#{ * sorry this is soooo long but I LOVE HER

[deathberi]

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH (2024) ↳ The Spice of Life ➤ Gongaga

[marinsawakening]

LOZ Fic Recs

Deciding to use my hobby of autistically crawling through AO3 tags for good. I'm prioritizing fics with less than 50 kudos. None of these are ship fics, most don't have any romance. All of these are completed one shots, most under 10k words.

Skies, Surfaces, and the Hero Chef That Can't Actually Cook by greatduwangs

Summary: Link's cooking sidequest in Skyward Sword, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Or, the missing ingredient was a home all along, or whatever.

Why I recommend it: 4.5k of Link eating things he shouldn't. Very funny and very cute!

Big Dark by phlyarologist

Summary: Character study of Mido as the events of Ocarina of Time change him, worldbuilding the Kokiri and examining what it means to grow up.

Why I recommend it: Contender for the best LOZ fic I've ever read. Brilliant worldbuilding and characterization, and a fantastic understanding of childhood and its nuances that you rarely see outside of fiction aimed at children.

loop - synonyms: coil, noose, ring, circle by MidnightBunnyy

Summary: Fi gets stuck in a timeloop and is very... well, Fi about it.

Why I recommend it: Excellent Fi characterization that leads to a very funny take on a time loop scenario while still being a serious story.

Notes: Restricted work, only available to AO3 users.

A Legacy Cast in Stone by sagittamoth

Summary: Pre-Skyward Sword Sheikah worldbuilding following an OC who works with the robots and timeshift stones in the last days before the war.

Why I recommend it: Does a great job with worldbuilding, creating a vibrant world that slots neatly into the greater Skyward Sword canon.

missing by fandomsandshit

Summary: Drabble exploring Zelda's time in the dungeon.

Why I recommend it: Does a brilliant job painting fear and an oppressive atmosphere, with stellar Zelda characterization.

Growth by herohelio

Summary: Two connected snippets of Malon in the adult timeline, meeting Link again.

Why I recommend it: Adorable Link and Malon friendship and great Malon characterization, with very effective hints at what living under Ingo had been like.

Because each time we live by grainjew

Summary: Follows Link through ALTTP, written through the lens of the reincarnation theory with a focus on connection to the wider LOZ series.

Why I recommend it: Author described it as a 'mood piece', which it absolutely is and is very good at. I like the surreal and blurry way reincarnation is portrayed in this fic, and it has a great take on the maidens.

Blind and the Bunny by justAPassingThought

Summary: A character study of Blind the Thief through his defeat in the Thieves’ Hideout Dungeon.

Why I recommend it: Excellent exploration of the Dark World and the way its transformations work, and I really like Blind's view on Link's Dark World form.

Litany of Betrayal by RawLiverAndCigarettes

Summary: A foreign warlord swears fielty to the king of Hyrule. Impa knows what the stranger truly wants. She has seen it before. She can still taste the ash.

Why I recommend it: Fantastic character study of Ganondorf and Impa in Ocarina of Time. Everyone is horrible and I'm thriving. Incorporates Hylia into the OOT canon in a way I find actually interesting. Fascinating worldbuilding in general.

Notes: Prequel to a novel-length fic I have not read (I'm terrible at reading long fics rip).

that gentle hubris by cassiopeian

Summary: Zelda bares her soul at the Spring of Wisdom, but the answers she seeks do not come from a goddess.

Why I recommend it: Mipha and Zelda friendship, a fun take on Zora mythology and I always love mortals forging their own paths in worlds where gods are objectively real.

Hunger by Anonymous

Summary: Sequel to Grace, where Zelda struggles to reckon with perceptions out of her control. Link is there to help point out what she's missed. Can be read as standalone.

Why I recommend it: Autistic Zelda, queerplatonic zelink, and a great portrayal of the hunger that comes with trauma.

Notes: Sequel to a fic that is also very good.

As Above, So Below by Mothlight_Witch

Summary: An exploration of the Depths and Hyrule's cosmology.

