#my GOD when does it END

[little-piece-of-tamlin]

not me crying in a library bc the stress of uni owerwhelmed me once again

studying is going great guys

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[choccy-milky]

✨ pokémon AU! 🔴✨ clora is mainly fairy & psychic (bc shes sweet but also smart) whereas seb trends towards fire/dark (even tho i only ended up giving him 1 dark pokemon...shhh) i originally gave him a houndour, bc dark + guard dog was such a perfect combo for him, but arcanine ALSO suits him and is way cuter so i had to go with that 🥹 and i had to fit in a raven and a snake pokemon somewhere bc...cmon🥰 BAHAHA

TYSM to the anon who inspired this!! it was so much fun

[blizardstar]

Me when Ashton Greymoore is denied honorable and meaningful self-sacrifice, and now must face the reality that they MUST keep living after it’s All Over

[jade-of-mourning]

i miss them

[thethiefandtheairbender]

Had a good chat with my partner about it today that maybe let me put a finger on what's always bugged me about "we're here to fix canon" attitudes being so prevalent in fandom (especially in the past 10ish years) throughout my life. This is not to say there's never a time or place for that (I've written fix its myself, or the occasional meta on how something could be fixed/improved) or that people are wrong to (we're anti fandom policing). It's also not an issue to me on the basis of "I love my blorbo in canon and fandom mischaracterizes them in the name of 'fixing' them" etc as it is just... coming from a fundamentally different perspective for story analysis / interaction than most (not all) people in fandom, I think.

One of the reasons I enjoyed getting my English degree was because I was finally being encouraged to and taught in alignment with what my brain had always be inclined to do: you always assume that there's a reason, and a good reason, for the story to do whatever it's doing. It assumes that the story is already exactly what it is supposed to be as it is supposed to be, and it's up to you to find the reasons Why.

The story was boring, or made you feel uncomfortable/bad, or you couldn't root for a character or relationship? All of that, at least at the beginning, doesn't really Matter. You assume that the story is paced fine, you assume the discomfort was intentional or part of something broader (historical shit that hasn't aged well) or that the dichotomy of "I feel invested or not invested" isn't useful. And in doing so, you replace all that with asking why.

An example I'll use is 1984 by George Orwell. I read that book in high school and I fucking hated it. Normally, I like the protagonist the most in anything I watch/read, but in that book, I loathed both the two leads and were actively rooting for them to be captured and tortured so the book could end faster; it was an actively miserable affair. I don't think that was necessarily the author's intention (certain amount of death of the author is baked in, but for a lot of the texts I was reading, we didn't even know the author or anything substantial about them, i.e. Beowulf) but, more importantly, I don't think any of those things are Flaws or downsides in the text.

Part of this is because 1984 is a dystopian novel (if a romcom book breaks genre convention that badly where you're miserable reading it, yeah, maybe something went wrong, but more on that in a minute) but even then it doesn't really matter on the basis of genre; I'm sure some people read 1984 and felt fascinated/excited while reading.

Rather, the focus becomes: what do I find so unlikeable about the protagonists? Why would they be written that way (on purpose)? What does it say about the society they live in? What does it say about their characterization, social stratification, etc etc? If a character does something that I think is non-sensical, why? Have I missed something? Should I watch retrospectively for clues? Is there another way to engage and to understand? Is what I label as confusion potentially a, or the, Point?

It is only after finding the reasons, and/or finding them unsuitable, that I let my subjective feelings into play. While a story can have great merit on the basis of relatability, relatability or "this aligns with my worldview / expectations / desires / etc." is not the be-all end-all of discerning quality

For example, I'm never going to be a fan of Jane and Rochester (she's 18, he's her 40 year old employer who routinely lies to her) but there are reasons, Good reasons, they get together in Jane Eyre (a book so subjectively boring I struggled through it twice) in response to both when the book was written and with the book's themes / symbols / their characterization. If they didn't end up together, it would be a fundamentally different story; it would not be Jane Eyre. So objectively, it's fine and an understandably massive influence on the western literary canon; subjectively, it's so fucking bad and I'm so glad I never have to read it again. But if I stopped there with my lack of interest or dislike of the main romance, I'd be missing out on what the text has to offer as well, the text.

This applies to more modern day stuff as well. I don't like Double Trouble from SheRa as nonbinary representation, and I'm nonbinary myself; however, I can acknowledge that the things I don't like about them were probably simultaneously empowering and exactly what the author (who is also nonbinary) wanted to be per his own experience of gender. Having a "I assume the text is right" mindset means that I can hold space for my own feelings/analysis (i.e. I also did not like Catra's arc, as I think she needed to learn other things / be written under a different lens) while holding space for the text as is (under the canonical lens of Catra learning it's never too late to be saved, I think her arc is conclusive and well done). And these two viewpoints aren't fundamentally opposed, but can coexist as analytical soup, being equally true / having equal value under the subjective (my view) and more 'objective' (the canon text's construction, or what I / the scholarly consensus, if it exists, believes it to be, anyway) at the same time.

