#ill write an actual version! eventually!

[aeragan]

alpha werewolf gallagher.......... going through a rut with his beta partner hrgejrjnrkgmg..... ohhhhh he's so clingy he's so clingy before it starts. Like you know why, but you like watching him squirm... and he kinda likes it too

and when it finally starts, he doesn't like to bother you but ohhhh are you happy to oblige. good lord he loves marking you up first and foremost. He can barely get his cock out of his boxers and he's biting and hitting and pressing his node to your throat and your wrists and anywhere and everywhere and gods do you smell so heavenly. it feels like all thought processes just Stop and he's thinking with his other head.

It's amazing how such a laid back man can be so greedy, buried to the hilt within you and rocking his hips upward to get more, more, more. He reeks of you and you reek of him and you're all his and only his and fuuuuck the way you clench around his so tightly, he never wants to leave, ever. His large hands push you back down everytime your lifted even by an inch, cause it feels so wrong to not be all the way inside of you.

He's so ravenous, too. Biting every inch of skin to prove his point that you're all his. Pretty little marks decorate your skin, from bites to bruises. So needy, practically begging for you to come back when you need to take a break. It feels like he can't wait (but he can. And he's being a very good boy about it.)

[epic-curious]

The thing to understand about Amy Dallon is that she's an incel. You'll make so many mistakes in trying to understand her character unless you start from this lens.

She has:

An abusive home life which encouraged emotional repression and resentment

An inability to change for the better, despite being socially and economically suited to do so (by virtue of being a parahuman)

Most importantly, a strong belief in the just-world hypthesis; in her mind, bad things only happen to unjust being, good things happen to good people, and doing good things regardless of intent/sincerity entitles you to a reward

These are all traits she has common with incels based on how they describe themselves and what they believe. There's this belief in the fandom that her sexually violent behavior came out of nowhere, but I posit that these character flaws, combined with Amy's knowledge that Victoria would never willingly reciprocate her feelings, provide the perfect setup for her to do what she did.

I don't think was an accidental writing decision either, like Taylor's attraction towards women. It really feels like Wildbow purposefully wrote Amy's downfall to parallel stories about "nice guys" who fly into meltdowns or become crazed stalkers after finding out that no, basic decency doesn't entitle the object of your affections to fuck you. Men who, despite real challenges, have the resources to become well-adjusted but refuse because they completely lack an internal locus of control. Just like them, Amy had resources outside of her abusive family in the form of the PRT, who despite their own issues would have moved heaven and Earth to make sure they didn't lose a valuable cape like her. Instead, she continued to hide her deteriorating mental health and continued to harbor feelings she knew wouldn't be reciprocated until she finally messed up like she'd always been meaning to:

"Do you know how many hours I’ve spent awake at night, wishing my powers would just go away, or that some circumstance would come up where I’d make some excusable mistake where they would eventually forgive me, but where I couldn’t visit the hospitals anymore?”

Another commonality with incels and "nice guys"; not wanting to actually get better, but waiting for a reason to let their worst impulses loose.

I also think this was the reason Amy's character drive Wildbow so crazy. Imagine, you write a character whose mental illness and entitlement cause her to rape and mutilate her sister, who has clear parallels to an incel's violent reaction to being rejected. The response by a not insignificant part of the fandom is accusations of bigotry, because they have invented a version of your character in their heads that has all of her identity markers but none of the characterization you wrote. Coincidentally, most of this part of the fandom hasn't read your work to completion, if at all. Some of them even blame the sister for being raped! This isn't helped by the fact that you are a bit homophobic, that you wrote your protagonist to be bisexual but didn't realize it, that you described the sexuality of one of your bisexual characters as "hedonist", that you inexplicably wrote a character who canonically looks butch, is obsessed with your female protagonist, but is somehow straight. Maybe you could have done some of that better, but the fact that your biggest detractors are fans of your incel rapist is confounding to say the least. Combine all this with the inkling suspicion that this discourse wouldn't exist if you had written Amy as a man...yeah, I kinda get why Wildbow went insane about her.

Now, I'm not writing this as some sort of callout for a fictional character. I love evil women and seeing Amy actually lean in to being an incel crashout would have been fun as hell. But I really hate this idea that Amy was a poor little meow meow whose character was assassinated by the author. The pieces are all there, you just understand this character less than Wildbow which is really saying something.

[planckstorytime]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard: Strangled by Gentle Hands

*The following contains spoilers*

“You would risk everything you have in the hope that the future is better? What if it isn’t? What if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than what was?”

– Solas, Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

I. Whatever It Takes

My premium tickets for a local film festival crumpled and dissolved in my pants pocket, unredeemed as they swirled in the washing machine. Throughout that October weekend in 2015, I neglected my celebratory privileges, my social visits to friends, and even my brutal honors literary theory class. All because a golden opportunity stretched before me: a job opening for a writing position at the once-legendary BioWare, with an impending deadline.

The application process wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. Rather than copy+paste a cover letter and quickly swap out a couple of nouns here and there, this opening required me to demonstrate my proficiency in both words and characters – namely, BioWare’s characters. Fanfiction wasn’t normally in my wheelhouse – at the time, I had taken mainly to spinning love sonnets (with a miserable success rate). But I wouldn’t balk at this chance to work on one of my dream franchises – especially since the job prospects for fresh English BAs weren’t exactly promising. So, I got to work crafting a branching narrative based on the company’s most recent title: Dragon Age: Inquisition. Barely two months prior, I saw the conclusion of that cast’s story when the Inquisitor stabbed a knife into a map and swore to hunt her former ally, Solas, to the ends of the earth. Now it was my turn to puppeteer them, to replicate the distinct voice of each party member and account for how they’d react to the scenario I crafted. And if it went well, then maybe I’d be at the tip of the spear on that hunt for Solas. Finishing the writing sprint left me exhausted, but also proud of my work.

The folks at BioWare obviously felt differently, because I received a rejection letter less than a week later. Maybe they found my story trite and my characterization inaccurate, or maybe they just didn’t want to hire a student with no professional experience to his name. Regardless, I was devastated. It wouldn’t be until years later that I learned that, had my application been accepted, I likely would’ve been drafted into working on the studio’s ill-fated looter shooter, Anthem (2019), noteworthy for its crunch and mismanagement. My serendipitous rejection revealed that sometimes the future you strive to build was never meant to match your dreams. What seemed like an opportunity to strike oil actually turned out to be a catastrophic spill.

Still, my passion for the Dragon Age series (as well as Mass Effect) persisted in the face of BioWare’s apparent decline. I maintain that Inquisition is actually one of the studio’s best games, and my favorite in the series, to the point where I even dressed up as Cole for a convention one time. The game came to me at a very sensitive time in my life, and its themes of faith vs falsehood, the co-opting of movements in history, and the instability of power all spoke to me. But I will elaborate more on that at a later date. My point is, I held on to that hope that, in spite of everything, BioWare could eventually deliver a satisfactory resolution to the cliffhanger from their last title. Or perhaps it was less hope and more of a sunk cost fallacy, as an entire decade passed with nary a peep from Dragon Age.

As years wore on, news gradually surfaced about the troubled development of the fourth game. Beginning under the codename “Joplin” in 2015 with much of the same creative staff as its predecessors, this promising version of the game would be scrapped two years later for not being in line with Electronic Arts’s business model (i.e. not being a live-service scam). Thus, it was restarted as “Morrison”. The project cantered along in this borderline unrecognizable state for a few years until they decided to reorient it back into a single-player RPG, piling even more years of development time onto its shaky Jenga tower of production. Indeed, critical pieces were constantly being pulled out from the foundations during this ten year development cycle. Series regulars like producer Mark Darrah and director Mike Laidlaw made their departures, and the project would go on to have several more directors and producers come and go: Matthew Goldman, Christian Dailey, and Mac Walters, to name a few key figures. They eventually landed on John Epler as creative director, Corinne Busche as game director, and Benoit Houle as director of product development. Then came the massive layoffs of dozens of employees, including series-long writer Mary Kirby, whose work still made it into the final version of DA4. Finally, the game received a rebranding just four months before release, going from Dreadwolf (which it had been known as since 2022) to The Veilguard (2024) – a strange title with an even stranger article.

Needless to say, these production snags did not inspire confidence, especially considering BioWare’s been low on goodwill between a string of flops like Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and, before that, controversial releases like Dragon Age II (2011) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The tumult impacted The Veilguard’s shape, which scarcely resembles an RPG anymore, let alone a Dragon Age game. The party size is reduced from four to three, companions can no longer be directly controlled, the game has shifted to a focus on action over tactics a la God of War (2018), the number of available abilities has shrunk, and there’s been a noticeable aesthetic shift towards a more cartoonish style. While I was open to the idea of changing up the combat (the series was never incredible on that front), I can’t get over the sensation that these weren’t changes conceived out of genuine inspiration, but rather vestigial traces from the live-service multiplayer iteration. The digital fossil record implies a lot. Aspects like the tier-based gear system, the instanced and segmented missions, the vapid party approval system, the deficit of World State import options, and the fact that rarely does more than the single mandatory companion have anything unique to say on a quest – it all points to an initial design with a very different structure from your typical single-player RPG. The Veilguard resembles a Sonic Drive-In with a mysterious interior dining area – you can tell it was originally conceived as something else.1

That said, the product itself is functional. It contains fewer bugs than any previous game in the franchise, and maybe BioWare’s entire catalog for that matter. I wouldn’t say the combat soars, but it does glide. There’s a momentum and responsiveness to the battle system that makes it satisfying to pull off combos and takedowns against enemies, especially if you’re juggling multiple foes at once. Monotony sets in after about thirty or forty hours, largely due to the fact that you’re restricted to a single class’s moveset on account of the uncontrollable companions. Still, this design choice can encourage replay value, as it does in Mass Effect, and free respec options and generous skill point allocations offset the tedium somewhat.

While the character and creature designs elicit controversy – both for the exaggerated art direction and, in the case of demons and darkspawn, total redesign – the environmental art is nothing short of breathtaking. I worried that this title would look dated because of how long it had been in development and the age of the technology it was built upon. Those fears were swiftly banished when I saw the cityscapes of Minrathous, the cyclopean architecture of the Nevarran Grand Necropolis, or the overgrown ruins of Arlathan. But like everything in The Veilguard, it’s a double-edged sword. The neon-illuminated streets of Docktown, the floating citadel of the Archon’s Palace, and the whirring mechanisms of the elven ruins evoke a more fantastically futuristic setting that feels at odds with all three previous titles (even though all three exhibited a stylistic shift to some extent). It aggravates the feeling of discordance between this rendition of Thedas and the one returning players know.

All of these elements make The Veilguard a fine fantasy action-adventure game – even a good one, I’d say. But as both the culmination of fifteen years of storytelling and as a narrative-based roleplaying game – the two most important facets of its identity – it consistently falls short. Dragon Age began as a series with outdated visuals and often obtuse gameplay, but was borne aloft by its worldbuilding, characterization, and dialogue. Now, that paradigm is completely inverted. The more you compare it to the older entries, the more alien it appears. After all these years of anticipation, how did it end up this way? Was this the only path forward?

Throughout The Veilguard’s final act, characters utter the phrase “Whatever it takes,” multiple times. Some might say too many. I feel like this mantra applied to the development cycle. As more struggles mounted, the team made compromise after compromise to allow the game to exist at all, to give the overarching story some conclusion in the face of pressure from corporate shareholders, AAA market expectations, and impatient fans. Whatever it takes to get this product out the door and into people’s homes.

This resulted in a game that was frankensteined together, assembled out of spare parts and broken dreams. It doesn’t live up to either the comedic heights or dramatic gravity of Inquisition’s “Trespasser” DLC from 2015, despite boasting the same lead writer in Trick Weekes. Amid the disappointment, we’re left with an unfortunate ultimatum: It’s either this or nothing.

I don’t mean that as a way to shield The Veilguard from criticism, or to dismiss legitimate complaints as ungrateful gripes. Rather, I’m weighing the value of a disappointing reality vs an idealized fantasy. The “nothing”, in this sense, was the dream I had for the past decade of what a perfect Dragon Age 4 looked like. With the game finally released, every longtime fan has lost their individualized, imaginary perfection in the face of an authentic, imperfect text. Was the destruction of those fantasies a worthy trade? It doesn’t help that the official artbook showcases a separate reality that could’ve been, with a significant portion dedicated to the original concepts for Joplin that are, personally, a lot closer to my ideal vision. I think it would’ve done wonders to ground the game as more Dragon Age-y had they stuck with bringing back legacy characters, such as Cole, Calpernia, Imshael, and the qunari-formerly-known as Sten.

I don’t necessarily hate The Veilguard (I might actually prefer it to Dragon Age II), but I can’t help but notice a pattern in its many problems – a pattern that stems from a lack of faith in the audience and a smothering commitment to safety over boldness. As I examine its narrative and roleplaying nuances, I wish to avoid comparing it to groundbreaking RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) or even Dragon Age: Origins (2009), as the series has long been diverging from that type of old-school CRPG. Rather, except when absolutely necessary, I will only qualitatively compare it to Inquisition, its closest relative.

And nowhere does it come up shorter to Inquisition than in the agency (or lack thereof) bestowed to the player to influence their character and World State.

II. Damnatio Memoriae

No, that’s not the name of an Antivan Crow (though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so, since we have a character named “Lucanis Dellamorte”). It’s a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory”, applied to a reviled person by destroying records of their existence and defacing objects of their legacy. In this case, it refers to the player. When it comes to their influence over the world and their in-game avatar, The Veilguard deigns to limit or outright eliminate it.

Save transfers that allow for the transmission of World States (the carrying over of choices from the previous games) have been a staple of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. Even when their consequences are slight, the psychological effect that this personalization has on players is profound, and one of many reasons why fans grow so attached to the characters and world. At its core, it’s an illusion, but one that’s of similar importance to the illusion that an arbitrary collection of 1s and 0s can create an entire digital world. Player co-authorship guarantees a level of emotional investment that eclipses pre-built backgrounds.

However, The Veilguard limits the scope to just three choices, a dramatic decrease from the former standard. All import options come from Inquisition, with two just from the “Trespasser” expansion. One variable potentially impacts the ending, while the other two, in most cases, add one or two lines of dialogue and a single codex entry. Inquisition, by contrast, imported a bevy of choices from both previous games. Some of them had major consequences to quests such as “Here Lies the Abyss” and “The Final Piece”, both of which incorporated data from two games prior. The Veilguard is decidedly less ambitious. Conspicuously absent options include: whether Morrigan has a child or not, the fate of Hawke, the status of the Hero of Fereldan, the current monarchs of Fereldan and Orlais, the current Divine of the southern Chantry, and the individual outcomes of more than two dozen beloved party members across the series. Consequently, the fourth installment awkwardly writes around these subjects – Varric avoids mentioning his best friend, Hawke, as does Isabela ignore her potential lover. Fereldan, Orlais, and the Chantry are headed by Nobody in Particular. Morrigan, a prominent figure in the latest game, makes no mention of her potential son or even her former traveling companions. And the absence of many previous heroes, even ones with personal stakes in the story, feels palpably unnatural. I suspect this flattening of World States into a uniform mold served, in addition to cutting costs, to create parity between multiple cooperative players during the initial live-service version of Morrison. Again, the compromises of the troubled production become apparent, except this time, they’re taking a bite out of the core narrative.

