#...also i hate what the sequel did to jack. bad. very not good

[chickenoptyrx]

I feel like its taking me a bit to get back into drawing, so please take this dumb blorbo doodle.

As usual idk what they're talkin about, I just enjoy drawin em

#i still *want* to draw dinosaurs #and am #but see. i watch the 1st 2 riddick movies and now a solid 50 - 80 % of my brain power is goin towards thinkin bout how much i love em #even tho theyre goofy dumb B scifi movies #...also i hate what the sequel did to jack. bad. very not good #anyway #my bullshit #no im def not just posting a dumb lil doodle so i can lk talk about the riddick movies in the tags #how dare no one even accuse me of that >:0 #...2nd movie kinda gave him brolys backstory tho. just a little

[alismodworld]

Alright well I might as well give my thoughts on the movie

SPOILERS TURN BACK WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!

Okay we clear? Cool. So, The Super Mario Bros movie. It was good but I honestly had no doubt it wasn't gonna be good after seeing the trailers and the promos. Of course as with everyone else my only point of fear was Chris Pratt's voice, but while I was watching the movie I realized its actually okay. It never annoyed me and it even fits Mario somehow (yeah I said it come at me). Now that I'm thinking about it, if Charles Martinet was casted it really wouldn't have worked. Whenever we see Mario in the game he's always happy and bouncy, rarely ever serious or emotional so having a voice like that probably wouldn't have made the more serious parts of the movie work at all and at best I would've laughed at how ridiculous it was and at worst I would've been sinking far back into my chair. No disrespect to the guy at all, he does a phenomenal job in the games, but I just don't think he'd work too well in the movie. He does get a nod to in the movie which is great!

The movie is gorgeously animated and I love how the characters translated perfectly on the big screen. The backgrounds were spectacular. And the way the incorporate the elements of the games into the movie to create this world is *chefs kiss*. Everything makes sense and it's not too on the nose, it's believable.

It's a very simple movie, nothing too crazy and if you have very basic knowledge of the Mario franchise you'll get what's going on like how I did. All the characters acted perfectly to how I expected them to and nobody really annoyed me. My only problem is with Cranky Kong's voice. Sorry, but Fred Armisen's voice just doesn't match up with Cranky's appearance.

Jack Black absolutely killed it with Bowser. He was the perfect amount of comedy and intimidation. AND THE PEACHES SONG THREW ME SO OFF GUARD I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT JUST SIT AND STARE!!

Also, PEACH! Oh my god I loved Peach in this movie!! I was scared and honestly expecting her to be too much of a "strong female character" rather than a strong character who happens to be female and she's definitely the latter. She's kind, she's helpful, she's patient, she cares deeply about her subjects, kingdom and everyone in general and she can kick serious ass too. I'm gonna be honest, in my years of playing Mario on and off I never really cared for Peach, IM SORRY TO SAY, I WAS DUMB KID! But watching her in this movie, I absolutely love her!!! AND SHE GOT LORE ON TOP OF THAT?!??

Also usually I hate the whole male character and female character get shoehorned together and end up falling in love trope, but here? PERFECT!! I also never really cared for Mareach but, I'm a changed woman and I never wanted two characters to get together so bad. I absolutely loved their chemistry as it was so organic. Of course they don't which I'm fine with but, maybe potential in the sequel?

All the action sequences were done great in my opinion and actually exceeded my expectations in some cases as I was genuinely expecting nothing but slapstick but we got a healthy amount of slapstick and serious action.

The final battle and climax was amazingly done!! Ugh that hug Mario and Luigi shared was amazing!!!

Okay now for what I didn't like

I wish we had more Luigi scenes. I understand that he's the one who's kidnapped and is basically the whole reason the movie happens but we got only a few scenes with him either running away or being trapped or integrated. I would've loved maybe a scene with him trying to be brave and find a way out or rally others to help each other escape which could've added to his character. Like it's called The Super Mario BROS movie...

Also Toad is just...there. I get he's the comic relief but he really doesn't do much other than tag along. The most I remember him doing was showing Mario to the kingdom, that's it. Idk maybe do something more to flesh out his character, why is he so eager to help Mario and Peach? Why is he an adventurer? What are his goals? Stuff like that.

Also no chain chomps...worst movie, 0/10, D-tier/j

I heard people were talking about the pacing which yeah it's a little fast but it's not too quick in my opinion. I think if they let certain scenes play out longer it would've benefited the movie.

But over all it's a really good movie. Not ground breaking but really good, happy, healthy fun. And I'm quite impressed considering it came from Illumination.

Here's to hoping this movie will pave the way to a Zelda movie!!

#the super mario bros movie #super mario #tsmbm #mario #luigi #princess peach #bowser #donkey kong #toad #spoilers

[cuttoncandyhair]

thoughts on some (canon) HoN couples

Zoey and Stark: I never really understood what their connection was supposed to be. She thought he was hot and he for some reason decided to be eternally loyal to her for... what reason again? So I guess they will be together forever. Should they be? Probably not. They fight an awful lot. I consider them the kind of couple that'll come to resent each other but won't break up. Fun! Aphrodite and Darius: I think they'll last. I just don't like them together. Their relationship is almost too perfect. It's like the authors brain stormed about what kind of relationship they wanted to give to Aphrodite, picked an idea, but never developed it further. They also didn't really give Darius much of a personality. He is a perfect warrior and a perfect lover for Aphrodite. Period. Considering how big of a role Aphrodite has in these books, her man is considerably underdeveloped as a character. They are just not interesting to me. Stevie Rae and Rephaim: Love them. Love them to death. Definitly an otp of my childhood. Will they last? I don't know, and I hate that. A lot of their relationship is based on novelty, I feel. They have very strong feelings for each other, but how will they work 20 or more years down the line? What do they have when the initial passion mellows out a bit? What do they have in common? What will they talk about? I will never forgive the Casts for not developing them further. Their relationship was such a big part of the middle of the story and then they were practically abandoned for the sake of making room for more Zoey-drama. Too bad. I really wanted to see at least glimpses of their relationship getting long-term-development. Damien and Jack: Cute, but once again drastically underdeveloped. Also, what's with all the gay stereotypes? I could write up a whole wall of text about those, but whatever. They got significantly more development in the Other World series. One of the few, and I really mean FEW, good things about it. They got a little more of an edge and personality and I must say, it suits them. I even started to care about them. Shaunee and Erik: In all honesty, what the fuck? That felt so forced! Why are the Casts so afraid of letting their characters be single pringles? I appreciated them trying to redeem Erik, but that sure as hell wasn't it, fam. In the Other World series they didn't seem like they would last either. I think they are gonna break up on amicable terms soon. All in all, I couldn't care less about them. Shaylin and Nicole: Umm... Where did they come from, again? I never saw that coming? They too just felt forced to me. Also, that thing they did in the sequel? What in the everlasting fuck? Was that supposed to be funny? I found it terrifying. Did anyone else find that funny? Maybe I just didn't get it? Frankly, I found it offensive, but I'm not a lesbian so what do I know... Kalona and Nyx: I'm happy for them. I don't get it, but good for them. As in, good for Kalona. He's got the love of his life back. How did Nyx forgive him again, though? Like, she knows of everything he did. Damn, she probably welcomed the people he abused and killed in her realm and had to calm their souls and reincarnated them. I take her for an empath, so she probably felt their pain with them. I can somewhat understand she loves the good side of Kalona, but how she forgave him for all he's done is beyond me. I wish her reacceptance of him would say something about her as an immortal entity and how she preceives the death and pain of mortals, but there is no way in hell the Casts would have thought that far. In the end Kalona definitly changed but his sacrifice doesn't make up for everything he's done by a long shot. What a mess! Travis and Lenobia: Darling! So cute! The only thing that hurts me is that he will die before her again. It must be so hard for Lenobia to think about losing him again. But all in all I think they were fun to read about.

#house of night

[justmybookthots]

Once Upon a Broken Heart / A Ballad of Never After

1.5/5 stars

What can I say about this series except that it was so terribly disappointing? 

The most vexing part was that I actually found the first book decent - not very good, but it was decent, and I enjoyed it. Also, a lot of people said that this book was much better than Caraval, so I’m kind of scared of / morbidly fascinated by how bad Caraval must be now.

But anyway, that is beside the point. The first book is decent, with a very pretty writing style and a simple but engaging plot. The writing was very redolent of a fairy tale; it actually reminded me a little of Enid Blyton’s writing in her children's stories. However, it did give me the feeling that the story was a little vapid at times - maybe I just needed more grit, blood and strife, and less focus on true love ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not that there wasn’t any in the story, but the conflict rang kind of hollow, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. I felt as if I were reading a series of tropes and mechanisms rather than an actual person going through all those things.

I must say that I disliked Evangeline, even in the first book. Here is a picture of her:

Before I elaborate on why she looks like that, let's start with the early parts of her I disliked. She was naïve and stupid, and had some real Main Character Syndrome (to be fair, she is the main character, but she's not supposed to know that). I cringed when she entered the North and immediately dreamed of marrying Prince Apollo, when she didn’t even know him yet, all for the expectations of a happy ending for herself. The secondhand embarrassment was at its peak when Apollo stepped towards the girl he would choose for the first dance, and she stepped forward, thinking he was about to choose her.

He didn’t. 

:)

I should probably talk about Jacks, who is arguably the heart of the story. Or the broken heart, because he, uh, is the Prince of Broken Hearts. 

I hate him. 

See, it's a pity because I actually liked him in the first book; his characterisation was intriguing, clever and to my taste. I thought he still had a lot of untapped potential, though, because I’d barely scratched the surface with him in Book 1. And with BookTok wanking him to oblivion - someone chose him over a gazillion book boyfriends - I had hopes that the sequel would blow my socks out of water. (Yes, yes, my misplaced faith in BookTok's credibility is my own vice)

Well, it did! Without a doubt, the sequel certainly blew all my hopes that this story would ever be decent 👍

Jacks is a coward. That’s all he ever is, and does. How does one do cowardice, you might ask? Well, you run and hurt the person you’re supposed to love, over and over again. Because he’s afraid of hurting Evangeline, he, uh, hurts her. Yes. And he spends the sequel being an ass - he flirts with girls frequently, while rudely barging in the moment Evangeline strikes up a conversation with another man. My teeth were grinding when she caught him in that deserted corridor with that girl, about to kiss her after spending the evening constantly sabotaging Evangeline’s attempts to get over him with other men.

If you don’t want her, fine. If you’re too much of a wuss, whatever. But what you don't do is stop her from starting something with someone else. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

And Evangeline? She actually started the book writing a letter to herself as a reminder that she must never fall for Jacks because he was dangerous. And how does she spend the last half of the book? Spoiler: Mooning over Jacks and acknowledging she’s fallen for him (which I was… very unconvinced about because the build-up to their romance SUCKED) and telling herself she was going to save him from his fear of love.

My dear, you are not Bob the Builder. No woman should be for any man. I think you should go fix your head first.

The last nail in the coffin for me was when Jacks revealed that all along, he was planning to turn back time to be with another girl (whom he didn't even love, but hoped to score a second chance with). 😂 Hilarious. You could turn back time to before the curse befell you, and you choose to go back... for some chick you didn't like? I get his theme is wanting to find true love, but I always found that so frivolous, and of course, so insulting to poor Evangeline. And after she “died” and he decided to turn back time to save her life - which, by the way, does not redeem anything for me. This girl practically risked her life to help you get the stones to help you find your true love. This is the least you can do, loser - he was such a rude ass to her to “protect her”. 

For once, Evangeline grew enough balls (it lasted for about as long as the dialogue went before she lapsed back into Bob-the-Builder mode again) to tell him this after he yelled at her:

EXACTLY. 

Anyway, I have ranted enough about this book. I don’t want any part of it anymore, and will not be abusing myself by reading the next book. I MAY read Caraval, mainly because I want to see just how bad it is. And also, I want to be sure Stephanie Garber is really a lost cause before I write her off completely. 

- 15 July 2023

#booklr #books #reading #once upon a broken heart #ballad of never after #romantasy #bookish

[lokisasylum]

Jack In The Box - First listen Review

Okay, at first glance what caught my attention was how short most of the songs were with the exception or “MORE”. I really thought we were going to get songs like on Hope World where most went over the 3:00 minute mark.

But anyway, on to the review:

Track 01. Intro

- The intro is very cool, its telling the story of the mythology behind Pandora's Box, how chaos was unleashed, but also Hope was born.

Track 02. Pandora's Box

- Old school hip-hop with a bit of rock undertones. Really liked the beat in this one, it had a beat similar to when 2pac was still around. I liked the lyrics how he continuously makes references to the myth of Pandora's Box to the meaning behind his name and how is represents him and what he is destined to be.

Track 03. MORE

- I already did a review for this one when it came out along with the mv. So imma skip it for now.

Track 04. STOP

- Another slow old school hip-hop song. This one has a flow similar to hip-hop from early 90s (think Naughty by Nature). The lyrics seem like a conflict between keeping a mindset of “there are no bad people in the world” despite what we are exposed to daily by the media, which eventually makes us question ourselves if we are any different from those who do wrong if the belief is that “there are no bad people”.

Track 05. = (Equal Sign)

- It surprised me how fast-paced & short this song is, for a song carrying such as strong message as "Equality is you and me" and hoping that someday we can find equality in the whole world by leaving hate behind. I really wish this song had been a little longer, its a bit like a sequel to Piece.Of.Peace.

Track 06. Music Box: Reflection

- This is the melody we heard when Jack In The Box was first promoted.I really thought it would be the into to Pandora’s Box.

Track 07. What if...

- Not one of my fave songs and its due to how monotonous the chorus feels. Though I get the lyrics do ask the questions many of us ask our selves on a daily basis: "What IF". We've all found ourselves thinking like this when things don't go our way.

Track 08. Safety Zone

- A song about feeling trapped in a world that's changing way too fast and being unable to find our "safety zone" like before (maybe when we were younger). There's a line I particularly like: "My life is becoming the enemy, the enemy is getting worse" its an intrusive thought I've had since the earthquakes and the pandemic began in 2020. Every day, every week, every month of that year felt like we were going through all levels of Dante's Inferno, it just didn't fucking end.

I can compare this one with RM's "everything goes"

Track 09. Future

- One of the most up-beat songs in the album. He seems to be talking about his life, how he began being just a kid who liked dancing and setting up towards that road but going through hardships. Nothing ever comes easy, but as long as you keep your courage, faith, positivity you can walk towards the future. It will always scare you once you realize you're on your own. But just learn to go with the flow.

Track 10. ARSON

- Had to listen to this song before even watching the mv so I wouldn't feel biased from the visuals. The delivery was pretty good, I like how the tension increases but doesn't quite explodes like the chorus in "MORE".  Lyrics wise I don't know how to explain this one... but if we go with the visuals of the mv its like a cause and effect of his life as an Idol. Never wanting to stop, always moving forward, reaching the top first, burning all the bridges even if it means burning yourself with it.

#jack in the box #jhope #jung hoseok #bts

[hexitca]

The Super Mario Bros. Movie review

Okay, so honestly it was a great movie!

The plot was simple and direct and the flow of the plot was actually really good considering what's going on (more under readmore but it's all spoilers so heads up)

the voice acting was amazing (they did Chris Pratt dirty in the trailer he was honestly not bad at all - I'll admit when I'm wrong) and Jack Black was PERFECT! Peach was great I liked her as a character. And I loved Toad!

The animation was really stellar! it was very clean and the effects were just *chef kiss* very good. Illumination is really a great studio (they just need to pick better-written movies but they have some gems like Despicable Me (1st one) The Lorax, which I really liked).

Honestly... a 10/10

I didn't see many flaws at all with the movie considering the plot is simple (which isn't a bad thing at all) it was a great movie for this movie and given the source material. Any critiques I have is personal preferences so it's not far to lower the score just bc of that.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I'm gonna go into detail here and so spoilers lol

There are very minor critiques but honestly, given that the plot and it's the first movie, many of my critiques are more preference than actual flaws of the movie. A lot of gushing so much of this detailed review is that lol

Plot:

As I was saying, very simple and direct. Mario lost his bro Luigi, and he needs to find and save him, he teams up with Peach and Toad. Bowser is taking over with the power of the power star and Luigi happens to be captured by him and his army. It's a race to save Luigi and stop Bowser.

