#but also I highly doubt this quest line is going to make it to my list of favorite job quests

[barrel-crow-n]

Obviously, we know that Inej knows Kaz best but really, even she doesn't know him - or at least, doesn't understand many parts to him.

"He just lets go" about a boy who has never let anything go. Who, since he was nine years old, has been unhealthily obsessed with Pekka and taking him down. Who was still obsessed with this revenge eight years later. Who hears his dead brother's voice in his head - cruelly egging him on on this maddened quest for vengeance. Who remembered every single last detail of the Hertzoon con; who killed eveyone involved.

People criticise this line, and rightfully because it's plain wrong, but it goes to show how isolated Kaz is and that even with the person he trusts most, he still holds many cards close to his chest. He still hasn't shed his armour completely - not even with Inej.

Inej also doesn't understand Kaz's language. She knows the signals he has established with her for moves and attacks but, funnily enough, it's only ever Matthias that truly reads Kaz (understanding his micro expressions and how he cares about Inej). She understands that she is trusted because he takes off his gloves - but even then doesn't seem to understand the extent; Kaz strips in front of her, as a show of trust - that he's willing to expose himself to her, but she doesn't understand that this is what he is trying to convey. I highly doubt this is a way of wooing Inej. At least, that that was the main reason. He was being vulnerable with her, showing his underbelly.

Kaz cannot say he cares, but he also can't seem to show it either - not in a conventional way, anyway. He carries Inej to the Ferolind despite it causing him pain, he yanks out the eye of the man who stabbed her. He says "I protect my investments." And that sounds completely dickish, but Kaz doesn't show appreciation. Ever. Inej doesn't understand that "I protect my investments" means "I want to look after you because you mean a lot to me" because that's what it means!!! In Kaz's language. "Protect" -> Look after, take care of, defend. "Investments" -> Very important to him, more valuable over time (liking her more and more as times goes on). "I protect my investments" isn't the stupid, asshole line Nina and a lot of people read it as. It's Kaz's kinda mean, not betraying how much it means to him, round about way of showing he cares. He won't say it outright because living in the Barrel has taught him that that is dangerous.

This is shown again when he says "I would come for you. And if I couldn't walk I'd crawl to you. And no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out, knives drawn, pistols blazing, because that's what we do, we never stop fighting." He can't say a simple "I care about you." but he can say all that. Why? Because he ties his care to violence. Protection. Causing harm to defend Inej. (Strooooong dog motifs for Kaz btw - the people of the Barrel were spot on with the rabid dog nickname)

And it links to how all the characters are always saying "ohh he's so mysterious, I don't know anything about him, where he came from, or what his motives are" when Kaz is literally openly saying everything.

He doesn't not speak of his trauma or his feelings! He talks about them all the time! He just isnt straightforward.

"Barrel boys don't have parents, they're born in the harbours and crawl out of the canals."

"My mother is Ketterdam, she birthed me in the harbour."

He's literally talking about being "dead" (thrown on the Reaper's Barge), how that affected him (traumatised him so bad he feels like he is no longer the same boy, that he was reborn as something else - a monster), about having to crawl out of the harbour, wet and weak from fever. He openly admits he's an orphan. He talks about it! Just in a cryptic way. A way no one understands.

It's like he's crying out, with people not far, but no one hears him. Like he's still on the Barge, making a futile attempt to cry out "I'm still alive." The Barge still has that hold on him. It's a manifestation of the trauma. It's the same way the flashbacks taking him back to that miserable night. A prison that he can't seem to ever be free from.

When he tells Inej "Tell Jesper he's missed around the Slat." he's doing it again, just more blatantly and more obvious, so that she picks up on it this time. He's showing her his language! Telling her to read into what he is saying! He's saying that he misses Jesper in his detached, cryptic way.

And this is so important with everything Kaz says. Reading between the lines - that's how you start to understand him. We get a cheat sheet by seeing his internal thoughts, but his dramatic talk is the olive branch for outsiders.

When Inej is asking him to open up, she isn't asking that he should share his problems and vulnerabilities like she believes she is saying. She's asking him to be more direct. And that's the difficult part for Kaz.

#kaz brekker. ever the performer #my isolated wet cat of a boy #who doesn't know how to show affection #and is stuck behind the bars that he himself created #he makes me crazy #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #six of crows #grishaverse #six of crows duology #my analysis

[jazeswhbhaven]

Huge Announcement from PrettyBusy! 1.10

First, this is quite long btw, if you'd like to read it for yourself please look on their website! They haven't uploaded it on their social medias just yet, but also check WHB Updates on twt in case I miss anything. I'm really only going to highlight the stuff I care about and wish to speak on! But overall there's a lot they're changing up and giving us in the future so this shows promise.

So! I like the timing of their pacing of releasing new chapters. I want them to take their time, the writers especially to give us some good stuff to read because I highly doubt they're gonna change the amount of battles between each story node. .-. And if they do then great!

They do give some info about friend systems (getting materials and items by having friends etc.) the Minhyeok mini game and additional chats being added.

So it seems here that we will get to battle the angels for additional items. They say you can loot them from their realms...so I wonder how this is going to go! Though it sounds like these battles are going to be harder than usual so make sure to beef up your teams/cards since the conditions need to be met.

SKRUNKLY MAMMON („ಡωಡ„)

But yay birthday stuff! I'm hoping they do it before my birthday date which is later in that month...because otherwise I'd have to wait until next year :(

Also they say that we will get to decorate the lobby with a single theme, icon packages will be added in the future, but they will give us icons for all the devils for the ones we have it sounds like.

Stickers of Ppyong are rewarded, they say 'line' so it makes me think of the messaging service LINE but I'm not sure if that's what they mean.

Now here's the big one

So now when we hit the pity threshold we will be able to select the character we want instead of just hoping we get whichever one we want. This is a big thumbs up from me because I think if ppl are throwing in that much money they should get what they want.

Now to address the 500 monthly Solomon Seals. They are letting us collect this by attendance and quests. I'm fine with that because I already do this with the Solomon Tears. I did peep some complaints (very few though) that didn't like the fact that they had to do stuff in order to get it. Come on now guys, you didn't think they were just gonna give us paid currency for free each month. Even I know better.

AND the Pancake Shop change. This one I am a bit worried about simply because what they highlighted sounds like it may or may not turn out to be what we expected in terms of spending and using our Pancakes to get items/characters we want. Also peep that in the future when we pull, when we get duplicates of Devils and cash them in for currency it will reward us with Gold and Tomes for the lower grade, and Nightmare Pancakes for the higher grade devils.

They did say that they are OPEN to criticism once the shop releases, so be ready to email them if this new Pancake system does not work for you. And a quick thing about the Nightmare Pass is that they did listen that other countries have to pay much more in pricing for things like this so they are open to lowering the price in the future. But this statement made me laugh ->

idk about any of you, but this read to me as "Yeah I'm tired of ya'll asking us for stuff when we do so much"

Like aight PB I hear you...I see you... (btw this isn't meant to be negative, I know very well what they mean)

So for Enviroment Changes (I'm assuming for gameplay) here are the highlights

-Reducing the Ultimate scenes by half (meaning it will be on the screen less during battle) -adding illustrations from past events into the album -boss skill window (idk who asked for this but cool) -faster annoucements about new characters and release schedules

So for January no new characters (bummer, but I understand) They say they are doing this because it takes them about 2-3 weeks to get the characters approved or any additional events and stories approved before they can confidently announce when we will see them.

It is crucial that we as players give them grace on this because given the nature of the game they have to jump through a lot of damn hoops to get things approved and the industry is realllllyyyy against NSFW stuff lately especially the higher up the ladder folks and will reject just about anything they don't like. I've seen people literally have to pull projects because the big man said "Nah not in this house" But PB is trying and that's what counts. They at least were transparent here that they don't want us to get our hopes up until things are certain.

And just a little message from them. Reminding us that they are a small production crew and that they are trying their best with all the resources they have at hand.

We all may have our thoughts about how they run things and it's natural because we're human, but the devs are at least listening and showing that they are willing to change and work around our needs the best they can for a better gaming experience. Now I do forsee some stuff is gonna piss us off, but that's a given. All we can do is give them feedback when it's due!!

#whb #what in hell is bad #prettybusy what in “hell” is bad? #whb game #game update #whb updates #a lot of stuff coming our way folks! #still worried about that pancake stuff but we'll see

[druidgroves]

😒 💀 👻 👀 💩 for Georgia + one oc of your choice

thank you bo !! georgia + allison bc they're og babygirls

get to know people in my oc's life

😒 …someone my muse hates.

The obvious answer for Georgia is Kellogg. Not a very interesting answer, but she hates the guy more than she's ever hated anything. Vault-Tec may have changed the trajectory of her life forever via cryo, but Kellogg tore it apart in front of her & inflicted so much trauma. We're getting closer to her fight with him in BLP & I am so excited lmao.

Allison hates Cullen with a passion. His "mages aren't people like you and me" comment pushed what would have been regular hatred of a templar into burning rage. She doesn't wanna be the exception. Being a mage is who she is & she's still a person despite it. When she visits Skyhold later on she definitely brings it up in front of the Inquisitor & the rest of their advisors, just to be petty.

💀 …someone my muse would kill for.

Without a doubt Georgia would & has killed for her son. The first time it was Kellogg, before she knew Shaun grew up & eventually figured out the ten year old she saw in his memories & inside the Institute was a synth. Even after she takes in synth!Shaun, by the end of the game she's already sold herself as the kind of person who wants to make the world a safer place for her family by any means.

Allison is kind of in the same boat--she's killed for family & for friends. She values her relationships to the rest of the Kirkwall crew highly & like. All of their personal quests involve some sort of killing lmao. She killed people in pursuit of her baby brother when he got nabbed. Allison repeatedly & willingly puts herself on the line for those she loves.

👻 …someone my muse considers a best friend.

Georgia's bestie is a hard tie between Preston & Piper. Preston was there from the beginning & they leaned on each other a lot in the early days after she left the vault. He taught her the basics of surviving in the new world she found herself in & she served as inspiration to keep going for him. He's her right hand man & she probably trusts him the most out of all of her companions. Piper serves best as a friend Georgia can chill out & gossip with, the kind of friend she sorely needed before the bombs. Piper is funny & loud & unafraid to be herself or express her opinions & Georgia truly admires that about her.

Allison's best friend is, of course, Varric. He talks about her like she hung the moon & Allison made him the fucking godfather of her child. She loves the man like family. Besides Varric, though, since he's the obvious choice, I think her next best friend would be Isabela. She's the most chill out of all the companions & the best at providing a break when Allison needs one. She also loves hearing about Bela's time at sea :)

👀 …someone my muse likes, but doesn’t trust.

Georgia likes Deacon but doesn't trust him as far as she can throw him (on account of the fact that he was technically stalking her even if it was for "the greater good"). She thinks he's funny & likes hanging out with him on Railroad stuff, but she basically treats him like a coworker.

Allison likes but does not trust Sebastian. Tbh I haven't really played much with him all that much but even if I did, his (admittedly somewhat understandable) reaction at the end of Act 3 would be her cut off point. Threaten her lover like that after years of being friends with her? You're done lmao. Post-DA2 Allison sees Sebastian as former friend but now a distant threat (distant so long as she & Anders can keep safe in hiding).

💩 …someone my muse dislikes, but admires.

Georgia & Cait don't get along very well due to opposing personalities & morals, but Georgia does admire her! Cait is everything Georgia isn't: tough, strong, & doesn't fall to social pressures. Georgia sees traits in Cait that she wishes came easier to her & in a way she's kind of jealous.

Allison isn't too fond of Samson for obvious reasons (since he is an ex-templar) but admires the fact that he put his neck on the line to assist mages. Overall she thinks he's pretty skeevy but overlooks that fact whenever they interact over the course of the game. If/when she got the news that he was leading the Red Templars for Corypheus, any goodwill she had left was probably diminished.

#bokatan #asks #ch: georgia tate #ch: allison hawke #thank u bo !!!! <3

[friendrat]

So my dm warned me that at some point my character will be separated from the group (read most likely kidnapped by a psychotic serial killer... he didn't say that, but I know how to read between the lines), so he wanted me to have a backup ready and leveled along with my main character. And because I am an over achiever (and practically don't know if our characters will all make it to that point...) I made three. 😆

So I thought I'd share them with my friends on here.

