#look! even abiding to the rule of the characters ONLY being themselves from that game i can't get behind the idea that he's a tough hang

[rrosiepetals]

don't know if you do ask but got curious what some of your favorite things about Marlon and also maybe your favorite pics of him in game

AAAA love this ask, thank you so much anon!!! I love Marlon and I will take any opportunity there is to gush about him!

Marlon is devoted, he’s got a good heart and wears it right on his sleeve. Take one good look at him and you see someone who’s (trying) to keep it all together. He was genuinely so passionate when talking about how well fortified Ericson’s had become. It was endearing seeing how much he boasted to Clementine about running the place and how he and all the other kids had worked so hard over the years to protect the school. 

He is a tragic character, and although only appearing in one episode, you can sense there is more to him than meets the eye. He is someone who has been weighed down by responsibility and by the world he was forced to grow up in. These kids had been sheltered, most of their lives had been spent surviving at the school. The teachers and other staff they'd looked up to… the ones that were entrusted to take care of them had abandoned them, leaving them for dead. As a result, they had no adult figure to look up to and seek guidance from.

Who could they lean on now?

This is where Marlon comes in; I like how despite his feelings of sorrow and betrayal, he decided to step up and take action, even though he was just as scared and confused as the other kids. It highlights just how much he cares for his friends; he doesn’t want to see them suffer and live in fear. It's a scary world out there; practically anywhere they go, it could mean death. However, as determined as ever, Marlon strives to make the best of their situation, and they work together to make Ericson the home that they never truly had before the apocalypse. The fondness in Louis' voice when he talks about him is really heartwarming and goes to show how dedicated he was when playing into the leader role.

Marlon is a person who will do anything in his position to protect his friend's safety. As the self-proclaimed leader of the abandoned boarding school, he goes to great lengths to ensure that everyone is well fed and has a good night’s sleep. When he speaks with Clementine, you can see the desperation in his eyes; shouldering so much responsibility alone for so many years is hard. Despite his doubts that cloud him, he attempts to make it work with the limited resources they have.

The situation involving the twins is extremely heartbreaking from both perspectives. Some people paint Marlon as this “heartless villain” who will just willingly hand over his friends like it’s nothing. I want to pose some questions. Do you think he wanted to hand them over? Did you think he hasn’t gone days upon days without sleeping? Wrecked with the guilt of his decision? Spending hours trying to come up with some sort of rescue plan to get them back? It doesn’t erase the fact that he knew these kids… he grew up with them in this fucked up world. He’s literally still a kid himself! What was he to do in a situation where all he had was a gun practically pointed at him by adults who could easily overpower them? Perhaps he could’ve handed himself over, however what would happen then? They’d just come back anyways and take the rest of the kids without a second thought.

At the end of the day, he wanted to be a good leader and good friend to everyone at the school. He kept all his worries and stress to himself so that the spirits of the school weren't weighed down because of him. He was so insistent that everyone abided by the safe zone rule so much to avoid any conflicts that could disrupt the peace they made for themselves. Thus, these built up emotions/worries caused his eventual downfall and he died thinking that all his friends potentially hated him for what he did. Watching those hurt and dejected looks on their faces when being confronted.. especially the look of sadness from his best friend. It hurt more than anything. I love how they handled Marlon, even if I wished he and many others had more screen time to truly shine, the amount of impact they had is worth it. Also many love towards his va Ray Chase, he put in his all with that performance!!!! 👏

A bit of a side note as well: Marlon had broken his own rule regarding the safe zone as he managed to save Clementine and AJ outside the train station. Why was he out there in the first place? I believe that he was actually planning to scout the Delta from afar, finding any weak spots necessary before making a solid rescue plan to get Sophie and Minnie back. No one else was with Marlon at the time as far as we know, only him and Rosie when he refers to "when we found you." I could be wrong but that’s what I’d like to think.

As far as picture wise go I have a few of them! Mainly love the ones where he’s smiling!!!

[sam-glade]

Happy STS! Let's talk about secrets. Do your characters or world have them? Are they considered a good thing or bad? Who in your cast is most likely to spill one? ♥️

Oh, Tori, you've activated an info dump - thank you💜

Answering for Days of Dusk:

Does the world have secrets?

Let me start with introducing you to merchants of whispers.

They're information brokers who specialise in a particular area - be it a geographical area, like a city, a county, or a princedom, or a topic, e.g. current events and politics (the Shadow), precious artworks and antiques (the Fox), lower social classes (the Tawny Owl), or curses and forbidden arcane knowledge (the Newt). These are the most famous ones, operating a little bit like the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. If one gets 'dethroned', someone else (usually the one doing the dethroning) will assume their identity. There are of course some minor and law-abiding merchants of whispers, who'll find you information like 'who does a plot of land belong to' or 'which rival merchant is looking to diversify', but they don't make for a good story, so we'll leave them be.

The Shadow is the most famous of them all, with the most robust network. They're to the world of twilight what the Prince of Light is in the sunlit world. Not officially a ruler, but without a doubt the most powerful figure with vast resources to get their way.

The Shadow is also the one wearing the Cloak of Shadow - one of the legendary four cloaks, imbued with the Weaveress's power. It will hide them in plain sight, make them disappear in the blink of an eye, and on the off-chance you know where they are and look directly at them, you still won't be able to see/hear/smell/etc. any recognisable detail about them. So, of course, it's a target painted on their back and the aspirational goal of any ambitious merchant of whispers.

They trade in secrets, which the aristocracy and other influential figures would like to keep to themselves, so there's a bit of an arms race between the two groups. Obviously using private messengers instead of the postal system is a must, but on top of that there are various developments such as tamper-proof wax which will change colour if someone tried to deform it once it set. There are methods of encryption complicated enough that by the time it's broken, the information is no longer relevant.

The insidious part of the merchants' of whispers mode of operation is that they never steal - they'll break in, copy the information, and exit quietly, so quite often you won't even know that you've been compromised.

It's almost a game or a competition between the government and the criminal underworld, believed to be bound by rules of honour - and so it is. It's a precarious balance, but to an extent it prevents the princes from squabbling among themselves at the expense of their subjects.

However.

There are also secrets that have never been written anywhere - so the merchants of whispers can't discover them. These are known only to the people who remember the Sun King when he walked the Earth. That includes the princes. They're the only group who knows that beliefs tangibly shape reality, and yes, of course they use it to maintain power.

Military secrets

Many of my characters are part of the Intelligence and Internal Security Corps of the Army, so they also deal with a lot of classified information and need to keep their mouth shut. Erya is the Captain General of IntSec, Varré her second in command, Gullin and Catnip are both brigadiers - so that's the top 4 in the chain of command.

Catnip in particular is responsible for gathering information. Her powers allow her to control small animals, who spy for her, which makes her an invaluable asset. And while she is the gossip queen, she knows very well what she should and shouldn't talk about, being the oldest and most tenured officer in the entire corps.

The most guarded secret there is that the Army can stop ruptures from appearing completely. No more threat to the population. No more people eaten by the Dark Ones. Buuuut if they did it, the whole institution wouldn't have a reason to exist, so...🤐

(Fun fact: being the nerd that I am, I've figured out access controls to the military archives, based on Bell-La Padula Model, and somehow managed to make it relevant to the plot...)

Are secrets considered a good thing or bad?

Neither. They're more like tokens or commodities, which can be traded and exchanged.

Do my characters have secrets?

Every. Single. One.

The two with the most world-shattering secrets are probably Erya and Ianim.

Who in your cast is most likely to spill one?

Lissan. Everyone other than him is very well-trained and used to dealing with either state or military secrets. So of course he's the one to run head-first into them on regular basis😅

If you made it this far:

Books 2 and 3 of DoD (The Prince's Shadow, Prodigal Children), answer what happens when the Shadow and the Prince of Light fall for each other. What will they choose, having the balance of the entire realm at stake?

Days of Dusk taglist (please message me to +/-): @acertainmoshke @another-white-void @cee-grice @cljordan-imperium @elshells @poetinprose

[fullmoonfireball]

callout for nintendo: just bullied the hell out of Luigi in their “Good Hang or Tough Hang” Luigi’s Mansion 3 video for being scared of a hotel that’s full of ghosts that want to hurt him

[initiumseries]

Hey! I love your thoughts on bad tv and I’d love to hear a series wrap up on CAOS if you want to make a post about it. If not no worries and thanks for posting your thoughts on the show over the last year. Loved them and love your blog too!

Thank you!! Sure I can totally do a series wrap up, pretty much right now, in response to this ask. 

So, if I had to distill my issues with this series into a few bullet points it would be: 

-plot -world building/continuity -characters

Plot

CAOS struggles with plot, and I think the biggest reason why, is they just seemed to completely lose track of what the hell they were doing lol. Season 1, ends up being the tightest season because the plot was simple: Sabrina’s dark baptism and her leaving her mortal life behind to become one with witchkind. They beat us to death with the Satan stuff, and they cram as much corny imagery as possible in, even if it doesn’t really make sense. 

why are they having class in a hallway? Do witches not use technology? Why is that blackboard so small? Why isn’t this just a normal classroom setting?

Sabrina’s Season 1 character arc is also clear: she decides, fuck the rules, she’s going to straddle both worlds and everyone’s just gonna have to accept it. It’s not good, but it’s clear. S2, 3, 4 get completely lost in all this other weird stuff. Sabrina is actually not her father’s daughter, but Satan’s, and that plotline goes absolutely nowhere when Sabrina conveniently doubles herself (and experiences 0 consequences for it) and rules hell while also staying in Greendale as herself (seriously, it’s not like satan was dying or anything, he was perfectly fine. For what reason did Sabrina need to become Queen? There’s no answer or explanation for that, she just...did. Ok :/).  Father Blackwood goes apeshit and pulls a Jonestown, for no real reason, CAOS starts leaning heavily into this white feminism stuff (for godsake, the coven kills a DEMON, with the fucking pain of childbirth?! Are you SERIOUS??) Then, s3, it’s about losing their powers because Satan is childish and petty, and a new group of spellcasters are out to kill the witches, and Prudence and Ambrose hunting Blackwood. S4, the eldritch terrors, which honestly, make so little sense, I couldn’t even be bothered. Each season, CAOs falls deeper into the trap of trying to up the ante, make the danger BIGGER, WILDER, more insurmountable, while being completely unprepared to stay consistent with their characters/motivations and undercutting their own BIG ideas with stupid, nonsensical solutions (let me trap this all powerful eldritch terror by taking it to a party, proposing and luring it into a magicked dollhouse...wtf?). 

Worldbuilding/Continuity

What I hate most about these writers for Riverdale and CAOS is that they just don’t feel beholden to being consistent in their worldbuilding and continuity. I don’t find anything cool about kids living in houses with old tvs and rotary phones, but then having a cell phones or wearing modern clothes. Historical anachronisms like that should serve a purpose. 

It COULD be interesting if the conceit is that Zelda and Hilda are OLD, so they take comfort in old things like that, but then that should be specific to the Spellman house, and it should be weird. People should take note of it when they’re there, Sabrina should be conscious of it because she grew up in a time where TVs didn’t look like they were stuck in the 50s. But instead, it’s just...a stupid mess of aesthetic anachronisms for no reason other than they can do it and I just find that to be lazier than utilizing those details in an interesting way. 

In season 1, we get a relatively clear idea that the witches have a certain way of life, that bleeds into season 2. It’s still very sloppy; the anti-pope, using satan where we’d use “god”, introducing the feast and other dangerous parts of being a witch, and essentially just doing the opposite of christianity (except for the racism/sexism ofc. That would require too much thinking I guess). But by season 3, essentially the witches’ way of life have been completely turned upside down. And we never...unpack that. There’s no mourning for literal millennia of supposed tradition, there’s no real floundering or struggling. There are apparently no other adults AT ALL in this magical world outside of Blackwood, Zelda and Hilda, so there’s no real way to get a sense of the REALITY of losing their way of life for these witches, or this world. Is it even a world? Or just a handful of people? Lol. What it means to have to choose a new god to pray to, and is there an divisiveness over who? In Harry Potter, the kids’ parents are tangentially involved when they start pulling their kids out of Hogwarts. Do any of these kids’ parents pull them out of the school when they start praying to Lilith and then Hecate? Do any of the boys have issues with moving from a male god to a female one? Where did all these kids come from if they didn’t have parents and families? Is this witch world just...the school? Why? It would have been interesting watching the witches struggle and scramble to regain their powers while also being hunted by this new, threatening group whose magic seems to be much older, much darker. But instead, they just pivot, and have a fucking picnic before the full moon. 

There’s nothing interesting about characters just constantly pivoting around obstacles without having any real emotional reaction, any real struggles. Obstacles like losing their powers, should be an actual obstacle. They should struggle, there should be emotional weight, and consequences. Instead, Sabrina continues to break rules to suit her agenda, put her friends and family and risk and everyone just...rolls with it. No one is angry at Sabrina for the loss of their powers? Her choice to not become Queen of hell is why they lost their powers right? No one has feelings about that? Sabrina isn’t ostracized? We never see the way these choices, or the overarching plot obstacles impact the characters emotionally. Instead, they’re doing this stuff:

Which is completely ridiculous to me. It all just...HAPPENS. Which is this entire series. Stuff happens, and the characters just, do stuff in reaction to it. Harvey, Theo and Roz are ostensibly human, living human lives. They end up getting pulled into Sabrina’s world, and no one has any strong feelings about that? Harvey’s brother is killed, Roz is turned to stone and Theo talks to his dead great aunt and none of them are haunted by any of that? No? They just decide to create a faux scooby club to fight demons?  Ok. And that cheerleading things is over as quickly as we see it. Stuff like this is insanely frustrating to watch because it makes the show a nonsensical slog to sit through. There’s nothing interesting or engaging to latch onto because they just hammer through it all and make up stupid solutions to get themselves out of the impossible stakes they threw the characters in in the first place. They introduce ideas and discard them just as quickly. An ex:angels show up, start killing people, Sabrina channels satan and kills them, and then that’s the last of those guys. Metatron (jfc even the name is stupid) shows up and is killed just as quickly.  Why bother introducing them then? Why bother do any of the things you’re currently doing in this show if you have no intention of seeing it through? 

Characters 

No one on this show gels, at all.  I don’t believe Theo/Roz/Harvey/Sabrina have been friends for ages. I don’t believe Sabrina and Nick are “end game” (why the hell do we keep saying this riverdale? It’s stupid and senseless). I don’t believe any of these relationships at all. Part of this is because the cast have no chemistry with each other:

they do not look like a friend group or couples at all, these are a bunch of people paired together.

But also because they weren’t consistent at all. 

Father Blackwood went from a witch/warlock purist, to a raging sexist, to a cult leader who killed his followers, to a raging maniac bent on hitler-esque destruction in 4 seasons...for nothing. It served no purpose. He didn’t even DO anything. He was nice to the Eldritch Terrors, and became immortal...for nothing. He killed the coven, for nothing. He killed his wife in childbirth, for nothing. Zelda stole the baby, for nothing. None of that amounted to anything worth while in the entire series. So what was the point?  Zelda marrying Faustus also made no sense and only happened to show JUST how sexist he was! But why? WHY? We don’t receive explanations for character behaviour, and when we do, it still makes no sense. 

Sabrina breaks all these rules and experiences ZERO consequences. At all times, and it makes her a terrible main character. Everyone else abides by the rules but she doesn’t and doesn’t have to pay for that? Why? She straddles both worlds instead of committing to one, and that was the closest we got to seeing consequences for her. Everyone rushes in to help Sabrina break rules instead of holding her accountable for feeling above them. Sabrina creates 2 versions of herself, and they sloppily tie in that all the realms are converging in on each other because of what she did. Except she and Sabrina Morningstar had been hanging out...ostensibly for days/weeks/months (who knows? Not this show!) before we saw any potential issues, and then we end up finding out that this is about the next eldritch terror, not about Sabrina existing as a double in 1 universe. People get upset for a second and then move on to help her. So why have rules in this world at all if it means nothing to break them? 

Nick goes through literal hell, and immediately cheats on Sabrina because of how a man made of clay looked at her. That’s laughable to me. It makes no narrative sense. Their relationship doesn’t even make sense.

Roz and Harvey spend 90% of their time almost fucking. It’s bizarre. Their getting together was random and every single scene with them alone in it is like a precursor to fucking and I don’t get why. This show does not grasp how to build up relationships. Also do these kids not have parents? Theo and Harvey stay having constant sleepovers with their respective partners, in their parents’ houses? Really? At seventeen? Lol k. 

I feel like, if CAOS were better thought out, it could have actually been interesting. But it was just a smorgasbord of stuff happening, and characters doing stuff, and none of that following in any real narrative way. Storytelling has structure for a reason, and a show with a good story structure usually yields an enjoyable watching experience. CAOS is a pretty strong example of how throwing that out and relying so heavily on aesthetics and still taking the show so seriously it’s not even fun terrible, gets you nowhere. Ultimately I’m glad it’s over.

[ijustwant2write]

First and Last-Robb Stark x Reader

(GIF credit to @hvitstark)

Tags: @amirahiddleston @bloodorangemoonlight

Requested by anonymous: 'hi! first of all, your stories are amazing and i love them so so much! now, i hope im not bothering you, idk if you're still taking requests or not, but if you are can you pls write something where the reader is the youngest daughter of a powerful lord and he has come to winterfell to discuss marrying her to robb? this can either be pre-canon (so robert hasn't come north yet) or in some sort of au where nothing happens and all the starks are alive and well :) thank you so much!'

Characters: Robb Stark x Reader

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

(Y/L/N)=Your last name

Warnings: Mention of smut, self doubt, arranged marriage, fluff

(A/N: I MISS WRITING FOR GAME OF THRONES, MY BABIES)

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There was a buzz around Winterfell castle as the final touches to preparations were made. The (Y/L/N) family were as noble as the Starks, and as it was their first visit to Winterfell, there had to be a good lasting impression. Catelyn and Ned were overseeing the servant's, trusting that their children's nannies or advisors were making sure that they were ready for such guests, they were not to make a fool of the family.

"I've heard that the women are all trained to be warriors since birth." Theon told Robb as he was being dressed in his finest clothes.

"From who?" Robb asked, raising an eyebrow at his friend.

"Wouldn't that be something? No wimpy, defenceless woman that constantly seeks your help, or spoils fun things such as hunting."

Robb knew his friend had only heard such rumours, though was still intrigued."She is a lady, I doubt she would have been near any fighting."

"Their women are strong Robb, proper Northern lasses. They are interesting, not like some of the ones who have visited before."

"They were boring to you because you couldn't even lay a finger on them."

He chuckled."In them more like."

Robb ignored Theon, he had always been so vile when talking of women."I wonder what they're here for. Father hasn't mentioned anything, I don't think he knows either."

"You can't be serious?" Theon scoffed. He gestured for the servant dressing Robb to leave now that he was finished."Come on, think about it."

