#do we have a ship name for those three yet?

[crowngamer901]

My Splatoon OCs' GrandFest outfits: The Concepts and the Final Models

(I’m looking at the last three with the names and I’m realizing how bad my hand-writing looks lol)

(Also I have no clue how long of a post Tumblr will allow me to make so this may be broken up into multiple posts/reblogs)

So a while back, everyone was designing GrandFest outfits for their OCs. Me, being a Blender user, was like "WHOA THAT'S SUCH A COOL IDEA I WANT TO JOIN IN!!!!" but obviously I have no modeling-from-scratch skills yet. The only thing I know how to do in Blender is how to attach Splatoon 2 clothing to a Splatoon 3 model and how to use Edit Mode to cut away pieces from a model.

BUT I WAS DETERMINED TO DO SOMETHING REGARDLESS OF MY ART SKILLS

So I quickly rendered the first render with Autumn (who wears a custom hairstyle of Haircut + Megalobraid here), Jewel, Derek, Monica, and Hunter - my agents - with the intent of just making outfits for them. I saved the aforementioned render to my iPad, opened Procreate, and began drawing. I wasn’t really going for any kind of theme for any of the outfits, and wanted to do some really custom clothing that didn’t exist in-game. I did, however, take inspiration from some of the clothing that already existed but that was about it.

It took two days to finish (as you can tell by Jewel and Derek having one date and Autumn, Monica, and Hunter having a different date) but it was fun! So fun, in fact, that I decided to make more outfits. 10 MORE OUTFITS, IN FACT. But that comes later, as one day I got bored and decided to actually attempt to model the outfits in Blender! And that was also fun! Yeah, it took the whole day but more importantly it was fun! So fun, in fact, that it only pushed me to make those 10 more outfits. So now we have everyone else’s outfit concepts (with actual existing clothing in mind), and the resulting Blender versions.

BEHOLD!

Jewel/Agent 3 (with a bonus bald pic showing her earrings)

Derek/Agent 5 and Kelly, with their matching rings (I LOVE THIS SHIP SO MUCH)

Found family brother-sister duo of I-Wei and Priscilla

Autumn/Agent 4 (with her usual hair) and Monica/Agent 8 with matching glasses

Hunter/Neo Agent 3 and Stitches, the two shortest characters in the line-up

Alecs, Kimberly, Ezra, and Morgan

And last but not least, Jeremy and Kaden

(Everyone's expressions in these screenshots match the ones I picked for the drawings)

I am SO HYPED to actually render everyone in their outfits but first I gotta go texture the GrandFest venues *cries*

Happy to answer any questions you might have about their outfits (like what clothing I used for everyone)

[phantombeck]

It's a lot of fun to actually be here and watch a fandom being born for the first time, but I've been reminded that I have to contribute to the fandom content now. my job is usually just to tell people how awesome their stuff is in the comment section, now im gonna have to actually finish and post things

be the change you wanna see in the world or whatever

[rweoutofthewoods]

fanfic/fandom ettiquite guide

Okay, I've seen some things recently that make me think there is some need to make a master post of some general fandom and fic ettiquite just because some people may not know and I think there's a huge wave of fanfic becoming more mainstream especially on apps like tiktok.

If you don't like it, don't engage with it!! I think this above all, is the golden rule of fandom. The internet is made for you to be able to mute, hide, and censor things you don't like. DO THAT! don't make a career off of hating things. This goes along with the three laws of fandom, which u should check out FIRST OF ALL.

DON'T GATEKEEP!! If you're posting about a fic, art, ANYTHING link it, credit it! Don't post a tiktok about a fic and then refuse to give the name. Not only are you failing to credit the creators of this content, but you're taking away from the fact that fandom is a COMMUNITY where content is meant for everyone.

Ao3 is an archive. You're going to see things you might not like or even find offensive or uncomfortable. But fanfic is not meant to be censored. Ao3 is made to be unfiltered, people can post anything and everything. Posting fics on other sites simply to shame their content not only brings MORE attention to it, but it's pointless. If you want a website that is censored go to wattpad. And of course, if you don't like it DON'T READ. You can filter your tags and warnings on ao3 so it won't show you that content.

Along those lines LEARN HOW TO USE AO3. There is no algorithm, it is not tiktok. You don't need to censor words in your tags. Your fics are not magically getting pushed out to people. Make sure you're using "person 1/person 2" for romantic relationships and "person 1 & person 2" for non-romantic relationships. Make sure things like non-con and underage are tagged under the warnings. AND AS A READER, know how to filter ships and tags to find the content you want. You can filter by kudos, certain tags, exclude certain relationships or characters etc. USE IT.

Do not create placeholder fics or other "non fics" on ao3. This is against their terms of service. You can (and probably will) be reported, this annoys people endlessly. We don't want to find a fic and open it to see "I haven't written this yet, sorry!" JUST SAVE A DRAFT OR DO IT IN A DOCUMENT? this seems like way to rack up hits, and it comes across as disingenuous, I don't see a real valid reason to make placeholders.

HOW TO WRITE AN ACCEPTABLE COMMENT: long is not important. A simple "loved this!" will make an author happy. DO NOT say any variation of "update pls?" regardless of how nice you think it is. Authors update when they can.I'm not the only author I've seen unhappy with this. JUST WAIT, either it will be updated or it won't, and either way you will live. If you have nothing nice to say about a fic?? MOVE ON. Don't leave a hate comment.

Do not rate or publicly shit on fanfic! A lot of authors know many people, and the chances of that author seeing whatever you're saying about their work is very high. If you don't like it, click off and read something else. If it's still living rent-free in your mind, that sounds like fan behavior to me. And there is no standard fics are supposed to meet, don't rate them.

Don't cross-post fics. Don't put fics on other sites, don't put translation on other sites. DON'T DO ANYTHING with a fic without checking with the author first. On that note, also don't post fics on GoodReads etc. unless an author explicitly says it's okay.

IF YOU DO NOT MARK YOUR BOOKMARKS AS PRIVATE AUTHORS CAN SEE THEM!! If you're going to say anything that isn't positive, you better mark that as private or better yet, move on. Don't say anything on a public bookmark you wouldn't want the author to read.

YOU CANNOT PROFIT OFF OF FANFIC, don't sell bound fics! Don't bind fics if the intention is to sell them. You're potentially creating a lawsuit for the authors of these fics and putting the existence of fanfic in danger. I've seen multiple authors debating taking fics down because of binding issues, just don't do it. AND IF YOU'RE BUYING BOUND FICS YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM. it's selfish and I wish bad karma upon you.

You wouldn't think I'd have to say this but don't plagiarize or use AI to create fics/art etc. firstly making ai write something IS a form of plagiarism. bUT ALSO just write your own content. If you can't, then writing fics etc. is just not for you. No shame about it!

DON'T ASK AUTHORS TO BETA FOR YOU!! You wouldn't believe how many people have asked me to beta their fics for them, I AM NOT A BETA. I HAVE a beta because my proofreading skills are shit. If someone wants to beta they will offer, or go find a blog or somewhere where people are looking to beta. Like @needabeta You can even make a post asking around for a beta, but don't go bug your favorite authors to proofread your fics.

Really just don't harass authors. Of course, don't be afraid to send nice dms, asks, or comments if their inbox is open, but don't spam them especially if they don't reply. Respect boundaries! Don't send nasty anons, everyone knows this is a sign of jealousy and obsession. You're only succeeding in making yourself look bad. Ask yourself why is this author living rent-free in your mind, hm??

If you don't like a ship, stay away from the content geared towards that ship. There's no reason for you to be in people's inbox harassing them over a ship. It's never that deep. If you truly hate it so much, go consume the content for ships you DO like.

Stay grounded. This goes to both fic authors and readers alike. Hits and popularity are not the mark of a good fic. Getting a lot of hits doesn't mean it's good and NOT getting many doesn't mean it's bad. I'm tired of seeing tiktoks asking "so what's the next big fic?" WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A "BIG FIC"? go look through the ao3 tag and find something you like to read, it doesn't have to be what everyone else is reading.

Headcanons are not law. People can think whatever they want about the characters. If you disagree with someone's hc, just move on... and just because a headcanon is popular, doesn't mean everyone has to abide by it. Be creative!

Don't treat artists and authors like celebs! We're all in this together! We're all losers who like the same characters and ships. Of course, compliment and be kind to all creators because we put a lot of time and effort into creating fan content for you all, but don't worship anyone. Don't treat them weirdly or make a post like "omg x followed me!" that's a bit weird. If you want to be excited, dm your friends and giggle together, but acting like authors and artists etc. are celebs only creates the room for people to stop seeing them as normal people and start acting rude or entitled. And many people are uncomfortable with it!!

TLDR; stop creating so much negativity in fandom spaces. At least in MY fandom it's just constantly shitting on ships, fics, art. It's hate anons, antis, and constant fighting about every headcanon. I'M TIRED OF IT! Learn to filter out content you don't want to see, and move on with your life instead of spreading more negativity.

If you have anything you think I should add shoot me a comment or an ask and I will add it! I'm sure I didn't get everything :) this mostly applies to my own experience being in the hp/marauders fandom for a good 10+ years, and I'm sure it varies slightly from fandom to fandom.

[sunshinescribes]

Hi! Can I request how law would react if his partner calls him baby or babe (any pet names) by accident in front of everyone? The crew doesn’t really know but they got a feeling they’re dating

Baby

Pairing: Trafalgar Law x GN!Reader

Warning: Established Relationship, Heart Pirates shenanigans, Soft Law, Reader is stupid in love with Law (as we all are)

You swear you can hear color and see sound…or at least you feel like you can.

Pulling an all-nighter working on internal ship repairs seemed like such a good idea in theory. It felt like pure genius on your part, being able to avoid the headache of having to work around your unruly crewmates—or worse, having to stop completely.

You love them, you really do, but your fellow Heart Pirates are a rowdy bunch. You don’t entirely blame them, though. It’s difficult being stuck in the ocean’s depths for days on end, missing the blinding sun and salty sea air—you hunger for it just as much as anyone, but when denied, you’d at least like to make certain that the Polar Tang is able to get you all to your next destination in one piece.

All your hard work and good intentions, and yet you had failed to consider one pivotal component: how long it would take to complete your repairs. The hours had passed in the blink of an eye, and much to your surprise, your late-night work had spilled into the early morning hours.

 You wonder how Law does it. He spends nights nose-deep in medical texts or hunched over his desk, flipping between scrolls and maps with ease. The dark circles under his eyes are a clear sign that he doesn’t get nearly as much sleep as he needs, but he moves and thinks like a fully rested man. Even when you slip into his room in the late hours, mindful of making sure your crewmates don’t know where you run off to, you find Law at his desk, lost in that brilliant mind of his.

He makes it look good, but you aren’t so sure you can say the same. You trudge down the narrow halls of the Polar Tang like an undead creature—sluggish and half-alert.

But you’re so close. Nearly done with your work. All you need is just one final push, a little boost to keep you on the mend. You can already taste the creamy milk and rich espresso on your tongue, topped with a dribble of caramel, just for that additional burst of energy. Yes, that’s exactly what you need.

You feel like you could float into the mess hall if you weren’t so worn. You nearly stumble as you push your way inside, avoiding Bepo while he rushes to his seat with Shachi and Penguin in tow. The trio is already deep in an argument that you can’t quite make out but know isn’t even worth listening to. You swear those three share blood, even if Bepo isn’t human.

Ikkaku is already seated, protecting her plate from Hakugan, who still can’t seem to grasp the concept of keeping his grubby little hands out of other people's plates, no matter how many times Ikkaku or Jean Bart try to beat it into him.

Others slip in and out of the mess hall, exchanging a kind greeting or snide remark before shuffling to their stations.

You hear Law before you see him, his rich voice carrying through the crowded space as he calmly explains to Uni that the Polar Tang will have to make port soon. You can’t help but stare. Even in your hazy, sleep-deprived state, Law is still the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

Reliable as always, Uni nods before rushing to the control room. Law catches sight of you as you stagger towards the counter. His expression is flat, his lips pulled in a tight line, but you notice the softness in his eyes. No matter how convincing his scowl may be, his eyes are always so telling—the singular piece of his soul he can’t hide.

He shifts closer, leaving a respectable space so as not to draw attention to you two. “Good morning.”

You yawn the greeting back unceremoniously, and god, you swear you feel your heart stutter when you glimpse the smile he’s trying so hard to hide.

“Late night?”

Your response is a tired hum. A joke sits comfortably on your tongue, but you can’t compel yourself to say it. You need your morning boost before you fall face-flat on the floor. You glance up at the cupboard, too tired to struggle.

“Baby,” you call, your voice slightly slurred, “can you pass me a cup?"

Law reaches above you, finding the mug you always seem to gravitate to—it’s nearly in his hands before he stops suddenly.

He stands as still as a statue, and you know your confusion is evident. 

The sudden silence that falls over the room doesn’t help. You can’t make out the usual jokes and jabs shared at the tables. No clattering forks. No loud, obnoxious slurping.

Did you push yourself too far? Is this what sleep-deprivation psychosis feels like?

“…baby?” Penguin questions.

Oh.

Oh shit.

The voices come all at once. A shrill cry from Bepo. Shocked laughter from Jean Bart. Shachi and Penguin yell over each other, triumphantly claiming they knew it. The only person who seems wholly unaffected is Ikkaku, who shoots you a knowing grin before returning her attention to her plate.

You glance at Law, who glares at his crew as a multitude of questions are fired his way. Each inquiry is louder than the last, and voices begin to blend as your crewmates shout over each other, desperately trying to get to the bottom of your secret relationship.

Maybe it’s the sleep-deprived delirium that makes the situation funnier than it actually is, because you laugh. Inelegant and uncontrolled. You shoot Law an apologetic glance, attempting to look as guilty as you feel, but from the way your shoulders shake and your lip quivers, you know you look anything but.

You expect his signature scowl—the look that makes marines blood run cold—but you receive something far sweeter—that surprised, uncertain smile that makes Law look years younger. His irritation has a habit of fading when you laugh, as if your joy is contagious.

He ignores the cries of his crew, finally passing you your cup.

“Sorry,” you whisper, trying to sound regretful, but your voice sounds far too cherry, laced with laughter.

“Don’t be.” There’s a devious glint in his golden eyes, and you hear the tell-tale sound of his room being created before you even see the blue film that contains it. “You have to deal with them now.”

You swear you hear that snarky chuckle of his, but he’s gone too quick, replaced with a crumpled piece of paper. There’s a moment of silence, a temporary peace, before all eyes fall on you, and the questions spill forth once more.

A/N: I WANT TO APOLOGIZE FOR TAKING SO LONG TO FINISH THIS REQUEST!! Despite that, I hope you enjoyed!

divider credit: cafekitsune

[starqueensthings]

We need to talk about Echo (and by talk I mean screm). S3 E13 + 14 Spoilers!

FRIENDS, I'M GOING TO EXPLODE. I need to talk about Echo for a minute. We need to talk about Echo for a minute,  because he has spent the last two episodes in the absolute thralls of complete and total danger, and I personally don't feel like there's been enough of a celebratory uproar for me to be satisfied with the level of appreciation and love that man deserves. (Remember when Hunter ran face first into a colossal exhaust pipe and we all collectively lost our minds because it was so impressive and so sexy? Remember when Tech drove a speeder really fast through a tunnel and we all fainted? I'M A TECH GIRLY. IT WAS ME! I FAINTED!!) but, Y'ALL, Echo deserves that right now!! And for all eternity!!! Because he is wholly submurged in the harrowing potential of torture and execution, and he didn't even bat an eye to put himself there. My awe of him is all-consuming, so please forgive me if this rant reads as nothing but incoherent screaming. 

Echo haters (first of all, we can't be friends....) come on this journey with me! Let's back pedal to the beginning of the last episode (13). He stole an imperial shuttle. Let me repeat, he stole an imperial shuttle. And not just an attack shuttle. Not just a lil one-pilot transport. Bro somehow stole a Rho-class medical transport, which is very large, obscenely conspicuous, and very easily tracked. And, to use his own words, it was "the best he could do on short notice." The man stole a shuttle on short notice. ON SHORT NOTICE? HELLO, HOW DID HE DO THAT. WHY AIN'T WE LOSING OUR COOL ABOUT IT. 

Next stop on this I-love-Echo journey through my mind: not only did he provide his brothers transportation in the complete void of their own (RIP havoc bb), but he also came equipped with intel and clearance codes, and, as Rampart stated, those things change DAILY. Echo somehow procured top secret imperial clearance codes, and a fkn SHIP, within hours of the Batch requesting his help. Not to mention, the ship had yet to be reported missing (which means it was only-freshly commandeered), and the clearance codes worked. Of course they did. Echo never fails. Never doubt Echo. "Echo's on it."  

Choochoo, next stop! Once they arrived on that station orbiting Coruscant, and made their way to the control room (lookin sexy as heck in his armour-au-noir), he broke imperial encryption, hacked into the Imperial database, almost instantly found them the location of a ship departing for the prison that holds their daughter Tantiss, AND THEN DIDN'T EVEN HESITATE TO CLIMB ABOARD AND STOW AWAY.  

