#i miss him but also hes an asshole

[strange-calathea]

Goodnight!!!

[dykedvonte]

Something something perhaps the reason Curly lacks a truly undamaged ID where his face is visible is to represent how much damage Jimmy had already affected on him throughout their relationship and the way Curly obscured part of who he is and what he stood to unintentionally cater to this toxic influence in his life.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 184

“Well damn.” 

Jason wrenched his gaze from the mess of red and green spattered across the room, searching for the source of the voice. His head hurt, he wanted his Dad. He wanted Bruce. He… his head hurt. His everything hurt. 

“Honestly, didn’t expect them to find another half-breed. Didn’t think there was another halfa out there…”  

He tore his gaze away from the floor- when had it gotten there- finally finding the other… person? The person giving him an empty smile through some sort of muzzle and missing an entire arm. Well, he couldn’t judge, he’d torn his nails off while digging out of his grave before… this. 

“Hey, kid, don’t sweat it, it’ll grow back,” the man apparently noticed where he was staring, shoulder twitching as he shrugged and more green pouring out. Jason couldn’t stop staring, eyes slipping from the growing pool to the rest of the chains apparently keeping the person on that side of the… room? Cage? Cell? 

“Shit, hey, kid, kid, don’t cry, uh, fuck, shh, kid don’t cry-” the person made a noise, some sort of hum or croon that caused him to relax. To his already brain-damaged confusion. “C’mere, away from the door now, shh…” 

Oh, when had he started to move? It was like he blinked and was stumbling away towards the chained person, practically tripping over a limb before the person managed to catch him. “Ope, oh you’re just a little baby-” a hand, clawed, carefully ran through his hair, tucking him against a rumbling chest that nearly made him tear up again. He wanted Bruce. 

“It’s alright kid, shh, they won’t get you,” the man rumbled, everything about him green to his rapidly closing eyes. Pale skin like a corpse, black scales like rot, hair white like snow, all stained green with blood.  “They’d have to kill me again for that.” 

[lloydfrontera]

my biggest gripe with the manhwa rn is that they made javier more of an asshole than he is in the novel and then took away most of the scenes where we see him being kind and soft with others.

javier can be an ass, he is a brat and he's especially annoying when he's with lloyd, but above anything else he is kind and loyal and selfless and good. i cannot emphasize enough how good javier is. he's the kind of person who cannot see someone in trouble or danger and do nothing about it. he's the kind of person who would sacrifice his life for total strangers and no hope of any reward. he's the kind of person who can't even enjoy a lavish party without feeling guilty because he'd much rather help people in need with that money.

he's so fucking good, lloyd is a little annoyed by it because he keeps getting dragged into life-threatening situations because javier just won't stop helping people they don't even know. mind you, lloyd is also endeared by this and would not want him to change but god can it be frustrating in his endeavor to keep them both alive.

there's this particular scene that i just. i'm so sad it was cut. where javier is helping around the refugee camp, going without sleeping and eating so he can focus on helping as many people as possible and then he spots a little kid that got lost on his way back. so he decides to help him.

and he's so gentle with this kid.

Javier walked over to the kid and called him. The flustered boy looked up. Javier strove to put on a warm smile on his face. "Are you lost?" “...” The boy nodded, his eyes all wet. Javier carefully stroked the boy's head. "I think I can help you with that. Why don't you let me help find your tent?" suggested Javier. “...” The boy nodded again. "But why didn't you eat the food? It's going to get cold. Are you not hungry?" "I am… hungry," the boy finally said. But what he said next caught Javier by surprise. "But I won't eat it," said the boy. "Why not?" "My mother is hungrier." "Is that so?" "Yes." “...” Javier wondered why this kid came out to take the food when he had a mother. There must be a reason, he thought to himself. He held out his hand. "I will hold the tray for you." "..." "I won't spill it. I promise." "Okay..." Javier took the tray and wrapped the boy’s hand with his own.

like. god. javier is not a naturally warm person. he's very reserved and stoic and sometimes outright cold, but he still tries so hard with this kid. because he knows what it's like to be him. he knows what it's like to be a child and be scared and hungry and without a home. and he remembers how much it meant for a kind adult to reach out a hand to him and help. and he wants to be that to others too.

everything he does, he does because he genuinely believes it's the right thing to do and therefore his obligation. and even when it doesn't come naturally to him, like being warm and gentle to a child, he still tries his best to do so.