"Just tell me."

"They've got a daughter, a year younger than you. Now, what do you think that means?"

Robb's eyes widened."No, no, father would have told me about it first-"

"Technically, nothing has been said about any marriage. Maybe that's what Lord (Y/L/N) is here for, not just for a friendly visit. And your father might not know about it yet."

Panic set into Robb's mind. His father had warned him that marriage propositions would be made, especially since he wasn't betrothed to anyone from a younger age. However, it was a small thought to him, most of his teachings had been about how to be a good lord. But having to face it was a completely different feeling. Perhaps Theon was wrong, his father hadn't even hinted at the idea. Now nervous, he took his cloak, wrapping it around himself before leaving his room, and maybe even meeting his future bride.

The pair made their way to the courtyard, hearing that the (Y/L/N) family were to be arriving very shortly. Robb's palms were beginning to sweat in his gloves, the mere thought of marriage making him dizzy. As he stood with his siblings, he ignored the fussing his mother made over them, making sure they were presentable.

(Y/N) made sure her hair was still neat and her braids were still tight in her hand mirror, damning the bumpy road beneath their carriage. It didn't help that her hands were shaking too, though she only noticed this when her mother took the mirror away, replacing it with her own hand.

"Relax (Y/N)," her mother calmed her, giving her a gentle smile,"we will be right beside you."

"He's not going to like me."

"And why's that?"

"He's probably heard all the rumours about how our women are these amazing fighters that aren't afraid of anything, and I'm the absolute opposite."

"For starters, we do not have all these women that go into fighting for the sake of it, you know that. And he doesn't know that your father is proposing this agreement."

"Have you met him?"

"No darling."

"So you don't even know what he looks like, let alone if he is kind?"

"The Starks are a wise, merciful and kind family. I am sure that his parents have raised him well. Their people seem to love them."

(Y/N) went to ask her mother another question, but was interrupted by the shouting of guards. They had arrived. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as the carriage slowed down, willing it to keep moving just a fraction longer. When it stopped, she hid her panic well from her mother, though a mother's instinct could always sense when her child was scared.

Lord (Y/L/N) had been riding up front for the last few miles, and was announced first as he dismounted his horse. He smiled as he approached Nedd, firmly shaking his hand.

"Lord Stark, it has been many years since I last saw you." he started.

"Yes," Nedd began,"in fact, Robb has only just been born."

(Y/N) heard his name, her heart beat thumping in her ears.

"Well, there are a lot of greetings to be made. My wife," (Y/N)'s mother was assisted out of the carriage, and (Y/N) heard her meeting the family,"and my daughter, (Y/N)."

As she emerged from the carriage, she hadn't expected how silent it would be. Everyone was watching her. (Y/N) carefully stepped out of the carriage, gripping onto the foot man's hand. She joined her parents, curtsying to the Starks.

"Thank you for opening your homes to us, it is a pleasure to finally meet you."

"And you Lady (Y/N). I am sure you have inherited your mother's beauty, and your father's wisdom." Nedd could see the young girl's hands were clasped together, stopping them from shaking.

"Not sure how much of that is left." her father joked, relieving the tension.

"Let me introduce you to my family," Nedd walked down the line, each curtsying or bowing,"my wife, Catelyn, who you already know, my eldest Robb, Sansa, Ayra, Bran and Rickon."

It was all too surreal for (Y/N). Here she was, facing the man that could become her husband and he had no idea. She tried to look at him, take in his details without staring, meaning she couldn't do it for long. Robb was also looking at her, dreading when her father would make the suggestion. Something deep in his gut told him that Theon was telling the truth, that perhaps a proposal was on the cards.

"He doesn't need to show me around Winterfell!" (Y/N) protested as she got settled into her room.

Her father sighed."(Y/N), I don't have to do this, but I am giving you a chance to get to know the boy. I could easily just throw the suggestion in their face."

"I know but...father I have a bad feeling about this."

He stopped her pacing, holding onto her hands."You will be fine. You're smart, so you know how to strike up a conversation. You're just nervous."

"Yes, I am. Father, you wouldn't make me marry someone who...someone who would hurt me, would you?"

"Of course not! If I believed the Starks were bad people, then we wouldn't be here. But this family is one of the strongest there are, and believe me, I've never seen a more honest family. You are safe here, and you will be loved."

(Y/N) walked out of her room feeling no less scared. She knew Robb would be going through the same struggle, though it didn't help her. Her footsteps were slow, too slow, her body knowing that she didn't want to go. Robb was exactly the same on the other side of his home, arguing with his mother before she forced him to leave his room and meet the girl, even if they weren't going to be married; in future, she may be a close ally. They were now stood at either end of the same corridor, freezing at the thought of having to be by each others sides for the rest of their lives.

Readjusting their postures, they composed themselves before approaching each other. This was it, the first time they would be alone together, perhaps the conversation that would define their relationship.

"Lady (Y/L/N), have you settled in well?" Robb asked.

"Yes, thank you Lord Stark. Your home is very beautiful."

"Please, my father is Lord Stark. You may call me Robb."

"And you may call me (Y/N)."

A good start, though many people dropped formalities when they weren't the people in charge. Robb offered to take her around Winterfell, which she politely accepted, racking her brain to think of topics to speak about. The small talk continued, until Robb started getting bolder with his questions.

"I've heard that your armies are full of women, that they are trained to fight since birth."

'Of course this question came up' (Y/N) thought.

"We do have a number of women. It is an extremely old tradition. Our lands did not have as many people as they do now, so when enemies would strike, everyone had to fight. And as the ears have gone on, we've kept that tradition alive, though there aren't as many women as there used to be."

"Are you trained in any weaponry?"

(Y/N)'s voice dropped."No. Ladies aren't allowed to."

"Oh." she hated the look on Robb's face, his expectations being dissapointed."That's understandable. Though my youngest sister, Arya, she does not abide by those rules."

"She doesn't?"

"No." he chuckled."A needle is far too small a sword for her liking."

They stopped walking, looking over the wall of Winterfell. (Y/N) was used to similar views back home, it wasn't too different. The noise of the people distracted her, and she turned around, watching them go about their lives. These were the faces she would be seeing almost everyday, if Robb and Nedd agreed to their marriage. And with dinner approaching faster than she liked, the answer was looming closer and closer.

After their walk, Robb had escorted (Y/N) back to her room to change for the meal that night. In his own room, Theon was there once again, prodding at Robb, wanting to know everything and more.

"So, what do you think?" Theon asked.

"I still don't know her very well. I can't make a judgement on her yet."

"OK, then what about how she looks?"

"She is a beautiful woman, but that doesn't mean I'll immediately like her."

Theon raised an eyebrow."But it helps."

Robb nodded."I guess so."

(Y/N) praised her handmaid as she finished her hair, calming slightly once she was satisfied with how she looked. Her mother entered the room, sighing as she saw her daughter fretting. The handmaid was dismissed, making (Y/N) realise that her mother was there, impulsively running to her; they shared a tight embrace, (Y/N)'s hands shaking as she clutched on.

"I don't think I can do it." (Y/N) breathed out.

"Yes you can. This is part of being a woman. You can do this, and we have chosen a family that will love you, they'll keep you safe."

"Mother, he doesn't like me, I just know it."

"He will. Everyone likes you."

Her mother knew that there were no amount of words that would ease her panic. All she could do was wipe away her tears, take her hand and lead her to the hall where dinner was being set. (Y/N) was stronger than she thought, and very likeable; she would fit into Winterfell just fine. It was Robb that was unpredictable.

"Father," Robb made a beeline to Nedd in the hall, desperate to speak to him alone,"may I quickly speak with you?"

"I know what you're thinking about." Nedd suddenly turned around.

"Well?"

"Well, we don't actually know if Lord (Y/L/N) wants an arranged marriage-"

"And if he does?"

"If he does, I shall speak to you in private, as will he with (Y/N). I presume that she doesn't know anything of it. Robb, I'll want to accept, but I need to be sure that you will too."

Everyone could feel the tension as they sat for dinner, Robb and (Y/N) having to sit beside each other. Their parents were in full conversations, the Stark siblings bickering already, whereas Robb and (Y/N) found themselves unable to start one themselves.

"Now," (Y/N)'s father stood, raising his cup,"I want to make a toast."

Everyone raised their own cups, knowing what his speech would include. They had been waiting all day to know what he wanted.

"Thank you once again for letting us into your home, it has been many years since my wife and I last visited, and actually, we were expecting (Y/N) at that time. But Winterfell has not lost its charm. We have been each others banner men throughout this time, and have fought beside each other in victory. I trust that our alliance is strong, but I am willing to make it stronger."

(Y/N)'s head started to spin, her chest tightening. She couldn't even look at her father. The words started to muffle, she couldn't be here to witness it. Without thinking of her manners, she mumbled under her breath, excusing herself as she abruptly stood and ran out of the room. She had no idea of the layout of the castle, running aimlessly, as if she could get away from this problem.

"(Y/N), are you alright?" She heard Robb call her.

She stopped, hiding her face in her hands, pure embarrassment stricken across it."I'm sorry, it's just..."

"I understand, it's a scary proposition."

"Yes, but I've known for so long."

"What?"

Her hands flopped down to her sides, using what bravery she had to face him."My father has been wanting this for so long. He loves your family, and not just for your power."

"There's something more to this."

"There's been another lord trying to marry me, but my father doesn't want me to marry. He told him we were already engaged. He showed up only last week. Robb, I would have told you if I thought I could."

"I understand."

"It's not fair that we've known for so long. My father can be a little dramatic at times."

"It's fine my lady, really."

"I know you need to discuss the answer with your father."

"You speak as if you know what that is."

"After today I think I do."

"And why is that?"

"I'm not what you think I am. I'm probably the most boring women in my land, and I'm supposed to be the one leading them."

"Is this about the army of women?"

"You would be surprised how many men don't like me after hearing that."

"I'm not one of those men."

"You're not?"

"I mean, we know this decision is ultimately up to our fathers."

"I suppose so."

"(Y/N), I can't judge your personality or even your own judgement, since we've only known each other for one day. But seeing as we know what our future entails, I feel that we should be open to get to know each other."

"Thank you Robb, I would very much like that."

[funkymbtifiction]

I absolutely loved the sorting chats thing but I was wondering if you have any other questions for figuring out your primary house? I took the test and I got the hatstall thing twice so I basically had to give my own imput on what house I think I am, but I can't figure out if I'm a Slythering primary who models Ravenclaw or the other way around and the questions on the quiz were too abstract to be helpful

Both the questions and the official descriptions, while helpful, are indeed vague. It always helps me to ‘see’ a House (or anything else) in ‘action’ in an actual person or a fictional character, in order for me to wrap my head around what someone of that House ‘looks like.’ They had a great many examples on their tumblr page until it was accidentally deleted / purged which helped me -- you kind of need to think about what each House values and represents, and then see them in a character that manifests those traits. Which is what I try to do when I write up my ‘Sorting’ posts (on my blog, previously linked) -- show how this character differs and how they might disagree with someone from another House, because of their primary focus.

But all of that is rather abstract too, isn’t it? ;)

Bottom line. Are you a Katniss Everdeen or a Luke Skywalker?

When you consider Slytherin, think about Katniss. What is her #1 priority in life? Her sister, Prim. She volunteers as Tribute so her sister does not have to go into the arena. She is willing to run off with Prim and Gale (another “chosen” family member) into the woods, and let the rest of society fend for itself, because at least her prioritized people, those to whom she is most loyal, would be safe. Katniss cares nothing for most of the other Tributes, but she adopts Rue in the arena, because Rue reminds her of Prim. She hunts for Prim. She tolerates the big orange cat that she hates for Prim. She does everything... for Prim, and later, for Peeta, once she has invited him into her small circle of ‘caring.’

For Slytherins, it’s MY people. MY family. MY city. MY country. It’s possessive, and personal, and it would gut them not to feel a sense of responsibility to prioritize THEIR people. If they were on their way to help a friend or a sibling and they ignored someone stuck in the ditch that tried to flag them down, there would be no guilt, because My People Come First. Always. That’s how they are wired. If this is only a ‘Model,’ it will be dropped like a hot potato the minute things get rough, and the person will feel no guilt. But the Slytherin would feel enormous guilt at not putting their people FIRST.

The Ravenclaw is not a loyalist house, but an idealist house. The Jedi Code is a perfect example of a Ravenclaw system -- it asks the Jedi to abandon their own instinctual feelings and gut impulses and live according to a set of high idealistic rules. Their expectations are lofty and their chosen system is something they live by, because they have created or adopted it to take the place of emotionalism. The Ravenclaw might craft ‘it is good to defend and prioritize one’s family’ into their system, but it would come from a place of intellect more than emotion. Luke Skywalker is a good example of this -- of a man who chooses to live by the Code of the Jedi, but who also crafts and shapes it more to his own form. Luke, being a compassionate individual, adds such things as love and mercy to his own version of the Code. And he lives that out. Kylo Ren is also another Ravenclaw, who is rejecting his own emotions in an attempt to live up to an ideal -- for much of the first two movies, a bad ideal, but a system he believes in (the Dark Side of the Force, and a renouncement of his feelings) and tries to enforce on other people through persuading them to join him (Rey).

Fortunately, being a Ravenclaw also means that when he sees another, better way to be (again, through Rey’s influence and her healing him)... he can discard the old system without a second thought, without guilt, and adopt an entirely new one. That is the skill and talent of the Ravenclaw. To forever be tinkering with what they hold to be true, and what they live by. If they find out their system is flat out wrong, irrational, corrupt, or immoral, most Ravenclaws will abandon it. Like Kylo Ren, they will toss the broken lightsaber into the sea and go build a new one. (The lightsaber being their “I live by these principles.”) These ideals come from the outside and their own tinkering, but they aren’t instinctively felt. Unlike the Slytherin, they do not go by emotions -- they go by what they have chosen to be.

As previously mentioned, I know a Slytherin. She always had a deep abiding affection for Katniss, because she understood her completely. When The Hunger Games first came out, and I was struggling to understand why she liked it so much (I found it incredibly depressing and morbid), she just said, “I would do that for my sister.” Years later, when she was taking the Sorting Hat test, I knew she would come out a Slytherin, because... she is Katniss. But the difference between us was distinctive. She would rush to defend, to protect, to be loyal to, and I would sit back and analyze the situation from a detached viewpoint, ignoring any emotions I might be having in the process... because I am constantly weighing everything against my logical reasoning and my faith. It’s as simple as that. Of course my family comes first, but my faith also says to treat everyone with kindness and “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” So there is always a push-pull in me between instinct (my family, not MY family) and everyone else, according to my belief system.

Consequently, if you want an idea of what a Hufflepuff looks like, look no further than Rey Skywalker. She may be a little grouchy and standoffish, but she also stands up for and defends... everyone. She has a collective emotional loyalty to the entire human race. She protects BB8. She protects Finn. She attaches herself easily to Han Solo, then to the mission to find Luke, then to the Rebellion, and finally, she even sees the potential for good and healing in Kylo Ren. Everyone is fair in her mind, everyone is equal, it would never occur to her to prioritize a select few over the greater good. Hufflepuff values.

And Leia, of course, is a Gryffindor. Someone who has found her Cause and intends to champion it, and you can come along for the ride or get the hell out of her way. She and Han, a Slytherin, butt heads a lot, because he has no interest in a Cause, until he attaches himself to her. Then her Cause becomes his Cause, in a truly Slytherin fashion -- what matters to My People, matters to me. She trusts her gut and does whatever it tells her to do, and entertains no turning aside for anyone. She will stand alone if she must.

You need to ask yourself, who am I? What do I trust? And what would gut me to ignore? My loved ones? Slytherin. My system and logic? Ravenclaw. My general concern for humanity? Hufflepuff. My gut instincts? Gryffindor. What are you willing to do in your life? Sacrifice other things to maintain and cultivate your intimate relationships? Slytherin. Abandon belief systems that you know to be erroneous without a second thought? Ravenclaw. Defend everyone who cannot defend themselves? Hufflepuff. Walk away from your entire family and friendship group on a matter of principle? Gryffindor. Who, by the way, do you ‘understand’ on a completely instinctual level? My Slytherin friend understood Katniss. My Hufflepuff friend understands Hufflepuffs. I understand Ravenclaws like Kylo Ren, because I get his struggle. It’s familiar to me. And my Gryffindor father understands Gryffindors and in true Gryffindor fashion, thinks cowardice is unforgivable. 

[routeless-writer]

Request Rules .・。.・゜✭・.

Welcome to Routeless, an otome/dating game imagines blog, here to fulfill your fantasies!

I’m Mod Mezzo, and I am the only moderator running this blog, so rule number one is please be patient with me, lol.

𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚁𝚞𝚕𝚎𝚜:

Be polite. Rude or threatening requests will be deleted, I will block anyone who tries to stir trouble. Abide by the rules list. Easy peasy! Just don’t be an arse.

If you prefer to stay anon, and plan to send in multiple requests one after the other, requests sent in parts, or need to request a re-do, please claim an anon by using a word, emoji, symbol, etc. It makes things easier for me, and if you send me more than one request at once, I can publish them all at once for you and/or give you updates! I don’t want to leave anyone hanging. This will also allow me to start a tag for you, so you can go back and look at your past requests easily without having to crawl through the master list.

Since this blog does accept nsfw requests, it is an 18+ only blog. I say this because I don’t want to turn anon off for you guys, so I’m warning you now. Minors DNI for my comfort and safety, and your own safety.

Other DNIs should be obvious. DNI if homophobic, transphobic, racist, acephobic, MAP/SOMAP/whatever the hell pedos are calling themselves these days, “””super straight””, sexist, TERF/SWERF, n*zi/n*zi sympathetic, just fuck off if you subscribe to any of this. Leave. Exit. The door is RIGHT there.

Also just anyone who comes here to harass me or my anons. I’m anti fucking bullying.

TWST characters that are 16/17 have been aged up to at least 18 in all my works. If you want to get mad at me for aging up characters at all, don’t. I’ll block you, delete your inbox messages, whatever. I am literally never in the mood for fandom discourse ever. I am quite literally minding my own business.

Anything that is not a request will be put under the tag “not a request”.

nsfw will be put under the “secret stash” tag.

Anything from me that is a notice/update will be under “mod mezzo”. Anything from my inbox that is not a request or posts unrelated to writing that aren’t notices will go under “mezzo mumbles”.

My inbox is always open to talk, even if i'm not taking requests. I'd appreciate if we could keep things friendly and chill, so general rules of politeness/no harassment of me or anons/no trauma dumping apply.

For questions about the rules, masterlist, the blog, or updates, the inbox is always open.

Other important tags are on my tag list, which you can view by checking my navigation page (pinned post).

