#I dunno I just think that idea would be interesting

[arcane-ish]

Rambling thoughts on Cait's storyline

I thought about doing like an exhaustive analysis of Cait's story in s2Act1 with like pictures and stuff as example. But then I got lazy. I will try to focus on some short notes.

1.) I don't get the vibe that Cait is being manipulative when she pulls away from Vi's touch. I think she's genuinely torn. I can't quite decide whether she's fighting her rising anti-Zaunite rage or on some level realizes what a mess she is and that going for it with Vi right now would be a bad idea. But I don't think she is angling for anything like that, imo she's just struggling with her own emotions. Sidenote: I think it's worth nothing how it mirrors the face touching that Jayce does to Mel.

2.) However, I totally get manipulative vibes from the whole "Cait sang Vi's praises to the enforcers and then her future team member just shows up at Vi's to tell her this". Like either Cait was setting up Vi to join the force (by giving a speech to the enforcers and threatening them with withdrawing funding) without actually asking Vi and/or she sent the enforcer girl to find Vi and tell her that. I dunno, there's just something odd about Caitlyn's multi-cultural task force just coming together like that.

3.) I complained in regards to Jayce's storyline that he is in multiple storylines that don't feel quite connected. And how he moves from one story to the next makes it seem like he doesn't actually care all that much. If I think about it, Caitlyn and Vi are strictly speaking in multiple stories as well (ie apprehending Jinx, Hextech, Ambessa's schemes). But they are getting the royal treatment. It doesn't feel like they are in distinct storythreads because the show connects them. These stories when they are in them still feel like they are fundamentally about Vi and Cait. Because of that it doesn't feel like they are in multiple stories, it's one big ball of story mud of Caitlyn and Vi. Jinx comments on Vi being sweet on Caitlyn. Mel tells Jayce to check on Caitlyn which gives her a chance to talk about Vi, Ambessa's schemes in regards to Caitlyn are meaningful also in part because they might affect how Vi feels about Cait and how likely they are to reunite.

Notice how when Heimer introduces Ekko and Jayce to each other, he doesn't ask what happened to Viktor? Even though that would make sense for his character and would give Jayce a way to voice his theory on why Viktor left and where he is now?

But it never comes up. Because Jayce, Viktor etc are firmly a B story and a result their fates and feelings don't matter to the other characters as much (and in turn means that the characters themselves feel like they don't care as much, while you can't get very far without having it pointed out to you that Vi matters to Cait and vice versa).

4.) I think the scene between Cait and Vi at the pond is intensely interesting. Because Cait says there's three faces she keeps seeing. her mom, Jinx and Vi. Her mom and Jinx are illustrated with a visual, but Vi isn't.

We don't get shown what Vi looks like in Cait's mind. Maybe we can infer that it's like in the beginning, where her world is in black and white and only Vi is in color.

But why not show us? In her visions of her, is Vi smiling? Being a steady rock? Looking at her with concern?

When she talks about her visions of Cassandra and Jinx, she speaks in detail how those make her feel. But with Vi she doesn't. We just have the tone of her voice to infer, but she does not say.

5.) I think it's very telling why Cait wants Vi to come along. Like there are clear tactical advantages to having a Zaunite guide while fighting in Zaun. Vi points this out and as Sevika points out when talking to the barons. But imo Cait asks Vi to come because she feels herself slipping.

She wants Vi to hold her back. Which from a relationship point of view, is kind of shitty, to pick somebody else and try to make them responsible for you not going evil.

(an interesting wrinkle is that when Caitlyn asks why she is indicating that she is scared if she goes after Jinx "one of them will end up in a box", indicating she doesn't want to kill Jinx, but Vi comes to quickly assure Caitlyn that she would be okay with Cait taking the shot on Jinx)

6.) Imo it's interesting that before they kiss Vi essentially tells Cait that she feels like she has nobody left.

And in the beginning it's like Cait also feels like Vi is the only thing that she has left, the only thing that is real.

When even her father is grey and doesn't feel real to her. Except it's not true. Even if Vi is important to her, Caitlyn has people. She has like three different people other than Vi try to reach out and give her comfort.

And that is on top of just via her position in society she has this whole apparatus behind and under her, the enforcers, the council. While Vi has dead siblings, dead parents, dead foster father (to her knowledge), no status within Zaun's society/nobody who cares what decisions she will make, a sister she considers dead and had a falling out with, no friends it seems left back in Zaun (either she never had any of her absence was too long) and for whatever reason she doesn't consider Ekko to be meaningful (maybe their relationship was just to casual, maybe she thinks he will judge her for working with the enforcers, maybe she is too self-hate-y to think she belongs there).

