#moral of the story here

[phoenix--flying]

keep seeing ship hate on twitter and I'm actively hiding my alabaster ships in a box because they would EAT ME ALIVE if they saw me shipping him with percy 💀

[autumnoakes]

okay but this update brings me back to melinoë's "with me or against me" view that she seems to have. people like eris, scylla, or prometheus who stand in her way are labelled as "enemy" and she can't really see things from their pov (eris especially is fascinating to see interact with melinoë because mel just cannot figure out or understand her motives). those who support her are labelled as friends. and it's pretty clear to see why she thinks this way when you look at what hecate and odysseus have to say. both of them pretty clearly hate chronos, and both of them had a large hand in raising melinoë. hecate especially was the one who trained melinoë from a really young age to kill chronos specifically, and she's the one mel looks up to the most (she sees hecate as a mother figure despite hecate wanting anything but).

what i find MOST fascinating is how melinoë just... doesn't really know how to handle nuance when it comes to friends vs. enemies. take arachne for example. there is a part in hades 2 when arachne just gets really bitter that melinoë is not only being helped by the olympians, but is helping them in turn. melinoë has absolutely NOTHING to say to arachne during that time (unless they added more dialogue in with the update). she doesn't know what to do when her friends are at odds with each other because of past conflicts, or how to address them. it goes against her black-and-white thought process and how she handles her morals.

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

something about how both wei wuxian and jin guangyao repeatedly say they ‘didn’t have a choice’ in their actions. in both cases, it’s not literal impossibility, instead determined by their mindsets and personal conduct…. but while for wei wuxian that means he can’t do something immoral, even if it means losing all his social power, for jin guangyao it means he can’t do anything to lose his social power, even if it means doing something immoral. the other option is still there, but it’s never one they’d pick.

something about how they’re trying to walk the same path but in opposite directions: wei wuxian willingly left the nice, broad road in favour of upholding morals and debts, while jin guangyao is trying to claw onto it and stay there by any means necessary. in both cases, being parted from it so easily is only possible because this nice, broad road — full of people whose social power is unconditional, given at birth, independent of their actions — was never truly theirs to begin with. but despite how it is possible to be forced off due to nothing, as we see with wang lingjiao, the positions of both these characters were ultimately due to actions they took.

(about how no matter the similarity of the paths, no matter the narrowness of the choices, the direction you take is still up to you.)

[thatswhatsushesaid]

psa that the day there are no jgy stans left on tumblr dot com is the day i am dead

but rest assured i'll go to my grave exactly as i lived: obnoxiously proclaiming to everyone within earshot how great lianfang-zun is. narratively, metaphorically, spiritually. sexually, too, like why limit myself. i like to keep my options open

[miabrown007]

Félix: kidnapping is a love language Kagami: you have no social skills, idiot

*two weeks later*

Félix: okay, so when Marinette's at her most vulnerable, I'll gaslight her into thinking I'm her boyfriend, so she'll follow me into an abandoned building where we can put her in an altered mental state and present to her my family's life story in the imaginable most cryptic play of theater she has ever seen, which will reveal to her our horrible secret and the fact that her abusive father-in-law is also her arch-nemesis Kagami: you're so big brained, bae 🥰

[luminous-orb]

doodle comic i made just before beating VLR. not to worry, I Know Now :)

[bubblingdrfizz]

taco from inanimate insanity but instead of snapping at the end of season one she actually kept up her persona so she could live in hotel oj. it's alright at first, but she's so fed up with acting dumb that it's really hard for her to stay in character and it starts to stress her out. one day taco gets sick or smth. she sneezes and lets out the most british "BLOODY HELL." ever. it's so weirdly out of character but in character at the same time that it's not even questioned beyond a simple "what" so taco was just able to live the rest of her life in hotel oj with her actual personality without needing to explain anything

