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beaulesbian · 1 month

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Thoughts and more thoughts about the potential of Rob Lucci after chapter 1111 - spoilers and theory

(disclaimer: this might be totally implausible and not at all what could happen, but it's something that's been on my mind since last chapter, so here are my thoughts on this. again, very long post ahead, I don't know how it keeps happening)

The way Oda allowed Lucci to feel during chapter 1111, is something I didn't expect to find so intriguing, and it points to how much depth really has each character in this story.

There is a subtle change of certain aspects of Rob Lucci's personality since the start of Egghead, and in the chapter 1111 even a bigger focus is on his reaction to meeting Mars Gorosei and asking for Kaku to be spared.

Given this swept away answer with seeing whom he's been serving all this time, there could come a realization that'd sort of wake him up. There's a potential to somewhat turn power of Cipher Pol agents from blindlessly following the World Government. To stop being the WG's shield.

It's very probable the story might deal with the reform or even collapse as a whole of the World Government - especially since the Gorosei are currently Luffy's main enemies. With that, the Cipher Poll intelligence could play a significant part of it as well, along with other moving pieces like the Revolutionary Army, Shanks, Luffy's fleet or even Morgans and his newspapers, and, of course, the Strawhats.

There's been comments of readers who only saw Lucci and Zoro's fight as one dimensional - one has to win, the other has to lose, and comparing points and skills without really diving into their respective characters - thankfully Oda knows those characters and knows how to make the story interesting and compelling. Where before I hoped we would get a follow up about the words directed at Zoro, instead Lucci was given more space for this chapter.

Where one would hope for Zoro to win and move to other parts of the island with the Strawhats, we instead stayed with Lucci and him witnessing Mars in his full on demon form - something that even Lucci was shocked to see.

Those two pages were such incredible moments for Lucci as a character who serves fully the Gorosei and the World Government in first place, yet! Yet! In the last part he's on the page, he's allowed and shown to be worried and caring for someone else than himself- after arcs and arcs where he appeared here and there just carrying out on orders and missions without seemingly caring about anyone to much depth before, he's given space to actually express the concern regarding Kaku.

Of course he's still this same of bloodthirsty killer, just like in Enies Lobby, (ch. 382),

both his immediate fight upon seeing Luffy on Egghead, and later against Zoro paints it clear what he's capable of.

Rob Lucci is regarded as one of the strongest assassin's in the Cipher Pol agency CP9 (and later with higher rank of CP0). Just reading his wikia to remember more moments, the section about his personality is mostly compiled of traits like cold-hearted, agressive, and especially taking the Wold Governments meaning of Justice into brutal heights, thinking all is allowed to accomplish his goals/missions/orders.

There's his past and how he has been trained by WG to do as they told him, or even go to length which he wasn't even ask to do, but knowing his position as assassin he did as he wanted.

By the end of Water 7 and leaving to Enies Lobby, where he preteded to be friends with Iceberg, Paulie and other shipwrights for 5 years, he didn't show any regrets leaving the place (contrary to Kaku, who seemed to really enjoy his work as shipwright and is sometimes shown really excited about new places and such)

Up until the chapter 1111 I mostly took him as someone really dutiful to follow orders through and through and not gave it much more thought beside that, but it's true that this already started to shift around chapter 1062, when we see Lucci, Kaku and Stussy on their way to Egghead Island:

"They want us to eliminate the most useful man in the world..."

"The last thing a man as keenly perceptive as you should be doing is looking for answers." (says Stussy, a double agent working for Vegapunk, lol).

I wouldn't call it distrust in WG, yet. At this point he was still adamant about following the mission to kill Vegapunk. But maybe it's more visible that he's thinking more about such orders and their consequences.

He fights Luffy immediately after setting foot on Egghead, calls it as it is in wanting to defeat Luffy and destroy his whole crew without any pretense (and maybe that honesty was why Luffy took his word for their brief cooperation in fighting Seraphim). ch. 1076

He says this honestly, yet after the Strawhats and Vegapunks are healing later on, Lucci still tries to attack Vegapunk, ch.1091

Once knowing Kizaru appeared too, Lucci returnes back to finish his mission, he strikes at Vegapunk again - unsuccessfuly because Stussy takes that attack, and Zoro pushes him from the lab and then keep him occupied until the latest chapter 1111.

