#bc they're not REALLY people i know and they didn't abandon ME. but i still do feel sad when i think 'oh... it's really gone'

[uh-oh-its-bird]

Offshoot of my "team Ro time travels to the founders era" post because @prinzgnomeovonchaos infected me with brain rot in the notes

So buckle in baby it's time for

Sakumo and babyKashi time traveling to the warring states ✨️

So first thing to get out of the way; Modern Hatake's and warring states era Hatake's do not hold up to the same standards.

The Hatake's during the states were a very small clan with a very big reputation. Hailing from Iron, they were an almost famous wild clan even all the way in fire country. Distantly related to the Inuzuka's but leaning more towards wolves than dogs.

They had a proper kekkei genkai and everything, unnaturally fast and strong, often born with some form of enhanced senses— be it smell, sight, taste, or even touch. Their white chakra fed into it, and they'd feed their chakra with diets of raw meat and the occasional light cannibalism during some special clan celebrations and rituals.

Unfortunatley Sakumo knows very little about the above because he was very young when his clan was pretty much all wiped out. He was raised by the only other survivor, his grandmother, who was pretty young herself when the clan got wiped, and unfortunatley was never all too concious of many of the rituals and traditions of her clan until it was too late.

Sakumo grew up to village standards and was mostly declawed because of it, and Kakashi is only doubly so. And with that dulling of all the different traditions and specific diets also came the slow fading of their bloodline limit, which was already pretty subtle if you didn't know what you're looking for.

Anyways moving on, and if you want more details for my headcanons ab warring states Hatake's vs modern standard Hatake's look at my other time travel post bc I talk ab it more there.

So Kakashi is like 6 (holy shit he's a BABY baby)

Google keeps giving me conflicting numbers for Sakumo's age at his death so we're just gonna shrug and say he's in his early 30's.

Then for the founders;

Madara (23)

Hashirama (23)

Izuna (19)

Tobirama (18)

Sakumo is staring at these guys going through it bc they are BABIES to him. And like look, he's used to working with or even occasionally under people much younger than him, but like. Oh man that's the shodai hokage. And he's like a toddler.

(He's a 23 year old man but Sakumo is kind of having a crisis so he can't register that)

So like. All the founders have major daddy issues, right? Like we can all agree that's plausible? I'm so sorry I just think it'd be *really fucking funny* if they look at Sakumo and just kinda. Yeah.

You know what I mean.

Anyways;

No idea how they got there!! This is set maybe a week before Sakumo offed himself but now he can't kill himself bc that'd mean abandoning Kakashi to the fucking warring states.

Kakashi fits the warring states standards alarmingly well actually. Honestly I think even for that time period he's still scarily young to be on the field. People are giving Sakumo looks like 'it's so hard what we've been forced to do to our children, the battles we've pushed them into, the things they've seen and done all too young'

Sakumo is going *hrrg.* and having a good long look in the mirror actually. Proper crisis, lots of guilt, Kakashi should not be out in the field this young and at least before he was mostly getting baby missions but now they're stranded in time and keep running head first into trouble.

I want Izuna and Kakashi to fight and even though Kakashi absoloutley should NOT win that battle I want him to win just so that Madara and Tobirama can make fun of him for losing to an actual child

Izuna is mortified he wants that brat DEAD

Uhh I have some more but I'm at work and actually hit post too early on this post so I had to come back to rush add all these edits bc I meant for it to stay a draft I could keep adding too later. So I'll just come add more later fr

[tagamantra]

realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

[queer-overwatch]

Hi!! Could I request maybe a Venture x Reader (Any pronouns will do) on like a museum date? I want Venture to yap.Please and Thank you. ( Also bless the both of you I needed more Venture content I was tweaking without them)

Venture at a Museum!

Aaa ty sm for the request!!! I love that idea so much- they are such a yapper I love them <3 also your welcome hehe, had to take thing into our own hands >:3 (also bc u didn't request a specific format (like hcs or oneshot) i just did a short lil oneshot, hope thats okay!) -Frisk

══════ஜ▲ஜ══════

"Look, look- they have a whole section on rocks! Kinda basic selection but it's still rocks!"

You never thought you'd be able to learn so much about rocks in one day, but it seemed like Venture had made it their personal mission to force as much information into your brain as possible. You didn't mind, really! It was always nice listening to them rant about all the cool stuff they found while walking around the museum you'd planned to bring them to, but it was a lot to take in at once.

"Augh, I love sedimentary rocks- they're my favorite! 'cuz sometimes they have like, little fossils in them and I'm like, "Woah! A cool thing in another cool thing!" and it's awesome! One time I found a trilobite fossil in a rock, it was so cool! I wonder if they have any here- that'd be so amazing! I wonder what they taste like-"

After spilling every single fact they could think of about the rocks on display, Venture drags you to a section of the museum dedicated to Egyptian history, though they mostly just seemed interested in the architecture of the pyramids. You really did try to listen, but you mostly just caught the gist of their long, long, long explanations- something about a Mastaba being like a sort of prototype to pyramids? You were just happy to see them so excited, even if you didn't quite understand what they were so hyped about.

"Oh, if only that British lady could go back to ancient Egypt and get the architects of their time to answer my questions! I'd give anything to be able to do that!" Sensing the slight disappointment creeping up on them, you decide to try and bring Venture elsewhere, not wanting them to spend any energy on being upset by what they can't do.

"Why don't we go look at the dinosaur fossils? I'm sure there's some mistakes in the descriptions that you can correct!" You take their hand, gently pulling them away from the long essay-like description of images of the pyramids that they were reading. Incising them with promises of being able to show off their intensive knowledge of dinosaur fossils, or fossils in general.

Venture perked up almost immediately, following behind you as they ready themselves to go on and on about their favorite dinosaur ever, the Deinocheirus! You tried to ask why it was their favorite ones, and all they said was something about it being "them fr fr" and having rocks in its stomach. You weren't too keen on questioning that one.

They take a large step so they're walking next to you, swinging your arms as you walk, "It's always been one of my biggest goals to find a dinosaur fossil! I really hope I do one day, if I did I could die happy!"

"Please don't die- I would be so sad if you died." You squeeze their hand, voice light as you joke with them.

"Aw but I wanna! I wanna be a fossil for future people like me to discover! When I do die I wanna be buried with a bunch of cool stuff! Maybe mess around with my bones a little, just to throw 'em off!" As you finally reach the fossil exhibits, they abandon you to run off and check over every. single. fossil. which while endearing, gave you a lot of running to do in an attempt to catch up.

"Finally! For once a museum that gets everything right! Well, everything as far as we know-" They stand next to one of the larger fossils, not anything you recognized as you take your place next to them, catching your breath.

"Wow, how impressive-" you wheeze, standing up straight and stretching out your legs as you link arms with Venture, trying to stop them from running off on you again.

They laugh, grabbing you by the shoulder and dragging you in the tightest hug you've ever received.

"Thank you, so, so, so much for planning this. And for listening to me talk about rocks so much, and for caring about me- and a million other things! I can't even remember everything you've done for me, but I know its a lot!" They let you go, still holding you by the shoulders, the biggest smile you've ever seen on a person splayed across their face.

"Of course-! I love spending time with you, you're well aware of that, silly." You laugh, grabbing their wrists and taking their hands off your shoulders, holding their hands as you admire the glow of excitement on their face.

"Welllll since you clearly don't mind, can we go to this other museum I found online next week?! I heard they have an area where you get to watch an hour long video on the story of Julius Caesar!"