[specialagentartemis]

ngl I think it’s fun how little internal sense the chronology of the Trojan War makes. Eris threw the Apple of Discord at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, which is what prompted Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera to demand the Judgement of Paris, and Aphrodite promised Paris the love of the most beautiful women in the world, who was Helen, who was already married, which is what started the Trojan War. But Achilles, son of Thetis and Peleus, was one of Helen’s suitors who swore the oath to defend her. And when the Trojan War was beginning (was threatening to begin?), Thetis hid Achilles among the women of Skyros, where he and Deidamia had a son, Pyrrhus/Neoptolemus. But when Achilles died in the ninth year of the Trojan War, Neoptolemus was old enough to fight in it. These things happen at mythic scales under mythic logic, it doesn’t really hang together, you just gotta go with it

[lazycranberrydoodles]

its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3

all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):

hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also

his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.

the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)

a whole lot of AU stuff

the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.

cases include:

Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)

Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)

Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))

The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)

Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)

The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)

Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)

Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)

the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao

there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.

the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.

for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.

it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.

tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me

Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost

[qiu-yan]

wow this post got depressing really fast. sorry

if you think about it. if you were just some random no-name cultivator who somehow got invited to the phoenix mountain night-hunt, and you heard something about 1. hanguang-jun of the sterling reputation, 2. wei wuxian the demonic cultivator already flouting social norms, and 3. a forced kiss....which would you believe? that lan wangji forcibly kissed wei wuxian? or that wei wuxian forcibly kissed lan wangji?

depressing thoughts.

[violentlydefending]

Wait....the writer of one of my favourite Monster!Majima fics is somebody I already followed (on your art account) and they do art of the weird monster guy?????? Truly a blessed day for me tbh.

I'M HONOURED!!!

so honoured in fact here's Even More Art of the weird monster guy :]

[glouris]

“they are very annoying and irritating” are you familiar with the concept of fun and being entertained by drama

[crimeronan]

another Vital AU hunter-and-camila thought from this morning was a thought of, like. camila very very very gently and carefully explaining that she'd like luz to get a basic physical done by a doctor in the human realm, because luz has not been seen by a human doctor since she was four and is overdue for ten million vaccines and desperately needs bloodwork to check her vitamin and thyroid levels, etc, etc, etc, and hunter is like. visibly freaked out and upset by this. bc he is SO afraid of strangers hurting luz.

anyway. that's all pretty much expected, on account of The Horrors.

what got me in my feelings was the thought of camila telling hunter that she has a lot of the same worries, and that she Knows not all human healers have good intentions, and that she Promises she'll take that into account when finding one for luz. because she does not want luz to get hurt.

hunter, naturally, is like "how.... do you know that....?" and camila is like ay dios mio. HOW do i explain medical racism or the united states..... to a boy.... with no concept of racism or the united states.....

[lizzybeeee]

The Lucanis vs Illario story would have had greater emotional depth/intrigue if the writers didn't water down how fucked up the Crows are as an organization.

Just some thoughts about how, out of all the side villains, Illario had some great potential to be a really interesting/tragic character in my opinion.

TL;DR: Zevran Aranai has a knife with Caterina's name on it for good reason and Lucanis/Illario need therapy...or whatever the Thedas equivalent is called...talking to Rook, I dunno

Going into DATV as a new player, or even as a returning one, the whitewashing of the Crows has a lot of the potential complexities of that life simply ignored or barely touched upon. The entire 'Illario vs Lucanis' boils down to: Illario seething in the shadows about Lucanis being the 'best boy'™ of the family while Illario is an after thought - which he is.

Let's be real, Illario is not subtle and immediately comes across as the Scar to Lucanis' 'Mufasa'. It's a questline with a very straightforward villain who has pretty lackluster motivations from what info we're provided - being 'I want power and to be the First Talon'. The game does very little explore what motivations he may have beyond being jealous of Lucanis/wanting more power.

However, if you play the quest line knowing what previous games have set up about the Crows - about how cutthroat and brutal the life is behind the glamour - then you can see that the entire Lucanis vs Illario conflict has amazing potential to be a dramatic tragedy.

We've seen how the life of Crow can affect Zevran - someone who was sold into the life through child-slavery. How interesting would it be to see how the life of a Crow can affect someone who was born into it? It's pretty clear in-game that Caterina intends for her grandchildren to carry on the family tradition - despite the fact that this 'family tradition' has likely led to the deaths of most of her grandchildren and however many children she had.

