#anyways this in favor of my canon

[bloodydragam]

ONE OF THE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE CORPO PATH... ahem

Okay, talking about some mirroring scenes, I love how in the corpo path V sees the city from the AV and in Johnny's introduction happens kinda the same, both near Arasaka Tower (cause I'm sure V can't actually see the logo... ?)

Oh, ofc, also the fact that it starts in Arasaka Tower and you take the same path of the lobby in Don't Fear The Reaper

I LOVE IT WHEN ENDINGS CIRCLE BACK TO THE BEGINNING!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS MIRROR EACH OTHER!!!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS SEAL THEIR FATES IN THEIR FIRST SCENES!!!!

I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS' GREATEST TRAITS ARE ALSO WHAT DOOM THEM IN THE END!!!!!

[necrotic-nephilim]

jealousy really is the driving force of DamiTim as a ship. love that for them. love how Tim has the Robin mantle ripped away from him and he has to suffer the jealousy of watching Dick and Damian bond. how possessive over Dick Tim can be, to have him stolen by Dick.

even more so though, is the jealousy from Damian. how on earth do you cope when you finally get to be Robin, a role you've convinced is your birthright, and no one really likes you? every prefers the Robin who came before you? Dick regularly reminds you that he can always go and call Tim back when you act out? like the complex Damian has over Tim is unreal. Tim, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had everything handed to him his whole life. he never had to struggle or fight for his place like Damian did. Damian has spent his whole life fighting and proving himself, and yet he can't ever seem to truly claw the mantle of Robin away from Tim. even when Tim lets it go, becomes Red Robin, they seem to share it. Tim can slip back into the role of Robin whenever someone like Dick or Bruce need him to, because *he's* the Robin who they need. he's the Robin who was able to find Bruce. he's the Robin that Ra's wants an heir out of. he's the Robin who even Jason respects. in Damian's eyes, everything Damian has fought tooth and nail for, was handed to Tim.

so of course he's going to react to Tim with violence and aggression, especially after finding out Tim has contingency plans for him. no matter how much Damian proves himself, he's never going to be enough, especially not to Tim. and so his deep refusal to see Tim as family, to acknowledge Tim's legacy is all driven by such an angry jealousy. Tim understands aspects of Bruce's legacy that Damian doesn't, like the need to sweet talk and play nice with the elites of Gotham, even if they're corrupt. they exemplify different aspects of Robin, and the aspects that Tim exemplifies are the aspects that Damian knows he'll never fully understand and therefore holds such a deep contempt for. he wants to fight criminals, not play nice with politicians. Tim understands the side of Gotham that's utterly foreign to Damian. if anything, he represents that side of Gotham, to Damian. a pretty little rich boy who's nothing but a know-it-all and not a real son of Bruce. he can't be a Wayne. he can't be Damian's family.

and all of that angry jealousy leading to unhealthy obsession turned a weird, angry crush from Damian is just my bread and butter. that is how DamiTim should be. to me. Damian obsessed over hating Tim Drake so much he accidentally ends up sort of in love with him and that only makes Damian angrier. because he can't prove everyone right by *also* liking Tim. he can't let Ra's win like that, because frankly why wouldn't Ra's be delighted by Damian and Tim getting together. and it builds and builds with angry passive aggression towards Tim that culminates in angry hate-fucking-that's-not-just-driven-by-hate. love and hate are always viewed as opposites in shipping and i think they're the same intense passion just in different directions. and for the best ships, they're very intertwined. what is DamiTim is not the peak of that. "i put so much of myself into hating you i had no choice but to fall in love with you somewhere along the way" core. love that bleeds into hate and hate that bleeds into love. "you make me so angry i regularly passively try to kill you but not with any real effort because who would i obsess over if you were actually gone" core. murder attempts as a form of courting. contingency plans to take each other out as a love language. they're unwell.

[shoot-i-messed-up]

Was always worried about the angst of unrequited love, had never realized the sheer amount of comedic potential that it has.

Imagine one-sided Superbat where Clark is fully aware that Bruce has a crush on him but is being his repressed self about it, and Clark is just like, “I’m not gonna touch that :) you’re going to figure that out for yourself, buddy, and in the meantime, I’m just going to have a good time and be best friends with you as you inevitably pull yourself together enough to either fall out of love or to confess :) and I’ll just let you down gently because I care about you :)” but he absolutely 100% is using it to his advantage in the meantime. His puppy dog eyes had never been so effective before. He’s gotten out of Monitor Duty three times in the past month.

[ennard-is-near]

Henry was lying, I think, about Michael finding a job listing not intended for him. I don’t know why he would do that, why he wouldn’t talk to Michael first or be upfront with him about the plan, I could guess, but I’ll never know. But I believe that there’s no way anyone else would have taken a job running a franchise for a failing 80s child murder restaurant, and I believe Henry knew that.