And that is a big part of him, eyes always on the mission - get information to his bosses, to Navy/Saturn/Gorosei/Kizaru, and keep his enemies occupied or better yet - dead. This thinking was always present with him to this point in ch. 1111, and that is from where it could lead to even more nuance in his future decisions:

The first time seeing Mars in his demon form there's that blink-and-you-miss it expression of pure horror, hinting that even the highest ranking agents probably had no idea just what the true nature of the Gorosei looks like, and that a sight like that can pull this expression from Lucci:

After that brief shocked state, he goes back to immediately report all informations he has on Vegapunks, Strawhats, even their plan of escape, as well as mentioning the other Cipher Pol agents, trapped in the Lab:

then there's this panel, "well done. no further questions.":

which reminded me of very similar words Lucci said to Robin in Water 7, ch. 348: "you've fulfilled your role. good work."

Maybe it's not intended as parallel, but just that similarity of something he's been clearly hearing from his higher ups, that he added it to his own vocabulary.

But then there's this more surprising part of ch. 1111:

After his shock of seeing that monster in front of him, and after giving Mars all the informations, he still finds the strength to ask him to spare his partner's life, to save Kaku:

What he gets as an answer is along the lines of: "it might be difficult when everyone to us is like ants" and that's the last of Rob Lucci for this chapter.

Mars seem to share this same thinking like Saturn expressed before, while the navy guy heard that even the life of an CP0 agents isn't something Saturn (and Gorosei) would really be troubled over, if lost.

and hearing that from Mars could be an eyeopening moment for Lucci.

They're assassins and an intelligence agency of almost the highest standing among the World Governement, but even the lives of Kaku and such seem to mean nothing to the Gorosei.

The point of the current anime episode 1098 where Lucci & CP0 were just arriving on Egghead reminded me how he was asking Vegapunk about the missing Cipher Pol agents and their disappearances, ch. 1068:

It's not that he was only concerned about Kaku in the latest chapter, but since the end of Water 7 - and seeing how his crew cared for him to pay for his medical bills (cover story chapters 491 - 528, manga only, which is very interesting that the anime didn't adapt that cover story), I think he started to care more about "his own people" - the Cipher Pol agents in general - even to visit to their "hometown" while he was healing and defended that place (and the new young trainees) from the Marines who were sent to attack CP9 after their failure at Enies Lobby:

So the question is.. once Lucci saw just who he was serving all those years, the World Government and the Gorosei - and now seeing Mars in his bird monster form disregarding any care for any lives, even their own agents - will that be a tipping point for him?

He asked Mars to spare Kaku but got an answer that all of them, Cipher Pol agents even on the highest places, are still the same as insects in the eyes of the Gorosei

Could that be something that will help him make a certain change?

My possible theory of what he might do/what might happen (given that he still has the strength to walk after his fight with Zoro):

Find Kaku himself - he was trapped in the bubble like the other Seraphim - we don't know if anyone else un-trapped him in the meantime, and Lucci himself doesn't know about the bubble prison, given his flashback to Kaku is just him laying down, as he last remembers that from the Lab.

Sanji said to Kaku that Lucci abandoned him - something that Lucci kept taunting Zoro with during their fight - about the inability to sacrifice one from their team for the greater good. (It could mean that Kaku either wouldn't count on Lucci coming back, but it would work even better if it was shown Lucci actually coming back for Kaku

and they could go finish their side mission of rescuing the other Cipher Pol agents -

and that's another thing -

even during that brief panel of their rescue -they were thankful to Luffy! Despite their positions of agents of Government, which puts them always directly opposing pirates/Strawhats/Luffy, they appreciated and thanked Luffy for giving them food and saving them, ch. 1090

This together I feel could become a moment of all these agents realizing that Luffy isn't their real enemy - or wake up from their WG brainwashed thinking once they see just who is outside fighting: Gorosei in their monster forms vs. Luffy

I think that Rob Lucci stands there now as one of the few who could sway the Governments power to a tipping point from the inside.

Not precisely helping Luffy or Strawhats, but taking that power of the intelligence agency away from the WG and Marines.

