#i don't want to tag her by her full

[petit-papillion]

Charles (with Leo) and Joris (with Chiara) celebrating Riccardo's birthday | 18 June 2024

Happy Birthday, Riccardo!! 🎂

🎥 minmarta

[teleportationmagic]

The thing about Jayce and Mel is that like. She does not view him as an investment. That is just certifiably false. You have to skip over all her scenes to believe that.

In the beginning she does! She absolutely does! She conceives of their relationship as a business one - where she makes profit off his inventions, and he profits from her business and political acumen, both monetarily and powerwise. And overall, she believes she's fulfilled her half of the bargain.

It's only when he comes back to her after Viktor gets sick that she realizes he believes this is something deeper. And it's notable that she responds to that emotion - she opens up about herself too, comforts him, and expresses real emotionality about it. It's then that we see his ideals start to influence her - especially reawakening in her a desire for nonviolence.

Wanting to do things peacefully is something that's been with her since she was a child. It is what guides her away from Noxus, because her pacifism just does not fit there. It's why she loved Piltover so - they aren't a violent expansionist empire, which is a really low bar, but that's what she's grown up in.

She never finds the violence in Zaun, because she never goes looking for it. This is her fault, and her flaw, let me make that clear. She has some of the most power in the city, and should know about what kind of violence is holding up, and work to resolve it, truly. But she doesn't, because she's focused on her own exploits, and has so insulated herself away from the class struggle that it does not register for her until it grows to violence.

And then, once that violence comes, she maintains that pacifism with an iron grip, more than Jayce himself. It is Jayce who constructs (almost) all the HexTech weapons that are used in the Undercity, in Caitlyn's police squadron. He betrays the oaths that he's made to his partner, where Mel keeps the promise she's made to her's. She is the only politician left to try to tamp down on the worst of Ambessa's instincts, and her removal from Piltover is what marks it's descent into militarism.

She is ultimately a complicated woman, with a bunch of interesting relationships to Piltover and Zaun. I think you can divide Piltover as a city neatly between her, Jayce, and Caitlyn - each of them standing for some of Piltover's best instincts, and some of its worst.

[butterflysnowflake]

man can I just say how adorable Wolf's interaction with Delia in the wedding scene is? When she's explaining her situation he gives her the most understanding looks and it's because they both effectively had the same cause of death. Delia turned her mourning of Charles into part of her performance art, and died from being scammed with asps who were NOT defanged. Wolf wanted to deliver the most authentic performance possible and died from presumably a negligent armorer who didn't bother to check if the grenade was live or not before shooting. both of them were quite literally killed by their art (not by their own faults to be fair but from someone else's irresponsibility). and it's kind of lovely Delia got such a sympathetic escort back to the netherworld who knows her situation firsthand probably better than anyone else

it's weirdly wholesome and empathetic even as their situations were both played for morbid laughs, and if Delia didn't have eyes only for Charles (what's left of him) and Wolf wasn't in a committed relationship with Janet I'd even say I could have seen things going somewhere between them

[lustrecannon]

fuck it. formal time

[harrowscore]

can't believe a show based on a videogame (usually games adaptations are notoriously bad, which isn't the case here tho) gave me the beauty and the beast/twisted mirrors/enemies to traveling companions/ruthless antihero+optmistic but still badass heroine who takes none of his shit/age gap but make it sexy dynamic of my dreams. as much as i love maximus and i think he deserves the best writing ever because 1. he's a clever deconstruction of the aspiring Knight bro who's actually a bit of a loser and, as much as lucy, sees the world in black&white at first and then doesn't get what he thought he wanted but what he needs (or at least i hope he'll eventually get it), and 2. he's a cutie and i want an epic love story for him too, it's very funny how they tried to give us a puppy kind of romance and the tumblr girlies still fixated on the "toxic ~she bites his finger off and he cuts hers off and sews it on his hand in what we'll pretend it's a symbolic marriage rings exchange or whatever~ asshole who used to be a nice guy/good girl™ with a lot of spunk and hidden anger but unshakeable morals" kind of relationship.

[backpackingspace]

Okay but consider post Canon over protective Athena who is sick to death of her most devout being raped.

Athena sticking close to the whole family and promising penelope that she'll keep a close eye on odysseus the first time he has to go into the market and penelope can't go with him. (She was going to go anyway. She's never actually going to let any of them out of her sight ever again. And it's an easy promise to her dearest weaver who seems so distressed to have odysseus leaving her side.)

