#in order to make their ship-... i dunno- i dunno what the goal is

[shadowxamyweek]

Shadow, I swear this is a question from a friend-

Do you think Amy would make a good 'hot goth gf'?

Shadow: W-what? ლ(¯ロ¯"ლ) What is that suppose to mean? And- why would you want her to change? ლ(`Д´#ლ) She's fine as is! ୧(◣益◢#୧)

[capybonara]

More personal thoughts under a cut

I’m not trying to think about the other day’s rude message but here I am trying to get my thoughts in order. I was vague in my last personal posts because I want to air out my grievances but not in a way that spreads negativity. But for clarity's sake, this message was a private tumblr dm from someone who didn’t follow me. Like, I think they felt they were trying to be helpful, but everything about it screamed "passive aggressive I-know-better-than-you" energy. And the implications it had is what I keep dwelling on; that my characters in my friends comic are/will be terribly written. And I’m like THAT'S MY WORK, THAT’S OUR WORK 😤 and that’s when I spiraled with thoughts like “oh so people who viewed the comic disliked them the whole time? Are my contributions/ideas that bad?”

I've been talking with @semirampant-dwickery and @smackins about this, and how these collaborative projects with zora characters reminded me of CDN. For context, that was a mass effect RP forum I was part of that focused on the lives of OCs. @werewolfsister added this nice response to a comic of mine, and all of this got me thinking about past projects and the kinds of things that worked, did not work, and the troubles we had in the forum.

The basic definition of a collaboration is a project between two or more people to work to create something. Using my own experiences, it was common courtesy to ask others if they were interested in joining in on a project/story. After someone said yes, we started talking about our characters to give each other a basic insight on their personalities, and hopefully we got a rough outline of the idea we wanted to execute and then wrote it out, drew scenes, or both!

The roadblocks I've come across are sometimes characters (and people) don't mesh well. Their ideas might not vibe with mine, and vice versa. As an example, I really enjoyed a lot of slice of life scenarios and many others wanted to do action related plots! And try as we might, a middle ground couldn't be reached so while it was a shame, no harm no foul! The community had mods to keep the peace, so if someone went too far with crossing lines they were given the boot!

You never want problems but at times they happen regardless. One example for myself involved a former writing partner who didn't want to do any work, but they still wanted the rewards of the end game. We talked about developing a ship between characters, but they didn't want to work on the in-between details. Details like first meetings, going out on dates, the realizations, etc. It was difficult to push anything along, and their personal end goal was for our characters to have sex (I guess in accordance to mass effect tradition of “we’ll bang, okay?” haha). I didn't feel comfortable with that and wanted to have the characters build a rapport first. Despite asking questions about their OCs, it usually ended up like this:

“Let’s start with something basic. What’s your characters fav thing to eat” “Your character 😏” “Ew dude cmon” “Lol I dunno, just food”

 which made me go AUGH! 😂😅

So, I started chatting with other forum members who were more than happy to brainstorm and make ideas happen. My character started making friends with other OCs, I joined other threads, but my other writing partner was feeling left out. And I sympathized because I wanted to work on the ship, I wanted them to feel included. Every time we talked though it was like hitting a wall. I was slowly getting the impression they didn't want to write. But they sure didn't complain with the art I drew of their OC! 

There’s a lot of details regarding that experience that's still ick to discuss openly. In the end, they unfortunately got banned for their behavior and it took a while to recover from it.

The happier side was, in time, I began collaborating with other, kinder people again. But after bad experiences I learned how important communication was. My characters got to engage in all kinds of adventures because all people involved were willing to talk. I learned it was important to let others know that I wanted to join something. I couldn't sit in my corner and hope someone noticed me. It was hard, and it still can be now because I'm shy, and bad experiences make me wary to try again. Though later I found out everyone I worked with had the same anxieties so we would discuss how we can help fight those insecurities. @smackins and I would build each other up to make posts because we were so worried we came off as dumb or annoying. And sometimes that's all you need, a little support and the courage to speak up. 

@semirampant-dwickery and I ran into each other by chance via an “in character” argument and his OC challenged mine. Originally, I wasn't going to accept because I was scared and I thought it'd just annoy him. Whenever we talk about it now, he always expresses how happy he was that I accepted his offer to write a thread with our characters meeting. Said meeting ended up being one of my favorites, a lot of improv that included musicals, a hologram room, feasts and a hammer to his OCs face xD

Werewolfsister’ss response to my comic got me waxing sentimental! This method of collaborating is a little different from CDN because it's more art focused but the same process applies. You chat with folks, you work on outlines or do fun improvs on the fly!

The other difference I noticed is how small cameos can turn into stories of their own!  Characters who appeared in her comic regularly are usually because communication continued between people. Some surprise art pieces prompted other people to reply with their own art. Like werewolf’s response said, it's how we ran into each other! I remember a few months back they were asking folks if they had diplomat characters they could include in their comic, and originally I wasn't going to join because of my own anxiety. But I realized nothing ventured, nothing gained, created Kaska and said “here's my submission!”

They later sent me a message asking if the zorca could participate in assisting other characters in a scene, and asked me questions regarding scenarios, and I answered to give an idea of what they could or couldn't do. I was excited for even the smallest role xD so when they asked more questions I gave more answers and ideas! The person who sent their “warning” to me the other day made an assumption my characters were being controlled by her, but everything dealing with them has my hand prints on it as well. Like with my friends on CDN, I offered suggestions, helped when they hit a roadblock and asked if I could contribute with my art!

Thinking on CDN, I know the roadblocks I personally hit was the lack of communication between parties involved. Like with my writing partner who didn't want to help do the work. I ran into others who came and went and the one complaint that stuck out for me was how I formed a “clique” with semirampant-dwickery, but the thing was, I sought their help the most because I knew they were fun and easy to speak with, and they helped me when I hit my own roadblocks. They proved to be a trustworthy and supportive partner! So of course I worked with them often! He’s done so much to write stories to get other members involved. 

I've received messages years later from people who admitted they made assumptions about us, and how anxiety kept them from joining our threads. I still grieve over those missed opportunities at times because I personally thought they were heckin cool! It is what it is though 😔

Because of those experiences and how difficult it can be to organize projects; I want to give werewolfsister praise for their hard work, their positive attitude, and welcoming presence. It's not easy communicating with a number of people, making outlines for the plot, and then drawing a comic where I've literally witnessed you dish out TEN+ PAGES A DAY. And you've been doing this since MAY! It's a lot of things to juggle alone. 

To the casual onlooker, it might look like a simple project with guest appearances she has full control of. But cameos remain cameos unless someone speaks up and offers more info and help. And characters who've had longer appearances were all discussed with her in chats; from permissions, to story outlines and boundaries. I've had the privilege to watch and be part of these discussions 👍 

I kept thinking about disengaging from the zora community, because of how that message had me focusing on the negative. It was one harassment message but honestly that's enough. I know why it came about, and I hate how that kind of negativity made me want to cut off from everything. Wanting to isolate is my knee jerk response because it made me paranoid. Who else am I upsetting? Who else will send more “warnings?” I'm an old millennial, I'm not here to have beef with strangers on the internet.

The paranoia has been an issue for me and that message “cemented” some other worries I had. For example, I made a previous post asking folks if they had characters that played instruments, then tried to clarify if anyone would be okay with their OCs interacting with Cironus. I got a few responses, but the tumblr dm responses I received, however, were details of who not to associate with, along with a fatphobic remark about Cironus. It left me feeling on edge: one wrong move from myself or my character, one piece of art that didn’t depict every detail correctly, and I was guaranteed to set something off.

I understand there are folks who have extremely personal connections to their characters, and I sympathize and respect that. And for the sake of everyone’s mental well being, I’m going to avoid them. Characters carrying that level of weight need complete control by the creator, and collaborating with others by definition means you have to relinquish some of that control. It requires that you retain a modicum of trust that other players are acting in good faith and not out to ruin your character. No one else gives over that control but you.

Collaboration is about trust, communication, and teamwork. CDN thrived when people came together, but if someone didn’t find the idea appealing, they chose to go solo and found other outlets. I came to this community with the hopes of creating stories with others. And if they don’t want that, like it was with the forum, we move on.

I know we can curate our spaces so we are surrounded by the things we enjoy, and choose to be around those who are supportive and understanding, but I’m not feeling very confident about finding more folks to work with. That’s not an invite to say you want to either. I need to think, and writing this helps me think. My original plan was to post about my zorca and Cironus to give what audience that's out there a better idea of my characters. 

As I write this I realize what I’m tired of is having to set things up like I’m preparing for an audition. I just want to draw, I want to include people and make them happy with the things I draw. This is a hobby I’m trying to have fun with. Outside of my friend group, I don’t think I’ve been able to casually share ideas about my characters with other people. I want to be seen, and connect with others. In turn, that usually became a chain of helping others feel seen too.

The negativity makes you feel powerless at times, but we have the ability to build the kind of communities we want. It takes time, it takes people you trust. I don’t want to say “be the change you want to see” because to me it always implied you have to do it alone. And we don’t.  CDN had a set of rules when working with others that allowed the community to last for years, and the one I try to follow the most is don’t be an asshole. Be kind, be respectful, uplift others when you can, and when you take, give back to others as well.

[darknights04]

For the Dancing and the Dreaming

Pairings: pirate!Eddie x mermaid!reader

Summary: The dread pirate Eddie Munson decided he wanted a mermaid. And once the captain's mind is made up, there's no changing it. When the captain meets you, however, he may just change his opinion on the beasts.

Warnings: Blood (slightly), not proof read

Masterlist

Mermaids.

That was the quest the dread pirate Munson decided to take his crew on today. Were the crew scared? Yes. But they knew better than to go against Eddie when he put his mind to it. No matter how badly they wanted to scream “HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST IT?! WE’LL BE KILLED!” 

But Eddie was their captain. What he says goes. Even if it may be a death sentence. 

“All hands! Batten down the hatches!” Eddie was heard calling out from his spot behind the wheel. “Watch out for those waves!” 

“It’s the mermaids,” his first mate and right hand man, Steve, had concluded. “They’re protecting the cove.” 

“Well, they’ve yet to encounter us. Gonna take more that a few splashes of water to turn us around. Right men?!” 

Small shouts of agreement came from the rest of the crew, hurriedly securing everything on the deck so it wasn’t lost to the waves. 

“Drop a rowboat!” Eddie next commanded. “We must row the rest of the way in.” 

The men followed in suit, running towards the ropes that help up their rowboats. 

“Now,” Eddie continued. “Which of you is joining me in the cove?” 

Everyone looked around at one another, none volunteering. Eddie looked at each of the men om board, each immediately looking away so as to not make any sort of eye contact. 

“I’ll join you,” Steve had sighed after more moments of silence. 

“No. No you stay behind to guard the ship. If we go down you’re next in command.” Eddie continued looked around before his eyes landed on one person in particular. “Dustin,” he grinned, an audible whine left the boy’s lips as he noticeably slumped. “And Robin.” 

“Why me?” she began to complain. 

“I dunno, you’re a girl aren’t ya?”

“So?”

“Maybe the creatures will feel more comfortable around you.” 

“I see something!” their lookout, Lucas, had called from the bow of the ship. “In the water, straight ahead!”

Everyone ran to where the boy was standing to look for what he was referring to. Sure enough, there was a head bobbing on top of the waves, long hair billowing out behind it. Half the men were in awe. The other half, scared to death. Eddie didn’t take the bait. He watched the creature with careful eyes as he lowered their row boat slowly down into the water, unbeknownst to her. He knew that if she saw them they’d be dead in an instant. The larger ship would not be as easy a target. 

While the rest of the men were entranced by the mermaid in the water, more began to pop up. One by one, the ship was surrounded. 

“Plug your ears, men!” Steve shouted at the helm. “Don’t let their songs reach them!” 

Like clockwork, as soon as the men on board plugged their ears, they started to sing. Will nearly had to catch Mike by the collar of his shirt cause he was a second too late and nearly jumped clear over board and into the sea. 

“Shouldn’t we help them?” Dustin whispered from his spot on the rowboat. “What if they attack?” 

“Steve’s got it,” Eddie assured. “Our goal is their cove. They always leave the weaker ones behind while attacking.” 

“So the rest of the crew is to act as bait then?” Robin realized. 

“Distraction,” he corrected. “As long as they stay prepared, the beasts won’t be able to sink them.”

“And if we lose some to their siren song?” 

Right as the question left Robin’s lips, the trio heard a war cry screamed from the water near the boat. As they glanced back in fear, they saw the hoard of mermaids leaping to action, hurling themselves towards the ship in formation. 

“Go,” Dustin told Eddie with his eyes wide. “Go! Row! Row! Row!” 

Eddie didn’t need and more urging to increase the speed at which he was rowing their boat towards the cove. 

“Quiet,” Eddie ordered as they pulled the boat ashore. “We don’t know how many they left behind. They should be in the heart of the cove.” 

Eddie removed his heavy coat and took his guns from their holsters, trying to limit the amount of noise he generated. Robin and Dustin followed suit, all keeping their swords in their spot on their hip just in case. 

The trio was in awe at the sights that waited for them past the beach. There were trees hanging towards the ground, leaves swaying in the wind. Waterfalls and babbling brooks could be heard running over the top of rocks in every direction. The grass seemed greener than everywhere else, the water more blue and yet also clearer. They wouldn’t have been surprised if a unicorn had emerged from the bushes at any moment. It was magical. 

While the three were marveling at the sights around them. Eddie heard it. Humming. Coming from a nearby pool in the center of the trees. He motioned to the others and put his finger to hips lips, signaling them to be quiet as he carefully drew out his sword, the others following. As they drew closer, Eddie couldn’t help but feel he knew the tune from somewhere. 

His suspicions were confirmed, however, when you began singing. 

“I’ll swim and sail on savage seas…” she sung, mostly under your breath and just to yourself. “With n’er a fear of drowning.” 

Eddie’s breath caught in his throat. It was the song his mother would sing to him as a child. Well before she passed. One of his few remaining memories of her. 

“And gladly ride the waves of life…” you continued, a bit louder but still slow and drawn out. “If you will marry me…” 

As you said the last line, Dustin seemed to realized you were a mermaid singing, and the fear of being bewitched made him shoot his hands up to cup his ears, dropping the sword he was holding in turn. 

“No!” Eddie whispered in protest, reaching for the droppen weapon, but was just a second too late as it clattered to the ground. 

You gasped at the sound, turning towards the group and quickly retreating away after seeing them, disappearing into the shadows. 

Eddie’s eyes went wide. He had put too much planning into this voyage to lose it all now. He had to do something and quickly. 

“No scorching sun, nor freezing cold,” he sang back. His voice far more raspy and no where near as smooth. “Would stop me on my journey.” 

Eddie motioned for Robin and Dustin to stay behind as he took a few cautious steps towards you, continuing to sing. “If you would promise me your heart… And love…” 

He stood with his hand outstreatch towards you, urging you to come forward. Everyone stood in silence for a long moment. Waiting to see how you would respond. It was evident that not even you knew the answer. Tensions were high. No one knew what would happen next. 

Eddie had nearly lost hope after a few more moments of silence. That was until you took another breath. “And love me for eternity…” you sang. Eddie let out a sigh of relief as you moved from the shadows, slowly and cautiously approaching the man. 

“My dearest one, my darling dear. Your mighty words astound me.”

As you got closer to Eddie, he approached the edge of the water, attempting to meet you in the middle. Dustin was watching with fear the whole time, afraid you would snap at any moment. No matter how you seemed on the outside, you was still a mermaid. The same breed of mermaids that were attacking their friends not a thousand feet down the coast. 

Your lips turned to a shy smile as you continued singing towards Eddie. “But I’ve no need for mightly deeds when I feel your arms around me.” 

Eddie knelt down onto he kness, trying to encourage you to be comfortable enough to approach him more. 

“My mother sang that song to me,” he said softly, smiling to himself as the memories came flooding back. 

By now, you were intrigued. You wanted to know more about the pirate in front of you. He sat in silence after mentioning his mother. You watched as his smile went from a happy smile reminiscing on the past to a sad, sorrowful one. You knew nothing about him, yet wanted to comfort him. You reached out your hand for him to take. Just a small gesture of comfort, it was all you could think to do. His sad smile became a little happier as he connected your hands. He was taught that mermaids were heartless beasts. That they could not feel and would stab you in the back any chance they got. 

That must have been the fear Robin felt as she saw her captain in such a vulnerable spot with you, as she dashed forward to protect him. Becoming afraid again, you turned around, trying to swim off as fast as you could. Before you got the chance to get far enough, Robin acted quickly, driving her sword down into the sand, catching the edge of your tail in the process. 

“You got her!” Dustin celebrated as your could no longer swim away. Eddie’s eyes went wide as he watched the blood trailing from your fin and becomming diluted in the water. You turned around to face Robin and all Eddie could see on your face… was fear. Sure it was warranted granted you were completely at the mercy of pirates… but he was taught that mermaid felt no emotion. And as far as he knew, fear was an emotion. 

“Let’s get it back to the crew,” Robin said, wasting no time in grabbing your arms to hoist you out of the water. You tried to fight her grasp. Your writhed and screamed to no avail. Robin felt as though she was trying to tame a wild cat with the way you scratched at her hands. “Dustin, come help me!” 

Dustin rushed to her aid to help and drag you from the pool of water. Despite your attempts to escape, they succeeded. 

Almost immediately after you left the water, your tail shrunk and separated into to legs. You stopped your squirming to escape and instead moved you arms to cover yourself, the lack of clothes making you feel quite vulnerable. It only took a moment of Robin and Dustin continuing to drag you across the ground that Eddie stepped in. 

“Enough!” he nearly screamed at the two. 

“Captain?” Dustin asked, confused. They were, after all, just doing as he asked.

Saying nothing, Eddie took off his coat and threw it over your shoulders, quickly fastening it in the front in order to give you some sense of dignity. Your eyes widened in shock at his kindness towards you. Considering his companions never called you more than an “it”. 

