#a very unfortunate fact

[nixxieie]

My man knew something

[annamationsart]

everyone loves talking about little jon in correlation to mr. spider but no one ever talks about how insufferable this kid was. i wouldn’t wish sitting next to him in class upon my worst enemy

[crystalcircus]

Without spoiling too much, they both come from the same country (Siracusa AKA Italy) and are long-standing rivals, with L*ppland Saluzzo specifically having a deep obsession with Texas. It's very much a "rivals with sexual tension" situation.

If you want to delve deeper, you can play Code of Brawl (the setup) and Il Siracusano (the deeper exploration) events. Both are available under the Side Stories tab in the Play-terminal (third tab from the left), and they each cost 1 of those red tokens (visible in the top right of the Side Story tab) to unlock. You receive two of these tokens weekly so spend 'em wisely, try to learn which events are connected and which you are interested in and unlock / play accordingly.

Above all, have fun! This game has a treasure trove of content from five years and counting so go wild!!

hello arknights nation can someone explain why lappland and texas are considered girlyaoi

[ovenproofowl]

this screenshot is sending me . babes . they slapped a pair of reading glasses on her and called it a day .

[critter-covenant]

"ooooh thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!!"

They'd be good friends I like to thinmk

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

That's the face he makes when he's feeling silly.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[crystallizsch]

more blushy jamil in my life pls

[arolesbianism]

May I offer some Siffrins on this fine day

[cadetral]

this could be one of the craziest sentences ive ever read in my life

[nshtn]

I love writing Wesker with a little touch of what he seems to hate so much... humanity.

The one core aspect of his persona is that he was manufactured - abused - created.

The Executive Training School intended to produce sets of controllable psycho-sociopaths - a class worth. Human beings, more complex than tools, rarely turn out how they are meant to - neither Birkin nor Wesker were controllable.

Lisa Trevor was a threat and an intimidation tactic as much as she was an experiment - "this will be you if you don't do what we say", essentially.

Wesker, Birkin, and Alexia were all groomed (literal) under the Doctrine, meant to take over in Spencer's stead when he passed (and meant to fight for the position).

Birkin's hate for Alexia was an intentional machination of Spencer. Wesker was intended to experience it towards Birkin eventually, but ultimately did not.

There is only so much death you can voyeur - unwillingly, willingly, it doesn't change the outcome - until you are no longer empathetic to it.

He's a victim of an insurmountable magnitude of intentional happenings whose scale approaches the Truman trope.

His natural, base inclination is not violence.

Birkin had a much higher kill count than he did in the beginning of his arduous and terrible journey, one that they had both started with the desire for a positive change even after they grew up watching their peers picked off like carrion by Marcus.

Wesker's comment to Birkin after the murder of Marcus is that he does not feel anything - good or bad - and that Marcus was "just another monster".

In RE4, he is more than willing to let people solve his own problems without directly, violently interfering to reach his goals. Only when they require violence does he portray it - his first suggestions aren't needlessly cruel ("ring the church bell", "take advantage of the distraction [Leon] is causing", "use [Leon] to clean up Saddler").

When Wesker initially became suspicious of the Arklays, and he looked upon what he perceived was Spencer's goal, he found the idea of it completely revolting even at its' smallest scale. But he could not flee.

The Arklays were meant to produce a viable strain that Spencer could then himself perfect after shedding the Arklays as a testing ground; it was intentionally set up for the event of Raccoon City to occur, but it was not intended for it to occur at the time that it did.

Spencer admits that he - and Project W as a whole - were raised intentionally to produce tools who would become eugenicists in a similar fashion.

Eventually that bitter lie becomes so numb to Wesker's tongue that it begins to taste sweet. "A lie repeated twice is truth" is a known and very evil propaganda tactic employed by cults and fascists - it is called the 'illusion of truth' in psychology, the curse of familiarity.

He was not born evil, and he's a broken dichotomy of a person who is fundamentally incompatible with life.

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[terracyte]

latest pacrim rewatch ate me upppp

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[breesperez139]

Dc x Dp Prompt #5

Demon Twin AU only Damian never had a blood son phase and has “biological siblings” (how absurd):

Damian would like to start by saying he is not at fault for this… miscommunication. Truly, how was he to know sharing the same blood as Jasmine and Danyal would make them “siblings”? Not once has anyone mentioned such absurd claims. He has never and will never treat either of the two the way he would Richard or any of his other siblings, but apparently sharing the same donors when being created automatically makes people siblings.

Worse, father is upset at him and mother for “hiding away” two of his “children” from him. Richard and Thomas will not stop staring at him. Todd, Brown, and Drake will not stop laughing. Cassandra has not stopped looking at his body language since this whole encounter started. Alfred is giving him his patented disappointed face he oh so hates but what is he to do?

Damian was not hiding anything or anyone. Jasmine and Danyal have not nor will they ever be his siblings. They are the children of Jack and Maddie Fenton just as Richard and the rest of them are Bruce’s children. Blood has nothing to do with family. They are at best “god-siblings” or “cousins” if father refuses to believe they are simply childhood companions.

