#past me was a genius and shes evil

[corrosivesaints]

Did st christopher change to st michael in fingers in his mouth ftuesday? And could you elaborate on that 👀

you eagle eye YES it did change! my hc was that brady has at least 1 saint medal given as a parting gift from his mom ❤️ i had st christopher initially bc he’s a common one & i was just getting words down. THEN the lovely @leftenantjopson suggested St Michael or St Joseph (of Cupertino), as they are patrons of soldiers/the military and aviators respectively. i’ve gone with michael bc he’s a classic. can’t go wrong with my guy michael (also he’s an archangel and i think they’re cool 😎)

anyway i just realized how insane the implications are of never taking off your sign of faith/devotion, not even when ostensibly breaking that symbolic promise by uhhh having gay sex. i’m putting them both in the blender btw 😑

[vatelixx]

You are the knife (I turn inside myself),

S2!Post-addiction!Spencer Reid x afab!BAU!reader

SMUT!! (and copious amounts of angst, and like a small amount of fluff to just… balance it out), Workplace rivals, aka, enemies to lovers (who are still enemies and would rather die than tell each other they’re in love).

──── autistic spencer (as per usual), evil evil reader (im being dramatic, kinda), they hate each other so much that they have to find a new way to crawl into each others skin.

Warnings: sub spencer, brat!spencer (a man gets glasses and suddenly thinks he can be defiant) brat!tamer!reader, HUGE corruption kink (someone keeps putting that in there???? it’s not me, i swear), first time for Spencer (i love a virginal nerd), restraints (someone has to pin him down), crying— like lots of crying, degradation (and a little praise because they work hand in hand), Spencer eats reader out like rent is due, reader says thankyou by destroying him, they argue mid-sex. They actually just argue constantly.

— warning: mentions of past drug addiction.

w.c: 9k (mostly smut, holy shit how is it 9k??? their arguments hiked up my word count im positive)

a/n: i know tumblr hates to see me coming with my Spencer Reid one shots. I wrote this at 3am when I was supposed to be studying for my latin exam, it’s okay. Uni will understand I had greater things to do. I promise i’ll get around to my requests this week, i just got possessed by the holy ghost and wrote this.

────────────

Something, something, mindless torture. Spencer holds his brain, his intellect, in high regard. Proverbial accomplishments, Stanford Binet approved genius, he’s an outlier to most. And yet, the moment you start speaking, he has no thoughts beyond the domineering urge to throw himself off a cliff.

You’re late today. Chicago, you’ve both been sentenced, discarded to create a profile from the minimal information present. Forced proximity, the team have been trying to stifle this animosity shared between you for over a year now. It doesn’t work.

Here’s the thing, each member of the BAU has their own specialised feat: Penelope could be a cybercriminal, if she so wished, a tech-genius that has no qualms in tearing down firewalls. Morgan, adroit, an expert on the field, stereotypically strong, all running lines of muscle. Who wouldn’t want to be princess-carried away from danger by him? He’s also remarkably good at kicking down doors. Gideon has incalculable years of experience, a mentor.

The list stretches on.

But you and Spencer can’t both be the brains of the team. It’s unbalanced, skewed. A clash of intellect. Scales tipped in one direction, why does he always come up short? Why can’t he just—

Why, repeats as you push through the bureau, blanking the predictable, formulaic stares of various officers, trained officials, the usual mess. Why— why profiling? Why did you voluntarily choose to suffer your way through ceaseless cases of sanguinary?There has to be an element of masochism to your career; no one with a sane mind voluntarily decides to walk into an onslaught of serial killers and death.

The early mornings are always the worst; stumbling out of bed, deriving no sleep from the night, tangled sheets and restless limbs. “Don’t,” you push, padding into the office, met with Spencer’s hardened gaze. “Late night.”

“We haven’t been here for 48 hours yet, 36 and 22 minutes to be precise, and you’ve already—“

“Get your mind out of the gutter, boy genius. Late night as in I stared at the casefiles until my mind went numb.”

“Did you take a break?” he asks, and you both know it’s not born from care. “Maybe a self-reflection period to realise that torturing yourself isn’t the most effective form of work. Your reactive skills will be delayed now, let’s hope we don’t find the unsub today. In fact, maybe I should warn Hotch—“

“Have I ever warned Hotch about your breakdowns?” that shuts him up. It also makes him spiral, because you can’t know, it’s not statistically possible that you’d be aware of Hankel’s lasting impact on his body, dilaudid, hydromorphine, and not tell someone. He assumes you’d be desperate to eliminate him from the team, to claim your win.

“Right, um— the case,” he shifts in his seat. Professionalism, tolerance, it’s all a little too much work when it comes to the subject of you.

“The case.” you agree.

You’re attuned to each other, a psychological curse he’s forced to stomach. Offices and crime scenes, analysing, competing, hellbent on one upping the other. “Look at these markings—“ his hands rifle through the files that adorn the table, searching searching until they produce an autopsy report.

The markings on the body are intricate, latin symbols prominent against the victims pale skin. You lean further forward, following the path of his index finger as it traces the outline. Perhaps there’s an element of telepathy to your dynamic; you don’t need to state the obvious, too aware that his brain has already processed the information, that he’s moved onto the nuances now.

Human sacrifice, it’s not the first time you’ve caught yourselves in the midst of cult worship and indoctrination. But it’s certainly the first time of its kind.

“Traces of wine in her bloodstream. Found in a forest. Sounds like a bacchanal.” you state, shifting to pull yourself up on the desk.

Spencer looks. At your long, slender legs extending out from a pencil skirt. Effortless, natural, situating yourself on the oakwood, hair half covering your face, with loose strands pooling over your eyes to obstruct your sight.

It’s a strange analogy, the two of you; Spencer with his tired eyes, haphazard clothes and messy desk, and you, just as dishevelled in the morning light.

Metaphorically and literally you’re higher than him right now. He fixes his askew glasses. Clears his throat. “Regina Horthorne,” the victim, “Straight A student. Honour role. What are the chances she willing went to said… bacchanal?”

“Hm. I don’t know, maybe she’s like Laura Palmer. Double life. 4.0 cheerleader by day, crazed bacchante by night.” you retort.

Shamelessly, you take a moment to observe him, just as he did you. Shirt sleeves bunched up at his elbows, hair tousled, large hazel eyes, interminably darting across your face. You wonder for a moment if he’s analysed you the way you’ve analysed him. It’s a futile question, of course he has.

Anything to gain the upper hand.

You continue, “Maybe they’re sacrificing virgins. You could go undercover as a potential victim. Certainly fit the part.”

“I’m already too old to be counted as an appropriate victim. There’s a high probability ‘they’, the dominant unsub, wouldn’t even look at me, and—“ he pauses, pretty face marred by creased features, brows furrowed, a slight pout to his lips.

“There’s a homicidal cult preforming human sacrifice, and you’re wasting time by insulting me?” Spencer is….. a perpetual scholar, a social disaster, wearing his intellect like an ill-concealed secret, outcasted for the weight of his own brilliance. “The BAU clearly made a well-informed decision when they hired you.”

“Oh, you wound me boy genius.” you respond, pressing your hand against your heart.

Endless cases. The impenetrable presence of fall. It feels like you shift through cycles, bleary-eyed and tainted from the job, damaged goods— do you struggle to sleep like I do?

You lean forward, hands, adorned with cluttered rings, braced against the table, bodies closer now. There’s a burn, something fervent that lingers between you, rivalry, opposition. Some days you feel as hedonistic as the unsubs you track and chase.

Continuing, you let out a sharp laugh. “Are you still bitter because I realised it was a bacchanal before you? Don’t worry, i’ll let you take the credit for it. I’m sure Gideon will be so impressed.”

Gideon sees everything in him, and nothing in you. Predictable.

The distance between you has become almost null. It’s intimate, and he’s not sure how he feels about that. “I’m not bitter. And I don’t care about the credit.” A lie. “Unlike you, I don’t need to prove my worth to him.”

────────────

Spilt blood. Your hands are calloused from holding a gun. From firing a bullet straight through skull. The case closes, locked behind that inviolable wall, the one that’s installed into your mind the moment you’re employed, the moment you sign your fate over to the BAU. You’re not sure why anyone stays, overworked and undervalued, there’s no heroes in real life. Maybe it’s the sense of family, or maybe it’s just what everyone subconsciously fell into.

You can’t understand why you’re so angry at Spencer, why it extends to the next case, South Dakota— deaths of locals, but these days, all of the illogical, petty reasons just blur together. Create this tangled mess of overcompensation. ’I assumed you two would get along,’ Prentiss had stated— but what does she know? She’s been an active member of the BAU for a whole 10 minutes.

The hostility has mounted to new levels now.

It’s hard work, long hours, no gratitude and a pay cheque that can’t even begin to cover the trauma that comes with the job. The BAU is like self-sabotage: a long list of reasons to leave, and no real reasons to stay. But still you’re both stuck in this loop.

South Dakota, of course it’s South Dakota. Cold, desolate South Dakota where the wind and snow will not let up, and the team are forced to remain cooped up in a cheap motel, desperate for any sort of entertainment.

Here he is, coerced into your room to work on the case, overtime, his eyes are rimmed crimson.

You’re sprawled out across the bed while he sits at the other end, slender legs crossed. Spencer is tired with a weariness that seems to go soul-deep, shoulders slumped forward, glasses oblique.

The tension is near-palpable, stifling. “I can do this myself. No offence,” full offence, “but you’re unneeded right now. In general, really.”

You make him cruel. Or no, maybe this job does? He can’t remember himself unscathed now, fresh-faced to the BAU, unaware of what he’d endure. It’s still early days in recovery, two months since he was entirely, indomitably reliant on Dilaudid.

“No you can’t,” you retort. Maybe it’s unprofessional, disreputable to waste so much breath on insults, to dedicate specific moments to hostility— people are dead, people will keep dying. And yet, perhaps there’s justification for this; your mutual animosity is the only semblance of routine to this job, the only way either of you can seek control.

Control. All you do is reach for the blade.

“You’re just bitter that I know what I’m doing. You’re not infallible, Boy Wonder. You need my help, so shut up and read that autopsy report. The sooner this is over, the sooner I can go back to my apartment and forget you exist.”

Well that’s certainly unlikely.

“I think,” he says, and he knows this is going to be bad. He can feel the serrated edge to his forming words, his half-baked analysis too focused, too distracted, by his need to hurt. But he’s exhausted, and these days, he runs on a detrimentally short fuse. Maybe he finds a release in your dynamic, or maybe it makes everything worse. How can something be everything and nothing at the same time?

“I think you’re insecure” he continues, “because you know Gideon values me more. That, to him, you’re replaceable. It’s why you’re so fixated on one upping me. Why you feel the need to prove yourself superior. Textbook insecurity. You can’t stand the fact that he chooses me over you, that he thinks I’m better than you. That my input is more wanted, more necessary.”

This is uncharted territory now. It’s never been pushed to this extent. It’s never gotten so morbidly cruel that his words actually pierce. You’d consider yourself to be thick-skinned, bullet-proof, a mess of hardened edges and calloused flesh. But he regards you with such insignificance, in a way that’s different from your own personal view of him.

Obstinate, petty, a smart kid yet to meet his match. But never insignificant.

There’s silence, and then he’s dragging you down with him, forcing you to dig deeper, to smother wounds with salt. “Did he really choose you, though? No one on the team noticed. Not one person. After the Hankel case? When you came back different?”

Spencer falters.

It’s a vulnerable, raw spot, a laceration that never seems to heal; the worst part is that you’re right. He’d been in a spiralling decline for months, in plain sight, but everyone had been so absorbed in their own issues and god he needed a release. No one noticed. No one ever notices.

That he has no life, no prospects outside of the BAU. That his existence has been one comicotragic mess of inexperience, missing the mark, missing the joke, the punchline, the fact that everyone was always laughing at him, behind his back, to his face, present or gone. It didn’t matter? Why would it ever matter to a bunch of washed-out teenagers?

He was robbed of his adolescence. And these days, he barely gets by.

Spencer’s eyes drift back to the files, avoiding your perusing gaze, if only you had enough decency to soften your eyes. Just once.

“You don’t get to bring that into this.” He murmurs. “Shut up.”

“You started this—“

“Are you 5?” he bites back, “I was making an observation.”

When he abruptly stands up, files clattering to the floor, discarded despite the prevalent case, you’re quick to follow after him, to chase him into the cheap motel corridor. Because no, he doesn’t get to walk away from this. Not when he laid the first blow, when the first cut was drawn from his blade. Perhaps it’s perverse, to chase the hurt that comes from being around him. Maybe it’s all just an elaborate way to self-harm, to find release in the distorted relationship you both share.

“Where are you going? You can’t walk away from this one.” you state, gripping his arm. Nails pressing into skin, crescent marks that’ll stain and remind and then ache— it’s repetitive now.

“I covered for your ass.” you knew about the addiction, you knew, and even though omitting such information to the BAU could’ve lost your license, you still. Didn’t. Say. Anything.

It’s not like it took much effort to discern the truth.

“I also signed your email up to about 100 rehab centres and self-help blogs.” you’re not sure if you did that out of malice, or if it was your own, interpersonal way of minimising the damage, despite the circumstances.

You noticed. The rest of the BAU, who pressed false promises of friendship, loyalty into his shaking palms didn’t notice. Didn’t even think to humour what he became at his worst. But you did.

Furthermore, to add onto that jarring conclusion, you helped him. Admittedly in your own insufferable, (downright mocking) way. But it was help, and that’s more than he’s ever received before.

All he knows right now is that he hates you, hates the person he is, the person this job, and the intransigent presence of you, forced him into becoming.

All he knows is that he’s stumbling forward, cupping your face (taking your grip along with it), and kissing you. Kissing you hard. Like he’s Icarus and you’re the sun, worth the inevitable burn, even if the touch is only momentary, even if it’ll seal his fate as foolish.

It’s a mess of harsh, rough skin, tousled hair and sharp teeth against soft lips. It’s like trying to grasp at stardust, his hands fumbling for purchase along your body, trying to push you closer, as if the chasm of space between you is unbearable, a distance that’s impossible to endure.

He laughs when you respond instinctively, a sharp excuse of a noise, muffled by your swollen lips, and he’s just kissing you through it because he hates you, he hates you— he hates you so much that sometimes he can’t breathe when you’re around.

You crawled under his skin a long time ago, made yourself a home there.

“I think I’d rather be held hostage for a second time than kiss you again.” he says, and he might’ve elaborated further, but his lips abandon such a notion to chase your own.

The kiss becomes more languid, more desperate, like he’s trying to find an answer in response to it. There’s a brief, agonising break, foreheads pressed together, a harsh gasp of air, before the moment restarts.

God you taste good. Feel good, he thinks. He’s never been this intimate, not beyond Lila, that fleeting mess in the pool. The two events incomparable, he felt something then, small and minuscule, not enough to pursue. But right now? Oh, In contrast, he feels everything now.

“I wish you were being held hostage. It’d be quieter,” you retort. It’s muffled, and you’re moving, bodies stumbling into obstacles as you relocate, when did you get to your room? It feels like natural progression, evolution, diminutive changes that you don’t even realise are occurring.

You bite his bottom lip, draw it between your teeth, ruin him for anyone else. Because isn’t that what you’ve been doing for years now? Hurting each other so profoundly that only you can bare the scarred aftermath?

It’s sick. It’s sick, and you wonder how petty comments, trivial work-place rivalry distorted into this? How you’ve just ended up sick because of each other, and admittedly, for each other.

What is sickness without pleasure?

He whimpers. The noise almost imperceptible, but it’s there, and it’s pathetic, an unbecoming thing caught somewhere between a gasp and needy whine. He’s backed against the wall now, and he can’t find it in him to complain.

“Of course it would be you,” he says breathlessly. For all the knowledge he lacks here (physically; he’s well-versed in the hypotheticals of anatomy), he doesn’t feel pure.

People like him don’t get that.

He should feel guilty. He should recoil at the touch, at the knowledge you bear, at the reality of this. Except, for some unknown reason, he relishes in the idea of someone having him, even if the cost is his pride, his dignity, even if the cost is you.

He whimpers again as your teeth rake along the slope of his neck, shuddering at the sharp sensation, and he’s almost begging, words on the verge of being uttered.

But he can’t. Because that isn’t him when he’s with you. “Are you going to punish me? For uh, everything I said tonight? Because ah, god, I’d like to see you try.”

Admittedly, it’s not hard to break his resolve. A few more soul-crushing kisses and your wandering hand, dipping beneath his trousers, hard. Obscenely hard. Yes, he’s muttering as you unclasp buttons, as you loosen his trousers to the extent that you can palm him through his boxers. Half-choked gasps escape his bruised lips with every touch, and he’s crying now. Pretty tears streaming down his face, accentuating those doe-wide eyes of his, now glossy and warped.

“Only person who’s ever touched you, huh?” you state, and maybe you derive pleasure from that concept. That only your hands, drenched thick with staining blood, have ever scrutinised the warmth of his skin. The areas where his form curves, and the areas that make him come apart, undone at the seams. Grasping you, relying entirely on the wall, just to remain upright and somewhat conscious.

He makes another noise, another guttural, pathetic sound. Because, yeah, it’s just you. It’s only you, and the thought should be unbearable, but the pleasure of having, being touched is too much.

He has to grasp the back of your shirt, nails digging into fabric, as a distraction, a way to centre himself, while the rest of the world falls apart. His words are scattered, broken and messy, and he finds himself saying things he’ll inevitably regret. “Please, I can’t-“

He’s supposed to hate this, hate you.

“Cant— can’t take it. Oh,” he wants to bury his face into the crook of your neck, but you’re gripping his jaw, forcing him to look directly at you. Glasses discarded, the view was blurry without the added layers of tears.

“Eyes on me, boy genius.”

He complies. Gaze locked, unable to look away, entranced by the way your pupils dilate, staring at you, like you’re artwork, something to be studied and broken down and torn apart, only to be rebuilt again once he’s had his fill.

“Let’s look at you. Hm?” you state, removing his sweater, then his shirt, and there’s so many layers, and he’s acting coy now, as if he wasn’t whimpering moments prior.

Instinctively, by reflex, he tries to cover himself up. To hide planes of untouched skin from your gluttonous palms. You grip his wrists, pin them above his head, and oh isn’t this a sight: Spencer Reid, entirely bare, bound by you alone, tear track marks and swollen lips.

He always wanted to be seen.

He just didn’t expect, anticipate, being seen to this extent. He can’t fight your trailing gaze, and he doesn’t want to; it might make him flushed, a few irrational movements away from a cardiac arrest, but this it— raw uncut intimacy.

You’re softer now, as you run your hand along his dick, earning a variety of muffled noises, as your thumb brushes over his tip, taking care to touch every part of him. Everywhere he needs it. When you finally wrap your fingers around him, everything burns, fervent and collapsing, and he supposes this is what it felt like the moment Troy collapsed.

“Mhh,” he moans, hips bucking in time with your palm, steady movements.

He’s already so messy, and it should be embarrassing, but all he feels is the blunted edges of pleasure, the jagged cut of humiliation, warring against each other.

“You’re— oh.. you’re enjoying this far too much,” he manages, and it takes so much energy to get it out, his words slurring, interrupted by debauched gasps.

It feels good, so good that he can’t process the shame that’s bound to follow. He hates you, and he might be a little in love with you, and it’s not fair to process feelings, chemicals, he was never supposed to obtain.

“That it’s. There you go. That’s my good boy.”

Spencer sobs.

“Shh, shh, I know, I know, it’s a lot.” there’s always an element of condescension to your words. An undertone that rips through his defences. Destroys him in the process.

His body is receptive, ruined, because of the praise. He’s not sure how you can look at him, clearly, consciously, and dictate that he’s good. Most days he feels impure, debased. Burnt-out and wasted, the great always fall.

The same skin he pierced with needles is now reverently on show, and you should be cruel, it’s what you’re both good at, the only viable way to communicate, an undisclosed secret language. But you’re not. That confuses him to no extent.

“I can’t— cant, ‘m so close.” his arms are still bound above his head, and despite the ache, he keeps them there. It’s not the most conventional ‘first time’, but he takes it regardless.

“Yeah?” you mutter, pace picking up. The sound is obscene, his excessive pre-cum smeared across his length, wet noises with every stroke. “You wanna cum for me, hm?”

“Oh god,” he breaks, “Yes— yes, please—“

You have no interest in denying him, not when he’s this destroyed from a mere hand-job. “Go on then. Just because you asked so nicely.”

He falls apart. Dewy-eyed and blissed out, you force him to look at you as he reaches his orgasm. To keep looking as he squirms and writhes. So he does, because apparently his cognitive function has evaporated now.

Your tongue meets your palm, tasting him, pressing the excess into his mouth with an indecent kiss. Is this what sex entails? Complete submission, vulnerabilities bared wide? Dirty in that primal sense, the same one he always shied away from?

Finally, finally in the aftermath, he breaks his stare. His head falls back against the wall, eyes closed, neck exposed. Stifled gasps, it’s quiet, as if you’re both aware of your actions, the consequences of them.

“This is, uh— yeah.” he mumbles, reaching for his clothes; now the ecstasy has worn off, the shame overpowers. The sin of man, he’s starting to think you’re the personification of the serpent.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. He doesn’t hold his own body to such pure standards. He’s not sure any benevolence would look at him with acceptance. Not after everything he’s done to it.

“Hey wait,” you’re not good at this whole ‘nice’ thing, not when it comes to him. But there have been moments, in the past, small, fleeting seconds of…. you’re not entirely sure what to call them. Late hours spent scrutinising cases, your back-up points to his statements, mindless information dumps that the team can’t quite understand.

“Don’t make me chase you a second time, jesus.” You can’t just leave—“ you exhale, breathe, in and out, “Are you okay?”

He stops. He stops because you’ve never asked that question, never cared to ask that question, and maybe that hurts more than not being asked at all.

A part of him, the small part of him that’s not functional, wants to stay, wants to just stay in this bliss and pretend that it doesn’t matter, that the inevitable fallout won’t occur. But the larger, prominent part, reminds him that this isn’t right, that he needs to leave and collect his wits.

“I don’t know, im confused—“ he sighs, drags a shaky hand through his hair. “Yeah, im uh… i’m fine. “I just need to leave, I have to-“ he swallows. “I can’t. Not right now, I need to do— anything but this.”

He walks out on you and it’s fine.

────────────

Everything is fine, reality can return, and you can forget that you had his arms bound against the wall, that he fell apart from the weight of your dragging palm. You can pretend you never saw him naked, bare in every form of the word. Stripped raw, his lips burning against yours, skin on skin. It’s. Fine.

Life continues. Your dynamic remains the same, unrelenting, your biting words, just short of callous, his scathing remarks. Modus Operandi. You wonder how you’ve turned the most tender person into something sharp, and you wonder if it’s ever going to be reversible.

When the case closes, the BAU, in predictable, systematic fashion, celebrate (ease the weight) over drinks. You’re adorned in lace, a black dress that just catches your thighs. It’s late now, and by the time you arrive at the dive-bar, the majority of the team are intoxicated (you couldn’t go straight from work, there was still blood clinging to your skin).

Everything is fine. To reiterate.

It’s not.. It’s not. Because oh, Spencer finds himself staring. He’s fairly certain he doesn’t have any lingering interest. But then again, why is he fixated on the way fabric clings to your ruinous figure, the way your hair sits, slightly dishevelled, pooled over one shoulder? It’s exasperating and inebriating all at once. You shouldn’t be able to affect him to such an extent, and yet here he is, mindlessly staring at you with starry-eyes. He should look away. Leave even?

Of course, he fails. You end up squeezing in next to him, all leather seats and too little space.

And, okay, he knows he should feel guilty.

In reality, he’s not. Because, sure, he’s sat too close, and sure, he can just make out the scent of your perfume, faintly floral. But he’s intoxicated, just as everybody else is, and it’s making logic and reason seem far off, too distant to process. He looks at you once, then twice, like he can’t quite believe you’re tangible.

“You look nice, I guess,” he murmurs bluntly, looking away, feigning disinterest.

As if the ‘incident’ (as he’s taken to calling it) didn’t tilt his world on its axis.

“You also look nice, I guess.” you retort, and it’s the best you’re going to get out of each other. At least in this state (the surplus of praise that left your bruised, possessed lips cannot be justified, or repeated ever. again.)

You lean forward, watch as his face creases at the proximity. Are you thinking about the kisses? Plural, fuck, plural. Open-mouthed, desperate movements?You’re. not. Instead, you steal his glasses, slip them on. The prescription is strong, thick lenses that distort your perception.

“What do you think?” you ask, “I might go as you for halloween, it’ll definitely scare the kids.”

“They make you look intelligent. Considering you need all the help you can get, I’d take that as a compliment,”

It’s a domestic action, to put on his glasses. And the thoughts that burn through his mind stem from HR prohibited to domestic, which he argues is far worse. You, tangled in sheets, sporting nothing but his glasses. Resting against the tip of your nose, askew, as you ride him. As you tilt your head back, exposing— no.