It was shown in multiple pages how the Gorosei care more about the rank and position than any lives of their trained assassins, and think of them as something to be disgarded left and right.

Their intelligence agency and assassins act as a Shield to the WG, and the CP0 even carries that in their name: AEGIS, (a powerful shield from greek mythology).

If the other agents would follow Lucci in a different direction, he could be the one to take away that shield from the Gorosei, uncover one of the layers that act as their security, leaving them more exposed and vulnerable to future attacks (possibly from people like Dragon and Revolutionary army when the time comes for them to strike).

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julesdap · 5 months

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thinking about how the rapture-and-bliss…… isn’t really hope. or maybe it is, but it’s hope corrupted, perverted. because it doesn’t give seb and dev hope, only fantasy. it’s escapism. that’s not what hope is, not the same hope that convinced hayward and paige to birth a god, not the same hope that makes carpenter work for a better world despite all her cynicism.

hope in its truest form is a driving, radicalizing force. what the man in the walls sells is the opposite. its victims literally live in a dream. it’s hope stripped of action. it’s forced optimism to the point of destructiveness. and it just drives home the point that no gods in this universe — the biggest metaphors for oppressive systems and capitalism and overconsumption — can take hold of anything good without corrupting it. because a god must feed.

#bitch. thats not a god of hope. thats the god of watching youtube videos all day because our realities are too big and scary and important #the silt verses #i think its interesting that some people took it at face value when the creature claimed to be a god of hope #and being upset that hope wasn’t enough to see seb & dev through it #but that’s the point!!!!! blind hope isn’t enough!!!! you have to put your feet on the ground!!! you have to Wake Up!!!!!!!#i think the cairn maiden along with the woundtree were also interesting examples of ‘neutral’ ‘harmless’ gods #but now we’re starting to see the maiden’s effect on carpenter (throwing herself into reckless situations etc)#and we already saw the woundtree’s effect on predator-prey systems & its weight on paige #literally no ethical consumption under capitalism and what a way to drive home that point……….#julestxt #tsv #tsv spoilers #okay. anyway

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jamesrodayrodriguezpresents · 10 months

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SAG-AFTRA is officially set to join the WGA in going on strike. No filming, premiere attendence or other promotion of any kind allowed.

I hope to see nothing but support for this decision.

#SAG-AFTRA #WGA #a shame the DGA isn't joining as well #not like their directors are gonna have a lot of work set out for them for the time being #this will have an interesting effect on the media landscape i'm sure #no more barbie premiere dresses #SDCC this year is gonna return to its more humble “nerds unite” roots at this point #i hope the wealthier writers and actors will support those that rely on the paychecks during the (continued) strike #actually i want a-list actors to step up in general #like why do like 5 people get paid a billion dollars for a few weeks of work per year #while their fellow working actors barely manage to book enough jobs to make their health insurance #IATSE should vote to strike again as well now that i think of it #they spend more time than anyone on set and get the least pay #doesn't seem fair #anyway #hopefully this will cause some positive changes in the industry #i don't want to see any complaints about the continued strikes affecting psych 4 #i'll block your ass if you do

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mitchmotch · 3 months

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day 6 of 30 min sketch mondays w @revalito! i love falin lots and tried to do a color study w her ^^

#falin #falin touden #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #fanart #sketches #i had to restart this one 3 times. LOL #its bc i wanted marcille2 be in there in too for a little cute moment #bc i heart them both so much. but i just could not get her face down quick enough in the time limit T T NO IDEA WHY LOL #so i just redrew falin and did a color study to cover the rest of the time #SORRY GIRLS.. maybe one day ill redraw the two of them together for real #i keep drawing characters facing right.. i drew this to the left but liked it flipped better LOL #anyways. if u read all this ty! i hope u have/had a good day :)#OH RIGHT BTW!! the artist i was trying (emphasis on Trying LOL) to do a color study from #is @ mmagurro here on tumblr!! i absolutely adoreeeee their art and their colors are always so beautiful and gorgeous...#i only partly got there bc i had such a limited time to do it LOL BUT STILL!#i felt it was appropriate to mention them still somewhere..#please check them out if ur interested!! TYYY