He didn't even remotely have a plan, or have time to make a plan. He didn't know who or what else would be on board that mysterious vessel. He didn't know where it was going other than the name of the fkn mountain (which has proven to be nothing but unhelpful thus far). He just ARC-troopered his way through that crowded hangar, dodging aggressive astromech's and inconsiderate loader droids, shirking from the perspective eyes of highly trained commandos, and snuck his way onto a heavily guarded, extremely unknown science vessel. Then, of course, he wasted no time, hacking into the ships control system (may I gently remind- there were at least three pilots and an officer prepping the ship for jump and closely watching all aspects of its controls), disabling the proximity sensors without being detected, and then seamlessly covered the troopers absence by pretending to be him (which we all know is what should have happened on Serenno but... hindsight is 20/20.)  

So... SO.... now we're at Episode 14. Here we at fkn terrified station because HULLO ECHO IS ALONE ON A SCIENCE DIVISION TRANSPORT; we have literally seen them carry around Zilo beasts in that shit. What the heck else could be on there that they don't know about? Literally anything. Because THEY KNEW NOTHING before attaching themselves to it. Echo knew NOTHING before sneaking onto that thing and creepin' around. Thank heck he didnt come across a fkn fresh wave of slither vines ok?  

NEXT, Echo shoots (not stuns- lol) a sassy fkn droid (they had it coming, not sorry), then another trooper. AND THEN discovered his only option for departing the ship once it enters atmosphere is going completely undercover, because (in true "we improvise everything" CF99 fashion that gives me heart burn just thinking about it), they had zero fkn plan to get off the ship. I will repeat: completely undercover. On Tantiss. COMPLETELY UNDERCOVER ON TANTISS. NO COMMS, NO BACK UP, NO RECON, NO PLAN, BARELY ANY GEAR, and I would just like to stress... no neuro brace. He left his neurobrace on that ship. Left it. LEFT IT AND TOOK A HAND INSTEAD. PLEASE FKN SEDATE ME.  

We can't leave this station yet... This I-love-Echo train needs to linger at this point for a sec because I think it's lost on some people how wild this is. Echo without his neurobrace is huge. It's a bigger deal than Echo without his armour. Armour is, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential (one can find more- see Howzer). Echo's neurobrace is not armour, it's a computer and it's so so so crucial to how his mind processes information and events. Don't forget, the Technounion HIJACKED HIS BRAIN. They took every memory from him and manipulated it for their gain. Pruned it, tweaked it, blanched it, poached it, turned it into scrambled eggs, and then fkn ate it up and used it to defeat their enemies (Echo's family- I'm sobbing). They implanted him with an unfathomable amount of information; they changed the way the neurons in his brain fire in relation to stimuli. That neurobrace is so so critical for him. Now, we know he can operate well enough without it, we saw it in the last episode of the TBB arc in season 7 of Clone Wars, but... please.... to what extent? We don't know what an extended time without that neurobrace looks like for him... especially when all other aspects compliing his surroundings foreign, unknown, and dangerous, and that scares me.

AND NOW HE'S ABOUT TO RUN AMOK IN TANTISS with Emerie who, (I'm sorry) is wishy-washy as heck (who are you loyal to!!!!! What is your history!!! Are you trustworthy and what are you looking to gain!!!), trying to adopt a collection of Jedi children whove spent maker-knows how long playing space tetris, WHILST ALSO ATTEMPTING TO LOCATE AND ESCAPE WITH HIS BROTHERS UNDER THE EYE OF THE GALAXY'S SECOND MOST DANGEROUS MAN. 

So yes, short of d-d-d-di... can't say it... short of THE WORST CASE, Echo has made the ultimate sacrifice to save not only Omega who is literally the only person we've seen able to make him truly laugh, but all the clone brothers that he's been desperately trying to locate and rescue. His bravery and determination are literally unrivalled, and he did it while feasting on nothing but humble pie because that man wouldn't know arrogance if it danced naked under his perfect nose.  

Okay so welcome, we've finally pulled into I-Love-Echo station. Before departing the ride, please stand and do a hip hip hurray for the miracle that is Echo, including but not limited to, everything he's done, is doing, and is willing to do for other people. 

[orangeocelotmartyn]

The start of something new (Garbage Rat, Martyn, and Ren triangle)

trancript under the cut

Oli: Have you seen a Rat-tic around here, because I told one of them there would be one. Water: I don't know what that is-- Eloise: No, but you know who I have found? I found Mratyn-I found Mratyn, and Will! Oli: Marty! Eloise: Everybody's here, yeah, Marty-- Oli: Marty's here. Marty from the good ole days! (begins playing a quiet clip of applause) Eloise: He looks a bit different, though, he looks a bit different, and I think he's got-I think he's got a boyfriend. Oli: (shuts off the sound of the applause) Wait, what. Eloise: I don't know, he just kept calling him all these pet names like "Big J" and "Captain," but I might be misinterpreting that. Oli: But he didn't call him anything like "O-Dawg," or-or "Garbage Rat," did he? Cause that's my names, he wouldn't use those on someone else. (he plays a clip of an audience 'aw'ing) Eloise: No, he didn't call him that. Oli: Oh, well, that's good, that's nice, I'd love to see Marty.

---

Oli: Don't worry guys, I'm gonna free you! Bek: Help me! Martyn: (through disbelieving laughter) You've gotta be joking--you've gotta be kidding, Garbage Rat! Oli: (joyously) Marty! Martyn: (laughing) What are you doing here! Oli: I've been here the wh--two weeks now, getting drunk on wine! And forgetting stuff. Martyn: What is the--right-- Oli: What happened to your eye? It go the same way as mine? Martyn: I don't wanna talk about it. Captain, if we're gonna recruit anybody, this is our guy-- Ren: Who is the loud one? Martyn: --This is our guy! Oli: You've not found another-- Ren: Reveal yourself loud one! Oli: Hello its me the Garbage Rat I eat the garbage. And what is your name sailor? Ren: Hello Garbage Rat, I am Admiral Jaque Levy La'rat. Oli: No way. And what are you doing with my boy? Ren: (clears throat) He's the Lieutenant on my-my vessel. I picked him up a few weeks ago out in the middle of the ocean, he was in half a tennis ball floating around and it was quite pathetic. Oli: No way...that's quite the step up from being a highway rat. Martyn: Ehh--that's the first time you've described it as pathetic, I don't think I like that. Bek: Bit embarrassing Martyn. Ren: Highway rat, what--? Oli: I actually never called him pathetic--

---

Oli: -friends everywhere we go-- Martyn: Garbage Rat! Oli: Oh my god, Captain, my Captain. (Martyn: Oh.) Hello. Ren: It's the Garbage one again, hello! Martyn: Oh, two seconds, Will! (Will: Okay!) Oli: Hello, you found yourself--you guys find yourself a ship to commandeer yet, you found yourself a highway to man? Martyn: Ah, we-- Ren: We find ourself a perfect spot to rebuild. Martyn: Yeah, we found a plot. We got home and a plot. We're gonna go to the kitchen with Will, wanna come? Ren: I would like, I would like to add, Mister Garbage, that you look magnificent on our boat. I mean, look--the three of us together, side by side, as the pirate crew is there no better-- Oli: Yeah...ey, ey now, I love pirating, I love stealing, I love robbing, I love eating. I'm all those things, but water is not a thing that I enjoy, my sweet croissant. Yeah. Water-- Martyn: Yeah, he's got a past with, uh, flushers. Oli: Drowning, flushes, the whole-- Ren: I understand. Oli: --nine yards, yeah. I shall not be going anything that could have whirlpools. Ren: Out on the high seas, some might call you a Coward. Martyn: Ooh. Oli: Well. In the garbage bin, somebody might call you a corpse. But I ain't gonna make it happen. (Martyn laughs in surprise) Martyn: Yikes. I should step in here, but I don't wanna, I wanna see what happens. Ren: My words. I've never heard such intimidation before. Oli: It's been a good few years. I've faced a lot of creatures in my time. I remember when we were-- Ren: Alright, well Mister Garbage, I'd be happy to have you as an ally on shore, in that case. Oli: I would love to be an ally on shore. And if you--

[gendrie]

arya and melisandre are really interesting foils to me. i don’t think it ever gets discussed, though. theres not really a lot of overlap between arya fans and team dragonstone fans i guess lol. but arya and melisandre are the only female povs to truly practice sorcery. theres so much to compare and contrast between them. at the start of the series arya is only 9 years old. she is just a child and the youngest female pov. melisandre is much, much older. we don’t even know how old, but she’s been practicing magic “for years beyond count” so...she’s the oldest pov by far. 

they're represented by contrasting elements: water and fire. melisandre has a serene aura. arya has a more wild temperament. melisandre is statuesque. arya is petite. both are described as being slender and graceful. they speak several tongues including high valyrian. 

While the boy was gone, Melisandre washed herself and changed her robes. Her sleeves were full of hidden pockets, and she checked them carefully as she did every morning to make certain all her powders were in place. (Melisandre, ADWD)

Last of all she threw her cloak across her shoulders. It was a real mummer's cloak, purple wool lined in red silk, with a hood to keep the rain off, and three secret pockets too. She'd hid some coins in one of those, an iron key in another, a blade in the last. (Arya, TWOW) 

they’re both fairly unconventional for their gender too. neither could be called a “proper” (ie: submissive) lady. they are driven and dangerous. melisandre comes to be seen as stannis’ “true queen” but she views herself as a knight in her own way. she casts an illusion to look very appealing and yet she’s also deeply intimidating to most. stannis is impressed with melisandre’s ability to inspire fear even in grown men. 

“I have ships . . . and I have her. The red woman. Half my knights are afraid even to say her name, did you know? If she can do nothing else, a sorceress who can inspire such dread in grown men is not to be despised. A frightened man is a beaten man. And perhaps she can do more. I mean to find out.” (Davos, ACOK)

Gendry and Hot Pie did not question her choice. She had the map, after all, and Hot Pie seemed almost as terrified of her as of the men who might be coming after them. He had seen the guard she'd killed. It's better if he's scared of me, she told herself. That way he'll do like I say, instead of something stupid. (Arya, ASOS) 

arya has a fierce reputation to those who know her but she’s only a small child and vulnerable so most don’t view her as a potential threat. she shares her soul with a ferocious direwolf and aims to embody those traits herself. she is a leader by nature. arya has gotten boys to follow her command despite being younger and a girl. 

Melisandre paid the naked steel no mind. If the wildling had meant her harm, she would have seen it in her flames. Danger to her own person was the first thing she had learned to see, back when she was still half a child, a slave girl bound for life to the great red temple. It was still the first thing she looked for whenever she gazed into a fire. (ADWD) 

relatively speaking, we don’t know a lot about melisandre, but we do know she was a slave at one point and likely from humble origins. she has devoted her life in service to r’hllor. whatever connected her to her old life is a distant memory. 

“We are but servants of the God of Many Faces." "Valar dohaeris." All men must serve. "You know the words, but you are too proud to serve. A servant must be humble and obedient." "I obey. I can be humbler than anyone." (Arya, ADWD)

arya has been enslaved too, but she was born the daughter of a great lord and lady. as her house has fallen arya is driven across the narrow sea to the temple of the many faced god. she is trying to be a servant of god, but the results are mixed. arya has a lot of previous allegiances because of her place in the world. she will not be able to make the sacrifice in the end. 

"A shadow is a thing of darkness." "You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows." (Davos, ACOK)

"All gods have their instruments, men and women who serve them and help to work their will on earth. “ (Arya, AFFC) 

both of their storylines are deeply involved with religion. arya is in religious training currently and she has significant interactions with all the major religions in asoiaf. arya is tolerant and curious. even if she is a bit skeptical of the gods in general. the gods she truly follows of the old gods of the north. 

Through the leafy canopy she could see the bone-white branches of the heart tree. It looks just like the one in Winterfell from here. If only it had been . . . then when she climbed down she would have been home again, and maybe find her father sitting under the weirwood where he always sat. (Arya, ACOK) 

for a character who hasn’t stepped foot in the north since her first chapter weirwoods are an important symbol in arya’s storyline. they represent her faith and culture, her identity and her family, her past and her future. they show up in every book for her in one form or another. 

The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said . . . but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman's hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods. (Jon, ASOS) 

melisandre would have burned the weirwood at winterfell if jon had accepted stannis’ offer to become jon stark, lord of winterfell. that’s why he rejected it. 

The red woman walked round the fire three times, praying once in the speech of Asshai, once in High Valyrian, and once in the Common Tongue. Davos understood only the last. "R'hllor, come to us in our darkness," she called. "Lord of Light, we offer you these false gods, these seven who are one, and him the enemy. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors." (Davos, ACOK) 

melisandre is not tolerant or curious. she views any religion that is not r’hllor as false. arya is familiar with r’hllor too. she has seen men rise from the dead before. she knows thoros of myr another red priest who receives visions too.

Soon she could even feel the heat in the air, as red R'hllor's worshipers lifted their voices in prayer. "For the night is dark and full of terrors," they prayed. Not for me. Her nights were bathed in moonlight and filled with the songs of her pack, with the taste of red meat torn off the bone, with the warm familiar smells of her grey cousins. Only during the days was she alone and blind. (Arya, ADWD) 

a major factor in this faith is fear of death and darkness. that is what melisandre preaches. she is terrified of the dark and won’t even let the lights go out in her chambers. which i think is a fascinating character trait for a character as old as her. fear of the dark is a trait associated with children. but arya, the child, learns early on to not fear the darkness. 

She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night. (Melisandre, ADWD)

mel is afraid to dream and rarely sleeps because of it. she associates both with the great other. 

Some mornings Arya did not want to wake at all. She would huddle beneath her cloak with her eyes squeezed shut and try to will herself back to sleep. If the Hound would only have left her alone, she would have slept all day and all night. And dreamed. That was the best part, the dreaming. She dreamed of wolves most every night. A great pack of wolves, with her at the head. (Arya, ASOS) 

even if she sometimes struggles with nightmares(/depression) dreams have been a great source of comfort for arya more often than not. 

“The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good." She took a step toward him. "Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war." (Davos, ASOS) 

the stance that melisandre takes is somewhat extreme. she subscribes to a completely black and white morality. melisandre's entire mission is to fight against death. she has done a better job than most. but even melisandre the red priestess of asshai cannot escape death forever. 

The kindly man chuckled. "He is a man like any other, with light in him and darkness. It is not for you to judge him." That gave her pause. "Have the gods judged him?" (Arya, ADWD) 

the faceless men are, obviously, a problematic institution, but they are teaching arya valuable lessons. the order is represented by the colors black and white - but they’re not at war. they are in balance. imo, this is going to be the outcome of the war to come. you cannot beat death. the faceless men are right when they say “valar morghulis”

"You are safe here. This is the House of Black and White, my child. Though you are young to seek the favor of the Many-Faced God." "Is he like the southron god, the one with seven faces?" "Seven? No. He has faces beyond count, little one, as many faces as there are stars in the sky. In Braavos, men worship as they will . . . but at the end of every road stands Him of Many Faces, waiting. He will be there for you one day, do not fear. You need not rush to his embrace." (Arya, AFFC) 

the hob&w, according to the kindly man, is “a place of peace” where death is “not the worst thing” and “always gentle”. the many faced god is the god of death and is therefore, likely, the great other from an entirely different perspective. death, despair, darkness are all parts of the human experience. they are often painful and scary, but everyone has to face them. 

Jon Snow turned to Melisandre. "What sorcery is this?" "Call it what you will. Glamor, seeming, illusion. R'hllor is Lord of Light, Jon Snow, and it is given to his servants to weave with it, as others weave with thread." [...] She made it sound a simple thing, and easy. They need never know how difficult it had been, or how much it had cost her. That was a lesson Melisandre had learned long before Asshai; the more effortless the sorcery appears, the more men fear the sorcerer. (Melisandre, ADWD)

"This will hurt," he warned her, "but pain is the price of power. Do not move." "Mummers change their faces with artifice," the kindly man was saying, "and sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye. These arts you shall learn, but what we do here goes deeper. Wise men can see through artifice, and glamors dissolve before sharp eyes, but the face you are about to don will be as true and solid as that face you were born with."

She probed around inside her mouth with her tongue, but found no holes or broken teeth. Sorcery, she thought. I have a new face. An ugly, broken face. (Arya, ADWD)

they might be on opposing teams but the skills they use have quite a bit of overlap. both utilize sorcery and bloodmagic. these are difficult, costly, painful things to learn. melisandre is a very impressive sorceress because she’s studied her craft for so long. she is able to work several glamors at once. she’s also able to do her whole shadow baby assassin thing. 

if arya stuck around with the faceless men long enough she would learn glamor too. it’s not the faceless men’s trademark, though. they use bloodmagic from valyria to create disguises that cannot be seen through using the faces of the dead. arya’s been trained and has a sharp eye to begin with. i think if her and melisandre met arya would be able to see past her glamor which would be a really cool perspective. 