He wants to say something about how ridiculous you look— but it’s hard to focus, you’re taking up all of his sanity, like a computer running multiple programs at once. You’re malware actually, destined to corrupt him (which you’ve already done to a painful extent).

“You can’t just touch my stuff.” he settles on, sounding more petulant than anticipated.

“Oh chill out, boy wonder. It’s a pair of glasses,” you mutter, removing them to blink blink blink, and there he is, the centre focus of your vision, now fully detailed again. It takes you a moment to render in his appearance: shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, arms exposed, long, deft fingers. There’s heavy bags gathering beneath his eyes, dragging down those big, blown-out irises of his, wide and completely dirty (how is it that his natural resting face is so obscene?).

Focus.

You push the glasses back onto his face. Better, it’s a sight you’ve come to anticipate after he ran out of contact lenses. “There. Oh, were you just upset because you couldn’t see me properly? That’s sweet, Spence. Flattery will get you everywhere.”

He can see everything.

Every small detail of your face; strands of hair falling loose, dilated pupils, accentuated by heavy liner, obsidian that contrasts against your incisive eyes. Your lips, oh your lips, he could write a thesis on them. Stained crimson, if he were to kiss you right now, residue would catch against his own mouth, incriminate him.

He gets up. Excuses himself. Sometimes he wishes he could vanish.

But it’s not good enough.

“You,” he says between messy kisses, “Need to keep your hands to yourself.” — okay, he’s not sure how this happened. He left for the bathroom (to splash water on his face, gather his dignity, perhaps drown himself?) and you to humour the locals outside, gathering around with half-smoked cigarettes and slurring conversations.

But then, on his way back, padding through the long corridor (why is it always a corridor?), you were there, and yeah. He was screwed. Fatefully wrecked.

He had tried, in the moments leading up to his demise, to resist, but he was a man of logic and science and the science, when he was around you, simply did not apply. You’re bad for him, in every sense, he should avoid you, he should stay away.

But now, there’s no space between your bodies, no space for rationality or reasoning (god he’s tired of the thinking part. He just wants to feel).

The kiss is rough, sloppy, a desperate, messy thing. “This can’t keep happening,” he mumbles against your smeared lips.

“Do you remember last time?” you question. It’s taboo, to bring it up, to disclose the buried. But you’re fairly certain this compromising position wouldn’t exist without the lethal effects of that one night. The cheap motel and his body arching into your touch.

Rationality appears to be nonexistent now. A discarded concept.

Like last time, you guide him back against the wall, pin his hands above his head. Mirroring your actions. Well, to some ‘dignified’ extent. “Had you just like this,” you lean forward to press a series of kisses along the curvature of his jaw. “I bet you’d let me take you like this again, hm? Right here? In the middle of this shitty dive bar?”

And if he weren’t so far gone, he’d protest, he’d tell you that no, this is wrong, because you’re so wrong for him. He knows that if one good man has to fall, it shouldn’t be him.

But you don’t let good men rise, and there’s something so enticing about the depths of hell. He’s not sure he’s good anyway. It’s a complex situation. “You’re a sadist,” he murmurs, breathless, “I wouldn’t.”

Your grip instinctively tightens against his wrist, and he squirms. He’s nervous, “Could we, like… at least find a bathroom? I’d take a bathroom, even though there’s endless strains of bacteria there. Or, or split a cab. No, i’ll just pay— Anything. I’ll do anything. Just not here. This is a public space, and technically, public indecency, and—“

“Fuck,” he’s never been the type to swear, “I’ll do anything.” this time, he says it in self-defeat. Acknowledgment.

────────────

French exit. His wandering hands in the cab, and the electric pulse that burnt through his body as he kept a low profile, stumbling out of the bar, muttering thinly-veiled excuses for his abrupt departure.

The second you’re both inside your apartment, you’re clattering into things. “I love your eyes,” you state bluntly, forthcoming in every sense of the word, “Love it when you cry for me.”

You think of every harsh word that has ever escaped your lips, You think of the consequences they might’ve had. Did he ever cry over them? You know, in contrast, you never did over his. Though there was that sharp, sinking pain that felt like the embodiment of slow death. Something terminal, fated to linger, to eat and eat until nothing remained.

No big deal!

“It’s an involuntary bodily response. You’re a dacryphiliac.” he responds.

There’s not a lot he can compute right now, his brain too preoccupied with processing your touch alone. Which is so prominent, so harrowingly good that not even his genius mind can comprehend it.

He’s reasonable to believe he would kill whoever had the pleasure of experiencing you like this.

“It’s not a fetish if I only feel it for you—“

Spencer breaks.

“No-no-no,” he says, too loudly, “You can’t just- say those things. You can’t tell me you love when I cry, just because- I should be scared, of you. You’re volatile. Destructive,” he murmurs, head leaning against the crook of your shoulder. Against better judgement. But all reason has left him now. You’ve stolen it, taken it as a personal trophy to parade and boast about.

“Why am… Why am I not scared?” he asks, “It’s not like I make you cry…”

“Because there’s no reason to be scared.” you answer simply. And at surface level, it’s true. In spite of the hostility, the years of white-knuckled rivalry, you’ve always trusted him. It’s a coveted admission, considering you’re circumspect by nature.

You unbutton his shirt, let it fall to the floor, exposing his skin in the middle of your apartment. He’s standing there, and you’re not sure what to do with all of this want that perhaps you’ve misplaced as enmity for so long.

“You could make me cry,” you state, because if there’s one person out there capable of cracking you open, leaning behind fragmented pieces, it’s him. It’s always going to be him.

It’s a startling realisation. That he, Spencer Reid, of all people, can reach the centre of you in ways nobody has ever done before.

“Why would I want you to cry? That’s— i’m not even sure how I would go about it.”

You grip his hips, walk yourself backwards until you’re hitting a wall, there your body instinctively curves forward to meet his. “It doesn’t always have to be bad.” you explain, because he’s looking at it from a simplistic, textbook perspective. “Last time,” those words still feel like poison, “When I made you cry, there was no pain, right? You cried because it felt good.”

He’s staring at you clueless. Though, he might just be distracted. Either works.

Your hand catches his wrist, and then you’re hiking up your dress, guiding his touch beneath fabric. The lace panties that cover skin. He’s tentative, experimental, dragging his thumb over your clit, causing your hips to cant towards him. “Make me cry, boy genius.”

You act like this is the most indecent thing he’s capable of doing. From an unbiased standpoint, it’s up there on his list, but admittedly he hasn’t really done enough to constitute a list in the first place.

Spencer, in response, simply drops to his knees. Your panties are pulled down your legs in a disconcerting haze, and then he’s just groaning, cursing Gods he doesn’t believe in, spiting them with blasphemy, whilst also simultaneously thanking them, humouring false promises he won’t commit to.

It’s blasphemous, a prodigy on his knees, in front of you, for you. As if he’s worshiping something he can’t even comprehend, something beyond the expanse of his knowledge. And you just pull strands of his hair, pull at the strings of him.

His hands find the inside of your thighs, caressing the soft skin there and you make another noise, a noise that has him devouring you.

Face buried between your legs, he flattens his tongue against your clit, drags it upwards to catch wetness, to affirm that you’re just as affected as he. That since you touched him, all thoughts have consisted solely of you.

He doesn't think he's doing this correctly- but you're making noises, gasps that he didn’t even know you were capable of, and that's the thing about science or anatomy, whatever it may be, the brain is incredibly subjective, and the more knowledge you acquire, the less you really know.

And there's knowledge here, but it’s not utilised; no coordination, even when there should be, even when he’s got the human body memorised to perfection. Still, you seem to like him messy, desperate, drawing your clit into his mouth to pull, to tug, before shifting back to blow cold air against you.

The task was simple, at surface level: make you cry. And whilst, if you pick it apart, it becomes more complex, he seems to be efficient in following orders because right now, you’re ruined. It might not be the most meticulous head you’ve received (though you’re sure, under different circumstances he could probably surpass that standard), but it’s wanting, in a way that makes you ache.

“Oh oh, fuck— fuckfuckfuck.”

You grip his hair, twisting and pulling and using, and he lets you, he’d do anything, do this forever if he had to. His fingers, still gripping your thighs, dig into soft flesh, leaving visible marks. And he wants to see those marks, in the morning, an irrefutable fact that would force him to accept this as real.

But he can’t focus, can’t think about anything when you’re reacting like this, so undone. How can there be anything, at all, beyond this?

He lets you drape a leg over his shoulder, let’s you get off against his face, fingers sliding inside, one digit at a time, to feel warmth wrapped around him. To feel the way you clench when he curves them, when he grazes spots that he could explain to factual detail.

Your body shudders, and you’re making noises he hasn’t heard before, sounds that could only be described as obscene— and his name, you’re moaning his name, and god, he’s certain he would follow you to the ends of the earth right now. Without question.

It’s when he stops, when he leans back enough that he can breathe. That he can look at you, really look at you.

You’re messy, undone. The sight could be considered humiliating from an outside perspective, but you’re gorgeous, and he’d do this a thousand times over if it resulted in this exact reaction. A reaction that he’s given you. No one else.

“I love your face.” He says, a little bluntly. But it’s true, he does.

So he returns to the task. Practically situating you on his face now to suffocate him, to let him become some sort of extension to your pleasure. And inevitably when you fall apart, tears and writhing, boundless pleasure, he can only push you through it. Allow his existence to crumble, for the second time,

And as he draws back, face covered in you, he can only stare.

His knees are bruised. That’s the first thing you notice when you stumble to the bedroom, when you’ve taken a moment to wipe away evidence of the tears, to regather and compose yourself. It’s not in your nature to be soft, no to him, but you still find yourself kissing the mauve blemishes, working your way up his body after you’ve oh so unceremoniously undressed him. Reduced to his boxers, he’s an incriminating sight.

“Losing your virginity to me is like the biggest irony ever.” you say, kissing along his stomach, watching as his body reacts, arches, contorts in search of more pleasure. It’s a hypnotising sight, to see every nerve tuned to you solely.

“Ironic, demeaning, enough to send past versions of myself into an early grave. Yes, I get your point.” he mutters.

Your hands find their way to the waistband of his boxers, and he’s lifting his hips, because he wants you to undress him, because he’d let you do anything right now, but he also feels embarrassed, exposed. Vulnerable in a way he’s never felt before. You’re seeing him, seeing things he doesn’t even know himself. But there’s nowhere to hide, not while you’re slowly pulling off his underwear, with a care that he’s unaccustomed to.

“I won’t go easy on you,” you assure. Even though that’s technically a straight-faced lie. Of course it’ll be more tender than anything else you’ve endured; he has this devastating habit of softening those around him. It’s only taken this long to affect you out of pure, unbridled spite.

Oh, he wants. The evidence is his body alone. Laid out before you, like an offering, a hedonistic one. Dick hardened, dripping pre-cum onto his stomach.

“Hands above your head,” you watch as he blindly obeys, any defiance now crushed. Well, for the most part: at least in his actions. “That’s good— good boy. Tell me if they’re too tight,” you say, binding them with his discarded tie.

You stare, and it’s like you want to eat him alive, and against better judgement, he’d let you. Serve himself up, passive as you tear him limb for limb, taste all the bad parts of his existence, the ones he keeps hidden shamefully away.

“Too tight? I’ve been held hostage, I think I can handle a little bit of fabric.” he retorts before tugging at the restraints, “Tighter.”

“Didn’t realise you were so into this—“

“Neither did I,” he scoffs, “I’ve never done it before, obviously.”

“Now you have. Congrats, i’ll give you a sticker once we’re done. Gold star, huh?” and just for good measure, you tighten the restraints further. Just a few more pulls until you’re knotting it in place. Until he’s entirely defenceless, but realistically, what would you do? It’s hard to find fear when you’ve covered him on the field for over a year (he’s prone to being targeted, an unsubs wet dream).

“Yes, thank you. I’ll put the sticker on the wall next to my PhDs.” right now, right in this moment, countless people are getting what they want.

And Spencer is being manhandled by his pretty coworker.

Ironically, that’s exactly what he wants.

You’re the perfect dichotomy. Cruel, and caring. Harsh words to juxtapose gentle hands. Soft touches, but scathing remarks that linger, leaving behind a trail of scars, the ubiquity of your cruelty.

You’re lethal, and he’s smart enough to comprehend the danger. Except he’s never been smart when it comes to people.

Your hands are acquisitive, roaming, searching, blunt nails that scrape skin as you rake them down, down towards his abdomen. He shivers, bite into that pretty bottom lip of his until he’s spilling blood, and it’s a sight. Something sick that you both want to such an offensive extent.

“Sensitive.” you murmur, like the idea of him so reactive pleases you, in a way you’ve never considered before. Because the way his body strains, bucking forward to deepen the contact is maddening.

“Are you always like this?” you wonder aloud, leaning down to run a hand along the length of his inner thigh. “Poor baby, so touch-starved.”

“I don’t know if I’d use the word sensitive.” he replies, “More susceptible to the fact that you’re touching me, and that I haven’t felt another person touch me in a long time. And of course when people touch me, it’s usually professionals poking me with needles or stitching this weeks new wound.”

Touch-starved? He has sensory issues. The lightest graze can provoke, cause his skin to crawl. Of course he would like your touch, of course the universe would torture him by finding relief in the one person who nobody should stumble upon for relief.

“Oh you’re a soldier, you suffer so much.“ you state, and it’s condescending (naturally), but there is some truth to the serrated comment. You, the team, are all bruised, mentally and physically distorted from the consequences of the job. Only he could react so reverently to your calloused hands, blissed out to the extent that it looks like you’re witnessing ascension.

It’s pretty. Pretty, in a soft, domestic way. One that demeans his bound wrists and your sharp words.

You press a few tender kisses to his thighs, the inner sections, where you’re certain, assured, no one has ever touched before. Maybe there’s something possessive to that thought, the want to own, to know that no one will ever have him the way you have him.

Your touch is like a brand. He wants it, even if it’s bad, even if it’s cruel. Because the alternative to this is nothing. A lonely existence. A life of work, of chasing shadows, knowing he had so much to give, and no one to give to.

“Stop mocking me.” he replies, it’s through laboured breath. “Just because I don’t have your proclivity for taking hits doesn’t mean I don’t suffer.”

No one’s ever touched him like this. No one’s ever cared to try. You’re his first.

“I know you suffer,” you retort, are you arguing? Is this foreplay? If it is, then you have some serious self-reflecting to do on every single past conversation. Because maybe you should’ve taken him to your bed earlier, in that case.

Oh god was your hatred of each other built solely on sexual tension?

Finally, you move. Just like the first time, your hand runs across his length, taking him slowly, easing him into it, coercing him through the pleasure. It’s not similar to before: it won’t end after he’s found his release, and it’s not frenzied and ardent. Spurred on by shame.

“And you know i’m always going to take the hits for you, regardless.” he whines when you remove your hand, and whines again, for contrasting reasons, as you spit on your palm, generate lubricant to support each stroke.

“Oh—“ he breathes out. He’s fairly certain he’s supposed to be more contained. A huff escapes his lips and then he’s retorting, “You could try a tactic other than reckless self-sacrifice every once in a while.”

He’s overwhelmed, with you. All of you. The way you look, the way you talk, all the harsh lines and scathing remarks. The way you take the hits for him, an altruistic custodian, but he isn’t worthy of being saved. Isn’t worth the effort.

“Shut the fuck up, Spencer.” you say, promptly ending this discussion; you grip his dick tighter, tilting your movements to catch him at a better angle.

“Shit— okay, okay,” he moans because that feels really really good, and he wishes he could articulate it in a better way. Something complex and poetic, but it’s just so good.

He’s always been a little masochistic. Too smart for his own good, too analytical. He wants you to take him apart, piece by piece, and see the inner workings of his body laid out before you, raw and vulnerable. Because only you can see him like this.

He doesn’t even really touch himself. There’s been nights, body flushed and wanton, bucking up against sheets, muffled noises pressed into his pillow. But they’re rare, and they usually lead to an aftermath of ignominy.

He’s a prodigy, a genius in the field of criminal psychology. So why does it feel so good like this? To be humbled, to be demoted. As if all his degrees, his awards, his intellect, mean absolutely nothing.

He’s never felt so loved. Which is ironic. Because he’d always hoped love would be slow, gentle. Soft, like a caress. The kind of love you share over meals and pillow-talk.

He realises, with a jolt to his system, that if this is love to you, he’d accept it, in its most primal form.

“You get off on this,” he analyses as you draw back, mostly to stifle the begs that nearly escape his mouth. Come back, need you here.

“Well I’d be pretty concerned if I wasn’t getting off on this right now—“

“No,” he pushes, “You like that i’m, that yeah. I have no experience. You want to corrupt me, huh?” he looks up at you with pretty, innocent eyes. Holy shit. “Ruin me for anyone else? Go on, let me have it. I’ll only come back, i’ve already done it once. Statistically, it’s going to happen again. And again. Pavlovian responses, condition me. Make my body react to no one else.”

When you kiss him again, he can only take it. Can only moan, whimper, plead against your mouth until you’re lining him up, until you’re sitting on his dick, and everything is okay.

“You’re so—“ bottomed out, wrapped around him entirely, you sigh. “Fuck, Spence, who taught you to be so fucking dirty?”

“You.” he mutters, playing coy. “But you’re a bad teacher, I think I could do with a few more lessons..”

“I think you could do with learning to shut your mouth more often.”

“It is better suited for other purposes, I suppose..”

He gags when you slot two fingers, index and middle, into his mouth. No warning, no predetermined acknowledgment. They hit the back of his throat, and he can only suck, muffling protests around the digits until he goes blissfully silent.

“Better,” you retort. Drawing them out, you press your thumb against his bottom lip, keeping it parted so that you can lean forward, spit into his open mouth. When you first met, he promptly refused to shake your hand, too conscious of the dissemination of germs, now? He’s swallowing your saliva, unprompted, with little resistance.

You know him. The way you touch is like you’re searching for something. Anything about him. It’s like you’re a bloodhound, trying to unearth every single vulnerability. And you must’ve found them, because you’re suddenly here, bearing all your weight on him, moving, and it’s all his body can do to take it. All of it. All of you.

He tugs at his restraints, because he won’t go down without a susceptible fight. Even if he knows it’s fated that he will inevitably fall. “Please—please untie me, just wanna hold your hand.”

And, oh that shatters you. Like, mentally, physically, spiritually dismantles you until you’re breathless, staring at him with widened eyes and a loss of composure. It’s such a tender request, something domestic and raw, and mindlessly you’re fumbling with the knots of his tie. Freeing them to take one in yours.

It’s against your nature, but you can’t help, can’t refrain yourself from pressing a kiss against his knuckles. “You’re doing so good f’me. Such a good boy,”

Your free hand runs across his torso now, grazing skin, admiring the sight of him, flushed, debauched, sprawled out beneath you.

He grips your hip. That’s the first thing he does once he’s sufficiently sane, well… partially, the praise did knock him entirely off balance. Tip the scales, send him over the inexorable edge.

He watches as you take the incentive to slip off his body, and the loss of friction is okay, tolerable because he’s sitting up against the headboard, drawing you closer, whining for you until you’re on his lap, until you’re sat in your rightful place.

Here, he can kiss you. Which he admits has become a very vital aspect to his existence.

The kiss is like a bruise. Not rough, he’d never be rough with you, he’s all long, languid strokes and soft movements. But it’s overwhelming, and leaves discernible, lasting imprints.

And yeah, sure, kissing you is the closest thing to worship he has ever known. Something he would like to commit to memory, every single time your lips touch, it’s like he’s seeing god in the shape of your cupid’s bow.

“Please, I need—“ he stutters over his words, “If you don’t move, I swear—“ he pauses, his head falling against your shoulder— “I swear, I’m gonna die, this has to be against the Geneva Convention, you can’t leave me like this, please—”

“The Geneva convention? Really? Is this your form of dirty talk?” you retort, unable to muffle your laugh.

“No. I’m stating my rights,” he says, “Torture is prohibited.”

“I’m not torturing you—“

You tangle your hand through his hair, tug tug tug, and then pull, drawing his head back by tousled strands, forcing him to meet your gaze.

“Ohmyfuckinggod, yes. You are.” he whimpers.

It’s indefensible how good he feels, how he sinks into you, hitting crevices you’re certain no one else has ever grazed before. Feeling full, whole, it’s new. It’s your own first, and you can’t even begin to articulate how defenceless you are to the way it makes you disintegrate, fragment to pieces of pleasure. Spencer is warm, and soft, and it makes you want to cry. To just fall, give in, transcendence of self, Burke said, and right now, you feel that entirely.

His moan is unapologetic, unfiltered as you move. At this point, you could slice him open, leave him bleeding in your bed, and he’d thank you for it.

You hold his hand, and yet, simultaneously destroy him.

“Please,” he whimpers again— he’s too pretty to be asking so nicely. “I just— I want you closer. As close as possible, I want you so close to me that I’m not even sure if my body can handle it.”

It’s not dirty talk, it’s more like he’s begging you, tears staining his skin, pitiful eyes, wide and glassy, staring at you with some form of desperation. Brows furrowed, gaze soft.

And his gaze only grows worse when you do give him what he wants, when your pace fastens.

It’s a religious experience, like he’s about to be crucified, a martyr to his pleasure. He’s almost afraid to touch you— to stain something divine, like you’re too much for him. But you’re not.

“I like this. Like you. Like you here. You’re so good for me,” he murmurs, and it’s untruthful, but right now, he sincerely believes it. “so good, so perfect, all I need, please—”

“Stop it.” you bite, preferring him defiant over this— because this opens up wounds you weren’t even aware existed. “Oh fuck, stop it.”

“So good. You’re so good,” he cups your face, presses his forehead against yours, and you might as well just die right here.

“Says you.”

“Says me.”

You fuck him harder.

“Oh,” is all he can pronounce, little oh’s every time you rock against him, and he has to grip you hips, deepen the movements until you’re bouncing against him, up down up down, exploiting his sensitivity with a torturous pace.

And it’s not fair, he needs to balance the scales, so he runs his thumb over your clit, firm halos that have you keening. “If being nice got me this, I’d be so nice to you for the rest of my life—“

Another lie. But it’s worth it. If only for the way you kiss him. The way you silence his cutting words, forcing your way into his mouth, forcing him to just squirm and sob, until you’re clenching around him, and he’s there with you. Falling apart, bodies shifting until movement ceases, and there’s nothing but bliss.

“I hate you so much,” you say in the aftermath, and it’s closest you’ve ever gotten to a confession of love.

He laughs, wipes away tears, “Hate you more.”

“Don’t leave this time.” he just nods, bordering on nonverbal now. It takes you hours to coax actual words out of him, and by then, you’re both tangled in a foreign mess of warm limbs.

“Oh i’m going to be so mean tomorrow.” you mutter, playing loosely with his hair.

He can only sigh, stare at you dreamily. “God, is that a promise?”

[shapelytimber]

Ok hear me out.......... wlw Wilhuff Tarkin and Orson Krennic-

the dynamic very much is unhinged creative vs rigid control freak in a context of evil bureaucracy- and personally the context is why I love to read stories with imperials jdjdkd nothing is more crack cocaine literature for me than to make drama in a space office filled with awful people

More flavor text and me trying to sell you on why this ship of two truly terrible people is great below vvv

For Krennic, lean more into the evil genius artist. She's been up for 46 hours straight drawing schematics, she's rambling about incomprehensible shit, her only meals have been cigarettes and energy drinks, she's so full of herself she might one day think she's god, she's gonna die by 60. She doesn't care much about the politics of the empire, but they don't bother her either. She works for the imperials because they have a lot funds to give to engineers willing to build them a battle station the size of a moon capable of blowing up planets. Before that she worked on a lot a architectures on imperial center/Coruscant.

The imperial uniforms are a bit boring- so I'm taking full advantage of the fact Krennic is more of an engineer/architect to tweak her uniform a bit (and the cape was already not respecting regulations sooooo) For Tarkin I'm keeping it tho, this woman won't be caught dead without it.

For Tarkin, lean less into the whole buff survivalist aspect- she very much was in her youth, but she *is* a 65 year old woman based on *Peter Cushing*, and has been in a very high and prestigious position within the empire for the past 20 years. She still as an extensive knowledge on how to survive in nature, and fight with her bare hands or a knife, but that doesn't come up very often in her line of work anymore. She still killed a space bear unharmed when she was like 17 tho. She hates chaos and developed the main philosophy that drove the empire to this day : to govern with fear and impose order. She is a bloodthirsty woman in her sixties, with a never ending hunger for power, currently cheating on her wife with a coworker she hates.

They both love the death star more than they tolerate each other, but they did end up bonding over plotting the demise of one coworker they couldn't stand and digging out rebel spies. Make no mistake tho, this is very much a love triangle/trouple between two women and a giant battle station.

In the end, Tarkin killed Krennic by shooting her from orbit with the death star, the project was finally finished, she didn't need her anymore and she might have gotten in the way of her control of the station.

Tarkin dies a few days later during the battle of Yavin, along the death star, not willing to back down in her moments of glory.

