#actually what in any detail his character is doing /or/ in any detail beyond guilt /why/

[heyclickadee]

So, here’s the thing. The finale is weird. Yes, I’m hurt by the fact that Tech didn’t come back and that a character that’s very near and dear to my heart was badly handled, and that will never sit right with me. But even apart from that, the finale fundamentally does not function as a piece of storytelling or as the end to this story. I’m glad that people are enjoying it, and I will never tell anyone not to. But I don’t think it works. (I get very negative about the TBB finale under the cut.)

It’s not just the Tech stuff or the CX-2 stuff (which may very well have been the same stuff) that got dropped. It’s *everything*. Every theme, Every narrative thread besides retrieving Omega, every character arc except marginally Omega’s, Echo’s (also marginal), and Emerie’s, which was the shortest and gets wrapped up by her deciding to help Echo rescue the kids. It all stops. It makes everything that came before seem cheap and pointless if you take it into account. And this is so, so frustrating for me, because the entire show was driving towards this incredibly rich payoff, it could have been immaculate, and then it whiffed the ball so bad in the last episode that it didn’t just miss, it managed to knock over the bleachers and set the entire court on fire.

Some examples:

1. This season had a really interesting exploration of Crosshair’s PTSD via his hand tremor and how it was something he can learn to manage, but not something that would ever fully go away. Aaaaand then his hand gets chopped off. One, that was stupid. I’ve seen some excellent posts (here’s one by @the-bi-space-ace) detailing why that was a terrible way to handle Crosshair’s lingering trauma, and others talking about how the idea there was that Crosshair needed to move on and it was severing his last ties with the empire. The former, I agree with; the latter, I don’t, because not only—not only!—does this episode stop dealing with Crosshair’s trauma, it doesn’t even deal with having cut off his hand! It just sort of occurs. No one reacts to it, no one says anything about it, there’s no follow up or commentary, nothing happens as a result—it’s an event which occurs with no results coming after it. It may as well be an animation error. You can say it was about Crosshair needing to let go and move on, but that’s something you have to project on to the text, not something that’s actually offered by it. It’s empty.

2. Crosshair again: We also have the lingering issue of Crosshair’s guilt and the fact that he never seems to get to a point where it’s resolved. There’s set up for a resolution. We have that, “Sure you have,” like about Crosshair from Rampart. We also have Crosshair saying he deserves whatever happens to him in Tantiss. And then…no pushback. No resolution. No moment of Crosshair realizing that he doesn’t need to carry that burden. Nothing that says he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He had all this character development this season, but he needed - last little push to forgive himself—and we never get any indication that he does. It, like his trauma, gets dropped like a rock.

3. Hey! More Crosshair! A good chunk of Crosshair’s arc this season was about learning that anyone can change, first, and that no one is beyond saving. Eeexcept that goes no where.

4. Which brings me to my next point: There is set up for the CXs to be saved. Even if we’re laboring under the conclusion that CX-2 was never intended to be Tech at any point in the writing process (I have. Doubts. Yes, I’m calling the creative team liars, here, but with the understanding that they have contracts that may require them to lie), we do have the set up where we learn the electrocyanide zappers can be removed, and with Rex offering forgiveness to CX-1. “Whatever they did to you, whatever you’ve done, you’re still one of us.” CX-Tech or no, Crosshair’s arc was tied up with the CX plot, and because he’s the one the CXs tend to react to—or, at least, understands what was done to them—the set up was there for him to help save and maybe rehab the CXs. At the least, there was an indication that they could be saved. Eeexcept nope! That gets dropped like a rock, too, and they’re not going to deal with it. Time for maximum carnage.

5. Hunter’s arc actually takes a step backwards. Sure, he gets a technically happy ending, but because the squad is basically in the same place they were in “Pabu” back in season two (down a member but successfully hiding from the Empire in a safe place), it negates Hunter’s development towards actually taking action—and actually hurts Echo’s arc, too.

There’s been this tension all through the show between just sitting things out on the one hand (Hunter’s way) and taking direct action despite the futility on the other (Echo’s way), but instead of finding some kind of middle ground or third road, it sort of comes back around to saying that, actually, Hunter was right, they should have just gone to Idaflor back in episode three and never left even though the Pabu invasion said that no, you can’t just hide, and even Hunter’s development was moving in the opposite direction. And this also means that Echo never reaches a point where he feels like he can walk away and that he doesn’t have to get himself killed doing this. Despite development otherwise they both end up back at that conversation in “Tipping Point” without any move in either direction or resolution of that tension.

6. Omega. Okay, Omega probably comes out the best after the finale, and, conceptually, I actually love the idea of Omega becoming a pilot even if the epilogue falls a little flat for me. But stuff with Omega still got dropped, including:

- The force stuff. We have two episodes dealing with m-count (after learning in episode three what Omega was created to do). We also have Ventress telling Omega that she doesn’t have a high m-count as far as she can see, Crosshair immediately calling Ventress out for lying, and then Ventress basically saying, “Yeah, no shit, but if she has force potential she’d have to leave you behind, and it doesn’t matter what your opinion on that is, so I’m not dealing with that.” Aaaand then,m. That. Goes nowhere. Despite a bit of set up for Omega connecting to the force as early as episode one, and some more set up in Tribe, and that whole subplot of her learning how to meditate, and so on.

Now, I don’t think that it was ever going to turn out that Omega did actually have a high m-count or that she had a particularly powerful natural connection to the force. I think she’s probably got a low or baseline m-count. What I do think, however, is that we were going to see Omega connect anyway as a refutation of Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire scheme. Their goal (based off of the ST) was to create extremely force sensitive clones as a way for Palpatine to jump bodies without having to waste time re-learning how to connect to the force. You know—dark side, quick and easy path, focus on eugenics and raw power, etc. Had Omega connected anyway because of her big heart and desire to protect, it would have not only paid off that set up, it would have also refuted Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire goal. It would have worked so well thematically and the set up was THERE.

- branching off of that, I think the Omega force stuff was probably tied to the Zillo beast. We also had a through-line of Omega being good with animals and taking the time to calm them instead of responding with violence. The first time we see this is in “Replacements,” where she realizes that the ordo moon dragon (also an electrophage—I don’t know what to call these things—like the zillo beast) is just scared and hungry. This is all conjectural, but it still fits with what was set up.

- Moving on from the force stuff, we also had a through-line that started way back in episode two of the series, but which was really emphasized this season, about Omega feeling like she’s the cause of the bad things that happen to the people she loves. This is why she gives herself up during the Pabu invasion in the first place. This is never resolved! We get Omega’s confidence boost when she realizes she has the force kids to take care of, but we never get a moment where Omega realizes that she has no reason to feel guilty. She’s the glue that holds the family together! But nope! Also dropped!

- But wait! There’s more! The first two season finales have Omega watching someone she loves fall away while she’s helpless to do anything to save them. That’s perfect set up to put Omega in the same situation, but be able to save them, because she’s finally come into her own. Instead we just end up with her needing to be rescued again.

- Omega has this big speech in Shadows of Tantiss about spending her life stuck in one place or another against her will, and how she refuses to be confined like that. I don’t think Omega would have been happy just staying on Pabu for the entire rest of her childhood and young adult life, even if I think she’d want to use it on a home base. But! Dropped!

7. I still can’t get over the fact that the zillo beast is on screen for about two minutes and then just. Walks away. It’s a large beastie that’s been locked in confinement for a while and is probably hungry. And somehow it didn’t go straight to the reactors for some delicious energy smoothies. Like. It. Did. The. Last. Time. Someone. Let. It. Out. But no, that would have required it sticking around for something that was probably dropped sooooo ZILLO BEAST EXIT STAGE RIGHT I GUESS. (Edit: I have been reminded that Hemlock does say to turn off the generators once the zillo beast is out, so that at least makes sense. I still think the zillo beast should have stuck around to do something.)

8. You notice how there are a ton of commandos around Tantiss, even up through “Flash Strike?” And how they kind of largely cease to exist? And how Echo says that there are far more clones imprisoned in Tantiss than anyone thought? And then how they rescue, like, a dozen guys? Because we never find our way back to those cells Crosshair was held in during season two? And how Tarkin does mention not wanting to allow clone dissidence to turn into an uprising back in “The Summit?” Because I did. This show was never going to be about a clone rebellion, that wasn’t the point, buuut I do think the set up was there for an uprising at Tantiss itself. Begin the series with clones losing their agency en masse, end the series with some of the most subdued clones taking it back. Except nope, dropped, soooo we gotta pretend the commandos don’t exist and murder the hell out of poor Scorch.

9. SPEAKING OF. The batch does kill clones sometimes, that does happen, but they do at least usually make some kind of effort to be non-lethal even when they’re not using stun, and times when they do resort to lethal tactics are usually born out of extreme circumstances. Not here, though!! NO HESITATION MAXIMUM CARNAGE. For. Reasons I guess.

10. There’s one point IN THE FINALE where Echo mentions signaling for Rex. This never comes up again. Rex does not show up. In fact, despite being called, “The Cavalry Has Arrived,” the cavalry does not in fact arrive. There is no cavalry. Yes, I know it’s a reference to Wrecker’s first line. But I’m sorry if you call an episode that YOU HAD BETTER HAVE A CAVALRY SHOW UP. Especially when you have a one about calling them in! But that also!! Got dropped like a rock!!

11. One positive: the moment Crosshair and Hunter leaning on each other to make that shot was nice.

12. Sorry, but Hemlock’s death was deeply unsatisfying. Let’s do something more than just shoot him multiple times, okay?

13. Rampart’s death, on the other hand, was incredibly satisfying. That said, the conversation about project necromancer? I’m dying. It’s actually hilarious, because it basically goes like:

“Tell me about project necromancer.”

“Wow! How interesting!”

I’m.

Are you serious?

I’m going to become the Joker.

Yes, I know we know what project necromancer is because of a different show. That’s not the point, the POINT. Is that any pay off for project necromancer in this show got dropped. And that’s deeply frustrating from a narrative perspective.

14. Speaking of, we never find out anything more regarding that partially successful m-count transfer from episode three.

15. We also never do anything with those medical records!

16. And Omega has a whole crossbow she never actually shoots despite the fact that her role on the team was as a sharpshooter after Crosshair left, and despite her getting advice from Crosshair on how to be a sniper. The literal chekov’s gun never goes off. I’m going to go eat gravel.

17. AZI, likewise, got toted around for three seasons for no reason. Probably could have helped with the medical records. Given that he was a Kaminoan medical droid. Oh, and that Omega was Nala Se’s medical assistant. So. Hmm.

18. You can cut everything in the season past episode five and skip straight to the epilogue and end up in the same place. This is not because the other episodes are filler. Far from it! The other episodes are great and deliver some amazing set up. But, because the finale does nothing with that set up, it doesn’t go anywhere.

19. And you know what else? From a narrative perspective, there’s no reason for Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair to be in these episodes at all. They don’t accomplish anything and make everyone else’s job harder. Omega was doing fine, she would have gotten out with the kids with just Echo and Emerie, and Tarkin was coming to cut off Hemlock’s funding and shut everything down once Hemlock lost control of the facility anyway. I can only suppose that the whole reason they were in this episode ended up getting dropped, too.

20. CX-2. Listen, the answer we get about CX-2 isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “Maybe, maybe not—you don’t get to know.” Because. He’s the only CX whose mask never comes off. After a season and a half worth of buildup of unmasking CXs and people pressing them to learn their names. It’s not a no, it’s a non-answer, which is far less satisfying.

And finally:

21: CX-Tech. I’ve seen some people speculating that there was a planned CX-Tech reveal that got scrapped at the last minute—dropped, along with the other points I’ve already laid out. And, honestly? I have to agree. Despite what the creative team says, because even their denials kind of come out weird (like the Kiners saying that the large brass chord in “Battle of the Snipers” was just a nice sounding brass chord and not a reference to “Plan 99.” They also basically say that the sacrifice theme from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif. Which. Is all over “Battle of the Snipers.” That theme. Not Crosshair’s. In a scene. Where he’s supposed to be fighting a shadow of himself who Totally Isn’t Tech but we put Tech’s leitmotif here and layered it in Techno music but nooo that was never supposed to be him. Nope. I mean, come on. I’m not stupid).This post is already long enough, so here are some posts by @apocalyp-tech-a pointing out the reasons why I think this was the case, and one by @eriexplosion pointing out why CX-2 as Crosshair’s shadow and only that doesn’t quite work. I don’t need to go over the trail that was laid out again. Up to the finale this was a character that had more screen time—and far more solo screen time—than Echo. Some people will not stop yelling that there was no evidence, and. No. I’m sorry, there was. I can’t agree.

