#ostensibly i have it better than a lot of others

[lucyvaleheart]

.

[giantkillerjack]

Hey anyone else remember the episode of Adventure Time called "Evergreen" where it's revealed that the original bearer of the crown to whom it was "forever linked" was actually a neglected child (and prior reincarnation of Finn) named Gunter trying to be like his wizard father?? Anyone??? Because I had fully forgotten until re-watching the episode last night and I'm losing my mind about the implications.

(This episode is also a devastating look at how a mistreated child unconsciously learns that he must treat himself and those he has power over as cruelly as he has been treated. Adventure Time has so much sadness and madness, y'all.)

[occamstfs]

Roommates’ Trivial Tiff

Pretty standard nerdy asshole to himbo TF, who doesn't love some cosmic justice ! -Occam

“You just don’t understand what it’s like dude. You have no idea how hard all this stuff is for me.” Brock was struggling to get through to his roommate, someone he has time and time again been more than cordial with. In response Harvey scoffs and rolls his eyes refusing to engage and instead doubling down, “I’m sure it’s real difficult with all your paid tutors and your-” 

“You’re not even listening bro! You like to think you’re so elevated, like you have all the answers but you don’t even try to understand what anyone else is going through.” Harvey grimaces and briefly tosses about whether or not this is true but stubbornly neglects to internalize the criticism, “Uhh, I do too?” Brock bites his tongue to prevent just blowing up at his roommate and instead he tries a different angle, “Oh yeah? If that’s the case then, bet you know a lot about me huh? Since we’ve been roommates for a year now,” pausing as he narrows his eyes briefly at Harvey, “and ostensibly we’re friends right?”

Harvey struggles not to display his ever present irritation as he retorts, “Of course we are, uh, dude.” Brock does a better job hiding his intentions as he issues a challenge, “so if we were to say, quiz each other you think you’d come up on top lil dude?” With this gauntlet laid there is little recourse in Harvey’s mind but to accept it, there are few times he enjoys showing off so much as in a trivia contest. So what he might have a less than pristine record of respecting oafs like his roommate, he is certainly not to lose in any battle of the wits regardless of topic or stipulations there may be.

Brock puts out his hand and states the stakes, “You can of course bow out whenever, but uh, how about every question the winner takes something from the loser?” Harvey was resolved to win before hearing the terms and is now spitefully even more eager now as he eyes Brock’s side of the room looking for whatever his prize is sure to be.

Without any further clarification Brock promptly launches into the game, “I guess we’ll start real easy yeah? Only fair.” Harvey feels resentment start to brew as he feels he’s being talked down to as Brock goes on, “For starters then, What’s my major?” Harvey audibly gulps and feels his face blanche as he scrambles to find such an incredibly simple answer. This is such an obvious and pressing piece of information it would be impossible not to have it on deck.

Seeing the hesitation Brock laughs incredulously, “God dude are you kidding? How could you not know this, I-” He shifts his jaw waiting for the second shoe to drop as it is suddenly clear he is about to clean house, this asshole is going to learn respect by hook or by crook. Harvey’s eyes that were just hungrily looking through Brock’s possessions now retread their path, searching for the answer, his eyes linger on some sports bandages and protein powder and he kicks himself for forgetting. “Well duh dude, you’re doing a sports medicine or a trainer degree or whatever. Sorry that I forgot what the proper name is, it’s not exactly high in the list of things I need to know.”

Brock stares down at the clueless nerd before him and slowly shakes his head. “Not even close Harv. It’s-” Before he can finish though Harvey stands and shouts, “Don’t fucking call me that! I bet you don’t know mine either!” This leaves Brock aghast, he crosses his arms and narrows his eyes, “Of course I fucking do! You never shut up about it! I’m lucky if my headphones can block out you whining about homework while also constantly talking yourself up! It’s so, fucking, annoying!”

Hurt by this despite his typical apathy to others Harvey starts up once more, “Okay but you didn’t say-” “Computer Engineering.” Harvey blushes in shame, not over his disrespect but of getting the question wrong. Suddenly there’s a hum in the room and the shadows in the corner grow darker and Brock looks around, “Well I suppose that question really tees me up on what to take huh? I’ll take your major.”

“Wha?” caught on the other foot Harvey blinks and sees that his textbooks and assignments are suddenly piled on Brock’s desk. He feels anxiety rise in his chest unsure of what has happened though confident this must be a prank or something. “No no no that can’t be right? What is happening?” He then returns to look at his roommate once more, a scowl plastered on his face as Brock who, despite his impressive stature always aims to present as kind and gentle, cannot help but smirk as he feels he has gotten one over on this jerk.

He stretches, exposing his midriff and flexing  his arms behind his head, perhaps to try and allure or intimidate Harvey, he’s not sure, but Harvey is not going to just take this sitting down.Though at the present, he is too uncomfortable to even vocalize his discomfort as he stands there trying not to shake. Instead Brock begins once more, “Urgh kinda see what all that complaining was about now Harv, kinda got a lot on my plate now hah!”

Harvey stares daggers at his roommate, “Brock I don’t know what kind of nonsense is going through your dumbass ox brain. But it’s not funny, I’m sure you’re used to bullying little g-”

“Excuse me? I’m a bully!? I know you’re not saying that, I go out of my way to be kind, even to little chip on their shoulder assholes like you. I just,” Brock takes a deep breath and flexes his jaw before he continues. “It doesn’t matter actually. I trust you have a vested interest in trying again though right? Surely you want your major back?”

At the moment Harvey is caught between the idea that this is some kind of Christmas Carol-ass dream where he’s supposed to learn a lesson or once more that this is just a prank by Brock. Amenable as he’s always been, Harvey's convinced that behind this lunkhead is the vitriol of the typical jerk jock. In this impossible chance that this is reality though, he can’t just give up his major. He needs it to be an, uh? God what was, no what is his major anyway? 

Harvey looks around in shock as he suddenly can’t bring his current course schedule to his mind, but he was literally in class this morning right? He feels his coursework draining from his mind as fear and rage begin to rise in his frail body. Images of lecture halls and professors flash through his mind before they just as swiftly dissipate, somewhere within him deeper than memory he feels that he was studying something with numbers. Mathematics, physics, engineering, something he was good at. He is determined to get that back as he speaks up finally, “What is the next question.”

Brock smiles and toys around in his head, confident that he will end up on top. “How about you pick this one, give you a fighting chance.” Harvey purses his lips and struggles to produce a question that he knows the answer to that his roommate will not. Oh duh, he’ll just ask him a math question, easy! Certainly not the aim of the game but Harvey just needed to get his life back. “What’s a derivative.” 

“Kinda not in the spirit of the game dude but whatever. I took calc you know. It’s the rate of change in response to a variable. Now since you’re still being an ass how about I lob one back? How about you derivative 𝑓(𝑥)= 2cos⁡(𝑥)−6sec⁡(𝑥)+3?” Harvey is flat stunned, this is some entry level shit but he cannot for the life of him bring the information to mind. He’s just as sharp as he always has been but anything beyond rudimentary trig is continuing to trickle out of his mind. He meekly chuckles out, “uh easy, it’s f(x) equals, uh tan-”

There’s a blaring in his head as both men are aware of his immediate slip up. Energy once more rises in the air as Brock looks down almost pitifully at his roommate this time. “Now I am sorry for this Harvey but, oof that course load! Like you so relish to say, I am just not that bright hm?” Harvey shakes his head as he realizes the horror about to occur. Brock looks a little uncomfortable as he continues, “After failing to pull your little gotcha, I think I’ll just go ahead and have your intelligence.” 

Both men are instantly struck with headaches the likes of which neither could endure under normal circumstances. As soon as the pain arrives though it is converted into a deep profane pleasure. Pins and needles fill Brock’s mind as it becomes heavy. Ideas and understanding fill his mind as a euphoric warmth flows through him. Harvey had enjoyed learning without truly lifting a finger, he had flourished and gained knowledge through no effort on his part but simple absorption. Brock is overcome with the ease at which he will now flow through life. Equally is he overcome by the ecstasy within his body as it only continues to heighten.

Opposite him Harvey clutches at his head as now not only do his learned experiences at university vanish, but all of his capabilities as a student and academic. Even the pleading within his mind slows down as he feels his ability to swiftly process information breaks down. Harvey turns from the man across from him as Brock’s hands feel up and down his musculature in rapturous delight, just in time to see whatever books and tomes he had collected as trophies begin to fade into the aether along with his memories of reading them. He looks down at his hands in confusion and horror, even with his unaddled mind at full steam he could not make sense of what has befallen him. He knows this is not right.

He is unable to find any answers, though as he searches his brain he begins to find a pleasant warmth in the vacuum where there once was knowledge. While his mind has been emptied, the bulge in his crotch demands his attention, which shall likely be a constant issue now that his mind shall evermore be less than preoccupied. He feels his mouth start to fill with drool as he looks down at his cock as it almost feels larger than it should be. He almost laughs at the idea that from now on he may fully be thinking with his cock. He opens his mouth allowing drool to spill out which shocks him back to sense and he turns around to demand that Brock return this all to sense immediately.

Brock for his part is reclined in a chair just rubbing his cock over his shorts almost forgetting about what they had been doing not seconds earlier. He laughs as he sees the expression on Harvey’s face, “Woah dude sorry about that, got lost in my own mind for a second there! No wonder you had, or have rather, such an attitude problem. It all just came so easy to you didn’t it? I mean we could keep going if you want, what else do you have to lose yeah?” Harvey wipes the drool from his face and takes stock, he can still read, he is pretty confident he still passed high school, he remembers his life before whatever hell is currently happening as well as whatever this new reality is. He nods his head and pushes his erection down as it continues to rise upon seeing his roommate’s cocky repose. He answers, “let’s keep going. Your question right?”

Harvey can’t help but trace Brock’s traps as he shrugs, “If you insist lil bro. What’s my middle name?” He knows this one for sure, he would bring it out to tease his roommate as needed. Brock slams his arm down in excitement and shouts, “fucking Laurel!” then he recalls this is only half the battle, Brock must also get his wrong, “what’s mine?” Brock smirks once more and laughs as he stretches to scratch his back, his roommate hungrily staring, “you don’t have one dude”

The energy rushing between the two men is drastically different this time. Unlike the pleasurable prickles of knowledge or the soothing burn of loss there is a direct, deeper connection between the two. Brock’s grin grows wider as understands, “Oh I getcha, question’s a tie so we share the spoils Harv. Only fair that since you’ve the mind of a what, meathead? May as well have the body of one.”

Harvey watches as his roommate takes off his shirt, he feels a warmth in his chest as he stares directly at Brock’s pecs. His breath catches as he watches his roommate flex them and he feels a nervous energy begin to surge within his own. He’s never had pecs before but he feels his chest pushing, growing, into his shirt. He sees his nipples harden and grow too large to ever hide as his chest expands. His swallows to stop from drooling once more as he sees Brock pose and flex his massive biceps, forcing a burning delight down the whole of Harvey’s arms. He matches the pose of the powerful man he has spoken nothing but ill of and flexes, sweat immediately staining through his shirt as the energy and strain heats his body beyond reason.

At the same time both men drop into a crunch, there is a loud tear as the pants of both men tear as they reach the lowest point in the crunch as Harvey’s ass bursts larger and his thighs swell with strength well enough to carry his increasingly top heavy torso. Not only is Harvey to gain the muscle of a tight jock, but the masculinity expected. The cock he has been til now proud enough of pulses with his heartbeat, with each pump it gorges larger, veins thick as the ones surging down his biceps force his cock thicker and further down his strained shorts. He tears at his pants to free his bulge as his balls bloat to the size of eggs, they pull tight ass they’re exposed to the air and all the soreness, strain, and pain of his still growing body becomes agonizing delight.

Harvey’s eyes water as he struggles to even stay cogent with the pleasure and power coursing through him. He smells his new musk breaking through his senses. Through the burning bedlam across his body he feels a soothing burn as hair begins to sprout and thicken where every man should make clear his masculinity. His pubes thicken and curl beyond his waistline and his pits grow wild and begin to spread to make it clear they, nor his musk, can ever be contained.

