#because there is a lot of cheating that goes on. just generally. and shenanigans i don't approve of and all of that

[m3ab]

So @hoicacti wanted some of my Yu-Gi-Oh headcanons, so here are a few non season five spoiler ones:)

Joey's dog tag that we see in his season two(?) outfit was gifted to him by serenity before his mom left with her. He wears it all of the time, under his clothes usually but just in general. ( @spudat0 came up with this one)

TW: infidelity, alcohol abuse This one's a little darker, but Joey's mom cheated on his dad. Basically, you know how serenity and joey look nothing alike? Yeahhhh. And she took serenity when she left because she left to go with whoever she cheated with. Joey's father turned to drinking as a coping mechanism, and that's how all of that went.

joey has a missing tooth from fighting and stuff. ( @spudat0 also came up with this one)

joey has lightning scars from y'know getting hit with lightning during battle city. And some burn scars, also from battle city. Yugi has burn scars from various incidents, namely when bandit Keith stole the puzzle(or otogi/duke for my manga readers) and when Yami jumped in front of the blast to save joey and mai. Ryou has scars from Yami bakura shenanigans. (Spud did a lot of the work for this one, but I helped a little bit)

joey and Yugi are both very wary of water after almost drowning in season one and the yugi vs mind controlled joey duel in season two.

ok the rest of them are all very silly ones about Yami, because he's a very silly guy.

Yami goes on yugi's computer all night occasionally and just does stuff on it. It doesn't matter what. It's how he got a lot of his real world knowledge outside of Yugi's head. Yugi is so tried after he does this.

Yami has the weirdest food cravings ever. He throws random foods together and finds them delicious. Yugi has taken control and immediately thrown up on multiple occasions, and Yami was very quickly banned from making meals.

Yami absolutely adores helicopters. This one is my favorite to joke around with, because it's so stupid. It mostly came about because of how fascinated Yami looks in the kaiba corp helicopter in season two.

Ok this one isn't as silly but is really sweet and one of my favorites of this batch. Yami has some manipulation over Yugi's dreams, and so he uses that ability to fend off yugi's nightmares. (This one was mostly me)

All of the ones not specifically marked as either spud or I were a team effort, and all of the Yami ones were done in the middle of the night while we were way too sleep deprived for our own goods. Except for the nightmare one.

[stereopticons]

On This Day in Schitt's Creek: March 4

2018

Button [david/patrick, G, 1,162] by Ididntsignupforthisshit

Alexis pushed the book towards him, and Patrick's breath caught in his throat. He reached out and his fingers touched the edge of the page reverently, like it was something to be cherished. Which was funny, actually, because it was a drawing of himself. | Or: In which Patrick gets a glance into David's little black book |

the waiting game [david/patrick, E, 6,004] by mihaly

After six months, David and Patrick still hadn't consummated their relationship, and frankly, David was tired of waiting.

2019

Always By Your Side [david/patrick, G, 2,672] by MadAlien

When Patrick is rushed to the hospital, David is left in the dark.

Lipstick on Your Collar [david/patrick, T, 3,636] by @stargatewars

Alexis finds lipstick on the collar of David's sweater. She fears the worst. That David is cheating on Patrick. Upon investigation the evidence mounts, but what does she do with the information? Tell Patrick? Keep her brothers secret?

Something Far More Suffonsifying [david/patrick, G, 2,781] by youwereonlywaiting

Patrick tells David about his audition, and David ends up revealing his time with Tina and Roland Jr. Or, a coda to Season 5, Episode 7: "A Whisper of Desire"

2020

[text] they'll none of them be missed [gen, T, 480] by text by (olive2read)

Twyla muses about a gift from a former boss

Christmas Revelations [david/patrick, M, 37,420] by @ineveryuniverse-sc

Patrick goes to his parent's house for Christmas in the hopes of telling them about David. David stays behind and has a difficult time being apart from Patrick for their first Christmas. Can David really stay away? A story about Patrick and David's first Christmas.....the good, the bad and the ugly.

I've Got You Under My Skin [david/patrick, T, 18,840] by @mostlyinthemorning

Patrick is stuck in his relationship with Rachel. David is stuck in Schitt's Creek, working at Blouse Barn. Both of them wish they were anywhere else.

Make It Right to the One I Love [david/patrick, G, 1,957] by ryry_peaches

David and Patrick talk it out. - David looks at a weird, tiny droplet stain on Patrick's couch — wine? olive oil? — and nods, trying not to seem mullish. He knows that he screwed up and he wants to take it back, but he can't, and this is — they've talked, a lot, about David's inability to cooperate, and Patrick really does have a superhuman level of patience with David's compulsions and needs. Right up until they start to hurt other people — that's the general cutoff of acceptable behavior, and David crossed the line. Big time. With the person in his life he least wants to hurt.

Sugar Water [david/patrick, G, 1,913] by odofidi

An empty apartment. Full of potential, two boys in love, music, and pizza. Takes places after The Plant but before Housewarming.

Think About What You Want [david/patrick, T, 1,384] by ThighsLikeTreeTrunks

Patrick thinks about if he should get married.

2021

Cookies [david/patrick, G, 1,700] by @rmd-writes

David bakes cookies with Marcy. That’s the fic.

Ecuador [gen, G, 300] by Rosey_Peach

Gold Star [stevie/twyla, E, 1,283] by @agoodpersonrose

“I’ve only ever been with men before,” Stevie murmurs, watching as Twyla nods in confirmation. “I kind of gathered that,” she whispers. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Holiday Shenanigans [david/patrick, G, 25,590] by @sullymygoodname

Patrick hasn't been to see his parents in almost a year. Not since he called off his engagement, packed up his things, and moved five hours away. But now he's returning for Christmas, and his parents have invited David to spend the holiday with them, too! There's just one problem... Hello! It's the Happiest Season AU that at least 5 people wanted!

How to Change Your Name [david/patrick, T, 12,086] by @madlori

Patrick talks to his YouTube viewers about a major life decision he's made, but it's harder work talking to everyone else in his life about it, even his husband.

Love That Journey for You [patrick & alexis, G, 1,304] by cringeisalivelmao

Alexis needs advice, Patrick needs to be honest, Genovia needs a princess

now i'm about to see what you mean to me [alexis/twyla, G, 884] by budd

Five times Alexis and Twyla talk about visiting each other and one time she flies out to New York. #15: "the biggest, warmest hugs"

shivers [alexis/twyla, E, 5,560] by singsongsung

Alexis has a long day in an airport, and Twyla wants to take care of her.

we finally got it all right [alexis/twyla, G, 1,519] by @sarahlevys

Alexis brings Twyla home for the holidays. She just forgot to tell her parents a few important details. (A Twylexis spin on a Happiest Season redo.)

You Know I'm Smiling Baby, You Need Some Guiding Baby [david/patrick, E, 8,868] by floosilver8

The continuing sexploits of Schitt's Creek.You don't need to read the others in the series to follow this one.Mostly canon compliant, Patrick's POV for S6E6 The Wingman. Chapter 2 contains the three-way if you'd rather skip it. (Title from Tina Turner's "Let's Spend the Night Together")

You Say It Best [david/patrick, M, 35,481] by princesstigerlily

David Rose is an international superstar, known the world over for his work in a series of controversial, moody arthouse films. While in Toronto for a shoot, he wanders into The General Store, an old fashioned and out of date shop, where he meets the owner, Patrick Brewer. Can they make it work in such wildly different worlds? In other words, Schitt's Creek meets Notting Hill. (Chapter 9 epilogue is E-rated)

2022

[Podfic] The Weekend (And It's You) [david/patrick, M, podfic] by HowOldAreWe

It's summertime in the Hamptons and David and Patrick keep running into each other. It takes more than the weekend before they actually meet.

a hard ride [david/patrick, E, 1,859] by CouerieDeux

What the fuck? They had done this hundreds of times before. Why now? Was it because David had hugged Patrick beforehand for the first time and whispered “good luck”? He’d thought that was normal, but maybe Patrick’s dick had other interpretations of his hot breath in his luge partner's ear. Or: an unfortunate situation, a locker room confession, and a quickie.

destined to collide [david/patrick, G, poem] by elifisher96

you’ve awoken something within me,something that was unearthed decades ago and then buried again

Good Morning, Sunshine! [david/patrick, G, 1,112] by PositivelyBedeviledSchitthead

It all started a month or two after the wedding. At first, David thought it was cute. Then he thought it was annoying. Then he thought it was cute again and incredibly endearing. He didn’t realize how much he looked forward to it until it stopped one day.

polaris [david/patrick, T, 10,995] by strangeluvz

“I was going to propose, you know,” he whispers. “I bought the rings and everything. I asked for Stevie’s blessing.” David wipes at his eyes and laughs, a little hoarse. “And what did she say?” “She said if I did anything to hurt you she would make sure I didn’t live to do it again,” A fond smile crosses Patrick’s face at the memory. “But she clearly didn’t follow through.” “Huh,” David laughs, and it sounds hollow. “What a bitch.” * Patrick runs into David five years after their break-up.

So Much [david/patrick, T, 590] by @filet-o-feelings

David observes Patrick and contemplates some of the things he likes about him.

The Touch of Your Hand [david/patrick, m, 3,098] by @a-noble-dragon

It's only a handshake...

this doesn't have to be a sad song [stevie & rachel, G, 982] by @sarahlevys nervouscupcakeinspace @rhetoricalk @sunlightsymphony singsongsung

"Just for the record... you know I didn't know. Right? I wouldn't have... if I'd known about your friend, I wouldn't have just shown up, but—I felt like I didn't have a choice." After the barbecue, Stevie and Rachel commiserate together at the Wobbly Elm.

what my head overlooks the senses will show to my heart [david/patrick, T, 21,114] by @patrickredactedbrewer

“David Rose! Someone is threatening to leak evidence that your sister allegedly kidnapped several members of a Saudi prince’s family!” “Okay,” David snaps, because really? “Maybe try to look slightly less thrilled about it.” “Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to make light of the situation, I just like my job. People come to me at pretty difficult moments in their lives, it feels good to be able to help. And it sounds like you need—well, you need a lot of help, David.” Or, Patrick Brewer, private investigator

2023

for science [david/patrick, G, 2,360] by @filet-o-feelings

Patrick Brewer is new to Schitt's Creek and decides to explore the town when he meets a very enthusiastic Jocelyn Schitt. Jocelyn introduces him to a reluctant David Rose, leaving them on their own as soon as introductions are made.

