#god they are so berserk coded

[vampyrebellion]

You’re the only one who made me forget my dream 🪽🪶

[the-punforgiven]

Finally got around to playing Soulstice since it'd been sitting in my steam library for ages and I gotta say, playing this after having watched/read Claymore really is just me going

At my computer screen every few minutes

[alexjcrowley]

Yesterday night I felt sick with my stomach and stayed awake all night making audio recordings to my best friend about watching Quantum of Solace for the first time (I am still finishing it) and then I started randomly talking about 00q and accidentally opened up the Pandora Box of my memories but I instantly remembered everything I ever knew about 00q like when it got adopted by the BBC Sherlock fandom or the Paddington is the new Quartermaster stuff or when everybody was obsessed with the fucking Téméraire and it was EVERYWHERE and everybody made the joke "It's a ship!!!" and the age difference discourse between James and Q and Q being called Quentin and Mycroft and Sherlock being Q older brothers and disapproving of his relationship with James Bond and the fucking tea mugs and so many cats and everybody talking about Q's jumpers and making up OC minions for him and every fanfiction in which James retires to be with Q because he was the only one he ever loved aside from Vesper and Q feeling insecure because of her and all then Madeleine Sawnn came along and everybody was distraught even though the flirting was there in Spectre and we were all distraught because we could have had it all and so many fix it fics so many fics about James cosntantly loosing his gadgets and how hard it was for Q to watch him seduce other people and everybody was saying they were grumpy x sunshine/black cat x Golden retriver coded BUT THEY WERE NOT ACTUALLY in my humble opinion but they were easily flustered x flirting menace and Q had such salty one-liners and everybody believed he was a posh boy and do you remember when years later you had the same museum scene with Hannibal it was clearly a parallel and then there was No Time To Die and Q was officially queer oh my God oh my fucking God it was CANON he TOTALLY CANONICALLY MUST HAVE HAD A CRUSH ON BOND and we saw THE CATS and WHO WAS Q WAITING FOR?????? James must have been jealous but then the movie was what it was and a lot of people hated it and all of the fix it fics in which Bond said his last words to Q because it was always Q it will always be Q and also everybody making up names for him names were such a huge deal Q revealing his name to James in his last moments grieving fics in which James died but you also had silly ones and spicy ones uhhh a lot of those because sometimes you just need to ignore canon and see them happy and maybe both retiring or maybe they kept working flirting over the comms and annoying everyone at MI6 which wasn't exactly Avengers "Everybody Lives in The Tower" au but it was close they weren't a found family per se but some of them were very close there used to be edits on youtube yeah before TikTok came along youtube edits were A ThingTM with all those retrica-looking filters and pop songs or sad love songs and fake trailers who remembers those or like scenes edited to look like they were from a romcom and comments on the scenes written in small usually white text that were meant to reflect the character inner thoughts like "That's hot" or "He's so annoying I need to kiss him" or "BITCH" and fics in which Q was kidnapped and James went berserk and a few years ago Knives Out came out and we tried to to have Bond and Benoit Blanc related do you also remember that?

[pyrobot1cs]

i dont get how people can call sollux a loser he wins so much in the comic. i will now refresh some of these wins in the form of a greentext

> be me, goldblood mutant with x-men powers

> restore world-altering video game my powerful girlfriend found scraps of through just my knowledge of code

> form two teams to play this game. pitch flirt with my cute hemo-anon friend about it

> predict i will die

> die from vast glub

> hot fuschia princess kisses me back to life

> i have double the amount of extra lives. on account of my swagger

> beat sgrub with the rest of my session

> transported to meteor in The Veil

> be the most tech savvy troll on the meteor, explaining timeline communication on Trollian to other trolls

> robot ex apologizes to me and explodes

> in a red relationship with aforementioned princess

> princesses violet ex goes berserk

> get knocked out

> im the only survivor from the trolls that he attacked

> cute hemo-anon friend protects my knocked out body

> he drops me down a flight of stairs

> wake up

> lisp gone

> voices of the doomed gone

> fuck yes

> talk to hot girlfriend whos now a time god in the dream bubbles

> drive the meteor into The Green Sun with my x-men powers

> die again. only a little bit this time though

> half ghost now hanging out with my time god girlfriend

> fuck off from the meteor to chill with her in paradox space

> somewhere my half corpse gets prototyped

> fully alive again, also fully blind

> chilling

> mfw

[mythmerth]

hello and welcome to the

mythmerth 2024 merthur fic reading wrapped 💫

I am your host mythmerth, and these are my merthur ao3 fic reading stats. when I say stats, I mean lists of numbers and histograms and pie charts and all that. like im so serious its a bunch of oddly color coded numbers that also happen to mean I read a shit ton of gay fan fiction. if that’s fun for you you’re in the right place!

Before we begin with the numbers there’s some things I want to clarify:

This is not going to be my favorite merthur fic reads of 2024 because god this is loaded enough as is. if you’re looking for my 2024 recs, go HERE !! (I will link when I have the post made!)

