#I Have No Character Independent of You. like. fuck you. *fuck* you.

[xgremlinxx]

I was literally thinking about this, like nobody from my past is worth being sad about...I was always the one that did or fronted everything, and it still wasn't enough. Hey, i'm not mad, i'm glad they showed their true colors to me.

A lot of them can't tell me that they had better than me, they settled for losers, drug addicts, and selfish bozos. Hey i'm not the greatest but I saw what they went for after me, don't ever tell me I didn't love or try with my whole heart, I saw how you settled for less because of your delusions. But tell me, why should I care when you didn't? lol Such a funny thing. I simply can't be arsed anymore.

yes, nobody is worth being sad about over losing them for me personally except for my parents, sponsoring my old ass letting me squat. I'll love them to the ends of the universe and back.

and nah i dga single fuck about being independent right now...My parents are great, sorry I didn't have fuck ass parents like ya'll. My states economy is dog shit, people making minimum wage to pay for fast food meals. Shit is burning down, inflation is too high. Rents too high, groceries too high, lol I dated a woman that had it so rough they need to sell their pussy...and you know what, I would totally sell dick if it was socially acceptable and celebrated like it is to sell pussy in the year of our lord 2025. LOL If it was in demand, but I wasn't born with a pussy, and lets be honest, thank g0d for that! Ya'll women in the west are beyond cooked, but I get it...Don't agree with it, but I understand.

I'm just being facetious. I could never sell my soul like that. There is literally nothing left in people like that, and it's so sad to see up close, so much sadder than just hearing about it.

Im finna work and stack until things improve. There is no rush. There is still time (famous last words). I'd like to fill the gaps of my character with substance, part of my problem is being too hollow at times, I am not me without passion. I see now safeguarding my vision & protecting peace comes b4 all.

People that carry years long attachments for people that were not good for them, broke up with them ( 5 years ago +) or did them wrong is the most cringe shit ever, quite frankly I'm not trying to be like ya'll.

[tooturtly]

Still on my locked tomb and feudalism bullshit, so here’s a discussion of John, and how I think he systematically uses the decentralized nature of the Nine Houses to avoid the realities of being God.

Essentially, what it says on the tin, but first, context. (Can you tell I’m somehow more unhinged now?). Feudalism is a political structure with a fair amount of decentralization of power. It usually came about in the past after a larger government/political system collapsed, such as Rome. Essentially, a King/Emperor cannot feasibly run large amounts of territory, with the citizens of those territories being from diverse backgrounds and customs, without a lot of loyal subordinates helping out. Enter the nobility.

The nobility do the work of running the lands so that the King/Emperor doesn’t have to maintain a large bureaucracy to, let’s say, collect taxes from each individual person, hold a census, or run a court of law. This does not mean the ruler gets to fuck off, they do have responsibilities to the realm, their court, their knights, and the nobles who support them. Some people have to like you to remain in power, otherwise you get assassinated.

So what does all this have to do with John? Well, first, I think it’s safe to say from what we’ve seen that the Nine Houses are very similar to a feudalist system. You have a collection of independent, semiautonomous populations that can generally keep themselves together. They have slightly different takes on religion, loyalty to the empire, and necromancy, but they are all unified under it.

Second, I think we can also say that John has a very specific perception of himself that does not always align with the reality. He wears worn, casual clothes that are not the type of thing anyone else wears, but includes a crown of infant bones. He has a casual, relaxed attitude, but also can pull out a speech about avenging death and fighting for the empire seemingly off the top of his head. He doesn’t want Harrow to treat him like God, yet also constantly quotes works from a world nobody but he can remember. His narration of his actions in Nona paint him as seeing what he did as something anyone would do, as not that bad, as the act of a desperate, passionate man. Yet he also rebuilt the world to make himself God and Emperor above everyone else, the head of a ten thousand year long grudge campaign.

The contradiction is inherent in his title, man who became god, and god who is man. Harrow especially points out moments where he seems mortal, human, calling attention to how he otherwise appears completely separate and divine.

John is a complicated character. People smarter than me have written more with better evidence laid out. What I’m trying to get at though is that, to me, John reads as a man who cannot view himself as having vast amounts of power over others on the regular. To a certain extent he has to view himself as ‘just a little guy’ so he doesn’t have to reconcile with the actions that have caused massive amounts of harm. He wants the Lyctors to be his friends and associates, rather than their boss.