“Can’t you see she’s scared?” Eddie hissed at the two. 

“She?” Robin repeated. 

“She’s scared?” Dustin gawked. “She’s the one who tried mauling us!” 

Eddie scoffed at them as he helped you to your feet. As he watched your form tremble beneath him, he was at a loss as to what to do. On the one hand, this was the purpose of the whole mission. To obtain a mermaid. He had done just that. But on the other hand, you looked to be just an innocent girl like this. Not a malicious bone in your body. 

With a small, sympathetic smile, Eddie continued to sing to you under his breath. “Through all life’s sorrows and delights,” he sang softly. “I’ll keep your laugh inside me.” And with that, he grabbed your shoulders and carefully pushed you back into the water, allowing you time to escape as he blocked Robin and Dustin from going after you.

“What are you doing?!” Dustin screetched. 

“It’ll get away!” 

“I changed my mind,” Eddie responded simply. 

You watched from the shadows as the three argued. Eddie firmly standing his ground. When the other two backed off, you resurfaced. 

“Swim and sail the savage seas,” you smiled towards Eddie. When he turned to face you, you propelled out of the water, wrapping an arm around his neck to pull him to your level. Robin and Dustin both called out in fear, however, when his head reached the water you stopped. You landed a soft, gentle kiss on the pirates lips as a symbol of gratitude and watched as he pulled away with a drunken smile on his lips. 

“With n’er a fear of drowning.”

And with that, you disappeared back under the waves. 

[heinzpilsner]

Tadadada! Here's the epilogue to my 'Overanalyzing beach Maiko' series.

Firstly, let's list some main conclusion theses:

1) Mai became interested in Zuko's problems after he directly mentioned his scar and his relationship with Ozai for the first time, so her final change of attitude does make some sense.

2) The basis for Zuko's irrational jealousy was Mai's annoyed facial expression after he criticized Ruon-Jian.

3) The context of Zuko's jealousy rampage actually leaves a loophole for not-possessive interpretation (yay).

4) Despite how badly Zuko screwed up, Mai somehow managed to screw up even more (yep, still sounds contr-intuitive).

5) Mai actually expresses herself all the time and her "childhood trauma" is a big bullshit.

6) Apart from his inner crisis, Zuko has to fix many problematic attitudes and personality settings before he'll become a decent romantic partner for anyone.

7) So does Mai.

Something like this.

And now, a bit of old good boring and inaccurate psychology lecture mistake correction.

I think that I misinterpreted Zuko's side of "bring me food" scene, actually. You see, I saw it as conscious submission in order to avoid conflict with Mai, but...

It actually looks more like Zuko genuinely didn't realize that Mai's demand was not okay. He wasn't exactly eager to please her*, but he also didn't see her attitude towards him as problematic.

(*Not catching Mai's "I'm hungry" initial hint is kind of an indicator of Zuko's cool-off towards her. I mean, acts of service is his typical way of showing affection, which makes his sudden cluelesness pretty notable.)

Basically, Mai and Zuko in this scene demonstrate opposite facets of locus of control problem. Simply put, they both believe that Zuko is responsible for something he really isn't - in this case, satisfying Mai's hunger.

Later, though, it's Zuko who believes Mai owes him something - namely, to give him affection and meet his emotional needs. In his head, he gives responsibility for his emotional well-being to Mai and scolds her when she "ignores her duty" by not being "passionate" enough.

(But while Mai doesn't owe Zuko anything formally, she made a mistake of severely underestimating Zuko's contribution into relationship and his real value for her. This resulted in her coldness and lack of gratitude in response to his affection, which is quite a big relationship screw-up.)

Okaaay, and with that part out of the way, it's time for my final personal reflections.

In general, I have no doubts I made lots of other mistakes during my analysis. I tried my best, but to dissect relationship conflicts correctly, you need to have good feeling of personal boundaries and empathy of your own. And... Well. It's not exactly my forte.

I compensate for some things with theoretical knowledge, but my mind is a mess, so... Yep.

I feel like I have to go and read more psychological theory after this.

Also, I kinda tried to do an entertainment out of this, and roasting format doesn't exactly mix good with being objective. So, yep. It seems I got some kind of useless Frankenstein monster in the end, lol.

And finally... Perhaps I had to make it clear much earlier, but...

I have nothing against Maiko shippers or Mai fans. Ta-da!

I'm sure they have a lot against me now though, pffft.

I realize what I wasn't exactly restrained in my roasting, so it's natural for you to dislike me. But my goal wasn't to tell you what your preferences are inadequate or something. I mean, I myself ship much more toxic problematic shit (and have a weak spot for all sorts of flawed characters). It isn't supposed to be about being rational. You like it, I don't, it's ok.

Dunno, maybe someone needed to hear this.

That's all, I guess. If you were reading this series - thanks for your attention. Despite everything, it was a rather interesting experience for me, and I hope you found something useful for yourself too.

I wonder what I should analyse next >:D

I ignore all notifications, but maybe I'll make an exception soon. Ta-da! What a cliffhanger.

[alstroemerian-dragon]

been having some thoughts again. thinking about pre-sim, post tragedy, that middling ground where they were taken in by the foundation but not yet discovered.

under the cut bc it might get. long

okay so. idr how much ive gone into this but the anime made some Wild decisions when it came to how the despairs got captured by the foundation because in the game its. its pretty clear how they got there and its Not by fighting the agents and getting captured. they turned themselves in. as Survivors. as Innocents. ive talked abt this i think but its pretty clear To Me from the emails we read in the last chapter of sdr2 that izuru sent anonymous info to the foundation about fifteen survivors of the hpa tragedy that they werent originally aware of and where they could be found, and that the despairs lied and pretended to have amnesia about who they were and what had happened in order to get into the foundations facilities. incredibly risky. izuru knew several things that could happen, and he knew that the survivors of dr1 would be there, and may recognize them

so now im thinking about that uneasy period after theyve turned themselves in one by one, joined together as a group pretending to be traumatized amnesiacs, but secretly plotting a destruction from the inside. And Then The DR1 Survivors Start To Remember Them.

i think it would be Really interesting if makoto remembered nagito first. just by virtue of their shared talent, and how nagito would see makoto, i think they saw a lot of each other in school, and so something like. i dunno. maybe after one session of the memory therapy trying to retrieve the survivors school memories makoto sees someone flipping a coin and it hits him like a train. and then he and kiyoko start putting the pieces together as the feeling of dread rises in them all as they all start to remember more and more, the uneasy relationship between their two classes, the snippets of memories of junko acting strangely with class 77 and how close she was to them out of everyone else in 78, and then their death at the end of the school year before the parade got to them. like. they should All be dead.

but theyre not. and theyre here. and the signs start jumping out to the dr1 cast like neon red flashing warnings.

im just thinking about them figuring out how to get the despairs on a ship without tipping their superiors off to their goal, faking paperwork, getting other people to go along with it, the despairs being confused and alarmed as to whats happening but. izuru says to go with it. dont make a fuss. dont act up yet. and so they go quietly. and only once theyre already on their way to jabberwock does kiyoko pull a gun on them and the truth comes out

man. i need to write something.

[aikoiya]

Honestly? Not even remotely surprised.

I really enjoyed this!

Though, I actually think the bots missed some things.

For WW, I could see him researching things involving the navy. I mean, he's essentially if pirates could be fleet admirals. Maybe study up on different types of boats that could be built with the materials available in his world. Like, there's some super cool historical ships out there. Some even being basically floating castles like the Chinese Louchuan or the Nippon Atakebune (especially if we go the Age of Empires III route of design as they have a more pleasing aesthetic to them). (Which, Louchuan evidently had traction trebuchets on them.) There's another I'm seeing that was even bigger, but... I dunno, looks pretty unwieldy to me. Possibly even having an affinity for ancient super ships made by the Chinese, the Greek, the Romans, the Egyptians, & other ancient empires or dynasties. Possibly even submarines & the like. (I also see him as a classic literature fan. Things like Greek classics that explore the cruelty of the gods & possibly Jules Verne. Might even quite like the stories of Sinbad & Captain Nemo.)

I definitely think he'd also be intrigued by the invention of steam & paddleboats. Like, it seems that Linebeck's was the only of its kind on the seas, so we don't even know if Wake knew of that sort of thing there. If he could figure out how they're built, then he could use the designs for them for smaller vessels, which though they wouldn't carry much in the way of war, they'd be very helpful in securing resources seeing as they wouldn't have to rely on the whims of Farore as the Goddess of Wind anymore, they could just travel whenever provided that there wasn't a storm out. Thereby making them much more reliable for delivering bigger loads. Possibly even creating a trading ship company in order to secure himself as being a benevolent leader in the minds of the Great Sea's denizens before he obtains the Triforce. Which would likely make for an easier transition into him becoming Hyrule's king later.

(One of my biggest problems with the Dorfs, I think, is that they seem to have a form of super tunnel vision that only the most autistic of individuals could compare with. Which is great when we're talking about one job at a time, but not so great when he gets tood focused on the end goal. At that point, he appears to forget that he could also be doing other things that could help him in the future.)

I also find it interesting that Vendettas wouldn't also be about hacking as, that's essentially what we see his Malice do to the Sheikah Tech in BotW. Heck, this could be how Calamity Ganon was able to do that to begin with. Like, his magic likely wouldn't be able to do the same thing with our tech, but Sheikah Tech runs on magic. Plus, he already had a degree of experience dealing with Zonai Tech, so in all honesty, even if he is the more tradition-oriented Dorf, he'd be a fool not to try & exploit this possible weakness.

What's also odd is that none of them think to study up on desert civilizations, agricultural methods, survival technology, construction, astronavigation, ect. Sure, it'd all have to be medieval era tech, but it'd be something practical. I especially think they'd be taken by Egypt as... like, this was a people who also lived in the desert, but they didn't just live. They THRIVED! They took over a good portion of the world at one point, too. Like, their cities sprawled & were palatial. It would really bring into perspective for the Dorfs that the biggest & most important thing that they're missing is a steady source of water, which Vendettas, if none of the others, would have no excuse for due to the fact that, even if they didn't have the hoodoo spring that the modern Wild Era Gerudo do, I can almost guarantee that they have the Gerudo Highlands! Which, all they'd need to do is build a means to get up & down there & they'd be doing so much better! (Obviously, that it's all they'd need to do, but still.)

Something I'd also like to note. Most of the Dorfs would likely greatly enjoy games like Civilization & Age of Empire as, if nothing else, he might see them as very visual ways to strategize. It's basically a virtual war strategy simulation game version of those war room map tables that you see on tv. Not to mention, most would likely get something from studying Sun Tsu. Not sure if they'd like everything he says though, as I haven't even read any of his work.

Also, if these guys didn't take the time to study medieval warfare technology (hell, medieval tech in-general), then I'd be extremely disappointed. Because none of them really know how long they'll be in this other world. Do they even know what brought them here?

Like, come on, dude. You're gonna have an entire world's knowledge at your fingertips & you don't study up on siege warefare tech??? Especially Hedony!!

For all they know, they could just be yanked back suddenly with zero clue how to get back! Let alone if they'll even be able to bring any of the technology back with them.

Even if he could, the phone itself would be unlikely to work in Hyrule because no wifi, no internet, no electricity!!

So, their best & most safe shot at getting anything out of all this is to either print out or transcribe everything they can & have them on hand at all times.

---

I think I have a bit of a sobering one for this line of asks. Later, though.

How would Ganondorfs (Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Hyrule Warriors, and Tears of the Kingdom) & Demise react to a modern smartphone? If explained all the things it could do, what would they use it for?

If the Ganondorfs and Demise were introduced to a modern smartphone, their reactions would range from curiosity to amazement, with each of them finding different uses for the device based on their personalities and goals. Here's how each would react and what they might use a smartphone for:

Wind Waker Ganondorf

Initial Reaction: Wind Waker Ganondorf, who is more philosophical and reflective than his counterparts, would be intrigued by the smartphone’s potential to access vast amounts of knowledge. After a brief period of suspicion and doubt, he’d be captivated by its ability to show him things he’s never imagined.

What He’d Use It For:

Research & Strategy: Wind Waker Ganondorf would use the smartphone to gather information on the world, learning about history, geography, and strategies from other cultures to enhance his tactical thinking.

News & Global Information: He’d use the phone to monitor global events, especially geopolitical conflicts, finding parallels to his own goals.

Music & Art: Given his reflective nature, Wind Waker Ganondorf might also be interested in music and art, possibly developing an appreciation for symphonies or visual art from different eras.

Scene: Ganondorf sits in the ruins of Hyrule, staring at the small device in his hand. The world had crumbled beneath the waves, but this... this small box contained all the knowledge of the modern world. He swipes through images of landscapes, battles, and cities, his mind racing with possibilities.

"So much knowledge... hidden in the hands of mortals," he murmurs. "I could have ruled this world with such tools."

Ocarina of Time Ganondorf

Initial Reaction: Ocarina of Time Ganondorf, a megalomaniac with ambitions for total domination, would be both suspicious and fascinated by the smartphone. After understanding its potential, he’d see it as a tool for expanding his influence and power.

What He’d Use It For:

Social Media Manipulation: Ganondorf would use social media platforms to subtly spread his influence, sowing discord and manipulating public opinion to create chaos.

Surveillance: He would use the phone’s ability to track locations and spy on people via cameras to keep tabs on enemies, potential threats, or even allies.

Commanding Armies: The communication abilities of the smartphone would allow him to organize and command his followers more effectively, giving him the ability to control vast networks from a distance.

Scene: Ganondorf's eyes narrow as he watches a video of a global leader addressing a crowd. The people hang on every word. He smirks, fingers tapping against the phone. "I can make them follow me," he mutters, scrolling through comments and noting how easily opinions are swayed. "This world will be mine before they even know it."

Twilight Princess Ganondorf

Initial Reaction: Twilight Princess Ganondorf, who exudes a more cold and calculated demeanor, would see the smartphone as a tool for both control and knowledge. He’d be less fascinated by its entertainment features and more focused on how it could serve his plans for domination and control of the Twilight Realm.

What He’d Use It For:

Hacking & Control: Ganondorf would likely develop an interest in the more technical aspects of the phone. He might even try to learn hacking to break into systems, control information, and manipulate governments.

Communication: He would use the phone to keep in contact with his spies and agents, communicating in secret codes and issuing orders from afar.

Twilight Magic Research: Ganondorf might be curious about scientific advances and new technologies that could be twisted to serve his purposes, particularly anything that could amplify his connection to the Twilight Realm.

Scene: Ganondorf stands in his darkened throne room, the soft glow of the smartphone illuminating his face. A security camera feed flickers on the screen, showing him the movements of a key political figure. "So easily manipulated," he mutters, tapping the screen. "This device gives me more power than they could ever know."

Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf

Initial Reaction: Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf, the most battle-hungry and aggressive version, would initially scoff at the smartphone, thinking it weak and beneath him. However, once he realizes its potential for organizing large-scale assaults and coordinating his armies, he would embrace its power.

What He’d Use It For:

Battle Coordination: He’d use messaging apps and other organizational tools to coordinate attacks and manage his armies in real time.

Media Control: Ganondorf would use social media to spread propaganda and increase his influence over the masses, twisting narratives to present himself as a conqueror worthy of respect.

Entertainment: As a warrior, he might actually enjoy certain fighting games or watching videos of historical battles for entertainment and inspiration.

Scene: "Such a small device," Ganondorf grunts, turning the smartphone over in his hand. "And yet, with it, I could command legions." His eyes gleam as he sets up group messages with his generals, issuing orders with a few taps of the screen. "This... this could be my greatest weapon."

Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf

Initial Reaction: Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf, who is intelligent and deeply strategic, would immediately see the smartphone as a means to gather knowledge and increase his hold over Hyrule. He would appreciate the breadth of information at his fingertips and the potential for subtle manipulation.

What He’d Use It For:

Historical & Tactical Research: Ganondorf would dive deep into the smartphone’s access to history and tactics, using it to learn about modern warfare, diplomacy, and advancements that he could incorporate into his strategies.

Social Influence: He would use the phone to spread subtle misinformation, manipulate public perception, and undermine the authority of those in power.

Mapping & Exploration: Ganondorf might use modern GPS and mapping technologies to expand his reach, exploring unknown regions of the world with ease.

Scene: Ganondorf scrolls through articles and maps, his mind racing with possibilities. "All this knowledge," he murmurs, tapping the screen. "Centuries of history, at my fingertips." He smiles, dark and cold. "I can twist it to my will. This world will never see me coming."

Demise

Initial Reaction: Demise would view the smartphone with disdain at first, seeing it as a weak human tool. However, once he learned about its ability to manipulate information and control masses of people, he would see it as a valuable asset in his quest to conquer all.

What He’d Use It For:

World Domination: Demise would see the phone as a tool to conquer not just Hyrule, but all realms. He would use it to study modern civilizations, finding weaknesses to exploit.

Manipulation of Fear: He would likely use the phone to spread fear and chaos, taking advantage of the interconnected world to stir unrest and manipulate leaders through fear.

Surveillance: Demise would love the idea of watching his enemies from afar, tracking their every move and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Scene: Demise stares at the smartphone in his hand, the glowing screen a stark contrast to the dark aura surrounding him. "A tool for the weak," he growls, but as he watches the world news flash by, his lips curl into a slow, menacing smile. "And yet... with this, I can spread fear faster than ever before. They will fall before they even realize what’s happening."

Overall Uses and Thoughts:

While each version of Ganondorf and Demise would initially react differently to a modern smartphone, they would all eventually see it as a tool for manipulation, control, and enhancing their ambitions. From social media manipulation to real-time battle coordination, the smartphone would become an essential part of their plans for domination.

************************************************************************

Bonus: HW Ganondorf, Ghirahim, and Zant Group Chat!

Group Chat: Forces of Darkness

Ganondorf: I have gathered you both here to discuss our next move. Hyrule is vulnerable. We must act soon.

