#darts shooting

[papay0]

Labru is enemies to lovers but the enemies part is one sided bc for kabru; laios is (or could be) humanity’s #1 enemy and while he’s having nightmares about him and acting as if only thinking about Laios gives him critical psychological damage, Laios’s just thinking “oh what a nice guy, he likes monster cuisine too” kicking his legs in the air and everything

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My dad got kidnapped by people who thought they were beavers and so I shot them with a dart gun. I then realized my friend was living in a lake.

[ashmakesstuffaus]

“Montana. Big Sky Country. The Treasure State. Folks got a lot of names for it. Me? I just call it home.”

This year marks the fifth anniversary of one of my favourite games of all time, Far Cry 5. This game is an absolute comfort, and I always find myself returning to it. I know Hope County like the back of my hand, but it always manages to surprise me.

Over the years I’ve created and recreated a number of props and other items from the game, and I see myself continuing to do so for years to come.

Hope County will always be home to me 🤍

[tofixtheshadows]

hi!! so there are a lot of improbabilities that make this hypothetical unlikely but: if kabru had met toshiro first & recruited him (toshiro being so passive + not with a clear goal would have helped there & kabru is ptsd-driven but very noble in his goals which can be explained) AND they got all the way down to the bottom (idk if i believe in them...but hypothetically!) would the winged lion find either of them to be a good target for next dungeon lord? one over the other? im thinking kabru has the intensity and complexity of desire necessary but i can't imagine what it would look like if he became lord of the dungeon. do you have any thoughts?

Good morning. This is a very fun thought experiment!

(side note: I got a second anon this morning with a very similar request? not sure if related. I'm gonna let this answer speak for both of them)

Toshiro sure would have had a different time of it if Kabru had gotten to him first, huh? On the one hand, Toshiro seems to like Kabru; I think it's sweet that Kabru seems to gravitate towards hanging out with him when he isn't with the rest of the main cast. So they probably would've been good in a party together.

On the other hand, Toshiro never would have met Falin and fallen in love with her. Even if she didn't reciprocate in the end, I don't think he regrets anything that happened. Even his difficult friendship with Laios was ultimately positive (for both of them!).

They definitely would not have made it to the deeper floors, I think Senshi is crucial to achieving that ... but this is a hypothetical.

I'm puzzling over the question of Toshiro, because he is a secondary character and there's only so much we know about his motivations. His big one in canon is to save Falin, even if it means all he can do is put her to rest. Without that, without her, what sort of desires does he have?

Toshiro originally came to the Island because of a demand from his father: for one of his three sons to find "something interesting" enough on their travels to bring back home that would convince their capricious bastard father to make them his heir over the others. So they're all off on their separate training journeys with their respective retainers with the added caveat that they can't return without something to impress their father. It's implied that after falling in love with Falin, Toshiro had wanted to bring back home a wife.

Since he's said to inherit the family after he returns home without her anyway, I've been assuming that the "thing" Toshiro ended up bringing to Toshitsugu Nakamoto was the story of the dungeon, the demon, and his friend Laios, king of a risen country and Devourer of All Things Horrible.

Anyway, the things we know about Toshiro's home life are kind of fucked. It's amazing he turned out to be so nice. He's always been a shy, sensitive person, and he was sickly as a child; Maizuru cared for him despite her spymaster duties and ended up filling a motherly role for him, even though Toshiro's mother is still alive. Historically, it wasn't uncommon for noble children to be raised more closely by their governesses/household retainers than their parents, so perhaps something similar was happening here (disclaimer that I don't know much about feudal Japan specifically).

We know that Maizuru loves Toshiro and dotes on him, but she's also very strict and frankly terrifying; she used the same Hag summon that she was monitoring Izutsumi with on Toshiro as a child just to keep him from wandering off. We also know that when he found out that Maizuru was having an affair with his father, it put a distance between them. Whether this is because he felt betrayed on his mother's behalf or because he dislikes his father that much, or something else, is unclear.

Toshiro was childhood friends with Hien, but as they got older, she had to take his place as one of his retainers, which seems to have severed that closeness. Canonically, he isn't close to his two younger brothers either. Toshitsugu literally bought Inutade and Izustumi (the latter as a drunken "gift" for Maizuru!). We see that Toshiro is uncomfortable with this, but doesn't know how to approach the issue. He lets Izutsumi go the second she's out of sight for five minutes, which implies to me that he really wanted the excuse to do so. Inutade is harder, because she loves being with the Nakamoto family and hero-worships Toshiro's father.

...all this to say, Toshiro has complicated relationships with his family and household. There's love there, but also a lot of coldness enforced by the upper-class need for propriety. Toshiro falls in line and acts as the proper stoic samurai, but he chafes at this; he envies Laios's gift for feeling and expressing things openly and readily. I think that's what the Winged Lion would prey on, given the chance.

I don't think he would be prime dungeon lord material, but if it came to that, I could see the Lion tempting Toshiro with a kinder vision of his life, one where he and his little brothers weren't pitted against one another, where his family was warmer, where there weren't barriers of class between him and his retainers, where he was allowed to be more himself.