These stats are wholly collected and compiled by me. Whenever I read or reread a merthur fic this year, I added the word count number to my list as soon as I was finished reading. I’ve seen some ao3 wrapped generators hanging around and I’m here to say that that is NOT what I used, and in fact from what I can tell would’ve been wildly inaccurate for me; this is the sweet sweet old fashioned data collection and thus has all the pros and cons involved in that.

For my data, all numbers are rounded to the nearest whole and written in the thousands unless specified otherwise. If you see a ‘26’ in my data images, assume that means roughly 26,000. For fics at a 25,501 word count, I rounded up to 26. For fics at a 25,499 word count, I rounded down to 25. the hope is that these even out at the end!

I am so excited and I have 0 regrets. 100% of these fics are merthur fics (including a very occasional poly fic) and I have never felt more off my rocker in my life.

all that being said…

it’s time for stats.

let’s begin with the complete 2024 tally before we get into the nitty gritty.

Between January and December of 2024, I read a total of 14,489,000 words. Yes, that is 14.5 million words of merthur fan fiction.

Of those 14.5 million, ~4.6 million were from fics I reread and ~9.9 million were from novel fics (aka I’d never read them before).

I read a total of 239 fics this year (N is NOT in the thousands). Of those 239 fics, 52 were rereads and 187 were novel.

Half (~119) of the 239 fics I read were above 44k and half of them were under 44k.

The average fic length id pick up was about 60k, and the specific word count I happened to read the most often was 39k.

Funnily, the average length of the fics I reread was 88k, and the average length of all the novel fics I read was 53k, so I guess I’m inclined to reread long fics more ???

The highest <completed> word count I read this year was Sorcerer’s Bane by BeautifulFiction, clocking in at a very scrumptious 265k words.

Not depicted in the image, but the longest series I read was Footloose’s ever infamous Loaded March, giving a hearty 1.26 million words to my count this year.

Now for the fun part…. monthly specifics…

behold, the gay merthur donut

did someone say pie chart?? too bad, you get a donut. also hello to my pfp.

From my monthly counts, May was my lowest at 732k words read and August was my highest with a very normal and regular 1.8 million words. read. in August. 1.8 million.

(once I saw those stats i wondered if I’d really gone berserk cause… what the hell was I on. is this normal? I don’t know what’s normal anymore)

I read an average of 1.2 million words per month, so I hover right around there with some exceptions (looking at you July and August. and May.)

This is a look into how I break down the months

Each novel read is noted with the right skew within the cell, and each reread is noted with a left skew. So for January, I had 7 rereads. Then I add them up and do general stats when the month is over: I read 20 fics in January that averaged at 65k each, for a total count of 1.3 million words.

Sometimes I’d mark fics in other ways to keep track of them, I did this with certain series and also to denote if a fic was unfinished. In August, I’d picked up Loaded March again and you can see those in blue. I also read Accidentally my Companion which is an unfinished work by Nakyrah, shown in green in the image (this is also the longest fic I read this year if you count ongoing, it’s at 276k as of now so check it out tehe)

I messed around with some histograms too~

While this is set up as a ‘histogram’, this is actually all 239 fics I recorded one by one laid out as a chaotic strip of lines. Each line is a fic, the height denotes word count. I have a pretty typical rhythm; read short fics between the super long ones, nothing too insane other than that diabolical spree of reading long fics I went on at the beginning of the year. I was about to get my bachelors alright? I was doing anything. my average word count in February was 114k okay I couldn’t be trusted. clearly, cause the first thing I did with my degree was make a fan fiction stat chart

Now this is a proper histogram: each bar represents a word count category and the height is how many in the category I read. As you can see, I’m very inclined to read the 23k-63k category. There’s also a spike at ~115k and I think that’s a bit funny. like why that set specifically? they Speak To Me

Speaking of fics I’m drawn to. You’re probably thinking, ‘the numbers are cool and all, but of those 14 million words of godforsaken merthur fics, what ratings did you read the most?’ I’m so glad you asked!

I read the MOST godforsaken ones.

I have no charts for this because I painstakingly went through all of my bookmarked fics from 2024 and tallied their ratings on paper to the best of my ability.

Out of the 187 novel fics I read (I don’t re-bookmark rereads so if I’d thought of this category sooner I would’ve been MUCH better off but I didn’t and now we’re here)

131 of them were Explicit (70%)

39 of them were Mature (21%)

13 of them were Teen (7%)

4 of them were General (2%)

And I guarantee the rereads look almost identical to this, if not more explicit. something about merlin and arthur and their explicit antics heal me; it’s always the filthiest I start reading when I’m feeling my lowest. I eat that shit UP. So if you’ve come to my page looking for Teen rated fics I fear this may Not Be The Place For You. I’ve read quite a number of very good T and G fics!!! I just. the mature ratings. they call me.

and lastly, I’d like to post my scrappy 2023 stats cause the year difference is. kinda funny

they consumed me body and soul and I haven’t looked back once.

and that does it for this years mythmerth merthur ao3 wrapped!

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown as much as I enjoyed all the reading and data collection I did this year!!

Again, if you’re looking for my 2024 recs I’ll have them linked here as soon as I create the post <3

If you have any inquiries or questions or comments on what my merthur 2025 wrapped should include pls let me know I’m just having a good time with this, what did you think? what should I do next?