"The heart is all that matters. Do not despair, Lord Snow. Despair is a weapon of the enemy, whose name may not be spoken. Your sister is not lost to you." "I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister? Melisandre seemed amused. "What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?" "Arya." His voice was hoarse. "My half-sister, truly …" (Jon, ADWD) 

“I told you that the Lord of Light would hear your prayers. You wanted a way to save your little sister and still hold fast to the honor that means so much to you, to the vows you swore before your wooden god." She pointed with a pale finger. "There he stands, Lord Snow. Arya's deliverance. A gift from the Lord of Light … and me." (Melisandre, ADWD) 

arya is completely unaware of melisandre’s existence, but the opposite is not true. melisandre has become an important figure on the wall. she is the one who comes up with the idea to send mance south to rescue “arya”. it seems melisandre is going to become a valuable ally to jon snow (she’s gonna bring his ass back to life lbr) and in the fight against the others. 

The king would only want to marry [Arya] to one of his own men, Horpe or Massey or Godry Giantslayer, and the gods alone knew what use the red woman might want to make of her. (Jon, ADWD)

it’s likely her and arya will cross paths at some point. it’s one of the meetings i’d be most excited to see. 

[cozzzynook]

Hiii cozzzyyyy

What do we think about Rodimus adopting a lil human in secret on the LL, but Drift discovers it and tells Ratchet? And all three o them just look blankly at the human (that doesn't understand what's going on ofc ofc)?

Thank uuu <3

Hi Bee,

Hear me out.

The human he brings aboard the lost light that doesn’t know whats going on is actually cyberronian and a baby.

The found them crying next to their offline creators and couldn’t just leave them there. He was going to tell police officials but when he picked the fresh bitty up and they stopped crying. Reaching out and gripping his chassis and digit whimpering for him, he just couldn’t bare to part with them.

Sooo he snuck them on board and let the ship take off.

Of course he told officials about the bitty’s creators and told Prowl in secret what he’d done and that he wasn’t giving the bitty up. Prowl can honestly say he’s never actually heard Rodimus sound threatening and he admired it before putting official documents in stating Rodimus was the sparklings caregiver now before sending them to him and hanging up.

Rodimus was entirely pleased with himself and more than happy to get started on bathing the dirty bitty that wasn’t old enough to have plating on their exposed protoform. He learned the bitty was a little mecha and so as he had them wrapped in a soft warmer against his chassis he had to figure out a name and get a bitty berth installed.

He wasn’t entirely out of his league here since he used to caretake for orphanages on Nyon. He knew what sparklings needed and their development. So he knew this was a fresh spark that wouldn’t be able to be away from him for a long time since the connection with his creators was severed so early in life.

Of course..in all his plannings he forgot to tell his crew and co captain…who just so happened to walk into his hab with Minimus and stare at the sparkling with open jaws and he immediately had to explain the situation.

“So you weren’t carrying this whole time and popped out a sparkling on a dangerous mission?”

“No I’m not an idiot!”

He looked extremely offended and felt it too which upset the sparkling almost pulling them from recharge if it weren’t for him calming them down.

“I got the paperwork and everything. I got attached…don’t look at me like that Mins! I’m not popping out a sparkling!”

The smug look on the mini turbo fox face plates and his co captains was pissing him off.

Just because he was a carrier mech did not mean he would go following his coding and pop out bitlets.

He was destined for greater things than being a broodmare! He said as much too.

“Rodimus its not meant like that. Carriers just-”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” he was genuinely upset but trying not to take it out on them since they didn’t do anything wrong. He was just sensitive about his coding and frame.

“I’d like some time off from being in public to get a better bond with them and get all the supplies I need. I’ll do all my paperwork here. I’ll keep my comm open as well.”

He ushered them out after letting Minimus hold his sparkling who began to fuss but didn’t cry.

“Lets get you some panel wraps and bottles annndd I’m gonna need to find you a crib…and a name.”

The bitty just kept sucking on their hand and he was off to find such things in the storage rooms while the dead shift was at its quietest time.

He managed to luck out on getting multiple blankets and an abundance of reusable panel wrappers. He’d brought those things back to his hab and set them on a gentle wash in his cleaning closet before heading back out to find a crib and clothes and some bottles.

He was yet again lucky in his search. Finding bottles, clothes and even a few pacifiers along with a stuffed fox that looked suspiciously like Minimus handy work made him smile. He’d have to thank his friend for leaving this here for him.

He was bummed he couldn’t find a crib but he had everything else he needed and he decided to enjoy the win. He’d gotten everything clean and settled when the bitty began to fuss and he knew immediately what time it was.

“I’m gonna fix a bottle. I know, I know. You’re hungry its okay,” he soothed to the upset sparkling.

He felt his chassis growing tight and he groaned looking down at the shifted plating to the still unfinished diluted energon meant for sparklings. He wasn’t about to make his sparkling wait an hour for fuel that wouldn’t be half as good as what his frame decided to make against his wishes.

So with a final groan and a hope for his luck to continue and his sparkling not getting attached to this form of feeding, he unclasped his chassis and let his breast mesh free. They were already filling with milk and he grimaced at how natural it all felt.

He didn’t like being a carrier but he wasn’t going to let that get in the way of feeding his sparkling.

With that line running through his mind, he held his sparkling up to his nozzle and allowed them to turn their helm crying until eventually they smelled him and the energon his frame was building before opening teary optics and latching on.

The first few suckles felt weird but eventually he felt the milk begin to release and his sparkling was greedily suckling blinking the tears from their optics.

Rodimus didn’t want to admit how close and connected he felt to the fresh bitty letting them drink from him.

He’d always had a problem with being a carrier and few mechs knew that he was and all that did knew by accident. It was something he liked pretending he wasn’t but that was extremely hard to do when a bitty was nursing from his mesh.

He sighed and looked to the bottles on the drying rack and figured he might as well try organizing his hab and bitty proofing it.

By the time he was done, the bitty was finished nursing and he was burping them. They’d fallen to recharge immediately and he smiled looking down at them. They were tiny, even for a new sparkling they were tiny. He was going to comm First aid to come to his hab in the morning so he could get them fully examined.

Carrier instincts would’ve alerted him if something was wrong with a sparkling even if they weren’t his own. But he wanted to be completely sure.

He laid the sparkling on his lap and began squeezing the rest of his milk into a bottle.

He’d have to find a crib and milk pump the next time he went to the storage rooms.

He stood and held the sparkling to his breast mesh that was still too tender to close his chassis over. He really hoped his bitty would take a bottle and not his nozzles and that his milk could be turned off when he called First aid.

He laid in his berth, nest fresh courtesy of Ratchet and Drift who were on took an extra, with a servo on the bitty thinking of possible names when he felt his optics almost slip closed until panic gripped him.

“Frag I didn’t tell them I adopted a bitty…”

Recharge was not exactly restful due to his nerves and waking a few hours later to the bitty whimpering wanting milk was something that stole his attention from Drift and Ratchets reactions.

He’d tried getting the bitty to take the sparkling fuel he’d put on earlier but the bitty hollered energon murder and he sighed lowering his helmet trying to suppress tears.

He’d lowered them to his nozzle and they immediately gripped on. He looked to the warm energon bottle and picked it up slipping it into the bitties mouth only for them to spit it out and spit up the milk.

It took over ten minutes to calm them down before deciding never to do that again and just accept he would have to feed from his nozzles.

The bitty gave a little glare at him with blue optics that looked so much like Drift and Ratchets when he did something to endanger himself he smiled a little making the bitty giggle.

It was spark warming and asserted that he made the right decision in keeping them.

“Your gonna be trouble aren’t ya lil mecha,” he cooed, cleaning himself and the bitty while allowing them to drink. He’d put the sparkling energon by the door and thought of how he was going to tell Drift and Ratchet.

He went through the motions of burping the bitty and soothing them to sleep before starting on paperwork. By the time he finished he leaned back in his chair and looked down at his breast mesh and the bitty sleeping on them.

He maneuvered the bitty and tried to put his breasts back into his chassis only to wince and hiss in pain.

‘That won’t work. Damnit. I’ll have to get a new chassis supporter.’

He looked down at the bitty and couldn’t find it in himself to blame them or really be upset. He was still pushing off the mental breakdown at succumbing to his carrier protocols. But looking down at the bitty he found it a tad easier.

Things didn’t feel so bad…until he heard the hab door open.

He stiffened in his seat and slowly turned his helm to see Drift and Ratchet staring at him and their hab.

He tried to smile but it came off wobbly and afraid and the sparkling made a whimpering noise that pulled his attention.

He shushed them gently with a small bounce and they nuzzled into him.

He looked back up to see the spot by the door empty with Drift and Ratchet right in front of Rodimus staring shocked at the fresh bitty in his arms recharging on swollen exposed breast mesh.

“Hehe. Surprise? Funny story here.”

“Roddy were you sparked and didn’t know it?! Did you emerge our sparkling on a mission?!”

Drift was seething with a myraid of emotions but not one was anger. He was thankfully whispering as he did so and was visibly checking him over before getting closer only to stop so Ratchet could begin scanning the sparkling and Rodimus.

“No I wasn’t sparked! And no I didn’t emerge a bitty! They don’t even look like us!”

He whispered venomously before pausing. They all stopped for a moment before Rodimus apologized.

“I’m not getting sparked. Ever,” he spoke, looking them in the optic before motioning for Ratchet to keep working.

The mech gave him a look he didn’t want to see so he turned his helm and let Ratchet work.

“The sparkling is fine,” he stood, looking at the fresh sparkling still sleeping on Rodimus who had an arm covering his nozzles.

He refused to move it because he didn’t want them seeing.

He knew they knew. They had since before they got together. He’d blown up almost saying some really nasty things when they revealed to him they knew by his scent, nest, clingy behavior he thought he shut down and the way he’d act around sparklings. Of course having this revealed made him all but destroy his carrying instincts and reject anything remotely like it.

It hurt. Physically and mentally to do so but he did it anyway and rejected any advice on not doing it. Of course he took it a step further and took preventative pills that kept him from going into heat and added an extra spark baffle. He really hated being a carrier and how it made him look to other mechs and femmes. He was not weak. He was not some birthing machine and he was not going to degrade himself by popping out sparklings and prove them all right. He was more than a carrier mech. He was a living being. He wouldn’t succumb to code.

Of course doing all this and having no heat put him in danger and made him sick but he truly would rather get sick than suffer another heat and possibly get sparked.

It took passing out after throwing up energon for his own medical right to be snatched away. He was taken off heat suppressants and his spark baffles were removed leaving him with just one.

He’d rode out his heat painfully by himself and left the medical center before they could try talking him into something he didn’t want. He ignored his teammates outside of battle planning for a long time. He ignored Ratchet and Drift, at the time Deadlock, for even longer since they just didn’t get it.

As much as he butted helms with Optimus the mech understood but still didn’t want him endangering his life. The only medic he really trusted was First Aid who admitted he didn’t understand but tried to give him the best option instead of getting snippy with him or pushing carrier scrap at him.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts when he feels Ratchet put a servo on his breast mesh and feel around it. He knows he isn’t being a perv but he still hates it. He’d never exposed his breast mesh to them before and hadn’t ever planned to.

“Well?”

He was getting more impatient and uncomfortable by the moment and Ratchet gave him a look that he returned with the beginnings of a snarl that he restrained.

“Milk won’t stop till the kid doesn’t need it anymore. You’ll need a new chassis plating. I’ll get to working on one-”

“I’ll have First aid make me one. Its fine. You both should rest. I’ll explain everything when you wake up.”

He was standing before either could get a word in. Was it fair? Not at all. But he really didn’t want this conversation nor the carrier slag they’d throw his way.

“Kid, get back here. This is a conversation we’re having now.”

He glared but didn’t go any further.

“I didn’t purposely attach the sparkling. It just..happened. I saw them crying near their creators when I went down to the lab. They were already gone and gray.”

“I wasn’t even thinking when I took them and decided to keep them. I’m sorry I didn’t ask first or tell you. You don’t have to care for them, I can do that on my own.”

He’d done it with sparklings at the centers and they’d recovered until they found a proper home during the war. So he knew he could.

“I’m not asking either of you to do anything and if they are a crying sparkling I’m going back to my hab.”

“Rodimus!”

Drift had yelled his name a little too loud to stop him from spiraling and putting distance between them. The mech was holding his arms on both sides and he wasn’t aware he’d been venting hard.

“Stop,” Drift vented hard, looking at him with his finials back and fangs poking out.

“You’re not going to your old hab. You’re staying here with us, where you belong,” Drift told him. “We’re not angry and we don’t blame you for getting attached. We just..”

“We’re surprised kid. Shocked really,” Ratchet came close and he felt crowded. The sparkling was picking up on his emotions and while that made him happy because it meant a bond was in place, he didn’t want them exposed to painful emotions or his cluster of feelings so he vented and bounced them. Keeping his gaze on the sparkling, trying not to notice how their gazes stuck to him and the longing in their optics, he started speaking again.

“I have the papers that say he’s mine already..Megs and Minimus know already because they came by unannounced.”

“Only yours?”

Ratchet was the one to ask and he felt bad that he didn’t think they’d want their names on the papers as well.

“I didn’t think you’d want your names on it. I didn’t think about anything other than your reactions honestly and I wasn’t fair in those thoughts either. I’m sorry.”

He owed it to them to at least get their frustrations out so he looked them in the optics expecting glares only to feel sadness and that was so much worst.

“Roddy…we aren’t..give us the papers.”

He went over to his desk and situated the sparkling while covering his nozzles and pulled the papers out handing them over.

They both signed it.

And he was both relieved and guilt ridden.

Both wanted a sparkling and were even partners with a mech who could carry by tank and yet…

“Why isn’t his name on here?”

“I couldn’t think of one…so I guess..as his sires, you can name him. If you want.”

They looked at him as if he’d revealed the secrets of Cybertron and he might as well have. Naming was a huge deal in their culture and for a carrier to completely allow the sires full handle of it meant a lot.

He looked down at the sparkling and stood beside them, “here, hold him.”

It was Ratchet who gently took the sparkling which made the bitty wake up looking confused. Their optics nor senses were actually developed but they could tell the difference between stranger, carrier and sire. They could smell that he was near but couldn’t feel him. And yet the sparkling didn’t cry which was a good sign. They did sneeze and Ratchet melted at the sight with Drift not far behind and he hadn’t even held the bitty yet.

It made Rodimus smile but the guilt ate away at him.

Truth be told, he really did want sparklings, but he hated the stereotypes, prejudice and weakness being a carrier brought on. He never wanted to be weak or seen as weak and he hated how he would be viewed if he were to get sparked. So he denied and rejected it and in the process, he denied himself and his partners something they all wanted. Its one of the reasons he wasn’t conjunxed with them while the two were. It was usually a guarantee a carrier would get sparked once they conjunxed. His fears greatly outweighed the speak of what if he still felt.

He was also certain they would one day tire of him and leave when they realized they could do better.

‘I sprung a bitty on them that isn’t even ours by emergence and they still want me,’ he let a few tears fall silently. ‘I’ve been unfair to them…’

He watched as Ratchet gave the bitty to Drift and how the mech melted completely with tears in his optics. Their bitty still didn’t cry which was also a very good sign he felt a connection to the two. He quietly bent down and grabbed a blanket to cover his exposed nozzles. He should let Ratchet make him a new chassis cover.

The feelings were overwhelming and he felt less of a warrior and solider and more the code he tried to reject for millions of years.

He..hated the vulnerability still and tried to quietly shift into the other room for a moment to gather himself but the two held him on both sides of his arms.

“What? Is he hungry?”

He didn’t want to make optic contact and tried to play off his sniffle until Ratchet pulled him in. He tried to move back but neither mechs allowed it.

“Kid..for once..don’t fight it..it doesn’t make you any less and it’s not a bad thing. Just for now..let it out..don’t reject it. Don’t reject us.”

The dam burst and he was sobbing with his intake covered by his servos to keep from being too loud. He kept his face plates hidden and felt Drift hug his back with their sparkling secure in his hold. Their arms tightened around him. He felt all the things he never allowed himself.

Safe. Vulnerable. Secure. Open. Tender. Exposed and held together as he mended himself whole with their comfort.

It felt as good as it hurt and by the end of his tears he felt raw and their nest had never felt so good to slip inside. He felt Drift and Ratchet pressed on both sides of him after giving him their sparkling when he whined for him.

Their sparkling nuzzled into him and made cooing noises, trying to fight their sleep but Drift wouldn’t let them. His humming was infectious and it was hard for him to stay awake but the plating that remained on his upper frame left him so uncomfortable. He knew what that meant but he wasn’t sure he could handle accepting it.

“It’s okay, Roddy,” Drift whispered in his audial, slowly taking the locks off his tank and back strut plating with Rstchets help. He felt pure relief at the metal being removed allowing his belly and wide hips room to breathe.

Accepting the sparkling as his own, his frame producing milk and allowing his emotions freedom in the presence of his partners triggered his body to go into a pseudo heat that was brought on from denying his code all these years.

“Let us take care of you,” Ratchet kissed along his neck cables, servos rubbing the chub along his belly, sending butterflies bursting within him at the love and comfort freely given.

Drift rubbed his palms along his hips and bit into his neck, hands making their way up to his sensitive breasts where he tensed and Ratchet cooed at him, reassuring him as he too cupped Rodimus breast. Both slipping the blanket free and wrapping the sparkling inside it.

