#but that's..a different circumstance

[riddlerosehearts]

"Be Our Guest" original draft storyboards vs final film (💖)

The song was originally written by Ashman and Menken to be sung by the enchanted objects to Maurice instead of Belle. However, story artist Bruce Woodside felt that the song would make more sense if it was sung to Belle, the main character, as opposed to secondary character Maurice, and directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale agreed.

[aueua]

people with siblings: how do you feel about them?

[arealtrashact]

Blood of my blood

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

4.2 spoilers but it's interesting how Scaramouche and Furina were both made as replacements. But while Ei saw Scara's humanity as a flaw, Focalors thought that's what made Furina perfect.

I need the two of them to interact

[timothvy]

dog walkers needed 🐶

[oooocleo]

more bugfae character design! these characters were created together w @forever-halone !

patreon

[herbarimoon]

And all I ever do is soak through you

(Alex G - Soaker)

[crescentfool]

my longest friend and companion

[skateboardtotheheart]

there is just something about the difference between edwin's love interests and having the cat king's reaction to edwin in hell being "i'll be waiting when he gets back" vs charles "no version of this where i don't come get you" rowland convincing a powerful trans-dimensional being to open a door to hell just so he could get him back

i am insane

[hunny-pp]

mouthwashing x cyberpunk au (bc what is brain rot if not mashing two current interests together into a smoothie)

au notes below cut:

-Curly, Jimmy, Anya and Swansea were a mercenary group sent on a heist in Arasaka - details of that doesn't matter but it was high stakes. Jimmy catches wind of something not going right, or that they were falling into a trap but keeps quiet. When they eventually do fall for the trap, Jimmy points it out far too late as Curly bears the brunt of an intense flame that pretty much fries him. Instead of helping Anya and Swansea, he leaves them to die and before he could escape, he was caught by Arasaka and eventually taken to be part of Mikoshi.

-Curly slowly recovers, implants and cybernetics applied on him slowly as to not shock him too much and trigger cyberpsychosis. He eventually becomes a fixer, reclusive and only communicating via text. Both Swansea and Anya quit the mercenary business completely, but still kept regular contact with Curly.

Swansea became a ripperdoc, maintaining his no-bullshit attitude which would scare off the seedy customers but keep the loyal ones. He only really goes on field to recover stolen supplies and chrome - only if he feels like he can't be bothered asking Curly to pull some strings for gigs. Anya became a medtech, before feeling stressed and isolated in that field, settling to become an owner of a small pharmacy, acting as a front and an occasional nurse for Swansea's ripperdoc clinic (kinda like Misty). She was worried she'd be accused of becoming a corpo now clawing her way back in, but she had nothing to worry about.

-Daisuke's a new mercenary, fresh into the business - having rejected his mother's offers for corporate jobs especially having grown up alongside people who later became Tyger Claws. He's slowly building up his street cred, but is finding it difficult to be taken seriously. He found himself incredibly lucky to be discovered by Curly, who was willing to give him a chance - giving him the higher stake jobs he's been wanting. To reward his good performance, he sends him to Swansea to get a free implant done. Swansea, initially alarmed by the youth, begrudgingly gives him that promised reward.

-Daisuke becomes more and more comfortable and accepted into their small circle, building rapport with Curly, befriending Anya and slowly earning Swansea's respect. He gets a mysterious text, asking him as the right professional for the job. He was told it was an urgent gig that he couldn't just ask and wait for a fixer to do. Thinking nothing of it as more than a gig, Daisuke takes it and Swansea is suspicious of the secrecy (Boy's a chronic yapper).

-The job was to steal an Arasaka relic in the middle of transport in the Badlands. All had been going well, until an unprecedented band of Wraiths came to hijack the Arasaka envoy, throwing Daisuke into a messy fight where the Relic got damaged, and encouraged by the mysterious texter, Daisuke slots the chip into his head before falling unconscious from the injuries. Swansea who had been tailing him drags him out and tends to his wounds while giving him an earful. He observes the chip while Daisuke gets flashbacks of the botched heist that changed Curly, Anya and Swansea's lives, but from the perspective of the one who betrayed them.