Very clean cut and to the point. If they make more I hope for more detailed plots but this was a perfect first movie. It introduces the characters without being all "You know who these's guys are!" bc this is for both old fans and new fans (aka children who maybe didn't grow up playing any Mario games). Loved the music and the references a lot, they were so natural lol

I was almost a little worried about the pacing but in the context of the situations (aka Bowser is gonna attack and take over in like a day and Luigi was kidnapped by Bowser) it was actually fitting. Maybe I would have liked a few more quiet moments but literally bc of the threat of Bowser, I'll forgive it.

Characters:

Amazing and fitting! I know they changed up Peach but it honestly wasn't too bad. Mario and Luigi were great! I love their relationship. Given that Luigi is so nervous and frightened of many things but supportive of Mario that was the perfect role for him as needing saving. I hope for a sequel where he's in the haunted mansion or in a similar position where he needs to save Mario but for the first movie it fits. I was a little sad he didn't get much screen time or lines but he was kidnapped. I'll forgive it. Maybe more interaction with Bowser but that's a personal preference.

Mario was PERFECT! Chris Pratt did a great job as him. The trailers did Pratt dirty bc it wasn't too bad a job! I love his never giving up attitude. Also, love the opening of the movie with the brothers it was so CUTE AAA love their brotherly relationship. Also, love how Mario hates Mushrooms lol (I hate mushrooms also it's a texture thing XD)

Luigi, from the little I saw, was great! The ending was great when he fights with his brother. It felt natural. I'm hoping for more of him in the future!

Bowser was AMAZING! Jack Black voiced him perfectly! I also liked that he didn't just kidnap Peach, he forces her to marry him bc he's gonna hurt her citizens which I find more interesting. He also underestimates her and Toad and I love that fight scene! His jealousy of Mario was funny lol

DK was fun! I grew up on DK show so it was kinda on point except he was more of a bratty jerk but I mean...it kinda fits lol

Overall:

Just a very well-paced and direct movie! Maybe some will find the pacing too fast but honestly, I didn't have too many issues with it. The brothers live there now so I'm curious about how that will work out. I hope they make a series! They do that with Sonic why not Mario Bros? Mario Bros need an updated series anyway lol

10/10

#super mario bros #super mario bros movie #the super mario bros movie #super mario bros movie spoilers #mario spoilers

[mementomoriifics]

After Hours - Sanemi x Reader x Giyuu (NSFW)

Tags: Student/Teacher, college au, pwp, praise kink, cunnilingus, blowjob, threesome, voyeurism, cuckolding i suppose??, sub!Giyuu, reader is cis female

Wordcount: 3204

Author’s note: A sequel to Office Hours! I suppose it can be read seperately though!

AO3 link

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"You look awfully happy."

You looked up from your phone at your friend, Zenitsu. He looked positively exhausted and eyed you with a certain kind of suspicion you weren't used to.

"What do you mean?" You asked, eyebrows furrowed as your friend gave you a look.

"You've got Sanemi-sensei's class next, right? How could you possibly be in a good mood? He's like, Satan incarnate!"

You snorted, a slight tinge of fear gripping at your heart as you locked your phone and tucked it away in your bag. Thank God Zenitsu was none the wiser.

"Just in a good mood, I guess. If it'll make you  feel better, I'll frown."

You pulled the most exaggerated frown you could manage, Zenitsu rolling his eyes at you but unable to stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"What would make me feel better is for my fucking roommate to stop raising fucking hell at three in the morning." The blond continued, the smile vanishing as quickly as it came. "Or if Nezuko finally texted me back."

His shoulders slumped and you couldn't help but pity your friend. He'd had a rather unfortunate string of bad luck recently that included the move of his previous roommate (a very nice guy by the name of Tanjiro). His new roommate was a very rowdy person called Inosuke who was part of the athletic program and who'd never heard of the concept of an inside voice.

Not to mention Zenitsu's rotten luck when it came to love. In the past month alone he'd been stood up on a handful of dates. Yet, he couldn't stop pining over his ex-roommate's sister.

Honestly, if you looked up 'unlucky' in the dictionary, you'd see Zenitsu's picture staring back at you.

"Just give it some time. I'm sure things will smooth themselves out." You said, patting the blond's shoulder in a way you hoped came off as comforting.

Zenitsu opened his mouth to continue his lament but the bell cut him off. He pouted but before another word left him, you interrupted.

"Gotta run! Sanemi-sensei hates people being late!"

"See you later then!" Zenitsu called after you as you dashed down the corridor to your class.

Little had your friend known that Sanemi-sensei was the exact reason you were in such high spirits. It had been a month and a half since your first rendezvous in his office and you'd visited him roughly half a dozen times after.

You'd also swapped numbers and your text conversation was full of flirting, inappropriate pictures and earlier today, Sanemi promised to take you to his apartment that weekend to 'finally fuck you on a bed'.

Oh, if only Zenitsu knew...

You made it to the lecture hall with just two minutes to spare, breathing heavily as you sunk into your regular seat. Sanemi was up front, leafing through his notes.

Grey eyes locked with yours for a split second and your heart skipped a beat.

You looked away and set up everything for class, startling slightly by the buzz of your phone. You fished it out of your bag, seeing the text previewed on your lock screen

'my office after class.'

When you looked back up at your professor, he wasn't paying attention to you. He merely raised his voice and started class.

You couldn't help the squirming at the thought of what was to come. Visits to his office always ended the same way and, God, you couldn't wait.

Minutes seemed to drag on as class proceeded. Sanemi-sensei was droning on about some theorem you had a hard time understanding. It really didn't help that you continued to get distracted by how he looked.

He was dressed in a pair of grey, well fitting slacks and a white button up with the first three buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Over that he wore a slate grey vest with very subtle, green embroidery.

For someone as rough as him, he seemed to know damn well how to show off.

Sometimes you wondered if he did it for you specifically but you decided to abandon that thought quickly. There was no way Sanemi would dress up just to get a rise out of you, right?

You hummed, copying the problem on the board as Sanemi turned to explain the method of solving it, arm flexing as he wrote on the whiteboard. You fought your mind to keep it from wandering to the time Sanemi had those arms hooked under the bend of your knees to fold you double on his desk.

God, you were really a lost cause, weren’t you?

You managed to keep your thoughts from wandering for the most part until the end of class, finding yourself up and out of your seat quicker than you’d intended to. You spotted Sanemi barely concealing a smile. He’d probably tease you for your eagerness later but you couldn’t find it in yourself to be bothered by that prospect.

Roughly twenty minutes and a bit of loitering later to not appear too suspicious, you found yourself in front of your professors office. Excitement coursed through your veins, arousal already rearing its head.

You knocked, waiting for permission to enter.

Silence.

You frowned. Was Sanemi still occupied with something? Maybe he hadn’t heard your knock.

You knocked again.

Still silent.

You hummed, a little puzzled. You usually stayed behind a bit or hung around to make sure Sanemi was in his office by the time you got there.

He probably would be here soon, you reasoned, opening the office door and walking in already. You weren’t paying very much attention so when you closed the door behind you and noticed a red faced Giyuu-sensei behind Sanemi’s desk, you all but screamed.

“What are you doing here?!” you called out, heard beating a mile a minute.

Giyuu didn’t respond right away. He merely folded his hand on the desk, keeping his intensely blue eyes aimed at them.

“I was waiting for Sanemi. I would like to have a chat with him. And,” he hesitated, his face getting even redder. “With you too, apparently.”

Your heart sank into your shoes. You knew Giyuu-sensei's office was next to Sanemi's but the walls couldn't have been that thin, right? And surely you hadn't been that loud?

"What about?" You asked, trying to keep your nerves at bay. For all you knew his reasons were innocent. Though you'd doubted that very much.

Suddenly, the door behind you opened, Sanemi entering and freezing in place as he noticed that Giyuu was sitting in his chair. He bristled and straightened his back, obviously unhappy with the fact your time alone was interrupted.

"What do you want?"

You were caught off guard by just how hostile Sanemi sounded as he addressed his colleague. You wondered if there was any bad blood between the two and judging by Giyuu-sensei's reaction, if there was, it was very one-sided.

"Just wanted to ask if you two could keep it down. You're not as quiet or subtle as you think." The history professor's face was an even brighter shade of red. Sanemi, who now stood next to you, grinned.

"So you've been eavesdropping." He taunted. "D'you get off on that? Didn't take you for the type."

You felt embarrassed and had half a mind to leave the office and never come back. You'd effectively been caught. The jig was up and you could both be in massive trouble if Giyuu decided-

"Yes. Its-" the man in question halted as if he couldn't believe what he was about to admit to. "It's hard not to let it affect me."

Sanemi barked out a laugh as if he'd just heard the funniest joke. You were still ruminating in your embarrassment, covering your face with your hands. If only you’d been quieter. It hadn’t helped Sanemi seemed to revel in the noises he could get from you.

"So you're telling me you've been jacking it to me and her," you peeked between your fingers, seeing Sanemi gesture towards you. "fucking after class? You're even more of a pervert than I thought, Tomioka."

"I didn't come here for judgement," Giyuu took the crass remarks in stride. "I just wanted to let you know that sound carries."

"You're not gonna tell anyone, are you?" You asked, a little scared. Giyuu-sensei hesitated but before he could say anything, the math professor spoke up.

"He'd be too embarrassed to have'ta admit he's been getting off to it." Sanemi continued and you gave his arm a half hearted shove. He looked in your direction, entirely unimpressed. But then you could see the gears in his head turn. "I got a deal for you."

"Shinazugawa, I can't-"

"Shh, hear me out," Sanemi continued, interrupting his colleague.

Giyuu had risen from the chair and you noticed a bulge at the crotch of his slack, averting your eyes quickly. You wondered briefly if Giyuu was into humiliation.

"What is it?"

"You keep your mouth shut about this, and we'll give you a live demonstration."

Your face flushed bright red at the suggestion but you couldn't deny the prospect of it getting to you. The idea of Sanemi having you in every way he wanted with Giyuu-sensei's pretty eyes watching everything happen. It made you wetter than you wanted to admit to.

"Are you in agreement?" The latter asked you, his expression set to hesitant.

"Don't be so fucking formal about it, you weirdo." Sanemi taunted, reaching to grab you and pulling your back against his chest, his hands already sliding up your shirt. "Of course she's down for it."

You nodded in confirmation, biting your lip as Sanemi shamelessly started to grope your chest. Giyuu sat back down in the desk chair, his face forced in a neutral expression but the tips of his ears a bright red.

"Let's show him your pretty tits, hm?" Sanemi whispered in your ear, roughly hiking your shirt up and off, carelessly tossing it aside. He eyed the bra you were wearing  for a moment. It was one of Sanemi-sensei's favorites and you could see him grin out of the corner of your eye.

"Pretty thing, isn't she?" Sanemi said, palming your chest. Giyuu nodded in agreement, watching you intently. His gaze made a shiver of excitement run down your back.

Sanemi’s hands left your chest for a moment to unhook your bra and toss it the same direction as your shirt. Giyuu kept staring, watching the other man’s movements like a hawk. You vaguely registered that one of his hands had settled on his crotch and another wave of arousal coursed through you.

“Already touching himself.” Sanemi taunted, going back to playing with your chest, rolling your nipples between his fingers until they were still little peaks. He gave one of them a playful tug. “Maybe we should show him how good you are with that pretty little mouth of yours.”

Without thinking, you sank to your knees, earring a pleased little laugh from Sanemi.

“Is she always that eager?” Giyuu asked, voice thick with arousal.

“Only for Sir.” You answered, both men cursing under your breath. You couldn’t help but grin at their reactions, keeping your hands busy with undoing Sanemi’s belt.

“I trained her well,” Sanemi sounded almost insufferably smug as he watched you. “Put on a show for him.”

You nodded, freeing Sanemi’s cock from the confines of his slacks and giving it a long lick from balls to tip. You caught the soft sound of a zipper being undone and part of you wanted to watch Giyuu touch himself to the idea it was him you were pleasuring but Sanemi had other plans.

His hand settled on the back of your head as he guided his length into your mouth. His thrusts started shallow but you knew it wouldn’t take much longer before he would fuck your mouth in earnest.

“She looks pretty with a cock in her mouth.” Giyuu spoke and you glanced sideways at him for a moment, seeing him lazily touch himself, as if to draw out his own pleasure.

“She does.” Sanemi spoke, thrusting a little faster. “She looks even better like this.”

You had very little time to prepare yourself as Sanemi slid his cock down your throat, nose pressed against the little patch of hair at the base of it. You squeezed your eyes shut, hearing Giyuu curse.

After a little while, Sanemi pulled out, his cock coated in your spit. You caught your breath, looking up at Sanemi who was stroking his dick as he grinned down at you.

“You want me to fuck your mouth a little more or do you want him to show you how I wreck that little pussy of yours and get you to make all of those pretty noises?” He asked only a little condescendingly.

“I want you to fuck me, Sir.” You asked prettily, deciding to be nice and compliant, just to get a rise out of your audience. Sanemi grinned in a way you’d call predatory.

“Good girl. On your feet, c’mon.”

You rose immediately, watching as Sanemi grabbed the chair on the other side of the desk and moved it so Giyuu could get a good view of what he was about to do to you. He sat down holding his dick, a shameless display.

“Strip and ride me.” Sanemi spoke, all business. “I want you to face him.”

You turned towards Giyuu who was still drawing out his movement, hand slowly moving from the base of his cock to the head where he’d linger for a moment. He wasn’t as thick as Sanemi but he was just a little longer and there was a curve to his length you wagered would feel like heaven pounding against your g spot.

After your moment of staring, you took off your bottoms, running your hands over yourself to show off. There was something indescribably hot about being completely naked in front of two men who were still fully dressed but both hard as a rock.

“C’mon, princess. Haven’t got all afternoon.” Sanemi spoke, an urgency to his voice.

You walked over to him and hovered over his lap, reaching between your thighs to grab him and line his cock up with your entrance. The entry was smooth and he filled you up so nicely as your butt hit his lap.

“You feel so good, Sir.” you whined, swiveling your hips to get any sort of friction. Sanemi chuckled, pressing his hips up into yours.

“I know, baby. Now,” he pressed a kiss against your neck. “Bounce and take what you need. And be loud for me. We don’t wanna let down Giyuu now do we?”

You whined again, trying to find leverage and lifting your hips slightly only to bring them back down with an obscenely wet sound. You’d be embarrassed if it didn’t feel so fucking good.

In your lust drunk haze, you looked over at Giyuu. He had pulled his tie loose, gaze settled between your thighs. He was touching himself in earnest and it was the hottest thing you’d ever experienced.

Sanemi’s hands settled on your hips as he helped you set a pace and you moaned, eager and wanton.

“Hey, Tomioka.”

Giyuu’s eyes reluctantly turned to stare at Sanemi over your shoulder. His hand didn’t cease its movements and a shiver of pleasure ran down your spine again, settling between your obscenely spread thighs.

“Get over here and taste her.”

You would’ve said something, not in protest or anything, but it all happened too fast. Giyuu was up and out of his chair in an instant, rounding the desk and settling between your thighs.

“Is this okay with-”

It was kind of him to ask but you interrupted him with a loud, whined yes. That was all the confirmation he seemed to need before the black haired man buried his face between your legs.

His tongue found your clit with ease that betrayed plenty of practice and your eyes rolled back in your head at the feeling. Thank God Sanemi was almost manually bouncing you on his cock because your body felt like it had become boneless.

It wouldn’t take too long before you’d plummet over the edge at this rate, between the feeling of Sanemi’s cock and Giyuu’s eager tongue.

“You gonna cum?” Sanemi’s voice sounded near your ear. You let out a damn near pathetic sounding ‘uhu’, earning a chuckle from Sanemi. “‘S a good girl.”

