#i am choosing to inflict this on you two specifically

[pomrania]

Smaugust: "hybrid"

For Smaugust I am drawing cats as dragons. If you want me to draw your cat as a dragon, reblog this post with a photo of your cat, as well as the cat's name included in the body of the post. Read below the cut for full details; it's the same as in previous years.

This particular post is accepting requests so long as it's still 17 August 2024 somewhere in the world. If it's no longer that date, check my blog to see if there's a current post.

Tell me what you want the other part of the "hybrid" to be, animal or plant or element or something more esoteric; there's sufficient options that "whatever you feel like" is almost guaranteed to inflict option paralysis. It doesn't need to be super-specific, just something to narrow it down from the infinite possibilities.

One request per person per day, and only one cat per request. It is acceptable, and even encouraged, to make a request for every day of Smaugust.

Cats will be dragonified in accordance with the theme for the day, given in the post's title. I'm using the prompts from @pencilcat's list, although not necessarily in the given order.

Non-cats are allowed so long as you provide reasons why the animal in question is actually totally a cat.

Check the date given at the top of the post, to see if requests are open for it. Unless it's literally impossible, I'll be drawing and then posting every valid request I've received; however, sometimes that gets done once requests are closed for a post. So just because I reblog this post and add art to it, that doesn't necessarily mean it's okay to make your own request (doesn't necessarily mean that it's not okay, either).

One thing that's changed from last year: there won't be a post for every day in August. I'll be deciding each day whether I feel up to making a new post (and thus taking requests) at the moment, or if I need to work on the requests I still have, or take a rest. Since I can't guarantee that requests will be open for any given day, if you know ahead of time that you're not going to be available on certain days but you'd still like to see your cat drawn as a dragon, get in touch with me ahead of time, because I'd hate for anyone to have to miss out.

The deadline for requests on a particular post is "when it's no longer that day anywhere in the world". This is because I hate fiddling with time zones. If you're in the Americas, this means anywhere from a couple to a bunch of hours past midnight, depending on where you live; in Europe, it's longer than that; for the rest of the world, listen I don't actually know where the international date line is (if that's what it's called) and I don't care enough to look it up. In practice, the deadline is "whenever I get online the next day", unless I'm sufficiently annoyed or particular that I'll actually check the date stamps.

I'd prefer for you to only give me one picture per request that you want drawn as a dragon, because then I don't have to choose. However, it's perfectly okay to include extra photos if you just want to show off your cat; I'd just ask that if there's more than two of them, that you put them under a cut so they won't take up too much room on anyone's dash.

[bestworstcase]

Can I ask where you get your reading on Oz's curse? I'm just not sure where you got your interpretation(?) from

well, from the text…?

i don’t think it’s remotely unclear tbqh.

in the lost fable, light tells him “you will reincarnate, but in a manner that ensures you are never alone.” later in the same, we see that a reflection of the host remains and rebukes ozma when he begins to stray too far from the mandate (“what are we doing?” -> “this isn’t what he asked of me”). 

after the cycle begins in earnest, jinn states that “no matter what, his mind would eventually turn back to the task he had been burdened with,” and when she adds that ozma learned the importance of living with his hosts, what we see is an identical reflection of his current self observing him while he serves dinner to his family.

we know—because it has been stated many, many times—that the outcome of the merge is two identical souls sharing one mind. “eventually, you won’t be able to tell who is who anymore,” ironwood tells oscar. that’s what “you will never be alone” means, that ozma very literally cannot ever be alone because he has his reflection watching him. all the time.

now, in 5.3, oz tells the kids this:

For thousands of years, I've walked the surface of Remnant, living, dying, and reincarnating in the body of a like-minded soul. The Professor Ozpin you all met was not my first form, and clearly wasn't my last. It's... an extraordinarily strenuous process on everyone involved.

from this, we can infer that he doesn’t consider himself to be ozpin anymore—to him, ozpin was just the most recent in a long series of like-minded souls whose bodies he inhabited. (this is why i call him ozma: he doesn’t say it in so many words, but the way he talks about ozpin in this episode makes it quite clear that ozpin is not his identity.)

he also says this:

With every rebirth, my soul is eventually merged with another and I am changed, but my memories stay with me.

note the use of passive voice. oz doesn’t say he changes; he says he is changed through the merger of his soul with countless others “who’ve spent their lives trying to protect the people of remnant,” but his memories stay with him once he leaves them. remember what jinn said? “some lives were spent in mourning, many were spent attempting to forget it all, but no matter what his mind would eventually return to the task he had been burdened with.”

his curse is—pretty explicitly—a corrupted version of ascension. when an afteran ascends, they choose what their next life will be—nothing can happen to them in the tree other than what they want—and the blacksmith helps them find their way back to themselves and they’re reborn into their new, chosen purpose. they leave their factual memories behind in the tree, but the heart remembers and the self remains. they change themselves. 

ozma agreed to return so he could find salem. that’s what he wanted. his curse has changed him, over and over and over again, to fill the mold of “countless men who’ve spent their lives trying to protect remnant,” and no matter what he does, no matter how he tries to live, eventually he’s pulled back to “the task he had been burdened with.” he is not allowed to put it down. he’s not allowed to change his mind. the curse is specifically designed to prevent this. he doesn’t get to choose who or what he becomes. he doesn’t get to choose his own purpose; his purpose is a burden imposed on him by the god of light. it’s anti-ascension.

and… what happens when ozma decides to join oscar in fighting the curse, in the v9 epilogue? it hurts him. it inflicts pain on both of them while forcibly trying to push ozma forward. the instant he makes a serious effort to disobey, the curse becomes violent and punishes him.

also like. gestures at literally everything else the god of light does, to salem, to darkness, to the jabberwalker. light is terrified of change and obsessed with control; the idea that ozma’s curse is supposed to encourage him to change and grow by experiencing the world through the eyes of other people—other people whom the god of light explicitly disdains as “but a fraction of what they once were” without the brothers’ blessings!—is flatly nonsense. it’s antithetical to everything the god of light believes and values. lol

[kiarabanetmi]

“Poison” and how it speaks to all types of abuse

Hi there! I’m posting again. This is a small analysis/commentary on how the song Poison from Hazbin Hotel describes not just sexual and drug abuse, but other types of abuse as well. If you haven’t seen Hazbin Hotel or haven’t heard the song, I’ve put a link to the song below. Even if you don’t watch the show the song is amazing and I highly recommend it. Note: this is not the official episode music video, which is triggering to people, this is the before episode release version.

I also made another post earlier on my opinions on episode 4 of Hazbin Hotel. Give it a read!

Ok, so I’m going to cover some very specific lines and moments in the song. The majority of my analysis focuses on verse two and the the final verse.

This song at its core is about abuse. Angel Dust’s type of abuse is a combination of largely S/A along with physical and verbal Abuse by his pimp Valentino. But if you analyze these lyrics, this song speaks to all types of abuse and abuse victims and/or survivors, except for a few lines that are highly specific depending on situations. I’m going to focus on how this song can speak to domestic abuse victims, myself specifically. If you do not feel comfortable hearing about the following triggers then please scroll on and have a good day. You have been warned.

So context before I get into this: I was raised with a mentally ill parent as well as victim of my other parent’s former Fiance who also verbally and emotionally abused but the two of us. My mentally ill parent suffers from untreated unconventional borderline personality disorder, known as BPD. My other parent’s ex Fiance suffers from grandiose narcissistic personality disorder, known as NPD. I am no longer in contact with the ex Fiance and have no plans to see them ever again. However, I am still suffering from my parent with BPD, specifically over the holiday. We had a major fight because they believe my other parent is truly the abuser in their reality and by taking their side, I was starting to abuse them as well. This has caused me to (at least temporarily) cut off the unhealthy parent and live with the other one full time. And the unhealthy parent is a master at verbal, emotional and psychological manipulation.

Now getting onto the actual song:

Whenever I listen to the back half of verse 1 into the first chorus, I really relate to the lyrics through personal experience. It starts at the following line:

“I shoulda known that this would happen,

“I shoulda known it when I looked into your red-hot eyes

“Spewin’ all your red hot lies”

Now let’s go back to the lyrics and how it relates to me. As part of their BPD, this is especially true, and true for those who are involved with family/spouses/loved ones who are verbally and emotionally abusive. I believe any person who has different under an abuser will relate to this simple like. At some point we know the pattern, we know the signs for when we “fucked up” as it were. And we know at some point, consciously or unconsciously, that our abuser is lying.

“What’s the worst part of this hell?

“I can only blame myself.”

This line can be relatable depending on the type abuse you suffer from. In Angel’s case, he signed his soul away (literally) to his abuser. In a way I do that with my abuser every time I choose to go see them and enter that unhealthy environment. The problem for me personally is that BPD does have patterns but I find myself surprised and shocked by them. Know that now I am doing research to try and learn how to properly deal with family members with BPD, but that personality disorder does not excuse the abuse I suffer from t I’ll his parent. Mental illness is NOT an excuse for inflicting abuse, even if it’s as complex or rarely treated like BPD. But every time I go back into that environment I can only blame myself for entering that hell willingly again. Because despite the pain I know they will inflict upon me at some point, I still love my abuser. I imagine this is a similar mindset to what other victims of domestic abuse feel as well. We walk back to our abusers, usually choosing to because we still love our abuser and hope they’ll change and this time they’re telling the truth.

But that’s usually not the case.

“Cause I know you’re poison,

“You’re feeding me poison

“Addicted to this feeling I can’t help but swallow up your poison

“I made my choice and

“Every night I’m living like there’s no tomorrow.”

In my situation I relate to this line INCREDIBLY hard. It’s not just my unstable parent who is abusive. That side of my family has a long cycle of generational abuse that I am trying to break away from. But because I grew up in that situation, despite now knowing how bad and unhealthy it is, it’s what I’m used to. And unfortunately, I am used to or addicted to that chaos. For the past few months I have lived with my healthier parent and during that time, I have developed a non-chaotic, healthy lifestyle. Growing up everything was constantly shifting and changing based on the needs/wants of my unhealthy parent, since I was predominantly in their custody in my youth. Because of this, I grew up used to that chaos, considering it normal and fine, until I was shown another alternative by my other parent when they filed for custody and finally got rid of their own abusive fiancé. But because of the way I grew up, I became used to the chaos, and every time I go back to visit my abusive parent, I run the risk of falling under their spell. And unfortunately, more often than not, I do fall for it. And when I do fall for it, I fall into survival mode once again. This means that in a sense I’m “living like there’s no tomorrow”, like Angel. I don’t think about the consequences of anything other than escalating the situation, of making sure I make it out of there without some sort of fight or confrontation.

“I got so good at being untrue,

“I got so good at telling you what you want to hear,

“I disassociate disappear”

When I enter this survival mode, as I’m sure many other abuse victims and survivors do, I tend to lose myself for a time. I become someone else in order to be who my abuser wants me to be. In my personal case, I end up regressing to a smaller helpless child (not literally, but my body language does, as an unhealthy form of self soothing, being untrue and becoming who they want me to be: someone they control. I tell them what they want to hear, usually that they are right or that their pain is valid and nothing is their fault because they are the victim (which in my parent’s case of BPD is a reality that they ACTUALLY believe). Half the time when my abuser parent is tearing into me or trying to make me feel guilty or into he the bad guy (with depressingly frequent success rates), I tend to enter a sort of humble stage. I disassociate until it’s my turn to speak. I disappear for a while until it’s safe to come back out and say or do something. And when I do disassociate it’s awful. I lose small chunks of time. This has not happened yet outside of these instances of interaction with my abuser, thank goodness, but it is still dangerous to disassociate too often. I’m sure survivors of all types of abuse have disassociated at least once in their time with their abuser.

“So far beyond difficult to resist another gulp.”

Since I grew up so used to this behavior and pattern, it is like fighting my own nature to try to stand up and not fall for the lies. It’s so hard because I still love my abuser but because of their illness and their refusal to acknowledge it or seek real treatment this pattern is unending. It’s hard to resist swallowing down the poison they force in my face and flood me with. In my case, unlike Angel, my form of poison is in a pool, slowly raising towards my mouth, and I struggle not to get it not. And I imaging that’s what most other victims of abuse also feel like. That physical, emotional, sexual, psychological abuse is a poison that if left unchecked or stayed near to long will eventually kill us, either minor abuser’s action or our own.(Note, at the end of this post I have posted links the contact information of various services to help people in these situations, at least for those in the United States). Angel’s situation is also like that too, but he’s also drugged and forced to take poison by Valentino.

“My story’s going to end with me dead from your poison.”

This line hit me hardest out of everything in the song. During the latest fight with my parent, they tore into me overall and so brutally that for the first time in my life, I truly contemplated suicide as a better alternative. The verbal and mental poison they fed me for so long overwhelmed me and I felt myself wanting to die from it. I am not suicidal now, but it was an overwhelming feeling of pain, hopelessness, feeling trapped with no escape (at one point literally when I threatened to go drinking and they blocked the door, which is a tricky situation). If I hadn’t gotten out of then not already had the support system in place that I spend years setting up and learning to build, I may not be making this post right now. And there’s thousands of others like me who are still stuck in that pool of poison, but have already choked too much and succumbed to it. Never forget them.

“Poison, I’m sick of the poison,

“Im filling up my glass but it’s always hollow

“Full of poison, I’m sick of the poison,

“Wish I had something to live for tomorrow.”

And like Angel here, I’m sick of the poison as well, and every other abuse victim of any type can relate to this. At some point nothing helps anymore when you are stuck in the situation long enough. There’s no escape, and everything is hollow. There was a time when I was like this as well. My abuser had isolated me from nearly everyone else in my life save for my healthy parent, and it nearly broke me. But I found a reason to live for tomorrow at the time.

And I hope you can too. If you are reading this and relate to my story, or you heard this song and related to it in some way, then please know you are not alone. This song is not just a bop, it’s a real look at the kind of a severely abused victim that we don’t always see.

If you or your loved one are being by abused in some way, you are not alone. Here are some resources if you are in danger and need to call for help:

The Suicide Hotline: 988

The National Domestic Abuse Hotline:

The National Sexual Assault Hotline:

Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Parents

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 149 - My Thoughts/Analysis

This was an amazing chapter! Amazingly unnecessary, I mean. Spoilers for Oshi No Ko Ch 149 below. 

Oh, where to begin with this chapter. Instead of getting more information and character depth on Ai and Hikaru during an arc specifically tailor made for them, we are instead treated to the return of this love triangle bullshit. It was acceptable during Tokyo Blade, but it’s overstayed it’s welcome by now.