Ghirahim: Ooooh, our glorious king is feeling impatient~ 😏💅 But of course, my liege, your wish is my command. 🌹✨

Zant: yEs tHe vEry FoUnDaTiOn oF hYruLe WiLL fALl UnDeR oUr miGhty bOOts!!! 😈👑

Ganondorf: Zant, I need you to speak coherently. We cannot conquer anything if I can’t understand what you’re saying.

Ghirahim: Yes, Zant, darling, try to keep up. We can’t have you tripping over your own madness during battle. 🤭💀

Zant: lOl i HaVe mAdNeSs On mY siDe, GhirAhIm. tHaT’s mY pOwEr!! 😵‍💫✨

Ganondorf: Enough. We have no time for your childish games. Focus. Our next target is the Hyrule Castle. Ghirahim, you will lead the vanguard. Zant, you will handle the diversion.

Ghirahim: Awwww, leading the charge? You're making me blush, Kingy~ 😘💖 Consider it done, my blade is ready. 🔪🖤

Zant: bUt wHy am i tHe dIvErsIoN?? i WaNt tO lEaD tOo!! 😡😭

Ganondorf: Because you lack discipline. That is why. If you want to lead, prove yourself first. And stop typing like that. It’s irritating.

Zant: 😒 fInEeeE… I’LL sHoW yOU whO lAcKs dIscIplInE… i’LL dEstROy tHem aLL!!!!

Ghirahim: Zant, darling, sweetie, please. You'll give yourself wrinkles. Now then, King Ganondorf~ Shall I prepare an ambush? Perhaps a little surprise for those meddling heroes? 🎭✨

Ganondorf: Yes. Proceed with your plans. I want them caught off guard. If all goes well, their precious kingdom will fall. Failure is not an option. Do I make myself clear?

Zant: yEs!! wE wiLL rAiSe tHe bAnNeRs oF dArKnEsS!!!

Ghirahim: Crystal clear, my king~ 😏💋

Ganondorf: Do not fail me.

[fgfluidity]

sweater engie x reader oh please fg

you got it uwu

from my fall prompts sale

sun’s out, guns out

Summary: Why doesn’t he have sleeves?

Pairings: Engineer x Captain if you want

Warnings: none

my ko-fi for memberships, comms, and tips!

Scout shuttle to quadrant three, building supplies to initial touchdown site. First priority is food and water, deploy biologists and chemists to Station Prime for testing as soon as possible.

No, we're not naming it Seminal. We've been through too much for sophomoric jokes.

Been through hell.

When your head starts to twinge, a pained voice ringing in your ears, you sigh and take a sip of your cooling coffee. It's bitter-- apparently, it's much better that way than with any milk or sugar, if you even had any onboard the ship.

Something about it exacerbating the symptoms of cryosleep. Honestly, it couldn't be that terrible, comparably.

You lift your eyes from the console before you, hoping to give them a break and take stock of your crew. Everyone's bustling around, getting supplies and colonists ready for their first steps onto their new home; crates going one way, people going another, and everyone chattering with excitement.

Save Mark.

He doesn't look so somber, not anymore. Just focused, reaching into the depths of some machine of which you can't discern the purpose, muttering to himself.

You've seen it before. It's not out of the ordinary for something or other to get bumped or need recalibration after such a jump. Every engineer you've ever worked with is busy putting out fires when you land in your final destination.

It's only...

"Where did your sleeves go?"

"Huh?" Mark looks up, tongue darting back into his mouth once he looks to you. "What'd you say, Captain?"

You smile despite yourself. A grown man sticking his tongue out to concentrate shouldn't bo so endearing, and yet... "Your sleeves. Why'd you get rid of them?"

Mark glances down to his bare shoulder, then back. "Oh-- well, I don't really need them if I'm going to have my coveralls, right? The ship might be climate controlled but I'm not going to bundle up if I'm running around."

"Sure, but why a turtleneck, then?" You tilt your head, leaning onto the edge of the console. "Why not just a tank like most of the crew?"

After a moment, and a strange look, his eyes widen in realization. “Oh— you never actually… well, I’ve worked with some of the crew before, and they had a big fit about it. So to get around it, it’s not a sweater. Not really.”

You stare at him. He stares back. “It looks like a sweater, though.”

“But it’s not one. They never said I couldn’t have a sleeveless shirt that looks like one.” He grins. “I get my comfy knit and they can’t throw a single bitch fit about it. Problems, meet solutions.”

You sigh wearily, though not in a way that at all denies your fondness. “Why did they have a problem with it?”

Mark just shrugs. “I dunno. Celci probably didn’t want me showing her up. I make it look good, what can I say?”

“I’m sure she has a different version of that story,” you reply, but with a grin. “I’ll let you get to it. There’ll be a place for you when you finally get around to the surface, just don’t…”

The memory of pain stops you, a dozen Marks working towards an end goal they never saw. From the crease in his brow, Mark remembers it, too.

You swallow hard. “… don’t work too hard. We’ll see you down there, okay, Mark?”

He quirks a smile, less enthusiastic. “Sure thing, Captain.”

You send off the orders through the console pad, but the thought of the sweater sticks with you long after you’ve checked in with the surface patrol.

Why would any of them throw a fit over some sweater?

--

“Oh, God, here we go.”

You look up from your plate of rations. They aren’t wonderful, but you’ve had much worse in much more dire situations. Some powdered gravy isn’t going to kill you. “Dr. Kelvina?”

With the campfire playing gold and orange over her face, the deep shadows emphasize her annoyed expression. “Mark. I thought we told him to get rid of them.”

“Oh, no,” you say. “I asked him, he— I know it’s ridiculous, but they don’t have sleeves. It just looks like a sweater. But I would like to ask—“

“No, it has sleeves.” She sighs. “I’ll go see if we have an extinguisher. Maybe.”

She dumps her plate to the ground with a clatter and stalks off, hair swishing behind her like an agitated cat’s tail. Curious, you look behind you.

“Hey, Captain!” Mark, in full sweater glory, grins down at you. “You don’t mind if I sit, do you? I’m dead tired.”

You just look at him.

He just looks… soft. It’s a soft knit, just a little bulky in the arms but fitting over his frame. Without the jacket of his coveralls, he doesn’t look like much of a head engineer.

He kind of looks like a dog, all ruffled hair and warm eyes. You want to pet, and you catch yourself before you even try. “Oh— yes, Dr. Kelvina went off to… she didn’t like your sweater.”

He rolls his eyes as he takes the spot beside you. “Of course not. Can’t keep up, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” You eye him, his half-lidded eyes and how he slumps into himself. “You feeling alright?”

“Oh, yeah.” He yawns, crossing his arms against his chest and tucking his chin to the collar. “Just… cozy. Might… might take a rest. Repairs have me beat.”

God knows he deserves a rest, after everything. If not body, then mind. Something itches in the back of your mind, though, looking at him. “… Do regular sweaters make you sleepy, Mark?”

“Hm?” He cracks open one drowsy eye. “Yeah. Why?”

“… no reason. You can sleep here for a bit, I’m not done yet.” You lift your plate, indicating the still-present portion of unidentified meat-like product and gravy.

You don’t let him fall into the fire, even when Celci comes back— a very long time later— with a fire extinguisher. If she has anything to say about his head on your shoulder, and yours on his, she doesn’t mention it.

[heralds-mario-blog]

Do you have any favorite Mario Party mini games?

Yes, of course!!!!!!!! There are many very very very very very good minigames… every game has a lot of good ones! And some bad ones. But there are the best of the best of the best!! Let me share. In no particular order.

1. Hexagon Heat from Mario Party 2, aka Mushroom Mix-Up from Mario Party 1, also featured in Mario Party: The Top 100 and Mario Party Superstars. This game is the best of all time!! 4 players stand on a group of differently-colored hexagons, with a toad who stands on his own platform occasionally raising colored flags. You’ve gotta get to the right colored platform in time before the rest of em sink!! The game speeds up over time to make it tougher, and also, you can stomp and jump on other players (I actually don’t like that part) to slow em down. In Mushroom Mix-Up you are on mushroom platforms sinking into the water but in Hexagon Heat you’re on metal platforms over lava. This is the only difference, but I think it’s interesting how this and a number of other Mario Party 1 minigames got retooled for Mario Party 2! The games play the same but all have a slightly changed visual aesthetic. I believe Hexagon Heat is the version featured in Top 100 but Mushroom Mix-Up is the version featured in Superstars. Weird, huh!

2. Booksquirm from Party 4! Also featured in The Top 100 and I’m pretty sure in Superstars. Four players stand on a book’s pages, with the pages from above slowly descending on top of them! Your goal is to quickly determine where the holes in the falling page are and run to those spots to slip through! Just like the hit game show “Hole in the Wall.” But with a book. It’s fun!! The page falling speeds up as time goes on and there’s a high score to keep track of it. If you ever wanna see something magical, look up a TAS of this game heheh… they manage to get to 100 pages, I think!

3. Toad in the Box from Mario Party 2!! I dunno why I like this one so much, but it’s cute. Each player stands beneath a spinning block with several faces, 3 enemies and a toad. When you hit a toad, your platform goes up one notch, and I think you need 4 notches to win. However! If you miss the toad, and hit an enemy, it gets ya, and you’re briefly stunned. The block spinning speeds up with each notch!! So u gotta time carefully, but by the last notch it’s spinning too fast to do anything but jump and hope! It’s a little luck-based in that way, but I don’t mind.

4. Shy Guy Says!! Another minigame featured in Mario Party 1 and 2, as well as the Top 100 and Superstars!! Depending on the version, either the 4 players are out in barrels attached by ropes to a pirate ship (I like this version heheh) or they’re held up by balloons! A shy guy pirate on the ship or a shy guy archer on a cloud will give one of two commands- “A” or “B”- indicating which flag to raise! You have to raise the right flag or he’ll cut ya off or shoot ya down. Careful though!!!!! He can be tricky, raise a flag briefly to fake you out or what not. Last person standing wins!

5. Look Away, from Mario Party 2, and also on Top 100 and Superstars!! It’s a 1 vs 3 game where the top player looks in any one of the 4 cardinal directions or head-on, and then the 3 players have a split second to look in a different direction! If they look in the same direction, they’re out. The 1 player wins if they get all 3 players out before 5 rounds are up, while the 3 win if they survive. I like the funky music they play. Also, the losing players on the 3 team can still play along and pick a direction to look and if they look the same way again they become smaller dhdjdnd.

6. Bobsled Run from Mario Party 1, 2, Top 100 and Superstars. A 2 vs 2 race in a bobsled along an ice track, where you have to push the sled to the starting line and then cooperate to lean the sled to hit boosts and avoid falling off!! Simple but fun.

7. Speed Hockey! I’m gonna. Stop saying all the games they’re from now dbdjdbd but it originated in MP2. A 2 vs 2 game that’s basically just like pong! It’s hockey but you can only move up and down along a track on a little platform.

8. Day at the Races from Mario Party 2!! Interestingly it never appeared again I don’t think. Each player gets to pick one from among 4 racers: a boo, a bob-omb, a thwomp, and a womp. Each racer has a different movement method or special ability, but none outclass the others entirely. You pick in order from last to first, then watch the race play out, betting on your chosen racer! It’s totally random, but it’s cute and fun to watch! There’s a similar game in Mario Party 5 called Random Ride that’s also a battle game but features each player picking a ship to fly with different names, but the ships in that game actually do have rates of how often they win, so it’s more weighted and I don’t like that as much. Plus there’s more than 4, it just picks 4 from the pool. Having the same 4 each time is a little better.

9. Quick Draw Corks, from Mario Party 2! A simple duel minigame where you wait for the shy guy to tell you what button to press to fire your cork gun!! Whoever shoots fastest wins. Heheh. Similar minigames appear in other Mario Party games as well, like Shy Guy Showdown in Mario Party 5.

10. M.P.I.Q. from Mario Party 3! Again, I think this one never reappears. It’s just a simple quiz minigame asking about Mario Party… which means I’m really good at it heheheh. The way it works is that the question appears on screen slowly, and you can buzz in anytime you think you know what it’s asking, but if you’re wrong you have to sit out the next round. It can be cheesed if other players wanna be rude but it’s fun!

11. Tick Tock Hop from Mario Party 3! Simple duel minigame where two players stand on the hour hand of a clock trying to jump over the minute hand. The hand will randomly change direction and speed, and the hand you’re standing on will eventually start to move too!! It keeps a record as you go, so it can get real intense between two skilled players. Burn style from Mario Party 6 is similar, but it’s a 2 vs 2 instead of a duel.

12. Pushy Penguins from Mario Party 5! A hoard of silly penguins, big and small, charge the players, and you gotta weave and squeeze through em to avoid getting pushed off! Last player standing on the iceberg wins.

13. Leaf Leap from Mario Party 5! All 4 players are trying to climb a beanstalk as high as they can. Leaves will appear above you one at a time and you’ve gotta jump to each one! You can jump to the left or right or straight up from whichever side you’re on. If you miss a jump you’ll end up falling to the last leaf that was in that column, so if you mess up at a bad time you can fall really far. If you’re quick, you can climb all the way up into space!! This game keeps records too, so I always try and break em. What I also like is that records are marked by an orange leaf! It’s my color!! And it looks nice.

14. What Goes Up from Mario Party 6!! It’s like Leaf Leap but you’re actually on a high cloud trying to make your way down to the ground as fast as possible, and you have to avoid landing on Paratroopas who act as platforms. You’re also not picking and jumping, just trying to navigate your fall. So it’s not actually like Leaf Leap at all, but it is in my brain.

15. Same is Lame from Mario Party 6! You have to pick a button to press each round from among “A,” “B,” “X,” “Y,” and I think “Z.” Or maybe not Z. Anyway, if you pick the same as anyone else, neither player gets to advance. If only you picked your choice, you go up a layer! Whoever wins I think 3 rounds first wins. It’s fun! I like little mind guessing games like that. It’s kinda like Look Away!

16. Control Schtick from Mario Party 6! The screen will tell you which direction to point your two signs via tilting each control stick on the GameCube controller, and you’ve gotta match that within a short timeframe! I don’t think it’s ever been featured again cuz the 3DS doesn’t have dual analog sticks and I don’t remember Superstars featuring it. Oh well.

17. Track & Yield from Mario Party 7! The players run against a conveyer belt trying to jump over those uh… track sign thingies? The ones you gotta jump over in track. Um. I dunno. Anyways!! Regular ones just push you back but electric ones shock you and usually for long enough that the belt can carry you away. Last player standing wins!

18. Deck Hands from Mario Party 7! A battle game where players pick a random numbered card from a deck in 3 rounds and whoever has the highest total at the end wins. The player with the lowest score picks first each round too.

19. The Final Countdown from MP7! Players stand on a grid of numbers which gradually count down. Whenever a square hits 0 it’ll open to a pitfall. Players try to run around and not end up on any square when it hits 0. But you can also punch and kick and push people into other squares to try and get them to fall!! It’s devious!

20. Jump, Man from MP7. It’s a single-player DK minigame where you race Donkey Kong along a short DK-inspired obstacle course to try and get to the end first! If you beat him, you get the reward he’s playing you for based on what you rolled on the board.

21. Sick and Twisted from Mario Party 8! Players all race along a course of spinning platforms while avoiding bullet bills and try to make it to the end of the course! Anyone who finishes can win, I think.

22. Cardiators from MP8!! This is a really cool one. A duel game where two players in an arena are given a set bar of health and pick random cards from a table. Each one has a different Mario enemy on it, and will take varying amounts of health from the enemy, including some that do no damage. Whoever’s HP hits 0 first wins!! It’s like yugioh kinda!!!

23. Trash Landing from Mario Party DS. It can be a duel or 4-player minigame. Each player picks a rope and rides along it. You have to land on whatever object the rope takes you to, but the objects all have varying sizes and thus room for error, randomly decided. So it’s not entirely luck based, but luck plays a part! It’s fun and nifty.

24. Dust Buddies from Mario Party DS!! Players are running from a vacuum cleaner and have to jump over and dodge out of the way of various household objects acting as obstacles. If you get to the end you win!

25. Soap Surfers from DS is a fun game where you try and knock your opponents out of the sink while riding on bars of soap!!

26. Camera Shy from DS! Each player has a camera and is lost in a hedge maze. You have to find and photograph all 3 of your opponents without getting pictured yourself! The map won’t show you where anyone is unless they’re being taken in a photo.

27. Stretch Run from Island Tour! It’s like curling, but with carts! Or is it shuffleboard? Or something else entirely, maybe, I dunno. I’m not an athlete. Anyway! Each player tries to gauge the distance to launch their cart to get to the edge of a dock without falling off! The closer you are to the edge, the more points you get. But obviously you don’t get any points if you fall off. There are three rounds, so you try to adjust for each round!

28. Pachinko Wizard from Island Tour. It’s another luck-based game but I love the name and aesthetic and tension. You pick one of four pachinko… what’s the term… like, landing areas? And then a Lakitu tosses a Spiny down the board. Whatever section it lands in, that player is eliminated. After 1 player loses it goes to 3, then 2, until one player has outlasted the others and won!

29. Blown Hover from Island Tour. It’s a quick game where you race on a hoverboard trying to jump over or duck under panels that will fold out in your way, but they only do it as you get close so you have to react fast! Some panels can be jumped or ducked over, some can be avoided by changing lanes and some can be avoided by doing nothing- some can even be avoided in multiple ways, but the deadliest are the ones you can only avoid one way. If you get hit, you aren’t out, but you lose speed and have to build it back up, which can be fatal! Whoever gets to the end first wins!!!

30. Slip Not from Island Tour. It’s a race where all 4 players are sliding on a thin ice bridge. As you go along, the bridge gets thinner and thinner and harder to stay on, made worse by the need to use tilt controls heheh. Almost nobody makes it to the end of the course, but what matters is being the last person to slip off the track as it gets thinner! It’s a fun one and I had a blast as a smaller tiger trying to reach the fabled end of the track… never did manage it though, sadly.

Whew!!!! That’s all the faves from the ones I’ve played, so excluding 9, 10, Star Rush, Super Mario Party, and Mario Party Advance. If you’re wondering why this ask took me so long to get around to, it’s cuz I don’t front much and this was a loooot to write for such a lazy catboy heheheheh.

