#also there's even More fucked up things abt the nature of his existence and his memories and whatnot but.

[thegreatyin]

so. to tldr + elaborate on a few things now that people have had time to read this absolute trainwreck:

both the robe and the resurrection endings of nemesis are technically canon in the scoundrel's continuity. officially, caeru chose the robe ending. he just also happened to invent his own resurrection ending because he's a batshit insane freak

the above decision (believe it or not) wasn't actually motivated by personal regret! i've had this plot twist in mind for months, even before the scientist completed his ambition. i chose his in-game ending knowing full well he would spiral and manifest the other one in the worst way possible. i'm very satisfied with my choice and its results, even if my character very much is not (⁠◠⁠‿⁠・⁠)⁠—⁠☆

the plutonian shadow's true identity is that of the doomed scientist's resurrected lover. his ""real name"" or at least the only name he remembers going by is greylu. his current body can best be described as a wholly artificial noman contained in a wooden mannequin shell. he also doubles as the future protagonist of my bag a legend playthrough :)

the shadow's ""heart"" is a mass of melted-together mountain shreds, which help animate him in a manner similar to clay men, as well as reflecting the apocyan memories that give him his (deceptively complicated) identity in the first place. this apocyan light flows throughout his entire body and specifically leaks out of his unfinished eyesocket. he cannot control this. fortunately, it is not painful.

if this diamond was to be removed, damaged, or otherwise tampered with in any way, he would collapse instantly. it is effectively his brain as well as his heart. mr stones do not interact, he's just a little guy :(

to this day, caeru has no idea where the shadow is and what the yearner has done with him. this causes him no small amount of stress.

the shadow, meanwhile, has been living with the yearner and the scarred naturalist. he does not know exactly who created him or the circumstances surrounding said creation, only that the vake yearner "rescued" him and took him in when he had nowhere else to go. he trusts her completely. he thinks she's his best friend in the whole wide world (which, to be entirely fair- he only knows, like, 3 people tops)

the vake yearner is definitely 100% sinister about her intentions surrounding him but i like to think they do buddy-buddy stuff anyway. literally nothing supports this. it's just a headcanon i have. the yearner is taking the shadow on evil snow playdates and he is hanging on her every word and they are having a lovely time (provided you ignore the kidnapping and gaslighting)

the vake and the yearner know each other carnally. i will not elaborate on this.

the silverer lived!!! she's okay. she's vibing. she probably put caeru in the doghouse for a little while but their relationship has somehow survived this particular shooting incident. possibly because both of them have experienced infinitely worse.

the scoundrel has no idea any of this has happened. as far as it's concerned it had a lovely christmas and it has no idea where its husband has gone or why everyone is suddenly all up in arms about trying to find its evil snowwoman clone. it's lonely :(

lark/the unlucky songbird is equally completely and utterly uninformed about current homunculi-related-events, but to be entirely fair, that's kind of the norm for him

caeru still loves greylu. greylu still loves caeru. they both love each other very, very much.

they miss each other even more.

On heartbreak, homunculi, and the small yet very awkward matter of shooting one's girlfriend in the neck over your ex

OR: How The Doomed Scientist has been coping in the aftermath of his ambition (Badly. The answer is very very badly indeed.)

OR: A loosely abridged summary of an RP between myself and @superoffbatter, posted on Tumblr for OC lore purposes.

OR: Major spoilers for the entirety of the Nemesis ambition, as well as minor spoilers for Bag a Legend and a brief spot of blog-typical spoilers for a certain "powerful" ending of Heart's Desire.

OR: What The Plutonian Shadow's deal actually is.

So.

In order to explain this long and complicated tale, we're going to need to set a good bit of groundwork first. For some, this will effectively be a recap. For others, it will be important new lore that will harm us later.

Let's dive right in, shall we?

The Doomed Scientist- also known by his real name, Caeru- has a long and storied history of obsessing over serving others. He's always had this concept in his head that he needs to help, he needs to give himself up for the good of everyone around him, and if he's not doing that then he barely deserves to live at all.

This is the mindset that drove his quest to kill Mr Cups. He wasn't doing it for himself. He was doing it for everyone Cups has hurt, everyone Cups has murdered, every other victim that died so it could fulfill its need for stories of vengeance and misery. During his ambition, he very much saw himself as nothing more than a tool and a weapon to be pointed and used as the dead saw fit.

His own emotions didn't matter. His own grief, all-consuming as it was, didn't matter. Cups needed to die.

Cups- Cups needed to-

Oh, fuck.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't take it. He had an obligation towards those that died, towards his lover, towards everyone who ever wanted the beast dead. He couldn't take it. He just couldn't.

No matter how much he desperately, desperately wanted to.

For the first few weeks after his ambition concluded, Caeru was inconsolable. He was wracked with guilt over ""failing"" to save his former paramour, even more than he was already- for god's sake, the man could've been revived! He could've lived again! He deserved to live again!

And Caeru failed him. He failed to serve him. To be useful. To be good. To be worthy of living.

He... lost it, just a little bit. He became obsessed with fixing this perceived flaw in himself. This perceived flaw in everything. He couldn't sleep yet, he couldn't die yet, not when his love deserved to live.

Deserved to come back.

And. I mean. Well.

How hard could it be, really?

Cups was a Master, yes, and the Masters are lying conniving tyrants- but this was a promise it staked its life upon. A promise it gave on its deathbed. It clearly knew that Caeru could kill it, will kill it, and thus it had no reason to lie-

Cups could have brought his lover back. The Scientist knew that, intimately.

What he didn't know was how. But... well, that's alright, isn't it? He's created life before.

Lenses are arranged, corpses are arranged in a circle, their skin parted carefully with a knife. When the lenses are aligned correctly, the flesh will coalesce into the correct shape.

There are some venge-rats that dedicate themselves to a vengeance so thoroughly that there is nothing left of them but this one desire. When they die, their corpses are saturated with this emotion- but nothing else. When the Academic's machinery leaps to life (more slowly then the one at Station VIII, of course) it drains this, and leaves only withered shells in its wake. Perfect vessels.

Soon, the Knot of Tails reappears in the mirror. In its little coils of many paws, shimmering lights rest- memories. Reflections of rays of light long forgotten by the waking world.

And the false-Noman twists.

It turns.

Second by second, it looks more and more like a person.

When it looks up and smiles a shaky smile, its face is human- and two delicate flowers adorn its hair. The snow lacing its body curls like silk, the nails on its hands delicate and precise and perfect

It doesn't move, for a second. Two. Three.

And then the Rosette Yearner opens her eyes.

All he has to do is perfect the process.

The Yearner reaches a trembling hand up to her head, pursuing her lips in thoughtful silence. She blinks, slowly- once, twice. The silence is finally broken when she speaks, a trembling lilt, her words falling like petals from their stem.

"I'm alive.”

It's cold, unfeeling, distant. Like she's only talking about the weather.

Caeru's first attempt at artificial life, The False Yearner- she who would later be dubbed The Vake Yearner- is a complicated figure. Born out of an insanely long RP exchange with @superoffbatter, she is a ghost in all but name. A failed attempt to replicate a certain Scoundrel's past self, all while her makers were unaware that her and the Scoundrel were one in the same.

Except while the Scoundrel pursued ambitions of power, glory, and transformation, the Yearner ultimately took a different path. A darker path.

The Yearner stumbles over the mirror as they both exit through the window of the Royal Bethlehem. She sighs. "Where to go, now?" she whispers. "I can't stay here. I don't want to stay like this. I want to... do something."

The Silverer shrugs. "It's up to you. I suppose you could hunt the Vake if all else fails?" It's an offhandedly thrown joke, but the Yearner stops moving.

She considers it in her head. She takes a deep breath.

The Vake, huh. The Vake.

She became an avid hunter of the Neath's most infamous monster.

Her relationship with her creator is strained at best. For the most part, they've refused to acknowledge each other- they've hardly even spoken since the incident of her creation, save for a brief yet notable encounter at the Captivating Princess' last masquerade ball.

Someone steps closer to the Scientist, staring him in the eyes. The atmosphere grows colder.

It's a woman in a large fur-trimmed overcoat, with thick gloves and a staggeringly realistically furred marsh-wolf mask. The cosmogone shade of her eyes reveals her identity- the False Yearner- or, as some have taken to call her, the Vake-Yearner. The mask, now that the Scientist gives it a better look, is very obviously made from a real marsh-wolf, but the expert skill behind it... it's Snuffer-made.

The Yearner got a Snuffer to pull off a wolf's face for her. How curious.

"My other self's fiancé." she says, in a monotone. "And their pet Drownie. How curious. How droll."

The Scientist's face may be hidden behind a mask, but nothing could ever hope to conceal his alarmed blanch, the widening of his eyes, the shift of his stance- distinctly defensive, like a prey animal ready to flee at any moment.

"Yearner." his tone is one of forced detachment. "I never took you as someone who'd.. enjoy this sort of thing."

A glance to the side, where violant eyes (albeit from a distance) still gleam amidst the other invitees. Their mask is smiling, even if their lips are pulled into a wickedly fanged frown.

His mask tips downward. He doesn't retract this statement.

It ended... well. Shall we say. Poorly.

He is allowed in the scene- and witnesses the frozen corpses.

Dead, for sure, though how permanent it will be is yet to be tested. A thin layer of frost clings to their skin, and the scene is obviously filled with signs of struggle. Eight bodies, all trying to leave the room as they were cut down- all trying to escape.

Signs of a blunt instrument. Some of them were smashed against the walls, against the ground- one had both arms torn off. Frozen splatters of blood cover the walls.

The Yearner is nowhere to be seen.

The Yearner, after all, is what can best be described as an immortal and unmelting Noman, sustaining herself off of nothing but sorrow and human hearts. Her very existence is built upon blood and misery. She thrives off it. Needs it to survive, to live, to flourish.

Nobody deserves that kind of existence. Not even the Scoundrel's very own doppelganger.

But she's alive. And she did come back from some sort of death, hellish and ironic and false as it may be. It can be done.

The Scientist has done it before.

He can do it again.

He will do it again.

And so Caeru works. And works. And works.

To serve. To fix. To help. Finally, he's going to rectify his mistake, going to make everything better, going to give his lover the life he knows they deserve. This is a noble service. A noble obligation. The last attempt may have failed, but this- this cannot fail- he will not let himself fail, not again, not ever.

And nothing can stand in his way. Nothing except-

"Caeru?" a voice can be heard, knocking on the door to the Scientist's laboratory. "Are you there?"

Were one to look through the one-way glass window, they would see the Silverer, looking worried. "Where were you?" she says. "I haven't seen you all week. What has got you locked in there?" she taps again, more hurried-

-His current paramour, The Snowswept Silverer.

A loud crash echoes at the Silverer's sixth knock. Someone curses. The door slams open harsh enough to send her flinching back, the Scientist standing in the doorway with a look of pure vitriol- then, far slower than his typical reaction speed, his fury ebbs.

"Louise." his voice is gratingly hoarse, his hair tied in a half-hazard bun via a thoroughly exhausted ribbon struggling to keep the strands together (it would be a cute look, if not for the blue hue in his cheeks and the blood and dirt caking his arms). His laboratory is- cold. Blisteringly cold. He's barely even shivering, but- surely it can't be healthy, staying in there for so long-?

"I'm... working." he stresses the word as though it's an obvious and irrefutable explanation. "Can we talk in-" he looks back, "A month?" he has the audacity to pause thoughtfully. "Two?"

And thus the preamble concludes, and the pieces and players of our play all finally fall into place.

"...Caeru, I’m not stupid." Louise replies, giving him a throughly unimpressed look. "Is this yet another Yearner situation?"

The accompanying dumbfounded expression that her paramour produces would cause her some amount of delight, were this any other situation. As it is, she is simply more worried- and a fair bit annoyed, as well. "Yes, I know you were involved with her creation, somehow. You and the Academic were rather obvious about it. Whatever you've been doing inside this laboratory, Caeru, it's not nearly as discreet as you think it is. You have a budget, and whenever you ask for it to be extended or spend carelessly on a new batch of supplies, people see it happen-”

Her paramour squirms uncomfortably. She continues her rant unabated.

“-The GHR is in fact a major supplier of experimental materials for the University. As long as it's an import from the Hinterlands, I know what comes in here and what comes out. And I know for sure a certain Yearner has also been looking around your laboratory. I would have left you to your devices, but this will lead to a disaster if I don't interfere."

Her hand- which he notices is clawed- is putting quite a lot of pressure on his shoulder. "Tell me, Caeru. What have you been doing?"

He gulps. The look in her eyes is... serpentine in its wrath, even. Like a Knot who's just caught a scout from the Court of Cats intruding into its home. It's a look that demands an account.

His expression twists- regret, guilt, frustration, desperation. "Louise," he says softly, "Please, just- just give me more time. A week or two more, and- and this will all be done and over with. You'll never have to hear about it again. Please."

He tries to shy away from her hand and take a step back- it's not exactly successful, given his strength relative to hers. His hands tremble. His arms are slick and ruby red- weeping scars, never bandaged-

"I don't want to fight you." a rustle, as one hand drifts down to his pocket, so quiet as to be barely noticeable. "Please." he begs again. "Please don't make me fight you. It's not like the Yearner, it's- it's important, I can't just- please don't make me. Please."

Needless to say, things quickly go from bad to worse.

"Go ahead. Fight her." another voice, intensely recognizable, echoes through the corridor. The Scoundrel's voice- but colder. Less shrill. Less amused. "She won't leave you alone, and neither will I."

The Yearner stands there. Her feathery black dress is covered in blood- fresh. Going by the faint gurgling sounds, someone tried to block her way- and she reacted as she often does.

"I could feel something happening down here. I didn't know what it was, but it felt... important. Thank you for the confirmation that it was very important indeed." she steps forward. In her hand is a large spike of ice, the size of a sword. "Will you let me see it, Caeru? Or shall I tell your husband of what you’ve done? Of how I came to be? I still have that to hold over you, at least. I wonder if they would like to know what happened to that cufflink." the word is hissed, and she smiles in delight at the way he flinches.

(It's... so recognizable, Caeru realizes, and yet so twisted. They sound completely identical. If one were to ignore the face made of ice, they would even be able to identify the similarities- and the sharp differences. It's a little bit disquieting, to see her face. The Scoundrel does... does not make this kind of expression, even at their worst. The only kind of person who does is a certain Mr Veils. It's the sort of look only someone who delights in misery shows.)

He has no other options. No other way out.

He will not fail again. He will never let himself fail again.

A thousand possibilities run through his mind, all at once, before he can even so much as blink. The window- no. The door- terrifyingly fragile. The mirrors- if they weren't already swarming with serpents, he'd be shocked. No solution comes without violence, without- he can't lose again, he can't leave again, he-

The Scientist draws fast as a lightning bolt and shoots his paramour square in the chest, flipping the pistol and shooting a second time for good measure. The desperate scream of his apology can barely be heard over the slam of the door, the clicking of several dozen locks, the mad dash to retrieve something before what little safety he has inevitably gives way.