First up Ohtacáro Alcarin:

Ohtacáro is a Winged Elf Windlord Avenger. He's not overly religious, but he fell in with the Raven Queen after a mutual enemy of theirs possessed him and murdered his family. He is now on a path of vengeance to wipe out said enemy's worshipers and destroy their temples. He was inspired by Hercules.

Next we have Niamh:

Niamh is a Moon Elf Sidhe Lord Cleric. She is an elfin princess who fell in love with a mortal man. They were married and went to live with her people. However, her husband returned to his homeland for a visit and never returned. Refusing to believe that he's dead, she is now on a quest to find him. She is inspired by her mythological namesake.

And last we have Billy:

Billy is a young (homebrew) earth elemental. He is an Earthforger Beast Master Ranger, whose companion is a bull. He ran away from home when his stepmother tried to kill his bull that his mother gave him, solely out of malice. Since then he and his bull have been fending for themselves in the wilds. He doesn't have any grand quest, he just wants to avoid his stepmother and live happily with his bull. He is inspired by Billy Beg and the Bull (it is a Cinderella archetype, I don't care if I'm the only one who believes it, and I will die on this hill).

Right now the party most needs a healer, but her backstory is a bit too similar to another character in the party for my tastes. Her personality is very different though, so that could lead to some interesting role play and character development if I chose her. I also hope to selfishly use dnd to give the character a happy ending.

Billy is the least likely to be used because we already have a Beast Master Ranger in the party. I just made him solely for the selfish reason that Billy Beg is one of my favorite fairy tales and I thought it would be a fun backstory to use. If he ever does get played, I highly doubt that the story would play out anything like the fairy tale.

Which of course means that Ohtacáro is the most likely to be used unless the party changes considerably, and I'm ok with that. I think he's going to be really fun in combat, since he can fly, and I'm going to take full advantage of that. I also think the Avenger class is really interesting, so I'm looking forward to that. Also his mission is kind of open ended, so it won't be unsatisfying when he leaves after my main character rejoins the party.

So there they are! Feel free to ask questions if you want, as it may help me further define them! 😁

#dnd #d&d #dnd character #dnd ocs #dnd ohtacáro #dnd niamh #dnd billy #fairy tales #fairy tale retellings #mythology #mythology retellings

[sobredunia]

Hello internet, welcome to Gaym Theory

This is just like the GRIS ramble, and as the previous “proof that I’m not normal” post, I’ll put this under a readmore because by god is this long

I have a huge theory for halOPE just hear me out

Aight so the game consists of an emotionless angel walking around qUiRkY worlds but they’re actually deeply fucked up if you look between the lines

Actually, there’s no “between the lines” in the complex, every single layer in that blue square onion is fucked up

The first world is the orange/yellow one, a wheat field forest thingie

You meet a shy lesbian witch, a cool plague doctor lady, some old man, a mushroom girl, the ultimate clown boy, a wooden puppet girl...

Then, after a few fetch quests, you reach the blue door, which leads you to the blue world, the complex. This one is literally just capitalism without the money

All the residents in the complex are lost. They’re too afraid to get out, not knowing where to go, too scared to lose the little things they already have. Some of them got there with ambitions, wanting to fix up the place and whatnot, but slowly the energy leaves them and they can’t be bothered to do something about the ever-rotting building

Now, we’ve only gotten two worlds so far, and starbage has confirmed that that’s about half of the game (unless she* decides to add more content than she anticipated and now it’s just a small fraction of the full game) so we can expect another two, maybe tree worlds

*I am merely guessing on these pronouns, I have looked thru your carrd and all sites linked didn’t have them. babygrill what r ur pronouns please i dont wanna misgender u

Now, where am I going with this? It’s simple: HalOPE is a game about the five stages of grief

Just not in the way we think

The orange world is not denial, nor anger

It’s acceptance

In this world, the witch lesbian girl comes to terms with her feelings and confesses to the plague doctor lady. The puppet girl gets free of the strings that were dictating her every move and, although it feels weird to move without them, she has realised that they were bad for her, and finally breaks free. In this world, people are mostly nice to you, outside of some few slightly mean dialogues that end up getting replaced with happy stuff (except for the old man sucks to be him I guess)

The complex? Depression. Do I really have to explain it. The main color is fucking blue

At the end of the demo, we go through a green door wounded, and get treated by an old(?) lady we can’t see the face of

I still don’t fucking know what the fuck is bargain, or how it works and is supposed to be represented, but my theory is that we’ll be making a medicine for ourselves since we’re sick or whatever, and in the end we’ll have to choose wether we use it to cure ourselves or the old lady who took care of u, since she’s also sick or whatever

I still don’t think that’s what bargain is about, but we’ve only gotten one official scene in the demo and a couple of screenshots that don’t say much about the story in the dev blog other than we aren’t fucking dead I guess

Now, what role does the angel play in all of this? They’re an empty figure that lacks emotions and only listens. Obviously, they’re the one that has been traumatised enough to go through the five stages, but there’s something else

Why would the stages go backwards?

Sure, recovery isn’t linear and the stages are a rough graph. People can go from depression to anger to denial again to bargaining, but I highly doubt someone who has already reached acceptance would go back

Unless they want to see what has traumatised them in the first place? This doesn’t make much sense, I know, but forgetting traumatic events is a thing that can happen, and maybe they want to go back to see what caused it to go through the phrases properly, or finally put an end to that gut feeling that something is wrong

The angel is just a representation of the person. They don’t get swayed by the nature of the complex, or stay in the nice wheat world. They’re analytical, emotionless, made to stop the phases from hurting them as much as possible

It doesn’t really work

Sadness is a very powerful emotion

I’m not even gonna fucking touch the actual angel lore we’ve been given, nope, my braincells have worked enough for today. I’m just laying this around. This is just the game’s overall message thing whatever

Enjoy a wholeass bible on your funni angel game, @starbage​

#imagine if i am compltely wrong #and starbage is looking at me like. you fool. you absolute buffoon #halOPE #Nathan's notes #ramble #long post #I tried alright

[self-loving-vampire]

As someone with a highly fragmented and complex personality but also happens to be plural unrelated to all that, I highly vibe with you on the disordered personality front. Just to say though, you might want to look into the term “median system”- generally considered between singlet and plural in the plural community, I think your case could be considered to fall under the umbrella. But of course, only if it’s a label you’d like to identify with and think suits you!

Interesting. I had not heard of that before and it does sound kind of like what I described (such as very different aspects who are all still the same individual), though I don't know if it's really plurality in my case since my thing seems to be closer to formlessness/self-transformation.

A single person with wildly varying aspects that still don't amount to distinctly different people still fits the description here really well, with the added complication that I have changed so dramatically over the years that when I read old messages and posts of mine they really do sound like they come from a different person.

To give an example, I recently discovered chat logs from around late 2011 where a close friend comments (with me nodding in approval) that she extremely doubts I'd allow anyone to touch my chest. A couple of years before then I was more fully sex-repulsed as well.

And now I'm much more like this:

Another dramatic example is the shift from aspiring hero to villain. Can you believe that back when I was dueling people with sexual access on the line, I used to use not vampires or anything like that but a Lightsworn deck because I felt it represented me best? One of my past selves was like that before being devoured by scrupulosity.

And then there's things like the empathy loss...

But still, only one "me" really existed at a time. It just transformed.

I actually really like that I am able to do this. Self-creation is a very powerful tool and also an act of defiance against the roles assigned to me by the world. I just play whichever role is more useful or comfortable for me instead.

And, back when I was still going through the whole Canada quest, it became particularly clear to me that these identities don't even need to be "me" but rather something that can be put on and off at my convenience and remain detached from otherwise.

If you could call it acting, it should be noted that an actor who was always sincere would not be very good at their job.

I don't think this is an ability unique to me either. I don't think anyone is the same person they were born as. People's upbringing and relationships shape who they ultimately become.

All I'm really doing is taking some control over this transformative process by making modifications on purpose based on my objectives. My mind is a computer, and I can change its programming somewhat.

Anyway, I find this topic fascinating. Thank you, anon!

#long post #about me #self-necromancy

[ysara-and-friends]

Ngl

I already like the Stormblood whm quests better

And I'm not even done with the first quest

#like e-sumi-yan is far from my list of favorites #but at the very least I'd choose him over kan-e-senna's younger siblings or eschiva without hesitation any day #but also I highly doubt this quest line is going to make it to my list of favorite job quests #like I'm so biased with the ninja quests because of Karasu #but i also love the machinist quests #and guydelot and sanson from the bard quests are charming #and i didn't hate any of the dancer quest people #.. charming may not be the right word but i mean- #i love their dynamic #i SUCKED at bard but at least I could look forward to *gestures to the two of them* #i don't think i suck that bad at white mage but the fact that my brain is programmed for dpsing sometimes shows

[palmviolet]

some thoughts on legolas as crown prince or not

in my fic the year of what now, i write that thranduil has three children, of whom legolas is the youngest. very little is known about the woodland elves and thranduil's family specifically with regards to tolkien's lore, so we're kind of free to interpret here without bending canon too much, so i have some different thoughts:

1. legolas is an only child. this is the most popular idea among fans, mainly because obviously he's the only child we see. it also fits well when you consider thranduil's grief and the way he deals with it, legolas as his only reminder of his lost wife and thus painful to communicate with but also the only thing he has left to cling to. lots of potential for angst, of course. the other facet of this is that it makes legolas the heir to the throne, which i'm less sure about. leading me onto...

2. legolas is a younger child and therefore not the crown prince. i've chosen this option personally because it seems to align with what else we know of the characters. let's think about it –

he goes off on a highly dangerous adventure of unknown length more than once. of course we can argue that the fellowship was an impromptu decision, but thranduil knowing his son's propensity for adventuring would likely not have been surprised.

thranduil became king following the death of his father on the battlefield. he had to take immediate command of his father's army. so he knows firsthand the importance of having an heir in place, even as an elf. additionally, the quest to mordor coincides with increased pressure on the woodland realm that eventually leads to a direct attack. in such a situation — where his own life is at risk — i doubt he'd allow even the possibility of his realm going kingless unless absolutely necessary.

all of this leads to my suggestion that he has an older son or daughter whom he has primed to be his heir, if ever it becomes necessary. leaving legolas free to do all the world-wandering, fellowship-joining, and dwarf-befriending he wants. (maybe less that last one, if thranduil has anything to do with it.)

of course there may well be a throwaway line somewhere in tolkien describing legolas as 'thranduil's only heir' or something but this is my very loosely canon-based theory. very open to any other takes!

#legolas #thranduil #lotr #the hobbit #tolkien meta #sindar #oropher #tyown

[bullworthdrabbles]

Women in Bullworth: Zoe Taylor

TW: discussions of sexual abuse, trauma, CSA, Mr. Burton's ped* bullshit, self-harm, and other not-great stuff.

This one is super long and full of hard stuff to talk about don't read if you are not in the right headspace.

Oh boy, this one is going to be one of the hardest to write for me because I love Zoe and I know so many who love her as well. Then, there’s also a lot of triggering content in her story that needs to be discussed but hits me very close to my chest. This will likely be very long and particularly scathing due to just how frustrating Zoe’s story (or lack thereof) is to me. As a victim of CSA, this particular post is going to be very hard for me to discuss and will take me a long time to fully articulate. I’m sorry for how long it has taken me to write this, but I needed many breaks and to rant to several friends in order not to type all of this in all caps and through various curses.

Before I really discuss the tropes and stereotypes like I usually do I need to discuss the fact that as I write this series I’m seeing the unfortunate pattern arise of Rockstar sloppily using sexual violence against women in their stories without doing their research, taking the time to consider the consequence that happening would have in someone’s life, and just what message they are sending with how they tackle these kinds of stories. Sexual abuse and teachers using their power to take advantage of teens and minors is an unfortunate reality that does happen in high schools. I can understand the idea of wanting to discuss this issue when your game is set in high school where these things can happen, but this type of story is horrific and to do it justice requires a sensitivity Rockstar simply didn’t deliver.

