#without thinking about it bc it's a game and you're the protag. that says something whether it was intentional or not

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

#every choice you make while designing your game says something about your experiences and your world view #whether you think it does or not #i think abt that interview with hozier where he talks abt all art being political & someone in the comments tried to disagree #by saying a child's drawing of their house cant possibly be political & someone else replies: #but it is. what does a house look like to them? is it one story or two? is it a trailer? an apartment? these things imply something #about that child's lived experience #another post i reblogged on kithj that talked abt these games like the forest or far cry where you play as a random white guy #that is being hunted by the evil native people. and the game requires you to just indiscriminately kill them #without thinking about it bc it's a game and you're the protag. that says something whether it was intentional or not #allowing the player character to do or say certain things without consequences communicates something to the player!!! #this does not mean you should punish them but that you should think about your narrative design and your choices and their outcomes #think about what makes sense in your world #and think about what it could imply in the real world. to the player #and think about all the different paths you can explore with them in this way #writing

[aqours]

ok i REAAAAAALLY need to make a dedicated sideblog for this shit now i realize bc this game is gonna fucking fully get me dragged into this discourse so i'm gonna make an active effort to stop putting these on main, but i can't see myself saying more beyond this in general but ANYWAAAAYS

so i recently made this post about the cognitive dissonance regarding this game and people using fucking CALL OF DUTY a game that is more or less a recruitment drive to make the US military look cool and try to get kids to join up and that GTA's wanted system is actually NOT rewarding you or something to try to play a dick measuring contest with coffin but this interaction really interested me and i wanna talk about it bc i just blocked them after they refused to answer the last question but this is a very specific kind of gaslighting tactic i'm very familiar with from my own days as an anti

i think p much all of us who are used to engaging with this discourse are used to like y'know, being called awful horrible disgusting things. this is not the first time some fucking weird random person came onto my content asking me if i was a kid didler or wanted to fuck my brother. ain't gonna be anywhere near the last time either folks, but i and Lord God knows that's not the case so i don't care what a rando on the internet says but here's the thing: you can't "win" this, but they want to win it. no matter what you say you are the absolute worst kind of dreg of society that should be shot behind a barn and no amount of anything would work. if i actually pulled a list of sourced all that would have happened was they would've doubled down on calling me an inc*s*ious p*d* that I would be willing to use articles probably written by "people like me." because YOU don't care about "winning" this argument, you just wanna get the facts out on your end. it's a catch-22 folks, nothing you say will get you out of it!

i started by calling them a karen, they immediately escalated the living FUCK out of it and tried to trap me in this catch-22 to keep feeling morally superior to me. me saying i don't have such desires and never will isn't enough because i like this game. nothing but me renouncing it will change it.

but here's the thing about antis- they fucking HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE it when you turn it on them. look at the difference. look at the difference between they were the one throwing the catch-22 at me vs. the other way around. what about you? you just came onto my post to harass me, so i'll say it back. how about you? are you just accusing me of these horrible things because you are projecting your thoughts on me? you told me to get a therapist: so maybe you're the one that needs help if so!

violent video games must encourage violence, riiiiight? and you support it because it's violent. Game of Thrones had in*e*t in it so everyone who likes it also is the same. and Demon Slayer, where the pfp is from is violent, so you support it. the main protag's little sister also gets a superpowered form where she gets physically older and a tits out kinda look. so clearly YOU want to see your sister in the same way, right?

and it went as expected. you can see the tone going from smug jerking off with a shit-eating grin to just annoyed while smelling their own farts like it's a rose. and the moment i started doing the same uh i got NO fucking answers and they stormed off. i waited half an hour for a response before blocking them

so why am i typing up this walltext? because i used to be an anti. i fucking guarantee you i would've called everyone who liked this game [insert horrible things] like 7-9 years ago. so let me tell you, you know what pisses off antis more than anything? more than ANYTHING? turning this catch-22 bullshit on them. this is the only way you can end this miserable conversation without blocking them.

it's all one-sided bullshit and the moment you turn it on an anti it IMMEDIATLY shuts it down. this fucker KNEW the answer and you know it. so i wanted to share that, if you ever struggle with this shit: well the best thing you can do is block them and to give a fuck about winning their imaginary argument, but this is the only way to make the headache end otherwise. just throw the catch-22 right back and that's the end. thanks for reading!

#starposts #the coffin of andy and leyley #coffin of andy and leyley #proship #comship #long post #anti anti #discourse cw #ok i REALLY do want this shit off my main blog though i'm gonna start using a sideblog probably

[borreloadsavagedragon]

11, 16, and 20

oh god, I’ll do my best!!!