and like that wasn't enough, when they finally find the kid's mom, javier finds out she's blind. recently blinded actually. that she used all her strength to get her child to safety and now she has to depend on him to take care of them because she can't do it anymore. her blouse is smudged with porridge.

so javier kneels down and explains who he is, why he's there and that he wants to help. he lifts up a spoonful of food and slowly and carefully starts to feed her himself. she's a complete stranger and javier doesn't hesitate one second to do this for her.

this is who javier is!! this is who he is at his core!! he's kind and he's selfless and he's above all else good!!

if your audience can't imagine javier comforting a child, then you failed your audience. you missed the point of his character.

[fefflerone]

Save me lonely loser guy save me

[bonefall]

there's been some chatter going around that ivypool's super edition might lead into an exploration/revival of faded characters, mostly bristlefrost. what's your take on that? (both for how you could implement that into BB if ever it becomes a plot point, and also your general opinion)

I won't be surprised if they do! And I won't really be disappointed either. Honestly I've never been fond of the idea of double death. I love the concept of fading, but ghost-killing has always felt kinda... boring, I guess?

Fading feels terrifying, but natural. Like a soul finding peace, and moving on to whatever the next stage of being is. The idea of persisting forever, far after there's anything relevant to watch on the mortal plane, seems worse. But killing ghosts? Why? Can't think of anything else? They can't respawn, or persist with ghastly injuries?

Double-death may have been added to add more stakes to Dark Forest training, or to make it so you can physically fight the spirits and win for the climactic battle... but honestly? It feels like they were trying to prevent themselves from using their favorite characters ever again.

But I don't expect this team to stick to it. Never really have, even when I was a tot experiencing it for the first time in OotS. They double-killed off a bunch of their fan favorites. Tigerstar, Hawkfrost, Spottedleaf... it's always felt like a matter of time before they just find some way to bring them back.

For BB though? I love coming up with supernatural stuff and magic systems. I can work with it, no problem.

In fact I'll be happy to. I've already done away with demons being able to die in the Dark Forest-- they can only be killed if a mortal comes in to kill them, or they leave the protection of their home. There's also a new state of undeath, Hawkfrost is half-killed by Tigerstar but manages to make it home just in time, leaving him in a state where he phases in and out of existence. A half-ghost.

I'll have to see what they do before giving a definitive answer, though, since I'd be trying to accommodate what they toss at me. It's important to note that I MASSIVELY changed the way Bristlefrost died, though. Instead of evil water, she burned up in orbit, knocking Ashfur out of the sky like a shooting star.

So like... if it's a Void location that a whole soul goes to, I'll probably mess around with it. If it's a resurrection ritual, that'll be easy to just adapt 1:1.

[spikyiwaizumi]

shoutout to Keisuke Unnan. that guy is my scapegoat when haikyuu verse needs a villain because look at him.

he’s an asshole. he looks formidable. he’s got a stupid fucking bowl cut. he’s perfect for “guy who picks a fight with the main cast for little reason”

[compacflt]

If you want, and only if you want to, could you explain about making Logistics a big part of Ice's career path? Not only did fit so well with your Ice's characterization, it was just so neat I've made it my HC for Ice's career path.

yes!

I got REALLy deep into the defense policy weeds in this post so I’m putting a cut to save people’s dashboards

1. when i was rewriting chapters 8 &9 last winter i did literally the bare minimum of research about the current set of high-level officers. the commander of the pacific fleet at the time had previously been the director of pacific fleet logistics ordnance & supply. So that was easy to yoink. a proven chain of succession.

2. but also: it fit ice’s (or his alter ego admiral Kazansky’s) neat, orderly, effective, collected, strategic characterization. And as professional tactics go, there would be no better promotion for a high-level officer looking to take over the fleet than DFLOS. understand the fleet by the numbers, you comprehensively understand the fleet.

3. In terms of secret-keeping logistics, ice is supposed to be kind of the best. like, because of his logistical thinking, he & maverick get away with it. Or that’s how I would’ve written it if I were a little smarter. Obviously in practice a bunch of people find out so it’s not great. but the navy AS A WHOLE doesn’t find out.