PS : a lot of this is inspired by the fic "Propagating structure" by oneinspats ! it's what made me like and understand this pairing, and is truly a great work of fiction. I really think this fic is a masterful work when it comes to expending the character of Krennic, and extrapolating on existing things. Exploring his more creative side, his passion for his work, his truly abysmal lifestyle, giving him a hatred of nature and a background as an architect on Coruscant. While also keeping his horrific aspects, like reading his internal (or external) monologues sometimes makes my skin crawl with how disgusting his ideas are and how deep they run, but making him an interesting and compelling protag for the story. While all of it is surrounded by this delicious dramatic irony, because we know that no matter how hard they try to scheme (or fuck), the death star will blow up and it's incredible.

[bixels]

your tags about mercy being one of the most complex characters- YES!!! theres a log in one of ana's gun inspection modes where it mentions how mercy DESPISED her healing magic/science being used for evil on the battlefield, and there's an ingame line of her saying "power boost working as envisioned!" and it just reminds me how she was lied to, forced unto the battlefield when in reality she just wanted to help people with her inventions and thats the only way they said she could do it. AGH. Hippocratic oath!!

Which is why I never seriously bought into Moicy (I get the hatefucking though) as a serious ship because realistically, Mercy would absolutely abhor Moira with every fiber of her being.

This is gonna be a really hot take for gay Overwatch-knowers, but. I preferred when Moira didn't exist as a character in the story and her whole selfish philosophy of 'progress at any cost' existed as Mercy's darker side. I was really interested in Mercy's 'holier than thou' demeanor (her battle uniform is an angel costume, for god's sake). I found it so interesting that Mercy was the one who turned Gabriel into Reaper (it was assumed canon until retconned by Moira). Or that Mercy "saved" Genji by installing ninja stars into his knuckles and turning his body into a killing machine (which is why, imo, I don't think Mercy would ever be in love with Genji. He'd be a constant reminder of the power she holds yet tries to ignore, the ways she's unbelievably fucked her patients up in the past. A reminder that she's not as good a person as others believe her to be). I'm personally really into the idea that Mercy has two sides in her: the side who truly cares about healing people and the side who's so full of hate and anger for the perceived enemy that she unconsciously fuels her rage into the people who rely on her. Turning people into living weapons to "fix" them and fight her battles. Reminder that she watched her parents walk out on her as a child to volunteer medical work for the Omnic Crisis, only for them to die and leave her orphaned and alone. Is she doing this to take care of people, or is she doing this to avenge her parents (the official site says it's only the former, but I think that's boring as fuck)? I think it can be both at the same time, but sometimes she prioritizes one motive over the other. I think the "angelic, cheery healer" is a persona she instinctively uses to veil her selfish motivations, to everyone and to herself. Reminder that she was also lauded as a savant, a prodigy, a teenage genius who literally revolutionized medical science before she could legally vote. You cannot expect me to believe that she's truly altruistic, that everything she does is for the betterment of humanity and out of the goodness of her heart.

I don't think she's a malicious person at all, just someone who doesn't want to admit she has ulterior motives.

Anyways, she's not actually this interesting in the game or the story.

[vintagecandy]

My personal reimagining of Jervis Tetch, AKA: The Mad Hatter.

So I noticed that it is really common for Gotham rogues-- but almost especially Jervis Tetch-- to get redrawn and redesigned! Which I just thought was such a fun exercise, so because I'm me and predictable my brain immediately leaped at the chance to imagine my own Jervis.... set in the 1920s. Now, the drastically different time period causes a lot of interesting dynamics. For one, I'm fairly certain Jervis Tetch's character originates from a time period of comics where people wore a lot more hats, so setting him in the past is very fitting for him. It makes a lot more sense for him to literally be an artisan hat manufacturer, as in a real hatter. BUT what's interesting is that hand made "hatter" style hats were actually beginning to fade out of favor, and one of the reasons is actually partially because there was a growing moralizing around the hatting industry's overhunting of birds for their decorative feathers, and so Jervis ( as you can see ) having this big, real peacock bird feather on his hat is sort of a defiance, a subtle expression of his bad intent. And I imagine his introduction to crime will be marked with the sudden unprompted rise of vintage style hats "regaining popularity". He's very much still a hypnotist, a master illusionist, and a scientific genius, and I was thinking- to shake things up- the hat is actually what drove him insane. Originally the hat band was created to counteract nerve damage he developed from mercury poisoning some years ago, but ended up also giving him heightened focus and an incurable bout of severe insanity. Then he later repurposed it for mind control. What insanity? Ok, look at the face I drew for him. This was on accident, but I've been looking at his face...... and I cannot shake the feeling he's a dad. Like, he has peak "wacky inventor father" energy in his face, but more sickly and evil. So I was thinking.... what if for this Jervis instead of his usual romantic Alice fixation... Alice was instead his daughter. And he loved having pretend tea parties with her, acting as the hatter. Some point after he put on the hat, his behavior was a little off but not worrying yet, but he lets his daughter wander off too far in this dangerous city and he just... never sees her again. He calls the police, they're kinda apathetic- probably corrupt tbh, he puts up posters-- nothing, she's just gone. Probably dead the more time passes. A senseless tragedy in a nonsense world. This breaks his brain! And so he decides he's going to take over all of Gotham and turn it into a game of Wonderland, part out of spite, and mostly out of total denial that his daughter is gone no matter how many years pass, in hopes that the little lost girl will find her way back to him or even that more puppets means more help finding her. But with time his insanity becomes so severe he doesn't even remember Alice was his daughter and not literally the book Alice, but he is slightly more lucid when without the hat. However, he feels sick and anxious when without it.

But as it goes in Gotham, by the time they consider you Arkham levels of insane, incurably so-- a 1920s insane asylum mind you! Which practically makes him more ill-- you sort of have no choice but to stay in the crime life forever. Which is where the tommy guns come in.

[fsfghgee]

Bi-Han and Sektor's Relationship in MK1. They are a couple now? Why?

First of all, I give my honest opinion based on analysis here, regardless of what people are repeating out there. I will never say something I don't believe just to please a loud part. That said, I like the expansion, I like the story and I like the couples (more precisely, Sektor/Bi-Han and Rain/Tanya). Tanya and Rain have a certain past and I enjoyed getting a glimpse of what they would be like in a relationship. Bi-Han and Sektor were a couple that surprised me positively, I didn't expect Sektor to be so affectionate with Bi-Han and much less that Bi-Han would reciprocate like a man in love, I enjoyed seeing this softer side of Bi-Han with her…

I admit that when I saw this scene I was like " own :3 " And then like "Liu Kang, you killjoy〴⋋⋌〵 !" haha

I thought that him watching over Sektor's body in mk11 would be the most of a soft side of Bi-Han that I would ever see in my life. And although I already knew because of the leaks that Sektor and Bi-Han would have a relationship in mk1, I never imagined that they would do it so explicitly. I was surprised, but positively. Because as I said in some previous analyses, a relationship with Sektor would give more depth to Bi-Han as a character. I knew that a relationship with Sektor would be their way of showing us a softer side of Bi-Han, showing that he has feelings and his actions are not only justified, but validated in the clan. I already expected Sektor to support him. They wouldn't make Bi-Han and Sektor so close since Sub-Zero's ending (where she was mentioned as a genius that he seeks advice from and even shares the leadership of the clan, since he refers to everything as "we", "our" and such) for nothing.

 "I had broken the Lin Kuei free of Liu Kang's enslavement. We were now masters of our destiny and could take our place among Earthrealm's greatest nations. But taking and holding territory would require a vast army. I needed more fighters to make our presence felt. Then I recalled Shang Tsung's dragon warriors. An army of them would be unstoppable. But trafficking in such strong magic would surely draw Liu Kang's attention. Sektor advised that we avoid detection by building our army using science, not sorcery. We've invested much time in this endeavor, and we are beginning to see results. Once again proving the depths of Sektor's genius. When we are done, all of Earthrealm will honor our desires and heed our demands. If not, they will face the Lin Kuei's wrath."

And as I've been saying since the day this game was released (and I'll keep saying it even now that he's been turned into Noob Saibot) Bi-Han is not a villain, but an antagonist. He's not good, but he's not purely evil either. He's a morally gray character.

I know a lot of people want one, but I don't care about a redemption arc and I don't see why it would make sense for him to have one. To me, neutral/morally gray characters are much more interesting. I like how they play by their own rules, how they're not easily influenced, how determined they are and all that.

And after Bi-Han saved the timeline, he already redeemed himself and the only thing that really didn't make sense in his story was fixed (which was allying with outsiders just for the promise of receiving power to rule, neglecting the safety of his own clan since their base is in Earthrealm). I've already highlighted intros that prove that even though he didn't participate in the battle against Titan Shang Tsung to free Shao from prison in OutWorld. After he helped Shao in battles in OutWorld and Shao failed to fulfill his side of the agreement, he returned to defending Earthrealm (more precisely, he returned to defending his clan):

*In MK1, all endings and intros are canonicals (with the exception of guest characters like Homelander, Omni Man etc).

"Though I had returned to the temple after Titan Havik's defeat, I remained livid. Livid with Bi-Han's foolishness, Kuai Liang's betrayal, and Cyrax's defection to his Shirai Ryu. So when Quan Chi arrived to parley, offering to eliminate the upstart clan, I listened... For his services, Quan Chi asked that I retrieve an amulet that was locked away in the Temple of the Elements. No small task, given its wards and guardians. Though one worth understanding, if it would finish the Lin Kuei's rivals. But before I could find the amulet, I found Bi-Han. There he was, imprisoned and forgotten, when Liu Kang had promised to restore him! As I rescued Bi-Han, all thought of retrieving Quan Chi's treasure was quickly forgotten. I will never forgive Liu Kang for this betrayal. That he is a god will not stop me from seeking vengeance."

I had hoped that after the expansion, because of what Liu Kang said to Bi-Han, they would come to an agreement about his desires. But they turned out to be just empty words and he refuses to even listen to Bi-Han's vision. Which I find quite ironic. Because it's so reprehensible that Bi-Han wants to rule Earthrealm while Mileena sits on the throne of OutWorld with her family ruling for generations…

Why is it only Bi-Han and his clan that have to settle for just serving as Liu Kang's lackeys? Because at the beginning of the story mode that's all they did....

Why should they settle for this fate of sacrifices without any reward forever? Because Liu Kang said it has to be so? I don't blame Sektor, Bi-Han and others for rebelling against this.

 "As I regained consciousness, I regained my memories: My transformation into a creature of chaos, my defeat of Titan Havik, and my failed confrontation of Liu Kang. Sektor was obsessed with finding the means to purge my soul of Titan Havik's corruption. She was shocked when I told her she should do no such thing. Infusing my soul with chaos did not damage me, it enriched me. By embracing randomness and chance, I have unlocked vast new powers. My kombat is less predictable, more formidable, and radically more lethal. Titan Havik gave me these gifts to use in fomenting his chaos. Instead, I will use them to fight for the Lin Kuei. Liu Kang, the Shaolin, my brother, and his clan will yield in terror when confronted by my perfection."

The only things that really disappointed me in the expansion was the lack of dialogue about Bi-Han's mother. I really wanted to know more about her and why Bi-Han reveres her. And the length, of course. There were a lot of things in a short space of time and I think that if it weren't for the amount of cuts they made, we could have had a longer expansion.

Regardless of what some people wanted or expected to happen, Mortal Kombat 1 was promoted since its release as a New Era that would present major changes made by Liu Kang in the destinies of iconic characters in the hope that everyone would find peace, but as the slogan "It's in our blood" said… It was never meant to last. In other words, although some characters ended up taking similar paths, others also took completely different paths. But the most important thing to know is that the Era of Peace is over.

And although Liu Kang has no control over the choices of those he has created the new destiny for, he has redesigned everyone's destiny and this has resulted in consequences…

Sektor and Cyrax being born female in this New Era and having a considerably different personality may have been both part of Liu Kang's plan, or just a consequence of his changes in the destinies of these two.

We never knew who Sektor's mother was and only his father was known, Oniro, the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei. In the New Era, Sektor is the daughter of Madam Bo (a former Lin Kuei warrior leader) and Longwei (retired master armorer of the Lin Kuei), in addition to having siblings, while og Sektor was an only child.

Sektor is literally not the same person, but she kept the fighting style and the codename Sektor. While Cyrax was not even born in the same country and unlike the og Cyrax, she did not choose to serve the Lin Kuei, she was born into a Lin Kuei sub-clan and was trained since childhood to defend Earthrealm like all Lin Kuei.

Cyrax's change of country and the fact that she was destined to be a Lin Kuei and did not become one by choice is hard to understand. But Sektor not having the same parents or the same position is completely justified. First, because it was not og Sektor who had the idea of ​​Cyber ​​Initiative, it was og Sektor's father, the grandmaster. Sektor just obeyed the grandmaster by voluntarily undergoing the transformation into a cyborg. And the way Liu Kang tells them not to doubt Sektor's zeal for Bi-Han and tries to manipulate her love for him in favor of his plans to restore Bi-Han…

May indicate that Sektor was destined to be by Bi-Han's side. And knowing that nothing in the previous timelines points to Bi-Han or Sektor as homosexuals and that both were extremely individualistic men in the past who only joined forces for pragmatic reasons…

And the fact that the Lin Kuei are a real clan in this New Era (a group of close-knit and interrelated families. They literally grow the clan by having children among themselves, not by kidnapping children from the streets as in previous timelines) and an ancient clan of warriors with a long lineage whose roles in the clan are passed down from generation to generation (almost like a caste system). Sektor being born a woman makes total sense. And since she does not actually have the same parents as the og Sektor, it is entirely possible that she was born a woman who, although cold, is able to develop feelings and feel love for someone without Liu Kang's interference (especially for someone like Bi-Han, a kindred spirit). In the same way that Bi-Han developed a great attachment to his mother and began to trust in the abilities of the women in his clan because he had a warrior mother this time.

In addition to not being a random and meaningless couple (since Bi-Han and Sektor have always been Lin Kuei and the most loyal ones), they made an effort to present a background for this couple and give it a foundation. Since the end of Sub-Zero (where he praises her a lot, always referring to everything as "our" and "us". And although I was one of those people who thought that the random Lin Kuei there was Sektor, as soon as these speculations started it was confirmed that that guy was not Sektor and I should have guessed, since Sektor has always had red as his characteristic color in the games), then in the expansion it really shows that there are no secrets between them, that thing about Sektor bowing was all just part of their act to deceive Cyrax (a very funny performance in my opinion, because not even pretending to treat Sektor as just another subordinate he could keep his hands off her or stop sucking up to her lol), throughout the expansion it becomes clear that they have a very deep and strong connection as mentioned in Sektor's bio….

A relationship that goes far beyond that of a simple subordinate and boss...

I like their succinct personality differences, where Sektor, despite using fire in combat, is much colder and more rational than Bi-Han, while Bi-Han is reckless and explosive. They are a dangerous couple and likely to cause problems for the good guys. But they are not evil for the sake of being evil, they are doing everything they can to make the Lin Kuei rule. They fight for it. And the way they support each other unconditionally, share beliefs, goals and dreams. Their relationship is anything but simply pragmatic. There's love between them

Cyrax: Love for Bi-Han has made you blind. Sektor: It is you who can't see the Lin Kuei's future.

Geras: If you love Bi-Han, return him to Liu Kang. Sektor: It's because I do that I cannot.

Quan Chi: You were supposed to retrieve the amulet. Sektor: Saving Bi-Han was all that matttered.

Sektor: I won't let you near Bi-Han. Ermac: You are one. One cannot stop Us.

Liu Kang: You should have trusted me, Sektor. Sektor: Why?! You left Bi-Han to rot.

Sektor: I couldn't leave you locked away in the Temple. Noob Saibot: You were right to be impatient.

Noob Saibot: Your mother concerns me, Sektor. Sektor: She knows nothing which can hurt us.

Ashrah: Your ardor for Bi-Han is -- Sektor: I don't need a demon's advice.

Sindel: Your 'beloved' should never have crossed me. Sektor: He doesn't fear you. And neither do I.

Shang Tsung: Bi-Han will pay a steep ransom for your return. Sektor: Just how are *you* planning to abduct *me*?

Shang Tsung: This hostility is unwarranted, Bi-Han. Noob Saibot: You tried to abduct Sektor!

Noob Saibot: It is time you answer for Sektor. Shang Tsung: For what, exactly? She escaped me unharmed.

Noob Saibot: You tried enlisting Sektor against me?! Quan Chi: Not against you. To help you see reason.

Noob Saibot: Leave. Before this gets ugly. Quan Chi: I am here to haggle but if we must fight, so be it.

Quan Chi: Sektor refuses to abide our agreement. Noob Saibot: I won't force her hand, sorcerer.

Liu Kang: Sektor should have trusted me to heal you. Noob Saibot: You should not have made her wait.

Noob Saibot: If Liu Kang seeks to punish Sektor -- Geras: It would be his right to do so.

Kenshi: So you and Sektor, eh? Hm. That tracks. Noob Saibot: If that is mockery, you are a dead man.

Sub-Zero: Together we will make the Lin Kuei immortal. Sektor: I am honored to fight by your side.

Sektor: You've been purged of Havik's magic?! Sub-Zero: Not exactly, Sektor.

General Shao: Sub-Zero sends his woman after me? Sektor: He sends his most skilled warrior.

Sektor: I couldn't leave you locked away in the Temple. Noob Saibot: You were right to be impatient.

Sektor: If Liu Kang continues to stand -- Noob Saibot: We will neutralize him.

Sektor: Is it best for you to remain this way? Noob Saibot: It is best for the Lin Kuei.

Kitana: I have to question your taste in men. Sektor: Please, Princess. Share your thoughts.

Reiko: Do you share Bi-Han's power? Or just his bed? Sektor: Careful, Reiko. Disrespect can be fatal.

Kenshi: You and Bi-Han deserve each other. Sektor: I couldn't agree more.

I particularly like how she imposes limits too…

Even though, everything indicates that she loves bold and dominant men…

Or more specifically a bold and dominant cryomancer who has won her heart and tested its strength several times with his foolishness and stubbornness. And despite this and the mockery of some, she and Bi-Han lead the clan together in perfect harmony and won't stop until the Lin Kuei rule Earthrealm.

I like a powerful couple. I like this couple. I like Sekhan.

tks @kermitthegod ^~

.....

[sarahreesbrennan]

Quick Evil Note

To all my wicked darlings, I have now received rather a lot of messages asking me about the influences of Long Live Evil. And I wish to get messages about LLE and truly appreciate the ones I do get! And I wish to answer them. But answers about influences are tricky.

The book has been out in the US for a little over two weeks, and it’s going so well so far, I couldn’t be more delighted and appreciative about its reception.

But also I’ve been informed (not asked) that two of my characters are obviously somehow both Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter, and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. (Very puzzling as I don’t think these pairings - and one isn’t a pair - have much in common with each other or with mine. Vague hostility against a vaguely academic backdrop for a bit? For the record… in the book everyone is an adult and I don’t even have any academic backdrops to be vaguely hostile in front of…) This hasn’t happened to me in a long time, because I haven’t had an original novel out in a long time due to illness, and it is upsetting to always be discussed differently than writers who didn’t openly link their real names to their fan identity.

I have very different feelings and new appreciation for fandom than I once had. It’s been amazing to see and meet people who have stuck with me for decades. People are generally way more open and affectionate to and within fandom than they once were. Love matters to me a good deal more than hate. But getting death threats in your early 20s for excitedly telling your Internet friends you were going to publish a book does mark the psyche, and so does having your characters dismissed as other people’s characters.

And we can say there is nothing wrong with fanfiction or writing fanfiction and there isn’t! Fanfiction is great and can be genius. Terry Pratchett wrote Jane Austen fanfiction, and didn’t (and shouldn’t) have people saying Captain Wentworth = Captain Vimes. Still, when a TV show is discussed as ‘like fanfiction’ or when Diana Gabaldon said she didn’t like fanfiction and many said ‘YOU write fanfiction’ it isn’t intended in any kind spirit, even when it’s fannish folk saying it. And it’s just generally odd to have everyone call your apple a tomato, and has had professional consequences for me in the past.

However! All the asks I’ve received have been very kind, and I do want to answer them. I do want to talk about my influences because they are manifold and because I actually think it’s important to always talk about influences. I don’t believe stories exist in isolation - we tell tales in a rich tradition, and also a story doesn’t come alive to me all the way until it’s heard or read.

Long Live Evil is a love letter to fandom: it’s chock full of references to many many stories I’ve loved, to fairytales, myths and legend and Internet memes and epic fantasy and meta. My acknowledgements are endless partly for this reason. I do owe a great debt to many portal fantasies and archetypes and musicals and jokes about genre and plays through the ages, though I do think of my characters as themselves and nobody else.

I was frankly tempted to go ‘Yes I stole EVERYTHING! Bwhahaha!’ But while I am thoroughly enjoying and finding great freedom in my villain era, I do want to talk sincerely to you all as well, especially when asked sincerely interested questions.

But I’m a little scared to do so and have people say ‘AHA! Now we know what it’s fanfiction of’ (it’s happened before) or ignore me and go ‘we know the truth!’ (it’s happened before) and to feel like I’ve injured my book. Long Live Evil means more to me than any other and I really want to get talking about it right, and make sure it has the best reception I can give it.

So. Questions on all Evil topics very very welcome but answers to influence questions may come slowly. Bear with me. I am working on this!

[avelera]

So I've been watching the new (and old) anime for Sailor Moon because holy shit after a childhood of trying and failing to see the whole story when it was only syndicated at 6:30 am on weekends and it was always the same few episodes with only the occasional glimpse of the epic shit that happened in later seasons, it's a miracle to me that kids these days can just turn on this show and watch it linearly and there's even a version that follows the manga.

*Ahem* Anyway, I just gotta say, maybe I'm biased because I'm the Sailor Moon Generation™️ so of course the story seems like it's genius to me, but man is this story genius like holy shit did Sailor Moon understand the damn assignment.

The Power Fantasy, holy crap, the power fantasy of it all. If you project onto the protagonist you are a normal teen girl who was the magical moon princess in a past life. When your kingdom fell to undeniably evil forces, you were cruelly ripped away from your beautiful soulmate, your amazing powerful friends, your loving magical mother and your ethereal magical kingdom. Now, you're given magical superpowers to help avenge those who wronged you, and you're steadily reunited with your magical beautiful amazing friends and your soulmate, who all adore you even when you're not perfect. Someday you know you will grow up into an ethereally beautiful, powerful demi-goddess who will rule the galaxy in a benign Golden Age

If you don't project onto Usagi, then the show is literally full of other women and girls* (and I mean the term as inclusively as possible), who don't all fit the same feminine ideal, a lot of them aren't even feminine or identify all the time as female, and the whole point is that there's many ways to be a girl, or to be a person, but you can all be magical Sailor Guardians who protect the universe with your celestial magical powers of awesomeness. You can be a mystical priestess, a smart nerd who wants to be a doctor like her mom, a strong fighter who nevertheless loves flowers and wants to find love with a handsome boy, or you can be in a long term steady relationship with your soulmate who is another woman that transcends space and time, a race car driver, a rockstar, a musician, the show just kills it at having a whole cast of different ways you can be a Sailor Scout and they are all valid.

Even when you get into the villains and stuff, they're pretty much all gorgeous and all obsessed with Usagi, either as she is now, or in her magical past life or in her future life as a benevolent demigoddess ruler of the universe. Like. The power fantasy of it all. Throw in just a really pretty art style, all the zodiac and celestial planet imagery, the mythology tie ins not to mention the lore of these beautiful interplanetary kingdoms all centered on the heavenly Moon Kingdom, like...

It just gets the power fantasy thing in a way I think many magical girl stories even within the genre have attempted but never fully replicated. There's a lightning in a bottle aspect to Sailor Moon that when I go back to it, even as an adult watching what is mostly a children's show, I find myself nodding along like "Yeah, yeah, this shit was fucking amazing, no wonder I was obsessed."

[unpickled-olive]

Realizing that, while I like Destiny lore, what I love is Seth Dickinson's writing.

The Final Shape was a lovely story and the characters' archs were all emotional and satisfying. Maybe a nostalgic tear was shed for Cayde bonding with his reformed, resurrected killer.

But the things that have kept me coming back for 9 years were missing. I thought there'd be concrete answers about the Traveler, or some more thorough insights into the Witness, or even good lore on the Dread. I was hoping for another great lore book to join the ranks of Books of Sorrow, Unveiling, Mysterious Logbook, Marasenna, Last Days of Kraken Mare, etc. Some philosophy and horror, a genesis or exegesis or thorough backstory on a yet unexamined character/species.

Sadly, I didn't find those. The Dread's origin is that the Witness made them. Do they think and feel? TBD. The Traveler's conclusion was something like "you just have to have faith <3." Fine for the characters, but not for the readers/players of a 10-year-old mystery.

There's some nice things. The Micah-10 Traveler interpretations are cool, as is her origin story. And the foreshadowing still has me excited for the Dreadnaught, a yet unseen Disciple, etc. But I think key parts of what made Destiny lore so alluring for me are diminished.