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gifti3 · 8 months

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I like to to think mcs who wouldnt fall into the conventionally attractive category getting shooked when multiple demons find them attractive

#and i dont mean in a 'ur scary looking' way #unless thats what the person reading this would want of course #but uk theres kinda a look thats in right now #so what if its different in the devildom?#i would hope they arent constrained to a super strict beauty standard like humans tend to be #like they are more willing to engage with a variety of features #if that makes sense #its kinda like how ud think someone is gorgeous but society says the opposite #so ur definition of attractive is more broad in a sense #but i wanna take that thinking and apply that to a whole country lol #of course everyone still has their own preferences but theyre still very open to other things #like i prefer pancakes over waffles but i still like both of them and sometimes i want waffles more #anyways i think this would be cool u know #like 'wow i never got this much attention before this is almost jarring'#obey me #obey me nightbringer #the idea is interesting and i think it would make sense!#if uve lived long enough i feel like ud be more flexible right?? cause youve had more exposure and experiences to different people #i mean the brothers all liking mc regardless of looks could be good proof #theyre very different in personality but they all still find mc good looking #what i guess im trying to say is that demons in general are more versatile when it comes to looks or something like that #see how i said looks #cause they still be hating on angels and humans #tbh im giving this game more credit than i should #but i think the idea would at least be interesting to consider

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eldritchamy · 2 months

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What the shit. Fighting a god in hand to hand combat as a gold dragon using immovable rods goes so fucking hard and it’s the backstory for a character that’s just in the main backstory???????? AMY???

You know how a lot of people, when making DND characters, make the mistake of having their level 1 PC have an elaborate backstory where they're super badass and already recognized as a hero?

When I made Ash I did the opposite. Her backstory is elaborate, yes, but in very mundane ways that inform her personality and how she perceives the world around her, and build up the logic of how she makes decisions.

I made everyone AROUND my PC a super powerful character who had done incredible things, and I gave Ash anxiety about it.

She feels, constantly, that she is inadequate by comparison. Her entire frame of reference is shaped by a bunch of women in her life that are outstandingly powerful, and she's just a quiet girl who makes leather goods and sells them for a living. She thinks of herself as the NPC in other people's more impressive lives.

Her mother, Lailah, is a nearly seven foot tall divine warrior created in Elysium to destroy Pit Fiends. She's an angel of lightning built like an MMA fighter, and she wields a weapon like piece of a lightning bolt (not stylized, I mean a real, glowing crackling arc of electricity that she holds like a staff and can be used like anything from a polearm to a spear to a whip, and when thrown it acts like a Lightning Bolt spell). She is built, both narratively and in game stats, to be an unkillable holy destroyer, capable of fighting MULTIPLE PIT FIENDS simultaneously, and winning. She's a CR 10+ magical creature (she's a homebrewed mix of Deva and Erinyes stat blocks with some unique flavor) with eighteen class levels, 16 in Zealot Barbarian and 2 in Fighter. She has a strength of 27 and a constitution of 25. She's designed to deal HUGE amounts of damage, tank unfathomable amounts in turn, NOT DROP WHEN SHE HITS ZERO HITPOINTS, and keep swinging until every devil in her way is a pile of dust, then use bonus action Second Wind to bring herself back above 0 so she doesn't incur the auto-death caveat on Zealot Barbarian's Rage Beyond Death ability. One of her attuned items is also the very simple uncommon item "Periapt of Wound Closure" which automatically stabilizes you at the start of your turn, thereby resetting the death saving throws she would theoretically have to make each time she gets hit below 0. Also, as an angel, she's innately immune to auto-death effects like Power Word Kill, which closes almost all loopholes that get around her build. She is UNSPEAKABLY badass. I ran a simulated round of combat with her once, and she could potentially one-shot a CR 15 Skittering Horror (228 HP) in a single turn. Her theoretical maximum damage output is like, 456 damage in a turn (granted this assumes all crits and rolling max damage).

So that's Ash's mom.

