#I love these little infodump posts because I COULD make them on main where I have a lot of shaman king followers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

eric-the-bmo · 1 year ago

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Now I’m curious to hear about your VtM character! Impulse Embraces are always really fun (and I’m noticing very Malk-like)

[barrels into the room] MAN OH MAN I HOPE YOU'RE READY TO HEAR ABOUT LEO WEST, THE NUMBER ONE MALKAVIAN OF MY HEART

[tiny pixel leo was made by @ slimejunior btw]

(It's so cool you wanna hear about him- this is my first time in a vtm chronicle, and while i'm not the best at roleplaying, i've been having a blast with the story. I'm sorry btw, this turned into a very long post- I jumped at the chance to ramble about almost everything I can about him- however, since my fellow players follow me here, I'm keeping quiet about certain parts of his character and past.)

Anyway! Leo West is an amnesiac(?) conspiracy theorist and Anarch Malkavian, and is for an on-going chronicle taking place in San Jose- us players have decided to name it Blood and Silicon (there's actually a blog dedicated to it that's run by one of the players).

Leo's a quiet and inquisitive man who's earnest and stubborn, and refuses to talk to the coterie about his issues (but really, none of the other members do that either). He knows very little about vampire society, as his sire refused to tell him anything before sending him away, and has been repeatedly described as a blank slate and full of potential- mostly due to his "newness" to Kindred unlife. He's probably being manipulated by at least 2 people at this point.

He's got Auspex and Obfuscate, and is (unintentionally) built as a stealth character. He also has the Sandman predator type- it's how his sire hunts, and he would prefer victims who wouldn't struggle, anyway.

With his occasional visions, it seems he's got connections to the Cobweb- additionally, since no one's explained to him what the Beast is (and his takes on the guise of his sire's voice), Leo is currently convinced his Beast is actually his sire just talking to him.

While I described him as an amnesiac earlier, he hasn't completely forgotten everything.

However, my main form of communication is infodumping (/hj), so allow me to ramble below, even though I can't fit everything about him in here:

Leo was a hopeless romantic born on May 26, 1994, raised in Chicago and brought up as a Christian. He stopped believing in that faith sometime in high school; something Definitely happened during that time in his life, since it was also when he broke his nose and started smoking (but hey, if I don't know what happened, then he doesn't either /lh). He did eventually quit cigarettes in college, where he graduated and was a librarian for a while; he helped run the DnD sessions the library would hold every month :-)

In 2019, he met a man named Jeremiah: his future sire. J is a man I could make an entire post about- but tbh this isn't about him, so I'll give only the bare amount of information needed.

Jeremiah is a bartender who moved to Chicago from San Jose, and at some point in the first year of knowing Leo, he ended up blood-bonding him for reasons unknown. Leo, who was completely unaware that he was now Jeremiah's ghoul, experienced the symptoms of the bond and assumed he was in love- which surely was a whole thing for him, because at this point in Leo's life he had just come to the conclusion he would never fall in love, since he's never had the best luck in that part of his life. The two of them entered a relationship (or at least it seemed that way to Leo), and of course given the dynamic/power imbalance here- as well as Jeremiah in general- it wasn't a very good one.

(Amy, Leo's sister, kinda picked up some bad vibes from her brother's partner, and very much dislikes him.)

During their almost-three years together while Leo served as his ghoul, Jeremiah used Dominate a lot on him, erasing his memories of anything that could be seen as Masquerade-breaching- meaning that Leo has no idea what he did for him.

Mr. West noticed his gaps in memory, of course, and with the help(?) of one of his more common library patrons, Chris, he fell down into a bit of a conspiracy rabbit hole to try and figure out what was happening to him. Sometime around this point he picked up his smoking habit again.

[As a result of J's actions, Leo no longer trusts his memory and carries around a notebook; It's also one of the reasons he avoids eye contact a lot, since that's necessary for Dominate.]

Eventually he must've figured things out, or perhaps his curiosity got the better of him- but somehow, on September 16, 2021, Leo stumbled upon something that resulted in his untimely death at 27 years old.

Jeremiah Embraced him that night, although it's unknown whether he did it because he still needed Leo's servitude, or if he genuinely cared about his ghoul (and I am unsure which one is worse).

The rest of the events of his Embrace are a bit tricky to talk about- I can't go into much detail without giving much away- but with all the stress and trauma of what happened, his clan bane manifested as Dissociation; in tandem/addition to this, Leo's brain blocked off parts of itself, resulting in even more memory loss.

In fact, after Sept 16, there's about an entire month and a half of missing time for Leo, and he doesn't remember any of it (this was originally due to a misunderstanding of the game's timeline, but is now a part of the Lore).

Anyway, even though I can't go into specifics of what happened to Leo during this moment of his unlife, I can offer you this sort-of-meme about it:

[At some point during this time J informed him of blood bonds, which was kind of a jerk move, considering his childe was having a bad mental moment already.]

It's been stated by Leo that Jeremiah sent him away to San Jose, and the fledgling currently has his coat- which implies J gave it to him as a gift, or at least let him take it with. His relationship with his sire right now is... complicated.

Anyway, Leo spent about a week in San Jose before meeting [aka getting kidnapped by] a Kindred named Harrison, who introduced him to the rest of the coterie. Currently, they're all a bit secretive, and Leo occasionally leads them into trouble (like lowkey breaching the Masquerade, and almost getting caught by a gang).

Throughout Blood and Silicon, Leo's been learning about Kindred unlife, and has additionally requested an informant to look into Jeremiah. (He's got a bit of a fixation on his sire- in his eyes, his investigation to figure out what's going has not ended, and it seems Jeremiah has many secrets..)

In the most recent session, the coterie has been gifted territory as a reward for doing a quest for Harrison. Meanwhile, something's going on with Leo, because vampires can't get headaches, can they?

I'm very excited to see where this leads...

[thank you for asking, this was fun to ramble about him <3]

#but yeah leo is FUCKED UP if u wanna know whats going on with him i can maybe tell u somehow idk #sorry for so much i get really overenthusiastic about my OCs at times #If J gets his own post i'll elaborate on their relationship as well as other stuff about him and Additional Lore #aka i need signs ppl are interested so someone send an ask and ill do that /lh #eric finally speaks #leo vibes #blood and silicon #no beta we die like Leo #vtm oc #vtm #vampire the masquerade #vampire oc #malkavian #vtm malkavian #malkavian oc #ask answered #tw smoking

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cuteniarose · 5 months ago

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also this anon came here from ur art blog!

can you tell us more abt ur ocs?? infodump plz

Hey, it’s fine, don’t sweat it! That was all on me, tbh, I have a habit of not putting too much info about my OCs into posts because they have a target audience of two, me and my partner in crime, and obviously we both already know pretty much everything there is to know about these guys. It’s very rare that anyone stumbles upon my art blog, let alone likes it enough to come here and send multiple asks about my characters, so thank you for that!! Maybe I should start putting small bios in the descriptions of my art posts, at least ages and sexualities and who they are in relation to whom 😅

Anyway, I did make a long infodump post about my main OCs, Suiren and Midori, here, and 99% of that information is still accurate, so I’m not going to repeat myself. And the rest depends on who you wanna know more about, Kat and I have over 20 between us, if I were to talk about everyone we’d be here until next year. But for now.. how about a rundown of the ones I currently speak of most often?

(Under the cut because this got LONG)

Haya – Born in 120 AG, she/her, cis, thinks she’s straight but definitely some flavour of queer, will most likely never figure it out :/. She’s Ghazan’s older sister who raised him after their parents fell victim to a plague when she and Ghazan were 14 and 5 respectively. Obviously, life wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the two of the after that. Haya had to quit school so she could work to provide for her brother, and she worked herself to the bone at any job that would take her because what else could she do? Let her brother starve? Not pay the bills so they’ll eventually end up homeless? And with how tired she was, of course she had little capacity remaining for kindness. She became hardened, mean and immensely overprotective, always yelling at Ghazan whenever he didn’t do as she told him, particularly he ran off to play in the Swamp despite it being where the sickness that took away their parents had come from, even more so when he made friends with Ming-Hua, and eventually she started hounding him endlessly about how much money he’s costing her. And it all boiled down to Ghazan running away as a teenager and joining the Red Lotus, later reuniting and falling in love with Ming-Hua, and having Suiren and Midori. When the time came for the plan to kidnap Korra, the girls were left with Haya, and that’s where things take a sharp turn for the worse. Haya saw her brother in Midori and the swamp rat who stole him away from her in Suiren, they were living proof that her brother abandoned her and she couldn’t stand it. And so she became physically, verbally and emotionally abusive, and the effect that childhood had on the girls will stay with them long after they’re out from under her roof. Haya is easily the most emotionally conflicting character that I have. You want to hate her, you SHOULD hate her, she’s an absolutely awful person with 0 redeeming qualities, but then you remember that once upon a time she was very much like Suiren, a young girl who loved her mother very much and just wanted the best for her little sibling, and now she’s older and alone and miserable. It’s.. a sad fate, and a part of me can’t help but sympathise with her. Not that it excuses her actions, but it adds a layer to her for sure.

Summiya – Born in 124 AG, she/her, cis, aromantic allosexual, no exact sexuality label beyond that since for her, sleeping with people isn’t about the partner, but rather what they can give her. Zaheer’s older sister, the stereotypically perfect eldest child who sets impossible standards for her siblings. What sets her apart from the rest is that her face is perfectly symmetrical, as if someone put a mirror to one half of it, and while she’s undeniably beautiful, the symmetry tends to freak people out a little. She doesn’t look human, more like a perfect porcelain doll, and that’s exactly what she was raised to be. She was born into a noble family and given the patriarchal structure in place her only role in life is to uphold her father’s reputation and political status by being married off to the highest bidder and becoming the perfect wife and mother. When she was 16, Zaheer ran away from home and she denounced him as a brother with no hesitation. When her sister Aiza did the same thing three years later, Summiya struggled a lot more to do the same, but she was already married and pregnant at that point so pushed the event deep, deep down and focused on her own family. Following her siblings’ betrayal, she was placed under a lot more pressure to not end up like them and not let her kids do the same, which resulted in her becoming an overbearing control freak who hates that both her children (a girl and a boy, just like her own siblings were) were born with birthmarks on their faces, making them imperfect, and her carefully concealed but still obvious hatred of those marks drove her daughter to attempting to bleach her skin. And all her efforts were for nothing, because they still end up rebelling against her as teenagers, not too long before she discovers her husband is cheating on her and only a few months before Zaheer is imprisoned. Tough year, what can I say? And she just.. cracks, completely loses it, and Kat said she’d write a proper fic about it so I’ll leave the details to her, especially considering tumblr won’t like me talking about them, but she begins cheating on her husband too and is a complete masochist, to the point she deeply scares her partners and they end up breaking it off. Essentially, Haya on steroids 😅

