#like obviously these two have depth

[im-a-gay-robot]

I absolutely love writing grimmons dialogue.

Here’s an excerpt from the fic I’m working on:

“I think you’re giving the FBI too much credit.”

Grif scoffed.

“Wait, I think I found something,” Simmons said, causing Grif to sit up.

“From the FBI?”

“Would you forget about the FBI already?”

“Psh, that’s exactly what they want us to do.”

“It’s on one of the websites I found when I was researching werewolves the first time.”

“One of the trash ones or one of the good ones?”

“The one that was right about wolfsbane, but also said that a stake through the heart would kill us,” Simmons answered.

“Well, it wasn’t wrong, I’m pretty sure a stake through the heart would kill me.”

“Yeah, but it would kill anyone, we’re not more suspetable to stakes than other forms of heart murder.”

“Heart murder?”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

#their bickering is just so much fun to write #but man I hate writing them in anything more serious #because it immediately feels less in character lol #like obviously these two have depth #but we don’t get to see it much on the show and I want it to feel accurate when it happens #rvb #red vs blue #grimmons #dexter grif #dick Simmons #thinking out loud

[okaydiscount]

Scout and his Ma :]

#scout definitely got his cockiness and stupidity from his ma #i mean obviously but also i feel like scouts Ma is/was a cocky hot headed know-it-all but only when it comes to street smart typa stuff #she knows how to throw a mean right hook and can out-drink half the guys at the bar but put a book in front of her and its like the world i #of course having 7 kids made her more level headed yknow wanting to keep them from going to jail for the rest of their life and such #anyhoo thats it sorry for the rambling i just like scouts ma a lot and really wish she had more character depth #art #digital art #tf2 #tf2 fanart #team fortress two #tf2 scout #tf2 scouts mom #scouts ma #discounts art

[iunpackmyadjectives]

Okay hear me out

What if Skybound, but Jay was the one who opened the teapot in the first place, so that he could wish for Nya to be in love with him

#Obviously it doesn’t work because no wishing for love so the rest of the season plays out fairly similarly #But this would mean that him wishing to go back to before the teapot was opened is him realizing how selfish he was #Also that would fix his last wish being two wishes #And #he would then feel like he needed to fight on nadakhan’s ship because he caused this problem in the first place #Like even more than in the original season #I just feel like it would add depth to his character #And begin to fix some issues I have with the season #ninjago jay #jay walker #ninjago #ninjago skybound #ninjago jaya #jaya #ninjago nya #nya smith #Yk I really wanna rewrite Skybound at some point… #Because I love the idea of it but I have so many issues with the season #hmmmm #maybe someday

[commanderfreddy]

people are discoursing about the laios and shiro fight bc that was always going to happen but i do hope that wave crests quickly and we can all come to see it as what it is: literally one of the best written fights between two people who are both entirely justified in their actions and acting without any malice or cruelty of all time

#theres a tendency - especially in action and faction based media (which a lot of fantasy is or is in dialogue with) - to depict fights only #as happening between someone who Is Right and someone who Is Wrong #and getting to see a full on beatdown between two dudes who are both acting in an entirely understandible way and who both dont actually #want to hurt the other at all - to the extent where their desire to maintain a positive relationship with each other is the SOURCE of their #conflict in the first place - is just so cathartic to see #like unpopular opinion but sometimes you do just need to Fight someone to work through issues youre having #like irl i would not recommend that extent of Force obviously #but if you're two people in a situation where neither has active power over the other sometimes the healthiest option involves expressing #and receiving genuine anger that is not filtered through a social buffer #like sometimes you just need to yell that someone is pissing you off by how much they invade ur time and space and sometimes you need to #yell that someone is sabotaging your ability to interact with them by not expressing any discomfort with your behaviour ever #AND MOST IMPORTANTLY SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO BE YELLED AT #BECAUSE it sucks. it sucks to experience and until you can both share that space of feeling awful with each other youre not gonna get past #it and you're not gonna understand each other's pain #i think they're both wonderfully well written characters and its a testament to their depth as people that i can so easily understand why #and how both of them are behaving the way they do #im still only like halfway through the manga but it is like my favourite character interaction scene so far #fred says a thing #dunmeshi

