#I didn't start writing to have a good narrative

[apeninastory]

ivan as a tragic-love character (pt.4a?)

DISCLAIMER: doing this for fun + because i love ivan + because my brain needs to. nothing abt it is carved in stone and i'm open to discuss abt it like adults do - i just excitedly wanted to share my take on ivan in a more articulated way.

OF COURSE i have to. of course. i managed to listen to nowhere a couple of times on the 31st and i won't shut up abt the new song anytime soon - especially since it's coming out AGAIN in a couple of hours!!!!! sit tight, this is gonna be a long ride.

let's break things down a bit, because i need to process the entire thing and this means i have to make lists and explain and ponder on what i write then fix it and keep writing and whatever

1] ivan's past 2] ivan's adoption by unsha + wife [or, a symbol of love for a character who deems himself unlovable] 3] ivan at anakt, with other characters 4] mimetic strategy 5] ivan and till [cheer up?] 6] the making of ivan's character - by ivan himself 7] meteor shower [or, the turning point of the narrative] 8] sua, hypocrisy and how it may not have been totally intended on ivan's part - until it was 9] nowhere 10] black sorrow 11] ivan, love and his shallow emotion 12] cure

i'll start here with the first 4-5 points

let me say i have no access to the patreon stuff, so what i know is based on: twt, original material on yt, twt again, ppl's fan arts and talking and my own delulu brain. also, i love ivan, so i may be not-totally-reliable on certain things, but you got the idea.

1] ivan's past.

what i know is that he lived in the slums - so filth, violence, a life dominated by a perpatual sense of insecurity (and with this i mean a lack of stability related to survivability, not strictly personality-wise), poor health and poverty was probably ivan's dailiness.

he wasn't alone - there were other kids, they probably lived all clustered togehter - for warmth, protection, complicity, company? also maybe, just like till and his provider/mother, they belonged to some sort of human factory, only this was probably illegal, given the differences in conditions. what we can infer is that life for him was far from violence-free; that ivan knows how to light a fire with rocks from his life in the slums, probably to fend off the cold; that he got used to insults, denigration, mistreatments as something that is part of his daily life.

this routine shapes his view of the world - as something dangerous, where one needs to be practical if they won't to survive, where misbehaving leads to death. it also shapes the way he sees himself, highlighting flaws more than his value and merits.

that being said, did he know abt the "cries"? abt how precious human singing is to aliens? i am honestly not quite sure abt this, but i guess he didn't. if he was "produced" in an illegal factory, it was probably only for the sake of becoming an anonymous pet-human - we know not all of them can sing in alien stage.

what we identify as an abusive, brutal, cruel treatment (objectively speaking) was ivan's daily life. his perception of it is inevitably different from ours/how it would be perceived from an external pov - or to be more exact, from an unaltered (?) pov.

[no wonder the song sounds so laidback, resigned - he is used to it.]

once deemed ready/aged enough (?), the kids are taken away, ready for auction - i guess. they probably tried to run away together, helping each other out

[though i wonder: i'd say they can identify other kids as good/comrades and aliens as bad/captors, but from various illustrations, they seems to live in the streets, albeit possibly controlled by aliens all the same. do they have enough food for everyone? is it evenly distributed? i guess not. so not all kids maybe saw each other positively. maybe they even betrayed each other for the sake of survival. poor babies...]

i was saying. they probably tried to run away. we see it in r3, glimpses of pre-anakt ivan. we know ivan is good at escaping/evading alien guards, and he must have picked it up somewhere (the hard way, since he was clearly captured here). here, they are taken away from the slums (?) to the auctions place (?), where ivan then gets adopted by unsha.

i'm guessing the alien here is threatening him to behave - they shouldn't rough the kids up too much, or else they'd be hard to sell, right?

what i find heartbreaking here is how ivan looks tired and resigned. he is so little and he must have experience so many negative inputs. he is so used to it that he is not even watching the alien - his eyes are focused on the sky. i guess it wasn't much visible from the slums, so it may be the first time? and he sees meteors.

now, for someone living in such a dark environment (both figuratively and concretely), falling stars must have been so touching, so beautiful, yet so painful - for being so far and so gorgeous and making him feel moved.

it's like when we listen to a beautiful song or see a wonderful painting or read a book that touches our souls - art does that to you. it's a selfless form of love, something left by someone else, a gift. of course there are tears in his eyes, falling stars are a wonderful sight for everyone, so i can understand ivan being awestruck by it.

[he sees the stars and maybe his little kid heart starts hoping? but then aliens treat him like an object, like an either-you-behave-or-it-won't-end-well and he starts to believe that an existence like his is destined to violence/negative things]

he must have partly feel frustrated, right? different emotions at play, all at once, can be overwhelming. he has tears in his eyes while he his held by the alien and suspended on empty air, he must also be scared, but in a very resigned way. no wonder he numbed is heart down.

2] this leads us to his adoption and unsha.

i guess ivan's demeanour fit unsha's plan - calm, smart, self-sufficient, not demanding in terms of attentions. the fact that he can sing must be a plus, and unsha is nothing but a business-alien, so he invests in ivan.

ivan's commodification starts right at his adoption.

as far as i know, he is adopted as a gift to unsha's wife for valentine's day, which "becomes" his birthday. we don't even know when he is actually born, which is so sad i wanna bang my head somewhere.

he becomes the object of someone else's marriage, a symbol of love without being at the receiving end of that form of affection. he probably doesn't know what love is, nor has he supposedly heard of it, so again, what he doesn't know remains far from his knowledge (but not from ours).

ivan represents love but does not benefit from it, emotionally. what he gains from it, is a "better" or more stable living environment. ivan has learned to be practical, we said, so he sees how having a roof on his head, food in his stomach and better sanitary conditions are all logical reasons to keep playing to unsha's tune despite him being an alien. we see him behaving - a party is thrown for him (fan meeting info: we know parties are thrown for his birthdays by unsha), he wins some sort of award (?), he practises singing.

all with the same, numb-like expression. he does how he is told and he survives. that's the end of the deal.

3] here comes anakt, friendship and love.

now. what forms of affection could ivan have come to know up to this point? a comradery-like sort of family in the slums? if that's the case, it should be a co-dependent/independent type of relation, where all the kids depended on each other to survive but were aware of being ultimately on their own - until someone either died or betrayed or got taken away. so it was born out of desperation and to fend off loneliness.

ivan doesn't know what healthy love is. doesn't know how it is to rely on someone completely and then slowly learn to stand on your own feet and become a person upon whom others can rely. doesn't know how to balance his need for someone's closeness while respecting the other person's indipendence. no such things have been taught to him in the slums - no adult, healthy humans were probably in his life (long enough?) to pose as models.

teachers at anakt were worried about him not being able to form relationships with others (i think this info is in the public diaries from anakt garden?), and there are comments of anakt kids not having many info abt him or not knowing how to approach him.

