#I care so much more than I meant to

[madeofbees]

i stayed up until 2am making the most unlikely crossover meme with an oth quote on shippy hannibal pics

anyway i invented time travel tonight apparently as i am clearly back in 2004 but before i come home i have some business in nc involving dan scott and a man who eats the rude

[sorikufeels]

kiss me once, kiss me twice, and, dare i say, kiss me three times

(progress posts: sketch, line art progress)

[cangrellesteponme]

i don't think wonderland is ready for those alices

[astracora]

The Cat Curse - MC Edition

Characters: Sylus x gn!mc (poly lads)

Warnings: Heavy hurt|Some comfort, Semi-canon compliant heart condition, Spoilers for current story release (Small mentions of Sylus bond up to 102 and all of Sylus' currently released content).

Word Count: 4170

Written: 23rd December 2024

Notes: New relationship Sylus/MC-centric but poly LADs (this time with group chat), with my personal pov of the game and lil headcanons littered in. Unnamed MC, but using my personal MC's basic appearance and adjusted backstory. I take some liberties with what the game offers me.

Now Playing: Monster, by STARSET

Masterlist

Next ->

You've been responding to his messages, Sylus notes, but something's off. He's been away on some inane business trip, ever since you, the doctor, the fish, the prince and he had visited a new kitty cafe opening. He rarely gets to see you visibly excited, you are worse at showing your feelings on your face than he is. Whenever you're faced with animals, of any kind, even Mephisto, your eyes sparkle and you could easily spend hours upon hours sat with them. Even more so if they let you pet them.

The first time you'd seen the evol kitties, according to the doctor, you'd been unsure. They didn't look like cats. Something off and a little wrong, but they mewed at you and straight away you'd gently stroked their noses. As if unable to hold back.

Since then you would drag any of them along to play kitty cards. You didn't like the game, had no patience for strategy, but you did like petting the cats. Sitting there between every round, barely looking at the board, and tickling small whiskers. Much to the fish's distress.

While Sylus doesn't really care if he wins or loses around you, he's almost assured a win when playing with you because it's simply not something you care about. Distracted and unbothered by the game. He's only relieved that when he sprouted ears and a tail (of the caracal kind), you had been just as enamoured with those. Finally smothering him in affection in the same way, and being distracted by his tail. Though he'd never confess to competing with cats, at this point it's just an everyday occurrence.

He found he enjoyed playing most with the doctor, unlike when the man played with you, he took no soft approach with Sylus, and it was fun to butt heads with him. Stubborn as they both could be. That left you to lean your head on the fish's lap, the prince asleep against your side already, and play with cats, to a backdrop of 'You're cheating', 'I'm simply better at this than you.', 'If you would stop getting distracted-' that you mostly blocked out.

Rounds later, he paid the bill before anyone else got chance to, and picked up some cakes to take back.

Then he'd had his business trip to attend, having moved things around so on your rare day off, you could see everyone. It was never fun to drop you off, Sylus missed you anytime he could not see you, and though he was prideful, he had been honest about not being able to sleep without the sound of your voice. A confession you'd flushed at and tugged at one of the straps of your prosthetic.

He'd watched you waver over how to respond, biting at your lip, and fidgeting, as you fought against your urge to run away from him.

Trying didn't come easy, you'd told him. Honesty and openness, it got even harder when you'd lost your family, it got easier with every day you were given room to breathe by all of them, and every friend you held dear to your 'broken' heart. He didn't want to dig, or poke at old wounds, not now you were trying to live... but he often saw too much of himself in you.

Whether it was because of the way you'd grown up, or his soul inside of you, it made him even more careful and aware of offering you what you offered him.

"I'll miss you too, Sy. Call me, alright?" Your finally settled on, cool metal hand taking his in yours and squeezing. Before he'd left you, reluctant and complaining, he'd pressed kisses over your face, down your neck, and finally pushed you to the wall of your apartment building, to steal all the air from your lungs. Thigh holding you up, as he tangled his hands in your hair.

When he'd tried to pull away, he couldn't quite, leaning back in once, twice, three times, chasing the warmth of your mouth. Over and over.

You'd laughed, pushing him back to breathe, gasping, "It's a week. We'll be fine for a week."

A week... you aren't possessive enough, he thinks, spinning his pen in his hand. Half listening to Luke and Kieran talk. He feels as though he's emptied and lost, missing parts of what makes him who he is, and your messages feel... the same.