[anothertina]

currently rotating ezreal on my brain lately. his parents were never around and once they weren't coming back he chose the worst copium way possible to not believe they were that which is BELIEVING THEY JUST ABANDONED HIM BC HE WASNT GOOD ENOUGH??? like holy shit this boy is so deep in denial and he is comfortable with that but I feel like the moment that starts to crack it'll crash down. badly. imagine him finding some sort of concrete proof of their death and it all clashes because, even if they're dead, logically no parent should ever make their kid feel like that (even if it was not intentional on their side)? and maybe he starts going on a spiral of "maybe they weren't the best of people" and "but they did love me" and he feels so conflicted because is it okay to still miss them even if he stops and realizes how they kinda fucked up with him? and that all coming down after he spent years in denial so it combines with YEARS of repressed grief and he probably doesn't even have their bodies or anything to mourn for. he has nothing left to mourn over just like how he was constantly left alone as a child. (and in the back of his mind there's probably a irrational voice telling him they didn't even bother to left him something when they died)

You get it, the thing is he's going to keep living in denial until he has physical proof that his parents are dead, he HAS to find their bodies, and if he finds their bodies I need to remind you all: Ezreal has photograpy memory, every type of information is absorved into his brain, he would not be able to forget. And that's when it would all start crumbling down, because this is it, that is the last time he ever got to see them, they are really gone. And isn't it fucked up that some part of him goes ''well, death means they didn't abandon you on purpose, isn't this the better outcome? Would you have prefered to find them happy without you?'' And he doesn't know how to deal with those feelings, I really think his brain would shut down for some time, he is not ready to process all that, after all there's a reason why he has been running away from those thoughts his whole life

[lemonhemlock]

It’s very amusing that Condal clearly wants to adapt AFFC, and how people eat it up despite it not being earned. AFFC was the fourth book of the series, after the beheading of Ned, Winterfell falling, Jaime losing his hand, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding. All the reasons for why the War of the Five Kings is over, all those people are either dead or scattered to the wind, and yet the war rages on. It’s a pointless war that characters we have grown to know and love undergo intense changes in, notably Jaime and Brienne as they wander through the Riverlands, Arya in Braavos, Sam on the edge of despair as he journeys south. Frankly? Considering that the Dance hasn’t even properly started yet and no one cares about the deaths that have occurs (Luke, Jaehaerys, Rhaenys) the sheer fatalism feels unearned bc no one has gone through gut wrenching tragedy yet. “War is pointless.” Great, but we got another two seasons of this and if the characters think this story is dumb and pointless and are just going through the motions, why should we watch? It’s frankly just too early for everyone to lose their shit bc they haven’t even begin to truly lose everything yet. The characters themselves thinking it’s pointless robs them of motivations bc we still got more than half the story to go! Criston’s monologue in the finale is good but that’s because it’s directly cribbed from Jaime’s “honor is mist” speech but it’s not nearly as earned bc we don’t have any idea how or why he started sleeping with Alicent or even why he became a kingsguard in the first place! Daemon’s Harrenhal arc ended with him somehow obsessed with a prophecy and connecting it back to Rhaenyra without him coming to terms with Viserys not trusting him with the prophecy which is what he was mad about in the first place!

We never actually see anyone react to anything, and the limping plodding along of character development happening off screen so we never see how or why anyone changes is not good! Episode 7 actually gave me some hope bc Rhaenyra seemed to be embracing her role as a leader of there’s dragonriders the gods have given her, but in the next episode she’s literally saying the exact same lines “what would you have me do” and “who will pay the price” which she said at the start of the season! Even Alicent’s about face is unearned bc we don’t actually see her truly fight with her children about anything, really. She just lets them talk in her face and then limps away to camp in a scene that’s “all about rebirth bc baptism and water” without ever getting to the core of anything. It’s a beautiful show full of empty symbolism without a narrative actually underpinning it, borrowing from a better story without understanding what makes that story so good.

You said it more eloquently than I could at the moment. It's not just one or two badly executed points, nothing gets built up, nothing gets resolved or even discussed, we just skip past A TON of vital characterisational changes and are expected to "fill in the gaps". No, they're just bad at writing. You wouldn't be reading a book or watching a show that is so bad at these elements - people are watching because it's ASOIAF.

Why is Alicent so mad? Aegon has barely done anything as king, he's actually tried to help the smallfolk in his audiences! Aemond dismissed her from the Council, sure, which I found a dumb political plot hole, but she hasn't done much to address it? And what exactly has Criston Cole done all season that he is the most reprehensible male character on the show? He didn't vote for Alicent and called her by her name. Does he deserve to die for that? Has Alicent ever been portrayed as the type of character who would react so disproportionately? That's Aemond-level writing. Is Alicent = Aemond now? (She isn't even shown being mad at Criston for sending Arryk after Rhaenyra!)

What Alicent is shown to have a problem with is Aemond burning Aegon. But then again why abandon Aegon to be executed by Rhaenyra? Just overdose him on milk of the poppy and let him die, ffs. Alicent also suspects Criston is not telling her about Aemond's crime, but they part on okay terms? She gives him her favour? How do you go from that to dooming him by revealing his coordinates?

I would really like to pile on-to the AFFC copycat accusations* with Succession rip-offs (my followers are probably tired of hearing me mention it, but it's truly what prestige television should be and it's what we should be comparing HotD to!). First it was teenage!Aegon wanking in the window à la Roman Roy, then Alicent suddenly gets water symbolism this season like Kendall and "I do not wish to hear it"? Do they think they're being cute here?

*not just with Criston, but with Rhaena, too, although you could at least argue there that GRRM himself is also mirroring Jaime and Sansa there

[calmlb]

have some silly skk wedding hcs bc. idk i just wanted to yell w someone abt them

chuuya cries in sporadic bursts the day of but taken altogether it's like 3 hrs of hysterical sobbing

dazai doesn't cry at all because he slips into like a shocked fugue state the second he sees chuuya but he DOES bawl like a baby the next morning

nobody who attended remembers past like hour 4 of the wedding and six months later they're still uncovering some of the wild shit they did during the afterparty. this is because the wedding staff accidentally became part of the celebration and the photographer, who was supposed to record the whole thing, ended up sleeping with one of the cast. it was kunikida.

just to be obnoxious ranpo proposes to poe and chuuya has to be held back by a crying w laughter dazai from Physically Attacking Him

dazai insists on having a bouquet to throw, which he purposefully angles for akutagawa to catch. atsushi faints, lucy's face progresses from angry -> considering in real time (they r a throuple real)

chuuya picks his best man/maid of honor fairly easily (hirotsu and kouyou duh) but dazai basically told the ada to figure it out amongst themselves and come back to him with their decisions (he's lazy/genuinely didn't know who to pick and wanted to outsource) and there was Actual Violence

lots of drama over whether or not to invite mori and verlaine. turns out to be a nonissue bc all verlaine does is cry in a corner about a) rimbaud and b) holy shit my little brother is getting married and after hour 6 mori and fukuzawa disappear from the event (neither they nor anyone else remembers this. very lucky)

ango receives an invitation with no context and has like 3 mental breakdowns about what this means for his and dazai's relationship

7 hours in (it was a long party) kenji's cow somehow shows up (he swears up and down it wasn't him, everyone's very confused the next morning)

it was a sunset wedding, dazai wore white and chuuya wore blue

adam and shirase and some other members of the sheep are there. adam makes fast friends with kyouka, meanwhile the former sheep are very narrowly spared dazai's wrath, mostly bc he keeps forgetting they're even there. it's a big wedding

tachihara tried to drunkenly breakdance, gin laughed so hard she thought she got heart palpitations and was afraid for her life. she went to look for mori and walked in on him and fukuzawa. none of them remember this but now gin feels a vague sense of horror every time she looks at her boss and she's not really sure why

yosano tries rizzing kouyou up and fails by any normal metric (yosano: please please please please please please please please please please) but kouyou is Tipsy and Charmed

dazai does indeed burn the marriage certificate (TRY RETURNING ME WITHOUT A RECEIPT, CHIBI!!). chuuya is so in love he starts crying again

higuchi and tanizaki had philosophical discussions about life on the rooftop and accidentally solved the secrets of the universe. they do not remember this

kunikida returns from his steamy rendezvous with the photographer and immediately sets his sights on ango. drunk kunikida knows what he wants (twinkish men) and when he wants them (now). there is a reason one of the most important ideals in his notebook is to Not Drink

the guild is there and are generally having a good time until fitzgerald sees tsujimura (only there as ango's plus-one, got abandoned bc of drunk kunikida's machinations) and calls her a blue-haired liberal, and hey, what's a party without a brawl in the middle of the dance floor

between the guild and the wedding staff half the people at the party weren't even invited. which is why the doa and hunting dogs are also there

kenji, kyouka, q, elise, and aya are having a Kids' Party in a separate room with adam as an extremely enthusiastic babysitter (well, more like occasional check-in-er, he's swinging back and forth between the parties). tecchou joins them after a while and has a great time, as all except aya are extremely fascinated by his unholy food combinations