4] so what changes? ivan starts to imitate his peers' way of socially interacting with each other

kids in anakt are not like the kids in the slums. they live "healthily", they study and develop skills, they create bonds, they play in the garden - it seems like the perfect receipt for a "normal" childhood, though we know what hides beyond the system. but it is the first time ivan experiences all this, and with his life-baggage? seeing how carefree many children are there (mizi, for example), how can he not notice how different him and them are? what comes natural to others is foreign to him.

he is not the only one to notice. aliens probably criticized this of him, forcing him to train how to smile to appear more friendly and child-like. ivan was not used to kids his age being carefree, so it must have been hard for him to approach them and appear approachable. he inevitably links his ability to make himself liked to how friendly and natural his smile looks, so he practices alone. what else? i already said this in my analysis of black sorrow, but i think that in order to fit in, ivan observed other kids and tried to imitate them.

the problem was that while they behaved spontaneously, ivan's reaction must have seemed forced, especially in the beginning. he sees everyone doing this funny thing stretching their lips that lightens their faces, as he is "taught" during medical experimentation. he tries, he trains, and slowly, he integrates. he becomes good at studying, he obeys and notices positive results in himself, adult aliens like him, his values as a commodity in his business relationship with unsha increases.

he is usefull, skilled, liked. eyes are on him, but he has grown numb to it all - out of survival instict. in the slums, he probably tried not to attract too much attention, so studying to be a performer and be good at it must require a certain effort to adapt. what helps is probably the fact that all the other children were going through similar things, so by observing them, just like he does with his smiling exercises, he knows he can learn. he can become better, become more useful, ensure himself good chances of survival.

5] and then, his heart stirs.

i don't think it was love at first sight - let's not reduce this to love, for ivan and alnst characters offer us a whole spectrum of emotions.

ivan is too pragmatic for that, and his love - his obsession - for till seems to spark and then grow the more he observes him. at the beginning, it is not even abt affection, imo. no, it's that all children have rules to follow and routines to abide to, even the painful ones, but there is this cute boy with fiery teal eyes raging against the darkness, shining the brightest when he lets emotions consume him, and ivan can't stop looking because he is gathering data observing others and trying to be like them. and he can't understand till.

i feel like crying if i think abt how much till must have affected little ivan, to the point that we know he associates till with the most beautiful thing he saw right after coming out of the slums - falling stars. there is something painfully romantic abt it, which also enforces the narrative of ivan self-assigning the role of the tragic-love character to himself.

[after all, none of them knows love. no, none of them knows how articulate and complex love is, they probably only know scattered definitions coming from books aliens have abt humans behaviours and traditions. ivan likes literature. he probably read abt love there, and lacking the direct experience of family-love or other healthy forms of love, he can only research what love may be about from there and from what surrounds him]

so till comes into his life and, like ivan does with everyone else, he observes him. till behaves in ways that go against the norm ivan had come to know, accept and adopt as line guide. ivan has all the reasons to categorize till as annoying; despite that, despite being aware of what makes till different and a stranger to the model ivan built in his head, he finds himself drawn to him. we could say that till is one of the most important sparks of humanity lighting up inside ivan.

[i think people whose emotions are numbed/strictly controlled by rationality tend to be interested/attracted (not romantically or sexually, or not only) by those who are fiery and open abt them, like puzzle pieces that fit together.

what we see in black sorrow speaks abt the inevitable attraction ivan comes to feel for till. that this emotion, for ivan, becomes love, is another matter, because not everything needs to be read as romantic. but before that, we see kid-ivan finding in kid-till something that is worth his attention and devotion - something that easily becomes ivan's light in the dark.]

i think one of the reasons he liked orbiting around till is that till doesn't care abt him pretending, abt his perfect smiles, abt the things he has to fix in order to be approachable to other kids' eyes. no matter what ivan does to rile till up, till doesn't let ivan fool him.

i imagine getting till's attention must have been hard, for ivan. till feels to me like a love-at-first-sight character, so he may have fallen in love with mizi the moment he saw her, not perceiving ivan's gaze on him. when till watches mizi and sua playing with flowers and wants to do the same, ivan probably didn't think much abt trumpling on the flower crown - he just wanted to attract till's attention. he suceeded. violence + riling till up seems a good receipt to achieve what ivan wants.

he keeps doing that, and with time, he understands when he can push and when he has to stop. he realizes how much more sensible than him till is, and i think he learns to cherish this side of till, as well as make it a part of himself. ivan becomes gentler. that is probably why he offered a truce at a certain point (thank you vivimeng fan meeting drawings!!), saying to till that he found it annoying to always have to measure his force to avoid hurting him too much.

loving till starts by trying to imitate him. ivan observes him, knows he can't be like him, reacts to till in unexpected and hard-to-control ways, and feels emotions that are entirely his own. for someone who had grown numb to his surrounding, how strange and terrifying and exciting must have been!

he cheers flower up fully knowing it is useless, imitating and humoring till - and then does the same, spontaneously i'd say, during the interview preceeding his doom and in the room where he finds till before r6, nuzzling till's face tenderly, trying to cheer him up. ivan imitates, absorbs and delivers - but only with till, it seems, he finds himself doing things more spontaneously, uncalculated, things that are not much logical or beneficial to him.

[growing up, maybe he thinks that's love, tries to label it as much, but feels like his emotions lacks the pureness and intensity of mizi and sua's love, so he thinks he can't call it that - instead, he goes for "shallow emotion"]

PART 2

[notomys-mordax-blog]

Part 2: Neve Gallus and the Shadow Dragons

Overall: 7/10

Important things first. I absolutely love Neve's design. Her casual outfit with the IDGAF unbuttoned shirt is 10/10. She's both very fashion-forward and feminine, but doesn't look soft. It's neat. The only real critique I have here is that I don't like how most of her face is hidden by her hat. While this felt like an intentional choice, I think it detracted more than it added to her vibes. 

Speaking of vibes, Neve's vibes are impeccable. She's a classic hardboiled detective solving mysteries and putting anything resembling a feeling in a box where it can't hurt her. They really leaned into the film-noir vibes with her voice direction with mixed results. Sometimes it's really effective, but other times it's stilted, especially next to characters who haven't been pulled out of a crime procedural. Overall, I really enjoyed her bit, but I can understand where critique about her voice direction comes from.

Despite her serious allergy to admitting her emotions, you can see how deeply she cares about the people around her by her actions. This worked really well in her interactions with the companions, but was a little bit more uneven when it came to Rook. I really liked seeing the social activities around the Lighthouse, but it was disappointing that Rook wasn't really directly involved in any of them. As a result they felt like an outsider (or like the Boss that people don't want to get too close to).

You could also see this with Neve herself. She liked to give the other characters small, practical advice and support for their problems, but didn't really seem to give Rook (who frankly, has more serious problems than a lot of his companions) the same treatment. I think this is really an area where the writing would have benefited from the addition of some barks and greetings to help link the "relationship-level-up" scenes and make it feel more like the characters are slowly getting to know each other, versus have an uneven sort of ladder where the relationship moves in jumps and starts.

This unfortunately also extends to her romance. I am the kind of person who really enjoys NPC romances. It not only makes me feel like the characters have more agency, but it is often a two-cakes scenario when it comes to interesting ships. The gender inversion of the detective x femme fatale of the pairing between Neve and Lucanis is really interesting, and they both use acts of service as their love language. Unfortunately, while the two of them have a lot of chemistry with each other, their chemistry with the player character is pretty flat. Lucanis's romance suffers more, in my opinion, because the content is so much sparser, but I also felt it with Neve.  My poor head canons need to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the Veilguard relationships work. 

Neve's role in the story is twofold. She helps provide a number of useful connections in Northern Thedas (Harding also plays this role). Additionally, she's our guide to Minrathous. For a Rook who does not have a Shadow Dragons origin, she's responsible for convincing the player that the city is worthy of saving. Personally I feel like the narrative emphasized how hopeless the whole situation in Dock Town a bit too much. I would have liked the narrative to give approximately 15% more weight to scenes like Hal and his fish-stand to show that Dock Town had good people and was worth trying to salvage.

