#interesting to me but no they had to go the ‘there’s evil haunted code making everyone evil and fucked up and also the arg bullshit’ route

[evanatsuhi]

i’m so sad that i have to add i/nscryption to my list of games with missed potential bc i think it’s a genuinely good game it’s just that the dev fucked it all up with the stupid arg 😭😭

[kerubimcrepin]

Liveblog - Dofus, livre 1 : Julith [PART 23]

I think after this it's kinda natural that Joris will never ever put his trust into anyone that isn't Kerubim or Atcham ever again.

I am once again asking why Kerubim has these books and what was he doing at devil's sacrament.

He's never beating those necromancy allegations.

There's a canonical name for the evil-ass looking huppermages.

Once again, this is Them in Dofus 2 when they reveal to Joris that they framed Julith or something. (source: my beautiful mind)

The Dessous comic implies that Marline bought this stuff from Kerubim which is so funny. It's beautiful how little of a shit the man gives for the safety of others.

I may not like Khan in his present form, as a macho gobbowler, but I like the idea of him. Joris, and his little "ghnhnn I have to do what's right, I have sacrifice my happinesss for other people" complex needs someone like that in his life who will buy him alcohol and help him run away from home when he's 14-16.

I'm sure if given another movie, or a show, Ankama's plan would have been to make Khan more likeable. He seems like a ride-or-die friend.

A scene ago he was in Julith's arms. So, she found it important to get him into the arms of this dofus-powered doll. Personally, I like to think that he started thrashing and maybe even bit her.

What did she lie about though? Liking him? Not wanting the Dofus? Being a competent person and not a fuck-up? (I love Bakara and say all of this with affection)

Once again, I empathize, that Julith was gloating about this to Bakara. That she doesn't really care about Joris (and by extension, Joris's feelings.)

She is killing a thousand people, who did nothing to her. These are civilians who came to watch a sports match. How many mothers are here with their sons and daughters who just wanted to look at their idols? If Joris never had Grougalorasalar's soul, if he and Kerubim never learned of her plan, THEY would have been among these viewers.

Julith is a very interesting character because she's ruthless, she has no morals, absolutely no understanding or compassion for others, — even Bakara or her own son, — and yet she is driven by love almost entirely. And that's her one redeeming quality.

But also — does it really change things, when you're driven by love to kill a thousand innocent people? To ruin your son's life? Because it doesn't really change much, to me...

I think there's a tragedy in that. She does love the idea of Joris. She loves what she sees of him, his voice, his face, and eyes. If she learned more about him, she'd probably love the parts he didn't show too. She'd love to see how he grew up.

She'd love how committed he is to those he loves. She'd love his ruthless march towards what he thinks is right that will allow him to close his eyes as he does unforgivable things. The only thing she would dislike is his loyalty to Bonta.

But the reverse will never be true. Joris can become a warmonger, a dictator, and a war criminal, but he would loathe to place his needs above those of others. He wouldn't do horrible things if he didn't think it was for the greater good of mankind.

As a 600yo man, Joris has lived through two apocalypses, — and yet people like Nox and Julith will lose 1-4 loved ones and go insane, killing people. I doubt he feels much for her, except for disgust.

Their friendship is so important to me. But also, somewhere out there, Tatak is crying.

I think one of the great tragedies of Joris's character is that he is doomed to break his own moral code, slowly but surely.

One must imagine Joris Jurgen living happily with the blood of innocents on his hands, because the alternative is more haunting.

One of her main issues is that she projects the actions of a few onto literally everyone in Bonta. Which is a very crazy fucking reach.

But I understand how she arrived at this reach to begin with: I don't think she was ever happy, before Jahash, and when she finally was happy, for once in her entire life, they took even that away from her.

You wanna know who else in this scene is going to have only 2 people who give meaning to his life? Jo—— [I am forcefully restrained by the police]

I just really like pointing out the similarities between Joris and Julith, — and the way these similarities underline their differences.

Once again: she doesn't give a shit about anyone's opinion. She is betting everything onto a nebulous future where Joris and Jahash and Bakara forgive and forget everything she did, and they live as a happy Fambly (in Brakmar, because that's a GOOD city and they will LOVE to move there, after being no longer welcome in Bonta due to the 1000 dead people.)

(Guy whose very emotional and Julith and Joris voice) guys I think she's starting to realize that their familial relationship is going to be unfixable.

Joris and everyone present here are quite aware that stopping this will kill one of them.

They are also very aware that one dead person is better than a thousand.

[lesbianboyfriend]

tell me about this btvs sexual violence thesis…..

okayyy i’ve been talking around this on my blog forever bc i haven’t had the mental capacity to make a coherent post about it but let me try now!!! i have some older posts that touch on some of these ideas too—i’ve linked a couple of them where relevant but honestly i could not find a bunch of them…but they are somewhere in my btvs lb tag. also note: i’m definitely still workshopping these ideas so id love to hear thoughts/rebuttals/expansions/whatever !!! it’s also all right now mostly working off my own thoughts/observations so i definitely want to do some research….i hope to one day write an actual essay about this

basically the summation of the buffyverse sexual violence thesis is that there is a narrative of sexual violence that is haunting the story. it goes pretty much unaddressed by the narrative at large, but it’s the crux of almost everything that happens.

i think there are two very obvious standout moments in btvs that highlight this sexual violence (the theory at large also encompasses angel but as i’m not entirely done watching it yet im gonna focus on buffy here, though i did touch on it briefly in a recent post about cordy’s death) which are the first slayer story and the spike attempted rape scene. going to talk about the first slayer first cause i think it’s kind of the framework for everything but important to note in terms of info that we get we + the characters aren’t aware of the first slayer story until after the rape scene.

imo the story of the first slayer is deeply deeply coded as a story of sexual violence. it’s about a woman being violated by a group of men who literally chain her down and force something into her. already, we’ve seen how being the slayer has isolated and harmed buffy, kendra, faith….its treated as almost a desirable, enviable position of honor (somewhat similar to how being a victim of sexual assault is sometimes painted as meaning the victim was “desirable”) but particularly once given this context, it’s hard to view being chosen as the slayer as anything but an act of violence against these women.

this is important to note because in a sense, it’s the slayer who upholds the moral binary of the buffyverse where good=soul, human and bad=no soul, demon. now this binary pretty much falls apart upon the slightest examination, because the story would not be as interesting if it was that simple. so there are multiple demon or otherwise characters who straddle this moral boundary—INCLUDING the slayer who not only straddles but enforces it. the outlier characters are presented as just that, outliers to this system, not indicators of its flaws. they are only good insofar as their goodness is directed towards maintaining the system. assimilation, not liberation.

okay, so, the spike rape scene. what’s notable about this scene is that it is, to my knowledge (?), the only moment of sexual violence that is explicitly named as an act of sexual violence. even in angel, which i feel has more overt moments of sexual violence, it’s not actually usually named as such. but what happens in this scene is explicitly named as a rape attempt. it is by far the most significant moment of sexual violence in btvs. so what exactly is going on with this scene?

now, there’s a lot that could be said and discussed about like, spike as a character, his motivations, etc (currently cooking up some thoughts about this myself), but for the purpose of this analysis i want to look strictly at what role spike is playing narratively in season 6. so, looking at this on a doylist level but NOT to be conflated with me excusing his actions on a watsonian level. anyways if we think about it season six is kind of a rejection of the larger moral order previously presented by btvs…i’ve talked about this vis-à-vis the demon/human evil/good binary and how season 6 really troubles those binaries. a lot of the season is about buffy grappling with these notions that perhaps her moral worldview is not correct—which leads to her spike. she’s previously made allowances for spike in this worldview, so she uses him as a sort of vehicle for exploring alternate theories. unlike the other demons we’ve seen allowances made for, spike is not “good” in the sense that btvs posits goodness for demons. he has done “good” things and he can’t hurt humans, but he is pretty explicitly still doing a lot of evil stuff. so spike gets to exist in the greyest area of any btvs character—his chip troubles the binary of who is and is not good/evil, not to mention who is morally killable under this worldview.

through her relationship with spike, buffy joins him there in that grey area. HER humanity (goodness) is questioned, which is not something that’s previously been up for serious debate. i talked before about how the slayer inherently straddles that binary, but as i said, both the characters and the viewers aren’t aware of that at this point. all of a sudden, there’s a total moral upheaval that creates lots of conflict….and this rejection of the prior moral order and exploration of what lies beyond it is what makes season 6 so compelling.

BUT season 6 isn’t the last season. and as we all know, season 7 kind of sucked!!! and went seriously hard on reifying that good/evil binary. so how did we get that wild shift between seasons? the rape scene.

as we know, “real evil” is only done by demons despite the countless terrible things we’ve seen human characters do. when spike tries to rape buffy, it cements him firmly back into the realm of monstrosity. violence, evil, whatever, they’re all signifiers of a monstrosity that removes the character of their humanity. we see this argument time and time again irl when people argue that people who do bad things are no longer human, thus rejecting the idea that they themselves are also capable of those bad things. this is why it’s so important that this moment is named as rape, as sexual violence, unlike the other instances. with the attempted rape, spike is ousted out of his grey area, back into “evilness”. buffy, as his victim this time, necessarily returns to the opposite side of the binary as him. buffy stops fighting against her role as slayer—she stops questioning the veracity of the system. in fact, she goes on to expand it, violating even more women in the name of “good.” spike realizes he has to conform to this moral order in order to “have” buffy (much to be said about that another time lollll) and regains a soul, the necessary signifier of his “goodness” and willingness to support the system he once troubled so severely. thus, the moral order is restored through an act of sexual violence, highlighting exactly how it predicated on the very sexual violence it claims to abhor.

some loose notes on other working parts of the thesis:

-general historical connection of vampire stories to sexuality (carmilla, dracula, etc)

-vampirism as sexual predation (penetration, vampires picking victims by seducing women at clubs)

-mystical pregnancy (in angel especially: cordelia, cordelia again, darla, cordelia…..) as a violation in and of itself and also a vehicle towards death

-angel and buffy in general. him being attracted to her since she was. 14

-sex with buffy returning angel to evil? not sure exactly how this would fit in yet but. there’s something there

-spike’s entire attitude for women

-xander’s whole deal

-as a matter of fact the way that pretty much every male character is misogynist

-episodes ted and billy (angel) -> presenting violence against women as stemming from an inherent monstrosity (billy somewhat contradicting this? but also reifying it. it’s left unclear tbh)

-darla in angel season 2 as a parallel to buffy in season 6…need to think more on this one as well

-dana….

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 2, Wave 3, Poll 14

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Elphaba Thropp-Wicked

Qualifications:

The musical had cut out (and censored) a LOT of things from the book to keep it PG. Elphaba 100% qualifies if you go by the novel.

Propaganda:

She's trans-coded; she was emphasized to look masculine since birth, and there's an actual quote where she says she chose to be female. The book included scenes from when she was a baby, where she was shown to be neurodivergent in a way that scared her caretakers and strained her relationship with her parents.

Norma Khan-Dead End: Paranormal Park

Qualifications:

They are confirmed to be bisexual and autistic within the series she is form.

Bisexual and autistic

She's autistic and bisexual (she's just like me fr XD)

Propaganda:

Norma is very good queer and autistic representation, showing her struggles with her autism within the series (especially in season 1, episode 3) and is the one of the first characters in an animated young audience directed series to officially come out of the closet to someone, which is a big step towards good queer representation within animated series, especially those directed towards younger audiences.

She's a badass magical security guard. Also once she found out that the actress who was her special interest was a hella creepy spirit who was haunting her own theme park, Norma took her tf down. She had so many emotions about it, got her own song about how she'd adored and looked up to this actress and how betrayed she felt and how hard it was. Also! Also she is so absolutely sweet and loyal and! and her mom supports her which is so SWEET.

There's this whole episode dedicated to her and her mom, and her mom is already so supportive of her being autistic and wants to be a part of her special interest, but unbeknownst to her mom her special interest has changed. (We don't like evil ghost ladies that possess innocent actresses in this house). Her NEW special interest is the paranormal and it makes her such a badass in the show but also a mega nerd at the same time and the two are not mutually exclusive! And she gets a crush on a girl and has this whole thing about coming out as bi and even though her crush is straight it's not weird between them. She's constantly battling demons both literal and metaphorical but comes out on top with friends and family that love her.

[jinlizz-dragondrama]

Halloween Spooktacular Special

"Trick or treat!" Kids shout as they go from house to house. I walked out of a grocery store with bags full of snacks for our scary movie night. I'm super excited to show my Halloween costume to everyone.

(This is just the costume I decided on, but you can picture one you'd like instead)

I find a manhole, open it, and jump down. Finally reaching the lair before my hands give out from the weight of the bags.

"Yay, Y/N is here!" April exclaims as she approaches me in her witch costume

"Well, it's about time. Did you get lost in the store?" Leo says smugly as he's dressed as a basketball player.

"No, I didn't, but I guess you don't want the snack. I searched high and low for," I say while holding it in my hand and wagging it from side to side.

"Have I ever told you you're the best?" Leo says, changing his tune a bit as I give him the bag of snacks.

"Not lately no," I retort

"Movies have been picked and ready to go!" Mikey shouts from the kitchen, the smell of cookies fills the air, and my mouth waters. Mikey is dressed in the hippo disguise costume.

I walk over to the kitchen to grab a cookie, Mikey tries to swat my hand away, but I dodge out of the way and make my escape with a cookie in hand.

"Projector room is ready for the ultimate scary movie experience thanks to moi," Donnie says while typing away on his wrist communicator. I look Donnie up and down as I see him dressed in an evil scientist costume.

"Wow, you dressed up. I had to fight tooth and nail for you to finally agree." I sat while folding my arms

"More like you bombarded me with texts, emails, and codes all through this month about me wearing one. Ugh, sigh. " A small smile graces his lips, and I giggle.

"Intetesting costume choice Y/N, very Aqua like," He says as he eyes me from the corner of his eye. Before I can say anything, Raph comes out shouting in a pirate costume.