[tundrainafrica]

[Part 1] Hi Sav! What are ur thoughts on Kamiya's (Levi's VA) words regarding Levi? Here are two translations I found on twitter. Since you know Japanese I think you're the perfect person to ask this from ^^ " Today at Anime Japan Kamiya Hiroshi said, “Levi hasn’t changed. The loss of Erwin is so huge that afterwards his life in a sense is like ‘yosei’.” Yosei (余生) means like, the rest of one’s life (after raising kids or retiring) where you have nothing left to do"++

Disclaimer: Please I have no intention of starting a ship war with this, I just wanna drop my own interpretation for my own Levihan stanning heart. 

Note: I had no plans of watching the Japanese Seiyu panel for the last episode of Attack on Titan for many reasons and 90% of it is because Romi Paku didn’t show up and I’m still salty overall about how AOT and the narrative is treating Hange altogether and literally the only comfort I get about Hange this whole AOT season is that she looks great in all her scenes but anyway, enough about the rant. I’m still low key salty about not getting our Levihan reunion yet… But whatever. 

I got all of these asks in succession and soon after I did some research on twitter to see what all the fuss was about and apparently, a lot of Eruri fans are likening Levi to a widow--- A WIDOW of all things. 

And I dunno, I feel like this conclusion for one kinda cheapens Levi’s character altogether and just cheapens the bond of Levihan so I kinda realized I just cannot stand and watch some obviously Eruri-biased Japanese translations of that statement run rampant on twitter without my own take. 

So anyway, I’m gonna drop my own take on this, my own interpretation as a Levihan stan.

Disclaimer: I am in no way trying to push any Levihan agenda on anyone. If you like Eruri and you wanna stick to your widow interpretation feel free too. I just feel like a pro Levihan take, and a more ‘non Eruri’ take on that statement should exist as well so I’ll just drop this here for Levihan fans to seek comfort and possibly for any casual reader or Eruri fan to get some other perspectives on this statement I guess?

This is the original Text

声の方「団長、エルヴィンを失ったことはとても大きかったと思うんですよ」

「だからそこから先ってある意味余生みたいな感じになってる気がする」

Isym先生「エルヴィンの最期を看取って役割を全うし、現在宙ぶらりんな状態」

リヴァイ本人「…俺達の役目は」「あそこで終わりだったのかもしれない…」

And if I were going to translate it word for word. 

“For Levi, losing Erwin was a big thing. And everything after that became some sort of ‘retirement’ (Yosei) for him. Since he took it upon himself then to follow Erwin, right now it feels just dangling in space.”

Okay these are obviously Eruri crumbs at first glance and I recognize why exactly Eruris would celebrate over something like this because if we had a Levihan thing like this too, I’ll probably be celebrating too

But Let me offer my own interpretation of this as a Levihan stan

Yes, I recognize that for Levi losing Erwin was a big thing, but I’d like to paint some of the terms in a positive light for Levi. And the main key terms above were ‘Yosei’ and “Levi dangling in space’

So I’ll be focusing on those two: 

余生 (Yosei)

余生 (Yosei) isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Yosei literally translates to ‘the remaining years of someone’s life” So it doesn't necessarily mean Levi’s a widow or Levi is lonely because Erwin’s not there anymore In fact, Yosei is used a lot from what I see, to mean, retirement years. So after you’re done with your job and you retire, your last few years playing golf, playing with grandchildren, those are your ��yoseis’ 

And there are lots of takes I saw online to this Yosei thing 

There was a meta in Japanese I found  where they discussed the fact that Levi was approaching his twilight years. and the main reason he was facing ‘retirement’ wasn’t necessarily because Erwin was gone but because soon after Erwin died, the basement happened and it turned out there were enemies much stronger than titans out there. 

The ‘Yosei’ meant, Levi retired from his role as ‘humanity’s strongest soldier’ because Levi was the ‘strongest soldier’ against titans, not against humans, the rapidly changing world and technology. I mean if we actually are objective about this, we could see the most capable survey corps member for handling the new enemy which is Marley and the Hizuru and just all the other countries and the impending war, was Hange since she is the best at navigating politics and she would be the quickest to adapt to technology.  

So yes, if it’s obvious, I do not like the ‘Levi is a widow take’ AT ALL.

「エルヴィンの最期を看取って役割を全うし、現在宙ぶらりんな状態」

 Since he took it upon himself then to follow Erwin, right now it feels just dangling in space.

But I’m not gonna discount the role of Erwin in Levi’s life. I think it is actually very important to understand why Levi feels like ‘he’s dangling in space.’ 

We all remember that last scene from ACWNR after Isabel and Farlan died and I’m sure we can all connect those last words from Erwin all the way until Levid decides to follow him to the role implied above. 

Erwin was Levi’s compass. Erwin gave direction to Levi’s life and suddenly Erwin dies and at the same time the world opens up and Levi starts to realize he’s not as needed anymore and his role as humanity’s strongest is gone.

So obviously all those events at once would leave Levi in some sort of limbo right. And that’s why he gets this feeling that he has reached his ‘yosei’ years and he’s also dangling in some limbo

I can think of two more specific reasons he ends up ‘dangling.’ 

First reason is: Killing the beast titan, the last order Erwin gave Levi wasn’t so easy to do anymore given the political nuances, the environment and of course the fact that the world was already more complicated than killing titans. And to think that Levi makes a promise to do that right before Erwin died? 

So I’m thinking the ‘dangling’ refers to Levi grappling with such complexities and nuances while trying to fulfill a goal which would have been so much easier if the basement thing didn’t happen and the world didn’t open up. 

And my second reason is: 

Warning: Before I go to this, I wanna warn you that this is my Levihan stan self reaching for pro-Levihan interpretations so feel free to ignore this if you don’t want crazy Levihan delusional interpretations. 

Anyway, my second explanation which I like to play with and I like to keep close to me, being a Levihan fan is that Hange of all people, was the last veteran stuck to Levi and as we all know, according to Yams old interviews about Hange’s gender...

Hange’s a free soul. She’s like the balloon, the kite that just floats in space and just continues hanging, dangling and flying. And she’s the person who Levi ended up sticking to after Erwin’s death. And since he ended up with such a free sould, he didn’t necessarily find much direction again, the same way he found direction with Erwin. 

Hange didn’t give a straightforward direction for Levi. But Hange provided comfort. 

And I’d just like to introduce a pro-Levihan interpretation this. 

So maybe ‘dangling in space’ and leaving the remaining years of his life like that isn’t such a bad thing? I mean I like to interpret this ‘retirement’ and ‘dangling’ as Levi finally being free of whatever ‘Ackerbond’ or whatever compass or order Erwin has set for him. 

Because Hange went about her position as commander more as a parent to the cadets and more as a comrade to Levi than anything else. And with title of ‘humanity’s strongest soldier’ not so relevant anymore post season 3 with titans becoming a not so big threat compared to the impending war, I think the ‘yosei’ and the ‘dangling’ could be interpreted as freedom for Levi from his role as Erwin’s right hand man and freedom from the burden of being ‘humanity’s strongest.’

And the transition from having to report to Erwin to having to report to Hange, I think this can be interpreted as a breath of fresh air for Levi.

Yosei after all can be interpreted as freedom. When people retire, people are free right? They’re free to try out different things, they’re free to focus on other things. Even if people have to experience the pain of ‘loss’ when losing one position, the remnants of it, the ‘yosei’ isn’t inherently bad although it can be interpreted as that. 

And the crumbs for this? I always believed that Levi generally acted freer under Hange than under Erwin. And I feel like I have created metas about this before about Hange’s leadership style: here and here

Anyway if you got this far, thanks for reading! 

[deniigi]

SO i've been reading your mando/luke series (which is brilliant by the way) and am so excited for when leia inevitably finds out about the marriage. i mean, can you just picture, tiny leia organa getting in din's fave like if you hurt my little brother i will kill you, and han just making apologetic faces in the background.

anyway! sorry to subject you to my ramblings, but i just wanted to say that it's really fantastic and you're an amazing writer.

Hi Anon!!

I think this was sent a while ago, before Leia became aware of things in the FTL Verse. But since then I wrote a cute little bit about her and Din bonding that I think you may enjoy.

Title: Flight School

Summary: Leia’s a shit pilot. Din’s her newest choice of flying teacher. Luke tags along against his better judgement and mounting anxiety.

--

About eight or so years ago, Han had tried to teach Leia how to fly, and coincidentally, about eight or so years ago, Han had banned Leia from the cockpit of every craft he had access to.

Luke hadn’t believed him when he said that he was done with trying to teach her for good and forever. He had thought, like a fool, that he’d have better luck.

Maybe it had been too much faith in their twin bond. Maybe it had been hubris.

The result was the same.

If Leia thought that she was putting so much as a toe over the cockpit threshold while Luke was sat at the controls, she had another thing coming.

The closest he’d let her to the console was the back right seat. That was it. That was as far into a corner as he could feasibly get her while still allowing her to see what was happening.

And so was established the present the order of operations that occurred on every family trip off of Yavin:

Step 1. Gather in front of the chosen vehicle.

Step 2. Board.

Step 3. Strap in Ben.

Step 4. Locate, disarm, and manhandle Leia into the seat next to Ben.

Step 5. Proceed with all other preparatory measures as usual.

This order of operations worked fine--great, even--until the family expanded.

Din and Grogu had their own pre- and in-flight procedures. They were haphazard. They were chaotic. They bore next to no resemblance to the word ‘safety’ and instead an alarming resemblance to a duck and cover drill, but you know what? Luke was willing to look past that because Din was a good pilot.

For all crafts? No. No, Din could successfully pilot about seven different types of ship before he started literally winging it.

Thankfully, his version of winging it was at least informed.

Sort of.

Kind of.

Alright, maybe Luke had more faith in Din’s natural ability to improvise than he did in his piloting, but that was not the issue at hand.

The issue at hand was Leia. Leia who had one single time seen Din take the controls from Luke so that Luke could go talk to her in the main cabin. That tiny misstep was enough to remind her that she wasn’t allowed to take the controls when she flew with Luke.

The jealousy had crashed over Luke like a seawall in a tsunami, which was how they’d gotten here. Right here. With Din waving Luke and Han off dismissively, saying that he’d teach the lady, no problem.

Luke snatched Grogu from his arms right after he finished that sentence. There was no way in hell he was letting the child on board alongside the toxic combination before him.

Din asked Leia what she knew about flying.

She said that she knew which way was down and that crashing was not optimal.

Din cleared her for takeoff.

“Relax,” he said while Han and Luke and Chewie crunched together and tried to practice deep breathing as one single body. “I got stuck on Paz’s first flight post-helmet and let me tell you: nothing will ever top that.”

Han told him not to underestimate Leia’s abilities. Whoever ‘Paz’ was, his record was sure to be beaten.

“I dunno about that,” Din said, giving Leia boost up into the ship’s entrance. “It took Paz twelve times to figure out how to land. The only thing that saved him was our oldest guy finding the mechanic’s pre-written homicide confession before the thirteenth try.”

With every little nugget of Din’s covert childhood came a new bout of indigestion. Luke was starting to regret having ever asked him to open up about it.

“Maybe shoot for a slightly higher goal, then,” Han suggested as Din hauled himself up into the Rust Bucket after Leia.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Din said before closing the hatch.

 --

 Luke was rattling, rattling, rattling out here on the ground. If he looked up and squinted, he could just see Leia through the cockpit’s hazy windshield. She was pointing at things and talking. Presumably, Din was answering her.

God, what a way for those two to meet in person.

“Should we clear back?” Han asked Luke and Chewie.

Luke looked up at him and then back to the ship. He looked up again and then back again.

“Luke,” Han drawled. “Luke, buddy, let’s not. Just this once.”

Luke shoved Grogu into his arms.

 --

 Din told him to stop breaking into the ship for the eighth time, but Luke ignored him to scramble into Grogu’s usual seat.

He strapped every strap he could strap and gripped the sides of the seat as tight as his hands would allow.

His knees wanted nothing more than to bounce into oblivion.

He was aware that Din was looking back at him while Leia asked where the brake was. He did not look back. He trained his gaze out the windshield at Han. Han met his eye and then shook his head sadly. Chewie pulled him back. Han set Grogu down and followed him. Grogu turned around and gave a little wave.

Luke felt a tear threatening to fall.

He pried a hand from the side of the seat and waved back.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Leia said.

--

[missn11]

Hi friend! I dunno if you saw, but I finished the Kill Your Boss visual novel earlier. Your tags on the summary posts give me life, thank you. Of course now because it's a thing I like, I'm trying to think of a VTMB crossover or AU. What if VTMB/Kill Your Boss fusion with Jeremy McNeil or Salvador Garcia ordering Nines to go undercover with the Sabbat? Like Andrei takes Logan's role, as Nines' immediate superior, and Riam's role is a Sabbat LaCroix who wants to make the organization 'respectable.' Maybe Ming Xiao as Noah? Like, the Anarchs and New Promise never fought and openly work together. If Nines sides with Ming Xiao, he technically retains his Anarch loyalty, but retires to Chinatown and house-husbands it up, haha. What do you think? Thanks for going on this nonsense journey with me, buddy :D

@badass-at-cuddling oh man that is a hell of a AU, I love it!

Oh man I can see Salvador Garcia/ or maybe more likely the Camarilla using Jeremy McNeil's health or something to control Nines when he wasn't happy about Garcia's/Camarilla's practices, but then it being revealed by Andrei that Jeremy McNeil was dead the whole time! 😭

Oh man Andrei as Logan would oddly fitting, though with more meat crimes and I kind of low key ship it now XD oh man maybe at the end Andrei will make Nines an bishop or a priest!

LaCroix also fits as Riam pretty well too, and damn it now I'm seeing Nines stepping on LaCroix's dick! Maybe LaCroix and Nines end up reviving the Sabbat but making it less meat crimey! 😆

Honestly Nines being in the Sabbat would make have low humanity but the real question is what path of enlightenment would he follow? 🤔Maybe Path of Honorable Accord https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Path_of_Honorable_Accord or Path of Harmony https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Path_of_Harmony or even Path of Caine https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Path_of_Caine , kind of trick to choose tbh XD

Also Nines is so going to be involved with the blood orgies

Ming Xiao as Noah is an interesting idea, I guess with the Kuei-jin and Anarchs not having fought it each in the past, Ming Xiao is 50% less likely to backstab you! XD Maybe the Kuei-jin and Sabbat became allies as they have a common goal in mind: to stop Gehenna/the Age of Sorrow. 😲 Nines being her house husband while she rules over Chinatown and the Kuei-jin and the Anarchs living amongst each other in peace is a wonderful idea and honestly I keep seeing LA by Night Nines as someone is a house husband, damn Camarilla getting in the way all the time, Nines has like 14 pies to make to feed the neighborhood kids! 😤

But yes this is a delightful AU and it'll be running around my brain for quite while! :D Also I think there would be polycube outcome in this AU too! :D

[popculturebuffet]

Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together! or Days of Summer

Hello all you happy scottaholics! Welcome back to those of you who’ve read the rest of this retrospective and welcome to those of you just joining us. This is the Scottrospective, my look at all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim, the game and the movie. It’s all the video game refrenes, slice of life story telling and boob punches you can handle!

It’s been three months since I left off with “The Infinite Sadness” , and while I intended to cover this one for Valentine’s Day, my schedule got away from me and with March being full up, this ended taking till April

I”m not too put off by it though as the hiatus between these two reviews is fitting for this one both in story and out. In story there’s a couple month time skip between books, while out.. this book got delayed a few times.  

This is notable to me at least because this was the first volume of the series I bought when it came out. As i’ve brought up before I came into the series via the Free Comic Book Day Issue and the second and third volumes, picking one up later. I still have my original copies despite no longer really needing them thanks to having the color editions in general. Always will provided something dosne’t happen to them. So this was my first instalment that I got to read fresh and got to wait for and be hyped about and i’d saved enough money that I was able to pre-order it. So the experince of waiting and waiting for the book only to keep seeing it slide back is vivid in my mind as is the frustration I felt having the one thing I COULD NOT WAIT FOR, keep going further and further back. 

So with this long wait and the fact I bought this one when it came out, as I would for the next two which didn’t get delayed thank god, this volume naturally means a lot for me. When I wrote Scott Pilgrim fanfiction, this volume’s status quo is what I based it on. It was the coolest to me and the one I loved to reread the most. It has the most contained story, the most character growth at the time, and the best art due to Bryan’s style having finally hit it’s stride. Not that the art for volumes 1-3 is bad mind you, but it’s very clear his style was changing and shaping into what it is now with each one and while it’d change a bit more, this volume is where the style and quality everyone thinks of when they think of this series and the kind you see on various art done from it comes from. 

So as you can tell i’m excited for this one. Before we get started there WERE two shorter comics released between this one both for Free Comic Book day, the first of which, Free Scott Pilgrim, is the reason I got into the series and the second, the Wonderful World of Kim Pine .. was both delightful and sets up Kim moving in with Hollie for this volume. Originally I intended to cover these in this review.. but I realized they wouldn’t of helped the pacing and this review is going to be way longer than my standard as is.

So instead I came up with the compromise. I did review them.. but as bonus reviews on my patreon. For just one buck a month you can read them and help me reach my stretch goals which now include reviews of Lost at Sea, Seconds and SnotGirl, aka Bryan’s OTHER comics. You can find my patreon THROUGH THIS LINK HERE if your intrested in the exclusives or helping me reach my reviews. I also intend to do an exclusive of Monica Beetle, a short comic Bryan did starring Scott’s dad in the 70s at some point so keep your eyes peeled for that, as well as the three strips he did of Style, the comic that gave us the prototypes for Lisa and Kim. 

I will talk about their connections and setups for this volume briefly: FSP sets up the next ex as a ninja, with Roxy having a bunch of posters come to live and pummel our boy, while Wonderful World has Hollie tell Kim she can move in with her. It’s not much, hence why i made these exclusives but they are good stories, so check them out. And with that JOIN ME UNDER THE CUT, as we enter Scott’s world once more as he grapples with the past, employment, and saying the L-Word... which might be Lesbians. I don’t know. Find out bellow!