Aria is interesting. She was always strongly attuned to the forces of nature, and her magic grew quickly. Where Ash grew up with someone she knew would always be there to protect her from anything, Aria did NOT have that safety net, and spent her formative years learning to be more self-sufficient in terms of relying on her own power. So eventually she got sucked into an adventuring party consisting of herself (a tiefling Witch subclass with very strong druid flavor), a tiefling zealot barbarian, and a couple of elf twins who were an Arcana cleric and a Celestial Warlock. Sometime after they had made a name for themselves, they were tasked with stopping a suspected fledgling vampire who had been kidnapping girls and killing a bunch of people. When they arrived, they met Cass, who was very much NOT a new vampire. She was almost 150 years old and had been protecting women from abusers and overzealous debt collectors, and things had gotten a little messy with one or two of them, leading to a lot more attention than she normally got. They start off fighting Cass (Aria polymorphs herself into a dire wolf and lunges directly for the throat, which Cass found amusing and impressive) but realize in the banter that Cass wasn't the real problem, and she ends up being a sort of a lesson for the group in terms of whose word they trust and who they take jobs from (YES THE BACKSTORY'S BACKSTORY HAS NARRATIVE ARCS AND MORAL LESSONS THAT LEAD TO LONG TERM CHARACTER GROWTH OKAY I CAN'T HELP MYSELF). Cass, having a particular rapport with Aria, ends up joining their party as a dhampir Soulknife Rogue/Shadow Monk.

Yes, that's all backstory that I made up for an imaginary campaign that exists entirely as a set piece for Aria as one of Ash's story NPCs. This doesn't even touch on the fact that I liked Cass so much as a character that I gave HER an entire backstory of her own. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM.

Anyway the team only makes a bigger name for themselves for handling things that other groups can't. Eventually, they just happen to be in the Tenth District when the War of the Spark happens (major established event in the MTG canon), and I basically added some extra "scenes" to it that didn't violate existing canon so I could have that be the climax of their imaginary campaign. One of Aria's partners was a new planeswalker at the time and her spark got harvested by the Dreadhorde, specifically by the god eternal Bontu.

Gods in Magic The Gathering aren't honestly that special? They don't seem to have THAT much power, all things considered. Ravnica's gods are mostly powerful magical animals, and in the most recent Magic Story one of their gods (Anzrag the Quake Mole) was captured in an "evidence capsule" (basically Magic's version of a Pokeball). The most powerful god in MTG is probably the Ur Dragon honestly, unless you count the Eldrazi, but that's a whole other conversation since neither of those actually have the "God" creature type.

Anyway, Bontu was one of the gods of Amonket (basically a plane based on ancient Egypt), which had been conquered by an Elder Dragon planeswalker named Nichol Bolas. HE was the one who actually killed all but one of Amonket's gods, and then another planeswalker named Liliana Vess (extremely powerful necromancer) raised them as zombies for his army, because Bolas had a ton of complicated leverage over her (magical contract that he could invoke to kill her if she betrayed him). So Bontu was a god zombie.

Here's a reference:

Well, Aria was a level 18 Witch at this point since this was the climax of their campaign, so she had access to the Shapechange spell, a 9th level transmutation that lets you become any creature with a challenge rating equal or lower than your character level. And the best candidate for that was an Adult Gold Dragon (CR 17). So Aria goes full berserk and stands up on her dragon hind legs and picks a fight with a dead god that she's determined to make deader, and has a Godzilla vs King Ghidorah standoff with her.

So how do you fight a god that can suck your soul out and instantly kill you with a single touch? You don't let it touch you.

What Aria did was basically inspired by this gif of a Wildebeest trying to charge at a lion:

Or this:

And to be clear, yes, I'm saying Aria was the lion in that situation. She basically did a big dragon threat display to get Bontu's attention, and used the Gold Dragon's weakening breath to give Bontu disadvantage on Strength checks and saves. Bontu charged at her, and at the last second Aria dropped to the ground and then shot back up, clamped her teeth around the god's throat, and used her weight to throw Bontu around and knock her off balance, and her superior strength to grab her by the wrists and wrestled her to the ground so she couldn't get a grip on Aria. She had every part of the god that could have killed her pinned, and used the claws of her wings to pull Bontu's armor apart and tear at everything she could reach while thrashing her around. It was Fen, the Arcana cleric, who thought to use Immovable rods to pin Bontu down so that even if Aria lost her grip, Bontu wouldn't be able to immediately one-shot any of them. So Athena (barbarian) and Cass (rogue/monk) as the two martial classes were the ones who got close enough to handle that while Fen and her sister (Gwen) used whatever holy magic they could to help from a distance.

