#faction dynamics

[grayrazor]

It's an interesting narrative choice how the United Earth Federation are the most "good guy"-coded faction in Supreme Commander--their colors are blue and white and they're the guys most prominently featured in the box art and intro cinematic--but their ending is the most evil.

The other two factions are just like "destroy the stargate network so everybody leaves us alone" and "end the war with a peace treaty (definitely no mind control promise 🤞)" while the UEF's win condition is blowing up everybody else's planets with a really big gun.

[amipenthe]

It’s such a small thing but one narrative detail I love about d gray man is that (assuming cross and lavi aren’t the same person lol) post-Neah’s death Lavi was sent to take care of pasta and Cross was sent to take care of Mana. It’s such a calculated and interesting decision on Neah’s part. It also makes me wonder how well lavi and cross even knew each other.

We’ve been headcanoning for years the third side lads were all close, but that seems to be far from the case. Pasta was a rando, Lavi and Cross don’t seem to know each other well (Cross has only ever spoken about Mana and Neah and the host. He didn’t know who the host was and never mentions or thinks of Lavi period point blank. Their relationship seems to be, “the former bookman jr who was protecting the host is gone and now I got to find the host myself.”) Heck, currently it doesn’t seem like Lavi knows that terribly much about Mana which is so interesting since Mana is the reason the third side exists in the first place. It’s different than what we expected, but an interesting and more realistic narrative choice that the third side was likely composed of strangers with different self-interests running towards Neah’s goal.

Also, it makes the relationship dynamics of the third side way more interesting and complicated than the whole childhood friends forced into war bit.

Especially because that means everybody knows different things about what happened 35 years ago. No one, not even Nea, knows the full picture.

[lavellane]

can you fucking imagine if instead of the mourn watch or lords of fortune factions we'd instead had an inquisition and agents of fen'harel faction . personally i have not stopped thinking about it once since finishing veilguard but maybe thats just me

[barbieaiden]

sorry i'm obsessed with rook!

[candidateofloyalty]

Every now and then I'll go "I can't believe Counter/weight is only the second season, it's so good" when in reality a lot of the things I like about it are clearly the result of it being the second season.

[akkivee]

it’s still so crazy to me that rosho mentally booted sasara out and said his nmcd is actually ichiro kuukou samatoki and juto LOL

[transingthoseformers]

Like. This.

I reread this and think that Soundwave, who has become Attached™️ to Miko, would be prepared to beat Megatron's aft if need be. And Megs knows this.

[twopoppies]

Hiiii Gina, when I started reading fics your tumblr helped me a lot to find good fics

And as you are someone who has always read fics, I would like to ask you if there have always been many authors who are anti or hate Harry/Louis writing Larry fic?

I personally feel uncomfortable reading a work by authors who attack H daily on their social media

I feel like all the amazing things in this fandom are ending, including the fics, which is sad (feel comfortable not responding if you don't want to

I would imagine there were antis back in the old days who were writing fic. But I only really started to notice people doing it after the hiatus.

When the band was together, basically you were an anti, a larrie, or a neutral. Everyone publicly liked all the boys. You could have a fave, but not at the expense of loving all of them. When Zayn left you then had the OT4/OT5 split. Now, it’s just a free for all. I say all of that to point out why it’s so much easier these days to know an author’s “politics”, so to speak.

One of the big complaints back in the day was ex-larries pretending to still be larries so they didn’t lose their following (the larrie fandom was much bigger, much more active, and had almost all the content creators then). These days, apart from larries, you’ve got het harries (or GF harries as they call themselves now), antis, and solos writing (and reading) Larry fic but not publicly expressing their “status” because Larry fics get read exponentially more than other pairings and they want to keep their stats. To be fair, some of them probably keep writing Larry because it’s just a pairing they enjoy writing, but I do find it bizarre that you could actively dislike someone and still write a romance story about them.

A lot of people only want to support larrie authors. The best place I know of to look is @thelarriefics, although I don’t know if they’re still updating. At the time, the mod was very much on top of who was a larrie and who wasn’t. But, again, not sure if they’re still updating because that’s a huge job to go back and remove authors who’ve changed their beliefs.

That’s a very long answer to what should be a simple question. But, as with everything, this fandom takes simple things and complicates them. 😂 I hope it helps, nonetheless.

[clownfire]

Riptide’s themes of found family mean so much to me. 

