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chongoblog · 1 year

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Brawl Tier List (Based On The Relevance of What They Were Doing When We Meet Them In Subspace Emissary)

I'll explain some of my choices under the cut

So a lot of these choices are pretty obvious, although some are a bit iffy or require explanation of the Subspace story which can be found in trophy descriptions & The Dojo.

The first category was for characters who were engaged in the Subspace plot from the get-go and were the "good guys". In case you didn't know, King Dedede is the hero of Subspace, and if it weren't for him, Tabuu would have won, since he made the "reset badges", and his initial plan was to hold onto some people and give them the reset badges in case Tabuu used his Off Waves. Meta Knight is considered to be a good guy, even though he mostly just wanted to get the Halberd back. Fox I put into this category as well since he's first seen giving chase to the Halberd in his Arwing, so I consider that pretty engaged, even if we don't know the exact reasoning.

The second category is open and shut. They're the Bad Guys. Ganon, Bowser, and everyone's favorite winner, Wario. Technically Wario kinda defected from Tabuu and wanted to just steal all the trophies, but I'm counting him here.

Next was the "Used by Tabuu" tier. According to the lore, the entire Subspace Army is made from the power of Game and Watch (although it says the Game & Watch are unaware of this). Pikachu's electricity was being used to power a lot of the operations (most notably the Subspace Bomb Factory iirc). And it's implied that R.O.B was coerced into helping Tabuu, feeling so ashamed that he put on the Ancient Minister garb to hide himself out of shame.

The "Was Doing What You Expect" Tier is a tricky one, since some characters like Mario & Kirby weren't doing what you'd expect in their normal games, but they were fighting, which is something you'd expect in Smash, but I was kinda lenient. Pit was watching from Skyworld, which is in character. It's shown that Pokemon Trainer was looking for Ivysaur and Charizard, so we can assume he was on that journey when we found him in the Ruined Zoo. ZSS's motivations are kind of unclear about whether she knew about the Subspace Bombs and tried to stop them or if she just knew her Power Suit was there and wanted to get to it. I always figured it was the latter, so I'm putting it in this tier. Marth was defending a castle, which sounds right (I haven't played Fire Emblem). Ice Climbers were climbing ice. Monkeys were getting their bananas. Link was getting Master Sword. Yoshi was sleeping (which only gets him out of "Just Standing There" tier because he is Yoshi).

Next are the ones who just kinda showed up. And it so happens that all five of them make a pretty grand entrance. Sonic is the obvious example here. Ness also counts since there's no implication that either he or Lucas actually live in or even near the Ruined Zoo, but then again in the dialogue-less cutscenes tying together over 30 characters, I don't think that detail was important. Falco makes a grand entrance, although you could argue that he was meant to be Fox's backup. Ike makes a grand entrance with this Great Aether. Captain Falcon literally shows up to jump out of his car, punch a robot and kill approximately 50 aliens in one fell swoop, so either there was an F-Zero track around the Island of the Ancients that we don't see and he quit in the middle of his race to do that, or he just did that. Either way there's something wrong with him.

And then finally we have the characters who were Just Standing There. Luigi obviously was minding his own business when he got got by Dedede. Peach and Zelda I almost put in the "Doing What You Expect Tier" (or at LEAST Peach since she knew Mario at least), but honestly? They were just standing there. No hate, obviously. Sometimes you just gotta Stand There. Olimar was minding his own business letting his Pikmin eat a robot before they were murdered. Lucario was vibing on top of a mountain (as you do). Lucas was just being sad. And Snake? We don't see any sign that he's on a mission. We just see that he's been on the Halberd for an undisclosed period of time before dramatically revealing himself way way later. I like to imagine he accidentally fell asleep.

And then the last tier are for the 3 characters that are unlocked after Subspace, so I don't really count them.

Anyway in case you can't tell I am back on my ADHD meds! Hope you enjoyed this. See you all for the Nuzlocke stream later.

#smash bros #subspace emissary #tier list

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embryhallowed · 7 months

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I finally posted something on my main socials in vocal support of Palestine, outlining the history and violence of the Nakba, listing various sources including many anti-zionist Jewish voices.

I got one comment, from a woman I went to college with, who is Jewish, and who moved to Israel after Trump was elected.

Her response was pretty much what I expected. She said it seems like my only point is that the Israelis deserve the violence and had it coming, that I'm spewing revisionist history, asking where my essays about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on are, and that I'm writing all of this from the safety of America, which is a country that is "worse than Israel by every metric" and she ends with telling me to fuck off.

So yeah, pretty much what I expected, if not a little weak sauce?

Like, it is not revisionist to tell the history of the Nakba. 750,000 people displaced, 15k killed, 500 villages destroyed. It's not revisionist to talk about the massacre of Kafr Qasim where Israeli police killed 48 unarmed civilians, 23 of which were children and the youngest was 8 years old, and then an officer responsible for the murders was put in charge of "Arab Affairs" in a nearby city. It's not revisionist to say Israel funded and supported Hamas to crush secular progressive movements in Gaza. Those things happened. It is well documented. They happened. They did. You can Google it and it will be the first result you see. And these things have continued to happen ever since.

I've been vocal for years about how it's fucked that America killed a quarter of a million Afghans, how Obama bombed the middle east so much that children in these countries grew to fear says with a clear sky, because the drones could fly on those days. I've talked about Yemen and Syria, I've talked about how AMERICAN influence made all of these situations worse. I've talked about Saudi Arabia and how they murdered an American journalist and nothing was done about it, but the reason THIS gets an essay right now is because it feels like we are witnessing genocide in real time, and most of the people in this country seem fine with it.

And like. "You're sitting there safely in a country worse than Israel."

Ma'am, idk what to tell you, you chose to move from America to Israel. Dunno what to tell you there. Otherwise, I HAVE BEEN VOCALLY CRITICAL OF THE USA FOR YEARS. I've openly said that the CIA, the industrial war complex, and American capitalism, has been the single greatest source of evil and suffering on the globe in the modern era. Like, I hate American government, politics, and the influence we have on the globe. We ARE the evil empire! WE'RE the baddies! I've been saying this for AGESSSSS.

IDK guys. I just gotta spew my feelings out here so I don't pop off to her. I have my sympathies for her, because she moved to flee from Trump and to ensure her mother had the healthcare she needs to live. She's married and now has a baby, she lives in Haifa. I understand why she's angry and defensive, I fully sympathize with how scary it must be for her.

But like. That doesn't change history. It doesn't change the fact that zionist military forces violently forced people out of the city of Haifa and cleared it for new Israelis. I've wondered, how old is the building she lives in? Did Palestinians live there once before her? I've never said the Israeli civilians "had this coming" but this situation IS a ticking time bomb, which is what leftist voices have been saying for ages.

She also said "we've offered peace and they never take it!" Iirc Israel hasn't actually met to negotiate with Palestinians for like a decade?? And like. WHAT HAVE YOU OFFERED?! "Hey guys, stop resisting us and we promise to stop taking your land and bulldozing your homes. I know we already did that like 70 years ago and completely ignored the borders we, Israel, agreed to, but believe us! We'll for sure hold up our end of the bargain this time! Also no we still want to have an ethnostate and we still want to treat you as second class citizens." WHAT PEACE OFFERINGS???

She said "you haven't offered any solutions!" I'm not here to offer the perfect solution for peace in the middle east, I'm here to say genocide is wrong, I'm here to elevate the voices of Palestinians and anti-zionist Jews. You already had the bones of a "two state solution" when the UN carved up the land, and Israel didn't respect that (not that it was great to begin with). And honestly, if you say "I kinda think a single secular state where everyone gets equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity" you will get crucified??

Anyway. I'm just ranting at this point. I knew I'd get blow back for speaking out, but it honestly wasn't as bad as I expected.

I just hearted her comment and will reply later, though idk if she'll see it, since she promptly unfriended me. Also unsurprising.

Anyway, free Palestine

#personal #free Palestine #I've had positive reactions to the post but hers in the only comment #i just can't support militant zionism and i won't #i do think it's hilarious that she actually went the route of “what about” everything else #when I've literally been fighting friends family and strangers about these exact things for like a decade #me sitting here with my Jewish partner #who also vocally supports Palestine #but yeah #we're just hating to hate

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artemisjpotter · 1 year

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I was reminded of Civil War recently and why it infuriates me: I am anti-Captain America and anti-Iron Man, because they both did terrible things in this film and NEVER remedied their actions or got called out for them.

Steve was arrogant so unbelievably arrogant. Pointing out that unchecked power causes issues in Winter Soldier made 💯 sense, yet he refuses to apply this ideology to himself? He seems to think the Avengers don’t need any oversight because I guess they’re just morally superior, even though Tony Stark created a killer robot that nearly destroyed the world and there have been people killed in collateral damage. I definitely don’t think people should be forced to reveal their superpowers or that you should stop someone from intervening when someone needs help, but it’s not black and white like the film portrays it. They also don’t give us a reason for why Steve thinks the Avengers will never go rogue or cause more damage than help (iirc he tells Wanda that collateral damage happens with what they do). It just irks me that he’s apparently okay with more incidents like Ultron and Wanda accidentally killing people happen because the pros outweigh the cons in his mind. I also find it extremely hypocritical to argue for government oversight (which I 💯 agree with) but not apply the same to yourself and your buddies when you have the ability to actually kill people. And Bucky is brainwashed and clearly needs help, but he is also dangerous to those around him, so Steve shouldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way and consider that as well.

Tony Stark isn’t any better. He only agrees to oversight because a Black woman tells him the Avengers got her son killed via a crossfire, so he’s operating purely on white guilt when he decides to support the Accords. Tony also doesn’t really seem to apply to him the same way it applies to others—like he locks Wanda in her room but he gets to still do whatever the hell he wants, which sure, Wanda is more powerful than Tony, but what’s humane about locking a person up for powers they never asked for? Not to mention he literally brings a child in the middle of a war WITH ADULTS including one WHO WAS TRAINED BY THE MILITARY. He blackmails Peter, a TEENAGER, into joining his fight by threatening to expose Spider-Man to his aunt. He is threatening a minor foe his own political gain. And he doesn’t even explain what the Accors are to Peter! This is why I am so against Iron Dad (that and the way tong treated Peter in Homecoming, but that’s a separate rant)

All in all, Civil War was a disappointing film that bad so much to offer if it decided to be more nuanced instead of focusing on how personal everything is between these two guys. And this is unrelated to the rant, but Civil War isn’t a Captain America movie—it’s basically an Avengers film, and it should have been marketed as such.

#captain america #captain america: civil war #civil war #iron man #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #rants #essays

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infinitecrime · 3 years

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When was the last time that Bucky killed someone as the Winter Soldier? He said in CW that he's not going to kill anyone, and IIRC he didn't. Did he kill anyone in IW or Endgame (those CGI critters for Thanos don't count)? I only watched those movies once so maybe I'm forgetting something. Anyway it seems like a long time that he hasn't been a killer, yet he still seemed uncertain up to the final confrontation with Zemo that he might slide back into the Winter Soldier ways.

Depends on whether you're working with real life death or comic book death mechanics. There are quite a few people in Civil War that get on the wrong side of the metal arm that would absolutely be dead in real life, such as the guy who got smacked in the chest with the concrete breezeblock. Same with a few of the guys in the bar scene in TFATWS, and some of the people they're shooting at during their escape from Madripoor. But this is comic book world, so I think we're meant to assume that anyone who is not explicitly shown dying on screen actually lived. As for IW and EG, he definitely killed, but as you say they were mostly non-humanoid alien creatures so probably aren't classified as people. I don't think he's killed as the Winter Soldier since CA:TWS.

I think the important things to remember when looking at Bucky's lack of trust in himself are:

A) he was killing through choice (sort of) before Hydra got to him and made him the Winter Soldier and that has probably hugely effected his view of himself. There's a big difference between killing Nazi's to defeat fascism and being forced to kill under Hydra, but killing people is killing people and he probably views it as an innate part of who he is at this point. In his self-loathing eyes, Hydra didn't make him a soldier, a sniper or a killer, because he already was one, and it's much harder for him to absolve himself of Hydra's crimes or reject the Winter Soldier if he sees it as a continuation of who he really is that he can slip back into at any time, not something Hydra invented, however wrong that may be.

