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stevethehairington · 1 year ago

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i blame you for making me think about tommy and carol bc i've never really given them much thought before. they were clearly written to be these obnoxious high school stereotypes and not much more than that, so i love how you're looking through that and making them more dimensional. what do you think they'll grow up to be like? are they gonna leave hawkins after high school, will they stay there forever, will one of them leave while the other stays? will they grow apart after high school, or will they always keep that toxic codependency going? please gimme all your thoughts <3

ANNA! "i blame you for making me think of tommy and carol" are my FAVORITE words to hear sflkjgfdlkg that's like music to my ears. the more people i can get thinking deeper about tommy and carol the better fdkjgfl.

they fully were written to be those obnoxious high school bully stereotypes, but boy oh boy, there is SO much nuance in how the portrayals of these characters actually came across onscreen.

when i think of tommy and carol and their futures, i honestly can see things going a couple different ways - which mostly stems from the fact that there are a lot of little headcanon details about them i like to change up in my head that then directly impacts which route their futures would take (the biggest fluctuating details being their sexualities; how their future plays out will be fundamentally different to me if it's just tommy that's gay, if it's carol that's the lesbian, if they're both some flavor of fruity, or if neither of them are.)

if i sat here and went through each slightly different future i imagine for them we'd be here forever fkdljgfd sooooo for now i will just tell you about my personal favorite.

first, a little backstory because i think it's important to know where they came from to know why they are the way they are because that ultimately drives where they end up:

i personally like to think that tommy hagan comes from a big family - a big family of all girls, too. he's one of five, the middle child, with two older sisters and two younger sisters. i also like to think that his mom is a single mother - and when it comes to his dad, my hc isn't super nailed down for him. i do think he was there when tommy was younger, but his father left, maybe around when tommy was nine? ten? but either, his dad was cheating on his mom and ended up leaving her (and their kids) to be with this other woman (maybe because SHE got pregnant?) OR tommy's dad hit his mom, and that went on for long enough until she finally stood up and kicked him out. out of those two options though, i like to lean towards the first one, beeeeecaaaause it makes tommy's motivations and behaviors THAT much jucier sdlkfds. BECAUSE combine tommy's middle-child-syndrome with this early abandonment and of COURSE he's got issues. OF COURSE he has to find every way to get attention because he doesn't get enough of it at home and OF COURSE he gets upset and lashes out when people he's close to leave him because he's got abandonment issues (so when steve, his friend, his best friend, suddenly drops him and carol, of course tommy gets upset). also, random tidbit that didn't really fit in anywhere else dkfls but i think i mentioned it in my response on that initial post that started all this but i DO think tommy is an angry guy. BUT i do not think that manifests in the same way as it would for a lot of other guys. he's NOT outwardly angry all the time, he's NOT always looking to pick a fight, he's NOT a physically violent guy. i think his anger stems from very specific circumstances - i.e. circumstances where his control is slipping - and while he doesn't resort to physical violence (aside from maybe a shove here or there, because that's the most we ever see onscreen in a moment when he is genuinely upset and angry), he lashes out. verbally. he says MEAN shit - and because he's friends with carol, his tongue has sharpened over the years (and also, growing up with all sisters means he's well accustomed to the ways of female warfare lol - aka the vicious mind games and cruelty of the tongue that is more common than physical violence). SO that means he knows how to go for the jugular with just his words, and that, sometimes, can be even worse than a punch to the nose.

carol, on the other hand, i like to think also comes from a single mother household, but unlike tommy, she is an only child. i like to think that she and her mom moved to hawkins when she was... maybe 12 or 13, so middle school age. she wasn't super popular at her old school, is the thing. i don't think she was necessarily super bullied or anything, but she didn't really have a lot of friends and she probably didn't get a lot of attention either. so when she comes to hawkins, she sees it as a chance to reinvent herself. she doesn't let herself fall into that new girl trap, and she's outspoken from the get go - perhaps a little to her own detriment, because while she does make friends, they ALSO scares a lot of people off because of how cold she seems (which is ENTIRELY a self-preservation thing for her). and then somehow, someway she catches the attention of steve harrington. steve harrington, who, at this point, is already well on his way to being the golden boy King Steve that we see in high school. and she clings to that, because that's her ticket to the top. i think maybe she gets a little crush on steve at first - except it isn't actually a crush. she just likes what he can offer her - the popularity, the attention, the feeling of being needed, and she misreads that as having a crush on him. (and if you subscribe to the carol is a lesbian hc, which i sometimes do! this "crush" would be FULLY because that's what's expected of her; all the other girls like steve, all the other girls think he's hot and awesome and perfect, so that must mean she should to, right? - but that's a different future route that i'm not taking here so. putting this back on the shelf for now lol).

ANYWAYS. yeah so carol gets folded into steve and tommy's mix. she befriends them, she gets close with them, they become a trio. inseparable.

tommy and steve have been friends since grade school. maybe they were sat next to each other because their last names both start with H, maybe even as a small child steve already has lots of friends because he's nice and he shares his toys and he's got kids coming up to him all the time asking him if he wants to play and he always says yes. but then one day it's steve that's toddling up to tommy and asking him if he wants to play. steve chooses tommy. and the rest is history. and as they grow up, steve starts growing into his looks and he gets good at sports and joins all the teams and he excels, so he's got people fawning over him and flocking towards him for any sliver of attention he's willing to give them. but at the end of the day it's tommy that gets steve's full attention. it's tommy that steve tells everything to, it's tommy that knows steve best, it's tommy who steve trusts, it's tommy who is steve's best friend. and tommy REVELS in that. it's that attention he's been craving his whole life. this, naturally, leads to tommy feeling possessive over steve. and he doesn't realize that this possessiveness is a little more deeply rooted than just wanting to keep steve's friendship until steve starts to look at girls.

the first time tommy sees steve with a pretty girl on his arm, he gets this sick, curdled, twisting feeling in his gut. at first he thinks it's because he's jealous of steve. jealous that he has a date and tommy doesn't. but when steve comes back and tells tommy that it didn't work out, tommy gets this relief that floods through tommy. he doesn't really understand it at first, and definitely doesn't examine it too closely either, just sort of shoves it down deep and doesn't worry about it. but then steve finds another girl, and this time things DO go well, and, naturally, as steve's best friend, tommy becomes the person that steve tells everything to. he tells tommy all about the dates, all about the kisses he shares with these girls, all about when things go a little further... tommy listens, because of course he does, but the whole time he's thinking all these horrible thoughts about the girl and that ugly feeling is back knotting up his insides. and omg when steve tells tommy about losing his virginity - OH BOY. he goes into detail, because that's what teenage boys do, and tommy listens but he's sitting there with this whole STORM of emotions swirling through his head - the twisted need to know more, the urge to scream at steve to shut up, disgust because he doesn't want to think about steve with someone else, turned on because its steve talking about having sex, deep shame because hes forced to face the fact that he's wishing it was him with steve instead of that girl. this, perhaps, is even the first time tommy is like. FULLY faced with the true nature of his feelings, the ones he's been shoving away and ignoring this whole time.

i think tommy struggles with it. being gay (which he refuses to consider himself) is obviously not accepted in that time period. and he knows he'd get absolutely pummeled if anyone caught wind that he'd even thought about another boy like that. whiiiich is where carol comes in.

i think at this point tommy is probably already with carol - when steve started showing his interest in girls, tommy didn't want to get left in the dust, so he tried to find himself a girlfriend too, and it just so happened that carol was right there and it was so easy because carol was just so easy (WOMP). i like to think that maybe they started as a hookup. tommy wanted to lose his virginity, and carol was right there, and well, there were rumors about her, and all tommy had to do was ask, and she said yes, and then it sort of snowballs from there because (even though their first time was probably fumbling and not actually the greatest overall, tommy still liked it, and if he liked sex with a girl there's no way he's gay, right?) then he asks her out and she says yes again, and they start this relationship that maybe didn't really stem from any true feelings at first, but like they sort of caught the feelings along the way, like they learned to love each other along the way.

and the thing is - i do genuinely think that tommy and carol loved each other. i do. i don't think that their relationship wasn't real, even if tommy is actually gay. i think they had a lot of fun together, and i think that the feelings were there. they just weren't enough. because despite things going pretty well with carol, tommy was still thinking about steve. he was still actively having those feelings even while with carol. (which - maybe he was just projecting those feelings onto carol.) regardless, though, there is a love that exists between tommy and carol - i just think that over time it morphs into something different than what they both initially thought it was.

NOW. when it comes to their future (WHICH HELLO THIS IS WHAT YOUR ASK WAS ABOUT AND IM ONLY JUST NOW GETTING TO IT SKFJDS S O R R Y AND THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH ME THROUGH ALL OF ^^^ THAT PREAMBLE SKDJFL)

since we are talking about my favorite potential future for them, it looks a little something like this:

they stay together. all through high school. when steve leaves them, things get a little rocky between tommy and carol, because steve was the glue that held them together, ultimately. but they both sort of realize that they're all each other has left, now that steve's gone, so they temper things. they marry out of high school - or that's when tommy proposes anyways, because tommy's barely three quarters of the way through his first year of community college when there's a pregnancy scare (which - honestly, everyone's surprised that didn't happen earlier) but yeah, carol's late, and when she pees on the stick it's positive. when she tells tommy, tommy proposes - because that's the right thing to do. he's not going to ditch her, he's not going to make her do that on her own. carol says yes, because what other option does she have here? but when they actually go to the doctor about it, they find out that the test was a false positive; carol is not pregnant. they stay engaged though, carol still wore her ring, and tommy stayed with carol, and neither one of them said anything about it. they followed through with it three years later after tommy graduated with a business degree and a cushy job at carol's dad's company.

at this point, they've known each other for almost a decade, and they've been together for most of it. so they know each other pretty well. which means - carol knows about tommy's... interests. she's fully aware. has been since high school, actually. she clocked tommy's crush on steve reeeeal quick, and actually confronted him about it once - which forced tommy into a corner and when he'd tried to deny it she's just scoffed and told him to quit fucking hiding from it. and he did. he'd admitted it to her, which was still difficult for him, but he'd gotten a bit better about admitting it to himself over the years. and in response to it, carol told him she didn't care.

which was really the best god damn way it could've gone. she told tommy that she didn't care that he gets off to guys, that she didn't care that he thinks about them, that he wants them. in fact, she told tommy that she didn't even care if he wanted to fuck around with them on the side. so long as he came back to her in the end, she didn't care.

and so, most nights tommy will slip off his wedding ring, he'll make the drive to whatever innocuous city is far enough away that he wont run into anyone he knows, and he'll seek out the company of other men. and when he's had his fill for the night, when he's satisfied that itch, he'll drive back to hawkins, and he'll try to be quiet as he enters the house and changes into his pajamas, and then he'll slide into bed next to carol and he'll go to sleep.

it's... it sounds like a pretty miserable existence, the two of them trapped in this seemingly unhappy marriage. but it's actually not. not really. it works for them. like i said before, they do love each other. it's just not that same sort of love that was there when they were kids, when they first started out. it's changed, it's morphed, it's turned into something more familial, rather than romantic.

maybe one day they will finally move out of hawkins. maybe that will be the beginning of the end. maybe once they're out from underneath the thumb of the town they grew up in, out from underneath the pressure of playing the expected role for all the people they knew there, they can start to live their own lives. maybe they'll finally get a divorce. maybe tommy will finally outwardly acknowledge his sexuality. maybe carol will finally find something she's good at and thrive with it. maybe maybe maybe.

FIN. skfjgdlkf. omg if you've made it this far THANK YOU for sticking with me and reading through all my rambling headcanons. i really mean it when i say i think about tommy and carol and their lives ALL THE TIME dkfsdlf. and like i said at the beginning, this is just ONE of the many pathways i've thought of for them sklfjsdf.

anyways, THANK YOU for asking and for indulging me in my love for tommy and carol!!! this was truly so much fun to write up and i loved getting to do that.

[also i GOTTA throw a little shameless self promo here, if you liked what you read here, this headcanon DOES feature heavily in my tommy-running-into-steddie-at-their-high-school-reunion fic, which you can find here. i ALSO have another stommy fic, which you can find here, which details my headcanon for steve's first kiss (which as i'm sure you've guessed, is with tommy).]

#asks #unclewaynemunson #tommy hagan #carol perkins #tommy x carol #stommy #sort of LOL #stranger things #macks headcanons #mack writes #sort of x2 LOL #THANK YOU AGAIN FOR THIS ASK ANNA!!!! I LOVED IT!!!

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purrincess-chat · 2 years ago

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Hi I'd love it if you could make an analysis on Adrien and Marinette this season. I've been seeing too many people say that their characters have been ruined and so and so. Your takes and opinions are really fresh and actually smart, so I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I would absolutely love to talk about them. The notion that their characters have been ruined comes directly from a butthurt place of salt, and it just demonstrates to me that people are not watching this show with their eyes open. I know we are missing a lot of context for this season, but so far from what I’ve seen of the later episodes, their characters are maturing and developing in ways we’ve been begging for since s2. And to understand that, we’re going to look back at the last couple seasons up until now.

CAUTION: I will be discussing all of the currently aired episodes, so if you have not watched anything past Elation or Transmission and don’t want to be spoiled for later episodes, go ahead and keep scrolling. I will not be discussing leaks, so you are safe from those. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Firstly, I think we need to address something I’ve seen people claiming in their tantrums about how Adrien and Marinette are “ruined,” and that’s this idea that Adrien’s feelings came out of nowhere/they weren't actually friends before now. They didn’t and they were. They’ve actually been hinting at his budding feelings for her for a while, we just didn’t know for sure that was happening until now. Hell, one of the biggest clowns on his character since s1 was literally “sHe’S jUsT a fRiEnD” when he’s literally making heart eyes at her and talking about how great she is, but I want to focus specifically on the moments that take place after Puppeteer 2 because Adrien himself cited that episode as the point when he noticed his feelings for her changing. And him saying that wasn’t a retcon or random. They actually started dropping mad hints after that episode, we just weren’t 100% aware that his feelings officially changed. I made another post a couple months ago with several instances that hinted at Adrien’s changing feelings, but let’s talk about those a little more.

