#Are you the void? literally not my experience. I just don't give up; keep fighting and you'll come out of my pocket* H̒̆͛͗́ͩ̓ͪ̏̾ͯͩ̾́ *prolon

[sbnkalny]

How can I fix the ground literally not existing?

You feel the void? literally not my experience. I just don't remember The way home from here

[hollypies]

I beg of you please tell me the RW lore I am oh so curious

Ok so RW lore us super uhm!! Its a lot. So. Uhm

Short!! Version

The basics is that there was a race called the Ancients that really wanted to die permanently! Death in RW is like sleep. You die and wake back up again, over and over. A cycle.

One day they found the Void, a way to die or ascend permanently. So they started jumping in . Then it had some. Some bad affects on certain ppl. So they made giant living calculators called iterators to figure out how to die permanently. They built a lot of them.

Another point is that the Ancients didn't build things like we do. They made purposed organisms, so the iterators are alive beings. Not just robots.

Anyway there was a GREAT ASCENSION and all the Ancients ascended . So. Now there's a bunch of.. Basically teenage gods with discord. Literally. The communications are like discord lol.

One day an iterator named Sliver a Straw sent out a triple affirmative, basically saying that the Great Problem (ascending permanently and safely) had been found, could be reproduced, and was portable. The Sliver judt straight up fucking died.

Iterators don't really die, so Sliver dying was ljke a big yikes moment. Basically illegal. Not Basically actually, it was literally illegal.

Cue shenanigans, and enter Five Pebbles and Looks To The Moon.

Pebbles is really craving that death right about now, and starts making something to kill him. This is extremely taxing, and Iterators take a massive amount of water for their cooling systems. Unfortunately, Pebbles was built right next to his sister Moon, and so he started chugging her water. Thus slowly killing her of dehydration.

Moon uses her big sibling privilege to yell at Pebbles, making him lose control of his experiment and releasing robot cancer into his systems. While this would kill him like he wanted, he instead decides to keep chugging all of Moons water to fight it off.

Cue slugcat campaigns.

Each slugcat can have their own encounters with Moon and Pebbles. By the time the slugcats are around Moon is almost nonfunctional, her entire structure submerged and damaged. Pebbles is slowly being overtaken by the Rot, which is the name for the cancer. You can help Moon as a slugcat, either by bringing her neurons (literally stealing Pebbles brain cells and then bringing it back to Moon, or by a specific campaign.

Eventually Pebbles gives up, and asks a slugcat to bring Moon a power core to help her. And so she's restored to some power and can begin repairing while he dies of the Rot. Weeee!!

Tbh there's a lot of shit I've missed, but I dont wanna spoil like. All of it all of it. It's. Houghghh.

Also as someone with siblings I cant ever imagine almost killing one for my own personal gain. I know Five Pebbles is a fan favorite and that at the time he made the decision to steal Moons water he was in a dark place, but that just doesn't stand by me. He made the ACTIVE decision to steal Moons water, knowing what it would do to her, and kept doing it even after he unleashed the Rot on himself. I get he's sympathetic to a lot of ppl but I just. I just can't understand it.

[covenscribe]

thoughts on the Larian IGN interview posted today (Dec.15.2023)

Interview is here

my thoughts under read more cut

-Personally think they shouldn't have added Karlach before they figured out her main story, hearing that there was never 'more' planned sucks because shes a great character and really should have been given more in game time to flourish

-Lae'zel is literally a child soldier I don't see toning her down in any sense as good

-I agree that Astarion's main motivating factor is fear I don't know why people are upset about this assessment tbh

-Okay the big issue is that the Evil Playthrough's lack of content is 'A consequence of your actions' . It is a video game, if you let people make a choice that you feel you need to punish them for then thats not fun. That's bad dming in dnd. I feel like Im being lectured for reading horror novels, some times I want evil storylines.

Instead of leaving it empty it should have been that more evil things fill in the void left by good being killed. Such as filling the city with more cultists, more missions seeing how the world is negatively affected by your choices other than just emptiness. Don't stop at having to kill kids at the grove for the evil run, keep the horror of evil snowballing until the world is burning.

If you're going to have an evil option go all out with the same effort you give the good options or it feels like half a game.

