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leonawriter · 2 months ago

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Emanations - or, "He's Just Like Me For Real?"

Hello, and today we are going to be talking about the Kabbalah, in which it explains the being of God as seen through the divine emanations (or refractions, or lenses) of the Sephirot on each of the points of the Tree of Life.

No, really. We are. Just... not that Kabbalah. The other one.

The Lobotomy Corporation Tree of Life, of course, in which each stage of the Tree is taken up by a separate character, all the way from Malkuth to, yes, including Keter and also Da'at.

In terms of religious theology, the Kabbalah talks about God the singular deity, and... I'm gonna bring back something I said to a friend once, because on the wiki page (I'm not saying I'm an expert on any of this, by far) it's said that some people were upset by the idea of separating a God that is supposed to be in the Singular into Multiple parts-

The way I see it, the way the Kabbalah/Sephirot work is that it goes by the same principle as the old story of the blind men who each encounter an elephant, which is too big for them to fully comprehend, and they try to understand it by touching the part that is in front of them. One says that it is a snake. Another that it is a leathery column. Another that it is a reed brush, or something of that kind (that was its tail, I'd assume). None of these people were correct, but at the same time they were only able to describe what they could feel in front of them.

In other words - it's only by putting together the pieces that we can understand the full whole picture.

How does this relate to Lobotomy Corporation?

Well. The fact is, there is one character among the entire cast that we have a hard time understanding. It isn't Carmen (we're told a lot about her, and we even later on, although it's in Leviathan and Limbus, see her speak for herself).

Just like the central figure of the Kabbalah, Ayin is never fully explained. We don't even really know his personality! What he likes or doesn't like!

...or do we?

There are, in fact, several times we see other characters in Lobotomy Corporation state that Manager X/A is, effectively, "just like [them]," as well as times when the Sephirot tell us (and Ayin himself, in a sense) what he's like.

Not counting the times when we have to delve deeper into things, I can think of two off the top of my head: Netzach, and Binah. If we want to stretch it a little, I can also include Hod.

From there, we have the start of a pattern. If we have the start of a pattern, we should really start looking to see if this plays out in other places.

Firstly, though, to Netzach, Binah, and Hod.

Binah is one of the most blatant examples. She states that she and Ayin are the same.

Okay, but what's she saying here? How are they the same?

Binah asks, in the flashback when Adam is asking "How should a human live," if A wants to know how she could be so cruel. She was the one who tore down everything he'd been working on, and killed all of his remaining loved ones save Benjamin, after all, and not for lack of trying.

Here's what she says:

"People live with their own anxieties. It is a natural price one must pay for confronting the unknown. However, I did not accept that anxiety, that fear. I devoured them to survive in this world. That was the first and final sin I have committed. I have no regrets about it. It was for survival. You were the same, no? I knew so, witnessing your face as you ripped through my brain back then. You may also say it was an inevitable process. However, it is about time you faced the fear that you have now forgotten, and dare I suggest… Face that fear if you want to stop the cycle."

So, effectively - and especially considering how in Ruina she is reiterating the same thing, with how she keeps inviting those who have every reason to fear her up to her floor simply to have tea, and when she is the one to bring out and help Roland face his own fears and insecurities - she is saying that she and Ayin were the same in turning a blind eye to their own discomfort, as well as the pain that others were going through.

We can see this easily in how she had earlier described how Ayin had rooted around her head and tortured her to get even a bit of information that would be useful to his cause.

It's something that isn't isolated to such awful things as that, either; it's in the every day act of walking past someone in need, or seeing catastrophes in the news and not being able to take it in, so your mind shuts the empathy response down so that you can function.

Thing is, both Ayin and Binah took that too far - we can only ever theorise on Binah's upbringing, but the implication here is that the ability to commit violences such as she did wasn't something that was inherent in her from birth, any more than he grew up as a child wanting to put his loved ones' brains in an eternal torment nexus.

The City, a cycle of pain and suffering, shaped them into who they became - people capable of shutting off the anxiety in the back of their mind that would say "maybe this is a bad idea. I don't like what I'm doing. I want to stop."

It could also be said that her Core Suppression/boss fight is all about Ayin, as a character, choosing to face his own fear of the person who had once destroyed everything he had, and not simply run from her, since if you don't interact with her mechanics in the game, she will recreate the way she came down on the Outskirts lab by releasing abnormalities that will then overwhelm the player.

This is mostly about Ayin, here, but given how Binah is, I do have to wonder about her - we see her having become someone that reaches out to others more in Ruina. Most of the others in the Facility seemed to make some sort of promise to try to become better with Ayin. It is rather easy to imagine that she did the same, to herself if not to him, to face her own fears and break her own cycle.

So. Binah effectively explains her similarities with Ayin flat out, and he backs her up in his own flashbacks, confirming the things that he did.

Netzach is similarly blatant, and again, like with Binah, this is after his Core Suppression:

Here, his cognition filter is turned off, and he's saying "I think we're both in a similar situation."

Now, that's not as blatant as Binah saying "you and I are no different," but Netzach has a very specific situation, and therefore only a few things that he can be referring to.

We know for a fact that they both followed Carmen. We know for a fact - later on - that they have both, at least once, attempted suicide within the Facility.

And... we also know that Ayin, in the state he is in now - at this point, still being called "X" - is also "doing work that [he] had never once asked for."

Remember - just because we the player chose to play the game, doesn't mean X chose to wake up there and take this job! He just woke up, got told what his job would be, and then started immediately managing the lives of other people, with a cognition filter in place because the earliest loops had him attempt to kill himself over how badly it affected his psyche, which would include how the employees were real people dying on his screen, and the fact that the Sephirot, the people he's gradually remembering, are in full-body prosthetics, enough to be (erroneously, but still) referred to as AIs.

Additionally, Netzach is made to ensure the safety of employees, which is a near impossible job, and he hates the futility of it. Likewise, Carmen set Ayin to finish her work, regardless that he disagreed with her about how it should be done.

In short: Ayin is suicidal, and is definitely also doing work that he never wanted to do.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything that he put himself in this position. The effect is still the same, which creates the person he becomes, and that doesn't even get fully into the mess that is "how much of all of this can be placed at Carmen's feet for what she told him to do."

Next up is Hod. I was going to say Hod is more of a slantways example, but then I went back to her post-suppression scene, and proved myself wrong.

[ID: Ayin on the left of the screen, Carmen with her facial features not shown patting a much shorter, younger, and nervous Michelle (Hod) on the head.]

A: Do I have any right to bear hatred towards her? The answer was "no." I was no different from her.

The first thing I started trying to put together after seeing that was - which specific thing is Ayin saying he's "no different from her" about? And since this is the flashback, and considering some of the things we find out later... I think that it's the way that Carmen had been able to talk people around to her way of thinking, in spite of them being nervous or afraid.

The way that Abram on Day 48 describes how Carmen came into his room comes to mind-

"She walked into your lab and started illustrating her hypothesis. Carefully, yet decidedly. You wanted to tell her it was preposterous, but like always, she had you persuaded. You had no choice but to admit it was the only way."

Just like Michelle, Carmen was able to persuade Ayin to do what she wanted of him, in spite of the knowledge that it was going to cause him to have to accomplish doing things that he would question his ability to endure through them.

The other half of Hod being similar to Ayin comes moments later, from her own mouth-

"Was I truly being considerate of others? Silly me, there's no room for something like that here. I was a hypocrite, all those "nice" acts were for myself. I'll keep trying to be a better person, even now. It may be specious, and some people may hate me for that, but as long as my efforts can save a person's life or give a person the consolation they need... I will live on, with my pride as a stepping stone. So, manager... let's keep trying together, in this interminable hell."

The key word for what I'm aiming at here is the "let's" in that last line - she acknowledges something that the player is not privy to; that she isn't the only one trying to be a better person, here.

Now, this is going into headcanon territory, so you can take it or leave it, but then again the point of the thesis here is to create an understanding of someone through the eyes and actions of those around them, so-

Hod wasn't the only one who likely would have seen the concept of waking up in the Facility as a "second chance," as she put it earlier in the scene. Throughout the flashbacks and what the Keter tell us, Ayin was someone who struggled to connect and communicate with others. He loses the few connections he does have, one after another. In creating the Facility, he also would have been giving himself a "second chance" at rebuilding those connections he failed at originally, and also giving them a second lease on life as he did so.