Admittedly, I'm also pretty disappointed that we finally get to see THE BIGGEST AND MOST MAGICAL CITY IN THEDAS, but are limited to just exploring Dock Town which feels like a pretty generic fantasy dock town. I feel like this was a big missed opportunity. Frankly I would have preferred if Veilguard was set entirely in one city and we had the chance to really explore that one location. 

Neve is one of two characters who can become hardened. This is done not through her personal quest, but through an early-game decision to choose which of two cities to protect from a blighted dragon attack. Thematically I like how the game is moving away from good versus evil choices. One of the major themes the story was trying to tell was that there are sometimes no "good" choices. There are some interesting parallels between Solas and Rook and the themes of regret. What I found awkward here was that there really wasn't justification for why Rook played such a key role in the defence of the city (and subsequently why people outside of Neve/Lucanis blamed Rook for what happened). I also think that the narrative could have done a smoother job explaining that with Minrathous, the problem was not in the defence of the city, so much as it was the political implications. I think this choice would have felt more interesting if they worded it more explicitly to be a choice between protecting the civilians in a city from the immediate brutality of the dragon attack (Treviso) versus protecting the civilians in a city from the long-term brutality of an oppressive political regime (Minrathous). 

As a slight aside, I did feel like it was kind of goofy that Neve, who is a well-known public figure, could just waltz into a venatori gathering. 

Her personal quest is a paint by numbers affair. You help her with a case that spirals into a confrontation with her nemesis, a venatori mage. She needs to be guided through choosing to leverage the help of a shady organization, or crack the case through legitimate channels. It folded in nicely with the main story, but did illustrate the problems with the venatori as one of the main groups of villains.

Part of me almost wishes that the outcome of Neve's personal quest would depend on whether or not she was hardened, versus something that you explicitly chose. I feel like hardening Neve had much fewer implications on the story than hardening Lucanis, and I would have liked to see some story changes. 

The Shadow Dragons

I really liked the idea of the Shadow Dragons. I think they were probably my favorite of the factions. It was really brutal to see what happened to them if you chose to save Treviso over Minrathous. I also feel like their existence could have gone a long way in explaining why the culture of Tevinter was so different from what we might've expected given how it was depicted in the games based in Southern Thedas. Throw in a few lines about how attitudes of slavery in Tevinter have been shifting over the last 10 years due to changes in policy from Dorian and Mae, underground movements like the Shadow dragons and maybe, for bonus points, a certain elf who has been cutting his way through slavers. 

Not including Fenris in the Shadow Dragons really does feel like a missed opportunity. Quantum characters are one of the general design problems with the Dragon Age games. Getting to see cameos of characters from previous entries into the series is a lot of fun, and something that the series wants to do. Unfortunately, because of the complexities that would arise from the different configurations in people's worlds, these cameos either have to be super shallow so an NPC can be easily slotted in -- or people's previous canon need to be handwaved a-la Leliana-lyrium-ghost. Personally, I'd prefer half-assed explanations about why a character who should have been dead (or otherwise incapacitated) is back in action, but that's not really a good solution either. Frankly I think returning characters end up creating a sort of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. 

Back to the Shadow Dragons. I liked them! I think my only quibble is that the Viper being the Black Divine was a weird narrative choice. I'm not complete with my save-mintrathous playthrough, so this might end up coming up more in the future, but thus-far, this revelation has been treated like a fun Easter egg. I also thought it was kind of funny (derogatory) that the ventatori who captured him didn't think to unmask the mysterious masked leader of the rebellion. I think the reason they didn't was because the narrative didn't want to deal with the fallout ... which is kinda lame. 

Another intrusive thought I had whenever I saw him was that there is a whole masked empire in the south, and whether or not people thought that the Viper was from Orlais. This is a dumb thought, but it is one that I couldn't help but think.

How I would fix it: 

Neve's storylines are folded into the main story much closer than Harding's. This means that resolving them would require addressing some of the deeper flaws in Veilguard's narrative. Despite my desire to write multi-thousand word essays analyzing the flaws of the game, I did ultimately enjoy playing it and would describe the experience as being a mostly fun romp with likeable characters and an interesting story that sometimes flubs the execution. I ran across a post describing DAV as one of the most polished unfinished games they've ever played, and this really resonated with me. 

The Venatori (and Antaam) were one-note villains with the same pedigree as Corypheus. Note how I didn't name a specific Venatori. Aelia, who was the main antagonist of Neve's route, didn't really have much going on besides "evil venatori blood mage". While I don't think we need to make the pro-slavery nationalists sympathetic, I do feel like they would be more effective villains if it was more clear what their goals would actually look like for the people on the ground. As an aside, my eye twitched a little bit every time the phrase artifact or ritual was used. This felt like a huge opportunity to add a little bit of flavor into the stew. I don't think we need major lore reveals, but what seems more interesting: "We've got to stop the Venatori from using an artifact to complete a ritual" or "We've got to stop the Venatori from using the Chalice of Lost Souls from making legwarmers soul weave"? 

Not specifying what the ritual or artifact was really made it clear that these things were just MacGuffins, and doesn't give the player any idea about why the Venatori are evil. While I think the scenes in Arlathan were they tortured animals while sitting on human chairs, it at least gave some specificity to their evil. 

The Tevinter presented in Veilguard doesn't really reflect how the Empire was presented in the previous games.  If the narrative choice to downplay racism and slavery was done because the creative team no longer felt interested in those themes or equipped to write them a statement should have been made to this effect. Regardless, the in-game cultural shift would be much less jarring for a returning player if some in-universe explanation had been provided. In the previous section I discussed a few different factors that may have shifted the attitude of the general population in Tevinter. This would help show the player that the Tevinter they've heard about isn't really representative of what the "average" Tevinter citizen is like. I think this could be accomplished really smoothly with a banter between Neve and Harding. Harding is surprised to see that the elves are treated more poorly in the South than in Tevinter. She can talk about the horrific blood orgies she's heard about. Neve can bring up that the average Tevinter citizen is horrified that the Danariuses of their country are how other nations perceive them. Additionally, this would help give the player a better idea of what the stakes for allowing the Ventori to get a foothold in Minrathous would be. It's the cultural traditionalists of Tevinter who want to go back to blood orgies. 

My making the Venatori more compelling villains, I think you'd end up fixing 70% of the problems with Neve's story. 

In terms of the other 30%  percent, this is really where you feel the pain of removing the small ways the player can interact with the companions. Even though walking up to the companion and overhearing "hey Rook" is narratively identical to needing to press x to initiate the same "hey rook" conversation, it feels different from a gameplay perspective. Adding this back in would help make it feel like Rook was actually talking to his companions. I would also have really liked to involve Rook into the slice-of-life activities at the Lighthouse! Let the player decide if Rook would be interested in joining a book club, or explore what kind of cook Rook would be. I think this would help the feeling that Rook is a weird boss who listens in on people's conversations. 

In Conclusion: 

I like Neve a lot and think that the idea of a detective procedural set in Thedas has a lot of potential. I really liked her interactions with the other characters (especially Bellara!) and enjoyed watching her slowly warm up to the party. It's just a bit of a shame that I didn't get the same sense of slowly building friendship from the player-character. 