If there's banter about how Illario's/Lucanis' parents/cousins died specifically I haven't heard it, but the impression I got in-game was that it was likely linked to the Crows/politics in some way? Feel free to correct me! Still majorly fucked up that she pushes her grandsons into this life regardless!

Lucanis/Illario's situation was not like Zevran's - who was sold into the Crow's through slavery, with no one to speak up for him. Caterina was a woman who had power, who knew what the life of a Crow meant, and who still pushed those she 'loved' into it because is consolidated her place in the system. For all the Crows talk of 'family' Caterina doesn't seem to give a shit about them unless if they're contributing to the family business in some way - not to mention the whole 'you fail and we kill you' clause of being a Crow in the first place.

In the 'Wigmaker Job' from Tevinter Nights Lucanis talks about how Caterina hit him [also Illario] with her cane for mistakes and had him spend days without food/water. How he used to hate her but now 'realizes' that it was her way of ensuring he survived the life of being an Antivan Crow. Did it end up protecting them? It likely pushed them both to refine their skills out of fear. It's likely that simply by association with her they would be targets and thus needed to know how to take care of themselves and fight.

But why have him as a Crow in the first place? Why not simply train them well to defend themselves? You can't deny that she doesn't benefit from having her grandchildren in the family business - intentionally wanting Lucanis to take over her position as First Talon. The Antivan Crows are a force to be reckoned with and being one brings a whole lot of power in Antiva - being part of the elite of that group even more so.

If the game showed us the ugly reality of the Crows - the brutality of the lifestyle and how cutthroat the organization is, it could have really added some depth to Illario's betrayal - having it be more than "I want more power/respect" to "this is the result of what you taught me was valuable in life."

Warden: "Do you actually enjoy being an assassin?" Zevran: "And why not? There are many things to enjoy about being a Crow in Antiva. You are respected. You are feared. The authorities go out of their way to overlook your trespasses. Even the rewards are nothing to turn your nose up at."

Illario, bitter about Caterina favoring Lucanis - resentful of the fact that she has already decided that Lucanis will be her successor, being offered power by the Venatori (at the expense of the Crows) and accepting because why not? How different is it from what the Crows do? Isn't power and status the whole point of working yourself up in the Crows? Getting into a relationship with Zara because why not? Isn't sex part of the allure of being a Crow? Why can't he have this? Why shouldn't he have this?

Rook: "When we met, it didn't seem like Illario and Caterina were close." Lucanis: "It was hard to be close to her. Even for me. And...I was her favorite."

Why would he have connections to his family? Why should he? Caterina certainly never seemed to value 'family' beyond what they could do for her and their family legacy. Most of his family is already dead, and of those that remain the only parental figure he has obviously favors Lucanis. We don't have a lot of evidence in-game to show that Illario ever really cared for Lucanis, but the prequel story 'The Wake' and Lucanis' own banter imply that they were practically brothers, best friends. Perhaps he did care and then ceased to at some point, perhaps he didn't at all, or perhaps he accepted that an early death for them both was inevitable like everyone else in their family. Dead now or later - what was the difference? At least if Illario sells him out now to the Venatori then he'll get something from it instead of another dead family member to bury.

It's the tragic result of raising a child in an environment where he was taught and experienced the need for self-preservation at all costs. Constantly threatened, punished, and made well aware of that fact that his life was an expendable commodity. Then, when things in the world went to shit he picked the only option that made sense to him. To save himself.

The irony of the potential fall of the Crows, the fall of House Dellamorte, coming at the hands of one of their own - not because he had a change of heart but because he was taught too well by them. The Crows view those that fail them as disposable, someone to be discarded - if the Crows fail Illario, what is to stop him from applying that mindset to them?

But this would require the writers to acknowledge how messed up the Crows are and we can't do that to our 'Noble Freedom Fighters'™. They'll also need to address Zevran's existence and what lore was established in past games...and we can't have that either lmao.

[missionel]

goodnight

[champmorado]

h. how do i explain my punch out ships without looking insane

my ships are: disco kid x don, carmen x don, GT x don, hondo x GT, hondo x don, hondo x bear hugger, von kaiser x bear hugger, hondo x sandman, hondo x bald bull, and sandman w/ one-sided feelings for bald bull 😭😭