He then hooked his chin over your shoulder to stare down at Giyuu, taunting him further. You looked down as well, the sight making you gasp.

The black haired man was eating you out like he was a man starving and you were an all you could eat buffet. His arm was moving erratically, betraying he was still touching himself. His face was the prettiest shade of red and it was all so much, too much.

With a moan that sounded like it came straight from a porn flick, you careened off the edge, making Giyuu gasp at the mess you made. You felt Sanemi pull out of you and heard him groan loudly, signalling that he had followed you over the edge as well.

You were breathing heavily, slowly floating back down to earth. Absently, hou glanced down and you didn’t expect the sight you were met with.

Between your thighs sat Giyuu still, the bottom half of his face a mess of your slick and Sanemi’s cum. Obviously lust drunk, he lazily licked Sanemi’s dick clean, his eyes locking with yours.

“Shit, Tomioka,” Sanemi spoke, voice a little rough. “Keep that up and it’s your mouth I’ll fuck next.”

Giyuu whimpered and it struck you that it was the first time you’d heard him make noise this entire time. You saw him shake and it dawned on you he must’ve finally reached his own climax. He seemed to collapse against you, boneless as he rested his face against your bare stomach.

“Shit,” You spoke after a moment of silence. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever been through.”

Sanemi chuckled, pressed lazy kisses down your neck and shoulder, his hands running up your sides in a soothing motion.

“Agreed. We should do it more often.” He agreed, looking down at Giyuu again. “What do you say.”

“I’m willing if you two will allow me.” Giyuu spoke against your stomach, refusing to move. You couldn’t help yourself and ran a hand through his now messy hair, a chunk of it having escaped the elastic he used to tie it back.

“If you eat me out like that again, absolutely.”

Giyuu chuckled looking up at the two of you with nothing but stars in his pretty, blue eyes.

“Can I maybe fuck you next time?”

You looked over at Sanemi who seemed a little peeved, considering the request.

“How about,” he spoke after a moment of consideration. “We all get decent and head to my place. Then we can talk specifics. Sound good?”

You and Giyuu nodded, the math professor snorting in amusement.

“Good. Now get up and get ready. We got a long night ahead of us.”

#sanemi x reader #giyuu x reader #sanemi x reader x giyuu #kny x reader #demonslayer x reader #kny imagine #morii's fics #not sfw

[something-in-the-seas]

aside from like, all the retcons, why do people dislike Burial at Sea so much? I had a lot of problems with Infinite (the both sides argument bullshit) but I can't remember anything as bad in Burial at Sea, which I thought was a mostly great examination of trauma and cycles of violence. (Though I did last play it in 2014 and haven't revisited.)Why does alot of the dedicated fandom seem to hate it so much?

A lot of people in the fandom hate it, most notably OG fans (and especially 2 fans), because it does a massive disservice to literally every single character. Ken Levine is notorious over gatekeeping what is and isn’t canon in his eyes, which caused a lot of stress for other official writers under 2K who have worked with him such as John Shirley, the author of the Rapture novel and the writers of Bioshock 2. Burial at Sea is the culmination of it.

Ken wanted Rapture to be over, 2K didn’t. 2K Marin, the studio behind Bioshock 2, was working on a Rapture DLC that Ken didn’t like and decided Irrational would do the DLC instead. 2K wanted Bioshock to be an annual franchise back in 2015, but it’s been eight years and an entire console generation has passed without a new game (2016’s Collection does not count). Ken essentially trashed any plans of going back to Rapture and tried to make 2 non-canon so that any new game would be a new location with new characters.

The problem is the vast majority of people don’t like Columbia and are very nostalgic for Rapture. 2K also loves Bioshock 2. Delta probably has the most merchandise out any of Rapture character besides Ryan, and is still getting merchandise made for him eleven years later. People love Delta.

Besides the retcons that attempt to make 2 not canon such as the bonding process, it fucks with 1’s lore completely by having Elizabeth be the one who orchestrates the majority of the plot of the first game. Audio diaries from the first game telling about how Suchong informed Fontaine about how to use the WYK and Code Yellow codes make no sense because Fontaine doesn’t get this information from Suchong anymore. He gets it from Elizabeth.

All the established fan faves save for Cohen are so dumbed down that they’re husks of their former selves. They’re simply there to have Elizabeth outsmart them or be a poorly written obstacle. Fontaine is so stupid he doesn’t know that a lobotomy causes brain damage, Ryan is there to be there for some reason, Tenenbaum is degraded to a poster labeling her a “bitch,” and Suchong... poor Suchong:

This is him from 1:

Tenenbaum… sometimes I pity the little freak. Such a tiny imagination… Content to sit there with her tanks of ADAM, tweaking and optimizing. I need to create… ADAM is a canvas of genetic modification… but Plasmids are the paint.

This is him in Burial at Sea:

Suchong observe strangest of coincidences. On other side of window, man in strange hat experimenting on Suchong's own creation. On Plasmid. Man name of Fink. Outrage! Theft of intellectual property! But -- man name of Fink is no fool. Through addition of oxidizing agent, turns Plasmid ingestible through stomach lining. Mr. Ryan very impressed with Suchong's initiative. Theft of intellectual property two-way street.

Atlas calls Suchong a racial slur, which, like, it’s Fontaine, but so does Elizabeth and Booker. He refers to Elizabeth as the “pretty lady,” his achievements are made to be Elizabeth’s or him copying from Fink, and his original death coming his own pride is Elizabeth’s doing. He didn’t discover the bonding process, she did.

Then, there’s Daisy, who is told by the Luteces she has to have Elizabeth kill her to make her a “woman” because “blood separates a girl from a woman.” She’s a period allegory now.

The stealth gameplay is an absolute joke with the Peeping Tom plasmid and the dumbest AI imaginable. You can just appear and disappear and they’ll all huddle around you, letting you knock them out one by one.

For fans of 2, it’s rough, but they’ll come out of this pretty good. Especially because during the time of Burial at Sea’s release, it was the height of shitting on 2 because Ken didn’t work on it, it was considered a cheap sequel, and he wanted to Thanos snap out of existence. Tables turned, though, and 2’s in a renassiance right now with a lot of people looking on it fondly. 2K’s rumored to have 4 be a sequel to 2, and if that’s true, 2 fans are eating pretty good.

For fans of 1 and Rapture as a whole, they’re in a worse predicament because now Infinite and Elizabeth are forever tied with 1. For fans of Jack, this shit sucks because his choice of saving the little sisters, the player’s choice left up to be canon or not, is now made canon because of Elizabeth. The one choice he and you had together does not matter. The story feels massively cheapened knowing what you know from Burial at Sea.

For Infinite fans who wanted to see more of Elizabeth in the future, Burial at Sea really sucks for them because Ken killed her off so nobody could use her. Elizabeth goes from being essentially a god to losing her powers after being killed by a... Bouncer (the standard Big Daddy you fight in the tutorials)... it’s insulting.

So, to cut things short: I’m actually the type of person who likes what people consider to be “shitty” games. I’m an avid defender of RE6. Burial at Sea episode 1 isn’t terrible until the ending, in fact I like seeing Rapture in it’s prime. Episode 2, though? The Season Eight of GOT for the Bioshock series.

#burial at sea critical #bioshock #we never see Elizabeth at her full potential save for the last ten minutes of infinite #then she loses her powers and dies #thanks Ken really cool

[lilmissbacon]

Why Jelsa is Ridiculously Stupid

Let me start off by saying that the idea of this ship was cute at first, I have nothing against it. In fact I have a few ships myself that have nothing to back them up. I am not making this to convince people to be anti, stop the ship itself, or spread any form of hate what so ever.

But this Jelsa fandom has gone too far. And when I say "jelsa shippers," of course I don't mean ALL of them, just about 80% of them.

In fact, I'm very appreciative of the few jelsa shippers who don't go around harassing others because "jelsa is life."

Also, allow me to correct you in saying that I'm not a jelsa hater, I'm a jelsa loather. There's a difference. Most jelsa haters, hate jelsa for the sake of hating it.

I genuinely hate it.

And don't go commenting about, "how do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it?" Because you see, that's where you're wrong. I did used to ship it, when I was 11. I was a child, I was new to the internet, I didn't know better. But I do now!

I am writing this so that some who may not know, will now understand why jelsa is bad and because I need to get all of this out of my system. I am slowly dieing inside.

First; I'm gonna go into how all the excuses to ship this are pointless. Next, I'll talk about just how these two would never work out as a couple. Then, will be what the toxicity has done to not just to the ship itself, but to the big four as well. And finally, I'll go into how uncreative the shippers are and just what horrible/stupid things they've done and are still doing.

1) Excuses are Pointless

Excuse #1: They have the same powers.

...Yeah, that's like saying you ship Lavagirl (Sharboy and Lavagirl) and Bolin (LoK) because they can both control lava. That's not a valid reason to ship anyone. There needs to be actual substance and I'll only say that once because that sentence applies to every excuse here.

Excuse #2: They look alike

🤦🤦🤦 First of all: that's also like saying you ship Tiana (Princess and the Frog) and Frozone (The Incredibles) because they're both black. Second of all: no they don't. It may be because I'm an artist so I notice small details, but here's how it is; Jack's hair is white, Elsa's is platinum blonde. Jack has a square chin, Elsa has a round face. Jack is much paler! THEIR EYES AREN'T EVEN THE SAME SHADE OF BLUE!!! Your excuse is null and void. Even so, if characters do look alike, then they're most likely to be related. Especially in animation.

Excuse #3: Jack can teach Elsa to have fun and Elsa can teach Jack to be serious

This clearly proves the point that jelsa shippers don't know these characters. The job of teaching Elsa how to be social and have fun is already taken by Anna. So if anything, Elsa will see Jack as a younger brother. And Jack wouldn't have been chosen to take on such a responsibility of guardianship if he didn't know when to quit. I don't know what it is about playful characters that make people think they're obnoxious. Jack is an immortal teenager with the heart of a child, that's what makes him a good guardian. But he's been alive for over 300 years, he bound to have the mind capacity of an adult and he does know better. He doesn't play when he's in battle, he's dead serious.

Excuse #4: They understand each other because they were both isolated for a long time

I don't know where you come from but people don't really "bond" over their trauma. Infact, if anything, that would make the relationship more unstable. Plus, Elsa isolated herself for 13 years because she was afraid of her powers. Jack was forced into isolation for 300 years! He has never been afraid of his powers and Elsa could still be seen throughout the day by parents and servants. They would never be able understand what the other went through.

Excuse #5: They both have a sister they love

SO WHAT?! At least half of the population have sisters. Simple as that. It's a horrible excuse.

Excuse #6: They both have an enemy in fear

Bruh, almost every fictional character has to deal with their fears, literal or mental. It's not at all unique to these two.

Excuse #7: Jack can teach Elsa to control her powers

She already has control of them by the end of the movie. And even if you mean prier to that, the reason she couldn't control them was because she feared them. I doubt that even if she could see him and if he showed her his powers, she's be irrational, believing that their powers were different.

Excuse #8: William Joyce says he ships it

Really, you're going to base the possibility of a ship because the writer of the 'books' that "inspired" rotg says he likes it. First: the books and movie are not the same worlds. Two: he most likely stated this in order for jelsa shippers to shut up to him about it. And three: his own canon with the books is a mess as it is. With him adding a bunch on random/unnecessary details on twitter that have no relevance or reference in the books. Even if he does ship it, everything that's going on with Jack's character in the books is weird enough as it is. Plus he's physically 14 in the books. I know age doesn't really matter but Elsa would definitely feel weird about dating someone who looks so young when she's currently 24 by the second movie.

Excuse #9: They could've met before the events of rotg

Not a reason to ship them but whatever 🙄 Even if their stories were based in the same world (which it isn't), Elsa never would've believed in fairy tales. Having to grow up so soon and all. She believes in magic, of course, but you need to believe in the individuals themselves in order to see them. Plus it is very clear in rotg that Jamie is Jack's first believer.

Excuse #10: Now that Frozen 2 is out, they are both spirits who followed the memories of their loved ones. They can live forever together!

Once AGAIN, how does this factor to them being a good couple? Plus the title of spirit is different in the Frozen-verse than the Guardian-verse. Guardian-verse; they are un-aging beings who keep the entire world in balance. Frozen-verse; never confirmed to be immortal (especially since 3 out of 5 spirits are inanimate objects), magical things that keep a single forest secure. The only reason the elements needed a fifth spirit was most likely because the one before Elsa died of old age. Plus the idea of Elsa outliving Anna goes against the theme of sisterly love that both movies strive on. This can be changed in fanfiction but I hate how people lie about her mortality for an excuse to ship.

Excuse #11: They're both single

So what? People ship characters who aren't single with other characters all the time. That's not a reason to ship them. Especially since your statement is false because Tooth is Jack's canon love interest.

It is true that jelsa haters will give reasons to not ship that I necessarily don't agree with.

•Like the age gap — Jack has the mental capacity of an adult, as I've said before. He's smart enough to make his own choices.

•Elsa not being immortal — that doesn't mean they can't still date, even if he outlives her. Plus you can change that in fanfiction.

•They come from different studios and will never be canon — Again, this is fanfiction, we can do whatever we want.

•Elsa is independent and shipping her with someone takes her independence away — for one: most of the world is bound to find love at some point in time. I would imagine that Elsa would want to find love like her sister. Two: Mulan, Pocahontas and Jasmine are very independent and they all still ended up with men. Three: she's not that independent to begin with. Independence isn't relationship status, it's your ability to make it on your own and Elsa is clearly, very dependant on Anna and her safety. Which is actually what pushes her to being a bad sister in Frozen 2. In fact it is because they made her more 'independant' in the sequel that Elsa clearly, no longer loves Anna as much as Anna loves her (you can check out Watso Videos' video on YouTube about how Elsa is a bad sister bc I'm not gonna go into it here).

My god that was ALL just part one. This is gonna take forever 😰

2) How they would never work out

For Elsa, she needs someone who is calm and collected. A rock for her to stand on when she's being irrational. Possibly even someone who is very stoic and straight to the point but with enough sense of humor to lighten the mood. And now that I'm thinking about it, Honeymaren fits that description to a tee. I'm not one to push LGBT+ in anyone's face, but I'm not gonna judge ships on characters assumed sexualities either. Even though Honeymaren didn't have much screen time, her personality still showed through and Elsamaren could very well work.

Jack on the other hand needs someone who would be able to keep up with his playful nature as well as be a rock for him to stand on when he's emotional. Tooth is a good suitor even though I don't really ship it myself. Hiccup, Merida and Rapunzel could also fit in this description.

They don't have the ability to be each other's rocks. They can't be stable if they both need someone to keep them so. If they were to date, the relationship would crumble before it even began.

Plus Jack has to be a guardian and there are a lot of fanfics that go into this idea of Jack being the king of Arendalle? First off: I'm fairly certain that you can't marry into royalty to become king. At least in the real world. Second: Jack wouldn't be able to handle that responsibility with him already being a guardian. And he can't just leave guardianship either, it was what he always was and was ment to be. And Elsa has the responsibility of keeping a magical forest in check, she can't leave to become a guardian.

3) The Toxicity

Oh my God! The fanfiction! As I usually say, you can do whatever you want in fanfiction. But if you have to butcher all the characters so much in EVERY fanfic in order to make the ship work, then there's clearly something wrong here! In every fanfic I've ever seen, the characters are so out of character it's insane. Not just Jack and Elsa, every character.

Olaf for example, is practically in love with Jack first meeting, in every fanfic. If he were to actually meet Jack, he would be apprehensive of him.

It's horrifying in not only that, but jelsa shippers will add Rapunzel a lot, just in spite of Jackunzel. They turn Rapunzel into a needy ex-girlfriend of Jack's when in reality, she's a very sweet and kind soul. Even if she and Jack had dated, they would've split on good terms and stayed friends after. There have also been cases where they do the same but with Tooth. Sometimes even both and it's honestly sick.

And let's talk about the sexism as well HAHA! I swear to God, they will rewrite Frozen but where Jack will save Elsa instead of Anna. They write Elsa as a hormonal teenage girl who falls in love with Jack within seconds.