bram and lovecraft kickstart their enemies-to-lovers arc the second they set eyes on each other

fyodor, dazai, kajii, and nikolai start up a game of Knife Monopoly, to everyone's surprise the extremely determined caterer sweeps them all. sigma is smitten at once and immediately starts to flirt with her (the caterer is a milf who is seduced by sigma's transgender rizz, sigma will eventually have an entire 'convincing the stepkids' family movie arc)

teruko FUCKS IT UP on the dance floor, haruno is so impressed she immediately falls into her first disastrous sapphic crush

hirotsu and natsume mutually agree to restart their homoerotic situationship without ever even actually saying two words to each other, someone has to take skk's place now that they've more or less gotten their shit together

katai wasn't there physically but was supervising through security cameras. he's the only one who will ever know everything that happened that night and deleted the footage due to trauma :( sorry katai

tsujimura and mushitarou bond over how desperately they Do Not Want To Be There

skk Try to have a romantic wedding night(/morning, given how long the afterparty stretched) but they are both too drunk, chuuya trips and falls flat on his face and dazai laughs so hard he throws up

omg i started yapping and then i just didn't stop. i didn't even know i had this many thoughts in my head. i am sending this before i can regret it feel free to delete if u want to

anon. THESE ARE SO GOOD OMG???? i could literally visualize a whole fic just by reading these hcs

adding my comments under the cut so it doesn’t get too long 🫣

ok first of all… the skk crying hcs??? CANON OMG im so obsessed

Ranpo turning skk’s wedding into his engagement party is so true of him. he absolutely would

Dazai totally would insist on a bouquet to toss, & him throwing it at to Akutagawa is so funny 😭

SOMEONE SAVE ANGO PLS-

KENJI’S COW IM SOBBING it reminds me of that wan episode where Atsushi asks Dazai what Yosano needed & he was like “… a cow!” boba eyes & everything

i had never thought of Adam & Kyouka being buddies but my life is changed now tysm for this revelation

NOT GIN BEING SCARRED BY ZENKU SKK 💀 someone get my girl outta there

ok but tipsy + charmed Kouyou is a vision

Chuuya tells Dazai that burning the marriage certificate means they’re not married anymore & that’s when Dazai finally breaks down into tears

ok Higuchi & Tanizaki is another duo i never considered and i LOVE IT???

KUNIANGO SO TRUE

TSUJIMURA A BLUE HAIRED LIBERAL I AM SCREAMING

omg i love the kids party & skk are both good with kids so they definitely would make sure the kids are taken care of 🥹 Adam would be such a good babysitter, and Tetchou too??? omg giving me fic ideas with this one

super invested in this caterer x Sigma arc tbh

ykw i was thinking abt bsd rarepairs the other day & couldn’t figure out who to ship Teruko or Haruno with… should’ve thought of this honestly

SOMEONE SAVE KATAI TOO OMG THAT POOR MAN-

now that you mention it… i actually love the idea of Tsujimura & Mushitaro but i think it’s mostly bc her hair matches his suit PFFT

skk’s ideal honeymoon = SLEEP 😫

i’m so glad you didn’t stop yapping non, this was so wonderful tysm i feel blessed 🥹🩷 please feel free to yell abt hcs or say hi anytime!! 🫶🏻💕💕

[virginiaisforvampires]

Hello, I am once again back to vent. Bc you're one of the blogs who knows the show is superior but is still able to criticise its flaws.

I feel like there is a big divide between some new/only show fans and older book/movie/whatever canon fans, and a lot of it can be blamed on 1x05, so I would like to talk about that.

I am one of those people who shipped Loustat since their tweens, and the show's portrayal is honestly amazing, in many ways superior to the books/show. However, I cannot stop thinking about the fight, and I saw you say how you don't really like they went there.

When s1 first aired and I saw the fight, I couldn't understand how it really happened? I didn't get why Lestat would beat the shit out of Louis AND then drop him from the sky and it felt ooc it made me put off for a bit. I know a lot of us were speculating that something was off about the fifght in s1, and obvi we were right, with Louis' recollecting his memory of how it actually happened - Claudia begged him to leave Lestat, Lestat went after her, Louis tried to defend her and then started beating Lestat and threatening to kill him (which, I feel like for Louis is pretty in character and makes sense with his story, I am a no1 Louis stan since the show and he can be so cruel) and Lestat realizes he's serious about leaving him, so he drops him. For me, although I still wish they didn't really make the fight happen, it makes me feel better? In that moment, we know Lestat's biggest fear is abandonment/loneliness. Louis witheld affection from him for years and then says he's gonna leave him. So Lestat wants to make him suffer/hurt as much as he hurts from Louis leaving him. It's essentially a metaphor for hurting him back. Does that justify Lestat dropping him, did Louis deserve it? No. Does that mean Lestat should have dropped him? No, it doesn't, explanation isn't justification etc, but that's how I see it.

Like you said, in the books, the whole murder plot happens pretty much out of nowhere, Claudia (who's much more doomed by the narrative there) is more like 'huh Lestat is a buzzkill and dull and witholds information and he turned me, let's get rid of him' and I get that they needed a bigger reason in the show, but they could have played into the posessiveness more without the abuse. However, the retelling/truth of the trial (and it is most likely closest to the truth, since Louis is canonically a liar and it's framed to show he's recolletcing memories again) makes it better for me, if that makes sense? Like it makes me feel better to know that Louis beat the shit out of Lestat first and kind of puts the drop more into perspective. As a Louis enthusiast and Loustat truther, it gives Louis more autonomy and control of his narrative. It's still wrong what Lestat did, I just see what they were trying to say with it, even though I wish they did it differently bc many people won't bother diving into that, and I don't blame them. Like, it doesn't ruin them for me bc it's a gothic romance and they're vampires, not with human morals (whcih is something a lot of people don't consider, I am 100% standing with the victim and irl there is no mutual abuse), and it's a fucked up soulmate situation where they love each other so much they would rather the other dies than be without them, but killing or hurting one hurts the other too, which is tragic and unaccepatble in real life, but that's the curse/blessing of their relationship. In any other genre/story/if they were human, it would put me off. I'm still not excited it happened, but it didn't ruin them for me. They're still such a superior portrayal of these two characters, mostly thanks to Jacob and Sam's charisma and chemistry.

I just know that for many people who are new to this genre, who don't know the canon, it's easy to paint this as abuser/victim, and in a way, Lestat always has the upper hand with his power, so they're not that far off in some ways. There is a lot of power imbalance at the beginning of tehir relationship. The changing of Louis' race highlights that. (and do not get me started on the book fans who claim Louis must always be white. Ew). It's just not the definition of their relationship, and I really hope season 3 lands it with Lestat's backstory etc to make people understand him more. I am NOT defending my problematic king. He did all of that. I am saying the fight complicated it (and made it harder for people who experienced irl abuse, which is why I think it wasn't the wisest move), and while there are layers to it that make it and their relationship more nuanced, not all people want to get into them. I'm not judging people who don't want to get into them bc of that. I'm not even judging people who don't want to get into the books. But I also acknowledge that this is a dark gothic romance between two serial killer vampires. Lestat lays hand on Claudia. Louis beats Lestat, Lestat drops him and hurts him badly, Louis kills him, Lestat saves him. It's a fucked up cycle of them being obsessed with each other to the point of killing. Is it healthy? no. Is it good for them? No. Does that justify the fall? Still no. But they are still made for each other.

I see that majority of people, even those who have no knowledge of the book canon, get this. They know Lestat is fucked up and they stil enjoy him and Loustat bc it's about fucked up, morally grey vampires. I would also confidently say that we have the lowest point of Loustat over with, and now that they're reunited (I am 1OO% NOLA reunion truther bc for me it's like they said, first time seeing real Lestat and like you said, with Louis' acceptance and their reconciliation, we have moved Louis' arc forward multiple books and we sped into the king's consort era. Especially with Louis havong bigger role (thank God) moving forward.