Maybe it's the layoffs at Bungie. Maybe it's new writers going in a different direction. Either way, the aspects of sci-fi/space fantasy—ancient mysteries, metaphysical warfare, _____—have taken the back seat to personal drama that frankly isn't that interesting or fleshed out.

Maya could be an interesting antagonist, but she needed more backstory than "this simulation was evil or something" and more nuance than "the Vanguard are coercive, so I will coerce all of humanity." Why not explore what her presence means for the Vex, or the other simulations helping Praedyth escape the Vault?

The Witness trying to sway various characters was fine, but that has been covered so many times, especially in Beyond Light.

All that said, back to Seth: their absence in TFS made me realize how huge their presence in the lore was for my love of Destiny. I finally went and read their original works. What an incredible writer.

First, I read Exordia, the first/only entry into a dark mindfuck of a space opera. Its horrific in abstract ways: mysterious alien monoliths that poison reality around them. It's horrific in grounded ways, too: the alien invasion plays off of parallels with the Anfal campaign and the US involvement in Iraq. It's campy at times (with a villain who shouts "I love genocide!") but also profound. There's souls and date, but also math. There's also my favorite trope: mysterious, ancient architects.

After that, I read Baru Cormorant—all three books in a month. It's tragic and inspiring and genius. Originally I couldn't get through the first chapter because of the "fantasy" label. I've already read Earthsea and wasn't in the mood for wizards on boats. But I had the wrong impression. Understandable, because there is just no succinct way to label it.

Is it even fantasy? Honestly, I still don't know.

What it is is its own world. One that the inhabitants haven't fully mapped. One whose past is a must and whose future is uncertain. It's about hegemony. It's about purpose, obsession, and revenge. It's about revolution and community.

The colonizer culture is a kaleidoscope of different influences. Seafaring. Peri-industrial. Eugenic. It strikes me as something like 17th century Britain with a 20th century grasp of science. They don't have guns, but they do have both Greek fire and lobotomies. The story plays with different cultural views on indigenous rights, race, sexuality, and gender in ways that commentary real life while serving as interesting world building.

This story also weaves an insane amount of intellectual concepts into it. But rather than bog it down, they lift it up. The fate of the republic hinges on a myriad of different questions: is evolution Lamarckian or Darwinian? Can mathematical proofs usurp cultural hegemony? How do economics influence history? Most importantly, can you destroy the enemy from within before it destroys you?

It is not just cerebral, but tragic and heartbreaking. I saw the end of the first book coming, and yet I was devastated by the last chapter. Crushed like no ending has ever really crushed me. I didn't want it to happen.

There will likely be some time before the final book comes out, which is understandable. So much research goes into these. So many plot threads need to be woven together. So many mysteries not yet confronted.

This is all to say: if you like what I like about Destiny–thorough examinations of ancient mysteries, sci-fi takes on souls and magic, fantasy takes on science and technology, obsessive characters and vividly fucked up monsters, cancer and math as motifs, metaphors manifesting, and genius characters written by genius authors–give Seth Dickinson a chance.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 11

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

Propaganda under the cut

Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)

"Spoilers! She's a college dropout in her early twenties, who suffers from untreated mental illness and dissociation and had a complete breakdown at college, causing her to come home. Now she's living with her parents again, but life in her dingy little hometown went on without her. Her friends are adults now - in a relationship and planning on moving to the big city, or having to waste away in a dead end job instead of following their dreams. Mae is the only one without a new adult role in life. She's not great with people either - she's blunt and often doesn't think things through, and in many ways just doesn't get the world of adults. She's also prone to petty crimes and general anarchy. She's kind of lost and purposeless, and trying to find meaning in life by desperately clinging to the past. Her decision to drop out of college probably saved her life, but it's also put her family in a tough financial situation and is viewed by most people as her just thoughtlessly doing whatever she wants. She's also kind of shamed a lot about not having a job or other productive role in life, despite the fact that her untreated mental issues are actually disabling for her. She also plays the bass real bad. Anyway, i love Mae a lot. Playing this game as a college dropout in my early twenties, sitting in my childhood bedroom in my mom's attic, back in my dingy little hometown, desperately missing my old friends who have all moved on to better, resposible things in life... yeah, it felt like the game was pointing dead at me. Given tumblr's general demographic, i figure i must not be completely alone in this"

Shigeo Kageyama / Mob (Mob Psycho 100)

"autistic. likes milk. if we reach a certain level of emotion we turn into a psychic bomb. cool brothers :)"

Barry the Quokka (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)

"Their only skill is working the microwave, they're non-binary, when seeing a trash bin their first instinct is to look through it, they're always the most normal person in the room, they can beatbox, and they were only hired due to being the only one who applied."

Kaveh (Genshin Impact)

"In a fantasy world, be a guy with a regular profession losing his goddamn mind. Poor guy has a guilt complex, (so true) and a lot of deep embarrassment regarding his life.(ehe) He just wants to do what he's passionate about but capitalism is evil and also he keeps getting scammed. Claims to not want anyone to know Things, goes into depth about these Things anyway. Is probably most definitely gay. Can be found face down on a table lamenting his fate. Terrible sleep schedule. (HA) He is such a guy. Wants to believe the world is a good place and people are inherently good. And wants to help people and do good himself. It's just hard. [And he has a roommate. Oh my god he has a roommate]"

"He was, and still is, regarded a genius. He aced his Akademiya days, he has the admiration and appreciation of so many people because he is oh-so remarkable. But what for, when reality is that he sits at home depressed and with guilt consuming him, faking the image people have of him, not only broke as fuck but actually in debt, drowning his sorrows in wine."

Yusuke Kitagawa (Persona 5)

"highschooler who wants to spend the rest of his life doing what he loves. is obsessed with art and beauty and it's on his mind 24/7 received help from his now friendgroup to break from his abusive foster father who he still have complicated feelings with had to move into school dorms and am struggling to live independantly since he'd rather spend money and time on his art but he's still surviving and enjoying the good times id say also ends up saying whatever is on his mind and is pretty eccentric. very passionate about what he loves. doesn't want to do anything else."

Nanami Kento (Jujutsu Kaisen)

"Ex-salaryman, now jujutsu sorcerer. During one life-and-death fight, kept talking about how it was almost six pm with is when he is getting off work at 6pm no matter what because he hates overtime. While his opponent repeatedly almost kills him. Normalest adult in this shonen anime. Teen MC: "Let's go all out!" Nanami: "No. Where moderate effort will suffice, use moderate effort." Some of his quotes from the anime: "I studied at Jujutsu Tech and one thing I learned is that Jujutsu Sorcerers are shit! Then I worked at your typical company and one thing I learned is that work is shit! If both are equally shit I'll take the one I'm more suited to." "You've faced several life-or-death situations, but that does not make you an adult. Finding more fallen-out hairs on your pillow, watching your favourite stuffed bread disappear from the convenience store... The accunulation of these little despairs is what makes a person an adult." "I don't praise or disparage anyone. I adhere to facts and judge on that basis. That's who I am. There was a time when I mistakenly believed society operated the same way." "

[cutielights]

Hey pookie!! I luv ur work sm and I was wondering if u could do a rottmnt boys x spider woman reader ab them reacting to her stopping a collider like miles did? Idek if u watched into the spider verse but maybe something like that if not u could wing it if you'd like tysm hope u have a good day/night! ❤️

>>:] yes. For the purposes of writing, im going to act as if you were a spider person for at least a year before this. Not supposed to be Miles’ story, but pretty similar (if that makes sense)

i waNT THE THIRD MOVIE. Frikin dying of miles morales deprivation over here, hand over the sunflower boy with in tact parents

@moonchhu THE OTHER SPIDER PERSON ONE TAG LIST

That Really Big Earthquake

LEO

“Heyyyy, I haven’t seen you in twenty four hours which truly is a record for us, I missed you, did you miss me? I bet you did right? Go on tell me aaaalllll about it.”

“So, I was just kinda minding my own business, y’know, thwipping and thwapping and going about being an awesome hero when I bumped into myself? Kinda. They looked like me, but they were different, and didn’t look like me, but, I knew they were me! Because my spider sense went off and they could do stuff I could do, but also some different stuff! And then we freaked out for a little bit before I went to auntie May to show her and she showed me four more other me’s who were hiding out in her basement and then we tried getting them home and we had to sneak about in this fancy restaurant wearing bow ties, and we cried and they went into this collider thing, also it turns out my favourite cousin was working for the evil genius corporation and he’s dead now and it feels like my fault, I’m so totally fine don’t worry about me. Howwasyourday?”

“Haha, what.”

“Stopped the collapsing of the multiverse.”

“Oh it sounds so simple when you put it like that.” Yeah okay sarcasm queen

Made you some tea after that, let’s just, take a breath for a minute, m’kay?

He has decided it’s a self care day now, at least he did after thoroughly checking you for injuries

How you do not have a concussion will always escape him, not one broken bone? Seriously? After all that?

Please remind him you’re an actual super hero and not a pane of glass

“Wait what was that about your cousin?”

RAPH

“Hey! How was your weekend?”

“Crazier than yours.”

“Okay, Bet.”

One explanation later sponge bob narrator voice

“Wait, so you’re telling Raph, that huge earthquake that happened, happened because of you and five alternate versions of yourself?

“That’s excluding a lot of things I just told you but, I am telling Raph that, yes.”

Huge bone crushing hugs are in order, according to him at least. And I mean, is he wrong?

Not letting you out of his sight for ages, please, Raph, let them go home

“Why are you so worried? I did it, I won!”

“It’s more the fact that it happened and less the fact that you’re mostly fine.”

DONNIE

Othello Von Ryan: Stay home, S.H.E.L.LD.O.N has picked up on some strange (possibly universal fabric destroying) activity. Also there has been some earthquake activity in the area you were in yesterday, not that I have a tracker on you. Because I don’t.

Only Two Legs: I handled it don’t worry :D

Othello Von Ryan: ?

Othello Von Ryan: Traverse to My Lab.

“Heyyy Deee.”

“Stop. Explain. This better be your attempt at humor.”

There was silence for a long while after you had messily glued together words to describe the past 24 hours, before he took a deep breath.

“First, How dare you stop the multiverse from collapsing without me that’s incredible rude. Second, therapy. Third, that earthquake and power surge destroyed My Lab, thankfully I have backup backups to my backups, but I couldn’t use the internet for an hour straight.”

“Y- You’re more concerned about the internet?”

“Not what I said. Now let me check you for a concussion.”

MIKEY

“Hey they took down those art displays.”

“The what?”

“Oh you weren’t here, BUT there was these reaaaallllyyyyy cool art statues along this street! Look, hey, look, I took pics!”

“Oh cooollluuuhhh that’s not an art display that’s five different fire hydrants merged into each other.”

“Haha yeah it does kinda look like that doesn’t it? I thought it was supposed to be a dog.”

“Mikey, no-“ You pulled him aside into an empty alleyway, trying to explain what had happened over the past twenty four hours.

It was an interesting experience, but you got there eventually.

Best believe this boy is giving you the biggest hug ever, and then buying pizza.

Oh, and Dr Feelings is going to be paying you a visit. Multiple. You can’t escape him.

“So they weren’t art displays?”

Speedily bulk writing and scheduling rn bc im going on a holiday with zero internet.

[cherllyio]

Why the Newer Villians in Lego Monkie are more scarier

So we all know that in the start of Season 4 MK said:

MK: "What if this is the part in our hero's journeys where things get a little bit darker."

And yea, im pretty sure we can all agree witht that-

But then, while i was writing an analysis/theory video on the villians of lmk, i reailzed something.

The newer villians are more "scarier and darker" because of two things:

How they interact with our heroes

Their colour symbolism and its influence on feel of the show

How they intereact with our heros

Now when im talking about "newer villians" im specifically talking about:

LBD and the mayor

The ink demons

The Brotherhood

The hooded guy from the underworld

First of all theese villians are much more smarter with how they plan things out.

While past villians like DBK and Spider Queen are hurrying to do anything to defeat our main characthers, our newer threaths plan things out more.

They are built up more slowly, but that also means that they can suddenly come out of the shadows and attack our heroes where they thought they were safe, and end up terryifing both for the characthers and us watching.

Hell, we havent even truly met the hooded guy yet, but he has already managed to give MK and idenity chrisis, kill Wukong for a period of time and introduce us to the ink demons, who are scary enough of themselves.

And in that scene where LBD was tormenting MK for the first time, she was moving slower, but she still scared the living shit out of everyone. This is probaly because she put herself so much apart from the normally high paste show we are used to, which just felt so wrong.

That they also have time to grow in the shadows, means they can also learn a lot about our main characthers, which leads to one of their best but scairest skills, manipulation.

For an example, LBD may be dead, but she still haunts the show because of her genius but terrifying manipulation she planted like a diseasce in MK and the rest of the show.

Their colour symbolism and its influence on the feel of the show

Villians like DBK, Spider Queen and even Macaque, though meant to be evil, they still match very well with the feel of the show.

This is because, like the rest of the show, they still are shown in bright colours.

But again with our newer villians, they have more blue, grey and/ or a more monotone look, again putting them apart from the rest.

The colour symbolism, both positive and negative, and influence speaks enough for itself

Blue: Melancholy, sad, visdom, truth, effectiv

Grey: Mysteries, lonlieness, death, deressing

Conlusion

Im really scared for season 5

2.

3. I have more way more things to say about these antagonists, more specifically LBD and that hooded guy. So i am currently, as i mentioned earlier, writing an analysis/ theory video about them. Its acutally about a quiestion thats been bugging me for a while:

If LBD's goal is destiny, while the guy from the underworlds goal is chaos, two very the most opposite goals, why are they both evil?

I plan to have this video uploaded on Youtube at some point in the next week, since its sunday today, so look out for that if you are interested. I will make a post about it, when i upload it.

Update: ITS UP!!! (here)

[myymi]

i want to talk about the paradox prism for a minute because it's really interesting to me

[everything below is purely speculation / headcanon - please don't mistake it for canon. beware of spoilers for sonic prime part 3]

similar to the master/chaos emeralds, the paradox prism has a level a sentience. not anywhere close to the same level as the emeralds, but there's still something there

the chaos emeralds tend to set up a line of dominos to cause a future event (ex; sonic taking tails under his wing and learning to become more responsible from it)

the paradox prism doesn't do anything close to that, but it does share something with the master emerald; it holds memories

the prism was able to create more versions of the people it saw based on the emotions it saw them project (tails, knuckles, amy, rouge, and eggman)

the different shards / shatterspaces are made up from other major events. whether from this timeline or another is different for each shatterspace

new yoke was created from the group's frustration with sonic + an ending where eggman's almost won (i believe this could be pulled from the events of forces, considering the enforcers)

i think the reason new yoke is the only shatterspace to have a version of eggman is because it's the only one that makes sense to have one

it's pretty well known by now that eggman will need a helping hand if he wants any chance at taking over the world

the only thing better than an evil genius is five evil geniuses, right?

the new yoke group are, as i said, everyone's frustration

nine is frustrated with his past. reminiscing about his tormentors brings him more anger than pain, and living in solitude definitely does not help

rebel and knux are frustrated by the loss of their home (and the egg council in general). having watched their home be destroyed was more heartbreaking than anything at first, it eventually grew to an anger that spurred them on to fix it

rusty is frustrated with those who disobey/fight against the council, but her anger eventually ends up directed towards the council for the way they used her.

i could go more in depth about the new yoke group, but this post is gonna be long enough as is wefoefwof

the shard being red could simply be because that's the color that represents anger, but i'd like to think that-going back to forces-it was a bit influenced by the phantom ruby/infinite as well

no place is formed by the underlying sadness + a devastating event that permanently changed the world (chaos' rampage)

im not connecting no place to chaos because of the fact it's flooded, im connecting it because of the way the stories parallelled

chaos' rampage begun when pachacamac attempted to steal and harness the power of the chaos emeralds for his own gain

dread seeks out the 'devil's ligthouse' solely to prove he is a legend, nearly killing his original crew trying to do so

both protagonists of these stories are selfish and caused destruction for their own gain

dread's, well, dread comes from his failure of proving himself to be the most feared pirate to ever live.

him failing to collect the shard caused him to believe that he truly wasn't a good pirate, leaving him to spiral into a life of cowardice.

the rest of the pirates' dread comes from their longing to be actual pirates.

because of his failure and cowardice, dread now leads a peaceful crew. they don't do any 'pirating', which leaves much to be desired

they enjoy the parties and all, but their true fun comes from being pirates, which dread deprives them of

boscage maze comes from the protectiveness surging between everyone + a world where harmony between enemies is possible to achieve (possibly comes from a timeline where eggman simply doesnt exist, leaving mobius to grow peacefully)

boscage is the shatterspace with the most life. it's full of all kinds of plants because nobody there is destroying it (intentionally, anyways)

thorn rose is protective over birdie and the green. she does what she can to protect both, even if it means hurting people she once called friends

keeping the jungle and birdie safe is her #1 priority, and nothing will ever change that (that's not to say something else can't join them in being her priority)

the scavengers are protective over their belongings and, no matter how strangely they show it, each other

gnarly was nervous when sonic touched his house, immediately turning aggressive to make sure he wouldn't damage it

instead of hiding the berry, prim showed it to the others for a chance they could all share it

instead of running off on his own, mangey let the scavengers follow him as he sniffed out the berry (+ him fetching the one that fell off the treetops, showing it off to the group)

hangry allows mangey to crawl around him, which we can assume means it happens a lot off screen as well

they stick together and cover each other's backs, no matter how hard the fight gets

while we don't know what this shatterspace was before it turned into the grim, it's pretty safe to assume that it was apocalyptic

who or whatever used to live here is long gone. the only thing standing are the purple crystal things.

my guess is it's a timeline where eggman won. he won, and the world died out because he ruined the ecosystem from building so many machines.

while purple is usually associated with royalty or mystery, it's also associated with power, ambition, peace, and independence

whatever happened to the world before the grim, it's very probable that it was out of high ambition with a need for more power. eventually, the world found its peace and is now independent

ghost hill is the blueprint. the time before sonic & co. make their mark on the world. a blank canvas.

maybe a timeline where they don't get a chance to make their mark on the world

yellow is a very light, energetic color. the feeling of happiness at the chance to create something new and fun.

ghost hill and the grim don't have much in terms of characters and design, but i think the colors of their respective shards give us plenty of information about them

the paradox prism is nothing like the chaos emeralds, but is also just like them at the same time. it's powered by pure chaos with no sort of indication on how it was created or why it has the powers it does

i wonder if eggman knew what the prism was exactly or if he only knew that it was powerful

did he know breaking it would cause the world to shatter? did he know how may memories it holds? how many lifetimes it's lived?

i also wonder if the prism knew sonic would shatter it, and that it was already preparing the shatterspaces; hence why it glows brighter

maybe it understood that sonic is a hands-on learner. maybe it knew he needed to experience the lessons first hand, needed them to-quite literally-slap him in the face

maybe it knew they all had their own flaws that they needed to be aware of. maybe it lived through the timeline where sonic never shattered the prism.

maybe the prism planned to be shattered by someone so it could share its memories. maybe there was some sort of pull that told sonic it needed to be shattered.

[katyspersonal]

In defence of Shadow of the Erdtree + Getting my grudges with the fandom's bad takes off my chest

(! if you are seeing this caption it means the post was shared via queue feature, thus I must be STILL on my hiatus! will respond to comments when I am back online and thank all 5 of you for waiting for me! )

*deep, tired sigh* Allllright so... Ever since SoTE came out, it has been a rocky patch for me growing past initial shock, absorbing new lore and above all, dealing with some conflicts that transpired over it! In the end my grudges, as well as disagreements with popular attacks on this DLC accumulated enough to make me feel like smoking volcano, I swear.. You might have observed some anger already slipping through the cracks, but I've decided to place ALL of my opinions in one easily skippable post instead of turning my blog into a toxic pool with endless negative posts, so I'll just get to it!!

YEAH YEAH I know, a TRUE comedy genius remaking my DLC predictions bingo post to structure what I want to address fdhhdsf This is basically a 'so how is checking Elden Ring tag going today? :)' bingo but... it is easier to put it like this. I just need some way to simply vent my own frustrations because I hate everything featured in this image with THE burning rage. Putting my opinions and everything under cut but fair warning, not only it is going to be very long as if anyone who knows me is surprised dfhshfsd, but also very ANGRY! ANYWAYS!

1) "They excused genocide by giving Marika a sad backstory"

Sigh… Instantly off to a terrible start, and it is truly the most Tumblr take out of all Tumblr takes imaginable. So let me suggest something actually ground-breaking here… Giving your villain reasoning not only makes for a more realistic and interesting character, but is also crucial because nobody is just BORN evil.

sorry I had to I understand the temptation of wanting a villain whose sole drive is power control preserving privileges etc because it resonates more with the narratives proposed in real life and people's struggles, but not only even in real life things are FAR not as often as simple… but even if they were, Fromsoft is always dealing with more complicated matters that touch the nature of existence in general, and not just power and control over it someone could gain! Marika was not "just" evil even in the base game either, giving off the impression of someone wanting to build a perfect world of light, life, safety and abundance even at the expense of oppressing "potential threat" species (Omens serving as…. well, omens of the threat of returning to the primordial state of things or Albinaurics, creation of Nox, who angered the Greater Will itself once).

She waged war on the Fire Giants who had 'evil god of fire', caused natural disasters and whose fire existed as anathema to the Erdtree and declared her victory the start of the "better age"! That already spoke of a lot of complexity, without forcing the audience to agree with her motivations and actions but instead understand what weight they held in the grand scheme of things! Again: much like Gwyn who destroyed Dragons thus creating time, light and life the way it is known now and who for all his agenda against humans had a pretty solid reason to fear the darkness within them, which effects we've seen across the trilogy!

What DLC did add was simply a lore on Marika's origins as a Goddess, and what made her vulnerable enough for the Two Fingers to seek her! Divinity is further stated to not be a great thing via Miquella's whole arc, but the wish to change the world to the better hits harder when you personally were a victim of its fundamental corruption! She did not instantly become a good person over DLC lore, nor she was just evil person and nothing else in the base game! War against Fire Giants (maybe Dragons?) was the means to topple the current powers and establish her reign, oppressing certain species was the mean to preserve it. She searched not solely to take revenge on the Hornsent, but to build a different world where what they did would not happen, ironically ending up causing more injustice ANYWAYS! Miquella fell into this trap. Heck, GIDEON fell into this trap!

Even then, her machiavellian character does not explain why even after Hornsent were completely defeated that war continues forever through Messmer and his forces. Could this be just what Messmer insisted on and THUS she cast him away, or she lost any and all sight of what pusher her to it initially? In either case, even the game itself makes it very clear that Marika/Messmer are not heroes here in the SLIGHTEST!

On a more general note, detached from the specifics of this game: I do still find it more strange to be angry about villains being given sympathetic traits, as a concept. People who are just "born evil" are such a minority that they hardly can say anything about nature of men. Bad people, by proxy, are a combination of some sort of unhappy event (trauma, bad upbringing, faced oppression, mental illness that was not treated if not had its negative traits amplified due to environment, growing in propaganda and ignorance, abuse etc) and person's unwillingness or even inability to heal and stop the cycle of pain by refusing to cause more of it. It is not that simple, and often, people who were hurt so are past the point of not letting it make THEM evil, or lack resources to do so, or have their attempts to change if they WERE bad actively sabotaged.

This IS the true horror of existence: freedom of will itself being put in question. We might be not defined by our pain, but how we will respond to it might be defined by prior events, information we had, circumstances and society around us. How can ANYONE tell what they would be like if they endured the same? Can we be sure that we "endured the same but reacted differently" wasn't predefined by other, nicer factors? To be angry at the fact that a bad person who did bad things had a reasonable, even sympathetic explanation at the core of it all is to be angry that one's privilege to use "born evil" to mistreat and emotionally distance from those people is put into question!

In any case, 'explanation is not an excuse' works not only as a tool to still judge someone's sins, but ALSO to explain that writers making a character more elaborate is not a demand to like this character or excuse their actions! Everything has reason… This is why no one is entitled to declare they know what is good and bad for everyone. Not just people like Marika or Gwyn, but even us.

2) "Hornsent are dangerous and deserved extermination"

…okay, look, yes this is another heavy topic, and it does deserve a separate post which I did make already in the past ( x )! It is another topic that sort of transcends the boundaries of this story (another common Fromsoft W for making people question life and society themselves)! To put it down simply, of course no race is inherently evil, what is the reoccurring topic here is the culture! And what is on the surface is that Hornsent as culture and species, in many ways, are victims of its own oppressive religious institution and questionable traditions. Bonny Village's potentates are hostile, dangerous cult serving as a the weapon of """justice""" and """purification""" within Hornsent! They possibly go back-to-back with their religion but except they are extremist. We cannot tell whether general face of the religion, the Inquisitor hags, would do anything about it had they have more control, whether they tolerate it for convenience, or whether they encourage and utilise its existence. But what we CAN tell is that not only "impure races" are punished/killed, but even "unfaithful" Hornsent themselves!