𝙵𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖𝚜:

Court Of Darkness

Dream Daddy

Ikemen Prince

Ikemen Revolution

Ikemen Vampire

Monster Prom

Mystic Messenger

Obey Me! One Master To Rule Them All (please note that I HAVE NOT started Nightbringer)

The Arcana

Twisted Wonderland

𝙵𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖𝚜 𝚃𝚘 𝙱𝚎 𝙰𝚍𝚍𝚎𝚍:

games i will add to the requestable list once i play them!

Touchstarved

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

Monster Prom 3: Road Trip

Ikemen Villians

What In Hell Is Bad?

Lovebrush Chronicles

Tears of Themis

𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎:

Fluff

Romantic

Platonic

Smut/nsfw/suggestive

Angst WITH comfort

Comfort

^^^This includes most mental illnesses/disorders, but if you’re not sure, feel free to ask. I will let you know if I am uncomfortable. I’d like to be clear, I myself am autistic/ADHD/PTSD, but I don’t speak for everyone who is neurodivergent or mentally ill. However, if you are in need of comfort, I’m willing to put in the proper research to properly fulfill a request.

All gender identities, presentations, and AGABs are accepted, and I specify in my writing what gender or AGAB the reader is when necessary.

Any variation of a queer/lgbtq+ s/o (i.e. s/o comes out as pan, react to ace s/o, s/o comes out as trans, etc) I am queer myself and will write GAYS being SILLY AND GAY

Littlespace (sfw only, I do not write ageplay)

BDSM/subspace/domspace centered asks

^^^ both nsfw and sfw

There is a kink specific whitelist under the rules tag for nsfw requests

Character limit of 5 (unless requesting a whole group, i.e. the demon brothers, monster prom girls, the arcana LIs, dorm leaders, etc etc)

Once again, feel more than free to ask me if I am comfortable writing something! I will answer you! 🫧

𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝙽𝚘𝚝 𝚆𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎:

Pedophilia

Incest

Non-con I’m iffy on writing, I do enjoy cnc though most cnc based writing will likely be done by me, not requested.

Yandere. A slightly possessive/overprotective character or s/o is fine, but this isn’t a yandere blog. To clarify, I have no problem with darkfic, I just don’t write much myself beyond mild angst. (And I read quite a bit I am looking at yandere blogs directly hello you’re doing a good job)

sexual age regression, sfw littlespace is fine, but that’s in a sfw context.

Kinks involving bodily fluids/“functions” outside of c*m (from either partner of any gender), sp*t, and bl*od. Simply put, no bathroom kinks.

𝙱𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝:

Guy Avari (Court Of Darkness) (unavailable)

Oliver (IkeRev) (only available as an adult/during nighttime in story)

Luke (Obey Me) (only available for platonic requests)

Ortho Shroud (Twst) (Only available for platonic requests)

Cheka Kingscholar (Twst) (Only available for platonic requests)

[redteabaron]

Sansa and the (yellow brick) road home

The movie The Wizard of Oz follows along the general theme most heroes/heroines do; the journey to the inner self, at times in relation with the outer world. (The book by Baum, and by relation the movie, has racist/xenophobic/nationalist undertones and implications that continue and multiply through the text that I’m just not going to include here since this meta is already too long and I’m also not going to include the political or Baum’s personal symbolism in these things.) 

I’m going to go off on a limb and assume mostly everyone knows the general summary of TWOO and not summarize it, if not, the wiki on the movie itself is pretty comprehensive. Below, instead of a short novel describing all the possible references and parallels found, I’ll just be using summarized points about how Sansa fills in for Dorothy Gale on her road home.

Red shoes - Red in the film, as that’s what I’m focusing on rather than the silver ones in the book since that was all about the free silver movement. Red for women and girls in a lot of fairy tales often represents the path onto adulthood, particularly connected to menstruation, which isn’t an enormous part of Sansa’s arc but it does get quite a few notable mentions (usually from gross people concerned with her ability to produce heirs). Sansa, like Dorothy, only gains her “red shoes” once she leaves home (that is, setting her on a path to metamorphosis and growing up). The “red shoes” symbolize things Sansa possesses that people, envy, admire or desire for their own. Sansa’s red shoes represent womanhood, agency over self, beauty, intelligence, her kindness and compassion. 

Sepia colors to technicolor in the film/Kansas to Oz - This transition from little to no color to places where it becomes a feast for the eyes (from the north to the south) represents Dorothy’s and Sansa’s feelings toward their respective homes and the places of their desires. Sansa yearns for something else, something different and southron because that is the place all the songs and tales are about. The north, as reiterated by numerous characters both northern and southron, is a hard, harsh place that has little beauty. Sansa, like Dorothy, feels unfulfilled and out of place in her home. She doesn’t explicitly state how out of place she feels in the north like Jon and Arya, but there is the implication that at least within her family she is out of place (perhaps with the exception of Bran who wants knighthood, loves songs and stories like his sister and doesn’t stick his nose up in the air at the fact that Sansa prefers the ones with ladies or love). King’s Landing is her land of Oz, a place of magic and possibility like all the songs, it’s a world of technicolor and danger.

Yellow Brick Road - The yellow brick road is just that; a road on which Dorothy needs to follow to meet with the wizard of Oz, and most importantly the journey she must undertake to go home, and Dorothy does want to go home, she misses it even in this enchanting land that seems to be everything she first wanted. Like Dorothy, Sansa wants to go home after briefly being in the place where dreams are supposed to be a reality (all the stories can’t be lies) and this beautiful place has more danger than she’d realized; Sansa’s yellow brick road is a sight more twisted and unclear with far fewer friends and guarantees of safety. Dorothy is told to stay on the Yellow Brick Road to find her way to her ticket home (the Great Oz), otherwise she’ll run into danger. 

Sansa’s metaphorical ‘Yellow Brick Road’ is her role as a ‘pawn’ in the game of thrones; she has to play within the rules others make for her and outliving them, or she will have no other recourse for survival. 

Toto - Toto is Lady; the animal in a fairy tale setting that is something unknown in a child, yet to be understood or tamed. Toto was Dorothy’s playmate, constant companion, and likely her confidante, and undoubtedly although Toto didn’t have a large part to play directly in TWOO, he set off the events to occur the way they did for Dorothy throughout her time in Oz and in Kansas, but at least she had the comfort that he was there with her throughout it all. Toto is symbolic of a natural gut instinct (his hatred of Miss Gulch, where Lady hates the Hound) and the one who uncovers things normally concealed (again, Lady’s dislike of the Hound despite being the gentlest of her siblings). 

Lady, like Toto, sets off a chain of events for Sansa personally, but Sansa doesn’t have the comfort of Lady being there with her. Here, Lady is the unknown part of Sansa (that functions as her gut feeling, portrays her true self yet to be realized) but ultimately she, a part of Sansa, is killed by Ned at the behest of Cersei (also featuring Robert once again turning aside something unjust and gruesome for an easier solution). 

It brings Toto escaping from the Wicked Witch of the West in a harsher light. Dorothy’s tearful happiness that Toto escapes alive even while she’s captured and her life is in danger … yet Sansa is in danger and Lady is dead, only alive briefly in her dreams. Toto represents a part of Dorothy that manages to escape the worst of the punishment, yet a part of Sansa is already dead, spiritually, at this point. With Robb’s death and his last words being Grey Wind, we can assume there is no ‘getting a new direwolf’ or just simply recovering from the death of their direwolf. 

The Twister - Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon uproot Winterfell and the Seven Kingdoms unintentionally. By accepting the position of Hand, Ned paved the way for her journey there. Later the deaths of Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon, Sansa is trapped in King’s Landing/the Vale (“Oz”). Robert is the Twister and once in King’s Landing, Ned is the locked cellar, essentially leaving her out in the open in danger as he doesn’t share his worries with Sansa. He deliberately leaves her as the odd man out while he manages to speak with Arya about the situation and at least makes her aware that there is danger. 

Poppy field - The allure of giving up and wasting away; in TWOO these lovely, deadly flowers cause those who breathe in their sweet scent to lay down and fall asleep until their death. The poppy field represents apathy and surrender during difficult times, and similarly this makes its appearance for Sansa who abides by all the rules of her captors (people who have harmed her, her family, her home, etc) - but she only succumbs to this from a certain perspective. Sansa hasn’t fallen asleep and succumbed to her metaphorical poppy field, she is, in effect, lucid dreaming. Dreaming while aware, even if she must stay in the dream so she can survive. She’s giving everyone around her the illusion that she is trapped in her “dream”, that she is “Sleeping Beauty” while she continues to learn, adapt, and observe.

Dorothy has three companions that remain with her on her journey that all want the great wizard to give them something they feel they lack. While in the book/film, it’s clear they’re still good people and not without their positive traits, everyone focuses on what they lack across the board. In the sections below, I’ll be using commonalities found in the (unwanted) “suitors” of Sansa on her journey where they too focus on their negative traits, or are the inverted intentions of Dorothy’s companions.

Tin Man/Tyrion Lannister/Sandor Clegane - Men of sympathetic circumstance and who want to be wanted as they are, or desire to be loved/objects of desire and are understood among others as not having a heart or not able to.

Both Sandor and Tyrion project their feelings of rejection from society and in particular women, noblewomen, and lust onto Sansa (a child, a prisoner of war and an easy, isolated target). They are the most selfish form of desire for the Tin Man’s want for a heart; where the Tin Man desired a heart for the purpose of loving others and everything (although he finds later he never needed a physical heart because he was good and loving all along) Tyrion and Sandor desire a heart from someone else for themselves.

They’re who are typically the ones we want to root for as the underdogs who get their just rewards as they have been abused in their positions or misfortunes in life, but they ultimately fall short because they are simply awful and have built up these defenses and use them against Sansa despite being positions where they could have proven to be the ‘knights’ she yearns for (barring the enormous age gaps which inherently leaves these matches undesirable anyway). 

While Sandor’s backstory regarding his abuse at the hands of his brother are awful, he himself enacts abuse on others - the murder of Mycah, him relaying regret for not raping Sansa when he had the chance (whether or not he meant it, she was a child and it’s an awful thing to regret not doing), and his participation in the unkiss as well as verbally abusing her and gaslighting Sansa. Yet he wants kindness and some sort of love or affection from her regardless of his treatment of her. She sings the Mother’s Hymn for him during the Battle of Blackwater Bay, in a way, giving him some form of (her) heart although that wasn’t what she’d intended to do (she misremembers the trauma so we can assume she was terrified), it can be inferred that Sandor got something from her that he wanted (subconsciously or not). 

Similarly, we have sympathy for Tyrion because although he is highborn, he still faces constant mockery, obstacles, verbal and physical abuse due to his disability and looks. However, he still wants to be lord of Winterfell and he wants Sansa (who he finds himself attracted to) - girl or woman-child or whatever she is. Tywin could have married her off to a Lannister cousin, so Tyrion does have the choice to pass her up, but he chooses to go forward with the marriage and even prepares to take her against her consent (where he molests her and says he could be the Knight of Flowers in the dark; essentially telling her to lie to herself about how she felt about him and the situation) but stops after he feels guilty. Tyrion could have been sympathetic because he isn’t without his soft spots (see his conversation with Jon Snow, his consideration for Bran, etc) but he again falls short. He wants love and affection - but he has rather exacting standards, the same thing that infuriated him about Sansa not finding him attractive.

Like the Tin Man it isn’t that they have no heart. Unlike the Tin Man, however, for Sandor and Tyrion, it’s simply that most of that heart shown consists of selfishness and self-centeredness. Sandor might immediately cop to it and never attempts to hide it, but he tries to bring every man down to his level by saying how awful everyone is, everywhere. Tyrion meanwhile may be capable of kindness, but he shows that he is easy to offend when it is rebuffed or denied, as though he expects payment for such a thing.

Cowardly Lion/Ser Dontos/Joffrey - Characters who have the titles of courtly images; Joffrey is a prince, then a golden king. Ser Dontos is a named knight. Both have the roles in songs and stories where the expected virtues would include courage, grace, humility, honor, etc but ultimately do not have these things even if they have the appropriate titles. 

In TWOO, the Cowardly Lion presents a falsehood or an oxymoron (after all, how can the king of all beasts be a coward?). Joffrey and Dontos do the same. (How can a king be cruel, how can a knight not have dignity, etc). Sansa’s attachment and adherence to songs/stories isn’t really all that different from any of the ideas the Stark kids have about their favorite stories, but in her journey specifically, we see her unraveling popular propaganda in Westerosi high society; she even makes comparisons in her inner monologues. 

Where the virtues of kings and knights are meant to be shown, we see her expectations fall very short of what the title is meant to indicate about the character of the people who hold them.

In both Joffrey and Dontos, they lack these qualities even if we, Sansa, may briefly hold out hope for the better (where Joffrey immediately kills that by suddenly having Ned executed, where Dontos sells her off to Littlefinger despite trying to play her Florian). In particular, Ser Dontos ultimately fails as the CW because he says he wants Sansa to be safe, to be her Florian, but isn’t truthful with her about it, yet he wants to reap the reward for it. Joffrey believes himself to have these qualities but is often called out on it by other characters, playing the CW in the beginning who immediately attacks the Tin Man, seemingly unaware of his lack of character. 

In TWOO Dorothy says she’ll miss everyone, but she’ll miss the Scarecrow most of all; below the characters I associate with the Scarecrow are the ones who Sansa might be able to more easily pick out traits (or trick herself into seeing more good than exists) she is most comfortable with (one of the characters below is most obviously not “safe” or the one she has the most affection for, but rather the one she tries very hard, due to her current dependency on him, to project or emphasize what he’s “done for” her). 

Scarecrow/Petyr Baelish/Harry the Heir/Ser Loras - Characters shown or believed to be less intelligent, without depth, or even overrated. They are stuffed with straw, padded with nothing of substance in a person.

Briefly starting with Ser Loras, I included him specifically because even though Sansa has a little crush on him, she quickly realizes that he never had interest in her, and didn’t remember giving her the rose even though it was the highlight of her day when he did. This is an indication to Sansa she doesn’t know him even though she daydreamed about him. She doesn’t truly know him, is what she realizes and he doesn’t know her despite the implicit belief that love or affection can be found and trusted at first sight. He was handsome, seemingly knightly, dreamy, and he turned out to be no one who would have any consequence for her.

Harry the Heir, we don’t know much about as a person beyond the basics. He has one illegitimate child and is currently courting Saffron, who is pregnant with his second illegitimate child. He is a knight. He’s Robert Arryn’s heir. There’s the idea that he’s quite good at knightly actions (jousting, swordplay, horsemanship, etc) and likely indications that he is a little egotistical. From the released chapters of Alayne we’ve seen, he does apologize for his rudeness, but I don’t believe he’ll be around long enough for us to explore his person. Our understanding of him, and I believe Alayne’s/Sansa’s understanding of him will be one of pity, knowing his fate, but ultimately we won’t know him enough for it to be particularly impactful save for how his death will affect Sansa’s actions. 

To that end, Harry has every possibility of being a better suitor than the others that have sold themselves as her beaus, but it won’t last. Where we read that Ser Loras didn’t remember Sansa or seem to care or was invested in her, we’ll see that ultimately Harry is another, if newer scarecrow; ultimately a character of seemingly goodwill, or at least one who won’t wish her harm, but will fall flat by not having substance or not be allowed the time to develop much. 

Admittedly, Petyr as the Wicked Witch of the West is also fitting, but considering we are constantly told in text how dangerous he is forces him to the forefront of our minds as this terrifying endgame boogeyman. Since asoiaf likes to have little twists and turns and defy immediate expectations, he isn’t likely so important to the final fate of Westeros, and by extension, Sansa’s fate. His biggest impact will be having spirited her away to the Vale and keeping her under lock. To that end, he is (one of) the Scarecrow(s) in Sansa’s journey. 

The whole “I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow” here applies to Petyr. Not that he represents a positive point in Sansa’s journey home, but he does represent safety, even though it comes at a price. (Where he tells her to call him Father, where he molests her, gaslights her, verbally and psychologically abuses her and she forces herself to dissociate, ultimately piling on the trauma). 

Petyr isn’t stupid, or without a brain, but he is overconfident in his mind, to the end that he will make huge missteps he won’t have accounted for (Jeyne at Winterfell, not thinking Sansa will be capable of fleeing or thinking for herself, believing he knew everything that happened after the Red Wedding, doubting Dany is a dangerous element, underestimating Aegon, etc) despite giving Sansa similar warnings (all while believing she would be too stupid or naive to heed them). He, like the Scarecrow, is a planner but ultimately he will meet an anticlimactic death. He, and numerous other characters, sell the idea (very loudly) that there is more to him than there appears, that he has great depths, that he is one of the most dangerous men in Westeros.

That isn’t to say he isn’t dangerous - he obviously is. He kicked off a violent war, arranged for the deaths of numerous people, has quite a lot of money and power (although he doesn’t have a name with weight). It’s just that with every person who announces how dangerous he is, we’ll see in Sansa’s journey when we see him as his truest self, stripped of his gold and power we will see nothing. He has no great depths to plumb beyond his own ambitions.

He is the Scarecrow who already found his “brain” (where Petyr already has the lesson that his strength is his mind), yet in the end, is still a scarecrow. Just the form of a man filled with straw.

Wicked Witch of the West/Cersei - The ever present danger that never loses focus on Sansa, seemingly magically out of reach from danger to Sansa’s eyes. Cersei, in a way, is this insurmountable force to Sansa; she is the purest form of danger that exists and it’s why Sansa has no choice but to hide and trust that Littlefinger will keep her concealed.  

Cersei blames Tyrion and Sansa for Joffrey’s death, and especially has a grudge against Sansa for her “red shoes” (her name, her agency, her womanhood, children, beauty, etc, we see her reference snidely about Sansa’s qualities whenever she talks/thinks about her) (see above for what Sansa’s red shoes are) and the action she believes she is responsible for. She has multiple hangers on as Queen Regent (flying monkeys who do her bidding). 

She, from Sansa’s point of view, has all this power and represents someone who can’t be stopped (we see the same thing with Dorothy and the WWW), but yet the Witch dies easily. In TWOO, she’s melted by a bucket of water Dorothy accidentally spills on her. I think this may be an indication that Sansa may have another indirect hand in her death (indirect as with the Purple Wedding), perhaps letting some information she gives be used against Cersei, or something. But ultimately, Cersei, like the Wicked Witch of the West won’t have a particularly “onscreen” death (she’ll likely die in King’s Landing, either by Jaime’s hand, or indirectly through Tyrion when Dany burns it).  

Oz/Man behind the curtain - The songs and tales of Westeros that conceal the darker truths that exist behind what power means; a means of propaganda that Sansa is forced to unveil on her own. While all the Starks learn a lot more about people, the world, truth and lies, politics, etc Sansa’s position in court leads her to pay a lot more attention to what people don’t say. She also develops a deeper understanding of how what she believed came to actually be. She has to learn how to weed out the domino effect stories and songs have, even though at their core they can be appreciated (for instance, that honor and nobility are good things, even if the song/tale about the person isn’t someone who realistically practiced it). 

