#i even got to the end of their story

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

None of our hands are clean

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[mishy-mashy]

If you told Bruce the first thing he woke up to would be a fat, bawling baby, and Leader’s new conspiracy theories about the Demon Lord, he'd have rolled over in his bed for an extra hour of sleep. Those sounded like problems for the him of one hour later.

Alas, he was not God's favorite, and had definitely done way too many people wrong. He was reminded of this as the sound of a wailing infant broke the often-silent air of the abandoned hospital currently being used as a base.

"For fuck's sake-"

Bruce groaned and kicked off the thin blanket, knowing he couldn't leave anyone to deal with this mess. Of course he had to get up. Sleep? Who was that? Bruce didn't know ‘em. At this point, his eyebags were deeper than Yoichi's obsession with Captain Hero. Or maybe not. The frail man was a fanatic. But sleep was a dream within a dream, being actively kicked away by the atrocious shrieking.

It was with annoyance in his heavy steps that he marched toward the shrieking scene, thinking someone set off one of the robot babies in the hospital's storage, that he actually had to stop and think about what he was looking at.

He blinked at the scene he rushed to. A hallucination, maybe. So he rubbed his dry eyes again.

Nothing changed. Huh.

For one, babies weren't in their cause. So this was completely something unexpected and very not robotic. There was an actual, human baby here.

Two, Yoichi was holding a sobbing little baby, with a head of pink hair, and an awfully clean baby onesie. Leader, for his part, had his emergency handgun raised to kill the child, having been in casual, off-duty clothes.

Three, he didn't think Yoichi had the arm strength for that, holding the baby so protectively with his body from Leader.

Four, why was Leader pointing a gun at a baby???

"What's happening?" Bruce finally said.

"Bruce!!!" Yoichi and Kudo both called out, looking at him, barely above the screaming of the baby.

"Leader wants to kill this lovely child!"

"Yoichi found a Meta baby, but it has to be a ploy by All For One."

He really should've just gone back to sleep. The warmth and pointedly isolated walls of his office were growing exponentially more appealing by the second.

But at this rate, Leader might shoot a kid, and possibly Yoichi, in consequence. So he dragged a hand down his face with a long-suffering groan, and opened his mouth.

"Okay, first—"

(I am having much fun with this, actually)

Oh the temptation to write a Resistance fic where Kudo learns to take care of a baby during terrible times

[royaltea000]

I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf

[lgbtlunaverse]

I feel like too often people frame Nie Mingjue's issues as ignorance borne from safety. Like, they think that because of his privilege as a sect leader he doesn't know what it's like to be in danger and forced to make hard choices to survive. And I disagree. Strongly.

First of all, Nie Mingjue is very familiar with death not only from war but from. You know. Actively dying since the age of fourteen. Let us not forget Nie Mingjue is dead! Super dead! And maybe he didn't die the exact way he expected to but he did, absolutely, know he was going to die. To act like Nie Mingjue is unfamiliar with the scenario of "do something you find morally reprehensible or die" is to ignore that he has been living that exact scenario and chose death.

Nie Mingjue knows death is a risk for someone like Jin guangyao, in fact he explicitly acknowledges it even in his worst moments like the stairs in chapter 49. Had his issue been ignorance, then he would've responded to Jin Guangyao saying that he's in danger and has to sacrifice others for his own safety with "No you aren't you'll be fine." But he doesn't. He accepts the fact that jgy is in danger with no qualms and says: then you should die.

That's not him betraying his values, those are his values. He is, essentially, pro-suicide. Jgy is like hey I have a moral dilemma what should I do and nmj straight up goes "Kill yourself" and earlier that same chapter when he was faced with a moral dilemma he went "I'm gonna kill myself." He believes the solution to moral dilemmas is suicide! He is extremely consistent about this! When it's pointed out to him that it would have been dangerous for Wen Qing to oppose Wen Ruohan it doesn't phase him because he thinks putting yourself at risk to do the right thing is the only moral choice. The idea that he can only hold this belief because he is himself somehow not in danger, again, requires you to ignore that he is dying the whole time. And it doesn't deter him. He is the idea of self-sacrifice as a moral good taken to its absolute logical extreme. Someone who is ready to die and demands the same from everyone else.

It makes him a very fun case study for fandom, because a lot of fandom spaces also tend to revere self-sacrifice as the ultimate good, and yet we get very uncomfortable when someone starts demanding it of characters we love. Like woah, hold on, that's a bit too far isn't it? Only we the audience get to do that!

