#and i love may as a Character for not being able to compromise on her anti-military values even for her daughter

[dykedivorce]

MOTHERLAND FORT SALEM | S03E06 "Book Club"

#motherland fort salem #mfsedit #tally craven #may craven #fortsalemdaily #that was cute. ultimately not the angst i crave but cute #mine #listen i know may is the acab queen the direct action master i know she was right to be mad at tally for choosing to serve #but in the context of the show where the military is. somewhat good. well not really but you know. supposed to be good #im so mad at her on tally's behalf qskfjn #she genuinely let their relationship become strained to the point tally spent christmas with raelle instead of home #like as far as we know. they havent seen each other in 2 years and havent spoken on the phone in months #i want tally to be angry!!! #but as ive already said and said the initial tragedy in these girls' lives are their mothers' inability to put them first #and i love may as a Character for not being able to compromise on her anti-military values even for her daughter #also she has the same anxious/won't listen vibes as ava's mom and that's just devastating to me

[unboundprompts]

Thank you so much for your blog! It's so neatly organized, it's lovely to read. It takes a lot of commitment to do detail every post and still constantly update, and I'm very grateful for you <3

I was wondering if you could write tips+prompts for a paranoid character?

Thank you again 😺

Thank you for the kind words!! That means a lot :)

How to Write a Paranoid Character

-> sources: mind.org , betterhealth.vic.gov

Paranoia is the irrational and persistent feeling that people are "out to get you."

Things that Make Paranoia More Likely:

Having confusing or unsettling experiences or feelings that you can't easily explain.

If you are anxious or worried a lot or have low self-esteem and expect others to criticize or reject you.

If you tend to come to conclusions quickly, believe things very strongly, and don't easily change your mind.

If you are isolated.

If you have experienced trauma in the past.

Things that may Contribute to Paranoid Thoughts:

Life experiences. You are more likely to experience paranoid thoughts when you are in vulnerable, isolated or stressful situations that could lead to you feeling negative about yourself.

Experiences in your childhood may lead you to believe that the world is unsafe or make you mistrustful and suspicious of others. These experiences may also affect your self-esteem and the way you think as an adult.

If you experience anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem, you may be more likely to experience paranoid thoughts.

Paranoia is sometimes a symptom of certain physical illnesses such as Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, strokes, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Hearing loss can also trigger paranoid thoughts in some people.

Lack of sleep can trigger feelings of insecurity and even unsettling feelings and hallucinations. Fears and worries may develop late at night.

Recreational drugs may trigger paranoia, such as cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, ecstasy, LSD, and amphetamines. This may happen particularly if you're already feeling low, anxious or experiencing other mental health problems.

Research has suggested that genes may affect whether you are more likely to develop paranoia.

Symptoms of Paranoia:

being easily offended

finding it difficult to trust others

not coping with any type of criticism

assigning harmful meanings to other people's remarks

being always on the defensive

being hostile, aggressive, and argumentative

not being able to compromise

finding it difficult (or impossible) to "forgive and forget"

assuming that people are talking ill of them behind their back

being overly suspicious

not being able to confide in anyone

finding relationships difficult

considering the world to be a place of constant threat

feeling persecuted by the world at large

believing in unfounded conspiracy theories

Writing Prompts for a Paranoid Person

-> feel free to edit and adjust pronouns as you see fit.

Everyone was against him. No one liked to see him succeed and so they were doing everything in their power to stop him.

People were talking about her behind her back. They would whisper as she walked by, and their laughter would echo in her ears as she got further from them.

"You never believe me!" They wailed, pointing an accusing finger at their friend. "You wouldn't get it! You don't know what it's like to be hated by everyone!"

He laid in bed, staring at the ceiling and wide awake. It was a nightly routine, at this point. He could never bring himself to close his eyes. There were too many things going on his head, too many things that only made him dread when morning came.

Everything was about to go so wrong so fast, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The impending doom beat down on her shoulders, reminding her that she was not okay. She was not safe.

They couldn't stop fidgeting with their hands. It used to offer some form of comfort, but not anymore. How could it when the whole world is against you?

They were looking at him. They were watching his every move. He was being tracked. Studied. Something was going to happen. Something bad. Something he wasn't prepared for. What could he do to be prepared?

"You think I'm crazy, but I'm not! You'll see."

If you like what I do and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee! I also offer editing services and other writing advice on my Ko-fi! Become a member to receive exclusive content, early access, and prioritized writing prompt requests.

#writing prompts #dialogue prompt #creative writing #writeblr #prompt list #ask box prompts #paranoia #how to write a paranoid character #how to write #writing tip #writing characters #writing help #writing advice

[dangermousie]

And now we know what causes her to seek vengeance and I find it so interesting because he doesn't kill her clan - he doesn't even kill her and the gamblers and courtesans (her BFF dies but it's because she was tortured before; she was not ordered executed, or even tortured after he took over.) But it makes so much sense for her character's idealism and absolutism and the fact that this is her first hero worship AND first love meeting a dose of realpolitik brutality.

When she sees him she hopes...

She tries to speak up...(side note, I love the irony that under the past king, they were tortured into a confession to implicate Jinhan and under Jinhan, their sin is that confession. Commoners really can't win...)

And his reaction. And her face at that OUCH!!!!

It is so interesting to me. Because he does what the assistant asked him (it's a return for the favor of betraying the minister of war) and they are all punished "severely" but - pretty impressively - as I said none of them are ordered to be executed; they are exiled for hard labor for 3 years and to get a whipping which sounds like a brutal amount of whipping but is still not death penalty (and is delayed until they get to the border so they have time to heal.) By the standards of a feudal society, it's a downright merciful punishment. (Yes, they had done nothing wrong, but in that society, being in the wrong place in the wrong time is a crime in and of itself.) This is Jinhan doing his patented thing - paying back favors when he has to but trying to minimize suffering while keeping within the bounds of what will not cause trouble. This is EXACTLY what he did in Qing - I mean he fought (!!!!) on the side of Qing in battles and made buddy-buddy with their royalty ie people he loathed (like he made buddy-buddy with assistant here) and he made things marginally better but he couldn't fix the injustice just mitigate it at the corners (he was able to make sure ransoms on captives didn't rise, but not that they were abolished.) He knows exactly what he can do and what he can't.

And ultimately, despite his cruelly abandoning words, if you look at what he does as opposed to what he says, the punishment they get DOES spare the courtesan's life - ie what FL asked for. Hell, they aren't even making her walk to the border, they are transporting her in a cart. She dies because she was tortured badly before; now she may have lived if she got a doctor, who knows - but at best, it's an indirect sort of thing.

BUT!!!! Here is where their difference in age, life experience, and personality comes in. He's done his best to keep all the competing factions satisfied but she's not a person who can think through that - she is terribly young, she's frighteningly idealistic and absolutist (she was willing to be tortured to death rather than say a false thing, her whole schtick with baduk playing itself was an example of it too.) And more importantly, she fell in love with him but not the real him, not truly, but this perfect paragon of selflessness and perfection she made him in her head. He's a good man and a smart man in an impossible situation, trying his best, but he's not a patterncard of perfection because nobody could be and survive. She herself earlier seemed to have understood that his actions when a hostage weren't a sign of betrayal but survival and making the best out of a terrible situation but when it comes to her and her friend, she's too personally enmeshed (understandably so) to allow herself to think the same. And so she vows vengeance.

The thing is - I think she had some sort of an idealized vision that he'd be able to save everyone and rule everyone without anyone ever wrongly suffering and it's impossible. In his position, she'd perhaps rather die than do what he did and take the throne (or compromise with assistant minister in terms of punishment or w/e else) but with that attitude, she'd have also died in Qing captivity and got a bunch of people killed or less of them freed due to higher ransoms. She is unable to compromise and he's nothing but compromises and it's a collision and I love it so much!

PS As far as we can see, the only people who came close to dying were her courtesan friend who died from prior torture and FL during her escape attempt.

PPS preview shows she will want to work with son of minister of war and ummmm that dude was one who allowed his dad to torture your friend so badly she eventually died. BRAINNNNNN PLS!!! But she doesn't feel betrayed by him I guess because she expected nothing.

#cdrama #shin se kyung #jo jung suk #sejak #sejak: charmed deceit #captivating the king

[thegreymoon]

The Story of Minglan

Oh, Minglan.

This is what happens when you take the attitude of "It's no big deal if my husband sleeps with morally questionable other women." 🙄

I am fully on his side on this issue but I feel like hasn't done a good enough job of expressing just how disgusting he personally finds these concubines that everyone keeps trying to force on him. Minglan has been brainwashed by the patriarchy and it will take her a while to find her ground and feel secure enough to put her foot down, but what is stopping him from advocating for himself?

My guy, just say NO.

***

LMAO, he's the ruthless and stupid one?

Chang'er's death is his fault? I cannot with this evil narcissist.

***

Fuck you.

Maybe if your garbage ass had not kidnapped him, he wouldn't have gotten sick. And if he had, they would have been able to afford a doctor.

***

I hope he really rips her limb from limb.

The more I see of her and of Lin Qinshuang, the more valid I find Mo Ran for deep-frying fucking Song Qiutong.

***

Unfortunately, Minglan talked him out of torturing her to death 😕

***

LOL, let's hope that at least the piece of shit maternal uncle gets tortured.

***

Please tell me we will get to see a beheading 😭

I am so sick and tired of these people. They have been trying to murder Gu Tingye for fifty episodes now. I am so done 😭😭

***

I love it when cats make guest appearances in dramas 💙

***

Hell person.

***

In general, I am not pleased with how this story has handled Manniang and her children. It all seems sanitised and on easy mode for Minglan because the true circumstances of him having this whole family before marrying her diminishes the romance as it is and making it any more realistic would probably have snapped a lot of people out of rooting for the main couple because they could no longer idealise it.