His prize is bundled in rags, apocyan soaking through the white cloth, pieces of shattered diamond and wood clippings scattered half-hazardly all over the floor-

Run. Run.

Thus the infamous girlfriend shooting incident. Don't worry, she gets better. For the most part.

Everyone else, well... they get substantially worse.

The Scientist acts on instinct, cradling his experiment against his chest. Not again. Never again. He turns when the door inevitably gives way and fires again, futile as it may be.

The bullet does not do much- not when the door is promptly kicked off its hinges, the locks snapping and shattering as the sheer force of the Yearner's kick propels it forward. In that moment, Caeru realizes that while the door was very secure, the frame is nothing but a few planks of wood. It wouldn't hold.

On the floor, bleeding profusely through the wound in her neck (though the ambery growths around it show it will be closing soon, whether it wants to or not), is the Silverer- who stares at the Yearner in horror. "This was not our deal." she hisses.

The Yearner shrugs. "I don't care."

And then she lunges for her prize like a woman possessed. Her eyes gleam, staring fixedly at the bundle in the Scientist's arms. "Either you tell me what that bundle is and why I feel so intensely that I need to see it, or I'll make you tell me." she purrs. "Make the choice, my dear creator.”

He desperately curls around the bundle, hugging it close enough for it to nearly bend under his grip- nearly. Whatever it is, it's sturdier than it looks.

"You can't take him." he gasps without thinking. "You can't- you can't take him, you can't hurt him, you can't-" he backs up against the wall and trembles. The weight makes him stagger with every step. When the Yearner approaches, he flinches. "You can't hurt him."

A delirious sob. The room is freezing. His skin is tinted such a vibrant shade of blue. It's a miracle he isn't already dead from hypothermia. Slowly, carefully, still keeping his gun aimed at the Yearner, his other hand pulls back part of the cloth- and the hand that dangles free is clawed and formed almost entirely from lacre.

Just like her.

"He's mine." Caeru whispers, pressing his head to the apocyan stains with equal parts guilt and adoration. "He's mine. And nobody will ever take him again."

The Silverer stumbles into the room, a gun in hand. The Yearner waves dismissively- and fractal spikes of ice erupt from the ground to block her advance. From the mirrors in the room, Fingerkings hiss and spit in fury- the Yearner should probably stay away from Parabola for a few weeks. She turns to look at the Scientist in disdain.

"Bringing back the dead." she spits. "Once again. You should know it gets you nowhere. Look at what you did before. You tried to return me to the world, when I wasn't ever real at all!" she yells. "An illusion. A dream! Delusions of high society and bohemian dreams of a waif that was never anything but a facade!" she roars, coming closer. "Who was it this time?! Tell me! Who was-”

She pauses, before smiling. It is not a nice smile. "Your lover, wasn't it? The seventh victim. Did you realize that killing Mr Cups would never return what you lost!?"

The words sting. They sting, because she doesn't know, how could she know. Her eyes are wild and mad. "Drop it. Let it go. You don't deserve to have them back.”

The Scientist chokes on a sob. He doesn't deny a word. His knees buckle- he slides down to the floor, holding the bundle like a lifeline and a precious piece of treasure, all rolled into one. "I know." his voice is calm, even with the tears sliding down his cheeks. "I don't deserve him."

He's- the Silverer recognizes the look in his eyes. He's never been more confident about anything else in the world.

"I'm not doing this for myself," the words ring slightly hollow when he's clinging to his creation on the floor, "I'm doing it for him. When Cups died, it-" his tone wavers. Caeru swallows. The despair and guilt in his voice is intoxicating, especially to a Noman standing so very close indeed.

"It begged for its life. It gave me an offer. It could bring him back, if I spared it." he looks beyond the Yearner- staring intently at a shadow on the wall, as though somehow it could stare back. "I couldn't- I couldn't, for everyone else it murdered, I couldn't-" he chokes. "I failed him. I failed him. He deserved to live, he deserved to come back- and I failed, and-"

He kicks at a spare diamond on the floor, watching it twist and freeze into place within moments of making contact with the Yearner. "I'm fixing it. I'm fixing him."

A kiss to his prize. To his magnum opus. His eyes stay fixed on it- nothing matters so long as it is in his arms. "I'm serving him. I'm fixing him."

🐈💙🐺

"No." the Yearner snarls. "No, you're not fixing him. I'll be the one doing that. Give him to me!"

She moves before he can say a word. Only a Licenciate's instincts save his head from being separated from its shoulders by a sharpened spike of ice. He dives out of the way of a furious flurry of stabs, and stumbles to keep hold of his prize- only to see the Yearner tear off her dress in front of him.

He blinks in disbelief before seeing it- connected to her body are numerous pulsating hearts. The blood vessels tear holes in the thin shirt she wore underneath, and wet the fabric in frozen blood. Nourishing her as they draw ever closer to death. How many people have been killed- perhaps permanently- to sustain her existence?

She grins wickedly, cosmogone eyes shining with Parabolan light. "You won't bring him back. Cups wouldn't have done it either, I'm sure. The Masters have experience with bringing the dead back- done it five times now. But it never works, not really, does it?" she spits out the words. "You don't know what it's like. To live knowing you are a failure. A failed attempt to bring someone ELSE back!? Do you want him to live like this, you bastard?! Give him to me. I'll give him life- his own life! He doesn't deserve to be the monument to your vanity!”

🐈💙🐺 🔫⛄

“You barely know how-" the Scientist curses and ducks around another flurry, flailing in a desperate attempt to keep his 'lover' close. He ducks and weaves around the room with expert precision- but his movements are more than slightly hindered by the weight of a corpse larger than he is tall. That... no, that can't be right-

"He won't be a failure." Caeru spits back, pressed against the spikes still binding the Silverer- can't she hear, some part of his mind wonders? What does she think of him? Of what he's done?

He gasps for air that comes stiff and frozen solid. His pistol is long-since discarded- useless, now, but he can't help looking at it and swallowing down his guilt. All the more reason to throw himself down the nearest well, really. At least it's worth it. At least he's worth it. At least it'll all be over soon.

"He's not finished, he's not fixed yet-" he dives away from yet another attempt to spear him in the head. "Do you really think I'd attempt the same experiment twice without learning from my mistakes?! He'll be better. He'll be- he'll be different. He'll be everything." he sounds utterly delirious. "He'll be everything you were meant to be."

The Yearner hisses- and her blade moves for the Scientist's neck with unbelievable speed. There will be no dodging this one. Encumbered as he is, he has to drop the bundle if he wants to dodge- and that he will never do. He closes his eyes-

And only opens them a second later, after the sound of flesh being cleaved resounds. He is- he is not on the slow boat. He sees the Silverer before him, blocking the Yearner's blade with her own arm. A steady trickle of blood is falling from the grievous-looking wound- the cut was such that it exposed the bone.

"Oh, hello. Does it hurt?" the Yearner remarks.

"Not... at all." the Silverer scoffs.

"What if I do this?"

The Noman wriggles her arm and the blade twitches on the spot it's stuck on. The Silverer yelps and wrenches herself free, before falling. There are holes torn all over her legs- even the Shapeling Arts couldn't hold back the blood loss indefinitely. She collapses, overwhelmed by pain. The sound that emerges from the Scientist's throat is one of near-inhuman agony.

For no reason in particular: Did you know Caeru's biggest fear is watching his loved ones die in front of him (especially while he's unable to save them?)

The Yearner laughs. "Guess it's just the two of us again. Now, hand it over. Or I'll tear your arms off.”

Caeru drops the bundle without thinking, kneeling over the Silverer and cradling her in his arms, barely acknowledging the Yearner's presence. Louise's name is all but chanted under his breath- he struggles to breathe. Blood soaks through his coat. Her head is held close against his heart. His hands scramble to stop the bleeding, to fix her, to save her, to- to-

His head darts up as the Yearner takes a step towards the bundle. His eyes are wide. An utterly distraught sob. He doesn't stop her. He only turns back to his (still living) paramour and desperately tries to keep her that way.

"Idiot." he mumbles into the Silverer's hair, still on the verge of delirium. "You didn't need to- you didn't-"

And thus, the Yearner wins this round. But the story isn't over quite yet.

He looks back just long enough to glare up at the Yearner. He spits. "I should've fed you to the Knot of Tails when I had the chance."

"You should have." the Yearner nods. "I agree on that, now."

She kicks the Scientist square in the jaw. Her delicate shoe goes flying off into the distance, and she leaps for the bundle. Before the Scientist can recover from his daze, she rips the cloth around it, and then her arm moves for one of the hearts in her chest- tearing it off in one clean motion. Blood- deathly cold- sprays everywhere. She shoves the heart into the chest of the Scientist's project, and it- horror of horrors- twitches. It opens its eyes, and gasps- before once again falling into utter silence.

"It worked." she grins. "That's what it needs, right? Life. You've been working with mountain-sherds, trying to breathe life into it- but you don't know anything. You don't know what you are doing, you've been getting nowhere. Your love needs life to come back. Life has to come from somewhere."

The many hearts on her body twitch and wriggle as she turns to leave, the body still in her hands, bathing her in apocyan light. "Don't worry. I have a lot of life to give."

She runs off, and Caeru can see-

The body is half-lacre, half-skeletal, and all mannequin. A horror of sable wood casings enveloping the lacre beneath like a shield, virtually impossible to separate without ripping it all apart. His chest is exposed just enough to betray the underlying array of cracked ribs, and inside lays a diamond shining brilliant apocyan. The light floods his body and leaks freely out of an exposed, half-finished eyesocket.

He's sturdier than the Yearner, clearly. Built to last. Built to survive. Not an accident, like she was, but something else entirely. He shudders, white hair flowing in waves down to her feet- his hands dig into her shoulders on instinct.

He meets Caeru’s eyes. He doesn't say a word.

Caeru watches them go, and tries not to scream. He fails spectacularly.

He stumbles to his feet, still cradling his paramour- he takes one step after them, then sobs. The Silverer twitches in his arms. His mind races.

If he leaves her, if he fails again, if he-

He turns tail and shoves coils of hissing Fingerkings aside, ducking into Parabola as the Yearner escapes. He'll regroup, he swears, he'll come back, he'll fix this, he'll fix everything, he'll-

He sets his paramour down and frantically sets about bandaging her wounds. The past can wait. He only has one Louise.

"I love you." he whispers uselessly. "I'm sorry. I love you. I'm so sorry-"

The Scientist's involvement in this tale ends here- left with many regrets, many things to answer for, and many wounds to try and heal.

Some, he succeeds at. Others, he does not.

But this was never about him in particular.

Far away is the Yearner, retreating to a lair in the swamps. A knock on the door, two knocks- and the Scarred Naturalist looks at her in disbelief. "What on earth is that?"

She enters, and places the body on the dining table without a word, knocking wooden plates and silverware (a strange contrast, indeed) aside. The body twitches, the sole heart connected to its chest pulsating madly as it slowly but surely withers into nothing. Her hand hovers over a cracked rib.

"We'll have to find replacements." she whispers.

The Naturalist shrugs. He doesn't know what this is all about, but he supports her interests, as always. He finds the Yearner is a surprisingly good influence on his master. Why, the master of silks has been startingly cheery since they've started their rivalry. "The swamp will provide," he notes. "Plenty of bodies around.

The Yearner nods. "Tell Veils I'm calling in that favour, too. It can provide far better materials than that fool of a scientist could. Ask it for wood- sturdy. Elder Continent- something that soaks in the light of the Mountain." she pauses. "Keep him safe. The box of hearts is under my bed- feed one to him every hour. I'll be leaving. I believe Fires had a shipment of apocyan lanterns sent over to Varchas? Surely nobody will notice if I take one..”

She takes a heavy coat, and steps out of the shack. She has a mission.

-

The body does not move for... quite some time. It merely stares up at the ceiling in idle bafflement, digging its claws into the table. It opens its mouth. All that emerges is a sickening click-

He closes his mouth. The heart shudders, and he goes with it. He rolls to his left and spends minutes on end staring at his hands in open fascination- another click.

He twists the joints on his fingers. He lifts his head, and while he may not have proper eyes- the empty stare of his eyesocket and the sickening glow of the apocyan leaking from his face is nothing short of disturbing.

He watches at the Naturalist for a long moment. Another click, as he opens his mouth, and then closes it. A claw unwisely pokes around the heart on his chest, another hand gesturing vaguely to the house around it. Finally, it manages to croak in a low rumble, like an oncoming storm- "Where?"

The Naturalist raises an eyebrow. "Bugsby's Marshes." at the confused look he gets back, he raises it further. "Watchmaker's Hill?" a pause. "The Fifth City, Fallen London? The Neath?" he chuckles. "My my. You're quite uninformed. I suppose it's just fair..."

He walks over to a cabinet, and takes out- is that skin? Human skin. A face. "You've just been born, haven't you?" He offers the face. It's fair-skinned and pudgy. He grins devilishly. "Perhaps a trip to the city would alert your senses."

(The Yearner didn't say he had to stay in the cabin. Just that he had to be kept safe- and that he needed the hearts.)

The Naturalist looks at the homunculus in front of him expectantly, and smiles again. It's not a nice smile.

The body's own face is carved from wood, and thus, cannot blanch- but its face certainly does scrunch up in noticeable revulsion. "No thank you." he says quickly, practically shoving it away. "I'm," he pauses, "Not, hungry?"

He reaches up- the heart beats faster. His finger dips into his eye. He could swallow, if he knew how. He sits up and stares down at his own body in obvious bafflement.

London. He's in London. In... what was it? Bugsby's Hill? This must be a dream.

He slides off the table, trips over his own hair, and falls facefirst onto the ground with a loud thud. A very strange dream indeed.

"...a trip would be appreciated, thank you..." oddly polite, for a newborn homunculus. If a bit laughable.

"My, you're clearly not fine." the Naturalist says. "And you can't go out like this, either way. I'll find you a suit. I have... one." the fact it belonged to someone the Yearner had hunted and killed probably doesn't matter. "Hm. But it's not your size. Maybe..."

He leaves the room to fetch something while the homunculus twitches on the ground. The body practically claws his way up to the wall as he tries once more to get his footing. 'Practically', of course, meaning 'leaves stark grooves in the wallpaper as though he was a particularly rambunctious kitten'.

Finally, the Naturalist returns with a cloak- torn in several places and repaired with careful carelessness. A trophy of war, a legendarily expensive article of clothing torn from the body of a Master and carefully, extensively defaced. Reworked and remade. He offers it.

"Thank you." a stiff sigh as he wraps the cloak around himself, tugging the hood over his head without a second thought. The illusion of anonymity is only slightly marred by the apocyan glow and uncomfortable resemblance to a Master of the Bazaar.

