#not typical fandom related

[snazzy-serpent]

Just bought my first Terry Pratchett book!

[catstar91]

Ok phandom peeps, I need to get something off my chest. I cannot stop thinking about it, it’s so funny that this happened to me!

So I’ve been casually perusing the DP fandom for a while, right? Like for several years at least! What can I say? I like art! So at various points I had talked to my aunt about some stuff related, like fun stuff about the phandom and the existence of ghost king aus and stuff. Recently though, I found a fanfic that I spent AN ENTIRE DAY reading and doing nothing else! Like I stayed up late the night before, woke up to immediately read more! I don’t normally read fanfics, let alone any long form story, cuz my attention span is shit and has been shit basically all my life! So in the evening when I was a good chunk of the way through the fic, I talked to my aunt about it! Cuz it’s funny! I found a lot of things in it very amusing and wanted to share!

And then she asked for a link…

The next thing I know, within a few months, probably 3 months later at most, my aunt starts telling me about phandom lore I had never even heard of before! She literally made an ao3 account!!! Guys I am floored! I’ve been idly watching from the shadows for so long, and then I accidentally get my aunt into the phandom and she starts telling me about a red duck candle that’s apparently been integral DPxDC lore for YEARS!

What have I DONE???

[inluvwcaitvi]

2nd throwback to when a silco stan told me that if silco was abusing jinx, then vi calling her “powder” is also abusive, and i genuinely had to, again, block that person after that bc what in the actual hell is going on in ur brain girl lmao 💀

[queercoded-disney-villain]

Chat I regret to inform you that my CCCC enjoyment has become a full-fledged special interest

[weirdfishy]

my lil moon (toddler cousin) was looking through my phone’s photos after we had a mini photo shoot and she kept swiping back and eventually got to some freshly downloaded svt wallpapers— she stopped at seungkwan’s- i told her his name and she said, “she’s pretty. is he sad?” 😆

it being a photo of him smiling and looking up, I ask why she thinks that, and so in true intellectual form, she swipes again, stopping at wonwoo. to this she immediately says, “i like him.” 😌

i tell her what his name is too, and she echos back, “wonu?” before nodding to herself 🥺

so of course, i start telling her who they are as she swipes through, and my lil moon likes to sing, so when she hears they sing, she asks to hear them

i of course put on svt’s killing voice video

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

Guys it's okay, you don't have to call Luke and Percy brothers. They're literally cousins. Already related.

[muppetjackrackham]

to the person who spent all that time writing a multi post thesis about the doctor having c-ptsd and bpd i hope you know i think about it constantly

[crimeronan]

i'm always a polyshipper before anything else bc my own found/created family is a polycule & i base all my (healthy) written relationships off various irl dynamics of mine. i'm genuinely curious how opinions of my fave toh polyship skew amongst people here. answers to this poll will not change the way i post about them or how annoying i am about them though.

[tkbrokkoli]

i think a thing im v passionate abt is music. or rather, listening to music. i listen to it when i work, when i drive, when i clean, when i walk. i spend several hours every day listening to music. once during a trip i didn't have the time to listen to music for several days and when i finally turned on some music it felt like the world was suddenly filled w more color and life. i once was so overwhelmed w awe and beauty listening to a song for the first time that it caused me to have a panic attack. in, like, a good way, like, wow, look at that song, it touched me so deeply that i lost control of my body for a moment. i sometimes get teary eyes or goosebumps when listening to music. i listen to the same song for hours on repeat. i don't know anything abt making music btw. i took guitar lessons for some time but im not talented or good at it and it took too much effort to continue. i love the sounds a guitar makes though. i also don't remember any music theory. i have a friend who's naturally talented at playing the guitar but they didn't enjoy it but even after years of not having picked up a guitar they can still play songs at birthday parties. i think it's funny that they are naturally good at it but they hate doing it and i love it but im not good at it at all.

[treepainting]

For something that advertises itself as ‘not having ads’ it sure does have a lot of ads

[alinaandalion]

recently been obsessing over nate ford and his absolute need to be a Good Person and how he grew up informing so many of his choices throughout his life. and how even though he is definitely not a nice person, he still has this massive capacity for kindness and empathy in spite of what he’s lost.

like, i’m sorry, i’m just not going to get over a character who went through one of the worst things you can (losing your child) and turned around and used that grief and anger to prevent as many people as possible from ever experiencing what he went through.

(and to eventually tell his team of thieves that they’re the best people he’s ever known, and he means it, this man who spent so long believing that Good = Lawful that he shaped his entire life around it because of how hard he was running from his dad and the way he grew up...absolute perfection.)

[leonstamatis]

Rules: post the first lines of your last 10 fics posted to ao3. if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics.

tagged by @waveridden!

a window to break out

The first time he tries to get home, it’s with the ruined pieces of the Tallus in his hands.

Nate knows he was right when he told Blink not to come back for him; there’s too much risk to that. He had to close the door and lock these worlds away, where no one can get hurt. But the Tallus had stayed behind with him.

2. symbiosis

It isn’t that Doric wants a rogue in the party. Rogues are worse liars than anyone, if Forge was anything to go by, and she doesn’t have the patience for that.

3. driftwood

If asked, anyone around would say the best thing Annie Cresta ever did was float.

It was an uneventful final. Bodies, animal and human and mechanical alike, floated like driftwood in the aftershocks of a disaster and the cameras searched the wreckage for any sign of life.

4. honey, honey

Edric plops down onto Ruthless’ bed with what can only be described as a shit-eating grin. He holds a journal in his hands, pages yellowed and leather binding split along the spine where it’s been opened and shut too many times. Edric holds it out toward Ruthless with a little shake.