[oh-no-its-bird]

FELLOW THORNE FAN SPOTTED????? i love him sm his funny little reactions get to me everytime

YESSSS I LOVE THORNE SO MUCH HE IS SO SILLY AND SO CUTE AND SO STRESSED!!!! I love when he does his little cat eyes,, he's so fucking cute, and his reactions are always so funny

My wife,, the village people also agree he is cat coded, which fills me with glee

HE CARES ABOUT HIS PEOPLE SO MUCH HE'S SO COMMITTED TO THE VILLAGE AND ITS PEOPLE AND ITS CHILDREN ESPECIALLY I LOVE HIM SM!!

HES LITERALLY HAD THE GOAL OF JUST HELPING HIS FELLOW DEMONS SINCE HE WAS A CHIILLDDD PLS ALL HE WANTS IS FOR HIS PEOPLE TO BE SAFE

I love him SO much, he is The Favorite, I think. I wanna add more photos of him but Tumblr is maxing me out at 10. But like!!!! He's so cute!!!!!!! I need to see him go through The Horrors.

Anyways take this from my notes app:

I think Thorne would be funny to put in Naruto bc he is, at his heart, just a guy. Just a silly little guy who has skill in like, management and selling things. And running a village, actually, which could be interesting in itself to squint at w Konoha.

But he's also like. A demon. A demon w little to no skill in battle who would probably die miserably in like all of 1 second if tossed at literally anyone in Naruto.

But also like, he runs a magic shop! What the fuck, that's cool.

I started daydreaming ab him being tossed into Naruto before we got the confirmation that he didn't really make (at least the main potions) he sold. But also like, canon is what I wish it to be, so it'd be cool if he did make some of those potions and trinkets, or at least had their recipies, so.

But also we could just toss him a bag of holding or smthn filled with some of his stock. But also it could be fun to just play w him trying to make his usual things and trinkets but like !!! Uh oh !!! The magic (chakra) here is totally wack !!! Now he has to find out how to adapt his potions recipies for the magic in the air, and they keep coming out weird / stronger / weaker than usual...

But ummm demon guy with -5 stats in fighting trying to scrape by undetected in Naruto world while operating a magic shop, while waiting for Remillia to hopefully come save him (which like, she would. Bc she's Remillia and literally not even god can stand in her way) (hes going to get fucking demolished the second any ninja so much as catches a wiff of him)

He ends up adopting Naruto bc ofc he does.

Demon connection!!!!

The kids in the demon village seem to love Thorne, and he has an advantage w Naruto too bc like. Baby Naruto being shunned by the village being adopted by an ACTUAL literal demon from the demon realm.

Would pay to see it tbh.

Thorne tries to free Kurama,,,,,

He sees people scared of the fox and is like "oh no...demon racism strikes again... this poor guy...."

And Kurama goes "yeah lmao, it was the racism. I pinkie promise I didn't flatten like half the village twice."

Actually tho. Thinking. Bc in TOWYV, demons dealt with the Frenzy curse, which'd make them go totally berserk and literally eat even their loved ones. So Thorne might actually have some context to legitimately empathize with Kurama ab being controlled by the sharingan to flatten Konoha that one time. It's a similar fear he shared with pretty much all of demon kind, not so long ago. (Even if Kurama cared less about the being made to kill people than loss of control)

Idk, could be interesting

Ummm final thoughts: read The One Within The Villainess

[sailorgundam308]

how you end up with your fav ship?

Oh god. Honestly, it creeped into me in an unintentional but sure way.

First time I played I didn’t know about the origins at all and went in with a “no prejudice/expectations” vibe. Romanced Astarion because he propositioned my tav first. My tav was a… buff berserker barbarian. Met Karlach only when I was almost leaving act 1 cause I couldn’t find her. When I did I was like “OMG ANOTHER foul mouthed, strong, barb lady!”

She quickly became one of my faves. However I truly thought I had fucked up her questline when it ended at the start of act 2. So I was kinda “no, it can’t be JUST this?!” sort of horrified and began an origin run with her to see for myself if her questline was actually that short and lame.

So even before I finished with my tav I was already playing Karlach. And as I played her I noticed more how she and Astarion interacted and how similar their traumas were despite how their appearances/body language/background differed. The contrasts and similarities struck me like a goddamn truck. I realized I was already noticing that in my original tav play, and things started falling into place.

The fact that they see eye to eye on some things, but not on others - in ways that you wouldn’t expect- and their dynamic being complicated, gritty, and so SO layered is insanely interesting to me. The more you dig the more layers and depth you find. It’s like, a ship that keeps on giving.

Also, there’s the “fuck your heteronormative expectations” of their relationship. Heard some folks say theirs is a “straight” relationship and, honestly, that’s so absurd I have no interest in replying. Also, if you are looking at them through a CONFORMING (or, to be honest, gay-but-heteronormative) lens, you will read Karlach as masculine - as a butch lesbian or whatever - because of her body language and appearance. The exact same labeling occurs with Astarion, who, if seen through a similarly heteronormative-coded gay lens, is a “twink”, who in a conforming gay world would be expected not only to be gay but to pair up with a bigger guy and be a bottom.