This saturates court culture across the world, although her focus is on Westeros, but we know that this isn’t just a southron issue; this exists in the north, across the Narrow Sea, within Houses, legacies, and even singular people. 

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 15: DR. EGGMAN

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a mini-series of mine, in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, it’s finally time for him. The bad doctor himself. Gather round ladies and gentleman, for the spotlight is on the arch-villain that shines above them all... Dr. Eggman.

The Gist: It's the dawn of the 90's. A little company called SEGA had an ephiphany. They wanted to make a video game juggernaut that could rival the quality and iconic appeal of the then-unmatched Super Mario Bros, and their current star, Alex Kidd, just wasn't doing it in the way that they hoped. They promptly set about starting anew, as a worldwide phenomenon wasn't going to make itself.

So a gentleman named Naoto Ohshima created a selection of design concepts for this brand new mascot. One of these concepts was President Roosevelt in his pajamas.

Seen here with his catgirl body pillow.

The response to this character was “This is good, but we think kids would prefer kicking the shit out of him”, and so he was given an antagonistic role instead. In the meantime, after juggling the rest of their ideas, they eventually settled on a rabbit hedgehog named Sonic for their main protagonist, knowing his Mickey Mouse-like aesthetic would help endear him to the audience, and the franchise as a whole would have an easier time gaining a DeviantART fanbase later on down the line.

Initially, the character of today's review was but a mere lackey among many, seemingly little more than one of numerous minions working for Sonic's originally intended main villain, the Nonspecific Goblin. He was also dressed as a bee for some reason.

Which is the least weirdest thing in this image.

At some point however, they all got together and decided that actually, the guy with the moustache was the only one worth shit, and so he was upgraded to the role of main villain himself. With a spiffy new attire of red and black, he was given the bold title of Dr. Eggman, because with a shape like that, what else are you gonna call him?

“Funny you should say that”, laughed SEGA of America, as they rebelled like an angsty teen and named him Dr. Ivo Robotnik instead. While this name does make equal sense for the character, as he is indeed a hard worker who also happens to like robots, the reason for this name's existence seems to have been mainly because they thought Eggman was too out there of a name for an egg-like man. Whatever the case, this would confuse a lot of fans for years, and remains a point of divisiveness to this day... Unless you're like me and your first game in the series was Advance 2, in which the manual clears it up right away, and you accept the idea of a character having two names and immediately carry on with your life.

He would have aimed it perfectly if it weren't for the Sonic Heroes Parrot distracting him.

And that was that, really. It didn't take long for them to come up with his characterization, which was that of a cackling fiend with an ego to end all egos. This guy was the Narcissist Alpha, more king than actual kings, no strings attached. Other villains would build statues of themselves, but only Robotnik would deface Ancient Egyptian monuments to improve them with his face. Other villains would think “Nah, refacing all four in Rushmore would look silly”, but only the Eggman, the Eggmyth, the Egglegend, would go “Well fuck you, I'm doing it anyway.” Then he'd do it anyway, and proceed to address to the entire world that he did in fact do it anyway.

It also didn't take long for them to develop his primary schtick. With the dynamic of Sonic VS Eggman, you had a classic rivalry between nature and technology. Interestingly enough however, this turned out to be executed more tactfully than your typical Amish-abiding examples in similar media. Never was technology itself regarded as a corruptive influence that you should never utilise no matter what. Rather, it was only as good or as evil as the person using it, with it just so happening that the villain loved machinery only slightly less than he loved himself, and it was countered by Sonic’s best friend being a techno wiz in his own right anyway. Anyhow, with his machinery, the doctor would make a name for himself among video game baddies by confronting his enemy as the boss of nearly every zone in each game, rather than hide away until the endgame.

And all without a driver's licence.

In his soon-to-be-30 years of activity, he has largely remained the same since his inception. Other characters have been introduced, other villains have came and went, but Eggman has remained THE villain of the franchise, and he's remained a vital part of the Sonic the Hedgehog universe... with a slight redesign along the way.

The only ad I don't want to skip.

The Design: Eggman's design may be more simplistic than the likes of Bowser and Ganondorf, and he may not look as openly threatening at first glance, but it's still a very iconic look no matter what look it is. His original appearance was devised so that kids could have an easy time drawing him, which only makes me feel worse about not being able to do it as a grown adult without it looking like a Sexy Legs Kirby.

Still, it's a classic for a reason. With his to-the-point colour scheme, contrasting heavily with Sonic's blue, and his capelet collar resembling walrus tusks, it was an instant winner and made everyone goo goo for g'joob.

The Emeralds he’s juggling are a metaphor for the divided fan community.

And when it was time to give the cast an update for Sonic's first real 3D adventure (or at least the first one that didn't get axed for being a magic eye seizure), Eggman got a respectable change of his own. He was taller, his getup was militaristic, and his body was more legitimately egg-shaped rather than basketball-shaped. He also gained a pair of goggles that he never uses, except in scenes where he puts them on and then never uses them.

“How do my chicken legs not collapse under the might of my gluttonous mass? Find out in an unrelated tie-in novel that you have to pay additional money for.”

There was also that one redesign from 2006, but...

Be it Classic or Modern, I've always loved his design. Before he even says a word or does anything, you know from his appearance that he's a bit of a clownish sort. But he also has a subtle creepy vibe going on, with the way his glasses often obscure his eyes, and how this only makes the pearly-white, unnecessarily wide grin on his face that much more empty and unsettling. This little bit of eeriness hiding among his cartoonish physique reflects the full extent of his character pretty accurately, as we’ll delve into soon enough.

If nothing else, it's more effective than him having no eyes at all.

GRRRRRRRR FUCK YOU BUNNIES THAT I CAN'T SEE

The Personality: If you've seen my villain reviews, then you'll have gathered that Sonic's rogues aren't known for having much in the way of personality. There are exceptions, but they are indeed the exceptions. More often than not though, whether it's an alien conquerer, an ancient monster, or Dan Green the Recolour, they can be summed up thusly: They're evil, they want to destroy the world, and the heroes stop them because they're evil and want to destroy the world. If they're feeling particularly daring, they might go for a second colour.

Luckily, as if to counter all these cardboard drawings, the central adversary of the franchise makes up for these voids of personality by actually having one. And what a personality it is.

The writers of SatAM looked at this and thought “No, this won't do, there's no character to work with here.”

He really is brimming with comedic charm. Every moment that he's present...

Every moment that he shows off...

Every moment that he basks in his own glory...

Every moment that he unveils a new wicked scheme...

Every moment that he puts his enemies to the test...

Every moment that he challenges the world...

Every moment that he laughs at the world...

Every moment that he lives, nay, every moment that he breathes...

Yes, the man has plenty of humor, and it's part of what makes him so enjoyable and memorable. However, if you think being a clown is all there is to him, then prepare to have your expectations subverted initial assumptions taken in a unexpected direction, because although he puts the goof in goofy, he ALSO puts the “oh...?” in “oh shit”.

For you see, Eggman is by all means the epitome of Laughably Evil, but do not, under any circumstance, take him at face value and write him off as a joke. He is anything but.

For starters, he can swing a planet.

There is a rule of thumb that I personally go by with Eggman’s characterization, one that I believe is an immediate make or break factor in regards to whether or not you understand what makes this villain work. Eggman - when you put all his secondary traits aside - is made up of two prominent halves. There’s the egocentric meme machine that bounces up and down like a kid with his N64 and laughs like Santa... and there’s the monster buried within that remains completely and utterly unrepentant for everything he’s responsible for. This is very important. Despite the character’s simplicity at his core, many writers have failed to grasp this, official writers included, and I for the life of me cannot understand why this is such a recurring problem. Eggman is funny, AND Eggman is evil. Both are equal. When you take away one or the other, you may have a funny character, or you may have an evil character, but you don’t have Eggman. Simple as.

Armchair intellectuals may argue that Eggman’s deeds aren’t that evil, since he tends to be merely callous rather than actively trying to hurt or kill people. Those people are probably the types on TV Tropes who weigh a villain’s evilness and effectiveness purely through the surface-level scale of their goals rather than what they actually do to achieve them. While it is true that Eggman tends to be more apathetic about the aftermath of his actions, that doesn’t - and shouldn’t - negate how dangerous he is. It shouldn’t negate what he’s capable of. It shouldn’t negate how far he’s willing to go. And it shouldn’t negate the consequences and casualties that can and do result from his many schemes.

Seriously, think about this for a second. If you confronted Eggman about his current plan to... I dunno, make a water park in Africa or some shit, and you informed him that there has been unexpected mass suffering as a result of this, how do you think he would truly feel about that? What do you think he would actually say to that?

Spoiler: No fucks.

If anything, that he “merely” doesn’t care either way as long as he gets what he wants is more uniquely horrific and deplorable than if he were a generic baddie who committed his evulz specifically for evulz’s own sake and nothing more. At least you’re inadvertently acknowledging that other people’s lives have value when you act one-dimensionally gleeful over ending them, but when your immediate response to the side-effect of a million potential deaths and environmental disasters is “Oh well, fuck ‘em, Eggmanland time baybeeee”, that’s a new level of cruelty.

Besides, even in the Genesis era, he was carpet bombing Angel Island...

“Good thing I have this shield. Sucks to be this forest!”

And he’s only gotten worse since then, indulging in such acts as going full suicide bomber with a missile, after his initial plot to destroy and rebuild Station Square through the means of Chaos and the Egg Carrier didn’t work out...

But don’t worry, he kept it lighthearted by making it look like a penis.

Making one of Sonic’s friends go insane with power against their will, forcing the Blue Blur to put them down personally...

It’s ironic, cause he’s metal. Or do I have to awkwardly explain the joke two more times before I’m a proper YouTuber?

Capturing thousands of innocent aliens, and forcefully converting them into mindless beasts...

I’m pretty sure I saw Alfred Molina conduct this experiment one time.

He even removed the heroes’ collective IQs so that he could shoehorn a cliffhanger on an already terrible game.

Thanks, cunt.

And honestly? When it comes to Sonic and chums at least, Eggman does let out a more openly sadistic side now and then. Need I mention that time when the doctor forced Sonic and two random buddies to make their way through a trap-infested island of his own creation? Not for the sake of nabbing Chaos Emeralds or anything of the sort mind you, he just wanted the blue motor mouth to suffer.

Images you can hear.

To make matters even worse, as befitting of his manchild tendencies, he’s ridiculously petty. How petty? Petty enough to abduct a little girl’s mother for no other reason than because Cheese completely trivialized his forces the girl was friends with Sonic and helped participate in the latest kicking of his own ass.

He only picked Vanilla because there was no Strawberry.

But at least his captives can admire the sheer variety that their captor has to offer. One of the greatest things about the doctor's style is that anything goes. With all due respect to Bowser, he tends to stick with his fiery castles (although he has been branching out recently), and plenty of other villains in gaming tend to be similarly stuck in their ways when it comes to tastes. Eggman, on the other hand, will create all sorts of fortresses and reside anywhere on the planet and beyond. It can be in the sky, in space, somewhere hot, somewhere cold, under the sea, in a circus... and every now and then, he might combine some of them together and thensome. So long as it's even vaguely mechanical in some way, his ground rules have already been ticked off.

Hang on a minute...

You know what else Eggman is? Relentless.

Persistence is a quality that most villains by their very nature share, lest they cease to be an effective antagonist. But once again, Rrrrrrrobotnik maxes out more than any other, and will often go to insane lengths to keep the current plan going, or if not that, then to spite Sonic.

Exhibit A: Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in which the grand finale consists of the madman throwing a gravity-shifting contraption your way, busting out a Kaiju-sized robo, escaping with the Master Emerald after his defeat, continuing to escape even after the Death Egg has been thoroughly destroyed, getting chased through the asteroid fields in space by Super Sonic, and only finally going down when the escape craft and the piloted mech controlling the escape craft are down. And all of this came after a grand adventure where, among other things, he destroyed an entire level just to kill you.

There are immortal omnipotents that put up less of a challenge.

“Looks like it’s time for Plan... *checks paper*... F.”

His relentlessness also reveals another side of the doctor that is simultaneously admirable and terrifying: He bows to no one. No one. Doesn’t matter who it is. Doesn’t matter how powerful they are. Doesn’t matter how much the odds are stacked against him. If another villain were to demand that he cower before them, the scientist would laugh and show through physical demonstration that this is not the way the egg rolls. Unless he’s absolutely unable to do so, he will give it his all every time, and even if he can’t, he’ll use his crafty mind to find some other way to get around the issue. You can beat him in battle, you can foil his plans, but you absolutely cannot break his resolve.

“Dad said it’s my turn to play with the Ruby. I know this, because I’m your dad.”

What about his relationship with those who actually serve him? Specifically, his own robots? Well for the most part, he treats them like absolute crap, what with verbally abusing them at every corner and being all too willing to go full Vader on them the moment they mess up. He IS capable of expressing fondness and giving praise to his more successful creations, like with Metal Sonic and Gamma, but even then, it’s a roundabout way of praising himself, since he’s the one who made them what they are. So basically, you’re only valuable to him if you make him look good.

Gaming in the Clinton Years in a nutshell.

And as for Sonic? Yeah, like with any legendary and long-lasting hero/villain dynamic, it’s obvious that Eggman has some degree of begrudging respect for his opponent. But if you think this respect would dissuade him from actually going through with his ambitions of rulership...

As the hedgehog’s apparent demise in Sonic Adventure 2 proves, as well as his defeat at the hands of Infinite and the subsequent six months of brutal conquest in Sonic Forces, Eggman is dead serious about his goals. If you think he’d get bored after conquering the world, he would simply expand his resources and have a crack at conquering the rest of the universe. When he says he hates that hedgehog, I’m inclined to believe that he means it, and although he may enjoy his “games” with Sonic to an extent, I also can’t see him wanting to remain stuck on square one forever.

If this were Sonic X, he’d just grieve.

By the way, the scene above? Undeniable proof that for all the doctor’s boasting, he’s not actually lying or exaggerating when he prides himself on his brilliance. Because when you get past his goofy exterior, when you look beyond the occasional, relatively minor mistake (*glares at IDW*), you’ll see that... yes. He IS brilliant. And not just in the science department either, although his countless robots and strongholds over the years are no doubt a testament to his credentials there. While he may prefer to go in big and bold, he can also be shrewd with his strategies when he wants to be.

Sonic’s aforementioned near-death experience, for example, was the result of Eggman turning the heroes’ own cunning plan on its head by being one step ahead of them. And in Sonic Unleashed, he lured his enemy into a trap, culminating with him cancelling out Super Sonic.

“...and pay the price for your Werehog gameplay...”

And after all those years of struggling, he finally got a giant monster under his complete control. “But he had help!”, you say? Yeah, from himself.

Did Flynn sleep through all this...?

Much like his inner nature as an evil bastard, Eggman's effectiveness is likewise commonly underestimated by writers. Yes, he occasionally makes mistakes. Yes, he occasionally overlooks details. Yes, he occasionally lacks foresight. But he is NOT stupid. A hero is only as good as their villain after all, and if Eggman is portrayed as a bumbling fool, then how can Sonic be a truly great hero? Eggman is humorous, sinister, and when the chips are down, competent.

...Did I mention that he's also a master Olympian?

The Execution: There's no surprises here. You knew from the moment you saw this review that my stance wasn't going to be anything less than 100% fanboy adoration. In that respect, this section almost feels redundant, because there's only so many ways I can say “Dr. Eggman is the fucking shit and I'm eternally grateful to Mr. Ohshima for bringing this absolute masterpiece into our world” without it getting repetitive. So to cap this review off, I'm going to very briefly compare his portrayals in other media, and explain why they tend to not be as good as the original SEGA Eggman.

“Cause they’re not balanced, right?” you ask. “Cause they veer too far in a particular direction? You're so predictable,” you add. To that I say:

1. Yeah, basically.

2. ...S-Shut up...

3. While the conclusion may be obvious, it's nonetheless important because as I mentioned previously, despite how straightforward this villain is, writers seem absolutely intent on not getting the point. There are loads of villains out there who share Eggman's talent of mixing hilarity and evil together with a bow of competence on top. Two of those villains are among the most famous supervillains of all time, in fact. You might have heard of them.

Joker can do it just fine. Green Goblin can do it just fine. And plenty of others can do it just fine. So why is it such an issue with Eggman? What is it about a round body and a long moustache that gets people to think “No, this guy is absolutely incapable of being comedic and threatening at the same time, no question, end of.” Is it because he’s a more cartoony franchise? Well, that can't be the case, because even Mario has a couple of beloved examples. Fawful, anyone? How about Dimentio? Cackletta? King Boo? K. Rool? Hell, you could even count Bowser himself depending on the portrayal.

Anyway, the point is, writers tend to miss the mark for one reason or another. With Sonic X for example, he wasn't too bad in the beginning, but as the show went on, he became exactly the toothless non-villain that many people misjudge him as. We all know that scene where he berates Black Narcissus for harming their captives (not for pragmatic reasons mind you, he genuinely took issue with the act on moral grounds, even though his own hands weren’t exactly clean either), but even before that point, he was doing such things as healing an injured Sonic without an ulterior motive, not taking any opportunity whatsoever to start conquering Sonic's world because he was pining for Sonic's attention, and being the Jiminy Cricket to Chris Thorndyke's Pinocchio. Why they thought the goddamn villain should be the moral conscience of this show remains an unanswered question, but at least it no longer influences how he's portrayed in the games.

Then you have the IDW comic, which is a similar tale of starting off decent and then careening wildly into the abyss, but for different reasons. Initially, he was built up to be in-line with his competent, foresight-packed self from Forces, with his inevitable return being met with dread, and a delightfully devilish scheme to match when he finally did so. But somewhere along the way, Ian Flynn thought that Eggman coming back from his amnesiac period and returning stronger than ever with a new minion and a deadly virus wasn't enough to up the stakes... so they decided to “up the stakes” by turning both the doctor and his new minion into massive imbeciles so as to justify their plot getting hijacked by the Deadly Six, a move so predictable yet infuriating that it got even me to turn against the Six. And the reason the Six got invited in-universe is because Starline decided he didn’t like being unique and devolved into Snively 2.0 behind Eggman’s back. All this from the alleged “best writer” for the series...

Yeah, same.

And then you have the Boom version, which shares basically the same issues as Sonic X but in a more mundane fashion. It's easier to dismiss because it's a comedy-centric show and his redesign makes it easier to separate him from mainline Eggman, and I'll gladly admit that he does have a lot of genuinely funny lines that redeem him a little bit. But yeah, too much of not being a true villain for my tastes.

Now this isn't to say that there haven't been portrayals in other media that are up there with the original. The versions that I consider better off than the ones above include...

