#posts I shouldn't have made

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

Not to focus overly on my Rookanis feels, but I love the dialogue cutscene where Lucanis and Davrin are drinking together, sharing stories, and invite Rook to sit with them, for so many reasons.

I mean, I love the dialogue cutscene in general and both the guys in it. The mood is great. The dialogue is just so damn funny. It's a friendly dick measuring contest between our favourite boys. After the initial antagonism and tension, they've become friends. There are bizarre lore drops. The stories are entertaining and frankly wtf? A big writhing ball of angry nugs? Created through blood magic? The stuff of nightmares! I wish I could see Lucanis deal with that. I wish I could see Davrin figure out the big heap of tentacles. I love the way the guys are just a little tipsy in a cute way. Lucanis talks a little too loud in comparison with what we're used to. Davrin is starting to have trouble articulating. The "Of course we're getting along. We're PROFESSIONALS," as Lucanis raises his cup a little towards Davrin always cracks me up. Also, Lucanis, are you drinking wine from a coffee cup? The way they both invite Rook to stay and participate. The prospect of slightly drunk cooking and snacking and sharing stories. All in all, it's a beautiful scene that makes me smile every time.

But let me also yap about Lucanis for a moment. (Of course you will let me. It's not like you can stop me. No one can stop me. Not even me.) I want to focus on how Lucanis interacts with Rook in this scene.

It's obvious he's let himself relax a little. He's a bit intoxicated. Clearly he's having fun. He smiles easily and flutters his eyelashes at Rook. When you choose the dialogue option that mentions ruining Solas' ritual, Lucanis insists that Rook tells the story. "[Neve and Harding] don't tell it the way you would," he says, encouraging Rook to talk about something, from what he says, he seems to have already heard, because he wants to hear them tell it.

Then he decides he'll cook something while they chat, but he emphasizes that he will only do so "if Rook's staying," nudging them further. It couldn't be more clear that he wants them there and that he enjoys their company.

I feel like I don't see enough people feral about it, because come on, he's so sweet in this scene. He obviously wants Rook around and their presence makes him happy.

And, yeah, I know this scene also happens with "just" friendly Rook. The thing is, I don't give a fuck. I don't think it diminishes the interaction in any way. The context matters. It's sweet with friendly Rook and even sweeter when they're more. Also, I played Lucanis' romance first, and I did not know that. What I saw in this scene during that first playthrough was the man absolutely delighted by Rook's company, repeatedly and enthusiastically asking them to stay and spend time with him, and it made my day. Still does.

When I keep babbling about how much I love Lucanis' romance, it's not just about all the hearts I get to click to see where they lead or the beautiful post-Tearstone love scene, it's also interactions like this where you see how much he wants Rook to be there, all the more or less subtle signs of affection (and yes, also friendship, because that goes hand in hand) that happen throughout the whole game.

[burningcheese-merchant]

I think more ppl need to see this

Yeah for real lol. That's exactly what it is with him. Not to toot my own horn too much but I believe this post I made ages ago hits the nail on the head haha

"I'm bored" is... technically true. In a sense. Personally, I think it's a very simple and vague allusion to the real problem. That thin sheet of snow coating a massive, freezing cold iceberg. Just barely obscuring it from proper view.

imo it's been a bit disappointing seeing people take to extremes with Burning Spice's character. I've seen people either woobify him, downplay or excuse his actions by saying "he's not evil! He's hurting! He's depressed! He doesn't hate people, he's lashing out because he can't internalize his pain anymore!", or just demand he be put to death immediately on sight without trial. You can like a morally repulsive character and sympathize with their issues while also acknowledging that they're repulsive and need to face justice for their crimes. Burning Spice is one of my favorite characters, I love everything about him, he's sexy as fuck, I understand why he's the way he is, I'm still happy to see his ass beat because he's a piece of shit and he deserves it lol.

