#also fun fact for you. I looked back at the canon material I have of them to see if they’ve ever verbally thanked someone before

[h-didanart]

They didn’t even notice Elara had gone to clean the kitchen, they were still completely absorbed with eating the delicious steaks, even calculating if they would be able to replicate the recipe back in their dimension.

They almost didn’t even notice she spoke, wouldn’t have if it was only one of them taking the front. But they did, and slightly startled they turned to her, piece of meat sticking out from their mouth slightly.

They blinked at her, looking back at the non-steak meat plate.

“Chicken…?” Cooked chicken it seemed. They looked back at her, before reaching over to serve themselves some of the cooked chicken, nodding at her after.

Now that they think about it they should thank her shouldn’t they? But how?…

They can think of something later, right now there was even more food to try

(Hi :3)

There’s a really strong smell of dumpster slowly creeping around the cabin.

Coincidentally, the visiting Bloodmoon has entered, some branches in their hold. They sat themselves in the corner farthest from the cat area, seemingly trying to weave the branches together, and seemingly unaware of just how bad they smell

Elara had been in the kitchen cooking herself something, just a steak with yum yum sauce. She froze when she smelled it. Did a skunk come by? Good lord! This was the worst smelling skunk she ever ran into. Well she thought it was a skunk until she saw their new house guest. She immediately spotted several stains and mud spots on them and her cleaning protocols flaired up with vengeance.

H-Hello... I am Elara, you must be the Bloodmoon my husbands told me about...

She is fighting her need to grab them and drag them to the bathroom and scrub them to within an inch of their life.

[digi-lov]

— A Getting Into Digimon Master Post

▙▚ TOYS - ANIME - GAMES - COMICS & MANGA - NOVELS - CARDS ▞▟

I've been getting asked a couple times how to get into Digimon, so I figured I collect some posts and info in a master post!

Digimon is a multi media franchise, so there really is no one way to get into Digimon. But I hope this post can help people getting an idea what to look for.

Digimon Card Sleeve Artwork by Tonamikanji

Shout ot to wikimon.net for a ton of the information, and to Digimon Basic - an amazing resource for Digimon material!

▙▚ DIGIMON WEB

As I mentioned, Digimon is a multi media franchise, and there is some content of just general Digimon lore on Digimon Web. There some fun facts to read up upon! There's also the official Digimon Reference Book / Encyclopedia online.

• Digimon Encyclopedia • Appmon Encyclopedia • Agumon Expert Research Profiles • Digimon Journal

▙▚ TOYS

So Digimon, or Digital Monsters, originally started as a virtual pet toy. I made a Post about this origin and relation to the Tamagotchi frachise before. ▞▟ Check it out here >>

Besides that, Digimon released many many "Digivice" toys tying into the animes, but also figurines and much more. I don't have nearly enough expertise to cover them in more details, but there is a LOT! You can check out the LCD Toy history on the official website, and even that doesn't cover all of it!

▙▚ ANIME

The first and second season of the anime, and the surrounding movies, share a continuity, but aside from that all seasons are self contained and you can watch whichever you want.

Notably, Adventure recently got newly released blu rays with japanese audio and english subtitles! ▞▟ You can get them at the Crunchyroll shop >>

I know some people like the english dub, but personally, I honestly don't like it at all... I do really like the german dub, but I really recommend watching the Japanese version. It's my favorite and is considered canon.

Adventure: Digimon Adventure (Movie) (1999) •Digimon Adventure (Season 1) (1999-2000) Digimon Adventure: Our War Game (Movie) (2000) •Digimon Adventure 02 (Season 2) (2000-2001) Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown!! Supreme Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals (Movie) (2000) (Digimon the Movie is a super cut of all previous movies done by the dub team) Digimon Adventure 02: Diaboromon Strikes Back (Movie) (2001) •Digimon Adventure tri. (6 Movies or 24 Episodes) (2015-2018) Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (Movie) (2020) Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning (Movie) (2023) [Digimon Adventure: (Reboot) (2020)] Tamers: • Digimon Tamers (Season 3) (2001-2002) Digimon Tamers: The Adventures’ Battle (Movie) (2001) Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express (Movie) (2002) Frontier: • Digimon Frontier (Season 4) (2002-2003) Digimon Frontier: Revival of the Ancient Digimon (Movie) (2002) Savers/Data Squad: • Digimon Savers / Data Squad (Season 5) (2006-2007) Digimon Savers The Movie: Ultimate Power! Activate Burst Mode!! (Movie) (2006) Xros Wars/Fusion: • Digimon Xros Wars / Fusion (2010-2012) Appmon: • Digimon Universe Appli Monsters (2016-2017) Ghost Game: • Digimon Ghost Game (2021-2023)

▙▚ GAMES

Like the anime, Digimon games are almost all completely self contained. Essentially the only exception is a couple WonderSwan games centered around Ryo Akiyama. They're also almost all widely different! No Digimon game is truly like another! In the list below I put well known games in bold, and more obscure games, or the ones never released in the West in small. I also left out all "dead" mobile games.

· Digital Monster Ver. S: Digimon Tamers (1998) (Sega Saturn) [JP only] • Digimon World (1999) (PS1) · Digital Monster Ver. WonderSwan (1999) (WonderSwan) [JP only] · Digimon World: Digital Card Battle (1999) (PS1) [JP only] · Digimon Adventure: Anode Tamer & Cathode Tamer (1999/2000) (WonderSwan) (EN release "Veedramon Version") · Digimon Adventure 02: Digital Partner (2000) (WonderSwan) [JP only] · Pocket Digimon World (2000) (PS1) [JP only] > Pocket Digimon World: Wind Battle Disc (2000) (PS1) [JP only] > Pocket Digimon World: Cool & Nature Battle Disc (2001) (PS1) [JP only] • Digimon World 2 (2000) (PS1) · Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers (2000) (WonderSwan) [JP only] · Digimon Adventure 02: D1 Tamers (2000) (WonderSwan Color) [JP only] ·Digimon World: Digital Card Arena (2000) (PS1) ·Digimon Tamers: Pocket Culumon (2001) (PS1) [JP only] ·Digimon Tamers: Digimon Medley (2001) (WonderSwan Color) [JP only] ·Digimon Park (2001) (PS1) [JP only] • Digimon Tamers: Battle Spirit (2001) (WonderSwan Color / GBA) > Digimon Tamers: Battle Spirit Ver. 1.5 (2002) (WonderSwan Color) [JP only] > Digimon Frontier: Battle Spirit / Battle Spirit 2 (2002) (WonderSwan Color / GBA) ·Digimon Typing (2001) (PC) [JP only] • Digimon Tamers: Battle Evolution / Rumble Arena (2001) (PS1) ·Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer (2001) (WonderSwan Color) [JP only] • Digimon World 3 / 2003 (2002) (PS1) ·Digital Monsters: D-Project (2002) (WonderSwan Color) [JP only] ·Digimon Racing (2004) (GBA) • Digimon Battle Chronicle / Rumble Arena 2 (2004) (PS2 / GCN) • Digimon World X / World 4 (2005) (PS2 / GCN) • Digimon Story / Digimon World DS (2006) (DS) ·Digimon Savers: Another Mission / Digimon World Data Squad (2006) (PS2) • Digimon Story: Sunburst & Moonlight / Digimon World Dawn & Dusk (2007) (DS) ·Digimon Championship / Digimon World Championship (2008) (DS) ·Digimon Masters (2009) (PC) [Korea only] · Digimon Story: Lost Evolution (2010) (DS) [JP only; EN Fan Translation exists] · Digimon Story: Super Xros Wars Blue & Red (2011) (DS) [JP only] • Digimon World Re:Digitize (2012) (PSP) > Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode (2013) (3DS) [JP only; EN Fan translation exists] · Digimon Adventure (2013) (PSP) [JP only; EN Fan translation exists] • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (2015) (PSV, PS4, Switch, PC) • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory (2015) (PSV, PS4, Switch, PC) • Digimon World -next 0rder- (2016) (PSV, PS4, Switch, PC) · Digimon Universe Appli Monsters (2016) (3DS) [JP only] · Digimon New Century (2021) (Smart Phone) [CH only] • Digimon Survive (2022) (PS4, Switch, PC, XBO)

There's also a couple Fan Games I've been enjoying, that I want to shout out here:

• Digital Partner by Aludeku • Digital Tamers 2 by dragonrod342 • Digital Monster NET DRIVER by kuhamaven / Alice Studios

▙▚ COMICS & MANGA

Digimon has several comic or manga adaptations, some longer but many short promotional works for new releases.

Although there's way more older Manga, I will start with a list of modern Comics/Manga, as we have received a variety recently!

The big one right now is Digimon Liberator! I've been loving it personally. It's a full color web comic, so it has not normal page layout and instead is just scrolling. When it first released I made a post with my Spoiler Free Opinion on the Prologue and Chapter one! ▞▟ Check it out here >> Read Digimon Liberator on the Official Website, GlobalComix or Webtoon!

But Liberator is actually not the only comic currently running!! Thanks to the Digimon Comic project we have FIVE more ongoing series to check out on the official Digimon Web site!

• Digimon Rikollection by Okutsuwa Waga • Digimon Paradox by Minato Ayumu • Digimon Knuckles by Soda Ichigo • Story of the Royal Knights by Yabuno Tenya • Digimon Seekers ~Witch of the Crossroads~ by Kariki Hajime

If you read any of the comics above, show your support by answering the survey on the website!

• C'mon Digimon: The capering monster BUN (1997) (Author: Izawa Hiroshi | Illus: Yabuno Tenya | Publ: Shueisha - Akamaru Jump) • Digimon Adventure V-Tamer (1998-2003) (Author: Izawa Hiroshi | Illus: Yabuno Tenya | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Chronicle (2003) (Author: Shisheni Okorarana | Illus: Moriyama Soh | Publ: Bandai) • Digimon Next (2005-2008) (Author: Okano Takeshi | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Xros Wars (2010-2012) (Author: Nakashima Yuu | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon World Re:Digitize (2012) (Author: Fujino Kouhei | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon World Re:Digitize Encode (2013) (Author: Fujino Kouhei | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (2015) (Author: Fukuda Ikumi | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Universe Appli Monsters (2016-2017) (Author: Akamine Naoki | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Universe Appli Monsters: Appmon Academy!! (2016-2017) (Author: Hirose Katsuki | Publ: Shueisha - Saikyo Jump) • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory (2017) (Author: Akamine Naoki | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump) • Digimon Chronicle X (2018-2020) (Author: Moriyama Soh | Publ: Shueisha - V-Jump / Digimon Web) • Digimon Dreamers (2021-2024) (Author: Yabuno Tenya | Publ: Shueisha - Saikyo Jump / Digimon Web)

▙▚ NOVELS

There two big web Novels of note for the Digimon franchise. Firs one is Digimon Seekers, which ran from 2023-2024 and consistes of 4 Chapters plus an Epilogue. You can read it on the official Website, but many fans noted the english translation being not great at certain points, so some dedicated fans edited the translation to fix the issues.

The second is Digimon Liberator, which is not simply a novel version of the web comic, but instead tells the story from the perspective of a different protagonist! From what I can tell, the translation for this one is better, although they sometimes mess up the card effects, so make sure to read the actual cards, which are included as pictures.

• Digimon Seekers: Official - Fan Edited Translation • Digimon Liberator: Official Website

▙▚ CARDS

Finally, what this blog is all about really, the Card Game. There have been many Digimon Card Games over the years, but I'm really only familiar with the current one. If you want to try learning it, there is a tutorial app in the Play Store, and a Rules video on the official YouTube channel that covers the essentials. There are also Fan made simulators to play online, with dedicated fan bases that you will surely find people to play with or show you the ropes!

If you just like the look of some of the cards, I encourage you to check the pricing on cards you got your eyes on. If the card isn't insanely diffcult to get and important for meta decks, you have fairly good chances to get some gorgeous cards for reasonable prices! I also collect Pokémon Cards, and let me tell you, the production quality of the Digimon Cards is leagues above.

[diamonddeputy]

Okay I put this together for a buddy who couldn’t make it so I may as well put it here too now that I have it all in one place

All the dev commentary I picked up from the UTY anniversary stream

PLEASE REBLOG WITH ANYTHING I MAY HAVE MISSED

• It apparently took them FOREVER to solidify a design for Decibat. One of the early concepts was a literal baseball bat with wings and I enjoy this fact very much

• They originally had an idea that Dalv would accidentally try and move into Martlet’s house after leaving the Ruins LMAO

• They expanded on this piece of concept art that had been floating around: there were never really plans for the Feisty Five to be evil, they just made their own wanted posters to inflate their own egos LOL

• I didn’t really write any of the specifics down, but listening to them talk about the Flowey fight was so interesting because they were all chiming in about who worked on what parts and where the inspirations were from and where they sourced their materials. Some details I remember off the top of my head:

- Flowey’s voice lines were pulled from the same McDonald’s commercial as his canon ones

- The audio for the scene where Martlet melts before Meta Flowey was a combination of a stock laugh and a clip one of the devs just so happened to have, when they used to edit for a YouTube channel, and the file got corrupted and just randomly made that sound

- The heartbeat monitor sound that plays during the Organic speciman is taken from the frequency of an actual human heart. Don’t remember the story about how they acquired that one

- The graphics for the Polygonal speciman were inspired by PS1 horror, Ben Drowned and that meme that went around in the late 2010s of a gif of a bug that made it look like a bug was on your screen (in specific reference to the little Flowey gremlins that crawl down the screen)

- They originally had plans to include a spectrogram in the fight, but decided it would make them seem too tryhardy

• There were plans for an underwater segment that were scrapped extremely early in development, something about a bridge in Waterfall breaking

• The comment Starlo makes in the Wild East about there being a fourth mission that was scrapped from the regimen is a reference to a literal fourth mission that the devs cut because they felt like it killed the pacing, where Virgil would kidnap the Feisty Five and tie them up in places around town and you had to go rescue them and it was a stealth game type thing

• - The designs for the Feisty Five have a lot of funny inspirations

- Ed was originally designed to be a normal monster, but they liked his design so much they used it for something more important

- Initial concepts of Moray’s design had them in a fisherman’s cap or a paper boat hat, to show how unserious they were about this. Also, they weren’t originally designed to be Angie and Gillbert’s child, a playtester just made that assumption and they were like y’know what sure we’ll roll with it

- Mooch’s design originated from a Minecraft RP OC that one of the devs had that she never got to use. Which is iconic tbh

• Mo was inspired by this lil dude, who showed up and had babies in one of the devs’ attic. Additionally, while coding the game, there were little variables they put in for fun like a timer. One of them was a number that just incrementally increased, and was labelled “Crimes that Mo has committed”

• The fact that sparing Dalv doesn’t abort Geno, that everyone chalked up to being a genius narrative decision, was AN OVERSIGHT??????? It was a coding error caused by the fact that they were initially gonna make everything that happens in the Dark Ruins not count towards any route, like Flowey implies in his dialogue, but they went back on that decision and fixed it for everyone except Dalv. They made a comment on stream like “we should really fix that” and everyone in chat was like PLEASE don’t LOL

• There were never really concepts for a Geno Starlo fight. And a lot of it is the reasons the fandom talks about that he’s a coward before his character development and it makes more sense for him to back out in the face of real danger. But also because in terms of power level, it didn’t make sense for him to stand a chance. And also because they were making all the routes at once and designing the boss fights at equal times and this was the first chance they got to make a boss fight for Ceroba LOL. But the plan was already set by that point that it was gonna be her instead of him

• No one truly knows the origins of the super faded silhouette standing in the background of the UG Apartments shop in Geno. Apparently the dude who made the CG just. Put it there

• We got more insight into the Martlet transformation animation. It was made with SO much purpose. If you look closely, she starts to melt and the determination puddles underneath her, but then she gains control of it and the puddle ABSORBS BACK INTO HER, then shoots out in a burst when her first wing transforms. THAT’S SO COOL

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• The dive-bomb attack Martlet does in her first-phase Zenith fight was inspired by Dyna Blade, as a Kirby fan that fact just made me happy lol

• Retribution was the last song made for the game, and was composed in just a couple days, which is WILD to me

• We got confirmation that Flowey is still in control of saves after defeating Axis in Geno, and Clover’s text in the overworld/after dying is just them being so focused on their mission that they’re drowning out everything else

• CANNOT forget The Jincident

[crazymuffin1]

this post is for people who wonder what the hell is going on with the venom movies/fandom because they havent watched it

if youre seeing it on your dash and dont want to scroll very long press J. if youre on mobile. cope.

venom the last dance is the third movie in the venom series and people who haven't watched the movies are probably wondering whats going on. whoever you're following has probably posted or reblogged some sort of eddie brock x venom thing. yes of course. mlm ships are popular and theyre the main characters. of course theyre gonna get shipped. just like stucky or other hot main male characters. nothing really special about these guys. right?

wrong! because as opposed to the other ones being non-canon ships where we just look at everything and say "thats gay" or look at it through shipping tinted glasses, symbrock is a bit special.

to start off with! the source material! the comics! im not gonna make this part long, just a bunch of images with short descriptions and you can interpret it however you want (click for full image)

panels ofter referred to as "the ones where they have sex"

no comment

even spider-man knows

aaaaaand the comic writers/artists also know

theres more (like how they have a kid and eddie experienced morning sickness...) but this is about the movie! not the comics!

first movie moments. im skipping smaller moments and i'll try to not write out the whole plot.

eddie and venom go through a whole car chase scene on a motorbike, and the moment eddie calls him cool, they get his by a car. often interpreted as venom losing focus from the praise

-omg why would that lead to venom losing focus?? because venom, on its planet, is a loser. bottom of the barrel. an outcast. and someone called it cool. venom sees that eddie is also a bit of a loser on his planet. theyre two losers together. Eddie asks why he doesnt just kill him and hop to another host, but venom says that hes a good match (other bodies reject the symbiote, and die from organ failure/eaten from the inside) and venom is "starting to like him" venom also gets a bit stuck on the moment that eddie says we instead of i. its both of them. together.

later eddie finds out his organs were failing (venom was starving and was working on fixing it) and when they get seperated the way he acts is kind of framed like a bad breakup. its not "im free from this parasite! yippie!" its "i trusted you and you hurt me. we're done" sort of breakup. venom tries to say he was trying to fix it but eddie ignores it (not the exact words but if you look at it you'll get it)

eddie gets taken away by the bad guys and venom hops on eddies ex and they reunite. and its not just reunite.

its this

thumbnail shows human face but it does not start off with that.

fun fact! theres a sort of deleted scene where eddie asks "who was i kissing just then?" and she says "mostly me" and then we hear venoms voice saying "well actually it was mostly me!" ALSO at the end of the movie, she says it was venoms idea. this was venom and eddie making out. not eddie and his ex. they do not get back together. she has a new boyfriend and they've moved in together so its serious.

venoms original purpose as to why the symbiotes are on earth was as a scouting party for an invasion force. venom changes his mind on being on the invasion part. eddie asks what REALLY made him change his mind "you did eddie."

also after the movie was in theaters they made an additional romcom trailer to promo the dvd/blueray release. the movie. framed as a romcom. im not kidding. on sonys official youtube. for both movies.

speaking of both movies, the second one has them breaking up! full on divorce after fighting and arguing!! very sad. and then venom goes to a rave (october, there are costumes, hes fully transformed) and says "i am out! of the eddie closet!" HES COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET. one person at the rave has a mask on that says "kiss me" and venom says "sorry no, not my type" THEN WHAT IS YOUR TYPE HUH??? MEN?? SWEATY LOSER GUYS??? his hosts keep failing because theyre not as compatible as eddie. and after having fun venom is sad and wishes eddie could've seen him. they of course, get back together* after some apologizes and because they need to fight a serial killer who also has a symbiote (carnage) because previously, they went to interview him, he insulted eddie, venom got mad on eddies behalf and grabbed him, resulting in getting bit, and that spawned a new symbiote from the blood. also the serial killer, (cletus kassidy) went to bust out his girlfriend who upon seeing his tentacles breaking her glass cage, called it hot.