- The OVA Eggman is pretty faithful all things considered, aside from his romantic feelings for Sara, which feels slightly off since the idea of Eggman loving anyone other than himself is incredibly unrealistic at best. But it doesn't actually soften or undermine his deviousness, so I'm willing to let it slide for an alternate take. Especially since he gave us the best Metal Sonic out there.

- AoStH is far from a perfect show, but there's a reason why even its detractors tend to treat its version of Robotnik like a national treasure. Admittedly most of that is because of the legendary Long John Baldry and the endless memes associated with this incarnation, but despite hailing from a comedy-focused show like Boom Eggman, this Robotnik still had a lot of legitimately dangerous moments, more than you'd think.

- And of course, Jim Carrey's Robotnik in the Sonic movie is just... *chef's kiss*

So obvious aesop though it may be, but you see what the more effective portrayals have in common, I assume?

Granted, this also isn't to say that SEGA Eggman himself has had a perfect track record. The decade's worth of upstagings and backstabbings by other villains should be enough of a counterpoint to that claim, and I've also made it clear now and then that I take issue with certain games regarding what they do with the doc, no matter how revered they may be by other fans. Sonic Adventure 2, for instance. I praised the fake emerald scene, and I do sincerely believe that he has a number of other badass moments in that game, but because Shadow was playing him like a fool the whole time, I can't help but have a bitter taste in my mouth when I look at the bigger picture.

So close to greatness, yet so far...

So in that case, which game do I think has Eggman's best showing overall? That's not in any way an easy question, but lack of dialogue aside, I'm gonna go with Sonic 3 & Knuckles again, as the classic journey through the sights of Angel Island plays out in a way that highlights just how determined, ruthless, and underhanded he is with carrying out his mission to revive the Death Egg by any means necessary. Other games do win out in other areas - SA1 for how bastardly he is, Forces for how cunning he is, Colours for his hilarious announcements, CD for using the scenery to show the effects of his actions, Mania for not letting the other villain walk all over him - but for the purest essence of the doctor at his cartoony yet competent best, I'd say S3&K is a reasonable bet.

And when it comes to all his many traits, which one do I find the most special one of all? Well again, far from easy to answer, but I think the coolest aspect about him is also one of the most overlooked. Robotnik, despite whatever superhuman qualities he may occasionally unveil, is for all intents and purposes a regular guy with a big brain. This might make him appear unimpressive when compared to your average Final Fantasy villain and the like, but if anything, it paints him in a more flattering light than expected, because he doesn't even need to be on their level to still be on the radar. It's easy to be a big bad threat when you're an ancient demon or an almighty god-like being, and you only have to wave a hand to cause armageddon. But when you're just Some Guy™ going up against superpowered opponents, meaning you have to earn your threat level the hard way, and you prove to be a challenge every step of the way regardless, because you're just THAT much of a genius... that's fucking awesome, no other way to put it.

And you know what else is awesome? You may not like Eggman, and you don’t have to like him, but like it or not, he is directly and indirectly responsible for a vast majority of the coolest and most loved moments and aspects of this franchise.

The opening to Unleashed? Eggman set up the scene.

Shadow running around and continuing to be part of the franchise? Eggman released him.

Blaze getting involved with Sonic’s world and continuing to be part of the franchise? Eggman’s half-responsible for that.

Metal Sonic? Eggman made him.

Egg Dragoon? Eggman.

Big Arm? Eggman.

Monkey Dude? Eggman.

That text is missing a blue checkmark.

This review is probably longer than the echidna family tree in Archie at this point, so I better finish it off. If it wasn't obvious from all the paragraphs I've belted out in this post, I'm very passionate about Eggman and the way he’s portrayed. Ever since I got into the Sonic franchise in 2003, I immediately took a liking to the doctor, and to this day, he remains not only my favourite Sonic villain, my favourite Sonic character, but also my favourite character period. Some may find it a weird or lame choice compared to other, “better” characters, but that's the way it is, and I ain't about to change it. I am very unlikely to ever stop enjoying the hell out of this villain, and even if he got irreversibly ruined in some way, I'd still continue to love what he was before that point.

Because yeah, he's not the deepest character ever, but... who cares? Is it not enough that we find something that appeals to us? When I got into Sonic, I was introduced to fantastic games, a likable cast, high quality soundtracks, beautiful worlds, numerous friends on this very site, and of course, the lovely treasure that is my partner. I may not have been with this franchise during the 90's, but it's given me just as much fun, nostalgia, and happiness as those who were. Despite the flawed titles, despite the fandom conundrums, I still love this series.

And I still love this absolute prick.

Crusher Gives Dr. Eggman a: TWO Thumbs Up!

[arrtemisia]

Hey so... If you could redo cannon Makoto what would you do? How would she change? I'm curious cause out of the main cast she was the only one that I just couldn't get a solid interest in (aside from Ann but that's just cause the idea of her being a fashion model confuses me more than anything I think)

God. So much stuff.

There's a couple big things about her that bug me, and none of them really change at all in her canon vs fanon portrayal, which means it's hard for me to enjoy her even in fanworks. In my opinion, I think her biggest flaw is that she's simply miscast, and her character would have worked much better as a confidant instead of a thief, which would've given her a place of her own to shine and avoid the weird dissonance between different aspects of her character (and this was actually their original plan, so Hifumi would have taken her place which. She would've fit in much better imo bc she's actually suffered under another's will like every single one of the others and she's an actual strategist instead of just """smart,""' but that's a topic for another post), but since we're talking about how I'd personally fix Makoto in the role she currently fills, I'm going to list some of the issues I take with her and potential solutions.

First of all, just to get it out of the way, she needs an actual reason to be here. She doesn't have one, full stop.

The big thing tying the thieves together is that they're all victims of abuse and oppression who rebel against their tormentors and want to prevent anyone else from suffering like they did. I'm not saying Makoto has never struggled, because she has, but it's really, really not the same type of struggle.

This leads to weird moments where everything about Makoto's personality and characterization, such as being a stickler for the rules, idolizing the police, etc mean that she has no in-character reason to stick with the thieves after kaneshiro is dealt with and should maybe even be opposing the thieves' way of doing things, but the plot drags her along anyway because the game really wants her to be a party member. And really, what's up with her awakening? She gets threatened once and then bang-boom-kapow she has a persona? It's weak.

Also before anyone says "well all those things about her personality change when she awakens and she sheds her good girl personality and yada yada," no she doesn't, actually, and I'm getting there I promise

The easiest solution here is also the most drastic. Swap when Makoto and Akechi join. This kills two birds with one stone; Makoto gets an actual reason to awaken through Sae, and Akechi's betrayal hits harder because he's pretending to be with you for longer (although admittedly this is much less needed on Akechi's part ever since royal).

Not only does this give Makoto a much stronger reason to awaken and join in the first place (Sae starts twisting into something horrible and Makoto wants to help both stop and save her), but it also gives her an internally consistent reason to stick around. Before, unlike the others (who all at least have "I want to stop others from feeling like I did," or in Futaba's case, "I wanna find the ppl who killed my mom."), once Kaneshiro is done with, Makoto has no real big personal reason to stick around other than "I'm a thief now and the plot says so ig." Now, of COURSE she'd want to go after Shido because he's the one that was manipulating her sister, and after that of COURSE she'd want to help take down mr divine sippy cup in order to get Shido tried and jailed.

However, if we're not going to shuffle around the order of party members bc that'd nuke the canon plot a little, then we need to rework the entire Kaneshiro arc and/or Makoto's backstory and values as a whole. Yeah this is why the first solution was the easy one.

I'm going to go in-depth about how I feel Makoto's personality and values should be reworked later I'M GETTING THERE, so I'll talk about that then. As for reworking Kaneshiro, I... don't have a whole lot of ideas. The palace itself is fine, it has one of the coolest atmospheres in the game (c'mon, there's got to be a fun bank heist in a game like this), but Makoto's connection with him is very weak. Maybe have it be that he was extorting her for years in secret and she never said anything? Maybe have him be the one that ordered the hit on her father? I'm not sure what would be strong enough to match to the other palace leaders, without feeling forced. I'll have to come up with more ideas for this one.

The second big issue I have with her is less of one specific thing and more of a collection of smaller problems that all come from the same source. She waltzes in, takes over, and starts acting like she's the boss of things. She then names herself the "strategist" and yet only ever states the obvious and, to use a word I hate, mansplains things to you that you already learned two palaces ago. She's constantly condescending and passive agressive to the other team members, especially Ann and Ryuji, berates everyone for not being as naturally book smart as her when all the other characters are smart in their own ways and just not good at academia, all the while everyone around her, even characters that normally wouldn't take that (ryuji, ann) or are too prideful to admit to anyone bring better (mona), are constantly like "You're so cool, Makoto!"

It's a classic case of show don't tell, and rhe game is obsessed with telling you that Makoto is "smart" and "cool." Once she joins the team, all the characters that were originally shown to be smart in their own ways are never allowed to say anything meaningful ever again bc Makoto is the "smart" one. She never does anything particularly different compared to the other party members, but the game is constantly insisting she's special.

I'm very hesitant to call her a mary sue, because I don't think she is one, and also I disagree with the use of that term at all as these days it's just meant to devalue powerful characters that happen to be girls, but I definitely think she's emblematic of a common writing flaw that can lead to mary sues. The problem with making a character the "smart" one as a personality trait instead of something that just comes naturally is that you have to dumb down everyone else's characterization to make them look smarter or cooler by comparison. It means that the character you're trying to prop up bends everyone else around them, making them act in ways they normally wouldn't in order to make the one character you're trying to look cool seem better by comparison.

This has an easy solution: cut that shit out. Have her slowly find her place on the team naturally instead of forcing her way in as a pseudo-leader. Don't give every single "well, duh" line to her, and cut the scenes where she stands around explaining obvious things you already know in a condescending manner so she looks smarter. Let the other characters actually act like themselves when they're in the same room as her instead of bending around her to prop her up. Have her treat those characters with respect in turn, bc for all intents and purposes when it comes to thief stuff they are her senpai, instead of just having her act like she's better than them, or boss them around, or be passive agressive about the fact that their grades are bad. Show that other characters are smart in other ways instead of acting like Makoto's book smarts are the end-all be-all. And for fuck's sake, stop acting like "smart" and "punches stuff real good" are personality traits, which leads me into my last big point.

Makoto and Queen don't really feel like the same character. Okay, so to explain this, let's walk through her awakening again.

Makoto is a good girl who's a stickler for the rules, sucks up to authority, idolizes the police, is obsessed with her grades and academic performance, and looks down on others who don't do the same. A couple people call her useless and then she gets threatened by a mob boss, after which she decides to live her life for herself and completely shed her good girl lifestyle and rebel against everyone pressuring her.

That is, except for the teensy tiny detail where she doesn't.

Nothing significant about her personality changes all post her awakening and joining the thieves, aside from the part where she sucks up to authority maybe a little less. She's still uptight, her grades (and the grades of those on her team) are still her top priority, she still idolizes the law and those enforcing it.

Y'see, persona has a bit of a common problem with saying one thing about a character, be it making a reveal or saying they're gonna change in some big way, but not fully committing to it. You can see it most in p4 (party members saying they're gonna quit/stop/do whatever and then backtracking in the last two ranks of their social link), but it's rarely so severe that it completely ruins their personality and character arc as a whole. Makoto, I feel, is the main exception.

The writers want Makoto to become this tough, rebellious biker queen who oozes badassery in every move and will never follow anyone's wishes for her ever again, but they also want to keep her old personality of the uptight naive rule-following law-abiding academic. So, instead of altering one to better fit the other, they try to do both... badly.

Instead of integrating the two parts of her personality, it just feels like she swaps between them whenever the plot calls for it which is really, really jarring. She'll be stuttering about following the rules and getting to know her generation one second, and then the next she'll be yelling about mowing down shadows with her motorcyle the next. It feels like Queen and Makoto are two separate uninteresting half-characters, with only a couple personality traits each, instead of one whole well-rounded character.

Either rework Makoto's thief aesthetic to better suit her personality as a whole and give her something other than "I'm totally not a good girl anymore" to make her compelling, or actually commit to Makoto shedding her past life everyone around her had forced on her and change her personality. Have her grades start to slip, have her talk back to Sae, change the way she dresses so it's rougher and less perfect, hell, maybe even have her quit student council. Just, anything to make her more well-rounded as a character.

I have some other nitpicks with her here and there, like the fact that her confidant is actually just Eiko's confidant and doesn't give Makoto herself any development, or the way the game keeps trying to set her up as Joker's waifu or whatever, but those are just that; nitpicks. The three big things I mentioned earlier - her not having a compelling personal reason to be a part of the thieves, the way the writers shove her into the spotlight by putting down everyone around her, and the fact that her characterization is just one badass half and one smart half that don't mesh and have little else in between - are the problems I feel are what's actually holding her character back.

Again, I do think that all of this stems from the fact that she's miscast, but it's too late to fix that now. While I personally really dislike Makoto, I do kind of understand her appeal for others when she's written well, and she's a totally valid character to like. I just wish she was portrayed better.

(Also, if anyone wants to reblog this, feel free I ask that you please don't put this in Makoto's main character tag. I know how much it sucks to get a bunch of negativity in a character's main tags as I am an Edelgard fe3h fan)

[mbti-notes]

Are you familiar with Little Women? Is Beth INFP or ISFJ? I don't really see enough Ne or Fe. I'm wondering how to determine the aux when her life/dev was cut short. Is Amy ESFP or ENFJ? You've said that using the tert is more likely to lead to problems, but how to differentiate an impulsive kid or unhealthy Se? I don't know what Laurie is and I'd love to hear any thoughts of yours. Thanks

I haven’t read the book. I’ve watched the 1994 and 2019 film adaptations and read some literary commentary. I don’t know whether I’ve captured the true spirit of the characters in my mind yet. 

The story is a period piece at this point, which means that context is very important for getting into the minds of the characters. That is, we should avoid projecting our current understanding about personality expression onto past eras. Theirs was a time when people, especially women, were not afforded the freedom that we have today to be oneself and pursue one’s own happiness. They were also quite limited in their exposure to the wider world, thus, new and diverse learning opportunities were rare and to be cherished. Despite being in financial hardship and difficult political times, I believe that the girls had a good moral upbringing. The fact that the girls eventually learned the right things to focus on in life is a credit to their mother’s strong and steady influence. Given this backdrop, I think there will be more examples of healthy than unhealthy function use. The girls are well-adjusted people.

Yes, it is more difficult to assess children, as they do not express the functions in typical adult fashion. Adults have the benefit of many years of feedback about their function use and they are more consistent in their function expression, whereas children are in their experimental phase and often misfire in their attempts to use a function. That is, there is a lot of “noisy” data to sort through when observing kids.

Beth

I’ve often seen words like “shy”, “pious”, and “industrious” used to characterize her. I don’t think introvert is in doubt. Her manner is reserved, she prefers to keep to herself, and she is self-motivated. I don’t think F is in doubt. She cares very deeply and her judgments/decisions are largely informed by her feelings. 

Other than the expected imaginative play of all children, I don’t see any evidence of Ne, and she should be showing some significant signs at her age. Being P means being a prospector of information. She lacks the curious, exploring, and adventurous mindset of NPs. Shy and reserved INFPs still find ways to explore the world safely such that they feel brave in their own way (a great example that pops to mind is the character Amélie from the film of the same name). But Beth is perfectly content to close herself off from practically every opportunity to venture out into the world, and there were some very good opportunities presented to her that NPs typically wouldn’t be able to resist. She prefers that life is tightly structured around familiar people, routines, and comfort zones, where she is able to feel in control of her own realm. Of all the sisters, she seems to enjoy her routines the most, as she is most likely to perform her chores and duties without complaint or requiring admonishment. Dutiful, obedient, routine, and “industrious” behavior does not come naturally to INFPs (i.e. not without coercion of some kind), in fact, they tend to really struggle with it unless they are motivated by deep passion. Therefore, there’s compelling evidence that Si is the higher function.

One of the main arguments I’ve seen for INFP revolves around Beth’s strong moral beliefs. If every person with strong moral beliefs is Fi dom, the world would be overrun with them. Why is it that, of all the types, SFJs are known for being the best caregivers? Let’s not do them a disservice by downplaying the strong moral beliefs that FJs are also capable of. It’s more important to look at the source of the beliefs and how exactly they are expressed. 

To me, the word “pious” invokes Si more than Fi. A pious person is a rule-abider at heart, someone who deeply respects tradition and ritualistic expressions of it. A pious person also faithfully corrects un-pious behavior, as a form of self-improvement. Challenging oneself to be “proper” (Si) is somewhat different than feeling “good” (Fi). I would argue that Beth’s morality comes from her sense of what is proper and “expected” of people, as picked up in very literal terms from her mother’s pithy advice. Beth is acutely aware of how her suffering might impact others and tries her best to put people at ease. She also never needs to be told twice and she doesn’t struggle with moral decisions in the way that her sisters do. 

INFPs often feel conflicted when decision-making because they tend to be full-to-the-brim with conflicted feelings after having prospected too many Ne possibilities. Beth does not seem to suffer this common problem because she’s not just about following her feelings and she’s not as full of conflicted feelings as one would expect of INFPs (i.e. F is not dominant). She is naturally good at managing feelings and keeping them in check because her main approach to information is to structure it with rules and regulations. And purposely keeping her world very contained to the known and simple is a way of making doubly sure that the rules are never difficult to follow. Luckily for her, she lived during a time when it was still relatively easy to choose a small and simple life, away from the stressors of the world at large. She didn’t get to experience the weeds of developing Fe because she purposely kept life simple socially, and then she died before she was forced out into the real world. 

Amy

Aside from the impulsiveness one would expect of children, I’m not sure I see other significant signs of Se dom. Fortunately, we do get to see her grow up, and the mature Amy doesn’t resemble ESFP. 

One of the main differences that I look for between ESFPs and ENFJs is the degree to which they “think” about how to socialize and fit in. ENFJs approach socializing in a much more complicated way than ESFPs, for better and for worse. ENFJs are more “calculating” socially (for lack of a better word) because Fe relies on knowledge of social norms to achieve social acceptance. ESFPs tend to fit in more naturally by virtue of being themselves and showing off whatever obvious talents or good qualities they have. The more ESFPs “think” about how to socialize, the more they fumble socially, because they get further and further away from themselves (i.e. betrayal of Fi + poor use of Ni). The more carefully ENFJs think about how to socialize, the more they succeed at climbing the social ladder, because they are better able to abstract the essential rules for socializing well (i.e. good use of Fe + Ni). 

As a result of this main difference in “complexity” of socializing, ENFJs tend to think/talk a lot more about fitting in (how to do it and how to behave the right way), whereas ESFPs tend to reject abstract talk about “how to” and prefer to “just do it”, since complexity only leads them astray. Notice how Amy gives Jo and Laurie unsolicited advice about how to be “better”, i.e., more acceptable. ESFPs aren’t likely to interfere with people like that because they don’t possess complicated “social worries” to project onto others.