Not to throw shade at "simpler" villains ofc. I love me some assholes that are assholes just because they can be. Like Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2. But Burning Spice isn't Jack Horner and he honestly shouldn't be. The deeper, sadder, more complex reasons governing his actions suit him better than just "I'm bored fuck this shit" and nothing else ykwim

and of course, he's still wrong. Burning Spice's view of the world is wrong. Does a book begin just to end? Does a song play just to finish in a few minutes' time? No. They begin so that we may read, listen, and enjoy. So that they may make us laugh, or have us shake our heads in disappointment, or tell us some hidden truth. Make our days and lives a little more interesting than they were before. Life is beautiful BECAUSE it is fleeting. Born, grow, wither, born, grow, wither. Yes, that's how it goes. But there's so much more to those things than just what we can gather from those three words. Every day is different. Though the sun rises every morning without fail, it's never quite the same color, is it? Always a bit of a different shade of yellow, orange, red, bleeding into the sky a little differently each time. There are so many things to see and do, games to play, people to meet and love and cherish. Maybe some of those things and those people won't be here someday but that doesn't mean their existence never meant anything. We are not born to die, we are born to live. We must die for those who are to live, and live for those who have died. Regardless, we must never lose sight of the intrinsic value of all that surrounds us. Burning Spice very much did. Underneath his bitterness and anger and (not unfounded, to be fair) lamentation for the unstoppable cycle of life and death is a deep-rooted selfishness and fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation for life and other people. In the face of despair, he gave in and chose evil. He was and is wrong for doing so, regardless of why he did it. He could've stepped down. He could've just admitted he didn't have what it took to be the Herald of Change. Hell, if he really hates being alive so much, he would've committed suicide a LONG time ago. But he never did any of that; instead he chose to inflict an equal or greater suffering on everything and everyone else, even the undeserving. And for that he MUST pay. And Golden Cheese, with her personality and her experiences and the wisdom she came to attain when faced with the exact same despair as Burning Spice, is exactly the right person to make him do that

[overdressedcarp]

I've been thinking for a while about the optional Magatama dialogue in The Cosmic Turnabout where you can prompt Fulbright about what's bothering him, and for both of the wrong answers, he acts like you got it right, and actively leans into the bit. For example, if you suggest that he's exhausted by life, he agrees and claims he's thinking about quitting his job and going to space. (Honestly, mood.)

(AA 5-4 and 5-5 spoilers below the cut)

It's a good line on its own: funny, and definitely relatable. With 5-5's context, though, it brushes up against a deep-seated desire to disappear, to run away and start over, something the Phantom hasn't been at liberty to do in years. He's shackled to a seven-year-old assignment, strangled by loose ends that he can't tie off. For maybe the first time in his life, he has to wake up every day and live with the effects of his actions, made blisteringly real in the form of the people he hurt.

(Do I think he's walking around harboring deep, profound remorse for UR-1? Not really, no. But the self-protective lie of "my choices don't matter because I'm not really a person" only goes so far when you're clocking into work every day to hang out with the guy who's on death row because of you, who's grieving because of you, and suddenly you're the only person he trusts to hear about the monster that ruined his life, and you planned for this but you didn't plan for this and honestly at that point I'd want to quit my job and throw myself into the vast expanse of space, too.)

Also worth noting, during this entire scene, any time Fulbright goes to answer a question or make an assertion about himself, the tinted glasses go up like a shield. Eyes hidden, hand obscuring the lower half of his face. It's something he does pretty regularly throughout the game, but it's egregious here. My man is on the defensive and he's giving absolutely zero ground.

But the big thing for me is the other "wrong" option, where if you claim that Fulbright is troubled by love, the Phantom's knee-jerk "yes, and," response is to tell a story about a carp named Love who ate a bunch of goldfish because he put them all in the same tank.

In the moment it's supposed to be absurd and comical and one more example of how hapless this guy is, but in retrospect, it's kind of telling that when the Phantom tries to conceptualize love in relation to himself, the first piece of Fulbright-flavored bullshit that comes to mind is about a creature that brings pain and death through mere proximity, not out of malice, but out of nature. As though, subconsciously, he's fixated on the notion of a foreign element that's been dropped into an otherwise peaceful space. A fish that seems like it belongs there until it devours the others.