Aiza/Emran – Born in 126 AG, she/he/they, genderfluid, pansexual, polyamorous. Zaheer’s other sister, the middle child in the family. The three siblings were never close with each other, they were never allowed to be, but Aiza and Zaheer still managed to share a few moments where he told her about Air Nomad culture and philosophy, thus causing her to gain an interest in it too. After he ran away she started reading a lot more and aching for the freedom described in the texts. At age 17, a few days before her arranged marriage, she gets into an argument with Summiya about duty, sacrifice and wanting more from life, much more than being married to a guy she never even had a proper conversation with and birthing his children, and upon finding no support in her sister she decides to run away too. She cuts her hair, disguises herself as a boy under the name Emran and becomes an air acolyte at one of the temples. She struggles at first since she never had to work for anything before, but eventually begins to love this way of life and gains a lot more confidence in herself. She makes friends and grows so close with them she sees them as family, and at some point reveals her deceit, but no one is too mad at her because ultimately, she’s still her. But after that revelation, she realises that she didn’t dislike being a boy, and she doesn’t hate being a girl as long as she’s not under the intense pressure her parents placed on her, and becomes genderfluid, using different pronouns and both Aiza and Emran as names depending on what they feel more like that day. They also start experimenting with their sexuality and fall in love with a bunch of people of all genders, forming a polycule though never settling down officially. After Harmonic Convergence they will gain airbending, and eventually, several years later, they’ll reunite with Zaheer and the two will get to need out about Air Nomads together like they were always meant to 🥹🥹

Ehuang – No exact birthdate yet, but most likely >180 AG. She’s still a bit too young for us to really decide on gender and sexuality and whatever else, but for now, cis, she/her. She’s the daughter of Midori and Opal Beifong, conceived with the help of Bataar Jr (Midori was the one pregnant). Midori and Opal adopt several kids together, but at some point Midori decides that she wants to know what it’d feel like to carry a child herself, to be there when they’re born, to see traits of her family reflected in them. So she and Opal talk, ask Bataar for help, one thing leads to another and nine months later, precious baby Ehuang is born. She’s the love of my life and light of my world, genuinely the most good and pure thing to ever exist, the representation of everything finally being okay with the world, and I adore her beyond what words can convey. She’s named after a character from the same legend her great grandmother’s (Ming-Hua’s mom, Nuying) name comes from, and will eventually reveal herself an earthbender, though not a metalbender like Opal’s family, but a lavabender like her grandfather. Truly the perfect mix of her entire family <3 This section is a bit shorter than the rest, but that’s simply because she doesn’t have too much going on with her yet. Hopefully one day we’ll find the time to add to it (and finally design her siblings, maybe???)

Ila and Alasie – Grouping these two together because they tend to go hand in hand with each other. Going off how old I imagine them to be compared to Suiren, Alasie was born in 152/153 AG and Ila in 150 AG. Cis and she/her for both, but Ila is a lesbian and Alasie is aroace (and a waterbender, though she’s rather bad at it). They’re not related to each other or, surprisingly, anyone else either on my OC list or out of canon characters. They both work as handmaidens in the Northern Water Tribe palace under Malina, Unalaq’s wife. Now, there’s quite a bit of lore surrounding Malina, but the basics are that her and Unalaq’s marriage was arranged, he has no interest in her because he’s a spiritfucker and only into Vaatu, she hates him, dislikes her kids, and was generally unsatisfied with life right up until one of her handmaidens showed interest in her, and in the nearly two decades since then she’s formed a proper harem out of both maids and guards who are all utterly enamoured with her. It’s not a permanent arrangement, a lot of them end up leaving their positions to get married or whatever else, and Malina chooses not to mourn and simply move on. Ila is a girl very much like the rest, in love with Malina and becoming absolutely obsessed after the one night she had with her. The difference is that her affection is completely unidirectional, she looks at no one else but her lady, completely and utterly devoted to her alone. Alasie, however, is aroace, and after being propositioned by Malina one evening tearfully confesses that she never wants to be touched by anyone, and Malina smiles and calms her and allows her to sleep in her bed, no obligations or anything, just so she can feel the warmth because she comes from a poor family and her clothes aren’t nearly as good at keeping her warm. What she ends up having with Malina is most similar to a queerplatonic relationship, and through that she becomes friends with Ila too, as they’re the two that Malina is most fond of at the moment. I will admit that Alasie is basically just a projection of myself that was created when I first figured out I was aroace and having a whole crisis over it, and Ila shares quite a few traits with Kat, so… yay for self inserts? They’re just fun characters to play around with when we need a break from the general doom and gloom of our main universes, that’s all :)

Oof, this took a looong time to write, and again, these are only about a sixth of all the OCs we have, so if you have any more questions about them, or wanna know about anyone else specifically, feel free to ask!!

#this was fun but also really tiring to type 😅#I also don’t have the spoons to check for typos right now so I’ll do that tomorrow or so #don’t mind any if you catch them. I’ll take care of it later #original characters #kat and nia and their multiverse of madness #<— stealing Kat’s tag lmao

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princess-of-the-corner · 8 months ago

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how am I having more thoughts on the Cardcaptor!Katsuki thing?

Okay okay some plot notes:

I'm sticking this AU in a weird-ass place! During Katsuki and Izuku's last year of middle school!

So they're not in UA, but this is post-sludge villain so they're a bit weird, Kats is NOT dealing with the trauma well, and Izuku is still training with All Might.

This does mean they're not getting involved in the main plot of bnha yet, but they /can/ run into some characters on the adventures. (Maybe the Heroes are responding to the chaos the Cards make, maybe their future classmates are caught up in said chaos, hell you can toss a villain or two in because some of them might know things about the cards).

Also this is a CC-esque au so similar canon deviations exist. Like Katsuki being transfem but not actually out yet.

Card nonsense kicks off pretty early in.

So I'm imagining that Katsuki is having a Bad Time™ and just wants to be alone for a hot minute. Wanders off during the school day and ends up in some backrooms of the school library. Finds the book with the cards. All the cards except Firey excape(because this one vibes most with her). Kero appears and while Katsuki is like ?????? he gives the plot dump of 'hey! Magic is real! You're destined to deal with this shit!"

Izuku also gets involved because he noticed Katsuki sneaking off, followed like the little fuckin stalker he is, and saw the whole card scattering/Kero infodump thing.

Katsuki and Izuku are in a weird ass place right now because it's post-sludge but pre-ua. So Katsuki is trying to figure out what the fuck is up with Izuku and whether her life is a lie and all that but hasn't really had the push to confront all that. And at first she's pissed at Izuku but Kero is a decent mediator to this situation and it's. it's the first time any kind of adult(as much of an adult as a little cat bear thing is) has kinda. Taken control and firmly but kindly said 'hey knock that shit off' so it's easier for her to really just take a step back and take a breath and actually like. Properly be able to listen to Izuku because again: Kero is saying 'hey the guy was worried about you that's a good thing' instead of 'lmao he's worried about you he thinks you can't handle this show him you can through force!'.

bonus points for Katsuki getting dragged into Izuku's nonsense and finding out 'oh you met mcfucking ALL MIGHT and he's training you as a successor????'. Which. Yeah def spins everything because fuck it All Might is the ultimate authority on right and wrong so if All Might thinks Izuku is a good person worhty of respect Katsuki is switching it up right now. (and feeling guilty for everythig in the past so whoops more of Kero being like 'kid you're FINE!!)

Swinging over to Yue! I mentioned before but he was determined to handle the passing of the torch to a new holder better than the Clow-Sakura transfer he was going in optimistically but GOD he meets Katsuki and is like "THIS??? IS WHAT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH???"

So like. He still does something similar to last time in hiding in plain sight to keep an eye on the new holder. I don't think he'll go full dual personality again because while I love Yukito that's A Lot. But also there's like.... There's not really anyone in Katsuki's life where he could slide in as a 'haha you're not going to question me being here!'.

Which leads to the idea of Yue basically faking being a teacher and is now on the Aldera staff but he's the only sane person in this place and is constantly on the verge of killing his coworkers because holy FUCK how do y'all treat children like this????

All Might gets dragged into this because Izuku has Katsuki meet him and tbh with Izuku helping Katsuki figure out the Card stuff they get into nonsense that's /technically/ vigilantism according to the law but Katsuki is the only one who can deal with the situation.

The actual collecting of the cards happens over that school years so Katsuki has all of them by the time she and Izuku go to UA (and also they're all a bit healthier about things both each other and themselves).

At UA, Katsuki initially tries to keep to just using her Quirk for this shit instead of the cards(though she's become used to using both in tandem). This only works so well beause ofc when bigger threats come out, she's not going to hold back out of some weird 'oh it's not fair to-' no people are in danger she's gonna use everything she has to save them.

So while we don't get someone Eriol-esque crafting situations, the Plot forces her to transform the Cards into her own versions.

#cardcaptor katsuki au

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some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat · 4 months ago

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Ok so I was gonna go more in-depth about the timeline and try to figure some things out, but I got a little sidetracked and time got away from me so I might continue this later but for now I need to go to bed. Please enjoy this infodump about the apocalypse in Moth Wizard (my post-apocalyptic fantasy setting) and the origin of magic.

(Content warning: war, religion, death, extinction)

When exactly canon diverges from our timeline is not determined yet since I've currently placed the apocalypse really taking off "sometime in the near future" and I don't know how much of the bad stuff may or may not happen in real life. We live in scary times. Ideally I'd keep it "in the near future" for a while though, like I don't know when (if ever) I'll actually Make The Show, but I'd like for it to still be in the future when I do. It would make the "this could happen to our world" part of the "this could happen to our world and while you individually cannot save us from it, it is entirely in the hands of humans to stop it and turn things around before then" message of the apocalypse, y'know, still apply.

As I mentioned recently in a very excited tag ramble, the apocalypse has several components. I think the main ones are war, climate change, and similar corporate greed consequences like pollution, unsustainable hunting, and destruction of habitats. All of it is human in origin. This is important to me, because if it weren't humans, then it would be Hashem (G-d), and He promised never to do that again after Noah and his family survived the flood. What Hashem did was give humanity the magic that allowed them to survive (and which now fills their world with wizards).

I like to think of this as kind of an inverse of the story of Noah. Hashem did not raise the tides, it was man, and man did not create the means by which life was able to live on, it was Hashem. Are we even now? Probably not, I wouldn't claim to know whether "being even" is even an applicable concept, but I do think that this event thousands of years later changed something forever. A circle has been closed. Life on Earth will never be the same.

I'll uh, definitely consult a rabbi about this at some point though, because I'm mostly making stuff up that sounds right and fits what I have in mind for their world. I'd like to make sure it's at least not actively contradicting anything.

Anyway, so we have the nearish future timeline deviation, I hope, where everything gets worse, billions of people die in world war III and countless species go extinct. Every single country on the planet is either at war or caught in the crossfire. If not for the gift of magic, it would have been the END end of life. How long after this does the story take place? I haven't decided. It's hard to put an accurate number to things.

Let's say hypothetically, magic is introduced in the year 5800, nice round number in the nearish future (a bit over 15 years).