I’m going chronologically, so not necessarily in broadcast order, but if we look at the production codes, Puppeteer 2 was episode 21 of s3. The next episode after that? Chat Blanc. Everyone clowned on Adrien for “only liking Marinette because she’s Ladybug,” but looking back on it, his sudden feelings aren’t so sudden after all. We’ll talk more about Chat Blanc later because as we know, this timeline got erased, and Marinette is the only one that kind of knows about it. Which brings us to Ladybug, and possibly one of Adrien’s darkest moments as far as things he consciously said and did. Up until this point, Adrien had always been kind of soft and mild-mannered, not wanting to stir up trouble to a fault, but the end of this episode is the first time we see him righteously pissed as Adrien. Another tidbit to point out from earlier in s3 that relates to this moment is from Oni-chan when Adrien tells Lila that he won’t support her or be her friend if she hurts the people he loves. Jump back to Ladybug when Adrien holds that friendship over her head again to restore Marinette’s reputation. Adrien isn’t the type of character to be shady or underhanded, but he is the type of character to fiercely protect the people he cares about, and in this instance, that person is Marinette. That moment was a huge indicator about how Adrien feels about Marinette and how much he values her/their relationship.

Next, we have the first instance where Adrien truly stops and ogles over Marinette in Heart Hunter. We’ve joked in the past that he gives her soft looks all the time, but this is the first time that he full-stopped and admitted out loud that he thinks she’s attractive. And he does it twice in that episode. Not to mention how badly he wanted her to run away with them, and how disappointed he was when she left. Additionally, we have him being conflicted over his feelings for Kagami over the next several episodes. He hesitates and isn’t sure how he feels. We all thought it was because he still loved Ladybug, which he did, but now we can see there was also unconscious feelings for Marinette swirling around in the mix. (RIP Adrigami) Marinette was always an obstacle in their relationship both as Ladybug and as herself, even unknowingly. It’s actually Marinette’s lucky charm keychain that pushes Kagami to break up with Adrien in Lies after all of his erratic and wishy-washy behavior toward her, signaling that Marinette would always be between them.

Season 4 brought forth several small hints, the cutest one being Mr. Pigeon 72. Adrien gets distracted several times by Marinette in this episode, which isn’t necessarily weird when he thinks he sees her during his dive, but the moment in the end when he bumps his head on the car because he can’t take his eyes off her? Boy was falling hard. One thing I find really interesting is that Adrien falls for Marinette at her most unhinged. He tells Kagami in Protection that he just always thought Marinette acting weird was part of her charm and found it cute (think back to how softly he smiles at her in Optigami when she’s freaking out over the elevator or how enamored he is with her acting crazy in Psychomedian). Seeing the context of these moments in retrospect when Adrien talks about how he felt during them just confirms that their relationship was always deeper than it seemed. His side of the story as it relates to their relationship has always been missing, and maybe that's what people mean when they say their relationship was underdeveloped? We always saw things through Marinette's lens, and of course, she freaks out and overthinks and doesn't think Adrien will reciprocate her feelings. It's refreshing to see his perspective and understand what he was thinking and feeling during some of those key moments, and it gives us more insight to the nature of their relationship this whole time.

Next we have Ephemeral, which I know this timeline also got erased, but I’ve always seen the ‘what if’ reveal episodes as a way of checking in on how the love square is doing development wise. In Chat Blanc, Adrien’s feelings for Marinette were still budding, and while it did make it easier when he learned her identity, I think his reaction in Ephemeral was much more telling about their relationship. People have said that Adrinette were “barely even friends” before s5, but I think Ephemeral proves that’s not true. (I mean, watching canon with your eyes open prior to that also proves that’s not true, but I digress). The moment Marinette reveals herself to Adrien in Ephemeral, he tells her how happy he is to find out that one of his best friends in the whole world is also his partner and the girl he loves. By Ephemeral, Adrien sees Marinette as one of his best friends, and that point continues in Risk when he confides in her about his homelife. He tells her that he doesn’t want to tell everyone else his true feelings because “they wouldn’t understand,” but he opens up to Marinette because they are close enough that he deemed she would listen. And people say that one moment was when his feelings changed, but that moment was just when all of the other hints came to a head for him. He didn’t fall in love with her in that one moment, he’d been falling for her slowly all throughout s4, and he was even still falling into s5 and didn’t realize he was in love until Determination.

Risk was just the moment that pushed him over the edge because he realized she was someone he could confide in, someone who would listen to him and understand his feelings without projecting another narrative onto him. And we’ve seen Marinette working on that throughout s5. She’s stepping back and letting him be who he wants to be and encouraging him to make his own choices. Adrien literally says in Transmission that the Adrien everyone else knows is a marketing image. Gabriel states in Pretension that he crafts the perfect images to sell to people, pretty much implying that he is in direct control over how the world sees Adrien and the person everyone thinks he is. Marinette is the only person that sees beneath the surface of that and wants to help him do something about it. And people think that’s “ruining” their characters? By letting them grow closer and fight for and support each other? By letting Adrien figure things out and work toward his own autonomy? Yall want him to stay lonely and miserable under his dad’s control forever? Weird take, but okay. Like it or not, his relationship with Marinette has been building up since the beginning, and we’ve seen them make big strides each season. Nothing about what’s happening in s5 is random, nor was it thrown in casually. The signs were there the whole time, sorry yall missed them.

Secondly, I want to look at LadyNoir, the big source of everyone’s grief, but in the same way the Adrinette hints were all there throughout s4, the LadyNoir hints leading them to where they are were abundant as well in s4. Looking back in the context we have now, LadyNoir and Adrinette had an inverse relationship in s4. The more Adrien fell for Marinette, the more his feelings for Ladybug faded, and their conflict last season had a lot to do with it. Ladybug pulled away from him a lot last season, and I don’t think it was entirely intentional or conscious. She was dealing with a lot and scrambling to juggle her new responsibility with Shadowmoth on the loose, Su Han bitching in her ear, Alya knowing her secret. And unfortunately, the more she pulled away, the more hurt Chat Noir got, so he pulled away more, which in turn made her start relying on other heroes more, which created even more distance, you get the idea. I think there are two key episodes that point to 1. Why Chat Noir stopped loving Ladybug and 2. Why LadyNoir could not have worked romantically. (actually there are 3 episodes about why LadyNoir can’t work romantically, but we will get to those in a minute)

The first episode deals with the reason Chat Noir moved on from Ladybug, and that’s Glaciator 2.0. Prior to this, Ladybug had been softer in her rejection of him, but still firm with the public that there was nothing romantic going on between them. She does care about his feelings, and if we recall the first Glaciator episode, she tells him that she doesn’t want to toy with his emotions or lead him on. She is sensitive to the way he feels, but she also stands her ground that she’s not interested. In Glaciator 2, we have the two of them already being a little at odds with each other from the growing distance between them in s4, and we also have Ladybug at her most stressed. So she snaps. And I think that episode did stick with him and play a huge role in why he moved on. She makes it abundantly clear in that episode that she doesn’t love him, has never loved him, and will never love him. She set very clear boundaries with him in that episode, and we’ve seen those boundaries stick with the way Adrien treats Marinette in s5. He’s not pushy, he’s patient, he lets her lead their interactions. That episode affected him. That episode alone is why it's not surprising that he moved on. She'd been telling him for 3 seasons she wasn't into him like that. He finally listened.

The other episode that points to the big problem with romantic LadyNoir is Kuro Neko. People don’t want to hear this, but LadyNoir does not function effectively when Ladybug in particular is distracted by love. We saw this in Desperada, we saw this again in Kuro Neko. She gets too distracted, and things don’t work. We see teasings of this in Determination when Ladybug gets distracted by Chat Noir, and they almost lose until he snaps her out of it. Granted, she was also still down about losing everything, but the point still stands that she does not do well when she’s in love with her partner. Contrast that with the way they effortlessly work together at the beginning of Perfection. They’re holding a whole ass other conversation while fighting bad guys as if they were doing anything else. Their mojo is back, and they’re getting along better than ever as friends. Romance was always a point of contention for them, and now they don't have to worry about it. They can just do their job.

Now, I know a lot of people are also of the mindset that they should just reveal their identities already, but we have two examples of why that’s a bad idea as well. Chat Blanc and Ephemeral prove that they will work well together post-reveal, BUT the main obstacle in their way is Hawkmoth. It’s too dangerous for them to reveal their identities while he is still around because as we’ve seen, they get reckless and careless and Gabriel sniffs them out. They lose. (yes, I count Chat Blanc as a loss). So long as Gabriel is still around and pulling the strings, they cannot tell each other their identities. They’ve said that on numerous occasions. It’s not a matter of compatibility because we know they’re made for each other, that much has always been clear. It’s a matter of practicality and dangerousness. It’s not safe for them to reveal right now, and I think the writers wanted to push them through the development they’re getting first, which brings me to my next point.

This season is about healing trauma, particularly Marinette’s, but also increasingly so Adrien’s. And the only way they could go about healing the particular trauma these two are dealing with is the way they’re doing it. Adrinette was the side that offered the most opportunity for that development by becoming canon, and I don't care if that pisses people off when I say that. "But best friends to lovers is better-" okay, but you're ignoring a lot of important context that I’ve talked about. Mixing their jobs as heroes with their romantic feelings is actively detrimental to their job. Ladybug loses focus, Chat behaves recklessly, Hawmoth literally learned their identities and took advantage of that. The world got destroyed, the universe nearly got rewritten. But yeah go off about how much better things would be if the heroes got together, especially in the season where stakes are at an all-time high and them focusing on the mission is absolutely crucial.

They needed development as civilians, but that doesn't make them less deserving of love, nor does it “ruin” their characters. That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. Marinette needed to overcome her hesitation and anxiety around Adrien. Because what good would it do them to date as heroes because she ran away from her problems with another boy only to turn around and find out that the boy she was running from is the same boy she ran to? Do people think that reveal would go well with her still not having healed from that? A huge point at the beginning of the season was that she was running away from her problems and throwing herself at someone else instead of dealing with her trauma. Marinette needed to turn around and face her feelings for Adrien. She needed to face the mistakes she made as a result of loving Adrien specifically and heal from that. And ya know what? Allowing Adrinette to date fixed Ladrien without them even having to appear next to each other. It allows Ladybug and Chat Noir to focus on their mission without their feelings getting in the way. It allows both of them the opportunity to be happy and get shit done. And ya know what, since they're healing trauma, they're gonna be ecstatic when the reveal eventually happens. We loved each other the whole time? You're actually my best friend in and out of the suit? You're gonna be at my wedding next to me marrying me? We're gonna grow old together? All sides are benefitting this season, and yes, being platonic is a benefit for some sides. Just because it wasn't what some people wanted doesn't change that. I swear some people just wanted to treat the sides as separate forever and only ever have good things happen for their favorite. I saw it all the time when people would pout about one side getting development in episodes in prior seasons. Personally, I am in it for the whole picture because I know it will be more beautiful in the end if every side gets worked on. I'm here for the love square, not just Adrinette, but it seems like some people forgot we’re all on the same ship.

Additionally, it’s not really a big secret that they’re winding down the Agreste plot. This season will resolve that storyline, so they needed to bring the Agreste plot to the frontline, and it wouldn’t have worked with LadyNoir. Marinette needed to see first-hand how bad Adrien’s situation is. We still don’t have all of the pieces, but later episodes show how desperately they’re fighting to be together and to free Adrien from his father’s control. They could not have put her that close to the situation with LadyNoir because they can’t reveal for reasons I’ve already mentioned, and as such, Chat Noir can’t tell her about his home life. LadyNoir being together would have been self-contained. It wouldn’t have propelled the other sides forward in the way they needed to. Marinette would still assume that disasters happen when she pursues Adrien. She’d likely still blame herself for being blinded by love for losing all of the Miraculous. She’d likely still distance herself from him, which would remove Adrien’s confidant about his home situation. The story they’re telling wouldn’t work. And that’s the other thing, we don’t know all of the details about the story they’re telling yet. (I mean, unless you’ve read leaks, but we’re not talking about those rn). Obviously, Adrinette being canon was important to the story, and I am personally just not seeing it as a detriment because I’ve seen all of the positives that have come from it in later episodes. Their characters are growing and maturing. They’re supporting each other. They’re fighting for each other. Is that not what we’ve always loved about the love square? The way they complement each other? How deeply they love each other and how much they sacrifice for each other?

The only conclusion I can come to about anyone saying their characters have been ruined is that they haven’t watched anything past Transmission. And not only that, they’re making a ton of bad faith assumptions about Transmission and the next episode after it in order to justify their outcry. But as someone who has watched every episode officially released right now, their development this season is solid. On all sides. There is a huge difference between not particularly liking something and something being bad. People would do well to learn the difference.

#cat replies #asks #ml meta #ml fandom salt #s5 discourse #ml protection #ml pretension #ml revelation #ml perfection #ml spoilers

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hoxooster · 2 years ago

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have u ever felt burnt out from payday ? you’re a long time fan so it’s kind of crazy you’re still talking and posting abt the game to this day

Yes, actually, many times.

Like, the major catalyst for me no longer caring about Payday's lore--and I mean to the point where I didn't care about what happened in the story and I never bothered to do a deep dive into anything or even speculate anymore--was when my buddy, Wolfee, went AWOL after the first Dentist trailer dropped. He was gone for a little over 2 months, 'cause his parents took all of his tech stuff: phone, tablet, laptop, et cetera. So, I really had no one to gush about shit with for a long while.

Then OVERKILL became progressively more... OVERKILL. And I mean more like current day OVERKILL, 'cause they used to be different when Ulf was there. They had a lot of missteps where they were outright rude to their fanbase, made a lot of stupid financial decisions (thanks a lot, Bo), and have just gone in a weird direction with their game overall. PAYDAY 2 has felt... strange, ever since Ulf left, and even more so with Simon having walked away.

And, ya know, with all the damn DLC, it's been really easy to get burnt out on PAYDAY. Especially when you're one of the older fans, where you gotta see all this new, weird shit come out and just be like, "Huh?" all the damn time. It's tiring, but I'm still here.