[zivazivc]

my brainrot about these two can be measured in liters

[thevoicefromthestars]

so i'm trying to come to terms with starship iris ending, y'know, as one does when there's a project that you auditioned for on a whim as a total amateur, eight years and a lifetime ago, that is finally coming to a close, and i am really truly trying not to get sappy about it. but.

in another universe, there is no ishani kanetkar. she was born with this show, for this show, and it's still a little unbelievable to me that there are people i've never met who know who she is. it's even wilder that there are people i HAVE met who want her, this person who has never been fully real but has always still been me, to help them tell their own stories.

i recorded the pilot episode on my wired earbuds' built-in microphone, in a bedroom in my grandparents' home in mumbai. those grandparents are gone; that house of my memory too. but every time i come back to this show, i remember sitting on the bed of the small room that once belonged to my great-aunt, trying and failing to find a scrap of quiet so that kay grisham could tell violet liu it would all be okay.

so maybe some of the things i'm feeling are for the end of a story, but i think some of them are also for the ishani who started telling it, who can't go back. some of them are for ishani kanetkar, this ephemeral self and not-self, whose own time is one day going to be over. and some of them are just for me, now, who looks forward to a future with other projects and other people but not this project, with these people, and is sad to say goodbye. i hope i can do my part to give it a truly phenomenal send-off.

[oifaaa]

No joke I honestly think Mei Chang is one of the best characters in fma like this girl at the age of 11 with nothing but a small panda and the clothes on her back crossed a deadly desert that's stated alot of grown adults find difficult to cross, found a serial killer and his weird weasly little sidekick and went yep these are the guys I want to travel with from now on I will also defend this serial killer like im his professional bodyguard despite me being a tenth of his size, finds a sentient suit of armour and proceeds to fall deeply in love with him and later when he asks her to help sacrifice him to get his brothers arm back she does not hesitate and all that's on top of her being an outstanding fighter, alkahester and a princess

[fusionsprunt]

Hunter, Year 4036

[phoenixcatch7]

The One Fact Pact

I want to see a fic where the chain is rigorously keeping their secrets and stories hidden, but they've all learned to trust one another. Like, it's past time they should probably be sharing things because it's beginning to get annoying, they all agree, but it's sorta become a habit by now? They kept those secrets and now no one really wants to share first?

So, to keep things interesting and get some momentum going, they make a deal.

Whenever they come across something that reminds them of their travels, their quest - be it an item, a familiar name, a location - they've got to share ONE fact or story about it.

But only! When they're in other people's time, because otherwise it'll just be a staged tour and one person infodumping and that's exactly what they're trying to avoid (and it won't be a fun competition they can make bets about).

And then either they go through worlds slowly building trust and understanding of each other through a long drawn out and incidental series of tidbits....

Or they immediately get stuck in wild's hyrule for ages.

Everyone's arguing over who the latest ruin belongs to. Time and wind are getting into an argument about the kokiri. No one can agree on the zonai. Wars is taking immense pleasure in pointing out anything someone else might have missed. Legend is resolutely ignoring eventide. Twilight claims the entire faron woods until they step into the hot and humid jungle for the first time.

Wild thinks he's immune because it's his world so he legally can't answer questions, but everywhere they visit there's a piece of his own story in the rubble or on the wind.

Wild: *happily making tea and checking his slate with the other hand* okay, looks like tomorrow we can reach the breach of demise and to new serenne stable. Just past that- Sky: *choking on his drink* the what?? Wild: the breach? Sky, weakly: Why's it uh, called that? Wild: oh, it's an old story. Apparently eons ago it's where a demon godking came up from underground to the surface world... *suspiciously* Why? Sky: gimme the slate. *squinting at the shape on the map*... I can neither confirm nor deny. Wild:... What do you mean? Sky, remembering the One Fact Pact: I can neither confirm nor deny. What's important is that I killed him. The entire chain, variously: YOU KILLED A DEMON GOD?!!? Sky *recalling the hardest fight of his life*: what, like it's hard?

And then he just refuses to elaborate.