The “reveal” that Kana’s been eavesdropping on the Akana-Kana conversation is a cheap tactic that dredges out intrigue for Kana during the wait between this chapter and the next one. Would it kill the series to lay things out in chronological order instead of relying on these sorts of flashbacks like a crutch to create the illusion of tension? It’s a half-assed tactic that any competent writer would stay clear of because it’s the equivalent of a sucker punch to the readers’ faces. The movie arc is already shoddily made and we don’t need what little goodwill that the readers have for the series go down the drain even further.

The Akane-Kana conversation is nothing more than air. There’s no substantiality to it. No introspection on Kana’s part. There’s no introspection on Kana’s part. She basically just saw Akane and Aqua talking and immediately jumped to conclusions. While, yes, this is in her character, framing it now, like this, is basically the specter of the dreaded love triangle plotline coming back from the dead. Instead of more necessary insight on Ai and Hikaru we get yet more screentime for Akane and Kana fucking about when it comes to Aqua. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I feel absolutely no sympathy for Kana’s despair in the majority of these scenes. Everything about this situation has been entirely self-inflicted. Despite knowing that her sharp tongue is a problem she hasn’t taken any visible steps to fix that. From the flashforwards her tongue is still something that she can’t control. She hasn’t taken any steps to pursue Aqua throughout the series and is content to hang around him like an annoying mosquito. Both Akane and Ruby have already made their moves on Aqua and she’s basically just sat on her hands the entirety of the series when it comes to him. She even had the gall to say that she doesn’t even think of Aqua as a love interest despite the reader knowing very well that it isn’t true at all. 

I read somewhere online that all the panels of Kana’s crying can be used to fill two whole volumes. While I don’t know how true this is, I can certainly say that I’m starting to get tired of this whole song and dance with her. There comes a point in a narrative that you see someone in the story that’s been continuously kicked down by their own bloody choices or has every opportunity to change but never seems to do anything substantial about their own situation and you have to ask, “Why should I care?”. That’s basically where I am with her at the moment.

“My love for him is like a mother to her child!” Akane, please. I know you can mimic Ai but this comparison might be a bit too far! Not that Aqua would mind Akane acting as Ai in bed but this is a whole new level! 

Even Akane is getting fed up with Kana’s shit. Good for her! Honestly, Akane needs to get past her obsession with Arima Kana because that’s something that’s holding her back from growing as a person and an actor in my opinion.

“If I were a man, I’d definitely choose you.” This has to be some of the lowest hanging yuri bait I’ve ever seen. Get this shit out of my face. You’re going to need a hell of a lot more for me to suddenly start spouting the virtues of the Kana-Akane pairing. This conversation doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test. 

Akane pushing Kana to do something and then Kana running away seems to be the story of their relationship. If she doesn’t even have the initiative to get together with Aqua herself then she doesn’t deserve him. She might as well be the rope between the Akane-Aqua tug of war, a proxy for Akane to try and “fix” Aqua. 

Kana feeling sorry for herself and not doing anything about it. We’ve seen that before. I’m just surprised the author is pulling this stuff some more and expecting people to still have sympathy for her. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point.

Akane jumpscare! It would be creepier if her face was drawn more accurately but the paneling is kind of odd there. Slightly surprising that we’re still on this plotline—I expected a cut a while back because that’s just how this manga has been rolling recently.

I—Wow, Akane. Wow. This is going to be a completely fine plan with no repercussions whatsoever. It’s in-character for her to want to try and save Aqua, but doing it like this is almost certainly the wrong move. I didn’t think that when I said that Kana would be the rope between the Aqua and Akane tug of war that it would actually happen! 

This is going to go horribly. The fact that Akane, someone who we’ve seen is relatively intelligent among the cast, attempt something like this is just—it’s just bad. Bad writing is what it is. As soon as Aqua gets a whiff of this—and he will, because Kana is weak to Aqua in general—that’s the Kana-Aqua relationship going down the drain in the worst case scenario. Does Akane really think that this sort of manipulation is something that Aqua won’t detect when Kana acts so out of character? Her level of manipulation is leagues worse than Aqua’s if this is the best that she can come up with. 

For Kana’s part, I think this is the nail in the coffin for her attempts at actually ending up with Aqua, though I’m more than sure some fans are still hoping and praying for a Kana victory at the Aquabowl. If your waifu is basically being strung along by her rival in to vie for the main character’s hand when she herself doesn’t even have the initiative to go for it—well, it might be a bit of a controversial take, but I don’t think that’s the type of behavior of someone who’s actually going to get together with the main character. Just saying.

We already know for a fact that this plan fails because of the flashforwards. Aqua, at least in public, is still more or less single by the time the movie premieres. It’s just a matter of how bad this fallout is going to be in the meantime.

The elephant in the room is obviously Ruby. We don’t know how Aqua has reacted to the kiss, nor what he thinks about it all about it. His narration has been left in the dark for so long that it’s become quite grating. How much longer are the authors going to tiptoe around this topic? Any discussion with regards to romance is going to be incomplete unless we get Aqua’s thoughts on how Ruby kissed him. And I don’t think he’ll be very conducive to Kana trying to get in his pants while she’s being manipulated by Akane to do so.

[the-sparkling-diamond-satine]

christian and satine <3

There's a lot of stuff you'd expect on this playlist so I tried to choose songs you might not already know! Also you're the only person who asked me about these two so you get a bunch of songs haha

Don't ship these two but I love the song!

Tbh I have mixed feelings about this POTO song for Christian x Satine (*chomping at the bit, barely containing a spoiler-filled infodump/rant*) BUT out of context it is VERY PRETTY and you don't know POTO so. The vibes fit the movie characters better but you also like them so I think you will still appreciate!!

Characters I DO ship!!!!! Guy x Girl 🤝 Christian x Satine!! I LOVE right people/wrong timing romances of course haha! And Once is one of my fave things I've seen live the music is SO GOOD and it's criminally underrated

Do you want some sad Christian songs?? Regardless of your answer, I am inflicting them upon you

Want a hyper-specific song from an AU where post-El Tango de Roxanne goes differently and there is COMFORT??? (Yes. You do.)

And since NO ONE asked me about Nini (criminal tbh /j) I am making you care about my Nini playlist with me. Here is another hyper-specific song about a couple (?) on a murder road trip which I imagine takes place in an AU where Nini killed the Duke to protect Satine and now she and Santiago are on the run. Women's wrongs >>> (this also has such Sweeney/Lovett energy)

[navii-blaze]

I could go more into how becoming a spectral being represents Sally letting go of her inhibitions and self restraint but that is a topic for a different day

It is a different day (i am all ears)

I think @tinyplanetss put it into better words than I could (thank you for the kind words btw!!)

I definitely took Blaze into account when thinking about Sally, mainly because I didn't want to ripoff Blaze's character and keep Sally separate. But there is definitely an overlap between the two, Sally's just needing to get to a point where she can grow more comfortably into her roles as a leader/guardian/comrade/monarch/magic bloodline hier(?) all at the same time. Blaze differs in which she's become very confident in her ability to carry out her duties and responsibilies, but needed some help to find the value in friendship and getting out of her anti-social shell.

So, similar character development, but reversed order in what they accomplish.

For Sally specifically, I view her sense of "inhibitions" as stated in my last post as being more self-inflicted rather than an outside force inflicted barriers upon her. We already know that Sally struggles maintaining her own agency, which has lead to her confining herself into a certain role within the FF. She obviously excells at her job, but she also misses the excitement and freedom that came with being just another freedom fighter out in the field.

I do like that she doesn't display any chaos energy related or significant abilities, as it helps ground her as a relatable protagonist who's capable of standing out despite her lack of powers. That being said, a little treat here and then where she's able to step outside of her role and be at the same power level of other protagonists is always nice, which is why I'm not against the idea of her having a super form.

In the scenario that she would have a super form, things would have to be pretty dire where Sonic or other characters proficient with chaos energies wouldn't be present, and Sally would be desperate to protect her people. Or maybe it happens on accident. Either way, I'd like to think that bc of her lack of experience with the emeralds her form would be a bit unstable, and so she may not last as long or have trouble controlling her powers.

The more spectral aspect of her design comes from her letting go of the confined roles in life that she plays, and represents her having a sense of freedom that she no longer/never had access to. She's "untethered" as the comment says, she can choose what to do with her newfound power without restriction or oversight.

And I agree, the galaxy/sun symbolism was a key factor in making her design, they go well together :)

[whumpshaped]

tw fantasy discrimination (institutionalised), exploitation, mistreatment mention, capitalism

"A conscience? Ethics? I haven't looked for that around here in a long time. I know you're a soulless, disgusting creature. You and your kind... you all are."

Standing at almost seven feet, with broad shoulders, muscles tensing and untensing visibly even under the coat of fur, a mouth full of sharp teeth designed to rip flesh from bone, and a death glare directed straight at the human in question, one might've thought the image was intimidating enough to make them back off. But with two guards on either side of them, equipped with the latest (and deadliest) version of the silver-coated, monster killing weapon family, they could afford to meet her gaze with calculated coolness.

"Surely, scolding me is not the purpose of your visit."

"No. No, it's not." The werewolf, leader of not only her pack, but the entire coalition of non-human creatures, gestured for her assistant to step forward and present the documents.

Her assistant was an unassuming little thing, one chosen specifically for her docile appearance. She must've thought that by choosing a dainty nymph to accompany her on her diplomatic missions, the picture would be a little more balanced; at the very least, humans wouldn't employ twice the guards for every meeting.

She spread out the papers on the desk, then gracefully stepped back to allow the human to look them over. It was complaint after complaint, pleading letters, terrified confessions from every creature on land, in sea, and air, all about one corporation, the director of which was sitting in front of the two of them.

"How could you have let this happen?" she snarled, fangs bared in a clear display of disgust and anger. "I know damn well- we all know damn well that rich human fucks love to abuse and take advantage of my people. So you, as someone who is working with hundreds if not thousands of them should've put in place strict measures to keep those people out of this corporation."

"Madam Chancellor, please, no need for such vulgarities-"

She slammed her clawed hand down on the table, letting out a frustrated, animalistic growl, ignoring the four weapons now pointed directly at her. "I will speak however I please, and you, Director, will listen. Get these people out of your corporation. I know there's not a smidgeon of empathy in that cold, dead heart of yours, but to think that you wouldn't even care about your billion dollar company is beyond me. Do you care for nothing but causing misery? Is that your sole motivation for getting out of bed in the morning?"

"I must ask you to refrain from making such accusations, ma'am," they said calmly, staring up into her glowing, yellow eyes. "I will keep the copies of these documents, and have my employees look through them. We will conduct thorough investigations, I assure you. Anyone found guilty of the crimes you've mentioned earlier will be let go."

"You have three months, Director. And during those months, while you conduct your investigation, you will make sure that the suspects don't set foot in this building, nor any of the others you own. Am I clear?"

"Very."

There was not an ounce of fear in their eyes, a fact that she could only lament. Slowly, she straightened up again, waiting until the guards lowered their weapons as well. "Good," she said finally. "Our meeting is concluded, then. I expect regular reports sent to my office."

"Of course, ma'am."

"I hope I won't have to barge into this office ever again, Director."

As they watched the two beasts leave, the human could barely stifle a laugh. Inflicting misery, as their sole motivation? Oh, what a ridiculous idea. No, they were a businessman through and through. Money had always been the only thing that dictated which direction to take the company in.

At the same time, these primitive monsters failed to realise that the billion dollar corporation was not the actual money making machine. The company was the cover-up, the ruse designed to lure hundreds of their kind to this one place with the promise of a well-paying, flashy career; a cover-up that had gotten a little too successful by complete accident.

The business, the real money was in letting those people in, the ones she expected them to now fire. And of course, they would, because it didn't matter in the slightest. Whether they were listed as employees and granted access to these disposable freaks that way, or they were simply let in through a backdoor, or invited to afterparties, it didn't matter. The money was going to keep flowing regardless.

They picked up one of the papers, scanning the tearful testimony with critical eyes. Oh, they were about to launch an investigation alright, and they were going to make sure that there would be no complaints like this in the future.

"Bring these over to my secretary," they ordered nonchalantly. "I want to know the sender of each individual complaint."

~

@ashh-ed @whumpsday @whump-queen @the-scrapegoat @hidden-dreamland @rosewriteswhump

[tehrevving]

Hi! I remember you saying once that you’ve got the sequel for “An Incompatible Coping Mechanism” in your mind where the reader insert has her tongue cut out. That’s so deliciously fucked up and I love it. Any more thoughts about that story rotating in your mind you wanna share? All good if not! Enjoy your night!! ❤️❤️

Hello. Oh my god that was a long time ago. I am so fucking impressed you remembered that. ❤️❤️

I love 15, I love everything about it, except the ending. I get it, Noctis dying is very ‘versus’ and I get it. But Final Fantasy the series as a whole is about defying fate. If the bros and Noctis had spent ages trying to fight his fate, and failed. Then atleast that’s a compelling ending. But it didn’t. No one fought, no one tried and Noctis died.

I finished Incompatible before ep Ignis came out. So I conceived of the whole story before the ep Ignis alternative ending. My thought process was about what can I make happen, with just one OC that could cause everyone to fight harder and have Noctis survive.

My idea was to make Ardyn more evil lol.

In Incompatible, Ardyn is the full on reason for Iggys blindness, not just kind of indirectly. I wanted to give Ignis some proper resentment towards him.

In my story, Ardyn kidnaps Prompto when he does in game, but also kidnaps ‘reader’ during the alternate chapter 13. Ardyn makes Noctis choose between the two of them. She begs for Noctis to choose Prom, that she’ll be fine and so he does. The scene in game where Noctis grabs Prom from the crucifixion thing is so damn powerful I had to keep it.

So Prom ends up scarred, but he’s okay. In exchange Ardyn tortures reader. He cuts out her tongue specifically, so she can’t communicate with Ignis. To inflict maximum pain. So we have Ardyn responsible for blinding and muting Noctis’ friends.

I thought this would encourage, the 4 of them, while Noctis is in the crystal, to fight harder to find a way to save him. I hated in game how easily Ignis gave up, when we all know he would never stop fighting for Noct. And then also encourages Noctis, when he comes back in the future, to never give up.

So he ends up surviving and ushering in the dawn.

I wanna add that I have never had an outline for this. It was my idea for how the series ended, but I never planned to write it. So you’re not all missing out on a big fic that I never ended up getting to.

