#fic: why if not for nothing

[clumsypuppy]

who is your favorite AA character? 👁️👁️

ziska… I hope capcom brings her back someday

[patolemus]

It’s very humbling when you’re reading a book —part of a trilogy, very acclaimed— and the only thing you can think of is ‘the fanfic I read the other day was better’

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 162

“So,” Danny drawled from where he was sitting, legs kicking slightly. Really, what a fun reincarnation. A world with heroes and villains where he didn’t have to do shit in and could just vibe with Ellie. 

“So,” Tim responded from where he was typing on his computer, mostly in civilian clothes save for his gauntlets and boots. The Red Robin outfit was haphazardly dropped across the couch and his pole leaning against the end. 

“Technically there’s proper procedures for clones…” Danny motioned to both himself and Ellie from where they sat on the counter, snacking on a plateful of scones. From Alfred, he was certain. 

“Technically, yes… but do we want to actually do that?” 

All three of them smiled, something almost feral in the motion. Of course not. They all had the same memories after all, and Bruce had just returned from the past, from exactly where and when Tim had said he was. Despite no one believing him, hence why they were in his boathouse, and not in the apartment or manor. 

“Think we can pull it off?” Ellie took a sip of tea, mischief swirling in her eyes. 

“Of course we can.” Both Danny and Tim spoke at once, one pulling up a new doc and the other pulling the whiteboard out from under a curtain. 

[wandixx]

I've seen a lot of different takes on Fear Toxin/other fear causing stuff (Yellow Lanterns Ring or something)(later just called Fear Toxin cause I'm lazy) but here is another one.

Danny seems like he isn't affected by Fear Toxin because his biggest fear is that his accident changed him so much he is no longer human, he can no longer truly experience human things.

So when he gets lungful of fear Toxin, he feels normal. He was antsy before, because c'mon, it's a rogue attack but it's not worse. Or so he thought. Because the anxiety lingers. Not enough to register as abnormal just this slight hypervigilance that makes you see things about yourself and your surroundings that you'd never realize otherwise. He'd realize he doesn't blink as often. He'd realize that if he doesn't consciously focus, he sometimes seems to not touch the ground. Forgets to breathe. He can't feel his own pulse at time. He'd realize people will miss him when he's walking down the street as if he was invisible (people just don't care about everyone they pass by). When he'd look straight into his reflection, he'd look slightly to the left. Not enough to actually name anything that was wrong but just stretched enough to fall on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. If he just caught his reflection in the peripheral vision, it'd be vaguely shadowy creature with glowing green eyes and white smoke instead of hair. Overall he'd be just wrong enough to be distinctly not human.

For everyone else, he'd be just a dude. Literally couldn't find more normal dude than this dude. Will pass as absolutely normal human unless someone is specifically looking for ecto-ghost stuff. Even most magic users wouldn't clock him at the glance

Tldr: Fear Toxin makes Danny perceive himself as some sort of eldritch horror but not enough to make him believe he'd actually be affected, while from outside perspective he's Just A Dude™

[nefelibatat]

So it's kinda interesting how Jinx is basically Caitlyn's own extremely malevolent genie. Every desire she has, Jinx fulfills, but with such a cruel twist that it almost defeats the point.

Want something new and exciting in your sheltered life? Well, one might say nearly getting blown up is pretty exciting. Looking for a real job to undertake? Here's a convenient pile of evidence leading you straight to the heart of a criminal empire. Good luck getting out of this mess though. Coworkers making you feel excluded? They can't do that now; they're dead. Longing to see Vi again? Don't worry. You will be taken to her, like it or not. Mum being too restrictive? Never again!

It's no wonder Jinx is associated with monkeys when her role in the show is ensuring a monkey's paw curls any time Caitlyn has a vague inclination towards something.