-I'm annoyed they didn't plan more for Halsin in act 3 other than to be there to be kidnapped and annoyed with the city. You have a whole character full of potential! And being the sole third option for poly romance being treated as a tacked on after thought feels bad.

-Shadowheart's original character pitch being a sharran jason bourne was a choice lol. I like how she is in game.

-I think its interesting that they noticed how it was unfair that some characters weren't getting as much love because of where they were placed on the map for recruitment. Like, y'all built that map...

I think it would have been better if the nautiloid section was a lot bigger and you end up recruiting all main companions on the ship, you can still have rescuing gale from a portal, astarion threatening you, wyll and karlach being about to fight when you have to get to the helm.

saying the potential to miss karlach added replay value i disagree with as it just adds frustration imo

-"Wyll: 'We Lost a Little Bit of Narrative Room"

You Sure Did, I love Wyll's story line but he gets so little screen time compared to other characters that it drives me up the wall. Also seeing how we went from the one black companion potentially being replaced by a white woman ( mizora ) in his original story line to being the only companion that can kill another companion doesn't feel good imo.

Tying character story lines together to make the world feel more connected is good but that was a miss

-The Emperor, like Astarion, being motivated by fear makes sense, but the emperor is more of a level headed manipulator and that's why he had a full underground empire of business deals.

-I love the irony that he devil is one who tells you the honest truth about the emperor.

-Saying "One of the basic questions of the game was whether you would become a monster if it would save the world." is interesting because with the companions it often feels like 'would you make yourself a monster to protect yourself' instead.

The ending is full of self sacrifice for multiple characters so I don't think its about becoming a monster, I think it's more about how people who are forced into awful situations will always come out changed.

-Raphael absolutely is a theater kid with too much power lol

-i disagree with the interviewer saying there was no real reward for not taking in more tadpoles the reward is less worms in your brain matter lmao

-imo they wouldnt have had to make minthara recruitable in a good playthrough for people to experience her storyline if they just put content in for the evil playthroughs so its just as fun and people will play it

I think that given unlimited time and resources, I'd want to make a new game at this point. I'm happy with Baldur's Gate 3.

"Baldur's Gate 4 confirmed. SV: What did I miss? AS: Apparently I just confirmed... No, I didn't."

dont tease me lol

-jaheria romance was planned and im sad we didnt get the gilf romance now

-apparently there is or was a special event that happens if you have stolen from a ton of people

Okay that was the full interview my main thought is

Stop pulling a bioware where you re-write a bunch of stuff that has already been worked on and you will have time for more of what you had planned and with less crunch.

That said I also know I'm an outsider and can't know everything they struggled with to make this game happen and genuinely wish them the best. I wouldn't bother critiquing the game if I didn't love it.

[thweaty]

(P.S. don't ask for my credentials lol). I don't usually comment on drama but it be fr lit on your blog and something one of your anons said caught my attention. For those of you who don't understand why Florence would be annoyed with Holivia, I want you to think about this for a moment: Yes, you're an actress with a promising career, emphasis on PROMISING. You know you have potential and this is something you're passionate about but all of your roles have been SUPPORTING CHARACTERS. You're worried (because of the attention span of today's age) that you'll never cement your place as a top billing lady and the longer you go without cementing that, the more the clock runs out. Auditions are hard. Most actors audition for multiple projects before landing anything, I'm talking for every one project an actor lands, there are auditions in the double digits they didn't nail, and for most actors (who aren't auditioning on clout [for the sake of some of y'alls faves we'll keep those names quiet]) their careers are very uncertain because of the absence of said clout. (Clout is not the same thing as being known. Clout is predicated entirely on popular trends, hence sometimes you'll find an actor present in films in a small time frame only to fade entirely into the void because the trend has changed and therefore the clout has run out. Again, not naming names.) So here you have Florence, trying to solidify herself as a leading lady for a particular demographic, downright working your ass off. Then you have a director fresh off a break up who is entirely preoccupied with finding a rebound by GIVING a basic FREEBIE to a man in hopes that she'll sleep with him, unable to seperate the personal and professional in a manner that puts the work FIRST. A lot of people don't realize that films are a collaborative effort and the best kind of director is a director that knows that and is willing to put themselves into the outcome of the film that best rallies every other moving part. Tbh, the director was more concerned with hashing out a domestic, publically-- and I need people to take this into account: not only did she give a man a literal pass just so he could be her boy toy, she went on social media to act like he was literal superman (despite him doing fuck all but sleep with her) and be glorified in a way that honestly, hard working women are all too familiar with having to deal with, AND THEN going on Twitter to insert yourself into discourse like you knew him forever and you just had to defend your wittle baby boy uwu, despite the fact that he's a grown ass man that can fight his battles but obviously didn't fight for his role. It gives very "not like other girls", very high school / stunted development, I mean it is VERY difficult to have respect for someone like that who also goes out of their way to speak to the press and demand respect for work she didn't do. The way the director behaved is actually kind of embarrassing, and as someone whose worked their ass off and continues to in order to make a name for herself, yeah, the entire experience would be a gigantic 🖕🏻

