#its a universal rule

[captain-clandestiny]

grisped. grabbed. snatched. both a symbolic illustration the hold life has had on me lately and a canon event from the Blusleeves storyline

[harveylikestoart]

DC? More D See these NUTS!!!

[noctiispiri]

i can't believe they made me do it again

[brucewaynehater101]

I'm bad at math, but is Bruce theoretically 38 years old when he goes into the time stream?

Hear me out (and canon likes to fluncate their ages, so this is my best guess without trying to account for birthdays):

Bruce becomes the legal guardian of 9 year old Dick when he's 23. That's a 14 year difference.

Jason becomes Robin when Dick leaves at 18. Jason is 13. That's a five year difference.

Jason dies at 15, and Tim becomes Robin at 13. That's a two year difference.

The age difference between Tim and Bruce would thus be 21 years.

Tim becomes Red Robin to find Bruce at 17.

That means that Bruce had to be 38, right? Why was I imagining him closer to 50?

Adopting so many kids must have aged him

[thenamesapollo]

i got reminded of an old post I made saying that nightmare can't be a capitalist and I'm just realizing now that I WAS WOOBIFYING HIM

[whateverthought]

House of the Dragon AU where Rhaenyra is raised as a boy, her birth kept secret for a while because she's sickly and Aemma has already lost a few miscarriages and a stillbirth and it doesn't matter too much since Aemon is Heir and Jaehaerys is still alive and Rhaenys is the one with eyes on her, but after Baelon becomes Heir everyone learns Viserys has a kid and when He dies and -another miscarriage,- Viserys becomes King he tells people he has a son, a small lie in all the chaos to smooth things over, to seem like a better prospect. At least till he gets an actual son. And then Aemma dies.

Otto proposes that his daughter, friends with the Prince already, be betrothed to Rhaenyra since betrothing her to Viserys wouldn't put his blood on the throne per se but the Prince? And he gets to override Daemon getting His blood on the throne? Que the Baby Problem(TM)

Que the Baby Problem. How do these lesbians women procure heirs for the throne? Rhaenyra's blood would have to be passed on, since any child born from Alicent wouldn't be a dragonlord but Rhaenyra being pregnant would make their hoax harder to keep up, having kids who look too different will cause rumors and if no one ever saw Alicent pregnant they'd start to wonder. That being said, I quite like them sharing the experience. And Rhaenyra has proven to be reckless and Alicent is easily swayed by her.

So we need a Hightower man and a Valyrian man. In comes Gwayne Hightower, a man in his 30s unmarried and with no children of his own in a medieval times equivalent. A man who essentially raised his nephew for his sister and cared enough about her to reassure her she was a good mother. I'm unsure who would step in for Alicent, Laenor- if he fell in love with Gwayne and had a Queers Help Queers relationship with the girls? But what would he get out of it? He couldn't be a Sworn Shield like Gwayne, Daemon? Too possessive, too power hungry, too obsessed with Viserys and hating Hightowers. Maaaybe Viserys since he does know and would do anything for Rhaenyra, and at least this way his other kids wouldn't threaten his first-born's claim to the throne and subsequently start a Succession Crisis.

Either way, when Rhaenyra is having her first child, she would have their first child so there's no confusion over who gets to be heir (if Alicent had a son first but Rhaenyra's first child was also a son it'd cause emotional problems cause they're both her sons buuut...) and Gwayne is a much easier solution to the problem. And they can hide away in Dragonstone and make excuses about Rhaenyra being overprotective because of her mother. The next would be Alicent's, to show the court that yes, Alicent is the one getting pregnant. And so on and so forth, their children would then be betrothed to each other to unite their blood.

Just Rhaenyra and Alicent, 'King and Queen' and their Sworn Shield Ser Gwayne Hightower and the other one, maybe a dragonseed who's Gwayne's lover? Wacky little medieval lesbians having a rollercoaster ride of a time making a family and running from court, the Velaryons, and Otto and Daemon.

[bmpmp3]

finding out ur coworker is way older than you thought and having to very quickly reorient how you talk to them

[gothearts]

Adam design? Any changes for his personality or demeanor?

Oh boy.. get ready for the infodump..

Note: He still has his ridiculous helmet, I love his expressions in that thing so much. So do the exorcists since I think that the mocking element of it is an interesting decision.

In this au, hellborns are not exempt from the annual extermination. Since they don't have souls, they're deemed evil indiscriminately. The only ones exempt are the sins and the Morningstar Family.

The extermination only takes place in the Pride Ring as further punishment for Lucifer and Lilith, watching annually as what they built is destroyed all over again.

(Hellborns with the means typically exit the Pride Ring during the annual extermination. If you can't, well, you're fucked. It's another layer of why what Blitzø is doing as an imp is considered so groundbreaking, but back to Adam)

He is NOT "indestructible" like the exorcists. Like any average Winner, he can be harmed. Therefore, he attacks from afar with his guitar being considered a long-range weapon.