The structure of the Nine Houses helps with that. He doesn’t have to regularly speak to the average citizen, or deal with the daily problems of the people and their Houses, or hell, even the people he’s conquered. Mercymorn says something in Harrow about how the Emperor’s seat is the Mithraeum, the place light years away from the people he is supposed to allegedly rule. The place only realistically accessible by traveling through the River, a feat only possibly by Lyctors (for the most part). And we learn that he’s only been away from that for 80 years, and he assumedly spent most of his previous ten thousand years there.

Because he is at the top of the power structure, he can lose himself in the bigger picture and forget about the reality, which is the fact that he is running a colonial Empire that requires the biological death of planets and people to survive.

[tuliptiger]

Bro I hate Silco so much. Bro. And don't get it twisted right. He's a good character, he's well written or in THE VERY LEAST incredibly interesting and compelling. To me I guess. I still can't stand him, I hate him and I think he embodies every human flaw a person can have. And every bad decision we make at our lowest points.

And for that I can't stand him in the purest way and I think that's kind of awesome. Get him out of my face though lol fuck that guy. Great presentation of what I feel a lot of people in the world are like or have the potential to be like rn.

For what he was meant to be, having just found out the original plan for him which I really shouldn't consider. Or maybe I should in favor of him, as a little grace for him. I guess Jinx and him were supposed to be like romantic. If that's your thing go for it I guess but I'm not going to talk nicely about it and it disgusts me as a heads up. Fair warning.

I'm forever grateful they didn't pull a Joker/Harley Quinn but because jesus christ I think I actually would've hated Arcane for that. For all you people complaining about Arcane, sure that's your right and it's all personal tastes anyway but it could've been actually, sincerely awful. It would've ruined Jinx as a character and undercut all of her nuance, her autonomy as a real, deeply thought out character. Her struggles, her mental health, her trauma, it would've fucking sucked.

I hate Silco for even the possibility of that and unfortunately i think it explains a little bit about some things. But anyway, back to hating Silco.

1.) He betrayed every single thing he's ever cared about in his life. He betrayed Felicia by trying to and knowingly kill her children. He betrayed the promise he made to not JUST Vander but to Felicia and himself.

Because what? Vander betrayed him first? Because he tried to kill him? Because he probably does feel genuine regret about maybe enacting the event that got Felicia killed? We never get the story but I think it's implied. Either that or Vander really was just deep in grief and rage and put that on Silco. I think they both fucked up for the record but Vander didn't CONTINUE that for the rest of his life.

What did any of that have to do with Vi and Powder/Jinx though? He's the reason everything bad happened, maybe you could blame Viktor since he went back to give Jayce the rune but every bad moment after that is almost exclusively Silco.

2.) He bribed Marcus contributing to the corruption in Piltover and Zaun. He fed drugs to Zaun for the point of nothing in my opinion. Because he couldn't come to terms with his grief, he couldn't make Piltover pay the way he wanted them too? He justified his own terrible actions for some idea of an independent Zaun for what? For who? Piltover may have taken from him but he actively chose to burn whatever he had left by trying to kill Powder and Vi.

3.) He's the reason Vi and her crew lost their loot, and their lives NOT Powder. He's the reason or at least the means for Singed to create more fucked up abominations and shimmer.

4.) He IS A HUGE SOFTIE he's soft as fuck. He loves and he loves deeply but he could never get over himself to do better. And this is possibly the main reason I hate him, he sincerely loved Vander and Jinx and Felicia and Zaun. People get hurt all the time, and it isn't the same as the trauma he faced but I DON'T think a reasonable series of decisions is to betray everything you are and have worked for to fuck over literally everyone around you. He is the scorched earth method, he wanted to hurt everyone and everything for what he felt and experienced. He's so incredibly selfish I cannot stand him.

5. A close contender, maybe even tied because I love Jinx so much. I hate that he is directly related to all of the hurt Vi and Jinx have experienced. I hate, I loath, I detest what he did to Powder and to Jinx. I feel so fed with season 2 episode 7, we DIRECTLY see what happens when Silco doesn't decide every day to hurt the world around him and hurt everyone in it. What happens to Powder without his fucked up influence.

I never thought anyone made Jinx specifically, like there isn't someone to blame because it felt diminishing to Jinx herself. But I'm rethinking it, I would say with certainty Jinx wouldn't have existed without Silco. I don't give him full credit, not in the creation of her and not her herself but the REASON she was reborn into a different person. Powder and Jinx created Jinx, but she created her because she had to, because Silco brought her into a fucked up world where she had to be different to survive.

Silco didn't support her, he enabled her, made her fear the world, fed her insecurities and projected himself into her. And because he does love, he really really did love her I think, that was what she felt she needed as a TWELVE year old girl. She needed a guardian who had her best interest at heart and not just love. Whatever support she had before, he ripped it from her and shredded it, and from that pile of rubble and ash Jinx had to find herself and emerge. But she picked herself up and chiseled herself into who she is in the series not Silco.