Moreover, the game’s unwillingness to acknowledge quantum character states means that it’s obliged to omit several important cast members. At this point, I would’ve rather had them establish an official canon for the series rather than leaving everything as nebulous and undefined as possible. That way at least the world would’ve felt more alive, and we could’ve gotten more action out of relevant figures like Cassandra, Alistair, Fenris, Merrill, Cole, and Iron Bull. Not to mention that The Veilguard’s half-measure of respectful non-intereference in past World States ultimately fails. Certain conversations unintentionally canonize specific events, including references to Thom Rainier and Sera, both of whom could go unrecruited in Inquisition, as well as Morrigan’s transformation into a dragon in the battle with Corypheus in that game’s finale. But whatever personal history the player had with them doesn’t matter. The entire Dragon Age setting now drifts in a sea of ambiguity, its history obfuscated. It feels as gray and purgatorial as Solas’s prison for the gods.

Beyond obscuring the past, The Veilguard restrains the player’s agency over the present. When publications first announced that the game would allow audiences to roleplay transgender identities and have that acknowledged by the party, I grew very excited – both at the encouraging representation, and at the depth of roleplaying mechanics that such an inclusion suggested. Unfortunately, The Veilguard offers little in roleplaying beyond this. The player character, Rook, always manifests as an altruistic, determined, friendly hero, no matter what the player chooses (if they’re offered choices at all). The selections of gender identity and romantic partner constitute the totality of how Rook defines themselves, post-character creation – exceptions that prove the rule of vacancy. Everything else is set in stone. The options presented are good, and should remain as standard, but in the absence of other substantive roleplaying experiences, their inclusion starts to feel frustratingly disingenuous and hollow, as if they were the only aspects the developers were willing to implement, and only out of obligation to meet the bare minimum for player agency. In my opinion, it sours the feature and exudes a miasma of cynicism.

Actual decisions that impact the plot are few and far between, but at least we have plenty of dialogue trees. In this type of game, dialogue options might usually lead to diverging paths that eventually converge to progress the plot. You might be choosing between three different flavors of saying “yes”, but as with the World States, that illusion of agency is imperative for the roleplaying experience. The Veilguard doesn’t even give you the three flavors – the encouraging, humorous, and stern dialogue options are frequently interchangeable, and rarely does it ever feel like the player is allowed to influence Rook’s reactions. Relationships with companions feel predetermined, as the approval system has no bearing on your interactions anymore. There are so few moments for you to ask your companions questions and dig in deep compared to Inquisition. Combined together, these issues make me question why we even have dialogue with our party at all. Rook adopts the same parental affect with each grown adult under their command, and it feels like every conversation ends the same way irrespective of the player’s input. With the exception of the flirting opportunities, they might as well be non-interactive cutscenes.

Rook’s weak characterization drags the game down significantly. With such limited authorship afforded to the player, it’s difficult to regard them as anything more than their eponymous chess piece – a straightfoward tool, locked on a grid, and moving flatly along the surface as directed.

III. Dull in Docktown

On paper, a plot summary of The Veilguard sounds somewhere between serviceable and phenomenal: Rook and Varric track down Solas to stop him from tearing down the Veil and destroying the world. In the process, they accidentally unleash Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, two of the wicked Evanuris who once ruled over the elven people millenia ago. With Solas advising them from an astral prison, Rook gathers a party together to defeat the risen gods, along with their servants and sycophants. Over the course of the adventure, they uncover dark truths about the origins of the elves, the mysterious Titans, and the malevolent Blight that’s served as an overarching antagonistic force. Eventually, Rook and friends join forces with Morrigan and the Inquisitor, rally armies to face off with their foes, and slay both the gods and their Archdemon thralls before they can conjure the full terror of the Blight. As Solas once again betrays the group, Rook and company have to put a decisive stop to his plans, which could potentially involve finally showing him the error of his ways.

The bones of The Veilguard’s story are sturdier than a calcium golem. Problems arise when you look at the actual writing, dialogue, and characterization – the flesh, blood, and organs of the work.

I’ve seen others chide the writing as overly quippy, but that better describes previous titles. Rather, I think The Veilguard’s dialogue is excessively utilitarian and preliminary, like a first draft awaiting refinement. Characters describe precisely what’s happening on screen as it’s happening, dryly exposit upon present circumstances, and repeat the same information ad nauseum. This infuriating repetition does little to reveal hidden components of their personalities, or their unique responses to situations. You won’t hear anything like Cole’s cerebral magnetic poetry or Vivienne’s dismissive arrogance. Many exchanges could’ve been uttered by Nobody in Particular, as it’s just dry recitation after recitation. It almost feels like watching an English second language instructional video, or a demonstration on workplace safety precautions. Clarity and coherence come at the cost of characterization and charisma.

Words alone fail to make them interesting. Most companions lack the subtlety and depth I had come to expect from the franchise, with many conversations amounting to them just plainly stating how they’re feeling. Most rap sessions sound like they’re happening in a therapist’s office with how gentle, open, and uncomplicated they feel. Compare this to Inquisition, where every character has a distinct voice (I should know, I had to try to copy them for that stupid application), as well as their own personal demons that it betrays: Sera’s internalized racism, hints of Blackwall’s stolen valor, Iron Bull’s espionage masked by bluster, or Solas’s lingering guilt and yearning for a bygone age. These aspects of their characters aren’t front and center, but things the audience can delve into that gives every moment with them more texture. The Veilguard’s companions lay out all their baggage carefullly and respectfully upfront, whether it’s Taash’s multiculturalism and gender identity issues or Neve’s brooding cynicism towards Tevinter’s underbelly. You’ve plumbed the depths of their personas within the first few minutes of meeting most of them.

Small exceptions exist. Professor Emmerich Volkarin stands out from the rest of the cast as a particularly inspired character: a charming, Vincent Price-like necromancer. His attachment to tombs and necromancy as a way to cope with his crippling fear of death makes for curiously compelling melodrama. The way in which he ultimately has to face his fear – either by foregoing his opportunity for immortality to save his beloved skeletal ward, Manfred, or by allowing his friend to pass on so that he can transcend into a new type existence – rises above the other binary choices in the game by being both narratively interesting and legitimately difficult to judge. Still, I feel Emmerich’s whole “lawful good gentleman necromancer” conceit, while a unique and clever subversion of tropes, would’ve worked better if it actually contrasted with anyone else in the party. Instead, the whole crew is full of unproblematic do-gooders who are forbidden by the game to nurture any meaningful interpersonal conflict. While I’d appreciate this lack of toxicity in my real-life relationships, fictional chemistry demands more reactive ingredients.

The Veilguard’s developers frequently positioned the game as “cozy” and about a “found family”, but I can guarantee you that there’s more tension at my Thanksgiving dinners than there is anywhere in this title. This family would get along swimmingly even during a presidential election. The thing about the “found family” trope is that it’s more satisfying when it’s earned. Here, it represents the default state, the starting point, and the status quo that they will always return to. Any minor squabbles (Harding wanting to sleep in the dirt, Emmerich taking too many books on a camping trip, Taash not liking necromancy) are introduced and squashed within the same scene. They all feel so extraneous. There’s so little friction among the companions here that you’d think it disproves Newton’s Third Law. The previous games never struggled in this regard, which makes the choices here all the more baffling.

Beyond the intra-party dynamics, characters lack grit or darkness to them – even when the narrative absolutely calls for it. Remember how I described the necromancer as lawful good (to use traditional Dungeons and Dragons alignments)? Yeah, that’s every character. Even the demonic assassin. Lucanis is a notorious hitman possessed by a demon of Spite, and possibly the weakest character of the game. This may or may not be due to the fact that his writer, Mary Kirby, was laid off mid-development. Regardless, he has noticeably less content than the other party members and generally feels unfinished. The demonic possession storyline goes nowhere; he doesn’t exorcise Spite, nor does he learn more about it or how to live with it. Instead, Spite is just an excuse to give Lucanis cool spectral wings (which he will use to fail several assassination attempts). The demon itself mostly just comes across as rude rather than threatening. The biggest issue, however, stems from the absence of any edge to Lucanis. When confronting his traitorous cousin, Ilario – the man who sold out Lucanis’s family to an enemy faction, kidnapped his grandmother, and made multiple attempts on his life – our grizzled, hardened assassin, pushed to the brink, demands… due process. Seriously, if your choices have led Lucanis to have a hardened heart, his method for dealing with the grievous traitor is sending him to jail. That’s The Veilguard’s idea of vindictive brutality among a clan of unforgiving murderers-for-hire. By contrast, Inquisition features Sera insubordinately murdering a stuck-up nobleman for talking too much. I believe that if modern BioWare had written The Godfather (1972), it would’ve ended with Michael Corleone recommending his brother-in-law to attend confession and seek a marriage counselor.

The writers seem intent on making the cast wholly unproblematic, with no way that the audience could ever question their morality or taste the delicious nuance of seeing someone you like do something bad. Measures were taken to child-proof every aspect of the good guys so that they couldn’t possibly be construed as anything else – even if it constricts them to the point of numbness and eventual atrophy.

To make things as palatable and accessible as possible, the language itself was dumbed down. Characters make frequent use of neologisms and bark phrases like “Suit up,” or “These guys go hard.” It emulates popular blockbuster superhero stuff rather than staying true to the diction the series traditionally employed. It’s all about the team, and the entire Dragon Age world has been stripped down into simplistic conflicts and recognizable stock characters.

This is why The Veilguard’s story largely fails. Despite being ostensibly being about the characters, they come off as an afterthought. Most of the time, only the sole requisite follower has anything to say on a given mission. Even in combat, their wholeness as fully-implemented party members falls short of expectations. Their damage output pales in comparison to the Rook’s, they have no health and cannot be downed in battle, and they mainly exist to give the player three extra ability slots. That’s the game’s true ethos for the companions, whether in combat or dialogue – utility, tools to make things happen rather than elegantly crafted identities. We end up with the largest amount of content per companion among any game in the franchise, only to have the weakest roster.

I know these writers can do better, because I’ve seen them do better. Trick Weekes wrote Iron Bull, Cole, and Solas in Inquisition, as well as Mordin Solus and Tali’Zorah in Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3. Mary Kirby wrote Varric throughout the series, as well as Sten and Loghain in Origins. Plenty of other experienced writers, such as Sylvia Feketekuty and John Dombrow also contributed, so I can’t put any of the blame on a lack of skill. I don’t know if the mistake was trying to appeal to a wider audience, or if the constant reorientations of the DA4 project drained the crew’s passion and left them lacking in time to polish things.

I personally suspect that the writers had to rush out a script for all of the voiced dialogue. A video from August of 2020 showed off the voice actors for Davrin and Bellara, more than four years before the final game’s release. I think the codex entries, letters, and missives that you find throughout the game, which consist of only text, are much better written than the dialogue. My theory is that the writers had more time to revise and spruce up these tidbits, where edits were minimally invasive, as far as production is concerned. But my knowledge is limited; after all, BioWare rejected my application almost a decade ago.

Still, there are aspects of The Veilguard’s plot that I enjoy. The lore reveals were particularly satisfying2, and many felt rewarding after a decade of speculation. I called that elves were originally spirits, as well as the connection between the Archdemons and the Evanuris, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the Blight formed out of the smoldering rage of the Titans’ severed dreams. I’d concisely describe The Veilguard’s story as the opposite of Mass Effect 3: Whereas ME3 did excellent character work, the characterization in The Veilguard leaves much to be desired. Whereas ME3’s tone was overwhelmingly grim, The Veilguard feels inappropriately positive. Whereas ME3’s lore reveals ruined much about the series’s mystique, The Veilguard’s helped tie the setting’s history together. And whereas ME3 fumbled the ending about as much as it possibly could, The Veilguard actually coalesces into a spectacular third act.

While I think the twist with Varric’s death is weak (outright pitiful compared to the Dread Wolf twist of Inquisition), the actual events that make up the finale carry a momentum and urgency that the rest of the game severely lacked. Everything from the sacrifice and kidnapping of Rook’s companions to the slaying of Ghilan’nain to the awe-inspiring battle between the Dread Wolf and Archdemon Lusacan – the whole affair takes the best parts of Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission and elevates it to the scale of an apocalyptic series finale. Ultimately, Solas takes center stage as the final antagonist, and the drama crescendos to a height the rest of the game desperately needed. He remains the most interesting character in the game and perhaps the franchise, and thankfully, the resolution to his story did not disappoint me (though I would’ve preferred the option for a boss battle against his Dread Wolf form if the player’s negotiations broke down). So in that sense, I think the worst possible scenario was avoided.

But is that really worth celebrating? Averting complete disaster? Exceeding the lowest standards? In many regards, The Veilguard still could have been – should have been – more.

IV. A World of Tranquil

In my essay on Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (2024), I briefly discussed a trend in media to sand off the edges so as not to upset the audience in any way. The encroachment of this media sanitization seems to be an over-correction to the brimming grimness of late 2000s and early 2010s fiction (to which the first two Dragon Age titles belong), which earned comparable levels of criticism. Like Solas, I occasionally feel trapped in a cycle of regret, where it feels like our previous yearning for less aggressive, mean-spirited content led to a media landscape that prioritized patronizingly positive art. Now it’s clear to me that, in order to have a point, you need to have an edge.

Dragon Age historically drew a very progressive audience, and many of them congregated around Tumblr in that website’s heyday. Tumblr has garnered something of a reputation for overzealous discourse and sensitivity among its userbase, and I think that the developers of The Veilguard, in an attempt to cater to one of their core audiences, may have misunderstood both that passion and the fundamental appeal of their products. They became so concerned about optics, about avoiding politically charged criticism, that they kneecapped their world-building, rendering it as inoffensive and sterile as possible. It’s not so much “PC culture” as it is “PG culture.”

To that end, the various governments, factions, and societies of Thedas lost their edge. Dragon Age previously presented itself as anti-authoritarian by showcasing the rampant abuses of power across all cultures. Whether it was the incarceration of mages under the Chantry, the slavery practiced by the Tevinter Imperium, the expansionist anti-individualism of the Qun, the restrictive dwarven caste system, or the rampant racism against elves, social strife abounded in this world. I think that’s one thing that drew so many marginalized fans to the series. But the correlation of fictional atrocities with those of real life frequently prompted volatile discourse, with many concerned about how allegedly allegorized groups were being represented. You began to see countless essays pop up by folks who use the phrase “blood quantum” more than any healthy person should for a setting about wizards. BioWare responded to this by making Thedosian society wholly pleasant and the people in power responsible and cool and the disparate cultures tolerant and cooperative. If nothing’s portrayed negatively (outside of the cartoonishly evil gods), nobody can take offense, right?

For starters, the Antivan Crows have gone from an amoral group of assassins to basically Batman. These figures, which previously purchased children off slave markets to train them into killers, are now the “true rulers” of Antiva, by which the official government derives its authority. The Crows in The Veilguard stand against the insurgent qunari army as heroes of the common folk. They’re not an unscrupulous faction that Rook is reluctantly forced to ally with for the greater good; no, the Crows are simply good guys now. When the pompous governor of Treviso rails against them, with such audacious claims as “assassins and thugs should not represent the citizenry,” we’re meant to laugh at the governor’s foolishness. The unintentional implication this sends is that lethal vigilantism and unchecked power are cool because the people who use it are cool and stylish. The slave trade goes unacknoweldged; Antivan children want to grow up to be assassins now. The Crows never do anything wrong in The Veilguard – the governor is later revealed to be cooperating with the invaders for their own power. BioWare avoids the unpleasantness inherent in the Crows’ concept by pretending it never existed.

