#AND NOT BE INCLUDED IN THE ACTUAL STORY

[cursedthing]

i love putting my characters into situations but maybe sometimes i shouldn't.

[slimepuparibaba]

Optimal Reading Order for Caleb's Storyline (with an infographic)

Last Edit: February 4th

The Old Days timeline was wrong, I fixed it 🫠🫠🫠

SO! I HAVE COLLECTED ALL THE CARDS AND HERE IS MY THEORIZED TIMELINE FOR PRESENT DAY CALEB! TRUST ME, WHEN READ IN ORDER THIS SHIT HITS SO HARD. CALEB'S WRITING TEAM INHALED SOMETHING AND I WANT WHAT THEY HAD.

THE TIMELINES

REASONING FOR PRESENT DAY (small tonal spoilers, you'll still be largely blind if you read this!)

I felt like I watched an entire TV Drama when reading through the cards in this order. Please read it in this order for optimal experience because you genuinely get to see the growth Caleb and MC get to have in this weird situation where they're adults trying to figure each other and their feelings out. I am a Sylus girlie (I KNOW I HAVEN'T MADE ENOUGH STUFF FOR HIM SO IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE IT, SHUT UP, I THIRST FOR HIM IN PRIVATE, IT COUNTS) but even I have to admit, this shit? Fire. Actual fire. Caleb's writing team is beautiful, and I hope they have good things happen to them.

...also BEG INFOLD TO MAKE A FUNCTION WHERE WE CAN LIST MEMORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, THIS HIT SO HARD AND I WAS LUCKY I GUESSED RIGHT FOR MOST OF THE MEMORIES THE ONLY ONES I FUCKED UP WAS HIDDEN WAVES COMING AFTER MYTH, BUT ITS OK--

[thefloatingstone]

Appleseed PDA montage to save you from reading endless pages of unimportant politics that don't amount to anything

also because I have nothing better to do, I'm bored, I'm moody, my gaming laptop is still broken so no BG3, and it's too late at night to start drawing after doing animation clean-up all day.

[wanderer-clarisse]

been thinking about Beren and Lúthien ballet adaptation again...

[puppppppppy]

littlest furth shop

@laikascomet

[wiltkingart]

skintight

[rohirric-hunter]

Genuinely amused when people who don't know anything about Christianity try to draw on it as a source for their fantasy -- "Oh this is my half-demon OC who takes damage from holy things and is stuck in a church, better hope that communion wine in the back doesn't spill anywhere!" You mean the regular. wine in the back? The very normal alcohol that is completely indistinguishable from any other alcohol to anyone at all until the actual communion ceremony? The Mogen David? That wine? Okay. Sure. *is imagining your OC screaming and running from a liquor store*

[estcaligo]

Sebek's Opinions on Popular Partner Nicknames or Why He Refuses to Call You That + What Nicknames He Would Use

*Sebek x reader *Romantic *A few slightly suggestive parts

After you and Sebek started dating, Lilia mentioned that he sent Sebek a link to a list of modern nicknames for couples. Later, you ask Sebek what he thinks of them.

What he thinks of popular nicknames

[Princess] "While I love you dearly and have sworn to serve and protect you, you are neither of noble blood nor a member of any royal family! Calling you this would only lead to unnecessary confusion!"

[Kitten] "You are a human, not an animal! Not even a beastman. Why would I call you such a thing?"

[Baby] "You are not an infant. Is this your childish attitude slipping through again? Get yourself together, human!"

[Boo] "…Pardon? Are you attempting to frighten me?"

[Sugar] "Sugar is a type of food. Are you suggesting I devour you? What? You… you do? W-Wait—"

[Honey] "You're still talking about food?! Grr… your incessant rambling has stirred my appetite! This is your fault, human! Now you're coming with me. We're going out to eat - NOW!"

[Angel] "I've read about these supernatural beings in overseas religions, but you possess no features that resemble them. You are a magicless human! Enough with this nonsense!"

[Doll] "You are a human being- a weak human, I might remind you! Dolls are lifeless and purposeless objects… If anything, you're far from lifeless. Quite the contrary - it's too lively whenever you're around!"

[Pookie] "You suggest I call you the same name my sister used for her stuffed toys? Have you no self-respect?!"

What he would call you

Sebek isn't the kind of guy to use overly sentimental terms, but if he wants to express his love and admiration, he'd choose something straightforward yet heartfelt. He loves you a lot, after all.

[My Love] Simple and elegant. Timeless classics.