Not gonna lie, it's mostly just 'cause I'm used to doing this. I've been PAYDAY blogging since January 28, 2014, so I've dedicated almost ten damn years of my life to these games. I have seen so much shit happen in this fandom that'd it'd take me weeks to list 'em all. I've met a few of the big players, some of the moderators and old time modders, and quite a few of the people who've made something for OVERKILL to use in their promotions and things. I know so many random tidbits about the games and the characters and the lore and the company and the fans that I'm practically an encyclopedia of knowledge for almost everything PAYDAY-related.

And through it all, the moments of distaste and distrust in OVERKILL, the loss of friends as they drifted away to other interests, the ever-shifting nature of the games into something weirder held together with spit and duct tape, the overflow of content, and the base confusion that I feel with a game I barely recognize anymore, I have remained.

I'm a dinosaur in this fandom, as has been pointed out to me many times. I have my moments where I'm a jaded, crotchety, cane shaking, old man, but I still love this game and its fandom. I may do this mostly out of routine, but another part of me does it out of thankfulness and love. PAYDAY set me on a path that allowed me to meet so many interesting people and do a lot of cool things.

It came at the right time in my life to save me, and I am forever grateful to it for that, even if I do have my issues with it. So, I shall remain here, ever faithfully cataloguing PAYDAY stuff and guiding anyone who asks me for advice. For, after all, I am the Torchbearer of this fandom. XD

#ask hoxooster a question #PAYDAY 2 #PAYDAY: THE HEIST #PAYDAY 3 #PD:TH #PD2 #PD3 #personal stories #Y'all're lucky. I caught myself ranting about my opinions for current PD2 and realized that I went off track.#Deleted 6 big ass paragraphs.#Anybody who KNOWS me is aware that that's just a *thing* I'll do though.#I can complain forever and I can get really singularly focused on explaining my opinions on things.#It makes peeps annoyed at me sometimes and gets me in trouble in others.#But damnit I have a lot to say.#long post warning #Apologies for making you wait awhile for an answer to this. I wanted to devote my full attention to it.

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blazingblorbos · 1 month ago

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So the Golden Epic Trailer came out.... didn't it?

hmm I have many thoughts. many thoughts. And not all of them are Honkai (Impact 3rd) related, even...

I'll start off with something I've noticed about Star Rail itself (for a long while now). Because it k e e p s being brought back up in my mind every single time they release one of these trailers: The Star Rail team is absolutely INCREDIBLE at, what I'm going to call, "Discontinuous Storytelling".

Hoyoverse as an entire company and artistic team has an unrelentingly powerful streak when it comes to their over-arching storyline trailers.. Genshin's Teyvat Storyline Preview trailer; Zenless's Lore teaser; Genshin's Overture Teaser; Winter Night's Lazzo; the Stonehearts' Myriad Celestia Trailer (even in spite of the fact that these last 2 may have served as a distraction from colorism-related outrages during their respective releases...); ANY!! FUCKING MYRIAD CELESTIA TRAILER, FOR THAT MATTER (FABLES ABOUT THE STARS PART 1 SPECIFICALLY, I AM STILL NOT OVER THAT).... And of course the one that has had perhaps the most profound impact on me to date: The Elysian Realm Concept trailer

And I've noticed for a while now that the stories told in a lot of the Star Rail trailers have felt,, very disjointed from the game's actual story. With any of their other games, even Zenless! now included, their trailers have had direct, VISIBLE connections to the events that played out in the game's actual storyline around the time of the trailer's release. It was a real, well-thought-out, well-crafted, teaser for what was to come [very soon!] for the playerbase in-game. And it's possible that.. maybe the pay-off period is just 10x longer in Star Rail than it has been in any of their other games...

but things like the Ever-Flame mansion and Duke Inferno's family was something that was teased in a Trailer, during a PIVOTAL hype season! and yet-!! was NEVER paid off!!! DUKE INFERNO WAS INTRODUCED TO LITERALLY JUST BE KILLED OFF LMAO (don't get me wrong, he had some pretty banger lines during 2.1 but. dude dropped mayyybe 9 banger lines out of.. what 27? during a flashback and dipped). Constance was the ONLY one of the children to have even a sliver of importance in Penacony's story, and the sliver is near microscopic at best.

THAT^ was perhaps the strongest offender of this "Discontinuous Storytelling" that Star Rail likes to do. But even before that: there have been so many.. things. just! A bunch of random things!! in Star Rail. Select tidbits of information, a mere taste of a specific corner of Worldbuilding lore, that's been dropped on players through a variety of ways that have just,, not been followed through yet! They love expanding on their world through things like Myriad Celestia trailers. And it's fascinating!! But for all intents and purposes, those random lore tidbits do not really make an appearance in game... and it just leaves me wondering, well.. What was this for?

A screenshot of a conversation between me and my friend that I think helps to contextualize What Exactly I'm Talking About:

anyways. I just hope this Golden Epic narrative is not that.

______________________________________________

Onto the Honkai Impact 3rd brain...

I'd be lying if I said 'I wasn't concerned'. I am. For a couple reasons. One reason being.. yeah.. the much, MUCH wider audience that's about to be introduced to a very Honkai Impact 3rd [from now on, to be referred to as simply "Honkai", as I've always done]—inspired set of characters. I'm not tooooo concerned about that; it mainly exists as a "Oh boy here we go again" kind of thought sitting at the back of my mind, and I plan to promptly go about my own business and continue to avoid the circles of illiterate video game players that exist in every fandom .

But the other reason I'm concerned... is because I'm worried over just how much these new Star rail characters are going to parallel the Flame-Chasers and their story. Honkai means a lot to a lot of people, and it will always mean something different depending on who you ask. The Elysian Realm is no exception.

To me, Half the beauty of Elysia and the Realm comes in how their story ended. Emphasis on ended... The reason I love her so much is because she's gone. The reason she had such a lasting impact, is because she's not here anymore. When I played through Elysium Everlasting, I recorded my playthrough. The thing about that though... is that I have still never watched that recording back. For a long, LONG time, I didn't explicitly revisit,, any part of the later half of EE, because (I locked in so hard and) wanted what I took away from that moment to be whatever I remembered of the experience naturally.

The Flame-Chasers' WHOLE THING, was: Here is a recorded history of what we did. YOU are the sole witness to our story. Witness it, remember it, and carry it with you into the future; we are past our time.

The entire fleeting nature of the Realm is something I hold so dear to myself. Their message of us continuing where they left off is the shit that got me crying, bro. Elysia ended the Realm with her and the Flame-Chasers' own 26 hands... because they exist in the past; their only job was to inspire the future, not live in it.

Having Star Rail characters that parallel them is fine, and I'm sure it'll be great! (As long as they don't do what they tried to do with the Seven Shus. Oh yeah. I saw that one. I felt it, I'm not blind. I knew it was there, but I chose to ignore it because 1) it didn't land and 2) paying attention to any traces of it that did manage to land would have ruined what the Shus ALREADY had going for them. Which- for like half of Part 2 wasn't much -- it got better later). It's more than "fine" actually, they can do whatever the hell they want with them! "Honkai" is in the title for a damn reason. I just hope it's in good faith.

Anyways.. I'm interested to see what they do with them.

#Honkai: Star Rail #Honkai Star Rail #HSR #long post #me collecting my thoughts; as per usual #blazingtextpost #Golden Epic Trailer #Honkai Star Rail Golden Epic Trailer #HSR Golden Epic Trailer #Amphoreus seems so interesting #I AM rather excited don't get me wrong #but I'm managing my excitement levels #Amphoreus being a land of Rememberance is another nail that they just.. NEED TO STOP FUCKING HITTING ON THE HEAD #some of them are so . the s a m e . it hurts #not necessarily /neg I'm just... idk I'm still thinking about it #I don't wanna say 'worried' but I think I'm definitely worried #honkai #honkai impact 3rd #hi3 #quick genshin mention #even quicker Zenless mention #don't get me started on the Elysian Realm Concept trailer /srs #that thing has changed my life [for the worst /j]#chekhov's gun.. more like chekhov's entire damn fucking army equipped with atomic splitting energy technology

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sevenmothz · 2 months ago

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Finally finished The Veilguard! Probably would have gotten it done earlier, but with how things went with the election, safe to say I lost some drive to keep playing for a little bit haha.

Overall thoughts, good and bad, beneath the cut. Spoilers ahead if you haven't finished the game yet.

The Good:

Combat: Super fun! I might be tempted to try this game on higher difficulties. I never felt like I was getting bogged down by random fights like I have in past Dragon Age games (Origins is probably the worst offender of the four games, but Inquisition is up there too). Playing a mage was fantastic and I'm so glad they finally aren't just standing around waving their staffs around lmao.

Lore: DWARF LOOOORRRREEEE!!!! That's probably the part I got most hype about haha. Also thoroughly enjoyed playing a Watcher and learning more about the Necropolis through Rook and Emmrich. I don't think any of the other factions can top the Mourn Watch for me, tbh. The elf shit was engaging enough to continue on with the story, but I'm not a big Solas girly and the elven history of Dragon Age has never been something I've been super invested in. Definitely side-eyeing the little tidbit we got from finishing Taash's personal quests though! If Dragon Age survives to see another game, I'm super into finding out more about qunari and their origins.

Characters: Really enjoyed the companions and their stories overall, and I'm glad they involved so many one-on-one quests with (some) of them. Also really loved meeting so many characters I've seen in the books and comics over the years. Getting to take screenshots of my Inquisitor in a new graphic style was also a plus.

Art: I know a lot of people really dislike the style the game is in--hell, I was iffy on it too when all I had was to watch the promotional videos--but as soon as I started the game myself, I really loved it! I don't know if they updated some things since dropping promo videos or what, but it just looks so much better in person on my gaming system. I hope they'll take a similar stylistic approach for any future Dragon Age games they maybe might do since I'm pretty burnt out on hyper-realistic looking games.

Maps: Blessedly linear, but expansive enough to feel good with revisiting areas to check out spots that were blocked previously. It made me think a lot of God of War's reboot games as well as the Jedi games, which I also really enjoyed playing. Inquisition had vast wastelands with practically nothing but enemies populating their maps and it just made me want to get from point A to B as fast as possible. While I overused the fast travel in this first playthrough since I wanted to get through the whole story, I'll definitely be using them less in future playthroughs so I can enjoy not only banter, but also what NPCs are saying throughout the areas.

Armors: Ooooh gorl so many armors I liked in the game! For most of the game my Rook was wearing that white/purple get-up with the big cap and UNF! Loved it. Switched off to a rogue-looking armor set in the Shadow Dragon colors that looked pretty bitching too. That one unique set from the Crows with the golden arms too? AAAHHHH!

Bugs/Tech: Other than characters getting stuck once in a blue moon or Rook being goofy as shit while doing the ol' parkour, I didn't really encounter much on the bugginess side of things. Nothing that was noticeable anyway.

Animation: Bioware finally figured it out after all these decades haha. Love it when characters aren't standing around stiffly like dolls being played with or walking around like they got a giant popsicle stick stuck up their asses.

The endgame was pretty epic. So glad all our companions get roles in the final rush like in Origins and 2. Inquisition completely dropped the ball in that regard (both when you're going after Coryface at the end of the main game, as well as Solas in Trespasser).

Emmrich: Best boy. ALSO HE DATES STRIFE IF YOU DON'T ROMANCE HIM FJDKALFDJAL. GET IT, OLD MEN!

Solas: Still a dumb egg man. Wouldn't have him any other way. Glad he's gone lmao.

Dorian: Still serving cunt and outlasted Solas. Stay winning, King Archon.

The Bad:

Varric: What a complete waste of time lmao. I honestly wasn't super hype about him being in another DA game (outside of him serving DILF looks, which WOOF GOTDAMN), and what they wound up doing with his character was dumb as shit. It was the Hawke vs Warden decision all over again from Inquisition where the story is Telling me to give a shit about these characters, but not Showing me a reason for my Inquisitor to care much about who they pick to stay in the Fade. If we'd gotten to see Rook adventure with Varric more at the beginning of the game, this whole mentor dying routine would have hit harder. Writers shat the bed and rolled in it.

Romance: So I'm going to have to look up a video online of how the other romances play out, but the Lucanis one was...disappointing. Had a really good start with the almost kiss scene, but then there was no follow up for that. Why doesn't he want to kiss Rook in that moment? Why isn't he physically affectionate with them at all until near endgame?? Meta-wise, I can take a guess, but the point of a story is to...tell it. I've heard Kirby isn't big on writing romances, so...idk, did that have something to do with it? Was it not fully written before she was fired? It straight up feels incomplete! I've heard from looking online that he even keeps flirting with Neve even when you're locked into a romance with him. Like...HUH?

Cont'd: Even outside of romances, it seemed like he just didn't have much more going on outside of his main storyline. Davrin, Bellara, Taash, and Lace all invite you out multiple times for one-on-one time (even get to go to the garden in the Necropolis with Emmrich, which was super cool), but Lucanis just...doesn't have that. Neve also seemed to be lacking a little in that regard too. Is it simply because they have parts of their stories as part of the main questline or what?

Cont'd 2: Also hilarious that if you harden Lucanis, he refuses to get involved with Rook, even a Shadow Dragon one that has reason to save Minrathous over Treviso, but he's happy to get into a relationship with Neve, who was also not there to help at Treviso haha. RIP to y'all that made that mistake on your Lucanis runs.

Music: Forgettable. I think the only track I truly liked was the ambient music for the Hossberg Wetlands (goddamn does that shit set the tone for that area) and maybe some of the boss fight songs. Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, you dun goofed. It's telling when the only times I perked up at the sound of the music was when it was an Inquisition track, which had an absolutely baller line-up of songs. I wish they'd have gotten Inon Zur or Trevor Morris to return for Veilguard. Or, I don't know, poked Zimmer with a cattle prod or something to wake him up, since I know that bitch can make some amazing music (no idea what Balfe is usually capable of).

Animation: When it's good, it's REALLY good, but then you randomly get scenes where the characters are just standing around looking at each other lmao. Like in one of the Lucanis romance-y scenes during their second coffee date, he just stands next to Rook and makes weird faces at them. Like damn dude, clearly someone didn't get paid to animate that day.