As a bisexual person, all this reads wrong to me. Both characters are pan. And I hate these heteronormative labelings especially when based off someone’s appearance. I like pairings who’ll breaking those expectations and Astarion and Karlach romancing each other throws not only the “straights” but the heteronormative code that pervades the queer community into a loop.

TLDR: it was because of SPITE and NUANCE

[300iqprower]

I’m fine with Cortez having a role in your Lostbelt (more begrudgingly, I’ll admit, as it feels more than a little uncomfortable to add a conquistador to the Lostbelt that, besides the whitewashing, was meant to be fully indigenous—emphasizing indigenous, not hispanic), but I have to say, I’m just not enthused for Grand Berserker Cortez. Like at all. Not just because Fate has positioned him to be a Pretender based on what we know of him, but also because it just feels intensely uncomfortable for one of the servants meant to fight the Beasts to be a colonizer. Especially since it’s an AU Cortez rather than PHH Cortez? Like, what?

oh he's a piece of shit. Thats the point. In my version, anyways. Idk and idc what official fgo intends for Berserker, @agnerd-bot's idea was so insanely good I had to find a way to use it for my Lb7 rewrite.

Like i said, he's an objectively terrible person. Not even in the Columbus sense where there's like, a sort of deluded idealism to it, no Cortez is just a selfish bastard and the whole point of him being a grand is that it makes you realize that grands arent the "best" of humanity, they're the peak of humanity. That means the bad as well as the good, and even with Daybit actively helping it's everything some of Chaldea's servants (namely Nitocris-Ammit) can do to not try and kill the bastard before their mutual enemies even get a chance. I also want him to be berserker rather than pretender because i don't want to lean into so much as the same post code as the pseudoscience of "white gods" and all that if I can help it. The idea of someone flagrantly and falsely claiming godhood is more interesting to me than someone convincingly imitating it anyhow.

TLDR Cortez's role specifically plays on his connection to the indigenous peoples of the lostbelt. It's not a good connection and its not meant to be, its meant to be vile and infuriating and it's never portrayed as anything different or more glorious than that. Just as a Beast of Humanity isn't necessarily evil, a Grand Servant isn't necessarily righteous.

He also, without going into detail, gets his comeuppance. Enough for it to even be somewhat pitiable, in fact, if still entirely deserved.

[imthepunchlord]

You know, thinking about how you said that the themes for the pig's power connected to cognition, mental power, and even now seems to have ties to prudence and wisdom, that are all very mental related things which makes me wonder if the pig has potential to do unnerving, if kind of scary with its power. And it kind of tracks with some of the past powers you have given with powers relating to sleep/dreams, memories, and warping personalities. I feel like it could be pretty fitting for the pig to have this cute exterior but has the potential to somewhat scare, since well people often view pigs as just cute and stupid they are actually very intelligent and can be pretty dangerous when they reach certain sizes.

That actually was something I was aiming for: the dangers and cunning of Pig.

When researching Pig, what comes up most is the warrior aspect, specifically with boars.

Norse not only had bear warriors (berserkers), but there were also wolf and boar themed warriors too.

They were also tied to Artemis and I believe Ares too. Both of them being very combative gods, and the former I know can be cunning.

China I found they are more tied to prosperity and fortune, and that could be tied to have the wit and bravery to pave a way forward.

So given all I've found, yeah it felt like Pig should've been tied to intelligence and have some danger to it.

It's also kinda a slight against canon, as the pig kwami's official name means idiot in Chinese. I'm sure it's meant to be a joke off "pigs are dumb" but I'm not all that crazy about a kwami having that name, nor having it go to a very LGBT coded girl.

So yeah, Pig can instead have that trend of being cute but dangerous.

[emiplayzmc]

okay i have went on a dandys world lore deep dive and after. a LOT of tabs i now have a pretty good understanding on what is going on i think :'D??

GOD thats more tabs than i thought but IT WAS WORTH IT :D

istg why do these lore filled roblox games never have comprehensive lore dives UGH it was very difficult to find any on regretevator (and the only one i could find the person who made it called bive "biv" which annoyed me enough to stop watching lmao)

anyways youre right glisten is the BEST absolute spamton coded guy i love how it plays the shattering mirror sound effect when he goes beserk THATS SO COOL and the letters in his room UAHUGUHUH

also its quite funny how easy it is to tell that Glisten is the favourite child... liek i looked at a good few npcs and he is the only twisted to have dialogue and he has the most lore and he has the most letters in his room and his trivia section was like 3x the size of any others lmao

idk if you know the whole lore of dandys world or just about glisten but if you do know everything then uuh what actually is the ichor operation??? and who are Arthur Walton and Delilah Keen? The wiki can only tell me so much lmao

also dandy reaaallyyy makes me think of flowey/chara.......

okay thats all byeeee :33

BLINKS AT YOU. SPREADING MY BRAINROT LIKE ICHOR, YEAHHHHH

Wait is it not pronounced like 'Biv-' omg maybe I should have picked up on that by the fact 'Bivey' is probably pronounced differently from 'Biv' but that is good to know hjgfsss. Real though Roblox games have such fun lore recently but it's utterly incomprehensible-

