#posts to show spawn

[extreme-technicality]

@druwuidnymph

[ask-zacharies-snackarie]

Shoes time, I've already shown these a bit. Peek the read more so I don't spam yalls dash :)

These were surprisingly easy, not gonna lie. I thought I was going to make these last, but they were actually the first thing I made.

It was the first time making shoe covers, and I honestly thought I was going to make these shoes from scratch-scratch. Thankfully I didn't. I don't know what possessed me but I just grabbed some old flats I had worn to hell and back and went "I think these can die and serve a new purpose now."

And then I cut their upper heels off, sewed it up, put hot glue on it for grip, and sewed and glued a bunch of shit onto em.

They're actually stuffed with polyfill fluff in the ends (which surprised the judges) to give them their shape. I tried to secure them in with the lining fabric by glueing it in, but I kept missing and went "fukkit it will be fine" and honestly? It was. None of the fluff came out or really displaced that much so I think it was a win.

The star and moon decals were glued on and then embellished with little stitches for detail, but it's 90% hot glue in this piece.

I honestly got the pattern for the shoes spot on for the original draft, I just had to make it bigger and shape it a leeeeetol bit more and it was Gucci. Unusual for me aisnendoe.

Finally, all the bells on my costume work, but I replaced the metal pellet inside them with a plastic perler bead instead; resulting in the bells not being quite as loud and annoying, which is good when I was hoofing it across a con for 10 hours a day, two days in a row!

[not-equippedforthis]

shout out to the very distinct feeling of 'oh god i'm going to become at least mildly annoying about this aren't i'. binging ds9 season 1 and i outright giggled at a very small mannerism julian did. got hyped when o'brien showed up. grinned widely at kira just Being There. felt the urge to yell and cheer and scream at the slightest hint of whump. the character dynamics and friendships are beginning to interweave like strings in a tapestry and i almost detonated upon realising this. uh oh.

[object-vault-9]

Week 127

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[extreme-technicality]

@druwuidnymph

Yeah sure you can let ur shirt ride up ur belly when ur around me. But watch out

[utterdrip]

astarion’s reactions to the player choosing another LI after committing to a relationship with him

(the ‘oh no, don’t you give me that’ dialogue has the ‘i—i didn’t think—.’ afterwards)

[firestorm09890]

FUCK what I said about the majority of significant changes to dialogue in Re:CoM being to adjust Axel's characterization, the most egregious change is actually this

(GBA CoM)

(Re:CoM)

if I had to guess, the reason for this change was because in GBA CoM, The Superior was a spooky, unknown being at the head of this Organization we had very little knowledge on, and for Vexen, the guy who runs his mouth constantly about how much better he is than the others, to be terrified of him, he must be some pretty scary dude. But then after kh2 we know him, it's Xemnas, he's very dramatic, he likes to talk to the moon, and the effect of your mind filling in the gaps about what "The Superior" must be like is gone. So it wasn't really necessary anymore, right?

(rest under cut because it's long)

Except... the way they changed it is so weird. In the GBA version, what's happening is pretty clear:

Marluxia tells Vexen that his project is a failure

Vexen demonstrates that he does not give a shit about Marluxia's opinion

he does care very much about The Superior's opinion, though, and Marluxia uses this to blackmail him into eliminating Sora- an action which is nonsensical, as the entire point of what they're doing needs Sora alive, making it clear to everyone in the room that he is deliberately sending Vexen to die

and then after that, when Vexen shows up to fight Sora, he goes "if you want to fight me for real you've gotta do it in the memories from the other side of your heart lol bye" and Sora goes "huh? other side?" and then it cuts to a scene on the top floor:

and then this gets more into subtext but here, Vexen has realized he's totally fucked and his only hope is to mess directly with Marluxia's plans (well, they were the Organization's plans, but it's pretty obvious by now Marluxia's abusing his power for his own purposes) by giving Sora more information than he should know. This does get the traitor gang worried enough to send Axel to go kill him (as opposed to just letting Sora take care of him, which was presumably the original plan)- he very specifically cuts Vexen off to keep him from saying too much (this is retained between the original and the remake)

Anyway, what happens in Re:CoM sort of follows the same order of events, but everything is changed slightly in a way that just makes things more confusing.

Marluxia tells Vexen his project is a failure and Vexen demonstrates that he doesn't give a shit about Marluxia's opinion, as before

Marluxia threatens Vexen with a weapon, rather than threatening to tell the Superior

this, notably, does not seem to faze Vexen very much. he continues to run his mouth while having the scythe pointed at him.