As an aside, Tevinter Nights definitely enhances the experience of playing Veilguard. In addition to providing introductions for most of the companions, it also introduces a lot of important NPCS, this is where you see Neve first confront Aelia.  

As another aside, I'm tired of games with end-of-the-world stakes. DA2 is probably my favorite entry into the series, and it has a much smaller scale than the other games. I really would have enjoyed a game consisting of helping Neve unravel mysteries in Minrathous and think that narratively, that sort of story is much easier to tell in a satisfying way.

So those are my thoughts on Neve. I would drink whisky with her while we speculated on who the Viper actually was, but first we need to do something about those Venatori (explain what the heck the cult actually wants).

[aihoshiino]

You know the more I think about OnK's ending the more it pisses me off lmao

It could have ended so well!! I absolutely love the plot point about how Aqua's "revenge" against Hikaru isn't killing him, but rather making him realize that Ai always cared about him and broke up with him because she didn't want to burden him. It's so genius and really feels like the climax the story was building up to.

And then it turns out that Hikaru is just irredeemably evil and wants to murder Ruby, so Aqua has "no choice" but to murder-suicide him???? And Aqua's actual suicide is portrayed as a heroic, noble act???

Like so many people (including you) have pointed out, it feels like this is the ending that Akasaka originally envisioned when he started OnK, but as the manga developed over the years that ending made less and less sense. But he was so attached to and married to the idea that he literally just stapled it on and bent over backwards to try and make it work with the story he ended up telling (it didn't work lol).

Aka is such a weird writer (at least just going off OnK ofc - i still haven't sat down with Kaguya-sama or Instant Bullet yet lol) because he seems like... simultaneously way too prone to getting distracted by new shinies while not being willing to compromise for what their additions to the story would actually mean in terms of meaningful changes to the way the narrative progresses.

Obvs the ending is a huge indication of this, but you can start seeing this kind of jump out at you when you examine the manga in hindsight. I can't for the fuckin life of me remember where I read it, but I distinctly remember someone pointing out that you can really tell there was a period of time that Aka was really enamored with Memcho, which is why she gets pulled into B-Komachi and is suddenly such a present and active member of the main cast but past a certain point he lost steam or interest or both in writing for her and that's why her involvement in the story just sort of... peters out outside of her standing around going :3 and :ε depending on what's happening.

This is also the issue with Akane past a certain point, imo - I've said before that I think a lot of the problems with Akane's long-term involvement in the story come down to her being a character originally conceived to have a short, self-contained arc being made to overstay her welcome in a story that doesn't have a ton of interest in her inner world but I actually think the biggest indicator in this regard is wtfever was going on with Black Hoshigan Ruby.

I can't take full credit for this observation and I, uh, also forgor who it was who pointed this out to me but a lot of the bizarre holes in how Ruby is framed at the end of the manga make way more sense (from a Doylist standpoint) if BH Ruby was also an improvised plot point. It explains why so little came of it despite how explosive of a status quo change it was presented and why it, too, peters out with a wet fart and is just sort of quietly retconned out of the story. It didn't work with Aka's ending in which Ruby is the most goodest and innocentest and most ideologically pure idol in all the land (which is why she's sooooooo special and good at being an idol!) so he just decided not to actually address it.

TBH, there's probably like a million things you could point out that have this exact issue in OnK but it all really comes down to Akasaka being at once way too prone to improvisation while also being largely unwilling or unable to gracefully make room for his own improvisations in the story. There's soooooo many times where the world state and society that Aka has built up in OnK should have real, tangible impacts on the characters just based on what has been previously established but because it might interrupt or change what he has Decided Will Happen, it just....... doesn't.

[womp-womp-waa]

They were having a family barbecue to celebrate Cara's birthday, her cousins were there. It was nice, she didn't usually get to see them as Ben moved out of their house when she was born. Her parents decided to never tell Cara why Ben was living with them anyways and her older brother... he doesn't like talking to her that much.

As much as she loved to have everyone around, she always could see Ben and Lily together. Laughing, smiling, enjoying their time together. She loved to see them happy, she loved them. But, why couldn't she have that? What did she do wrong to Aiden? Why must he always be so cold towards her?

She tried to learn lessons from Lily based on how she acted to get Aiden to like her. It didn't work. He still avoided her like the plauge. And that's when it hit her, Aiden did get along with Lily. But he was basically siblings with Ben. That was it! She had to learn from Ben, she just had to be more like Ben. So she changed whenever Aiden was around she would become quiet and started to write poetry like Ben did. Every single time she tried to show Aiden all he said was "That's great. Why don't you show mum?" Then dismissed her and returned back to his room, where he spent all of his time.

It made her heart ache whenever Lily and Ben spent their time together. It seems like they're just flaunting their amazing relationship just to mock her. Something to show her what her and Aiden could've been, but can't. For the simple reason that she was born and that was her mistake.

No matter how much her parents shower her in love and attention it didn't matter to her. All she wanted was the attention of her brother, if only for a second. That's all she wanted, can she please have that?

[seraheart]

"Why are you so much more mad about Conan keeping secrets from people who deserve to know, than about Haibara keeping secrets from people who deserve to know?"

It's mostly the direction of the character trajectories, and the values the narrative assigns to these actions.

Extreme trust issues and hopelessness are Haibara's starting point. As far as I can tell, her slow-burn character arc is (was?) supposed to be about her learning to trust and have faith in people (and in the possibility of her own survival).

Meanwhile, Conan's apparent arc right now seems to be the opposite. His trust issues and increasing lack of faith in (most) people have been portrayed as an indicator of how he's "Better Than" those other pitiful, "Lesser" people beneath him, who just can't measure up, and therefore "don't deserve" his respect. Learning to respect (most) people less and less appears to be like the end point of his current trajectory. I hate this!

Haibara's trust issues and lack of faith in people are portrayed as symptoms of what's wrong with her. Conan's trust issues and lack of faith and respect for other people are validated as the "correct" approach due to Conan being "better than" these other people.

[anaer]

i really do hate jjk

[attila-werther]

you know what. it's been a hot minute since I've enjoyed and outright despised the ending to a story in equal measure. fascinating sensations! I am grinding my teeth!

[starpros-sunshine]

Hmm tomorrow will be a tad awkward....

[loregoddess]

Let’s go with Narve for the ask meme

How I feel about this character He's cool! I definitely didn't use him to his full potential in my runs, although I'd like to try and figure out how to use him in battle for whenever I replay TriStrat. But narratively I think Narve's arc offers an interesting insight into the worldbuilding, helping to show Hyzante's current culture and approach to information (both acquisition and suppression) long before the player even gets to say, the end of Roland's route where Exharme reveals that if Svarog had not burnt the Archives himself, then Exharme would have destroyed them on orders from Idore. Like, even before that, we know from the beginning of Narve's character story that suppressing information that doesn't help Hyzante/Idore maintain power is just a Thing that happens regularly.

But his character story also gives us insight into the counter of this as well, in that despite Idore's best attempts to expunge Grandante from history, the people who Grandante helped after being exiled still remember him, and in this way his legacy still lives on (and of course, Narve himself is carrying out this legacy, and sharing the story of his grandfather, and making it even harder for Hyzante to fully stamp out the memory of Grandante; not unlike how Frederica continues to fight against Hyzante in the epilogue of Roland's ending).

So like, while Narve isn't my top favorite or anything, I still think he plays a super interesting role in how the narrative fabric gets woven, since he embodies some of the fundamental themes of the overall narrative--that there are powers that would seek to suppress information if it benefited them, and that it's impossible, or at least very difficult, to truly erase information so long as there are people willing to remember and share it.