He could be reading into it... you're not exactly one to put your heart on your sleeve, or cling. You're independent because you've had to be, and he still hasn't had enough time to get you to lean all of your weight on him.

So he sends a message into the group chat without you, made in order to plan surprises or outings.

🐦‍⬛: Is everything ok back home?

⛄️: Aren't you busy?

🐦‍⬛: I'm taking a break.

They don't have to know he's tuning out his business partners, hoping they'll talk themselves out so he can leave.

🐠: lucky, some of us have r busy

🐠: [Attached photo]

🐦‍⬛: Please tell me that's not paint on my walnut table.

🐠: won't answer u then

⭐️: looks more colourful now

He rubs the space between his eyes, already dreading returning to the mess, and regretting letting the fish use his space for storing work while his studio is being fumigated. The partners at the table tense at his action, but he doesn't bother sparing them a glance, so they relax and resume talking.

🐦‍⬛: Is anyone going to answer my question?

⛄️: Is there a reason you're asking?

He hesitates, it's just a feeling, if he worries everyone, and it's nothing...

No, he didn't get this far by not trusting his instincts.

🐦‍⬛: Kitten's messages have felt off.

Two exclamation reactions are his instant response, the fish and prince. They start to type, then stop, then start again.

🐠: what way?

⭐️: have U called them?

⛄️: Calm down, they took some time off work because of a cold.

🐠: y didn't anyone tell us?

⛄️: I thought they would have asked Tara to contact you, or contacted you themselves?

🐦‍⬛:  They didn't.

⭐️: ive been on mission for a couple of days, i can stop in tomorrow when its over

He puts his phone down too forcefully and looks at the room. He's... irritated. Not like he normally is when it comes to you, a childish way where he can't have enough as he likes from you. Like you're a toy he cannot stop playing with. He's almost angry, but mostly sad.

He's been patient, surely you can at least talk to him if you feel sick?

Sylus is done with this trip, he's bored of listening to people talk nonsense, and he has no need for anything they have to offer. "We're done here, Luke. Kieran."

Waving his hand absently and ignoring protests behind him, he leaves the room, phone in hand.

🐦‍⬛: I'm coming back now.

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

Jenna had sent you home, it's not the first time she has. You're terrified one day she'll get bored of having to keep track of your health. Or you'll really let her down, and get you... or more importantly someone else, hurt.

It's probably not a normal mindset to worry so much about what your boss thinks, or to fear disappointing them like they're your parent.

It's not like you have parents to know what's that like... but gran's disappointment every time you got into fights growing up... well it was enough.

Caleb used to cover for you, within reason. He lectured you, told you to pull yourself up and figure it out. That fighting every battle against every jerk you met, reckless and stupid, would get you killed. "Come on pipsqueak, use that energy for something better. Something worthwhile."

So many reasons you didn't want to or couldn't, you wanted to tell him... a hand clenched over your chest.

You were so tired of disappointing them both though, so tired of seeing worn eyes tending to cuts and bruises. Bandaging your back, or fixing the set of your arm.

Being a hunter was that answer. If you used what little life you had in you, unsure when your busted up heart would give out finally, then you could greet Caleb and Gran with pride. Your life was a tool, to make others better.

So every day you weren't working, felt like a day you were failing them... failing to be worth anything other than the core in your chest. A vessel with no purpose or value but to hold something you hated. That could kill you.

It wasn't like you could work like this though... you'd laughed at your partners when they'd sprouted ears and tails. Especially Raffy, he'd been so disgruntled at the fate that had befallen him. This was... probably karma. Pointed, soft ears on top of your head, pinned back against your skull. Pristine white, so they at least blended into your hair.

At your back, a bristled tail, huge and furry... already having picked up some dirt to sully what had been pure white.

It hadn't settled since it had appeared, and you wondered what that said about you...

Fucked up mess. Stupid fool. Useless.

Too loud, everything was too loud. You could hear your neighbours through the walls, all the cars below your apartment, every child crying, dog barking, cat mewling.

It hurts.

You covered your ears with your hand, but noise filtered in through the new set you'd acquired.

Hurts.

You'd grown accustomed to the state of your heart. If you don't pay attention you can miss something, and you care now... perhaps you always did, just too raw like an open wound to let yourself.

It's racing and panicked. You don't need your hunter's watch to know it's too fast. 

