#kind of necessary ramble

[styxfoxx]

The euphoria from finally finding a label is amazing.

Like yeah, I've kind of always known I was a fox. There were signs. Last year I called myself otherkin. Fox kin. I thought I wasn't a therian, my identity didn't go that deep.

Now I understand that while I am many things like characters and generally creatures, the animal in me will always have the first place.

I am Vance Hopper. I am Blazion. I am Trent Cooper. I am a dog. I am the Shadow™. I am a crow.

But I will always stay true to the first identity I found on a June afternoon on the bus while going home.

A fox.

[flame-shadow]

hey did you know??? that if you stop stretching and maintaining mobility in your body then it goes away?? things get tight and you can't move the way that you used to??? and when you decide to try getting a stretch routine going that the first week fucking sucks because you keep going 'damn i used to be able to do this no problem' and then you have to switch gears and be kind to yourself and just focus on getting better from here instead of berating yourself for dropping the good habits in the first place??? and your body never stops aging so you gotta keep taking care of it and sometimes you gotta take care of it extra in certain areas because of things that happened when you were younger and it's boring and sometimes hurts but it's so necessary???

i am yelling this at myself right now i am going through An Experience (trying to get into a routine of body maintenance again for my physical and mental health)

[ocean-returns]

You couldn't do a straightforward Human Nature plot set in the 12th Doctor era bc if 12 got fobwatched Clara would immediately steal his identity. Missy would also steal his identity. Absolutely insane Doctorfication possibilities.

Also, 12's forgotten memories canonically manifest as songs AND he's faceblind, so he wouldn't even have a dramatic dream journal full of half-remembered portraits, he'd just be hanging out in his university office shredding guitar solos while Bill (who he just met) is like "Wow, sick riff Professor Smith!" and he's like "Thanks, it's called I Dreamt I Rode a Dinosaur."

[azems-familiar]

you know what? like, no, actually, i don't want to see endless reblogs of gifs of people punching nazis with trite comments underneath like "likes charge reblogs cast" or "here's some positive cleansing energy for your blog". actually i want to know what concrete steps you're going to take to support the vulnerable people in your life, because personally, just a hot take here, but i actually believe that it's more important to care for people and act out of love and compassion than it is to act out of hatred and idolize violence. not that anyone would care about this. i swear it's all just some fantasy where people are so excited they finally get to be violent because they actually only care about getting to be the oppressors and have their turn as the boot on someone's neck.

they've been doing this to jews for over a year now, after all.

[the-meme-monarch]

do you think Teagan had the tea in her immediately during creation or did it have to be poured into her?

yeah it was already there upon creation i would think. toons are ‘born’ with clothes on they can have Beverage out the gate also

[infamous-if]

me: what if i add this whole other part that adds 20k words to this chapter

me, whispering to myself as i make a new document: i am not bound by the rules of reasonable word counts.

[l0ganberry]

Original:

[iambecomeahamburger]

Um, so, about Lucy Barker

*rant incoming*

you know that fandom phenomenon where female characters will literally get hated on for being interesting (free my girls they did all that but your honour i do not care). lucy barker did NOTHING. NOTHING to deserve the hellish events that unfolded in her life, and she still gets hate. i have many thoughts about this, many of which i cannot properly articulate.

im gonna be so honest, pre-ruthie ann miles, the sweeney fandom was not so kind to my girl as they are now (2023 toddhead nation you are everything to me) and this i think was mainly the burton film enjoyers who hardcore shipped sweenett in the most uninteresting way possible.

REAL sweeney/sweenett enjoyers know that lucy is a pivotal and interesting character who took nothing but ls from life, and that sweenett only works as a ship if what you love about it is how deeply problematic and messy it is. I rest my case.

[celestialecho]

On homesickness, to a home that never was.

via ryebreadgf // the smiths, back to the old house // via wikipedia // adrianne lenker, half return // via edwardsaidpdf // sophie may, somewhere far // radiohead, (nice dream)

[physalian]

There is an extreme divide between “toxic positivity” and “aggressive kindness” like one minimizes your pain and shames you for feeling it and the other sees your pain and punches it in the face for you.

The difference between “It all works out in the end just be happy and look on the bright side.”

And

“Yeah you can be sad like you can absolutely do that but how about we use this sadness constructively to get you out of this hole? Your sadness don’t control you, babe, I believe in you.”