Now ... Kabru.

Kabru is interesting because, since his ultimate goal is to seal the dungeon and eradicate monsters, I imagine that meeting a demon would be like a guy who's given a genie and wants to wish for no more genies. And if said genie is trying to take over the world via wishes, the genie is a bit screwed. I really think that Kabru is the character who would stump the demon(s) the most, despite his complex desires, because they are antithetical to the demon. Laios also had complex desires, but the Winged Lion lured him and set him up as the hero of a fake prophecy because a lot of Laios's desires revolved around monsters, so his wants aligned perfectly with the demon's methods. Oh you want monsters? That's great, they're the things I use to solve most of my problems anyway.

Even in the absence of prior knowledge of demons, I think Kabru's back would be up as soon as the Winged Lion tried speaking to him. Kabru's insight is almost preternatural, and he's well-versed in persuasive speaking thanks to his own silver tongue. He would mistrust the Lion immediately, especially considering its monster-like form.

Giving the demons bestial appearances is an artistic choice on Kui's part, so I don't think there's any indication that the Winged Lion & co can't look human, but the Lion might have been constrained both by Thistle's seals on it and the need to maintain the lie that it's just the innocent guardian deity of the Golden Country. If it could, I think it would try to look less monstrous, with Kabru.

Still, the point of the demons, I see, is that anyone can be tempted, anyone can be manipulated, because we are all full of buried desires that can be unearthed, and wanting things and having to defend them make you susceptible to manipulation.

Consider what Mithrun told Kabru: they keep the knowledge of demons secret because knowing the truth would not stop people from trying to have their wishes granted. After all, Mithrun was a Canary, but he fell for its temptation anyway. I've seen people characterize this as a sort of rock bottom decision, and maybe that's true, but I also pin it on his toxic inferiority/superiority complex. That's exactly the kind of thing that makes you think you're built different.

Would Marcille have stopped before unsealing the Winged Lion if Mithrun(/Kabru) had actually gotten to sit down with her for five minutes and explain why becoming dungeon lord would be a very bad idea? Maybe. Or maybe her desperation, and her own pride, would have made her decide that she knew better, that she'd be careful, that she'd go in with a plan and definitely get what she wanted with no dire consequences.

I think Kabru could be desperate enough to make a similar decision, even if his desires were antithetical to the demon. And the demons have an advantage over the aforementioned genie simile: their ability to eat desires.

If the Winged Lion were smart, it wouldn't let Kabru seal it away like Thistle. Given the opportunity, its best chance for dealing with Kabru would have been to immediately eat his desire to stop another Utaya.

I'm gonna plug this wonderful and tragic little one-shot someone wrote recently about the dungeon lord Kabru hypothetical: This place is not a place of honor.

[orb-the-watchman]

Just occurred to me that I've had Brichbam for almost two years at this point and I have still kept the vast majority of her backstory hidden

[katnissandpeetamellark]

My favorite part is that Lucy gray is wearing her rainbow dress when Snow “shoots her”

[alisaint]

she lives in my head rent free all utilities paid but that's okay because i am a generous soul and it's of no expense to me i have the money it's fine. no this isn't causing me any kind of serious psychic or spiritual damage bro why do you ask

[radioves]

its quite shrimple actually

[watcheraurora]

"Tango noises" are really hard to try and spell sometimes

[intothefandomverse]

You know what time it is! Fic update time! Read it! Or don't.

(But you should read it)

[whumpwillow]

What if there were a poison that was harmless to humans but makes their blood toxic to vampires? Its a creative way to starve a vampire - all these people walking around and not a drop to drink. I think Vampire Diaries did something like that with verbane (probably spelled wrong) and it burned like hell when vampires tried to drink anything with it.

Verbena! Yes i did a whole post series on this concept because why limit it to the vampire diaries, it’s such a nice and versatile whump concept! I’ll link the posts later if I think of it

[eyes-inthe-skies]

Really the reason Sg1 makes me so Insane is because there are like 10 deeply complex relationship dynamics all happening within any given pairing of team members. Like. They're peers, they're mentors, they're siblings and also each others parental surrogates, they're all married for 15 years, they cant stand each other, they'd all put each other as the best man at their wedding, they're all so Normal about each other but act like it's really not a big deal. They're somehow both the Dream and Nightmare blunt rotation. Theres just so much to unpack from character to character.

[suddenlymicah]

GUYS THIS IS URGENT I CANT FIND A POST I JUST REFERENCED AND I FEEL LIKE IM FALLING APART

it was something alomg the lines of "no matter how many darts you shoot at it, you still put a picture of him on your wall"

PLEASE HELP FIND IT PLEASE I WANT TO DO SOMETHING FUNNY AND SILLY

[airyairyaucontraire]

Dani's really great at her job and a lovely person, and I would heaps rather be on a mission she led than one where Ed was in charge, but if the best they can do when they need a new commander on Mars is to bring her out of retirement, don't they have a problem with their leadership pipeline? Is everyone else available really significantly less capable?

[reverse-hermit]

my spidersona..SPIDER-MIND !!!!!!!

tweaked their design a little and finally gave them a name..love them so much