[Darling] Would use in private moments, probably in an unusually quiet voice. But I think it'll also work for a daily life.

[My Dearest Heart] Would say this when overflowed with emotions. Hugging you tight after a long period of not seeing each other, or kissing goodbye.

[Beloved] This carries a note of respect, so he wouldn't hesitate to use this in public or when talking about you (later, he still needs to get used to it). Overall, calls you "beloved one" in daily life.

[Sweet Companion] He values loyalty and appreciates the fact that you've chosen to walk beside him in life, despite the challenges you'll face. He is proud to call you that, with both affection and appreciation.

[My Fair One] Read this in one of his many books and thought it suits you perfectly - to admire your grace, beauty, and strength. Unintentionally says it when he sees you in some cute outfits. Or when you're triumphing after some achievement - he (secretly) thinks you look most radiant in those moments.

[My Heart's Desire] Alongside his desire to serve Waka-sama, of course. But he means it. You're now one of his objects of admiration and dreams. He uses this when he misses you or is a little desperate for intimacy (hug him or kiss him asap!!).

[Fire of My Loins] When his passion is stirred, this one might slip out. Uses it in most intimate moments.

[ (My) Human ] Forever and always. A nostalgic reference to where it all began - when you were just his "human" in the most innocent of ways.

[dirtytransmasc]

I find it deeply depressing that every adult in Spider's life had children, yet he was never anyone's priority. every adult he could and most likely attempted to match in to. the adults he remembered as the closest things he had to parents since birth (Jake and Norm, even if they weren't acting as his parents, because Spider, genuinely, would not know better). down to his actual foster family (the McCoskers). essentially went out of their way to de-prioritize him.

like I'm not faulting them for having kids, for having a family. but Spider was their first priority. he didn't need to be adopted by any of them, per say, but he was their responsibility. he was their orphan, Jake especially, considering he was the chief of his people, but Norm as well, seeing as he's a prominent figure head of the clan/Hellsgate.

the McCoskers took him in, but over the years, as they had their own children, he was more and more neglected. he was now no longer his actually appointed guardians priority. and that only gets worse and worse as he ages until they become outright abusive (Nash does anyway, cause thats what I'm gonna call violently kidnapping his, throwing him in a room and locking him there, and trying to kill all of them, him included, when they run away. as abuse. and I'll get back to the whole "you have to turn yourself in to the RDA" x2 speech from Jake in a second). they also didn't really accept his culture. with their resentment towards the Na'vi brewing, Spider most definitely faced some heat for being more of the forest than of humans, in terms of culture.

3 times over, Spider came first and was put last. put last by parents who know damn well how much love, time, care, and attention a child needs. who should be able to see when a kid is being neglected. who dialed to advocate and protect him from neglect (instead of calling him a stray).

he was a child and they were his advocates. all three parties failed in their duty as advocates, to protect Spider. to ensure he always had a loving home that made him their priority. that fulfilled all his needs, not just the physical ones. but all put their own families first, and abandoned Spider to the scraps of their love, time, and affection.

imagine being Spider, an orphan who can't even mention his birth parents and is always treated like he is the physical rebirth of his father's sins by half the people around him. every adult in your life has kids and seems like they're such a good parent. you watch their kids being loved and tended to and having a steady home. they receive love and affection constantly. but your fosters pay less and less attention to you as they have babies. and now your a stray to the man you look up to so much. and the man who probably taught you how to put an exopack on has less and less time for you. no one has time for you. you're no one's child. no one's priority. just a stray. a nuisance. and you don't truly belong anywhere.

no one was putting him first. children need to be someone's priority. psychology. they need it.

and then the RDA returns. the McCoskers leave, Spider is expected to leave everything he has ever known, to join the very people he hates and has been trying so hard since he could understand what it meant, to prove that he wasn't like them. Jake, the man he once looked up to, was telling him to leave. sending him away. stripping him of the little amount of family he could somewhatly claim, that being his siblings.

once again, Jake is his chief, should be looking out for him. not even as a father, per say, but as his duty to Spider as his chief. a chief should never be sending away his most vulnerable ward, a child he should consider his own (as all of his clans children should be one with his own children), to the opposing enemy force.

this happens again when they're running away, Jake tells him ever more directly to hide in the forest alone until the RDA stops shooting at everything that moves and then turn himself in so he can his own children could run. once again, putting him last, instead of protecting all of them.