All the people I ship romantically with this character No one at the moment, although if pressed, I might try to make an argument for Narve x Jens since they seem to be close in age, and mage x craftsman is an underappreciate ship dynamic.

My non-romantic OTP for this character I do like Narve's friendship with Geela like, of all the permanent roster characters who can show up in other character stories, I wasn't expecting Geela per se (esp. since Anna's usually the one who gets to hang out with the younger kids), but it's nice to see how supportive Geela is of Narve's pursuits (although considering that she plans on opening her own school after the war, maybe her taking to Narve isn't so surprising, since one of his encampment dialogues suggest he's going to open up a magic school as well).

My unpopular opinion about this character Underrated character by everyone, including myself before I sat down to start drafting this ask. I have to say, he's a pretty interesting character in his own right.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. As usual, more character interactions. Would Narve and Corentin have become friends over their shared love of magic? Actually, it would have been interesting to see a conversation between Narve and Ezana over the similarities and differences between their approaches to magic too. Narve's character stories focus a lot on his healing magic, so it'd be interesting to see him discuss healing magic with Cordelia. It would have also been interesting to see Narve interact with characters outside of the field of magic too like, would Narve and Medina bond over frustrations with Hyzante? And of course, now I'm wondering how character interactions between Narve and Jens would work like, they both share of love of knowledge and desire to become the best in their field (to similar but different ends), and Jens is The Army Blacksmith, so he should at least have some interactions with every other playable character anyhow...

So many possibilities, at the rate I'm going I should just draw up a chart of all the support/rapport-style bond conversations I wish had existed in TriStrat as a dual game/narrative mechanic.

[travalerray]

fanfic writing is always like:

questionable characterisation (not really familiar yet) => oh this is actually good => questionable characterisation (projecting)

[this-is-captain-handsome]

I reached the 30 tag limit LMAOO

Hi! I saw on one of your posts you said that you used to be a stucky shipper. I actually started off as a stony shipper but then absolutely fell in love with stucky but I like both . I was just wondering what made you "jump ship" on stucky lol. Sorry if this comes across as annoying or anything im just curious!

Hey! As you can see a couple of people have asked me this over the last couple of weeks and I’m really lazy and haven’t got around to responding yet, but the people deserve an answer so here we go. Before we start a quick disclaimer: I’ll only be talking about the ships themselves, not the communities or any of the discourse surrounding them. This is not a ship-bashing of any kind and please do not take it as such, it’s just my own personal experience surrounding these characters and these relationships. 

 Buckle your seatbelts kids, this is a long one.

I first got into Marvel c. 2015. I’m European so I’d never really watched any marvel movies before that, I watched Age of Ultron on a plane and remember being vaguely aware the Steve/Tony was a thing (what is pretty interesting is that to this day I have no clue where that knowledge came from) but was mostly just excited by the superhero stuff. I then got home and watched The Winter Soldier and fell in love. I love the Winter Soldier, it’s probably still one of my favourite marvel movies (it got kicked out of its top spot by Black Panther last year unfortunately) and to me no other marvel movie could hold a torch to it at the time. So I came onto tumblr, searched up The Winter Soldier and was just inundated with Stucky stuff, as expected. I rolled with it, got invested just from constant exposure (it was also around the height of the Stucky ship) and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I was super into Stucky for almost six months and was pretty much your average shipper, I didn’t understand stevetony, loved Steve Rogers, was close to creating a Stucky sideblog wit some ridiculous pun as my username, I was gone over this ship.

Then one day, I sat down and read the man on the bridge by boopboop on ao3. You’ve almost definitely heard of it, but it was the most popular fic in the Steve/Bucky tag on ao3 at the time (for some reason I had just never got around to reading it until then, it was long and I didn’t have the stamina I have now). It was your pretty standard Stucky fic, Steve gets Bucky back, they have to deal with his trauma which results in Steve and Bucky declaring their long lost love for each other etc. etc. What was different about this fic, was that it was all told from Tony’s point of view, and since Steve and Tony were on the same team at that point, their dynamic was a huge part of the fic. And I found myself falling completely in love with Steve and Tony’s dynamic. I went back to the fic for this post (and god it is a good fic) and pulled up the first couple of chapters and instantly just found so many instances of that dynamic

(grade A stevetony arguing over each other’s safety with a side of flirting from Tony)

(Idk why but the image of Steve and Tony not going to sleep, but rather staying up and brewing coffee together was such a vivid one when I first read this fic, I still remember it to this day. )

(Tony picking Steve flowers while trying to desperately play off that he didn’t aka. Tony caring while trying desperately not to care)

(Everyone knowing that Steve would definitely come to Tony, apart from Tony himself.)

Now obviously, this is a stucky fic and I went into it knowing this, but I found when Steve and Bucky finally got together I felt honestly a bit bored, a bit cheated. I had no idea why at the time. I remember very clearly x-ing out of the fic at the end and feeling really uneasy, I came onto tumblr, went straight back into the Stucky tag and all was well.

When I next went back onto ao3, I started out with a couple of oneshots in the Stucky tag, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me anymore. I remember sitting there, a little bored, not at all invested in this relationship and just missing something. I figured I was probably missing Tony’s presence in the fic and so filtered in Tony Stark’s character tag. I read a few of those and all was well but I realised the same thing was happening as had happened in man on the bridge, the moment that Steve and Bucky got together, the fic lost something for me. Desperate at this point, and a little annoyed at myself I conducted an experiment and went into the Steve/Tony tag on Ao3 and as they say, the rest is history. If you go onto older posts on my main blog there’s a pretty drastic, almost overnight shift c. January 2016. I have to admit, I expected Civil War to be a conversion so I enjoyed stevetony without consequence for five months, while still labelling myself as a Stucky shipper because I expected to be pulled back to Stucky after civil war, the reality was that somehow I came out of civil war shipping stevetony harder than ever before. From there, I spent two years reading my way through the stevetony tag on ao3 and finally set up this blog in 2018, with a really obscure reference as my username and it’s been stevetony til I die ever since.

I just couldn’t read Stucky anymore. That’s what I mean when I say on this blog that stevetony has ruined me for every other ship, because it has. Steve and Tony’s firecracker dynamic pulled me away from what was fast on its way to becoming my favourite ship in 2015, all because they had a bit of banter on the side in a fic. It’s kind of depressing really, the sort of hold that Steve and Tony’s dynamic has over me, 

It’s strange you say you fell in love with Stucky, I fell absolutely out of love with it. I have thought a lot about how I ended up falling into stevetony and why I was so drawn to them instead of Stucky in the first place and I think it all comes down the the story itself. To me, Steve and Bucky’s relationship carries much more weight as a friendship, I still have no doubt that Bucky is one of if not the most important person in Steve’s life, but having that be a lifelong friendship is way more powerful and impactful to me, (especially since what I know I misconstrued to be Steve’s obsession with Bucky is actually Steve’s obsession over the past. I’m not saying Bucky isn’t dear to Steve and he does want to obviously rescue him, but looking back on it there’s more to Steve’s obsession with Bucky than just love, it’s a fear of change and it’s him desperately trying to hold onto a past that’s gone.)