I have a lot of these for a bunch of stuff I’ve written. So if you’ve gotten this far, ask and you shall receive lol.

[theriverbeyond]

3, 5, 14 for the writer asks ?

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

ohhhhhh it is so hard to choose between my children but RIGHT NOW my gut is telling me it's We Can Hold You, my collective narrator Harrow Nova/Alecto dream not-exactly-sex-but-not-not-sex with background Gideon &/ Harrow.

I was working off a prompt for IdProQuo, and Nova/Alecto was a ship I hadn't even considered before but the prompt was so intriguing and RTMI that I grabbed it. i LOVE Harrow Nova AUs (my favorite Harrow to write), plus fiddling with canon to make Nova and Alecto even MEET much less suck face was a ton of fun, I felt soooooo >:3 when I figured it out.

Also I loved writing (my headcanon of) Alecto's version of desire. IMO she is like the ocean. does the ocean want to fuck? unclear, but it definitely wants to consume.

What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

*scrolls through my WIP list document* i have hope for most of them (even when that hope is very slim...) (or when the fic is so indulgent hope isn't even on the table). but whenever i think of a specific fic idea to be "ill never write this" to im like (thinking emoji) well actually.... (<- delusional)

IDK if I had to pick, probably most of my long plotty modern AU fic ideas. i LOVE long plotty modern AUs, writing a long plotty modern AU is like, a dream of mine & as my DMs can attest i am not in any way short of ideas, but i don't think any of them will be happening anytime soon every time I sit down to write one of those ideas it just does not go well

If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick?

HMMM I'd probably go with Bury Me, Bury Me, my Kiriona/Ianthe fic where no one gets off and no one is having a good time and where I finally assert my long held personal headcanons about Kiriona's stigmata/what she allows to be done with it. a comment said "I'm not sure if I'd count this as sex or like two people beating the shit out of each other in an Applebee's parking lot but it's not assault because they both agreed to fight" and it's correct.

I'd want to make it a comic book, because a logline of the fic is that Kiriona has no sexual experience whatsoever and her only point of reference is porn comics, that she tries to replicate here to limited & personally ruinous results. OR maybe a music video/AMV, because I need to inflict my Kiriona-is-in-her-edgy-2010's-alt-music-era headcanon on people

send me fanfic writing asks!

[mercuriallycooperative]

i believe in my heart that the only way Wednesday would willingly become conversant in memes would be in order to weaponize them. in the same way that, upon reaching adulthood, one may realize the joy that is deliberately using up-to-date slang completely incorrectly when speaking to younger people, in order to watch the deep and complicated pain of ‘oh my god please stop saying everything you are saying that is not how that word WORKS-’ flash across their face.

i am not sure what memes would be best for this endeavor, particularly not enduring staple memes. some, for sure, would only work once for shock, and would probably give away the game. (i am specifically prompted by a panel that has just come across my dash that says “thoughts: intrusive; ass: protrusive; trans: inclusive” with accompanying images of two Danny Phantom characters in certain poses. would sending this be a murder? yes. would it give away any plausible deniability? most likely.)

i don’t know how to deliberately accomplish inflicting that sort of emotion on a consistent basis, especially in a manner that does not undermine Wednesday’s personal chosen presentation of self, but i feel that if it is possible, that is the reason she would choose to willingly become conversant in memes. a new way to inflict suffering without legal penalty.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Yeah! I agree with most of this, and I am in fact a Feferi/Kanaya defender, but I am actually going to go to bat for them doing things at least a little out of cruelty/self-interest, because I find the fandom skews too lenient toward them overall.

Feferi is an outright hypocrite around Eridan, and given that she's smart enough not to let the mask slip around other trolls, I have to assume she's aware of it.

With Eridan:

CC: T)(is is t)(e last time I will say t)(is. CC: W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!! CC: GLUB. >38(

With Jade:

CC: I will suspend my neato quirk just for you. CC: I hereby renounce the royal mark of sea dweller supremacy in the interest of INT-ERSP-ECI-ES DIPLOMACY.

[...]

CC: Okay, you win. I have officially humbled myself before you. Entirely glubbing peasant-IFICATED for your pleasure. CC: Shall I clip my fins for you as well, your majesty?

Just to be clear, I agree that the fundamental problem with Feferi and Eridan is incompatability - Feferi just doesn't "get" him or understand his issues. She does make a genuine effort to reach out to him and act like a good moirail, and I believe she's being at least somewhat genuine when she says that she didn't break up with him sooner because she was worried he would hurt somebody or himself.

But, like, let's not kid ourselves here, she IS a casteist - moreso than Eridan by a massive margin - and is able to write off those orphaned kids in a way he can't. Confirmed by Hussie's book commentary, Feferi knew from her mom's prophesying that all the other trolls were going to die because they chose to play SGRUB anyway, which made it easy for her to not give a shit about using them to feed her lusus. Presumably, she shared this with Eridan, who woke up on Derse early and whom Feferi does genuinely care about to some extent, and for SOME REASON it didn't make him feel better.

Both the fact that their failed relationship was mostly due to Feferi genuinely not knowing how to help Eridan with his mental illness, and the fact that she probably did get some kind of ego boost/was deliberately stringing him along for his usefulness, can be simultaneously true. Homestuck is full of lovely nuances like this. Feferi isn't a bad guy, and she's not even particularly wicked to Eridan, but she IS kind of a callous, two-faced, casteist Mean Girl when she's at her worst (she loves to use slurs and mean them lmao), and that affects the way she treats him.

And if the rest of the team wasn't aware of Gl'bgolyb before SGRUB, they were hyperaware of Gl'bgolyb after - her being prototyped turns the underlings skyscraper-sized, and Hussie speculates in the book commentary about how many of her psychic abilities they inherited down the line, which required the psionics of the team to suppress during the Black King fight. I can't imagine, given the logistical threat her prototyping presented, that the topic of her feeding and placation never came up - especially because Feferi and Kanaya actually discuss it before the game:

CC: T)(oug)( I guess it will be a relief not to )(ave to worry about keeping )(er voice down anymore! GA: I Wonder If Any Other Kid On The Planet Has As Many Burdens In The Fire As You

So, even if it somehow never came up while the team was discussing what to do about all these damn enemies suddenly being massive and capable of inflicting psychic damage, the one other person on the team we can say FOR SURE knew about her feeding schedule is Kanaya. (It's also funny you mention Nepeta specifically, as she was actually Eridan's client player, so they actually must've had a ton of conversations offscreen.)

So Kanaya really doesn't have any excuses here. She knew that Eridan was under the exact same pressures as Feferi, but chooses to show him none of the sympathy she offers Feferi. Despite the fact that she's clearly sick of Eridan's ass, she still entertains him when he talks to her, letting him think of her as a close friend, and still makes him that science wand (as a joke) - something Hussie regularly calls her out for in the book commentary as part of her larger problem of being an enabler.

And if you really look back on Kanaya's journey, "enabler" is one of the biggest issues she causes - she enables Vriska, literally refusing to tell her to stop doing bad things & building up Tavros only so Vriska can tear him down again. She lets Rose's drinking problem and their codepedency persist far beyond what would be reasonable to allow. She lets Feferi have a space where Feferi can agree that Eridan is a burden to her, without ever encouraging her to break up with him or see things from his point of view.

And it's not just her enabling habit - she also has a tendency, shared with the story's other Sylph, to just kind of...stop caring about people. When she catches Vriska kissing Tavros, she decides she wants nothing more to do with them, which isn't just kind of unfair to Vriska (who didn't know Kanaya was red for her), but also terrifically unfair to Tavros, who wasn't even a particularly willing participant. She also decides that it's totally chill and cool to kill Gamzee, which is of a more debatable justifiability, but it's still worth noting that she generally places her own desire to kill him over the fact that Karkat is literally the dude's moirail, speaking to a selfishness on her part. And then, just as simply, she decides the moment has passed, and no longer gives a shit about him. And her bullying of Eridan is never framed as anything BUT that - she literally redflirts with Rose by mocking Eridan with her.

GA: He Will Hunt You Down And Goodness And Hope Will Prevail TT: Is it too late to throw myself at your mercy? GA: Yes Its Much Too Late For That

[...]

GA: Wait I Hope That Wasnt Too Emphatic GA: Maybe At This Point I Should Clarify This Is All A Big Joke

[...]

GA: The Gesture Of Hostility In This Case Was The Joke GA: I Did In Fact "Train" This Character GA: I Made Him A Wand To Shut Him Up TT: Wait, you did? Really? GA: He Wouldnt Stop Harassing Me For Your "Secrets" TT: That's incredible. Well done.

Like bro the girls are bullying himmmm 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

The thing is, callousness and casual cruelty from these two, especially as it pertains to Eridan, are in fact character flaws for both characters that add nuance and depth to them. Feferi isn't just friendly optimistic princess troll - she's a hypocrite who pretends to be less casteist than she is, clever enough not to show it around the other trolls, and she's also fully capable of not giving a shit about others dying if it suits her purposes, and genuinely doesn't seem to understand why Eridan can't do the same. And Kanaya isn't just nice all-loving team mom troll - she's actually constantly deciding that some people just don't matter to her, so it's totally cool to string them along and mock them (to their faces, even, as she does to Eridan in [S] Kanaya: Return to the Core), and also perfectly comfortable with others dying if it suits her desires.

This doesn't erase their positive attributes, or the genuinely kind things they do do for others - rather, it shows that people are people, and people are flawed, and that even people that one could broadly call "nice" or "good" are capable of some downright reprehensible cruelty if they believe themselves to be justified enough.

And I think that's beautiful. I love women's wrongs.

Murder, Love, and Destiny: An Eridan Ampora Character Study

Warnings for things from Homestuck, like discussions of child abuse, mental illness, murder, suicide, etc. etc.

Because there's a huge wall of text after this point, I'm going to summarize what I hope to convince you of in bullet point format, and then hope you'll actually read the rest of the text before arguing with me about it.

Eridan is the least casteist highblood, if you ignore all the slurs.

Those are his emotional support slurs.

Pale EriKar was not only canon, but set up to be endgame.

Eridan is incredibly plot-relevant, thematically relevant, and was definitely originally intended to be brought back to life, alongside the other dead trolls.

He's Sad.

The first thing we have to establish is what counts as "canon" for the purpose of this essay. I am only counting the original comic up to Game Over, after which there's a general consensus that Hussie kind of gave up on his original planned ending, and slapped together something that most people hate. So I am immediately disqualifying Pesterquest, supplementary material, fanworks deemed canon, the epilogues, and Homestuck^2.

Moreover, we are taking Hussie's commentaries with a grain of salt, for two reasons. The first reason is that I firmly believe - and will be arguing - that the original plan was to bring Eridan (and the other dead trolls) back; therefore, Hussie (who has a track record of playing coy with future plot twists) can't speak too fondly of him, lest he give it away. The second reason for de-emphasizing Hussie's words is that, post-retcon, Hussie isn't very well going to say that he had plans for a better ending, and then didn't execute on them; to save face, he has to act as though his trashing of several prior plot threads, including but not limited to Eridan, was the plan all along.

Therefore, this essay will not be putting too much emphasis on Word of God, and will instead be relying on textual evidence from the comic itself, of which there is plenty. So without further ado:

Eridan is a Consummate Murderer.

The reason I'm starting with this point is that, far more than any other, this truth lies at the core of his being. Eridan is formally introduced to us with a murder, and he's haunted by an overpowering genocide complex. He outright describes to Rose at one point that "killin is all i evver done practically," and uses "murder" as an expletive (ie "swweet stinkin murder"). With a conservative estimate of 5 kills per week for 4 sweeps (Vriska looks VERY young when she has to start killing, and Eridan was likely a similar age when he began), both Eridan and Vriska easily have bodycounts above 2000 - the real number is probably even higher.

At this point, many raise an objection that Eridan is only killing lusii, but I believe we need to count his kills as troll murders, for three reasons: first, a dead lusus results in the orphaned troll being culled; second, one has to assume he has had cases of trolls trying to defend their lusii, or coming after him for vengeance; and third - and most importantly - Eridan HIMSELF is thinking about the orphaned trolls.

Compare Feferi: Go Home:

That should keep her happy for a while. At least until she dies.

To Eridan: Go Home:

That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere very sad.

So Eridan, to a much greater extent than even Feferi, is thinking about the orphaned trolls he's leaving behind, and considers his own actions to be murder.

Now that we've established the facts regarding his murders - a rough bodycount, and the fact that, by his own admission, he barely had any hobbies outside of it - we can move on to the effect that it's had on him. It's not very good!

Vriska's manipul8tions and murders had to be done for her own sake - if she ever stopped, she died. Therefore, much of Vriska's personality revolves around justifying her own actions so she doesn't have to reckon with her softer feelings, like guilt or kindness - which she expresses would be viewed as scandalous by others of her caste.

But if Eridan ever stops feeding Gl'bgolyb, everybody dies. The stakes he has riding on his shoulders are, at all times, the fate of all trolls, including all his friends. Given Dualscar's title was "Orphaner," it's implied that killing lusii for Gl'bgolyb has always been a violet blood's duty, and is seen as such by the others, which is why nobody expresses gratitude for his hard work even a single time.

Which brings us to our next point:

Eridan is Crushed by Anxiety.

If Eridan stops killing lusii, everybody - especially his friends, but everybody else, too - dies.

If Eridan ever shows guilt or kindness, he'll be considered "weak" by the standards of highbloods - he shares this with Vriska.

Eridan is expected, by aristocratic tradition, to take on the mantle of his ancestor Dualscar and finish his work. Dualscar met a comedically cringefail end, so this is a massive undertaking.

Before finding out that god tiering is an option - so, for nearly his entire life - Eridan has had to live with the expectation that he will outlive all of his friends. The lowbloods from culling or dying on the battlefield, the highbloods from old age, and Feferi from being killed by the Empress when she gets old enough.

(This is reflected in who he talks to the most - Feferi, who's the only one with a natural lifespan longer than his, Vriska, who's a highblood, Kanaya, who's practically guaranteed to survive into adulthood, and Karkat, whose anonblood allows Eridan to give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Also if he can't land his concupiscent quadrants he'll die from that too, but that seems pretty secondary to the rest of his concerns.

He can't even make friends with the other highbloods, because sea dwellers are expected to hate and antagonize them.

He had a free ticket into adulthood, but would almost certainly be expected to join the army and serve as a commander. That is to say, his fate of performing the role of a vicious, murderous sea dweller seems dreadfully inevitable to him.

