#this is the whole point of the show and how it characterizes the siblings

[lovesickeros]

putting my thoughts under the cut in case people dont want to spoil themself on arle voicelines

currently obsessed with the view our current harbingers have of the Tsaritsa. both childe and arlecchino greatly respect her even if arlecchino is dubiously loyal to the Tsaritsa at best. they both talk about her as a figure who is gentle and compassionate, completely at odds with both the organization she allows to commit horrible acts (dottore. its a lot of dottore. he canonically took children from the hoth under the old knave if they were no longer considered "useful" and used as test subjects). shes described as someone with no love left for her people yet the harbingers we've heard talk about her never seem to describe her in such a manner. of course, childe mentions she had to harden herself to complete her goal, but he still notes that shes too gentle. the more we learn about her the more i want to meet her purely because she is contradictions all the way down and its great!!! taking whatever scraps i can get and its perfectly in line with my characterization too so i stay winning

#not a fic #shaking like a rabid dog TSARITSA LORE TSARITSA LORE TSARITSA LORE #lore that actually follows how i characterize her too!!!!!! #a woman who is the goddess of love yet so clearly incapable of it and still it peeks through anyway #a horrible contradiction of the goddess of love and the tsaritsa. the cryo archon. #a woman who is gentle and loving and adoring at her very core but she cannot love. she cannot allow herself to love #despite the fact it was the very thing she was known for. she was the goddess of love and now she must sever a part of her #the fatui as a whole is all about “the greater good. no matter the cost” and it shows through every member!! #also the themes of “love” are shown through her harbingers as well in interesting way that i adore #childe and arlecchino themselves especially. #childe is all about familial love. he adores his family and esp his younger siblings. he'll do anything to make them happy #contrasted by arlecchino's lack of emotion at all. she cares for the kids but does she love them? maybe. but she is not a good “father” #she is still a harbinger. still raising children to be soldiers in the name of the tsaritsa. #but also her + clervie as a theme of love (however you see them aside) #i wont go too in depth but scara and his is familial as well (ei. and later nahida) #and also signora (romantic. rostam) is the turning point in her story. it made her into the crimson witch of flames!!! #something something love is consuming. and it consumed her (also applicable to arle to an extent) #okay ill shut up now this has been ur daily tsaritsa yapping

[rookisaknight]

Also I must say: I do not like the way Collapse characterized John. Love his interactions with Joseph but I think characterizing his sadistic tendencies as some kind of struggle with violent impulses is actually pretty contradictory with what we are told in canon.

What John tells us in his bunker is "I spent my whole life looking for more things to say 'yes' to. I opened up every hole in my body and when those were filled, I created more. But it was Joseph who shower me how selfish I was being. Always receiving, always taking. The best gift isn't the one you get, its the one you give." That, to me, paints a pretty clear picture. As an outgrowth of his childhood abuse John spent his adulthood engaging in self-harming behaviors, seeking out scenarios where he could recreate that helplessneess and release as a way to feel cleansed. Its pretty clear to me that these habits were primarily self-destructive, even submissive in nature ("always receiving, always taking"). "Things to say yes to" isn't quite synonymous with the American Psycho kind of picture that Collapse paints, John seems to have specifically sought out scenarios where he would lack control, where he would be hurt and preyed upon. Until Joseph convinced him to instead enact those desires on others. Take everything that was done to you, and do it to other people, not only to cleanse them, but to finally save yourself from the sin inside you.

Like to be clear: this isn't me saying John wouldn't do malicious cruel things without Joseph's interference. But making him a knife-happy bad dominant stereotype with an obsession for strangling people both contradicts how the main canon tends to characterize him, and also imo whitewashes Joseph's manipulation. If John is a collection of violent impulses, Joseph becomes not one of his abusers, but his handler. Its kind of a consistent problem with the Collapse where it is wants to continually frame the actions of the siblings as what they probably would have done anyways. Joseph is wrong for gaining by it, but it shies away from pointing out where he not only encouraged it, but at times redirected it into specific, more beneficial channels.

John had his brother never showed up likely wouldn't have been a very good person! He would still be a corrupt lawyer deeply fixated on his own desires and with a very destructive personal theology. But he does not pick up the knife to use on others unless his big brother tells him to.

#far cry 5 #fc5 #joseph seed #john seed #fc6 collapse

[gojuo]

Showrunners claiming being "feminist" is the whole circus. They screwed every woman's characterization for high Rhaenyra up:

Book!Helaena was an political advisor who usually participated on Councils,don't shy away from disagreeing with Aegon and he actually listens her advises. She was incredibly loved by the smallfolk and was brave enough to claim Dreamfyre. On the show she did not even have a Coronation or her crown neither(another woman wearing a crown except Rhaenyra is a crime).

Book!Alicent was a witty,smart and incredibly charismatic woman dutiful at the old King Jaehaerys and her sons. She was so interesting: she was disrespected on so many ways for Viserys and had every right to be upset. No other woman in Westeros had to suffer having her first born son be desinherited and ignored by his father (except Ellia from the show and on the book Jon is just a bastard) Alicent,Helaena and Aegon could had been such incredible characters on the show

The Helaena treatment is ssoooooo beyond evil. I can't believe that this fandom is still bitching about the same old tired 3 talking points months after season 1 has finished but not a single peep about how misogynistic the writers have been towards Helaena.

Being beloved by the Smallfolk is not something that randomly happens. It has to be a deliberate move, because technically, Helaena is a public figure and near every public outing she makes has to be a thought-out decision to a certain extent. She can't just willy-nilly go out into the streets of King's Landing, mingling with the people and getting to know them and have an impact on them in such a way that they would love her so much to rise up in revolt in her name. In a way, the cultivation of her public image is reminiscent of Margaery, with one major difference: no deliberate manipulation at play. There is, after all, not a single indication anywhere in any canon that Helaena was a manipulative person in the way that Margaery was, no. What this was — what the Smallfolk adoring her was — was the tangible proof of Helaena's bravery to be out in the streets with the people of King's Landing, the fortitude of her to break down the invisible line between high-born royalty and low-born commoners, a testament to her graciousness and gentility and the affirmation of her adventurous heart. She was the first one of the Targtower siblings to claim a dragon, she showed her political acumen when she and her mother drafted the more than generous peace terms for Aegon to send to Rhaenyra, she had an incredibly complex relationship with her husband who she shares such a horrific trauma-bond with which is, to this day, still unparalleled by any other couple in this entire franchise, and she was a truly witty and humorous person ...

... and all of that characterization was thrown out of the window for the show. She is an extra to someone else's story in every. single. scene. she appears in. Her first scene as a child was to cement to the audience how "weird" and "unorthodox" she is. To show the audience that she is now on the autism-spectrum apparently. She is a dragon dreamer but all she does is utter some vague one-sentence prophecies no one can make any sense of, now always having to live psychologically in isolation because of this, which is the complete opposite of how life was for her in Fire and Blood. She speaks two or three sentences during the dinner scene, and it was to service the contrast between Jace and Aegon as people, it wasn't about her. We get a two-second shot at her children and she isn't even interacting with them. Do not even get me started on how the show completely erased how Helaena used to bring the kids to Viserys every single night to sit down together and hear him speak of tales of the past as he lay dying. These passages in the book weren't without reason, they were there to humanize all four of them — Helaena, Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor — and to garner sympathy from the reader. Blood and Cheese is one of the most disgusting things to have ever happened in all of the books, but the brutalization of all of these characters was that much more awful because we had actually spent some time together with them in the text, because we had gotten to see them be loved, because we had actually gotten to know them, even if only a little. And the show erased every single fucking thing concerning this point. Everything.

And if that wasn't enough, showrunners and writers then went on to make her an extra during her own coronation scene. That coronation was about Helaena just as much as it was about Aegon and they fucking took that from her! And for what? For what did they change her character this much? All to turn her into the fucking female lead of a fucking incestuous love triangle which is a fucking plotline straight ripped off from three fucking different characters in a different fucking part from canon. FUCKKKKK!!!!

Don't even get me started on Alicent. They gave her raw as fuck book character and motivations and narrative purpose to fucking Otto of all people in the show. She has become the abeyance of her own storyline! And instead of the fandom putting attention to this type of misogynistic writing Helaena and Alicent have been victim of by the writers, I'm having to suffer through the same played-out takes on how being an Aegon fan means being a rape apologist or how Alicent is an evil person because Helaena doesn't like to be touched. For fuck's sake GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!