Conversely, I feel like adding a romantic element to Steve and Tony’s relationship enriches the story being told, if you look at something like civil war (either MCU or 616 tbh) in the context of Tony being desperately in love with Steve, it makes a lot more sense, especially with things like The Confession in 616 or the stuff brought up in that strange conversation in the conference room in the MCU. There’s lines from Steve like “I’m home/you gave me a home” or even straight up “he loved you” and his tormented behaviour throughout infinity war and endgame that just really makes you wonder, not to mention lines from others like “you two still gazing into each other’s eyes/sounds like both of you got into bed with the wrong people” and they did have to share a bed at Clint’s farm after all lol. The tragedy of their story is heightened if you look at it through the context of them being absolutely in love with each other, just never having actually got around to telling it to each other’s faces. This tragedy is heavily implied in The Oath/The Confession in 616 when they confess their deepest darkest secrets to the other’s comatose/dead bodies, and apparently it’s always been that they love the other person. Actually you could easily introduce a romantic element by making relatively few changes to the MCU, but that’s a post for another time (I have a long and comprehensive list in my notes app on how little you actually need to change to make that happen, it’s literally the matter of a few lines of dialogue and one major story change at the end of IM3, an interesting thought exercise to say the least).

Finally, there’s a quote that came up on my dash the day I made that fateful venture into the ao3 stevetony tag, “your soulmate isn’t someone who comes peacefully into your life. It is someone who makes you question things, changed your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone idealized, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionize your world in a second” to this day, it resonates so strongly with me about stevetony. It’s everything I love about this ship just compressed into a quote. 

So yeah it was basically a bunch of happy coincidences, but thank god it happened. As a writer, stevetony has taught me so much about character and dynamic, stuff that is honestly invaluable. When you have long fics that basically detail the day by day life of Steve and Tony post-civil war in rural Italy and consists of them sleeping, crying and working through their repressed feelings (looking at you @silkspectred ), it is the characters and their unique dynamic that drive the entirety of the story. Steve and Tony, in the hands of a compelling writer, can keep me hooked over a frankly embarrassing number of words. I still have a bit of a special place for Stucky in my heart really, it did start me out in marvel after all and it was one of my first ever ships, but your first love is only so good until you meet your true love, not to get all sappy but stevetony has completely destroyed my ability to ship anything else. I might get a bit flirtatious with some other ships, like sambucky (I still love Bucky, and I love Sam!), or the riverdale ships (beronica and jarchie or bust), or even the game of thrones crack ships (daensa til the day we die), but I’ll always come back to stevetony.

So yeah this escalated into a far longer post than I intended to make but I’ve never really spelled out on this blog how or why I ended up jumping Stucky to Stony when I know it’s usually the other way around. I guess it just comes down to stevetony catching me out when I least expected it, and never having let go of me since. 

[iwanthermidnightz]

When I was 24 I sat in a backstage dressing room in London, buzzing with anticipation. My backup singers and bandmates gathered around me in a scattered circle.Scissors emerged and I watched in the mirror as my locks of long curly hair fell in piles on the floor. There I was in my plaid button down shirt, grinning sheepishly as my tour mates and friends cheered on my haircut. This simple thing that everyone does. But I had a secret. For me. It was more than a change of hairstyle. When I was 24. I decided to completely reinvent myself.

How does a person reinvent herself, you ask? In any way I could think of. Musically, geographically, aesthetically, behaviorally, motivationally. And I did so joyfully. The curiosity I had felt the first murmurs of while making red had amplified into a pulsing heartbeat of restlessness in my bars. The risks I took when I toyed with pop sounds and sensibilities on red? I wanted to push it further. The sense of freedom I felt when traveling to big bustling cities? I wanted to live in one. The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them.

You see, in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming, the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.

It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.

Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix this if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth. And my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn't sensationalize or sexualize that, right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.

But none of that mattered then because I had a plan and I had a demeanor as trusting as a basket of golden retriever puppies. I had the keys to my own apartment in New York and I had new melodies bursting from my imagination. I had Max Martin and Shellback who were happy to help me explore this new sonic landscape I was enamored with. I had a new friend named Jack Antonoff who had made some cool tracks in his apartment. I had the idea that the album would be called 1989. And we would reference big 80's synths and write sky high choruses. I had sublime, inexplicable faith and I ran right toward it, in high heels and a crop top.

There was so much that I didn't know then, and looking back I see what a good thing that was. This time of my life was marked by right kind of naïveté, a hunger for adventure. And a sense of freedom I hadn't tasted before. It turns out that the cocktail of naïveté, hunger for adventure and freedom can lead to some nasty hangovers, metaphorically speaking. Of course everyone had something to say. But they always will. I learned lessons, paid prices, and tried to… don't say it don't say it. I'm sorry, I have to say it. Shake it off.

I’ll always be so incredibly grateful for how you loved and embraced this album. You, who followed my zig zag creative choices and cheered on my risks and experiments. You, who heard the wink and humor in "blank space" and maybe even empathized with the pain behind the satire. You, who saw the seeds of allyship and advocating for equality in "Welcome to New York". You, who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult). You, who saw that I reinvent myself for a million reasons, and that one of them is to try my very best to entertain you. You, who have had the grace to allow me the freedom to change.

I was born in 1989. Reinvented for the first time in 2014, and a part of me was reclaimed in 2023 with the re-release of this album I love so dearly.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long. This moment is a reflection of the woods we've wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark.

I present to you, with gratitude and wild wonder, my version of 1989.

It’s been waiting for you.

[eyra]

stuff what I have learnt about writing good

If you've followed me for longer than two minutes then you'll likely know (because I keep going on about it) that I've been working on a novel for the past year. It's always been a dream of mine to write and publish a book and whilst I still have a long way to go before I can even start thinking about querying (whether on this book, or the next, or the next, etc.) I suppose I can now say that a book Exists. I have written A Book.

Now whether or not that book ever sees the light of day, the process of writing it has been truly eye-opening. I went in knowing virtually nothing and came out, still with a huge amount to learn, but with a whole library of tools that I didn't have before. I'm now putting these to use with the first draft of my second book and already the process feels so much more enjoyable, because I've started to figure out how to make it work for me.

I wanted to jot down what I've learnt purely for my own reference so I can keep looking back and reminding myself what worked for me first time around, but given that I get a nice number of asks picking my brain about my own writing process, I thought I might as well share all this with you lot in case there's anyone out there who finds it useful!

So here are the big things that I've learnt so far...

1. Not every trick works for every writer

This has been, by far, my biggest learning. Starting to plan a novel for me felt SO overwhelming - I felt like I was bombarded on all sides with "this is how to write a novel" content, and it felt like there was just too much to learn and like I would never find my way through it. I spent weeks (months...) doing every worksheet, every outlining method, every chart, anything I could get my hands on. Some of them, by the end, proved themselves very useful. A lot of them didn't. There are thousands of voices online that are telling you "this is the right way to write a book" or even "this is the ONLY way to write a book" - don't listen to them. Try things, but don't feel like you have to fit yourself into every single box. Just find the things that work for you.

2. It's possible to overplan

On a related note - sometimes you just need to start writing. I spent WAY TOO LONG faffing about before I put pen to paper with my first book. So, so long planning out characters and plot points, a lot of which I then had to completely reimagine mid-draft because I realised they just didn't work anymore. In hindsight, some of this was down to me being scared to actually start writing - the planning stage was a bit of a comfort zone for me, despite not naturally being a plotter/architect - I have always always always been a pantser/gardener, but I got sucked into the whole "proper authors do it THIS way" narrative.