NO WONDER he can't stop having emotional breakdowns. NO WONDER his chatlogs swing wildly from relentless self-aggrandizement to traumadumping. NO WONDER he's obsessed with murder and death and genocide.

Doc Scratch calls him a "vengeful boy on the path of nihilism," and it's not hard to see why: Eridan's entire life has been about living up to the role imposed on him by society, sacrificing his own time and sanity for everyone else, which he "nevver got any appreciation for anywway." And all he had to look forward to was more of the same, all his friends dropping dead one by one before him. For Eridan, there has never been any hope.

SGRUB could have been a way out for him, but a combination of his own terrible choices, spurred on by his anxieties, and his teammates' unwillingness to knock some sense into him, meant that he only wound up mired even deeper in his hopelessness.

We all know about how Eridan wouldn't stop killing the angels on his planet, provoking their aggression and turning it into a ball of death. How he was definitely not supposed to be doing this, and how his stubborn insistence on it led to his further ostracization from the rest of the group. The thing is, when we look at his angel-murders from the point of view that Eridan's entire life has been about murdering things or else Something Bad™ happens, it actually starts to become... kind of sad.

KARKAT: BETWEEN A TRIGGERHAPPY PRINCE WITH A GOD WEAPON BLASTING ANYTHING THAT TWITCHED AND A MILLION CRAZED ANGELS HE DELIBERATELY ENRAGED, IT WASN'T WHAT I'D CALL AN IDEAL SOCIAL HUB. KARKAT: IF YOU WERE LONELY WHY DIDN'T YOU VENTURE OUT MORE OFTEN? ERIDAN: wwell i wwoulda but nobody else wwas vvolunteerin to pick up the slack on angel killin duties

Killing the angels is something he feels like his has to do, because his entire life has been about killing things he doesn't want to kill. He's unable to break out of that mindset on his own, and his unpleasant personality has scared off anyone who might want to help. No one on the team tries to understand his thought process on a deeper level, not even Karkat, who just tells him it was an idiotic thing to do without addressing his underlying anxieties at all. Indeed, "nobody understands."

And this is really the root of why I think so many people get the wrong read on Eridan - Eridan is constantly contradicting himself, constantly denying his own feelings, constantly pushing an image that he doesn't actually believe in, and constantly insisting that he's fine with all the horrible shit in his life - that he likes it, even. After all, he can't admit to his guilt for his murders, or how much he doesn't want to watch his friends die, or how scared he is about the future - that'd be weakness!

CC: I can't look after you anymore. CA: I DIDNT EVER NEED ANYONE TO LOOK AFTER ME CA: i was totally fuckin fine my ambitions were noble

You see his contradictory nature with his stated love of history, which he only ever offhandedly mentions - because he's not actually that interested in history, it's just something that's expected of someone of his station. And you see it with his wavy accent, which he himself calls "weird" and drops when he's trying to be emotionally sincere. And you see it with his dumbass outfit, which is very clearly an imitation of Dualscar (with the only exception being the wizard-ass scarf, because wizards are his actual interest. I don't believe he likes fashion. I genuinely believe - and Eridan himself says so - that he basically has no hobbies outside of murder).

Even being proud to be a sea dweller is pretty much an outright lie:

CC: You can't )(ave t)(e sort of affinity for "our kind" t)(at you profess if you've only spent, w)(at... CC: A few days underwater, maybe? IN YOUR W)(OL-E LIF-E!

One that he tells because he's SCARED OF THE OCEAN. Because he knows what lives in the ocean, because he's been feeding it his entire life. I see a lot of people who give Eridan an interest in marine life, and I'm telling you, that's just got no basis in canon. He's fucking TERRIFIED of the sea.

And for that matter, land dweller genocide. Eridan doesn't want to do it. Both Feferi AND his internal narration call him out for not actually wanting to do it. He outright states he wouldn't kill his friends.

CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

But he feels like he HAS to want it, HAS to believe in it, HAS to be talking about it constantly, because that's what's expected from him as a sea dweller, and a sea dweller is ALL that he will get to be. The mutation that puts a violet streak in his hair is damning. It's a fate he feels like he can't escape. Which brings us to:

Eridan is Not Actually Casteist, Well He Is But Not Like That, It's Complicated

Secondary title: Those Are His Emotional Support Slurs, Okay

In the exact same vein (haha) as secretly not wanting all the land dwellers dead, Eridan also genuinely doesn't feel like he's better than lower blood castes. Vriska and Equius obviously put quite a bit of stock into being nobility, and both have acted superior to Karkat for it. Feferi actually revels in her high status, and while she is genuinely well-meaning, she's not as interested in abolishing casteism as she is in changing the meaning of "culling" specifically (the hemocaste, aristocracy, and casteism still very much exist in a Beforus under her rule). Gamzee MIGHT be the only highblood less casteist than Eridan, but then again, as soon as he snaps, he does say a lot of casteist stuff to Equius, although it's unclear how serious he is, and he also proceeds to get really into his weird highblood clown cult.

Meanwhile, Eridan - despite all his slurs and talk of genocide - does not actually try to "pull rank" on a lowblood for being a lower caste than him with a single exception. That exception is Sollux... after he's already shown having entirely caste-neutral opinions on Sollux:

CC: But Sollux finally came t)(roug)(, and now I believe t)(e full c)(ain is complete! CA: man that guy CA: hes a fuckin drama machine it is fuckin pathetic CC: YOUR STUPID FIS)(Y FAC-E IS T)(-E DRAMA MAC)(IN-E T)(AT DO-ES NOT)(ING BUT W)(IN-E AND GLUB. CC: 38P CA: fuck SORRY CC: Anyway you s)(ouldn't say t)(at about )(im, )(e is a )(ero and )(e saved my life. CA: yeah sorry

CA: my feelins seem petty and meaninless noww CA: she had better things to wworry about than my ovverwwrought bullshit CA: like the dead guy wwho savved her CA: so forget it thanks anywway

It's only AFTER he's mad at Sollux for dating Feferi that he starts going in on Sollux with casteist rhetoric... which is treated as unrequited flirting and not serious casteism:

ERIDAN: hey finless this doesnt concern those wwith mustard sludge slippin through their vveins ERIDAN: its a matter for royalty only ERIDAN: so keep your mouth closed or ill slit you open ovver my next meal SOLLUX: w/e bro, not iintere2ted. FEFERI: -Eridan, please! I don't want to see any more dueling. FEFERI: Don't try to provoke )(im. It's not like I don't know w)(at you're doing! You keep trying to spark a rivalry wit)( )(im to get me to auspisticize between you two, and pull us out of our quadrant! FEFERI: It is t)(e oldest and lamest trick in t)(e book. It didn't work t)(en and it won't work now!

THEY don't even think he's being casteist.

In fact, directly contradicting this earlier argument he has with Feferi:

CC: T)(is is t)(e last time I will say t)(is. CC: W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!! CC: GLUB. >38( CA: pshh CA: hemospectrum begs to differ

He OUTRIGHT states his real feelings here:

CA: im the biggest fuckin idiot who ever lived CA: i cant BELIEVE i just opened up to you like a chump when i knew what was comin CA: i am one sad fuckin brinesucker CA: overemotional sappy trash youre right im not better than anybody CA: im worse than anybody CA: EVERYBODY CA: all the bodies

So the question of "is Eridan casteist" has an answer of "kind of, but also no." Eridan DOES espouse the rhetoric; he's constantly saying stuff that a casteist sea dweller "should" be saying. However, if you look at his ACTIONS, and the way he actually treats people, he doesn't actually care about blood color. He'll hit on anybody, and he's rude as fuck to everybody. The real problem with him is that he's terrible to talk to, not that he's discriminatory.

That's the thing about Eridan. Understanding him means looking past the way he presents himself, the lies he tells to himself, and even, at times, the way the narration presents him. His "overblown emotional theatrics" seem a lot less overblown when his problems ARE so real, deep-seated, and constantly causing him an unimaginable amount of anguish.

The problem is, the main people he has to bounce those problems against are Feferi, Vriska, and Kanaya, three of the people most comfortable with their privileged positions, for whom Eridan's genuine emotional distress seems like needless melodrama. Feferi loves being a princess, Vriska enjoys her noble privileges, Kanaya doesn't need to worry about culling. But for Eridan, his noble status, and the duties and expectations placed on him for it, have caused him nothing but pain - of course he would feel like nobody understands. Most of his closest friends genuinely don't, nor do they try to.

Because that's what he is at his core - a traumatized fucking child, who doesn't see any way out. Eridan is not a casteist genocidal sea dweller... he just wishes he was one, and tries to be one, because if he actually was one, he wouldn't feel so awful and scared and sad all the time. He'd be normal, like his friends.

The reason he constantly spouts anti-land dweller rhetoric and uses casteist language is to assuage this cognitive dissonance. That's why he has to come off so strong, present himself in such an aggrandized way, act like such a douchebag. They're his emotional support slurs. He doesn't actually believe what he says, which means he's a Bad Sea Dweller, which means he's Failing, which means Something Bad Will Happen, so he'd better get his ass in line and say something casteist!

And it's all made worse because:

Eridan is Dumb of Ass (and True of Word)

Oh my god you guys he's so stupid that it hurts.

Okay, that's not entirely fair. Eridan is clearly well-educated and book smart; he has some of the most elegant prose out of the trolls, and he's prone to going off on insane rants with it. (Actually, his language gets more flowery and showy when he's trying to impress a stranger, and gets progressively more laid back, chill, and even kind of "bro"-y when he starts talking to people he doesn't feel like he needs to impress.)

CA: at this point i find all her adorable black pixie dabblins to be prime kiddie playtime shit CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about

What I mean is this: his brain is so full of anxiety and cognitive dissonance and murder and death that he struggles to care about other people, which has devastating effects on his social skills. I go really in-depth on how his though process informs his behavior here. The question may have popped up in your mind already: if his casteism stuff isn't actually real, then what is Eridan actually like? The answer is, overwhelmingly, and discomfortingly, SINCERE.

This boy is gunning at 100% emotional earnestness 100% of the time, and it's deeply uncomfortable for others to deal with. He'll swing wildly from insults and derogatory language, to stating a desire to kill all land dwellers, to awe and amazement at his friends' prowess, to demanding that they do things for him, to traumadumping and venting, without missing a beat. Often in the same conversation.

CA: kan its hard GA: What CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

He's also specifically terrible at parsing hostility. Functionally, he interprets all hostility aimed AT him as either pitch/ashen flirting or "ironic repartee," and similarly views his own hostile words as verbal jousting, pitch/ashen advances, or even just factual descriptions of the world around him (ie calling Nepeta a "kittycat shipper cavve girl"). Hostility and aggression are just kind of his baseline, default state of being, and he basically has no ability to differentiate between good and bad attention. I talk more in-depth about his emotionally bereft upbringing (and shitty lusus) here, but suffice to say that our boy isn't getting any emotional support at home, and as a result, craves attention, no matter what kind.

This also means he's insanely gullible. For example, Rose calls him an idiot to his face, and then blows up his computer, sarcastically calling it "your first lesson in showmanship." Eridan proceeds to literally considers it that, blowing up Jade's computer after he's done talking to her. Furthermore, Kanaya sees him as a burden, insults him to his face, and pretty much just bullies him along with Rose for fun.

So she trains Eridan to become a powerful white wizard of hope to challenge her, as a joke.

And yet, in spite of all that, Eridan still has nothing but gratitude and praise for Kanaya:

ERIDAN: kan i been meanin to thank you KANAYA: For What ERIDAN: for all that trainin you did ERIDAN: i wwouldnt be the incredible holy wwizard i am noww wwithout your help KANAYA: But I Didnt Even Really Train You I Just Made You A Wand ERIDAN: yeah wwell thats all i needed i guess ERIDAN: i just needed for someone to showw a little faith in me so im sayin thanks i owwe ya KANAYA: Okay Then Youre Welcome KANAYA: I Hope You Use Your Magnificent Powers Of Light And Hope For Goodness And Purity And Lets Not Forget Science ERIDAN: dont wworry im all ovver that shit you dont evven knoww KANAYA: Uh Oh I Hope That Didnt Come Off As Too Sarcastic ERIDAN: wwhat KANAYA: The Thing I Just Said KANAYA: I Didnt Even Realize How Sarcastic I Was Being Its Starting To Become A Problem I Think KANAYA: Please Dont Take Too Much Offense ERIDAN: haha damn kan if thats your idea of offense bein made then i honestly gotta fuckin wworry for you ERIDAN: tell you wwhat ill givve you some lessons in dealin out the dark umbrage to repay you for your tutelage in the wwhite science

Like, he's in the middle of genuinely thanking her for believing in him, she makes fun of him to his face, and his response is to laugh it off and offer to teach her how to properly insult someone. It's honestly... kind of sad. Not that he doesn't deserve the ridicule, but what we're seeing here is a traumatized, emotionally neglected boy trying to communicate the best that he can that he loves and appreciates his friends, and receiving nothing but mockery in return.

It's really not a surprise, then, that he goes off the deep end. His entire life prior to the game has been shit; he got broken up with as soon as he entered the game (by someone who didn't even care enough not to use fish puns while doing it); he's ostracized and avoided for the game's duration; and then he spends the rest of his time on the meteor being bullied. He feels deeply hopeless and anxious about their situation because he literally doesn't know how else to exist, and his concerns are dismissed and mocked at every turn. When Feferi turns on him with intent to kill, that's his breaking point.

I see a lot of people say he goes grimdark, or succumbs to external influence somehow, but I don't think that needs to be true (nor is it) - he's just a deeply traumatized kid with almost no support network who's finally been pushed to the edge, despite displaying every possible warning sign and making multiple cries for help. Yes, ultimately, he's guilty for his own actions, but his killing spree - alongside Gamzee's and Vriska's - represents a cohesive failure as a team to address very clear problems in their midst.

So Feferi and Kanaya are sick of his ass. Sollux hates him platonically, Equius doesn't like him, and Nepeta thinks of him as a creep. Vriska is his awkward ex, and Terezi agrees with him when he calls himself pathetic. He never interacts with Tavros, Aradia, or sober!Gamzee. Is there anyone that treats him nicely?

Uh, okay, so I swear this isn't shipping goggles -

Pale EriKar Is Canon And I Can Prove It

So, I'm going to start this with a disclaimer: you can ship what you want to ship. I don't mind. I don't care. Headcanons are valid, death of the author, etc. What you do in your free time is up to you.

