#anyway wow that was a ramble IM SORRY

[madbard]

“Ford is irredeemably self-centered” this, “Ford’s a bad person” that, etc…

Alright. Tell me then.

What was he supposed to do?!?!

Be a better brother? Ford loved Stan! When they were children, Ford took care of his brother as best he could. But Ford was also a kid in a bad situation, and there were limits to what he could do. Not to mention that Stan relied so heavily on Ford that it honestly wasn’t healthy for either of them. Stan couldn’t stand by himself and he wasn’t trying. They were both struggling; maybe pin that on the parents instead of the kids.

Not be angry at Stan for messing with his experiment? Of course Ford was angry! This was his dream college; in that moment he thought his entire future was crumbling. I assure you, if my sibling had ruined my chances of getting into my dream school I would have been more than a little upset, and I’m sure the same goes for most of the people reading this. Of course, Ford did hold onto that anger for considerably longer than was justified, but in this case I would argue that Ford less “held a grudge for 10 years out of spite” and more “never got the chance to make things right with his brother and held onto that anger because it was better than the nauseating guilt over that final argument, the uncertainty at times that his brother was even alive.” (Which is not to say that Ford isn’t spiteful. Our man has plenty of spite. But him being spiteful is not the only thing going on here.) Which brings us to our next point.

Stop Stan from being kicked out? How?! That household does not appear to have been a safe place for either of the brothers. Should Ford have gotten himself kicked out too? Should he have known exactly what to say to talk his father down - the man who just violently threw his twin out of the house? Ford didn’t kick Stan out. He just wasn’t able to stop it from happening, and that’s not something any teen should be blamed for.

Behave himself when reuniting with Stan at the culmination of the worst period of his life thus far? There’s stress. And then there’s being dangerously sleep-deprived and at the mercy of a horrifying demon that betrayed you, leaving you alone in a shack in the woods with no one to call for help except your estranged brother, who’s complaining about a mullet, of all things. Yeah, I’m not going to say Ford’s behavior was anything other than atrocious here. But really. How well would you handle that?

Thanked his brother? Stan could have destroyed the universe; it makes sense that Ford’s upset! He’s also had literally decades to stew in the terror and fury he experienced in those last moments before falling through the portal (something which almost certainly would not have happened if it weren’t for Stan). Again, Ford’s not acting like the world’s best brother here, but it’s understandable.

Ford’s not perfect. He can be arrogant, spiteful, and bitter. He makes serious mistakes (often due to his own hubris) that put himself, his loved ones, and sometimes the entire universe in grave peril. Ford is, in fact, deeply flawed. That’s part of what makes him a fun character! It’s also what makes him a well-written and believable character. Yes, Ford acts like a jerk. He does so quite often.

Ford also spends nearly the entire narrative bouncing from one deeply toxic situation to another, desperately trying to survive and make life better for himself and his family and watching as his brother makes mistake after mistake - sometimes making choices with severe, negative consequences on Ford’s own life.

Ford is doing the best he can. He’d not a bad person. He tries to be good. He tries to do the right thing.

He just fails sometimes.

Don’t we all?

[caluupin]

saw an AAI screenshot from a tweet and had to draw it

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[kaiserouo]

So, I found a few folks on Reddit having a conversation…

If you have the time, (obviously no rush, I respect you and your talents) I think they’re onto something with that Umbra meets Arthur idea.

Thats a good idea but nah im probably not gonna draw that, for several reasons (or should i say excuses)

Im bad at drawing human faces and arthur is not addictive (?) enough for me to learn that specifically for him, like how bloodhound kickstarted the whole art thing i do

If this is already discussed widely then theres probably a million artists thats gonna draw that specific idea out so i can just see their art instead of drawing myself. You know, like open source code

I... think I already dealth with that in my au when i saw arthur for the first time? By "dealt with" i just set that umbra is more attracted to the original trapinch version excalibur and just disregarded the whole thing, probably because it involves human faces and theyre the arch nemesis for me

[cygniavenue]

been stewing on this one for a while but i said i was gonna post more of my headcanons so here's a little bittersweet tidbit;

childhood was a really rough time for Diomedes and Sthenelus (and the other younger Epigoni as well) full of a lot of grief and sorrow and confusion, and the weight of your father's legacy crushing shoulders too young to uphold it or begin to understand it. Diomedes, for the most part, doesn't even remember Tydeus. All he really knows is the idealized version of him Athena and others hold him to. Sthenelus has fleeting memories of Capaneus but refuses to remember - he only resents. Their childhood was spent being trained up to be weapons.