The bitty inhaled the pheromones in the air and began to fall into recharge. What smelled of heat to adult mechs smelled of sleep pheromones to sparklings.

They placed the bitty on the edge of the nest yet still within close servo and optic contact.

Laid out bare for them to see, Rodimus tried to cover his nozzles but the two stopped him. Both Drift and Ratchet pressed a kiss to his nozzles before licking the dark milk duct and kissing the tender mesh again.

They enjoyed the way they bounced heavily and how his belly followed suit.

“You make an amazing person and carrier, sweet spark,” it was Ratchet who always spoke sweet words while taking them apart in berth. The medic popped his panels open and let his spike free, Drift followed pressing kisses to Rodimus’s belly, servo rubbing the chub as he worshipped it with kisses making Rodimus array snap open and lock.

Drift placed a kiss on his soaking valve before moving to let Ratchet do the same.

“You’ll look even more beautiful growing, swelling full with our sparkling. You already look so beautiful caring for our first one,” Drift soothed into his audial. They both were lining up to meet at the entrance of his valve, both their spike heads bobbing together before slowly slipping inside.

They all groaned together in unison until Drift and Ratchet nipped at his nozzles pulling them. Their servos resting interlocked over his belly as they rubbed the soft flesh stimulating his nerves. Bobbing their throats to a wave beat as they drank from him while fully sheathing their spikes deep inside him.

They left him a silent screaming, back arched mess that could do nothing more than cry and whisper his begging for their soft loving touches that left him exposed emotionally and a soaking, valve squelching mess that tried to cycle and lock down on their raw spikes that were struggling to keep from bursting inside him.

He felt their grip on his belly tighten and they rubbed his flesh as if he were already accepting their loads for a new spark when he felt their chassis open and his spark thrum to life.

Three different hues of blue made the dark room glow. Spike and valve bio lights pulsed and grew vibrant while Drift and Ratchet lifted themselves to hover and look down at Rodimus who looked up at them.

“We aren’t letting you go, Roddy. Not now, not if we never got to conjunx and spark you,” he leaned down, kissing the sobbing mech who gazed up at him before Ratchet leaned down capturing plump lips that quivered at his bite. “But now that we have, no more running and hiding from us. We love you Rodimus and we know you love us too.”

Rodimus sobbed even harder.

Feeling their sparks glow and leave their chambers to meet between them and merge making them all conjunx and completing the connection.

They overloaded together, squeezing each other, Rodimus’s valve clamping down on their spikes that buried within his soft tank lining spilling into him. Their sparks dancing getting lost in each other until none could be distinguished and they all held a large piece of each other once their sparks returned to them.

Rodimus was enternally grateful to have Drift and Ratchets servos in his belly as he felt the flesh stretch and grow heavy at all the transfluid that sloshed and flowed inside him. He felt his valve and cheeks grow hot all over again and he moaned, rocking into them.

“Please,” he cried, feeling them rub his distended belly full of transfluid, valve throbbing hot as his tank wanted more. “Please,” he begged again, seeing the two smirk.

“We’ll give you everything you want and need, sweet spark,” his medic promised.

“We just hope you don’t mind carrying two or three by the time we’re done with you.”

“Although, it’d be nice to see you so round and full of three while feeding our first,” Ratchet chuckled.

“Maybe we aim for three next time?” Drift kissed along Rodimus’s face, nuzzling into his olfactory sensor when the mech needed the reassurance and care.

“We can discuss that later. For now,” Ratchet pulled Rodimus close, washing his em field over the mech who needed their affection they were more than happy to give, “lets focus on mending him. He needs our love first, we can think on that later.”

With a nod from Drift and a quick check on their sleeping sparkling, they made love to their conjunx.

-

My mind…went elsewhere..anyway if anyone wants to tip me the link to my kofi is on my pinned post.

[fivelasanctum]

I blame the snippets from the Commission handbook I found online but I am shipping the young man form of Founderfive + Lila together. Love her with her canon beloved in any form. A bit of a crackship but still intriguing in the scope of fanon and the fanfiction realm. Does offer many compelling storyline developments if he had survived past season three. Or a trace of himself lingered in the timelines given he created the time Commission and most likely the subway system as a possible contingency plan. Five assumed he was 100 years old given that is a normal human lifespan and he passed away in his 'can'. In the excerpt he mentioned he no long remembered his name. Yet he was still quite lucid to talk to his other self to not save the world. Not suffering from dementia at all. Been established that time was nothing when at the commission. Why we can't truly gauge lila's age given she worked for them as well. Five was suppose to only do 5 years of service for the Handler but was still with them up until he was 56 or 58 year old self. Was rescued when he was 45. Time is subjective. So the founder may be more godlike in terms of his age and abilities (thinking timelord for those familiar with the Doctor Who series)

As shown in the image above: Seems to be a somber, melancholic version of five that is filled with regrets. Horrified about what he has created. That has a life all it's own. Essentially feels the road of hell was paved with good intentions but that despite the original aim for what he wanted, "time is a finicky mistress." Cannot be molded by one person no matter how powerful the founder became. "someone I lost" could mean his youthful self that was self aware and confident in his purpose. Knowing what he wanted and needed to do. Believing he could change the world on his own. Since founder lost touch with what it meant to be a 'Five'. Yet it can also mean he lost his version of lila. The series is familiar with tragic endings with couples. Luther and sloane were sweet, married each other and looked to be endgame. Yet when the universe was reset, luther remembered and still loved her but for whatever reasons, couldn't find her. When five and her found him in the bunker she did have pity for him. Trying to calm Five's ire towards the founder since by this time he was in a more fragile state when it came to his health. He did acknowledge her with 'bingo.' A five-ism I'll call it. Confirming she was keeping up with it all. Not confused like other characters would be (Diego and luther in particular) When he did perish, she was hesitant to leave her five alone with now dead founder. Knowing it was an emotional moment for him. Confronted with his future mortality and the realization he would be alone. Not having accomplished what he sought out to do. Their was another revelation in the commission handbook that five can't use his powers if his hands are bound yet was not verified completely. Take with a grain of salt since I still need to purchase the book and this is second-third hand accounts from others that gave hints to some lore on five/founder. Still opens some doors with the information. Many ways to go with founderfive and lila within the fandom. ♥ Could be more manic with a god complex in his younger days since five revealed to Klaus he thought he could evade death in addition to time and disasters. Would make founder be more insane or at the very least more of an anti-hero type character. ♥ slow-burn beauty and the beast tale with Lila. Projects being more insane than he actually is to push her away. ♥ Possibly stalking/watching her when both were at the time commission courtesy of his own powers and the infinite switch board. ♥ Their were three chairs in the bunker with opened alcohol bottles and glasses. Showing he could have had company but with himself. Since he made the Bunker paradox psychosis proof. Most likely to bounce ideas off alternate fives for how to save the world before he threw in the towel in the end. ♥ Perhaps created paradox psychosis as a means of sticking it to his other selves. Five has always been self deprecating as we saw with his adventure with luther. Both trying to kill each other and insult one another. Founder could see what his alternate selves were doing, jealous if they had a happier life with their 'lila' compared to his situation of being stuck at the commission with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Well. More than one world infinite ones due to timelines branching off. ♥ With his mastery over time it could have served as a double edged sword. Slowing down his own time subconsciously. Lila, while able to mimic his abilities, she could have hit her limits. Having to watch her age eventually while he would remain. Maybe worked on finding a way to let his time move so he could reunite with her. In the comics, Five is frozen in time as a ten year old. Never able to grow from that point. The handler was able to freeze time for a couple minutes and she wasn't even the highest ranking person in the commission. Makes sense founder can impart a crumb of his powers. ♥ Founder serving as the battery core of the commission for everything to function. Suitcases leeching off his power, creating custom timelines.

♥ Idea of founder being annoyed with his other self. Jealous if main lila has a relationship already with main five. Might separate him in three bodies. Representing the three parts of his mind while in physical, different ages. Kid five, apocalypse five and 25 year old five at the end of the series. Yet all have the memories of lila and events leading up to what founder did on a whim. Can't stay separated forever since memories or sense of self can be distorted. Just some ideas I have had and other Fivela/live/Fila fans have had when discussing this on Discord <3 Thanks for reading~

[ladyluscinia]

Ok, I think I might be exiting the "are you fucking kidding me?" period and ready to make a real argument, so lets talk about Three Act Structure!

Is OFMD S2 just the "Darkest Hour"?

A very common explanation I've been seeing for some of the... controversial... aspects of S2 is that it's meant to be that way. That the middle act is where the protagonists hit their lowest point. Where we get the big failure point. Where everything looks kind of shit.

S2 is supposedly just that point. It's The Empire Strikes Back. People have been making that comparison since before the first episodes even dropped, telling everyone to expect something that could be disappointing or unsatisfying - it's just a matter of needing to wait for S3 to pull it all together.

It's not a baseless framework to consider the show through - I'm pretty sure David Jenkins has mentioned it in interviews (or at least mentioned he planned for three acts / seasons) so it's certainly worth asking how he's doing at the 2/3rd mark.

So - quick summary of Three Act Structure:

Act 1 introduces our characters and world. It includes the inciting incident of the story and the first plot point, where a) the protagonist loses the ability to return to their normal life, and b) the story raises whatever dramatic question will drive the entire plot. Act 2 is rising action and usually most of the story. The protagonist tries to fix things and fucks them up worse, in the process learning new skills and character developing to overcome their flaws. Act 3 is the protagonist taking one more shot, but this time they are ready. We get the climax of the story, the dramatic question gets an answer, and then the story closes.

If you want examples, the Star Wars Original Trilogy is a very popular template. And, hell, he said it was a pirate story... the main Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy also does a solid job with their three acts.

Let's compare. (Spoiler: I'm not impressed 🤨)

---

First thing I need to establish... Wait. Two things. First is that Three Act Structure is flexible, so we can't really analyze success or failure by pulling up a list of necessary plot beats that should have been hit in X order. Second is that if you tell me you are writing a romance with a Three Act Structure - where "the relationship is the story" - the first thing I'm going to do is ask you how you are adapting it. Because while there's not necessarily anything preventing you from applying this to a character driven plot, most people are familiar with it as plot structure for externally driven conflict.

Unless there's a reason the status of the main relationship is intrinsically tied up in the current status of the war against the evil empire, a standard Three Act Structure is going to entail either an antagonistic force that absolutely wants your main couple apart being the main relationship obstacle OR the romance aspect being a subplot to the protagonist's narrative adventure. None of those sound like how the show has been described.

So how is OFMD adapting it?

---

Act 1

(Can't figure out how well Act 2 is doing if we don't start at setup.)

Right out the gate, OFMD breaks one of the main "rules" for a story where the Acts are delivered in three parts. Namely the one where the first Act is treated as an acceptable standalone story, with it's own satisfying yet open ended conclusion.

In Star Wars, A New Hope ends with the princess rescued, Luke finding the Force, Han finding his loyalty, and the Death Star destroyed. The Empire isn't defeated, the antagonists still live... the story is not over, but this one movie doesn't feel unfinished.

Similarly, Curse of the Black Pearl gives Jack his ship back, Elizabeth and Will get together, and Norrington has the English Navy let them all off the hook and give Jack and the pirates one day's head start.

OFMD's final beat of S1 being Kraken Arc starting is not that, even if Stede returning to sea is still a pretty hopeful note. Now... I don't necessarily think this was a bad call. At least, not if the story is the relationship. It's easy to close on a happy ending and then fuck it up next movie if the conflict is external and coming for them. Not so much if you're driving the story with your protagonists' flaws, in part because it should be really obvious at the end of setup that your main characters need development and can't run off together right now. I actually like that they were risk-takers and let S1 look at the situation clearly vs doing a fragile happy end, because it takes into account the difference between a character-driven and plot-driven narrative.

I think OFMD's Act 1 actually ends at maybe the Act of Grace? Well, there through the kiss on the beach, counting as our "first plot point" before everything goes wrong, basically.

At that point, they have setup the story and characters. We've been introduced to Edward and Stede's current issues. Signing the Act of Grace does make the intertwined arcs between them real - it's no longer a situation that either one of them could just walk away from like it was in 1x07 - and we narrow in on the (alleged) driving question of the show:

It's not about "Will Stede become a great pirate?" or "Will we develop a better kind of piracy for the crew?" - the show is the relationship and the big question is "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?"

Act 1 ends on their first solution, being together and making each other happy and admitting it's more than just friendship. Act 2 starts, appropriately, by saying both of them are currently too flawed for that to go anywhere but crashing and burning.

Now... looking back, what does Act 1 do well vs poorly?

I think it's really strong on giving us the foundation for BlackBonnet's characters and flaws. We aren't surprised Stede goes home or Edward goes Kraken (or at least... we weren't supposed to be surprised. There are still a lot of holdouts blaming Izzy for interrupting Edward's "healing" despite how at this point in the story it doesn't make sense for Edward to have the skills to heal... but I digress). The relationship question is compelling at the end of S1, the cliffhanger hooks, and the fandom explosion of fics did not come from nowhere - the audience was invested.

I also think Act 1 does a great job of settling us in the universe. We understand the rules it abides by, from how gay pirates are just a fact of life to how there's no important organs on the left side of the body. Stede has a muppety force field. Rowboats have homing devices, and port is always as close as you want it to be. Scurvy is a joke. The overblown violence of pirate life is mostly a joke, but we are going to take the violence of childhood trauma seriously.

Lucius's fake-out death, while technically part of Act 2, works well because Act 1 did a good job of priming everyone to go "obviously this show wouldn't kill a crew member for shock value, and we're 100% supposed to suspend disbelief about how he could have survived getting flung into the sea in the middle of the night." And we do. And we get rewarded for it.

Regarding antagonists - a big focus of any setup - the show is deliberately weak. The one with the most screentime is Izzy, and he's purposefully ineffective at separating our main couple. Every antagonist is keyed to a particular character, and they function mostly to inform us of that character's flaws and development requirements. The Badmintons tell us about Stede's repression and feelings of inadequacy, and Izzy tells us about Edward's directionless discontent and tendency to avoid his problems. Effectively - the show is taking the stance this will be a character driven narrative where Stede and Edward's flaws are the source of problems and development the solution. No person or empire (or social homophobia) is separating them...

...which leads me to something not present - there nothing really about the struggle of piracy against the Empire. Looking at Curse of the Black Pearl... we see piracy is in danger. The Black Pearl itself is described as the last great pirate threat the British Navy needs to conquer. Hangings are omnipresent - Jack is sentenced to die by one almost as soon as he's introduced to the story, when his only act so far had been to wander around and save Elizabeth from drowning. OFMD tries to invoke this kind of struggle in 2x08, but there's no foundation. Our Navy antagonists are Stede's childhood bullies, and so focused on Stede the crew isn't even in danger when they get caught. The Republic of Pirates is getting jokes about being gentrified, not besieged.

Even the capture of Blackbeard by the Navy is treated as a feather in Wellington's cap but not a huge symbolic blow against piracy... because we just do not have that grand struggle woven into Act 1. You only know the "Golden Age of Piracy" is ending if you google it, or have watched a bunch of pirate shows.

Overall, a solid Act 1, well adapted to the kind of story they've said they were looking to tell - a romance in the (silly-fied) age of piracy, instead of a pirate adventure with a romantic subplot.

---

Now, Sidebar - Where is the story going?

The thing about the dramatic question - in OFMD's case: "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?" - is that a) there's normally more than one question bundled up in that one + sideplots, and b) while you aren't supposed to have the answer yet, you can usually guess what needs to happen to give you the answer.

Back to our examples... Luke's driving question is "Will the Empire be defeated?" Simple. Straightforward. Also: "Will Luke become a Jedi?" The eventual climax of our story from there is pretty obvious... the story is over when Luke wins the war for the Rebellion in a Jedi way. That's the goal that they are working toward.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit more complicated. We're juggling more characters and have a less defined heroic journey, but there are driving questions like "Is Jack Sparrow a good man?" and "Is Will Turner a pirate / what does that mean?" and even "Will the British Navy defeat piracy?" They get basic answers in Curse of the Black Pearl, and far more defined ones in At World's End. Still, this is another plot-driven narrative. They've laid the foundations for the Pirates vs Empire struggle, and when that final battle turns into the trilogy climax then you know what's happening.

OFMD is not doing a plot-driven narrative. To judge how they are doing at their goals, we have to ask what they think a happy ending entails in a character sense.

Clearly it's not the classic romantic sideplot, where the climax is the first kiss / acknowledgement of feelings. They've teased a wedding in Word of God comments a lot, so that's probably our better endpoint. Specifically, though, a wedding where both of our protagonists aren't ready to flee from the altar (big ask) and where they've both grown enough that their flaws / mutual tendencies to run away from life problems won't tank the relationship.

In Stede's case it's still massive feelings of inadequacy and being too repressed to talk about his problems. Also he ran away from his family to chase a lifelong dream of being a pirate - "Is Stede going to find fulfillment in being a pirate captain, or will the real answer be love?" Edward meanwhile expresses a desire to quit piracy and retire Blackbeard, but we also find out he's struggling with massive self-loathing and guilt from killing his father - "Is retiring what Edward wants to do, or is he just running away?"