The bully wiki and the game itself states that Zoe was expelled from the school for reporting Mr. Burton's sexual harassment and based on the previous missions involving this disgusting man we know Zoe isn’t the only victim. Does he ever get held accountable? Does he face any sort of punishment despite Jimmy quite literally being a witness and having evidence thumbtacked to his wall of Mr. Burton's disgusting behavior that he made Jimmy also take part in? No, not really, he only gets “fired” at the end of the game, and by “fired” I mean you still see him walking around the school like nothing happened, still saying the same shit and having access to underage girls. If it was just the lack of accountability I could interpret this as Rockstar taking a very bleak but realistic look at the situation. I could maybe think they were trying to show the disgusting truth that victims are almost never believed even with a mountain of evidence stacked against the perpetrator. They could be showing that it takes so much traumatizing bullshit just to try to get justice only for nothing to happen.

However, they messed up this story almost comically which makes me think it was just a cheap way to get her out of the school because they clearly didn't think about how abuse and a violation of someone’s bodily autonomy would impact an actual victim. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t simply flip a portapotty onto the person who harassed and violated my bodily autonomy. I'm not a generally violent person, but I do think about harming my abuser in incredibly violent ways because of how much bullshit he has put me through. Rockstar never has her dealing with the side-effects and real mental toll this kind of abuse does to a person unless it’s time to make it a funny mission. Turning real horrific trauma into nothing more than a motive for a prank. Then there’s the dialogue of her talking about liking older guys, which I want desperately to believe is Rockstar trying to insinuate that Zoe is coping with her trauma via hypersexuality. Hypersexuality is a common unhealthy coping mechanism for survivors of sexual trauma, they purposely seek out sexual encounters as a way of reclaiming power and bodily autonomy sexually. It can also be seen as self-harm behavior if the survivor is having lots of purposely unprotected sex. But Rockstar clearly didn’t do enough research into sexual trauma responses, much less the basic realities of surviving sexual trauma, so I highly doubt that they even considered this when writing these lines.

Unfortunately, Rockstar was just trying to make her a “not like other girls” stereotype, I bet you thought I wasn’t going to bring it up but sadly I am. Zoe is one of the better-written female characters, but that isn’t really saying much when all the other girls are just cardboard cheap conflict and plot devices. We actually know a lot more about her background than we do the other girls, does it really change that she doesn’t serve much of a plot-significant role? Nope. Does this change the fact that Rockstar once again used sexual trauma as a cheap mission fodder? Nope? Is she allowed to be more than just a health pack, quest giver, and reward? If you think her being the “girl the protagonist gets with at the end” counts maybe, but to me, nope.

This was hard for me to say as it was a hard pill for me to swallow, but literally, all of her traits that separate her from the other girls are just so they could make her a “Tom-boy” and “not like other girls” stereotype. They don’t make her a fully formed unique person where her past, experiences, and traumas actually impact who she is as a person. No, they needed a final love interest for their protagonist so they just took his character traits and story and made some similar dialogue as the dialogue for Gary ( we can all admit there was something going on before the betrayal between those two) then slapped it onto another ginger, now with boobs. The funny thing is she doesn’t even seem that interested with Jimmy until the very end, their whole relationship seems forced and rushed so Rockstar fucked even that up. They clearly had a lot of ideas they wanted to touch on but because of their own unwillingness to take the time to flesh her out instead, we got...well everything I said before.

I’ve said it a thousand times and I will say it again, a lot of these problems could have been avoided. Rockstar could have taken their female characters seriously, could have written them well if that was one of their focuses, but it wasn’t. I love this game and I love a lot of these characters but I feel that even if this game provided me years' worth of comfort and entertainment, it should still be called out for its issues and how it mishandles very serious and sensitive issues. I hope this series and my thoughts on these characters made you think about your own writing and works you see making similar mistakes. I can tell that none of these errors came from a place of malice, but deep ignorance and works that perpetuate said ignorance can send harmful messages to people. I hope by shedding light on this I may make you re-examine the messages you see surrounding female characters in media and their stereotypes. Thank you for reading my incredibly long rants.

#sa tw #csa tw #cce discussion #bully canis canem edit #canis canem edit #women of bullworth #bully anniversary edition #bully brain rot time #bullworth academy #bully scholarship edition #bully game #cce bully #bully cce #cas speaks

[hafanforever]

It’s Good to Be Bad

I’ve described in previous analyses that I have a strong affinity for villains in fiction, including those by Disney. But like any fan of Disney, there are villains that I love and ones that I deeply detest with every bone in my body. So for my last analysis of the year, I will discuss my five most favorite and five least favorite Disney animated villains, though I also want to list a couple of other characters as honorable mentions to explain why I like or hate them.

The reasons I have for liking my favorite villains are simple, if not somewhat shallow, because I don’t exactly have deep reasons for liking them. Regardless of how evil, sadistic, cruel, and ruthless they are, I like them primarily because they are funny or charismatic. But it’s so much easier for me to list why I hate my least favorite villains, which is largely attributed the kinds of traits they display (most of which I cannot stand in people), their motives for being evil, and how they carry out their evil deeds while showing their evil natures.

This essay has turned into a longer one than I anticipated, so I am adding the “Keep reading” feature. Before I begin, I want to thank my dear buddy and soul sis @minervadeannabond for coming up with this title. Here is yet again another analysis of mine for you to enjoy, sis! 😁😄😉❤️

Most Favorites

Scar - Since The Lion King was the very first Disney film I ever saw in theaters as a child, and the first one I remember well from my childhood, many of my favorites Disney things come from it, including Scar being my #1 favorite Disney villain. Yes, he is a sadistic, tyrannical, narcissistic, cold-blooded murderer, but I think it is because of his cunning, smooth, elegant, charismatic nature and how pivotal he is to the story, particularly with how much he turns out to be a dark reflection of Simba, is why I love him so much. Furthermore, his song “Be Prepared” is my favorite villain song and among my favorite Disney songs of all, further showing how much The Lion King has given me Disney favorites since I was a child. 😁

Hades - Another one I remember well from my childhood, Hades is undoubtedly one of the funniest villains from the Disney animated canon. Although he is as cruel, evil, ruthless, and sadistic as any Disney villain, Hades is also so fast-talking, sleazy, sarcastic, cheeky, and hilarious that it makes it hard for me to take him seriously as a menacing villain. And while he constantly goes into fiery rages and blows his hot-headed top when furious, these help make Hades far more a comical, rather than scary, figure. Heck, when I was a kid, I always laughed, rather than got scared, whenever he unleashed one of his temper tantrums (except when he blows up at Meg with “I OWN YOU!!!”). And James Woods’s performance, especially since he ad-libbed many lines, helps make Hades such an unforgettable and memorable, if not lovable, character. So yeah, Hades’s wisecracking, talkative personality made him a memorable villain for me as a child, and I’ve loved him for it ever since. 😆😂

Ursula - Much like Hades, Ursula is sleazy, scheming, and cunning, yet wisecracking and comical at the same time. Besides her dry sense of humor, Ursula’s eccentricity, flamboyance, and elegance have always been the traits that drew me to her, and Pat Carrolll’s performance of the character is pure excellence. 😉

Maleficent - Despite being an incarnation of pure evil, including with her self-proclaimed title as The Mistress of All Evil, to me, Maleficent is by far the coolest, most badass Disney animated villain of all! 😆👍🏻 Yes, she curses Aurora with no true motive whatsoever, and she’s sadistic, ruthless, blasphemous, and murderous, but her display of her ill temper and dark magic just makes her totally awesome, most especially when she zaps her minions for their stupidity and incompetence upon learning they were only looking for a baby during their 16-year search for Aurora. 😁

Ratigan - Again, Disney has an evil, murderous, sadistic villain in Ratigan, but I love him because he is very collected, calculating, sophisticated, and charismatic, not to mention Vincent Price delivers such a great vocal performance as the character. 😉 What I also love about Ratigan is the moment when he undergoes what is known as a villainous breakdown, which is when a villain snaps and goes utterly crazy. During the film, Ratigan has some moments of losing his cool, but just as quickly manages to become calm and regain his composure. However, upon seeing Basil and Olivia escape from him inside Big Ben, along with Basil having having foiled his earlier scheme to kill the queen and take over England, Ratigan finally snaps, turning from a formal, sophisticated, composed rat to a highly feral, aggressive, savage one. It is the moment when Ratigan reveals the monster within and looks like a true rat, with an aggressive expression, hunched back, elongated claws, and running on all fours. The fact that Ratigan’s breakdown juxtaposes what kind of rat he was for the majority of the film is why his villainous breakdown is my favorite of any Disney villain.

Most Hated

Gaston - I have stated this before in “Bride and Prejudice”, but I pick Gaston as my #1 choice as my least favorite Disney animated villain. And it’s not just because of his extreme vanity, egotism, chauvinism, and arrogance, which are the very traits I hate in people, but because of his inferior, sexist, misogynistic views of women. Gaston is THE walking definition of toxic masculinity, the fictional example of the worst kind of man, the epitome of what men should NEVER be! 😡😡😡 He thinks men are the superior gender and that women are inferior to men, with their only purposes being to serve men and be their sex objects. And since I am a feminist who believes in gender equality, I dislike men who have low, sexist opinions of women, and Gaston fits the profile of what I think is the worst example of such a man. I could go on and on explaining just why I loathe this monster of a man with all my heart, but you can just read the aforementioned analysis to find out more.

Lady Tremaine - If it weren’t for Gaston being my #1 pick because of his extreme sexism and misogyny, I would pick Lady Tremaine. She comes such a close second because her motivations for abusing, oppressing, and being so cruel to Cinderella are petty and stupid, ESPECIALLY because Cinderella never even did anything to deserve such treatment from her in the first place! 😠😡 Lady Tremaine hates Cinderella and is very jealous of her purely because Cinderella so much better-looking and kinder than her own daughters and herself. So they abuse her and make her their servant to make her miserable and unattractive so that they can look better than her instead. Additionally, Lady Tremaine has a deep-rooted obsession to be above Cinderella at all costs that she resorts to lying, manipulation, trickery, and cheating in order to stay above. I particularly loathe it when she manipulates her daughters into tearing up Cinderella’s dress just so that she can appear fair and keep her word regarding her side of the bargain (she says ”if you can find something suitable to wear”, and once it’s wrecked, it’s no longer suitable) while simultaneously making sure she doesn’t have to keep her promise since she never wants Cinderella to go in the first place. All that being said, do these sound like justifiable excuses for hating a completely innocent woman? I DON’T THINK SO!!! 😡😡😡

Claude Frollo - Now if weren’t for BOTH Gaston and Lady Tremaine coming first, Claude Frollo would come on top as well! 😡😡😡 Frollo is without a doubt in my mind the most evil villain in the Disney animated canon. Unlike most Disney villains, he is COMPLETELY devoid of any likable or redeemable traits, making me have nothing but feelings of pure hatred for him. Ruthless, cruel, blasphemous, racist, and evil to his core, Frollo holds a deep-seated hatred for the gypsies and seeks to eradicate them from Paris, making him not only murderous, but genocidal, especially since he seeks to kill them simply out of his own racism, supremacy, and superiority. Throughout the years in his quest to eliminate the gypsies, Frollo murders Quasimodo’s mother by violently kicking her, causing her to fall and hit her head on the stone steps of Notre Dame, then tries to burn Esmeralda at the stake, declaring that she must be killed because she has been practicing witchcraft. After killing the mother, Frollo even attempts to drown baby Quasimodo simply because of his deformity. What makes Frollo even more evil besides doing his deeds is that he is a judge with control over the city, yet he proves himself to be corrupt and hypocritical by violating the laws to accomplish his dark, sinister deeds. Perhaps what makes Frollo the most evil villain of all is that he is in complete denial about how evil he really is. He has a delusional belief that he is a good, religious man doing God’s work by trying to purge the world of evil, when all he really does is twist his “faith” and hypocritically use it for his own evil purposes. What’s worse is that Frollo never once takes an ounce of responsibility for his crimes; he makes excuses to justify his actions, painting himself as guiltless and his victims as the only ones at fault. So with Frollo being such a blasphemous, hypocritical, racist, genocidal, murderous, corrupt judge who never believes he is doing anything wrong and always lays blame on the victims of his misdeeds, I can’t say there is a single thing about him that I like, and I’m happy he met his death in a fiery blaze! 😡🔥