Allegedly, of course <3

allegedly ❤️😭

[karla-the-elemental-dreamer]

KH-OC Week - Catch Up: Day 3 - (3 AUG 2021)

@khoc-week

For this day, I will be covering 2 prompts: 'Loss' and 'Heartless/Nobody appearance'.

Firstly, for 'loss', I ended up having a dream, which seemed to play on the BBS scene where Eraqus was struck down (so relating to this theme; losing Eraqus; losing someone dear to you). Only in the dream, Xehanort didn't have his way, and the Land of Departure remained in existence. And then it seems like the situation was swapped, and Terra seemed to bring a 'you get what you give' experience to my end:

-------------------------------------------------------

Dream No. M79A - Master Eraqus' Second Chance (24 JUL 2021):

The dream started with me at the Land of Departure, outside, witnessing the cutscene after Terra (KH-BBS appearance) fighting Master Eraqus, for myself. In the same way, Terra went “What have I have done?”, as he then started crying. However, I quickly came and wrapped myself around Terra (now suddenly in KH3 appearance) from behind and closed my eyes, but it wasn’t just an ordinary hug. I seemed to be able to exercise the power to bring Eraqus back to life, that is, if I was able to say the right words (while in the void via Terra) to Eraqus to convince him to come back.

It wasn’t long before Riku (KH3 appearance) came up to me and gently said, “Terra’s grieving”, suggesting I leave Terra and go with him. For some reason, I seemed to trick Riku into thinking I was feeling slightly remorseful that I couldn’t help Terra; I kept to myself that I had already acted, and in a profound way. So for the time being, neither Terra or Riku knew what was about to unfold, and Terra continued to weep outside as Riku took me into the halls.

The dream then seemed to play from a third-person perspective for some time, as Terra walked in, but seemed surprised when he noticed Eraqus standing on the top level. Terra shouted “Master!” as he ran up to the second level to meet Eraqus. With Terra being literally gobsmacked that Eraqus was there, they went into a side area to talk. Terra asked Eraqus, “Was it Aqua?”, in which Eraqus responded with no. “Was it Ven?”, Eraqus said no again. But, realising that Terra couldn’t possibly guess anyone else…

Eraqus continued something like, “It’s someone who has a very special place in your heart. She told me to come back. In-fact I can show you what she said to me”. With Terra closing his eyes, the scene went to when I was in the black void, floating in-front of Master Eraqus as I said something like, “It wasn’t Terra’s fault, Eraqus, please forgive him. (forgotten in the middle), I hope I’ve done enough, and that you decide to come back”. As Terra opened his eyes, there was a quick sub-scene at the front of the halls, of Kairi and I standing side by side as Terra’s voice said, “There’s two princesses of light”.

The dream went back to the main scene, from my perspective again now. I was standing with Riku at the front of the halls as Terra walked out of the side area. I approached Terra, who had a look of awe on his face, as when I was right in-front of him, he wrapped me in a tight hug. The dream camera showed Riku first of all looking confused, but then the awareness of my situation seemed to hit him, and he sighed and gave a close-mouthed smile with the energy of ‘you cheeky dreamer’.