I agree with one of your asks, I kinda wish to see them separated for a bit maybe, so Louis can come to himself a little bit. Ofc they won't be able to stay away for long, bc they are obsessed and spent too much time apart. I also totally agree with you that they NEED to talk. I loved loved loved the reunion and I see that for a lot of people, it put Lestat into more perspective, which is something I hope s3 builds on. We NEED to have a canon talk about the fight and the killing and the trial. And then we can move forward with much more equal, much happier Loustat. They're always gonna be fucked up and a bit problematic, and Claudia's always gonna haunt them (hopefully literally in Lestat's case), but they are some of the most legendary couple in dark/gothic romance. This show is repeating all the time that they are the core of this story.

It's just very hard to talk about the fight bc real life is not gothic romance genre, and it's a very sensitive topic I have irl experience with. I just feel better when I think about it like this, which is what I think the show was trying to say. I hope I am making sense, I am still a huge stan of the show and I love how many new fans this brought into this fucked up universum

Hey!

I mean, there’s also the fact the writers just do not see the fight as horrifically as audiences do, which I discussed at length in this post.

Nothing will ever justify the choice for DV. It just won’t, because it turned Lestat/Loustat into something he/it never was, which I discussed at length in this post.

There’s also the fact the added context from 2x07 doesn’t truly add up either, because Louis was not going to leave Lestat. Notice he ignores the questions “you’re leaving with her?” and “you’re gonna leave me?”

Instead, he goes right into threatening to choke Lestat until his eyes pop out, chopping Lestat’s head off, and laughing about it. Yeah, he never intended to leave, which makes the drop excuse even more ridiculous and OOC.

We’re told all this violence started, because Lestat grabbed Claudia’s throat, and Louis was defending her, but Louis and Armand both later did the same damn thing. We’re then told Lestat maliciously dropped Louis, because he couldn’t convince Louis to love him, but that incident actually took place in the books between Armand and Lestat. Lestat would never behave like that with Louis and especially over trying to force him into loving him or some sort of twisted “payback” for not loving him. That is the very antithesis of Lestat as a character, but it does fit with Armand’s character.

So yeah, why did they choose to write such a convoluted mess when they could’ve just, I don’t know, followed the actual book canon? Why are they seemingly stripping the other characters of their awfulness and slapping it all onto Lestat? Is all of this still part of the tale to frame Lestat as a monster? Will S3 really add that much context or change anything? Or did they truly drop the ball when writing the DV and subsequent “explanations”? *sighs* I’m aware of all the arguments and all the abuse/patriarchy/power metas. That’s just…..not what the show is really saying. The fans are putting way more thought and care into this than the actual writers as explained in the linked post above. 🙃

I’m really just tired of rehashing at this point. It was the worst mistake the show could’ve made. This isn’t directed towards you, because you’re preaching to the choir, but all this recent discourse does give me smug satisfaction, because I’m seeing that the very same people, who tried to tell me over a year ago that I was an idiot for being against 1x05, are finally waking up to the longterm negative ripple effects that one event is having on the show overall, Lestat, Loustat, and the fandom…..exactly as I told them it would cause problems when they wanted to scream at me about how “iT WAsn’T OoC!”

Anyways, as I’ve said, it’s a lot more joyful and peaceful when you no longer give a shit what others in the fandom think and understand that ignoring the idiots is the best thing to do, because giving them attention only serves to incite them even more and especially when you realize all their performative morality outrage was always just a bullshit ploy for attention in the first place.

We’ll see how S3 plays out and how this fabled “real Lestat” is unfolded.

I’m also sorry you have real life experience with abuse. I do as well, and it’s never an easy thing. Sending you a big hug and feel free to vent to me anytime! I’m always here to listen. ❤️🫂

[mount-raging]

Buncha' info about my trolls au bc I wanna infodump abt it

Under the cut bc it got a bit long whoopsie-

Branch and Poppy are not a romantic couple in this. Major apologies to the Broppy fans, but I never felt them. And because I'm making my own au that's supposed to cater to me, I just couldn't force myself to include a ship I didn't enjoy writing about. Instead of being a romantic pair, they instead develop a sibling dynamic post-first movie and they openly consider themselves brother and sister by the time that World Tour happens. Branch has no remaining family and Poppy has always wanted a sibling, so it worked out well for them because they felt closer than friends but didn't feel romantic. Remember that this is not canon, this is my own thing and I'm not trying to attack the ship or the people who ship it, they're simply not romantic in MY au.

The duo do end up with romantic partners though! Some time after Trollstopia was created, Branch hit it off with Synth and found out he actually kind wanted to try dating him, and so far (as of after Band Together happens) they're going pretty steady and show no signs of breaking up. Poppy and Barb were an unexpected couple but are VERY attached to each other now. They've got a few issues to work out but they're getting better at communicating with each other and making their personalities work, so they're doing okay.

If you were to cast a normal average human into this world, they'd be immediately outmatched in height by essentially every troll except the classicals. Your average pop troll would be maybe around 6'1 (with exceptions like Smidge) and they can only get bigger from there. Techno trolls are the species with the ability to grow the largest due to living in a massive ocean with very few restrictions on their size. And yes, this does mean that compared to a human, someone like Bridget or Velvet and Veneer are absolute giants.

Now for some more Band Together related stuff for my au:

Synth and Barb didn't join their partners for the wedding because Barb kinda has a kingdom to run and Synth was one of the trolls left in charge of managing things while Poppy and her father were away, but also partially because they don't really know Bridget and Gristle and didn't think there'd be much point in going.

Branch was VERY affected by his brothers abandoning him, he held a pretty tough grudge against everyone except Floyd. His other brothers all just left without saying goodbye to him or acknowledging him, but Floyd took the time to let him know he cared and that he was only leaving because he couldn't handle everything going on. He was the only one to actually show he still cared before he left. Branch has a lot of trouble reconnecting with all of his brothers except for Floyd, they're on better terms. He IS connecting with all of them, and he still has a bit of frustration with Floyd, but he's just more comfortable with him because he's the only one who actually took him seriously when they were reunited and back before they'd split up. I'm not saying he hates his brothers ofc! But there's still a lot of baggage they all need to work through together. And his brothers also deserve to have a second to mourn their grandmother.

All of the returning trolls are a bit...startled by how the village has changed. Viva ended up growing up away from the pop village and lead her own, so she didn't know much about their history at all, and Branch's brothers have been in various places far away from the village, so safe to say none of them ever learned that there were other kinds of trolls out there. Poppy wants to write a letter to Barb and have her come back as soon as possible so that she can introduce her long lost sister to her new girlfriend. Synth is VERY surprised to hear that Branch has brothers, and excitedly rambles off about how he ALSO has a bunch of siblings to the returning trolls. He clicks especially well with Floyd and Bruce. Branch's brothers are a bit surprised to find out that he has a boyfriend, especially one that's a prince, but they're very happy for him and do their best to make a good impression.

It takes a bit of time for them all to adjust. Viva bunks with Poppy for the time being, and while Branch's brothers did come back to visit, Bruce is the only one who's decided not to stay in the village. He does kind of have a wife and kids after all! But he promises to visit them as often as he can. Send letters and such. The rest of the group are staying with Branch for now, but aren't sure if they want to live in the same house forever.

Viva is given a few days to adjust before they make any big announcements about her. After all, she's still processing a lot. The village is very happy to hear about the fact she's returned, and the trolls that lived with her also came to live in the village. No reason they shouldn't all stick together after all. Before Bruce leaves they have a family dinner together, if Poppy and Branch are brother and sister now, no reason for Branch's brothers and Poppy's sister can't be siblings either. Poppy is very very happy to have such a big family now.

I want to do something with Velvet and Veneer. I know they did some terrible shit and all that but considering how the trolls made peace with the Bergens even though they'd spent the last however long eating and basically torturing the trolls, and Barb kinda tried to convert all other tribes to one genre and caused some mass destruction...idk I feel like the siblings should get another shot under close surveillance or something (code for I love them and I want them in my au but not in a jail cell you feel me?).

[ohsweetflips]

5, 6, 12, and 16 for Rhodes please? ☺️

i flipped 5 & 6 bc i realized i could put them in somewhat-chronological order <333 :)

-----------------------------------------------------

6. Healer’s summary of treatment for Rook’s wounds

A haphazard note written by the Veiljumper's healer about Rhodes, approximately 6 years before they were recruited by Varric and Harding. Takes place after disarming a relic went horribly and they were promptly electrocuted. Seems to be more instructional for dealing with Rhodes than instructions for Rhodes.