He and Lilith originally split not because he was a prick who ordered her around, but rather, he was eager to please Heaven, and she wasn't.

Lilith was a free thinker from the start, a dreamer, while Adam narrow mindedly focused on what he had before him. This led to a lot of clashes, her refusing to be subservient to heaven, rather than subservient to him.

(I know that's the original story, but I just don't find it as interesting for the route I'm trying to go with a truly corrupted Heaven in this au.)

She would flee the garden and take comfort in the arms of Samael.

This led to Adam feeling bitter. But he ultimately elected to let it go as he was promised companionship with the much more likeminded Eve.

However, in trying to rid Eve of the qualities that made Lilith so disliked, she became naive. A trait that Adam thought was cute at first, but she just... wasn't Lilith.

Eve was a replacement, and it was apparent, but Adam once again let it go because it was the will of heaven, and he'd already failed to keep one bride.

Then Lucifer gave Eve the fruit and unleashed all of the badness onto the world, and Adam witnessed the war that broke out in Heaven, seeing the devastation first hand, reinforcing his notion that Heaven is always right.

Alongside sealing an ever growing hatred for Lucifer. He'd charmed away his first wife and filled her head with delusions, casting her to eternal damnation. He'd corrupted his second wife and used her as a vessel for evil. (That wasn't his intention, of course, but that is the narrative that was reinforced in Heaven's mind to fuel his desire to uplift their "values".) And he'd destroyed the once beautiful gardens he'd called home, casting Adam and his children to the earth, severing the divinity they'd held.

Lucifer truly took everything.

That's why, when the extermination was proposed, he was more than eager to lead the new order of angels to go down and keep Hell at bay.

Michael, the actual leader of heaven's army, refuses to set foot in Hell and was more than eager to pawn off the responsibility onto Adam vs. Having to go down there and face his brother yearly, taking more from him than he already has.

(Michael's guilt will be touched upon later, it's important.)

Adam is the actual lieutenant, but Lute (Luael) is still his sidekick of sorts. Lute embodied his hatred for hell. Exorcists have very little sense of self. Their only purpose, as mentioned in the post on them is to fight, nothing more.

Hearing Adam talk about what Lucifer did alongside other tales of the horrors of hell is what led her to push herself as hard as she did to excel above her sisters. She reminds him so much of Eve due to that frankly naive devotion, and it's another layer of why he initially kept her around.

(Sorry to guitarspear shippers, but their dynamic is going to be inherently unhealthy in this au. Idk if they'll end up together. It depends on how their own arcs pan out as I expand on this further. But as of right now, he fills the void for her, and she's a stand-in for what he's already lost. They are not well 😔 this is also why he eagerly made the deal to sneak Lilith into heaven on the condition that she divorces Lucifer. He would jump on the opportunity to be taken back.)

ANYWAYS.

He's not really crude when he meets Charlie like in canon. Yes, he was kind of funny at times, but I want to take a more serious approach.

He comes off as inherently bitter towards her because she's not only the daughter of the man he hates but a reminder that Lucifer took Lilith from him.

The condescending attitude remains, but instead of just laughing her off, I think he unloads all of those millenia of anger onto Charlie.

He waited until that moment to announce moving the exterminations up purely out of spite.

Trying to hurt Lucifer indirectly by hurting Charlie.

The confrontation with Emily still happens, and I'd imagine it's relatively the same. But it's only after Charlie argues with him that he goes on a tangent on how useless hellborns and sinners are, ending with him declaring that he can't wait to come down again and exterminate them.

And everything after that's still the same.

He failed to complete the extermination, and thus, instead of being reincarnated, he was damned to hell. Which comes as a nasty shock.

He'd spent his entire existence devoted to heaven. He'd done all they asked.

And yet here he is.

It's a harsh reality.

He struggles to acclimate to Hell. But he does end up at the hotel where he'll have to face Lucifer head on in the hopes of working his way up to redemption. (That will be fun to explore later)

SO YEAH

Sorry for the rambling, that went into quite a bit more than his personality, but I hope that explains it well?

Idk, ig I just thought a more nuanced approach to Adam as a character would be interesting. Like he's got every right to be angry at Lucifer, but I want to go the "hurt people hurt people" route. He thinks he's justified in his path to vengeance because these are "bad people" (some absolutely are AJDJSJDJS) anyway. And Heaven does everything it can to reinforce that notion, using him until he becomes a liability with his inability to control his own anger.

[slabmaxxing]

i wonder if wemmbu having his armor durability and potion duration mod installed can be interpreted as him being more combat ready than the other unstablers. hes used to combat he knows war and violence better than he does peace. always aware of the state of his armor and the time left on his potion effects so that he can repair or restock at a moments notice. idk

[companion-showdown]

Who had the worst time aboard the TARDIS?