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

3! And they are all names for the same one ship bc this community loves to make new names out of nowhere for everything omg

I’ve mentioned this one in particular before vaguely in character ask games but I don’t wanna always bring it up, the tag and filtering system does all it has to for me and ygo is one of the few communities that actually does tag accordingly usually, Twitter is the raging exception but Twitter rewards witty captions versus tags and I love obstacle courses 

I’ve gotten vagued about and subtweeted enough for sharing the ships I do like, I’d hate to be someone who bashes something of value to someone else and make them feel insecure about their favorite things by subtweeting them because I do know many who do love the pair 

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

I had to think on this one bc the only things I could honest to god think of were a handful of ships and I really don’t wanna go that route dbshhsjs

I will literally read anything that isn’t like… too much into dead dove territory 

BUT

Some Fanon inside jokes can be annoying once they’re super overdone, ygo jokes I come across aren’t too bad outside of the TCG (ygo players reading jokes and draw good card memes are so bad, stop making them 733627472738 times) but like… even in our small franchise corner, some of them are overplayed

Like Yusei drank milk once and now his figure has to have a glass of milk, we did that

NSFW for literally ten seconds but

(also stop making the stereotypical rival characters into domineering or nasty tops, it’s weird)

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

oh my god ok, here it is, the one question I can go full hater on

Ok so I LOVE protags usually, I'm rarely a protag hater, but I hate when shows go out of their way to make protags solve EVERYTHING even when it’s really not appropriately theirs, like shows that need to find reasons to keep protagonists in the episode or in the frame, or to remind us that it’s the protag’s world and the cast is just all living in it

Like it’s definitely my fault being so involved with Shonen shows that I don’t get to see the latter happen a lot since Shonen is like the BIGGEST offender of this trope but I still wanna complain!!!!!!

God I lowkey wanna talk abt Arc V for this but we’re just gonna… *brushes show off of desk into a lock drawer* 

That’s a can I cannot open

So let's talk Zexal II, aka the part where I get to talk about the worst duel in the entire franchise because I can’t even rewatch these episodes for my analysis without wanting to slap my computer shut, it makes me that angry 

Uh

Some Spoilers since I know you're still watching

😭😭😭

Like this comes from a place of someone who fights off Yuma hate in the TCG community regularly

But in my whole ass I feel like Heartland and Kaito’s duel is an actual disaster

It's also honestly a little bit of character assassination as a treat for no reason but we'll touch that in detail in the paper

And letting Yuma and Astral take this duel over is just an egregious slap in the face lmfao

Especially how the show chooses to handle Kaito passing out and everything following when he finally returns to consciousness that just makes him essentially a step up from background character

Yet people deadass have the nerve to say Kaito has the most favoritism, bitch where lol

Extremely unsatisfying to watch someone who's been an established threat for the ENTIRE show not be able to dismantle the last standing figure in their life who’s been a source of great pain to them and someone who has never dueled up until this point at that! And not only does he NOT get to take the dub, it's literally his second last duel in the entire show and while the last duel is INCREDIBLE, making this a moment of glory for the protags is weird!

Idk, I stand firmly that this part is unwatchable, just a very badly done way to backseat Kaito to shift the focus onto the original duo, and that in theory is cool, but there are so many better ways to do it

But shonen isn't shonen without some dramatic hero comeback

Shonen is such a love/hate relationship

#this took a while oh my god #thank you!!!!!! #asks #answered

[stealingpotatoes]

The World As It Should(’ve) Be(en)

(feat. some illustrations with no consistent style that were all done in under ten minutes)

I know I’m not the only one who thought Delilah’s “The World As It Should Be” could have been a lot cooler.., so get this: what if there was another mission to dh2

(trust me it's a cool idea -- if you can’t be bothered to read, just look at the pictures) 

So EVERYTHING is the same up until the bit where you go into the portal. You roll up to Death To The Empress thinking that's the last mission... but no! You go in the portal and it gives you your end of mission stats! and you're like ?? wait what i thought i was about to go kill Delilah?

The ACTUAL final mission (and actual Delilah take-out mission) takes place in a Much Better version of The World As It Should Be. 

The final mission starts and you land exactly at the port where you start Death To The Empress, but everything is different about Dunwall. everything’s completely off and wack;  it's sunny, the streets are bright, everyone looks happy! there are flowers everywhere! It's super aesthetic and pretty. The clothing’s also different from the rest of the game. 