2024

My Cup Runneth Over [david/patrick, M, 1,218] by @characterassassination-at-9am

Stevie has a non-emergency emergency that she needs David's help with. David, specifically, not Patrick. For reasons. David did not sign up for this, but he's a good friend, and a good person.

Stats:

No fanworks for 2017 2018: 2 fics/7,166 words 2019: 3 fics/9,089 words 2020: 6 fics/61,994 words 2021: 11 fics/95,695 words 2022: 9 fanworks (7 fics, 1 podfic, 1 poem)/40,079 words 2023: 1 fics/2,360 words 2024: 1 fic/1,218 words Total: 33 fanworks (31 fics, 1 podfic, 1 poem)/217,601 words

[dontmixpaintinyourcoffee]

I like rewriting things for fun because this is just what my brain is like, and on my rewatch of Gravity Falls I was struck once again by how out of place "Roadside Attraction" is. Honestly I don't even dislike it that much, it just feels misplaced? Like, it's a season 1 episode thrown in right before we start gearing up the final arc. I'm hardly the only person who thinks this, but I thought it would be fun to throw my hat in the ring and come up with my own alternate version. Thinking about making a comic about it maybe??

So I've given it some thought, and here's how I would write "Roadside Attraction" (with the benefit of 10 years of hindsight, no deadlines, no supervisors breathing down my neck, and access to pieces of storylines that have only all come together completely after the show ended): It got long so it's under the cut.

I really like the idea of the road trip itself, and I really really like the idea of Dipper and Stan getting this bonding episode. Especially with Stan trying to be a role model for Dipper in a way that Ford has no experience with, playing into both of their insecurities of not being good enough. I just think the focus was too messy. There's a lot of different messages that could be fit in to the whole flirting thing, and I think the episode kind of confuses itself. I'm also of the opinion that the show is at its weakest when romance is the focus. It's just infinitely less interesting than the familial and platonic bonds that have been so lovingly set up.

So instead of the focus being on flirting, we're going to one of Stans favorite skills- lying!

The original episode centers Dippers conflict on not knowing how to deal with an unrequited crush and then acting on some bad advice from Stan. But the episode doesn't really succeed in clearly painting what was actually bad about his advice and why it was bad that Dipper followed it, it gets all muddled up (he wasn't cheating, he was literally just talking to people. It's messed up that ultimately he was objectifying them as subjects for "practice", but he also thought these were going to be one-off interactions. It's all too shaky to actually take a lesson away from in the way the episode wants you to.)

So we're shifting the focus from "confidence with girls" to "confidence" in general. Dipper expresses his insecurities with not being a very confident person, he doesn't think he's brave or cool or tough and he's scared of other people seeing him as weak. So Stan tells him to get some practice talking to people the only way he knows how-by making stuff up! It's very easy to be confident if you just pretend you're someone else! Sure, maybe Stan Pines isn't much of a winner, but Hal Forrester is doing great! And who's to know that he's not Hal Forrester? Stan is a showman and a con artist, if there's one thing he knows how to do it's perform. And that's kind of... All... He knows how to do. It's the thing that's kept him alive for 40-odd years. But it originated in a deep-set belief that Stan Pines is a bad person to be. He has to be someone else in order to be someone worth being around.

Most of the episode can play out as it did but with this framework. We can even keep Darlene! (Stan chatted with her under a false name and acted like he was some kinda unattached drifter lone wolfing it on the road. She heard that and thought "oh good, no one to come looking when he goes missing!" Then gets thrown off when a bunch of kids come and save his ass.) And a different side story for Mabel and the girls. Spitballing here- uhhh Candy and Grenda try to distract Mabel from her feelings about her Summer Romances because she's clearly upset but is trying to hide it. Wacky shenanigans abound. By the end the theme about authenticity comes full circle and Mabel feels better by earnestly talking through her feelings with her friends. It gives Candy and Grenda a bit more time to have some real emotion and follows up on Mabels lesson in "Society of the Blind Eye". She already learned that it's better to live with the bad stuff and learn, but now she also knows that you don't have to carry the bad stuff alone, and that a good friend won't stop being your friend because you aren't performing happiness. That theme can then be picked back up and really hammered home during "Escape From Reality" when she starts facing how shallow Mabelland is.

Anyways back to the primary A plot:

Instead of the crowd of girls it's just a crowd of kids who are all calling him by a different name and claiming to have bonded over a bunch of different interests he doesn't actually have, so he panics and runs out of there. (Basically a Kidz Bop version of what would happen if some of Stan's old "buddies" caught up with him)

Now on the drive home, they have a different conversation. Stan admits that his way of doing things isn't a very stable one, and it always ends with him being alone, but since it was his only option for so long he doesn't really know how else to be. And then Dipper can reassure him that, he, at least, thinks his Grunkle Stanley is pretty great. (Emphasis on the Stanley). Maybe they can both figure out how to be actually confident, together.

ALSO THE B PLOT IS FORD BEING LEFT HOME ALONE WITH WENDY AND IT'S REALLY AWKWARD UNTIL MONSTER STUFF HAPPENS AND THEY GAIN A MUTUAL RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER AS BADASSES!

The monster stuff could be anything tbh, maybe the science magic bullshit from the portal reactivating aggravated a long sleeping cryptid and now it's out for revenge on whoever interrupted its nap. That way we can reinforce that the space between dimensions is weak for a plot sprinkle while primarily focusing on emotional development for the main characters before we get into "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future". I called it a B plot but it's honestly probably more of a glorified cutaway gag, I don't know how feasible it is to fit all of this into one episode.

I have a really specific scene that I would want to happen at the climax of their side story where Wendy saves Ford's ass at the last minute when he wasn't expecting it and he's like

"How on earth did you manage that?!"

"Dude, my dad is Dan Corduroy. I've been training for stuff like this since I could walk."

"Boyish Dan???????"

And then Wendy suddenly has tons of new ammo to tease her dad with because no one has dared use that name since the 80s

[whoslaurapalmer]

i want to know about your fic! is that cheating? is it meant to be a surprise?

technically!!!!! it is in fact a surprise!!!! because it is secretly for a person!! I will give the following incredibly vague details --

1) i hope to get it done within the. oh I wanted to have it done by the 20th I think but it will uhhhh probably take. longer. by god, it's already the 11th. I regularly and vastly underestimate time. but I hope not much longer than that!!!! hopefully a week after at the latest??????

2) objectively it has the funniest shenanigans. but also like......I am trying to keep them in character. but also not. experience the EXTREME second hand embarrassment that can come with these shenanigans, bc second hand embarrassment physically hurts me

3) a long long time ago (2008.) the mcr website had a blog section that gerard used REGULARLY, and once posted about calling second hand embarrassment The Motts (and since it's gerard, it does and does not make sense in context.) and ever since then whenever I experience second hand embarrassment I think 'oh no gerard way I am feeling the motts' so my notes very frequently say DO YOUR BEST TO AVOID THE MOTTS.

4) lemony is there!!!!!!! beatrice and bertrand are mentioned in passing. ......other characters show up.

5) the fic spans a great deal of time. like.........a GREAT deal of time. damn.

6) I have never written this trope before but I have read a great deal of it in my time, it was very popular in the les mis fandom? which I have read TOO MUCH fic for. I always wanted to write fic for it and still have lots of wip documents, but I think my les mis fic potential days have passed me by. I still love the amis a great deal, though. anyway it's also not quite that trope, and that's very thrilling. that's where a great deal of the amusement comes in. If I can navigate it right. oh but it's also a very old trope, actually!!

6a) I mean, you see tropes in fic sometimes and think of them as very fic specific, and I think some things very much are, but also, people have been telling the same sorts of stories for an age, and i was actually able to tell my mom about the plot and have her understand it bc she's seen movies with the plot. which is very bizarre, usually this does not happen.

6b) although I do wonder now, isn't this trope like the worst way to get enjolras and grantaire together. well, I guess it depends on how you're writing them, honestly. I think the most well-known fic with this trope did it well, now that I think about it

7) I think. I am going to split it into two chapters. and........see the first half took about a weekish of planning to get the Reasons things were happening to make sense. so if push comes to shove and I only finish the first half by whatever date it was, I will post that, and then, do the second half. which is less structured but still needs. you know. things to stand on. just less things.

8) it tentatively had a title but then I thought, it would be better as a chapter title maybe, so then I figured out the other chapter title, and now I am. Missing an overall title.........

9) the titles, though, are from the songs the maze and I know how to speak by manchester orchestra.

10) potentially, a candlelit dinner may take place. there will be bread.

11) one of my notes just says 'it's the most unsexy [REDACTED] of all time'

12) someone's gonna get kissed eventually though despite my subpar skills at writing physical romance contact!!!!!!

13) I worry about it a lot, though. Just, making the fic, make sense right in general. I know what I'm aiming for but there's still a lot of uncertainty in getting there, sometimes. and it happens all the time, in everything I write!!!! every writer goes through that, in every piece. never stops being very nerve-wracking, though. And I don't think I've ever really written something like it before. so!!!!!!!! we'll see. I'm rooting for it.

[auniverseforgotten]

👻💕💌 if i may 👁

SORRY FOR THE DELAY ON THIS two of the questions needed more brainpower than I had at the time zsdxfcgvh THANK U SO MUCH FOR THE ASK!! From this ask game here.

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

Honestly sometimes it feels like my wildest headcanon is He Would Not Fucking Say That, brought to you in this case by seeing the FGO version of a character first then finding a really cool blog and learning "haha wow they REALLY character assassinated you huh :D" yes this is about Fionn and Diarmuid like wow the man who was so beloved in Irish legend and folklore that the Christians had to STILL let him look good in their own stories otherwise people wouldn't listen. And now they focused Solely on a tale that came out later than much of the OG Fenian cycle that was designed to make him look bad. Uh huh I see. And with Diarmuid like okay. The guy who got in a fight with someone so fiercely that their Sheer Killing Intent kept everyone else in a huge battle WAAAAY the fuck away from them is just gonna. My Lord and be all sad. LIKE GODDAMN THEY CHARACTERIZED HIM BETTER IN FATE ZERO THAN FGO.

I am sorry to everyone who enjoys these versions I am not meaning to bash them it just drives me INSANE. AND MEDB. MEDB WHOSE WHOLE CYCLE INCLUDES A LOT OF AWFUL SHIT HAPPENING TO HER LIKE ABUSE AND ASSAULT AND THEN THEY TURN HER INTO A SEXUAL OBSESSED HARASSER TYPE. LIKE THANKS I HATE IT AND ALSO YOU FOR DOING THIS. Like the Ulster cycle does have a Heavy focus on shit like that but like she has SO MUCH DEPTH and importance and they just HRARGH.