As I've mentioned before, the first people to discover magic were kids probably aged 12-17, because of how the magic system works. To use magic, you need to try and truly believe in it, recklessly, and I don't think anyone is better at recklessly believing in undiscovered magic than teens, speaking as a former teen myself. Too young and the line between make-believe and reality won't be the right shape, too old and they'll have lost faith in undiscovered mysteries. Teens inhabit the sweet spot where the world seems just strange enough that maybe if you really really tried, you could fly.

And suddenly one day, the teens were right.

Sidenote but what I really love about this part of the magic system is that it comes with built-in explanations for why small children are not blowing up cars on accident (it has to be fully intentional and separate from playing pretend), and why not everyone uses it enough to call themselves a wizard (it's hard to believe recklessly and intentionally enough), AND gives good excuse for why anyone desperate enough could do it in a burst of emotion (recklessness is easy if you have nothing left to lose, the exact boundaries of possibility don't seem so important anymore). It's great.

It takes a while for people to believe the kids who discover magic. Obviously this footage going viral on TikTok is faked, and now there's a whole trend about pretending magic is real. And anyone who tries while under the impression that it's fake will of course fail, they don't believe at all. But the news don't have to spread via social media, it's much easier to show people in person. And do you believe it when you see a flying car on the news? You thought this was a reliable source, why would they buy into this obviously fake nonsense? And then you meet your 11-year-old cousin who claims she can make animals talk. You don't believe her, of course, until she points to a squirrel and the squirrel addresses you by name. The world is already in chaos, and now this?

Within a year, I think, it is generally understood that magic does exist. The exact mechanics are still unclear and everyone has their own interpretation, but the fact that some people are genuinely able to do things that until a year ago were definitely impossible is hard to deny now.

Somehow, magic seems to favor saving lives over taking them. This is not actually because magic itself has morals, but because it favors vulnerability and cannot be controlled the way guns can be controlled. Governments try and inevitably fail to create magical armies. You simply can't command someone to use magic. They would need to raise such soldiers from children surrounded by cultish propaganda in order to control their faith to such an extent, which of course they do to all their citizens, that's how they ever got anyone to kill another human on command, but they didn't have the foresight to include "you will be a wizard" in their programming starting 10 years ago. And now they won't get the chance. Their time is about to come to an end.

Oceans rise. Nations fall. The world we know dies screaming.

#sfw #personal #ok to reblog #Moth Wizard #tw war #cw war #war cw

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cpulysses · 4 months ago

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I dont think I ever poster my Whipped Cream Cookie obsession here bcs at the time I would "consistently" post I was also obsessed with We Happy Few but oh my DAYS!! HES GETTING A SKIN. HES GETTING STUFF HES GETTING SO MUCH FUCKKNG STUFF IM SO EXCITED!!! So I'm infodumping all here

OK first of all were starting from the beginning. when i was born anyways when I was like 13/14 or something around that age and on a bigggg road trip with only me and my dad, I was feeling super bored. Me and my friends just finished a roleplay we had so we were speaking in a groupchat and my boyfriend mentioned trying a Cookie Run roleplay! We all joined but I was the only one who stayed, everyone left immediately because their favorites were taken.

BUT NOT MINE!!! I really liked Whipped Cream Cookie, when I picked up the game again after a really long time I just looked at him and decided yeah that one and oh my god why did that like change the trajectory of my life. He wasnt taken and I knew jack shit about his lore, but I picked him up and later on Cyborg Cookie too

I wasn't... heh... known for my whipped cream..! 🤓! But I still really liked him, people liked how I wrote his dialogue, but I was cooking so well with Cyborg Cookie that theg were the main focus really, eventually I decided to connect the twos lore for fun! I knew like all of Cyborgs lore except for stuff with the future skins really, so I just interwove Whipped Cream as someone related to their past in a way where Cyborg makes that stupid pink egg Whipped Cream has, and Whipped Cream just kinda found it and was like this is FIRE! and Cyborg was like noooe :( Thats basically it shortly put but I had a lot of fun roleplaying the two and found my best friend ever while in that server and now were big and grown and :3!!!

But yeah, I basically ONLY have good memories with the character. I continued to grow to like HIM, when the server was sadly deleted I ocified him and Cyborg alongside other cookies, with my friend also taking them in as ocs as well. And I grew more attached to my ocified Cyborg cookie due to how different they were to the base, but my ocified Whipped Cream Cookie could never fucking take the wheel. I love him sure but canon Whipped Cream just always had a special spot for me, my friends literally told me they've never seen someone so infatuated with a character while barely posting about it online or anything (now here i am) or just in general so captured by a character, he was like my fucking mascot to my friends, they'd see ANYTHING with him in it and send it to me, to the point where I wouldn't be shocked if I've seen almost every fanmade and canon Whipped Cream cookie thing like in the world

And for part of that massive fixation I knew jack shit abt what lore he actually had 😭 I knew small things and then again all he really had was small things, but I didn't know all of it. Then randomly on his wiki page I was doomscrolling and found a link to an article all about him! Not an article just a long google doc, but thats where I learnt a bunch and could look into the Dessert Paradise and all the characters to know how each connect and know more about him and I was very joyous,,, I was content for SO LONG. Just knowing he was a fellow brownskin who loves ballet and pink, with my little headcanons. Now I knew real shit I felt like the man.

And now me, one of my friends, and my boyfriend are all ocifying some of the Dessert Paradise cookies that we see as family ^^ So like Sugar Swan, Wind Archer, Fig Cookie etc etc. I wish I knew who made that Whipped Cream Cookie document but if your out there just know you changed the trajectory of my autism for life. I won't say more I'm already rambling so much, but I love Whipped Cream with all my heart and this update has me so so excited because I've had dreams of being on my fuckjng death bed with one wish and wishing for an update about him. Its bad.

BUT!! I will draw him and my ocified version more to post here and on Twitter even if nobody gaf bcs i gaf. I love him so dearly I've grown with hum through time the span of like 4-5 years just because I randomly pointed to him and went that one!! And moved on. I could legit die happy now. Like my life is over this is my peak. My peak.

#whipped cream #whipped cream cookie #cookie run #cyborg cookie #i love this guy so much hes not even a twink i cant say i love this twink he has to be strong as hell if he does ballet #also i always saw sugar swan as his mother figure in a way so seeing black sugar duck and him be like straight yuri is scary to me but #i will learn and adapt i will grow and change and i know theyre very different people anyways #plus seeing the headcanon with them is pretty cute im no hater #why did he change the trajectory of my life forever #can i put a pride tag is he gay enough where i can put a pride tag #pride #ok i did it anyways

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the-gayest-show · 10 months ago

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TGAMM Analysis: The Ghost IS Molly McGee/All in the Mind (Pt 1)

This was originally a thingy written for a mandatory film journal in my film class (where I essentially write long ass reviews of hyperfixation fuel and assigned movies) but oh no! my two favorite episodes!

Since tumblr has a text limit that is higher than the words i need to speak to get my point across, i'll be taking this into 2 posts which i'll combine thru reblogging (link to both at once)

enjoy my first half of infodumping analysis/review!

The Ghost IS Molly McGee:

As an indulger of children's media, one thing lots of shows focused on fantasy/supernatural stuff like to do is a trope called the Body Swap. TGAMM has, in my opinion, the most unique take on it. Usually in Body Swapping, it's done to prove a point. Take The Owl House for example. It had a body swap episode which was the main trio swapping bodies because everyone thought they had it harder than the others in terms of living. Same could be said for other media with this trope, but TGAMM puts the loveliest spin on it. It makes the switch not to prove a point, but rather to mutually benefit each other.

The situation that the episode begins with has two sides. First, Scratch (being the Chairman of the Ghost World as of the s1 finale) is constantly annoying the Ghost Council (GC) with interrupting their work and eventually this leads to the GC going on strike. Since Scratch is lazy as all ever hell and the GC was essentially heavy loading his Chairman work for him, this is Scratch's side of the issue. Molly's side is that she has been selected to lead the school play, but can't seem to get everyone into line. It's like she herself says "I'm a encourager, Scratch, not a discourager!". Eventually the two of them decide to bodyswap (via wraithing molly and scratch possessing molly's soulless husk) to benefit each other (Molly is kind and supportive, Scratch is more negative and able to put his foot down), and they go on trying to solve their problems. At first, they each have success with the majority of the people in their respective locations (Possessed!Molly [actually Scratch] is a really good leader and leads the stage crew almost in a military way, while Possessed!Scratch [actually Molly] in the Ghost World goes on to convince 3 of the 4 GC members to forgive him/her/them [switching is hard to describe, stay with me here])

But there's one stickler that each of them have to face. Possessed!Molly has to deal with Georgie, who is supposed to be making a paper-mache costume for the play, but refuses to do so, despite Possessed!Molly's many attempts. Possessed!Scratch has to deal with Bart, one of the Ghost Council members who refuses to accept the apology no matter what form it comes in (food, cards, etc). This is essentially the driving force for the plot, we even get a solid song number out of it (crack an egg! gotta make or break! he's got anger and she's got cake!...)

Eventually, they both realize that they never actually asked said sticklers what the problem was that they had to begin with (aka. the message of this segment), and they both do that and listen to what the other has to say and it all works out. With Bart, he just wanted to be shown appreciation through real action and not through items, while Georgie wanted to be in the main role but she never is and thus she was upset about that. They both get what they want and that's the end!

Love the little thing at the end where when both Molly and Scratch watch Georgie perform and cringe so hard. LOL

#posts #tgamm #my film teacher keeps praising me for going 'above and beyond' for writing these fucking things #but the autism won't let me summarize my fav shows in ONE paragraph #when i watch ANYTHING i immediately head to the 'board and write until i have emptied the thoughts in my head #this is one of those times #the ghost and molly mcgee #tgamm analysis #tgamm spoilers

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klayfruit · 2 years ago

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ouh.... i had never heard of goblet grotto but i googled it, & the artstyle looks so charming. would love to hear u talk abt it sometime, when u get the chance or feel like it ^_^

THANK U OH MY GOD nows my chance …. idk if u wanted me to explain it in ur dms or anything so im just gonna infodump here!!!

goblet grotto is a game made by thecatamites (who still actively posts games, just mostly under the name garmentdistrict) in 2012. the main Thing abt the game is that you play as a little swamp toad knight (probably) named swampy, who ventures into the grotto for their search for goblets. the game itself though is absolutely giant, branching paths at nearly every corner and the “story” becoming more bizarre as time goes on. goblets become less of a collectable, and more of an item of worship

the moment youre thrown into the game and it begins, there are already several noises screaming into your ears. first thing you notice is the glyphs popping up at the top of the screen, each one appearing accompanied with a Horribly Loud “BWAH”. you take in the side menu, looking at swampy’s little avatar and noticing how one of the options is just “pray”, and seeing how theres a Whole Ass Paragraph describing your surroundings right now. halfway through reading the paragraph, you are killed by wolves. you have eaten 0 meats and collected 0 goblets. the game is absolutely ruthless to the player, sometimes it will just throw an unkillable enemy at you, force you to crawl around slowly without an explanation, completely destroy your save file, etc. theres also just moments where the games like Oop You Fucked Up! like if you pray too many times it completely destroys the side-text into becoming incomprehensible screaming nonsense, along with just randomly spawning pyramids that make a horrible buzzing noise that you cant turn off. also theres an npc where if you interact with them it makes all your side-text start saying weird shit.