He lies, sits, writhes, flexes, exists in nothing but pleasure for some time, no longer concerned for his lost intelligence, beyond the care of his education. His hands, larger and painted with still thickening hair, press tight against his body as he feels the new contours of his body. Each new valley and mountain is a testament to the ecstasy he shall now prioritize above all. Until his roommate’s voice breaks through the haze, “Fuck bro you’re really feeling yourself huh?” Harvey’s eyes open to see Brock’s arrogant sneer has only grown worse as he has contendly watch Harvey lavish his new corpus.

Harvey meets it with a scowl and Brock tilts his head, “Want to do one last question then, bro?” His smile grows tight as he tries not to laugh as the appellation of bro has become the paramount definition of this once genius. Harvey just nods his head, still understandably disoriented as he lies in a pool of his own sweat and pre that remains dripping directly onto the floor. Brock motions for him to ask whatever the presumably final question is but is met with a grunt and a wave of the hand. Brock grimaces slightly, “if you insist bud,” he grimaces slightly as he looks down at the man. Asshole he may have be, may still be even, surely there’s something Brock could do to fix even that. He leans to whisper the question in Harvey’s ear, “what color are my eyes.” 

Between grunts, Harvey strains to look at his roommate only to find them obviously closed. His body contorts with pain and pleasure as he feels the throes of defeat and one final lose begin to seize him. He groans out through clenched teeth as his jaw widens and his brows thicken as changes already begin to work upon his mind, “don’t… know…” Brock nods and sits next to his roommate laying Harvey’s head on his lap. At the point it would be a kindness for the man to forget his life before, and that is exactly what he is to do. 

Brock removes the memories and identity of the sour nerd that made life perpetually unpleasant not only for him, but anyone unlucky enough to grace his presence. His breathing speeds up as his body heat rises beyond imagination, sweat turning to steam in the cold dorm room as he shakes his head and clenches his fists. He writhes only briefly, each flex of his body a final protestation of Harvey as Brock erases even his name from his head. 

After a minute of this his body goes still before he opens his eyes blearily and groans. Still lying in Brock’s lap he stretches his arms, turning to smell his impossibly rank pits before turning it into a flex as he must do anytime he raises them. Brock watches this with trepidation, unsure of who exactly his roommate is to be now before suddenly a name surges into his mind, Bull. Perfect fodder for the jerk he once was and an apt name for the behemoth lying on his lap. Testing the waters Brock pats his chest to wake him up, “Morning Bull.”

He yawns and scratches at the same stubbled face he has always known and he sits up, “urgh got a massive headache bro, must have gone pretty hard to have a hangover this bad huhuh! Wanna go grab brekkie and hit up the gym?” Brock stifles a smirk and helps his roommate up to standing, slightly surprised to see him standing taller than himself before responding, “You got it big guy, how about you get some clothes on first though right?” Bull guffaws, looking down at his hairy sweat-drenched body as he throws an arm around his roommate, cock bobbing around in the open air, still chubbed up. “What would I do without you bro huhuh!” 

Brock looks to see all of Bull’s tops have changed to stringers and tanks. Where Harvey had nothing but pants Bull has piles of unwashed athletic shorts, one of which he promptly throws on, going commando. Seeing Brock watch him, Bull grabs at his crotch and juts at the door, “Come on bro! Faster we get a pump in faster we can get back here and have some fun dude.” 

With that Bull again throws his arm around Brock, once more smelling his b.o. as he almost deliberately spreads it on his roommate’s neck, like an animal marking its territory. The two then off to start their day, in Bull’s mind as they always have. Brock feels his crotch grow weightier as the amble down the hall, unsure if he’s made a horrible mistake in all this. Who is he to say what is too far in acts of cosmic retribution. Brock is certain at the end of the day he and Bull are at least to have quite a bit of fun.

[wickworks]

Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith

(from this month's backer update)

Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.

This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!

This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:

I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?

It's all about perspective, baby.

Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.

Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.

(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)

We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:

they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.

they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)

or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.

So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:

(fullsize here)

The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.

I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.

So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:

We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)

We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:

Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:

I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.

Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.

Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.

[bostova]

something I learned about whilst doing sex work, that I probably wouldn't have learned otherwise, is how uniquely awful it is for everyone involved (imo) when you put a person on a pedestal. like, when you raise another person above you, you are lowering yourself, always.

the supposed praise that you give a person when you tell them that "i wish i had your x,y,z" or "i hope one day I can be as etc. as you" or even "you are such transition goals" and so on, is actually just creating a distance between the two of you that you feel is near uncrossable, and so you isolate them in the process.

a couple of times from a couple of people this might be fine, but once this starts happening on a larger scale, the sense of isolation really starts to wear that person down and then they are left with a couple of options.

they either adopt a god complex and start believing they *are* better than other people, and they never dare to look down in case they realise how much further they have to fall than everyone else.

Or they just don't respond at all, and the people call them rude and lose interest in them. they can try and correct those people if they like but people tend toward celebrity worship and love the idea of there being people out there who are better than them in some almost out-of-reach yet tangible way (musicians, actors, porn stars, star athletes, billionaires, royalty, saints). Odds are high that if it's not that one person, the obsession will just shift to someone else.

The thing about this kind of deifying behaviour too is that a lot of people don't realise they are doing it. they don't notice that they are poking holes in their own self-worth and scraping away layers of self-esteem in the process of raising someone (who is ostensibly just another person like them) up to the heavens.

someone told me recently that i "need to be better at taking compliments" and first of all fuck you don't tell me what to do, and secondly, is a compliment worth taking if it makes you feel more alone than you did before you heard it?

[thewertsearch]

GT: I should preface this request with an overture of appreciation. GT: For how much your cool and brotherly friendship means to me. GT: It has just been… GT: Absolutely *bully* having a standup gent like you in my corner. GT: Just a grade a dude whos a cut above the others in class and camaraderie. GT: Phew… *gropes for fresh kerchief*.

Wow, Jake is fucking terrified of this guy - or at the very least, he seems incredibly intimidated for a guy who's ostensibly just chatting with a friend.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what I'd expect from a Bro who's not any different from his adult self. Jake's acting exactly like Dave did, back when he was forced to share an apartment with the guy.

TT: Take it easy, bromide. TT: Just about the only way I could salvage endearment from this perilous slope of horseshit would be to discover, really fucking soon mind you, it was a preamble to some floundering invitation for me to rush to your vicinity as nakedly as possible.

In other words, you wish he was hitting on you.

I really don't think he's kidding, especially since both Roxy and Jane seem to want a piece of English, too. Jake's sitting at the epicenter of at least three crushes, which is not a pleasant place to be sitting when you're fifteen.

TT: But since we've already shot that wad's eventuality on so many dry runs of flustered ambivalence that were as hilarious as they were one sided, TT: That leaves only one hope for this message to avoid spiraling toward qualification as a critical fucking defect in the hull of the Mach 10 rocket that is my precious spare time.

And here's the guy's actual personality. It's a fairly even mixture of Rose and Dave, a combination which synergizes much better than you'd expect.

He's still prone to Dave-style rambles - but unlike Dave, his streams of consciousness are every bit as eloquent as Rose's text, which some extra swear words tossed in for flavor.

It's very good, and immediately does a lot to humanize him, especially when all we've seen so far is "roof. now." and "State your business."

TT: And that hope lies in the extent to which you were practicing artful insincerity. TT: Now's your opportunity to pretend that's what you were gunning for. I suggest you seize it. GT: I… GT: Oh. Yes! But of course. GT: The ironies! GT: Good grief how i was bandying them just now. You know me dude. GT: *Blows smoke off red hot irony pistol.* GT: *NONSUGGESTIVELY!!!!!*

lmaoooo

Alright, I can't actually tell if that was a Freudian slip or not - but I kind of hope it was. If these two became a couple, the vibes would be incomprehensible.

TT: I'm guessing you're probably jonesing for uranium about now. No? GT: Ok can you please just sendificate me some more already?? Im in kind of a hurry! [...] TT: You know. I've offered to construct the rabbit for you many times before. I would craft a much deadlier model. […] GT: Damn it man ive told you this is just something i have to do myself. […] TT: Yeah, I know this is your policy. You've done a good job and you should be proud. TT: But it's my responsibility as your friend to offer one last time. TT: Just as it's my responsibility not to just fork over a bunch of uranium just because you ask me in a moment of weakness. […] GT: Why not??? TT: It's too easy.

Throughout this whole conversation, I've been trying to get a grasp on Bro's general vibe - and I think I'm starting to understand it.

When you're talking to Kid Bro, everything is a game - and he'll make damn well sure that you follow the rules.

Jake previously committed to making the bunny alone, and Bro refuses to rescind that rule, even if Jake's no longer following it himself. He strikes me as a guy who frames every interaction he has as transactional, confrontational, or instructional. He's not capable of just shooting the shit - there has to be an angle.

Mind you, I don't think there's any genuine malice in it. I think this is just how he's wired - and I really do think he's trying to help Jake develop as a person, in his own way.

The problem is, we've been down this road before...

...and nothing good lies down this road.

[lisafication]

This post is uh, extremely normal I swear

So hello yes I am absolutely On My Bullshit regarding my new favourite game. 

That’s right, it’s the cannibal incest game, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. And I’m here to shove five thousand words of pretentious analysis down your throat because, and I do not exaggerate, I think it is one of, if not the best written game I have ever played. And I have played a lot of games, including Baldur’s Gate 3, Final Fantasy XIV and Undertale, to name a few narrative luminaries to come to mind.

That wordcount is not an exaggeration. My brainworms are extremely powerful and now you can share them with me as I walk you through my insane skyscraper of inference-driven analysis.

Or you can click away. I really wouldn’t blame you, it’s quite a lot.

Content Warnings: …Yes?

(To drop the bit for a moment, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley covers extremely disturbing material and challenges you to examine aspects of living in this world that many have taken for granted all their life, it is not a comfortable game, this will cover similar topics and will often echo the game’s unremitting scepticism on basic principles of society and humanity and you should look after yourself first. My Content Warning is framed as a joke, but it’s also quite real in that the game is designed to make you uncomfortable and there’s no shame in that not being for you.)

This was originally posted on and formatted for Sufficient Velocity, and you can probably more easily read and discuss it with me here.

With that said, let’s dig in. I have had to split this into multiple posts because tumblr will only allow so many images. There will be spoilers for all endings.

She’s excited, are you?

It’s All About Ashley

It really is, isn’t it? I mean, for approximately eighty percent of the total game as currently released and the entirety of Episode 1, you’re in control of Ashley, just as she’s in control of her and Andrew’s relationship for 80% of the game, up until the various ending sequences where it begins to slip. The only other characters who really matter at all in and of themselves are Andrew and her mother — and the former is under her thumb, and she eats the latter. It’s all about Ashley. Even her obsession with Andrew is, ultimately, about Ashley.

But who is Ashley? What is Ashley? Why is Ashley, even? Let’s take a look.

Ashley as presented to us in Episode 1 is very straightforward, so let’s list off the traits we’re given — she is malicious, she is fearless, she lacks empathy, she doesn’t have anything resembling a conscience, she demands Andrew belong to her and her alone, she has him at her beck and call.

In Episode 2, we’re ostensibly shown how she has him at her beck and call— she leverages the threat of reporting Nina’s death over him and had him swear to be with her forever. We’re shown that even as a child she was “just, like that” — but as a child, she hadn’t learnt to live with it yet, to laugh at the farce of it all.

Yeah, exactly like that!

And she does this throughout Episode 1 — The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is a remarkably silly game much of the time, finding moments of absurdity and levity against a backdrop blacker than pitch — and most of the time, your internal narration is coming from Ashley and the jokes will not-infrequently come at her own expense.

She will later get negged by her human sacrifice for her poor ritual circle drawing

Her reaction to being told that her soul is as dark and viscous as tar is “You guess you already knew that” — it’s confirmation to her, not new information. Ashley knows who she is. But who taught her this? There’s layers to this, nothing in this game is as simple and straightforward as it appears at first sight, which is why I’ve been obsessing over it for days.

While it’s common in fiction, the truth of the matter is, most ‘bad people’ really do think they’re good people. But Ashley has never once thought of herself as a good person — or perhaps better put as a person worthy of love — as we learn across Episodes 1 & 2, with our flashbacks to Andy and Leyley and the VERY VERY QUIET!!!

I really wish I had space in this essay to talk about this, but I’d like to touch on these being traits usually more easily forgiven in young boys than young girls at some point.