*when they get reunited (anne helps out again) theres no kiss this time, and annes fiancee, after seeing them fight, says "those two need some serious couples counseling"

after a big climactic fight and mutual reassuring that theyre a perfect match for one another, they flee to some random place in mexico where they sort of have a love confession. theres an extended deleted version of it but i think many of us think they cut it down to save it for the third movie. also they get transported to the mcu in the post-credit and then re-appear in the post-credit of spider-man where theyre just sitting at a bar asking the bartender about the blip and thanos. venom decides to go skinny dip but they get transported back to their universe. net zero gain.

THE THIRD MOVIE

hasnt come out yet. but the promotional things. the trailer. my god the tiktoks and twitter clips?? WHY IS THE TIKTOK VIDEO CAPTION VENOM X EDDIE 4EVER??? HUH???? WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME!?!?! IF I GET QUEERBAITED IM GONNA EXPLODE WHY IS ONE OF THEM FRAMED LIKE A COUPLES COUNSELING HELP GUIDE.

i cant post this one on tumblr but this tiktok is a slideshow, one image of venom and eddie from each movie, and the background song is "I've loved you three summer Lover - Taylor swift" with the caption "it's a love love relationship"

WE JUST WANT THEM TO KISS AGAIN AND HAVE A MUTUAL, EXPLICIT, LOVE CONFESSION. AND HAVE 4 HOURS TENTACLESEX SCENE. (not necessarily in that order)

and the first trailer that came out for venom3 has the line"eddie, my home [long pause] has found us" like girrrrrllll for a full 3 seconds i thought he was saying that eddie is his home.

[northwest-cryptid]

You know, I heard the very weird take of "Chesed wouldn't kill people to defend others he deemed more important." Which is a wild opinion to have because he uh... he does that, in canon.

This is something I see happen a lot in fandom spaces weirdly enough. It's nothing new either; this idea of "[Character] wouldn't actually do [thing they do in canon] because they're not I don't see them as that kind of character!"

I think a lot of people need to understand when something is just being misinterpreted in your head a specific way. It's fine to have a different opinion than the canon, but it's a whole different thing to say "well actually my opinion is correct and the CANON is wrong." The canon is the base by which we create everything from. Your idea of Chesed may be a fine AU or headcanon or whatever, but it's not going to go above the canon for who and what Chesed is. The same goes in the opposite direction, I love all the very on point Coffee Shop AU Cheseds. It's funny because it works for a character who does seem to love his coffee. However reducing a complex character into "the coffee man" doesn't mean his actual canon character in the actual canon games, made by the actual company behind the games; is ALSO actually reduced to such.

I think the take that Chesed shouldn't be available for reception in LoR is kind of wild because he is. If he didn't want to be, he wouldn't be. I mean look at Binah she doesn't play a role in receptions, and when we see the exception for this it's fantastic because yea she totally WOULD decide "no no I'll do it this time" when it comes to the reception of a SPECIFIC guest. Which I can say with assurance because it's literally backed up by the fact that she does that in the game. It's one of the few receptions you're allowed to use Binah for.

More over we specifically get dialogue where Chesed remarks that he doesn't enjoy fighting but that he's able to protect people he cares about by doing it. While he doesn't condone the act of hurting people, he sees it as a necessary evil to protect people. So yes, Chesed would in fact punch a nazi. That's all but confirmed through his beliefs and actions that we see him take via the actual source materials. He's not some passive centralist who wouldn't take action. ESPECIALLY given his actual trauma that stems from Lobotomy Corporation. I mean come on guys did we play the same games?!

I'm not telling people they can't have fun with AUs and headcanons or whatever. I'm saying that it's weird to claim the canon is just wrong. It's the canon, it's the basis for everything; it's the "truth" in a sense. We don't get to say it wouldn't happen that way just because it goes against our belief of how we see a character. I can't claim that "Gebura wouldn't have lost that encounter, don't you know who she is?" Because the canon says she did, and more over that's an important part of her character growth. Likewise you can't tell me Chesed would just passively stand by and not fight while his friends are hurt or killed, simply because you see him as some kind of centralist pacifist. This man literally has an entire storyline about figuring out how to take action to do something because he's tired of seeing so much pain happen around him when he can't do anything about it. Yes we know Chesed has a genuine love for all people, yes we know he hates the idea of anyone having to die or be hurt, yes I understand he would in most cases be a pacifist. However we literally see him fight to protect people. He is not above violence to end violence.

[ahyesthesufferingoftvteens]

You know I don’t think Kaidam shippers really explore the more unhealthy side of Adam and Kai’s relationship…which is disappointing to me because it sounds like something that would be really fun to explore?

This is a long post, so I’m gonna put the rest under the cut, for those who are interested in hearing me out:

Like in most depictions I see Kaidam as this very cute and fluffy and wholesome ship. Which I absolutely love, and I think Adam and Kai can be like that!

Then I look at the canon material and we have:

- Adam infantilizing Kai. “Very cool, Kai!” Has the same energy of your mom cooing at a shitty drawing of herself that you made for her when you were four.

- Kai pushing Adam away and barking back when Adam tries to control the situation and force Kai on the back-burner. OR when Kai very obviously states that he wants to be left alone and Adam doesn’t respect that request and tries to fix a problem that can’t be fixed in that moment.

- Adam and Kai both having trouble regulating their negative emotions and potentially getting explosive, which once resulted in Kai getting thrown across a forest. Wowza.

- Kai having a strong need for attention and validation that Adam does not notice as an obvious sign of trouble at home and something that Kai needs to talk about and get help with. Instead he interprets it as, “ugh, he’s being annoying again,” and reacts according to that perception.

- Kai outright hinting that Mira and Adam never really…hung out with him before he was invited to their team? And likely still didn’t while he was in their team? He was very likely brought to training sessions but that was it. They’ve never even been in his house before The Hollow Life. Adam very likely did not see Kai as a part of his circle before everything happened.

- Adam saying things that are insensitive to Kai and then not taking Kai’s resulting insecurities seriously and very obviously treating them as something he can quickly fix with a few words, which hints that Adam sees Kai as shallow.

Like, Adam and Kai’s friendship is fucked up. Toxic even, I would say. On one side we potentially have undiagnosed ASPD and OCD, and on the other side we potentially have undiagnosed HPD/BPD and AuDHD. This is a recipe for some DRAMA.

But the fact that no one has ever explored how this shitstorm of a relationship can evolve into something that’s actually healthy (as far as I can see) is sad because the POTENTIAL is INSANE.

Like, just imagine this…

—————

Kai confesses he likes Adam. Adam, who doesn’t take Kai’s feelings seriously, thinks Kai is shallow, and subconsciously views Kai as lesser probably thinks to himself “Awwww he’s a baby bi! You know what? I’ll date him for a little bit. It’s his first guy crush, he’ll be over it in a week. Besides, I’ll be giving him an example of what a good boyfriend should be like!” And meanwhile Kai, who is definitely very into Adam and desperately wants Adam to like him, is trying very very hard to impress and please and help Adam.

Then the PROBLEMS start coming in and Kai sticks it through anyways because he does genuinely like Adam, and he wants to be better for Adam, he just wishes Adam would actually try to be better for him.

So then this relationship lasts for longer than Adam anticipated, but by this point he’s too in deep, and he’s probably starting to actually like Kai back (but he likely doesn’t understand that yet because Adam strikes me as autoromantic with the occasional exception. Romantic feelings? What are those?), so he just kinda lets the relationship continue while not really knowing what to do about all of it.

That is, until Kai SNAPS. Accuses Adam of never actually liking him (which is partially true) and playing with his feelings (which he did) and then when Adam confirms these assumptions Kai breaks up with Adam and blocks his contacts.

And THAT is when Adam realizes he fucked up big time and that the way he views Kai is wrong, and also that he really likes Kai now. This is the funniest part of the story: Adam begging and bargaining with Kai for WEEKS before Kai even considers talking to Adam again. Kai’s first request is the most daunting: Go to therapy, Adam.

So Adam does that despite his protests, because god forbid he loose Kai again. He gets therapy, and works through some of his shitty behaviors. He’s much more self-aware than he was before now. Kai is working through his own issues as well.

More time passes, and Adam and Kai are finally hanging out again. This time Adam tries his damndest to hear Kai out, and Kai is no longer as explosive, but he’s very firm on his boundaries and doesn’t let Adam walk all over him. They start dating again later down the line (happiest day of Adam’s life) and now Adam has a story to tell his grandchildren about how he nearly fumbled the bag with his husband.

—————

This is a gold-mine to me. The sauce is impeccable. Every relationship can have issues: the goal is to work through them together as a team!

Let me see relationships that don’t work out at first but then with dedication the two meet in the middle and are finally deserving of each other!

Let me see relationships that aren’t perfect 100% of the time but are still absolutely great!

Let me see relationships that sucked and the two work their things out, but decide to remain friends because that just works better for them!

Let me see complicated relationships! They’re so fun to read!

…Also this scenario I wrote out is also great potential for Reekai (Sorry. It’s my OTP. I gotta rant about them). Like if you branch off after the break up and Kai starts hanging out with Reeve (who probably ALSO dated Adam once and would understand Kai’s strife.) you get the very funny concept of “Adam’s exes keep dating each other.”

In this scenario, after accepting that he lost Kai, Adam would probably be somewhat proud of the fact that he set Reeve and Kai up…until he remembers that he did so by being a trash boyfriend. Then he’s kinda down on himself until he quickly picks himself back up and strives for the future.

And I mean, who knows? Maybe in the future Reeve and Kai could consider letting Adam date the both of them once they’ve deemed he’s worthy.

There’s a lot of directions this can go guys. The Hollow kids and their relationships with each other are messy! Let’s talk about it!

[thelosers-club]

HELLO so I heard people talkimg about Stan having OCD and I just really really needed to clear up misconceptions about OCD and Stans character so if you like stan uris or mental health studies at all this might be fun to read for you

none of this is like drama relatef at all it was just a fun little thing i wanted to do so i could learn about mental health and my favorite characters at the same time

sorry if none of this makes sense i wrote it all in one go at 2am (feel free to add any info you want or clear up anything i might've explained poorly)

This started because I was sick anf tired of people saying stan has ocd because that just doesnt make sense towards any canon material (If you want to headcanon him as it, that’s fine, but please read through this so you can do it more accurately) and it seemed to be just a dramatic stereotyping of what OCD is.

After doing research, reading the literal DSM’s sections on OCD, I’ve come to the conclusion that: I was right, Stan very very much does NOT have OCD.

People said he has it because in IT 2017, he makes sure to clean the windows properly, and in the book he has germaphobia. That’s about it. I looked at other things I tried to find as evidence for him having OCD, but I couldn’t find anything else that fit. And this is not a case of opinion because I like to be as absolutely objective as possible in these types of things and see no point in anything otherwise

So anyway, I’ll try to put this all simply because if I get too complicated I’m gonna get lost and this will turn into a rant on literally anything because currently I’m unmedicated for my adhd

Why does Stan not have OCD? To put it simply, he does not fit any of the criteria. I do think he has germaphobia, but I believe that to be part of his autism (as it’s very, very common in autism) and/or anxiety.

To delve into that a liittle bit more, the OCD criteria is this:

A. obsessions or compulsions, such as recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, images, that are, at some point, intrusive and inappropriate and cause distress. the thoughts, impulses, or images are not simply excessive worries about real life problems. the person attempts to ignore/suppress such thoughts as to neutralize them with some other thought or action.

Thinking back on the book, which is what I like to adhere to as much as possible, Stan does not have these thoughts recurrently enough that it is affecting his life. I can see that he has a fear of dirt and ick which sometimes spikes when he’s stressed, but otherwise he is able to go through his day to day life easily enough with these thoughts.

Other diagnostic criteria to fill up the cracks in this is that the obsessions or compulsions must be time consuming (taking up more than 1 hour a day) or significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine and functioning, or social activities or relationships. Stan is not shown doing things like this repeatedly and, in my mind when I try to follow stephen king’s writing and ideas as much as I possibly can, I do not think he would if the book were longer either.

But, I very much think these traits are there; And they fit perfectly into autism traits. I think right now is a good time to note that autism gets mixed up as OCD quite a bit because they have overlapping traits.

Now to defend my case for why he might have Autism;

He acts to put it quite simply, insanely fucking autistic. Alllll the fucking time. That man is incredibly autistic there is no denying this

His whole character is set on the fact that he is a very black and white person, very very rigid, and you can’t deny it because he literally killed himself over finding out he was wrong about the guidelines and rules he made up for the world. he is so autistic

A common trait of autism is having an abnormal way of speaking, like a weird rhythm, and Stan’s tone WAS described as pleasant but it was also described as abnormal and such..

Look at how much he likes birds. it feels a little obvious to me here lol

the meltdowns he’s had because, again, his routine and rules were interrupted

He was insanely good at math/accounting which I think also has to do with the need for rules he has, math is ruled and never changes 4+4 will always be 8 yada yada

Also stan just in my headcanon world has very very limited romantic and platonic feelings and I think thats common in autistic folks because we’re so different from other people

anyways im tired and i think you all get it by now if youve watched any of the movies or read the book Stan acts quite autistic. i swear im not self projecting pleas

[mik3stuff]

Local burger lover Mike,what do you think the Spiderband's favorite kind of burgers are🤨🙏🏼🎤?

First of all I will pass on purchasing this title non-ironically, thank you very much. Second YOU CAME TO THE RIGHT PLACE OH MY TITAN I'LL HAVE SO MUCH FUN WITH THIS ASK

All of them, no exceptions, will always prioritize artisanal burgers over big franchises like BK or McDonalds and this is just canon we're on the same page about it right?

Mirassol likes a good old chimi but she's also super into a classic brie cheeseburger, Miles G loves chimi too but prefers a spicy double burger

Gwen is a huge burger lover (she likes it especially when Hobie's mom makes 'em) and her and Hobie have a shared favorite for pizza burgers but her second option would be a big chicken burger or a bacon burger

Hobie as I said before highly prefers pizza burgers, they're his favorite and just like Gwen he'll eat any type of burger his mama makes cuz his mama is great and her food is too but scrawny as he is once in a lifetime he'll eat the whole thing. He always shares his with his friends but they're now making him eat more and soon enough he'll be just fine with eating one entire burger (angst material prob)

Pavtir's is probably a spicy Indian lamb burger and Gayatri's since I headcanon her as vegan i believe that would be a veggie indian-style burger (I've seen some pretty mouthwatering recipes recently so I had to add this)

Peni likes a chili burger with wasabi ketchup

Ganke is a burger addict too and his favorite is a nduja burger but he also loves a vegan cheeseburger (my boy is lactose intolerant)

My sweet girl Margo <3 she's a monster when it comes to eating fast food you look at this cute little girl and think "she ain't eating that much" but she is and she'll steal some bytes (haha humor) from her partner's. She likes to say she doesn't have a favorite and if you insist she'll probably say something basic like a classic burger but she loves your good old bacon burger and I would like to say it's her personal fave

Bonus Mike likes a double cheeseburger but he hates cheddar (also a lactose intolerant but since is it holding anyone back right? He's allergic to cats but had four and got adopted by Nora who counts as at least three and this is totally not me just dumping random facts about me at my oc's)

I really hope these are in character lmao, tried adding cultural rep without making it sound stereotypical but idk. Also please feel free to add your (Summer's or anyone else reading this) spidersona favorite burger 💗

[bluedalahorse]

I think I’ll say this once, since I need to say it before I can move on to more excited posting about promos and things:

Obviously Young Royals means a lot to me. It’s become another way for me to connect with my hyphenated-American heritage and to start teaching myself Swedish again. It helped me survive a pretty brutal year of bullying at work. It made me confident enough to start the process of getting formally evaluated for autism and ADHD. I’ve been writing a 200k+ historical AU fanfic for YR—the kind of fic I always read and adored back in fandoms when I was younger, the kind of fic I wanted to write myself. I’m proud of the way that Heart and Homeland has made me a better writer, and I’m glad for the way it’s deepened my friendship with @heliza24. It is Young Royals in part that inspired by thesis on restorative justice in YA literature. When I was in the hospital last fall because I almost had a literal stroke from stress, I was comforted and kept calm by the fact that I was wearing a YR t-shirt and had a plush doll of a YR character sitting in my lap. And all of that is the short list.

As we come close to the release date, I hope that every single member of the fandom gets something they enjoy in the new season. I don’t think every person is going to get everything they want, but I genuinely hope there’s a moment, a scene, a line that brings them joy. We’ve all stuck with this series for a while, and I want us all to have something we can take with us. A little bit of sparkle for the road, if you will.

There’s of course the possibility that some of us get a lot of what we want, and others of us are let down. I know this was the case for season 2, and it feels naive to imagine that everyone in the fandom will be equally satisfied by season 3. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll enjoy the hell out of it, but I’m also trying to prepare my heart in case it’s not what I wanted. I’m trying to gently talk to myself right now and say that even if the third season leaves me upset and unsatisfied—even if the writing takes a nosedive or it’s good writing but it’s just not what I wanted—that I still learned a lot about crafting stories and being myself and surviving hardship and thinking about systems and whatever else, from this show. That my experience with the first two seasons still matters, that my work on my fic is something to be proud of. If season 3 is a disappointment, Heart and Homeland will be my new canon. I’m sure there are other people out there talking themselves up in this way too. I know we’re all pushing through the pre-season jitters.

The other thing I’m trying to reconcile right now is how I feel about the promotional material that’s come out, and the conversations around that. Like on my own, I actually feel pretty great? It’s fun to see the new stuff come in? But then I think about the ratio of Wilmon to other things and some of the responses I’m seeing to that. And I see people say like “oh the show is back to focusing on what’s actually good about it” and “it’s great that they’re doing this because the audience doesn’t really care about characters who aren’t Wilmon.” And… hello? Aren’t I the audience? Tumblr isn’t too bad (most of the time) but then there’s like, Instagram, where the Netflix Nordic posted whole set of photos of different pairs and friendships from a whole bunch of shows, and there was one (1) picture of Sara and Rousseau and I saw enough comments where people were like “ew! Vomit! Give us Wilmon instead!” that like… y’all. Frida Argento is a human being and a damn good actress, and Lisa is a good writer of female characters, and like. We can celebrate that, once in a while. We can create space for her too. It’s not Frida OR Omar and Edvin. It’s Frida AND Omar AND Edvin AND Nikita AND Malte AND Nathalie AND Mimmi AND Fabian AND Samuel AND… look I could keep on listing but I’m going to get distracted if I do.