You walk through the same streets you walked through in the mission you just did, and there aren't wolfhounds and ppl patrolling the streets, it's not in ruin, it all looks very nice! (you land at the docks for parallels/ to make it very obvious what's changed, not because it makes sense). People are talking; they're happy! there are no guards about at all so you can walk freely and see it all, explore around this world. And the people are talking about how great empress delilah is, mainly. 

And as you go through, you find notes, books, and dialogue etc that hints to an entirely different past; in the first parts of dunwall, you find that delilah has been empress for like 26 years! not just a month and a half. The story pieces together as you go along, and you work out that this is a world where Delilah was never thrown out and her father's false promises were fulfilled. This is her world as it should be. 

But things keep happening to remind you that it isn't real; perhaps the sky sometimes turns to the Void, with whales floating above you, and things will somtimes momentarily look like a painting of Delilah's, not detailed reality. People’s speech repeats and loops too often. Creepiest of all, people randomly turn to stone, then back out, as if it never happened. If you put the corrupted rune in earlier, there might be more glitches than if you didn't. the glitches get more pronounced/ more obvious as you get closer and everything starts to feel a little too perfect, more and more as you go on. Everything becomes more uncomfortable. (And if you kill people in the world, nobody reacts at all. They just let you do it)

Plus, overall it feels like a very childish city? as if this might all be a little girl's dollhouse, not a real place. 

You make your way to the Tower, where you find that there’s a party going on. A really nice party -- puts Lady Boyle’s Last Party to shame. Dunwall Tower again looks super nice and aesthetic. The outfits are again really nice but again rather childish. 

A cool glitch here would be the partygoers keep stopping and just looking dead at you w no transition or anything. One second they’re talking, the next everyone at the party is staring straight at you. Then suddenly they’re talking again, as if that never happened. Also a lot of the partygoers faces repeat too often, reminding you that this is a simulation. 

In the tower/ closer to the tower, you find more history stuff, but it's more intimate/ detailed i guess? ONE VERY NOTABLE THING YOU FIND is letters from Jessamine (!!!) who is very much alive but is just -- and has always been -- the imperial princess!!!!!!!

The letters mention stuff that shows she and delilah are close. jessamine is in this and not suffering bc it's delilah's childish, perfect world! where nothing went wrong and jess is still her sister and del doesn't hate jess! (this is to kind of push it in your face that Del is Like You i guess, but also that smthn smthn she's still thinking like a little girl bc this all stems off childhood trauma etc)

Tho as people, not the player character, Emily & Corvo are ignored in the world as it should be/ there's no mention of jessamine's family bc this is delilah's world and she's not thinking abt other people. 

At the party, you see a woman who you discover is Delilah's mother, alive and well -- which again pushes the whole "this is delilah's perfect world". She talks to you a bit, talks about delilah. Makes you see a different side of her (but you can't be sure it's real; this is Delilah’s perfect, adoring world). She says she ought to go somewhere else. Things keep glitching, whales phase through the walls (it’s super cool). 

You continue through the party, when suddenly you see a woman in a dark dress. She stands out from the rest of the party, in their bright colours, and it’s pretty hard to miss her. This woman is none other than Lady Jessamine Kaldwin, your dead mother or secret wife (whose, bear in mind, soul you let go 2 missions ago). Her outfit is similar to the one in Delilah’s childhood painting of her, childishness of Delilah’s world repeated. 

The fact Jessamine is here makes Delilah almost more relatable (especially seeing as you just spoke to her lost loved one, her mother). It makes you understand her more because you know the protag wants more than anything to have a world where Jess lives. It helps you to understand why Delilah made this more. Actually, this whole mission is sort of "uhuhuh delilah is actually sympathetic" BUT you can still very much interpret it as her lying to you, because this is a manipulation of reality -- what's to say she isn't still lying?

Anyway, you can go up and talk to Jessamine (the game sort of encourages you to talk to her). But she doesn’t recognise you. Emily and Corvo don’t exist in Delilah’s false world, so Jessamine has never known you. It’s very painful for the protag (you can hear it in their dialogue), because their loved one is alive, but she doesn’t know you. You have dialogue options to try to convince her it’s you/ she knows you, but they don’t work. 

While Jessamine doesn’t recognise you, she does say she’d certainly like to spend more time with you. She tries to convince you to stay here, more or less (yes, Inception is one of my favourite movies, what about it?) But the protag says they have a mission/ that they need to see Delilah.    