One hesitant step, then another. One more, for good measure. The homunculus looms above the Naturalist, voice rattling like gravel. "Who did you say you were..?" he looks at the door. "You and that- ah. Ice...? Ice. Woman. With the. Eyes." his tone reeks of disbelief.

"Quite tall..." the Scarred Naturalist mutters. "Ah, well. I am a Scarred Naturalist, just a humble scholar living here after my... let us call it an involuntary exile from academia. Unfortunately, prejudice tends to get in the way of scientific advancement... no matter." he coughs. "My associate is the Yearner, a hunter living on the marshes in search of a particularly elusive beast. She brought you here. Given by your state you must have been in quite a situation! Do you remember anything in particular? Have you an address to return to, perhaps?"

The body tilts his head roughly 45 degrees and ponders for a moment. "I run an inn," he looks up, vain as it may be, "Quite far from here. My, ahem, business partner- last I recall, I was bidding him farewell for the morning..."

He trails off and stares into space, not lost in any specific memory, but simply caught in a wave of utter bafflement at the holes in his own mind. "Next I remember, I was carried here by the Yearner. And now I look like-"

He stops, and raises a hand once again. The lacre coats his palms- fresh, vulnerable spots where his mannequin-like casing has not yet been applied. The apocyan dims. "-Like, this." he stands in silence for a long minute. His gaze, though unreadable, is inevitably drawn back to the face- the. Face.

He takes a step back. "Well! Now that I think about it! I really must be going!" he spins on his feet and twists the doorknob with forced cheer, barely able to keep the tremors out of his voice. "It was lovely meeting you, I'm quite grateful for your assistance, tell your associate she's a delight, but if you can just direct me to the nearest path back upwards-?"

He smiles. His mouth is full of uneven, half-formed teeth. "I'd hate to take up too much of your time. I'm sure you're busy doing... busy marsh things."

"Upwards...?" the Naturalist mutters. There's a grudge here. "Never been upwards." he says, too low for the homunculus to hear at all. "Not like they'd take us. The sun hates us more then Stone does. No, no path upwards for me…”

He composes himself, and gives his conversation partner an amused look. "I am loath to inform you, but there is no path upwards. Have you seen yourself, young man? The sun would scour you utterly. To ashes. It does not take kindly to Neathy things- and perhaps you should take a look at yourself? Thoroughly Neathy, that body of yours."

He reveals a mirror, and on it, the cloaked shadow can finally see his face. He tugs down his hood and stares. He's quiet for a time. A trembling hand caresses his cheek (hollow and wooden and false), then scratches at his beard (snow-white and soft as silk), then traces along his scars (carved deliberately and carefully into his face, as though replicating something that was already there).

The Naturalist continues, regardless of his guest's confusion. He sounds quite amused by the whole affair. "Do not worry. I am sure my roommate could not let you go without a shelter for the night- and when you wake up, Penstock's Land Agency will be ready and waiting. We could find you a home here- and perhaps arrange for mail to the Cumaean Canal? I'm sure that ‘business partner’ of yours might have explanations for what happened- and for these apparent gaps in your memory."

A soft sound escapes the body's mouth, indecipherable. He brings a hand up to the apocyan-lit hole in his left eye- and flinches on instinct when his claws dip into it with ease. "Thoroughly..."

There's awe, yes. Horror, most certainly. A hint of amazement. Most of all, complete and utter bafflement.

"But- I have people to get back to, I can't just-" he blinks. "Mail... that. Would be appreciated, yes. Thank you kindly." he looks back at the door. Without speaking, he steps outside- and stops, staring up at the false stars in open awe.

One tentative step, then another. He marvels at the world like a newborn babe.

"What is this?" he doesn't particularly expect an answer. "What... am I?"

The city is alive. Even at this hour, Watchmaker's Hill bustles with activity.

The Starved Embassy's ambered glow and the visitors from the Roof who walk the streets, the Clay Men who pass in stoic silence- the hawkers, the conmen offering rostygold for whoever beats them at arm-wrestling (hiding brass tacks between their fingers as they brag about their prowess), the marksmanship competitions for prizes of jade! The scholars debating the nature of the stars, taking blind steps towards the observatories. The criers announce Feducci's fighting rings, the chittering of surprisingly articulate insects and the growling of the marsh-beasts.

Fallen London stands before the Shadow in all its glory, this strange and wild city of a thousand stories. It gazes at him with mirth.

The Shadow gazes back.

He tugs up his hood and strolls along in absolute wonder- his hand dwarfs a wrestler's own as he pins their arm with ease, barely noticing tacks against wooden 'skin'. His voice is eager and enthralled as astronomers entertain each and every one of his questions about the 'stars' in the 'sky'. A sorrow spider creeps up his elbow- he plucks it by the leg and dangles it in front of his eyes. A half-hearted smile. It disappears into his cloak, and does not return.

Everyone gives him a wide berth, but if this bothers him, he doesn't voice it. This must be a dream- it is a dream, surely, but even so, there's no harm in enjoying it while it lasts.

He'll wake up eventually. He'll see his partner eventually.

Anxiety dies as he stops on the edge of a hill and gazes up at the firmament. London's invitation is easy to accept- after all, in a city of a thousand stories, surely an explanation lies within one.

Barely glancing at the Naturalist behind him, he wanders off into London's heart. Lacre trails in his wake.

It's a beautiful day to be alive.

[lookingformoondrop]

OMG FINALLY SOMEONE WHO WRITES ABT THE COFFIN OF ANDY AND LEYLEY AAA

Honestly I'd take any writing about Andy LMFAO whatever you want to write, I'd just love to read something, be it headcanons or some short story <3

Absolutely! I was shocked when I tried finding content for TCOAAL, and there was none💀. For the sake of fluff Andy, the reader is the closest thing Andy has to a sister!

*Leyley doesn't exist*

P.S. Hopefully, this isn't OOC. This is also not proofread, so

I hope these meet your expectations <3

Andrew Graves x female best friend! Reader

TW: Everyone has a filthy mouth (swearing)... N/M = Nickname ♡

♡925 WORDS♡

Ever since Andrew was a kid, he was treated more as his parent's friend than their kid.

This often meant that Andrew was forced to miss out on childish routines like throwing a tantrum, making a mess, having fun the loud way, and making mistakes, simply because "he was so easy."

If he were to add to his parents' load of problems, he wouldn't be able to live with himself, let alone sleep.

But that was all before he met you.

Every Friday, Mrs. Graves would give Andrew money to go on a snack run for the weekend.

But no matter what he did, no matter when or how he entered the grocery store, this little girl (no less than five) would terrorize Andrew.

"She's so annoying, mom! She always snatches the snacks I go for and then bolts for the next aisle. Then she just giggles and runs away with MY TOMATO SOUP."

Mrs. Graves sighed and turned around to face her son, "Andrew, just because a little five year old girl is taking some of the same snacks as you DOES NOT MEAN I am letting you shop at a different store! 'Shop Shop Shop and Shop, with more Shop' is the best for low-deals and prices. Please don't be difficult."

With no other choices, Andrew was forced to continue shopping.

Every week, she did the same thing. She'd sneak up behind him when he wasn't paying attention. She'd snatch the poor snack out of Andrew's hand and would bolt out of the aisle.

And everytime she did this, Andrew would grow angrier and angrier.

Finally, when the little girl stole the hundredth can of soup from his hand, Andrew turned around and grabbed the little girl's hair.

"AHH! Get off of me asshole!"

"You little shit! Give me that can back!"

They'd fight over the can of soup in the middle of the aisle for the next 10 minutes before the store owner kicked them out for "public disturbances."

Now, without his can of soup, sitting at the curb outside the store, with new bite marks along his arm, Andrew was more pissed than ever.

"What the hell is your problem? Do you just find malicious torment funny, you borderline psycho?"

Andrew turned towards the girl. She turned her smile towards Andrew, "Nah, just you."

Annoyed and exhausted, he put his face in his hands.

She thought for a moment , "No one plays with me, so I figured I should play with someone who looked as miserable as me."

Andrew looked at her through his fingers, "What about me screamed misery?"

She put a finger on her bottom lip, deep in thought, "You just have this face,"

Andrew scoffed at the girl, burying his face in his knees. She giggled.

"You just naturally look like an asshole"

"Watch your language, you fucking shit!"

Andrew went to grab the girls hair, "You dont even know my name, and yet you're calling me an asshole!? No wonder you dont have any friends."

She slapped Andrew's hand before it could reach her, "Well, what's your name?"

Andrew hesitated, "It's...Andrew Graves. What's yours?"

The little girl smiled, "Y/N L/N, your new best friend, Aaaaandy."

Andrew sat lazily with Y/N, laying on his lap. He cringed when he thought about their first meeting.

Of all the things they could've fought about, it was a can of soup... God, they're fucking stupid.

Since that day, Y/N would beg Andrew for attention and fun. She'd stalk him when he was out and about and would drag him away from any errands he was requested to run on.

"Leave me alone, N/M"

"Make me~"

"Please?"

"Lame. Now I have to come with you! With that bitch ass attitude you'll get beat up."

"Great."

And when Andrew accidentally reveal his address? Andrew was permanently stuck with Y/N.

Every Friday, she'd follow Andrew home, and even when Mr. and Mrs. Graves questioned the foul-mouth girl Andrew would never offer an explanation better than, "Some stray I picked up that won't let go. I have to keep her."

"Aaaaandyyy, can you change the channel? I don't want to lift my eyelids."

Andrew sighed, "The remote is right by your leg, dumbass"

"So?" She scoffed, "reach it for me."

"It's closer to you than it is to me!"

"Andy change the goddamn channel!"

"i'm not getting up just because your ass wants to be lazy!"

"ANDREW"

"Y/N"

Even if that meant pissing each other off with meanless schemes.

Despite their bickering that has made local pedestrians' ears bleed, they still were there for each other in everything.

"Whatever, you dumb bastard," Y/N mumbled to herself.

Andrew played with Y/N's hair as he stared at the mindless TV.

"Veronica Steveson asked me out to the date."

"Aw, poor hussy"

"Ouch, you think so lowly of me?"

"No, I just assumed you said no," Y/N continued to watch the TV.

"Why would I...?" Before Andrew could finish his sentence, Y/N sat up and stared at him with intense eyes.

"Do you like her?"

"W- Well no, but it's not like any other girls are crawling to date me"

Y/N scoffed at Andrew, flicking his forehead, "That's because you're stupid to notice."

She laid back down on his lap, and Andrew secretly smiled to himself. "So...who aren't I noticing?"

"Your mom."

"Y/N GROSS!"

And even if no one admitted it out loud, and even if you blushed one too many times around each other, you belonged with each other.

"But seriously, Andy, pass me the remote"

"Eat shit, N/M"

Thank you for the ask <3

[honey-bell-aint-well]

I keep seeing this Loveball being mentioned in regards to fresh, but I wasn't in the fandom back then and I don't know what the fuck Loveball is and how it created fresh's character? Asking you abt it bcus you seem knowledgeable abt fresh lol

I'll have you know that when I saw this ask I cackled and rubbed my hands together evilly, completely unironically.

Unfortunately I've already rambled about this before, so I'll copy and paste the rant here rather than ranting anew:

So, like seven years ago there was a fandom-wide event called the Loveball, where people gathered their OCs and had them all attend an UTMV dancing ball. Fresh went, of course. There, he met a Frisk called Pacifrisk. Even knowing who he really was [90's parasite], they still believed he could be good. Before this, he hadn't ever really felt a connection to anyone, or even positive emotions in general. But Pacifrisk's faith in him made him feel positively towards them. This freaked him out. [No Fr@ns though, don't worry. That wasn't the intention for this plot.]

As a result, not only did he try to kill them, but he also went through with his plans: the Fresh Takeover [I forget what it's actually called]. His true reason for attending the ball. OCs were either possessed by the parasites or tried to fight against them. Apparently, some people used alcohol to ward the virus off, as Fresh hates substances such as that.

Fresh wanted to take over the multiverse, with this Loveball being the first step for his total domination.

But then right in the middle of things, a Sans AU [which I totally forget the name of X,D] grabbed Fresh and basically yeeted him into an alternate state of being. One where he could see the creators, all staring at him. An audience.

The Sans revealed the nature of Fresh's existence: That he was simply a character in a story. And if the creators got bored of him, he could easily be written aside and forgotten. Erased. His conquest didn't matter, in the end.

Predictably, this gave him an existential crisis. I'm not sure what happened after, but he stopped invading and went somewhere to contemplate his existence in a depressed state.

Afterwards, he had a new goal: To entertain. To convince the creators that he was worth keeping around. Similar to his previous goal of survival, but now with more dire stakes."

Here are some links regarding the Loveball. I recommend checking them out if you want more info about it, because I didn't really talk about it very deeply here:

https://thebonezone66.tumblr.com/post/139210779428/muffets-love-ball-roleplay

https://www.tumblr.com/bestfresh90smess [This is CQ's RP sideblog]

https://loverofpiggies.tumblr.com/tagged/loveball/chrono

Hope this clears things up! :D

Edit: Oh, and Fresh wasn't created during the Loveball. He was originally an April Fool's shitpost doodle that CQ made, inspired by Dippy Fresh from Gravity Falls. Eventually he developed into the horrifying 90's abomination that we know today.

[painted-bees]

I went looking for a list of OC questions that had a majority of things I hadn't answered yet wrt the hi-note trio, and found this lil' one abt "love and relationships" lmao I'm not gonna make anyone submit a number in my ask box for it, it's only 15 questions. I'll just answer them all for Margie and Raf under the cut.

1) How does your character view the idea of romantic love? Raf's got a complicated relationship with it. He's a very romantic person, and wants desperately to believe in the whole "true love "thing-- to believe that someone could love him just because it was predestined for them to do so, or because of some hard coding in their DNA or whatever--and that it'd work the same way for him, too. Just effortless, unquestionable, natural and unbreakable love. But that doesn't exist, it's a fantasy. People don't get into relationships unless there's something tangible in it for them--and then it's a tug-o-war of compromises and capitulations, and it's impossible to imagine anyone ever being truly happy and comfortable under the weight of an obligation as undefinable as 'love'. And so, he figures he'll be lucky if he can find someone he can tolerate, who can tolerate him--who might, once in a while, give him the euphoric feeling of being valued as a person rather than as an asset. And hopefully, those moments can outweigh the inevitable fights and disagreements, and all the emotional damages that arrive in those situations. As for Margie, there's no clear distinction between romantic love and platonic love for her, much of the time. She loves her friends all very intensely, and she loves her romantic partners in very much the same way! Her expressions of love do not change much between friends and lovers--and maybe for this reason, people who take the plunge into being a committed romantic partner with her find her to be somewhat underwhelming. There is very little difference between Margie as a friend and Margie as a romantic partner. There is very little difference between her definitions of these two things. Arguably, she's a very loving--but not a very romantic--person. She doesn't believe in soulmates or true love or any of these things, either. It feels too limiting. It puts so much unnecessary pressure on a single person and needlessly mystifies something that really shouldn't be all that strange or complicated.