Perhaps more ridiculous is the Lords of Fortune, a new faction of pirates and treasure hunters based out of Rivain. Except they don’t really do piracy or treasure hunting. The game goes to lengths to ensure that the audience knows that the Lords don’t steal important cultural artifacts from any of the tombs and ruins they raid. What do they steal, then? There is no such thing as an ethical treasure hunter – plundering indigenous sites for souvenirs is inherently problematic – but the writers wanted to reap the appeal of adventurous swashbucklers without any of the baggage, regardless of whether it makes sense or not3. It comes across as a child’s idea of a pirate: they’re not thinking about the murder and looting, just the funny men with eye-patches who say “ARRR!” The developers want us to like the Lords of Fortune, and to that end, they can’t do anything culturally insensitive – even fictional disrespect toward a made-up culture. This is doubly amusing because the Lords are represented by Isabela from Dragon Age II. The same Isabela that kicked off a war with the qunari by stealing their holy book, the Tome of Koslun. This irony goes unacknowledged by the game.4

When these rogue buccaneers aren’t busy giving land acknowledgments to displaced Dalish elves or whatever, they’re enjoying their nonviolent coliseum. Pirates revel in bloodsport, but only so long as no actual blood is spilled. The Lords refuse to fight prisoners or animals in their arena, as they find such acts too cruel. I guess they’re all big Peter Singer readers. Instead, they summon spirits to adopt the visages of common enemies so that the player can kill them with a clean conscience. It’s another example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too – they wanted to create a glory hunter/gladiator faction, but couldn’t stand the underlying implications of such. So they twisted and bent them to fit into their unproblematic paradigm, leaving the Lords flavorless and lame. They barely even contribute to the main story, and they’re practically the only look we get into Rivaini society (which remains criminally underdeveloped).

More tragic is the handling of the qunari, once one of the most unique and nuanced civilizations in the Dragon Age setting. The Qun, as portrayed in the first three installments, is a society that demands all of its composite parts work in harmony. Thus, they have predetermined vocations for their children, rigid gender roles, strict codes of conduct, and an ambition to “enlighten” the rest of the world. While the Qun has often been presented as antagonistic toward the heroes, the series has commonly balanced its portrayal by showing how seductive its absolutism can be for people without hope. In some cases, life under the Qun is preferable, as is the case with former Tevinter slaves. Conformity becomes comfort when the world is regularly threatening to split apart.

The Veilguard opts for a different approach. See, Rook’s not fighting members of the Qun in this game – they’re fighting the Antaam, the former qunari military. The Veilguard constantly reiterates that the Antaam, which makes up one of the three branches of the Qun, has broken off and decided to invade, pillage, and stoke chaos. BioWare didn’t want the questionable morality and complexity of fighting an invading people from a humanized, multi-faceted culture, so they removed their culture. Their efforts to turn the non-Western-coded qunari into something digestible for their mistaken conception of a modern audience instead results in two caricatures: one being a fetishized, perfect society where there are no perceivable social ills; and the other a bunch of rampaging brutes.

Contending with a realized conception of Plato’s Republic mixed with the Ottoman Empire makes for more compelling drama than a horde of murderous giants. Again, BioWare wanted to have it both ways, and they still needed nameless, faceless orcs to kill. So every bit about the qunari’s militancy, imperialism, and repression coexisting alongside some of their more progressive ideas and communal unity is stripped of its context and meaning. Blame is placed solely on the Antaam, who no longer represent (and retroactively, never represented) the Qun’s ideology. It’s a cowardly compromise, attempting to pin the blame of all the Qun’s failings on a renegade military and seeking to exonerate the political and social apparatuses of their culpability.

At one point, a minor character named Seer Rowan lectures to an ignorant human (a proxy for the audience absorbing these retcons) that qunari society has always been egalitarian in practice, with mages enjoying freedom there. Previous games showed that the qunari shackle their “saarebas” mages, stitch their mouths, cut out their tongues, and teach them to commit suicide if they ever stray from their masters. However, we’re now assured that this is only practiced under the Antaam, and No True Qunari would ever do such a thing. Ignore the fact that, in Inquisition, we witness the enslaved saarebas under the supervision of the Ben-Hasserath, a subdivision of the Ariqun (i.e. not part of the Antaam). In fact, the Antaam that Rook fights in The Veilguard never command saarebas at all. They’re completely absent from the game (likely because the image of the bound, mutilated minority was too much for The Veilguard’s sensibilities). Seer Rowan’s weak, conciliatory retcon can’t even justify itself in its own game. The scolding diatribe communicates an intrinsic misunderstanding of the Qun by the writers – namely, it continues the pattern established with the Antivan Crows that the mechanics of power in society are fundamentally good as long as aberrant forces aren’t in charge. While I understand the desire to be conscientious about the portrayal of fictional cultures that draw upon non-Western traditions and iconography (which have historically been demonized in media), glamorizing the Qun and stripping it of its realistic nuance does little to alleviate any problems with representation. If anything, it creates new ones.

But hey, now we have our faceless orcs to guiltlessly slaughter. That’s what the Antaam’s been reduced to, bereft of the ideology that made them people. We kill them because they’re strange and scary and foreign and seeking to destroy our cities for fun. They remain the most prominent representation of the qunari in-game, barring our party member Taash. BioWare’s attempts to reverse what they viewed as problematic components to the qunari instead devolved into the very tropes they wished to avoid.

Which leads us to the elves. Much of the series’s discourse has surrounded the portrayal of the long-suffering elven people, who endure slavery under Tevinter, expulsion from their homeland in the Dales, confinement in ghettos, and the general disdain from other races. The games’ stories use symbolic shorthand of real-life oppressed peoples to communicate these tragedies, and this has led to a variety of intense, emotional interpretations over the years. The unending misery of the systematically marginalized elves hasn’t gone unnoticed by the fanbase – and their criticisms haven’t gone unnoticed by the developers. To quote The Veilguard’s creative director, John Epler, in an interview with Polygon:

“Dragon Age has not always been the kindest to the Dalish [elves]. Somebody once made a joke to me, and it’s not untrue, that it’s possible to wipe out a Dalish clan in all three of the games in some way.”

He and others on the development team must’ve thought elves needed a break, because the omnipresent racism against them vanishes completely in The Veilguard. Tevinter, an empire built on the back of chattel slavery, doesn’t show any of that. Consequently, it feels like players in the know still haven’t seen the true face of Tevinter, despite spending half a game there. The notion that the capital of Minrathous gives now is one of a prosperous city that’s centuries ahead of the countries down south, rather than a cruel regime cracking the whip at every opportunity. Perhaps the writers weren’t comfortable portraying this, or felt that their audience might not be amenable to it after years of incendiary argumentation. Nevertheless, it castrates their established world-building and robs us of the opportunity to witness true elven liberation in the climax. With both the fall of Minrathous and the toppling of the tyrannical elven gods, we could have delivered a much needed catharsis after four games of oppression, but The Veilguard forgoes this storytelling opportunity to play it safe.

I worry that this hesitancy originated from anxieties about the sensitivity of depicting marginalized peoples in brutal, dehumanizing conditions, and how that might look to more fragile viewers. But I think it’s important for all players, watchers, and readers to know that, though there might be aspects shared between them, fictional minorities are distinct from real ones.

Dragon Age’s elves are aesthetically Celtic. Their residency in alienages evokes images of Disapora Jews in Europe. Their Long Walk after being driven from the Dales calls back to the Trail of Tears, sharing an experience with Native Americans. Their subsequent migratory nature is reminiscent of the Romani people. And their ancient empire of Arlathan, with its large columns and temples of worship, headed by ascended humanoid (for lack of a better term) deities that cast down an enemy called the Titans, and which has since had its religion and culture co-opted and renamed by Roman-inspired Tevinter invites comparisons to classical Greece.

My point is, the elves of Dragon Age don’t represent one group of people, because fictional cultures are constructs drawing from countless inspirations. If they represent anything beyond themselves, it’s the idea of a proud people that’s fallen under the yoke of conquering powers – a supervictim to embody all. The idea that one must be limited in their storytelling options based on how the portrayal might reflect upon or disrespect an existing culture is flawed, in my opinion. In the overwhelming majority of cases, coding cannot be read as a 1:1 allegory, especially in speculative fiction like science-fiction and fantasy. I believe the most mature way to evaluate a story isn’t to try to pigeonhole what it’s trying to say say about who, as if there’s some insidious encrypted message in the text. Rather, it’s to see the forest through the trees and interpret the work as a complete whole in itself.

On that basis, I ask: would it have been so bad to see some of those enslaved elves, praying for salvation, side with their manipulative, nefarious gods? To add some nuance to the conflict with Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, would the story of elven liberation not have been better if the game actually engaged with it? Could we actually have a moral quandary with those whom Rook ends up fighting, even if the content might be seemingly problematic?

Epler might respond in the negative, per the Polygon interview, claiming that the gods “simply don’t care” about the elves.

“Those blighted, decrepit gods, they’re not bothering with the soft pitch. Their pitch is, We’re going to make a horrible world. We’re going to give you a lot of power, and maybe you’ll be OK.”

Like a chess board, the core conflict of The Veilguard is black and white. BioWare abandoned the chance to make Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain more interesting villains because it was too risky.

Similarly risky was Solas’s role as an antagonist, since his motivations, as explained in “Trespasser”, are deeply sympathetic. Perhaps too much so for the developers’ comfort. Unlike the Evanuris and their disinterest in the elves, Solas wants to restore the elven people to their former glory. At least, that seemed to be his pitch in the last game. Frustratingly absent from The Veilguard are the Agents of Fen’Harel – elves who swore fealty to Solas’s cause. They infiltrated and compromised the Inquisition, effectively precipitating the final decision to end the organization in its current form. The idea that Solas had amassed an army of common folk who found the idea of a renewed elven empire appealing made him appear formidable and intimidating. “Trespasser” implies that a mass uprising of elves under Solas’s leadership was imminent, and anyone could be in on it.

None of this happens in The Veilguard. Not only does Solas lack an army, but their absence isn’t explained or even acknowledged. As a result, Solas remains a passive antagonist until near the end, since the player has no disciples of his to contend with (either physically or ideologically) along the way. It wastes a side of his character that had been foreshadowed in a decade-long cliffhanger – that of a charismatic leader, capable of coordinating a rebellion that could spell disaster for its own followers.

In a Reddit AMA after the latest game’s release, Epler answered where the Agents of Fen’Harel disappeared to:

“Solas’ experience leading the rebellion against the Evanuris turned him against the idea of being a leader. You see it in the memories – the entire experience of being in charge ate at him and, ultimately, convinced him he needed to do this on his own. And his own motivations were very different from the motivations of those who wanted to follow him – he had no real regard for their lives or their goals. So at some point between Trespasser and DATV, he severed that connection with his ‘followers’ and went back to being a lone wolf. There are Dalish clans who are sympathetic to his goals, but even there, there’s an understanding that he’s too dangerous to have a more formal connection with, and that he will, ultimately, sacrifice them to his own ends if necessary.”

I find this explanation unsatisfying, not the least bit because the narrative offers next to nothing to imply this. The disappearance of Solas’s agents represents my biggest bugbear with the game, depriving it of the full potential of its highly anticipated antagonist in favor of the more generically villainous Evanuris. Moreover, this omission fits into the aggravating blueprint for The Veilguard’s inoffensive direction. The motivations, emotions, and backgrounds of the Agents of Fen’Harel would be sympathetic, and therefore might problematize the otherwise cut-and-dry conflicts. Epler seemed concerned that audiences might think Solas was “a little too sympathetic in his goals,” according to an interview with GamesRadar+.

But that’s the thing: sympathy isn’t endorsement, and portrayal of sympathetic characters isn’t endorsement either. But neither does that invalidate the emotions and experiences that generate that sympathy, even if the character’s actions ultimately turn toward evil. I’ve noticed a trend (especially in symptomatic criticism, which I generally dislike5) to view art as propaganda, and to evaluate it from a moralizing, top-down perspective. Antagonists with complex or understandable motivations (in this case, revolutionary villains) are often judged by this framework as tools for stories wishing to champion the status quo. Common arguments that I’ve seen imply that the relatability that we often find in villains is not a strength of the writing, but a devilish trick of ideology by which writers can reinforce conservative doctrine, to scold us away from certain beliefs. Any decent writer knows this isn’t the case, and that people don’t write morally or emotionally complex antagonists for didactic purposes. Instead, characters such as these embody the anxieties of their creators – the fear of losing yourself to your passions, the fear of going about things the wrong way, the fear of sacrificing too much to achieve your desired ends. The concepts and feelings that compel these characters remain authentic to the writer’s heart and the connection they established with the audience.

Art isn’t propaganda. To read it as such reduces it and promotes intellectual dishonesty and foolhardy myopia. Stories are irreducible (otherwise, we would not waste our time with them), and so I believe interpretations should be formed from the bottom-up, rooted in the text as much as possible. The “message” cannot be imposed from the top-down, but symptomatic readings, in their focus on tropes and cultural context, frequently condemn without a trial. Hindering your story in order to future-proof it for the sake of optics is a safeguard against this, and one that leads to bad stories. Artists should have confidence that their text will hold its ground on its own. To quote Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “A Message about Messages”:

“The complex meanings of a serious story or novel can be understood only by participation in the language of the story itself. To translate them into a message or reduce them to a sermon distorts, betrays, and destroys them… Any reduction of that language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete.” (67-68)

BioWare’s doctrine of passive writing violates this wisdom by surrendering to their fear of (bad) criticism. The Veilguard lacks punch, stakes, and empathy and becomes incongruous with its established lore because it’s not willing to take risks that might alienate or upset players. They’re more concerned with making sure their work is inoffensive than they are with conveying a moving story.

I believe all of this was inherited from an incestuous feedback loop between a vocal minority of critics, of which I might’ve once counted myself among the blameworthy, and the apprehensiveness of out-of-touch corporate board room decision-making. Dragon Age’s genome mutated, and it slowly lost its teeth.

Over the course of a decade, we bred the Dread Wolf into a Dread Pug.

V. What It Took

The Veilguard’s lack of confidence in itself and lack of faith in its audience contribute to its capitulatory nature. In many respects, it feels like the developers lost their passion for it over the course of the ten year hellish production and just wanted to be done with it. This resulted in a decent game that nonetheless feels divorced from what came before it. It tries to juggle being a soft reboot while also trying to close out the series’s biggest and longest running story arcs, but inevitably fumbles.

Nearly everything done by The Veilguard was handled better by Inquisition. And Inquisition was certainly the more ambitious title. Perhaps more returning characters would have established a sense of continuity between the two, or at least made it less awkward by having them present for the story’s grand finale. For as strong as the endgame is, it could’ve benefited from the presence of slave liberator Fenris, elven history aficionado Merrill, possible Evanuris soul vessel Sera, or Divine Victoria (any of them). The core pillar of Dragon Age is the characters, and The Veilguard’s under-performance (and in some cases, outright dismissal) in that regard sabotages its integrity. Without this to anchor it, the changes to gameplay, visuals, and roleplaying depth become more alienating.

Personally, what do I take away from this? The Veilguard is far from the game I dreamed about for ten years, and not the one that loyal fans deserved either. I’m no stranger to disappointment at this point in my life, and yet this still leaves me with a hollow feeling. Will I still be able to return to Inquisition, a game I truly adore, and see it the same way as before, knowing now where all this is leading? The true cost of The Veilguard, for me, has nothing to do with the price tag: it’s the loss of that perfectly tailored dream, now that the possibilities of the future have shut their gates.

Where do those dreams go? Are they doomed to fester in their lonely, incommunicable agony? Will they be twisted by their enmity, like the blighted dreams of the Titans, and spread their corruption into those important happy memories?