Athena fully manifesting in the market when someone grabs odysseus with godly flashes of snakes and owls and the drums of war to scream /release him/ (odysseus is feeling indulgent for both his patron and his wife it's so cute that they're this worried it's not like he couldn't defend himself just fine. Especially from whatever poor fuck just grabbed him who definitely doesn't deserve a goddess screaming in his face. Hes trying so hard not to laugh if he did athena would send him flying.)

Athena telling all the other gods that yes she knows odysseus is the favorite barbie doll she choose him well after all and to back the fuck off if any of them bother him again they will have made an enemy of her.

Athena disguising odysseus only as an old beggar from here on out instead of an irresistibly tall and handsome man. Because she saw how uncomfortable nausicaa's attention made him.

[weaponizedmoth]

"Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a vampire in love with a human. Better integration than I could possibly have dreamed."

(just some Sundown The Vampire in Retreat fanart. More details and B&W vers. under the cut, etc).

:)

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[starry-907]

hey look it's another "technically drawn to song" thing, except this time it's an animatic because A) i'm learning toon boom and B) i really wanted to highlight how this whole part of this song just really kinda exemplifies purple's pre-redemption arc to me. I did this all over the course of a little over a day

anyways me when i'm in a "chasing validation" contest and my opponent is purple, am i right?

[autistickaitovocaloid]

Something space themed for Meiko's 20th because there's meant to be a meteor shower visible where I live tonight

[quadrantadvisor]

tl;dr: I think being trapped in a time loop would fix him

[Plain text under the cut]

I read like two different jason time loop fics which both featured jason coming to the cave for help or resources when people didn't expect him there which makes me think that the loop helped make jason aware that he could come to his family for help and anyways jason gets stuck in a time loop shortly after becoming the Red Hood bruce is aware or at least suspects his identity but he hasnt communicated that to anyone else yet so for a couple of loops jason tries to figure out what's going on but all of his league contacts are either unhelpful or unreachable within the time frame and he gets frustrated and he spends a while just. living out all of his sadistic fantasies he gets to do every dramatic reveal, he gets to kill each one of them, and they're spitting and defiant and telling him he isn't the jason who died but after a while it stops being satisfying and he gets desperate for a way out he knows by this point that bruce hasn't told anyone about him, so his new plan is to talk to one of them away from bruce and just lie Dick is the obvious choice, and that's how jason finds out that dick has been hallucinating him while he's been gone he is not very useful. it's really hard to convince him that jason is legit and then he just gets really emotional and doesn't pay attention to the time loop at all also jason feels really weird about it

so he tries tim. he's like. okay. he doesn't know you're the red hood. you just have to be civil to him for one loop and when it turns out he can't do anything you try something else but tim is also like. really emotional about him apparently? but when jason tells him there's a time loop he takes it really seriously tim is like "why didn't you go to bruce?" and jason is like "i tried that. when he finds out he makes it worse" which is a very plausible thing for someone in a time loop to say so tim believes him Tim's like "obviously i have to verify" and jason is thinking to himself what a waste of time this all is. but tim gets his permission to bring babs in on things and that's how jason finds out about oracle and the clocktower so thats useful at least they use babs equipment for blood tests and tim grills jason on things only he would know and jason is like. hey. why do you know any of that stuff and by the time that tim is satisfied that Jason is who he says he is and that what he says is happening is happening the day is basically over and jason is like well thanks for nothing

and Tim's like, oh, sorry, this is just the setup. next time just tell me this timeloop code, I'll know that I trusted you enough to give it to you so I'll listen to whatever you say which actually does work to Jason's surprise, tim just asks him how many times and what they've already tried and they get down to business tim always has a freakout over jason being alive but that freakout can come at different times of the day depending on how jason plays it jason is still mad at tim and frequently snappy with him but it takes a few loops for him to just yell at tim that he's the red hood and he's been killing people and he was planning on killing tim (not strictly true originally but like. he has done it, so) and tim is like. hm. that makes it pretty personally dangerous for you to know my time loop code, since it makes me just drop everything and listen to whoever says it. but also i think you do need help so i guess I'm still glad you have it. and jason is like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

anyways on a later loop tim convinces him to sneak into the bag cave for the tech and bruce catches them there and jason is like well that's this loop shot but bruce is just like ……. jason? 🥺 you came home? anyways the fic is about jason realizing that he never needed to do all that shit, and actually he finds it rather distasteful, and he can just. go home. if he wants on the last loop he has to like leave gotham to go stop whatever is causing this and it takes all day so he doesn't even talk to them so he has to make the real choice to start up relationships with all of them for keeps and by that point he's experienced so much time loop violence that the first thing he says to bruce is, I'm not gonna kill anyone, at least for now. we can talk about the morality of it and stuff and i will legitimately discuss it with you but right now i just don't want to so that can be our truce and bruce is like, sobbing at having his kid back he uses the code on tim one last time and tim jerks to attention but Jason's like nah relax the loop is over, just wanted to say thanks for all the help