So we open Two Months after Volume 3 with a beach birthday party! Complete with Kim in a swim suit!

But it’s for Julie who lobs a volley ball at Scott’s head when he and Ramona try to make out. 

I also dont’ know if “Manfiesting out of all the world’s collectives sorrows” counts as a “birth” necessarily but whatever. I love a good beach story. It’s just a fun setitng for swimming, romance and battling a giant crab with the help of the bird what lives in your backpack.

So after the beach our heroes get dinner and Ramona sweetly calls Scott the nicest guy she’s ever dated. He responds with “That’s sad”. Blunt, but entirely accruate. Julie calls it pathetic and tries to counter Ramona RIGHTFULLY saying “who the hell asked you?” something that really should come after EVERYTHING Julie said with “Back off bitch i’ts my birthday”

So later that night Sex Bomb-Omb has a beach sing along, and I can’t help but notice Neil’s hairy legs. 

I mean yes it does make since for a 19 year old to have leg hair, but of all the characters besides Stephen, the ONLY other character we’ve seen it with to give it to, why the character you specifically single out as “Young” it’s just a weird choice I never noticed before. 

But anyways Julie has to whine about it because she’s Julie, she can’t stand other people being happy and complains the song...

One of my faviorite moments of the series. Knives puts a nicer spin on it, she’s here too and not over with Neil because, as we’ll find out later they broke up, but she just asks if Knives should be drinking. She shouldn’t but for fucks sake lady she was just trying to talk. I also do like that despite Julie trying to control Ramona’s love life, you know the thing the VILLIANS are doing, Ramona cannot stand her now.. and honestly probably never did. 

But Julie, SOMEHOW turns out to be right for once as Kim and Knives have disappeared later that night, and Scott elects to go look for them. Also Ramona says she wants to marry kim while drunk after Julie asks if she does. The throuple is strong with these three... serioulsy that’s my one true pairing for all three now. I mean it ballances out their collective flaws, it’s cute and Ramona is just as into her boyfriends ex as she is her actual boyfriend even when she’s not hamered. Why the fuck not?

Scott instead finds the two making out. I will confess I shipped these two when I was younger.. but I don’t. Not because their gay or anything or because I found another ship for them but because the age gap is still just as wide as it was for Scott. The game did not get this memo and made them a couple which is... ehhhhhhhhh. I mean I wouldn’t mind either being bi, but it just brings up the same problems even if their both hammered. I also question why this scene exists. No really outside of one face punchingly dickish comment from Scott later, this never comes up again and it doesn’t effect Kim’s or Knives character any. Why have this? it’s clearly not fanservice, it’s just a thing that happened. And while Scott Pilgrim as a series does have some of those, as does life and that’s fine.. this is a bit too major, i.e. Kim and Knives, two of the main cast, making out, drunkenly or not, to just.. gloss over you know? I feel Kim would feel majorly guilty for this, as she has the most active moral compass of the main group, and Knives would be massively confused but it’s just.. forgotten because I dunno. In a story that’s otherwise pretty stellar this stands out as an utter waste of potential. I’m not saying have them hook up, gay or not it’s still not better than what Scott did, but have them at least talk about it and have both grow or something from it. Sheesh. 

So we cut to.. another day. Maybe the next day I dunno but it’s August. Point is Scott and Wallace are grocery shopping and Wallace notes they can’t get fancy mayo as their barely in budget. I would’ve glossed over this scene... but @panur​ pointed out back around the Infinite Sadness review that this scene reveals something very intrestng: Scott.. is kind of a fincial burdern to Wallace. Before this while Scott mooched off him it wasn’t all that clear that Wallace was struggling. 

But here we notice that outside of some Havarti, it’s just the simplest stuff imaginable: turkey, bread, boxed mac and cheese ramen noodles... it’s nto BAD stuff, I have all of that in my house and it’s good stuff... but it’s not the kind of thing that you need to carefully budget for. Now granted part of this probably is Wallace as he likely spends a LOT on drinks, condoms and two 2 liters of diet soda a day.. but while he really needs to adress his alcohol issues, the rest is fair. He should be allowed to have as much sex and diet coke as he wants it’s his money. Same with the havarti. He earned it if he wants some really delcious cheese with herbs, seriously Havarati is the best, then that’s his bidness. But the rest of the time he’s barely managing to get  a basketfull of cheap food.. because he has to provide for Scott. It’s clearly something Scott dosen’t get and something I can relate to not getting. It took me a while to get how hard it is to budget for a full family, let alone two people on one income like Wallace has to. But Wallace is working on a nice job... but still a call center or something. He can’t pay for everything and the finccial stress is about to give as their landlord wants to meet with them. And as we’re about to learn things were even worse than we thought. 

Our heroes head home where we get a truly iconic conversation when, over margeritas (again proving my point that while Scott certainly isn’t HELPIGN wallace’s finacials, it’s not all on him)

This will be imporant later.. both the Lesbians part and Scott’s struggle saying it. he tried earlier on the beach but couldn’t get it out and Ramona clearly didn’t want to hear it as she kapt sshhhhing him.. playfully of course but still. 

So some time later it’s moving day! Kim is moving into Hollie and Josephs, and Scott, Stephen and Jason are helping. You might be wondeirng who the hell Jason is. He’s Kim’s boyfriend. I do not likes him. Not because he’s kim’s boyfriend, getting upset because a fictional character you fancy is dating is just patently stupid. I’ts like getting upset a celebrity crush is in a relationship: you had no chance anyway why. I wasn’t even bothered as a kid. I don’t really like him.. because he has no real personaliy and no real baring on the plot and I struggle to think why Bryan included him other than for a really annoying plot twist next time, which does not help my liking him knowing what’s coming. 

But while our heroes help our heroine move in, and Scott is suprised Hollie is there despite Kim having told him a minute ago she was moving in with her, something I can relate to sadly, we get something vitally plot important; Stephen passes Joseph’s room.. and notices he has a small recording setup in his room. Stephen quickly begs him to record the band’s album and Joseph agrees if only because he finds Stephen hot. Eh i’ve seen better relationships start on less, fair enough. And yes I said relationship more on that in a bit. 

So after a brief scene of Scott and Ramona having lunch where Scott fails to know her age and when Ramona says he could just ask.. hea sks and she dosen’t tell, not a bad scene character wise just not very plot important and probably should’ve bene swapped in order with the previous scene, we get to the next day. There’s a heat wave so Wallace orders Scott to go to the mall maybe find a job. He emphasises that. 

Instead Scott just sorta bums around thirst but nto having any money.. until an old face shows up. 

For those who forgot like Scott has, it’s Lisa Miller from the Volume 2 flashback, the girl who had a crush on Scott and was close friends with him and Kim. After a tackle hug  and some panic Scott eventually remembers.... if in a curiously unique and self serving way

At the time this was just hilarous. Now it’s very clear foreshadowing for the big twist in Volume 6. The two catch up while Scott is very clearly attracted to her but very clearly dosen’t want to be, with Lisa wondering where kim is, finding about Ramona, etc, before offering Scott lunch as the two catch up and Scott is very conflicted about how he feels. It’s nice visual stuff as he’s blushing, something more clear in the color version and trying to desperatley sort things out. As for why Lisa’s here she’s moving to the states soon, but is staying with her sister for now. 

So after an incdental scene with Wallace we catch up with Knives, who has broken up with Neil. And after some talk about Clash at the Demonhead, Tamra notes Knives apparently put a big x on her shrine of Scott... which baffles Knifves as she sure as hell didn’t do it and is still, sadly, obessed with Scott as ever. Granted Tamra isn’t at all helpful here claiming she did it even when she says she didn’t, is clearly confused and while yes we don’t know who else would care Tams, that just makes it all the more creepy. Stop gaslighting your bestie, she’s already got enoguh issues. She dosen’t need thinking she might have a split personality on top of the stalking, obession over a guy who has no intrest in loving her back, and attempted stabbings. Knives dosesn’t get a ton of focus in this one sadly. She kind of takes a back seat, and while sh’es not GONE from the volumle and someone close to her does impact it, she dosen’t really have any personal progression, negative or positive, like she does in every other volume, a shame since her personal jouney is one of the most intresting of the main cast. 

Anyways that night Scott hangs out with Lisa, having not gotten around to telling Ramona she exists yet and plays a game of find the Kim Pine. She goes to Neil’ and Stephen’s place for practice, but finds no one there and Neil being a dick... get used to that it’s going to get about 80 times worse soon enough. Though we do get this classic panel i’ve gotten some use out of 

He goes to Kim’s place, but she , Hollie and Satan’s Misterss have all left to Sneaky Dee’s, the local mexican place, for something to eat and Stephen is either high or doing.. something with Joseph. 

Yeah i’m not hiding that Stephen turns out to be gay in the final volume or cheating on Bitch and a Half with Joseph. And even if I hate Julie with the power of a frozen sun, I still dont’ think cheating on her is kosher. He could’ve just broken up with her and while part of it was likely confusion, and he could also be bi and not decided which one he wanted to be with, it’s still a dick move.. and later makes him a hypocrite but that’s a rant for next volume. 

So our heroes FINALLY find Kim, along with Hollie and Mouthface. And a nice thing I like is that Kim and Lisa are just.. increidbly close, happily catching up and making plans to hang before Lisa leaves, that despite Lisa having feelings for Scott the two ended up as close and She and Scott did and i’ts sweet to see. it’s also just.. rare to see Kim GENUINELY happy. I mean look at her

It’s not like she HASN’T smiled across the series but normally she’s just so miserable, likely because her best friends are a grumbly asshole who forces them to hang out with a raging typhoon of bitchiness, and an insenitive asshat who she never got closure with. This is the first decent human being whose not Ramona or Hollie, and that last one’s not going to last, in a while. It’s genuinely sweet to just see her.. enjoy the moment for once, honestly engaged with someone. Ramona shows up and finally meets Lisa, who apparently was on Degrassi.. I mean she says candaian show no one ever watched, and I watched that plenty but i’d like to think she was on there for a season or two. I liked Degrassi.. I honeslty miss it and think it could use some form of revivial and think porting it to netflix was a smart decision.. what wasn’t so smart was not having the other seasons leading into it on there. Need to watch more of it. 

So the next day Ramona stumbles into Scott’s dreams and both are annoyed, with Ramona suggesting he get a job. This finally gets him to try. He asks about Wallace’s work but understandably, he dosen’t really want scott there and asks if he even knows. So Scott sets out to ask his other friends for jobs, while Knives shows up saying she’s “totally not stalking him” but someone is following HER, a mysterious spiky haired dude in a black leather jacket, shades and with a sword on his back. Whu-oh. 

He tries Second Cup, with Julie annoyed that Stephen’s recording.. it’s hard to tell if she’s annoyed because she’s a bitch or because Stephen is both gneuinely annoying right now and clearly screwing around behind her back. My take?

But Scott realizes maybe getting a job at his Sister’s place of work who also works with his arch enemy might be stupid and backs out. He next tries Kim’s, but backs out of that too, admitting to kim it’d be stupid and Kim lists off all the reasons (His lack of resume, the fact them working together would be stresful and his ountain of late fees) why that’d be stupid, but in a jovial way. For once i’ts clear that while she’s still taking the piss out of them she isn’t mad at Scott.

In fact she genuinely helps him get a job, taking him to Stephen’s work since hers is dead right now anyway, a vegan place.  While Scott naturally compares things to a job system as he’d start as dishwasher while Stephen taught him prep, Scott agrees to genuinely take this seriously and Stephen’s boss decides “eh why not” when he asks her to employ him. Scott is gainfully employed baby! God I miss that. Seriously i’m not pimping my patreon for shits and giggles. 

But as he celebrates and Kim wishes she could punch his life in the face, they run into some trouble on the way home: Katana man who slices a motherfucking bus in half and chases them, with Scott reluctnat to fight because he has a sword and Scott does not, which is valid. He does escape though using subspace. He and Kim part awkardly and he returns home to Wallace throwing a party with two intresting charcters, a woman and a man of color, one of the few in the entire work, who are never seen again. 

The next night is practice.. or rather recording, and we start to see Neil get edged out, with him unable to come due to exams and clearly not happy about it, and Stephen just kind of ignoring anything he cares about like the dickhead he is. It dosen’t get any better as “recording” ends up just being Scott, Ramona, and Ratfaced Knacker watching bored with Joseph and Stephen work. Eventaully Scott and Ramona decide to get out of there as things are getting tensed between thing one and thing bitch, and leave.. and take Julie with them for some reason. 

So the three have dinner with Lisa, Kim, and Jason before The Mummies Curse thankfully leaves. Jason thought they were friends. 

We also get this exchange. 

I mean.. she is the better option. She his THE option. But before we can get the obvious answer of 

Stephen comes in with Knives. He smuggled her in. This leads to problems when Scott returns from the bathroom to find Queen Bitch throwing a bitch fit about him having brought her and screechs at her when she dares to talk to him “How do you even know my name?” Well Ted Cruz, you see when someone is an actually thoughtful and likes other people, they keep track of things about them and don’t constnatly tear them down or assume their partneer is automatically bonking a 17 year old instead of you know, actually forming something of a friendship and not shutting her out sensing she needs this friend group. Some people are not vacous piles of vitriol who care about nothing but themself and seem to go off at the slightest thing. 

Scott takes Ramona home but finds a drunken barely awake wallace so no sexy times. Not that he could anyway as the next day is the meeting with Peter their landlord. 

Peter reveals they’ll have to clear out by the 27th as their lease was for one year and their paid up.. as in only the first and last month. The two part melacholy knowing this sucks and isn’t a great situation. Then it’s time for Scott to work work, angelica, work work, eliza and peggy. After grueling day, can relate, he runs into  a wisp on teh wend and steels himself for a fight.. okay he bitches about it being too hot but it’s Scott. so it’s expected. He does get a hit in on his mysterious persuer.. and that’s when we meet Roxy.

Via boob punch, something Scott’s not proud of but in his defense, as Roxy keeps complaning about it, he was blindly struggling for a hit and din’t know the next Ex, or any of them, were female.. not that Ramona didn’t suggest it loudly enough by empahsising “exes” but scott’s a bit of a fuckwit. She mentions “everyone allways remmebers you”.. which is kind of ominus and tells me she tried to hook back up with ramona despite her having a boyfriend and she rejected her. Still on good terms though. But this confusing encounter ends with Roxy vowing she’ll get him next time gadget, next time. 

So we get some assorted slice of life scenes with the band, lisa and what have you as Scott tries to get in touch with Ramona but she keeps avoiding him. THat’s not worrysome at all. And Lisa brings up high school while drunk and clearly hits on Scott. He sidesteps it with her drunkness.. but this clearly isn’t over or going to stop being a problem. 

Speaking of problems Wallace makes Scott confront the truth: He either needs to find a new place to live or commit to staying, though Wallace is trying to nudge him toward asking Ramona to move into her place. Scott starts thinking it over, it being very hard especially since, as Stephen points out this was his very first place of his own.. but Stephen also points out these things are temoporary.. right before Scott ducks from katana guy. 

At work Scott wonders who it could be, though it turns out Stephen’s met him before, as he’s brought his family in here. So he’s PROBABLY not one of the exes.. but it leaves the question why he wants to cut Scott in half like Dewey Cox’s brother. But it turns out he’s nto the only enemy Scott’s casually running into as Roxy is there too.. with Ramona. 

The two talk, clearly about Scott and Lisa with Roxy trying to convince her he’s cheating and Ramona rightfully trusting Scott: while he IS attracted to her, he’s been fighting it every step of the way. Scott storms over to find out what’s going on and while Ramona is more distracted by his new job, she eventually realizes Roxy did attack him and he simply dscribed her poorly when he mentioned the incident over the phone. Scott is confused as he dosen’t get it. Is she with one of the exes what? After some hiinting from both parties, and Roxy rightfully mocking him for not getting the obvious... he finallyg ets it in the grandest way possible. 

So Roxy gets ready to fight and Scott can’t because sword, and gets fired in the background as he hides in Ramona’s bag and Ramona prepares to step in. Roxy screams at her for trusting him and defending him when Ramona.. just dosen’t her boyfriend to be bisected by her ex. A fight insues and a damn cool one at that. I honestly wish the movie had taken more from this, but simply didn’t have time leading it to instead be more like the envy fight with a bit of the Winfried Hailey fight from Free Scott Pilgrim. 

Roxy chases her and Ramona rightly points out Scott can’t run forever but takes him into Subspace.. where Roxy heads them off, having “taught you everything you know bitch” leading to a cool fight in the wintery version of subspace. Again why THIS wasn’t used instead I have no real idea. We also find out she’s a half ninja but she eventually leaves afer Ramona presses that button.. but Rammy is actually apologetic about it and Roxy’s “I hope you and your 24 children are happy together comment” is telling. 

Upon this readthrough of the volume.. I realized Roxy is the most layered and intresting of the exes next to Gideon himself. None of them are out and out terrible, but most of them have pretty simple motives: to kill Scott, ???, profit. Or in Todd’s case to kill scott, bang around and be a dick. But Roxy.. genuinely wants Ramona back. She’s the ONLY one who does: Gideon kinda does, but only in the sense that he wants her for his collection. But Roxy geninely still loves her, admitting so during this fight. And it’s not like she has no chance: out of the 7 exes she’s the ONLY one who parted with Ramona on anything resembling good terms. While intrestingly we don’t find out WHY they broke up, Ramona didn’t cheat on her like she did everyone else she was with. The two have coffee and hang out and Ramona geninely dosen’t even consider until Roxy tries to attack Scott that she’d really try killing him and tries her best to talk her out of it. But what holds Roxy back is her anger: She’s so bitter about the fact Ramona is bi or pan, so dedicated to viewing Ramona’s very orintation as a betryal (though Ramona calling it a phase dosen’t help and the movie RIGHTLY has Roxie comment on it and fly into a rage over it), and so driven to make sure the woman she loves dosen’t get hurt again that it blinds her to the fact Ramona dosen’t love her the same way anymore, and that while Scott is objectively a dick, and a cheater, and a greasy buttcrack pooflap, he is not a terrible person. A meh one sure, but he’s got good to him. She’s so biophobic she simply can’t see he’s a harmless moron.. well harmless to Ramona even with the cheating. He’s killed two people at this point and will kill again. Also she apparently has issues with only being a half ninja but this is never adressed. Point is Roxy’s really grown on me and is now probably my faviorite ex.  