She's smart as a whip, she's so incredibly clever. She knew to some extent the reality of what was happening. But reality didn't have any real gravity anymore for her without something to hold her to it. Silco, at any time, could have stopped what he was doing. He could've seen her hurting and said, this isn't it. This isn't worth it. But he didn't, and she didn't need a reason to change because she had someone who fed her love when she had no one. When she thought it was all her fault and where Silco tried to convince her Vander and Vi weren't good people and that they didn't love her, won't love her.

I could go on, I fucking hate Silco. Once again, I think he's the weakest character emotionally and mentally but certainly not writing wise. He's spineless, he can kill sure, but in the main universe he couldn't get over his own feelings of guilt and hurt to do better. Nobody is satisfied with the slow progression of equity, of freedoms and peace. Silco wanted to take it all violently, take it all and take everything around it down with him.

In another universe, he's better. He makes better decisions because a different set of events led to reconciliation between Vander and him. Because Piltover made the first move of peace after Vi had to be sacrificed. Because Marcus saw a dead Zaun child in the arms of her younger sister. Because a lot of things, Silco is a better man and I think he's stronger for it.

The main universe Silco was wrong about everything he did, he made every possible bad decision on purpose over and over and over again.

The fact that I just wrote what feels like an essay on this bastard should at least show how I hate him, in the way I don't like hate hate him. I hate him in the way good art makes you hate it in just the right way. I think he's interesting enough to think about. I don't hate the alt universe Silco, I just hate the main one. He's multifaceted, he's a villain, he just kind of sucks, he moved the story in permanent ways. He forever changed the world by facilitating the events that led to Jinx as a person in Runeterra.

Anyway Yeah I really really hate Silco. Thanks for reading lol If you have some good points or different interpretations of events with Silco I would genuinely love to read them especially if they are different. I'm the first to admit I don't fully understand all the subtleties in Arcane and I love it for that, but I miss things. Changing my view on what actually happened in scenes is one of my favorite things to do right now. I crave the richer and fuller offering of a closely inspected Arcane provides tbh.

[magiefish]

Good News: Quincy Morris is technically in Dracula 2020.

Bad News: Oh my god what did they do to my boy

[vaguely-concerned]

so when adaar tells harding that they got her mother out of danger in ferelden before the blight really hit, and that she's safe with 'some old friends' for the duration... good people of tumblr I was just hit with the incredibly funny concept that harding's ma is spending the entirety of the veilguard double blight hanging out with the valo-kas mercenary company. ma harding and shokrakar is the buddy comedy duo I didn't realize I needed until right in this moment. they butt heads to begin with but end up seeing eye to eye eventually. with the help of some crates, and creativity.

(...in fact since harding's parents have canonically amicably divorced since inquisition.......( ͡�� ͜ʖ ͡°) hello my second nichest but also perhaps most valid dragon age pairing thus far. lace bringing taash home with her for the first time only to find her mother standing on a chair to also be passionately making out with a powerful and bluntly hilarious vashoth warrior is something that can actually be so personal.)

[llitchilitchi]

hybrids and fantasy races are fun and all that but there is something incredibly potent about the characters who caused some of the vilest things that happened on the server (c!schlatt, c!q, c!wilbur, c!dream...) being plain human

[vulpinesaint]

kind of unfortunate that so many fantasy epics are also war novels because i will be honest i just do not like war novels that much... the grand clashing of forces is compelling obviously but it requires characters to talk about so much practical battle strategy and while i can get my brain to comprehend all these fantasy maps and kingdoms and borders and battalions and front lines and army movements it takes up. so much space in the book. feels like i'm fighting a war of my own trying to get through it sometimes

[serpentface]

What’s the Janeys/Brakul death scenario?

So like upon review I mostly just was going to kill them off for Couya + Faiza + Hibrides’ character development (#FEMINIST WIN!!!!!!!).

The background situation of their death scenario is something that will happen either way:

Throughout the story, the pilgrimage requests tribute from the towns it passes through (mainly food and other supplies). This is a common practice for pilgrimages and the travels of royalty, and Imperial Wardi civilians are used to the concept (just not so much during a famine). Some people give fully willingly (a lot of people believe in the pilgrimage's goals/and or the necessity to keep its high status participants fed), most are at least partly coerced (usually not via direct threats, but the pilgrimage contains a couple hundred soldiers, the Usoma, and Odonii leadership. The threat is implied), some are Fully coerced via threats.