4. The field of military logistics is rigorously bureaucratic, boring, soulsucking, selfdefeating, notoriously corrupt, and yet entirely necessary for the military to succeed at any level (in the very first draft of WWGATTAI i included a famous US marine corps maxim that most people have heard at some point: “amateurs talk tactics. professionals talk logistics.” but that was literally the only good thing about the original chapter 6 which got entirely rewritten a month after i published it). So logistics as a field of specialization fit in perfectly with my secondary character thesis that rising through the boring bureaucratic ranks of the Navy sucked all the humanity & will to live out of ice one day at a time.

a couple related interesting things that I’ve never talked about on this blog & might never get the chance to again:

a) ice canonically joins the navy as a fighter pilot & ends his career as a glorified bureaucrat. that sucks. obviously the struggle to rise in the ranks is a notoriously cutthroat, political, sleazy business (you do not get to the top of the United States Navy by being nice to people), but i would also not be the first person to say that—for exemplary officers—leadership is an EXPECTATION that can counterbalance someone’s natural drive to excel, if that makes sense. You get promoted because you’re good at something (flying), but you get promoted away from the thing you were good at. There is an extent to which you have to fight for a promotion—but there is also an extent to which commanders above you pick you for the job, suck you up along the pipeline. Loss of agency—a major major component of joining the military—does still apply to upper-level officers.

B) to that end, i am reminded of one quote from Todd Schmidt’s 2023 book “Silent Coup of the Guardians: US Military Elite Influence on National Security.” This is an Army training & doctrine commander speaking: “the military has a lot of two- and three-star senior leaders that were confident, charismatic commanders at the O-6 level. But that’s the end of the story. One in fifty, maybe one in a hundred, truly have what it takes to operate successfully at the strategic level and make a real difference for their service. The problem is that they all tend to think that, since they have stars on their shoulders, they’re the one.” —I’ve been writing ice as “The Chosen One,” the officer unicorn, for two reasons: one, it provides him cover for his illegal relationship (and also asks an interesting chicken-egg question: does he get away with his rlnship because he’s so good, or is he so good JUST to get away with his relationship?); and two, he’s “the chosen one” in canon, i.e. he already has four stars in canon: canonically he is not a mediocre officer. But most officers (cough cough maverick) are not cut out for high-level leadership.

C.) in Thomas E. Ricks’ book “The Generals,” Ricks argues that (at least in the Army) mediocrity in the general/flag officer ranks is unfortunately by design. In WWII, if you were a mediocre officer, you got relieved! You got fired! It’s part of why we won: merciless culling of the general officer ranks! But between WWII and Korea, officer relief began to be associated with shame & wasted resources. Mediocre officers got promoted anyways. The military elite pipeline sucks mediocrity up the chain of command. Ricks blames this issue for (at least the Army’s) shit leadership in every post-WWII war, including but most especially Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no penalty for mediocrity. That in turn reflects on military strategy (mediocre strategists at the helm) & the outcome of every military foray (mediocre outcomes).

D) additionally. There’s a whole neverending debate in the field of civil-military relations (an extremely interesting field of study btw) about the corporatization of the military—lots of high-level talk over the years of “running the military like a business.” If you get kinda into defense policy like me (am i still antimilitary? Idk! but i CAN easily tell you i am against the navy’s littoral combat ship program! It sucks!) then you will know that the navy is struggling right now on a lot of different fronts (procurement [shipbuilding esp. is a disaster—ford-class carriers are under budget though 👍🏽], recruitment, theatre prioritization, general preparedness, readiness against major adversaries [China in particular]). Simply, the navy is pretty mediocre at the minute. I talk a big game about ice being COMPACFLT & SECNAV, but if those are true, & if he “exists” in our current timeline, or even canon timeline (COMPACFLT in 2020), then he’s complicit in a lot of why the navy is sucking ass right now. He didn’t do his job very well. LOL. So, because I love (especially my version of) ice too much to see his legacy suffer, I am stating for the record that my timeline is a different timeline where ice saves the navy from itself and fixes all its issues & solves all its problems & makes it the pride of the armed forces & the tip of the spear of American defense :) because I said so

E.) unrelated but important. It sounds obvious but it must be said. Ice dies on the job in TGM canon. To the extent that in earlier drafts of the script, not-his-sister-Sarah even points out to maverick that ice is still active duty, in the same breath as she tells him ice is sick again. (A wise move to remove that line.) ice does not resign his commission. Ice does not retire to spend time with his family at the end of his life. Ice dies as commander of the pacific fleet. He dies on the job; he dies FOR the job, bureaucratic as it is. If you were wondering why I wrote ice so dormantly suicidal, it’s because canon (i argue) has made it clear that—since the second ice signed up to be a fighter pilot during the Cold War to the second he died active duty—ice has ALWAYS been ready and willing to die for his honorable Navy career.