Scott and Ramona talk it over on their way to Sneaky Dees and Scott finally asks to move in and gets a yes. His response is downright adorable. 

So at Sneaky Dee’s Young Neil is just a bit absolutely irate with Scott.. which isn’t fair as them not playing things is entirely on the blocky face asshole. Yell at him.. which he does, pointing out that they haven’t played shows in forever, and that the lady who owns Sneaky Dees not only runs shows, in the upstairs space, but has been asking them to play. Kim is rightly curious about this and to both Stephen just keeps saying “We’re recording right now.” And some of you may of wondered why I hate him. Well while he’s not exctly stellar in the first half in the second Stephen becomes goddman insufferable, slowly destroying the band for his affair and not giving one iota of a shit what anyone else wants. He’s a selfish, egomanical cheating prick. And yes I get it their recording an album.. but doing live shows would give them extra practice, MONEY, even if likely not a lot and exposure for said album. I get professoinal bands stop touring for a bit to do an album but you are not a professional band, and said bands still often iron out the album on the road. God you suck.

But while Scott sidesteps this argument he walks into another where Ramona confronts him about lisa about liking her.. and he rightly says if there was anything, which there was not it’s in the past. And while yes he is a cheater, she does not know this yet. This plot honestly would’ve worked better if she learned about the knives thing sooner, but instead she just comes off as paranoid for listening to Roxy about something that isn’t happening. Yes Scott’s been shown to be attracted to her.. but he’s been ashamed of it, fighting it and in denial about it, and is clealry all in with Ramona. Being attracted to someone else on a phsyical level does NOT mean your relationship is doomed. 

Things get worse as he goes home to ruminate.. and instead sees a man’s Penis. And Wallace..is at his second most unsymapthetic, not letting Scott get a shirt or a bus pass or something like a decent human being for no goddamn reason. Usually when Wallace is a dick to Scott, Scott’s earned it and badly needs a slap in the face. Here he’s just being a prick because.. the plot needs him to? I dunno it dosen’t work for me. It’s in character, I just don’t have to like it. 

So with no other options.. Scott ends up at Lisa’s. And so we get the last temptation of Scott. Lisa admits, embarassed that she’s been wearing sexy dresses and what not specifically to attract him, with Scott also mentioning how things are rough, Lisa tries to fight it herself pointing out he’s with ramona.. and when Scott points out they didn’t do anything in the past Lisa points out they should’ve.. and maybe they should now. 

We fade to black as Scott ends up in a dream and finds Roxy, who naturally has the same skill and tries to Freddy Kruger him before he wakes. He finds Lisa but they didn’t do anything: Scott pushed her away and babbled about how much he loved Ramona instead. As i’ve said.... his heart was never with LIsa... and even when he was so close to giving in he couldn’t. It’s a tangible sign of growth: He screwed around on Knives with Ramona, and given how bad things were getting with Ramona, it would be oh so easy to once again ditch a relationship the minute he found something else and oh so understandable. But... he dosen’t. He loves Ramona even if he hasn’t said it, he wants to make this work, and he’s changed. She’s changed him. He’s not quite a good man yet.. bu he’s getting to be good enough. Love turned him from a skeezy dumbass into a far more loveable dumbass. Ramona’s gotten him to stop dating a teenager (even if again he cheated), face his past with envy to finally move on and now get a job. He’s realized just hwo much she means to his life and world and so he goes to tell her. 

Riggghtttt after going to get his job back and works a shift, with steven wanting to punch his life in the balls. Stephen shut the fuck up. Just because Scott is lucky and your stuck dating satan’s scrotum does not mean you get to punch his life int he balls. Kim does, because he’s put her through more shit but not you. 

He goes to second cup to talk to Stacey.. only to end up at the wrong one where Knives also now has a job... and we finally get an answer to who the mystery katana guy is...

Yup turns out wielding giant weapons in vengance runs in the family. As for how he knows about Scott her aunt mentioned her boyfriend, everyone freaked out and obviously while her mom was mentioned as knowing in volume 1, they did not tell her dad whose brain turned into an engine of vengance and defaced the shrine. While part of it is apparnetly racisim for Scott being white the fact is he clearly saw Scott’s photograph. The guy is 5 years older. I get him being protective. Still dosen’t justify cutting off his head. His balls maybe but not his head. 

And then Scott ran, once agian finding a subspace entracne.. and this time we see inside ramona’s head and well...

Yeah.. that’s.. kind of fucked, and Ramona isn’t happy scott saw that, though she backs down once Scott explains..a nd then gets upset over him staying at Lisa’s but before SCott can tell her he loves her it turns out Roxy stayed over. So yeah, Ramona might of cheated, she tells him to alk it off and he runs around in a psycadelic haze of emtoinal confusion. And meets.. someone new...

Scott snaps out of his funk and ignores his doppleganger heading back for Ramona... whose fighting Mr. Chau. Scott left the door to Ramona’s head open and he followed him through Subspace. Scott lures him into the house and away from her only to run into Roxy. This leads to both of his attackers fighting and her wondering if Gideons ent him “Why does no one ever belivie in me?!” 

She soon realize no i’ts just unrelated and calls Scotto ut on hiding behind not having a sword and behind her being a woman, caling it a flimsy excuse. I mean she’s tring to kil lhim. It’s okay to hit an enemy combatant. Scott realizes he has to stop running... and get real with ramona leading to a truly epic, romantic and heartfelt speech and given how far he’s come and just how heartfelt it is it’s a real sign of how deep he feels. Sure we’ve seen genuine chemstiry between the two.. but htis moment is a shit.. from a simple relationship.. into true love. 

I may of only had a few but Relationships are not easy, They take work, they take time, they take patience and theyt ake love.. but if your willing to work with someone, look past some flaws and help them with the rest.. then it’s worth it. And Scott has finally realized it and for the first time in a while is running TOWARDS something difficult, actually working on this relationship and talking with his partner instead of running finding someone else or wallowing. He’s truly grown up. While he still has miles to go.. he’s taken about 50 steps forward with this. And as such given the kind of unvierse we’re in, as Ramona is genuinely touched by it he levels up a glowing sword with a heart shaped hilt coming out of his chest.. and realizing what’s happening he pulls it out....

So Scott faces off with roxy and in an awesomly short battle, their sords clash.. and he bisects her. 

Scott then honestly talks down Mr Chau who leaves after a nod, and Ramona tells Scott she loves him two. The two make out and all is well.

One make out fades into another, as we cut to Scott moving in with Kim and Blockhead’s help. Well kinda they only had one box but they owed him one. He and wallace comiserate over the end of their time as roomies. They’ll always be friend but it’s truly the end of an era. Also Wallace gets off another bit of dickery as he’’s very glad it all worked out for scott...

 Now there’s the Wallace I know and love. Dickish but just the right loveable kind of douchebag with that swagger. 

Back at Knives house she’s apparenlty into somebody though who I have no idea, Mr Chau give sher his blessing and she.. apparenlty doesen’t know chinese. I dunno. As I said her subplot this go round was her weakest overall. 

And so we end with the whole gang gathered to see Lisa off. It’s a REALLY nice shot, and one of the only times Wallace is seen with the Sex Bomb omb side of the group. Oh sure he goes to their shows and what not, but generally their never in the same vincinity so while there’s no interaction I still find this neat. Seriously the whole main cast is there, it’s a really lovely shot

Also Jason and Hollie.. who are getting awfully chummy. Whu Oh. And of course Craphole and Mouth Face are as likeable as ever. 

So we jsut get a genuinely nice sene. Except Stephen and Julie reconciling. Fuck that. Please move on. And as everyone fondly wishes Lisa adeu and wish she stuck arond the res tof the series we end on Scott and Ramona snuggling, Scott asking her her birthday and finding out she’s 24, and they both will be come september. Scott wishes this moment could last. 

They probperly snuggle as the volume ends on a high. 

Final Thoughts:

Yeah.. Gets it Together is, on rexamination, DEFINTELY my faviorite of the 6. Besides personal value i’ts hte best contained story, contaning lots of character development, great character moments, jokes, and EASILY the best art so far, with goregouness and creativty abounding. 

There is a problem here or there: Stephen and Julie’s subplot feels underbaked, and not just because I hates them, and there are several scenes that don’t further plot or character stuff. Ther’es also stuff that could’ve been expanded on.. but given this is still a pretty meaty graphic novel, it’s understandable why it wasn’t.. though it is why I’d love a streaming series since while the movie is excellent, a full series could expand on stuff from the books more Brian simply didn’t have time for. Knives also didn’t get a lot to do. 

But their drowned out by tons of great decisions: Lisa was a wonderful additoin to the cast and I genuinely wish she’d stuck around, adding in some energy, blending well with the Sex Bomb Omb crowd, and having great dynamics with everyone and her arc with Scott is heartbreaking,knowing she can’t have him but wanting him anyway having never gottne proper closure on the man she’s always wanted. She’s a heartbreaking character and its nice to see her end in a decent place and on good terms with Scott, having let him go for both thier sakes. 

And while Lisa is a highlight everyone is on their a game here for the most part apart from knives, girl hitler, and captain dumbass: Scott grows signfigantly but is funny as hell, Wallace has an intresting arc trying to nudge Scott out without being overt about it, scared to really confront him, Kim is in a happy and serene place for once and it shows. The villians are also intresting: While Mr Chau is a tad underbaked, he’s sitll a cool imposing presence. I do think he shoudl’ve had more to do with the plot.. but is still just so freaking cool it papers over that and him just.. disappearing after this like poor Lisa. 

Roxy is far more intresting, having clearly more going on than we see and while I wish we’d got her backstory, she’s easily the most engaging of the exes, being the only one to actively compete with Scott (All her and ramona end up doing is making out a little it turned out), and have bigger stakes than just “The glasses wearing douche asked me to beat up my exes boyfriend and I was like alright. 

All in all Gets it Together is really magical, the series high point, and just damn fun and it was a pleasure to go through

Next Month on Scott Pilgrim: It all falls down as we take a look into what once was my least faviorite Album, vs the unvierse. Two perfect assholes try and murder scott with Robutts, his relationship and band crumble and things get sad so very very sad. 

Next on this blog: More LIlo and Stitch! The Proud Family come to Kauai and get into a fight with our heroes. Also wizard kelly... who if nothing else is now far more tolerable now i’ve had to spend another volume with the wicked bitch of the west. Touche universe touche. See you at the next rainbow. 

[everamazingfe]

A Close Shave

Fic Summary: After being picked up by the Urania and brought back to the Hephaestus station, Communications Officer Doug Eiffel tries to come to terms with his new look. It doesn’t go well. Luckily, Jacobi comes along to save the day. 

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Words in this fic: 2082 Pairings: Doug Eiffel/Daniel Jacobi Warnings for this fic: Brief mentions of abuse

Notes: I got into Wolf 359 at the start of this year, and after relistening to it recently I decided to start writing some fics. I was pretty nervous about posting this, but I couldn't keep it in my drafts forever, so here it is! There’s also a link to this fic over on A O 3 as the source of this post! Click it to go read it over there, or you can search up the title or ‘everamazingfe’ on the site.

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There was something about him, Eiffel had decided within the first few seconds of seeing him for the first time. His face was mostly blank unless he had some sly comment to say, some sarcastic remark, and then that stony expression was replaced by something cockier, more smug. Sometimes there was a flash of softness to it, usually when Maxwell was speaking. But even when his face was at its blankest, there was a mischievous gleam in those bright green eyes of his.

Eiffel had never really noticed anyone’s eyes before. He didn’t know Minkowski’s eye color, or Lovelace’s for that matter. Hell, Eiffel didn’t even know if he knew his own eye color at this point, he avoided looking in mirrors at all costs. But for some reason, he’d noticed Jacobi’s. Not only had he noticed it, but he had committed it to memory as well. 

For a moment, he was convinced he could picture them clearly as he stared out the window above his comms panel, making eye contact with them in the reflection of the glass. Somehow, he was able to picture his face with perfect clarity too, despite only seeing it a handful of times while he was in sound mind. 

“Feel good to be home?” The Jacobi that Eiffel thought he was picturing in his mind so clearly spoke, startling him out of his trance and making him jump because it wasn’t his imagination, it was the real deal. It made sense, he’d never had a very visual imagination anyway, but there was always hope for a change of mind. “Wow, I didn’t think I was all that scary, Officer Eiffel.”

“You’re not,” he grumbled with a huff of indignation, grabbing the edge of his station and pulling himself back to it, hooking his knees beneath it to keep himself there. “I just… Got lost in thought.”

“You? Capable of thought? Now that’s something that wasn’t included in your file.” There it was, that stupid sly grin that Jacobi always had when he thought he was being oh-so-clever. Usually, he was. But that joke had become played out within the first month on the station.

Eiffel responded with mock laughter, trying to ignore the way that comment made an invisible knife twist in his chest. After all he’d done, no one thought he was good at anything. What a surprise. But he didn’t have time to unpack all of that right then. “Get some new material, I’ve heard it all before,” he drawled, hoping he looked as bored as he sounded. “I’m a slacker, I’m an idiot, I’m a motormouth. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Your shoe’s untied.” 

Maybe there was some truth to one of those three things, because like the idiot he was, Eiffel had that brief moment of panic everyone had when someone told them that their shoe was untied, or their fly was down, or there was something on their shirt. And because of that panic, he looked down. It had completely slipped his mind that he hadn’t even worn shoes in the two (Three? Did those hundred days hurtling through space count? He didn’t know.) years he had been on the Hephaestus. “Oh, goddammit!” He groaned as he stared down at his socked feet in dismay, trying to tune out the cackling laughter Jacobi let out behind him that sent him halfway across the room. 

“You’re also gullible, apparently!” He let himself continue his path across the room so he could push off the back wall, still in a fit of giggles as he sailed back to the console. “You actually fell for it! I can’t believe it! I’ve never gotten anyone with that before.” Jacobi’s grin was bigger than it had ever been, and he wiped the tears from his eyes before they wreaked havoc on the station’s internal systems. Maxwell was too smart to fall for a simple trick like that, and Kepler… Well, Kepler didn’t like being pranked. 

Eiffel grumbled something incoherently, waiting patiently for Jacobi to get over himself before he spoke again. “Was there a real reason you came down here?”

“No, not really. Kepler’s giving Minkowski an orientation for her new role and then he needed to discuss… something with Hilbert, I don’t even wanna know. And Ala- Maxwell’s busy with Hera. So, I was bored.”

“What about Lovelace?”

“Dunno. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care.”

“Right… So you came to interrupt my very important work?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you.” Jacobi made himself comfortable, lounging in the free-floating bliss that was zero-g as Eiffel pretended to look busy, though his eyes were fixed on the reflection of the man in the glass. The bright light of Wolf 359 backlit him beautifully, and the color in the star seemed to desaturate everything else in the reflection, except for those damn eyes. 

Eiffel let out a sigh, bringing a hand up to run it through his hair, his fingers brushing through the empty space where his long curls used to be. He let out a frustrated growl, moving his hand up to his scalp. The little hair that was left was scraggly and damaged as hell. It was coarse and patchy, and it scratched his hand uncomfortably when he ran his hand over it. “Actually. I have an idea of something we can do.” He turned around to look at the real Jacobi, who arched an eyebrow in silent encouragement for him to go on. “Come with me.”

He’d had his head shaved a handful of times, and it was usually under duress. The first time was as a punishment for getting gum stuck in it, even though he hadn’t been the one to put gum there, and it would’ve been much easier to just cut the chunk out rather than shave his whole head. The second time had been when he’d joined the military. This would make number three, but this time it was necessary, despite the fact that his goal had really been to never cut his hair again. All that length had meant a lot to him, it meant that he had control over something in his life, finally, but the cryofreeze had, apparently, had other plans for it.

Additionally, most of the shaving kits, particularly their razors, had been dismantled for Minkowski’s crusade against Blessie. God only knew where all of those had ended up, or if they were still even on the station, but he knew there was one that was still safely tucked away. 

“Wow, Eiffel. I thought you would’ve liked to wine and dine your dates before bringing them home. You always struck me as more of a gentleman than that.”

“Shut up.” He rooted around in his locker, letting various pieces of uniform and whatever else had been shoved in there float freely around them as he did so. Most of it was contraband that he should’ve been more careful about getting seen, but he was too focused. Once he found the kit, he let out a soft, ‘a ha!’ And underhand tossed it to Jacobi. “You’re shaving my head.”

For once, Jacobi didn’t have some sort of sarcastic remark to make in response. He was just confused. “Sorry?”

“I can’t… I can’t stand it being like this. I can’t. And it’ll never grow back right with the ends this damaged, and I don’t really feel like cutting myself a thousand times in the process. So you’re doing it for me.” He tried to make his voice sound commanding, authoritative, but instead he just sounded desperate, irritated, upset. His hair meant so much to him, but he could stand to be without it for a little bit. He’d done it before, he could do it again. What he couldn’t stand was the sorry excuse for hair that he’d been left with. 

“You don’t think I’d use the razor to kill you? It’d be the perfect opportunity.”

“If you wanted to kill me, you could’ve done it back on the Urania when I was half dead.” 

“You hadn’t annoyed me as much back then.”

“I mean, if you really want to, I guess you can, but… I’d really just like my head shaved, please.”

A dramatic sigh filled the silence, and then: “Ugh, fine. But you owe me.”