Jessamine will offer to take you to Delilah, which results in a conversation -- will get to that later. The other option is keep winding through the party and to the throne room yourself. 

Either way, you get to the throne room, where you find Delilah. Again direct parallel. Same pose as before, but this time, her throne room isn't dark and covered in murderous vines, it's bright and full of adoring people/ partygoers (it’s a sort of parallel to the start of the game too, especially if you walk in with Jessamine).

 Delilah doesn’t quite know you’re here. She has a vague idea of who you are, but she doesn’t hate you at all. Breanna is by Delilah’s side, no matter what you did in the Conservatory. However, you don’t see any of the other Coup Crew members there -- this highlights how they were just tools to her, not people she cared for.

So you have three (yes, three — this is where things get even more fun) options here. Lethal, non-lethal, and the option I’ll get to later. 

Lethal is straightforward. You kill Delilah however (nobody stops you), and the entire world begins to collapse in on itself/ break apart and very disruptively becomes the Void again. This maybe ends with you having to fight/ assassinate some Delilah copies in the near empty void/ something more similar to the World As It Should Be as we see in game.

Non-lethal is easier if you placed the corrupted rune on the throne in DTTE, but you can still do it otherwise. It would of course be something to do with trapping Delilah in the World -- somehow cutting off the exit before you go so she can’t escape, should she realise this isn’t reality. 

If you pick either of these ways, you go through the portal again and return to the depressing and dark Dunwall, your Dunwall, and free your family member. (Or take the throne if you’re in super high chaos, I guess). All goes the same. 

Now, the third option. The third option is to stay in the false world. It’s to stay with Jessamine, in this perfect Dunwall. To get this option, you talk to Delilah after Jess takes you to her (though you can still talk to her without Jess guiding you, Jess’ll appear). 

Of course, you have the option to talk to Delilah and say this is all crazy, it’s not real, and proceed to do the former two options. But you also have the option to say you understand her or something, and she more or less offers for you to stay. 

When you first express interest in staying, the Outsider suddenly appears. He’s there to try to convince you that you need to get rid of Delilah, and that your other family member is frozen in stone back in the real Dunwall. But then what Delilah does, absolute madlad, is make a copy of your family member, but how they looked in DH1, not now (idk HOW, but she does it -- she is god in this part of the Void so she just can). Delilah wants you to stay, especially if you’re Marked. Jessamine also tries to convince you to remain here, and she’s harder to ignore. 

You again have the option to reject Delilah’s reality (you get a lot of options to do this), but if you choose to ignore the Outsider, you say something about him “wanting to keep power for himself”, just a lot of insulting really (being about as nice as he was to you, maybe.)e’ll disappear again, unable to stay in Delilah’s part of the Void. And you can stay with your unbroken family, with Jessamine who is alive. And not return to the real world, where you don’t know if your family member will be able to be revived from stone. 

(Seeing as Delilah was in Jess’ heart, perhaps she’s able to make a Jess who is almost the same as the Jess you knew)  

The third ending plays on the themes of “emily/ corvo has been ignoring the suffering in the Empire”. This is the ultimate way you can ignore it all. You can choose to completely and utterly ignore the now in ruin empire that you walked through earlier, and ignore all the people you promised to help along the way and everything you learnt. Or, you can show you’ve changed since the start, and go back to harsh reality. It won’t be nice, but you can’t ignore your people’s suffering again. Imo it gives the character more of an arc, rather than only having the option to return to the throne. 

But yeah, if you pick the third ending, the Outsider of course does his speech. He tells you how the Empire has falled to chaos, fallen to civil war, as everyone vys for the throne and its power. He tells you how your allies fare. And then you see Empress Delilah on her throne in the false world (you see a few glitches to remind you it’s fake). But then you see the protagonist and their family together. It’s a really cute family moment, and aside from the protagonist being the wrong age compared to their family (you’ve got adult Em with dh1 Corvojess, or dh2 Corvo with Jess and 10yo Emily). There are no glitches bc the protag would be ignoring them.  Everything seems entirely perfect. 

Anyways! I hope you liked this! Don’t get me wrong, I love Dishonored 2, it’s one of my favourite games. I just think the World As It Should Be was a sort of missed oppurtunity for something VERY cool. 

