#both of which are resolved

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[felassan]

What kind of spirit do you think Felassan waz?

Swag

[bixels]

Be honest, what are your thoughts on appledash? Do you hate it or its more of not a big deal

Not a big deal to me. I like it, I see all the appeals, I just personally like Rarijack more.

[nenoname]

stan twins the canon cptsd brothers i will always think about all your unaddressed issues that would make perfect plot fuel for your spinoff

and also the whole 'stan getting that poem by bill via a website which contrasts with bill getting one from the axolotl via a website' foreshadowing thing

like idk i would love something like su future but like more optimistic, aka not an accumulated breakdown that has to be mostly resolved off screen at the end :/// but something thats being kinda addressed throughout? (although would love to see one of them turn into a monster thats always fun lol)

stan having severe issues from his dad and those years of being homeless that we keep on getting more info on but never really getting confronted on (the drifter catalogue and tijuana incident...), him being completely alone for like twenty years when running the shack before soos comes along to the point that 1998 is noted as his low point, and him not really learning about bill+what he did to ford until ages after he killed him if he ever did get the full context

while i think amnesia and everyone seeing him as a hero actually helped with stan's 'i'm a worse version of my brother' thing its still a lingering issue too and we now got him being insecure over his own hands

ford being immediately thrown from 'being tortured by bill' to 'being stuck in the multiverse and being chased by bounty hunters constantly', him fully expecting himself to die when destroying bill, and him only now being safe for the first time in 30 years ....relatively safe, he's still in constant danger because of course he is

idk in the end the series wants them to be happy and they deserve it, its why i wasn't too worried about the book being like 'ooh bill is back!! and the book is haunting ford' thing cos i knew they'll be ok

[mohntilyet]

i’m having illario dellamorte thoughts. what if instead of knowingly betraying lucanis he did it like, unknowingly. idk how this would work but i’m intrigued by what it gives us. illario ‘i accidentally caused my cousin’s death & can never tell anyone’ dellamorte. genuinely grieving. blaming himself. does he take advantage of the year before lucanis comes back?? does caterina still ignore him the whole time?? how different is the canon plotline once rook shows up with lucanis post-rescue…..

anyways i would love your thoughts!!

95% of what i do with illario operates on the idea that he is frighteningly competent so you can see why the way the crows plotline plays out in the game might frustrate me. it’s also this reason why i don’t actually think too much about “illario got lucanis killed, but didn’t mean to do it”, because i like the idea that everything illario does in his life is planned to the second and that he’s too well trained to mess up this badly, if that makes sense. with that being said. 5% of my brain power does sometimes go towards “and what if he just sucked actually” and it was a theory i enjoyed before the game even released. so i have in fact been thinking about this anyway LOL . maybe he tries to honeypot zara, accidentally actually reveals lucanis’ next assassination job, and zara gets rid of him as a ‘gift’. illario is horrified and that gets even worse when lucanis’ body shows up, and he assumes this must be because he spurned zara by leaving her and not having the guts to seize power.

i think we could make his inferiority complex worse. illario’s worst fear confirmed: he is as worthless as his grandmother believes he is, botching something so badly that he accidentally sentences his cousin to death when what he wanted was lucanis just… out of the way for a bit (maybe while he kills caterina. LOL. i still think his resentment of caterina trumps his jealousy for lucanis though those two things are very intertwined its hard for him to differentiate them). so incapable that he got the only person who actually supports him killed, and now he’s dreading the idea of becoming first talon. he doesn’t want first talon without lucanis backing him, and now the only person left is caterina which is suffocating and makes him even unhappier. at least he hadn’t lived through her alone, and now through consequences of his own decisions, illario has no choice but to.

i think that would affect his plans for talon because of how horribly he’d fucked up, and tries to mask it because if he suddenly actually doesn’t want to be talon that would be a red flag for everyone. lucanis coming back would delight him (talon is within his sights again if lucanis comes back!) and freak him out. i think the plotline would actually be pretty similar because of this freak out, so he still shows up to zara’s fight to cover his tracks. lucanis can never know, caterina can never know, because what little faith they have in him will be lost. like he committed fratricide and didn’t even MEAN to😭 ...corpse whispering still happens, and zara is like “ohhh that coward. he can never finish what he started, can he?” + “elaborate.” + “i gave him what he most wanted in the world and instead of being grateful, he ran away.” so lucanis finds out about what happened but feels a mix of “illario, you idiot” + pity because turns out he didn’t even mean for it to happen, and keeps his secret for now, otherwise he’d probably have to kill him.