Amy often gets obsessed about particular things that she believes are necessary for “moving up in the world”, such as: physical appearance, material possessions, matters of etiquette, impressing the right people, learning the right crafts, developing the right skills, and so on and so on. Moving up in the world seems to be her main character motivation AND she’s a natural at it. ESFPs, with the strength and conviction of healthy Fi, tend to dislike/resent the idea of social hierarchy, so it pains them a lot more to feel forced into participating in categorizing people along those lines, and, in the end, they will feel that social rewards are meaningless if obtained through betraying Fi. ENFJs are much more willing to play the long social game, even when they are aware that it’s all an act, because Fe benefits much more greatly than Se from the rewards of social status. In the end, Amy makes the correct decision to prioritize her well-being over the superficial trappings of social status (Fe+Ni well-balanced).

Laurie

I’m not sure about him, either, because he’s a supporting character and we aren’t privy to all of his motivations. Being rich affords him a carefree life, so his personality development is rather slow due to not being challenged to grow. I think he’s introverted as he’s modest and unassuming, not one to actively seek out attention, esteem, or glory. I think he’s P as he doesn’t seem to require any structure and is content amusing himself with whatever he likes moment to moment. He seems to scrape by just fine no matter where he is or what he’s doing, and he doesn’t aspire to much more than drifting along. However, I think his lack of aspiration isn’t a natural part of his personality but more a result of him being bogged down by unresolved heartbreaks. He feels somewhat alone in the world (family issues). He dreams of being with Jo but she refuses him. He dreams of being a musician but feels torn about disrespecting his benefactor. He dreams of various careers but lacks the talent.

What’s his main motivation? I think he would love nothing more than to devote himself wholeheartedly to the people he loves. He’s basically willing to accept any sort of life as long as he gets to be with his loved ones. This deep romanticism indicates F, and if also P, then Fi dom. His long and deep devotion to the IDEAL of being with Jo might indicate Ne. Later, he longs for the past and his childhood relationships with Jo and the girls, which might be an indication of Fi-Si loop. He has mythologized Jo, their past together, and the future they could’ve had. It takes both Jo and Amy to make him face facts. A running theme in the book is how women are expected to be proper for men (so as to be a good influence and/or not lead them astray), and the sisters saving Laurie from himself is a good example of that.

Observe how he sizes up the girls and the ways in which he tries to care for and protect them. One thing that he seems to value a lot is “authenticity” and he tends to call them out for inauthentic behavior throughout the years. He had a hand in Amy re-evaluating her priorities. In return, Amy taught him that "authenticity” is a privilege (as women didn’t have the freedom to be authentic) and he came to admire her ambition and tenacity. He seems to think that he’s good at sizing people up, but she’s on a different level. I think that he was impressed by her blunt assessment of his lifestyle, probably because he had never encountered that sort of tough love (aka honesty) before. It seems that he needed someone to be tough with him, which is common for INFPs. Jo was always the star of the show, too self-involved to encourage his growth. Amy opened up his mind, which he seemed to sorely need for moving forward (perhaps Ne resolution).

[covairecity-promo]

~ WANTED CHARACTER! ~

❝ I’ve dug my grave, made my choices. ❞

Name: Alden Fields

Species: Werewolf

Age: 120

Sexuality: Pansexual

Prisoner 

Face Claim:  Milo Ventimiglia

✑ BACKGROUND: Some men go to war to defend their country, to bring a sense of pride to their family and honor to themselves. Alden went to war to escape his life. The broken home in Iowa - he was born in in 1898 - was difficult enough to look at, let alone live in with two brothers, one younger sister, an abusive father and a mother deteriorating like the peeling wallpaper. When he was 18, old enough to enlist, he left the slanted structure with nothing but a few things on his back and the promise he’d return to save his fellow siblings. Living in his home had felt like hell and surely the war couldn’t be any worse than what he had already endured. Safe to say, he was wrong.

He quickly found himself shipped overseas and landing in the deepest trenches. The bloodshed and disease that spread throughout the muck was more than most men could handle. It was only natural that Alden adapted to his environment and numbed most of his feelings and emotions to get through the day, if he wasn’t shot and killed that is. Two years into his term something changed, something happened to the man that was more natural for his blood than the ways he had adapted to the life into which he’d thrown himself: he changed from a human into a wolf.

Keep reading for full biography & visit our group!

Alden had never known he was a werewolf. His relationship with his father and mother wasn’t commendable and they certainly didn’t talk about their dark little secrets. He didn’t know his father’s abusive actions were the result of rage from the primal characteristics that surged beneath his skin, that his sexual rampages were a cause of the moon’s influence, and how he always seemed gone the day of the full moon. Alden discovered all these truths the hard way when his skin ripped apart and his human form was shed for that of a wolf. His werewolf gene had been triggered late and all his comrades around him had paid for it.

A fleet found him three days later in a trench soaked with blood and littered with bodies, and thought his squad had been ambushed. But Alden couldn’t let his enemies take the fall for what he had done. He confessed that he was the one at blame, frantic and terrified by his own actions. His fellow soldiers condemned his confession as war trauma babbling, and so he was carried off to be examined by numerous doctors till the next full moon when all doubts were erased. While Alden wanted them to cure him of this alarming disease, the army had different intentions: they had before them a super-soldier, a man who could take a bullet, be ripped and torn by sharp wire and resurface alive. A creature that could devour fleets; they used him as a weapon, even going as far as making him bite other soldiers to amass an indestructible army.

Alden hated it, being treated like an animal and set loose on others like a wild dog. Towards the end of the war he made a run for it, condemned for fleeing his post and hunted by the government. It was only years later that he was found, captured by the Germans who found identification on him and revealed him to be a U.S. soldier. Not long after, they discovered something wasn’t right when he was forced to stand among other soldiers and a fire squad. He was the only one left standing.

Bleeding and barely conscious, holding but a heartbeat, he was taken to the nearest concentration camp and offered up to the sadistic scientist held there to assess the indestructible creature they’d happened to find. It was there in Auschwitz that Alden met the infamous Josef Mengele who was very interested in the wolf’s heredity and genetics. The doctor’s order was to utilize whatever Alden had, and find a way to weaponize it or him for military purposes. But first, Alden suffered a great many tortures if not for the sake of sating the man’s curiosity, than to test his endurance.

The “treatments” on Alden ultimately physically severed his conscious connection with his werewolf side. Meaning simply—when he shifts under the full moon, he has absolutely no control over his actions and no thought process. He is merely a wild wolf till morning.

It wasn’t till the war had nearly ended that Alden was released. Or rather, stolen. He thought he had been rescued by a human SS officer that worked around the labs Mengele’s patients were contained in. It was only later the man’s true intentions were revealed. He was a hunter, but not the hunters wolves typically encountered, no, this man was a collector. He hunted breeds to add to his own personal display. To him, Alden was a toy soldier, beautifully broken and a delight to behold. Held in the remnants of an old warehouse were cages, holding thought to be mystical creatures, anomalies and the abnormal. Most were just freaks of nature, creatures born with different genetic structures that added a head here or tail there. Alden became something of a pet to this human, confined in a small cell constructed of silver and made to abide by the man’s rules and forced to take part in his games.

For 76 years Alden was part of this collection until the hunter’s son sold him in 2020 to Covaire City so he could acquire enough money to purchase a vampire to starve and force to bite him in order to gain immortality. He has remained locked away at the slave castle ever since…

✑ PERSONALITY: Alden has been fighting a war his entire life. He encountered his first battlefield in his childhood home, his father would cast the first strike; his younger brother would fall. He found his second battlefield beneath barbed wire, looming above the trenches. The loss of his connection with his primal side has a direct cause into the wolf falling into an omega status in Covaire, aside his lack of money. He has no ability to communicate with a pack. He will never experience the full moon like the others, his veins run hot and his vision becomes clouded till the dark of night consumes him. Alden has lost a part of himself he can never retrieve. He has lost those he loved: his brothers and sister. Loss is a casualty of war. After the actions of the Hunter Alden settled into bitter submission, he doesn’t fight the cages he’s put into as much as he did before. But there is a fire in his eyes, a call for a rebellion. Given the chance, he would not hesitate to strike those who have kept him captive. He’s numb to most emotions, distant, quiet. The years of abuse he’s endured have made him distrustful and hesitant around others. His words are simple and crafted, made to please the ears of the masters and mistresses they find in a way that cannot be misinterpreted. To most prisoners he is somewhat kind; he feels like all those kept in the Chateau are prisoners of war and does what he can to make their circumstances more bearable. Few ever get close with the wolf however, the Hunter taught him one grave and horrific truth: the beast inside him, unleashed during the full moon will attempt to murder any of those close to him, friend or foe.

MAIN || PLOT || SPECIES || CHARACTERS || EVENTS || APPLY || MOBILE

[scullysexual]

hunger games au (with mulder and scully)

Just a little self-indulgence fic and an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m sorta proud of it rn and decided to post it. This is pretty much for myself and I’m not gonna much in terms of making sure everyone reads it. If you like it, feel free to let me know if not bye. Not much is gonna be changed in terms of plot, this is literally going to be fanfiction in it’s finest form. It might have elements of a crossover if I can’t find the appropriate xf character to play the hunger games character but we’ll see. Words: 2809.

- - - 

There’s nothing there except a swirling black void, harsh waves crashing, screams of men, and a father drowning in the sea.

Dana wakes just before her father goes under. Her stomach tightly coiled with a realisation that her consciousness has yet to remember.

It’s chilly, the tips of Dana’s fingers red raw from the cold night. She tucks them beneath the blankets and rolls over to the other side. Adjacent to her lies her sister, buried beneath three blankets. Only the tip of her noise is really visible, the rest of her obscured by blankets or vibrant red hair.

Not too far away is her younger brother spread out in the space left by their elder. And finally, on the double bed near the corner, her mother sleeps.

Dana rises, pulling off the covers and bracing the chill. She dresses quickly and quietly, careful not to wake her remaining family members. She pulls on yesterday’s clothes, her boots, clips her hair back in its familiar style and heads towards the kitchen.

“Morning.”

Bill Jr. sits at the table, lacing up his shoes, his miner’s hat beside him.

His presence startles Dana.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” Dana says. She makes her way towards the jug of water.

“I’m going now,” he tells her.

Bill stands almost immediately after and picks up his hat.

“There’s not a lot of bread left. Make sure you leave enough for Mom, Missy, and Charlie.”

Dana’s eyes move to the basket holding the bread. Bill was right, there’s barely any left. She adds trading with the baker onto her mental list of things to do today.

Bill hasn’t gotten far down the street before Dana’s following him but he doesn’t slow down to walk with her or even take note that she’s behind him. It’s no bother to Dana anyway, as he turns left, she turns right, headed towards the woods.

Technically, entering this area of the District is illegal. Hunting and trading is high on the list of crimes and the punishment for it is death. At least it should be. Most turn a blind-eye to it. The Peacekeepers that guard the city are just as poor and hungry as many of the other residents and while only a few will venture into the woods themselves to procure food and plants, they won’t say anything if they catch you trading.

It’s the Capitol you really need to look out for and their cameras. While it’s not been confirmed, it’s rumoured that they hide cameras so as to spy on the Districts. Dana has yet to find any cameras walking around town and with the fence meant to keep wild animals out, she doubts there would be any cameras in the woods.

But still, she bares it in mind when she enters.

There was a time when she didn’t need to hunt. There was a time she didn’t live in the Seam. Most residents of District 12 are miners however her father was one of the fortunate ones not to have that profession. He was a sailor, in charge of carting coal in a ship back and forth to the Capitol. He was also one of the rare ones to be allowed to leave.

He used to say the Scullys were for fit for District 4- the fishing district. There was even some speculation that the family was from there originally and somehow ended up in this district.

She can still the remember the house they lived in, caught between the Merchant Town and the Seam. Her only problem back then was having a sense that she didn’t belong anywhere. Too poor for the Merchant Town residents, too rich for the Seam residents. Even when they had to move, the Seam residents still viewed her as one of the more fortunate ones.

The move had been caused by the death of her father. Caught in a storm just off District 4, his ship had capsized, killing all members onboard. The family had been notified of his death via an eviction notice. Her mother had crumbled, becoming just a shell of her former self. Billy had tried to become the man of the house and, in theory, he was but he was too much of a rule abider and even when things began to take a sharper turn for the worse, he still wouldn’t venture into the woods to hunt. Melissa was just too soft to hunt. Dana had tried to teach her but Missy had started crying at the sight of the wounded creature. Charlie, the youngest, was just too young at the time. He was seven- too scared and confused to really do it anything. So it had all fallen down to Dana, at eleven years old, her stomach grumbling, it came down to her to get the food on the table and it had been that way ever since.

Dana follows the path of stamped grass and weeds all the way to the entrance to the woods. Not a real entrance, just heavy-duty netting that’s been ripped and nobody’s bothered to fix. The fence is supposed to be electrified all day, every day but there’s barely enough electricity to power the important buildings, nobody wants to waste it on this. Still though, Dana listens for the faint buzzing and if there isn’t one, it’s safe and she sneaks through.

The woods don’t scare her anymore. There are still the wild animals lurking about but as soon as she’s armed with her dagger and spear she feels practically invincible against them.

She reaches for her weapons now, hidden behind a fallen tree, deep down in a hole. It’s nothing fancy, metal is hard to come by so the spear is just pieces of wood stuck together but it’s effective and sharp and does the job.

Her dagger, however, is the real treasure. On one of her father’s trips a man had given it to him and when her father returned he kept it hidden from the rest of his family, presenting it to her the first time they came out here.

While they had no reason to hunt when her father was alive, her dad had still taught her to. That had surprised her, he always appeared much like Bill Jr., always following the laws. Until Bill, however, William Scully was smart. He knew his profession made him stand out against the miners, knew the Capitol would see him as a looming problem, knew that one of these days his time would be up, his family would finally suffer the consequences and they would need every help they could get.

The dagger was expensive. A green and gold handle with real sharp steel at the end of it. They would have a lot of anything they wished for if Dana sold it but none of her family members knew about it and it was the last gift her father ever gave her.

“What took you so long?”

Dana turns to see Ethan standing behind her, already prepared with his bow on his back and his own wooden spear at his side. He was the closest thing she had to a friend, having found each other the first time Dana fully ventured into the woods without her father. She had been scared when she saw him, tried to run for it but fell over instead. Ethan had been furious, screaming at her that she had scared his dinner away. Dana felt tears prick her eyes but she would not cry even as he called her stupid and useless. Finally he asked what she was here for.

“To hunt,” Dana said meekly.

Ethan had laughed, shaking his head and walked away.

A few days past since at incident and she hadn’t seen him again, not until she was trying to kill a rabbit. Leaning against a tree, watching her struggle. He hadn’t announced himself, for the longest time Dana didn’t even know he was behind her but an arrow had pierced the rabbits head and that’s when she spun around and saw him.

After that they became hunting partners. He would shoot the smaller animals with his arrows, her the bigger animals with her spear. Eventually, Dana had mastered stealth. She knew how to sneak up on the animals without startling it and kill it with her dagger.

She also looked for plants, too. Some for eating, some for healing. There were no hospitals here, most replied solely on homecare or you could pay a visit to the Scullys where they would stitch you up and allow you to live a little longer.

And that was her day. Hunting animals and trading in the early mornings, school till three o’clock, and a healer in the evenings.

All except today.

“How are you feeling?” Ethan asks as they begin their usual route through the woods.

Dana thinks back to the way her stomach coiled when she woke. The worry for herself, for her family. For Ethan and his family.

“How everyone feels on this day,” she answers.

This day. By law, written as a holiday but in reality it is as far away from one as possible. School is shut, businesses close early, everyone meets at the Square by 2pm, dressed in their best preparing themselves to cry themselves to sleep or sigh in relief that they have survived another year.

“We’ve been lucky this far,” says Ethan with a shrug.

It’s all bravado, she knows. He’s just as worried as she is. But she has gotten lucky. Three siblings and herself and not once since becoming of age has any of them got chosen. Still, each year becomes more nerve-wrecking. Melissa’s eighteen, her name is in that box eight times. Bill’s aged out, thank god. Dana lost count how many times her name has been entered (taking tesserae means your name is added each time as a trade but there’s only enough for one person so Dana’s had to take out one for each member of her family already making her name being entered four times more. The tesserae given out isn’t enough to last which means taking out more and in return her name being entered multiple times more). It’s only Charlie, who only turned twelve last month, who’s name has been entered once. He’s the least of her worries.

Ethan isn’t much better. While he only has an older brother, who has also now aged out, he’s just as poor as her, his name is also in that box more than it should be.

“Come on,” says Ethan pulling her thoughts away from boxes and names. “Let’s focus on hunting. Maybe find something nice to celebrate later.”

Dana watches him walk off for a moment, temporarily stunned.

“You’re really not worried?” she asks.

He stops and looks over to her, his eyes scarily vacant.

“We don’t need to worry till 2.”

He’s right, Dana realises. Worry makes her clumsy, loud, and if she wants her family and herself to eat tonight, she needs to push that worry away.

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

Dana pushes the front door open carrying her winnings in a bag at her side. She’d done good today, most people at the Hob were anxious to sell before they had to shut down for the day. In the woods, she had managed to kill three squirrels, earning her one and a half loafs of bread from the baker, a few coins for selling the strawberries, and even a turkey to eat tonight. The greens she found, she kept herself, rabbit pelts she traded for a blanket, and a few herbs to add to the medicine cabinet.

Melissa greets her when she enters, already dressed in what looks to be one of their mother’s old dresses from when she was younger. Her hair is pulled back and braided in parts. She looks beautiful but then Melissa always looks beautiful no matter what.

“Dana’s back!” she calls.

“Send her in!” Mom shouts back.

Melissa takes the bag, putting the stuff away and Dana enters the bedroom here her mother is currently having a fight with Charlie’s hair.

“Put that on.” She nods to the floral dress laying on the bed.

Dana hates dresses but it’s almost customary to wear one. That or a skirt. Something feminine.

“That’s gonna have to do.” Maggie pats Charlie on the shoulder telling him he can go. “Is Bill back yet?” Maggie asks.

“He wasn’t in the kitchen,” Dana answers as she climbs into the dress.

“I don’t want us being late,” Maggie mutters.

Her mother almost becomes unbearable on this day. Stressing and running around like times is going to go quicker just because it’s today. They could have a whole 24 hours and she’ll still be worrying that if someone isn’t back at this time it’s just going to make them late.

Once dressed, Dana sits as Maggie pulls the clips out of her hair along with leaves and dirt.

“If you’d come back sooner you’d have had time to bathe.”

“Sorry, I was out getting our dinner for tonight.” There’s a harshness to Dana’s tone as she says the words. She still felt a slight resentment towards her mother. She went away in many of her children’s eyes, leaving them to fend for themselves. Had it not been for Dana, Maggie would have watched all her children die of starvation and not done anything about it while she withered away herself.