B) it's barely been any time at all. From his perspective, he's been killing people non stop from 1943-2014, 71 years. Then he's had 9 years of freedom, but most of those were spent hiding with the trigger words still in his head, being chased and triggered, being frozen, and being blipped. I think prior to having the words removed he really wouldn't have made any progress towards recovery or seeing himself as something other than the Soldier, because he was constantly waiting for someone to catch and trigger him, which is exactly what happened. If you take into account the blip, he's only been free and with the words removed for around a year, a year and a half max. So to me it makes sense that he still doesn't quite trust himself at the start of TFATWS - you don't get over 71 years of killing in 1 year, especially when you had IW and EG in the middle of that year so he still was fighting and killing, even if it wasn't people per say.

C) Bucky's thought processes aren't necessarily rational and are a result of trauma and PTSD. Even though from an outside perspective, we can clearly see that he is a good person and a victim who was forced to do awful things that he isn't responsible for, that he can trust himself because he isn't the Winter Soldier, and that he needs to let go of his guilt and shame and fear, that doesn't mean he can see himself the same way. His relationship with autonomy and identity are also severely damaged. When your entire life, identity and independence could be stripped away at the drop of a hat, it would be incredibly difficult to convince yourself that you were truly free, even if people are telling you the words and the Winter Soldier are gone.

He'll probably always be a little bit scared of what Hydra put inside him, and scared of it coming out and taking over, even if he has begun to trust himself more. He'll probably always think of himself as a killer even if he's made great progress in recognising that he didn't have a choice. Recovery is a long and bumpy process, especially when it revolves around identity and self worth, and he's made great progress but I think there's still more to do for him. Hopefully we’ll see that in future works and it won’t just be a “he’s cured now!” situation.

#bucky barnes #marvel #mcu #tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier

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mocha-sim · 3 years

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“Old AU/fanfic ideas I’m probably never going to write” dump

(Long post warning)

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“Full Circle”, first fic I came up with when I got into the fandom around early 2018, your basic next-gen fic except the main focus is on the student council, who all somehow wind up involved in the case of Ayano’s daughter, Kataba (which is a dumb name in retrospect). Kuroko is Kataba’s teacher, and Akane is the guidance counsellor. Aoi and Shiromi don’t actually appear until after the first rival is killed (pretty early in the story), when Aoi - a bodyguard at Saikou Corp. - is sent to the school to watch over Megami’s son, and Shiromi is a detective/journalist assigned to the case. Weirdly enough, Megami’s son Haruki ends up being the one to trigger the “senpai effect” in Kataba

I had some ideas for rivals:

Haruki’s close friend Emiko, kind of a flirt. Gets stabbed to early in the story for the audience to really get to know her

Rikuto, leader of the gardening club, and a very emotional guy who may or may not have been suffering abuse at home. Iirc Kataba drops something heavy on him in the shed to kill him

Kano, leader of the (now-official) gaming club, grumpy and rude but has a soft spot for cute things, kind of a depressed attitude and maybe has drug problems. Gets driven to suicide

Kazumi, leader of the art club, an energetic girl who’s popular around the school, but a daydreamer. Suffering from an unwanted pregnancy

Chika, leader of the science club, cold and distant personality, others call her “ice queen”, looks up to Kaga who now has his own huge corporation. Kataba sabotages her experiment (a small robot) to quite literally blow up in her face at a science convention, which kills her

Isamu, leader of the school’s kickboxing team. I never really fleshed him out tbh

Tamotsu, leader of the delinquents, infamous throughout the school and has the kind of personality you’d expect a delinquent to have. I don’t remember the details of how I planned to have him eliminated but I think Kataba found some way to get him killed by a rival gang

Sadashi, a timid and quiet new student who moved from elsewhere in the country and is struggling to adjust to life at Akademi. Again, I don’t think I fleshed her out as much as the others, but there was something about her trying to get into the student council

Masumi, Haruki’s childhood friend whose family is constantly moving around for business reasons, but is always texting and video-chatting with him. Just like Haruki, she’s extremely rich and is one of the only people who can really relate to him. A very calm and polite girl. If I'm remembering right, I think she actually survives, but gets kidnapped and tortured by Kataba and never really recovers from the trauma

The tenth rival is actually Haruki’s bodyguard, Aoi. By this point in the fic it’s all gone to shit, there’s a missing person’s report out for Masumi, Akademi is in a state of panic and many students have stopped coming to class, and there’s been talk about shutting the school down permanently. The focus is kind of split between everything that’s going on (Masumi, the state of the school, Shiromi’s investigation, Taro and Ayano’s marriage falling apart, Kataba trying to kill Aoi) instead of just focusing on the current rival

I think had one idea for a student who’s not a rival: a Midori-like student called Tsuki Muun... but she was a gag character more than anything

There are other canon characters who appeared in the story, like Ayano and Taro, Megami (though she doesn’t play a major role), Info trying to help Kataba for her own benefit (I had a vague idea about her going undercover as one of Shiromi’s coworkers and trying to sabotage the investigation), possibly Osana and/or Hanako, and I considered having Oka show up as a ghost

Taro is kind of an ongoing obstacle for Kataba and is the one who rescues Masumi from the basement (he also hits Ayano with a chair when she tries to stop him from taking Masumi to the hospital by threatening him with a knife. King behaviour)

Kataba is actively trying to sabotage Shiromi and her coworkers. Early on in the story she kills Shiromi’s search dog as a “warning” to her

Shiromi and Taro end up becoming close friends whilst she’s investigating his daughter’s crimes. Ayano gets kind of suspicious but I don’t really remember where that ended up going. Also there’s this whole scene where they break into Kataba’s room while she’s out to find her bulletin board with notes/pictures of all the rivals and how to eliminate them

Aoi is not only Haruki’s bodyguard but his godmother as well, and he calls her “auntie”

There’s some conflict between them because he feels that she’s too overprotective and, being a teenager who wants to hang out with his friends, he doesn’t want some middle-aged woman lurking over his shoulder all the time

Over the story they start to resolve things and grow closer. Aoi supports him when he feels insecure about not living up to the “perfect” image of his family

Since the story would take place around 20 years in the future I think I was going to take some liberties with technology and stuff like that, especially during Chika’s week

Akademi’s uniform also changed over the years to something more fitting for a high school, the number of students attending grew much larger, and their sports club/martial arts club were replaced with something closer to actual high school sports teams

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Supernatural creature AU, where everyone except Taro and Hanako is some kind of monster/creature/etc.

Taro is oblivious to everyone around him being monsters and thinks the school he attends just has a lot of weird students, but he’s an accepting and non-judgmental person so he just takes it in stride. Hanako, however, knows what’s going on and has to constantly keep Taro from walking straight into danger

Ayano is a demon who Taro unknowingly sold his soul to in exchange for a bag of chips, and now she wants her repayment. She and Hanako are almost constantly at odds with one another, but on occasion they team up to protect Taro from a “greater threat”

Instead of an occult club (because I think that would be kind of obsolete in this AU), there’s some kind of support/therapy group for undead creatures like zombies, ghosts, vampires, etc. Oka decided to start it because of the struggles she’s faced as a zombie

The sports club are all aquatic monsters of some kind. There’s at least one merman in there

The science club are aliens and/or have some kind of “artificial human” theme going on (robots, Frankenstein-esque creatures, etc.)

The gardening club are all fairies - the kind who do things like tending to flower gardens and cleaning around your house

Shiromi, on the other hand, is more of a “trickster” kind of fairy who steals shiny things/valuables, gets people lost in the woods for fun, and may or may not eat human flesh (Hanako makes the assumption that she does and tries to save Taro from her). She doesn’t get along too well with most of the gardening club

Akane is a banshee who ends up serving as the student council’s “alarm” for when someone is dying

Aoi is some kind of reptilian/dragon creature who can breathe fire, but probably can’t fly

I don’t think I ever got anything set in stone for the rest of the student council. I was thinking of making Kuroko or Megami a seraph but that doesn’t really fit in with the “monster” theme

One of the bullies is a shapeshifter of some sort

At least one of the delinquents is a werewolf

Iirc the existence of monsters/supernatural creatures wasn’t common knowledge even in this AU and Akademi was created as a “safe” school for them to get an education without the threat of being discovered by humans. How Taro and Hanako got in... nobody knows. Maybe someone thought the two of them were a little too average and had to be hiding something

Most of the other students at Akademi are aware that the two of them are humans, and some find them fascinating or like to mess with them. Others are wary around them and try to avoid them out of fear that they’ll react badly. The rest of the students are just horribly confused and trying to figure out what they are

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Aoi x Shiromi biker/mechanic AU

Aoi is part of a biker gang, but her bike is an absolute rustbucket that’s constantly breaking down and there’s only one reliable repair shop in the small town she lives in. The mechanics keep suggesting that she gets a new bike but she has a sentimental attachment to her old one and doesn’t want to get rid of it. She’s gonna get fined for driving it eventually

Aoi doesn’t get along with her family in any AU it seems, and trying to stay away from the house as much as possible led to her getting involved with the biker gang (probably with the martial arts club members). Luckily, the gang she’s a part of is much more benevolent than the other major gang in town and mostly acts in defense of themselves or others. They’re politically active more than they are actually criminal, and the illegal things they do basically amount to protests and the like

The “rival gang” is the delinquents. They’re the ones who commit more crimes like theft, vandalism, drug trafficking, etc., and usually do what they do for money. They’re not afraid to use physical intimidation and violence to get what they want. Both gangs often wind up in trouble with the law for collateral damage during their fights

The delinquents hate Aoi more personally than the other members of her gang because of a) the amount of problems she’s caused for them and b) a rivalry with their leader, Osoro, which dates way back to high school. Aoi gave Osoro that scar on her face, and Osoro damaged Aoi’s eye badly enough that it had to be removed

Kaga and Shiromi’s parents died at some point when Shiromi was in high school. Kaga was already an adult at that point, plus a mechanical genius, and was old enough to take over the repair shop. He taught his little sister everything he knows so that she could help him after she graduated. They live in a small apartment right above the shop

Shiromi usually winds up being the one to repair Aoi’s bike (or at least helping) and the two of them start bonding over that

Most of the people around Shiromi’s age (19-ish in this AU) left town to attend college somewhere better, or get a job elsewhere, so she’s found herself lonely a lot since she graduated high school. Sure, there are the other employees at the repair shop who she gets along well with, but they’re all significantly older than her and she can’t really connect with them the same way she could with her friends from high school. She’s grateful for the opportunity to talk to someone close to her own age for once and potentially make a new friend (though Aoi doesn’t really want anything to do with that at first)

At some point Aoi comes in seriously injured after a fight, but denies that she’s hurt. Shiromi convinces her that she needs to go to the hospital and gets her there

Kaga already has some protective-older-brother tendencies (which Shiromi hates), but it practically doubles when she starts hanging out with Aoi and the rest of Budo’s gang. She knows Kaga just wants her safe and uninvolved in gang conflicts, but by this point she’s really attached to Aoi and wants to keep seeing her, so Kaga backs off under the condition that Shiromi stays on her guard and doesn’t go out at night

As Aoi and Shiromi start hanging out outside of the repair shop more often, the delinquents realize that Aoi has someone close to her that they can use to hurt her

They start making threats against Shiromi just to provoke Aoi, or otherwise messing with the two of them. After a fight in which Umeji suffered a major head injury that hospitalized him, and Osoro’s gang lost the drugs they were trying to sell, Osoro makes the decision to kidnap Shiromi to lure Aoi in and beat up/possibly kill her. They succeed in the kidnapping, but it falls apart when Shiromi tricks the guy who’s supposed to be guarding her and escapes on her own before Aoi even shows up

After this incident Kaga is full-on freaking out and forbids Shiromi from seeing Aoi, blaming her for Shiromi getting kidnapped. The two of them keep communicating through text and Shiromi sometimes sneaks out to see her

Before the story takes place Aoi wasn’t super close with the other members of the gang - they were acquaintances more than anything. Over the course of the story she gets closer to them and starts to learn more things about them (like the fact that Budo is/once was in the same situation as her - in love with a girl (cough-Oka-cough) whose family wouldn’t let her near him because of his lifestyle)

There’s a whole arc focusing on Aoi’s parents trying to get Aoi out of the gang, not because they’re genuinely worried for her safety but because they think their daughter being part of a gang reflects badly on them. They possibly try to get the other members of the gang arrested

After this arc, Aoi moves out into her own place near the repair shop, and Shiromi and Budo help her move in

Aoi and Shiromi end up happy together, Kaga and Shiromi resolve things between them, Aoi no longer has to deal with her parents, Budo ends up with Oka, the other gang members resolve their own character arcs, and the delinquents end up in jail

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Magical girl AU which, tbh... I never really fleshed out. It was mostly an excuse to draw cute magical girl outfits. But I did have some stuff down for it!