If they are going to get to a satisfying wedding beat at the climax of their story, what character beats do we need to hit in advance?

Off the top of my head - both characters need to self-realize their flaws (a pretty necessary demand of anyone who runs away from problems). They are set up to balance each other well, but also to miscommunicate easily. They have to tell each other about or verbally acknowledge that self-realization so it can be resolved. Stede has to decide how much being a pirate means to him. Edward has to decide if he's retiring and what he wants to do. They both need to show something to do with getting past their childhood traumas given all the flashbacks. Through all this, they also need to hit the normal romance beats that convince the audience they are romantically attracted to each other and like... want to get married.

Oh, and this is more of a genre-specific sideplot, but once they demonstrate a behavior that hurts the people who work for them, they need to then demonstrate later how it won't happen again. Proof of growth, which is kind of important in a comedy where a lot of the humor is based in them being massively self-centered assholes. Stede doesn't earn his acceptance in the community until he kicks Calico Jack off the ship, making up for causing the situation with Nigel in the first episode. A workplace comedy can get a lot of material from the boss as the worker's antagonist, but if you want the bosses to stay sympathetic you have got to throw them some opportunities to earn it.

All that sounds like a lot, but like - the relationship is the story, right? If we spend so much time on establishing flaws big enough to drive a story, we also have to spend time on fixing them. Which is where the turning point hits.

---

Act 2: How it Starts

This is where the full story reality-checks your protagonist. Glad you saved your boyfriend and embraced new love in Act 1, but his repressed guilt means he's about to completely ghost you, and your own abandonment issues and self-loathing are about to make his dick move into everyone else's problem.

Again, it's a non-conventional choice OFMD has this start at the very end of S1 rather than with a sudden dark turn in the S2 premiere, but it's still pretty clearly that point in the Three Act Structure.

In Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back opens with a timeskip to our Rebellion getting absolutely crushed and hiding on a miserable frozen planet. The Empire finds them as the plot is kicking off and they have to desperately flee. They get separated. Han and Leia try to go to an ally for help and end up in Vader's clutches. It's a sharp turn from the victorious note that A New Hope ended on.

Pirates of the Caribbean's Act 2 starts dark. Dead Man's Chest opens with our happy couple Will and Elizabeth getting arrested on their wedding day for the "happy end" escape of the last movie. Jack has not been having success since reclaiming his ship, and we'll soon find out he's being hunted by dark forces. As for the general state of piracy, we get a horrifying prison where pirates are being eaten alive by crows, and a new Lord Beckett making the dying state of piracy even more textual. "Jack Sparrow is a dying breed... The world is shrinking."

The key here is making a point that our heroes aren't ready. This is the struggles part - things they try? Fail. The odds do not look to be in their favor.

Now, OFMD apparently decided to go all-in on flaw exploration, especially with Edward. The first 3 episodes of S2 are brutally efficient in outlining Edward's backslide. In S1 you could see he had issues with guilt and feeling like a bad person. S2 devolves that into a destructive, suicidal spiral where Edward forces his crew into three months of consecutive raids, repeats his shocking act of cruelty with Izzy's toe offscreen (more than once!), escalates it with his leg, and finally they state directly that Edward hates himself for killing his dad so much that he fears he's fundamentally unlovable and better off dead.

Stede's struggles are subtler, but most definitely still there. He's deliberately turning a blind eye to tales of Edward's rampage, half from simply being too self-centered to care about the harms Edward causes others, and half from being unable to face or fathom that he had the ability to hurt Edward that much. Upon reunion he wants to put the whole thing behind them, not addressing why he left in the first place. Very "love magically fixes everything" of him, except Stede is no golden merman.

Interestingly, here, BlackBonnet's relationship dysfunction has very clearly been having a negative impact on the surrounding characters we care about. Make sense, since it's the driving force of the story, but that also adds a lot more relationships we need to make right. Like... Edward is the villain to his crew. The show focuses on their trauma and poisoned relationships with him. And then draws our attention even more to Stede taking his side to overrule their objections to him.

For a story where the conflict and required resolutions are primarily character based, and the setup had already given the main couple a good amount to work with, dedicating a lot of S2 to adding more ground to cover was... a choice. Potentially very compelling on the character end, certainly challenging on the writing end... but not a complete break with the structure.

Bold, but not damning.

---

Act 2: How it Ends

Now it is true that Act 2 tends to end on a loss. Luke is defeated by Vader and loses his hand, and Han has been sent away in carbonite. Jack Sparrow for all his efforts cannot escape his fate, and he and the Pearl are dragged to the locker.

But the loss is not the point. The loss is incidental to the point.

Act 2 is about struggles and failure, but it's also about lessons learned. There's a change that occurs, and our cast - defeated but not broken - enters the final act with the essential skills, motivation, knowledge, etc. that they lacked in the beginning.

Luke Skywalker could not have defeated the Empire in Return of the Jedi until he'd learned the truth about his father and resisted the Dark Side in The Empire Strikes Back. (Ok, confession, I'm using Star Wars as an example because literally everyone is doing so, but frankly it's a better example of formulaic Three Act Structure repeating within each movie because on a trilogy level - relevant to this comparison - it is a super basic hero's journey in a very recognized outfit and as such the Act 2 relevance is also... super basic "the hero tries to fight the antagonist too early" beat where he learns humility. Not really a lot going on. So, for the better example...)

Dead Man's Chest has a downer ending with the closing moment of the survivors regaining hope and a plan against an enemy now on the verge of total victory - a classic Act 2. But in that first loss against Davy Jones we get Will's personal motivation and oath to stab the heart, Jack finally overcoming not knowing what he wanted and returning to save them from the Kraken (being a good man), Elizabeth betraying Jack (being a pirate), Barbossa's return, and Norrington's choice to bargain for his prior life back. The mission to retrieve Jack from the World's End is the final movie's plot, but things are already on track to turn the tables back around as we enter the finale.

Now, relevant sidenote - one major difference between Three Act Structure within a single work vs across three parts is that Act 2 continues into Part 3, and only tips over into Act 3 about midway through. This is because obviously your final movie or season cannot just be the climax. That's why both movie examples start with a rescue mission. They have to still be missing something so they can get the plot of their third part accelerating while they go get whatever that something is.

But if you wait until the 3rd movie / season to get the development going at all - you're fucked.

Jack's decision in the climax of At World's End to make Elizabeth into the Pirate King goes back to the development we saw in the Pearl vs Kraken fight in Dead Man's Chest. So does Elizabeth's leadership arc. Will's whole arc about becoming Captain of the Dutchman gets built upon in the third movie, but it starts in the second. Not just as an idle thought - he's actively pursuing it. Already consciously weighing saving his father vs getting back to Elizabeth as soon as he makes the oath. Everyone is moving forward in Act 2. Their remaining development might stumble for drama, or they might be a bit reluctant, but I know that they know better than to let it stick, because they already faced their true crisis points.

I'm not sure we can say the same about OFMD.

S2 does a good job of adding problems, yeah, but there's not really any movement on fixing them. Our main couple stagnates in some ways, and regresses in others.

Stede opened Act 2 by running away in the middle of the night back to his wife without telling Edward anything. We know he did it because of feeling guilty and his core childhood trauma of his dad calling him a weak and inadequate failure. Now in S1 he actually speedruns a realization of his shitty behavior with Mary, but what about S2? Well...

He continues to not talk to Edward about... pretty much anything. My guy practiced love confessions galore but Edward only finds out about going back to his wife via Anne, and it gets brushed aside with a love confession. He seems to think Edward wants him to be a dashing pirate, or maybe he just thinks he should be a dashing pirate. Idk, it doesn't get examined. Regarding his captaincy, they give him an episode plot about Izzy teaching him to respect the crew's beliefs, but this is sideplot to a larger arc of him completely overruling their traumas and concerns (and shushing their objections) to keep his boyfriend on the ship so. That.

Stede kills a man for reasons related to his issues, shoves that down inside and has sex with Edward instead of acknowledging any bad feelings. At least this time Edward was there and knows it happened? Neither Chauncey's death nor his dad have been mentioned to anyone. He gets a day of piracy fame that goes to his head, gets dumped, and ends on a complete beat down by Zheng where he learns... idk. Being a boor is bad? He's still wildly callous to her in the finale, and spends the whole time seeking validation of his pirate skills. He reunites with Edward, kisses, and quotes Han Solo.

Where S1 ended on a great fuckery, his S2 naval uniform plan after they regroup is ill defined except to call it a suicide mission - and we don't get to see what it would have been because it devolves into a very straightforward fight and flee. And gets Izzy killed. Quick cut funeral (no acknowledgement of his S2 bonding with Izzy), quick cut to wedding (foreshadowing), quick cut to... innkeeper retirement? Unclear when or even if BlackBonnet discussed Stede's whole driving dream to be a pirate and live a life at sea, but I guess that got a big priority downgrade. Despite the fact he was literally looking to Zheng for pirate-based compliments in the post-funeral scene.

I guess he's borderline-delusionally dogged in his pursuit of love now - so unlikely to bolt again - but he's also got at least a decade of experience mentally checking out in a state of repression when he's unhappy. And he's stopped being as supportive and caring toward the crew in that dogged pursuit, while arguably demonstrating a loss in leadership skills, so, um, good thing someone else is in charge?

And if Stede is a mess, Edward's arc is so much worse.

As established, they devote the Kraken to making Edward worse. He literally wants to kill himself and destroy everyone around him in the process because Stede left, and this is fixed by... Stede coming back. That's it. The crew tries to murder him and then exiles him from the ship (and Izzy takes the lead on both, indicating exactly how isolated Edward has become), but it's resolved in half a day by Stede just forcing them to put up with his boyfriend again. Like they think he murdered Buttons and still have to move him back in???

The show consistently depicts Kraken Era as a transgression against the crew, but they also avoid showing Edward acting with genuine contrition. He admits he historically doesn't apologize for anything, and then mostly still doesn't. It's a joke that he's approaching probation as a performance (CEO apology), and then the only person he genuinely talks to is Fang - the one guy cool with him - and the only person who gets a basic "sorry" is Izzy - the guy he really needs to be talking to. Edward's primary trauma is guilt, but apparently he only feels it abstractly after all that? He's only concerned with fixing things with Stede, despite Stede being about the only person around who hurt him instead of the reverse.

Speaking of primary traumas, Edward hating himself doesn't really go anywhere after the beat of self-realization. Apparently Stede still loving him is enough of a bandaid to end the suicide chasing, but he doesn't like. Acknowledge that. Edward is maybe sorta trying to go slow so he doesn't hang all his self-worth on Stede again (you can speculate), but they a) absolutely fail to go slow, and b) he doesn't make any attempt to develop himself or another support structure. Just basically... "let's be friends a bit before hooking back up." And then we get the whiplash that is Blackbeard and/or retirement.

Kraken Era is Blackbeard but way worse, like no one who has known Blackbeard has ever seen him. In the Gravy Basket Edward claims he might like being an innkeeper, before destroying his own fantasy by having the spectre of Hornigold confront him over killing his dad. The BlackBonnet to Anne & Mary parallel says running away to China / retiring makes you want to kill each other - burn it all down and go back to piracy. Stede rightfully points out prior retirement plans were whims. Edward gets sick of the penance sack after a day and puts his leathers back on to go try "poison into positivity". But also claims to be an innkeeper (look - two whole mentions!) when trying not to send children to be pirates after teaching them important knife skills.

Killing Ned Low is a serious, bad thing that prompts ill-advised sex and then going hardcore into retirement mode - leathers overboard, talk about mermaid fantasy, get retirement blessings from Izzy, end up dumping Stede for a fishing job instead of talking about how he's enjoying piracy. The fishing job, however, is also a bad thing and a stupid decision because Edward is a lazy freeloader fantasizing about being a better person. We have an uncomfortable, extended scene of "Pop-Pop" weirdly echoing his abusive dad and then sending Edward to go do what he's good at - disassociate, brutally murder two guys, fish up the leathers, rise as the Kraken from the sea. He continues with comically efficient murder but also he's reading Stede's love letters and seeking to reunite with him so... wait, is this a good thing? Post makeout / mass slaughter he's trading compliments on his kills with Zheng so. Yeah. Looks like it. Murder is fine.

Wait, no, skip ahead and Izzy is dying and Edward suddenly cares a whole lot as Izzy makes his death scene about freeing Edward from Blackbeard. Now being a pirate was "encouraging the darkness" because Izzy - a guy who had little to no influence over Edward's behavior - just couldn't let Blackbeard go. Murder is bad again, and he is freed. Minus the little detail that the murder he explicitly hates himself over was not related to Blackbeard or piracy whatsoever, so presumably haunts "just Ed" still. Anyway he's retiring to run an inn with Stede now, as the "loving family" Izzy comforted him with in his dying moments sails away from the couple that can best be described as the antagonists of their S2 arc. Also Edward implicitly wants to get married. It's been 3 days since making out was "too fast". He's still wearing the leathers.

So most of the way through Act 2 and Edward's barely on speaking terms with anyone but Stede, who he has once again hung his entire life on really fast? Crushing guilt leads to self-hatred leads to mass murder and suicide, but only if he's upset so just avoid that. He's still regularly idealizing Stede as a non-fucked up golden mermaid person (that maybe he personally ruined a bit) because he barely knows the guy. His only progress on his future is "pirate" crossed out / rewritten / crossed out again a few times, "fisherman" crossed out, and "innkeeper ?"

Just.

Where is the forward movement?

It's not just that the inn will undoubtedly fall apart - it's that the inn will fall apart for the near-exact same reasons that China was going to at the beginning of Act 2, and I can't point to anything they've learned in the time since that will help them. I guess Stede realized he loved Edward enough to chase after him, but that was in S1! They should be further than this by now. You can't cram another crisis backslide, all the Act 2 development, and the full Act 3 climax into one season. Certainly not without it feeling like the characters magically fix themselves.

If they just fail and keep blindly stumbling into the same issues because they don't change their behavior, then Act 2 doesn't work. You're just repeating the turning point between Act 1 & Act 2 on a loop.

---

Where Did They Fuck Up?

Actually... lets start on what they did right.

The one consistent aspect of S2 that I praised and still think was done well in a vacuum (despite being mostly left out of the finale) was the crew's union-building arc.

With only 8 episodes and more to do in them than S1, side characters were going to get pinched even if the main plot was absolutely flawless. That was unavoidable. With budget cuts / scheduling issues, we regularly have crew members simply vanish offscreen outside of one scene, meaning cohesive arcs for your faves was not likely. Not to say they couldn't have done better - my benefit of the doubt for the TealOranges breakup and Oluwande x Zheng dried up about when I realized he was literally just her Stede stand-in for the parallel - but something like Jim's revenge plot from S1 was realistically not on the table without, like, turning half the crew into seagulls to afford it.

The union building works around this constraint really well. They turn "the crew" into the side arc, and then weave Izzy's beats in so that they aren't just about Izzy. The breakup boat crew working together to comfort each other and protect him turns them into a unit, and Stede's crew taking it upon themselves to address the trauma vibes while the captains aren't in the way solidifies it across all our side characters. The crew goes to war with Stede's cursed coat and wins, they Calypso their boss to throw a party, and they capitalize on a chance to make bank with an efficiency Stede could only dream of.

We don't get specific arcs, but Frenchie, Jim, and Oluwande are defaulted to as leaders in just about every situation, and Roach is constantly shown sharing his inventions with different characters. Individuals can dip in and out without feeling like the sideplots stutter. Any sense of community in S2 is coming from this arc - even if there are cracks at the points where it joins to other storylines (Stede and Edward, Zheng, etc.)

So why does it work? Well, because it's a workplace comedy, and you can tell they are familiar with working on those. They know where the beats are. They know where to find the humor. They know how to build off of S1 because they made sure the bones were already there - an eclectic group of individuals that start as just coworkers, but bond over time in the face of their struggle against an inept boss who they grow to care for and support while maintaining an increasingly friendly antagonism because, you know, inept boss.

OFMD does its best work in S2 when it's being true to its original concept... and its worst work when it seemingly loses confidence in its own premise.

"The show is the relationship," right? It's a romance set in a workplace comedy. The setup of Act 1 was all about creating a character-driven narrative. So given that... where the hell are we getting the dying of piracy and a war against the English Navy?

That's not a character-driven romcom backdrop, it's an action-adventure plot from Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. It's plot-driven, creating an antagonistic force that results in your characters' problems. Once the story is about the fight against the Empire, the dramatic question becomes the same as those adventure stories - "Will the British Navy defeat piracy, and will our protagonists come out the other side of the battle?"

Forget the wedding. The wedding is no longer the climax of the story, its back to the happy ending flash our romantic subplot gets after winning this fight.

Except, of course, trying to pivot your story to a contradictory dramatic question near the end of Act 2 can be nothing short of a disaster, because either you were writing the wrong story until now, or you've completely lost the plot of the real one. I shouldn't even be trying to figure out if they are doing this, because it should be so obvious that they wouldn't.

And yet.