I feel like this got off topic and I'm sorry but the wildest HC really is just. Yeah He/She Would Not Fucking Say That dfhvb

💕 What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

This one is. Hard. OURGH. So I'm cheating and picking two from two fandoms <3

From Transformers it's a toss-up between All Cut Up Over You, for the mix of Freaks in Love, yippee <3 and sheer g1 shenanigans in the other parts of the fic, and scientific curiosity what a little oddity, for the way I could play with fic structure and mental states and also a SHITTON OF WHUMP. If you look at them. Mind the tags dsfxcgv

And from FGO I'd say my fave is proooob between With Nothing Left, objectively a more simple fic but it's one of my favorite structures of the repetition of something over and over, establishing it as a Truth and seeing the way the reaction changes, and solace, which is surprising bcus I really do not think i write Cu well BUT it was really fun to think of the singularity battle around it [five stages of grief] and to really dig my teeth into grief in general.

My fave fic that will one day hopefully be finished is atm like a 30k monster fionndiar flower lung fic that has SO MUCH EFFORT and RESEARCH and TEA HELPING ME and EVERYTHING in it but god I don't know when I will ever post it. Or who would ever bother reading it LMAO IT STARTS IN MYTHOS AT THEIR FIRST MEETING AND GOES ALL THE WAY TO CHALDEA IT IS SO FUCKING LONG SEND HELP.

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

There are so many tropes I belove so much,,,,mutual pining counts, right? Unrequited love that is not actually unrequited and you get to write them both be absolutely STUPID about each other for NO GOOD REASON. THERE IS NO WORLD IN WHICH THESE THINGS ARE NOT LOVE. YET HERE THEY ARE. MISREADING THEM ALL.

I'm also fond of using tropes like soulmates or hanahaki in Even More Fun Ways. None of them have been posted tho >> I'm fond of the "soulmates =/= romantic partner" and also "i have this soulmark and it doesn't matter because I love you and I Chose you" and I like looking at them like what if your soulmate was The Worst, actually etc etc. Longheld nemeses that are soulmates and delight on their next plans to injure and/or kill each other.

As for hanahaki I have the most fun with it when a character is either immortal and CANNOT die so I get to explore all the fun and grotesque ways it would just Get Worse like haha you've had it for a century now! Sometimes your body realizes it should be dead and shuts down for a few seconds-minutes-hours but to you it's just a blink! oops!! or unfettered flower growth expanding throughout the body etc. Man imagine hanahaki but the plant is kudzu. Rip.

But I also like it as just Won't Talk About Feelings disease where it's not romantic necessarily it's just strong emotion. Give this to the emotionally constipated character every few months see what happens. Sometimes it's exasperation [GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE AND TALK TO ME] and sometimes it's pained understanding [your parents again? Yeah...] and sometimes when it's grief it just lingers. Loves or family lost, friendships broken...and it never goes away because they never leave your mind. Non-deadly in this version obv.

And then Tea and I were talking about their transformers specific version of it too,,,THERE'S JUST SO MUCH FUN TO DO esp when, for me, you step outside of the traditional trope.

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions (of sorts)

I know I basically haven't been keeping up with these this year--it's been kind of a slow writing year in general for me, which is part of it.

And normally at this time of year, I'm setting a number and picking a set of projects to work on for a fake/cheat NaNo but given the whole...AI-nonsense implosion that went on there...

Yeah, not happening.

But I do want to get back into more writing, because I miss it, even if it's been hard this year. So behind the cut is a bit of rambling about the following long-range projects I'm hoping to get more into as time goes on:

The Other Battlestar (BSG)

Papa and J----, August '34 (Les Mis)

Precipice

A handful of other miscellaneous AUs (mostly BSG)

My three main origfic projects (The Farglass Cycle/Feredar; Lux; Untitled Intrigues Story)

And also, as long as we're here, let's go ahead and do an Open Question Night! My askbox is always open, but I'll be keeping a semi-active eye on it and responding tonight. Anything I've written/posted about here or on AO3 is fair game. I do take prompts, but no promises on when I'll fill them, haha.

The Other Battlestar

So this is an AU that I technically started building the first time I was in the fandom, so like...twelveish years ago now? Haha.

The premise, essentially, is Baltar ends up on Pegasus instead of Galactica. Which means a lot of gaps to fill in, both in terms of getting the fleet into roughly the same position when everyone reconnects, and also, even with Razor filling in some gaps, there's a fair bit of 'how do I fill those six months' on the Pegasus side of things.

There are a few OCs involved in filling in those gaps--splitting Baltar's canon shenanigans across two people, one to do the Politics and one to do the Science. Politics is Vance Kimball; movie star/philanthropist, went to university with...I'm blanking on his name; Roslin's original VP pick; anyway the two of them were at an alumni event and got off Caprica together along with the Science person, who is admittedly the most self-indulgent part of this fic but I've decided to stop feeling guilty about my pleasures and honestly what is fandom for if not self-indulgence lol.

Also adding a few people on the Pegasus side of things--there's a Marine officer who grew up with Baltar on Aerilon; Daphne Reed who is the senior medical officer (Cottle's counterpart); and a Four with the civilian fleet who gets drafted to work under Reed.

I did also figure out how to keep Helo on Caprica so he can meet Athena, because they are important to me and see above about self-indulgence, and Fleet!Cavil and Vera (Tough!Six/Hooker!Six/Punk-rock!Six/whatever the cool kids are calling her these days) are probably going to show up once or twice.

So, yeah, the holdup here is...figuring out the best way to balance all the different threads, how much I actively need to rewrite vs. how much I can handwave, and so on. Even if I stop at the end of the Pegasus arc (which is my current plan; I have some vague ideas for where the second half of S2 and beginning of S3 might go but no Active plans at this point), I'm guessing this will end up being like. 150k? It will not be short, anyway. But it's been in my head for a long time and I'm very fond of it.

2. Papa and J----, August '34

So this (and its companion piece, Provenance) is something I was having a lot of fun with and just. Need to get back to, haha. It's outsider POV, an art history grad student named Ari doing some Research into a previously-undiscovered painting by Cosette (who is a moderately well-known painter). Obviously this is a post-canon AU where both Valjean and Javert survived the summer of 1832. I left off with Ari about to go to Europe to continue working there, going into museum collections and archives to try and a) identify J; and b) put a name to 'Papa,' now that we have his face. Anyway, I do plan to get back to this, just...again, slow year, haha.

3. Precipice

I will not quit this fic until/unless I entirely quit the Star Wars fandom which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon (even if it's back-burnered a bit). So, yeah, even if it's been...::checks notes:: three years since I updated, I haven't forgotten this, it's too big a part of my SW fandom life for me to do that.

(For those who don't know, it's a 'the Republic falls but Anakin doesn't' AU, we've just reached about the timeframe of ANH where I left off)

4. Other Miscellaneous AUs

Just kind of rapid-firing--

The Selkie AU and Backup Plans AU I started with the Year of the OTP project back in 2023. They could go interesting places, and I want to explore them some more.

Acheron is another Les Mis fic, Groundhog Day loop for Javert, fun times.

Percussive Maintenance is the one where D'Anna accidentally unlocks Sam's memories what with all the concussing when they're trapped in the parking garage during Downloaded. It involves a lot of Sam talking to Philosopher!Cavil; I still need to decide whether or not I want to involve/reference the girls from Caprica-the-TV-series. I had a general outline going from Sam regaining his memories up through when they get back to the Fleet that I was hoping to do for GBB this year, but I didn't get enough into it to make it happen. Maybe I will moving forward.

Someday I'd like to get back to Serenissima (which was a Baroque/Renaissance Venice BSG AU)

I have some BSG crossovers floating around that I'd like to actively work on At Some Point (mostly Star Wars, though some of the self-indulgent Stargate crossover stuff I've done in RPs with a friend of mine is always percolating in the back of my head, lol; also the Wheel of Time stuff I started noodling with back when I watched S2 of that series is still interesting--maybe when S3 comes out or when I start my reread of that series)

Someday I'd like to get back to the Avatar Zuko fic or a couple other AtLA AUs I started working back when the fandom renaissance really picked up.

5. Original Works

The Farglass Cycle/Feredar is a fairly typical swords-and-sorcery type fantasy world; it's one of my oldest/longest-running projects and just sort of always a constant in the background of my writing universe.

Lux is the Apocalypse in SPACE. I think a lot of what I've written lately has focused more on the Horsemen than the original two main characters, lol (which would be Lux (Lucifer) and her human love interest Mariko). I still need to get around to fully explaining who Trixie Milton is, among other things.

Untitled Intrigues Story is technically a fantasy because it takes place on a made-up map. The pope/High Priest has sent his two sons as envoys to two rival kingdoms to try and prevent them from going to war, each of them ends up tangled up in the internal politics in different ways, and it's mostly about that. There's also some Politicking going on within the higher ranks of the church (this world is kind of modeled after late-Renaissance Europe soooo), which I find a lot of fun when it's. y'know. fictional.

...yeah, I think that about sums things up, haha. I'm not making any promises for when any of this is coming out, just...these are the sort of uppermost things in my mind for what I want to get more into working on in the next few weeks/months/through the end of the year and beyond.