how ruthless the game is is what makes it so enjoyable to me, its so just unabashedly itself. youre thrown into this world screaming and bleeding, and you have to figure out how everything works to even manage to survive. the glyphs mentioned earlier are a whole ass language, the translation of each and every single glyph being in the guide book that comes with the game. you need to manage to memorize a good amount of them to realize that they have An Actual Meaning and Mechanic in the game. whenever swampy collapses and starts crawling, its not for no reason, its because theyre hungry/havent collected goblets recently and theyre screaming this at you through the glyphs. also would like to mention that praying too much also leads the glyphs to become more panicked and almost trivial, eventually them turning into symbols that Arent even seen in the guide book and i had to ask thecatamites directly what the glyphs meant.

theres so So much damn story in this game, and at the same time theres little to none. the moment you see something that seems like it could be a reoccurring theme, its instantly thrown out the window. its extremely rare for something to be consistent through a small section of the game, nevertheless the whole ass game. the only example i can think of is the game’s depiction of god, who speaks in funny little typing quirks and says shit like “UP AND ATEMCOWBOY!!!!!! WORLD IS HYOU OYSTER ;^)”. its heavily implied that, once you pray too much and the side text becomes all fucked up, its god speaking to you in their fucked up little way of speaking, screaming at you to keep on moving and collect goblets and have horrible dreams and Replace all files in your computer with a list of Swears (direct quote from god). there are also altars in several areas through the game, purple hooded people surrounding each altar. if you pray at it, god just straight up appears and gives you goblets. what’s special though about the inconsistency is that, at the very “end” of the game, seemingly all the vaguely important characters that you only see once in the whole game appear once again. it just like makes it special and really sends it home. god, along with the purple hooded people appear in this area, i just thought that was fun.

also want to mention the sound design and music is so unique and honestly fantastic. i am specifically talking about the glyph’s “BWAH”s, and also how everytime you collect meat, swing your axe, and collect goblets, you hear a man say in your ear “MEAT.” “KILL.” “GOBLETS.” aside from the sfx though the music is genuinely so fucking good im not even joking. its got such an amazing vibe to it, my personal favorite is world end because of how melancholic it feels compared to every other song in the ost

theres honestly so much i could say about this game, but i have autism and cant properly put my thoughts into words, so all i can say is just Pleaaaaase check out goblet grotto, even just for a moment. the gameplay sucks complete ass if youre not familiar with it, but the newest vers of the game DOES have an immortal mode (press L at the start screen and it brings you to Secrets Menu). if you dont wanna play it i recommend vinny’s small vid of him playing it, it gets the main thing abt it across pretty well! ALSO i made a whole ass website of me just talking about everything i know about goblet grotto, its like a sort of guide for the game as theres no other good guides of it online due to how obscure the game is.

anyway thank you so much for listening to me. autism be damned i can write essays about mediocre game

#txt #long post #goblet grotto #thecatamites #garmentdistrict #asks #i think this is like completely incomprehensible and messy. when i saw this ask i lost consciousness and when i awoke i saw this post typed

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chaitigers · 1 year ago

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Ivan infodump

OK SO i posted my little guy Ivan (big deer guy) and as i mentioned in his post, hes a mix of different characters i've like found interesting and that had interesting concepts that i wanted to explore in a character so yeah I decided to make ivan!

Ivan's like part of this universe im a part of w some buddies and he's like a werecreature (i cant rlly go super in depth w the lore here because i dont rlly know it that well LHDFCBDVLKHB) he was turned into one like after some stuff happened in his life that left him broke so he needed money to like get back on his feet and doing that (essentially making himself a test subject for this thing some scientists were doing) was the only way he could. Heres where the first theme i wanted to explore comes in, Guilt and Debt.

If anyone's read crime and punishment, the main character Raskolnikov essentially k1lls his crusty musty landlady so he doesnt have to owe her his rent anymore which imo, slay, but at the same time he is riddled with this immense guilt and like questioning himself as to wether or not committing a crime and a deadly sin (because hes also catholic so another LAYER of guilt added)

Raskolikov gets sent to prision to like seve his sentence but most of the book is like him debating with himself wether or not what he did was right, because he mrd3red someone that was a pest both to him and everyone else who owed rent to her, and she was a busive and mean so like thats someon no one would miss because she was bad so he's good for killing her, it was for the greater good, but at the same time in the eyes of the law Raskolnikov is a criminal, as well as in the eyes of religion because he murdered someone and thats an unforgivable act and hes supposed to go to hell for that.

In Ivan's case, his guilt lies in the fact that he was essentially the reason him a nd his family's business went into banktrupcy, if he was never born he woudln't have caused much trouble to his parents. He's the son of a violin maker, meaning business is not as big as theyd wish it to be especially as violins are expensive as shit because theyre handmade works of art that only few know the trade of making them and stuff. Ivan obviously inherited the knowledge from his father, helped him in the shop and helped to provide for his own family even as a child, but he still carries that guilt of being the reason niether one of his parents could fulfill any of the desires they had due to him being just "a burden" in his tiny little head.

In the debt aspect, he is quite literally indebted, left with the previous unpaid bills and unfinished projects his father left after he passed, and left with a bunch of customersn his father still owed things to like money, instruments and materials. To Ivan, thats the way he's repaying the hardships he made his parents go through. the family burdens are passed down generation by generation as well, because many of most of the monetary debts came from people of the past that made those bad desicions and left their descendants to deal with them. Ivan is determined to fulfill these depts, at all costs, and eventually that costs him his humanity.

NOW ONTO HANNIBAL!

I mostly wanted to do the c@nn1balsm as a metaphor for all consuming, obsessive love with Ivan , especially the love for his craft (because in the end he loves what he's doing, hes a passionate violin maker) but literally in the way that he loves as well. He isnt that bad looking, at least according to him (in my head his face claim is jacob elordi specifically in saltburn and like post euphoria and the kissing booth) but he does feel like he's hard to love because of all the guilt hes carrying for shit he didnt even do (like be incredibly indebted to the state). hes super inexperienced in love, has only had one long lasting relationship, and that relationship is one that consumed him so much that he couldnt see himself living apart from that person he loved after they broke up. Ivan has an anxious attachment style, always has and hes like a kitten with separation anxiety, he will wail and scream until he gets back to that person he feels safe with even if it means that he's actively pushing them away because of how clingy he is.

all that to say that he ate his ex boyfriend because if he couldnt be with ivan then no one could have him

So yeah that is like almost all of Ivan's story! i love him dearly and rlly want to expand more on him in the future!

#art #original character #oc #artist on tumblr #character #my characters #character concept #hannibal #crime and punishment #analysis #infodump #oc story #oc stuff #original characters

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altblock-tm · 1 year ago

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OH WAIT lemme post that infodump from Discord I had about some cool OC ideas I had

So I have had slight story/worldbuilding ideas after the fact, but this was all the base stuff. the below is copied directly from Discord

Okay so I got some OC ideas from a dream

It was a little complex but let me just go over the basic outline

The thing took place in a castle repurposed into an theme park. there were a lot of circus/clown aesthetics, which ties in to one of the characters I dreamt about

The main character wasn't me. The person experiencing everything was this unnamed silver-haired femboy. But not much about their character was shown in the dream

The other characters were ghosts

The first one was named in the dream. His name was Castarian, and I LOVE HIM he's a sweetie. so nice and anxious and sad but still helpful to the protag. He stayed in one room and never showed himself, but did his best to direct and give hints to the protag. I was starting to get hints on why he hid himself when I woke up, but I still knew enough to come up with stuff on my own

The second one wasn't named, but I decided he should be called Drisco. This BITCH. he was trapped in a mirror, but an essential part of the dream was talking and interacting with him. he's one of the classic jester type characters, and he looks kinda like Harlequin (he has a black and white mask, his stupid little clown clothes are black and red, and he has the aesthetic of card suits). his main goal was to be freed from the mirror, but since the protag didn't trust him, he just played games with them in there instead

Despite him being dead and stuck in a mirror, he has incredible access to dark magic. literally the darkest part of the dream was making a goddamn blood sacrifice to him so the protag could revive someone from the dead. option one was the protag's own mother (if I remember correctly, the protag's main goal of the dream was to find someway in the castle to bring her back from the dead?), next was Drisco himself, and the third option was Castarian

the protag didn't trust their mother in Drisco's hands and didn't want to release him, so they chose Castarian. they wanted to see what he looked like and thank him for he help :)

Drisco just laughed and was like "Cassie? Him? Really? Okay, I'll go talk to him!"

and Drisco disappeared for a while to talk to Castarian. Castarian was not happy to talk to Drisco, but when Drisco talked about reviving him and why the protag wanted to do it, Castarian got really anxious about them seeing him.

Drisco got bored and reminded Castarian that in order to complete the ritual, they needed something intangible in exchange for reviving him. Castarian told him that he'll owe a favor, because he wants Drisco to cover up what he looks like with an illusion as well. Drisco started to demand more, but Castarian demanded he do that. Reluctantly, Drisco complied

and then I WOKE UP. So mad about that I wanted to interact with Castarian more :( he's my boy

but I did get a glimpse of what Castarian looked like! he was part human, part boar. kind of looked like how people draw Technoblade, but the burly version where he's big and furry. his fur was a light brown and he was very VERY fluffy and soft

he was so anxious to hide himself because he thought the protag would be scared of him. he was killed by people who thought he was a monster, stabbing him through the heart. so when Drisco did revive him, Drisco hid him in an illusion of a human. Drisco would pettily antagonize Castarian for this

Castarian used to be human, but he gained the favor of a fey who blessed him with the strength of a boar, and welp here he is. they also blessed him in another way- to help with how terrible he was at being assertive, every demand he made to someone magically enforce someone to do what he ordered. Castarian learned to be careful with his wording and instead phrase things as helpful suggestions so he didn't accidentally force someone to obey a command

but Drisco's illusion wasn't even Castarian's true human form? he had long messy hair as a human, but Castarian has become so anxious about his self-image that Drisco covers him up with a neater, clean-cut, "perfect" version of him.

my conclusions from the dream are that Castarian is a lovely boy. he's anxious because he's like 9 feet tall in his boar form and super burly and strong now and horrifying enough for people to kill him for being a monster. but he's so fluffy and so sweet,,, I wanna pet him fr

Drisco's a bitch. funky little gay guy with some nuance to him, but has that chaotic clown bastard energy.

he and Castarian's interactions have a weird divorced vibe. these bitches have so much tension between them and it's so funny. Drisco knows he'll get destroyed in a fight with Castarian (especially while he's in boar form) so he manipulates Castarian's self-hatred to make him feel bad :(

#artbabble-tm #long post #ocs #oc: Drisco #oc: Castarian #to this day I haven't had any ideas about that aforementioned femboy protag #and I had this dream in march #I'll reblog this later with notes on additions/revisions I made to worldbuilding and story #they aren't much but they're really fun to play around with

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edelblau · 1 year ago

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marz said they love my durgey so im gonna use that as an excuse to infodump about them (and try to put it under a readmore but readmores always break for me now so who knows if itll post properly) (spoilers for baldurs gate 3 dark urge playthrough to follow)

my main dark urge is named naught (like zero/nothingness ^_^). he's a tiefling monk with they/him pronouns. below is a lazy reference for his more 'unique' features i spent very little time on

his backstory is largely the normal dark urge stuff; wandering and strange from the get go with unsettling mannerisms even as a child, he was adopted by a poor family. he actually bore a lot of affection for them, and tried very very hard to be 'normal'. when he realized his family was displeased with the way he sort of romanticized violence and death, he tried to tamp it down. however, given the nature of the urge, he was eventually overcome and killed them (second heal memory)

after that incident, he fled his home, and tried unsuccessfully to resist; but as his body count even unintentionally rose he fully gave in. in his time as the leader of the bhaal cult, a lot of his 'personality' outside of the urge was utterly erased and dead.

interestingly, however, he regained some sense of 'self' as the plans for the absolute took place, though perhaps in a way that was worse for everyone. the tldr of this being that because the plan required he interact with and 'bond', so to speak, with gortash, leader of the banites, he was able to have conversations with someone. the issue here being of course that gortash is a terrible person, but so was he, so it was sort of a net 0 for humanity and only really 'good' for him (and maybe gortash, i guess) since it let him retain a hint of personhood outside of bhaal; personhood that would serve him after orin's betrayal at moonrise.