Like, man. I love Wilmon. Don’t get me wrong. I love the complexity their relationship can run with. There are lines heliza has written for them in fic that make me swoon and I am giddy about the part where I get to read them first. I love the glowsticks. I love Wilmon’s sense of humor and the part where they cheated at Vincent’s rowing race thing and their utmost commitment to being dumbass teenage boys against the world. The first week I saw the show and came into work (where we have an athletic field) I went and took a selfie on the field after covering my hands in those gross fake dots. Look. I am all in.

And also… I came to the show for Wilmon but I stayed for so much more. I would have watched Young Royals once or twice and said “that was pleasant” without ever getting back into fanfic after a decade away, if the show was only Wilmon. I do like Wilmon, but it wasn’t Wilmon who inspired my thesis on restorative justice or made me a better writer overall. I survived that year of bullying at work because I could come home and write my ensemble fanfic, especially the parts where I focused on the non-Wilmon pairing I was in charge of writing. I finally felt confident enough to be evaluated for AuDHD because of a connection I felt to a character who wasn’t Simon or Wilhelm. It was a plush doll of a non-Wilmon character who sat in my lap and kept me calm while I was hooked up to those scary machines in the hospital this past October.

I guess my one humble request is that people be thoughtful about how they use phrases like “everyone thinks” or “no one wants.” Not every member of the fandom has the same opinion, and not every member wants the same things out of season 3, and there are some of us who are happy about the new Wilmon content but who are still feeling a little hungry for more of our most beloved characters, and hope they’ll get meaningful storylines (and not get ignored) in season 3. I do know we probably won’t all get what we want, and that some of us will probably get more of what we want than others. I hope that whatever happens, we’ll all get something we want, and we can all be gracious about it, and continue to find meaning in the canon.

For the people here on tumblr who are already including me in their everyone… thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you know who you are and I hope you know how much I appreciate you. And I do hope this Little Fandom That Could can keep going into all sorts of new creative places.

[batsplat]

if you were to direct a motogp movie (or make a one season of television) what season or rivalry would you make it about? and more interesting what artistic liberties would you take? it doesn’t have to be a straight up biopic bc imo those are often boring, instead it could be something like velvet goldmine (1998) aka fictional characters whose real life counterparts are pretty obvious, veering in like rpf territory. anyways👀

did you know. one time this guy put a curse on this other guy. and he never won a race again

anyway, look, I do feel like by this point that's the BORING answer from me, but obviously it's where my mind first went. I'm not sure I'd actually want it out there in film form because by now it's badly enough remembered that it's like, my cute little niche story, and I think there's something fun about the Wider World even within the motogp fandom not exactly getting how bonkers the whole thing was. (I know other humans have canonically watched motogp 2004 but I swear even journalists have forgotten some key key details and it's kinda annoying but also fun.) bold words from someone who's been blogging about it!! weird gatekeep-y instinct. but basically my job here is done as far as outreach is concerned - I wrote a very long post, now I get asks about it twice a week that allow me to think about it some more with the four other people who care, perfect balance. that rivalry doesn't need to go mainstream!! the whole point of it is that it's kinda cruel but narratively pleasing that it's gone under the radar, because it's another sign valentino won. but obviously, I cannot literally make a film about this, so the hypothetical repercussions I think maybe we can put aside for a moment here

okay I came back to this bit of the post after I increasingly got into of the spirit of coming up with dumb ideas, but it did make me flesh out what I'd even WANT from something like that. I'm with you anon, a lot of biopics are boring!! if you want to just know what happened, please just literally go and 'watch the races' and 'read books' like what are we actually getting here. you kinda want to give it a purpose for existing, right, a way of portraying real/mildly fictionalised events in a manner that is also taking some kind of stance on the material AND is doing stuff you can't do 'in real life'. thing is, look, you could make 2006 into a film, and I'm sure it'd be perfectly nice because it's fundamentally a solid underdog story (well, inherently winning a title with repsol honda is NOT being an underdog but you can write it that way), but also what are you doing beyond just telling people what happened? I feel like that generally about single seasons, they're not really doing anything for me. I was also turning around the biaggi/valentino rivalry in my head in part because that's the one valentino gave as his answer for 'rivalry he would turn into a film' (marc big wet eyes sitting right next to him), but like. a film about that rivalry from valentino's pov is fundamentally not something I'm interested in. you have all these isolated very memorable moments that make it work as a rivalry, like you can absolutely spin them into a dramatic yarn that goes through the genesis of their conflict to middle finger gate to punching gate to assen + donington + sachsenring + phillip island 2001 and it's basically *insert rousing music* successful coming of age. at most you can lean into the fact valentino became successful at being a dick. like idk it's fine but also what's the point? valentino is challenged in a sports context by biaggi, he's challenged because he realises his words have consequence and the press actually reports the words he says to journalists (the horror), but he is fundamentally not challenged on a personal level. that's the entire point, right? it's the ultimate comfort zone rivalry - biaggi is a dick who it is quite easy to hate and also reacts poorly to valentino's initial provocation. the animosity escalates and it is inherently fun to beat him. valentino is mean to him, but it's not like he even really crosses any lines to beat him. like you can make it into a film, and if you twisted the material a little bit you could make it satisfying, but I don't want to!

now the way the writing process of this post worked was that I was going to breeze through a bunch of non-sete/valentino rivalries and explain why I think some of them don't work for our purposes here, but then I ended up writing myself into changing my mind. so my take on the biaggi rivalry is that actually, you CAN make it work but it has to be from biaggi's perspective. basically, I think you've got to amadeus it (a web weave I have been thinking of making at some point btw). so,,, it's a meditation on talent and how unfair it all is, maybe minus the bit where salieri poisons amadeus (I know that doesn't happen in the film) or dresses up as amadeus' father to, y'know, make him write a requiem on his death bed. and it's not amadeus in that HERE, the clown prince gets a happy ending! but it's more like, in thematic terms, I think you have to zero in on this bit. biaggi didn't have parents who shoved him on a bike when he was three years old, he didn't have parents who were invested in his motorcycling career (or even necessarily particularly invested in him), he started the sport late and discovered that, yes, he did have a prodigious amount of skill in it - but one that he started honing far later than valentino did. he approached his career with a sort of grim resolve, surly and irascible and not interested in making friends with any of his competitors but very, very good. he goes away from the race track and dates all these models, he irritates fellow riders, he's not part of the gang and he's happy about it. he's very successful! four 250cc titles, wins his first ever race in 500cc at a time when doohan was very much winning everything. he's also just like,,,, an interesting and spiky enough character it's not hard to make him come alive

but then of course you have this gradual emergence of the amadeus character, the one who challenges his established position in the court of,, well... motorcycle racing, and also as the guy italians rooted for! and valentino's obviously, y'know, in so many ways the exact opposite from biaggi, and he's super young and cheerful and lively and is doing all his silly celebrations and is being a bit camp and goofy and treats motorcycle racing as a party (you really want to lean into the culture clash here, like in amadeus it's because you have stuffy austrian court vibes but here it's because everyone is having their bones broken every two minutes and just how... kinda grim a lot of motorcycle racing was). and he's also this innocent! yes, he insults biaggi, and yes, in retrospect we know valentino is kinda evil, but at the time he was a kid with a big mouth who was a little taken aback by how that biaggi feud sort of escalated beyond what he'd actually intended it to do! and biaggi just, hates him. and I think, sorry to the real man max biaggi here, but you've got to play with how once they're actually competing with each other, it's miserable how there's just this unbreachable gulf in talent. like, whatever biaggi does he cannot win! he isn't going to defeat valentino over the course of a full season! which is depressing and horrible and CRUEL, because there's this inevitability to the whole thing... and also! because valentino doesn't DESERVE it. and you don't have to go full salieri pleading with god to explain how god could give this CLOWN all this talent, but it's kinda the same vibe! how is it valentino, who is constantly just having a laff and canonically maybe wasn't the biggest gym-goer in the paddock and is just generally seen as, y'know, a bit of a dandy, this foppish clown who everyone loves and who doesn't have to work hard to be good - how is he the one who is winning so much!! it's miserable and unjust... and I think how you portray this is that you really emphasise the kinda, repetitive nature of the defeat. like, I think you probably want to make this into a non-linear narrative where all this biaggi backstory is communicated somehow but you don't just start it when he was born or whatever - you start it in 2001 when they're competing for a title and already hate each other. and then you heavy on the time loop vibes. the whole cinematic language and all that other shit should emphasise how all these weekends are structured in exactly the same way and if you're losing to this one guy, all these different weekends can start feeling the same. it bleeds into each other, it feels inescapable, you're trapped in this narrative you can't change... worst of all, you even return to the same places again and again - like play with that! biaggi keeps coming back to where they had the fist fight, to where valentino first insulted him all those years back. you play up the disorientation and the misery of it all, plus biaggi canonically gives us all this kinda messy freudian shit to play with like how he was dating 'valentina' and his relationship with her was falling apart because of how miserable valentino was making him. it's all there!!

ANYWAYS the way you conclude this story is!! welkom 2004!! so again we can artistic license this a little bit and, uh, ignore sete (though I do also think it's fun if you lean into biaggi being displaced as a rival and staring at them being friendly and happy with each other from the outside) - but the key bit is that valentino is finally making the big error. biaggi wasn't winning titles on a yamaha, since he left yamaha has gotten worse, now valentino is making this big mistake out of his own hubris. language of cinema that shit and make everything brighter and more hopeful.... the time loop is finally over, biaggi has escaped, this year will be different!!!! everyone in his circle agrees, valentino is fucked. step off the plane at welkom (pre season testing didn't happen in this universe) and it's literal dawn of a new day... staring out at the sun and finally, biaggi can move on, can live a new and different life. anyway. obviously we all know what's coming next - you have this big dramatic climactic race where biaggi throws himself at valentino again and again and again and he comes so close to winning it... but he doesn't. and you have valentino living his best life, being delighted, but the film is focusing on how like,,, we're bleaching the joy back out of biaggi's life, how actually he's returning to what he already knew. and it ends on the podium, with the camera focusing on biaggi on that fucking second step or zooming in or whatever (idk how cinema works) and it just finishes on this shot of biaggi dead-eyed in a bleak world, trapped again for eternity aka until the end of the 2005 season. done!! I'm not sure this is quite what valentino had in mind, but. well. that's how I'd do it

this is from the pushkin play from 1832 not the 1984 film but like. low key pushkin already kinda nailed the essence of sports rivalries in the 1830s and we just have to acknowledge that sometimes

right. so the casey rivalry is where I'm going to go completely off the wall. skip this bit to get to the slightly saner stuff. this is also one I fully admit to sometimes playing around with in my mind anyway, but. uh. I'm gonna be taking this one in just. well. places. I do have a vision here but I also don't quite know how to explain it in a way that doesn't make me sound like I've lost my mind, but well if you're still reading this then that's on you. so lemme get this out of the way: the classic sports biopic formula would work well with casey. if I had to point to a single rider I would sports biopic-ify, it's casey. so you have all this kinda,, obvious adversity that's easy to get across, and it's a narrative you can follow chronologically without too much trouble. you've got all the childhood stuff, the australian racing club not letting him join them, the move to britain, the rising through the ranks, it's also this very biopic-friendly 'nobody ever believed in him apart from like three people' stuff. and the premier class is also narratively satisfying, from the rocky rookie season to the kinda shock success to then all the lows of 2008 and 2009 and the physical ailments and the anxiety and then the switch to honda and the title and then him deciding to retire... that's all good stuff! you can absolutely biopic-ify it! gun to my head and sure, I can walk you through exactly what bits of his life I'd focus on and put in what order and so on, and I think ultimately you could make a very good sports biopic from that

[some mild gore to follow in this next section]

but also. thing is. that's fine. it's just not where I want to go here, because again I feel like at that point you can also pick up his autobiography and just read it - because what you're basically doing here is just filming that. and I get how this stuff works, you're bringing the story to a wider audience, you can show stuff in a different way in that medium etc etc, and that's all great but also I don't care about bringing stuff to a wider audience. I care about doing fun stuff in my brain. so what I'd actually do here is just, basically, go in the exact opposite direction and ditch all the realism. genuinely, ditch the live action stuff, we're going animated - what I'm interested in here is stuff where we need to be able to fully suspend our disbelief and lean into some surreal shit. I'm not going to bury the lede here: my idea is that you take that thing where casey said he hated how ducati was ruining the bike by letting valentino's yellow encroach on it and, basically,, just go all in on that bit. like come on, that is so singularly visually evocative, it truly captures a lot of what's going on thematically in that rivalry. (see also x and x for the most relevant casey posts.) casey sees valentino as the malevolent force, this infection! he associates him strongly with a specific colour, one that can be sickly or unnatural or just... evil. malignant, malicious, malevolent, all the m words. to casey, valentino is a personification of everything that is wrong with the sport. valentino is literally the walking manifestation for so many of his issues, from the dangerous riding to the lack of respect to the lying to the cult of personality to the obsession with image and the media to the backroom games to the politics to the injustice of how different riders are treated differently, like!! he's literally all of that! this is a topic for another post, but this plays out in a lot of kinda, weird and funky ways where it's a two way street and sometimes when casey talks about motogp you go 'actually I think that's just valentino?' (btw he also does this about 'europe' right I don't think those are europeans you hate casey that's literally just valentino) and sometimes when he talks about valentino it's kinda? this feels like it's about a little more than the bloke himself? and basically, right, I think you need to take this to its natural conclusion where casey used to admire him and look up to him and want to emulate him on track and then gets disillusioned when valentino's worshippers turn against casey and casey is the one to bring valentino down to earth and... listen, I think you need to play around with valentino being a literal god. and I think you need to have casey stab him to cover up the yellow on the ducati with blood

okay. look. the idea here, right, is that we're basically making the subtext text, and just digging into that process of 'bringing valentino back to earth', of taking on a god and having the audacity to succeed, and also treating valentino as this sort of. infection in his own mind. the bike is literally being infected!! casey may have left the ducati but he STILL has some fidelity and love for this project, those were his people he worked with, and now valentino is coming in and just twisting everything around himself!! but also I think how this functions is that, okay, so you have all this normal stuff that's the actual 'plot' in the 'real world', but the ISSUE with the real world is that there's a lot of stuff that just. isn't possible there. like the thing casey wants in that rivalry but is never going to have is... a captive audience. a big problem casey has in that rivalry is that he doesn't get the chance to actually say a lot of stuff to valentino. he starts using the media more and more and plays the game on valentino's level, but there's still this disconnect where mr straight talking is the valentino rival who valentino never really blanks or freezes out like... there's a disconnect! there's valentino the person, who casey never quite figures out how to just straight up hate, and then there's valentino the character, the racer, the rider, the god who casey DESPISES. but when they're doing small talk at pressers and podiums, casey doesn't get to talk to that version of valentino! he just talks to valentino the person, who obviously isn't literally a different person but is also not going to explain to casey where he's coming from, is he, and also isn't someone who casey can explain to where HE is coming from. and that gulf... it does bother casey. I don't think he can quite verbalise why either, but there's just... this creeping tension. I think it'd be easier for casey if valentino really were more of a caricature, just kinda a dick in all walks of life. and there's just these canonical hints of that... the way casey talks about how he's sure valentino as a guy is fine, but he never knew valentino like that, the whole 'I'd like to go with valentino for dinner to tell him where I was coming from in that rivalry' thing, like!! it's there

so basically EYE think what you should be doing is using the wonders of storytelling to actually. embrace that element. and just leave realism behind now and again. valentino is a god, he is literally worshipped, he's part of this pantheon that casey is trekking to reach. casey is brave enough to take him on in combat, he is the first one who is truly able to draw blood. he sees how valentino isn't just a god of joy or battles or speed or the SUN or any of that other stuff - he's a disease, an illness, a god who is also a false prophet... the worship never quite goes away, because who ever truly gets rid of their valentino rossi complex, but casey eventually is given the chance to face a chained valentino and kinda,,, ritualistically publicly humiliate him using the ducati as both this sick thing that has to be 'cured' and this symbol of valentino's failure. I'm sorry, visual language goes brr here, like chain him up, do weirdly eroticised torture idc!! (psst psst valentino's fucked up shoulder also extremely goes brr here, casey low key a teensy bit weird about valentino's injuries? his thing after the 2010 leg break where he goes 'why's everyone making such a big deal about this other people break their limbs too' and then after 2011 jerez immediately asking whether valentino's shoulder is okay in just a very obviously passive aggressive way. literally he opens with that, valentino isn't using it as an excuse or anything, for some reason it's already on casey's mind and I would politely contest it was out of genuine concern for valentino's wellbeing!! it's just kinda? I'm so compelled by it? I suppose it is kinda about how valentino's suffering gets taken more seriously than his own? how those absences are received differently by the motogp world? idk I find this fun because casey does know this is one thing valentino can't really be blamed for himself, so it just slips out a bit? but yeah, casey + valentino's injuries, nobody's talking about it but I sure will, let casey get weird and mean and a teensy bit sadistic about valentino's injuries in an artistic manner.) crucially I like animation as a medium here because I think it's easier to lean into surrealism when you don't have to hand hold the audience so much through the suspension of realism, also there's just some imagery you can do in cooler ways through animation where in live action it may just look. weird. (I think you can also do one of those things where you have a live action film with only those specific bits animated but also... why? it just feels like in live action you need more 'justifications' for things, like am I saying casey is having some weird hallucinations and is losing his mind? no I just want to have weird vision sequences ffs.) the colour stuff!! valentino/casey is big on the colour coding as a rivalry, to the extent casey is even, y'know, drawing attention to it in the literal text!! yellow and red are banger colours, valentino is big on imagery himself with all his sun + moon motifs, it's kind of all there to make the easy next step to kinda zany surreal imagery. ritualistic stabbing works better in animation, you can kinda get the blood to like. drip down and overwhelm the yellow illness that's slithered out across the bike

and. AND of course what this entire set up allows you to do is.... give them an opportunity to talk. they can't talk in real life! casey CAN'T give him his real thoughts on anything, and fundamentally valentino can't either. they're opponents. they're strangers who chat sometimes. it's not just that they aren't friends, it's that fundamentally they cannot be friends - because their ability to do their actual jobs depends on a certain level of professional distance. valentino of course does have a decent read on casey, and vice versa, because when you're figuring out how to defeat someone then (if you're valentino) you're looking to play the rider too. valentino's entire approach depends on focusing in on his rivals and attempting to throw them off, to make them unravel. he's watching casey closely!! the entire journey of casey's first three seasons in the premier class essentially becomes like, this god of their world focusing in on him. figuring him out. trying to gnaw away at him. obviously, animation also allows you to go big on the panopticon-y imagery which is kinda fundamental to their rivalry, because of their fundamentally oppositional stances to 'performing' for the ever present cameras where there IS a little bit of common ground in they have both struggled with it. but valentino isn't going to ever say that to casey! casey isn't going to open up to valentino! so if you give them,, you know, a different arena to express themselves, where casey actually has this external figure to talk to (as he's like, cutting him open I guess) whereas valentino actually is put in a position where he's allowed to respond, where he can taunt casey a little bit, where he can interrogate casey's approach and also the similarities between the two of them and how casey has been forced to become a little more like valentino to challenge him... because the thing is, right, valentino is so big on message discipline with his rivals and has completely stopped talking about that rivalry post mid 2013 that, first of all, you have this complete imbalance in who's been telling this story for the past decade, but second of all you kinda don't have a sense of what valentino would respond? idk!! I think this is mainly fun as a thought exercise for me specifically but also I do think it's kinda, digging into some of the bits that make this narratively work as a rivalry, how valentino in this rivalry is actually just kinda... removed. like he's not really emotional about it!! at most he's a bit bitchy, but even that just feels about The Game. it's the most extreme in this regard followed by jorge - but with valentino's other feuds you kinda... see a bit more an unguarded moment, see something a little more real there. the casey rivalry feels so uncomfortable precisely because valentino is a little... inhuman in this one. I mean, if you want to have valentino as some kind of cross between a deity and a monster in any of his feuds, this is the one. casey's just an obstacle to him. idk don't you think casey kinda wants to chain valentino down and stab him and make him see casey a little more... well, I think he should want it and I think it'd be fun to see and get them to talk to each other. ugh and also all the implications of making the faith vs non-believer elements more literal... casey the heretic!!!