Yes, definitely there are also Hornsent children who would have no choice regarding their upbringing, information, nor much agency over their actions, and we know they did not spare the children either from the story of Hornsent NPC that we follow! But even then, it is clear that Hornsent that were in disagreement about their culture's demands had to be quiet about it either, or else they'd likewise be persecuted!

"Why could not they just have started a revolution" is a very unfair criticism towards a culture/place oppressed by corrupt religious (and military?) institution on many levels! As someone from the country ruled by a tyrant feeding the civilians propaganda excusing genocide and promoting xenophobia, as well as very corrupt and oppressive religious institution that yet is hardly a HALFWAY as awful as some countries I could explain how hard (impossible) it is to reliably as much as gather enough people to rebel (with no results but legal troubles down to getting imprisoned). Let alone gather enough people to go an die for the cause. Especially when almost everyone with ANY power and weapons is already by the government's side completely rotten by propaganda. Feeling outnumbered, not having any resources because they're all in the hands of people who ARE corrupt, knowing even out of other people who disagree most would not risk leaving their children and sick relatives and alike in trouble rising up against the enemy they can't reliably take down is already a huge problem here. Even considering the (very idealistic) sentiment that dire consequences doesn't erase the blame that comes from not speaking up, it doesn't change that there are real and reasonable people who don't agree! Let alone the separate topic of how even people rotten by propaganda deserve a chance for rehabilitation! Propaganda is a horrifying tool and not having immunity to it should not be automatic death sentence!

Shadow Realm is already full of burn Hornsent spirits questioning what did they even do wrong and claiming they only wanted to live and didn't do anything, further proving that they might not even be much aware of what their Inquisitors and Potentates do, let alone not being a solid monolith race of those who agree with extermination of the "impure"! They are people, living in conditions of the culture held by the throat of those truly evil! It were a bunch of civilians burnt, as well as Hornsent's (NPC) wife and child who 99.99% didn't do anything. To think of it, it makes it very bitter that Bonny's Village and Inquisitors in the Tower clearly were able to recover and bounce back, when it were civilians who payed the price. Very grim yet clever remark about the real world as well, but I am sidetracking. In general, yes, a culture that considers itself holier than others with extremist forms of it deeming them unworthy of living should be stopped and criticised, but genocide can NEVER be the answer!

^^^ It fact, something already suggests there was a different answer, an even obvious one. Marika's "betrayal" suggests a long social game on her part, as well as the fact that Hornsent culture were trusting her! Maybe they knew she was a shaman and things were happening past the point where they stopped persecuting them, maybe they had no idea. Yet, in any case, Marika held enough social power to bridge the gap between the cultures, to let them evolve beyond their past, traditions and prejudice against 'outsider' cultures and instead learn from them!

^^^ In fact, the gap was bridged, since Crucible, THE Hornsent thing, WAS considered divine even as Golden Order was established! That was like… after getting Elden Ring instead of Dragons (whatever the reason was), war with the Fire Giants and murder of the Fell God and removal of Destined Death from the Elden Ring? Nonetheless, with the power to stop vicious cycle and to let the horrible practices and past be buried and dissolve in her new order of life and radiance, so-to-say "civilization", she chose the path of genocide and revenge that has not ended even to this day! As well as essentially became "the very thing she sworn to destroy" by keeping those like Omens and Albinaurics oppressed!

And to bring back the previous chapter of this post, it is not an invitation to say 'aww then it is fair that she hates Omens so much 🥺', but a pointer that what she did was wrong. And so, yet again, the cycle continues, take Vengeance-Seeking Hornsent that swears to kill not only her and her family, but everyone affiliated with her in any way even if they were innocent and simply were born under such order! He mirrors how she/Messmer did not simply stop at punishing those who WERE guilty, how violence and revenge will always only birth more of violence and revenge, until someone decides to stop it and chose to solve the situation the pacifist way to their best ability. Even when some people claim that within this option those who will want their power back can survive and ruin everything again: likewise, if culture is exterminated, victims will survive and come back with revenge. Either way suggests the risk, but only one of these ways has even a CHANCE of better future! What IS certain is that humanity could never be at better place unless we as species keep trying peace over and over, that won't banish all evil from the first try, but we must choose peace and not genocide over and over!

3) "Miquella's character was assassinated"

No, it wasn't.

OKAY FINE but it is one of the topics that are hard to approach seriously, when someone mistakes the arc of the character falling from grace to a complete rewrite of the character's personality! How falling from grace inherently suggests there was no grace to BEGIN with? Character assassination suggests Chloé Bourgeois from Ladybug that the character has been written a certain way, but then deliberate effort was done by the writers to damage their image and make the audience hate them or no longer care about them!

What we learned about Miquella from the base game was all information about him from the times long before we, player, arrived in the game, and before his departure in the Shadow Realm! He was kind, he cared about his sister to the point of creating a new school of magic and then creating Unalloyed Gold all to heal her, he wanted a gentler order than the Golden Order and created his own tree that welcomed everyone but first of all those oppressed by the Golden Order, he wished his brother Godwyn could die honourably instead of being a growing virus to all living past death. At the same time, he naturally needed military force to protect his Haligtree, as well as was able to bewitch people with his powers!

In Shadow of the Erdtree, nothing that followed erased that information! In fact, he still boldly stated that he wanted Age of Compassion! What we DID witness though were two things: 1) the fact that he had to get a bit machiavellian, something that already was obvious from the base game because kindness alone is not enough to survive in this world and you HAVE to do some planning as the leader up against the current order with its own fans, as well as people who hate the compassion as an idea and 2) that he has been leaving behind what made him the person that he was, including his feelings and attachments, which logically included caring for Malenia for example! So, the dearest sister is 'loyal blade', because he abandoned his love! He does not still love Radahn either, but Radahn was a part of the promise; a very pragmatic thing and memory that did not have to go as his feelings did. He simply was part of the initial plan to ascend to Godhood; Miquella sounded scared of the idea when he asked Radahn to be there for him, but abandoning his fears and doubts would not automatically erase the OATH. Effectively, a "contract".

Miquella was hyped up as that kind, almost perfect, noble person, for us to find out that he is not anymore. The 'anymore' part here is crucial! Fromsoft have previously did the trick with hyping a character up to be great but us finding out they were not with Vendrick and Gwyn (and very briefly with Artorias who didn't DO anything yet was hyped as THE hero when he was in fact defeated)! Miquella repeats the trend with reveal that he did charm Mohg back then (was not perfect in his actions, but I'll get to it later), but also has the story of further descent from that not-perfect-yet-GOOD person that we follow! He is effectively the most elaborate incarnation of the concept, and we know Elden Ring includes Fromsoft learning from their previous games a lot, polishing the concepts they want to use! Miyazaki confirmed that Elden Ring is "close" to the dark fantasy game of his dream, yet is still not it (someone stop this madman fhfdhs)!

To suggest that revealing him as complex, as well as adding the tragedy of repeating Marika's mistakes no matter how much he was running from this sad fate, equates the devs wanting us to hate him (that is what CA is) is ABSURD! He REALLY did not want to be Marika, he was AVOIDING it, yet no matter what, it caught up to him... How comes you equate tragedy and imperfection with suggesting that you should hate him according to the writers' intention? I will go further and say that if your expected reaction to finding out your fav was never perfect in the world where perfection doesn't survive, and had road to Hell paved with good intentions is 'oh devs made him hateable' it only speaks of your own lack of understanding and compassion. Miquella is as much of the victim of this wretched world as everyone else, where you die a hero, remain a lazy fence-sitter or try to do something but only drastic means to do it make a change. Really, this is just Fromsoft's world and Elden Ring is in no obligation to change their philosophy of existential horror!

4) "Fromsoft failed fans by not making it [insert a thing from a wishlist]"

It could be a bit subjective, but personally I think this is simply not how creativity works as a concept. This kind of criticism suggests that upon deciding on the DLC, developers were supposed to look at the fandom's discussions, determine what would be most emotionally satisfying for them, and go that route regardless of what their vision of the story was or what…? It feels like a very entitled kind of thinking for me. Creator's one task is to bring their own vision to life and tell the story and messages they want to deliver! Not to cater to the audience, not to tell them what they want to hear, not to do what sells well or, god forbid, fanservice. (and you can probably see in which paragraph I will need to touch this one too!)

Miyazaki has a rather grim vision of the world and humanity, that is not completely nihilist and devoid of hope, but never gives the coherent answer to what the better future IS either. Character Aldia from Dark Souls 2 (and vaguely in DS3) is probably the best personification of his philosophy. The world is wretched, but the means to change it are so terrible that one might question whether it is even all worth it and whether the new world built on sacrifices is truly better, toppling the corrupt power just replaces it with the other corrupt power unless you decide to straight up destroy the world, but there must be something, right? We just lack insight to understand what it IS, but how can we obtain that knowledge without losing our humanity? Happy ending or blunt message about how if you remove corrupt authority things will magically be good are not his style.

And… regarding smaller things, honestly? He had a right to throw in a random ship that didn't have any foreshadowing if he wanted! It is HIS story and HIS characters! Creator must not obstruct THEIR vision and preferences for anyone, but it is OUR choice whether to take it or leave it. Just because we gave Elden Ring that kind of popularity and influence with huge amount of support and bought copies of the game doesn't mean that now Miyazaki is under obligation to serve us and think about our reception and tastes as sort of "gratitude" or whatever… And on a relevant note, it is his choice which topics he wanted to explore in SoTE and which topics he was done with and decided to leave be.

Again I might be different, as the very moment we had a DLC confirmed I emotionally distanced from Elden Ring knowing that any headcanons and expectations could get jossed at this rate! Getting invested into series that is still in development suggests obvious risks! No one is obligated to ENJOY whatever choices he made, but what we should do is to remember that he had RIGHT to HIS choices.

5) *claiming all hinted that it obviously should have been Godwyn*

I've heard it often that base game all foreshadowed that Miquella was departing in the Shadow Realm to bring Godwyn back to life, Eclipse thing and all, therefore SoTE "betrayed" fans by not focusing on Godwyn. Everything was supposedly set up for him to be prominent or maybe to be a final boss instead, even if he'd be a through and through failed attempt of resurrecting him! But…

Even in the base game, it was suggested that 'Eclipse' was already attempted, and failed. Nothing to suggest that they would go and try again via different means. And, in fact, there is another piece of evidence that Miquella was not going to attempt another way of resurrecting Godwyn! 'Please die a true death' suggests that Miquella wanted Godwyn to not exist as Prince of Death, but to die fully; with his body too, not only his soul.

This is certainly not about resurrection, so it is safe to assume that Golden Epitaph was made as Miquella gave up the hope of returning Godwyn's soul to him! 'Eclipse' was attempted, and it failed! Moreover, 'Eclipse' is a thing associated with the Castle Sol / Mountaintops! Nothing to suggest that it is properly done in the Shadow Realm, it is very much Lands Between's thing to do. (could it be relevant that Fell God of the Fire Giants was killed, and even before Furnace Visage thing his fire was shaped like an orb, so like a sun? no sun to eclipse to begin with? now Erdtree is THE source of light? some fuel for interpretations)

This is not the only reason, as we have a more bold one, that is Fia's quest getting broken! One of the endings is Fia laying with Godwyn and bearing a Rune to bring Those who live in Death back in the Elden Ring, and one of the remembrance bosses is Fortissax fighting within his dream! If Miquella's goal was to go and try to resurrect Godwyn, that would already remove his body from that area by the very existence of the DLC! So, should have Fia's quest/ending and Fortissax battle been timed events only for pre-DLC era? Or, again, if you say that event would only happen if we followed the entire DLC story to the final battle: Fromsoft's DLCs typically do not have any significant effects on the base games, it is usually just some extra dialogues here and there. And what would be about Godwyn's "virus" growing in Stormveil, as well as on some enemies and deathroots in the ruins where Mariners resided? What is considered his body goes FAR beyond just Deeproot Depths, should they have programmed removing of ALL that to not contradict their own lore, then? It really doesn't feel like the case even from technical standpoint already!

From narrative standpoint, both Godwyn and Radahn should (have) stay(ed) dead for the story and emotional weight, however, elaborating Radahn didn't make his presence overbearing for Fromsoft's standards! On the contrary, he got more role besides kinda 'just being there' compared to other Demigods! Godwyn had a lot of impact and presence all over the story in the base game and one of the endings being tied to him! I will get to it in the paragraph about devs allegedly 'abandoning' some things that needed elaboration though!

Yet even then, devs still added Godwyn bits with Knights of Death getting sort of rebranding to still stand by him in death and the bit about Godwyn having custom-made medallions for his special knights! It is very clear that devs have not forgotten or forsaken Godwyn but instead keep reminding us how much he mattered for the idiots living in this fictional universe! However, they know where to stop so the character isn't devouring the story too much as they have their own style with balancing characters' presence! Saying that "only" adding Knights of Death going to protect what's left of their Lord like sort of fucked up plant culture in Shadow Realm is some sort of grave insult to his fans is just weird, because in fact devs were not supposed to add this EITHER!

6) "Scadutree fragments is a cheap way to force players to explore the map"

I don't think there is anything wrong about rewarding the players for exploring the open world map that is meant to be explored! And, yes, it is rewarding, not forcing! The bosses COULD be beat even without Scadutree fragments if you know what you are doing! Like, what surprises me the most is that this take typically comes from the gamers! You know, THE people who would know a thing or two about imbalanced builds or weapons, or have enough time and patience to memorise every single movement by the boss, let alone liking to challenge themselves!

Even then, Scadutree Fragments are supposed to be discovered naturally as you walk around, check niche places on the map, do platforming and search for optional enemies and bosses! If all you wanted from this DLC was to run very straightforward to just beat the boss already with ease so you check the remembrances faster, are you sure that you actually like PLAYING this game? Getting into an open world game when you don't want the 'open world' aspect seems counter-productive to me :/

Bonus mention: some people finding Abyssal Woods sequence frustrating and annoying! It is somewhat relevant to this complaint! Losing Torrent in this area perfectly adds to the sense of not being able to escape, and stealth game with Aging Untoucheable is straight up horror stuff! How are you supposed to experience getting into the forbidden area infested by the force that every living (and dead!) being in the setting fears, if you just can run straightforward to the boss willy-nilly without any buildup or obstacle! It feels like the same sort of complaint as Malenia being unfair boss when she should be hard as someone who "never knew defeat"! Fromsoft is very good at using gameplay elements to confirm what the lore says! This "criticism" just looks like straight up impatience to get your dopamine injection already instead of enjoying the process of learning this story like devs intended!

7) "Miquella has always been evil"

I suppose it goes as a sibling paragraph to 'Miquella's character was assassinated', except this time from the standpoint of those who either liked the "twist" or were indifferent to it… I think this is just a confirmation bias at play from the people who assumed this about the character from the start, often including but not limited to Berserk fanboys. I agree that the fact he has never been perfect was plain to see either, with Bewitching Branches being a sinister power as a concept and Haligtree Soldiers suicide-bombing being a bit too fanatical, but yet again: nothing erases the notion that he had good intentions!

Ansbach kind of reminds me of the same effect Kenneth once had; Kenneth described Godrick as pathetic and everyone agreed completely ignoring the bits that suggested otherwise, and now Ansbach described Miquella as a monster and this is what some people believe! Honestly, how do I develop this level of charisma to make people believe me uncritically fhfdhhfsd In any case, the "unreliable narrator" effect is very prominent in the game, and it is important to remember that developers make the character say what the character would, not give us the directions on what opinion to have!

Miquella's power is further elaborated upon in SoTE, as not inherently brainwashing one but a very strong remedy for someone's problems! Leda's fanatical murderous fixation, Hornsent's obsession with revenge, Moore's insecurities and Ansbach's fixation on avenging Mohg's "honor" (which is likewise a very questionable concept lol) all were muted, giving them peace and friendship instead of attacking each other OR himself! The key to them being pacified and happier being to fix their love on someone else doesn't make Miquella evil megalomaniac wanting an army of loyal dolls.. on the contrary, often caring for someone else IS the feeling that brings out the best in us humans!

Again, this one is subjective, and of course people can read the character any way they want! But I start to take an issue with this reading when people claim that it is canon and dig at the base game saying how he never cared for the compassion but just was sort of narcissist seeking the oppressed to make an army of admirers from or whatever… The DLC accentuates on how he has been abandoning the 'humane' parts of himself, that were making him vulnerable and as Demigod more human than God, so we meet him at his "lowest". Even then, he states his motivation to make a better world full of compassion and free of evil! He would make everyone hold hands in more peaceful ways if he could, but even from the base game his arc was basically trying and failing to heal his sister. Besides, Dane's last and only words are asking him to make a gentler world, without his spell in the effect-

Like, there are enough things that show he had enough reasons to make people see him as symbol of hope even without MAKING them to. With Radahn, we are repeatedly told that "he and Malenia helped him to cosplay Godfrey" stems from the oath they shared and Radahn agreed to! Whether you see Caelid battle as him wanting to die (to go to Shadow Realm) in a battle, or him rebelling against Miquella's world of shining flowers and kissing bunnies in the end as a warmonger but twins not having this "change" it still doesn't straight up speak of evil intent. Could be taken as despair and reaching that 'giving up' state! With Mohg we are not sure either. Maybe Miquella just wanted to "heal" his pain but his personality persisted and obsession/kidnapping happened, so he knew he was beyond help and TOO soaked in blood and sin! Or he was beyond help / didn't want help from the start, so EVENTUALLY (key word) amounted only to sacrifice in Miquella's eyes on his path to Godhood as he NEEDED one, maybe it was even seen as 'mercy'. Help is to build a better world as a honor and all.

He very likely wanted to make a better world for him too! Both their goals were connected to "love" after all! The reading of the character as evil is not as cut in stone and evident as some people make it look like!

(In fact, shortly after BASE game released, Miyazaki confirmed that Martin wrote some nice characters and Miyazaki wrote the ways to corrupt them. So, Martin wrote the kind guy, and Miyazaki put him through corruption arc. But I will get to it in due time -_-.....)

8) *views Messmer as just another (boring?) victim of Marika* (and variations)

This one I kind of saw in two forms: people who dislike the character or not care about him writing him down as "boring" for this one, and simps who kind of lift agency off the character in order to be able to like him! This is to put it roughly, as again, there are various variations but with the same sentiment at its core!

I do think that Marika having enough influence over his actions, and even having abused him emotionally in some way, is entirely palatable interpretation! The nature of Base Serpent, as well as supposed connection with the Fell God, is debatable and can vary from truly harmful thing to simply a force of nature that exists to ensure forces like Erdtree can't live forever. Regardless of interpretation, would a kind, loving mother truly allow for her child to hate himself so much?

Marika has….. a problem with fire. Waging war to put down the Flame of Ruin because it could burn the Erdtree and removing Destined Death that was fire-affiliated power already showed it; as 'Eternal', she of course wanted to live forever, same for her Erdtree! Messmer manifesting fire element would certainly be a problem for her, but was it though? Base Serpent is malicious but for this reason Winged Serpent exists, no? Can another side of universal balance be something that must be removed from the scheme of things? Can fire, or death, truly count as 'evil' things? Are not they simply forces of nature that Marika being the MILF Gwyn that she is did not desire personally, in her vision of a brighter, bountiful world?

My point is, even though she created many Divine Blessings to help him, she did likely inflict some sort of negative self-image on him anyways. Maybe it was not her intention, but she always feared him and eventually that brought her to hide him away!

So like, how does this NOT make Messmer just a victim? Okay, so here is the error that kind of started it all:

User drenched-in-sunlight explained it better in this ( x ) post, but the point is that taking up the Crusade that Marika wanted was Messmer's own initiative and not something she forced him to do like English localisation made it sound! So, she was still possessed with the wish for revenge, but Messmer was like 'hey no need to make your hands dirty, I can do it'! Like drenched-in-sunlight explained, Marika's 'wish' here is the same as in the description of her braid (same symbols), so Messmer sees what is hurting her, and ASKS to be the tool of her vengeance! I'd say that even without this bit, simply the fact that he is a grown ass man should give him agency and hold him up to proper judgement, but nuance is always important!

This does paint an interesting picture though: Marika has been trying to "heal" him (which is a debatable concept considering her character and what fire, save for Frenzied Flame, means in the setting, but I don't insist), he asked to deliver her vengeance FOR her, but also despite having sealed the Base Serpent within him she was still scared of him and sealed him away making everything connected with him heretical and warriors standing by him still shunned, and Messmer lived in hatred, begging her forgiveness before crashing her seal yet cursing her name upon his death! It looks to me as though she grew truly scared of him and decided she wanted him gone BECAUSE of seeing him in action during crusade! Him hating her for ditching him implies that was not something he expected, so maybe seeing him in Crusade made her go 'wow, my son is actually more scary than I thought'!

That speaks of Messmer as someone who can get carried away with cruelty in blind, fanatical devotion! (that also makes Queelign an interesting mirror into his youthful, more """innocent""" self but that's not the point fdhfhds) Marika might have been horrified by it, or horrified by her own ugly reflection in the monster she (unintentionally) created with her parenting, but nonetheless it describes Messmer's personality more. Someone whose reaction to his mother's trauma and yearning for vengeance was to not only take such terrible plan in his arms, but also to go too far with it, maybe even too far for HER. Not everyone would react the same way. A better person would've probably focus on helping his mother to heal and move on, or maybe even turn around and refuse to comply with such harmful intentions. But he, being a grown man who could think and choose, chose to commit genocide. He is evil! He is not JUST evil, either. He is NOT boring tool of Marika with no agency, though!

And on a relevant note, for the simps..

No but seriously fdhfhdfds I understand how that sentiment could have left a sour taste after SA Mohg truthers kept saying 'hey guys you aren't real fan of Mohg if you ignore what he did 🙄' (that certainly aged…….), but I still want to remind that a fictional character doesn't need to be stripped out of his agency to be found attractive! With Messmer what he is doing is a bit more direct, and it is NORMAL to simp for the characters you could not stand in real life! What is the fun of engaging in fictional worlds if you turn it into a morality contest and sort of a "practice" for what kind of endeavours and relationships you'd want in real life? It is for going wild and satisfying curiosity and dark impulses. No limits needed. This is just an advice if anyone needed one like this, because we just never know really.

9) *"corrects" people's interpretations (especially of Nanaya)*

Sigh...

This kind of behavior in the fandom is certainly not exclusive for the past-DLC era, but it really felt more relevant to address again and- yes, like I said, with Nanaya thing it is something I've witnessed the most! Not long ago I said that despite hearing people question why there are so many uncharitable takes on Nanaya I haven't really seen any? But yes, like usual, it happened because Tumblr bubble is often different and you need to catch updates from Reddit and Twitter to have full fandom picture! An example: not reposting the art of course, but here is a cute comic of Midra reuniting with Nanaya in spirit after death ( x ). And do you know why the artist had to add a caption to ask people to not correct their headcanons? …..because on Twitter, they got pestered with people "correcting" them that Nanaya was aKtUaly evil / Shabriri / etc. 🤡🤡🤡

Honestly, I approve of correcting people when they legitimately, objectively contradicted or missed something stated in canon! I disagree with the notion that canon is just a suggestion and the whole fun is to just use names and concepts from it to create one's own thing! I am one of the guys that wears the T-Shirt that says "Just make an OC then" because primarily fandoms are about studying and enjoying the source material! A good headcanon knowingly differs from canon, know rules to break them at the right places, all that. It is especially relevant in Fromsoft's games because the information in them is very scattered and obscured. You WILL miss something, and so communicating with the fans, double-checking wikis etc is crucial! Similarly with fanart: there is a difference between giving a character heterochromia and more interesting look to add flavor in design and drawing them incorrectly because you haven't SEEN their datamined face and need a pointer (looking at you, white Henryk Bloodborne fanarts all because not everyone checked datamined faces!)!

As I got this off my chest that I am not an absolutist with the 'let fans do what they want' because if someone doesn't need canon that much they can always make OCs or original settings…. …when something is not canon but simply a popular interpretation, don't "correct" people! Midra asks Nanaya to forgive him when he succumbs, and it is anyone's own choice whether they take it as her never having wanted him to succumb when she was still alive or her having been secretly lyinh and ensuring long endurance would made him explode into more "sufficient result"! Fromsoft's lore often leaves bits of information that can be used to justify any interpretation! And discussions, even debates, to prove why your version is better are very interesting! Fromsoft's lore community at its best feels like we are all academics defending our thesis before the audience! But the whole "well aktualy" + "there is no proof so your headcanon is bad" + "let me educate you media illiterate casual" + "but [popular loretuber] said this" attitude just isn't it.