#anti hotd #hotd critical #helaena #alicent #i have an ask abt alicent in my inbox im gonna go more into depth on her character there so thats why i kept it short here anon #hotd #anonymous #answered

[sepublic]

Hexside was Necessary for S3

         Since it apparently needs repeating;

         Yes, Hexside actually makes sense and DOES have a purpose in For the Future, within the larger, limited run time of S3, and the show as a whole. For starters, Labyrinth Runners ended with Hunter telling the students about the Day of Unity, so we actually get to see there be payoff from this setup, as knowing ahead of time about the draining spell allowed Hexside to become, unwittingly, a safe haven against the Collector’s spies.

         This is important for our protagonists, because they need the memory tweezers to access Luz’s memories, to glimpse Philip’s teleportation glyph combo that will take them to the skull, enabling them to bypass the Collector’s spies and an entire trek up the skull. The tweezers are at Hexside, so a detour there is necessary.

         From a thematic standpoint, I’ve already discussed how the situation with the kids lacking supervision and causing chaos is meant to parallel the Collector’s reign over the isles, and emphasize the idea that kids need good adults they can actually rely on for structure and guidance. Continuing off of that thread, Boscha is actually a parallel to the Collector in this way, and these similarities help us characterize the kid when he isn’t on-screen; For the Future gives us a lot of insight into another side of the Collector we haven’t gotten to see up until this point.

         Hexside is also necessary for Luz and Willow’s arcs in this episode, as it provides an opportunity for adversity. Because of their struggles against Kikimora and Boscha, this causes them to reach a frustrated lowest point, which opens up Camila and Hunter to reach through to their loved ones and help them come to terms with their vulnerability by accepting their mistakes.

         And speaking of Willow, Hexside also has her briefly reunite with Viney, who unwittingly adds to her pressure by mentioning how the kids really need her leadership. Likewise, I suspect that seeing a bunch of kids that are Luz’s age is enlightening for Camila, who is essentially being given a tour of the Boiling Isles, the place her daughter chose; She sees how there are many peers who recognize and like Luz here, an important reminder amidst Camila’s apprehension towards the isles’ more visceral aspects. Amity gets to reunite with her siblings, and helps by getting through to Boscha.

         Hexside is also a good opportunity for Belos; With the kids distracted, this gives Belos ample time to be alone with his thoughts… And thus, we get our entire sequence with the ghosts and his failed possession of the Grimwalkers; This couldn’t have happened if Belos was too busy, in his weakened state, trying to fend off the kids. He only held up hours earlier because he was using Hunter as a human shield, but without Hunter nor the integrity that a host provides, I’m not sure if Belos could’ve survived a battle with the kids in that condition.

         So we get a real nice moment where we can see how Belos operates on his own, without anyone around to manipulate nor impress; We get an illuminating look at his psyche, that otherwise wouldn’t be possible if the kids were there to distract Belos from his thoughts. And if the protagonists can’t be with Belos, they may as well be somewhere, hence Hexside. And because they’re preoccupied with Kikimora, this also gives Belos a much-needed headstart.

         Thanks to his knowledge of a hidden passageway in the skull that he created, Belos is able to access the Archives while the protagonists need the teleportation glyph; And by reaching the Collector before everyone, this enables Belos to possess Raine, and thus manipulate the Collector. This allows the conflict to persist, as the Collector’s progress with King is being messed with, and thus the resolution with them isn’t as cut and dry as it otherwise might be; Without Belos’ lies, the Collector could’ve been talked down much sooner. 

         This is a parallel to Kikimora emotionally isolating Boscha to control her, which made that conflict more difficult. This is for the sake of Luz and Willow, Camila and Hunter, and again the themes of kids needing adults they can trust, and the juxtaposition of those whom kids can’t rely on, which brings out the worst in children, like we see in Terra and Odalia. This again helps to characterize and set up the Collector’s arc when they otherwise can’t be on-screen and we need to follow our main protagonists.

         In particular, it contrasts with Camila as a motherly figure, and how she really comes through for Luz this episode, as do Eda and Lilith as King’s only other companions for two months. Luz and Camila are able to fully rekindle their relationship this episode, as their conflict with one another is framed as THE inciting incident of the series, from the perspective of the audience watching the series premiere.

         And because of Hexside, we have the Collector’s interactions with Belos, which inspire him in the next episode to possess the Titan’s heart, which leads to that whole big sequence… Not to mention, Belos goading the Collector to attack the protagonists leads to Luz’s nightmare sequence that she manages to overcome as another capstone to her arc, etc. etc.

#the owl house #luz noceda #willow park #camila noceda #emperor belos #philip wittebane #the owl house collector #the owl house boscha #the owl house kikimora #hexside #analysis

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

It's crazy how Ryan went as far as he possibly could to woobify Aemond, and give him qualities and traits that actually existed for other characters in the book. Like Aemond is the only one with a character arc in the show among the young generation.

Anon, the woobification of Aemond really took me by surprise, honestly. Book!Aemond has very little going for him. He's hotheaded, violent, and not really all that smart. He's a fun character, but he's very much a liability to his cause. I expected some softening of the book portrayals, since the characterization in F&B is very flat by design and there just aren't very many sympathetic characters in the Dance aside from the abject victims, but Aemond's softening? It kind of drives me nuts because it does come at the expense of other characters who actually had arcs in the book, and unlike say, the significant softening of Rhaenyra's character, which was done to create at least the semblance of a protagonist in a story that didn't really have one, the woobification of Aemond seems pretty wanky.

My guess is that in absence of any real character traits for book!Aemond besides being a world class hater, Ryan wanted to play up the sibling rivalry between him and Aegon to create more tension during B&C, Rook's Rest and the regency, but he went way overboard trying to justify the rivalry when really, being second son in a feudal society provides plenty of justification already. But they give him this school shooter-esque bullying backstory, the awful "Aegon SA'd him by taking him to a brothel at 13" thing, then there's the implied Helaena/Aemond/Aegon triangle (I sure hope the show doesn't go there but...), and the implication that Aemond is the good obedient reliable son who just loses his temper at times, whereas Aegon is the real problem. So you've got fans unironically thinking Aemond is a better person and would make a better king than Aegon which is just wild to me, because how is the brother who murders an envoy to settle a beef, obliterates an entire house including the kids, and lays waste to the Riverlands in search of one guy while the capital is just left open to attack and his armies are perishing, better leadership material than the guy who at the very least listened to his advisors (to a point), did not fuck off but battled back from catastrophic injuries to finish the war, and you know, knew the value of taking hostages? I mean, candidates with good leadership potential are pretty thin on the ground, granted, but Aemond??

I would have been much happier if the show let Aemond be the unparalleled champion of haterism that he is in the books, and let that haterism be his downfall. He's not a character that needed softening imo. Give him some nuance, sure, but we're really doing the whole mass murderer who was bullied as a kid thing? That said, the woobification obviously plays well since he's a fan favorite, but like you said anon, fleshing out characters for an adaptation should not come at the expense of existing arcs, especially when there are so few of them in F&B.

#book!aemond just said fuck them kids #pushes a literal three year old into dragon dung lmao #and you know good for him #never beating the book purist allegations😔 #aemond targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #hotd critical

[otaku553]

How goes the fma x albedo fic? I hope that doesn't sound pushy, I'm genuinely curious. And in that vein, do you have any little drabbles you may have written or want to write? Especially with your recent kny ocs/yourself and your siblings. That'd be super fun to read about! Your art AND your writing is so freaking good, the moment I see you've posted something new on your blog I'm clicking it so fast. Same with your ao3 account ❤️

Thank you for the kind words!!! Currently not working on any fics, since I just came out of 10 weeks of summer research where my days began at 8 am and ended at 9 pm for probably less than minimum wage hahaha (doing research is a Bit Sad but I get a whole month to relax before classes start again so thank goodness for that)

I do however!!! Have a lot of plans!!! If you’re interested you can read more below!

Plans include but are not limited to:

Finally working on Homuncular Nature again!! I definitely do have a lot of plans and cool scenes playing out in my head for the next chapter, it’ll just come down to when I actually put pen to paper (or stylus to iPad) to actually organize and write them all. The road block I think is that I have seen neither Albedo nor fmab very recently and all my concrete ideas are for around the 30 episode mark for fmab, the turning point with the first actual confrontation against father and the subsequent Briggs arc.