That was good enough for Eiffel, and he trailed along behind Jacobi to the Hephaestus’ bathroom. Gravity was a little different in there, as in it was actually present in order to make showering and other general acts of hygiene (that Eiffel didn’t really partake in) a little easier. So he was able to sit on the counter and stare their reflections down as Jacobi stood behind him, setting the kit beside him on the counter. 

Jacobi wasn’t a friend, not by a longshot. In Minkowski’s book, he was part of ‘the enemy.’ But they’d spent a decent amount of time together after he’d been picked up by the Urania, and even a little bit of time before that over the comms. Someone had to keep in touch with him and keep up-to-date on his coordinates so the ship could get a lock on his location, and Kepler had felt like that work was beneath the highly intellectual minds of himself and Maxwell, so it had fallen to Jacobi. And Eiffel hadn’t minded, because beneath all the smart remarks, the guy was alright to talk to. A little stilted, maybe, but that wasn’t anything he couldn’t work with. It was better on the Urania. Easier, at least, because Jacobi’s body language did a lot of the talking for him. Once again, helping Eiffel was deemed grunt work, so Jacobi had been the one stuck tending to his wounds, helping him get around when he was too weak to even keep his eyes open, and adjust to eating again after not doing it for a hundred days (though with all of the substitutes for rations Hilbert dared to call food, one could argue it had been even longer since he’d really eaten). 

Long story short, Eiffel liked Jacobi to some degree. The guy was alright in his book, and he was sure the feeling was mutual, because he could’ve easily said no, or done a hackjob of it, or killed him. But instead, he took his time and made sure that he didn’t miss any spots, his other hand resting gently on Eiffel’s head to keep it steady despite all the fidgeting. 

After the first pass, Eiffel moved to get off the counter, to turn around and thank Jacobi, but a firm hand on his shoulder pushed him back down. 

“I gotta go again, make sure I didn’t miss a spot. It looked awful before, but it’ll look even worse if there’s just a tiny patch with a few hairs left.”

Eiffel furrowed his eyebrows together, but nodded and got comfortable again. As comfortable as he could, at least. His ass was already numb and the feeling was starting to spread down to his legs, but hopefully the second pass would go quicker. 

And it did, kind of. Jacobi didn’t need to clean the hair from the razor as often because there was barely any left, but he still took that same slow and gentle care as he had the first time. When he was done, he wiped off the leftover shaving cream with a nearby towel, smiling genuinely as Eiffel lifted a hand to feel over his scalp. “Well? How does it feel?”

“It feels great,” he answered earnestly, laughing in relief. He didn’t hate the way his reflection looked anymore, and now he could actually believe everyone when they told him to pull it together because it would grow back eventually. Hopefully this made the process easier. His eyes drifted to Jacobi’s in the mirror, mirroring that same smile. “Thank you... I really do owe you.”

“Yeah, you do.” The genuine smile faded to his usual cocky grin, and Eiffel threw the towel at him. It hit him square in the face, but it didn’t wipe away that look. “But… You’re welcome.” He offered him a hand to help him off the counter, steadying him with a chuckle when he nearly lost his balance. “Gravity that hard on you, Doug?”

“No! It’s just… That counter was not very comfortable to sit for that long on. And yeah, I guess gravity’s pretty hard to adjust to too.” 

“Well then we’d better get you back to the lazy embrace of zero-g.”

[delkios]

[fic][Star Wars: Republic Commando, Sev, OCs, G] Go Now and Finish What’s to be Done

Takes place in the nonexistent RepComm sequel where Sev ends up joining the beginnings of the rebellion.  I haven't found a detailed explanation for how the inhibitor chips work but I figure there'd be some kind of fail-safe in the event Order 66 is instituted while a clone is unable to take comms, has busted gear or is simply sleeping.  I personally imagine once chips are activated they transmit an activation code to any inactive chips nearby and the order stays dormant in the mind until a trigger (Jedi) occurs.

Title from Iron Maiden's Afraid to Shoot Strangers.

Title: Go Now and Finish What's to be Done Fandom: Star Wars: Republic Commando Rating: PG Word Count: 2988 Characters: Sev, original characters Summary: A year after the fall of the Republic, Sev brushes against Order 66.

He was never going to get used to all these people.  Even after the months spent in a Trandoshian slave ship, stuffed in a cell with so many other creatures he felt like he could scarcely breath, Sev felt uncomfortable having people constantly around him even at a distance.  It made him acutely aware of the people he was missing.

It certainly didn’t help that more people seemed to be arriving every day, making this ramshackled outpost feel claustrophobic with each new transport.  Someone was going to start paying attention if they got too much bigger but the folks in charge of this… ‘rebellion’, as they were calling it, were too busy arguing about what their goals were and how to achieve them to pay attention to that kind of detail.

If Sev didn’t owe some of those people his life, he would’ve bugged out on his own.  That and damn near none of them understood how guerrilla warfare actually worked which left him, by the some cosmic joke, the only one capable of teaching them how not to get their fool selves killed.

He rubbed at his forehead, waiting in the hangar for some pilots he was meant to turn into sharpshooters.  Another headache.  It was feeling near constant these days, probably should get it checked out but it was hardly something Sev couldn’t work through.  Couldn’t even count how many missions he’d done with a concussion, a headache was nothing.

Something in his periphery caught Sev’s attention, drawing it to the far landing pad: a child, peering about nervously and making an attempt to hide behind a much larger being- likely their guardian -in discussion with the dock master.  Even from that distance Sev could recognize the filthy, tattered robes and the object hanging from the child’s belt.  A Jedi.

Jedi needed to be executed.

Sev was halfway across the hangar, hunting knife in hand, before awareness slammed into him.  The reality of what he’d just been about to do crashed on him so heavily it pushed the air from his lungs, skin breaking out into a cold sweat.  His hands shook, his knees nearly buckled and there was a pressure in his head, urging him to kill the child.  He heard his knife clatter to the deck, faint around the sound of his blood roaring in his ears.  He stumbled out, allowing himself to think of nothing but getoutgetougetout for fear that foreign killing urge would return.

“Whoa, Sev- you okay, man?”

There were hands on him and Sev belatedly realized he was being supported by someone and that he’d somehow managed to get out of the hangar.  “Out,” he gasped, “gotta get out.”

“Out where?”

“Away.  Somewhere… out.”

“Ooookay, I’m taking you to Charla.  You look terrible and you’re kinda freaking me out.”

Sev had no choice but to trust in whoever was bodily hauling him because the light of the hall was harsh and he had to squeeze his eyes shut to try to block them out.  His head throbbed, the duel mantra of execute the Jedi and good soldiers follow orders racing through his head so fast he couldn’t think about anything else.

“What happened?”

“I dunno- he just charged outta the hangar and ran into me.”

“Get him on the table.”

Another set of hands were on him and Sev finally registered the sharp scent of disinfectant and the memory of Kamino hit him so hard that Sev crumpled over the table he’d been lead to.  Good soldiers follow orders defective product decommission defective product good soldiers follow orders execute the Jedi, “No,” he moaned, strength finally giving out on him, “not defective, don’t decommission me, I’ll be good.  Good soldiers follow orders good soldiers follow orders not defective good soldiers follow orders.”

“Dank farrik- give me that hypo.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know- PTSD trigger probably.”

There was a sharp prick to the side of his neck and a soft hiss.  A gradual numbness overtook Sev, forcing the tension out of his muscles and turning his thoughts sluggish.  His breathing evened out and the smears of light and color eventually resolved into recognizable shapes.  He was laying on the floor, he realized, having crawled under an examination table, half curled into a ball.  Two people were staring at him with open concern- Charla, the closest thing to a head medic they had, and one of the pilots Sev was teaching, Reever.

“Sev,” Charla asked in a carefully measured tone, “how are you feeling?”

His eyes wandered for a moment, not entirely sure how or why he was in the position he was in.  Eventually he settled on replying with, “Like osik.”

“Well, you kinda look it.”  The old Gran’s distended lips pulled back over flat teeth as she smiled at Sev.  She held out her hand.  “Can you come out?”

Honestly he kind of wanted to just fall asleep.  But he pushed himself up on his hands good soldiers follow orders and crawled out.  With a little prodding, Sev managed to sit on the examination table.

“Good lad.  Now, what happened to you?”

“There’s something wrong with my head.”

Charla hummed, pulling a tray of examination tools nearby.  “How so?”

“I wanted to kill someone.”

Reever snorted, making themself comfortable on a nearby chair.  “How is that different from how you normally are?”

Sev turned to glare at the human but Charla’s hold on his chin was too strong.  “I know what bloodlust feels like.  I know what killing intent feels like.  I’ve killed out of anger and hate and fear and panic.  I’ve killed because I had to and I’ve killed without caring about it.  This wasn’t like any of that.”

Reever grimaced but Charla didn’t bat any of her three eyes.  “What was it like?”

Sev forced back a wince as she shone a light into his eyes.  “Involuntary.  It wasn’t like an impulse, my body just moved on its own.”

“Disassociating?”

“No.  It didn’t feel like that.  It was like… something had taken over.  I started having thoughts that didn’t make any sense.”

“Like what?”

His jaw twitched as the words came back to him, faint in the thick fog of medication but it still made him want to throw up.  “ ‘Good soldiers follow orders’,” he repeated, “ ‘execute the Jedi’.”

Reever stiffened, sitting up straighter.  “That can’t be a coincidence, right?  That you started thinking about killing Jedi at the same time one’s supposed to come here?”

Charla hummed, tapping a finger to her mouth.  “They say the clone army turned on the Jedi.  Does it have something to do with that?”

Sev shook his head.  “I don’t see how.  I was MIA before that happened.”

“Wait- you’re a clone?”

As one, both Sev and Charla turned to Reever with a slow look.  “Did you not catch on to the fact his name is Seven?”

“Hey, I fly with Porkins.  I don’t judge people’s names.”

Turning back to her patient, Charla continued as if she hadn’t been sidetracked.  “How does your head feel right now?”

“Hurts.  Felt like it was splitting before the hypo.”

“How long has it felt like that?”

The moment flashed in his mind and Sev shut his eyes as another fresh stab went through his head.  “Right after I realized I was gonna kill the Jedi.  Been having headaches for a while before, don’t know if that’s related.”

“How long before?”

“Dunno.  Maybe… three weeks ago?  About the time of my last mission.”

Charla looked through Sev’s file she had pulled up on a tablet.  “I don’t see any mentions of injuries from then.”

“Wasn’t injured.  Just raiding an Imperial cache.  Simple snatch-and-grab.  We only ran into a couple troopers, took care of ‘em easily.”

She hummed, then gently pushed Sev down onto his back.  “Well, lets get you scanned, see if that will reveal anything.”  She pushed a couple buttons on the table’s control panel, unlocking it from the dock so it could float freely, then moving it to hook to the medical imager’s railing.

The machine turned on and Sev closed his eyes to the light, focusing on his centering practices as the imager whirred around him.  He was finally feeling calm and much more like himself when the process ended and Charla made an unhappy sound.  “I’m not seeing anything on the scan.  No abnormalities, no swelling, no unnatural spikes in chemistry.  Everything matches with your last scan.”

And there went his calm.  He’d never been great at centering himself when not on mission.  “There has to be something,” Sev growled around gritted teeth.  He made a distressed sound in the back of his throat, resisting the urge to clutch at his aching head.  “I don’t blank out like that.  There has to be- I can feel it eating away at my thoughts!”  Eating away at his sense of self, at his control.  For all that Vau had beaten aggression and stubbornness and ruthlessness into his clones, he hated berserkers.  The moment you lose yourself on the battlefield is the moment you get you and your squad killed.  You will never lose control, you will never need to- you will be better than that.

“Hmm… let me try a deeper scan.”  Charla put a hand on Sev’s shoulder, startling him out of the memory.  “This may hurt a little.”

He merely nodded.  Pain was fine.  He could deal with pain.  The machine whirred on again and Sev couldn’t help the initial wince.  It was a cross between pressure and pinpoint pricks moving through his brain.  But it was a simple thing to endure and it helped him focus on regaining his calm.

Charla made a sound, buttons beeping as the traveling pain halted and reversed.  It halted again, feeling like all the little pins were centered on one section of his head, edging on the far side of uncomfortable.  “There’s something odd…”

“The bacata processing implant?”

“I already know about that,” she chided lightly, “and unless it somehow migrated inside your skull, no.”

Sev’s blood flushed cold.  “What do you mean it’s in my skull?”

“It’s either the very beginnings of a tumor or someone put something in your brain that they didn’t want anyone to find.”

Neither option was especially appealing to Sev but, knowing the Kaminoans, he’d place his bets on the latter.  “Can you get it out?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“If it’s not supposed to be there, then it’s safe to take out, right?”  Sev was trying not to sound like he wasn’t trying to keep from panicking but those thrice-damned kaminii put something in his brain.  “So get it out.”

Charla gave him a measured look.  She put her hand back on Sev’s shoulder and gave him a grounding squeeze.  Sev had heard others refer to her as matronly, grandmotherly, and Sev had no idea what that meant but something about her always seemed comforting, even when she was ordering people around.  “I’ll have to put you under for the procedure.  From what I can tell it shouldn’t take long but you’ll be in the medbay when you wake up, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Reever-” Stang, Sev completely forgot they were there, “let someone know Sev will be in medical for the time being.”

“What should I tell them?”

“That he’ll be under observation until I release him.”

“Got it.”  Reever came just into Sev’s view, patting his ankle gently.  “Good luck, bud.  Place won’t be the same without you skulking around.”

Sev growled in response and laughter trailed Reever’s retreat.  The table moved away from the imager and towards one of the surgery bays.  When Charla came back into view, she was holding a set of clippers.  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to shave off some of your hair.”  She pressed the back of a thick nail to the right side of his head a little above the ear, right before the curve of the skull.  “In this area.”

There was no way around it, of course, but that information still gave Sev pause.  His hair was well beyond unruly these days, using hair ties and headbands to keep the curls from falling into his face.  But he’d yet to get it cut since his abandonment on Kashyyk.  Fixer had been the only one to cut his hair since training- kept all of Delta’s hair in regulation length during their downtime.  Sev couldn’t stand the thought of someone else doing it.

Sev took a deep breath and said, “Alright.”  It was quick- just a buzzing and a slight vibration to the side of his head, cool air rushing against the newly exposed skin.  It barely took a minute but it left Sev shaken afterward.

He heard Charla set the clippers down and move away to prep for the surgery, leaving Sev to focus on his breathing and forcing himself not to reach up and touch the spot.  Hopefully he’d be able to cover the bald patch up somehow.  He didn’t think he could stand to have someone messing with his hair long enough to make it look less blatant.  He was mildly amazed that this was shaping up to be the hardest part in the whole ordeal.  When the Gran came back, she had a mask over her face and a hypo in a gloved hand.  “Ready?”

“Yeah.”  He shut his eyes.  “Let’s do this.”

---

When Sev woke up again the pressure in his head was gone and he breathed deeply for the first time in what felt like years.  His eyes roamed along the ceiling of the medbay with a sudden clarity before they found Charla leaning over him and Reever hovering in the background.  “How are you feeling, Sev?”  Charla asked softly.

“Better.  The normal kind of murdery.”  His mouth felt thick and he accepted the glass of water passed his way.  “What was it?”

Charla reached to the side as Sev pushed himself to a seated position.  She held up a clear case with a fleshy colored, amoeba-looking thing pressed inside.  “This.  An initial biopsy shows it’s structure is too consistent to be purely organic.  I’m going to take it to the tech lab and see what they think.”

“Why are they here?”  He asked, pointing to Reever.

“Dodonna wanted me to keep him updated on your condition.  Also you’re, like, my friend so I also wanted to keep updated on your condition.  Synda found your knife in the hangar, by the way."

“You're not getting it back until I clear you from medical," Charla said promptly.  "I did a number of scans while you were out.  I found no other anomalies, your brain seems stable and the surgery went well.  You really are feeling better?”

“My head doesn’t hurt anymore.  Guess I won’t really know until I see that Jedi again.”

“Yeah, about that,” Reever looked disturbed, “I found out that that Jedi is a kid.  Were you really gonna kill a kid?”

“That’s what my body wanted to do, so yeah.”

Reever gaped in horror.  “Sev- that’s supremely karked up.”

Sev rolled his eyes.  “I’m fourteen, I’m well aware how karked up everything about me is.”

Their mouth flapped, not sure if they believed Sev or not.  Charla frowned thoughtfully.  “Well.  I suppose that explains why some of your brain scans so different than other humans of your… presumed age.”

“You’re very tall for a fourteen year old,” Reever said weakly.

“Accelerated aging.  I get to live twice the speed of a human in half the time.”  The clone snorted.  “Not like any of us expected to live that long anyway.”

Reever rubbed a hand over their face.  “Sev, man- I’m learning so much about you today and absolutely all of it is horrifying.  Stang, no wonder you’re the way you are.”

Sev just scoffed.  They didn’t know the half of it.

“Well, I suppose that leaves us two very big questions to answer.”  Charla held up fingers as she counted.  “One- what exactly this thing is and what does it do to you, and two- were you a special case that got it implanted or does every clone have one.”

For a painful eternity, Sev’s heart froze.  His fingers curled over the edge of the table and he could feel his breath rattling in his lungs.  “I need to get my brothers.  I need to get them out of the Empire and that,” he spat, pointing an accusatory finger at whatever had been taken out of his brain, “out of their heads.”

“Assuming that was actually the problem,” said Reever.

“And if it is,” Charla cradled the case in her hands, face uncharacteristically grim, “we may have found something extremely important for the Rebellion.”

If the chip was the problem than it would mean, to some degree, this entire thing had been planned from the beginning.  “I need to see Dodonna.”  Sev felt that old, familiar fire raging up inside of him as well as a rare clarity.  First, he was going to save his brothers.  Then he was going to dismantle this Empire, built on the lives and subjugation of his fellow clones.  Then he was going hunt down every kaminii that took part in the program and break every bone in their skinny little necks.

[minalblood]

Ok this isnt my usual way of doing things cuz... Well, tbh i dont really care enough to actually make a post bout most things, id just rather reblog shit, but I've now seen several posts comparing the Loki finale with spn's and just... Where?