Burying yourself into your bed, you cover your head with the duvet, grab at your headphones to shove them into your ears, turning them as loud as they can go, and bury your head under the pillows.

Your phone buzzes at your side, and you don't want to touch it. Scared to leave the cocoon you've built for yourself.

You'd begged Tara to tell Zayne you were sick with a cold, that you would be fine soon. She'd given you a heartbroken look that had made you bristle further, pity. Always pity.

You didn't want pity.

Before your fraying emotions could get the best of you, you'd fled the hunters association, hood up over your head and run home.

You can feel your tail trembling, struggling to swish under the blanket as you struggle to calm down, to at least get some sleep.

Maybe if you sleep it will go away.

Maybe when you wake up you'll feel better.

Useful.

Worth having around.

Not on the cusp of disappearing with nothing to show for yourself.

-----

When you'd woken up, tail still bristled, and newly acquired fangs digging into your bottom lip. Blood staining the bedsheet, you'd finally fished your phone out from your nest.

3am.

The world was quieter for it, and you wondered if this was part of why Sylus preferred the night to day.

You didn't remove your headphones, but you did finally open up your messaging app, seeing messages from everyone.

TaraTara💖: I hope you're ok bestie, if you need anything let me know.

Number One Lumiere Fan: Tara said you were sick, if you have time, I have a few shows you could watch to waste time. Only one is about Lumiere! Promise!

Simone (the one whose guns explode): Hey! Tara said you weren't doing so hot, if you want some company for a movie night, I make the best soup you'll ever have!

Captain: Remember to actually get some rest, take advantage of the break, alright? Everything will be fine here.

🐠cute fishie 🐠: hey cutie, wat do u think?

🐠cute fishie🐠: [Attached Image]

⭐️little star⭐️: missions going well, how are U?

⛄️sweet snowman⛄️: Tara said you're sick, I'll come over to check on you as soon as I can. Make sure you eat and drink.

🐦‍⬛pretty bird🐦‍⬛: Meetings are always more boring without you kitten, I hope you're missing me as much.

Your tail settles, curling against your side, fur flattening and you try really hard not to cry. You wish you'd thanked Tara when you left instead of fleeing, overstimulated and hurting.

Wounded like the cat you're teasingly referred to as. Feral and ready to hiss and scratch. You've spent so many years shutting people out.

Shutting Gran and Caleb out.

Shutting them out you wasted so much time until it was too late.

Why can't you learn?

You force yourself to respond, trying to sound as much yourself as you can... it's unnerving, to wear a mask over a mask. You wonder if you'll ever recognise your reflection.

You hesitate as you go to respond to your partners. You should tell them, reaching up to roughly pull the ears on your head. They'd understand, they've been where you are. Your brain says you should go to the kitty cafe, find out how to fix it this time around... but being out there, in the noise...

Instead you send some version of you're fine, and things are fine, everything is good. You're good.

You're together. You're useful. You're not a burden.

You aren't fragile and sick and useless.

You are worth keeping around, even when your heart picks up speed again, beating so hard against your chest that you fear the core wants to escape its fleshy vessel.

The straps attaching your prosthetic are digging into your skin, rubbing it raw, but you ache to even try to remove it. Fighting with the buckles and biting at the bit. You're still in your uniform, and you're sure by now you need a shower. The idea of water shooting a shot of anxiety straight into your chest, flaring up your tail, and your ears flatten as far as they can.

No water...

Maybe later.

Or you can really fill out how shit you feel with a wet wipe bath.

Caleb would kill you.

You don't want to think about it anymore. You want to let the quiet take over, or reasonably so with the screamo in your ears. Blasting the noise outside into nothing.

So you go back to sleep. Easing the pain in your heart with the only sure fire way.

---------

You can't breathe. You can't breathe.

Bolt upright in bed, hissing through your teeth, chest so tight you can feel your ribs.

You flounder, pulling at where your straps should be, but they're gone, no leather under your fingers. So you move to claw at your chest with one hand, gasping.

Hands grab you, and you struggle and you fight and you hiss. Fangs out, feral and ready to claw your way free. Arms far stronger than you pull you against a warm chest, tilt your head back and pills are placed in your mouth. You try to spit them out but a hand is on your throat, rubbing at your larynx. You swallow and then water follows it.

You splutter and cough, and you wriggle and struggle. Your head is pressed against skin, and you sink your fangs in.

Out. Out. Out.

"It's alright, you're alright, I'm here."

