#because it's the evil day

[mudinyourshoes]

watching tale of the nine tailed because honestly screw christmas that's way and so far:

-rang, rang baby your bother shows up to the site of your massacre, starts crying, and then "executes" you but misses any vital organs. he's a immortal deity who obviously has a lot of experience killing people and you...you conclude that he was actually trying to kill you?! FOR REAL REAL?! REALSIES????? pls say sike

-if yeon was clear about what he did with rang, i'm pretty sure that would mean rang owed him a debt and since foxes always repay their debts, i'm guessing that's why yeon never cleared this up. because let's be real, yeon is screwed. he screwed himself when broke the rules to get ji-a reincarnated and so i'm pretty sure he's just protecting his brother by trying to keep him out of yeon self-made, self-destructive ✨problems✨

-i love that yeon isn't really looking for a "happily ever after". he's a realist in the sense that he's aware he fell in love with a mortal and that means he was always going to lose her. and he's obsessive anyway. fantastic A++

-on that note, i really like the world building that's happening around "how fucked in the head does living for thousands of years make you?" not just for yeon, but for all the supernatural creatures. rang...might actually be more sane than most because he's only a hundreds of years old (????) but even that might have broken him a bit lol

-ji-a is marvelous. she's smart, she's brave, she more than a little nuts. which is good because yeon is all kinds of nuts. they match. very nice.

-i do not understand ppl complaining about lack of chemistry in this.

-so far it's perfect?? it's got fantasy, mystery side plots, solid world building, friend and family relationships that feel real and important, and I would hate to meet any of the lead characters ever irl. so, that's perfect.

[musubiki]

balor 🥰

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[krashlite]

"A stream through the valley to nourish these hills would lay all my troubles to sleep" A Field Song - Unfamiliar Things

Based off of CherriFire's designs!

[kindaasrikal]

Shatter spin comics and dragons rising season 2 part 2 spoilers (but its literally just a picture for both):

Like father like son, these two just keep on mimicking each other.

[itsnotmourn]

OH MY GOD ITS CARMEN AND RICHARD

[nelkcats]

Invocation to the wrong deity

Diana needed help, but it was a burden that fell on her, since the danger was on Themyscira. She wasn't going to bother her companions with a personal problem so she didn't inform the League.

Or at least, she didn't think to ask for help until she realized that she required an experienced mage to perform a summoning. She could ask Zatana for help but she was on a journey, and Constantine was not an option. With a sigh she decided to contact Captain Marvel.

Her partner agreed to help her immediately, and with much reluctance on her mother's part (no one was happy with the Captain's participation but they accepted it) they managed to perform the summoning. Just in time, because one of the "evils" from Pandora's box had landed on their land.

Unfortunately, instead of summoning their old guide "Pandora", someone else appeared. A teenager in a star-spangled cloak looking around excitedly. Of course, no one was happy with such a development.

Except the summoned one, Danny was happy to leave his meeting with the Observants, the excuse of the summoning was always convenient.

[woffles-4-waffles]

Rebooted Overlord 👉👈

[acowardinmordor]

Hey. What if Chrissy was cursed, but she doesn’t go to Eddie to ask for ket, she goes to ask for carboprost. And maybe she doesn’t call it that by name, and maybe she doesn’t outright say that she can’t stay pregnant because it would mean that she’d have to marry Jason, but that doesn’t matter. Because in this version, Eddie is the child of an accidental pregnancy, and his mom and dad got married, and it destroyed his mom. So fuck that noise.

Normally, he’d have the meds on hand, and would offer to drive her out of town to a clinic. He happens to be out, and Chrissy is terrified (because Vecna is making it all so much worse) so Eddie changes something.

He offers to drive Dustin home, and has Chrissy with him. Dustin thinks this is hella weird, but Eddie says that he needs to talk to Claudia. Dustin still demands answers, but the kid knows that his mom is a nurse, and it has to be important to happen at 11 on a Friday. Chrissy stays in the car with her favorite music playing to help her calm down, while Eddie has a quick, awkward conversation with Claudia. She thinks Eddie got his girlfriend pregnant and gives him a look about it. She didn’t think that situation was a possible problem for Eddie tbh.

Claudia doesn’t have a random bag of abortion meds with her - that would be insane - but she works the next day, and can get Chrissy in quickly and quietly. Before opening.

Eddie goes back out to the van with the news, planning to ignore Dustin’s questions the entire way, and then leave. Thus. Dustin is with Eddie when Chrissy pauses the tape to listen. Thus. Dustin sees her cursed, and he’s a little shit, but he is always right. Cranks the music back up, manages, with Eddie’s help, to snap her out of it.