TOURNAMENT MASTERPOST

[doctor-hopper]

I'm really tempted to comb through his lines about luck and write meta on it, because even off the top of my head, looking only at DR2/Dangan Island content, it's like

His FTEs frame bad luck as being part of good luck: bad thing leads into something good enough to compensate

But he has at least one Dangan Island line where he anticipates something bad after experiencing something good

And interestingly considers nothing much happening to him to be bad luck in Dangan Island's ending, even though he had a good time, which warrants some unpacking (my current hypothesis is it's because his impending death is making him desperate to make his life meaningful, not 'waste' his remaining time)

Not all of his examples fall neatly into his luck cycle model, especially not the FTE version where the events are connected. The diagnosis and HPA admission were separate-ass events, in DI's ending he expected his convo with Hinata to go well because of the aforementioned general '''bad''' luck too, the events of chapter 5 are hard to sort into the model, some DI interactions make it sound like he just has extreme outcomes sometimes (eg. he'd win capture the flag first try every single time), etc etc.

I have a feeling at least some of the way he talks about his luck is copium, especially in his FTEs since he really had to focus on the idea of bad -> good in the killing game. But as you say, he could have been intentionally oversimplifying... and if he actually thought the cycle worked both ways, saying he lives in fear of bad things every time something good randomly happens might've veered too close to genuine vulnerability. Which he avoided (by his standards anyway- I think he lacked awareness of how bad the kidnapping + plane stories were) until the final FTE.

Either way, I definitely need to scrutinise his lines more :'D

A ton of good points! Komaeda’s luck is fascinating and nowhere near as clear-cut as he originally makes it sound. Fics where he tries to “game the system” and finally gain some sort of control over his luck are interesting—but honestly, I feel like he’s already been trying to do that for as long as he’s lived. And he exercises an impressive amount of power under those restraints! But…also.

As for anticipating something bad after experiencing something good, I do think the way Komaeda portrays the order of events is just what he tells himself and/or Hinata. In reality, good and bad luck are two sides of the same coin to him—the real important part isn’t the order, it’s that nothing good can happen without something bad happening too. Everything has a price. Luck is a zero-sum game.

(He touches on this again in 2.5 when he says there’s “a fixed amount of luck in the world” and so he’s content to suffer the bad luck for everyone else’s benefit. In the dream-world sim, the luck he experiences is apparently “ideal”, but it still has to exist. There still has to be an Omelas child of sorts. Komaeda would just rather it be himself.)

As for good being caused by bad vs. just following it, it definitely happens both ways and he’s definitely contradicted himself. Beyond that, even, there are cases in the game where it’s not totally clear what sort of cycle is involved in the luck he experiences. In 2-1, he draws the short straw simply because he wanted to. Was the bad…offscreen? Was it the killing game itself? Would “being forced to clean” actually count as bad luck even if he wanted it? Was it then followed by the good luck of finding the secret passage? People hypothesize that his luck works differently in the simulation according to his own belief, which would complicate things even more, but I’m sort of back-and-forth on that theory. There are arguably examples of luck working the way Komaeda claims it does in DR2, also—such as getting the Despair Disease the worst out of anyone thanks to his compromised immune system, but being able to discover in the hospital that Tsumiki was the culprit. ending up in the hospital but meeting a lovey-dovey nurse GONE WRONG

I’ve always read the Island Mode ending as copium myself. I do definitely think he was hoping for a chance to die meaningfully on the island, and I guess in his mind that could be bad luck, but it doesn’t really fit his model. The way he tries to nudge Hinata into agreeing it’s bad luck, the scene reads to me like he just needs to believe it’s bad luck so he can solemnly ask Hinata to be his friend. (And I think it’s notable that in the word he uses for friend here is 友達 tomodachi, which in this context could be understood as more of a personal friend—everywhere else, he’s used the word 仲間 nakama, comrades, to refer to the whole class as a unit.) And remember, being loved by someone is another way that Komaeda’s death could have meaning—so even if he didn’t end up in the climactic situation he was expecting, perhaps he’s realized there’s another way to get what he wants. :’)

But, yeah, what decides if something is good or bad luck for Komaeda though? I think even that’s not always clear to him.

I’ve heard the view that it “gives him what he immediately wants while taking away what is subconsciously valuable to him” (from TheAmityElf, I think) which is interesting, especially to play with as a writing tool, but not ultimately convincing. Some events could be loosely mapped to that pattern, but others contradict it a bit—you can’t tell me he just wanted money, and he did actively try to turn down his invitation to Hope’s Peak.

Which is now also making me think: Since the diagnoses and the invitation weren’t directly related, do you think he even connected them in his mind at first? What if he didn’t, and so he was afraid that by going to Hope’s Peak he would be invoking even more bad luck yet to come?