2) What was your character's first heartbreak, and how did it influence their approach to relationships? Raf's first heartbreak, romantically...hm. He had a few friends who grew up with him, most of whom were also part of the junior classical music circuit; some of whom he kept in contact with even as his career pivoted away from the classical niche and into pop performance. I think perhaps there was one lass who he might have returned to Monaco for rather than fucking off to Juilliard--if she had returned his affections. He had confessed to her over the phone, just after being announced as a semi-finalist for a large, televised popular music competition. She asked him to call her again after the competition was over, when he was gonna come home. He didn't make it as a finalist, and she never answered his calls then after. So he followed his initial plans and absconded to Juilliard with a different friend who he awkwardly...briefly fell in with romantically instead. Who knows why she never answered his calls, but Raf has no doubt attributes the fact that he didn't make it as a finalist to the reason why she stopped talking to him. That was kinda the first and last time he made the first 'move' for a romantic relationship, and has since taken a much more disinterested, aloof approach...as with most things, really. Margie's first heartbreak was in grade five! She had a huge crush on a boy one grade above her, and mentioned it within earshot of one of her classmates from the 'popular' clique. Those girls got really excited for her and offered to help set her up on a date with him, got him to come over and ask her out during recess, and when she provided a very overenthusiastic, "yes!", Margie found that she had only been set up as the butt of a very hilarious joke between the lot of them. In that same interaction, the lad coined a new name for her, "FleaGirl", and it stuck all the way until she graduated highschool. It's still one of those embarrassing moments that crop up in her brain during the Midnight Carousel of Shame that keeps her awake during restless nights. As a teen, she started flirting with people as a joke, cuz that's her affection could really be–and she delighted in weirding people out with the overfamiliarity she performed. It felt nice though, when the other person would volley back and try to out-skeeze her. She still doesn't know how to flirt in earnest, and will always make a joke out of her affections. It's always kinda up to the other person to respond sincerely if they're actually interested in her.

3) Does your character believe in soulmates, and why or why not? HAH woops, I accidentally answered this in the first question lmao

4) What traits does your character find most attractive in others? Raf values honesty and genuine expression. He really...really loves joyful, unironic cringe. Like, there's something really attractive to him about a person who can let their guard down in order to fully enjoy something. He's really attracted to people who seem impervious to expectation and can cut through what he perceives as the superficial, performative gestures of day to day interactions. Sometimes that takes the form of a counter cultural "I don't care what they think of me" rebellious personality. Sometimes it takes the form of, well...[[gestures at Margie]]. Also, he'd never admit this, but Raf is attracted to messes that he can clean up. Margie is attracted to nice hair, cute smiles, and warm kindness. Unprovoked kindness towards her is the fastest way to make her fall in love with you. The other is casual, affectionate physical touch. She is not immune to a well groomed sense of style and easy confidence, either. If someone is well dressed with nice hair, a straight, open posture, and a warm smile--that's an attractive looking person to her.

5) What does your character fear most in a relationship? For Raf, it's expending his usefulness and being discarded. In every relationship, he's waiting for that one chance to prove that he can't give, or be, or provide what his partner was hoping to get out of him. Or maybe they finally get what they were after and don't need to keep suffering the act of 'loving' him anymore. Or maybe something better will come along and make him redundant. He's always waiting for that other shoe to drop. His biggest fear is just learning that his partner was only pretending to love him, so as to pacify him while they extract from him whatever it is they wanted. For Margie, she's terrified of overstaying her welcome. She feels like as soon as she gets into a relationship a timer starts ticking down where, every day, she starts becoming a little less cute, a little less fun, a little more annoying, a little more difficult to live with. She's identified herself as a kind of 'manic pixie dream girl' that people initially enjoy because she's weird and quirky and playful. But the more time they spend with her, the less fun those things are. She never stops being weird and quirky and playful. There's no point where she is able to get serious and organise herself, and behave like a normal adult. No one wants to live with that for very long.

6) How does your character handle jealousy or insecurity in relationships? Margie has no jealousy. She's straight up chill to let her partners have other relationships or flings or whatever so long as they don’t lie to her about it. And she’s extremely trusting about this. Her insecurity about her own lack of desirability probably played a huge part in developing this polyamorous stance, but she genuinely does feel very comfortable and secure in it. Raf [[gritted teeth]] deals with it. Not very well, in previous relationships. Poorly, in fact. The very uncommitted, open ‘friends with benefits’ relationship he had with Margie for a while before he eventually admitted to himself that he really needs her to stay in his life–has done a lot of weird psychological lifting for him. There’s a really strong precedent for Margie to be honest with him about the nature of all her relationships. On top of this, she doesn’t have locks on her phone, she makes him hold her phone most of the time. She doesn’t care if he reads her messages or checks her emails [he Does Not Do This, if only for the exercise in restraint]. If he’s having the Weird Paranoia about Margie, the thought that “well, she’d let me go through her messages right now if I asked” is enough to leverage himself with. Sometimes he does ask, and she’s just like “sure, w/e”--and he pacifies himself on that without feeding the impulse further. And so, the paranoia usually picks a far more fruitful subject to latch onto.

7) What past relationship still impacts your character's current life?

  Raf is still comparing and contrasting his current relationship with Margie to his previous relationship with Lacey…and has been learning a lot about himself through the differences. Lace was arguably his only other “real”/serious relationship before Margie, and it was such an absolute trainwreck. But it’s also just what he assumed relationships were Like. Nowadays, he kinda dreads ever meeting with Lacey again because most of what he has learned is that he absolutely could have, should have treated her better, and she deserves an apology.

 Margie still thinks about her ex girlfriends in Montreal. She just really misses them a lot…She’d love to rekindle those friendships, and thinks there might still be a chance to do so, some day.

8) How does your character show love and affection?

  While Raf hates to have things expected of him, treating and gift-giving is genuinely his biggest show of affection. It stops the moment he feels like he’s being taken for granted, or as soon as he gets even the faintest whiff of entitlement. He doesn’t take kindly to being “hinted” at any more than he appreciates being straightforwardly asked for gifts or favours. It’s the fastest way to get him to withdraw. But If he gifts things and he feels like the gesture is genuinely unexpected and appreciated–it’s almost kind of a bond-strengthening exercise in of itself. He enjoys being helpful and feeling needed and appreciated, he just pathologically hates being taken advantage of or used. So–like…a lot of love and trust goes into the act of Raf giving something. It puts him in a vulnerable position, because the way the gesture is received will forever colour his perception of the relationship and can really…make or break it for him–beyond reasoning or any logical recourse.

 Margie shows her love and affection with physical closeness and careful patience. If there is someone she exceptionally loves and loves being around, she takes a lot of extra measures to make sure she doesn’t overwhelm them with her presence and she tries to really reign in how she acts around them so as to not be unpalatable. But she’ll drop her head on their shoulder or throw her legs across their lap. She’ll hold onto their arm while walking, and lean against them in casual settings. She just wants to exist in the same space, and reciprocated touch is a comforting reassurance that they do, as well.

9) What significant change has your character experienced in their understanding of love?

 The biggest thing Raf has so far learned is that love isn’t a tug-o-war of compromises and capitulations after all. If you love someone, you genuinely want them to feel safe and happy and secure, and so you’ll give things up and change your behaviour willingly for their sake with very little sense of loss about it. They’ll do the same for you, and neither will keep score about who gave up what, or who was willing to do the most work for the relationship. In the end, it’s not about him vs her or who gets to live ‘better off’ in the arrangement–but it’s a matter of collaborating to build a comfortable, happy environment together. One’s happiness is the other’s happiness. Not a competition, not a game of carefully measured concessions. A better whole.

  Margie has learned that she has a lot more to offer in a relationship than she thought; that emotional labour is an enormous contribution to a partner who is able to appropriately value it. Just because it comes easy to her doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Her love and affection is not a joke; it has meaning, it has worth. It’s worth a whole lot. 

10) What sacrifices has your character made for love, and were they worth it?

  Raf has to sacrifice his entire sense of safety and wellbeing every time he commits to a relationship. And, just this once, it’s been worth it.

  For each person that Margie has pursued as a romantic partner, she has sacrificed a friendship and definitely mourns each one. Raf is the first time she’s not had to sacrifice anything.

11) How does your character's cultural or familial background influence their views on marriage and relationships?

  Oh man lmao Raf’s Monegasque billionaire family dynasty…his parents genuinely really really love each other, but he has had very limited exposure to that. I don’t think he has ever seen them hug or hold hands, they stand very attractively next to each other and exude an imposing aura that commands respect. So…his idea of what marriage and relationships should look like is severely lacking. “Absolutely No PDA” has definitely stuck with him though.

  Margie’s from a lower income northern Ontario blue collar family with a dad who probably still makes “ol’ ball and chain” jokes about his wife, and a mom who does all the cleaning and cooking and doesn’t really get to enjoy her hobbies outside of the house. Actually, in a small way, this has probably contributed to Margie’s lack of enthusiasm towards getting married. She doesn’t wanna be anyone’s ball and chain, she doesn’t want to cook and clean, she doesn’t want kids. She’s written herself off as being absolutely unfit for marriage. She thinks she’d be an abysmal wife lmao

12) Does your character have a relationship that everyone else misunderstands?

No lmao everyone around them understood Raf and Margie’s relationship better than they did themselves for a long while lmao.

13) How does your character handle rejection or unrequited love?

  Raf has only really had to deal with this once, and he got pretty spiteful mad about it at the time. He also holds a mean grudge just…generally…so I do not think he’d be excited to ever meet her again.

 After the initial emotional gut-punch, Margie suffers a lot of shame and embarrassment and gets really depressed and quiet for a few days until something new and shiny comes along to divert her attention away. Anytime she randomly remembers a rejection though, she gets to re-experience it all again for a brief moment lmao stings.

14) What lesson about love is your character still trying to learn?

  Raf is still trying to really honestly believe that it can be this easy. He’s still waiting to hear what the catch is.

  Margie still has to fully internalise that the people who love her don’t find her annoying and will never tire of her–and that she doesn’t have to apologise for existing as a person with wants and needs

15) How has your character's professional life affected their romantic relationships?

  For Raf, it has severely limited his options–he refuses to date fans, past and present. If they recognize him as a public figure, but aren’t from a similar economic background as him, it’s basically a write-off in his mind. Eligible peers are hard to find…

 For Margie, it’s uh…homelessness definitely complicates things. All of her relationships prior to Raf were plagued with financial stress…and that can probably be cited as a major reason as to why most of her relationships fell apart.

[sopaprimordialy]

I've been thinking about how Luther could have fit so easily into the Disney Renaissance villains again.

He and the Rogues really make me remember what we lost by getting rid of simple villains.

Luther can either be a product of his environment if we go by the original movie / video game or he can be a symptom of the general bigotry that exists in the world.

I feel like if he were created specifically today they're probably would have made him way too complex like some sort of direct parallel to Cyrus or something and we would have lost so much what makes him so interesting.

He can be genuinely terrifying but can also be very comedic depending on how you look at them or even downright pathetic given he may or may not be the son of Victor and is imitating with his father probably does to his own loved ones.

I like the idea of Luther being the embodiment of "suffering doesn't create good people, it creates suffering", in the sense of: I don't think it's *possible for someone to end up that fucked up without some trauma. Like, why would he even be in gang life he lived in a totally stable, loving and caring household?

(*I mean I don't have the needed knowledge to even begin a discussion about people being born "evil" as their nature X being a product of their environment so let's just say its highly unlikely)

The way he says the line "life is pain" makes me believe that he did go through something. The way he is disconnected from everything around him and sees himself as this pain-bringer entity that won't ever face the consequences of his own acts (and, when he does, he just kinda regresses to being a whiny little kid) could be a response to being neglected, isolated. Neglected in a way that he would never be punished for whatever, but neither loved or cared.

I can almost see in my mind he going fucking berserk throughout his entire childhood and teenage years, like, terrorizing other kids at school being the worse kind of bully to ever exist and never being held accountable for that. And I can see he doing that for attention. Eventually, the attention he would get from being a jerk TM wouldn't be enough, and he would start doing more hardcore stuff, progressively more criminal, and boom, gang gang gang.

And then the general bigotry of the world comes to scene, because if he's being neglected and his family* (talking abt that later) isn't educating him, "the streets" will, will them not? At least, that's what my mom always told me. But this "street educational system" aka the police seems to work faaaar better on anyone that isn't, like, a white cisgender male. He has so much less to fear, honestly, it's comical.

Luther is both of those things and at the same time he's also this caricature of a villain that keeps laughing maniacally and saying shit like "yes indeed wanna see 'em bleed get the mop mop mop" and the whole watch the word burn and chaos take over thing. Weirdly enough, this is one of the best ways I've seen this kind of problem being represented; it should be considered pathetic to be hateful about things like race, gender, sexuality... bigotry *is* pathetic, and I like the fact that a character that generally represents how society treats (or, at least, wishes to treat) minorities is portrayed as such.

(This section is dedicated to talking about his hypothetical family)

So. Families.

The first social structure we meet as soon as we're born. Your family has the duty to keep you safe, nourished, loved, and basically teach you how to be a decent human being, at least ideally.

But what if this structure is, let's say, fucked up? Trauma inducing, ain't it? Then everything goes down the drain: the protection, the love, the teachings, the function human being... that's part of what I see in Luther.

In the possibility of Victor being Luther's father, I imagine him being pretty emotionally absent, maybe even physically, considering he would be out to work a lot. Still, Luther would look up to him a lot, it's his father, after all. Maybe if he does everything right, he can get his attention! If we consider he's talking to Victor in that phone call, it fits!

(Further context for why I think that: I found in the movie wiki that Patrick, the actor for both og Luther and Victor, once said that he's talking to a character called "The Boss". Apparently, he kinda just made that shit up and it became canon since no other explanation was given. In the same part of the wiki, I found this commentary that he must look up to that person considering the unique way they interact with them then and in other instances in the game)

Ok now it's 4 am. I need to finish this thing before going to sleep so I'm sorry if this last part is rushed or incomprehensible I don't wven know how I'm still awake

Victor also seems to be very aggressive, and I doubt he keeps it only to harassing young women at work and throwing them under trains (*sob*). He would of course behave like that at home too, I totally agree with you that, in great measure, the way he acts with his crew is basically him imitating how Victor would act with his family.

It's funny and tragic for me to imagine that the way he treats Cropsy — both the passive aggressiveness he shows in the musical and the physical assaults he does in other medias — being just a mirror of how Victor would treat his wife.

I think it was you that talked about Luther's parents being divorced at some point (but I could be wrokg cause I'm super sleepy rn) and dude I agree so fucking much with that. I think they would be the kind of couple that takes way too long to get divorced (esp considering the time period we're talking about) and that just leaves more and more trauma on their children's heads.