"Let's get this thing started, yer mateys!"

"But first, since you four haven't gone trick or treating or seen a haunted house before. April and I decided to give you the full experience. So let's go to the surface onward!" I say excitedly as I rush towards the lair entrance, making swooshing flying noises.

The guys shrug their shoulders and follow me.

"Bring back lots of candy," Splinter says from his room

We all climb out of a manhole and walk out of an alleyway. I pull up the route on my phone that's best and leads us to the haunted house.

"According to my calculations, this will be a better route instead. As I collected data on the best houses to get full-sized candy bars and avoid all fun-size candy and..." He shivers a bit repulsed "Toothbrushes" he finishes

"Aw, Donald, that took away all the fun, besides Ms. Thomas means well when she gives those out." I roll my eyes but ultimately agree to his route.

Pulling out pillowcases in everyone's color, I hand them out to everyone.

"Alright, let's make this interesting the person that gets the most candy in an hour gets to sit in the comfy bean bag during all the movies," I say while chuckling evilly

"Ohohoho, you're on," Leo says, accepting the challenge

Everyone takes off separately and starts to trick or treat. I deviate a bit from the route to go to the house that gives a ton of candy if you do tricks.

I can see everyone having a good time and spot Mikey getting a bowl full of candy from an old lady. My jaw drops, but it doesn't discourage me as I continue my candy hunt. Donnie and I ended up at the same house at the same time, we looked at each other, then the door, back at each other, then the door, and I took off running. He activates his battle shell to fly over, and one of his mechanical hands reaches out to ring the doorbell before I can reach it. I try to push him away, but the door opens, and I put on my best smile.

"Trick or treat." I chant

"What a lovely costume, here you go,"

"Thank you,"

Looking down, I see the toothbrush and toothpaste fall into my pillowcase. A smug look appears on my face as I see Donnie try to hold back a disgruntled face. I skip away and continue trick or treating.

Soon, the hour is up, and we make our way to the haunted house.

"OK guys, we will count our bounty when we get back to the lair. Now let's get our scare on."

Looking at the house up close, I start to shake from fear a bit, and I swallow hard.

"Is little Aqua scared? You're shivering harder than Raph. He says while pointing at his big bro.Poor Raph looked terrified

"It's ok, you can hold my hand," Leo says as he extends his hand out to me

"Pfft in your dreams, Romeo." I smack his hand away playfully, and we make our way inside.

It's so dark, a fog thick layer of fog floats on the ground. I'm trying my best not to seem scared, but I stick close to the gang. I hear a chain saw start up, Raph and I slowly look behind us, and out from the darkness comes someone with a creepy mask and chainsaw in hand. Raph screams and takes off, running into the nearby corridor, leaving us behind. I clutch onto someone's arms tightly and hide my face in the person's shoulder.

"Man, you got a tight grip"

I blush a bright red and jump almost 10 feet up in the air when I realize I am holding onto Donnie. He sighs and is looking away from me.

"If you need someone to hold onto, I won't mind being that person... because I can't have you be scared of things that aren't real..." He quickly says

I smile a little and hold onto his arm as we walk through the haunted house. April, Leo, and Mikey walk ahead to give us "alone time." Everything I get scared Donnie is there to comfort me in his way by info dumping about how the dark tricks the mind into believing in stuff that isn't there, how being scared triggers the fight or flight response and so on. It does help me feel less scared until I hear Raphs screams and we rush to see what's up.

Raph is running from a three headed dog like creature. We all scream and start running, April and I go one way, Donnie and Mikey go another,  Raph and Leo go a different way. April and I try to catch our breath but i hear heavy breathing and feel hot breath on my neck, I grab her hand and start running again.

Donnie and Mikey are screaming as a person in a demon costumes cha see es them. Donnie tries to come up with an explanation as to how it can be this scary.

Raph is running while scared crying and Leo is running not far behind Jim as someone in a doll costume is chasing them.

"I gotta admit they did a great job with the affects and paper mache" Donnie says while running

"You and I both know that, that thing is real" I shout

"I will not admit anything"

Raph opens a door and we all fall through it. Quickly getting up and us all pushing the door as hard as we can to close it. The monster gives up and we all slide to the ground to catch our breathes. Soon Leo start laughing, then Mikey, April, Raph and we all start laughing.

"Let's go home you bunch of scardy cats" Leo says while getting up

"I seem to recall that you were screaming the loudest" I punch his shoulder gently

"You were definitely hearing things Aqua" Leo chuckles awkwardly

"No, no dear brother I believe she was right. Remember I record everything. Wanna hear a replay" Donnie says

"No!" leo clears his throat and blushes "No I think we're good on that one.

We make our way back to the lair, dump out all our candy that survived our run for our lives. Donnie and I tie, grabbing my candy I run to the bean bag and jump onto it taking up the whole seat.

"Aqua, move over. We both won fair and square" Donnie says

"And if I don't" I say playfully

Donnie hits me with a pillow and whole I'm distracted his sits next to me. The bean bag was big enough that we weren't close together but close at the same time. Mikey pops in a movie and passes a big bowl of buttery popcorn.

"I bet Leo is gonna get scared again" I say while looking at Leo

"Hardy har har" Leo says sarcastically

The movie starts and April and I shout

"HAPPY HALLOWEEN "

Authors Note

Happy Halloween everyone stay safe! And brush your teeth after all that candy lol

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 1: The Flame of Tar Valon

Welcome to another spoiler-filled chapter of my horrifyingly long reread of The Wheel of Time. Every secret will be revealed, some blatantly, some only by reading between the lines and going all Bible Code on my precisely and perfectly placed letters and punctuatio.n

It should have been summer by now, but spring had been late in coming, and the land had run wild to catch up. New-come pale green bristled on every bush, and red new growth tipped every tree branch.

Nice of the Wheel to schedule them a mild summer in between the two supernaturally dominated seasons they're going to be suffering from. I'll have to try and remember to pay attention to the late books and see if they get a similarly mild season after the Bowl is used.

Stripped to the waist, Rand al’Thor shivered at the wind’s cold caress, and his fingers flexed on the long hilt of the practice sword he held. The hot sun had slicked his chest, and his dark, reddish hair clung to his head in a sweat-curled mat.

My inability to find fan art of shirtless Rand practicing swordplay with Lan is going to haunt me for the rest of time, or at least this sentence.

With a bundle of thin, loosely bound staves in place of a blade, the practice sword would make a loud clack when it struck anything, and leave a welt where it hit flesh. Rand knew all too well. Three thin red lines stung on his ribs, and another burned his shoulder. It had taken all his efforts not to wear more decorations. Lan bore not a mark.

While the books still have Rand take to swords remarkably quickly for real life training (and frankly even for in-world justifications, since LTT should be comparatively shit at the sword what with being one of its pioneers), they should get points for having given him multiple months of training with the world's most intense teacher.

The wind howled across the tower . . . and trapped him. It was as if the air had suddenly jelled, holding him in a cocoon. Pushing him forward. Time and motion slowed; horrified, he watched Lan’s practice sword drift toward his chest. There was nothing slow or soft about the impact. His ribs creaked as if he had been struck with a hammer. He grunted, but the wind would not allow him to give way; it still carried him forward, instead. The lathes of Lan’s practice sword flexed and bent—ever so slowly, it seemed to Rand—then shattered, sharp points oozing toward his heart, jagged lathes piercing his skin. Pain lanced through his body; his whole skin felt slashed. He burned as though the sun had flared to crisp him like bacon in a pan.

Our first bubble of evil, maybe! With one of the seals on the Dark One's prison broken, the influence he has over reality is definitely growing either way. There's also something interesting in the fact that the winds of the first two books are winds of evil from the mountains: the unnatural winter wind of the Mountains of Mist and now this from Dhoom. Rand is their symbolic opposite, according to Loial anyway.

“And what was that fool move, sheepherder?” Lan grated. “You know better by now, or should unless you have forgotten everything I’ve tried to teach you. How badly are you—?” He cut off as Rand looked up at him.

Lan goes from jackass high school football coach to "How dare the weather hurt my precious baby?" in about five milliseconds and Rand thinks he's an unemotional rock.

“For someone like you. . . .” Lan shrugged as if that explained everything. “How long before you leave, sheepherder? A month since you said you were going, and I thought you’d be two weeks gone by now.”

Sure, on the one hand Lan is changing the subject on a dime, but on the other hand these two topics are very connected because they're all about the well-being of his special boy. Especially since the Amyrlin is coming to town.

Again Lan seemed to read his mind. “In the Borderlands, sheepherder, if a man has the raising of a child, that child is his, and none can say different.”

Was this policy established because letting people get butthurt about infidelity hurt with the constant war against the Shadow or because the sheer number of orphans meant they needed to firmly integrate families together or both? You decide!

It was an idea he had thought of more than once, but he rejected it now for the same reason he always had, and more fiercely for coming from someone else. As long as I keep it, I have the right to call Tam father. He gave it to me, and it gives me the right.

On the one hand, it's good that Rand's emotional traumas don't just disappear between books, but on the other hand, this particular bit of uncomfortable denial is exhausting. Rand is so obviously Tam's son in so many ways that his inability to internalize it despite Nynaeve and Lan's best efforts is... well, it's a big explanation for the emotional problems he's gonna start having later on.

Some weapons used the One Power, things that could destroy an entire city at one blow, lay waste to the land for leagues. Just as well those were all lost in the Breaking; just as well no one remembers the making of them.

Sorry Lan, but one such weapon is very much accounted for (Callandor) while two more aren't as lost as we might hope.

When it was done, war and Age ended together, with the world shattered, with more dead unburied than there were alive and those alive fleeing, trying to find some place, any place, of safety, with every second woman weeping because she’d never see husband or sons again; when it was done, the Aes Sedai who still lived swore they would never again make a weapon for one man to kill another.

Amusingly for an infodump where Lan notes that mythology is replacing fact... Lan's reciting mythology here, not fact. The anti-weapon Oath wasn't adopted for another thousand years after the Breaking, at least not universally.

“Mat and Perrin are still here,” Rand mumbled. “I don’t want to leave before they do. I won’t ever—I might not see them again for—for years, maybe.”

Rand probably looks back and assumes that his hesitation this past month out of loyalty to his friends was a weakness (hence his increasing willingness to use and even throw away his associates as he gets darker and darker). Really though, the fact that he can't just up and disappear from the people he loves like this is a strength.

“You wish everything could be the way it was, sheepherder? Or you wish the girl would go with you instead of to Tar Valon? You think she’ll give up becoming an Aes Sedai for a life of wandering? With you? If you put it to her in the right way, she might. Love is an odd thing.” Lan sounded suddenly weary. “As odd a thing as there is.”

Is there a way that Nynaeve could put it to Lan that he would go with her to Tar Valon instead of with Moiraine? Maybe but... I don't think so. And I don't think Egwene would ditch Tar Valon for anything Rand could offer her; if he tried he'd probably end up agreeing to go and be her Warder despite the obvious stupidity of such a course of action.

Rand surged angrily to his feet. “All right, it’s Moiraine! I wouldn’t even be here if not for her, and she won’t as much as talk to me.” “You’d be dead if not for her, sheepherder,” Lan said flatly, but Rand rushed on.

He'd be dead if not for you too, Lan, but you aren't using that as an excuse not to talk to him. Lan is super loyal to Moiraine at this point, but I have to wonder exactly what he thinks of all this. He's clearly undermining her a little by training Rand the way that he does.

“I told you she needs to be alone sometimes. It isn’t for you, or anyone else, to question her actions.”

And stuff like this. How much of it is Lan 100% believing what he's saying, and how much of it is him saying it to himself now that they're almost at the finish line and she's gone erratic while leaving handling the DR entirely to him (or is his interacting with Rand at all a kind of defiance)? He says Rand's learned all he can from her, but that of course is BS because there's a lot Moiraine could be teaching him about politics and diplomacy but she's not, unless this is a month-long lesson in making people wait.

Go through Parting the Silk, beginning from Heron Wading in the Rushes. Remember that that Heron form is only for practicing balance.

We finally get some sword forms. They're beautiful and these two are super self-explanatory, especially how Heron is obviously only for training. Yay sword forms!

Mounted men in armor rode out of the trees, and women ahorseback, too. Then a palanquin borne by horses, one before and one behind, its curtains down, and more men on horseback. Ranks of men afoot, pikes rising above them like a bristle of long thorns, and archers with their bows held slanted across their chests, all stepping to the drums. The trumpets cried again. Like a singing serpent the column wound its way toward Fal Dara.

Again I wonder if comparing the mass movement of troops to serpents is meant to be evocative of the Light and time itself.

“Ingtar’s with them.” Lan sounded as if his thoughts were elsewhere. “Back from his hunting at last. Been gone long enough. I wonder if he had any luck?”

So Ingtar went hunting to cover up his attending the meeting, right.? It would probably be very suspicious if someone needed him but couldn't find him because he'd gone off into T'A'R. (Are ancient memories of Darkfriend Socials in the Age of Legends the reason that the Wise Ones think going to T'A'R in the flesh is evil?)

Aes Sedai were respected in Shienar, at least by most people, and the rest respectfully feared them, but Rand had been in places where it was different, where there was only the fear, and often hate. Where he had grown up, some men, at least, spoke of “Tar Valon witches” as they would speak of the Dark One.

Who can blame the TR guys, considering how shitty the Aes Sedai were to their ancestors? The White Tower's PR problems are so hilariously self-inflicted that it's surprising any part of the Borderlands still likes them at this point.

“The Amyrlin Seat’s come in person.” Lan looked at him, his expression as hard and unreadable as a rock. “Your lessons are done, sheepherder.” He paused then, and Rand almost thought there was sympathy on his face. That could not be, of course. “Better for you if you were a week gone.”

Lan: I don't envy you kid. Sorry that everything's about to suck even more than you think it already does. By the way, you were always my favorite, even before Mat got cursed and Perrin became a werewolf.