[wndaswife]

ex-best friend who is a misogynistic lesbophobic gay man is following chappell roan my left eye is twitching

[a-sketchy]

if the events of persona 4 didn’t happen, if you gave him ten years i think yosuke could’ve become the kind of guy to do fight club. yu is literally his tyler. the degree to which it maps is insane.

[hidey-writes]

wip wednesday

In the drifting silence of his empty apartment, Shen Wei presses the door shut, turns the lock. And then, like his body was waiting until he was alone, his legs give out. Shen Wei tips/topples against/into the wall, sinks down to sitting on the front mat/in the entryway. He sits there for a long time, curled into himself with his arms around his knees. The whole time, his body braced for the sound of Zhao Yunlan’s door opening, the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. Waiting, again, for Kunlun to return to him.  But no sound comes from outside his door. At last, Shen Wei tips his head back against the wall, lets out a soft, streaming sigh. The sound trembles in the still air. It’s the closest he’s come to crying in years, that he can remember.

from the up draft of the answer fic. im cutting it veryyyyyy close to the deadline this time ahahaha (nervous!) but the writing is going relatively smoothly (knocks on wood) and i think it'll turn out pretty delicious!!

[viridiave]

Spoiler-heavy thoughts about Crick and how the Game Mechanics treat Temenos’s story

So. yeah if you press ‘Keep Reading’ I should probably let you guys know that these thoughts are just a tiny bit unhinged. And again - spoiler alert! You’ve been warned!!

GAME MECHANICS AND UI

- Gonna preface THIS section by asserting that yes, not EVERY mechanic needs to be taken apart under a microscope and re-contextualized into the greater lore of the game. Not EVERYTHING has to mean something to everybody. Some of my classes in game design disagree though and honestly for the genre that Octopath Traveler is, that being a story-heavy role-playing game where the narrative is half the game, I'd say that integrating lore into the mechanics and vice-versa wouldn't hurt - in fact it ENHANCES the experience. The second game does this pretty handily through the EX Skills (the first of the skills being Divine Blessings, and the second being earned at the end of the story.) and the Latent Powers.

Okay the Latent Powers? Honestly that part's mostly for Hikari. Shadow's Hold/Light's Radiance is STILL one of the best examples of Gameplay and Story Integration that this game has

No I swear I don't have a bias for 'other selves'/'deep parts of yourself made manifest' what are you talking about -

I swear I can write an entire separate post JUST about the EX Skills. Mostly for Osvald, Castti, and mOTHERFUCKING TEMENOS AGAIN

aND THIS IS WHY I GO FUCKING BONKERS WHEN I THINK ABOUT THE DEMO VERSION OF THE GAME LIKE WHAT THE FU-

- Literally the fucking emblem for Temenos's story is a staff and a sword over the Sacred Flame like - they REALLY want you to know how important Crick is to this tale

- tHE FACT THAT CRICK IS THE ONE WHO HAS COVER. NOT EVEN HIKARI OR THE WARRIOR CLASS. IT'S CRICK - DOES THIS COUNT AS FORESHADOWING???

I'll like - write here what I should have written in the bath - and that's me being like 'oh it's because he's recklessly protective. OH SHIT IT'S BECAUSE HE'S RECKLESSLY PROTECTIVE'

I fully acknowledge that it doesn't have to be that deep. MAYBE I'm pulling stuff out of my ass. But allow me to go bonkers over Crick and his for-some-reason-worryingly-appropriate moveset

Man I wonder how bonkers I'd go over Malaya if she was allowed to throw hands. I want her to complement Castti's moveset so bad

- Also the fact that both of their kits complement each other. Crick's bulkier build was made specifically with supporting Temenos in mind.

My guy's Sacred Sword reduces the enemy's elemental defense. Wonder if that implies that the Sanctum Knights normally work with magic and/or magicians

aGAIN HE HAS FUCKING COVER which is PERFECT because early-game Temenos can and will faint if a monster blinks at him too hard

Then there's his OTHER skill Godsblade's Shield which RAISES his physical defense to SO HE CAN COVER FOR TEMENOS BETTER LIKE. AT SOME POINT I SHOULD JUST ASK WHY THEY TRIED SO HARD FOR HIM SPECIFICALLY

And I mean. It makes SENSE but I don't think any of the other helper characters really had this level of chemistry in their mechanics as these two do