I mean, look at this:

If this show was realistic, the odds are that Rong-jie, with a vindictive, abusive, neglectful biological mother who abandoned her like this, would have taken all that trauma out on Minglan because this is how kids tend to react in such situations. She would have given her stepmother hell because she was there and a convenient target, while the narcissistic, toxic, neglectful bio mother was not.

Also, killing Chang-er is the writers taking the easy way out because now they have eliminated Gu Tingye's eldest son and possible heir from competing with Minglan's children for the title and the wealth. It's such a cop-out. With Chang-er in the picture, the only way Minglan's children could inherit would be if Gu Tingye refused to acknowledge him as a son, which would absolutely destroy his image and tank the character in the eyes of the viewers.

This way, Minlgan's children get all the benefits without her having to fight for them at the detriment of Tingye's older children and Tingye gets to preserve his image of a doting and responsible father, putting all the negative connotations of his irresponsible first common-law marriage onto the evil Manniang. Gu Tingye and Minglan maintain their noble images and Manniang is scapegoated to enable this. It just leaves me feeling a lot of ick.

It may be unfair of me, but I respect the writing on this show a whole lot less because of these decisions. The truth is, overall, this drama is better written than 99% of other dramas so I feel extremely weird getting hung up on this and letting it get so magnified in my head, but I feel like the fact that the rest of this drama is so realistic and well-written works against them here. There are standards here that were set and I am expecting the rest of the story to proceed on that level, but these standards are no longer being met because meeting them implies compromising the untarnished image of the main characters. It is so convenient and such an obvious cop-out, that I genuinely feel swindled and somewhat salty about it.

***

So selfish and so fucking evil.

What did Rong-jie ever do to her?

She is the one who abandoned her, she's the one who took the boy out and caused his death. She will just blame anyone except herself for her shit selfish decisions.

***

WTF.

Rong-jie is going to need so much therapy, which is unfortunately not a thing in Song Dynasty China.

***

Fucking finally, some good decisions.

***

Oh, yeah, Xiaotao and Shito are definitely a thing.

***

So gorgeous 🧡

Definitely a potential reference pic.

***

She is the poster child for an untreated personality disorder.

I'm so glad I live in the XXI century where mental health care is available, not that it prevents a whole lot of people from still acting like this and blowing up entire lives.

***

Don't you worry, evildoer, your comeuppance is also coming!

#the story of minglan #tsoml spoilers #tsom ep50

[cerastes]

Thoughts about IS3

I love IS2, and I love IS3. I completed Surging Waves 15 on week 1, and am now trudging to do a 100% completion of IS3, as I did with IS2. I played IS2 a lot, and I will be playing IS3 a lot. With this in mind, I’ve had a lot of thoughts regarding IS3, by itself and as a successor to IS2. I will be sharing these thoughts.

The balancing on IS3 is done very well, because the Surging Waves is a good system. Some may know it as “Intensity” or “Heat”, but Surging Waves is a concept often used in modern Roguelikes to add different modifiers to the base systems and balance of a Roguelike to further increase replay value. The fundamental design of IS3 is easier than IS2, but with Waves, it becomes harder than IS2. This is a good thing: IS3 is more welcoming than IS2 to newcomers both to the game as a whole and to endgame content. You can tackle Waves 0 as a mid-range player, as long as you have basic understanding of building a team, without much difficulty. The clear rates of IS3, visible in the game itself, are pretty high already, and I see a lot of people say they feel IS3 is easier than IS2. I agree with the sentiment, the base balancing of IS3 is much less demanding than IS2, but as you ascend the waves, it becomes significantly harder than IS2 between the slowly ascending stat heft as well as the extra conditions.

Team building flexibility is far more permissible in IS3 than IS2. IS2 had this problem where a Berry pick (Honeyberry or Mulberry) as a Medic was pretty much always the correct choice due to the sheer amount of Nervous Impairment that the game dishes out, with almost every IS2 exclusive enemy and two out of the four bosses inflicting it in heavy quantities. Not only that, but the very nature of Nervous Impairment as a type of Elemental damage is particularly dangerous: Heavy burst damage plus several seconds of Stun compromise your defense and offense significantly! In IS3, on the other hand, there’s more varied types of Elemental Damage, with the main type being Corrosion: Indeed, plenty of enemies inflict Corrosion, but Corrosion as a type of Elemental damage allows for FAR more flexibility in team building: A Berry is suddenly not always the right choice, they remain VERY good choices, but not the Best choices necessarily when gauging where to put your Hope. Likewise, Crowd Control-capable Operators, irregular range Operators, and other such characters are all good choices in IS3 due to deliberate enemy design and tile placement that makes them great to have, as opposed to the fundamentally simplistic, rudimentary style of map design seen in IS2 that, by nature, benefited Marksman (AA) Snipers heavily.

Bosses have a unified design philosophy of “Alternate Bulk”. Instead of making stat sticks in order to deal with burst damage compositions and strategies, they instead give them a range of base stats not far removed from the IS2 final bosses, instead opting to give them different ways to mitigate damage that can be circumvented by the player one way or another in order to gain an advantage: Highmore has high HP but low DEF, however, she also significantly cripples the ASPD of nearby units (-60 phase 1, -80 phase 2) and has multi-target with Corrosion damage in order to prevent just easily being able to absorb her hits with one superbuffed tank (3 targets phase 1, 5 targets phase 2). The Last Knight has a whooping 4000 Defense that can be reduced to a paltry 800 with a special item, much like how you could remove the Big Sad Lock’s regen with an item and he Freezes units that damage him twice in the space of 2 seconds (4 seconds under 25% HP), however, he moves very slowly, has to work through a bunch of Rubble, moves ONLY in a straight line, and is susceptible to every status effect in the game except Silence. Skadi seems straightforward at first, but she necessitates you to place your units in specific tiles to slow down her SP charge, and if it fills, she transforms into Ishar’mla, and He must be defeated to turn Him back, all the while gaining access to a fast triple target 4-tile range True Damage autoattack. This all means that bosses come with their own counters and mechanics to deal with, but not invalidate, burst damage: Burst damage compositions are still very strong! In fact, if you get lucky with items, you can really just burst right through their mechanics all unga bunga style, but even if you don’t win the item lottery, a good burst composition will still pay great dividends, it’s just, the game wants you to sub-build something else alongside your burst composition! It can be bulk, it can be crowd control, it can be global control, it can be sustained damage, anything! This not only incentivizes varied builds, it rewards playing the game in your own desired way instead of always rewarding burst, all without actually weakening or invalidating burst. Coming from a mobile game, this is fantastic game design not usually seen in that sector of the industry, with mobile games usually taking a heavy-handed “completely negate a style of play” approach to ‘balancing’ whether long-term or for gimmicks.

It’s all actually fresh new maps. I’m astounded, because I thought IS3 was going to be Mostly IS2 But With A Couple New Maps And A Creepy And Wet Coat Of Paint, the way IS2 was IS1 But With A Couple New Maps And A Creepy And French Coat Of Paint. Nope, they legit just made a whole slew of new maps. I wouldn’t have minded IS2 2 but I am very very happy that IS3 is its own thing!

The Squads are still kind of lopsided. Not all Squads are made equal, and I don’t think they were meant to be, but I also don’t think they were meant to be this unequal. In IS2, Resource Squad, Leader Squad, and Class-specific Squads blew the other Squads out of the water pretty badly. In IS3, the three new Squads are pretty damn good, and I think it has to do with the fact that you can upgrade them with the all-new talent tree whereas... You Can’t Do That with the other Squads. This is a very weird decision, because the three new Squads are very very strong if played with their strengths in mind, further incentivized by the new systems like Surging Waves, Dice, Light, Caches, and Wish Fulfillment. For instance, one of the few decisions I dislike about Surging Waves is the fact that Waves 4 increases Hope cost of everything 3 Stars and above by 1... This is huge! That single increase in price makes 3 Stars that aren’t Reserves cost 1 Hope! It’s a pretty massive game-changer in terms of building and early run economy! I would’ve made that something like Waves 7 or 8 personally, but it’s very early at Waves 4. However, People-Oriented Squad complete gets rid of it, while still offering its discounted Promotion costs. I’ll be honest, I don’t play Waves 4 and above if it isn’t People-Oriented as of the making of this post, because being able to Not deal with that is simply too strong. And if I wasn’t doing that, I’d definitely grab either of the two new Squads to try and make up for it in other areas, and if not those, the Class-specific Squads, again, for Hope efficiency. I wish they would make the other Squads a bit more appealing or upgradable. They aren’t unplayable by any means, but I think there’s a clear disparity in potency. *I understand part of this is also because my strategy is based on Hope-efficiency, but putting that aside, I do believe there’s a disparity in potency, even with my possible bias.

These are my main thoughts regarding IS3. I’ve been enjoying the game mode a lot and I can’t wait to experiment more with it.