(pictured: real canon shit the durge writes about gortash)

of course, dark urge and gortash's murderous funtimes had to end when orin got tired of the family drama and decided to end it the only way she knew how.

this left naught at the beginning of the game in a position where they knew intuitively that they enjoy others company, they didnt remember how resisting was 'futile', and they were surrounded by people who could definitely kill them if they acted out too harshly. not that naught didn't 'act out'-- he has a very Broken sense of morality and whats 'too far' after everything, and definitely partook of some torture and senseless violence a few times. nothing especially severe (he didn't get arabella killed or the rest of the grove, for instance), but he definitely was... bad. not normal.

these lapses would slowly die down, however, the closer naught came to the others around him. their sense of morality rubbing off on him and making him desire their approval. where he once welcomed his butler, he started fighting back; still bound to his urge, still not entirely 'there', but constantly thrashing against the current-- until the orin battle, which went Great, by the way

even after withers resurrection, though, i dont think hed ever truly be 'normal'. even if his nightmares no longer stem from bhaal, i dont think theyd ever go away fully. and i dont think hed ever fully gain a normal moral compass (hes dating astarion, by the way. so good luck faerun.) nor do i think hed ever fully come to remember his past; though i dont think hed ever fully care to, either. hed always remain this unnerving, somewhat 'immoral' person; always a bit more brutal than he should be, a bit more direct, a bit too stiff and strange. full of love and care that hes learned from his journey, but still with a hint of violence; no longer bhaal's, but wholly his own. always a step away from a 'normal' person even without bhaal's black blood in his veins.

but at least minsc is his uncle. thats nice.

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spacebug7 · 2 years ago

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hi hi!!! bored so do you have anything you like want to infodump about? or just send a long post about or want me to research/read/watch/listen to or etc? this ask can take as long as u want or be as long as you want or whatever u want just curious :) can be about absolutely anything!!

hey there!

sooo this is pretty different from what i normally talk about BUT tlou hbo has reignited my hyperfixation on it and sadly they have taken over my brain once again. aaand i kind of feel like people are misinterpreting the core of the story at the moment, so. full ramble below the cut and yes i will be spoiling absolutely everything (including the next season, but i'll mark that part with a warning) so i am very sorry tumblr user hazmatazz if you can't read this now but. i NEED to get this off of my chest.

right off the bat, i'm going to get to the main thing: joel's lie.

a lot of what i'm about to explain is best summarized with the bts the making of clips that are shown at the end of look for the light but i feel a very deep need to spell this out for some of you.

NO ONE IN THIS SITUATION IS RIGHT OR WRONG!!!

and this is a running theme that i'm definitely going to get back to later because that's another main thing with tlou as a whole.. they tend to create very morally grey, not-right not-wrong characters, and that's on purpose. a large part of this story as a whole is to show how people (and humanity in a lot of cases) would react if we were put into these situations.

which leads us right back to what joel did.

the last of us offers this already very damaged, very broken person a really visceral, hard decision. and i feel like people are forgetting that these experiences, him losing sarah and tess and the promise he made to tess.. all of that shapes his decision to save ellie and protect her.

like (i believe it was, i don't have the time to check--) craig mazin said at the end of look for the light, a lot of tlou1 is about the deep, unconditional love of a parent. he was essentially offered to save his adoptive daughter or save humanity.

just think about his situation for a second. if you had this person that you loved like family, and you had to choose saving them over a world that is already long gone, would you? because i know i would, and i'm sure there are a lot of people that would agree with me.

and then there's ellie.

throughout the first part, ellie has this strange sort of, for lack of a better term, "chosen one" complex, where she has this mindset that's like, "okay, i have this really special, probably rare thing, and there's no one else like me, as far as we know. what can i do with that?" and her first answer is always to use it. the show takes this another step further in a small way when she tries to save sam, but it doesn't work, which is some pretty rough foreshadowing, but i'm getting off-topic.

ellie wants her immunity to mean something bigger, to be something greater than just something that can only stop her from getting infected. she wants to save and help people, because she couldn't save rylie or tess or sam, and she's watching all of these people die around her, and she can't do anything. so, obviously, when she finds out there's a chance she can change that, she's going to want to tak eit. and even more so, she's going to get hurt when joel, this person she loves and cares a lot about, stops that from happening on purpose and lies to her face about it.

they both have their reasons. does that make joel a little selfish, in some ways? maybe. but talk to any parent you know, and they would do the same thing. sometimes, when it comes to stuff like this, people can be inherently selfish. it doesn't mean that they're bad people, though.

you could argue for both sides here, and that's what makes all of this so complicated. ellie is a bordering-on-suicidal fourteen year old girl who wanted her immunity to mean something for other people, too. joel just wanted to keep her around and let her live a somewhat fulfilling life. you could also say that fedra wouldn't allow the vaccine to be distributed, or that the fireflies are liars or that maybe the fireflies were just trying to help, and you'd be right on all accounts. it is just too difficult to call either of these people wrong for getting upset and doing what they did.

season two spoilers start here!

i also sort of want to elaborate on that thing i said earlier about tlou and its characters, because i know for a fact we're going to have the same fights we got when tlou2 came out once season 2 is out, and i want to clear some stuff up right now before i lose my mind. yes, this is tangential. i do not care at all lmao

if you can forgive joel and tommy for all of the shitty things they've done, hell, if you can forgive ellie for what she does in part 2, then you can absolutely forgive abby, too. and if you don't, you're kind of biased and lack some very important empathy, imo.

let's just look at what these characters do during this conflict completely objectively, for a minute, sticking to the games' canon.(since s2 isn't out yet)

joel kills abby's father, the surgeon that was meant to kill ellie, in order to save her. abby, in turn, once she finds him, kills joel. ellie and tommy, out of pure grief and anger, track abby and her group down and kill all eight of them off one by one. ellie only spares abby once she's the last person standing and has a kid to take care of.

keep in mind, abby literally SPARED ellie and tommy. was this for some pretty harsh reasons? probably. but still. she said it herself, she let them live. she could have killed them at any time in that room, and she made the choice not to.

now, no one other than abby had really laid a hand on joel, other than wrapping that tourniquet around his leg at the very beginning. ellie still wanted them all dead, because they were there, and they helped, and they were friends with abby, and in ellie's eyes, that's crime enough to deserve punishment.

but we still love ellie. we still love tommy. we still root for both of them, because we understand their characters and empathize with them. (which was sort of the point of playing as abby for so long in part 2 but i guess some people just didn't click with that which is fine but ugh. you don't GET ITTTT)

on the outside looking in, abby really isn't any worse than either of them. you may even argue that she's better. but that's one of the driving themes of the games, and the story as a whole. no one is good or bad, we're all just people with separate motivations that intersect in bad ways.

spoilers end here!

i guess that's why i get so frustrated when i see that we're still misunderstanding the conflict between joel and ellie here. there isn't any right or wrong here! they are both just people who care about each other very deeply, and sometimes, because of that, they get hurt. if we're going to keep doing this i am begging you all not to watch season two. you're just going to get pissed off again.

#tlou spoilers #tlou 1 #tlou 2 #ugh.#needed to say all of that before i exploded #when i say seeing people still hating on joel or abby in the year of our lord 2023 makes me mad #you have NO IDEA #YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT OF EVERYTHING #URGRHGRH

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kritzenkriegen · 1 year ago

Text

When I was finishing up this piece, I got a little overexcited and drafted out a bunch of — commentary, I guess is the best word, showing different shots and the process. Before it actually posted I decided to hold back, in case this flopped, but since it hasn't— time to be a bit unnormal.

Alternative Shots

Keep in mind that these aren't as polished as the original, 'cause the original is lighted very specifically for that pose and camera.

Here's Sniper with Red Spy instead of Blu, if that's more your jam

Here's a solo Sniper

Here's Spy face which I really liked tbh

And Snipes having a crisis

Lighting Breakdown

Sooo I maybe kinda have a degree in this stuff that I never used, and I haven't touched 3D work in two years. But when I started working in SFM on a whim it really rushed back. I love this stuff so I'ma infodump a bit.

There's 13 lights at work here —the "sun," a very minor "shack" light, 2 rim lights, and 9 fill lights, which include 4 lights that exclusively light up the characters' faces.

The "key" lights in this instance aren't typical key lights, and I'm not sure if the shack one even counts; usually key lights are what do the majority of the leg work, the strongest lights making the main elements visible. In this case though, I wanted the "sunlight" to be at that specific angle, only lighting the lower half of the characters, while the other, ambient lighting did most of the work. The shack light is just there to hint at itself and light up the environment a small bit.

Next element is the fill lighting, and here it's really more important than the key lights.

In real life, the reason we can ever see anything is mostly because of ambient light bouncing off every surface and casting light on everything else. When a sunbeam comes through your window and strikes your floor, it's not just your floor that's lit up — it's the walls, objects in the room, etc. that are reflecting that light all over the place. A program like SFM doesn't replicate those bouncing light rays, so you have to put them in yourself. For example, I put in some fill lights point up into the characters, to imitate the sunlight bouncing off both the ground outside and the floor of the shack.

Without fill lights, it's a dark and shadowy scene where you can barely make anything out.

A challenge here was lighting up the characters' faces while not having that light cast on the wall behind them. Faces are very important so they tend to get special lighting. In some programs I've used in the past you can choose whether light interacts with a certain object, but I don't think you can in SFM. So these lights had to be small and very specifically angled in order to not show on the wall.

Last but definitely not least is rim lighting, i.e. backlighting. Rim lighting helps give the scene definition.

