#jaded protagonist

[fictionalnormalcy]

The Boy with a Strange Name Ch. 37

Brother Inclusion

@jayalaw @drakaina-amore64 @phantomfana @roseraintears

Word Count: 119,831 Rating: Mature (Graphic Depictions of Violence) Fandoms: Fusion of the How to Train Your Dragon books and animated franchise Additional Tags: jaded protagonist, modern day AU, moving somewhere new, fitting in, making friends, additional DreamWorks characters, back to hometown Summary: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III has lived nearly seventeen years of life. In the span of those years, he’s moved twelve times. Five of those years his mother was alive. Then a tragic accident left Hiccup in the sole care of his father, Stoick Haddock. Berk was where he had been born. That much he knew.  Over every, single, move his father put him through, it wasn’t until he reached sixteen years old that Berk was the city in which the father finally decided to plant roots. At least, that was what he claimed. After years of being victimized at each school he attended, Hiccup was determined to keep a low profile at Berk High. His past is intent on preying upon him, deciding that Berk was perfect place to come back into the light. However, like all good things that came to him, there was always something to drag him back down into the pit of despair. A dormant secret, tied into his family history, was ultimately brought into the light when Hiccup settles on Berk. A secret tied with guilt and tears, and it all goes downhill from there. He discovered what his father truly did those long stretch of years, and finds he has a gift that had been nonexistent for centuries.

[wraithdolll]

you should drawing turtle. please. or peril <3 the sillies

turt

[ninoxwof]

Tsunami the Seawing (Revisited)

Been over a year since I started this blog and there are some designs I want to freshen up a little bit so here's a bit of a new design for Tsunami!

[Image Description: A digital drawing depicting Tsunami from Wings of Fire. She is a blue slightly muscular seawing dragon with a light sky blue underbelly and a deep blue neck, nose bridge and forehead. She has swept back curled lighter blue webby fin that goes from her forehead to her tail, they resemble slightly like tidal waves. She has similar webby fins on her chest, a tail fin, and ears that are similar to fish fins. Her offwhite bioluminescent scales are shaped like wave markings and teardrops and they're notably on her shoulders knees tummy, tail and brow. She also has swirl bioluminescent markings on her fin like wings to signify she is of seawing royalty. On her chin, she has two long barbels similar to her father's and then two more barbels that are similar to a shark's pectoral fin. She also have shark like fins on her elbows and on the bottom part of her tail. She has a little bit of yellow on the side of her belly, on her upper eyelids and on her esca. Her horns are a deep dark blue that resemble the tip of a conch shell. Her left eyebrow has a scar that runs vertically through it and her eyes are green. She is standing giving a toothy smile. In the second image she's shown to be wearing a purple pearl necklace, and two fin rings on her tail fin. /.End ID]

[cursezoroark]

I remember people kind of. Complaining. About Melia’s position in Rejuvenation’s plot of how she’s more of the MC than Protag and how everything seems to curate to her. And. Well.

It does do that. But not in the fashion of raising her up. She’s basically the Narrative’s Victim. She kind of gets ripped out of her seemingly normal life and gets isolated from anyone familiar to her for 3 years. Proceeds to reunite with her newfound strength back to the original timeline. And then immediately faces the burden of fulfilling Nancy’s request. Terajuma happens, Team Xen, her Dad Dies. Doomed Timeline. The truth about her family. Genesis Syndrome (I forgot the Name). and then Zeight happens and at that point she’s been brought up only to be beaten down by the events again and again that her optimism and whimsy at the beginning was a Huge echo of the present. If you go through Renegade, you find that the betrayal absolutely shatters her tether onto the story, and her efforts of rising up to the challenge with hope have been completely disregarded. Like they didn’t really matter, because she wasn’t the one with the power to make it matter. M2 is a desperate sort of attempt to achieve something out of the experience, although its persecution rather than resilience. An attempt at justice.

I do think the protag stands as the Protagonist of the narrative, but as it’s Witness, jury to Judge sort of deal. Regardless of what path you decide to take, some events are rather concrete and Don’t change. There are things you can only observe and not Interfere with. As the interceptor, they don’t have quite all the pieces to completely change events, whether intentional or not. But they have the critical pieces. They simple have interferences in moments that seemingly Matter to the narrative. And really, any sort of control of the narrative is what gives them Power. Especially in a world that’s seemingly Programmed from inside out. They listen to the world, and react to it, judge it, and sentence it. There’s always going to be opposing forces no matter the path they choose, but their position is what puts them above the rest.

[silverskye13]

My brother in law let me borrow Sonic Frontiers [also read: asked me if I had access to a PS5 and when I said yes, handed it to me and said "play this"] and now my two biggest gaming nightmares are merged into one! [Fast paced gaming mechanics and open world map structures]

Anyway, I've been playing for 8 hours.

[characterswithcolorsnamesfight]

Prelim Poll 5

Propaganda here

[hornkerling]

As you wish, @jadesabre301

My fics for stray gods mostly come in sapphic, particularly Calliope/Persephone because they're so angry and messy and delightful and writing Calliope soothes my inner menace. The first I ever wrote was Kore Enterprises, filling in the missing scene of Persephone visiting Calliope's apartment.

