#I thought they handled it well

[littlespoonevan]

actually what makes friends to lovers such a good trope and, in fact, what is Essential to making it a good trope is that the characters have to be friends. and you may say, well duh!! that's what the trope is!!! but no, no, no. you see, some people see friends to lovers and think: two people who are secretly in love/have feelings for each other throughout the entirety of their friendship and use that friendship to mask that. but the real slow burn is when they're legitimately friends. like, they feasibly might have 5 episodes/10 episodes/a whole season where there is No suggestion of romance between them (even if you know it'll head that way eventually) and instead they're just hanging out with no deeper meaning. so instead of seeing them hide their feelings the friendship is peppered with these ✨moments✨. moments where you think, oh there could be something more here. moments that slowly begin to happen more frequently and closer together until the character thinks, oh there could be something more here - by which point you, as the viewer, are Tearing your hair out because you already knew that!!!!! catch up and kiss already!!!!!! and so by the time they both actually realise it and are both actually ready to vocalise it you feel like you've run a marathon - exhausted, strung out, breathless, but also experiencing the greatest adrenaline high of all time

[words-writ-in-starlight]

honestly my mother was a huge champ about her eight-year-old asking to be bought an unabridged edition of the Odyssey for a birthday present, and then she was an equally huge champ about reading her eight-year-old the unabridged Odyssey as a bedtime story and pausing every four lines to define something for me, and let me just say that I have fucking TREASURED the opportunity to reverse that old tradition by more or less forcing her to sit on my couch and listen to Epic and pause it every four lines for my dissertation

[mangoes-and-mothman]

i think Stone pre-Robotnik excelled in surviving torture tactics and de-escalating high-stress situations and thats why the government sent him to Robotnik. He works as his assistant but in reality he's Robotniks handler.

[luminique]

saw a japanese tweet about lighter during his underground fighting days and i am absolutely distraught. don’t treat this as canon though, they only used info in game to help build their own understanding of lighter.

they said that in his ep, he seemed to be someone who was constantly winning. but if you look at his story in the game, he mentioned having losses. a little headcanon that they had was that it wouldn’t be fun/entertaining if he always won his matches. you could put him against anyone and he’d honestly win against them so there were some match fixings and unfair advantages to his opponents to give the audience a ‘real’ show.

another thing that was mentioned was how he told us during the tour de inferno how he could just lower his head and bend his knees a little and he’d get money. this isn’t solid proof of anything but many do think that he may have been forced to provide extra services, considering the fact that he is canonically handsome (claims from bellum and other npcs have complimented him too).

then we learn that he felt like a zombie during his time in those fighting rings. opponent after opponent, his body deeply bruised and wounded, unable to look at his own reflection in their eyes. he had only done it for the money, to compensate for his actual losses in his life but then he was turned into an object for entertainment.

he was just a young man, he also had hope and ambitions. then it was ripped out of him starting with the deaths of his comrades, followed by his exploitation in those matches and the underground fighting rings. even though big daddy had paid off his debts, his ‘mistake’ as a leader didn’t disappear, the scars and marks on his body didn’t disappear, his own habits of self sacrifice and suicidal thoughts didn’t disappear.

we don’t actually know what went down during his days in the ember arena. personally, i would be more than fine if he chooses not to tell us the full details. i just hope that the game story treats him with care and we don’t have to consistently make him relive those days.

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

Sometimes I think about how Adrien must grieve

How, when he lost his mother, it was a gradual thing, where he lost more and more of her, where he was slowly prepared for an eventuality and a future in which she would not be there anymore. How it was longstanding and tormenting and how his grief began long before the day he would never see her again. How though the pain of loss must have been sharp and aching for him, and he must desperately miss Emilie, at least he achieved some solace in not having to see her in pain anymore.

But then once he's reached a healthy stage and coping style in his grief for Emilie, the wounds are reopened once again.

How his father went from existing to suddenly being gone to Adrien. How he had no warning, no indication that he would never see him again. How even though the grief is sudden and unexpected, it had really started months before Gabriel was gone, and even long before he became injured.

