#does her backstory make sense?

[demaparbat-hp]

“Zuko?” Ming searched for the Prince in his silence. He was staring intently out of the window, mouth blown wide open, eyes distant and awed and sincere. Oh. His whisper was a fragile, breathless thing.

“We're here.”

Ming’s doubts and concerns are hers alone, but that doesn't mean the rest of the Crew doesn't share them. This sudden mission, Zuko's change in attitude, his obsession with the Water Tribes...

Ming tries to discover the root of it all in For the Spirits Chapter VIII: Make You Stay, but will Zuko let her in?

[crafteeauthor]

Ik the general consensus with the cat king and Esther is that they had the World's Most Toxic Hookup Forever Ago™️ but I'm enamored by the idea of it being a way more messy and emotional entanglement honestly

[ropebunnykant]

i fear the ending of agatha all along is once again making people confuse “i didn’t like the ending/the ending made me sad” with “that was bad writing”

[whoatemyshoe]

[geospiral]

“I want to be someone’s stepping stone; I want the memory of me to haunt that person so that I may live through them and be beside them without having to stay. I know that's selfish and cruel, but if the path has already been laid out for me and I have no choice but to die, then I want to at least be able to choose who I die for. And to be honest, I will probably regret this decision when I’m lying there and spitting up my own blood, but at least it will be mine… and I think I can rest easy knowing that.”

Moran, a top student when it comes to all things excluding singing, can best be described as being Anakt Garden’s very own “Thinker.” Often found sitting on the very left edge of the garden’s box, she is willing to lend an ear to those in need.

Alien Stage OC Base made by @shakingparadigm

_____________________________________________________________

Anakt Garden:

Moran is not a person who will intentionally seek other people out, but she does enjoy when others come to her, usually in the form of seeking guidance. This guidance can range from simply helping a fellow student with their class work to teaching others some of what she knows about the Segyein’s entertainment industry, a topic that she is familiar with due to her upbringing. 

She likes talking about philosophy, giving general worldly advice, and being a mediator to her fellow classmates, trying her best to be an impartial judge.

Moran also likes “reading” other people’s fortunes as a kind of game. It’s not anything serious; you ask her a specific topic about the future, such as “Am I going to pass the test?” and then give her as much information as you can about your chosen topic in order for her to make an educated guess. If she guesses correctly, you have to give her something, and if she doesn't, then she’ll give something to you. The items are nothing big, just small treasures like a pretty stone from the stream or an Anakt Garden lollipop. Moran also keeps a small collection of things she finds or is given in case others would just like to do general bartering with her; however, she doesn’t hold any real attachment to the things she collects and will usually trade her items away in exchange for short-lived treats such as candy, drinks, or a bubble wand.

Moran gets along fine with the other students, and although she can be pretty blunt at times, to the point of unintentionally seeming rude, she does her best to stay on everyone’s good side. She was raised with many others under her Guardian, so she has always been used to living alongside her fellow humans; however, the experiences were not great, causing her to have trouble telling when others genuinely like her or wish to be her friend. It doesn’t help that it only seems that her classmates come to her when they need something.

______________________________________________________________

Background:

Moran’s Guardian, Rheya, is a well-known and respected theater director with a theatrical troupe composed of the many humans under her, raising them from a young age to be her personal actors. By having her plays consist of an entirely human cast, Rheya is able to push the limits of her plays' theatrics in ways that she simply could not when working with her fellow Segyeins. Her plays are touted for their stories and visual spectacles; however, they can tend to be extremely dangerous for the humans involved, with many sustaining real injuries throughout their performances.

Despite the humans of the troupe referring to Rheya as their "mother,” they do not view one another as family but rather as competition when it comes to gaining their Guardians' affection. Bullying amongst the group is commonplace; if one person is punished, everyone is, which leads to that one individual being viciously humiliated and outcast by their peers and being sent down levels in the troupe’s personal social hierarchy.

(Note: The troupe’s hierarchy is loosely inspired by that of the video game Rule of Rose; I haven’t played it, and it's basically impossible to do so without pirating, but I got the idea from the video analysis of the game by RagnarRox.)

Rheya did not want to stop her storytelling at just theater production; however, she wanted to extend her reach further and saw Alien Stage as a chance to do just that, devising a long-term plan to craft what will hopefully be one of her best stories. She wants the story to go like this: she will choose two of her humans, one to send to Anakt Garden and the other to stay with her, molding him into the next big celebrity pet. The one sent to the garden, Moran, would be used as fodder in order to boost the fame of the other human pet, Adam, under the guise that the reason she trained for and performed in Alien Stage was to gain the other’s attention, subsequently dying in the competition. Upon finding this out, Adam would then go on to perform in the next Alien Stage season after her to avenge the women who loved him, winning in the process.