But the way he speaks about ensuring nobody remembers the Pizzeria, the fact that the office is set in the middle of everything so it would be nearly impossible to make an escape route for a person without having animatronics loose, the fact that he trusted a seemingly random employee to do what needed to be done for his plan to work, hell even the way the promotional and welcome tapes frame the restaurant seem to want to scare people off. It just doesn’t add up to “let’s get a random guy in here to do the dirty work and go home safe.” Instead, it seems more like “Let’s make sure that there are no more cryptids running around as a result of William’s actions. We can lure them, make them come willingly.” And Michael is easy to lure to the restaurant. In fact, Henry knows that he’ll apply to work there.

[sapphim]

obsessed with Shepard dying and being reconstructed by Cerberus. waking in a body you don't recognize, free of scars, a clean slate, unlived in. minor tweaks here and there, "upgrades" unasked for, cybernetic or bioengineered. 20/10 vision, too crisp and clear. a more efficient liver. old L3 biotic implant replaced with cutting-edge technology. forcibly assigned übermensch. have you been cloned, or merely Ship of Theseus'd? if they cloned you once, would they do it again? could you be activated as a sleeper agent? would you have any way of knowing? they say that paranoia is a sign of reaper Indoctrination. is it really paranoia if you have good cause?

[gothic-mothic-topic]

Mfw one of my favorite characters in a game either isn't popular and barely exists in the fandom, or everyone hates them.

[alpinelogy]

Ao3 Wrapped 2024

tagged by @femmegeorge and someone else I cannot find rn, I am so sorry, but thank you both <3

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works published: 17 (6 on anon, 10 as attraqtia, 1 hidden cause I did not like it) subscriptions: 88 (+ 47 user subscriptions. Where did you come from guys) kudos: 1,876 comment threads: 122 bookmarks: 660 (galaxy collapse alone is 133 lmao. stage lights second with 80) word Count: 166,512 hits: 27,480

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top three kudosed fics

galaxy collapse (somebody scream) (266 kudos)

home is only a town (you're just a guest) (237 kudos)

kicked out the stage lights (you’re still performing) (226 kudos)

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top three word count

now entering a world (from which you will never return) (51,522 words)

no rules (in breakable heavens) (16,275 words)

home is only a town (you're just a guest) (15,429 words)

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top three ships

Oscar Piastri/Logan Sargeant (2)

Alexander Albon/Logan Sargeant (2)

Oscar Piastri/George Russell (2)

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top three tags

Angst with a Happy Ending (5)

Pining (3)

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (3)

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tagging: @landoisokay @lafaerie @racingliners @weegreenbean @autumn816

[randomnameless]

tbh, I stopped caring about houses that much when I found out that it's an otome/dating sim game with srpg gameplay sprinkled on top. In other FE games, you either gather supports by pair ups or by having units standing against one another. And mechanics like cooking in Fates were done to get some more stat boosts. And even if the avatarization of the game started with New Mystery, Robin and Corrin feel more like customizable characters than an avatar for the player.

In houses, Byleth is like every typical dating sim protag, that does not speak and the few times they do is by having the player choose options that may raise heart points with a character or lower them, you have to find lost items and when you give them back you gain heart points, you have to give them gifts to gain heart points and cooking now doesn't give you any beneficts in battle and only works for, you've guessed it, getting heart points. And let's not kid ourselves, tea time is like the "dates" in otome games, in which you can spam gifts till you raise the affection to the max. The only thing that distincts those points from the otome ones, is that those are necessary for proficency and for unit classes.

Heck, we even have a ring to give to the chosen blorbo in order to get a special custom made cutscene, when in pasts games getting an S support gave you a broken unit to deploy and a little blurb of text during the credits. And of course, calendar/day systems are also common in these tipes of games too.

People complained about awakening and fates for turning the franchise into a dating sim, but 3Houses is literally one in and of itself, and yet is praised as peack FE experience and as peack srpg.

(I could also argue that is because of this otome nature why the characters are "tell don't show" with their given trauma, unlike in pasts games when it was "show don't tell" (Nino, Reison, Camilla, Leif, Soren...))

Well,

When you put it like that, it becomes obvious that the other games (FEH, Engage) mentionning Fodlan are stuck on the uwu monastery part of the part 1 and not the, y'know, events happening that will lead to part 2 because as you said, the SRPG aspect is just "sprinkled on top" lol

However, the "pair up your units and build their relationships!" has been a non gameplay mechanics for decades now (FE4's was a gameplay mechanic, it had no support convos - FE6 added the support convos and gave a small gameplay boost but it didn't commit and we had no endings, FE7/8 had endings, FE9 had convos but FE10 removed them and yet had endings depending on the pairs, etc etc) even without avatars.

Then we entered the avatar era and if it added the "my waifu and my bae" shenanigans, FE13/14 were still more centered on the story aspect that on the "dating sim" aspect, as in, even if you could raise affinity with a character by doing X or Y, it wasn't really coded in a minigame - came FE16 which you analysed perfectly : tea time, gifts, eating, S-support CG, etc etc.

That being said, FE is a RPG, meaning it has characters : you play FE for the solid gameplay but you also build characters, and imo the best way to develop and write characters is to interconnect them with other characters, and/or with the plot/lore.

Sure, Arden functions as a wall/tank. But through the 5 lines he has, you learn that he is part of a group of knights, has friends who often tease him but is relied upon by those people and takes pride in that, he'd also like to find a wife someday and has self-esteem issues.