[mouse-fantoms]

If ya’ll think I’m not crying like a baby about this then let me inform you 😭😅

[snake-and-mouse]

One of the funniest things about modern aus of mxtx series is the ways writers have to conquer so many of the mcs complete and obvious inability to keep a steady full time job in today's society

[frownyalfred]

me, swigging NyQuil straight from the bottle: this is good

brain: really?

me: gotta write this down, gotta write this down—

[themisterhip]

"Let me worship you..."

Fanart inspired by this fanfic (NSFW) made by @theomnicode (READ IT, IS AMAZING ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)) Also hey, I'm not dead :D (read the notes for info) Have a hot sneak peak:

[kukopelli]

The Weight of an alchemist love fanart bc i like seeing them cry and a big Naturals ramus bc i like making myself cry

[barufisher]

i do think that for me personally. there is no version of taash's storyline that i can get down with except one where they reconnect with their qunari side. my main problem with their arc is that it perpetuates this idea that someone has to "choose" one culture, that they have to turn their back on parts of their identity in order to be the right kind of trans (the white western kind) and all of it just makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. and to be clear this is not me like... trying to make anyone feel bad, there are parts of taash's story that i personally connect with as well, like there is nothing wrong with the way taash does gender in general and there's nothing wrong with it resonating with people. it's when we put it all together in context within the game that it becomes a problem for me.

we know the qun does not have the same ideas around gender as the rest of thedas, we know that their identity, including gender, is connected to their duty. and so it doesn't make sense that taash's mother cares about them wearing dresses. why would she care about that. i'd ask if we've ever even seen any qunari in dresses but i'm pretty sure we've only seen three qunari women total and two of them are in veilguard and are scholars wearing what i personally consider a robe. the third is in trespasser and is ben-hassrath, and is definitely not wearing a dress. if anything, their mother should be concerned about the fact that they fight, since the whole point of leaving for rivain was to avoid taash being designated as a soldier. and to be fair, we get this a Little bit with the fire-breathing. but everything else about shathann's disapproval doesn't make sense in-universe.

and we also already know about the aqun athlok, which shathann even tries to bring up but the game shouts her down because....? i get that shathann is meant to be overbearing and kinda shitty, but this is not the way to do it. all this does is imply that aqun athlok is "wrong" and not as progressive as this other identity that rook has to teach taash about (and that also isnt even specific to rivain, or related to them connecting to their rivaini culture. it's the shadow dragons that teach them all of this along with rook. in general transness and the nonbinary identity are not integrated into the world in any meaningful way which makes it feel even worse). there are various cultures that have their own specific gender identities that do not adhere to the gender binary, and taash should have been given the chance to connect to their own culture in this way. and even if they really wanted to make it so taash just didn’t feel right with aqun athlok, that identity still should have been properly discussed as an option and handled with respect, rather than so carelessly thrown aside as “wrong” (though again not a depiction i would personally like but it would still be better than what we got).

and just. i really disagree with the idea that gender identity under the qun is More Rigid than elsewhere. it’s different, as we know from comments from iron bull and sten-- and we could argue in circles about inconsistencies with the things they say, obviously there have been retcons previously in an attempt to better develop the qunari beyond what we see in origins and da2, but i think this kind of development is a good thing, and is exactly why the regression with taash irritates me so much-- but when we look back at characters like warden tabris, dorian and his father and tevinter's obsession with bloodlines, the entire experience of playing f!hawke in da2 (and also da2 literally has a whole subplot about women being murdered for like 3 years and no one cares. these games just have a misogyny problem lol) and even tarquin in veilguard commenting about how his father forced him into being a soldier because he's a man(!!)-- there is a lot of rigidity, expectations, and violence around gender throughout thedas. but for some reason these rigid gender ideals and a lot of this gendered violence is held up as the status quo and not challenged at all by the writers in the way the qun repeatedly is. the exception being dorian (though you're still incentivized to forgive his father), but a lot of the characters in tevinter-- magisters, templars, the literal black divine-- are still allowed complexities and to be the good guys working with the shadow dragons, a grace not given to any qunari character besides iron bull (who ultimately still has to leave the qun or die later). i’m not trying argue that the qun is perfect and can never be criticized-- i like the flawed characters and societies within dragon age. but the qunari also deserve to be given the same depth, complexities, and engagement as everyone else, too. and it’s worth pointing out that it’s always the qun that’s depicted as backwards for the same harmful “rigidity” every other culture in the game reinforces.