With my second novel, I did a nice amount of planning but then just bit the bullet and started drafting. I know where my story begins, ends, what my major themes are, I know all my main characters and I know my key plot points. The rest, I'm figuring out as I draft. If nothing else - I'm having a lot more fun this time around.

3. Think about voice and tense before drafting

Yeah duh obvious right? NOT TO ME. If you were following me around April time, you may have witnessed a series of minor breakdowns when I realised that, having written a whole first draft in third person present tense, the entire book should actually have been written in first person past tense. So that meant, basically, starting over from scratch. This was a big learning for me, and not a mistake I'm likely to make again.

4. Stop looking at your word count

For someone who's never really put much thought into word count before - my approach with fanfiction has already been "it'll be as long as it'll be" - I got OBSESSED with the word count of my first couple of drafts. A lot of people will tell you that any good novel "has to be" under 100k words. I constantly see this one post on Pinterest that says "I promise you that you can tell the story you want to tell in 100k words or under." I'm definitely no expert on this (and I'll eat my words when an agent tells me my manuscript needs cutting down), but I'm sceptical - a lot of stories can and should be under 100k words, sure, but most of my favourite books are much longer than this. However, I did get stuck in a "this manuscript has to be between 70k and 100k words" mindset and felt like a failure whenever it was sitting outside of that bracket. Also - keep your genre in mind. If you're writing a rom-com, 70k could work perfectly. If you're writing fantasy, you're probably going to go over that.

5. Know whether you're an overwriter or an underwriter

And related to the above - know whether you tend to write bare bones-style then add to it, or whether you tend to dump it all on the page then cut back later. I'm the first, and I knew this, but I still panicked when my first draft was only around 70k. I felt like it was rushing through the plot at an unreasonable pace and it didn't feel "finished". This was because it was a first draft. By the time I sent my manuscript to my beta reader, it was around 126k.

6. The dumb stuff works

The title of the document for my first draft was "XXX - worst possible version" and at multiple points during the drafting process I changed the font to Comic Sans size 48. It works. Completely takes the pressure off and gives you full permission to write big, write silly, write unhinged, write mad things that you'll cut back by 90% later. But it gets it all on the page. If you're stuck or cringing at yourself in Times New Roman size 12, try Comic Sans size 48.

7. Don't compare your first draft to your favourite book

Like an idiot, I did this. I still find myself doing it. It's possibly my worst writing habit. I'll type out a page at 11pm after a full day at work and no dinner and then I'll pick up a published book and think "ah man, the page I've just written is nowhere NEAR as good as this." Published books are fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh drafts that then go through months and months of editing. Do not compare your manuscript to a published book. Just don't do it.

8. Don't try to be That Author

Good writers are good readers. Absolutely read broadly, read deeply, just read. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, everything. And it's fine to find yourself influenced by other writers - that's how writing works. But don't try to BE other writers. One of the issues I had to unpick last year was that I was reading a lot of authors whose writing styles are very different to my own. I know my own style fairly well by this point - fanfiction's a great sandbox for figuring that out - but at certain moments during my editing phases I found myself cutting away at my prose because it felt "too different" to the books I was reading at the time. This was a weird thing for me to have done, and I went back and fixed it later.

I think what I'm trying to say with this one is: take inspiration from everywhere, let yourself be influenced by different writing styles, but find your own voice and trust it. Literature already has a Sally Rooney and a Donna Tartt and a Leigh Bardugo. It doesn't need a clone - it needs you!

I'll finish by sharing what I've found to be the most useful plotting template. This obviously isn't the total extent of my planning process by any means, but after trying about a million different plotting techniques for my first manuscript, this is the one:

The 27 chapter method (more examples here)

And finally, two little character tricks that I find invaluable:

AITAH?

Character philosophy

I hope someone out there finds something useful in this post! Although I've been writing in some capacity since I was a teenager, 2024 was definitely the year I realised that I am a writer at my core. I want to be a published author, but I'm already a writer. It brings me happiness like nothing else in the world! And I love to talk about all aspects of writing, so my ask box is always very much open.

Happy scribbling! x

[lostintransist]

Listen all I gotta say is price and Johnny are the type to bear hug you during sex. I mean like fully encompassing your whole body, holding you as close as possible with their strong ass grip while they’re balls deep in you. That’s all, thank you and have a great day :)

Oooh anon I like the way you think. Let me posit a few ideas for you. Because brevity is NOT a skill I possess all my thoughts are below the fold.

MDNI 18+, Female reader (because it fits the narrative I want to write today)

CW: Pap smears and doctors appointments mentioned, sex (obviously), mentions of lubrication and anatomy lessons (because if I have to read one more 'it's so tight' I am going to start fight club in your comments. If the vagina is 'tight' it isn't aroused! Vaginas are small when not being used for pleasure or producing a human.)

Johnny "Soap" MacTavish

Johnny bear hugs you, but not frequently. The first time it happened he had been hounding you all day for some action. You put him off with a smile and wore your prettiest day dress out for errands. "I can't miss my appointment today Johnny, and if I leave now I can get some shopping done."

He goes with you obviously because he hasn't seen you in weeks because of his job and spending time with you even at an appointment is better than missing you from home.

You didn't mention and he failed to ask what kind of appointment you had. Imgagine his delight shock to see you strip off your dress with absolutely nothing underneath because you have a yearly physical.

Let's not even argue the point that Johnny is horrified to see how a pap smear goes and apologizes the rest of the day that you have to do that as a part of having him as a newer partner. [I hate pap smears so much...Like I want to fist fight god for making them a thing that needs to happen.]

It takes him a couple hours to get over the sick feeling in his stomach. You had been mid conversation when the provider reached up and flipped down the sheet covering your breasts. They pressed and prodded all without either of you acknowleding what was happening. Was that normal? (It absolutely is.)

When you do finally let him convince (Lets not lie you also wanted this all day) you to bed end up riding him as he orgasms. His arms snake out and pull you to his chest, the powerful bands of his muscles holding you tight to his chest as he shudders below you. He is overwhelmed and in awe of the things you have to do to keep your body healthy and how part of those things are his fault.

It does prevent you from coming like you wanted but Johnny, once he can see again, takes care of you before settling you both in a bath.

Captain John Price

This man is so used to being in charge that the first time he sinks home into you he is snaking his arms around you to bear hug you to his chest.

"If you move even a bit I am going to explode inside you like a fourteen year old boy and his first time touching a lover," he growls into your shoulder.

He didn't need to use lube on the regular but after you explained he quickly agreed.

"John you could do hours of foreplay and I would still not produce enough fluid to make this an enjoyable experiance for either of us." You smile uncomfortably as his eyebrows tuck downward in confusion. With a shrug you continue, "My body does all the other normal things."

"Normal things like what?" Ah man, he did it now. Education on bodies that had vaginas would always get you on a rant. "So you know how in media the common thing to say about a vagina when inserting a penis is 'oh it's so tight' because it is supposed to feel good for a man?"

John leans back in his chair, contemplation exchanged for his look of confusion. "Yes, go on."

"Okay. When a penis gets erect it grows in size and shape typically, so does a vagina. An unaroused vagina is only about 2 inches in length but when aroused it grows to on average about 4. The rush of blood down there allows it to become more elastic and accomodate many shapes and sizes."

At John's nod you continue, because you know that this can be an uncomfortable topic but you refused to go to bed with a man who didn't care enough to understand how your body works.