If she removes all other options, only then can she expect him to like her.

This is something that is echoed in the modern day — her seeming self-assurance is easily shaken and she reaches out to the world — usually Andrew — to affirm and validate her, soothing her insecurities, using any tool she deems necessary. Even when her life is on the line when Andrew has her by the throat at the climax of Episode 1, the only ‘compelling reason’ she can give Andrew to not kill her is her ability to soothe his nightmares. When he tells her there are sleeping pills for that…

Most people would have a bit more to argue for their existence.

While she, unlike Andrew, acknowledges having had friends before the quarantine… you know she’s got a point that they didn’t even bother to answer her calls, that was clearly not something the state was interfering with given Andrew’s calls with his mother and his girlfriend, and given her general demeanour it’s not hard to imagine that… they weren’t ever very close. When we see her and Nina talk in the infamous ‘box scene’, it’s clear that Nina doesn’t like her very much, despite Andrew’s assessment of Nina as being one of Ashley’s friends.

We see further support for her general lack of companionship in her dream sequence in the Burial route — Leyley and Leyley Alone. No matter what you do, you can’t place the pink plushy at the family table, the flowers won’t bloom if you give the Julia and Nina plushies her own as a companion instead of Andrew’s — and if you’re bold enough to go for the ‘incest route’, in the ‘Love’ room you see that no one ever looks happy to be with her in the childlike depictions of her history, nor is she happy in turn, save for when she’s with Andrew. In a bit of heavy-handed metaphor, the player then overwrites all of these tense, upset, hard moments with Andrew, having him fill in for everyone else in life — and happy with her.

Once Upon A Lousy Life…

THE END

And that’s why she needs him to affirm her, because no one else ever has and no one else ever will. It’s even included in their comic beats — when the siblings are getting along well, they’ll often play a game where Andrew dramatically overpraises Ashley while she demands more; it’s a comedic bit but I mean — it really does matter to her!

For the record, she opened a door. She gets a little heart in a speech bubble after this exchange.

We have a great example of this dynamic, that of insecurity and affirmation, in Episode 1, after Andrew has killed for her, butchered for her, his girlfriend broke up with her, he’s seemingly thrown his entire life away for her… she’s still insecure over her relationship with him, she’s uncertain of her control and she needs him to reaffirm it for her.

This is her victory, surely?

Andrew affirms her once, with his usual dead-eyed look.

But she's still not so sure.

He actively reaches out to affirm her again with cheer.

Look how happy she is!

While it’s most obvious and clear cut here, it’s hardly the only case. Let’s look back to the aftermath of Andy and Leyley and the VERY VERY QUIET!!! (I’m not using the other name). Leyley is, after similarly extreme acts — he murdered a girl and hid her body for her — convinced Andy doesn’t like her and she needs this leverage to keep him around, to meet her basic needs for survival. Because that’s what this is — she receives no care of affection elsewhere, so she forces it out of the only source she sees available through the means she sees as necessary.

I really hope we see some of their earlier childhood in Episode 3

What exactly made her like this? Was it just neglect, or something more specific…

She needs this to be the case because otherwise she doesn’t believe he’d stay.

This pattern repeats throughout — Ashley’s insecurities are hit on and she reaches out to Andy to affirm that she is not alone, and she will use any and every tool to exploit her ostensible control over him and force him to be what she needs him to be — and as long as she has that, as long as she is everything to him and it’s not possible for him to leave, she’s happy. As long as she thinks he loves her in her very particular, very peculiar view of love, she’s content, come what may. As long as Andy and Leyley are together, they can take on the world.

Let’s talk about that view of love, because there’s always more layers to unpack here I’m only scratching the surface with this essay — Ashley consistently refers to anyone else Andrew may have befriended or spent time with as a whore, a slut, a bitch — highly gendered insults that bring to mind the idea that he’s cheating in some way. But it’s not even about sex — when Andrew mentions that their parents had friends, she accuses them of cheating on each other in the same way!

There’s a lot to unpack about Ashley’s view of femininity and the role the patriarchy plays in their relationship.

Any kind of emotional engagement, any kind of commitment, any kind of life outside of your significant other is, to Ashley, cheating. Because that’s what she needs from Andrew, a seeming complete and total commitment, secure in her place as the only thing in his life, because she cannot understand anyone picking her if they have a choice.

This insecurity she has in her relationship is what drives her to empower the trinket — he can’t leave her as long as she can protect him with prophetic dreams, after all. She needs every kind of leverage she can get because until she succeeds in being everything to him, in devouring him so completely she has him in her thrall mind, body and soul she can’t be sure of herself — hell, her dream sequence in Burial has you placing Andrew’s signature green plushy, ‘the best thing in the world’ in a cage far away from anything else.

Ultimately, it really is all about Ashley — even her seeming obsession with Andrew ultimately comes back to her own insecurities. If she is everything to ‘the best thing in the world’, some of that ‘best’ must surely reflect on her! 

But that’s enough about the more normal, straightforward and understandable sibling. 

That was not a joke.

Andrew’s Rank 100 Deception

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist.

Let me explain.

You might have noticed that in the previous section I often use language such as ‘ostensibly’ or ‘seemingly’ to describe Andy and Leyley’s relationship, and there’s a good reason for that. From the beginning of the game through to its end, Andrew is lying to you, the player, without ever falsely representing or misinforming you about events that occurred.

The common, or obvious ‘initial take’ on Andrew as presented in Episode 1 is fairly straightforward. The game primes you to think this way, it frames things and strings reveals just right so as to make it very easy to overlook the incongruities it introduces in Episode 2. He’s a victim. Plain and simple, Ashley is his abuser and he is her victim and would be fine, a normal albeit kinda depressed guy without her.

It really is not a difficult conclusion to draw

You can go all the way through the game, have him try to accept his mother’s olive branch and enter the Decay route as a method for him to finally actualise his desire to get out from Ashley’s thumb and it makes sense, it’s a reasonable way for the story to go, given his character.

You see him this way because the game primes you in Episode 1 to view their relationship like Andrew does — he’s lying. He’s lying to himself, he’s lying to Ashley and he’s so good at it — Deception Rank 100 — he even lies to you. Without misrepresenting a single event or otherwise misleading you directly, the game gets you to buy into his preferred self-perception. Nina? Ashley. Julia? Ashley. The murders they commit in the course of the game? Ashley, Ashley, Ashley, it’s not his fault he’s not to blame he’s just a doormat at the beck and call of his demonic sister.

But he wants to be there. From the very outset, the very first puzzle, that’s made clear. Does anyone else remember this exchange, from right at the beginning of the game?

Ashley wants to investigate the music!

Andrew disapproves…

…Or does he?! 

Like. Listen. Okay. You do not frown when saying ‘Nope’ and then smile when saying that you’ll instead tag along if they do it if your heart is at all in the no. That’s not an objection, that’s using Ashley as his excuse. Especially if you immediately throw her the balcony key that she could not possibly have gotten from you by force (more on Andrew’s ability to use force later).

This is the very first time you control both characters together with Andrew following Ashley instead of off on his own, the first adventure, the first puzzle! 

But put a pin in that for now, let’s talk about his initial framing in Episode 2 first. Episode 1 has set us up to, generally speaking, believe the superficial framing of the siblings as portrayed in its promotional art:

The question that we then ask, right at the heart of it is… why is he a doormat? We explore this in his dream sequence in Episode 2, which does make it clear that the boy’s not okay but— it’s real easy, given the priming from Episode 1 to make you think that he’s the one with the originally functional moral compass, to think that that him being fucked up is damage done to him by Nina’s death and being bound to Ashley for his entire life. She corrupted him.

But, well, is that the case?

You're primed to ignore this as manipulation (which it is) but the best manipulation has some truth to it.

Precisely two things spur Andrew to action in the entire game, consistently — they are the fear of consequences and Ashley. And the first incident of that fear, the very first time we’re shown his seeming moral compass as a kid — the first time it’s really hammered home that it’s a fear of consequences rather than any true moral qualms is after Nina’s death. And why does he fear consequences here?

……

The ‘natural’ read that many take away from this sequence, particularly those who have only played Decay, is that Ashley browbeat him into doing this against his will, using emotional blackmail to overwhelm his objections, and then used the event itself to bind him to her forever as her personal doormat.

In a strict sense, this is true. But this doesn’t match up with the details, something the game uses shock to encourage you to overlook. That outburst is before any kind of threat has been made, and absolutely nothing either of them say anything about it being morally bad until Ashley weaponises ‘you’re a bad person’ against Andrew — morality didn’t seem to enter his mind or the equation at all until Ashley brought it up. More than that, his greatest fear and driving motivation even prior to that is, as shown above, being taken away from Ashley.

She, of course, recognises this and uses it against him. But she never needed to, it didn’t change anything about Andrew’s attachment to her, it was there to address her own insecurities.

Just like to touch on how a lot of his affirmations are preceded by him confirming her insecurities.

I adore this phrasing

There’s a second prong to this as well, to the question of ‘who really calls the shots here’ because — Andrew can, at any stage, apply an ‘ultimate veto’ of physical violence. The game is very clear to the player that that is on the table — even when they were children, when Andy swears their blood oath, he briefly considers killing her — and take note of how he ultimately got a ‘winning’ condition out of her by not specifying there wouldn’t be others and she is forced to accept that, there. Even outside of their most serious confrontations, Ashley is portrayed as having to convince, manipulate or otherwise coerce Andrew into going along with her schemes — she really can’t make him do anything, she doesn’t have the supremacy in violence and, to a lesser extent, capability that would allow her to. 

Andrew, you are like ten years old.

The truth of the matter is, Ashley can only make Andrew do anything because he lets her. I don’t mean in the sense that I’m saying abuse victims let their abusers emotionally abuse them, I mean in the sense that he is clearly considering his options on the table and choosing to discard those that could stop her, or bring an end to any of this. He needs her.

But it’s true that he hates her, too. He has to hate her, because if he doesn’t hate her, if he isn’t forced to have done this, that means… he’s responsible. And nothing, at the start of the story, is as important to Andrew as avoiding the consequences of his own actions, not even Ashley. By the midpoint, he loves her, he hates her, he can’t live without her, he wants to kill her — by the end… well, that depends if you’re on Decay or Burial, but more on that in a bit.

A great scene to study for this dynamic is the climax of Episode 1, when Andrew grabs Ashley by the throat and considers strangling her to death. She’s pushed him too far with hurtful words and assault, and he’s seemingly had enough.

It’s still framed as a question of risk, of consequences happening to him. 

Like, this is not the usual behaviour of someone who’s been pushed past their breaking point.

He tells Ashley that he wants to kill her, because she’s just going to throw another fit and that’s a risk to him. She is… not framed as being able to fight back (she does have a gun here, and more on that in a later essay, maybe). He’s so calculated in how he approaches his use of violence here, which isn’t at all what you’d expect of someone about to commit a crime of passion… but it’s very easy to overlook because of the abuser/victim narrative that the player fits his behaviour into the narrative that the game primes them to accept, brushing incongruities under the carpet.

At the start of Episode 2, we get to control Andrew for the first time, and the first obvious holes in his cover start to show. Some of this is optional — you only learn that he’s been faking having nightmares in order to share a bed with Ashley if you choose to go back into the motel room and check the bed, for example — but not all of it.

----(See reblogs for the second half)

[illdowhatiwantthanks]

Not really a request, at least not a super detailed one but, anything with Rosa Diaz x autistic reader would be amazing!!

Maybe R drops off some lunch or something for rosa and meets the rest of the squad or smth?

In general i am in love with your autistic!reader fics. Im currently in the process of being diagnosed with autism, and its just really rather comforting to see myself in a reader insert

-Ara

Hey, Ara! 🥰 So glad you enjoy the autistic!reader fics! They are some of my favorites to write. I was just diagnosed about a year ago, so it's still new-ish for me, but I also find a lot of comfort in the autistic reader inserts. Hope this is what you're looking for, and best of luck with your diagnosis process! Feel free to reach out if you need a fellow autistic pal to talk through stuff with! 💕 –illdowhatiwantthanks

A Little Lunch

Rosa Diaz x autistic!fem!reader Warnings: explicit language, overstimulation (the autism kind), established relationship (let me know if I missed anything!) Word count: 1.4k

Summary: People aren't your forte, but you told your girlfriend you'd have lunch with her at the precinct, and so you will. And it goes... surprisingly better than expected.