In 2014, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: Inquisition helped me to see the light and come out of it. In 2024, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me feel nothing. There’s no less favorable comparison in my eyes. It’s disheartening to behold something that once meant so much to me and be greeted with numbness. I have to wonder if that affection will ever return, or if I’ve just grown out of it.

But as I wandered the streets of Minrathous as Rook, I heard a familiar song. It was one of the tavern songs from Inquisition, its nostalgic chords filling me with wistful sentiment. I know, deep down, there’s still something there. Maybe I just need to dig it up. Maybe it’s time to look back…

To be continued…

– Hunter Galbraith

Further Reading

Le Guin, Ursula K. “A Message about Messages.” Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, Abrams Image, 2018, pp. 67–68.

Incidentally, this was an anomaly my friends and I pondered over and eventually solved. It turned out to be a former Wienerschnitzel. ↩︎

You could argue that this credit goes more to Inquisition and the previous games for laying the groundwork for said reveals, which were obviously planned out ahead of time, as confirmed by the aforementioned official artbook. Regardless, the payoff satisfied me and gave me proper closure. ↩︎

I’ve been informed that there is a hidden conversation that explains that the Lords of Fortune do, in fact, sell cultural artifacts at times, but only to the rightful owners. This just makes me wonder what they do with the artifacts if the prospective clients can’t pay. Do they shove them back in the ruins and re-arm all the booby traps? ↩︎

I would argue that this does not represent character progression on Isabela’s part, as her (possible, depending on the player’s choices) return of the Tome of Koslun in Dragon Age II was a pragmatic sacrifice she made to save her friends and the city, rather than an acknowledgment of the qunari’s inviolable ownership. In fact, in many continuities, she never returns the Tome at all. ↩︎

I prefer more formalist criticism because it allows the text to lead the dance, not the critique. I think it’s only fair, given that the creators likely spent more effort crafting the piece than I spent consuming it. Symptomatic criticism mandates that the reader consider everything around the text, typically at the text’s expense. In the worst cases, symptomatic critics make their arguments about seemingly everything besides the text in question. ↩︎ Link to article: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2025/01/01/dragon-age-the-veilguard-strangled-by-gentle-hands/

[restinslices]

Angst Idea: Headcanons or one shot is up to you; but the idea of Bi-Han’s kid died awhile ago prior to the games events(probably do to a rival clan wanting to take out the next heir of the clan) and it fuels a lot of his resentment towards liu Kang and stuff. It’s not until he meets one of the versions of his kid from a different timlime( probably during Khaos regins or during one of the many invasion seasons) and he ends up desperately trying to connect with this version of his kid even if it’s not really his original version of them.

Oh this is delicious.

I'm writing this on the tumblr website so I can’t check the word count, soooo to prevent this from being stupidly long, Imma split this into two parts (if ya’ll want the next part).

CW: Angst, child death, non canon storyline

(He so damn fine. The red flags just looking like flags~)

Bi-Han knew he had his faults. He was ill tempered, dishonest, untrusting, held grudges, the list could go on and on. All those flaws disappeared when he was around a special someone, tossed in the wind and floating about, waiting until he was away from them.

He wouldn't blame anyone for assuming he'd be a strict father who took issue with everything his child did. He knew Kuai Liang and Tomas assumed he'd be just like that, only to be surprised when he proved himself to be the gentlest of souls when it came to his baby.

"Aw man!" The seven year old pouted as they kicked at a rock, "okay, you hide next and I'll try to find you!". Hide and Seek had been their favorite game for years now, for reasons he didn't know. He just chalked it up to one of the many things they found intriguing that he personally didn't care for. They covered their eyes with their hands, "one! Two! Three-!

Bi-Han's rough hands pulled theirs from their eyes, "playtime is over". He had already let them skip out on the last hour of their lessons. He had to be somewhat sensible and at least get them to bed on time. "We'll play again tomorrow"

"But I wanna play now"

"Yeah? Well-"

A gasp followed by a squeal left them, which honestly could've meant a number a things. Children were excitable by nature but he swore they had more energy than any normal child did.

"Daddy look!" his eyes followed where they pointed, eventually seeing…

A butterfly.

A butterfly?

That's what got them excited? "Isn't it pretty?

Not necessarily. It was just a butterfly. A little insect with wings. Whatever caused them to squeal, he didn't see it. But he also wasn't a child anymore. His mind had been reigned in by the reality of being an adult long ago, his childish wonder dripping out of him until there was nothing left. "It's a butterfly"

"But isn't it pretty?". He shrugged. "You don't like butterflies?

"I don't care for them"

"Why not?

"I just don't. Come on, let's go home"

His extended hand went ignored, his child instead choosing to slowly approach the flower the butterfly sat on. "I think you should start liking butterflies. They're small, but small things keep us happy". Ugh, what cereal box did they read that from?

"I'll considerate it" he said, trying not to sound as uninterested as he actually was. "Let's go home"

"Hey dad" you looked over at him, "I'm gonna make history when I'm Grandmaster. Wanna know how?

Hmm... Your intellect maybe? You'll be known as the wisest Grandmaster the Lin Kuei have had so far. Or maybe your strength. You'll crush the bones in someone's body without even thinking. Or maybe you'll be fast enough to kill 1000 men within the blink of an eye. Or maybe-

"I'm gonna be happy"

Happy? How would being happy make history?

"Grandpa was pretty grumpy sometimes. You are too. Maybe Grandmasters are always grumpy. I won't be though. I'm gonna be the very first happy Grandmaster. You wanna know how?". You fully turned to face him, arms outstretched "like this. I'll have open arms"

As smart as Bi-Han was, you had fully lost him by now. "Open arms?

You nodded, "yeah. That means I won't be all angry and violent all the time. I'll be kind. That's what I wanna be when I grow up; kind. I think everyone would be a lot more happier if everyone was kind. Everyone doesn't have to be sad and angry". The butterfly began to flutter away, catching your attention. "Maybe I'll inspire others to greet the world with open arms. You think I can do that?”

No. As harsh as it sounded, Bi-Han knew what you wanted was impossible. People would always yell, fight and kill. The world would continue to be ugly because that's just how the world was. There was no "greeting the world with open arms". That wasn't realistic. No Grandmaster was happy because being a Grandmaster meant carrying a heavy burden. You'd see.

But he couldn't tell you that. You looked too sweet and innocent, eyes full of light when thinking about a future that couldn't be.

"I think... " he began, setting his hand down on your shoulder. "I think you can do whatever you set your mind to"

That smile was worth the lie.

"Can we play one more round of hide and seek before we go home? Please please please? I won't even choose a super good hiding spot, and we can use the clap rules! Please please please please pleeeeeasssee?”

No! You need to get to bed!

"Alright, fine"

Dammit Bi-Han. Just one more round, then you'd be off to bed. Then he swore he'd be more strict with you.

"Close your eyes!”

Yeah yeah, he knew how the game went. He closed his eyes before covering them with his hands (because you always sword he was peeking if he didn't cover his eyes), then counted loudly. 1, 2, 3, he shouted each number until he got to 10. "First clap!”

Clap clap!

East.

His feet carried him while his eyes scanned the area. The faster he found you, the faster you could both be inside. He wouldn't admit it, but damn, he was tired. A mix of both physical and mental exhaustion, but he tried his best to hide all that from you.

"Second clap!”

He waited a bit.

Silence.

"Second clap!" he shouted louder. Still, all he got was silence in return. There was no way you didn't hear him. You always heard him when he called for you. "Clap or we're going home!".

More silence.

Then a ear piercing scream.

"DAD, HELP!”

You were a jokester, yeah, but this was no prank. You'd never play like this with him, and that scream, it was of genuine horror. It was a tone he had never heard you use before. A tone that scared the hell out of him, and caused him to run in the direction where he last heard you clap.

He kept running, calling out for you, heart thumping faster than it ever had before. A snake. Let it be a snake that frightened you. Or a spider. Anything but you actually being harmed. “WHERE ARE YOU?!”.

“DAD!”.

He was getting closer.

He could hear you crying.

All these stupid fucking trees were in his way. He kept having to finagle his way through them, which only added to his panic. Seconds wasted on trying not to run straight into one. “I’M COMING!”.

“DAD!”

“I’M-“ he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw you. A nightmare. That’s what he wanted this to be. This couldn’t be real. You couldn’t actually be laying on the ground, blood seeping from the several stab wounds you had. How? He had just saw you!

Someone had been watching you. How hadn’t he noticed?!

“I have you” he ran to your side, heart tearing into two when he heard you cry in reaction to him sitting you up. “Daddy’s here. I have you”. Who would do this to you?! Who would attack a child just trying to play with their father?!

“I’m scared” you managed to get out in between your heavy breathing. So was he.

“Don’t be. I have you”.

“I don’t wanna die”.

“You won’t! I’ll get you home!”. You blinked, but it lasted too long. He had to get you home now! “Stay awake. I have you”. That’s all he wanted you to do. Just stay awake and let him get you help.

Your breathing changed almost at an instant. Your hyperventilating slowed, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted. “Dad…”.

Bi-Han watched as you let out your last breath.

Your eyes were still open, but they lacked the warmth from earlier. They were lifeless now, no light in sight. A smile no longer graced your face. There was no talk of open arms. There was no big speech like there was in the books he read as a child. You were just gone.

“Baby” he whispered, “wake up. Don’t- this is an order from your Grandmaster! Get up! GET UP!”. He shook you with all his might, but the dead didn’t follow orders. He rocked back and forth, your blood staining his clothes, his forehead on yours, letting out the most gut wrenching sobs he had ever let out in his entire life. When his mother died, he was sad, but he was comforted by the fact that she had lived a beautiful and long life. You were so young. You still had so much of the world to see. Shit, maybe you actually could’ve led some unnatural era of peace. He didn’t fucking know. All he knew was that it would never happen now.

His baby was gone. His beautiful sweetheart with a laugh as beautiful as the clouds in the sky, was gone.

You were just a corpse now.

~~

When Bi-Han found out that Liu Kang was the creator of this timeline, he wasn’t shocked like the others. He hadn’t seen it coming, but he felt something stronger than shock.

He felt rage.

As creator of this timeline, not only had he chosen to have the Lin Kuei remain mediocre, but he must’ve known that you would be killed.

“That’s not true” he tried to tell Bi-Han, “I am no puppet master. I had no idea that your child would die, and I didn’t plan for it to happen”.

“Then bring them back”.

“I can’t”.

Bullshit. He could do anything! He just refused to!

Liu Kang… he was the true traitor yet everyone was angry with Bi-Han?! He hadn’t meant for Sindel to die, but why was everyone upset by her death? What about his child? No one demanded justice for them! Even when their death was fresh, all these people who cried for Sindel, their “allies”, did nothing. Liu Kang could’ve burnt their rival clan down to the ground, but no! Bi-Han had to carry the weight of his grief, and somehow think straight enough to make a plan of attack. When he looked up from your corpse and spotted the pendant of his rival clan nearby, gods, he wanted everyone to die. And Liu Kang had the nerve to advise him to think on it first?! No!

“The innocent men, women and children-”

What about his child?!

That grudge was the wind beneath his wings, carrying him away from everyone he once called an ally. But it also carried him to what appeared to be his own destruction.

He was in an unfamiliar timeline now, woozy from the fight he was just in. Fine, maybe he should’ve made a better decision, but at least he was doing something! Liu Kang would probably have him be inactive as always!

But now he was in an even worse spot. In unfamiliar lands with a madman ranting about his need for anarchy. Black tendrils with sharp points came closer and closer to Bi-Han, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t afraid.

Then, there was a noise. A clattering on the ground.

Before Titan Havik could react, a sudden wave of ice filled the nearby area, freezing anyone with their feet touching the ground. Ice crawled up the nearby machines, but thankfully it didn’t stick the way it did to flesh.

“Move move move!”. Ugh, of all variants, it had to be Jonny Cage?

Johnny Cage in a military uniform? He needed a nap.

“How long do those bombs last?” Johnny asked, rushing over to Geras and freeing him from his confines.

“Long enough for us to get out of here!”.

That voice…

He was upside down, but he could still recognize the child approaching him. He heard that voice in his dreams and nightmares. Of course he’d recognize it.

“Hi dad”.

His baby.

TUMBLR PLS STOP DELETING RANDOM SHIT! THIS IS SUCH A RANDOM ASS GLITCH-

[changisworld]

Skz biggest kinks & pleasures (maknae line)

18+,MDNI, I’m not putting smut warnings as a surprise for readers but it’s all just smut, don’t read if underage

ONLY CONTENT WARNING ILL GIVE IS ONE OF THE KINKS HAVE PISS!!!

Word count;3,335

©ANY translation, copy & paste, posting of my work is strictly forbidden for ANY posts/ writing i post.

main masterlist here

hyung line version here

**this is not proofread so sorry for any errors x**

HAN JISUNG: COCK & BALL TORTURE

I genuinely cannot imagine Han having a dominant bone in his body & also cannot ever imagine this guy being 'vanilla' in the SLIGHTEST!! Whenever you guys have sex, he is always shaking, whining & drooling absolutely everywhere & he hasn't got a single bit of shame.

You both experimented sexually within the first three times you slept together. You have both experimented with vibrators, strap-ons, handcuffs, wax etc & it did the trick.. until it didn't. Han could orgasm from these things, don't get me wrong, but since he had gotten 'used' to these things, he hadn't gotten bored or anything but you could sense he wanted more now.

You have just put the small stick candle onto the bedside table after letting it drip onto his abs & perky pecs as he is handcuffed to the bedpost, his face red as he squirms slightly, humming as the wax dries into his skin, cooling down.

You settle in between his legs before crawling up his small frame, your knees touching his balls as you kiss him (full of tongue & spit obviously) when your knee moves & puts a lot of pressure on his poor, filled balls & he squeals into his mouth. You instantly move your knee & sit up, both of your eyes wide, but for different reasons.

You are scared in case you genuinely hurt him as you look down at the site, but you then notice an even bigger puddle of precum on his lower stomach, his cock twitching & jumping as he blushes, boba eyes staring at the same thing you are.

"Did you like that Hannie?" you question, voice raising at the end, not wanting to do something & scare him. His mouth opens but he stutters for a few seconds. "Uhh, I-I don't know, it's new" he word vomits out, cheeks & ears getting more impossibly red as he looks into your eyes, trying to see your reaction.

You hum at his response before your hand reaches down & you take his balls into your hand before squeezing them, not too hard but there is still force behind it which makes him hiss as his hips jerk up, his cock dribbling at the tip which makes you chuchkle.

"My baby likes having his balls hurt, hmm? what about your pretty penis too, Hannie?" you question as you put more pressure on his balls as you flick the head of his cock a few times, making him thrust his hips as he tries to escape but also get more of the feeling. He nods enthusiastically, tilting his head to hide his reactions as much as he can despite handcuffs making him unable to use his arms to cover his face.

You don't like the way he is hiding his pretty reactions so you slap his dick with the back of your hand which makes his head jolt back to its original position, making you smirk. "Tell me if it's too much, mkay? Sit pretty f'me." you tell him, joking since you know he's not going anywhere. You get off the bed & dig through the bedside drawer & return holding a small cock ring, much tighter than any other one you have both tried, never having the right moment to try it.. until now.

You straddle his thighs, you slowly grind to feel friction as you struggle due to how much the man beneath you is hissing & squirming around but eventually roll the cock ring down to the bottom of his shaft, it beginning to turn a dark reddish/ purple colour almost instantly which makes you both drool, only hans drool actually leaves his lips.