and ultimately with the way the game inserts this very modern, anachronistic, and condescending language in a poor attempt to be as "correct" as possible to "teach" the player, while simultaneously writing such a careless, racist arc about their culture kinda just , makes me feel like they were actually trying to imply that one identity is more correct and progressive than the other. or, if nothing else, it's a bias that got amplified due to their unwillingness or inability to engage with taash's character beyond using them as a mouthpiece for corporate "representation."

there absolutely are people out there that are like taash, who don't necessarily have or want a connection with certain parts of their culture, and maybe they do identify closer with one aspect of it over another. this is all fine! this happens in real life, everyone has different relationships with their identity and heritage, there is no universal experience, and people are allowed to write about their own. but the thing is. this is dragon age. and taash was written by weekes. and both dragon age as a whole and weekes specifically has a repeated pattern of racist writing when it comes to depicting the qunari. and taash's quest along with the way the antaam are portrayed-- faceless, voiceless, basically naked bodies for you to kill-- makes this a series of poor choices that i don't feel generous enough to excuse.

and it sucks. so bad. that this happened. i want to like taash so bad. but.... man.

anyways if you read this far you should read this article, which is far more eloquent than anything i could write and really dives into the whole "civilized versus savage" binary that we see in a lot of fantasy RPGs and is really epitomized in taash's quest-- in dragon age, it's always the qunari and dalish elves versus a (usually white and/or human) andrastian:

[jae-in-a-trenchcoat]

I think Darius finding ao3 on Brooklynn’s computer is gold (based on this)

[myokk]

my first attempt at digital art (never again🥲) for mctober💘

Eloise Babbit✨

slytherin

5th year

favorite subjects: arithmancy & ancient runes

least favorite subject: beasts (animals make her nervous🥲)

hobbies: reading & thinking (IT’S A HOBBY OKAY??)

[brighteyesredfire]

FINAL FANTASY XVI (2023) - Clive and Gav

[degenerateshinji]

Cheng Xiaoshi 16.5.25-19.5.25

prompt: i will draw the exact same piece from start to finish for four days without being allowed to look at the previous days' drawings. At the end of the four days i will put all the pieces side by side for comparison.

[the-fanfiction-addict]

I cannot with this fandom anymore. You have no empathy and no sense of kinship either.

I'm sick of seeing so many people minimizing the actual scale of Siuan's horrible treatment just because she wasn't their bias.

Siuan's Stilling was so painful that she literally fainted on the spot.(and they just had to make it more painful by shooting arrows at her, because why not make the lady who's already getting mauled sufffer more I guess?)

Now is a good time to remember that getting Stilled feels like rape to Aes sedai by the way. And she had to watch women that had grown up with her actively taking part in her violation and betrayal before blacking out.

As if it weren't bad enough she was stripped, put in rags that were little more than underwear(for the time period) and tortured as soon as she came to. For fucking hours.

THEN she was finally dragged from her cell all the way back to the hall for the final time. Bloody, battered,filthy, publicly humiliated for all to see, and made to kneel before her main abuser since she was a girl.

Helplessly witnessing her own downfall as not one of those women tried to put a stop to what was happening. Or at the very least treat her like an actual human being in her last moments.

And some of y'all will still be out here daring to open your mouth holes, question our anger and come up with stuff like: "That was a great ending for Siuan☝🏻🤓" "she hasn't suffered that much or that long anyway" or "Alanna and Moiraine or Egwene had it worse"(Egwene did have it pretty bad & Nynaeve! My shaylaas...but still. That is not the point)

And my favorite one yet:"That was a very humane and swift death!"

Hmmm. Okay.