Pirate crews are literally found families IN THE TEXT.  The way Roofus talks about the Black Rose crew choosing to collectively raise Chip and Lizzie. Jay’s arc can be read as being about the disconnection with one’s birth family experienced by many queer ppl. ALMOST EVERY CONVERSATION WITH DREY. Ollie is basically the Albatrio’s son.

I AM A SUCKER FOR FOUND FAMILY TROPE, ESPECIALLY ONES THAT DON’T JUST REPLICATE NORMATIVE FAMILY STRUCTURES!11!!1!!!!...!

ishouldmakeapowerpointpresentation...

[sforzesco]

Hi I hope you are well! I have been thinking about Pompey and Crassus a lot (particularly your wonderful art) and was wondering if you think there was ever a moment, after Caesar came on the scene and married Julia to Pompey, where Crassus felt like his grip on either of the other two was slipping? I feel like I'd be worried if my ambitious protege and my rival were starting to get cosy. Thank you!

ngl this specific aspect of their interlocking dynamic fascinates me to the point where I actually have three or four separate stories (not including Trikaranos) exploring this exact situation, because historically the answer seems to be yeah, no question about it (although the severity of the looming break depends on the scholar and who their main guy of focus is) but emotionally it’s like. ohhhhh. the potential to get some real bite and bitterness and messy fuckery in there is off the charts.

[imaginarianisms]

Aemond bolted awake in a cold sweat, a gasp escaping him as he breathed heavily, only to feel the sharp pain in his eye causing him to cry out in pain, tears stinging his remaining eye that threaten to fall but he wipes them away with a harsh swipe of his hand. The boy took in his surroundings and it was then that he remembered what happened and where he was. He was in his own cabin on his father's ship heading back to King's Landing where his family would be staying while the Blacks had Dragonstone. His head tilted upward at the sound of a deep rumbling nearby, only to look out the cabin window to see Vhagar keep an eye on him as she kept her distance away from the ship lest she accidentally knock it over into the Blackwater to sink.

He'd cried himself to sleep last night, knowing that he would never be safe again. Lord Vaemond and Lady Naerenna were kind to him and Helaena and Vaenna had been there with him the entire time. And Mother, she... Mother protected me. Aemond's hands clenched his blankets into fists. Luke didn't even get punished! Viserys had made his favoritism clear last night. He didn't even ask me if I was okay... Tears blurred his vision, his throat tightening as he tried his best to fight them back. The dagger, his nephews, the Velaryon cousins, the sea salt in the air, writhing on the floor howling in pain as Vhagar roared with Aemond in their shared agony. Where's Vaenna? Hela? Aegon? It hurts, Mother, help me, I'm in pain, it hurts too much!

The sound of his cabin door opening had him immediately wipe his tears away, his one eye wide in fear, heartbeat racing as he saw who his visitor was. This is... Larys Strong, he's my father's Lord Confessor, Master of Whisperers and Mother's ally... what's he doing here? His heart sank into his chest. Am I in more trouble again? Aemond watched @clubf8ed closely, his fingers twitching nervously, eye downcast.

❝Did Rhaenyra send you? Are you going to hurt me?❞ Aemond asked.

[qserasera]

just musing on why competent / hypercompetent protagonist characters seem so hard to write in fiction and why

(characters i feel like i can classify within this category: most characters in fma, mei changsu from nif, minglan from story of minglan, geralt from the witcher, most of terry pratchett's protagonists)

[narzissenkreuz-ordo]

if i see one more person say that the aventurine & ratio ship is just the haikvh of hsr i think i will go absolutely nuclear w/ the block button

i have no opinion on aventurine x ratio because THEY ARENT EVEN OUT YET. THEY HAVE NOT MET IN CANON YET but god if they get the haikvh treatment im gonna mald. i cannot stand the ship at all which sucks because i LOVE kaveh & al haitham as characters but i literally cannot go into the characters tags because theres nothing there since i have the ship tags blocked.

its so frustrating to see people make expectations on characters backstories and interpersonal relationships before actual canon comes out. ive seen this happen so many times and i lived through the webttore twt fallout. speculation and being excited for a character is great and fine but youre setting yourself up for failure if the character you created in your head doesnt live up to the actual canon character then your initial excitement and joy is just. gone :(

[rivilu]

hm...

[help-me-nah]

might actually delay next fantasy au update by a few days because i really, really want to have some concept art to go with the next chapter

[twcwheeler]

Now idea of Cee actually watching classic version of Dra.cula and having real spark ache at the end.

She totally hasn't lost some she deeply cared about, or fallen for some fearsome types / past affiliations herself.