Blood fills your mouth and his scent surrounds you and you shiver. Blinking as your heart medication begins to do its job, easing the fractured organ in your chest. You spit, trying to clear your mouth of the taste of metal, shivering and shaking but your chest isn't constricting you now.

"Sy-" You cry outloud, he holds you, not bothered by the blood tricking down his shoulder. Of course he isn't, he heals it, the pain nothing in comparison to watching you choke on air you can't breathe. "Sorry. Sorry." You mumble against his skin, licking where you bit, crying and shaking. Wrapping your arm around his neck.

He assures you, and he rocks you both in his arms, rubbing your back and running a hand through your hair. Careful around your ears, not going far enough down to touch your bristled tail.

He hums and he rocks, and he squeezes you tight enough to ground you.

It's an hour or two later when you can finally feel any semblance of stable. You can't bring yourself to look at Sylus, he's stroking your cheek and wiping tears from your face, and all you can do is stare at the bed. You can't think of what to say.

You didn't take your medication, you hurt him... it's not the first time, but when this happened with Caleb you didn't have a cats' fangs.

Between you opening up and me prying, I prefer the former. He'd told you, after a terrible day, listing every way he would support you.

With all your sharp edge, you place your hand over his on your cheek, "I'm sorry, Sy."

He huffs, turning you in his arms so you're facing each other, but his one hand grips your hip, sturdy. Solid, strong. He doesn't hurt, but escaping would be hard. You try hard not to.

Though you can feel the... your tail swishing.

He looks at it, at your ears, then at you, red nosed and disheveled.

"Explain."

It's a command, brooking little argument, and though normally you'd refuse to take orders, you duck your head now. Avoiding molten eyes and seeking out something to focus on. The hand that was on your head, stretches out in between you both, palm up, and you take it quickly. Toying with his fingers, squeezing it in your own. Finding connection in your hand on his.

"Jenna sent me home, my evol doesn't work, I can't fight. I... it hurt. Everything's so loud."

You can't see it as he frowns, as your ears prick, then settle, seeking out all the things that hurt them. "I went to sleep, thought it would make this go away, but it didn't."

"Why didn't you tell me?" You hear it then, the pain, like he's biting down on glass. Your eyes dart up and his eyes are glassy, warm red gone dull. "You left your prosthetic on. It was rubbing your skin raw at the angle you were sleeping. There was blood on your sheets." He presses his forehead to yours and breathes you in, "Then this. Why didn't you tell me?" His voice cracks, and you want to be sick.

You twine your fingers with his and choke on the words, "I didn't want to be a bother."

He hisses, his grip on your hand almost hurts, but you probably deserve so much worse. You lied to him, to them, and you hurt him. More than just biting at him.

"You need to tell me. No matter what. No matter what I'm doing, beloved. No matter the issue." He kisses your forehead, over and over and over again. "Promise me."

You nod, and curl your pinky around his, just like you used to with Caleb when he made you promise to come to him with an injury. The words are too stuck in your throat, your voice too sore to use, but you nod. Desperately.

"You're not a burden to be carried, kitten. Ever. Do you understand?"

You don't. You want to, but it's hard. There is no part of you that feels easy or fun, but you do love him. So much. More than you thought yourself capable of. More than you wanted, on borrowed time.

"I'll try." You promise, and it feels like you've cycled back around to the start. Promising to figure things out at home, promising to aim for something. A future you're not sure you're going to ever see.

He takes it in earnest, you do not go back on your word. You are loyal and once you trust, you trust with your heart and your soul. It is yourself you do not trust.

Instead he eases you back into his lap and stands, you flinch and release his hand to grab his neck with your hand. "You need to be cleaned up, I'll help." You go to tell him no because it's water, and you're more a cat than even he teases you for, but you have your head in his neck at this angle, and his scent is so strong. Your tail flattens and begins to flick, lazy and soothed. You hear him chuckle, vibrating through his chest and through yours. "I'm not going anywhere."

-----------

Sylus eases you through steps. He's seen you injured, he's seen you with phantom pains, and he's watched you battle nightmares. Wanderers with swords through your chest, your heart stopping, an explosion you can't stop. He knows what you look like when wounded, he also knows that you fear his reaction when you are.

It takes time to heal wounds, he knows that intimately. You'd never shed your rage or anger, not really. When someone has made mention of gods you'd scoffed, when someone has talked about EVER and their many plans to help humanity, you'd snarled. You trust no king, no god, no corporation to fix the world or the people in it. He knows you're always scared but you keep walking forwards anyway, and he admires and loves you for it.