Rewriting Ten Thousand Maple Leaves! A lot of people have been very kind but I think I missed the mark with my first chapter to be honest. My writing has gotten a lot wordier and less succinct, which feels like I’m filling a chapter more with fluff and unnecessary description than actual content. I think I also dislike how I characterized Sanemi and how quickly Kazuha was willing to agree with things. Writing both of them is kind of a difficult challenge tbh! I think in rewriting it I want to give back to Kazuha more of his vagrant role in the games, where he is avoiding the law for reasons somewhat out of his control.

Ebisu siblings content! I think it might be fun to try having them interact with more of the canon characters in kny but I also think there’s some value in a complete sort of outsider point of view when inserting characters into a piece of media. I feel like whenever I see self inserts I see a lot of ocs making themselves indispensable and making meaningful relationships with existing characters that way and that’s totally valid! That’s a lot of what I do for crossovers as well. I think when it comes to my own ocs though, I want them to feel grounded in some form and the reality of it is that none of the characters I make based on myself or real people are that impressive or remarkable. But I also think there’s a lot of value in showing smaller scale things outside of the main interactions and plot to show that even though we aren’t remarkable, we still have our own meaningful connections and ideologies and stories :) in the end the Ebisu siblings are a lot more visual though so I may just continue making doodles and art without writing anything haha

Kirby & Meta Knight ageswap AU: I was mostly doing this on my ask-gikabi sideblog in short form comics, but I lost sight of what I wanted to do after making the discord and starting to interact with some of the people who followed it. I think a lot of people are inspired and have their own very cool ideas that I wanted to take into account but then eventually it was no longer my story or the story I wanted to tell, which is why I’m thinking of restarting it as a fic. This one is still in very rough idea stage though, I have honestly no clue how I’m even going to begin organizing it

Yanfei ace attorney crossover: this one’s just pure crack lmao I would definitely write it as crack taken seriously but I think this is fun to explore just for small ideas that pop up every now and then, i.e. yanfei is semi-immortal because she’s half adeptus so it would be Really Funny to me if she showed up in dgs era, got her attorney’s license, went into hiding after it became obvious that she wasn’t aging, and then re-emerged after rebranding herself as her own daughter or granddaughter. That, and I have a lot of fun imagining someone as pragmatic as yanfei trying to get through the sheer chaos of aa despite being otherworldly

Continuing winter weather advisory: I got to a really good point in that fic and was rereading it today like,,, damn I wrote that? And it would be fun to see where I planned on going with it so I do want to also try working on that a bit if I can

Kazuha & Kunikuzushi role swap au: this is something I posted about a Long While ago but it’s an idea I continue to be fascinated with :) I especially enjoy how these two characters could have had completely different roles and personalities depending on how their pasts happened (with wanderer being so nice and turning so bitter and kazuha growing up so spoiled (for lack of a better word) and turning out so weary and yet kind

Link click and mha crossover: this one is honestly just a very recent idea but I think it would be fun to make a drabble on how lightime photo studio would be able to continue operating even in another world and the trouble they might get into for illegal quirk usage and what using cheng xiaoshi’s powers in a world where being able to tell the future is canonically possible would entail

I have!! So many ideas!! And not enough time or motivation to actually write any of them most of the time :’)

But I’m very glad to hear that you enjoy them and look forward to my posts!! :D I really hope I can work on some of these over the last month of summer vacation that I have :)

#to this day I still get kind of freaked out when people compliment both my art and my writing #like wow!! thank you so much!!!!!! the art compliments I expect because I’ve been pretty bloated in my opinion on my own art since childhood #but the writing always comes as a surprise! #especially when people are like ‘oh I found you through your writing and found out your art is also good’ like WHAT #if anything I’m much more likely to be found for my art I feel like!!! #but thank you fr #people telling me my writing is actually good has done wonders for my confidence in classes for writing essays and such #and it really shows because when I’m less worried about how good my writing is and trying to make it sound good I get to devote a lot more #time and energy towards planning and figuring out ideas for what I want to write and my past few essays in humanities classes have done grea

[jasontoddssuper]

Jason Todd tropes that are bad and ruin JT's extremely based character:

1.Him being uncultured/stupid(Speaking as an active comics reader who has him as his main fix,this is literally a lie-He's a genius and has been since he was Robin as seen by his grades and a big Jane Austen and Shakespeare fan.I still can't believe i saw a poll calling it fanon,there's a canon panel of him reading Pride & Prejudice in prison and he quotes Shakespeare all the time💀)

2.Him being a hyperhorny pervert(Just because he's hot that dosen't mean he's trying to get into people he barely knows' pants and y'all are ugly asf for forcing your weird little assumptions onto an incredibly traumatized man based off said trauma.Also for the simps this is why y'all can't get boyfriends)

3.Anyone but Duke being his favorite sibling(Duke was NOT the only other Batkid he never had beef with for y'all to minimize Jason and his love for eachother.'Little Wing' isn't canon,it's time to move on)

4.'The rebel Robin'(Don't buy into DC's classism guys)

5.Speaking of which,let's just pretend the Roy and Kory deal never happened period.Ableism and racialized misogyny aren't made okay because OMG POLYAM REP!!!!!-Sincerely,a polyamorous and mentally disabled black woman

6.Both the erasure of his soft and redeemable side and the twisting of it to make him a perfect person

7.Pairing him up in age gap ships(He kills pedos,he's not gonna be into any of the whole ass entire children y'all aged up as an excuse to cover up your k*nks that leave you bitchless)or hc /oc Batkids(same deal,he's canonically an incest hater)

Jason Todd tropes that are good and have a basis in his character and add on to him:

1.Him being smug about what a nerd he is but getting big mad when someone uses that word for because he's 'too cool for it'

2.Him being demisexual(see Artemis and Rose evidence)

3.Duke and him being brothers who're also like chaotic and teasing best friends,with a side of Cass hating his ass and him being scared shitless of her with neither budging until he stops killing and then they become the definition of 'siblings who're mean to eachother to show affection'

4.Keeping his pre-reboot Robin characterization since a big part of the tragedy is that he was an extremely sweet ray of sunshine who still had trauma responses and then DITF changed him forever but not completely

5.His Outlaws team being HIS OWN CAST because he deserves to be his own person and his friends deserve to have their characters respected instead of literally just existing to prop him up.My personal hc is Eddie,Rose,Artemis,Kyle,Thaddeus and two ocs but i'm open to other ones!!

6.Giving him justice and letting him keep his duality core trait.He's extremely cruel yet unbelievably kind,he's got high intellect yet makes dumb mistakes,he's full of anger and sadness yet far from without happiness or calm moments,he's a grump yet very fun and so forth!!Also:He's definitely 'not knowing how to deal with kids turned Team Dad' at this point and i would love for that to be included in more Dead Robins Club content!

7.Pairing him up with the Outlaws i mentioned and Superfam ocs(i'm shocked this second one isn't common,aren't you guys always saying every Bat has a Super as their soulmate????Major L on y'all's part)

8.Go nuts with projecting your identities onto him!!!To me he's afro-dominican,bi,a trans man and neurodivergent asf just like me and it feels super good so i highly recommend it!

@clanofjones @nightwings-robin @ammomancer

#jason todd #pro jason todd #batfam #robin #red hood #ntt #ditf #lost days #utrh #rhato #the outlaws #task force z #wfa #wfa spoilers #dead robins club #anti batcest #duke thomas #duke is a robin #duke is a batboy #jaytemis #jayrose #cassandra cain #group:off color bats #damian wayne #stephanie brown #jayeddie #jaykyle #jaysumm #dc critical #letters from summer

[elisedonut]

❄️HARRY POTTER REC FEST 2023❄️

Lightning round because i for sure got distracted and never finished after day 12

so here we go i wont go into too much detail for any of these I did skip a couple that i didn't have an idea for as expected but enjoy!

13. A fic with over 100k words 

Percy Take the Wheel by KittySmith

My personal favorite long Percy-centric fic!

Based on the concept of “What if Molly and Arthur died between the first and second books and Percy ended up being the brother to step up to take care of his younger siblings”

14. A favorite series

Harry Potter and the Ticket Backwards by viciousmouse

Gen Time travel Au’s my beloved. Another Harry goes back in fic but this one has a ton of focus on smaller characters Dudley, Susan Bones, Hannah Abbott ect ect.