As Terra released me, my phone went off; Terra going to join where Aqua and Ventus were standing, while I went closer to Riku to answer my phone. It was my mum, and she seemed to be crying over the phone. She told me that I had to come home; that my grandma had died. I grew upset and started crying as I approached Riku and said, “we have to go home”, telling him what happened. With a look of sorrow, Riku gave a remorseful groan as he welcomed me into his arms.

After a lengthy hold, Riku released me and I thought we would now be going. But then for some reason, I didn’t know how Riku and I could get home. I looked over at Terra and said that Riku and I could use his help, in which he softly nodded and left Aqua and Ventus’ area. Terra realised what I wanted as he equipped his armour and opened some sort of portal in the room. Like in an earlier dream, Terra got me to sit in-front of him as he leaned over me, while Riku seemed to be hanging from the vehicle like he was holding onto some monkey-bars.

Landing in my house, I went to my mum who was in the front room, visibly very upset at what had happened, while Riku and Terra watched on from the side of the room. And I too ended up crying again at the inescapable feeling that my grandma was gone. After a few moments of me just standing there and sobbing, Terra slowly walked over to me and draped me in another long, tight hug, me now crying on his shoulder.

When he released me, that’s when the dream went to the next scene, but it felt like it was playing as a sub-scene. My grandma was standing in-front of the central heating unit, and was talking, seemingly how she was explaining how she was back. But it sounded weird as she was saying all these complex English sentences, and English isn’t her first language IRL. At first, I was wondering how she came back, but then an energy hit me, and I realised it was Terra. When he held me in the front room, he was returning the favour; he basically did the reciprocal of how I had brought back Master Eraqus for him. After a while of my grandma saying some weird stuff, the dream ended.

----------------------------------------------------------

Secondly, the 'Nobody/Heartless' prompt:

Firstly, my name as a nobody would be Xalkra; and I have my own Organisation XIII. As for appearances, I haven't really considered it much yet. Xalkra would obviously be wearing the black coat. Like Larxene, she has a bratty demeanour and can be quite devious. Xalkra is the leader of the Org, and has the title of 'The Mastermind'. I use my academic gifts and abilities for good things; she uses hers for ulterior motives.

And then in my AU, I have two side main characters, two teddies (a male and a female) called Selvian and Sierra. In adapting them to the KH AU, they are like my Donald (Selv.) and Goofy (Sier.), and we would form a KH trio in itself if the criteria required. I have an archived drawing (from my GIMP days) of the two bears as their nobody forms, Lexavnis and Serrixa. For height perspective, the bears would come up to my pelvic bones:

Today I know more about KH than I used to; and now I understand that the nobodies aren't necessarily fully evil. So if I had to revise their appearance today; I would. Lexavnis and Serrixa seem to have a heartless palette going on here.

With my previous fan-fic AU, Lexavnis and Serrixa would do Xalkra's bidding. In the story, Xalkra said that Selvian and Sierra had to race Lexavnis and Serrixa (our Org can could co-exist at the same time; so like Sora and Roxas), and the prize was the spare vessel that Selv. and Sier. had to try and win to revive/re-create Repliku, after we thought he was killed off in KH3.

----------------------------------------------------------

Bonus (still Heartless/Nobody) - Horace:

I do have other teddy bear OCs, but they don't feature as much as they are not the main two. They would also make up Xalkra's Org 13. There's one bear called Horace, who I have concepted to be an obese bear that doesn't know his limits, so much so that he even goes around and eats furniture (eg. why does your bed only have 3 legs?). He is quite 'dumb', he doesn't speak, just wanders around, 'rumbles' and eats things. Others have to keep him away from objects/structures, and vice-versa.

His nobody is called Raxeoch. Once again, he can't talk, he may appear 'dumb', BUT he is actually smart, otherwise how can he eat things to help Xalkra's motives? Unlike Horace, Raxeoch knows what to destroy. In the fan-fic I wrote, the start of the assault on Riku's Destiny Islands property was when Riku caught 'a teddy bear', trying to stuff a sun lounge chair into his gob. I never finished the fan-fic; I was eventually going to get Raxeoch to eat Riku's (or maybe somebody else's) keyblade.

Let me know if you ever want a drawing to be done of Horace (I currently don't have one).

Edit: Forgot to mention that teddies cannot wield keyblades.