#arknights #long post #integrated strategies #is3

[bimgtt]

Sasuke isn't compatible with any forms of romantic relationships whether instinctively or purposely with anyone including Naruto

Many people may think i ship SasuKarin but truth is no matter how much I try I can't imagine people like KaKashi( survivor of tragedy who can't overcome his trauma by himself can be in romantic relation?), Gaara, kabuto, orchimaru, jugo etc. people being in romantic relationship,

similarly Sasuke can't either, survivor of crime against humanity, i think brotherhood bond from naruto is happiness for Sasuke and him wandering the world freely and helping naruto from shadow but for offspring, he can get help from orchimaru and karin and create a child of his own, leave the child under karin or naruto, sasuke is a person who doesn't need romance or compatible with romantic relationship, i ship sasukarin is only cz karin is selfless in gaiden and wanted best of sasuke meaning she will take care of sasuke's child as a caretaker mother even if sasuke doesn't reciprocate her romantic feelings, that's how noble Karin had become so noble since gaiden,

whereas sakura was always forcefully romantic towards sasuke even in chapter 699 she forced sasuke to reciprocate her forced fantasy based romance when he never was the fiest one to show any special romantic interest towards sakura other than comradeship like he did with kakashi and naruto, in gaiden too,

sakura is a girl who wants romantic relationship from her respective partner, in which case only someone like rock lee or hashirama or minato or child obito like personality can give her perfect romantic relation, someone like minato is perfect for sakura who has both sasuke's good looking and skills and naruto's quality to be able naturally social with others, so someone like minato is perfect for sakura and will understand her romantic feelings, sasuke is far from that, he is romantically incompatible with someone like sakura along with everyone else, sasusaku is recipe for disaster, it forced sasuke to play a role he never naturally wanted or not compatible instinctively whereas sakura in gaiden regressed her natural personality bcs of this relationship mainly cz she is obsessed without any deep, valuable, memorable background connection with sasuke which made it more incompatible as natural romantic relationship and sakura suffers the most than sasuke as she has to totally revise her lifestyle and regress her natural lively personality, that's why this ship is forced, toxic and one-sided and sasuke is incompatible with any kind of romantic relationship, only camaraderie, familial relation where he is compatible with such as brotherhood of narusasu and fatherhood with sarada etc.

if you make sasuke romantic it will not be kishi's sasuke but another author's creation, naturally kishi's sasuke is aromantic and can live his life without romance and marriage but sakura is totally complete opposite whose whole character is based on romantic love from someone, someone like minato is compatible with sakura who is mixture of narusasu, a perfect man for every shallow romance loving girls like sakura or previous ino but sakura forced to compromise her natural personality or regressed her natural character traits in gaiden whereas esaka regressed sasuke's natural character in retsuden

moral is sasuke is instinctively or voluntarily incompatible with romance and sakura has to regress her personality or character traits bc of SS and SS was able to happen for extreme initiating from sakura(like blank era novel and gaiden mentioned) and sasuke never the first one to voluntarily showed or initiate any romantic interest towards sakura aside from comradeship in part 1 and not even in gaiden we have no concrete details of blank era from original mangaka but vague and ambiguous details,

sasuke never meant for any kind of romantic relation and SS is forced recipe from sakura and forced to regress her whole natural character traits from part 1 to part 2 in gaiden and boruto manga only comes back when sasuke isn't around, which is pretty unromantic.

so my preferable eding would be karin as sasuke's clone child caretaker mother which is perfect than sasukarin as sasuke can't have instinctively or voluntarily romantic relation with anyone even with naruto bc of his severe past tragedy which shaped his whole lifestyle and gave birth his present personality which is incompatible with any kind of romantic relationship

#anti naruto ending #anti sakura #anti boruto #anti sasusaku #pro sasuke uchiha #anti ss #sasuke being single is better than in any forceful ship where he never meant to be in naturally

[justin-chapmanswers]

hello there! love your work :) i'm wondering how much you personally contributed to bot's backstory, and however much that may be, what you think of it - why do you think the decision was made to have bot be created by test tube and fan, as opposed to some other entity? the pair had already gotten an arc in ii2 about learning not to project their desires onto a child figure (fan's egg) so it's interesting that the same was done with them again in ii3. my love of the season is not really diminished by that decision (i still absolutely love ii3!!!) but it has bugged me haha :'D but anyway, i hope you're doing well!! thank you and have a lovely day <3

- clover anon

Hihi, love the question. Honestly, while I did contribute a bit to the Bot backstory, I'll say I had a lil less to do with it than a couple other writers. It's an element I've been excited about since we got some momentum on it conceptually, but since it's not my baby I can't give suuuuper definitive answers here.

We started with the character's existence before the backstory. "Bow has the votes, what now?" The initial thought was "welp, Purgatory Mansion'd, that's that. Who's next-up on the list?" I wouldn't wanna meddle with her s2 story by suddenly making her able to be a part of the competition. There was strong-enough pushback on this that we decided to consider our options and come to a fun compromise. Robot was pitched, and it opened up a lot of options, and we wanted to have a fairly firm grasp on which we'd run with before we wrote episode one.

To your question, there was debate on what element of the world Bot would fall under. Meeple-made was considered. Contestant-made was considered. And some additional options. Ultimately, we landed on the direction that'd keep Invitational's story a little more grounded and character-focused, which was an early goal, and kept it as a personal story between the contestants.

The Meeple option was, of course, very alluring. So-much-so that half the community was guessing that Bot was Meeple-related. Might've been the obvious conclusion based on how we've set up our lore thus far (not that I think this would necessarily be a negative, so long as the execution is strong). Besides this, we still have a lot to hit on with Meeple and we weren't looking to complicate it. It felt like a breath of fresh air to us to explore a mini-mystery that didn't tie back to where our past ones have.

While, again, I didn't add as much to the story of Bot's creation as others, I do think it's nice to let Test Tube take a lead in the story as opposed to Fan. In season two with Egg, it was largely a Fan story that Test Tube would step into. Here, it was fun exploring Test Tube get so caught up in the excitement of creation for the sake of creation that she didn't connect the dots on how her creation may not experience that same excitement. It felt like a nice evolution of where we left her off, now that she's better-equipped to empathize, while also giving her a story that directly hinges on everything she's prided herself on since the start of the show. But I totally get how the parallels to season two's story with Baby Shimmer could lead anyone to feel that we're treading similar ground.

I think that one of the most notable differences is that the story of Bot is Bot's story. I enjoyed the lil mystery and all, but to me the element I've been most excited about has been allowing Bot to have a pleasant time being themself and existing in a way that feels freeing to them. I had made some pitches early-on in the conceptualization of Bot that were more baked-into the pre-established lore, and would tie them more closely with Bow, but honestly I couldn't be happier with where we landed, because my originally route wouldn't make it easy to tell a story about Bot NOT being Bow, and this has meant a lot to me.

More to come!

[silriven]

Thoughts on the Waking Shores Campaign

The one thing I wholeheartedly like about the Waking Shores quests, and by like I mean "oh, man, I think I seriously love this a little more every time I rewatch it" is this conversation between Wrathion and Alexstrasza. There's a lot going on here that I adore*

*but...

The reason why I like this exchange so much is because I am an idiot reading Wrathion as a sympathetic character, and I'm pretty/definitely/99.9% sure that was NOT the intent behind this scene.

The thing I've been wrapping my head around is that I really, really like the premise of this storyline: the pressure of being one of two surviving black dragons (as far as he and Ebyssian know) to return to the Dragon Isles and take responsibility for their flight's inheritance causes Wrathion, who is relatively young and inexperienced, to crack. He starts compromising his morals, lashes out and gets sloppy. Blacktalon notices and they're concerned. Ideally Ebyssian would be here to comment on that and call it out, too. Then Sabellian shows up, Wrathion's insecurity tanks, and things get worse. I love the idea of throwing this problem at Wrathion.

The problem is that would require the narrative to frame all of this as somewhat sympathetic, not JUSTIFIED, not EXCUSABLE, but as an understandable character reaction. And it just does not.

"My condolences for having to deal with those two for as long as you did."

"The red dragonflight is charged with the preservation and nuturing of all dragons, even those we may tire of at times." Wow, Alex, really?

So when you get to the end of this questline and there's this exchange between Alexstrasza and Sabellian: she's reprimanding him and seems to be denying him entrance to the Ruby Life Pools. Sabellian is present for the renewal of the ruby oathstone and oversees the eggs placed in the black dragonflight's life pool, anyways, but that's not really important.

What IS important (to me, the idiot who's a fan of this character) is that Wrathion is hanging back, observing everything at a distance. For all of the fuss he made about being involved in this task, now that he's here, he doesn't know what to do. He's out of his element, he isn't comfortable.

So when I first saw this, I thought: "Oh, now's a perfect time to tie up that loose end from the argument. Alexstrasza can notice that Wrathion is hanging back, beckon him forward, maybe say something sympathetic or poignant alluding to the way he was created by her flight. She could say something like that she wishes he had been better cared for, like these eggs will be, because Alex is supposed to be, you know, a kind and empathetic character.

This bullet cuts right through Wrathion's impressively thick emotional barrier, which was already pretty cracked from the stress he's put on himself. Wrathion apologizes for being a self-centered asshole and pledges the black dragonflight's defense of the Life Pools (the Obsidian Citadel is practically their neighbor, after all). Alex forgives him, blah blah blah, nice emotional landing just like all the other leveling campaigns have. Cool."

But we don't get anything remotely like that. The thing that struck me while playing through the Waking Shores a second time is how the purpose of the black dragonflight in this story is ultimately to service the red dragonflight's arc. The ruby oathstone is what gets a nice, tidy emotional resolution, the black dragon eggs are more like props.

Sabellian doesn't comment on how he feels about his flight finally being able to rear children on Azeroth again after "millennia" of struggling to survive on Outland. Wrathion has absolutely nothing to say after the shock of realizing that he and Ebyssian are not, in fact, the only black dragons left.

Another thing that I thought was a missed opportunity is what if Sabellian wasn't allowed into the Life Pools and it was up to Wrathion to oversee the placing of the black dragon eggs? Wrathion finally gets a taste of what he wants, he's the leader here, and he's utterly at a loss for what to do. These aren't his eggs, he doesn't know the broodmothers, he doesn't know how the hell his flight used to raise their whelps, he's not good with kids, etc.

Instead of leaving him flounder, Alex beckons him forward and teaches him what to do because, again, she's supposed to be an empathetic character.

I think I would've liked Dragonflight a lot more if Wrathion had had some moments to breathe in-between the arguing and the showboating. It just really doesn't feel like he was written to be a sympathetic or even likable character, not at least until Aberrus and the final chapter of Embers of Neltharion, "A Flame Extinguished."

I really like this next bit I've taken a screenshot of, too. I love the way Alex's voice actor says "Please, find Wrathion" in exasperation. You can tell she cares about him and empathizes with him even though she's clearly frustrated with the way that he's acting: stubborn, tunnel-visioned, and insecure.

tldr; to have a line like "My heart aches, I worry for Wrathion" conclude with only "the red dragonflight is charged with the...nurturing of all dragons, even those we may tire of at times" with that extra insult of "my condolences for having to deal with those two" just absolutely boggles my mind. There's so much more that could've been done with this setup.