Also Harry convinces Percy to try to become a lawyer. 

16 A fic that made you laugh 

Hexes Are Not Romantic by Electroid

Flintley with Marcus being dumb and not going about this whole flirting thing very well. Very cute.

19. Fic with the hottest smut 

Points (not) Taken by Green

Flintley with honestly, again Marcus just not doing boundaries but i think about it alot, it’s probably one of my favorite Flintley works.

20. A fic rated G

Dancing Lessons by HPfanatic12 

Gen fic where Percy teaches Harry how to dance for the Yule Ball. Very cute and fun concept.

+ Ludicrous by mrsprobie 

Justin Finch-Fletchley/Percy Weasley, meet cute. Very cute.

23. A soulmate fic

Into Oblivion by hmweasley

Draco Malfoy/Percy Weasley, I know someone else has Rec’ed this one for this fest already but i am too it’s very interesting 

24. A holiday fic

Saving Christmas by A_Door 

Percy Weasley/Blaise Zabini, Very cute story of Blaise trying to show Percy their into him without saying it despite their many attempts going right over Percy’s head.

25. A fic rated T

wholly true by starsailing

Flintley, Once again awkward Marcus trying to court/flirt will never not be entertaining to me. In this case with gift giving 

26. A fic with an ending you can’t stop thinking about

There's Rue for You by Mr_Customs_Man

Flintley but only like kinda, anyway Ok so i’ll admit i'm stretching ending here. The part I think the most about with this is the end of Percy’s stay with Marcus but still I think about the regular ending too, because that whole last paragraph is just oof.

It’s fic exploring an AU where Peter polyjuiced as Percy after the fight and Percy goes through hell

27. A Muggle-AU fic

blueberry eyes ( seem to make time still ) by pandorascrate

Hannah Abbott/Percy Weasley. I liked that they didn't immediately get together. It took years in the story for them to get together. Also Percy feels good in this. I like the way he was written.

29. A post-canon fic More Lessons in Grieving as Taught by Dennis Creevy by angeladex

Gen Dennis and George talk after the final battle. Pulling Dennis into stories revolving around the Weasley’s grief for Fred is always really interesting to me and i’m not going to lie this one almost made me cry.

30. A pre-canon fic Life Lessons as Taught by Luna Lovegood by angeladex

Gen When Luna’s mom dies she goes to the burrow to tell the Weasley’s her family won’t be coming over for dinner after all and Percy walks her home. I really liked this. Percy’s reactions to a 9 year old Luna trying to weave around saying outright that her mom is dead was really good.

31. A fav amongst favs Vivaldi and Hot Chocolate by Patriceavril

Stan Shunpike/Percy Weasley, I’m very biased towards this one i won’t even lie but i love it very much. It’s cute, it’s sweet. Percy’s characterization is really nice. Stan’s characterization is really fun.

@hprecfest

#hprecfest2023 #percy weasley #marcus flint #draco malfoy #george weasley #hannah abbott #justin finch fletchley #stan shunpike #dennis creevey #luna lovegood #flintley #Stercy #blaise zabini

[arceespinkgun]

I'm glad someone noticed Earthspark Bumblebee's similarity with Prowl, that paired with the fact that his alt mode appears to be stylized closer to a racing/sport car (like Bumblebee's current alt mode) than a cop car makes me wonder if EarthSpark could doing something with the whole "Bumblebee idolizes/looks up to Prowl" tidbit that was often in his character biography and tech specs?

I am extremely nervous for Earthspark Prowl though, I keep telling myself “it can't be worse than it already is” but I know it could be. Especially if Hasbro panders to the people who are rooting for Prowl to be a mean jerk to children from a blasian family

I was wondering that too. I remember noticing that detail in Bumblebee's Marvel comics profile. Maybe Arcee will appear to point out to Bumblebee, "Look at you! You're just like Prowl now! You've got daddy issues with Optimus, you used to be cute and round but now you've got that sleek midlife crisis alt-mode, you're the strict teacher type—" and even though there was a time when Optimus and Prowl were his idols, Bumblebee screams in horror? lol

Actually, I remember thinking that not only does the characterization of Earthspark Bumblebee really cover many of the traits Prowl used to have, so does Thrash Malto. He's really growing to be a character concerned with ethical concerns that other characters aren't pointing out, and he has issues with authority figures and plays devil's advocate a lot. He also often seems overlooked compared to his siblings despite how much he carries the team, which is another trait shared between the characters. They also share a sort of naivety. This makes it doubly strange to me that Prowl is going to be in the show, since two characters are already very similar to the way he used to be?

I feel the same way about being nervous about Prowl being in the show. I'm just completely at a loss for how this could be good. If Prowl's a fascist pig, then it makes the Autobots as an entire faction look TERRIBLE and really confuses the message, given that he's literally the face of the Autobots. If he's a sympathetic good guy, while some part of me will like seeing a return to that characterization since I am sad about what the character became later, I feel like it's not appropriate to just sweep the disturbing trend in the character's more recent history under the rug, especially in a show that is mostly about the experiences of Blasian kids and their parents.

#earthspark spoilers #transformers earthspark #Bumblebee #Thrash Malto #Prowl #my analysis

[zmediaoutlet]

(1) Hi Liz, happy WW! I have a random thought-thread I’d love your opinion on, and it kind of goes with this weeks WW theme of americana and american gothic!Usually in incestious stories the siblings don't have romantic/sexual relationships outside of their family. Its interesting that both Sam and Dean have had a good amount of "normal" relationships throughout their lives, yet the fandom can still see incest as a plausible endgame. (Even though, a few of these relationships are contested.)

(2) A big theme of the show is both of the boys longing for a normal apple pie/white picket fence life, and that want being contrasted with their fucked up family and deeper desires. The way I see it, their “normal” relationships throughout the show represent the standard American Dream of wife and 2.5 kids. On the flip side, Sam and Dean’s relationship with each other is the mirror-image of that American Dream: it is the dark, american gothic, forbidden ending. (3) So throughout the show, we see two examples of American ideals/lore playing against each other. My question is: Have you ever thought about this dynamic in SPN in comparison with other incest stories/lore? Or about how their past relationships tangled with Wincest paint a bigger picture of the American-ness of the show? (Could it ever REALLY be set in Canada? Haha!) I’d love to hear your musings, I hope this message made sense!

I apologize for not getting to this on WW proper but I have been a flat fuck this week and so I needed a bit of a running start! Thank you in the first place for such a thinky ask! I think I understand what you're getting at, but you'll have to indulge me as I think out loud --

American Gothic: technically literally just that one painting, because the barn had a gothic-style window for some reason. But gothic incest romance has all those flavors of isolation, and when you combine that with American suspicion of poverty and closed communities becomes -- turning inward, backwoods and a family that looks suspiciously at outsiders and gets up to all kinds of shit. The Benders, basically.

American Dream: committed spouse, a home to build a life inside, children as a legacy, being able to support and sustain yourself and be happy and more-or-less free while nevertheless contributing to society as a whole.

Now, whenever we're thinking about something, there are the bare facts and there's the presentation of those facts. Sam and Dean are outsiders to society, raised in a way that could easily make them cult-members, who fail to have successful external relationships and end up turning inward to live alone in a bunker while having a casual relationship to violence. On bare facts, that sounds pretty American Gothic.

...On presentation and feel, though, it really isn't, and that's because the Sam and Dean we meet are not Benders, nor are they the fic-versions of themselves that we meet in various AO3 stories that try to make sense of those bare facts with an entirely different presentation and vibe to the one in the show. Instead Sam and Dean are... really regular guys, 99% of the time. Despite the being-raised-in-motels and despite the violent job and despite walking midnights full of monsters... they have a really easy time with 'strangers', they do have external relationships (brief or not), they move through the world with confidence and ease. They aren't secret serial killers. They aren't deeply possessive and controlling of each other's thoughts and desires and actions (again, despite some AO3 treatments).