[sparrowmoss]

in the past couple days i watched 1. the series The Midnight Club, and 2. the movie Do Revenge. and i thought they both were super good like !!!!! both media with main characters who are POC and ALSO lgbt ??$:);!; it feels so rare but. if anyone is interested i will like summarize and content warning them below

the midnight club is not happy feel good media to be clear it is more geared toward teenagers i think but deals with some seriously heavy stuff because every single main character has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and multiple of them do die through the series. its about all these terminally ill teens living in a hospice care house together and bonding/coping/passing time by coming up with horror stories to tell each other. the horror stories are acted out by the same actors so its really cool. obviously lots of dark topics like cancer and HIV/AIDS and death and hopelessness vibes but also empowerment for those kids. additional content warnings i can remember rn would be for discussion of suicide and self harm, murder in a lot of the midnight club horror stories, cult stuff and the like vulnerability and manipulation that goes into cult recruitment, disturbing imagery like corpse people and jumpscares and hallucinations (?) and unreality and stuff i guess idk. it was SO good. main character is a black girl and there is also a gay black girl and a gay black guy in the main cast as well as lots of other POC characters and some other lgbt characters

do revenge is SUPER DIFFERENT but i thought would also be more for teenager audience, though now i dont think so as much because like those high schoolers were doing coke and ketamine for gods sake it was insane. i thought i knew what was going on but there was a plot twist that i fucking never ever saw coming and my jaw literally was wide open atp but i wont spoil that ! its generally about two girls who meet and decide to help each other get revenge on two people who seriously wronged them. and in the process of that, shit gets so wildly beyond out of hand. everything spirals out of their control so fucking fast. it was hilarious and upsetting and shocking. so good. for that the content warnings i think would just be like… shitty guy cheating, revenge porn stuff, drugging people without their knowledge or consent, some shitty stuff is done to someone who presumably is a lesbian but shes rich and white so she ends up fine, car accident scene that was a little scary, ummmm general fucked up shitty asshole teenager shenanigans by which i mean cruel actions and questionable priorities and general lack of awareness for how characters only care about themselves ??? idk if that would bother someone nfbdjfndf anyway one of the two mains is a lesbian and the other is implied bi and is a POC and theres a bunch of other POC and other lgbt characters

and both of them have mild emetophobia warning scenes with only very fake puking sounds and nothing actually visibly shown just that super fake audio like i have pretty bad emetophobia and cannot handle Seeing it but i was totally fine. i would tend to rec the movie more just because it was a happy ending and like. everyone in it was not terminally ill and dying. no one died. they did a shitload of drugs but they were okay

[itspileofgoodthings]

me like ..... am I a bad teacher .......because I make class fun and my students laugh ........ surely this is wrong ........

[bluiex]

(This Grian Cheating first) I was thinking Scar ending up with Tango, they have so much fun together and Tango is always willing to indulge Scars shenanigans and listen to him! Scar loves hearing him explain stuff and asking him questions on it so he can talk more about it

-They just bounce off of each other’s energy but Tengo is the calmer one, he loves feeding and taken care of  the Jellie pandas and Jellie when Scar is busy. -Tango loves Scars small kisses, Scars lips are nice and cool on his Skin.

-Scar thinks Tango expects a lot out of him, but in reality he doesn’t. One time Scar got him an orange rose because it looked like his hair, and Tango pulled him into a kiss out of happiness. Tango keeps the rose on him at all times now!

-They are always their for each other, and Tango was very understanding when Scar would be sad over Grian cheating on him even though they started dating. Tango kisses Scars hands and tells him it’s okay and that he loves him no matter what. Even though he still loves Grian somewhat.

-Basically the song ‘Hey lover’ by The Daughters Of Eve.(Scar thinks Tango is True love if it was a person, he loves him so much!)

-Scar is cold blooded and is a Vex while Tango is Hot blooded and Half Blaze so They cuddle at night and Scar loves how warm his sunstone is. -They both purr when they are with each other. They have nicknames for each other, Scar is Moonstone and Tango is Sunstone:D

-I have a headcanon where the are platonically Dating in HermitCraft.

AAA anon, they are in love:) (Jimmy would go with Scott we all know it) 

Ooooh I love that for hermitcraft- like say Scar still holds his ill feelings toward Grian after DL and then goes to Tango for it

but in general, omggg I adore the idea of Tango an Scar platonically dating. this is cute asf

[forevercloudnine]

new 52 riddler origin/timeline

I noticed an older 2017 post by @batriddler​ about Edward’s possible New 52 origin story was going around again, so I thought I’d make a timeline adding what we’ve learned about his origins since then through The Riddler: Year of the Villain (2019).

Childhood

So Year of the Villain brings back several elements of Edward’s original backstory. The first was that, as a child, he won a puzzle contest and became fixated on that moment of victory for the rest of his life.

Unlike previous iterations of the character, however, there’s no obvious indication that Edward cheated in order to win it (other than the looming shadow of his future careers). Whether he won it fairly or not, winning the trophy was a turning point for him because it was the first time he was given undiluted positive attention, something he wasn’t getting at home.

Edward’s mother is heavily, HEAVILY implied to be an alcoholic (like there are even more bottles lying around in this panel, I cut them out for the screenshot), and he himself implies in the narration that she was neglectful to the point that he pretty much had to raise himself. Interestingly, there’s no mention of an abusive father, which is the bog standard for Riddler backstories in previous continuities. There’s nothing contradicting the existence of an abusive father in addition, so obviously there’s room for headcanons here (though I’m enjoying that Jonathan’s New 52 daddy issues replacing his retconned Post-Crisis mommy issues was finally mirrored by Edward’s Post-Crisis daddy issues being retconned and replaced with New 52 mommy issues. It’s equality).

[Side note: apparently his actual birth name in the New 52 IS Edward “Nygma,” which is also a return to form to his first origin. Personally I’m much fonder of him being born “Nashton” and changing his name as an adult, but that’s just me.]

He says that winning the trophy was the first time he “felt like [he] meant something,” which would seem to indicate that before this he’d internalized his mother’s neglect into a low sense of self worth. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the high of winning it lasted very long, since his classmates weren’t very appreciative of his victory (which is also very in line with Edward’s previous origins, especially Chuck Dixon’s take in Questions Multiple the Mystery).

There’s not much other information about his childhood available, though Batman Annual #4 does seem to indicate that unlike many of Batman’s other villains, he did grow up in Gotham.

This is just based on him telling Bruce that “all of Gotham City” watched him grow up, and that Edward in particular read and watched a lot of tabloid news about Bruce when they were adolescents (is this a Batman Forever reference??? It’s probably not a Batman Forever reference).

Teenage Years

Assuming we’re supposed to take Bruce’s heat-of-the-moment psychoanalysis in Zero Year seriously (Edward is clearly irritated by it, so... confirmation?), Edward’s desire for attention in childhood results in him breaking into corporate data banks and government safe-blocks as a teenager.

Given what Edward is capable of in Zero Year, this definitely doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility, but it’s deeply hilarious in the context of what Year of the Villain confirmed he was (also?) doing as a teenager, which is working as a carnie.

I cannot tell you how hilarious I would find it if THIS is the “questionable past” that Bruce’s Uncle Phillip was talking about during Zero Year, but presumably he’s referring to the same kind of high profile crimes that Bruce was.

But seriously, how funny would it be if he was just talking about how Edward literally ran away from home to join the circus as a teenager...

Adulthood

The 2017 post theorizes that Edward started working for Phillip at Wayne Enterprises in his early twenties, and started earning the various degrees you can see stacked up in a corner in the image above during his employment there. That would seem to fit with this timeline, since I’m not willing to add “earned six different university degrees” to teenage years that are apparently already packed full of ripping off carnival goers AND corporate espionage.

In Batman Annual #4 there is the BAREST indication that Edward might have started working at Wayne Enterprises early into Bruce’s sabbatical abroad, since he talked about how “for months” there were nightly vigils at Wayne Tower where there were so many flowers people would have to cross the street not to step on them. Presumably this would have only been in the first year of Bruce’s disappearance, when Bruce was 18; at the very least this indicates that Edward still lived in Gotham when Bruce left, though it would make more sense for him to be visiting Wayne Tower as Phillip’s strategist than as a hacker/carnie.

In general though, Edward’s Zero Year plan is so ridiculously complex that I think it’s reasonable to assume that he took as long to prepare for his debut as Riddler as it took Bruce to train to be Batman.

[Another side note: Not to accuse Edward of projecting or anything (God forbid), but I think it’s interesting that Edward puts so much emphasis on criticizing Bruce for “disappearing for years” and “making everyone think he’s dead” in combination with the COMPLETE absence of his father from his origin story as presented in Year of the Villain.]

I do think it’s fascinating that Edward’s New 52 origin veers away from the whole “cheating” thing that’s so central to his character in previous continuities - not that he DOESN’T cheat when he feels like it (the whole carnie thing), but it’s not presented as an insecurity of his, and here he’s genuinely intelligent enough to mastermind crimes without needing to move the goalposts at the last second (cough Arkhamverse Riddler COUGH).

One final thing from Edward’s adult life that I think could relate back to his origin comes from Batman #23.2, “Solitaire.”

The issue starts with a flashback of Edward having a deck of playing cards confiscated from him in Arkham because he was playing Solitaire (like, genuinely playing Solitaire; he actually wasn’t plotting anything, it was just for stress relief). The comic is his quest for violent revenge against the Arkham guard who took his cards, which initially seems like a pretty average example of Riddler Brand Pettiness, but the story goes out of its way to highlight how much this really bothered him.

The Arkham Guard has moved on to become the head of security at Wayne Enterprises, so to get revenge Edward has to break into his old place of employment. An unexpected altercation with one of the executives leads Edward to totally freak out over her “touching” him, and afterwards he goes to meditate in her old office in order to calm down. His attempt to relax is interrupted by his old Arkham tormentor, who gets in a couple shots at him before Edward takes his revenge...

...which is BLOWING UP THE ARM that the guard used to take away the “small comfort” Edward had in Arkham. Afterwards, he goes up to the roof to play Solitaire, seeming to finally relax from his agitation earlier.

Given Edward’s isolation and neglect in childhood, it would make sense for him to have ended up playing Solitaire a lot: it’s a game that doesn’t require involvement from friends or family, but still requires a player to use strategy and skill despite the lack of an opponent.

[Yet another side note related to the previous side note: Batman is ACTUALLY dead during Solitaire, which takes place after Joker’s Endgame arc. Bruce and Joker are of course later resurrected through shenanigans, so Edward is right to think he’ll be seeing Batman again. But Riddler sitting on the Wayne Enterprises rooftop, indulging in a self-described “small comfort,” waiting for a man who’s disappeared to miraculously show up again is really interesting. Again, not to accuse him of projecting or anything, but... where’s your dad, Edward...]

His affection for Solitaire is also interesting, in the sense that one could argue that’s what he’s doing in Zero Year: playing a game with himself. He’s challenging other people to play with him through his “riddle” game, and he’s clearly prepared for the possibility of having an opponent (given that he has a whole rainbow disco death trap room set up at the end of Zero Year, which he seems DELIGHTED to have a chance to use), but he’s not expecting to have one. Whether this is a perspective rooted in his childhood or not, it seems to have changed after Zero Year, based on his riddle for Batman in “Alone.”