Was he, however, being "considerate of others" in doing so? Was he doing all of this to help them, even when his actions did eventually lead them to a place of betterment? It's entirely likely that just like Hod, many or most of the things he did were just as much for himself as they were for others, hoping to make himself feel better.

And, just like Hod... by the time he's reached the loop we're playing through, he too is ready to put his pride down and use it as a stepping stone to help others (in Hod's case, the agents, in his case, the Sephirot themselves) - even if they find it specious, or if they hate him, both of which we do see from the ones he's trying to help, several times over.

So in Hod, we see that Ayin is a man who likewise couldn't stand up against someone as charismatic as Carmen, and who was roped into something he wasn't happy with (the idea being fine, the means not so much), and that although his first attempts to help others may have come from a superficial place, he has come to want to honestly try to help, no matter the cost to his own pride.

Now we have the foundation of a pattern. Binah, Netzach, and Hod all have scenes where they or Ayin directly state that they are the same, or going through the same things.

So, because of that, we can move on to others who might not be so direct, but keep in mind that this is still likely going to be the case.

I'm going to go with Yesod, because the way I see him as similar to Ayin is related to what we've already seen in Binah.

[ID: Ayin on the left, holding something (presumably the key previously mentioned in this scene) to Gabriel, who is smiling slightly on the right, all skin covered by a turtleneck and gloves.]

A: His earnest hope to not see anyone else die couldn't reach me. No, there is no point in lying anymore. I pretended that I didn't hear his desperate cry.

What was it that Binah said, later on?

"However, I did not accept that anxiety, that fear. I devoured them to survive in this world. That was the first and final sin I have committed."

In other words, at this point Ayin was already refusing to accept his own anxieties and fears, which was what enabled him to "pretend not to hear" Gabriel's need for better safety.

The key thing here for Ayin and Yesod, however, is the phrase "No, there is no point in lying anymore." Ayin had the human compassion and understanding from the start to know what the correct way to respond was - and he pushed it down.

And herein lies the place that I see them intersecting.

Gabriel/Yesod pushes his emotions down, and becomes overly focused on rules and objectivity to the point that it boils over and into self-harm.

Ayin pushes his emotions down and becomes overly focused on the fulfilment of Carmen's ideals and goals, to the point that it becomes his own destruction; just as the Facility is a torment nexus for the others, it is also one for Ayin. Relevant too, is the fact that we only see Ayin's emotions boil over when he has already helped everyone else. It comes in the form of the Keter, who are his cynicism, his despair, and his fanaticism.

It shouldn't be unbelievable to say that Ayin had all of his own emotional reactions pushed down and hidden inside of him just like Gabriel/Yesod, considering how he shows countless ways that he both did and does still care for those around him. It must have been eating him alive, knowing that he had to see people suffering, cause suffering, and do absolutely nothing.

Next, I'm going forward to Tiphereth. Or, no, rather, Tiphereth.

Funnily enough, the similarities we have between Ayin and Tiphereth- okay, that's going to get confusing. Enoch. I mean Enoch - are also, just like with Yesod, found most clearly in something Binah says. This time, in Library of Ruina:

Binah: However, even when he faced me in person, his anger was directed at what was above and beyond.

Tiphereth's entire Seed of Light aspect is "The Expectation of the Meaning of Existence." Enoch, before he died, was said by Lisa to constantly be asking questions, to be looking - just as Binah says here about Ayin - "above and beyond." Lisa herself could never fully understand Enoch asking for more, as she was happy enough with what they had, and did not like Carmen.

But a lot of parallels can be made between Enoch - who sacrificed himself, almost certainly knowing that he would die, for the sake of a better world - and Ayin.

There are moments in the story where one or another person - often Angela, or one of the Keter - refers to Ayin as having been more alive and active of a person before something happened. Usually and easily this can be read as referring to Carmen's death, and I wouldn't say that's wrong - however, regardless of whether that's it or not, I think that these things count.

Because what they both have in common, and the reason they both chose to follow Carmen, and they both decided that their lives were worth putting second place to, was the idea of "the world has the potential to be a better place."

This can even just be seen in Ayin's Day 50 dialogue to himself. That even though he "held no such ambition" to save humanity...

"In the light, they create their own stories, and lay down the roots of their existence in it. We are merely there to sow the seeds. It is up to the people to bloom in their own ways."

My own way of interpreting that is that Ayin never had a grand ambition to be the one to save humanity, because what he and Enoch had in common was the ability to see that all it would need was a nudge for people to save themselves, and the world could be better.

And that the reason why they both had a certain kind of thousand-yard stare...

Ayin, on Tiphereth's pre-Core Suppression flashback: He had already seen and experienced so much of this world's despair and misfortune, his eyes no longer looked like those of a child.

So, in short-

Both Enoch and Ayin saw the ways in which the world could be a better place, yet the world as it was injured their hearts so that they were drawn to someone who could promise what they felt that they could not do.

Actually - let's not forget Lisa.

If anything, I'd say that all of Lisa-Tiphereth's story likely calls back to how Ayin would have felt while living alongside a Carmen who had already started fading away, and becoming a shadow of herself.

Her entire Suppression is about wanting to let Tiphereth (Enoch) rest; I can easily place that as her being a foil to Ayin having brought back all of the Sephirot as fractured, wounded existences that can only repeat a certain number of days, and in some cases keep "breaking down" - Netzach is a good example of this. Then there's the fact that although they're all stuck in a time loop, there are examples of any given Sephirah ageing or showing signs of change (Tiphereth, Chesed especially).

With Tiphereth, we see Ayin refusing to simply "let go" even though they're "broken," but also he's faced for perhaps the first time (in this loop at least) by how the loops can't last forever.

Next up, because I can't keep away from this one anymore since I keep remembering the comparisons I've seen others make, is Chesed.

Chesed's similarities are not obvious at a first glance. It literally takes finishing his Core Suppression and seeing other memories of Ayin's own to be able to catch onto it.

But, once you see it, it's kinda hard not to.

Ayin, during the pre-Core Suppression Flashback: He had an excellent reputation from the people who surrounded him; he had his sly yet charming smile and humour. It would have been easy for him to get into any one of the Wings with his skills and personality. But he chose us, not the Wings. Though amazing he once was, there is no doubt he died in despair and regret, cursing his choice. Seeing the dead bodies of his coworkers strewn about in front of him... not even having the single comfort of knowing it wasn't his fault.

And now, from one of Ayin's own flashbacks with Carmen:

“Oh, to work in an experiment with my favourite junior; I feel unstoppable, like a tiger given wings! “….” “Don’t be so humble. You could have gone to any Wing you wanted. But you still chose to come here; is it because of your trust in me? Just you wait, I’ll make sure you won’t regret your decision.

Hm!

There's a running theme between the two of them that there isn't in any other Sephirot, of "you could have chosen any Wing, yet you chose to come here" which is seen both times, explicitly stated both times, and tellingly? Ayin's flashback with Carmen happens when you get the Seed of Light to 30%, which should mean that you get it before you unlock Chesed's Core Suppression cutscene.

So. By the time you reach that cutscene, there is already a through line of them being similar - and then you see the latter part of what Ayin thinks about Daniel.

"There is no doubt he died in despair and regret, cursing his choice" as well as "the dead bodies of his coworkers strewn about in front of him."

Now, this can't be Ayin projecting here because Daniel does outright say "I'll see you again in hell" before Ayin shuts off the intercom. That's pretty explicit. But... let's fast-forward. Or rather, back:

Ayin in one of the Hokma story flashbacks, at a conference table with himself at the head and all of the other seats are empty. He's far in the distance, with a single photo of the whole group blurred out above him. Everything is in greyscale. The entire thing is a representation of his despair.

"With everyone's sacrifice, I came this far and reached the ranks of the Wings. But there was nobody left to celebrate the moment with."

He... does not look like he even wants to celebrate, in my opinion.

Plus:

Angela, approximately Day 41: In those days, you looked absolutely terrible. Many coworkers—friends—were worried about you and tried to comfort you, but you didn’t care. You wouldn’t listen to anything. I guess you still needed them at some point. Seeing as you were the one who locked them away in here, barely holding on to the husks of their dead bodies��

and

Ayin, around the time of Hokma's Core Suppression: The ones who had left early on likely didn’t need me anymore, but I needed them in those final moments.

To bring back those who had forsaken the embrace of the earth. To hide and lock away the Seed of secret. I was the only one who remained. I wanted to be forgotten like a mirage.