Rand: Lan's a cool dude who can kill anything! I wish he cared about me, but he can't do that because real men don't care about anyone but their weapons!

“I didn’t mean to channel the Power,” he whispered. “It was an accident! Light, I don’t want anything to do with it. I swear I’ll never touch it again! I swear it!”

And I swear I'll never read another chapter of this book again! I swear it just as hard as you Rand!

(See you all tomorrow with the next chapter ;) )

[revolveroshawott2]

Split Necklace 1/30/24

I don't have much to actually talk about, I haven't been working on Split Necklace for a while. At this point I may restart my "design doc," well it's just a paper tablet, but something is bugging me when rereading it. Not really sure what so I may redo it, character names will be the same, but the story outline may be radically different. It's still gonna be SAW but anime, which is still ironic because while I maybe 25 I still have a fear of that puppet from that series. I think I'm gonna rework the character design. Only to make everyone, but Ken, stand out a little more. The reason why I singled Ken out is because I want to attempt the Silent Hill 1 thing they did with Harry. A neutral looking man so the player can fully immerse themselves in. Due to my fear of it, I don't know much about SAW but I would imagine due to some of the stuff victims had to go through, stuff like getting a key on a pendulum before getting slashed by a saw blade, being super glued to a car going high speed, and something called a reverse bear trap, things would be very tense to go through yourself. Before you ask I have friends who are fans of SAW and while it's not completely accurate I got board and decided to look up the plot summaries on Chat GPT. They're kind of stupid, but the basic premise of how badly do you want to live is a neat idea which is why I'm still working on this to some extent, but I'm trying to write outlines for other projects.

Said projects are two comics, one is a Super Sentai fan comic I had in mind since high school called V-Ranger. I have the cast, their respected colors, and the villain I just need to write an outline. The other is called My Foreign Boyfriend, about a Japanese woman being in a relationship with an American that moved to Japan. Currently writing that outline, while coming up with chapter ideas. I know exactly how I want it to begin and end just need to fill in the gaps.

To focus on the topic of this post, I'm still gonna keep the Legends of the Hidden Temple names for the chapters. As to why, the biggest reason is because I honestly love that show and the Jester's Court was the 1st thing to come to mind. Not sure why it did, it just happened. As to the other reason, it's kind of like how the crew who made Regular Show did their episodes. From my understanding they had the episode title 1st then just came up with ideas for it that episodes. So looking at all 4 seasons I think I can come up with something good. Thinking about it now, I want the Jester's Court to be the 1st level so I think it's just gonna be one body part to collect. Keep things simple, but right now the biggest thing that I want to work on is the story itself. That's a big focus of it, not to the extent that the gameplay will be trash. Trying to make it survival horror game, there will be an HP meter. Both a bar in the pause screen, and visually. A kin to how Haunting Ground and Resident Evil Revelations displayed HP. Making the screen a bit of a visual mess, but at the moment I will most likely get someone who knows Javascript to get some codes made for things, but at the moment it's unnecessary.

I do apologize for lack of updates, and screen shots in this update. This is low priority for me, and if y'all lost interest I understand. However once I figured out somethings about how I want to proceed development will continue! Hopefully the real world won't get in the way... but that maybe out of my hands, because life sucks. Regardless thanks for reading this update!

[theggning]

Hello!

While I never hated Godot you made me like him more!

If you don't mind what is your favorite thing about Godot

I'm so happy to hear that, anon. He's a good boy and if I have made anybody like him more then my dorky efforts have paid off. >:3

In general, I really like how hard they go with making him complex. Nothing about Godot is ever black and white. He's simultaneously noble and twisted, incredibly cool and incredibly lame, deeply tragic and deeply funny (is there another AA character who's so off-the-rails weird and laugh-out-loud funny while also being so intensely sad?)

But my favorite of those contrasts is that no matter how hard he pretends or how wrecked he is as a person, there is still good in him. He has a moral code leftover from his former self that he won't betray, no matter how bad he gets. As misguided and intensely mean as he is to Phoenix, he won't cheat in court and he won't get an innocent person sent to jail even to "stick it" to him (Godot literally just stops arguing his case once it's apparent they have the wrong person.) The coffee moment with Pearl and his interactions with Maya in 3-5 are indications that he still has a good heart under all the bluster. (Someone on my other post's notes described this as "he still has love to give" and that phrasing has stuck me in the brain like a splinter. It's haunting me.)

(3-5 spoilers beyond this point.)

Even his worst actions aren't straightforward. Godot takes somebody's life, but it's incredibly hard to call it a "murder." He was inarguably saving Maya's life in the process. The victim isn't straightforward either- he killed Misty Fey, but he also stopped Dahlia in the act of murdering Maya. And yes, as he admits, he did have a hand in setting up the circumstances around it, but so did Misty, and it's just UGGGH. SO TWISTY. And then he calls himself out for it! He recognizes his own failings and admits he was wrong! There's enough good left in him to realize how far he's fallen and how warped his actions have been. He ends the game on a note of cathartic acceptance and relief, and his ambiguous fate means we can freely think about where he might go and what he might do next. What kind of relationships he might have with other characters once he takes off the proverbial mask and lets them know the real Diego. EVEN MORE complexity on top of the delicious ice cream sundae of "I'm going to be thinking about this character forever" (ugh, that's a Godot-worthy dumb metaphor.)

If Godot was another heartless pure evil antagonist like Manfred von Karma or Matt Engarde, he wouldn't be nearly as interesting. If he had actually lost every shred of the good man he used to be, if there was no hope of redeeming him, or if he ever truly sank to the level of committing evil acts, I wouldn't care about him nearly as much. Godot is great because he's not a villain, he's an antagonist, one specifically designed as a foil/dark mirror to Phoenix, which is the kind of deep storytelling meta shit I absolutely eat up.

Also, he's hot. Hottest prosecutor in the series. Fight me, I'm right.

[keroseneinhalers]

my favorite part of warrior cats is the grotesque story of squirrelflight, ashfur, and the extended cast of cats that sound like they came out of an ajj song

this gal named squirrelflight flirts with a guy named ashfur a few times. typical 80s romance song. its quick, its fleeting. squirrelflight gets together with brambleclaw. its all real lovely. brambleclaw gets promoted to leader after squirrelflights dad goes into retirement and makes his deputy the chief. brambleclaw is now bramblestar

(before the promotion and after the marriage, brambleclaw leads the entire 4 clans to a new territory. not relevant. he also stabs his brother in the neck with a tent stake)

and then squirrelflights sister leafpool, who is a medicine cat and sworn into celibacy, has sex with a guy from windclan named crowfeather. this is something all the cats are sworn not to do. double illegal.

crowfeather is a bit of a whore because he was previously in love with another girl who went on a magical journey with him when he was a child. (brambleclaw was there for that too. brambleclaw is eternal and everywhere) the girl crowfeather was in love with got impaled by a falling stalagmite while protecting a tribe of savage feral cats with names very similar to english translations of a few native american names i know. interesting. racist? there was a mountain lion involved

yeah so they have sex and leafpool gets pregnant. but since she did two crimes in one she gives the kids to squirrelflight and pretends they belong to her and brambelstar. theres an uncomfortable birthing scene because the kids decided to emerge from her cat uterus in the middle of a snowstorm. this is very telling of their characters after birth

theres three kids. jayfeather lionblaze and hollyleaf. jayfeather is very angry. lionblaze is angry but in a brave way. hollyleaf loves rules. they are a legendary trio

theres a thing about superpowers, and a prophecy or something. jay is sickly and blind and can see peoples thoughts. lionblaze never loses any fights, ever, and he maims ashfur a little while theyre trianing. hollyleaf doesnt have any powers, but she is absolutely obsessed with the warrior code and gets caught up with a guy named sol who says the world is gonna end. none of this is relevant except the "bootlicker hollyleaf" thing

ashfur is stewing. ashfur has been stewing for years now. long enough that they literally brought all 4 clans across the continent to a new territory kind of stewing. hes lonely. he misses the girl he was madly in love with, and shes married to the coolest guy in town. hes in agony. (over in windclan, crowfeather has a new girlfriend. manwhoring as long as he lives)

theres a big fire. thunderclans entire territory sets on fire. everyone is escaping, except for squirrelflight and her three kids. jayfeather, lionblaze, and hollyleaf, who is contemplating becoming an antivaxxer or something

imagine this: a clearing on the edge of a pit. the pit is where the cats live. everything is on fire around this clearing. there is one log running across the clearing, and squirreflight and her fake kids are going along it to escape. theyre the last out

ashfur appears he stands at the other end of the log. hes pissed. hes crying. he hates squirrelflight. he hates her so much. his rage is all consuming, like the fire that burns around them. he says he wants her in as much pain as possible, and he knows how: taking the only thing she loves in this world. her 3 kids

we all know something ashfur doesnt. the kids arent hers. squirrelflight, though non an omnipresence, is gifted with this knowledge herself.. she sees ashfurs twisted evil mind and tells him, flat out that they arent hers. she doesnt love them. he can kill them, they mean nothing to her. they are, after all, just her sister leafpool's. why would she care for them?

ashfur is stunned. he gives up. he leaves. squirrelflight and her three kids leave. its a bit awkward. imagine the thanksgiving dinner table after a particularly bad argument. thats all this is really

anyways. hollyleaf is broken from this. shes the daughter of a medicine cat and a manwhore from a clan that only eats rabbits. she cant take it. much like ashfur, she snaps

there are these big clan meetings, once every month. everyone goes, except the old people and the dying people and the kids who just want juiceboxes and lunchables. thunderclan is heading out to the Meeting Island. they find a body in the river. surprise! its ashfur

they go on to the gathering despite finding the body of one of their finest, most mentally haunted warriors polluting the stream with the blood seeping out of his slit throat. the three kids are there. squirrelflight is there. leafpool is there. bramblestar is there

this story has very weird heathers energy to me. its there, but it isnt coherant. like a bad remix of 100 gecs, sort of. this part is no exception

hollyleaf runs up to the big tree the clan leaders stand on and monologue. shes not allowed to do this. perhaps the sense that she lost her identity with her illigitimate birth turned into something real, that the warrior code didnt matter anymore. perhaps she was just tired of being kind; she wanted to go apeshit

she confesses. to two things. number one - the muderder of ashfur. how tragic. number two - leafpool. leafpools affar with crowfeather. squirrelflights lies to her for her entire life. theres chaos. thunderclan is like stan twitter after a minecraft youtuber said something racist 8 years ago. the 3 other clans are trying desperately to get in on this drama. the hot tea of the hour if you will

hollyleaf says her share. she runs away. lionblaze and jayfeather chase after her all the way back to the thunderclan territory. she yells at them. she runs into a tunnel and gets crushed by rocks. thats the end. shes dead.

jk jk that was a lie shes alive and shes living in a huge cave system with a ghost cat. remember the native american coded mountain tribe? yeah, they had ancestors. the ancestors lived at the territory the 4 clans moved to after squirelflight flirted with ashfur and before she got together with bramblestar. they used to drown little kids in the tunnels. jayfeather is the entire reason why the ancestors moved to the mountains and became the racist mountain tribe. i wont explain the timeline of this, and i dont think i could if i tried

up above hollyleafs slowburn romance with a transparent cat, theres a new girl with superpowers. prophecy fulfilled yadda yadda. her sister is annoyed that she isnt #quirky and so she joins a fighting cult run by the cats in hell. i cannot stress this enough its literally every cat from the 50 some books before this who went to hell. they have an army of children. theyre training them. the sister kills one of her classmates and becomes equals with the hell cats. my second favorite plotline in the series

the hell cats come to the land of the living. the sister betrays them. theres a big battle, and its supposed to be the end of the series but you know theyre gonna continue it for at least 20 more books. (they did). hollyleaf appears, and i dont think its ever explained how or why. but shes back, and she joins the battle. everyones too busy with the literal hell cats to care much about some kid with a body count of 1 appearing randomly

hollyleaf fights a bit. she gets mauled to death. thats the end. its just over. she dies and she doesnt come back. rip to a queen

i think my biggest question besides why would someone create this ad continue to do so for fifty plus books, is how the fuck brambleclaw stabbed his brother with a tent stake when he literally doesn’t even have hands. what.

[baodurs]

i filled out this super cool button character profile by @extraordinarymage for sabrina! thank you for making this, it was a lot of fun to fill out <3 the bulk of it is under a cut and oh boy is it long !!!

Short, Quick Reference

Name: Sabrina Wiseman

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Love Interest: Kent

Main personality trait: Confidence

Secondary personality trait: Morbidity

Relationship with Nick: Full of love, haunted by unaddressed guilt and frustration. But mostly full of love.

Nickname for Nick: Saint Nick (used sparingly)

Resentful or accepting?: Slightly resentful

Main strategy (interpersonal, insightful, innovative?): Insightful

Ethical or expedient?: Expedient

GENERAL

Name: Sabrina Larkspur Wiseman

Nickname(s): Sab, used by anyone; Sabby, only Nick and Sally; and, of course, Button for Nick.

Birthday: I think I made her an October Libra for the purpose of a template I did months ago, but I’m not sure! No concrete birthday yet, I’m always very slow to nail down details like this.

Age: 20

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Hair color + style: Blonde. A little past shoulder length, sometimes wavy. Usually a middle part. For Aeon, tied back in a bun.

Eye color: Blue, entirely because of the section of Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency” that goes, “My eyes are vague blue, like the sky...”

Height: 5′5

Piercings: Multiple in each ear, but a couple have started to close.

Tattoos: None yet! Sab likes the idea of a tattoo but is worried about finding the perfect design, whether she’d end up hating it, that the pain might be greater than she expects and she’ll look like a baby in front of her tattoo artist. I’d like to think she eventually consults Sally and/or Glitch to come up with an idea that she falls in love with, but I haven’t come up with what that would be!

Clothing style: Mostly solid colors, not a lot of patterns. Nothing super bright, but a fairly varied mix of pastels, neutrals, dark colors, black. Partial to denim skirts and sweater tops. Ankle boots. Likes a good turtleneck. She’s bolder when it comes to formal wear, and especially loves suits. Big fan of silk and satin.