There is barely a hint of emotion as father purses his lips while his siblings continue looking on at him in disbelief. Damian is not understanding why they are having trouble comprehending such simple logic. It is common sense to know that siblings are the children at least one of your parents have raised other than yourself. Parents are the people who raise you. Talia raised him therefore she is his mother. He lives with Bruce who is now raising him and therefore he is his father.

Neither Talia nor Bruce raised Jasmine or Danyal, therefore they are not siblings. It is merely coincidence that he shared blood with both Bruce and Talia. After all, every time he’s visited Amity Park, most children look nothing like their parents. How can it not be coincidence when it is clearly far more normal to raise children who don’t share an ounce of blood with you, than those who do.

How can it not be normal when Jack Fenton took Jasmine in so easily knowing he didn’t share any dna with her? Even more so with Danyal who doesn’t share even a drop of blood with either Jack or Maddie. Look at yourself father. Out of all your children, only one shares your dna. Do not try and pin this on Damian for being the only sensible person in this family. Blood siblings, ha, don’t make him laugh.

[megsdoodletag]

Whats updated codex Lion doing and how is he handling that hi brothers are back

lion is rockin the dad bod if i’m bein honest

ah yes. lets talk about the championship warcrimes mcgee everyone forgets to rank with the other championship warcrime mcgees.

Lion is less concerned with his returned brothers than he is with the emperor and gman. Lion’s whole deal is loyalty, particularly to those above you (we’re still working on being loyal to those who rely on you but we’re getting there). To him, emps accepting magnus back into the palace isnt so different from him collecting the Risen, but emps’ refusal to take the reigns from guilliman despite his brother’s measured response to stuff like the ecclesiarchy is baffling to him. He’s mellowed out a Lot since imperium secundus, but his most basic thought process does not understand why they aren’t all just wiping planetary governments and starting from scratch now that dad’s back. Why go through the trouble of installing the triarchy when you leave all the rest of the stupid 40k imperial bureaucracy anyway? Why is dad allowing gman’s 20 stupid space books of space rules when the first one sucked anyway?? Why isn’t dad in charge???

I say most basic thought because, again, he’s had some time, he’s done some Introspection, he has admitted to himself banishing people for mistakes is not always the neat and tidy solution it’s made out to be in his head, and that his paranoia is a problem, it’s just hard for him to change that pattern of thinking. also he’s not entirely wrong i mean. gman is slow going because he’s got approximately the entire universe on his plate but like. some of this stuff feels like something that should have a ten-step removal plan. right??? point is it’s complicated, and he doesn’t have a clean solution and is actively restraining himself from enacting his own version of a ‘clean solution’ which he’s at least learned is maybe a bad idea without running it by dad first.

In the meantime dad said to continue gathering the Risen, so that’s fine he can put his energy into that. Dad also did not say shit about the risen being not codex compliant so take that gman. so lion currently is largely occupied with trying to get his legion in order, which is a bit like herding cats pun absolutely intended. lion is constantly fighting new fissures between what he and the risen envision and what the newer astartes of his geneline are used to expecting, issues that run hot enough that there are some days where it feels like they’re creating fallen instead of saving them. it’s a constant uphill battle even with the newfound self awareness. running back and forth to gather bits of his old legion means he’s mostly out of the way of his brothers, and that’s just fine as far as he’s concerned.

That said, him and his arc are more central to Updated Codex than one might expect. For one, lion is the one who tattles on gman to emps. He takes one look at juno and goes

'i'm telling dad!!' and runs off to do just that, forcing gman to introduce juno to the wider imperium. she’s about 4 at the time.

An older Juno, as stated in the snippet below, has been boots-on-the-ground for fallen retrieval missions; in fact they were probably some of her first joint campaigns outside of ultramar/ultra successors. Lion has seen her work as and with astartes, and generally is alright treating her the way he does his formerly wayward sons.

that doesn’t mean he trusts her. The paranoia didn’t magically disappear. when she gets her own little specialist squad consisting of some weird serf, the child of a traitor, and a xeno spawn, He manages to get a dark angel attached to their retinue, and instructs him to report on their actions regularly.

Juno isn’t impressed.

Melwas is a brand new Dark Angel looking to prove himself in a time when living legends, tarnished though they may be, walk amongst them and his primarch is personally watching every move he makes. Mel has a massive guilt complex, for both genuinely enjoying the oddball squad’s company (a betrayal of his mission) and for spying on them (a betrayal of his friends). It’s a lot of pressure, which isn’t helped when, upon reuniting with a former neophyte friend of his, he is promptly subjected to a barriss offee style turncoat plot where his friend tries to kill him (and the squad) in an effort to make a point about how the DAs are losing their way of life, yadda yadda, angst, yadda yadda etc. yaaaaay!!!

He gets a weird dog and some hugs from his friends and maybe his dad figures out how to tell him in words he was handpicked for the oddball squad because lion is actually quite impressed with his level head. maybe lion will go the extra mile and figure things out with luthor and mel can make out i mean up with that friend who tried to kill him or something. who knows.

but that’s what uncle lion is up to!