What I am attempting to argue in this section is that an Eridan/Karkat moirallegiance was heavily foreshadowed, one of the most heavily foreshadowed things in the entire comic, and - assuming that the original ending of Homestuck included all the dead trolls being brought back and redeemed - was going to be endgame. There's a torrential amount of evidence pointing to this, and very little of it is acknowledged even by the EriKar shippers, which is a shame.

At the very least, I'll be happy if I can convince some Karkat RPers to be extra nice to Eridans, because they are actually just friends who care deeply about each other. Canonically.

The first thing to note is that Eridan and Karkat, at least prior to SGRUB, talk all the time, to the point where Feferi feels the need to comment on it:

CC: You know, I'm not sure w)(y we never talk about our romantic aspirations. CC: We s)(ould more often. It is kind of -EXCITING! CA: shrug CC: Probably because you fill your gossip quota wit)( your nubby )(orned bro. CC: You leave not)(ing left to talk about wit)( your dear sweet moirail! CC: We are supposed to )(elp eac)( ot)(er wit)( t)(at stuff too, remember. CA: maybe CA: seems kinda CA: odd though

("Can you please stop having an emotional affair with Karkat" "Eh, I'll think about it")

The second thing to note is what the contents of those conversations entail. Sure, they "gossip," but it goes deeper than that, because they gossip about things that Karkat would NEVER gossip about with anybody else, because Karkat usually respects his "VERY GOOD FRIEND"s. For example, here Eridan mentions that Karkat has speculated on Kanaya's love life with him:

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that GA: No Thats Not It CA: yeah it is your real feelins run pretty awwful RUDDY methinks evverybody knowws it CA: especially that assblood karkat he and me havve you so pegged about that its upright silly

And it's not even a one-off thing, because here Karkat is again, mentioning Nepeta's crush on him:

KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK? KARKAT: HER DISINTEREST IN YOUR ADVANCE WASN'T A REFLECTION ON YOU AT ALL. KARKAT: COME ON, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.

It's a situation he's been trying to "tiptoe around for a long time," and he tells ERIDAN, of all people? MULTIPLE TIMES? (AND HE ALSO TELLS ERIDAN THAT THE REJECTION WASN'T HIS FAULT???? WHAT??????)

So we've established that they talk frequently and about some pretty seriously sensitive topics. But did you know that they also talk about... their feelings?

See, the thing is, Karkat has always been weirdly nice to Eridan. Here he is in a memo near the very beginning of their game, when Karkat is at his most "rah rah, I'm the big bad leader":

FCA: i got a problem FCA: wwith feferi FCA: and im really kinda sittin here in bad shape about it emotionally speakin CCG: OK, WELL CCG: I GET THAT, I HEAR YOU BRO CCG: BUT THIS IS STILL NOT THE RIGHT PLACE FOR THIS SO I'VE GOT TO BAN YOU. CCG banned FCA from responding to memo. CCG: BUT SERIOUSLY JUST GET IN TOUCH WITH ME IN PRIVATE ABOUT IT, OK MAN? CCG: WE'LL GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHTENED OUT.

Compare that to Tavros asking for advice later down in the same memo:

PAT: sINCE i DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE NOW, bUT MAYBE HELP ME, PAT: aBOUT A THING THAT HAS TO DO WITH A GIRL, PAT: lIKE, PAT: a ROMANCE THING, yOU MIGHT KNOW ABOUT, CCG: YOU PEOPLE ARE IMBECILES. CCG: ALL OF YOU. CCG: I AM NOT POSTING THESE MEMOS TO COUNSEL YOU ON YOUR PAST AND FUTURE DATING PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CCG: WHY ARE YOU ALL SUCH BASKET CASES. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY ANYMORE. PAT: sORRY, CCG: SHOULD I BAN YOU? WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT ANYMORE! ONE OF YOU STOOGES WILL BE RIGHT ON THE LAST ONES HEELS WITH ANOTHER SOB STORY. CCG: JUST CCG: HURRY UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS BRO.

He then proceeds to dispense no actual love advice; he just points out that Vriska can totally read this memo too, and then mocks them both when she shows up - thus making it clear that he is giving Eridan special treatment.

You see it again in his discussion with Eridan in [S] Kanaya: Return to the Core, where Eridan invokes a "pact" between them, and Karkat immediately plays nice with him, despite himself being extremely high-strung and stressed out:

KARKAT: RIGHT, IT'S POWERED BY SCIENCE, I FORGOT. KARKAT: OR HOPE. WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS. ERIDAN: i dont fuckin need this from you i take enough shit as it is from the rest a you dirtscrapers i thought you and me had a kinda pact or wwhatevver KARKAT: OK FINE, SHUT UP, I APOLOGIZE. I KNOW IT'S TOUGH BEING YOU.

That's definitely pity, which Karkat states to be the basis of all relationships besides pitch. But, sure, okay, Karkat is sometimes nice to his friends. He is, after all, the Friendship Troll, so that's not necessarily out of the ordinary. But how about the fact that it goes both ways?

That's right, Eridan "100% aggro 100% of the time" Ampora is actually really considerate toward Karkat's feelings, and basically nobody else's. Upon hearing that Karkat is distressed that Sollux has died, Eridan actively puts his own meltdown about his breakup with Feferi on pause:

TC: BeCaUsE OuR GoOd bRo sOlLuX JuSt kIcKeD ThE WiCkEd mOtHeRfUcKiN ShIt CA: wwhat the fuck do you mean by that CA: are you sayin hes dead TC: YeAh :o( CA: oh fuck CA: oh god fuck noww i feel like an asshole

He then goes on to chastise Gamzee for his shitty advice, demanding to be given the chance to comfort Karkat himself instead:

TC: BuT I ToLd hIm tO Be cHiLl TC: BeCaUsE ThErE Is a mIrAcLe cOmInG, i cAn fEeL It CA: that is the wworst fuckin advvice CA: wwhat an awwful thing a you to say CA: MAGIC ISNT REAL STUPID STOP BELIEVVIN IN IT TC: i'Ve gOt tO BeLiEvE At wHaT My hEaRt tElLs iN Me, EvEn iF It's a fAkE ThInG TC: HoNk CA: this is a lot a pointless fuckin rubbish and isnt no emotional help to him or me either for that matter CA: put kar on

Before finally giving up when Gamzee insists he's "too scared of Jack" to help, drinking some Faygo, and trying to ask past Karkat for help, because past Karkat isn't sad yet about Sollux dying. So, to recap,

Eridan's first instinct when in emotional duress is to go to Karkat.

Eridan feels like he knows Karkat well enough to know that Gamzee's advice would be useless (and is proven right by the fact that Gamzee and Karkat's moirallegiance fails for similar reasons).

Eridan is willing to shelve his own emotional meltdown for Karkat's sake.

Eridan demands to be the one to provide Karkat with emotional support.

And this is, again, not a one-off thing. In the memo Karkat opens right after Eridan and Gamzee have both turned murderous, after he's spent several minutes making death threats toward Eridan and insulting him directly, he goes:

CCG: I'M SO UPSET, I'M JUST COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. PCA: yeah i knoww wwhat its like you wwanna talk about it

Eridan spends this entire memo under the belief that it's a completely run-of-the-mill conversation they're having:

PCA: i mean yeah obvviously i kneww you wwerent serious PCA: i guess i appreciate the effort youre puttin into cheerin me up PCA: i can alwways count on you for some good ironic repartee kar nobody else really gets our sense a humor CCG: UGH, NO PCA: are you busy PCA: you said youd try to make it to lowwaa soon wwell howw about it

Which implies that offering to listen to Karkat's feelings is also a completely regular thing for them.

But something magical is ALSO happening within this last memo, and to really explain it, I'll first have to be a little mean to the GamKar shippers (sorry).

So, canonically, GamKar doesn't work out for them, despite also being somewhat foreshadowed. In fact, they feature on Nepeta's shipping wall, which is actually, in my opinion, foreshadowing that it WOULDN'T work out. (Nepeta's ships being wrong, and shipping being something she needs to learn to outgrow, is a whole essay on its own, that I'm not getting into here.)

But the thing is, the seeds for them not working out were also planted in the first - and only - real post-moirallegiance interaction that they have with each other, where Gamzee tries to calm Karkat down... and FAILS:

GAMZEE: naw brother, i was just about to all say for you to try and get your settle down on, maybe. GAMZEE: :o( ... KARKAT: OK KARKAT: OK YEAH KARKAT: I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT. KARKAT: NO, YOU'RE RIGHT, I SHOULD RELAX. KARKAT: AND BREATHE. KARKAT: I MEAN, WHAT ARE MOIRAILS FOR, RIGHT? KARKAT: THIS IS HOW IT WORKS, I STOP YOU FROM KILLING EVERYBODY, THEN YOU RETURN THE FAVOR AND CALM ME DOWN AND I JUST KARKAT: BREATHE KARKAT: LIKE KARKAT: THIS... KARKAT: SNIIIIIIIIIIIIFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK, THAT SUN IS BRIGHT. KARKAT: CALL ME CRAZY, BUT IT'S KIND OF HARD TO RELAX WITHIN A STONE'S THROW FROM, OH, I GUESS ONLY THE BIGGEST FUCKING STAR ANY MORTAL HAS EVER LAID EYES ON. ... KARKAT: BUT I MEAN, CAN THIS BE HEALTHY? KARKAT: AREN'T WE GOING TO GET BURNED OR HAVE OUR RETINAS SCORCHED BY LOOKING AT IT? KARKAT: OH GOD I THINK I'M HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.

But let's go back to that memo where Karkat is freaking out in every way possible. This is how he starts that memo - so upset about the deaths of his friends and terrified by Gamzee that he can barely string together a coherent thought:

CCG: WE ARE SO SCREWED. CCG: OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. CCG: GUYS, I AM TERRIFIED, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. CCG: I'M IN A ROOM FULL OF BODIES, AND I THINK I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TURN MY BACK ON THEM? CCG: OH MY GOD, I JUST HEARD A HONK. ... CCG: FEFERI, I'M SORRY. CCG: IT WAS MY FAULT, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. PCC: Sorry for w)(at?? CCG: FOR CCG: I CCG: I CAN'T DO THIS CCG: IT'S TOO MUCH FOR ME, I'M SORRY.

In fact, he's so distressed that he bans Past!Feferi and Past!Gamzee almost immediately after they come in. But then Eridan comes in, and... I mean, first of all, just compare how long it takes for him to ban Eridan:

But more interesting are the contents of their conversation. Over the course of talking to Eridan... Karkat completely calms the fuck down. Like he's entirely forgotten that he's shitting his pants with fear. In fact, he even starts critiquing Eridan for his dumbassery:

PCA: evven if i wwasnt compelled to think you wwere still bein flippant and ironic wwith me you cant exactly outright reject me can you CCG: WHY NOT PCA: cause youre future you PCA: doesnt count unless its present you til then its all fair game CCG: IS THIS REAL, ARE YOU BEING IRONIC OR SOMETHING, I CAN'T EVEN TELL ANYMORE CCG: THE PROBLEM IS, I CAN'T PUT THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR PAST YOU AT ALL, SO I DON'T KNOW. ... CCG: YOU'RE KILLING ANGELS NOW, AREN'T YOU PCA: no CCG: YOU ARE KILLING FUCKING ANGELS, RIGHT NOW, IN THE PAST, WITH YOUR SHITTY GUN. I JUST KNOW IT. PCA: wwell uh PCA: therere just so damn many kar and theyre not gettin any less bloody pissed is the thing CCG: THIS IS WHY IT WOULD NEVER WORK BETWEEN US, MAN.

It's extremely funny. Over the course of talking to Eridan, he goes from:

CCG: OH GOD OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD CCG: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

To:

CCG banned PCA from responding to memo. CCG: ANYWAY CCG: THAT'S IT I GUESS.

Eridan isn't even trying to calm Karkat down. He still succeeds in doing so. This is because they are soul mates. And I mean that in the sense that the comic literally calls being moirails soul mates, which it doesn't do for the other quadrants:

A reasonable human translation would be the concept of a soul mate, but in a more platonic sense, and with a more specific social purpose.

That "social purpose" being that an even-tempered troll calms down a more hot-tempered one, and vice versa.

It also goes on to note:

But some pale pairings, as the one above [referring to a picture of Nepeta and Equius], will be strikingly obvious to all who know them.

But what's really interesting is the next page.

And yet others will seem to have been hatched for each other.

Did you catch that? Let me zoom in.

(Also, the blue and red cuttlefish to represent Sollux - Feferi and Sollux spend the whole game together, and even wind up talking about their feelings constantly in a pile - more on piles in a sec.)

In fact... in Eridan's first visual appearance...

The crab has always been there for him.

It's also important to talk about the bottle of Faygo that's been photoshopped to be candy red, Karkat's blood color. The path that it takes actually directly mirrors Karkat's relationships with Gamzee and Eridan - it's initially something that Gamzee has, but winds up being ejected out of his life, and washes up on Eridan's shore. In fact:

TC: SnAtCh aN IcEcOlD, dOg TC: MoThErFuCkIn cHuG ThAt sHiT LiKe yOu aNd tHe bOtTlE WaS ReUnItEd lOvErS CA: are you recommendin a bevverage to me or somethin CA: is that wwhat this is TC: YeAh mAn SlAm A FaYgO CA: i dont havve a fuckin faygo you stupid fuck wwhy wwould i keep that disgusting shit on hand TC: ArE YoU MoThErFuCkIn sUrE AbOuT ThAt? CA: oh CA: oh god youre right i do CA: i totally forgot about it TC: YoU SeE MaN TC: MoThEr TC: FuCkIn TC: MiRaClEs TC: :o)

When Gamzee and Eridan discuss this exact bottle, Gamzee even likens it to "reunited lovers"; it's something that Eridan has had this whole time (after all, he was cheating on Feferi with the guy), but never realized.

There are a few miscellaneous things that don't really mean anything on their own, but put next to all this other stuff, is worth considering, so I'll list those now.

First, they both do the bonk:

Second:

CG: ARE WE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF STUFF I SAID. TA: eheheheh you LIITERALLY a2k me that every tiime are you jokiing. TA: ii cant even tell anymore. CG: IT'S A JOKE MORON. CG: HONESTLY I'M JUST GLAD NOBODY ELSE IS PRIVVY TO OUR CONVERSATIONS.