Now CASS had a problem, because she's a DEX based martial class, not a strength based one. She needed a boost to be able to get this job done. So she drank some of Bontu's blood from one of the wounds Aria had left on her arm to give herself a burst of strength. Except. She had to get real close to do that. And Bontu managed to get a loose grip on her, and tried to suck out her soul.

The magic that makes Cass what she is is very old and very powerful. It binds her soul to her body in a much stronger way than any living creature, fusing the two together to prevent her from dying (i.e. by having her soul separated from her body; Cass can recover from almost any conceivable physical injury as long as there's life energy, in the form of blood, for the magic that keeps her alive to feed on and maintain the seal between her body and her soul). BECAUSE SHE WAS FEEDING ON THE BLOOD OF A GOD AT THE TIME, the magic holding her together basically fought against the magic that was trying to rip her soul out, and it had enough fuel to hold on until Aria's thrashing forced Bontu to let go. So Cass survived the Elderspell thanks to a very weird and unrepeatable set of circumstances (which allows something narratively impressive and legendary to happen without being gamebreakingly overpowered and violating the established rules of the world).

Because of how her magic draws energy from other things, though, there was a side effect: she also accidentally took in one of the planeswalker sparks that Bontu had harvested. So when Cass had healed enough for her soul to no longer be dislocated, her spark activated and she became a Planeswalker. (I imagine a soul is connected to a body mostly through the nervous system, because that's how a brain holds consciousness in it, so a "dislocated" soul is like something glued to every nerve ending in your body being pulled on with an enormous amount of force, trying to sever that connection; imagine trying to pull yourself off the ground when every nerve ending in your body is superglued to the floor by something akin to the Strong Nuclear Force. It SUCKED.)

The team ended up being forced to retreat because of Cass' injuries, so Aria didn't actually manage to kill Bontu personally (or die trying, which in her grief-rage she was fully open to). Right about this time, my bottle scene ends and Magic canon comes back into play: Liliana betrays Bolas and turns the Dreadhorde against him, and Bontu ends up being the one who bites him and rips out HIS spark. Due to the enormous rush of energy of consuming all of Bolas' stolen Planeswalker sparks (tl;dr he was trying to become a god), and with the added bit of lore that it was Aria's team that heavily injured Bontu just prior to this, Bontu exploded in the process.

This resulted in Ravnica playing a game of telephone in the chaotic aftermath of the War. Aria fought a god. She's still alive and that god is dead. Rumors spread and now Aria is misremembered as the one who killed Bontu. Half the plane thinks of her as the "god killer." All she wanted was to avenge her lover or die trying.

Neither outcome happened, and now she's credited with the very thing she sees as her greatest failure. And that trauma has haunted her ever since.

#so my backstory has a backstory with its own backstory #this is a normal and healthy way to approach storytelling I think.#so anyway Ash is surrounded by badass women and doesn't recognize her own potential #because her entire frame of reference is the most outrageous statistical outliers #Ash #Aria #Lailah #Cass #eldritch OCs #Uneiverse #I have one character whose backstory goes back over 6000 years have I ever mentioned that #y'all don't even KNOW the shit that lives in my brain #also I invented god from scratch so TECHNICALLY I made backstory for the universe itself and it goes back billions of years #when I say that I don't mean I made up A GOD from scratch. I mean I reinvented the CONCEPT of what 'god' even means.#and built a universe around that concept #I also have some cool thoughts about the nature of time and fate that I haven't talked about yet #the inside of my brain is a very interesting place. try not to get lost. the exits are not clearly marked.#what if I gave my characters *T R A U M A*#anyway I'm glad you thought this sounded cool enough to ask about. I hope you feel the same about the rest of the story someday.