So: both Daniel and Ayin could have gone anywhere they liked because they had the ability to be wanted by any of the other Wings. However, both of them wound up severely regretting their decision by the end of it all, with Daniel dying in a corridor surrounded by the bodies of his coworkers, and Ayin would later wind up with no one left alive or who would support him, and later than that, surround himself with the bodies of said coworkers and friends in a literal way, since he would need to literally lobotomise them in order to bring them back to some semblance of life (aka, the Sephirot).

That's it, right?

Wrong.

There is one last thing that they share, which at first is just seeming to be a Garion-Chesed-Angela thing of control, and what you do when you aren't given any, and what agency you have left.

But the thing is... this does have a link to Ayin, because one of the key phrases here ties back to Carmen, and Ayin himself has experience with it even if he doesn't outright state as such.

One of Carmen's catchphrases is, apparently, "No matter how great you may be, you will always be in the palm of my hand."

In other words - she can predict and control what others do.

How does this relate back to Ayin...? Well. Let's fast forward to Day 48, shall we? Abram has some words to say about that.

Abram: She walked into your lab and started illustrating her hypothesis. Carefully, yet decidedly. You wanted to tell her it was preposterous, but like always, she had you persuaded. You had no choice but to admit it was the only way. What made me, us, so upset... was how much it hurt to listen to her put it so calmly, as if it were none of our business. And how much we loathed ourselves for just having to tolerate it.

Now, what does this sound like?

To me, regardless of the very different circumstances, Carmen is still able to persuade both men to do exactly what she wants them to do, and to walk the paths she has decided she wants them to walk. The exact details can still surprise her, and she's happy when people do choose to follow what she's got planned, but... there is an aspect of controlling behaviour.

Carmen knew that Daniel would join her after she and Kali kidnapped him by accident (or not? we can't know) and Carmen - as shown above - told Ayin exactly what he would be doing for the rest of his life, without letting him have a say in it.

They truly were both in the palm of her hand.

Additionally, once they've been doing this long enough (Chesed under Angela, Ayin having been carrying out Carmen's will) they both stop caring as much, and lose their kindness.

Chesed: It’d be better off for all of us in the end if I were to at least feign our noble and benevolent posture, now wouldn’t it? The same goes for you, manager. I said it before, there's no need to invest your emotions and effort into such drivel.

They're both people who have been controlled by others into doing things that would result in others being hurt, and eventually they stopped seeing the worth of caring when people were going to die anyway. We can even see that this is what happens because of Ayin's response to what Chesed said above.

Moving on, and let's head back up the Tree again to Malkuth this time.

Now, Malkuth's entire deal is about wanting praise and recognition for what she does, and Ayin only realising that giving some out once in a while isn't a bad thing to do too late.

Just going back over her Post-Suppression scene again gives me Ayin saying the line "Nothing can be achieved through passion alone," making me wonder - how did he learn this? Was it possibly through personal experience? It would fit with what we know about him through the lens of Tiphereth/Enoch. Especially with Chesed calling this looped mostly-amnesiac A "Mister Passionate" at one point!

I think perhaps the connection that Malkuth has to Ayin is a rather simple one: they both share the same understanding of what it feels like to try one's best, and still have everything crumble down around you.

Malkuth says here, Post-Suppression and before her filter lifts: Nobody knows how much pressure it is to be in a position to command everyone else until they've truly tried it themselves. I'm sure you know how it feels, manager. Everything starts tumbling down on top of you when you think you might not be able to handle it.

I think that she and Ayin are both well aware that she's talking about herself when she moments later says that if he sees a dying employee, not to look away from them.

Thing is, Malkuth had become the sort of person who had been pushing the cycle on rather than breaking it up until her meltdown there; she had been "retiring" employees when they were complaining too much, and having very harsh structures in place... just as Ayin had later (in the formation of the Corporation) become a much harsher person than he was in the beginning.

However, there is something else that they share, which comes up in conversation with someone we meet later, too.

Malkuth, during the Day 47 flashback: I was always biting off more than I could chew. I wasn’t being realistic. At the same time, this is such a sad place. So, I refused to think that I couldn’t do something. But you saw me. You saw how this obsession and pressure to blindly move forward eventually ate me away. In the end, what was important was for me to stand with my own two legs. To be aware of where I am, and where I should go next. Then it naturally rises up. The will inside me. [The Will to Stand Up Straight.]

The key element and terms here are this: the fact that both of them were passionate about something, and had an idea in their heads that to please and/or impress the person they wanted the recognition of, they had to do something that others told them not to do. Their obsession with moving forward with this would destroy them - Malkuth would die to Cogito, and Ayin would lose everyone he knew and loved to following Carmen's will, eventually even himself.

Which, funnily enough, leads us neatly into the next point: Hokma.

Now, Hokma is a funny one because he both appears to be the one who's known Ayin for the longest time (potentially even longer than Carmen), so we learn a lot about Ayin through what Benjamin himself says!

Keeping in line what Malkuth said right at the start and then not too far into the future and will say on Day 47, we see Benjamin having said this before Hokma's Core Suppression:

"How can this still be considered following her will?

This… This is nothing but a seed of calamity, drenched in sin. Oh, by the Wings! Your mind has been soaked with grief, even more severely than I thought. Please, just… Why can’t you just stop now?"

As I said before, we see Ayin as having suffered from being unable to to stop.

And yet, I do have to wonder - how much of this had Carmen predicted, and told him to endure, given that he was, even now, still "in the palm of her hand"...?

That said, however, I think that a particularly close similarity that Hokma brings to light is the fact that neither of them want to let go of the past.

Hokma, Pre-Core Suppression: [Silhouettes of the other Sephirot's past selves, including Carmen morphing into Angela, flash by on the screen.] The moments I have just made you witness are no longer merely scenes of the past. They could be the present, or even from the future. There are people who once loved you, and employees who think that they are happy here. There is also Angela, a cold imitation of Carmen. Is this not the heaven that has burrowed into your mind, the place you have been yearning for?

Hokma spends his entire introduction, meltdown, and even Post-Suppression not wanting Ayin to move forward and beyond into somewhere that he cannot follow, and if that means keeping Ayin trapped in the loops? Then so be it.

Hokma wants to stay, because Hokma wants to remain at Ayin's side, and also because now that he's seen Ayin regain some of himself beyond his grief, he doesn't want to see Ayin lost to grief again.

Ayin could in theory have chosen to use an entirely new set of employees. The L Corp branches elsewhere do not have Sephirot. He could have done many things. What he did was that he found, gathered, and used the remains of his coworkers and friends who he had been close to, and brought their consciousnesses back as actors in the script.

In a sense, Ayin was with the Sephirot the way that Hokma is with the employees/agents, who he is capable of bringing to life and killing at the flip of a switch.

The difference is that Hokma says "When I no longer feared the impending night, I came to love this place," and Ayin... is never suggested to have come to "love" the Facility that he created.

Like. Hokma outright says earlier on that:

"Throughout this entire process, you were never sincerely willing to do what you did."

So why assume that he was happy at the end, other than Hokma's own self-admitted selfish desire, which was, quite simply, not to lose Ayin again?

In summary: Both Hokma and Ayin desperately clung to the past and the people they had lost, in spite of the self-destruction and the pain they inflicted to those others they were clinging to that came with that.

The last Sephirah to be covered is Gebura, because at a glance Gebura is pretty much the one who is the last alike to Ayin.

Although they both have an affinity for the colour red (Ayin is only ever seen in a lab coat and back shirt/trousers in LobCorp, but his textboxes are red), one is good at fighting and violence and the other... really isn't, and is much better at hanging back, as well as how Ayin has a very low tolerance for the effects Abnormalities inflict, even at a glance.

However, there are a few things we can still glean from her.

Having gone back through most of her LobCorp cutscenes for a refresher, I came across this:

Here, Binah has come up to a malfunctioning Gebura, who wants to go out and hurt-kill All The Abnormalities.

Binah: The edge of a blade that has lost its way will be unfathomably blunt, for there will be nothing but the void to slash, no matter how much the blade is sharpened.

This put me in mind of how I see Ayin having lost his own way, in the process of trying to follow Carmen.

It isn't just me saying that, though.

Netzach: We were both caught up in the karma of the past. I’m not the one who has changed. It’s you, manager. You’re the one who’s finally starting to see clearly.

And later on in the same cutscene, when we get to the flashback, it's mentioned that she "had to be rebooted many, many times."