[hiccanna-tidbits]

The RotBTD+ Gang Plays DnD! (Feat. my ships, sorry not sorry XD)

So highkey I’ve actually been wanting to do a “The Gang Plays DnD” type post for AGES now, but then I saw @hobie-brown and @ohlooksheswriting-wips do DnD AU posts for RotBTD, and then I was like “Ah shit, I really should finish mine, eh?” So thank you to both of you for inspiring me to get off my ass and actually write the post!!!

Hiccup DMs. He comes up with this super complex plot revolving around dragons (because of course) where the party has to dismantle this society ruled by evil knights who want to genocide all of the dragons. Imagine his chagrin when the party wants to do nothing but fuck around in towns and aggravate NPCs 90% of the time.

They usually end up playing at Jack’s apartment, mainly because Hiccup’s dad doesn’t really want a bunch of loud nerds yelling about 20-sided dice in his household while he’s trying to work, if he can at all help it. Jack’s sister regularly barges into their living room and roasts the fuck out of Jack and his friends for being such damn nerds and eats all of their DnD snacks they’ve set out. If they’re in the middle of a combat session, she always gleefully proclaims that they’re all going to die. While Jack is annoyed by this, the rest of the party finds it deeply hilarious.

Jack Overland plays the absolute mayhem warlock Jack Frost, who got his powers through making a deal with the archfey Prince of Frost and has absolutely no qualms about being an evil god’s mortal Sower of Chaos. He spends the vast majority of the campaign doing such useful things as creating ice slicks under annoying NPCs and freezing people’s drinks. He also plays a Tiefling because absolutely no one can talk this boy out of playing the creepy demon race.

Rapunzel plays a woodland nymph druid who is also the party healer (because of course she is). Her name is probably Sunlily or something else suitably hippie-esque. Whenever there’s downtime (or whenever the rest of the party is also dicking around, and she can get away with it), Rapunzel likes to go into the nearest forest and pick the best berries and nuts for the rest of the party. She also loves baking fruit pies and cooking the best nymph food for her companions when given the chance. Definitely the party Cinnamon Roll (every party has one!). She often will turn into cute animals to distract the guards while the party infiltrates a building.

Merida’s character is the party archer and general ranged weapon master, as well as a raging lesbian. Hiccup learns very quickly that any male NPC who tries to flirt with her will very quickly get impaled with an arrow. She can’t ever decide if she wants to be a ranger or a rogue, so she multiclasses in both for flare. She also plays a Tiefling, and continually insists that her character is both scarier and sexier than Jack’s. In combat, she either Leeroy Jenkins her way in with a sword and just starts slashing every which way, or just shoots 90% of the enemies with arrows before the fight even starts. There’s really no in between. She can get away with this because she’s highkey one of the party tanks, and consistently deals a shitton of damage.

Anna plays a human bard, basically having read over the class options and going “Wait, in this one I get to make stylish medieval music??? And wear dramatic and garish outfits and a dumb hat??? And cast wacky illusion spells??? And do silly little magic tricks??? And INSPIRE EVERYONE??? Hell yeah, I’m in!!!” She mostly uses magic attacks in combat (definitely favors Tasha’s Hideous Laughter), but occasionally when she’s out of spell slots she’ll just take to slamming enemies in the face with her lute. She also has WAY too much fun with Vicious Mockery, let’s be real.

Elsa, upon hearing Jack’s character concept, rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her damn brain, and vows to play his concept, but serious–solely out of spite. She rolls up a super OP elf Chaos Sorcerer, filled with lots of brooding angst about how uncontrollable her winter powers can get if she isn’t careful. She combines it a bit with Storm Sorcerer so she can create literal blizzards, and Hiccup ends up allowing it just because he thinks it’s cool. Although Elsa’s character is undoubtedly aggravated by the rest of the party’s antics, she starts becoming grudgingly protective of these idiots and can deal some pretty crazy damage when her companions are threatened. She also contains one of the party’s only brain cells.

Eugene of course plays dashing rogue master thief Flynn Rider. Although his high deception and lockpicking skills certainly come in handy, he’s the most chaotic neutral fucker you’ve ever met and will take any excuse to rob NPCs blind or cheat them out of every cent they have in a tavern card game. It’s nigh impossible to get him to cooperate with the rest of the party much of the time, and often Elsa’s character has to either bribe him with some of her family’s gold or threaten to freeze him to stop him backstabbing one or more party members. Eugene’s character forces Hiccup to add in many more heist plotlines than he originally intended. This delights Eugene immensely, and sometimes he goes a bit crazy planning elaborate heists.

Moana plays a sorcerer water genasi. She can control any body of water, but she has a special affinity for controlling saltwater (i.e. the ocean lol). She also requests an animal handling bonus, but only with marine animals, solely because she thought it would be funny. She’s also an ex-pirate who robbed a lot of wealthy merchant ships and freed their slaves back in the day, which Merida thinks is incredibly badass. Moana tends to get bored and unengaged when there are no bodies of water to play around with, so Hiccup ends up having to add a lot more lakes, rivers, and oceans to the campaign than he originally planned on. Moana also takes a sailing skill, and thus the party often ends up traveling by boat. Typically Eugene and Rapunzel will infiltrate and hijack it, and Moana will sail it. Moana probably contains the party’s only other brain cell.

Astrid plays a gigantic berserker orc barbarian who is never without his trusty axe. Astrid is hands down the party’s top tank, and unquestionably deals the most damage every combat session. Much like Merida’s character, Astrid’s character is absolutely a shameless power fantasy. Hiccup pretty easily picks up on this, but is too polite to say anything about it. Jack also picks up on this, but is hardly as courteous as their DM, and teases Astrid mercilessly. Astrid is not amused.

Rapunzel requests that her weapon of choice be a frying pan, her justification being that her character found a discarded one at the edge of a human village outside her woods and mistaked it for a highly-dangerous human weapon. Hiccup is like “…you know what? Fuck it” and rolls up stats for a goddamn frying pan. Jack has nigh-endless admiration for Rapunzel for choosing such a goddamn memey, absurd, yet oddly effective weapon and it definitely makes the poor boy even more smitten with her than he already is.

Eugene and Merida have a bet going on who can sleep with more sexy barmaids. Merida is currently winning, much to Eugene’s chagrin. She’s not even inherently better at seducing NPCs, she and Eugene have the same charisma stat–she just consistently rolls better than Eugene. Eugene is incredibly salty about this.

Anna and Elsa want to be sisters in-game as well, but neither want to change their race–so Anna decides her character was adopted. Hiccup and the rest of the party go along with it, mainly because there’s something deeply hilarious about a regular human bard being adopted and raised by a family of high-powered elf ice mages.

Astrid is absolutely the sort of player who tends to get bored and restless outside of fights, and tends to fidget and twiddle her thumbs waiting for the next combat session. Jack picks up on this, and purposely does more roleplay for longer just to piss her off. He’s also just a very dramatic fucker and highkey loves roleplay.

When she’s not causing mayhem around the town or sleeping with hot women, Merida tries to entertain Astrid between combat sessions by offering to spar with her. Unfortunately, this does not usually end well for poor Merida, as even the most hardcore and badass of tieflings is prone to getting dumpstered by an 8-foot-tall barbarian orc with an axe. Astrid is, nonetheless, grateful to have someone to fight.

Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana will humor Hiccup and attempt to actually play the main plot. Meanwhile, Jack, Merida, and Eugene are a DM’s worst nightmare. They constantly derail the damn campaign to fuck around, cause mayhem, and do inane shenanigans in every. Damn. Town. They go to. Anna is kind of a wildcard–she’ll typically go with whatever group looks like they’re going to be doing something more interesting. Astrid will go along with whichever group is more likely to get into a fight–which, often as not, is Jack and his posse of terrible Chaotic Neutrals (who have definitely pissed off a number of NPCs into attacking them).

As the campaign goes on, Elsa and Eugene become the beleaguered Party Mom and Dad. Both are quite aggravated by this–especially poor Eugene, who just wanted to play a morally-gray charming rogue who stole everything and got away with it and then accidentally ended up caring about these idiots he got stuck with.

Anna initially joins the campaign because she has a planet-size crush on Hiccup, and inevitably is the one who dragged Elsa into it too. Being the hopeless romantic that she is, Anna writes a love interest into her backstory. Hiccup eventually has the party run into said love interest, and Anna is overjoyed. He starts flirting with her as the love interest, and it’s easily the best 30 minutes of Anna’s life.

Moana and Elsa also give Hiccup pretty detailed backstories, and he works in little subplots for them. Moana gets to bring water back to a dying part of the jungle in the middle of a draught, while Elsa gets to go on a whole sidequest to explore her family history and how they came to be sorcerers.

Jack, Merida, and Eugene also give Hiccup fairly elaborate backstories, but Jack’s and Merida’s are like 99% memes and Dumb Shit. Hiccup tries to give all of them backstory-related plot hooks, but inevitably any hooks he provides are either stabbed, robbed, or frozen. Honestly any plot hook offered to these 3 will be all but spat in the face of and tossed off a cliff.

The one relevant part of Eugene’s backstory is that he and Rapunzel decide they used to be partners in crime before the campaign started. Rapunzel would infiltrate and scout out places he wanted to rob as small, unobtrusive animals (her preferred Wild Shape is a chameleon) and later distract the guards as a bunny or kitten while he went in and took every gold coin in sight. In return, Flynn Rider would bribe builders to not develop into Sunlily’s forest. Rapunzel and Eugene partly came up with this For Funsies, but also it was Rapunzel’s sneaky way of tricking Eugene into having prior connections in the party so he’d be less likely to betray them. It works pretty well–although the entire party is protective of Cinnamon Roll Sunlily, Flynn is certainly especially protective of her.

Astrid does the absolute bare minimum as far as backstories go. She is literally just here to smash stuff, slice people, and beat some fuckers up.

Rapunzel has a backstory, but she’s typically so invested in the main plot and the other party members that Hiccup rarely needs to bring it in to keep her engaged. She’s highkey the party emotional rock, and probably the only one keeping them all together.

On that note, Rapunzel’s character is the ONLY one who can get Jack’s character to take the plot even REMOTELY seriously. Like he’ll be dicking around in the nearest tavern challenging the nearest orc to a drinking game, and Rapunzel will come in and ask him to help them on a Main Plot Quest. And he’ll be like “come onnnnn I’m having funnn” and she’ll be like “Jack pleeeeeease?” and you just. Can’t resist Sunlily’s puppy dog eyes. At all. Also, whenever Sunlily is genuinely threatened, any silliness immediately goes out the window and Jack Frost is OUT FOR BLOOD.