Instead, if we return to our two bullet points -- which one do the Winchesters as of approx. s11 (and certainly by the point of the post-15.19 period where the characterization-story ends) really sound like? Hopefully most would agree that they ended up getting that American Dream version they hoped for, even if the bare facts aren't necessarily the stereotypical ones that people name-drop. This is partly because the "wife" and the "picket fence" don't actually mean a female spouse and a literal boring 3br/2ba in the suburbs. What they mean is stability, comfort, safety, contentment. What do Sam and Dean have together at the end of the show? All of those things. Like, 10/10 on the rubric, guys. And they don't have it in a grimdark 'ah I suck your blood out of your balls every morning' kind of way -- it is presented as an unalloyed good thing. They're happy together, just as they are.

Now: that is fucking STRANGE. But it's wonderful in its strangeness. This is a show where the leads, being as basically normal as they are, 'should' have gone the more traditional wife et al route -- but they didn't need to, and the show didn't force them into that box. (By some miracle.) They have 'normal' relationships, as you say, but (just going off purely canonical ones) Jess and Amelia and Cassie and Lisa were never real options, because the show never presented them that way. There were the 'facts' that Sam or Dean was in a more-or-less committed relationship with an external person, but the feel was that these were offscreen, told-not-shown, and they never really mattered. Every one was only possible when the overarching ur-relationship, that of Brothers (because we don't have a better word for what they really mean to each other), wasn't possible at that moment. The show does gesture at how this is strange -- Lisa tells Dean that his fixation on Sam is bizarre; Sam realizes that he has to literally choose between a girlfriend and his brother -- but the return to the central relationship is always treated as the correct choice by the narrative and, this is crucial, presented as morally sound, inside the framework in which the show operates.

You can imagine another text -- a Crimson Peak or a Borgias or a Game of Thrones or a Flowers in the Attic or a Secret History -- allowing for those external-to-internal shifts and treating them as vile, disturbing, strange. Pale violent children who snap at people who try to help them get on the correct path. Normal people staring in at the freaks and saying, what are they? what happened to them? The only character I can think of in all of Supernatural who comes close to that attitude is Henriksen, and he's a 'villain' by the lights of that season, and is brought into the light (again, inside the moral framework of the show) where he realizes, ah, the Winchesters are the good guys, so it's fine.

That might be the everlasting difference between Supernatural and some of the shows where the incestuous couple falls into the gothic 'dark' side vs the American dream side. Sam and Dean are the good guys. They are literally on the side of light. The literal deity of the new framework of the universe is their little buddy and the world was literally designed with their story in mind. Regardless of what you might think about all those things, or wish they were otherwise, or wish the presentation were otherwise -- they're just true, and the presentation of them is positive. Sam and Dean are not evil and so their strange, fucked up, bizarre relationship must come around to being a good thing, or the show just -- doesn't work. Or it's an entirely different show. But Supernatural On The CW (2005-2020) was never going to have their heroes be secretly gnasty Lannisters, and so -- their reward, after all that trial and hardship, is to live the American Dream after all. Not in a dreamlike wife or picket fence but in the things that matter: security, and comfort, and family. And they really only ever needed one other person to be their family.

(P.S. 'What about Sam?' I hear a complainer complaining. To them I say -- he got the American Dream right the first time around. What he promised to Dean was to live and try out the more traditional version, which he might have always wondered if he'd missed out on. And he had that life! Good for him. Note that it passed in the space of a montage -- returning us to presentation and told-not-shown and the feel being that it didn't matter all that much, in the end, because what happens? He shows up on the bridge in the clothes Dean loved him in, with the face Dean remembered best, and he'd been waiting all those years to say -- I imagine, and I'll let this be fic here at the end instead of meta -- I tried it. I did what you asked. Now, here I am, and I'm never doing that again. I think Dean'll be all right with that.)

#answers #spn #spn meta #happy wincest wednesday #tbh bud i think one could write a book on this topic #but this is me with three cups of tea and a glass of wine #signing off with some excedrin

[hellsbellschime]

I was not expecting to love Aemond of all people before the show came out lmao. In two episodes Leo and Ewan have made him my absolute favourite. 😂😂

I wasn't expecting to like him so much either but I feel like the added context of his characterization actually makes him far more interesting, and the entire showdown over his eye is just SUCH A GOOD SCENE TO ME. Like yes, this kid is a badass but he's also sitting there simply doing the calculus of what's happening and realizes that he, the mutilated and now-disabled 10-year-old, has to diffuse the situation because he's not going to get justice, Luke isn't going to be punished, and his mom and siblings who his dad does not give a shit about actually might be the ones to suffer the consequences if he doesn't just take it on the chin and move on. That is a REALLY horrific injustice for a 10-year-old to have to swallow, and to see how that seamlessly translates to who he becomes almost a decade later even with the incredibly rapid storytelling is just great.

His position in the story is so interesting because so many people are just calling him as Green-Daemon when he has become who he is for all of the opposite reasons. Daemon is a roguish nightmare because he knows he can do anything and get away with it, and Aemond is a roguish nightmare because he knows he has to be the one to do shit because no one else will.

He likely became such a badass warrior because in one fell swoop the worst thing that ever happened to him happened and he realized that his mother, literally the only person enraged enough to not go along with the gaslight gatekeep girlboss excusing of the King's favored side of the family, was actually so disfavored by his father that Aemond felt like HE had to protect HER from HIM. And he has to spend his whole life afterward pretending that it's fine even to the point of having to sit down and play family with the people who hurt him on every imaginable level in order to protect an old man's fee-fees when that old man wouldn't lift a finger to protect Aemond AT ALL, and while there is no excuse for what's to come I'm just saying that if someone had just acknowledged this injustice then the entire course of the war would have been changed and I'm just saying THIS IS A LOT OF PATHOS TO DEVELOP FOR ONE CHARACTER IN LIKE 13 MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME

#aemond targaryen

[sleepysandy]

some thoughts on acftl

just finished an hour ago and i need to vent (spoiler heavy and pretty long)

stuff i liked

apollo pov

unpopular opinion but i do like the idea of an apollo pov. i think it makes sense since there are some plot points that can only be revealed through apollo. however i think the execution could be better.

at first i liked hearing about his messed up thought process and daddy issues but at some point it became repetitive. it all became about keeping evangeline captive and killing jacks which made it obvious he was just obsessed, not loved, with evangeline. i can't decide if i like it bcs it was a sorta parallel to jack and donatella but also made the reveal at the end kinda obvious.

i also expected some sibling angst?? like the brother plot was just brushed off when they were pretty close until they had a falling out then when the brother came back he poisoned him?? i cant remember but the brother tortured him too i think?? the whole anti valor arc group was never brought up again too like...

2. evajacks

they didnt have a lot of scenes together but those scenes were *chefs kiss* i also liked their development. evangeline is jaded from everything going on, she did learn to not be so trusting and really think for herself what she wants. i liked how she didnt lose a lot of her hope and optimism too.

i disagree with reviews saying that jacks wasnt good in this book since he was so different. i think that was a testament on how eva's death really affected him. i actually wasnt convinced that jacks had feelings for eva until she died in tbona so seeing how jacks so despondent and serious in acftl cemented his feelings in my mind. i feel like people would buy jacks' characterization if there were flashbacks to his past and more povs.

stuff i didnt like, its mainly about how many plot points from the previous books werent mentioned at all

i wish they used the previous characters more

kristof knightlinger was kinda hyped in the beginning, like where did he go?? i wished he and eva had at least one together that would plant doubt in eva that apollo was this perfect prince. (i kinda had a problem with the whole memories thing in general, more on that later)

i also thought that the old librarian would be important lol

i wished luc was in the book too :((( eva lost a quite a bit of her pre-north memories so luc wouldve been perfect to bring those memories back since eva did say that luc had been there for her when her dad died. also he couldve mentioned something about marisol since he wouldve been the only one in valorfell in tbona i think.

i wish lala's feelings for dane were explained more. like does she have commitment issues, does she not feel real love anymore since shes a fate, is there something going on with chaos/castor??? i wanna see more of her relationships with the other valors too but i do acknowledge that including all that is too much for a side character

chaos/castor and jacks angst!!!!! the eva and castor interactions were good but like jacks said he became a fate for castor (which is a good insight into jacks character) but i wanted to see how they interacted after castor killed eva. like your have a friend who you kinda cursed to be an immortal so you then become immortal then your friend then kills the love of your life like..... i need to see how that went down. but also your friend's crazy sister is obsessed with you??? to the point that she also curses you??? like give me friendship angst!!!!!! (speaking of, why did lala agree to be a fate too...) (also what happened to the real chaos fate??)