[hyfinart]

i have no idea if i asked this before or i was dreaming but what if mephone was forced to go to shimmers school Like yk how they speak in beeps and boops- what if he kinda understands them, but not much. so prime shimmer was like- ight boy. school time. and bam he's struggling to memorize the shimmer history of their economy like i dunno bruh...him living as a shimmer with no knowledge and is forced to study seems funny to me would he tho...

very very late answer! guess i should go through my starchild asks aha /pos

i think it's a really interesting concept, the shimmers having to teach mephone something they themselves have really never had to explain before. they are a collective, they understand what every other shimmer understands.

i don't think it'd be much of a sit-down, lesson learning type thing, i feel prime would just be overjoyed to just have conversations about their history and culture (and the bad parts would probably be left for more serious conversation). it's a LOT, but mephone tries his best. he keeps voice memos and writes down the more obscure facts in his notes app.

their language would be really hard to learn, i'm sure. but mephone wants to connect and tries his best! the shimmers don't speak english unless they're talking directly to mephone or he's part of the conversation so it does feel a little alienating. there have been a few times where he tries to chat in their language, but he gets lost rather quickly. day by day!

weirdly, though, it feels more normal to speak in their language, even if it's through a small vocabulary. being part shimmer is the reason he's even able to speak their language in the first place, and connecting with that side feels right. like it was meant to be that way from the start.

and it was! it was.

[bixels]

What did/do you like about Pharah?

Uh, gameplay-wise, I really love characters in shooters who rely on three-dimensional movement techs. Chaining together hover and jump to stay in the air for as long as possible and keep momentum is so satisfying, and picking enemies off from the sky made me feel like a bird of prey. I was a good Pharah main.

Story-wise, there unfortunately isn't much to canonically go off because Pharah is so underutilized and neglected. Her personality's pretty boilerplate "heroic hero" (she's literally inspired by Captain America).

But it's the crumbs/bits and pieces that I really latched onto. Pharah's a confirmed lesbian; her short story with Baptiste implies she harbors a crush on Mercy (fucking thank you.). She's biracial Egyptian/First Nations. She has major mommy issues, having grown up both admiring and resenting Ana. She's the bridge between Old Overwatch, inspired by the idealized heroes who surrounded her childhood, and New Overwatch. She's one of the only inter-generational characters in the cast; someone whose experiences span the gap, which is why I seriously believe Pharah would make a great main character.

There isn't much to go off of, though; she's a very uncomplicated character (she's a soldier for a private military corporation, lol.). But that just means she's a blank slate character, so I've seen fanfic writers run wild and create some really interesting takes on her. My favorite interpretation of her's a dense, herbo gym-bro type (a lot of her liens are about work outs, exercising, and playing sports) who's easily excitable under her seemingly self-serious, armored visage. We see how she tends to gloat and hype herself up when she's on a streak too, so Pharah definitely has a competitive and boastful side under her more professional and militant performance.

Now Mercy? Mercy is a real complex character.

[somegrumpynerd]

Has anyone done that one episode of spongebob where he walks through everybody else's dreams but with Nightmare? Like for whatever reason (out of boredom, curiosity, sensing the bad emotions) he goes through each of his gang's dreams and gets involved, intentionally or by mistake. It could be a fun way to explore each of their different views, you could get angsty with it and what their own personal worst nightmares are like (or just get silly with it, dreams can be strange and funny).

Could do it with Dream too, either going in to try and help people out of a nightmare or just wandering in to a nice dream by mistake and getting lost.

[maliciousalice]

Hear me out (or don't... it's fine I'm just venting and mean) yeah um I don't believe Chakotay was saved in Prod*gy s2.

[1tsjusty0u]

wow this has such majoras mask vibes! (guy who is currently playing majoras mask)

[front-facing-pokemon]

[ganymedesclock]

Out of curiosity, any thoughts on the anime Bleach?

I consumed a fairly good chunk of it when I was younger. It's since faded in my passions. I think Rolling Star by Yui is by far my favorite of the openings but a lot of them are very good.

I think the visuals are fairly stylish but it suffers the shonen problem- granted, I think a lot of this is in the format of how long running shonens are produced- of starting out with a bold exciting concept and then sort of petering out in weird directions the longer it goes on. In Bleach's case, I really loved the design and concept of the early hollows, but from the Soul Society arc onward, this entire fascinating afterlife concept boils down to Fashion Sword Boys Fightin' It Out.

