#of the fantasy variety

[the-matron-of-ravens]

Genuinely curious, what are your thoughts on Dancer and FCG cuz like, he Literally, not figuratively, tried to kill her and did kill all of her companions at the time. I can see being critical cuz she doesn't seem to treat them like sentient beings, but even in the canon... most of the automatons aren't. Just some of the really old ones from Aeor/other old cities, right? So? She got a whoops!sentient microwave, treated them like a microwave, they killed all her friends and almost her and she's supposed to....? Be good buds with them? Also I know it's said that she trauma dumped on FCG, but let's switch it from microwave to personal journal - how would YOU feel if your personal journal popped to life and attacked you for trauma dumping? IDK haha I guess Idk you opinions and I'm just responding to my projected assumptions of your opinion. REALLY I'd 100% sincerely would like to hear your thoughts. I was really bothered by FCG pushing to meet with Dancer. Like jeez just leave her alone, you're her literal sleep paralysis demon, read the room.

Hey! Thanks for the ask, I put this a little bit in the tags but I can elaborate more here. (Edit: elaborate A LOT MORE it seems)

So here goes, I don’t know if you meant it this way but the analogy of a journal or microwave is helpful here because that’s exactly how Dancer treated FCG - as a tool to be used. But they *aren’t*. FCG is a whole being with emotions and thoughts all of which are apparent and so clearly distinct from other automatons.

So tbh, I think the perspective of “whoops! Sentient bot” makes sense for like a month, max. Not years. After all, we have seen NPC after NPC recognize FCG is a sentient being almost immediately after meeting him. I find it VERY hard to believe that Dancer never realized it herself.

Additionally, we need to step out of the plot itself and look at FCG’s mechanics. We know that every time he heals, takes damage for someone else, etc. he takes stress points, and that once past a certain threshold his switch flips and he goes full Murderbot.

We also know that rest and recovery are what reduces FCG’s stress points. So that tells us that Dancer was using and using and using FCG and not letting him rest (enough? At all?) even though he needed it. Because again he’s a person not a tool.

Even when they met back up recently and FCG sobered her up she remarked how she missed him doing that for her. And while I don’t expect her to miss him, I do think it’s indicative of her interest in him never being about him as a person but only how he could serve her.

And if we want to criticize FCG for his lack of boundaries, inability to take no for an answer and pathological need to fix Dancer sure that’s fair. He needs to unlearn a lot of that and quick. But we then have to ask ourselves where did those traits come from? They didn’t come from nowhere.

FCG is mentally extremely YOUNG. Aside from the 6?-ish Months spent with Ashton all he remembers is his time with Dancer. So, if FCG has a pathological need to fix others, to help them, and feels worthless if he’s unable to do so - that comes from how Dancer treated and trained him.

That doesn’t just go away; ESPECIALLY not when FCG doesn’t even remember going postal and doesn’t see to have the (IMO) most clear and realistic view of his and Dancer’s relationship.

After all look how he interacts with the Changebringer. She’s his surrogate Mom/Dancer. He needs someone to tell him how to feel, think, and what’s Good and Bad because he doesn’t know how to do it for himself - because he wasn’t *taught* to.

But here’s my real question. What do we call one person keeping another person in service to them, with no compensation or personhood to be had, and with no intentions of releasing that person from that service? That’s slavery my dude. AT BEST indentured servitude.

(but that implies there’s a debt. What debt? Waking him up? He didn’t ask for that; that was her choice.

And again this sounds a lot like children being “indebted” to parents for giving them life, housing, feeding, etc. )

That’s the part I can’t get over. And that’s the part I can’t get behind where FCG is the abusive one. The power differential was NEVER in FCG’s court; he never once thought of himself as a person or as anything but in service of “Soul Touched”. That complete sacrifice of yourself and your needs (or an inability to even know you HAVE needs) comes from being in relationships where those things are expected/demanded.

So, yeah, he literally tried to kill her, and I gotta be real I’m not surprised. Even children of abusive parents who they love snap sometimes. Because again, that’s mentally what he was at the time. A child.

But even then, no I don’t think it’s unreasonable or unrealistic for Dancer to be traumatized or not want to see FCG again. I don’t even think she’s wrong to say “I can’t give you closure” because closure isn’t something other people give you.

But the way she’s been discussed to be largely clueless about his sentience, blameless in his blow up, and FCG’s victim? I just can’t get behind that. Like at all.

[benevolenterrancy]

~ Extremely Unwilling Magical Protagonists Attempt To Outrun The Plot And Not Fucking Die ~

(@takofukkatsumi this tag is from a while ago but it hasn't left my brain -- L-Space got very weird all of a sudden)

[hellafluff]

Body diversity in Dwarven Women,,,,, Ryoko Kui marry me

[moodyseal]

This might not make the final cut (not even a first cut exists yet LMAO) but. Possible scene for the Winter Soldier AU? A mysterious blonde man keeps appearing in Hyacinthus' dreams. Wonder who that is hmmm

[johnbly]

That's Turks teamwork. Pretty good, right?

[hylialeia]

"i can't come up with a fantasy name for my world so i HAVE to use chatgpt to get the gears flowing" have you all forgotten what fantasynamegenerators.com has done for you

[wayward-banana]

babe wake up I remembered to do a new years Takumi after 4 years

[mostlyfate]

TEARS not my breaking point being when they showed even the little percentage dust demons helping 😭😭😭

[battleonthebigbridge]

“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do – some… don’t ever want to.”