What do the Zheng and Ricky plots add to the story if not this? Neither of these characters have anything emotionally to contribute to Stede and Edward - they truly are plot elements. It's a hard break from the S1 antagonist model, but it also takes up a lot of valuable screentime. This was considered important, but still Zheng's personality and motivation only gets explored so far as it's an Edward-Stede-Izzy parallel with Oluwande and Auntie, and they only need the parallel for Izzy's genre-jumping death scene. Which follows a thematically out-of-left-field speech about how piracy is about belonging to something good (workable) and how Ricky could never destroy their spirits (um...?). And then David Jenkins is pointing to it and saying things about "the symbolic death of piracy" and speculating S3 might be about the crew getting "payback"??? An idea floated by Zheng right before our temporary retirement, btw.

Fuck, the final episode of S2 didn't have time for our main couple to talk to each other because it was so busy dealing with the mass explosion of Zheng's fleet and Ricky's victory gloat. We get lethal violence associated with traumatic flashbacks until they need to cut down enemy mooks like it's nothing, at which point we get jokes with Zheng. The Republic of Pirates is destroyed outright, and it feels like they only did it because they got insecure about their "pirate story" not having the right kind of stakes. Don't even get me started on killing a major character because "Piracy’s a dangerous occupation, and some characters should die," as if suspending disbelief on this aspect makes the story somehow lesser, instead of just being a fairly standard genre convention in comedy. Nobody complains about Kermit the Frog having an improbably good survival record.

Did someone tell them that the heroes have to lose a battle near the end of Act 2, so they scrambled to give them one?

Just... compare the wholly plot-driven struggle in 2x08 to Stede and Edward's character-focused storylines in 1x10 and tell me how 2x08 is providing anything nearly as valuable to the story. Because I can't fucking find it.

At best they wasted a bunch of time on a poorly integrated adventure plot as, like, Zheng's backstory or something, and just fucked it up horribly by trying to "step up" the kind of plot they did for Jim. In which case the whole thing will be awkwardly dropped but damage is done. Otherwise, they actually thought they could just casually add a subplot like this because they've done something wildly stupid like think "pirate" is a genre on the same level as "workplace comedy" and can just trample in-universe coherency while you draw on other media to shore up their unsupported beats.

Bringing us to the most infuriating bit...

---

"...end the second season in a kinder spot."

If this was the goal, the entire season was written to work actively against it in way that is baffling and incompetent.

The really ironic thing is that the reason that the Act 2 part typically gets a downer ending is because of the evil empire that OFMD did not have to deal with until they pointlessly added it. A plot-driven story has an antagonistic force - a villain - that the heroes need to defeat. Something external working against them. The story ends when they beat the thing, and it's not much of a climax if they do most of the defeating before you get there. Ergo, they have to be outmatched up to the climax. Ergo, the second part cannot end on them feeling pretty comfortable and confident going into the third.

The same rules do not apply in the same way to a character-driven arc.

We already established Edward and Stede declaring their love is not the end of the story. Nor, necessarily, is both of them confidently entering a relationship. Even once they've developed a bunch they will have to show that development by running into the kinds of problems that would have broken them up before and resolving them better.

David Jenkins keeps talking about this idea that S2 is getting a hopeful open ending and S3 will get into potential problems, and like... I don't see any reason why they couldn't have done that successfully. They didn't, but they could've.

If S2 grew them enough as characters and then had them agree to try again in the last minute of the finale, they absolutely could have had a kind and hopeful ending where you were confident they could do it. And then a potential S3 can show that. It's a bit rockier than they were counting on, but they have learned enough lessons to not break up. And then the overall plot can build to proposal (start of Act 3) and wedding (the romantic climax). It doesn't have to be a blow out fight to be emotionally cathartic.

(Hell, the main rockier bit that they overcome in the S3 Act 2 portions could be marriage baggage. I'm sure they both have some. It would work.)

In the same way focusing on our character's long term flaws and character-driven conflict makes an Act 1 "happy ending" more difficult, I suspect it makes an Act 2 "happy ending" easier.

Instead they wrote an Act 2 that failed to convincingly start development and got confused on its direction, and then presented a rushed finale ending in a copy of the predictable disaster from S1 as though it's a good thing. They yanked the story at least temporarily into an awkward place where a romcom is trying to sell me on a bunch of serious drama / adventure beats that it has not put the work into, and inviting comparisons to better versions of those same beats in other, more suited media that make it look worse. The need to portray everyone as reaching happy closure overrules sitting with a major character death and using it for any narrative significance, while still letting it overshadow those happy endings because a romcom just sloppily killed a major character with a wound they've literally looked into the camera and said was harmless.

If I'm being entirely honest, Dead Man's Chest ends effectively at Jack Sparrow's funeral and then cuts to the British Navy obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, and it still feels kinder and more hopeful just because I leave with more faith the characters are actively capable of and working toward solving their problems.

OFMD S2, in contrast, has half-convinced me our main couple would live in a mutually obsessed, miscommunication-ridden horror story until they die.

---

Additional Reading

Normally I link stuff like this in the post, but that requires more excitement than I'm feeling right now. Here's my alternative:

Where I thought they were going with Edward - really outlines the mountain of character development they still have unaddressed

Where I thought they were going with Izzy - touches on a lot of themes that might be dead in the water & also context that's still probably relevant to why Izzy got a lot of focus in S2

My scattershot 2x08 reactions

An ask where I sketched out the bones of this argument, and another where I was mostly venting about the fandom response

This one, this other one, and this last one (read the link in op's post too) about genre shifts and failure to pull them off

The trauma goes in the box but it never opens back up - the whole point of Act 2 is that they needed to start opening shit like that - and also they focus so much on needed character growth and so little on following through

They can't even carry through on character growth that we got last season???

Why Izzy's death feels like Bury Your Gays ran smack into shitty writing

EDIT: Oh and this post is REALLY good for outlining the lack of change in way less words than I did

[carionto]

Gently now, easy does it, careful

The Humans maintain the majority of their fleet within the Sol system as they have not yet expanded further. A few are in Coalition systems on the border with the neutral buffer zone between us and the United Federation, who we are in a bit of a cold war that is looking to turn hot any day now. And there are scatterings of some scout groups dotted around the immediate vicinity (aka roughly 400 light-years from Sol).

Recently, they recalled almost every ship back to Earth for a special operation.

They are, uhh... trying to plug the 200km hole they blew in their planet with a moon of roughly equal size.

Normally we'd expect them to just dunk in there and see what's what, but we suppose because it's Earth they are for once being careful. All seventy five Dreadnoughts, one hundred and thirty eight carriers, three hundred and twelve destroyers, thousands of transports, even fourteen planet crackers, and millions more ships of all shapes and sizes are amassed around the now almost impossible to see moon of Uranus named Sycorax, gently tugging it with every available gravity hook and tractor beam towards the Earth.

They got bored of waiting and after Jimothy McCallahan showed it was in fact possible to attach and sync enough hyper-drives to straight up steal a moon, so yeah, they're doing that now for convenience sake.

To say this is the biggest patch job is pointless, as this is nothing but the mad inventiveness of Humanity on full display. Nobody else would think to try this, because nobody else would create the initial problem in the first place. According to our eons long records, there is no precedent, thank fuck. Nobody who made it to space had ever been THAT crazy before.

As the moon approaches the upper layers of the atmosphere, every ship in a burst of immense power amplify their grip and slow the process down to just about five meters a second. The next two days are agonizingly slow, but the display of beams engulfing the moon and shining past the swarm of ships are almost like a second green-tinged sun over the Pacific.

And then, without fanfare, it is inserted into its new home. Cheers on all channels at the accomplishment of this monumental task. Now, huh. Nothing's happening. That's good, we expected another calamity, but the Humans seem a little disappointed now. I think some of them also expected chaos and destruction.

Well, maybe it fixed Earth, probably not though. But then again, everything the Humans have done so far has felt like a probably not possible at all, and then it magically worked perfectly. Well, from their perspective. We would consider explosions and collateral damage a sign of failure, but oh well. Good for them.

Meanwhile we signed into Coalition law making it an official crime to steal moons, planets, planetoids from their host systems. Initially adding stars was dismissed, but after we remembered who we've got in space now, those were included as well. I bet they will try.

[respectthepetty]

Pride Petty Watch (SOTUS) 4/5

I'm watching the blacklisted shows I was supposed to watch during Pride: Love in the Air, The Untamed, and my (former?) sworn enemy, SOTUS. I've made it halfway through SOTUS (first, second, third), and barely remembered EVERYTHING about this show once I hit episode nine, so now I'm hauling ass through the remaining episodes because Arthit is wet, stressed, and sexually repressed (just how I like my men), and I know what's coming. The Obama 'Hope' poster can't save him now.

Barack, we're really in the angst era now, and I'm living for it!

Kong has been in his feelings all day that Arthit likes a girl, but the sex gods have thrown him a lifeline in the form of crappy plumbing. Before crappy plumbing was invented and pipes starting bursting, how were the gays forced to sleep together in the same bed? Plumbing was a huge plot porn in porn, so I don't think we give it enough credit for helping people get laid.

And, of course, the first thing Kong does once Arthit is in his apartment is he feeds him, so he can get lectured about his baby taste, and he gives him pink milk to signal that the BL part of this BL is about to explode!

We done been knowing that Kong wanted all of Arthit's attention which is why he is constantly pissing Arthit off (itty bitty masochist is a problem if he doesn't have someone controlling him), so I'm glad he confessed to that quickly and without shame.

Since I'm watching this show through a kinky lens rather than strictly a BL one, I truly don't think Kong realized he had feelings for Arthit until he was asked. I think that up until this point, he just craved the punishments and the attention that came with it, and now that'he is being ask if he likes Arthit, he is slowly understanding that he actually does like Arthit and not just what Arthit does for him (punishes and controls him). I am so fucking invested!

I'm not being ridiculous about this either because Arthit tells Kong to stop smoking, and Kong simply says that he'll stop. Kong needs this kind of attention. He needs to be told what to do and punished when he doesn't. The way King dresses tells us that he likes structure. He only has a few items in his fridge. He likes order. As messy as Arthit might be, he is great at providing Kong exactly what he needs.

Ten episodes in and I am losing my mind over this show! I know I did not have this much fun with it the first time around, and even though those first eight episodes were stale, these past two are checking off all of my favorite things: not-date date, forced proximity, sleeping confession, AND ARTHIT IS AWAKE! This show walked, so the bed scenes in The Time of Fever and The On1y One could run.

And now Arthit is avoiding Kong! I am being fed so damn well with this episode. This is peak cinema! And to make it all better, Arthit is in Kong's phone with a little sun next to his name because Arthit is warmth to Kong, yet giving him the cold shoulder now. The beautiful irony!

Perfect time for my ghost ship to pop back up! M looks so hurt that Kong won't tell him what is wrong! He is even more bothered that Kong wants to be alone and is snapping at him. Even if these boys couldn't be romantically together, they really are good friends.

As a fellow slut, my answer to this question has always been "more than 100, less than 1,000' regardless of the actual number (because who can remember?), so Tuta is answering exactly how all queer sluts answer, and I have never felt so represented in a BL in all my years of watching them.

TOPTAP! Now that I remember watching this show, I know I didn't see this interaction as queer the first time around, but now . . . I think Arthit had stronger feelings for Jay rather than Namtan. And this isn't a Kong x M ghost ship kind of thing either. There is tension in this scene, and it's radiating from Arthit.

Namtan is scary because she sat there for FOUR HOURS and now that Jay finally showed up yet completely forgot their three-year anniversary, she just keeps smiling through the entire exchange. Girl, stop that creepy ass behavior! Just grab a knife and stab him already.

I'm upset that Namtan basically called Arthit just to complain about her boyfriend, but I love that Arthit has turned this shit show of a conversation around and is now complaining swooning about Kong being an itty bitty masochist who keeps provoking him as a means to get his attention.

Arthit is sooooo close to the truth here. Kong does want to be a pain in Arthit's ass in more than one way. Arthit isn't imagining this. Kong actively wants it and has made that part clear.

I do not like Namtan. She needs to go worry about her failing relationship and leave this emerging bisexual alone because pink IS Arthit's color, and this pink milk business is the perfect metaphor for his (repressed) queerness since some people are chill about it and others like Namtan always got some dumb shit to say about how they don't expect it from him. Queerness comes in all shapes and sizes, Namtan!

Lord, now he is hiding behind the curtain while he basically tells Kong that he will continue to avoid him for the rest of their lives. This is so delicious! I cannot believe I had to make it through eight whole episodes before I got to the good and juicy center of this story!

Arthit opened this can of worms when he asked Kong if he had feelings for him. Before that, Kong was just going along with whatever because he simply liked the way it felt, but now he realizes what those feelings mean, and boy oh boy, I'm having the time of my life!

AND NOW KONG IS TAKING OFF THE STRING BRACELET! Tian from The On1y One and Kong are the same text but different fonts. Nerds and their fucking string bracelets are out to get me in my feelings. Alexa, play Ariana Grande's "One Last Time" so I can cry while I dance!

Okay, Ms. My Love Mix-Up, I know this is Kong's name in Thai but . . .

It now looks like a "W" since she has used it so much which means it's an upside down "M" and if that was intentionally, that is genius of the show. Props department earning its paycheck!

I believe 2016 was still during Off's "dark days" (when he was kind of a jerk), so having his character constantly being the one to scream "fag" is really doing something to me. I don't even understand Thai, but I just feel like he is saying this with too much enthusiasm for my liking. I know it's a character, but if I had tried to rewatch this show before Cooking Crush and The Trainee came out this year, I would've walked away with some grudges against Off, the actor. I'm going to sit in this feeling for a bit.

Kong threatened to make Arthit his wife and now Tuta responds to Bright's homophobic comments by stating he will make Bright his husband. I do not like the implications or that a product placement has been roped into this. This is not the vibe, and I would like to return to my angsty homphobe-turns-into-a-homo plot immediately.

Yes! This is exactly what I need! Kong sitting alone in the place he was punished by Arthit and thinking about those moments fondly while Arthit is experiencing a crisis as he is being questioned if he likes girls or boys. This is how you do flashbacks people!

I wrote briefly before during The Eclipse that the pink milk in this show was an entire character all on its, but rewatching this show has really made me appreciate just how well done all of this was. The conversation with Knot is about pink milk but the pink milk has been the perfect symbol of Arthit's queerness at every angle. He doesn't really hide drinking it because it's just part of him, but once his friends (the people he think accepts him) start commenting and teasing him for being a guy who likes it, he starts to hide it, and even when he tries other things, he doesn't like them as much as he likes the pink milk. I guess we needed the first eight episodes to lay a solid foundation, so I could be losing my mind in the last half.

The way these two best buddies are talking about THE friends-to-lovers issue while not naming names has me holding onto the last bit of my sanity. Once the feelings spill out, they can't be shoved back in. It changes things.

(which is why y'all should just get together!)

May getting hit by a ball had me crackling at three in the morning and was exactly what I needed in the midst of all this angst. God, how did this show win me over like this?!

M is giving May the same looks that Home gives Peach in Peaceful Property, which means New is showing the characters' love the same ways, so HOME IS IN LOVE WITH PEACH AND NEW IS PLAYING IT AS SUCH!

Arthit is now thinking about Kong giving him his heart on the beach and let me state it again - THIS is how you do a flashback people!

Kong walked away from the pink milk, so Arthit could have it, and I've never seen a boy look so miserable drinking his queer little drink.

EPISODE THIRTEEN, I NEED YOU RIGHT NOW!

[yukidragon]

Sunny Day Jack - SunnyTime Crew Headcanons

I accidentally went on a bit of a ramble about the relationship of Jacktor and Jean over on twitter, and I realized that I haven't mentioned here just how drastically my thoughts have evolved about Jean Laurent since the last couple times I talked about him. So let's talk about my current headcanons for Jean and the other stars of the SunnyTime Crew, specifically their relationships with Joseph and Mary in Sunshine in Hell.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur @kurokrisps

For the longest time, the popular theories in the fandom have been that Jean is secretly Ian's father and that due to jealousy he might have had something to do with [Redacted]'s death, it not outright murdered him. I thought that the former was a neat idea and would add a lot of potential drama, both for Ian and for Joseph when these truths of the past were brought about in the present. I wasn't opposed to the latter theory, but I didn't really feel it had much weight behind it, and I didn't feel like going that route for my telling of the story.

Then three big things happened that totally changed my thoughts about Jean. First, I learned that Rory Rainberry is canonically gay. While the character and the actor aren't necessarily the same person - as Sunny Day Jack from CloudyTown is different from runaway Joseph Cullman, for example - a big part of the game surrounds how the character and the actor are tangled up and blended together. As such, it feels only right to me that the actor for Rory is also gay like the character he plays.

This, of course, means that unless Ian's mom was Jean's beard, or a fling he had while experimenting with his sexuality, it's unlikely they were in a relationship. It's not impossible, of course, since we know so little about Jean at this point. Heck, for all all we know he sold sperm to a sperm bank for extra cash on the sly.

The second thing I learned were several little tidbits of info from the new afterlife story in the latest build of the demo. I won't discuss any details about it here, as it's a closed beta for only members of a certain tier of the patreon and kickstarter backers, but I got a new sense of the vibes during that era in time.

