#i don't like to insinuate but also.

[iniziare]

Inquisitor: The Evanuris were elven mages? How did they come to be remembered as gods? Solas: Slowly. It started with a war. War breeds fear. Fear breeds a desire for simplicity. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Chains of command. After the war ended, generals became respected elders, then kings, and finally gods. The Evanuris. Inquisitor: You said that the elven gods went too far. What did they do that made you move against them? Solas: They killed Mythal. (Chuckles.) A crime for which an eternity of torment is the only fitting punishment. Inquisitor: I thought Mythal was one of the Evanuris? Solas: She was the best of them. She cared for her people. She protected them. She was a voice of reason. And in their lust for power, they killed her.

You know, sometimes I wonder about him in regards to Mythal. Not only over how intensely he struck down those who slayed her (and the severe repercussions thereof, even if he didn't realize they'd occur as they did), but the sheer conviction he holds in regards to the future. He banished the Evanuris, and in doing so, single-handedly brought devastation to his people, and Mythal's, leaving their descendants scarred and 'weak', shadows of their former selves. But it's the 'and Mythal's' that gets me. He 'avenged' her and in turn, became the 'undoing' of the elven civilization she'd loved and protected above all?

Inquisitor: That's the past. What about the future? Solas: (...) My people fell for what I did to strike the Evanuris down, but still some hope remains for restoration. I will save the Elven people, even if it means this world must die.

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[starflungwaddledee]

Okay.... Officially submitting Techie for the shipaganza!!!

Techie and Starstruck is fun to me because of the contrast- like they're both perfectly valid Kirby characters, just on opposite ends of a spectrum, but also having a surprising amount in common? They're both so totally normal after all. :P

Starstruck is not at ALL like Techie's usual partners, but she's up for a challenge! Most likely they hang out at an arcade (her natural habitat) so Techie can show off a bit- if there's prizes she could even win something for Starstruck (and then of course offer to "show you even more fun stuff/more of my skills back at my place" ;D)

(Techie's dream walking ability also has interesting interaction potential! 👀)

i absolutely ADORE techie/starstruck!! one of the oc X oc Big Ones™️ to me, in my head.

they are so different- literally from completely different universes, not even parallel gameverse ones- and yet they do have a lot of common ground! i love the idea that techie could start off rather bold about it all, boasting and showing off, but still be kinda surprised at how well it works. starstruck is very easy to impress and very earnest about expressing her admiration!

i think they might run into some, uhhh, technical issues due to my headcanons for waddle dee biology, but surely nothing techie couldn't sort out! she's a professional, after all! 😎💖

[omppupiiras]

Normal conversations to have at work:

Coworker 1: is käärijä gay? I read that he's gay

Me: nahhh

Coworker 2: no he said that he's gay last year (??)

Coworker 3: maybe he's bi then

Me: as far as i know he's straight

Coworker 1: but i read that he's doing stuff with a man on... Onlyfans?

[gingermintpepper]

🌩️

For the ask game please :D

Thank you so much for the ask hehe!! I'm actually quite a bad measure of what's funny in my writing but most things involving Hermes tend to make me chuckle. Have something from my ongoing Hermapollo document!

"C'mon, you really tellin' me you never -" Apollo shakes his head once, the motion measured and elegant and so entirely not Artemis that Hermes is really thinking that whole twin thing is just a bit they feed the new kids for their own sick satisfaction. "But you love wide hips!" 

Surprisingly, the young sun god doesn't freak out and struggle to cover Hermes' mouth with an embarrassed hand like he was expecting. He doesn’t darken with anger or flush with irritation. There’s not even a little trace of the burning beast of wrath that threatened to damn him to Tartarus for stealing a few cows. It’s kind of creepy, honestly. Hermes ought to take him mortal watching on his next day out, maybe he just acts different when he’s on the mountain. 

Apollo's gaze is fixed on the delicate metalwork wrapped around the fountain's base. Hermes still feels as though he's looking at him with entirely too much intensity. It must be the crow nestled on his shoulder. "I also appreciate a wide back but you've never caught me pining after Ares." 

Hermes shrugs easily, "Not yet at least." 

Finally, Apollo's fingers stall, his brush blotting ink where it's still connected to the paper. "That's disgusting." 

A bright laugh erupts from Hermes, genuine enough that Apollo doesn't notice his now ruined study aa he marvels at this novel variation of Hermes' usual mischievous snicker. When he turns his attention back to his painting, a caustic frown sours his once dignified expression and Hermes nods internally around another fit of laughter. There's the Apollo he knows.