[itsclydebitches]

Ok so jumping on this train - the shift in Penny's portrayal just... bugs me so much?? Like, when did we ever get indication that James saw Penny as property and not her own person? What happened to Ciel? What about the team she would've had at the festival? When did things change? Why? What prompted it? We don't know. No one mentions it. Penny doesn't express any particular discomfort until "Cordially Invited". We're just expected to accept that it's a thing now.

It’s another one of those cases where I can kind of see how RWBY started to set that conflict up... but in the end skipped over 99% of the work. In “A Minor Hiccup” Penny runs into Ruby, weeks after their fight at the dock, and after failing to convince Ruby that it’s all a misunderstanding that she thinks she knows her, Penny admits that yeah, she was there, and she only left because her father is incredibly protective of her. She then goes on to say that she was told not to talk to anyone, particularly Ruby’s group, but it wasn’t her father who told her that. The two then stumble upon Ironwood’s presentation and the timing of that arrival, combined with Penny’s suggestion that they go elsewhere, heavily implies that Ironwood was the one to tell her to keep her distance. Indeed, when two guards spot Penny she takes off. She’s not supposed to be out on her own, let alone chatting with Ruby. 

This could indeed function as the beginnings of a “Ironwood only sees Penny as a weapon” plot line but the problem is that, at this point (in the very same episode) we’re shown why Ironwood and others in the know would want to keep Penny from getting too buddy-buddy with anyone: she’s a robot. The first person with an artificial aura. She is a dubiously ethical experiment that hasn’t been announced yet and is, literally, classified. That is the presumed reason for telling Penny not to make friends. Because (as actually happens) if she gets close to someone she might spill the beans... and not everyone is as kind-hearted as Ruby. Even ignoring what her reveal would (did) do to Atlas’ reputation, others might try to use Penny for their own gains. You know, like exactly what happened in Volume 7. 

However, this reason is then deemed null and void when Penny is cut in half at the tournament, revealing her robot status to the entire world. 

So when she’s resurrected in Volume 7 Ironwood’s original motivation - a motivation that hasn’t been touched on in five years - is gone. Penny is the beloved protector of Mantle. Ruby is in the know regarding not just her, but every other secret Ironwood is keeping. Penny’s secret identity has been obliterated and Ruby is in on every classified bit of info the show has, so why shouldn’t they be friends? We’re not told. What we are told though is that friendship is a Big Good Thing in Team RWBY and non-existent on Team Ironwood, even though we a) are given no new motivations for why this mindset supposedly exists and b) see the exact opposite: 

The Ace Ops claim they’re not friends but we see them being friends with their team, Team RWBYJNR, and Qrow throughout the volume

Penny says Ironwood won’t let her be friends with people (why?) but here she is chatting with Ruby while Clover is right behind her and she’s clearly friends with Winter. She gets to show the group around, wake them up every morning, participate in missions like an election party that, as the title suggests, was really just meant to be a night off. It certainly doesn’t look like Ironwood is concerned with Penny keeping her distance. 

Via his subordinates, Ironwood is implied to be anti-friend yet he’s the one hugging Qrow and throwing the team a license party. He extends both trust and friendship towards them the moment they walk through his door, despite doing so on a stolen airship 

Team RWBY is supposed to be the epitome of friendship but they’re lying to their main ally, ignoring Ozpin, meekly going along with Ruby’s secrets despite disagreeing with her, not fighting as a team, and have two members going behind all the others’ backs