And some people might say, well, okay, the show misdirected you guys and pulled off a twist by having CX-2 be no one, and well, I can’t agree with that either. Twists only function if the twist is more satisfying than the conclusion to which the story seems to be leading. And I’m sorry, you can’t tell me that a season and a half of CX building and three seasons (because I can find set up all the way back in episode one of the show) for Tech survival culminating in what amounts to a boss fight is more satisfying than getting to see Omega have her big brother back. You can’t.

The reason I bring this up last is because, yes, I think CX-Tech was a plot dropped at the last minute, but because I also think that it’s the dropped plot that ripped everything else apart. CX-Tech was an incredibly efficient way to tie up most of the lingering plot threads and dropped character development.

-Crosshair’s guilt? Okay, he faces down the end result of his decision to stay with the empire and possibly something he knew about (Tech would be in this situation because of Crosshair, and were given hints that Crosshair knew) and is finally able to forgive himself because they’re able to save him.

- Hunter’s decision to finally take action and be proactive rather than reactive is validated, because it’s the thing that finally gets him his entire family back.

- Echo saves someone the same way he was saved, and maybe he realizes that it is enough and that he doesn’t have to be a soldier forever.

- Wrecker’s efforts to keep the family together and keep Hunter sane finally pay off.

- Omega is able to protect the people she charges about and finally, finally has all of her brothers.

- Thematically, it rounds off each member of the batch (Omega included) traumatically losing and then taking back their agency in a way that correlates directly to who and how they are as people.

- It also rounds out the OG batchers each being haunted by a failure that has to do with the thing that makes them special.

- You get pushback against “Clone Force 99 died with Tech! We’re not that squad anymore!” because no, it didn’t, and they’re more than a squad, they’re a family.

- It comes around and closes the wound opened in Aftermath and ripped back open by Return to Kamino: they go in for Omega and lose someone, but here, they go in for Omega and get someone back.

- Would allow Tech to close off his lingering threads and finish his character development BECAUSE THOSE REMAINED UNFINISHED.

- Completely subverts the “bury your disabled” trope by making sure we know the character whose disability was explored the most’s life is more important than his death. Seems like an important thing to do in a show that is kind of about disability. Just saying.

- Makes the lack of closure and little mentions of Tech make sense from a storytelling POV because the necessarily catharsis would come from his return.

- And it would actually add some triumph to the ending. Yes, this little family survived. They outlived the war. They’re together, despite every effort to rip them apart. They made it, despite the dark times, despite the Empire, despite what they were made to do and be. They defied all of that. That would have been so, so satisfying.

As is, without Tech, without that CX-Tech reveal, we sort of end up in this weird place where all the themes are half-baked. They are more than soldiers…except Tech, who had to fall out of the story as a soldier (despite us getting the clearest glimpse of what his life outside of soldiering could have been). They get to live how they want…except Tech. They don’t leave their own behind, except Tech that one time. They should value their own lives a little…except Tech. They’re more than a squad, they’re a family…except Tech, the only one besides Omega to say that’s what they are, doesn’t get to see it, and they don’t get to have him around. We begin the series with a broken family and end it with a family broken differently. That’s not dynamic.

So there’s no really punch to the ending. It’s sort of…well, okay, we tortured a family for three seasons I guess. Relieved that the survivors are doing okay, but that’s kind of it.

22. The finale in general is just sort of a bunch of events which happen, but which don’t lead into one other. It’s weird. It’s not that too much happens, it’s that almost nothing happens. Nothing of substance, in a way. The finale is, in a word, the only true filler episode in the entire show.

TL;DR: I think a lot of stuff got dropped from the finale. I don’t know why. I suspect that it might have to do with the strikes—basically, the script was done, most everything was recorded and boarded, and then when the finale was in production they got sudden drastic budget cuts (this was during a time when the studios were disappearing entire completed shows and movies as tax write-offs), had to gut what they had planned, and couldn’t bring the writers or even showrunners in to smooth over what was gutted or to even pick what got taken out. They wouldn’t have gotten to choose or compress things. They were on strike (because the studios wouldn’t negotiate), and whoever did choose ended up just ripping out the stuff that would actually take any time or budget to deal with (so, basically everything I laid out), killing it (literally), and using the remains of what they already had recorded. And who knows how they had to fill in gaps.

But I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was a last minute decision to take certain plot points and put them in a different show. Maybe it was executive mandate. Maybe the creative team just sucked the whole time (that’s one I have a hard time buying—we have four other shows and most of this one that tell me that they’re better at their jobs than this). Maybe everyone said screw it, who even cares anymore at the same time.

Maybe nothing happened. Who knows? I strongly suspect something bad did happen behind the scenes that was out of the creative team’s hands—I really do, because that’s the only way I can make sense of this—but until we can get someone talking without six layers of PR and NDAs, we won’t know for sure. All I know is that The Bad Batch is an amazing show with 46 episodes that range from “fine-but-clunky” to “IMMACULATE,” with more leaning towards immaculate than not, and some incredible set up, and one episode so nonsensically bad it makes me want to eat drywall.

It’s just that the one terrible episode comes right at the end.

I love The Bad Batch. I love every single episode and all the things that were set up, but…eh, I think I’ll be ignoring the finale until further notice.

[scratchtovoid]

“Make it a son for a son”

There’s a new season two promo where we hear Matt saying Daemon’s infamous line for the first time. And it has me wanting to bring up something I see with the team black fandom.

(BOOK SPOILERS)

There’s an impulse within team black to distance the characters of team black but particularly Rhaenyra from B&C by presenting it as a rogue act committed by Daemon on his own.

Now, first the book does not tell us that. The book gives us little to go on beyond Daemon’s involvement and the obvious implication that Mysaria was his KL contact to set everything in motion.

The rest of the details are mostly speculation.

Rhaenyra’s involvement is limited to a letter from her husband promising that Luke would be avenged. We have no further details on what she knew or how she reacted. Which also gives the show lots of room to present Rhaenyra’s feelings about this revenge plot however they like.

But what I see often in this attempt to isolate B&C to a Daemon-plan not a team black plan, is a misunderstanding of Daemon as a character.

In a bid to defend Rhaenyra’s innocence in the act, Daemon can not just be the lone perpetrator, he is also the monster.

Except this is an intensely human act.

A personal attack.

He could have killed all of Aegon’s heirs in that moment. As well as TG’s two queens. That would be the political move. Taking out the other side purely for political gain regardless of the innocence of the children he attacked.

And this is where those arguments from even within team black fall flat to me.

Because this is not political. This is personal. This is a grieving parent and husband who has no control and could not prevent the initial attacks on his family.

It’s not only rage and revenge, it’s grief and guilt.

So when team black talks about this event and may even lean into the interpretation of Daemon being a monster. It actually takes away from the greater story of team black, part of what makes them unique in contrast to the greens.

The greens, and this looks to continue based on the promo which seems to suggest Otto wanting to use Jaehaerys’s funeral as a propaganda tool, are very politically driven.

Think about it, they’re acting on tradition, purposely wishing to limit the power of women. They use rumors at court as a weapon, look for deals to be made, deck their king out in symbols of legitimacy. They always have a political angle to the moves they make.

This does not mean they do not feel emotional! I’m not saying that. But team green always has this internal conflict of making the political move at the cost of the emotional gain.

And team black (but particularly Daemon) are the opposite. They will make politically bad moves to satisfy the emotional urge.

Look at Rhaenyra marrying Daemon in secret, yes there is a political angle, but ultimately that marriage was one for love. Or Rhaenyra imprisoning Coryls after turning on the dragonseeds.

And with B&C there is no political advantage! They gain nothing in terms of good will with the public or lords of the realm. They have no eliminated any threats. They actively let threats live!

So what am I getting at here?

I’m not justifying Daemon’s actions. But this is fiction. And sometimes I think it’s good to look at a story for more than just “right” and “wrong” or moral lessons.

I think GRRM asks such interesting character questions in the Dance.

What does it mean to do something in an act of pain that is clearly going to be detrimental to the other side?

What does it say about a person to do that?

I think team black specifically should be asking questions like that.

[flower-boi16]

I would like to ask what your opinion is on MDHWrites's blog, or some of his most comprehensive takes criticizing the show at large, for he's covered a lot of ground. What is your regard for his opinions, if you have seen it.

The second I saw this ask pop up in my inbox my thought was "should I even answer this?". On one hand, I would like to express my opinions on Writes' TOH takes since I have er...strong feelings about some of them, but on the other hand part of me still feels a bit iffy about it.

For my 200+ followers who don't know who tf this anon is talking about; MDHWrites is a tumblr user who makes a heavy amount of posts critisizing TOH, he's kind of the most well-known TOH critic on this site, at least in the TOH critical commuinity (and yes, TOH has a critical commuinity).

I remember once randomly stumbling across Writes' blog when I was new to tumblr and first discovered that critical tags were a thing and I started reading some of his posts. I don't remember exactly what all the posts I read said but I do vaguely remember some of the points Writes' made in the posts.

This was at a time where I kinda just accepted critisicm of things I liked rather than actually thinking about the validetly of the takes, and since Writes' posts sounded proffesional enough (and because I went on the toh critical tag and watched videos critisizing the show WAY too much) I think I kinda just forgot why I liked the show in the first place...? I know that sounds weird but I first watched TOH when I was 13 (I'm 14 now) and my analysis skills were still developing at the time.

A couple of months later after I rewatched The Owl House and fell back in love with the show leading me to grow an attatchment to it that was stronger than ever before I thought back to Writes' posts and decided to revist his blog and read a handful of posts out of curiosity to see what his points were. And...I thought going in that there might be some good points about the show but...I can't really say I agree with any of his takes.

While I don't Writes' TOH takes are Lily Orchard levels of infuriatingly media illiterate, and Writes' doesn't look like a bad person...I don't think his TOH takes are that good. They sounded professional at first but everytime I think about them I notice more holes. That's all I'm going to say. I don't want to cover Writes' TOH takes in detail because I know some might alert him of this post, he'll see it and I'll end up starting an argument I don't really want that.

I guess I'll just say that I think his comments about the understood scene in the posts I read feel like he completely missed the point of it. The scene is meant to be a moment of realization for Luz of what she truely wanted, it's not intended to be a "character finish" and just because she realized what ultimately wanted doesn't mean that her self-loathing and guilt of helping Belos is just going to go away.

He even goes as far as to say it doesn't matter to Luz as a character in his post about filler in TOH, where he labled several episodes that are extremely important for outside context as "filler" by the standards of the general commuinity that complains about Amphibia's filler (that post is a whole other can of worms that I don't want to get into) which is just....baffling.

I could also get into things like Writes' takes on Luz's depression arc or his post about Waffles or his post about grom factor (a fan comic by moringmark) but again I don't want to say anymore things here beyond that.

I just don't agree with most of the takes that Writes has on the show. I will say sometimes he makes interesting points like his post about why the boiling isles woulden't work as a setting to a sequel series which does raise some valid points and his analysis of Boscha's "redemption" on my post that he reblogged was fairly interesting (though his reasons for Luz reaching out to the collector not making any sense weren't valid to me) but overall I don't care for his TOH takes.

[greenshi]

alright tell me about YOUR current favorite guy now

I AM FINALLY DOING THIS i have been. so distracted lmaooo. BUT I decided to do the guy in my icon, fifth member of weezer and best FE character, Python <3. He may not be the Number One guy in my brain right this moment, but that spot and most after it are all taken by OCs, so. We're doing him instead. Also because of this tag because I think you'd like this guy jort

ANYWAY, Python. My guy. He's a character from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a recruitable archer early on in Alm's route.