In the latter third of the story things are not going well. There’s been a lot of internal struggles among the soldiers and dissatisfaction with pilgrimage leadership (mostly Stavis), men are starting to defect and a large body are getting outright mutinous. The group has also lost much of their food supplies and things are getting desperate (they've been starting to eat their own pack khait and oxen)

With this going on, the pilgrimage sends three soldiers to exact tribute from a farming village in the province Lobera. They meet a group of men acting as representatives for the village, who flat out refuse to give tribute. Things escalate into an outright fight, the soldiers are better armed but few in number and are killed.

One of the village elders finds out that this happens and panics, knowing that the men who killed three of the Usoma’s soldiers (one of which is her son) have signed their own death sentences, and possibly that of others. She attempts to persuade the families to preemptively flee, and then takes the village's one remaining skinny old plow ox to carry the bodies of the dead soldiers back to where the pilgrimage is camped. She supplicates herself before Stavis Amanti and begs for mercy, saying they don't even have enough food stored to feed themselves, much less to give, and that the men thus considered the killings righteous self defense. She shows that she’s returned the bodies for rites as an act of goodwill, and offers the ox in tribute, the most valuable thing she can provide. She begs that the Usoma accepts this as tribute and spares the men's lives, and that the pilgrimage moves on without taking anything else.

Stavis bids her safe passage away from the camp (without confirming or denying that he's accepted her plea), and the heads of pilgrimage confer on what to do. The killing of the soldiers is a violation punishable by death, but this would be like, a notably bad PR move. Meanwhile a contingent of soldiers (including some major side characters I haven’t introduced) break off and lead a raid on the village to avenge their fallen brothers and loot supplies. Others get drawn into the fighting, and it devolves into a full on massacre.

A couple families had fled at the elder’s suggestion, but most refused to leave their homes. Some of the villagers believed they would be left unharmed if the killers were given up, others had been preparing for a reprisal and armed themselves with everything available. But they have few actual weapons and none are trained combatants. All of the remaining men and adolescent boys get killed, one woman manages to take out a soldier using a shovel but is killed, most of the other women and girls are spared murder but several are assaulted. The village is looted for supplies and kindling for funeral pyres.

Stavis Amanti has no fucking idea what to do. The soldiers defied orders and killed Imperial Wardi civilians, but the current climate amid the pilgrimage would make it EXTREMELY Bad for him if he demanded their punishment (but also potentially very bad if he didn't- not all the soldiers participated in the massacre and many were horrified). Faiza encourages him to exert authority in a measured response by having the ringleader of the mutineers killed but sparing the rest, and offers to publicly back him in hopes of avoiding full on mutiny.

The raid reveals that the villagers had been hiding more grain than they claimed they had (as in like, enough to feed their people on starvation level rations for a few weeks). Stavis takes this as an opportunity to justify not punishing the mutineers (as the villagers DID technically have something to give, and execution IS technically the punishment for refusing the order of tribute (though not execution of the entire community)), but insists that their Galenii bless the village dead and their men build pyres for the civilians as is honorable conduct. (This attempt to make amends is not particularly appreciated by the survivors.)

The pilgrimage holds a funeral for their own dead soldiers. The village ox that was given in tribute is killed and butchered for the funerary feast.

----

In the Bury Your Gays route, Brakul is one of the three that gets killed during the tribute extraction. Janeys loses his fucking mind when his body is brought back, and tries to slit his own throat on the spot. Couya stops him by wrestling him to the ground while Janeys screams threats at her and the old woman in a very pathetic public spectacle. He is deprived of all sharp objects.

While the pilgrimage leaders are conferring, he hovers miserably around Hibrides (who is also not feeling so great about all this). He's suddenly very interested in her pregnancy for the first time ever, asks to feel the baby (which has been just starting to kick). She's like "fuck off", but he strongly implies he's planning to commit suicide asap and she concedes and then is like Okay I Let You Feel The Goddamn Baby Now Leave Me Alone Holy FUCK.

Janeys turns his attention to fucking murdering anyone tangentially involved in this happening. He’s among the initial raid party, plays a major hand in it turning from its ostensible 'find and execute the ones responsible, subdue the rest, steal their food' directive to a full massacre by directing his men to immediately attack the first man he sees. He and his group capture three young men as prisoners and demand that they be slain at the soldier's funerals as is wartime custom (this isn't wartime). Janeys additionally demands that he should get to do it, as the only kin of any of the dead men. Once that's done he immediately cuts his own throat and bleeds out. They wind up getting cremated at the same time so things work out how Janeys wanted it.

At one point I realized that this is kind of just The Iliad?