In retrospect, my rim lights aren't very rimmy, and that's probably why some of the lighting seems off — I ran into a similar problem here as with the fill lighting, where the wall behind them put a big limitation on where I could put lights and at what angle.

But, still, rim lights make a huge difference — without them things look flat, and in my experience it's the step that really makes everything look more 'legitimate.'

Map lighting... So at the start I was fighting a losing battle with the lights that come prebaked into the map, which are used in the game itself. The in-game lighting hovers between functional and aesthetically pleasing, and it does its job well — but, it ultimately falls more on the functional side, and if you want total control over the lighting, it becomes a problem.

When I found a dark map to use that got rid of the in-game lights, there was an instant improvement towards the more 'dramatic' effect I want. Lesson learned!

Since then I've discovered that you can do this to any map without downloading a darkmap, but it does make the scene a lot harder to work with, so *weighs hands*

Now, finally... Something I really love to do and that keeps me motivated is comparing early renders and seeing the progression. When I'm feeling frustrated, it's encouraging to see that significant improvement is being made, even through the small adjustments.

Started from the bottom now we're here!

I'm not perfectly happy with this piece — the posing is a little stiff, it could use even more ambient lighting, Sniper's expression is eh — but I'm done picking at it! I'm proud of it as a first finished piece. And I'm very happy so many of you like it.

Steam Workshop Sources:

Dustbowl Dark Map

Light Limit Patch cause only 8 lights that cast shadows?? That's hilarious.

Evening Dust

I've got a dozen Heavy / Medic SFM wips lined up, but I wanted my first posted render to be a tribute to the ship I was obsessed with when I got into TF2 6 years ago <3

#commentary #process #just realized that sniper's cigarette went missing in his solo shot lol #process post

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heloflor · 4 years ago

Photo

So, given that I didn’t have much time to work on fics recently because school, I’ve decided to relieve some stress by making a random representation of how I imagine Cavendish and Dakota’s house in their time-period looks like. And since I have no plans to ever describe it in detail in a fic, here it is ! Though, given how bad I am with designs, showing the house is mostly an excuse to infodump on domestic headcanons.

Regarding the last names, I didn’t make a typo for Cav. I like to imagine the two getting married way before the events of the show, with Cav taking “Dakota” as a last name, mostly because he got several siblings in-law on the Dakota side who adopted him on the spot.

And about the representation of the house : yeah it looks like shit. Since I can’t draw, I’ve decided to do something rather quick using MSPaint but yeah, not the best thing in the world. Though, if I get back to playing the Sims 3 at some point and end up making a Dwampyverse savefile, I’ll most likely try to recreate that house and could share a few pics.

I also went with a rectangular house with one floor instead of some futuristic-looking thing, mostly because I have no imagination when it comes to design. Though, you could still use the excuse that they want something more “old-timey” given their job or that they don’t have all the money of the world so they chose a simple house for the small cost. But yeah, by the end of the day, the choice is mostly because I can’t design shit.

But still one thing in my defense : looking at episodes that take place in the future like “Missing Milo” or “First Impressions”, it seems that most buildings are square-y with the roof being the weirdly-shaped part, with B.O.T.T. being one of the few exceptions. And looking at “A Christmas Peril”, the buildings are definitely more wacky but it’s 20 years later so…

I could also mention that I’m a bit unsatisfied with how empty the living-room and the bedroom ended up being but I’m drawing a total blank when trying to come up with the kind of stuff Vinnie and Balth would have that are linked to their interests. Though, maybe the excuse of them not being often at the house works ? Idk. Let’s just say I have ideas for the “basic” stuff, aka what you find in basically every single middle-class house, but draw a complete blank for anything that’s decorative. Still posting a map of the house tho because I don’t really consider it a work in progress if I simply have no idea and may never do. I’m very bad at design so bear with me on that one ! It’s not only about the house, it’s also about the fluffy headcanons !

So here’s under the cut some random info about the look of the rooms and furniture + a bunch of headcanons regarding Vinnie and Balth’s lives in this house. For each part of the house, you first have the info about how it looks first and then the headcanons.

Those headcanons are made with the idea that Vinnie and Balth are married (duh) but also, for a few, that Vinnie has three siblings + a few in-laws that he has a good relationship with.

(very long post ahead)

General :

- They bought the house in 2162, 2 years after getting married.

- It’s in the suburbs, or at least what the future version of the suburbs would look like. In other words, the presence of a backyard is debatable.

- There could be a garage for their time vehicle, so that they don’t have to go to headquarters every single day. And if not an actual garage, there’s at least some space to put it. In both cases, it would be near the bedroom’s side of the house.

- While the walls outside would have that futuristic “metallic” look, the walls inside would be a bit warmer. At the very least, the inside isn’t “future metallic white”, especially with Vinnie having photophobia.

- The intensity of the lights in every room can be adjusted. That way, Vinnie can put the dimmest light and navigate the house without his glasses. This is mostly useful for showering and midnight snacks.

- When they went house-hunting, Balth was the one who insisted that they needed a place with those kinds of lights. This is also the same kind of lights that Vinnie had in his now-former apartment.

- You know how near the end of the episode “First Impressions” you have Balth going into Mr. Block’s office ? Well, the way the door opens in that moment is how the door opens for every room of the house, perhaps excluding the main entrance (I like the idea of their front door being an “old” one, aka the “normal” doors we have today).

- Every room would have a spot that can create “tactile panels”, like some holographic tablet that can be used to change the settings of the house, for example changing the lights or the internet or even lock the doors and blinds.

- In 2175, when they were forced to leave the future, Vinnie stole a device from B.O.T.T. that made him able to create some kind of forcefield around the house that only he and Balth can remove. So, even if they’re not there anymore, the house still is theirs and can’t be sold to anyone else. And before you ask why B.O.T.T. didn’t simply send agents to bring the duo back and force them to open the shield : the forcefield works with hand-scan detection and Vinnie convinced Balth to use their left hands, the hands with the wedding rings. So if time-agents come knocking, they could try convincing the agents to let them use the bathroom first and they could wash their hands and use the soap to remove the rings. That way, the scan wouldn’t work and the agents would have no way of knowing why.

Living room :

- There’s more furniture than showed here like souvenirs from previous missions or some random stuff that belongs to them. I just don’t have enough imagination. : /

- Likewise, the corridor has a few pictures or posters, like pictures that Vinnie didn’t have the space to put in his memory room but still wanted to display. Also, I want to say that Vinnie would display pictures of his family (sibling, in-laws and nephews) but I’ll see him more as having an album for family pictures, or a framed picture on his nightstand.

- There could definitely be a carpet or two. They would either be modern ones to fit the fact that they’re from the future or vintage stuff found in some of their missions. One of the carpets would be under the coffee table. Another would be in the big-ass space between the living-room and the kitchen, or in the corridor.

- The style is a mix between old and new stuff, with also a few things related to their interests. Like, for example, the couch could have an animal pattern or something (AND BY THAT I DON’T MEAN REAL ANIMAL FUR).

- Speaking of the couch, after looking up “futuristic couch” on the internet, they would absolutely have one of those gigantic couches that have like a bed attached to them due to how big they are. Btw I have no idea which company came up with this design and I couldn’t care less. It’s just that the design looks cool and would fit a futuristic house.

- The side table is a floating square, given how we see in “A Christmas Peril” that tables in the future don’t have feet anymore (that’s one way to protect your toes).

- The floor lamp is more futuristic. It’s like a white orb attached to a lamp foot.

- The TV is attached to the wall. The remote is some kind of holographic tablet, kind of like the house settings thingy.

- This is where Balth would spend most of his mornings and evenings when they stay home. He’d just be sitting with a cup of tea, most of the time also a book, with the sun illuminating the room, just feeling comfortable and peaceful. The side table/cube was bought specifically for Balth’s tea. He would also use the lamp while reading in the late evening, either for the peace of having little to no light and solely focusing on the book or as a way for Vinnie to be in the room with the lights at the lowest setting. And speaking of Vinnie, he would sometimes join his husband on the couch, lying down with his head resting on Balth’s legs (cue Vinnie falling asleep, leading to a frustrated Balth who needs to pee but doesn’t want to wake him up).

- Since there’s a mini-table for when Balth drinks tea, the table right in front of the couch is mostly used for Vinnie to rest his legs on.

- And speaking of fluffy headcanons : movie nights. From time to time, aka minimum once a month, probably more, the couple would be in their pajamas cuddling on the couch while watching a movie, with Dennis resting in Balth’s arms.

For the movie choices, Balth would choose science-fiction, especially if there are any Professor-Time-themed movies, but also historical fiction (for some reason I tend to see Balth as having a liking for history ? I think it’s because of the way he dresses + his small rant about pirates in “Game Night” ? Idk honestly. It’s mostly a random headcanon that’s here for some weird reason). As for Vinnie, it’s mostly animal documentaries (Balth falls asleep halfway through but Vinnie doesn’t notice until after it’s over) or animated/family movies (the future equivalent of D*sney, S*ny pitcures, P*xar etc. Which are movies Balth would enjoy as well). For some weird reason I’ll also see the two of them being into mystery movies (crime-solving movies basically).

And if they sometimes decide to watch other genres, I could see Balth having a liking for some romance movies, because for some reason I like the idea of Balth being sappy. Besides, the guy is passionate when it comes to proving himself at his jobs and takes them pretty seriously in order to reach his objective. And given how he can be insecure and sometimes feels like a ball of anxiety, who’s to say he isn’t passionate when it comes to love too ? And no, I don’t mean passionate as in “making out all the time”, I mean passionate as in taking relationships seriously and making it work while also wishing to make sure his partner knows that he’s loved, even if Balth isn’t really the best at expressing his affection all the time.

On a different note, to get back to other genres : Vinnie would probably like horror movies. Because if cuddling in front of a sappy movie is great, having your husband show his love and trust for you by clinging to your arm out of fear is even better, nevermind the fact that you’re as terrified as he is.

Kitchen :

- It’s one of those kitchens with two walls of cupboards/cabinets, both on the ground and elevated. One of the cabinets is used entirely for snacks. Because Vinnie.

- The wall separating the kitchen and the living room “has a hole in it”. It’s like you have a small wall with cupboards, a hole, and a wall connected to the ceiling with a few cabinets. Basically, you look up “kitchen cupboards” and imagine that the space in-between is a hole instead of the wall (why is it so hard to explain something so simple ?).

- This would be the most futuristic-looking room of their house. Looking up at references, they’re that Pinterest post showing a room with white cabinets with round corners and what seems to be slide doors. This is pretty much how I’ll see their kitchen, except bigger, with a different wall color and with one wall not being here (see above).

- The table is floating because of course it does. The chairs don’t tho. Also the chairs are as futuristic as the rest of the room. And looking up the internet again, the chairs are shaped like chairs.

- So I put a stove but tbh I’m not sure how much these two would cook, given how in the show they’re always seen eating out (granted they don’t have a kitchen in their ‘apartment’ in Milo’s time). And given how most things seem automatized in the future, let’s just assume that the house can do most of the cooking itself with like a robot (aka plot-convenience technology) but still needs the necessary furniture and ingredients for the recipes. Also, if there’s an issue with their cooking system, they’ll probably know a few recipes and can feed themselves (Vinnie’s oldest brother Enzie would definitely teach his younger siblings a few recipes, at least enough to survive on their own. And he would be more than happy to teach his brother in-law as well).