Now, in Echoes, the class discrepancy between nobles and commoners is a prominent theme, especially in Alm's route. This is something that comes up in a lot of FE games, unsurprisingly, seeing as princes and thieves fight together side by side. And the games (at least those I've played, which is only FEA-FE3H. I know.) tend to handwave a lot of the more unsavory points of that topic. A lot of the time, conversations or supports that delve into that topic end in "yeah, being poor and starving sucks, but you know what also sucks? Being royalty! It's really hard :[" which, like, yeah, it is, but also one party here has the means to help the other, but is choosing not to instead say how their life sucks too, actually. Idk, these conversations always rubbed me in the wrong way a bit.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, Python is a commoner. And he doesnt buy any of that "being rich is hard too guys :[" shit for a Second. In his support with Clive (a nobleman knight who's opinion on the whole situation is "well some people have to be poor so I can be rich") he straight up tells him that his ideas on how society should be run are wrong and that his view on common people are condescending at best.

Python doesn't fight for honor or any sense of duty, he fights for his paycheck and his childhood friend who does feel that duty, Forsyth. Even if he and Forsyth disagree on many things, there's a mutual respect between the two, an understanding of their station, and a small rivalry between how to best navigate said station. Forsyth encourages Python to get out there, try things, put some effort into life. But Python just, doesn't see much of a point. But it's not for any depressive reason, or even straight apathy. Python just prioritizes rest and relaxation. He doesn't live to work, he has no dream job (which Forsyth takes as having no dream at all, not that Python would disagree), he just wants to enjoy his life; sleeping in the sun, having a few drinks, spending time with friends, and sharing stories and gossip.

Speaking of friends and gossip, I'm going to drop my favorite support of his, maybe even my favorite support in the whole game (even though its locked behind a dlc map like seriously what was up with this games dlc why is a support between two base game units behind a paywall-)

Going from this support, and the fact that neither of them have romantic endings, (Lukas' even saying he 'never wanted for companionship') this is a pretty clear attempt by FE at writing two aroace (or at least just aro) characters. And, idk, I think its really special. Neither are framed as missing out or needing another to be happy, the conversation is to the point and respectful, and they are both allowed to be full characters beyond this detail of their lives.

And that's a common thread through Python's character that I admire. In any other story, the character that had no want for big dreams, constant improvement, or romance would be framed as an empty person, someone deeply unhappy without anything to strive for. But, even as the other characters try and impose that narrative onto Python, that's never actually the case. He is happy as he is, doing just enough to be as comfortable as he can, taking rests and shortcuts all along the way. He will not sell his time more than he must, he will not work harder than he has to, he will not allow those who push themselves to breaking for those above them to guilt him into doing the same. He has nothing to prove, nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, the one time he could push himself, in his bad ending after Forsyth dies, *THAT* is when he is empty and miserable, fighting like his friend once did until his early, untimely death.

Python is just such a breath of fresh air. He was the one in my brain telling me say no to my boss long before Chilchuck, he is a character that not even FE has been able to write like that again (even when writing for him specifically, like his Heroes characterization is so off and bad augh). He is one of the very few canonically aro characters I can find, and I'm proud to have him napping in my icon for the foreseeable future.

[dubacheryking]

It seems like you really like the IT book( it 1986), so do you remember Eddie Corcoran’s story from chapter 6. Because like his chapter is for real one of the most heartbreaking chapters in the whole book and he’s like so underrated for no reason. Soooo like what’s your opinions on him and other little interesting thing like that lol.

:)

oh my GOG tbh i think eddie corcoran's death is straight up the most horrifying part of the book. like if u put a gun to my head and said "what part of IT 86 do u find the most stomach churning" THATS IT RIGHT THERE. no one ever really talks abt it by 90% of the fandom on here is movie based and they dont FUCKING include it for some godawful reason (i can understand the 1990 ver not including it specifically for censorship reasons, since it was the 90s and also made for tv and ALSO cut to 3hrs lol) but like. the fact that it wasnt in the movies is criminal tbh.

but i digress.

as for opinions and such regarding the corcoran boy.... i mean, we get next to nothing abt him. what we know is a) his stepdad is an abusive piece of shit b) he had a younger brother that he seemingly cared about deeply (SOBS) c) his pos stepdad killed his baby brother (LIKE ACTUAL BABY. A 4YO???? FR????) d) his death was horrific. theres a little bit more but but but i havent reread that chapter recently so some of it is certainly escaping me. i wish there was more about him as an actual person, but i also understand that w the book already being a billion pages long there is only so much small details that could actually be included, and the history of derry and main story obvs will trump this specific smaller story--but like, fr, i want to know more abt eddie. we know he was terrified of the thing from the black lagoon (fair) and obvs holds a lot of fear and anger and guilt regarding dorsey's death, we know hes abused, we know how he dies. its a weird paradox of being very close to this character (in terms of his pov at the time, being in his head and all just like w any of the main losers) and being extremely removed (we know nothing abt his internal life beyond what his abuse brings out). which. frankly it's somewhat genius bc, yeah, abuse DOES tend to stifle the actual personality/interests of the person being abused and DOES like literally fuck w the brain chemistry and processessing of a child (source: happened to me lolololol), but its also heartbreaking that all we know him as is One of The Missing. he can never be more. its fucked.

soooo . this got away from me. sorry if it makes little to no sense ill just do a small bit on my thoughts summarized HERE:

i wholeheartedly agree that eddie corcoran's death is like. the worst part of the story. listening to it makes me legit sick to my stomach in a way NO OTHER PART OF THE BOOK DOES. LEGIT. and i think the main reason for that is while cosmic horror space clown spider thing is fake, duh, and more obviously used as a stand in for trauma and specifically for childhood trauma and the lasting effects that it has on our psyche, eddie's death is REAL. dorsey's death is REAL. we see, in grusome, up close detail, the actual consequences of abuse and how it destroys people's lives--specifically children's. we see how the complacency of those around such families (eddie's mom, the teachers, the principal, the town of derry at large) contributes to the horrific mistreatment of the most vulnerable, and how NONE OF THEM suffer any consequences for their lack of action. the section ends with eddie's mother getting access to his savings, which amount to less than 20$. to do so, she has to have him legally declared dead, EVEN THOUGH THEY DO NOT HAVE A BODY. AND THAT'S FUCKED. SHE DOESN'T EVEN WANT TO MAKE SURE HE'S FUCKING DEAD BEFORE SHE DOES THIS, DOESN'T WANT THE CLOSURE, DOESN'T WANT TO LAY HIM TO REST, DOESN'T WANT A PLACE TO VISIT. I CAN'T. like obviously we see themes of abuse and neglect in the whole book, that's the whole point, but eddie's story is different. there is no winning. there is no escape. you can't spin it into a better life.

he's a kid, just like any of the losers, but to the universe, he's not 'special,' so his death doesn't matter. he could have been swapped in with any of the other characters--fuck, he literally shares the name of one of them!! and yet he's not, and because of that, he doesn't matter. his death effects no one. the only positive is that it reopens dorsey's case, and even then, the reopening of his brother's death almost entirely sweeps eddie under the rug. the town of derry turns away, and when the truth of dorsey corcoran's death is revealed, the shrug, go so very sad, and wipe their hands of it. just another child death at the hands of an adult monster, just another day.

[festivating]

Hi!!You have written about Elphaba's feelings of guilt so maybe you've thought about this: a little detail i kept looking for in Book 1 is whether the concept of "hell" exists in Unionism. but it was not mentioned, only an afterlife (which seems to be common, judging by the part in which Sarima tells a story). Some characters seem afraid of sinning but this doesn't work without stakes- Is the punishment experienced alive? I believed this since Frex seems to think he "deserves" the green baby for his faults, and in the case of Elphaba for sure ppl can experience some sort of culturally/socially induced religious guilt without necessarily adhering to Faith or believing in Hell.. But reading the second book the phrase "Shell go-to-hell" made me realize the word IS used in casual language throughout book 1 and 2. What do you think of this?

Since we discussed Unionism before I thought to send this publicly in case others are interested, sorry it's a weird ask lol

Not a weird ask whatsoever, this is something I have thought about yes!! Unionism is definitely big on the whole "afterlife" thing, which they also call "Other Land" and the "Beyond." Sarima even thinks Fiyero is waiting there for her. Elphaba thinks about it very bitterly, and calls it a "manipulation and a sop" after she hears Sarima's story, and right after that she goes on to say that both unionists and pagans talk about hell as intimidation and the "Other Land" as reward, so there is actually a concept of hell in unionism!

There's also this exchange between the kids:

“There’s tunnels from here all the way to hell,” said Irji. “Where? Why?” said Nor, and Liir echoed. “They’re hidden. I don’t know where. But everybody says so. Ask Six. I think because this used to be a waterworks headquarters — it did. Hell burns so hot they need water, and the devils tunneled up to here.”

So the fact he mentions "devils" and hell burning hot makes me think their concepts of heaven and hell are pretty similar to how catholic beliefs operate. (Wow unionism paralleling catholicism... shocker🤣). I'm not sure if there are any other clues or information in books 2-4 because it's been a while since I read those in full, but that's what I gathered from the first book!

[oldsargasso]

That is absolutely when Kim realized how gentle Kenta is! That he hates seeing people be hurt. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a similar “I told you to run” conversation like Kenta did with Jeff, to which Kim probably laughed. (I also still fervently believe it was Kenta who dropped Kim off with Jeff) (grumpy patient Kim would get at my heart so quickly good god)

Oh no nonononono you are putting thought into my head about clueless hottie Kenta. I am going to get back to you on that later.

VERY occasionally Winner is not the worst LOL. (Kenta knows how to endure, more than anything—I’M HURTING THANKS) And yes I agree, it’s not Winner’s thing, it’s just something he’s doing for his boyfriends (very occasionally not the worst)

Oh god Dean really is that desperate for acknowledgment isn’t he AHDJFJSJ. It may have been why he stayed in the background for so long—he probably was more than eager to do any odd little jobs to help out the team, thinking it would get him somewhere because he always got little pats on the head so he must be doing something right, no? If you do write more fic for them I’ll be on my KNEES

The first time Winner says something genuinely appreciative to Dean, Dean lights up so brightly that it kickstarts Winner’s entire character development arc.

ME TOO, YOU GET ME, I want all the details 😭 how much do they get as prize money, how is it split amongst the team, how much does gas cost etc etc. 

(took me forever to reply to this because I keep reading your other ask oh my godddd)

exactly!! like Kenta is violent when necessary, but he doesn't revel in causing pain (unlike SOME PEOPLE*). I can never be convinced otherwise it wasn't Kenta who handed Kim to Jeff (I actually wrote it in one of my wips:

There’s no order beyond release him, then but there wasn’t an order not to call Jeff, so Kenta does. Mr Tony didn’t tell him to come back quickly, either, so once Kenta’s undone the ropes around Kim’s wrists and ankles, he waits with him. “Do you need anything?” Kenta asks and doesn’t flinch when Kim turns an incredulous look on him. “No, thank you.” Even beaten up, bruised and ill-treated, Kim remains polite. It makes Kenta’s fingers twitch. What would it take for Kim to snap?

(*I keep thinking about like. guilt and penance re: Dean's actions v. Kenta's v. Winner's. I think Kenta is easiest absolved by Kim, and everyone else, because while he did choose to stay and perform Tony's orders, in Kenta's eyes there was never really a choice. whereas the other two consciously choose to do bad things. but the other layer is that Winner was actively brutal towards Kim, whereas Dean was against Babe. idk I just think there's a lot to explore there in terms of how they all move past it but it's probably a bit heavy for the fun polycule chat lol)

see!! Winner can be selfless sometimes you know. he's just going along with things for his boyfriends' sakes. he gets NOTHING out of watching the way Kenta easily (gratefully) sinks into subspace, or how Kim sounds confident and assured and his hands move the same way, or how Dean shivers and bites his lip every time Kim points out how well he's done at certain placements of rope. Winner just reclines next to them and watches and doesn't do anythinggg, he's practically a saint by these measures.

he IS he's soooo pathetic about it. god I cannot handle the idea of Alan and co. unconsciously/unintentionally fulfilling the absolute bare minimum of Dean's praise kink, and probably Dean didn't even realise because like? Alan's whole thing is family and that's what you do for family, you help each other out and you try to make things easier for the people you love, and if it felt like Dean was always the one doing all that...it's not like the others were unappreciative, it's just that they didn't reciprocate because to them it was just Dean doing what he wanted to do! he loves all those little jobs, look how happy he is when he finishes something. I honestly can't think too much about Dean and Alan's mismatch of the family ideal or I will. explode.