For better or for worse, Rapunzel is not immune to being looped into Jack’s shenanigans. Occasionally if either Merida or Eugene have a particularly hare-brained scheme she’ll go along with it, but by and large Jack is the most successful in convincing her to temporarily abandon the plot and cause mild mischief with him. They once wasted half a session creating an elaborate “ice theme park” for some squirrels in the forest.

Hiccup tries to get Merida to play the main plot by eventually having there be no more sexy female NPCs to seduce in the towns they go to. Unfortunately, this backfires–Merida just hooks up with Moana’s character instead. When asked to roll for how good the lay is, Merida gets a nat 20–and thus her character and Moana’s character end up hooking up regularly throughout the rest of the campaign.

Hiccup introduces a few Wise Old Mentor-type NPCs to guide the party throughout the campaign. While Rapunzel, Elsa, Moana, and Anna actually try to listen to them and take their advice, Merida, Jack, and Eugene absolutely refuse to take them seriously and mercilessly play pranks on them.

At one point, Hiccup gives the party the option to attempt to tame a group of wild dragons and use them as mounts. They all have to make animal handling checks. Anna, Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana pass. The rest of the party fails, with Jack and Eugene crit-failing. Hilarity ensues.

Hiccup ends up bringing back Anna’s backstory love interest as an NPC regular. Anna thinks he’s just being a good friend and a good DM and trying to incorporate her backstory as much as he can, but really, he just wants an excuse to regularly flirt with her. He hardly has the balls to out-of-game.

Merida comes out as gay toward the end of the campaign. Everyone in the group is extremely supportive, of course, but everyone is also like “Merida…with the amount of barmaids you’ve banged…and the amount of times you and Moana’s character hooked up…this isn’t exactly surprising.”

Hiccup actually finds a way to use Jack and Elsa’s same-concept-opposite-execution characters to the plot’s advantage. He decides one of the main villains will have a prophecy saying he’ll be taken down by a powerful ice mage. The party manages to fool this guy into thinking this ice mage is Jack, and sends Jack to fight him. As soon as the villain sees Jack, he’s like “WHAT??? THIS clown???” (word has absolutely spread throughout the land of Jack not using his ice powers for anything besides mildly annoying trolling). Naturally, the bad guy lets his guard down after thinking he’s going to fight this literal joke, and then Elsa crashes in from the side and absolutely dumpsters him.

Jack tries to defeat the final boss by just annoying him so much that he leaves. Unfortunately, he just annoys him so much that he attacks Rapunzel’s character. Jack’s just like “oh HELL no” and attacks with absolutely nothing held back. Turns out he’s pretty terrifying when he’s not using his magic for Dumb Antics.

During the final boss of the campaign, the Big Bad tries to one-shot Moana’s character, and Merida��s character super theatrically jumps in front of her to take the blow instead. Rapunzel just barely manages to heal Merida’s character, but it’s a really close call. During all this, Merida is like “ah shit...maybe I’m NOT just in this to get fantasy-laid.” After the fight’s over, her and Moana’s characters have a big dramatic love confession and share a Big Damn Kiss in front of everyone. It’s pretty epic.

After the final session of the campaign, Merida drags Moana outside Jack’s apartment and sputters and trips over her words for a solid minute before she finally gets out that through all this nonsense...well...maybe it’s not just in the game that she thinks Moana is hot. Moana just gets this HUGE grin on her face and says “c’mere, Leeroy Jenkins” and just pulls Merida in and kisses her. Cue the rest of the party barging in on them. Merida and Moana freeze, and there’s a moment of terrified silence...and then the entire party starts cheering them on like “took you long enough!”

The entire rest of the party could detect the sexual tension. Literally all of them.

But Eugene is like “HA, THIS MEANS IF WE DO A SEQUEL CAMPAIGN I’M WINNING THAT BET! BECAUSE YOU’RE GONNA BE DATING MO’S CHAR AND THUS NOT ABLE TO SLEEP WITH ANY MORE BARMAIDS!”

By the epilogue session, Jack and Rapunzel are dating. Merida and Moana are also dating. Hiccup and Anna STILL haven’t figured out why they’re so prone to spending half the session flirting when Anna’s love interest shows up, and Hiccup STILL hasn’t figured out why he likes to have Anna’s love interest show up so often. Bless their souls. Maybe they’ll figure it out next campaign...?

Damn I actually really like this...maybe if people like it I’ll do some incorrect quotes or a drabble or something??? Or maybe some HCs from next campaign???

[snakeliciousbaby]

9 & 10

Ohoho! Thanks for the ask! These are gonna be fun ones to answer ):)

Season Ranking?

Season two is my absolute favorite, as someone who loves motw and teenage shenanigans. This season is just banger after banger after banger!!! Season four goes next, because I love the introductions of Anya, Riley and Tara, adore the growing queer themes, and once again: love motw. Season 1 is next (though this is where ranking gets a little hard) because I love the creepier tone for this season, and all the character introductions. Season five and season three are about the same ranking, since season 3 is amazing but held down by a cheating plot that I'm VERY conflicted about, and season 5 writes Riley terribly but also has fantastic Spike-Scooby dynamics and excellent general found family stuff. I'd put season six next, since personally it's too depressing for me-- and was also the season that made me genuinely consider dropping the show. I also despised most storylines, with the exception of parts of Buffy's-- so it wasn't a fun time. And yet it's still season seven at the bottom, which I consider basically a joke with one or two barely redeeming factors. 6 was bad with a finale that managed to pull everything together-- 7 did NOT have that finale.

Character You Relate To The Most?

mmm let me think--Xander. It's Xander. I literally dressed up as him for Halloween cause of how much I relate to him, though in more mental than physical ways lol. A lot of his arcs hit close to home, and one of the reasons I can't help but despise Hell's Bells is that it deals with a lot of fears I have as well in a horrible way. In less serious terms, he also just makes a lot of jokes I would as well-- and dresses in a way I aspire to.

[cryo-locket]

Rules & Info

General Info

❖ This is a highly sfw blog, so please refrain from sending/tagging me in anything sexual.

❖ I am mostly open to any sort of conversation you’d like to bring to me even if it’s unrelated to Genshin.

❖ I ask of you to please be respectful to one another. I’d rather not have any conflict happening.

❖ I write based on my own viewpoint of everything, so please do not try to criticize me if my viewpoint differs from yours, as everyone has their own way of characterization.

———

❖ Feel free to drop some mail into my inbox at anytime! If you have any other questions, I’ll try my best to answer them!!

❖ You can just ask if you want to be mutuals, but please be sure I at least know you and it’s not a situation where I have no idea who you are at all for that would be very awkward.

❖ Tumblr is also known to sometimes bug out and eat asks. I keep count of the asks in my inbox on my pinned post, so if I don’t reply to your ask within a day or two, and the number of asks in inbox on pinned post doesn’t change, you could send in an ask to check with me!

DNI/BYF

❖ Please stay away from my blog if you’re homophobic, transphobic, lgbtqia+ phobic, sexist, racist, etc.

❖ I spam random posts a lot at times.

❖ I’d rather not have anyone at the age of 12 and under interacting with my blog as well, thanks. (You’re literally not allowed on Tumblr what are you doing??)

❖ If you’re here just to send hate to me or anyone else, you may leave now. Save your breath and don’t make a fool of yourself on public media.

❖ I often use nicknames/pet names for people, so do let me know if you are uncomfortable with any of them.

❖ I’m honestly still quite confused about how tone indicators work, so please be aware that most of the things I say are mostly sarcastic and I do not mean any harm by them.

❖ I will not hesitate to block you should you try to start any sort of conflict, or violate any of my blog rules. If there’s anything you are unsure of, you can ask me in dms or send an ask on anon if you’re more comfortable with that.

❖ Please do refrain from acting all familiar with me right off the bat when I do not even know you/have never really interacted with you, because it’s just weirdly uncomfortable. And yes my dms are always open for questions of my blog you’re not comfortable with asking through asks, but don’t message me casually through dms otherwise if we’re not close(moots).

Requesting and Writing

❖ I currently only write for Genshin, but I do play ‘Obey Me!’ and Twisted Wonderland, so brainrots are very much welcomed!

❖ I may take quite a while to finish your request, so please do not rush me. Though if you’d just like to pop in to check with me if your request got through without tumblr eating it then that’s fine!

❖ As stated above in the general info section, no nsfw stuff, this is a sfw blog and I am uncomfortable with such things.

❖ Anything too gory, yandere related, cheating, suggestive, etc. I will not write for.

❖ My posts are mainly gender neutral unless stated otherwise, but I am known to make mistakes at times, so do correct me if you notice anything.

❖ I write for every currently playable character plus one stray Scaramouche. (Aloy’s origins are not of Genshin so I don’t write for her either)

❖ I write both platonic and romantic. Small beans are only allowed platonic.

> Small Beans: Qiqi, Klee, Diona, Sayu

✫ Please do not ask romantic troupes for any other minor characters if you are an adult!

———

❖ I don’t accept requests often, as my mind often goes blank when I do requests, but my inbox is always open for any sort of other shenanigans you’d like to send in! (Even an occasional ‘hi’ is absolutely fine!!)

❖ Though I do write angst, it’s probably only once in a blue moon, because I’ll most likely cry three times over before I finish the story. (╥﹏╥)

❖ If you have any other questions, feel free to send in an ask or even dm me! Whichever is more comfortable for you

This list also randomly updates whenever I remember something I should add, but I’ll most likely make a post notifying about it. So please remember to pay attention to #notice locket for announcements and stuff!!

<Head Back to Navigation Locket

[gra-sonas]

For the otp asks, are there still numbers you haven't been asked yet? Every singlenone of your answers has been amazing to be honest.

Awww, thank you, nonnie, I’m glad you’ve liked my answers. ❤️

Okay, let’s see which numbers I haven’t answered for Malex yet:

1) Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop?

Neither. They just enjoy the ride and the view. 🎡

6) Who takes photos of the other while they sleep?

They both did in the past when Alex came to the Airstream whenever he was on leave. One afternoon, Michael had managed to take a picture of Alex who’d fallen asleep after their intense and somewhat desperate reunion sex. Michael took the pic not knowing whether he’d ever get to have this again: Alex, safe in his bed. After Alex had left, Michael got a printed copy of the photo at the drugstore and put it in his wallet. It’s still in there.

Alex took a photo of Michael asleep whenever he had to leave, desperate to drink in the sight of Michael, all sun-kissed skin and wild curls. He never dared to get one of the pics printed, but he has a special folder on his phone where these pics are stored.