Davrin can die what the fuck. I'm guessing it's Lace if you pick her to lead the other group? UGH THE WORST! ASSAN EVEN GOES DOWN WITH HIM??? T A T At least his death felt worthy, unlike fucking Varric getting prison shanked by Solas within the first hour or two of playing.

Y'all really couldn't think of a better way to sell Varric being around and Rook not knowing? Good lawrd, embarrassing. Look what they did to my boy. I'm gonna be a salty bitch about Varric's treatment for years to come. Was really holding out for Inquisition!Varric being a fluke.

While I did like that the companions weren't at each other's throats in dumb ways, yeah, they probably could have used a bit more bite. Or like...have their problems with each other not be solved within one cutscene.

Taash's storyline is probably still my least favorite since the queer side of it is too formulaic and felt clunky now and then. Can see those story beats coming from a mile away. Was honestly more interested in their struggle with their qunari and rivaini backgrounds.

Lace also seemed to suffer a bit with a predictable storyline, but that may be because I'm also like her and struggle to accept needing help and not always being okay and putting on a front to not bother others bahaha.

Can't believe we only got to visit Kal-Sharok once jfdksalfda.

Casual clothes: Would have been nice to have more options. And also just to have them organized a bit better so it's easier to check through what will and will not cause clipping issues and whatnot haha.

Shadow Dragons: Hilarious that a group that's trying to be an underground rebel force all color code their outfits lmao.

The Kal-Sharok armor. GOD! It's so bad!

Can't believe I had to choose between Manfred and Lichdom. Ugh so rude. Hardest choice in the whole game.

Overall:

Even with my complaints, I still had a great time and definitely want to playthrough Veilguard more, and likely will once I've had a break from Dragon Age for a while. I got a fanfiction (not related) to finish writing, podcasts to catch up on, and doll stuff to get to. I also have that playthrough of DA2 to finish as well that I put on pause to get Inquisition done with before Veilguard released.

I do really hope Dragon Age will continue (considering the after-credits scene, it definitely seems like they're interested in continuing the series) since I still absolutely love this world Bioware has created and added to over the years, even if the stories don't always pan out how I'd hoped (sometimes due to EA and Bioware's management being dumb as bricks).

Honestly, me being "meh" about a Dragon Age main quest is pretty normal for me lmao. DA2 was the only game I enjoyed the story for from beginning to end, and I think a lot of that is because it isn't a story about gathering followers to fight against a big bad and save the world, but instead about a group of assholes out for themselves that find a family in each other and are just trying to live out their lives one day at a time.

Considering the after-credits scene, I imagine we won't be getting another story like DA2 anytime soon from Bioware, which is disappointing, but hardly surprising. Most people tend to want the big epics over the more zoomed in stories.

#singull talks dragon age #singull plays dragon age #singull plays da: the veilguard #veilguard spoilers #the veilguard spoilers #da:tv #da: the veilguard #dragon age #dragon age: the veilguard

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lesvegas · 2 months ago

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ritchie’s🎃💀 ABCs of Horror Movie Marathon!! 💀🎃

Horror movie challenge prompted by @quintsmachete

Day Twenty Two - V is for Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Promise this won't have spoilers, besides this: there was no kiss, no monster sex, and not even an 'I love you'. And that's okay.

This is gonna be long, by the way.

Hear me out.

My friends and I joke about how the third movie better have Eddie and Venom fucking on-screen, but you'd have to be pretty naive to think they would lean into the homoerotic angle anymore than they have in the first two movies. While I do wish there was a little more explicit love between the two, I honestly kind of appreciated the subtext and the way their 'relationship' ended (that's not even a spoiler; see title and trailer).

There are two main reasons I found their dynamic and the movie's ending satisfying rather than disappointing: the nature of the relationship itself, and the fact that this movie really couldn't be more than what it was on that front.

I'm not a comic book nerd. Feel free to send asks to my bestie @nosoactivehero if you wanna hear his thoughts about all that. But what I do know from the few interpretations of Eddie and Venom that I've seen (Spiderman 3, Spectacular Spiderman, random episodes of other cartoons, the odd game or two) that a relationship like that could never really work out in the end. You could even say they're doomed from the start. The fact is, while these Tom Hardy movies have made Eddie and Venom closer than they ever have been before (as far as my non-comic-book-reading ass is aware) they're still a parasitic man-eating alien and a human man trying to keep it from devouring everything in sight. They love eachother, they feel like good friends at worst, but there's never been an instance where they've been able to maintain a symbiotic relationship long-term without anyone getting hurt. Ultimately their relationship has to end, and it has to end either with Eddie dying, or him living on and feeling like a major part of him is missing forever. And I think this movie handled that pretty well.

As for this movie's limitations... listen, it was limited from the start. Venom 2018 was something of a fluke; it was intended to be an edgy antihero movie a la Morbius that unintentionally became a hit with monsterfuckers, enough to warrant two sequels. And while Sony did lean into that a little bit and tried to cater to that audience, it really starts and ends with promotional material and tiny tidbits of that dynamic in the movies. It's honestly surprising there was even that 'kiss' in the first movie at all, because there's still the other half of their target audience: kids. And their parents.

Sony already has monsterfuckers and fujoshis in the bag. They're gonna see this movie and cling to every little #symbrock moment there is. They don't really need to be pandered to more than they already have been. So, that leaves the kids and the parents who will buy tickets for them. They were already gonna see this movie if they saw the first two, and the only thing that might put them off from doing so is hearing that they made the main character and the big alien slime monster gay. I can believe the director/writer Kelly Marcel and producer/writer/star Tom Hardy would be willing to take that risk, but I highly doubt Sony would ever let the movie happen if they even thought about it. So that leaves relying on subtext and history to sell the ship.

Also, these movies are still PG-13. This one has a lot more swearing and violence than before, but it's still PG-13... I think.

I still think they could've at least dropped the word 'love' aloud just once, but I don't blame them for dialing it back either.

This movie has a lot of loud moments, but it also has a lot of quiet ones I found myself appreciating. There were typical goofy Venom moments like you'd expect, maybe a little less than usual, but there were also moments where they were just talking or Venom was expressing Eddie's feelings aloud. I honestly think my favourite scene was in a van with a family on their way to Vegas (well, stopping by Vegas, again, not gonna spoil it) and Eddie had a moment to think to himself about what he wants, and where to go from here. The kid of said family talks to him a little while everyone sleeps, asking for reassurance that aliens aren't real, and Eddie's hesitation is kinda funny before he lies to reassure the kid. Aliens aren't real, don't worry about it. I thought Venom would pipe up with something obnoxious in response, but instead he told Eddie that he said the right thing, and that he'd make a good dad. And I think that says a lot about how their friend/relationship has developed over the last in-movie year.

Can you tell what I went to see the movie for? I mean, the first two were really fucking messy, it only makes sense I'm mostly here for the #symbrock moments. But the rest of the movie was honestly not nearly as much of a mess as the last two, and I found that really refreshing.

It's definitely not perfect. The first few minutes of exposition had me looking at my bestie and saying 'what the fuck was that'. Fortunately, they only drilled said exposition in two more times after that, and it felt somewhat justified in that it really just acted as the vehicle for the plot and stakes as any tolerable exposition should.

The first 20-30 minutes had me worried this movie was gonna suck worse than before, but after that the movie quickly got good. A lot of new characters were introduced which also had me worried, but their screentime felt justified by the end as they all had a role to play, big or small. The sets were a hell of a lot more interesting with a mix of wilderness, cities and a certain military base, and for once every set piece was largely visible and colourful. I think I would've preferred more night time scenes, but that's just a personal preference. The action was honestly pretty engaging, even if most of it was still CGI on account of Venom being. Venom. The music was surprisingly great; I could give or take the pop songs but they were fine, and the orchestral OST genuinely hit at times. The story is... fine. Again, it really just feels like a vehicle for the scenes to happen the way they do, but it's easy to follow and isn't entirely unbelievable in the context of the universe. I could nitpick some stupid moments and plot holes, but c'mon, it's fucking Venom 3, do you really expect cinematic perfection? I think the fact that I only rolled my eyes twice was pretty impressive. The humour didn't land for me as well as before, but it did get a chuckle out of me here and there.

And the ending... I get why some were disappointed, but honestly, I liked it. A lot. I also thought it was kinda ballsy to end on a bittersweet moment like that. Not the kind of thing you'd expect from a movie where half the target audience are kids.

I really liked this movie as an ending to a hot, messy trilogy of flukes. Not great, but honestly not that bad. Gonna give this one three outta five lobsters 🦞🦞🦞🗌🗌

#abcs of horror 2024

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eirian-houpe · 2 years ago

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TMI Tuesday

Welcome to Tuesday, everyone!

Such a busy week so far and - well - it’s only Tuesday. It’s a strange kind of insanity that seems to follow me around like a lost puppy. Anyway, how are you all? Good I hope.

Also, lots of exciting things going on: the run up to Fluffapalooza, and of course the Chipped Cup Awards voting period is underway. Please be sure to support your fellow Rumbelle creators... Reblog the link to the ballot form, sing the signal boosts from the rafters, and loudly for the people in the back, but above all... please, please, please.... VOTE! Your creators are counting on you.

I still have fic chapters from Disparate Pathways, and Time’s Curse to post, so hopefully I’ll get some of them up soon, but work has been kicking my arse again (or should that be still?), so the going is slow.

Anyway, go on and drop me an ask and let me know what you’d like to see updated next. If you drop me an ask like that, I’ll give you a tidbit for the named fic. How’s that for a fair exchange?

Otherwise, here are some other suggestions for you…

Ask suggestions

Ask something about any of my fics (full list is below the cut). If you want specifics from some fics that are already outlined, you can ask about:

Disparate Pathways, Chapters 48 through 56 All Our Past Mistakes, Chapters 11 through 44 Lover’s Leap Series, Stories 15 through 31 Time’s Curse, Chapters 4 through 10 Laer o Faen, Chapter 27 & 28 Stargate: Atlantis, Harms Way or any of the 20 fics in the series.

Ask something of any of my characters in general or you can get really specific if you like - for example you might want to ask Gold from Pawn Shop a question about a chapter, a thought, a feeling… (the world is your oyster really)

Ask about my process as a writer, what makes me tick,, or even ask about me personally. Almost nothing is off limits.

Also, if you want to see a specific character or fic featured in Three Things Thursday, or Saturday Secret, feel free to send in prompts, if no one does, then either the choice will be random or they just won’t happen at all. I made an analogy for why that might be in a different post about a car stuck in the mud with spinning wheels. Those wheels are still spinning!

Please remember: if you read a fic you enjoyed on AO3 or on Tumblr (not just mine), please take the time to comment and/or leave kudos, and to reach out on TMI Tuesday. It means a lot to the writers and artists.

You can find all my fics currently on AO3 here, and there is a full list under this cut.

Storybrooke’s Best Kept Secret - Rumbelle

Darkness In Hyperion Heights - Woven Beauty au

Seven Tastes - Rumbelle

Tuesday - Rushbelle AU

The Language of Flowers Series - Rumbelle

Disparate Pathways - Rumbelle AU

Scattered - Rumbelle AU

All Our Past Mistakes - Rumbelle AU

What the Actual Fuck! - Sutherelle

Breathe - Rushbelle

The Lover’s Leap Series - Rumbelle

Awakening - Rumbelle

War Is Coming To Storybrooke - Rumbelle

Given No Choice - Rush

Thoughts On A Happy Ending Series - Rumbelle

Darker Hearts Series - Wish!Rumbelle

Modern Wonders - a OUAT/Alice crossover

Time’s Curse - Rumbelle

The Pawn Shop On Main Street - Rumbelle

The Mansion On the Edge of Town - Rumbelle with a side of Jefferson

Cobra: In Your Prayers - Cobra/FatWS/UC:Undercover et al

To See Series - Rumbelle

Nobody Knew (Bingo) - Rumbelle

Secret of the Seas - Rumbelle AU

Butterfly and Phoenix - ST:DSC

Laer o Faen - Tolkien

Ship’s Rats - ST: DCS

I Amar Boe Men Heb - Tolkien

Coming Down - Halt and Catch Fire

Armor of Ice - Halt and Catch Fire

Duath i-Achas Eriol - Tolkien

Balance of Terror - Sleeper Cell

What To Believe - UC: Undercover

If: In The End - UC Undercover

Precious - The Mummy Series

Forbidden - The Mummy Series

Power Is - The Mummy Series

Angel of the Heart - The Mummy Series

Star of the Morning - The Mummy Series

Not Yours To Keep - Foundation (TV)

No Saving Throw - Stranger Things

Here are fics that haven’t yet been started, but are in the Muse’s bucket.

The Miner’s Day Festival - Rumbelle

Aftermath - Rumbelle (with a side of madness)

Saving The Dark One (WT) A twist on a twist of Rumplestiltskin.

Brought To You By The Color… (Red)

Calcul(us)

(In)consistent equation

The Boston Storybrooke Line

Breaking the Waves (Movie AU)

ILP (or IEP) for Rumple.

One Last Wish

In Service to My Son

Playground Games

Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

“Only Remembered For What We Have Done.”

Librarian: UC

Exquisite Harmonies

Resolutions - Rushbelle in the Deck the Halls universe.

#TMI Tuesday #rumbelle #asks #send asks #send me asks #ask me anything #ama #feel free to prompt me

0 notes

phoenixyfriend · 3 years ago

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Fake Sith TCW Trio

I have another fucked up time-travel AU! Who’s surprised? (Nobody.)

So like. Have you guys read that one fic where Luke and his students go back in time and pretend to be Sith Lords and are super hammy about it? (Sith Lord Swell by AMournfulHowlInTheNight)

This AU has contributions by @atagotiak, @the-lunar-system, @purronronner, @gelpenss, @creepingthroughthistidalwave, and @thisarenotarealblog.

I want TCW trio (plus Rex and Cody) to go back to several years pre-TPM and, since the Council DEFINITELY won't believe them about the Sith being back... they'll force the issue.

Anakin is weirdly excited about things and building up their backstory.