The first time Winner says something genuinely appreciative to Dean, Dean lights up so brightly that it kickstarts Winner’s entire character development arc. screaming!!! that is EXACTLY it. honestly we NEED to discuss how the polycule forms in the first place. (but I need to know everyone survives the final ep first 😭 the only one I'm 100% confident will survive is Dean because he won't be there 😭)

(re winnerdean fic... I have the opening scene mostly written and the final line! just gotta...write the rest...)

RIGHT like Babe's rich as hell just from racing. Way has a car dealership as a ...side hustle? does Winner have family money for all those jackets or is that what he spends all his winnings on. WAIT HE NEVER WINS. also I think there should be more exploration of the fact that everyone seems to go to the same gym.

[vechter]

🍍🍈🍒 for the askss xoxo

🍍 What kind of AUs do you like? Are there any AUs you hate or just generally have beef with?

answered here! also, one very specific AU i hate: tim joining the batfam early bc his parents are oh-so-neglectful and he's just-a-little-guy and he's going to save jason and he's going to fix the batfam! yuck.

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

it's dick grayson ofc. i've actually done a very detailed version of headcanons for him here that i’m pretty pleased with. additional stuff that comes to mind:

periods of time where he hallucinates people. like this has a canonical basis, but i want him to sporadically hallucinate people— even those who are alive— even when he's not stressed or under some dubious toxin. kinda something like titans (2018) where bruce appearing out of nowhere and being a bitch is just commonplace for him.

shutting down probing conversations about robin and legacy. he can't talk about it beyond surface level platitudes and even if he could, he wouldn't know where to start because it's all tangled up for him. he has periods of immense guilt and grief about what he's created and it causes him to avoid his parents' graves sometimes. there's no pattern to any of it, at least not one that he has been able to identify.

random one but he can untangle wired earphones very quickly and very easily. it pisses off roy and donna sooooo much.

doesn't bother with bat-crazy levels of security for his apartments after blüdhaven. instead, he just has alarms for the niche/cavity he stores his nightwing suit and gear. it drives tim and babs absolutely crazy but he doesn't budge on it.

after he gets his act together a little bit, he actually keeps in touch with sophia. goes to her graduation from brentwood, helps her pick out college classes. she's one of the few civilians who has access to his nightwing lines if she wants. she'll sometimes even call him when he's on patrol to complain about a professor or a grade and he'll alternate between punching a thug and giving her rlly weird advice about making sure she doesn't end up joining a vampire cult.

🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

sth about writing what you know... usually really enjoy writing dick & bruce, dick & donna, dick & tim.

i love cass & dick interactions too but those need to be written in a very specific way which doesn't always come to me. i've to be in a very particular mood for it bc the crux for a lot of their initial interactions is a certain discordant tone that later morphs into a sort of kinship+damage about being warped mirror images. they can see each other but understanding is a whole different ball game.

as for romantic, i'm a dickroy girlie through and through. i would also like to write dick & midnighter flirtations but i've only skimmed his comics so i'd need to actually sit and read them lol

[petrichorpetals]

So I finished reading Babel and I have thoughts tm

Spoilers under the cut:

So I'll begin this with I went into Babel expecting to love it! And I love the magic system, I love the world building that we do and it had me 100% sold in the beginning. But at about the halway point, cracks started to form. I love the idea of Hermes and I do love the heavy lifting that the book does to make this as period accurate as possible. I feel like the point that the book honestly lost me for the first time was when Robin covered for Victoire and Ramy when they were stealing for Hermes. I hate how Robin doesn't play off innocence at all and immediately folds once Hermes even gets so much as mentioned. I hate that he has to do his own mental gymnastics over justifying giving up one singular safe house that never has any ramifications. I hate how Victoire and Ramy immediately get mad at him for not telling them about Hermes even though they know how secretive Hermes is, and I additionally hate how long it even takes for them to have this conversation other than not now Letty's around.

And Letty. Oh how I could go on about Letty.

I feel like my biggest complaint for this book is probably the lack of character development. We hardly ever get Robin's thoughts and opinions on things and in the beginning, that's intentional. He doesn't want to think too hard about difficult things like the professor being his father or even small details on how he feels about his friends besides they simply are. The book tries to explain how they're actually really good true friends when it's glaringly obvious they're friends of opportunity. Ramy is well described and is honestly the character with the most personality in this book. Letty is constantly being excluded from talks either because she's white so she "won't understand" so they never bother to even try to explain, or because she doesn't know about Hermes. I'll save her rant for now but it's both unsurprising that the girl literally named Victory and a descendant of Haiti, the nation that successfully led and won a slave revolt and the option for self governance, was the one to continue on the narrative despite her having honestly less character growth than Robin. Robin as well didn't even feel like Robin at the end, he just felt like we shifted Griffin's character onto him without doing much to support it. I can understand becoming jaded with the world, but the boy that was so wracked with guilt over killing his father suddenly shifting to I'm okay with active murder and slaughter of innocents is too hard of a right. Especially when he was so terrified by griffin doing it!!! Robin left Hermes explicitly because all of these ideas of suffering were so far away that he can't see them to feel compassion towards these people's problems, yet at the end he martyrs himself for this same cause???? We did a full 180% shift without the groundwork or explanation. We started killing off characters without fleshing them out any beyond a name and occasionally a tragic backstory we'll drop 2 or 3 chapters before they die at BEST. Most characters exist as just strawman puppets that we can tug around for plot. We spent so long occupying the tower and I couldn't tell you anything about the end occupants of the tower other than two of them were maybe dating???

Far far too much time was spent trying to shoehorn in our political agenda to the point where all subterfuge and metaphor gets thrown out the window in favor for saying colonialism is bad. What's worse is that it's even a political agenda I agree with! It would have been better if we have characters actually living out the tragic circumstances that we're told they find themselves in other than them being vaguely talked about as things like "Yeah no this shop refused Ramy and I entry" and never expanded on other than that empty statement. I'm not saying that you have to write out a whole hate crime but you can act out some of the microagressions. I think the worst part is that the few microagressions we do get acted out never got any weight... like the scene where Robin gets invited to hang out with the rich nepo baby kids and they treat him as an exotic toy. Robin literally just tells them off, steals their booze, and absconds from the interaction facing no consequences other than a bruised ego. The boys don't retaliate in any way. (As a side note: I do really enjoy how Robin kept comparing his situation to certain Cantonese words towards the end and I desperately wish he was doing that the entire book.)

Another major complaint I have with this book is there's 0 nuance. It's all excruciatingly quite literally black and white. I think Abel is the only confirmed white person besides maybe the professors (who we never get race described to my knowledge) that doesn't turn out to be an asshole. Additionally, we've been led to believe that this system is hundreds of years old and we have no people of color in positions of power? None that are considered British citizens? We're told that the live translators are in high demand and Babel has associates everywhere around the globe, and yet Victoire claims that there's no one that looks like them in a position of power and that they'd never be considered British. As someone that adores that kind of history, I can tell you for a fact that it's untrue. They might not have been 100% treated with the same respect if they weren't light skinned enough to pass but there's been black men with positions of power within Britain. There's probably a lot more people just hiding their ancestry that can pass as white. They even bring up the fact that Robin can pass better than Ramy like!!! There's no one that really waffles back and forth between these worlds like Robin did in the beginning. It's either you live out your life normally and you're acknowledging all the harm done around you and you're okay with it or you fight a losing battle and suffer because of it.

And if that isn't the biggest complaint I have with the book. It honestly felt that by the end nothing fucking mattered at all!!!!! Robin even acknowledges that even by destroying the tower, it's just symbolic and they'll rebuild it later. There's no change to the system at all beyond death at a large scale. It gives such conflicting messages. The parliament was still going to vote to go to war against china, all of hermes basically got destroyed in Britain, and yet the girl named Victory escaped to go find the resistance elsewhere????? The book acts as if the tower going down was one final act of defiance but it went down because like Victoire said, Robin wanted to die. I also hated the way that we waved around Griffin's letter to Robin and once Robin refused to read it the first time it became blindly obvious he never will. Victoire doesn't even tell us what it says other than how she read it and Griffin tells Robin about assumingly their younger brothers also by their father.

But one of the biggest missed opportunities came from Robin's name. His real name was stolen from him by his father and he was forced to become Robin. Robin tries to reclaim back that part of himself by rejecting his father but he never tells the audience his true name. It's even hinted in the book that he remembers it still, and yet he dies with us only ever knowing him as Robin. Honestly it should have been a ceremony with Hermes of reclaiming back the heritage stolen from you by reclaiming your own name. It'd work for security too since when pressed for associates, they can't give up Robin if they only know him as Xiu Ling. It would have added so much depth to the characters if Victoire named herself that. There's so many missed opportunities that this book had that it ignored in favor of trying to advance the worldbuilding and push the story's morals.

Okay I've talked around her for long enough. It's time to talk about Letty. There's so much going on that it's hard to figure out where to start. I think parts of Letty were written well. I think the book accurately was foreshadowing the way that they were purposely leaving her out of the loop. The way she occasionally had to dress as a man to have any respect. You can see the way they isolated her on purpose and I agree that in her position I would have gone a little mad as well. But then we have her indoctrunated into Hermes and the way they weren't looking for her in conjunction with the professor's murder like they were the other three. That one honestly made no sense, (beyond the obvious trying to foreshadow her betrayal) but something that genuinely made me angry was the scene where they were actually being honest with Letty about how people are being racist towards them and Letty started crying for them. Robin says a line that was the equivalent of "It's funny how we told her about all the horrible stuff we deal with and we've become the ones to comfort her" and it immediately pissed me off. Yes I understand that this is meant to be synonymous with white guilt and white people making themselves the center of poc narratives, but it doesn't fully work here. It's not always shown, but they do make an active effort to hide how badly they're treated to Letty since she "doesn't understand" without making an effort to educate her. Of course she crying! She's being told that her best friends in the world are being treated like shit when she actively forgets how the world views them as nothing more than their skin color. Letty has never been shown to be actively racist, just borderline maliciously ignorant. And some of the things that they get mad at her for "not noticing" are things that happen behind closed doors that she couldn't have been aware of???? Like the professor wanting Victoire to wear slave chains thing. It's a fucked up thing that we as an audience cry along with Letty when we find out about it. By insisting that Letty shouldn't be crying for her friends, you insist that the audience shouldn't either. I really don't know what response they expected out of her. They literally describe Letty as basically having a "delicate sensability" and yet they expect her to basically go :/ damn that's fucked up anyways how about lunch? Did they want her to passionately write the schoolboard? You're telling her a pitiful story and berating her for being willfully ignorant, of course she's going to cry that she never noticed! Society had also trained her not to notice to begin with! That shit needs to be unlearned from the impassivity ingrained in us by society.

But Letty's betrayal. Other than her loose foreshadowing that we were talking about earlier, it honestly comes from nowhere. Letty later tried to justify herself that they were threatening violent and criminal acts but the only one actively doing that was Griffin. Everyone else at Hermes only tolerated his violent tendances and agreed to them only as a last resort option. They were literally about to leave to go spread out pamphlets for god's sake, not start an active blood war like she tries to say. Also what was her fucking plan there? They're planning on being potentially violent so I'm going to stop it with more aggressive violence? I really really don't buy the part of her being an admiral's daughter so she's a good shot. Her father was negligent towards her to the point where he barely taught her anything, there's absolutely no way that he taught his DAUGHTER how to shoot. They also tell us this fact as though we ever saw Letty shoot a gun before this scene. The reasoning that her friends were indoctrinated into almost committing violent criminal acts is a solid one, but I genuinely don't get the sudden shift of valuing being patriotic over her friends that she'd previously professed she'd die for. Telling the police because she's worried for them is one thing, but actively coming back to lead the charge and shoot one of them is another. And especially her shooting the boy that she liked???? I'm with Victoire and Robin in asking Why????????? It's so out of left field entirely. But I will say that Robin is assuming a LOT when he tries to say that she shot him because he didn't like her back. You could tell that wasn't the full truth, but we'll never fucking know because Babel is allergic to characters having moral nuance so she just says that she killed him and didn't mean to. Letty and Robin both experience such hard right shifts in personality by the end that they're unrecognizable.