You took a few deep breaths outside the precinct door, sandwiches from Rosa’s favorite shop in hand. You’d never visited her at work before, never met her coworkers. People weren’t your strong suit. But Rosa had asked you. She didn’t ask you for much. She liked to keep her work life separate from her personal life, for the most part. And the fact that she wanted you to meet her squad? Well, you couldn’t let her down. You wouldn’t.

The overhead lights were bright, and the general office noise was overwhelming when you stepped inside. You lurked in a corner, trying to acclimate yourself, trying to survey the room and find Rosa and calm yourself down so you could have a nice, normal lunch with your girlfriend.

You jumped a bit as a woman in a rolling chair slid in front of you, hands pressed together over her waist.

“Is that my Panera?” she said, staring at the bag in your hands.

“Uh… no.”

The woman stared at you for a moment, and you shuffled uncomfortably under her gaze and felt the need to provide a reason for your presence.

“I’m, uh… I’m here to see Rosa. Diaz. She's a detective. Do you know where she is?”

The woman’s face lit up. “Ohhhh… interesting. Did she order Panera, too? Great minds.” She held out your hand for you to shake, so you did. “Gina Linetti,” she told you. “Dancer, secretary, genius.”

“Gina, stop tormenting my girlfriend!”

You’d know that voice anywhere. You visibly relaxed as Rosa walked into the squad room, placing a strong, protective hand at the small of your back.

Gina held up her hands, as if in defense. “Sorry, Rosa. I thought she was Panera.”

“She’s not Panera,” Rosa growled. “She’s my girlfriend, and we’re eating lunch, and you’re leaving us alone.”

Rosa took your hand and led you through the precinct, into a break room scattered with tables where, alone and away from prying eyes, she planted a gentle kiss on your cheek.

“You okay?” she asked softly.

You nodded and held up the bag of food. Rosa gestured toward the table and went to grab napkins and, for neither the first nor the last time, you were grateful that you often didn’t need words with Rosa. You were comfortable in one another’s silence and, for you, this was life-changing. Your words were one of the first things to go when you got overstimulated, but Rosa never seemed to mind. For this, and for many other reasons, you loved her.

But you’d barely started on your lunch before people started trickling into the break room: Jake, Amy, Charles. All ostensibly eating lunch, too, even if they’d already taken lunch, even if all they had was a bag of chips from the vending machine, as Jake did.

“So, Y/N,” Amy started. “How did you and Rosa meet?”

Rosa jumped in before you forced yourself to say anything. “Hey,” she spat at the group crowding the table next to yours. “When I told Y/N she could meet me for lunch, I meant me. Not me and half the squad. Scram, losers.”

You gave a little half wave as they slunk out of the room, smiling a little as Charles mouthed off to you behind Rosa’s back: “We’ll catch up later!”

“Sorry,” Rosa said a few minutes later. “I know they can be a bit much.”

You shook your head and squeezed her hand, able to find your voice again. “It’s okay. They seem nice.”

“If by nice, you mean fucking crazy, then yes.”

A knock on the doorframe. At first, Rosa seemed annoyed by the interruption, but when she saw that it was Captain Holt she looked almost… proud?

“Captain,” she said, rising from her seat and nodding at him. She gestured toward you. “This is my girlfriend, Y/N. Y/N, Captain Holt.”

You moved to stand and shake his hand, but Holt stopped you. “Oh, no, please.” He sat down next to you, and Rosa seemed comfortable with him, so you decided that Captain Holt was someone you would like. “It’s lovely to meet you,” he said.

“You too,” you replied, trying not to let your voice shake too much. You tried to think of something to say, tried to think of a topic of conversation, but you were floundering. Your voice was hard for you on a regular day, even sometimes with people you loved, like Rosa. You just couldn’t manage to force anything out. You felt your cheeks growing red. You hoped you weren’t embarrassing Rosa.

You couldn’t have said all this to Rosa even if you’d wanted to, but Rosa always seemed to get it anyway.

“Y/N, Captain Holt and his husband are going to the symphony tonight. I told him that was one of your favorites, too.”

You lit up. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rosa, you thought. You loved the symphony. She was right; it was one of your favorites. Despite Rosa’s general indifference toward classical music, she’d gotten you both season passes for your birthday. She didn’t love the music, but she loved the way your eyes shone when you listened, the way you perched on the edge of your seat like a child. She loved that when she held your hand during the performances, she could tell when you were particularly moved because you’d get goosebumps and the hair on your skin would stand up.

“Oh, it’s John William Weischselbraun tonight, right? Bach’s Oboe Sonata? That should be excellent!”

Holt looked about as excited as Rosa had ever seen him.

“You’re a fan of the oboe, are you?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, yes, sir.” You nodded enthusiastically. “I played oboe in my high school orchestra. It’s a severely underrated instrument.”

Rosa beamed at you as Holt reached out to shake your hand. “Diaz....” he said, shaking a finger at her. “She’s a keeper.”

“Yes, sir,” Rosa nodded.

He stared at her reproachfully. “I hope you take this fine lady to the symphony and not just to your rock concerts.”

“She does, sir,” you assured him. “We even have season passes.” And then you had what you thought was maybe one of your more brilliant ideas. “Maybe we could all go together, sometime? Me and Rosa and you and your husband?”

Rosa and Captain Holt stared at each other for a moment, and you were afraid you’d misread the situation terribly. You’d always thought that Rosa liked Captain Holt, at least from the way she talked about him. You thought they were friendly with one another. Maybe you’d been wrong.

You tried to backtrack. “Or maybe not,” you blurted. “Just a thought.”

You couldn’t help but smile at how quickly both Rosa and Captain Holt jumped to reassure you. So quickly that their voices overlapped.

“That’d be great, babe.”

“Now, doesn’t that sound nice?”

Gina rolled in front of the door to the break room. “Captain, you have a phone call,” she yelled out as her chair rolled by.

“Excuse me,” Holt said, standing. He stood, pressed his hand over yours and said, “Truly nice to meet you, Y/N. I look forward to our mutual date.”

When he’d gone, Rosa stared at you. She was smiling. Really smiling.

“What?” you asked, your face reddening.

She leaned forward and kissed you quickly, her hand gently grasping your chin.

“What was that for?”

She tucked your hair behind your ear. “You did really good today,” she whispered. “I know you were nervous. Thanks for lunch.”

You turned an even deeper shade of red. “Anytime. Or, well, sometimes.”

She smirked and kissed you one more time, pulling away quickly as Jake wolf-whistled from the doorway.

“Shut your mouth, Peralta, or I’ll shut it for you,” she growled.

It was always so funny to you to see Rosa with others. So rough, so intimidating. When she turned back to you, she was soft. She was always soft with you.

“I’ll see you tonight?” she asked, squeezing your hand.

You nodded, as you stood to leave, perching on tiptoes to kiss her on the cheek. Your voice had slipped back inside of you for the time being, so you simply squeezed her hand back and let her walk you out of the precinct.

Rosa watched you go, swinging your arms a bit as you walked down the sidewalk, and her heart ached. She loved you so much. Your quiet voice, that was always a gift to hear. Your swinging, fidgety arms. The fact that you loved her so much, so purely. She only hoped she could show you just as much love in return.

[raayllum]

King of What? :: a S7 Ezran Meta

Introduction

Because S7 in particular gave me even more Ezran feelings than usual, and I thought "What's more fun than methodically breaking them down and sorting them into categories?" so here we are. We'll be looking at a lot (but not all) of Ezran's s7 arc as well as some holdovers from previous seasons. There are also some motifs to keep in mind, such as the:

Phoenix motif

Need motif (+ him and Callum later)

Reflection Motif

that we will dive into more later once they're more relevant / we can put the pieces in place. For now, a little background meta key up because S7 breaks Ezran down and then systematically builds him back up while also, in some ways, doing a complete overhaul.

So let's talk about it?

Pillars of Identity: Who is Ezran?

TDP is a series obsessed with a lot of things, but if I'd have to wager what the second core idea of the series is beyond the Cycle of Violence, I'd probably put in on a theme of Identity, specifically questions such as, "how do I, as a person, exist within the Cycle (breaking it, perpetuating it, both)?" and "who has, or is, my grief turning me into?" as they are deeply interrelated. To answer those questions, that requires establishing who a character is in 'normal life,' or outside of grief and the cycle (ie. trauma) and who they are within it.

With that in mind, I think Ezran has about five approximate pillars for his identity, in roughly this order:

Harrow's son

The king

Callum's brother

Zym's friend

Rayla's friend

I don't think that other characters pillars would be that different (Rayla's primary would also likely be her three duty bound parents) as it does make sense; most children's primary influence in life, especially as they grow, start with their parents as role models even if they may eventually separate and take an opposite road (love you Soren). Where Ezran differs, I think, is that while I don't know if Rayla would consciously conceptualize herself as her parents' daughter as her primary pillar, I do think that Ezran — especially Ezran in arc 2 — is always orienting himself around "I am Harrow's son" (for better or for worse in terms of what that means).

This is also why I put Ezran's identity as king as his second pillar. In his childhood / pre-s3, I think his second pillar would've been his identity as Callum's (little) brother. However, we see him place returning to his kingdom above helping Callum (brother) and Rayla (friend) returning Zym (another friend) to Xadia. The loss of his father strips away the relative safety of body and mind that being a prince comparatively gave him, fundamentally altering his internalized and externalized sense(s) of responsibility and his choices accordingly. It's the loss of his father and the subsequent grief, yes, which Callum also experiences, but uniquely the mantle of the throne as well, which is what he highlights in 7x02:

This all started the day that assassin came to Katolis and killed him. Our king. Our father. I never asked for this. I wasn't ready to be a king. I'm just a kid. That day changed me forever.

So let's talk about being the king. Let's talk about

The Crown

Ezran's crown is one of the few objects in the series to have an episode titled after it (3x02) and the only one I can remember that continues to be a symbol we consistently come back to throughout (i.e. unlike 1x07's "The Dagger and the Wolf"). Despite returning to Katolis to be king and sitting on the throne itself throughout the episode, Ezran struggles with the crown. It is, to him, in some manner different than the throne, despite ostensibly representing the same thing. He has, effectively, already made the choice to be king, yet persists in his doubt and hesitation as he struggles to learn the balance.

Opeli, however, contributes to that distinction, noting specifically that "the crown is a heavy burden to bear" and that "no one blames you for being a child". Ezran's choice to fully commit to, and his acquiring of the kingship fully, is made synonymous with him putting on his father's crown for the first time. In a lot of ways, Ezran returning home to Katolis was him realizing he can't run away from growing up (2x09) in his own words, and therefore that putting on the crown is him committing to becoming someone new: this is Grown Up Ezran, or Growing Up Ezran, actively. He is, from this day on by choice, no longer just a child, but also — more so — a king.

AARAVOS: The whining child king, in over his head, and he knows it. (4x04) DOMINA: Who is this child? ZUBEIA: He is a king! (5x01) KARIM: I've never negotiated with a child before. CORVUS: He is a king. (6x07)

This also folds into how Ezran conceptualizes his father. Again, as children often do, he looks to his father for guidance with the things that Ezran is struggling to handle per his sense of responsiblity (teaching Zym how to fly in season 2): "I just wish Dad was here. He'd know what to do, you know?"

When Ezran returns home in season three, he does so with the direct consequence of his father's actions on his shoulders and wrapped around his brow, and with his letter in hand, and these changes likewise reflect a more nuanced understanding of his father:

All of you knew King Harrow as a great king. He was a warrior, a leader, and a champion. But I knew him as my Dad, who loved me and my brother and our mom, and sometimes told really bad jokes. [...] I didn't see everything he had to do as king, but I do know my father had to make some very hard decisions... I haven't been through the things that made my father the king he was. So I've decided that I don't have to be the king my father was. My father made choices to keep fighting battles that started hundreds of years before he was born. To punish children for crimes their parents committed. I don't want to be that kind of king.