-Coming to, and telling Anya and Swansea this, they both tense up, Anya visibly reacting more. Anya rushes out, muttering that she has to call Curly, while Swansea tells Daisuke in the gentlest way possible, that if they don't take out that chip, Daisuke will slowly die and the person in that chip will take over his body. (Beat for beat V's story, pretty much). It all comes to a shock, both visibly upset by the circumstances but Daisuke tries to keep himself upbeat, asking if there's anyway to take it out. Before they could discuss any further, Anya returns. She tells Daisuke who the person living in his head is, and they explain the story of that night. Curly reveals himself, showing Daisuke what had become of him because of Jimmy's actions.

-Daisuke has to struggle in keeping his integrity and morality now while also shaking Jimmy out of his influence - I think unlike Johnny who - much to his chagrin, accepts V's agency, Jimmy would try and find a way to get Daisuke to relinquish control in varying ways. It's mentally exhausting and it makes him call into question his own self, but with the help of the others, he keeps himself intact as he finds leads to take the chip off.

-Because I want a good ending, and because it's about keeping integrity and inherent goodness in spite of the horrors and despair that influence someone for this AU, Daisuke will in time get Jimmy out of his head - and slowly recover from the withdrawal of the chip and regain his health and strength.

[m1nsur0]

Same Branch, Different Leaves.

[Sun Wukong and the Destined One]

[clowns0cks]

thinking about how when the doctor is chameleon arched he's a mess he has no idea what he's doing ever he's just a victim of the events around him and he's pathetic and confused asf and also a bit of a coward while when the master is chameleon arched he is a scientist, he builds an entire system out of "food and string and staples" to save humankind, gives people hope, and ultimately he's brave and plans to stay behind and die to let the other people get to utopia safely. Idk something about how they're normally the opposite of this (the doctor is always ready to save people and always has a plan / the master has ridiculous plans that are obviously gonna fail and he's scared to die a lot of times) and maybe when they don't know who they are they are actually what they would have been without external influences (yes I mean death from master audio but also every other experience that has shaped them). I don't know. I'm just rambling as I think about it I don't know what is the point of this post

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

Warden: You've never killed an innocent?

Zevran: Now there's an interesting word, "innocent." How many men do you know who can claim to be truly innocent?

Zevran: But if you're talking generalities, such as children and relatives and bystanders and such… never on purpose, but it happens.

Zevran: It's unfortunate, but death comes to us all. If not me, then some wasting disease. Or a fall down the stairs. Or at the hands of a darkspawn. It's all relative in the end.

Zevran: "Death happens," as we like to say. And when I get paid for it, death happens more often.

-

Zevran: In Antiva, being a Crow gets you respect. It gets you wealth. It gets you women… and men, or whatever it is you might fancy.

Zevran: But that does mean doing what is expected of you, always. And it means being expendable. It's a cage, if a gilded cage. Pretty. But confining.

-

Davrin: Lucanis, how do you decide when one of your targets deserves to die?

Lucanis: Usually when the client pays up front.

Davrin: I'm serious. Do you just kill anyone?

Lucanis: No. There has to be merit.

Davrin: "Merit?" Who decides that?

Lucanis: The Talon of the house.

Davrin: And then you just carry out the order?

Lucanis: It's my job.

Davrin: Must be tough to sleep at night.

-

Lucanis: You kill for a living, too, Davrin. How do you sleep at night?

Davrin: Like a baby. The things I hunt are pure evil. Monsters. There are no shades of grey with darkspawn. But you...

Lucanis: Provide a service.

Davrin: What if your target doesn't deserve to die?

Lucanis: Who does? Good, bad, everyone dies eventually. We just speed things up.

-

Emmrich: Do you have any say in your... targets?

Lucanis: You want to know if my victims deserved it.

Emmrich: Forgive me, I shouldn't have asked.

Lucanis: Everyone wonders.

Lucanis: I've never killed an innocent, by my count.

Lucanis: I cannot say if yours would agree.

-

Emmrich: Lucanis, do the implications of your work never trouble you?