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

follows an unhappy nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company - the corporate structure of gods & spirits in the modern world who deal in prayers and belief

he meets a succubus who convinces him to go freelance, and they travel the world getting their own sustenance and building a relationship

but the elder gods aren’t finished with him, and he’s tasked with stealing an artifact from the British museum, with the help of a human magician from the succubus’ past

nonlinear storytelling

#Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon #aroaessidhe 2024 reads #another one I was really enjoying for most of it but by the end a few things I feel hm about #I thought the narrative style was really interesting and I REALLY enjoyed the concept of the corporate god stuff lmao #(tbqh I would have liked more focus on that. it’s mostly context/background) #the relationship between the main two….I wanted it to be like dysfunctional immortal couple kind of vibes but it kinda ended up a little to #like the MC spends a lot of the book being jealous and upset she won’t say she loves him and I’m fine with that as a character trait #if he got over himself but it’s more like She gives in at the end. eh. I feel like we didn’t truly see much depth in their relationship? #maybe wish there was more than one female character and also her being a succubus means she is kinda regularly raping people. #the examples we see are mostly shitty men and like obviously all the other gods are murdering people too but also.... #That is a thing in here. It maybe could have been discussed a little more idk. #Having said that I did still enjoy a lot of aspects of it!

[antirepurp]

i think some folks may need to have the word "queerbaiting" revoked from their vocabulary until they learn what it means. perhaps

#soda offers you a can #i would not make anyone watch bbc sherlock bc im not a monster but that show defines queerbaiting at every turn #two characters having a deep and meaningful relationship is not queerbaiting by itself #it requires the narrative to set them up in a very particular way where you're forced to read them as romantic #only for that same narrative to deny the existence of any romance repeatedly #bbc sherlock deliberately leads the audience to believe there's romantic tension between sherlock and john #from side characters etc repeatedly assuming they are a couple to some Very deliberate scenes #that would immediately be painted as obvious romance if one of them was a woman #however it also insists on the heterosexuality of both john and sherlock by setting the former up with several girlfriends #and turning irene adler into a quirky little crush for sherlock (who also cures her of being a lesbian i guess) #and obviously john gets a wife but she must be killed off so the homosexual tension between john and sherlock can resume #and we can keep guessing if they end up together or not #they won't. but the writing very deliberately lead the audience to believe this #that's like. shit the defines queerbaiting #it's not Real Human People not telling the world they're queer #and it's not two characters having a relationship that's got more depth than a kiddie pool #sorry. new pet peeve unlocked. or old one rediscovered im not sure

[autopotion]

There are a number of things in Crimson Shroud I was kind of iffy about that put me off playing it, but now that I am I actually find I'm liking it quite a bit. The writing, art, and music are all very moody in a way that's familiar to me (Yasumi Matsuno + Basiscape, you know how it is lol, plus I think the guy who did the art took notes from Akihiko Yoshida) and while I originally found the tabletop aesthetic to be off-putting (your guys are always represented by little tabletop figurines, and dice that you physically roll with the stylus are a big part of the mechanics) over time it's really really growing on me. I think it's kinda cute ngl.

I feel like this is the type of game I would've been obsessed with if it had come out in the early 2000s and I'd played it then. Really weird, very stylistic, thick with lore for a relatively short game, not very well known, moody tone... Like it brings Summoner to mind, actually, which was a flop of an RPG that came out in the early 2000s that was also openly and heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but also I have a lot of fond memories of it lol. And that game was also very moody

Also you can totally tell this was intended to be a sequel to Vagrant Story originally, it wears its spiritual predecessor on its sleeve. It really feels like a journey through Lea Monde abstracted through figurines, dice, and dungeon maps. This might be heretical to say... but I'm kinda... enjoying it more than I was Vagrant Story, LMAO. I think for two reasons: 1. turn-based combat is more familiar to me, so I'm adapting to Crimson Shroud's mechanical depth much more quickly, and 2. the major female character in this game, Frea, is actually playable, and is your party's linchpin. Will always be lamenting Callo Merlose's demotion to NPC in vanilla Vagrant Story for game memory reasons u_u