This is from an actual jelsa shipper, my dude. WTF!!! They make Jack super dominant as well as a douche who cheats on Elsa half the time. Jack is not that dominant, he's a very emotional guy. And he'd be the most faithful boyfriend on the planet. He was alone for 300 years! If anything, he'd be clingy but not too clingy because he also understands personal space.

And if you like angsty fanfiction where a character cheats on the other, there are literally no fanfics where Elsa cheats on Jack. As if a woman couldn't possibly cheat. This is very sexist towards men and women and is toxic as hell.

If anything, Elsa would cheat on Jack, she's not exactly trustworthy in keeping promises or being loyal.

I swear, half of the jelsa shippers has never even seen rotg and just go by what they read in others fanfiction.

Jelsa shippers have gotten so bad about this ship that they've low-key harassed people for not shipping it, as well as start shipping wars within the big four fandom. That's the reason the fandom truly shrunk after 2013. I've seen posts about people admitting to leaving the fandom because it got so bad.

4) The Shippers

Jelsa shippers have literally threatened lives, not just to other fans but even to the creators of the movies. Literally threatening them into making the ship canon. They've made patitions to make it canon as if that would work. They've even harassed a lot of recent shippers to Elsamaren because "jelsa is canon."

Oh look at that, they're homophobic too...

...

...

...

... That's great 🙃

Isn't it a bigger sin to love a celestial being though? Therefore the fact that you –as a toxic christian– ship Elsa with a spirit it worse.

THEY'RE DELUSIONAL!!! So many of them have shipped jelsa so long that legit think it's canon!

Not only all that mess but there are literally more jelsa games on the internet then there are Merida games. I'm specifying this for personal reasons (aka Merida is my fave Disney princess)

And let's continue on with what really aggravates me as an artist. Jelsa shippers, stealing artwork, mostly from Jackunzel. This is not just a rumor, it's very much real.

And it doesn't help when all of their actual original fanart is just them taking scenes from Frozen and adding Jack. Then to add more salt on the wound is that almost all the fanfiction is the same, whether it'd be based during Frozen, rotg or in a highschool au.

There's literally nothing original about or going on with this ship, even after Frozen 2 came out, the shippers and fanfiction haven't changed. If anything it made the shippers spike up again.

The only thing that could say is original about jelsa is the frost daughter fanon. Oh boy! What we have to unpack here.

This is something that I recently heard about...

...

I am mortified.

Frost daughters is this little thing that jelsa shippers came up with, believing Jack and Elsa (if they could get pregnant) would have nothing but girls. What's scary about it is they're designs. Like they're trying to be original... But it's not really going great.

Most of them are just young!Elsa copies, some are edits of Elsa with Jack's hair color.

For example:

This is fine, this follows genetrical rules. I'm fine with this.

But what has me low-key petrified are some of the other designs.

Like... WTF IS ALL OF THIS!!! Where are this colors coming from?!! I don't understand 😭 You can see in the screen shots that these are literally titled as daughters of jelsa.

The white haired ones are fine. The ginger is understandable. Got it from Elsa's dad's genes. That's okay. A few are wearing pink? They can wear what ever they want. But wtf I'd going on with Nevada? Why is she black? Jack and Elsa the pastiest of white! And you cannot tell me that she got it from Elsa's mom because this was made BEFORE Frozen 2 and her mother is still white as an adult.

Where tf does the blue and pink hair come from? None of these make sense!

I want to kill myself, just looking at these!

That's gonna be the end of this rant

Now I'll say it again, I really have nothing against the ship itself. I too have casual ships that make no sense. But with ALL the fanfiction and fanart being so unoriginal and most jelsa shippers low-key being dangerous, it's hard for me respect people's opinions about it.

I try, trust me, I do! But it's become so murky in my brain that I can't tell the difference anymore and I'm also just not a fan of Elsa's character in general. And I like ships that actually make sense.

And being that I'm an equalist... it's really hard for me to look at this stuff and not get pissed off. I'm sorry if all of this comes off as aggressive because it kinda is.

I'm just very passionate, okay?

I hope you understand where I'm coming from. None of the pictures I used are mine. And I hope you have a good day?

#anti jelsa #antijelsa #jack frost #anti elsa #DreamWorks #disney #ships #hate jelsa #the big five

[bansheeoftheforest]

Transfem/Enby/Genderfluid gang Jekyll au:

(Unrelated, but I once I had a daydream au like this. Except minus the gang and just Lucy)

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Does Rachel find out? (because I suppose it's a bit hard for her not too) she'd happily try to make dresses for Jekyll to wear when going out on heists

Also, you ever see those dolls where like uh a tutu would spin into a full dress? Like the dolls with the gimmick of "two in one outfit" and itd change somehow to a completely different look? (Usually a dress) I keep imagining that. Like exactly that. Hen presses a button on their suit and it spins into a dress. Is it impractical? Yes. Literally Impossible? Absolutely. But it's fun to imagine

-----

Update on my game progress: I killed springhill jack and was deeply disappointed to find that isn't an unlockable outfit, I mean come on! That evil lair literally had two mannequins wearing it, and you're telling me Jacob didn't yoink one? Smh 😔

In terms of main story, as of writing this I have received the Hallucinogenic(?) Darts and got the cargo cables, also got poisoned. Now looking in a pirate basement

Also, hatred towards B button ended. "Follow this 50km/h vehicle with your wimpy human legs" quests are my new worst enemy

And! I was looking through the dlc and saw some individual outfits were free! I dont use the Evie one due me thinking her original is better. But Jacobs outfit "The Creature's Rags" looks v good! And I get to keep my hat <3, a bit sad to discover both cant be colored though

I greatly appreciate the fact that Jacob and Evie sorta level up together, so you can just decide to play as another when you usually play one, and the other wouldn't be horrendously underleveled!

-

Also! I forgot to acknowledge it but Rexford Kaylock being somehow related to Jasper sounds very fun. They've probably never met and never will, as I simply enjoy the thought of him being related

Oooh! And now I'm imagining Lucy agreeing to help the Rooks at some point, she walks onto the train to discuss plans only to immediately stop. Because there's Dr. Henry fucking Jekyll. Just causally lounging on a couch wearing clearly too big clothes (he stole them from Jacob) and sipping tea. Jekyll is in too much panic and shock to say anything so Jacob just slaps his shoulder and says "Henry here makes some of strongest and most useful poisons! He also helps fix some of our real bad injuries AND He gives us information on people from the aristocracy if we need it! <3" but all in like a tone of sheer affection and "look at my person, hes so talented, I recruited him myself, be jealous of how good he is at everything"

Robert circus man keeps reminding me of Robert Lanyon, and before I even knew his name, just how he acted and what clothes he wore

Ned! Ned my beloved <3. At first I was confused on why the game felt the need to mention that it was made by people of many gender identities and etc. But then! Trans character! Canonically trans character! I dont really play video games that much, and certainly not recent ones, so this may be a decently common sight, but it made me really giddy and happy to see <3

Rachel would probably find out immediately. She goes to Lucy's house to visit her brother on a surprise visit, is very surprised to see her boss drinking tea with Patrin and Elise, in the most fancy and most lacy dress she has ever seen. Hen would be absolutely horrified to see Rachel, Patrin/Elise/Lucy would probably start bubbling about how they started to work for them and how good they are at the job and doesn't that dress just suit them perfectly and Hen would look like they would want to sink into the couch and disappear. Rachel would probably only need a moment to realize, then she would be Hen's biggest supporter and make SO MANY DRESSES for them <3

I know exactly what you mean and I want Hen to have at least 10 of those. Maybe not a suit but more like a short dress like Evie wears that turns into a longer dress, just yes pls <3

--

Oooooh I just did the sequel mission for that one yesterday! It's really annoying with he just poofs away like that but i still think it was v fun. Maybe there is a mod that adds that outfit? XD

...Y'know you can just steal a carriage and go after them most of the time, right? At least unless they specifically state "follow x by doing z" and stuff, so XD

I really like that outfit but I like Jacob to be a fancy fancy boi. I also have yet to find an outfit for Evie that I like, the only one I have found so far was the military outfit but you can't unlock that until you have done the WW1 missions and I promised to save those so my friend could watch me do those missions, you get to play as Jacob's granddaugther, I believe <3

Yess, only thing is you have to decide where to spend the points but eh, its just takes a minute or so XD

I like to imagine Rexford being Jasper's kinda-odd-but-also-very-protective uncle, prepared to beat anyone up who lays a hand on his nephew... Too bad Jacob killed him in cold blood lol

I love that point and I especially love the thought of that, too, being Jacob x Jekyll bc I have been having that brainrot for a fucking week at this point. I just... Adore the panic. Like, Henry just chilling, taking a break from the Lodgers, just getting to go on a lil vacation seeing the train move past London, catching up with friends and shit and flirt with Jacob, and all of a sudden Lucy walks in, they both stare at each other for such a long moment, Henry chokes on his tea, Lucy just goes like... "Uh... Dr. Jekyll? What the hell are you doing here?" bc lets say that they have met before, Jacob just being so proud of Henry and all he has done for them like look!! This is my person!!! He is so good for us and he is really just awesome!!!!!! I recruited him myself aren't I just the best!!! meanwhile Henry is just like... 👉👈🥺 XD

Man do you know how much I can relate to you rn. I love the thought of Robert being the one holding the fight clubs. I love the fight clubs but I absolutely hate all the races. The Lambeth Lap Race can go and die </3

Yess!!! It has always been really important for the team of AC to make sure to keep a diverse developer team and especially since they are working with history, it's important to have many different perspective on things, and it actually isn't until recently that they added sexualities and gender identities to that little pre-note on the loading screen! It was first just about races and ethnicities but I'm glad they are keeping it diverse and aren't afraid to show it. Jacob technically has a male love interest later on but... Spoilers <3

#ask #darling-dolly-darlene #banshees au #syndicate crossover au #trans!jekyll au

[extremelyblackandwhite]

losing my mind

pairing: endings, beginnings! frank x reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of drinking, sex, drugs, cheating, creative liberties with endings, beginnings plot, time jumps, angst, accidents, wounds

based off “losing my mind” from bernadette peters/or follies 

sequel to “always hate me”

The sun comes up, I think about you. The coffee cup, I think about you. I want you so it’s like I’m losing my mind. The morning ends I think about you, I talk to friends I think about you and no one knows it’s like I’m losing my mind. All afternoon doing every little chore, the thought of you stays bright, sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor not going left not going right ...

The sounds of the night infiltrated Frank’s mind like a drug, probably the only one he could take. Life seemed bleaker and this time he just couldn’t deal with it the was he normally did. Somehow drinking seemed to have no effect on him, drugs were just childish things and girls didn’t matter to him. He just roamed the Earth like a doomed soul with heavy metal spheres shackled to his ankle. Even his house no longer felt like home, every small thing reminding him of Y/N. From the little Beanie baby in the fireplace to the lingering scent of the laundry detergent she had swore to him was the best thing he could ever get and would make his clothes as soft as ever. It hurt him more not to have her on his side rather than Jack, Jack who he had known since he was a kid. No, he missed her and how she would drag him to watch Gossip Girl with her as Jack merely sneered at the idea or how she would eat only sweet and salty popcorn believing it tasted better.

The only thing that seemed to take his mind off was driving. He couldn’t sleep so driving was the only thing he could do. Just drive. Anywhere, for hours and hours on end with sleep weighting his eyelids and regret on his mind.

     - Where are we going? - he turned his head to the side, Y/N sat on the passenger seat, burgundy dress on and feet up on the car console. She had a sassy look to her, hair pushed back with a gaze that almost mocked him. Slowly, he blinked his eyes wondering if his mind was playing a trick on him, which it definitely was. - Don’t worry, darling. I’m just a personification of guilt and lack of sleep. 

      - Go away. - he steered the wheel of his car, hoping the hallucination of Y/N would just disappear. 

      - I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t feel so guilty. - the corners of her lips were pushed upwards. - How long did you think I took to sleep with Jack, huh? Think we’re doing it right now?

      - Shut up. 

      - He was always much more interesting than you. Smarter, sophisticated, the type of guy I’d take to my parents. You know my parents, right? You know they love Jack, they’re always talking about him and how smart he is. Do you wanna know what they say about you?

     - Shut up. - he screamed but what was he screaming at? His own guilt, screaming at the personification, the realisation of his guilt standing there in that damned burgundy dress, the same dress he had met her. She was not there, she was not real, she was just a vision. Guilt and regret personified. - Go away. 

     - I can go away whenever you want, darling. Go on and do what you always do, go get high, overdose even and maybe I’ll disappear or maybe I won’t. We all know you’re gonna end up like that, dead, just a bit too much and I’m not gonna be there. Jack’s not gonna be there when you’re gone and we won’t care. You wanna know why? Because you push people away, you push them away because you know you’re a mess and being next to you is like dying from radiation poisoning. Slow and painful, side effects lasting forever.

    - SHUT UP! - the lights of his car got brighter and brighter until he realised it wasn’t the light of his car that were shining at him. In a flash of second, his forehead hit the wheel of the thud and everything went black. The last thing he heard, his heart still beating and seemingly breaking out.

I dim the lights and think about you spent sleepless nights to think about you. You said you loved me or where you just being kind? Or am I losing my mind? I want you so it’s like I’m losing my mind. Does no one know? It’s like I’m losing my mind.

The sizzling of the pan was everything that was heard on Y/N’s very small apartment just on the outskirts of town yet still with an unbelievable rent price tag. As she moved the pan, she looked up to the clock shining 4:04 AM. She sensed something was wrong yet she couldn’t pin point what is was. Had she forgotten rent? No, rent was surely paid. Were all bills paid? She didn’t know but something was deeply unsettling to her and as Jack, who had come over for a small dinner and catch up, spoke to her the tragedy-like feeling just rose out of her chest.

    - Y/N? - he touched her wrist, noticing how still she was. - Hey, are you alright? 

    - Something’s wrong. 

    - What? Do you feel a disturbance in the Force? - he joked, trying to lighten the mood but Y/N was much to distressed to even get the joke. - Please tell me it’s not about Frank. It’s been two months.

    - Frank? No. I’m just .. I’m just tired. - she sighed, grabbing the pan from the stove and placing it on the table, a perfect frittata. Jack merely raised an eyebrow, setting down his cutlery as she sat. - What?

    - Normally if you don’t sleep that’s what happens. At this point I’m not entirely sure if stopping communication with Frank is hurting him or you more.

    - It’s not about Frank, Jack. Cut it off, please. - she rolled her eyes, slicing half the dish for her and half for Jack. Of course that deep down she knew she was lying to herself, of course it was about Frank. Half of her didn’t want to admit it that she hadn’t caught a wink of sleep ever since Frank professed himself to her as that half knew what he was. She knew the type of guy he was, she had picked him up from one night stands houses, from the curb of sleazy bars and strip clubs. He wasn’t exactly what one would consider a partner yet at the same time she knew he could be good. He would always make sure to buy some sweet and salty popcorn despite hating them, even having a quarter of a shelf filled with them. Or when her engagement broke off and he sent her a care basket with the whole box collection of Friends and Gossip Girl. 

    - C’mon, Y/N. Spit it out, what is it? Have you also been in love with Frank for all these years? - it came out as more of a joke, a tiny yet full laugh coming from his throat yet Y/N remained still. - Oh my god. You’re in love with Frank.

10 YEARS AGO

Y/N walked into the Valentines’ Day party thrown by Jack, barely holding herself up in her pair of new heels and burgundy long sleeve fit and flare dress which at the time she had thought was very appropriate. The mood was mellow with low lights and pink and red helium balloons suspended into the air while a very slow and almost melodic version of “Can’t Take my Eyes off You” played. 

Jack quickly noticed her, waving at her to come join him and his friends. In all honesty, she didn’t know any of the people here. She knew Jack from her English class as they had been paired together at the beginning but other than that it was mostly frat boys and their boyfriends. 