Since she has a pretty accurate face claim, I’ll link some gifsets I’ve rb’d for appearance ref if you are so inclined.

STATS

I’m always adjusting minor things and swapping scenes around, but these are from my most recent Sab run! Most scores hover somewhere around these values.

Personality:

Confidence: 53%

Humor: 5%

Morbidity: 22%

Resentful: 57% | Accepting: 43%

Strategy:

Interpersonal: 12%

Insightful: 50%

Innovative: 10%

Ethical: 43% | Expedient: 57%

KEY DECISIONS:

What is Nick’s nickname and why?: Saint Nick, used very rarely. It’s a joking reference to the time she thought Santa was an evil Ment out to ruin Christmas, and a point about Nick overdoing it with the cheer. “Saint Nick” is usually code for “I know you mean well, but please mind your own business.” Otherwise, she just calls him Nick.

What is their favorite type of cookie (and its name and why?): Salted caramel chocolate chip! No special name.

What was their initial reaction to Sally hugging them, as kids?: She just froze. That could just be me projecting adult Sabrina onto her childhood self; I don’t imagine that she was as uncomfortable around strangers or quite as cautious back then. But that’s what I’ll stick with.

How did they ace the ASE test?: The in-game option she takes is “My entire life has revolved around strategic avoidance,” but the one about being just plain smart also sounds like her. If Sab has the chance to thoroughly (over)prepare for something, she will do it. Her mind blindness also has her constantly (over)analyzing situations. So, hard work and relentless anxiety!

Did they manage to win their first assignment? How?: Yes, by having Sally block the door. I’ve headcanoned some slight differences in how it plays out, which I wrote about in-depth here. To summarize, Sab thinks of blocking the door as a desperate last resort, not a clever loophole, and she pushes back against Rosy’s praise because she wishes she could have done it the “real” way. Rosy goes from being impressed to being annoyed that she’s willfully missing the point.

What was the primary emotion Button felt during the Aeon bombing (love, gratitude, etc?): Guilt. She feels very guilty about how much Nick has given up for her in general, but I think that in the moment, it’s on a smaller scale. The fact that Nick was on the phone with her when it happened, coming to her rescue like always, becomes emblematic of their whole relationship for her, and she really fixates on that.

Who drove them home from the hospital from and why?: Glitch. Sab responds to her initial text with “Are you sure?”, and is relieved when Glitch takes that as “Yes, please.” She doesn’t relish the idea of being around someone more connected to her family or Nick at that point.

How do they feel about Nick riding around in their mind?: Worried, at first. Just because it’s so unknown and absolutely insane. After seeing Doctor Amari, she’s excited! Sab is thrilled to be a Pollard Five and intends to take full advantage of it. I am not looking forward to seeing how she reacts when that’s taken away from her.

Why did Button agree to do the undercover mission?: To prove she still deserves to be an MIV. Sabrina feels stupid and reckless for putting herself, Nick, and Aeon in this position, but she knows she’s smart, and she hasn’t worked this hard for nothing. She wants to prove what she could do with a normal Pollard Score and make herself too valuable to give up even when she’s back to Zero.

Told Glitch about your mind blindness?: Depends on the playthrough. I’m constantly going back and forth on whether Sab meets Glitch for coffee or wanders the city with Nick in her second chapter 5 slot (after trying to track down Kent). If she does meet Glitch, though, she absolutely tells her; with how touchy Sab is about privacy, she couldn’t stomach not warning Glitch that Nick could hear everything they said.

Figured out K’s secret?: Nope. She finds enough of the clues to be given the “I knew it!” option in-game, but she didn’t actually put it together. Sab is too angry and embarrassed by learning that Kent is an AMO to find any reason to interrogate it. “The random guy I met before school just happens to be a jerk” is a perfectly sound explanation to her.

Found Noh’s clues?: Not at the metro station. Sometimes she sees the Vengeance brooms in chapter 5 (again, depending on the playthrough), but that’s it.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP:

Love Interest: Kent

Why them?: Sab feels an immediate kinship with Kent after learning about the NPO program. It’s kind of funny how quickly he moves from the least sympathetic position in her eyes (Ment who got past me and read my mind without my knowledge) to the most sympathetic (non-powered child of a prominent family aiming a league above where he “belongs”). A lot of new respect for his competence. Her fate is sealed when she realizes that his kindness at the hospital wasn’t him trying to make up for some wrongdoing, but just him being very sweet. (She had scoffed over “You needed help.” But now she’s like, “Oh. He meant that?! Fuck.”)

As they spend more time together, Sab realizes how weirdly similar they are in other ways, too. And she starts to feel safe/secure around him in a way that she’s extremely not used to. Growing up surrounded by Ments, Sab has a lot of issues about being too much, too difficult, needing to “be worthy” of love. So someone like Kent who is not a Ment, who has no “obligation” to care about her, and whose judgement she trusts implicitly? Being around him and being loved by him mean a lot, and I think will go a long way towards helping her reflect on her other relationships!

What are their first impressions of each other?: Okay, there are like 3 first impressions with Kent. First: he’s tall and handsome and secretly adorable, and they have similar career goals, so she’s drafting a five-month plan to woo him and get his number. Second: he’s a lying, self-obsessed loser who owes her many explanations. Third: oh no, the first impression was true! And he’s been continually, selflessly kind to her in spite of her overt hostility. Scratch the five-month plan, because the crush was only fun when it was entirely superficial; now she really, really likes him and that just sucks.

We know that Button makes a good impression on K by stopping for their dogs, but apart from that... I mean, the “we confused each other” from chapter 7 is very apt. Sab has lots of shifting personas, and Kent sees pretty much every one within 24 hours. The prevailing impression before everything gets cleared up is probably just that she cares a lot? About everything? Her stopping for the dogs, how seriously she takes the first assignment, the way she seems so deeply affected by something he said or did that morning. It’s a rare side of her to meet first because she usually pretends to be above everything.

What feature does your Button find most attractive in their RO (ex. appearance, personality, etc.)?: Probably his composure. And his... steadfastness? The way he seems unruffled by anything, his soothing presence. She really admires that about him and finds the calm contagious.

What do they do to spend time together?: Going on drives together! Kent driving while Sab plays songs she thinks he’ll like, talking or not talking. Cuddling on the couch while reading their own separate books. Museum dates. Walking the dogs together.

Do they argue? How do they handle arguments and disagreements? How do they make up?: I imagine that the first month or so of their relationship would be difficult, just because they’re both bad at expressing themselves and not used to relying on other people. Kent kind of negates a lot of Sab’s impulses to get defensive or hostile, so instead of arguments, I think there are more likely to be awkward periods where she’s just stewing in something without addressing it. Most of their fights would be, like, one of them becoming really distant for a concerning number of days until the other tries to awkwardly check in on them.

What does their future look like?: Uhh some random lore: I think eventually they do get married, despite neither of them caring that much about it. Sabrina would be excited to have something to plan, and she knows it would make the people around her happy. They have a long engagement; there’s never really an “official” proposal, just an acknowledgement that yeah, they’ll get married one day, and then eventually they get rings. The engagement is almost Sab’s favorite part, honestly. She likes planning and showing off her ring and calling Kent her fiancé, a lot of fanfare on her part for a wedding that ends up being very modest and chill.

OTHER RELATIONSHIPS (Feel free to go in depth!)

Relationship with Nick: When I first started developing Sab, I thought that with as difficult/prickly as she can be, her relationship with Nick would be worse than it is. Never bad, but certainly strained, with more jealousy/resentment on her side. However, she rejected this. She is resentful, but never towards Nick—she internalizes the negative parts of their relationship so they manifest as guilt instead. And that’s the problem, not resentment. Sab thinks he’s overprotective, but that doesn’t make her angry; it just makes her sad. She wishes things were different and he didn’t feel so responsible for her, but she also doesn’t know how she could manage without him taking on so many of her burdens. So, guilt! So much love, but always looming guilt.

Having Nick in her head has helped. It’s added a new kind of guilt (“I’m a horrible person for being so giddy that people can’t hear my thoughts even though that requires my brother to be in a coma”), but getting inside Nick’s head for once and really feeling his love for her changes things. Makes her feel way more secure, I guess? It’s easier to see her brother as human person, a friend who loves her, rather than a perfect selfless paragon who sacrificed everything to raise her, which is an important shift.

There are also Things happening with self-presentation in the fact that they’re both models, and flirts, and pretend to be shallow. And the ways that they’ve responded to vastly different expectations. And selflessness versus selfishness. But I have no idea how to talk about that yet.

Relationship with Father: Strained and distant. Sabrina doesn’t necessarily blame him for leaving, but she hates how he’s handled it. She’s incredibly frustrated that John insists on keeping them in this miserable limbo of uncomfortable visits, even though moving away was (to her) a tacit acknowledgement that she and her parents are better off without each other. He’s trying to force a relationship that Sab thinks is ultimately harmful for everyone involved. For Nick’s sake, she’s willing to grin and bear the visits, but it never works because John can obviously tell it’s an act. He pushes her, she gets defensive, and so on to infinity.

Relationship with Mother: Like with John, Sab doesn’t resent Hope for the incident itself, or for leaving afterward. It was terrifying, and the idea of being around Hope makes her panic—but she thinks of that as just another irrational anxiety symptom, and she’s trying to work through it. What she does resent Hope for is letting it get to that point at all. Sab is incredibly bitter that Hope will suffer silently to the point of almost killing her (during the incident) and potentially herself (with the BRS), while Sab has no choice but to be completely open. Especially because they’re so similar in that way—she’s almost jealous. “Oh, so your silence is allowed to almost kill me and it’s ‘nobody’s fault’ but I can’t pretend to enjoy a single lunch with Dad without him calling me out for lying?”

And even though she doesn’t hold the incident itself against her, Sab is very hung up on “Why are you never quiet? Why are you always there?” She knows, on some level, that this was not a Personal Judgement against her. But because Hope keeps so much quiet, this is the only honest expression of her mother’s feelings that she can remember! It would take a lot for Sab to believe that Hope was really, genuinely interested in reconnecting with her, rather than just pretending to love her "enough” this time because to do otherwise would reflect poorly on Hope as a mother.

Relationship with Sally: Besties <3 Sally is the only member of the Wiseman inner circle that Sab doesn’t have complicated feelings about. They both have hidden morbid streaks that they bring out in each other, and can laugh about. They both have competitive streaks that work well together because they’re always on the same team. And their wants/needs from the relationship complement each other well, I think. Sally has always felt valued because she’s useful and not because she’s loved, while Sab has always felt smothered by love/care without feeling like she genuinely adds value to other people’s lives. So it means a lot to both of them that they’re able to help each other practically, while also genuinely loving and supporting each other outside of that.

Relationship with Gray: Full of trust and genuine care, but predicated on distance. Sab loves him a lot for being so careful not to cross any boundaries, physical or emotional, with her. She’s grateful that he’s there for Nick in a way that she doesn’t feel she can be. But "I like Gray because he doesn’t push me and is good to Nick” means that any hand he extend makes her defensive, because she’ll either view him as an emissary of Nick or start to panic because their normal routine is being disrupted (she doesn’t tell him about Hope in ch 3, for example).

They get along very well in a friend-of-a-friend sort of way, and bond over being cautious counterparts to Nick. Also, Sab never had a crush on Gray, but she is not immune to tall superhero and thinks it’s fun to fake flirt with him. (You know Isabela’s “You have pretty eyes” routine from DA2? Sab does that to Gray when conversations steer towards things she’d rather not talk about.)

Relationship with Glitch: I’m really excited about these two! They click from the start, and Sabrina feels immediately comfortable around Glitch, which makes her feel distinctly uncomfortable whenever she catches herself. Externally, they have pretty different personalities, but they’re both perceptive and... socially manipulative? aware of their self-presentation?... in ways that they both pick up on right away. So it’s a lot of conversational maneuvering and trying to figure out what the other’s game is, while also genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

Relationship with Kent/Kenna: I could go truly insane here. See the romance section above instead.

Relationship with Kim: Sab wants him to like her sooooo bad. He’s one of the only people to ever really get through to her, re: my headcanon conversation after the first assignment. Authority figures tend to treat her as special, whether that’s negatively because of her mind blindness or positively because she’s such an overachiever. She had no idea how to respond to that not being the case (and didn’t handle it well at first), but chapter 6 solidifies her respect for him.

It also turns Rosy’s opinion of Sab around; he was impressed by her in class but left his office thinking she was self-absorbed and naive. But the bombing is a reality check, and her response is very measured and practical in a way that surprises him.

Relationship with Lev: She doesn’t mind the comparisons to Nick or the “maybe one day they’ll fix you” comments as much as you might think. They aren’t her favorite, but she prefers that sort of thing to the inspirational platitudes belied by coddling that she got from her family growing up. Sab has fond memories of Lev and is grateful that he’s always been kind to her, but doesn’t have any particular feelings apart from that.

Relationship with Clarence: Holds a grudge against him for causing a scene, making her late, and generally being a jerk. But she can’t fault him for being right, after what happened! Mostly she just wants to avoid him, but she’ll be thrilled to lord her success over him if/when she proves herself.

Relationship with Dean Branham: Like Rosy, another authority figure that Sab desperately wants to impress. But without the personal investment she has in Rosy’s validation, more “Oh, this person is in charge, so I should make her like me!” Despite Nick’s and Rosy’s reservations, Sabrina doesn’t really have a problem with being “strongarmed” or manipulated into cooperating; for now, she figures Branham was just doing her job and respects her tactics.

Relationship/attitude towards Ments in general: Mostly just uncomfortable and wary around them. Sab doesn’t want her mind read, and she figures that no Ment wants to be forced to read it either. So she has a pretty strict “no Ments” rule for close personal relationships (excluding Nick, Sally, and Gray, of course. But only Nick really counts because he’s the only one who can hear her thoughts whenever she’s nearby). Not out of hatred or resentment, just because she knows it will be easier for everyone in the long run.