Mother Gothel - A character I see as being an amalgam of Gaston, Lady Tremaine, and Frollo, the reasons why I hate all three of these villains are also found in Gothel: vanity, narcissism, oppression, mental abuse, trickery, manipulation, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and flat-out cruelty. First of all, Gothel’s vanity, narcissism, and obsession with her own beauty makes her extremely insufferable and annoying, not to mention the fact that she hoarded the flower to herself for hundreds of years just to stay alive shows how incredibly selfish and possessive she is. And due to her selfishness, she kidnaps Rapunzel, hides her in a tower, lies to her about the outside world, and continually mentally abuses, manipulates, oppresses, mocks, and belittles her just to ensure that Rapunzel will never leave the tower and the flower’s magic in her hair will keep her (Gothel) alive and young forever. On par with her narcissism, Gothel is shown to be a very spoiled, childish, immature woman who seeks to always have things her way and throws tantrums or other emotional outbursts when she doesn’t get her way or what she wants, especially the very moment she wants it. Furthermore, Gothel possesses a martyr, or victim, complex, which is shown perfectly when victimizes herself and places all the blame on Rapunzel whenever any sort of conflict befalls their lives and relationship, especially when they argue. So with all these flaws in mind, like Gaston, Lady Tremaine, and Frollo, I can’t find any good reason to like Gothel at all. “Mother Knows Best”? More like “Gothel Knows Worst”! 😠😡 

Governor Ratcliffe - I said above that I hate Gaston because of his bigoted, low views of women, and prejudice is the main reason why I hate Governor Ratcliffe. However, his prejudice is in the form of racism, the kind of bigotry that I hate the most. Ratcliffe displays this attitude towards the Native Americans, considering them savages and seeing himself as better than them all because of his race, which makes him a white supremacist. Besides his supremacy and superiority regarding his race, Ratcliffe is intensely greedy and selfish since he wants to keep any riches found for himself and believes that the Virginia land and anything he finds on it is his for the taking. In relation to his bigotry, he is also quite delusional and self-righteous, which makes him believe that any theory he has is right and he refuses to believe otherwise or listen to reason. For example, Ratcliffe dismisses Wiggins’ correct assumptions on why the Indians attacked the settlers and John’s claim that there is no gold in the lands after Pocahontas tells him this. The hatred I hold for Ratcliffe is significantly less than the other four listed here, but the reasons I gave are virtually like those I gave for Frollo, so I’m confident with Ratcliffe and his place on my list.

Bonus Mentions

Hans - Hans is a villain that I place in the middle between my most loved and most hated villains, because I love him for WHAT he is as a villain while I simultaneously hate him for WHO he is as a character. I have said it to friends and some of my other analyses before, but one of the reasons why I love Frozen is because it took many of the traditional fairy tale elements and tropes used in their preceding films, and turned them upside down. So rather than having another prince as the heroic male lead in this film, Frozen twisted that trope around by making him the villain instead. And when Hans finally reveals his true nature, you realize that he has fooled not only Anna and the other characters who interacted with him, but first-time viewers as well! So while I love Hans for being a villain who keeps his true nature under wraps for the majority of the film and almost gets away with his crimes because of it, I also hate him because of how cold, cruel, callous, ruthless, and sadistic he really is. When he reveals his true nature and explains his plan to Anna, he mocks her intelligence, naïveté, and desperation for love while explaining just how easy it was for him to deceive and manipulate her into being a pawn in his plan to take over Arendelle. Throughout the whole scene, Hans smiles wickedly and sadistically, clearly showing the delight he is getting from tormenting Anna and watching her suffer while he explains his scheme and extinguishes all light sources to accelerate her death. It’s also easy to see his sadism when he announces his plan to murder Elsa, and that he will get even greater joy out of carrying out the act itself (which we see when Hans smiles widely while swinging his sword over Elsa’s head as he tries to kill her on the fjord).

Chi-Fu - While he is not a true villain, and not even evil at all, Chi-Fu is a very detestable character, one whose guts I hate completely because he has the same traits that make me hate Gaston: arrogance, conceit, egotism, bigotry, superiority, and misogyny. Prejudice against women is a main theme in Mulan, and Chi-Fu is the one man whose prejudiced opinions never change. While Shang and Mulan’s fellow soldiers initially hold views that women are beneath men, they learn to change them after Mulan proves herself a capable warrior in the army (even after her disguise is revealed), most especially when she helps save China from Shan Yu’s reign of terror. Despite the majority of his bigotry being aimed at women, Chi-Fu is also detestable because he shows it towards nearly everyone else, except the Emperor. As the second-in-command to the Emperor, Chi-Fu sees himself superior to almost everyone else around him, which enhances his pompous, elitist, arrogant attitude. Because of all these antagonistic traits, I loathe Chi-Fu while I don’t hate Shan Yu at all, even though the latter is truly pure evil and genocidal! 😠😡 It just goes to show that some people who are neither necessarily good nor bad can be even more contemptible that the most malevolent, murderous people.

#Miscellaneous Disney #Disney #Disney Villains #Disney Villain #villains #villain #Scar #Hades #Ursula #Ratigan #Maleficent #Gaston #Lady Tremaine #Claude Frollo #Mother Gothel #Governor Ratcliffe #Hans #Chi-Fu #favorites #most favorites #least favorites #my stuff #mine

[thefirstknife]

I keep seeing this brought up in your posts with o14 and just want to point this out: just because someone doesn’t know/say they’re being abused doesn’t mean they aren’t. I myself didn’t know the emotional/verbal abuse I endured until after the fact and this really makes me uncomfortable when you use that point. Please understand that it is very much a thing that happens to those (not all cause everyone is different) that are abused.

You’ve brought up an important point that I am very well aware of. I am glad you sent this ask in this way and I want to address why I don’t use it as an argument.

Under read more, warning for talk about abuse:

I specifically don’t want to entertain this part of the discourse because abuse is about power dynamics. The abuser is usually someone with more power over the other person and the abused is usually someone who cannot escape the situation due to that power imbalance. And the abused person often either doesn’t have the capacity to understand the power imbalance or isn’t capable of asking for help or escaping the situation because the abuser is in some way threatening them. It doesn’t have to be a direct and physical/vocal threat (though it often is), it can be implied, but the imbalance in power dynamics is essential to identify an abusive situation. This is why abuse always features an age imbalance, economic imbalance (employer-employee or a household where only one person works and has control over all the money), family imbalance (parent-child) and so on. The abuser is the one who must have power and control over the abused. 

There is no such thing between Saint and Osiris. In no way are they ever presented as one being above the other. They are equals in every single way: age, experience, position within their respective jobs and so on. Saint does not fear Osiris, nor does Osiris have any power or control over him. Saint isn’t afraid of talking back to him and challenging him. Saint isn’t isolated from others and he isn’t afraid or incapable of asking for help (from YW, Ikora, Sagira previously...). For that reason, I cannot accept that there’s a possibility of Saint being abused but just not knowing about it. From all the available lore that I’ve poured through to compile all of the known and documented interactions between the two, there is no indication that Osiris holds any power or control over Saint in order for this relationship to be classified as abusive. 

Some people said that Osiris is being abusive by “withholding emotions” from Saint, which can definitely a part of an abusive relationship. However, I do not believe that Osiris is withholding emotional availability; this argument only popped up after Sagira’s death and their bickering in the Hangar (where Sagira was mentioned). It is explained numerous times by many different characters that Osiris does not respond to grief well. Ikora knows it, Saint knows it. This is not an abusive trait per se, as one cannot really control how they handle that sort of extreme grief. One could even argue that Saint was the abusive one in this situation by bringing up Sagira before Osiris gave him permission and a green light that he’s okay with discussing it. Same thing happened when Crow brought it up. However, I will not claim that Saint or Crow are abusing Osiris because there’s no other evidence to it. The situation is complex and not just easily boiled down to abuse. As someone who has been through abusive situations, I believe it’s reductive to call one bump in the road as abuse. It makes it harder to recognise actual abuse, both for victims and onlookers. 

Of course, maybe there’s something in the background that we don’t know about. After all, we don’t have every single Saint/Osiris interaction written out in the lore. However, considering what we do have and what we do know about these two characters, I can say for a fact that there is no power imbalance between them and Saint is not the type of a person who would sit back in fear of anyone and not know about being abused, definitely not by Osiris. There is simply no evidence. Of course, if someone just doesn’t vibe with the situation due to a personal experience and the whole Saint/Osiris argument that happened most recently in the lore is triggering for them, that is something I can respect. It’s personal, you can’t control what triggers your trauma. But that’s a personal experience, not an objective read on their relationship. People have been adamant about saying that the relationship is objectively abusive, which it is not. If it’s upsetting for personal reasons, I would absolutely recommend not interacting with the upsetting content and would implore people to tag their content appropriately.

In my original post from back a month ago or so, I specifically addressed how people tend to claim Osiris is abusive over Saint without backing it up with anything and essentially vilifying one of them (Osiris) while completely infantilising the other (Saint). It’s harmful to mlm, especially to mlm of colour because of how Osiris is treated by the community. It’s a reductive view of a long-term mlm relationship that spans centuries. The time span is quite literally incomprehensible. 

People also never bring up Saint’s behaviour towards Osiris, such as pushing a sensitive topic in public and pressing him on it when he’s clearly not ready. These are also signs of abuse. Another sign of abuse are also threats of physical violence which Saint does in the Devil’s Ruin quest dialogue when he tells Osiris to “get off this line” to which Osiris responds with “make me” and then Saint quips with “you would not survive that.” Nobody brings that up as abuse. And they shouldn’t! It’s clear that this isn’t a serious threat. And it should be clear that one quarrel over a traumatic topic isn’t a sign of a toxic relationship. Saint also greets Shaxx with the line “I always hated you, brother” and then they both laugh. Saint is very clearly often joking in this way and people recognise it as not serious. Osiris should be given the same benefit of the doubt when he retreats into himself over indescribable grief; he’s not emotionally manipulating Saint, he is grieving in the only way he knows how.

I find it highly suspect that this whole discourse only started once the pairing was confirmed as canonical. People have been shipping them way before that and with way less information available and there’s never been any discourse about how Osiris is actually abusing Saint in this relationship. I just find it really suspicious that a mlm relationship featuring a man of colour gets labelled as abusive from the side of that man of colour specifically, only after we’ve received the information that it’s canon. It’s an incredibly common pattern in fandom spaces when a fandom favourite (in this case Saint) gets into a canon relationship with a character that’s easy to be prejudiced against. Even if that prejudice is unconscious, it’s still prejudice and it’s painfully obvious to anyone who has ever been in fandoms for as long as me (or longer). There are also literally scientific studies on this so I’m not just talking about my own experience. 

Without any evidence of abuse and no imbalance in power dynamics present between these two characters, I can’t see how someone can come to a conclusion that Osiris abuses Saint after they’ve argued once “on screen,” especially after Saint himself explains what the situation is about. He eloquently puts his reasoning into words when Amanda asks him if there’s trouble and also promises to reach out for help if he needs it. I don’t like the trend of jumping to a conclusion, especially when people who do it are highly inconsistent about it (most recent one being the person who claims Osiris is abusive, but also claims that both Osiris and Saint are grown men who can handle themselves without our help; this is a contradictory statement, as Osiris cannot be abusive to Saint if Saint can handle himself and can just leave if he wants to).

I apologise if the discourse about this whole thing is making people uncomfortable. I should’ve addressed my reasoning behind it earlier, in order to make sure that everyone is on the same page. I should’ve also tagged it with a warning for talk of abuse, but no one else did and I didn’t think to correct it, which is definitely something I should’ve done. People started talking about how Osiris is abusive and toxic without thinking that people going into the tags might be upset by it and unfortunately I didn’t think of it either.

I hope this explains it adequately. It’s a long post but I didn’t want to hold back on any of the details because this is an important topic. If there are any points that anyone believes are not properly explained, feel free to ask for further clarification.