The placeholder club leader/now the empty demon is the “Kyubey”-type thing that gives all of them their powers

I never really figured out whether I wanted to take a dark route or a more light-hearted one with this. I think my favourite idea would probably be something in between, though - not super grimdark and edgy, but not all sunshine and rainbows either

All of them got not only powers and weapons, but also enhanced physical abilities like running faster, jumping higher, increased strength, increased durability, and more stamina. But those abilities would only take effect while transformed. I was thinking one of them would get used to having enhanced abilities and keep trying to do things they can’t actually do in their normal daily life, which eventually gets them hurt

Kuroko has some sort of rifles and the ability to form hard-light shields to protect herself or others

Akane’s weapon is a bow for which she can produce as many arrows as she has energy for. She also got the power of flight/levitation

Aoi has a sword, like a really heavy broadsword type of thing that she can somehow lift with one hand, and the ability to breathe fire

I think I was planning on giving Shiromi a weapon at some point, but I don’t remember what it was... My other idea was her not having one single weapon, but being able to produce as many small projectiles like throwing knives, shuriken, etc. as she needs. She can also become completely invisible

I don’t think I really had anything fully decided for Megami tbh. I had a vague idea of what kind of outfit she would wear but I never drew any designs (at least, not that I remember)

They definitely have to do some travelling around Japan at some point

Ayano may or may not have been an “evil magical girl”, I don’t really remember

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Another one I didn’t flesh out a whole lot: the fic where a bunch of Akademi students go on a camping field trip

Info attends school as a normal student in this AU and is part of the group that goes camping

It’s Ayano, Info, Osana, Megami, Kuroko, Akane, Aoi, Shiromi, Osoro, Kaga, Taro, Umeji, Budo, Itachi, and Tsuruzo

There’s a scene where they’re all gathered around a campfire telling horror stories. Kaga offers to hold Megami if she’s afraid. Megami is not afraid, is sick of his shit, and tells him to go sit somewhere else

At some point they need more wood for the fire, but nobody wants to go into the woods to get it, so Shiromi tells the boys that whoever brings back the most wood can have a date with Akane. It gets most of the boys off of their butts for sure, but Kuroko scolds her for it. Shiromi just says that, once they’ve got the firewood, it’s not like they actually have to go through with their end of the deal. Kuroko heads off into the woods to collect some herself

Kuroko ends up bringing back the most wood and waves Akane off, saying that she just did it so that she wouldn’t have to go to dinner with one of the boys, but Akane insists on giving her that date when they get home

Everything is going great with the camping trip until they wake up one morning to find Osana missing from the girls’ cabin. They spend hours searching before someone finally finds her dead in the lake

Everyone is certain that this wasn’t an accident and the mood immediately plummets. Almost everyone has their suspects and is at each others’ throats. The teachers who are supervising decide that they’ll all pack up and be ready to leave tomorrow morning

However, Itachi and the delinquents want to figure out who killed Osana and bring them to justice. One thing leads to another and all the students end up lost in the woods. At some point the delinquents suspect Info and attack her, which injures her and splits the group in two

After that I’m not really sure where things go, but everyone is trying to get back to the main camp and get home safely. Aoi is in the same group as Info and is hella suspicious of her as well so not everything is peaceful. There are some people in Umeji and Osoro’s group who are pissed at them for attacking Info and splitting the group. Taro is extremely upset by Osana’s death and Megami comforts him, which leads to Ayano plotting to kill Megami as well while they’re still here, and possibly hindering the group/trying to isolate Megami as a result.

---

I had a pirate/mermaid AU for Aoromi but I never wrote anything down for it - I just had a few really, really old sketches I never posted

Iirc, the general plot was that Aoi’s crew was struggling after the betrayal of Ayano and the death of the former captain Megami + many other crew members, and couldn’t really do anything but run from other crews who tried to attack them, their only advantage being that their ship was still the fastest. Then they fish up a mermaid, Shiromi, who they plan on selling for money to hopefully try and get back on their feet, but end up getting emotionally attached to her

---

Superhero AU which I think I’ve mentioned before but

Anyone with superpowers is legally required to work under the government to defend the citizens whenever they’re called, but they don’t get any pay or significant benefit from it so they also have to work other jobs in their civilian lives. This causes huge amounts of stress

There are some who formed their own group to rebel against this system, which eventually evolved into trying to establish a new society in which they are above those without powers. Info is their leader. Her powers revolve around hacking, not just technology but people as well (though the latter is a lot more complicated and difficult)

Hanako is a sort of “sleeper agent” who doesn’t actually know that she has any powers, let alone that she’s one of the most powerful. Info finds out before she does and brainwashes her. Hanako constantly finds herself “blacking out” and then waking up in her room hours later with no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, a new member of Info’s organization shows up under the name “Nemesis”

Kaga doesn’t actually have any powers, but works for Info and her organization anyway. He’s a technological genius who built himself some kind of Iron Man-esque robotic suit to fight alongside them. He believes that if he works with the “winning side”, when they eventually take down the government, he’ll be spared/treated better than the others. Spoiler: he won’t. Info is planning on discarding him as soon as he outlives his usefulness to her

Also Kaga’s codename was “Dr. Bluescreen”. Clearly the most intimidating name ever.

Homu is a robot and one of Kaga’s inventions. She ends up developing sentience and emotions

Seiyo and Ajia are rivals in both their civilian and superhero lives. They work as waiters at the same restaurant

Being born with powers also comes with enhanced abilities like speed, power, endurance, etc. Ayano doesn’t have any actual powers, but has all the other enhancements (maybe even more so than the others) and is considered one of them anyway

Megami’s power is to calculate her opponent’s weaknesses and adjust her own powers accordingly. It sounds good, but it’s not so great when facing off against more than one person at a time

Aoi has fire-related powers and is in constant conflict with the fire department

Kuroko can produce toxins from her body, Akane can fly, and Shiromi can camouflage herself or other objects/people

Info and Shiromi go way back and Info is constantly trying to convince her to come over to her side. Info may or may not brainwash her at some point which sort of sets off Kaga because opposite sides or not, that’s still his little sister

At some point I was thinking of adding a “middle group” who don’t want to work under the government but don’t want to put themselves above people without powers, either. Maybe the delinquents

---

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taramaclaywasaterf · 3 years

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with all due respect... it's perplexing how much you like spike while being a terf (affectionate). spike, the character whose motivation is to dominate and violate the metaphor for female power (slayers), who turns buffy herself into a hollow shell, who is consistently a perpetrator of sexual harassment and violence, towards women who reject him....

Sorry for the late response, I saw this ask right when you sent it but I’ve been scouring my blog because I know for a fact I answered a similar question about Spuffy before, but tumblr is such a piece of shit website I literally cannot find it anywhere even though I know I fucking tagged it!! Ugh I hate this hellsite.

Anyway, trust me babe I know Spuffy is trash lol. I hate that I love this garbage ship so much, I really do. Part of it is that I was like a tiny fetus when I first watched the show so I didn’t actually realize how terrible Spike was, but now I’m like a decade and a half into shipping these two characters so I’m too invested to stop now...like, I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to- it’s ingrained into my psyche lol. I literally made my father buy me a leather duster from Goodwill when I was in middle school so that I could look like Spike, because I wanted to be as cool as him so badly. There’s no coming back from that lmao

Another big factor is that this show is, what, 20 years old now? It’s not like it’s currently on the air, still making new ones. If it were a new show airing right now, there’s no way I could stomach it, let alone support it. But this was the late 90s/early 2000s. It’s already happened. And as long as we‘re able to recognize *why* the shit that happened in the show was disgusting and wrong, and maintain self awareness and perspective, I honestly don’t see an issue with having one ~problematic~ (ugh sorry I hate that word lol) ship. As long as it’s not, like, literal pedophilia or anything, obviously, because fuck that shit.

Onto more character stuff, I’m gonna sound real cheesy and cliche for a second here, but...well, Spike didn’t have a soul. Everything he did, he did as a literal soulless demon. Angel was off nailing puppies to trees, murdering children, and torturing Dru while he was unsouled. Of course Spike is gonna be a piece of shit. He’s a demon. But despite that- despite his lack of a soul- he was still able to somehow, in his own way, love Buffy and Dru. That shit hits me in the heart every time I think about it. Here’s this guy- a man who wrote poetry and wanted nothing more than for his mother to be happy and for the girl he loves to love him back- who is suddenly torn from his life of being the butt of every joke, with his soul ripped from his body and a demon put in its place. And yet, he still just wants love. To be accepted. Becoming a vampire is supposed to heighten everything you were as a human being. Well, as a human, William was gentle, and kind, and desperate to be loved. But vampires are supposed to be evil. And bad. And remorseless. I said this in the other post I mentioned, but basically, everything Spike *is*, is a reaction to who William was. It’s like two opposing magnets trying to come together inside him constantly. And then he finds Buffy. A woman who not only appeases the demon inside him by treating him like a villain, but also- because of the fact that she’s so kind, so pure, such a light, she brings out William, the scared, lonely human man inside of Spike from all those years ago.

That’s fucking heartbreaking, dude.

Would any man in real life get this type of sympathy from me? Hell no, of course not. But this is a TV show. And we’re talking about magical creatures here. In real life, men aren’t hijacked by literal demons that make them abuse women. They do that shit all on their own. And when it comes to vampires, and Angel and Spike specifically, you as a viewer and Buffy herself can know for a fact that they changed once they’ve gotten their souls (or, in Angel’s case, gotten his soul *back.*) In real life, sure, men can go to jail for murder or rape, but it’s not like they’re gonna come out a different person. They’re still the same person who raped or murdered someone. When it comes to vampires, they’re literally just the same *body.* They’ve got a soul now. They’re no longer controlled by a demon possessing them.

That said, when it comes to Seeing Red...that shit was just straight up bad writing lol. Like, I’m not using that as an excuse or a cop out, I actually really mean it. The writers knew they wanted Spike to get a soul, they wanted to force some conflict, they wanted to drive a wedge between him and Buffy, iirc Joss was off writing Firefly and stopped giving a shit about BTVS, so the writers did...that. I’m forever annoyed and angry at them for it- not just for Spuffy but for Tara as well. It’s like they sat down and said “ok everyone, how can we best destroy our own show in the matter of 10 minutes?” then did it.

Lastly, they’re fucking cute together. Like, c’mon. You cannot tell me “I can be alone with you here” isn’t one of the most unintentionally romantic things anyone has ever said. “Every night I save you”? Fuck, it kills me. “If my heart could beat it would break my chest” stop that’s too fucking painful to think about. “You have to go on living, so one of us is living” nooooo my fucking heart “I love you” “No you don’t, but thanks for saying it”? Jfc that shit makes me fucking sob like a baby every time I watch it.

Basically, to sum up: I know it’s trash. But it’s an old ass show, and he didn’t have a soul, and we can indulge ourselves in some bad shit every once in awhile as long as we know why it’s bad.

#asks #anon #buffy

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jq37 · 5 years

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May we have a recap, please? :)

**spoilers for panic at the art show and home for the holidays**

OK people. I actually don’t have a ton of commentary on these two so I’m gonna try and keep it (relatively) short and sweet [Edit from Future Me: Failed Step 1].

Also, iirc, this is the week Dropout starts streaming new Fantasy High eps on Wednesdays which is very dope and I am very excited for. I probably won’t do full on recaps like I do for normal eps because, lbr, I don’t strictly have the time to be recapping these eps at all and it’s pure stubbornness that keeps me from making wiser time management decisions. But, rest assured, if I have an Opinion, you will hear it whether you want to or not.