Do they have any other important relationships, past or present? (Relatives, friends, etc.?): Not many, but yes! Sab dated around a lot in the 2 years before Aeon (more like year and a half, because she completely shut it down once she was more focused on preparing for the MIV program), but there are 2 relationships that were formative/important for her. A high school sweetheart, and someone Sab met through modeling. She doesn’t keep up with her high school ex, but the model is her best friend outside of Sally and Nick, and they still keep in touch! I’m still developing them/the relationships, and I’ll probably post more about them someday. They’re fun!

PERSONAL BIO

Describe their personality: Confusing and contradictory. She has two main modes that confuse people who meet both (e.g., Kent). She’s either cold, stuck-up, and sometimes hostile, OR she’s charming, frivolous, and sometimes flirty. Mode 1 is tense but stoic and inexpressive; mode 2 is seemingly relaxed but very posed and insincere. Mode 1 is for when she feels uncertain or has no agenda apart from “get to point B”; mode 2 is for when she’s more comfortable or trying to manipulate someone. Her actual personality is a bit closer to the second, but she doesn’t pretend not take things seriously or hide when she’s annoyed.

Strengths: Analytical, methodical, detail-oriented. Very driven and hardworking. May not always act like it, but does have social skills/charisma; a great liar, if you can’t read her mind. Unfailingly loyal and loving to her favorite people, so so so warm and affectionate and supportive if she really loves you. Very perceptive.

Weaknesses: Way too proud. Can be petty and vindictive. Self-absorbed (she doesn’t mean anything by it, but it’s hard for her to see past herself sometimes). Stubborn, hates being wrong. And... emotional isn’t the word, but strong negative emotions can really cloud her judgement. It ties into her being proud, petty, and stubborn; if she’s really upset about something, she can cling to that emotion instead of re-evaluating it or moving forward.

Phobias: From this ask about the phobias that are planned to show up in-game, there are a few that I could see fitting Sab, but I want to wait to see how they’re implemented before I fully commit. Which is very metagame-y, I know (and I am very metagame-y about IF), but “fear of X” is so broad that it really does depend on when/how it manifests in the text.

That being said, agoraphobia is almost a lock; crowds do make Sab very anxious if she can’t keep track of everyone within a certain distance, and if she can’t leave when she starts feeling antsy. Claustrophobia is a maybe. The choice that triggers it (in chapter 4, about hating MRI machines) suits Sab, but I’m not sure if she hates MRI machines because she hates tight spaces, or if it’s more related to her general anxiety about hospitals, medical tests, etc. Which she definitely has!

What activities/club did they do in school?: She avoided anything group-oriented as far as possible. She took piano (maybe violin?) lessons and did recitals, but wasn’t in orchestra. The one exception was maybe National Honor Society or some equivalent, which she would have joined for her resume’s sake. And I think she would have tutored!

Where do they escape to when they need space?: A little used library corner, where she can people watch without being seen/heard.

How do they feel about/cope with their mind blindness?: Sab hates it but tries not to dwell on it. She knows that it’s no one’s fault, and she mainly just tries to... minimize it? Drown out her thoughts, limit her contact with Ments. And, least healthily, very rigidly managing herself. Because there’s so much of her that exists outside of herself, without her control, she tries to either filter or completely suppress everything else. Part of why she got into modeling, she can perform and be perfect and have total control over the final product of her body in the photographs for whatever campaign. Some Day This Will Be Better. But definitely not where she is in current canon.

How has your Button changed since the Incident with Hope?: Developed many new anxieties and disorders and syndromes :) She also became way more self-conscious, as in literally conscious of and way more tightly monitoring herself, what she’s thinking, what she’s expressing, how she’s sitting, etc. Less emotive face, more rigid posture.

If they weren’t an Aeon student, what would they be doing?: Sab would have beaten herself up forever if she “proved everyone right” by avoiding Unity/Ments entirely, so she’d want to stay in the family business somehow. She probably would have ended up doing scientific research on mental agility. Maybe even working for Mirrortech or some other biotech company, which I imagine would have been an interesting conversation to have with the family.

RANDOM FACTS:

Zodiac sign: Like I said, I assigned her Libra months ago for the sake of a template. But I don’t know enough about astrology to commit. Libra or Leo, probably.

Hobbies: Music, reading poetry, “cooking” (i.e., sitting on the counter and not helping while Nick makes dinner)

Likes: Watching other people (Nick) play video games, dressing up, taking long showers/baths, dark chocolate with caramel, back hugs

Dislikes: Being patronized, hot weather, going to the doctor, driving, doing anything she is not good at

Type of bedsheets: Bamboo.

Drink of choice: Cucumber mint lemonade! For hot drinks, some kind of caramel coffee. For alcohol, she refuses to get drunk because she’s terrified of having even less control of her mental broadcast, but at home/around people she trusts she’ll have a glass or two of wine. Doesn’t know enough to be picky, but doesn’t like it too sweet.

Favorite food: Probably some pasta dish Nick makes with asparagus and tomatoes and a lot of garlic.

Favorite color: Like a light turquoise!

Favorite music: Music to her was another mind-shielding tactic before anything else, so she tends to like upbeat-ish electronic/pop stuff. Catchy and repetitive, and/or with lots of personality to drown out her own thoughts. On the other end of the spectrum, she does have a soft spot for crackly, lo-fi, old or old-sounding slow songs—something about fuzzy recordings simulating a weak telepathic signal.

Favorite season: Hmm, spring and autumn are both good. She likes either side of winter.

Anything else you’d like to share: My heart and a long, fulfilling marriage, with anyone who reads all this 💍

[starstruckmyths]

Canon Steve Bucky but mandalorian like cult exists and Bucky who escaped hydra early joins it so Steve defrosted in the future meets this heroic man who never shows his face and... You know how it goes

S T U C K Y   M A N D A L O R I A N   A U

Please please please I’ll come to your ask in a bit but my mind just pushed something forward and I’ll give this a little ramble before I will unleash my thoughts about yours.

First, some lore about the Mandalorians, taken straight from the Wiki: 

The Mandalorians were a clan-based cultural group that was composed of members from multiple species all bound by a common culture, creed, and code. 

Originating from the planet Mandalore, the Mandalorians' history was one of warriors who would become feared throughout the galaxy, gaining a reputation as mercenaries and bounty hunters. 

The Way of the Mandalore involved protecting fellow Mandalorians but also wearing a helmet at all times. The cult's ideology stated that if a Mandalorian removed their helmet in front of another living being, they were no longer permitted to wear it. 

You could go so many directions with this I’m FREAKING OUT. First of all: Space AU. Mandalorian Stucky AU in space I’m S H A K I N G. One of them is the Mandalorian, a warrior and bounty hunter through and through, and then it could go so many ways, honestly. 

The other is a “helpless” villager being terrorized by some kind of monster, but who later shows willingness to fight and a certain amount of spunk and fire in them. 

The other is a different kind of bounty hunter/warrior and they’re both going after the same target, and so end up fighting for it, but then decide to maybe share the bounty, or perhaps they face a bigger threat and need to team up.

The other IS the bounty and they get ~taken~ to be turned in. But then it turns out that the cause is everything but noble, and that turning the other in could be catastrophic. Maybe HYDRA is a kind of organization there too, and they’re set on having Steve/Bucky for information or general evilness, and then the Mandalorian figures out they have to protect the other. 

But that’s the space AU ramble, you said something about... 

Modern Mandalorian AU

Bucky is the one with the helmet and doesn’t take it off -- NONNIE OH NONNIE, WHERE DO I START

I literally cannot function my head is flooding my crops have been watered my mind is rambling and bumbling and stumbling and it’s too many thoughts shfsklfjahfkjdfhfhksajfhsfs [<-- that is me, making a Windows shut-down noise].

In episode 4 of The Mandalorian, the protagonist Mandalorian meets a charming village woman who’s very kind to him, and she almost removes his helmet, and he almost lets her. That’s what I want to talk about here, because I feel that single scene would build this entire AU. 

Steve trying to take off Bucky’s mask, Bucky almost letting him before he breaks it off at the last moment. Not because he is not completely swept away by the brave young man with the most gorgeous eyes he’s ever seen, but because he can’t. He’s not supposed to do this. Being with Steve... that can never be his life. He can never have that. People like him never can.  

And I wrote a scene about that because OF COURSE I DID

Just imagine: 

|X|

Silence had fallen unlike any other silence ever had. 

It was as if the Earth itself had decided to stop spinning just for them, the breeze had laid down at their feet and the noise of the ever-bustling city had faded to a background ring barely to be heard. 

A light breath slipped passed his lips, one he was sure was not to be felt through the mask. They stood so close the tips of their shoes almost touched, and Steve thought to feel some kind of warmth, though he could have imagined it. The soldier let him, allowed him to come so close even though a distance had been kept before. 

Steve lifted his hands from along his sides, fingers uncurled and lax, posing no threat to the other who had most likely only ever seen threats in his life. The pale blue eyes followed his movements. Attentively, but not of fear or hostility, no. There was something almost curious to them, a sparkle of something hidden beneath the surface. He grazed the pads of his fingers along the fabric of the mask, imagining it to be the bare skin of the face hidden beneath, and he cupped the Kevlar in his hands, keeping the rough exterior against his palms. 

It was then that he wondered how many people had done this before him - if there had ever been any at all. He slid his hands a little further, heart brimming with the unspoken permission. No words were said, and yet he knew it was alright, he knew he was allowed. His gaze went from the mask to the hair, to the suit and even briefly to the ground, but they always went back to the eyes, to look into those pools of pale blue that haunted his dreams and lay at the tip of his tongue, but he could never quite figure out why. 

Why were they so familiar to him?

His fingers found the clasp of the mask, the only thing keeping it on so securely. All he had to do was press and click, and then pull away to let the mask come off. It was so simple, and yet there was a tremble to his hands as he lay his tips on the edges. They were in a kind of half-hug, Steve’s arms resting partially on the soldier’s shoulders, and were they to take one step closer they would be wrapped in a tender embrace, chest to chest, nose to mask. 

Before he could loosen the clasp and finally gaze upon the treasure of the hidden caves, another set of hands landed on his own, taking them oh so gently and bringing them back. They were not pushed or pulled, but rather kept. The soldier had his hands around Steve’s own, holding them between them as if to share a lover’s minute. 

“I cannot,” the soldier spoke, his voice holding an edge of withheld grief, “This is the Way.”

Steve only just managed to take another breath, his lungs so deprived of air it was as if he was too high up to ever come back down. His heart raced, faster than a horse’s in a race, and he swallowed around his own disappointment, mustering a smile to his face as he held the tender gaze. “I understand.”

The soldier released one of his hands, bringing it up to Steve’s face in much the same way as Steve had done before. The fingers uncurled and lax, the backs stroking down his cheek in a way so horribly soft he was not able to suppress the shiver crawling down his spine. Then the soldier cupped his face, fingers lying warm and heavy beneath his ear as the thumb rested on his cheek. 

Just like before, the eyes pierced into his, so deep and profound, as if he would drown if he looked for too long. The soldier released a breath of his own, a sound almost melancholic. 

“No,” he said, “You don’t.”

|X|

Oh look now I’ve made myself bittersweet sad. 

I just-- I’m a rambling mess, Nonnie. Oh my goodness. I’m just- I can’t. I love this. My head is spinning and I love it so much. 

I imagine the AU would be like Steve seeing Bucky sweep in to fight a group of dangerous criminals, getting in and out on a whim, and he becomes rather interested in this ~mysterious soldier~. 

He tries to get the soldier’s attention, probably by showing off. He jumps out of planes, takes on way too many bad guys for his own good, showcases some of his abilities, gets into a lot of trouble hoping that a certain someone will save him. 

He half-fails, half-succeeds, as he has to save himself but what do you know, the mystery man is standing right outside the building. They introduce themselves. Or rather... Steve does, and the mysterious man is just The Soldier. Steve goes along, trying to ask questions, to find out, to know. 

Soldier/Bucky won’t admit it, but he finds it endearing, and it’s been so long since someone has worried for him, or has been so interested in him. 

Nonnie, you clearly have an idea, and I KNOW you’ve been thinking out parts and plots for yourself. Feel free to come back any time and tell me all about it. 

Stucky Modern Mandalorian AU(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*✲ﾟ*｡⋆

[jennsmischievousmind]

Fucks not Found

Ghosts

Summary: You hack, that's what you do. Dying to do so freely, wasn't what you had expected. Meeting the weirdest fucking squad; losing the best part of you; falling for a thief : was not planned.

Pairing : Four/Billy (Ben Hardy) - You

A/N: The story goes through the all movie, so I suggest you watch it before reading.

I don't own any characters other than Eight.

English is not my native language, I'm trying to get better at it, please be indulgent.

Tried my best to match Ryan Reynold's level of sass aha

Ch1 Ghosts | Ch2 Florence | Ch3 A Matter of Seconds | Ch4 I need a Backdoor | Ch5 Die Hard | Ch6 White Flag | Ch7 Haunt the Living | Ch8 One, but not done [end]

This is how you die.

"So you're the one who hacked the wrong guy" You swiftly turn around gasping at the sudden voice in your apartment

"Depends, you’re his hitman?" You were ready to run even if it means jumping by the window.

"Nooo, I'm an angel.” You snort at his sarcasm, unknown to you at this moment that he was full of it.

"Wanna disappear?" he asked taking a seat at the kitchen table eyeing your bags at the door.

"In a body bag? Slowly you make your way to the knives, just in case.

"You are a funny one, aren't you? I know the man you stole from, you won't get far until he got you. But, he emphasized, if you’re willing to do what's right.."

"I've already done my part for the flag." Assuming he was American by the way he talked.

"I'm not talking about shitty drug dealers. But evil war-lovers, genocide perpetrators, that kind of shitty so-called human. Those ones that are above the laws with governments' balls in their hands, ready to squish them.”