Xemnas is still leveraged- Marluxia points out it was the Superior who entrusted him with the castle

...even though reasonably Vexen would already be aware of this, and has still demonstrated that he has zero respect for Marluxia despite it

the lines about betraying the Organization being a capital crime are retained, probably because it's super relevant later, but then that line of thinking is abandoned in favor of Marluxia and Larxene just taunting Vexen instead

The part where Marluxia says "do it. you won't" could be seen as a sort of threat... if not for Axel's line: "You give a challenge like that to Vexen and he'll seriously want to eliminate Sora." It frames it all as though Vexen went to fight Sora out of some sort of pride.

And look, Vexen may have a temper and a superiority complex, but he's not stupid. They're obviously baiting him. Plus, what happened to him seeing himself as above the others and countering things he doesn't like with "well actually I'm higher ranked than you and also you're an idiot"? Is he that insecure in his fighting capabilities? I could deal with characterization changes doing him dirty if it didn't also make no sense in the context of the plot.

So now we have Vexen going to try to kill Sora, something that really makes no sense to do, out of pride. What was the purpose of sending Sora to Twilight Town? Also pride, over the fact that he managed to get that information? Giving the writing the benefit of the doubt, I could say that these nonsensical actions can be explained as evidence that Nobodies can have hearts and people with hearts do strange and rash things, but that just feels like a reach, which is bad because what they had in GBA CoM worked perfectly fine and made sense without any reaching for the "idk emotions make you do strange things" explanation.

It continues. After Vexen gives Sora the Twilight Town card in Re:CoM and Sora wonders about what the "other side" means, this is that version of the conversation the top floor members have:

...what? "If Sora disappears, that would mess up the Organization's plans"? what are you worried about? the only reason Sora would disappear is if Vexen killed him. there's no way they think Vexen being in Twilight Town would give him an advantage, right? they know he's a pathetic fighter. "Vexen has clearly committed a treasonous act against the Organization" HOW? HOW IS IT CLEAR? they don't express any worry about Sora learning too much, up until Axel says "I came to stop you from talking too much" when killing Vexen- and that being there makes it seem like they were worried about Sora learning to much, but if that's the case, why would they replace the perfectly serviceable lines in the above scene? it's just... baffling that they would want to lean into the narrative that Vexen going to kill Sora (which he'd been goaded into doing) is the problem here, because it just makes so little sense compared to what it was originally.

once again giving them the benefit of the doubt: Marluxia's real plan was to take over the Organization, and he saw an easy way to pick off one of the members, so he took it. the motive for stopping Vexen doesn't actually matter.

buuuuut it's the same as with Vexen earlier. Marluxia may be too self-absorbed and power-hungry to notice Axel is scheming against him, but he, too, is an intelligent man. he's plotted for a while, getting into Xemnas's good graces in order to be put in charge of the Castle. this is incredibly sloppy for him. I guess it could be said that getting so close to his goal would make him sloppy, but again, if they'd just left things the way they were in GBA CoM, I wouldn't even have to be saying this

in conclusion: GBA Chain of Memories' intra-Organization strife subplot is so tightly woven with calculated moves on all sides that Re:CoM changing certain things without taking into consideration the consequences makes certain parts of the plot fall flat and become far more confusing than in the original story

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

The entire time Sol as trying to insist that the girls were in danger I kept saying out loud “okay dude what’s your point”

Like what he was saying had absolutely nothing to do with their safety

There was no way Osha was gonna forgive you bro if you can’t even admit you did something wrong, even when you’re failing so miserably at justifying it

[extreme-technicality]

@druwuidnymph

[vorestarr]

thoughts on vampirism as a symbol of trauma

i've been thinking about this in relation to Astarion's story arc for a while and started writing this post a couple times, only to have it become much longer than expected, so for now this post is just going to be about the different paths of ascension vs spawn from the end of his personal quest. (i think there are multiple ways to read his story, and this is just the way i've been reading and thinking about it.)

the basic idea of this post is that Astarion's vampirism is a physical manifestation or symbol of his trauma, and therefore the two different ending paths for him are distinguished by how he addresses his vampirism (and therefore trauma).

it's pretty clear that the vampirism itself is a traumatic experience for Astarion, from how he describes almost dying, then actually dying, and then everything that comes afterwards at Cazador's hands. but i think of this a step further, in that the actual symptoms of vampirism are also part of this. there's an idea that there are physical manifestations of traumatic experiences held in the body, even if the trauma itself was psychological in nature (i.e., the body keeps the score). this is how i read vampirism for Astarion, specifically.