The third big thing that happened is the sunberry renaissance over on twitter, spearheaded by the delightful Chosee. Sunberry, for those not yet in the know, is the ship name for Sunny Day Jack and Rory Rainberry. I'd say it's thanks to Chosee that Rory and Jean are enjoying a new surge of popularity, as well as a fresh perspective on the characters.

These three things - along with thinking more about this era of the story thanks to expanding Mary and Joseph's headcanons - inspired me to totally change what I wanted to do with Jean in Sunshine in Hell.

Naturally, before we begin I want to emphasize that these are my personal headcanons and telling of the story, and as such don't necessarily reflect the canon of the game. (Heck, for all I know, the initial fan theories are the correct after all!) Game theories can wait for another post.

A Good Impression

As we can tell from the interview with Dan, Sunny Day Jack was the most popular character on the SunnyTime Crew Show. While none of the cast members were immune to jealousy, it never got to the point of in-fighting, let alone murder. Each member of the crew had plenty of fans to adore each of them, even if Jack was the most popular character by far.

Joseph was highly nervous when first meeting his fellow cast members at the start and tried his best to make a good impression. He refused to make the same mistakes he did in the past that made so many people dislike him, and he totally reinvented himself. He had a brand new identity, a brand new name, and a brand new friendly attitude. No one ever had to know what type of person he used to be... not even the one person there who knows his name isn't really James Haberdae.

It's a fresh start for Joseph. He's been given a second chance to start over with the love of his life by his side. He wants to do things right this time. He wants to be happy with Mary and help make both their dreams come true. He wants get along with people, actually make friends for once instead of enemies... and most of all he doesn't want to let down the kids the way he was put down all the time when he was a child.

Joseph - or rather "James" - is rather well liked by his coworkers. He's helpful and friendly, eager to learn more how to to best do his job and help his costars. Despite his worries and past experiences, he winds up charming many people working at the studio.

The years Joseph spent on the street taught him how to please others in order to survive. Now he can actually use what he learned to build an actual life for himself, rather than drifting along barely scraping by. He swallows his temper when slighted and goes out of his way to be helpful at the studio, even if it means he winds up taking more work upon himself.

Fortunately Mary is there to keep Joseph from tipping too far the other direction and giving too much of himself to everyone else. She's got some bad people-pleasing habits as well, but because she's especially concerned for her starlight's wellbeing, she does her best to make sure he's taking care of his own needs too. Naturally, he does the same for her in return.

Of course, it's pretty well known that Joseph and Mary are together. It's kept on the down low, as the studio doesn't want any gossip anywhere within a mile of the SunnyTime Crew Show or its characters, but those who work on the show are aware of their relationship.

Most find the pair cute, but at least one person is a bit...

Well, I don't want to talk about a certain person here since that might be spoilers for the new afterlife story, so I'll say that at least Joseph's costars thought the pair were cute together.

In a way, the people at the studio are the first real friends Joseph has ever made besides his sunshine. They don't know his past or even his real name like Mary does, but that's for the better. He can reinvent himself, make a new future while keeping the only good thing about his past.

Finally Joseph isn't alone anymore.

Jean

Jean Laurent is an old hat when it comes to showbusiness. He was a child star who was put in front of a camera before he even had a concept of what a camera was. He's been in everything from sitcoms to soap operas to commercials, and he even had minor roles in a couple films.

Funny thing is that the SunnyTime Crew Show isn't Jean's first time being part of a wildly popular TV show that reached a national audience. As a child, he was part of a wholesome family sitcom. His precocious personality, as well as a memorable catch phrase captured hearts all across America. The show is one of those old classics that is still vaguely a part of pop culture even in the present day.

As an adult, Jean distanced himself from being boxed into that specific character or being viewed as a child. He wanted to be taken more seriously as a mature, grown up actor, but he's rather pigeonholed by the perception of him as a child even many years and roles later. The SunnyTime Crew Show wasn't his first pick of roles, and he mostly auditioned as a favor for someone, but the other acting gigs he wanted more fell through.

Any gig is better than none, especially when you want to get better roles one day. Playing the part of a clown baker for little kids might not be what he wanted, but it's fine for now. Sure the studio works them hard, but what studio doesn't? All things considered, it's not as bad as other places, especially since he's not the poor schmuck stuck center stage.

Yeah, Jean does feel the occasional jealous twinge when Sunny Day Jack gets more attention and love than Rory Rainberry, but overall he's perfectly happy being somewhat overlooked. Being the star that gets all the attention isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when people still see him as the annoying character he's trying to distance himself from. He twitches whenever someone says the name of that old show or the character he used to play.

And if anyone even jokes about prodding him to say that old catch phrase, he's throwing hands. He is never saying those words ever again. Never. Again.

Well... unless he gets paid ridiculously well. Despite spending so many years as a popular child star, his nest egg is less than ideal because his parents were the ones holding the purse strings. Those bastards wasted his hard earned money on drugs, hookers, expensive cars, and all sorts of useless shit. Once he became an adult, he amputated that dead weight as soon as he could. His family still tries to hit him up for cash occasionally, but they've well and truly burned any bridges they had to him.

Yes, Jean has a lot of experience with the world of showbusiness, both its highs and lows. He's practically seen it all.

That's why Jean could see Joseph was in way, way over his head. He knows all too well that fresh meat like Joseph - especially when they're so soft and tender - is going to get eaten alive. He's seen it many, many times before.

Jean didn't intend to get close to his fellow costars, or anyone working at the studio really. This was just a stopover role, something to pad his resume and bank account until he landed a part someplace better. You never know who in this cutthroat business is genuine and who is looking for an opportunity to stab you in the back while wearing a smile on their face.

Damn it if Joseph didn't get past Jean's defenses in spite of himself.

Jean was certain that Joseph was a bright star that's going to burn out quickly, just a newbie that got ridiculously lucky. He had every reason not to get too close, but over time he and Joseph bonded. At first he pegged "James" as a boy scout, a sweet and naïve golden retriever of a man who was practically born for the role of Sunny Day Jack.

Over time things changed bit by bit. Joseph was so earnest that Jean wound up feeling sorry for the guy and threw out a bit of advice here and there. Just to make things easier for himself of course. Joseph was always so grateful, so eager to learn, it made Jean feel awkward for how harshly he'd come across.

The actors all smoked, so the four would often wind up hanging out while taking their cigarette breaks. While Jean didn't tend to start conversation, the others were more open to talking. Venting about the bosses was a sure way to get Jean to join in, and he wasn't immune to laughing along to a funny story or ribbing a costar for something embarrassing that happened.

Joseph never pushed himself too hard on Jean when trying to make friends. He saw a bit of his old self in Jean in the way he used to push people away with a prickly exterior, ready with some cutting snark and raise his defenses at a moment's notice. He was friendly, but never encroached on Jean's personal space unless invited. That consideration played a big part in Jean eventually warming up to him.

Over time, friendship grew between the four, much to Jean's chagrin. Sure he had the occasional spat with Cloudy-Belle Sue's actress, but he respected her. Knackadan Drizzle's actor was a riot and a great wingman at the local hot spots when Jean was looking for a handsome gent to take home for the night.

With things being not quite so progressive in the 1980's like they were today, Jean had to keep his homosexuality on the down low. While the studio overlooked quite a few "questionable" things people did when working there, it was only overlooked if the news never caught wind of anything. This was why Jean had adopted the motto of "don't shit where you eat," so he made it a policy never to date his coworkers.

Of course, a little subtle flirting never hurt anyone when the cameras were off. When he was in a good mood of course. Jean didn't often let people know when he was in a good mood, but after he made friends with his costars, he would occasionally flirt with the two good looking men who shared the stage with him. It was all in good fun.

Really, Jean would've been very tempted to break his rule of not dating coworkers for Joseph. Those handsome looks were a big part of Jack's popularity for good reason. If Joseph wasn't already in a happily committed relationship, he would've most likely asked the other man to come to his place or a hotel for the night.

Nothing would've come of it beyond a night of sex even if Joseph was single though. It would've been just a fling since Jean doesn't plan on staying at the SunnyTime Crew Show longer than he has to, but it would've been fun.

Jean isn't one to break into a closed relationship though, not unless it's a toxic one that's better off ending. He's no saint even if he does have morals. Joseph and Mary's relationship is certainly anything but toxic. The pair are just so sickeningly sweet together that he can't help but feel a little jealous of what they have. He's not ready for that sort of relationship with anyone yet, but maybe someday he'll find a guy that looks at him the way Joseph looks at Mary.

Jean doesn't quite bond with Mary the same way he does with Joseph, but he does grow fond of her as well, and a big part of it is because he and Joseph become friends. He doesn't tend to interact with the writing staff very much directly, just reading the scripts he's given and listening to the director's instructions, but with how Mary and Joseph are joined at the hip, he winds up spending more time with her by association.

Mary is almost as new to showbusiness as Joseph. In a way, she's a good match for him in how soft she is. Jean suspects their relationship is a big part of why they're both so soft, as the pair dote on and spoil each other so much. They don't talk about how they met, but they act like they've always known one another, so he suspects they're childhood sweethearts. They probably had a charmed life together, never really knowing how bad life can truly be...

Yeah, Jean doesn't really know the pair as well as he thinks he does even after spending a few years getting to know them.

Jean gets close enough to joke around with Joseph and even lightly tease Mary a bit. All it takes is a bit of innuendo about what the pair do behind closed doors to make Mary blush hard. Naturally, Jean uses their nicknames for each other as a way to tease both of them. Jean even gets close enough with Joseph for insult humor between friends, though he never gets quite that casual with Mary.

Rather than being jealous of Jack's popularity, Jean takes advantage of it to tease Joseph. "Poor bastard," he remarked sometimes whenever "Jack" would get dragged off for yet another extra photo shoot, interview, or autograph signing that he could simply waltz away from.

Jean does legitimately feel bad for Joseph being overworked, and advises the guy not to jump at their beck and call so much, but Joseph always smiles and insists that he can handle it.

Joseph is too desperate to keep his job. Jean can see that. All the advice in the world isn't going to deter Joseph from clinging to the part of Sunny Day Jack with everything he has. Poor guy is just going to have to learn the hard way just how harsh the entertainment industry is.

Jean just hopes that there'll be something left of the good guy he's grown to care for by the time showbusiness has had its way with "James."

Jean never saw the incident of '84 coming, not in a million years.

In the aftermath, Jean moved on to another role, as he always intended to do, but it was tainted by the incident. He did visit Mary in the hospital once, but it felt more like he was coming to her wake than encouraging her to get better. She didn't even seem to know anyone was even there anymore.

Jean didn't visit a second time. He didn't want to think about the incident or what happened to either of the pair. He distanced himself from all the people who worked on the show.

With how hard the studio came down with the NDA, Jean knew better. He tried to forget he ever knew any of them at all. It was better to cut all those relationships off.

He never should've gotten close in the first place.

The show never happened. Jean was never a clown. There's a gap in his resume filled with hush money. Being paid for his silence helped ease his nerves a bit. This was just a part of the business, he told himself. He saw so much shit over the years... this was just more of the same.

That's why even in the present day, Jean is still acting. From child star to silver fox, he's a well known actor with a wide range of roles. He has connections in various places in the industry, even with the modern day LambsWork Productions.

Most days, Jean forgets all about the SunnyTime Crew Show and all the people he got to know there. He forgets the faces, names, and funny stories. He forgets everything.

But sometimes... he remembers the incident in spite of himself. He remembers the children screaming and the smell of gunpowder.

Sometimes Jean feels guilty for burying the memory of his friend James... but he knows better. He always knew better than every one of them.

On that note, let's switch over to another one of the costars of the fateful SunnyTime Crew Show.

Knackadan Drizzle

Much like Rory, Knackadan is also canonically gay. Also like Rory, I decided it would be fitting if his actor shares the same sexuality. However, while we know the actor for Rory goes by the name of Jean, we don't actually know the name of his actor yet.

Well... outside of the closed beta, at least. I'm not giving out spoilers here, so let's just stick with a fun little nickname for the purposes of this post. I'm going to go with Knacktor, a portmanteau of "Knackadan" and "actor" much in the same way Jacktor became wildly used for Joseph.

Likewise, I'm going to be calling Cloudy-Belle Sue's actor Suetor. I know Cloudytor and Belltor could work too, but I like the potential pun possibilities with Suetor. I just need to figure out a good joke involving her and a suitor...

Anyway, Knacktor, being the oldest member of the main cast and more mature than the rest of the crew has a more fatherly air to him. He's friendly and fairly outspoken. He's had many years under his belt as a model and taking in acting roles. He hasn't landed a starring role before, but he's got a good resume and a decent amount of experience.

Knacktor is the first person to befriend Joseph, warming up to him right away. He often times goes out of his way to help the poor guy out, as "James" is always in way over his head. He's the first to offer tips and give the new star a heads up when trouble is brewing. He's more than happy to suggest catching a drink together after work, maybe even a double date with his boyfriend.

Although I don't have the character fully fleshed out in my head yet, I like to imagine Knacktor as having a long-term boyfriend during this era. He might have to keep it on the down low, especially since not everyone is going to be nice about his sexuality during this time period, but with those he can trust he's more than happy to show off his lovely partner.

In a way, Knacktor envies his costars in the romance department. Suetor is engaged and even invited him and his partner to her wedding. Knacktor can see Joseph and Mary are no doubt headed for marriage as well. It's something he and his partner can't do legally... at least not for a few more decades.

Until then, matching tattoos with hidden meanings would have to take the place of wedding rings.

In a lot of ways, Knacktor is the "uncle" or "big brother" of the group, watching out for his fellow costars as well as other friends he made while at the studio. Unlike Jean, he was more than willing to make friends and get along with everyone he could.

Knacktor's opinion on Joseph and Mary was that they were "good kids," and he liked to use the fact that he was older than them as a reason to playfully tease his younger coworkers. They were friends, and he got to know them pretty well.

The relationship Knacktor and Suetor have is more of a sibling bond type vibe. They have a history and are fond of teasing one another. They knew each other from a previous show they had parts in, which were also aimed at young children. It was more of a local show, but it gave them a good sense of how these things go.

Knacktor was in it for the long haul. Despite the flaws at the studio, he saw the potential in the SunnyTime Crew Show because there were so many people working there who were passionate about it. Joseph especially fueled this energy and encouraged others, which he was more than happy to help along.

What happened during the incident and the "facts" that came to light were something Knacktor never would've expected. Even today, he still doesn't know the truth about "James" or Joseph or whoever... Everything was buried... along with his unlucky costar.

Nothing was the same after the incident. Knacktor was there when it happened. He was standing right beside Joseph when the bullet blew the man's brains out.

He still has nightmares about what he saw that day... and sometimes... he has nightmares that Joseph is still dying, still trapped somewhere...

Knacktor tries to forget, if only for his own sanity... but guilt makes that impossible. He and Joseph were close. They had been good friends. Joseph opened up to him at times, and he did the same. He caught glimpses of the man behind that smiling mask, but never enough to see someone who could drive a person to murder.

Knacktor knows he'll never know the truth. He can't dig into it. He can't afford to, not when the studio threatened legal action against those who wanted answers, who wanted to talk about it.

He can never be really sure if he ever really knew "James" at all.

Trauma and guilt born from loyalty to a friend was made it impossible for Knacktor to forget. He visited Mary after the incident. She was a sweet woman. It was awful to see the way Joseph's death destroyed her. It pained him when he heard of her passing not long after.

At the same time, it was almost a mercy. Mary no longer had to live with the nightmares like Knacktor and the others did...

Knacktor couldn't keep acting after that. He refused to work with LambsWork Productions again or even return to the old studio... but it wasn't enough. Going into any studio caused him to suffer from panic attacks, even if it wasn't the one where the incident took place. All it took was some lights and a camera and he was reliving it again, watching a friend fall... his blood and viscera spraying all over him...

He could never forget that feeling no matter how many times he scrubbed at his skin.

It was impossible for Knacktor to continue his acting career. He retired quietly. The hush money from the studio allowed him some breathing room while he changed jobs. He couldn't work with children, not after that. He couldn't work anything that reminded him of the SunnyTime Crew Show. He got a nice, quiet desk job where he still works to this day, readying for his retirement.

While Knacktor doesn't hide that he was an actor in the past, he never breathed a word about why he quit. He'll change the topic or simply say he got tired of it, hiding his trauma behind a smile.

Some things are best left buried in the past, no matter how much the guilt haunts him.

Cloudy-Belle Sue

Of all the cast members, Suetor had the most experience working in young children's programming. She bounced around from local show to local show until landing on the SunnyTime Crew Show. It was the first time she was on a show broadcast nationwide. It was an incredible experience, one that she still treasures despite how it ended.

Suetor befriended Joseph easily, along with Mary. The two were just so sweet, and she was really rooting for them to make it. It broke her heart with the way their love story ended. They were invited to her wedding, which was set to take place only a month or so later...

Only a few of her coworkers came to Suetor's wedding, one of them Knackator. Jean rescinded his RSVP after the incident and ghosted all of them.

The empty chairs at the reception were painful for her to look at.