then for a year, Spider has no family. no one. the McCoskers are gone and no one has stepped up to bat for him. he's 15/16 and alone. his the big sibling to the Sully's. those kids are all he has, but they aren't really looking out for him. he's looking out for them. cause he's the oldest. that's just how it is. he is one with the clan. lives with them. does chores. watches out for his siblings, the whole nine. but Jake isn't doing his duty of watching out for his ward. he is once again giving and giving and giving, and not receiving.

and then he is taken, he is taken, and while Jake may not have had the means to go back for Spider, or been able to take the risk of going back for him, he abandons him without a thought for his safety, and puts his children first. it's the language and attitude be poses towards the situation that is wild to me. he has every right to be worried about his children, but he could not spare Spider an ounce of concern, even knowing the danger he was in, and is more concerned about him spilling details then anything else. Spider is, once again, not his first, second, or even third priority. he is a means to an end. a necessary loss.

people only care about Spider when there's nothing else they can put before him.

[madaqueue]

OH that self ship poll had me wondering …

[shorthaltsjester]

me when the campaign with characters i’ve praised for being essentially pawns/npcs in the greater world is ending by underserving the main characters by [checks notes] highlighting the role those characters have played as quasi-npcs who are nonetheless still the narrators of their destinies within the limits of a world beyond their control

[chrliekclly]

does anyone else ever think abt ingrid and jamie nelson?

[timefall-if]

i fear my hungry ass needs a snippet... preferably of M... or of black market medic MC... or both... pls and ty 🙇🏾‍♀️ (btw ur if is looking great and i cant wait to see where the story goes!)

M spits out blood, leaving a dark and wet spot on the floor. With one hand, they hold a can of cold beer at the back of their head, hissing at the feel of it and shutting their eyes tight.

The party had just finished when you walked in through the metal doors, and the mess still hadn't been taken care of yet. The walls are smeared with makeup and piss, unintelligible words written in bright lipstick and circled with smelly sprays of yellow. Cheap, ugly confetti lays sprinkled around chipped chairs, and there are a few strings of neon lights still flickering against the ceiling.

You're sitting next to M at the bar, pouring cheap vodka onto a napkin. You turn to them, holding your hand open, waiting for them to give you their other arm. M does so without so much as a glance in your direction, their eyes still closed and head thrown back.

“This will sting a bit,” you say, focusing on the deep scratches on their skin.

As soon as the alcohol touches their arm, M grunts. “Fuck …"

Their body tightens and limbs flex. You look up at them slightly, your stare fixed on their muscles. M's arms are greenly bruised, surely ugly and brutish to someone else's eye.

Not to you, though. Never to you.

"Like what you see?"

You wince at being caught eyeing your best friend. Were you so obvious?

Your back straightens and you meet M's bright green eyes for a moment. Their eyebrows are slightly raised, an insufferably teasing smirk playing on their lips.

"Shut up," you mumble, turning back to the vodka bottle and napkins on the bar counter.

The sound of M's raspy laugh makes the corners of your own mouth turn upward, your head shaking in both affection and exasperation at once. You grab your scissors and cut some white, soft gauze.

M closes their eyes again. "How'd you get all this stuff so quick, anyway?" they ask.

You snort. "Eh. Marek knows someone."

There is a beat of silence. Not uncomfortable or awkward, but there is something you have been meaning to ask, something that just keeps bugging you, and you know M could smell your curiosity from miles away.

You hesitate before moving your body in front of M again and starting to gently dress their wound. "So, wanna tell me what happened earlier?"

They sigh, "Besides getting my ass beat?"

Your mind drifts back to tonight's fight. The lights of the underground pit were bright in the centre, leaving the rest of the room almost dark. The crowd was loud and wild, crushing you, spit coming out their mouths as they yelled the name of the fighter they bet on, willing them to not let their audience lose their money.

M put up a good fight, they always do. They've fought against this opponent before too. Even though the guy was bigger and meaner, M had won every single time. Until tonight.

You don't know how it happened. One moment, M was pushing him into a corner, their fists coming up at the guy's head and hitting hard. Then their gaze slipped to the crowd and saw you, something in their eyes changing from wild and animalistic to vulnerable, then ambitious. Next second, you see M thrown on the floor, the impact knocking the air out of them. Their opponent started to blindly punch wherever his hands would land, though M kept fighting back, using their legs to hit the guy in the stomach.

But it wasn't enough. M kept sneaking glances at you, almost as if to check if you were still there. They were exhausted, bleeding from their nose, and definitely couldn't take any more hits. Marek stopped the fight and got the guy off M, but they couldn't meet your eyes anymore, not even once.