Anakin: Okay so I can definitely be a Maul type, with the unhinged ranting and manic laughter, Obi-Wan can be the whole Refined Rich Guy type like Dooku, where you can't even tell he's evil until he starts talking about getting out the eyeball scoops, maybe toss in a bit of mad science stuff? Ahsoka could play up like Ventress OR, oh oh, she can be the Light Side Child we need to PROTECT who's publicly begging us to return to the Light after our big dramatic Falls where we murdered like eighty people to save her, and-- Obi-Wan: Why are you never this enthusiastic about actual undercover missions. Ahsoka: Did you just have all this ready to go, or...? Anakin: WE COULD GET YELLOW CONTACT LENSES FOR ME.

Obi-Wan: How's my evil laugh?

Anakin going “Okay.. so if any of us need to murder someone to sell the bit it should be me, I think I could handle it the best. Why? No reason.”

Obi-Wan: I'm not sure a complete Fall could come from protecting Ahsoka, really-- Anakin: No, no, it could.

Obi-Wan: Surely you’d hold back because you realize neither of us want that for you. Anakin: Uh. Sure. Definitely.

Obi-Wan points out that none of them can channel the dark side to Prove they're Sith and Anakin just goes "Okay, give me like two seconds to stew in my negativity and--right, you can stop staring in horror, please."

Anakin rambles on that they can TOTALLY make the galaxy a better place while playing at being Sith! He's got a whole LIST of slave empires to "take over" and disassemble!

Anakin has a whole excited spiel about how EVIL soldiers and assistants are minions, in this case partly because Cody and Rex are too good at what they do to be mooks. Cody could pull off evil minion very well. Facial scar? Looks good in black? Quietly competent and sarcastic?

He also pushes for Obi-Wan to lounge in a fancy throne with a glass of wine while Anakin stalks the shadows and Ahsoka hangs out on the window ledge. The disaster lineage is dramatic, okay, Anakin’s just leaning into it, he’d appreciate it if everyone stopped looking at him like that.

Qui-Gon, surprisingly, ends up a skeptic about all of this. Everyone is freaking out about the Sith and he’s like “y’know I’m not even sure they’re darksiders.”

Some Jedi, possibly Qui-Gon for his conspiracy board, gets in a real risky situation and one of the Fake Sith saves them, but also panics and kinda drops character for a bit.

Jedi: You saved me! Why’d you do that? Anakin: I uh... just wanted the pleasure of killing you myself?

"You saved me. Why?" "Mmmm. Jedi." [walks away]

Qui-Gon: [trying to figure out what is up with these people semi-competently (from his perspective) pretending to be Sith] Dooku: [trying to protect Qui-Gon from Sith influence]

The gang is the most successful at pretending to be Sith to Dooku. Sure, they’re not gonna punish him for something he hasn’t done, but it’s not hard to act menacing and angry around him.

(They really do have so much fun irritating the heck out of Dooku. He hasn’t Fallen yet, but they want to keep an eye out.)

At some point, future Obi-Wan definitely drops that little tidbit of "What, you didn't think the Banites were the only Sith running around did you? You... didn't even know about the Banites. How... disappointing."

They REGULARLY use Ahsoka as an excuse to be marginally less terrible. They claim that if Ahsoka pouts, they stop. ‘Soka also uses them as an excuse for why she’s a lil feral. (To be fair, that one is accurate. She was already a lil feral before but it’s not like they did anything to stop it.) Ahsoka gets her "breaking into people's offices" jollies by bugging Nute Gunray's office.

The Jedi keep trying to Rescue Ahsoka.

Rex and Cody end up in real beskar, there's a whole Thing with Mandalore and Jango and Satine.

Obi-Wan is CONSISTENTLY worried about Anakin Falling for real, which... hey, at least he knows to be worried about Anakin Falling. Step up from canon, really.

Anakin is WAY too into killing the Hutts but like. It does... technically sell the bit.

Obi-Wan: Sure, I’m not sad that they’re dead, especially because we’re not connected to the Republic, so we don’t need to worry about starting a war and all that. But. Anakin is disturbingly cheerful about this. Rex: Wasn't he a Hutt slave? Obi-Wan: Well yes, but-- Rex: I'd kill Nala Se if I could get away with it.

Cody and Rex are very supportive of Anakin's murderous intentions.

Obi-Wan does understand anger, even killing someone in anger. Like Maul (the first time at least) and D’nar and a few others. All the same, like... y’know. The level of bloodthirst from the others is a little off-putting.

At one point, Anakin accidentally addresses young Obi-Wan by name, despite never having met before, and to cover it up, he... panic-flirts. He panics, and so he flirts, with young Obi-Wan.

(He will later blame this on old Obi-Wan, because he had to pick up the habit of flirting with the enemy from somewhere.)

Anakin vaguely implies that he's a wee bit obsessed with young Obi, and that the padawan should "get used to being the target of a dark-sider's interests," because he’s scrambling for Ominous Shit and, well, future Obi-Wan was pretty frequently a fixation point for darksiders, right?

The second he gets out, he just starts screaming into a bucket while Rex pats him on the back.

For the next however many terrible months, possibly years, he has to keep up the act while having an ongoing meltdown about how That's My Dad As A Twenty-Something.

(It doesn't help that young Obi-Wan reflexively flirted back.)

Old Obi-Wan, meanwhile, is just very "you dug this hole yourself, padawan."

There is an argument at the beginning about Obi-Wan’s outfit. If he’s gonna be a Sith, he can’t just go around in beige, but he’s like “I like this and it’s comfy.” Sure, he’s changed clothes for undercover stuff, but that’s always been temporary, y’know? He likes his beige.

We have a number of options.

My first instinct? Beige linen three piece suit, like a southern lawyer. "Now I may just be a simple Outer Rim force adept--"

And, of course, you can TOTALLY make the beige sinister: he’s impersonating a Jedi! Jedi impersonation would also explain why nobody has a red saber.

“Sure is good that the Jedi don’t seem to realize most of the galaxy doesn’t know red sabers are different and bad.” “Shhhh, stop poking holes in our story where a Jedi might overhear.”

Like.... if you do enough doublethink, it works! How would a Sith hide? In plain sight. Also, it’s a GREAT way (if they were actually assholes) to try to slander the Jedi name.

(Anakin and Ahsoka still think he could stand to put a little more effort in. Add a splash of color, for pity's sake!)

Though tbh part of me is like “What if Old Obi wore, like... a split skirt suit...” Victorian womenswear inspired because he misses his robes, but he has to look Professional, and like he's MOCKING Jedi instead of BEING one, so he wears a vintage-y split skirt thing over his leggings. Ends up looking a lot like what Ventress had for a while, but Beige. I also keep wanting to put him regency menswear.

Anyway. Obi-Wan’s wardrobe aside...

Anakin builds up his Tatoo accent again. It helps him with the (mostly true) "slavery helped me fall" backstory.

Either Cody or Rex offhandedly mentions being made to serve them (the Fake Sith) and now the Jedi are somewhat concerned about brainwashing. Are these Mandos the victims here?

“No like. Literally made for this. In a lab.” This is even more horrifying. So...

On the one hand good! The Jedi should be scared about Sith! On the other hand... it makes the Jedi more determined to stop them, specifically. They keep on getting in the way, just, all the time, and they’re not investigating the actual Sith problem, which is decidedly not great since the Team doesn’t actually know who’s a real Sith right now, except Maul, and who even knows where that guy is.

Obi-Wan, at some point: Do you think we've succeeded at this ruse... a little TOO well? Anakin: I don't follow. Obi-Wan, gesturing at the truly obnoxious amount of wealth they've collected, including "trophies" of their kills: Really? Because I'm a little worried! Anakin, planning out a battle to take on Nar Shadda: ...I'm not.

"How many people do we realistically we need to take over Hutt Space? Apparently... five."

(Mostly because Anakin is ridiculously op.)

ANAKIN AND YOUNG OBI GET KIDNAPPED BY PIRATES TOGETHER. It's tradition.

Anakin: Okay, so, I need to get really angry about something to pass as a Sith... time to think about my WIFE and how I'll NEVER SEE HER AGAIN.

Since Anakin’s life never goes as planned... this does not work. Instead of getting properly angry, he makes himself sad. There are tears. There is wailing. There’s a distraught rant or two. Young Obi ends up awkwardly trying to comfort him.

“Oh no, this… Sith?? Is crying on me. What do I do???”

Later on, when the Council wants intel: "So... one of the Sith cried on me about his wife. I think she's dead? He wasn't very clear about it but it, uh... it sounded like it might have contributed to his Fall. Also the relationship was a little unhealthy? He basically worshiped the ground she walked on and kept ranting about how he would have given her the galaxy on a platinum platter of she'd only asked, but that might be new and inspired by the Dark."

One of the random Jedi is REALLY good at detecting the truth Through The Force, and asks Anakin how he Fell...

Anakin just. Tells the Tuskens story.

They don't get pinged as lying, but oh boy does old Obi have a LOT of questions for Anakin once they're in private.

There are other things happening to help sell the ruse. Some of them are necessary! Some of them are... not.

Obi-Wan: What's the best way to show we're rich and kind of evil, but like... classy about it? Anakin, immediately: I sit on the floor next to the throne, leaning against it, and you call me pet names while stroking my hair, and then when you need something killed I get to do it for you and then I go back to the floor and you thank me for the directed violence, and then you go back to Negotiations with criminals while I’m sitting there covered in blood. Obi-Wan: ...is there something you want to TELL us, or...?

"You're all going to get a glimpse of something normally kept hidden about me." "Anakin, you don't have to do that." "No, I'm gonna."

(Anakin has decided hes going to peel his kink tomato to sell this ruse, and the others are slightly uncomfortable with that.)

Anakin: Okay, I cannot keep flirting with you. Young Obi: Wait, what? But that's the best part of any time we run into you! Anakin: You look WAY too much like my Master did when I met him. Obi: O...kay? If someone looked like my master when HE was young, I'd-- Anakin: My Sith Master half-raised me. He's basically my dad. Obi: ... Anakin: What's that look for? Obi: I mean, you spend a lot of time lounging at his feet, and, like, given how much you hate slavery, I... kind of assumed it was a kink thing? Anakin, brightly: Oh no, I just have a LOT of trauma. And neuroses. Snips says they’re neuroses.

Young Obi is a little upset because he was actually getting REALLY into Flirting With The Enemy and was hoping it would go somewhere. He mopes to Qui-Gon about it. Qui-Gon isn't sure whether to be proud about Obi breaking rules, or worried over Obi-Wan falling for a Fake Sith.

(As Tia put it: "You enjoy making young Obi-Wan have a completely unrequited crush on Anakin, don’t you?")

Fortunately, one of those attractive Young Mando boys very kindly helped him tape up his ribs this one time, and has thus caught his eye...

I feel like having Cody date Young Obi would court an entirely different kind of (internet) drama because clone ages, but whatever.

Also please imagine an element of "so I'm dating the genetic identical of my boss... who's dating the man I'm a genetic identical of..."

(It's probably not actually Jangobi but man would that be funny and also stupid.)

Somehow Young Obi figures out that the "Sith Master" is a future him before he realizes that they're not actually dark. In his defense, Anakin was pretty convincing. Especially with the wife rant. It makes HIM more obsessed with Anakin, in a reversal of the implied earlier dynamic, which is all kinds of weird. Less romantic but like. Still weird.

"Future Me Scares Me" with Extra stupid. "Future Me Annoys Me." "Future Me acts like grandmaster Dooku, but more sass." "Future Me raised a really hot evil guy that refuses to bang Present Me." "Future Me might be a Sith, but I'm getting more and more convinced he's just fucking with us all." "Future Me is really rocking that beard, and I can't BELIEVE we figured out a way around the babyface."

"I’m kinda concerned about the whole evil thing, but I’m also glad that I know I’ll stay hot as I get older."

Quinlan approves of the priorities.

Also a lot of interactions with older Obi are very Anakin: [does/says something deeply unhinged] Obi-Wan: So, do you want to…. Talk about that? Maybe? Anakin: What’s there to talk about?? I’m fine, everything’s fine! Anyways how about those plans for tracking down Maul?

Anakin later, like way after the ruse is lifted, just blankly tells everyone that he did Fall, once, and Older Obi made him get therapy about it after the truth came out between the two of them a few months into the Fake Sith thing.

Where'd they find a therapist? I'm sure there's one SOMEWHERE around. Denon and Herdessa are close enough, and they've done enough "your criminal empire now belongs to me" that they can pay well. They make sure to find one that takes confidentiality real seriously.

It's all very "we need some more time to unpack all that."

Therapy helps get Anakin to figure out Sheev’s whole deal. They don't necessarily figure out he’s a Sith from it, but they figure out he’s sketchy and they need to look into that more. Obi-Wan probably already thought he was sketchy, but the whole active gaslighting campaign was a little surprising. They realize that he kinda benefited a lot from a lot of Sith plots and they still probably don’t think he’s a Sith but Obi-Wan is definitely starting to think he’s working with one.

"Okay, we're already bugging Gunray, should we bug Palpatine just to be safe?"

They get away with a lot of slicing because Anakin is a technical genius from twenty years in the future.

The reasons they're so good at Taking Over Hutt Space: 1. They know parts of the future. 2. They have superpowers and FAR less reason to not use them, now that their actions aren't going to reflect on the Republic. 3. They have Cody and Rex, who are two of the greatest military minds in the galaxy, and know EXACTLY how to wage a war that covers a solid third of the galaxy, starting from a position of relative weakness. 4. Anakin's charisma is scary high, and his knowledge of slave culture means they gain a lot of trust from the people they free, and they just... keep acquiring volunteers for the army they didn't plan to have. Obi-Wan doesn't know what to do. He thinks they might have started a cult?

In his defense, Dooku sort of started a cult, and Komari got kidnapped by a cult, brainwashed into joining it properly, and then took it over as head figure of said cult. It's practically tradition!

Comics Vader is the central figure of like three different cults, it was really just inevitable.

Anakin: Aw, don't worry master, it's not a cult, it's a revolution! Ahsoka: They're worshiping him, though. Anakin: ...it's still a revolution! Just... with some misunderstandings.

Also, if they got wind of people trying to keep people from being able to leave and other culty stuff like that, they’d probably put a stop to it pretty damn quick.

Names! Time for names. As per usual, it's easiest to keep track of Obi-Wan's alternate Older Self by just calling him Ben.

Darth Ben.