Imagine Luther's whole villain's past being like "my dad be rude and violent :( my parents divorced :( now I kill oppressed ppl's leadership:("

*read it in a whinny lil voice

He doesn't need a complex "Cyrus' parallel that went wrong" past to work and this simplicity is beautiful, but if he was written nowadays it would happen 100%

[simpel-is]

ranting abt moonlight again bc holy FUCK THIS FILM IS SO SMART AND SO GOOD WITH ITS COLOR

this hyperfixation will drag me into the ground and i will happily go along

spoilers for the movie (if u havent seen it go watch it mf its pride month) also discussion about religion (kind of), homophobia, black masculinity identity and culture, ect ect

no because how tarell mccraney and barry jenkins used the color blue as a symbolism in this movie is SO FUCKING GOOD i feel like in almost every scene u can see a color being used in a symbolic way

in my interpretation at least, blue here represents both vulnerability, security with one's identity but also masculinity (in the sense how blue is used in society to represent men and masculine gender roles, the expectations that come along), and which meaning of the blue is used is colored (ha get it) by the context of the scenes

at the end we reach the conclusion that masculinity and vulnerability can co-exist without contradicting each other in the final sequence of little in blue moonlight but WE WILL GET TO THAT IN A BIT

in the beginning chase sequence little is getting bullied and chased while he wears a blue backpack -> the blue here represents the vulnerability, and how it paints a target on chiron to get bullied by other kids

even in subtle details like how juan drives a blue car but doesn't wear blue on himself, how teresa wears blue through-out the movie, how there's hints of blue in juan and teresa's home (in that scene where juan has little sitting with his front to the door but back to the blue, but we the audience can see it, smth tells me its supposed to be how juan is trying to put up a front to act as a reliable older figure for little which GUH JUST SHOWS HOW MUCH HE CARES), his house's walls and mother wore blue at the beginning scenes which shows when he was younger he could feel and project vulnerability into his own home at one point

during the little section, after the chase sequence little is shown wearing a red shirt while other kids, including kevin, wear white and blue. white here is sort of used as a neutral color of uncertainty and perhaps innocence, while red is the opposite of blue; it's invulnerability, but also insecurity and femininity (which lines up with how chiron's mother wears red in the scene she yells at him), and it shows how chiron is outcasted with the kids, bc of his quiet nature

during the chiron section, the bully wears red and black, contrasting against chiron's mainly light colored outfits. i thought a long time for what the yellow could stand for, and maybe it's there to represent whenever chiron feels love towards another character (teresa, kevin, in specific scenes with his mother) or that sense of escapism (when he was running to the beach at night), his shirt for 80% of this section is a plaid shirt with yellow blue and white sort of mixed up together and a blank white shirt inside

before and during the betrayal scene, he wears a white shirt with blue lines, no yellow anymore bc it felt like he doesn't need to imagine kevin's love for him only exists in dreams. it's reality now, and it makes things more clear for him and his identity (THEIR SHIRTS EVEN MATCH LIKE THEY COMPLETE EACH OTHER IM GONNA CRY.)

also it might be to distinguish when its masculinity or vulnerability but the shade of blue used during the revenge scene is a more teal blue while the moonlight blue is like a natural real blue without a tint of green (i could yap on abt how green is used but this is getting too much)

now during the black section of the film, yellow is first used to represent anxiety for chiron when he wakes up from the nightmare; that escapism and affection he felt for kevin and his mother now reminds him of what happened years ago. it still haunts him. and it also haunts kevin shown in the scene when he calls chiron to apologize (but at the center the lighting is blue. he calls in vulnerability)

as black travels back to confront his past and familiar ties, his mother now wears light blue which is contrasted against chiron's darker shade of blue shirt in the forgiveness scene (they're on different ends of the spectrum, but they're slowly healing, both on the same page of what they wanna do; heal from the past)

as the movie continues, the yellow in scenes slowly turns to represent familiarity and affection instead of anxiety, but the yellow doesn't look warm or as bright as before; there's still tension, things left unsaid. but at the centre, the focus point of these scenes, there's blue, and it isn't tinted by another color (the car drive scene, how blue light peeks in through the diner scene, when kevin changes into a blue shirt)

and the scene where black fucking says "you're the only man who's ever touched me." good fucking god.

he looks at kevin's shirt. he wants the blue. he wants to share the vulnerability with kevin.

when kevin holds chiron, the lighting is dark, and the yellow now is warmer, it represents familiarity and affection again. a lot of things are still a mystery to them, a lot still left unsaid, but everything feels familiar again in a new way, in a more intimate way.

and that fucking scene where little looks back in the blue moonlight, showing how chiron's vulnerability and masculinity don't have to contradict one another; he reaches security with his child self. he finally heals.

this movie is so, so beautiful.

[moonlitlex]

i have so much to say abt chalice of the gods so im just gonna copy paste my review from goodreads here. you can also read it on goodreads

ok. i promised i would hate this book. and i do. i hate this book. i also hate rick riordan. in addition, i hate capitalism. i promise that’s relevant.

let’s talk about the book now. i’ll cover the things i love first. i love percy jackson. i love grover. i love annabeth. i love sally. i love paul. i love percy annabeth and grover together. all of these things are very obvious and self-explanatory. percy is hands down THE main character of all time. i have nothing bad to say about him. his literal fatal flaw is loyalty. he’s actually perfect and has no flaws. this is expected from the son of sally jackson, the perfect person. paul is sweet and kind to sally and that’s really all that matters. annabeth is awesome and supportive and so is grover and they’re all besties forever. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

the jokes are better than before. there are definitely some legitimately funny jokes in this book, which i was really missing from the last few rick riordan installments. and i don’t think this is because rick suddenly got funnier. i think it’s because this style of joke works for percy. of all of rick’s protagonists, percy seems the most natural fit for these jokes.

sally is great. grover and annabeth are generally on form. so is percy, as much as can be expected from rick riordan at this point. i will elaborate on this later.

now to complain. this is the stupidest premise i’ve ever heard of. percy is a high school senior. he is going to go to new rome university. he needs 3 divine recommendations. this is already a stupid premise but don’t worry, it gets worse. poseidon reveals that the reason percy needs these recommendations is that it’s a special requirement for him specifically made by zeus. and the reason he gets to have this stupid requirement is that he’s a child of the big three and shouldn’t exist.

hello. zeus. yes, lord zeus, it’s me. alexis.

what the absolute FUCK are you saying.

this doesn’t MAKE SENSE. the only reason percy shouldn’t have existed was that the gods had a stupid pact to not have any kids because of a stupid prophecy. two things here. one - that prophecy is OVER. everything turned out fine. thanks to percy jackson. you’re welcome, gods of olympus. two - percy has literally saved olympus TWICE now. two times. this is genuinely such a dumb and made up reason to send percy on a quest that i can’t even turn my brain off and enjoy it. it’s not fun. leave percy alone. LEAVE HIM ALONE.

it’s literally insane how stupid this setup is. rick keeps writing books about how the gods are horrible and take advantage of the demigods and the demigods live terrible lives. in this book, percy has LITERALLY saved olympus TWICE and motherfucking zeus (literally) had to be talked down from making him get 25 letters of recommendation to 3. this is AFTER percy spent 3 years in pjo almost being killed and got his memory wiped for 6-8 months depending on which book you read in hoo and then got sent on a quest to save the entire world AGAIN. this CHILD got like a 2-4 month break (depending on which book you’re reading) and he woke up with no fucking memory and had to spend like 2 more months fighting monsters and the literal primordial earth goddess. and now he has to go on literally pointless quests that someone who didn’t just get back home from saving the actual world could ALSO just do. because he needs to get some fucking letters of recommendation.

look. genuinely. percy jackson should snap at this point in the story. this boy should’ve snapped like at least 5 books ago. at minimum. rick wrote the perfect setup to show us percy’s instant descent into madness. he should LOSE it. all the gods have done for the ENTIRE time he’s known he’s a demigod is treat demigods like disposable tools. this is the point in the story where percy goes. wow. luke was right. you guys are all assholes who don’t care about us even a little bit. i am NOT saying what needs to follow is a fanfic-esque dark!percy story where he successfully destroys olympus or something. what i AM saying. is at bare minimum this is where percy goes you know what fuck you i hate you guys and washes his hands of being a demigod at least temporarily. at the very least he should sit back and think yeah, i don’t really want to go to new rome university. it’s not worth it. i will just go to a different university. look. it’s percy jackson. he can literally one shot all but the most fearsome monsters (typhon, the giants, a drakon, etc). he is literally going to be 100% completely fine going to mortal university AND he wont have to deal with zeus’s annoying ass.

listen. MY percy jackson wanted to kill smelly gabe as a 12 year old because he abused his mother. MY percy jackson doesn’t like bullies. MY percy jackson challenged ares to a fight just on the basis that ares was a fucking asshole.

MY percy jackson is not going on useless fucking quests to go to new rome university of all places.

which reminds me. why DOES he want to go to new rome university. this is percy jackson. he LOVES new york. why is percy “what did they do to my city” jackson going to university ACROSS THE COUNTRY from the city he loves. why is he doing that. and hey look. sally and paul (and soon estelle) are ALSO going to be in new york. so like WHY is he leaving for real. percy my fatal flaw is loyalty jackson. IT DOESN��T MAKE SENSE OK! it’s percy he is seriously not going to have issues with common monsters attacking him. we literally saw him fight off titans and giants a fucking hellhound isn’t gonna get his ass. WHY is he leaving. it does NOT make sense.

there’s this scene ok. where sally tells them she’s pregnant. and percy’s like oh my god…. i’m going to be in california…. and my sister is going to be here…. and i was just sitting there going. yeah bro. why are you going to california. i literally do not understand. you literally are from nyc. you live here. your family is here. your friends from chb are like a short pegasus ride away. there are like 50 universities in new york. just go here. why are you leaving. you are percy jackson. being a new yorker is literally one of your defining traits. stay here. WHY AR EYOU LEAVING I DO NOT UNDERSTAND PERSEUS

and listen. if your argument is that annabeth is going to be in nru. why the FUCK is ANNABETH going to nru!!!!! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT!!!! EXPLAIN IT!!!! percy LITERALLY says annabeth is such an overachiever she’s already run out of ap classes to take. he literally says that. why the fuck is this girl going to nru where let’s be real her admission is guaranteed. annabeth is 100% someone who would want to go to an ivy. and would you fucking believe it there’s an ivy right here in nyc. like let’s be fucking realistic here. annabeth started her architecture career at SIXTEEN designing the city the fucking GODS live in. so like. don’t you think she’d want to be a bit more challenged. don’t you think she’d want to go to a university that is actually recognizable to mortals. annabeth did NOT love new rome that much like did richard forget what he wrote. this girl was freaking out about new rome until percy said he only likes it because they could live together there. she literally does not care about new rome and she is WAY too ambitious and academically inclined to be happy with going to some small as uni 99% of employers have never heard of.

this isn’t even the worst character assassination in the book. that award goes to the way rick wrote percy. percy. my darling percy. my beloved percy. perseus jackson. light of my life. as i said before, he is MOSTLY on form. the him really wanting to cali thing is definitely ooc for him but it is NOTHING compared to the sheer amount of times rick portrays percy as stupid in this accursed novel. his internal monologue is constantly shit like i’m always so behind annabeth and omg i’m being so dumb right now and annabeth calls me seaweed brain because i’m an idiot and blah blah fucking blah.

dick riordan has forgotten that perseus jackson is, in fact, not stupid at all. he is INCREDIBLY clever. he is just not particularly academically inclined/not very book smart and it would also be perfectly understandable given the fucking books that riordan wrote to interpret that as percy being very discouraged from engaging with his studies. he genuinely enjoys chiron’s class at yancy because chiron is an engaging teacher and encourages him. he spends 90% of his time in pjo deducing what’s going on with extremely limited information because rick decided none of the characters can tell him anything because of plot and exposition reasons. in son of neptune he literally just coasts on having sherlockian (not bbc that’s a whole other angry review) powers of deduction. to the point where the characters around him are amazed at how he’s figuring stuff out. literally in house of hades annabeth’s pov’s are constantly her commenting on how she gives percy shit for being a dumbass but he’s actually really clever.

it genuinely feels like at some point during the writing of mark of athena rick decided to just slowly start making various fanon ideas canon. percy being stupid is very commonly accepted fanon because he doesn’t realize how smart he is (and fans don’t realize he’s an unreliable narrator) and the fans also love to infantilize characters with more in your face adhd (leo is another victim of this phenomenon). we’ve spent 5 books in percy’s head and he doesn’t think he’s particularly clever so it makes sense to ignore the mountains of evidence pointing towards his quick and creative thought process in favour of haha percy is dumb jokes.

the wild thing is, percy isn’t even that hard on himself in pjo. he obviously doesn’t see himself in the same way we later come to find out other people see him (mainly thinking about hazel and frank in son of neptune, which is the only time in hoo he genuinely feels like the same character as pjo percy) but he’s not really dealing with crazy self doubt and self esteem issues. he does have his down on himself moments but they’re all extremely understandable given the context because he literally faces impossible odds in every single pjo book. at one point he’s disappointed he couldn’t tell that ares and luke manipulated him… like yes bestie that’s a very valid thing to feel upset and betrayed about. it doesn’t mean that he’s actually stupid though and genuinely he comes across more as humble and not realizing just how awesome and cool and interesting he is than anything else. percy consistently shows that he is really clever. half of pjo is percy figuring out a new and interesting way of defeating his enemies and the other half is percy figuring out how to bait his enemies into a duel to improve his odds. it’s horrible what rick does to percy in his internal monologue.

it’s to an insane degree. yes i realize i have already written 500 words about percy not being stupid alone but i must stress how egregious this is. it’s literally characters who have previously acknowledged percy’s intelligence who start remarking about how he’s stupid. in house of hades percy and annabeth get out of fucking TARTARUS and reyna makes a jab about how percy wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a paper bag without annabeth. that is an INSANE thing to say for reyna and for rick. rick has not written a stupid character so it’s weird to make that something a character does without really trying to show them being wrong. from reyna’s perspective, this is a guy she was complimenting a few short weeks ago. this is a guy she immediately wanted to make a leader at the camp that she loves and is her home. this is guy she barely knows and she pretty much immediately proposes to him. WHY would she suddenly start making jokes about how dumb he is? it’s not like she actually knows him better now. he came to the battle with reinforcements and basically immediately dipped after the feast. how are we to accept reyna treating our beloved perseus in this horrific manner? we simply cannot. it is unnacceptable. this is inaccurate.

it’s so WRONG to do this to percy. yES I UNDERSTAND I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR TOO LONG. I DON’T CARE. PERCY JACKSON IS MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND I NEED TO DEFEND HIM FROM THIS SLANDER. I AM ONLY PARTIALLY JOKING. listen. liSTEN. this is the guy whose signature move is manipulate your enemy into dueling with you when you’re outnumbered or outmatched. he very coolly manipulated bob into killing his own brother (btw this was very hot and sexy and clever and attractive perseus is king of gaslight gatekeep girlboss). he is NOT stupid. he is impulsive. he is extremely oblivious about some things. he is NOT stupid. i watched perseus jackson grow up for 5 books and he is not stupid. i always say this. i always say that percy is not stupid and richard riordan refuses to listen to me.