Rheya doesn’t have any faith that Moran can survive her Alien Stage season, and neither does Moran herself, but while Moran is in the garden, she hopes to find someone who she can truly die for in the competition, someone she actually cares for, unlike Adam, whom she barely knows and has never loved. If Moran must die, she wants it to be meaningful to her and the one she adores. She wants to make it her own choice.

[chiquilines]

Miryumi uni au!! Its been ages since ive drawn them and uni aus are so dear to my heart

[wynandcore]

So everyone that I love is stuck

because this, that, the other,

and the state fucked up.

[pensymbols]

if u believe that jason grace is lame gtfo this is NOT safe space for you

[eyeofthechasm]

points a mic at you. odile realizing renzo is hiding something from her

Lorenzo’s always been one to hold secrets. (Odile looping AU belongs to @tealgoat ) (& spoilers for like. Act 3 technically? Yeah.)

You’ve known that the entirety of your time in this party. He’s…selective, let’s say, on what information he shares with you all. He hasn’t really shared much about his earlier years.

Like Siffrin, in a way.

Except Siffrin, as you learned with your newfound abilities, doesn’t remember a lot of his life. Lorenzo…seems to keep it barred intentionally. All of his answers to the questions you’ve tried to ask are too vague for anything to be gathered from them.

You remember yourself asking, “Where did your last name come from?” a while ago; far before any of this...looping business.

You watched him think. Think long and hard. Far too hard for something as simple as his shattering last name.

Eventually, he settled on, “My mother. Where else?” and essentially refused to say anything else.

It’s…frustrating. You can’t fully trust him when he’s so uncooperative. You had the same situation with Siffrin, though he ended up proving he could be trusted eventually.

Lorenzo hasn't.

You see movement from the corner of your eye, interrupting your thoughts. Looking up, you see Lorenzo, the one and only, turning over in his sleeping bag.

Right. You nearly forgot you're still in the clocktower. How late is it now? Everyone’s still sleeping, so it can't be...

Everyone's still sleeping.

...

You have an idea. A terrible idea, you feel, but an idea that may ease your suspicions.

You climb out of bed as caefully as possible and creep across the cold floor, down the stairs. They creak, though there's a small chance anyone will hear you. If they do, there won't be any consequences anyway.

You feel sick for thinking like that. But it is true.

Reaching the bottom, you go straight for where you all ate. Lorenzo always leaves his bag here. You see it every loop.

You grab the bag, but freeze there. Going through other peoples belongings was never something you saw yourself doing. Were you really doing the right thing? Even if you suspected him of something, it's a low point to stoop to...

You shake your head and yank the frayed handle up. It doesn't matter. It's for a good reason. You're sure everyone else would understand.

Inside the bag is a pleathora of items. Personal, mostly. A sharpener for his knives, various hair ties scattered by the bottom, hygene products...

A journal. Perfect.

You grab it. Its cover is mostly a dark grey, with silvery raised designs: dots connected with lines, comletely nonsensical to you. It's held together with a worn, leather buckle. The text on the front is illegible. Trying to make sense of it hurts your head.

Carefully, you undo the buckle and open the book.

...

...

Oh.

The entire thing is written in the same manner as the front. You can't make heads or tails of any of it. It all hurts your head in the same way the title did. You only recognize faint bits of Vaugardian placed between the pages. Most of the legible text is assortments of letters, like those learning sheets little kids get in school.

One part sticks out to you, though. It's incredibly messy, almost chicken scratch, but you can read it well enough.

"My name is:Lorenzo Silvana Halloran

My dad's name is: Peadar Halloran

I am 10."

Your breath catches. That's his name. And his...father's? He said he didn't have a father. Only a mother.

You hear the floor creak and slam the book shut, returning it to its original place. Someone must be awake. No more snooping.

This only confirmed your suspicions, though. He's hiding something. He's hiding something, and you're more determined than ever to figure out what it is.

You have all the time in the world, now, after all.

[hirokiyuu]

look at my alternate yuu concept boy

[cr0wqui11]

I’ve come to the conclusion that the presentation trio are infecting my dreams and it’s only a matter of time before they infect my nightmares. (I have not had a nightmare in years)

[whom-to-kill-whom-to-let-live]

Some Legato thoughts:

He hates humanity, that’s pretty obvious, he wants all humans to die.

But there is this really fascinating disconnect that happens with him sometimes, where you can kind of sort of see the person he could have been peak through, but just barely.