5. from the bones to the other side

Before the fall, things were… Okay, Edric wouldn’t say things were easier. But they were simpler. Less room for error and for that creeping sense of anxiety and uncertainty on the back of his neck.

6. the waiting and the wanting

Nerd looks lovely today. It’s hardly a surprise; Val is of the expert opinion that Nerd is always lovely, regardless of date or time or circumstance, but he’s not so much of a zealot that he’ll confess as much.

7. something wicked

The first time we speak after she disappears, it’s standing in the bay with cold water splashing against our hips. She’s staring off into the distance, where the sun hovers just above the horizon. With the reflection in the water, it makes a perfect circle. A gold coin just out of reach for the both of us.

8. hooked

The doorway to this realm is foreboding. An arch of animal bones shimmers in the air in front of Lyke, and he almost wants to turn around and high-tail it somewhere else. If the point of an escape route is to take him somewhere safer, then this doesn’t really fit the bill.

9. ground control

“It’s so quiet.”

They’re the first words out of Rivers’ mouth when Caleb tracks her down. She speaks in a shell-shocked monotone that Caleb has heard before — usually after someone is pulled from a burning building, though.

10. burning

Let’s set the scene, then.

It’s a bar in Houston. The lights above the door flicker intermittently. Most of the letters are dim or altogether broken, leading most of those who pass by to believe in its status as a shady, disreputable establishment. Rather than enter from street level, you have to walk down a half flight of stairs.

i thiiiiink most of my writerly mutuals have been tagged in this already but just for funsies i'll go ahead and tag @sarsaparillia @magictavern @birdlord5000 and anyone else who wants to!

[anoddopal]

It feels good to interact with the selfship/self insert community more after being introverted for so long. ;u;

[woodlands-nd]

mutual has new hyperfixation, you know what that means!!

time to osmosis general information about the thing while being kind of so confused but I'm used to that. also i reblog everything that looks cool

[eff-plays]

Ok so I watched the interview with Stephen Rooney, Astarion's writer, and here are some highlights. (I'm an aspiring writer and current game design student who wants to write for games so I'm sorry if some of these insights aren't as interesting to you as they are to me <3)

He calls Astarion his "horrible little vampire boy"

He loves seeing the fandom around Astarion<3

He did write other characters in the game, but mostly NPCs surrounding Astarion or his storyline, so it mostly revolved around Astarion

Astarion is not as connected to other companions/Origins as, for example, Lae'zel and Shadowheart, or Wyll and Karlach are to each other, but he is still reactive to their stories, even if it's just to stand off to the side and laugh when something terrible happens

He had a clear sense of where Astarion's story would start and end, but it got "muddy in the middle", but those are also moments where the best ideas come from

They write from the general idea that every character has one "good" and one "evil" ending, in order to give the player choice. RIP Ascendant apologists :(

According to Stephen, two of the most important aspects of Astarion's character (to keep consistent when bringing him to Idle Champions, at least) is that he enjoys violence, but is also fun about it

"He has a certain appreciation for violence, I guess? A bit of a murdery streak. [...] He's a vampire, he's all about blood, and he's all about, kind of, those darker sides of humanity. [..] But at the same time, he is ... He is really fun, he's really fun to write, he's really fun to have in your party, and it's very important for me that that is also represented."

"He's gonna stab you, but will have a smile on his face as he does it? I mean, I dunno. That's kind of him in a nutshell."

Larian would not have allowed for Astarion to be a typical brooding Dracula type, and there were scenes that were shot down for not being original enough

The main thing about Astarion was trying to get a "sense of fun." It would be easy to write a character that was very unlikable, and they absolutely did not want to do that

Rooney says Astarion is consistently terrible throughout the game and awful in a whole lot of ways, but he also needed to be charming enough that you could tolerate his presence and wanted him around

Rooney also had a lot of input on Astarion's stats (meaning the 10 Charisma is probalby 100% intentional)

He also had input on how certain lines should be delivered, even though the writers didn't directly work with voice actors

The way Astarion moves and poses is "all Neil"

Apparently, Neil Newbon worked on the character for years and Rooney did not speak to him once, though his voice work did influence how Astarion's lines were written and it became a "feedback loop" (Possible context for "ONLY SLIGHTLY, NEIL")

There were no points where a line delivery drastically changed Astarion's writing; rather it was a constant, slow evolution

However, there was one very spoilery moment where Neil gave such emotion to some "basic" lines that it fundamentally changed the scene (WHAT IS IT OMG)

It's difficult to balance approval, as you don't want to straight up write a monster. Every character needs to have some humanity in them. So if it comes to leaving the party, it needed to be the result of something central to said character. They wanted to be mindful of situations that would cause actual rifts between characters. (I assume this is why most generic disapprovals/approvals are +/- 1 or 2, while character-related ones give +/-5 or more)

However, as they don't write straight up horrible people/monsters, it doesn't come up as often as one might think.

The interviewer makes a point about how characters like Astarion and Lae'zel are good examples of how to play "evil" characters, as they are maybe not the best people but are still eager and willing to stick around the other party members

They worked to make sure the characters would work as a group, no matter the configuration of the group. The characters needed to be on the same path, even if they don't always agree or walk that path the same way.

Stephen Rooney is very proud of the "climactic" scene of Astarion's story. (AS HE SHOULD BE.) He even had to step away from the computer and have an emotional moment. Me too, man.

He's also "extremely pleased" that there's a point where you can punch Astarion in the face. "Actually, that one might be my favorite part" A MAN OF THE PEOPLE!!

Stephen Rooney's tip on what specific thing you should try out with Astarion: When he's trying to get a "sneaky nibble" at night, you should "probably" let him bite you. Way ahead of you there, sir.

No discussion about Astarion's romance unfortunately, but that's that!