You lean over & begin kissing his soft lips as you begin to lightly dig your nails into his cock as you drag it up & down, digging harder the closer to the tip you get. He struggles to kiss you back & loud but muffled whines escape his lips, his hips jolting & his cock twitching uncontrollably. "P-pinch my b-balls y/nnie, pu-pulease" he begs, hair almost blocking his view due to how much it's sticking to him. "You're so dirty Hannie, so slutty." you remark before beginning to kiss his neck as you do as he asks, sucking a few hickies into his neck as you begin pinching his full balls before slapping them, then repeating the motion & you're convinced you can orgasm from his noises alone.

His bottom lip is the same colour as his cheeks now from all the nibbling on it he has been doing, his eyes watering & his cheeks getting stained from the tears, not even having one thought in his head anymore, which you notice.

You sit up as his legs begin thrashing around, shaking as you use your other hand to start flicking the tip of his cock, residue sticking to your fingers coming from the area as you start to pinch in a rougher way, twirling the skin in your hands as you look at Jisung, in his own world.

"This is all it took to get you all floaty? You're so weird for enjoying this, you're seriously gonna cum from getting your dick slapped?" you laugh as you ask him, not actually meaning what you're saying seeing since you could probably fill a glass with your own juices you're that turned on. You admire Han, not even expecting an answer, drool puddling the pillow as more drool is drying into his chin, just to have even more drool cover it, his cheeks soaked with tears & also sweat.

You put his entire cock in your hand as you tighten your hand around it as much as you can & he lets out a squeal as you begin jerking him off & despite his cock literally purple because of the cock ring, you are convinced the cock ring didn't do a good job as he cums in record time, it spurting out ropes of it all over your hand & his tummy, him rattling the handcuffs, trying to get away from the sensation as his eyes completely roll back, panting heavily.

You let him ride out his high & you quickly remove the cock ring, trying to not overstimulate him too much since its the poor babys first time experiencing this before you lick the cum off his tummy to avoid having to leave him before crawling beside him & letting him nuzzle his face into your chest, before falling asleep almost instantly.

FELIX: MARKING

Nothing turns Felix on more than being able to have a constant reminder you belong to each other & what better way to show one another off when you're not together than having a hickey or two on your necks?

I can't be 100% sure if he enjoys giving or receiving them more but if i had to pick one, I'd say he enjoys giving them more seeing since he has more freedom to choose wherever he wants, unlike you seeing since he is still an idol, meaning you need to be way more cautious which makes him sad since he would do anything to have loads of hickies littered all over his neck.

You are straddled on top of Felix as your lips are locked together as your lips are locked together & he is playing with your puffy clit. You are grinding against his fingers as your eyebrows are furrowed together, letting out small gasps as his fingers are working like magic.

"Fefe, inside, pretty please." you mumble through kisses & who is he to deny you? He slides his ring finger inside your wet walls as he prods around a bit to find the gummy spot & despite him having short fingers, he is good with them & only takes a few seconds to find it & as he does, he slides a second finger inside too, rings touching your lips which makes you twitch due to the coldness.

You start whimpering & you break the kiss & start to grind against his fingers as you clench around him, making him swallow deeply. He takes this opportunity to begin kissing your jawline & working his way down as he helps you work yourself towards the first of probably very many orgasms.

His lips suction to your neck as he lets his teeth take a few playful bites which make you twitch from the slight tickle, making you giggle a bit which he returns. He litters some kisses around the left side of your neck before lightly pushing your head so he can access the right size before doing the same thing.

He begins to suck on your neck, humming at the light scent of the perfume you put on earlier in the day & also because of the taste of your skin, you both think he's addicted to it.

Your fingers wiggle their way into his hair as you lightly push at his head, somehow wanting him even closer to your neck as you melt further into him if that is even possible.

You can feel his teeth grazing every once in a while against your skin which makes you leak even more arousal as you tense up as your orgasm washes over you, Felix holding onto your waist to keep you from falling off his lap due to the amount your legs are wobbling on each side of him.

Once you come down from your orgasm, Felix slips his fingers out of you & you guide his hand up to your mouth before sucking your own juices off of him as he smirks at your reddened face, admiring it.

"So pretty f'me aren'cha babe? Made you a new necklace too, want you to give me some on my thighs, princess. pleeeaaasseee" he flutters his eyelashes to you as he give you his iconic beautiful smile. You hum a 'yes' response before you're sliding off of him, legs still a bit like jelly as you pull his sweatpants down, him raising his hips to make it easier for you, pulling his boxers down too with them.

You begin to jerk him off slowly as you kiss his balls & thighs before you begin nibbling on them playfully, before giving him the same, dark purple marks he just gave you as he lets out hums of approval, giving you butterflies.

SEUNGMIN: PISS

The reason you & Seungmin have always got on well sexually is because of how much you both have in common when it comes to kinks & how much you both love to explore together, & that is how you both eventually found out how hot you both find piss to be during sex. It started off with how much & how dying he was to help you squirt & it just developed from there.

Seungmin is laying on his back with his head on the pillows of your shared bed as you are sitting on his face (another one of his biggest pleasures is eating pussy while barely being able to breath because duh) grinding against him as his tongue is working its magic, pushing you towards your second orgasm within the last five minutes.

You are whimpering out above him, pulling on his hair to get him impossibly closer to your dripping core as his hands have a firm grip on your ass cheeks, fondling them in his fingers as he tongue fucks you.

"Min-Minnie, g'na cum." you push the words out as the feeling begins to bubble over, but before it has a chance to fully do so, he removes his tongue & pushes your hips up so you're now hovering above his face as you basically scream from the frustration as you can feel the almost orgasm dissapearing again.

"You know what I want before I let you cum, baby. Don't be so nervous, we both want it, mkay? Wanna taste you as much as possible. You deserve to let go, so good for me all the time." he says to you in a soft tone as he gives your ass cheek a small slap before letting you sit back on his face.

Despite everything you have tried together, pissing on him has always made you shy, but he always reassures you before, during & after.

He begins to suckle on your clit this time, slurping up all your juices as his spit mixes with it. He lets out small moans & grunts at your taste as one of his hands leave your ass to come around to your lower stomach before he begins prodding at it & putting pressure on it, hinting at you what he truly wants.

You try to hold off for a little while longer but the added pressure makes it impossible & you let go. Your golden stream begins to dribble out of you & straight into Seungmins mouth & face, making him moan at the taste of you, but he can tell you're holding back. He bites your clit & you yelp before your piss begins to spray out, making him hum in satisfaction.

Your moans get twice as loud as they were a minute or so prior as you see your piss now soaking his face & towel beneath you, along with his hair now getting wet, the same as your fingers since they are still weaved through it & your orgasm hits you like a car. Your legs shake around his head as your stream & also orgasm comes to a stop.

Your breathing is erratic as you take deep breaths, hair stuck to your now shiny face. "Such an angel for me y/n" he breathes out, panting as he helps reposition you so you're now on the only dry patch of the bed as he leans in & kisses you, your orgasm & piss soaked all into his chin & cheeks. You taste yourself on his tongue & it makes you moan quietly.

Your hand worms its way down into his boxers but you can feel a big wet, sticky patch which makes you break the kiss & look down & the result makes you chuckle. "You came in you underwear for me Seungmin? I'm honoured." he 'tuts' before beginning to blush. "You expected me to be able to hold off when you just did that to me? You're insane." he murmurs before kissing your neck while playing with your hair.

JEONGIN: OVERSTIMULATION

Is this any surprise at all.. HAVE YOU SEEN HIS FINGERS? they're made for pleasure i swear, they're so long & just hkvedbvbv. I feel like poor Innie is still a bit too nervous to try anything too 'taboo' or 'out there' but the things you have both agreed & have tried together, you both love.

You're on the bed laying on your back as his fluffy hear & gorgeous face is between your thighs for the third separate time that day. He is making out with your clit sloppily as he has three fingers buried inside you, scissoring in & out of your leaky opening, driving you towards your second orgasm from just this session alone & to say you're a moaning mess is an understatement.

You're uncontrollably squirming on the bed & your legs are thrashing around as you're babbling random swear words & his name as but he is keeping you grounded by having a firm grip on your pelvis with his free hand as your fingers are pulling on his pretty locks.

"Innie, gonna cum again." you whimper out as your back arches off the bed as your eyes roll to the back of your head, your pussy not getting a break even for a second as Jeongins fingers keep pistoning in & out of you & his tongue simply swallows your juice & orgasm while continuing the same pace.

Your orgasm fades but the sensation doesn't. If anything, it intensifies as the over sensitivity takes over, which makes you begin to hiss & grumble. "Too-too much Innie." you pant as your fingers do their best to pull his hair & face out from your dripping hole. "Cmon, y/nnie.. you've only orgasmed twice today, can't even just take one more, hmm?" he questions, knowing you can't say no. You've already orgasmed twelve times today & you both know this but he knows you'll do anything to please him.

You give a weak nod & he gives you a cheeky smile before diving straight back in, fingers speeding up & him taking your swollen bud back into his mouth, suckling on it before moving down to make out with your other set of lips. Your squeals are bouncing off each wall in the house no doubt & your third orgasm of the past twenty minutes washes over you as you begin trembling & shaking so much Innie decides to take pity on you & unlatches himself as he gives your swollen pussy a small slap.

You are in the middle of trying to get your breath back as Jeongin grabs a pillow & places it next to you before moving you so you're hips are now resting on it & your ass is facing upwards.

"spread your legs a bit for me, hunny. You can take it, can't you? I'm so hard for you y/nnie." he groans out as he jerks himself off behind you as he helps you move your legs just enough so he can slot himself in between as he spits onto his cock for extra lube as he drags the tip of his cock up & down your burning sensitive folds, making you hiss.

He begins pushing in & the hair gets caught in your chest as he bottoms out, releasing an animalistic groan. Once he feels you clench around him a few times, he begins to start a sharp pace & you begin to bite the duvet to try silence your screams.

His long cock hits the same G-spot that his fingers have been abusing all day & it makes you yelp as you reach back & push your hand against his pelvis, trying to stop him from going as deep but he quickly yanks your wrist away before holding it against your lower back as he leans over you, back to chest as he moves your hair out of your face to kiss your cheeks as he keeps fucking into you.

"I-innie too- too much, too big, s-slow down." You whimper as your eyes scrunch closed, trying your best to hold on as much as you can to give Jeongin the chance to orgasm. "You can do it hunny, just stop running from it n take it mkay? You're clenching so tight around me y/n, so good." You get all flustered & get butterflies in your belly at his words & you keep whining as your toes begin curling as your now forth orgasm hits you & Jeongin lets out a deep moan as he cums too after feeling how tightly you clench around him & you feel the warm liquid fill you which makes your orgasm go that extra bit further.

You both lay like this for a minute, catching your breath back before he pulls out & you let out a deep sigh. Jeongin begins to move off of you but you reach & take him by the arm & using the rest of your strength to pull him back down. "stay like this, you're like a big weighted blanket." you mumble out, eyes feeling as heavy as rocks.

Jeongin chuckles before kissing your cheek but getting off you regardless & shuffling down back to your pussy, looking at the cum dripping out along with your slick. "I'll have my dinner first then we can cuddle as long as you want, jagi, okay?" he giggles before sticking his tongue out & beginning to kitten lick your pussy again. You knew this is a long night.

[artbyblastweave]

The Maker I think is an example of comic books generating a character who's incredibly good, but also incredibly dependent on the gnarled sprawling context and editorial meta-context in order to understand why he's good. He's born out of the core tension of the Ultimate Universe- the tension between retelling familiar stories in a way that's accessible to modern readers, and actually doing genuinely new and unexpected things with the characters in a continuity where you had the leeway to do so without having to enact an editorial snapback- and it's not a coincidence that he's one of only two characters who differentiated themselves enough from the 616 status quo to escape the sinking ship that the original Ultimate Marvel eventually became. He's probably not a character that would exist in the way that he does if The Ultimates and then Ultimatum hadn't sent the entire tonal trajectory of the setting into a tailspin, he's the end result of that tension embodied, a character whose backstory you can't even describe without talking about two separate Universes.

Then, of course, you get into the fact that "what if Reed Richards snapped and turned evil" is a character concept that's only legible because of the existing referent of 616 Marvel, where people have been going, "Man, Reed Richards has a lot of character traits that would make him terrifying as a supervillain" for decades. And once you notice that, you get into the issue that in fact, quite a bit of ultimate Marvel was dependent on some recognition of the old thing to recognize why the New Thing is clever. For example, is the ambiguity surrounding whether Thor is actually a Norse God or just a crazy super soldier interesting, without the context of 616-thor for comparison? Is Gah Lak Tus an interesting spin on the world-eater if you don't know about the giant asshole in purple tights? All these characters where the new take is dependent on some knowledge of the original to land effectively (or, in many cases, to understand why the new take is dogwater.)

And then, of course, you get to the Maker's big Plan for the 2023 Ultimate Universe- to pare down and reconstruct a version of continuity that's simpler, more manageable, less chaotic- a metatextual reference to the project that originally created him, and like that project it almost immediately flies off the rails because for good or ill you can't keep an entire setting's worth of plates spinning without some of the participants getting their own ideas and breaking from the script. And what you're left with is a character with an arc about how we're never getting out of here- about how you're never, ever going to be able to escape the weight of continuity, you're never going to be able to reboot your way out from under what came before, and moreover it's not completely clear why you'd even want to- look at all this great stuff we've accumulated! Look at all the thematic parallels we can draw if we bother to remember what we've done! If you're not gonna pull all these ancient threads together why are you even bothering with 60 year old characters instead of just writing something new?

[novlr]

How do you write an unreliable narrator in a way that actually feels clever and not just confusing or annoying? I want readers to realize something’s off without hitting them over the head with it, and still keep them hooked enough to want to figure it out.

I’m an absolute sucker for an unreliable narrator. I find them completely frustrating and endlessly entertaining. When you read a book, and you just know that something doesn’t quite add up, and you start to question the nature of the reality of the story you’re reading? Mwah. Chef’s kiss.

Sometimes unreliable narrators are obvious. Other times there are just hints. It could be a detail that contradicts an earlier scene. A character who reacts oddly to what should be normal. And then, slowly, you realise you can’t trust the very person telling you the story. An unreliable narrator transforms readers from passive observers into active participants, forcing them to become detectives in their own reading experience.

What is an unreliable narrator?

An unreliable narrator is the voice of your story whose credibility has been compromised. They might be lying deliberately to conceal a truth, or completely unintentionally. What makes them fascinating is that they are telling their version of a truth or attempting to create one, even if that truth doesn’t match reality.

Unlike traditional narrators who serve as trusted guides through a story, unreliable narrators force readers to question everything they’re told. This means that the real story often lives in the gaps between what the narrator says and what the reader comes to understand is actually true.

It’s like a friend telling you their breakup story; their version of events might be completely honest from their perspective, but you know you’re only getting one side of the story. Unreliable narrators remind us that truth is often subjective, and that everyone is the hero of their own story.

Types of unreliable narrators

There is no definitive type of unreliable narrator, so the first step is to understand their role in the story and what you want their version of the truth to mean. Here are some common types:

The deliberate liar consciously misleads readers.

The self-deceiver believes their own false narrative.

The mentally compromised has their perception affected by illness, injury, or trauma.

The naïve observer lacks the experience to understand what they’re seeing.

The morally ambiguous has values that skew their interpretation of events.

Each of these types of unreliable narrator serves a different purpose and will change the tone of your narrative. For example, a deliberate liar is often used in thriller and mystery stories where readers must untangle truth from deception, while a naïve observer might be used for dramatic irony. A mentally compromised narrator might lead readers through a haunting exploration of perception, reality, and the self, whereas a self-deceiver might highlight wider social issues in their story world as their illusions gradually crumble.