Her mother’s proclaims of she was grieving weren’t a good enough excuse for Dana. They were all grieving after all, all coming to terms with his new life, yet they didn’t stay in bed all day.

Her mother was better now but Dana was waiting for the day she would disappear again. It happened once, it can happen again.

There’s a slight tug on her hair in response to her words and Dana tells herself to keep quiet.

Melissa enters and seats herself on the other stool. Her presence is sure to stop any more awkward conversations and stray comment between Dana and their mother.

“You okay?” Missy asks.

Dana nods. She tries to draw on Ethan’s strength, his optimism.

“Lasted this long, haven’t I?”

Melissa smiles. “One more year and it’s over.” She’s talking about herself. One more year and it is over for her. She no longer has to worry. She just has to suit up for the mines or follow her mother and become an official healer.

A silence passes over all three women for a moment. Dana watches her mother braid her hair in the mirror, Melissa messes with one of the clips her sister was wearing earlier. It’s quiet except for the sound of the door opening and Charlie saying hi to their brother. There’s a bit of chatter between the two by the door but nothing the girls really pay attention to.

“It’s barbaric.”

Dana’s eyes widen and Melissa stops playing with the clip. They eye each other in shock as if their mother has just broken the law or something.

In some cases, she just did.

Negative words aren’t supposed to be said about the Games, even in the safety of their houses. They’re a holiday, a festivity meant to be enjoyed and looked forward to.

At least that is the case in the Capitol and the Career Districts.

In all the others, the Games are seen, as their mother just said, as barbaric. Brutal, cruel, and vicious. To put 24 kids in an arena and watch them fight to the death is viewed with the heaviest of contempt. But it’s a punishment and a reminder of a history that can’t be forgotten.

“You should watch what you say,” says Dana calmly. “People could be listening.”

Melissa’s eyes look wearily around the room as if trying to find who could be listening. Dana doesn’t believe they are but on a day like today, she couldn’t be completely sure about that.

“You’re done,” says Maggie moving away. “I’ll make sure Bill looks presentable and then we’ll leave.”

Dana runs her hand through the braid, silently admiring her mother’s work.

“Do you really think they’re listening to us?” Melissa whispers. “Patty Bullock said that at school once. Nobody believed her but…”

“They film everything today, don’t they?” Dana says, her attention still on her hair. “Do you really think they start at 2?”

It was almost unheard of for Dana to speak like this but she had her doubts about the validity of this theory. Still, it was good to be mindful of it’s possible truth.

“You sound like a boy in my class,” says Melissa. “His nickname is Spooky.”

The door opens with Charlie telling them it’s time to go. They follow each other out, headed for the Square, and Dana doesn’t think much more of this Spooky.

[gascon-en-exil]

Mercilessly Judging the Men of Fòdlan: The Alliance

It’s been a long time coming, over eight months in fact, but now that it may be assumed that the last of the DLC has been released and the fandom as a whole has settled comfortably into its various camps I think there’s no better time than now to answer that burning question: how raunchily, outrageously gay can the male cast of Three Houses possibly be? For those unfamiliar with this fun little series of mine, I’ve been applying my extensive knowledge and experience of gay male sex and hookup culture to the men of Fire Emblem, originally as a way of reckoning with the refusal of the games themselves to provide me with any worthwhile self-insert M/M content. I stand by that premise for FE16 - you all know how absolutely nothing appeals to me about m!Byleth or his prospects on that score - but in the years since my first outing of merciless judgment with Awakening that idea has expanded into something broader, an imaginative modern AU of sorts where all these guys are into men (if not always exclusively) and willing to put themselves out there in the lewd and semi-anonymous world of hookup apps in search of their preferred carnal delights.

A note on organization before we begin, as this material is too long to cram into one post. Excluding Byleth (as Avatars and their spawn always are for this project) there are twenty-one playable male characters in Three Houses. This makes for an even threeway division to preserve the eponymous conceit of the game, but not a particularly neat one. Aligned with the Leicester Alliance I therefore have below the male Deer, Almyran and former Goneril indentured servant Cyril, runaway Alliance noble Balthus, and Alois because his biography states that he’s the son of a merchant family. The Alliance is the nation most associated with successful mercantilism, so there.

The Empire

The Kingdom

Claude

Indecipherable from the start. The alluring shirtless selfie and goofy profile read like a fun and easy lay, but rather than sending nudes he engages in long meandering conversations that last for days or weeks before the first meeting. An expert at drawing people out while revealing almost nothing of himself in return, this takes on more literal dimensions when talk and pictures get more explicit; he’ll respond to dick and ass pics with vaguely positive emojis but deflect repeated requests to send some of his own, but he’s so disarmingly chatty that few guys get angry about this. In-person encounters are similarly frustrating in a way that’s hard to convey, as he’s eager to get his hookups naked and cumming via whatever method expedites the process with as little effort on his part. He’s left more than one satisfied but confused partner wondering some time after their meeting if he’s even really into guys at all, or if he’s playing out some weird service kink or vicarious voyeurism. Whatever the case he’s not much the dating type, not because he’s closeted or non-monogamous but because he has other priorities that don’t mesh well with long-term companionship. A shame too, when he’s become a permanent part of the masturbatory fantasies of many a man with whom he’s had even the briefest of encounters (particularly tops, who see in him a cocky bottom who desperately needs to get wrecked). That’s mostly all it is with him though: just fantasies, quick and dirty and unfulfilling because sex is apparently little more than a means for him to connect with people who may help him reach something bigger. Open-minded about his partners’ kinks, but is extremely touchy about race play; he’s aware that he has an ambiguous look about him, and does not appreciate anyone bringing that up even if the intention is completely innocent.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: your erogenous zones, your fetishes, your guilty pleasures

Favored gift: a lavish dinner, not for the expense but for the pleasure of sharing it

Lorenz

You may not like the hair, or the overwrought floral motif, or the polite but pointed way he pursues dates with the men he’s scoping out, but it’s undeniable that his reputation precedes him as someone who is known and who is worth knowing in the community. He’s not as slutty as that suggests, far from it, but he does enjoy his lunch dates and his inordinately expensive shopping dates and generally being as publicly social as it is humanly possible to be. Has an assortment of fem bottom BFFs on speed dial who are always up to the minute with him on social media, but it turns out he’s more versatile than his age and his...expressive fashion sense might imply. Would absolutely love a boyfriend, but judges all his dates in every aspect and considers least of all the size of their dick or what they know to do with it. It’s unusual for him to run across a guy who’s as well-educated and career-oriented as himself who also meets his admittedly snobbish criteria regarding class, and most of the time when he does they make better friends than marriage candidates. Cannot abide poor manners in or out of bed, and has corresponding expectations about proper condom use and prep (also PreP) and won’t hesitate to interrupt a makeout session with a lecture on not fingering him when he just ate an hour ago and he hasn’t had the chance to use an enema yet. Jock types do little for him, although he does have this one celebrity crush of that sort that he holds dear to his heart precisely because it will never, ever happen (although, he does happen to move in adjacent circles....). 

Favored erotic tea time subjects: office sex, hustlers, the tea itself...not like that

Favored gift: his crush’s contact info, also measurements if he can get them

Raphael

His selfies come in two varieties, gym and food, and this perfectly sums him up as a person and a friend and sexual partner. Sociable but not particularly quick-witted, his conversations are filled with emojis and exclamation points and it’s not very long before he’s making invitations to hang out at either his favorite fitness center or one of his many favorite restaurants. Don’t expect much from the latter however, as he favors quantity over quality. Is more or less the perfect boyfriend if you like them big and dumb, and on some level he knows this because he’s clearly comfortable with who he is and the goals he’s set for himself, both in body weight and in life in general. Even nicer, he likes skinny nerds just as much as he likes guys who can hold their own (or even surpass him) during workouts, and he’ll try just about anything once. Not the most skilled at topping or giving head or anything else that demands precision in action, but he’ll always give his best effort anyway. Besides, he makes a great bottom, with enough cushion and stamina to take a really hard pounding and jerk himself to completion in just about the time it takes for him to coax his partner to orgasm. A simple man with simple tastes and an insatiable appetite for food and pleasure and good company, and if it comes to it a sweet and devoted familial sort as well. Doesn’t have much of an imagination for kinks, but the person who shows him how to combine food with sex might be on the receiving end of a marriage proposal right then and there.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: sexy workouts, feeders, power bottoms

Favored gift: food, especially if you get into watching him eat it

Ignatz

Fucking an art student is always a unique experience, and he’s determined not to disappoint. More likely to share pictures of his latest projects than nudes up front, although he welcomes receiving them himself as he’s quick to explain that he draws his influence from all areas of his life. Has a particular fascination with the kind of unintentional eroticism found in certain religious art, which is more likely to be found quietly perplexing than offensive in hookup spaces. Is shy and relatively untested when it comes to sex, and as such he’s a natural fit for tops who love to break in new twinks. Said tops may have to put up with his request to sketch them in the bed or on his sofa afterwards though, because apparently the nude models in his classes just can’t compare to the men who ten minutes prior had their dicks in him. As he gets older and acquires more familiarity with the medium he’ll start to gravitate more toward guys of a similar age and disposition as himself, who can be subjects for his art without the constant demanding to get off. (They still get off with him of course, but he has trouble convincing the less understanding that that’s not his first priority.) Sometimes too he’ll just want someone to cuddle with and tell him that he’s good at what he does and isn’t making any questionable life choices. However, with art being the uncertain career that it is he may find himself one day having to reconcile himself to a sugar daddy to spare him from a mind-numbing day job - or worse, admitting to whatever disapproving relation(s) he’s got that he screwed up his professional prospects and isn’t doing so hot in the dating scene either. Never quite loses his mawkishness in bed, but hopefully he’ll get past his public anxieties with a bit more success. Is not really into the gym bunny types, although they love him to death and he has to admit that all that toned musculature is easy to work with. Keeps the glasses on during sex, or at least until he has an accident with them.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: artistic nudes, sexy statuary, missionary (he likes to watch the top)

Favored gift: a set of professionally done nude selfies, for modeling

Alois

A loving and devoted husband and father, he’s only in the app space because a friend made a joke about them and he just had to check it out. Utterly clueless on the terminology and the rules of etiquette, such as they are, for a place where it’s considered perfectly acceptable to begin conversation with a picture of your erect cock. Needless to say he completely misunderstands the term “daddy” in this context, thinking it naturally applied to him without being aware of all the horny twinks that would be hitting him up as a result. Will eventually be prodded, laughing and blushing the whole time, into taking and sharing some mildly saucy selfies, and the boys go wild for his literal dad bod and hair in just the right places (including on his face; the handlebar variation is a few decades out of date, but that just makes him more endearing in a dorky retro way). It’s not clear initially whether he’s even attracted to men, but after a few months of chatting and swapping pics and perhaps furtively jerking off to the ones he gets he might agree to a discreet encounter or two. Well, they would be discreet if he weren’t always so loud, and if he didn’t always resist everyone’s immediate impulse to shove a dick in his mouth just to get him to shut up by coming up with yet another dumb joke. Doesn’t get much further than the idea of oral anyway, as he’s not the most sexual guy to start with and he can’t quite get past the immature giggling over ass play. Not a bad jerkoff buddy when it’s all said and done provided you can stand all the puns, nor is he all that bad to look at or cuddle with afterwards once he figures out that guys like his hugs too. One can only wonder what his wife thinks of all this.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: (bad) sex jokes, porn, glory holes

Favored gift: links to daddy porn, so he’ll finally figure it out

Cyril

Born into a rough background and forced to get by in some difficult circumstances has left him hardworking to a fault - emphasis on “fault.” His greatest act of teenage rebellion was to be aggressively not rebellious, and he still hasn’t grown out of that mentality as he’s quick to scorn his more carefree and hedonistic peers and wouldn’t even be on the apps at all were he not so privately, guiltily horny all the time. As may be expected this mentality wins him few admirers and even fewer friends, of any age, the more so because he’s inexperienced and still figuring out exactly what he wants from a sexual encounter. Will bottom but has a complex about the implications, but unfortunately most of the guys willing to hook up with him are tops and expect to get it in at least for a little while. Manages better when it comes to swapping head, having experimented with his more adventurous friends in school. His fastidiousness and unusually good eyesight lead him to subconsciously fixate on his partners’ minor bodily blemishes, and since pointing those out never goes over well he’s taking to prefer sex in the dark. He’s absolutely not looking for a daddy and is annoyed at the suggestion, just as much as he’s annoyed by guys who try to turn pillow talk into impromptu therapy sessions regarding his past. Will take a few more years and probably some time away at school to properly find his footing; there’s a no-nonsense if slightly insecure top buried under the fading twinkish exterior, and provided he learns out to mellow out a bit he could be quite popular one day.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: circle jerks, docking, race play (which he feels guilty about)

Favored gift: a cock ring, for those size woes 

Balthus

He was on the wrestling team in school and acquired a notable reputation for his strength and skill in a brawl, although it was also at this time that he realized he was getting hard every time he would throw down with another guy. Deflects this with an exaggerated womanizing demeanor and a blank profile announcing only that he’s looking and saving even the headless torso shot - impressive though that shot is - for messaging. Gets handjobs and blowjobs and occasionally tops, all NSA and very discreet, but his internalized insecurities fortunately do not extend to his partners. This is probably because his preferred types are either closeted muscle bros like himself or self-confident young bottoms with no patience to take anything from him except a hard fuck and a thick load. His awkward younger days will be long past him before he learns to open up to anything more than that, and even then it’s unlikely that he’ll be very relationship-minded. Has to be educated by more experienced partners on lube and prepping a bottom, and it’ll take a lot of drinks and a lot of convincing to get him to try eating ass (he will though, eventually). Bottoming himself is out of the question except perhaps with the most dedicated of vers guys, but put him on the mat with another total top and there are good odds that someone’s going to end up penetrated before it’s over. Speaking of odds, is terrible with money and not domestic in the slightest, but he’s got a rich family that he can theoretically fall back on in a pinch. Not really boyfriend material, more like the ideal perpetually naked roommate with wandering eyes and a boundless libido.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: erotic wrestling, dirty talk, praise kink

Favored gift: a harness and matching jockstrap, he’s got a thing for gear

[noonmutter]

Mun Dash Game

Rules: Name your top 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people.

Editor’s note: These are in no ranked order or anything like that, they’re just ten favorites as I could think of them.

Bismuth - Steven Universe. You may notice a theme here; I like my characters complex, their motivations valid, their decisions misguided, and their actions questioned by everyone, often including themselves. I loved Bismuth’s entire concept and I’m sad that she hasn’t had more time front and center to develop beyond her introduction as both a plot device and as a catalyst for Steven’s advancement. Same story with Jasper, though she got a few more appearances. I want to see these people grow and for the people they hurt to grow with them, damn it. Even if that growth is downward into an even worse state, I want to see it because positive or negative, emotional fallout is awesome.

Demona - Gargoyles. There was going to be a Gargoyles character here and I am basically legally obligated to pick either Demona or Thailog because I am a sucker for great voices and tragic villains. Demona’s story wins out by a decent margin because her suffering was entirely borne of her own poor decisions, many of which she felt were right at the time. She just refused to accept that she was wrong or that she could try to make things better at any time, and I was fascinated by that from the first time I saw it. This shit was in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 19 years.

Baby Doll - Batman: TAS. She only showed up once (in the original animation style, anyway) but good god damn did it count. She was angry, hurt, belittled, and so unbearably lonely that when everything fell apart and the dust settled and she couldn’t kill all her problems away, she just broke down. “Why couldn’t you just let me make believe?!” is still crystallized in my head, and it still gives me little pangs when I think of it. And at the end of it all, she sobbed “I didn’t mean to” as she hugged Batman’s leg. And he comforted her. Also in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 21 years.

Scanlan Shorthalt - Critical Role, Campaign 1. I bet you thought after those first three it’d probably be Vax or Percy, but... Look, the character was fantastic and the player made him that way and frankly made that campaign. He’s my go-to for when I need a good cry, and he’s why I learned to build a bard. The same man who started the campaign by asking his bestie what the worst race/class combo was and saying “Okay I’ll play that,” at the end of the campaign made the word “Nine” hit his fellow players and viewers in the chest like a sledgehammer, and nobody has topped that since. His second campaign character, Nott, has also got one of the most poignant backstories I’ve heard in a while, and man will it twist yer gut. Meanwhile both of those characters provide some of the best goddamn comic relief you’re liable to find. Emmy Winner Sam Riegel, ladies and gentlemen.

Francis - Left 4 Dead. I love this grumpy asshole biker. I love that Steam took his “I hate everything” (except vests) schtick and ran with it. I love that the trailers for the second game included him and Rochelle meeting up and commiserating on their hatred of everything, up until Rochelle says she hates his vest and he short-circuits. I miss Francis and I miss playing Left 4 Dead all the time and I yearn for a remaster or rerelease that works better with current setups cuz the original one has uh... not aged well, technologically. Francis and Zoey made life worth livin’ in that game.

Jogurt - Shining Force. This is probably the most obscure one on my list but that’s because Shining Force is an old-ass Genesis game/franchise that is, I admit, pretty generic as far as the plot goes. I love it to pieces regardless because it had some fun with it, and the character designs were wierd and some of the interactions were downright silly. Jogurt was the easter egg secret character in this game, and he’s a little hamster thing with a football helmet on. At the time you get him, most of your fighters have stats in the 20s or potentially 30s and their level is 9, 10, or they’ve been promoted to a new class; every single one of his stats is one and he had not been promoted. If you are able to keep him alive long enough to get him the XP necessary to level up just once, which takes some doing since an enemy can be unarmed and as long as they don’t miss, they kill him, you’ll get a ring called the Yogurt Ring.

When worn, it makes a character look like Jogurt. In the remake for Game Boy Advance, the image for the character shows that it’s a costume with a huge visible zipper up the back. That’s all it does. That’s the joke. And I adore it.

Freddy Krueger - A Nightmare on Elm Street series. I have a love-hate relationship with Freddy. On the one hand, creativity in horror movies--especially in the kills--is something to be embraced, and no matter what else you think of them the Elm Street movies got real fuckin’ creative most of the time. On the other...there have been nine (official) movies with Krueger in them, and only the first three were good. The remake in 2010 was disappointing because it tried to both play to nostalgia and ignore it at the same time and also made Freddy darker, which made him less fun to watch.

Still, I enjoyed the hell outta Freddy’s concept, for much the same reason that I love Chucky the Good Guy Doll so much: they’re both snarky monsters who really enjoy the horrors they’re inflicting and they have incredible presence because of the actors who brought them to life. (Mark Hammill worked with what they gave him for Chucky but uh...what they gave him sucked).

Lorewalker Cho/Margeaux - World of Warcraft. The first, because he’s voiced by Jim Cummings and he’s a knowledge-hungry panda who Blizzard has not been stupid enough to kill off thus far. In the middle of an attack by what is basically Cthulhu, he wants to you bring him research notes on Cthulhu’s fishmen. I love him and I would commit war crimes for him.