Anyway, on with the show.

Last recap, I mentioned that this ep was giving me Aelwen house party vibes and now it reminds me of that ep in another way: Everyone rolled like TRASH almost the entire ep. It was so frustrating! They barely got any hits in until like halfway through the ep.

(Aw man, I just realized I’m gonna have to remember which spelling of Aelwen is correct again now that FH is coming back.)

I love how Murph is immediately like, “I need to make sure my wife doesn’t die during this fight avenging her fictional husband.”

Isabella also has Aelwen’s trick of poofing around the battlefield which is annoying as hell (ha) for the group.

Siobhan hilariously casts fear on Priya just to be spiteful. I thought she was doing it to help the evac process but no. It was a purely spiteful action. Bless.

When Kug turns into an ape he, of course, turns into *the* NY ape, King Kong.

“I roll a nat 20 on an epic shit.”

When Brennan was describing Kingston’s spectral New Yorker Guardians I was already thinking about that one part of Spiderman 2 (the OG Toby Mac version) and then he straight up said, “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us,” and I lost it.

“Deny the stairs the pleasure of my feet.” Emily is a poet.

I want to know what makes a pigeon spicy more than anything.

The fact that Brennan killed Ox AGAIN and then immediately looked into the camera and let the audience know the dog was fine because he clearly Oracle stared into the future between eps and saw the entire internet sharpening their pitchforks was so funny.

About midway through the ep, Pete tries and fails to send Isabella back to hell and Isabella starts monologing about her plans and connection with Robert Moses (she stole the list from Santa and is/was gonna marry Moses apparently). I wonder if Brennan was like, “These players are for sure gonna murder her without getting any useful info out of her unless she goes full Bond Villain right now.”

And, proving my point, Emily immediately does 56 points of damage, royally f-ing Isabella up.

This is a really civilian heavy fight which feels weird in a way the FH fights never did. Like, these aren’t even civilians who live in an adventuring town in a fantasy world. These are just normal ass civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pete fails a wild magic roll after failing to teleport into the building and then gets a choice of getting really strong (which prob would have let him bust down the door) or to teleport in (which is what he does and exactly what he wanted). Very clutch when the dice rolls play into the story like that.

Kingston lightning bolts Isabella’s hair off which is just malicious but also totally called for.

On her next turn, Sophie gets hurt on purpose to get low enough to activate her ring, lets her hair burn for long enough to shorten it to a cute bob, insults Isabella, then knocks her tf out.

I love that Emily took one of her teeth (a seemingly crazy move) and when called out by Lou was like, “It’s a link to Robert Moses” (a completely reasonable answer). That’s the Axford one-two punch.

I didn’t mention it before but, Willie the golem is here, first immobile but then brought back by Misty. Post fight, he says he was somehow brought here by one of the evil factions of the city and says they’ll talk about it later. Also, Misty makes out with him (DON’T KINKSHAME HER).

With a high insight roll, Kingston is able to deduce that the group was ambushed (though not by Priya) and that their victory was a really important one for the fate of the city.

(Sidenote: The amount that Pete is Over Priya in this ep is so funny.)

Back at Wally’s (which is where Kug is now staying) Wally has gotten Kug a dog bed to sleep in and fancy charcuterie cheese because he and Ricky are the only pure-hearted people in NYC.

At the same time, Pete and Kingston have a very sweet heart to heart and then settle down at Kingston’s place to chill and listen to jazz. Idk how else we expected this to resolve, considering this is a Brennan Lee Mulligan DM’d show where the sacred pillars are Teamwork, Friendship, Communication, and Making up an NPC on the Fly Because One of Your PC’s Decided to do an Insane Thing.

Next up is the Christmas ep and Brennan, Emily, and Zac are in sweaters for the occasion.

Well,actually it’s the 21st and Emily immediately clocks that that’s the solstice.

Are cookies the good carb?/Absolutely not. But have fun with your life. (I love Ricky’s soft jock energy.)

“I run deliveries,” Pete says to Kingston’s parents, not technically lying but also not being completely truthful. Misty would be proud.

Going over to Misty, it seems pretty clear at this point (and it’s confirmed in the promo for next ep) that Misty’s fairy business is some kind of de-aging/reincarnation for herself. I wonder how many of these she’s done so far. She said she’s been around for, what? 200, 300 years? Assuming she’s been doing then reincarnations at about 65-70 years old and she reincarnates to around 25? Maybe 6 times? Idk. Just spitballing.

Saucer of milk to keep the faeries from stealing her (non-existing) children. Faerie lore is wild y'all.

Did you take another level of warlock?/Yeah bitch.

The fact that since Sophie has joined a monastery, she’s only taken Warlock levels and no Monk levels is very funny from a story perspective. It’s like, she finally comes to this sacred place to be trained to her full potential and she’s just spending what should be her sparring time playing with her cat in exchange for spells. Wild.

Emily’s cat-like, self-satisfied grin when Brennan is like, “So you just jerry-rigged yourself clairvoyance powers, huh?” is so good.

And she did it on the fly because Emily Axford is winning D&D. There are no points but she’s winning.

So, uh, Emily does, two things, very in character right after the other:

Thing number one: She send her unseen servant to spy on her family. Her dad seems hardline, “F, Dale. Whatever. Family first. She needs to get over it.” On the other side of the spectrum is her mom who is very upset about the whole affair with her siblings falling in the middle.

The second thing she does, very casually I might add, is have her unseen servant BURN DOWN HER HOUSE SO SHE CAN COMMIT INSURANCE FRAUD.

EMILY

Everyone loses their minds and rightfully so. What a wild-ass swing that no one could have seen coming. I love it.

“I look in my backpack which is now my home[…]"

I almost forgot that Ricky was a fire fighter who would not abide that nonsense until Brennan decided to cut to him.

Ricky just dolphin swims across the Hudson in 2.5 mins to go put out the fire that Sophie set. Amazing.

Ally mocking Emily/Sophie: Truthfully, I don’t know what happened.

"I love John McClane, because he loves his wife.” WALLY

Wally: Oh we’re gonna tell a lie on Christmas.

“This is what winning looks like.”

I would really like to know what trace stuff what on the drugs Pete got from 7 but Ally rolled too low to figure it out.

“I disassociate fully."

Well it took him a long ass time but glad to have Pete on the selling drugs to kids is bad train. Choo-choo, dude.

7 saying you can hack in real life in reference to his AK-47 has the same energy as Hardison using the word hack in literally any semi-weird episode of Leverage.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS VOLUNTARY PANOPTICON

So Kug goes with Wally to David’s house disguised as a dog and, despite that, blurts out that he’s his dad immediately. Well, he tries to. The Umbral Arcana stops him, unfortunately.

"I lick my son’s face.” KUUUUG.

Sophie showing up with a raw goose and hellish rebuking it is so metal and it’s a shame no one got to appreciate it.

Me when Sophie’s Mom changes into black top in solidarity for Sophie’s mourning: F EVERY OTHER NON-SOPHIE BICICLETA. I RESPECT YOU.

Kingston is hustling very hard to get his man Pete a job which is a very Kingston move. That’s how guys like that show affection.

Didn’t mention it before but Kingston’s parents and Mom specifically adopting Pete is very cute.

Sidenote: Idk what 7 was talking about Pete trying to stay low profile. He wears a cowboy hat (now a ZEBRA STRIPED one, courtesy of Kingston). I think the subtlety train has sailed my guy.

Esther shows up at the firehouse, carrying presents for her mom and grandma and looking for Ricky. The says that she’s kinda dealing with something and it feels good to be around him (beat) magically speaking. Sure. I’m gonna keep my Hercules soundtrack on hand just in case anyway.

I think Ricky is the only person who, with no pretense, could give his crush a sexy calendar featuring him.

Anyway, turns out Esther’s mom and grandma are the furies of Tompkins Square and she’s fated to join them or something.

Esther causally: I defy you, I defy the prophecy.

The fury thing would explain why Esther’s mom would have cursed Kug. They are famously magical punishers.

Ricky is a magically certified Good Boy but we been knew.

Zac’s restraint to respect Esther’s personal boundaries in lieu of getting a lore drop to stay true to Ricky’s character is amazing. Mad props.

So we slide over to Misty’s Christmas party which Stephen Sondhein is attending and him having a character card kinda killed me.

There’s a post on tumblr somewhere about playing faerie incapability for impoliteness against a vampires need to be invited in and that’s what I thought about when Moses and his vamp friends showed up at Misty’s house.

Robert tries to talk Misty into striking a deal with him for protection from Titania. She’s very much not having it.

“You know Robert, I love a comedy and I love a farce. I’d like to remind you of who it is that started this and it’s not me and it’s not my friends but I can assure you Robert Moses that we will be the ones to end it if you do not. Do you understand me?” Damn. That’s a mic drop from Misty.

[As I’m editing this, I’m realizing I somehow lost a BIG chunk of text. I’m not gonna write it all up again but the Cliffnotes are as follows:

Between the Solstice and Christmas, the gang goes Grand Central Station to see the clockwork gnomes that live there because trouble is apparently afoot. Some size changing nonsense happens and Pete shoots a dog (with mini bullets, the dog is fine). Lou is enchanted even though Kingston is not (a common theme with him). Ally and Emily are on the same nonsense wavelength (as usual).

There are dope magical dragon trains under Grand Central Station that go to the shadow realm which is a place I’d like to know about. Kingston has never seen these trains before even though you’d really think he would have.

Murph says Gnome Rights which is wild if you know what Naddpod is like.

Anyway, the high priestess of the gnomes passed out the other day and they figure out it was due to pixie magic which is suspicious. They also know they pixies have access to a “time stone” which leads me to believe that it’s Brennan and not Aguefort who thinks that Chronomancy is the most powerful magic of all.

Sophie and Jackson go to Dale’s grave on Christmas. Jackson explains that the Order of the Concrete Fist is basically a literal school of hard knocks. A counterbalance to all the reach for the stars dreaminess that comes with NYC.

Dale was their chosen one who was supposed to stop the monastery from falling when some unspecified badness crossed over to this side, but when he went to the place where he was supposed to get guidance, there was no one there (clearly tying in to what Dale said to Sophie last time they talked. I wonder what she needs to get to the top of? Empire State maybe?).

Watching Murph watching Emily, his real life spouse, play at grief for her fictional husband and do some truly insane things is so funny because you can clearly see him thinking, “I am married to this woman,” which, in fairness, is probably the main thing he’s thinking when he’s playing D&D with Emily.

I’m probably missing something but that’s all I remember. Back to post-Christmas!]

So it’s opening night at Misty’s show and, somehow, Ricky’s first show ever.

I love that Don Confetti is there because of Siobhan’s offhanded comment for a handful of eps ago about him being a supporter of the arts.

Anyway, everything is going great until the second act when Titania busts in through the mirror which is *not* is storage as Misty requested but on stage. It’s a theater fight, y'all! And not the West Side Story kind although if that doesn’t come up I will be very surprised.

“Let’s kill Titania!” –Misty in the promo

Just going straight to 11, huh Misty?

See y'all then!

#dimension 20 #the unsleeping city #d20 #asks #kickmuncher3

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zwischenstadt · 4 years

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Sometimes I forget that I spent a year hanging out with a big city chapter of the W*bblies.

- My friend who was my main interlocutor did EVERYTHING for the chapter: social media, music show organizing, getting people to protests, etc. When I asked them if they felt like it was unfair, they said it was, but because of the principles of “mutualism,” did not feel comfortable asking other members to chip in.

- Went to a dinner where the national president was present. Someone brought up minority outreach as a subject, and one of the members said that the “lumpen-proletariat was insane” (EXACT WORDS) and couldn’t be trusted. Nobody objected, and iirc many people nodded along.

- I had a chat with the national president about local politics. He said his dream was for U.S. cities to go back to the urban Boss system, because there was no unemployment since bosses gave everyone jobs!!!

- At the same dinner a woman tried to convince me to go home with her and fuck her. Her boyfriend was sitting next to us and was blatantly uncomfortable.

- One of the highly active members went to see a music show in a ritzy neighborhood with a mutual non-w*bbly friend. They confessed to them that their family was incredibly rich and bankrolled their entire squatter lifestyle, which they were reminded of because they walked by an entire 3-flat building their dad owned.