#silriven: ruminations #wrathion #alexstrasza #dragonflight #world of warcraft #this is from an oldish thread I posted on bluesky back in august

[jennagrinsoverml]

hello, idk if you've done this yet, but do u know any good post reveal pre relationship fic recs? sorry if this request is kinda vague lol

General requests are easier than super specific ones lol so you don’t need to apologize for that! I have been meaning to do a PRPR rec list for a while now (and, not directed at you, anon, but yes, PRPR stands exclusively for post-reveal pre-relationship) so thanks for giving me the push to finally do it! (Sorry, I may have gotten a little carried away with this one, but it’s truly one of my favourite things to read.)

The Official Summer Buster Kiss List by @peachcitt

“You’d really be alright with kissing me?” he asked, and Marinette popped the cap of her dry-erase marker on and off.

“I mean, yeah,” she said, and they stared at each other for a moment. “Of course,” she hurried on, “you’d have to be alright with being my candidate. Teacher. Guide. Whatever.” She made a few empty gestures with the marker, and the loose cap flew off the end, bouncing off the wall and rolling off her desk.

Adrien caught it before it could fall to the floor, handing it back to her. “I am,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I’ll do it.”

or

a very simple four-point plan to tackle the issue of marinette's abysmal kissing life that turns into a six-point plan and also results in an outcome that literally no one could have predicted (sarcasm)

One-shot. They’re just so incredibly stupid (affectionate). The writing is gorgeous, the humour is spot on, and I loved all the little details of their lives with the passage of time. It’s so clear that they love each other, but as always, it takes them way too long to admit it haha.

Emergency Contact by @coffeebanana

When Marinette invites Adrien to live with her temporarily while she recovers from an injury, she thinks the hardest part is going to be hiding her feelings from him. But Adrien's idea of being helpful might go...a little overboard.

Post Shadow Moth defeat, Aged Up Characters, Read the Tags

Multi-chapter. This fic is just so real and messy and beautiful. The mutual pining is absolutely perfect! The backstory and how that impacts their current dynamic is so well woven through and adds another layer to their relationship. But also, I love the lack of perfection, that these are real people with real flaws and the way that all plays out. I absolutely love this fic!

rainwater and brown sugar by @aerequets

He knew they shouldn't do anything (whatever that 'anything' was). They couldn't. Not until they defeated Hawkmoth. Not until their relationship wouldn't get in the way of their work (or whatever other excuse they'd come up with over the course of three months). He knew all this. He knew.

But it was the raindrop that did it for him.

One-shot. It’s seriously unfair that someone who draws so beautifully should be able to write equally so. And yet. This is just so beautiful and SOFT and lovely. And then THAT KISS!!!!!

An Open Secret by @kasienda

Adrien whirled around toward Marinette. She smiled at him.

He couldn��t smile back. He stared at her like the dumb blond model that he was often accused of being.

Something shifted in her expression. And her warm open Marinette smile transformed into Ladybug’s grin. He was looking at Ladybug right now.

He knew Ladybug’s name!

Her name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

And he couldn’t say anything! Not to Marinette! Not even to Plagg, who had confided two weeks prior that Master Fu was growing increasingly paranoid since the location of his home and hideout had been compromised. Their master had apparently decided that Chat Noir and Ladybug would have to give up their miraculouses if they ever discovered each other’s identities.

It wasn’t fair!

...

A fic where they both know, but can't openly talk about it.

Multi-chapter. I absolutely love the early reveal in this fic. I’ve read a lot of reveals, but this one is really fun and original! And then the premise of the fic itself isn’t one I’ve seen anywhere else, which makes it very different from the usual PRPR fare. Because even though they both know...they can’t actually talk about it. And it’s so interesting and different and sweet?

A little push by @emsylcatac

Alya asks Chat Noir to record a video of himself encouraging Marinette to confess...to Adrien.

Of course his mouth speaks on its own. Of course he says yes.

Of course his Lady is most likely sure to kill him.

...And of course Marinette feels like she's the one who's about to die.

One-shot. @emsylcatac‘s fics never go the way that I expect them to, and I really love that about her writing. Although this starts off really silly, the way Adrien expresses himself at the end wasn’t something I saw coming at all, even though it’s SO TRUE to his character. The pining and miscommunication is wonderful, but it’s the ending that really sells me on this one.

17 days, 2 hours and some odd minutes by @miabrown007

It has been 17 days, 2 hours and 14 minutes since Chat Noir flirted with Ladybug for the last time.

It has been exactly 17 days, 2 hours and 13 minutes since Adrien realized his very good friend and his best friend were, in fact, one and the same.

Consecutively, it has been exactly 17 days, 2 hours and 12 minutes since he constantly fought the insurmountable desire to kiss the said friend.

One-shot. The yearning in this fic is absolutely e x q u i s i t e . I love it when Adrien stops flirting post-reveal and Marinette takes it the wrong way. And they’re just SO STUPID here, and then they get to be adorable in love dorks.

the wonderful part of the mess that we made by heresie_irisee

They knew.

They knew, and there would be no magical reset button for the memories they'd made today. She'd have to see him at school every day, and she'd see the Chat in him, as surely as he'd see the Ladybug in her.

One-shot but a lengthy one-shot. How about some post-Oblivio fic that has the magical ladybugs NOT erase their memories of the fight (because lbr that made no sense anyway)? Oblivio is probably my favourite episode and this is such a great fic. The mutual pining is so, so, so good! Especially love Marinette struggling to assimilate Adrien’s identities and Adrien’s obliviousness.

The Boy She Loves by @goth-bias

Adrien just wants to know who Marinette has been in love with this entire time, but she refuses to budge. Accidentally reading a part of her diary, however, gives Adrien the answers he has been looking for.

One-shot. So you may not know this about me, but I’m absolute sucker for the trope of Adrien fixating on the boy Marinette loves post-reveal. (And tbf for him fixating on the boy Ladybug loves pre-reveal.) I love how well done the miscommunication is here, where their failure to confess makes sense and all of the tension naturally follows.

Make it clear by @amiraculousplatypus​

After years, the masks have fallen. Marinette and Adrien figure out what has changed. And what hasn't.

One-shot. This one is all about the yearning. And then Adrien’s beautiful honesty that pushes Marinette to finally do something. They’re both so in character and I love them so much!

White Lies Over White Nights by meirencollector

“Tell me, Marinette. The other boy, is it me?"

There’s something about the way he says it. The way his lips move. The way his eyes glaze at her. The way he looks at her as if she hung the moon and stars. The way there’s a warm glow when he's drawing close to touch. Even in this snowstorm, he was a ray of sunshine, and she was a sunburn.

One-shot. This one is really interesting because of both its device--a game of Truth or Drink--and its use of non-linear storytelling. Even though the fic is set post-reveal, we get all kinds of flashbacks to memories of their pre-reveal interactions that really illuminate the present and are extremely well woven into the narrative. I also really appreciated how honest Adrien was about his feelings, even with their relationship being so ambiguous.

The following fics are amazing and absolutely worth reading, but do feature sexual content, so minors beware.

your lips are meant to be kissed by @zimtlein

During a tipsy evening, Adrien kisses Marinette’s forehead.

Understandably enough, Marinette has a complete meltdown.

One-shot. Rated E for sexual content. This is one of my favourite fics and I’ve read it a good half a dozen times at least. The pining is absolutely phenomenal and Adrien is so, so oblivious. And the tension between them just builds and builds and builds until I thought I was going to die! But instead it all leads to a phenomenal resolution.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #ml fic #ml fic rec #adrienette #adrinette #ml love square #post-reveal pre-relationship #prpr #jennarecsml #ml fic recs #marichat #ladrien #ladynoir

[amplichor]

CHARACTER INFO SHEET ;

NAME : utahime iori

NAME MEANING : iori : hermitage , uta : poetry or song , hime : princess

ALIAS : utahime - sensei , utahime - senpai , uta , hime ,

ETHNICITY : japanese

ONE PICTURE / ICON YOU LIKE BEST OF YOUR CHARACTER :

THREE HCS YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE :

she has two brothers : i've posted a family hc before stating that she was an only child but I changed my mind — her behavior suggests that she has at least one sibling. i believe utahime to be the oldest of three. her brothers , takuto & setsuko , are twins : born 6 years after utahime . they're both annoying and love to irritate / tease their older sister. ( the origin of her short fuse. ) her brothers are both jujutsu sorcerers, however, while utahime and takuto specialize in providing support, setsuko has a more powerful and combat ready technique. takuto is able to use his technique ‘ lullaby ‘ in different ways depending on the song he sings, in general definition he’s able to destabilize curses, cursed users, and even sorcerers if needed. setsuku has a technique that’s more power focused , dubbing the name banshee, you can infer what he's capable of.

sweet things : it's common knowledge that utahime doesn't like sweets, while that's true i do see her liking more organic sweets that comes from fruit, therefore my portrayal of utahime includes her favorite dessert being a fruit cheesecake , favoring a tangy sweet rather than the intense sweet that most candies and sweets have.

celestia : growing up, utahime was extremely fascinated with the moon and stars, and even to this day she can point out the stars and constellations when she's given the chance to look up and observe the sky and she'll likely start to ramble on about which ones are where and it gets her a little more out of that polite and proper shell she has a lot of the time.