#dishonored 2 #dishonored #delilah copperspoon #emily kaldwin #corvo attano #Jessamine kaldwin

[malelovemail]

I haven't seen All These Aus so I cant really talk about how respectful they may or may not be but - fandoms using the same ideas/tropes isn't an uncommon thing. Like yes credit if you're pulling the majority of the story/set up (like in this instance where its not something v basic like 'hlvrai but college') but I don't think its necessarily a bad thing. Like will some stuff be unoriginal, yeah, but thats.. kind of the thing that there's always going to be unoriginal fancontent (1/2)

“Like a fandoms content is really self interactive and derivative off of each other. Like I get what you're saying w 'make your own ideas' but this is something that is also happening with other universes/ideas I've seen in the hlvrai fandom. And w every big fandom, especially ones with a young fanbase. Like ik you're saying 'you don't have to stop' but this is also a result of fan community working off of fellow fan ideas. Not everyone is gonna be skilled enough to build much onto the idea (2/2) Which isn't saying that people shouldn't try or whatever. Point is really just this echoe chamber deal happens w every fandom really and especially with hlvrai's young fans its gonna be more often and with less instances that add much. Its hard to avoid that sort of thing though without discouraging a fandom's collaboration and spreading/sharing of ideas which is what results in some amazing building contributions, but also the echo chambers. (3/2) [sorry theres gonna be 1 more, I know] I actually 100% get the frustration and I've tuned out of the tags bc it has turned into that echoe chamber of like ask blogs and some other stuff. But I don't think this is something malicious, its really just... people doing usual fandom stuff of seeing an idea they like and making their own thing with it, and in this instance has led to this, but I don't think it's really deserving of a finger wagging or shaming just bc its not producing great content. (4/2)” ---------- yup, dont disagree with you there; ive seen this kind of thing plenty in other fandom spaces and my intention in sharing my thoughts on the matter was not to shame young artists from deriving inspiration from the work of others, but in this specific instance there's almost an over-saturation of this one idea of which is very articulately crafted by the original writer, quote “protag gets trapped in an old fashioned computer program and interacts with the cast in a 90s webcore environment, cast tries to help protag escape the computer with the eventual help of an outside source partially at fault for the main antagonist - and by extension the protagonist’s plight, in initially helping work on the program, among other things”. this is a very hand wave-y synopsis but u get the idea almost every re-imagining of this au follows that exact formula, tells almost the exact same story with little deviation, and that under normal circumstances would not be a bad thing for most of these swap aus if there werent, like, literally a dozen of them now. i know for absolute certain no one copy of this idea has ever had malicious intention, and it’s definitely not any one particular person’s fault for contributing to any degree, but it does tend to encourage a bit of piggybacking off of the ideas of other people by copying, rather than taking inspiration from a given piece of media and applying it to their own work, which isn’t necessarily a problem with an immediate (or necessary) solution, if there even is a solution to begin with as i’ve said i’m not asking people here to drop everything they’re doing and start working on something different, at this rate the hlvrai fandom is so saturated with hundreds of au ideas that if i were to ask you to name one completely random idea offhand i could probably find at least one art piece or a blog for it by now - and that on it’s own is entirely fine! multiple renditions of a similar concept is fine, so long as it isn’t a premise as hyperspecific as y2k’s, imo i think a good example of “same concept, personal rendition” that’s been relatively harmonious (from what i’ve seen at least) has been the merfolk aus. ive seen at least 3 different fics for that on ao3 all of which i follow and they take the same general ideas (and mer species, oftentimes) and run with it in completely different directions. there are probably tons of other writers and artists for that medium too and i think its fucking great! its really awesome to see peoples individual takes on a concept like that, au wise, and while the core concept is the exact same there’s not too much overlap in environmental premises the issue i take with people doing similar for the likes of y2kvr is that y2kvr in and of itself is a very unique take on the general, webcore “trapped in a computer/game/etc” theme, it has it’s own unqiue premise, nd i feel like people have overall honed in more on said premise and setting rather than the core concept itself, which has churned out a lot of spinoffs of something much more hyperspecific per result. in general i think people have taken sub-aus a bit too far for this specific concept and i wanted to try and maybe discourage anyone else from jumping on the train at this rate without permission, since mothra has pretty clearly expressed a sense of discomfort towards it now regardless of my thoughts and opinions on the matter comparative to others, at the end of the day it’s more important to listen to and respect the wishes of the creator, whether it be asking permission first or holding off entirely from here on out . thank you for the ask(s)!