Disappointingly, his hair doesn't even flare, he simply rips the page out of the weighty sketchbook and washes the brush clean. Dips it in the empty black ink and begins anew. His crow doesn’t even ruffle its feathers. "Besides, it would be rude to Lady Cyprus" 

Hermes blinks. Stops for a fraction of a moment as he processes the information Apollo let slip with this new, blasé tone of his. A vicious smile bisects his face. "You're kiddin'."

Apollo doesn't grant him so much as a glance, "I wonder."

He immediately attaches himself to Apollo's side, mildly annoyed that the blond's stroke doesn't even waver - what a prick - but this bit of gossip takes hard precedence. "How'd you even find out?!"

Dispassionate gold eyes look down on him from behind too long and equally gold eyelashes. Actually, if Hermes really looks, there’s a sparkle in there, the same sort their father gets in his eyes before he issues a particularly troublesome task to some unfortunate servant. A soft wetness lands solidly on his forehead and when he catches himself, he realises its ink and Apollo's dumb lips are actually smiling now. He holds his brush out with elegant fingers and his crow hops atop it. "'Everything that happens beneath the sun', remember?" 

[angelsdean]

my rule of thumb for anything misha says ever is that he's very likely lying and making things up or exaggerating for funsies and maximum chaos because why the hell not?? as an actor on a stage i too would lie abt random shit all the time for the fun of it. he is literally the epitome of real life unreliable narrator ajdskfk

[queeraliensposts]

Friendly reminder, by celebrating the possibility of a celebrity you don't like might get deported, you are also celebrating the fact that innocent children, and workers are getting deported.

[sysig]

VUXPet (Patreon)

[daisywords]

\

[kaerinio]

it's monday. why tf am i sitting here having to professionally pop off at someone???

[smallnico]

nobody asked but i want everyone to know that when i draw karlach doing a happy tail thrash, it's stimming. i'm drawing her happy flapping. i'm not trying to compare karlach to a dog (or, rather, i'm not trying to condescend to her or minimize her pain or awareness or intelligence). i think everyone knows she's got big feelings and she's a very physically emotive and fidgety person (we've all seen her little dance) so it just makes sense to me that she would vent her excitement physically somehow.

also it's what i would do if i had a tail. i'm stuck using my hands lmao

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Insinuation 2.2 Live Reactions

(This is me, writing reactions as I read, because why the fuck not. They're not complete, mature thoughts taken after I sit back and evaluate what I've read. Consider them as such)

While I wouldn't say any of the word count is wasted, per se, I do think that for all that 1.6 million words is impressive... did it really need to be 1.6 million words? 2.1 felt like 75% space filler tbh.

The go-to place for news and discussion on capes was Parahumans Online.  The front page had constant updates on recent, international news featuring capes.  From there, I could go to the wiki, where there was information on individual capes, groups and events, or to the message boards, which broke down into nearly a hundred sub-boards, for specific cities and capes.  I opened the wiki in one tab, then found and opened the message board for Brockton Bay in another.

There are many advantages to letting your characters properly use the internet.

I had the sense that either Tattletale or Grue were the leader of the group I had run into.

Tattletale, really, seems like.

“This article is a stub.  Be a hero and help us expand it.” 

*snort* Jesus christ, that feels too real.

The only new information for me was that her costume was lavender.  A search of the message boards turned up absolutely nothing.  There wasn’t even a hint as to what her power was

And yet sometimes even the internet fails in the face of people just not being worth noticing yet.

 Rachel Lindt had never made any real attempt to hide her identity.  She had apparently been homeless through most of her criminal career, just living on the streets and moving on whenever police or a cape came after her. 

I am somehow both shocked and not at all surprised she's managed to pull this off.

Monsters the size of a car, all muscle, bone, fang and claw. 

Half the time fanfics seem to almost imply the end up with Scales and shit too?

At the very bottom of the page was a list of links that were related to her:  two fansites 

Bitch has Fansites? Why am I actually surprised?

He was estimated to have forty or fifty thugs working for him across Brockton Bay,

I feel like this is an issue of Wildbow not having enough sense of the scale. The Bay has three main gangs, E88, ABB and the Merchants, and 40-50 seems way too small to be a player.

but Lung had made it a mission to conquer and absorb every gang with Asian members and many without.  Once he had the manpower he needed, the non-Asian gangs were cannibalized for assets, their members discarded.  Even though there were no more major gangs in the east end of town to absorb, he was still recruiting zealously.

And yet... he still only has 40-50?