there's some obvious stuff here you'd have to figure out, like 'how do you make this work as a narrative even to people who aren't familiar with casey stoner at all' and 'who the fuck do you think the target audience is here' and 'you do know this is not the kind of thing that would ever be made, right, go back to the casey stoner sports biopic like a sane person' but!! I do think it's material you can make work if you're just,,, efficient and smart in how you're actually telling the 'real life' version of the rivalry. also in my head this is. idk. an animated limited series not a film, which then brings in other stuff like 'episodic structure' because I'm fundamentally opposed to tv shows that think they're films. and look, I'm not going to write an entire film script treatment here, I just think a good writer can figure this stuff out. blood on the ducati is the framing device for everything else, simple. lots of animated floating eyes I reckon, first casey is watching valentino and then valentino is watching casey and the whole world is watching them... and it does bleed into real life just a little, where you're wondering whether casey is actually imagining/dreaming this stuff or valentino is or if they both know it somehow... you can get away with more ambiguity in animation. anyway, if you do want more thoughts on this one specifically for whatever reason, let me know because this one I do actually have more on

also laguna 2008 is a bit tortoise and the hare coded if you really think about it

[end of gore]

so. on to jorge. hm. the thing about jorge is that he was kinda writing a coming of age film in his own head, so like - yes, that's what you do go for? you can play it straight and follow how jorge has cast his rivals, or you can pin the whole narrative on the fact that jorge has cast them - the kinda artificiality of the narrative, the way jorge is this storyteller who isn't being recognised as much as he thinks he should be, isnt adequately appreciated. the way there's this three way discourse between what jorge thinks the story is and what the public thinks the story is and actual. you know. reality. I think this is a bit more light-hearted, like you know how the best stories about teenagers take their emotions seriously but also let them be kinda silly? because young people are silly! jorge was silly! he's got a lot of CHARM because he's so cocky and naive and full on and intense and awkward and kinda off-putting and tactless and a bit all over the place and so painfully, painfully young, like he's a good protagonist because that's a KID. but also, obviously there's also a lot of extremely not light-hearted bits of his story - everything about his father, his manager... idk this one's another one where, I don't just want to make it a generic sports biopic, and I'm trying to figure out the clear narrative arc here? I mean, you can point to the end of 2010 and really lean into him choosing victory on-track over popularity off it. the problem with 2010 is that it does not work as a dramatic season, yeah sure with the magic of biopics you can hack at it to shit but also. idk. what are we getting out of it. I think for narrative purposes you want to maybe narrow in, and end it at the end of 2008, with the switching of the numbers this kind of moment of emancipation? but also! this feels like we're straying a bit too far away from the fun sports elements and I don't want to REALLY suggest all the ways in which you could mine jorge's personal trauma in a jokey tumblr post, so I'm gonna move on from this one

the problem is 2015 just straight up doesn't work as a jorge-centric narrative, except in a very kinda comic way that leans into how absurd his role in that season was. 2012 as a season is a bit... y'know, it's fine. okay it's mostly terrible, but that's fine too. but it doesn't have a great narrative hook. which kinda leads you to the problem that I do think the valentino rivalry is more... juicy from jorge's pov, because for valentino, jorge is just kinda? an obstacle? idk he's more normal about it, it's just his job to destroy the guy, you know how it is. but also 2009 does work better narratively from valentino's pov, like it's the build up to catalunya specifically you can dramaticise... idk though, I do love catalunya but my heart isn't really in this exercise because I think valentino isn't really being... challenged here? it's a title fight where he's fundamentally using a set of tools he's already perfected, to beat a guy he doesn't really give a shit about. when the italian press is down on him pre catalunya, it doesn't spark any genuine self-doubt - it's just a handy source of extra motivation. there's no epic highs or lows that season, not real ones. and yes I know I was talking about making valentino who gets stabbed repeatedly to cover up an infection a moment ago, but that reflected real EMOTIONAL truths!! I'm committed to thematic fidelity more than I am to literal fidelity

genuinely I think the best way to tackle jorge is with the jorge/dani parallel journeys... what, film? tv show? maybe show actually - you don't have one coherent narrative Statement per se but you're constantly charting those journeys in reference to each other, really rooting it in their respective points of views, no neutral detached cinematic language like I want everything to be very much written to be from their eyes!! going from one to the other and back again. and you're charting these different journeys, right, and how they both captured different flavours of like... emotional successes and failures. I think it's actually about failure, yeah, about having to accept there's something you can't have and might never be able to get - whether that's universal love or a premier class title or whatever - but Actually, that might not be the end of the world. and during this process, they go from being enemies to tentative friends!! guys who realise they can maybe actually understand each other better than they thought!! this real moment of interpersonal connection. you have all these media narratives and the managers and so on and the fact they're competitors as these built in reasons why they've just been pitted against each other from the start... but y'know, again, it is also just a bit about maturing, about being able to set that aside, about making your peace with defeat and failure as an element of growing up. you can't win everything, maybe there's something you really really really want and you're just not going to get it, but at the end of the day it's kinda... yeah. self-acceptance. idk this is the nice one

so with marc you can go several different ways here I guess, and again he's also perfectly decent sports biopic material, probably second to casey in that category like yeah sure do the comeback story. but also, we do already have a very good self-produced documentary about what he thinks the narratives of his career are? idk this is also just a personal taste thing, I'll leave him to doing all the injury stuff himself, I don't have much to add there. we'll get to the obvious one in a second, but I was trying to figure out if there were other places I massively felt like you need the cinematic touch. and, again, the 2013 season is obviously very exciting!! but also, you have it covered in.,,,, multiple documentaries, I don't feel I have a take their either? his rivalries with dani and jorge aren't really substantive enough to sustain a bit of cinema. dovi... I mean, what are you saying there? what's the arc? I feel like if I tackled dovi, I'd go somewhere else and really go all in with the ducati stuff, and make it a bit more... you know, stark, stripped back, basically just the emotional component of how much he gave to that project and how he managed to beat away one rival after the next and how it all ended up falling apart in a kind of anti-climactic way? he's also good sports biopic material, but in a way I think the marc rivalry is the bit of his story I have the least to say on. so eg, 2017 is a dramatic season, but he's also kinda fine after it? he always knew it was a long shot, he tried his best and he got really close and then he lost. you can't amadeus it because dovi isn't (fictional) salieri. basically, I think what I'm saying here is that dovi is too well-adjusted to feature in this post. though I'd totally watch a film about his 250cc seasons, like it's a bit annoying because HE is the underdog who loses both title fights to jorge, but it'd still be kinda fun idk. I wouldn't really know what to do with the material but if someone made the film I'd absolutely watch it

right then. the thing about sepang 2015 is... yeah, sure, of course you can do it, it already exists as a narrative but... yeah, what are you adding!! idk I always think when you're adapting something, you kinda need to have a reason for it? I mean, what are you doing that's not already there in the footage? idk maybe this is just a sign of having been a fan of this sport for one too many years but to me the idea of sepang 2015 can get a bit boring (or maybe just repetitive) where I need a new TAKE on it to really get into the idea of fictionalising it. like where's the auteur's touch y'know, what can I still add to this!! but it also needs to WORK for someone who is new to the story, which kinda just makes you want to tell the story straight.... y'know the story is strong enough and COMPLICATED enough to stand on its own and it IS good but I don't really have anything interesting to say beyond 'yeah sure that'e be neat'. I can't tell you why, but I also don't think the casey approach quite works here? the idea of providing a framing device with which valentino and marc can actually talk to each other... eh. don't like that. hm. okay wait actually I just turned it around in my head for... a while and I think I've got an idea to make the worst motorcycle racing film of all time. so, my central stupid film-making gimmick here is just. centring the fact we're completely reliant on a few guys and what they're telling us in making up our minds, and our removal from that story and the imperfection of their perceptions and so on. so I think you kinda make a point of... not actually showing the motorcycle racing? like, you always show it by showing other people watching it, you're showing the tv screen rather than the actual racing. even in the cinematic medium, you're centring the theatrical aspects, where you drill it down to just a few characters. valentino. marc. uccio. marc's fuck ass manager. maybe a crew chief or two. keep it limited though, all the others are kept at a distance - you're constantly focusing in on the same few characters. and very early on you basically just like... get them to fourth wall break by telling you, the viewer, with their actual words how racing works for them, what meaning they take out of it - and again it's this remove because we're never allowed to actually feel the racing for ourselves (no helmet cams), and it sets up that as the tragedy unfolds, again and again we're just hearing from them what happened. it's all zoomed in on how claustrophobic the entire situation is, like doing the race direction room after the sepang 2015 is perfect for that kind of thing, and crucially they're only ever addressing the audience because they can't address each other. but fourth wall breaks also obviously draw attention to artificiality! I realise they are very much like, lame gimmick central, but also are these men not inherently about lame gimmicks... idk it's basically the same story but at least it feels like a kinda interesting way of telling it. kinda trite, but cinema allows you to get to the point and let valentino actually play with the camera... so literally take it into his own hands and lead it around and tell the story from his point of view. and you can play with how they do both change in what stories they think they're telling, how they're constantly revising their own stories, how their stories completely clash with each other... like. make them literal narrators. that's my pitch

so. one interesting pattern that has come up with my approaches to these rivalries is that with the exception maybe of the 2015 stuff, I feel like I'm more naturally inclined to treat valentino as a narrative device and centre his rivals. a big part of this is that valentino is a fantastic narrative device. he's kinda. this looming presence in every narrative in this sport where you can just sort of use him as a sort of way to poke away at all these other riders. the monster everyone loves who you are trapped with. BOO!! he's gonna eat you! which is fun! but ALSO, crucially, several of these rivalries aren't that emotionally challenging for him!! again, with casey right, he wants to beat him, but he's not having a crisis of faith over losing to casey. he thinks casey is annoying, he wants to beat him because he wants to win. valentino is casey's foil, but casey is not valentino's. valentino makes for an excellent personal antagonist to casey, but the reverse just isn't true. casey isn't forcing valentino to reexamine his approach except 'ramping up the levels of being a dick on-track' - like, yes, that's a serious competitive challenge, but also valentino is very comfortable in his own skin in that rivalry. sure, you could have valentino have some kind of massive revelation about the casey rivalry, but like. he doesn't in canon. he changes his behaviour towards casey in pretty predictable ways depending on what the relationship demands from his perspective at any given time. there's nothing more there

now, obviously you know where I'm going here. there IS a rivalry where you can make the argument he changes as a result of it, there IS a rivalry that tips him over the line and makes him to do stuff he hadn't done before that, there IS a rivalry that happens to coincide with a period of his competitive life that challenges him both personally and professionally. now, look, I have already talked about the sete rivalry. you know what I think about this rivalry - and if you don't, I really already have told the story here and here and here and here and also here. I think this works perfectly well as a narrative in its own right, and it's one you can tell from either perspective... but you kinda need both. I think again you probably naturally lean towards starting it from sete's perspective and that first proper meeting (I mean, idk if it is their first actual meeting, but it's the logical obvious place you start this story) with sete giving valentino advice during his first 500cc test and valentino just, y'know, ignoring him and being a cocky shit and then crashing. so you get to see sete being kinda exasperated by the whole thing. also, obviously ibiza is like, a key framing device here, like it's the most obvious in-your-face way of tracking their relationship with each other. I don't actually know how often they partied there together, but it must have been at least twice and if the commentators are to be believed it must have included 2003. artistic license and you can add one or two more times, but mainly you want to focus in on 2003 onwards right. so you've got this 2002 one where it's, y'know, high point of their friendship and in the name of narrative efficiency, you establish here that sete is looking to make the honda switch. the emphasis is on how valentino has been winning everything but on the flip side you're getting the first insight into his discontent. and there's a bit of a vibe of, what could you possibly have to complain about? like you are winning so much? so it's late one night where they've had this slightly unguarded alcohol-fuelled moment of genuine vulnerability but in the end it's actually characterised by how... unsubstantial the link between them is, because they wouldn't talk about this kind of thing with each other and they might both be similar in some ways but also don't gettttttt each other. it means you can return there as a location in 2003, where you've just had sachsenring and valentino's dramatic loss but they're still partying together and it's like. obviously In The Air that not everything is quite right... their relationship is already gradually altered and twisted because you're introducing this element of actual stakes and competition (obviously in 2004 they do NOT spend that time together, as far as we know anyway, and you can show them being very much not together at ibiza as a very obvious Oooh Things Will Fall Apart and maybe already haveeee)

and I do think basically I've already said what I think the themes here are,,,, several times by this point, so I'm not going to belabour the point. I think all of this fundamentally works as a narrative with like, minimal massaging and rearranging of the elements for dramatic effect. it's all there already, everything from sete's arc with the [insert non-tasteless way of covering a real life tragedy that fundamentally alters the course of sete's career] and how that leads to sete becoming the challenger and how he does want to win and his eventual downfall. with valentino, you have the element of liberation and self-discovery and... well, growing into your own but also kinda having the narrative drawing attention to how 'growing into your own' can involve becoming a fully realised character who is essentially quite cruel? you have this kind of... build up, right, towards this moment of revelation, where you lay bare who these two people actually ARE at sepang 2004, and then again at jerez 2005. valentino has gone his own way, he has freed himself from the chains of honda, he has embraced individualism and the chance to define himself and his own legacy and stand on his own two feet and not rely on the strongest bike or all this stuff within honda where they chose him as their flag bearer, for better or for worse... like he comes to his own here! he takes the step from 'great rider' to 'legend' because he gets to this dramatic moment of stepping into the unknown, he takes this massive risk that could have cost him so much, and it ends up elevating him. but it also puts him under duress, and in that moment he reveals himself - whatever sete did or did not do at qatar 2004, EVEN IF sete did all that shit, what you are left with is valentino vowing to ruin this man. valentino uses sete to make himself 'better', to fuel himself as a competitor. valentino turns sete into a tool in his own story. and again, thematically you've got all this stuff about how sete was managing the image of the rivalry and how valentino took advantage of that - how sete needed it to remain respectful and valentino was completely willing to abandon that. like, you have two protagonists who really are similar in quite a few ways, who think they have this shared understanding with each other, but when it comes down to it? they end up being super painfully different

now I can go on about this and how to play it straight, basically, you can just do that rivalry and I think it'd be cool and fun and very easy to arrange in a good narrative way. BUT I've kind of already. done that. like I don't want to suggest a film that is basically a nicer version of my tumblr posts. so I want to take this in a slightly different direction, and I think what we need to consider with this rivalry is this: what if you made the curse literal? basically, what's always kinda charmed me about this rivalry is that the curse should not work and all the misfortune that befalls sete after that is so comical that it's kinda... what do you do with that? and the answer is you just lean all the way in. my pitch is this: what if valentino sells his soul to the devil?

so, you know faust, right, and you know the bit at the start of goethe's faust where god and mephistopheles are basically making a wager over how corruptible this one human is. and faust is like... he's kinda disillusioned, he feels that everything he's dedicated his life to in academia is fundamentally hollow, gets very close to committing suicide. and faust has gone a bit new age-y, gotten into all this mystical shit and he's got this pentagram that ends up preventing mephistopheles from leaving his presence in their first meeting... and basically what the devil can give him is like, the chance to attain some true pleasure, and for that faust is willing to bet everything - so if faust can just have that, then maybe eternal damnation is worth it. and look, I'm not going to summarise the entire plot of faust here and it does go off the wall a bit with all the gretchen stuff, but the point is you have this version of the devil who is fundamentally a cynic and is attempting to win an argument with god by making this human succumb to his own nihilism. and what faust basically does is like, abandon his normal life where he's trying to live by normal virtues and goes off on this journey with the devil. and there's this little moment where mephistopheles,,, pretends to be faust and takes on the role of an academic adviser (you know how it is) and seduces this random student away from the word of god and sends him down a wretched path, which ends with this bit:

like, a big part of faust's tragedy is supposed to be about... well, hubris, of the relationship of god to man, of no longer being afraid of the devil... and obviously, this is all framed very much in terms of religion, but at the end of the day it's also about, you know, having purpose - faust is living a life that no longer has any meaning to him, all of his knowledge and studies now no longer fill the void inside himself. his nihilism opens the door for mephistopheles, and is what makes him willing to accept the devil's terms. now, and I am so very sorry to goethe here, I think we have some material we can use here to explore the valentino/sete rivalry. obviously, you can't do a one-to-one, you need to get rid of some of like, the depression and all that - there were times when valentino was feeling 'a bit low' in 2003, but not 'faust thinking everything he'd done in his entire life was pointless' low, yeah? also, unless you want to do a real long view here and even then it can't really be justified, there obviously isn't really a 'tragedy' here from valentino's perspective. like, he wins! this isn't valentino's tragedy, it's sete's! I was being a bit facetious when I said he was 'selling his soul to the devil', and you can kinda parse mephistopheles' motivations in different ways depending on what flavour and what interpretation of him you're dealing with here. you don't 'damn' valentino, you essentially just turn him into a tool of the devil!