i also think not meaning to kill lucanis would sour his feelings towards the venatori, who are a reminder of how badly he failed, so the alliance wouldn’t happen. this does mean if the story goes on as it does in canon, he has to take desperate measures another way and kidnap caterina for some other reason but i can’t think of why….. maybe a thing where illario is like “ok. lucanis is distracted by the elven gods. this time i just have to kill nonna for real and then nothing is in my way” and recruits disgraced houses or houses that don’t like caterina to do so? not sure tbh but i don’t believe caterina made it so far without making enemies lol. this would happen post bloodbath + corpse whispering— lucanis leaves his cousin unchecked because while he knows illario didn’t mean for him to die, he has no idea how far he would go to have caterina dead. teia could find out about this and send word to foil the kidnapping and assassination attempt

so ‘murder of crows’ is still about saving caterina, the illario-lucanis fight still happens, but it’s a little more hesitant and lots of “why won’t you just let me kill her? i’m doing this for the both of us”. he’s had to live with being the un-favorite, but never would have thought lucanis would actually pick caterina if it came down to it. with all of his missteps here, i think the final decision (and i think it should be like this in canon anyway) would be to imprison illario or kill him. imprisoning him is just a lot of “i can’t kill illario as much as he couldn’t kill me”, vs killing him as is expected from him as talon, and what he knew he would have to do after finding out about illario's failures. unlike canon, where illario is actually meaning to kill him and can be seen as a 'good crow' despite the sloppiness, here he's like. just bad at everything. the allied traitor houses that went against caterina would also have to be imprisoned or killed. no happy ending at all here, and lucanis still becomes first talon. now that i’ve written it out this is actually probably the worst ending LOL

the above sticks a lot to what is canon to the game (plot points, choices, etc) and i didn’t go very far away from it so it's like canon 3 inches to the left. tho my thoughts on this are not fleshed out* because i think illario works better as an antagonist character that sets things in motion !! not necessarily the villain in a cain-abel story, but a character who opposes lucanis while still not wanting to hurt him. that kind of discipline where he finds a way to get what he wants (first talon) without compromising what he also cares for (family) is so much more fun for me than a man who apparently just loses it and decides to enact a bad plan to get rid of his cousin. if he waited 20+ years to become talon i think he’d be more careful when it came down to it. if i had my way illario would be playing insane 5d chess to rival solas (insert black sails “i once thought that to lead, to be liked was just as good as feared. and that may very well be true. but to be both liked and feared all at once, is an entirely different state of being.”)

[piecanl]

Do you think Tubbo would recognize the path Bad is going down, because it's one he's already walked down on?

This self-destructive behavior coming from a broken heart?

He hasn't seen Bad at his best, before the eggs got kidnapped. He's seen him a victim to grief more than a father. It's why the blue staining Bad's being isn't out of the ordinary.

But suddenly he starts carrying flowers to remind him of the love he lost, suddenly the void calls out his name even louder and suddenly Tubbo sees himself in the older demon.

And it's scary, because suddenly he sees what he has become, how it affects others.

And for the first time of many, he sees Bad walk down a road he's paved. For the first time of many, Bad is the one repeating Tubbo's mistakes.

[alea-jottun]

Arcane season 2 rewrite part one : Viktor

(other parts here)

Here are some ideas I have been entertaining for an alternate season 2 I'm working on.

I have been mixing s2, what little of LoL lore I've heard about, and what I wish would have happened (I apologize in advance for any mistake, English is not my first language):

With the way they established a link between Viktor and Singed during s1, I think it would have been interesting to mix the LoL lore and Arcane canon : Singed could have been encouraging Viktor down the Lol path (spurring him to commit more and more unethical experiences in the name of progress, while providing him with shimmer and helping him replace his sick body with machine parts, etc.).

I can see Singed feeding Viktor's resentment towards Jayce and Piltover, preying on his pain after his banishment (and claiming that he understands him because he lived through a similar experience). Of course, from a purely objective point of view, Viktor is aware that Singed is trying to reel him in and has ulterior motives. But despite his best efforts, the emotional pain is still too raw and powerful. He knows Singed's intentions towards him cannot be good, but he is also grateful to him for helping him continue his work (in this AU, Viktor managed to steal some hex crystals) and for helping him with this new body.

Back in Zaun, Viktor drowns himself in his work, trying to forget how much he's hurting (how could Piltover do this to him ? How could Jayce side against him in his trial, this kangaroo court, after all they've been through together ? How could he have been so wrong about Jayce ? How could he have been so naive to think Jayce would undertsand ?)