If I had to choose a friendship here based on actions rather than meaningly words, it wouldn’t be with Team RWBY. That extends to Penny and her relationship with Ironwood too. Volume 2 (again, five years ago) implied that Ironwood wanted to keep Penny secret, but that’s not the same thing as not viewing her as a person. Her lack of friends was a direct result of her status as a classified experiment. Whether we agree with that decision or not, it is logical, and that motivation was removed on Volume 3. You can’t jump straight from, “Ironwood doesn’t want Penny blabbing her status as a robot to random first years” to “Ironwood only views her as a weapon” and expect me to buy that. Especially when everything we’re shown implies the exact opposite. Do weapons get to go to parties for cake and selfies? Are weapons presented as the defender of a city, clearly building on Ozpin’s advice to have a symbol of peace? We’re never shown this supposed perspective of Ironwood’s until the series randomly decides it should exist and even then the evidence is... pretty flimsy. Ironwood says, “Penny is completely under my control.” Is that a horrible way to phrase things? Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Ironwood doesn’t think she’s a person. Does Penny look upset? Yes. But she looked upset the moment Jacques asked if they were “safe” with her around. Based on the actual canon, it feels to me like this is a flaw of Ironwood’s that’s easily addressed. There isn’t evidence that he thinks a robot with an artificial aura is beneath him, only that he doesn’t know how to talk about Penny in a more respectful manner. He doesn’t act like he really thinks she shouldn’t have friends, he just doesn’t know how to express caution without giving a firm, blunt, either/or order. This could have all been solved with one conversation between them where Penny lays out the language she’d like Ironwood to use (reflective of many minorities’ experiences: “Hey, I know you don’t actually think this but the way you referred to me is very derogatory”) and Ironwood clarifies his status on friendships among peers. Instead a single line somehow got blown up into, “Ironwood has no respect for Penny and doesn’t care about her at all.” Which then somehow became, “Since Ironwood hates Penny it makes perfect sense that he’d shoot Oscar. He clearly hates kids.” Which... we’re missing a couple of steps there lol. 

[segadores-y-soldados]

Honestly, I think the Overwatch Timeline is too compressed. But I am curious on when Moira joined Talon cause from what I can tell Vialli, Akande and Moira should have all become Council Members at roughly the same time. They weren't in power during Retribution but they are all seemingly council members soon after. So it seems the younger members got together and took out the old guard even if Vialli and Akande don't share a long term vision. I am curious about if that just happened or planned.

This is what I would like my next “consequences of Retribution” essay to focus on, actually, so I probably won’t go into a ton of detail in this answer.

However, I will touch up on the main points:

But I am curious on when Moira joined Talon

If you’re on my blog, then you know that I believed Moira joined Talon before she joined Blackwatch, or was recruited into Talon shortly after her recruitment to BW.  Either way, by the time of “Retribution,” she was already a Talon agent.

They weren't in power during Retribution but they are all seemingly council members soon after. So it seems the younger members got together and took out the old guard even if Vialli and Akande don't share a long term vision.

“New faces stepped up to fill the void in Talon.”

Absolutely, 100% agree that Antonio’s death motivated Akande to take out Akinjide.  Antontio is very comparable to Akinjide: it is implied that both men were merely interested in “hindering” Overwatch’s work, but they weren’t necessarily interested in waging a “full-on war” against the peace-keeping organization.  All they wanted was for their “profit-making organization Talon” to get less scrutiny from Overwatch and Blackwatch.  

So they attempt to bomb Gérard Lacroix.

...It doesn’t work.  Gérard survives the attack.

As a response to the attack in Rome, Gabriel escalates his plans to snatch Antonio and get information from him.  Moira forewarns him of the mission.  Because of this, Antonio is prepared for Gabriel and his team, and surrounds his mansion with a literal “army” of new, highly specialized Talon paramilitary units that Moira had a hand in designing.

However, what happens is that Gabriel figures out what’s going on, and very quickly realizes his team is compromised.

He also probably realizes that Antonio’s been played as well.

So Gabriel decides he’s not going to drag Antonio around and attempt to keep him alive when a hostage would be “dead weight” and virtually useless as a bargaining tool anyways.  So he shoots him.  Genji and McCree excel in shoot-outs and the sudden change in objective is enough to keep Moira intrigued by the turn of events.  So Gabriel plays into these things and the crew survives.

Did Moira want Antonio to die?

I honestly think she didn’t really care who lived and who died - she’s the real “winner” in the end, and the most important part to her was testing if her new experiments (the Talon army) could survive against Gabriel, who has at least some of his “Reaper” powers.  The army loses, which gives Moira “data” to realize that cooperating with Gabriel is beneficial for her research, and also gives her new ideas (e.g. the creation of Widowmaker).

Akande, however, has probably been waiting for things to kick off in Talon, and uses the social and emotional loss of Antonio to undermine Akinjide and his influence in Talon.  This is the wording in his Hero Profile:

Adeyemi was a useful asset to Talon, but the organization saw far greater potential in Ogundimu, with his intelligence and his ability to inspire as a commander. While Adeyemi was content to profit from raids on Numbani, Ogundimu had a grander vision. This difference in aspiration would lead Ogundimu to kill his teacher and take on the mantle of Doomfist, along with the eponymous gauntlet.