so, this is how this works out in my head: the devil works more broadly as the manifestation of competitive impulses, the kind of 'how far would you go to win' question as a bloke who shows up and literally talks to the characters about it (magic of cinema). he's also engaging with valentino feeling like his victories no longer having meaning, with being disconnected from honda and from the entire culture there and just feeling like he's going through the motions. there's this element of like... opening the door to what is essentially a journey of self-actualisation, bringing him closer to being a 'god' but also allowing him to fully come into his own and become himself. to win on his own terms. I reckon ibiza is my preferred narrative device where the devil talks both to sete and valentino there (separately), first literally as a mysterious stranger and then... maybe not? he's talking to them at times of their lives when they're not at ibiza and it's not happening there in the physical world and they both end up kinda having to confront they're dealing with some potentially malevolent supernatural entity. but the important elements of the devil is that a) he's not going to do anything the humans don't actually ask for themselves, and b) everyone knows he's following his own agenda and you should be careful of the requests you make of him. so it's kinda like... essentially, the backdrop of this rivalry unfolding is they're constantly being challenged to decide what lines they're willing to cross. which culminates at qatar... and maybe you do have sete making like. a teensy mistake. a teensy error in judgement, one that is both real and deliberate but he could not have known would get that reaction and instantly regrets. and valentino, who is I think inherently sceptical of the devil coming to offer to help him and maybe does crank out the pentagrams (remember, the whole point of faust is that he was too arrogant to be scared of the devil, or one of the points anyway), in a moment of fury does decide - no, actually. I will take that step. I will curse sete. now the thing is, dramatically this is a teensy bit tricky because when you're talking about being damned by the devil, usually the consequences are a bit more severe than 'not winning a motorcycle race again' (yes, you can get into how sete did also seem genuinely cursed after that, cf his ambulance/bus crash situation, but again we are flirting with being in poor taste in this tumblr post). but the thing is, right, you have to lean into the silliness here! qatar 2004 is inherently silly, a CURSE is inherently silly, like real life is already silly here! you have to engage with the people where they are, and for these athletes all this shit is so heightened that the emotions are full on. like, valentino would've sold that guy to the devil! and to him not winning another race is basically the worst thing that can happen

so, obviously, you get to do the actual curse stuff. curses are inherently campy fun, the devil doing curses is campy fun, getting valentino rossi to crank out the pentagrams is inherently campy fun. you get to play around with this, right, like you know that bit in the brno 2005 race commentary where the commentators are talking about how valentino might as well have a little radio to talk into sete's helmet to remind him of how sete had fucked up at the sachsenring. OBVIOUSLY obviously obviously it is just so... idk scrunchy and fun to have this idea of valentino becoming a malevolent enough force to literally do that.... like damn the commentators did kinda eat with that?? ughhhhhh do you ever think about sete leading the qatar 2005 race for most of the way???? like that's SO fucked up because you literally have articles from about the race going 'hey maybe sete can break his curse' and then the commentators are talking about curses having one year expiration dates but obviously they!! do not!!!!! there's one race where sete goes off track and the commentators are talking about how valentino will surely have smiled into his helmet like that's so fucked!! it's so fucked!! but idk I think basically you have all this creeping curse-y stuff and devil stuff and then you get this twist and then it just becomes misery zone for sete until you sort of. compress the timeline and have him retire without getting into what happened at the end of 2006. and valentino just relishing in all his very worst emotions. and you've got sete who was the better man after jerez 2005, who took the high ground again and again and again and it did NOTHING for him.... and then he's cursed and his career is finished and the devil has had his fun getting mixed in with mid noughties motogp. and now obviously this is inherently kinda dumb and corny and silly but it's the devil!! mephistopheles to me is allowed to get up to dumb shit sometimes, let him have some fun!! idk I like curses being literal idc

I think the obvious critique here is 'this doesn't really feel like it gets the message of faust'. which, yes, is true - and obviously the way narratives are structured, a satisfying resolution isn't 'well selling your soul kinda slaps, actually'. and my statement to respond to this argument is as follows:

this is essentially canonically what happened. valentino DID do something kinda evil and it DID work out 100% for him and it DID kinda slap. at least when you add in the devil, you're making explicit the bit where it is a little bit bad. also, is sports not inherently about selling your soul for success... the story of valentino and sete is essentially about how we are twisted by competition, how pretending that we don't wish ill to our opponents is inherently dishonest. it is about lifting a facade for something that is already inherently there in the souls of men. this is obviously inherently a deeply cynical stance, but this is also a deeply cynical story beyond all the fun battles and camp dramatics. the devil is a cynic and he is basically the point of view character of goethe's faust - he's the one who is positioned closest to the audience. sports is all about living out some of humanity's worst instincts in a relatively low stakes setting, which means we get a free pass to have fun with a deeply cynical story that goes 'maybe selling your soul to the devil is fine, actually'

do I stand by this stance? not really, but the whole fun of storytelling is that sometimes you can just be kinda mean. I think goethe would get it... you can tell which character he enjoyed writing the most

the OTHER way you can do this is centre everything around qatar 2004 as like,,, the mystery box element...... okay look I have now made two posts that go WAY too deep on the 'what really happened' element but I do loveeeeee the whole thing like I would just make a film about that very end of the season and we show it from all these different angles as different characters narrate what happened... like fuck all the riders I want to hear from whichever mechanic used the scooter... the gresini mechanic who gave evidence to race direction.... various honda higher ups the crew chiefs like this is jb vs juan martinez it's war!!! obviously you still have the same emotional/thematic hooks as the general rivalry does but idk I would have a LOT of fun figuring out how to structure that, I loveeee mysteries... maybe I'd write it as a mockumentary yeah..... this one's just fun

anyway. a lot of stuff going on in this post, huh! you can probably tell I didn't edit this much. my classic tell when I edit my tumblr posts is I remember how 'paragraphs' work. unfortunately all I have energy for are like. a bunch of rants about things in my brain. I think when tumblr tells you that you've reached the maximum number of characters per paragraph and you need to figure out where to put a break, it's probably a bad thing? on the whole, my stance is I don't have anything AGAINST mildly fictionalised versions, but for me I'm always more of a.... well I want to take advantage of the full specificity of the events as they happened or just come up with a completely original story. kind of person. I know this ask probably wasn't looking for my 'what if you bled out valentino as he's strung up above a red motorcycle' vision but yeah. with a lot of biopics I'm always a bit 'well you could just read about this couldn't you' like I need stuff to take some kind of a stance on the material it's using... all my stuff takes a stance. that's all I've got. obviously all these stances mean that basically none of these things could ever be made. and I know what I said above but if they called me up to write the casey stoner biopic script treatment, I would also do that. if you've actually read to this point, give me a shout - you're a real one and I love you

[argentior]

Headshots of the apathy adoring guys.

Sketch ver

apathy adoring is a self-indulgent rewrite of redo of healer that is probably at least a little influenced by the way too many manhwa/manga with dubious relationships I've read. Which is to say for some reason I looked at Redo of Healer and thought "I can make a messed-up Josei story out of this" and ended up doing it. Still has dark themes though so like. Careful before you click.

Anyway. Notes on the guys as of Ch 11 and general apathy adoring notes/spoilerish recap if anyone cares to read that I suppose. Random summary stuff and fun facts.

The Boy | Keyaru

Protagonist of Redo of Healer. The premise of that thing is that this guy at 14 years old was abused physically and sexually for 2 years because his semen can raise the level cap of others. It be one of those magic with numbers and a limited slot of skills fantasy worlds. He goes back in time and carries out a long rape revenge seinen fantasy thing. I did not like that. I don't know why the fic got into my brain so much.

Still out for revenge in the fanfic. He ran away from Alban and managed to eat a couple more poisonous plants and fungi relative to canon before he was caught this time, so his immunity to drugs and poison kicked in sooner.

Was still caught, healed Kureha, allows himself to be abused for the revenge plan, that whole deal.

Interested in the maid because of previous timeline memories. Infatuated by the Maid/reader in this current timeline due to the chain of events that occurred that resulted in more interactions. (Came in later, she was assigned to clean him up, and it just went on and on)

A notable differences from the source material includes him playing along and "getting better" at healing publicly so he gets to stay out of the dungeon some days. I was getting tired of writing scenes in the dungeon.

Has introduced himself to the Maid/reader character. So she knows his name. She just refuses to acknowledge it.

The weirdest thing he's done in the story so far: used healing magic to kind of transform his hand into being like the Maid's wounded one and kissed it.

Main aim when writing him: Pitiful enough to make you help but there's something wrong with him that makes you regret it. Or maybe you're just being paranoid.

The Knight | Bako

Appears in the light novel/manga and is killed shortly after. Was used by Keyaru and his group because Bako was the "most sane of the knights" whatever that means. In the novel it was murder after his aid because he was involved in the attack on Keyaru's village and could have spread knowledge of Keyaru's party, in the manga it was because he attacked Keyaru's group in revenge for killing Renard. Renard had taken him in. He's vice captain of Princess Flare (first/main abuser of Keyaru)'s knights.

In the fic he's a coward who is aware of Renard's atrocities but is too attached to his father figure to really do anything about it.

Infatuated with the maid due to projecting. He is very aware of what the kingdom does to the boy in the dungeon but you know. Coward.

Savior Complex.

I hate his hair why are you so spiky.

Has no colored version in the manga. Was that insignificant. Chose blond hair for the "knight in shining armor pretty gold good and righteous" imagery and steel blue eyes and something dull and different from the red eyes of the other guys. Also. Similar to Renard.

Main aim when writing him: physically strong/imposing but kind of pathetic if you're not in a fight-or-flight headspace.

Yukito | Harris | The Rabbit

An oc I made to balance out the cast. What's a josei without 3 guys amirite haha

No but like sincerely. A character to balance out whatever freak stuff is happening with the other two. Also probably delves into the idea of free will and consent somewhat.

Is a rabbit demi-human (basically a rabbit boy). Escaped slave, gave his "true name" to the Maid/Reader after they met by chance, which by source material lore means that he is bound to her mind and heart, body and soul. She is Not Happy about this.

Has chopped his ears and tail off and is blending in as the "human" Harris surprisingly well. Being albino tends to answer the question of why he hides his face for most people.

Main aim when writing him: a decent, sweet person in unfortunate circumstances. Kind of the physical manifestation of the idea of running away, which even if possible the maid thinks of too much of a dream than actual choice.

Bonus

The Maid | The Reader

Low level low magic horrible stats. Instead of being a competent warrior like the other staff in the palace, she is just good at cleaning.

Very tired, very paranoid. Violent intrusive thoughts.

Wary of all the boys. No attraction to any of them lol.

But if pressed. And had to stick to any of them. It would be Yukito.

[averys-happy-space]

putting this here more for myself than anything. i wanna be able to look back at it in a year and see how its changed. explanations for each section under the cut

ship i loved at first sight: tara x piper. i don't know what the ship name is. taper? pira? pira seems nicer lol. anyway, tara used to be my favourite brawler (and is still up there in my top 5) and i think the first time i saw tara x piper fanart was on reddit. it was by Xpyray and i swear to god ive never fallen in love with a ship faster. their art is so fucking good and they dont rlly draw brawl stuff anymore but i still follow them cuz their art is so so so pretty (please go follow them if youre reading this). anyway so yeah thats how tara x piper became my fav ship.

ships i initially didn't like: rico x piper, shelly x colt imma be fr at the start i didn't really Get these ships. but after watching some of the official animations and learning more of the lore, i started to appreciate these ships more. i don't love them or anything but they can be cute

ships i don't like anymore: sandy x nita, leon x jessie, sandy x leon there is no real reason for this other than the fact that i simply stopped liking them as i grew up. as i was making this i realised that when i was younger i used to like the ships with the kids/teens more, but now i'm 17 and i'm just not interested in them anymore. i guess thats what happens when you grow up lol. these ships are still cute, but i just don't engage with them anymore

favourite popular ships: mandy x chester, fang x buster so a bit of background, i actually quit brawl stars for a while, i think after the gale brawl pass. i dont really remember why, but its probably because i just got bored of the game lol. i think that also played into why i'm no longer interested in the same ships as before. anyway, i came back this year during the bizarre circus brawl pass and accidentally fell in love with these two ships. honestly, i'm not even entirely sure why i fell in love with these two ships in particular. chester definitely caught my eye when i came back to the game because a) i love clowns b) i love a good troll c) i love the random XD energy chester has and d) he has super interesting & fun game mechanics. i have no interest in mandy really but then i saw One suggestive mandy x chester fanart that went hard af and suddenly i was on board lmao. on the other hand fang and buster were two characters that i took some time to fall in love with, but now they're my favourites lol it's so strange. i really don't know how it happened.

favourite rarepair: amber x maisie i was looking at a diagram of all the trios so far because i was brainstorming ideas for who to include in a fanfic and as i was looking at it, suddenly it Clicked in my mind that amber x maisie would go hard af. like think about it. overconfident fire entertainer who gets so swept up in performances that she forgets about safety x safety coordinator with a fire extinguisher for an arm who secretly likes being in dangerous situations? come on!!!! im surprised more people havent thought of this pairing cuz as soon as it clicked for me it seemed like such an obvious pairing to do. but then again they've never interacted in any animation/promo material/etc so i guess it's not a pair people would just think of without prompting. but it's so fucking good!!!! more people need to get in on this ship.

controversial ship: none here's the thing. i don't know any controversial ships that i can see myself shipping. the most controversial one i know is probably edgar x colette but i see them as siblings so i don't ship it nor do i engage with fanart of them. edgar and colette ships in general are probably controversial seeing as both of them don't have canon ages and it's vague enough that people are always talking about whether they're adults or minors. but i personally see both of them as older teens so i don't ship them with anyone. (to me, they're too old to hang out with the kid brawlers but also too young to hang out with the adult brawlers. it's weird because there's no other brawlers where i see them as teens, so in my mind edgar and colette both have 0 shipping potential)

ships i want to become canon the most: amber x maisie, fang x buster they're my current favourite ships. what else to say.

comfort ship: fang x buster i think about them All the Fucking Time. lowkey i started to project on fang a bit just cuz i like him so much. i don't even know why or how i started liking him this much but he's my favourite brawler now and it's horrible. i think the seal in the coffin was @/giveittomegay's fanart of them. THEY'RE SO FUCKING CUTE. like omfg. confident, charismatic chinese immigrant who just arrived at starr park x introverted insecure white guy who doesn't know how to approach others. slowburn where they become closer through working at the cinema and buster realises he's fallen in love basically immediately but fang hasn't realised his own sexuality (has had crushes on girls before so always assumed he was straight) and doesn't realise he's in love with buster until maisie straight up tells him. fang's confidence means he jokingly flirts with buster all the time because he thinks it's funny to tease the guy and make him flustered but doesn't realise buster gets flustered because he likes fang. fang is fucking stupid. also, i think using fang x shelly here as a conflict plot point would be so good. like, fang seeing a pretty girl and approaching her, flirting with her, etc. i like to think fang is dense as fuck and would genuinely believe he's in love with shelly despite buster occupying 90% of his thoughts because his thought process would be something along the lines of "oh, i just think about him a lot cuz he's my best friend, i'm sure this is all regular, normal bff things". and buster just fucking dying inside but not saying anything because he thinks it's none of his business and he shouldn't interfere in fang's love life. MAISIE WATCHING ALL THIS HAPPEN AND WANTING TO MURDER BOTH OF THEM FOR BEING SO DENSE. like ohhhhhh my god there is so much potential here it's fucking insane. side note: fang doesn't have anything against gay people. i like to think maisie x amber comes way before fang x buster, so fang knows gay people exist and like he is perfectly fine and comfortable being around them, he's just so stupidly dense that he doesn't realise HE is gay (or more specifically bi). he also assumes buster is straight because default sexuality and whenever fang makes jokes based on this assumption buster never corrects him. because buster is a pussy. god. i want to write this fanfic so bad but i'm so fucking bad at writing dialogue it's insane.

ships that deserve more attention: amber x maisie, brock x bibi, barley x bull, max x janet LET ME COOK HERE OKAY. amber x maisie i already explained above. brock x bibi (i call them bibrock) is because it's noted in bibi's bio that she's secretly a huge nerd and i think it would be super cute for her to have a bf who she can indulge in nerdy and geeky shit with. to me they're both massive comic book fans who become close by playing all the superhero video games together before branching out to other games. they're console gamers btw and they get SUPER competitive whenever they're playing against each other. but they also do play coop games where they work together. usually brock is the one who does a lot of theorycrafting and tries to minmax his grind so he can get all the resources in the most optimal and time efficient way possible, whereas bibi prefers just going into fights and wrecking havoc lol. barley x bull is because they're both restaurant owners/servers (barley has his bar, bull has his diner) and i think they would bond over shitty customers and interesting food/drink recipes. they're both also familiar with having fights break out in their establishment and are fully capable of shutting fights down, even if it means getting their hands dirty. they think they're on opposite ends of the spectrum but they're actually more similar than they realise. for sure a very slowburn romance (especially because i think bull would be denial about liking a fucking robot lmfao) max x janet is because they're both celebrity entertainers. yeah, that's it. no but seriously i see max as someone who puts up an outgoing persona in public and is generally a very hyper, high energy person but at the same time, she tends to keep people at a distance because she's scared of intimacy. before janet, her closest friends are surge and meg. surge kind of Knows something is up with her because every time he tried to ask about her past she clammed up and gave noncommittal responses. he worries about her but doesn't know what to do about it so he just tries to make her happy in the present. meg is a kid so she doesn't realise anything is wrong lol. hanging out with meg and surge makes max happy and she considers them family, but she still has a wall up around her true self. janet is the one who is finally able to help max come out of her shell and address her past trauma. it also helps that max thinks janet is very pretty and desperately wants to kiss her. this is canon btw don't question me.

first otp: tara x piper | current otp: fang x buster i basically said all i have to say about these ships so yeah. that's it.

[positivelybeastly]

I have to say that your insight into beast as a character are simply marvelous to read every single time and I can’t help but take the time to read them every single time they pop up on my dash no matter how long. I’m reading that the instant I see it.

It’s fun cause i discovered your blog via the four pillars of hank post and I love the fact of him having a child would be a great next step for him cause it just really feels like it could expand more of him. Also he has the dad energy! Give it to him marvel please >:(

Thank you so much! Every now and then, I do occasionally get little pangs, thinking that I'm just shouting into the void about my hyperfixation on a sad lil' blue guy, but hearing that people are enjoying my thoughts and insights into Henry Philip McCoy does a lot to reassure me that no, it's not just me that loves this big blue lug.

And yes!!! Honestly, Hank feels like the X-character who would easily have been advanced and developed the best by giving him a kid - not only would it have naturalistically have continued his development from Avengers and New Defenders, but it's canonically something that he was scared of, something that he had complicated feelings about!

"It might take after its father."

Like, fuck, man, that is so much to dig into! Especially given where Hank's feelings about his mutation end up going in New X-Men and Astonishing X-Men? There is such fertile ground here - the mutant metaphor is so incredibly wide and encompasses so much, and that includes, oh, I don't know, disability, and mental illness! You know, disorders and the like that could be inherited?

And this is not a story that can be covered by characters like Scott and Jean with their kids, because I'm sorry, three out of three of those kids have invisible mutations that pass with ease, and they don't manifest in nearly the same way as Hank's mutation does over time. There is story here!

And oh my god the dad energy! The dad energy is off the scale!

Hank and Rictor!

Hank and Broo, with added bonus of Abigail mom!

A whole ass gaggle of children!

The man just. Suits, being a father. He always has - and there's so much material that means it wouldn't be a boring plotline! His X-gene and the stories that have been told about its development naturally lead itself to all kinds of supplementary storylines, and honestly, it feels like they were heading in this direction, until . . . well.

Until Bendis.

Bleh.

But still. Now that we're back on track with where Hank is meant to be in general, maybe this is a storyline we can come back to? I'd really like it, tbh. It can even be looked at as an outgrowth of his story about coming to grips with his re-emergence in modern times as a clone - now that he knows about his future, does he have the right to bring further life into being; does he deserve that kind of domestic bliss after what his other self did; who would want to be romantically/domestically entangled with someone with such a past?

C'mon, Marvel. You know it makes sense . . .

[typingatlightspeed]

TF2 Big Bang 2024 - A Proper Proposal

Demoman is sure Sniper is everything he could want in this world, so he's decided to propose to him. The problem is, he can't think of a proposal grand and impressive enough to properly express just how he feels, and how much Sniper means to him. Luckily, he has seven other teammates ready and willing to help him make this proposal something Sniper will never forget.

Part of the 2024 @tf2bigbang! <3 Ao3 Link!

I'm honoured to have been asked by the wonderful @boimann to team up for this event, my first big bang, and I'm over the moon at how lovely their piece (also included in the body of this fic) is! I had a lot of fun brainstorming this story, and when I asked boimann if there's anything they wanted to be sure I included, they said "mercs covered in blood". :D Not sure they meant chunky salsa gibs, but what can I say? The spirit moved me lmao. Canon-typical violence herein, nothing graphically described or anything. Bon appetit!