So, how do you actually write an unreliable narrator?

Writing an unreliable narrator is a delicate balancing act. You need to give your readers enough truth to keep them invested, enough lies to make them question everything, and enough clues that they can piece together what’s really happening. The trick isn’t just about deceiving your reader, but about making that deception meaningful (and entertaining).

Let’s look at some of the more universal techniques:

Build credibility before breaking it

Start by establishing your narrator’s voice as trustworthy. Let readers settle into believing what they’re told. This makes the eventual revelation of unreliability more impactful. Show your narrator being accurate about small details or making reasonable observations before introducing elements that challenge their reliability.

Leave breadcrumbs

Plant subtle inconsistencies throughout your narrative. These should be small enough that readers might miss them on first reading, but obvious enough to create that satisfying “aha” moment when the truth is revealed,, like contradictions in the narrator’s version of events, other characters reacting to the narrator’s version of reality, or something that runs counter to the reality of the reader.

The power of perspective

Remember that unreliable narration is fundamentally about perspective. Your narrator isn’t necessarily lying; they’re telling their truth, even if it doesn’t align with objective reality. Show how their personal biases, experiences, and limitations colour their interpretation of events.

Build tension through uncertainty

Use your narrator’s unreliability to build tension. When readers begin to doubt the narrator, every new piece of information becomes suspect. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of uncertainty that keeps readers engaged. But make sure you keep it balanced. Give readers enough reason to doubt your narrator without completely destroying their credibility too early.

The art of the reveal

The trickiest part of writing any unreliable narrator is deciding what the best time to reveal it is. And it does have to be considered carefully. Do you want a dramatic singular reveal, a gradual reveal with an “aha” moment, or to never explicitly confirm it, leaving readers to decide?

Remember: the goal isn’t simply to trick readers, but to explore deeper truths about perception, reality, and human nature. The best unreliable narrators make us question not just the story, but our own assumptions about truth and reliability. So make sure you consider that when you decide whether you need a reveal or not.

Keep your inconsistency consistent

Even unreliable narrators need to follow internal logic. Their unreliability should make sense within the context of their character and the situations they find themselves in. A narrator with memory issues should consistently show those issues. A deliberate liar should have clear motivations for their deception.

[owlstro]

Thank you for the great stuff you been posting so far.

2. tw astro x gn reader? We couldn't escape in time and now we gotta deal with the guy, fluff or angst I am alr with either :b.

3. I think you forgot to tag the shrimpo one?

TWISTED ASTRO X GN READER , fluff

note: 1. UR WELCOME!! im glad thst people have been enjoying my works!! havent seen alot of dw x reader soo i decided to take matters into my own hands!

2. i decided fluff since im better at writing it!! Altho the entire thing isn't very long so my bad lolsies..

3. OOPS!! i was pretty tired when i made that one, ill be sure to fix it, thank you for letting me know!

art: @ samwichtheunforgettable on Pinterest

Well this is a doozy, despite all the adrenaline you felt you couldn't get close enough to make it into the elevator. You were understandably freaking out and panicking.

Once you sorta calm down to actually think logically, you decide to hide. You don't know what to do, all you can do is just hide and hope no Twisted finds you.

Well, technically those hopes DID work, all of the Twisteds wandered the area like zombies, except one. Of course, you were gonna die eventually.

Although after some chasing and hiding, the Twisted kept following you, even almost slowing down when you ran out of stamina.

You were quite confused about why they didn't hurt you when you slipped and fell over.

Till you noticed who was chasing you, or well.. more accurately, following you. It was Astro, Twisted Astro.

You didn't know what he wanted, but it definitely wasn't something malicious. He looked lonely, sad even.

You stared at him, he stared at you. It was awkward for the two of you to say the least.

You suppose, if you're gonna find out how to communicate with him.. It would preferably be somewhere safe than a random hallway.

You lead him to the hiding spot he first found you in. Still feeling uneasy about a literal Twisted following you and the fact you haven't died yet is a miracle.

Astro looked at you curiously, wondering what you'll do next. You were just observing his body language. His arms and legs twitched quite often, most likely due to an absurd amount of Ichor he had to.. consume?

You tried communicating with him with words, while he could vaguely understand, it wasn't all too helpful.

You tried conveying your thoughts and MANY questions, on why he isn't attacking you like the others are, through body language but it seemed it confused him more. Man, being a Twisted sucks.

You tried all sorts of things, all of them ending up him confused or the both of you confused by what you were doing.

You just sighed and sat down, never-mind all of this.. How are you gonna return to the group? This is a mess.

Your eyes hovered over every small or big object you could see in your sight, not really making a single coherent thought.

You knew Astro was still there with you, probably staring but you didn't pay too much attention. You DID appreciate his presence, because Astro always gave off that calming aura of his.

But you didn't know how to feel about his corrupted.. or well, 'Twisted' version of him.

You could hear him shuffle a little closer to you as your thoughts spiraled into madness.

Then, his nightcap (that weirdly acted like it had a mind of its own.) wrapped around your torso.

Oh, well this brought you out of... whatever your brain was on.

You heard him mutter something or at least you saw him try to say something, due to all of the Ichor he consumes.

"It's fine, you don't need to speak." You eventually say, not wanting to make his throat hoarse. Seriously it must hurt drinking the Ichor.

Twisted Astro weakly nods, seemingly figuring out whether or not to lean on you or wait for you to lean on him.

You answer his thoughts by leaning on Astro. Your head on his shoulders.

"These circumstances aren't ideal, no far from it, but at least you're here." You say, almost feeling sleepy but your anxiety about the other Twisteds forced you to wake up.

final note: SORRY IF THIS IS MESSY. i couldnt think of many headcanons for him MY BAD GANGG. i might edit this but yea.. sorry this took so long! school had me swamped, HOPE U STILL ENNJOYED UR REQUEST!!!!!!

[fire-lizard-ro]

Hi Roro, hope you’re doing well! Let me start by saying your Sunday stuff is MAGNIFICENT, oh my gosh this MAN-

I’ve come with a request for you…

Dr. Veritas Ratio x fem or gn reader. Bathtub. Sex. Like most of the time he’s only interested in reading in the tub, rejecting reader’s advances. But one day, idk, he’s in a MOOD but he doesn’t want to admit it, so he lets reader go a little further than normal with her advances, but he’s still being petty about it, kinda denying and still trying to read his book or whatever and it just Escalates eventually…

Aaaa thank you so much if you decide to do my request! Remember to take breaks and stay hydrated!

I'm ILL over this man jfc-

Dr. Ratio here to prescribe you with a dose of vitamin D-//SHOT

Veri, my love, please just one chance I'm begging just a crumb oisego-

But yesssss gimme the bathtube sex I want it- I wanna do all kinds of wild things to or with this man. Crazy.

But hehehe I know what you are. 👁️👁️

A s i m p . 🫵 (Like I'm any better.)

And thank you!!! This took a While, but I did it. I had lots of fun with it so feel free to request again~

CW and writing under the cut:

CW: vagina and cock (gasp), PIV sex, cockwarming, rough sex, hair pulling, choking (+some breath play), cumming inside (wrap it before you tap it folks), spanking, degradation+praise, objectification, kinda sorta human furniture thing???, name calling (ex:slut), use of words like "cunt" (wow that feels weird writing here-), marking, ignoring you during cockwarming, doggy position(?), cum play, holding your hands behind your back, discussion of safe wording (check-ins), kinda cum as lube?, funishment, d/s aspects to the relationship (though you are dating for romantic reasons as well), slight pussy slapping, talking to your pussy (I know this man a freak <333), crying during sex (+dacryphilia), dumbification (ofc this was gonna be here), ruined orgasm, edging, slight cum eating, a liiiiittle bit of gagging (w/ fingers), usage of "pet" exactly once

Reader gender: fem (I talked with anon separately and they decided on this when I asked for preference- I also only have one fem reader ask. If people want, I can write another version tweaked to be gn or AMAB/male reader~)

Disclaimers:

>>>Dr. Ratio will be referred to as Veritas here since reader is dating him.

>>>This was written and almost finished before 1.6 release.

Bathtub sex, surprisingly, probably isn't the norm for you two. After all, Veritas (oml it feels weird calling him that after so long of calling him Ratio-) enjoys his down time in the bath where he can relax with you and read his books. I like to think that it's one of the few times when his ever racing mind is a bit quieter. So when you are finally pent up enough at just the right time to want to pounce on him in the tub, he's a bit surpised at first. But the surprise would soon melt into mild annoyance. "Can't you just stay still? Quit it- I'm trying to read."

Of course he says it in that ever dramatic way of his while not even glancing up from his book. Speaking of said book- "You're going to get my book wet, darling-" (Yes, he's a "darling" kind of guy. It's sophisticated as he is. And you know he'd say it with that drawl of his and drag the word out. Sometimes in those more intimate moments, it sounds almost like a sultry purr with the way he says it, commanding all your attention.) "And if you do that, you know I'm going to have to punish you, hm?" You almost want it if it means he'd touch you where you want him, but you know that his punishments aren't necessarily fun. Yet still you like them all the same.

(They're more of funishments than punishments in this case- Please do know that funishments and punishments aren't the same, my dear little kinksters~ Since the reader actually enjoys these "punishments" a lot and they are done for their and Veritas' mutual gratification, it's a funishment. These are normally for bratting behavior while actual punishments are for serious things and are meant to actually discourage the behavior that earned you the punishment. Hopefully I explanied it well, lololol-)

But of course you continue to try and rouse his interest, touching him here and there. It reaches the point where you manage to wiggle your way between his arms, in front of his book. Not only does this block his view, but you're dripping water all over his book! (It was all of one or two droplets.) If you listened close enough, you'd probably have heard the sound of his reason breaking in that moment. Like you had poked a sleeping bear one too many times. (And some little part of himself that knew it was also partly because he also was getting into a mood was squashed. Of course it was just because you needed to be disciplined.)

"That's it. You want my attention, darling? Well now you have it.” There was something dark in his voice that sent a shiver down your back and made your nethers tingle in anticipation. He snapped the book closed and set it on the table by the bathtub almost gently, a stark contrast between how his voice sounded and how he was looking at you. He'd tilt his head and consider you, seemingly thinking about how best to punish you for your transgressions. "Hands on my shoulders and do not move them. Color?" Veritas was launching right into it, huh? "Green." "Good."

With hands on his strong shoulders, you watched him with eyes darting around his form to try and figure out what he'd do. Your question was answered by a hand gripping your hip and another dragging down between your breasts, then over your belly, then stopping on your mound. He didn't move any lower, fingers thrumming there just above where you wanted him. Teasing. "I can see your cunt drooling from here. Was she just so hungry that you couldn't be good and hold it until we were out of the tub?" Heat bloomed in your cheeks as he spoke. "Should I punish her? Hm?" Veritas gave your wetness a few light slaps, just enough to make you jolt but not enough to do more than just barely sting. "No- It isn't her fault she's so empty and wanting. But it is your fault that you couldn't be obedient and wait. Isn't that right, my cute little slut?" He whispered in your ear, leaned forward to curl possessively over you while his fingers slipped down to trace around your twitching hole as it tried to suck his finger in.

"Mmmmm..." he hummed lowly, the sound vibrating against you where your chests were pressed together. He kissed the spot beneath your ear before his lips marked a path down your neck, sucking and nipping marks into the tender flesh there. Just as he reached the junction between your neck and shoulder, he suddenly sunk his teeth in and thrusted two fingers into you at the same time. Veritas had sneakily wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you still right before so you weren't able to squirm away from his teeth or his fingers that now plunged in and out of you, agonizingly slow after that fast, rough entry.

The man pressed a kiss to your new bitemark before sliding the hand of the arm around your waist up your back to latch onto your nape and hold you still for a kiss. He chuckled into it as you attempted to fight him for dominance, your tongues clashing. Ultimately, he won and was now devouring your mouth, licking into it with fervor.

At some point, his fingers began to speed up. Veritas was fingerfucking you with his palm slapping against your throbbing clit. And right as you felt yourself begin that climb- He slowed down, his thrusts going back to a leisurely rhythm. He swallowed the whine that left your throat, smirking into the kiss you were still locked in. As he pulled away, he looked incredibly smug. "Thought it would be that easy? Of course not. This is a punishment.”

He did this another time, bringing you close to the rise of pleasure (not at all that close to your peak, though) before going frustratingly slowing. The third time, however... It didn't seem that he was going to stop, and you felt it build and build inside you like a white hot flame. And right as you were reaching the end... He spanked you and ripped his fingers out, sending you over the edge but ruining your orgasm. It had tears beading in your eyes. Fuck did that make him want to fuck you absolutely stupid, but he had more control than that. Your punishment was far from over.

He soothingly ran his hand over your back as you leaned into him, body shivering. "Color?" Through your panting breaths, you managed a weak, "Green." "Good girl." He didn't let you rest any longer, manhandling you into a new position. Now you were leaned over the edge of the tub with your hands keeping you from falling out, Veritas behind you. "I'm going to fuck you now, and you're going to take it all like a good girl, right?" At first you thought he was talking to you, but then he caressed your slit and cooed at it. That mixed sense of shame and arousal shot through you and had you clenching around nothing, making Veritas laugh condescendingly. "So honest..."

Again he started out slow, the sensual slide of his cock inside of your pussy making you close your eyes to focus on the pleasure he was giving you. But he was faster to ramp things up now that he'd already edged you and ruined one of your orgasms. It may or may not have also been because he was quite ready to slake his own lust with your body.

The only reason you didn't slam your face into the tub's edge or fall out was Veritas' grip on you when he grabbed both of your wrists and pulled your arms behind your back. You felt a hand slide into your hair and then he was thrusting into you hard, the slap of his hips slamming into your ass loud in the confined space of the bathroom. It was obscene the way you could even hear the wet sound of his cock going in and out of you amplified by the natural acoustics of said bathroom. "You like hearing how well you take me, slut? I certainly do. It's filthy. Fitting-"

Your hips are bruising from them being pressed onto the edge of the tub, bumping into it with almost every thrust. It hurt but fuck did it all feel so good because he was pressing against your sweet spot every time he fucked into your wet hole.

The hand pulling your head back by your hair let go only to wrap around your throat and pull you up so your back pressed against his chest. "Fuck you sound like such a whore right now. Are you my good little whore? Just for me?" Of course you couldn't answer because your mind was blank from his hand pressing just right to cut off some of that blood flow. Oh and because he had also just tilted his hand to cut off your air. He held for a bit, waiting until your vision was a bit fuzzy at the edges before letting you breathe, the feeling of the air rushing back into your lungs making you dizzy. You felt so close you could scream- And then you nearly did when he pulled out and stopped your orgasm.

His hands let go of you and you nearly keeled over, but he caught you. With an arm around your waist, you couldn't tell what he was doing behind you until you heard the slick sound of him fisting his cock. Right as he began cumming, he slammed back into you to fill you with it while biting down hard on the back of your neck. Another bite to mark you as his.

Veritas then pulled out so the last few spurts of cum would paint your labia in white, marking you inside and out with his spend.

You could feel the frustrated tears pouring down your face as you felt your burning arousal festering in your belly and the mix of embarrassment and thrill at his actions. Fuck this man would be the end of you. He unlatched from your neck to lean forward and lick the tears off your face with a hum. "You look so pretty like this..." He patted your ass before that same hand was sliding down to open you up using your pussy lips as he leaned back to watch as the cum he poured into you began to slip out.