When they get back together, they don’t need to take pictures of the other asleep anymore because they know, that from now on, they have “the real deal” right by their side for the rest of their lives.

10) Who is more likely to cheat?

Neither!

12) Who starts a food fight in the kitchen?

Neither. The “kitchen” in the Airstream is too small, and Alex’s kitchen is so pristine, the mere idea of getting it all dirty in a food fight is absurd. They do enjoy cooking together, though, feeding each other bites of whatever they’re preparing.

13) Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer?

Alex is the singer in the family, that doesn’t keep Michael from singing in the shower, though. He also loves to sing in the car, along to whatever’s playing on the radio. And Alex joins him, happy to share this with Michael.

15) Who likes writes the others name on their wrist?

Neither

18) Who talks to the other while they are sleeping?

Sometimes Michael wakes up in the middle of the night. Not from nightmares or anything, he just wakes up and lies in the dark, listening to Alex’s slow and deep breaths right next to him. And he’s just so grateful that he gets to have this, that they get to have this. That they finally figured out how to be together without hurting each other.

And sometimes he just has to tell Alex, even though he’s asleep and won’t hear Michael, but Michael tells him anyway. How much he loves Alex, how much he loves their life together, he tells Alex about his hopes and dreams, just all the little things he sometimes forgets to tell Alex when they are awake (although they both make an effort to talk to each other, to tell each other how much they love the other etc, there’s no lack of communication between them these days).

Anyway, sometimes Michael talks to Alex while he’s asleep, these moments are very dear to him and they help him to fall asleep again eventually.

(Sometimes Alex will wake up from Michael whispering sweet things to him, he pretends to still be asleep and just let’s Michael’s love wash over him.)

19) Who drives and who has the window seat?

During their first summer together they’re going on a road trip. Alex insists on driving because he wants Michael to be able to soak it all up. The view, the landscape, sights, animals on the side of the road, everything.

23) Who thinks they are not good enough for the others love? and who’s more afraid of loosing the other? Who thinks they keep messing up, only for the other to tell them they don’t need to worry?

Ouch, this is a touchy topic for both of them.

Alex is maybe a tad better at talking himself out of thinking like that, but sometimes it’s still hard to shut up and dismiss Jesse’s voice in his head. Michael struggles more tbh . Undoing the damage of more than two decades of abandonment issues requires a lot of work.

But the longer they are together, the easier it gets, and the faster one of them will pick up on the other “going there” and then they’ll talk, and there’s always the reassurance of “I love you, you are good enough, you are my forever, I’m not going anywhere.”

24) Who starts random slow dancing with the other in the kitchen? Who holds the other just above the ground and kisses them?

When they cook together, there’s always music playing in the background, and Michael loves nothing more than to hug Alex from behind, kiss his neck, and sway with him to the rhythm of the music. Eventually, Michael will turn in Michael’s embrace, put his arms around Michael’s neck and kiss him (while they’re still swaying to the rhythm of the music).

26) Who kissed first?

Alex tried, but Michael wasn’t ready.

Didn’t take him long to get there, though

27) Who orders take out at two in a morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark?

When Alex is really (REALLY) in the mood for fries and milkshake one night, Michael drives to the Crashdown and gets them fries and shakes just before Arturo closes for the night.

Neither of them‘s afraid of the dark, though, and if someone’s thirsty in the middle of the night, it’s usually Michael who gets up so Alex won’t have to use his crutches.

28) Who writes poems/stories and love songs about the other? Do they sing the songs the write for them?

I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THAT THIS IS CANON 🥺😭

29) Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the emergency room after it backfires?

No stunts for these two, especially stunts that will earn them a trip to the ER (Michael wouldn’t go there anyway, and Alex has spent too much time in a hospital, he really doesn’t need more of that if he can help it).

It’s more likely that alien shenanigans will get them in trouble, and since they’ll both do anything to protect the other, chances are, things will end in a way that requires medical attention, it’s usually Kyle or Liz who’ll patch them up.

One day, Alex gets hurt quite severely during a mission to another secret facility, though. Michael finds him after fighting off a group of soldiers. Alex is lying on the floor of the server room where he was hacking into the main computer, a red stain in the shape of a poppy slowly growing on his chest. He’s been shot and his breathing is getting more and more shallow. Michael cradles him in his arms, yelling at him to stay awake, but he knows if he doesn’t come up with an idea real quick, he’ll lose Alex.

There’s no way in heaven or hell Michael will let that happen. He rips Alex bloody shirt open and places his hand right over Alex’s heart. He closes his eyes and lets his instincts take over. His hand starts glowing a familiar red, and the lights in the room are flickering. He feels a boost of something building up inside of him, and with one final push, he presses his hand down on Alex’s chest. It’s like he’s shoving life itself back into Alex’s limp body.

Seconds later Alex starts moving in his arms. He coughs, then he looks up at Michael, his dark hazel eyes shining with so much love, it takes Michael’s breath away.

“You did it, Michael, you saved my life!” He grabs for Michael’s hand (that’s still glowing a faint red) and presses a kiss into the open palm. Michael cups Alex’s face and Alex nuzzles into the touch. The intimate contact blows a connection between them wide open and all of a sudden it’s like they’re outside in the bright sunshine, there’s so much light, but it doesn’t hurt their eyes, it just surrounds them, pierces right through them and warms them from the inside.

Then there are pictures, they feel like memories but how can that be? There they are, kissing, but they are clad in what looks like primitive fur clothing. Another picture, Michael is wearing a toga-like garment, while Alex is sporting the golden armor pieces of a Roman general. They are lying on the floor a luxuriously decorated tent, feeding each other with grapes. Another picture where they are wearing medieval clothing, and so it goes on and on. It’s like there’s always been an Alex and a Michael in every century since the beginning of time.

When the picture show ends, they gasp and with that they’re back under the harsh neon light of the server room. They look at each other and although they hear noise in the distance, they hug tight and sink into the most intimate kiss they’ve ever shared.

When the noise comes closer, they stop kissing, and Alex grabs Michael’s hand.

“Please help me up. I have everything I need downloaded, also one push of that button over there and the facility will blow up in 15 minutes. Let’s get out of here, and then I want to go home and make love to you four weeks in a row.”

Michael grins, helps Alex up and on their way out, sets off the self-destruct mechanism with a mere thought.

When they get home, their friends don’t see them for an entire month ;)

[vaguely-concerned]

Some T.F./Graves thoughts from their bios

I realize what a dumb move it is to base uuuuh basically anything on lol bios, since riot apparently change those like other people do underwear, but if I’m not here to build my castles on sand what am I here for honestly  

- I LOVE the description of their first meeting, it’s such a meet cute lol... these two assholes really did just take one look at each other and mutually went ‘so is anyone gonna enter into a life-defining homoerotic partnership with this lying cheating bastard??’ and then neither of them waited for an answer 

- Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all their shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

I am genuinely a little emotional about how obvious it is that at the end of the day the money really is secondary to him - what really drives him is how much FUN they have together. (he seems in general quite driven by that sense of Adventure; if it were just about the cash he had steady work in bilgewater before he took the trip over to the mainland as a kid) it’s like the part of ‘the road to el dorado’ in the boat except more sincere... ‘you made my life an adventure bro’ :’) 

(also very funny that graves’ bio is where you learn that t.f. doesn’t always win or get away with his shit hahaha, in his own bio it’s played like ‘oh gotta let people win once in a while to throw off suspicion’ flasdhfjsad. it’s mentioned he gets caught a lot more without graves watching his back too, which also gets me in my feelings a bit) 

- one thing I find interesting is that t.f.’s parents aren’t referenced directly at any point (the only family members mentioned specifically are his aunt and grandfather, I’m pretty sure). I’m wondering if they were already out of the picture somehow and that’s part of the reason no one spoke up for him? I mean it’s fucked up either way, I don’t know what’s worse; that his people found it so easy to exile him because he didn’t have anyone to protect him, or that his parents were alive and JUST LEFT HIM THERE. like what the fuck. from how it’s written it’s pretty clear he was still considered a child at the time too, so, y’know. (Graves is described as ‘little more than a youth’ when he headed for the mainland while T.F. seems to have been a kid when he started being on his own, so I’ve headcanoned something like 16-17 and 13-14 for their respective ages of leaving home, with both of them around 19 when they met) I’m quite curious about what kind of internal family politics were at work for them to apparently all agree -- or perhaps be too intimidated to disagree -- to exile a child for life with no recourse and no resources. like yeah okay he messed up but that’s some next level assholery to pull on a kid honestly, no wonder he grows up to have a bunch of abandonment and emotional intimacy issues (and presumably some prime survivor’s guilt as well. oh buddy) 

- eternally entertained by how much meeting t.f. is worded like the ‘how they met their spouse’ section of a wikipedia article in graves’ bio

Across one table, he met a deplorable fellow named Malcolm Graves is also *mwha* so good 

- for fic purposes I would just like to give a moment of thanks for the paragraph in graves’ bio that mentions a bunch of shenanigans they got up to back in the day, very useful thank you

- from what I understand t.f.’s exile-causing transgression has been changed quite recently from fighting back to running away, which I am so happy about because it makes a lot more psychological sense to me and makes graves’ words in ‘burning tides’ hit so much better.  