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carnivalcarriondiscarded · 9 months

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Comedic Barnaby ask here again! I'm sorry, I meant your Modern Human au thingy, my bad lmao.

ohhh ok - was just informed that you probably mean comedian, which makes a lot more sense than what my mind was interpreting!

he does actually do little side gigs around comedy! he even got a degree in clowning, but his main job (at the "present day" part of the timeline) is bartending at the same queer club that Eddie does drag performances in! sometimes Barns will open a show etc with a lil' stand-up act, and when he can, he'll do other comedy-based stuff at local venues

#the only reason its not his Main thing is because... well things change you know? life happens #i approached everyone's jobs and timelines as Realistically as possible while still keeping it uhhhh Fun!#and i think it would be interesting if his lifelong passion didnt really work out the way he hoped #so he's the area's most entertaining bartender!#and during county fair season he'll take extra shifts / weekend gigs at the uh. county fair #julie does as well actually!#she'll be over there running a dart-throwing booth and barnaby's across the way making balloon animals etc #carnival companions!#rambles from the bog #wh modern human au #barnaby claims to be doing all the side gigs for extra money to pay for his & wally's place #but everyone knows wally makes enough money off of his art that barnaby doesnt Need extra jobs #but hey! he's doin what he loves so!#and a lil extra cash in the pocket never hurt anyone #it just means higher quality cat food for Welcome <3

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ocpdzim · 1 year

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what you’ve got to understand about working conditions in education (and also other care-oriented careers) is that if they’re shit, two things are true at once:

that does not ever excuse being cruel to a kid, no matter what

until those conditions are fixed, education will continue to suck absolute shit

this is because when working conditions for teachers are really bad, many of the good teachers who recognize when they are reaching a point where they can no longer be the sort of teacher the kids deserve due to burnout WILL quit. they will do the responsible thing and go away for their own sake and the sake of the kids. and you end up stuck w a combination of new teachers who are trying their best but won’t last long, burnt out teachers who are trying their best but have nothing left to give and therefore aren’t very effective at actually teaching, and cockroach shitheads who take out their misery on the kids.

we have all had terrible experiences with bad teachers, many of them flat out traumatic, but for fuck’s sake please try to look at the systemic underpinnings of the problem for one minute. spitefully declaring that teachers don’t deserve good working conditions or even the right to complain about bad working conditions because ms. whoever in 5th grade was a bitch is only going to create more of her. if you want good teachers then we need an education system they can survive in

#i get so irritated w the post where like.#95% of it is a good post and then at the end op is like WAAAHHH teachers are complaining about burnout on my post about a bad teacher #like yeah no shit. if the field of education wasnt so hostile to everyone who works in it maybe they could have found a better teacher to #replace that motherfucker with. and then she would not be there to bother the kids any more.#as someone who Has had traumatic experiences w bad teachers.#its scary enough walking into a field i know is pretty much built to chew new teachers up and spit us out #hoping to be able to survive it long enough to do some good and be the kind of teacher i needed as a kid #without people acting as though it is some sort of crime for teachers to want. like. basic human dignity at work and enough money to survive #even people who are nominally pro-workers rights #you guys have no fucking idea how bad the situation is in schools right now #the reason bad teachers didnt get fired perhaps USED to be tenure #but nowadays its the fact that its rare for a school to be fully staffed *at all* bc so many teachers quit or died #so they'll hire and keep absolutely fucking anyone simply because the alternative is No Teacher. and an empty classroom #full of kids who wont learn anything except that the system doesnt even care about them enough to put a teacher in the room.#i have gotten job offers ON SIGHT from principals who know nothing about me and im literally not even legally qualified to teach yet #like before even telling them my name lmao #and im sure everyone else in town who expresses any interest in teaching whatsoever gets the same.

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autoboros · 2 months

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does auto have lore or does he have some stuff wrote about him or something?

Oh man I've got a lot on Auto

Like a Lot

I don't think I have anything written currently on hand that's fully up to date or organised so I guess I'll just try rewrite stuff here (it is a bit long even though I've summarised a lot forgive me)

Auto was born into the Octarian army, life in the domes was all he knew. He didn't have parents that he knew of or grew up with, but it's not something that ever bothered him since, again, this was all he knew. He would attend school there, and made two friends for life, and they'd quickly become inseperable.