[xolboragainandagain]

Luke Triton and the doing his absolute best

[arolesbianism]

I caved and made them real. Obverse me losing more and more motivation to draw as I made each of these back to back lol

[buddiesmutslut]

I’m being so ffr rn, if the show runners definitively show that Buddie is not going to happen?

I’m probably not going to be watching anymore.

I mean it when I say that they’re literally the sole reason I watched this show in the first place. I saw a billion TikTok edits of them & was like “Idek these characters I need to watch this show and see what’s going on over there.”

And like, it’s a fun show, I’m not saying it isn’t, but first responder shows are a dime a dozen. There are other shows that have queer characters and found family and wild adventures. Granted, they don’t have Buck & his bi arc, but I’d still read fanfics to get my Evan Buckley fix lol.

I don’t need them right now, I’m so down for the slow burn, will-they-won’t-they & the pining & the yearning & the build up and the GOOD foundation. I want to see Eddie figuring himself out and dealing with his repression and figuring out he’s queer (& Demi, pls God. I hope if I just say it enough, I can will it into existence somehow) before anything happens with the two of them, but if they take definitive steps to have one of them like, marry someone else or something, I think I’m gonna head out. Find me on ao3 for the rest of my days lol.

[sharptoothed-gaze]

on bad’s stream sunny said q!phil makes her feel unwanted and like a burden. q!phil feeding chayanne and tallulah in front of her, and then turning to her and telling her to find someone else to get her cookies seemed to really affect her emotionally. and she’s confided with tubbo on older streams that she feels like q!phil is a lot meaner towards her and her dads (tubbo and slime) than he is with everyone else, and it makes her feel singled out like she did something wrong.

Oof… yeah I was familiar with the past stuff. I honestly find it heartbreaking since I know Sunny has had it rough all through her little life.

I had only missed Sunny’s most recent signs anon, but yeah! You’ve made me realize how I totally didn’t even think about how feeding the other two cookies might have impacted her!

Philza genuinely wants Sunny to feel welcome in his home, but I also fully understand how prioritizing his kids so obviously would sting.

After all, she just lost the one who always prioritized her.

[pennamepersona]

the thing that finally let me understand wyll was seeing a couple posts about how he's like. unfazed in the beginning. this is normal to him

very "the day you were taken by the nautiloid was the worst day of your life. for the blade of frontiers, it was tuesday"

[cestacruz]

More people should ship shizuka and ushiwakamaru|yoshitsune i mean like, yall, they are the most famous and tragic love story in japan

They are the moment.

AND SHIZUKA IS CANON IN FGO NEED I REMIND YOU OF THIS

AND ALSO

Literally mentioned 1. As THE most important person in Ushi|Yoshitsune's life along with Benkei, a man who literally Died for her and 2. ALSO mentioned along people who were close to her

They are gay they are gay and its not like Ushi doesnt like women they literally use the word Seduce when talking about how she convinced Kouju no Mae of giving her the scrolls and from what we saw it was just incredible depression rizz out of her

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

Do you have any Zhongli/Zhongchi fic recs? I haven’t found any that are nearly as good as yours 😔😔

funnily enough someone already asked this, but it was quite a while ago and tumblr is a mess to search old shit thru so here, this is the post this was asked during the ao3 crisis of- .......last year? i can't remember. either way, the post starts w me saying i don't have all the names and links but dw, after ao3 came back up i edited the post so you should see all authors and links in the recs.

i have to admit that for reasons unrelated to the fandom i haven't been reading many zhongchi fics as of late? so like- bear in mind i don't have an updated mental picture of any of the recs after the post was made. so if one went off the rails or if one of the WIPs finished, i'm not aware;; i also mention in the post that i'd add more recs if i had access to ao3 (which i didn't at the time bc it was down), and while that is true, it's been so long since i read any of them that i wouldn't be able to confidently reccomend them outside of 'i somewhat remember the plot and i remember liking it'. also i don't remember half of their names. so uh- yeah that's the list i think

[montaigness]