The two most obvious examples of this I can think of is when he shares one of his hot dogs with a child that seemingly didn’t have a reliable access to food and when he frees those enslaved girls. Two things that he really did not have to go out of his way to do, and by all means shouldn’t care for at all considering his hatred for humanity.

But he still did. 

And by themselves those seem like very good actions, right?

But then you remember that the hotdog had been kept in a bag with a severed head/tongue, and he wanted to use the kid to spook Vash (but then again he didn’t have to give her food to do that, he could have so easily used his powers to control her, we have seen him do it to entire groups of people with ease). 

He violently kills over a dozen people with his powers in front of those slave girls, not because he intended to free them but because the slavers picked a fight with him first (but he spares the girls, none of them are physically harmed at all despite the carnage, and he offers them the closest thing he has to reassurances before he leaves, when he could have just ignored them).

It’s like he almost gets there, but not quite.

[tj-crochets]

Hey y’all! My sister made her person* a fabric sensory toy/fidget toy thing that was pretty much a mini quilt made of minky but instead of batting it had magnets in each little “pouch” formed by the topstitching, and it got me thinking.  I hadn’t given much thought to making like sensory and/or fidget toys, and I’d never considered magnets before. Is that something y’all would be interested in? I don’t know much about either sensory or fidget toys, or how they are different or similar, but I would love to be able to make things that help people *I have no idea what their relationship name is? Idk if she’s her girlfriend or her fiancée or her wife or SO or what, but just in case she ever sees this post I don’t want to get it wrong, so if my sister sees this: sorry, I did my best lol

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'm reading more and more poly romances, and I typically am very big on poly books needing to like... give fair amounts of time and complexity to each dynamic in order to work for me? Every character needs to serve something other than another dynamic. Like in Sierra Simone's New Camelot, Embry and Ash have this distinct "you have to beat me to love me" thing, whereas Ash and Greer have the idyllic dom/sub dynamic, and Embry and Greer at first fall in love because they're both in love with Ash, but slowly develop a more individual dynamic that Ash recognizes needs to be nurtured away from him for a while.... and in Sara Cate's Give Me More, Hunter and Drake have the childhood friends who are in love but don't know it thing, and Hunter and Isabel have a lived in deeply romantic relationship, and Drake and Isabel have this whole forbidden desire guilt deal... It all matters.

And while I don't think every person Nora loves and plays with in the Original Sinners series is, thus far, someone she is IN LOVE with (like, I don't think she ever truly fell for Zachary for even a minute, for example) her dynamics with them matter in terms of how they affect her character and theirs. They don't just serve another relationship.

EXCEPT. For Wesley. Who, and I don't know if this was intentional as Tiffany Reisz was writing these books, I'll be real--only exists to convince me further that Nora and Soren are low down dirty dogs who just can't quit each other, and the two of them breaking out a knife on each other in bed is somehow! Much more romantic! Than Wesley's attempts to loooove her

[sureuncertainty]

not to be a swiftie on main (jk i don't care) but listening to tortured poets department has gotten me thinking about Kat's story in Sterling Performance and how she really is the way she is because of the trauma of growing up famous and being essentially puppeted by her parents parading her around and making sure she lived up to their standards and always reflected well on them, never being able to make her own decisions, constantly having to play a part

and the way that Iris completely disdains and derides her because she grew up rich and privileged, and thus couldn't POSSIBLY be a victim of any form of abuse or anything. in much the same way that people on this website talk about how Taylor Swift can't possibly be really suffering bc of her privileges lmao

(i think that's part of why Kat loves Taylor Swift actually)

but yeah the trauma of fame is def something I wanna explore in the sterling performance!

[homenecromancer]

there are a bunch of characters in Dune who have interesting parts to play in Paul’s story, but i enjoy turning that around and asking: how is Paul fucking up the story a given character was already living?

like specifically right now i’m thinking about how Chani, at the moment Paul enters her life, is poised to have an interesting story of her own — she’s a young woman, fighting for the freedom of her people, who is the daughter of a very important figure who has just been murdered by the people most recently responsible for oppressing the Fremen; lesser things have kicked off the plot of many a science fiction novel — aaaaand then some offworlder shows up, slots himself in to a preexisting prophecy, and disrupts Chani’s entire social world

Paul reflects on it himself a little bit, and seems depressed by the prospect that having people accept him as the walking fulfillment of a prophecy means they quit treating him like a person… but i enjoy pushing that idea a little further and wondering where exactly other characters were set to go in their lives before Paul steamrollered over them