The main dude is also growing on me unfortunately. "Giauque," the stupidest possible version of "Jack." I had my hackles up when he internally referred to Frea as a she-dog early on (shortly after she was revealed to be a member of an oppressed fantasy ethnic group, which like. I don't even want to get into all that shit right now, but it's the other reason I was put off by this game) but over time I think it's clear that was just a very poor way of demonstrating their usual dynamic, which is that he took Frea under his wing and likes her quite a bit, but portrays himself as a gruff, amoral lout, so he prefers to bicker instead of be effusive. The implication is that they're a bit like each other IMO, both too sharp-tongued for their own good

I also know a ton of spoilers so I'm paying lots of attention to Frea in the frame story... We'll have to see how it's handled, but I do like that the main antagonist of this game is a woman. So few games feature a woman as the primary villain, and even if they do, they find ways to blunt her impact (like Ultima in FFT, she's resurrected at the ass end of the story and then Ramza & co. kill her immediately), so I'm curious to see where Crimson Shroud will go with Abigail (an insane name for a villainess in a dark fantasy piece btw)

BASICALLY I think if CS was a fifty-hour game I might find it more exhausting, but since it barely hits twenty if you're taking your time, I'm a lot more invigorated by it. The short runtime works in its favor IMO.

#crimson shrouding #weirdly it also like..... reminds me of pyre??? #which is an insane thing to say the two have very little in common #but there's like.... a tone thing. a 'pack in a bunch of lore in a tiny space' thing. #a 'you can see our fantasy inspirations openly and obviously' thing #CS is doing a spin on TTRPGs #pyre is doing a spin on console RPGs especially those that were inspired by TTRPGs #something something #... a 'there's a lot of depth here but we're still focused in on the one concept' thing

[soldatrose]

Tried to organize some thoughts about two of TBNA’s main duos, but it’s a mess.

#tbna #witch hat atelier #wha #my posts #qifrey #olruggio #estheath #utowin #(or whatever their names are don't come at me please) #same comparisons could be done with the agathe/coco duo but those parallels are already pretty underlined in the story #i'm a little curious about utowin tbh (and chapter 64 only increased that interest) #for now he doesn't have much depth but there are tidbits that made me wonder #also i put him in the upholder of the law section but i think there's a slight difference with olruggio and estheath #because the two of them really use that status as a sort of moral superiority badge #while utowin doesn't so much? i think? #also the similarities yet differences between estheath and qifrey really fascinate me #and the privilege that goes with it is obviously central to that relationship (just like it isin utowin and olly's relationship since it #appears that olly was sent in priority to the great hall?) #(see @labarch's awesome meta about olruggio and privilege!!) #anyway it makes me wonder whether estheath was also a victim of forbidden magic and was just 'found' by a radically different person #and how that may have changed his perception of the witch world #easthies #(just found out that's the most version of his name but...eh)

[heavencasteel420]

In my hypothetical no-UD AU, Joyce and Bob are seriously dating but Hopper is friends with both of them and there are kind of flirtatious vibes all around. But Will and Jonathan are both just like “whatever, let’s not look at that too closely.”

#bob and Joyce have been dating for about two years #so Jonathan’s basically past the ‘is Bob secretly an awful person beneath his teddy bear facade’ phase #and most of the way through the ‘will Bob devastate Mom and Will by bailing if things get too real?’ phase #and about to enter the ‘why come to me when I am this’ phase #and the ‘I’m going to move to forks because Mom married a baseball player and doesn’t need me anymore’ phase #will is genuinely glad to have an adult man in his life who likes him in a benevolent and genuine and effortless way #but this is the story where lonnie dies and will doesn’t feel much about it #so he feels guilty about the gulf between his affection for bob and the nothing he feels for lonnie #even though it comes from a natural preference for people who are nice and care about him #Bob is well-meaning but he does not understand the depth of dysfunction going on #and he’s like well obviously lonnie wasn’t a good guy but he was their father and i should respect that #and will and jonathan are both like no thank you! we do not want that! #meanwhile Joyce is frustrated because she has actually achieved some stability for the family #and made it so Jonathan and Will can do have a more normal adolescence #but there’s never an actual conversation about this #and it’s really too little too late for Jonathan #so he totally misunderstands what she’s trying to do #and thinks she’s just sweeping his parentification under the rug because she’s embarrassed by it #meanwhile will is like I will be the most normal teen ever #(as long as he doesn’t have to play sports except track ig. he has limits) #this is supposed to be a fairly lighthearted story btw