Spn ended as a show with one of the most hopelessness inducing shit I've ever seen, taking a character thats been consistently seen as at the very least depressed and killing him off with a 'that's what his happy ending looks like' plastered on it, another character who's whole ark was reconciling with himself about who he is only to make him essentially cut half of himself out for a kid and also still be unhappy, and a third who's whole thing was learning what free will is and that he too deserves free will only to have him go back to obeying orders in heaven. It was absolutely against everything the show had portrayed for 15 years, including in the actual season this finale was a part of.

Loki is an on going show (s 2 confirmed), but even if it hadn't been, the shows main narrative themes remained true to the end, Loki did in fact grow as a character, the shows ultimate plot is about free will, tackling also the fact that free will means shit will also happen, its not only roses and happiness and Sylvie stuck to her actual goal and achieved it, aka killing whoever was behing the TVA. Loki's goal throughtout the show wasn't killing the Time keepers, it was having the free will to write his own life story and he's done and doing exactly that, sometimes that means shit happens, no characters died needlessly in my opinion and as I've said, in no way did it go against its own themes that it established initially. Not to mention the fact again that it's ongoing!

Finally to touch on what people are really complaining about (the more vocal post I've seen circulating, I've no doubt some people just genuinely didn't like it and thats fine) which is the Sylvie/Loki thing. Ok lets discuss. Firstly, if it's not ur thing that's entirely fine, its not mine either, but to claim it's a problem for u cuz it's, as Ive seen multiole people say, heteronormative is hella problematic to me since it seems to erase the fact that both characters by their own words are bi/pan. That's shitty. Number 2: 'if Sylvie was male presenting they wouldn't have gone there'... Now while I do think Marvel/Disney wouldnt likely have the balls, I still find issue with this statement since it feels very... Sexist to me. I dunno what exactly about it, but it very much reads like y'all would not complain bout the pairing if Sylvie was male presenting more so than a dig at Marvel/Disney and that is not cool with me. And finally, C the selfcest thing as incest stand-in. Ok so I get that selfcest aint for everyone, which again, fair point if u just dont vibe at all, but the actual issues people seem to have is less with it being selfcest and more that its not mlm, which is highly hypocritical. Now to the people who do just dislike it for being basically incest, ur perogative, ur view , but I'd've hoped that the whole multivers aspect of this show could've made it clearer that while they are variants of each other they are not actually the same person. Also also since the spn parallel is what began this, to the spn fans I ask, how tf can y'all not see this, the multuple versions of Sam and Dean alone should have you realize it's someones history, experience, surroundings, accuaintances that mould a person. We don't even know for sure if they share parents! Its a dif universe they've been born in, oddly enough that means they couldn't be more physically different, even if they may share some personality traits or some history between them. Again, i dont ship it, it feels awkward to me based on their interactions, but that doesnt mean imma say some bullshit bout incest just cuz I dont like the idea. Fact is they're not actually related and, as an aside, the would u fuck ur clone talk has been around for ages with little issues about incest because its already covered in the meme as is the pollar opposite.

Ok this was rambly and well, hopefully some of my points have been made clear. To end I just wanna say I do look forward to season 2, I can't wait to see Mobius and Loki reacquaint now that we have a Mobius that doesnt remember/know Loki it'll be a nice juxtapose to their relation this season (yes i ship it, whatever) and also also wanna see what's gonna happen with Kang overall and with Sylvie. She wasn't having a good time there.

Edited below:

So quick add, I just realised why the comparison fucks with me so much more than other shit and it's cuz it reduces both finales to shipping, thats why it annoys me, it essentially undermines Loki's whole arc and reduces it to shipping and it also undermines just how bad spn ended and why its bad since it also reduces it to a ship. Neither are bad or good because of a ship being canon or not on its own and seeing this comparison makes it seem very much like thats the reason spn ended bad and equally makes Loki ending bad because of course it would if the ship didnt go the way you wanted it. But thats not the way to measure a show like Loki or Spn, or at least def not the only measurement to apply for the end conclusion.

[marshmallowprotection]

WARNING! VERY LONG! AND ALSO TALKS ABOUT ABUSE AND MANIPULATION AND ALSO MENTIONS OF ALCOHOL.

Please don't read if that triggers you!

ALSO MAJOR AND I MEAN MAJOR SPOILERS FOR DRAKENGARD 3 AND POSSIBLY EVILLIOUS CHRONICLES TOO. — Submission

It has been like a millennium since I have sent you any sort of things about a character (or in this case, characterS) but as I recently revised the story of this very fucked up pair of twins, I decided to show them to you. They are specifically characters in an RP of mine with my friend Jade which is a crossover between Evillious Chronicles and Drakengard 3.

Here's a bit of context:

The Intoners are beings that can use the power of song, but their true purpose is to destroy the world. The original Intoner was Zero, who became an Intoner after the Flower, some sort of being that the Gods created to destroy the world, took root inside of her corpse and effectively 'revived' her as an Intoner; also, Zero wasn't always called Zero, previously she was named Rose (which wasn't her birth name, as she has no birth name), but she changed her name to Zero after she became an Intoner (it's unknown why). After Zero tried to kill herself when she realized that she'd eventually be forced to destroy the world by the Flower, the Flower, sensing her hostility towards it, birthed five beings from her as sort of 'backups' in a sense to ensure it would succeed in destroying the world: One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. These beings are all in some way like Zero, as they were created from fragments of her memories, personality, and resemble people from Zero's past; e.g. One resembles a rebel girl who Zero was tied up next to as she was left to die in town's square of some village as punishment for her crimes of murdering hundreds of people; Five resembles a nun who Zero had killed at some point before she became an Intoner; etc. The Flower did this on purpose to make Zero hesitate in killing them, which...on paper it would seem to be a good idea, but Zero's not the type to hesitate in killing anybody, unless it's someone she cares about (which, the only people she cares about are not even really 'people', their dragons), and she don't give two fucks about the other Intoners at all, so, yeah.

'HERS' is a acronym for 'Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome' and its a fictional disease in Evillious that when your infected you become compelled into doing violence, as the goal of anybody whose ends up with HERS is to destroy the world and everybody in it; well that's an oversimplified explanation of it.

The Climb One is a ship that the last Earthlings from the Second Period used to escape their dying planet.

The First Period was the very first world in Evillious, which heavily resembled our world; the Second Period was a virtual reality created by the people of the First Period which also heavily resembled our world. At some point the First Period died (it's implied that a nuclear war happened there which is why everybody there died) and thanks to Behemo the Earthlings on the Climb One were taken into reality and they found the ruined First Period planet and on its ruins was built the Third Period (which was a world of its own). Oh and the humans from the Second Period are referred to as Earthlings in order to differentiate them from First Period/Third Period humans as they were originally not even 'real'.

Sickle is a robot built by an Earthling named Luna Hazuki and eventually he becomes a god and takes the form of a bat who observes the people of the Third Period.

Medora is another OC of mine from my RP with Jade. Her story is a story for another time ^^'

Aurende is an original kingdom of mine, not a country that's canonly in EC.

Why are Lumina and Eliora Romanian? I dunno I found out Lumina means sunshine in Romanian and just went with it; it's an insignificant detail anyways that's not exactly very relevant to Lumina and Eliora's stories but is just there.

Alright the context dumping is done with ^^''''' go onto the Evillious Chronicles and Drakengard wikis, they can give you a lot more less simplified context for this stuff but I think I told you the bare minimum you need to understand whats going on? I hope I gave you enough context to understand ^^'

But anyways on with th character info and Lumina and Eliora's story!

Name: Lumina

Aliases: True God Twins (With Eliora)

Lumi (By Eliora)

Lumina Ardelean (Full Name)

Hypocritical Strawberry (By Sickle, Mockingly)

Age: 1,045+ (On 499 E.C.)

Looks 18

Height: 163 cm/5’4’’

Weight: 49 kgs/110 lbs

Cup Size: C

Bust/Waist/Hip: 84/59/85

Sex: Female

Gender: Female

Classification: Human (Till 529 B.T.)

Earthling (Till 528 B.T.)

God

Race: Romanian

Hair Color: Strawberry Blonde

Eye Color: Gold

Born: 546 B.T.

Died: Varies

Status: Varies

Sexuality: Bisexual/Demiromantic

Relatives: Unnamed Mother (Deceased; Died In Childbirth)

Unnamed Father (Deceased; Died of Alcohol Overdose)

Eliora Ardelean (Younger Twin Sister)

Flower (Creation)

Zero (Flower’s Host)

One (Creation Via Flower)

Two (Creation Via Flower)

Three (Creation Via Flower)

Four (Creation Via Flower)

Five (Creation Via Flower)

Medora Aurende (Prototype Intoner)

Occupation: Creator of The Flower And Intoners

Affiliations: None

Favorite Food: Chocolate-Strawberry Sundae

Loves: Eliora, Revenge, Inducing Suffering In Others, Chocolate, Sundaes, Sweets, Strawberries

Hates: Alcohol, Her Father, People Who Hurt Others, People Calling Out Her Hypocrisy, Faeries, Her Father’s Girlfriend, Five

Weapons: Magic

Background + Personality: Lumina is a prideful but vengeful girl, whose been irreversibly scarred by the events of her and her twin sister’s childhood. Her mother died giving birth to her and her sister, which caused her father to blame her and her sister for their mother’s death, giving him an excuse to constantly beat her and starve her and her sister. Lumina did her best to protect Eliora from their father, taking most of their father’s beatings. Due to their father being an alcoholic and his alcoholism only causing her and Eliora to be abused even more horribly and brutally whenever he was drunk, Lumina developed a hatred of alcohol, especially beer and wine, which her father drank often. Her father eventually got a girlfriend, who also often abused the two girls, and ironically, this girlfriend heavily resembled Five, the youngest Intoner sister, which caused Lumina and Eliora to often be uncomfortable whenever she is in Five’s presence later on.

Lumina one day discovered her mother’s diary and found that her father had in fact heavily abused her mother when she was alive, like he did to Lumina and Eliora, and that her mother had been a way for him to take out all his anger and pain, and her mother believed that that was ok, because this way she had a meaning, this way her ‘worthless’ life had a meaning. Lumina realized her father was not upset about her and Eliora’s mother’s death because he was in love with her mother, he was upset because he had lost his main coping mechanism to deal with all of his problems, and so had replaced her mother with her and Eliora. Lumina became enraged by this revelation and confronted her father about it, but only found herself battered to near death.

The next day, her father died of an alcohol overdose, and she and Eliora ran away and ended up on the streets. From there they were constantly beaten yet again, except not by their father, but by people they had never even met before.

Lumina continued doing her best to protect her sister from the abuse and often took care of her, leading to the two sisters becoming starkly different in their world view;

Eliora’s world view will be stated in her info, but nonetheless here is Lumina’s world view:

Lumina, sick and tired of all of the pain she went through because of the world, developed a hatred of the world and a desire to destroy it all and start again, as well as to punish humanity for being ‘sinful’ creatures, believing that starting from zero again was the only way to end the cycle of abuse. Ironically, Lumina found herself also enjoying watching other people suffer, as she believed that other people deserved it for being ‘cruel, sinful humans’, which made her no better than her abusers and only showed she was a hypocrite in what she believed, as she began actively inflicting harm upon others just like how she had been hurt.

Eventually, Lumina and Eliora by unknown means managed to sneak into the Second Period, where Lumina ended up unknowingly being infected by HERS, which only served to make her desire to destroy the world stronger; Eliora, however, remained uninfected. Lumina and Eliora then snuck onto the Climb One, where they would then end up in the chaos somehow reincarnated into Gods and trapped inside the Climb One with Levia and Behemo, who questioned who they were until Behemo recognized them as the two homeless girls he saw often wandering the streets. Lumina and Eliora would manage to escape the Climb One within a few years thanks to their bodies being intact, and they soon found that they had become gods, which gave Lumina an idea; they enact a plan to destroy the world. Despite Eliora’s hesitance, Eliora went through with it and so the two sisters began their experimentations which would eventually lead to the creation of the Flower and the concept of Intoners.

One of their prototype Intoners was Medora Aurende, a princess of the Kingdom of Aurende, who was later deemed a failure due to not being strong enough to destroy the world, and so the twins disposed of her, leaving her for dead in a forest in the Beelzenian Empire.

Eventually, the Flower was finally complete along with the concept of Intoners, and the twins enacted their plan to destroy the world. They went to the city of Alicegrad in the country of Holy Levianta and infected a human who had been left for dead in the city square named ‘Rose’ with the Flower, and she was soon revived and turned into an Intoner. Rose changed her name to Zero soon after. Eliora began to become more and more hesitant and concerned with Lumina’s plan to destroy the world, but in response, Lumina slapped her and told her

“I’ve protected you for your entire life, you know. It’s time you repaid me a bit by helping me destroy the world that hurt me so much. And this will only serve to benefit you anyways; after all, this world hurt you so much too, despite my attempts at protecting you. Why wouldn’t you want to destroy it as well, Eli?”

Eliora afterward meekly nodded and never questioned Lumina again out of fear of what she’d do to her if she dared to question the plan again, even though Eliora could tell the Flower was slowly growing out of their control.

Lumina’s overall a very hateful, vengeful, hypocritical woman who at this point constantly contradicts herself, claiming that she wants to break the cycle of abuse whilst continuing to harm others. Yet deep in her heart, it seems she does genuinely still care for her sister, although it appears as time passes she slowly becomes more and more obsessed with hurting other people and punishing humanity for its sins as she gradually succumbs to her HERS instincts, and her care and empathy slowly wither away; even her love for her sister and feelings of kinship with Zero is slowly dissipating; until all that remains is her hatred of the world and humanity overall. Sickle mockingly calls her a ‘hypocritical strawberry’ due to her hypocrisy and strange obsession with strawberries.

Name: Eliora

Aliases: True God Twins (With Lumina)

Eli (By Lumina)

Eliora Ardelean (Full Name)

Pitiable Strawberry (By Sickle)

Age: 1,045+ (On 499 E.C.)

Looks 18

Height: 161 cm/5’3’’

Weight: 48 kgs/108 lbs

Cup Size: C

Bust/Waist/Hip: 83/58/84

Sex: Female

Gender: Female

Classification: Human (Till 529 B.T.)

Earthling (Till 528 B.T.)

God

Race: Romanian

Hair Color: Strawberry Blonde

Eye Color: Gold

Born: 546 B.T.

Died: Varies

Status: Varies

Sexuality: Bisexual/Demiromantic

Relatives: Unnamed Mother (Deceased; Died In Childbirth)

Unnamed Father (Deceased; Died of Alcohol Overdose)

Lumina Ardelean (Older Twin Sister)

Flower (Creation)

Zero (Flower’s Host)

One (Creation Via Flower)

Two (Creation Via Flower)

Three (Creation Via Flower)

Four (Creation Via Flower)

Five (Creation Via Flower)

Medora Aurende (Prototype Intoner)

Occupation: Creator of The Flower And Intoners

Affiliations: None

Favorite Food: Chocolate-Strawberry Sundae

Loves: Lumina (Or So She Claims), Dancing, Chocolate, Sundaes, Sweets, Baby Animals, Children, Dragons, Books, Reading, Singing, Zero, Strawberries

Hates: Seeing People Suffer, Her Father, Her Father’s Girlfriend, Five, The World (To A Much Lesser Degree Than Lumina), Alcohol

Weapons: Magic

Background + Personality: Most of Eliora and Lumina’s backstory was covered in Lumina’s info, so most of it will not be stated here except for any parts unique to Eliora.

Eliora is a meek, weak-willed girl who does as her sister tells her, secretly wishing to deviate from her sister’s will but being unable to as she is blinded by her ‘love’ for her sister and by what Lumina constantly tells her about their plan with the Flower and Intoners being “for the best”, that it’s “better for them to destroy the world here to stop humans from continuing to sin and hurt each other”, that “humanity is a sinful, malicious race that should be annihilated along with this cruel world they created”, even though Eliora knows deep inside that Lumina is merely manipulating her and forcing her to go along with what she wants.

Eliora’s world view is vastly different from her sister’s, as Eliora, who often could only watch as her sister was beaten and hurt constantly, found herself believing that revenge didn’t do much but perpetuate the cycle of abuse that she and Lumina suffered from, and so believed that the only way to end the cycle was to help abuse survivors not repeat the actions of their abusers. But Lumina heavily disagreed with her and forced Eliora, whether through physical harm or threats, to go along with Lumina’s plans and act the part of an ‘evil god who wants to destroy the world’.

Eliora also feels as if she’s indebted to Lumina for her protecting her from most of abuse of their childhood, and so feels obligated to help her even though she really believes that what Lumina’s doing is wrong.

Sickle pityingly calls Eliora a ‘pitiable strawberry’ due to her strange obsession with strawberries just like Lumina and because she’s a person who is very pitiable.

Whenever Eliora is able to, she often spends her time dancing, singing, or reading, loving all three activities immensely and secretly wishing she could have become a dancer or writer or singer or something of the sort rather than a mere instrument in her sister’s plans to destroy the world, and hopes that in some other life she could go follow her dreams rather than be forced to help her sister.

Also unlike her sister, Eliora is a very empathetic person, and despises killing and hurting others, although pretends as if she does enjoy such activities in order to please her sister.

So yeah, that's Lumina and Eliora's story. *me torturing my characters again and again goes brrrr-*

For reference here's their official designs (btw I probably should redo their arts considering their older as I made them back in April so yeah- oof) as well as sketch I made of them I may never finish but who knows:

Left girl is Lumina, right girl is Eliora ^

Oh, wow.

Okay. You’ve really edited and revised a lot of the story. The girls are looking really good, too. Angst can be a good device to help you channel your emotions in a healthy and constructive way. I think you’re building a really fun universe that just works for you and all of this design, planning and care takes a lot of time and effort. Never discount that work you put into it.

They are foils of each other.

They suffered but they handled it differently. That makes for an interesting arc for the both of them as they try to make sense of reality.