He just wishes you'd take his hand when that happens.

He has not felt fear like seeing your heart failing you in his arms before, and no matter the violence of your struggle, he would let you rip him to pieces to survive.

He has so much time, and his greatest fear is losing you too soon.

He cleans, and he dries, brushing hair and rubbing lotion to ease the burns on your skin. He helps you dress, finding clothes that don't irritate your tail, because at least he is intimately familiar with that, and then he sits you down on the couch with vegetable soup. Not handmade, though he'd rather have done so. He doesn't want to leave you alone, so he orders what he needs. Sending the twins running around. He's sure you'd like to see them, but he's worried their exuberance will agitate the overstimulation you're combatting.

Watching your ears flick this way and that, picking up too much. As though you don't already struggle with the world's input.

He almost feeds you, wanting to heal you with his own hands, like he's anything like the doctor... he's not. His skills are in bloodshed, and he is as sharp edged as you are.

Except you have made yourself a weapon, to be worth the pain, and he was made a weapon, to survive the pain.

He does not move far away, however, kneeling at your feet, and massaging your calves while you eat. You try to pull your legs away, but he keeps them held, and continues his movements. You have soothed his body before, stitched his wounds, kissed where his scars would be, and he will not have you lacking his own love and affection.

A dragon does not love lightly. Though you don't remember the depths he has gone to for you. This is an easy act of devotion.

"You need to tell them too." He finally speaks, as you clear your bowl. He's relieved to see your ears are no longer flat, your tail is not bristled, you are as relaxed as you can be. You nod, guilt written in your face, and he retrieves your phone for you on black and red mist.

Sitting at your side, he grabs your brush and begins to brush your tail. You almost leap into the air, startled and dropping your phone onto the couch cushions. "Sy!"

"Cat fur can get tangled, especially long fur." He smirks, pulling you closer, and brushing through it with long fingers, "So let me take care of it."

You flinch at the contact, stare at where his hand is in the new found attachment, then keeping your eyes trained on your phone, you nod.

He's content to let you write out what you need to, to be honest with the others, he doesn't want to have that job. It's your mission to step out of your self made cage. So he brushes quietly, the twitching tail in his hands restless, but soon as soft as you can be in your relaxed moments.

Your head hits his shoulder, ears twitching in sleep as all the pent up energy and stress escapes you. Held in long white furs in a small brush. You mutter in your sleep, words he can't understand, and whistle through your nose, little noises that make him laugh.

The best, however, is the purring in the back of your throat, broken up by sleep, and the tail that has found its way around his wrist.

He does not move you, but he retrieves a blanket and holds you against him, cheek pressed to the top of your head, against your fur ears, and keeps watch while you finally find some peace.

⛄️: Are they alright?

🐦‍⬛: They will be.

[dreamsy990]

hi i wanted to draw my own au so have a snippet of scene i rewrote like 12 times and will likely rewrite again

[welcometogrouchland]

I miss them so bad (Dick and Damian)

[leafatlaw]

Sorry still thinking about Derap after that stream and- “Do you care about me or mapicc more?” Because what a stupid question, you shouldn’t ask people questions like that and expect an answer. It’s rude and hurtful, it’s only going to make everybody feel worse, because there is a wrong answer here, at least for Derap there is.

Because Derap probably cares about Zam more than anyone on the server. He cares about Atlas more than anything on the server. And he’s scared. Deraps a smart guy, he knows abit of how much Zam cares about Mapicc, he knows abit of their history. He knows just enough to know Mapicc is a threat to how much Zam cares about him. Like I’ve said in another post, Deraps really only got Zam, and he knows this, hence why he keeps testing him and quizzing him on everything. He’s trying to force Zam closer to him. He wants Zam to care about him as much as he cares about him. If not more.