there are such horrendous lines as “i am a guy of limited talents. if i can’t kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, i’m basically defenseless.” richard how DARE you say this about my beloved perseus. he is NEVER like this. he literally would never say that. even at absolute worst percy’s internal monologue was “this plan is stupid and will get us killed. but it’s the plan i have.” he’s NOT a being defenseless guy. what hte fuck are you saying. richard did you read your own books. RICHARD. DID YOU. at one point he says that he is constantly several steps behind annabeth’s thought process. he has literally never thought this before and it is also untrue. richard. i hate you. read your own fucking books oh my god.

ok. i think i have sufficiently harped on the fact that percy is not stupid. now i will complain about another thing. and this was just in one part but it bothered me and this is my review so i get to talk about whatever i want. if you don’t like it read someone else’s review. don’t hate read my review. i didn't charge you money to read it

at one point, percy has to wrestle a god who hercules once wrestled. and annabeth says something about hercules brute forcing it. and look. i GET that hercules was freakishly strong. i get that. i understand it. but when annabeth says hercules just brute forced it they’re both like ah shit i can’t do that. perseus. beloved. you ripped the minotaurs horn off its head with your bare hands as a 12 year old with no training. you are literally insanely strong as is. that is an insane thing for a 12 year old to be able to do. hell, that would be an insane thing for a grown adult to do. i don’t think rick realizes how op percy is. he was so caught up in making percy cool (which is, you know, extremely understandable and right and correct percy jackson is the coolest man in fiction for a reason i get it) that he forgot that he made percy extremely unbelievably powerful too. with the curse of achilles he was potentially matching minor gods in power level. he fights while sustaining mini-hurricanes and explodes glaciers and shit.

some more things. the prose is… acceptable. the plot reads like a fever dream. there is a smoothie shop called himbo juice that annabeth percy and grover are evidently regulars at. and there are. himbos. that serve. juice. so you can imagine what this fever dream looks like. like the last couple rick riordan releases, this one reads like published fanfiction too, just with better quality of writing than the sun and the star.

there are some WEIRD continuity errors in here. one of them is fairly minor but i still noticed it - percy says his father compared his mother to a princess. this is not true. poseidon compared sally to a queen. specifically, he called her “a queen among women”. i know this because i am sally jackson’s number 1 fan.

more egregiously, however, is annabeth’s yankees cap heebie jeebies. percy puts on annabeths’s cap and gets the heebie jeebies while using it. and then he goes wow annabeth. you never told me that using the cap is like this. and annabeth is like yeah well. power is like that. richard. riordan. did you fucking FORGET that percy has, in fact, worn annabeth’s cap before. and it was literally completely. once again, richard, did you read your own books.

one more good thing - when percy fights geras/gary, who is the god/personification of old age, the way he does it is by imagining him and his friends getting older and embracing it. this was a genuinely good and sweet moment and it was very touching. the trio’s talks about this after the fact are also absolutely a return to form from riordan. for like, a few paragraphs. but still.

the biggest problem is just how obvious it is that this book is a cash grab. we had pjo. then we had a sequel series. then we had ANOTHER sequel series. and now we’re getting random standalone novels that are extremely unnecessary and don’t add anything. rick riordan has dollar signs in his eyes. these are not stories that make sense. these are not stories rick genuinely wanted to tell. these are stories that are being told because the purpose of publishing books now is to maximize profit. (sidebar - i told you the capitalism thing would be relevant. you should believe me more often. smh) the only reason rick is still writing these books is that they make money. they feel extremely empty and hollow.

percy is trapped as a teenager forever because rick refuses to let him age up. percy accepting old age would make FAR more sense for a percy who’s in his 20’s and just now realizing that he lived past all the shit he thought was going to kill him and he has a real life that he likes and he could actually grow old now. but percy must be a child for marketing purposes, so he stays a child. the world itself is trapped in a cycle of the gods promising they’ll be better and the gods literally not changing at all. and for the sake of the book series, it can’t change. if we had real change in the world, that would actually mean something, silly. we can’t have consequences. we have to reset every 5 years like a fucking comic book so that we can make infinite money. this is the infinite money glitch irl. just make trash that doesn’t need to be made. the end point of capitalism is making trash no one asked for that has no artistic merit just because you can make money off of it.

by the way, dr emily wilson’s iliad translation, which was also out on the same day, is LESS expensive than this book. this cashgrab nonsense novel is MORE expensive than a book a professor in classics who has a phd spent 4 years on. this is just wrong. the fun and stupid cashgrab book should NOT be more expensive than a book that someone spent 4 years meticulously translating from ancient greek. it’s just so clear and in your face. trials of apollo absolutely felt like a cashgrab but at least there was SOME semblance of effort there. this is literally just the most plain and simple cashgrab novel you can make.

hey. you know the infinite monkey theorem? the infinite monkey theorem is that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text including shakespeare. richard riordan is a monkey with a typewriter. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

rick riordan struck gold with pjo. it’s genuinely to this day one of my favourite things i’ve ever read, flaws and all. it’s FUN. it’s COOL. it’s THEMATICALLY COHESIVE. the characters grow and change. they feel like real people with personalities. it literally doesn’t even matter how op percy is because THAT’S how good of a character he is. he is so compelling that you want to read about him anyway even though you can tell right from the minotaur fight that this kid can decimate whatever opponent he has. the books are funny and moving because you can genuinely connect to these characters. the more i read rick riordan’s work, the more certain i am that pjo was a fluke. i don’t think he knows what he’s doing. i think he should retire from writing.

unfortunately for me, richard riordan seems to have no intention of retiring. he has announced another percy jackson book that will be released next year. i assume there will be at least 2 more books based on the setup in this one.

rick. listen. i know you’re listening because what else will you do with your time. rick, why are you doing this. hasn’t percy been through enough. when will it end. give it a rest. stop it. get some help. at the very least, read your own books before writing percy. i am right about him and you are wrong about him. you are the author and i’m killing you right now. i am strangling you and i am hitting you with weapons. all at once. i am very proficient at causing deaths. (this is a metaphor referring to roland barthes’ death of the author. i wish no bodily harm to richard riordan).

this book is… alright. percy is my smart king. sally jackson is queen of my heart. it’s a fun read but you do have to turn your brain off completely and read through some serious percy defamation.

[edit: i am downgrading this book to one star (was at 2). the more i think about it, the more angry i am. there is literally a paragraph tailor made to rub jason's death in our faces. it's about how he looks forward to getting old being married to piper and having grandchildren. it's a very low blow. jason is literally rick riordan's biggest missed opportunity and he's rubbing in how poorly he treated jason even after killing him off for apollo's character development.

annabeth still keeps putting percy down because rick doesn't realize how mean she is i guess. she's still scared of him. canonically. which is a really weird and fucked up thing to write imo. this relationship doesn't seem healthy in canon (they are healthy in my head, however, because i know what women are like) but rick refuses to address it or let them break up. i LOVE annabeth. i love her. but she is an extremely flawed character and rick never treats her as such. and it just makes it exhausting to read about her.

percy IS on form but it genuinely feels like he's tlt percy, not post hoo percy. his inner voice sounds way more immature than it has for most of pjo and in son. riordan also repurposes the "look, i didn't want to be a half-blood" line from tlt to make a dumb little joke about how high school is hard. it was a GOOD opening line. it immediately set the tone and told us so much about percy in literally just a handful of words. now it's a joke about how being a senior in high school sucks. it's this mcu-esque allergy to being sincere that pjo never had.

there is BARELY any grover in this book. i love grover so much that i was cheering any time he was there, but there is very little of him. he's in like 2 or 3 scenes and has his own side plot going on with juniper and being bad at understanding what his girlfriend wants or whatever. extremely unnecessary and not what i want for grover. this book kind of ends up feeling like it's about annabeth but from percy's perspective. she gets good moments at percy's expense. percy spends the book monologuing about how annabeth is way smarter than him and all he has is his sick ass water powers and the best swordfighting skill in 300 years, both of which are very downplayed. percy explodes a river and it's treated like this crazy freaky scary thing but two years ago in universe he made a volcano erupt and everyone was like yeah this makes sense percy is that powerful. in son he explodes a glacier and it's just a normal tuesday for him. he literally doesn't even react to it. and now we're supposed to believe his exploding and purifying a river feat is some unbelievable feat.]

in conclusion, i want a refund. no i did not purchase this book. however, i would like to be reimbursed about $5000 in emotional damages. i will also be suing richard riordan for defamation on percy’s behalf. good night new york city. and my beloved perseus jackson who lives in new york city.

[vexedallay]

I have so many thoughts abt epsilon guys, so it's analysis post time-

Warning: long post below cut

So, they're not human, right? Their body is that of a robot, so presumably their mind is some sort of computer or AI (and here I mean an actual goddamn artificial intelligence, not a "generative ai" or some bs). So their entire fucking mind is made of code, and things like "variability" doesn't really exist. In order for someone like epsilon to function, they need to break down the complexity of human nature into sets of rules that govern how social interaction, society, and the world in general works. They can then follow these rules and be fine. (This is how my brain works, btw. Computers make more sense than people to me) Epsilon can understand that their rules might not be complete, and is flexible enough to add more when encountering new scenarios, but they do expect their rules to be accurate. They are very much a person of logic rather than emotion. As they have mostly only interacted with other robots and artificial beings, who function in much the same way, this works for them. However, when interacting with actual people, this doesn't work as well. People are notably often governed by emotion, not logic, and are incredibly prone to spontaneity. As such, Epsilon really has no idea how to interact with them sometimes, especially with little kids.

Epsilon also refers to living people as "organics" and robotic things as "artificials" because that is how they separate those two groups mentally. There's too many types of people, too many types of robots, so Epsilon refers to the makeup of their bodies instead. This isn't necessarily an insult, it simply is. But it is a fun detail about Epsilon habits.

Also since epsilon is a robot, they can do things like be rebuilt. This is a massive thing in the actual portal storyline - being able to rebuild these robots over and over again to continue testing. Even if Epsilon wasn't programmed initially to feel pain, they are a learning system (that's what makes them so good) so there isn't a reason they couldn't have *learned* to feel pain, or at least some facsimile of it. Additionally, them watching their body get destroyed and rebuilt it bound to be traumatizing anyways, which means I just gave this robot ptsd. Oops.

Anyhow, how does epsilon actually *survive* being destroyed, much less *watch*. First off, Epsilon only exists in their memory files. They can be *completely* disconnected from their body, lose access to *all* of their sensory systems, yet still be *alive*. (This is also bound to be incredibly traumatizing since they are basically completely at the mercy of whoever happens to find them, completely unable to defend themself.) And, if they needed to watch, glados is there and watching anyways. Since epsilon only exists in their memory files, they could be hooked up to other sensory systems, through network connections and whatnot. I'd imagine glados does this on purpose as a sort of threat to epsilon.

I do want to mention glados at least briefly. She definitely had some level of control over at least Epsilons body and sensory systems, which in general is rough (complete understatement). She also put Epsilon through all of these tests, making Epsilon a lab rat. Which means Epsilon likely has the *mentality* of a lab rat. So high levels of obedience, no real purpose to life (currently they want to find rho-13, but once they find him they won't have a purpose at all), etc. Which is just fun to play with.

Also, I like to think Epsilon uses they/them pronouns because they never got a gender module installed, and learned that they/them was the default. So they're a they/them guy with no actual preference.

Fibally, Epsilon definitely thinks of themself as EP-511ON56. They're a robot, and that is their serial number. The same way they think of RHO-13 as his serial number rather than a proper name. The reason they *use* this nickname is because organics don't like listing serial numbers constantly, so Epsilon.

Anyhow, long af ramble about epsilons character? Complete.

[horizon-verizon]

Hotd is the trenches of white feminism because why else is it that most of the time when I see someone who actually understands why trying to change it to a story where both sides are wrong is actually both irresponsible and impossible, they so often turn out to be a bipoc woman? Why are we the ones out here having to defend white women and even the men around them from other white women who so often claim to be feminists and why is this also true in real life? I'm tired.

When the ASoIaF fandom itself is entrenched in white feminism with no real public acknoledgement of how/why people got the conclusions they did bc everyone wants to avoid being honest and just be either sexist/racist OR deny such things motivating some of the writers' decisions or other fans' feelings abt such and such...

the next fandom for the next TV/film adaptation will inevitably follow. And worse bc HotD is the hub of male gaze and misogynoir-baked-into-the-writing that reinforces it all.

I have had to explain how male gaze is different from "female gaze", how it has always been about trying to make subordinate a woman's true perspective AND agency for male-viewer excitement and confidence. To make the female subject no longer subject or actor as the male. How it constructs a pleasure in seeing female subjects subordinated, that that is its inherent purpose and function.

ANOTHER LINK

Not about "who is hot", or "looking with disrespect", or "what makes men attracted to women" like female gaze is supposed to be about "what makes women attracted to men" or gets them hyped or whatever. This, what I just described people have done/said about male gaze vs female gaze, is a complete misunderstanding AND attempt to redefine what male gaze is/what it has always really been about to distort the unnatural desire to see female objectification as "natural".

Something that neoliberal capitalism has tricked many people, inclu women, into believing like it has tricked girls into thinking sex work isn't as dangerous and "a big deal" bc you're making money being a commercial product of a patriarchal society.

I will repeat: male gaze, as a theory/application/criticism/observation of patriarchy in film/media was about how & why women are agency-less/mitigated objects for the male-centered or male-as-the-actor/subject story.

In the male gaze, the "woman" is not "the maker of meaning", but the "bearer of meaning".

And Laura Mulvey was a white, "mid" class woman...and other white women can't even get this shit in their fucking brains for more than three seconds.

I, too, am tired.

Now, of course we can understand how both sides went into a war that ravaged an entire realm in under 3 years. how it lead to the end of dragons before Daenerys. How we can seem to chalk it up to noble people being typically selfish nobles...however, what makes this unique is the fact that it could have been entirely prevented if sexism itself did not exist. That Rhaenyra was a woman mattered and defined the entire trajectory of the greens' moves & motivations & confidence into usurping her in the first place. This is just basic fact. Not even Maegor's war w/his own nephew (Aegon the Uncrowned) was this devastating!

(LINK#1 & LINK#2, both by zaldrizer-sovesi) The Blackfyres came from xenophobic, [likely] ableist, desires for self-aggrandizement and have a lot to do with ideas of masculinity and power: bastard given a ruler's sword by the past one vs nonmilitant legitimate ruler who invites the "Other" into his court--using such things already in the society for one's one advancement. If we can acknowledge that, why can't we acknowledge the same for Rhaenyra/the Dance and sexism?!