You keep your head down as you pull the gauze on M's arm tighter. "You were doing good, M. I saw you."

They shift in their chair, the metal screeching against the floor. Your hands work deftly at patching M's scratches, and your fingers linger on their skin just for a second too long. Then you let go.

But M's hand catches yours before you get a chance to turn around again, yet their eyes are still closed, head almost bowed.

"I was distracted."

"By what?"

M's eyes snap to you, finally holding your gaze for longer than ever tonight. Their brows furrow as they look at you, a scrunch between them that you move to slowly rub away with your thumb. Their stare is still trained on you—on your face, your eyes, your lips. They follow your every move, their breath hot on your skin. And you think you might know now what they were distracted by. Or more precisely, who.

They plop back into their seat, still holding your hand. "I just ... I don't know. You're right, I was doing good. And then I saw you in the crowd and I-"

M stops themselves, tongue scraping the inside of their cheek, trying to swallow back the words that are threatening to spill out of them without their permission.

"Doing good wasn't enough anymore. I wanted-fuck, I don't know what I wanted. To show you that I could do even better, I guess. And instead, I just fucking embarrassed myself."

This is what that was about? M wanting to prove themselves to you?

You tie a knot with the ends of the gauze strip, securing it on M's arm as you finish the job. They let go of your hand, allowing you to put your utensils back on the counter. You clean the scissors with agonisingly slow movements, feeling the sharp blades beneath the napkin. If you pressed slightly harder, they would cut you.

Once you're done, you sigh. The silence between the two of you stretches, heavy like a blanket. You pause before you turn to them, trying to catch their eye again, but they pointedly avoid your gaze.

Tsk. Frustrated, you grab M's face with both hands so they wouldn't be able to look anywhere else but at you. Their eyebrows raise as if they would've expected you to just let it go. They should know you better by now.

"You don't have to worry about that stuff with me, M. You're always the best. And I'll root for you ... even if you take a punch or two. Okay?"

They try to move their head from between your fingers, but you don't let them. You keep your hold firm, not breaking eye contact. "Okay?"

M looks at you and grabs your arms gently, their skin harsh but their touch as soft as a breeze. For a moment, you think they will push you away, whatever you said surely being the wrong thing.

But M keeps holding your arms instead, keeping them in place, your hands still on their face.

"... Okay."

[jayninjago]

Woah look at my new teacher dude im fucking cooked

[myokk]

[mollysunder]

The Medarda arc of s2 struggled to be good, because the plot viciously smothered it. You can argue that Arcane was never about politics but you cannot say the Medardas were never explicitly a family defined by politics. So when the show shifted it's priorities from a drama steeped in political conflict where even though the setting was fantastical the stakes were grounded to a shift where magic is the end all be all threat to humanity, the Medardas are rendered largely irrelevant.

In s2 Mel's agency over her own story is both largely stripped from her and poorly communicated. Arcane has Mel abducted from the plot to be the Black Rose's captive. Even when Mel manages to free herself it's not through the traits the audience understands are her strengths, her cunning and social intelligence, it's through an innate instinct that natural to her and indecipherable to the audience.

Ambessa as a character is more or less a villain of convenience, which would be fine if she wasn't immediately following Silco's act. Once Mel is removed from the story Ambessa is largely disconnected from any emotional tension fuels conflict between the characters and previously drove the plot in s1. She's there to play the worse bad guy for Caitlyn and then give Viktor the man power for the Glorious Evolution.

It's frustrating to see the Medardas used the way they are in s2 because when they're together I can see how it could be good. When they're together Mel forces emotion out of Ambessa. In Act 1, Ambessa proved she could do circles around Piltover's court, which could actually put Mel in a tight spot.

Their final scene on paper sounds like a good idea where the true resolution to Mel and Ambessa's story was that Ambessa saw Mel's own ruthless behavior as she not only betrayed Ambessa to the Black Rose, but used her as BAIT to double cross LeBlanc. Ambessa died proud that her daughter killed her the way she did, and that's so cool and tragic, but the execution was a flop.

One, their final fight is completely unimportant to the actual Glorious Evolution, Mel's grief can't even be a highlight because it's interrupted by Viktor's mind trap. Two, their fight didn't rely on any of Mel's actual strengths, just magic and the poorly explained MacGuffin LeBlanc gave her. How did Mel even know it would do that?

It's like the writers had the bones for a great story for the Medardas, but then they're like the world's worst archeologists and fit those bones together in the worst way possible because they were convinced the bones made a stegasaurus instead of a T-rex or something.