"That's gross" your brother appeared from the adjacent room. You let your mind consider the stranger’s offer as soon as you look at your confused brother, knowing he was in danger because of you.

“You two look at lot alike.” The guy leaned in, screwing his eyes at you both.

“We’re twin dumbass” your brother answered glancing at you wondering.

“What’s the deal?” you asked considering the offer

The guy smirked, “Well, to be short you die, and then you take down evil motherfuckers without governments’ backlash on you.” He tapped his fingers against the Formica table.

It took 5 minutes.

"One condition, my brother comes to!"

"What's he good at?" he crossed his arms.

"I can drive…Hold on what? Die? Who the fuck are you!?”

"Already too many questions” he rolled his eyes

"He's a hell of a driver, it got him under surveillance when he got chased by 6 police cars after an illegal race back in the States."

"So they caught up Muttley” the guy clucked his tongue

“Hey!”  

"No, you interfered almost ashamed, I told him to stop the car...I got motion sickness."

The guy erupted in laughter, you two watching him unamused.

_

“I’m more like Peter Perfect.”  Your brother mumbled as the guy left.

You look by the window discreetly, catching a glimpse of the guy mingling in the crowd. “You’re Muttley bro.”

A week later you got a text. The guy who called himself One had planned your fake death. A random trek in Italy’s mountains, an assumed fatal fall, no bodies recovered.

It was never supposed to be your life. But we all know nothing happens as it should.

Papà went to fight a war and disappeared, you were forced to move in America when you were 6.

Mammà never cope the loss of her motherland and husband. She died of a belated broken heart syndrome when you were 16. 

Both you and your brother were placed in a host family. It wasn’t a crappy family like it’s always the case in some tv show, they were nice and wealthy. The father was a tech engineer, somehow you took interest in his work and start learning to code, soon reading about hackers: white hats; black hats; “We are Legion”, you were hooked and skilled in a matter of time.

When you turned major though, things turned difficult, the host family had to let you go and Internal Affairs of your state caught you looking in their network. Which led to you working as a C.I for them, it was that or prison. Not thrilled by the idea but obliged to cooperate was your new motto.

Your brother had some job here and there but nothing steady, so money from the IA was welcome.

After a year and a half, I.A ditched you, it was rather good news in a way, they’ve erased your past mistakes but said they’d keep a distant eye on you.

So you moved on from your shithole that was the 1 bedroom apartment you and your brother shared and went to your parents’ hometown in Italy. Your brother was reluctant at first as he couldn’t even say hello in Italian, you taught him as your mamma had done it with you but he wasn’t that interested.

Working with people was not your forte, you were too bossy, so you got fired ... plenty of times: from a coffee shop, a rental bike shop and a tourist city tour bus thingy. So you started doing what you were good at, hacking for money, it went well for a few years, never being too greedy - until you hacked the wrong person and got in trouble.

That's how you became a Ghost and ended up in the middle of the California Desert.

_

One had built a squad. No names, only numbers to identify each other. Not calling your brother by his name was a challenge, same for him.

There were 7 of you.

One, the “boss”, a mysterious sassy billionaire who decided to fund his own strike team.

Two, a French blonde woman, pretty cold, a spy apparently

Three, a crazy hitman who couldn’t shut up

Four, a young parkour master and reformed thief

Five, a Doctor, but you heard she was actually working at a Dentist

Six, your brother, the annoying driver.

And then Eight, you, the Black Hat somehow becoming a hacktivist.

Why not Seven? Long story short, it was one more condition you’d submitted to One.

_

_SICILY

"Your focus determines your reality.”

“Oh for fuck's sake One, quit your Jedi bullshit!” you loosed your temper typing on your keyboard angrily. An entire week, an ENTIRE WEEK quoting Star Wars!

Four and Five laughed in the comm. One braced himself on the other end of the line. Three cut the heavy silence.

“Eight, Chiquita please stop yelling”

“I’m not a Chiquita stop saying that!”

“Ok ok chi…Eight, damn you’re stressful” 

“God, why do I have to team you up!!” One facepalm

“Now what?” Five asked

Radio silence

“Oh so now no one’s talking! What are you, 4?” One angrily called out to you 2.

“Yeah, uh high, literally.” Four answered One, you snorted.

“No ..  damn not you!”

“You called me Mate!” Four said offended

“No, shush – Eight are you done with the system?” he was about to lose it.

“I’ve been done with it the second Three called me Chiquita!” you crossed your arms in front of your laptop.

“Hey ..” “We’re not talking about that again!” One cut Three

“Can we get going now?” Two interfered, you heard her bike roaring.

“Finally, some sensed words.” One said wrapping it up.

Four entered the place you’d hacked the system of. Six and Two were not far in case of trouble.

“Four, the hard drive is in the main office. Second floor.” One enunciated, you followed Fours progression with the security cameras.

It was enlivening, stressful, but oh so exciting. When you worked with I.A you were never there when they’d go down in action, it was nothing but boring data researched and dealer’s MacBook.

“Freeze Four, guards coming east.” Switching cams you gave him a safe path.

“Ok, you’re clear. Now to your left, third door then turn right.”

Four got his hands on the hard drive containing all you needed to know about the next target.

“Well done.” One congratulated the team

“Thanks, thanks, It helps to have a sexy voice guiding you” Four chuckled, you blushed, sexy voice? is that even possible?

“Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.”

You rolled your eyes at the endless use of Star Wars' quotes.

“Hum that’s my sister, remember?” Six growled tightening the wheel

“Luke grab Solo, meet up in 15minutes at the hotel. Everyone move!” One instructed you smiled at the thought of being Leïa. Gosh, you were as much of a nerd as One.

Climbing down the jeep Three had rented, you laughed seeing your brother holding Four in an arm lock for a few seconds anyway, Four reversed the lock, pining your brother’s arms behind himself.

You passed by them “Easy with my twin please.” Four wasn’t releasing his hold so you stopped, turning back you lift an eyebrow at Four insisting he let him go.

“Oh!” he lifted his hands in defence taking a step back.

Grabbing your brother by the sleeves as he was about to jump on Four “Come on piccino” you made your way in the hotel laughing.

_ 

Your first big mission started a few weeks after, everyone gathered in The Haunted House as One called it, an old bunker, cheesy name for an HQ.

“You don’t get it, I need a CAR!”

“That’s a car, Six.” Three argued back.

“No that’s a heap, that thing won’t get us through the paved road of Italy, believe me.”

Four and Five were amused by the situation, Three had rent a truck and an old Volvo for this mission.

“Alright, shut up, we’ll get another car!” One declared, Six flicked to Three.

One resumed the mission’s details. Giving everyone their own missions. A simple mission, retrieve a lawyer’s smartphone.

In the midst of it, your hand flew to your brother’s head next to you. The smacked resonating between the walls of the unfinished bunker.

“Why ..why’d you hit him?” One asked confused, your brother was rubbing the back of his head frowning at you.

“Cain’s instinct.” You replied wriggling your fingers for him to continue. Four snorted, Six nudged him in the ribs.

In a few months, you had learned a lot from this weird squad. Learning to shoot was an obligation, Three was insane but a good teacher.

You’d asked Four to teach you some parkour in case of a chase. Six and Four became close friends in a matter of time. Five was nice, but you were never one to be good at making friends. Two was not a big talker and frankly, she scared you a little.

So you spend your free time hacking and reading, on the hammock installed between a dismantle plane and a dead tree. Not far from there you could hear Four skating in the empty pool and three at the makeshift shooting range.

Suddenly,

“EIGHT!”

Groaning you closed your book “WHAT!?

Your voice boomed against the caravan and lost itself in the desert, but you still hoped Four had heard. It was his thing, screaming your name instead of coming to you directly. At his silence, you wriggle out the hammock and strode to the pool.

“What’d you want skater boy?”

He was lying in the pool his board by his side. “Four?” you made your way to the ladder, “hey” you gently nudge him with your foot but he didn’t move.

“Four? you called out worried, “shit” knees hitting the vinyl liner checking if he was breathing, he wasn’t.

“Hey wake up, seriously dude don’t make me do CPR on you, I suck at it!” suddenly laughter erupted in your ears. Six appearing on the edge, Four chucked on the floor.

“Pranking you..he tried to breathe in, is always the best sis!” Six laughed even harder at your confused face. Still kneeling at Four’s side, he was looking at you laughing, until he wasn’t, catching a glimpse of worry melting with anger in your eyes.

Punching his left shoulder, you hurried out the pool. He stayed on the floor watching you go.

“Don’t make me do CPR I suck at it!” your brother was still laughing his brain's out.

_

“What was that?”

Four leaned on the dead tree near your head, his shadow offering some shade.

“A real bad joke?”

“No I mean, why’d you hit me?”

Sighing you clasped your book closed for the second time today “you really got me worried, happy?”

“No, you propped up on your elbow at his answer craning your head to him, I didn’t mean to scare you.” His warm hand slide in your hair at the base of your neck, he leaned in, letting you enough time to push him away if you wanted.

"Sorry" he whispered, his lips pressing in your temple gently, warmly for a few seconds. Catching yourself leaning in you almost fell off the swinging' hammock as he released his hold, he grinned and left not saying anything more.

"What the hell Four!!" you yelled at him, an ounce of laughter in your voice, a blush creeping into your cheeks, his own laughter filling the desert's silence.

FLORENCE

A/N: don't forget to double tap if you liked it. 🙏

[urlocal-turt-nurt]

Prank’d (Purple)

Based on that trend of a naked girl walking past her boyfriend playing video games. Basically just Donatello and his gf themed. Whoops.

I apologise for this has nothing to do with being pranked but I wAsnT sUre wHaT tO tItLe iT So hErE we aRe

Okay, she was interested.

Admittedly, when the video of a naked girl walking past her game-preoccupied boyfriend showed up in her feed, she wasn’t impressed. Amused, but unimpressed.

But then it happened a second time, and a third, and then a fourth.

After briefly wondering why there were so many naked girls on a platform that didn’t allow nudity, it showed up a fifth time and by then she was pondering its merits.

On one hand, her boyfriend was a hyper-focused, obsessive-compulsive, mad scientist who she could go literal days without seeing due to aforementioned hyper-focused, obsessive-compulsive, mad scientist behaviours.

He didn’t tolerate interruptions, not even the sleep-driven ones, and replaced sleep (and food) with caffeine. She had once watched him, without hesitation, eat a handful of coffee beans with a completely straight face.

She was haunted by the memory.

During those periods, she rarely got attention from him. Sure, he let her sit with him and stare angrily at her uni papers, but he wasn’t much for conversation. Or touching. Or sex.

Sad face.

On the other hand...

She paused and tilted her head.

Huh, there was no other hand.

And considering said boyfriend was currently in one of his moods...

“Welp,” she says, rising to her feet and shucking her top. “Mikey’s always telling me I need to be spontaneous.”

—————————

Donnie twirled his pen around his fingers, face locked on his screen.

His position on the couch was more for comfort than any desire to be around anyone, and the single laptop he had with him would only suit his needs for so long. But he’d rather his spine didn’t look like a sideways u, so here he was.

Donnie twisted his lips for a short moment in thought before the pen fell from his grasp and he was typing away; eyes flicking across the screen and taking in lines upon lines of code as he tried to figure out why that damn hover board was glitching.

“Donnie?”

Donnie didn’t even pause. “Hey, busy.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

He briefly focused on her footsteps softly padding away before he was back, immersed in his-

BANG

His head shot up and he stared at the wrench that was lying in the middle of a newly dented heap of unused machinery.

He turned to look at his beautiful, infuriating girlfriend, then back to the machinery, then did a double take.

“See, when it happened with the other guys, they saw a hot naked girl in their peripheral vision and just stopped what they were doing.” She said. “But of course getting my guys attention means throwing a wrench into something that’ll make a lot of noise.”

Donnie.exe has stopped working.

“I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “Are you naked right now.”

She tilted her head at him, one hand propped on her hip and that hip popped enticingly to the side. “No Donnie,” she smiled a sultry little smile. “This is a nonesie.”

“Oh my God,” Donnie groaned. Half because Oh My God, My Girlfriend Is A Dork and half because Oh My God, My Girlfriend Is Naked.

She sighed softly and pivoted, starting to strut away knowing full well his eyes were on her ass.

“Don’t mind me!” She called back. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

She wasn’t surprised to turn around and have him in front of her.

“You move fast,” she told him seriously and he gripped her waist tightly, pulling her to him.

“You,” he said softly. “Are absolutely evil. Are you aware of that?” She merely smirked in reply and he traced his hands down her body to grasp the back of her thighs, hoisting her up.

She wrapped her legs around his waist with a purr and leaned in to lick a long line up his neck.

“We are going to move this somewhere that isn’t in danger of being walked into by an unassuming family member.” He told her, a very slight hitch in his breath from her ministrations.

She grins against his neck. “Oh?”

He gives her a very unimpressed look, not even bothering to hide his aroused flush (or his other very aroused body part). “You interrupted my work.” He said plainly, striding towards the lab.

The door clicked shut behind them and suddenly she was on her back and he was looming over her, so tall he didn’t even need to climb on the desk after her. She gazes up at him because who the hell expected this to work? Not her definitely. But...

“So I’m going to presume you weren’t planning on walking tomorrow?” He asks, copying her coy head tilt.

She whimpers, arching up against him.

She definitely wasn’t complaining.