Scooping up the cum that had dribbled out, he fingered it back in, purposefully tapping at your gspot a few times. He then pulled the white covered fingers out and petted your clit, playing with it a little before bringing it to your face. "Clean them off." Your tongue kitten licked some of it off before he was shoving them in your mouth. You gagged a little, drooling over his fingers while weakly sliding your tongue over them to clean them of the cum clinging to them.

"Good girl," he praised with a kiss to your jaw before he let out a sigh. "I'm going to sit you on my cock and finish my reading. Color?" "Green, fuck-" "That's a good pet."

Warming his cock while leaned forward to rest your arms on the lip of the tub while your head rested on those was hard. You desperately wanted to cum, but you now were willing to be obedient to get what you wanted. You weren't sure how much more punishment you could take. It didn't help that he had an arm resting on the back of your hips, slung over them as he leaned on you a bit while his other arm rested atop the other one. That hand was holding up his book. He wasn't touching you besides that and your ass resting in the cradle of his hips, cock deep inside your pussy which still fluttered around his thickness occasionally. Every time you squirmed he would spank you with a pointed look before going back to his book, ignoring you entirely. Any whining or talking would be met with the same treatment.

He checked in on you after a bit. "Color?" "...yellow." His demeanor changed immedately. Petting your side, he eased you back to lean against him once more. "What's wrong, baby?" He typically saved that endearment for intimate moments alone together and times like this where you might need reassurance. "I wanna see your face... wanna hold you." It seemed you might be a bit sensitive, now, after being punished for a while and needed that from him. "Of course, baby. Your punishment is almost over. I'll let you come soon and we can continue in the bedroom, hm?" You loved this man. "Okay." He kissed your forehead. "Good girl."

He slipped out, making you whine. It was met with a chuckle and he helped you turn around to slide into his lap again, this time facing him.

Veritas pulled you to rest against him, tucking you into his neck as he wrapped an arm around your waist. Once you both were settled in, he went back to reading. He still ignored you, but it wasn't so bad this time.

You knew he was done when he set his book on the table again.

He settled his grip on your hips before going straight into fucking up into you hard and fast, what cum was still left in you from his cock plugging it in you aiding the slide of dick in and out of you. He fucked you and played with you until you felt like you couldn't think straight. Even when he asked you questions, knowing you couldn't answer, you weren't quite sure what you said. Whether it was even coherent or not.

"Such a cute, dumb girl for me."

As you came around his cock again, you moaned as you felt the warmth of his cum in you. "Did so, so good for me. Such a good girl." Veritas gave you some time to come down from your high before asking. "Do you want to continue in the bedroom or are you finished for the night?" "...m' done." "Alright, baby." He gave you some more time before cleaning you up and draining the tub. Another kiss was pressed to your forehead, then your cheek, then your lips. "Let's go to bed, darling. I'll take care of you."

Lololol hopefully you like it. 🙏

If there’s any typos or if it doesn’t make sense somewhere… Your honor my client claims “oopsie daisy”. It’s me. The client is me, your honor-

[shootingstarpilot]

1. for codys pov of the melidaan trio reunion? idk everytime i reread i get a kick out of imagining his version of that very sweet phone call with mel and then nield and cerasi fucking knocking obi wan over with that hug

Ask Game

Write a scene from [insert fic] in another character’s POV

okay I'm so irritated because I started writing this out and then the page refreshed and I lost a good half of the scene but you know what? we're going to try again!

(also cheers for the best prompt because i would've needed to write this eventually for llch so this was AWESOME, thanks so much for this-)

(also also i promise there will be a second half going up that is the actual hug, but you know me, what is a prompt if not an invitation to go hogwild, etc., and also i just really liked this ending line, okay?)

Cody worries.

To be fair, he’s good at that. He’s been worrying for most of his life, about brothers and battles and all the small intricacies that accompany being second-in-command of, functionally, most of the GAR. He forces it into planning and practice until it eases enough to let him grab a few hours of sleep, but it never really– leaves.

And now he’s got something else to worry about.

Oh, don’t get him wrong– he’s worried about Obi-Wan for a while now. But this–

This is new.

He doesn’t come down to the barracks on his own, despite Cody’s hopes after the first night. And they keep finding him in… odd places.

Watching the blurring stars on the observation deck, his comm unit methodically disassembled in front of him. In the rafters of the cargo bay, datapads stacked perilously next to him on a folded crane. In the laundry room, the sound of his pacing muffled under the thunk-thunk-thunk of the enormous machines.

He comes with them, when they ask. But the bags under his eyes grow darker, and his voice grows quieter, and Cody worries and worries and worries.

(There is not a lot of information about Melidaan in their briefing.)

He thinks:

They were his first command.

He thinks:

How long did they think he was dead?

He thinks: 

If it were me–

He thinks:

I’d have no room for rage.

He thinks:

If I thought he was dead–

He thinks:

To be proven wrong--

He thinks:

What wins out, the nat-born or the soldier?

He thinks, but he does not know, so he holds onto Obi-Wan as his breathing evens out and keeps his mouth shut.

A series of moments, in the last few hours:

Standing together on the bridge, shoulders brushing together.

The set of Obi-Wan’s jaw.

The sudden shock of Stats’ voice, announcing their approach.

Obi-Wan’s hand, pressed against the tempered glass.

The fog of his breath when he leans forward, watching.

The light–

Turning towards the window.

The light. 

Obi-Wan’s voice. Quiet, disbelieving.

Oh, he says. All the lights are on.

The stretch of them. The expanse.

(The blooming, awful hope.)

"Sir," Cody says quietly, unwilling to disturb the silent bridge. "We should-"

"Yes," Obi-Wan agrees. His hands vanish into the sleeves of his cloak, and Cody's own itch. "We should."

Cody opens the comm line when Obi-Wan doesn't move. Leans forward when Obi-Wan doesn't move. Declares himself when the line crackles, watches Obi-Wan twitch at the voice announcing Central Control, introduces himself, confirms their ship's ID, and then--

"Requesting identification of the highest-ranking officer on board."

It translates perfectly well.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. Leans forward.

"Ben Kenobi," he says. He glances up, meets Cody's questioning gaze, quirks a smile- "Reporting for duty."

Her excitement peels away the years.

She sounds so-

Young.

Stats takes over briefly. Coordinates. The landing dock.

Cody tunes him out and watches Obi-Wan instead, feeling faintly ill.

"It's good to hear your voice, Mel," Obi- General Kenobi says at last. "I've- missed you. Very much."

"And yours, Ben," says Mel, and that's a new name too, one Cody doesn't recognize- "We missed you."

Ben.

"Sir," Cody says cautiously. The bridge is silent, all eyes on them, Waxer's wide-eyed expression mirroring his own nausea. "Were we-- your name--?"

Have they been naming him incorrectly? All this time, have they been doing him wrong? His file had said Obi-Wan, everyone had said Obi-Wan, but they of all people know files aren't the half of it-- had they asked? Actually asked his name? He'd said to call him Obi-Wan, but he's always prioritized them, their comfort, he might not have-

(Their names are all they have.)

"Oh," General Kenobi says. He laughs, a little half-hearted thing, and Cody's chest seizes. "Oh, no, I- Mel, she- she couldn't pronounce my name, when I arrived. It was either Ben or Bibi, and I just- kept it. Obi-Wan is more than fine. I haven't been Ben in a very long time. It's their name more than mine, really."

And yet he'd chosen it, when they'd asked for ID.

Cody doesn't stare. Not noticeably, at least. He turns his gaze towards the glass, ducks his head towards Obi-Wan and mutters something along the lines of nice to know we have one friend down there, at least, something that gets another snort, and considers the weight of this newest discovery.

If anyone could shoulder two names like that, he supposes, it would be their general.

(Obi-Wan suits him better, anyways.)

The gunship is packed with most of Ghost's officer corps, all of them eager and wary in equal measure-- even the barest whisper of Separatist sentiment is enough to put them all on edge, because even a whisper making its way to someone in authority indicates a seething mass under their feet that had gone unheard, but it's not quite enough to quell the rustling excitement. Cody suspects Obi-Wan can tell, because his lips twitch upwards as soon as they step onboard, but he doesn't say a word.

Instead, he takes up his position by the portal and presses a hand to the glass.

The portal isn't very big.

Cody rests a hand on his shoulder, and watches him instead.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

since @sketchy-scribs-n-doods asked why birth certificates are racist:

preface: read this post about eugenics so that I don't have to write that overview again.

anywho! the very very short version is that there was a guy named Walter Ashby Plecker (hereafter "the Plecker fucker") who was a doctor in Virginia in the late 1800s/early 1900s. like he was born right around when the Civil War ended and his family owned slaves, if you want to get an idea of the time and place we're talking about.

the Plecker fucker, along with a couple of his good buddies John Powell and Ernest Sevier Cox(1) from the Anglo-Saxon Club(2), wrote and lobbied for a law called the Racial Integrity Act (incidentally, one of the blueprints the Nazis used for their own laws), which did a couple of things:

it legally categorized every person into either "white" or "colored," with "white" being only people with a completely unbroken and provable white European heritage – with a teeny tiny exception for people who were less than 1/16th Native American that he was bullied into including(3) – and "colored" being literally everything else, with no specificity as to whether it meant Black or Asian or Native American or whatever;

it prohibited white people from marrying colored people (though notably not banning having sex with them: we're talking about a guy whose family owned slaves here, so you can do the math on that)

it allowed for the sterilization of certain undesirable people, such as the mentally ill; and, most importantly for our purpose:

it required all births and marriages to be registered in a big state-wide database, with the races of all parties listed.

and he also set himself up as the first guy in charge of that registry, so that it would be done exactly the way he wanted it.

prior to this, if you could get away with passing as white, you were (generally) treated as white. this was to prevent any white-passing mixed race people from marrying into white society (because their birth certificate records would show that their parents had nonwhite heritage), and eventually eliminate mixed race people, period.

now, obviously birth certificates weren't in common use before this law, so at least the first wave of people affected by the law could still (in theory) lie about their ethnicity and establish themselves as white on their birth certificates, thus allowing them to continue marrying "real" white people.

not a problem! the Plecker fucker fancied himself a bit of a genealogist (meaning he thought everyone with the same last name was related, somehow), so he'd just go in and edit people's records to say "colored," invalidating their marriages in the process, and ordered all of the people under him to do the same. like, there's a letter he sent out to the county-level people that was like, "anyone with the last name Collins [yes, really] is actually mixed race, DO NOT LET THEM GET MARRIED TO WHITE PEOPLE, EDIT ALL THEIR RECORDS."(4)

outside of the obvious negative effects of the law in general not allowing interracial marriages (until it was overturned by Loving v. Virginia in 19-fucking-67) and sterilizing anyone disabled or "feebleminded," him going in and literally erasing Native heritage from records has prevented Virginian Native Americans from being able to claim federal tribal recognition, because it's all just "white" or "colored," which could mean anything nonwhite.

anyway, that's why birth certificates are racist. they were made up by a racist guy to do more racism. and then that racist guy got hit by a car and died.

I stg this is the short version. the longer version was idk how many pages before I melted into a depressed puddle of goo and almost flunked out of my senior year of college.

(1) Ernest Sevier Cox was a weird fucking dude in that he was really good friends with Marcus motherfucking Garvey, to the point that they attended each other's events, dedicated books to each other, and wrote each other a lot of letters even after Garvey was deported to Jamaica (and Cox personally tried to get Garvey released from jail when he was imprisoned for mail fraud). This was partly because white nationalism and black separatism accomplished the same ultimate goals (i.e. Black people leaving the US) from different angles, but I think they just also genuinely liked each other? For some reason??

(2) Basically the KKK but for genteel, refined, upper-class people instead of violent, disorderly peasants (yes, they legit disliked the KKK because it was a poor person thing). Also, I can't find it again, but at one point when I was researching all this in college, I was looking through old school newspapers and either William & Lee or William & Mary had a junior Anglo-Saxon Club, sort of like a Young Republicans, and one of their contributions to the student newspaper was a piece about how they definitely weren't racist and how dare they be accused of racism, they just didn't want blacks or whites mixing! How is that racist? (Yes, they used the word "racist," and I have no idea what their definition of racism was, if it wasn't what they were doing) Anyway, I think about that a lot.

(3) This is informally called the Pocahontas Exception, because a lot of really, really influential, prominent and rich Virginians actually took a lot of pride in claiming to be descended from Pocahontas and John Rolfe (even if they weren't), and without the exception, they'd all be classified as "colored." Plecker didn't want any exceptions at all (he was, at the very least, not a hypocrite about what he thought "white" meant), but given that some of the people the law would make "colored" would potentially be voting on the law, he had to include the exception or risk it not being passed at all.

(4) The reason I even got into this subject in the first place is that one of my family tree names is on that list and we're pretty sure they moved to Kentucky because of it, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're related to us OR that they were white-passing mixed-race people: they could well have been just plain white people who happened to have the same surname.

[haecien]

hi! can I request seventeen's reaction to having a girlfriend who's often misjudged because of her cold appearance and attitude to strangers, but to seventeen she's very sweet and caring??? thank you!

ANON THIS IS AMAAZINGGG!!! Literally what i just needed to get my writing fuel up

A/n — Happy new years btw!! (From gtm+8), hoping you guys will have a wonderful year mwaaahh. I wrote this in a rush so I hope u don't mind how I did it hehe &lt;33 ALSO THANK YOU TO SKY AND SKYE (double sky(e) ) FOR HELPING OMFG.

Tags — Fluff, a bit of humor?

Since it's new years and I'm being nice ill give you guys TWO versions! First one is this fic right here:) and the 2nd one will be posted soon ! &lt;;33

Ver 2

🗣 : " Your girlfriend seems so scary, I wonder how you keep up with her! She also seems like she doesn't care AT ALL !! "

Would get mad and instantly defend you

— Hoshi, Seungkwan, & Mingyu

Flabbergasted you decided to call his GIRLFRIEND mean and DOESNT care??? Oh how absolutely WRONG that is!! They would start defending you like a lawyer in a serious case, they would pull up receipts and read them to you then eventually start blabbering how your the sweetest most loving girlfriend ever.

Just try his best not to laugh at the very wrong assumption

— Jun, Woozi, & Jeonghan

"You're wrong + L + ratio " I swear they tried there BEST to not laugh not wanting to embarrass the poor person, and considering you act like such a sweetheart infront of them is funny too..... they do eventually end up laughing then explaining how its the complete opposite.

" Oh no- she's actually the sweetest person "

— Vernon, Joshua , & Dokyeom

Will just immediately say that there assumptions were wrong, no arguing just straight to the point! He will go on and ramble a bit on how happy you actually make him and how you are the most caring person ever. He will go back to his normal convo tho afterwards:D (the most sane response tbh...)

Glares and looks like he about to fight

— Wonwoo, Minghao, Dino, & Seungcheol

Bro you just told that to the wrong person... basically the first one but WAY worst, they will stand up and start threatening you. Like how dare you say those types of things about HIS GIRLFRIEND and think you'd get away with it?? Let's just say you didn't exactly have a nice chat with him after you said those words.......

Svt taglist — @slytherinshua , @woozvc , @weird-bookworm , @mayashu , @bangantokchy

[angeliteeyes]

Yandere mikan rambling... which is just canon mikan—

Been in a bit of a writing rut so just trying to get back into the swing of things. blep. Just gonna go ahead and post it as soon as I finish

When she realizes you're not feeling well, you expect her to freak out and start going totally overboard on taking care of you, becoming even more panicked and anxious than her usual self. To your credit, you're half right. She does indeed take painstakingly thorough care of you every single moment, without fail. Yet...