I expore Calliope and Persephone first getting together in Firewater, which probably still has one of the better opening paragraphs I've managed recently.

Calliope is used to Persephone on the edges of things. A cautionary tale for late night drinks and the bluer days of late autumn, when the city parks are full of crows fighting over the night’s scraps amongst raw and jagged trees, their final leaves are just the shed skins of their livelier, younger selves. A fragile song through tiny bones.

I wrote You caught my voice and listened as a response to @kshaar's Earworm, which is such a good drabble istg. Everything they write is incredible, whether for stray gods or dragon age, you should read all of it. But Earworm was the one that had me seeing if I could remember enough Greek to mangle some Sappho. It's also, like most of my fics for these characters, full of extravagant eidolon lore.

I have one Calliope x Grace, Calliope x Persephone, eventual ot3 everyone lives AU called Sing all your questions to sleep, which was quite fun. Comes complete with a rant about The Symposium!

The two fics I'm probably the most proud of, however, are The seed that grows without the sun (complete) and Monsters of the old world (one chapter to go).

Monsters of the old world came about because Hephaestus's fate in the game haunts me. He is one of my favourite Greek gods, and because I'm me I was tangled up on the crip potential of it all, and also the idea of Medusa on a very particular rescue mission. I'm trying to close off the final chapter, but it keeps running away from me because I get caught up in the absolute mess that is Aphrodite's choices re: Venus. But it's nearly done!

Hephaestus is blowing glass the first time he hears about the snake-haired bitch in the compound. It is only training and muscle memory that stops him from swallowing and ruining this body’s throat, and frankly the body is built more for war machines drawn up in CAD than the construction of delicate, physical parts. But Hephaestus has always worked better with a prototype, and while you can take a smith, lock him in a server room with a wall of screens, and he’ll make do, he’s always preferred to bother his captors with these specific, ‘old fashioned’ demands. A workshop. Bronze and coal where they want radium. Glass blowing, when a single wrong move would fuck his lungs beyond repair. Even he’s got to live, and showing the bastards just how much their discards can do is some extra stolen joy. When Hephaestus has to pass on, the higher ups throw the infirmary at him. Why waste an able fighter on the crippled god? Hephaestus’s eidolon tends to lead to injury, and well—that path is a dark one. But he is sure the tales of Medusa’s arrival are something he’s dreamed up in a crucible, and it’s not till he’s in the compound’s refractory and a hooded, writhing figure is shoved into a chair opposite him that he believes it can be true. Medusa stares at him, eyes hectic and flaring in a single, surprised moment before she ducks her head, the snakes around her face extending flickering tongues into the air between them. Chains hold her arms at her sides, and a corporal slams a bowl down, glaring at Hephaestus as the known quantity. “You feed her,” he snaps. “Not like the snakes will get you.” For a moment, Hephaestus and Medusa, two who have not spoken in millennia and rarely even then, meet each other’s eyes in perfect accord, amazed that this child-human thinks snakes are the problem

Seed is...it's about Persephone meeting the woman she would become in the late 1940s. It's one of the most personal stories I have ever written, despite being in a time and place I have not lived.

If you read any of them, read this one.

“—I can help with that.” Chastity wipes sweat from her eyes and blinks at the woman leaning against her gate. She’s seen her around. Hard not to, when there’s only one good place for bread in the village—though if there’s any more rationing or prices go up again, she’ll have to start making that, too, and God only knows where she’ll find the flour.  But that’s future, and presently Chastity has a stocky, slouching stranger smiling at her, and she’s got a spade. And the spade's not covered in rust like the one Chastity found in Sal’s shed. Hers has an edge to it, and Chastity, a married woman for nearly a year and imagining it cutting through the dirt she’s barely managed to scatter, is pretty sure this is what lust feels like. Turns out, Sister Immaculata was wrong.

[rpgromanceplayinggirls]

Name: Jade Empire

Genre: Fantasy, Martial Arts, Action RPG

Platform: PC, Xbox, MacOS, iOS, Android

Release: 2005

Audience: Teen

Protagonist Type: Optional, Set

Romance type: Optional, BxG, GxG

Official Synopsis:

Step into the role of an aspiring martial-arts master and follow the path of the open palm or the closed fist. In this multi-award-winning action-RPG, your choices and actions will determine the fate of the entire Jade Empire. Will you prevent the destruction of this beautiful land, or will you crush it beneath your heel? Are you a warrior who uses his strength and fighting mastery to bring peace, or will you instead use your power to bring pain and ruin?

The choice is yours.

Content warnings: Violence

Notes:

There is no customization of the main character in the game, but the player may choose one of three unique female characters to play as. Each character starts with a different fighting style, but the player may equip other fighting styles freely as the game progresses while still maintaining their chosen appearance.

The female player character, known as the Spirit Monk, has two romance options available to her: The mysterious female masked assassin Silk Fox, and the male Sky, a charming rogue who mourns his dead wife and child.