Most of my residual fondness for it has me eyeing @gallusrostromegalus's An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy, because it seems to be taking a lot of the later series and injecting that sense of weird monsters and afterlife ramifications back into it.

[loopholes-and-wishes]

I feel like I should clarify that I'm not a huge fan of the blushing virgin trope when I say I hc Isabeau as zero experience. Its mainly because I think it's fascinating how we can make Bad Touch even fucking worse in retrospect and also cause I enjoy ruining Siffrin's life a lil bit. Just a wee bit.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[fisherrprince]

this is the result of too many thought trains colliding at once so like - s. sorry paranatural likers. I only had one cool idea all day and it was to turn King C into a spirit fusion hostile takeover gundam situation

like this (very rough wip gif under the cut)

[theloveinc]

You said you wanted to talk about Hunger Games Bakugou?.... 🎤

I DID AND I STILL DO DESPERATELY!!!! and not just bakugo, anyone even!!!!!!!!! tho i'm having a bit of a problem bc there's so much to explore, i don't know what exactly i want to say!!

Are you in the games together? Someone he meets before or after? Your mentor or mentee???? ARE YOU AN AVOX HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH, maybe, even? Or even just from the same or different district? something, something IN THE CAPITOL????

LIKE THERE'S SO MUCH HERE I'M NOT SURE WHAT TO PICK N EXPAND ON AND I NEED HELP!!!!

[elytrafemme]

i wrote a long post about this and i maybe shouldn't have deleted the entire thing just now (oops) because it was insightful but i do like... i don't know. there's literally no way i say this that doesn't sound shitty so i just need benefit of the doubt here but like... i have so many complex feelings about the DSM5 and diagnoses Already... both in my own life and just like, generally, that sometimes i think about my own trajectory going from "you have BPD -> i am convinced i have BPD and nobody can tell me otherwise -> i have complex trauma not BPD". and i don't know how to describe it without sounding shitty to people who genuinely value and have benefitted from having the diagnosis of BPD, that has derived insight and help and resources and validation from it, but i can't help but think about how being so fucking convinced i had a personality disorder when i was like... 15? 16? 17? led me to developing this internalized voice i still don't really understand but struggle with daily that is like CONVINCED that i am overreacting, that i'm splitting, that i'm too emotional, that i'm lashing out, that i'm going insane and lacking any and all logic-- all the time, when i am actually behaving normally. because it was ingrained in me, and not entirely by the fault of other people (example: none of my present mutuals/online friends enabled any of this bad stuff because this preceded the time i was really present here, and by then it was so entirely self driven nobody could draw me out of it), that i was just Fucking Crazy. so i spent two years of my life convinced i was "irrationally splitting" on people when i was actually feeling mixed emotions about my literal assaulter and was feeling mixed emotions on everyone around me because i didn't know how to handle that trauma. but i was just like no i'm insane. i don't know.

i can't really emphasize enough that i know this isn't other people's experience with it and i'm just speaking for myself.

[the-kestrels-feather]

I've been screwing around playing with the idea of a Gatsby sequel that follows Daisy's child with Tom who's 20 now and has a ~fascinating~ relationship with her mother and father (Tom died a few years prior) and is close to her younger brother and the two learn later that her younger brother (I named him Holden idk) is the illegitimate child of Daisy and Jay and it would touch on themes of like emotionally distant parents (seeing as Pammy's only interaction with Daisy we get in the book is the nurse bringing her out like fine china that Daisy can show off before going away I dont think its that far off), trying to live in the past, etc. Maybe Jordan and Nick would pop up somewhere too? Idk.

[purplecatghostposts]

Marble Hornets AU where after Tim passes out in Benedict Hall at the end of Entry 86, he wakes up years in the past, just after they first started shooting Marble Hornets. He remembers everything, and to his surprise, so does everyone else.

Everyone except Alex, who has no idea why his friends are acting so weird, especially around him. He’s really trying his best to piece it together but nobody is telling him anything, not even Amy, and it’s kinda freaking him out? Did he miss something?

Cue a lot of freaking out from the rest of the Cast while they try and figure out what to do, a very confused and concerned Alex, and a monster that’s gonna attempt the same bullshit all over again but will probably be thwarted by the power of love, knowledge, and maybe incredible violence.

[quibbs126]

I kind of want to make an oc that’s a sea Cookie, but they can survive in the Licorice Sea and probably lives there

Not sure if they just live there, they were created by the Licorice Sea and have some sort of connection to monsters in it, or…whatever third option I came up with that I’m forgetting about, but I think it’d be neat

I’m just not sure how to go about designing that