Again, none of this is to say that you can't take issue with a canon text, or want to change something. I remember one time I was watching a show where their refusal to explore a romantic relationship between the female lead and her guy best friend was actively making the show worse; I understood their reasonings of wanting to put them with other people to explore their relationships, and wanting to emphasize a male-female friendship at the core of the story, and I still wanted them to put the two together as a Ship instead for various reasons. But that doesn't mean my line of thinking would've been Objectively Better—assuming if they had been paired together would've been executed in the manner I'd enjoy, or that them being paired with other people couldn't have been executed in ways I would've enjoyed more—merely that I likely would've enjoyed the series more per my own subjective preferences.

What I see in fandom sometimes is that people, understandably, aren't approaching at the start from a "the story always has a good reason" as much as they are speed-running from a "this didn't make sense to me or felt bad/off" and maybe examining why (which is supremely useful!) but not going back to examine the other side of the coin as to why the story would do it anyway.

Because sometimes the story—or a part of a story—is still 'bad' to us. It's just worthwhile to look at why it's 'good,' too.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 209

Now Jason was planning on, well, a lot of things, when he came back to Gotham. He had a lot of plans, several of which had to do with the old man and even more that had to do with cleaning up Crime Alley, making it safer and all that. 

What he was not planning on was to find some sort of lab in the basement of where he was planning on setting up a safehouse. Nor was he planning on finding several literal children in cages inside said lab. Oh and Lazarus Waters- but children! With muzzles! Being experimented on!

Now he’d like to say he had a plan in what happened next, but if he’s honest everything had gone Green and he didn’t remember what happened next, only that he’s back home with said children and covered in blood. Oh and everything smells of smoke. 

… And apparently there’s more of these things dotted around Crime Alley with the rest of these kids, er, siblings? Family? Fright does mean family? Okay kids, he’s not turning into Bruce but you can stay here while he deals with this… however long that takes. 

He better not be turning into Bruce he swears-

[lokh]

also i think if roleswap laios and canon laios met theyd immediately start fighting.

[jubmato]

guys. guys hear me. out. pelase hear me out im cooking i swear guys ple

[dellamortethelesser]

i know other ppl saw that post about the fact that if solas had just waited out the last two blights, the veil would've fallen anyway. truly makes me insane. like his pride and regret are so powerful that, after being "awake" for only a few months? years? he decides he can't stomach this world at all and has to interfere personally to "fix" things and take the world back to the way it was before and it brings us to where we are in veilguard. he did not give any other mortal life on thedas a consideration before beginning to put those plans in motion. he couldn't wait.

[mamawasatesttube]

it's like, i really do enjoy most of the bats as characters and i really do like a lot of their comics. but also i am sooooo tired of them being hailed as better than literally everyone else. both in fanon but also in comics (modern ones are esp egregious imo, like WHAT was that shit about batman and the joker being the most dangerous men on the planet. hi. have you heard of lanterns? speedsters? supers? actually if i keep listing groups who could kick batman's ass we'd be here all day). they're like kudzu. that shit needs to stay in its native environment (funky little neo-noir detective stories) and stop being an invasive species (putting down everyone else to make them seem cooler). put bruce wayne back into a murder mystery setting that isn't about saving the world but is about saving one person or one family that no one else would've saved right now or so help me god. the whole invasive species cross contamination thing is unhealthy for both him And the other ecosystems he keeps getting transplanted into. please. it's so dark in here

[pokimoko]

The fact that Main-verse Ooo is as good and as kind as it is (relative to the other universes shown so far, at least, it's obviously not perfect) all because of the same character that starts off as the OG series' antagonist, the person we were made to see as the bad guy (albeit an often ineffectual one) for several seasons, is making me lose my mind.

Imagine finding out the guy you spent your childhood beating up and saving princesses from is in fact a driving catalyst behind you being able to exist, and not only exist but also live in a world that knows what kindness is. All because that man, the same man who you've witnessed do terrible things, once met a little girl and taught her how to be good.

Simon's story really shows us that even if you lose your way and forget how it is to be good yourself, the world keeps the memory for you. That act of love Simon showed Marcy by protecting her and seeing her as more than the monster she thought herself to be created ripples upon ripples, small at first but eventually enough to help give their wreckage of a world—a world that easily could have been forsaken, its goodness overlooked because of its inhospitable remains—a chance to grow into something beautiful. Because of those very same ripples Simon created, the people of Ooo grew up in a world where they know enough about kindness that they were able and willing to spare the 'bad guy' some, to see beyond the wreckage and allow him to grow too.

In saving Marceline, Simon helped to not only to save the world, but also himself.

[xuxudio]

the voices won

[jack-kellys]

omfg r u stupid or WHAT.

[autisticaradiamegido]

thoughts on dave and aradia (<>)?

day 356

BIG fan tbh. in this house we love and respect timerails

truly yall read this log and tell me theyre not cute

[daily-beast-wirt-brainrot]

[Day 11] || Vitreous hemorrhage is the presence of blood in the vitreous humor. A small amount causes blurring of the vision. Large amounts of blood can make the vitreous humor opaque and cause near-complete vision loss. ||

As time persists, branches begin to grow not only on his exterior but on his insides as well. He begins to partially lose his sight as well as his ability to speak until he himself becomes one with the trees, forever wandering the abyss that is the Unknown.