Ahsoka: You should be Darth Boring. Obi-Wan: I can still make you run laps, you know.

Anakin: The Force is telling me to call myself Darth Vader. Obi-Wan: ...why? Anakin: I dunno, but it sounds cool, I'll run with it.

Someone: Ben has all the answers; we shouldn’t question him, ever. Ben: One time I lost a planet, and a five-year-old found it for me.

More options: Going with the "evil word with the prefix 'in' chopped off" that we get with Sidious and Vader: Darth Surrectus (as in insurrection) Just random Latin words: Darth Temporus (time) Darth Commenticius (fake)

Anyway, back to Nonsense:

Maul goes after young Obi early, because the Fake Sith are really invested in this one random Padawan (Sidious is saying he might be a cousin of the false Sith Master? They do look similar enough) so someone needs to investigate. Naturally, Anakin shows up with some wild screeching to fight Maul, and when someone questions why he got involved it gets very "Kenobi is MINE!" and like. Okay. So.

Anakin means it in a very Sith "to toy with" and "to torture" way, or the ‘my chosen opponent!’ way, just the same kind of Obsession as Maul had with Obi-Wan in the original timeline. Unfortunately, Anakin’s a weird-ass person who flirts with Young Obi against his own better judgement, so there's some awkward "Like... your boyfriend?" from young Obi. Anakin just screeches in SOME emotion that nobody wants to interpret, and couldn't even if they wanted to, and starts whacking away at Maul again.

(Anakin hasn't explained the "you look exactly like my dad, sorry, it's just too weird" thing yet, and he is HAVING MANY REGRETS.)

There's definitely at least one instance where a person asks Anakin if he's planning on dating That One Jedi Twink, or at least banging out the tension. At that point in time, Anakin doesn't actually know who the fuck they're talking about, because "Obi-Wan + Twink = Does Not Compute" for dear, dense Ani, and instead he just ends up ranting about how he is LOYAL TO THE MEMORY OF HIS LATE WIFE, how DARE anyone so much as INSINUATE that he would TARNISH HER PERFECT MEMORY and UNWAVERING KINDNESS and WHOLESOME BEING, and the person who asked doesn't end up lightsabered but they do end up with a LOT to tell whoever they're reporting to.

Young Obi-Wan definitely hears Anakin mutter the phrase “something to discuss with my therapist later” a few times, and he’s a little bewildered because darksiders definitely don’t seem like the type of people to go to therapy. They’re the type of people to need therapy, sure, but not the type to go to therapy.

I think it would be very fun for Young Obi to continue sighing over Anakin (who's pretending to be fine with it and even flirting back because he's in too deep to stop and hasn't worked up the courage to explain the elephant in the room) while Anakin is covered in grease and infodumping while having a slightly manic hyperfocus on engine repairs while the two of them Somehow got stranded together in the middle of bumfuck nowhere (it's Plagueis's doing, he finds the interactions between THESE two in particular to be the most informative regarding the fake Sith).

Anakin, at some point while stranded with young Obi-Wan, and having actually started unpacking some stuff in therapy, though he’s def still got a ways to go: I’m pretty sure Ben cares about me. He acts like he cares, like he’ll do stuff like put extra blankets in my quarters in the spaceship because I get cold real easily or track down those droid parts I need for a project and he always has my back in a fight but y’know it’d be nice to hear him say he loves me once in a while. Especially because we kinda had a rough start and idk I don’t think he wanted me around at first.

And uh. Obi-Wan definitely relates to that a bit too much, y’know?

I want to say that Young Obi ends up mentioning All That to one of the clones or Ahsoka later, because they seem probably invested in Anakin's well-being, even if Ben is, well, a Sith, so Obi-Wan's a little worried the man's affection really is fake, but at least Ahsoka...

(Ironic, given what Anakin's actual eventual Sith would-be-Master was like.)

Young Obi mentions Anakin’s most recent rant to Ahsoka, and she just goes "Wait, is that why Skyguy likes to sit by the throne and get called pet names?" "Uh... I don't... know... but it sounds like all of you have a LOT to unpack there, Miss Apprentice."

Later on: "Master Kenobi, you need to tell Skyguy you love him 'cause apparently he's been having a lot of emotions about you not telling him you care and he's been talking to mini-you about it whenever they get stuck together and--"

Young Obi-Wan is just constantly the "Now we don't have time to unpack all of that" John Mulaney gif. Anakin in particular is a mess, and young Obi-Wan slowly goes from "I want to date that" to "I want to study that" about him.

Obi-Wan gets stuck somewhere with Ben, tries to small talk, gets on the topic of Vader, and spills the drama. He gets an awkward “Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”

It’s followed by a fairly frustrated “I try, but Anakin refuses to communicate his needs to me, and it feels like I’m always falling short.”

At least one member of the group is in therapy, probably all of them, but they’re still using young Obi as a sounding board for all this stuff. On the bright side, this is probably good for impressing the importance of good communication on Obi-Wan.

Good for Obi-Wan! And... whatever Padawan he eventually has.

As for baby Anakin, who is approximately age four, I want to go with "Anakin decides to be his own uncle, and Shmi just rolls with it because fuck it, she’s not a slave anymore, and a Fake Sith is a solid defense against anyone trying to re-enslave them."

[This is a backstory I've had them use before (see here and here).]

Seeing Big Ani and Little Ani in the same space might be what finally pings the "oh shit, that's future me" thing for Obi-Wan... you know, if he’s ever allowed close enough to see Little Ani in the first place.

Little Ani stays with the fake-Sith and is sorta jointly trained by all of them, and young Obi-Wan teaches little 'Soka at the Temple. Ani and 'Soka still end up friends somehow, but it is fairly different.

Every time little Ani addresses Old Obi as "Dad," it's just like ten kinds of awkward. The one time someone tried to explain that Ben wasn't his new dad, Shmi glared them down. She is of the opinion that, all the gods be damned, Ani deserves to refer to the most mature man in his life, who raised another him in another timeline already, as a father.

Ani doesn't NEED a father, Shmi herself is more than enough, but he does deserve to have this if he wants it.

An alternative conclusion to the time travel is uh. So the Mandalorians are genetically identical (give or take a hair gene) and really resemble Jango Fett, though whether anyone notices that is up in the air. Then the three ‘Sith’ (two fake Sith and their morality chain tag-along) have three younger, identical copies show up….

It could be really weird cloning shenanigans. Now, it makes no sense that they’d make clones, and stagger their production like that, and leave them as babies on various planets for Jedi to find. IDK what reasons Obi-Wan would come up with for that, but it’s a fun little detour before he gets to time travel.

There's a really painful moment (for the audience, who know about canon Vader) where someone tries to convince Ahsoka to leave the Sith and she's just like "no way, they'd never hurt me!” Then she clarifies that “someone has to keep them from doing stupid Sith shit whenever they get bored, you know?"

A bunch of Jedi probably think she’s delusional, but the few that have seen her get into trouble that is legitimately too much for her, which isn't often, have then seen Anakin show up like the devil himself to save her, and it's like. Oh. This is why she isn't scared of them hurting her.

We’ve discussed how Anakin does get concerningly in character with the fake Sith thing. However, Anakin and Ahsoka are, just once in a while, surprised by how Ben gets sometimes when playing the bad guy.

After all, he stabbed a dude with a fork and threatened to eat him during his time as Hardeen…

He has the same dramatic streak as all the rest of the lineage. He can be vindictive and creepy and scary as fuck.

HOWEVER:

Obi-Wan: I know I'm supposed to be playing at evil right now, but how do we feel about me making that evil a little... fruity? Ahsoka: Fruity, master? Anakin, who knows where this is going: [buries face in hands] Obi-Wan: You know, the... [limp wrist] Ahsoka: ... Obi-Wan: I mean, I'm already bisexual and well-groomed, I can play it up.

What’s the point of being evil if you can’t be flamboyant?

Anyway, I had to put in a lot of thought for what to do with Rex and Cody, because there's a solid place for them in terms of strategy, but it doesn't do much to give them independent narrative arcs, and 'young Obi-Wan has a crush' isn't much of an arc, you know?

So, basic info first: Cody, Rex, and Anakin all hold the rank of General in this AU because, like... who else is gonna. Ahsoka remains a commander because everyone declares her Baby, and also to keep up the "I'm a morality chain" ruse.

Cody maintains a very stern and unyielding public persona, but the second they're behind closed doors, he's roughhousing with his little brother.

Rex has some fun pretending to be a sadist whenever he and Anakin have to team up, because hamming it up as an evil bastard in front of Jedi is actually really fun... but usually, he's a competent fucking professional.

Because here's the thing: someone has to be.

They both kind of hate the army they've gotten, because these people don't even have proper trigger discipline, let alone any actual discipline.

This army? Tragic. They hate it. Give them the clones.

They have to be drill sergeants for months before they have anything worth sending onto the field.

I think that might be how/when they end up reaching out to Jango. Like, the first inroad is absolutely "we're your clones from the future and you were a Shit Dad so you owe us," but then they actually talk him around into letting the Fake Sith hire him. He brings along all the Mandalorians he can get to answer his calls, and on suggestion from Those Mando Twins, joins the army Ben doesn't even want.

Darth Boring doesn't want an army! Unfortunately, Cody thinks that's stupid as hell, and is overruling Ben so they can actually work on this 'cleaning up the galaxy of slavery' thing with actual resources.

Cody and Rex are super competent, and it shows in their horrified disdain for the state of their troops.

Rex: Fucking natborns. Anyone who isn't in the know: What's a natborn? Rex: [leaves without answering] People: WHAT'S A NATBORN???

(I'm assuming that the word smush is harder to parse in Basic.)

I think young Obi-Wan's new crush on Cody should also be unrequited. Cody's just like... bemused. Very "Okay, then, that sure is an Affection you've decided on."

Cody and Anakin both: Sorry, it’d just be too weird. Obi-Wan: Why would it be too weird? Cody and Anakin: Reasons.

Rex has to deal with the "whyyyyy" from both his brother and his (former?) General.

Young Obi-Wan just likes cute boys that fight good! Is that so wrong???

Ahsoka: So since we're not officially Jedi anymore-- Obi-Wan: We're still Je-- Ahsoka: Can we date? Can I date now? I want to date someone before we go back to the Code. It's a classic life experience for most teenage girls, and I want to Have That Experience before we're back at the Temple. Obi-Wan: You're not... you can date, Ahsoka, that's not actually banned by the Code. I mean, you'd have to keep it casual, but-- Ahsoka: I CAN DATE!!!

(Great priorities, Ahsoka.)

An idea I'm toying with is that one of the clones ends up Legally Engaged to Satine for political reasons, and young Obi-Wan is just like ???? because not only can he not date the hot boys, but one of said hot boys has become Mr. Steal Yo Girl.

Young Obi-Wan is suffering, and Quinlan is the worst friend ever because Quinlan is laughing at him.

There is obviously the question of

"How would Satine ever end up agreeing to that, given what their public personas are like and all that? She puts duty ahead of personal feelings but all indications are that it’s a terrible decision both ways." (as stated by Tia)

Which, yes, I forgot to actually say that I was imagining Jango had declared "those twins" his heirs after telling people they were his younger* cousins. Because reasons.

* Jango is about 27 when they land in the past, and I’m going to say the accelerated aging ended after hitting physically twenty because no, I don’t want to deal with that. As far as anyone knows, Cody and Rex are about five years younger than Jango. They’re less than year apart, which isn’t very visible, and most people assume they’re identical twins (except Rex’s hair), and that Cody just looks slightly older because of the scar.

Darth Boring had convinced Satine that the way to keeping Mandalore peaceful was to work with Jango (because Darth Boring, which is not his actual title but it is what Ahsoka insists on calling him in private, has a vested interest in keeping Mandalore and all interested parties calm), and he... maybe accidentally set up a political marriage between her and one of the clones.

It wasn't on purpose! Satine never married in his timeline, okay, he didn't expect her to ever get married here, either! He didn't even suggest it! This just happened!

(I want to say that Cody would be more competent at having a political marriage? But IDK.)

Do I do the Satine thing? It has potential, but also it's a bit of a cop-out. Do I have Cody be a diplomatic representative for their pseudo-Sith empire? He could be, but I think he'd hate it. Do I have Rex date one the Chaos Entities (Anakin or Ahsoka), or is that too repetitive with my other works? THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH GOING ON.

Part of me wants Quinlan to get a crush on Cody, and the crush gets bigger specifically in response to the fact that Cody refuses to take him seriously and/or just doesn't give him the time of day.

Based on their one interaction in TCW, they probably let get along ok. Cody maybe likes him back, buuuuuuut internally he's just a little "you were tolerable at almost-forty; early twenties you is obnoxious."

Just imagine the absolutely puppyish attempts at gaining approval and Impressing The Hot Mando General. Quinlan keeps having vague daydreams of seducing someone to the side of the Light. He really leans into the bodice ripper fantasies of saving someone evil with the power of love! (And also the power of really good sex.)

Bant looks at Quin and Obi and wants to throw them both into the nearest pond because they're idiots, but on this topic they are the same flavor of idiot. She considers calling up Reeft and Garen to help her knock some sense into them.

Quinlan: Can I volunteer to go undercover to the Sith? The Council: No. Quinlan: ...what if I-- The Council: No.

Tholme tries to get Qui-Gon to commiserate over their Padawans getting obsessed with Hot Sith Boys, but Qui-Gon just finds the whole thing funny. He knows from the chats he has with Ben that Anakin feels so completely, utterly, incredibly awkward about all of this.

(Ben continues to hold to "Anakin brought this on himself.")

(Ben also “kidnaps” Qui-Gon a lot.)

Also, hey, at least Quinlan isn’t actually into hot Sith boys! He’s into hot Sith minions which is... probably a step up. At least Cody’s not a Sith himself!

It's a step in some direction but Tholme has no idea which one.

(Quinlan sees Cody in dress uniform once and just keeps the mental image for Ages. It’s in his dreams. Sometimes said dreams overflow to Tholme via Force Mind Magic and Quinlan wakes up to someone smacking his face with a pillow.)

Arguably, Quin's also a lot more romantic about his crush than Obi-Wan is, in this case. Quinlan: I want to save him... Obi-Wan: Hey, hey, cute boy. Look at me. Let’s bang.