Lucanis: Everyone on this team has killed before. I'm hardly unique.

Emmrich: Yes, of course. But in your case, it's a profession, rather than an act of necessity.

Lucanis: I'm not sure the Venatori or the Antaam see the distinction as you do.

-

Emmrich: I find it extremely interesting, Lucanis, that you consider the point of view of your enemies in battle.

Lucanis: I have to. It's much more difficult to find and kill them, otherwise.

Emmrich: Exactly! A utilitarian attitude towards death, and yet you extend empathy to your victims.

Lucanis: Not that much empathy.

Emmrich: Enough to wonder how the Venatori and Antaam view your actions.

Lucanis: Death comes to everyone, in time. I get paid to deliver it. Like a letter not everyone wants to read.

-

I think about this a lot. I'm always... surprised when I see the talk that they're supposedly trying to make Lucanis into the perfect "cinnamon roll" in Veilguard, because his sweet personality doesn't "match" his profession and background. Like, no? That's a very surface level of looking at it, I think.

Zevran is like this, too. He is an incredibly chill guy, and when you romance him, he is also very sweet and vulnerable, despite being an assassin. They're not that different in that department. They were both trained to be assassins since they were children. They're both traumatized in various ways. But neither of them acts like a bloodthirsty, evil freak. But they both also take pride in the job they do (or did), and how well they can do it, and have no intention of stopping. And yet they both express surprising empathy. (Zevran argues against annulling the Circle! Quite extensively!) And they make pretty much the exact same arguments about being killers for hire, as shown above.

Death is a natural part of life. Sometimes it just comes sooner, because we're there to deliver it. There's (almost) no such thing as an innocent person, so my victims aren't innocent people. Therefore, I've never killed an innocent in my entire life, as far as I know. (At least not intentionally.)

And that's interesting and fun about them! It's beautifully deranged. Lucanis completes an assassination mission, slitting somebody's throat or what have you, and then goes on his cosy coffee break, satisfied with a job well done.

The fact that they both say that they've never, in their opinion, assassinated "an innocent", so it's all good, doesn't automatically make it true and doesn't mean it's not complicated, however. Not every line of dialogue can be taken at face value. As video game players, we're rather desensitized to this, but hearing this should normally be at least a little alarming. For a regular person, at least. And it is for the people in the game! Like Emmrich and Davrin. Davrin has several banters with Lucanis about it. Like, who decides when somebody deserves to die and which contract's going to get carried out? Well, the "CEO" of "the company," of course! What could ever go wrong that way? Emmrich tries to coax Lucanis into saying that he does feel something about the whole thing, because he really wants it to be true. While Lucanis is very matter of fact about it. He knows what the Crows are, and that's it. He doesn't glamorize or demonize it.

So, it definitely isn't that "Veilguard says that Lucanis has never done anything wrong ever in his life," just like Origins doesn't do it with Zevran. Both the men's attitude towards killing is warped in an interesting way, completely in line with their background and upbringing. It shows when Lucanis argues with Davrin about them both being killers, because it completely escapes him (or maybe he ignores it for the sake of the argument) how the killing he does (contracts where the targets tend to be people) and the killing Davrin (a monster hunter, a darkspawn slayer) does is of different kind entirely. His logic is flawed at that point. But to him, it boils down to the fact that "it's just a job," and "killing is killing," and "death is death" regardless of form, and that rightfully baffles Davrin to no end. If anything, it shows how the Antivan Crows are taught to hand wave the issue, because the arguments Lucanis and Zevran both present are too similar to be anything else.