[erstwhilesparrow]

to the surprise of approximately no one, i am thinking about video game mechanics and mcrp and c!owen and violence again. i am thinking about interesting accidental resonances and i am thinking about what someone's medium of choice makes it easy to tell stories about. the thing is, owen's pov of outsiders is a story that, despite being told almost exclusively in minecraft, really does not want to be a story set in minecraft.

what i mean by this is that cc!owen repeatedly and deliberately tries to prevent minecraft logic from existing in the story he is telling. according to him, things operate in the messy space of real-world physics, and the fundamental structure of the world aligns much more with our reality than with, i dunno, a series of 1s and 0s. of course they can't climb the vines to get to the top of the walls, they'd get tired well before the reach the top, never mind that minecraft doesn't have any mechanic in place to keep you from clinging to a vine for as long as you want. of course acho drowning during the underwater maze game could have been from something being wrong with the potions, never mind that minecraft potions come out the exact same way every time. of course it matters that owen punched mohwee for going into the maze, but only once, because he couldn't bring himself to do it again. never mind that a punch in minecraft rarely means much.

a single punch in minecraft doesn't mean anything. or it means almost everything, which is why it doesn't mean anything. but the outsiders, at least for a little while, make a world where a punch matters, where it's the kind of thing you go running to tell other people about because it means a real fight's brewing. mohwee punches graecie, and someone comes running to let owen know. we're meant to react to it the way we would if it happened irl. we're treating this seriously now!

except that's really hard to do in minecraft, because minecraft isn't a game that gives you many avenues for... body language. for the kind of nonverbal communication you do by touching someone gently. try as they might to pretend otherwise, it is built into the bones of any minecraft world that the only way you can touch another person for sure, in a way that the game has an obvious mechanical system in place to respond with, is by punching them. so two things here.

one is that yeah, the outsiders creators stop acting like a punch is a punch not super long into the series, because there is no vanilla mechanic for [grabbing you by the arm and dragging you away from the gates]; you have to use what you have at your disposal (such as the left-click button on your mouse) to gesture at the thing you actually mean. owen emulates the act of dragging someone around by punching magic at one point. nobody, in-universe or out, reacts like he was actually hitting her, and i'm not saying we should. but there is that disconnect between what the story is supposed to be (maybe owen pushes her away from the gates, maybe he's trying to pull her back), and what the game will allow them to do.

two: despite the ways that the game runs counter to the kind of story owen et al. are trying to tell, this limitation wrt punching still produces some really interesting resonances that require us to accept and pay attention to the fact that no matter what owen says, this is a story told through minecraft, inflected by its mechanics.

(side bar: i'm focusing on owen for this, but i think you can expand this idea to other characters, maybe the whole cast, by thinking about how both the story world and the game world are, on some fundamental level, set up to not allow for kind or gentle connections between people. you can't actually put your arm around someone else. you can't actually wipe away their tears or lean on their shoulder. the entire world the outsiders live inside of, both from a game perspective and a roleplay perspective, is designed to funnel them toward big dramatic gestures and cyclical violence. the easiest way to touch someone is violently. and still, there are the gestures of care, carved out of what the game will allow. sharing food. speaking softly to each other. opening the trapdoor to your bunker and letting the people behind you hurry down the ladder to hide. so you've never learned how to touch someone without violence. you can still know how to put your whole body between the person you care for and the danger. you can still die for them. isn't outsiders such a story of caring, despite, despite, despite?)

anyway. about c!owen. i think it's fair to say he's a character shaped by violence from the jump. he comes up the elevator and is almost instantly making and hoarding weapons. he tells himself he has to protect everyone, and the first two ways he decides to do this are by making a sparring ring where he intends to teach them to fight, and by threatening to break their legs. for the latter half of the series, he is literally sleeping on the edge of a sparring ring, all his personal effects literally pushed off to the side to leave room for this sand pit in the middle. even before he gets the memories of his time as a soldier back, we can see that this is how he interfaces with and understands the world. violence is in his bones.

as a result, i am kind of crazy about the fact that the literal game mechanics he engages with reinforce this image of him. there's this brief period of time really early on where i guess they haven't really got the prox chat range to yell to each other from a distance, and owen decides to take his weapon of choice and fire an arrow in the path of the person he's trying to talk to. (i know for sure he does this with rasbi and with at least one other person. forgive me, i don't recall who the other person was.) when you're getting shot at, yeah, you sure do generally want to look in the direction that arrow came from to see who's trying to shoot you! that'll get someone's attention! that is generally how people play the game!

at another point much later in his series, a group of outsiders find an enormous crane towering over a section of the maze, and owen pulls out a bow and aims it upward. it took me a second while watching to realize that it's because when you draw a bow in the game, you also zoom in on the thing you're aiming at. owen was trying to get a closer look at the crane, so he grabbed his weapon and used it to get a better understanding of the world.