One more interesting dimension of his luck to think about is whether it hurts others vs. himself. In 2.5 it only hurts Komaeda, but that’s not quite the direct opposite of his real luck, because his real luck gave him cancer and dementia! However, it also does seem to be proactive in protecting him from actual death in both 2.5 and the rest of canon.

I’ll conclude this reply with this…relevant blackout poetry (blackout infographic?) I made years ago and which you suddenly reminded me of, lmao.

Silly coda: This is why Komaeda’s favorite word is eucatastrophe.

(…How lucky, then, that people say “Komaeda, eucatastrophe!” to him all the time!)

[snobgoblin]

It's crazy how having a Mary Sue oc was viewed as such a terrible thing back in the day? Like most of them were done by little kids who wanted to have fun yet they got so much hate? Imo unless you are trying to make a well-written character, then yes them being a Mary Sue is bad. But if your making your oc just for fun then it doesn't really matter.

god yeah. i also think it's that a lot of them were little girls specifically and you know it's the worst crime in the world when a woman has an interest, let alone a child because as we know, women and children are not people /sarcasm. see, because the thing is if a man or boy makes a mary sue nobody gives a shit. that's from my experience anyway lol. like oh some boy in my art class made this edgy op demon oc. nobody cares! he's cool! oh but I make a girl who's literally the same she's the worst character ever and she's op and I should really rework her. almost like you hate seeing women in positions of power. ALSO taking into account the history of the term Mary Sue... like it's always been targeted at female fans. female characters. those are the only ones who ever seem to come under fire for this near-religious "standards for a good character" shit. but I'm glad it's mostly over now. that or I've just been ignoring it for years. LMAO

and its also like okay what if the character is bad. what then. is it any of your business? no. so shut up. people need to learn that their input is not always wanted or needed, that kind of attitude of "i need to bully- i mean critique everyone when they don't ask and they should be thanking me because I helped them improve" pisses me off especially because it's never constructive it's just telling people they did bad

[things-falling-apart]

sighhhh how does tumblr work . don't know but here's one of my warriors ocs! archstripe! whose story i'm still developing ..

[completeoveranalysis]

[6]

I turned the page thinking there was one more to go, but it looks like this is actually split across a double page spread. But since I've seen it let's talk about it anyway!

It's all the worlds we've seen! And in the most CLAMP way possible we see them overflowing and overlapping but THROUGH the frame that Sakura's Wings makes of them. They HAVE the memories of these worlds inside them, and here they visually show us the mess of them all colliding and ripping apart.

And it's gorgeous! Is this all of them? Let's see, if we start in the top left and go counter clockwise we see Acid Tokyo (1), with I think Koryo beneath it (2), and what I am going to assume is the library from Recourt (3). We have a clear Piffle (4), followed by the Land of Fog (5) (justice for the mini-arcs!), and then Infinity (6) which is hilariously just a picture of Eagle Vision since we didn't see much of the world itself outside of his illegal fighting ring. Next is Nihon I think (7), followed by Hanshin (8), and the flower fun district in Shara (9). Above that is Yukito and Toya in Clow (10), going sideways is The Country Which Had Tornado-chan in it (11), and crossing behind both of those is the ferris wheel I think has to be Edonis/Outo (12), above that is Jade (13), Yuuko's store (which I didn't count as a separate world but sure, 14), and Shura - which I technically count as the same as Shara, but sure, let's make that 15 visible worlds.

You could argue that Clow and Acid Tokyo are the same world, which would bring it down to 14, but you could also say that about Shara and Shura, which would do the same. If you did it for BOTH that would bring it down to 13, which means one is missing. Oh, Seresu? Does Seresu not count because it doesn't exist anymore?

Either way! The numbers are murky and the math doesn't really matter but I like that it's close enough and entertaining enough that I stared at a jpg for twenty minutes straight! So that's a win!

[dykedvonte]

An independent Courier would actually hate being in charge or enforcing standards in New Vegas. At least in my mind.

They made Vegas independent but I feel like that playthrough/style so clearly makes it apparent it isn't for them. They are making Vegas a place where people can live freely, like how House genuinely didn't care what people did but without the behind-the-scenes Big Brother surveillance he did. Having every family, faction, and other influence group or person comes to them about alliances or rules would be draining, and boring, one note.

In an independent Vegas, The Courier is also Independent. They like getting rid of lines and borders that impede freedom, they like to help give people the tool but I don't believe they want to be the one to shape it.

[animentality]

Which companions to romance as a Durge?? Used to be on team Astarion but now I just feel like he is too stupid(canon smooth brain, he is lovely tho) for my durge who was/is in into Gortash.. :(

GALE. THE ANSWER IS GALE.