He becomes the Machine Herald and, once he's no longer under imminent threat of death due to his illness, he begins to work on mechanical machinery, body prosthetics, etc. in order to improve life in Zaun.

And that's when things go wrong : Viktor's new body is powered by the hexcore Jayce has implanted him with (because I like this idea, let's keep the beginning of episode 1). But now he needs shimmer to keep his mind and body together (after all, it's by mixing the shimmer variant, his own organic body and the arcane that Viktor fixed his leg in s1), and the pain at bay.

He becomes a shimmer addict.

At first it's manageable, not as nocive as regular shimmer, and he only replaces the parts of his body that are actively hurting/killing him (his lungs, his spine, etc.). But with his regular shimmer consumption, he begins to develop side effects, which spurs him to modify even more of his body, which in consequence make him even more dependent on shimmer.

A few years pass, and now he is involved in shimmer traffic (there could be a possibility to link his arc with Jinx's or Sevika's here, I will need to develop this point later). He keeps healing desperate Zaunites, knowing that every prosthetic he builds helps the patients survive but will get them addicted to shimmer eventually. He tries to convince himself that he is doing the right thing, that he is doing more good than harm, that some sacrifices are unavoidable. He hasn't had a resting night of sleep in years.

Viktor keeps transforming and fears that one day he won't recognize himself anymore. If he doesn't stop taking shimmer he will lose the rest of his humanity, but if he stops his machine body will fail him. He has never felt this lonely.

[szilverer]

unfortunately, it was inevitable for my ghostie to marry their brainwashed stalker, but they're still making it a punishment for him.

(ya might be wondering damn what makes someone inflict poor edward on themself? well, to put it simply. you take what you get)

for starters, this ⬇ was the first dream i came across after my 8 year hiatus.

so i was like, oh, ok. love? what love?

guess chasing love is a main theme for them now. good luck rei. you woke up alone, and you have no family whatsoever. you certainly don't care about that right now, but you will, your ambition will make sure of that.

cue a string of unsuccessful crushes/love interests that were either using them, only interested on something they owned, or just. straight up made their heart skip several beats and then left. (i was also focusing on LF so hard i skipped on acquaintances, and didnt start/continue MYN and other storylines that could've given them possible npc friends/platonic interests. i also thought the bewildering procession needed 125 base persuasive, which i didnt have at the time)

i feel like if they had one (1) meaningful connection that wasn't scheduled to move on without them by the end of the ambition, if there was one (1!!) person they felt would consider sticking around by their side. edward would be deadward. 100%.

but they didn't

they didn't have anyone.

this blond weirdo was the only person that would stay by their side no matter what, at least for a while, and that was only because he had no actual choice in the matter.

this marriage represents reisz giving up on chasing love. pure and simple. after months of having people to come back to they'd be left with nothing. truth or not, this was the mindspace they were in. they were just. so tired

so yeah how could they possibly not take this opportunity to assure there would be at least someone out there waiting for them. that might as well have been the only chance they'd ever get to walk down an aisle anyway.

[oceansquill]

Okay, someone uploaded the ~10 minute dream portion of the podcast - I'll link it in the comments. Here's a summary

the main story:

Starts with Phil saying that when the "their nda's are done they can talk shit now" jokes were going on, he said that when he retired he'd give context to the "imagine taking credit..." tweet

Tommy says he'd "never been in an argument with anyone before" so he was really stressed at the time

at the time tommy was in a call with eryn, jack, tubbo, and freddie and they were egging him on

from tommy's pov, dream got really personal so tommy wasn't sure if he was serious or not

Tommy contacted phil for help, phil decided to find out

other stuff:

tommy joked about there being red flags, jack and phil agreed - jack claimed he had a bad feeling from the start

the infamous part of it was "I vowed never to be horrible to dream again" "it's not worth it, it makes me too sad"

apparently jack was aggravated by dream one week into the smp and figured he was a bad person from then on (also said dream doesn't like him and was clear about that - corroborated by tommy)

jack gives dream credit for giving him the dsmp opportunity and "individual acts of kindness" but thinks that he takes ownership of other peoples' works because he helped (and doesn't like him because of that)

at the end jack said the words came out harsher than intended, he just really does not like dream

jack said if there were dream fans in the patreons he thinks they're "fighters" and says hats off to them

tommy says he done with all the behind the scenes drama so he only works with like 4 people now

phil says he has no animosity towards dream, just disdain for a lot of things he's done behind the scenes

jack says he'd be civil to dream if he saw him

says he feels bad airing "all that out online"