- Their big hangout was with a magazine and bar run by a guy who was a wealthy heir, but claimed to represent the “lumpenproletariat”. If you’re noticing a pattern, congrats.

- Members tried to develop a weird hand gesture system to indicate that one should continue speaking (not at a formal meeting, but in *all* social interaction) and then when they should stop. The idea was that it minimized microaggressions lol

- They have no interest in recruiting members and are really a sex club. I’ve met multiple former members from different chapters who 100% agree this characterization. Not that i’m against weird sex clubs mind you. They’re fully aware that they only appeal to a certain “type” of disaffected middle-class white kid, and just let them come to them.

- One of the members was schizophrenic and would constantly make up astounding stories that were obviously fake, always involving him happenstance coming across Nazi gangs and beating them up. The rest of them literally believed anything he said. At one point I took a walk with him and be broke down crying begging for help and telling me about voices demanding that he kill and rape people. I tried to convince his friends that there was something seriously wrong with him and they literally refused to believe me. He skipped town the next day, and I never learned his actual name.

- I know at least one dedicated, active member who was anti-BLM and thought that the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was offensive and reactionary

- There was a Texas chapter making hay about doing prison organizing work until it turned out the uni professor running the project was a police informant

- Unverifiable of course, but I heard about an instance in a Northeastern chapter where a member knocked up another member, and the knocked-up-one refused to collect child support because it supposedly violated the NAP lololol

You do hear about some cool projects which are supposedly organized by them, but if you know the internal dynamics of the org, you know that people just slap the IWW brand onto their own self-organized projects. Which is fine! But it sure doesn’t make for any kind of actual organization.

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eisforeidolon · 5 years

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Prophet and Loss

This episode did actually do a few things really well, a couple decently well, and then there was the usual.

That intro is just … horrific. Even knowing from being spoiled that it's only a dream? Just - holy crap, Jensen. That Dean clawed up the walls in his sleep he was so deep into it? Gah. So much no (but in the best way).

In a similar vein, I also found the scenes with the screwed up prophet guy really creepy. The look on the actor's face, the methods of his murders, him creepily stalking the second victim, the Enochian chanting from nowhere? I thought it was a pretty effective piece of horror, so that was great. I mean, Killer Prophet sounds like an awesomely terrible slasher flick, so.

In terms of the acting, I thought all of the scenes with just Sam & Dean were great – in the motel, in the car, at the end. These guys really are just that good at being these characters. I got a genuine sense throughout the episode of Sam holding back his frustration with Dean's chosen path and goodbye speeches until he just sort of falls apart and explodes at the end. I like it when the writers let Sam actually get angry at things instead of just playing peacemaker doormat guy. In an abstract sense, this is a really good place for conflict with Dean not seeing another option and Sam refusing to believe there isn't one and they both sell the moment really well. I had actual emotions and everything!

Unfortunately, the impact of these scenes are a little spoiled by the scripted content of the conversations in a few places. Again, is Dean's plan here really that much more extreme than what he planned to do with the Mark? Are we supposed to read it as some kind of (OOC) machismo thing that instead of insisting that there is literally no other way Dean doesn't try to convince Sam there just isn't time to find another way because Michael isn't that secure? The latter would be a legit argument, whereas insisting there can't be another way is pretty obtuse after they've found another way around just about every hurdle they've faced. I suspect the writers were so focused on trying to get to the emotional payoff of the scene at the end with Sam talking Dean out of it that they just didn't bother to make Dean's rationale make sense, which is lazy. Then there's the car conversation where suddenly we have this random retcon about Dean periodically running off (previously always talked about as a kid as good soldier, obedient Dean) actually also sometimes being John telling him to GTFO (paranoid about monsters around every corner John Winchester). What? and also Why? with a little Huh? thrown in. Even the end conversation – I wouldn't normally mind them trying to throw in something that feels like a take off of RL stuff (Donatello always kept never quit fighting!) except when it's so obviously shoehorned. Donatello not giving up lead to the deaths of two perfectly innocent people, is that really the moral you want to go with here?

Like, I wonder if perhaps the gruesome twosome heard all the fan talk about liking parallels and decided that was something they were good at. Because this episode had the weird obtuse Donatello to Dean one and it also had the twin smarming on about losing his older brother and I just … lost it, had to stop and have the giggles for a minute. I mean, J2 and the other actor were doing their best but that dialogue was laid on so thick in such an absurdly on the nose way – it really only belonged in some kind of straight up parody spoof. Not even to mention that I guess that's what they must have been going for with the whole Nick thing in a way, and I have not found a single thing about that storyline interesting or sympathetic or in any way worth breaking vessel canon for.

A few more random things, then. I kind of liked that Rowena and Castiel were both looking into trying to find other things to help, though I'm still annoyed at trying to play like the Book of the Damned is a catchall solveall (what does damnation have to do with archangel possession?). I actually liked the phone conversation between Dean and Castiel – Castiel's complete inability to not immediately spill all the beans and Dean just flat out ignoring him trying to speechify. Considering the close relationship between the victim and the killer and his obvious tattoo with symbols similar to those carved into the victim, I had to wonder about both the existence and the competence of the cops in whatever town this took place in. Like, the killer was just a fucked up human and it was kind of weird a murder investigation didn't get there before the Winchesters. Similarly, since he was just a human being fucked up by outside influence the whole scene of beating on him 'til he killed himself was just … weird. Or was that just me?

Also, what even was that Donatello storyline? Seriously? IIRC, he lost his soul to Amara and then when they tried to have him translate the demon tablet he went evil, so Cas turned him into a vegetable. But now, suddenly, even if there's a spark left they have to try and bring him back and he'll magically not be evil now because …? Did I miss something to explain why he has a magical reset button in his head now? Not to mention that they all suddenly really care about Donatello being *gasp* a vegetable trapped between life and death … when he's been that way since 13x13. These writers really do seem to write as if everything that’s not happening right on screen is in some kind of static limbo they can just ignore or focus on whenever they feel like bothering and ignore when they don’t - souls in the veil, heaven falling, Donatello’s coma, etc.

I remember at the time reading some people really upset that Sam stopped Dean here because of the threat Michael poses. While I kind of get where that's coming from, I've never felt like the Winchesters have any kind of moral imperative to sacrifice literally everything for the world. As such, I'm never going to be bothered by either talking the other out of making a sacrifice play. Especially when it's a case like this where the writers have worked so hard to set up a false dichotomy; either they go with Dean's plan or they take literally no preventative measures until they find another way or Michael bursts free – middle ground, what's that?

#spn 14x12 #spn season 14 #negativity for ts

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robotslenderman · 5 years

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Think I’ve finally nailed down Mehra’s story in between getting exiled and ending up in the Dark Brotherhood.

Post-Morag Tong, she meets Quen and helps rebuild the Thieves Guild, going through the quests and everything.

She’s pretty highly ranked in the Thieves Guild except there’s a problem... she keeps killing people on jobs. This isn’t too much of a problem at first, but other thieves are like “The hell, Mehra?” She’s supposed to be a disciplined Morag Tong-raised woman, they don’t kill people they’re not supposed to. But she keeps doing it.

(Sometimes she swears she hears Velsa or Zeira or Quen telling her to kill someone, but it becomes quickly apparent to Mehra that that's... not actually happening. They wouldn't do that and then get mad at her for it. Not all three of them at once. Surely?)

Eventually she brings too much heat on the Thieves Guild and she’s asked to leave by Zeira. It's not a hostile kicking-out - it's a sad parting, and Mehra is understanding. She's secretly paranoid the whole thing was orchestrated, but she doesn't let herself resent them and just. Leaves.

Floats around for a while. She knows the DB is probably the only place left to go, but she doesn't want to. Still, she researches them. Stalks a few DB agents she runs into. Ends up tracking down and watching the Black Hand at some kind of Black Marsh ceremony where the Shadowscales are hatched. She's hiding in a basket, watching through the gaps.

When suddenly Nevusa (my headcanon Listener) opens the basket and, without looking down, drops a book on Mehra's head. The Night Mother, she says to the rest of the Black Hand, told her to do that, and then they leave.

it's the Litany of Blood.

Mehra ends up spending the next few months fulfilling it, because... why not? She doesn't have anything better to do. Meanwhile in the Kvatch Sanctuary they're boggled that an outsider has been chosen to do the Litany, and red spectral statues are appearing but the killer hasn't been recruited yet.

Eventually each pedestal is filled, but... still no killer. The Night Mother still hasn't told Nevusa where to find this killer. In reality, Mehra moves around too quickly to be reliably tracked down, so NM is still waiting for her to settle.

(Headcanon is that the Litany is only ever completed by future Listeners. So the whole Kvatch Sanctuary is especially apprehensive and excited because there's a future Listener out there, and nobody, not even Nevusa, knows who it is.)

Eventually Mehra hears about the DB presence in Kvatch, so goes there. She still doesn't want to join, but it's not like she has any other career options.

there's no Thieves Den there, so she relocates to Anvil.

By day she poses as a beggar, using the disguise to scope out houses. By night she cleans out houses and, occasionally, kills. Sometimes she just kills - she hovers on a roof, waits, then just drops on someone on an alley and stabs them in the back.

The DB eventually get wind that there's a serial killer in Anvil. The NM still hasn't said anything to Nevusa - Mehra isn't sleeping anywhere secure, but Nevusa wonders if it's their Litany killer and puts out feelers.

Nobody ever looks at Mehra twice. She's got horrific burn scars and she pesters people for money - people avoid her, they don't stare, so nobody notices her Tong tattoos, let alone anyone who'd recognise them. Mehra thinks it's hilarious, because the second anyone spotted her tattoos they'd quickly realise she's the killer.

But nobody ever looks, so they don't. She sticks out because she's very distinct as both a Dunmer beggar and one so badly scarred, but still people ignore her.

The killer is eventually active enough that the Kvatch Sanctuary actively investigates. Nevusa is pretty sure it's the Litany killer because the method of killing is the same as the Litany victims - as Nevusa found out when she out out feelers. A single knife to the back, right in the artery beside the spine.

Kvatch Sanctuary gets excited again because their future Listener is in the area and fucking up people for the lulz.

But they can't. Fucking. Catch her. There's never any witnesses, or survivors. Nobody acting suspicious at night (by DB standards, anyway). Remains-Silent, Venom and Mirabelle are brought in to try and find suspects - nothing. Elam is stationed at the Thieves Den full time to keep an eye out for potential hit men or freelance assassins - nada.

It doesn't help that Mehra got shy when they showed up, and stopped killing for a while.

Elam does spot Mehra in the TD occasionally and points her out to Nevusa as one of the more suspicious denizens of the TD, but she doesn't like to talk to Elam and her entire face stays covered, so he doesn't yet connect her to the scarred beggar.

Eventually things get quiet enough that Terenus gives Astara permission to pull everyone out of Anvil, so she does. Clearly, the litany killer has moved on.

And the fucking killings start up again almost immediately.

Cue DB facedesking. This time they just keep Mirabelle and Elam down there.

Mirabelle is a servant listening for gossip, working at the barracks. She's to report any progress the guards make on finding the killer, and to inspect the bodies whenever she can.

Elam is to stay in the TD and just get work. In game, IIRC, not everyone uses the Black Sacrament to get the DB's attention and if I remember right Elam is the one they contact if they don't. So in my headcanon Elam spends a lot of time in Kvatch getting work the old fashioned way. Well, now he's charged with doing it in Anvil and he's not allowed to come home until the litany killer comes with him.

So Elam spends time bored out of his mind, missing home, hoping nobody is messing up the Sanctuary too much, and getting work.

The TD is, for once, grateful there's an agent of the DB hanging around because the litany killer keeps picking off *their* guys, because who else is hanging out in alleyways at 3AM?

There isn't much privacy in the TD but he still has to give out work, and the thieves and pirates and so on give Elam as much leg room as they can.

Eventually his Brothers and Sisters start complaining their targets are dead before they can get to them. Elam has Mirabelle look into it, but still lets clients think the DB did it.

Mirabelle reports back that their would-be targets are getting killed by a single knife to the back.

Nevusa's reaction upon hearing about this: "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Elam's is to break down into laughter so hard he can't breathe.