Emerald and Gus both have healing moves for better survivability considering how squishy Osvald and Agnea are

And it makes sense, Temenos already has access to a healing move because he's a cleric

The thing that separates Crick from them is that neither Emerald nor Gus really have moves to further support their leads on the level that Crick does. Emerald is fast and he breaks well and Gus is clearly meant to be the DPS of Agnea's Chapter 1, but again - Crick has moves tailor-made for Temenos to go off and do his thing

You lose Pirro and Scaracci/ Rai Mei and Ritsu after the intro and none of them really complement the Throné and Hikari and vice versa as much as Crick and Temenos do with each other

The difference with them too is that they have established relationships with their lead characters prior to the story, sometimes even encountered as antagonistic forces

Pirro, Rai Mei, and Ritsu are all bosses that were once considered close comrades of Throné and Hikari

Scaracci displays mutinous traits throughout Throne's Chapter 1

Emerald subverts this by acting mutinous - which, his conflict with Osvald amounted more to a sacrifice of goodwill

He knows Osvald and how he acts even prior to the beginning of Chapter 1, so he's in this category of having an established relationship

Gus averts this completely by just being a genuinely supportive part of Agnea's life

Mechanically, you never have anything to do with these characters again past Chapter 1 - save for Rai Mei and Ritsu being bosses. Hikari's companions also play an integral narrative role in his final chapter, with Ritsu being encountered as a boss again for the final time

Crick is a subversion of all of them in that he doesn't have any direct relationship with Temenos prior to Chapter 1, and though we never use him as a helper character ever again he consistently shows up as an integral part of Temenos's story up until his death in Chapter 3: Stormhail

Weirdly Crick is also the only one out of all of them where the use of Path Actions is required more than once - Osvald has to Scrutinize Emerald at one point

AND GODDAMNIT OF COURSE THE FIRST AND LAST TANGIBLE INTERACTION WE HAVE WITH CRICK IS TO FUCKING GUIDE HIM I'M SO MAD ABOUT THIS BOOKEND IT'S SO MEAN AKSJKAS

And this in itself makes complete sense given that he has larger roles to play outside of Chapter 1 - just not in the same vein as Ritsu or Rai Mei, but the fact is that Temenos's story is VERY good at establishing and building up chemistry between its characters

bUT FOR MECHANICS WE NEVER HAVE TO USE AGAIN AFTER CHAPTER 1?? THEY WENT SO HARD AND I WANT TO KNOW WHY

- It's not as big of a deal as it looks but I also find it funny just how much fun the devs seemed to have with Crick's introduction and entry into the party - using the Path Action to fucking TROLL with him.

- ON THAT NOTE, LET ME FREAK OUT OVER GUIDE AS A PATH ACTION A LITTLE MORE

I saw a post on Reddit earlier about the 'summoning townspeople' Path Actions and it kind of shook my world a little, so I'll just put my response to it here

For a guy who makes it a point to tell people not to follow anything blindly it's INCREDIBLY hilarious to me that Temenos's Path Action is getting people to follow him blindly.

MECHANICALLY, it's because he's the designated cleric. Temenos has Guide, because Ophilia has Guide. But thematically it's interesting to think about just how antithetical it is to his central creed of doubting, and how this specifically applies to Crick.

I did go back and check and yeah - Crick's one of three individual people I was able to find over the course of the stories that has a required Path Action used on them more than once.

Malaya is one other example with Inquire, and she even one-ups him with one use of Soothe. And I'll get to HER when I get to Castti's essay - I mean infodump - because it's like. Somehow even MORE heartbreaking than this instance of Guide

While I'm here I'll also mention Roque, who also has two instances of a Path Action used on him, namely Purchase and Hire in Partitio's Chapter 5

But back to the dramatic aspect of it it's like. I really want to shake the devs because it's so mean of them to have Temenos's relationship with him begin by guiding him towards not only the cathedral but to a healthier way of thinking, and to end with Crick's fucking GHOST leading Temenos to the crucial truth that he's lost so many people to find, including Crick himself

- I won't scrutinize everything about the cleric class itself but I WILL talk about the EX Skills, because to me it's ironic just how mean they are. I'm glad that the irony isn't lost on the fanfic writers like I see you guys use these as fanfic titles - bless you all