THREE THINGS YOUR CHARACTER LIKES TO DO IN THEIR FREE TIME :

karaoke . . . she loves to sing in general , often taking time through her day to aimlessly sing or hum, obviously she sings in the shower ( if she has music playing ) . she's always loved to sing, always had a knack for it, and with a voice as pretty as hers ? you'd want her to.

drink ! . . . there's not much else i can say, utahime likes to drink and it's how she unwinds after her stress induced days supervising and all, she prefers beer over anything else but that doesn't mean she won't drink anything else. her tolerance is dependent on what type of alcohol / liquor it is.

read . . . since she was able to, she's loved to read. usually she's perched somewhere, working through one of the many books she's bought and put aside for later ( work keeps her busy ). her favorite genres include romance and action , sometimes fantasy. not to mention the word puzzles she likes to do, crosswords, word searches, etc.

PEOPLE YOUR CHARACTER LIKES / LOVES :

shoko : her closest friend , a confidant, shoko is a constant in her life that she doesn't have to worry about watering herself down for ( not like she really does anyway but regardless ) , she's completely herself around shoko and catch up no matter how long it's been inbetween their visits. she really loves shoko, is perhaps overly protective of her ( all her friends ) and i can see utahime actually telling shoko anything whereas she may hold herself back from telling mei mei anything that could be compromising .

yuuka iori : her grandmother , a woman that's raw, she always says whats on her mind and doesn't hold anything in, she has a more rancid sense of humor ( she's one of the fun old people ) . but she's always been closer to her grandmother.

Her students : yeah this is a bit of a cliché probably but ! Above all else, utahime loves her students as if they were her own children ! she ahs a special place in her heart for each of them, and applies herself accordingly but just like gojo, she'd be willing to die for those students.

TWO THINGS YOUR CHARACTER REGRETS :

her scar : she didn’t have to take the mission, she was already training to become a teacher vs. staying a active sorcerer, because her strengths laid in her ability ot easily teach others, often tutoring when she was at tokyo. her scar was given to her thanks to the special grade curse that had originally presented as a grade 2. she regrets how confident she had been going into the fight, knowing what she knows now, that she almost died killing it, she would have been much more careful, maybe she wouldn't have taken it or at least had some backup. her scar taunted her for a while, eventually she had no choice but to deal with the fact that she'd forever have that reminder of her weakness.

goodbyes : utahime's father passed away shortly after her scar healed, it was a very intense time for her and she lives to regret never being able to say goodbye the way she wanted. he grew sick, but he's always had a stronger immune sysetem than the rest of the family, that being said, he died suddenly, on a rainy november morning. if she was given the chance, if she had known ! then she would have made sure he was aware of the love she had for him, the only girl surrounded by her brothers she was a daddy's girl, her dad's soft spot, and they had a bond to resemble that. her biggest regret is never telling her dather how much she loved him.

ONE PHOBIA YOUR CHARACTER HAS : etomophobia , aka the fear of bugs. she will scream ! and cry ! she hates them so much, will call somebody if there's a spider in her apartment.

#standing man emoji #i finally finished it #i have no clue what i've written here but enjoy #。＊ ˚ ⭒ . ✶ meta . ���

[bestworstcase]

Loved your recent Light & Dark meta, but I am curious, how would you rationalize Dark's decision to fuck up the moon when he left, seemingly just to be a dick?

well it’s less about rationalizing (<- in the common sense of constructing a moral justification) than it is trying to tease out whether and to what degree dark may have intended for humankind to be reborn from the ashes—or in other words if he was primarily motivated by emotional reaction to salem/light/the rebellion or else playing the long game to get his brother to leave with him.

the… for lack of a better phrase, ‘lightest grey’ reading here is that dark let his brother curse salem, vaporized millions of people, and left the whole planet in flames behind him as a gambit to liberate humanity from himself and his brother, because he no longer believed that compromise was possible. that’s interesting from a character perspective but by no means does it make him ‘good’ or ‘right’—and in the broader sense of rationalization as simply explaining why he does things, it probably bears repeating again that dark is an emotional being who is clearly very, very fed up with the situation and it’s not contradictory for him to both have an agenda and act with petty cruelty while pursuing it.

with that being said, hinges OFF!

i’m gonna also tag in @lizarr7’s reply on the op because it’s salient to the topic and probably the best place to begin:

Light is afraid of change. I think that's the simplest and most distilled way of putting it.

Also I'm not convinced we've seen the last of Dark. After all, if the tree kicked them out on the terms that they couldn't return until they found unity or whatever, why would it let one brother in without the other, especially when the very reason he is returning is because they haven't? I don't think dark could ascend if he wanted to. I don't think the tree would let him.

as a point of clarification, while the tree makes the door for the brothers explicitly because their fight is harming the ever after, they are not exiled in the punitive sense and it is actually somewhat unclear whether they were made to leave as opposed to just being given the means to; more broadly it’s unclear to what extent the tree is an active force at all.

i don’t think the tree is entirely passive—the blacksmith is an aspect of the tree and obviously she is a thinking, feeling being with philosophical opinions!—but a core tenet of the blacksmith’s ideology is non-intervention. the joy of creating is “the not knowing [what the creations will become]” and balance is “an ecosystem, an organism, a living breathing thing” which “cannot be restored with force or calculation” because “true balance finds its own equilibrium.” that’s a pretty hard line against direct interference or management, and when ruby finds her in the tree, the blacksmith tells her “the only thing that can happen to you here is what you want to happen; the choice of what you become and where you end up is yours to make.” she offers ruby guidance because ruby isn’t able to articulate what she wants, but she can’t (or at least, won’t) make ruby’s choices for her. the red prince is an important data point here in that it’s demonstrably possible to ascend toward the worst version of yourself instead of the best, if you do choose. so i don’t think the tree would ever prohibit an ascension, for better or worse.

in any case, this is how the blacksmith recounts the brothers’ departure:

The Ever After could no longer bear the Brothers’ experiments. And so, the Tree built them a special doorway to a greater beyond where the Brothers could try creating worlds of their own. A doorway that would remain open for the Brothers’ return, and any of their creations. And what truly remarkable things they accomplished, whenever the Brothers’ creations have come to the Ever After.

i do not get the sense that the tree intended their exile as a punishment or imposed any restrictions on when or how they could return, beyond “if you’re going to fight, take it outside.” rather i think the brothers took this “greater beyond” as a place where they could resolve a vicious fight neither of them wanted to be having and reconcile with each other. before all of this happened they were constant companions who did everything together! they were always very different, but for a long time they found harmony in their differences, not conflict.

before they leave, dark glances at light and inclines his head as if to ask “ready?” and then waits for light to nod before he steps through. there’s some tension under the surface—dark is standing rather stiffly with his hands clenched into fists behind his back, he’s not super happy to be leaving—but a sense of camaraderie also. and of course the whole thing ultimately kicked off because the brothers wanted to try new things and see what else they could do. the tree kicked them out in the way that you’d tell roughhousing kids to go play outside. it’s a consequence of bad behavior but not a punishment.

hence my thinking is that the brothers themselves were deeply invested in negotiating a compromise and tried their absolute best to do so, but were stymied by their incompatible ideas about, fundamentally, the value of destruction and the place it should have in their world.

the narrative of ‘the two brothers’ is, i think, probably accurate in the essentials of what the conflict developed into:

Though they had distinct personalities and competing desires, they were still connected and did not feel whole unless they were together. Since they could not agree on where to go, they decided to create a world for themselves.

[…]

One day the God of Light approached his brother. “I have been trying to create a beautiful world for us, but your creations spoil it.”

“Your creations are almost as dull as the unending void was,” said the God of Darkness. “If this place is going to entertain us, we need to make things lively.” With that, the God of Darkness brought forth earthquakes and volcanoes that tore his brother’s continent apart into smaller lands, boiled the oceans, rained fire and ash, and wiped out all the living things.

(NB: the creations light refers to are the moon, deserts, mountains, canyons, and grimm. humans do not exist for the grimm to prey on yet so this is wholly a quarrel over aesthetics; light wants everything to be lush and tranquil, dark wants a world in endless motion. note how the main point of contention here is just “plate tectonics, yes or no?”)

[…]

“Brother,” said the God of Light one day. “Why do you take pleasure in torturing and destroying my creations?”

The God of Darkness smiled. “You take so much joy in their creation, I merely want you to be able to do more of it.”

[…]

The God of Light wanted his brother to see the world as he did, to comprehend the responsibility that came with their immense power. And so, he made a bold proposal:

“What if we create a new form of life together, one more capable and fascinating than the animals and insects? We can make them aware of what they are, and empower them to control and shape their world.”

The God of Darkness was intrigued. “If they can think and communicate as we do, they won’t be as predictable as the things you’ve made before.”

“There is one condition, Brother,” said the God of Light. “If we create these beings together, then we must share in any decisions about their fate. You must promise not to wipe them out on a whim; they must have the chance to find their own destiny and rule or ruin this world we have made for them.”

[…]

For a time, the brothers were satisfied with what they had made together and they watched Humanity adapt and flourish. People spread across the planet, and if the God of Darkness occasionally tossed adversity their way in the form of natural disasters like a flood or tornado, the God of Light then blessed them with bountiful harvests and fair weather.

The God of Darkness was interested in testing the Humans’ limits and admired their resourcefulness. Following a devastating earthquake, rather than give in to despair and accept failure, Humans rebuilt their homes—stronger than before, so they would survive the next quake. And though they grieved their lost loved ones, they picked up and pressed on. The God of Light underestimated the Humans, overprotective of their creations, but the God of Darkness saw how they thrived in facing challenges and grew in overcoming them.

[…]

“Your abominations [grimm] are killing the Humans,” the God of Light told his brother. “Get rid of them.”

“You protested whenever I wiped out your creations, but now you want to do the same to mine?” the God of Darkness snapped.

“Your creatures are not alive. They are crafted from malice and hate, with the sole purpose of destroying all that is good in the world.”