---------

One thing Demoman found himself forever grateful for was the fact that in spite of their overall shoddy accommodations, the base had central air conditioning. Otherwise, he'd have sweat to death by now.

As Demoman nuzzled into the fluff at the middle of Sniper's chest, a soft laugh puffed out of his nose, the Scot's muttonchops tickling at him. The man was wrapped around him, arms and legs encircling his body and holding him close in a death grip of a snuggle from which there was no escape. There was little cause for Sniper to make the attempt, of course. He lifted a hand to Demoman's chin and tilted his face up so that he could look into his bright brown eye, worry crossing his brow when he saw that it shined with unshed tears welling over its surface. "You okay?"

"Aye," Demoman said, his voice soft, like if he spoke too loud he'd shatter their moment of peace. "Just love ye so bloody much."

What a sap. An absolute softie. A complete and utter gooey romantic.

God, he was amazing.

"Get up here," Sniper teased, pulling Demoman up for a kiss, laughing against his lips. "Love you too, pup."

Demoman's grip only tightened as their lips met, one hand sneaking up to the back of Sniper's head to thread through his hair and scritch him gently. Their kisses were lazy and slow, tasting terrible with morning breath, but neither could bring himself to care as their tongues met and caressed one another. It was soft, gentle, so unlike every other aspect of their lives. Here, they could be sweet, and quiet, and warm, unlike the explosions and bloodshed and heat that awaited them in their workday.

They wouldn't give that part for the world, either. It was that balance that thrilled Demoman. That Sniper would take the bombast and the bomb blasts just as readily as the gentle touches and sweet nothings with equal amounts of enthusiasm, murmured words of adoration as natural as the report of a rifle for the rangy assassin. It set Demoman's heart aflutter, this perfect man, this mirror presenting an equal and opposite view of a life lived, so different yet loving him so much the same.

Demoman kissed a line from Sniper's lips to his cheek, then across his nose to the other, then craned up to peck one kiss to his forehead for good measure. He sighed, utterly smitten with the handsome bushman wrapped in him and the sheets they were tangled in.

Resting at the back of one of the drawers of his work desk, strewn with bomb-making materials, empty beer bottles, and full ashtrays, sat a receipt for a jeweler's shop in Teufort, for a ring. Demoman had the owner holding onto the thing for him, a custom creation that came at a pretty penny and couldn't afford to be found by clever eyes.

It had been agony, letting the ring sit unattended, unused, unpresented to the man it had been created specifically for. But as much as Demoman wanted to bring it home, to simply slot himself against Sniper's back one morning, spooning him with gentle kisses to the nape of his neck, and set the box down on his pillow in front of his face with the question unspoken but obvious, he knew Sniper deserved better. Sure, it was a sweet thought, but if there was one thing he knew about Sniper, it was that even though he'd come from a loving home, it was a decidedly lowkey one. Never had a big deal been made about him, a thorough to-do, a full-on fuss and hullabaloo, and if there were ever anyone who deserved such a splore, it was Mick Mundy.

Either way, Demoman had long since decided that these mornings, sleepy and cuddly and perfect in his man's arms, were how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And God willing, Sniper felt the same.

Bells rang, breaking the quiet with their piercing shriek, and Demoman growled as he half-leaned away and flailed at the night stand, trying to find the damned alarm clock and murder the bloody thing.

He succeeded in knocking it to the floor where it continued to ring, now slowly vibrating in a loose circle from the force of its hammer hitting the bells atop it. Deflated, he flopped to the bed in misery. For once they'd gotten up before the alarm and had some time for themselves in the morning, and this is how the universe rewards him for such diligence? A long-suffering sigh left him as Sniper began to untangle himself.

"Right, it was lovely while it lasted," the bushman grunted, pulling himself into a half-seated position. "Contract calls."

Swatting around blindly, Demoman eventually gave up trying to find the clock on the floor without rolling over and harrumphed, wrapping his arms back around Sniper. "Nae."

"Look at you, Mr. Work Ethic 'imself fightin' the alarm. You've gotten too cozy, looks like," Sniper teased, scritching at his lover's scalp through his short curls.

"Cannae help it. I've got ye in me arms. How's a lad supposed tae let go o' that?"

"For a big fat paycheck," Sniper teased. "Come on, love. That bloody alarm's not going to shut up anyway." Demoman pouted. "Fine," he grumbled, finally letting Sniper go to roll over and snatch the clock from the floor and shut off its ringing bells. The room seemed deafeningly quiet in its sudden absence.

"There, much better—wagh!" Sniper squawked as he was tugged back down onto the bed by Demoman's strong arms, crushing him to his chest. "Oi! We've gotta be on the field in an hour! Tav! Come on, let me up! Tav! Let go! Tav you cunt!"

Demoman merely closed his eye and held on tight, a faked snore leaving his nose as Sniper struggled and cursed.

*

"So have you asked him yet?" Soldier asked, digging some residual moisture from his shower out of his ear with his pinky finger.

Demoman sighed, scrubbing a hand through his still-damp hair, a little annoyed that he still couldn't comfortably put a hat on yet. The dry desert air always made water evaporate off of skin quickly once the team had their post-work showers and filtered through the base for their afternoon business, but his hair always took forever to dry out. And he just knew if he put his hat on before it was fully, completely dry it would end up squished down against his head like he'd pomaded it there, and Sniper would tease him mercilessly about it the moment his hat came back off.

As much as he loved the man he was not about to give him craic ammunition. Handsome bastard would have to do that legwork for himself.

"Nae yet," Demoman said finally, earning a look of surprise from his friend.

"You paid for that ring last week! Don't tell me you're getting cold feet, Cyclops!"

"Never! I want tae spend the rest o' me life with Mickey!" A heavy sigh left Demoman's nose as he gathered his thoughts. "I just... I want tae make it right. Perfect, ye ken? I want it tae be big, meaningful, a real monumental sort o' proposal. Mickey's family loves him, but they're quiet, reserved folk. No one's ever made a big to-do about him, and he deserves that. Somethin' grand and special! A proper DeGroot proposal!"

"You're going to blind him?"

Demoman leveled a withering look at his friend, who smiled broadly in reply, fully aware of how much of a little shit he was being. "Nae, ye cheeky wee cunt! Look, when me da proposed tae me mum? Was on a job. They were the demolitions team contracted for an operation. Standard sort o' job, but Da always had a flair for the dramatic. They set up the buildin' the rest o' the team was heistin' tae blow, and while he was at it, Da added an extra little touch. He set the timin' in a specific pattern. So once the team's out and they're at distance, Mum hits the detonator, and instead o' it all goin' up at once, they blow up in a pattern, tae the rhythm o' the first song they ever danced tae. When she realized, he was already takin' her hand and slippin' a ring on her finger as he knelt and asked her tae marry him." With a wistful sigh, Demoman shook his head. "Bloody romantic."

"How'd she react?"

"She tore him a new arsehole for spendin' money on a ring!" Demoman laughed. "Then she said yes. That's Mum for ye."

"So you wanna give Sniper the same kind of proposal?"

"Nae the same, but somethin' with that sort o' spirit, aye. Just need tae figure out what is the problem. Once I've got the What, the When'll fall intae place."

"And you haven't come up with anything?"

"Nothin' seems grand enough. He deserves the bloody world."

Soldier shook his head, smiling all the same. His friend was so smitten it was almost pathetic, but what red-blooded American wouldn't want to show the one he loves how much they matter using explosives? It was what they did every July fourth, after all. "I'm going to help you. If you can't come up with an idea on your own, that ring's going to sit at the jeweler's and the receipt in your desk until Sniper stumbles on it someday and you'll look like a coward. I know you are not a coward, son! So we're going to assemble the greatest team in America to conduct this operation, and make it a crushing success!"

"The team? Ye think they'd help?"

"Why wouldn't they? We're a team, Tavish! And what's a marriage if not the most powerful kind of team there is? If marriage is sure to result in happiness, then you must marry!" Soldier nodded sagely. "Sun Tzu said that."

Demoman couldn't help but grin at Soldier's enthusiasm. And who knew? Maybe the team would be able to help him figure something out. A good group brainstorming session might be just the trick! "Couldn't hurt, I suppose. Mickey and Scout are on a beer run tae town on account o' Engie's doin' a software update on the teleporters today, so that gives us plenty o' time tae ask around."

Soldier nodded, the straps of his helmet wobbling with the motion. "So who do we talk to first?"

"Who else but the one bloke on this team that loves gettin' a crew together tae pull some barmy stunt only we can pull off?"

*

"A proposal?" Spy hummed, watching the whiskey in his rocks glass swirl, a light coating clinging to the glass and slowly breaking away as its surface tension was dispelled by gravity. He smiled warmly. "Possibly the most noble task I've been approached for in a long time."

"So will ye help me?" Demoman asked, crossing his arms, fidgeting with nervous energy. It drove him mad how Spy played so coy about every damned thing.

The smoking room was quiet for a long, uncomfortable moment, carefully calculated to provide the pause with proper pregnancy before Spy finally met Demoman's eye and nodded. "But of course. Far be it for me to deny romance, mon ami! While I don't particularly understand what you see in the bushman, it's abundantly clear how utterly smitten you are with him." Spy took a sip. "And he with you, muted as his reactions can be."

"I assure ye, nothin' about the lad's muted behind closed doors," Demoman said with a wag of his eyebrows.

"I am, tragically, also very aware of that, as well. These walls aren't soundproofed."

Soldier chuckled and elbowed Demoman who couldn't exactly deny it, his cheeks reddening a bit.

Spy smirked, then set his glass down atop his minibar. He cleared his throat, and tapped a bright red button on the top of his bar cabinet, a microphone popping out of a hidden compartment. The public address system across the base squealed gently with the slightest ring of feedback before clearing, and resounding with Spy's voice as he spoke.

"Attention, gentlemen. Report to the briefing room in thirty minutes for an emergency meeting. Thank you."

A second tap of the button pulled the microphone back into its compartment, and Spy lifted his glass once again and took a sip. "I will meet you there, gentlemen. If there are any preparations you need to make before that, now is your time."

"Half an hour? Why not now?" Soldier asked.

"Because I have my own preparations to attend to as well," Spy hummed. He downed the last of his drink and gestured to the door. "The clock is ticking, gentlemen."

Getting the hint, Demoman tossed Spy a salute and grabbed Soldier by the elbow. "Aye, thanks, Spy. See ye then."

Once the door had shut, Spy lifted the receiver of his phone, and dialed a number on its rotary. A moment of ringing later, a voice answered on the other end of the line, flanked by the popping of gunfire, "Pauling here!"

"Good afternoon, Miss Pauling. I hope I'm not interrupting anything..."

*

When at last every mercenary on base had filed into the briefing room, Spy shut the door gently, its soft click seeming portentous in the curious hush of the room. The fact that Soldier wasn't making a racket was already making everyone else a little nervous.

"Gentlemen," Spy said warmly, beatific and genteel as he stepped the the centre of their gaze across the table, his arms folded behind his back and a smile playing at his lips. His eyes fairly sparkled.

Everyone realized at once that Spy was about to launch into a speech. Engineer trundled over to the coffee maker and set about doling out cups.

"I bring you here today for a mission of great importance. We men of murder and malevolence are not often called upon to serve the more noble motivations of mankind. Rarely are soldiers of fortune such as we tasked with more than violence, destruction, skulduggery, and far more sinister things, living weapons to be wielded against our neighbour, to accomplish whatever dark deeds our benefactors demand." Spy withdrew a cigarette from his case and held it between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting it for a moment before turning his eyes back to the team. "Today, if only for a fleeting moment, we break the chains of servitude to the almighty dollar that we have willingly wrapped around our necks, cast off the yoke of deception and cruelty, and emerge as men, with clear eyes and open hearts, our hands, stained though they may be, ready to serve the greatest, most worthy cause that exists in this world." He snapped his cigarette case shut and tucked it into his jacket pocket. "Love, gentlemen."

Spy lit his cigarette and took a drag. "It is no secret that we here at BLU have seen love bloom on our battlefield. Our Demoman," he gestured to the man in question, "and Sniper have found comfort in one another's arms, romance blossoming between the bullets and bombs, taking root so deep, that our dear DeGroot seeks to formalize their bond as matrimony."

Medic gasped, grinning giddily as he turned to look at Demoman, lightly clapping his gloved hands together in delight. Pyro mirrored the action on his other side, and Demoman quickly found the entire team's eyes on him instead of the man speaking. He shrank in his seat, a little embarrassed.

"But what proposal could possibly suffice for the prince of the Highland Demomen? What proposal could ever truly illustrate just how impossibly important Mick Mundy is in this man's heart? That, gentlemen, is why we are here today."

Taking another puff from his cigarette, Spy began to pace slowly, the motion catching the team's attention and bringing it back to him. "We are men of violence, yes, but we are also men of action." He gestured to Soldier. "Men of science." His hand swept to Medic, Engineer, and Demoman in turn. "Men of art." Heavy and Pyro. "And men of passion!" He spread both arms wide, to present the team to themselves, his cigarette tucked between two fingers and making an arc with its smoke. "We, gentlemen, are a team, and as a team, we can accomplish anything. And on this day, we will devise a proposal so grand, so powerful, so explosive, that it will shake the very foundations of romance itself, and leave it forever changed in its wake!"

Silence fell over the room. Softly, Pyro clapped his gloved fingertips together, to which Spy nodded appreciatively.

"Er, right. So, I wannae propose tae Mickey," Demoman said, fingers digging under his knit cap to scratch at the back of his head. Spy always had to make things so bloody dramatic. "And I want it tae be big, meaningful, ye ken? He deserves tae feel special with it, made a big deal 'o."

"Ach, that is so sweet, Demo! Do you have a ring?"

"It's been ordered, but it's still at the jeweler's in town. He's holdin' it so Mickey disnae find it."

"When you plannin' on poppin' the question?"

"Soon, but I dinnae have a specific date."

"You have location?"

"Nae."

"That is precisely why we've assembled a brain trust of sorts, to work out the best possible proposal," Spy said, taking a seat at the table.

Pyro hopped to his feet and trundled over to the blackboard, snatching up a piece of chalk. "You said you wanted it to be explosive, right?"

"Aye. Ye thinkin' fireworks?"

"Better." Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Pyro drew a vague approximation of the RED base on the board, as seen from BLU's battlements. "What does Sniper love more than anything in the world?"

"Demoman!" Soldier announced, looking to his teammates proudly for having gotten the answer right.

"After Demo," Pyro corrected with a laugh.

"Work," Heavy said simply. "Sniper never shut up about job."

"His professional standards, the merits of his work's flexibility," Medic added.

"Get too close to the feller you realize he talks an awful lot 'o' shit 'bout poppin' heads when he's lookin' down the scope, too," Engineer chuckled. "Real joy in what he does."

"He loves shooting people from far away," Soldier agreed.

"Exactly!" Pyro turned to the board and drew a few dead stick figures around the base, with head wounds. "So how about surprising him at work?"

"What do you recommend?" Spy asked, intrigued.

"He's always going to be looking at the RED base, so let's give him something to look at. Write it out across the REDs' walls for him to see."

"In blood!" Soldier said, slamming his fist into his palm.

"With bombs!" Pyro corrected. "Blood won't show up; the base is red."

"How? And when? Nae like I can sneak out there at the start o' the match," Demoman hummed, thoughtfully.

"What about settin' up those bombs on remote, like a sticky trap meant to deliver a message?" Engineer asked. "Maybe a bunch o' real careful shaped charges?"

"Hard to make letters with just shrapnel and burn marks," Heavy countered.

"What about paint?" Pyro asked. "You'd need a lot more than just your usual sticky setup, but a bunch of specially-made miniature stickies filled with paint? You know the geometry and physics on this better than anyone, but I bet Engie could help with it, too! Set 'em all up and when they're in place, let 'em rip and splash Marry Me Mundy over the front of the RED base where everyone—especially Sniper—can see!" He turned the chalk sideways to write the letters in broad strokes on his drawing of the base.

"That could work!" Demoman said, perking up with excitement. "But how am I tae set this up? Durin' a match?"

"Perhaps not," Spy hummed, stubbing his cigarette out in the ash tray. "Before coming to this meeting, I placed a call. Miss Pauling owes me a large favour from some very important, very last-minute contract work I did for her recently. I informed her that I was calling it in. I have arranged for her to establish a sudden ceasefire day in three days' time, with a falsified cover story about emergency respawn maintenance, and find a contract for Sniper that can fill his time that day to keep him away from base. Then, we will be free to place the explosives properly and at our leisure, to prepare for the next day. Then, when the shutters open and we take the field, you can detonate the paint bombs for a proper proposal."

"Then once the match is over, I can greet him in the locker room with the ring."

"What if we lose match? Will ruin mood," Heavy hummed.

"Then we must make sure we win! We will be fighting not just for victory, but for love!" Soldier demanded, slamming a fist on the table. "We cannot lose, men!"

"No pressure, right fellas?" Engineer chuckled.

"You said the ring is still with your jeweler?" Spy asked.

"Aye. Didnae trust meself tae hide it well enough."

"Fair. Sniper is observant by trade, after all. Then it will have to be fetched. Is it at Enrique's, perchance?"

"Spy, there's only one jeweler in Teufort. 'Course it's at Enrique's."

"Then allow me to fetch it for you. One less activity for you to hide from your fiance-to-be. I will be joining Miss Pauling and Sniper on their contract, and will keep in communication with you regarding our estimated times of arrival. I can easily slink away for the ring during such."

"Thank ye, Spy."

"Any time," Spy hummed, lighting another cigarette. "So, we have myself and Miss Pauling on jewelry and distraction team. Pyro, I assume you can help with the paints."

"Sure, I've got a bunch we can test to make sure it can stand up to explosives and get good coverage. And show up against RED's wall."

"I can help as well," Medic chirped. "Viscosity is going to be a concern as well as pigment when it comes to coverage, and I have quite a bit of knowledge in comparative viscosity of fluids in relation to their aerodynamic properties!"

Everyone's faces soured a moment, imagining what horrors that knowledge entailed.

Spy shook it off. "Demoman, you and Engineer can manufacture the bombs, yes?"

"Aye, should be nae danger. Construction and placement."

"It'll be fun figurin' out the angles on this, if I'm honest," Engineer chuckled. "Plus who don't love blowin' things all to hell?"

"Heavy—"

"I will handle Scout," Heavy announced, preemptively weary.

That gave Spy pause. "Yes, he will be a concern. The sooner he finds out about this plan the longer we have to be concerned he will let the information slip and spoil the surprise." "He does not keep secrets well," Heavy agreed. "Strange," he added, giving Spy a long, knowing look. The corner of his lip twitched upward just barely, and the rogue gave him a hard, unamused stare in reply.

"So you running interference with him is a good idea, thank you, Heavy," Spy continued brusquely.

Medic elbowed Heavy, who cracked into a full smirk in spite of himself. "Schatz. Don't antagonize him, he's doing a sweet thing." "Yes, Doktor." Heavy looked away from Spy, trying to tamp down his own amusement.

"When we do let Scout in on it though, he could be good for setting up a few bombs if we need to put any in weird spots that might need hand-placement," Pyro said, turning his darkened lenses at Heavy as a threat. "Since he can jump and climb better than any of us."

"And I will make sure we win this match, come hell or high water! We will not let a loss ruin this, as God is my witness!" Soldier barked. He clapped a hand on Demoman's shoulder. "You have my word as an American that your man is gonna get the best proposal in the history of our great country! You're gonna propose the pants right off him!"