[danielnelsen]

anon who asked about chasind headcanons, i am not ignoring you, that is actually step 3 of my current project:

gather all chasind lore in existence

organise it into something coherent

fill in the gaps

unfortunately i have been on step 1 for about 2 weeks and it is currently a 130 page document and will still take a while to finish

but i am getting there!!! and i have formed many headcanons in the process about all kinds of things

#personal #da #don’t get excited about 130 pages of chasind lore. that’s not actually what it is #i’ve included anything on the avvar and the early alamarri and clayne #and the largest category is obviously the avvar (esp from dai) #but it’s coming along #i’m currently going through game dialogue which i was Dreading but it’s not too bad #i’m not gonna do da2 because i would have to go through each file and map the individual lines. nope! #just gonna go through some of mota (cahir is chasind) and ctrl-f through the talktable for the rest of the game #and i’m considering skipping dai altogether because……like when tf would the chasind be mentioned. bioware forgot they exist in dai #they get one codex entry for the skyhold decorations and that’s it #even the fallow mire has avvar instead even tho it’s BASICALLY IN CHASIND TERRITORY #devastating that so many of the avvar files are labeled chasind. like they were gonna be there and then they got replaced #look i don’t dislike the avvar at all but they are very much the favourite child and i resent that #anyway. all i have left is some other in-game text (quests mostly; which aren’t gonna give me much) #(i’ve already done codex entries and notes and item descriptions) #and a few things that i’ve skipped because i was getting sick of them: two avvar-related ttrpg adventures (where eagles lair & buried pasts) #and one novel (the calling. also something that has avvar stuff rather than chasind stuff) #where eagles lair is the most important one of those to actually go through because it goes in-depth on avvar culture #and since there’s very little actual chasind lore i’m basing some ideas on avvar stuff because they evolved from the same culture

[erythristicbones]

i don't feel like copying what i wrote, so take some screenshots of me having brainworms for the JDK villains again. primarily spurred by me going "hey wouldn't Nisha and Artemis and Apollo make cool rockstars instead"

#i really need to hurry up and finish organizing my writing blog so i can start posting these there instead #anyways i feel like this finally nails EXACTLY the kind of vibes that i wanted for the Acolytes and Solanace #and tbh.....even if i cant find a way to work JDK's original curse themed plot with these ideas #i feel like it would absolutely be worth changing the stories/motivations for the POV trio to fit this new set of ideas #kinda adds a lot more to the villains as a whole #and also sets it apart from a lot of my other stories that revolve around 'essentially a cult' as an opposing force #if i decide to be the most self indulgent that i possibly could be #i might even consider the idea of making it a story ABOUT Solanace and the acolytes in the POV sense #theyd still obviously be villains but the protags of the story instead of the antags #at which point jonas/lydia/hayes would have to be majorly reworked to then fit into the antagonist roles #could also theoretically work with the idea of jonas AND nisha being POVs #so the reader would be getting insight to the good guys and the villains at the same time #JDK(which STILL needs a better placeholder title) really is a story that ive had to majorly change multiple times #most of my stories i have the general idea + genre settled before anything else #but this one is more character driven #i have two groups of OCs ive thought about in depth and i just havent been able to build the story around them in the right way yet #i think once i can Actually get my brain focused long enough to draw #i wanna doodle more rockstar inspired designs/themes for nisha/artie/apollo #see if the idea continues to tickle the brainworms in such a great way + then have time to make polished refs b4 artfight #bc i really love my overdramatic artsy villains okay. i think they deserve to be extra as fuck ya know? #who doesnt love a villain whose primary goal is to put on a show and THEN to do the evil things?

[madam-whim]

Not quite happy that the new chapter’s going to be on Telvanni home turf. 

