Jaskier trying to draw him out in the first verse, and Radovid finally answering him in the second.
Cause like, with Radovid, Jaskier meets someone who he can't fully read properly. He knows there's something under the front of a drunken, bumbling prince, but he doesn't know him well enough yet to be certain as to what.
So, he tests the waters a bit. throws out a line to see if Radovid will take it—and he does. A little bit. But it's so interesting to me, because it doesn't just feel like Jaskier is trying to nail down Radovid's truth in this verse; it feels like he's injecting elements of his own mask into it, as well.
"Keep your words on ice, your gaze lights the fire. They say 'keep on playing nice,' but I have no desire. Why waste our words when lips were made for extraordinary things? It's not a want, it's a need, it is paying no heed to what others say to sing."
This is Jaskier's read of Radovid as he knows him so far: a man hiding more complex wants beneath the veneer of a drunken party boy. But it's also Jaskier admitting that he knows this about Radovid because he wears the exact same mask himself.
Much like how Jaskier and Ciri speak through Geralt and Yennefer in order to process their own feelings about them later in the season, Jaskier sings through himself in order to comprehend who Radovid is. Jaskier is using the performative persona he's crafted for himself in an attempt to coax Radovid out of his.
All of it leads into the main intention of this song: "The greatest songs are made up of unspoken words of love. Of them, I've had enough. with you, I am enough." I am tired of having to put up a front. I want to be understood. I think you understand me. Prove me right.
And Radovid sees what Jaskier is doing. He comments on Jaskier's ability to see people for who they are and not who they pretend to be. But there's still more he wants to understand. This still feels like a game, in a way.
It's only after Radovid sees the brutality of Dijkstra and Philippa up close, watches them orchestrate the assassination of the queen and threaten to incriminate him if he doesn't fall in line, that he then grasps the vulnerability in Jaskier's lyrics. Jaskier is also caught between multiple conflicting desires, that of his loyalty to Geralt/Yen/Ciri, and that of his work as the Sandpiper & how said work is backed by his continued commitment to Redanian Intelligence. That internal conflict and the desire to escape it is also highlighted in the song's first verse ("they say keep on playing nice, but i have no desire"). Only after all of this, when true fear begins to take over and the game stops being fun, does Radovid truly begin to truly understand Jaskier.
And so, he seeks him out. And he responds.
“Drop the sweet disguise, your heart’s beating too loud. The fairytales and little lies can’t drown out all the sound.” You were right. I do understand you. I know what you really want, because we're the same. You can’t hide it behind a façade of a song and a story and a persona.
“Take this heart and break this heart for extraordinary things.” I don't know what will become of this, or us. I still don't fully know if we can trust each other. But no one has ever seen me in the way that you have.
It's not a want, it's a need. With you, I am enough.
#angel.txt#the witcher#jaskier#radovid#radskier#meta & theories#angel.doc#twn spoilers#i never wrote my wpb meta so have some extraordinary things meta instead shdfdfddfd#i truly think that first verse is so complex and multi-layered and can be read in multiple ways (both in-universe and externally)#like this is what i meant by 4d chess like how the FUCK can i explain what jaskier's doing in that first verse#its also little things. the background vocals that pick up in the second verse.#the way the second verse is omitted from the diegetic performance of the song which could imply jaskier hadn’t written it at the time#the way that we hear this song over the credits only after they get together in ep 4 and it's an extended version BUT#the extended version is entirely instrumental after the first half ends which also imply that the second half hasn't yet been written#as a whole i think that a lot of twn songs can be read through both internal and external lenses to enhance their existence in the narrativ#the fact that some of them have different names in-universe as opposed to on the ost. the choices they make in diegetic song placement.#im not very inclined in musical terminology but my brain is going insane over what this show does with its songs and how joey himself write#(and tbh i like to think of the sountrack/ost versions of songs as smth separate or alternate from the ones seen directly In the episodes)#idk. just very much intrigued with the idea of this song as a conversation#the entire song being an illustration of the masks they both wear#the truth that lies beneath them‚ and the way they both try to chip at each other until one of them drops it first.#obsessed with certain choices and going a little too insane about them <3
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caecaesclubhouse · 9 months
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For context, I just thought "what if they became friends?"
.
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astral-schools · 5 months
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you are the most important person in this story.
you are dead.
this story is your own drawn out funeral. you are not the main character, and yet your ghost lives in the shadow of every step they take. you have been consumed, body and mind, and words spill from your voice without your direction. your actions are judged in your absence; you are on trial and you cannot defend yourself. you have no defense.
you are not the main character. you are not a character. you are a foundation. you are an idea. you are a lesson. (you are a villain, in every story but your own.)
there are two ghosts in this story. one is at the center of it all. the other is you. the first one is also you. he decided to be. (and then he decided not to be.)
(he killed you and decided you weren't good enough.)
you didn't have a voice. you didn't get a say. you weren't even there.
no one knows how you felt about dying. they didn't need to. you are not a main character in this story. (this story is not about you.) you are the most important piece of this story. (this story could not happen without you.) you do not have the power to change anything.
you have the power to change nothing. (whether you want to or not.)
you are in checkmate.