[cryptvokeeper]

I dare not speak it in the tag because I value my energy but no one has the correct opinions about nosferatu 2024 except for me

[ratatatastic]

on the robe saga, fors told viaplay "it was our captain's idea actually" so he was team sasha btw. which could mean nothing

(they also said "smells fresh, so you've not sauna'd in this one?" and he laughed and said he didn't he saved this one for that day)

its so personally funny to me that literally everyone is team sasha (ie. maffhew, roddy) except sasha himself its "today? barky" "barky hes the best" "matthew tkachuk and you guys know why..." "id wanna be barky in tappara!" "its gotta be barky" "probably go cap!" "id say barky!" all over again like sasha youre bias is showing here please 😭😭😭

oh! now that you bring up forsy saying he saved the robes for gameday! (can we also talk about how cute his smile is as he says it because he looks so proud of himself that he listened to his captain when he told him to save the virginity of his bathrobes for the game)

it does makes sense why forsy was missing from the pic lundy posted on his stories (not that particularly means much considering ekky aj driedges spence adam jesper swaggy gadjo and kuli are missing) but in the sense that all the boys in the pic have their robes on or have them bundled in their laps sans lundy who takes tourguide duties very seriously! but even then forsy couldn't help but join in because he has them on as an extra layer during lunchtime so the cold mustve gotten to him somehow but to know even then he didn't go into the sauna with it... mmm... your restraint is admirable...

so really knowing all this the timeline gets so funny because this idea has been bouncing around probably since bzito gave them the robes in helsinki (whether that was when they landed oct 29 or the day after oct 30 when lundy played tourguide for them) and maffhew mustve quipped "man it would be so funny if we walked in with em huh?" to sasha and promptly forgot about it because he yaps unconsciously and anything out of his mouth comes out in a fugue state and also in a very "i say shit and i dont really expect to be taken seriously" kind of way, sasha made a personal note of it in the maffhew index he keeps in his head, told the team in a very sasha esque way aka "don't dirty robes too much we're gonna wear them for the game :]" and no one took him particularly seriously because its sasha he always jokes like this haha hes not really gonna- (reminds them day of probably via text) and go oh well i guess its a prank but i'll still wear them because it's sasha (shrugs) i don't mind being the butt of the joke if it's for sasha to which they're delightfully surprised when everyone shows up in robes and it slowly starts to dawn on them none of it was a joke at all

sans forsy who takes everything his captain says very seriously and diligently follows his every word and saved the sanctity of the robes for gameday merely because sasha told him to... which could mean nothing... of course...

dear god help us all...

[zahri-melitor]

Look, one of the fundamental things I keep an eye on for DC writers these days is "is this person plotting a story arc that has sufficient escape valves in case of cancellation".

Because, realistically, even if you've been handed a headline title and an ongoing run, any writer should be tying off their story every 12 months and immediately before every major company-wide event. They shouldn't need to yank that cord, but you can always tell the difference between someone who has figured out how to exit their arc in advance and has just had to compress the story, and someone who's been caught on the hop (for active examples of this, go read literally any comic leading in to either Infinite Crisis or Flashpoint, as everyone got shuffled on their titles after both. You can see when teams were informed they were about to lose their books and when books were needed for the event in terms of how the stories all suddenly pivot to Getting Stuff Done ASAP).

There is also the evil cousin, 'run extended beyond expected plotting and ideas' which can show up but obviously is a rarer beast to spot.

[lacewise]

Logically, I understand that prepwork and setup take time and are distinct skills from crafting

Emotionally, I don’t understand how I have so many projects in different stages that never seem to get finished and always seem to expand

[silverwhittlingknife]

i have a special place in my heart for "show don't tell" storytelling, especially in comic books. comics are a visual medium!

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Maybe the truth at the heart of Shadowstruck is the importance of family. Because the most compelling stories in this universe are about what happens when you tell parents that some of their children have no right to their love, care, and protection. It destroys what should be the strongest and most natural bonds of love, and that simple horrible thing leads to all the complicated problems in their oppressive society.

[aalghul]

i think often about how teen titans ‘03 failed from start to finish to portray a team and relationships worth investing in. were we reading about a team or 3 characters the writers liked + a cast of extras they threw around as they liked all the while not even having the favoured characters interact with each other in a worthwhile way