#Anonymous #king.txt

[lvtvr]

Since you're the official captain of consensual Lancelot, do you have head canons???? :3c

AAAAAAAAAAAA okay anon listen u have no idea how blessed i felt when i got this ask my heart Wept and the reason it’s taken me days to get to is bc i wanted to. do a Good Job. anyway. okay.

first a disclaimer: i don’t really like imagining shippy stuff taking place in the canon setting in general, so all of my hc’s are usually set in AUs or a pseudo-canon parallel universe of some kind. and ofc Lotor doesn’t even canonically exist yet, and also… lbr it makes no sense for a protag to date a villain. so, yes, i am aware that this is all utter self-indulgent CRACK but its just for fun aight sdgkljsdjgsdgj

also i’m tagging @softlancelot (a blog i love btw ive never hit follow so fast before in my life) lmk if thats not OK!!

Lance is a middle child, and has always felt starved for attention, so he is thrilled to have someone actually be willing to give it to him without having to bend over backwards to be noticed

Lotor is a shallow looks-first kinda guy, but it’s Lance’s quick wit and refusal to be intimidated by him for more than a few seconds that really gets him. He always feels like people kiss his ass for no reason that has anything to do with him, and damn does he enjoy the challenge of bantering with someone who’ll just tell him he sucks to his face

Lance would fucking court him though, and make a big deal about treating him like royalty while he does it and be really cute and embarrassing about it

If the rest of the team is shocked at Lance dating a Galra, all he’ll say is that he loves and respects them all and asks for the same respect to be extended to his Legolas-looking bf

lotor’s confused. wtf is a leggy lass

They’re both kind of insecure and feel like they’re not good enough – Lance because he feels average and like he isn’t a genius like the rest of his team, Lotor because of daddy issues (really, imagine having Zarkon for a dad) and the shit he’s no doubt had to deal with for being half-Altean. Later, this becomes something they can open up about and connect over.

Lance, the flirt, finally meets his match. He’s really flustered about it at first, because he’s always the one who does the flirting, and now it’s happening to him and he’s ded

eventually he gets his game back though, and they are quite literally fucking disgusting about it. like, the smarm is so thick you could spread it on ur dam breakfast toast

lance is psyched to finally have found someone who can go back and forth with him and indulge him where most people (kinda rightfully) think he’s just annoying

They are obnoxious. Even more so when they know people are watching them. It’s babe this and babe that and matching outfits all the way. 

But when they’re alone, they allow themselves to relax. They both know what it’s like to be so concerned with pretense that they feel comfortable letting that guard down around one another

Lotor loves Lance’s blue eyes. It’s not a color you ever see on Galra, so to him eyes the color of an ocean are incredibly exotic

They both love to pamper themselves!!! They do face masks together and bond over all the beautiful girls they’ve interacted with!!!

THEY PLAY FOOTSIE. And make bedroom eyes while they do it. This is fucking real I’ll fight u on this one

Risqué stuff under the cut bc I have no self control :^)

HAIR. PULLING. Lance loves long hair, and Lotor’s luscious white locks are sexy as fuck to him. He loves raking his fingers through it, yanking at it, and just eats up the resulting gasp or moan

Lance is canonically really into hot aliens and he can never stop asking questions about Galra (or well, Galran/Altean hybrid) biology

“so are u guys…. mammals? do u have…. nips?”

“ok but like. fr. what color is ur nut”

lotor is like “maybe if you stopped talking you could find out” and strokes his face seductively and lance DIES because as we all know he is all bark and no bite whatsoever

s h a r p  t e e t h. Lance is. So into it. Just feeling them pricking at his skin is enough to get him instantly horny. He probably had a vampire phase tbh

Lotor loves leaving hickeys on his perfect skin as well, and Lance likes looking at them after and feels his whole body get hot

Lotor is possessive – comes with being a prince – and he will growl “you’re mine” while his hands are under Lance’s shirt and his mouth is on Lance’s neck. It makes Lance shudder because, ngl, he really, really likes feeling like he’s worth wanting

They’re both super up for experimenting with stuff. Candle wax? Ice cubes? Handcuffs? Lingerie? Yeah man let’s do it

Lance has great legs, so seeing him in thigh highs is the fuckin’ dream

Honestly, there’s something sexy about having a prince tied up and at your mercy.

Lotor’s a swordsman so you can bet Lance exploits this pun opportunity to death

“hey babe u need a sheath for that sword?”

“hey babe u up for some…. fencing? ;)”

“i will fucking. fuck ur sword. watch me.” “Lance no”

#anonymous #vld lancelot #lotorlance #lotolance #what do i tag #headcanons #nsfw-ish under cut #im dying scoob i really need s3 to come throuhg for me