I always do this thing when I read media where I describe what the reading experience is like and for Babel it was like being constantly on a slow moving train passing by set after set. Large swatches of the story felt like a montage rather than a story we could see taking place. It felt like a slideshow of events shoved together. I truly believe that if this book was several novels and we learned to go heavy on the character work and development as well as adding conflicting narratives within the story it would easily be a 5 star book. Give the characters a personality beyond their suffering and make them less of strawmen from their culture. Like for fucks sake, we showed a Chinese girl on exhibit whose feet were bound and just went isn't that fucked up lol anyways and just moved on. We were being told that the girl is just a spectacle to be gawked at, but that's exactly what the narrative treated her as too! These characters don't exist beyond their suffering they endure and have no personality beyond that. We have a political regime that is actively harming its citizens, no longer passively, and people just go about their day as usual uncaring about the destruction around them. The British can put up with passivity but the effects of the seige on Babel made it to where they could no longer passively not care. They went into this tower with no plan and honestly it would have gone better with the pamphleting!!!! It had the same effect!!!!!!!! The bad press and social outcry would have pressed them to doing something, but the narrative decides that the government just doesn't care. You can really tell that at the end the author didn't know what to do with the story so they decided this is the best course of action. It's also blatantly obvious that Griffin was originally meant to be the main character, the author got hit by writers block, tried to write out the story from another perspective and liked that one better. Griffin's sudden death to Sterling wouldn't have as much forced backstory otherwise.

[cryoculus]

— reparations 05 ⟢

i have a very marketable skill called “jumping to conclusions”

★ FEATURING; arataki itto x gn!reader

★ WORD COUNT; 4.6k words

★ TAGS; modern au, flower shop au, slow burn, idiots to lovers, tooth-rotting fluff, mutual pining, no smut, sfw

★ NOTABLE CHARACTERS; arataki itto, thoma, kamisato ayato, kamisato ayaka

★ MASTERLIST . AO3 ★

“I can’t believe I wasn’t here when he did the thing. What kind of father am I?!”

You’re in the middle of shaping the bonsai you have on display when Itto sulks behind the counter—chin propped on top as he watches the silk white cocoon inside Itto the Fourth’s jar. You roll your eyes.

“Well, if you spent your precious time being here for his milestones in life instead of canoodling with the yakuza…”

“Nope! You are not guilt-tripping me out of this, master!”

“Wasn’t counting on it,” you scoff.

So, as things might have it, after placing your late-night order at Shimura’s, you and Itto decided to lounge in the shop to wait for the food. But the moment he sat down on your swiveling seat, the gang leader refused to take his eyes off the caterpillar-turned-chrysalis that was Itto the Fourth. You actually forgot to bring up that it was finally one step closer to the next phase of its insect life given all the commotion that occurred over the last hour. But your patient didn’t seem to mind the delayed info.

“Say,” you begin, putting down your shears as you flash him a pointed look. “If you won’t tell me exactly what’s going on, can I at least know how you got on the yakuza’s bad side in the first place?”

Itto hums, craning his neck to meet your gaze. “Eh? Ain’t that the same thing?”

“Don’t think about it like that! Your origin story is different from your current predicament, you know.”

And then Itto makes a motion of pinching his thumb and index finger together before sliding it across his lips like a zipper—shaking his head petulantly. What a damn kid. 

To his credit, Itto may be idiotic about eighty percent of the time, but he’s still pretty sharp. You’re not sure if he’ll even spill the details once the entire ordeal is over. You can almost hear your mother chiding you for nosing into another person’s business, but what the hell is so important that Itto would have to (literally) break his back for the sake of it? A lifetime supply of yakisoba? A printed certificate that says ‘Arataki “The Yakuza Boss” Itto’? The longer you wallow in your own thoughts, the wilder your imagination runs, so you decide to spare yourself the trouble.

As you get back to your feet, you peek behind the blinds you drew at closing time, wondering when your food is going to arrive. Though it’s only been ten minutes since you placed your order, you were beyond starved. However, there don’t seem to be any delivery motorcycles in sight. Guess your dinner isn’t arriving miraculously early. 

“Is there anything I can do to make you tell me?” you ask out of the blue, turning your head to Itto, who is now comfortably leaning against the backrest of your chair. “Beating you in an onikabuto battle? An eating contest? Rock-paper-scissors?”

Yeah. You’ve totally lost it. You don’t even know why you’re trying so hard to get it out of him. It’s none of your business! Repeat until true! 

“Those are quite the honorable choices, if I do say so myself.” He laughs, cracking his fingers together. “But not even a mountainload of mora can get me to disclose the details. And that’s saying something ‘cause I’m kinda broke right now, but who cares!”

You do a double-take on that one. “Wait, you’re broke?” 

“Hm? Is that so hard to believe?”

You’re quick to stride back to the counter, placing a palm in front of him as you shoot Itto an incredulous stare. “The rent in this place is forty thousand yen a month. Rent that I pay to your gang. Your gang, who owns this property. Did you just happen to forget that?”

“Oh, yeah…”

“Shinobu doesn’t let you handle any of the money, does she?”

“Um… No, she does not.”

“Then how the hell have you been getting by all this time?” you nearly shout, throwing undecipherable hand gestures everywhere. “I-I don’t even pay you—”

Itto effectively cuts off your rambling by pressing a finger to your lips, making your eyes go wide as he shushes you. He meets your gaze earnestly, and only speaks once you’ve completely gone silent.

“I know you’re my master and I still have tons to learn from you when it comes to gardening or whatever. But lemme tell you this: you need to learn how to chill.” He says every word so slowly, it’s as if he’s talking to a prepubescent teenager. “Look at me! Barely escaped with my life back there, but I’m bonding with Itto the Fourth ‘cause the situation calls for it. Sometimes, you gotta adapt to strange environments, y’know?”

Chill. Right, yeah. Chill. A.K.A., something that you were already lacking the moment Itto didn’t step through the front door on the first day of his leave. And now he barges into your home, passes out, makes you treat both his wounds and him to dinner. Where the hell are you supposed to get a decent supply of goddamn chill?!

“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” you balk sarcastically, slapping his hand away. “Thank you, Arataki. You just solved half the world’s problems with unsolicited advice.”

To your absolute joy, he chuckles aloud, looking way too pleased with himself. “You’re too kind! Some of my boys said I should start writing for an advice column in the daily newspaper. What do you thi—”

All of a sudden, Itto’s cheery voice cuts to the thick silence of the shop. He stills, rising to his full height as rusty amber eyes do a cautious sweep around the room. You’re about to ask what’s gotten into him before the man before you promptly has all the color drained from his face, as if having realized something drastic.

“Tsk, he’s coming...” he mutters, and for a moment, you momentarily mimic the shock on his face. Who’s coming? Those fuckers that hazed him? 

“Itto—”

“Yo, I’m going to, uh…” he trails off, grabbing Itto the Fourth’s jar before tucking it beneath his arm. The gang leader jams a thumb over his shoulder with a wobbly smile. “Hide in your room for a sec. Is that okay with you?”

“What?” You scowl. “Are you just going to leave me to entertain those lunatics alo—hey!”

Not even securing your explicit permission, Itto bolts back up to your apartment with his stupid hibernating caterpillar—leaving you right in the dust. The room is silent, save for the erratic thrum of your heartbeat that’s making you feel a little psyched out. Should you call the police? But if the person (people?) that Itto sensed was dangerous, surely he wouldn’t leave you to deal with them for him, right? But then again, cooking up assumptions about your unwitting apprentice was a common mistake that you’re growing tired of making.

Your instincts jolt to life when you hear three knocks on the front door of the shop, making your heart plummet to your stomach. 

It takes you a moment to realize you’re locked in another game of ‘Guess Who’s on the Other Side’. This time, it could either be A.) Itto’s assailant(s) or B.) the food delivery guy. Though your hunch was wrong about Tora’s sudden appearance in the balcony, you were pretty damn sure this can only be one or the other. 

Calm down, you tell yourself. Sure, Itto isn’t the best at keeping his temporary employment here all that discreet, but surely the yakuza won’t try to drag you into their problems. You’ve got nothing to do with all that! 

With a clean conscience, you breathe deep, compose yourself, and open the door.

“And here I thought you’d gone straight to bed.”

When you see who it is, your jaw nearly unhinges itself from your skull and lands on the floor. How the fuck can you be so wrong twice in the same night?!

“A-Ayato?” you stammer, but he’s already letting himself in—shrugging off the coat off his shoulders as he marvels at the state of your shop. “Lovely place you have here,” he comments. “I might send in an order or two pretty soon since Ayaka has been gushing about your bouquets non-stop.”

You can’t even be bothered to feel flattered at the promised revenue because you’re processing the presence of not just one, but three people that have entered your shop past closing time. Ayaka and Thoma followed suit right after the force of nature that is Kamisato Ayato, but thankfully these two look a bit more apologetic.

“You weren’t picking up any of our calls,” Ayaka sighs, stuffing her phone in her handbag and unraveling the scarf around her neck. “We thought you might’ve been in trouble.”

Calls…? As in, plural? Shit. You left your phone upstairs after that strange, heart-to-heart conversation with Itto on your balcony. You hadn’t bothered checking it since you finished patching him up. But you attempt to mask your surprise by shifting everyone else’s attention to Thoma instead.

“I told you something just came up, right?” you sigh. “Why’d you go ahead and let Ayato-nii march all the way here just to see if I’m fine?”

The blond chuckles, already sounding defeated. “We all know when waka’s got something set on his mind, there’s no stopping him.”

Well…that is true. 

You guess there’s no use trying to point fingers now that the Kamisato trio was here, so you just tell them to get comfortable instead. Thank Archons Itto suddenly rushed upstairs (for reasons that still eluded you). It’s going to be pretty hard to explain what a shirtless gang leader is doing waiting for late night takeout with you to these guys. Even if the four of you have been through weirder shit in the past. 

“Has business been faring well?” Ayato asks, carefully draping his fingers across the bonsai you were just trimming earlier. 

You nod. “Uh, yeah! So far so good. The people here in Hanamizaka have been sweet and accommodating. Didn’t really expect that in a place handled by the Arataki Gang.”

For some reason, the older Kamisato raises an eyebrow at that and you internally panic. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Was bringing it up a bad idea? Nahhhhh, Ayato couldn’t possibly know about Itto’s temporary post here. You aren’t even sure if Ayaka knows since Thoma isn’t really a snitch. You should be safe. Maybe.

Then, you hear a loud noise coming from upstairs.

Ayaka glances over to the stairwell curiously and you bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from actually screaming. Yep, entertaining these three and kicking them out ASAP should be your main priority right now. Close college friends plus big brother or not.

“What was that?” Ayato wonders.

“I-It’s probably just Mikan,” you laugh nervously. “She’s been really hyperactive lately. Turns the place upside down whenever she isn’t asleep hahaha!”

He looks, by no means, convinced of your reasoning, but thankfully Ayato plays along and decides to drift over to your beloved succulent rack. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Ayaka, Thoma, we were…informally invited to the wedding of one of the daughters of the branch families. I say informally because the ceremony is still in its planning stages.”

“Is there any reason you’re telling us this in advance as well?” Thoma asks.

“Mmm, well I heard the bride-to-be, who is one of our cousins, is going to wed a commoner from the city,” Ayato elaborates. “A commoner who suggested that this flower studio is going to take charge of the necessary arrangements for the wedding.” 

You take a moment to process that, vaguely remembering a job your mother told you to look out for the last time you were home. “...Do you mean Andou-san?” 

For the past few weeks, you were so preoccupied with keeping Itto in check that you completely forgot all about it. But who knew Andou’s fiancée was from a Kamisato branch family? Huh, small world. 

“Forgive me, I’m not very good with names, but when our cousin bought up your store in today’s lunch meeting, I just felt the need to bring you three together again.” Ayato laughs softly as he picks up one of the tiny potted succulents, casting a cheery stare at his present audience. “Just like old times, yes?”