It's how despite the fact that Gabriel was seemingly in good health, and Adrien had no reason to fear losing him, Adrien has actually been grieving for Gabriel and their relationship for a long time. How Adrien has had to watch his father slip away, lose himself, and slowly give less and less of himself over to Adrien, until Adrien could hardly recognize the man that was supposed to be sitting across the table from him.

Sometimes I just think about how grief became a comfort for Adrien, a lifestyle, because he has been taught that all good things in his life, all things he loves, must come to an end eventually.

And I think about how that must affect him as a person.

[kelocitta]

I wanted to ask, I might have missed it, but how is the new Scav chieftain as a character? With her having to take over after her daughter’s passing, and the needed cleaning up after Artificers mess in this AU? It’s really interesting that shes now suffering a loss of a child, acting as a parallel to Artificer also.

Bolt of Silver (Although name has certainly changed) was an accomplished pirate* sharpshooter. Her particular skillset was in the execution of caravan/patrol captains from exceptional distances in order to induce panic for a followup assault. Her past is largely unknown, and as such she is not someone who would have ever been considered for the position of Chieftain had there not be a considerable amount of panic. She took the position because she, as an elder, is generally given respect of wisdom and also she herself showed quiet a bit of initiative and leadership during the panic that curried some favor- although she is notably more of a substitute than a properly recognized Chieftain, and will eventually step down once a replacement is formally put forth. Her daughter, in contrast, did not share her criminal history and was a rather accomplished explorer, archivist, and generally an upstanding Scavenger. The fact she acquired the position was a testament to her own skills, independent of her mother, who retired and integrated back into the larger community as a general assistant and expectant grandmother. *Pirate in the context of Scavengers does not refer to boat users, but rather caravans or groups of united thief or criminal rogue wandering groups. 'Unaffiliated' Scavenger groups are common, but many of them are merely small families, independents, or even particularly traveled traders and thus welcomed into the larger community even if they do not directly consider themselves a part of it. Pirate groups are distinct in that their activity is almost entirely criminal in nature, often violent, and ideally removed or pushed to the furthest fringes of territories.

[jathun]

Hot take but Caleb is at least a little bit justified in the way he's acting in the main story. Not completely of course. He definitely takes it too far and he SHOULD have told the mc what the hell was going on in skyhaven from the get go so she could be better prepared.

But the mc is actively acting like a goddamn dumbass. She throws herself basically blind into a situation which even her supervisor says is suspicious at best and dangerous at worst AND which they know next to nothing about, with no backup and basically no plan except for a vague "infiltrate the fleet and find out what they know about the aether core". So OF COURSE she gets caught the moment she steps foot onto the place. And of course Caleb has to step in and clean up the mess before his superiors, or worse, Ever, look too much into this girl who's throwing herself headfirst into anything and everything even remotely connected to the aether core. All the while keeping up his persona as a heartless colonel so that what is likely a year's long plan to infiltrate the fleet and ever in order to destroy them from within wont go to waste - though that's more of an educated guess from going through his material and some theorising built upon said material.

Honestly the mc's foray into the N109 Zone was also bumbassery at its finest but there you could excuse it with grief making her not think things through...but with skyhaven? There's really no other explanation than idiocy.

She should know by now that everything connected to ever and the aether core is dangerous business. THEY BLEW UP HER HOUSE FOR GOODNESS SAKE! But she keeps acting with all the forethought and grace of a bull in a china shop. Or a pumpkin magus in a flower shop if you will.

At the end of the day though, since LADS is an otome game and the mc is a self-insert, there will never be any lasting consequences for her ill thought out actions. Nor will they be properly scrutinised in the same way the LIs actions will be.

So I guess I'll just sit in my little corner and grumble about the way Caleb gets misinterpreted by large swathes of the fandom as nothing but the manipulative yandere type when in truth he's still a sunflower - he's just grown in rotten soil.

[starflungwaddledee]

some rather strong first impressions were made.

required reading for the magical "voice" headcanon and another for starstruck's signature in particular. asked by @trainerbob23 !