Third, Karkat muses to his future self about how he misses his friends, especially the assholes, two pages before staring at a dead Eridan's ass (joking, he's definitely looking at WV, but it's still significant that this thought is being associated with Eridan):

CCG: I MEAN, DON'T GET ME WRONG. CCG: I MISS ALL OF MY DEAD FRIENDS A LOT. CCG: EVEN THE ASSHOLES! I MISS THEM TOO. MAYBE EVEN ESPECIALLY THEM, IN SOME PERVERSE WAY. CCG: AND I SHOULD BE RELIEVED THAT THEY ALL SEEM TO BE HAPPY IN SOME WAY, EVEN IF IT'S BY FLOATING NEBULOUSLY THROUGH DREAM PROJECTIONS WITH THEIR FREAKY BLANK EYES. CCG: AND I GUESS I AM RELIEVED ABOUT THAT. CCG: BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT'S LEFT ME UNSETTLED.

Fourth, in the same conversation, he bemoans his failed relationship with Terezi, before Future!Karkat chastises Past!Karkat for his instability and mixed signals. Going back to the page on moirallegiances, an explicit function of a proper pale relationship is stabilizing a troll's other relationships:

The two partners in a strong pale relationship will serve to balance and complement each other's emotional profiles, and thus allow their other relationships to be more successful.

Of course, I don't need to tell you how messy and unstable Eridan's relationships have been.

And finally, Piles of Stuff™ are associated with moirails, and directly stated in-comic to cause an outpouring of emotion:

Standing near this pile stirs powerful emotions. The closer you stand to piles of stuff, the more freely the feelings flow. It is a law of reality.

So here's a seven-word tragedy for you: For Sale, Shitty Wand Pile, Never Used:

ERIDAN: at least i got the upright basic decency to hide my shitty wand pile somewwhere in the lab you wwont find it dont evven bother lookin KARKAT: WHY DO YOU ASSHOLES HAVE PILES OF THINGS, JUST STOP.

(Which he specifically tells Karkat about.)

So, yeah, what I'm saying is, there's just, like, a weirdly large amount to read into here. That Karkat and Eridan are probably soulmates or whatever. And that this is important because...

Eridan Is Plot Relevant (Well All The Dead Trolls Are But This Is An Essay About Eridan)

So. Now we are going to talk about themes. Yes, like we are in schoolfeeding again. I'm going to keep it simple, because "The Themes of Homestuck" is a whole essay on its own, and this one about just the shitty fish boy is already way too long.

I think it's fairly non-controversial to posit that the main theme of Homestuck is, "children should mature, care about each other, and throw off the shackles of their old society, because they will be responsible for a new world one day."

Up until Game Over/the Retcon, this is so prevalent and well-established that SBURB/SGRUB's coming-of-age themes will outright be commented upon by the characters, and the main villain is a child who deliberately stunted his own growth so he could go around kicking over other peoples' toys forevermore.

So, the thing is, with that being the theme of Homestuck, if ALL of the Alternian trolls don't survive to the end, the ending is thematically unsatisfying, because the message suddenly gains an addendum of "well, some kids just need to die," which totally sucks. Like, sure, Eridan was a violent, crazed murderer even at the best of times, but his permanent death within the canon ending kind of means that the comic is saying that people in his position don't deserve kindness or second chances. That position being a traumatized, emotionally neglected child, who was being bullied by people he considered his friends. It's a pretty terrible message.

It's even worse when you consider what other trolls don't make it to the end - Nepeta, the most outspoken troll against the hemospectrum (and Davepeta does NOT count, don't try to tell me the final culmination of Nepeta's character arc is being combined with some guy she barely knows and a bird). Feferi, who genuinely wanted the best for others, even if she was kind of a privileged princess. Aradia and Sollux also stay behind in the bubbles, even though their lives have pretty much been endless parades of suffering and being used by other people. Even Equius doesn't deserve it - he was kind of a casteist freak, but not irredeemably so, and the fact that he became kinder to Karkat over the course of SGRUB proved that he had the capacity to change. And Tavros, allergic to himself and being insulted by Vriska, is a terrible way to end his arc.

It's also really clear that, since half his friends are dead, Karkat just doesn't really have anything to do. His title is the Knight of Blood, and Blood is about bonds - romance, friendship. And yet, he ends the comic having never figured out what Blood was about, with no confirmed filled quadrants (sorry DaveKat likers, but within the comic itself, DaveKat is never confirmed), and most of his bonds nothing more than ghosts in the bubbles. It's a terribly unsatisfying ending for the most narratively important troll.

I think, then, that even if you don't agree that Homestuck should have ended with full revivals and redemption arcs for all the trolls, the essay is going to proceed on like you do, so, sorry, I guess.

The thing with Eridan, specifically, is that he's actually tied deeply into the plot and themes, and his return means more than just Karkat finally getting a date (although that's important, too). Eridan is directly intertwined with a prophecy to kill Lord English; he's set up to mirror Caliborn and Calliope; and thematically, his redemption would be the most clear instance of the "interrogating society" part of the theme of Homestuck, because Eridan is kind of the Society Troll. And also, he was definitely supposed to be Roxy's wizard boyfriend.

Just gonna get that last one out of the way real quick because it's a fast one, Roxy fucking loves wizards and is a hipster. Eridan is a wizard and is also a hipster. Roxy has a crush on a prince. Eridan is also a prince. Roxy wears a purple striped scarf. Eridan wears a blue striped scarf. Roxy uses rifles. Eridan uses rifles. Momlonde's introduction includes a passive-aggressive fridge battle that features a cameo of Eridan's quirk.

Using the colorful MAGNET LETTERS, you recently left a succinct message, which may or may not have been directed toward anyone in particular. But you couldn't find the letter W, so you just stuck two V's together. Your mother then purchased a fresh pack of W's and left them there for your convenience.

Yeah. So. Uh. Not only did Eridan need to be brought back to date Karkat pale, but he also needed to be brought back to date Roxy flushed. Can you imagine how funny it would be. They'd get together within 5 minutes of meeting for the first time and Rose would lose her shit. Anyway.

Him being a parallel to Calliope and Caliborn is also a quick one - Caliborn uses Riflekind/Sceptrekind, and Calliope uses Pistolkind/Wandkind. Eridan's two weapons are rifles and wands. Lord English is described as an evil wizard and at one point is shown using Calliope's wand. Eridan is also an evil wizard who uses a wand.

Look, I'm not saying that Eridan is necessarily directly related to these two, nor am I even necessarily saying that he and Roxy HAVE to date, but I am saying that he's got Weird Plot Connections that make him bizarrely relevant to characters that only come into play well after his death - almost like the comic was setting up that he would be coming back. His reaction to Cronus supports this, which I go into detail about here.

There's other strange "Eridan's plot important" things, too - like the fact that he's completely unimpressed by Faygo, considering it to be "just soda," and seems to be the only non-cultist who's okay with it. Or the fact that he's actually been awake on Derse since before the game (but unable to hear the horrorterrors, maybe foreshadowing some psychic resistance?) which he casually reveals to Kanaya and which Terezi is aware of, hence he's included in the people she names are "in" on the existence of the game. Or the fact that the genetic code for Alternia's first guardian was written within the pages of four FLARP books, with the addition of a fifth code Gamzee wrote in Karkat's ~ATH book... but Eridan was the fifth FLARP player in the team, implying that Doc Scratch/LE influencing Gamzee caused him to usurp Eridan's part of the first guardian code, giving LE his way into the trolls' universe.

Individually, it's all kind of nothing, but it just paints a bigger picture of Eridan being weirdly relevant, especially when we get to the juicy stuff:

The Prophecy

ARANEA: The 8ard of Hope may seem a little jaded these days, 8ut he once had a deeply a8iding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. ... [T]his magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. 8ut the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. ... ARANEA: 8ut at some point he 8ecame disillusioned with magic. If there ever was any truth to his far fetched vision, the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or if his descendant proved to 8e as much of a failure as he did, then perhaps on to some other Hero of Hope.

ERIDAN: i slaughtered enough angels to knoww my limits and wwhere i stand against the lord of all angels they prophecized

GG: im pretty sure hes from the future! CA: wwhy GG: because he said hes my grandson CA: wwhat the fuck is a grandson CA: is that some kind of pervverse human familial thing GG: umm yes ... CA: that gun i just gavve you is somethin of a hatchright to the kid CA: happy i could play a role in your dirty stinkin lineage GG: like an heirloom? i guess it could be ... CA: i kinda think thats wwhy i found the gun in the first place CA: but noww im forsakin it because fuck i just found a better destiny than my old crappy one wwhich i nevver got any appreciation for anywway

Jake is supposed to have been the one to defeat Lord English. (No, Jake defeating pre-LE Caliborn right before he gets sealed into Cal doesn't count! He doesn't even get the final blow in that fight, DIRK does.)

But Eridan at one point had that destiny on his shoulders. Aranea turbohealing Jake, and the resultant hope field, summons a bunch of angels, which are heavily associated with Eridan - yet another random connection that Eridan has with future plot events.

Jake was another character, alongside Karkat, who was kind of reduced to a joke by the end, despite the fact that he had literally, directly, been passed the destiny of defeating Lord English. It's hard not to see this as a consequence, at least in part, of removing Eridan from the story. By cutting him out of the fabric of the ending, several plot threads - including this prophecy - are left dangling in irrelevance. And so Jake, like Karkat, now has nothing to do.

Homestuck is generally a series where every prophecy does come true, which makes it kind of startling when several prophecies fail to - Feferi's to "unite the two races," Jake's to defeat Lord English, and Karkat's to bring "compassion, forgiveness, and equality among all bloodlines" in the Signless's place.

That last one is actually relevant to:

The Thematic Importance of EriKar As Soul Mates

Eridan represents the worst aspects of Alternian society. He's a sea dweller at the top of the caste structure, with free reign to murder whoever he wants, soaked in the blood of thousands of innocent trolls. He espouses the casteist rhetoric that their society is built on, calling for the deaths of all land dwellers and the oppression of the lower castes. And while he should be benefitting from his position of privilege, it has also done nothing but hurt him.

Karkat, meanwhile, is a pariah. A mutant who would've been culled on sight, who spent his entire life living in hiding, and most of the game in fear that he would be ostracized or worse by the rest of his friends if they found out about his blood color. He's also the second coming of Troll Jesus, and thus, more despised by the Alternian ruling class than a mutant normally would be. For most of his life, he dreamed of nothing more than finding belonging within the society that had deemed him unfit.

Their friendship is something that "should not be." The highblood and the mutant. The royal-v and the off-spectrum. The empress's sea dweller and the second coming of the signless. Eridan "should" see Karkat as a miscreant to cull on sight. Karkat "should" be terrified of Eridan's very existence.

But in reality, Eridan doesn't give a shit about blood color, and Karkat just wants to be accepted. Eridan just wants someone to care about him, and Karkat loves his friends. Aside from Feferi, Eridan is the only highblood who never comments about Karkat's mutant blood, and they were best buddies even before Eridan knew.

Eridan and Karkat getting together isn't JUST the two most undateable trolls on the team finally landing a stable quadrant. These two, moreso than any other pairing, represent the themes of Homestuck. Children growing up, caring about each other, and throwing off the shackles of their old society.

In the pre-retcon timeline, their team failed to do so. This led to Gamzee falling into his highblood clown cult, Equius letting himself and Nepeta die by submitting to his place in the hemospectrum, Vriska killing Tavros because she couldn't allow herself to show weakness, and Eridan completing his caste's dream of genocide. Karkat spent the entire meteor trip and beyond beating himself up about it, since he considered it all to be his fault.

But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, they have the chance to, one by one, redeem themselves. I believe that's how the original ending would have gone: Terezi would ask John to bring Vriska back, because she only feels comfortable fixing her own mistakes. Vriska would then have asked John to bring back Tavros, whom she regretted killing. Tavros would be there for Gamzee, rendering him an ally. Gamzee would ask John to bring back Equius and Nepeta. Equius would ask John to help him not make the same mistakes with Aradia, and Aradiabot would catch John by the wrist and demand he bring her back in time to before she died, allowing her to circumvent her own death and Sollux's guilt. Sollux would ask John to keep him from provoking Eridan, saving Feferi. And Feferi would be pretty ok with the way things were... but KARKAT would then pull John aside, and drop an entire book of mistakes he made on John's lap, and this would result in a finalized timeline where all his friends are alive and god-tiered.

Because all the trolls SHOULD have survived.

Vriska should've survived because people should be allowed to have second chances.

Tavros should've survived because caring about each other, and being willing to show kindness and mercy, are good things.

Gamzee should have survived because people mired in religious fundamentalism and cults deserve to be offered a helping hand.

Equius should've survived because people should be allowed to grow and change their beliefs.

Nepeta should've survived because she was the anti-casteism troll. Casteism is bad, folks! Not only that, but I'm convinced that she was originally going to give the Ultimate Self exposition, and Davepetasprite^2 had to be contrived in the canon ending in order to shortcut Nepeta's character development, ruining it in the process.

Aradia should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team and live a life free of the control of evil uncles and shitty ancestors.

Sollux should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team because we all deserve to heal and be happy.

Feferi should've survived so she could be in a kismesistude with Nepeta, and realize that casteism itself is bad, not just the definition of culling, and then used her Witch of Life powers to even out the lifespans between the next generation of trolls, which needs to happen or else casteism will just happen again as long-lived highbloods inevitably amass power. And, also, it would complete the prophecy Gl'bgolyb gave her that she was intended to unite the two races (dream bubbles don't count, because by that metric, Sollux did more than she did by establishing a connection between the trolls and humans).

And Eridan should've survived, because the harm society has done to us can be undone. We don't have to submit to the roles it imposes, to the laws it wrote, to the abuse it inflicted. We can be free.

I've seen a lot of people who believe that such-and-such character did SUCH awful things that they don't deserve a happy ending. Oftentimes, it's Eridan, but nearly all of the dead trolls have gotten this treatment. So, let me just ask all of you who have gotten this far and still hold that opinion one thing. Do you think that's what Troll Jesus would have wanted?

This is why pale EriKar is so important: for it to happen, Eridan has to make a choice between upholding the beliefs of his shitty society, or pursuing a happier, kinder future, one where he outright rejects the caste system. For it to happen, Karkat has to shake all his insecurities about not being good enough by Alternian standards, and take on the duty of creating something better than what he came from. If pale EriKar happens, it means Eridan and Karkat choose love, not fear. Compassion, forgiveness, and equality.