The last example is important! This problem IS also often the result of latching onto what a popular loredigger says. Usually Vaatividya (video lore), charredthermos (wrote a popular Bloodborne interpretation document), Lokey's Lore (has whole website with his interpretation of Fromsoft games bits) and so. And I often see people hate these popular Youtubers too, but I think that the blame lays on the crowd! It is none of these guys' fault that the crowd decided to promote them to the fandom's idols and give them this sort of influence! They were not loredigging to gain this kind of power, they probably never expected the popularity, and they would sure be unhappy to know that their work is used to shun creativity and start fights in the community that they care about! Yes, even when they 'lokey' (haha geddit?) speak in the manner that suggests being close-minded to other interpretations, they are not forcing and CAN'T force fans to idolize them.

In the end, they were just doing what they loved, and popularity probably came from them being pioneers. But instead of spilling vitriol towards them and saying how they should be "dethroned" as if they damage the fandom, why not turn our anger towards THE people who idealize them? We are all angry when we are "corrected" and they use lore of someone popular as a "proof", but this is the fault of THE people who "correct". Discourage this behavior, encourage thinking like individuals and not like sheep. No one asked for the popularity or the power to stomp out any curiousity and creativity. Don't hate the big guy AND don't take the big guy's word as a gospel. In the end, we are all just guys looking for answers in the places where they were NOT given.

10) "Mohg beating allegations made the story worse"

Sibling paragraph to 'they've failed the fans by not making it a thing from my wishlist'. Themes of sexual abuse and incest ARE quite interesting and important, but not inherently THE most important, or more important than any other themes! The information about Miquella having put Mohg under spell opens up equally interesting things to talk about and look for! How did he end up like this? Was it an accident of him trying to "heal" Mohg and it no working, and then he decided to just use what he had when he followed his plan? Had he written Mohg down as only working as vessel sacrifice for that mad plan from the start? What was the backstory between Miquella and Mohg considering this? There are still interesting things to work with, regarding relationship of the two, but now with added spin of Miquella's fall from grace arc that starts with following the plan with Radahn. Because, I remind you, requirement for a vessel, so, someone powerful dying and being used, was part of it from the start! Since Radahn needed to die! It is dark, just in a different way, and divided between two characters instead of just clear stated victim and abuser without shades of grey or nuance!

I say 'divided between two characters' instead of 'they've switched' because Mohg didn't instantly become a GOOD person over this reveal! I praised him as a valid character to point out that not all victims of awful childhood and mistreatment are automatically good people, which is a good way to diversify the characters! Make things more realistic than black and white thinking. Similarly how Rykard or Dung Eater are evidence that not all people up against the oppressive system are automatically good people. That benefit of Mohg as a character didn't evaporate, he still serves that point well enough! Nothing in the DLC said that all the kidnapping of surgeons, corrupting people with the blood and bringing in sacrifices happened because of Miquella's charm. Ansbach, in fact, confirms that the blood cult madness existed before Miquella's charm! When we admit to him that we killed Mohg, he also states that such were understandable risks of seeking Lordship, implying that Mohgwyn Dynasty, so, attempt to insert himself into Golden Lineage through mad, violent means, was also already a plan before! To think of it, SA accusation is the one and only thing he beat x) Reminds me of this meme: ( x )

Again, the story allegedly becoming "worse" solely boils down to 'they've made it about a starter point in Miquella's descent from grace and not about sexual abuse' that is simply not true. It is still interesting and valid story, just in a different way! I would normally argue that as far as fandom life goes, it should have in fact improved things; whereas Mohg was never addressed and explored as a character beyond "mohglester" thing, now he should get proper respect and analysis by the fandom, right? …right? WRONG, now people do often simplify him in a different way and forget that he DID do all that other bad shit! 🤦🏻‍♂️

And I can imagine that complaint about this reveal is not limited to but INCLUDES fans being annoyed by how people simplify Mohg and make him a good guy now! But fandom's habit of selectively reducing characters to just one trait ("mohglester" before, "victim of brainwashing" now) is not the fault of writers. How exactly the fact that we, as a community, are too shallow and unprepared for complex story and characters Fromsoft offers to us, is the fault of Fromsoft? Creator should not simplify their writing or direct it a certain way just because of the notion that majority will lack attention span or insight to understand it! We are the ones who should do better! Mohg offered enough complexity in SA allegations era, he still offers enough complexity now, it is right there in the source material for those who seek and care!

11) "Why some people are still coping instead of admitting the writing is bad???"

Yeah very mature of me to single out this paragraph by making the headline sound like the speaker is having a fit, I know. 🙄 In my defence, this particular one also truly got on my nerves, but it lacks the same huge gravity as the topic of approving of Hornsent genocide did so it is just… it is certainly something right.

Certain kind of fans that I lovingly call 'Twins Cultists' (as opposing camp to 'Chadahn Simps') has been terrorizing the fandom with the attitude of singling out and shaming other fans for "wrong" interpretations, saying how they "disrespected story and characters" with the awful sin of not reading characters Malenia and Miquella deeply enough while at the same time reducing Godrick and Mohg to a bad punchline and insulting fans that read deep into THEM, trashing everyone outside of their echo chamber, putting characters/ships malicious ragebait takes in the TAGS and then playing victims of the "toxic community" and such and such. And you would expect this kind of behavior to get significantly humbled up and them to self-reflect on how they were treating fans when THEIR takes were disproven? And I am glad that some people DID!

Full respect to the guys who reconsidered the attitude of swinging their One True Reading at the heads of "heretical" fans like a bat now knowing Fromsoft always has some cards up their sleeves! Especially if they apologised to the fans they were rude to! But also enough people didn't and now not only hate differing fans harder, but also are furious that writers sorta took away their privilege to be mean to "media illiterate weirdos". I wish I had the patience to accept the fact that of course people are angry, because something so important for them was……. no, fuck that lol I don't.

Okay jokes aside, yes I am aware that it is not possible to care about something passionately without at least somewhat slipping into the territory of defending your understanding from "threats". All we can really do is to draw the line between getting too carried away by our passion and outright obnoxious toxicity in the fandom and TRY to not cross it. To CHOOSE to not cross it when we see it, and step back if we did cross it. I do, however, take an issue with people who refuse to try and even encourages the mentality of seeing fellow fans as "enemies" and gets proud knowing they angered someone or discouraged them to check the tag. In Fromsoft fandoms, it is almost exclusively Tumblr behavior, we are sure luckier than every other fandom in the internets, but I still want to get it off my chest. Like I said, this particular attitude developed a new form after SoTE released, attacking the fans who seek reasoning within the writing decisions they deemed badly written or fundamentally wrong.

And these instances are EXACTLY where I put "just caring passionately" as their motivation into question. Because if someone says it makes sense to say that Miquella and Malenia admired Radahn's kindness when they all were younger and thus he likely faced a negative character arc since then into becoming obsessed with war instead, and you get mad at them for "coping when calling a warmonger kind is dumb and makes no sense"…? Sorry, but who cares about characters MORE in this situation: the person offering proper thought about them given some new information, or the person who is mad that their one-dimensional vision got broken?

People finding creative, interesting and reasonable ways to incorporate new information into lore, in the ways that do not contradict the base game (!!!) is not "coping" or "seeing through pink glasses" or "refusing to admit their fav dev can do wrong" or whatever you choose to call it. It is simply using analysis and imagination, it is adapting and accepting. If you can't do it, you are welcomed to do rewrites of SoTE reveals and characters and ending, it is not illegal! But don't go and say that the writing is so awful and broken that everyone who accepts it "never actually loved Elden Ring" or other nonsense just because for YOU this writing didn't work! The one and only unforgivable thing the devs did starts and ends at the fact that Radahn thing was not foreshadowed, and yet even HERE his relevance is EASILY incorporated and developed into backstory if you are willing to put in effort! This retcon is such a nothing thing compared to what some other writers do glares at Ladybug retcons for comparison. Like, working with it is possible, and if you don't want to it doesn't mean others shouldn't.

And in fact, at first I saw a lot of enthusiasm regarding the rewrites, AUs, "fixes", dwelling on pre-existing lore ignoring SoTE and all that. I really did, and it was valid. But then what I saw, personally, was that flame dying down and amount of such posts shortening but out of those who left this brand of toxicity followed! My interpretation of this change is that when initial shock and frustration waned, more people started to notice SoTE was not bad.. and THAT made people who continued hating SoTE feel less validated, in a way. When people started to warm up to certain plot twists and decisions, to elaborate new information into their vision of the lore… people that still hated and disapproved of the thing lost the image of being "the saviors of the fandom from Miyazaki's garbage writing" and became simply people who do their own thing. And for people who are driven with negative impulses, 'just enjoying the things they like' is usually not enough. They need to be "right", they need to "contribute to the fandom", they need to be "better" and so on. It is a known thing about fandoms even aside of SoTE and Soulsborne fandoms altogether, and I feel like this situation is the return of it, personally.

Of course, this is all speculation and the dynamic I've observed. Maybe someone observed different processes entirely! I just think it is safe to assume as I've seen absurd level of toxicity even despite staying away from 'active' fandom (no 'cool kids' circles, no following popular creators, no open Discord servers, no checking tag or Reddittube etc)!

Still, "I'll fix awful creators' writing because I actually love and respect the characters unlike they" is already a very questionable sentiment, but to attack the fellow fans over this is beyond any patience and understanding! Eventually there is no "right" or "wrong" way to love the characters and story and to be passionate, even if we are naturally inclined to believe in our own vision the most! Perhaps you express your love by putting in a lot of effort to give the characters different writing entirely, to "save" them from decisions of creators you don't agree with. But it is an OPTION, not the One True Way, and… really, it is strange to be mad at people for being happy and satisfied with the story and finding a lot of valid things in it and call them blinded Fromsoft dickriders incapable of critical thinking or whatever! Bonus points when such sentiments come from EXACT same people who resent the Youtube bros that bash every other new TV series AND insult people who dared to enjoy such aaaaawful product or whatever… You guys really hate the type of YouTube "critics" who take personal insult in people who enjoyed a thing and even reasonably justified the parts that THEY declared disgrace to the series and disrespect to true fans? Yeah most reasonable people hate them. We all know at least one modern TV show whose fans got this sort of treatment. But don't you guys see how you've became exactly the same type of "critic" at this rate? Unacceptable behaviour, not justified by 'but it comes from place of passion'! I am passionate about Soulsborne as you could tell and I disapprove of it, no correlation!

12) "Fromsoft became woke" (and variations)

For startes, I have to wonder whether we've been playing the same games all along. Where was it when Gwyndolin was intersexual and affirmed himself as a trans man later? Seath is also blind and has what is a disability for his species? Where was it when Pharis/Evlana was a very GNC woman in Japanese original, but for you she looked a trans woman because English localisation made Pharis a he/him a removed Pharis' nametag from "female archer" in the woods? Where was it when our good friend intersexual trans man was literally killed by the church? Where was it when they had female doctors, church leaders and scholars in Victorian era? As well as strong female hunters like Maria or Gratia? Gratia and Rom are also confirmed intellectual disability rep via Japanese script? Or when both male OR female hunter could propose to Annalise? Or positive sex worker representation in Arianna being the only kind person to step in Oedon Chapel? Where was it in the BASE Elden Ring with Ranni being bisexual, Malenia representing severe physical and mental illness, Miquella being GNC at least and trans+neurodivergent-coded at most, Dolores being a return of GNC woman, Blind Swordsman, Niall being another prosthetic-using fighter and Marika/Radagon? Speaking of blindness there were also Maiden in Black, Firekeeper, Irina 1, Irina 2 and Hyetta? Where was it when through their whole games they never sexualized their female characters and the ONE exception in Gwynevere was not even on purpose? WHERE WAS IT WHEN TRANS COFFIN???

...okay, I can continue and I'd love to be reminded of more examples. But on the serious note, this complaint has two ways to go about it: 1) an understandable fatigue with writers and stories placing pseudofeminist agenda on bland unsympathetic female characters, retconning pre-established characters to pretend to care for diversity and generally hating the audience for merely being born cis/white/male and 2) people being upset at diversity in the cast to begin with and complaining about "forcing the politics in art". And in both cases, this just doesn't apply to Fromsoft.

In the first case, they simply aren't hating their "privileged demographics" audience through characters and narrative, and doesn't seem like they will. They write very compelling, nuanced and even sympathetic characters, as well as the stories that make you ask questions to yourself! They insist on messages against corruption of religious institutions and fascism, but even THEN they'll give sympathetic characters on that side (!), show that not all people who oppose them are good either (!!) and make damn sure to recognise at the start of it all were good intentions (!!!!!!). From this angle, you could argue they are not woke ENOUGH, actually, because of how merciful, open-minded and non-forceful their messages are! They deliver their points through characters who are actual people, rather than writing characters as bland plot devices that hate you!

In the second case... Yeah, as memey as the phrase is, but "they've always been woke". Just because Miyazaki loves motherly woman archetype and and Fromsoft games always had compelling married hetero couples doesn't mean they are your allies in "preserving traditional values"! Again, messages against religious corruption and preserving long-overdue order of things fearing change are plain. Elden Ring had a slight increase in diversity, but to think of it, Elden Ring is also a bigger game with bigger cast. I do want to point out though that the very concept of worrying that with more diverse characters somehow cis and white cast will no longer be a part of From's stories is strange. They'll never make it all about JUST one demographic because they cover nature of humanity in general, but if anything, adding way more angles than their staple Medieval Europe culture route gives them more power for TYPE of the messages they want to tell! Because their power is, and always been, showing the situation from different perspectives.

13) COMMERCIAL BREAK LOL

14) "Devs artificially increased difficulty instead of WORKING to make battles"

This is very unfair criticism already from the very concept! Players had two years to advance through the base game, and if you play consistently, it is enough time to become ridiculously overleleved! Overleveled to the point of not being able to enjoy playing SoTE at all, as all enemies would drop dead instantly! It was easy to sabotage the challenge and simply not let the devs give us the fun experience they intended. But, no! Devs cared to make things so that even if you are 300+ level and have godly build, you'll be down in two hits by the first Furnace Golem, let alone bosses! So, yes, you either need to run around and collect Scadutree Fragments, or seriously study your boss and come up with clever strategy! I am still proud of a really smart way to fight Rellana I invented x)

This complaint did have a period of initial shock when it was really blown out of proportion due to the comfort zone of being overpowered broken, but this opinion still lingers and I just find it strange! Why NOT make sure that players of any level physically can't be too strong to actually PLAY SoTE, instead of just running through it with ease? Even then, how comes they "didn't work on bosses"? Boss battles like Messmer, Bayle and Midra are absolutely wonderfully well done on every level! Romina, Rellana and Putrescent Knight are really great and have super interesting battles even if not as epic and show-stopping, aesthetic and moves alone are immaculate. Non-remembrance bosses who are also very fun and beautifully designed! There are annoying bits about Scadutree Avatar and Gaius, but you can't seriously say they did not WORK on them! The bosses are challenging not only due to artificial difficulty, because even at high Scadutree Fragments level you still need to give them thought! And while you do… right, you can admire the sound and the battle design!

I am just really confused about this complaint because it could only be applied to reusing Radahn for the final boss.. but even then he is not fully reused, and sure not so reused for Stage 2 where you can't see shit because of Miquella's spells. One "kinda mid" boss can't and should not eclipse all those awesome bosses! If anything, he feels more like a hard to get joke! Fans have been saying things like 'oh if only we could fight Vendrick at his prime', 'oh if only we could fight Gehrman at his prime' etc etc… now, as they ALSO did want to fight Radahn at his prime, they got an option to do so, and he is not all that impressive, right? :p Let's be real he only sucks because Leonard isn't here hgfhhhgb

15) *admiring how fanatical Leda is while hating other (male) characters with the same quirk*

Sigh... I will just leave this meme by the user wraith-caller here: ( x )

Yes, fandom does have decent amount of simps for this type of male character, I know. Lautrec, Alfred, and D twins. (Coincidentally, all women-killers x) Even if Devin is actually justified) I suppose Queelign would go here too if people didn't write him down as a joke character by proxy over a cursed cleric haircut? 🤔 skill issue btw So of course it is not to say that they are not given enough love/lust/other positive interest…..

…but for some STRANGE reason, people who feverishly admire Leda and simp for her or at least hail her as such compelling character that ALSO hate Alfred or D for being such horrid fanatics are almost a staple by now! Why!!! This problem existed to a smaller extent with people who hated Alfred while simping for Adella and even shipping her with her victim- and no, it is cool and based, one does NOT get into a media with dark themes to demand healthy characters and healthy ships, but why so many times gender defines it? I don't care if you are a lesbian; whether you give character a justice should NOT depend on whether you are attracted to them, or else you are no different from straight girls that would like a male character and hate female character with the same issues! And sure I don't care if you are a feminist and are inclined to give "pay back" for years of misogyny in the fandoms by applying double standards!!

16) "Why could not we have JUST ONE genuinely nice character?"

Alllllright so… apparently, I was wrong this whole time about SoTE. I was convinced that it had no impact on the base game beyond like, Leda greeting us in Mohgwyn Palace, but I suppose I was misinformed very much? Because turns out that this whole time I was not aware that SoTE removed existence of Roderika, Hewg, Boc, Melina & Torrent, Latenna, Albus, Thops, Jar Bairn, Millicent and Enia from the base game!

….fine, okay, sarcasm is not my forte at all, but what I said still stands from both subjective and objective standpoint. Subjectively, I don't think counting out minor characters does any good for enjoying and analyzing the story! Should anything only "really" count when it is a significant, major character? This reminded me of that time when someone said it was 'incredibly fucked up how Bloodborne only had 2 non-white characters' when in reality it has 13 but minor characters supposedly didn't matter much…?

I want to specify though how this bit is more about how I interact with fictional worlds; I take them as just fictional realms that I enjoy exploring and "living through", I do not put much emphasis on how much 'weight' characters representing certain demographic OR worldview in the story as someone able to love every other minor gremlin genuinely! Maybe it is autism, maybe it is the fact that I am naturally hesitant to interact with the 'big guys' anyways with real people too. I enjoy tending to flowers and I suppose for most people the point or representation they want to see should be visible from every angle, like Erdtree x) With major characters, I think Rennala and Godwyn are the closest we have to good people, yet they were not able to be 100% good conceptually due to their high status.. much like Miquella himself, which brings me to a more objective point!

Conceptually, it is already impossible to be fully good when you as much as hold a lot of power! Some people have to be neglected if not straight up stomped out, for your own safety or safety of others, and it won't be a good thing *regardless *of intentions! Some sacrifices have to be made because if you are nice to everyone while having a lot of power, bad people will try to use you! Some social games, if not straight up violence, have to be applied if you want to make a change in the world! The big, important person can't be perfectly kind, because in that case they will no longer be big and important! It is just cruel truth about how society works! And Miquella HAD to be big and important. He had huge plans for the world, and as much as keeping himself and what tribe he has built within the Haligtree safe implied some morally questionable acts, let alone making his path through the position where he can change anything!

Pacifist character with unyielding principles who has a say in the fate of the world can often be portrayed from a very unpleasant angle, like, 'hug and forgive war criminals with unreal body count :3' angle (Steven Universe comes to mind first of all). Like, such decision make you wonder how this is being a GOOD guy here! But at the same time, is taking down those war criminals truly good either? When the character combines being the force of good AND being the force able to effect fate of the world, they inevitably are faced with the dilemma of either getting their hands dirty, thus sullying their grace at the very least, or making a decision that would feel like betrayal for the victims… which, again, sullies that grace but in another way. Miquella was already conceptually doomed to act Machiavellian by the virtue of being an Empyrean who wished change, much like Ranni except more subtly so!

And this is why true goodness could only come through the little guys. They don't have to make morally questionable decisions with no outcome that spares their innocence; their field of influence is to just care about their closest surrounding and to do their little tasks! They can't change the world, but they can change just the lives of their friends and their own.

Malenia, one of the key figures in the story, was faced with the choice to either "abandon her dignity" and nuke the continent to deliver Miquella's plan in full (the route she did end up doing), OR to preserve that "dignity" but thus hinder their plan that I remind you was against the Golden Order, to build a better world (which is also sort of morally questionable decision in the grand scheme of things)! She could not win and with all information we were given, more suffering in the setting would ensue no matter what! Do a drastic sacrifice for the greater good, or forsaken that greater good to preserve more lives but doom them to live in the same bad conditions forever was her picture! Yet Millicent, effectively a 'little guy' version of Malenia, had the privilege to die with her integrity intact without any big consequences for the world and great scheme of things! True good, certainly, can only exist in the smaller scale.

When it reaches the higher plane and higher decisions there is no way to remain 'unalloyed'. So, yes, we could NOT have 'just one genuinely nice character' out of people with huge power and importance. Not because Miyazaki allegedly hates hope and hates you! But because he is a writer that seems to understand such fundamental things and philosophical dilemmas from the track record of his games so far. ANY mature, insightful writer knows that the idea of someone 'important' forever being good might be a thing the audience wants, but not a genuine thing. "No matter how tender or exquisite a lie will remain a lie" and all.

17) *hating Radahn's inclusion because "dudebros got validated" and not over the story*

To be honest, this IS something I am also familiar with. I won't play the "unlike you snowflakes I don't care about online discourse uwu" persona because I SURE do! I used to dread Mariadeline ship because fans of it were easily the most toxic and unbearable type of Bloodborne fans, choosing to remain willfully ignorant about Gehrman's character actual lore, showing near-biphobia regarding Maria, having era of acting personally attacked when their ship was implied to be anything BUT cottagecore fluff dynamics without corners, playing victims of hate and "misogyny" when they themselves maliciously rage-baited fans that were just enjoying themselves, and doing that ableist 'no reading all this get a life' thing when shown where they were wrong! I had a period of really disliking Leda because she was an in-universe manifestation of aforementioned 'Twin Cultists' who act very similarly to common Mariadeline fans with spreading the "us CORRECT fans with MEDIA LITERACY who RESPECT story and characters vs them WEIRDOS" toxic mentality, with the whole joys of echo-chamber stuff, playing victims when they knew they were PROVOKING anger and feeling attacked when anyone dared to as much as to look at their favs as anything but perfect. I dealt with both and enjoy the ship now, and like Leda now. These are just two recent examples, but I faced a similar problem often, in previous fandoms as well. And I will be real here:

What helped me every time was to distance from the 'vocal' fandom, gather around a few friends to private chats and bounce around the ideas on our own. Without any outside influence, without deliberately skewing interpretation to "spite" anyone, without any motivation in it besides trying to look at things with clear gaze. The cure against the sour taste that bad fandom experiences have left is not to have the writers to "validate" you or to "spite" your opponents or whatever. The cure is ALSO not to completely abandon the ship/character/concept/etc giving up on it as if it was rotten and "not worth the stress". The cure is to hide away from this negative influence for a time being and build your own vision, that might have only like 3 other fans but be immune to everything! Us very few people here who like Mariadeline the different way keep FAR distance from its more 'common' fans, and we are pretty glad that we grew a Halightree in the contrary to their Erdtree x)

I do not really see why could not the same be done with Radahn as a character. In fact, it feels like there is an unspoken DEMAND for it. For 'reclaiming' him, even! My friend heraldofcrow made a post ( x ) about why Radahn is not 'Chadahn' at all but actually a sad character in his own right and just LOOK at the notes! Clearly, he does not have to remain a "mascot" of those dudebros and remain associated with the dumbest discourse you ever had to read!

I think the fandom really has lost the objective when prior the DLC you guys started to hope for certain outcomes based on the fandom experiences! People hoping for Miquella to be kind to make 'annoying Berserk fanboys' shut up, people hoping for Miquella to turn out evil to be vindicated after his annoying fans were toxic over "wrong" interpretations of him, people hoping for Mohg to be confirmed bewitched so everyone who called them media illiterate could eat their words, people hoping for the answer to Caelid battle to invalidate Malenia haters from Reddittube…… Like, how comes that we have forgotten that the first priority is to hear what the writer has to say and try to accept it as fans, or at least to have objective, reasonable wishes for the story rooted in our knowledge about writing and NOT in fandom discourse? It should not be a matter what group of fans gets validated or screwed over, it should be a matter of what it does to characters! It should not be important that now Malenia haters will NEVER shut up, but it SHOULD be important that we now have a better context for her moral failing and can work with it. She is not THEIR to trash on, she is YOURS to cherish as the girlfailure now with extra information!

There is a Russian saying: "Мышки кололись, плакали, но продолжали есть кактусы" (literally "(the) mice prickled themselves, cried, yet kept on eating the cacti"). It is a figure of speech describing someone who keeps stubbornly doing something that only brings them suffering without a reasonable purpose to it. This is exactly what those dudebros have been doing thinking about Malenia within the context of their fav and what they have been doing complaining about how hard it was fighting her when no one forced them to. But this is ALSO exactly what Malenia fans have been doing engaging in bad faith "debates" started by those guys and checking Reddittube knowing full well no good takes exist there!

If what you wish from it is effected not by your knowledge and tastes, but by your bias stemming from fandom experiences… really, distance from the fandom and heal. Characters are their own entities, not your tools to own other people in the fandom. It goes to both Reddittube AND Twitbr, to both people who started it and people who merely developed negativity as reaction. Fans are NOT part of the story and should never be, we are all just people observing it and reacting to it.