Why I recommend it: The other contender for 'best LOZ fic I've read'. Astounding atmosphere and worldbuilding, incredibly unique and all-around breathtaking. Lives in my head rent free.

What is your wish? by AdeptArcanist

Summary: Character study of Vaati connecting him to Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask.

Why I recommend it: Very weird and unique take on LOZ lore and I'm so incredibly here for that.

Linner (Link Dinner) by waterglider

Summary: An adaptation of one of Zelda's diary entries set after the "Blades of the Yiga" memory. After a very irritating person saves her life, Zelda has developed a theory-- one she plans to test.

Why I recommend it: Zelda is kinda mean and Link is a monarchist bootlicker. I adore this take on pre-Calamity Link, he's genuinely insufferable and I love that. If I ever end up writing pre-Calamity Link I'm so stealing this characterization.

Notes: Sequel to another stellar fic, prequel to an in progress novel-length fanfic that I have not read (again, terrible at reading longer fic).

[toadsong-art]

Had a blast reading @spark-hearts2's fic, Yeah, I'm Not Calling Her Mommy. I didn't really have strong opinions on her until reading this, and realized just how fun she could be as an ally.

[vaguely-concerned]

I love the way lucanis pronounces 'ferelden' just slightly awkwardly/uncertainly in his first banters with harding that bring it up -- like maybe he hasn't had cause to say it out loud much in common and is having that moment of second language use stumble where you go 'shit it'd be. something like that, right? that sounds about right?? 😬'. it feels like such a neat and well-observed little detail to slip in there I love the voice acting in this game

[blackbatcass]

I really really wanna know more about Donna Troyyy, so far I love her so much but I don't wanna be the type of person who claims they love a character then can't name 5 things about them. I wanna do her justice and really understand her character and purpose. I also don't wanna read something that completely mischaracterizes her because I'm aware that there's a LOT of that these days. I was hoping you could give me some recommendations to read after my tests?

Thank you so much if you do, and have a wonderful day! <3

I think I can help with that! Luckily donna's characterization is pretty solid & consistent in any comic up to around 2006. i would be wary of more modern interpretations of her but for most of her older appearances you don't really have to worry about bad writing.

The number 1 rec for donna is always New Teen Titans, that's where pretty much the majority of her appearances and character development take place in the 80s and 90s. The whole series is very long though so if you want more specific recommendations that focus on her I would definitely read ntt vol 1 #38, vol 2 #7-9, #18-21, #47, and #50-55. Issues 18-21 especially are probably my number one rec for donna if you're interested in seeing her flaws and struggles; those four issues took place when the titans were kind of falling apart, donna had to step up and call the shots, and it's a really neat insight into her character that i don't think gets quite as much attention as arcs like her origin stories. You'll probably honestly get a good feel for her if you pick any couple of arcs from NTT and read them through.

Wonder Woman (1987) #126-136 is a very important arc that reiterates donna's borderline horror dimension-bending origin weirdness. Titans '99 is a must-read for her, and jumping off that the Return of Donna Troy miniseries is like... Thee donna comic of all time so i would definitely recommend that. In between ntt and titans 99 she was in things like green lantern and darkstars but honestly the biggest things for her character you have to know from that time are that she and terry got divorced, she was dating kyle rayner, terry tried to take custody away from her, and terry & robbie died in a car accident.

There are way more detailed and comprehensive rec lists you can find in my donna tag if you're interested- I left out arcs like total chaos which are narratively very important for her but i don't think are quite as good a showcase for her as a character- but I think if you just want to get a feel for her character these are a good place to start. if you want like a primer on some of her major character traits i can definitely provide that lol:

donna is an incredibly emotionally intelligent and kind person who is a very good listener and always ready to help, which is why she's pretty much the #1 trusted person every single titan goes to when they need to vent. unfortunately being the appointed Fixer of All Problems Mom Friend when you're like barely an adult gets pretty overwhelming and is a very unfair weight to put a person; you can see this start to grate on her in titans 99 especially. something I like about donna is how open and honest she is with people about her struggles. most characters in the superhero genre would rather die than admit they need help and will never ever talk about their problems without being forced to, but donna isn't like that. if you ask her what's wrong she's going to be honest and tell you what's bothering her. she struggles a LOT with trying to appear 'perfect' in everyone else's eyes, and is really motivated by seeming to have it all together even when she doesn't. this is fueled a lot by her not being born an amazon and not knowing where she came from; the fact that for a lot of ntt she doesn't know her own history really gets under her skin. donna's identity issues are a HUGE part of her character especially later on as retcons and reboots get folded into her story. her past doesn't make sense. she has like nine competing backstories. she's one of the only people to remember the world pre-crisis on infinite earths and has literally been been forced out of existence and remade through pure memories, not to mention all the times dark angel forced her to live different lives until she reached rock bottom as a punishment for diana lol. in one origin she literally is not a real person and was just a mirror twin of diana. the main tagline associated with her is 'who is donna troy?' lol. which i think is fascinating and a very fucked up existence.

Anyway! I can talk about my girl all day. I hope this was at least a little bit helpful!

[innalia-suctons]

I lovveeeee Madoka Magica ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[lablass-2882]

Happy Star Wars Week

Day 1 of Star Wars Week

@swsource is hosting Star Wars week, and this is my entry for Day One or The Chosen One Day, aka your favorite character.

Which just so happens to be Hera Syndulla.

Aka Space mom.

[captaincanonly]

my brother in christ

[rosykims]

please tell us more about your second worldstate!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 i'm so intrigued by your ocs and i saw you mentioning playing amell currently

thank u for asking omg !!!! i have 3 worldstates loosely planned out which is a Lot for me since i have a tendency to get deeply (perhaps pathologically) attached to one worldstate and one pc lol. but im being brave abt it !

worldstate 1 is my canon worldstate, and the overarching theme for it is self-mythology/loss of personhood. i wont go into detail since i yap enough abt them already lol but i have elspeth (warrior f!cousland romancing alistair) cillian (a rogue m!hawke romancing anders) and ashara (a mage f!lavellan romancing/redeeming solas) all going into datv head first. my canon datv pc will likely be an elven archer f!rook romancing either davrin or taash hehe <3

second worldstate is all mages and obv thats the main theme i wanna have fun with

lucander amell (he/him, blood mage and spirit healer, romances morrigan) unassuming, distant, and polite and also kind of unnerving. used to being seen as a bad guy and is willing to act accordingly, but otherwise is a pretty decent, honorable man. does morrigan's ritual, kills the archdemon, leaves alistair a grey warden. doesn't become warden commander in awakening bc he goes into hiding from the wardens before they can ask too many questions abt the ritual and why hes still alive. he tracks down morrigan in the hopes of protecting her, and then stays with her and their son after that.

cecilia hawke (she/her, spirit healer mage, romances fenris) a blue!hawke who's sweet and motherly and soft spoken and has an enormous guilt complex/self hate for being a mage lol. carver joins the templars, and she later sides with them in act 3 and kills anders which </3 anyways. she survives here lies the abyss in dai and hopefully goes on to attend biweekly couples therapy with fenris <3

thomasin trevelyan (SOFTEST of launches on that name) (she/her, knight enchanter mage, romances cullen. maybe.) socially adept, politically cunning, with a love for the game and a desire to regain her place within the trevelyan family nobility. sides with the mages, doesn't drink from the well, negotiates a truce between celene/gaspard/briala, pardons the wardens, redeems solas, disbands the inquisition post trespasser. shes a good girl and she's got her head on straight!

might do a qunari f!rook mage to romance taash or davrin for datv! we'll see !