This choice - this pairing - is the ultimate representation of giving Alternian society one big middle finger. Saying, we don't need you anymore, fuck off! Saying, we reject you at your core; we will choose something better! Saying, we will create a new world, and it will be kinder than the one we came from!

Pale EriKar means LOVE WINS.

Thank you for reading.

[valdomarx]

the ultimate jaskier playlist

 { listen on spotify }

[temporalhiccup]

Rae pls indulge and go into AK breakdowns I would SO love to read it!!!

Ok! Here we go! Breakdown Time!

The Betrayed is a playbook I'm working on that's inspired by Ghost Rider, the Spectre, and Doctor Fate. Specifically you wrestle with an entity within you that demands vengeance, as it wears down what remains of your humanity.

For this breakdown I'm going over two Moves. These Moves may change by the time the final version of the Betrayed rolls around (all the playbooks are currently in the final refinement stage). But anyway today we're looking at I Am Vengeance. In the next part I'll go over The Weakness Of My Heart.

Let's get into it!

The following is my personal and general approach to writing a Move for the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. This refers to the Moves were you need to roll dice or make an important decision.

Moves should be relatively easy to trigger. If a set up is required, it shouldn't be too much work to justify the narrative circumstances or fictional requirements. I like seeing moves used!

A Move is a moment for the character to step into the spotlight. Normally in the conversation of a game (player describes what their character says or does, other players and GM responds, back and forth, back and forth) a Move doesn't have to be triggered most of the time. When it's time for a Move (the circumstances warrant it, things seem uncertain or dire, the player has set things up to trigger a specific move, etc) then time stops at the table, right? Everyone slows down and goes through the mechanics and structure of the Move. To me, I want to justify this slowdown as a way to spotlight the character, to make this moment meaningful. I write Moves so that everyone at the table gets used to the idea and thinks, "Oh heck yes, let's slow down and enjoy this. What are they going to do? What awesomeness are we going to bear witness to?"

The end of a Move should significantly shift the fiction, circumstances, narrative positioning, or emotional state. I write Moves so there's a distinct before and after state. Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly bold, there's a quick inciting thing that happens when the move is triggered, to give this burst that better sets up the after. If the narrative positioning or fiction trajectory remain roughly the same after a Move is done, what was the point of slowing down the game for it? I also want players to feel like they have significant narrative pull in the story being told at the table. My favorite moments as a GM is when my players shock and surprise me, it inspires me and revs me up!!!

There are some specific things I keep in mind when designing a Move for Apocalypse Keys (compared to my other Powered by the Apocalypse games), but mostly it's along the lines of: CAN I MAKE THIS AS BIG AND EXCITING AND EMOTIONAL AND SUPERNATURAL AS POSSIBLE LET'S GO WHOOOOOO YEAAAAAAAH or something similar.

Okay, the Starting Move for the Betrayed is:

I Am Vengeance

The entity within you can always sense those nearby who bear the scars of trespass and the burden of regret. When you merge with the entity and deepen your senses to see the full weight of a soul, describe what you find there. Spend Darkness Tokens and roll.

On an 8-10 the entity within you tempers justice with mercy, choose two:

Their greatest trespass is revealed by the darkness, create a Power of Darkness that you have access to, for now.

Declare how they must make amends to appease justice, gain one Bond with them.

Your souls burn and resonate together, inflict two Conditions on them, but take one in return.

The soul you peer into cannot hide the truth from you. Ask the Keeper any question, they will answer it honestly and with great detail.

On an 11+ the entity within you demands retribution and horror, choose one:

The vengeance you deliver eclipses the trespass. Describe how you go too far and the suffering you cause. The Keeper will tell you what supernatural beings of power take notice and their response.

The entity within you would claim a new soul to strengthen itself. Gain a new Power of Darkness that reflects the screaming soul within you, trapped for eternity.

On a 7- the entity reshapes another part of your soul and replaces it with what may better serve horrific vengeance. The Keeper will tell you what happens next.

So for I Am Vengeance, I needed a Starting Move that embodied who the Betrayed is. I knew I had to make a version of Ghost Rider's penance stare ability, since it's such an iconic aspect of the character. In the instances when I have a specific character and/or their super power in mind when I make a Move, I try to deconstruct it along the following questions:

What narrative permissions are granted to this character or through this ability?

How can I break this down in a way that it's open to different creative interpretations and character concepts?

How can I connect the thematic concept to the mechanical, narrative, and emotional components of this moment and the game in general?

This Move comes with a built in ability that is constant, and doesn't need to be triggered. The Betrayed will always be able to sense those nearby who bear the scars of trespass and the burden of regret. This is part of that deconstruction, this is not a ability that's present in the inspiring characters. But from a TTRPG approach, I wanted to give the player a unique and interesting perspective. It also communicates an important thematic element of the playbook: this is a character who can see the worst in others, their regrets, how does his affect the character? How do they treat their own trespasses and regrets in response?

The trigger here is: When you merge with the entity and deepen your senses to see the full weight of a soul, describe what you find there.

Okay, so! A huge amount of TTRPG design is just...obsessing over word choice, hah. Here I wanted to ensure a few things: this Starting Move starts off with the idea that you merge with the entity. In other Moves for the Betrayed I experiment with other ideas (like in another move it's "when you become vengeance incarnate," which communicates a different action entirely!) I wanted a soft set up here: what does it mean when a character merges with the entity within them? I also wanted to give players an opportunity to change what that merging could look like each time they triggered this move.

in addition, it's easy to trigger this Move. The character just needs to decide to merge with the entity. As for narrative set up, the player decides when they want to risk looking deep into someone's soul, because...we'll, shit could definitely go down and get out of hand.

I also used "deepen your senses" to further support the idea that the player can just always sense the trespass and regret around them. This move is then a moment when things come into sharp focus. Having a player decide what that means for their character is cool and fun!

So remember earlier when I said there's a before and after state? The before state here is "the Betrayed can always sense something others cannot". The after is "the Betrayed and the entity of vengeance within them will act on a specific character's trespass". Ah, but I also mentioned that sometimes I have a quick inciting thing. This Move has it, in the "describe what you find there".

This is an exciting moment for the player. They get to narrate and decide what they see, when they take the full measure of someone's soul. What kind of trespass or regret are we talking about here? How deplorable or evil a person is the NPC? Or were they once a good person who made a terrible mistake? The player gets to decide!

This felt great in playtesting, I really enjoyed the pressure, the freedom and responsibility that came with declaring such a thing. As a Starting Move it also primes the player to be creative, spontaneous, and intuitive. Many mechanics and the general flow of the game really flourish when a player hones these aspects of their play.

So, now we roll the dice and see what happens. In case you're not aware, Apocalypse Keys doesn't use stats. Instead, as inspired by Libreté, you roleplay to gather tokens. Each token adds +1 to the roll. So you're aiming to roll to hit that perfect hit: 8-10, you're still in control. On an 11+, it's a disastrous success, you've gone too far and the monster within you is unleashed.

I experimented with what a perfect hit and a disastrous success looks like across the Moves and playbooks. In I Am Vengeance there's a distinct difference between the 8-10 result and the 11+, there is no overlap. For this Move, I wanted it the perfect hit and disastrous success to feel distinct from each other, to show the extremes available to the character.

In the 8-10 result I'm still finalizing whether or not the player gets to choose two options or just the one. Two choices feels great in play and meta-wise it supports the ides that the character is more "in control". But it can also slow down the moment further. I'm still weighing this, I have to roughly feel out how often a player can use this move (the less often, the more likely I'll stick to two options). If I do switch to the one choice, I'll probably shift things slightly and beef up the options a bit.

In Apocalypse Keys, a Move always pushes the narrative forward in significant ways. In many Moves, there's a blending of the narrative and the mechanical. I could have just stuck in the mechanical options (or just the narrative!), but you can feel how distinct it feels that I merged the two here, right?

So for example, one of the options is: Your souls burn and resonate together, inflict two Conditions on them, but take one in return. This is easily the combat-focused RAR I'M HERE TO BEAT UP PEOPLE option. This can easily force an antagonist to stand down, or soften him up significantly for someone else to take the final blow. If I had just stuck with the mechanical option, it would communicate "wow the entity of vengeance is violent and strong". Which is cool!

But! I wanted to add the narrative implication, where does this violence and strength come from? I decided it comes from the fact that the souls resonate with each other. A player or Keeper can decide to express specifically what that means, but even if they don't, it leaves this implication hanging in the air. How are the Betrayed and the target of their wrath similar to each other? What does it mean when souls resonate? Every option in the 8-10 result offers an implication in the blending of the mechanical and the narrative. It makes the choice feel that much more significant!

Any combination of the 8-10 result can easily map to what it looks like when Ghost Rider performs a Penance Stare, but it's still open enough to interpretation that any type of character can express themselves well.

Now let's look at the 11+ result. In this one I decided to go with one of the regular treatments of a disastrous success: limiting the options, but feeling more powerful. This reflects how the character has less control over the situation. They go too far, and they can only reign it in so much! But also, the options are more powerful than a perfect hit! What a double edged blade this is.

In this Move I really wanted the disastrous success to feel like "You know, my dude, there is like...an entity of vengeance inside of you, and it is absolutely not human."

The first option, has the player "Describe how you go too far and the suffering you cause" I wanted this to reflect those moments where Ghost Rider, The Spectre, and Doctor Fate would go all out, and punish the wicked without mercy. This is an excuse for the character to go all out, to not hold back! Then the Keeper gets to describe the "supernatural beings" and their response. This is reminiscent of the forces that push and pull at these iconic characters that inspired this playbook.

The second option has to be my favorite though. It's also the one I chose the first time I playtested the move! "Gain a new Power of Darkness that reflects the screaming soul within you, trapped for eternity."

It was honestly a really hilarious moment, I had just declared that the oil conglomerate Executive had helped the fae perform a wretched and murderous ritual to ensure the smooth purchase of mines. I didn't want to have supernatural beings notice what I was up to, but it also meant I had to have this slimey soul of a human next to my soul for all eternity. "Oh my god, why did I write this?!" I asked out loud while the other players laughed. (That, to me, is a good sign that I wrote the disastrous success options well, hah!)

"What does it look like when you take his soul?" Lowell asked me, as the GM. So a second before I was lamenting what I was forced to do, and now here I was, throwing myself into it. "You see me pull out his soul through his mouth, my skull wreathed in flames. His soul looks like a gargantuan slug, wailing and writhing, and I swallow it whole as his screams echo through the mines."

It was also fun coming up with a Power of Darkness that reflected this horrible human and what he is now. (I went with Emotional Manipulation, to reflect the greasy corpo scum he was)

Finally, we have the miss, what happens on a roll of 7 or lower. Not every PbtA game has moves with specific misses, it's usually just an open invitation for the GM to do something. (Which is actually my personal preference, I often find the misses are too uninteresting for my tastes, even in some of my favorite games!)

With Apocalypse Keys, it was a long conversation with Sean Nittner (project manager and development editor) over why it felt necessary for Apocalypse Keys to always have a specific miss. The long and short of it is: Apocalypse Keys is a game that happens on a huge scale, and the monstrous PCs don't fail in as much as things go horribly wrong because they are monsters. So I try to write a miss that supports that truth.

In this case, I wanted to highlight how the Betrayed is at the mercy of the entity within them. Their soul will be reshaped to better serve vengeance. This can be a harrowing and quiet moment, or it can create explosive consequences, or something in between. What does it mean to reshape a soul? I can't wait to hear the stories about this!

Phew, that's our first Apocalypse Keys breakdown! I hope this was useful to you!

Powered by the Apocalypse is a system I love, and I feel like we're still exploring what the system is capable of and where it can go next. The structure of PbtA is an opportunity for designers to structure a game to reflect their design goals and play philosophy in very big and bold ways.

I worked on Apocalypse Keys for years, and with the help of a lot of people, made a game that reflects what I love about TTRPGs 😤❤️🔥✨

We'll be looking at The Weakness Of My Heart next time, which offers an intimate (and potentially tragic!) narrative opportunity for the Betrayed 👀

[mariaiscrafting]

no, you know what, I’m going to stop vague’ing on the dash. my anger is about to get extremely direct and enraged, so fair warning, but I don’t care about anyone’s comfort right now. I’m going to get fucking mad, and you all will fucking deal.

not a single one of us has the right, or should even have the option, to guess about ccs’ sexualities. I’ve kept my mouth shut when it comes to people analyzing george/dream and guessing they’re some kind of queer, but I’m fucking done. I’m going to go into every single reason “truthing” about ccs’ sexualities is just so beyond fucked.

first of all, this is in response specifically to ranboo and tubbo truthing. being a kid and getting thrown into such a massive spotlight, where you will undoubtedly be subject to some fuck shit eventually because the internet is full of thousands upon thousands of people, is already terrifying and anxiety-inducing and damaging enough. but for their own audiencemembers - their own supposed fucking “fans” - to take it one step further and speculate about their sexualities? oh, for the love of god. I can barely believe I even have to explain how fucked that is. it is one thing to be friends with or close to someone in real life and recognize your own queer struggle in them, to approach them with sympathy and support in case they are questioning. it is another thing entirely to speculate about the sexuality of someone you don’t even know, and to then take it a step further and “truth” about your fucking theories. you are not an expert, you are not their friend, and you are not a fucking oracle. you can guess all you want about a cc’s sexuality, you can comment on how their actions or behaviors or words resonate with you when you were questioning or closeted, but to go ahead and take your own speculation as truth is arrogant, presumptous, and damaging as all hell. 