Why do we need to subordinate that under "both sides bad", instead of the other way around? Again, Condal and many HotD "neutrals" have argued that "both sides bad" is the "point" of the war...which, it it actually were, then what is the goddamn point of it if it can be subsumed under "oridinary" nobles' wars?!! What is the point of the Dance or even adapting it at all? bfr!

[meltsyoutodeath]

Friday night funkin' x bnha crossover au where the fnf people were like born there and everything and. ok this post works better as a bullet list hang on:

(NOTE: anything I get fundamentally wrong is because I didn't actually get past, like, the training camp arc thing in bnha. I'm just going off the copious amounts of bnha crossovers I've been reading)

Bf's quirk is that he can pull anyone into a rap/singing battle that deals real physical damage if the opponent can't keep up. of course, the harder the song, the hardest it is for Bf himself to keep it up

Bf's quirk doesn't make a battle stop just because a rap battle began. you have to imagine a guy simultaneously fighting for their life and trying to hit the right notes to a song that started playing out of nowhere

Gf's main thing is that she starts looking like a demon whenever she feels something too strongly. That emotion can be happiness, anger, hate, love, whatever. BUT Gf can also enhance other people's quirks just by touching them

(more under the cut because it gets long)

Gf and Bf both go to UA! this is not because either of them want to be a hero. neither of them are interested whatsoever in all that. but Daddy Dearest insisted that Gf could ONLY go there because it's a prestigious school and he wants the best education for his daughter etc etc (it was totally not because it's hard getting in UA and DD thought Bf wouldn't be able to follow her there so they'd FINALLY break up)

Bf, of course, is THE boyfriend of all time, so he sweats his way through UA's entrance exams just to prove he'd do anything to be with Gf. and also as a fuck you to Daddy Dearest

They join the hero course because someone said Gf could never be a hero with such a villanous quirk and they took that as a challenge

moving on to OTHER characters: Pico is the quirkiest quirkless guy on earth. man was wanted for a school shooting at age 14 (yes I know canonically he was older during Pico's School but let me cook ok). he wasn't even responsible for the school shooting in question, but everybody just kinda decided he was because he was the one of the only survivors, so.

these days Pico works as a mercenary, but he's done enough to be seen as a villain. some even consider him a Big villain (because, you know. massive school shooting)

there are conspiracy sites that discuss what Pico's quirk is, btw. one day he made a burner account and said "I think he's quirkless" in one of those and he got banned from the website

Darnell's quirk lets him enhance pre-existing flames. So while he can't shoot fire out of his hands or anything, giving him a lighter is the same thing as giving him a flamethrower

Nene's quirk lets her copy any object she's holding, as long as she knows its composition. It's basically Yaoyorozu's but nerfed

That's how she gets her endless knives supply, and also how Pico never runs out of ammo. she makes, like, 20 magazines for him per fight

Darnell, Nene and Pico are a group who are mostly seen working together. they only try to kill each other sometimes

Fun fact abt them is that they have a combo attack where Darnell uses a spray can that's actually a bomb to distract enemies and then Nene launches a bucnh of knives that Pico redurects with gunshots as needed. this isn't easy or effective but they find it fun AND it looks really cool

One day Darnell is watching the news and something about some place being burnt down because of a villain comes up and he goes "something big burnt down,,, and not because of ME???" and at the same time Nene walks in all sad and goes "there's this new girl with some evil league or something who's stealing my knives brand :((("

so naturally they decide they HAVE to bring down the leauge of villains now. not because of the crimes or whatever but because they're stealing their brands

Pico joins them because why not. they become the team rocket of bnha

during the... training camp arc? is that what that's called? those 3 trail the League because a big open area sounds like a perfect opportunity to catch one of them alone and, thus, very killable

Pico ends up running into Bf and Gf locked in a battle against an unspecified villain and he looks like he's having trouble so Pico's like.... omg is that my ex?? I forgor he goes here. he's still kinda hot... who said that. I should totally help him out

so Pico gravely injures his enemy but gets so caught up in the friendly rap battle Bf pulls him into that he forgets to finish him off

and then Weekend 1 happens as normal except avoiding Nene and Darnell is a lot harder because they're, you know, roommates

anyway after that he starts hanging out with Bf again more. eventually Gf starts coming too and then I reveal this was SECRETLY GF X BF X PICO PROPAGANDA ALL ALONG

one day Midoryia sees them hanging out and near instantly clocks who Pico is so he runs away very comically (after Bf tells him he can't kill his classmates)

later on Midoryia can't help but ask wyat Pico's quirk is and promptly stops working when they tell him he doesn't have one

and that's all I have for now but you get my point right

[bonemarble]

What do you feel like Sherwood and Leah’s relationship was like before her changing and what is it like now?

i feel like i haven't gone over sherwood-specific parts of the books in a while so i may revisit this. off the top of my head, this is another case where there's a lot left to our imagination so we can mostly speculate. i can tell you what options i personally find compelling:

1) from the little we know of sherwood's past he ran from his mother's pack leaving his family behind and he wasn't there where they all died. we know of at least three cases (leah's camp, northumbria, adam's pack), where he joined a group of people that was in some need of his assistance, didn't seek to wrestle power, and offered his services, without necessarily becoming too attached. he tells mercy she and adam make for better leaders than him and even in his time with bran he worked in his service. a possible connecting factor to all this is that there is some survivor guilt at play. in which case, it could simply be that after most of the camp died he could not bear to see leah, the last survivor, also dead and changed her for this reason. not saying they would not have a bond: surviving some things together can be an incredibly powerful unifying experience;

2) which leads us to a second point, if not really a separate option as they can co-exist. given the nature of the singer's cult i think it's possible leah and sherwood had sex under the control of the singer at some point (as in: no one consented, i don't think rapist is the route briggs is taking with sherwood). a relationship as co-victims of sexual abuse could be an interesting angle, especially since in this case their bodies were used to rape each other which would also bring a lot of guilt towards one another. it could explain why sherwood was so anxious to flee her presence as soon as she was safe despite being desperate to save her. it would also create a disturbing but interesting dynamic with bran: he holds power over both, his mating with leah without consent is framed as a form of rape, and we are explicitly told he brought leah into the pack only bc he couldn't do so with sherwood. which marks one more way sherwood takes the figurative place of one of bran's wives in the story;

3) and from this to point three. you did not ask abt bran exactly but i can't separate the issues. as already stated i am curious abt the parallelisms between bran/blue jay/charles and bran/sherwood/leah, where leah takes the role of the child and sherwood that of, well...the wife. i am not sure it was intentional, it may be the comparison was just meant to signal two people bran cared about: briggs is overall fairly regressive and her incestuous preoccupations have more to do with parent/child entanglements with negative connotations. i don't see her proposing a sexually charged exploration of brothers with a romantic frisson sharing a daughterwife. still, that's a subtext that can be extrapolated and i enjoy it. so there. this fucked-up little polycule could take a lot of configurations but i would extremely like even just some repressed implications;

4) finally, it's also possible sherwood and leah were actually involved/had untold feelings for each other while at the singer's camp. and that bran "stole" leah from sherwood when he changed her and mated with her (also with some possible parallel to how mariposa is said to have stolen asil's mate from him and how the cornick witch implies she stole bran from sam). this also can work with previous points. it would certainly mean a lot of jealousy and regret on all sides.

very long answer to say: i don't exactly know, i can see things going a lot of ways and the ways i like are usually a bit uncomfortable. i think the story has the bones for it, there's truly material on which to build. realistically, i think briggs will play it safe and either go for an amical bond or introduce some mild love-triangle action.

what are your opinions on this, anon?

[beatcroc]

1- GOD I LOVE YOUR ART SO MUCH

2- just a random question: do you plan on playing the BYOC mod (made by mcpig and the pizza tower discord community) or other stuff, or is it out of your interests?

3- some leaks shown that beside a noise spin off, we may also get a pizza tower update with playble mr stick and also a PIZZA TOWER 2- INVASION OF THE ALIENS (or smth likr it i forgot the title)

are you excited for it?

yaaaaa thank youuuuu :3

2. i'm not really much for modding in general, haha. isn't that one something for DOOM? i have no experience with doom either but maybe someday [dont count on it]; i feel like if you get into doom it's just natural to get into the goofy mods along with it

3. i do not care abt any of that 🔥🔥💯🔥💪🔥 when and if we get any official announcements for more projects direct from the tour de pizza team i'll look into it, but until then there's still plenty to chew through right now.

in my case, i'm far more interested in the game's past than its future; my actual ultimate hope for more More Content:tm: in pizza circles is them expanding the base game with stuff that got cut during development, since there was so much of it. the mansion? the heat meter? unused transformations? betas of these things literally exist and are still functional and playable; and with the structure of pizza tower being as loose as it is i wouldn't think it'd be hard to add a new floor, or just an extra level or two to existing floors. even just looking through sprite archives and seeing unused peppino attack animations im like man these don't look like they fit the current combat system but i'd fucking love to see them in the context of like a wrestling level or something

but anyway i realize this is kind of a pipe dream so in the meantime i just comb through debug mode to explore what there used to be and crash my game every 20 seconds :^) [space pinball cannot hide from me forever i WILL find a way through.... i haven't actually booted debug since the noise update though i hope all the old maps and shit are still there :x

there's also the old demos and builds to sniff out but i've been lazier about getting to those because frankly they all feel like ass compared to how the final game handles fjgfjkgfgf

if there WERE to be be a sequel to pizza tower or something else in its universe, i would definitely want a different cast; or at least a different protagonist. peppino's tale feels very neatly wrapped up and i really like his ending as-is.

[controlban]

some atsv thoughts...

i was a year older than miles when i saw the first movie when it came out. now the second movie has come out, and im 20, but its not my fault the sequel took nearly 5 years to release. ageing up is fine and exists for situations like these where a piece of media didnt maturate properly with its initial fanbase, and thus didnt allow for them to naturally grow in tandem. that's literally part of what fandom/fanfiction is for. fandom and fanfiction are for people to expand on their favourite piece of media and remake it into how they want it to be. the same thing happened with mcu!peter parker. i was abt 1-2 years younger than peter parker when homecoming came out, and i was 2-3 years older than him when no way home released.

whatever happened to just judging silently, and moving on with ur day? why are people being so mean and exclusive now?

obvi ped0s are fucking vile, but no one's being a ped0 here. go find ur common sense and thinking skills.

and i bet the same ppl who are being so weird abt this fandom rn are the same ones who think the movie has copaganda... what??? tell me ur a spiderman/marvel tourist without telling me ur a tourist, smh.

this movie uses typical spiderman tropes, and makes a meta analysis of miles morales as a character and whether or not he deserves to even be spiderman. the movie uses this as a narrative device. one of the core elements of spiderman is parental figure death/trauma, his/her relationship to the police/the city (often times by way of the police chief to represent all of the police, and/or by way of the media to represent public perception of spiderman, ie.: hero vs menace).

if we wanna only talk about movies, then all 3 live action series of spiderman have done the exact same thing. the comics do it even more.

but these ppl just watch movie, see ‘cop not intrinsically bad in this one’ and go ‘hey guys, this is bad right? am i right? please agree. when are we going to do something about it’. it feels like a very uninformed and performative analysis and reaction. and its always the people who aren't the ones being affected by police/police brutality that seem to put on the biggest show about supposed copaganda. how about you do something about the very real problems happening in the real world if you're worried abt copaganda? because i'll bet every dollar i have that every person that was bird calling on twitter abt atsv never set foot anywhere near any of the many protests that happened this year for the lives of those lost to the unjust american judicial system in just this year alone.

there are ways to consume media while also being smart. stop letting twitter raise u. you don't have to constantly perform for everyone to prove you're a good, socially-conscious person.

twist your head back on.

[bloomingdead]

"your fanservice should not be as important to you as getting a well-written third game,"

sure because forbidden west and burning shores are peak writing and good development right? the pacing isnt a mess, the rushed relationships arent a mess, the villains are underdeveloped as fuck.... what the fuck you are talking about a "well written third game" over a bad written and rushed ship that would also be fanservice? just please. thanks to people like you who defend that shitty writing of seyloy we are going to have a big mess for the third game

“shitty writing” you either have never had a girlfriend that you didn’t meet through an app or you’re not sapphic. my girlfriend and i played the whole dlc together and felt it was such a natural development of the crush. especially between two ~20 year olds (seyka seems like she might be a lil bit older than aloy bc of her status as an officer). the worst part of the DLC was londra tbh. his “cult” felt underdeveloped and confusing. but sure, go off abt how seyloy ruined it instead of how it actually added something of more value. londra felt like he was just there to force gameplay while aloy and seyka’s relationship felt like the true focus imo.

who knows?? seyka could have been written for the third game before they decided to introduce her sooner in the dlc. forbidden west was actually really good and i don’t understand why you’re searching through the tags if you actually thought it and the dlc was bad. i haven’t defended seyloy or talked abt it in the tags in over a month. and tbh i’m getting tired of defending it because interacting with y’all is exhausting. you try to sprinkle in opinions with no foundation/proof about the main story to act like you’re not just upset about seyka. the true supporters and fans of guerrilla can peer through your thinly veiled bullshit to see that you and the others are just upset cuz you’re obsessed with your fav/kin ship and NOTHING else can compete with/replace it. just look at the quote you chose to reference. struck a nerve, did i?

you sound like a bunch of middle-schoolers with all the whining and bitching about something you don’t get to, NEVER WILL get to control. because it’s not your fucking story. and it’s not mine either. i’m not writing that shit! i’m just part of a vast audience of plenty of other people who don’t agree with you weirdo little diehard talanah/erend fuckers. don’t buy the games if you hate them so much, don’t pick up horizon 3 when it comes out. leave guerrilla (especially the writers), kylie, and ashly the fuck alone. you’re making those of us who ACTUALLY feel normally about this game look deranged. there’s so many things to be excited about that already exist in the games, so much to look forward to, and so much positive shit you could be focusing on. but you waste your time complaining about a 9/10 game. find something better to do with your time cuz even while hiding behind anon you’re embarrassing yourself.