“Nii-sama, the three of us have always kept in touch,” Ayaka sighs. “Is there anything else you’d like to talk to them about?”

The older man hollers, setting down the succulent as he raises his hands in surrender. “Oh, fine, fine. You caught me. Another reason why I wished to catch up with our dear friend is…this funny story told to me by one of my secretaries.”

“One of your secretaries?” you repeat.

Ayato nods. “She lives around this area. Told me she was walking home after sorting out some documents at the estate in Yougou Heights when she walked past Sakura Street and… Realized a motorcycle crashed into this very same shop! Shocking, is it?”

…Count on Ayato to express his concern in the most backwards way possible. You can feel your tongue turning sandpaper dry as your eyes discreetly rivet back to Ayaka and Thoma—two people you kept in the dark about the night you first met Arataki Itto. They exchange puzzled looks almost in unison, which means this is probably the first time Ayato brought the matter to their attention.

“Crash?” you chuckle, gesturing around the shop. “Does this look like a place that’s been trashed by a motorcycle, Ayato-nii?”

“Well, now that you mention it, that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case,” he hums thoughtfully. “But I couldn’t help but wonder…especially when Thoma over here told us about your lively helper. Arataki…was it?”

Fuck. He’s on to you. Ayato is soooo on to you. 

“Oh, yeah. Itt—uh, Arataki. That’s his name. Y’know, the gangster.”

“From what I heard, that man is kind of a bum,” Ayato remarks warily, folding his arms. “Yet he’s working here?” 

“Yeah, ‘course he is!” you reply a bit too quickly. “That guy um, takes odd jobs whenever money’s starting to get tight so I’m just helping out. It’s only for a few weeks.” Shot in the dark. You still don’t know how Itto’s made it this far without a stable job, on top of those weird allusions to a life in prison he’s yet to speak to you about.

“So where is he now?”

As if the man in question wishes to answer Ayato’s inquiries for himself, yet another crash resounds from upstairs. Holy shit. You are going to rip Itto to shreds once you’re done dealing with Ayato. Could he be any more goddamn obvious?!

“Mikan, stop messing with the furniture!” you yell (somewhat) convincingly. “A-Anyways, that guy is on leave right now. So if you’re looking for him, you might have to contact his deputy, Shinobu instead.”

“Do you need help rounding up your cat or something?” Thoma offers. “You always count on me to calm her down, remember?”

The mere suggestion is enough to send you into cardiac arrest. “Nope! It’s fine. Mikan’s just going through it is all. She’ll calm down eventually.”

“Is that why you weren’t able to have dinner with us?” Ayaka shoots you a worried look. “I know a well-practiced vet from Watatsumi Island. Would you like me to give you his card?” 

“Hey, come on!” you groan—feeling all sorts of pressured from their kind suggestions. Gods, you can only imagine how much these three were going to fuss if they found out that Itto’s crashing stunt was actually true. “You have all got to chill. We haven’t gotten together in nearly a year, and you guys choose to spend the time worrying? How about we call it a night for now and let’s just…hang out this weekend! How’s that sound?”

Ayato starts to stroke his chin contemplatively. “Hm, I did ask my secretary to free up my schedule next week. Business trips drain the life out of a man, if you kids only knew.”

“Nii-sama, you’re only three years older than us.”

“Ah, the ignorance of youth is bliss I can no longer attain.”

“They’re right, though,” Thoma, thank Archons, agrees with you, straightening the collar of his own jacket with an apologetic smile. “We’ve already imposed too much. Let’s all just continue this on the weekend. Should we meet you here?”

The last bit was directed at you, to which you respond in turn. “Sure. I promise I won’t stand you guys up anymore.”

“We’ll hold you to that then,” Ayato huffs, digging into the pocket of his trousers before tossing something in Thoma’s direction. Fortunately, the blond is dextrous enough to catch it mid-air. “Go take Ayaka back to the car. I’ll just put down a few orders I’d like our dear friend to make for me.”

Thoma nods without question, twirling Ayato’s keys around his index finger as he and Ayaka exchange farewells with you. Though, you try not to think about how your best friend’s stare lingers on you a tad longer than usual. 

When the door shuts behind the two of them, Ayato paces around the shop for a few moments more. Though you’re sure as hell he was just stalling, you can tell that the fondness in his eyes as he surveys each shelf is anything but fake. 

“So my office back at home has been looking very dull to me as of late,” he laments. “The rainforests of Sumeru are quite a refreshing sight, and I’d like to emulate the scenery, no matter how minimal, inside my workspace. That’s why I wanted to ask which decorative pieces you recommend for the setting I have in mind.”

You rack your mind for a catalogue of tropical plants that could suit Ayato’s tastes right then and there, feeling a bit proud of yourself to have earned his favor. “Let me see, uh, Monstera plants make for good minimalist decorations in the office, Ayato-nii. I actually have some displayed right…here.”

Wandering around the rows of shelves, you show Ayato a miniature version of the lush green plant that seemingly has holes on its leaves. “This is what they actually look like. They didn’t get attacked by pests or anything.”

“Oho, these are exactly what I saw by the riverbanks.” He nods. “I’ll have someone pick up, hmm, five of these within the week along with a check for the payment. Just text me the invoice after.”

“Sure thing.”

You’d be lying if you say you weren’t expecting him to sneak in something else in such a casual conversation about the items you have on sale. If there’s anything you know best about Kamisato Ayato, it’s that he likes to keep his intentions tucked discreetly between two different pages of a book—so that only those who are meant to know their meaning can read between the lines. But as you quietly see Ayato out of the shop, you wonder if it’s actually possible for him to do things without an underlying motive beneath all that pretense.

“A shame that you weren’t able to sample Komore Teahouse’s special dinner sets tonight,” he sighs, raising a hand to pat your head affectionately as he puts his coat back on. “But we all have lives to live and other matters to attend to at times. Just make sure you show up on Saturday, yes? You promised~”

“Yes, Ayato-nii. I promise.” You spare him a hearty laugh, wrapping your arms around Ayato tenderly. The years you spent growing older alongside him and his siblings always makes you feel like you were part of their family, too. Well, Ayato did say to never hesitate calling them your family once, and you’ve always done as told.

“Can you promise me one more thing?” 

Pulling away, you meet his silver-eyed gaze with brows raised. “What is it?”

He gazes at you with a tinge of seriousness for the first time tonight, one hand placed on top of your shoulder. Ayato opens his mouth, as if raring to speak his mind, but the moment you anticipate his words, they never come.

“...Forget it. I might be speaking out of turn,” the older man sighs, smiling sheepishly to himself. “Just—take care of yourself. Your future’s looking quite alright here in Hanamizaka, but I hope you know it won’t hurt to be more cautious.”

“You sound just like my dad, it’s kind of creepy,” you joke, patting his hand with yours. “Got it. Now, shoo! Ayaka and Thoma are probably waiting for you in—”

“Shimura’s delivery!”

Startled, you glance over at a man whose motorcycle is parked by the curb—the familiar Shimura’s logo printed brightly on the delivery box behind him. You can practically feel the day’s fatigue evaporate from your body at the sight of it.

“I’m the one who placed the order!” you say, waving him over. But as the delivery man scrambles over to where you stand, Ayato flashes you a minute nod—one you return with a warm smile that doesn’t falter even when he’s already walking away.

“Late night special for—” the delivery man practically announces to the whole neighborhood as he squints at the receipt in his other hand. “Arataki Itto?”

Again, you feel your entire body seize up at the mention of his name. You whip around to the direction Ayato headed when he finally made his leave, chest threatening to burst. He hasn’t gotten far yet, and the possibility of him having heard what this mouthy delivery guy just said is more likely than not. But Ayato doesn’t look back. In fact, he just keeps his strides forward as if he heard nothing at all.

“Yeah,” you respond to the man in front of you with a queasy smile. “That’s our order alright…”

“Well that took long enough!”

You don’t even have the energy to snap at Arataki once you make it back to your apartment, carefully setting down your food on the now-tidy coffee table. Huh. Did he clean up while you were downstairs or something? Only the remote to your TV and Itto the Fourth’s pickle jar littered the surface.

“What took long enough?” you sigh. “The food or me getting rid of my impromptu guests?”

Itto snorts from where he’s sitting cross-legged on your sofa. Thankfully, he’s now wearing a shirt but it seems a few sizes too—wait, is that your old pep rally shirt? “Duh! I was talkin’ about aniki. I have the patience of a mother when it comes to food, mind you. But when that guy’s in the vicinity, ohhhh boy! I’m not really ready for my 781st loss yet. I hope you understand why I had to run with my tail between my legs. Don’t tell him that, though. He’ll laugh at me.”

No matter how much you try to make sense of what the hell Itto was saying, you’re way too famished to think. So you decide to fill your poor stomach with something to eat first before asking questions.

The scent of chili oil and steamed dimsum makes your mouth water as you pop one into your mouth, chewing happily as you watch Itto wolf down his own very late dinner beside you. It feels a little strange, having a meal with someone on a couch you’ve only shared with Mikan, but the change isn’t unwelcome. Even if he probably broke into your room to steal your clothes.

“So, this aniki person you mentioned,” you start, quietly slurping your fried noodles. “Are you…talking about Ayato-nii, by any chance?”

“Eh?” Itto stares at you, putting down his chopsticks before bracing his palms on his knees. “You know aniki, too?”

“Well, yeah. He’s the older brother of one of my best friends,” you inform him. “How do you know him?”

“Haha! It’s a long story, master. One that’s best told over drinks and not fast food takeout. But I’m sure I can convince ya to go out drinking with me sooner or later.”

“Do you even have the mora for that?”

“Ahh, no. No, I don’t. That’s why you’re footing the bill as usual.”

“You’re really fucking thick-skinned, you know that?”

Once the two of you have finished bickering over interchanging topics in the span of thirty minutes, you clean up after your food. Itto actually has the decency to help you dispose of everything that needs disposing, as if he isn’t sporting any healing injuries at all. You try not to laugh at how comical it looks for him to lug a trash bag down the stairwell of your apartment wearing your pep rally shirt-turned-crop top. It’s either this guy has zero self-awareness or he seriously does not give a fuck. You’re not really sure which one it is.

“So, can I sleep on the couch?” Itto asks once he gets back, wiping the sweat off his brow.

A pause.

“What? You’re sleeping here?”

“Of course I am!” he says. “I can’t exactly show up at our home base looking all jacked up like this, now can I?”

“Well, you can’t just volunteer your employer’s couch as a temporary stronghold either, wise guy!” you scowl, kicking him in the shin as you retrieve your phone. A quick scroll across the lock screen clues you in on the several missed texts and calls that your friends made earlier, and—damn. You should really keep this thing on you all the time.

“You’re kicking me out just like that?” He pouts, and god, it’s such an atrocious look on him that it makes you want to hurl. But then again, it’s already, what, one in the morning? 

If you evict him now, Itto would probably just go back to those assholes that hurt him instead of swallowing his pride and letting his gang see him like this. Which will give you more problems than if you just let the guy sleep over for one night. Dammit!

The gods better be looking down on you with favor right now. 

“Fine. Do you need any blankets or something?” 

“Nah, s’fine. They don’t give you blankets in prison, so.”

“...Remind me to do a background check on you tomorrow?”

“Hehe, now why would I do that?”

You let out a long, long sigh when you shut the door to your bedroom. Itto assured you that he’d hold down the fort and beat up anyone who tries to rob you in the dead of night while you slept. A promise that’s equal parts reassuring and terrifying but you’re frankly too exhausted to think about it too much.

To your surprise, Mikan is already inside your room. But she seems to be preoccupied by something—

A gasp flees your lips when you see one of the photos you have propped up on your nightstand on the floor, lying face down with a couple of glass shards littering the floor. Mikan mewls once she notices you draw near, pawing at some of the fragments as you pick up the frame with careful hands.

It’s a picture of you and your dad at your junior high graduation day, but the protective glass sheen was smashed to pieces. Thankfully, the photo didn’t seem to suffer any damage. 

“Did you do this?” you ask Mikan, to which she replies with a sharp cry that makes you chuckle. “Yeah… Just messing with you.” 