3. jacks past

to jump off the last point, like where were the flashbacks???? i think jacks being serious this book would make a lot more sense for more people if scenes of his friends dying in like one day and the first fox dying from the curse were shown in the book. show how much jacks blames himself with the deaths of his loved ones, thats why he was so desperate to keep eva alive.

4. jacks pov

kinda related but i feel like jacks pov was underutilized. his povs were super short and didnt reveal much about what he was doing away from eva. in contrast to apollos pov where it was shown how he was manipulating eva and the public about jacks but also his relationship wtih the valor family. wished we couldve seen how he uses the scar to know where eva is and he follows her around.

i woudve loved to see more pining from his end too

also i dont think it was ever explained how they have the telepathic link???? and why eva was immune to his powers??? was it love at first sight? it was mentioned how he watched her from the start but was it love??

5. evas family

what was evas dad's secret shop??? like are not supposed to find out?? the clothes shop was even featured in caraval but not here?? also did the mom know about the prophecy?? were the fox and key motifs on her clothes supposed to be a coincidence or bcs of how much she liked the story as a kid?? that would explain the foxes but not the keys...

i kinda wish that eva discovered something about her mom's life in the north. give her more connection to her family and maybe reveal more of her prophecy

6. memory stuff

getting majority of the memories all at once was meh for me. i wish that each side character revealed/triggered memories for eva. like luc could trigger memories about her life in valenda, kristoff for coming to north and becoming apollo's fiance then wife, lala for her curses and apollo hunting her, chaos for the stones and arc stuff so that evas letter to herself revealing her and jacks relationship could be a final piece of the puzzle.

i do like the fact that jacks kept the letter for himself and eva reading the letter didnt make her distrust jacks but bring her memories back.

7. breaking the curse

so did evas love break the curse?? i kinda thought it was leaning towards jacks love that could break the curse since it was mentioned in tbona that jacks doesnt know if he actually loved the fox but there was no big declaration of love from him.... im just confused, happy but confused

i did like the fact that the curse was 'wrong' that it was never about jacks true love but someone who could never love him. altho i have no idea how eva broke that curse and if that means donatella survived that bcs she would never love jacks

so when jacks admitted that he loved eva, did he turn human?? was that why the curse broke???

also the bells werent as important i guess?? i totally thought the bell stuff was gonna come back....

also what was all that about how eva was like the first fox??? i thought while reading that aurora misinterpreted the vision "he'll fall in live with a Fox" that jacks will fall in love a fox girl but in reality a capital f Fox but castor said in tbona that she was similar to the first fox and eva said that the little fox nickname was familiar.....

anyway thats it for now, after i reread my notes from the three books i might add to this. overall, i think the book was ok, but definitely not enough to be an finale especially for a 5 book arc for jacks. i think the book shouldve been a whole lot longer but i kinda feel like garber wanted the length to be similar to the previous books so the end felt pretty rushed. i kinda feel bad that i had more dislikes than likes when i rlly loved the first 2 books so this was so..... i think there were a lot of good ideas but the execution was not it i guess

VERY MUCH DISAPPOINTED THAT JACKS DID NOT SHOOT A SINGLE ARROW

i do get that this is a romance focused trilogy, not a fantasy so you could argue that plot points and lore shouldnt be looked into as much but the relationship and character development of evajacks could be better too... imo it's mostly jacks character that was lacking

also this did feel like a build up for an apollo book but garber said she wont write for this universe for a while so ??? kinda disappointed if there will be an apollo book bcs the amount of apollo chapters screwed jacks over but in the caraval series, the ending focused on the actual main characters at least and not so much on jacks.

#acftl #acftl spoilers

[suchine-toki]

Thoughts about Shinpachi

Many times I’ve seen how he’s called out for being a boring character or that he’s annoying for yelling a lot, and although he never seemed like an annoying character to me, I’ve to agree that he’s dull compared to his companions.

Shinpachi is the ordinary character of the main group, the straight man who balances Gintoki and Kagura within the Yorozuya. He starts out as someone who lacks strength and courage, but gradually improves over the course of the series. His initial goal is to save his family's dojo, though that’s more of something Tae wanted to do for his father, not a personal aspiration of his.

At first he was given the trait of being the leader of Otsuu's imperial troop, which was an interesting contrast to his usually submissive personality, showing he has leadership skills, but he never made much of it. Although it does help characterize him as someone with a very good heart, supporting Otsuu when she was just a street artist.

I think that's the strong point of Shinpachi's character. He’s compassionate and always remains optimistic despite difficulties. He’s kind and genuinely good. But he also suffers from an inferiority complex, he feels he has no control over his life in a society in which he lost the only thing that made him special, being a samurai.

In the case of Gintoki and Kagura, their stories were relatively planned from the beginning (at least Sorachi had an idea), which wasn’t the case with Shinpachi. We could say that Beam Saber arc is the arc of his past. Here, like his companions, he must face someone from his past who has become a villain. While it's a very emotional moment for both him and Tae, this whole situation has the problem that it was never brought up before and never brought up again.

Part of the arc's conclusion is how the two siblings go on vacation after the fact, a joke that takes some weight off the situation in my opinion. The true conclusion of the arc shows Shinpachi reviving the dojo by teaching the homeless, but later we see that this doesn't hold up over time either, so the whole arc ends up feeling kind of pointless in regards to his character development.

Something similar happens in the Correspondence arc, in which Kirara is introduced. Here they both pretend to be someone else when they meet, however, in the end they show themselves as they are, realizing that they’ve many things in common. It always seemed like a very nice thing to me, so I regretted the fact that Kirara didn’t appear again.

This wasn’t only because it was an important lesson for him to learn, but also because it would’ve been interesting to add another layer as Shinpachi's love interest. I don't mean including Kirara in the main cast, but keeping her present through the letters she would write to Shinpachi and bringing her back from time to time would’ve been enough.

Nevertheless, I consider the biggest problem occurred at the end of the series. Shinpachi was slowly but surely becoming an independent character. However, in the ending he’s shown to be unable to move on if he’s not with Gintoki by his side. And don’t get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that it's wrong that Shinpachi is very fond of Gintoki.

Nor it’s bad per se that he wants to be with the Yorozuya. It's about how it was shown. It appears that Shinpachi never followed his own dream. Restoring the dojo was something his sister wanted to do, not him. In the time skip he’s already an adult of 18 years. Staying in the Yorozuya seemed more like the need to remain in a shelter to avoid going out and having to face the world.

I would’ve liked to see that at the end of the series, someone who feels they’ve no control over his life would decide his own path. For someone with an inferiority complex to feel self-confident. Since the first prototype of the character was Nagakura Shinpachi, the captain of the second Shinsengumi squad, I would’ve loved Shinpachi to join the Shinsengumi, taking advantage of his leadership skills.

#Gintama #Shimura Shinpachi #Happy Birthday! #Ended up writing more than expected #But I'd a lot to say #I love him and he deserved better #Thoughts about #I can write #my post

[twilightknight17]

"Guys, holy fuck" - Part 2

Hit the image limit on the other post so I broke it up so I could scream more. XD

So where were we?

Right, right, Shadow Toshiro.

Once the shadow goes down the first time, he goes one-winged angel and turns into a god damn horror monster version of Eri that is GIANT. And that, my dudes, was a fight. That thing had so much health. It was great. :D

Now for some info:

Okay, that makes sense.

Yep, all that, we’ve seen and understood already. Still good.

But why, though? What makes her different? Why can she switch forms? Why is she still basically a separate entity from him? Did you just not want to lose your new character? I almost feel like I’d rather have had a P4 boss fight that ended with Toshiro getting his persona, and have Erina just be his cognitive Eri, based on his memories. Because this is… confusing. Nothing has worked like this in the past, unless I seriously overlooked something.

Yeah, I know, Aki and Mai and Ideal Maki were a thing, but Maki was a Wild Card and also had the DEVA system bolstering her cognition. No one else’s persona has been able to turn into a person and just chill with everyone after their awakening. Erina is basically her own fully-formed person. Like… I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.

All right, yeah, let’s go with that for now.

There’s like, a slight implication here that Toshiro’s shadow wasn’t actually his shadow, but just something pretending to be his shadow? Especially since he never like, reconciled with it. After the giant Eri, it just disappeared. But I only pinged that after the fact, because while we’re just standing here trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Erina, god shows up to yell at us.