Is he as developped as, say, Xillia's Alvin? Hell no! But they're characters from two different genres, Arden has those 5 lines that puts him above any "generic" armor.

(I find it interesting how UO and in a way, FE11, gives you the opportunity to play with generics instead of playing with named characters, in UO generics will turn out to be better since you can change their growths, but they're generics. Do you want the RPG of the Tactics/Strategy aspect?)

So, I'd say that support conversations are important, I love Saias and Ralf to bits, but I'm sure I'd love them more if they had more lines. And since support through battle can be a chore (hello FE GBA and trying to get Bartre and Karla's supports when she joins 2 chapters before the end!), I initially welcome any way to grind those supports faster lol.

However, it can quickly spiral in, well, the otome mechanics we have in FE16 - if you want to build support then why not have an entire mini-game for that, and meals and chorals and whatever else?

It's all about finding balance between developping your characters without turning your game in a dating sim or what I'd call "playing the sims and pairing those dolls with those other dolls you like".

Still, let's not kid ourselves, nowadays the "dating sim" aspect of the series is, while decried by some, very popular - and FE is first and foremost, a series that has to sell.

3H is not peak SRPG not peak gaming experience or even in FE gameplay that'd be FE5 but I can't ignore the fact that its dating sim aspects might be part of the reason why it's still very popular.

[b00m-b0mb]

Something really funny that's occurred to me is the way Joe talks about Maccie is like she's some catastrophic event that happened to their family "I can't believe she's been here that long." / "Everything's been different since she was born" / "Everything changed." / "She changed everything."

And it's just rlly funny to me. I want to up the dramaticness of his words at some point. And anyway, he's talking to the Samurai/Ronin for the first time and I'm wondering the impression he's getting lmao

Joe is certainly expressive to me, but only when he's given the chance. And I think w Ronin, he just started letting a lot of stuff out bc thus guy is gonna go on his way anyways.. but then he's like wait!!! Actually let me go?? For a little? (Platonic yearning so bad)

Ronin like 》^. "I suppose.. Alright, curious karate man, I'll accompany you a little longer."

Or something I'm messing around UGH

[musky-potato]

It's so weird now that I looked at it again, my identiem continuation fic is only like 7k while my Ignatius!Roksoo (wmmapxlcf) fic has already touched 11k wc...

CUZ HEY!! I put a LOT of thoughts on identidem while Ignatius one was just vibe!!!

[lem-argentum]

i love ff.xiv aka my oc photoshoot simulator <3

[lithopsy]

having another fictional character breakdown again but it (spoilers for a seven year old game) is so insane that saeran killed jihyun IN FRONT of jumin in the SE like THAT GUY DIED?? THERE IS A FUNERAL CG?? like why does the fandom collectively ignore that scene

[aloysarrow]

Shes MY main character self insert and I get to play MY headcanons onto her the way I want!

[greyedian]

ok ok fuck it I'm gonna try to be brave and actually work on Sterling and Gale's whole uhhhh situation bc I started a new bg3 run with my friend so now they're back occupying my brain. Again. Sooo... *carefully opens document*

[shadowofaliar]

ngl the casual way that surrogacy is used and talked about it fandoms/fanfics makes me a bit uncomfortable to be honest….

[revengesworn]

but okay i might as well post about it now before i forget all the important details-

i'm working on a mainverse for senju post-canon. specifically, it's a verse where the "dark impulses" curse that was affecting mikey was never actually destroyed - it simply "scattered" and spread to various people in the new timeline.

the reasons for that are probably convoluted af whoops i'm working on it basically as follows: first, when shinichiro was cursed, his only punishment was to be killed by kazutora. mikey's curse was actually a more indirect consequence of him having been dead in the previous timeline than a "punishment" from the old man, so to speak. instead, it as his own lingering feelings of self-hatred and a desire to "not be saved"/be let to rest from the original timeline that caused the curse to affect him in the new one.

for that reason, when mikey finally accepted that he wanted takemichi and everyone's help, in the moment where takemichi was dying, that's when the curse was fully broken. or... seemingly so.

see, the curse at this point was sentient enough that it wanted to sustain it's own existence. and so while part of the curse left mikey, his self-hatred which he still held onto caused a part of the curse to remain in him - less than before, but still present, even in the final timeline. on the other hand, the rest of the curse that had left mikey scattered to those who were present who also held onto feelings of self-hatred, blaming themselves for something or another - and among others, who else would be chosen but senju? senju still blamed herself for everything that had happened with haruchiyo, so the curse took a new home in her.

so what does any of this actually mean? basically, the idea for this verse is that even in the final reset timeline, certain characters still struggle with "dark impulses" to an extent. they're much less powerful than they used to be, manifesting not as an all-consuming urge to destroy but more occasional moments of anger, depression and emptiness, but nonetheless still exist. to mikey, who's lost a great deal of the curse, this is much easier for him to handle, so he's satisfied enough with what he's been given, but to characters like senju, cursed for the first time - it means she's essentially forced to struggle with an unnatural sense of anger and emptiness that she doesn't understand the cause of.