to start, he's turned into a vampire after a traumatic experience (almost being killed by a group of people one night). he's "saved" from this by Cazador turning him into a vampire, but still his body literally dies when he turns into a vampire, which is another separate traumatic event where he feels himself die and then has to climb out of his own grave. (also noted, i believe it's hinted that Cazador orchestrated the attack on Astarion that almost killed him in the first place, so Cazador is the cause of all of this trauma in one event that is Astarion becoming a vampire.)

his body is physically changed by the experience. he loses things because of it, maybe things that were not particularly important to him but now seem incredibly important once they're gone (like walking in the sun) or things that were previously important to him and now he can no longer enjoy (living indulgences and pleasures like food, or his own reflection). also critically, he cannot get those things back. his life is changed (literally ended) and there's no fixing it.

he learns coping strategies during the subsequent 200 years, which i will not get into in this post, but suffice to say that he learned things that he believed would protect him in the moment.

after the tadpole when he experiences freedom from Cazador's influence for the first time, there are some critical shifts that happen to start him on a path to address these things, or not. the recent interview where the devs mention that the ascended path is one of fear, i really agreed with and have said similar things in previous posts, because to me, i think the main difference between how Astarion acts in those paths is that for ascension, he relies on the methods he learned in those 200 years to survive in the moment, while in the spawn path, he learns new ways to cope.

to elaborate on that, i think the ascension path specifically is about avoidance.

in trauma, avoidance is what it sounds like: avoiding any triggers or negative emotions related to the traumatic experience. the avoidance can manifest in different ways, but a key idea is that by avoiding those negative feelings, they are never actually addressed.

i think there are two big ways this manifests in Astarion's story, related to vampirism:

ascended Astarion is avoiding those negative feelings of fear of Cazador (or someone else doing what Cazador did) by focusing on seizing power and control. if he's more powerful, in control of a situation, then nothing bad can happen to him again. the way this ties back to vampirism as a symbol of trauma is that this is literally described to us in the game as the natural course of life for vampires: they live in fear of other vampires, fear of their own spawn seizing their power, etc. this is the story of Vellioth and Cazador, and then later Cazador and Astarion (regardless of the choice he makes to ascend or not). we even get a list of vampires where ALL their life spans/eras of power are timed so that we can infer that each subsequent vampire has killed the previous vampire to dethrone them. so, vampirism itself is trauma and the known course of vampirism is this same cycle we see repeated with multiple vampires and histories in game. by taking a different path and not becoming a full vampire, spawn Astarion has started to learn a new way of dealing with his vampirism/trauma, rather than avoiding it.

the OTHER major way i see this manifest in the game is how ascension and spawn paths deal with the literal symptoms of vampirism: walking in the sun, Astarion's reflection, food versus drinking blood, the vampiric state of undeath, etc. these are all things that changed about Astarion when he became a vampire, and things that (in the normal course of events) cannot be changed back. he died, he's dead, there's no curing his vampirism. in other words, there's no going back to who he was before the traumatic experiences. that by itself is a neutral statement, the same way that there's no going back to who a person is before any major event (be it meeting someone important, choosing to take a certain job, etc etc), because we are all constantly changing and growing. HOWEVER, i think the places with Astarion where this stops being neutral is how he addresses that fact: with acceptance or avoidance.

to elaborate on the second point, which is my main reason for making this post:

on the spawn path, Astarion learns new ways to be and to live with his vampirism. in his epilogue, he can mention that he's not bothered by losing the sun again, he can describe finding a sense of belonging with others who share his vampirism, and he can define himself in new ways that he's picked for himself rather than stay in the definition of vampire that Cazador held.

in the ascension path, Astarion avoids all of those difficult realizations and choices. he falls back on the same strategies that helped him survive in the moment for those 200 years, but which can and do hurt him after escaping that environment. he's working hard to keep from addressing those negative feelings -- and on the surface, this works! he can walk in the sun without the tadpole! he has new vampire powers and he can do all the things he lost when he died! he can see his own reflection again! but, he's still a vampire, still has his fangs, still has his red eyes.

this is why i think the route is characterized by fear and why i found that interview with the devs interesting: by focusing on all those avoidance behaviors, Astarion ends up being stuck in a state of mind that's all about fear because it's all about avoiding that feeling. he feels great in the moment because he has been able to claim back some of what was taken from him, but this is not a solution because he's still a vampire.