Akande’s fight with Akinjide was 100% ideologically-motivated.  He wanted Akinjide’s Talon forces, he wanted the “Doomfist” title, and he wanted the seat in the council.  He had a vision for destroying Overwatch and the world Talon could help create after it fell, and he was going to see it through.

So, was Antonio’s death “planned” by the younger members of Talon?  I don’t think so, not entirely.  Did they seize the opportunity to take over Talon and push against Overwatch more aggressively?  Yes, absolutely, and McCree’s narration + the video confirms it.

Doomfist (Akande) says to Symmetra:

Order...chaos... Means to an end.

Akande will use both deliberately planned attacks and “unplanned” tactical opportunities to his advantage.  We see “history” repeat itself in his “Masquerade” comic, where Akande has finally seen the right “confluence” of events - some planned, some “random” - that motivates him to break out of prison, overthrow Vialli (who has “stagnated” with money), and reclaim authority over the Talon council.As for the timeline being too compressed - I don’t disagree, but “Retribution” expanded our “fall” of Overwatch to roughly 2-3 years instead of “just one” like it was before:Moira’s recruitment: 8-9 years before RecallRetribution: 8 years before RecallUprising: 7 years before RecallThe fall of OW: about 6 years before Recall

It’s still a very tight timeline, and so much stuff happens in those years that it definitely feels like a lot to take in.

[hua-fei-hua]

19, 23, and 25?

hehehe just as i thought i forgot i rb'd that the other day~

19. when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

hilarious question to give me. the answer is that i have my google doc of notes, which is usually divided into several chunks

premise / title(s)

ao3 tags / summary

timeline / plotting

chapter ordering (if different from timeline, which isn't uncommon for me)

lore bits! either canon or specific to the au

quotes n snippets that remind me of this particular fic

things to talk about in the a/n

cuts

which looking at it now is a lot more chunks than i realize but this is also how i end up with 10k word minimum planning docs i'm not joking. usually the chunks go in that order, but there's been switching around~

if the story focuses on multiple pairings and parallel plots, then i also highlight the timeline/plotting/chapter orderings accordingly, color-coded to colors i associate w/that pairing hehe

as for notes on things like character development, themes, motifs, and things i want to eventually include (like prose i have written out for the future), all that gets chucked onto one melting pot onenote page, for which i have one per fandom. it's messy, but i memorize the navigation as i make it lol. it also has rough half outlines for oneshots that i start writing on a whim w/o a plan!!

23. any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

catch me putting any and all odd details abt band into Bb my beloved which i have not abandoned but in fact have left to marinate these last few months and will continue to leave marinating for a few months to come. Bb is like this au where if you read it, and you knew me or where i came from, you'd Fucking Know i'm not even joking ahaha.

other than that, i've taken fencing, volunteered in daycare, AND-- most recently-- read some of the gnostic scriptures (that IS LITERALLY JUST LYING AROUND IN MY HOUSE IT'S REALLY FUNNY) for not necessarily fic writing reasons (the first two for sure), but also lore speculation abt [redacted for contract reasons]. i've swallowed ice cubes, eaten flowers, almost paid someone to give me a black eye-- you know, the works. i don't really use a lot of these in the things i have published, but i know a lot abt a fair number of things~

25. copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

ahh how embarrassing most of my wips are gnshn rn but i should have some zenith ch. 4 still, though ch. 3 was also p good... oh wait i just remembered i have some far ahead snippets on the onenote C:<

There's a flower in the back of Gojou's head, a daisy, fresh and white and clean. And as all his dormant emotions start waking up one by one, fighting desperately within his chest, his picks a petal off the daisy. I care. As it falls into the void, it transforms into a drop of blood. I don't care. Gojou starts falling, paralyzed in real time, but in the infinitesimally slow space in his mind, the petals start falling faster and faster. I care, I don't care, I care, I don't care. It's like some sick play on love. I care, I don't care, I care, I don't care. There's something forming in his throat; it's getting hard to see. He's never felt scared in his life before, never felt anything at all, if this horrible crawling, clawing feeling in his head, his heart, his skin, his chest is what it means to feel at all.

ask game~ get to know yer fic author hehe

[trashcat-hiss]

I'd like to talk about my experience with this trauma response.