     - Hey, Y/N. I’m so happy you came. - he gave her a friendly hug before turning to his friends, or rather, one friend as the other men around seemed much more interested with their dates than him. His friend however quickly caught her attention. He was much more casually dressed than the other boys, wearing a button up shirt with a worn out coat and slightly ripped jeans. - This is my friend, Frank. Frank this is Y/N, we go to English class together. 

     - Nice to meet you Y/N from English class. - he raised his glass at her as she took a seat in the middle of the two boys. - What’s your poison?

     - Oh, I’m really not in the mood for alcohol tonight. - she gave him a shy smile, feeling like a school girl talking to the jock. 

     - Ah, that bad? - he questioned, bringing the cup up to his lips. - Don’t feel bad. Valentine’s is a commercial invention and the break up rate is usually higher around it. 

     - Sounds like you’re the one who’s not dealing well with it. - he raised an eyebrow at her statement, amused look in his face. - Statistics quotes and all? Who broke your heart?

     - No one breaks my heart, I don’t have one. 

    - Everyone has a heart no matter how hidden it is. That is just how anatomy works and you can choose to ignore that you have one or you can chose to accept you have one. 

    - You speak like an English student.

    - You speak like a Law student. - she noted.

    - How did you know? - he was amused by her, mostly how cut throat yet somehow soft she was about the information she was giving out. 

    - Law is reason free from passion. - she quoted, leaning her head against her own shoulder. - You seem to be void of it.

PRESENT

   - You know Jack just because you’re very happy in a new relationship doesn’t mean I need one. - she was protective but she knew. She knew she loved Frank, she had loved him from the very moment they had known each other, she loved him through the recounts of his night stands, she loved him when she accepted a marriage proposal and she loved him when she left his life months ago. However, just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should be together. 

   - I’m gonna ask you this only one time and whatever answer you give we won’t speak about it ever again. - his hand went to rest on top of hers, a caring look of that of a parent that Jack somehow always carried. She just stared at his hand, softly and safely on top of hers as he let the question go. - Are you in love with Frank?

The truth is not always kind or reassuring, it’s not always soft or climatic and in this case it was just ... freeing in a painful sort of way. The pain of holding it in for ages, pretending it would just disappear, the pain of leaning her head against his shoulder whenever they had show marathons and knowing it was just that, just a momentaneously second of paradise which would never come to fruition. The truth that she knew, that she had always known, coming out scared her more than her words could ever describe them. There’s knowing and there’s saying and sometimes speaking is harder that acknowledging. 

    - Yes and I really don’t ... - her phone ring interrupted her. Her gaze moved slowly across the room, sensing something in the air that felt like tragedy in the end. Without much thought, she grabbed her phone from the kitchen island, putting it up to her ears.

There are moments that the words don’t reach, you hear something but it just doesn’t register, it just doesn’t reach your senses and for Y/N this was one of those moments. The grip on her phone grew lose causing the device to slide off her hand and into the ground which in turn made Jack get up to notice how every single thread of joy seemed to have left her face. Before he could even question what was happening, she rushed up to her door, grabbing her jacket and keys. Jack followed behind the crazed woman who pretty much pulled the door of her car open. 

     - Where are we going? - Jack asked her but she continued to drive. The short ten minute drive seemed to take hours and hours and as the emergency unit of the hospital became clear to Jack, he understood what that call was about. 

She parked the car like a crazy person, immediately jumping off the car, still wearing her pyjamas and slippers which were hidden by her black trench coat. Her heart was beating like a drum as she hit the front desk where a less than bothered nurse was filling her nails and having small talk with her colleagues. 

    - Hi? Sorry, hi. - Y/N knew she sounded desperate but she was. - I got a call about a car crash. I’m Y/N Y/L/N. 

    - Follow me. 

All afternoon doing every little chore the thought of you stays bright. Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor not going left, not going right. I dim the lights and think about you, spend sleepless nights to think about you. You said you loved me or were you just being kind? Or am I losing my mind?

The small noise of beeping woke him from his transe. All around white, nothing but white and if people were right than maybe he was in heaven however as his eyes got accustomed he could see the machines but more than machines, what really frightened him was the vision of Y/N.

   - Hey, darling. - her hand came to caress his face making him wonder if he was seeing her or if she was one of his tired mind’s inventions. 

   - Are you real? - his words were slow and droopy, caused by the high amount of morphine they had injected him with. 

   - Yeah, I’m afraid so. - she gave him a kind smile, hand pushing his messy hair away from his forehead. - Me and Jack were so worried. 

   - I wasn’t high, Y/N. I promise. - he didn’t know what was wrong with him, maybe he didn’t want her to be even more disappointed than she already was with him. 

   - I know, you just had a car crash, darling. You probably have enough morphine in you to put down an elephant. 

   - No, Y/N. I, I got distracted in the road I wasn’t using or drinking or with a girl, you have to believe me. 

   - Frank, darling, I know. You’re in the hospital, you don’t need to apologise to me. I was so worried about you and so was Jack.

   - Jack’s here? 

The girl nodded, pushing the hair away from his forehead once again, leaning to kiss his forehead. He was covered in small cuts caused by small shards of his car’s broken windows and a few gashes which she just couldn’t look at without feeling the tears submerge to her eyes. A sea of guilt was storming in her chest and although her subconcious kept telling her this would never be her fault, it was merely a car crash, her heart told her something else. Friday night. Gossip Girl night when Frank would bake the only thing he could without setting the kitchen on fire, mozarella and tomato pesto salad, and the two of them would sit down and watch two seasons in one night. If she hadn’t ... She didn’t even wanted to think about it.

Frank on the other hand could see the distinct pain on her features. The pressure of her muscles creasing her soft features, lines by her eyes and lips quivering. It hurt, it just hurt more than he could phantom something would hurt, it hurt more than his wounds, it hurt more than knowing he’d hurt her several times, it hurt to see her so hurt and being able to do absolutely nothing yet that seemed to be a pattern. Frank always did nothing. 

9 YEARS AGO

Valentine’s Day. Again. And Y/N was once again at the same party, the same decorations, the same slow version of “Can’t Take my Eyes off You” playing in the background, the only thing missing being Jack and Frank. Jack was on a date with a girl named Catherine whom he gushed about all the way through first until last period and Frank, well, Frank was out with a girl named Mandy. Oh Mandy, where to start with Mandy? Y/N hated Mandy. They had been housemates during the first year of university and if there was someone who could get her on her last nerve and consider murder it was her. Not only had she been a nightmare to live with, constantly refusing to clean or do any house chores, eating the food Y/N bought for herself. God, she was an absolute nightmare but Frank was interested in her and therefore Y/N held herself back. 

She sighed ordering a virgin mojito, wanting to remain sober and not get drunk and end up in bed with one of the various frat boys around. Looking at her phone she noticed the hour, 23:20, only forty more minutes of this painful holiday and she could be free from her feeling of loneliness. As she was about to turn off her phone to enjoy her drink, a message fell. Frank. 

“How’s commercial holiday? Found a suitable partner yet?” 

She smiled faintly at the text, finger lingering over his name on the phone.  

“I guess it’s alone commercial holiday for me once again”

She turned off her phone, not wanting to see another text from him, afraid it would be about how well his date was going with the housemate from Hell. Staring at her glass, she mixed the drink using the little heart shaped wood pick. As she took the first sip, the slow version of the song ceased to play and in its place “At Last” started to play because why play actual upbeat songs on a holiday where 50% of the population was miserable.

On that moment she decided she was better off alone in her room rather than in the middle of various single people expecting their fantasy of coupleness to occur. As she picked her clutch and looked for the door, she found Frank coming him, same old beat jacket that had become a trademark over the years. He gave her a little grin, walking towards her. 

      - Couldn’t let you spend Valentine’s alone. - he said before she could even question his appearence at this party. - C’mon, I have some red velvet cupcakes, wine and a blanket. Let’s go to the beach. 

PRESENT

Y/N had remained at the hospital for the two days he had been in, barely catching a second of sleep until tiredness finally beat her and had her sleeping against the uncomfortable hospital chair. The moment she went to sleep was the moment he woke up from his morphine induced sleep, eyes immediately focusing on her and how her hair fell in front of her face as she rested for the first time in two days. He moved slightly in his bed to better stare at her which led her to wake her up with the noise, moving her head upright immediately.

      - You’re awake. - she gave him a sleepy grin, straightening her back. - The doctor said you should be free to go home today. 

     - You should go home, Y/N. - his voice was still somewhat raspy from all the medication they’d been giving him. - I’m really not worth this. 

     - I have nothing better to do besides my neighbours are renovating, so it’s awfully noisy. 

     - Y/N, you really don’t need to be here. 

     - I think that’s the thing, Frank. - she gave him a soft smile, raising from her couch to go stand near him. - I think ... no, I know, I know I’m always gonna be here.

You said you loved me or were you just being kind or am I losing my ... mind?

everything taglist: @connie326​​ @lookiamtrying​

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan/reader #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan/you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan/y/n #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan imagine #frank imagine #eb!frank #endings beginnings

[saipng]

re7 anon, im bad with horror in general so im progressing really slowly but i genuinely thought losing hands was a re8 thing and i felt quite bad for ethan when he lost his left hand like .. he got it back but also i wish he could keep his hands. also if you don't mind me asking, why is re8 a bad game? i dont know anything about this franchise i just jumped straight into the 7th game with 0 knowledge

man oh man how i WISH you hadn’t asked that, for both our sakes. cuz now it is 5 am the day after my birth and there is no way that i am not going to go into an overtly long rant that idk if anyone will care about. but hey, you brought this upon us, so.

without spoilers, why is re8 a bad, bad game?

well, you see. that is simply because it is not a game.

it is a part of a franchise.

listen. listen here. what the hell is that supposed to mean???

there are plenty of franchised games, right. just because a game is part of a franchise, or even a sequel to another game, obviously doesn’t make it automatically bad.

the reason re8 is bad, however, is because that’s all it’s meant to be. it is a sequel and a prequel to yet another sequel. it is not a game.

because, if you look at it from the point of view of a self contained game, it is bad.

the story is all over the place. absolutely nothing is answered or explained, and only more questions are created with the promise to be explored in future games. new characters are introduced only to be very obvious sequel baiting, and absolutely none of them are explored beyond the surfacest of surface levels.

moreover, the reason for things to happen simply isn’t there. the story is so bad, the characters in canon literally cannot explain it to you. the reason is ‘just cuz’. it feels like capcom threw all of their budget into rendering every follicle on dimitrescu’s tiddies as opposed to actually creating a cohesive narrative that doesn’t fall apart at the simplest probing.

see, the reason that re7 worked and re8 doesn’t was because re7 was a GAME. any person, even a person like you, who has never heard of anything resident evil before or even cared about the franchise, could jump in and enjoy their experience with it. the horror works, the story works, the characters work. the pacing is immaculate. i’m not saying it’s a perfect game obviously, but it WORKS and it is FUN. and, for those who DO know resident evil, you get the hints and implications and the lore and even a familiar face and eventually, the dlc. it was an AMAZING reboot to the franchise.

re8 though? re8 assumes you’ve played all of resident evil games before and you’ve enjoyed them immensely and you want more and you will play again and again and again.

im not saying that a game, especially a sequel, has to be completely free of references or call backs to previous games or work alone without any previous knowledge. i mean. that’s not how sequels work.

but in the end, they’re still supposed to make sense. a game is supposed to be that - a game. doesn’t matter if it’s the first or eighth or seventeenth.

re8 feels like a weird wobbly bridge that you got across before the other side is finished building. it is awkward. it feels incomplete, stitched together from different concepts and ideas. they brought back ethan winters only to have no idea what to do with him. they introduced the lords only to be short term hype generators. they shoehorned in chris redfield because he is chris redfield and it really doesn’t matter how much he doesn’t fit.

in my humble opinion, the game needs to be at least 5 hours longer for it to actually start making sense. at LEAST.

the characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, need to actually be explored, the pacing fixed, flimsy writing tied together, map expanded, puzzles actually added in. then, it would be a better game. i don’t know about good. but definitely better.

that being said, you may be thinking. why the HELL is everyone obsessed with this trainwreck????

well, because we’re all mentally ill, that’s why.

okay, serious answer - because the less the assholes give us, the more power it gives us to project and play around. they created these extremely fun concepts and didn’t bother developing them despite the enormous potential and that pissed us all off. well, me. it pissed me off.

and, as we all know, NOTHING motivates me more than spite at this point. so me and the other content creators basically ripped the lords and ethan and rose and all the others out of capcom’s undeserving hands and said ‘okay thanks ours now’.

because dammit, resident evil village could have been SUCH a good game. the idea of it is FUN and we all love it.

the execution? perfectly terrible.

and again, i’m not saying that you’ll hate it. i think you can, and should play it (or at least watch a playthrough). and moreover, i think you’ll enjoy it. i think you’ll have fun, still. i think you’ll like it a lot, as did many others.

none of that erases the fact that it is still very much a bad, bad game.

now, i could go more into how the horror elements greatly suffered because of capcom’s desperate need to rehash re4, or just how much of re4 they actually ripped off and shoved into this game; i could talk about how ethan winters (and mia, to an extent) is a terrible character in this game and reason he works in re7; i could talk at extent why the bakers were truly scary and the lords very much arent; i could even mention all the unnecessary mechanics and how much they truly contributed jack shit to the experience.

i could, but i’m not gonna. this is long enough as it is, and i hope it all made sense, at least somewhat. i tried to not include any spoilers (as much as was possible).

and i also really hope i didn’t dissuade you from giving re8 a try.

because, like i said, it’s still fun. capcom gave us steel beams and pieces of plastic and said ‘go wild’ and we built our own playground. it’s like that post that’s like ‘this amazing new restaurant everyone talks about and you finally go there and they serve white toast bread and everyone brought their own jam’. literally that.

but it can be so good, if that’s something that you can be into !!!

oh and. this is my own personal take on the game, of course. draw your own conclusions, yada yada. but if you’re bad with horror, you’ll find this game easier to digest for sure.

anyway. periodt.😩✌️

#resident evil village #resident evil 8 #re8 #if anyone starts any arguments i’m gonna lose it please don’t okay i’m not strong enough for that #long post #anyway #anonymous #answered

[thegeminisage]

hi, sorry for answering you both so late, i am putting your answers together since they are sort of related!

the short answer is, i can’t write a “real” sequel to broken road but the third part of the triptych would be the indirect dean/cas spiritual sequel, except with way more porn. the long answer is:

i just don't think i could write a true direct sequel to broken road set in that same continuity because i don't have anything left to say about john and how he gets along in the real with his family world now that he’s stuck there and they’re all stuck with each other. my main three points of interest that i felt were left unresolved would be the continuation of dean and cas's relationship (more on this in a sec), sam and eileen (ditto), and figuring out if john and mary ever made it work or called it quits for good. so if i wrote a sequel to broken road it would just be a bunch of john/mary stuff that i feel underqualified for because it WOULD involve their sex life and i DO NOT want to write john having sex. them fucking offscreen in broken road was as close as i'm ever getting and even that was weird. and then somehow i’d also have to work sam and eileen into that and it’s not at all related. it would take two fics and i don’t even want to write one. also, i really kind of want to leave the question of john and mary open anyway - i have my own thoughts about how things ultimately end up but i prefer to let the reader imagine what ending they like best, since people have such strong feelings about it. i know that's a little bit of a cop-out and i'm sorry! but it feels beyond the scope of that fic and also a little beyond my scope and area of interest as a writer.