[gffa]

I was asked by @grasswatcher for fics that explore STAR WARS’ Jedi culture and this is one of those subjects that’s dearest to my heart, because I constantly crave more exploration of what it must be like to be a Level 100 Space Psychic in touch with an ancient, unfathomable energy field that creates feedback loops in your head and connects you to all living things and can overwhelm you so easily if you don’t have your shit together, just as much as I want to know about Jedi traditions and Jedi artwork and Jedi philosophy and Jedi stories and Jedi language and all of it. There have been some pretty stellar ones out there, sometimes deep dives, sometimes just weaving bits into the background and I love them all and want a thousand more immediately! STAR WARS FIC RECS - JEDI CULTURE: ✦ The Mathematics of Repair by panharmonium, obi-wan & anakin & cast, 4.6k   For raw teachers and rough-edged students building in the rubble: tiny steps are enough, provided they carry you in the right direction. Immediately post TPM, in short snippets. ✦ In All The World by Ammar, obi-wan & anakin & cast, 76.6k wip   The story of how Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi tamed each other, from Naboo to Anakin’s early days at the Temple. ✦ Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi by stonefreak, obi-wan & anakin & padme & ahsoka & palpatine & cody & cast, ~30k wip   or: “Obi-Wan’s Life Gets Worse (Though It’s Not As Bad As It Could’ve Been)” ✦ Cataclasm by dendral, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & waxer & cast, 51.9k wip   For reasons unknown to all but himself, Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Jedi Order in the midst of the Clone Wars, taking with him a single clone. Anakin Skywalker has been unofficially tasked by the Order to find Obi-Wan and bring him home. Unfortunately for Anakin, it seems his former master is always ten steps ahead of him. ✦ Remedial Jedi Theology by MarbleGlove, obi-wan & anakin & mace & palpatine & cast, 51.3k   Let us consider the fact that the Jedi Order is a monastic religious organization based out of a temple, with five basic tenets of faith. ✦ We Will Abide by naberiie, plo & shaak, 10.3k   Light. Dark. Balance. Beneath the Jedi Temple, far below the chaos of Coruscant’s Galactic City, ancient halls and corridors sleep in silent darkness. Padawans Shaak Ti and Plo Koon are determined to explore them. ✦ The Living Force; Parables for Padawans by glorious_clio, obi-wan & cast, 6.1k   Since infancy, younglings are taught the Jedi Code, “Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.” Obi-Wan Kenobi learns these tenets backwards and forwards again. But even as a child, he is interested in nuance. And so his teachers tell him parables. ✦ Lineage by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & xanatos & cast, 35.9k   AU!Jedi Apprentice. Book I: In which master and apprentice meet for the first time, enjoy a disastrous adventure courtesy of Xanatos DuCrion, and reap the fruits of patience and fortitude. A fanciful retelling of the original. ✦ Lineage II by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & cast, 40.9k   A year or so has elapsed since the last time we saw our heroes. BOOK 2: In which master and apprentice investigate an evil brainwashing plot, attend a boisterous wedding, and battle the enemy within. ✦ Lineage III by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & dooku & xanatos & bant & cast, 49.4k   AU!Jedi Apprentice. Book III: Master and apprentice face an important rite of passage, grapple with a traitorous plot within the Temple’s walls, and discover the limits of obedience and intuition. Appearances by Bant Eerin, Xanatos DuCrion, Yan Dooku, and others. ✦ Lineage IV by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & siri & adi gallia, 39.3k   Master and apprentice endure a stint with the Agri-Corps, and find that trouble has a way of coming home to haunt them. Featuring a pile of bantha poodoo, a tentacled carnivorous plant, a desperate escaped convict, and a highly provocative young woman. ✦ Lineage V by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & tahl (& some qui-gon/tahl) & dooku & cast, 50.7k   An evil scientist wreaks havoc when she captures Jedi Knight Tahl Uvain for purposes of obscure research; Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan rush to the rescue, only to be embroiled in further trouble; and Master Dooku joins in the hunt with characteristic aplomb. ✦ Lineage VI by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & cast, 66.2k   Master and apprentice undertake a risky undercover mission to expose conspiracy in a far-flung sector; a comedy of manners abruptly transforms into a nightmare when their cover is blown; and a desperate escape gambit strikes deep at the foundations of trust. ✦ Lineage VII by ruth baulding, obi-wan & qui-gon & siri & adi gallia & some obi-wan/siri, 74.5k   Sent to the aid of their fellow Jedi on a disastrous mission to New Apsolon, master and apprentice contend with brainwashing, genocide, conspiracy, and the perilous realm of the heart. ✦ What Is My Heritage? by Marnie, qui-gon & yoda, 7.7k   Qui-Gon, age 13, tries to find a place to belong. ✦ Coming Home by Marnie, qui-gon & yoda & dooku, 18.1k   A story telling how Qui-Gon comes to be Dooku’s apprentice. ✦ Snakefic by esama, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & yoda & cast, 6k   It was only the matter of time before the egg hatched. ✦ Shadows of the Future by stormqueen873, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & cast, 129.3k   ObiWan lost the duel on Mustafar, but instead of dying, he finds himself on a ship leaving Tatooine, with his old Master and a familiar young boy. As events begin to unfold, can he stop the future he knows from occuring? ✦ The Ice-Breaking Game by sharkcar, padme & ahsoka & rex & cast, 7.1k   After contracting the Blue Shadow virus, Ahsoka Tano is quarantined in Theed, along with Senator Amidala and Captain Rex. They are three very different people, but they all share a restlessness that leaves them unable to endure their confinement. To pass the time, Padme suggests they play a question game, each telling stories about personal experiences. As all three share a humorous discussion, they learn about compassion and the importance of knowing perspectives different from their own. ✦ When Darkness Seems to Hide This Place by IllyanaA, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & kanan & ocs & cast, 94.9k wip   After killing three of the Jedi Order’s best and brightest, Palpatine’s fight with Jedi Master Mace Windu goes shorter than expected. Afraid he’s lost his chance at recruiting a new apprentice, Sidious unleashes Order 66 across the galaxy, but, per their programming, the Clone Army is not to harm Anakin Skywalker. After witnessing the most painful loss he’s ever experienced and injured at the hands of his captors, Anakin is ready to die like the rest of the Jedi, though not before getting his vengeance. ✦ A Long, Long Time Ago by ruth baulding, dooku & qui-gon + qui-gon & obi-wan + obi-wan & anakin + anakin & ahsoka, 5.8k   A wisdom tale handed passed down through the generations poses troublesome questions for a line of masters and Padawans, from Dooku to Ahsoka Tano. ✦ Adi Gallia, Master of the Order by Perspicacia, adi & obi-wan & anakin & mace & cin & ahsoka & riyo & rex & cast, 7.2k   Ashes in her heart, she had left the younglings and the elders and the wounded for her duty to the galaxy, choosing to stop the Sith instead of protecting her people. ✦ The Apprenticeship by Nny11, ahsoka & yoda & anakin & cast, 31.4k wip   The doors only open when a Master opens them for their Padawan, a subtle reminder to them that a student needs a teacher’s guidance and that teachers must let them go. The force thinks it’s rather funny when it alters history by forcing Master Yoda to take on a very young Ahsoka Tano as his Padawan. ✦ Goreblood the Terrible by BloodyMary, jedi & cast, 1.7k   It has occured to me that so far we lack any sort of folklore/storytelling tradition for the Jedi. So I set out to remedy this. Behold, for Goreblood the Terrible was the result. ✦ “The Padawan Chooses The Master” by lurkingcrow, obi-wan & anakin & cast, 3.6k   prompt: AU - The Jedi say “The Padawan Chooses The Master” Qui Gon lives, Obi Wan is very preoccupied, and Anakin is put into the creche as an Initiate to learn what he can until Qui Gon wakes up from his coma and gets yelled at by the Council. In the meantime, Anakin meets other Jedi Masters and when the Council asks him who he wants to be his teacher, his answer isn’t Qui Gon. Instead it’s *insert your fav Jedi here* ✦ Brothers (working title) by Charity_Angel, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & padme & shmi & yoda & cast, 22.7k wip   In which Qui-Gon has a very near miss on Naboo, Obi-Wan is very stubborn, and they end up breaking a lot of rules accidentally as a result. All because of that kid they picked up on Tatooine. ✦ Under a purple sun… by Perspicacia, obi-wan & ahsoka, ~1k   Ahsoka hadn’t been happy when Skyguy had left her with Master Kenobi for this mission, but it was still good to spend time with her Grand Master. ✦ Hondo Kenobi by StarWarsSyl, obi-wan & hondo & cast, 2.6k   It’s not every day the pirate Hondo calls Obi-Wan in to give him a baby. ✦ Duet by Silver Sky 1138, oc & cin, 2.3k   Asha Scarsi, the Jedi Padawan who feels the Force through music, isn’t half as good at lightsaber combat as she is at singing and mindtricks. So she’s a little nervous when Battlemaster Cin Drallig calls her to the training room after class. ✦ The Only Home We Know by ReneeoftheStars, katooni & petro & ganodi & byph & gungi & zaft & cast, character death, child death, 2.4k   The Jedi Temple is under attack. Determined to fight for their home, younglings Katooni, Petro, Zatt, Ganodi, Byph, and Gungi make their way to aid the Jedi Masters in defense of the Temple. But the situation is far graver than they expected. ✦ The One Where Anakin Tries to Be Serious by GirlwithCurls98, anakin & ahsoka, 1k   Even though they’re fighting a war, Anakin finds the time to lead his apprentice through one of the Jedi’s sacred ceremonies. ✦ Obi-Wan and the Force by AwayOHumanChild, obi-wan & cast, ~1k   One of the first things Jedi Initiates learn is that everyone experiences the Force differently. ✦ All That I Have Seen by Felilla, ocs & ahsoka & anakin & obi-wan & yoda & cast, time travel, 35.3k wip   She died in the Temple, staring into the face of a man that she once looked up to, a man that she once thought to be a great Jedi. She awoke in the Temple, years before that event took place. Years before everything went wrong. And she decided to make it right. ✦ Knightrise by Deviant_Accumulation, obi-wan & ahsoka & satine & rex & cast, 19.4k wip   “Strong enough to fight the Sith Lord, you are not.” “And you are?” ✦ Markings by wabbajack, plo & ahsoka & bultar & cast, 1.6k   In which it is revealed that Master Plo Koon has always had a difficult time putting his foot down when faced with his Little ‘Soka. ✦ Night Shift at the Temple by ReneeoftheStars, oc jedi & cast, 1.8k   A Jedi Temple Guard sees all, speaks to few, and has attachments to no one. One must be prepared for any threats that may arise, especially at night, while most of the Temple sleeps. ✦ Jedi of Light by Sannah, obi-wan/anakin/padme & mace & yoda & plo & even & jocasta & cast, 9.4k wip   Out of irritation with the war and with permission from the Council, several talk show hosts create a show that airs weekly about the Jedi. They name the show *Jedi of Light,* and go around following Jedi and asking them questions. ✦ Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi by stonefreeak, obi-wan & anakin & padme & palpatine & bail & cast, 29.2k wip   By an old Republic law, all members of the Jedi High Council are senators in the Galactic Senate, and can thus be voted in as chancellor. ✦ The First Trial by Raven_Knight, obi-wan & qui-gon, 2k   Accompanied by his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, young Obi-Wan Kenobi undergoes his first trial and rite as a Padawan Learner on the frozen planet of Ilum. ✦ Arrival by CJinn, obi-wan & yoda & cast, 2.6k   Little Obi-Wan was only a few days old when he was brought to the Jedi Temple. His arrival caused some confusion among the Jedi. ✦ Found Clan by silvergryphon, boba & ocs & obi-wan & anakin & cast, 18.4k wip   After the Battle of Geonosis, a Jedi Healer discovers young Boba Fett mourning the loss of his father. Not about to leave a ten-year-old boy on his own, she promptly adopts him with the full collusion of her Padawan. ✦ Tipping Point by Ria Talla (ronia), adi gallia & finis valorum & eeth koth, 3.3k   “I believe that if what’s happening on Naboo is allowed to continue, the other member systems will wonder what they owe to a Republic that can no longer protect them.” ✦ A Personal Touch by DragonHoardsBooks, obi-wan & anakin, 6.2k   New jedi padawan Anakin Skywalker realizes that there is more to being a jedi then he tought. Discovering a completely new culture will take time and effort, but maybe he’ll make some friends along the way. ✦ Master by CJinn, obi-wan & anakin, 27.5k   Obi-Wan Kenobi had always wanted to become a Jedi Knight. What he didn’t expect was to become a Master merely days after his own Master died. Adapting to his new role as the mentor and Master of the quite unusual Padawan Anakin Skywalker became a bumpy road. ✦ The Orchards by Raven_Knight, obi-wan & qui-gon & cast, 3.6k   When young Obi-Wan Kenobi is injured on a previous mission, Qui-Gon Jinn refuses to accept further off-planet missions until his Padawan’s recovery. Yoda assigns the pair an in-Temple mission of utmost importance while Obi-Wan heals. Master and Padawan welcome the change of pace. ✦ Starrunner by rinzukodas, obi-wan & jedi & oc, 80.2k wip   In what would have been the year 17 BBY, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine is found slumped over his desk, dead to rights and emitting a foul odor. The coroners declare the body victim to a heart attack and the smell a result of a lack of a timely embalming—a bit of bowels humor, the head coroner says with a nervous laugh when interviewed by the Galactic Enquirer. ✦ The Spire by skatzaa, obi-wan & ocs, 2.4k   The galaxy was on the brink of war, and Obi-Wan Kenobi had been assigned a new room. ✦ Room Arrangements by skatzaa, obi-wan & anakin, 2.2k   Anakin has some concerns about room arrangements at the Temple. Obi-Wan does his best to reassure him. ✦ Swimming Lessons by devilinthedetails, obi-wan & anakin, 2.1k   Obi-Wan decides Anakin must learn how to swim. ✦ The Uses of a Sandwich by Laura Kaye (laurakaye), obi-wan & qui-gon & oc & cast, 17.6k   A few months after being taken as a Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi faces a challenge: meeting his Master’s first apprentice. FULL DETAILS + RECS HERE!