[navree]

"rhaenys could have ended the war by dracarysing all the greens right there" yes because a distant relation to the throne deciding to barbecue an anointed and publicly positively hailed king and his entire family who is well loved within the city and in multiple other parts of the country for the sake of the succession of a far-away princess no one was ever on board with who hasn't been seen by the populace in literal years, her psycho husband, her three obvious bastards, and two toddlers from the psycho husband would go over super well with westeros and especially in king's landing where scores of the still-cheering population were killed for no reason by that same dragon who would do the barbecuing, because when targaryens act unilaterally without thinking of how the people would react there's never any problem, which is why the storming of the dragonpit and robert's rebellion were actually just collective delusions dreamed up by readers who hate rhaenyra and not key parts of the story and house targaryen's history that directly contributed to their demise and are intrinsic to the plot

truly team black stans are made up of only the most genius and media literate amongst us

[emsartwork]

Barbie Girls: Ro(sella)

[kakooshi]

My Hero Academia is ending in 5 chapters so that there will be a sequel where Bakudeku are married and they start a hero agency with Shouto as their sexy secretary. And they all fall in love while trying to navigate post-war society and make it a better one for both heroes and villains. It's true, HORI TOLD ME.

[carlyraejepsans]

One thing I think people forget is that sans probably wouldn’t talk about missing his home and never being able to go back and giving up unless he absolutely felt he had to

with frisk he’s pretty sure that’s the time traveler that could very well end the entire world. He’s trying to reason with em as a someone he’s hoping could be a friend at that point because he’d really rather not have that happen

In geno is IS the end of the world and he’s hoping you’ll realize this is stupid and cruel and reset. It’s not like he’d have this conversation on a random Tuesday with papyrus

yeah agreed, sans goes out of his way to not talk to/with papyrus about their life before the underground. remember the newsletter q&a? (this is more a theory, but judging from their behavior i personally think papyrus is an amnesiac/sans thinks he is, and he's trying to spare him the grief of remembering).

his memories and mementos are stored behind his house for a reason, he's had his realization that he'll never go back already: there's no sense in reopening that wound again if he has an option to avoid the topic.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Ok, I think I have a pretty good idea of why a lot of Akechi's dialogue is... like that.

So, even before his confidant truly started, I noticed that he has a real knack for directing the flow of a conversation. This is very fitting for someone who is both a detective and skilled at interviews - when there is a topic and a goal, Akechi is in his element.

All this to say, he's actually kind of controlling when it comes to conversational flow. He probes for information, or turns the conversation around to a particular topic, usually the Phantom Thieves. He manages to take a few of Joker's dialogue options and spin them so they sound mildly incriminating in the context he's placed them in - the only way to truly get around this is to pick answers that feign indifference, and even then, that's more than a bit telling. He's clearly very good at this kind of thing.

But then, we get conversations where either Joker does something he didn't expect, or else he doesn't have a particular goal in mind - and the conversation stutters. In the first instance, Joker does something (a particularly egregious example is putting his glasses on him and fluffing his hair in rank 3) which both leaves him wrong-footed and no longer in perfect control of the situation. He just kind of... freezes, for awhile. It's hilarious. He has no idea how to respond.

He picks up control again in the phone call afterwards, having chosen to play into it, turning this "fooling the crowds" into a kind of game or secret between them. Nice save.

But in instances where there isn't an obvious topic and the goal is somewhat nebulous, for instance, that one Leblanc scene, it becomes pretty apparent that Akechi doesn't have the right "script" to go off of. Again, it's particularly notable in that scene, because I'm fairly sure he didn't have any specific reason to be at Leblanc, other than him looking for a quiet spot now that public opinion has turned on him. And because there isn't anything specific he's digging for, he kind of just ends up throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. Probing for any kind of recognizable reaction that he can jump on and work with, and that just doesn't really happen in this scene.

He references Sae, a woman in a respectable position, to Sojiro, but instead of that netting a welcome, it earns his ire, given Sae's recent actions against him. He then tries to greet Joker, his... rival? friend? enemy? person who at least seems to somewhat enjoy spending time with him? But Joker's responses are somewhat short, and Akechi practically wilts. He tries to commiserate by oversharing. He tries to involve Futaba and reaches out for the only topic of interest he can think of around "young people". He compliments the coffee. He compliments Joker. He tries to invoke that connection between them. None of it is really sticking, nor does it serve as a jumping off point for him to steer the conversation, or even really start one.

So, he basically just ends up having a one-sided chat with himself and then leaves. Hilarious. Also a little sad, if I'm being honest. It's really giving "guy with no friends who only knows how to speak to adults" energy. If there's no specific purpose to the exchange, or he is not in control of its direction, he seems to be kind of out of his depth. He succeeds only in being a little awkward and confusing, more than anything.