if it helps you any, i imagine going forward their dynamic is a lot like it is in the epilogue, which is part of why i made the epilogue so long, was to give you a good idea of what life is like for them now. but here’s what i imagine might go down after the final curtain call (this is LONG, skip to the section labeled “dean” for the triptych answer):

john & mary: 

john continues to suffer and bite his tongue and probably do a lot of complaining and DEFINITELY do a lot of avoiding being alone with dean or cas or dean-and-cas. john was expecting to retire after yellow eyes died so he really wouldn't know what to do with a family that still hunts for "no reason" and i imagine he'd be pretty pissed that they still hunt at all. i expect he and sam would butt heads over that

mary would probably keep attempting to be supportive and keep being bad at it, and spend a lot of time trying to put a brave face on it while secretly dying inside, because she's constantly at war with herself. here she has john back, but not the john she remembers, and spending time with him is difficult because she wants to let herself have him and take comfort in him and also she doesn't want to be anywhere near him because he abused their kids

eventually mary or john or both would have to leave, though mary would come back - in canon she's in and out a lot anyway, she stays for awhile and visits regularly for game nights. i think john would miss the first game night, get one "seriously?" text from mary, and then show back up every week that he possibly could but also not visit unless it would make things worse if he didn't. i don't think he particularly enjoys spending time with his family for a long time, if ever, because much like season 12 mary he came back to a family he barely knew or recognized (and because of what he knows now spending time with dean would be particularly awkward). HIS sons would be getting married to women and retiring and having biological children. this gay adoptive whatever the fuck makes them feel like they are not his sons. 

anyway, i imagine john and mary would do much better when running into one another outside of the bunker, on their own separate hunts. they might even take one or two together. there’s probably some very guilty sex in their future at some point because mary is real fucked up. john post broken road does a lot of shutting up but i think around mary he would be the most like his old self. they do this will they/won't they dance for the next decade at least before finally making up their minds one way or the other. i do think they all still go on hunts together sometimes, maybe even with the apocalypse world hunters, and since that's sam's deal john is probably kind of quiet and falls in line and does what's needed without chatting much to anyone. i bet the first few times people don't even realize he's sam's father because he's so quiet. it's his way of trying to apologize to sam and also if he steps out of line when sam is in charge sam would <3 deck him. yes. but yeah i see it being very brisk and professional and awkward, until they all get used to each other again

sam: 

as i said earlier the only thing i didn't fix in broken road was eileen, so at some point sam would figure out a way to get her back - since in this verse jack never becomes soulless and chuck never returns and we never get season 15 it's possible she shows back up because she didn't go with her reaper, or because someone fucked up a summoning spell, or sam realized she was in hell and decided to spring her, or she just crawled out on her own like a badass. i think it would be kind of funny if john was involved with her resurrection but maybe accidentally somehow, so it's not like oh sam learns to forgive his dad because john did this really nice thing for him it's more like UGH why did it have to be YOU why are YOU involved in this important thing that has nothing to do with you slkdjfghl but also if you hadn't done it she'd still be down there or something, so, it cancels out. or idk maybe john had to work hard at it or give something up to make it happen. he has to genuinely shut up and be selfless and not fucking complain and feel sorry for himself the entire time, that might be fun too. either way sam would not thank him

(though i do think sam deserves space to explore the fact that he loves john even still, even despite the fact that he also hates him/is very angry with him and always will be. i don’t imagine sam and john ever fully reconcile but i imagine john behaving BECAUSE OF SAM SPECIFICALLY offers sam more catharsis than he thought possible.) 

anyway, john would be so relieved to see sam with a woman even if she is a deaf hunter but then it turns out she hates him like sam does so like. sucks to be him! meanwhile sam and eileen get to catch up and he finally has a willing ear (so to speak) that isn’t cas or mary to talk to about this stuff and of course SHE has someone who very much understands what it’s like to come back from hell. part of what i really love about sam and eileen is the way they sort of instantly and intrinsically recognized and understood one another, even across something that resembles a language barrier, and this hypothetical future would be no exception. there’s no way they don’t get engaged inside a year, and much like in the 15.18 fixit they’d sometimes hang at the bunker and sometimes not. i imagine with the apocalypse world hunters going in and out though it’s never exactly empty or lonely there. 

whether or not their family unit ever retires and/or moves out of the bunker in this verse is sort of beyond me because my feelings on it change daily but you can imagine whatever you like! however i am adamant that the furthest away from each other sam and dean will ever get permanent-living-situation-wise is next door/across-the-street neighbors. their weird little codependency is part of what i like about them and i have a Whole Thing about not “gentrifying” dean. but for the most part sam would be very much doing his own thing which involves john very little, and healing from his own damage with people OUTSIDE of his blood relatives which he very much deserves. and he has moved so completely past the need to care about john that like john is a backdrop in his life, albeit one with baggage. but mostly he becomes someone to keep an eye on in case he makes trouble, no different than a hundred other surly hunters sam’s known. and he can still be there for dean without his life revolving around dean because now dean has other people there for him too. (i ALSO have a whole thing about sam being in the life for dean specifically, that he’s giving up some or all of adulthood for dean because dean gave up childhood for him - kind of the way someone takes care of their kickass single mom in old age. it’s a guilt/love/debt/devotion sort of thing.) 

and speaking of the Eventual future, if babies ever come into this picture (sam and eileen’s, to be clear, dean and cas are probably satisfied with jack, NOT THAT JACK ISN’T ALSO SAM’S CHILD) john is allowed to see them but never unsupervised. i’m picturing like sam and eileen both on their third day of no sleep and sam lets john change a diaper because he’s exhausted and john considers that the best their relationship has been since sam was 6. mary always wanted to raise babies and sam likes her better so she’d get to pitch in with much more enthusiasm (and aw they’d finally get to bond a little more), and dean has raised a baby already so he’d probably try to like help and get waved away a lot like no no raising other peoples babies is no longer your job it’s ok. there is eventually a fight about this

cas & jack: 

castiel lives a great life caring for his newly re-graced son and staring at john when he enters or leaves rooms, and i imagine eventually jack gives him his wings back, since he can do whatever the fuck he wants (i'm not giving jack his own section but he also probably keeps acknowledging dean and cas are a couple like out loud which would be fine except for dean is still half in the closet like a skittish traumatized cat so eventually cas would have to explain very gently that nobody was supposed to know that yet and jack should cool it to give dean time to adjust)

anyway i DON’T believe in human cas, i believe he likes being an angel, so he just gets to stay an angel forever and now he has wings too <3 and he can teleport which spooks john in the exact same manner it used to spook dean in s4 <3 except this time cas is being <3 malicious on purpose <3

cas fully won here because like john does NOT want to speak to or acknowledge him much less be in the same room as him so they tend to have a dynamic where like all 6 of them are in the room and cas dean sam mary and jack all talk to each other and john dean sam mary and jack all talk to each other but cas and john do not talk to each other. cas doesn’t have to threaten him or glare at him constantly anymore like all he has to do is look at him. and john is like. man what’s he gonna do. that guy is having sex with your son and there’s nothing you can do about it! so dean doesnt have to be like ok cool it cas anymore because cas has literally won in every possible way. i think at most it’s very much cas being like “if i were trying to kill you, you’d know it <3″ and john can’t return those vibes to sender because then dean would be like ok cool it at his DAD instead. it used to be cas don’t piss off dad and now it’s dad don’t piss off cas. anyway i think that since cas has let dean lean on him so much it would be nice if he could lean on dean a little. again more on that in a minute

dean: 

and finally, as for dean...i think he needs a year minimum to dean with people acknowledging he and cas are a couple and another 3 for it not to be weird to say cas’s name in front of his dad. absolutely zero pda in front of john ever but he might like eventually get to the place where he and cas can lounge around together on the couch while they watch movies with the rest of fam and it’s not a big deal. sneak an arm around him at a movie theater. kind of the same vibes as the 15.18 fixit but with less anxiety. because like the worst possible thing (getting outed to everyone) has already happened and aside from the outing itself being completely horrible nothing that terrible even came to pass as a result, so he’s just Adjusting. i think he sort of has to unlearn and relearn his habits - his mediator thing, his defending dad thing. i think there’s a lot of times where he just walks out of a room when shit is too much for him to deal with because he has let go of some of the need to constantly micromanage his family’s interactions to make sure they don’t boil over. michael already took that scenario to the max and mary already dumped john so there’s really not much left to be afraid of. i think he gets told “that’s not your job” a lot and maybe listens more than he used to. and to bring us around to the second question...

i also think dean would get weirdly hung up on the fact that he and cas’s sex life is Not Normal - as in, they fooled around a little and that was it. i think dean would have a huge problem with that. like, obviously he has A Few Hangups About Gay Sex given his history but if you’re a couple you’re supposed to bang on the regular and it’s totally homophobic if he doesn’t bang cas as much as he’d bang a lady he was committed to, right? he’s not gonna give cas less than he gave cassie or lisa, that’s not fair to his best buddy and number one pal! 

meanwhile castiel, known asexual, is utterly and wildly neutral to the whole idea except that it’s a way to be close to dean. cas would be just as happy fucking like champions for a six-hour marathon or spending that same six hours curled up in bed together while he plays with dean’s hair. like, same diff. you know that thing about like “cas thinks everything is important he gives the same gravitas to the apocalypse and a nine year old’s birthday party”? like it’s exactly like that with sex and cuddling and sharing a meal together and driving together and watching dumb movies like it’s all time spent With Dean so it all matters just as much.

so we have this conflict where dean is tearing himself apart over the fact that he’s taking a normal human amount of time to “work up” to the whole thing and cas is like. but it’s fine. it’s literally fine. and dean’s reaction to this would be something very offended like hello excuse me i am super hot and fuckable and you don’t WANT me?

if this all sounds familiar that’s because i’ve written similar stuff to it before! if you go to the fic page for broken road, you'll see it's part of a series now (the "triptych"), with my dumb little 15.18 fixit as the prequel. even though continuity-wise these are two totally separate fics i feel very strongly that that fic is the spiritual prequel to broken road, and eventually, a long time from now, after the next @cambionverse​ fic is done or at the very least well underway, i'd like to write a spiritual sequel. a triptych is three works that stand on their own but also make a more complete whole, so even though these three stories would not be related at all in continuity of where they take place in canon, they each set the stage at a different part of the dean/cas relationship. so fic #1, the get-together, had no sex at all, and it was very short. fic #2, pre-established but just barely, had a little sex in it and it was very long. fic #3 then would be pre-established but like VERY pre-established and have a fuckton of sex in it, and be medium length. i’m ha ha basically writing my own nc-17 porn coda since SOMEBODY won’t do it for me (if you got that joke you’re entitled to financial compensation). 

except i actually really do want to tackle this subject myself, it’s stuff i only got to touch on in the other fics because it felt off topic, so in this fic it WOULD be the topic! i really found a groove i like with cas who has almost no trauma around sex but doesn’t care whether or not he has it vs dean who really really wants to have sex but has a minefield of past bad experiences he has to watch out for. and i like writing porn anyway and i didn’t get to write very much these past two fics. i’ve always said that i think dean would snowball (not like that, gross) - it’d take him FOREVER (literally a decade plus) to work up to kissing cas but a fraction of that time to start fooling around with him and a fraction of THAT time to blow him etc etc. the more he does the easier it gets. i feel like it’d be a lot of fun to write. 

so, this third fic would not be an official broken road sequel, because there’s almost no plot outside of the porn to speak of anyway, but if what you wanted was to see how the dean/cas went from where it left off, hopefully that will be satisfying in that regard.

i should say, while the third fic would be almost exclusively porn there is one plot element involving ********** that i am not going to talk about on tumblr because it would ruin the surprise. i have told a few people privately and i will tell you if we know each other pretty well but if you know (or guess) don’t tell anyone! 

see, the other thing i would want to tackle in that fic is how cas has his own traumas and baggage, even if they’re a little different from dean’s, and i think dean sometimes gets so deep in his own stuff he kind of...not forgets that exactly but forgets how profoundly it still affects cas, because by and large cas deals with that sort of thing a lot more quietly and in much healthier ways than dean does. not that his self-sacrificing ass is the poster child for mental health, but for example cas recognized suicidal ideation in himself and actively worked to keep himself away from situations that would make it worse. he translates his bad feelings into meaningful action (well, he attempts to, even if it usually goes wrong). so he hurts kind of quietly and in late season especially most of the worst moments of his life are behind him (barring jack’s death, which doesn’t happen in this verse). so he’s also further along in his healing process which mean dean kind of forgets how fucked in the head he can be. and in the uh...unusual situation...they find themselves in because of this minor plot, it becomes something that he can’t not notice, that they can’t just not talk about, and cas gets to lean on dean a little, they sort of get to know each other better. so that’s part of the point of that one little plot element. but the rest of it really is porn.

i haven’t started work on the third fic yet - i don’t have a title and my outline is just a bunch of choppy ideas and i have about 2000 words of the middle of the fic jotted down out of context. (it was originally going to be a shorter unrelated thing before i realized how well it tied to what i already had.) i have another obligation to see to before i can get started on it (again, @cambionverse​, you should read it if you havent, the concept might sound unappealing but almost everyone who tries it likes it and it’s way better than broken road). so it’ll probably happen a very VERY long time from now! but it IS happening. >:) i just hope after the first two fics in the triptych were so well received that it doesn’t disappoint 🥺

#liz answers asks #anonymous #broken road #liz watches spn #liz loves writing #sorry this is such a long post i got carried away #i'm really excited about that third fic but i am more excited about other things first #but i don't want to get anyone else too excited until i have more concrete stuff bc rn i don't have much confidence in it #when i first conceptualized it i was like 'this is so weird and bad i will have to publish anonymously' #i've moved past that particular bit of self-doubt but only a very small inch lol #12:46pm

[claptraprights]

Beware of me going into fandom discourse but...I notice that a lot of them treat all the ‘bad’ things Jack did before the Eye of the Destroyer got blown-up as just random events that aren’t connected but honestly, they’re a pattern and in this essay I will-

I’m not going to get into whether he’s good or bad as a person (he was a bad person, duh, but that’s...boring and not worth discussing) but simply the fact that the writers gave us far more complex explanations for his actions and behaviours than: “he was a good guy with some random flaws and then one time Lilith and Moxxi were really, really mean to him and Jack decided to commit genocide.”

In fact, the focus on especially Lilith and Moxxi (Roland, too, but he tends to get away bc he told Jack he was sorry) when it comes to Jack becoming ‘Handsome Jack’ ignores a lot of stuff we already know about his life before the events of the Pre-Sequel as well as what it actually meant that he became CEO of Hyperion: As CEO, he finally had the capacity to do what he liked. As Handsome Jack, he no longer has any need to curb his impulses. Before he became CEO, Hyperion dictated how Jack has to act to be successful in the corporate hierarchy. - As CEO, he dictates how Hyperion acts. He is the New Face of Hyperion.

Yes, some aspects were retcons so it is valuable to look at Pre-Sequel as a singular story and examine what it tells us - but there are many details in there that show that this is not a complete departure from what Borderlands 2 told us about him but rather an attempt to tell the story from another side.

Jack has violent tendencies right from the start. He frequently says that killing someone or “destroying things with reckless abandon” feel good to him. For one (this isn’t from me), while many people hate Claptraps, Jack is particularly aggressive to them considering that he’s the one who actually picked him to be his soldier. Someone once said here on tumblr that Jack’s instances of violence against robots are the kind of violence Jack can get away with before becoming CEO (I wish I could credit the user but it was a long while back) and I find this incredibly compelling. Because Jack consistently commits violent acts when it doesn’t endanger his position in Hyperion:

Sure, he treats robots like shit - but they���re robots and no one really gives a shit. Jack’s second wife disappears - nothing you can prove or tie back to him (and chronologically, he must have killed her (at least this is very heavily implied) before the events of the Pre-Sequel). Sure, he says he enjoyed killing the Meriff but the guy’s a traitor so no biggie, right? And yes, Jack says he enjoys killing the three scientists when he could have contained them in a multitude of ways - but he can justify it because one of them might also have been a traitor. All this is really en d’accord with Hyperion philosophy: He puts pragmatism over human lives or robot lives. He doesn’t transgress against the suggested course of action and the one that he has likely been taught during his time in Hyperion. But....Jack doesn’t feel pragmatically about it. He enjoys it, he says so himself.