First - Prayer for Plenty, the sequel's answer to how absolutely fucking broken Saving Grace was as a passive in the first game. Limiting it to JUST Temenos's natural moveset feels like it should be sending a message honestly - it's a way to prolong the lives of his comrades and he couldn't do that for the ones he held dear in his own story. Can't help but feel like the fact that this is the one he gets from AELFRIC'S SHRINE rubs salt in the wound - no pun intended -

Secondly is Heavenly Shine and it's like. It's a holy nuke filled with divine power that drains Temenos's magic reserves completely. He invokes Aelfric's name when he uses it to and to this day I think the reason it feels cathartic to use is because it feels like a manifestation of Temenos's wrath

Unlike Osvald's own magic kamehamehadouken nuke where he learned it out of a need to protect Elena, Temenos learns this AFTER his story - and maybe it's just my concern speaking but man I really want this to represent his sheer need to go absolutely fucking apeshit like my man is NOT in a good place after his story is done

- This is the part where I go into the tinier, 'definitely stretching this past the realm of MATTERING' details that actually have something to do with the game mechanics

Some of Temenos's class lines are reminiscent of Crick's own. We've drawn the comparison with Temenos's Sweeping Cleave line already and it's adorable

Temenos Sweeping Cleave [insert handshake emoji] Crick Sacred Slash: I'll cleave you in twain!

Reaching even further here. His lines for Lux Congerere and Sacred Effulgence also somewhat invoke Crick's declaration of 'cleaving the shadows from this world', but it's not exact and I'm just indulging

Lux Congerere: Banish the shadows from this world!

Sacred Effulgence: Aelfric, banish the shadows from this world!

I'd also be extremely remiss to NOT mention the recruitment of Ort in postgame and it physically hurts me to summon him because of the way he says 'I will avenge you, Crick!' like DUDE. Oh well at least he's grieving healthily

Sacred Slash brothers let's gooo

There's like. No way that I'll be able to fit all of this in my other thoughts about Crick that are dedicated mostly to his and Temenos's arcs so. It's like not even in a ship sense anymore even if I do think they're fruity as hell

Honestly I'm just glad to get this all out of my system EXCEPT THERE'S MORE, because Temenos's story loves to torture my brain and its themes resonate with me a bit TOO much

[incesthemes]

One thing I find interesting is that Sam and Dean who are as we all know very open about their sex lives with each other…with one exception. (I’m only talking kripke era) Ruby. When Sam is telling Dean about him and Ruby getting together it is the only time in five seasons where Dean cuts Sam off not wanting to hear more. Ruby who is the only other character to call Sam “Sammy” and not be told “only he (Dean) can cal me that.”

Ruby is the biggest relationship other than John to impact the boys. She is the wedge, the only person to be jealous of. Sam can hookup with girls on hunts but only the once. This is more. And she knows all about how dangerous their lives are more so then they do at the time. Creating jealousy and suspicion. She takes care of Sam and that’s Deans job. She never hated his freak qualities encouraged them when Dean shamed them (out of fear).

She nurtures Sams most hated aspects of himself. But also when he feels the strongest. When he can use this curse to help people. If he helps enough people will it scrub his blood clean?

so okay i'm working on 7-month old memory with ruby because i'm still only on season 2 in my re-rewatch but let's compare ruby and meg (i feel inadequate because i have such extensive notes about meg now but nothing about ruby lol).

they both occupy the same narrative role: to influence sam down the path of his destiny. they flirt with him, get close to him, say what he wants to hear, all to bring sam closer to his fate. they do this through manipulation so that sam will embrace his path and stop running for it.

dean is the diametric opposition to sam's fate, (narratively) the only person in the world who can stop him. this goes the opposite way as well: their choices in the story are between their fate and their brother, and it's only by choosing their brother that they ever manage to avoid their destinies.

so what both meg and ruby do is pull sam away from dean. this is subtle, and they go about it in different ways. meg is aggressive and encourages sam to hate dean, turn away from him. this is an appropriate tactic given the context in which she meets sam, because he and dean are fighting and separated and she's trying to embolden sam to strike out on his own and leave dean behind.