lastly my third worldstate places value on the eluvians so its very elfy or at least elf-adjacent. and also the lineage of ameridan > garahel > maherial and so on. i just think its neat . still VERY much underdeveloped tho so no names yet

f!mahariel, she/her, an archer who romances leliana (prev tamlen :c) who dies killing the archdemon

half elven f!hawke mage, romancing merrill!! she sides with the mages but probably still kills anders :( shaking my head in disgust so u can tell i do not approve of this choice ..........

an m!trevelyan warrior romancing ?????????????? IDK. cass maybe. this is going to be exclusively a 'piss off solas' speedrun so hes siding with the templars, putting gaspard on the throne, doing war crimes, etc. wont be redeeming him i fear </3

i hate to say it. i HATE to say it. but if there's a way for me to make a solasmancing rook for datv i Will find a way in this worldstate for the comedic effect of antagonizing my m!trev. even if its just thru headcanons exclusively lol

[montanamp3]

it just burns like a fire in the pit of his chest

[masquenoire]

"Icons only" + Eddie and Roman's daughter Elena telling Roman that she loves him @question-marked (Detective AU)

Send "Icons only" and something for my muse to react to And I will show my muse's reaction using only icons (1-5) and no text

[renegadeontherunn]

guys i love snow white i don’t even care she’s dark and a little crazy and wanted to hug rosamund immediately after meeting her but over the blanket bc she’s so cold and she woke herself up from the dead and punched through her own glass coffin bc no one was there to wake her up….i’m literally obsessed

[charrfie]

GIVE ME THE ELLIE LORE RRAAAAAGG🫵🫵🫵

OHHH BOY OKAY WHERE DO I START WITH THIS. HEADS UP THIS IS GOING TO BE SO LONG EVEN IF IM JUST SUMMARIZING THE BASIC SET UP!!! Also the plot is pretty heavy on violence but for the sake of this ask I'll try to skirt around the details

I suppose before I start explaining the details surrounding Elle I should talk about the actual overarching story itself! It's a story of reflection, mostly. Something I put together (with my boyfriend who made the other main character in the story, Tilly!) that contains a lot of the feelings I was never able to make sense of/reconcile with as a kid. Obviously it's done in a super over-the-top kind of way but I feel like it still works pretty well for its purpose. A lot of the metaphors and plot points are actually INTENTIONALLY inflated bc I wanted to encompass any weird middle schooler's love for edge and cringe (... my love for those things haven't changed either, admittedly <3). It's about young sapphic love and finding family in friends rather than in blood, it's about how fucked up middle school is, it's about transness and identity. It's about growing up too fast. There's a lot more to be said about the themes of it but these are the most prominent I feel.

As for the plot itself, I'll only explain the opening of it or else we'll be here all day. What you need to know is: Elle is a pretty fucked up kid. Often bullied for being The Weird Girl in middle school and with a mom who doesn't really care about her (would classify it as neglectful like "you do your thing I'll do mine" rather than abusive though ig neglect is a kind of abuse), she's left to face the world on her own. And of course this leads to things like unrestricted internet access as a child (should mention it takes place roughly in 2008/2009 so this kind of stuff is in full swing), morbid curiosities not really having a reason to fade, etc. There's quite a bit that happens in between her early life and the catalyst of what sets the plot in motion, like how she loses one of her eyes and whatnot, but I'll skip that part for now considering it's a little upsetting? Anyways, one day she meets a girl named Miriam. Miriam is a sweetheart and an A+ student... as well as the first person to give Elle a second of their time. Over the following weeks, a friendship starts to bloom between them. The friendship, however, comes to a close much too soon when a very paranoid Elle fucks up and makes a split second decision that gets Miriam killed. Its completely motivated by fear and self preservation, so of course she instantly regrets it. None of the potential witnesses around her figure she had anything to do with it. She's just a little girl after all. But there's one person who saw what she did. Staring at Elle from a distance with knowing in her eyes. Tilly. And it just so happens that Tilly is also kind of a fucked up Weird Girl! Who goes to Elle's school! Of course she does. Elle heads to school over the following days expecting to be called a murderer, arrested, or killed herself after being exposed by Tilly but... this doesn't happen...? Tilly tells no one. Rather, the students at school show Elle pity, thinking she was a victim. And yet Elle feels Tilly's eyes bearing holes into the back of her head all throughout class. Elle suspects this is a threatening thing, but instead, Tilly soon expresses an interest in Elle that likely also stems from her own morbid curiosity (however Elle can't fucking stand her for quite a while). Over time the two find themselves bonding somehow! Elle finds comfort in Tilly's similar struggles to her own, finds someone who pays attention to her for once with no possibility of hurting her. Tilly finds a home in Elle that her broken family can't provide for her. It sounds very unhealthy considering the context behind their meeting but it's genuinely very helpful for both of them, and sooner or later they find themselves dating ^_^ !! This, uh..... doesn't stop them from getting into worse trouble down the line though............