Do NOT let patient tell you that they are "okay to get up and go." Rhodes doesn't know what they're talking about. They don't remember all of us worried that their heart was going to stop at any moment. Any medical discharge must be approved by me.

Dawn Lotus and Elfroot to soothe pain. Prophet's Laurel as well if it's unbearable (you can tell by the sweat on their brow).

Patient is often restless. Might have to assign someone just to keep them company. Or ask Amylia to stop in when she closes shop - she's rather fond of them.

Royal Elfroot, Rashvine, and Deep Mushroom for the burns themselves. Will scar, no doubt, but this will at least help ward off infection. Even Rhodes is a bit squeamish over their wounds.

Do not let patient take off bandages. Telling them that we will get Strife involved doesn't work. Been telling Strife that he's too soft on them. Find me - I know they're uncomfortable, but I'm not having an infection on top of this. Elfroot can help them relax.

Tell Strife to have scouts search for more Arbor Blessing. I would rather not have another close call like this.

Patient has trouble sleeping. Try not to disturb them too often. I can check on them if necessary throughout the night.

Kid's got to be more careful. "But I'm fine, and the others were able to disarm the relic anyway." I don't think they realize how close they were to death. Sylaise help them, truly.

5. A conversation overheard between Rook and a companion

A conversation overheard between Rook and Harding, about three or four months after Rook's recruitment.

Rhodes: "Do you miss it? Being with the Inquisition?"

Harding: "Hm... kind of? Being a scout, I was able to travel all over and actually see what was going on. How pretty or abandoned or... eerie some of the places were. All before anyone else from the Inquisition got there. And then I got to be the one to tell the Inquisitor about it!"

H: "But then, on the other hand... I like being here. Being a part of the adventure. Being able to make decisions and help call the shots, you know? Varric still takes lead but it doesn't feel like I'm working for him. Well, not that the Inquisitor made me feel- the idea of the 'Inquisitor' is so much more intimidating than he actually - anyways! I like being a part of the action. Plus, you're here! I wouldn't want anyone else!"

R: "... Really?"

H: "Yes! You're good at what you do and you're my friend and - don't look at me like that! You'll make me cry!"

R: "I'm just happy to be here!"

Varric: "Listen kid, Harding, I love this moment we're all having here. But we're about, ah, five minutes out from meeting some pretty tough people who won't want to deal with the whole crying... feelings... heart-to-heart sort of thing going on."

R: "Right, right... wait, Harding, what was eerie about what you did with the Inquisition? Didn't you just... go and look at places?"

H: "Have you ever been to swamps where corpses crawled out of the water? Twice?"

12. Rook’s daily schedule

A scribbled list on a torn piece of notebook paper. Found knocked off a table in Rook's room. Before the battle of Tearstone Island.

Morning:

Wake up (around 08:00). Bathe (to actually wake up). Brush and braid hair. Coffee with Lucanis and Neve. Magic training - see if can finally get that new spell. Help Lace garden. Eat and review where we have to go next.

Late Morning:

Davrin and Taash are training - go see how they're doing. (Tell Lace?) Go check in with Bellara - make sure she's eaten today. Relax with friends (if possible). If not: get ready to head into field. Fix hair (if need to). Apply cosmetics (if feeling like it). Reorganize pack. Head out.

Afternoon:

If out in field: save world. If at Lighthouse: Stone-parchment-shears with Manfred (Emmrich says it's probability, I swear it's strategy). Play with Train Assan. Visit Emmrich - go for walk outside? or watch Manfred's magic lesson. If not too late: go visit Veiljumpers.

Evening/Dinner:

Go see what Neve's doing - help reorganize office if wisps are at it again. If weekly group dinner: help out (dish duty, again). If not: Prepare something with Davrin. Have dinner together. Clean up.

Night:

If out in field: return. If not: Spend time with Davrin. Talk about our day. Bathe again (most likely). Brush out hair. Get ready for bed (now with Davrin).

16. Letter from Rook to their love interest

A letter carefully written from Rook to the warden, Davrin, while he is away at Weisshaupt to help train the griffons. Before the battle of Tearstone Island.

Davrin,

Emmrich says that, since I miss you, and because you're going to be gone for a while, I should write to you. He said I could just tell you about my day and gave me a piece of his own paper.

[An arrow drawn pointing to an elegant letterhead, courtesy of the Grand Necropolis]

I don't write a lot. I don't have good penmanship. I hate that I can't talk to you right now.

This is weird because

I've never had

I'm not used to wanting to talk to someone who isn't here. It's just me, or everyone is just there.

You make things different. I wish you were here.

[A change in pressure of the ink, as if a break was taken in between writing]

Emmrich is really happy with Manfred's magic. He asked me if I wanted to watch one of his magic lessons (how I got the paper). He thinks Manfred's trying to learn electrical spells because he nearly set a rug on fire with this weird, purple fire. He's doing good, though! No major new burns in Emmrich's library.

I helped Taash train today. Made me hold some of their weights while sitting on their back. They told me to tell you that they could do 27 push-ups like that and now it's your turn, "unless you're scared." I told them you could do more!

[A simply drawn smiley-face]

Lucanis is planning a fancy dinner for Neve tonight. When I checked in, Lace was helping him. I think she wants to do something for Taash. The kitchen already smells amazing. If we ask nicely, we can probably get him to make some for us when you get back.

I'm writing this with Bellara while she's reading. She's been keeping me company tonight. It's for the book club. She said she likes it, but the romance happened too early. She loves the characters.

Everyone says hi!

I hope you're having a nice time in Weisshaupt. Are the flowers still blooming? Tell Mila that I say hi. Give Evka and Antoine my love. And pet the griffons for me. Assan gets extra.

I miss you and Assan. It's not the same without you here. I want to go with you next time. I like just existing with you.

Please write back.

I love you!

Yours,

Rhodes

In return, Rhodes receives a lovingly written letter with a pressed blue flower.

[idkjustletmescroll]

Warning: if you liked the dragon prince as it is, go right ahead and scroll on by :) this is basically what I would have done differently/liked to see, even if I did really like the show overall

We're just going to get right into it. This pretty much only pertains to act 2. I liked act 1. Anyways!

1: Ezran stays in katolis in season four; sunfire elf plotline rewrite

It's no secret that most people dislike the sunfire elf sideplot, and, despite the fact that janai and amaya are both my fav characters and my fav ship, it doesn't fit in to act 2's overall story. I'd have liked for them to continue the human/elf plotline both through sunfire politics and katolis', as well; there's no way ezran's speech in the graveyard in season 4 just made it a non-issue. Tbh, I didn't feel like ezran contributed much to the gang's journey in season 4, and, considering that act 1 had it be such a major plot point that the kingdom needs its king, I'd have liked for him to stay in katolis and, along with the sunfire plot, develop a plotline about humans and elves not only needing to reconcile, but come together to defeat aaravos (elf magic + human creativity and resourcefulness).

Also, the show mentions janai's grandma, queen Aditi, ALL THE TIME, and then never really does anything with her character--or the orphan queen. Since lux aurea canonically has a massive and ultra-important library ("bookery"), time could've been devoted to research there, too. It would have been a way to work in plenty of exposition.

2: The Terry issue

My issue with Terry is that he's just not important. I don't care about this guy. I spent most of act 2 dreading when he was on screen because I just don't care. Sure, he's sweet, but...why is an elf involved with a dark mage? How does he even get involved with claudia? How does he justify all the terrible things they're doing? I think it would've been interesting to see an elf who not only doesn't mind dark magic but defends it, presenting more issues for the main cast (i.e. callum) to think about. In my opinion, he should have either died or abandoned claudia fully in either seasons 5 or 6. He would have been the last person who loved and supported her unconditionally leaving her, one way or the other, and therefore leaving her fully vulernable to aaravos' manipulations. I'm sorry, but most of what he did in season 7 was centered around getting the gang not to hurt claudia, and it was pissing me off. No, you don't have to agree, this is just an opinion.

3: Rayllum

Yes, I know, I know, it's just a kid's show. Yes, I know rayllum is an audience fav, and even if it's not mine, I understand why people like it so much. It's cute, it's fun. My issue with act 2 rayllum is that it feels like the show focuses a lot more on their relationship than on the individual characters. I'd like rayla to actually explain to callum why she left: she was paranoid, she wanted to make sure viren was gone for good. Could she have finished him off herself, if it came down to it, looking him dead in the eyes and using her swords? There's a question that keeps coming back to haunt her: is she able to end a life? Why couldn't she have let callum and ezran help her? She's failed at everything else (in her eyes). She can't go home, her own adopted fathers either banished her or tried to kill her. She couldn't fail at this, too. She had to do something. That's interesting.