Remind you of anything? For me, that's all too similar to how Ayin himself had to be "replaced" during the loops - the flavour text for CENSORED says it best: "If a flaw in the system disables the censors covering the Abnormality, we will once again have to sincerely consider how to dispose of the manager."

All of that, along with something else, this time from Gebura after her Core Suppression:

Gebura: When we first reawakened in metal, we could feel the exact moment our final breath stopped, lodged into us like glass shards.

I don't think I can say for sure that Ayin shares Gebura's raw anger; not in the same way she expresses it, at the very least. I think it'd not be a reach to say that he had a lot of anger after the Head's raid on the lab, but he himself is able to feel more than that.

What I do take from this is that each of them was stuck in their own personal moment of hell from the moment they woke up in the Facility. For the others, that was their moment of death.

For Ayin... he awoke in the Facility with the emotions he had when he started to put it in motion - that is to say, as a depressed man full of grief. Full of the feeling of having been unable to hold on to any of these people.

In fact, Gebura's final words to him are about Carmen. To say that she knows Ayin misses her too, and that they won't be able to see her smile again. Gebura asks him to, once he's figured it out, tell her what the gift Carmen left for them was.

In short, I think that Ayin and Gebura are similar because they both lost their way in the past, and both of them "break down" many times before they reach a point of being able to move forward, having found their way again.

On top of that, where Gebura hates Abnormalities because of the trauma she has of feeling unable to save anyone when the lab was raided, Ayin went through that same experience, yes, but he's also the Manager. Every time he makes a wrong decision and something kills an employee, that's on him.

I've seen people say in the past that Lobotomy Corporation rewards you for treating your Agents as disposable; the game here is telling you that Ayin does not agree, because what he gets from Gebura is the Courage to Protect.

Who even is there to protect in the Facility, other than the employees themselves? Both Agents and Sephirot alike.

So. After all of that, the only place left to look is Keter - and that's Ayin's own mind, really. The "reflections, the pieces in the mirror" as Ayin's Day 50 self calls them.

I don't think that I'll go into those, because they'd end up needing an entire essay of their own based on the psychology of the self and how one sees oneself, among other things.

So, to summarise:

Ayin is someone who is outright described as passionate when it comes to how people should be treated. He chose to join with Carmen because he believed in her ideals and wanted to please her, but she would manipulate him subtly into finishing her work, and he would come to regret his decision yet be unable to break free and stop himself from moving along the path she had set for him. He would push his emotions down in order to carry on, and ignore the pain he was causing himself and others in carrying out his plan, and the script. He would feel nostalgia for the past, and bring back the Sephirot in order to find comfort in having the friends he had lost alongside him. He would try to become a better person, no matter how long it took, no matter how others saw him for his efforts.

Maybe we don't know much through what the game says in black and white, but the game does tell us what we need to know - if you're willing to read into it, in the same way that one would need to put all of the colours of the Sephirot - the emanations of the Kabbalistic Tree of Light - through a single lens to understand the idea of what God truly looks like.

Or, even, just a single flawed human being.

#project moon #lobotomy corporation #lobcorp ayin #literally everyone is here but I can't tag 'em all #prjmn stuff #this post has been worked on for nearly two months now

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daisyjonesgf · 2 months ago

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just now realizing we’ve never talked about bombshell’s family and i have an idea.

so, im from texas, and i was honestly so thrilled when u mentioned bombshell was from the south too. So basically, i was listening to carrie underwood’s church bells, and i was like what if bombshell’s mom was jenny, like her mom got married to this super rich, old money, oil family guy who turned out to be a major pos (whether he’s bombshell’s dad is up to you) and because bombshell’s mom is someone who doesn’t tolerate this shit, slips something into his tennessee whiskey. obvi she tells the story to bombshell once she’s old enough to properly understand and bombshell later writes church bells for her mom

-❤️‍🩹

omg bombshell my love, she's been so neglected recently fr, my shayla 😔

yes yes yes I love this

bombshell being technically like an oil tycoon socalite in the south, who's supposed to be religious and marry a rich man also involved in some oil tycoon shit. and she has brothers so she's not inheriting anything really but she shocks everyone and moves to become a popstar, and she waitresses and works for it, only her mom really supports her

but she does get big and even then it's kind of a scandal bc she's provocative with her outfits and it's the music industry's biggest open secret that she was a homewrecker for billy's marriage and the abortion too, like the famous and rich people know. her divorce. all of it. she's a scandal back home, too wiley, last great american dynasty core. even though bombshell really is a sweetheart and the only time she is absolutely being off the rails is when it comes to billy.

she totally also had to go to rehab at some point because she got addicted when she was hanging around billy and then would have the worst crash outs with then he broke her heart (finding out ab cami, every time he went back, the final time he went back) and the drugs got her bad in their grasps and she was forced into rehab before it got too much worse especially after she did an award show clearly drunk and drugged up, my shayla

but bombshell has one singular mean bone in her body, seriously she was the sweetest, nicest kid. she is the sweetest, nicest person. but when she finds out billy is married and is so upset but then he comes back and is crying and saying he loves her though, she can't help but take him back. but he can't be with her, and she should blame him and she does deep down, but she loves him so much and needs someone to blame it on, so she blames camila. she tries to convince herself cami is the bad guy when she's younger to make herself feel better and target her anger at someone who isn't billy.

she writes a couple mean songs but never says much to anyone especially billy about it. sometimes though she just wants to get it all out, all the raw emotions she's feeling, how she hates camila but also feels bad for her, but also thinks she hates her so much because she wishes she could be her, be with billy, have a family with him, camila has what she wants so badly. and she can't tell daisy about it because she knows them personally, so she tells her bestie who I have named vienna, her fellow pop singer bestie for real and just bawls and only tells this stuff to her.

when bombshell gets older she gets over it, her irrational animosity towards camila and recognizes how she and billy were the problem not camila, she still wants him, but she knows that's not cami's faults. and in fact really respects her and things very highly of her.

but yeah, she does have the one mean bone in her body during the years she's having an affair with billy.

she felt ashamed telling her mom about it though bc her dad was a piece of shit and cheated among other things, so bombshell feels like a dog with her tail between her legs if she talks to her mom about the man who's marriage she is homewrecking.

but after billy leaves her for good, she flies back home just to bawl in her mom's arms for as long as she can and again when she gets out of rehab

#wanda 💋#djats x reader #billy dunne x reader #billy dunne #❤️‍🩹 anon #bombshell 🪩

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johnathancanines · 14 days ago

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stuck in the perpetual torture nexus of having unintentionally making an oc who is so directly comparable to grace but fuck it we ball it's a Thing now

rewatching some of the end of s1 for things like the final grace-campbell interaction bc i have Schemes and it got me thinking about how such a palpable difference between grace and niamh is how they react to tommy and his "business". in their final interaction tommy says to grace "one day i will throw this gun in the canal" and she replies "why not now?" which is a common theme with their relationship, she wants him to be "legal" now and to forego the violence asap regardless of the realism of that desire, be it bc of the situation or tommy's nature itself. this is likely coming from the fact that she's upper class and in her understanding of the world and for her as an upper class woman, violence is an option. she CHOSE to be an undercover cop like SOLELY to get revenge for her father's death. now her job is done she can put that all away and go back to being a "normal" woman in a world where violence is not needed. but that's only because she's also inherently blind to the violence that gave her her position and her family it's wealth. she's irish sure but she's a unionist northern irish woman and looking at her family i wouldn't be shocked if someone in there was landed gentry or knighted or some shit. those people got what they have by being installed or handpicked by the crown to repress and oppress the rest of ireland. she wants revenge for her dead father but doesn't consider that her father was killed because he's on the side of a colonialist power that literally starved a whole country so bad millions died or fled and that's like.... like people are still alive from that era. if you were born in 1849 in the middle of the Hunger you'd be like 70 in 1919. and that's just one of the most recent grievances they have.

but these kinds of things don't matter to grace -- sure bc who gives a fuck about geopolitics when your dad is killed, like that's fair i don't harsh her on that-- but just, she sees violence as a always singular choice, as in it's not part of a large context. she has the privilege to pick and chose when to pick up a gun and thus logically everyone else can. which is utter horseshit.