#destiny 2 #discourse #saint-14 #osiris #o14 #abuse warning #i don't want to get into personal information but i've been through abuse myself #and while every abusive situation is different and unique to the people involved #there are patterns for classification #most important being power and control #ask #Anonymous

[mrpenguinpants]

Hey so that Dainsleif quest huh 👀

[Spoilers for those who haven't played it yet ofc]

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These are just some disorganized initial thoughts for your consideration:

So I'm pretty sure his "travel companion" that he keeps mentioning is our twin

Does that mean our twin has gone to the exact same places as we've been going?? Dainsleif seemed to be familiar with all the locations we visited in Mondstadt but I suppose that could've been from an even earlier journey

And the possibility that the Abyss is trying to mislead us bc we hadn't encountered any abyss mages since Dvalin 🤔🤔🤔 what do they want??? We know (kinda) that our twin is watching our progress and that they're the prince/princess of the Abyss so like are they trying to keep us from getting in the way of their plans so as not to accidentally hurt us? Though something tells me we're gonna get tangled up in it one way or the other lmao

Dainsleif said that his goal is to oppose the Abyss so perhaps he's got his own secret plans to try to stop our twin (as is also supported by what he said at the end of the mortal travails video about proving ourselves worthy of stopping "her"/Lumine probably)

Also turns out I'd been pronouncing his name wrong the whole time lmao I had been saying dains-leaf instead of dains-lif

No Vision as confirmed by his full character model

Also his eyepatch is more of a phantom of the opera mask lmao

Important observation he looks like post timeskip Dimitri from a distance when I had to meet him in Dvalin's Lair I legit thought he was Dimitri for a sec XD

Anyway those were my thoughts about the new quest lmao my internet was cutting out the whole time while I was trying to play like dsfkdksjf pls I just wanted to talk to blond eyepatch man

Important part of this post: 

I took a lot of pictures of Dainsleif if you want to use them as references (or appreciation).  The pictures are under the read more tag so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t read anything and skip to the read more. 

Also, he calls you and your sibling “idiots” through money.

He asks for 500 mora and (this is probably just a coincidence but considering Zhongli tips Xiangling 888 mora I’m sus). The number 250  [二百五] or ( èr bǎi wǔ) means “idiot”. 

If someone calls you 250, they can say (nǐ shì wǔ bǎi) or “You are [250]”. But if you give someone 500, this can be taken as saying two people are stupid (250 + 250 = 500). I mean, that’s probably not how it works but I think it’s funny to imagine Dainsleif being too polite to call us stupid. 

---

I know right? When I saw the leak for it and seeing it confirmed in patch notes, I was so confused. Wha-Why are you here so early? I wasn’t expecting you for another 5 years at least. I’m happy to see you and your beautiful model in game but at the same time I was so worried that we were going to get crumbs of interactions. Same thing with Guizhong in Zhongli’s story quest. Genshin please...finish your stories (that’s fucking hilarious coming from me considering I still have a part 2 to Childe that I need to write), but I’m honestly just happy that he’s in the game. But yes 👀👀 more lore food. 

You know, I was talking about the archons a bit with @maagdalen and, I may have been misunderstanding or reading the wrong message, but they brought up the idea that what if the archons’ personality is based on their regions country's? So for example, Venti’s personality adopts the German mentality because Mondstadt was modelled after Germany? Obviously, I have no idea if that’s true because I’m not from or am German but in the context of Liyue and Zhongli. I can definitely see some sort of connection. 

But some food for thought:

“But cyro archon is very viable since she's suppose to be a kind hearted person that needed to be cold for the sake of freedom. or peace. something like that.”

 “Sorry, but this is stupidly Russian style. No matter what you say, people will always be dissatisfied. Of course it's not that bad...but it's something to think about.“ 

But yess, @svnflowery�� said the same thing. That Dainsleif was Lumine’s “guide” the same way Paimon is our guide. I actually think that’s an interesting idea. That Lumine has gone to the exact same places as we’ve been through. It actually makes me wonder (since we can play as both her and Aether), that Lumine went through the same story line as Aether. She met Venti, Zhongli, everything that’s happening right now. She’s already been through, then when she reached the Khaenri’ah chapter she failed. So she decided to spin the clock back and change destiny. I mean, this is me spit balling and I don’t think this happened but it’s something to think about. 

You know funny enough, hasn’t Venti been asleep for a while? Either way, he doesn’t really strike me as the type that truly wants to be an Archon. He says in his voicelines as well that “that’s a problem for Mondstadt to deal with”. So it would be easier for the Abyss Order to mess some things up. While Zhongli has been alive for 6000 years and I highly doubt Abyss Order can do anything to him haha. If we’re going on that “Lumine has already been through this journey” she could be trying to re-make or lead us on the same path. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Dainsleif was our guide, then when Lumine spun the clock back and aligned herself with the abyss, that’s when they split. That could be a reason why he’s trying to oppose the abyss order but really I think it’s because the Abyss Order’s goal is to basically set the world on fire (or something like that). I always pronounce character names wrong and I don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of it. You know who I’m talking about, my pronunciation isn’t completely shit to the point you don’t know. So why do you keep yelling at me??

Also. The most important part of his quest was it was “Aether’s version” of the “We will be reunited” trailer. 

It even showed the crushed dandelion flower and the ruin guard footprints. IT’S OUR SISTER. 

I knoww, I was searching for his vision and got weird pics but that’s alright, I LOWKEY HATE THE OPERA MASK SO MUCH. GIVE ME ACTUAL MASK. THERE GOES THE “SEPERATE COLOURED EYE” ART OF KHAENRIAH PEOPLE. Yo, knock off Dimitri let’s go. 

I love Dainslief’s english voice but I hate Xiao’s en voice. What a dilemma. I usually play in chinese but wow does Dainslief sound old. Jp is slightly better but I hear grandpa vibes. Korean isn’t bad and I actually don’t mind korean xiao so korean we shall go. It’s weird. I like Dainsleif english voices, Xiao chinese voice, paimon korean voice haha. Jp is usually just good all around but I have preferences. But tyty for telling me your thoughts! I’d love to hear about the Xiao quest that just dropped. Beautiful boy 

sweats 

yeah about that...xiao scammed me. I wonder if his speech changes based on what you say. i kind of doubt it though. 

I’m looking at his outfit from every angle while Xiao stays pretty in the back. 

I like that you can see his magic arm there. 

While on this side you can’t. 

I swear this is for research. IM TRYING TO SEE IF HE HAS A VISION. IM INNOCENT!!

he also has some sort of weird...blue thingy on his foot?

Im using Xiao as a personfication of me BUT TELL ME YOUR SECRETS 

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin lore #genshin impact lore #genshin spoilers #genshin impact spoilers #genshin khaenri'ah #genshin impact khaenri'ah #genshin lumine #genshin impact lumine #genshin aether #genshin impact aether #genshin dainsleif #genshin impact dainsleif #lumine #aether #dainsleif #genshin 1.3 #genshin impact 1.3

[wakaoujisenhime]

My congratulations with 200 followers! Can I ask scenario about Akashi's girlfriend suddenly finds out about his second identity, but she isn't scared and she accepts him?

A/N: So, with this one, I wasn’t entirely sure which setting I should put it in. I was between her finding out when he first ‘transformed’ and discovering it when he reverted back to his Teiko self. In the end, I decided to pick something in between and something entirely different, so I hope you’ll like what I came up with. ( ꈍДꈍ )

Tags: Akashi x reader ✅  SFW ✅  fluff ✅  slight angst ✅

image/art source: Twitter (art by eijo_q)

━━━━☆ ━━━━☆ ━━━━☆

A slight tint of red - Akashi x reader

You’ve been looking at these heterochromatic eyes for as long as you can remember—those cold and lonely pair of eyes that belonged to your beloved boyfriend, Akashi.

The captain of Japan’s most popular and most feared team was unrivaled in many aspects, and that trait made him a highly respected individual amongst his peers. Unfortunately, that respect also bore negative feelings such as fear, hatred, and jealousy that were the main reasons people decided to avoid his presence.

But you were different. Those rumors didn’t face you in any way; if anything, they motivated you to actually find out more about the man who earned himself countless titles.

The moment you two first looked into each other’s eyes, shivers went down your spine, and if your memory didn’t betray you, then he probably felt the same way. Back then, you felt like you couldn’t move for a slight moment, but thanks to your friends and his teammates, who brought you back to reality, the two of you snapped out of it quicker than you might have wanted.

It took you both quite a while to actually start a conversation since he wasn’t usually the type to initiate such things. At the same time, you, on the other hand, were either too shy or unsure whether you interpreted the short connection you guys had correctly or not. But when you finally succeeded, neither of you had to struggle and find a suiting topic; the conversation just started developing on its own. And after a few months during which you had several interactions with the red-haired young man, it became evident that you had fallen in love with him, so now came the question whether you should confess to him or not, when and how...

Much to your surprise, you had the support of many of his classmates and basketball team members. They repeatedly encouraged you, saying just how good the two of you got along and how his mood had improved when he was with you. Needless to say, that boosted your confidence to a certain degree and gave you the needed courage to begin your quest.

Unfortunately for you, your attempts didn’t differ much from how you normally treated and talked to him. Still, you were determined to continue giving it your best until he either realizes it or until you found the best time to confess.

But your plans weren’t including the most important chess piece in this story, namely Akashi.

While you were forging one plan after the other, you were completely unaware of how the red-haired young man had seen past your actions and was already aware of the feelings you harbored for him. He knew, but he chose to remain silent and wait until you felt prepared enough to tell him.

And then one day, you finally stood before him with your cheeks slightly flushed and your eyes wandering but never focusing on the person before you. You were an adorable sight for him to behold, but he didn’t want to uselessly torture you any further, so he decided to initiate the dialogue.

“Is everything alright (Y/N)..?”

The gentleness in his voice caught you off guard, but it also helped to get the ball rolling, and before you knew, your confession was already in full swing. Firstly, you began reassuring him that everything was alright, that he needn’t worry about you, and that the reason you called him was a positive one. After a short break, you then proceeded to reveal all the feelings you’ve been harboring for him...

When you were done, he remained silent for a short while and gave you his answer...an answer that surprised you.

“Then today marks our first day as an official couple.”

——

The first few months went by pretty well. Your boyfriend had even made sure to divide his time between his training and you equally. He even made a weekly weekend date customary for the two of you, additionally making sure that the place you went to or the activity you did never repeated itself.

But what is a relationship between two people if only one person does the entire work?

That’s what you asked him one day. Akashi was surprised, of course, but he quickly understood why you’d say that, so he decided to tone down a bit and allow you to plan some of the dates as well.

A good and loyal man whom you could call your boyfriend, who made sure you were treated like a queen and whose yellow and red eyes were always only focused on you and you alone.

Could your life get more perfect?

Or at least that’s what outsiders and bystanders would think...

You see, no matter how much Akashi tried to smile at you, there was always something bugging you about it.

At first, you decided to ignore it and thought that it was your imagination and that all he needed was a little time until he could tell you what haunted his mind, but the longer you waited, the gloomier his expression grew, and it worried you. Not only were you not used to him appearing that distanced at times, but what hurt you the most was the fact that he wasn’t even intending on sharing anything with you.

Instead of doubting his trust in you, a more direct approach was in order, so you decided to just ask him yourself; all you needed was an opportunity, and what worked better than everyone’s beloved test period?

Next to your weekly dates and your monthly horseback riding expeditions, the two of you also organized a small tutoring group where you or some of Rakuzan’s basketball members would seek Akashi’s help in topics they didn’t understand. Luckily they were not always up for studying more than they had to, so the two of you got at least some privacy from time to time. So when the exam period started, you prayed to whichever deity you believed in, to give the two of you some time together.

The moment your finger pushed the doorbell on your boyfriend’s extravagant front door, you expected to be greeted by one of his butlers, but instead were greeted by a warm embrace from your beloved.

“Hope you won’t mind that today is going to be just the two of us.”

“Oh no, not at all!”

You were overjoyed to hear this but tried to appear as calm as you could while Akashi brought you to the living room, where some papers were already splayed out on a table.

After you had taken a seat and placed the snacks you had brought with you next to the tray with some of your favorite beverages, the two of you discussed what subjects and problems you’ll be going through today. Since you truly needed some help with a few subjects, your plan to talk to him had to be postponed for a short while.

When the two of you were about to move on to the next pile of tasks, you looked at your boyfriend’s profile and began: “Hey Akashi...it’s not school-related, but I have a small question for you. Is that ok?”

You saw his red eye shift its attention to you as he nodded his head slightly, a small smile adorning his lips.

Here goes nothing...