When Lilith follows them into the Vault he doesn’t tell her he wants revenge for the attempt on his life or simply take her out so that she cannot stop them from reaching the Vault- he actually fantasises about killing her and watching ‘all that sass ooze out of bullet holes’. Again, his actions are pragmatic but he wants to see someone suffer. By the time you fight against the Dahl space-ship, Jack demands of the Vault Hunters to take it down for ‘pragmatic’ reasons - that the pilots might come after them. But at this point, the Vault Hunters already point out that they would arrive at the Vault more quickly if they simply ran past it and you can’t very well fly a space-ship into a Vault. Both sides are being pragmatic here. But if you decide to kill the injured Lost Legion soldier, Jack shows a little more of hs true face: He enjoys this. He has fun:

Jack: Hahahha! He really thought we were gonna let him go. He was like "daaah, I'm gonna turn my life around and eat better and finish my novel and stuff", and then BOOOOM! What a dumbass, ahaha! That's good stuff.

  Jack enjoys violence (he even enjoys being shot at; he mentions). But Hyperion, like all the corporations, hides behind a veneer of civility and Jack maintains that same image. Because he has to.

Capturing Angel, killing people who mention his wife, his new wife leaving him because she was horrified by Jack’s actions and then mysteriously disappearing, Jack using Timothy for his purpose and ruining his life for Jack’s own advantage, Jack setting Moxxi’s Underdome on fire after she left him - all that remains canon. And ... it’s not the pattern of a good person who sometimes slips up a little.

By the time we meet him in Pre-Sequel, Jack already canonically has aspirations to become CEO or at least, to come into power inside Hyperion. He’s usually referred to as a minor engineer but he has a giant office (which I assume would have belonged to Tassiter once Helios had been finished), he’s basically personally in charge of Helios’ defence despite Tassiter saying he’s there to observe Pandora and nothing else, he has run major operations like the discovery of Eridium that might Hyperion rich af, he hunts Vaults, has secret labs, he hires and fires people as he pleases and the only person who ever seems to be able to keep this “minor engineer” in check is Mr. Tassiter - at least for a little while. And even then, the board of directors backs up Jack. He seems to have a lot more power behind the scenes than his position leads on.

He’s already employing Timothy as his Doppelgänger - who explains to us (and Janey) that Jack has “big dreams”. And Nisha even tells Tassiter that Jack is going to kick him out of Hyperion at some point anyway. In Borderlands 2 we also learn that he was blackmailing powerful people in the company before he became CEO - makes sense considering that he has Angel surveilling the entire network and would explain why Tassiter simply cannot get the guy fired. Even Zarpedon argues the most dangerous thing about Jack - which will surely lead him to use the Vault’s power for Hyperion - is his ambition.

So in short: Jack is violent and ambitious. And he has been since long, long, long before Lilith and Moxxi entered the picture. What Jack ultimately wants is power. Everything he does is about power.

Now, this might feel like I’m drilling into hollow stone here but the question is why he wants power so badly. The reason this feels like a ridiculous question is a) because most villains do. Generally, people like power, not even just villains and not just in fiction - and b) the Borderlands universe is all about the struggle for power and survival.

But this is kinda my point here: People crave power because power equals security and in a violent world like the Borderlands it means safety from a wide and diverse range of horrible fates. But even irl, we know that money equals security. Power equals security. Luxury equals security. The further we move up in life - the safer we are. So the fact that someone might want to move up in the Borderlands universe is quite understandable. In fact, most of our characters are fortune hunters in one way or another. And while as readers/players/outside audience we can argue about how evil the companies truly are, in-universe they are the only way you can move up unless you want to move to Pandora and become the biggest, baddest bandit king (and you still wouldn’t eat a particularly luxurious life).

And since bandits are despised, it makes sense that to the general populace in that universe, joining a corporation isn’t much of an immoral thing to do even if people are cynic about them (outsiders more than employees). We also know that the companies put a lot of energy into influencing their employees, misinforming them, pressuring them, downright brainwashing them. And Hyperion is one of the best of them. They foster an atmosphere where it is quite accepted that employees murder each other about positions. In fact, in Tales, Hugo Vasquez tells Rhys that he can only leave Hyperion if he’s dead (would have to look up the exact quote but it’s rather early on).

  Jack’s central problem is that he has an absolutely warped idea of authority. For him, authority is automatically violent and violence is automatically an expression of authority. And he craves both – he has too, because violence reminds him that he’s in charge and authority means he can commit acts of violence – which he enjoys. These two are inseparable for him. And to be fair to him, there is very little to prove him wrong: The Borderlands of universe is an extremely violent place and the most powerful people are incredibly violent to defend their positions.

And if we go even further back into Jack’s past, this world-view seems to be rooted even earlier, all the way in his childhood.

“Dad died pretty early. Mom pawned me off on HER mom. Spent most of my time coding or getting smacked around. Had a cat. Grandma drowned it ‘cause I didn’t make my bed. Usual stuff.”

I analysed that line in more detail in that essay I wrote a few weeks back about Dusty, Brick’s dog and the role of real-world pets in Borderlands, but the gist of it is that Jack grew up in an extremely abusive and extremely authoritarian household where an absolutely horrendous degree of violence was the norm (Borderlands 2 tells us that he buzzax Jack sends the assassin to kill his grandmother with was the same she used against him when he was a child) and where punishments had nothing at all to do with the infractions or teaching a child why what they did was wrong. There is no indication that Jack was a violent child at all or really any statement on what kind of child he was - but we know that he learnt at a very early age that a) the person who can hurt you is in charge and b) if you are in charge you get to hurt people. In fact, Jack loves his grandmother and he wouldn’t let anyone speak badly of her – after all, she’s the only parent who was there to take care of him. And yet he keeps the instrument of his abuse for his entire life and eventually has her killed with it once he’s in charge.

And now before you “cool motive, still murder me!” and “I’m having a bad childhood right now asoue-gif!” @ me: I know. And it is. Angel does. But that’s not the conversation here. The question is how his behaviour patterns prior to the big eyeball explosion fit together. And considering that both Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel go out of their way to give us missions where we hear about this, we can conclude that these are vital facts for us to know to understand Jack.

So, you have a kid, one of many, growing up in a world where the strongest, richest, and most powerful live safer and better than the rest - without any illusion about this truth from inside his family unit: His father his dead, his mother left bc she could and his grandmother exercises the right and law of power inside her own home at will because she can.

He moves on and joins Hyperion which functions on the same principle but bigger scale. In fact, while for people from different backgrounds, Hyperion might be horrible and suffocating (Rhys certainly is fully aware that Hyperion is full of pricks), for Jack this was likely a giant update to his life quality and while for someone from a different kind of home-situation, it might have shattered their world-view - for Jack it wouldn’t. It reinforces it.

Now, we don’t exactly know when Jack got married or any of that. Even the addition that he married a woman from the Jakobs family is a speculation based on a recent addition (although experiencing his first period of peace and safety in his life in a rather wealthy family would also deepen that view on life). But we also know that Jack was implied to be at least a loving, functional father for the first years of Angel’s life. Until this sense of safety - the first he ever had in his life, is ripped away:

A bandit, in that situation more powerful than him due to having a gun, threatens him, wants to take his daughter, and Jack cannot defend his family. His daughter, more powerful than him due to her Siren powers, is forced to defend herself and ends up killing his wife/her mother. The sense of safety he had evaporates like a bubble on a hot stove - because of violence.

  At this point, we enter the “broken man goes out to avenge his wife’-phase of any good fridging story. But in fact, the storyline is never really touched upon. We don’t know what Jack did to the bandit, if he ever did anything, or the guy got away. But this is not really a hero’s story.

Instead, Jack dwelves into an entirely new project: Harnessing Angel’s power for himself to become more powerful. And in this case that means no less than blackmailing leading people in Hyperion, finding an ancient super-weapon and tricking people into digging it out for him, stealing its eye as a giant death laser, and turning the research station he’s sent to into a secret super-weapon that would only obey to him. And if he has to make another wife disappear in the process, put a bomb in the face of some college student to control him, kill a few employees - that’s okay because he has the power to do it and if you got power you get to do what you like. Right?

At this point, Jack is already sadistic, violent, and powerful. Which to him ...are the same thing. But due to the nature of Hyperion, the only way to get to the safest spot on the career ladder - that of CEO! - would be murder. Because Tassiter won’t just give him that job he feels he needs. So, to become CEO he has to take the guy down and he cannot take down the guy who controls all of Hyperion just with Hyperion resources. The Eridium already worked wonders to make him more powerful in the company and it makes sense that he would want to open another Vault – on Elpis.

Except this is where Moxxi, Lilith, and Roland try to kill him and his Vault Hunters. And yes, from his point of view they betrayed him. And in his worldview, that isn’t only a loss of love and loyalty but also a defeat. Because the fact that they did hurt him means that they could hurt him and that means that he wasn’t as safe as he desperately wants to feel. A need that already came under fire with the Meriff attacking him which resulted in him killing those scientists.

Moxxi is definitely someone he used to feel safe with - so yes, her going against him must have been a horrible shock and his breakdown makes sense. He’s not just breaking down over being betrayed by his ex and two people he barely knows. He was just at the verge to become safer and more powerful than ever in his life and finally get the means to dethrone Tassiter and become CEO - when he learns that - guess what? You’re never completely safe in the Borderlands-universe and even the people you thought you control - might be the ones who end up hurting you.

At this point, Jack goes into paranoia overdrive and frequently loses control over his emotions and tells the Vault Hunters to kill everything that comes into his path - the Lost Legion soldier, the space-ship, Lilith. But remember that even before all of this, his Vault Hunters are already aware of his violent tendencies (not that Wilhelm cares of Nisha minds). It’s not that his motivation changed. He’s still ambitious and he still craves authority and violence. What changed is that he becomes more and more aware that someone might steal his victory from him at the last minute. Not to mention that they’re breaking the rules of power, as far as he’s concerned. He had the Eye, he has Helios, he has Angel - he should be safe and now he realises that he isn’t. And then he finds the secret of the Warrior, the greatest super-weapon he can imagine - and one second later he’s lying on the floor with his face on fire because he was absolutely helpless once again, against Lilith this time.

This is the moment when Jack decides to simply kill everyone on Pandora. And if you keep in mind that for him, peace and order mean that no one can hurt him - simply setting the whole planet on fire is perfectly sensible. Because if everyone there is dead, that’s one thing less to worry about. Ultimately, Jack was so desperate to pursue power that he failed to examine his own behaviour and realise that just like he was willing to do everything to get into power - so would everyone else. And that the farther up he moved in life, the more people would have to go through to him to get what they want. And that the more people he would hurt because for hum hurting and controlling people are the same, the more people would have a reason to fight back just like he’s fighting back against Tassiter. Which means that while he’s safe from a lot of problems poor people have in the Borderlands-universe, he had to deal with entirely new dangers. So, it’s hardly a surprise that for Jack, who tried to hide behind power his entire life, feels like being attacked by people less powerful than him, who are not part of the corporate hierarchy - is an act of ultimate betrayal and transgression. This is entirely against the rules of his game.

So yes, the eyeball thing is definitely an important aspect of Jack becoming the person he is later on. But it did not shape his willingness to hurt other people or his lust for power. Those were already there. Even his paranoia was already off the charts: Moxxi ultimately made up her mind to do this because of what he did to those scientists and because he was pointing a big fat laser on her planet. Yes, she betrayed him - but he was already obsessed with the idea of people betraying him and she was reacting to the atrocities he committed because of that. The reason this is such a big turning point is not that Jack found out what it feels like to be betrayed when Moxxi did and noticed that he really, really doesn’t care for it – Jack being betrayed was already a major part of the first part of the game. The problem is that he survived and this fuelled his a) obsession with people betraying him and b) his desire to feel safe from people who might betray him. But my main-point here is that if none of this had happened, it wouldn’t have changed much:

People point out that Jack at least seemed nicer in Pre-Sequel or was more hesitant to commit atrocities before the whole Eye-disaster, or that he seemed more heroic. But if you look closely at his actions, you realise that this is simply not true. Jack was already violent. And he already craved power. The things that held him in check were the boundaries of society and his ambition to move up as part of Hyperion which meant that he had to play by their rules. This is why he did all the horrible things he did before that in secret. But that still doesn’t change that he takes pleasure in death and destruction and that his inhibitions become weaker and weaker every time. So even if Moxxi had never betrayed him and Lilith had never branded him - if he had become CEO, it would still only have been a question of time until he became a monster.

Moxxi’s attack had two effects: It made Jack more distrusting and started the rivalry between Jack and the Crimson Raiders. But if Jack had become CEO, it was only a question of time until he became violent and murderous enough for people to try to kill him and for the Crimson Raiders to fight back against Hyperion. You have to keep in mind that Pre-Sequel is a retcon all on its own - and that the story of Borderlands 2 stands on its own two feet even without it. We don’t need it. We don’t need the Eye-explosion for it to make perfect sense that Jack would go after Sanctuary and therefore, it’s kinda evident that things would sooner or later have come to a similar conclusion without it.

So here you go. That’s why you shouldn’t ignore all the other stuff Jack did in favour of blaming Moxxi and Lilith for everything bad that happened ever.

#long post #child abuse mention #cw child abuse #handsome jack

[nerdyfangirl67]

Now I Know - Criminal Minds Reader Insert

Pairing: Hotch x reader

Warnings: language, slight angst, fluff, wide range of emotions expressed by reader in the letters

Word count: 2248

A/N: This is a sequel to If You Only Knew, set in the future when Aaron finds the letters the reader wrote. The reader is married to Aaron now. And my requests are always open so feel free to send me some!

Aaron is cleaning out the attic and finds the box of letters the reader wrote for him during a relationship break. He reads them and finds out how the reader truly feels

AARON’S POV

It was one of those days when I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. I had fixed the squeaky step leading up the front porch, replaced the garage door light, and even cleaned the gutters. And it was only one in the afternoon and I wasn’t sure what else to do for the day. 

On any typical day off, Y/N and I would be spending time doing something with Jack. Today though was different. Y/N was out with Garcia and Prentiss on a much-needed girls’ shopping trip. Jack was over at a friend’s for a playdate and wouldn’t be back until Y/N picked him up on her way home. 

After a quick lunch of a PB&J sandwich with a side of a macaroni salad Y/N had made the other day, I decide to head up to the attic and clean out some of the many boxes that had been pushed aside and forgotten when we had moved into the house.

Pushing open the attic door sends up a dust cloud, causing me to have to wave my arms around like a mad man to clear the entry as I let out a harsh cough. Once the dust clears, I trudge up the rickety stairs, my eyes scanning the room as I reached the top. There were quite a few more boxes than I had anticipated, all strewn haphazardly across the floor. 

Heaving out a sigh, I move forward, examining the boxes and decide to start with those marked miscellaneous.

Two hours and six boxes later and the attic looked no cleaner than it had when I started. I start looking for the next box of seemingly random crap when I come across a small wooden container, resting atop a large cardboard box with Aaron written across it.

Curiosity had me stepping forward to grab the wooden container. Intricate designs were carved into the top of the container and a small gold latch held the lid closed. I trace a gentle hand across the top before carefully opening it. 

I pull out a thick bundle, quickly realizing that it was a stack of letters wrapped in gold and silver tissue paper. I slowly unwrap the paper, careful not to tear it. 

Written in thick, black ink and staring back at me is my name and the address of my old apartment. No name is in the left upper corner, leaving me with a mixed feeling of confusion and curiosity. 

After deliberating for a solid five minutes on whether I should open the letters, as all were addressed to me, none of which had a return address, I decided to go for it.

I grab the top letter of the stack and neatly open it. A glance at the paper tells me that it is from Y/N, dated four years ago.

Aaron,

I don’t have words that will ever truly tell you what I feel.

How could you do this to me? To us? I’ve spent the last year falling a little bit more in love with you every day. And I love Jack as if he was mine. He feels like he is.

But you threw that all away. You told me I deserved something, someONE, better and then walked away with my heart.

You are the sun to my moon. How in the hell am I supposed to be me without the biggest part of me?

I hate what you did. I hate that I can’t make myself go into work because I’m afraid that I might run into you. I fucking work in an entirely different unit, on a completely different floor, and yet, your presence hangs over that building like a shadow.