personally, i do not read the ascension path as continuing a cycle of abuse, but as the continuation of avoiding the painful process of healing from trauma.

ascended Astarion is elated after killing Cazador because he feels the power flowing through him and it makes him feel safe in the moment, and because he is avoiding addressing any lingering feelings of pain or negativity, including avoiding addressing that he just killed 7000 people.

spawn Astarion meanwhile looks absolutely miserable immediately after killing Cazador when he cries and breaks down, and then he feels numb later because he's so overwhelmed. this i think resembles something that can happen in trauma therapy, where a person feels worse when they initially start addressing and working through their trauma, because it means actually feeling all of those negative emotions they've been avoiding.

in the end, ascended Astarion has not changed how he addresses his trauma or vampirism, and the ascension has actually given him more tools to continue avoidance. spawn Astarion meanwhile is exploring other ways of living with his vampirism, and can be experiencing success with that by the time the epilogue rolls around (even if there are some bumps and regressions along the way, like losing his ability to walk in the sun again).

because this is my main reading, i also don't think this makes ascended Astarion evil or irredeemable -- i think he shows that he does still have all the emotions that he's displayed through the game and therefore he still has the potential to follow the same path that spawn Astarion did in healing. but, the critical thing with the ascension path is that he does not have the clear motivation or triggering event to start him down that path. he's further away from that, and it will take more work to get there. everything he did after all comes back to the ways he learned to survive under Cazador, so those behaviors helped him at one point. the issue is that he's past the point of those things helping him, but he can't let them go.

tl;dr: i like looking at vampirism itself as a physical symbol of trauma and as a way to read Astarion's potential storylines, because it provides a context for me to view how the ascension and spawn paths treat his vampiric symptoms -- avoiding them in the ascension path by giving him an "out" of sorts to avoid addressing how those symptoms impact his life because of the extra abilities granted to him by the ritual, versus being forced to grapple with them and figure out a way to life with them and even enjoy them on his own terms in the spawn ending.

if you read this whole post, thanks for sticking with me and feel free to share your thoughts too. :)

[h-didanart]

Bloodmoon doodles I did at midnight

(you can see me begging for sleep in some of them)

[teddybearsims]

reasons why august doesn't like going out in public: strangers approaching him. (but at least they catch his good sides)

[extreme-technicality]

@druwuidnymph

smack

[tangled-shoelace]

Spawn doodles

He’s my silly little guy

[head-empty404]

I think it's time to explain ChainedSoul cause I'm assuming most of you are confused why you're seeing posts of them randomly!

if you're too lazy to read a wall of text, then here's the TLDR:

ChainedSoul is the ship name for Al Simmons and Johnny Blaze, aka Spawn and Ghost Rider respectively and they should kiss.

now hear me out on them -

they are both men who have made deals with rulers of Hell (or a circle of Hell in Malebolgia's case), they both in turn became somewhat immortal beings that should not be messed with, and they have similar abilities.

the best part is the ANGST.

since Zarathos is bound to Johnny, he will find ways to absolutely torture Spawn during nighttime. Spawn knows he's not a good person and Zarathos will make sure of it. I just know Zarathos relishes in the fact that he's destroying someone Johnny loves, almost as much as Mephisto would maybe.

but if you don't want to think about the angst, then look no further than the FLUFF !!

the height difference is very cute because Spawn is around 6'11" and Johnny is about 5'10" normally and gains a few inches when becoming Ghost Rider at 6'2"; to put that into perspective Johnny goes up to Spawn's shoulders!

Spawn would either crouch for Johnny or just stand there and watch him struggle to kiss him, no in-between. I also feel like that Spawn would get flustered easily when flirted with since it's been so long since he's even been in a romantic relationship that he had almost forgotten what it was like.

I need all of you to note that I've written out Spawn's pursuit for Wanda; this is because I want that man to stop being miserable over his ex-wife. I didn't leave it out completely of course. I've had it to where he's stopped trying to pursue her when he saw her happy with Terry. all that Spawn cared about was Wanda's happiness, me thinks; as long she's happy then he's happy. he would still protect her family if they're in any major danger.

anyways thanks for reading and I hope you see my vision for my rarepair !!

[bhaalsdeepbat]

i think astarion is going to always have a natural lust for power. like i think his vampiric nature will just forever cause certain desires, but spawn ending kinda reasserts that he has the power to resist AND shows he has people he can rely on to talk him down if he needs it.