niamh on the other hand is from hell's kitchen which was basically an irish slum in new york city at that time and around when she lived there was run by the gopher gang which was pretty fucking notorious. while niamh herself worked very very hard to stay away from that lifestyle and people associated with the gang she still had to live under their control like the people of small heath and the peaky blinders. the gopher gang at its height, which she was there for, had like 500 guys and had other gangs paying them tribute and working for them. they were comparable to like, s2-3 peaky blinders. she's also been working in vaudeville and similar performance venues since she was like 4, so she's very familiar with people say, attempting to exploit others or just be shitty to people they can be shitty to since like... no fucking laws to protect actors or children really existed then. niamh has always worked hard to keep her nose clean and never supplement her acting career with anything like sex work for her own safety and self-conception (she didn't begrudge the girls who did it's just a personal thing you know?).

when she agrees to spy on british soldiers for the republicans it's out of a desperate sense that she has to do it. she has family who's lives are on the line and who could be killed if there isn't a sufficient amount of intelligence to help them get out of the way of danger. it's simply not possible for her as a person to stand back and do nothing at all knowing that her cousins, uncles, etc could die and she chose to do nothing. she is forced to engage in a world of violence, even if she is using non violence means, to protect herself and others from potential future violence. it's why she steered clear of the gophers in nyc and why she agrees to help the republicans in ireland.

but even with all her hard work to stay out of trouble if tommy told her "one day i'll throw this gun in the cut" she would deeply appreciate the sentiment and love him for it dearly but also ask him not to. because she knows like he knows that the world IS VIOLENT and it is INHERENT to the systems at play around them. she would encourage him to find solutions that do not involve a gun but she also loves him enough and understands the world enough to know that he will need one to be safe. and that's before she'd fully grasped that he is in fact a delusional maniac who will never stop getting into shit no matter how much he likes to say he will. then she REALLY wants him to keep the gun because if he's gonna keep fucking around and finding out she wants him to have the best chances to get outta there alive.

#barking.txt #tommy x niamh

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skaruresonic · 8 months ago

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I kinda think you got that backwards, bud.

Sega's "leash" is the reason Dark Beginnings is good. Or at least a lot better than, say, IDW!Shadow. You want his writing to be on a "leash" because frankly, he doesn't really seem to understand Shadow's character, as he expressed frustration with the idea that Shadow isn't a "conversationalist" and cannot recall SA2's events correctly.

The other thing I wanted to point out is the idea of fandom by public consensus. "Any Sonic fan can see it" implies you're not a "real" Sonic fan if you "can't" see it.

Thirdly, I'd argue Flynn is soaking in the praise for what is essentially regurgitation of old material by other creators. We've seen Shadow cry in his debut game. It's nothing new.

Sonic X Shadow Generations Finally Lets Shadow Cry

The Sonic series has a "strange relationship with the concept of crying," just like I have a "strange relationship" with the concept of rolling my eyes at internet games of telephone.

"He's shed some tears" - One. One tear. Not plural. Singular. Shadow didn't bawl his eyes out in SxS Gens.

We also don't have time to unpack the idea that crying indicates a "deeper" character than a stoic one, but rest assured that bugs me, too.

Flynn did not invent the idea of Shadow shedding a single tear over Maria, yet people act like he's solely responsible for giving Shadow "depth" by making him do something he's done before. Such #peak writing, recycling material he didn't come up with, many wow.

Never mind how this entire game needlessly retreads an already resolved and closed matter. We have to go through this whole rigmarole for a third time Because Reasons.

Fourth: the fact that he has been writing for the IP in some capacity or another for almost 20 years and still needs his writing to go through heavy revision and scrutiny by the higher-ups before it attains an acceptable baseline level of quality, let alone approach good, is concerning, to say the least.

Pontaff were only around for half that time and managed to get Eggman right just from perusing the character's Wikipedia page. So how is it that Flynn has been working for the IP for double the amount of time they have and still can't grok that Shadow isn't a "conversationalist" unless Sega practically rewrites his stuff? How is it Sega won't "let" him be wrong, but they could let Pontaff be "wrong" for ten years?

The last thing I wanted to say was: So what does the writer credit actually mean here? If what Flynn says is true and the final product is the result of collaboration, shouldn't he remove the writer credit from his name? After all, it's not like the credits can say "30% written by Ian Flynn, 70% written by other people ig"

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carica-ficus · 1 year ago

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Review: Harrow the Ninth

Author: Tamsyn Muir

Date: 24/02/2024

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

________________________________________________________

My February has been very hectic (to say the least), but at least I finally managed to get my hands on "Harrow the Ninth" thanks to my wonderful boyfriend who ordered it for me. <3 And just in time too because I was in a mood to get back to The Locked Tomb. This series completely won me over.

"Harrow the Ninth" picks up sometime after the ending of "Gideon the Ninth", and follows Harrow as she tries to adapt to her new life as a Lyctor. Her powers are immeasurably stronger, but in comparison to the older Lyctors she is seen as feeble and incompetent. Even worse, she is seen as a liability to the Emperor. She needs to learn to defend herself and prove to be a valuable soldier to her God, but this all seems a menial task in comparison to more dire matters - the indescribable grief and significant vulnerability which render her useless.

The first thing that stands out in this book is the switch in narration. "Harrow the Ninth" is mostly narrated through a 2nd person singular and is only switched to 3rd person singular when referring to the events which happen at the Canaan house. It's certainly an interesting writing choice which might prove to be slightly confusing at first, but Muir's beautiful style and fantastic storytelling quickly compel the reader to simply accept the fact that this is how "Harrow the Ninth" will be told. If something, Muir has proven numerous times that her writing decisions are always made with a specific intention, so it's best to just accept them and enjoy her work as it is presented.

Even though the story is a bit convoluted at first, things slowly start falling into place. New characters are introduced and old characters are given enough space to grow and expand. Muir incredibly utilizes her universe and the story in order to create a completely new experience of the series, but also provides many scenes where it pays homage to the first book and its events. "Harrow the Ninth" is truly an upgrade from "Gideon the Ninth" in tension, emotion, depth and story.

On the other hand, I'd argue that its pace is slower than that of "Gideon the Ninth". Harrow is actively preparing for the most difficult fight of her life, but the process of it is relatively passive. There's a lot of things happening at the same time, but it feels like the plot isn't moving forward at all. This book focuses more on other elements, than on its story, up until the very end where it builds up to a thrilling finale. Taking into consideration the aforementioned switch in narration and unresolved questions, it is easy to understand why some readers find it all difficult to grasp. However, "Harrow the Ninth" is absolutely worth the time.

There's a lot of things to adore about this sequel, but the portrayal of Harrow's grief, feeling of inadequacy, and utter helplessness take the crown. "Harrow the Ninth" is a story about loss and about love, it's about desperately clinging to that which doesn't exist anymore - a home she cannot go back to and which will never be the same, a person who gave their life for hers, and to a version of herself that she no longer is. It is about change and the inability to finally accept it.

"Harrow the Ninth" is a worthy sequel to a riveting book such as "Gideon the Ninth" and provides a compelling foundation for the rest of the series. Although the novel might seem a little slow and complicated, my honest advice is to just leave all your expectations behind, keep reading, and accept everything as it is written. The book is highly rewarding and offers something new and different. Reading through it has been a beautiful experience and I cannot wait to continue with the series and to, one day, reread it and appreciate it even more.

#harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #locked tomb #reading #book #recenzija #moja recenzija #čitanje #science fiction #horror

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fae-of-the-rose · 2 months ago

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welcome back to "Fae Has Thoughts Because a Post on Tumblr Hit a Button: Final Fantasy XIV Edition"

so I said in the tags of this post that I was going through FF14 again with an alt, one because it's been a Hot Minute and two because I wanted a male Viera, tried to fanta my miqo into one, didn't feel right, went back to miqo, made the alt. and also since like, as an RPer and occasional fic writer (who is also from a family of Irish descent who love stories), I like stories and telling stories and making stories, so I thought it would be fun to go into 14 knowing most of the story (still haven't finished DT but like I know what's going on there) and see how the alt comes together after establishing Some Backstory Points, rather than it happening on the fly like it sorta did with Rhel.

so Daene (born Daen'ne, dropped a syllable for his city name because it's just easier) was born in the Skatay Foothills like all Veena. except his father wasn't a guardian but was an Elezen refugee from Dalmasca who had been given passage through the woods. for obvious reasons this was a problem, doubly so because one of the first things I decided about Daene was that he is a seer before he gets the Echo. and the rest of his village did not like this, because that is Important in this village but this kid is both half-outsider and male and while they could work with the latter, the former is a deal breaker. so Daene grows up with visions he can't understand, that his mother doesn't understand, with no one who does understand them willing to really even acknowledge that he has the visions because he had the unfortunate luck to be born a half-Viera. he leaves the woods with his singular friend, certain he's never going to see his mother again because the visions are confusing and that's what they're pointing to (spoilers: he will, just probably after Shadowbringers).