Glamtober Day 21- Another world (Wonderland)

Chimerical Felt Coat of Casting (Colibri Pink) / Werewolf Arms (Colibri Pink) / Fat Cat Halfslops (Colibri Pink) / Werewolf Feet (Colibri Pink)

[angclnumber]

OPEN TO : f / nb PLOT : your every day enemies with benefits situation . possible additional connections could be coworkers , bandmates , childhood enemies , exes who can't leave each other alone , etc .

" OKAY , THIS WAS A MISTAKE and it is never, ever happening again ." dawn can't help but feel a bizarre sense of deju vu to the last time the two of them found themselves in this position . or the time before that . she ignores it ." and if it is not already abundantly clear you will tell no one ."

[thebirdqueen]

Oh my godddd I would be such a Chocobo girl if I was in the ff7 universe. Give me ALLLLL the big birds you can find to me. I'd race for fun mainly and I'd be on my top game making my birds the damn best.

[morverenmaybewrites]

I've hit a bit of a reading slump, on top of receiving my delayed-for-two-months salary, so I'm about to go book shopping in a few days.

Has anyone got any book recs for me? :D

[solradguy]

I love that the "Vincent is Sephiroth's father" headcanon hinges entirely on the fact that they've both got generic bishounen anime face syndrome under the spiky hair rofl

Vincent is Reno's father confirmed. Because they both have the same delicate facial features. Vincent is Cloud's father. Vincent owes $95,354 in child support for his 12+ children. Confirmed by lack of facial feature variety in the (modern) Final Fantasy universe

[art--harridan]

[Image description: A digital drawing based on the film Girl Shy. It depicts Harold Lloyd's character Harold Meadows sat at his typewriter, paused in thought as his fingers hover above it. His eyes are looking up and his mouth is slightly open, like he's dreaming awake. A thought bubble floats around him like smoke, with the faces of two women in the middle of it. The two have annotations next to them that denote the twenties era stereotypes that they are styled as. The one noted as "the flapper" is smiling and has curly, slightly unkempt hair, with a headband around it. She has lighter makeup than the woman next to her, who has dark lips and eyeshadow and is labelled "the vamp". She has large circular statement earrings and an ornate headpiece atop her smooth updo. Her eyes are downturned, and her expression less approachable. Harold is coloured in greyscale, and so are the ladies, although they have a warmer brown tone, as does the smoke. There's a pinker line of light surrounding them and the writing. The background is a dark brown.]

Inktober - Day 15 (Guidebook)

Film - Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1924)

[fallloverfic]

I've seen some very odd takes about certain language used in the scene where Mizrak rebukes Olrox at the end of Castlevania: Nocturne, which I think might be due to lack of knowledge about the historical context of certain things.

CW: historical racism against First Nation groups

I know reading academic articles isn't for everyone, but I have to wonder if a lot of people in the Castlevania: Nocturne fandom have not watched things like, say, Disney's 1995 animated Pocahontas, which, for all its many, many flaws, features the song, Savages. I'm not going to quote it in full here, you can find the song lyrics elsewhere (though the European colonizers do use the lines "vermin" and "barely even human", among other epithets). It's not a great song for a lot of reasons (among them being it tries to "both sides" things). But to look at the scene in CN where Mizrak, a Christian working in a European Christian church with at least some Europeans, calls Olrox, a First Nation man, an animal without the understanding of how Christian European colonizers (typically as part of or at least backed by some Christian churches) have viewed First Nation peoples and treated them, and certain epithets used for them, and how European Christian dehumanization of "new world" groups and non-Christians generally worked/works?

Well.

[witchofthesouls]

So is that pretend marriage Cyber au in space, does that mean Smokescreen is the normal one while Optimus and June is that weird couple that vibes on a different level?

If this is the Do As the Romans Had Done idea, then yeah. Optimus is just that buff need that's really quiet and serious, yet unintentional feral and/or terrifying. And June, while able to blend into mundane societies, has a really broken scale of a Danger sense.

I'm definitely keeping it as Other!Au, but now I'm leaning that June comes from a long line of magic-users: alchemists, sorcerers, enchanters, and what not. Think of them between deep in the mystical many-kinds-of-arts and unhinged field work scientists.

And that's why June isn't too freaked out about everything because this species-swap with an impromptu space adventure isn't the weirdest shit that happened in the family.

Smokescreen is the normal guy from a civilization that fell to an inconceivable scale of planet-wide infighting, but he attributes any weirdness from the others as "Oh, they used to humans, so it's a learning curve" and "Primes doing Prime-things."

Meanwhile, Optimus is climbing extreme cliffs to reach a stray goat without a by-your-leave or safety rigging and more than capable of fishing with his bare hands off a waterfall to use it as a teaching moment for vocabulary and anatomy structures for the kids.

June, while is more affable and likes chit-chat over recipes and the weather, is also the person that made a deal with a fae that's an Archivist in a forgotten library beneath a massive cave system to hunt down extremely rare specimens that were once predominant in textile spellcraft for protection and health. That deal ended with Jack, by the way, so he's still a spooky fae-child.

Smokescreen is deeply engrossed by Optimus in a bar: really terrible at small talk but more than able to consume fuel that's used for stripping rust infections from a tank without a grimace and starts a fist fight when someone tries to drug another person's drink without them knowing.

June is in a shadowy corner doing a secret handshake with an indescribable stranger because she recognizes their cloak's stitching and scented tobacco from her (several greats) grandmother's fellowship. Now she's back to doing odd jobs or quests.

Smokescreen rationalizes it that June was a medical professional for humans, so it isn't too out of the realm why she's interested into toxins because he's more distracted by Optimus dropping bombs that he consumed hallucinogens as a sparkling and managed to survive to make to Iacon.