(you've never been very good at chess. what an infuriating game.)
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rainymoodlet · 10 months
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Kiss Me in Komorebi+ 🌸
[Episode Five] One Last Push!
These two! 🥹 Though Daniel and Jiro don’t seem to vibe with one another on a necessarily romantic level, the friendship these two have started to form is through the roof! I think they relate to each other in ways other Sims not involved with the more judgmental side of show business might not be able to, and both admire the other for their respective ways of dealing with their life-altering physical accidents.
There’s very little Daniel can’t abide: but not having control over the projection of his life? He’s not going through that again.
@wormsimblr
[ Part 25/?? ] 🌹
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sqlmn · 5 months
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genuinely just sat there and drew blondes for two hours
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d-ama-ien · 4 months
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The music I discovered thanks to random animatics and recommendations from who killed Markiplier related posts like 6 years ago is on another level
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torgawl · 4 months
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can we talk about sukuna and rika and why the king and queen of curses having a dispute is also narratively fitting? if sukuna is an heian era sorcerer with an antipathy and disregard of human emotions and the weak's will to live, blind to love and unable to comprehend the value of relationships with others then rika, as his counterpart, works especially well. rika is just a kid, or was just a kid. an innocent young girl who ended up dying tragically and saw herself transform into a vengeful spirit after being cursed by love. not only does she represent the weak (remember when sukuna's slaughter of women and children was implied?), she represents love itself. with her feelings lingering after death, she clinged onto her existence with the sole wish of protecting yuuta. it counteracts so well with sukuna's selfish will to kill time before his final breathe, which he admitted to be his will and motivation.
before i move on to my next idea, which let me preface by saying that it might be a little out there and dives into theory territory, i'm going to contextualise it with some information on the symbolism of "king and queen" that might help understand why this thought may make - at least some - sense.
in alchemy the king usually appears in conjunction with the queen, representing the sun-and-moon duality. in accordance with the theory of sulfur and mercury, which together, after alchemist purification, form the philosopher’s stone (also called the elixir of life, associated with rejuvenation and immortality), usually represented by the crowned hermetic androgyne (the union of the complementary male and female, achieving perfection or completion in the human state). according to jung, the king and queen also signify the spiritual conjunction that takes place when the process of individuation is complete, with the harmonious union of the unconscious and consciousness. jungian psychology has subjected the alchemistic tradition to extensive analysis and views the king less as an image of paternal authority and more as an archetype of higher insight and wisdom.
with that in mind, i think it's easy to understand where i'm headed but i want to add something else. remember jjk 0? geto's plan at the time was to obtain rika so he could use her power and move forward with his plan to annihilate all no-sorcerers. he believed her to be the key to achieve his goal and was willing to risk his own life for it. furthermore, the story is highly based on buddhist concepts and one of the core aspects of jujutsu kaisen is the cycles of suffering the characters are subjected to. in buddhism the goal is to become free of the samsara (continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth), eliminate suffering and achieve nirvana (enlightment). this ties withe the name of the series as kaisen is comprised of the kanji 'kai', meaning cycle, and 'sen', meaning battle, which combined with jujutsu (which means magic/sorcery but contains the word curse) describe the story as an endless battle of curses. and in a sense, the story also repeats itself, between generations and storyline-wise with the events circling back to how it all began. yuuta managed to land a fatal strike on geto once again, but now rika is pointed to be in a direct confrontation with sukuna as the queen of curses. now that i went through all the context needed to understand this, is it possible rika is once again in danger of being taken away? the idea of achieving a state of perfection with the unity between king and queen is quite intriguing. sukuna finally addressing yuuji as a worthy rival because of his unshakable resolve and unbreakable soul, is almost directly implying yuuji to be the one with whom sukuna has his last battle. an ultimate power-up (or the equivalent to), would be veyy cathartic before a final fight where yuuji would have the opportunity to finally go all out and have his well awaited and deserved protagonism (in my eyes, at least).
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query-quadrant · 3 months
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I've had a pitch crush on someone for a while! I really hate them! >:)
But one of our hatefriends just told me they might be pale for me? >:O
If they are, what do I do??? How do I make them hate me properly? :(
I don't pity them! I don't even know why they pity me! Or if they even really do! :?
It's really confusing and I don't want to have to reject them and then have to try and ask them out! That's not gonna go well!!! >:(
yeah i dont know that sounds awful i think personally id just die
questionable advice: either try upping the annoyingness and going all out with pitch flirting or just sit them down and just actually ask them if they pity you or not maybe youll get lucky and they dont but either way at least youll know right so that sucks a little less than not knowing
bad advice: kill their lusus maybe thatll make them really mad at you
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six-of-ravens · 6 months
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think I've figured out what bugs me so much about Natasha Pulley's work - every female character who could potentially interfere with the ~gay couple~ is portrayed in a negative light
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fauvester · 9 months
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iskra can dunk on her father for sleeping with his therapist all she likes. she MARRIED hers
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