"Typically with arousal the vagina creates a lot of fluid to help with insertion." "Isn't that what precum is about too?" Biting your lip you decide if you are going to ruin his day. "No. What we call precum is a cleaning fluid because pee and baby batter use the same tubing in a penis."

"Oh." He looks mildy uncomfortable with this information. Well in for a penny in for a pound. "All that to say, I would love to have sex with you but we will need to use lube because my body doesn't produce enough fluid and the fluid you make isn't really what I will need."

John thought about that conversation as he sank home, the plushness of your thighs bracketing his hips. Shoving one arm behind your neck and the other under your back as you lay under him he focuses on breathing.

Lord only knows that an anatomy lesson from you would be what nearly sends him over the edge. When you start twitching under him he holds you tighter, a slight wheeze escaping your chest.

"Dove I am getting older and don't recover like I used to, give me another ten seconds and then I will fuck you like I'm trying to touch your brain."

That delightful little sentence had you clenching around him, but your hips stopped shifting. Damn, he might need to ask his doctor for some little blue pills because one round a night with you might not be enough.

I'm so totally normal about these fictional characters...yep.. totally normal.

[shrimp1y]

"wrio isn't a cop hes a king"

Can someone with brains please please PLEASE talk about the disgusting portrayal of cops, crime, court proceedings, justice system and prison incarceration in genshin impact's fontaine update because I cannot SIT HERE and see people completely destroy their brain cells just so they could play a mediocre game and make some fictional men fuck in their mind

I'm deadass surprised there isn't more people talking about it??? I'm honestly so ??? It's literally presenting prison labour as a good thing. Wriothesley, the prison administrator, got rich off of making his inmates build police robots for the state AND HE'S PRAISED FOR IT. AND THEY'RE PAID IN COUPONS THAT CAN ONLY BE USED IN JAIL. HE WAS REWARDED FOR IT WITH HIS DUKE STATUS.

The fact that the fucking MC's mascot was like "oh the prisoners get one free meal a day? you're making life too good down here what if no one wants to leave :(" what in the bullshit. What in the. There's also a fighting ring in the prison, by the way, and you can bet on it with your coupons you just can't bet on both fighters.

The. This is a scene people think is hot. "But that's a bad guy!" THAT'S HOW THE NARRATIVE IS WRITTEN. THEY ARE ALWAYS THE BAD GUY IN FICTION. THAT'S HOW COPAGANDA WORKS, they make you think people in power can just beat the shit outta anyone and of course the person deserves it because they are clearly always the bad guys! And the people in power are always right! This is sarcasm btw.

Neuvillette and the magic judgement machine are literally seen as undeniable justice ordained by magic and NO ONE KNOWS HOW IT WORKS. NEUVILLETTE HIMSELF HAS NO CLUE WHAT HE'S DOING HE'S ACTIVELY FIGURING SHIT OUT AS WE SPEAK. And yet it's what sends people to The Worst Most Dangerous Super Scary Prison Ever Where There's No Laws [but 1 meal a day's great /s].

"But he feels bad!" Genshin has repeatedly chosen to highlight the pains and troubles of the oppressors [Eula] [Ei/Shogun] and there's literally never any repercussions for them aside from when they portray The Haterz clearly as villains or they turn it around and say "Well it was a misunderstanding all along! No one's to blame here!"

I'm not smart enough to go into details I'm just saying. This. needs to be talked about. I'm not telling you to stop the game bc Hyperfixations not really smth that can be controlled or whatever I get It I Got Back into the game when the first trailer dropped I drew neuvillette fanart and then everything just went downhill since then and I'm like why the fuck did I expect anything better than racist, pro cop dogshit from Mihoyo It needs to be talked about ESPECIALLY by people who still cares about it to critically. assess what the fuck you are absorbing because this shit isn't okay. This is literally paw patrol for weebs they just didn't call anyone a "cop"

PLEASE. TALK ABOUT IT.

[blackfilmmakers]

Hello! I was wondering if it was Okay to ask for some tips on how to write a black horror antagonist respectfully? I’m a horror author and I realized that my horror villains are not very diverse, but I’m afraid of falling into stereotypes.

Things to consider when making a Black Horror Antagonist:

-Who is the protagonist in relation to this Black antagonist? Is it a White kid? A group of people with fairer skin compared to the Black antagonist? If you aim to make diverse stories, you can't just make the antagonists poc and call it a day. Society already use the narrative that Black ppl are out to terrorize White neighborhoods with malicious intent, to justify killing us. Birth of a Nation glorified the Klan so well(cinema-wise) it literally brought back the Klan. We also have this ongoing rise of anti-Haitian crimes(AntiBlackness overall) because some White woman wanted to make a meme of Haitians eating cats

-If they are a magical antagonist, is the magic they used based on Black or Brown cultures that are already demonized enough? The recent rise of anti-haitian propaganda does stem from the stereotype that Haitians practice cannibalism for their "satanic" ritualsm. Which the word, "cannibal" was a slur that refers to islanders apparently. Anyways you can have your magical Black antagonist, but if they start writing in vodun symbols and wear feather headdresses, reconsider that it's just "if it's a vague Black/Brown religion it's automatically scary"

-What is their personality like? Are they cunning and creative and clever? Or are they a simple-minded beast? In The Promised Neverland we see two caretakers(they are antagonists): Isabella and Krone. Isabella is a fair-skinned woman who is presented as intelligent and cunning with her villainy. Whereas Krone's villainy depicts her as a monstrous beast. We already have enough Black antagonists that are essentially the main villain's attack dog, with very little focus on their motivations. If you wanted to write about a monster/beast that has no intelligence you could always write that instead. But if you have a Black human being, well humans can be written in so many different ways, do use that opportunity

-Consider whether or not your Black Horror antagonists are ableist narratives. Ableism is already a problem in horror stories already. But when it comes to Black neurodivergent/disabled people, you have to be extra careful with that. Sonya Massey's disability (and aave) made those cops murder her because at the end of the day, she's a Black woman they didn't bother to hear out, and needed an excuse to shoot her. What you write as a "scary" trait for your Black antagonist, could support ableist narratives that disabilities/neurodivergency are inherently dangerous

-Colorism can be an issue here as well. Even if you do have a Black protagonist, are they someone who is lighter than the villain? Dark=/=Inherently Bad, and Light=/=Inherently Good

-Horror is all about exploring a fear (societal or individual). So this is when you have to ask yourself, what do you fear? What do you think your readers' fears are when they read about this Black villain character? You can't control your readers' perception, sure, but fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can challenge societal expectations or support them. So with all the points I listed down above and whatever points I didn't say, this could all attribute to the "horrors" or the "thing you need to fear" in the story. Do your readers find the Black antagonist scary because they are a well written antagonist with proper motivations? Or are they conditioned to see Black people as scary?

-In terms of how these characters speak or their motivations, that I have to advise getting several Black beta readers(that aren't just your friends) to have review your work. If your character is a disabled Black person, get a disabled Black reader. If they are Jamaican character, get a Jamaican reader. Hell, ask these readers if they even find your Black villain intimidating or compelling.

All in all, if you write about a Black character you really need to write them as you do for your White characters. The problem I think most nonblack writers have with this advice though is that they read that as "write Black characters as White(the default)". That won't work. You always have to consider a Black character's Blackness and how that interacts with the world you created

@/writingwithcolor and @/creatingblackcharacters would probably have more input

TLDR: Make the final girl a darkskinned Black woman