The litany killer is now actively fucking with them and stealing their kills.

and they still don't have a clue who it is

Good news: this means the litany killer comes by the Thieves Den often enough that they eavesdrop on Elam's business deals, or at least enough to know who's pissed at who and who's planning on getting the DB involved.

Elam still thinks this is the funniest thing ever, but when the fences of the TD are notified they are Not Amused and start more actively working with the DB. They want the litany killer dead. The DB decide not to disclose that they're recruiting them.

The fences and the denizens of the TD do some fund raising and ask everyone to pitch in for a DB contract. At this point they've started calling her "Litany", since the DB have spread her moniker.

Mehra contributes a huge amount because she thinks it's just as funny as Elam does. They have the exact same sense of humour.

Those who know Litany stole the DB's kills no longer bother going to Elam and just stand in the middle of the TD and yell, "Hey, Litany, kill X for me!"

which she does

Some with a sense of humour start egging Litany to steal the underwear of someone they hate and stick it on the spire of the nearby Chapel.

She does this too

Litany is suddenly as popular for their sense of humour as they're hated for killing people's buddies.

Elam is like "our future Listener is *awesome*"

Nevusa doesn't know whether to be amused or exasperated.

Astara is Not Amused.

Then a break comes - someone fresh off a ship hears about Litany, and mentions it's similar to some killings in Hew's Bane. They're practically kidnapped and taken to Elam.

They tell Elam that they're a footpad from Abah's Landing, visiting some relative or other, and that some high ranking Dunmer in the Thieves Guild got kicked out for killing too many people while on the job. Mentions that she's a former member of the Morag Tong.

which... seems to fit Litany's MO. Nevusa is aware that *somehow* the Litany of Blood ended up in Litany's hands from Black Marsh, and the killings were done so professionally even the DB can't track them down. For it to be Morag Tong sounds right.

Cue Nevusa going to Abah's Landing, personally, to visit Zeira.

Who - if reluctantly - confirms that... yup, there was a Dunmer here called Mehra Adrano, former Tong. Liked to backstab people she shouldn't. Lovely woman, just... too stabby for the guild. Very lost after her exile from the Tong. Talked openly about how she thought she was going to wind up in the Brotherhood until the Thieves Guild took her. Zeira's surprised she hasn't ended up in there yet.

"We're working on it," says Nevusa. "We're finding it difficult to track her down."

Zeira gives Nevusa a description and as much info as she can. Nevusa does some research, uncovers Mehra’s backstory as Dralsea Sadri.

Nevusa returns to Anvil, where Elam and Astara still haven't tracked her down, and gives them Mehra’s description.

Elam is like "fuck, she's that scarred redheaded Dunmer?! I give her a few coins every time I buy my lunch! I talked to her like five minutes ago!"

They grab the Shadowscales and go to confront her...

Mehra’s sitting on her pallet, notices the Dark Brotherhood's Listener, Executioner, and a bunch of Shadowscales approaching her, and is like "and it only took you lot eighteen fucking months to track me down. Oh, by the way, here's your book back, Nevusa."

And the rest is history.

#Mehra Adrano #Dark Brotherhood #Morag Tong #ESO #TES #my OCs #long post

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sauntering-down · 5 years

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last night, i dreamed i was reading a webcomic about these two teenage boys who met in a laundromat. they didn’t know one another, but one was struggling with having his life uprooted after (i think) his father lost his job and they have to move. the other always had his nose in a book and constantly read while tossing out various bits of advice at the first guy - usually good advice, but occasionally he was just trolling. so first guy takes the advice and his life starts to improve and slowly he realizes second guy is actually really unhappy too, which turned out to be because his younger sister had recently drowned. he didn’t know how to handle it, so he started counseling the first guy instead, just so someone would feel better. and now there was kind of a role reversal because the first guy wanted to repay the favor. anyway, plot aside (pretty sure they both got better and then hooked up at the end lol), the most interesting thing was the actual setting of the comic. in the beginning, it only ever took place at the laundromat in the middle of the night. and slowly, as they became proper friends and started helping one another and getting their shit together, they started leaving the laundromat and going other places - the convenience store across the street, some 24-hour diner next door, the elementary school across from that - until the comic-world comprised of the entire neighborhood instead of just this dingy little laundromat. it was cool.

i had other dreams - some school dream with Erin and Lauren and iirc a cancelled science class. something where i was flying around and taking pictures of hot air balloons and the earth below with my phone. what was supposedly the first episode of Legend of Korra but mostly featured entirely different characters, including a guy who controlled a violent, humanoid attack dog with music and tried to kill a pair of kids with it until he was stopped by their cousin, who could control plants; Mako and Bolin were briefly present, and for some reason they were sculptors. i don’t remember any of those too well, sadly... or the one from a few nights ago involving a school bus, the house across the street from my old house, a college class, my neighbor, and a little game with a wooden token that had four pictures printed on it - three with a man being killed different ways and one where he lived - and the point of the game was to make sure the man lived, though i have no idea how that was done.

#dream

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gayregis · 5 years

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issues with blood & wine

cdpr litcherally took away all the development that vampires got in the book series, despite blood & wine adding more vampire lore, and ill explain how

retcons & just weird differences from canon

blood & wine paints vampires as this big evil secret society and civilization whereas in the books they literally do not have more society than “a bunch of frat guys and sorority girls getting wasted every full moon”

the vampire lore they added with mentions and/or demonstrations of human cattle, bloodthirst as a form of torture, the hierarchy with unseen elders, drinking blood being seen as something much darker and sinister all together instead of a vice of vampires like alcoholism is a vice to humanity, and the whole dumbass retcon about the conjunction of the spheres.

the views on blooddrinking introduced in blood & wine lead to annoyingly misplaced dialogue with geralt and regis like geralt mentioning vampires “treating humans like cattle to slaughter” which, they dont, and which geralt learned in baptism of fire, then remarking disapprovingly that humans are more like an open bar then. this dialogue makes no sense even because that’s NOT how vampires in the witcher function

regis’s torture in la cage au fou is just basically torture porn and is pretty unnecessary. but it’s also overdone because it’s not like regis has been sober for centuries, he broke his sobriety at stygga and therefore has only been sober for 8 years, which... he spent dead. so the temptation of relapse would already be an issue for him, which should have provided enough tension and angst for all of us. the scene in la cage au fou also depicts such a visceral pain of bloodlust and doesn’t show WHY it’s such a widespread temptation and vice for vampires... which imo would be more powerful as both a plot point and statement

side note: not vampire related but geralt and regis literally dont talk about the hansa at all and it annoys me because regis seems depressed for No Specific Reason besides dettlaff’s situation when we know that he and geralt experienced great loss at stygga and are struggling to cope with that

side side note: considering regis broke his sobriety at stygga and could be struggling with thoughts of relapse already, knowing that he’s depressed about the loss of milva angouleme and cahir could provide for some more angst and tension :/

the vampire claws are ugly and not lore-friendly. why not just give them short claws on their hands. when regis and other vampires fight in the books, they barely use their claws anyways. they turn invisible, turn into bats, scream, etc.

the smoke/fog effect annoys me because there’s no mention of that in the books, only of them turning invisible. and you can SEE smoke/fog so tell me what is the point

the op-ness of vampires bothers me because vampires were already op in the books and making them moreso just is annoying because it’s unbalanced. i guess this is partially due to an issue in the books where sapkowski never explained how a vampire could truly be killed, but my interpretation is that sapkowski intended to portray regis as “truly killed” at the end of the series, just obliterated beyond his regenerative ability within the near centuries... i mean it took him half a century to grow back a head, how long would it take him to regenerate his entire body? forever, which is pretty akin to ‘death.’ there wasn’t a need to add social rules about vampires killing vampires because... vampires could ‘die’. but cdpr introduced dettlaff regrowing his hand within like, 3 days, and that was that. i don’t disagree with some of the regenerative things depicted, like regis regenerating after dettlaff spears him lol, that was pretty cool and reminiscent of the battle of the bridge where he regenerated from an arrow piercing in about 2 minutes. but for things more severe than flesh wounds........ i can’t support that because it’s too unrealistic given the canon from the books

i like dettlaff’s monster form, i really do, but seeing as how the books say that vampires turn into BATS............................. i guess it is said that all vampires are unique and have different powers, but come on, what is that, that is not even bat-like, or MAYBE do something with the MOTH aesthetic he was given?? he should have had like, locust powers or something cool, come on....

speaking of animal affinities, this is really nitpicky at this point lol, but regis’s corvids not being shown as birds of omen or some dark motif and instead as just General Helpers......... when they attack stygga in lady of the lake, the birds crowd the fort and circle around it, causing the guards outside to all stir and worry about what ill fate is to befall them. it’s intended to be super creepy and worrying. iirc when regis was around corvids also tended to perch in the trees, sort of ominously signaling that he was around... in blood & wine they’re good boys and i love them, but they’re not entirely creepy enough. think of how regis’s gwent card depicts the corvids as an example of a step in the right direction. what im saying basically is less doctor doolittle and more the birds, please.

honorable mention is regis’s hairline and facial hair. baptism of fire described him as looking middle-aged, so he should look around 45. that is all

the conjunction retcons introduced are just confusing and annoying. regis remarks about the vampires’ “home” wistfully multiple times throughout blood & wine, AS IF he actually saw it at one point. our boy’s like, 400 something years old (436, but who’s counting), so he was born in the 800s (bc the witcher saga and games take place in 1260 something). he’s fucking young compared to someone like the unseen elder, or even for example, AVALLAC’H, who’s older than him by like 2 centuries. the conjunction of the spheres occurred 1500 YEARS BEFORE THE SAGA & GAMES TAKE PLACE, in 200s BCE which is MORE THAN 3 TIMES REGIS’S AGE. so it makes no sense for regis to be talking about the vampires’ homeland before the conjunction because (if regis is considered middle aged by vampire standards) he’s like, 3rd or 4th-generation vampire.

depiction of vampires

i will say that orianna and blood simple was a good move because it shows how vampires’ addictions can manifest in ways other than raiding villages as youth... though i would have liked to see orianna shown as middle aged looking like regis is i’ll let that slide because i know cdpr can’t show a woman who is supposed to come off as attractive looking more than 30 years old

but the strictness of vampire society imposed in blood & wine, through the no killing vampires laws, tesham mutna’s whole hierarchy and structure, is inaccurate in my opinion because in the books the whole THING about the vampires is that while they’re highly intelligent and emotional, they don’t really form social structure beyond drinking parties, which i think was both a nice step away from classic “stuffy manor vampire” types and something unique for the witcher universe...

my biggest issue, though, is with dettlaff and his characterization throughout blood & wine, or should i say, lack of consistent characterization. half of the “good things” dettlaff does isn’t even shown (i.e., resurrecting regis) and is rather explained through word, so the effect on the player isn’t as big. his actual caring and protectiveness of rhenawedd/syanna is overshadowed by syanna’s huge arc about her own backstory so there’s like, NO empathy built up for dettlaff. you actually get to talk to syanna about her opinions and takes, but as for dettlaff you’re relying on regis’s secondhand guessing about his brother’s emotions. regis is also somewhat of an unreliable narrator because it’s not like he can predict everything that will happen... as much as it seems it, sometimes

but the whole point of the books dealing with vampires (and more specifically, regis) was to show that sometimes monsters are more reliable and morally upright than humans. im not saying every vampire in the witcher series should be shown as a paragon of morality, because that’s definitely not the case. but i think for a player who has just met regis, just learned about the vampires in the witcher universe, they need more context and more depictions of Good Vampires, or at least, Vampires That Employ Logic, in order to accept that vampires are NOT some savage beasts like anna and damien argue.

it also doesn’t help with... how regis is depicted. regis is always shown in his humanoid form when he’s proper and kind and geralt is friendly with him, and when he’s in a more bestial form during la cage au fou and tesham mutna, he’s shown as like, a danger [[to geralt]], which is such a slap in the face when you consider how regis and geralt fought side by side at stygga. to even think that regis is somehow untrustworthy tbh literally goes against everything in the books -- in the saga, regis is depicted as yes, a very powerful being, but one that has deep intelligence, emotions, and alliances to geralt and the hansa... when he uses his powers and fights in the saga, it was not only rare, but only ever for Good, to save ciri and yennefer. and he was completely in control of himself and his powers... even when drunk at stygga. not to mention regis was even a self-described ‘coward’ and felt it necessary to avoid battle and conflict because he disliked it so. so when in blood & wine, regis fights during capture the castle like it’s nothing, that’s so alien to his character, idk how to even describe it. he just brushes it off like “looked like you needed a hand, we thought we’d stop by” instead of like, whoa. this is a big sacrifice he’s making by putting himself into this conflict, because he loathes violence. of course there’s also the issue with la cage au fou where regis is shown as Bestially Untrustworthy because he Can’t Control His Powers but those issues have already been discussed.........