A wobbly smile crept across the Scot's lips as he looked at the helmet that covered where his friend's eyes were. "Aye, thank ye, Soldier. Thank ye all. Ye dinnae ken what it means tae me—"

Everyone shifted uneasily. They could hear the telltale quaver in their teammate's voice.

"We do, mon ami. Now, please, let us adjourn so that we can begin preparations," Spy interrupted hurriedly, trying to derail the emotional outpouring followed by likely crying jag that was mounting already, earnest though it may be. "Save your tears for when you are holding you new fiance."

Demoman sniffled, a deep breath following it at he forced back tears. "Aye, let's get tae it, lads. We've a plan, now let's put it intae action." "Ready?" Soldier asked, hopping from his seat. "Ready!" Demoman echoed, grinning as he rose in turn.

"CHARGE!"

*

Three days of preparation felt like no time at all, but as paints were mixed and loaded into custom-machined sticky bombs and tested in a small blast chamber in Engineer's workshop, Demoman found himself growing more and more impatient for the day to arrive.

"This is takin' forever," he grumbled, going over his notes with a frown.

"Wish we had a little more time to test and iterate," Engineer grumbled. He scratched at his chin. "We ain't gettin' the kind 'o' power we need to cover the distance between the bridge and the buildin'. At this rate it ain't gonna say nothin' on the side 'o' RED's base, let alone 'Marry Me Mundy'."

Demoman pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed at it. "Aye, but there's only so much power we can put in these we bastards with a shaped charge inside, let alone nae just vaporizin' the paint on detonation, nae matter how thick the stuff is. Tae keep it goin' in a direction with the power we need, we either need bigger bombs, which means it'll be harder tae get the angles we need tae spell anythin'."

"Maybe we're comin' at this all wrong. What about if we put the bombs on the buildin' itself, make 'em splatter in place."

"We'd only need squibs for that," Demoman hummed. "Would be a right pain settin' em up, but we wouldn't need tae bring protractors out there tae get everythin' in place the right way."

Engineer chuckled at that. "I dunno about squibs, though. After all, we still want a nice big kaboom to get Sniper's attention, after all."

"Aye, yer nae wrong there. Right now we've got enough bloody kaboom tae turn the REDs tae paste if they stumbled intae the blast zone!" Demoman grinned at that. "Alright, we'll focus on the power behind 'em later. Now we've a better plan, we should focus on designin' a better housin' for the bombs, first. Since we're puttin' 'em on the buildin' now, we could build a launcher tae speed up the process."

"No monotaskers," Engineer said firmly, a knife-hand gesture emphasizing his point. "We're already on a time crunch; I ain't about to start R&D on a mini-sticky launcher you're gonna use once."

"Aye, aye, nae danger," Demoman hummed, disappointed. "Right, let's get back tae the drawin' board on these hand-set stickies, then."

Engineer grabbed a new sheet of blueprint paper and a compass. "Sounds like a plan. You see my pencil anywhere?" he asked, forgetting for the third time in an hour that he'd tucked it behind his ear.

Medic giggled excitedly as Pyro pried the lid off of one of the paint cans he'd hauled back from the hardware store. Inside, the paint was a cool, saturated azure that almost matched Sniper's uniform shirt. "Oh, this colour is perfect!" he cooed, dipping a stir-stick into the goop and withdrawing it, watching the paint run off of it in thick rivulets.

"I went for an exterior paint made with latex," Pyro said. "They said it could thicken a little if we left it open so the water inside evaporates."

"Ah, that's true, but with latex, I know of an additive we can use to further increase its viscosity!" Medic declared, thrusting a finger into the air. "I should still have some hydroxyethyl cellulose somewhere in my lab, and that can thicken anything water-soluble!"

Pyro clapped his hands together. "That's perfect! We need to make sure this paint is nice and goopy so the guys can really launch it!"

"I'll go dig around for it. I'll get my Zahn cups too, so we can get actual measurements for Demo and Engie's purposes. They're going to want the math on this, I'm sure."

"Good thing you know how to calculate that kind of stuff. When I build it's usually based on feel alone," Pyro chuckled.

Medic merely replied with an impish grin in lieu of admitting that he operated much the same.

Heavy wasn't nearly as excited or feeling as industrious with his assigned task: distracting Scout. Keeping Sniper out of the loop was easy. After all, the man was generally easygoing and content to hang out with Scout outside or do some light hunting and let people have their space. Sometimes projects came up, and he was rarely involved in his teammates' R&D, so it wasn't anything terribly out of the ordinary for him.

Scout, on the other hand was nosy. And dogged in his determination to find out when something was being kept from him. His little brother instincts were honed to a razor's edge, which none of the team wanted turned on them. Heavy, having suffered the slings and arrows of helping raise three little sisters, had the best chance to weather the storm.

"Surprised you wanted me to work out with you," Scout said, hands splayed on the gym wall as he leaned in and stretched his hamstrings. "Doc finally get on you about your cardio?"

"No," Heavy grunted, then half-shrugged. "Yes. But is not reason. Doktor is working on something with Pyro this week, and I am waiting for new book to come in mail. I want to do something... eh," he rolled his hand in the air, trying to find the right word, "useful? Producing?"

"Productive?"

"This," Heavy said, nodding gratefully. "Something productive to do with time until then." He tugged his hooded sweatshirt off and set it aside, taking a seat on the workout bench. The fluffy hair on his shoulders, chest, and belly danced lightly in the breeze of the box fan that sat at one edge of the gym.

"So workin' out with me is productive?"

"Tiny Scout flex often, but no muscles show. You are not weak man, but you are lean. Want to show you how to lift to build muscle that is visible."

Scout's eyebrow lifted, and he turned to face Heavy, his fists coming to rest on his narrow hips. "Yeah? Why you feelin' so charitable all of a sudden?" Suspicion had his nostrils flaring, like he could sniff out some kind of misdirection.

"Boredom." With a tilt of his head to the side, Heavy sighed and worked Scout's ego with an offer of exchange, "And maybe then you help Heavy with cardio so Doktor give me less trouble. Mega baboon hearts are expensive, he always tell me."

Scout snorted a laugh at that. "Fuckin' a! If the guy's costs weren't covered by 'is contract, 'e'd give us a freakin' invoice after every match!"

Heavy barked a laugh at that, slapping his thigh.

In three days' time, Miss Pauling arrived on base with a clipboard, a few manila folders, and a knowing glance to Spy before gathering the team in the briefing room and informing them of a ceasefire being abruptly called because of emergency respawn maintenance. She handed one to Engineer, and he grumbled that he'd get right on it and left to go get a drink, thumbing through the Mann Co catalog she'd tucked inside to give it believable bulk.

"The rest of you are on liberty for the rest of the day," she said, shuffling through her papers. "Except Sniper, and you, Spy. You two stay here."

Everyone else filed out, leaving her with the two mercenaries. She closed the door with a light click, and tossed two manila folders onto the table. "I have work for you two."

*

Scout skidded to a halt in front of the rec-room door, snatching hold of the jamb to stabilize himself. "Miss P's truck just pulled out. We're go, guys!"

"Lookout says we're go, so let's go, ladies! Up and at 'em! Move out! Go! Go! Go!" Soldier whooped, hopping to his feet and ushering the others out.

The mercenaries rushed out, Demoman and Engineer grabbing the bombs and plans from the workshop, the rest of the team mustering at the gate to the battlefield. Once everyone arrived, they threw the gate open and spilled onto the field, making a bee-line for the end of the covered bridge that separated BLU from RED, and would make their staging point.

"So, where will we be placing these bombs to get the paint on the building?" Medic asked. "Is the bridge enough surface area for them all?"

"Naw, we ran the numbers and did some control tests, and the amount of propulsion we'd need to get the paint from here to there'd end up just splatterin' it everywhere. Instead, we cut out the middle man. Bombs get planted on the wall itself, and explode outward in all directions. We just gotta make sure we ain't in the line 'o' fire when they go off, since they're still gonna fire off spikes, shrapnel, and a whole hell of a lot 'o' kinetic energy."

"Shouldnae be too bad, since we dialed down the explosives inside tae compensate."

Engineer froze in place, thinking for a moment. "...Did we?"

"O' course we did, we talked about it."

"...but did we actually do it? I remember talkin' about doin' it, but did we actually change the measurements when we loaded these puppies?" Engineer asked, biting at his lip as he realized a sudden massive hiccup in their process.

Demoman shrugged. "Too late tae double-guess it now. Important thing is it'll still write the words, which is all that matters." He set down the toolbox full of bombs, flipping it open to reveal a pile of small, palm-sized blue bombs bearing long, thin spikes designed to wedge deep into the wood and hold the bombs in place overnight. "Right, time we get tae work, lads. Plenty 'o bombs, and it's all by hand. Take a few, pick a spot, and get tae work. Scout, ye and Heavy're on the high spots."

"Aye aye!"

*

"What the hell?"

The RED Spy narrowed his eye as he looked down the rifle scope, watching the amassment of BLUs at their battlefield doorstep. He lowered the rifle and looked to the RED Sniper beside him, who nodded, satisfied that he'd seen the same thing. "It looks as though they're attaching something to the wall. It is hard to tell from this angle."

"Saw 'em totin' out a toolbox filled with little miniature stickies with longer spikes on 'em, and some sort of schematic. Got me wonderin' if they're usin' this little respawn outage as an excuse to do some impromptu demolitions on our base."

"But that would be madness," Spy said, handing Sniper back his rifle. "Surely their contracts are as ironclad as ours are. Base offensives during downtime aren't just a breach of contract, it forfeits one's life!"

"Grounds for termination," Sniper echoed with a dark laugh. "Right, but then if it's not that, then what the hell is it? A nasty little surprise for the start of the work day tomorrow? Not bloody sportin', is it?"

"I suppose it's a clever way to gain a short-term advantage," Spy conceded.

"Underhanded way, more like it. Fair dinkum clever but there's a difference between bein' a bunch of mad cunts and bein' a bunch of dog cunts."

Spy stared at Sniper for a long moment. "Your people have such an elegant way with the English language."

"Oh piss off."

"Regardless, we should alert the rest of the team. This cannot go unchallenged. I suspect if nothing else, coming running to our front porch like a horde of irritated pensioners, threatening them to get off of our lawns, may suffice to spoil their fun."

"If you can get Soldier to not go full-on offensive. Or worse, Demo. After all, they're plantin' stickies, and 'is ex is out there."

*

"I have completed the letter M!" Soldier barked, stepping back from what—thankfully—actually was a fully-set letter M on the wall of the RED base.

"Grand, lad," Demoman replied, jamming another sticky into the wood. "Yer all doin' grand!"

"Yeah, we gotchu, Demo," Scout said, eyeing up a jump. "Can't have Snipes gettin' a normal borin' ol' proposal." He grabbed a sticky and took a few steps back. "Still can't believe you guys didn't tell me til this mornin', though."

"Couldnae risk it, lad. Ye two are mates. Could've let it slip."

"Psh, yeah sure. Like I'd ruin somethin' this important." Scout ran and leapt, slapping the sticky onto the wall and kicking off to land in the gravel with a crunch.

"Like you ruin Doktor's surprise party last month?" Heavy asked, wedging another bomb into the wall.

"It was not that big a deal," Medic sighed, trying to defuse things.

"Man, you ain't never gonna let me forget about—hey wait is that why you had me in the gym all week? Were you runnin' interference to keep me in the dark? Ohh pally, you slimy—man I thought we were bondin' an' shit! I thought oh hey maybe the big guy forgives me for the party thing finally an' wants to just go back to bein' buddies an' all along you were just keepin' me busy so I didn't find out about all the paint mixin' an' bomb makin' an' proposal plannin'?" Scout threw his arms wide. "What the hell?!"

"Lay off him, son," Engineer chastised, clapping a hand on Scout's shoulder. "We assigned him the job. Last thing any one of us wanted was this gettin' out too soon, and as you showed with Doc's birthday, when you get excited, sometimes this," he pointed to Scout's mouth, "moves faster'n this," he tapped Scout's head. "Don't mean you ain't tryin', or that you don't care. We just all know how hyped up you get, so we wanted to keep the anticipation to a dull roar, is all."

Scout's scowl slowly morphed into a pout, and he turned his eyes back to Heavy, who was staring at him evenly, waiting to see his response. "Yeah, okay. I guess. Whatever. Let's get this done before Miss P gets back with Spy an' Snipes." It was as good a result as they could have hoped for, and Heavy and Engineer shared a look as they went back to work, knowing full well that within ten minutes Scout would be over it and chattering merrily again.

"How are you so good at that?" Medic leaned in to ask as Engineer trotted past him.

"Just gotta know how to massage a fella's ego the right way so it don't bruise too much, is all," Engineer replied with a chuckle. "Same as negotiatin' a contract."

Medic nodded, understanding that all too well. "Ah, a fair point!"

"How much longer do you think we have, anyway?" Pyro asked, one arm full of stickies as he worked at the bottom of the Y in 'Mundy'.

Demoman checked his watch. "Nae as long as I'd like. We need tae get on it, lads. They should be on their way back already."

"Awright, time to knock this into high gear! Hey, Heavy, boost me up! If I climb up the battlement I can get on the awnin' an' put the 'marry' up there!"

"That's a lot for one person," Engineer said.

"Soldier, you wanna grab the Rocket Jumper from resupply real quick? You land like a freakin' cat off those jumps. Between the two of us we should be able to get it done."

"Roger!" Soldier hollered, charging back across the bridge into the BLU base.

"It does deviate from the plan," Engineer hummed, scratching at his chin, "but it does increase visibility."

"Aye, good idea! Nae way it disnae catch his eye now." Demoman grinned broadly as he watched Soldier hustling back with his launcher, Scout already climbing onto Heavy's shoulders and beginning to scale the building proper. He imagined Sniper's voice crackling through the radio when the bombs went off, disbelief and excitement all blended together as he choked out his answer amid a hail of paint and shrapnel.

*

The drive to and from the job site probably doubled the time of the actual job itself, possibly including the stopover in Teufort for Spy to gather additional recon. All the same, it had been an easy job, a nice paycheck, and Sniper couldn't complain about that. It had almost been too easy.

"Surprised you didn't just do this one yourself," Sniper mused, catching his hat as an errant breeze through the open window of Miss Pauling's beater of a truck threatened to steal it. "Was a piece of piss, really."

"It was the range, if I'm honest," Miss Pauling lied, her eyes never leaving the empty, open road. "I'm better up-close, and this guy has a habit of keeping his perimeter pretty secure, hence the need to strike from outside of it."

"S'pose you do work mostly in pistols and shotguns," Sniper conceded.

"I own a few rifles, but I've got an astigmatism so scopes are kind of weird for my eyes. Plus if I'm doing the wetwork it's generally because nobody can find out. Full blackout kind of stuff, and sniping's pretty public." She chuckled a little, thinking of the screams and sudden scramble of everyone around when Sniper had taken the shot.

"Yes, they cannot all be week-long stakeouts or risky shots taken in the middle of firefights," Spy said with a sigh, trying his hardest to narrow his body to avoid physical contact as he sat between Miss Pauling and Sniper. He was aching for a cigarette, but in spite of the open windows (thanks to a very broken AC unit), Miss Pauling had made it clear that he would have to ride in the truck bed if he wanted to smoke.

He almost wished he'd taken her up on that, now.

"Either way, a short day's not so bad. Strewth, might turn in early and get a good night's sleep for once," Sniper chuckled. "Get dinner, skull a couple of tinnies with the lads, grab Demo and drag 'im to bed."

"Sniper!" Miss Pauling teased, playing at being scandalized.

"For a lie down!" Sniper drawled, glaring at her in mock-defensiveness. "Dunno what you've got on your mind, but I was just thinkin' of how much of a bloody cuddle-monster Demo is. Coziest night's sleep you can imagine, 'long as you like sleepin' with a bloke wrapped around you like a koala." He chuckled at that.

Spy made a show of rolling his eyes. "Yes, that is all you two do."

"Never said that."

Miss Pauling snorted a little laugh as Sniper turned his attention out the window and the passing desert, a smile playing at his lips as he thought back to their mornings, Demoman pulling him back into bed for just a few more minutes, just another snuggle, just another kiss, just a little bit longer in the quiet of morning, wrapped in one another's arms.

It made his chest feel full, his heart feel light as he reflected on the memory of that gentle moment of giddy love, and how lucky he was to have it.

If you'd told him when he'd taken this contract that the guy chugging cider and shooting bombs at people would turn out to be the love of his life, he'd have called you an outright galah, talking complete nonsense just to hear your own voice. He and Demoman couldn't have been more different!

Demoman was everything Sniper wasn't. He was loud, excitable, unpredictable, and from a home that told him his occupation was worth more than he was as a person.

Sniper was everything Demoman wasn't. He was quiet, patient, stable, and from a loving home with parents who only wanted safety and prosperity for their son.

And yet, there was so much about them that matched. A mirror image, opposite but the same. Both of them were passionate about their work. Both of them stuck out like sore thumbs among their countrymen, in spite of their own immense national pride. Demoman was a Highlander through and through, and you'd not find a more true blue Aussie than Sniper. Both of them knew what it was like to never be enough, to be an outsider in their own homes, to doubt themselves because of it. Both of them wanted someone to just accept them for who they were, all of it, and more than that, love them for it.

For all of Demoman's grins and laughter. For all of Sniper's smirks and stories.

For all of Demoman's tears and tragedies. For all of Sniper's doubts and isolation.

He'd have called you an outright galah, and he couldn't have been more wrong if he'd tried. God help him he'd never been happier to be proven wrong.

Demoman made him feel wanted. Appreciated. Adored. He made him feel like he fit in ways he hadn't since he first left his parents' arms as a child. He made him happy in ways he wasn't sure he'd ever felt or could even conceive of. Demoman felt like part of him, not a missing piece or something so cliche, but like vines that had grown into the brick of an ancient building, so intertwined that they may as well be one whole structure. He never felt more peace than when he could feel his weight on his chest, his muttonchops gently tickling his skin, his strong arms wrapped tightly around his narrow middle; when Demoman could hear his heartbeat and would smile against him as the sound lulled him to sleep, fingers twitching lightly in his dreams. Even when he snored.

A soft laugh left Sniper's nose. He fancied he'd be fine with it if he heard that snore every night for the rest of his life.

*

"They're climbin' the freakin' base?" RED Scout asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked out onto the field. The RED team had assembled atop one of their gravel silos.

"See? Plantin' bloody explosives. Fuckin' oath, just like I said."

RED Demoman sneered at the sight of Soldier rocket jumping onto the metal awning beside Scout, nimbly landing and motioning for Heavy to throw the toolbox filled with the remaining bombs. "Plantin' bombs in the off hours. Just like that soulless bloody monster tae set traps like the coward he is."

"This aggression cannot stand, boys!" RED Soldier barked, stomping his foot. "We are not about to let those maggots dance up to our doorstep and take a big fat crap on the welcome mat! They are not welcome at all!"

"To arms!" Demoman declared, storming into the base.

*

"Thanks again, guys," Miss Pauling called as the passenger door shut, Sniper and Spy stretching in the evening sun after the long drive. "Money should be in your accounts by tomorrow. And I'll try to get that new hat you were after, Sniper."

"Aces. Have a good one, Miss Paulin'."