EVEN THE DEVS STAN GLISTEN IN THIS HOUSEHOLD 🙏🙏🙏 But yeah I never thought of that but he absolutely has the most going on with him as of right now 😭😭 Game is still in Alpha afaik so maybe the devs will add more stuff to the other characters in future updates? Also I think he was originally a DHMIS OC of the creators, so if he's existed for longer than the other characters I can get why he has a lot more going on :D

GRIPPING YOU BY THE SHOULDERS. I DONT KNOW WHAT KIND OF CHEMICALS THEY'RE PUTTING INTO THE ZESTY MIRROR. BUT IT IS THE ***SAME*** CHEMICALS THAT TOBY FOX PUT INTO SPAMTON AND THE ADDISONS, I KNOW IT IS.

Also YESSSS yesyesyes the glass shattering effect is so fun. When I tell you bro is TERRIFYING when he goes berserk though. He gains a MASSIVE speed boost and starts sprinting at mach speed towards whoever is in his line of sight 😭 Also he needs to be babysat when he's not berserk so I almost always volunteer ✨️✨️ I love that mechanic sm though, just the concept of needing to follow around a character who is utterly TERRIFIED of being left alone and is likely one of the VERY FEW Twisteds who still has their sanity among the practical ZOMBIES the others have become?? And the few people who actually seem alive and healthy probably give him such a massive amount of hope for salvation only to be ditched the moment the machines are done and having to watch his only hope just run away from him and treat him like the rest of the mindless Twisteds, no matter how much pain he's in and how much restraint he has to keep from being fully corrupted and hurting people?? MY HEART. I NEED AN EXTRA DIFFICULT GAMEPLAY METHOD WHERE YOU BRING HIM INTO THE ELEVATOR AND OTHER FLOORS WITH YOU. LIKE LIKE A REGRETEVATOR NPC.

Also the community collectively calls following him around to keep him sane 'babysitting' which is just funny to me. Hi yes hello this is an adult male mirror from the 90s who has experienced the horrors. Yes he is my son who needs to be perceived all the time and please never even breathe so much as an insult in his direction because he is very fragile </3

As far as I know Arthur and Delilah are the creators of the show in-universe! I don't know MUCH about them given that there isn't much ON them yet (I hope there's more soon aghhh) but from what I can gather, I think Delilah is maybe the start of something bad that happened, maybe how the ichor operation got started in the first place, and Arthur is the skeptic of them that wants to know what she's up to. Like. 'You said he has friends. I'll need them' from Delilah sounds so suspicious??? And Arthur writing that '[Delilah] reassured me that what happened wasn't [Delilah's] fault'?? DELILAH GURLIEPOP WHAT ARE YOU ***UP*** TO...... Also I myself don't know MUCH about the ichor operation in general yet, only that Mister Dandicus (Dandy, lol) is / most likely is running the show behind it and is responsible for what happened to the Twisteds (including probably his closest friend of all the Toons....... 😬😬😬 he gets real awkward when you buy Astro from the shop and dialogue says they don't talk as much as they used to so methinks he at least feels remorse for what he's done and doesn't talk to Astro much because of it......). Dandy is very Flowey and Chara-core, morally grey characters my absolute BELOVEDS 🫶🫶🫶

Anyways YESS YESSS SUCCUMB TO THE DANDY LORE, Roblox games are PEAK for lore and blorbos lately my god. I'm telling you they put chemicals in the 🫳🏳️‍🌈✨️ mirror that turned him into a character that rapidly makes a little hole in my brain right beside Spamton and the Addisons.

[bjornironsidelothbrok]