also it’s tiring how it’s lazily attempted to explain that vampires aren’t just horrific thirsty beasts of the night and then toussaint is sacked by vampires like a week later. the showing was more impactful than the telling here

back to dettlaff’s inconsistent characterization, it’s annoying how he doesn’t get a chance to explain his thoughts and worries and grievances like syanna does, but also it’s annoying how he’s shown as such a caring person for those he loves (asking syanna if shes okay, feeling guilty that he couldnt rescue her sooner, regretting not being there for her...) but then when he’s betrayed he immediately goes to “sack the city until i can murder this bitch” which is like...... okay, i get it, scorpio vibes, but it doesn’t really make sense without some kind of dialogue between dettlaff and geralt. the player would have to stop and really mull this logic over (it does make sense, but you have to think about it... dettlaff would want to murder syanna because she had him murder those close to him anyways, and dettlaff didn’t know (and never finds out, actually) that the knights were bad people deserving of death anyways). i feel like if dettlaff knew the reality about the knights, then he wouldn’t want to murder syanna....... he would be mad that she didnt communicate with him in the first place, but at least he wouldnt be assuming that he murdered innocents. from dettlaff’s perspective, syanna is a killer who killed some of his best friends, but as the player, we never get to even interact with him or his feelings about the subject. instead we’re faced with an unnecessary dichotomy between the two of them which ends in tears and bloodshed either way, and it’s unsatisfying.

#thoughts #tw3 #bw #regis #dettlaff #omfg big fucking rant goodbye lol #i spent like an hour writing this all out o h my god

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chiseki · 5 years

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Figured I’d make this an intro post, since I’m pretty much using this alternate url as an “out” url compared to my usual vagueness.

I’m Joshua. Yes, that matches the sidebar, so it’s not really surprising here.

And that would surprise an entire two people following my main blog that know me irl because the rest were previously informed. Maybe three people, I forget if the last one is on tumblr or not.

Which is, by the way, ““““““““fun”““““““““

Yup, having like three local friend circles that had relations to each other outside of myself, and only one of them being in the know is fun.

You can basically stop reading at this point, because from here on out is just gonna be a massive time rewind to.....jeez, fuck if I know when, my childhood? I promise there will be time skips, we don’t need that mess played at normal tempo. (Also some funny stories after the giant gap in the text, if you want to scroll for that).

Most of this story is actually located in college, but the only real indicator (aside from having a general dislike of dresses) was way back when I was in all of second grade--apparently I was so damn insulted I burned all these facts into my memory--and an older kid was brought into the classroom, gave us this cool sales pitch about do we want to learn to shoot a bow, go camping, build campfires, etc

and then was like “OH YEAH THIS IS THE BOY SCOUTS IT’S BOYS ONLY”

I was so hyped lol.

Wound up being in a mediocre girl scout troop later, and my brother obviously got directed into boy scouts. At which point I got to find out that their camping trips were mostly getting rained on and finding black windows and getting taught woodworking by a dude missing a chunk of finger.

So more suffering than child me would have expected, but they still got to build fires and go REAL camping and shoot bows and rifles and shit.

Meanwhile, in girl scouts, we went to this one set of cabins every year. We never stayed in the damn cabins, because someone would find A Bug in there, or a spider, and then someone ELSE would have the same issue, and no one wanted to be in a cabin alone let alone be the only one in the cabins at all, and we always wound up sleeping in the air conditioned lodge that was visible from the damn cabins.

Except the one year where we went to a different camp, stayed in the legendary caboose, and there was a bat sleeping on the outside of the window so no one wanted to sleep there except me.

My scout group was weak.

I miss the cookies, though.

Anyway, due to not being forced into gender-targeted toys and getting to play with whatever the fuck I wanted, I also have jack shit for anything resembling an early warning sign aside from the above.

Actually, scratch that, I was not really a fan of dresses. I mean, this was fair in general, since they were usually scratchy, didn’t fit my arms/shoulders right, were designs I had no say in, and everyone would get on my case if the dress might get even a LITTLE dirty. Had some skirts I liked in middle school, but even that was a mess of having to wear tights because my genes have never resulted in anything resembling a thigh gap.

And I was like, constantly trying to play with the guys in grade school. And they’d periodically get that “NYEHHHHHHH GUYS ONLYYYYYY” shit going on. That was never not infuriating tbh.

Flash forward to high school, still basically left to my own devices. Only indicator here was that I was just tickled fucking pink whenever I heard that I either passed at cons or was at least tossed in the “maybe.......?” zone.

Flash forward to college. I honestly don’t remember what set me off on thinking about it, but started eyeballing my gender with a microscope. Unfortunately I couldn’t apply a litmus test like sexuality, so there was a lot of “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhfuck” going on.

Actually, I think part of it was that on the forum I hung out on, a lot of the old regulars had assumed I was a dude until a childhood friend had dropped a pronoun several times in succession & asserted its correctness, which then led to a discussion along the lines of “whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat”.

But yeah, started testing the waters.

Also tried going to a LGBT+ club like, once. With the gal I was either dating at the time or was about to be dating, my memory is shit tbh. “HEY SO HOW ABOUT WE ALL JUST COME OUT TO EACH OTHER, A BUNCH OF STRANGERS <33333333″ still freaks me out, honestly. I get why it’s generally done, but like, no thanks. But I was horrendously obvious in ducking about the gender question and she totally called me out on it later in private lol. Also got me my first binder, but I digress.

Anyway, basically spilled on “I’m.....probably..............? a dude...........? jsyk??????” to my immediate friends, which was met with a lot of “.....YEAH ACTUALLY THAT MAKES SENSE” and a “hang on I need a dictionary........ok I get it”

I think I was the least smooth part of anything resembling a coming-out just due to like, me not wanting to have to tell people to do things for me? It’s something I find extremely awkward, like I know it’s that horribly stereotypical dating thing of “what’s wrong, bby, what do I have to do” “I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO” but.

And that’s an entire digression about how my relationship with my mother often included me saying a lot of shit I had to say convincingly, but didn’t mean at all, and probably led to me having fuckall faith in what people say, most especially when under a forced prompt. I could do an essay on that, but not here.

Which, admittedly, I’m gonna rewind here because I think it’s funny in hindsight, but it means the dictionary reaction went like “SO...........I’M.............TRANS?” “What?” [thinking this is pushback on the idea] [PANIC MODE] “UH” “Like, literally, what does that word mean, I've never heard it in my life.” “OH. WELL. Heh. Uh. That internal reaction I had was embarrassing then, oops.”

Anyway.

Then the collective action was, “well, have you picked a name what do you MEAN you haven’t picked a name, we can’t just run about calling you by your deadname after all that”

And I tossed some names out, that I’m not going to list, because they were just fucking awful. So I got interventioned and the method became throwing names at me until they stuck.

Adam? Nah I knew an Adam and I can’t unassociate with that

Noah? Violin teacher’s third kid was named Noah. Same issue with Gabriel and Caleb.

Benjamin? I fucking grew up with a Benjamin he would kill me.

you get the idea.

And those were like, actual reasonable rejections. At least half the time I was just like “I DON’T LIKE HOW IT SOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNDS.” Take, for example, Josh. I 1) knew one in high school and he was a piece of work and 2) I just, inexplicably, don’t like how the word sounds.

Which is part irony and part masochism that JoshUA stuck.

I mean, that name had pre-existing connotations for me. I had played..........a game.........in high school. And given that my options were pretty shafted to Stereotypical White Boy Names if I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, some positive(?) pre-existing connotations were going to be needed.

Incidentally, I had a v. sweet trans girl offer me her deadname, which was a cool name, but just, like, didn’t fit me in particular so. She also picked her name by RNG tournament, with the top 10 baby names for her year being the competitors. Which was neat and worked well for her, but I know I would have just re-run the fucking tourney if I didn’t like the winner lol.

But anyway, continuing on to a less flowery story. I’ll add some blank lines so it’s skippable. No need to set off every other person with gender issues here.

Decided to come out to my family. Apparently time fuzzed down my memories of being devoured by mosquitos outside while my parents were trying to decipher that their kid was holding hands with a girl in the back of the van and that girl had been planned to sleep over that night, and despite the fact that booth teens wouldn’t be jumping to sex that fast nor had the equipment to make a kid between them....it was Reason For Concern like a straight couple sharing a bed.

I mean, my mom was convinced that anything touching the nether regions was SEX and PREMARITAL SEX was EVIL. But I digress.....again.

So. I tell them. And the reaction ranged from “well ok I mean you’ve always been weird” (thanks, bro) to “uh I guess my last name’s odds of getting inherited just doubled........?” to “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME”

Yeah. That last one was word for word. Some stuff was thrown, lots of crying (”I CAN’T EVEN DO MY MAKEUP AND IT’S YOUR FAULT”)--both of which were not my doing, though I got shocked(?) into my own set of tears iirc.

I think I set a speed record for climbing back into the closet. Like, a week later, everyone was pretending it never happened. I sorta emotionally cut ties with my mom at that point--kept it civil, but Did Not Want to discuss my life or friends at all with her or in any way that would get back to her.

So obviously, no one in my family knows I go by Joshua. If they asked, I would tell them, but lo and behold, zero questions, they never brought it up again, etc. And I’ve been very careful about not letting that knowledge spread, not putting it on the internet in a way that connects back to my legal name, being primed at any point to pretend “Joshua” is a mutual friend and to not respond to that name if someone accidentally calls me by it.

Incidentally, during Yet Another Family Counseling that was at least performed at an individual level this time, my mom apparently told the counselor that she thought she handled that well. Last I checked, making the situation about yourself and doing the whole “woe is me, the mother, with a child like this” shpeal was not “well”.

And I mean the WHOLE shpeal. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to see the posts by parents of trans kids that wax soliloquy about losing their child and mourning their “death” (especially the ones that aren’t all “but I got a new kid!”) like, the ones especially cut from the same cloth that would be like “my child is autistic but ~I~ am the inspiration for waking up in the morning” like no, your kid is the inspiration for dealing with you.

And if anyone is wondering, this is basically the Midwest Stereotype for....LGBT, interracial dating, etc rejection imo. Seemingly ok with it, but NO WAIT HANG ON, NOT MY CHILD. Like, I legit had trans kids explained to me (albeit without terms for it) at a relatively young age by my mother and yet. “X exists but not in our good christian neighborhood” attitude. Ugh.

So where was I? Hmm, yes, funny Joshua stories. Ok I have like ONE story. One of my friends that was in the know finally got me to play Trails in the Sky. Now, this sucker has a chunk of text lead-in with a ~mysterious~ boy that young Estelle’s father has brought home, and the whole discussion skips his name, ending on “my name is....”. Then it time-skips to present day, finally casually dropping this dude’s name, which, obviously, is Joshua.

My friend did not tell me this.

No warning, nada. Only Estelle had really come up in conversation.

And then we collectively dragged another friend into the abyss with us, except he wasn’t in the know. We also had him streaming his playing sessions when our schedules coincided, which led to--because of a shitty accuracy stat--him yelling (as we did) “JOSHUA!” frequently in combat.

I debated on just responding “Yes?” randomly one day in the most casual closet-exit possible. Then procrastinated by deciding to just be out with it at the end of the first game since he’d also played twewy.

Some of you have probably started to eye my avatars with judgement in your hearts. That’s fair.

Anyway, we had forgotten about another character that practically had his name, so at least I had someone to share my weird feelings with.

And then, he started the second game, and I didn’t hold back on responding “yes?” every time “Joshua” was used as an interjection.

Also because of that one post about biblical names, I will respond to any use of “Jesus”.