The God of Darkness scowled. “Is that what you think of me, Brother? Never forget: You and I are the same.”

with the context provided by 9.10 it is very easy to trace the lines of this conflict all the way back to its source: dark ate and light did not. dark understands destruction as a natural and essential part of life that brings healing, nourishment, and revival; light misunderstands it as something his brother did to get rid of bad things and he cannot wrap his head around why dark refused to get rid of jabber (a bad thing) OR why dark keeps adding destructive things into their new world (which, having been created ex nihilo, does not have a primordial wilderness for dark to clear).

to him this seems arbitrary, pointless, and cruel; meanwhile dark looks at light’s creative efforts and sees an egg that could hatch into something wonderful if only the shell would crack. and then once he’s added a beak here and some talons there and has the newly-hatched chick cradled in his hands, light accuses him of ruining the egg and he can no more understand why his brother is so upset about that than light can understand why dark keeps doing this.

the cherry on top of the irreconcilable differences sundae is that light thinks erasing jabber or the grimm from existence is exactly the same as, say, breaking up the planetary crust before spinning the world like a top. but to dark these are profoundly different—one is death, the other a renewal. a forest burnt to the ground by wildfire erupts with new life again; a town flattened by a terrible earthquake is rebuilt stronger and with more care, to survive the next quake unscathed. this is ascension! this is the pattern they have known and cherished all their lives, adapted for a different environment; an old song in a new key!

and the longer this fundamental difference in perspective goes unresolved the more impossible it becomes to find any common ground at all in the conflict arising from it. when we meet them in 6.3 they have been in the trenches of this ideological stalemate for so long that it’s devolved to dark spitting that creation is his nature just as it is light’s and light responding flatly that no it isn’t. it’s gotten to the point of “you don’t own creation, you don’t own humans, and you don’t own me” and the answer being, basically, “well i’m right, you’re wrong, and that human tricked you into breaking the rules because she’s bad and needs to be punished.”

it’s gone on for so long and grown so large that in a very real way it’s mutated into a fight about whether or not dark is an evil monster who needs to be restrained lest his malice bring the world to ruin, and while i don’t think light would describe it that way it seems very clear to me that dark has grasped this. as i said in the original post, resurrecting a virtuous hero who died in the prime of his life, at the request of his devastated, grieving lover, without any conditions at all, for no other reason than because it pleased him to be kind, is as clear and unambiguous a proof of the value dark sees in life, in love, and in creation itself as dark could ever make—and it changes nothing. it completes the circle and the original fight begins again, exactly as before. dark recognizes this as it happens and immediately capitulates, immediately takes full responsibility, apologizes, and corrects his ‘mistake’—and it changes nothing. light still lunges at salem, to punish her for what dark did.

so, either dark lashed out at salem in a petty rage because he believed light’s insinuation that she sought to manipulate him (which does not, in retrospect, make sense, because it’s preceded by dark folding into himself, getting very quiet, and apologizing to his brother, at whom he was screaming furiously not a minute before; he doesn’t seem outraged or indignant, and he really has no reason to take light at his word)—or, he saw what was happening and backed down so as to prevent light from trying to solve the problem by killing salem, a la jabber.

only that didn’t work, because nothing dark does actually matters anymore. dark can bring a legendary hero back to life as an act of kindness toward his bereaved lover and his brother will see only an abomination in need of stern correction; he can bow his head, humbly apologize, assume full responsibility, and undo the act that provoked his brother, and light will still condemn the innocent mortal caught in the middle.

there’s nothing dark can do, at this point. he can bash his head against an unsolvable conflict for the rest of forever while his brother flatly refuses to move a single nanometer away from his original position that destruction is acceptable only within a very narrow, strictly-defined set of parameters (clearing away the primordial wilderness of the ever after to set the stage for light’s design) but aberrant and unworthy to exist in any other context because it incites change and change is anathema; or he can walk away and be free.

except he can’t walk away, because this world and humans in particular are very dear to him. light is cold and unyielding and punitive enough as it is; how much worse would he become without dark around to keep the world changing and growing? look at what light did to salem in retaliation for dark merely granting her request and then walking it back to appease his brother!—how dire might the consequences be for humankind if dark chose to upend the balance by leaving?

these are rhetorical questions; the answer is that light resorts to demanding absolute obedience or else he’ll vaporize the planet. because that’s the ultimatum he gives ozma, without dark.

so dark, if his goal is to leave remnant, has to make sure that light leaves too. how?

(tin hats on!)

here’s something sticky i’ve been chewing on: light bites jabber and shatters him and then the blacksmith skips ahead to their departure, right. we don’t see dark putting jabber back together again, but we do know he ultimately was left alive, and we can infer that dark fixed him up one last time before they left.

light bites salem, too. the sound cuts out and the screen cuts to black for a couple seconds. then she jolts awake, unharmed, falling from the sky above light’s domain. absent the jabber parallel, it made intuitive sense to conclude that light snapped her up without actually harming her, flashed back to his domain, and then dropped her.

but the jabber parallel underscores the physicality of light’s violence: he rends jabber to pieces with his claws, he shatters jabber with a snap of his jaws. (beware the jabberwock, my son!/the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!) lunging down to bite is one of the ways light executed jabber—so when he lunges down to bite salem…?

dark is cut completely out of frame throughout the whole sequence of salem’s reaction to losing ozma for the third time. he breathes a blast of fire to engulf them and then we do not see him again until after salem is made immortal. this is a very overt implication that light made his choice to retaliate unilaterally; and given that only a minute prior, dark makes a deliberate point of leaving salem unharmed, it seems self-evident that dark did not want to kill her.

and of course this occurs mere minutes after it’s established that dark can bring people back even when light is the one who killed them.

and,

“If we create these beings together, then we must share in any decisions about their fate. You must promise not to wipe them out on a whim; they must have the chance to find their own destiny and rule or ruin this world we have made for them.”

if ‘the two brothers’ is accurate in the essentials of what “the rules we agreed upon” entailed, and light killed salem without consulting dark, and dark did not retroactively approve that decision, then light violated the rules and dark has every right to demand that salem be revived and allowed to decide her fate. if light insists upon punishment, it must be a punishment dark will agree to.

and light’s rigid absolutism demands that he obey the rules, too. he might stretch his interpretation of them to rationalize doing things that are not in the spirit of the rules, but he won’t break them.

so, who dropped salem into the fountain life and creation? here’s some pernicious little oddities that have been taunting me for a year that now seem… suggestive:

number one: after salem finishes coughing up water and realizes where she is, she sits up and, while light chides her for being selfish and arrogant, turns her head away from him to stare at dark. she is looking at dark, not light, when she asks “what did you do to me?”

number two: this fucking split screen. light is above his brother at the top of the shot but dark is ascendant, and once their relative positions have reversed dark’s half rapidly fades out to reveal salem (and both of them are shown whole, so their heads overlap light as well). the symbolism here couldn’t be louder if you gave it a bullhorn; salem’s immortality is the ending of light’s divine rule but a victory for dark, who rises (ascends!) from his inferior position beneath light and promptly vanishes, leaving salem to take his place.

number three: before the split screen, when salem is on the ground, the tree is center frame. after the split screen, she stands up, which—because she was sprawled perpendicular to the camera, so to be clear this is not an animation error—moves her a little to the left, which in turn has the effect of moving the tree off-center as the camera moves with her. look. LOOK at how this changes the composition of the shot!

centered. symmetrical. salem lies at the roots of the tree and the brothers are both sheltered by its crown but apart from it. (you can also see how her head is turned toward dark here)

off-center. lopsided. salem is still under the roots but her prominence in the shot is much greater; she completely fills the space between the brothers and they now seem small by comparison. the tree has moved away from light, who is now fully alienated from it—no part of him touches it—and dark has moved toward it and into it. his apparent ‘movement’ from the previous shot to this one is a descent from the high branches, following the trunk down, toward the bottom. (afterans ascend by diving to the roots of the tree and then rising up to blossom from its crown.)

these two shots bracket the split screen and directly reiterate that symbolism: light is removed from the seat of his power (and symbolically alienated from the cosmic tree) and dark gains the advantage, but salem has become a formidable barrier between them which, with the context v9 supplies, gives dark what he needs to be able to return to the tree.

and as a final point of interest, light tells salem that she must learn the importance of life and death before she can rest, and, well, that’s an eyebrow-raising turn of phrase, isn’t it:

“I will give them knowledge of themselves and their world,” said the God of Darkness. “So they can comprehend life and death, and thus they will also know fear.”

The God of Light said, “And I will give them free will, the power to decide what to do with that knowledge and choose their own place in the world.”

do you see? do you SEE? dark used light’s desire for retribution to guide him to this outcome, and he made salem immortal to make salem his heir.

more opaque is the question of to what degree dark anticipated salem going as far as she did, but i do think his characterization in ‘the two brothers’ is elucidating here:

The God of Darkness was interested in testing the Humans’ limits and admired their resourcefulness. Following a devastating earthquake, rather than give in to despair and accept failure, Humans rebuilt their homes—stronger than before, so they would survive the next quake. And though they grieved their lost loved ones, they picked up and pressed on. […] the God of Darkness saw how they thrived in facing challenges and grew in overcoming them.

dark sees in humans a cycle of growth and continual refinement through adversity. he delights in this and is “endlessly fascinated” by the human will to adapt and survive. he doesn’t allow hardships to befall humans to be cruel, but rather to galvanize them to achieve their full potential—and so where light curses salem with eternal pain as retribution for her “arrogance,” dark likely intended immortality as the furnace that would forge her into what he hoped she could become.

“the gods hoped that salem would learn from her eternal curse, and she did. she learned that the hearts of men are easily swayed.” she learned that the gods are fallible. she learned that light is cruel. she learned that humans do not need the brothers and that the brothers do not own them. she learned that humans, too, have a claim on the powers of creation and a choice in their own fate.

dark gave humans knowledge.

one of the brothers wanted salem to learn her lesson and return humbled and contrite; the other wanted to disabuse her of her faith in them and provoke defiance, and he got what he wanted in spades.