- I like that their individual descriptions of graves being captured are so indicative of how they each think about it -- namely t.f. doesn’t want to think about it (repress! repress! repress! very relatable) but probably has the more accurate view of it: The exact details of that night remain shrouded in mystery, for neither of them likes to speak of it—but Graves was taken alive, while Tobias and their other accomplices ran free, while graves does think about it but sort of still has his trauma goggles on for it: During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him. t.f.’s is obfuscating and refusing to engage in the emotional aspect of it, graves’ is much more emotive in the language used, like ‘abandoned’. the lol bios often teeter awkwardly between straight biographies and wanting to dip into prose/flavour text, I must say I usually find them very clunky and unsatisfying, but this juxtaposition works for me.

sort of weird the details that don’t make it in, though -- like the fact that they’re both aware that miss fortune was the one who screwed them over in the whole gangplank Situation? (I love that part in ‘destiny and fate’ where graves is gamely like ‘yeah of course I’ve got a grudge against her but that was pretty metal too so y’know *shrug*’ haha)   

- it’s interesting how much t.f.’s uh connection I guess to the cards is almost described as some kind of... compulsion/unstoppable drive in the middle of his bio and then fades into the background towards the end (because his priorities have changed to repairing his marriage now that it’s an option and by god I support him in that). I really do wonder how his card magic actually works -- it’s a cool mix of extremely unsubtle and undeniable sorcery (straight up throwing fireballs around) and subtle (’hunches’, being ‘guided’, just knowing things he sort of shouldn’t), which seems to be where it started

also it seems like he can do it with just about any playing card he comes across? would be sort of weird if it’s the cards that are special, considering he keeps throwing them away and also I don’t know a lot about gambling but I distinctly imagine that casinos don’t let you use your own decks haha. and t.f. seemingly can’t do magic just on his own, without them. so it’s a thing that happens very specifically in relationship, when all the elements come together, symbiotically sort of thing? could he do magic without the cards but it’s how he’s trained himself to think of it so he doesn’t realize it (well I honestly doubt that but just for the thought experiment)? is there some sort of spirit behind those cards looking out for him? is it lady luck keeping an eye out for her favorite boy lol? we know this stuff can physically change the cards like when they showed the crown in ‘destiny and fate’, and he seems able to ‘prime’ a card with magic beforehand if ‘double-double cross’ is anything to go by, but even then mf can’t actually use or release it. hmmmmm many questions  

- the more of my long fic I write the more I am questioning what the fuck these two DO with all the money they steal -- like they’ve clearly pulled off some HUGE heists, surely it can’t all go into like drinks and cigars and fancy waistcoats and tf’s seemingly unending supply of playing cards

do they have like. a bunch of small caches of gold hidden away all across two continents in case of emergency? are their buried treasures the stuff of runeterran urban legend and people go out hunting for them? Have they invested this stuff in actual banks? (actually no I refuse to accept that as a possibility lol if nothing else this would make it hard to figure out if they were robbing THEMSELVES sometimes, sounds like a lot of hassle)

- His people had always waved away concerns over primitive magic and “cartomancy”, but now Tobias began to seek out ever more dangerous means to bend the cards to his will. 

I’m having a little bit of a hard time parsing this -- does this mean his people didn’t believe the cards were magic at all and he’s the only person he knows who can do it, or do they know but just don’t think can be dangerous??? I chose one particular interpretation for my fic, but I honestly can’t figure out what it’s actually meant to mean haha

- T.F. getting a special satisfaction from robbing people who are Assholes is a good character detail (his colour story really goes out of its way to show that the merchant he’s playing against is a real shitbag, for example); there is some lopsided form of righteousness/sense of justice there, I think. and it also ties in with why I like that his exile was because he ran away rather than because he resorted to violence -- there’s this underlying sense that he particularly enjoys outsmarting people who’re dickish to outsiders in precarious situations (like his people) so thoroughly that they don’t even realize it before he’s long gone, without ever having to even lay a finger on them, because that’s a way to fight back while staying out of reach when you come from relative powerlessness. There’s a... lack of malice, I guess, to both of them that I find quite endearing, you can see in Burning Tides that even at his most mindlessly vengeful Graves doesn’t actually enjoy being actively cruel. ‘mutual sense of roguish honor’ is RIGHT they’re bad men but not Bad men you get me  

- All in all, Twisted Fate is glad to have his old friend back, even if it might take another job or two—or ten—to restore their once easy partnership.

This probably means nothing because as I said the lol bios seem an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of canon, but I think it’s so sweet that both of their last sentences/’where are they now’ statements are about them wanting to repair their partnership (and do some Cool Big Stuff together in graves’ case, I do wonder if that’s foreshadowing for the ruined king game or what)

[ihatetaxes99]

Death Note: The Glorious Manga Ending (And the anime that failed to deliver)

Well, this is certainly something a tad different from my usual affairs. Yes, I'm delighted to bear the news that I am taking a break from writing sub-par fanfiction and selling weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in order to follow something a little less creative, but more immediately interesting to me in my current time of writing. I mean, hell, there's probably a 60% chance that no one will ever read this, since I'll likely drop it halfway through and go back to my black market dealings. But, in that small 40% chance that I do get this out the door, or indeed any further than this very sentence before I forget about it for all eternity, then I want to have a little discussion, a fun little analysis. And of course, I'm going to analyse everyone's favourite slice of life fluff comedy, Death Note. Specifically the ending and how I think the manga surpasses the anime in many, many ways.

If you haven't yet read or watched Death Note, then you won't be reading this anyway, so it would be rather pointless at best and an insult to your intelligence at worst to give a recap of how the series works. If you must have a layman's explanation, big murder book gets dropped into the human world, shenanigans ensue. There, now go watch or read it for yourself. Preferably read, as I am about to discuss. The manga is far better, entirely because of the second half. It's no secret that the Death Note anime handled the second half poorly. Content was cut, elements were skipped, scenes were changed entirely and Near, my favourite character from the manga, was done so dirty that he generally ranks as many people's least favourite, for some understandable reasons and others that I consider rather weak. But the main part of the second half aside, I want to talk about the final showdown, the confrontation in the Yellow Box warehouse, and how I feel the anime adaptation butchered a near-perfect ending for the sake of either time, or budget, or maybe to appease Light fangirls (because that definitely has a factor in why I don't like the anime's ending as much.)

So, to recap, most of the confrontation at the warehouse between the SPK and Kira plays out very much the same. Mikami writes the names down, Light reveals himself, the notebook is revealed to be a fake and Yagami has his famous mental breakdown, followed by one of the most powerful lines in the series:

(Note: I condensed the speech to fit neatly into two boxes)

I love this speech. I think it's one of the best in the series, for reasons that very much tie into why the ending in the manga works better. I want you all to think for a moment; I've seen a lot of people say Death Note is a series that doesn't take sides on the conflict. No, that is bullshit. In the early series, maybe, but from the moment Light Yagami killed Naomi Misora, and arguably even earlier than that with Raye Pembre, he was consistently portrayed as being more and more callous, more evil, more of a scumbag. Let's look over what he did, especially in the later stages of the series.

He:

Murdered the FBI agents tailing him.

Only expressed regret over Utika's death because it may negatively affect Kira's reputation.

Watched with no emotion as his father died and indeed, encouraged him to use the Death Note moments before he died.

Mocked Matsuda for mourning his father's death.

Manipulated two seperate women into doing his bidding (albeit, one was unintentional) and killed one himself, with plans to kill the other had he not been killed.

Instigated a riot in New York with the intent of killing Near and the SPK.

Killed FBI agents who were tailing him.

Only cared about Utika's death because it compromised Kira's strong public image and not because he was actually a good man.

Manipulated two seperate women into falling for him (albeit one was accidental) and promptly killed off one with no hesitation, with plans of killing the other had he not met his end first.

Watched emotionless as his own father died and even tried to get him to use the Death Note in his last moments.

Mocked Matsuda for mourning the death of his father and used it in a last ditch effort to distract the detective and escape.

Staged a riot with the intent of killing Near and the rest of the SPK.

And these are just some of them. By the end of Death Note, Light was not a good person. I personally never agreed with him, but he went from a disillusioned kid with a minor saviour complex to A full-blown, sadistic, perverted image of what he used to be, utterly unfeeling and cold-hearted, with a major God complex, a complete lunatic. As Near said, a mass murderer and nothing more. After everything Yagami's done over the course of the series, it was just too satisfying to read this for the first time, and I will concede, the anime did a great job adapting it. I feel a lot of Light fangirls agreed with him because his ideals sounded good on paper, but in reality, they're completely childish and self-serving. I am not one to moral grandstand, I believe those who take any excuse to give lectures about morality are annoying and often hypocritical scum, but my point here is that this is not a man any reasonable person could agree with if he were a real person. So, this teardown of his ego was perfect.

Now, the first big difference is the ultimate fate of Teru Mikami. In the anime, he kills himself in the warehouse, in a scene that makes me laugh every time due to the comically large quantities of blood spewing from him. He dies defending Kira's ideals, believing in his God. Or, if you choose to interpret it another way, he has accepted that Light is not God, and he has nothing else to live for. Either way, the anime lacks a key scene, after Light is shot by Matsuda and begging for help:

This is extremely important, as it continues what Near did with his speech and sets in motion the following trend for what is to come. Light is humiliated, his second most faithful pawn has turned against him, called him scum, seen him for what he truly is, and worse still, he's done it in front of everyone else. Teru Mikami has denounced his God, and this is just the stepping stone for the humiliation Kira is about to suffer. Also, it's worth noting that just before Mikami denounces Kira, there's a scene of Light crawling on the ground, bleeding, calling out for Misa and Takada to help him, seeming to have gone totally delusional, forgetting that Takada was already dead. This may have been excluded from the anime, or it may have been the fault of the subs I was using. It still serves as a vital part of the theme that the final few chapters hammer in, over and over again, that being the complete and total humiliation of Light Yagami. And the worst for our criminal-killing protagonist is still to come.

Finally, we reach the fate of the original Kira, the end of Light Yagami. In the anime, he uses Mikami's suicide as a distraction to escape, wherein he runs off, seeing visions of his past self, and dies out in the middle of a staircase, from a heart attack delivered by Ryuuk, calmly and quietly. This is all very nice and emotional, we see for a moment, Light contemplates what he became and wondering how it could have ended differently, and him dying in the middle of the staircase, as many people have stated before, is oh so very symbolic of how he finds himself unable to reach Heaven or Hell. However, this does not hold a candle to the manga.

This is what Light is like upon his death there:

Yeah, there's no real doubting it, he's going out like a complete bitch. Like the anime was thoughtful and silent, with an underlying sombre soundtrack, in this the once great Kira is reduced to a blubbering mess, throwing a tantrum because he refuses to accept his time is up. It was made very clear to him at the beginning that he was to die at Ryuuk's hand one day and now that it's here, he can't take it. He tries to cheat death, the one thing no human nor Shinigami can do. I mean, just look at the panels. He's a mess. A privileged, pampered brat who isn't getting his way. That is why I consider the Death Note manga ending to be superior to the anime in almost every way. While the anime gives us symbolism and a sense of calm, the manga goes all the way in tearing down this character, who has been a piece of human garbage for years at this point. I find it so satisfying to watch him get what he deserves, not only the death but the shame.

Light's own hubris and mental instability stole from him the honourable death he received in the anime. And that is everything I believe he needed, far more than the mere reality check he was given in the anime.

Phew, damn this was a ride and a half to write. I always appreciate feedback, if anyone wants to share their own thoughts on the ending. Please do feel free to do so, and I'll hopefully be back soon with your regularly scheduled shitty fanfics.