Cody: There are currently two future Jedi generals having some form of absurd romantic fixation in my direction. I don't know how to feel about this. Rex: Bed them. Cody: ...I'm not saying that's not eventually an option, but one of them is the younger Kenobi, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. Rex: Pat him on the head like a tooka and then bed his friend, it'll be funny.

I think the Quinlan thing and also general exasperation of leading an absolutely useless army can function pretty solidly as the basis for Cody, but I have another idea for Rex now.

Komari is currently brainwashed in a cult, yes? So.

I keep bouncing around back and forth on what to do with Rex, but part of me suddenly really likes the idea of, after Team Fake Sith finds and dissolves the cult (as one does), and takes Komari into custody (because she's dangerous and deeply unwell), Rex kind of ends up her touchstone to being a decent person. He’s not a morality chain, and it’s not really a redeemed-through-love thing, just This Is A Solid Dude who doesn't pity her or thinks she's irredeemable (however you choose to define such a thing), but actually relates to the kind of conditions living like that can involve, and just kind of...

I don’t know. I think Rex's arc in this AU could be very heavily grounded in something to the effect of "You're not the worst darksider I've met. You're not the only person who was in a cult. You're not even the only former Jedi I know that's committed awful, horrible crimes. My question is just this: What are you going to do moving forward?"

Later Anakin: Wait, who do we know that was in a cult? Rex: What did you think Kamino was?

(Rex isn't as chill as he'd like her to think, but he's trying, and she's fairly reliant on the Force to understand emotions, and is currently in nullifying cuffs, so he can bluff.)

Komari needs someone solid and dependable to rely on for at least conversation, and I think Rex needs to feel needed.

I’m not sure if it’d be romance or friendship, but I think there's a solid basis to work with, potentially.

Per Tia:

One thing about Rex and shipping is like. If you want to do Rexwalker again that's fine, but if you're worried about repetitiveness but still want to like. Ship him in a non-political-convenience way. Rexsoka here actually would be different than your other stuff.

I'm trying to figure out if I can make it work because Ahsoka thematically fits very much into a little sister shaped hole here? She feels younger than in other works, despite not actually being younger than she is in, say, Commander Buir. In those other fics, she has some time alone to function and prove herself independently of Anakin and Obi-Wan.

I usually pluck Ahsoka out at sixteen if I'm pulling her from TCW, so she's got most of her competence but hasn't gotten quite all the trauma yet. Commander Buir, in particular, also has baby-shaped Anakin for contrast.

That said, I can see a decent source of narrative conflict in her wanting to experiment with romance and all that, and Anakin trying to tell her she's too young.

A year into this whole time-travel mess, she wants to give the dating thing a shot, and it spirals into "You were only two years older than me when you got married!"

I think I could build a plot out of Ahsoka wanting to do these things, and Anakin as an audience insert not quite processing that she's old enough to make these decisions. If she's choosing to date Rex, whose age works out as being close to hers when one takes into account Kamino fuckery, and whom she trusts absolutely, it’s arguably extra weird for Anakin to be upset with it.

"Senator Amidala was five years older than you, and you married her when you were nineteen and had only really known her for a week! I can go on a date with a guy we both know is one of the most trustworthy people alive if I want, Skyguy!"

I can definitely see Ahsoka getting annoyed with Anakin being overbearing and controlling at some point before that unrelated to romance, too. It’s not exactly a new fault of his.

My god, just imagine someone snidely asking Anakin "where's your little shadow?" and Anakin, being Himself and also a Fake Sith, has an emotional breakdown about how Ahsoka yelled at him for micromanaging her and not trusting her to make her own decisions in life and so she got herself a multi-month solo mission from Ben that Anakin isn't allowed to know any details about, and--

It's another one of those "oh, you have PROBLEMS problems with your mental health" incidents for the Jedi to add to the file, because Anakin having emotionally charged rants about his issues at seemingly terrible times is how they get a lot of information.

Some of the rants are planned.

Many of them, actually.

They want the Jedi to know these things.

Just, well. Anakin.

He really is a little Like That.

On that note, I'm low-key imagining that Anakin gets put on mood stabilizers by the therapist in this context, and he's doing good! He's handling his issues! He's--been captured with Obi-Wan the Younger again and his medication was confiscated.

Anakin is... not great. He's a little out of practice managing his unmedicated self, and when adding withdrawal symptoms onto that... poor Anakin.

(Poor Obi-Wan.)

I think it would be best if Anakin makes a bunch of ominous blustery comments at their captors about how they won't like what's coming to them if they take his belongings (AKA the fanny pack that has his backup pills), and then Obi-Wan just gets to watch Anakin get more and more erratic, because like. Yes, Anakin is using the Force to compensate, but unfortunately he's mostly cut off, and the stress of the situation is pushing him away from depression and into the beginnings of a manic episode.

Anakin is aware of his issues to the point where he's mostly managing, and he keeps asking Obi-Wan "would it make sense for me to [slightly deranged, very impulsive action]," and Obi-Wan realizes he's being the morality sounding board for the Hot Sith because ??? reasons?????

Eventually, Anakin does flop back in bed and dramatically throws his arm over his eyes, and says he needs his meds back, he's absolutely going to lose it, and Obi-Wan tentatively asks what kind of medication. There are levels to worry about. Mild allergy medication is one thing, but heart medication that needs to be taken every four hours is another, you know? He wants to know how much panic is appropriate.

Anakin lets him know that it's Psychiatric In Nature. Obi-Wan suddenly realizes that he really, really, really doesn't want to know what a properly erratic, unmedicated Anakin is like.

(An unmedicated Anakin really isn't nearly as bad as Obi-Wan fears. Anakin's been dealing with this for a while, and knows what his issues are and some of how to deal with them. He'd need to be running on no sleep and higher levels of stress, or to have been drugged with something meant to increase his aggression, to really lose his shit and do something worthy of Vader. RotS levels of stress and sleep deprivation is required to pull RotS levels of manic paranoid delusion.)

Tia asked:

How long does it take the Jedi in general to catch on to how like. They have opportunities. But these Sith never seem to harm any Jedi. And it’s not just like, the past timeline parts of the disaster lineage. They probably get opportunities to hurt other Jedi. Ones that are less skilled at saber work. And more importantly ones that they don’t seem weirdly interested in."

I'm not sure, really. The Jedi don't spend as much time in the Outer Rim as they could, and that's where the Team operates, so actually running into them by accident is unlikely for anyone other than Shadows.

Fortunately, it's really easy to toy with Shadows with the excuse of "I want to see how long it takes before you Fall with us."

I do want like... okay. Here’s the mental image:

Qui-Gon calls them out on being Fake Sith pretty quickly, so Ben just sort of eyes him, dramatically, and orders out "Leave us" to all non-team people. The threat of torture is implied but not stated. He gestures with wine to keep in character. He definitely makes sure Young Obi-Wan is ushered out, so it's just five time travelers, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Ahsoka's immortal force birb.

"...so, what's the reason for the farce, Obi-Wan?" "How in all the hells did you figure it out so quickly?"

(Qui-Gon cheated a bit. He could feel the broken training bond that was never properly severed due to Traumatic Death Of A Master on Ben's end)

Ben didn't realize he'd feel it! Young Obi-Wan can't feel his older self or a training bond with Anakin or Ahsoka, so why could Qui-Gon?

IDK if there would be anything on the level of crying and hugging it out, but I think it would be very funny if, every time young Obi and Anakin are getting captured by pirates or something, Ben and Qui-Gon are just having a nice afternoon tea and checking their watches to see if their respective walking bundles of neuroses are done with their adventure yet.

The Council is So Done, because Qui-Gon continues to insist that they're Not That Bad, but every time anyone other than Qui-Gon brings up the friendship, Ben laughs and makes a comment about how absolutely gullible Master Jinn is.

Obi-Wan is skeptical of his own experiences with Anakin, at least, if only because he's skeptical about Anakin's everything.

"I don't know if Vader is telling me the truth. I don't know if he's telling himself the truth. I don't think he's a great source of information even when he thinks he's being honest."

Anakin could tell Obi-Wan the full and complete truth, and Obi-Wan would worriedly put a hand to his forehead and start doing tests for hallucinations and paranoid delusions. In his defense, this is a very reasonable assumption to make with an individual like Anakin. It's just also not accurate, this time. I don’t know if Anakin hallucinates in canon without a weird inciting incident like Force Nonsense or getting drugged by the enemy, but paranoid delusion is pretty much all of RotS.

"I’m your time-traveling padawan who’s pretending to be a Sith to catch some other Sith who’re going to start a galactic civil war and those Mandalorians you like are from a clone army based on a template of Jango Fett made to serve the Jedi (because that’s totally something he’d sign up for), and one of the Sith is your grandmaster but he doesn’t seem to have fallen yet, it’s probably fine," is hard to believe.

Honestly, even if he seemed stable before saying that, which he doesn’t, it’s all real far fetched. There's a lot going on and Obi-Wan wouldn't even begin to believe it without evidence.

I've had it in my head that he and Bant and Quinlan have been gossiping about the mess for months if not years about these idiots, and at one point it became common knowledge that Ben was a Kenobi, and Bant convinced them (since the two were among the most likely in the entire Order to encounter the Fake Sith) to get a DNA sample, probably hair or blood since that's easiest so they can figure out HOW these two are related, if they are, and then there's a whole big thing.

Bant: No, no, this must be contaminated, it's coming up as Obi-Wan! Are you sure you didn't accidentally grab some of your own hairs? I know it's a little long for most of your hair, but the braid-- Quinlan: Wait, they keep claiming stuff about cloning, right? Maybe someone's a clone? Check for artificial telomeres! Bant: ...okay, so, there aren't any artificial telomeres, but the ones from apparently-Ben are... a lot shorter... um... I don't know what to do with this. It's like I have two samples from the same person, twenty years apart. Quinlan: Obi-Wan, what's that face? Why are you-- Obi-Wan: Vader told me he was a time-traveler. I thought it was the fever talking, but...

That’s how he finds out that Ben is future-him before finding out about how he’s not evil!

"Master Jinn... I think... I think the Sith controlling the Outer Rim is me from the future." "Oh, you finally figured it out?" "I AM HAVING A CRISIS HERE."

Obi-Wan, after a few hours of dazed realization, runs screaming to Quinlan and Bant like 'GUYS GUYS THIS EXPLAINS WHY VADER KEPT SAYING IT WAS WEIRD AND THAT I LOOK LIKE HIS MASTER AND THAT IT WOULD BE LIKE DATING HIS DAD.'

You know, the important stuff.

I think Qui-Gon tells him that Ben isn't evil because, like, That Sure Is A Crisis Obi-Wan's Having. He could hold off for shits and giggles, sure, but Obi-Wan’s on the edge of something Really Concerning, mentally. Best help calm him down on at least one or two things.

Obi-Wan’s maybe still a little skeptical until he confronts them over it. Because their Sith act was real good and also like. Maybe Qui-Gon just wants to believe the best of his Padawan, y’know?

Quinlan runs into Ben before Obi-Wan does, after this whole mess, and gets to observe as money changes hands and people act like sore winners about bets made for When Does Obi-Wan Figure It Out.

Anakin was saying 'soon' because he really didn't think the fever-fueled rant would be discounted as easily as it was.

Cody was of the opinion that it would take at least a few more years since they're actually pretty damn good at this whole schtick.

Quinlan: Wow, he's... going to be really disappointed that you have such a low opinion of his intelligence. Cody, gesturing at Ben: Experience. Darth Ben: ಠ_ಠ

Cody just rattles off some of the Extremely Stupid Shit that Ben's done in their time working together.

Rex cheerily offers up "You didn't even realize General Skywalker was married, sir! And they weren't subtle!" "I knew they were together, I just didn--" "Everyone knew they were together, sir. Everyone."

(Rex had the lowest opinion of their deductive capabilities. He claims it would have taken until Baby Ahsoka showed up at the Jedi Temple.)

-Once Obi-Wan accepts that they're decent people after all- Obi-Wan: Wow, Anakin, you're real good at acting unhinged! Anakin: Haha. Yeah. Thanks?

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throwaway-yandere · 2 years ago

Text

Spoilers!!!

my random rambling about to explain why ["No" (Yandere!Albedo/Reader)] is a mess lmao (and no i didn't proofread this, enjoy reading my unaltered agony):

Edit: actually nevermind i edited just one word cause I couldn't take the misspelling lol. There rest of these texts are still unedited except for that one specific word ( which is troupe to trope lol )

Writing albedo's pretty much a challenge because i pegged that he's the type of yandere that you wouldn't figure out he's one unless he confesses everything. He's popular, but a recluse. He's eccentric, but he can be trusted. Those are some characteristics that can make create such a disastrous slowburn yandere. And he likely confess after a long time just to have a record of your reaction (with a scholarly purpose in mind.)

Idk if I managed to make him subtle at all ;;-;; My goal was to make the reader think albedo is a green flag for most of it all while dropping hints that he aint idk if that worked out but oh well no beta we die like __ right?

It's not my proudest work that's for sure, but it's an interesting ride writing it so I thought I'd share lol (꒪ヮ꒪)

The fic was supposed to be inspired by Love Hypothesis. A friend made me read it in a sleepover and I jokingly suggested doing a yandere albedo version and I guess I'm a man of my word(?). I unfortunately had to change a lot since I can't see Albedo having a very intense strict "I don't want to produce mediocre scientists" mindset, and the reader is gn! here so they shouldn't have women-specific STEM struggles. Albedo's loved by a lot of people and he's rather lax when teaching Timaeus so I really can't picture him playing the "grump" character troupe. I have a habit of constantly checking character voice lines in the wiki to get a gist of who I'm writing and I just can't see him as an Adam Carlsen. Send help. (´；ω；｀)

And also a big "unlike LoveHypo" here is that this is a yandere story. It's bond to be toxic. It doesn't read like the source material anymore since it's not a grumpy/sunshine troupe, it's a reluctant stalker/suspicious individual dynamic, if that's a thing. Ironically, I think this is a first fic of mine where the reader lowkey wins in the end? Lmao. What. ರ_ರ

Also: I REVISED THIS FIC SO MANY TIMES YOU HAVE NO IDEA 😭😭😭 For unrelated reasons I got sick with quite the high fever in the middle writing the latter half as well LOL (≧▽≦). The fic was supposed to be more faithful to Love Hypothesis but of course that's scrapped due to reasons mentioned above but then I added that small ex-itto tidbit for fun and temporarily made the reader into a pure chaotic, reckless (and lowkey asshole) person so it'll be believable that the two were exes. Also SCRAPPED that partially because when I tried writing their dialogues with Albedo they're both going nowhere fast and it's turning into a real clownship ;;;;-;;;; wtf. Nearly had the reader call Albedo a dweeb in a dialogue.