[yasminewestbank]

all movie asks answers from the ask meme post bc it was fun

Your favorite movie released this year DIDNT WATCH ANY 2023 MOVIES YET.. CRIES

A movie you think is underrated - obliged to say An Elephant Sitting Still by hu bo bc i can never find it in dvd stores and i unfortunately honestly dont know if i will find a screening of it in a cinema available to me ever again but i dream of it

A movie you think is overrated - going to put two, one new and one classic. first one is parasite. im bitter abt this movie bc it was advertised like crazy and the reviews were so hyping and then i went and it was average. its not a bad movie but not only doesnt deserve the hype the hype ruined it for me bc if i went with the proper expectations i wouldnt have gotten so disappointed. a classic is alphaville of godard... obviously its a good movie and im sure it was groundbreaking at the time but by now the story doesnt feel as sophisticated bc this genre of story is at this point.. i wouldnt say overdone bc its still a great genre but its not fresh or suprising by now without making it more complex. this movie felt like a blueprint to the 1984 book soviet dystopia genre so it didnt keep up with the times. many classic movies are still exciting and fresh just like when they came out including other movies of godard but this isn't one of them. but i can also see how it was probably one of godard's top commercial movies, bc it was easier to digest and more basic than his other work

A movie you like but wouldn't recommend - stalker of tarkovsky and tarkovsky movies in general bc i think it would probs be boring to most ppl (its slow and not much plot) + tarkovsky movies r slow and the kind of movies u have to watch in the movie theater

A movie musical you like - annette of leox carax. and its not only a good movie the music is so good too

A horror movie you like - audition by takashi miike . love japanese violence

A sci-fi movie you like - high life by claire denis. AND it has robert pattinson in it!!!!!!!111 and hes amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A fantasy movie you like

A movie in your native language you like - Life According to Agfa by Assi Dayan. one of the only good israeli movies that exist bc i didnt see so far any good, worthwhile or complex israeli movie besides this one (not including documentaries).

A foreign-language movie you like - (i put a bunch already so ill do one in a language i didnt put yet) tori and lokita by the dardenne brothers. takes place in belgium in french about a young refugee woman and a refugee child from africa who pose as brother and sister. this is going to destroy you but its such a good movie i cant recommend it enough but i still cant recover

A movie you wish you could un-watch - the disney secretariat movie. it was so bad oh my god it was so fucking bad im in pain. i want disney to give me back the braincells i lost. this actor horse deserves so much better

A performance you think is underrated - Vicenç Altaió (yeah had to google this one) in story of my death by albert serra. his acting was insane. probably one of the best acting perfomances ive ever seen, specifically the toilet scene stuck with me. so it's a period movie about casanova. there a scene in the movie that all of it is just him taking a shit. and of course it sounds goofy but it was actually a really human and sensitive depiction and his acting was so natural i completely forgot i was watching a movie. he really made this scene what it is. and tbh i think even from those other photos u can see what i mean on him

A performance you think is overrated

A movie made better by the ending - only thing that comes up in my mind is barton fink of joel coen.. i can barely remember this movie bc i watched it years ago but (spoilers) i can just remember there was a twist in the middle that flipped the whole movie on its head and it was super enjoyable. besides this i cant think of anything

A movie ruined by the ending - the holy mountain of jodorowsky... at the time i watched it i was so disappointed by the ending it was so anticlimactic. i think he thought he did something but it just didnt work. (might be spoilers) same vibes when a story pulls "and then he found out it was all a dream". like.. in this case it just didnt feel fitting it was disappointing. but i watched it years ago so i wonder if i would feel the same now

A trilogy/franchise you like cant think of anything

A movie you never get tired of talking about - drive my car by ryusuke hamaguchi. its fun to talk abt this movie bc even tho there are a lot of themes and details that make it what it is, its not too complex to not be able to grasp and pinpoint them. so its complex enough to be a good movie but not too complex to not be able to talk abt it, both abt the good and bad things (bc there r also choices the director made that i dont like). and there's also so much to talk abt that stems from this movie not only in the movie itself but also what it shows abt japanese cinema, contemporary japanese cinema/this generation of japanese directors versus the previous generations. also i love this director in general i recc all his movies

A movie you never wanna hear about again - if i hear one more thing abt any marvel movie im going to kill myself

A movie you look forward to watching (could be an upcoming release or not) - aki karutismaki's fallen leaves that came out this year

A movie you think looks beautiful - red desert of antonioni. i adore the aesthetic of this movie. tbh its probably my favorite movie visuals wise. i just cant stop adding photos from google bc i love everything slkfdsflsfgds

A director you think is underrated - tbh hard to think of anyone.. i think any director i like got some kind of recognition, and if i think ok which one doesnt get mainstream recognition it would be basically most of them. so im trying to think.. who do i rlly think doesnt get recognition. maybe the crown should go to the photographer petra collins who actually directed the first season of euphoria before sam levinson kicked her out and claimed he did it and stole all her work

A director you think is overrated - HITCHCOCK!!!!!!! HES NOT THAT GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HES TRULY NOT THAT GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! I COULD PULL UP 10 DIRECTORS FROM HIS TIME AND BEFORE HIM THAT ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN HE IS THAT ARENT AS HYPED UP. godard and kurosawa made movies so much better and decades before him so the reason hes hyped cant even be that what he made was groundbreaking for the time. hitchcock is MID

An animated movie you like - the cowboy bebop movie... its so fun and satisfying to watch i watched it so many times dsfdf

A silent movie you like cant think of anything

Your favorite movie - possession by andrej zulawski. im speechless abt it. dont read a summery go into this blind. its such an insane experience (sin look my fav movie is a polish movie)

Your least favorite movie i dont rlly have one i have a whole bunch of movies i dont like but i dont have THE hated movie

[lexa-ocean]

do u have any rolfe and earl headcanons?!?!?! NOT FORCING BTW!!!! U SAID U SHIP THEM I THINK….

I started drafting an answer and Tumblr didn't save it 😭😭 but yeah i do ship them!!!! They might be one of the ships i've into the longest lol. I even got my partner to ship em before we got together!!! (It's how I won her over lol/j)

Putting hcs under the cut!!

Ok so my biggest hc here not only re:this ship but also in general to the rockafire is that Earl is. Not actually a puppet lol??? But yeah my hc is that he's like. A monster type dude similar to Mr Munch basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ like in general my hcs for the rockafire rely a bit on their world running on magical realism rules, where ppl see things that we'd think Odd as ordinary. Like random furry monsters just existing lol. But anyways. Continuing w that, Earl's Specific Brand Of Creature™ is just naturally tiny and light, ergo why Rolfe can just. Swing him around like that 😭 also as I mentioned in this fic, he's also very feline like and can purr, among other things!!! Going onto the shippy aspect, as i wrote on the afromentioned fic, Earl's purring is one sure fire way to calm Rolfe down if he's having a hard time 💖💖 the downsize tho is that Earl doesn't like doing it in public :/ so it's really a thing just for the two of them

(Eventually Earl becomes trusting enough to do it around the rest of the band, but everytime he realizes he's doing it he threatens them to not go around saying it. They all agree but tbf its like an open secret at this point 😭)

Anyways, all this to say Earl had a Whole life before meeting Rolfe. And i think they had a Very Funny meet 'cute' where Earl was like. A server at a comedy club Rolfe decided to do stand up at (i think its funny if Rolfe used to do stand up by himself and SUCKED at it) and Rolfe was so bad even Earl started heckling him while waiting tables and Rolfe was SO offended bc what does this lowlife server know about comedy??? So they started to trade barbs back and forth and everyone else in the club thought it was HILARIOUS and even some ppl started wondering if it was all part of some Really Funny Bit and they had agreed to do this beforehand but. No lmao they literally just Have Chemistry when it comes to comedy. Anyways eventually Rolfe's time ran out and he was thinking like 'oh great i wasted my whole time fighting with this rando i'm gonna get booed off again-' but nah fam he was cheered on bc the fight was HILARIOUS. Rolfe wondered wtf was up but when he noticed ppl praising a very confused Earl he wised up about it and asked him if he wanted to do an act together and. Earl said No. So Rolfe just began going to the club to BEG Earl to be on his act it was High Key Pathetic 😭 but Earl did eventually agree (mostly bc word spread out abt the funny 'comedian vs server' act and the club threatened to fire Earl if he didn't do it again :'D) so yeah they eventually began hanging out outside the club, at first just to keep working on their act but eventually they started liking each others company. Like they Don't Agree with each other in a BUNCH of stuff but they could Argue about it in a fun way and they both enjoyed it. And when they Did agree it was also fun like they could talk for HOURS.

Yeah the thing is, living together and being close as they were eventually their feelings wandered into a more Flirty spot and (without quite meaning to) they began putting into their act to the point everyone was like 🤨🏳️‍🌈❓️ at them. And the club owners turned out to be... pretty fucking homophobic!!! So one day they were just like 'we know what you are' and dead up fired them. Probably called them some slurs on their way out too 😭 and the funny thing is Rolfe and Earl hadn't even NOTICED they were being flirty with each other so they were SHOOKED and frankly very fucking pissed off. They just made it back into their apartment like

Another thing that def helped their bond it's that they were both deeply lonely people and had like No Friends??? So in my hc Rolfe had a pretty awful home life and grew up Very Isolated so yeah. His social skills consisted on acting like he was better than anyone else then being Shocked when that resulted in ppl finding him annoying. And Earl once again i have a Whole Headcanon but tl;dr is that he's from Argentina (like me hi i like projecting 👋) and back then thing's were... Not Great™ so he had to leave and rebuild his life somewhere else and it was HARD and he was also Grumpy about having to move in the first place so yeah 😬 suddenly tho they found each other and become Close Acquaintes, maybe even Friends??? Dare i say even Close Friends??? It got to the point that they decided to move in together to save up on rent and work more on their act and stuff. And they were Pretty Good at it too!!! Everything was going well... maybe too well...

Rolfe: Wow I can't believe we were fired and over fake accusations too???

Earl: Yeah i mean wtf are they on?? We're not dating???

Rolfe: Yeah I mean i am gay but not at you lol ur not my type??

Earl: Yeah same i think guys are hot but not you ur a geek

Rolfe: The club owners are CRAZY

Earl: Yeah lol imagine us dating??

Rolfe: Lol that would be weird

Earl: Heh... yeah...........

Earl:

Rolfe:

Earl: ...So u wanna make out-

Rolfe: YES

So yeah lol ironically they started having a Thing bc of that whole situation. Club owners created their worst enemy fr.

I do think they didn't sit down to discuss the Terms of their relationship until MUCH later, so they never really called each themselves boyfriends or anything. They just had an Unspoken Thing™ and they figured it out as they went.

Anyways, they stayed in that town for a while and began doing their act at different clubs (changing it as they went from 'server vs comedian' to 'audience member vs comedian' bc several clubs weren't willing to let Earl act as if he worked there) but the past club owners kept spreading rumors abt them so eventually no club in town would take them :/ so they decided 'actually fuck this town' and just. Got into a van to go around the country as a traveling act. And they did very well!!!! They def had their ups and downs but it was mostly positives. At one point they ended in a club that had a STRICT 'the comedians must stay only on stage' that they weren't told about until last second so they had to change their WHOLE act with a few minutes to spare.

Rolfe: Wait hold up i have an idea... ✨️puppet✨️

Earl: Fuck off i'm not pretending to be a puppet-

*smash cut to Earl on Rolfe's hand*

Earl: I hate you

Rolfe: Love you too ❤️

That act ended up being a MASSIVE success tho so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Earl had to learn to cope

But then one day they stopped at a Showbiz place and meet Wolfman (as mentioned in my fic, he's Rolfe's older brother who he lost contact with) and well. Rolfe and Wolfman had a pretty emotional encounter and Earl decided it was better if they stayed 'just for a while'. Before they knew it they were helping Wolfman's bestie (Fatz) on making a new band since the WP5 was breaking up and they had a whole STAGE for themselves and yknow what maybe they could stay for a while longer...

3 years and a shared house later: Wait shit. We're Attached now.

ANYWAYS this thing devolved into a whole origin story huh 😭 lemme drop some actual hcs here real quick

Rolfe is older than Earl by like 2 yrs (i usually write Rolfe as 37 and Earl as 35, for reference)

Rolfe is the most physically affectionate of the two, he has an habit of getting Affection Zommies™ (term coined by my girlfriend) and just. Picking up Earl to cuddle him or squeeze him or nuzzle him 🥹 and Earl just rolls with it like "oh i'm being pick up. Ok then." It's like the meme of 'came home drunk last night and got too happy to see my cat' yknow

They both smoke, but Rolfe smokes those v long and 'softer' ones while Earl smokes a heavier type (Earl probably smokes weed too on accasion). Anyways, point is, they 100% do that 'leaning really close to light up their cig with the one their partner is smoking' thing like. ALL THE TIME. And everyone thinks they're being romantic but in reality they started doing it to make their lighters last longer 😭

They lowkey have a ratatouille style system to cooking?? Like Rolfe is ok at cooking but NEEDS the recipe. On the flipside Earl has a hard time cooking bc of his side but he just Gets cooking like he can eyeball and improv things and ends up with fantastic stuff. So what they usually do is Rolfe cooks while Earl watches him and gives him indications. And yes, their system works

They're both v good with children!!! And actually like them!!! It wasn't a huge sacrifice for them to change their act to make it more kid friendly. They're also not bad babysitters.

Rolfe loves sewing and clothing design and the like. It can be hard to find stuff Earl's size, so he'll sometimes make him clothes

(Half the time is stuff not really Earl's style but is the thought that counts?)

Rolfe LOVES Earl's voice he thinks he's the best singer in the band and is constantly trying to get him more songs. Earl himself doesn't think he's that good, but he does like to sing and has fun w it so he's also not complaining.

Even tho they usually write their skits beforehand, they're also p good at improv if things go wrong. For ex. the Frank Sinatra skit was meant to have a different ending where the song went without an hitch, but then Technical Difficulties happened and they had to run with it

Earl wont admit it but he genuinaly likes how soft and fluffy Rolfe is.... world hard and cold, fur soft and warm ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)

On that note, Earl has an habit of kneading on Rolfe without meaning to (cat-like creature babeeeeyyy). Rolfe feels flattered every time it happens so he doesn't say anything, even if he might ocasionally get Poked at by claws (yes Earl has retractile claws)

I said this earlier, but Rolfe's parents are pretty garbage. They keep sending Rolfe letters trying to guilt him into taking care of them (send them money), and they can cause Rolfe to spiral. Earl's solution is to check for them constantly and shred them whenever he sees them. He just takes his claws to them and goes wild

If Earl ever meets Rolfe's parents, heads will roll

They're both also very aware of each other's issues/trauma, since they were all they had for a while they ended up accidentally trauma dumping on each other early on.

Yknow that one trope where the tall partner lets stuff in high shelves so the short one has to ask them for help? Yeah Rolfe's the complete opposite. He tries makes sure everything is accesible to Earl, esp if it's stuff he uses constantly

They're both pretty early risers, with the difference Rolfe also has an habit of staying up late. As a result, Rolfe is usually a zombie in the mornings before he gets his caffeine dose. Earl ends up trying to make sure he doesn't get himself hurt by running into walls or smthn

Yeah i think that's all i have rn!!! I've actually been at this for a few hours.... lol....

As an extra, here!!! I made a playlist for them a while ago!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHPhhJWNKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNaHpezFjng

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Djn8yRscS8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybhNZqEnkYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX8JmX-PJ8k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EemlA7ICn6Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LViL6-nt3wQ

(Yeah i know most of these are in spanish, sorry they just Fit)

Thanks for the ask!!! 💖