That night, you think of two things as you slowly drift off to slumber. The first is: what did Ayato want you to promise? It’s really not like him to cut himself off mid-sentence like he did earlier. You’re going to try and bring it up again this weekend, if chance permits you.

As for the second thing…

“Why the hell would he do that?” you whisper to no one in particular, one arm draped across your eyes. In your mind, you imagine a statuesque man with strange tattoos standing over the broken picture frame—a disdainful look distorting his usually vigorous smile.

For once, you decide to sweep the dust under the rug, where no one else can hope to find it.

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★ UPDATE SCHED; every thurs & sat (12 nn gmt+8)

© cryoculus | kaientai ✧ all rights reserved. do not repost or translate my work on other platforms without permission.

[curiouschaosstarlight]

Part of a post I'm writing that I think distracts from the actual subject of that post but I feel like saying it anyway;

The Crepus situation seems to be pretty well-preserved from manga to game, from what I can tell. Diluc's vague about it but actually saw the scene, from beginning to end. Kaeya insists Diluc killed his dad but arrived late and didn't actually see what happened, nor did he have a clear view of what Diluc was doing at the time.

Considering how I'm...relatively sure their whole confession-then-fight thing went down not too long later on top of everything else, I don't think they've ever actually, like...talked about it.

...What I'm saying is, I'm pretty sure Crepus died from the whole overuse of Delusion thing, especially since they made special effort to draw him disintegrating rather than as a regular-ass corpse, which is not something Genshin has ever or will ever shy away from. Not "trapped in agony and Diluc had to murder him himself". I could easily be wrong, but considering everything else we see and hear in the manga and game, it would be real fuckin' weird that the only person whose word we have to go off on for details is Kaeya, the belated party that was NOT there for inciting incident.

I genuinely think Kaeya made an incorrect assumption and just...hasn't ever had it cleared up. Because he and Diluc aren't talking. And who knows how Diluc's actually handling the situation. Whether he did or didn't mercy kill his dad, the survivor's guilt has to be immense regardless.

Anyways, point being, I love and adore Kaeya, I really do.

But he's a pessimist and also a little bit of an idiot at the best of times.

One that's smart, crafty, and perfectly capable in many areas, but keep in mind he was gonna kill Collei without actually assessing what her real problem was because he was projecting so hard, and I think he's only somewhat learned to project a little less in the actual game.

Not everything every single fictional character says is 100% actual, true, unbiased fact, even if the character themselves might 10000% believe in it.

And I just...think it's very deliberate that the manga showed the events the way it did, and ALSO had only Kaeya say directly that Diluc killed Crepus. We see the events for ourselves. The events are ambiguous and look way more like Diluc hardly had any reaction time beyond being able to pick Crepus up. (Which could easily be why he has blood on his face; from picking up a bleeding man.) It just feels deliberate. Very, very deliberate storytelling.

And Maybe I'm Wrong. That's not too weird. Maybe it'll never be confirmed one way or the other.

I just...think we shouldn't rest on our laurels and call something completely canon when it's, so far, been left very much ambiguous.

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 071 - Trip's Grief

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 3 Episode 20 - The Forgotten

As we open into this episode, Enterprise has mostly recovered from it's heavy damage. We finally have a number of casualties from the battle. Some work is still a lot of work to be done, but the ship is in functioning order.

I love that uniforms in this one are not in pristine order, their grimy, covered in soot and charring, and just I love that look. It's a quick and effective way of communicating that they haven't had time to rest yet. Trip hasn't even had time to shave, he's growing some stubble (and it suits him). I've been loving that such a heavy attack has had lasting damage on the ship

T'Pol has been finding her emotions harder to suppress, but is getting off the Trellium D well enough.

The main plot of the episode quickly takes hold, Archer boards Degra's ship to make discussions with the Xindi council, and decides that they have to prove what he has to say about the Reptilians. Unfortunetly the Council's representative is not convinced by all the evidence, but Degra is being pulled closer towards Enterprise's viewpoint.

Trip's arc throughout this episode was absolutely great. I'm a sucker for characters who overwork themselves beyond any and all reason. Between repairs after the battle and what happened to his sister, the poor dude refuses to give himself the nap he deserves. His dream conversation with Crewman Taylor, the deceased member of the crew Archer asked him to write a letter to the family of was beautiful. His guilt over not being able to write the letter during that scene and his grief over both Crewman Taylor and his Sister was heart-breaking. This breakdown has been coming since the start of the season, and I loved seeing him finally let it out.

The main plot of this one was weak, but that's been par for the course for this arc, however I really loved the character interactions here. Especially Trip, who was absolutely the highlight for me. His final letter to Crewman Taylor's family was beautiful.

Comparing my Enjoyment of this Episode with a Doctor Who Universe Story of the Same Title

Doctor Who - The Forgotten

It's been while since I've got to do one of these! The Forgotten was 6 issue comic run by IDW in 2009. I haven't really got to touch on Comic-Who yet on this blog. Speaking truthfully, most of Doctor Who comic love is directed towards DWM comics and Titan Comic's lines. IDW's run at Doctor Who comics as whole isn't spectacular to say the least, especially their 10th Doctor run.

The Forgotten Specifically, involves The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones waking up in a strange museum dedicated to his life, where he's set to become the next exhibit. A good premise, and one Doctor Who has done both before and since. Trouble is, he also can't remember before his current regeneration. The majority of the comic is dedicated to the Doctor going through the museum and regaining his memories from his previous incarnations, and we are treated to a few flashback stories with the first nine Doctors. I won't focus on those, but one small detail I liked is that the first and second Doctor flashbacks are in Black and White.

Throughout the main story, the comic keeps baiting you into thinking The Master is behind all of this, but actually it's "Ten-two" from Stolen Earth/Journey's end, and it's not even actually really Ten-Two because It's actually all just a dream caused by an Alien parasite that latched onto the Doctor, who's actually dying on the TARDIS floor.

The Forgotten is kinda the Epitome of everything I don't like about IDW's run of Doctor Who comics. It tries to throw the entire breadth of Doctor Who canon at you, but with very little of the Depth to it. This comic brings in Autons, the Kaldor Robots, the SS Marie Antoinette Clockwork Robots, but none of them stick around for more than a few pages, and it doesn't do any of the work into even differentiating them beyond their designs. They're just all robots that shoot in this comic. There's nothing about what made these individual villains unique or scary here. The Fake Ten-Two says one line about speculating to be The Valeyard, but nothing is done with that because two panels later he fully admits to being an image created by cranial parasite. It's just a random Valeyard name drop, and it feels really out of place.

I know IDW also had the Star Trek licences at one point, so I am kinda curious if they had similar issues with that. In terms of this episode vs this comic though, this one definitely has to go to enterprise. While I'm not particularly invested in the whole Xindi plotline, the character writing on this episode was enough to keep me engaged for Enterprise's "The Forgotten". Sadly, another instance of "I swear I actually like Doctor Who, Star Trek is just sharing titles with the bad stories"

[star-going-supernova]

Hi Star, I have a silly question,,,

I've been fixated on Vanessa A. for very long and have constructed this narrative where she's an Afton because she married Michael Afton in their twenties. After he dissapears, she gets a call from him telling her to stay away from Freddy's. She doesn't listen and searches for him anyway, discovering that he used fake names and lied about everything, fueling her obsession with finding him.

Then Glitchtrap finds her and uses her for his own purposes, due to his murder obsessed ego and petty grudge against Michael probably

Vanessa at one point writes a note "flowers for your grave" and orders chocolate despite not eating sweets. This would imply that she was visiting Michael's grave, which just breaks my heart into a million pieces and makes me want to scream into a pillow like a child

William is trying to brainwash her into thinking she's his daughter, which is just sick.

I think Vanessa is determined and broken and she blames herself for Mike's disappearance. She is absolutely my favourite character out of all of FNaF lore and I can say that it's because of my selfish and dillusional attatchment to her LMAO

I struggle to express her story correctly. Do you have any advice as an author?

(you dont need to answer this, i also just wanted to say that your fanfics bring me so much serotonin thank u *holds a thumbs up*)

Aww, thank you, friend! I’m glad you enjoy my stories! And what an interesting premise! I’d be happy to offer some words of wisdom. Keep in mind that everyone’s got different advice to offer and different views on writing, and this is merely mine!

Now, without knowing exactly what you’re struggling with, my advice to you is really allow yourself to explore Vanessa internally. This can really help show her inner struggles and determination and guilt. I sometimes see authors—not just of fics—who rarely go beyond the surface-level parts of a character (not that that's a bad thing!). Let’s quickly define external, surface-level, and internal characterizations: 

External: facial expressions, body language, actions, reactions, habits, etc. (these are details that can be observed)

Surface-Level: preferences, obvious thoughts/emotions, intentions, etc. (think of this one like what a standard movie can do: we see the character, maybe we get some flashbacks, and there might be voiceovers for internal thoughts. but everything we see inside the character is deliberately shown to us)

Internal: how their emotions feel rather than what they are (difference between saying “they were sad” and “their throat was tight, a sob getting stuck somewhere behind their sternum. they trembled and closed their stinging eyes. the gathered tears slipped free, tracing slowly down their cheeks, warm, but only for a moment.”), their bias/thoughts/reactions to what’s happening without it being so clear-cut, their unspoken wants/needs, their secrets and memories, etc. (the story is largely told by them, and a lot of the story is colored by the character’s perception/experiences/thoughts/etc.)

These are very closely tied to the point of view you choose, and obviously, if you’re not telling the story in Character A’s POV, you can’t dig into their internals. And not every story needs to be deeply connected to a character. I’m personally a believer in character-driven stories (did a paper on that once, actually, lol) and love love love really getting to flesh out my characters. When you use internal characterizations, you’re telling the story through someone. It’s an excellent way of giving the reader a chance to understand and connect with your character. 

Here’s an example of how the deeper into a character you go, the more you can show: 

He sharply raised his hand, and she flinched. Her eyes squeezed shut, but she didn’t move away.

There are only external things here, a reaction that a witness could see. We aren’t in her head at all. 

He sharply raised his hand. She flinched, already anticipating the sting of a slap. Stupid, she berated herself, shaking in place. Now you’ve really made him angry.

We’re in her head, but it’s all spelled out. Her thoughts are clearly marked rather than a part of the storytelling itself. We’re not truly seeing the world through her eyes. 

He sharply raised his hand. With a little stuttered gasp, she flinched. It took everything in her not to throw herself backward, but that would only make him angrier. She shouldn’t have done that; why had she done that? Her thoughts ran on loop, panic choking her. Tense, she waited, the sour taste of fear clawing up her throat. 

We are deeply inside this character. We aren’t seeing conscious thoughts; we’re experiencing this moment with her. The story is told through her reaction and reasoning and feelings. 

Like I said above, this style is really good for when the emphasis is on the character. Keep in mind, of course, that not everything in the story has to be super descriptive. Sometimes, characters just do stuff or go from point A to point B. Moderation makes it so the times you do highlight the character's inner workings are notable.

If you’re having trouble with something else, such as plot, then this might not be very helpful, whoops. That would be entirely different advice. Regardless, I hope this helps even just a little, friend! Thank you for asking, and I’d be more than willing to ramble about a different part of storytelling if that would help! ;) I did go to college for this, lol.

[androxys]

Kid Detective (Tim Drake - The Eras Tour: A Lonely Place of Dying)

So I know I’ve talked before about Tim Drake and his character in the context of A Lonely Place of Dying, and how LPoD is foundational (in my humble opinion) to understanding the context of pretty much any modern Batman comic. Like, if your Batman has lost Jason Todd and carries his savior/guilt complex like an albatross, LPoD. if you have literally anything with Tim, LPoD. Simply foundational.

So I went back through it and here, in no particular order (spoiler alert: it’s chronological order) are a collection of comic snippets about about 2k of my thoughts that I think do a pretty good job of reflecting on this era of Tim, which I fondly call the Kid Detective Era.

I think it’s funny that we don’t see Tim at all at first; he’s introduced to us as a bodiless character.

(Batman 440)

    Here is our first real introduction to Tim as a narrative character. I say this because technically at this point we have met Tim as a character before, but we’ll get into that later. This is the first time we’re getting a thought or speech bubble directly from Tim, even though we don’t know that it’s him yet. We also got Tim Fact #1: caucasian. Beyond that, all we know is that someone is following Batman and taking photos of him. This person knows of a connection between Batman and Bruce Wayne, and is now headed to Dick.