The second, because she was a bit character that had me fully invested in her and her story within ten minutes. And then Blizzard ripped my fucking heart out. And I yelled at Questifer about it. Aaaaaaaa.

Granny Weatherwax/Sam Vimes - Discworld. They’re both staggering badasses who have neither time nor tolerance for the bullshit trappings of men, while at the same time harboring a deep and abiding love for their fellow beings. They also approach that from completely different ends. They are also both unquestionably the most noble characters I’ve ever read. They are the sum of their principles and their refusal to budge. Steve Rogers could learn from them. In D&D, they’d be paladins to their core, and they’d absolutely hate that.

Spawn - Image Comics. I have, admittedly, read exactly one Spawn comic book, and mostly love him because of his design, his backstory, and the fact that he’s voiced by Keith David in all animated iterations including video game appearances (and only the animated ones were ever good--the 90s movie was fucking horrible). I am hoping the rumored new movie will make things a bit better for the live-action version, but until that actually comes out, I’m not holding my breath.

Tagged by: @safrona-shadowsun and @ourcollectivefantasy

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[artyloreviews]

Disco Elysium (2019) - A Review and Analysis

A postmodern role-playing game for a much different audience. A combination of skillful artistry and unfulfilled potential. An attempt at tackling difficult topics and pandering to different tastes. A full package, with deceptive contents...

I enjoyed playing through Disco Elysium, but for completely different reasons than those that initially sold the game to me. Going in, I believed that it would be the type of RPG that I had been looking for quite some time – one that is not burdened by most of its interaction with the world happening on a grid, scanning through a list of spells and abilities, franticly pausing every frame, trying to min-max numbers as to not get destroyed by a pack of menacing farm animals of a slightly higher level. Examples of that in the genre would be classics such as Baldur’s Gate or newer re-iterations like Divinity: Original Sin and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. What I would habitually find myself doing is picking up the game, sinking my teeth into it, eventually hitting a numerical roadblock in some quest, and almost immediately retiring to a life of “not playing that game ever again”, as I am faced with the option of either save scumming and beating my head against the numeric wall, until by some fluke of the numbers I get the “good” number and am allowed to proceed; or could just stop doing whatever thing I am currently invested in and go somewhere else on the map, where the numbers are not as disagreeable, so I can get my personal numbers high enough to where the numbers I was having difficulty with before seem less impressive and I can pick up that quest again, but this time only halfway through, struggling to remember contextual cues that were relevant perhaps a few hours ago, but are now a forgotten footnote in some journal entry.

In both cases, the immersion gives way to the idea of gameplay, as the perhaps flawed ideal of an RPG is that which is based on table-top role playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, the aforementioned Shadowrun, or anything else that follows the same formula. From my personal experience in TTRPGs, the same issue persists, namely in having meaningful choice and character development take second fiddle to massive 3-5-man 1-2-hour combat encounters in between the more immersive moments of dialogue between players, non-player characters or story development. I’ve always felt that combat is so abstracted from everything else in TTRPGs in the way that it suddenly shifts into an entirely different game, which unlike the elements of role-play is less free-form and bound to a rigid set of rules. You’re no longer interested in how things look, feel or act, but rather how large a number is on a sheet of paper; and this contention of mine seems to always be translated into the video game counterpart of this genre, carrying the same problem from one medium to the other. Games even seem to compound upon the issue, by putting you in charge of multiple characters, where your custom created character is somehow not only equal to them, but at the same time the savior of the universe and all that is holy.

I cannot help but believe that the party ought to be AI controlled pawns, considering that they are supposedly different people with their own goals and aspirations; thus leaving the player to micro-manage their singular character – their avatar in the game world, rather than developing a form of psychogenic schizophrenia by having to deal with each and every one of the party’s members (now, admittedly the remakes of both Baldur’s Gate games have such a feature, but the combat AI is so poor, that you still have to go and remind them that they actually have a whole list of spells that they could be, in fact, using to… for instance, heal you, as you sit there bleeding profusely, crippled and powerless on the ground).

The only games which I have seen managing combat and RPG elements successfully are listed as a fundamentally different genre, known as “immersive sim” or “0451 games”. To name a few, that would be games like those of the Deus Ex, Dishonored and even the Fallout series. Most of those are first-person, for the most part shooters, with some emphasis on a singular character’s development through dialogue and stat point distribution. My main point can roughly be exemplified by comparing the naming convention and the reality for both genres: one is a “role-playing game”, the other is an “immersive simulation”; the first being used deceptively, as you could be playing a multitude of roles at any given time and also suspending that role-play to participate in some rather lengthy tactical combat for what could be 50% of the game’s runtime. On the other hand, you have “immersive sim”, which according to Warren Spector (game designer of Deus Ex and Thief fame) is a game in which “you are there, [and] nothing stands between you and [the] belief that you're in an alternate world”. I simply cannot emphasize enough how even the most engaging narrative and the most skillful writing can be tarnished by this type of abstract combat, which feels so fundamentally foreign and somehow still intrinsic to the idea of role-playing games and immersion.

Disco Elysium seemed to be the odd one out – a RPG that has no combat, except that, initiated by your choices in dialogue (more akin to playing an animation than actual combat). It was also advertised to me as having quite an in-depth ideological system, that was affected by your choices in-game and would automatically adapt dialogue according to your flavor of politics, philosophy or culture through a series of thoughts, which you would internalize, if used often enough. Frankly, it seemed like wish fulfilment for a jaded immersion-loving straight-edge centrist such as myself.

Upon launching the game, I was quickly introduced to the persona that I would be inhabiting – a deranged, drunken amnesiac, who in some cases would pass as a cop, but only if one’s notion of law-abiding is that of a drug-fueled abusive lover; also known as - the farthest thing from me. I already knew that my journey through the game would be that of a redemption arc, where this horrible piece of shit human, was going to become the most squeaky-clean, drug- and alcohol-free centrist known to all of Revachol. A true test of the game’s systems in action – from deranged and corrupt, to the straight and narrow. To my eventual surprise - I could do all of it, and very successfully at that. By the end of my nearly 24-hour playthrough, I had achieved my ideal vision for the character, with only a bit of resistance, which I will briefly mention further down the line. For now, I had succeeded in using all the tools available to me in order to internalize the thoughts for centrism, rejecting any form of drugs, and by the end almost managing to squeeze in the time to internalize being sober, cut short due to the spontaneous conclusion of the game.

The thoughts system was not entirely what I had initially imagined. Namely, what I had envisioned was a system, which converts whatever responses one made throughout the game, into non-internalized thoughts, which would begin to alter the dialogue options available, and only after choosing to emphasize said options, would it eventually internalize and give you a lot more radical options based on said thought. What it would turn out to do instead is make the acquisition of thoughts work in a similar manner, but make the process of internalization a menu, in which you “equip” thoughts into available slots. It seems like a minor inconvenience, but it makes the thoughts feel like yet another item that you just set and forget, rather than the thoughts of a person being actively developed over time, based on what kind of discourse they engage in. I suppose the idea of having it take anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours to internalize is there to be the substitute for the drawn out process of internalization. It is in a way saying “I feel like turning into a centrist in the next thirty minutes.”, while going around doing investigative work around a crime scene. The more active process I envisioned, would indeed take a lot longer, but it would be massively more immersive, as more and more options become available to you over time, rather than after some arbitrary timer has gone down.

Another big detractor is having to use skill points to unlock new slots for thoughts, which would otherwise be put into your more practical skills. Theoretically, one would think a human has an almost infinite capacity for new ideas; and one is surely not going to want to internalize them all. A good example would be the “Volumetric Shit Compressor” thought you gain early into the game, which mainly fulfils its purpose in one skill check for less physically able characters as a part of a single quest and is never made use of again, beyond its flat stat bonuses. No other thought in my playthrough had a temporary pragmatic function like that, which feels like a missed opportunity. Its temporary nature is where the skill-point cost seems absurd, when they could be better used to improve one’s skills. In what way would the character becoming more skillful help them stop “getting their shit together”? Wouldn’t one discard the though immediately after it’s no longer useful? The way the system works currently, meant that I spent most of my points on slots and playing around with thoughts, rather than improving my character until the very last parts of the game, which in effect made the game more difficult than intended. The decision to make thoughts equipable and not persistent passive perks that can upgrade into more radical or complete versions of themselves is perhaps one of my main disappointments with the game. The effect on scope would be minimal, as the game already has the dialogue options for those thoughts written and would only need to change their acquisition and internalization to be less menu-driven and more player-driven.

I tangentially mentioned not having skill-points to freely use until the latter parts of the game: That in turn made skill checks a lot more difficult and perilous, by making white skill checks (ones you can fail and retry upon increasing the skill they require) harder to re-unlock once failed and making red checks (ones that you cannot retry once failed) almost impossible, if not clothed in every stat-boosting piece of apparel in one’s inventory or seasoned with every potentially hazardous bottle of booze or glowing fairy dust left lying on the ground. White checks also do not unlock after one has used a consumable item or changed a piece of clothing to boost said stat, which encourages save scumming, as there is no way to change clothing in the middle of dialogue or knowing what the skill check will be, leading to one of the many pitfalls which I described earlier.

An even greater fault is that some quests just drop dead in their tracks, if the stat check is not completed. Moreover, since one cannot be proficient in all four skill categories, I would regularly hit a brick wall, upon being faced with a Psyche or Physique skill check, as my character mainly specialized in Intellect and Motorics. The thing about hitting a brick wall in Disco Elysium is not so much that you fail and have to face the consequences, but rather cannot continue at all and the narrative stops dead in its tracks until you can succeed the check. Sometimes quests are tied to each other, so not being able to progress in one of them means that you can’t progress in any of them. Suddenly an entire quest chain can just be gone at the click of a button. It got to a point where I would prefer to hear that all my efforts were in vain, fucking everything up irreversibly, rather than having a white check get locked and sit there in my journal, waiting for me to miraculously gain five points in some sub-skill of Physique. One way to fix this would be to have more obfuscated red checks with uncertain odds that lead to failure states. At least that would be more immersive than the current offering, as one could live with the consequences, rather than be left guessing what it could have been if one had slightly higher skills. This, however, could be difficult, as there is a dice roll to every skill. Not being skilled merely means you have less of a chance of succeeding or, alternatively, a higher chance to fail and lock the skill check.

The one thing that the game does great when it comes to skills is the addition of secret tasks. If one were to follow particular lines of inquiry, they often lead to some skill check down the line becoming easier, due to the things learned beforehand about that topic. This system rewards being thorough and attentive and is, perhaps, the best feature of the game. However, observations made through the “shivers” system (where orbs of information will show up contextually above the protagonist’s head, revealing information about the environment or elaborating on something relevant) do not appear to factor into these skill checks. This often leads to you reading something important when it pops up in the overworld, but upon engaging someone in conversation one must often select benign lines of dialogue, acting like one hadn’t made those observations to begin with. The dissonance is even more infuriating whenever Kim (your companion throughout the game) tells you that you are obviously wrong, because he also made those observations but (unlike you) could talk about them. It would have been a lot more diegetic if there were dialogue options available for you to repeat the observation to Kim instead, perhaps as you talk to him in the overworld (a feature that is woefully underutilized, and shows the same five or so options throughout the entire game, except whenever Kim wants to talk to you about something he deems relevant – an ability, which you would think the player should have had as well).

Speaking of the overworld, Disco Elysium does quite a lot with the small real-estate it has on its map. For what feels like a small neighborhood, it packs tens of hours of content, a varied cast of characters and lots of places to explore. Walking around is encouraged by the game, almost to a fault. At many points during the game Kim will remark upon your seemingly absurd ability to run around without getting tired. There even comes a point where you are injured, and are told not to run to avoid further harming yourself. After about twenty hours I realized that this was in order to signal to the player that if they run all over the place, trying to finish everything as quick as possible, they would be left with a lot of extra time at the end of the day, which would have been perhaps better spent looking into side-quests or other optional activities. However, the walk speed is woefully slow and with the amount of backtracking one needs to do, means that you will be seeing the same places plenty of times, which only tempts you even more to not waste your precious time RP-walking. The game has benches, which you can use to pass the time, but they are only available whenever Kim is not with you, which is only durring the night, meaning you can’t make any meaningful progress by resting on one, effectively making them worthless. That and the presence of time-gated tasks, means you will most likely be trying to find ways to waste your time, prompting Kim to berate you even more for straying away from the main focus of the narrative, as he often does. If you’re a fast reader, the game luckily fast-forwards time based on how many options you’ve selected, rather than real-time. This is most apparent whenever you’re save scumming and going though entire trees of dialogue you’ve already read.

And you will be reading a lot, as this is what you signed up for when you relinquished the combat systems of your typical RPGs. A welcome change, I might add, as the dialogue is beautifully written and engaging for tens of hours. (The end credits even thank Chris Avellone for what is probably him lending a bit of his Midas touch when it comes to game writing.) However, there are of course flaws in the way Disco Elysium decides to portray some of its characters, as it is sometimes more interested in making political statements in a very one-note way that might shock some people, rather than what one would think are nuanced and fleshed out personas. A large part of the cast is wearing a thick layer of existentialism, which they seem to flaunt upon every given opportunity. The same goes for characters who clearly exhibit some variety of political radicalism; you’ve got your racist nationalist, your bourgeois-eating communist, your fence-sitting centrist (dubbed moralist) and a whole swath of colorful opinionated people whom you either interact with or endure. Everyone else is mostly pleasant to be around, if not a bit saddening, due to the overall melancholic way of life people of Disco Elysium are forced to lead, influenced by factors that they alone cannot control; an overall sense of futility present at every turn. Most of them have quirks that help them cope with their predicament, which you can explore in full detail through in-depth dialogue trees, leading to some intriguing interactions and ultimately some interesting consequences down the line. Every line of dialogue seems to have a lot of those, which is surprising for a game that so haphazardly makes you select dumb questions for answers you already know. An example of that is the one occasion in which I used a particular brand of alcohol to boost my “Pain Threshold” in order to open a certain mission-critical freezer. Which towards the end had Kim labeling me as someone who “drinks on the job”, even after becoming sober and internalizing the thought that removes all positive effects from alcohol, as well as the action leading to us retrieving an item, which we would later use to further the plot. Instead as a one-off sacrifice of one’s principles, it was seen as a major transgression that would only lead people into thinking of me as even more of a raging alcoholic, rather than someone who is trying to recover and “get their shit together”, as it were.

A major part of the game’s rhetoric is lost to those who do not have a dictionary that has been well tempered through copious forms of political jargon, coming from a various selection of manifestos, academic political analyses and some of the more famous philosophical works for the last century. I would go as far to say that some of the sentiments the game presents are absolutely impenetrable when it comes to wording. I’ll give you an example:

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?

If you immediately recognized that it was about centrism, then congratulations – you are a lot smarter than me and probably everyone else around you. For you Disco Elysium is the perfect college-level textual experience for your Tuesday-night 1960’s poetry club. For the rest of humanity, it’s a bunch of gibberish. Flowery prose and poetics are riddled everywhere and you're never really sure what you're doing, what thoughts you're thinking or what's happening to you.

I mentioned briefly that the game tries to depict centrism as a form of moralism (a term which it prefers over the former). Even so, it presents centrism as less of an effort to hold multiple perspectives and act with a full and informed range of understanding, but rather as the stereotypical “fence-sitting” argument, where no decision can be made now, and progress can only be obtained through a slow, incremental process. While on the surface, it would seem so – as a self-proclaimed and passionate centrist, I cannot help but disagree with the outsider view that the game seems to be promoting, favoring critique of the right and an emphasis towards the left side of the political compass (making small but insignificant jabs towards both throughout). Contextually, the game’s developers Studio ZA/UM, have displayed a clear favor of the political left in their public appearances, which may explain this somewhat skewed perspective. While it’d be lovely to go on about the politics of ideology, it’s better not judge the contents of the game based on the developers’ ideological affiliation, but rather on its own merits.

Considering the amount of reading one needs to do, I would hesitantly say that Disco Elysium is part RPG, part choose-your-own-adventure visual novel. I say RPG, because of the aforementioned brick walls, inhibiting progress in a way that no immersive sim ever would, as there would be multiple ways to get the same information, which is sadly not a thing Disco Elysium does well. The sheer volume of the text is also a cause for some, I would suppose, aesthetic concerns about the game. Graphically, the game is stunning with its unique painterly style, but it often values it over function, namely in having the UI serve little to no purpose, as Kim and your portraits take up the entire bottom left of the screen. At the same time the dialogue panel is put on the far right side of the screen, even though two thirds of it are spent zoomed in on some 3D models doing their idle animations, instead of having the text front and center, as the thing you will be most likely looking at for 90% of your time with the game. Other technical issues include shadows being displaced from where they should be, especially on stairs, as well as being incredibly jagged for a game that doesn’t really have high hardware requirements and very little real-time lighting, but all of this is frankly unintrusive, compared to the cramps in your neck from looking to your right all the time.

Every once in a while, you get to enjoy not having to read, as a select few scenes are entirely voice-acted by a talented cast. I am unsure, however, of the production team behind the recordings, as they seem to sound as if recorded in home studios with different microphones and sound processors. Other than that, the quality and range of the performances is wonderful, especially since it is coming from some lesser known actors in the industry.

When it comes to sound, the game does a fantastic job of establishing a lot of varied soundscapes for an admittedly small plot of land. The music is ambient, droning and subtle in all the ways that make you not think about it, until you are sitting there listening to the soundtrack on your own time, remembering all the scenes that every piece of music has lifted from monotony. All of the tracks have this aging, somber tone to them, much like the world they are written for, making the music an unavoidable essential part of the experience, as you walk the fields of Revachol with the wind blowing and the small creek near you emitting a slight babble. The only downside is that the mixing of all these layers is often horribly unproportioned. Everything will be quiet, until some random intercom plays two straight minutes of loud white noise into your ear. Those parts are few and far between, but still leave a surprisingly large impression for an otherwise spotless execution of foley and ambience.

Overall, Disco Elysium is a full package. While not necessarily the game that I hoped it would be, it was still an enjoyable experience with an incredible main quest, memorable characters and side quests, elevated by wonderful sound design and fantastic ambient music, with writing that will be unparalleled for years to come. While it is not without its flaws, and some of them are quite major - it does what it set out to do with flying colors and is sure to appeal to a lot of people, who have been looking for an experience such as this. For me, however, it also represents a lot of squandered potential. It is by no means an ideal game – far from it; but I would still recommend you play through it for yourself, just to see where it takes you. It has a way of challenging you intellectually, that not a lot of games can pull off, especially nowadays. It is an admirable endeavor in tackling difficult topics, whilst also spinning an intriguing narrative that keeps you invested until the very end.

Score: 7/10