Despite the incident, Suetor continued to work in children's entertainment. Because she had been getting in makeup at the time, she didn't get a front row seat like Knacktor had. She didn't suffer the same level of trauma. The screaming of the children reached her dressing room, but it sounded odd to her at the time. She was distant enough not to notice the panic and fear in their voices until she heard the sound of gunshots.

Suetor left her dressing room only after it was deemed safe enough to do so after the police arrived. She didn't see any bodies, just the blood stains on the floor. Knacktor was off getting cleaned up. She took it upon herself to try and help calm the crying children who had been traumatized by the incident.

Of the three costars, Suetor was spared the worst of the incident. Knacktor was right next to Joseph when it happened. Rory had been backstage, but still had a clear view of Joseph's murder and the way Mary ran to the body, screaming...

Suetor did visit Mary in the hospital more than once. She tried to support Mary, but her words could never reach. They had become friends even before Joseph came back into Mary's life. She had hoped she could do something for her grieving friend... but she didn't know what she could offer.

There was nothing she could do for Mary, just like nothing she could do for Joseph. The studio wouldn't allow them to pay for a funeral for either of them. The cast couldn't even have a memorial. They were all scattered to the winds, left adrift and threatened into silence.

Suetor still has the vase Mary gave her for her birthday. Sometimes, she puts flowers in it that she thinks Mary or Joseph would have liked.

What happened to those two was a tragedy, one that should never have happened.

Suetor never got a clear picture about what happened during the incident. Jean refused to say anything and Knacktor was too traumatized to talk about it. Anyone else was too scared of legal threats to tell her the whole story.

All Suetor could do was move on. She continued to work in children's entertainment, sometimes in front of the camera, sometimes behind it. She tried to do right for the children, both in honor of her lost friends and so that no other child would have to suffer such a traumatic scene again.

Suetor had children of her own. They're all grown up and moved out of the house by the present day. By all respects she's had a nice life. The incident of '84 at times feels more like a nightmare than anything else, but she can keep it out of her mind for the most part. She is able to remember "James" and Mary fondly as she knew them and not so much for how they died.

Of everyone, Suetor suffered the least from the incident, but it still haunts her.

Everyone who worked on the SunnyTime Crew Show are haunted by the ghost of the incident of '84, even if they're not free to talk about it publicly.

Joseph tried so hard to do right by the children. Suetor saw that every day with how gentle he was with them, how wholeheartedly he embraced the role of Sunny Day Jack. She might have been the more experienced one of the two in this regard, but he had this natural charm with children. He was the most beloved cast member not by luck, but because he shone more brightly than any of them.

What happened to him wasn't right. Suetor heard only a few solid details, something about a lunatic with a grudge... but why would anyone hate such a sweet, sincere guy like James to the point of murder? It never made sense to her. A part of her was never satisfied never getting answers, but she had to accept it... if only because digging put her and everything she cared for at risk.

Sometimes over the years Suetor couldn't help digging, just a little. Not enough to risk NDAs. Not enough to risk her family. Sometimes she runs into people who were there, who knew Joseph, who were in the audience... sometimes they say things.

The children especially had a lot to say even years later... but children can be the most unreliable of narrators, and accounts can differ wildly, especially as the years distort the truth.

A bad person said Sunny Day Jack was actually a bad man. Then that bad person killed him. The things the bad person said to Joseph... Suetor could never be sure what exactly they were. Time also has a way of blurring the truth until things start sounding more like an urban legend.

It's an unsolved mystery, one Suetor can only accept will never be solved... at least not until a young woman who reminds her of the friend she made 40 years ago comes to her door to ask questions about a show that was lost...

I think I'll leave things on that note. As you might tell, the cast of the SunnyTime Crew Show is still very much a work in progress. Although they're not fully fleshed out yet, talking about them like this helps me develop them more. I think I've got a better idea of who I want them to be in Sunshine in Hell thanks to this post. I have a feeling I'll ramble on about them more again in the future to develop them further. I hope you enjoyed this exercise in character building!

[ai-the-broccoli]

in which Light and Misa discuss Celebrity RPF

(based on this thought)

Misa: *holding her laptop* Hey, Light. Light: What? Misa: *cheerfully* So do you think RPF is okay, or should we start killing people for writing it? Light: ... What are you talking about? Misa: RPF! Real Person Fiction. It's like fanfiction of real people. Light: Oh. Well, that isn't a criminal activity. We don't need to kill people over fanfiction right now. It's still too early for that sort of thing. Misa: Oh, okay! *glances back to her laptop* --Wait! Why are there 5 shipping fics about YOU?! Light: Me? Oh, yes. People do seem to like to write wildly implausible fanfiction of all sorts about Kira. There are thousands of them online, you know. (Last time I checked, every single one that I could find was unbelievably horrible and out of character, and one of them even depicted me committing the illegal act of cannibalism, which is a crime and masterfully confirmed to me once again that the world is rotting and only I can save it. But now that I've confirmed the state of things for the time being, raising my blood pressure repeatedly for no purpose will not aid me in becoming the god of the new world, so I set a password to restrict my own access to the three fanfiction websites.) Misa: No! I mean, yes, duh, but that's old news. Of course I know thousands of Kira ship fics on every corner of the Internet. But these five are not fics about "Kira". They're tagged with "Light Yagami"! Light: ...What? Misa: Yeah. And-- Light: *frowning* Misa, hang on. Why are there 'RPF' fics about Light Yagami? Misa: That's what I was asking! And also-- Hey! I'm not shipped with you in any of them!! Why?! GRRRR this isn't fair! Light: Wait. You haven't told anyone about my relationship with you, have you? Misa: Of course not! Misa wouldn't forget about her promise to you! Light: Then it's just natural they wouldn't write about us. Misa: But I'm literally in this fic?! Yet you're dating-- wait-- EW! Him?! ALL him?! Light: ...Who? *finally turning around to look at Misa's screen* A-

Looking for the Golden Light: A Hideki Ryuga x Light Yagami fanfiction, by xoxo3gossipgirl we never go out of style: A Light Yagami x Hideki Ryuga fanfiction (ft. Misa-Misa), by xoxo3gossipgirl And I'll Write Your Name: A Light Yagami x Hideki Ryuga fanfiction (ft. Misa-Misa), by xoxo3gossipgirl Grave Repercussions: A Yagami Light x Ryuga Hideki fanfiction, by xanaxLOVE28 lightning strikes every time she moves: A F!Hideki Ryuga x F!Light Yagami fanfiction, by xoxo3gossipgirl

Light: *inhales sharply, horrified* HIDEKI RYUGA?! [Light Yagami takes -100 damage] Misa: Yeah! God, my new manager never stops trying to pair me with him. It's getting on my nerves! Light: ...What? Misa: I don't even understand why. I mean, everyone in the industry knows Ryuga swings that way! And I told her I got a boyfriend. Light: ....... Oh. Oh, yeah, uh, right. Yeah, of course. I knew those are all about that Hideki Ryuga. The popular actor. Right? Misa: Huh? Yeah. Of course? What other........ wait................OH. Ryuzaki -- L -- also used it as an alias one time, didn't he? Light: Exactly, Misa. Obviously, these fics had nothing to do with him, but I thought we should make sure for safety's sake. Just as I thought, all this is indeed about the actor. Misa: Huh... Well, yeah. *turns back to the screen* This is definitely about the actor... and this one too.... and-- Wait a second! *gasps* Why does this fic say that I'm a- a- Light: A what? Misa: Light! *inhales sharply, horrified* What is "l-l-lesbian Misa-Misa" supposed to mean here?! [Misa Amane takes -100 damage] Light: ...Huh. Hm. Misa: W-wait... *stares at the description* Misa is here in this fic because she's in a fake PR relationship with Hideki Ryuga here... and apparently we're doing it so we can both... *squints, incredulous* "pretend to be straight"... together??? Light: Oh? That's... ridiculous. Misa: RIGHT??? I mean, who would ever DO such a thing??? That's stupid. Light: ...............Misa, you said earlier that your new manager keeps trying to pair you up with Hideki Ryuga -- that actor Hideki Ryuga. And you say Ryuga -- I mean, the actor, the real Ryuga Hideki, not L -- he's known in your industry for being gay? Misa: Yeah- ...Wait. *gasps, horrified* My manager really thinks I'm a l-les... bian?! Because--I never told her who my boyfriend is?! What! *screaming* She can't be SERIOUS! [Misa Amane takes -100 more damage]

[weirdmageddon]

yesterday i wrote a scene where jade wasnt a plot device and was left the hell alone in A6A5 because this being dave and jade’s last proper conversation in years made me sad and i wanted to see them reunite properly. i mixed a bit of narration in too even though it was rare around this point in the comic but its just to paint a better picture. also i wouldnt mind feedback on character voice (it’s important to me that the dialogue sounds believable)

[3 years are over, everyone is in the new session. The prospit ship is on LOMAX, as is everyone who arrived on the meteor, safely warped by Jade onto LOMAX as well. Jade has banished B2 Jack to the Furthest Ring already. She hasn't seen her friends in 3 years, not to mention she never met the trolls in person yet.]

[Jade teleports to LOMAX where John was talking with the meteor crew. Her eyes widen when she sees the trolls, giving everyone a greeting. Jade waves to the trolls.]

You’ll have time to catch up with them later. First you want to reconvene with Rose and Dave.

> ==>

Dave... Oh my god! DAVE!!! That’s right! The last time you saw him, he died in your arms after Jack redirected the bullets from your gun into his body!

JADE: dave!!!! DAVE: hey DAVE: this has been three years coming hasnt it DAVE: cmere

> ==>

[Dave hugs Jade with a slight grin on face. He notices her… sniffing him?? but doesn’t even bother to question it.]

JADE: it is so nice to hold your body when its not a corpse :) DAVE: ok DAVE: weird thing to say DAVE: actually who am i kidding who gives a shit DAVE: i almost forgot how much i missed the enigmatic riddlefuckery that is your phrasing DAVE: fortunately i have context for this so i know what youre saying DAVE: humor me for a sec and imagine that i didnt DAVE: but first DAVE: are those dog ears JADE: yes! i am part dog now JADE: because i prototyped my dreamself with becsprite JADE: jadesprite became part of me! and so did her doggy traits from bec DAVE: got it DAVE: oh yeah john mentioned that on the back of his dumb poster inside that bucket that appeared out of thin air DAVE: right before we had to haul ass out of there before jack caught up to us DAVE: karkat had a complete fucking meltdown over that btw i wish you couldve seen it DAVE: damn it feels like so long ago now JADE: heheheh i remember JADE: john realized it at the last second but it was too late! DAVE: of course it was johns idea only he could do something that gooberish DAVE: you know what this means though JADE: yup!! woof woof DAVE: it means youve done it harley DAVE: youve finally done it god damn it DAVE: the evolution of humankind is finally upon us DAVE: the scientists said it would never happen in our lifetime DAVE: but look what we have here DAVE: before me stands mans first legitimate furry subspecies DAVE: homo canis DAVE: as the name implies theyre gay as fuck btw DAVE: its too bad all those scientists are dead and cant witness this phylogenetic breakthrough DAVE: rip to the science community yall wouldve lost your collective shit DAVE: hey jade lets pour one out for the science community for being real ones

> ==>

You are still nestled into Dave’s shoulder. He’s taken a sort of protective position over you. Your perceptive barkbeast ears can hear his formerly bullet-riddled heart beating a mile a minute with the regularity of quartz beneath his time-branded pajamas, all the while he continues to ramble to you about certifiably dumb shit. You can tell Dave is psyched to see you again, even if he expresses it in his OWN bizarre way, which means extended metaphors and topical tangents. What a hypocrite, calling YOUR phrasing perplexing! You sure missed this guy.

You realize you started tuning him out while thinking about all this.

DAVE: jade JADE: umm homo is the species name JADE: so wouldnt that mean were all gay? :p DAVE: yeah that sounds about right DAVE: anyway enough of this bullshit

> ==>

[Dave motions to retract his arms since he doesn’t want it to get too weird, but Jade squeezes tighter. Dave immediately yields to the movement]

DAVE: jesus wow ok DAVE: really happy to see you too DAVE: like if you had a tail it would be wagging so forcefully youd be knocking over all the fucking furnishings in the room DAVE: just slapping it so hard on the owners thigh that it feels like theyre being flogged DAVE: talk about getting bitch slapped JADE: :D DAVE: so howve you been JADE: really really excited to see you guys all again!!! JADE: and to meet the trolls! DAVE: yeah theyre pretty weird DAVE: and im still not used to it DAVE: but it gets more manageable the longer youre around them DAVE: by the way JADE: ?

> ==>

DAVE: sorry you had to go through that JADE: through what? DAVE: seeing me die and stuff again DAVE: except that time right in front of you JADE: .... DAVE: when we were gathering up all those frogs i knew jack was going to appear DAVE: i was waiting and waiting to play it out DAVE: mentally rehearsing my fucking torso getting turned into swiss cheese and knowing you would have to watch on top of it DAVE: i had to make sure it happened to protect the integrity of the alpha timeline DAVE: but if you knew this was going to happen you wouldve tried to prevent it and created a doomed one DAVE: and so i didnt say anything DAVE: i couldnt DAVE: so DAVE: sorry for putting you through that JADE: oh..... JADE: dave D: JADE: well im here JADE: if you ever want to talk about it DAVE: its cool DAVE: you just deserve to know what happened there DAVE: but thanks DAVE: so am i JADE: yeah i know JADE: i guess i should be glad you did that then... JADE: even though i was freaking out when it happened ._. JADE: otherwise you wouldnt be here will us now dressed in your red god tier time pajamas DAVE: yeah these magical rags really are comfortable arent they DAVE: and they stay like perma clean JADE: they are! i would wear mine over and over for days on end JADE: id take a nice shower and put it right back on JADE: and you know how much i love cycling my outfits through my wardrobifier JADE: by the way dave your cape is sooo cool! :o DAVE: thanks DAVE: yeah i love it its hella soft DAVE: its like ive got a portable snuggle blanket with me in case i ever need to drop to the floor like a tired sack of shit and get my snooze on DAVE: ive got a permanent personal reservation at club bed featuring dj pillow and mc blanky JADE: heheheh JADE: can i touch your cape? DAVE: of course go nuts JADE: yaaaay!!

[rpmemes-galore]

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ... sentence starters

“Oh! A knife?”

“Walk or die.“

“You're killing her!”

“All part of the plan, yes?“

“Such beauty. Yet deadly.“

“Admit it. You still love me.”

“You are aware of the ritual?“

“You bastard, how could you?“

“Wait! I am with child... yours.“

“I heard where you're headed.“

“How can you say I used you?“

“All die. Even you. Soon, I hear.“

“The lies I told you were not lies.”

“That's very good, may I use that?“

“As do I. Always have, always will.”

Oh no, no, I've seen a thing or two.”

“You're either with us or against us!“

“I can save you. You need only ask.“

“I've actually never been that drunk.“

“He's religious, I believe it's required.“

“Who's to say I won't live forever, eh?“

And how will I get free of these bonds?“

“You lied to me by telling me the truth?“

“Mistook it for a brothel. Honest mistake.“

“I'm not with you, neither am I against you!“

“You will go. You will return. Or I will kill her.“

“I was wrong. Not every soul can be saved.“

“Maybe you don't believe in the supernatural?”

“I may have had... briefly, mind you... stirrings.”

“Face is familiar. Have I... threatened you before?“

“I cannot save you both. One of you must sacrifice.“

“You've stolen me. And I'm here to take meself back.“

“If not for me, you would never have been captured...”

“I think you might be better off if you just... stay out of it.”

“I'm starting to think you don't know where you're going.“

“It's not the destination so much as the journey, they say.“

“Have I mentioned, sir, what a lovely daughter you have?“

“Mutiny served me well. It gained me an audience with you.“

“Your father saved you. Perhaps his soul is now redeemed.“

“Does this face looks like it's been to the Fountain of Youth?“

“Did everyone see that? Because I will not be doing it, again.”

“You're the one who insisted on bringing the bloody mermaid!“

“If I don't kill a man every now and then, they forget who I am.“

“How is it we can never meet without you pointing something at me?“

“Captain, I wish to report a mutiny. I can name fingers and point names.“

“Seeing as how you're still alive, I say it's all been very successful thus far.“

“You demonstrated a lot of technique for someone I supposedly corrupted.“

“I thought I should give you fair warning, we're taking the ship. Nothing personal.“

“No, no, no, no, not quite all the way to feelings. More like... All right feelings, damn you.“

“You broke free of your bonds thirty minutes ago, waiting for the precise moment to pounce.“

“You know the feeling you get when standing in a high place, the sudden urge to jump... I don’t have it.”

“My God, you will not take her. If you have taken her, give her back. Give her back...please...”

“I be placed in a bewilderment. There I were, resting. And upon a sudden, I hear an ungodly row on deck.“

“Sailors abandoning their posts, without orders, without leave. Men before the mast, taking the ship for themselves.“

“Better to not know which moment may be your last. Every morsel of your entire being alive to the infinite mystery of it all.“

We shall need a crossbow, an hourglass, three goats, one of us must learn to play the trumpet, whilst the other one goes like this.”

Such beauty. Surely you are one of God's own creations and not a descendant of those dark creatures who found no refuge on the Ark.“