Something shifts. The further into your illness you go, the more you begin to notice her typical demeanor drop to the wayside. You're not quite sure what the right words to describe this new version of her would be—or at least, how she appears. Calm? Stable? Normally, you're so keen on her relaxing and letting go of her worries. But somehow, seeing her serene expression as she's hovering over you, spoonfeeding you your favorite soup, doesn't bring you quite the comfort you expected it to. And eventually, you realize why.

This is the happiest you've ever seen her.

Sure, she's been "happy" before. It's not as if she's incapable of positive emotions. Still, though, it's never been that straightforward with her. Each and every time previously that you've seen her smile, there's been a catch, a side effect of her eternally warped perception of herself intent on destroying whatever little joy she obtains. You couldn't even ask her out without needing to reassure her of your genuineness a million times over and that no, you didn't mean as some sort of pet or plaything. And no, she doesn't have to take her clothes off just to make you happy or not hate her. Keep them on.

With that in mind, you really should be thankful that she's handling your health troubles so well, so gracefully. It's better than her constant breakdowns, right? So you let it go.

Nighttime rolls around (although to you, the entire day's essentially been one long period of rest). Mikan crawls into bed with you after stating that your specific issue isn't contagious. Though, when you try to get more information out of her, asking for her professional opinion on what it actually is, she merely hushes you. Says not to worry about it and just rest. Let her take care of it. Of you.

When the sun's rays beam down onto Mikan, so does the weight of it and everyone else's perception of her. It's as if she views anything other than pure darkness as a spotlight shining down upon her, ready at any moment to expose the rottenness she claims is hiding beneath her flesh. Her touches in the day are so timid, fragile even, and always followed along by a signature flinch and token apology, despite your many efforts to reassure her not to worry so much.

At night, though, she flourishes. You've even taken to pretending to fall asleep much sooner than you actually do, all to provide her a little extra peace of mind, free of the burden of eyes looming over her. It makes her feel safer, you think. Her fingers like to caress you gently while she's under the impression that you won't notice and risk getting mad at her. Tonight is no different in that regard.

What is different is the sensation of her limbs cradling you, enveloping you in ways far bolder than even her normal way of latching onto you at night. By all means, you should be enjoying this sweet occurrence like you always do. But you can't shake the feeling of her grip tightening and constricting, akin to a boa about to secure its next meal. The way untold secrets linger in the little air you can manage to breathe into your lungs. Of how little of those hidden truths are known to you.

Another quirk of hers that rears its head around this time is her sleeptalking. Honestly, it's the highlight of most of your days, especially when you can get her to respond. In this state, her words become surprisingly bold—a result of her inability to feel shame or social pressure, you suppose.

You don't need to be able to see her to tell that she's already dozed off. Her body parts weigh down on you just a little heavier than before, and the faintest of sounds start to creep out of her unconscious mind and into your ears. For now, they're only soft sighs. The deeper her slumber grows, though, the more coherent her slurred words start to become. You lean in closer to catch what she says next.

"...Forever...Take care of you, I promise..."

You whisper back in reply. Gently, you remind her of how your health issues are only temporary, how you'll be back to normal in no time. Even if she's unconscious, you can't help but want to comfort her. That's what love is, after all, isn't it? Wanting the person you care for to be well and happy?

She doesn't respond immediately, or even soon after for that matter. The pause is long enough that you're fooled into believing her to be done talking altogether, and you start to nod off into a deep sleep of your own.

You don't catch her final words.

"You don't get it. That's ok, though... I will take care of you, until death do us part."

[writingseaslugs]

Octavinelle: When You're Sick

Favorite dorm here we go! This was fun to write and hmmmm I really wanna be taken care of by the Octrio. They can be good at it, I swear! As always, the intro is the same as Heartlabyul and Savanaclaw, so feel free to skip it if you’ve already read those parts.

Disclaimer: All characters in this series are aged up. For more information about my version of this world and the type of reader you can expect, please click the “Au Information” below!

Request Information | Masterlist | Au Information

Octavinelle: When You’re Sick

The worst thing to ever happen to you while attending Night Raven College had to be, hands down, getting sick. You were alone in the dorm with only ghosts and Grim to keep you company, and as much as you loved them, they couldn’t take care of you when you became sick. This meant you had to make do and hope that everything was alright. Normally if you were under the weather, you’d just suck it up and go to class so as to not worry anyone. This time however, that wasn’t an option.

You woke up with every muscle in your body feeling sore and aching with even the slightest movement. Your stomach churned something fearsome and you had a runny nose and cough to boot. You had no idea what illness you had fallen to. Having so many symptoms…you could only assume it was the flu or something akin to that.

Still, there was no way you were making it to class like this. So begrudgingly you told Grim you weren’t feeling good and needed to rest, and to go to class and get your homework so you could do it later. The demon cat was grumpy about not having his henchman, but eventually gave in, leaving you alone to rest in your room and hope that whatever you had would go away.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul is going to be concerned the moment he hears from Floyd and Jade that you’re home sick. He knows you tend to take care of others and neglect your own health, at least in the time he’s known you at the college, so he’s automatically assuming the worst. So he’s going to excuse himself from his own work at the lounge, pack up all his paperwork, and head over to your dorm. He needs to make sure his best customer, and sometimes best worker when you were strapped for cash, was okay and not actually dying, as Floyd so eloquently put it.

He’s not half bad at taking care of others oddly enough, though he is lacking in experience. It’s one of the many things he studied in his free time, so he at least knows what he’s doing. He’ll be calling the nurse anyway just to check in on you and make sure it’s nothing too serious. Once he gets that out of the way, he’s going to do his best in following directions and making sure you recover in the most timely manner possible.

Thankfully he does care for you, so he won’t be making any comments about how helping you out will come with a price later, like picking up shifts at the lounge. In fact, he’s very gentle with you and asks questions in a softer voice than normal. He even orders food from the lounge to be delivered so you can have something warm to eat that’s also delicious. He will be doing work on the side, especially the moment you fall asleep, so don’t be surprised if you wake up to pages turning.

Once you’re better it’s like a weight is lifted off his shoulders. He’ll be in a chipper mood as well, something the twins will notice right away. If you bring up wanting to repay him, he’ll just inform you that if he ever falls sick, you’ll be the one nursing him back to health. A good compromise in the end, and something you were already planning on doing for him.

Jade Leech

Jade won’t have too much of a reaction to finding out that you’re sick, other than a frown being placed on his lips. He finds out through Floyd when he’s complaining that his Shrimpy couldn’t come out and have fun since they were dying at home from some horrible, debilitating disease. Jade knows his brother is playing things up, but this does give Jade the little push he needs to go in and visit you to make sure you’re okay.

Thankfully Jade is one of the more competent boys when it comes to taking care of others. He’s already figured out exactly what was wrong with you and is grabbing some of the best medication from Sam’s, since the stuff the nurse has is “mediocre at best”. Since Jade is normally the one having to take care of Floyd when he’s sick, he knows all the things to do if you happen to be stubborn, especially with taking medication. 

He’s just very soft with you, showing you a genuine smile as you eat the soup he brings you, and playing with your hair. He doesn’t need to do much when taking care of you, trusting the medication to do all the work, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to want to leave your side. Just expect Floyd to be paying you a visit as well, even if you’re asleep, and waking you up. Where you have one twin, chances are you have both of them, but it’s all good since they’re both amazing at making you smile. Jade stays even after Floyd gets bored and heads back though, and he’s without a doubt skipping his shift at the lounge that night.

Jade is in a noticeably better mood once you’re better, but don’t be fooled. He’s going to be using this against you in an attempt to have you join him on one of his hikes. Saying something about the fresh air and moving your body will be good for you. He won’t force you, but he’s definitely going to be playing up that he’s so hurt if you decline. Just go with him, if you get tired the string bean of a man can and will carry you up a mountain.

Floyd Leech

Floyd doesn't even know how to react when he discovers you’re sick. He’s both mad and sad, all at the same time. People are going to be parting like the red sea the moment they see him walking down the hall with a scowl on his face. His shrimpy couldn’t possibly be sick, it wasn’t fair. He had so much planned to do with you today and now you couldn’t even leave your bed? He won’t stand for this and after pouting for half the day, Jade comments that he can simply visit you and maybe help you feel better. There goes the switch and suddenly Floyd is in an amazing mood as he ditches the rest of his classes and work just to go and visit you. 

Floyd isn’t half bad with taking care of others if he’s in the mood to do it. He is the one who takes care of Jade when he’s sick (which normally Jade gets sick right after Floyd). He’s not going to be talking to you in a super gentle voice, or babying you unless he finds it fun to do so. If you happen to get flustered by him doing so, then he’ll be more inclined to literally spoon feed you.

Floyd is just going to raid your medicine cabinets rather than going out anywhere, since it’s just the flu he assumes it’s not too bad. He’s also using your kitchen to cook you some meals and bringing them to you. He’ll be smiling brightly when you’re eating the food he made, and whenever you take the medicine. He feels so accomplished knowing that you’re getting better due to his efforts. There is a good chance he won’t be spending the entire day by your bed, since he’ll get bored, but he will be there on and off the entire time you’re sick.

You’re getting a good, healthy squeeze the moment you’re all better. Floyd is just over the moon and already telling you about all the things he has planned now that you’re no longer dying. Be nice and humor him, he has been going through a lot of emotions the entire time you’ve been sick. He just managed not to show you, but anytime he left the dorm, he was back to being grumpy and irritable, to suddenly depressed and closed off. He was really only smiling when taking care of you, so he deserves to squeeze you for a good while now that you’re no longer sick.

[mamawasatesttube]

hello! Sorry to bother you. My friend somewhat recently introduced me to one of your fics and I've got to say your writing is phenomenal! :) Truthfully, I had never read anything DC before but I fell in love with the way you portrayed the characters (especially Kon) in all your fics! I've been wanting to get into the actual comics, would you say your fics are a good intro to the comics, or is it not worth reading them because of how different the comics are, when it's your version of the character I love? You dont have to have an answer, I know I'm not wording it very well. If there's any tips for someone who hasn't read any comics before who's wanting to get into them I would really appreciate it! I did see the recs you have on your pinned post and am planning on trying to get my hands on those! Thank you so much for introducing me to these characters, I hope Ill love them as much in the source material!

thank you!

as for the question, oh man. please read the comics! everything i write is a love letter to them. 90s superfam comics save me i love you so much 90s superfam comics !!!! my writing is very heavily inspired by what i read. a lot of people in this fandom love to shit on comics and that makes me so sad. i Love comics. i wish more people in fan spaces were actually fans of them!!! because they are so fun and there is so much to discuss and enjoy!!! everything i write is 100% comic canon-inspired (well, specifically postcrisis era for the most part, bc i don't really like current comics, but the 1987-2011 ones i've read... yeah <3).

my favorites are like... of course superboy (1994), which is kind of a dumpster fire at times but it is my beloved dumpster fire (i could go into a lot more detail on how much i have to say about this comic. it has so many layers. it's infuriating sometimes. it tells such a story of exploitation without seeming to realize just how heavy it is at times while seemingly fully aware at others and aughghghh god theres so much to sink my teeth into. karl kesel i NEED to pick your brain). i also really love steel '94 and wonder woman '87 and all of triangle era superman, which i know is a HUGE rec and probably very intimidating to start off with sdkjfhs but it's dear to me!

as far as tips for new readers go... honestly, i still don't consider myself a huge authority! i started reading comics in summer 2022 so it's only been about 3 years for me. i guess i would say: in my opinion, people build up "getting into comics" as a huge and insurmountably difficult thing to do, and then intimidate themselves out of it. sure, it's more involved than just picking up a standalone novel or watching a standalone movie, but there aren't so many hard and fast rules that you have to start here or there or read this or that first.

like, for example, if you asked my personal opinion as to whether to read young justice '98 to get a good read on kon's character, i would say no, his solo run gives you much more insights as to his character than the group comic that focuses a lot more on the characters who don't also have solos. but if you just said hey, yj98 looks fun, and then jumped in and read yj98 first anyway, that's fine too! there is no hard and fast rule or anything.

the first comic i ever read was superboy '94. i didn't know what the hell was going on for the first few issues or why it kept telling me to go read other comics because i was still figuring out how crossovers work. eventually i was like oh wait i should go read reign of the supermen before i finish this book and things will make more sense. but like, i still jumped in at a point most people will say does not make much sense to start at dslkfjdslk and i ended up fine and also having a good time!

so i guess what i'm trying to say is: there is no wrong way to read comics. you really do just kinda go "hey that looks cool" and start reading. and if things really don't make sense you can either google it, ask someone who has read more comics than you, or just go "ok fuck it i guess superman's blue now sure i'll just roll with that" and plow onwards anyway! there is no wrong way to do it. you just start reading and then read what interests you!

[dreamsy990]

SPONTANEOUS MINI REVIEW BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT I HAVENT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so. i actually really liked this one!

so uh. if you witnessed that incredibly long thread i made yelling about kh3 you will know that i. am not a fan of the look of modern kh. i think its kind of uninteresting compared to the delightfully cartoony style and just generally i dont like more realistic looks to games that already had a unique visual identity.

so im here to say that i think it works for 0.2! im a good way through kh3 and i dont think it works well there and ill get to that when i eventually review that game but. in 0.2 i think the new style fits the more dark tone very nicely, and the enviornments are absolutely gorgeous. like i came out of ddd thinking absolutely nothing could top symphony of sorcery in terms of world design and was proven wrong. the realm of darkness is my new favorite kh "world". for my mutuals who havent played kh, look at this!!! its absolutely gorgeous

and the environments are actually my favorite thing about this game. besides being beautiful, theyre also delightfully trippy and unsettling. theres a section where you have to climb up a seemingly never ending staircase, and every time you reach what you think is the top you hear aquas worst thoughts. a lot of the areas are twisted, destroyed versions of worlds seen in bbs. its very dark (fitting, for the realm of darkness) and honestly its a treat to just walk around admiring the view. the visual storytelling is as good as kh ever gets.

i briefly mentioned aquas thoughts a minute ago so ill bring them up again, her commentary adds a lot to the desolate atmosphere, and this game really feels like a character study. it shows her desperation, her worst thoughts, her hope despite everything, and its just genuinely good. i havent been able to say that about khs character writing since like. days. its GOOD.

i am. not a fan of bbs' writing. i think its got a good underlying concept with absolutely terrible execution, and it makes me wonder at times if the things i like about it were intentional or not. but this game takes the best written character of bbs and gives her more depth than they ever could before. i can say with confidence that aqua is one of the best characters in the series, and a lot of it is because of this game.

the tone here is very gloomy, but thats not really a complaint because the game is so short. the depressing atmosphere isnt too much to bear because youre barely in it for more than 2 hours. and i think that run time is EXACTLY long enough. it goes for exactly as long as it needs to tell the story and still give a moment to breathe.

as for gameplay. im not the biggest fan of the updated system. i like to think im open to change with kh's combat. i think the command deck has potential and the card system in com was fun and i actually liked days' panel system. but something about the way this new version of the system feels to play is just. unsatisfying. hits dont feel like they have any weight to me, and spells feel inconsequential despite being more grandiose than ever. its just not as good as it was before, and like its a sort of half assed replacement of reaction commands. the way they incorporated style changes into it was okay, but again its not as satisfying as it was in bbs. but maybe it was just satisfying in bbs because the rest of the combat there sucked

tldr, the things i care about in a game (writing and visuals) were fucking spectacular, but the gameplay definitely had room to improve. also if i ever have to fight a darkside again ill throw up and cry! 8/10, though im tempted to raise it to a 9 for the environments alone