Bjorn Lothbrok, better known as Bjorn Ironside is the firstborn son of Ragnar with his first wife Lagertha, a famous and great shieldmaiden. He is the half-brother of Hvitserk, Ivar, Ubbe and Sigurd and has a father-son like relationship with the Flóki, who is an old friend of Ragnar and Lagertha. He's the uncle of Vidar, Edda, Cailan, Iwan, Illian, Marlena and Ellinor, the great uncle of Vidars and Marlenas son Ragnar and the cousin of Marcellus, who's now his brother too, after his mother adopted him, with whom he shares a deep connection and an unbreakable bond. He's the former king of Kattegat and lost the election for King of Norway to Harald. He is a descendant of Odin, as are his father and brothers. Bjorn is a great warrior in all respects, just like his father. As a young child he tries to keep his parents from fighting. He also wants to become a man in society so he can go on raids with his father and uncle. Norse society adheres to the belief that a “real man” is a killer, so Bjorn is eager for the chance to fight to prove his manhood. This is evident in how when he’s asked what a man does, his first answer is, “He fights.” Ragnar approves of this response, but nevertheless reminds him that they do more as well. At times, Bjorn seems to be the reasonable one in his family. Unlike his father, he appears to be much more in-tune with the emotions of those around him, which becomes even more apparent when he grows older. As an adult, Bjorn is Ragnar’s most trusted lieutenant and right-hand man. He shows extreme loyalty to Ragnar even after years of separation. With the death of Ragnar, Bjorn becomes arguably the most renowned Viking in Christendom aside from possibly his mother. The only person who is not frightened of him is Ivar, and even Ivar will later admit to Bishop Heahmund that he is a little scared of Bjorn. Like most Viking men, Bjorn yearns for glory on the battlefield and a place in Valhalla. He is passionate about fighting and eager to battle. He is a highly skilled warrior, even when he is young. He was strong enough to match Rollo in a drunken brawl and in his first battle is fast enough to get through without ever been struck. The true testament of Bjorn’s prowess as a warrior comes during his time alone in the wilderness. He survives for several months in the icy mountains, manages to track down and kill a bear with only a hatchet and knife, and outwits and overpowers a supposedly invincible Berserker who was sent to assassinate him. He calms down a bit after. Bjorn tends to be the most emotionally stable of the brothers. He is noticeably much more mellow and agreeable as an adult than he was as a child. Bjorn has a somewhat different personal code than most other Viking men. He refuses to rape women in raids or slaves. After his time living in the wilderness, Bjorn tends to act cold and distant to most people. While he still is a lot less willing than most Vikings to kill or throw away lives without need, he has definitely hardened since he was a kindly young adult. It’s clear that Bjorn doesn’t have his father’s intelligence or penchant for outside-the-box thinking. When he realizes that Ragnar doesn’t trust him to follow in his footsteps, this prompts Bjorn to strike out on his own and do some traveling to prove his worth to both himself and Ragnar. He takes great pride in his battle scars, bearskin cloak, and tattoos. His tattoos and hairstyle are clearly modelled after the ones Ragnar had in his younger years. Bjorn’s courage, deep devotion to his parents, and unshakeable code of honor are all similar to the personality of the god Baldr. He has been the new head of the family since his father's death and, like his father, sails under the Raven Banner.

[camgoloud]

fellow coriolanus lover here - hands down the best of his tragedies!!!

right???? coriolanus truly is the peak tragic hero… i will absolutely NEVER be over the final scene of that play. when i read the word “traitor” coming from aufidius? i had an actual physical reaction like GOD. the way it parallels act 3… the way that coriolanus’ entire self-identity is built around Not being a traitor to his own code of honor to the extent that the very word is his berserk button and yet in the end because of that very internal code he refuses to break he can’t help being a traitor after all. to BOTH sides of the external conflict around him… thinking about it makes me want to scream. more people need to read and talk about this play FOR REAL before i explode about it

also i think politically it’s a lot more interesting than people who haven’t read it give it credit for. like yes it Is the fascism play but it’s the fascism play in the same way othello is the racism play i think i.e. there’s room for a lot of discussion about whether it’s A Fascist Play or A Play About Fascism (and its assorted societal harms etc.) and whether/how much shakespeare accidentally landed on the former while aiming for the latter. because like. not that any of the plebeian/populist characters come out of it looking particularly great. but you know. neither does coriolanus! and as far as the ~centrists~ go lmao menenius comes across to me as a HILARIOUSLY contemporary caricature of your typical center right “both sides are bad but also Reagan was right hashtag trickle down economics hashtag the body politic” guy. so my personal read on the text is that. we’re not really meant to be on his side either lmao he’s just too inherently laughable to me

i don’t know there’s just so much going on! everyone read this play i’m no longer asking. if it helps convince anyone it’s also absolutely the gayest one shakespeare ever wrote (not clickbait) (seriously everything coriolanus and aufidius have going on is so fucking insane) (they have wet dreams about murdering each other)

[princess-of-the-corner]

Okay so, if I could summarize each of the four main characters and what makes them so interesting:

Ruby Rose: She dresses in black and red, has a lot of death motifs, and is the most willing of the four main characters to fight dirty. She's also an altruistic sweetheart who just wants to make the world a better place, is heavily coded as both autistic and asexual, and her entire character arc across the first eight seasons of the show is based around her deteriorating mental health as she holds herself to higher and higher standards until she just can't live up to role she has given herself. She's also seen blushing when talking to a pretty girl in Season 3, and while one boy younger than her is implied to have a crush on her, she has NEVER shown ANY interest in boys outside of the noncanon parody spin-off. Also, while it's never explicitly mentioned in show, analyzing the information we DO have reveals her to be perhaps the SOLE survivor of a HORRIFICALLY thorough genocide, even if Ruby herself doesn't realize until after Volume 5.

Weiss Schnee: Basically Chloe with better writing. She starts out as a seemingly shallow, petulant rich girl with an ego larger than her father's corporate empire. She's also deeply aware of what a monster her father is, comes from a broken home, and even BEFORE her character arc is primarily motivated by a desire to redeem her family name after her father married into the family and turned her grandfather's company into a standard evil megacorp. She's also canonically bisexual.

Blake Belladonna: She's a Faunus, a former member of the civil rights group-turned-terrorist organization known as the White Fang. Her ex boyfriend, Adam Taurus (who is heavily implied to have started courting her when she was 12 and he was 18), has slowly but surely been subverting the White Fang's actual purpose in order to turn it into an instrument of his bloodlust, and thus her driving motivation for much of the first few seasons is to atone for her perceived role in the White Fang's fall (as she unfairly believes herself to be responsible for his fall to the darkside, because he would divert blame to HER whenever she tried to confront him on it), and also try and fight racism. She's also the team's second in command. She was also the first member of the cast to be confirmed queer, and is the closest thing to a harem protagonist the show has, with three characters (not including her abusive ex) all having been confirmed to have fallen for her at different points. Her eyes are the same color as her partner's soul.