Of course, Lucanis, unlike Zevran, as the grandson of the First Talon and her favourite, might have had some extra privileges and wiggle space in comparison, which might have allowed him to bend the rules sometimes, give him space to show more compassion and act more heroically, because people are complex and there are many layers to what each person might consider right and wrong (e.g. killing is okay in various circumstances, and slavers in particular can get fucked - hell, we do it in video games all the time), but still. The fact that his grandmother wanted to tap a new market, so she made Lucanis specialize for hunting mages, which ultimately led to him killing a lot of Venatori and blood mages, makes it cleaner, which is nice, but then again, we hardly know the full extent of all his work. Moreover, when you ask Zevran to tell you stories about his jobs, you don't get much dirt out of him, either. He talks about some of the goofiest ones he's had. One of his targets that he (unsuccessfully) participated in taking out, a royal that got his position through plotting and murder, he also describes as somebody so immoral he basically deserved it. Also very clean. (Compare both these guys with somebody like Blackwall who truly committed a despicable act of murder for money that we do know of. And this single crime sounds so much more upsetting than anything either Lucanis or Zevran describe. None of the things Zevran says is as awful, besides the murder of his lover, which is framed like it wasn't really his fault, because he was misled.)

It's also worth noting that Zevran talks about how he was the best the Crows had before he left and how it brought him respect, wealth, women, men, or "whatever it is you might fancy." All in all, it comes with benefits. By his own admission, he was well off. But of course that came with a catch, as well. The "gilded cage" Zevran talks about. But that's not what made him leave. It was the plotting, backstabbing, and ever present distrust in the end, which led to the biggest mistake he'd ever made. Much like him, Lucanis also mentions that he had a comfortable life before getting captured, in the same quest where he also talks about how he didn't actually have full control of his life. ("Even before I was captured, my life was not really my own. So much had been determined for me.") The gilded cage comes up yet again. And it was plotting and backstabbing that made him lose a year of his life in the underwater prison.

My point is: Lucanis and Zevran are both assassins, because that's what they've always been, they were trained to be assassins since they were kids, they have a very pragmatic approach to death and killing, which they were most likely taught or perhaps were forced to develop, and they both take pride in how good they are at their job, and express no intention of ever stopping. And yet they both show that they have a good heart in various other ways, turn out to be friendly and incredibly loyal, and even very sweet as lovers. Because people can be complex, and so can be fictional characters. Yes, they're very different men, with different problems and personalities, yet also not that different.

You can't think that Lucanis is "too good" without also thinking that Zevran is "too good." You can't have this problem with Veilguard unless you also have it with Origins, is what I'm saying. And I think this may also apply to some of the other Crows we meet in Veilguard.

[venti-death-watch]

aventurine’s this very interesting combination of incredibly cunning, calculated, & brutal tbh while also having intense self esteem issues. he views every relationship as transactional and has no issue with using people to stay on top. he’s never left survival mode; considering his childhood, maybe he’s always been in it.

‘gilded’ describes him so well. not only is he still in a birdcage with his fancy clothes and riches covering up that he’s still in a place where he can’t escape, he also uses his persona to hide his perceived worthlessness underneath

[themirepirate]

was reading Sherlock holmes and this popped into my head

[shorthaltsjester]

just constantly thinking about percy telling vex that he’d like to think they’re all better than they think they are (except her brother, of course) . constantly thinking about when vex tells percy he’s a good man and he gets awkward and flustered and returns that she’s a good woman and when she gets as awkward and flustered he goes “see. it’s not very nice is it.” percy shouting to ripley that he forgives her and vex carves forgive into the wood of her bow. vex tells percy to take off his mask and percy comes across vex in tears and scrubbing at her armour. god. the campaign starts and percy is making arrows as flirting and getting kisses in return and the campaign ends and exhausted and knowing it won’t be a want that will be fulfilled percy admits he never wants to make another weapon and vex equally exhausted affirms that he’ll never Have to. and god . god . opposites attract is great or whatever but the deliciousness of dynamics where the characters hold up a mirror to one another where they get to shed the burden of self and see someone Like Them as someone good or capable of being better and Falling In Love. and that love being a pathway to them coming to grips with their own image and their own capacity to be better. and that the fact that the person they fall for being someone so Familiar means that they see through each other’s shit. that percy sees that vex has fallen into the trap of Nobility tricking people into thinking that makes them inherently better and giving her the only whitestone title someone has to earn beyond selection or marriage or birth. that vex sees percy forgive ripley and discusses the importance of that choice but reminds him that it’s just as important that he forgive himself.