- I put 4 chairs at the table but honestly I could see them keep 2 at all times and put the others in the storage room, especially the times they get very busy with their job for a few weeks and don’t have the time for social life.

- At some point, Balth probably tried to convince Vinnie to have better food habits and tried to put his snacks on the higher shelves. Not only did it not work because chairs exist but also it led to Vinnie getting frustrated. So Balth dropped it. Though, he would still try to talk Vinnie into working out to stay rather healthy.

Memories room :

- Vinnie’s personal space. He basically saw the third biggest room of the house and went “mine now” and Balth had no issue letting him have it (hard to say no when Vinnie’s eyes shine like that).

- He already had a memory room in his old apartment.

- Basically, Vinnie brings back souvenirs from his missions, along with pictures he took, and put them on display. For more information, I made a post about it a while ago, so check it out if you want info on it.

And side note : I learned more about ADHD and autism later on and found out that the correct word for Vinnie’s passion for animals is a special interest, not a hyperfixation. The main difference between the two terms is how long your interest last. The reason I used “hyperfixation” in my post is because 1. I didn’t know that “special interest” was a term that existed and 2. people with ADHD kept talking about having hyperfixations and most people see Vinnie as having ADHD. So yeah, my bad for using the wrong term. And while I won’t change the current text from my post, especially with someone in the notes correcting me (I don’t want them to look like an idiot), I’ll definitely add a few words at the end of the post about it.

- This is where Vinnie spends most of his time when at home, trying to keep the room in the best condition.

- There’s a window in the room but Vinnie condemned it in case some of his souvenirs were sensitive to the sunlight.

- The room is made entirely of shelves, with like four-five rows on the same wall. The shelves are either integrated into the walls or they’re floating because future. In any cases, there’s nothing around the shelves, it’s just shelves with stuff on it.

- When you enter the room, one of the rows of shelves next to you has all the animal-related stuff he gathered before starting a relationship with Balth. The rest of the room can have a few animal-themed objects but the pictures tend to be more linked to him and Balth.

- Likewise, when you enter the room, on the shelf you’re immediately facing, there’s a miniature recreation of their wedding altar with their wedding picture in its center. The miniature is made out of the future equivalent of papier-mâché and the altar is themed around time-travel with objects from all kinds of time-periods and cultures. And for those who might ask regarding the picture : Vinnie has a black suit and carries the bouquet while Balth has a white suit. Both have a hat that’s basically Balth’s usual hat (with the Professor-Time goggles, because themed wedding) but colored like their respective suit.

Balthazar’s office :

- The room has quite a few libraries but this is mostly decorations. Basically, this room is more of an 1800th century study than anything, especially a rich/royal study. Yeah, for some reason I see Balth as having an office that’s just “rich 1800th century” aesthetic. I think it’s from the headcanon of him being a runaway prince 🤔.

- So yeah. The bookcases are vintage, the piano is your usual black piano, the armchairs are vintage and tbh Balth almost never uses them because he’d rather read in the living room, and the desk is vintage, though the stuff on the desk is futuristic. Balth is up to date with the technology he’s using to work, he just likes the older aesthetic for the rest.

- On his desk, despite literally living with the guy, Balth has a framed picture of Vinnie (again, I want the stubborn gay disaster to be sappy from time to time, with his love language being small touches and attention to details like for example being able to quickly see the kinds of foods Vinnie like the most so that when he’s in a bad mood, Balth can get him that specific food to make it better ; or learning Vinnie’s body language to know when he’s upset or bothered by something).

- Balth mostly spends his time here to make the reports on their missions or work some administration stuff when needed. When he isn’t at his desk, he’s there to play the piano.

And yes, I throw out the window that line from “Backwards to School Night” that indicates Vinnie doesn’t know about Balth playing piano but tbh I ignore or question quite a few things from this episode such as : the line indicating that Vinnie and Balth don’t live together in their time-period since Balth doesn’t know Vinnie’s weekend habits ; the line about how the ray thing age you down to 90% your current age and yet baby Vinnie seems younger than the parents despite his adult self seeming older; the fact that Melissa read a book 16 times in the span of 6 minutes ; the fact that it’s called a “age regressor ray” and not a “age regressor ray-inator” (seriously, I am the only one always expecting Vinnie to say “inator” and being disappointed when he doesn’t ?).

- The couple absolutely sing songs together with Balth playing the piano. Or at least Vinnie would sing a song in the middle of the living-room and have Balth be annoyed by it, only for Vinnie to hear Balth play the same song on the piano later and join him.

Bathroom :

- Not much to say here. It’s a bathroom. It’s futuristic-looking. The mirror is a cabinet. The tub is round. The bin comes in and out of the wall. The clothes drier also irons the clothes. The toilet is glued to the wall. The walls are dark gray or dark blue or at least a darker color so that Vinnie doesn’t have to dim the lights to the lowest level when he’s showering. There are also several little lights along with a main one so that Vinnie can light the small ones instead of getting a headache due to the brighter light. During lazy/slow days, Balth would take baths instead of showers (and Vinnie would want to join him to make out). Balth may or may not sing in the shower (Vinnie definitely does). That’s pretty much it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guest/Storage room :

- Only used as a guest room when one or several members of the Dakota family are visiting the states and end up in the Tri-State-Area. So for 90% of the time, the room is used as storage.

- Bed’s not that big and very “squary”. Might or might not be floating.

- It’s mostly random junk that they don’t know where to put and don’t want to get rid of, like some stuff they got from their missions but that Vinnie doesn’t want in his room or some old things they want to give at a garage sale or that one Professor-Time body-pillow that Balth refuses to let go of while Vinnie just wants to trash the thing. The body-pillow being in the storage room in a junkpile was their compromise on the issue. Also, whenever someone might stay in the room, Balth makes sure there’s no way they will find the body-pillow (his sister in-law Bettie would never let him live it down).

- Not much to say here either aside from that.

Master bedroom (the room in which the proportions are way bigger than the rest of the house because I have no idea what I’m doing) :

- I described the room quickly in my fic “nightmares” but yeah basically the room has several posters and pictures related to their interests, along with a bookshelf full of animal encyclopedias, time-travel facts, history books, Professor-Time fantasy books etc. There are also albums, whether it be family pictures or album of the two of them.

- Like for the living-room, there can definitely be more than what I described/pictured here. I’m just really bad at imagining the kind of stuff people would have in their bedrooms related to their interests. And speaking of which : at some point, there was the aquarium that Vinnie mentions in “Time Out”.

- Unlike the other rooms in which the windows have roller blinds (apparently that’s the english word for it ?), this one has curtains on top of it because Balth likes to open the window in the morning but he doesn’t want Vinnie to hurt his eyes. So with curtains, he can open them enough to light the room but not enough for the light to reach Vinnie’s face.

- The bed is pretty classic for a futuristic bed but with round edges and these two idiots definitely go crazy with the sheets design (animals, food, Professor-Time, past time-periods, stuff like that). Also, the bed is “open”. By that I mean that, if you look at futuristic designs, there tends to be some roof thing above the bed and linked to it. They wouldn’t have that.

- The nightstands are floating cubes.

- “Dennis’ chair” is just some random old wooden chair where Dennis stays most of the time. Balth almost never takes him during his missions and Dennis is a comfort object that Balth mostly talks to when sitting on the bed, movie nights aside. So the bear stays in the bedroom.

- The bookshelf would also be made of wood.

- The wardrobe is futuristic, with doors that can open by themselves with sensory detection. Also, unlike what that poor “drawing” shows, the wardrobe is “taller” than it is “larger”.

- The armchair is an egg chair.

- They sleep

- They spoon

- Balth is the big spoon because 1. he’s taller and 2. he grew up sleeping while embracing a teddy bear and old habits die hard.

- When Balth goes to sleep or wakes up, he can’t help but play with Vinnie’s hair and give the small man a few kisses, feeling satisfaction in seeing his husband smile or try to pull away while laughing.

- Vinnie sleeps on the side closest to the window while Balth sleeps on the side nearest to Dennis.

- Balth’s nightstand has an alarm clock that’s basically just a holographic square with numbers on it, while Vinnie has an album or some random animal trinket. Vinnie’s alarm clock is not feeling Balth’s warmth against him. But if Vinnie has to use an actual alarm, the sound would either be some old-fashioned song or an animal noise (is this starting to get too much insistence on the “animal-loving” side of him ?)

- While Balth likes to read in the living-room, Vinnies likes it better to chill in the bedroom when reading. Also, during weekends and vacation days, Balth would sometimes read in bed before sleeping (yeah for some reason I really like the idea of Balth being a reader. I think it has to do with him being old or british ??? Weird brain is weird. And besides, if Balth reads, it would most likely be science fiction related to Professor Time). Vinnie uses this time as an excuse to cuddle.

- They have themed pajamas. Balth mostly has Professor-Time stuff (clocks, Heinz or Perry’s faces etc) while Vinnie has mostly animal-themed or food-themed pajamas.

- Vinnie sometimes sleeps naked in the summer. Balth is still trying to figure out how he feels about that.

- Random headcanon regarding Dennis : while he belongs to Balth who keeps him close when in doubt in order to vent or when he wants to get comfortable somewhere, I actually like to believe that, between the two, Vinnie is the one who talks the most to Dennis, mostly because Vinnie would just enter the bedroom and casually greet the bear, or he and Balth would have a dumb argument and Vinnie would playfully tell Dennis “Can you believe that guy ?” while pointing at Balth. Just, Vinnie being Vinnie and having random one-sided conversations with the bear.

And a little cute thing : while Vinnie really just talked to Dennis because why not, seeing the guy like the teddy bear so much would actually make Balth feel better about himself. I like to believe that grown-up men having plushies would still be seen as a ridiculous thing by most people (because toxic masculinity) and Balth got the habit of hiding Dennis when he was still trying to find the right guy for him. So seeing Vinnie have no issue whatsoever with the teddy bear and even liking him would definitely help Balth’s confidence, along with warming his heart.

- And since this post is all about headcanons : two things about phones and these two being sappy that have nothing to do with houses.

1. One day, Balth left his phone on a table and Vinnie decided to take a selfie with it because why not. After seeing that, Balth acted frustrated but ended up putting the pic as his phone background. Ever since, Balth’s phone background is a picture of Vinnie. The most recent one is from “We’re Going to the Zoo” with a picture of Vinnie holding squirrels in his arms while a third one is coming out of his pistachios-filled pants. The pic on the phone is a closeup, only showing Vinnie’s head and upper body. And for those who like angst, I’ll let you imagine how he must have felt having this as his phone background during the rogue arc.

2. Vinnie’s (numeric) phone password is 2703, aka march 27, the date of his wedding anniversary. The day is put first and the month second because Europe. Also, during busy weeks, this would be a good way for Vinnie to remember the anniversary.