Yang Xiao Long: She might wear the image of a hard-drinking party girl, but she has NEVER consumed alcohol on screen, is PROBABLY the best student on her team, built her weapon herself, and is a genius mechanic on TOP of being a berserker who gets stronger the more and stronger hits she absorbs to charge her Semblance with. She's both the tank AND the team mom, because all three of her parents AND her uncle have let her down in some way, shape, or form since she was a child, forcing her to grow up so her sister wouldn't have to. Her birth mom walked out on her when she was a baby, her actual mom mysteriously disappeared on a secret mission, her uncle's too drunk to be much help around the house and is usually absent on top of that, and her father is very clearly not up to the task of raising two children on his own, no matter how much he may try and genuinely loves his girls. Also, she's Ruby's older half sister, and a good chunk of her arc is dedicated to the fact that it takes her until season 9 to realize that she's gay and in love with her best friend. Her eyes' default color is the same as her partner's soul.

GOD that's gay.

[philosophicalparadox]

The thing I like about Berserk most of all, ironically for me, is that the characters are dominantly human.

I usually never like the human characters or root for the human side in Man Vs Monster tropes, cause humans are usually dicks being unfair and judgemental and most man v monster is just Catholics vs Jews or Catholics vs. Protestants, or Catholics vs Heretics of any other flavor 2.0

But Berserk doesn't play by those rules, ironically - VERY ironically, considering there's a whole arc dedicated to the Holy See and Catholic church torturing heretics for funsies.

But that is exactly what I love about Berserk - there's no “man must become a monster in order to defeat one”, no - man is already a monster, plain and simple. Anyone, anywhere, can become a monster in the right circumstances - and those circumstances are A) not at all universal and B) not always tragic or relatable or heroic. They're often vile, disturbing, disgusting. Hypocritical. Nasty. I wont go into detail - if you've read Berserk, you already know.

But that is how it is - everyone has their reasons, everyone has their moments - and they're not always pretty, or justified, or sane. Sometimes the person in those moments thinks so - but often in Berserk you see people, ordinary humans, doing heinous things knowing they are doing something injurious or harmful, purely because they can, or they want to, or because they think they'll be rewarded in some way. Inquisitors torturing innocent people because they think God will reward them is among the least of it. Hell, the Band of the Hawk is unto itself a Mercenary Band. Judeau said himself they had all types of folk in their rank - that they didn't care about pasts, only futures. Criminals, bandits, you name it. Judeau himself was a performer - not a nice thing to be back then - Corkus was a common bandit/petty theif. They had decent folk the same; second sons would have been trained knights without a title, not that being a knight made one at all decent. Plenty of nasty, rapey ones existed.

Point is, the only black and white in Berserk is the colour coding of Griffith and Guts (which is deliberately ironic in multiple ways) and it lays that out right from the start.

Grey. There's so, so, SO MUCH GREY, it's all there is, anywhere, in anyone. There's no virtue without vice. There's arguably the opposite- Wyald comes to mind - but even he is just supremely dark grey. His actions are as despicable as possible, but his reasoning is that of a child. He is so dark he might as well be black, but I still hold that he is just the deepest grey- similarly, Laban is surprisingly very chivalrous, and a genuinely good and honest man. Even in the face of the destruction of everything he knows, he remains virtuous and steadfast. He is mostly white - as white as its possible to get in this story and still be somewhat grey; for even he can't help his humanity and despises those which would assail himself and his country, as a knight ought to I suppose.

What's interesting here, though, is that both our image of the deepest grey and the palest are both side characters. Wyald plays a pretty important role in the plot, but so I would argue does Laban, for what little we see him. He demonstrates that even in a world collapsing, humans can still have hope, and that when calamity strikes is when humans are most keen to band together and support each other in the wake of common circumstances (plague, famine, disaster).

The two main characters however (well, 3 if you count GA Casca) are, despite their respective color palettes, extremely mid. Yes they both do some extreme stuff, but morally they’re both opposite but still similar shades of grey- and personally I’d argue their palettes reflect the exact hues they possess, with Guts actually being the darker, more morally corrupt one. But that’s a post for another day.

Berserk is the ultimate tribute to the Cynic's philosophy. And I am nothing if not a cynical philosopher lol.