And on callum's side, I think it would have been cool to see him connecting with the ocean arcanum...without the finnegrin plot, bc I didn't like it. He sees ezran growing up, and that's kind of scary, not always knowing what his little brother's thinking or feeling anymore. Callum's growing up, too, and, as much as he loves being high mage, he still wants to explore the world and learn new things outside of katolis; he's getting political marriage offers; his life is going to change soon, one way or the other, and that's scary, and he doesn't really have a parental figure to talk to, with Amaya being away. He can't always control or predict rayla, and he can't control or predict or prevent all of his losses, either. Since that's the ocean arcanum's whole deal, I think it would have been a neat way for him to get it.

There we go, plotlines for individual characters instead of the whole relationship, that still include and effect that relationship. Also, I would somewhat tweak callum's decision to help rayla in s7. First, he would also have his own conflicting feelings about runaan. He agrees runaan should be allowed to go to his home and husband, but insists that ezran will be easily convinced as soon as things settle down, "in a few weeks." Rayla goes through with the breakout anyways, callum's hurt but decides to go along with it, and--and this is very important--HE DOES NOT LIKE RUNAAN. He does not FORGIVE Runaan. Maybe they talk it out, but either way, runaan being the one to have killed harrow effects callum in some way. S7 made it more of an ezran thing. Callum also feels a lot more torn up about betraying ezran, maybe seeing some sibling pairs in the silvergrove that make him think back on his brother.

4: The key of aaravos

Just some resolution to the key, guys. It's been emphasized CONSTANTLY in the show since s1 episode 4. Idk what it would be, I just want it to be SOMETHING.

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

What would happen if Dream abandons his post, like Destruction did?

I know it's not in his character, but hypothetically, what do you think the consequences would be to the world?

interesting question!

i mean, to get the obvious out of the way, the first thing the universe would do would be appoint a new dream of the endless, the reason there hasn't been another destruction is bc he's been keeping his sigil on his person, refusing to abdicate fully, because he doesn't want anyone else to have to get dragged into this

but since you said like destruction did, assuming this was also the case for dream, let's start with this conversation

(and the line here that does always stick out to me is "things still change", because it really does boil down the endless to their most fundamental property - they are all vehicles of change. because life needs change and change needs life, that is the thesis at the core of sandman, that flows through almost every character in different ways, and if you have seven beings that represent the fundamental aspects of life, that means the things they have power over are the things that change people)

(i also still haven't gotten over the time when delirium asks what the word is for the thing that lets you know time is happening and dream just says "change", but now we're getting off topic)

essentially what destruction's saying here is that destruction will happen with or without him, but instead of being in the hands of one of the endless (a being with their own rules and restrictions, their own place in the cogs of the universe), it's in the hands of humanity (or mortals in general, in the comic world where alien species are a common thing)

fate is a really complicated subject in sandman, with both destiny and the fates as separate agents, and within that both can be surprised and influenced by the right person, but all the endless have some kind of connection to time through their father, and if there is a grand plan that's supposed to be fulfilled via the endless' aspects, they would be the ones to push those pieces into place. whether they're aware of it or not, there is some kind of order to how they care for their aspects, they have an instinct for the way things 'should be' (see: literally any prediction any of them have ever made based on their aspect)

and that would be what destruction is deliberately ignoring here, and instead letting every piece fall into place how it will, through the chaos of mortals making their own decisions

and that's a decision that's backed up by the story! because the other thing that sandman does like to push is that ultimately fate is nothing in the face of mortals. the endless exist because of living beings, not the other way around, as dream says to desire. and we see with lyta in kindly ones, she pushed the fates into acting against dream. they didn't go after dream because of the blood debt, the blood debt was the loophole that let them interfere, because lyta was going after dream, and she invoked their power to help her

why should the endless remain caretakers, asks destruction, if it only hurts them, and ultimately they're only needed to complete some arbitrary plan?

(dream who views everything as a story, which must by definition have an author and an ending, fundamentally does not understand this)

so if we extrapolate from there, if dream were to abdicate, there would still be a dreaming, but dreams wouldn't be crafted to serve the stories of the dreamers, people would learn nothing from their dreams, it would be chaos subject to the mind of the individual dreamer. some people still may have helpful dreams, but some people would be hurt by them, and there would be no predicting what would happen. you'd also lose a lot of the knowledge that dream keeps in the library, and there'd be no telling what would happen to all the creatures he's brought into the dreaming to be immortal

(as far as "but we saw the dreaming without dream for a hundred years" goes, i don't think that's a perfect example, because the dreaming is an extension of dream, you can't rip a being in two and expect both halves to just get on with their independent lives. they were hurting being apart, but they were still the channel through which mortals dream, which meant everyone's dreams got thrown into pain and chaos. whereas the dreaming that would be formed through mortals alone would, for better or worse, have nothing to do with the endless)

but there is another clue that throws a spanner in this whole thing so far - death. because destruction isn't the only time one of the endless have abandoned their duties. there's a really short death side comic called a winter's tale, most of which got turned into everything death says to dream in episode six, but there's one page that didn't make it into the tv show

death stopped taking souls. death did not move on without her. mortals were not able to kill each other. and if nothing dies, nothing changes, and the world is thrown into a very different chaos than if death just happened randomly.

i don't have a concrete answer for what this means in regards to all of the above? but here's some possibilities

1) everything i said about destruction holds true for all endless, but this wasn't death leaving her post, this was death deliberately rebelling against the system. she was still pushing pieces into place, but where they shouldn't be, actively holding people back from dying

2) everything i said holds true for all endless but death. because death is different to the others, she's death. the endless cannot experience their own aspect. the ritual that surrounds the lives of the endless don't apply to her, it's specifically stated in regards to the funeral shrouds that there's only six. she must be there for the ending of all things, including her siblings, she has no way out, so she can't just abdicate her post like the others could, even if she wanted to

3) it works differently for all of them. this is the one i personally think is least likely? but since i don't actually know for sure, i think we can consider it might work for dream like it does for death, rather than for destruction (the elder three do have more fundamental abilities, after all). in which case, dream doing what destruction did would have disastrous consequences. it would start with dreams you have while asleep, mortals would only be subject to already created dreams, which may also fade over time into nothingness. but the dreaming isn't the only thing dream has dominion over. stories, creativity, connection, hope, faith, these are all things that fall under his purview. if you could tear those away from humanity, what you'd have left wouldn't be humanity

[brooklynisher]

Here's a bunch of old sketchbook doodles I made y'all

Stick around bc this includes my first SPG drawings!! (Before I joined Tumblr)

Riveting start

I'll start off with little drawings I made of myself. And my god do you see what I'm doing with the anatomy? Do you see how tiny those joints are? That's horrific. Why did I build everyone like that? But Yugo is where I began to find my art style. Will love them forever for that. I've got to go back to simple-shaped heads one of these days and blush/eyelashes on everything

We've got some lovely Smile For Me-related doodles. First is a Flower Kid design. Second was not smile for me specifically, but Face Love (by the same devs). And the last two were my earlier attempts at making comics and scenes. Ft. lancer for some reason.

Here are a couple of abandoned OCs. Pretty boy (Basil) is supposed to be yellow. We've all had that OC whose only trait was being a hot person and that's what he was all about. Didn't develop him much in terms of character which is sad because I kinda like his design. He was created when I was doodling random designs in FireAlpaca. I'll have to show the other doodles in a different post (If you are interested).

THIS GUY I WOULD LIKE TO BRING BACK! Might be kinda basic in terms of like "Weird Core" designs but I still love him. His plot keeps changing though because his design is so strange yet so simple to the point where I could put him in just about any world I wanted to had I gotten bored of the old one. Which is silly bc he's just a depressed news anchor man.

Anyway bc of that, Basil used to be his bf, but isn't anymore. He got replaced with fat peppermint man who fun fact: was inspired by the song Brass Goggles BEFORE I even got into SPG and learned what it was about! How silly is that! Peppermint boy is technically my first SPG OC!