“So, I’ve noticed that there are times during which you tend to look quite sad and troubled. At first, I thought that whatever it was, you just needed some time to process it yourself until you could tell me. Still, that plan backfired quite a bit, since your expression has been getting worse,” you stilled to let him process your line of thoughts first, and then you resumed, “I just hope that you know how much I care for you, and if I have given you the impression that I don’t, then let me apologize. Akashi, I truly care for you, more than you might think...and more than I sometimes show, so I would be really happy if you could at least entrust me with some of the thoughts that have occupied your mind.”

You took another break to look at the man next to you and immediately noticed how much his body had tensed up. Whatever you chose to say next was about to either provoke a change in your relationship or let it circle around the same iceberg as before. So you mustered all the courage within you, took his hand, squeezing it, and said: “I love you Akashi, but if we don’t talk this out now, I’m not sure if we’ll have another chance like this...”

Silence...

Whatever you just said had quite an impact on your boyfriend, more than you ever expected. His entire face went pale, and his eyes seemed unable to focus on you or your face anymore. You were worried that this topic might’ve been too big of a landmine for your fresh relationship, but there was no way for you to return anymore, so you had no choice but to go through with it.

Akashi sighed and stood up, his back turned to you. He looked so lonely that you couldn’t help but follow his lead and stand a few meters behind him, leaving your boyfriend enough free space but also maintaining a certain closeness, just in case he needed an embrace or anything of that sort.

Another short period of silence followed during which the red-haired young man looked out of his living room’s window and apparently tried to calm his nerves down for the upcoming talk.

“(Y/N), there’s something I’ve been...keeping from you for quite a while.”

I knew it...

It was no secret that you expected that to be the case, but you couldn’t help but be curious as to what that secret was, so in order to tame your curiosity and stop yourself from showering him with countless questions, you bit your lower lip. You already had a few hunches as to what that secret might or might not be, but you remained silent and waited for him to finally tell you what’s been on his mind for so long...

His lips were moving, his eyes were focused on one of the many random trees in his courtyard, his hands were trembling, and all you could do was stand there and listen...listen to the most unexpected confession.

“A...second personality, you say?”

Akashi nods, and even though he turns around, his eyes never meet yours; they just blankly stare at something behind you. Usually, you would’ve followed his view, but you already knew what those beautiful eyes of his were fixated on.

His childhood photos...

Even if his confession of having a second personality sounded quite far-fetched at first, now that the both of you were silent, you had some time to actually think it over, and much to your surprise, it made sense...to a certain degree, at least. His eye’s sudden change in color and the abrupt disappearance of his angelic smile from his middle school’s days were drastic developments in a brief span of time, judging by the intervals in which the photos were taken. When you first noticed this peculiarity, you thought that either something on a biological level or something bad in general had happened, so you had made up your mind to drop it for the time being. Who would’ve thought that you’d be getting an answer to that as well today?

“I-I’m sorry (Y/N)...if my story sounds too unbelievable or too unrealistic for you, then please feel free to label it as some kind of fairytale I came up with to put your mind at ease.“

You squinted your eyes, trying to comprehend just what kind of nonsense your boyfriend was coming up with, and before you could even think of an answer, your mouth was already open, throwing the first things that came to your mind at him.

“What if I choose to believe you, though? What would you do then Akashi? Would you push me away like all the other times, or would you keep on pretending that everything’s alright? Huh? Tell me...“

The young man was clearly taken aback by your direct questions, but he recovered quickly and turned his back to you, mumbling something about you not being able to grasp the true meaning behind his words and how you couldn’t handle his true self.

He must’ve thought that you weren’t going to hear his self-talk, but you did...and what you heard made you extremely mad. Pure rage clouded your judgment, and the next thing you knew was how Akashi’s back was pressed against the wall and how your hands were gripping his shirt’s collar.

“How dare you say something like that?! Do you really think that I’m that insensible and shallow?”

You continuously threw your feelings and thoughts at him, not noticing just how worked up you truly were. At one point, though, Akashi just couldn’t take it anymore and wrapped his arms around your trembling body, pulling it towards his chest where you could continue to cry. Now that you were enveloped in that oh so familiar warmth, you just couldn’t keep on screaming at him, so you just closed your eyes, held onto him, and tried stopping your tears from ruining his already crumpled shirt. While you were doing that, he placed his hand on top of your head and stroked it gently, calming you down even further.

“(Y/N)...I’m truly sorry, I never intended to doubt you; it’s just tha-“

“Don’t apologize Akashi...I understand”

He wanted to tell you just how scared he was of your reaction because you were one of the few people he trusted enough to tell this to, and all the others who saw, experienced, and even knew of his change ended up being either weirded out or too scared. 

But you were different, and even if he knew that, he just couldn’t risk losing the light of his life, and that’s why he decided to keep it a secret from you, up until now. When he saw how mad you got for his sake, how sad it made you the moment you found out just how heavy this has weighed on his mind, it made him understand that even if you were scared somewhere deep down, you’d still look for a way to make him feel better and try your best to understand him. 

That realization was all he needed as he gently planted a featherlight kiss on the top of your head and raised your chin so that you could look him directly into the eyes.

At that moment, you could’ve sworn that his iconic yellow eye had a slight tint of red in it. 

I love you...

#knb scenarios #knb x reader #akashi x reader #akashi seijiro x reader #knb fluff #knb angst #━𝙰𝙽𝙾𝙽'𝚂 𝙴𝙲𝙷𝙾

[bigskydreaming]

Ive been reading some debates on whether or not Dick has LoA training because of the Vengeance Academy stuff and was wondering what you thought about that. Do you think this counts?

Yes and no? I mean, lol, it depends on your purposes for exploring this train of thought.

Thing is, I personally think it would be a mistake to view “League of Assassin training” as some complete singular thing that you either have or you don’t have, like a specific training regimen or course work for lack of a better analogy, that you either make it to the end of and have in its entirety, or else it doesn’t matter.

And I also think that part of the reason for viewing it this way is fandom’s tendency to try and rank the Batkids, according to a lot of various arbitrary variables like skillsets they do or don’t have.....which, if you’ve followed me long enough, you know is something I heavily disagree with, the trying to rank them in skills or competency in general.....as I tend to be more interested in ways this found family that I do ultimately gravitate towards for their ability or potential to be actual FAMILY, can like.....work together and come together rather than so constantly be pitted against each other. Like yeah, I’ll rant to Kingdom Come about times they’ve been pitted against each other in terms of my feelings on those specific instances or how the dynamics played out in them, but that’s in terms of scenes or stories that already exist....for the most part my thing is not really looking to INCREASE the divide between the characters, but rather the opposite.

So like......my point here is I’ve mentioned the League of Assassin training Dick likely has from his time at Vengeance Academy myself, but not in the interest of like......adding to his ‘rankings’ within the Batfam or being like anything the others can do he can do better, as frankly, I don’t think the time Dick spent at VA puts the training he got there as directly comparable to the time Damian or Jason or Cass spent with the League or League trained tutors....but that’s not really my aim in exploring that line of thought. Rather, I look at what League training Dick might have as being more a possible source of insight into experiences his siblings have.

After all, the thing about the League of Assassins is they’re very good at what they do, but what they do isn’t inherently all that different from any of the other hand-to-hand combatants throughout the DC Earth. I mean, depending on what continuity you go with, in most of them Bruce himself trained with the League or various League affiliated teachers before he came back to Gotham to be Batman, and he just sorta took what worked for him and put aside all the more lethal applications of their training and knowledge. But his own training methods when teaching Dick and the other Robins and Batgirls no doubt included more than a little overlap with League skills and training, because not all of their knowledge and expertise is STRICTLY lethal....as Bruce himself has shown, and later on Jason and Cass and Damian....most of what they can do can just as easily be repurposed for non-lethal combat. So in a lot of ways, depending on your interpretation of things and what angle you’re going with, all the Batkids can be said to have some degree of League training.....the same training Bruce himself had.

So when I talk about Dick having League training from his time at VA, Ilike I said, I’m talking more about insight, things he could glean from having firsthand knowledge not just to various League techniques or skills, but also League training methodologies and mindsets. Dick was only there a few weeks, at most maybe a couple months, and the thing is....you can pack a LOT into fairly short term experiences. That’s what boot camps are, essentially, and that’s how I viewed VA....a short term but extremely rigorous and intensive boot camp for prospective League recruits, as Shrike used it to put potential League candidates through their paces with little regard for their health or longterm prospects if they couldn’t make the cut. I called them prospective League recruits but its important that the kids weren’t recruited into VA itself first....they were literally kidnapped off the streets like Dick himself, and forced to prove themselves daily in their training and the missions Shrike set up to advance that. And all of that can be extremely motivating and act as a pressure cooker that packs a ton of training and skill acquisition into very short periods of time......BUT.....that’s not ever going to measure up to all of that being equally in place and acting as a pressure cooker when training Jason, Cass, Damian, etc over even LONGER periods of time, y’know?

BUT. Equally true is all of that is never going to measure up directly to the still extremely intensive and longterm training Dick himself received OUTSIDE of VA....just one on one with Bruce, training with the other Titans, hell, this is a guy who was an acrobat on the world stage before his parents died. Every day of his life he’s been training intensely. VA isn’t just a footnote compared to the lengthier League training some of Dick’s siblings underwent, its a footnote in the overall tapestry of Dick’s own training. And I have extreme reservations about the way League training is referred to as something various Batfam members have in addition to or on top of their other training as reasons for why they’re an even better fighter, etc....same as when Talon training comes up for Dick in AUs....when like......Bruce, Dick and the Batfam overall have never NOT ultimately defeated the League and the Court of Owls every time they come up against them.....so why does assassin training so often get regarded as this ‘leg up’ over the Batfam’s primarily non-lethal approach to combat, as though its a superior skillset? If its inherently superior, why do the assassins keep losing to the Batfam, I’m just saying. So on that front, the idea that “was trained by assassins” is innately translatable to higher elevations in the eternal quest to rank the Batkids, like.....just does not work for me and that specifically tends to be where people lose me here, not whether or not Dick has this training at all in the first place.

Another way to look at things here is like....let’s take one specific skillset: Dick’s use of escrima sticks in his fighting. Now, this DIRECTLY hails back to his time at Vengeance Academy. It was a literal plot point, that VA is where Dick first trained with escrima sticks and discovered an affinity for them. Once he was back with Bruce though, he didn’t do much further with this while Robin, but upon becoming Nightwing, he picked them up again and RENEWED his training with escrima sticks, becoming extremely proficient with them and making them his signature weapon. 

Now, is Dick’s status as one of the best fighters with this particular weapon because of his several weeks boot camp when he was ten? Again - it just depends on what you mean by that specifically. If you’re asking did he gain the proficiency he’s known for with that weapon AS a ten year old during that short span of weeks - hell no. His proficiency comes from the intensive, regular training he does with them here and now, as an adult, over a course of years, still constantly growing and improving day by day. BUT at the same time, you can ask the same question and examine it through the lens of “would he have ever discovered and explored and FURTHERED his affinity with this particular weapon if not for his time training at VA”.....the answer could still very well be no. Thus his training there matters, its just its not the only thing that matters, and the context and qualifiers that go not just with this question but the reasons for asking that question and the purposes you intend for the answer.....all of that matters too.

So to circle back.......do I consider Dick’s time at Vengeance Academy to be him having League of Assassin training?

Yes, but I must specify that my reasoning for that, and for exploring that line of thought, have absolutely nothing to do with my view of Dick’s overall status as a fighter, and everything to do with my view of him as a brother.

I think Vengeance Academy was tough and brutal, and did a lot to increase and hone Dick’s skills in various areas over an extremely short period of time. I think that it absolutely left an impression that shaped his training and fighting in later years whether in terms of preferred weapon choices or even choices he makes in the heat of the moment, like Last Laugh (which I think absolutely built upon Dick’s feelings about having once stood over a similarly unrepentant and mocking Two-Face years earlier, gun in hand, poised to make a choice.....as well as Dick’s awareness of how many times Two-Face, like the Joker, has busted out of jail and hurt and killed more people since that time).

But I also think that Dick would still be one of the foremost fighters in the DCU even without his time at VA, and that his short time there is not anywhere close to being the reason he’s at the heights of skill and aptitude that he’s reached over the course of years and years of rigorous, intensive training.