[wandixx]

Halloween dress-up, let's go!!!

Assignment: "Dress up as ghosts".

Status: Yes. They're ghosts. Just really different types of ghosts

[aroaceleovaldez]

Mark Oshiro confuses me a little bit not going to lie. In the press tour for the first book all they ever talked about was how Nico is their son and Will is fine I guess. Then they said like 2 weeks before TSATS came out that they didn't understand Will's character at all and it's one of the main reasons why Will has so little POV.

Possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think it's a good, encouraging sign when the writer admits to not really caring about the deuteragonist or not even having a sense of how to write them...

Yeah, no. If you have no interest in 1/2 of the POV characters of your book, you REALLY shouldn't be writing it (or at least, not have that be a main character). Especially when the main way TSATS could have been improved is if it was primarily Will-centric instead of Nico-centric. Will basically had next to no established character prior to TSATS! He was practically a blank slate! But all the new stuff we got for Will in TSATS was so clearly disinterested and had no regard for his previously established traits (or the established timeline/canon). Which is annoying because fleshing out Will would have been the PERFECT opportunity to actually incorporate a lot of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in as a sensitivity reader, which was the ENTIRE REASON THEY WERE BROUGHT ON AS A CO-AUTHOR!!!!

As TSATS stands, there is no reason for Mark Oshiro specifically to have been the co-author instead of someone else. It's so clearly just a PR move from RR following the huge backlash Rick received due to his response to criticism on how he wrote Piper and Samirah (and Reyna and etc etc). This was immediately following Rick saying he wasn't going to write what would become TSATS because "it [wasn't his] place to." Most of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in either weren't relevant at all to TSATS or written very poorly (to downright offensively) in TSATS, so either Mark Oshiro wasn't doing their job or was not able to do their job for some reason, but either way it basically makes the theoretical justification for Mark Oshiro being the co-author/sensitivity reader irrelevant.

With Will, it was HUGE fanon back in the day for him to be trans. Trans!Will and photokinesis!Will were basically the two biggest headcanons for him (both largely popularized by Cherryandsisters). We know Rick is aware of this old fanon because he canonized photokinesis!Will. If we had gotten trans!Will, that would have been great! And then made sense why we specifically got a trans co-author! (Instead, if anything, TSATS canonized Will being cis.) If we had gotten Will being latino, that would have been amazing!!!! And also then made sense as to why they chose Mark Oshiro for the job as a latinx author/sensitivity-reader, versus potentially choosing an Italian co-author since Nico being Italian/Venetian was emphasized so much in the book (and done poorly! Yknow what they could have done to fix that? GOTTEN A SENSITIVITY READER FOR IT)! Based on the themes and focuses actually present in the book, it would have been most logical to get a queer, neurodivergent, Italian co-author or sensitivity reader who specializes in those three topics at least. But we didn't! So why was Mark Oshiro chosen instead when they only specialize in one of those topics? PR reasons. It's blatantly entirely PR reasons and no actual thought or care was put into this book (or, likely, TSATS 2 either).

It doesn't help that we're also actively being told that the published version of TSATS was a rough draft. Or that their editor blatantly isn't doing her job. Or that "The Sun And The Star" was the working title that they just kept cause they didn't bother to make an actual title. And that the final version is full of explicitly last-minute scenes that weren't checked over at all (the final Bianca scene, for one). Or the ACTIVELY ADMITTING TO SOURCING IDEAS AND INFORMATION FROM FANS! That last one is kind of important because at this level of publishing that is a HUGE no-no for legal reasons. You can get into a lot of trouble for that and there is a reason why it is Ye Olde Fandom Law to never try to pitch your ideas or headcanons to the source creator(s) and keep fandom separate from the creators. There is a REASON why Rick Riordan is so distant from the community these days and it's for PROTECTION AGAINST LEGAL REPERCUSSION. Mark Oshiro being the exact opposite while also ACTIVELY ACKNOWLEDGING sourcing concepts from fans does not bode well! It has to do with copyright stuff.

It's just. So. Sighhhhhhhh >->o <- me lying on the floor about all of this. It's sad being able to see the glimmer of what could have been at the very least a decent book underneath all this. If anyone involved in the process had actually cared just the tiniest amount.