18) "They clearly gave Radahn spotlight because he was popular in (western) fanbase"

It is absurd to assume that Fromsoft would turn the planned story around because a lot of people on Reddit and their YouTube lore influencers declared 'Chadahn' their king. In fact, judging by the merch they're offering, Malenia is recognized as equally marketable if not MORE marketable! Besides, had they cared about Western fanbase's reception specifically (which IS where Radahn is loved), they would have likely avoided the potential backlash by that type of fans regarding making their fav LGBT+! With half-brother, no less. I've also heard a theory that they included Radahn as the very last moment solution, but I doubt that baking in Freyja into the story with her and Ansbach's questline, as well as creating Gaius, could've been something done in the last moment! I am not a game developer so correct me if anything, but it looks like a lot of work to do. Besides, there is not enough cut content in SoTE to suggest the plans were far different! And we all know that cut content always still lingers in the game's files with Fromsoft!

They can care about marketing- heck, using Vargram, an existing character with his own lore, to portray the "Tarnished" in promo materials because his set is more catchy than Knight/Tutorial set, for example! Or how replacing an option to murder Orphan of Kos as an infant with 'shadowy presence' because it felt too grim didn't undo the option to kill Arianna's infant and other celestial children, nor it undid how horrifying Fishing Hamlet was. They also obscured the fact that Annalise's baby got aborted, but not the fact that Queen Yharnam's baby was stolen while she has a bleeding wound where a big belly used to be. These are examples of making posters more eye-catching and dodging potential scandals about promoting abortion respectively, but nothing about nuking the plans for the story!

You know what sells even better than Radahn? Big boobs! Yet over and over they make their female characters have smaller chests, even Marika, and the ONE exception Miyazaki ever made, Gwynevere, was done because the guy who drew her concept was too happy! Heck, assuming that Miyazaki included Radahn because his coworker wrote a Miquella x Radahn fanfic he liked is more realistic assumption than him wanting to "sell better" jggfggfhgn In any case, my point is, they follow the vision they like and don't sacrifice integrity of the story!

(+On the relevant note, back then there was a scandal with press calling them "homophobic" for Mohg supposedly perpetuating a negative stereotype with incest/pedophilia accusation….. but while they debunked that impression, they've added consort thing with Radahn that falls for the exact same issues potential lol!!!! You know the only reason "Radahn is a groomer" takes don't exist is because people who care about Radahn aren't the discourse-starters of the fandom. They didn't escape certain side-eyeing even when they COULD and it is funny)

There is another thing I want to address though!

The screenshot is from this reveal trailer, and the excerpt is from Miyazaki's interview ( x ). I assume that this COULD be used as a reasoning behind thinking adding Radahn and final Miquella cutscene in the "last moment"; like 'you see, there was an ending where he 'reveals' (?) the Scadutree, but they cut it, and offered that unfinished clip of Miquella asking Radahn to come with him!' ..okay, sure, but you know what else was in that interview?

The confirmation that there would not be an extra ending for Elden Ring, of influence on the main game! Right off the bat, right after this trailer! Miquella "unveiling" the Shadow Realm or anything like that would have had consequences on the main game, certainly! They might have animated this prior because they wanted to add a new ending but then decided to not touch the main game under any circumstances but kept it for the cool trailer, or they animated it for the trailer from the start (like if Miquella is unveiling a new location for us, metanarratively)!

19) *refuses to use information and lore from the base game while looking at the DLC*

Yet AGAIN, "Free my man Mohg from SA allegations (he did do all that other shit though)". XD True, when it is not that people reduce (?) him to just a victim upon learning Miquella's Bewitching lore for the sentiment alone… it is then because they sort of forget. :clown: Ansbach's entire existence and what information we receive from him confirms that Mohg's scary bloody cult existed before Miquella's spell! It is up to anyone to interpret whether 'love' theme about his cult also existed before what Miquella did, or was, in fact, a side-effect, but kidnappings and sacrifices definitely were not caused by Miquella!

Another example off the top of my head is Maliketh and even Hoarax Loux / Godfrey basically evaporating from Marika's backstory, as though nothing ever existed besides her time at the Shaman village, Messmer and Fell God. And the latter one makes it especially odd, because base game hammered it down in every other Fire of the Giants' incantation that the motivation to put that fire down was because it was capable of burning the Erdtree and existed as anathema to it altogether, but now it got basically forgotten, as if all that ever existed about it was Messmer's presumed connection to it! I even got """corrected""" once when I stated that war with the Fire Giants happened to establish and protect the Erdtree, with something along the lines of 'we don't actually know what the motivation was but very likely to help with the curse that he caused on Messmer'! Also seeing the turning point of Marika's story in her becoming a God through Divine Gate, when in reality it was first her being chosen as an Empyrean by the Two Fingers! So, first someone now qualified to create the new order, and then actually creating it by entering the Divine Gate!

There were also Miquella things such as saying that he abandoned Malenia when she described his absence as "he will keep his promise", or saying that him forgetting Godwyn was a weird decision when the base game already suggested he failed and gave up with failed Eclipse and Golden Epitaph with words 'please die a true death'! To be honest, with Malenia one I myself fell for it at first, but… yeah, base game suggested he was going to return to her after/if his plan succeeded. Romina "creating" Scarlet Rot I also found to be often disconnected from (Outer) God of Rot existing 🤔

I suppose this could be justified because many people finished Elden Ring significant time prior the DLC, so many lore details got blurred and only general impressions of specific fixations stayed! It is just how memory works, and revisiting the source material from time to time is necessary! Even then, SoTE is so full of new information that it is easy to just completely fixate on it! I just think that it is important to remember that SoTE is still not just a whole game despite its absurd side and saturation with the new things, and things in it add into the base game! Not always like missing puzzle pieces but sometimes in a way that makes the puzzle itself bigger, but still. Gaius existing didn't replace Alabaster Lord that was Radahn's Gravity Magic teacher and Ogha, but he was also a "classmate"! Radahn being stated as an important sibling for Miquella and Malenia didn't replace Godwyn, but rather is added as someone also important! Hell, maybe he even became so close with them after Godwyn's assassination, but I'll get to the "it doesn't contradict stuff" in the meantime! Dryleafs and Needle Knights aren't supposed to make anyone forget about Loretta and the plan to find "proper" Haligtree Knights but never finding a master for such sword! They are just people who put faith into him after Erdtree started to die and his police force respectively! (Also no if I saw that Needle Knights are police then so have to you all, fuck you)

20) "How could they abandon [insert a thing that had enough place in the base game]?"

This kind of happens frequently, and usually it is about Godwyn! Sibling paragraph to 'it obviously should have been Godwyn' I suppose! Godwyn is not the first character who is very significant for the story yet everything happened behind the scenes, through descriptions and dialogues of other characters. In fact, meeting him in "person" is already a luxury by Fromsoft's standards! He had enough of spotlight already with his death triggering the VERY events of the plot with Shattering, one of Miquella's failed plans being about 'Eclipse' to bring him back, being grieved for by other characters, making peace with Ancient Dragons and thus a whole type of incantations in the game being linked to him, haunting the environment via Deathblight and being core figure in the questlines of Ranni, Fia and Rogier who are pretty significant characters all! He had enough development and presence in the narrative, I'd say to the point where bringing him into SoTE would overload the story with his presence! Not making him a core figure in the DLC and limiting new information about him to his most significant Knights rebranding into Knights of Death to protect the places where Prince of Death "grows", again, not some grave insult to his fans because what was there to tell about him happened in the base game!

With Fromsoft characters, THE tragic culmination of their story often happens behind the scenes and we are intended to meet the character at their lowest point, or just dead! With Godwyn, that culmination did happen behind the scenes, with such beloved, important, enigmatic figure getting assassinated and sending Marika over the edge, and we have a second emotional culmination for the character that we get to experience where we DO meet him at his lowest - an abomination on all living and mockery of former self, knowing Miquella did not get the wish to either return his soul OR let him die a true death! He did not have enough screen time, but he had enough presence in the story and feelings!

A similar complaint could be made regarding 'Well, Miyazaki said that Miquella would be a focus of the DLC, but we only meet Miquella in the end and he just sits on Radahn's back instead of at least fighting us himself'! (no not me making up a guy, it was an actual claim towards Miyazaki allegedly "lying") First, you people take it BACK about a very clever Dark Souls 3 reference and Miquella's spells not letting me see shit. Second, like I said, his presence is all over the narrative! All core NPCs talk about him, we follow his traces and find flowers growing from his blood, we learn more about him and his past, Radahn's story is now connected to his and Mohg's story with him given some insight, Trina is inseparable part of him, Dryleafs and Needle Knights are HIS covenants, we see effects with and without his spell… How is all this NOT 'being focused on the character'? Fromsoft's style of giving character time and space is not specifically to show them on screen or let us battle them or have dialogue with them!

Personally, I also at first wrongly assumed that they forsaken Miquella and Malenia's connection for the sake of Radahn, but this is, again, the case of one not excluding another! His connection had enough weight in the base game: he started Fundamentalism with Radagon primarily as a sort of magic to heal Malenia and abandoned it when it was not working, she always identified as 'Blade of Miquella' and it is the only thing she holds onto as she is falling apart, her clothes, prosthetics and armor pieces are made of his Unalloyed Gold and it even digs into her very body, all which he created for her, Ephael is full of statues depicting their younger selves holding each other, she was the one to have his needle (different from the gold needle) and she awaited him to keep his promise since he was "the most fearsome Empyrean"!

(Cut Rico's dialogue in the base game's files ( x ) ( x )) The original intention seemed to give Trina less of a 'personality', making her more inseparable entity from Miquella or even straight up just his disguise like with cut Merchants' questline, so the plan to ascend Miquella to Godhood was already in the plans! They have changed the dream realm thing since, recontextualizing Miquella going to sleep to ascend into presumed dream realm into Godhood with dream Trina persona to Miquella departing into the realm where rather all dead drift to, but the POINT of him leaving for that mad plan rather than mysteriously vanishing and Malenia not knowing why was there from the start! Writers didn't just "randomly made him abandon her" - he ALREADY did so in the very early draft of the story!

In the interview ( x ) about SoTE, Miyazaki also confirmed how many things that were planned from the start were cut from the base game's story because it was getting too big:

Miquella also abandoned not just her but everything, and Radahn logically got special treatment because he was part of the plan from the start! Miquella, who left every feeling that made him the person that he was, did not need to love Radahn or care for him to remember that a God requires 'consort' (in this setting's lore). It is not outlandish to assume that he wanted Radahn to share that fate (a fate so bad that Trina begged us to rather kill him that allow it, mind you!) and not Malenia because she already suffered enough for him in his eyes, for example. She depended on him for everything, so why not ask the other tough guy rather than a person that never knew independency and true agency outside of his influence?

My hot take is that not asking her to hold his hand through horrifying ordeal further proved him caring about her with all the context! He maybe ideally would not have asked Radahn either but if you need the Second Guy as a God, who will you rather ask: a person that already never knew life besides self-identifying as your tool or a kind tough guy who was the second most reliable figure for you BOTH after Godwyn? And would Godwyn be interested in the idea to abolish the Golden Order anyway? Radahn presumably changed his mind later in life, but Godwyn was THE Golden Order guy since the start! But my interpretation is not so relevant, it is subjective and again saying 'there is no glaring problem that people think there is, it comes down to interpretation'. There was still nothing else to add about how Malenia and Miquella were connected in SoTE, it was already all said in the base game!

I might be talking from the standpoint of someone who very much used to the way Fromsoft reveals information; they are very minimalist and precise, they give as much of it as needed to understand the gist, and bringing up something not in one description of an easily missed item but several times across unskippable lore is generous for them! They said enough in the base game for everyone to get the point and decided to not milk the same thing in SoTE, nor they erased or contradicted the information from the base game!

Wanting more information for the sake of it is valid and natural for fans, but Fromsoft doesn't give it just for the sake of it! They didn't abandon these topics, they simply finished talking about them! Even so, Godwyn got now got confirmed to have his version of Cleanrots/Redmines, and Romina offered a fantastic narrative parallel with Malenia as someone unable to bring Scarlet Rot to blooming from the buds state yet cherishing it, when Malenia wanted nothing more but to get rid of Scarlet Rot yet it kept getting through no matter what! They added some extras without exhausting the point itself!

21) "Sote was a mistake" (and variations)

YOU take that BACK about Thiollier and Ansbach. You take that back about Leda and her potential of interacting with Loretta, about Freyja, about insight on how Tanith looked like before marrying Rykard, about Moongrum having a twin sister- heck, about RENNALA having a super cool badass sister! You take that back about Midra and Nanaya and the whole cool Abyssal Woods location, about cool Midra's Manse lore and the best fucking boss battle and soundtrack ever. You take that back about Messmer and the Fire Knights. You take that back about cool battle mechanics additions with many two-handed arms, hand/legs combat mechanics and throwing weapons mechanics. You take that back about Romina and super cool insight on Scarlet Rot. You take that back about Ymir and super messed up cool cosmic eldrich stuff with cosmic fingers and Metyr being a return of Ebrietas archetype no one could expect. You take that back about how everyone finally pays more attention to the Fell God and worldbuilding in general. You take that back about immaculate aesthetic and captivating lore of Hornsent. You take that back about meeting Trina. You take that back about how significant and important topics they managed to raise- no, honestly, how cool is that that they got us to discuss the topics of fascism and genocide, as well as cycle of revenge and dilemma of limiting free will vs accepting cruelty of the world so hard that we FORGET to simp for [choose Messmer or Rellana or both depends on you] during such passionate debates? You take that back about coolest fucking sets ever and ability to become a dragon. You take that back about Igon, Florissax, finally getting an explanation about why Dragon Communion was a thing if Golden Order made a pact with Ancient Dragons and BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYLEEEEEEEEEE! You take that back about Gaius- actually no screw that man, remove his battle lol

…sorry had to add that punchline.

My point still stands: you cannot objectively say that SoTE was a mistake. Subjectively, you can; if you were a fan that solely cared about Miquella only through a certain lense and nothing else, then sure, SoTE fucked your headcanons over and all the cool stuff won't make you shift your hyperfixation. For you, it would have been better if SoTE never existed, you would've been better off in previous state of things, endlessly debating Radahn's fans and bullying people with charitable Mohg interpretations and whatever. But people like this do NOT represent the fandom as a whole at all! Not even in relevance to the gaming-only part of it, I am talking about artists-writers part of it as well! Objectively, SoTE contributed a lot of interesting lore and characters without breaking pre-established lore; as I stated earlier, importance of Godwyn and Malenia did NOT get erased just because Radahn had a retcon to also be important person! SoTE answered some questions that required answers, like origins of the Formless Mother, Dragon Communion, Trina's nature, what happened with Mohg, what was the reason for Caelid and what were these darn weird crawling hands enemies!

No I am not rofling, I was seriously very confused about them and made at least three attempts to solve the mystery of their nature, but SoTE finally freed me from that torment!!

Adding more characters absolutely was not a mistake! None of these characters broke pre-established things, they are merely more 'dolls' to play with! Answering some questions was also not a mistake; whereas people might not like what the answers ARE, tying some loose ends of the story was a good call! It is not as if they've written elaborate document explaining every single bit of lore to the point no one can make interpretations or create new stories anymore! All they did was putting an end to some arguments, however new questions arose in their place; questions more interesting than who is "misogynist" and who is "media illiterate".

From the gameplay standpoint alone, I do not understand this claim either. How exactly SoTE would ruin base game, which is intact and still accessible map without changes? Shadow Realm's map exists separately from the base game, none of it breaks the main game's locations and bosses! I doubt that new mechanics and weapons from the SoTE completely ruin the main game and make it imbalanced either! For most of them, having a strong weapon doesn't automatically make you skilled and even base game's bosses could still kick your ass. And as for "imbalanced" ones, gamer bros of the fandom have been doing great so far self-regulating themselves to shame people who used Mimic Tear, Comet Azur, Blasphemous Blade etc 🙄 Their field of creating artificial "honor"-based difficulty and challenging themselves would not suffer because of the weapons from SoTE! They are able to make the challenges and PvPs what they want within themselves, encourage or prohibit anything. It is not as if Miyazaki is holding them at the gunpoint telling them to use mechanics introduced in SoTE that they believe "ruin" the playing process! Simply not use new weapons or not go in the Shadow Realm altogether if you don't want to - and Elden Ring will remain what it used to be for you!

I guess I can only agree with the notion that aside of SOME story loose ends, base Elden Ring was not lacking in anything. It was a very huge game, with many characters, many locations, many worldbuilding things to touch upon and discuss, many mechanics, very contained and packed with things for years ahead to dissect, discuss and create art and writing and videos for! SoTE just made it even bigger! We were mostly living fine without these characters and new information, save for the frustrating arguments I've mentioned!

Mohg fans against SA interpretations could disagree entirely because as SoTE aired they all said "the night, and the hunt, were long…" But, like I said before, fandom experiences should not define what we want from the story! Some questions remaining unanswered was bearable from the STORY standpoint, but it is objectively NICE that they did get answers! And… just adding more characters is definitely not a problem. Not characters that break the story, just MORE characters. There is a Russian saying, "Кашу маслом не испортишь" ("you can't ruin the porrige by adding more butter in it"), and it applies here very much. Unless some people, for example, hate Messmer and are frustrated that they have to remember about him when writing Marika's backstory or anything.. I would not get it either way because giving a character a couple of sentences of acknowledgement and tossing them away feels like the easiest thing to do in my eyes. Fandom is always doing it, they have always been doing it, so why NOW this is something so hard to do?

22) *blames Martin for all the parts of the story they hate*

As funny as the joke about Martin being responsible for the "incest ship" is, considering his track record, Miyazaki actually confirmed in the interview right after the first SoTE trailer that Martin did not have anything new to add to the DLC story! But then, just because he didn't turn in to add new lore for SoTE specifically, how could we tell that he didn't write these "plot twists" previously? For this, we need to dial back to when his contributions to the Elden Ring were discussed after base game's release!

(Start watching from 6:00 to 7:25)

“Elden Ring was going to take place in, let’s say the present of their game universe. But what they wanted me to write was what happened like 5,000 years before that,” he said. “So I went back and wrote a history of what happened 5,000 years before the current game, and who all the characters were and who was killing each other and what powers they had. They had these runes that were at the center of the game, and the rune got split into many pieces, and that’s what screwed up the world. I laid all that out.”

So, he wrote the base premise for the backstory - what happened and existed before the Shattering, and up until that point! So, how characters got corrupted, how their plans changed and what happened to them later etc was up to Miyazaki to create! Take the concept of the character - who, what power, what status - and put them through the arc and development! Not Martin wrote the events that unraveled after the Shattering AND unravel as we play the game! Miyazaki himself also confirms this, according to this ( x ) interview:

“So it was more up to us to interpret this and say, ‘how did they become such inhuman monsters? And how did the mad taint of the shattered shards of the Elden Ring and its power affect them?’ So that was our job to take these grand heroes and sort of misshape them and distort them into something they were not.”

"…if we get a chance to show Martin and if he gets a chance to see the game and see these characters, I think he might be a bit shocked. When he wrote them, he was really envisioning something a little bit more human, a little bit more traditional human drama and fantasy characters. So I hope he gets a kick out of that.”

I recommend reading the whole page, but this is the gist of it! So, not only what events we are following are Miyazaki's work, but also their fall from grace, their sins, their mistakes and everything you might hate ('you' mostly as in, people upset that Miquella was not as perfect and pure as you wanted) is ALLLLLL on him! YOU leave Martin OUT of this! we also all know he only writes hetero incest fsdhfdghsfdg

23) "SoTE contradicted the base game's lore [example that doesn't contradict it]"

This one is less focused than it may seem, because it is not just about Godwyn and Malenia! In fact, it is rarer about them as complaints about them mostly do the "they got abandoned" route that I've already ranted a lot about! god it feels so good to finally rant lol I've seen some instances of people JUST throwing the 'ohh my GoD this new info is SOOOOO contradictory to [thing]' and refusing to elaborate, pouting and playing victims of blinded fanboys when questioned, which is in itself very infuriating! Regardless of how you are frustrated with SoTE, how it screwed your expectations and preferences personally, you are a garbage critic if you just waste your emotions without any real argument to your point, there is no way to put it lightly! That being said, for this particular reason, it would be easier to address concrete examples that HAD some explaining behind them from the critical people! But, it NEEDED to be said!

Personally, I've stumbled into a couple of things, in which I managed to add my say! The first was a claim that the whole story of the base game was not supposed to happen because if Marika got driven by the impulse of revenge and despair, she was supposed to succumb to Frenzied Flame but she didn't! And this is NOT some groundbreaking discovery about how the story is allegedly fundamentally broken, but simply a huge overlooking of pre-existing information, if not confirmation bias! Frenzied Flame and Three Fingers are very interesting topic in general, that I've covered in a couple of lore posts already, but for the subject: whereas the sickness of Frenzied Flame, aka the 'become too sad and you will start to burn' illness, is the case in the Lands Between and started because of Shabriri's crime, the story of Marika and Midra's Manse logically happened before Shabriri! Abyssal Woods and Midra's Manse have the eyeballs that are evidence of being directly grasped by the Three Fingers as the only eyeball items, whereas the Lands Between has Shabriri Grapes as eyes scorched from within but being grasped by Three Fingers became not a staple but an exception (Vyke)! Marika was contacted by the Two Fingers, not Three Fingers, to have the power that she does. Even then, is not it logical to assume that even after Shabriri caused his curse on the Lands Between, a God would be immune, especially if the "counterpart" of the Three Fingers is their guide? Not to mention how Messmer did take a lot of burden off her by doing her wish for revenge by himself-

Alright, you got the point. It is very easy to logically conclude why there is no glaring contradiction at all, and you don't even need to dig deep into lore to find out why! This is the brightest case from my memory that is best described as 'if you WANT to believe that Fromsoft completely broke the story, you WILL find a backup claim for it'! But unfair criticism that doesn't address the possible counter-evidence is not the way to analyze! When you want to make a claim, you need to scan the overall volume of information for possible objections to your claim and deal with them! Explain why they do not work, or why they are not truly saying anything! Sometimes, as you deal with the potential counter-evidence, you find that there are things you cannot reliably argue against and it might make your initial claim appear less solid or lose validity altogether! And this is fine! As big as the temptation to "prove" something is, the true purpose of having a claim should be to make sure that it is valid all things considered!

Just because you are already too upset with the story and the writers to give it proper effort and analysis doesn't mean you can just toss a bold, easily debunked statement and expect to not have any objection! This is not in particular to the 'Frenzied Flame makes Marika's backstory impossible' person at all, but about a behavior in the fandom I've also noticed; where someone's response to the information that deconfirms their criticism is 'well, but I am already too hurt and disappointed to dig deep and analyze, so…' No, not how it works. You are making a claim about existing piece of writing and thus put skill of the writer up to scrutiny, not writing your own AU/headcanon, therefore be ready to deal with counter-evidence if there is any!

Another example off the top of my head was that existence of Gaius allegedly contradicted the pre-established lore about oppression of Albinaurics! I want to point out though that the person who originally made this claim was nice and never denied validity of the counter-arguments! But as for the subject, I will repeat that it is very easy to assume that there would be some double standards put in action! Like 'oh yeah Albinaurics are cringe, but this one is nice to me so he is an exception'! Or 'yeah we all hate Albinaurics, but this one is HELPING us in the Crusade against those spurned of Grace, he is paying the price for being an impure species himself, let's be nice to him guys :)' (🤡🤡🤡).

In this case things are easy to explain not through digging into information in the game further, but through putting into consideration how humans tend to work! Though Messmer, for one, has his more humane traits stated with how he respected the wishes of his Fire Knights when some of them protested against burning Rauh Ruins, and Gaius might be an extension of that sympathetic side of him! Opinion that saying Radahn was admired by the twins for his kindness contradicts the lore falls apart even EASIER; it is not hard to assume he maybe used to be kind! Miquella even specifically revived his younger version, and it is very telling!

All in all, the writers do not need to overexplain every single thing to prove that there is no contradiction or things make sense! Elden Ring is entirely written in such a way where by just digging deeper, connecting the dots or even applying your imagination and experiences you can easily explain why things work! I just want to really, REALLY accentuate it that before you cry 'bad writing!!!' or 'contradiction!!!', give it SOME extra thought! And if you are not willing to because of disappointment/weak attention span/anger/etc, then don't make the claim to BEGIN with! What is the point of making a claim when you are not in the right state of mind to make SURE it is valid? Bashing a story or a writer while willfully not being fair to them with your effort and research is something better reserved for private chats with the friends just to let it all out, but not for the public blog for all other fans to read and REACT at!