So while my answer remains yes, he has League training and it matters and counts, my reasons for bringing that up will never be because I think it adds to his status or reputation as a fighter, or is necessary for him to be as highly regarded there as he is.....but more for what his time at VA, his firsthand experiences with their approaches to training, the methodologies and ideologies they train kids with, what all of that gives Dick in terms of insight to members of the League, and to those people League members have trained, like his siblings.

One thing I’ve long wanted to see fandom explore more in the context of Jason’s views on killing is the fact that so much of that was shaped while he was in the pressure cooker of being freshly resurrected, traumatized, still an impressionable teenager, with feelings of obligation towards the League for the Pit’s rejuvenation of his mental faculties, taking him in and training him, and like......feeling isolated and abandoned by everyone else who’d previously known and loved him, thinking that he had no one who really cared about him, and that not only was he dependent on the League for his survival at that time, but like, he owed them and he was that much more open to being persuaded of their way of looking at things. 

And thing is, in terms of like, scale and shit, Dick’s experiences in Robin: Year One and his own mindset at the time and how vulnerable he was mentally and emotionally, they’re not the equivalent of what Jason was going through but like I’m always saying, when you stop looking at trauma in terms of arbitrary rankings and stop pitting what the various Batkids have been through against each other’s experiences and just like......look for potential common ground, this opens up SO MUCH potential bonding, insight and understanding between the brothers and positions Dick to be so much more capable of intuiting even a sense of what Jason went through at the time and why he was clinging so desperately to things he may or may not have actually believed in (at least so strongly) if circumstances had been different, etc....but you get what I mean, I think. There’s so much that can be done with this angle, that’s opened up entirely just by virtue of Dick having SOME shared experiences here.

Because while like I said, in terms of actual training, Bruce has a lot of the same skillsets and knowledge the League does, and his own history with them, its the MINDSET that’s so key here. The one thing that sets Bruce and his experiences when he was a young man with the League and League affiliates apart from Jason, Damian, Cass, etc.....is that Bruce went looking for training, and never was without resources or options. The League-trained Batkids though were either approached (or ‘approached’) by the League at key low points of extreme vulnerability in their formative years, when they HAD no other options (or felt they didn’t) or else were just outright raised by them like Damian or Cass, with no knowledge of anything else until they left or escaped. And that puts everything through an entirely different filter, because its that specific element of vulnerability, of having no one else to turn to or anything else to cling to or put your faith in, that renders you particularly vulnerable to being influenced or exploited by those who seem to hold all the cards there.....and its a shared insight that Dick can have into various of his siblings BECAUSE of his League of Assassins training, as short as that might have been, because of the specifics of why it was so intense and influential despite how short a time it was.

So. In conclusion: 

Does Dick have League training because of his time at VA? My answer is yes, but not if the follow up is anything in the vein of “and how does this factor into which of his siblings he can or can’t beat while sparring.” In that case my answer is yes but YAWN. If however the follow up is along the lines of “and can this open up tons of doors for potential conversations, bonding, trauma-unpacking or camaraderie with siblings due to their own histories with the League and its training methods and teachings and mindsets” then my answer is YES GOOD NOW LET’S HAVE SOME MORE OF THAT PLZ.

[albatris]

ok ok alriiiight ok so the plot of ATDAO

this post is not, like........... well, it’s not gonna be a blurb or a summary or a nice neat synopsis, this is not Professional Writeblr Business, this is, this is, uhhhh

this is like drunk house party logan rambles

works best if you imagine ur just like “hey man how’s it going” super casual and I grasp you firmly by the shoulders and look you dead in the eye and just ramble all of this without taking a single breath

could I have explained in a nice neat concise "elevator pitch" sort of way? probably. mind ur business. that’s not how we do things here at albatris.org

anyway the purpose of this post is “hey people seem to know a lot about the characters and the worldbuilding and the premise but have no clue what happens in the actual story” so I’m not going to be talking about said characters and worldbuilding and premise in depth

in terms of rambles, that stuff’s been covered! this post assumes you know what Ports are, n what the nature of the ATDAO apocalypse is, vaguely what the MCs are like as people......... though I can fetch this info for you if you like

but yeah if you are coming into this post with zero prior ATDAO knowledge........... deeply deeply from the bottom of my heart: sorry

also if this is your first time experiencing One Of These Rambles

also @safe-in-the-steep-cliffs​ and @siarven​ I am tagging you because you said you would like to be tagged and also hi and also I hope y’all knew what you were in for

anyway without further ado

(visual representation of my approach to this rant, not of how complicated my plot actually is)

(my plot is not that complicated)

ALRIGHT

there are two viewpoint characters! and two plotlines which converge near the end of the story, but honestly there’s a very real possibility I will decide these are two separate books meant as companion stories to each other because I love making things difficult for myself yeehaw

ATDAO’s co-protags are Tris and Noa, best buds four years and counting. their friendship is one of the single most important aspects of the story, n the ongoing love and trust they have for each other despite the way unfolding events force their relationship to change is integral to the themes and making the heart of the story what it is. I will now proceed to not mention this friendship for the entire remainder of this post. they’re bros. that’s all u need to know. listen. listen. I have a lot to cover

so yeah, ur first key player is Tris Greer, whose parents are dicks but whose siblings are chill. most notably of said siblings there is Jacob, older brother by thirteen years, whom Tris believes is just about the coolest person on the entire planet. this plotline kicks off when Jacob gets caught in the midst of a freak car accident that kills a dude and wrecks a street corner and also somehow causes Jacob to just kind of................. blip out of existence entirely and without a trace?

n Tris is understandably horrified and distressed by Very Much All Of This, but hey, at least there are responsible adults who can look into this obviously Port-related weird disappearance and figure this mess out, right?

INCORRECT

the relevant interdimensional authorities are brought in to suss out the situation and these authorities are kind of like “hmmmm idk about this” but are all set to take Tris at least somewhat seriously until they learn the following:

that Jacob had already been reported missing to police in his home state three days earlier

that Jacob was in the midst of several ongoing personal crises and at least one nervous breakdown

that Jacob was allegedly tangled up in some real weird shit that would more than account for a disappearance under suspicious circumstances

that Tris is schizophrenic, prone to hallucinations, confusion, memory issues and quote unquote “letting his imagination and anxiety get the better of him”, and precisely zero people can actually corroborate his story that Jacob was even there are the time of the accident to begin with

and after some back-and-forth and Looking Into The Evidence pretty much everyone in any position of authority comes to the conclusion that this is just Ordinary Regular People Crimes and whatever happened to Jacob had nothing to do with weird apocalyptic energies, and that Tris is (at best) stressed out and delusional or (at worst) lying through his teeth because he knows more than he’s letting on

so Tris is forced to hop pretty quick from “I’m sure someone will handle this” to “no one believes me but I’m sure if I can find some concrete proof they’ll listen and someone will handle it” to Well Fuck I Guess That Someone Is Me

cue bizarre reality-hopping fantasy quest, which is ten times easier said than done when most of the time Tris is terrified enough just, like, going to the supermarket

he enlists the help of his new classmate Shara, amateur paranormal investigator and professional weird-bullshit enthusiast, who agrees to help him puzzle out what the fuck happened to Jacob in exchange for his assistance in mapping out Adelaide’s interdimensional “fault lines” as part of her ongoing quest to track down the source of the apocalypse

she’s got big fuckin dreams, ok, go hard or go home

slso worth noting at this point that there HAS been an uptick in Ports and their related reality-bending strangeness in Adelaide recently which is why this is of particular interest to her currently. gotta find out What Makes The Weirdness Tick, gotta find out Why The Sudden Extra Weirdness

..........and also Kai is there

Kai has no nice neat reason to get involved with the plot, Kai just likes drama and being all up in people’s personal business. Tris brings them on board for one single afternoon like “hey I will pay you some money to come to my house and fix my fucked up phone so I can listen to an interdimensional voicemail” but forgot the apparently key addendum “and then leave”

their first three chapters of knowing each other is basically Tris being like “stop inviting yourself into my house we are not friends” and Kai being like “that’s a rude thing to say to your friend. also your sister gave me the netflix password and I used your kitchen to bake pastries feel free to help yourself”

but yeah so Tris’s story mostly focuses on his quest to figure out where Jacob got yeeted to and how to get him safely home (y’all probably know a bit about The Unreality already maybe?), whilst also dealing with rising family tensions, whatever shifty stuff Jacob was involved with prior to his disappearance, and his own creeping doubts about his perceptions of reality

n I’m also saying flat out it’s not a plot that’s going the “oh the whole thing was just a delusion all along” route because ew

his psychosis is a fairly involved part of his character but the explorations around it are more to do with, like......... the difficulties he has in trusting himself and whether he has the luxury of letting himself get swept into some Big Weird Implausible Adventure when this has extremely different implications for him than it would someone else. n eventually to how his success and survival is not ~in spite of~ but specifically because of the different way he understands and interprets the world and the skills he’s developed

THAT TANGENT WAS A PERSONAL RANT IT WAS NOT RELEVANT I just have words to say on the subject of how psychosis is treated in fiction and didn’t want people jumping to the “none of it is real” conclusion anyway ok moving on

ur SECOND key player is Noa Yun, who has rather a lot on her plate right now. she’s broke as fuck and her mum is sick and her car is making Noises and she’s not getting enough hours at her job at Not-IKEA and everyone is on her back about her failing studies as if that’s a thing she has the energy to care about. feeling rather backed into a corner by life’s bullshit and her financial situation, she blatantly lies her way into a field job at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities, because A) surely it can’t be THAT bad, and B) what does she have to lose?

so more or less what she’s doing is the equivalent of emergency services for Port-related weirdness, it’s going out and dealing with highly unstable otherworldly energies head on, navigating Weird Phenomena and bendy patches in reality......... it is, among other things, a job that’s relatively easy to get into because no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole unless they absolutely have to

n the DII is a whole other post, this shit has lots of different functions and levels and branches and corruption and secrets and a tendency to view workers who have to go out and deal with the brunt of the apocalypse head-on as vaguely expendable and I’ve talked about it a bit before and in more Serious Words

things kinda kick off for her when in true Noa fashion she hurls herself into a dangerous situation to help out a coworker, n enters a pretty standard issue “overlap” where the barriers between universes are a little fucky, but hey, she seems to come out of it with nary a scratch, so it’s reasonable to assume everything is fine, right?

INCORRECT AGAIN

she basically gets some whacked-out otherworldly energies latched onto her that are now following her through her everyday life, and it turns out she’s starting to bend the reality around her the way certain types of Ports do, which is! obviously not ideal! she’s not exactly a Port herself, because she’s pretty sure that’s impossible, but it’s clear capital s Something happened to her in that overlap, and she doubts it’s good news. and to make matters even more disconcerting, she’s now being dogged at every step by strange visions of a child who speaks in an unfamiliar language and who seems Real Fuckin Pissed at her

so her thing is basically “I acquired fucked up reality-bending powers against my will and they might be lowkey killing me ‘cause Ports are notoriously unstable like that and also I’m haunted for some godforsaken reason” which all somehow ended up being, like, the least interesting part of her plotline for me lmao

oh and Noa also enlists the help of Shara, Because Ghosts

anyway yeah so her search to find out what’s happening to her re: Weird Children, being a Port-adjacent something-or-other, and whether there’s a way to stop her own unravelling leads her to (rogue computer programmer? mad scientist? general shifty bastard?) Laurence Marrick Thiele, who claims to have suffered a similar affliction in the past and now does some real interesting research on the subject. n this guy. well. he’s got some fuckin stuff going on

he definitely knows more about the nature of Ports than he should. also is he actually researching what he says he’s researching? also what’s with all the weird tech? also did he just straight up murder that guy Avery? all will be revealed later, maybe, if I feel like it

but yeah at about the same time as Noa goes “actually fuck this you’re shady as hell I’m out” she stumbles into, like, The Actual Reality of what Marrick is up to re: manipulating Ports and interdimensional doorways for his own gain, and the various ways this spells bad news not only for her but potentially for the entire city and anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire, and she shifts gear to “actually you know what I’m gonna kick your ass”

there are various reasons for this, but first and foremosterly you have to understand that Noa’s got a fuckload of pent-up rage and she will bring it in full force the moment you say some stupid shit like “some people are expendable” or “it’s inevitable for the greater good”