She was a fun one, but I abandoned her too. I think she was too influenced by Frye's character from Splatoon. She was a warrior of sorts. Sort of tribal I suppose. She spoke fast, and in her tribe's language, so many people struggled to understand her. She was very bouncy too. Jumping all over the place. If you know Frye, you'll probably notice that they're a bit too similar to each other. That's usually why I abandon my OCs. When they're too similar to another.

Critter I doodled. Not really an OC, but I still think she's cute

Don't ask me about the first guy. The girl was a mii that was born in Tomodachi Life! Her name is Lily. She is the child of Kris (Deltarune) and Hatsune Miku. She looks silly which is why I love her.

I'm Picasso. Kinda vibe with this ngl. Not sure if I could ever turn this into anything though

Here are some low-effort doodles. Enjoyed the design of the big lady more than I thought. I was practicing drawing bigger bodies at the time. Joints are still KILLING ME but it's not bad considering I had the worst anatomy method imaginable

Here are some higher-effort doodles. Aside from the abhorrent anatomy (WHY DOES THE PIG ZOMBIE HAVE TWO DIFFERENTLY SIZED SHOULDERSS????) I quite like these critters. That mermaid girl had lore too. She could control the dead of the sea. She was lowkey evil. Never turned her into anything though. Also, you can see by that guy at the bottom of the first one, that Bunny's art was starting to take an influence on me.

Lots of stuff going on over here but LOOK! MY VERY FIRST SPG FANART! IT'S OF VI POINTING AT AN APPLE AND YELLING AT IT

I was inspired by Bunny to make these monster-ish-looking people

More thingies! There's the goopy robot which I initially drew as a first attempt at drawing a robot, but then I made it black and goopy bc that's what it was giving. The star guy appears and disappears a few times. I think I wanted to keep them, but the design was very similar to LightLazer so I felt a bit weird about drawing them.

More robot shenanigans. First time drawing Rabbit and The Spine! Cannot believe that my first Spine drawing was in a dress oh my god.

More Bunny-inspired drawings and I'm REALLY kinda digging that weird tiny robot critter. Looking at it now, it's kinda like Spring in a few ways, but it's also completely different from Spring in so many other ways. The limbs are retractable. I kinda like this thing actually. I Oughtta do something with it.

These ones are more SPG-specific. You'll have to forgive me, most of these are from memory. Don't ask me why Rabbit looks like David Bowie in the first one.

And finally, some Rabbit and Spine doodles! Rabbit's doing the "Hey Andy Sweetie" meme. I could totally reattempt drawing that today actually.

Anyway, hope you had fun. I did. Ugh this is so sillyy

[indelicateink]

@limonmelon you made a really great post about vampires and creativity, and it really struck a cord with me, because i have passionate feelings on the topic. and I started typing up this response, and then it because a gd entire ted talk/half plea to the writers that got off the topic of your post, and i thought: christ, what an asshole i'd be to maybe post this on someone else's post, lol??? (and I didn't want to make it ttly independent, bc then it felt like vagueing, which is weird.) but after typing it all up i feel committed to the time/brain investment and am just posting it on my own blog lol.

anyway: read limonmelon's post bc it's very insightful.

i'm very curious about how they will handle lestat's music in the show, and do I hope they let him be a good artist. because although I totally agree about their unchanging, magically unnatural bodies, i feel like they are emotionally allowed to learn/grow/change? (this isn't meant to be a rebuttal--more my differing pov on something I see come up on this topic a lot.) so...personally, likewise i'm not sure their relationship to art is necessarily stagnant.

to my mind--and it could ttly be projection--i felt like louis's abandonment of his photography was more about fear of failure and frustration. and personally, as an artist, I fight the deeply entrenched societal idea that some people are Naturally Gifted and everyone is consigned to mediocrity: innate talent can exist, but hand to god it is the time you put into your craft that matters so much more than the beloved fairytale of divine skill. (when people look at my art and say the dreaded That's So Great I Could Never Do That, it's pain.) I think louis knows what he likes and has hit the barrier of not being able to YET create what his mind's eye wants, and it's too frustrating to continue being Not Good Enough (Yet) because he knows good art. and that is so incredibly human. I don't think vampirism has cast his sensitivity/self-expression in amber--i think he cut himself off at the knees, and we'll maybe never know if he could've excelled. instead he nurtures his eye for others' art (which i feel is just a different way to channel his sensitivity).

i feel like our go-to example of vampiric artistic mediocrity is marius. iirc in the books it's implied that marius's art was never special enough to be immortalized like some of his peers were. which is also just...life. and objectively hilarious because he was so goddamn pompous about it (and kind of an asshole lol). that was so human to me--not a vampiric curse, though i suppose they're not mutually exclusive. but even with forever, he's just not going to make the kind of art that will land him the (highly subjective) recognition of a museum, though his pursuit of art may please him personally, even if the results don't. THAT'S ART, BABY (i'm directing this at marius, lol).

I love that amc/AR gives us of examples of vampires who don't always make "good art" or they stagnate--maybe the TdV, maybe Marius, etc. It's a great statement that even with their supernatural abilities and, ostensibly, all the time in the world (caveat: you have to practice; caveat: i posit that vampires have fewer active hours in our 24 hours than we do, and usually have to spend a chunk of that time hunting & eating instead of making a sandwich), they still aren't also given the ability to knock it out of the park every time when it comes to making art. they gotta earn it like everyone else.

i agree they are trapped in those unchanging bodies, and i do feel like that could add some angst to their lives that might make making art harder, given it's possibly an emotional burden sucking up all their bandwidth? that seems to me like a case-by-case thing, though.

but I don't think vampires' immortality inherently necessarily translates to, say, soulless art. that one can't imbue one's art with relatable emotion or expertly express feelings and emotions just because death isn't looming. I do think they face different obstacles in relating to existence--they're operating on a whole different way of existing, becoming daily killers, eating people to survive, never seeing the sun, hiding who they are from the world, being forever in good physical health, living on a different scale of time--but these are generally passionate beings, and I don't feel like their differences would hinder making engaging art? (though, interestingly, it could be more alien to us, and harder to relate to.)

so I really hope they don't take the tack that lestat's music sucks just because he's a vampire. lestat came to vampirism already highly skilled in and passionate about performance, and the magical abilities of vampirism helped him pick up the ability to play all the musical instruments he could want. and i think it would be inconsistent for amc to decide he--they--can't make "good art" despite their skills, that they can't express themselves in a human way, because they can't grow and change?

because I think it's shown they can change.

in temperament/action, in the show at least, it's implied that lestat grows from a short-tempered insecure mercurial partner/father (granted, this is a bitter louis relaying this characterization lol) who learns a "very hectic lesson" and, is hinted, grows to someone who will one day possibly engage in a more functional relationship with louis in the 21st C.

amc louis, likewise, is someone with depression, anger, and a lot of compounding angst--and then with daniel's revelation, pivots, it's implied, into a new way of existing.

i feel like we're given the hint these characters will continue to evolve. i'm guessing they will remain fundamentally who they are (lestat--impetuous, passionate, violent, sensitive; louis--thoughtful, astute, ambitious, slower to show the intense feelings he keeps beneath the surface), but the potential for growth is there.

idk, I'm just passionate about these beings having the ability to sucessfully express themselves artistically in a way that resonates. i get it could go either way. and i mean, if amc decides it's just a supernatural curse that they can't make "good art" than there's nothing I can say to that, it's arbitrary lol. but it doesn't feel right to me, given the givens? and what a shame to randomly go little mermaid with this, and take away their voice in exchange for the ability to walk on the land. amc, let passionate vampires make good art if they can manage it, just like everybody else lol. I want to see what they make.