“my own gift to them, used against me.” / “you thought there was no greater punishment we could bestow upon you?” / “still demanding things of your creators.” these are the last things dark says to salem—his parting words—and it’s you cannot overcome us with the weapon i lent to you. you cannot overestimate our cruelty. you failed because you expected us to solve your problems for you. is he mocking her inferiority or is he telling her DO IT YOURSELF FOR THE WORLD IS YOURS

and then he shatters the moon and fire rains down, and he freezes the debris forever so that the violence of his departure will never, ever be forgotten. salem curses the gods and the universe and everything but herself as she wanders the planet waiting for a death that would never come—passively suffering in the last helpless vestiges of her faith—until fate leads her back to the land of darkness and she takes fate into her own hands.

look at this. LOOK at what dark did to the moon,

and look what it became after salem hurled herself through its reflection into the pool of grimm!

it isn’t mended but it’s been made whole. by salem when she rejected the fate inflicted upon her and recreated herself.

“it created a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction, and in time, she would find her adversary.” and it’s not ozma, and it’s not ruby standing behind ozma, and it’s not weiss or yang or blake revealed by ozma’s aimless wander through the white void. it’s light, who breaks the silence by saying ozma’s name and reveals himself like this:

i can’t add a screenshot because i’ve hit the image limit but the way light is positioned here directly repeats and exaggerates the serpentine motion of his lunge at salem and these are the only two shots in the lost fable where his draconic head is shown from the front rather than in profile.

and note the repetition here of this composition.

light delivers his ultimatum alone, standing in the place of the tree, against a backdrop of the white emptiness beneath the ever after. in the absence of his brother he maintains the circle alone, re-enacting their conflict and creation of the world by himself, unchanging, forever. remember how i said that nothing dark did actually mattered anymore? this is the proof.

dark is GONE, and light carries on trying to win their fight millions of years after his brother washed his hands of it and walked away.

“in our absence, i would like to offer you a chance to return” / “creation, destruction, choice and knowledge were the ideals upon which humanity was made. now, i leave them behind with the hope that you can learn to remake yourselves.” he tells ozma that if brought together, “these relics will summon my brother and me back to your world, and mankind will be judged.”—but he makes it explicitly clear that he is acting alone. he says i, not we, leave these relics behind. i, not we, have chosen you. dark has no part in this.

if dark still exists as before, then light is violating his own rules by acting unilaterally—and he has no reason to believe that dark will answer the relics’ summons or participate in a day of judgment he did not agree to and may not even know about.

if, on the other hand, dark left remnant and ascended…

well. um.

Finally, overcome with loneliness, the dragon decided to create a companion with whom he could share the cosmos and eternity—an equal, fashioned in his own image. Because even an all-powerful god cannot make something from nothing, the dragon divided himself and all his magic into two halves.

However, he destroyed himself in the act of creation. The old god was no more; in his place were two brothers, a dragon of pure light, and his shadow, a dragon of unfathomable darkness. They were new gods with shared memories and complementary abilities.

we have hard confirmation now that this part of ‘the two brothers’ is not literal truth, so where did it come from and why is it here?

the dragon divides himself and his power into new gods with shared memories of complementary abilities. something cannot come from nothing, and so in order to create himself in this new form, equals fashioned in his own image, he must destroy himself. this is a description of ascension which introduces the possibility of a god destroying himself in order to be reborn as multiple new beings.

dark is gone. he left remnant behind and we have not seen him since; light delivers his ultimatum alone.

there are four relics now, each inhabited by one of the spirits of destruction, creation, knowledge, and choice—the four qualities that defined the brothers and defined humanity in turn.

these spirits are shackled and wrapped in chains. the two we’ve met so far palpably dislike ozma.

and light, who has never ascended, who does not understand the role destruction plays in creation, who abhors change, believes that when these relics are united, his brother will return.

they’re the dragon divided. into four, not two, because dark understood that balance is not two forces locked in eternal conflict and understood his own nature to be more than a false dichotomy.

#TLDR HE BROKE THE MOON SO SALEM COULD FIX IT #SEE ALSO ‘GIFT OF THE MOON’

[autisticbokutoenthusiast]

I have just finished extraordinary attorney woo and like to share my thoughts on it as an autistic person!!

(apologies if my words are bad I just finished it and sometimes emotions make things harder to say)

I would first like to say that I didn’t watch this show at first because I don’t have a lot of hope for shows with autistic characters not acted/written by autistic people, but I wouldn’t group eaw with those shows at all! I actually really enjoyed the show and related to the main character a lot!

My thoughts on Woo Young-Woo: I loved young-woo as a character! I love that she has strong sense of justice and doesn’t compromise it for other people, I love that she understands herself and appreciates herself the way she is, I love that she respect peoples boundaries, I love that she respects her own needs. I love her love of whales and that she wants to share that love with other people. I love that she allowed to feel joy and sadness outside of disability context. I love that she is allowed to be adult even when people around her don’t always see her that way. I love the autonomy and trust she gives herself. I love how she doesn’t judge others because they are different than her, but tries to understand them. I love her “being a wildcard” because she cares so much about fairness. I love that she is allowed to love even when she have doubts about how much her love is worth (I love that show disprove those doubts).

My thoughts on the show: I like how when young-woo has idea she has a whale moment (idk what else to call it), it is easy way to understand what is happening in the show. I like how the show has characters that are mean to/underestimate young-woo and then are nice to her ( like attorney Jung and attorney Choi) but also characters that were never mean to her in first place (like Jun-ho and Geu-ra-mi) and show that some people will be mean when they don’t understand you but not every one have to be that way. I like the way the show gives young-woo and other disabled characters autonomy, even when there is a storyline/circumstance that might try to do the opposite. I like how young-woo is able to have relationships and interests outside of a service for others, that she isn’t just reduced to how her differences make her a good lawyer but that she is a person like the other characters. 

My thoughts on the finale: I like how show continues to show young-woo putting the interest of the people and justice first. I like how they show how much she respects and cares about attorney Jung, and I like when he reminds her that she is her own person who makes decisions based on what she thinks, not what others think. 

I liked the way Jun-ho clarified his feelings for young-woo, I like how he says he likes her, and it isn’t about if she acts the way other people may act he likes her because she is the way she is. I like how he use the “unrequited love from a cat” metaphor because easy to understand that we love things even when they show love differently than us, and I like that young-woo corrects him to say that cats love people just as much, because as autistic person people think you don’t like them or say you don’t show love/affection to them but you do, just show it in your own way, and its best feeling to find someone who can understand the way you show love and embrace it.

I like young-woo’s speech to Tae Su-mi. I like that she says that just because in world not made for you with people who can be mean to you doesn’t make your life less, or worth less than others. that even if life different or hard can still be beautiful and still equal to other life

I like final scene with young-woo going through the revolving doors by herself, and how it shows that she works hard to exist in world around her in her own way with her own kind of support. and she feels fulfilled in her life.

I don’t know if that makes sense and I don’t know if every autistic person like/relate to this but I recommend giving it a chance, because I think it is a good, interesting, funny show even outside of reasons like it as autistic person

#extraordinary attorney woo #extraordinary attorney woo spoilers #eaw #eaw spoilers #woo young woo #actually autistic

[neyafromfrance95]

So spapel has absolutely consumed my brain. I can't stop pleading to the snw gods to apply a canon fix-it because the idea of them permanently breaking up and Christine being tragically in love with her emotionally unavailable ex forever is too heartbreaking. Like, I'm already tense waiting to see how it all goes to hell this season (Christine's commitment issues combo with Spock not being able to reconcile acting on love vs. logic is my current guess) but whatever happens, the state of them in TOS with the new context of SNW is purely awful, and I don't want it for either of them!

anon, i understand you completely! i think we all do!

but the thing is, we do not know the future of spapel's relationship post-tos!movies, so there can be hope for them. after all, christine is still madly in love with him in tos and an added context from snw could hint that spock loves her too, he simply surprises his feeling for whatever reason.

besides, i have always thought that we had to fill in a lot of blanks in tos when it came to the characters' personal lives since unlike snw, tos was more plot-based than character-based, imo.

that being said, snw and tos are two different productions. just like there is no way pike is going from looking like anson mount to looking like jeffrey hunter in 5 years, snw!spapel's relationship won't ever grow into exactly what their dynamic was in tos.

snw presents their dynamic as that of the soulmates, not simply the first loves bc i believe spock loves t'pring and surely christine has had loved others in her life too. but to our knowledge, christine is the only one for whom spock decided to feel his vulcan emotions and spock is the only one with whom christine wanted to have a strings-attached relationship.

their relationship has been developed exceptionally well so far. i believe that it will have equally satisfying, but hopefully open-ended conclusion in snw. my only fear for now is that they will rush the breaking up storyline, rather than pushing it for much later.

what is interesting to me, is how often the intensity and the danger of vulcan emotions, the very emotions that spock let loose for christine, are emphasized. so i bet that's done for a reason. spock has already let his feelings for christine get in the way of his duties as the first officer - punching a vulcan man, almost starting a war, endangering his own life during the mission...

and listen, i love all of this as a shipper, but if i lived in the federation, i would be seriously pissed by the fact that my life may depend on a high-ranking starfleet officer who is so compromised.

it would be just so bittersweet, if the reason why spapel broke up is that a love like theirs wasn't compatible with being the starfleet officers, and it would be so much more impactful if christine was the one to act logically by breaking away, and maybe that's why spock is the way he is in tos, bc he hasn't quite forgiven chapel for leaving him.

i just hope i'm not massively setting myself up by having such grand, high-romance expectations.

but well, nothing in canon gets in the way of us imagining that 70 years old spock and christine got reunited and restarted their relationship anyways, haha!

#asks #spapel #christine chapel #spock #star trek: strange new worlds #snw #christine chapel/spock #spock x chapel #star trek #st: snw #spock/chapel #strange new worlds #spock and chapel #spock & chapel #star trek strange new worlds #star trek: snw #star trek snw

[wtowingedtragicobsidian]

BDS Gender & Orientation HCs pt2 PM

~if a character/commentary is not included I’m just assuming they’re cis/straight~

Akutagawa:

Orientation:|Gay, Demiromantic| Doesn’t get romantically attached to people, with a few notable exceptions. He has never looked upon a woman with lust in his life and genuinely doesn’t understand the appeal (lol). He does understands the appeal of men but his fear of physical vulnerability tends to negate him acting on it.