24) "If fans have to fill the gaps and think themselves it's a bad writing"

Sigh… This is relevant to the earlier addressed complaint about fans 'coping', and somewhat relevant to the complaint about 'they should have given more information', AND reverse complaint to how they've answered some questions in SoTE, I suppose. For starters, this argument could not be further from truth at all! Do you really, genuinely, want to say that instead of provoking you to think, to express creativity and curiosity, to apply your knowledge or experience for understanding, writers should have just spoon-fed you every single thinkable bit of information as if you are a toddler? For sure, the discussion about how writers treat reading comprehension of their audience cannot come without addressing the demographics that supposedly would benefit from "over-explanation", so I'll jump RIGHT into it, skipping through the normies:

As an autistic person, I do have my own problems with sometimes skipping through a subtext or an "obvious" clue in the writing, this is true, and maybe people who want to state this are also autistic, I can't know for sure. But.. do we REALLY want to have our intellectual abilities insulted, as a group? Accommodating to autistic people should come locally, like in teaching the society to be more patient with 'stupid' questions and explaining the 'obvious' social cues! It SHOULD be about society being better! It should NOT be about quality of fiction in videogames and movies and TV shows dropping! It should NOT be about writers sacrificing the amazing language of subtlety, nonverbal storytelling and speaking through assumption that our own experiences as human beings will fill in the gaps! We can understand subtexts and unspoken lore, even if it might be harder. When we cannot, autists that did understand the subtext explain it to us! When THEY cannot, there will always be the guy on Youtuber or elsewhere musing about what they liked or disliked in the writing, revealing the information that we might have missed, and we will go 'huh'. We can help ourselves and each other!

Instead of being mad at the writers for not giving more spoken information and evidence, let's place the pieces of the whole puzzle that we did find together to discover a full picture and teach others AND themselves to be patient instead of screaming "reeee media illiterate!!!" at every sneeze! I have insulted another autist's intellectual abilities over not reading the clue I managed to. I had MY intellectual abilities insulted by another autist over not reading the clue THEY managed to! We should strive to be better and kinder as society, AND we should have pride in the ability to do so and ourselves, instead of implying that complicated, subtle writing is "too hard" for our "tiny toddler brains"!

Aside of the general sentiment that the writing that provokes you to use your brain/heart/both to fully comprehend it and gives fuel for debates and discussion, I want to address specifically Miyazaki and how he approaches writing, and why he does so. I want to link the video by Zullie regarding the topic, too:

To paraphrase it: Miyazaki, in his youth, loved reading English novels, but because he didn't have as great knowledge of English language at the time, some words or even sentences evaded him and he had to use his own imagination to understand what might have happened in the parts he could not read! The experience of having general layout and understanding of the story, but details being missed here and there and left up to you to think about, is precisely what he wanted to emulate! You might guess "the words lost in translation" correctly, or you might end up with a completely different meaning than the actual one, but what matters is the fun of this process! To include YOU, an individual, into completing the story! Bloodborne was the first Fromsoft's story I've gotten into, and even before knowing this information I had the feeling like, 'ah, they've written the full story, but then dragged an eraser across random parts'… and so, the hunch was correct!

Miyazaki doesn't just lazily drop ingredients in your direction expecting you to cook anything from them and then praise it as though it was HIS brilliant recipe, that some writers WILL do to sorta take the credit for your creativity! Nor he just cooks the full meal and gives it to you. He removes some ingredient from it so you CAN eat it and enjoy it, but you are always tempted to add something! Something feels missing, but it is up to you WHAT spice you add to complete it! Yet this meal is coherent enough for you to have a hunch on whether you should add something sour, sweet or salty, it is not quite JUST anything! But if you don't think hard about it and add what YOU like, regardless of whether you think it fits the meal or not, the meal won't necessarily taste bad… There IS recipe that exists. He DID write the story. He just lets you choose your own experience!

^^^ It goes in line with how he creates the games; he stated they are not adding the difficulty levels so players can overcome the challenge in some way that suits THEM as a player. Whether you want to cheat, or to grind levels until you become a God, or to cleverly use the tools and items you are given, or to study every move until you dodge them all or whatever! There is no "right" way to beat these games, though we could conclude from levels designs and tools what was 'intended' way to beat them! A 'suggestion'! You might end up going just the 'intended' way, or you might not! You might just happen to guess the missing story bits 'correctly', but also not, and this is okay!

We are endlessly teased with this feeling that if we think just a bit harder we will discover that hidden "right" way, and we all want to believe that we did! Fandom has two extremes between people who DO believe in One True reading of the story and stomp out every alternative suggestion AND people that claim there is no story and you can do whatever and canon doesn't matter and doesn't exist and all. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and it is so frustrating, it is so torturous at the times… but also, so clever and beautiful.

This approach is why discussion about the meaning of Dark Souls and Bloodborne is STILL alive a decade later and even "apparent" lore questions constantly get revisited, and Elden Ring will meet the same fate! Every boss will be beaten but there is always a different way. Every lore question will be answered, but there is always a different answer. Isn't it much better than if we just cOnSuMeD cOnTeNt in a short time and forgot it all, waiting the next one?

25) *frankly unfair toxicity towards creators, down to racism against Japanese*

(Jeez.. I am REALLY paying a hard price by not saving the screenshots of the terrible takes I am referencing, aren't I. -_-" Everyone will just decide that I've made up a guy because a take like this sounds too awful to be real, doesn't it…..) Look- Some lines should NOT be crossed. Say all you want about the writing quality, but how DARE you to bring in this sort of anime fetishes into this discussion? I am just without proper words, and I will not tolerate this slander of Miyazaki! Everyone, EVERYONE knows…. that his fetishes are feet and dying in absurd ways.

sdfjfdhfdsh OKAY OKAY SORRY I HAD TO, but in any case! Did you guys miss the part where Miquella's ever-young body was a curse, was acknowledged as a curse, was a counterpart to Malenia ever decaying as inability to change at all, and something he transcended when he became a God? At NO point his curse was brought up as something quirky and attractive, at NO point Radahn or anyone was addressed as someone finding guilty attraction to him! We had one (1) guy suggested to do that, Mohg, and they confirmed that his behavior was result of enchantment, but even if it was not: without the new information, it already looked like a BAD thing. Like a HORROR thing, even! Miquella wanted Radahn to be there for him as a consort/king, by STATUS, that we know as much! Nothing is there to outright state any of 'that' brand of attraction! It can range from 'yeah they kind of pulled the dynasty-preserving incest thing, very authentic to medieval royal dynasties vibe' to 'it was innocent and not romantic or sexual in any manner, consort is just a status of the second person after a titular God in this setting that doesn't have to be a partner'. You know what is missing from this range? This being a "fetish" that you could flail around in that 'well what else to expect from jApAnEsE developers, you know jApAn has a problem with such things right??????' (🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡)

________________________________

*long, relieved exhale*

So..... yeah, I am done I suppose fhhfds I know I forewarned it as sort of super angry and rude rant, but in a way, it turned out to be more of a love letter to SoTE than a hate letter to a certain kind of fandomry that I just was not able to avoid..

It is funny how it turned out, as at first I've had strong negative reaction of shock, and Radahn consort reveal even soured the first days of playing this DLC for me, heh. That disappointment hadn't vaned yet.. I do not vigorously oppose weird, problematic ships of course, I still stand by what I said about creative freedom. But I guess I kinda did not want Miquella to have any "ship" in canon...? It is hard to explain why, since I do not insist that he is mentally a child too. Maybe I've fallen for the person he WANTED to be, a 'God' that 'loves everyone equally / no one', so him singling out someone disagreed with that "possessive" streak more than I disagreed with how random Radahn felt?

Even so, aside of this, I've been slowly understanding writers' decisions more and more! And those I did not understand I've found to be valid and not broken at all as well! But despite warming up to SoTE more and more with every day and becoming a fan, I was not able to avoid the "window" to VERY toxic and awful takes, some from very toxic PEOPLE, that was my (ex) mutual abundantly reblogging them and.. I guess when I've finally snapped about how strongly I disapproved of that behaviour and how it was all passive aggression all along, my very only inhibitor was just- *snaps fingers*

Moral of the story: if something rubs you a very wrong way, do not keep it in and ADDRESS it. Because if you hope that the alert factor will go on its own, all you'll end with is telling each other very unpleasant things. Pent up aggression ALWAYS breaks through.

In this case, I just feel relieved after having finally written all these thoughts down SOMEwhere. They were eating me from inside, reducing my HP by randomly appearing in my brain even when I was busy and I just could not help but rotate them. Venting is good and healthy. I have some bad troubles with both mental and physical health these days, but at least now there is one LESS thing to siphon my energy away. 🛏️

[joedirtymadre]

Anniversary

This one is ok, I think it’s pretty cute. (SENKU X READER) Other than that still taking requests!

“Hey (Y/N)! How’s it going?” Yuzuriha called out. “Hi Yuzuriha, and nothing much, just tending the garden. I planted some ginger and green onions a while back. Senku really likes them in his ramen so I was hoping to surprise him for our anniversary,” I explained. “Oooh well they look nice! And wow has it really been a year already? That’s so exciting! I’ll make you a cute dress for the special day!” Yuzuriha said, with determination. “You don’t have to! Plus it’s tomorrow! I’d feel bad for putting an extra project on top of everything else you have to do,” I explained. “No, trust me I got this!” Yuzuriha yelled as she ran away, probably heading to begin creating it. I smiled at her enthusiasm and continued tending the crops.

“Hey (Y/N),” I heard Senku call out. “What’s up?” I asked as I quickly stood up and sped walk over. Don’t want him finding out what I’ve been growing in my spare time. “I’m setting up a team to go investigate the caves past the forests,” he explained. “Ok, so who are you planning on taking?” I asked. “Well I need a small team, so probably Chrome, Kohaku, Magma, the big oaf, and Ukyo. Just wanted to give you a head’s up cause it’s a long journey, so we’ll probably be there the rest of the week,” he explained nonchalantly. “Oh… well when were you planning on heading out?” I asked nervously. “Tomorrow, duh,” he said. “Oh… umm… alright then. I guess the caves might have valuable supplies,” I mumbled. “Yeah, that’s why we’re heading out at the crack of dawn,” he smiled. “Yeah ok… but Senku, have you forgotten anything? Anything… special?” I asked, hoping he didn’t. “No? Why do you ask? Why are you acting all weird all of a sudden?” He frowned. “No reason! Just… no reason. Hope you have a safe trip, I’ll be waiting for your return,” I said softly and began walking towards my hut.

Senku’s POV

That was strange… (Y/N)’s never acted like that before. Am I forgetting something? Her birthday? No… or maybe… “Hey Senku! Where did (Y/N) go?” Yuzuriha called out and she and Suika came over with a basket of flowers. “Yeah! We wanted to know if she likes any of the flowers we picked out,” Suika smiled. “Flowers? For what?” I asked, confused. “For your versary!” Suika cheered. “Anniversary,” Yuzuriha corrected. I froze. Anniversary? She’s been keeping track? Oh god- “You forgot,” Yuzuriha said with a dark aura around her. “N-No what gave you that idea?” I scoffed, trying to keep the act up. “Yo Senku! We’re still heading out tomorrow right?” Chrome called out, with Gen and Kohaku behind him. “You idiot…” I mumbled, feeling Yuzuriha’s aura darken. “You know… for a genius you sure act like an idiot,” Yuzuriha said as she placed a tight grip on my shoulder.

“What’s going on? And why does Yuzuriha have a black aura around her?” Gen asked. “Our dear old Senku, forgot his anniversary date,” Yuzuriha explained. “Anniversary?” Chrome asked. “Yes, an anniversary can mean many things, like a wedding, or when a country was established. In this case it’s celebrating the day our beautiful (Y/N) and evil scientist started dating,” Gen explained. “Thanks for making me sound like an even bigger asshole,” I sighed. “I mean, you did forget a special date,” Kohaku said. “Is that why (Y/N) shut herself in her hut?” Nikki asked as she walked up. “Man, how are you gonna dig yourself out of this one, Senku?” Gen smirked. “And you told her about the plan of going to the mountains!” Chrome groaned. “You screwed up big time,” Kohaku frowned. “I know, I know. But luckily for me, I know how to make up for it,” I smirked, and quickly began telling everyone a plan.

The Next Day

Your POV

I woke up, and quickly began changing. I walked out and noticed it was late morning, “Senku and everyone else has probably left already,” I sighed. I walked over to my garden and began harvesting the vegetables that I planted. “Just because Senku’s not here, doesn’t mean I can’t have a delicious bowl of ramen,” I said softly. “Hey (Y/N)!” I turned once I heard Suika’s voice. “Oh, hi Suika. How are you?” I smiled. “I’m good, but can you help me with something?” She asked. “Sure!” I smiled. She quickly led me to the main building, I walked in and found Ruri weaving flowers together. “Oh wow, are you making floral crowns?” I asked, as I sat down next to her and Suika followed. “Yep! We’re celebrating today! So we want to make floral crowns for whoever would like one,” Ruri smiled. “Oh wow! Who are we celebrating today? Is it somebody’s birthday?” I asked, and began grabbing some flowers to behind weaving. “It’s a secret! But this is someone who everyone loves, that’s the hint,” Suika said. “Hmm… ok then! How many should we make?” I asked. “As many as you can, the whole village may want one,” Ruri explained. I nodded and the three of us began to work.

“Wow (Y/N), you quite…fast,” Ruri said in shock. “Yeah like Yuzuriha!” Suika added. “Haha, well I used to help her on her projects a lot. So I guess I learned how to keep up,” I smiled. “I see, well why don’t you wear this one? I think it suits you best,” Ruri said as she handed me a beautiful crown with only hydrangea flowers. “Oh wow, these are my favorite!” I smiled, as I placed the crown on. “Well I’ll see you guys later! Since we’re all done here,” I smiled and quickly got up, but was stopped by Suika. “H-Hold on (Y/N)! I think Gen told me that he wanted your help too!” Suika stumbled as she stopped me. “Really, well alright then. I’ll head over to him right now,” I smiled. “I’ll go with you!” Suika said as she rushed to follow me.

I walked towards Gen, but Suika rushed over quicker. I watched as Suika whispered something to him in a panic, before the two looked over towards me. “Uhh… do you not need my help Gen?” I asked, confused by the looks on their faces. “No! No, dear (Y/N). Just Suika reminding me of the project I needed help on,” he smiled. “Ok, so what’s the project?” I asked. “Just need some help with… umm… with working on my makeup?!” He said, or more like questioned? “Uhh, your makeup?” I stared blankly. “Yes! It’s just that a true mentalist needs to be able to lay-pay both roles successfully! And ever since we’ve been stuck in the Stone Age I’ve had trouble remembering how to use the products Senku has created for Kohaku,” Gen sighed. “Oh, well no problem…” I said slowly. “Perfect!” He smiled and guided me towards the building Ruri was in again. “Oh hi (Y/N), welcome back,” Ruri smiled. “Hi again…” I laughed awkwardly. “Alright (Y/N) here are the products, now make me feminine,” Gen smiled. “Ok,” I said, determined.

I kept trying to do Gen’s eyeliner with black ink, but he kept moving… “Gen… if you move one more time I swear I’m gonna knock you asleep. And then there’ll be no issue of you moving,” I smiled darkly. “Cary-say! A-Alright, I won’t move anymore,” he said nervously. “Perfect,” I grinned. 5 minutes later and we’re done. “Ta-da!” I said as I showed Ruri and Suika the product of 30 minutes. “Wow! Gen looks so pretty!” Suika said. “She’s right, the makeup really helped his feminine features show,” Ruri clapped in fascination. “Hmmm… I have an idea, why don’t I do your makeup (Y/N)? You know, as practice,” he explained. “Uhh.. I think I-“ I was quickly interrupted. “Oh please, dear (Y/N). I’d appreciate your upport-say,” he begged. I sighed and nodded, sometimes it’s tough being a people pleaser…

After an hour of Gen doing my makeup he was finally done. “Oh my gosh, (Y/N) you look so beautiful!” Suika exclaimed. “Wow! You look amazing!” Ruri smiled. “Haha, thanks. I haven’t really worn makeup, even before the blast,” I smiled softly. “Well, I think that’s all the help we need. You look extremely ired-tay, so go rest up early today!” Gen exclaimed as he pushed me towards the door. “O-Oh, ok,” I stuttered and was pushed out of the building, I sighed and walked towards my hut, I guess he’s right. It’s not like I had any other plans… I walked towards my small home and saw Ginro carrying a large bowl of paint? “Oh Ginro need some-!” I was cut off by Ginro tripping, leading to the paint coat my clothing. “Oh (Y/N)! I’m so sorry! It was so heavy! Please don’t tell anyone!” He said as he ran off. “Alright then…” I sighed and headed home to change my clothing.

I walked to my small home, and walked in to see something on my bed. “What’s this?” I asked myself, and walked closer to realize it was the dress! “Oh wow, Yuzuriha really outdid herself!” I said in astonishment. “Well I’d hate to wear it because I’m not celebrating my anniversary, but at the same time it’d be a shame to let all her hard work go to waste!” I smiled and quickly changed. It was an all white dress, with the resemblance of a white lily. I placed the dress on a look into the small mirror Senku made and took steps back to see myself in the small frame. “I look like a flower, and Gen really did an incredible job with the makeup,” I smiled. I spun around like a little girl, wearing a dress for the first time. I continued laughing and spinning until I heard a knock on my door. “I wonder who that is?” I asked myself as I walked over and slowly opened the door to Gen. “Oh wow, Yuzuriha really created an amazing dress,” Gen smiled softly. “Hi Gen, how can I help you?” I asked. “Well I was sent to retrieve you mi’lady,” Gen said, causing me to tilt my head in confusion. He held out his hand and I took it leading to him pulling me outside.

“Gen? Where are we going?” I asked him, as he led me deeper into the forest. “You’ll see soon enough,” he said. We continued walking and I saw a few lights leading to an open area. We walked closer and saw a flower field, with everyone eating, dancing, and playing together. “(Y/N)!” Suika said as she ran up. “You look like a flower!” She grinned. “Thank you,” I smiled. “Gen what is all of this, who did this?” I asked. “Why don't you find out for yourself? He’s waiting for you,” he said and directed me towards the middle of the flower field. I followed his direction and found, “Senku?!” I called out. “Senku, what are you doing here?” I said when I ran up to him. “What do you mean? It’s our anniversary, and I wanted to celebrate my flower,” he said, while wrinkling his face after saying flower. “Sorry, I know that was pretty cheesy, but I know how much you love your flowers. I hope you like the crown I made… Well, Yuzuriha gave up trying to teach me and took over,” he chuckled. “It’s beautiful, and the dress she made too! Oh Senku I’m so happy you’re here, but- Senku I didn’t make you your gift,” I said, worriedly. “It’s fine, just having you deal with me is enough,” he said. “Now come here, let’s dance. I know how much you like to,” Senku said. “Really?! Ok let’s go!” I smiled.

Finally the night came to an end. Everyone except Senku and I congratulated us and eventually took off. “Now that the riff-raff went to bed. Follow me,” he said. He took me to another clearing with a giant view of the stars. “Oh wow!” I said as I stared at the stars. “Senku, it's beautiful,” I smiled. “Yeah, glad you like it. I thought you would,” he smiled. Senku brought me out of my sky gazing and pulled me into a hug. “You know I love you, right (Y/N)?” He asked. “Yeah I know…” I said and pulled him into a kiss. We pulled away and stared into each other’s eyes. “Just promise me you won’t forget our anniversary next year,” I laughed. “Ha, so I guess I couldn’t play it off as a surprise huh?” He asked, while scratching the back of his head. “Nope!” I smiled. “Man… that damn mentalist gave it away I bet,” he chuckled. “Yep, but you did make it up at least. This was an amazing day,” I said and pulled him into another kiss. “You know… that does look like a wedding dress. I wonder how you’d look in a real one?” He asked. “Senku? The brilliant scientist suggesting marriage?” I teased. “Well a brilliant scientist needs a jack of all trades by his side,” He said and pulled me in for another kiss.

[dreamwatch]

Breaking The Law

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest

Day #1 - Prompt: Firsts | Word Count: 999 | Rating: T | CW: None | POV: Eddie | Tags: school shenanigans, Eddie is a little shit, first band name + first gig, two for the price of one! | AO3

****

“Mr Munson, Mr Williams, my office. Now!”

It’s not that he’s not used to being called out in the middle of the hallways of Hawkins Middle School; Eddie’s academic career has not been without drama. But the principal calling him out? That’s not normal. And here’s the thing: he hasn’t done shit wrong lately. The talent show is in a week, and he’s not doing anything to jeapordise that. Wayne’s taking the evening off work and everything. His nose has never been cleaner.

He and Jeff share a look before following Principal McKenna into her office. They’re both clueless, and Jeff is about as cleancut as they come. 

She slaps a piece of paper on to her desk. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Uh,” Eddie starts, but he’s so lost Jeff butts in.

“It’s the sign up sheet for the talent show, ma’am.”

“I’m aware Jeffrey, but I want to know what is the meaning of this.” She points to their entry.

“That’s us,” Eddie grins.

The old bitch glares at him; he wasn’t even being smart-assed! 

“I will not have students performing under this name in this school, do you understand?”

“What’s wrong with the name?” asks Eddie innocently.

“Your band is called Jock Itch, Edward. That’s entirely inapropriate. I will not have that on our posters and I am not announcing students on stage to…” she gestures furiously to the sign up sheet, “that. You have until noon tomorrow to change it, that’s when the posters are printed. If you don’t change it, you’re not playing.”

“What?!” wails Eddie. “That’s not fair!”

“Don’t push me, Mr Munson.” She gives them both another firm stare. “And I want to know what song you’re performing. It needs my approval. You’re dismissed.”

Eddie kicks just about everything he can find all the way back to Jeff’s house, Matt and Shawn straggling behind them.

“It’s so fucking unfair, man. Bitch hates me.”

“So we’ll change the name, it’s not that big a deal,” says Matt. “It’s just a name.”

Eddie whirls around to face him, continuing to walk backwards up the hill. “It’s a good name! Fuck jocks, man, who cares about offending them.”

“Well, Mrs McKenna clearly,” adds Shawn.

They spend the rest of the afternoon on the floor of Jeff’s garage scribbling away in notebooks, the ocassional shout of a potential name the only thing breaking the silence.

“What about Blood Monkey?” offers Shawn.

“Hate it,” replies Eddie.

“Blood Sacrifice?” Matt. Jesus.

Jeff cuts him a look. “She didn’t like Jock Itch, dude, I don’t think she’s going to like Blood Sacrifice.”

“Blood—”

“Nothing with blood!” shouts Eddie. “Okay, no one say anything for ten minutes. Just write names and then we’ll share, okay?”

The sound of scribbling and scratching, pens and pencils on paper, is interspersed with quiet mutterings while they all concentrate. Eddie doesn’t even work this hard in class. 

Jeff slaps his pen down. “Okay, what have we got?”

They huddle together, notebooks and scraps of paper sprawled out on the floor. Eddie’s eyes flick up and down the pages. 

Steel Funeral

Evil Primordial

Dark Cadaver

Astral Cannibal (Shawn’s suggestion, honestly Eddie’s getting more and more worried about that dude by the day)

Lords of Hate (Not bad)

Demonic Candle

Fucking hell.

Eddie runs his hands up and down his face because he needs to do something to stop himself from going off half-cocked. He takes a breath.

“Look, these are… I mean, some of them are okay, but we can’t use these. These are way worse than Jock Itch.” He’s handing notebooks back when he sees it, in Jeff’s neat handwriting. 

Corroded Coffin. 

“I like that one.”

Jeff smiles shyly. “Thanks man.” He shrugs sadly. “Shame we can’t use it.”

They all deflate because he’s right, there’s no way that’s getting past McKenna. But Eddie is a godamn genius, if he does say so himself.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” He grins at his brothers in arms. “I think we have a name.”

***

“The Tigers of Roane County? That’s your name?” Principal McKenna raises an over-plucked eyebrow as she stares at the slip of paper Eddie hands over.  She looks at them sceptically, her eyes on Eddie just a little bit longer.

Eddie rocks on his heels. “Yeah, well, you know. It’s like, rock and roll but also ‘Go Tigers’ right? Like, school pride?” He can feel Jeff’s eyes boring into him, they’re probably on stalks, but he can’t look.

“Fine,” she says on a sigh. “And song?”

“Make Your Own Kind Of Music.”

She leans back, hand to her chest. “Oh gosh, I love that song!” And then she’s writing their band name on the sheet and adding the song title and they’re on the bill. 

Fucking. Yes!

On the night Wayne gives him a hug and wishes him luck, and it’s the best feeling in the world. They head backstage, which is now full of cheerleaders and like, what the fuck? How is that a talent? It’s just shit they do for school. But then some cute kid with pigtails is waving pom poms and wishing him luck and he’s so tongue tied he can’t even reply to her. He can feel the blush all the way to his toes.

And then they’re next.

They huddle together. “Okay,” begins Eddie. “Remember. No matter what happens, stick to the plan. We’re fucking awesome and one day that’s gonna be Madison Square Garden. Got it?”

“Got it!” they reply.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen. We have a rock and roll band for you now. Please give a round of applause for The Tigers of Roane County.”

They walk out onto the stage, Eddie sweating buckets; it’s different when there’s a room full of people. But then he sees Wayne. “You’ve got this,” he mouths at Eddie. And he has.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are Corroded Coffin, and this is Breaking The Law!”

Principal McKenna is a problem for later.