[breserker]

Top 10 pairings and/or fandoms :)

okay HONESTLY i'm a one ship wonder with a lot of fandoms, i have the flagship and then a few tributary ships so this should be pretty easy except for the fact that i think it shows my boring ass hand tbh a lot of my ships are the boring obvious ones probably because I don't consider myself a multishipper if that makes sense. Like it takes a lot for me to care, y'know.

also sorry for the delay i'm working on the giant buddha in terraria and oh god it's past midnight huh

Ulrich/Yumi (Code Lyoko) - Dude it's here because it's my first real ship first real fandom experience i understand they might be kinda milquetoast inasmuch as they were VERY popular but i really resonated with Ulrich's insecurities and totally not brewing emotional abuse victim angst so it'll always stay close to my heart Henry/Eileen (Silent Hill 4) - First...adult-ish ship? Dude i was 14-15 when i got into Silent Hill and I attached to these two immediately, idk why, but scarring and recovering is gonna be somewhat of a running theme I think Majima/Makoto (Yakuza 0) - PERFECT SEGWAY BITCH OH FUCKING DAMN not only were they my first foray into real smut writing in 2019 Makoto is one of my favorite characters of all time, i attribute at least some of my comfort with myself nowadays to this ship and I've met some LIFELONG friends through them Scully/Starling (crossover X-Files and Silence of the Lambs) - Not a big greater hannibalverse type person but these two in particular I'm still very very very sweet on. I wish I would've written more when i had the gumption but I like what I did with them at the time. Guts/Casca (Berserk) - I just. y'know. I love them, I love Guts, I love Casca, and i think my favorite gutsca moment, my favorite one, is when Skull Knight tells Guts that what he may want for her may not be what she wants in general. PEAK shipping moment for me, idk if that's weird but OH that's so good. FUCK yes independence from each other. OUGGH Anya/Dimitri (Anastasia 1997) - there was a tweet in early early 2020 that said "you don't have shipping preferences you heard Dimitri say "princesses don't marry kitchen boys" and it was decided for you" and i've never felt so fucking called out Carlos/Jill (Resident Evil 3) - i think we can blame silent hill ascension for making me so utterly pathetic and cold and betrayed that I went full force horny for valeveira out of ?????? nowhere. they're sweet, it's nice to write Carlos after so much of writing the guy in the next ship I'll list... Tseng/Aeris (Final Fantasy VII) - GOD DUDE IF I TOLD YOU I STARTED SHIPPING THEM AS A HORNY JOKE BUT NOW IT'S 350K WORDS OF FIC WITHIN ~3 YEARS LATER IT'S NOT A FUCKING JOKE ANYMORE IS IT Wolf O'Donnell/Isabelle (Crossover StarFox/Animal Crossing or just smash bros if you like) - I really really really had a fun fic for them that i WILL get back to but a lot of real life stuff got in the way and since it is a FUN fic, if you're not having fun irl it's hard to write fun irl. Also can you tell I'm grasping at straws bc I'm desperate to find other ships i care about. Yuffie/Elena (FF7) - Because I'm grasping at straws I'll end with another FF7 fic that I've been itching to make more stuff for (i've sketched a few things here or there but that's it) and it's these disaster lesbians.

Mayyybbeee there's another ship that I'm fond of elsewhere but tbh I mostly see shipping happen and I'm like "That's nice" and I move on, or even if i care about the ship caring about it versus actually WRITING or making fandom over it is a different thing. Like I loved Eadaz/Sabran in Priory of the Orange Tree, or Ammar ibn Khairan and Jehane bet Ishak in the Lions of Al Rassan, but i'm not exactly writing fic over it.

[gear-project]

You've probably been asked this before but, if Strive were to have a guest character from any and I mean any media be it game,anime, or even..movie ect. Who'd you want it to be? My own choice this may be ridiculous but, someone from Digimon Specifiically Beelzemon.

Guilty Gear is a pretty long-standing fighting game series... so a lot of things over the years might mesh well with it:

God Eater, Code Vein, Vampire Hunter D, Monster Hunter, etc. even Bioboosted Armor Guyver gets an honorable mention...

But... I think the one character that Ishiwatari would want to add to the roster the most would have to be:

DARK SHNEIDER... from BASTARD!!

There's several underlying reasons for it... and he's already voiced his strong opinions on the series' influence on his game series.

As for myself... hmm... who would I want?

Much as I love Guts from Berserk, I'm not sure he'd be a good fit.

Nightmare from Soul Calibur??? Not quite it either.

Even Jack Garland from Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin would be a crazy pick from me...

...Possibly even Haruko Haruhara from FLCL would be the more "organic" choice (but we already have I-No).

I'm also a huge fan of Yoshitora Tokugawa from Samurai Shodown... but I don't think he hits the right notes for this tune of an idea...

Nope... I think... of all the characters that would be best suited... my choice would have to be:

RAGNA=THE=BLOODEDGE.

Now, I know what you're thinking... BlazBlue: it's already a famous ARC System Works game... and GGvsBB has always been a dream crossover.

That's NOT IT, though!!!

Ragna represents the "other side" of Ishiwatari's history developing fighting games... and showcasing another "possibility" in Guilty Gear's realm would impress not only the current GG Strive fanbase, but also pay homage to one of Ishiwatari's oldest friends: Toshimichi Mori!

Ishiwatari and Mori have been working together for years, so even if Mori retired, they would still do things together off and on. And BlazBlue's music was one of those projects.

Hence why I think Ragna is a special case... he represents all the possibility that these two creators shared and put their heads together on as friends and also, Ragna embodies Hard Rock and Heavy Metal with his "Rebellion" just as much as Sol Badguy and other GG characters do!