They were great friends with their own interests. One who enjoyed mechanics and machinery, the other who enjoyed botanics and tending to the foliage, and Auto, who enjoyed strategy in combat. Each of them were rather quiet, the second one not learning how to speak until late into her infancy, but they all fit together perfectly. (Related; They are all autistic.)

As he grew up a little, he realised in his childhood that his goal would be to become an elite soldier. He always admired and took interest in the high ranks of his sector and their skills in combat. Years and years later, around 16, he'd achieve this, becoming one of the top ranking elites of his sector as he'd always wanted. He had practiced with a wide array of weapon classes, and found chargers and blasters to be his favourite.

A year into this, he realised he felt a little aimless without any further goals. He had just achieved the biggest thing he could go for in the underground, what else is there? He then learned of the surface, and this idea grabbed him. He'd go to the surface and seek out new opportunities. His friends were on board with this idea, and they wanted to make a new life together. One of his friends managed to make contact with the surface, contacting someone who would help retrieve them. Things were looking pretty good.

To make the already long story short, Auto escaped. He stayed with the friend from the surface - who would be my other main oc, Boro - and would await the arrival of the others. He was absolutely captivated by the surface and how different it was, but his wonder was held back by the anxiety of waiting.

In this time, he met Hiro, who was a friend of Boro's. He'd end up spending a lot of time with him, getting introduced to turf wars and anarchy battles through him. Auto quickly learned of his love for Tower Control, and found a favourite weapon in the Custom Splattershot Jr. He would also learn of his new feelings for Hiro. He had never felt something like this before, though, and didn't know what the hell he was feeling or how to deal with it, and it caused him a ton of emotional turmoil.

In the end, only one of his two friends had successfully escaped, the other being lost to sanitisation. This loss only worsened Auto's mental state. This was his lifelong best, dearest friend, and he lost her. He blamed himself for this to no end. He is only around 18 or 19 here - he still blames himself for it to this day.

The people close to him do their best to help him, though, and his mental state recovers slightly. Around this time, Hiro and Auto learn of their feelings for one another, and get into a very loving, close relationship, and his life basically stabilises from here onwards.

He's 23 now, and he has finally felt a semblance of happiness for the first time since the underground. A boyfriend who is his absolute world, friends he cares about and can rely on, goals and achievements he can feel proud of, hobbies he can enjoy... He feels happy. Despite it all, though, he still blames himself for the loss of his friend.

#oughhhh i hope it isnt so long that its a boring read or anything #i always worry that auto isnt an interesting enough oc #or that he's too generic idk #but i love him very much #splatoon 3 #splatoon oc #OC// Auto #i have a lot more on him - like down to his interests or experiences of his past and his friends from the army #and just the people of his life from back then #and a lot of experiences he has had on the surface too #but i dont want this to become the length of the bible so it'll go left out

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presiding · 7 months

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What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

#i assume my followers are cool enough to let me give a brief measured critique on fandom trends and DotO #thanks for the anon question!! what fun!#i love billie lurk <333 #jumped on the opportunity to rant n rave #what part of billie isn't my fav! (im a guy who likes the bad stuff too. mmm interesting meta)#trying to be not unfair or mean- i'm not targeting anyone but rather trends. and it's ok to be disappointed with something you love #fuck it. make it part of the appeal! her writing sucks! plenty of room for me & other creators!#its easier for me to indulge my billie brainworms when it sorta feels like she's not getting as much love as she deserves #you know? i want stories where her history is explored and her agency is important so i guess i'll roll up my sleeves #tumblr is a terrible place for this sort of critique IMO- lots of nuanceless empathy-free guilt-trip-ish rhetoric #so i hope i avoided that. but not so much that i seem forgiving.#that said i'm not tagging this one with fandom tags! no thank you.#i am blaming arkane yes. but that is also not without games industry context #i could complain about amateurish writing but that also never happens in a vacuum. industry problem(s) for sure.#people love to blame writers for things #and yeah a couple really fucking good writers can push a boulder uphill #but its usually a company problem #hire lots of diverse people in your company. give them authority and respect and reasonable workloads. and no crunch.#ah fuck this is a separate essay in tags. again #THIS WAS A SIMPLE QUESTION #*clutches head in hands*#uh if you're still reading at this point im SO sorry and thank you and i love you

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