He really could have said anything—he could have made up a story about a bad breakup, or a really sad movie, or a family member who died. He could have jumped to talking about Blackquill, and how he's concerned for his emotional state given the nature of the current case. But instead, his mind instinctively gravitates to a Love that consumes everything around it: a Love defined by its capacity for violence. There was never a world where the carp could exist alongside the goldfish without hurting them.

And idk. I feel like if he wasn't feeling some kind of way about that, then it wouldn't be bleeding into his Olympic-level improv gymnastics routine to convince Phoenix that he doesn't have any secrets and you can put the supernatural lie detector away now, thanks.

[flowerful-doodles]

Close enough, welcome back Sunset

[buckysbarnes]

JOE KEERY as STEVE HARRINGTON “dear billy” 4.04 • stranger things

[coquelicoq]

it's about...longevity? stability? it's about natsume believing he'll be somewhere long enough to plant flowers and see them bloom. it's about him taking touko seriously when she asks him to tell her what flowers he wants to plant. it's about making something with his own hands, building a future with the fujiwaras. it's about him repairing a rundown home for someone else, restoring it because it's beloved to them, because it's the home of someone they love. it's about him seeing touko's joy and thinking about the youkai saying we'd like to look upon her happy face forever. it's about the box garden making him think of the fujiwaras' garden and his parents' garden, about the flowers being both the memory of flowers that bloomed there before, and the flowers that he and the youkai planted earlier that day. it's about him waking up in both worlds with sensei. it's about touko finding the petal in his hair. it's about him feeling how he falls short and the youkai saying, but you have such gentle hands...

[vee-is-a-clown]

Ok you know what makes me angry? Why is Allura so mature and humble? She's a daddy's girl only child princess who was set to inherit a flourishing kingdom. Sure, she's well educated and probably elegant and graceful and tactful because that's how she was raised to act for diplomatic reasons but she was also probably spoiled throughout her adolescence. She probably got whatever she wanted whenever she wanted because her family had the resources to give it to her. Who's to say she isn't a spoiled brat who can otherwise act kind and approachable? Even if she isn't a brat, she was still handed her life on a silver platter. She has to learn how to operate and be self sufficient.

When she gets out of that pod, she should be scared. She should be angry. And she deserves to be so. Her father that she relied on for just about everything shoved her into a sleeping pod and suddenly she's awoken by someone who isn't him. Logically, that means he lost. She should be kicking and screaming. She should be having the worst panic attack ever. She should be mourning everyone and everything she's ever known. She should be mourning the status quo that will never again be maintained. She should be mourning the future that can never come to fruition.

She has to figure out life without any system or technology that she's ever relied on. Coran doesn't know how to fix and maintain everything. She's like one of those people that wake up from 10+ year comas and don't understand modern technology. She is my dad who has had the same flip phone since forever and now must figure out how to use a phone with a touch screen.

Every luxury she had as a princess is gone. The castle chef who knew exactly how she liked her food. Her mother's ladies in waiting who told her the castle gossip. Her own ladies in waiting who'd sneak out to festivals and other trivial things with her. The cleaners that arranged her room exactly as she liked it. HER MOM. I don't care if she was a daddy's girl, she still has got to miss her mom.

I feel like she should've had more outbursts. Seeing Keith in the red paladin armor should've made her cry. In fact, all of them should have. The new paladins in their armor is a symbol of a new era- an era without the people she loves. She deserves to scream at the top of her lungs and lock herself in her room and trash something. She should be yelling that life isn't fair. She should be angry. She should be so angry.

I don't care if she's trying to hold it together for the paladins in the show. She's holding together too well. She needs more moments of instability. She needs to grieve. She needs to be tired. She needs to be imperfect.