[msommers]

riya youtuber AU and maeve magnus archives AU!

thank you!! finally a reminder to get back to those abandoned maeve thoughts lmao // send an au for 5 headcanons

riya youtuber au

in true riya form, i can't imagine she'd have a single type of content. she'd be all over the place, uploading whatever the fuck she felt like making. also in true riya form this chaos somehow works for her, algorithm gods be damned. (it's bc she's hot and has hot friends/family)

honestly she's probably one of those youtubers who has like 3 different channels because she let a friend talk her into at least trying to be a little organized and yeah it worked, things are sorted, but sometimes she'll go over a month without putting anything out on one of them because she didn't feel like making anything for it lmao

in this world she'd actually get to live those dreams of traveling with victor and they'd have the most envy inducing vlogs about it. like wym they're so carefree and privileged enough they can do shit like “we spent 3 months visiting the most romantic destinations according to [insert site here]” why can't that be ME

i just know one of her most popular videos would be “grwm but my brothers do the voice over” (daimon knows the most bc he's the married one and listens to his wife lmao) 

she does grwm livestreams before she attends concerts and almost all of them start several hours before she’s set to leave because she’ll have the artist’s music playing in the bg and waste an ungodly amount of time dancing to it + talking with her chat. the eyeliner can wait she’s gotta shake ass to this chorus real quick

tma maeve au (which i did partially write a statement for all those months ago but never finished lmao)

she had 2 encounters with the lonely. the first happened when she was a little girl and home alone, the forsaken playing with her belief that her parents wished they'd never had her by having her walk through a version of her home with all trace of her existence removed. when she ran outside to look for help, it appeared that nobody could see or hear her whatsoever. naturally she had a massive breakdown after that, blacked out, was woken up by her irritated mother, and found out she'd lost about 2 days to the "nightmare".

her second encounter came nearly three years into her marriage to carden, the lonely returned in a familiar horror but this time working in tandem with the stranger. her home once again warped by the fears, this time everything of hers replaced to display the version of her that carden tried so hard to mold her into. surrounded by people that she knew because of him, all seemingly blind to her panic and speaking to her like it was a casual gathering with nothing amiss. she's married to that man for another two years and almost certainly recovering from that encounter the entire time, often stumbling two steps back because of his gaslighting aligning perfectly with that encounter's reality. 

i still believe it’s super funny for maeve to lie her ass off on a cv and in an interview with institute head ilya (he’s a knowerTM but goes along with it anyway) to get a job there because she believes it has answers for her experiences, and those will help to heal her. and then it’s even funnier bc she’s unwittingly signed on for exposure to a third entity and even more horrors. like yikes, sorry bestie, you really don’t deserve all that. at least she can flirt w her co-workers to cope

maeve recording her own statement is fun for many reasons but i think #1 is the concept of after finishing the stories, her saying into the quiet, “ilya. i know you’re listening.” and hearing the static grow just a little bit louder bc yes. yes he is. do i know all of the surrounding circumstances or place in the story?? absolutely not. and idc. i think it’s cool and fun and sexy for king voyeur himself to be Seen in return. to get called out when he's just sitting there in his office having a peep lmao

lysandra (lonely avatar) and ilya (eye avatar) having a turf war over who has the claim on maeve because lysandra’s been tormenting her for [indiscriminate amount of time here] and wants the treat, but ilya's formed an attachment + maeve's so effortlessly started easing into the domain with her dedication to research, writing, and aiding archivist-in-training dietrich over there.

[therainingkiwi]

overall PJO TV show impressions

TL; DR: not a perfect show, but overall that doesn't matter bc they get the important parts right.

Finished watching the PJO show episodes 1 and 2 and I have SO MANY thoughts. General impression is that although there were a handful of wonky moments (mostly related to pacing and editing); overall those didn't bother me because the HEART of the original books is there and that's what really mattered to me most.

I originally loved these books not for the Greek Mythology (although that is what got me initially interested), but for the emotional storyline. Percy Jackson is, at its heart, a book about a bullied kid finding a home, finding confidence, learning that even after all these years, he is GOOD at something. He is WORTH something.

There are tons of things to nitpick about the series. Pacing is weird, and Grover rushing into the conversation about the quest felt almost deus ex machina… but at the end of the day, the reason I adore this adaptation is because it cuts to the heart of what Percy Jackson IS.

It's about kids who have never belonged. It's about the outcasts, the weirdos, the people who have been told by society that they're incompetent and worthless and disruptive and "special." I could also write a whole essay on the show's use of the word "special." Let me tell you, as an early-diagnosed ADHD'er, there are few words as patronizing, as shameful, as painful, as that. "Special" education, my ass. If no one ever calls me that word ever again, it'll be too soon.

The movies were about some children of the gods that went on adventures and had sword fights. There were cool superpowers and monsters and fun action scenes. But the heart? The emotional center? That was gone. It was turned into a fetch quest story with little to no emotional depth.

And, look, pure-action isn't BAD. Sometimes it's fun to watch people battle cool monsters with cool powers. But that's not why Percy Jackson became an international bestseller. It captured the hearts of children everywhere who felt out of place in the world and wanted to belong.

And THAT's what this series gets. I don't care about the missteps that much. The cuts to black, as if this were airing with commercial breaks? Honestly, didn't like it. The fight with Dodds was anticlimactic, we didn't spend NEARLY enough time at camp, and I think the omission of percy and luke's first sword fight was really a mistake. But at the end of the day, it's still about a bullied disabled kid who not only finds a place to belong, but fights to make that place better for those who come after him. It's about a kid who goes from thinking he's broken, to knowing that he's not. It's about a kid who was abandoned by his dad, and decided that he wasn't going to let that happen to anyone else. It's got the emotion and the heart, and for that alone, it's a resounding success in my book.

[plusultraetc]

Saw the tags on the Toshinori post and do you have more to share?? Any insights? If so I’d welcome hearing them 😭 He really is so self-sacrificial and it hurts but it’s truly at the core of who he is

This has been sitting in my inbox for almost a week because I needed to make a futile effort at organizing my thoughts into something coherent--but this is as organized as they're going to get for now! Thank you so so much for the ask though bc I do love to yell about MHA <3

(Obligatory reminder that I'm watching this show in such a confusing order so if what I'm about to rant about has been addressed before and I'm harping on it unnecessarily I Am Sorry.)

(For anyone curious, this is the post btw)

SO. It feels relevant to mention that my sister and I were talking about All Might in the first place because we were talking about MHA Moments That Haunt Us. For me, it's the 'I am not here' sign hanging around the neck of the All Might statue in Kamino Ward after the Paranormal Liberation War. It literally lives in my brain rent-free 24/7 365 days a year, especially with the AM vs AFO fight being relatively fresh in my mind. The reversal of All Might's catchphrase and all it represents hurts, but to display it at the site of his 'last stand' in Kamino? That's brutal.

All Might vs All For One and how that rematch plays out is so so important to the story for so many reasons, but one of them is that the fight itself is a sacrifice. Toshinori gives everything he has, short of his life, to defeat All For One. He gives up his physical strength, his public image as the unbeatable Symbol of Peace, and, effectively his Quirk ("Goodbye, All For One. Goodbye, One For All" haunts my every waking moment, still!)

This battle is also the culmination of years of All Might's life and heroic philosophy (because Toshinori has been both practicing AND preaching self-sacrifice in the name of the greater good since we met him. It's what he thinks a hero does). Kamino is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, if you will. Yes, he does get to walk away from the fight with AFO, but he walks away irrevocably different, almost unrecognizable. He's forced to totally change his focus and his mindset and his life. Everything he has given up is made literally visible in the deterioration of his body.

But most most importantly, All Might's sacrifice at Kamino was... all for nothing. Even if AM defeated him in that moment, All For One is free less than a year later. The world is in shambles. People are afraid, and their faith in heroes is crumbling. Heroes are afraid, and this time, they have no idealized symbol to rally behind. When Dostoevsky wrote "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing," he was talking about All Might btw.

Toshinori gave this fight (and his career, and being All Might) everything he had, and it still wasn't enough. He sacrificed so much of himself, and so much of how he perceived himself and his purpose, and he didn't even save the world. He just bought them time--and not much of it. I think that's why he's so desperate to keep fighting, no matter the cost, no matter what condition he's in--even 'quite literally half-dead.' He can't let Kamino be the Symbol of Peace's final stand, because Kamino was ultimately for nothing. Instead of saving the world, it has been reframed through the sign on the statue as All Might abandoning the world. And ever since then, he's been scrambling to prove that he is still here.

(There's also probably something here about Sir Nighteye telling him that he was going to die. Since Nighteye used his Quirk on him, Toshinori has been anticipating sacrificing his life for good. Knowing that his entire hero career is effectively a fight to the death has probably maximized his self-sacrificial tendencies.)