[myreia]

✦ D I S C I P L E O F T H E H A N D

Alchemy for potions. Blacksmithing for repairs. Leatherworking and weaving for mending. She is not an artisan, but the basic skills she has picked up over the years have served her well. Self-sufficiency has always been at the forefront of her mind, and she is pleased that she can keep herself afloat when needed. Besides, crafting is relaxing. A hobby or two here and there is good for her mind. —level 90 compendium

[andi-o-geyser]

on my anti dr. jacob agenda sooo hard you don't even know. like the level of just how unprofessional, unethical, and fucking infuriating his choices are is putting me into so much of a rage i can no longer maintain my danny rojas level of live laugh love in this economy. bastard. bastard man. my worst enemy. im calling the kansas college of registered psychotherapy and regulatory board of ethics on him don't test me

[fromtheseventhhell]

Saying this an Elia Martell fan from what little we know of her, but I'm really sick of how fandom sees her as nothing but a perpetual victim and/or hater of Lyanna and Rhaegar. Where's fandom content of her being kind to baby Tyrion or headcanons of her plotting with Rhaegar against Aerys? Makes me wish GRRM would write more Fire and Blood books to flesh her out more outside of the "pretty victim" fanon Sansa stans want her to be.

It's actually so frustrating cause there are great conversations + theorizing that could be going on surrounding her character because we know we're going to be learning more about her in the future, but a lot of her "fans" are just stuck on using her as a prop. And honestly? That's because the more we learn about her, the more she moves away from being fandom's favorite passive self-insert character. If George has her doing anything it breaks their idea of her being the perfect victim which is what they love about her. They don't even like her character organically, they just like that it gives them a justification to hate Rhaegar and/or Lyanna. I'm personally neutral-positive about Elia, but I am very interested in learning more about her character. George has kept that portion of the story intentionally vague for a reason and I can't wait to see why.

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

Been thinking about a postgame scenario that goes in a direction I don't think canon would ever take in a million years, but like... I think it could be really compelling...

And that's the idea of Chrom becoming Plegia's king after Grima's defeat. And specifically giving up his claim to Ylisse's throne to do it (leaving it to Lucina when she's old enough).

Because here's the thing... The game ends with Grima's defeat/Robin's return in the sacrifice ending. It doesn't address what happens to Plegia at all, and while I personally maintain that Aversa is the most qualified candidate to rule, her canon ending provides that she goes back to the village she was born in. So, fine. Let's give her that.

But SOMEONE has to do SOMETHING because realistically, Plegia is in dire straits. Validar, the king and the leader of the Grimleal, is dead. He gave, like, ALL of Plegia's resources to the Ylissean League (well, okay, we don't know how much, if any, he left in reserve, but... He really needed Walhart gone and it's not like he had any reason to think that anyone would need resources once Grima was running around, so... chances are good there's little to nothing left in the wake of the averted apocalypse). And the population has been utterly devastated, because not only did people (exactly how many is unclear, but presumably it took more than just a couple) have to sacrifice themselves to renew the fell dragon's power, but Grima was also spawning Grimleal onto their back at the final battle. Their losses are so immense...

So first of all, Chrom is definitely responsible for taking all their resources and setting half of them on fire (Now to be fair, Flavia and Basilio are also responsible, but... Idk, I kinda feel like they'd bicker with each other over who has to do the crappy parts of the job and then agree that they should just ask Chrom if he can do it. Like "Haha, if you didn't want to deal with thieves ambushing the Longfort to steal construction supplies, you shouldn't have gone and beaten me at the last tournament!" "Oh, shut up. Let's see if Chrom can send his thief friend over to talk these guys down. Or kill them, whichever." I mean, Chrom is always going to be their guy who knows a guy.) There's just no way Chrom would abandon the surviving Plegians who need help anyway, but especially not when he knows the war with Valm would've ended before it could begin without them.