another thing I had decided pretty early on, like during the character creation, was that he was going be friends with Urianger. this was, at least mostly, because I love Urianger and my OCs are nothing if not at tools for a little projection. but in the back of my mind I was just. "okay there's more to this here. I know there is. fuck me if I can tell what it is, but it's related to the whole vision thing from Shadowbringers. that isn't the whole of it, but it's in the same fucking aisle".

and then, from the post I linked above, my friend who also loves Urianger (and frankly has a better lore memory than I do, shout out to them) says in the tags: "#that man is so traumatized by getting safety yanked from under him #it started when he read a prophecy that said the world would end and only one adult believed it was a problem"

oh that's what it was. I will admit, I am unsure if Urianger actually has visions or is a seer, like I said it's been a Hot Minute since I played most of the early stuff, but the fact remains that if you put a man who's seen a prophecy of the end of the world and a man who grew up with baffling visions, both of whom only had one singular adult who even sorta tried to helped, in the same space and they're gonna latch onto each other a little.

sometimes it's annoying that I can't place Why Things Feel Right, but then I get lovely moments like this

#Final Fantasy XIV #itp: Fae has thoughts #itp: Fae speaks #there is also the fact that Daene is 100% ND of some flavor #and I headcanon Urianger as the same flavor #(the flavor is autism)#so like #that is also a thing but less relevant to the post #so into the tags it goes

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buttercupshands · 1 year ago

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So I've read ch 421 spoilers

It's a mess. I've been really patient with final arc even though I disliked some of the stuff happening enough for me to dissappear for a year or so.

Even if I dislike AFOmura with passion, at the start he was interesting to really explore how the quirk singularity was supposed to work. Without any "new being" sadly, I was curious what would happen and yet... Nothing.

Okay then what about Toga, Dabi and Spinner? What about their battles? Nothing really

Dabi was the most enjoyable of what was left of LoV with Toga close second. But they're both basically dead at this point. Spinner just existed for a couple of chapters, talked and then poof mission completed nothing else needed of him.

Toga's final chapter is still satisfying, it was similar to Jin's final chapter in a way.

Well what about the new chapter? Nothing

Tomura after 419 had basically become a background noise, maybe he'll come back one day. But not in this chapter.

This chapter is basically AFO talking like him losing Yoichi isn't something that happened 100 years ago. Are we supposed to care that he's sad and doesn't feel anything?

AFO trying to use his "tragedies" like he'll suddenly get a character development from it is just annoying.

Tomura's body in AFO's control now looks even more like a corpse rather than a normal body. Just let him die amd take his body with him if you don't want Tomura to live anymore. I don't care how sad AFO might be from suddenly understanding that his goal is hollow. About time

And now. Getting help in the finale of any arc is honestly something a person reading Shonen manga would expect and it's like a norm rather than an exception.

Except... Izuku is literally quirkless again. What can he really do now? No one really knows that he just decided to throw everything away just for the "crying child that needs saving". People already voiced how dumb that was and yet here we are with "crying child" saved, hands restored, but now there's no way to defeat AFO again.

And the worst thing is is that I actually tried to think about the arc and Izuku's role in it as something good for a long time and it didn't pay off at all.

I still like how he's paying attention to the fact that it's an All-Might merch, but sadly that means he doesn't pay needed attention to what he's going to do now and no one is actually capable of helping him in the moment.

It might as well end in "everyone believes that it'll be okay!" and stuff and that's it. That's all we'll get.

And I'm just lost at what to even look forward to in this finale. But maybe when it'll come out in a volume format I'll understand it better like I did with Izuku leaving UA arc. I basically just skipped it, looking at the leaks sometimes and only after it was finished I read it, two years after it came out I didn't bother watching anime version until this winter.

In the end all we can do is just wait and see, I'll still be doing sketches and stuff, but for now it's really not great or even just good.

(it still looks good tho, since Horikoshi is still Horikoshi)

#not art #bnha manga spoilers #bnha leaks #Bnha #bnha critical #bnha 421 #I woke up only to be disappointed with this chapter #As usual only 2-4 chapters for Tomura and like 20 (with breaks even 3-4 is the same) for other stuff #For as long as this final arc was I was literally using “hey Tenko still exists!” as an excuse ti continue following this mess patiently #Plus I like Izuku so it was like match made in heaven to test my patience while feeding it with hope #But now it's gone I'm just tired

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p-taryn-dactyl · 2 years ago

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Yayyy! Mick so deserves more love, honestly his character is so good, he's just m'wah 🥰

do you mind if I ask for mick angst s1, like something to do with the whole chronos thing. I'm not really sure about plot maybe reader is snarts sister. when chronos!mick captures and threatens len by saying he'll kill Lisa he mentions something about how he'd kill y/n too but he can't find her. And len says the reason he can't find her is cuz she left the ship to try and find mick when len 'got rid of him'. And later when the team have mick imprisoned on the ship they find y/n and don't trust her not to free mick so they put her in the cell with mick. Mick asks why she spent so long looking for him and left the team to find him and then she confesses that she loves him and that the only reason she agreed to join the team was to keep an eye on mick and leonard?

I'm not super great at coming up with plots lol so really just any chronos mick and snart!reader angst would be great ♡♡♡♡♡

(The angst potential micks character has is astronomical I don't understand how there isn't more mick angst on tumblr!)

a/n: hi! thank you so much for this request, I love writing for the legends!! I tried my best to follow the prompt but it might've gone off the rails at some point lol (also I agree, he has so much potential!! I hope to write more for him in the future!! word count: 1.2k

Safe and Sound

You sat in the corner of the cell, arms crossed as you stared at the man across from you. Mick deliberately kept his gaze away from you, your icy stare unnerving him. Your foot tapped against the floor, the metal against your boot echoing throughout the still air. He fidgeted his shoulder, a nervous tick you had observed over the years, indicating he was uncomfortable or even nervous. He felt the stillness in the air as a noose whereas you thrived in it, turning it in your favor. You leaned forward, bracing your arms on your knees as you cocked your head to the side. Finally, Mick broke, turning his head towards you, eyes wide in his signature angry expression.

"What?"

His voice was rough but you heard the undertone, the quiver in his words. You shook your head in response, leaning back against the glass, moving your eyes up to the ceiling, making direct eye contact with the not-so-hidden security camera. Wiggling your fingers in hello, you smirked a bit.

"You know why you're here?"

Mick's question was hesitant, like he was annoyed in the fact that he didn't know. You nodded, pursing your lips as you examined your hand. After a bit, you once more returned your stare to the fire-tinged man.

"They don't trust me. Looks like we got that in common."

Mick scoffed, shaking his head.

"Come on. Don't give me that bullshit. You probably have them wrapped around your finger, especially your brother."

You smirked, shrugging your shoulders.

"Of course I do. That's why we're not dead yet. You forget not everyone aboard the ship is a hero."

Mick turns his head to you, raising a singular eyebrow. He sighed in defeat, shaking his head.

"Alright, Y/N. Why don't they trust you?"

"Because they think I'll let you out, so," you raised your arms, "here I am."

Mick looked like he was about to respond but the door to the brig opened, revealing your older brother.

"Lenny!"

You waved at your brother, not making to stand up.

"Y/N...Mick," Len's eyes barely left yours to acknowledge Mick, "Just checking up on you."

You scoffed, zero malice in your tone.

"You mean you were sent on damage control duty. Don't worry, brother, we're both in one piece."

Len's eyes strayed over to Mick where they hardened with pain and apologies. He nodded stiffly before walking out of the brig without another word, very out of character for him you noted. It stayed silent before you felt Mick’s eyes on you. Stubbornly, you kept your eyes on the entrance of the brig. You had been in the cell for what felt like forever, why would he only want to talk now?

“I threatened Lisa.”

His rough words and tone made you stiffen before you forced yourself to relax, turning your head to face Mick, one eyebrow raised. Mick seemed to wait for your response before realizing you weren’t going to answer. Letting out a small growl of anger, he continued.

“I threatened you as well, Y/N. But unlike Lisa, you were nowhere to be found.”

You heard the hidden question in his words. Where were you?