----

So like obviously whether they die here or not has little impact on THESE events, but a lot of the endgame revolves around Couya Faiza and Hibrides and these deaths would be very significant to THEM in varying capacities. It affects the trajectory of the final stretch of their arcs and adds a lot of layers to the ultimate Couya/Faiza conflict. I also liked their deaths being kind of random and shitty and meaningless because that in of itself is kinda ~thematically resonant~ with the story. (A lot of tension between the lack of intrinsic meaning to events and the profound levels of meaning ascribed to them).

I'm almost definitely not going with this version of events though. Janeys and Brakul don't have much active involvement in the endgame and don't Really need to be alive for it as it stands, but I think the version where every main character (except Faiza she's doomed) survives to see What Has Been Wrought and living to experience the fallout ultimately works better.

[racke7]

From a fanfic-writing perspective, One Piece is incredibly frustrating on a few counts.

The first is that... One Piece is actually pretty damn good, as far as stories go. So trying to nudge it into something "better" is pretty much a lost cause overall.

The second is that One Piece has this huge and incredible world that's filled with lots and lots of things... that we never see. As in, outside of the very local environment of the Strawhats, the world is incredibly vast and largely empty.

Basically? Because of OP's good story-telling, it's really difficult to really add someone new to the Strawhat-crew. But because everything outside of the Strawhats are both incredibly unknown (in the Grand Line anything can happen) and incredibly disconnected (the world is too big for people to really stumble into the plot "accidentally" with any frequency)?

Trying to write a non-Strawhat fanfic is a bit like just... inventing an entirely new world of vaguely pirate-themed shenanigans from scratch. It ain't fucking easy, is basically what I'm saying.

[raayllum]

having a moment (and this might be my autism speaking) of remembering that when characters (or even irl people) are analyzed / analyzing themselves, some people just look at the behavioural patterns and not where they stem from in the character's psyche and go "my job is done" when the job is half finished cause to me that shit has always been synonymous and i cannot imagine fathoming meta writing from any other standpoint

[fluffydice]

On the topic, I think Rise does a wonderful job of displaying the sensory needs of neurodiverse characters because they don't limit them to one extreme or the other; another reason why their portrayal is so wonderful.

Donnie probably shows the most examples of this range, for obvious reasons. He doesn't like unexpected stimuli—and that can be something as small as unexpected touch. He has a preference for his flavorless juice. His lab, from what I've been able to glean, appears to be lit mostly from the glow of his computer screens or his tech. Otherwise it's usually kept rather dark.

On the other hand, Donnie loves noise (as long as he's in control of it, of course). He blasts techno music until it's impossible to talk without shouting. He falls asleep to Shelldon's affirmations: also absolutely blaring.

As for Mikey, this one's a lot more speculative lolol. We see a lot of examples of him seeking out sensory throughout the series, the most memorable for me personally being when the boys are interrogating Warren Stone and he's just. Playing with absolutely everything on the playground, rapidly switching from one thing to the next. But for someone who loves runs around—and very much enjoys doing so—it's a bit surprising to me that he so willingly rides Raph's shell so much. I could see that being his safe space of sorts, for when things get too exciting and Mikey can feel it starting to overwhelm him. Just an area to take a breather.

It's wonderful to see both because it allows the characters to have sensory needs without it becoming a one-dimensional gag. It's no longer a trope, but rather an aspect of their identities. Yeah, Donnie not always reciprocating affection can be made funny. Yeah, Mikey not sitting still can be made funny. But the joke is never the character themselves because they focused on writing a complex, actual person; not the simplified, easily-digestible idea of a disability.

[embryoed]

Very interested in how Demetri’s character will be handled in Season 6, especially with Gianni saying that his “biggest weakness” going in is him feeling he has to prove himself

[godsfavoritescientist]

Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.

I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.

Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?

How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"

And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.

So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.

So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.

And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.

-

And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.

Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.

And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.

So you sail away in a boat together.

And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.

But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.

But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.

You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.

And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-

-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.

You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.

-

And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.

It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.

And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.

[dormiloncito]

last night i dreamt an entire marvel movie that doesn't exist

[snuwolf]

some concept sketches of some new aus for an older CJ. originally from a Persona-based Mutants & Masterminds campaign, he's getting rebooted for World of Darkness after our table found Hunter: The Parenting and became obsessed + a possible werewolf AU idk i'm throwing him in a tumble dryer

[trans-yllz]

very ironic that there have been several story beats throughout fontaine like "the melusines are often infantalized by people but they are fully autonomous beings who deserve respect" and then half of the fan base is like awe cute little melusine baby who is like a child and a kid and a baby who needs to be taken care of by other characters because they're like a human toddler 🥺. die.