more broadly, owen uses spears and arrows to point at things, to check distances and investigate stuff he doesn't want to or can't get close to. when he and magic first notice ash up on the walls, he fires arrows up at her, not really to hit but to see how she reacts. then he keeps firing them, having noticed the barrier blocks (in-fiction, the screen that makes up the false sky). later, while talking to chat in a high-up part of the maze, he demonstrates again that the sky is fake by hurling a spear into it.

out of character, these are just creative workarounds for the medium's limitations. in character, however, these instances make it clear that every single thing about the way owen interacts with his world is coloured by the fact that he has used weapons and will continue to use them, that his reaching for a bow right after waking up wasn't some fluke, that even with his memories wiped out he is a character who has been trained to reach for violence before anything else.

just by playing the game, cc!owen adds another dimension to this character, because he is playing a game where There Exist game mechanics meant to facilitate violence, and this is about the cycles of violence c!owen finds himself trapped in and perpetuating and it is also about how violence is so deeply ingrained in him that it is an inextricable part of his world.

[shima-draws]

Grips my shirt and tears it apart so that all the buttons go flying and SCREAMS I love Law and Cora so much what the FUCK!!!!

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

My hot take is that marcanne has as much potential for toxic yuri as any other calamity trio ship and it's not nearly as soft and fluffy as one may think

[13eyond13]

You know even if L and Light were both extremely heterosexual men, I still don't get how either one of them wouldn't find it alarmingly sexy that the other one was secretly trying THAT hard to constantly impress them and read their mind and personally entertain them and trip them specifically and ONLY them up

[pwurrz]

being obsessed with yakumo is a job and baby i’ve never called in a sick day!!!!!

[lilacerull0]

the initial appeal of lila to me was how in her childhood days, she was the brightest student, but managed to do it in the most unconventional way possible, a way that so closely mirrored my academic experience and that i was never able to find a description of until now. the prototype of the good at school kid is always somehow related to wanting to prove one's self to someone or living up to the expectations, be it your own or somebody else's, there is a level of obedience involved and a desire to be liked (sometimes hidden, sometimes quite outwardly) and it almost always ends in gifted kid burnout and being surrounded by this sort of portrayal has always felt kind of isolating to me who did and continues to get top marks, but fails to bow their head. as a child, lila is the best student in her school, but not because she has to be. it is simply the consequence of who she is, but her particular brand of intelligent fails to meet the parameters of how students are supposed to behave. and okay yeah, this is portrayed in fiction, but that kind of student usually doesn't get top marks in spite of being the smartest person in the room. lila does. because she is able to translate the awfully restricted, written according to some unwritten step by step guidebook, material (that is supposed to offer information, but unable free thinking or thinking at all) and give it her own spin that results in teachers being obligated to grade her accordingly because she understands what's being taught, but also resent her because her understanding of it is too out there to be acceptable. she takes the material out of context (the context being school) and tries to understand it for what it is simply because it interests her. it's the sentences that have been following me for as long as i can remember "you're incredible bright, but you wander off" or "your knowledge lacks structure" or "you're incredibly bright, but your way of thinking is incompatible with the world's mechanisms". (something that has been said about me in kindergarten because that's an okay thing to do to a child apparently) and i have mentioned this in relation to lila before, but i think she is able to keep this attitude alive because it isn't an attitude at all, it's a way of being. she isn't a rebel by choice, she's a rebel almost biologically. (which is an advantage, but the world isn't too into people who think, no restrictions attached) it's almost like her main trait is having too much individuality which was always how i felt about myself and what causes people to characterize you as unfeeling. i love her forever <3

[pandorashearts]

nintendo het baiting w sidon and his fiancee only to pull the gayest shit ive seen in a While by having sidon renew his vows w link (they got married at the end of ruta’s quest in botw. obviously. clearly.) and giving him a power that lets him ‘stay by his side forever’. i see you husbands i am so glad your marriage is thriving. good for them. good for them. they also both have two hands for anyone who wants to pull any nonsense im js. there is room for yona she just has to understand link has held sidon’s heart for years first.

[mapicccc]

I really can't examine mapicc without examining myself but I Do want to think about him and his Feelings so I'm in a bit of a rough spot

[cruesuffix]

last spoti wrapped post but this was the evolution from last year to this year when i realized i could just convert all my fav tracks on spotify to mp3s on my fav offline app…get ready for next year when i’ve downloaded every song i can think of and no longer need that stupid ass app unless it’s to discover new songs!!