The game favours the female love interests, and it is common to accidentally romance Silk Fox when attempting to romance Sky, as platonic-seeming dialogue with Silk Fox may be read as romantic by the game. Taking care not to be too friendly with Silk Fox is advised if the player wants to romance Sky.

There are multiple endings for the game, and the love interests will become good or evil depending on the path the player takes.

The game is set in a fantasy Asian culture that largely takes cues from ancient China, but also invents many details, and mashes aspects from elsewhere in Asia together in a way that may come across as insensitive to modern players. However, the game was an early landmark for Asian and LGBT representation in video games, and it was considered quite progressive for the time period.

[tangledinink]

this is really stupid but like.

... is there anyone else in this fandom whose twin has died? am i the only one?

[butchlesbiannero]

ff7 spoilersssss mmmwah

i’m reeling a bit having clouds (presumably) whole backstory now. still haven’t finished the game so there could be more to come and i may be missing stuff rn buttt. it’s interesting to me how in the end cloud isn’t a true clone of sephiroth (which i know clone is also a contentious translation choice but regardless) or anything huge or grand but a kid from a small town who was ostracized and tried to prove himself and failed. he isn’t the archetypal hero. he didn’t have any friends. he hugely resented and constantly fought his peers who ostracized him. he tried to run away and be a big, tough member of SOLDIER to prove himself but was too weak to cut it. i mean, to put it in a kind of reductive way, he was a loser. who then happened to get himself ensnared in human experimentation and have himself permanently tied to sephiroth and jenova by genetic alteration. the persona of cloud strife we know for the entire first half of the game is the ideal he was never capable of reaching and that his brain (and his wonderful new jenova cells exerting their influence) convinced him of to cope. and we as the player fell for this persona just as much as cloud himself did. after all why would we question who we are? we’re the hero of this story

[emile-hides]

More updated OC references while I have the bones to keep making them. This is Elliot and Zinnia; Two solo OCs who's stories I merged together a couple of years ago for no reason and are now forever intertwined.

Elliot's an OC version of a Canon X Canon AU RP I did with a friend I no longer talk to forever ago, and Zinnia is the only surviving character from my own Suikoden inspired RPG Maker game I attempted to create in Middle School.

[shenoego]

Hehehe Stalker sleeps upside down like a bat.

That's all.

[chaosallstar]

Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill

[callsign-relic]

Watched a video where someone played Splatoon 3 side order and bought side order yesterday and I can feel the Splatoon enjoyment seeping in

[justakidicarus]

I’m actually really tired of most AU’s in certain niche’s rn on Ao3

Just like, super tired of specifically the “Jaded Protagonist” trope.

You see it in every single Deku travels through time (or in every time travel AU period)

You see it a good deal of Varian in/during Season 2 AU’s

You see it in most Tommy SBI found family books.

The Jaded Protagonist has just gotten too edgy to me. When every time the character is just biting the heads off everyone else and striking out on their own despite everyone trying to understand and help them, who ch tends to be most of the drama and often leads to OP characters (Especially with Deku) its just not enjoyable to read for me. I understand that this might just not be for me and other people may enjoy these more serious characterisations but it just makes the book feel more bogged down and hard to get through, as the sheer amount of miscommunication these jaded characters bring is the main driver of conflict

I am especially talking about the countless Jaded Izuku fics.

Miscommunication in general has just become so overused and stale to me that it makes a boring plot. X character keeps saying ominous things like “You couldn’t change anything anyway even if you did know so I won’t tell you,” and then we find out that if the characters did know then they absolutely could have helped. It makes me mad at the characters for their decisions and a bit mad at the writer for choosing this of all things as their main plot drivers.

I want more X character time travels to the past but instead of being an edgelord they are a dork who keeps forgetting key details not for plot reasons but because they aren’t relevant in their time and it stresses everyone out.

For example:

Adult Izuku (ArsenAll) on the bus ride to the summer training camp with class 1-A just chilling and chatting happily with the Dekusquad about funny little anecdotes when he mentions Yuga doing an underground mission and suddenly startles so badly from his seat he nearly falls out but Uraraka catches him. The entire bus looks at him as he whirls around and starts profusely apologising to Yuga. No one can tell what exactly he’s apologising for but Yuga is getting steadily more pale.

“Yuga I am SO sorry I completely forgot about the whole- y’know THE THING I mean it really hasn’t come up or been relevant since like- first year but that’s really no excuse and you’ve probably been super stressed about it and I haven’t even mentioned it or thought about it and I can’t even really fix it rn cause it’s a pretty private matter and I don’t really want to share personal details with everyone but you kinda really need to know and argh I am Super Duper Sorry!”

Just like, funny stuff like that instead of angsty going of on his own and destroying every threat with zero help. Enough of the Jaded Protagonsit, bring some light into this dark and dreary atmosphere and environment. We should aim to make our readers laugh not groan in agony from our characters emo attitudes.

[asurrogateblog]

the tune from incarceration of a flower child is also in 4:50 AM (going fishing) from pros & cons which is leading me to theorize that the dream in that song is actually a continuation of the jasmine and jade fantasy and once you listen to it with that in your head it is. upsetting.