Higuchi:

Orientation: |Bi| The Akutagawa’s were her bi awakening.

Chuuya:

Orientation: |Gay| Exclusively likes men. He was self-conscious about it (possibly with some self-loathing) when he was younger but then he met Albatross and the Flags, and they assured him it was cool (half of them were queer anyway). Since then, he’s been secure in his identity, but keeps pretty quiet about it as he’s a very internally guarded person who likes to keep his personal life private. Still, he won’t compromise for others’ comfort and can be quite outspoken if somebody’s making unsavory remarks—regardless of if they’re directed at him or not.

*Chuuya has a soft spot for the younger queer kids in the mafia and tries to subtly wingman for them. He’s like a brother figure to a lot of them and is more than willing to talk with them about their identity or offer comfort, regardless of how close they might be. (yes, in his own way he’s trying to pay forward what the Flags did for him.)

Tachihara:

Orientation: |Queer(pan)| Had never really given sexuality much thought and just assumed he was straight—and then he met Gin and was like ‘oh, guess not’. Since then, he has been more in touch with his sense of attraction.

Gin:

Gender: |Genderfluid, Demigirl| Mostly use neutral forms of expression/address, however, for as much gender euphoria that causes, they do get a bit antsy if they haven’t been able to express either of the binaries for a while. Conveniently their work/life balance lets them express their gender with relative ease, presenting femininely (and using feminine or neutral pronouns, though feminine is more common) while off work—and conversely presenting masculinely/androgynously while a work (and using neutral and masculine pronouns, though neutral ones are generally preferred). She doesn’t tell many people about her gender and often lets them assume —usually enjoying the mixed results and ambiguity—unless they are very close with her (so the Black Lizards and her brother know).

Mori: (When I was writing this, I told myself I wasn’t going to touch this one, but then I stared at his hairline too long and realized he would be wilding more interesting—to me specifically—if he was ace, so-)

Orientation: |Asexual, Demiromantic| Fascinated with sex and human sexuality to an almost fetishistic degree and is more than willing to exploit/abuse those attachments in others—he likes to watch the fallout and sadistically enjoys the exertion of his power. BUT, he doesn’t feel that kind of attraction himself, which may be a contributing factor to why he’s so interested in it.

He does, however rarely, feel romantic attraction. He’s had one(1) notable crush and its fucked with him ever since.

Kouyou:

Orientation: |Bisexual-sapphic| Despite (in the strictest sense of the term) being bi, she only entertains advances from women and will identify as lesbian if asked. She did have a notable romance with a man in her youth and while it was genuine attraction, it burned her forever—since then she has shunned the romantic advances of men. After that formative heartbreak all her entanglements have been sapphic in nature, but she’s still very wary of romance and ‘love’, so they have been few and far between; mostly consisting of short lived situationships.

Q:

Gender:|Nonbinary| Uses neutral pronouns. They get a right kick watching people fumble to trying to figure out how to categorize them.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd headcanons #bsd hcs #bungou stray dogs hcs #akutagawa ryuunosuke #higuchi ichiyou #chuuya nakahara #tachihara michizou #mori ougai #ozaki kouyou #bsd q #yumeno kyuusaku

[gleamingtempest]

Mai Akasaki & MonoTV - Narrative Foil Trait Compilation #9 & Theory

How does this series work?

This is my narrative foil disection series for Danganronpa Despair Time based on my post Danganronpa: Depsair Time foils theory. This post in particular is also a theory, rather than just a compilation of traits;this is because MonoTV & Mai do not match up with the original post this series is based on. I just believe that they fit the general throughline of what makes foils foils in DRDT so far & want to make a post outlining why. This post will also be assuming that the girl in the bonus episodes IS Mai Akasaki;otherwise, there is nothing to go upon. The presented theory is that the CH1 recap shows off all narrative foils in DR:DT based on how the pairings in said recap video are paired. This series will go through all 8(?) of these foil pairings and disect the dichotomy present in them in a more in depth manner. I will do this primarily by comparing and contrasting Backstory, Motive, Flaws & Character Arc. (Credit to Barbieronpa for that compliation of concepts.) All of these posts will contain heavy spoilers and will be updated as the series goes on and more information on the characters is presented. If you are interested in the those updates please return to each of these posts after the end of an episode batch. This will only look at presented content within the series;outside of the foil theory itself it will not take into account theories & speculation.

Backstory

Mai Akasaki: -> All you have to do is ask for my hand, and I’ll give it to you. -> Ask for my life, and I’ll give it to you as well. -> Don’t apologize for asking. I’ll give you my forgiveness too. MonoTV: -> It does not know who created it nor why. It just serves it's purpose as it was instructed to. Compare/Contrast: -> Both share some recurring theme of control;specifically in regards to their own ability to choose their path. -> This is assuming the secret quotes about Mai are particularly meaningful;which I feel they are. -> Mai to some degree compromises her identity to better fit into a mold others need/want. She is whatever they need. -> MonoTV is whatever he needs to be as the creation of the mastermind. He is nothing more and nothing less. -> If Mai's story is meant to mirror this, then to some degree, a similar principle can be applied to her.

Personality

Mai Akasaki: -> Kind -> Thoughtful -> Relaxed MonoTV: -> Cruel -> Single Minded -> Irresponsible

Motive

Mai Akasaki: -> She loves her family. -> Some years ago, she was searching for someone named ‘Teruko Tawaki.’ MonoTV: -> He does as he's told. Compare/Contrast: -> Both become what another needs them to be.

Flaws

Mai Akasaki: -> She kept calling the number, even though no one picked up. -> She's an average girl with nothing special about her at all. -> It's all her fault. MonoTV: -> It can't be anything other than what it was created to be: A Monster. Compare/Contrast: -> Both seem to be bound to the expectations of another.

Narrative Arc

Mai Akasaki: -> She didn't forsee the consequences. MonoTV: -> It stagnates because it is not able to change. It is only what it was meant to be and that is that. There is no progression for something which has no soul. Compare/Contrast: -> Ultimately, there isn't much to go off in regards to any type of progression or arc for either of these two. -> That being said I think there's two obvious throughlines of comparison between these two which are essential not only to this compliation and theory but also, to the series themes as a whole: -> In contrast, Mai is a soulful, kind person who loves other people while MonoTV is a soulless, cruel being which can never be human at all. The inclusion or lack of a soul is a signficant aspect to take note of. -> In comparison, both bind themselves to the needs and desires of others, rather than pursuing their own decisions. -> In contrast again, tying back to the first point, MonoTV CANNOT choose while Mai... -> Well Mai...? -> Chooses not to choose. -> Well, she does love her family after all. -> And, she was looking for a girl named 'Teruko Tawaki'. -> If someone submits their own desires and needs to the pursuits and desires and needs of others, willing to become whatever they need and their only outlined motivations is their love for a group of people and the pursuit of a cursed person, -> I wonder what the possible implications could be? -> I wonder what happened to Mai's family and, -> I wonder what Teruko had to do with it.

#mai akasaki #monotv #danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #narrative foils #drdt foils

[damn-it-a-hogwarts-legacy-blog]

Hi!! Ask game: 6, 7, 22, and 25! :)

Thank you for the ask, lovely!! 💚

6. How easily could your OC be convinced to do something that goes against their moral compass?

Mmmmhmmmhmhmhm, specifically eyeing @boxdstars' Mara here, whose canon is intertwined with mine lol. Mara is a very... Morally grey character (and my DAUGHTER I LOVE HER) and through sharing a friend group in school, Mara eventually ropes Isabel into a number of unspecified but illegal activities when they're adults, some of which may or may not involve dark magic. Allegedly.

All that to say, Isabel is honestly kind of corruptible lol. There exist some things she refuses to compromise on, like the safety of her family. Other things, like oh, I dunno, taking a little bit of revenge on a Gaunt or two even though Ominis would very likely not approve? Not so much.

7. What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

God in what ways has she NOT changed since I first came up with her lol. I've already talked at length about how she's technically my HM mc, but at this point she's evolved into being my HM mc's ancestor.

I've come a long way with her characterization simply by virtue of writing about her for so long and in so many varied fics. She's still evolving just a little bit with every fic I post, but she's become much more complex and, imo, interesting since I wrote my first fic. I've given her legitimate struggles both internal and external, and she's so much more than just the generic armpiece for Ominis now. She has her own fleshed out background and perspective that she brings to Ominis' life and struggles, and I think by having that deeper background, it's easier to write narratives that are realistic and engaging (well, to me and my friends at least LOL). If anything, I have to be careful not to let Ominis fall into being a generic trophy husband these days.

22. What character alignment would you consider your OC to be?

Somewhere between chaotic neutral and chaotic good tbh. I hope I can do more to explore her not-so-virtuous side sometime soon, because I haven't fleshed that out as much as I'd like.

25. What is your favorite thing about your OC?

Man this is HARD lol. I think it's more that I'm proud of the work I've put into her. My fic output is slow af right now, but that doesn't mean I'm not constantly thinking about her. Through consistent writing, conversations and headcanon posts, I've been able to chip away at building what is now my favorite OC I've ever made.

Another thing I've just recently begun enjoying is using her as a tool for processing via angst. If you made a graph of the prevalence of fluffiness versus angst in my fics and put the fics in order by posting date, you'd definitely see a clear pattern. It's not that I dislike Isabel or Ominis--really, my love for them has grown a LOT and continues to grow. I've just found that using her as an emotional conduit makes for great combo story fodder and journaling lol.

#hogwarts legacy #ominis gaunt #ominis gaunt x mc #isabel greymoore #headcanons