[halfbaked00q]

Im soooo weak to when Bond is like casually being used or exploited at his expense for some ostensible Greater Good except the situation doesn't HAVE to come to that, not really, and he's so inured and even numb to it that he barely pays it any mind; meanwhile, Q absolutely minds and is very indignant on his behalf and works overtime to like either try to avert or forestall the situation before it gets to the point where Bond has to dig his own claws into more of his soft underbelly to offer up on the sacrificial alter of politics of all tawdry things, or to manufacture a way in which he does the needless "needful" so as to spare Bond at least one unnecessary additional wound upon his psyche.

bonus if Bond finds out and maybe after being angry or indignant about it - I don't need you to do my job for me, Q, this is what I'm here to do - and either Q tells him/lets slip or he deduces that like, this isn't Q thinking he can't get the job done, this is Q finding him precious and worthy of protecting, and like. he's just very in awe of that and does in fact feel very safe and cherished within the cradle of his Quartermaster's regard

[majimasleftasscheek]

I got a curtain for my merch room tweehee

[gracebriarwoodwrites]

I write fragile on a dozen boxes salvaged from recycling I forgot to take out before I knew I was moving and my hand shakes even more each time. The lines bleed off the box corners and into me. I'm fragile, you see.

[nyminish]

The amount of research that went into making The Ancient Magus Bride is just fucking incredible. As someone raised pagan, the shit that it covers has me astounded at the stuff they get right word for word. They don't take bits and pieces to build their own story it's literally based off of Celtic mythology and folklore.

Not to mention the representation!! It doesn't come right out and say anything but there's LITERALLY an autistic character that wears headphones and goggles for sensory reasons. Plus every other character I see is like, trans trans trans trans

I think half of these individuals probably give absolutely no fucks about pronouns and don't even have a huge grasp on gender just cuz they're not even human or they're so old they just stopped caring.

They literally have a character that was a native and it talks about the struggles of modern society treating the natives like shit

THEY CALL THE CHRISTIAN GOD THE CONQUERER GOD

Oh my god and don't even get me started on the amazing way they're handling mental health struggles.

Just,

AAAAAAAAAAA

[dearmahiru]

...i'm sorry, but if you can't believe amane could have killed shidou, then you should be able to understand that the explicitly suicidal character traumatized by the death of his wife and children would not cope well with the preventable death of a teen and adult mother figure. think abt his character past haha funny doctor man beefing with 12 year old for 0.2 seconds i beg

[catabasis]

to see the Doctor opening up about the events of the Flux and the revelation of the Timeless Child, to have him think for a moment that his best friend shared those memories and that he had someone he could share the burden with, someone that could understand his pain and his fear, and then to have that taken away from him, to have that turn into a weapon to terrorise him... as much as it hurt, as cruel and heartbreaking as it was, i think it was brilliantly written, because that moment where we thought the Doctor was being comforted didn't feel earned. Donna having those memories wouldn't be as meaningful as having the Doctor willingly opening up. in order to heal, he needs to talk about it, to willingly share those memories in his own terms. Donna tries to get him to talk at the end, she is so gentle in the way she asks, trying to make him feel comfortable enough to share, but the weight of those memories and the cruelty of the being in the spaceship make him hold back again, but at least he's honest in how long it would take him to heal, and that alone shows how much he's grown and it shows that with time he'll be able to really open up and start to heal

[neutron-stars-collision]

I think that part of the reason why it took Colin a while to forgive Pen and accept LW is that he knows she can see right through him. It’s been said multiple times that she sees him for who he is, despite the mask he tried to wear at the beginning of this season.

And Colin probably thought that he can see her too. That he knows his Pen through and through. So when that crumbled… yeah, it was a harsh wake up call.

He must’ve felt uneven with her, along with the constant worry that he’s not enough for her, that he’s not worthy. The realisation that while she knows him, he doesn’t know her must’ve been a real kick in the gut.

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

It's crazy how I can be like "I'm having a depressive episode" until I'm with the right people and then it's like oh no I'm ok actually