Since I was in my early teens I told myself I'd kill myself at 25. 25 came and went and I didn't do it. So then I figured 30 was probably a good time to go. Funny enough, I made it through that year, too.

I just turned 35 (which by my weird logic was important as it is a multiple of 5) and I realized that between 30 and 35 I hadn't really been thinking of this year as -the- time to go.

Now that chronic illness and pain are my daily reality, and the fact that all four of my grandparents died around age 65, I don't plan to make it longer than that. I figure that with childhood intermittent starvation, lead exposure, etc, and all the psych meds I've been on that the number is lower, so more like 55. Is this being real or is this CPTSD brain? I can't really tell.

But here's the thing that I've been learning about myself as I pass each one of those 5 year markers, though... I've kinda settled into this strange contented attitude as I approach this nebulous future death date now. I grow more willing to stick it out (even though the challenges seem to grow exponentially intense as I age).

Like, sure, my life is probably gonna be shorter than many people's. But even though I now have a ton of limitations I didn't expect to have this early, I'm now determined to make the most of what's left.

I ain't got time for self-loathing. Fuck you, media, my body has some trouble getting me around as easily as it used to and it can't handle heat and cold so well anymore, but physical uglyness is a capitalist marketing scheme. Plenty of people made me think I wasn't worth loving for decades, and I am not wasting any more of the precious time I have left helping them beat me up. My lumpy, scarred, fat body helps me enjoy the wetness of summer rain, or encourage my friends, or watch clouds, or taste curry. This body hurts literally all the time, but I'm still glad to be in it. Some days I have a lot of intrusive thoughts about escaping it permanently, but the real me, under those false thoughts, is willing to take the bad, because there is still good to experience and to create.

Even if your trauma leaves you feeling like your destiny will be cut short, there is good out there to enjoy. It might take sloughing the expectations you have and those placed upon you to begin to reveal it, but it's there. You don't have to keep playing society's arbitrary rules if they're preventing you from wanting to be alive. You could give up everything and be a Buddhist monk, even.

If the only thing that plugs the void a little is anger, be angry! You didn't deserve the bad shit happening to you! Let yourself fight for what you do deserve, which is love and some joy. Fuck you, void! You can't have any more of my time!

Anything (well, a lot more than your brain is letting you currently consider) is possible when you stop caring about conformity and other people's expectations. Dream big! If you feel like you're gonna die early and that everything is pointless, give life a point! Follow that pipe dream your parents told you wasn't a safe choice. If you're gonna die anyway, go wild! Eat a whole cake, go back to school for art, leave a partner you're unhappy with, quit the job you hate. Not everything will work out, maybe you get the thing and it doesn't make you happy; that's okay. Know that you at least tried to reach for joy. You took some control over your life, you snatched it away from the trauma.

Because even if you feel like you're on a first name basis with Death, you deserve a life with some happy things in it.

let’s talk about a ptsd thing that’s called sense of foreshortened future. i don’t see anyone ever talking about it here and i think that it’s important that people know that what they experience is nothing but another symptom of their mental illness.

So what is it?

Basically, sense of foreshortened future is a feeling or a belief that for some reason you won’t have a long and fullfilling life. You feel like you will die soon – or sooner than expected – and therefore you shouldn’t make any long-term plans. You try to avoid long-term relationships, you don’t have any career plans, reaching your birthday - hell, sometimes even managing to surivive the week surprises you. 

You feel like you’ll never have a normal life because you’re not only broken beyond repair but also can’t trust anyone anymore. It is an incredibly depressing feeling that makes you feel like there’s no point in… anything, really? Every activity becomes dull and pointless and you don’t know what drags you though life at this point.

I know it won;t make the feeling go away but I want you to know that this feeling is NOT a reflection of reality. You’re not broken beyond repair and you will have a normal happy life if you work on your recovery. making plans is not pointless. You deserve to be happy and you will be happy. Don’t let PTSD and its symptoms convince you otherwise.