Got writer's block with this story and tried writing something else and at that point I was writing 3 fics at once for no valid reason (and now an itto-focused side story for "careful, he bites" is nearly done lololol, I finished a short alhaitham fic before this as well, will prolly upload it tomorrow. The sagau au take I have might take a while). I'm very sorry for my absence! Life is absolutely hectic rn sigh

Also, here's the story header/banner i scrapped as well lololol:

Ain't this a mess lol.

ya know what makes this more hilarous?

i enrolled in an educ course in a state uni before i finished this fic lmfao--

so yeah, "why did they not fake date like in love hypo--" cause im a coward and it felt weird for me to write something about that considering my future possible profession hAHAHAH--

Edit:

#tag: no - albedo #ansytea-talks

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waywardstation · 2 years ago

Note

I sometimes casually play Pokémon Go. Really just dropping by catching a few Pokémon do this or that and just have fun.

Anyway today is/was a Litwick Community Day. Earlier I took a breather from a big task and booted up the game. As the area filled up with tons of Litwick I thought to myself how fun it would be if I managed to catch a shiny today. And in that same moment the Litwick I picked first… turned out to be a shiny! I managed to catch another shiny a few moments later. Kinda happy I got them. And since the first one is male I named him Ingo.

I know it’s a random tidbit but since Litwick is probably Ingo’s starter I felt like sharing this one. Either way I love my two smol shiny Litwicks to bits and I’m very happy.

I always enjoy having a cool favorite character in Pokémon. Every time I start appreciate their Pokémon even more than I already had. Now I’m a even bigger Litwick and evolution enjoyer.

Anon I’m so happy you got two shinies!!! It’s always such a great feeling when you click on a Pokémon you want on the map, and you find out it’s a shiny!! And Ingo is such a great name for it!!

Very glad you shared this anon, made me very happy to read that you got your two shinies!!

Appreciating submas definitely made me more invested in litwick day too for the same reasons haha. I’ve been gone all weekend at a big event (which is why I’ve been inactive) and had a lot of fun today catching litwick too!

Thanks again for sharing Anon, very happy for you!!! ^^

#I’ve caught over 100 litwick #1000+ candies #9 shinies #i wish I could trade away some shiny litwicks to people if the trading distance wasn’t so limited :(#i hope everyone had a good litwick day!!!!

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theeeveetamer · 2 years ago

Text

Scarlet Blaze Liveblog, Chapter 5

It got rid of my extra spaces when I hit post :( Why do we live? Just to suffer?

SPEAKING OF SUFFERING! Holy shit the new Tumblr beta editor REALLY fucking hates formatting. Wouldn’t let me make any of these sections into bullet points. I have been fighting with this thing for weeks now (it also really hates letting me remove large sections of text as well). Had to turn it off to get any semblance of formatting so I hope it looks alright when I hit post

Explore dialogue

Now we have an NPC saying that there SHOULDN’T be fog this time of year. Make up your mind, game.

Linhardt: Aw my lazy days are over :(

Shez: You know some of us never had lazy days

Linhardt: Yeah but weren’t you just doing that because you wanted to?

Uh, no it’s called Shez is a commoner and had to literally become a mercenary to SURVIVE. They mention that numerous times. In another support they talk about how they were happy to eat rats if it meant their belly got filled. jfc, Lin, the privilege just oozing from you…

There’s a random mage lady who asks you if anyone on the opposing side uses dark magic. Agarthan lady, perhaps?

Ferdie stands like someone wearing one of those babydoll skirts from Style Savvy and I love him

Interesting that they explicitly state that Hrym was wiped out for resisting Ionus’s power centralization here. IIRC that was a lot less explicit in 3H

We also have explicit trade with Dagda, Albinea, Brigid and others. So I guess that’s another point against “Rhea doesn’t let Fodlan have contact with outside nations”

Why does Randolph look like he has a tiny blanket on his shoulder lmao

Wait why was Constance hostile to living in the Empire again?

Oof. Between Dimitri and Edelgard, Dimitri definitely got the superior Hapi nickname

Random Tidbits

Lmao. Hubert being like “I don’t even have to try not to kill you” during training and Ferdie being like “uh. Thanks. I think.”

I really wish the game would tell me when a character maxes out support points even if the letter is locked. It’s really annoying building support and then just realizing it’s not going up anymore after you’ve wasted so many training points and whatnot

I’ve decided that I’ve stopped caring if units like the food I’m cooking. Y’all will eat it and y’all will like it. I’m done coddling your asses.

I don’t care if you’re bad at the tasks either. Caspar, Linhardt, I’m sure you’ll do fine at running this street stall.

HUBERT WANTS TO GO ON AN EXPEDITION!!! OH BOY!!!

Hol up lemme drop everything

I hope he takes me somewhere nice to kill me

Good thing I unlocked all these new excursion spots. Gonna drive me crazy tho since I’m pretty sure there’s different dialogue in each one

“The shorter a leash, the better”. Kinky

Let’s go on a nice waterfront murder date

“Once, two souls took a boat out on the water… Only one returned. A fine story, yes?” oh my god he’s actually going to kill me

I have a feeling he wanted me to propose a competition… No wonder Ferdie is his type

“Ask thoughts on their employer” that’s a new one, I don’t remember that question ever popping up before

Unfortunately I don’t get to stare at his face. I was really looking forward to more murder dialogue.

Support Conversations

Shez/Caspar C - Caspar has daddy issues lmao of course he does they all do.

Sorry, having daddy issues won’t save your appeal from that hairstyle

I was about to comment on Caspar being like “I’ve got to build my way up from the bottom” but then he actually addressed what I was going to say by acknowledging that he at least has his name to lean on. So good for you Caspar, I see you retain some semblance of self awareness in this game so far.

Shez/Linhardt C - Shez: Just so we’re clear, whatever Hubert said you were gonna do to me, I’m not into it.

Shez is not kinky confirmed :(

How is Linhardt NOT interested in Shez’s power. She literally fucking shapeshifts and he’s just like “eh, whatever it’s just a sword.”

Like. What. C’mon dude.

Shez/Monica C - Ok Monica I hate you

MANUELA/JERITZA B LET’S GO - GIRL STOP BEING SO THIRSTY

Oh my god do not make Jeritza smile

Manuela: Don’t you want to talk to people?

Jeritza: No.

Stop making Jeritza relatable to me

Lmao Manuela realizing she’s still single because everyone views her as a teacher

Come to me Manuela! I have a teacher kink! We can do both!

Caspar/Dorothea C - Caspar: I’m reading

Dorothea: You can read???

This support is weird. Caspar is like “I wanna study” and Dorothea is like “You need to study!!!! Here let me lecture you on how you need to study!!!!!!!!!!” Caspar: “WOW I NEED TO STUDY!!!!”

Like he was already doing it Dorothea, geez.

Shez/Manuela C - Lmao we stan a messy queen

Y’know Manuela we can smash. I’ll never leave you

Shez/Hubert B - Uh wow weirdly abrupt start. Am I supposed to take this as happening directly after the last one??? They’re standing in the same place and Shez starts like Hubert just said something

Like. Really weird way to do this

“Sever ties” so that’s what the kids are calling it these days

Shez: You have emotions

Hubert: *confused Hubert noises*

Lmao he just had to insult my intelligence there at the end. Never change, Hubert

I know this is a lot of supports but since I’m playing on NG+ I have like 8 activity and 8 training points so it’s stupid easy to get supports. I didn’t even talk about all of them. I imagine future posts will have less as I start hitting time gated supports

Side Battle/Story Content

I’ve been putting this off by playing free mode battles with the renown unlockable characters lol.

Omg Maximum ambulation. Ferdie runs so fast. He’s got the zoomies!!!

Oh no Hubert wants to kill talk to me

Hubert: It’s cute how u thought I would let you live, tho

HI DADDY RODRIGUE

Man first Seteth now Rodrigue? This route really hates DILFs I guess

I mean I’m not surprised. Look at Count Bergliez

RIP Gustave is here too. Guess they’re making him fight in this route

Main Battle/Story Content

Everyone: *whispering*

Ferdie: WHY ARE WE WHISPERING!!!!!!!???? :D

Ferdie you lovable himbo

Ok do we really need three rounds of “why is everyone so quiet” so everyone can get their dialogue about being quiet in?

I wonder if this conversation changes with permadeath. It’s kind of written like it

Maybe I should do an “everyone dies” run in the future just to see how the story changes lol

INGRID!!!!!! MY DARLING!!!!!

Lmao I don’t even like Ingrid that much but I already miss my Lions :(

Oh I guess Jeralt is in the Kingdom now

I mean they’re trying to do the whole “oooooh mystery who could it beeeeeeeee” thing but I know Ling Tong when I hear him

Oh looks like Ashe is a traitor. Can’t say I’m surprised

Honestly fuck Lonato. If you have a problem with sexy dragon lady you have a problem with me

I haven’t talked about this but honestly the colors are fucking me. It’s a good thing Warriors games don’t have friendly fire because I keep running right past all the soldiers in blue to try and kill all the soldiers in red, because like. Fire Emblem do be like that normally

I keep finding big purple circles on the ground. What is that. What does it do. Who is doing that

I actually feel like a bad person for recruiting Ashe here. I mean Lonato is literally willing to kill the poor kid

Edelgard: Family should not fight family

Also Edelgard: Unless it’s Dimitri fuck that guy lmao

Also Also Edelgard: Also Rhea, since she probably banged my great great great great grandaddy a thousand years ago (and maybe is my great great great great grandmommy). Fuck her too

“I could not bear to lose another son” Ok then maybe don’t try killing him, Lonato???? What the fuck?

If saving you weren’t a requirement you would be so dead right now, Lonato

Byleth was kind of a pushover on NG+ lmao

… I’m sorry does Monica have jiggle physics

Ok her boobs don’t have jiggle physics, but her bow does. Which makes it look like she has boob jiggle physics. Why.

JFC Bergliez is so ugly

JUDITH MY BELOVED

She was surprisingly absent from AG I’m glad I get to see more of her

I’m sorry, Bergliez got all the way to Deirdriu????? When???????? When did we do that?????

Damn we killing daddy Gloucester, aren’t we? This is dead Fire Emblem dad dialogue

Oh even this guy gets a first name. Not the moms tho. Fuck the moms I guess :/

I’m surprised Fleche got a name and wasn’t just “Randolph’s sister” for the entirety of 3H

Kinda awkward to hear Petra complimenting the dude that murdered her dad

“The head of House Ordelia is one of the Five Great Lords” am I misremembering? I thought Lysithea’s family gave up their seat at the roundtable to Marriane’s uncle because they knew their house was in decline thanks to Lysithea’s condition

I went looking through her supports to see if I was right and apparently Lysithea/Hilda support confirms homeopathy of all things exists in 3H. No wonder these people still die of the plague.

Ok I couldn’t find anything and I don’t care enough to keep looking, but I got my eye on you, continuity guy

“Consider why we chose not to dismantle House Aegir” goddamn Hubert is just going straight for Ferdie’s throat

Ferdie: Haha I’m in danger

Also RIP Ferdie basically blatantly admitting that he’s only still around because he’s willing to “toe the line” regardless of how he feels about anything. Why am I supposed to be rooting for the Empire again?

I don’t get why people are like “We went to school with these people for 30 seconds maybe they’ll listen to reason” like? Why would they, exactly?

Like it was stupid in 3H but at least they had a whole year in 3H. In this game they were all literally at the academy for like a month

Recruiting Ashe also feels weirdly OOC for him after he spent the entirety of AG’s prologue and parts of part 1 talking about how Lonato would want him to do what he thinks is right and how he believes Lonato has gone off the rails, and while it hurts him, he believes it’s right to stop Lonato. Here he’s just like “Ok fine I don’t want to kill him I guess I’ll join you. Fuck my dreams of being a knight.”

I guess they had to make someone from the BL recruitable and everyone else makes even less sense than Ashe. I mean can you imagine if they let you recruit Ingrid here? Lmao

Anyways wrapping up

Spoilers for recruitables in this route here here.

Can I just say, the spread of recruitable characters, from a gameplay perspective, is kind of weird?

On SB, of the characters you get automatically, half of them are mages (5 of your starting 11 are mages).

Not including the wolves or other characters, you get Ashe, Ignatz, Lorenz, Raphael, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes, and Leonie (under special circumstances) in addition to the SB characters. But like. That means on SB you get two axes (Caspar, Edelgard), two swordies (Shez, Petra), three mounted lances (Ferdie, Jeritza, Lorenz), one brawler (Raphael), four archers (Bernie, Ashe, Ignatz, Leonie), and eight magic units (Hubert, Dorothea, Linhardt, Monica, Manuela, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes). If you include the wolves you get ten. Ten magic users. What do I need ten of these guys for? What is this game’s obsession with mages (the Lions also had way too many, though it wasn’t this egregious and at least Annette can be a serviceable axe unit once she gets Crusher)?

Made even worse because there’s only two magic master classes, and only one magic master class per gender which means you’re going to be ending up with two dark bishops and eight gremories. You can’t equip tomes as a dark knight or holy knight either, you have to use the lance, which is not optimal for many of these mage units. No idea why they decided to take out Valkyrie and Dark Flier if they were going to create so many damn mages. Basically every other weapon type (aside from archers and brawlers) gets at least two different options for master classes, and there aren’t nearly as many archers and brawlers as there are mages.

I guess I’ll use Constance and Hapi more on GD, since at least they only come with Marianne and Lysithea to start

#SB Liveblogging #Scarlet Blaze Spoilers #FEW3H

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