[phoebehalliwell]

The problem with Phoebe is she's inherently selfish. She works to overcome it, but it's still her biggest flaw. Getting arrested for theft well into her twenties, lying to her sisters about Cole, becoming the Queen of Hell, her entire baby arc, the list goes on. And I think a lot of fans assume that selfishness means she's at fault for Cole's behavior, when that's the fault of his own selfish tendencies.

honestly? i love selfish characters, or just like,,, characters who aren’t really like good people. like they’re not evil or anything, but like,, they’re not these beacons of piety and moral righteousness. they’ll be petty and hold grudges and put their own needs before the greater good because quite frankly? it’s a lot more relatable. and it makes the moment where they choose to do the right thing a lot more gratifying than if they are just morally upstanding people who you can always trust to do the right thing. i thought phoebe could have been a really great character to follow this arc, but it just never landed.

for starters, phoebe would never really screw over any random person, she would go out of her way to save innocents (for the most part). she never worshiped her own life over her duties as a witch, that was more piper’s deal, so that was never her burden to overcome. almost all of her poor decisions didn’t harm innocent bystanders, they only seemed to hurt those closest to her. the prime example of this is her relationship with cole and her lying about it. she very much left all of her sisters at risk for her own personal needs. her going to save cole in the underworld and prue dying while she’s down there, cole becoming the source and psychologically torturing paige, it’s all her putting her own comfort above the comfort of others. but like here’s the thing. she’s not being selfish, necessarily. she’s being stupid. she’s not choosing her happiness over the happiness of others, she’s choosing her happiness and oh my god why is everyone so upset what happened i certainly could not have done anything wrong why is everyone mad at me?

the reason i personally really like to see selfish characters is because they’ll know which choice is right and which is wrong, but the wrong choice is enticing because it’ll bring them more comfort. they know it’s wrong, but are they willing to be a bad person and sit comfortably with it? sometimes the answer is yeah. and that’s really interesting! you snitched on your friend for a reward, now you’re safe with a large amount of money rather than still in the weeds? are you a dick? yeah. but you’re safe. it’s nice because it really asks the audience would you do differently? if it came down to it, would you stay in danger / a lower standing / a difficult position and stand by your moral code? or would you put your own needs over what’s right? i like a little honesty. i wouldn’t always do the right thing. sometimes i know i would act selfishly. but i’d know i’d be a bad person doing it, and i’d be okay with that.

we don’t get that with phoebe. she never thinks she’s in the wrong. and maybe if this was only from her point of view, we could be manipulated into believing her. but it’s not. we’re in the attic with paige as cole drives her to madness. we see the pain paige is in, and then we get phoebe acting pissy towards paige for distrusting cole. phoebe didn’t see what happened. she doesn’t realize she’s choosing the “wrong” option. but we as the audience know, and we’re rightfully mad at phoebe for picking cole over her sister.

so by the point cole starts deteriorating, we’re already accustomed to phoebe as the dick, phoebe as the bad guy, but not even in a fun interesting maybe maybe not relatable way. she’s just a dick. and when cole comes back from the wasteland, stuffed full of hellish powers and clearly edging towards a breakdown, we’re ready to slap that label on her again. but the situation’s different here. in this case, she acknowledges cole, she acknowledges the situation, and she realizes what she’s doing is leaving him high and dry. and she does it anyway. this isn’t her dismissing paige and she had no idea what paige was going through. she knows what cole is going through. and she choose not to help him. and i don’t blame her.

cole took a lot from phoebe. he tried to kill her on multiple occasions (pre- confessing his love), he often became between her and her sisters (there was almost always a choice of standing by cole and protecting him or sticking with her sisters, and she almost always chose cole, which you could argue resulted in prue’s death), she turned her back on her family for him, she got infected by the source via her antichrist baby, everything, and when it came down to the final choice, stand by cole as her killed her sisters or stand by her sisters as they killed cole, she chose her sisters. and that fuckin takes a lot out of you. this was maybe all within what? a year? of just having the world you known taken from you, flipped upside down, torn apart, and the common thread throughout it all was cole. now, cole came back saying he wanted to be a good person. that’s great. it’s not phoebe’s responsibility to hold his hand and lead him to that. and it’s well within her right to be upset that his only intention is to get her back. that if he didn’t have to be a good person to win her back, he wouldn’t, because he expresses next to no remorse for the pain he’s caused people and he makes no moves to make ammends. what he does is performative, and she knows that, bc he plainly lays out his intentions. he hurt her, even if that was not his intention, throughout their relationship, and to know his sole purpose back on earth is to rekindle that relationship....... like,, it is completely understandable and reasonable for her to reject him. she does not owe it to him to rake herself across the coals so he can live some happy ending.

so if you want to argue that phoebe not wanting to put herself through another heartwrenching experience after all the trauma she went through broke cole, you can say that. but like. coles sole purpose in returning was to be with phoebe. he had the entirely selfish fantasy of getting the girl despite all the literal hell he put her through, and that he could live that way forever. i have seen people say that cole wanted to be good and phoebe drove him away from that, but that's never what cole wanted. cole wanted phoebe, she pushed him away from her. if he truly came back to be good, he would have cut his losses, left the city, dealt with heartbreak, and tried to start anew. im not saying being rejected by someone who you genuinely believe is your soulmate doesn't suck absolute ass. but like. you were married to her. it didn't work. it really hurt her. you can see that. she really doesn't want to be haunted by your ghost. and bro, she's kinda mean to you. stop pushing it. don't think you'll knock her past some breaking point her she stops hating you and suddenly wants to try again. phoebe did not push cole past his breaking point, cole tried to push phoebe past hers and lost himself in the process

[crepuscular-gloom]

Poptropica Island Ratings

okay I saw a post on here a while ago and someone rated the Poptropica islands. I remember agreeing with a lot of them, but they only went so far so a lot of the newer islands were missed out. I came across it again recently and got hit by a wave of nostalgia so I’m gonna do my own now. Unoriginal content very good. i’ll put a keep reading link to stop it from taking up too much space

Early Poptropica - mega nostalgia but kinda boring. I like the original Poptropicans being pixely and there is a goth gf in the sewers however the giant green spider scared the shit out of me as a kid and the idea of an aircraft graveyard made me sad so 6/10

Shark Tooth Island - also nostalgic but I didn’t complete it for a long time for some reason.. very short. it has a story but its there is nasty shark and people stuck on an island so make a calming potion. the medicine man looks like he is from viva pinata so 6/10

Time Tangled Island - VERY GOOD AND FUN AND HISTORICAL FUCK THAT AZTEC THO DICKHEAD. quite lengthy for an island but this is good because that means more time periods to explore. it’s also educational but i just care about restoring time. very legendary the iconic just jumped out - 10/10

24 Carrot Island - stupid pun point taken off. introduces Dr Hare and people are THIRSTY. you can dye your hair with milkshakes. i thought it was creepy as a kid honestly. i think its mind control or something. but i like it, it still has nostalgia value 8/10

Super Power Island - very legend like. i loooove the antagonists, especially copy cat but i think i had to look up a guide to beat her because i was dumb af. you need a licence to be a superhero but you are a superhero!!! very fun i like this one a lot 10/10

Spy Island - i remember sucking at this one as well as a kid.  i think it fucks with peoples hair and i only remember because my character looks fresh 100% of the time and this island fucked it up i think. i don't really remember it tho. 5/10

Nabooti Island - it’s based on a Choose Your Own Adventure book so good premise. go around the world is also good. you have to get jewels i think. ngl i didn’t finish this one because i sucked at it so i’m just going off the wiki and how far i got into it. fuck the animal puzzle 7/10

Big Nate Island - who the fuck is Big Nate. i only remember the school climbing frame and a stink bomb. fuck you big nate we don’t have your comics in England 1/10

Astro-Knights Island - medieval knights.... IN SPACE?!?! COUNT ME IN. crazy jester bard guy antagonist. people are thirsty for him too. i’m pretty sure you end up in another dimension or something. cyborgs and shit 9/10

Counterfeit Island - bruh i loved this island. pretty sure antagonist is also making people thirsty. you have to go back to Early Poptropica Island to complete it, very cool. investigating crime is cool idea it’s l.a. noire in poptropica. the wiki says there is a glitch called anti-social clown and i have to say relatable 9/10

Reality TV Island - i think i completed this like twice and i remember jackshit. you get to see past characters tho so very good. it’s just doing challenges. 4/10

Mythology Island - VERY GOOD. LEARN ABOUT MYTHOLOGY. you can fight hydra and other creatures, you meet Zeus you meet Hades, Aphrodite is a bitch. 9/10

Skullduggery Island - pirates are always good no matter what. apparently it is one of the hardest islands which explains why i never completed it but you fight other pirates and sea monsters for doubloons or some shit sounds cool to me 8/10

Steamworks Island - steampunk is good. i remember completing this and thinking it was interesting and weird to look at. i think the atmosphere is was lonely tho. there’s a boss battle against a plant i think. otherwise i don’t fuckin remember 7/10

Great Pumpkin Island - it’s Peanuts so it’s nice. very nice and simple. it’s just about the great pumpkin except you’re there. 6/10

Cryptids Island - GOD TIER. CRYPTIDS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. some of it is scary tho. the jersey devil just fucking staring at you from the window was a shit the bed moment for a kids game. also before the islands got rebooted, it was one of the only islands to have sound effects, i.e. when the chupacabra bursts out the box. honestly because of the balls on this kids game to scare children and also being good island 10/10

Wild West Island - the only thing better than pirates is cowboys. i don’t really remember it but you do go against an outlaw gang. i like cowboys 10/10

Wimpy Wonderland Island - Jeff I know you made doawk and poptropica but did you have to show it. ngl i liked it because i like doawk. but it’s kinda... creatively bankrupt i guess. 3/10 2 points because Rodrick is there

Red Dragon Island - i think more time travel but just to old Japan. you have to save a girl. that’s all i remember. also i think there is a nasty samurai guy. but also evil dragon. i can’t remember because for the longest time this was a premium account only island so i never got to finish it for the longest time. that was a dick move 7/10 for that alone.

Shrink Ray Island - cool premise but this island expects me to learn morse code 3/10

Mystery Train Island - detectives? on a train? very nice. basically murder on the orient express except no murder and thomas edison is there and also various other 1700/1800 nerds

Game Show Island - basically Reality TV except it’s to save the world from robots. 5/10

Ghost Story Island - wow iconic. this is the only island with voice acting and it’s to fucking jumpscare you i shat myself.  ghost hunting, very cool 10/10

S.O.S Island - it’s basically Titanic mixed with Moby Dick. it’s ok 6/10

Vampire’s Curse Island - i reaaaally like this one. i like vampires. it has a vampire daddy in it so. he kidnaps a teenage girl tho because he thinks its the love of his life who is dead. kinda weird. he does stop being insane at the end tho and says sorry and dies. the girls bf is a dickhead tho. 9/10

Twisted Thicket Island - i think you’re saving a forest from becoming housing. i really like it because it introduces various folkloric creatures like the nokken. i only remember the nokken because i went on akinator to see if he knew what it was and i don’t think he did so i added it and it’s photo to his database. or maybe it was just his photo but i remember uploading something to akinator. 8/10

Poptropolis Games Island - i don’t think i liked this one 3/10

Wimpy Boardwalk Island - Jeff. 2/10 1 point added because Rodrick is also there

Lunar Colony Island - space is good. do i remember this island tho? no. i think theres aliens tho. 5/10 because i like space and aliens.

Super Villain Island - it brings back the most memorable villains like binary bard and black widow. you find out why they are evil. pretty chill 8/10

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory Island - what do you expect 5/10

Zomberry Island - the last of us except i think people are just eating nasty berries really. i like it it’s spooky 7/10

Night Watch Island - Paul Blart Mall Cop 6/10

Back Lot Island - you make a film. i can’t remeber it like at all. 6/10 because it sounds ok

Poptropolis Games Island Part 2 - fuck off 2/10

Virus Hunter Island - i don’t think i completed this one either. however it is one of those inside the human body things which is always cool if cliche. 8/10

Mocktropica Island - very satirical what if about if poptropica was run by assholes. ironic since a bunch of islands were made premium only for a while. pretty sure the bonus missions still are too which is why i’m not mentioning them. funny tho 7/10

Monster Carnival Island - spooky yes. people thirst over the ringmaster raven guy too. theres a spooky clown on the ferris wheel. i don’t remember much other than i liked it because it was about monsters in a theme park. 9/10 i remember it was surprisingly short tho

Survival Island - castaway except it’s you. i don’t remember it either lmao. i got out of touch with old poptropica real bad by this time so my next ratings might be unfair sorry. pretty sure it also becomes the most dangerous game tho and some guy wants to actually fucking kill you. ballsy. 7/10 because it sounds ok i should maybe play it.

Mission Atlantis Island - i like atlantis but i didn’t play this one either. you see deepsea creatures which are spooky so extra points 8/10

PoptropiCon Island - poptropica’s answer to comicon. now i did play this one for some reason but i don’t remember it too well either. i was 14 when it came out so. sounds like yu-gi-oh so good. 7/10

Arabian Nights Island - didn’t play it i think it’s just telling the story. it’s a cool story so 7/10

Galactic Hotdogs Island - what the fuck 1/10

Mystery of The Map Island - vikings are cool. island seems very short tho. 5/10

Timmy Failure Island - who the fuck. this would be more impactful if i read these fucking things but i don’t. who the fuck are you timmy. i guess it’s called failure for a reason. (that was mean sorry) 1/10

Escape from Pelican Rock Island - prison break, nice idea. you have like a twin in this one. seems a bit repetitive sometimes tho. theres like 7 days of doing similar things. 6/10

Monkey Wrench Island - it was created to be the new tutorial, i.e. an actual tutorial rather than Early Poptropica. very fast and boring, especially if you already know everything. 2/10

Crisis Caverns Island - i know nothing about this. even the wiki is incomplete. maybe that means its shit then. 1/10 the wiki doesn’t even care too much about this one.

Greek Sea Odyssey - more ancient greece is always good. you get to beat the shit out of zeus this time 8/10

Snagglemast Island - all you do is collect coins. another tutorial one. 1/10.

bonus: home island. legit just a hub. points added because you can do a lot of customisation here and pick up a pet that doesn’t cost credits. 4/10

DOUBLE BONUS: the little haunted house mini thing. very good because spooky costumes, spooky house fun little monster party. 10/10