This is, of course, a speech made in the context of actively rejecting war and of pardoning those who would otherwise be punished, both things that Harrow did engage in directly and deeply regretted in the letter Ezran currently holds. Ezran then walks the balance of simultaneously rejecting who his father was, and honouring who his father was and who he wanted to be. This is perhaps best exemplified in season 3 of Ezran, two episodes after rejecting his father's 'way', having a mirrored path across the courtyard set to "Last Sunset" in one of their most overt parallels, prepared to give up his life and freedom in hopes others will make better choices with the (hopefully) renewed agency they now have.

By the time we get to season 4, Ezran has changed greatly. He's more confident as king, the team's resident diplomat and negotiator, and a lot more active in general, though not without plenty of room to grow. 4x03 offers a cold dose of reality that the road to the future he wants is going to be harder to walk, but still confident that we can get there because, "We all want peace, and we all want love."

He also has a more complicated yet positive view of his father as king and of the world at large. He best expresses this, perhaps, the first time he removes his crown (which is a permanent part of his identity, and of his character design):

I am King Ezran of Katolis. As my gift [of sacrifice], I offer you my crown. It has no jewels and it isn't made of precious metal. It's made from the steel of my father's sword. My father was a strong king, and I wanted to carry that strength with me. But he also taught me that strength isn't always about weapons and war. This crown reminds me of that lesson.

Rather than just seeing Harrow as something to not be, Ezran has come around to wanting to carry his father closely with him. He's learned that "peace demands just as much strength as war" and also decided to embody Harrow's closing thoughts as a king: "I now believe that true strength is found in vulnerability, in forgiveness, in love." A dual strength for a dual king, symbolized by Ezran taking his father's sword and reshaping it into something new.

Ezran is a King of Love as Strength. He is king because he's literally Harrow's son and heir, but also emotionally — narratively — Harrow's son in terms of breaking the cycle and choosing love (similarly how Janai in S7 becomes known as a queen of mercy just like her previous royal role model, Aditi). Harrow's son by fact, and Harrow's son by choice in some ways:

EZRAN: History doesn't have to be a narrative of strength. Not if we don't want it to be. It can be a narrative of love. KARIM: These are childish dreams. EZRAN: Not dreams, choices. I am a king. And as a king, I choose love over strength.

So Ezran being king, to him, is synonymous with choosing love as strength. With making choices. With being Harrow's son (positive). He forgives Zubeia and Avizandum because of Zym. He forgives Rayla because "I'm sure she doesn't mean to make [Callum] feel that way". He provides an anchor, a pillar, for other people to build their identity around ("Don't you remember who you are?") as a reminder and a lever (hi Soren). He can honour and strive to be better than his father simultaneously. He can hold pain and love in his heart at the same time.

Until he can't.

King of what? King of ashes? [Of nothing?]

In seasons 4 and 5, we see Ezran remove his crown. Both are about sacrifices: he is prepared to offer his crown to Rex Igneous and to Finnegrin in order to help with their mission, asserting its sentimental value and importance to him: "You must bring Rex Igneous a worthy gift." / "It's not worthless. It's really important to me."

In season 7, he removes it just once. This is in admission to Callum that he "never asked for this". He was given the option of being king or not being king, but neither would've necessarily made him happy, and he made the best choice with the options he had... Options that he never asked for in the first place. The crown being a reminder to choose strength over love? He never asked to have to learn that lesson, either. It was a burden placed on him in making the best out of a bad situation, which is — unfortunately — an unavoidable part of life. But it can still be, or feel, unfair to him.

I think we see this aspect of Ezran struggling with what he wanted vs what was forced upon him in how he (and others) in 7x02 treat his high ranking position. We've seen first hand in 5x01 that Callum would overrule something like Rayla — and Runaan by extension — being arrested, but Ezran has the final say here as king. However, he does not directly highlight his own ranking. Merely, he reminds his brother of Callum's position:

Callum. High Mage. We need you at this council meeting.

And Rayla ("you're not my king, but you are my friend") reminds Ezran of his, because it is Ezran's status as king — the power, the trauma — that is driving them apart:

So, King Ezran. How determined are you to stop me?

Being king gives Ezran control over the people around him — Opeli, Soren, Corvus, Aanya, Callum — and over what happens. It gives him control. A sense of safety. And while these are understandable desires, they swing the wrong way in his anger.

So let's talk about who they swing towards!

Targets (Sol Regem, Runaan, Callum)

Ezran's anger has three direct targets in season 7, and as such, it's easy to see the way each stacks on top of the other.

The initial one is Sol Regem ("We need to find Sol Regem and destroy him"). This leads to finding an already dead dragon, which means in addition to having no one to blame, it means Ezran has no way to know or understand why Sol Regem attacked Katolis (beyond a hatred of humans). The destruction of the castle feels like losing his family all over again, in some ways, in addition to his childhood home.

Then lo and behold, the man responsible for killing his father walks right into it.

You! This is all your fault! Everything changed the day you came. You killed my father!

I think this line shows a few things. As king, Ezran was supposed to protect and be there for Katolis (2x09) while also working to break the cycle. That's what, by Ezran's measure, a good king would do. He's utterly failed at the former, and if he's a bad king, then he shouldn't be king. So whose fault is it that Ezran, a bad king, is on the throne? Logistically and emotionally, it's Runaan. It's not quite rational but it is reasonable for Ezran to look at every event in his life from the past two years spiralling out from his father's death, and culminating in Katolis' destruction.

However, despite Runaan becoming the next target of Ezran's anger, he's not actually the most consistent target of it throughout the season: Callum is.

After 7x02, Ezran doesn't breathe a single word of ire about Runaan for the rest of the series, even if he's still clearly angry months later in the 7x09 'epilogue'. Instead in 7x03, he's fixated on finding and dragging his brother back as punishment ("we can't let him get away with it!") for betrayal, which Ezran also takes personally and extends beyond himself: "Callum betrayed me. He betrayed all of Katolis."

The idea that a king represents his kingdom is an old one in terms of history, and considering that Runaan killed the king of Katolis, and Callum helped him escape, it's not that much of a reach. However, Ezran isn't even thinking that logically. If Ez was proposing hunting down the kingslayer and bringing him back to face justice, that'd be one thing. However, he only talks about holding Callum accountable, not even Rayla (who also betrayed him) or Runaan (the escaped prisoner).

His targets, quite literally, switched from Aanya having her arrow notched at Runaan and then to his brother, and Ezran's anger has subsequently followed.

Now, some of this is undoubtedly because of the three, Ezran is the closest to Callum. They had a childhood together and Callum was customarily always in his corner, if sometimes a bit scatterbrained/unreliable or angry. He, accordingly, expected Callum to be on his side, and barring that (stopping him from going after Rayla in the meeting) was prepared to enforce it. A lot of our emotional upset tends to come from "I expected you to understand/support me, and you don't" after all.

However, I think Ezran's emotional interplay is a bit more complicated. I think in 7x01, Ezran attaches to Callum as an extension of himself even as he self-isolates, such as sending Callum to go with Corvus "because we have to do something" in investigating Sol Regem, and for no real in-universe reason besides "Corvus offered to go, but I need to feel in control so I'm going to tell/order someone to go with him".

The other, bigger part of this is that Callum is the biggest hole in Ezran's reasoning.

EZRAN: He killed our father. Isn't that enough?

We know that part of Ezran's grief is that it forced him to be king and grow up quickly, something that Callum is adjacent to but can't relate to in the same way by virtue of not having the crown. But since the reasoning Ezran highlights is that 1) Runaan is a murderer (unlike the bulk of the people at his council table—oh wait) and 2) it's okay/right to punish him for killing their father... having his brother, who is also King Harrow's son (cue the identity pillar) disagree is a pretty big blow to it. They both loved their dad; he was their father, and they were both his sons. Callum is in the closest position imaginable to Ezran as anyone could be, emotionally, yet they have two completely different perspectives. It gives Ezran's reasoning much less ground to stand on, and he can't handle it. The fact that Callum's perspective (which was already a betrayal in its own way) then becomes action (which is what Ezran labels the betrayal), I think, is just the cherry on top.

Another thing that's worth noting, I think, is that neither Ezran or Callum are necessarily the ones who escalate things in 7x02; Aanya and Rayla are. Soren, Corvus, and the other guards are working under Ezran as his crownguard, but Aanya and Rayla are the rogue parties. Aanya isn't operating under Ezran's jurisdiction, but as his friend and ally. What this does mean, though, is that literally everyone at the Banther Lodge is on Ezran's side against Rayla and her weakened, injured father... except Callum, but as a mage, he's enough to tip the scales to take down the crownguard... and then use himself as a human shield.

One of the things about Ezran's anger and its targets in season 7 is that it does a very good job at illustrating exactly why the Cycle is so destructive to participate in, because yes, you may aim your anger at the people who 'deserve' it and are directly responsible—the acceptable, understandable Targets if you will—but you catch others in the crossfire. There is always collateral damage of people who didn't do a thing to you, whether that's the people who love them, or the people who are like them. (Insert Zubeia wanting to take revenge for the loss of her mate and child, claiming the lives of the assassins sent to take it, and then Lyrennus' pain at the loss of his child + Ethari's at the loss of his partner.) There is no clean way to kill your enemy in a manner that does no harm to anyone else (who is innocent).

Ezran's targets by proxy of wanting to deal with Sol Regem's destruction of Katolis are the dragons and Zym (more on them in a second, though, cause that deserves its own section). His targets by proxy of wanting to punish Runaan is causing deep pain to Rayla, even before she's taken any action against him, and then on a more literal sense his own brother. His targets by proxy of wanting to drag Callum back by force likely would've been Runaan, Rayla, potentially Ethari, or even Corvus or other crownguard in the fight.

Callum shielding Runaan (and Rayla by extension) force Ezran to confront this fact, at least a little. Does he value punishing Runaan (and Rayla, a girl who's saved him countless times, who was willing to lose a hand for him, who has otherwise always taken his side)—perpetuating the cycle—over his brother's life. And Ezran is angry enough that he good and truly considers it (although we could say perhaps he was waiting to see if Callum would move out of the way). But where Ezran was willing to hurt Rayla emotionally if it meant physically punishing Runaan, he is not willing to risk killing Callum to keep the assassin as a prisoner.

This is also, I think, the turning point for Aanya. She is Ezran's friend and was willing to follow his lead, and upon seeing the choice that Ezran made—sparing Callum over killing him and Runaan—she shifts gears. She and everyone else (who are deeply uncomfortable with Ezran's increasing rage, but unwilling to speak out against it) recognize that pursuing and punishing Callum will not actually making Ezran feel better. So she tries a different tactic.

EZRAN: We can't let him get away with it. Corvus, I need you to track them. CORVUS: [Gently corrects him] King Ezran, we already know where they're going. The Silvergrove. EZRAN: Right. And that's why I need you to track them. (7x03)

I also think Ezran taking 'being king' as such a core identity piece—Callum was Harrow's son too, but not in the way Ezran wanted/needed—lets Aanya reach him. She's also a child monarch, and reminding Ezran of this and that he and Callum can heal ("But I'll always be your brother" / "You're brothers") is something that Ezran deeply needed to hear from someone else, too.

AANYA: I know it hurts right now, Ezran. But you need to know that you and Callum are not broken. The both of you will heal one day. You're brothers. It's okay to be angry, and it's okay to be sad. But I think you should let this go, for now. You're the king of Katolis, and your people need you. EZRAN: You're right. I need to protect them.

EZRAN: But Katolis needs me. (4x03)

However, that doesn't mean Aanya's advice, nor how Ezran pursues that protection is faultless, so next, let's talk about

Dragons as Friends and Foes

Ezran has always been the dragon boy.

Back in 2021, I wrote a more long winded post that basically boiled down to—in a show where elf, human, and dragon relations are key—it was likely that Callum was always designed to be the human who engaged the most with the culturally elven side of things (primal magic, Rayla being his lancer), and Ezran (with his ability to talk to animals) was designed to handle the dragon-human side of things. Think how we see Callum's first meeting with Rayla, an elf, while Ezran is the one who discovers Zym as a dragon egg.

Although other characters (namely Rayllum in S3, and Soren in seasons 4-6) bond with dragons as well, this remained true throughout arc 2, wherein Ezran is the closest to Zym and Zubeia, the primary negotiator with the various archdragons, going on his 'big dragon missions' (5x01-5x03), etc.

Season seven, therefore, presents an interesting departure in Ezran's view of dragons. Previously, while they should've been enemies, he always saw them as friends and allies: being the first to run to and aid Pyrrah in 2x07, trying to commune with Zubeia to wake her up in 3x08, defending Avizandum in 4x08 on behalf of Zym, etc.