I have a much longer version of this written out but this is a lot already so maybe another time? Sorry if this sounds rushed!! Its a lot of info I'm trying to stuff in here at once so a lot of the more nuanced and slow-moving topics dealt with in the story may seem a little awkwardly phrased here

Now despite literally everything I've said about Elle and Tilly, they're both big babies and I love them a lot. They're very sweet just ignore the violence okay? Here's some art of them together my bf (@nervigg) did!! Same one I used as my pfp! Girlfriends :^]

[iloveotters2000]

Still constantly overwhelmed, but I'm getting professional help, which is nice and leaves me hopeful. Maybe it'll give me the energy to maintain my friendships again because I have been self-isolating more and more frequently.

I still miss seeing her sometimes, but it's more the concept of her I think. And the concept of someone who understands me deeply. Someone who feels the same emotional turbulence. She's hurt me though by (I feel) distancing herself, cancelling activities last minute, making me feel like I'm not important (which was even more present when we were dating and everything went south). I still like her as a person, but because she struggles w the same exact issues it is hard to get a sense of security and safety in our relationship...it's also hard to maintain boundaries when we were once closer than just friends.... It's not a very healthy dynamic, although I don't want to admit it and I especially don't want to lose her....

[kamiimiya]

its a very love hate relationship with just starting to be insane over a character because on one hand all of the content is new to me and i can cry about it and get the butterflies and feel Feelings,,, on the other i havent shut up about the same character for like a week now and i fear its getting out of hand atp

[spirkbitch]

i’ve always made my distaste for that relationship clear.

but your response specifically highlights one of the things i dislike the most, not only about the relationship but about Chapels characterization in snw.

i can see that the dynamic is well written enough to be enjoyable for a lot of people. but (attempting to set aside my clear bias for spirk) i can never get past how it disregards existing canon, like spock (seemingly) not knowing her first name in tos, or calling her feelings “illogical fantasies” in tmp, and how it confuses later plot lines, like her long lost fiancé (of course their relationship in snw isn’t the only thing that causes those problems, there is no lack of continuity errors in the star trek universe but i know a lot of people don’t care as much as i do so i won’t go further into it)

they completely changed her personality, made her more ‘girl boss’ for lack of a better term, but with this being a prequel, and her being nothing like that in tos, it kinda makes it seem like someone broke her spirit at some point.

if she’s so cool and badass in snw for then why is she so different in tos. she’s rarely seen in tense situations, usually just taking orders and flirting with Spock. this establishes that she’s hung onto these feelings for years, and throughout tos she always makes her feelings clear, even though he shows no interest and even clear distaste at times, this makes her seem pathetic at best (and kinda creepy imo).

and i don’t think that was the intention in tos, at least i don’t want to see it that way. without previous background given by snw she seems usually calm and kind of snarky at times, she has a crush on Spock that she’s clearly forward about but not in a creepy way. but with the context from snw, them having a previous relationship and her being so much cooler than she is in tos, it makes it seem like one breakup ruined her entire personality and now she’s doomed to a life of creepily pining over a man who doesn’t want her anymore.

that was a really long response i’m sorry i have a lot of feelings on this

star trek used to be about gays in space

now they just make Spock kiss women