[khaire-traveler]

Honestly, I'd love to write a respectful retelling of the Hermes and Crocus myth someday, as well as the Hyacinthus and Apollo one. Those myths just connect strongly with me, personally, for some reason, and I have a deep love for them. The thing that often stops me is the overall negative perception of retellings in the HelPol community. Some people get rabid over them. ☠️ I fear nothing I write, regardless of how meticulously I try to write it, would ever be good enough for the wider community, and I'm sure I'm not the only writer in HelPol who avoids writing retellings due to this. I would do my best to be respectful to the original culture, and yet, still, it likely would never be enough. I'm kinda just complaining lol, but I feel like people hate these sorts of things so viscerally within the community that even when a retelling has a genuinely interesting story to tell (Hadestown, as an example), they will not only ignore it but will actively despise it. It's discouraging. It stops actual worshippers from creating myth-based retellings, and in my opinion, that's a problem. Many people are upset that worshippers don't create retellings, then create an incredibly hostile space for such things to be created. If you want more content about the gods from worshippers, create a space that welcomes such things. This isn't to say feedback shouldn't be welcome; it's just to say that hating all retellings with such a fierce passion also prevents retellings from actual worshippers being written.

[breakteeth]

I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but the fact that everyone assumes at surface level, that Dennis is the most manipulative of the gang proves, to me at least, that he is the least manipulative of them all. It's just because the others are much better at hiding it with calculated fawning and weaponized incompetence.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I know the problem is that I'm still on twitter but I can't take stupid yunmeng shuangjie discourse anymore. Someone will be like "it's so mean of wwx to swear to jc that they'd be brothers in the next life and would always be by each other's side and then completely drop him the moment he found someone new" and then someone else will go "actually wwx has a completely valid reason to never want to be around jc again because jc sucks and is evil and tortures people for fun" and the whole time the central premise everyone agrees on is that wwx apparently does not care for jc at all and I'm like. Did we read the same book.

[teh-nos]

okay, so the thing with wishing we could kudos every chapter of a fic.

i get it, we all want to hit the little like button more than once, it's the easiest way to express our approval/enjoyment/gratitude. i am going to address this to a generic 'you' (hello Y/N!) and assume that 'you' has either never posted fic to ao3 or hasn't posted both oneshots and multichapter works.

hits, kudos, comments, bookmarks. every marker of popularity (which many will interpret as quality) on ao3 is inadvertantly weighted in favour of works with more chapters. no, not longer necessarily, but with more chapters. go and sort a few fandoms by any of those stats and you'll probably be able to spot this trend in action right away.

oneshots are only at the top of a tag (by the default date sorting) once, and even if you re-read it you can only leave one kudos on it.

a multichapter can stay near the top of the update-sorted results for months if you time your chapter drops right, and of course every time someone comes back for the next chapter that's another hit, and being seen more it is more likely to end up with more kudos. you can still only leave one per work, though, which limits the effects to some extent. multichapter works still tend to overall outperform oneshots on stats, and the longer they are the more likely that becomes, but you'll still usually see a couple of oneshots on the first page if you sort that list by kudos.

and a lot of people (percentage unknown) do sort by kudos (or some other stat) and works at the top of 'by kudos' will thus attract more readers and more kudos. so there's an incentive to get as many kudos as you can on your fic, and if cutting it up into 250 chapters will help... well it already does, and that's had an effect whether writers will admit to dragging fics out a bit on purpose or not, but imagine if that effect were to become orders of magnitude more intense.

even if you personally prefer longer fics cut into fairly short chapters, you probably don't want to get your 150k epic in chapters of only a 100-300 words, do you? you don't want the oneshot writers to just give up when every page, no matter how they're sorted, is full of 5000-chapter works to the point that readers now riot when asked to read a whole 2000 words in one go. your fave author is now feeling insecure because chapter 12 didn't get as many kudos as the last one did.

and this is why ao3 will never let you leave kudos on every chapter. they're aware that the site already incentivises chaptering works and doing that more than you otherwise might. so you're just going to have to learn to put an emoji heart in the comment box.