I hate that I let myself become someone who didn’t know who they were without their partner. I hate that I’m constantly looking at the door, hoping you’ll walk back into my apartment, pull me into one of those bear hugs I love, and tell me it was all a mistake and you’ll never leave again. But the thing that I hate most is that I am still in love with you. That’s what I hate the most.

You ripped my heart out and walked away, leaving me a blubbering mess. 

How could I ever forgive you?

Y/N

The letter leaves me breathless. She never told me how she felt during that almost two-month break. And I can’t believe that I ever let her feel that way. 

It takes me less than a second to rip open the next letter, much more destructively than I had the first.

Aaron,

It hurts so bad. I feel like I’m slowly dying and I can’t bring myself to care. It’s like I was flying and then you brought me crashing to the ground. Hard.

Whenever you speak, I hang on to every word, as if I was drowning and your words could save me. Well, I’d do anything not to have clung so tightly as you ripped my buoy out from under me and let me drown.

That’s what I’m doing, drowning. 

How can I ever live life without you, when I know how good it was with you?

I know it’s all cliches, but that’s how you make me feel. Like a protagonist at the end of a cheesy rom-com, running away with my prince to live happily ever after, except I don’t get my happy ending.

Gosh, it hurts so bad, the pain of losing you. You were my everything and it turns out, I was more of your nothing.

She didn’t sign her name at the bottom of this one. Combining that with the dried, smeared ink on the page and it becomes apparent that she was crying so hard that she couldn’t finish.

A lump settles in my throat, making it hard to breathe as the guilt consumes me. I’m slower this time, as I move to grab another one, afraid of finding out how much I truly hurt her.

Aaron,

I miss you.

And I will always love you.

And if I can’t make you as happy as you make me, then, as much as it will hurt me, I hope you find someone who will.

With love always

Although this one is short, the profoundness of what was written is clear. 

She had been willing to give up if she knew I wasn’t happy with her, no matter how much it hurt her.

I open another, ready to see more of what she wrote in these letters.

Aaron,

The past couple of nights I have been having the same dream.

It starts normally. I’m in the kitchen, making breakfast on what I assume is a Saturday morning. Jack comes barreling into the room, excited to help make pancakes. You come in a short while later, much slower and quieter than the first Hotchner did.

In your arms is our four-month-old son, whom you had grabbed from the nursery on your way downstairs. Jack is rambling about a dream he had as he starts pouring a bag of chocolate chips into the pancake batter. I smile at you, which you return with a silent ‘I love you.’

The scene changes and instead of being in the kitchen with the three of you, I am in my bed, waking up to light shining through the crack between the curtains. I roll to my right to find another person in the bed with me.

At first, I think it’s you, with the dark head of hair peeking out from under the quilt. I move my hand to trail through it, realizing it is not you. At all. 

My hand, which I had quickly removed upon coming to the realization it wasn’t you, causes the person next to me to stir and turn over, revealing someone nondescript, someone who wasn’t you. I scramble out of the bed, finding that this isn’t the home that I had just been in with you and Jack and our new son. 

I scramble towards the door and fly down the hallway, only stopping to open the doors along the way. None of the rooms I open have any evidence of you or Jack existing. There are no pictures, no children’s toys, no red ties casually strewn across the back of the vanity chair, no case files scattered on a bedside table, nothing. 

I soon come to the realization that you don’t exist in this version of my life, which absolutely breaks me. I can’t even imagine a life where I didn’t have you or Jack at least as friends. 

I couldn’t be happy in this version of my life and I know it. That’s what makes this dream a nightmare. The fact that it shows me what my life could very much end up like if I don’t fight for you, or for Jack. 

I don’t want to share my life with anyone but you Aaron. Forget the idea of ‘you deserve someone better’. That doesn’t matter to me because all I want is you. YOU are perfect. YOU make me a better person. YOU make me want to strive for a life full of laughter and love. 

No one but you.

Y/N

This letter truly makes me realize what could have happened had Y/N not come to my door, had she not fought for our relationship, for me. 

I reach for another one, but just as my fingers grasp it, I hear a car pull up in the driveway. A glance out the window tells me it’s Y/N and Jack.

I set down everything that had been in my lap while I was on the floor and hurry down the stairs to the kitchen. I manage to beat you there and I lean back against the kitchen island as I wait.

Jack comes rushing into the room and excitedly starts telling me about his play date. I admit I was only listening half-heartedly as I watch Y/N enter the kitchen. She has several different bags in her hands, yet she doesn’t seem to be struggling.

I listen to Jack for a while longer before I send him to pick up his room. Although Jack’s room wasn’t the neatest, I mostly sent him there to get a moment alone with Y/N, who had just returned from our bedroom after dropping off her shopping bags.

I stand fully and call out softly across the kitchen. “Come here, Y/N.” I open my arms up, inviting her in for a hug.

She doesn’t even question my request. Rather, she sets down the knife she was using to prep for dinner and steps into my embrace.

I pull her as close to me as I can, wrapping one arm around her waist and another up to pull her head into my chest.

I simply hold her, the feelings that came when reading those letters rising and falling within me. I don’t know how to bring up what was in those letters, but I know I have to. Not only because me reading them was a violation of her privacy, but also because what she wrote about in those letters was something I had never known about, something she never talked about with me.

“Y/N,” I murmur as I pull back just enough to look her in the eyes, her Y/E/C that always seemed to pull me in. “I found the letters you wrote and put in the attic.”

As I watch her, I can see the moment she realizes exactly what I am talking about. Her eyes widen and she moves back a step. She opens her mouth to respond, but I place a gentle hand on her face.

“I never realized how I had made you feel. I always thought that I was doing what was best for you. You didn’t deserve a man who works all the time, who can’t leave the job at the office, who brought home the darkness and evil he saw every day. I thought you deserved better than that.” I pause, brushing away the lone tear that was trailing down her face. 

“I realize now though, that despite what my intentions were, I still hurt you. And it kills me that I can’t go back and take that hurt away or keep myself from doing what I did.” I step closer to her, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“What I can do is promise you that I will never let you feel that way again. I promise you that I’ll tell you how much I love you and how important you are to me everyday.” I finish my impromptu speech, watching her as she looks at me.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, which honestly scares me. But then she is throwing her arms around my neck, pulling me down to her lips. 

The kiss is hard and short before she puts her head on my chest. “Thank you Aaron. I know what I said in those letters and a lot of it came from deep down in me.” She presses a kiss to my t-shirt covered chest. “And to me, you’re perfect. You always have been and you always will.”

A feeling of contentment and happiness bubbles in my chest. And I know that whatever happens, as long as I have her by my side, I’ll be able to get through it.

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds reader #criminal minds reader insert #fandom #fanfiction #reader #imagine #reader insert #aaron #aaron hotchner #hotch #hotch x you #hotch x reader #aaron x you #aaron x reader #hotchner reader insert #aaron reader insert

[bigskydreaming]

This isn't a meme thing or anything but I was wondering if you had a top ten favorite characters from books? I actually end up getting a lot of good book recs from reading your blog so I was just curious lol.

LOL I wasn't going to do this ask because I was like ugh I suck at top ten lists because I can never pick just ten. But then I thought about it for like, five whole seconds and realized I DO have ten standout characters in answer to this so its like oh hey, learned something new about myself today! Lmao.

Anyway, in no particular order:

1) Anyanwu - from Wild Seed by Octavia Butler - Can not stress how like fucking...formative Anyanwu's character was for me as an abused kid who first read this when I was like 12. The book heavily deals with the back and forth across centuries between these two immortals, Anyanwu and Doro, as Doro basically tries to control her every which way he can, and Anyanwu just defies him at every turn, and it just....you love to see it. She's a bad-ass and I adore her.

2) Prince Corwin and Merle Corey/Merlin - from Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny - Yes I'm cheating but its me so you should have seen that coming. Another fave series from when I was in middle school, its ten books in total, and the first five are in Corwin's POV and the second five are in the POV of his son Merle/Merlin. So I maintain it counts. And is fine. Shhh, let it go, Elsa said so. ANYWAY, I actually probably like Merle better than his dad, because I mean, lbr, Corwin is a total asshole. But he's MY asshole, y'know? Wait, that came out wrong. Don't quote me there. But you know what I mean. Merle is a lot more level-headed, and quick-witted I think, and I like his supporting cast of relatives who want to kill him and he sometimes want to kill more than his dad's supporting cast of relatives who want to kill him and he always wants to kill, but like. Both are Valid. Also shout out to Fiona and Rinaldo, with a side shout out to Flora, who are probably my next three favorites from the series. Dara would be up there too but she knows what she did.

3) Elric/Corum/Dorian/etc - from the Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock - Look I'm already cheating so why not continue on a theme. But basically this counts too, I'm just saying. See Michael Moorcock's big project going all the way back to the 60s was he created a fantasy multiverse of different dimensions where this one Eternal Champion, meant to balance the scales between the Lords of Law and the Lords of Chaos, like, is reborn over and over again in different incarnations but who are all essentially him. So Elric of Melnibone, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum I can never remember his last name.....they're all essentially the same guy.....but they're all at the same time very very very different, and they have extremely different storylines. But I maintain if you're gonna read one you kinda gotta just read them all, all Pokemon like and such forth, because the real beauty of these books is seeing the familiar traces of the Eternal Champion threaded through each of these incarnations but also contrasting how different they are from each other and like, looking at what makes them so different each time and how much it stems from their environment and situations, etc.

4) Civet - from the Dragons of the Inland Sea series by Laurence Yep - This is a kids' series, like for ages 10-12 kinda, but easily my favorite from when I was a kid. I reread them so many times, and I love pretty much all the characters from Shimmer to Thorn to Monkey, but Civet was always a standout. She's essentially a tragic character and her ending is bittersweet, but like.....she fully knows who she is and what she's about and makes no apologies for that, and she ends on exactly the note she wants to. Like, her story and her characterization was pretty damn dark for such a young-aimed series, but that's part of what drew me to it, it managed to capture the tone it set out to convey but in a completely age-appropriate way, and in an era when most books aimed at kids dumbed down most of their story concepts and themes, this one was refreshing for just being....real. Despite being blatantly fantasy. Also the Boneless King is one of the best villains ever, despite being deliberately over the top a lot of the times....idk what it was about him, but he was just chilling.

5) Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask - from the Galactic Milieu series by Julian May - These are linked as well because they're a couple and their stories intertwine so much that there's no real point in separating them y'know? That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But anyway, they're a weird choice for me because Julian May is hit or miss for me overall....I HATE her Saga of the Pliocene Epic, which is technically in the same universe as her Galactic Milieu series, but they have totally different vibes and the latter series doesn't contain any of the elements from the Saga of the Pliocene that I loathe, so it just works. Plus it has Jack and Diamond Mask, and like.....I don't actually know why I love them so much? They're just so different from pretty much any other characters I've ever read. Like, May does a lot of really high concept stuff across the board, but Jack and Diamond Mask are like.....high concept character wise? If that makes sense? Its okay if it doesn't. I'm literally just spitting words out here. Honestly, its hard to say anything specific about them because so much of their characters conceptually just doesn't make sense without knowing the in-universe concepts that led to them even existing, but like. They're weird and off the wall but still astoundingly human for all that and I love them.

6) Naomi Nagata - from the Expanse books by James S. A. Corey - I mean, if you've seen me ramble all the Naomi love in my live-watches of The Expanse TV show, this should be no surprise, but my love for her in the books like, exists manifold. She's great in both, but the books cover so much more content-wise, that her character has so much more room to breathe and be explored in all kinds of directions the TV show never touches on. The funny thing is, I actually prefer the TV characterizations overall....I think the authors of the books are actually pretty shit at characterization a lot of the time, but the basic thread of Naomi's character is consistent and the sheer abundance of story material she has in the books like.....keeps me going back to them even just for her. Her conflict with Marco in the books in particular just has so much more depth than in the show....like, I don't hate the show's version at all, anyone who's seen my posts there knows that lol, and I'm not actually even sure which version I actually like more in terms of that particular storyline.....but I just love that both versions are so different, while still being recognizably the same, y'know? I don't even know. Nobody knows. Its a mystery. Just nod and say yes, shh, its fine.

7) Locke Lamora - from The Lies of Locke Lamora/The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch. This is an odd one for me, because in one sense Locke is a very contrived archetypal character from an author that doesn't always pull it off as successfully as I feel he thinks he does.....like, what I mean is Locke is inherently that type of character that is SUPPOSED to push buttons and straddle a line between likable and unlikable....and to be fair, that is VERY hard to pull off without at least some of the time falling on the wrong side of that line and alienating at least some readers. But there's something very genuine or sincere feeling about the character underneath all that, which is ironic for a character who is an acknowledged pathological liar and hardly ever tells the truth....like I said, its an odd one for me because I can't actually put my finger on what makes this particular character work for me when so many similar characters just bug the crap out of me.

8) Damien - from Black Sun Rising/The Coldfire trilogy by C. S. Friedman - This one is a whole fucking lie because I don't actually even like Damien that much lmao, but the thing is, I don't have a particular fondness for any of the characters in this series? But I gotta put it on the list anyway because I just love the world in this series so much, and its practically a character in and of itself. Like, so this was a science fantasy series set on a distant planet in the future but otherwise steeped in fantasy archetypes about spirit creatures that only Adepts could see, and like, Fae and life energy and sorcery that had roots in scientific principles but was otherworldly all the same. And that's like.....all literally my jam, and so I can't deny that this series was very formative for me even if its not the best example of those concepts. Its just the one I tend to go back to the most in my mind, like....the world and its characters are very standout and larger than life for me, even if they don't specifically APPEAL to me? They're impactful all the same. Its another odd one. I'm odd. You just kinda gotta roll with it. Its a thing. Its factual.

9) Yeine Darr - from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin - This was a tough one because I love literally everything by Jemisin and all her characters are just so....ooof. They're very very real, even in the most fantastical of settings. I have mad characterization envy every time I read her stuff, but like. Its so good. So really the struggle was picking one character or even two, because I mean, The Fifth Season and its sequels are easily her best known works and have a ton of fantastic characters, and I think her Dreamblood duology is vastly overlooked but in the end I had to go with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms even if just cuz of nostalgia. Its the first of her works and when I first started reading her and so its just.....anyway, if I was gonna go with that, it had to be Yeine, because she's so central to everything and also just....fantastic. Nahadoth and Sieh are also standout characters who get mentioned a lot in talk of this trilogy, and they're both such big personalities that at times they kinda overshadow Yeine, but Yeine has such a compelling.....undercurrent to her that she never actually gets lost in the shuffle even when surrounded by all these larger than life gods, and just. You love to see it. I do anyway. And its my list so nyah. But also if you're gonna read Jemisin, read everything Jemisin. It just makes sense, y'know? Good for the pores.

10) Cayal and Arkady - from The Immortal Prince/The Tide Lords by Jennifer Fallon - All the other Tide Lords can rot, but Cayal is hilarious in a depressing way. He's a ten thousand year old immortal whose greatest wish is just to die, which is how he meets Arkady who is a historian who just wants to like....know everything he knows once she realizes he actually is the figure of legend he professes to be and is so mad at him for not really giving a shit about all the weight of history he's been present for, but Cayal's just like, umm, I LIVED it so that's why I don't care, I'm allowed to not care, that shit hurt. Did you miss the part where one of the other Tide Lords threw a fucking meteor at me? And Arkady, distinctly unimpressed, is just like....I thought YOU did that, to Jasper. And Cayal's like, no that doesn't sound right. And Arkady's just like, you literally JUST told me that story. And Cayal's like, huh. I must have been lying. I do that sometimes. And Arkady's like, I thought you never lie, that's your whole thing? And Cayal's like, ahah, but what if THAT was a lie too? And Arkady's just like, bitch I hate you so goddamn much, how are you the worst of all the Immortals while still the only one who will actually talk to me and answer my questions. Cayal's like, we may never know.

Anyway, there's my list but like there's a lot more obviously because I'm me, I don't do moderation, its against my religion, but also I have to stop some time and the ask was for ten and those were the ten that popped into my head so they must be the right ones! Probably. Until I change my mind at least.