But even so, I do think there were moments where they got to just be kids. They built their own little fort of escape somewhere they knew would remain hidden. It took weeks of stacking rocks with what little free time they had until it was perfect, and it was theirs, and it was somewhere where they didn't have to be wise beyond their years.

They eventually forgot about it as they got older. They sacked Thebes, Diomedes restored Oeneus to the throne, and then the Trojan War happened, and all the things in between being on the battlefield - getting married, becoming kings, Sthenelus even had children of his own. The fort lay forgotten and untouched, a reservoir of good memories they'd both buried a long time ago.

And then, when they're fleeing Argos, they find it again, reclaimed by the vines and the leaves. All their old stuff is in there still, little wooden swords and shields, animal and soldier figurines, drawings they etched into the rocks. It's the only place they ever had that wasn't overrun by sorrow, where they weren't forced to fill the shoes of men they don't (or refuse to) remember.

But there's just no time left. They have to leave it knowing they'll never see it again. All they can do is hope they can hold onto a fragment of the tranquility their younger selves buried there.

[vonclosen]

i was going to make a long meta post but tbh i dont think it'd be taken in good faith. but there's something to be said about how much fallout new vegas is a reflection of war & military-critical views in the late aughts & 2010s that maybe younger people can't fully appreciate having not been quite as cognizant as i happened to be at the time (a tween/young teen).

i think i can understand where someone who was (we can assume) financially marginalized like boone would think joining the military was his "out" and an at all honorable thing to do. why he broke to the conditioning. the level of self-hatred and alienation when he comes out of it realizing that he committed war crimes, hurt real people, that he was always a tool to the NCR--it chewed him up and spit him out, let him out into the world without resources.

beyond being about boone himself, boone's narrative fits in very well with the (broader american) cultural feeling towards war in those who were critical of it in the 2010s and i find it very interesting to pick apart. because his story is about new vegas. but like all fallout games, it's highly political and a criticism of contemporary cultural feelings/ideas.

[fluffalpenguin]

Happy Shun Duel Links Day!!! (party popper emoji)

[icyfox17]

i love seeing how different people format their drafts/docs for their stories, it's so lovely seeing the personality on the page sobsobsosbos

people are so cool...

[sieglinde-freud]

i love the difference in dynamics between the first gen and second gen in awakening bc they both definitely have something of a found family going on but in two completey different ways and its just really fun to look at

bc on one hand you have the og shepherds right like chroms squad and you have the ones whove been around for a while (stahl, sully, sumia, vaike, etc) but you also get to see their new pickups as you recruit them (virion, gaius, tharja, olivia, etc). and not only that, yeah the shepherds are a pre-established group before robin joins, but they havent done all that much yet bc the war with plegia/the grimleal hasnt happened yet, so they dont have necessarily the strongest bonds together yet. so what we get to see instead is these weird group of silly goofy guys slowly warming up to eachother, getting to know eachother, and becoming the family they are at the end of the game. you get to watch them create those friendships and start to love eachother and its just a nice journey to see them go through together as a whole

and then on the flip side you have the second gen cast, who already know way more about eachother than probably anyone ever should. but the thing about them is that in contrast to their parents, they only ever knew eachother in war time, so when they get to ylisse which is definitely still in the midst of conflict but infinitely more relaxed, they all suddenly have to contend with different sides of eachother theyve never met, and all of their crazy ass coping mechanisms are putting them at odds with eachother bc this entire time theyve always loved eachother, they just havent figured out how to like eachother. which is pretty much how a lot of their conversations play out, figuring out how to get used to eachother again and its a lot rougher to watch because they’re all navigating a new world without much idea as to how, but they try and quite honestly they’re not very good at it but they’re trying

and the game ends and theyve beaten god or whatever, all because of the bonds theyve formed through these families and its just the sweetest thing in the world to me. they all start from a place of conflict with eachother and turn it into what i think is one of the most close knit casts in fire emblem and its just a really great pay off once you finish. awakening cast i love you so much im putting you in my mouth (highest honor btw)