    Tonally, this is such an ominous introduction to Tim. Reading this now, in 2022 with all the pleasure of knowing exactly who Tim is, and having always known who Tim is. I can’t imagine this being the cold open to a comic with a mysterious new character… especially as this character reveals that he has context.

(Batman 440)

    Tim is still off camera here, so we still don’t know anything about him. How old he is, what he looks like, nothing. This is his photograph collection, which we imagine are a lot of photos he took himself, as well as newspaper clippings and articles that he found. This serves to show that Tim’s interest in Batman is not a quick thing– a collection like this would have taken time and dedication to build. There was work and premeditation involved. This spread also brings us back to the point that technically we have seen Tim before, back in Batman #436.

(Batman 436)

See here the photo from above. Tim will provide even more context to this later, once he actually meets Dick Grayson. But first, he has to find him. Tim tracks Dick up to New York, where he follows Starfire home (yikes) and asks her where Nightwing is. Starfire is– understandably– confused, and it’s in New Titans #60 that Starfire provides our first detail about the stranger who is following Dick. The stranger is “that kid.” At this moment, Dick is off the grid and going back to Haly’s Circus, where he performed as a child, and which now is facing financial difficulty. The Titans didn’t know about this because Dick just… didn’t tell them… I guess. Tim knows about this because he broke into Dick’s house, found Dick’s safe, broke into it, and stole some of Dick’s papers.The Titans take this as confirmation that whoever broke into Dick’s house knows that Dick is Nightwing.

(New Titans 60)

    All this leads us to the exciting moment where Tim, staking out the circus, sees a clown perform an acrobatic move to stop an out-of-control lion. Tim (correctly) concludes that the clown has to be Dick Grayson, and in this moment we get our first real look at Tim Drake. He’s got his camera in hand, a youthful glow, and two living parents. All this will change.

(New Titans 60)

     Here is Tim and Dick’s first real conversation. I think it’s worth noting here that Tim is not a very good conversationalist! He doesn’t really make any time for Dick’s very justified confusion, he just steamrolls right into his “Batman needs you” speech. But before they can deal with that, they have to deal with the circus mystery happening in the present, with the aforementioned lion. Tim wasted no time here either– he is not a very patient lad, at present– and has already been digging through the trash for clues. Tim does fail to solve this particular mystery, but Dick gets it, and things end up right as rain at the circus. So Dick decides to take this kid back to Wayne Manor, because what else do you do with the kid who knows the answer to “Who Is Batman?”

(Batman 441)

     Tim explains how he figured out who Batman and Robin were, by telling Dick how he was there the night the Flying Graysons died. How he took the picture with Dick, and coped with the trauma of watching two people die got really invested in learning about the Flying Graysons. He watched Robin perform a quadruple somersault, something only three people could do, and Tim was able to connect the dots to Dick. From there he tracked it to Batman, and then deduced Jason’s identity.

(Batman 441)

    As Tim is explaining all this to Dick, he keeps returning to his Big Point: that Batman needs Robin. And Tim thinks that when Dick was Robin, things were better, so therefore Dick should just be Robin again, and things will be better again. It’s a very thirteen year old way of thinking, bless his heart. Also, can you believe he’s thirteen here? Crucially, while Tim kind of floats the idea about him being Robin in the “every teenager thinks about being Robin” way, he did not set out on a particular mission to become Robin himself. He very explicitly thinks Dick is the one for the role.

     The problem with this, of course, is that Dick is Nightwing. It was kind of a whole thing when Dick stopped being Robin. He isn’t too eager to jump back in, and tells Tim as much. He takes Tim down into the Batcave, because why bother to keep any secrets at this point I suppose, and shows him the Robin costume before suiting up as Nightwing and tearing off to find Batman. (By the way, there’s a whole Two-Face plot happening, and that’s where Bruce is. But this post isn’t about him, it’s about Tim, so Bruce gets relegated to background character status.)

(Batman 441)

(New Titans 61)

    There’s a little bit of tone jumping going on, because Batman 441 leads directly into New Titans 61 and they didn’t get the scenes lined up exactly (comics, amiright?) but the gist is here– Tim is distraught that Dick isn’t taking Robin back up. To Tim, it’s very important that it’s Batman AND Robin. Tim is reading very heavily into the symbolism of the mantles here, and is treating them like a sacred thing. It’s Alfred then who begins to plant the seed that perhaps Dick knows that he cannot be Robin again, but that Dick’s inability to retake the role does not mean he disagrees with Tim’s premise; it’s just time for another person to take up the pixie boots.

(Batman 442)

    Alfred must not have paid too much attention to gardening though, because he seems surprised when his seeds bear rapid fruit. In fairness to Alfred, I think there’s a kind reading here that could go along the lines of him seeing a potential candidate for Robin in Tim, with Dick’s tacit approval, but Alfred did not imagine the speed with which Tim would take to the idea, nor did Alfred believe Tim was anywhere near ready. Which would explain his hesitation when Tim went to put on the suit just pages after seemingly suggesting that Tim could be Robin. But there is also a reading here that would call Alfred out as a hypocrite, throwing Tim to the wolves to keep Bruce from killing himself. Regardless, Tim is right, Batman needs help, so Alfred drives Tim– in Jason’s suit– to a building that Two-Face collapsed on him and Dick.

(Batman 442)

    When Alfred and Tim arrive, they help the two out from under the building and Bruce doesn’t react well to seeing some kid in his dead son’s clothes. Which, fair. He insists that there is no more Robin, to which Tim makes his big case.

(Batman 442)

    Tim lays out his entire beliefs to Batman, stands toe to toe with the Dark Knight, and explains his conviction in the symbol. Always the symbols with this boy, at this moment in time. Tim at this point, importantly, has accepted that Dick cannot be Robin again, and that it is up to him to be Robin for Bruce, if he is the best candidate to do it. So Bruce decides that on a tentative basis, Tim can begin training to see if he can be trusted. Which is such a Bruce thing. He can’t commit to a new Robin yet, so he’ll make this boy dedicate time and effort into seeing if he can measure up to a near-mythological ideal that he has built up, without any clear goal or end in sight except for gaining Batman’s nebulously defined trust. Great job, Bruce.

    I don’t know if it’s better or worse that from Bruce’s perspective, Tim really is just some kid. It’s just that when this random kid happens to know his biggest secret, what else can you do? Speaking of the fact that Tim isn’t Bruce’s son (yet) though, where are Tim’s parents? Well, he relayed that back when he was explaining his connection to Dick.

(Batman 441)

    The Drakes are, in a word, absent. Off on business, leaving Tim at a boarding school that Tim slipped out of on vacation. LPoD doesn’t establish Tim with much of anything in the way of parental oversight or authority figures, leaving a narrative gap that Batman can slot nicely into.

This all builds to a collective image of Tim in his debut story. The first major pillar is his belief in Batman and Robin. He believes in them as symbols, as universal truths. Batman needs Robin. He starts this story thinking that Dick Grayson is that Robin. He doesn’t necessarily know or even think that Bruce Wayne needs Dick Grayson (he does, but that’s besides the point) because Tim isn’t privy to the family dynamics inside Wayne Manor. He’s just an exceptionally determined kid with a camera who saw what only Alfred and Commissioner Gordon were seeing: Batman was slipping without a Robin to balance him out. So Tim went out to correct that balance. He has a good mind already, figuring out everyone’s identities and following Dick to Haly’s Circus. Tim was remarkably straightforward and determined in that goal, to the point where he could be a little creepy, invasive, and stubborn. He really could have slowed down and talked to Dick at the circus, but the mystery of the lion grabbed him. He’s very focused on the task at hand; when a problem arises that impedes that task, he solves it with a similar directness. There’s very little finesse here, at this stage. That will come later for Tim. Right now, he’s just a kid with a dream, and that dream is on probation at best.

[1shadowhole]

Yeah, it's so OOC. It was episode 11. I went and looked for it because maybe I exaggerated the event in my head, but it's just as weird, if not more, as I remembered.

Here Merlin is SHAMED for always putting Arthur first. Which is something that happens even in Merthur fics, because it is highly unhealthy. But it does it without any respect as to why.

Not the way Merlin was manipulated by the dragon, Druids, events, and even Gaius. Not the way Merlin has suffered the consequences every time he doesn't (think of the Freya episode). And not the way he was essentially tortured by guilt and madness for 1500. Which was actually talked about in detail in earlier episodes.

Here they make me hate Morgana... Even though they tried to redeem her. And it was kinda working on me before all of THIS happened.

"looks like I'll always come last for everyone"

Yes girly, because all of this shit is your fault in the first place. You have no right to speak... this is karma coming to get you.

Nah instead she just manipulates Merlin. And because everyone does it anyway, Mordred joins in.

"Going to sacrifice another innocent person for your King?"

You also have no right to speak. Also, that's not an innocent person. Still, he uses millennia of guilt on the broken shell of a man.

Also not only OG Merlin (post-S4) wouldn't have hesitated to do just that, but THIS Merlin from 2 episodes ago wouldn't have either.

They went into detail about how much he suffered without Arthur. He went mad! BECAUSE OF Morgana and Mordred. I know character development is a good thing, but this character development is "well he is in love with Morgana now". Sigh. I am at least happy for the Mergana shippers out there. But I can't see it happening.

The time Merlin sacrificed Morgana comes up. Which is something I will always defend Merlin for. What was my boy supposed to do in that situation? So... Is he supposed to sacrifice innocents (the entirety of Camelot) for the sake of one person (in this case Morgana) or what? You are contradicting yourself, script.

Also, they use Arthur's words against him lmao! When he meant that Merlin should try to save himself. Not to sacrifice himself for him. It was a sweet moment and you ruined it for me T.T

So yeah he left Arthur to die.

This isn't saying "I'll have to trust in the skill of my King" or "I'll have to trust Arthur will win".

No no no. He is not putting any faith in Arthur. He knows Arthur would die.

He doesn't trust Arthur. He trusts that somehow Avalon will protect him. For some reason.

To be clear, that's not something that happened in the past. Merlin, like us, has no surety that Arthur can be saved and healed after his return. As far as we're aware this is the last shot he has. If he dies he dies.

This isn't Merlin growing out of his obsession with Arthur. It's swapping it with an obsession for another person. He also learned the important lesson of... "have faith that everything will just turn out fine"

Which is a horrible lesson to learn for anyone. But especially for him. Because nothing ever turned out fine for him! Every time he did his life went to shit! Just because the script decides that this time it DOES, it still goes against one of the main themes of the original show.

I didn't want to tear into this when I started, but reading through it reminded me just why I didn't like it (there are other reasons. The knights and Gwen also go through character assassination... Literally and figuratively. I'll never forgive them for what they did to my sweet Gwen. I'm not the biggest Gwen fan and it hurts me still. Also, she's not in a love triangle anymore! You'll be glad to know she's in a love QUADRILATERAL now. Ain't that just great?)

Also, I wouldn't dare to do this to any other fan work. No matter how much it made me furious. But the writers of this went above and beyond to let us know that they MEANT for this to be canonized and they sent it to the writers.

They also went above and beyond to convince people that this IS the canon ending of the show. Which I never liked. A lot of people genuinely think that it is. So the makers of this PUT THEMSELVES to the level of the canon show. Which in my eyes allows me to criticize KC the way I'd criticize the show. You no longer have Fanwork protection. You elevated yourself above it... Since... Idk... Fanworks aren't as important I suppose?

Guys. Guys.

As the Death Aniversary comes closer and closer, I see people talking about how happy they are that AT LEAST, the showrunners put down the script for the last season.

So it is time. It is time for the annual reminder that Kingdom Come is not the canonical season 6.

Merlin has no canonical season 6. It probably never will.

Regardless of your opinion of the piece, it was not written by the writers. It was not meant to air. It was not the original plan for the show. These and more affirmations often get shared, but it's just fake news.

It was written by fans. It's fanfiction in theatrical form.

[ziracona]

Tumblr user TabrisFam you were right…I should have taken the wisdom of another Tabris and run back to DA2 immediately…