Gritting your teeth, you position your body away from the assassin, the atmosphere of the room no longer giving you comfort. You no longer had the high ground, with one question, you no longer held the power.

“Y/N.”

Just your name.

That’s all it took.

“I was looking for you. I didn’t believe Len when he said he took care of it, didn’t believe the team when they said you were dead. I was trying to get you back.”

To your horror, your voice started to waiver towards the end of your words, breaking your composure. You were sure Mick noticed your weakness and you braced yourself for the taunting words of Chronos. But when you built up enough courage to finally look Mick in the eyes, all you saw was him. No Chronos, no time lords, no manipulation. Just the man who protected you for as long as you could remember, the man who had buried himself so deep in your heart you knew no one would ever take his place.

“Why would you leave?”

Before you could reply, he continued.

“Why would you care so much to leave your family?”

At that you broke, allowing your emotions to show on your face.

“You are my family, Mick. I love the team, I really do but I lo-”

You stopped before you could let the words finish, Mick’s gaze becoming intense as his mind filled in the words where you stopped. Clearing your throat, you steadied yourself and then continued.

“We all promised each other we would stick together. I don’t break promises, you know that.”

The air was thick with tension and unanswered questions as you continued to feel Mick’s eyes boring into you. Scoffing, you waved your hands in the air, as if you could swat away your words like you would a fly.

“Anyways, I think we-”

“What were you going to say?”

Mick’s voice once again made you pause. You chuckled nervously, another weakness you internally scolded yourself for.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mick.”

Mick scoffed. You heard him stand up to walk the few steps to stand in front of you. You felt your heart beating so loud that it was the only thing you could hear. You slowly raised your head to look up at Mick, his eyes full of confusion. That surprised you. He knelt so that he was eye level, not letting you look away.

“I-,” you swallowed, steadying yourself, “I was saying that I lo- oh, shit, am I really doing this?” You whispered to yourself as you put your head in your hands.

“I love you, Mick. That’s what I was going to say.”

The silence was loud as it stretched between you. When you finally worked up the nerve to remove your hands from your head, Mick’s eyes were filled with an emotion you couldn’t quite determine, while also shining with a dimmed hope.

“Why?”

His question rattled you to your core. Which was evident in how you started sputtering.

“What? What do you mean why? Mick, you’re amazing! Do you not know that?”

The look in his eyes answered that question.

“Oh come on,” you whispered under your breathe, deeply disturbed by the thought of Mick not knowing how incredible he is, “Mick, you’ve been through things that would make most people insane, you’re always there to be a support, no matter how hard you try to hide it, you genuinely care. That’s something that’s so beautiful about you. You give your all to your relationships, so much so that it burns you. I’m constantly amazed by you and if anyone has told you otherwise then-”

You were interrupted by Mick pulling you into his arms, hiding his face into the crook of your neck. The only coherent thought in your mind throughout the internal screaming was how out of place this felt. That Mick was willing to drop his guard down to show his affection and gratefulness towards you. With tears in your eyes you returned the hug, knowing that while you and Mick had a long way to go, this was an incredible start.

a/n: i am so sorry for how rushed the ending is! i hope this was semi-ok

#mick rory #mick rory x reader #mick rory imagine #heatwave #mick rory x snart!reader

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crookedorel · 4 months ago

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"It was your birthday!?" Man! How was she supposed to make sure she prepared the best gifts for people if nobody warned her in advance! Not that the expectations were high; they literally met just a month ago. Still, Yunaka loved any opportunity to give someone a gift and make them smile, and she wasn't about to wait a whole ass year just because she hadn't been ready for his.

The stock in the marketplace still wasn't the greatest. People were kind of just focusing on essentials right now, understandably, so anything nonessential was either not around or crazy overpriced. Still, just getting him something to eat felt lame. Luckily, after enough digging, she'd managed to find a prize.

"Here ya go, happy birthday!" A tiny little horse, hand carved out of wood. It's not overly detailed - in fact you can almost barely tell it's a horse and not a fat donkey or something - but she thinks it's cute! Besides, it felt fitting. From a silly little game to a silly little horse; it would probably stand out more than whatever rich people fluff he'd get from nobles.

"Finally wrangled that evil horse that's been tormenting you. Hopefully now, you can get some more rest." She giggles as she says it, settling with one hand on her hip as she waits for him to take it and give his judgement. "It's not the day, but I hope you have a good one anyway! Next year I'll be on time for sure."

He did not know that she had been looking for him, to start.

He knew even less how she had come by the information that it was his birthday. The Lady Deirdre was one thing, perhaps it had come about in an offshoot conversation, although this he doubted as well, neither fond nor nostalgic of such a childish whimsy - but he had met this woman less than one month hence, and although their conversation had been perfectly pleasant he had not expected such a connection.

Perhaps neither of them had. Perhaps that was the point.

His shock was naked on his face, blinking at her approach, and at the accusation in Yunaka's initial tone. "I beg your pardon then, it isn't something I - "

But then the gift appeared in his sight, cradled in the palm of her hand, innocuous with the singular context of their odd initial meeting, but a more profound and thoughtful gift he could not have expected to receive.

It was not the same, he noticed, eyes raking over its edges, some nicked and rough, others smooth and sharp, its shape unmistakable yet not as refined as many he had seen - and yet he was certain even before he extended his hand to take it, it would hold all the same weight as any he had played with as a child in sickbed.

Berkut cleared his throat, straightening a touch before he reached, fingers grazing against her palm to curl around the offering, eyes drifting downward to fix upon it for a moment before rising to meet hers, firmly, softly.

There was a beat of silence, the expression on his face an odd, stony nostalgia before he said, slowly, in a drawl more practiced and molasses than the awkward stilted one she had heard from him before; "Well, my dear, I suppose I owe you as many good nights' rest as I have left in me, with this here trinket to keep watch over me."

#in character #birthday 2025 #interaction: dcggersedge #they are so funny to me he rolled an 18 for this he is so charmed by her #thank you for sending vivi :pleading:

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ramblesbiab · 1 year ago

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I feel like if there's one thing I could probably make a video essay about today if I had the energy to is how utterly terrible seasons three and four of the Harley Quinn animated series were at understanding everything the first two seasons set up.

Season one establishes the status quo, it shows us who Harley Quinn is as a character in this iteration, along with building her relationships and motivations. Season two builds on this further while having great set pieces and concepts which further challenge and showcase the characters.

Both those seasons deal with the budding romance of Harley and Ivy, but they understand that you can't have an entire show based entirely on one couple. The other characters exist for a reason. They diversify the show while also just... being good characters. King Shark, Dr. Psycho, and Clayface are all amazing, and those are just a few of a large and well-balanced cast.

Along with this, Harley Quinn herself is such a good character. She's funny and chaotic without being too much, and when she goes too far, she's called out on it and it's addressed in a mature way. I genuinely, and I'm not sorry for this take, believe that the first two seasons of Harley Quinn is one of the best animated shows out there. It's so unapologetic in it's style, so understanding of what it is and what it can get away with.

And then, there's seasons three and four.

In stark contrast to the complexity of seasons one and two, seasons three and four each choose a singular angle to focus on: "What if Harley Quinn is actually morally good?" in season three, and "What if Harley Quinn isn't actually morally good?" in season four. They create a season-wide problem only to use the entire next season to disprove themselves. It's such poor time management, especially for this show!

One of the biggest reasons I say that is because of Season 1, Episode 7 - "The Line". This episode addresses how Harley Quinn... isn't all the way morally evil, but rather is a complex character. They address the debate of Harley Quinn's morals in one season one episode better then the entirety of seasons three and four! I know the writing team had some changes after the season two finale, but did you not watch the show before writing for it???

Now, I have to admit that I'm being a bit harsh on season three here. It has some interesting concepts that the show runs with, and a few of them work. My biggest problem with it is honestly the fact that it's so clearly the buildup to season four, which is genuinely awful in itself. Harley's team starts to be featured less, they start to push towards the "Maybe she's good?" of Harley, the issues between Harley and Ivy start to drift from a cross episode - or even season - narrative where they both grow and learn more about each other, to a weirdly episode-by-episode affair where they fight, feel a bit upset, then magically make up at the end while we all go aww yay!

The heart of the show has been removed. I wish it hadn't, because I was excited to have a chance to see more cute Harlivy moments, but somehow the show became too engulfed in Harlivy. This was never really the Harley and Ivy show - they were always the main characters, sure, but as I said before, the show understood you can't have a show about exactly one couple. The problem is that their new attempts at focused side characters fail.