[denfucker]

dennis... he is so interesting... silly, even...

to be worshipped is one thing. to be worshipped is a given. who wouldn't worship him? he leaves and the gang changes because who are they without him? he comes back and the gang chooses him because why wouldn't they? and the d.e.n.n.i.s system and being a golden god and demonstrate value, so they only see what you present and not what you are. sex is what you are. you are a god. see past the golden god and there's nothing there. engage physically. that's it, that's you. engage physically and they won't ask too many questions. nurture dependence, they want you. they worship you. they need you. neglect emotionally, once they start to get too close and worship and obsession tips into what you think is love. inspire hope, so they'll leave and come back again, because you decide what goes and what doesn't. and nothing goes. you are golden and perfect. they will never leave.

then. separate entirely. you leave first. they will cling onto you and kneel at your altar and miss the perfect version of you, and you will only be known as the golden god and you will only be remembered for sex because that is what you are.

and that's all you need. you need worship, you need obsession. you don't need to be loved, or known, because what does that bring you? to be known is to see past the facade. to be known means presenting every bit of yourself, every flaw and imperfection that you try to scrub and dye and push away before it becomes too obvious. and what do you do, when someone knows you, and they don't like what they see?

what then?

[spoopup]

i really dig the remastered sprites for the aai collection … makes me want another investigations game in this style .. with a certain different prosecu- *GIANT ROCK FALLS ON ME FROM ABOVE*

[loosingmoreletters]

slams hand down do it you know you want to do it,,, sugar daddy au and now its just awkward as fuck but they get to Deal with It. bonus points for people laughing at them in the background. i am your inner demon whispering that this is a good idea and you should absolutely write it (no pressure ofc!!! take your time and its fine if you want to!!!)

for ship names. yeah very sad. i havent settled on like. a combination of their names that sound appealing to me so im just. sitting there awkwardly in Yun Taeheon x Shin Junseo. simple but it works. ill bonk my brain for ideas later,, i have cut down on thigns i need to hand in tomorrow im procrastinating because the thing i need to do is so horribly boring

maybe the korean side of the fandom has something going on but that would require me to go on twitter and figure out what korean words to put in the search box and I'm already failing at "go on twitter".

sdkhldfkhg the inner demons are winning. now I'm kinda contemplating how this would even start, which made me realize we know fuck all about Shin Junseo's past??? We only knew that apparently he had a shitty job before he awakened and didn't have any friends and seemingly also has no family.

So like? Local man signs up on an app bc honestly at this point being a sugar baby would not be worse than another horrible shift at whatever minimum wage job he has to pay the bills?

And cool, he hits it off with Yun Taeheon, something something business man. It's a lot less hollywood-pretty-woman than he expected, more nice dinners with genuinely entertaining discussions, and sure getting laid is nice too, and then, well, the world goes to shit for a hot second and well, the contract written before runs out, isn't renewed and Shin Junseo has a moment between picking up a shitty job again and awakening where he comfortably lives on his savings while his,,, ex? well, no, ex would be implying they dated. boss is also not quite the term, his previous situationship, made himself a guild master.

whatever.

and then the world goes even more to shit and he drags corpses and the memories of a world annihilated out of a dungeon. He makes his plan, keeps his head down and then fucking Yun Taeheon is standing in front of him again.

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

CRYING I JUST GOT INDIRECTLY TOLD IM SOMEONES FAVORITE PERSON

[steelycunt]

how do you write poetry that isnt mortifying...how do you write poetry that is earnest...how can you write something earnest that isnt simultaeneously so mortifying that the only thing to do with it is destroy it 😂😂

[a-lonely-tatertot]

seeing a post with a time stamp that says 3 years ago and you just have to sit down for a sec. like god so much has happened and yet it feels like yesterday

[cannibalistic-suggestions]

Blog Update • December 24, 2023

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