Sol Regem's attack changes all of that. As Ezran states:

But doesn't a home need to be safe? [...] Our ancestors spent generations building Katolis. I don't want to waste our time if it's all going to get knocked down. [...] We have to be ready. We have to be strong enough so that they won't even think about attacking us. Before we rebuild, we have to build our defenses.

In season 4 and 5, all Ezran wanted to do was work with the dragons. To work together with Zubeia to stop Aaravos; to call upon the dragons to help stop Claudia and Viren. Now, the dragons are a 'them'. Now there's an 'us'.

This isn't necessarily a 'wrong' way to think about it, though. An archdragon did attack and devastate Katolis, seemingly — to Ezran — for no apparent reason. To want to prevent that from happening is reasonable. Yes, Ezran is friends with dragons, but most friends aren't also born with the inherent capacity to utterly destroy your life as a built in feature.

At the same time, this new 'us vs them' mindset is challenged a few times in season 7. Although Ezran's assurances to Zym that "we're only building such powerful weapons so that we never have to use them" will not work out without consequences in arc 3, I'm sure, thus far we only see Ezran use them on another enemy he's willing to be increasingly violent with: Aaravos.

In 7x07, the Startouch elf offers up a double serving of manipulation — the bigger one being to join him and that he's humanity's ally, which Ezran steadfastly rejects, and the smaller one beneath regarding the Nova Blade (+ Callum), which Ezran 100% plays into. Both of these push Ezran further as a character.

The first avenue that Ezran rejects leads him to claim that:

I have allies already. The elves and dragons, fellow victims of your evil.

Even if the only elf he's currently working with is a recent addition is Terry, forcing Rayla and Runaan to go on the run in 7x02, and his draconic ally in Zym is deeply worried about Ezran and Aanya's project. But it shows that despite his coldness towards previous allies, Ezran still holds unity close and refuses to relinquish it entirely as an ideal.

Secondly, we have Ezran's choice to use the Nova Blade. This is both a departure and in line with his thoughts in 5x06:

CALLUM: We borrow this Nova Blade, wait for Aaravos to get out, and then just stab-stab, buh-bye bad guy. EZRAN: Wait, slow down. Shouldn't that be the last resort? If we can stop Aaravos from getting out at all, we can solve this without any violence.

On the one hand, Ezran in 7x08/09 is just following through with what he said here. If Aaravos was still trapped, they didn't need to resort to violence. Now that he's out, violence is accordingly on the table, just as Ezran said it would be. However, I think it still feels like a departure in some ways because of Ezran's repeated emphasis on strength and love over violence, and his choice (4x08, 5x06) to melt his father's sword down into a crown... only to now acquire a sword that isn't made for defense whatsoever, but for the express purpose of killing.

That said, more on the Nova Blade in a second.

For now, I want to return to the archdragons, and just do a little season track:

7x01: Ezran finds out an archdragon / former king of the dragons destroyed Katolis. Furious, he wants to destroy Sol Regem in turn, but cannot as the great dragon is already dead.

7x02: Ezran takes out his anger on Runaan, Zubeia's servant assassin.

7x03-7x05: Ezran goes with Aanya to learn how to build weapons that can stand a chance against dragons / archdragons, in spite of Zym's misgivings.

7x07: Despite Callum giving Ezran the mission to go retrieve Zubeia, Ez delegates it to his crownguard + Terry, choosing to remain in Katolis and converse with Aaravos instead to "keep [Aaravos] busy".

7x09: Ezran (and co.) are spared from sacrificing their lives and "everything we are" because of the archdragons, who all sacrifice themselves to stop Aaravos. Ezran holds Zym while his parents / Zubeia die, and then instructs a memorial to be created in the Valley of the Graves.

So, after a season of being angry at an archdragon, at seeing dragons as potential enemies... Ezran and everyone / everything he loves is saved by those very same creatures. Instead of destroyers who force him to sacrifice, they are saviours who choose to sacrifice on his behalf. This doesn't remove responsiblity from Ezran's shoulders per se—in many ways, a world without archdragons adds to it, as he states, "It's up to us now, Zym" (in a nice callback to 1x03)—but I do think it greatly contributes to his perspective in his closing scene this season.

One of the ways it does so is bringing back the gift motif from 4x08, not only in "worthy gifts of sacrifice" but in Ezran's realization that:

We offered gifts that meant a lot to us. But the truth is, they don't mean anything to you.

being directly contrasted in 7x09, with:

AARAVOS: And what will your sacrifices buy? A mere moment of peace before I return to a world without you? Without archdragons. Your deaths mean nothing.

EZRAN: They have given us a great gift. A chance to keep on living. Keep trying to be better.

The first time Ezran spoke of the dragons in 4x01, it was with excitement for Zubeia and Zym's visit to Katolis. He believed "it would change how people see dragons". He offered gifts of friendship and peace in the Valley of the Graves, only for the portrait to be defaced. By the end of season 7, Ezran's desire for people to see the dragons differently has come true, and his honouring of Zubeia is allowed to stand in a way that's far more permanent than a painting.

OPELI: It's the gift ceremony. I'm concerned that holding in the Valley of the Graves is insensitive. EZRAN: Wait, what? It's a sacred beautiful place. It's a place of peace. OPELI: Some people have come to me in confidence. They worry that honouring a dragon in a place that is a memorial to so many great humans, some of whom died at their hands, is offensive. (4x03)

EZRAN: Aaravos pushed us to to the brink. We were ready to sacrifice it all. Everything. You and me, Callum, Rayla... We almost gave up everything we are. But because of them, the archdragons, we didn't have to.

Now, I don't think this change at the end of the season will be enough necessarily for Ezran to halt Project Ruby Fire. I don't think it undoes the hard choices he's made or the things he's learned about himself. But I do think it asserts what he's aspiring towards, and helps direct himself to who he wants to be and how he's going to proceed going forward (Evrkynd, Runaan).

Speaking of which, let's finally talk about Runaan. Again.

A Phoenix

I've alluded to this this a bit before, but I think one of the main reasons Ezran chose to forgive Runaan was because of the archdragons' sacrifice. The dragons gave him a chance to keep living, to keep trying to be better—and Ezran then turns and gives that "great gift" in turn to Runaan. I don't know if I think that Ezran would've otherwise had Runaan executed, but forgiveness even more than just being spared is a much more active choice in a lot of ways, and not something that Ezran had to conflate, but chose to.

The other reason I think Ezran chose to forgive Runaan is because, as of the end of S7, he's been Runaan.

As an assassin, I had convinced myself that I was a kind of peacemaker. A twisted peacemaker, I suppose. I believed that my act of precision violence was preferable... necessary, even, to prevent far greater bloodshed.

[...] I was trained to accept that I was already dead, so that I might carry out my dark work without fear. But I am not dead. I am alive. I have a family I love. I have so much to lose, the very things I took from you.

"They have given us a great gift. A chance to keep on living."

Ezran now understands how someone can believe that to keep back chaos and death, you have to kill another person. To believe in your bones that someone has to die, even if that means your own destruction. That doesn't mean Runaan was right about Harrow, or that Ezran is necessarily wrong about Aaravos, but the journey to get there, the mindset, of how undeterred you are when you reach that place... Ezran's been there. He knows, now, in ways he didn't before.

He forgave Zubeia because everything was complicated: because he could relate to longing for his mother (Zym), to watching his father grieve his wife the same way Zubeia was grieving Avizandum, to wanting to protect his kingdom (Avizandum). To grieving family. Of a child who had lost things.

He forgives Runaan because he can understand being an assassin, and already dead, and realizing you almost lost / have forsaken your family along the way. Of violence testing you, and failing, and having to try again. To reforge yourself into something new—because the true heart you had before is gone, but that doesn't mean your heart is.

Ezran stands in front of the fireplace twice in season 7. The first is with Zym in 7x02 and where he has his initial disagreement with Callum. The second time is with Runaan in 7x09, a fire in his eyes. This evokes not only Ezran's fury and association with the dragons, but also the framing of Aaravos from earlier in the season.

Ezran once asked if he was now the king of ashes. 7x09 demands him to answer if he wants to keep being a King of Ashes. If he wants to continue feeding his anger and hate, if he wants to continue fuelling the fire of hatred and grief within him. And Ezran says no. He says yes to forgiveness, though this time, he does not know the way:

EZRAN: But it's not that simple or easy. [...] Somehow, we have to hold it all in our hearts at the same time. (4x03) CALLUM: But somehow, you got past that. You forgave her, because everything was complicated. (7x02) EZRAN: I'm going to forgive you. I don't know how, but I have to try. (7x09)

He is presented with a phoenix (Runaan, back from the grave) and chooses to become one himself, and welcome back in all the other pillars of identity that had been crumbling over the past season.

EZRAN: I think about the people I love who are counting on me to do the right thing. Not the strong thing, not the harsh thing. The right thing. Do you love your sister, Prince Karim? (6x07)

It's sort of fitting, then, that in choosing once again to be Harrow's son (positive), he's presented with a more literal bird phoenix in "Harrow's soul in is in Pip" then, too.

And the same rebirth goes for the world around him, too.

ASTRID: Everything burns when a star dies. (7x09)

OPELI: King Ezran... perhaps it is finally time to rebuild. EZRAN: No. It's time to build something new. [...] Our world faced its end. But we survived. And on the other side, we find ourselves at a new beginning. [...] There is no such thing as utopia. But with hard work and discipline, persistence and patience, we can build a better place.

The Crown, Again (reforge into something new)

So I've talked about the reflection motif, and I've talked now about the phoenix motif. There's still more I could touch on in regards to Ezran's whole thing with Aaravos and the Orphan Queen, the layers of Aaravos' manipulation, the theme of following in your predecessors' footsteps and the good and harm that can come of it, but that's probably a meta for another day. For now, I want to return to the Need motif we touched on earlier.

TDP is very interested in questioning what characters deem necessary. Thus far, this was mostly done through Aaravos ("Aaravos did what was necessary" / "we will do what must be done"), Claudia ("I did what I had to do" / "Maybe he's just doing what needs to be done" / Whatever it takes, however dangerous, however vile"), and Viren ("I tried to explain that I had only done what was necessary"). S7 starts to shift gears and push further at the main trio, questioning and picking apart some of their mindsets (which again, could be a meta on its own) in regards to what sort of violence they believe is necessary and why, only for none of it to actually have been so because of the Archdragons. A nice little meta-narrative reflection.

What I want to actually focus on here is Ezran's idea of need. This is usually couched within his place of being king, and loyalty to his kingdom, as we've seen previously ("But Katolis needs me" / "You are the king of Katolis, and your people need you").

EZRAN: I wish [Zym] could come with me too, but you need to go be with your mom. That's your home. Both of us need to go home. (2x09)

So Ezran believes that needs to be king because Katolis needs him. Great. What does Ezran need?

Season 7 gives various answers, according to himself:

"Callum. High Mage. We need you at this council meeting" (7x02)

"We can't let [Callum] get away with it. Corvus, I need you to track them" (7x03)

"I need to protect [my people]" (7x03)

"Destiny works in mysterious ways. The Novablade came to my ancestor, only to be lost for generations until we needed it" (7x09).

The other people in his life have other ideas, as discussed.

ZUBEIA: But Zym, you must go. Your brother Ezran needs you. (6x02)

AANYA: But you need to know that you and Callum are not broken. The both of you will heal one day. You're brothers.

CALLUM: Mom said it was okay to be angry, but I couldn't let the bad feelings stick. Because we were going to need each other. Because we're brothers. I still need you, Ezran.

Broken things can be mended. Crowns and swords can be reforged. People can be, too. As much as Ezran loves his council and his crownguard, he needs people who don't just see him as king. Callum is not his High Mage, but will always be his brother, and that's what's most important. He needs Callum and Rayla and Zym; he needs Aanya who can help keep him grounded. He needs his family because they help keep him who he is as much as he has for them in the past ("Don't you remember who you are?" in 4x07) now that it is up to them to maintain it, and the archdragons are gone.

And to be himself, Ezran needs to be:

Harrow's son with accordance to a Narrative of Love

The King of Katolis

Callum, Zym, and Rayla's brother

rising from the ashes and bringing others up with him, over and over again the way he always has. The way he always will.