(fun fact : I was trying to come up with scenarios for fics when I ended up thinking about Vinnie’s password and that number came to mind. So I just went “guess that’s their wedding date now”)

#Milo Murphy's Law #Vinnie Dakota #Balthazar Cavendish #Dakavendish #long post #VERY long post #headcanons #Flor talks #hey look I'm rambling again about random shit #I am SO. BAD. at design #but yeah #have a house #and random ideas #also have Balthazar Dakota #it sounds more and more normal when you think about it a lot #also Dennis Cavendish #or is it Dennis Cavendish-Dakota ?#now to edit the memory room post

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poppitron360 · 5 months ago

Text

OKAY I LOVE THIS SO MUCH I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ADD THINGS TO MY IDEAS AND NOW THIS IS MORE OF AN OPPORTUNITY TO INFODUMP

2) I was planning on having it take place after Jason’s death, even though I haven’t actually read up to that bit yet. I think Leo’s survivor’s guilt from being the one brought back and not him would DEFINITELY play into the angst and the PTSD. I was thinking similar along the lines of what you said about them both struggling- I wan thinking of having some Leo/Hazel bonding moments over both the choice to give up their lives and dealing with being given a second chance. Leo and Hazel’s friendship is not talked about enough, and I think her being able to help him as someone who’s been there is so powerful. Also, Frank is there to comfort him as well. ALSO YES PHYSICAL SCARRING IS GONNA BE A BIG THING!! I am OBSESSED with the hc of Leo being Hard of Hearing after the explosion. Specifically deaf in one ear and chronic tinnitus in the other. I’ve been writing it into all my post-hoo fics (In my married Valgrace ones, Leo uses a hearing aid and also Jason and him both know ASL and morse code to communicate sometimes). I think for this fic prosthetics might be a little detracting from the main theme, because it’s all about Leo trying to hide how he’s struggling, but scars DEFINITELY and also hearing loss. I’m writing amputee/lost limb Leo into some other fics though.

5) YES YES YES I was gonna write this fic as a precursor to my “Jason comes out to CJ” fic. I like the whole “expectations of him as a Praetor to uphold Roman Values” as sort of a homophobia metaphor, and Jason being able to be a bit more relaxed at chb and with Leo where he can just get away from all the expectations to be the perfect Roman sort of being an extension to his canon arc. I might have to wait until I read TSATS to finish it though, because I want to learn more about Piper’s gf.

7-8-9) PUTTING THEM ALL AS THE SAME FIC WOULD BE GENIUS- it might be a bit clunky because of time skips and tone shifts but if I could make it work… Yh honestly the “Jason taking Leo’s last name” hc is JUST SO CUTE I WAS THINKING ABOUT IT ALL DAY AFTER I WROTE IT I COULD NOT FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE JUST AAAAHHHH. I am not normal about them.

12) THIS IS SO GOOD and def inspired me to keep writing it. YES Leo latches onto Luke’s idea of blaming Hephaestus bc he doesn’t want to admit that he secretly blames himself, but deep down he doesn’t believe Luke. It’s so interesting to explore Luke’s manipulation from Luke’s side. Because he is genuinely angry at the Gods for abandoning Leo- he really does have sympathy for this kid and wants to bring the Gods to justice for all the damage they caused Leo, Annabeth, his Mom, all the people he loves. But he’s also not got a very healthy outlet for his anger, but kinda uses Leo’s trauma to justify that. He doesn’t have plans to overthrow the Gods yet, but he feels like he needs to convince people to see his way of thinking so that he doesn’t feel wrong for being angry.

The way I was writing this fic was multiple POVs- Thalia, Luke, Annabeth and Leo’s, so I could explore both Luke’s desperation to justify his anger, and Leo’s willingness to accept a person to blame, plus Thalia’s fear from having to keep these two 9-10 year olds safe (in my fic Annabeth ran away a bit later/for a bit longer, so she’s 10 by this point and Leo has already been on the run for a year), while Luke is spouting his bullshit and she just wants to keep her new family from falling apart like her old one did. And Luke’s promise of family being the thing Annabeth clings onto for dear life, relating to Leo who was also cast out by his blood relatives, secretly knowing that Luke has issues and is manipulating her but trying to convince Leo that “he’s here to look after us. He’s just trying to protect us” to brush off the bad feelings she gets from him and justify his actions because he’s her whole world. And maybe having to convince Leo of that too, saying it out loud, or seeing Luke doing the manipulation to somebody else, might make her actually have to confront the fact that Luke’s way of thinking is wrong.

Leo joining the wrong side and realising later is so interesting, seeing as he HAS been manipulated his whole life- by Hera and Gaea- leaving him with pretty bad trust issues. Luke being the only person who treated him decently since escaping the foster homes would mean he gets attached pretty quickly, and his own self-hatred being something that drives him to not really care if he’s a good person or not (similar to my Leo Villain Arc AU I published a couple weeks ago).

And in terms of turning him back I just had a thought when you talked about him meeting Percy-

BECKENDORF’S SACRIFICE?

Like imagine you’re part of the Titan army, trying to overthrow your dad for abandoning you to starve on the streets, and your brother just gave his life to stop you because he genuinely believed these omnipotent assholes are worth fighting for. Maybe that makes Leo more angry, seeing as how Hephaestus let it happen. But maybe it makes him realise that he’s on the wrong side.

OOH! OOH! I JUST HAD ANOTHER THOUGHT- What if Beckendorf actually confronted Leo about it in the moments of before his death on the Princess Andromeda, asks him to come home, and that Hephaestus didn’t abandon them because he gave them a family and a cabin at chb- it was always there, waiting for Leo. He didn’t intervene when he was being cast out because he knew that eventually Leo WOULD find his family- his brothers and sisters- and that he’d be alright in the end. “It’s not flawless dad logic, but he had the best intentions,” Beckendorf says, “Come home, lil’ bro. We miss you.” And then he fucking explodes.

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH @ginnyluna FOR THIS RESPONSE

And I mean that. I’ve been writing all these fics and hyperfixating on them and I just wanted to talk to someone about them (which is kinda why I did this poll)

These comments were all amazing (and all the other ones I’ve been getting- you guys have such awesome ideas)

Most of these would be finished at some point the poll was just to help me see which ones I might want to prioritise (but it honestly depends on which ones I’m inspired to write).

Yeah. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts- it genuinely made me happy-stim so fucking hard when I saw how long this reply was because I was like ‘CONTENT!!! YAYY!! SOMEONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT MY ART WITH ME!!!”

SERIOUSLY THANK YOU

Raise your hand if you have a million bajillion works-in-progress!!!

Because I sure as hell do.

Anyway, I want to see which ones I should prioritise, so I’m doing a poll. Out of the 97 fic concepts i have in the vault, all with varying levels of completion, I have narrowed it down to 12 (the max number of poll options on Tumblr).

Please Vote!

Category 1- ANGST:

1. Ok not too many spoilers for this one but it’s SUPER angsty. All I can say is Leo faces a very creative punishment from Nemesis for cheating the prophecy and coming back to life, and it’s called “The only sad person in paradise” (undertones of Valgrace).

2. Leo deals with coping with the trauma of dying. LOT of angsty headcanons, including one where the design for the chb bead for the summer hoo is set in was the moment of Leo’s death. And he just has to keep that around his neck the whole time, and it’s chocking him. The opening line is “Every so often, Leo needed to remind himself that his heart was still beating.”

3. A curse befalls camp half-blood that’s slowly reversing the effects of their powers. Hecate cabin’s spells are being undone, plants are un-growing, arms healed by Apollo cabin are re-breaking. Magic is being unwound, and then Leo’s body starts to ache, and he realises… does that include a certain Physician’s Cure?

Category 2- VALGRACE

4. Platonic Valgrace (Romance implied)- “Never go to bed angry”- Leo and Jason have an argument on the Argo II. Jason thinks Leo won’t understand him because he’s never had to live up to the expectations of leadership that come with being a child soldier. Leo thinks Jason won’t understand him because he’s never had to fend for himself, he believes everything Jason has is because of who his father is. They storm off (Jason in the literal sense), argue with themselves for a bit- I did a really cool thing where I switch POVs every line or so, as their arguments parallel each other, like in a TV show where two characters are rehearsing a conversation with the other, but using the HOO multiple-POV thing- and then they go to sleep. They both have weird vision/flashbacks/prophetic dreams, where they experience a day in the other’s childhood. They then realise they completely misunderstood one another, and they’re not as different as they thought.

5. Jason and Leo go to New York pride. That’s the whole fic.

6. Instead of… whatever that ending to BOO was, the Gods reward Leo for his sacrifice by bringing Esperanza Valdez back to life. She thanks Jason for taking care of Leo while she was gone, and they have a heart-to-heart. They are officially boyfriends in this. Jason keeps being reminded of his own reunion with Thalia, and how Leo had stayed with him through that. He vows to do the same.

Category 3- MARRIED VALGRACE:

7. Leo and Jason get married (A classic “Wedding Episode”)

8. Just a fic describing married life with Leo and Jason- it’s called “Violets and Marigolds”

9. A fic from the POV of Leo and Jason’s kid, Isabella Valdez. Some angst, but I don’t have the full plot outlined yet. She’s adopted, and they don’t know her true godly heritage, and Leo suspects she might be mortal, and maybe Lupa made a mistake. Leo and Jason argue over whether she should join the Legion (They’re living in New Rome). Leo struggles with his fear of hurting the people he loves with his powers.

Category 4- MISCELLANEOUS:

10. Platonic Perleo- Percy and Leo get captured by government agents and have to escape Area 51 (Vaguely inspired by an episode of Helluva Boss)- VERY NERDY. This is a very fun one.

11. Leo talks to Hestia about… life, I guess. I started writing this while still on TLH and never found an ending, but it’s a good concept. Leo learns to accept his powers as something that can be good, when he only sees the bad. Hestia tells him “If fire was only about danger and destruction, then it would be the symbol of Ares, not Hephaestus.”

12. Thalia, Luke and Annabeth find little Leo while on the run. Leo and Annabeth bond over engineering. Luke tries to use Leo’s trauma as leverage to get Leo angry at the Gods. He tries to put the blame of Leo’s mom’s death on Hephaestus, since he’s responsible for giving Leo his powers. He points out how the Gods are all-powerful, and yet they leave the four of them- their own children- to starve on the streets. Leo in canon harbours a lot of resentment for his situation growing up, and Luke could easily spin that to justify his own anger.

Tagging people who might be interested:

@four-leafed-queer-gal @lavenderfairiez @child-of-helios @green-tea217 @puzzled-pegasus @imasimpdealwithit @123letsgobestie @ginnyluna @euryvices @ollieisanerd @sleepyycapybara @twomanyfandomshelp @lokiwiiiiiii @yoshuko-ew @keefessketchbook @frankzhang-appreciation-posts @hollow8007 @fairytalesociology @via-rant @daonedaonlyskh

If you have any suggestions for things to add to these fics- leave them in the comments. A lot of these I’ve struggled to flesh out/find endings for. Any help is much appreciated and you will be tagged in the fic if I use it.

Also, Lmk if you want to be tagged in any/all of these!

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