Dustin runs inside to grab his walkie, shout to his mom he’s having a sleepover, and starts the fight 16 hours early.

—-

Hot potato if you want it

[navree]

genuinely would love for some of the "both parties are the same" people to name me a single election in the entirety of the twenty first century where the outcome for the country wouldn't have been better if a democrat had won

[doomedclockworkdotmp3]

yknow what whatever have some beauty mark boys

[bonefall]

Hey, what makes a character a 'plot device but not a character'? And how do you not do that? I'm trying to do it on purpose but also I need to still make them interesting because it's on purpose, yknow?

A good skill to pick up is to learn to criticise criticism itself. A "plot device" is simply a thing that moves the plot along, it's a neutral literary analysis term! Usually, when people are angry that "a character has been used as a plot device," it doesn't mean they hate plot devices. It means they're gesturing at something deeper.

Runningwind and Bumble are equally plot devices in their deaths. They are both killed by the antagonist to escalate political tension. Runningwind is rarely "accused" of just being a plot device, and yet, we're talking about Bumble for the same thing.

So, why?

Well, Runningwind is just a background character, but in life, he was a part of the community. He was characterized as impatient but responsible. Yet, he wasn't SO important that he died with a bunch of unresolved plot threads.

He is mostly an extension of the entity of ThunderClan. His killing by Tigerstar, and the fear and paranoia that settles on the group after this, feel like a progression of the story insteas of something forced.

Bumble, on the other hand...

Is hated immediately by Gray Wing, when she's established as Turtle Tail's friend. Bumble's abuse at Tom the Wifebeater's hands invites even MORE investment. The rejection is shocking and upsetting. There's a story there about our main characters being imperfect; jealous, bigoted, and judgemental.

But, she is simply killed off. Everything they set up for this character is gone with little personalized fanfare. It's not a tragedy with a lesson about cruelty, or something anyone regrets.

It's just... plot. Gray Wing whinging that no one will like his shitty brother now that his body count is 2.

More than that, in the discussion of women in particular, "Fridging" was coined to give a name to the way women characters often don't get their stories told at all. There is a CULTURAL trend of female characters facing disproportionate violence, for the sake of advancing male plots.

Bumble has a lot going for her. Petal had a lot going for her. Turtle Tail had a lot going for her. Bright Stream had a lot going for her. When they died, they took their potential with them.

It's not always wrong to kill off a character of high potential, mind you. In Gurren Lagann, Kamina's death is sudden and shocking, leaving a massive hole in the hearts of the cast that never heals. Grappling with that loss, but also letting his memory fuel them, is a major theme of that story.

All that to say... there's no formula for avoiding it. You've gotta identify what the deeper issue is, in your specific narrative.

I can't say for certain what that will look like for your story, but here's some things I keep in mind;

When you make characters who exist to die, make sure they're people before you axe them.

Ask yourself; what about them does the cast miss?

If they just miss them because they were (pre-existing relationship), go back to the drawing board.

Fluttering Bird as an example. Who was she? Dead sister. Why do they miss her? Dead sister. No traits until after her death.

Runningwind was short-tempered and helpful. Kamina was a valuable leader who made people believe in a brighter future. Swiftpaw was fiesty and desperate to prove himself. The better characterized, the more profound the loss usually is.

If this is a female character who is dying just to serve the plot, be aware of cultural bias and tropes. How is the gender ratio looking in your cast? Is this happening disproportionately with your girls?

Note how Quiet Rain's litter had both a boy and a girl, but the girl was chosen to be "weaker" and wither away.

And how most of the time in DOTC, whenever a man had to be upset, a girl would get killed for it.

If you ever feel like the character on the chopping block is NOT a full character, ask yourself why it needs to be a character at all. You don't need to spend narrative time building out someone when a literal object of high value might suffice.

"My sister died when I swore to protect her and I can't face my family" = Old. Tired. Ive seen this.

"I lost my heirloom sword when I swore to protect it and I can't face my family." = Fascinating. Why was the sword so valuable? Will they really not take you back? How did you lose it?

When you do kill off "high value" characters, try to make sure you're not leaving too many plot threads hanging. Or at least make a point of how they will never get closure.

[gentlebeard]

If I could hold you for a minute, Darling, I’d go through it again

For @edsbacktattoo & @stedesearring 💕 Show: Our Flag Means Death - Season 1 & 2 Music: Francesca by Hozier YouTube

[scringee]

It truly is a resident evil 4 ass post

[screwpinecaprice]

Some warm up connverse

[moistvonlipwig]

it's actually so nuts to me that no one across both shows objects to giving angel the gem of amarra even though it is obviously an objectively terrible plan on every level. yeah sure give the guy with an Evil Switch a ring that makes him invulnerable. that'll go well