Because not all cycles are bad, either.

Conclusion

As stated, there's more to Ezran's arc in S7: ideas of history and half-truths, of chains and Startouch elves, of home and memorials. Of what we carry against our will, what we choose to set down, and vice versa. What this meta was, then, was the first at likely two passes, focusing on Ezran's emotional state(s) throughout the season and his emotional processing. More structural and thematic based analyses of his character in S7 / across the show thus far will definitely folllow.

For now, though, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed a bit of a deeper dive!

All hail the king.

[tanadrin]

RE "revolutionary leftists are revolutionary because they know they can't win electorally."

It astounds me a little that there are leftists who think that a communist revolution is more likely to work than, like, fifty years of community-building and electoral politics. Sewer socialism, union activism, and other boring activities have brought much more success in the U.S. than agitation for a revolution.

What I mean is, setting aside the moral concerns (violence is bad, even when it's necessary, and if there are practical alternatives then we should pursue them), I am not a revolutionary leftist because I think we would lose a revolution. For one thing, there is a considerable right-wing element in the country that is much better prepared for this kind of thing, and I think that the majority of the institutions in the U.S. would pick fascism over communism if they had to choose, but also, prolonged violent action is ripe for breeding authoritarianism.

Goatse is concerned that "the party" might "abandon or neglect its primary ends," but what is leftism if it is not, at bottom, an attempt to improve the living conditions of all people, et cetera et cetera? To the extent that social democratic parties successfully pursue this end to some degree, they're better than than an ostensible communist party that talks the talk but commits human rights abuses. And, more than the fact that U.S. leftism has some pretty fierce opposition that would probably fare better if The Revolution happened tomorrow, I think that, even in winning, we would lose, because what came out the other end would look a lot more like Stalinism.

I think one thing the hardcore revolutionaries in OECD countries don't realize is that the reason they can't marshal support for their revolutions is that the socialists won most of the issues that were salient in the early 20th century--workers got more rights, better pay, unions were legalized, etc., etc. But it didn't take restructuring the whole political economy to do it, which is immensely frustrating if you believe that any society without your ideal political economy is inherently immoral and impure, so in order to justify an explicitly communist platform you have to rhetorically isolate it from the filthy libs and feckless demsocs who it turns out have been pretty effective within the arena of electoral politics in which supposedly nothing can ever get done, and treat them as of a piece with the out-and-out fascists and royalist autocrats of the 1920s and 30s.

Which, you know. Is not persuasive to most people! Most people understand intuitively the vast gulf between the SPD and the Nazis; they see that, milquetoast and compromising though they may be, the center-left can deliver substantive policy improvements without the upheaval of a civil war or political purges, and this is attractive to people who are not of a millenarian or left-authoritarian personality.

Which isn't to say that communists don't often make important points! It sucks having to fight a constant rearguard action against the interests of capital rolling back the social improvements of the 20th century, and it sucks that liberal governments in Europe and North America have historically been quite happy to bankroll and logistically support fascists and tyrants in the third world against communist movements (which invariably only exist as communist movements because these same fascists and tyrants have crushed more compromising movements and only the most militant organizations have managed to survive).

But I agree with you: communists also talk a big game about how liberalism is the real fascism (what's that line from Disco Elysium I see quoted everywhere about how everybody is secretly a fascist except the other communists, who are liberals?), while also being awful at democracy. Suppressing dissent because your small clique of political elites is the only legitimate expression of the people's will (which you know, because you have declared it to be so) really is some rank bullshit. A system with competitive elections is still, well, a system with competitive elections, even if those elections are structurally biased in certain ways; all the bloviating that attempts to justify communist authoritarianism cannot really obscure the fact that authoritarian systems are cruel and brittle, regardless of the ideology being served.

[lurkingshan]

I’m sitting here thinking more about the way Great and his relationship with Tyme is being presented in this show and wondering if this is all purposeful. I’ve been discussing with a few friends today how little it feels like we understand Great’s motivations and choices and how little emotional grounding we have for his romance with Tyme. How much is it driven by the rewinds, by the visions, by genuine connection? What does he think of the accusations Tyme has leveled against his family and does he have any qualms about potentially harming his brother by exposing them? Does he have any beliefs about why this is all happening to him? I have no idea and it feels notable to me that we still barely know our ostensible protagonist halfway through the show.

Meanwhile, others have noted that the show is starting to feel like it’s more about Tonkla. He certainly is getting a lot more screen time than expected and his backstory, motivations, and emotions are better sketched out than Great’s. He is also the only other person in the story who has experienced whatever these timeline glitches are, and a lot of what’s happening hinges on him and Dome.

Korn appears to be the only point of connection between Great and Tonkla, and they don’t seem to be aware of each other’s existence, or at least they haven’t met. But when tracking the events in the two timelines at play, there’s always a connection point through Korn that brings them all together.

I don’t really have a concrete theory here, but I am noting these things and wondering whether the feeling that Great, his relationship with Tyme, and the way he’s moving through the story seems off is intentional. Perhaps there’s a reveal coming that will make all of this track, because it seems unlikely to me that the show would accidentally develop a side character better than its main character.

[literalite]

mistki's the land is inhospitable and so are we (2023)!! as edits featuring mine and some of my friends ocs 😁 had a lot of fun with this project... rough explainer of how/why each song corresponds to each character/s under the cut because i love symbolism and talking! sorry it is long

bug like an angel - sapphire

without spoiling too much of her story and arc... sapphire's life is not easy. she's hurt by people she cares for and who care for her, although inadvertently, and in turn hurts people who she cares for and who cared for her, also not by her own volition. it's kind of a terrible truth that you will harm and be harmed by the people you love, even when you and they truly don't want to. it's up to you how much you're willing to take and deal. you can't keep every promise you make and you can't right every wrong. but you have to keep trying anyway. that's sapphire's strength, and the core of her goodness and why i personally consider her one of my favourite ocs. i chose to depict bug like an angel in mitski's more positive interpretation here and in that light i think it works best for saph

buffalo replaced - heiya

well first and foremost the vibes of the song fits heiya perfectly fhgjk but also lyricism and tone... yep. quick breakdown of heiya's background since i doubt i'll ever be able to do it properly she's an interesting character for me because she like a lot of my other characters has lost. everything. she had a wife and a child and they were both killed and she had to leave her home again and again and unlike how some of my others would have taken this she has never flagged in her unwavering dedication to preserving hope. for herself for her people for the future etc etc. which is a very fucking difficult thing to do! the world changes faster than you can keep up with it sometimes but for heiya she will not let herself tire and be swept away in it all. people rely on her. she's a guiding star as much as she is a woman. she's a lover and a fighter and thats what buffalo replaced means to me! so

heaven - vinny and caleb

i feel like of all my oc couples so far they have like. the sweetest most kind of simply mutually trusting dare i say straight forward love. they just love each other so much and thats all. the world could end around them when theyre together and it'd be okay truly. also yeah vinny is ostensibly in heaven now bye angel i feel like this one was pretty self explanatory. me and who WHEN

i don't like my mind - sunny

he just like me fr (said in denji voice) anyways wow ha. unstoppable unending guilt due to past actions that haunt your every waking moment? throwing yourself into any and all distraction just to take your mind off it, filling your time with other shit so that past sin doesnt for once echo in your awful and hollow brain? this song is perfect for sunny honestly just that sentiment also the "please don't take this job from me".... sometimes the coping is worse. you can be proud of something because you can do it better than anyone else even if that thing is terrible

the deal - wolfgang munch by @gunthermunch

Wolfgang Amadeus Munch. umm this will make more sense later on but it still kind of makes sense now i think. he doesn't want to be himself he keeps . leaving and moving and running away from his own memories his own self in reaction to others. if he could pawn it all off he would. if he could be better in an instant without having to feel every agonising second of change he would! but thats not how the world works. or is it. read munch by gunthermunch thats an order

when memories snow - lilian

i feel the older you get the more your past kind of swells up and trails behind you... at least for lilian that is shes very linked to the different versions of the girl/young woman she used to be. for her its a double edged blade, a lot of her own strength is drawn from who she was and what happened to her throughout her life. they haunt her but she's haunting it back in her own way

my love mine all mine - saige, bellona, ari

stares you down okay so usage of this song very much almost verges into spoiler territory but uhm. uhm. starts twitching basically the whole dynamic here is . sometimes when you love you will sacrifice. and while that is usually a good thing sometimes it is not but sometimes it still is. sometimes you pay your dues for love and sometimes someone else has to pay for your love as well. and whether that is worth it to them remains to be seen. but it's all about love still. whether that's a worthy cause is up to you i suppose

the frost - yoshiki and hikaru from hikaru ga shida natsu

fun fact (or not so fun fact since i had it listed as such) this slot was originally meant to be taken up by a gojo/geto edit and while it still works for them frighteningly well i swerved to do another black and white haired doomed gay pairing gfhjkl; i really recommend yall to read hikaru ga shinda natsu/the summer that hikaru died because honestly it speaks for itself! it's SO good i love it so bad

star - ari and luca by @anjitrait

wow these two did not deserve the horrors the narrative (me) slammed down onto their heads. they're kind of the most married of all time to me but like of course under pressure even the strongest most loving of bonds will warp. they've been together for roughly a decade and a half now. they know and love each other as totally as you could possibly imagine. despite it all i am yours, no matter. are we picking up what i'm putting down chat

i'm your man - nayef and sióar by @lucidicer

after the album dropped like at least 3 people swung into my dms with a ?this you?? about this song which. i mean the fucking dogs that start barking halfway through the song. are you kidding me. but anyways sioyef and devotion. sioyef and putting yourself in your lover's hands and looking to them like they are a god. this is super self explanatory. you know

i love me after you - redacted and ophelia

HM.... all i'll say here is that sometimes the homoerotic tension filled high school friendship where both parties have something very wrong with them but in totally different directions can be. scarring. bad. sometimes love just isn't enough when you don't know what you're meant to do with it and when you've lived in survival mode all your life. but that once the dust clears you can scrape yourself off the ground get up keep going and that isn't gonna be the end for you there. or for love, even. sometimes shit just ain't meant to be and thats ok

[polygonal-trees]

Welcome new Transformers fans!

You might have seen this Don't Make Me Tap The Sign meme floating around. Transformers One has been out for a little while now so I want to expand on it as well as some other TF fandom things.

What does "Transformers doesn't have a set canon" actually mean?

Essentially, every new Transformers story is a reboot. They might draw from or expand on concepts from previous iterations but canonically each continuity family is separate. This means all lore is extremely flexible - origin stories, relationships, even personalities can change wildly between iterations and while some may be better or worse than others, they are all equally canon.

For example: Orion Pax was a dock worker in G1, an archivist in Prime, and a miner in TF One. None of these contradict each other.

Continuities also tend to share ideas without being directly connected. For example Transformers One draws from Transformers Prime in multiple ways (e.g. it features Airachnid) but it is not a prequel to Prime and in fact directly contradicts it. Yes I know there's a guy on xitter claiming tfone is a prequel to the Bay movies but he's wrong.

What is a continuity family?

Most storylines include tie-in novels, comics, video games, and other shows that all share the same canon.

The Aligned Continuity is the most well known. It consists of Transformers Prime, Rescue Bots, Rescue Bots Academy, Robots in Disguise 2015, multiple video games, and some tie-in novels and comics. They are all ostensibly set in the same canon... except the Aligned Continuity is inconsistent so even its lore is loose :')

My point is that while every continuity is separate, some shows are connected.

(Sorry if this is confusing. It is confusing. You get used to it)

What about fanon?

The Transformers franchise is old enough that a lot of fanon has become so pervasive it exists in a sort of nebulous space where it feels like it could be canon or at least become canon once enough fans are working for Hasbro but essentially: oh boy is there a lot of fanon

For example: seeker trines, doorwing speak, the Unicron Singularity and all forms of robot sex (sorry) are fanon, but they appear so often in fanworks that it's easy to get confused (I know I do!)

It's safest to assume something isn't canon unless you've seen it in a show (and even then, it may only be canon to that particular show)

Can I mix-and-match in my own fanworks?

Absolutely! It's very common for creators to set a story in one continuity but transplant a character from another, or use a different backstory, or borrow whole plot points from different canons. Chop up that lore and make a delicious continuity soup.