#idk i don't trust their very white u.s. american writing team to handle that responsibly #like obviously the telvanni have this huge slavery thing going on #and that combined with the fact that the writing has been bland and without any depth to it for the last two years... idk #eso #necrom #necrom spoilers

[maddy-ferguson]

Sick of getting called homophobic for not enjoying or shipping byler. Sorry but will stans are right for not shipping him with a guy who said his life started the day he disappeared. There is no enjoyement here aside from supporting it to piss off actual homophobes. The ship itself sucks ass.

you're so funny for sending this to me like am i supposed to agree that it sucks😭😭 but yeah i know what you mean like are people not allowed to dislike a ship anymore as long as you're not being weird it's literally fine it's A STRANGER THINGS SHIP

#people were like no this is terrible why would they do this to will i kinda hate mike now after volume 2 so they literally KNOW #it's not for everyone and like. a lot of bylers who are will stans' tweets and posts read like they don't even like what's happening that #much since their mike is like...a different mike sometimes or is portrayed as not good enough for will and not as someone who was #struggling too. idk. i feel like you have more to gain from being a byler if you're a mike stan than you do if you're a will stan which #sounds weird bc i just said that a lot of people are always like mike sucks will is the bestest ever but like. if you watch the show its #definitely mike who has the upper hand and who's 'making will suffer' even though he's suffering too if you think he's gay too which i #obviously do. but it means that you have to accept that and like that this is the story for will and a lot of bylers who are will stans #(even mike stans tbh) simply don't! so being like no i don't like this anymore because will's my favorite and the idea of it paying off #eventually doesn't make it worth it to me is like...very normal behavior lol #and when i say mike stans have more to gain i don't mean that mike has more to gain from the relationship. in universe at least (like no #omgg mike you are such a lame person how did you pull will) #because for us as a character he gets depth and an oh mike hasn't had nothing going on for two seasons plot twist. which is always fun #does that make sense #ask

[villanevedenier]

Someone stop me if this is a hot take, but lowkey the tsh women are all ‘women written by a man’ in that we only ever see them from richards perspective

Like is camilla slightly hollow and kinda a non-manic pixie dream girl? Yea but thats only because thats how richard sees her. For all we know camilla has a very rich inner world, we’ll just never know.

#tsh #dont get me wrong its okay to still be iffy with the way the women are written #but like #if youre only looking at donnas portrayal of women in her two novels in a male first person perspective there’s obviously gonna be issues #like the women in what ive read of the little friend are all full of depth #donna tartt #i don have a parasocial relationship with secretive neo romantic writer donna tartt what are you talking about #richard papen #camilla macaulay

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray

fun YA adventure

follows a girl who’s seen as cursed because of her recently hanged notorious pirate queen mother, and runs away to the navy where nobody will recognise her

and her half-sister who’s desperate to find her before she’s arrested for using a fake name, to bring her home to their dying father & save the family business

both get on the bad side of some pirates and have to brave storms to find each other

aroace MC, sister relationships

arc from netgalley, out april 9

#The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray #aroaessidhe 2024 reads #This is ok! I enjoyed it on the surface level but think it could have had a bit more depth and structure #I do always like to see an aroace MC who mentions it casually throughout the story and the central sister relationship #The writing is a little young for me… I think it has this silly/satirical element of the plot and caricature-villains but the prose wasn’t #quite funny enough to make it work....so parts just felt a bit random and undeveloped to me? #I genuinely love a lot of MG and younger YA but this is on the side of writing style #that felt too noticably young for me to enjoy fully (for me - obviously it's for teens! so that's okay!) #It’s quite slow to start (it doesn’t get into it until half way?) and the two storylines felt a bit disconnected. #All the different things happening felt all over the place & I felt the ending was a bit unsatisfying #Betsy’s love interest seemed like a nice interesting boy but it was such instalove I felt like there was no development between them lol #I think it has some fun parts and some good characters! I would still recommend to teens looking for queer piratey stories #(tho as a note - THEY aren't really ever pirates. maybe briefly.) (I think maybe ofmd comps might do it a disservice if you're not clear #it's just 'piratey and also there's queer people) #there's some good side lesbians (def side tho)

[enby-catgirl]

dirk strider kinda reminds me of my brother and while i’ve come to love my brother more as he’s grown out of being a stupid shithead i just can’t get myself to like dirk

#my first reading had a flawed interpretation of dirk and it’s colored my perception of him #i will openly admit im probably not really Understanding the character past the like ‘cool and stand offish to mask insecurities’ thing #and the pseudo intellectual shit #idk! he’s obviously a character with depth and stuff but i just don’t really like him #dave is great imo but this isn’t about him #i swear i have good reading comprehension skills i just haven’t reread it in two years and the epilogues further colored my perception o him #i don’t consider the epilogues canon anymore but like. i have trouble separating that version from the Canon version in my brain because #it’s been so long #haven rambles