#chiseki talks about chiseki

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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I was talking about Wonder Woman at work today, and my deskmate said that she didn't like the movie because she thought that nothing Wonder Woman did was about herself. All the impetus and action was about someone else, generally a man. And so she thought it was a bad feminist movie. I didn't know how to respond beyond "you are wrong" and I have to see her again monday. Please help me come up with coherent arguments?

Um, what? Since when does Diana spend the movie doing something for a man?

(Sorry, I’m just confused at your coworker’s logic here.)

Diana is the driver of the action throughout the movie and the other characters all play a role in her story somehow, not the other way around. She is the one to rescue Steve when he crash-lands on Themyscira, hears about the war, decides it sounds like Ares’ doing, and decides to peace out against everyone’s advice (including that of her mother/aunts/the other Amazons) to go take care of it. She decides to take Steve off the island with her, they go to London, Diana is the one who insists that they go to the front, and spends the rest of the time pretty much flat-out ignoring whatever Steve thinks she should do (don’t cross No Man’s Land, don’t go after Ludendorff, come with him to stop the plane, etc). Steve is portrayed as (understandably) not actually believing that she is the immortal clay-daughter of Zeus from Awesome Lesbian Paradise Island destined to kill another Greek god, but he doesn’t belittle her for it, isn’t sarcastic and abrasive to everyone he meets, tries to protect her, tries to teach her about Earth customs, and goes along with her plans even when he doesn’t understand them (i.e. telling her to follow the smoke rings to find Ludendorff). I legit cannot think of once when he’s actually the one deciding what Diana does or when she listens to him, and he’s given the same kind of role that is usually given to the female love interests of male superheroes: he’s concerned about her hero activity, his reactions are mostly dictated by her actions, she decides what’s going on and then he goes along with that, he has the eye candy moments, she has to save him several times, and he ultimately dies in service of her character arc. Diana’s goal (find and kill Ares, the reason the Amazons were established) remains paramount throughout the entire movie and is never sacrificed for Steve (or anyone else’s) interests. Diana of course eventually does this, but discovers it’s more complicated than she thought.

Then there’s the broader story/narrative architecture of the movie. The Amazons in the beginning look and dress like actual female warriors; they’re strong, muscled, wearing actual armor (which was why it was so squint-worthy when Justice League wanted to skimp them up more) and presented as powerful and capable. They’re visibly diverse and they are not stick-thin models in golden bikinis. The film is obviously aware that Diana is beautiful, but her looks are never made the point of her character. Etta roasts Steve when he tries the cliched trick of “putting glasses on a woman and suddenly she’s not hot.” There are no leering up-skirt angles or lingering cleavage shots. The film is (mercifully) totally devoid of any “Diana must use her sexuality to get ahead!” or “Diana meets Real Men who must teach her about sex” (part of why the boat scene was so brilliant) or “Steve is a sarcastic asshole who is justified in laughing at her naivete.” And of course, thank fuck, nothing remotely like Whedon’s favored “sexual violence/infertility makes a woman Tough and Broken.” (I mean, if you have seen his leaked Wonder Woman script, which a) is a flaming pile of poop and b) literally does all the above things, you will understand just how much of a bullet we dodged.)

Diana is allowed, as the filmmakers have commented on many times, to be a kick-ass warrior and also a woman who loves babies and ice cream and has feelings for Steve and whose power is in fact based on love, not His Murdered Parents and Angst (yes, you know who I’m looking at) or all the other de rigueur Gritty Origin Story male superheroes. Strong Female Characters ™ exist in their dozens as basically men with unnecessarily revealing boobplate armor, and are Repressed and Tormented and Grim and like to drink and have hard pasts and so on, and it’s extremely refreshing that they did not do that with Diana. Especially given how much fandom tends to hate and disregard/demonize traditionally “feminine” female characters. Diana is clearly awesomely strong and powerful (to this day I cannot watch the No Man’s Land sequence without crying, like, all the tears) but she’s not a machine, and her compassion – for the people suffering in the war, for Steve, for Charlie, for the villagers, and even for Ares – is a key facet of her character. (Plus we have the scene of her climbing the tower to get the magical sword, but later discover it’s not the sword that’s special, it’s her). Yes, I wish she’d gotten to interact more substantively with female characters outside Themyscira, but then, you don’t have a single man on screen for at least the first 15 minutes until Steve crash-lands, and that whole battle on the beach. So the Amazons are awesome, as noted above. I can live.

This is still not even to mention the fact of the men that Diana does travel with. Steve is the only typical White Leading Man, and even he mostly spends his time figuring out how to go along with whatever slightly crazy thing Diana is doing now. Charlie is a Scottish sniper with PTSD who Diana recognizes as having other talents than killing. Sameer is a Middle Eastern man who gets to point out that his race has stopped him from doing what he really wants to do. Chief is played by an actual Native actor and gets a line about the fact that Steve’s people have killed all of his. We also have that glimpse of Sikh soldiers heading to the front – in WWI, the British Raj was in full swing, there were a lot of troops from the Indian subcontinent, but they simply aren’t noticed or mentioned. We’ve talked about the Amazons already, but yes. Gal Gadot herself is Ashkenazi Jewish and did not do a British or American accent for the movie. The character of Wonder Woman was originally created (iirc) by a guy in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and another woman, specifically around themes of female empowerment. Plus, on the simplest level, I (and pretty much every woman I know) felt like a million bucks after seeing it. We finally got the superhero movie that we deserved, stripped of all the layers and layers of Male Gaze bullshit that we just have to take for granted, and good for Patty Jenkins insisting she got paid what she deserves.

Lastly, I am leery of anointing anything as a piece of Perfect Feminist Media ™, but the sheer fact that it took until 2017 for this movie to be made is a reflection of, again, the amount of BS it had to get through and do away with. There will always be more improvement to be had and to make, but it was a fucking awesome start.

#wonder woman #wonder woman meta #anonymous #ask

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ark-of-eden · 7 years

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Accidentally drifting away from IDW Transformers?

(R:) I realized recently that I can't remember the last time that I bought, or even really looked forward to buying, any IDW TF comic. I remember a while ago when I was united with other fans who were excitedly posting things like, "Only three more sleeps until release!!" I used to mark release dates on my calendar and sit around on Comixology, refreshing the site until the early hours of the morning so I could get issues right when they came out. My life's been in kind of a shitty place for a while, but IDW TF stuff used to be one of the few things that actually got me excited and that I looked forward to. Now I just kind of...vaguely recall that new issues have been happening when somebody posts a screencap that I haven't seen before. I don't really know what's been happening since I suddenly stopped reading months ago, but since people are barely posting spoilers and big meta analyses anymore (used to be that the day after an issue dropped, screencaps and spoilers were so thick on the digital ground that there was no way to dodge it all unless you filtered everything), I suspect that a lot of other people are feeling this as well? Maybe? :/

When I tried to encapsulate what was causing it, the biggest reason I could think of was that a whole lot of things that were relatable to me or that were interesting just definitively ended all at once. Even though I was following several series, this sort of happened simultaneously in all of them, which caused that sense that IDW TF as a concept wasn't really relevant anymore.

Examples of things that are now gone that were evidently more important to me than I'd originally thought:

* TAAO ended, and it seems up in the air as to who is going to continue it (if they continue it somehow) and what they're going to do with the plotline and main characters despite the dangling story hooks. I admit that I haven't even bought the last issue because hell, there's nothing coming after it, and this way I can at least pretend that it's still ongoing and I just haven't caught up. I was invested in Starscream because his situation mirrored some parts of my actual life, so I wanted him to succeed despite acknowledging his personality failings. Apparently there is good Starscream in that other Vs series that started recently and which I am so invested in that I can't even remember the name of it most days ("Starscream of Gor"?). But that seems to be Starscream chewing up scenery by being classically himself, as opposed to being something related to his TAAO character development.

* Megatron. It's not that his arc was bad or that the ending was bad, but interesting things were being done with him and now that he is gone all those interesting things are over. Previously, he was the Soulless Evil Warlord Who Keeps Being Disturbingly Heroic Sometimes. Then there was the weirdness of Autobot Megatron, which at least provided fuel for interesting philosophical thoughts. (Ravage is also gone, but he was underutilized, IMO, so there's the added tragedy of nothing interesting ever being done with him in the future.) I get that Megatron might be coming back later, but then he'll be...Atheist Jesus Megatron? I felt that there was more mileage left in him as he was, so even if the character comes back, those previous versions of him will still be gone.

* Tailgate. TBH, I think this was the last thing that I was curious about in post-Megatron LL plot country, because it was dealing with the transformation of a powerless person into an overpowered person and how he was changing, his relationships were changing, and it was all very complicated and muddy and fascinating. I'm sure that he'll be rescued eventually, but who knows when. In the meantime, there's a void where that whole plotline used to be.

* Skids, or specifically Dead Skids. Apparently there's a plotline going on where people are trying to resurrect him? And maybe they won't succeed, but the fact that this is even a thing made me realize that I've hit critical mass in my tolerance for people being Surprise Not Actually Dead. JRo has this weird reputation for being a monster who is constantly pawing the Sudden Character Death trigger, but he really doesn't kill main characters all that often. Trailbreaker/cutter and the DJD are the only main, ongoing characters who died and stayed dead, IIRC? Like, I really appreciated the emotional impact of Rewind's death, but a new Rewind showed up quickly and all that emotion went flat. Tailgate was dying dramatically and then got 100% better at the last minute. Pharma was infected with Robo Ebola, got his hands cut off and was left for dead in the middle of nowhere, was implausably rescued and got all better, got his head blown off, and is foreshadowed to be coming back AGAIN. (Don't get me wrong, my warped ass loves Pharma, but seriously??) Cyclonus dramatically shielded Tailgate from a hail of bullets and seemed dead, but showed up later with only cosmetic damage - Accidental Dead Universe No-Sell FTW. The entire cast, including bonus Overlord, got slaughtered, but it was another dimension so it didn't really count for anything (except that replacement Rewind). And Skids dramatically Died For The World's Sins and who knows, they might succeed in bringing him back too. I am actually cashed out on the experience of being emotionally affected by a person's death/dying only for it to un-happen shortly afterward. If you're going to tearjerk by killing people, just fucking kill people.

* The DJD. Tarn was another person who uncomfortably reminds me of me in too many ways, enough so that I at least wanted him to be around for a while so he could fuck up his life and everything around himself in relatable ways that encourage me to drink heavily. (I have a historical weakness for characters like him, so this isn't specifically a Tarn thing - Tarn's just the local incarnation of that type.) Character development for the rest of the guys definitely wouldn't have hurt either. Their deaths made plot sense, but they're gone now and I don't think they'll be easily replaced.

* Deathsaurus and his merry mecha. Sure, they're also still out there and are supposedly going to come back at some point, but they were interesting and now they're gone.

* Most of the interesting things in the Optimus Prime series, particularly now that Prowl is gone. Prowl jumped series and is now on LL Bad Cop Vacation on the moon? For some reason?? It was never clear to me why he got it into his head that he had to go there, but he is no longer pulling strings on half the plot and just seems to be retired. While I'm happy for him, he was a huge part of why I even bothered with that series. There's some interesting stuff going on with Optimus Vs Pyra Magna on the religious front, but LBR, that series is fucking crawling with humans and human concerns and all that crap, so I need a real good reason to spend time in that environment. (I deal with humans every day of my life. I don't need humans in my escapist media.)

* Nick Roche, may his sanctity endure forever, is done making Wreckers series? I think I heard? A portion of the perfect light of mercy has departed this sinful world forever. TTnTT

That's all that's coming to mind at the moment, but that's rather a lot of things that used to be vital to my interest and which are now gone. Mostly I read a whole lot of fanfic and get excited about those plotlines instead of whatever's going on in canon because people are still writing a lot of fic set back in the parts of canon where things were still cool. :/

I dunno. I'm sort of peripherally aware of what's going on, but it keeps slipping my mind to get recent issues and catch up. :( I'm not switching fandoms, so far as I can tell (is there anything besides TF and 40K where you can read an entire book with few or no humans at all? ...True, maybe those various YA series where all the characters are animals...), but maybe I'm just turning into one of those people who ignores current canon and hangs around in the rosy past instead? :/

#idw transformers #disillusionment #sadfeels

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