[iidakki]

enkiii he's so cunty

[hacash]

I really wish more schools would teach that elections are, fundamentally, a mathematics problem. and I understand why we don't like to look at it like that because that's a horrible, horrible way to look at the world - far easier to look at voting as a hero's journey, grabbing your sword and standing up against the system, than doing an equation with peoples' lives - but unfortunately that's what democracy is. picking the least shit option not for your own edification, but because if you don’t the more shit option will get in.

like, I can't blame anyone for being mad at a particular party for treating a certain group of people awfully, that just means you have moral standards, but it's a basic fact that before every election you have to do a little maths problem in your head. and for this election cycle that problem looks a little like 'X party causes 100 units worth of harm vs Y party causes 5000 units amount of harm; oh, and either X or Y will win the election regardless of my abstention; sacrificing my vote with abstention or a third party is, sadly, a fantasy for kids; so what am I prepared to do that will result in the least harm done.’

like. that's how it works. it sucks. I get it. I don't know a single country with a voting system that works perfectly. I don’t know of a single example in human history where they got a perfect voting system. there's a reason why democracy is known as being the least bad option out there. it's still the option you need to preserve and engage in.

[takaraphoenix]

I truly don't understand the writing on Stiles and Lydia's relationship in the show though. It feels like two different writers are playing hot potato with it, one writer hates it and the other loves it.

Seasons 1 and 2 really set them up. From Stiles' one-sided infatuation, they built a genuine friendship up, he got to know the real her and he was the one person who was actually there for her. They even dated briefly.

But then the season 2 finaly reunited Lydia and Jackson in an epic kiss and made Stiles actually watch that, stomping out the ship quick and dirty and you'd think okay, so next season we go back to Jackson/Lydia.

But then Colton leaves the show and Jackson is written off and you would think that they could build up on the momentum from season 1 and 2 and further the romantic relationship between Stiles and Lydia. You would think that, but it doesn't happen. Instead, the show decides on Aiden/Lydia and on setting up Stiles/Cora.

But then the potato goes back to the shipper and despite both those happening, Stiles and Lydia share that really stupidly forced panic-attack stopping kiss (that's not how you stop a panic attack. Why would Lydia think that). So you think oh, okay, maybe Aiden was just the rebound, maybe the thing with Stiles and Cora won't happen after all, maybe we are actually heading toward Stiles and Lydia.

But then we head into 3B and Aiden/Lydia is still a thing and even though Cora was written out of the show, Stiles gets to kiss a random girl and then Malia enters the plot and they have whatever they did in Eichen House (which, I do mean 'whatever', because Dylan says they did not have sex, while Shelley says they did have sex. So it's Schrödinger's Smut Scene).

But then during the final stage of the possession, it's all Lydia being there for Stiles, Stiles leaning on her, Lydia finding comfort in Stiles when Aiden dies. And you'd think oh, okay, but surely this time they will actually build out the romantic potential of this ship.

...But then season 4 starts and Stiles and Malia are fully a couple and quite honestly, I lost interest in being ping-bonged around on this now four season spanning will they won't they. And Parrish is around the corner too.

It's just honestly so frustrating that they keep building up momentum for the ship in every second half of a (half-)season, just to hard cut to the next season where the ship doesn't happen and instead other ships are happening. It truly does feel like half of it is written by someone who wants them to be canon, just to then be passed on to a writer who really, really doesn't want them to be canon and these things feel like something a writer's room should maybe be in agreement about.

[falmergirlcock]

"who's the top who's the bottom" I DON'T CARE who's the unstoppable force and who's the immovable object!!!!

[taraxippos]

I will say I think at least 75% of the time someone describes art as having 'a human soul' its shorthand for 'a positive quality of sincerity/passion/human imperfection etc that makes art engaging' (which is a sentiment you can by all means disagree with and is not a good argument for why a technology shouldn't be allowed to exist, but is generally not being used as a Spiritual argument), rather than 'I believe in an immortal soul which is metaphysically imparted into artwork created by human hands and imbibes it with Good qualities, and therefore art made otherwise is a Evil'.

Getting focused on that wording as the sole basis to make snide jabs about spirituality is only a little less silly than seeing someone go "god forbid xyz" and responding "Ummm actually god isn't real and thus can't forbid anything☝️🤓"