“Be not afraid” and all.

I kid you not, I was internally screaming, “YALDABAOTH? IS HE POSSESSED BY THE REMNANTS OF YALDABAOTH TRYING TO SEIZE POWER AGAIN?” But no, doesn't have Yald's stupid feet. This is:

Who the fuck is you, and why does it look like your head exploded off your neck? Are you sure you’re not Yald?

Anyway, this bitch keeps calling us “children” and “lambs” and “pathetic” while it explains who the fuck it is.

I don’t like it, and it doesn’t like our persona abilities. It calls them a “mask of madness, one which will assuredly drive man to ruin.” So it offers a deal: It can remove our powers, and along with them, our memories of this whole horrible adventure, and in exchange, it will put us safely back in the real world. It’s nice like that, even though we’re “infidels who had the audacity to defy a god.”

Hey. You. Got some bad news about all the other gods I’ve met. Wanna know what happened to them? :3

But we shouldn’t answer now! We’re high off a lucky win and our emotions are compromised. We should think it over and tell it our answer when we’re ready. And then Salmael fucks off into the sky. Are we sure that’s not a weird misspelling of Samael? Are you connected to Shido somehow?

Toshiro gets like a thousand points for being completely chill about a god falling out of the sky to tell us we suck. Zenkichi was a lot less calm about the whole thing. XDDD The Thieves, Toshiro, and Erina agree that they’re not giving up their powers, so we’re gonna have to kill god again. But how? How do we follow god into the sky? Whatever shall we do?

Oh, guys. Do you hear that noise?

CHOO CHOO, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Lavenza is here in the Velvet Room Train to pick us up and take us to the sky. No, she doesn’t know why it’s like that all of a sudden. We DO NOT CARE. THIS IS GREAT. Toshiro almost manages to offend her, but we’ve got things to do, so we just put another pin in that.

And that is where I had to stop. It asked me if I wanted to save and I was like “yes, I cannot handle any more Epic right now.” My GOD. I’m so excited Lavenza gets to be more involved, because that’s how I tend to characterize her. She wants to be more hands-on than her siblings or Igor. And she’s not afraid to snark at the others. It’s nice to have the whole team in the Velvet Room again. ^_^

Never change, Yusuke. :P

Actually, isn't this a good thing? If Akira's Velvet Room is now manifesting as a train, maybe that symbolizes him moving forward into the future? Scramble put him back in prison, but this game hasn't. Maybe this is the Velvet Room's final form for him?

Next time: Into the goddamn abyss to once again dethrone god, I guess????

Final note: I’m constantly amused by the one-off poses the sprites have. One single use of the sprite where Makoto’s hugging Morgana. One of Toshiro holding Erina/Yuki. And now apparently one of Makoto throttling Ryuji so he can’t interrupt Futaba and Toshiro. X’D Wow. Pls stop picking on Ryuji, Atlus.

#Li plays P5T #the T is no longer for Tactica it's for Train

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

Y’know what, the Fire Vermillion siblings need more love. In general. Because they’re, perhaps with the exception of Mereo, underrated characters. I will admit a few things in the beginning, because they are objectively true, so bare with me. 

The reason why I specifically mention Mereo, is that she’s the only one of them to have had a concrete effect on the events of canon, and those took place in the EOTMNS headquarters, along with, perhaps, teaching about Mana Zone to Yami at Yultim. Though I’m quite sure that Yami would have bene able to figure it out, and since Yami ended up having to be rescued in the firs place, the criticality of it in terms of plot is questionable at best. At least as of now. 

There are a lot of so called filler characters in a lot of shows, even on very “visible” positions, because of how the world is constructed and to flesh out the world. It makes sense to have at least faces and names to those who are supposed to be there. I mean to say that as all the MK (magic knight) captains were introduced, they should be presented in a plot that is so centered within the MKs as a whole. 

And the Fire Vermillions are, for the most part, just that: filler characters. Even the Silvas have more of a place and a role in canon, although that is through Noelle, since she is a part of the main cast. Which explains why they’re not as much of filler characters. They’re there to at least build Noelle as a character. 

However, the Vermillions do have a lot of interesting dynamics and unexplored potential in them that, I think, is overlooked. 

We already know that Mereo is characterized as a ferocious and a strong willed woman, but who also isn’t only hot blooded. Or, rather, she in herself holds a very interesting duality. 

Mereo is very driven, bold, and passionate who enjoys the thrill of the hunt and the battle, but she is also very strategic. She doesn’t dive head first into something without thinking about how to go about it. For example in the EOTMNS headquarters, she indicates that Zora and Asta should step out of the battle field, because, quite frankly, they’re not yet equipped enough to take them on. Which means that she is able to analyze the situation quickly and make accurate predictions of the situation. 

It’s just that her, dare I say, analytical side is shadowed by her boldness and loud personality that is very hands on; cut through. But that analytical side of her is also innate to her. It’s not something that she has studied from books, but rather learned in practice through observation and training. She is, in a word, a genius. Of a kind. 

I wouldn’t call her as a “refined person” necessarily, but a rough one. Which doesn’t mean that she would all the time voice her opinion or thoughts if there is no point to it. She can also quietly observe, and make her own judgements based on it, which is very hunter -like behaviour. She doesn’t need to flaunt, or prove herself, at all times, because she is confident in who she is. 

And she is also a caring person. Because she will protect her family, which I think was best shown by her being out for EOTMNS blood when Fue was put into a coma, but even then she wasn’t engulfed into rage before it was due. Or rather, she was never engulfed. Her rage was always directed, which just speaks of her self-control, which, when looking from the surface, doesn’t seem to be a trait of hers. But it very much is, and adds to her being a tactician. 

Her love language is also pushing people forward, to be their very strongest selves, because “the weak will die”. By which she doesn’t mean political strength, or any other kind of feigned strength. She wants to make sure that her near and dear are capable of taking care of themselves when she is not around. And that is displayed, for example, when Leo talks back at Mereo for Fue doing his best to “nurture” his squad into the best knights they could be, and Mereo simply sees that as him babying the squad. 

Mereo’s love is tough love. But I also think it’s because of how she grew up on her trips, when she was in the wilderness and fended, and hunted, for herself. It’s very clear cut and straightforward. It’s very intense. 

I don’t think Fue is wrong in his approach though. It’s simply that his approach is more ... book analytical than Mereo’s. He wants to make calm and calculated decisions based on what he observes and sees, and has had to study, from books, a lot more than what Mereo did, because to Mereo the things were learned through intuition. 

Fuegoleon is a more studious character. But he is not without passion. And he does admire his sister’s passion and strength, while recognizing that they are two very different people. Their passion, the burning in their souls is different between each other, but they’re both very strong willed and driven people. Their drive is simply to different things. 

And Leo comes after the two. While Fue and Mereo have a kind of sibling rivalry going on, because they’re so close in age, Leo is left out of that loop. Because there is 14&16 years in age difference between him, Fue and Mereo. They’re not supposed to be on an equal standing. 

However, though he is in the shadow of his brilliant older siblings, he is given a hard time about it, because people seem to be blind to it. And I think it’s... a bit similar as to what Fue went through while watching Mereo, because she was just that good “without trying”, because she was learning on her own. But the age difference just tenfolds it. 

Leo does admire both of his siblings, but he’s not getting out of Fue’s teachings everything that he’s supposed to get. Because ultimately, they’re two very different people, again. Fue is trying to help Leo grow, and he’s trying to help through the methods that were helpful to him, but he has grown blind about the methods not working for everyone. And perhaps Leo doesn’t feel the call to try and learn like Mereo, on his own, because Mereo is very eccentric. 

But he doesn’t know from who else to ask, since the two strongest Fire Magic users in the kingdom are his siblings, so he’s stuck, until he can figure it out for himself. Which is what he started doing in Spade. That is where his passion, his strength and growth are starting to show and shine. Because he does have that fire in him too, just like the rest of the Fire Vermillions. 

I think that there is an immense amount of care and passion in the Fire Vermillion family, and they simply show it in very different ways. 

#mereoleona vermillion #fuegoleon vermillion #leopold vermillion #black clover #thank you for coming to my tedtalk

[nobodysdaydreams]

My Last Minute and Probably Wrong Guesses for @tmbswhodunit (and my undoubtedly flawed logic to go along with it)

Drumroll please...