So why is this important?

It is very, very, very, very, very frustrating to be "corrected" about something that isn't relevant, or to see someone critisize a show based on lore that doesn't apply, or to have a character be called OOC when they're not, etc. I think a lot of fandom slapfights could be avoided if more people understood how loose Transformers canon actually is. Do what you want with your own creations but please be mindful when it comes to interacting with other people's.

This is A Lot

You don't have to know everything about Transformers to be in the fandom and have a good time - if you're only interested in TF One that is perfectly alright, you don't need to watch every show and read every comic and play every game to be considered a fan of something.

But if you want to find out more I recommend checking out the TFWiki - it isn't perfect but it gives a good rundown of most general lore as well as details about specific shows.

That's it from me. I hope this is helpful! It's the sort of thing I would have liked to read when I first joined the fandom haha

[feedists4progress]

Food is one of the most universally beloved things on planet Earth. Aligning a presidential campaign with it is smart for all the obvious reasons, but for the Harris-Walz ticket, it’s also a signal. The rhetorical challenge of progressivism is that it is by nature abstract: It imagines a world that does not yet exist, rather than advocating to return to some previous version of the one we know. [...] In foregrounding food, Harris and Walz are making theirs the candidacy of terrestrial pleasure and straightforward abundance.

The governor of Minnesota and possible future vice president’s hotdish recipe is, uh, a lot. It involves, among other things, whole milk, half-and-half, two types of meat, three cups of cheese (specifically Kraft), nearly a stick of butter, and a full package of Tater Tots. It is gluttonous, deeply midwestern, and, I am sure, delicious. Indeed, Walz won the Minnesota Congressional Delegation’s hotdish cook-off in 2013, 2014, and 2016.

Tim Walz loves food. He loves corn dogs, and the all-you-can-drink milk booth at the Minnesota state fair, and—I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this—dunking cinnamon rolls in chili. He gets excited about soda. He posts pictures of his sandwiches.  He loves to eat so much that people on X are already writing short-form fan fiction about it. Throughout his political career, but especially recently, he has gone out of his way to talk about food, the fattier and folksier the better. Last week, in a discussion with CNN’s Jake Tapper that was ostensibly about Joe Biden’s mental fitness, Walz recounted receiving a call from the president while eating the Minnesota delicacy Juicy Lucy, a hamburger stuffed with cheese. The next day, he posted on X about a different award-winning hotdish recipe of his, this one involving two separate kinds of canned soup.

We are witnessing what might be the most food-centric presidential campaign in American history. Kamala Harris is, by all accounts, an exceptional and enthusiastic home cook, and has made cooking part of her political brand—surely an intentional calculation, given the negative connotations that might arise when the potential first woman president openly embraces domesticity. In 2019, she offered an off-the-cuff lesson in turkey brining while getting mic’d up to go on television: “Just lather that baby up,” she said, eyes bright. The next year, she started an amateur cooking show; on it, she cracks an egg with one hand and bonds with Mindy Kaling over the fact that their parents both stored spices in old Taster’s Choice jars. She laughs a lot in the kitchen.

Unlike her running mate, Harris seems unlikely to throw four kinds of dairy in the oven for dinner—she’s a Californian, and she cooks like one: swordfish with toasted cardamom for her pescatarian stepdaughter, herb-flecked Mediterranean meatballs on an Instagram Live with the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. But she’s not immune to the humble charms of ice cream, gumbo, Popeye’s chicken, red-velvet cupcakes, or bacon, which she describes as a “spice” in her household. She comes off as sincere in her love of food but discerning in her tastes. When a 10-year-old recently asked her at an event what her favorite taco filling was, she answered with the kind of absorbed expression that she might otherwise display when explaining foreign policy on the debate stage: carnitas with cilantro and lime, no raw onions.

Invoking food on the campaign trail is a cliché for a reason: Eating is an easy and extremely literal way to prove that you are a human being. But the Democratic Party has not always been great at it. In 2003, John Kerry visited the Philadelphia cheesesteak institution Pat’s and asked for a sandwich not with the traditional Whiz, American, or Provolone, but with Swiss. If voters needed proof that he was something other than the eggheady elitist they thought he was, this wasn’t it: In Philly, Swiss is “an alternative lifestyle,” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s food critic, Craig LaBan, said at the time. One does not get the sense that Walz or Harris would stride into Pat’s and ask for Swiss—not because they’re self-consciously avoiding a gaffe, but because they have deep respect for America’s foodways and are interested in enjoying food however it is meant to be enjoyed.

Their approach makes a marked departure both from the Obama era—what with its well-meaning but not entirely fun focus on childhood obesity, and its notorious seven almonds—and from the current leaders of the Republican Party. Donald Trump doesn’t really talk about liking eating; he does, famously, consume a lot of fast food, but that is reportedly because he’s afraid of being poisoned, not because fast food tastes amazing. His most well-known food tweet—“Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”—reads like an obligatory plug rather than an earnest celebration of the way the taco bowl itself looks, smells, and tastes: all business, no pleasure. Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, says he loves Diet Mountain Dew, but he seems mostly to be mad about it. To the degree that he has gotten specific about why he likes the beverage, the praise is purely functional: “high caffeine, low calorie.” The primary message here is that food is the site not of delight and togetherness but of anxiety and alienation, or utilitarianism at best. It’s all a little, well, weird.

Food is one of the most universally beloved things on planet Earth. Aligning a presidential campaign with it is smart for all the obvious reasons, but for the Harris-Walz ticket, it’s also a signal. The rhetorical challenge of progressivism is that it is by nature abstract: It imagines a world that does not yet exist, rather than advocating to return to some previous version of the one we know. I find it telling that Walz keeps using the word joy when he talks about the campaign and about his running mate. It’s an uncomplicated message, one that’s even more concrete than Barack Obama’s hope: Hope is the future, but joy is the present. It’s cold milk on a hot day; a perfectly cracked egg; a steaming casserole dish full of God knows what, enjoyed at a crowded table. In foregrounding food, Harris and Walz are making theirs the candidacy of terrestrial pleasure and straightforward abundance. It’s simple, really. —Ellen Cushing

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

There's this dynamic I've seen replicated across numerous different identities, where people from the same identity group who have suffered greatly over that identity end up in conflict with those who have suffered less and also talk freely about the joy that identity has given them.

The people who have suffered a lot tend to find the joy expressed by the latter group extremely grating at best and offensive at worst. This often then leads to identity policing and the creation of artificial barriers that are unsupported by reality. If you have not suffered THIS much, then you aren't really [X]. Or, perhaps, the latter group is told that while they might technically be [X], they need to stop talking and 'prioritize' (aka stop talking, but nicer) the former group. This is also often categorized as 'privilege,' which actually makes 0 sense.

Meanwhile, the latter group frequently has complete failures of empathy or perspective, and often do not make space for the former group to talk about how [X] identity has hurt them, how they have suffered due to it, and how they don't necessarily emphasize it or particularly want to 'find joy' in it. There is often a complete lack of recognition of trauma the former group has experienced, and this lack of recognition can be especially painful coming from people who are ostensibly in the same group.

We have GOT to start acknowledging that both experiences are legitimate and finding ways to talk about our various experiences without hurting each other.

Some suggestions I might make are:

If you're in the former category, please try to access therapy or support groups to address your (completely legitimate) trauma. As someone who has *been* that person, life is so much better when you are happy for people finding joy, even in something that hurt you, rather than, what, exactly? Wishing they experienced the same pain? If it was really that bad, why would you wish that on anyone? Especially someone like you?

Stop categorizing intra-group dynamics as privilege, as if that marginalized identity could be a privilege. Instead, consider using other terms to discuss the spectrum of experience that don't erase other people's trauma.

Stop denying the trauma of others. Try to get some perspective on things, and look at the facts objectively. This is what is intended by the original "prioritize [X] with [Y] experience" framing, even if it has been twisted in shitty ways. Bad discourse doesn't change what happened.

And as someone who has also been in the latter group - look. There's a time and a place. For example, I love being Jewish. My life has gotten way better since becoming Jewish, even in spite of everything else that's going on. But Yom HaShoah isn't the day for me to express that. That would be tactless, tasteless, and insensitive. That's instead a great day for me to be quiet and supportive of Jews who lost family. There are plenty of other days for me celebrate my love of Judaism and for the Jewish people (like Shavuot!)

Anyway, nuance is good, infighting is bad, and valuing and respecting people's varied experiences can only help us. Exclusion and disrespect only hurts us and helps the people who want us silenced, hidden, erased, bullied into conformity and/or killed.

[pekoehoneyncream]

Sergeant Kyle Gaz Garrick Headcanons

Part One

Words: 600~

TW: None (sfw)

Part Two

Y'all are powered by spite alone, istg. Gaz won the poll by one vote, ONE! I had soap's shit lined up and ready to go and y'all really said 'nah, no thank you'

Here's your prize,

Hope You Enjoy!

Gaz is slow to trust. He does not like strangers, and often feels on edge around new people. He isn't outright rude, in fact he's often downright friendly. He knows better than to alienate unknowns and make unneeded enemies for his team by acting hostile.

Ghost often validates Gaz's suspicious nature by asking him for breakdowns of potential weaknesses and if someone's likely to become a problem or a liability. 

Gaz shows a lot of love through acts of service, if there's anything that the 141 needs or needs done he'll make sure it happens, often before they even realise it's going to become a problem.

Gaz has a habit of referring to other people as NPCs. Particularly groups of people that ostensibly have a use, but only ostensibly.

Gaz cusses A Lot. He uses swearing, snark, and sarcasm as coping mechanisms, particularly in stressful situations. He doesn’t like directing his vitriol at his teammates, but situations, enemies, unknowns, strangers, acquaintances, and friends are all free game.

Cannot stand ticking or tapping noises, especially when he can't find where the sound is coming from. Rattling vents and unbalanced ticking ceiling fans are the banes of his existence. | At first he tried to be casual when he brought stuff up to Price, “So, have you noticed that the third light in the breakroom buzzes and flickers a bit when it's on?”, but now he just straight up tells Price what bothers him. (Price tells maintenance, but if they're being too slow Price has been known to just fix it himself.) | Soap, with his pathological need to bounce his legs, is on thin fucking ice. Gaz can usually ignore it if Soap keeps a consistent rhythm, but when Soap's fidgety he starts to drive Gaz up the wall.

Not great at sharing. Leaving the last piece of something, in case someone else might want it, is not something that would ever cross his mind. If someone doesn't directly ask for something, he's assuming they're not interested.

He's cannot do constructive criticism. He's got the criticism part down pat, but rarely cares enough to struggle with making it constructive. He embodies that video: Be Nice. ‘I'm finding it.’ It takes you that long? ‘It does, It does.’

He's an only child. His mom, Gemma, is a Biomedical Equipment Technician, and his dad, Arthur, is a Semi-Retired English Professor. He was mostly raised by his dad, as his mom's job kept her out of the house most days. His dad actually became Semi-Retired to be a Stay-At-Home-Dad and raise Gaz. Arthur Garrick has published a few textbooks and still goes in for the occasional guest lecture.

Gaz's bedtime stories were books like Le Morte de Artur, the Iliad, Lord of the Rings, the Robert Frost Compendium, and Narnia.  

When Gaz was learning to write his dad taught him cursive, leaning towards calligraphy. To this day Gaz's printing looks like a ten year-old's. Meanwhile, his writing is very pretty to look at, but nearly illegible. His signature is completely unreadable, it's just a very elaborate pile of loops and slashes.

Occasionally forgets the words for things. His brain does this thing that he likes to call Playing Wheel of Fortune, where it will let him remember the meaning of the word, and sometimes what the word rhymes with, or its first letter. | These moments all go something like this: “You can’t pin that on me! You've only got… fuck what’s the word, where its a person in a place and they're getting blamed for something. It’s like a lawyery thing.” A court? “No no, it's like they got caught, but they were in the wrong place and it’s only if you put it together a certain way it looks bad. Like a bad impression, but serious. It’s a long word. I think it starts with S… Circumference? No. Situation? Something like that.” Circumstantial? “Yes! Circumstantial! Circumstantial Evidence!” I saw you eating my crisps, that's not circumstantial evidence.

Thank You for Reading!

PekoeHoneynCream's Headcanons