ruby on the other hand can't use that same strategy. they've already entered into a codependent relationship when she shows up, and if the choice is between literally anything else and his brother, sam is going to choose his brother. so ruby uses that against him and becomes dean: and not just dean, but an idealized version of him. the problem, of course, is that this idealized version of dean is the version of dean which is enabling sam to pursue his fate. sam wants dean to accept him and love him warts and all, so ruby does that in dean's place—and that's the danger of it all. she makes his fate out to be desirable and alluring, using dean's voice all the while to seduce him. ruby is not dean: she's just using his likeness to blind sam and manipulate him into fulfilling his destiny. choosing ruby isn't the same as choosing dean, and therefore in choosing ruby sam is unable to avoid destiny.

by all accounts it makes sense for dean to hate her: he not only has legitimate reasons not to trust her, but she's also manipulating sam by impersonating him. she's trying to take his place, and obviously that is going to make his fear of abandonment flare up.

but on the other hand, dean reacts completely differently with meg, even though she too embodies dean's fear of abandonment and represents sam leaving him. instead of being repulsed by her, dean pressures sam to fuck her and even after they figure out she's bad news, dean continues to tease him about this fabricated love affair they had going on. dean's reaction here is understandable too—he's displacing his fear and sense of inadequacy via sexual commentary because he believes sam is going to leave him for a girl.

both reactions are understandable given dean's psyche, but what makes them different? my current assumption is that dean simply learned from meg's example. she was obviously deeply traumatizing to both sam and dean in different ways, and meg is also the origin of dean's firmly held belief that demons are liars. so he's not quick to trust ruby, and she doesn't give him many reasons to trust her, at least when put against her red flags. monsters (especially demons) are also generally repulsive to dean, exacerbated over the years of battling against their respective fates. dean is disgusted by ruby, so he wouldn't want to know what she and sam are up to in bed.

on the other hand, ruby comes to embody just how thin the tightrope sam's walking actually is. sam shouldn't trust her, and he doesn't at first, but this is his fate we're talking about here. she worms her way under his skin and convinces him it's all okay. dean is probably not so blindsided by her because this isn't his fate—he's not faced with the allure of this path the way sam is. his direction is different, and he's blinded in different ways that sam can see straight through just as well.

it's kind of like how dean is exempted from the revenge arc in season 1: he stands on the outside of the conflict because he is in fact its opposing force. where sam is blinded by his fate, dean can see things for what they are and (try to) guide him back to the family. sam does the same thing for dean too because as i said, choosing the brother over everything else is the only way for them to avoid their destinies.

so way too long story short i think that's probably why ruby disgusts dean so much: she disgusts him, and he can see past her facade because he's not drawn in by fate the way sam is. he has no reason to trust a demon and no extenuating circumstances that would sway him to consider it, either. ironically, this just fuels the conflict and drives the wedge between sam and dean deeper because ruby's manipulation is just so complete and so perfect. there was no correct choice: sam was doomed from the start and there was nothing dean could do to stop it.

[mokagachas]

As someone who knows nothing about Oberon but loves your art: where do I start if I want to understand your love for the man?

oh man. oh jeez ( wheezing ) haha okay. uhm. erhm. i didnt expect to get this far uhm ( shaking )

so here's the problem: oberon is from lostbelt 6, a chapter in hit gacha game fate/grand order. you can play f/go if you want and chug along to lb6 - which is unfortunately a chapter 6~ years into the game's main story. but i cannot with any sort of conscious recommend a gacha game to people.

so playing the game is one option. option two is checking out atlas academy database, a website that has all of fgo's stories and such conveniently catalogued! click 'main story' on the top of the page and it'll give you just, well, the main story.

if you want to watch the stories themselves - which at least for lostbelt 6 i highly recommend because the OST is amazing - there's also this commentary free LP on youtube that i've linked to people!

that being said that is still a lot of words to get to lostbelt 6, so- if you don't want to read everything pre-lostbelt 6, i recommend going to the typemoon wiki and reading the summary on each story pre lostbelt 6 ( so, up to lostbelt 5.5 ). just click on the link in each chart and you can find a detailed beat-by-beat summary of each chapter.

i've been told that, in all honesty, that lostbelt 6 is still enjoyable and easy to understand without full context for the outside story beats. it certainly reads like a fairly self-contained story outside a few things needed to understand why some characters are here in the first place, so i've been considering writing up a summary on just those key points / the premise to the lostbelts so that people can read that and then jump right into lostbelt 6 and love oberon...

hopefully this was helpful in any sense of the word heehe ... if you need clarification with anything feel free to send another ask !!!

lets all love oberon!!! lets all think about oberon!!!!!!