Bane, Nora Freeze, and the Bat family are all good characters, but they're at their best when used sparingly. I genuinely don't understand the choice to step away from King Shark and Clayface as main characters, because season four shows how awful they function when they're used sparingly.

I'm mostly disappointed that when I want to recommend one of my favorite shows of all time to someone else, I have to do it with the condition that it falls off significantly as soon as season two's wonderful finale comes to a close. Maybe it should have be Fin, after all.

#harley quinn #harley quinn the animated series #posion ivy #lesbian #sapphic #ramble #at least the between season comics are cute #i love their art style #unironically #those are the best post-season two things #this show did #lol

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thefirstknife · 2 years ago

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If going by the Destiny 2 content creator reactions and their fans of Lightfall then the greatest enemy to all is the concept of a Cliffhanger.

There people wouldn't be able to handle any non bing able media. If they had to watch Breaking Bad, any mystery story or what have you before Netflix i imagine they'd throw a fit

Yeah, I'm feeling the same. I genuinely don't know what people expected from a penultimate expansion. Talked about it before in regards to how the marketing for Lightfall may have been a little weird and how people ended up feeling misled by it, which is a fair complaint to have. But if we go further than that, I still don't know why people expected "all answers immediately" from an expansion that's clearly not the final one. We knew right away that this is not the ending.

This is a good opportunity to talk a bit more about some extra stuff which will be below, because I'm choosing mercy for people on mobile:

Another thing that gets me as well is that this is simply how Destiny always does the story. Like, it's a live service game and has been for 10 years. Campaigns are on a frequent hit-or-miss scale and aren't really all that expansive on their own anyway; a 3 hour campaign is NOT and never has been the totality of Destiny's story. As a matter of fact, like 90% of Destiny's story is told in written format with lore and side quests and other stories, not in campaigns. Campaigns are generally just the initial setpieces that shift the narrative in a certain direction with a singular event, but the majority of the story happens as consequences of that, over the course of years.

There's been so much stuff that we've been waiting for years to be explained. I always figured this as something that the Destiny community loves and expects. I got here only in D2 and only got into lore properly in Shadowkeep, so everything I knew by reading about Destiny's past story and community reception was that the mystery and the players coming together to figure things out was one of the main draws of the game. That's how I perceived the game, its lore and its community when I joined. As something where we work together to pore through texts to understand where things are and where they are going.

Actually, recently one of the biggest complaints going from Beyond Light and onwards was that Destiny has lost its mystery component. It's been a frequent and overwhelming critique of the story and seasons. How seasons are here to just quickly sum everything up in neat and presentable infodumps given to us by characters and lore tabs that tell us everything directly without any need for deeper engagement. This obviously isn't even fully true (Beyond Light's deepest mystery remained undetected and misunderstood by the majority of the playerbase and still is to this day (that would be Savathun replacing Osiris)), but overall yeah, certain things were absolutely streamlined in comparison with how lore was done before.

Like, no contest: frequent seasonal story drops that give us dozens of lore books, item lore, quest lore, dialogues and so on over the year that are easy to acquire and are readable in the game, as well as stories that happen weekly and are more engaging than just playing a 2 hour campaign every six months or every year have all done A LOT for the lore to be more approachable and less "mysterious." I put that in quotes because people frequently also misinterpret what "mysterious" means or at least aren't talking about the same concept. I've noticed that there's quite a bit of backlash for stories being resolved and character arcs being finished. To a lot of people, that's the removal of "mystery." In a sense, a lot of people want an endless story that never resolves but that gives just enough easily consumable fandom-related details that aren't really progressing the story in a meaningful direction.

But yeah. To end this tangent here, people have been complaining a lot about the lack of mysteries and wonder in Destiny. Which is just weird to me because that's just how stories work. At some point, the story will start resolving the mysteries. And yet, then came Lightfall which brought completely new mysteries and some of the most fascinating ones I've ever experienced in the entire Destiny setting and people just kinda... Didn't care. I attribute a lot of this to people just not recognising that they're no longer into the story all that much. They no longer want to engage with a mystery, they just want to see the conclusion. They don't have the energy or the interest to pore through the texts anymore or engage with the fandom or, indeed, wait for information to be revealed, especially if this isn't the type of stuff they like.

For example, there's a lot of fans of the type of gothic horror mystery about the Hive and Lightfall simply does not fit that aesthetic. And mind you, Destiny is famous for genre switching all the time so this is something that should be expected. But Lightfall's futuristic high concept scifi story that's about virtual realities, mind uploading, human experimentation with nanotechnology, bizarre alien entities that play with the concepts of consciousness and the nature of reality, and so on is something that a lot of people have no interest in. And as much as I want to say "skill issue," it's a matter of taste. It's completely normal to me that there's people who aren't into this. However, a lot of those people just refused to engage and then proceeded to say that the story is objectively bad, "worst expansion ever" and so on. Absolutely insane to me. Like, genuinely baby behaviour in my mind. The "upset because we're not about me" type. Meanwhile I've seen a plethora of people who have quietly, almost ashamed, admitted that they like this stuff more than Witch Queen. No one should be ashamed or afraid to say that.

And most of all, there was disappointment that a "new mystery" was started "too late" when things were "supposed to be explained." And first of all, things ARE being explained. Again, this is a live service game. It's updating over the course of the year. We've received so many explanations and threads to follow and read about and engage with while we wait. That's the whole point; keep the content coming over time. Second, for people who claim that "Lightfall's campaign wasn't complete," yes it was. The Lightfall campaign was to save Neomuna and stop the Witness from destroying the Veil. We did both of those, except the Witness deceived us (as it is known to do) and it never wanted to destroy the Veil in the first place; it wanted us to get there with a Ghost. And it ends with us falling for that deception (out of necessity of course: our hands were kinda forced. Brilliant deception in that regard) and losing to the Witness as it hijacks our Ghost and opens the portal (but we do end up saving Neomuna and have the Veil at our disposal now to start researching it). This is known as a plot twist: a big "oh shit" moment in the climax of the story where we realise we've been duped and we've done exactly what the villain wanted all along.

Which leads me to the third point, perfectly summarised by your ask and by a single word: it's a cliffhanger. Lightfall is the penultimate expansion in a ten years long story. It's a cliffhanger before the end. It's supposed to keep us wondering what the fuck happened and how are we going to solve this until TFS drops. It's supposed to question our place in the universe, our understanding of it, the nature of everything we've learned so far, the extent to which we were right and wrong about the Light and Darkness, as we prepare for the finale of the saga. I genuinely don't know which answers people were expecting to be delivered in a 3 hour campaign that would immediately tell you everything you need to know and then you'd put the game down for a year OR you would keep playing and seasonal stories would just be meaningless side stories that don't progress the plot (yet ANOTHER complaint about seasons that's been going on for a very long time and an unsolvable problem: people want seasons to be meaningful stories that progress the plot but also not meaningful enough so that they can be freely skipped without missing important story bits. These are contradictory statements. Both cannot be true).

And of course, it's completely normal if this just didn't work for people. It's an important distinction to make here; "I understand what it tried to do, but it didn't work well for me" is a completely different statement from "this was a bad story and the worst expansion ever." I've never seen this distinction being made as pretty much everyone only ever spoke about it in the latter terms. How the state of the story is awful and "dangerous," how the writers "dropped the ball," how things are horrifically bad and nonsensical and so on. In worst cases, it was straight up "Bungie should fire these writers." There's also a lot of people who claim wholeheartedly that they've understood the story, but then can't tell you what the theme was or they start going on about how Nimbus was a bad character who "wasn't even sad for Rohan," which immediately tells me they haven't finished the story. So I'm afraid I don't believe those specific types when they say that they understood it, but didn't like it.

Most of all, this was a REALLY long-winded way to say that this ask basically says it as concisely as possible: Lightfall is a cliffhanger before the end. It's SO important to consume more than one media and learn some media literacy. This isn't even remotely a long wait as far as cliffhangers go in general. We need people to stop expecting the media to get churned out mindlessly in quick succession for instant gratification. Hell, some would absolutely classify Destiny as being churned out quickly. And meanwhile we have players here losing their minds and crying and throwing things because they have to wait 3 months for a new season. Absolutely bizarre to me. Try waiting for a book series to continue for longer than ten years.

#destiny 2 #lightfall #ask #long post #if you click read more

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