Petrichor - @mashpotatoequeen

The title is lowercase and most of her recent titles are also lowercase

Many of her fics have titles like this (fancy words like eucatastrophe or bellis perennis)

This fic is very beautiful, amazing word choice, gorgeous visuals (which is what I really love about her writing 💖). I also enjoyed Constance and Sticky's sibling dynamic very much!

We'll Both Be Completely Home in Midair - @oflightningandstars

The title of this fic on AO3 ends in a period, which Moth has done on occasion

The AO3 version also lists where the title is from, which is a Moth staple

The fic is locked. Moth is one of the only people who consistently locks his fics

Even when you ignore the first three points that make me look overly analytic (sorry), the fic is about aliens, which is very similar to the "Cirque des Etoiles" concept which involves stars and spaces AND the Dr. Who AUs, which at some point involved Moth.

The writing, characterization, and concepts are also absolutely beautiful, so they match Moth's style perfectly!

Steady On - @mvshortcut

Milk always double spaces between their paragraphs and also this feels a lot like Milk's writing (and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time! seriously the part where Martina doesn't take Mr. Benedict's hand...why do you do this to me... /lh /I loved this fic!)

Milk's titles are all capital letters, so this fits that (sadly so do many of these fics, but that at least narrows it down)

Milk consistently tags both the books and shows for their fics. There are only two fics in this that fit that requirement. It was for this specific reason that I only tagged the TV show for my own fic (at least for now. I'll probably edit my tags now that the exchange is over).

The Interview - @acollectionofcuriousreblogs

Summary is a longer sentence, other authors usually use shorter ones.

The way the paragraphs are spaced is very similar to her other fics

The angst is AMAZING and very similar to that one snippet I saw on her tumblr during whumptor with her OC's (which was also very well written, but also hurts??? And what happens to Sticky??? The public (me) needs to know! /lh /great writing).

The Alpaca -@lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2

Has used *** to separate lines in fics before

The fic is unrated, and some of her fics on AO3 are also unrated, which is generally rare.

I really enjoyed this fic. The line "some has Godfathered my daughter" made me laugh. 😂

Art: A Psychic Among Us - @heyitsthatonesmolgay

Has made fan art for me before (which I love😍) however, that was a pencil sketch, so it's hard to compare the styles.

You can make gifs and animations for free with fire alpaca (according to google) which I know Nick uses

The way Nick titled the fan art was to put "art" or "fan art" before the title of the art in all caps, which matches this style.

This art is fantastic, I love the animation, I love the concept, just...all of it. 10/10. Anyone in the fandom who makes art is officially a wizard in my book because I don't know how they do it.

Fairytale- @fandom-queen-13

This one gave me the most trouble out of all of them by far. At first I was 100% sure fandom-queen-13 was the one who made some of the fanart, because I have art drawn by her for my SOS fic (if you haven't see it, it's amazing!) BUT! The art submitted to the exchange didn't match the style. Also, I know Crow does a lot of fairytale AUs, and I know Sophie and I have talked about them too, so that really threw me off. HOWEVER, there were three key things about this fic that tipped me off:

1) The bold alternating text in the fic and use of ~ matches other works of hers on AO3

2) The fact that it says in the description that this fic was inspired by "@sergentsporks". There is no one with that URL on AO3 or tumblr, HOWEVER, there IS someone named "@/sergeantsporks" and I found this post: https://www.tumblr.com/sergeantsporks/695958143301255168?source=share. Only one person in our fandom liked the post. Once I figured that out, it cracked the case wide open (unless of course someone else liked and unliked the post in which case this entire guess post is completely wrong. If that is the case then um...my bad? 🤷🏻‍♀️)

3) The writing is amazing and completely blew me away, not unlike the art style I'm more familiar with. Seriously, this was a FANTASTIC concept and I loved it so much! Werewolf Kate and Milligan my beloveds!

Card Games - @ae-jurumi

This one was difficult. Once I determined that fandom-queen-13 was in fact likely NOT an artist, I was down to Amphibian and surprisingly, realized at the last minute that I forgot to consider Sophie as an artist. I've seen some art from Amphibian in the past, but it can be hard to track down because they have two blogs, and as for Sophie, she writes such great fic that I find myself forgetting "oh yeah, she's also an amazing artist, like really good???" however, I had to go with amphibious entity for this. Why? The art seemed slightly more their style, and most of Sophie's recent fics have titles where all words were capitalized.

Most seem to agree with me, as the tmbswhodunit poll had them winning for this

Has only written one fic that I know of (which was INCREDIBLE everyone read it) but the odds of them doing art for the exchange seemed higher

This art was amazing. It's so beautiful, I can't even tell if you drew it or use software to do it, but either way, it's incredible and proves my earlier point that all fandom artists are wizards.

I Have Spent My Entire Life Clamoring Towards It - @mysteriouseggsbenedict

All words of title are lowercase which Frances sometimes does

Posted to an anon collection as well as WhoDunIt and I know from the discord that Frances was worried about the fic being posted properly

Mary Oliver is a poet, and we know Frances studies library science

A wonderful and sweet fic, and we know that Frances is a wonderful and sweet person. Suspicious. /lh /affectionate

Seriously a very wonderful fic. I love anything where Nicholas Benedict is a good dad and a good mentor.

Cat Fic - @crow-in-springtime

Second word of title is lowercase, which is consistent with how recent fics on AO3 are titled

Author took finals according to the tags, and Crow is in the right age range for this

Has tagged fics "I wrote this instead of sleeping" before

Usually writes fairytale focused content (which I LOVE), however, this fic also seems very much in the wonderful adorable whimsical style of Crow

Crow also tags both the TV show and Book on AO3 (as does this fic)

I love this fic. But the cliffhanger though: what is the cat's name??? 👀

Don't Grow Up Too Fast - @sophieswundergarten

It is to my great shame that this took me the longest to guess and it might not even be correct

But it matches the technicalities of Sophie's writing: the use of long dashes, each word of the title is capitalized.

The biggest give away is that it’s one of the only works Sophie DIDN’T give kudos to, and you can’t leave kudos on your own work.

Also, the writing really does feel like Sophie. I know she loves nicknames, and the "Pen/Penny" thing is a nickname. So. There's a clue right there.

She also loves sibling dynamics, so focusing on Rhonda and Number Two's relationship fits that too.

Sophie already commented on two other fics and she doesn’t seem like the type to comment on her own fic and throw everyone off (would be impressed if she did though)

The writing leaves me with a warm feeling that I get whenever I read fluff by Sophie. So the more I think about it, there more confident I am about this guess. I think I just had to eliminate a few other choices first.

Amazing fic btw. They are such a family 🥰

And...finally...as many were quick to guess both on tumblr and in the discord:

Sirens of the Sea and Sky - @nobodysdaydreams

The Crangst (Crack + Angst) style is my bread and butter (though I usually emphasize the angst more).

It’s the longest fic in the bunch, because in classic Bods fashion, I never know when to quit. The whole paragraph of backstory was completely unnecessary.

Also in classic Bods fashion, the fic has a glaring typo (I wrote that Mermaid Curtain drove into the water instead of dove into the water. I fixed it on AO3 but not before everyone read it on tumblr. Oh well. At least this way we can imagine mermaid Curtain driving his golf cart into the sea).

Genuinely curious to know the exact moment in the fic that made @sophieswundergarten and @myfairkatiecat go "oh gosh dang it Bods" and all but @ me and/or private message me about it (as I suspected they might).

Don't judge me. This is finals did to my brain. They melted my mind. I swear, if this is the first fic of mine you've read, literally any of the other 7 works on my AO3 are so much better than this, I promise.

Really, who else could it be? Who else would do this? The silliness and absurdity haunts me like a plague. I will never be free. Never. I didn't even try to make this funny, this is just what my brain is like 24/7. I've never seen one episode of Sailor Moon and have barely watched any H2O and that was years ago. So why write that into a fic? I don't have the answer. I know not what I do. But I hope that at least some of you enjoyed it, because despite everything, I really enjoyed writing it!

Thank you @mahpotatoequeen for putting this together and thank you to everyone for your wonderful fics! When I have more time, I will be leaving comments on them all because you all are extremely talented deserve them! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 💕💕💕💕

#I hope these are at least 50% right... #We'll see... #Either way good job and congrats everyone! #Tmbs #the mysterious benedict society #tmbs disney #tmbs whodunit