(there’s also a fun ongoing subplot with her work at the DII where she and her team are investigating a string of strange illnesses with bizarre symptoms that appear to be spreading via obscure radio stations so that’s. happening. I guess?)

but yeah the main story here mostly follows Noa’s attempts to undermine Marrick, bastard supreme, and find a way to fuck him up before he goes, like, Full Cartoon Supervillain, n also like........... her attempts to keep up her work at the DII despite her rising paranoia that the teammates she’s growing to care about will notice her increasingly unstable state and the fact that she’s all tangled up with the very forces they’re meant to be thwarting. n along the way discovering the reality of what happened to her in The Aforementioned Overlap Incident and about her visions and such

so that’s all that. did that make sense

n she’s got a whole arc going on about trust and learning to lean on others, like, she comes into this story as a very standoffish person with lots of paranoia, she’s spent much of her life feeling like she can only rely on herself, n she’s. well. yeah, like I said, she’s got a lot of anger at the world and at the various systems that have failed her and her loved ones, n the story puts her in a position to become even more isolated

and her plotline isn’t so much “you have no reason to be angry or afraid” or her learning to Not Be, It’s more, like........... yeah you have every fucking right to be furious and of course you’re afraid! but there are people around you who love you and who will jump at the chance to defend you and who will help you carry the weight of your anger and grief and none of this needs to be yours to bear alone which is extremely cheesy

which applies to both her Weird Supernatural Goings-On as well as her regular ordinary life goings-on

I feel like Alice and Jet deserve a mention for Noa’s plotline but also this went on and on too long already so. well. Alice and Jet exist! yep. they work with Noa at the DII. I have things to say about them. I will not be saying them today

and uhhhhhh

in general, for Tris, his plotline, you wanna think, like, fantasy/adventure vibes which veer pretty sharply into horror, and for Noa you wanna think...... kinda, sci-fi mystery conspiracy vibes with a dash of some superhero bullshit maybe except not really

and that

pretty much is it I think

also the fact that Kai just invites themself into the plot for funsies and then is dragged kicking and screaming into caring about themself and making positive changes in their life means there was no convenient place in this post to be like

"oh there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop"

but there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop

goodnight! thanks for coming to....................... whatever this was! have a nice saturday everyone

#alcohol mention #just in the first little intro bit #being concise is not my strong suit! this should be apparent perhaps #tl;dr #tris's brother jacob gets lost down the back of an interdimensional sofa and tris has gotta go get him back even though #he's terrified enough just leaving the house let alone leaving this entire reality on a stupid convoluted mystery quest #and noa has a run in with some interdimensional bullshit and acquires Powers and A Ghost neither of which she wants #and then accidentally uncovers the schemes of literal cartoon supervillain marrick and is like #''oh sick i was looking for a reason to go absolutely fuckin ballistic and fuck someone's shit up'' #And Both Of Them Make Nice Friends And Learn To Love Themselves :) #atdao #i constantly walk the very fine line between not wanting to be Too Vague about noa's plotline vs not wanting to be Too Spoilery about it #like............... the stuff about the kid and about marrick's endgame i'm never quite sure how much to delve into hahahaha #but yeah anyway #imo i only went on ONE mildly unrelated tangent which should have been cut but i decided to indulge it instead #which is the couple paragraphs about noa's character arc #character arcs not important for this post!!!!!! but also. dfkhgkdfjshg. try and stop me #(i mean i did pretty ok staying on track for the most part i think) #(still a rambly post though)

[brooklynboysficrecs]

Ria’s Top 10 Shrinkyclinks Fics

I will admit this isn’t my preferred AU -- I won’t immediately jump on a fic just because it’s pre-serum Steve and WS Bucky. I gotta like the plot, or the premise, or be really, really intrigued by the tags, but to be fair, that’s how I am with everything that isn’t Modern Bucky and Cap Steve, so. That being said, I have read some truly fantastic shrinkyclinks stories, and I do very much love Steven “Fight Me” Rogers at his scrappiest. And these fics also tend to feature protective!Bucky which is another personal favorite of mine. Oh, but also: shrinkyclinks generally refers to pre-serum Steve with actual Winter Soldier Bucky, but a lot of people use the tag just to imply body types, and when they say WS Bucky they mean he’s all huge and muscled and sometimes has a metal arm, though that isn’t required. That’s the definition I’m going with as well, so hopefully nothing’s confusing!

1. If Wishing Made It So by leveragehunters. Before I get into anything about the actual fic, let me say this: leveragehunters is probably my favorite stucky writer. Like, hands-down, I read almost everything they write, and they’re big into fantasy stories, which is a great bonus for me personally. So, so, so many good shrinkyclinks fics by them (Even Underneath the Waves, a mermaid AU that features equal amounts of pre- and post-serum Steve, and A-mage-ing Grace with mage Steve are two of my other favorites, and they would’ve been on the list, but I try not to put more than one story per author, ya know? And IWMIS kinda wins out above the others for me, so). This story features jinn!Bucky who finds himself in the baffled hands of Steve Rogers, who is perfectly prickly and stubborn and good. Bucky’s got a terrible past with humans in general (and Hydra in particular, what a shocker) that he and Steve have to overcome as their relationship progresses, but that progression is frankly beautiful to watch unfold. I come back to this story time and time again because of how much I love these versions of Steve and Bucky getting to know one another, learning to trust each other, supporting each other through the worst the world has to throw at them. Plus, there’s a few more stories in this series if you get as hooked as I am, which is always great!!

2. Roots Have Grown by AustinB. I remember reading this and just... completely feeling what Bucky is going through. Not everything -- he’s an agoraphobic veteran, and I can’t relate to either of those, really, but he’s so... awkward about his crush on Steve. And that’s -- that’s relatable to me. But it’s precious, really, how he tries to help Steve even though he’s afraid to actually meet him initially; he becomes Steve’s sort of... anonymous benefactor? Guardian angel with money? Like, it’s definitely a sugar daddy type deal originally but I doubt Bucky would describe it like that. I don’t know, it’s cute, though, and I loved seeing Bucky opening up to Steve as they became closer. 

3. Through The Woods by VenusMonstrosa, alby_mangroves. Okay, hear me out: werewolves. I fucking love werewolves in fiction; I mean, not really the romance novels you’ll see in the grocery store, but. Werewolf mythology is one of my favorite things, so seeing it in fanfiction almost always manages to lure me in. And I was so not disappointed with this story! Steve’s living alone in a cabin in the woods, which of course sounds like the opening to a horror movie, but here it leads to love. Werewolf Bucky is both charming and terrifying, to a degree, he’s a wolf, but he and Steve are fantastic together. This is another story that goes in on the trust aspect of their relationship and I for one am a big fan of that. There’s some violence, minor character death and the like, but it’s definitely not undeserved so. If you can handle that (and the sex, because there is sex in this) then I highly recommend this one!

4. The Joy of Little Things by obsessivereader, Sealcat. And so we move from werewolves to dragons. Yup. Dragons. Another of my beloved mythical creatures that I obsessed over when I was kid. Bucky’s capable of shifting into a human in this, but primarily he’s a big ol’ dragon that surprisingly doesn’t want to eat the scrawny sacrifice from the local village. Steve ends up working for Bucky, instead, and from there hilarity ensues. Steve’s obviously wary of Bucky, but Bucky isn’t at all what he’d been expecting, and they grow closer the longer Steve’s staying in Bucky’s caves. There are a couple of stories with Dragon!Bucky, but this is my personal favorite; it’s cute and heart-warming and, well. I just really like it. 

5. I Just Want to Love You in My Own Language by agetwellcard, inediblesushi. So this one has Cap!Bucky (Bucky!Cap?) but again, sometimes it’s more about how Bucky looks rather than his role as the Winter Soldier. Anyway, I remember my biggest take away from this story was how adorable Bucky was in his quest to win the affections of sassy Nurse Steve, who patches him up after missions and is probably playing hard to get. Bucky uses terrible pick-up lines, absolutely awful, and he is completely unashamed of that fact. Which is, as I said, adorable. Steve, initially, does not agree with my assessment, but he gets there eventually. After some requisite drama, of course.

6. Tint & Shade by forestofbabel. Oh, god, this one hurt me, I remember that pretty clearly. Bucky is the Winter Soldier in this, and Steve is a 21st century art therapist who just so happens to resemble his late grandfather, Captain Joseph Rogers, who fought in -- you guessed it -- WWII. Like I said in the intro, if I really like the premise of something I’ll usually read it regardless of the configuration of pre-/post-serum Steve and pre-serum/WS Bucky, and this was definitely one of the fics I got into for that reason. Having actual WS Bucky interact with a modern pre-serum Steve is always interesting, given how much they don’t have in common, generally (there isn’t even really the veteran status that modern Bucky sometimes has in fics), and it’s a journey to see how and why they connect. Having Steve resemble his WWII era grandfather caught my attention, and the fic itself made me grateful that I decided to go for it in the first place. This is another one where is trust is key to their relationship, considering the mental/emotional state Bucky is in at the beginning. Very good story overall!

7. Fourth Floor by dirtybinary, mithborien, picoalloe. So dirtybinary has written some amazing stucky fics, which is why I was so excited when I saw this being posted initially (a few years ago, but still). There’s magic! Mystery! Suspense! Some NatSharon! Looking this over, I’m wondering if I should’ve saved it for the Urban Fantasy list I wanna do (and If Wishing Made It So, if I’m being honest) but I do like it for the shrinkyclinks list. The writing is great, the characterization of Steve and Bucky is great, and like, they live in what is essentially a magical apartment complex, so what’s better than that? 

8. my heart tells me you are lonely, too by FanGirling. Alright, so I read this one as it was being published, and the slow burn about killed me. You know, in a good way, though. Bucky lives in Steve and his mother’s apartment building, trying to figure out where to go with his life now that he’s broken free of Hydra and gotten his autonomy back. He’s obviously wary, skittish, but he takes a liking to Sarah Rogers when she reaches out to befriend him, surprised anyone wants to be near him let alone take the time to get to know him. Steve... is not so easily sold on Bucky. And I’m not gonna spoil anything here, but the shit these two go through is intense, and I cried a lot during this fic, sometimes out of frustration because they’re both ridiculous about their feelings (of course Bucky’s fears are valid, the man has been through literal hell, but also I was internally screaming a little as Bucky continually talked himself out of getting closer to Steve.) I wanted to wrap the both of them in about thirty blankets for pretty much the entire length of the fic. God. They’re just -- they’re so incredibly sweet in this one, once they work past their issues (Bucky and Steve are both more than a little messed up from their respective circumstances, but they make it work). Mind the tags on this one, also, especially because there is a chapter that deals with attempted sexual assault against Steve (obviously not with Bucky!), but Bucky handles the situation before anything truly nasty happens, that I can promise. 

9. Local Raccoon Befriends Angry Chihuahua by charlesdk. This is yet another author I really love; they have a fantastic farmer!Steve/Modern!WS!Bucky story that I love to bits, as well as other great fics. But anyway, this one. The title sold me the second I saw it, honestly, I can’t even pretend that wasn’t the deciding factor in me reading this. I don’t think I can really do any better than the summary in explaining why I recommend it; feisty tiny Steve and lovestruck grumpy Bucky are a winning combination in my book. This one does feature the boys dealing with homophobia and ableism, though I can’t recall how severe it is. So I’d just mind the tags, and if you’re alright with them, thoroughly enjoy this story. 

10. The Road to Hell is Paved with Tony’s Good Intentions by pinlilli. Bucky as a mail-order Russian bride. That’s the detail that pretty much demanded I click on this fic, and oh my god, it was even better than I ever could’ve expected. Tony, in a bid to help Steve get over his awful ex-boyfriend (fuck Brock Rumlow in every universe, honestly), literally orders him a husband -- in the form of beefy James Barnes, who is a fucking gem and I will not hear one bad word against him. He does chores, it’s lovely and adorable, and you will definitely fall just as hard as Steve does. There’s some canon-typical violence in this one that relates to James’ past, but nothing super graphic as far as I remember. Again, Rumlow is a dick and should be treated as such, but he’s hardly the most important part of this fic and I urge everyone to take a look at it if they’re as intrigued by Bucky being a mail-order husband as I was. 

#stucky #stevebucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #captain america #winter soldier #chris evans #sebastian stan #fic rec #shrinkyclinks #top 10