I can just imagine what it would’ve been like if I’d grown an online platform that ripped me of my privacy when I was a teenager and trying to figure out my own sexuality. if I had a section of my audience analyzing my every social media post, the inflection in my voice and the nature of my laughs, my every interaction with my best friend, you know what I would’ve done? retreated so far into the closet that I would probably have tricked myself into thinking I was heterosexual. I would’ve been so fucking terrified and felt so stripped of any privacy or control I had over my own goddamn thoughts; do you understand how fucking vile that is? have none of you ever been terrified of giving away your own sexuality through your mannerisms and facial expressions and words, while you were closeted? have none of you ever experienced that utter fucking terror when you notice someone start to question your sexuality, the immediate urge to retreat and back up and act and believe the complete opposite just to prove them wrong and go back to the safety and security of them believing you were straight? for fuck’s sake, now imagine that feeling amplified a hundred fold, applied not just to one instance or one person in your life, but to thousands. do y’all not understand just how a) morally fucked it is to inflict this same kind of practice onto someone you supposedly care about and support, and b) potentially psychologically damaging this could be to ccs who are closeted, especially the fucking minors? oh my fucking god.

that isn’t even to point out why people do this shit - which is to project and find solace and derive some kind of enjoyment out of cc’s. that’s what cc’s are there for; they are entertainers, first and foremost, which continues outside of streams and bleeds into fandom culture and the kind of enjoyment fans can make out of interacting with other fans and creating their own fan content. the problem with this fact is that fans take it too far, like 85% of the time. cc’s aren’t just there for our own enjoyment. they are fucking people, oh my lord. they are real people that we will never know, and while we may have our fun with our little theories and talking to other fans and making and watching cute compilations and writing fanfiction and making fanart, we are just deriving entertainment from the parts of themselves they choose to show us. that persona they put on for the stream, that is not 100% them. they are real, rounded, 3-d, full people who we only ever get the privilege of witnessing a small sliver of. and we need to fucking remember that, because we can’t just keep running with the ideas of ccs that we have in our heads and treating them like they’re malleable characters for our own entertainment. 

anyways, specifically about truthing (and mind you, this is the point in the rant where a little of my anger starts to seep out because I’m tired and it’s 1:40 AM and I have class tomorrow): there’s so many things that can be said about gaydar. I’m not here to argue whether or not it exists, or the details of the morality of straight versus non-straight people engaging in the practice of truthing. I’m just here to say that, even if you believe gaydar exists and can be accurate when employed by non-straight people, that still only applies to people you fucking know. what you see of a cc is not “getting to know” them. what you are seeing is one face of a multi-faceted jewel, cut in far more ways that you can ever hope to one day perceive. your theories are just those - theories. whatever you might think of the giggles you heard or the pickup lines you saw uttered or the softness you imagine between x and y, human interaction is far too complex and laced with meaning for some rando on the internet who watches youtube videos and twitch streams to fully grasp from two entertainers working from behind a screen. your gaydar is not going to fucking work through a screen, fuck off with that shit.

another thing that’s fucking bothering me so much is this assumption that comes with being at all open about queerness when you yourself are not queer. ik this is just one of the many factors “truthers” use to justify the findings of their totally infallible, prophetic gaydar, but it’s a factor nonetheless, and it bothers the fuck outta me. someone being willing to express support for lgbt people or donate to lgbt chairities or open to conversations with other lgbt people about lgbt endeavors is not evidence of queerness. to say that it is contributes to the harmful belief that cishets still have that they cannot be any of those things - that is, exceedingly open about and to queerness - without being perceived as queer themselves. 

anyways, and now we are at the bottom line, which is that, this entire conversation wouldn’t even have to be had if people just fucking listened to cc boundaries. ranboo and tubbo do not like being shipped. it is that fucking simple. i know that it is tempting to ship two people you think are cute together. i know it is tempting to indulge in a dynamic you find comforting. but idgaf. temptation is not an excuse. find some fictional characters to ship, and kindly fuck off.

[iwantasecretgarden]

*cracks knuckles in lawyer* my time has come.

As a huge fantasy nerd, lotr buff, and general all around dragon slash wolf girl turned attorney, I am pleased to offer you options ranging from most boring and safest to most narratively interesting and unhinged:

1. Customary will. Nothing is distributed until the elf or long lived partner (“LLP”) actually perishes. Perishing can include leaving this world by any means; actual accidental or illness related death; self inflicted or anything of the “lay down and die” type; fading away from sadness or some other strong unbearable emotion; diminishment of power tied to a landmark corrupted; or a simple voyage never to return. The disbursement of this will is deeply regulated by an elvish tribunal whose entire livelihood is nerding about tax laws in different lives jurisdictions and inflation. These people exist. Barring spouses and children being alive it would likely be the next closest living relative. I hear many unassuming reluctant heroes get their start this way (when a great aunt dies and leaves them a mysterious fortune/house/hoard/birthright). Good example: Bilbo selecting Frodo as his heir and pulling a Mad Baggins.

2. Dispersal of spousal shares upon spouse death. So LLP loses their human spouse. Under the laws of human lands in some jurisdictions, half of all property is owned by the deceased spouse and either reverts to the living spouse (so they own it all) or conveys (passes down) to their children or heirs. So another solution to keep things equitable and to balance out the accumulation of STUFF is to use the death of spouse to clean house, take their net worth down to modest income, and let the kids have it (like a house, the magic cloak, etc). It’s also a way to step back. So for instance, when Aragorn dies, Arwen is still the queen. She takes this time to abdicate in favor of their son and his heirs and moves away for a time (before after generations she chooses to lay down and die in the heart of her grandmothers dead forest). But she does give up her titles and home and stuff! Upon death of human spouse!

3. Conveyance upon majority. Upon an heir reaching the age of majority (or predetermined) LLP just drops the shit and relies on human partner. The heir may not be the first generation of heirs but grandchildren or greats. Conveyance of property is total to all involved parties and the couple is able to live modestly and not worry about their end. Examples today include getting access to a trust at 26. Or whenever Thranduil gets tired of ruling Mirkwood and crowns Legolas when he’s “mature” enough.

4. Random conveyance. What it says. At random intervals LLP goes bananas and just bequeaths everything to a distant relation and moves. Possible name and or identity change. Definitely moving. Basically; I’ve crammed everything into this mansion I can. I’ve renovated the kitchen five times. I’m bored. Byeeee! Cue mysterious inheritance letter. Example: I do find it hilarious Gandalf does this to some extent. Mithrandir this, grey pilgrim that, stormcrow to you. Also see (not related) Sabrina the teenage witch. Once hilda and Zelda live somewhere for a hundred years or so they sell everything and move elsewhere. I hate saying it but this is the plot of the Cullens in twilight but on a shorter stupider scale. This would be the most frustrating for probate lawyers and tax people everywhere. But very funny for me, specifically. Just loving the idea of LLP being heartbroken etc moving two towns away and just changing their name from Justin to Dustin or Tom to Tim. Hearing stories of their greatness like hmmm yes. Not to mention how MANY human partners they may have. How MANY offspring they need to keep in order for which clan gets the next mysterious dumping of your fortune!

Anyway hope that helps and if it doesn’t hurray! We’ve all learned nothing! Pa excuse formatting types this up on mobile in bed

me: hey dad, what do you think probate law would look like in a fantasy world where some people can live to be over 1000 years old? how would an elf who married a human divide up their assets when they're definitely going to outlive their spouse and probably their children too?

my dad: *staring into the middle distance*

[ekaterinatepes]

Nothing But The Best

Author Notes: once again I apologize for how long this took to update. Schedule is still hectic and will remain so for the following month or so. But fear not. I shall continue to update at least once a week. Once again reblogs and comments are appreciated!

XVI

Our ability to survive depends on our skill to change and adapt. Everything in life is about transformation.

The drastic changes in your life seemed like a never ending avalanche of heart break and tough decisions… once again, transformation.

Your own choices placed you exactly where you were at, there was no one else to blame but yourself.

Satoru chose to remain in New York for another two weeks during which he had invested himself into re-discovering you (in his mind you never stopped being his. In the sanctuary of his thoughts you are always referred to as his wife, his one and only Mrs. Y/N Gojo. The woman of his life and owner of his heart).

Satoru tried a gentle approach with you. Not wanting to push you too far not to leave you alone all together. Using all his knowledge of your personality and preferences he slowly inserted himself in your life once again.

At 5:30am sharp he would meet you at the entrance of your building wearing his training clothes, he wanted to show you he supported you and your career. He would go for a run with you around the park. This, of course evoked memories of when you both first started dating and Satoru would show up to workout with you or take you out to dinner after training.

You got to know he had been working harder to help Yuuji control the curse inside him but it was a hard endeavor. He didn’t have to specifically verbalize it for you to know it was a loosing battle and he felt responsible for it but he was trying his best to find a way to help the boy. You missed the kids, they were like family. So you made sure to ask Satoru to tell them you missed them.

But despite your ex-husband’s best efforts you still wanted to be alone. You needed some clarity, the opportunity to sort out your feelings. Gojo wasn’t particularly thrilled with you pushing him away but he promised to you and himself that he would change and would do an effort to respect your wishes so he gave you your space.

But Satoru wasn’t stupid, he knew you missed Suguru and felt guilty for choosing your own husband (ex-husband) over your best friend.

And that’s why you kept pushing him away. Saying you needed time to think.

His time was running out, he had to return to Japan. At least for now, he had unavoidable responsibilities with his students as well as the rest of his missions. He went to your apartment the night before his flight and explained to you why he had to return but he also promised to come back to New York as soon as possible.

“It’s alright Satoru, I understand… I’m gonna be just fine” you reassured the sorcerer who didn’t look convinced at all about leaving you alone. “Please, at least answer my calls and messages. I’m gonna be worried sick if you don’t” you nodded and then he hugged you tightly, inhaling your intoxicating aroma as if he wanted to commit it to memory. His lips soon found yours and before either of you knew it you were in your bed ripping off each other’s clothes so you could express with your bodies how much exactly you would miss one another.

He had taken you for granted once, he would never make that same mistake.

-

-1 Week Later-

It had been three weeks since you last saw Suguru, he wouldn’t answer your calls, texts nor your emails. You didn’t even know if he was still in New York for that matter. Not knowing was slowly killing you, consumed by guilt you knew you deserved this treatment.

And yet, you wanted to find him and explain… try to make it up to him somehow. He didn’t deserve the pain you had inflicted upon him.

-

From: Kitten 🐱

To: Sugu

I need to talk to you, please give me a chance to explain. I don’t want to lose you Suguru. I know it’s selfish on my behalf but I can’t let you walk away without explaining. Please Suguru.

I miss you.

-

Another message sent, he wouldn’t answer your texts. At least he didn’t block your phone number. (Not yet, supplied your tortured mind)

The whole reason why you held back from actually having sex with Suguru although you both had wanted that very much during the last 6 months was because you wanted to give Geto everything. Not only half of you. He deserved someone who would chose him completely. At least that’s what you knew was right.

You didn’t want to toy with his emotions. Then again Satoru’s sporadic presence in your life didn’t help at all. Everytime he showed up you were back to the beginning.

There was no other way to explain this other than saying…you could never resist him.

-

It was a Monday evening, you just got home after your training at the academy. Sitting on the couch eating some salad when the doorbell rang. You were not expecting anyone. And most importantly someone who didn’t need to be announced by the guard downstairs. There were only two people who could show up at your door in such fashion.

When you opened the door the first thing you saw was a broad torso covered in a very familiar black fitted t-shirt. Long black hair framing a handsome face and those beautiful amber pools looking at you. Without hesitation you threw your arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. Suguru responded to your embrace by surrounding your firmly in his arms lifting you a few inches from the floor.

His sweet lavender and sage scent welcomed your senses once more. It wasn’t until he dried the tears from your cheeks that you realized you had been crying.

“Yo..you are here… Suguru! I am so sorry! I-“ he stopped you by placing his right index finger upon your lips. “You don’t have to say anything. I am here because I have to tell you something important. Come Kitten, let us sit” he took your hand and guided you to the couch where as soon as you both sat next to one another you threw yourself into his arms once more making the raven haired sorcerer chuckle “I missed you too Kitten” he whispers against your h/c tresses.

“Listen…. I was angry… I was mad at you because I thought you would choose me and instead chose Satoru. But these past weeks without you, I have been a wreck to say the least and then I realized… I have always known you loved Satoru from the beginning and that never bothered me before.” Sighing he made a small pause before continuing “Granted… I do resent him for hurting you but I never expected you to completely loose your feelings for him.“ you were about to explain to him that you were trying to sort those feelings out but he interrupted you with a little kiss on your lips “let me finish Kitten” a tender smile spread across his lips making you blush again.

“I realized that I don’t want to renounce to you, I don’t want to give you up. Because there simply is no other person who I want to be with. No one can replace you. And you don’t have to choose between Satoru and me…. At least on my behalf I am ok with sharing you with him. I don’t want to lose you and I don’t want to put you in a position that only will hurt your heart.” Stroking your cheek softly Suguru leaned in and kissed your lips once more, just this time the exchange was sweeter and lasted longer. His tongue teased the entrance to your mouth before fully delving in to revel in your warmth and sweetness. Pulling back and looking into your eyes Geto assured you “I love you… and I want you to be happy. I am not going to make you choose because I don’t want to lose you Y/N”.

To say you were shocked to the core and touched beyond words was an understatement “Suguru… I don’t know what to say…” you start but Geto chuckled

“You don’t have to give me an answer right away.. I und—-“

You cut him by crushing your lips against his, kissing him throughly. Your legs straddled his waist immediately so you could feel his strong and warm body against yours. Was this man even real? I mean… Suguru Geto was a remarkable person but at this point you started questioning your own sanity. Did you make this man up in your imagination? Because you have never met someone sweeter, nor kinder nor more loving than him. And this was without counting all his very alluring physical attributes.

By the time you pulled back you were out of breath and so was he.

Now, the thing was… is this what you wanted? Did you want them both? Wasn’t it too greedy to have them both as lovers?

There was also the possibility Satoru would flat out reject the idea but… you didn’t want to choose between them. You…. Loved them both.

Before you could speak once more you ‘felt’ someone behind you stroking your back.

Almost jumping out of your skin you turned around to find Satoru in his usual jujutsu high uniform sans blindfold.

“You’re late…” Suguru comments as if he had been expecting his best friend to teleport right then.

“I know… Yaga was being a pain in the ass as per usual” added Satoru with a grin before taking a sit next to Suguru with the biggest shit eating grin you could imagine.

“So? Did she agree?” Questioned smirking and moving his hand to stroke your hair away from your neck while you still sat on Suguru’s lap.

“I am not sure… I think we broke her…” added Geto amusedly before chuckling and kissing your cheek.

“I know how to fix that!” Excitedly announced the white haired man. Cupping your face between his hands he pulled you in to kiss you deeply. His tongue voraciously licking the inside of your mouth and enticing you to kiss him back.

This was surreal…. Were you dreaming? You had to be dreaming or maybe you hit your head and now we’re in a coma. Yeah… you have to be hallucinating this.

When Satoru pulled back he laughed “Princess… don’t look so surprised… you must have known this would have happened sooner or later… Sug and I would never give you up and we know you wouldn’t pick one over the other either… and well, we didn’t want to give you the chance to pick neither…” they knew exactly how you were. Even before you knew it yourself. They just knew you would bolt and choose no one if that meant not hurting the other so they had to figure out a solution where all of you were happy.

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