He could teleport, but when he did so, he didn’t disappear.  As he teleported, his original self, for lack of a better term, would stay where it was and remain active for five to ten seconds before disintegrating into a cloud of carbon ash.  Essentially, he could create another version of himself anywhere nearby, while the old version could stick around long enough to distract or attack you.

One thing I love about Worm is that even when someone has a 'normal' power, like teleporting, they can't actually have a normal power. it's always some extra level of bullshit. :rofl:

 By all rights, I should have been angry that Armsmaster took the credit for the fight that could have cost me my life.

I mean, you did tell him he could. And really, it's more complicated than that.

Buuut, on the other hand... yeah, I get it. She's still just 15, and 15 y/os are allowed to bounce their perspectives around.

I was given pause by one post that asked whether Bakuda could or would use a large scale bomb and the threat of potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands dead, to ransom Lung back.

That, I think, is called Foreshadowing

If it happened, it would be the responsibility of heroes better and more experienced than I.

Who are you and what have you done with Taylor "I'll take over the city and run it RIGHT" Herbert? :P :rofl:

It was meaningful, though.  I couldn’t interpret it any other way; Tattletale had found a way to get in contact with me.

Probably because her power suggested it was likely you'd check PHO

[angelzrazor]

I think my love for Raimiverse Harry Osborn stems from the fact that all the core elements of his character are kept intact. James Franco may be conventionally attractive, but Harry isn't a cool eccentric extrovert. He is shy, soft-spoken, sensitive, and dealing with emotional abuse and neglect from his father while also being clearly neurodivergent and VERY queer coded. The identity issues that stem from years of neglect, feelings of worthlessness, and mental issues he has aren't played as a joke nor demonized. I think it's the best live-action portrayal we've gotten so far.

[shopcat]

i have had a rant in the opposite direction of people who SHOULDN'T own border collies or cattle dogs but also on the other hand like. your dog reflects you as an owner and their environment like hm i'm sure my border collie would have hated living in town/a city BUT that's bc primarily indoor dogs are not a huge thing here and i do think that added level of socialisation/entertainment/bonding would mellow out a BC additionally to walks they're very attentive and oriented to their owner/family at least in my experience... his biggest problem was he was overprotective of me and became reactive to other dogs bc of it. he did one single time chase down a man as well from being overprotective but the dude was being weird and suspicious and also turned around and BOLTED like of course you're going to get chased 😭

anyway. i think people underestimate their pets or maybe just make assumptions based on Breed Traits and stop treating them as ... pets if that makes sense. like yes some dogs absolutely love to work or run or chase or play or search or what ever but if you're being like "my dog is so high energy and anxious and constantly showcasing bad-to-me behaviour" then turn around and are like Oh and it's shut in a 5 x 5 box of grass day in and day out with one ball to throw around by itself like DUDE... also it makes me sad when people act like certain breeds are too much x or y or a horror story or nightmare etc like i get commiserating over certain traits in pets it's part of the whole Thang but they're still dogs and not wild animals you can treat them like a dog. because they're a dog. like i'm sorry yours sucked or whatever but MY collie was very sweet and attentive and entertained himself independently without anxiety he was the most relaxed and chill dog we ever had. my fox terrier was a demon from hell (she was also very sweet) but if i was putting the two against each other in some sort of who is craziest tournament she's winning by a mile.

[match-your-steps]

just read a review of the lego movie from 2014 and it is genuinely a horrible piece of literature and through perusing the comments underneath the review, I have gained an intense dislike of the reviewer. it's not even that I liked the lego movie and he didn't it's just that a lot of the stuff he says is factually incorrect, really stupid-sounding, or he doesn't provide any real reason, and in the comments, he reacts to even the friendliest and politest constructive criticism as if it's a personal attack on him.

[forcebookish]

one of the things that has me nonstop thinking about topmew is that they're actually a very unique type of couple in fiction but not in real life. in most fiction, people are always falling in love by accident. they meet, circumstances put them together, they're caught by surprise when they fall in love. but though both top and mew had never been in love before and didn't totally know what to expect, it wasn't a complete shock. they met through a mutual friend, they found each other attractive and interesting, so they decided to date. they fell in love because they went on dates and did romantic things together on purpose. i think neither of them expected to fall so hard, but still, the point of dating is to see if you're compatible and fall in love and maybe build a life together. and that's what they did.

i don't think that makes them boring, i think that makes them relatable! i think that makes them stand out from other fictional couples! you know, people claimed they wanted more realistic BLs, but for some reason when topmew came along, a ship based on a real life gay couple, they didn't like them?