Of course, there's the historical hostility between Ylisse and Plegia to consider, but... If anyone's protesting, it's probably the Ylisseans. Because the survivng Plegians, uh... probably were never Grima's most devoted followers in the first place (if you really wanted to give Grima your life, you'd rush to the front of the line at the Dragon's Table, right?) and even if they used to consider themselves true Grimleal, the religion's leadership is destroyed, and—for the purpose of this scenario, I'm considering it post-sacrifice ending—the fell dragon is gone and not coming back. These people narrowly avoided becoming Grima's breakfast or Grima's meat shields. They all almost certainly know someone who wasn't as lucky. And the one who saved them... Well, it was Chrom, wasn't it? Because he believed in humanity enough to challenge the concept of fate, a fate that the people of Plegia were surely taught was inescapable. Despite their history with Ylisse, it's hardly unreasonable for them to see Chrom as a savior to them specifically. The second coming of the Hero-King who ought for the lives of all humans, really.

And yeah, I'm going here... Chrom is Marth's descendant. Marth was Altean. Former Altea is is modern Plegia, so technically, the people can argue that he's actually theirs.

Doesn't it sort of make sense, even? Plegia is ruined, the god to whom the theocracy was devoted killed. "What we need is to restore the glory of ancient Altea!" And who better to help them than Chrom, Marth's successor in blood and in spirit?

But Chrom would frown and say no. Of course he's going to help them restore their country to prosperity—or at least to independent, peaceful functioning. But king? Sheesh, that's going too far. Come on guys, you don't really want that. Besides, he's already ruling Ylisse...

Except, he's not ruling it as Exalt. At least, not at first he's not. He forswore the title when he started his rule and in canon he is only official welcomed as Exalt after Grima's defeat. But what if he just... continued to not accept it. It's not like he ever wanted to be Exalt. He only has the right to rule because Emmeryn died—because he failed to protect her. It has nothing to do with any of his successes.

But if the Plegians made him their king, then it would be because of his own accomplishments.

And in a way I also can't help but find it heartwarming, because it was the Plegian people who got him to truly understand Emmeryn's ideals. He wanted peace, he wanted to follow her path, but it wasn't until the Plegians took her sacrifice for the peace offer it was and refused to continue fighting Ylisse that Chrom was finally able to comprehend what it meant that Emmeryn believed that all people wanted the same thing, that peace is something for everyone and not just purehearted saints like her who would never hurt a fly. So wouldn't it be sweet to expand on that existing connection? For the people who once bore a grudge against him and his nation to say, actually, our home is your home and you belong with us... For Chrom to reach back and decide that these are his people and that he will protect them...

Especially because that's what he's always done for Robin. Your father doesn't get to determine your path for you, your past doesn't dictate your future, you always have a place beside me because we are two halves of a greater whole. This AU is definitely a chrobin AU, because when Robin gets back I want them to rule at his side (after all, I do have feelings about Grima's loyalty to a people who have been praying to them to end their suffering for a thousand years).

Now, I do think that Chrom would never leave Ylisse while little Lucina was still growing up, but... Honestly it would probably take quite some time to establish a castle for Plegia's new ruler anyway (especially if they go super hard on the Altean revival theme and want it to be IN former Altean territory, which has become the "border wastes" and undoubtedly needs some help... But EVERYWHERE in Plegia needs help, so what better time to give the land some attention?) So when Lucina is an adult she can take over as Ylisse's true Exalt, and Chrom can focus his efforts on the other side of the border. I think he'd still be awkward about the whole thing, approaching it like "Well, I guess I'm here if you all still want me..." but Robin's there to give him confidence and the people there are SO excited for their hero to come and live with them and together they all usher in a new era of peace and prosperity as Ylisse and Plegia themselves become like two halves of a greater whole.

[musical-chick-13]

So I guess ultimately my question is why are we assuming that Nayuta specifically meant “Denji belongs to me definitively, and you are trying to take his attention away from me?”

Aside from the fact that narrative misdirection is a thing and that I think it would completely contradict all the themes of the story thus far to just have her be Makima 2.0 and inherently evil...

We don’t actually know if she and Yoru recognize each other or not? Even on a subconscious level. If she does recognize Yoru (and, reasonably, knows how her powers work) calling Yoru a thief could have meant that “You are trying to steal Denji’s spinal cord to make a weapon” or even “You have stolen this random girl’s body to use for yourself.” (Even if she doesn’t know specifically that Yoru is sharing Asa’s body, she might still be able to tell that something weird is going on?)

She’s still a child, she might have just impulsively said the smallest amount of words that would sort-of convey what she was feeling.

I’m not worried yet.

Yet.