The truck roared to life, and with a final wave, Miss Pauling sped off, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake as she pulled out of the lot and onto the dirt road that led from the base.

"Now that that's done and over with, let's get back inside where the air conditioning actually works," Spy grumbled, fussing with his jacket. "I wish she would take Engineer up on his offers to fix that rolling heap she calls a truck."

"She's gonna run that thing until it stops rolling before she actually lets 'im look at it," Sniper chuckled, slinging his rifle across his back and heading for the base. "Means she'd 'ave to plan for downtime otherwise, and Miss Paulin' don't rightly know the meanin' of downtime."

"In spite of having one job she's managed to be an even bigger workaholic than your dear partner," Spy snorted, falling in step beside him.

The jaunt from the end of the lot to the base wasn't a particularly long one, but it did afford a view of the battlefield between buildings. Spy caught himself craning a bit to see if the team had finished, eyes widening as he saw Scout and Soldier at work, standing precariously atop the shoddy metal awning that sat over the RED base's central sniper's nest. All of that time, and they still weren't finished, and being super obvious about it. What's worse, they were going to get the attention of—

"Holy dooley!" Sniper tipped his sunglasses down as he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide as he looked through the gap between buildings out at the field. "Is that the team? The bloody 'ell are they doin' out there?" His eye was drawn by a blur of red, and he choked on his breath. The RED team were atop one of the silos, and their Demoman was leading a charge inside, likely to get weapons. "REDs! We've gotta warn 'em; they're gonna get killed!"

"What—"

"Respawn's off, Spy! The maintenance! They're gonna get killed! Tav's out there!" Terror choked Sniper's voice as panic rose in his gut and seized his heart. He took off at a sprint for the base, gravel crunching like the churning of a runaway train with each step.

"Mundy!" Spy called, giving chase. Merde, this could not have possibly taken a worse turn.

"There, that's the last one," Scout announced, wedging the final sticky into place and clapping his hands. "Comin' down!" he called, and began to slowly hop from ledge to ledge to reach the ground. Soldier followed less elegantly, landing with a grunt beside him.

Demoman checked his watch. "Just in bloody time, too. Let's get off this field before they get back and catch us—"

"TAV!" Sniper's voice ripped across the battlefield, making the BLUs turn as he tore out of the entrance to the base, sprinting for the bridge, Spy hot on his heels. "REDs INCOMING! RESPAWN'S OFF, TAV!"

"Mickey?!"

"Catch you doin' what, ye prancin' dandies? Sneakin' ontae the field durin' a ceasefire tae set a trap like a bunch o' bloody cowards?!" From the woodwork, RED mercenaries emerged in force, weapons at the ready, their Demoman coming into view at the battlement window.

Demoman froze. None of them were armed, and if the REDs killed them, it would reveal that Respawn was still live, which would make Sniper start asking a lot of questions. And the bombs being discovered already meant they wouldn't remain until morning anyway. Everything was going tits up and panic began to simmer in his brain as Sniper crossed the bridge.

Before he could say a word, he felt a weight at his belt. He turned to see Soldier yank the detonator from his pouch with a broad grin, eyes glinting as he beheld his mortal enemy at the middle of the battlement. "See you in hell, traitor," he growled.

"CHARGE!"

"GET DOWN!"

As the REDs leapt to action, the BLUs leapt to the ground, and Soldier flipped the switch on Demoman's detonator, stopping Sniper in his tracks in the middle of the bridge, a scream ripping from his throat. Spy skidded to a stop at his side, jaw dropping open.

The bombs exploded in a deafening cacophony, rocketing paint, shrapnel, and concussive force in every direction, covering the RED base in a mixture of azure and bright crimson. Heat passed as a wave that sliced through the air with a breeze in its wake, and Sniper fell to his knees in horror.

There was blood everywhere. There was gore everywhere. Body parts, bare giblets left of what they once were, showered to the ground and splattered every surface, which dripped just as thickly with blue paint. A hopeless wail forced itself from Sniper's throat as tears flooded his eyes, his body buckling forward to support himself on his hands. Gone. They were gone. Respawn was off, there was no way that—

"Mundy," Spy murmured, laying a hand on his teammate's shoulder. "Mundy, it's fine."

"What the fuck do you mean it's fi—"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Scout groaned, dragging himself to his hands and knees, covered head to toe in a mixture of paint and viscera.

"Maybe make bombs too strong," Heavy groaned.

"Just a little," Medic grunted, almost colliding with Heavy's chin as he lifted his head, the giant having thrown himself mostly atop him to shield him. All the same, his glasses were a complete loss, one lens fully blue, one lens smeared red.

"I was right; we forgot to change the formula after all. Too much mustard on those babies," Engineer grumbled, shoving what was likely half of the RED Scout's torso off of himself and sitting up. "Everybody alright?"

A thumbs-up surged out of a heap of gore, and Pyro's muffled, "I'm okay!" sounded from beneath it.

Soldier shot to his feet, laughing. "Hell of a show, Cyclops!" he cheered, bending over to dig through some rubble and meat and tugging Demoman out of it, helping him up.

"Tavish!" Sniper gasped, scrambling to his feet. He fairly dove out of the bridge onto him, wrapping his arms around the man as he nearly tackled him right back to the ground, squeezing him hard enough to hurt. "You're okay! I thought I'd lost you! I thought—" his voice choked out, and he buried his face in the mess of blood and paint on his lover's chest, holding back a sob. "God, I thought I'd lost you."

"Takes more'n that tae be rid o' me," Demoman soothed him, rubbing circles on his back, his heart breaking for the agony he'd put Sniper through.

Sniper responded by clinging all the harder, and kissing him until they were both out of breath, unable to summon any words but a desperate, terrified, relieved whimper.

Pyro burrowed his way out of the mess of body parts he'd been buried in, wiping the lenses of his mask clean enough to see. Catching sight of his teammates' embrace, he hummed out a soft little, "Aww."

Heavy climbed to his feet and helped Medic up, giving his hand a squeeze as they looked over as well. Medic squeezed back, a fond little sound leaving him.

When at last they parted, Sniper caressed Demoman's cheek, his hand shaking, his whole body quaking with residual adrenaline. "Well. We're out of a bloody job now, aren't we though?"

"Nae danger, they'll be back soon enough," Demoman chuckled, leaning into the touch.

"No they won't. Respawn maintenance, remember? We've just killed the other team!"

Engineer let out a nervous chuckle. "Well, y'see, about that, Stretch..."

Sniper looked to Engineer in confusion. "Wait, Truckie? Aren't you supposed to be—"

"Pff, and you guys thought I was gonna ruin the surprise," Scout scoffed, getting up and casting about to find his hat.

"Surprise?" Sniper sighed. "Tav, what the hell is goin' on?"

"Er, well, y'see... we sort 'o... set this all up. The ceasefire, the alleged respawn maintenance, Miss Pauling takin' ye out for a contract..."

Sniper looked back to Spy, who simply smiled and shrugged, then slunk past them to hand Demoman a small, black box.

"Was plannin' tae paint it on the RED base so ye'd see it first thing when we started the match tomorrow. Even built special paint bombs for it so I could do it with a bang, ye ken. But I guess it didnae turn out."

"Paint what? Tav..."

Demoman took a breath and straightened up, looking Sniper in the eye with purpose, the sudden change in his bearing taking the assassin aback. "I guess this'll have tae be as explosive as it gets." He dropped to one knee and opened the box, holding it out to Sniper. Inside of it rested a gold ring inset with a sapphire surrounded by small diamond chips in the shape of a crosshairs. "Mickey, I've made a right mess o' everythin', and I never meant tae scare ye like that. If ye can forgive me, I promise tae do everythin' in me power tae never make ye fear, or cry, or hurt again. I promise tae fill yer life with nae but joy and love, like ye deserve. I'd give ye everythin', anythin', the whole bloody world if ye wanted. Ye deserve it all and more. And I hope I'm worth deservin' ye." He took the ring from the box, and slipped it onto Sniper's finger. "Michael Mundy, will ye marry me?"

A relieved sound left Sniper, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and for a second time, he crashed into Demoman, bowling him over into the sodden muck of blue and red gravel. He kissed him giddily, gleeful laughter bubbling in his throat, and when he could finally bring himself to stop kissing him long enough to speak, he pressed his forehead to Demoman's, looking into his eye. "Yes. Of course I will you beautiful idiot!"

Demoman crushed Sniper to his chest with a kiss, tears beginning to run from his eye.

"HE SAID YES!" Soldier whooped, and the team let out a cheer.

[starferret]

omg hiiiiii :3

Ok so first off thank you guys so much for all the love and support on the previous comic, it really does mean a lot. I might try to continue it in some way, either by just drawing some key moments, or sharing the script of it. But anyways!! Here’s some behind-the-scenes and fun facts about the comic!

This was the initial concept sketch from back in May. I wanted to focus on the creepy expressions that Luigi would have with mimicking Dimentio’s, but didn’t go that much into detail in the comic since it was just meant to be sketching out the ideas

These were the sketches for what was the next planned sequence, but I just didn’t like the action poses. SPEAKING OF ACTION POSES-

When trying to visualize the fight scene, I’d boot up Smash Ultimate and observe their attacks. I’d go to training mode and have so it advances by one frame at a time and just stare at it. I just spammed all of their attacks to learn about their fighting style and how they move.

Fun fact! Pretty much every Dimentio that floats behind Luigi were all drawn while I was on a 6 hour plane ride back in August

Writing stories always have you researching the most bizarre and mundane shit. I had to scrub through videos to see how Mimi teleports, and in the end I didn’t even do the one in the video. In Chapter 2 when Mimi is chasing you, she has a unique animation when she enters the room where she basically materializes out of a bunch of squares. There was no way I was going to be able to replicate that effect in 2 panels, so I went with the normal flipping animation- which she does do in her normal form.

Time for fun details :3

While the “dependent” one isn’t based on any specific moments, the other two are each from the previous Paper Mario games (woohoo I love canonical timelines!). “Insecure” is based on Luigi telling Mario about his adventures in TTYD, while his partner Blooey says that he’s lying. “Obsessed” was a bit harder for me to find an example of, but I settled on a line from his diary in the original Paper Mario. In one of his entries he talks about how the Goomba family came to visit and gave him a treat, and he writes “It looked so yummy I ate it without telling my brother! My FP increased by 3. .........You think he'll notice?”. Now this could be interpreted as “do you think he’ll know that I ate it without him” or something like that, but the way I interpreted it was that he’s proud of his FP increasing and wonders if Mario would notice this ‘accomplishment’, as if he’s desperate for his brother’s approval.

Luigi’s hand twitching is him trying to break free :) that punch angered him so much that he overpowered Dimentio’s control on him enough to be able to move his fingers around :)

Also I drew Bowser on Carrie cuz I didn’t know how to draw him running lol

[bellaaldamas]

I just wanted to say, thank you and the other fans from this part of the GoW fandom.

In a place full of trolls and gamerbros who turn characters that they deem annoying into irredeemable, useless bitches (Freya, Angrboða) and characters they do like are reduced to either prize for someone (Thrúd, Sif and somehow, Freya again) or into their masculinity idol (Kratos, whom they only accept as the testosterone caricature godkiller and his development seen as creators turning him soft. This claim is at it's peak with Ragnarok, but it was there back in 2018 such as wanting Kratos to beat or even kill Atreus for "acting like a brat". What a horrible mindset!) - It's nice to have a side with people who are welcoming, creative and genuinely fun to interact with.

Your analyses - both fandom and in-game inputs - are a delight to read. They're beautifuly written, intelligent and well formulared, I always feel smarter after reading them.

Apologies if you prefer to discuss this in DMs, I wanted others to read this too.

I wish you a wonderful rest of your day/night 💛

Thank you so much for this message, this kind of feedback truly makes existing in this - and, admittedly, other fandoms - worth it. Your summary of my ramblings genuinely took me by surprise as I haven't been "conventionally" active in the fandom intentionally due to negative past experiences with other fandoms. Those occasional inputs I do come up with are mainly hastily written bursts in broken English.

I don't make a secret out of the fact that in my experience all fandoms, definitely not just Gow(R), are toxic to varying degrees due to trolls employing the very same tactic everywhere they go. For one, it's creating the illusion of dominance of their opinion in terms of quantity (as they have no arguments to back up their stance other than canon twisting nonsense they clearly realize that "quality" is not their strong suit). To attain that, they resort to a number of other tactics typically used by abusers both online and in real life.

As such, whenever trolls see intelligent and thoughtful people refuting their "points" they know they cannot come up with a single canon compliant rebuttal. Therefore they dog-pile in droves as to wear down the opponent who inevitably has to stop responding to them at some point. Because a logical person who dedicates time and thought to formulate an argument, fact checks and brings up evidence and quotes from the source material simply cannot withstand a wave of unhinged trolling coming at them left, right and center. They certainly cannot respond to each ridiculous one line statement of the trolls (such as the types of statements you bring up, in the vein of "Freya is a b1tch, she should've DyEd instead of He**d*all!!11!!") by typing out a thorough and researched response each time. As it would require not just spending hours on it but repeating themselves numerous times over.

The above behavior from trolls is what caused me personally a burnout from the fandom culture overall and led to my taking a distance. When I engage with people in online communities I tend to avoid blanket statements and try to always back up my points with examples from canon. Trolls don't need any of that and always dismiss those points or, at best, make it look like they acknowledge them (by quoting back). But instead of replying with canon facts they resort to Strawman Arguments or Ad Hominem.

In Gow(R) and other gaming fandoms there's also the matter of the trolls looking for "backup" in the form of big bloggers/reviewers who express, in some respects, a view of the plot and characters similar to them. Which trolls use as another "proof" their opinion is supposedly held by the majority. But the uncomfortable - for them and those reviewers - truth is that YouTube community (a cesspool of trolling as of now) represents hardly even 1 percentage of the general audience (one that pays actual money for the games). Which at most passively watches some of those videos, mainly when they have a click baiting title.

A prime example is that "viral" video with millions of views about Atreus supposedly "having a crush on Thrud". Looking at the comment section it becomes obvious that the people leaving humorous and lighthearted remarks don't take the video or the title statement seriously. Whereas the actual trolls who consider Atreus a "selfish little runt" (c) but somehow good enough to be a prize/reward for Thrud (whom they either sexualize or treat as their girlboss self insert); and who deny that Atreus and Angrboda is the only canon budding romance arc in the series are the same four or five people/nicknames. Who can be observed under other Atreus/Angrboda videos with their nonsense.

Furthermore, trolls actively participated in making the "Atreus and Thrud" piece viral in the comment section for at least one Atreus/Angrboda tribute video by mentioning the AT video and the amount of views it has. And openly insisting it somehow "proves that the fans want" Atreus and Thrud as a romantic arc for Atreus - the very same character they consider unworthy of being a secondary protagonist let alone becoming the main lead of the series or having his own spin off. But, as noted, they believe him to be acceptable enough to become a trophy man for their preferred girlboss.

That in turn brings us to another issue of male characters absolutely also being susceptible to objectification and being reduced to love interests and plot devices for female characters whom fandom minority treats as a part of their personal power fantasy. Atreus hating trolls originally didn't even deny they hated Angrboda "by association" with Atreus - thus even they initially admitted she was intended as his potential romantic partner by the narrative - because women to them are just men's extensions/accessories. But when they realized this argument makes it very easy to dismiss them for the bitter misogynists that they are they changed the tactic (also classic troll pattern) and started to distort canon in order to invent "arguments" to justify not just their Atreus hating but also their Angrboda hating stance.

To "warm up" they originally started calling Angrboda a "woke points character" which I cannot stress enough is utterly laughable when coming from Atreus/Thrud shippers. Because if there is a woke points or fan-service character in GowR it would be Thrud and Heimdall, respectively. They're the only ones who could be either removed entirely (Thrud) or replaced/have their screentime reduced to one or two scenes and the story would've been exactly the same. Thrud's Valkyrie aspirations have no influence on the plot whatsoever and are a complete filler. I'm saying this not because I dislike either of them but because it's an objective fact that smashes troll arguments flat.

Then there is the matter of the trolls being unable to stand the fact that interactions with Angrboda is Atreus's healthiest and most positive relationship in the story. It especially challenged them that Angrboda always valued Atreus's personal choices and didn't once question him (even when she disagreed with his train of action), his moral character or his right to take his own independent decisions (on the contrary, Thrud questioned his every move and deemed him untrustworthy the moment he made one, genuine mistake with Garm - and the trolls deemed it admirable because "finally someone put that little runt in place"; they don't actually ship Atreus and Thrud, they ship their own aggression and disdain towards Atreus projected onto Thrud).

Angrboda let Atreus exercise his agency (another troll nightmare as they cannot stand the very idea of Atreus having any) even when his actions went directly against her mother's words about the giant marbles or against the prophesy itself. That is, despite Angrboda considering the prophesy which killed both of her parents her lifeline. And believing that delivering said prophesy and the giant souls to Loki was her one and only mission in the existence full of loneliness (years of not speaking to another person, per Angrboda's own admission). As well as full of hard labor she had to engage in daily at a strikingly young age (purely out of love and sense of responsibility for every living thing in Ironwood) because there was no one around to help her (Atreus understandably expressed astonishment and admiration at that which Angrboda appreciated but - which is no less important - pointed out they're the same age; implying that she knows and acknowledges Atreus/Loki has gone through a lot himself and fared well). Even Angrboda's grandmother broke due to challenges that only made Angrboda more caring and compassionate.

Which is another point worth addressing about fandom culture because it tends to put down gentle and vulnerable girls and women as "unfeminist". Modern "feminism" has little to do with woman empowerment or rights and is a repackaged patriarchy that praises women/female characters as strong and independent only when they take the aggressor and conqueror mantle from a man.

Kratos fell a victim of a similar thinking on part of both the gamebro AND the "progressive" segment of the fandom. I realize Tumblr is not ready yet for that conversation, but masculinity is not inherently toxic and neither is femininity. What both gamebros and woke types cannot handle is that Kratos's development and Angrboda's character represent the type of masculinity and femininity, respectively, that isn't imposed on them by the sexist society but that is based completely on their free will and life experience. Moreover, Thrud is the one who was heavily influenced by the toxic environment she grew up in. Therefore considering her a "feminist icon" is both factually wrong and unwise (even if we discount her "treacherous ex wife" comment in regards to Freya because that was ALSO a part of Odin's toxic influence that she can now, hopefully, work through and move on from).

But the most delightful part is that none of those troll views and arguments have proven to matter at all. GowR developers went on to do literally every single thing trolls dreaded. Freya was not made into a "big bad b!tch who deserved to be killed by Kratos for being a less than perfect mother" (even though not only was Kratos the furthest thing from the father of the year in Gow18 but as you note, the very same people wouldn't object to physical violence against Atreus at his hands). Kratos continued to work towards healthier existence and carving a better path. Angrboda remained an emotionally mature, loving, caring and independent person with a potential of her relationship with Atreus going further in the following installments. Atreus is clearly set up to have his own spin off or remain a secondary protagonist or even become the main protagonist next game. That in and of itself is a prime example of how irrelevant trolls and their entitled demands are in the grand scheme of things.

That being said, as I always point out, we should keep in mind we cannot control media we consume, only our experience with it. A healthy emotional distance from it is the only way to avoid stress if/when the writers come up with decisions we might not like or find offensive. Mental well being should be our priority and media created by others should never define us.

Thank you again for this positive and inspiring message. Have a great and fulfilling time yourself <3