#she's my self indulgent little blorbo. i love her

[cptnwynnie]

some stuff about A.B. :]

some of this stuff i talked abt on discord last night as well so a bit of this is just copypasted

She goes by A.B. purely because she thinks it sounds cool. Though, some take to calling her "Abby" instead of pronouncing the two letters. And, of course, the executives and mr. curtain call her by her full name, as they don't tolerate nicknames like that.

Her hat belonged to her mother.

okay i just realized this is gonna be a kinda long so the rest is under the cut lol

She was a papergirl pre-canon, which is how she comes by the ad in the newspaper two weeks before the round of tests that the other kids take. She makes it to the second test, but doesn't pass it because she couldn't figure out the puzzle. But, the whole thing made her curious, and she wants to write an article on it for her personal newspaper (her journal. she has a little journal she writes articles in.) so she trails behind number two all the way back to the house, intent on catching up to her to get an interview. bad news: she gets caught snooping around the driveway. good news: Mr. Benedict respects her commitment to hard-hitting facts-based journalism, and decides she could be quite a useful part of the team (he also may or may not be deeply concerned that this little girl was running around stonetown all on her own with literally zero adult supervision)

She then tells Mr. Benedict her story about how her mom dropped her off at "daycare" when she was little and then didn't come back and that pretty much seals the deal.

As for her mother, she was not brainswept, she really did leave A.B. behind. Her father died when she was a baby, and her mother found herself unable and unwilling to care for A.B. on her own. So she left her on the steps of an orphanage and didn't look back.

A.B. doesn't find this out until the end of the first book. Mr. Benedict has the thought that Ms. Moore may have been brainswept, so decides to look into it. What he finds is that she moved to New York, and has been living there since A.B. was seven, eventually getting remarried.

He leaves it up to A.B. if she wants to know and, of course, she does.

Naturally, she is both devastated and incredibly angry at her mom. Despite this, though, A.B. doesn't let go entirely. She still needs her mom. Not just needs, but wants. Part of her still clings to the little hope that her mom might come back for her.

She ends up going back to the Wetherall farm with Kate and Milligan (having been invited, of course,) and helps rebuild the farm :]

In TPJ she winds up losing her hat when the kids escape from the Ten Men in the Salamander. She wants to go back for it, but there isn't time, she has to let it go. It's sad but it's for the character development.

Then she gets frustrated with her braid catching on things, realizes her hair is quite easy to grab, and so she hacks it off with a knife :)

and that's everything I got so far :]

[torchickentacos]

you ever scroll past some sort of discourse that you didn't even know existed, and you have to take a second and realize that, while none of us are superior to others, some of us ARE much better at choosing which dumbass hills to die on? because I think sometimes you deserve to go 'huh. at least I'm not getting involved in all that'.

[synonymroll648]

deep down in my soul, i know that if sophie ever introduced keefe and fitz to them, keefe would want to play uno immediately and fitz would want to play chess and sophie would look at their puppy eyes and just. relent. give in. and go screw it, i’ll play you both at the same time. and then she would either destroy them both, die of panic because brains aren’t designed to multitask well, or both. and then her boys would want to swap games over and over and she’d indulge them just for one night in a pillow fort with all their stuffed animals or something

[saintsenara]

As someone who isn't the biggest Hermione fan and keeps it quiet because greater fandom LOVES her, I'm honestly gagging for more of your Hermione takes. Especially your takes on fanon Hermione, who I can't STAND. Have a good one x

thank you very much, anon - there are dozens of us!

hermione is certainly the character i struggle to find common ground with the most - and this has been the case since i first read philosopher's stone as a child.

[which has actually been a really fascinating pop-culture experience - i think we tend to overlook, both because the media landscape and its representation of child and teen girls has changed since the 1990s and because of jkr's increasingly harmful views on gender, just how groundbreaking hermione was as a female protagonist in media which wasn't marketed primarily or exclusively towards girls. there is a reason why so many girls and women identified with her when the books were coming out - and it was very interesting for me growing up to not be one of them.]

the cause of my beef with hermione is for the incredibly petty reason that i find people who possess many of her more... striking traits quite difficult to deal with in real life, particularly if they don't acknowledge [which people in the hermione vein often don't...] that these traits are things it might benefit them to work on in their interpersonal relationships...

but this doesn't prevent me recognising that canon!hermione [and any real person like her] is interesting - and that her more annoying traits work well with her more straightforwardly admirable ones to create a fully-rounded character who, from a fanfiction perspective, is a great vehicle for all sorts of tropes, themes, and storylines.

which brings us - of course - to fanon!hermione...

fanon!hermione is, at her core, another brick in the wall of mary-sues. she's beautiful, and so clever she can solve millennia-old puzzles without batting an eyelid, and she's preternaturally emotionally intelligent, and she's morally spotless, and she's always right, and the story's preferred romantic partner worships the ground she walks on, and anyone who doesn't like her is punished.

i don't think - to be clear - that there is anything wrong, per se, with people wanting to write fanon!hermione [nor, to be frank, with other flawless fanon versions of female characters, oc mary-sues, or self-indulgent self-inserts - i'll defend the right to have fun with characters to the death]. this is a hobby, and people's way of engaging with that hobby doesn't have to appeal to me - it's fun escapism sometimes to write a character who is wonderful and perfect and beloved and has a sexy partner; and when it comes to accusations of writing someone "out-of-character", let she who is without sin cast the first stone...

but i also think - and [sigh] here comes some discourse - that fanon!hermione is part of a slight... girlbossification of female characters in the harry potter fandom [and presumably in others, i just don't follow closely enough to know] which i've always been a little uneasy about.

i understand why this happens - this fandom, like many, has an overwhelming preference for making blorbos of male characters and for imagining these characters in slash relationships. the treatment of female characters in slash subfandoms - i.e. tonks in wolfstar spaces; lily in jegulus spaces - is often straightforwardly misogynistic, and even in cases where it isn't, female characters are often shuffled quietly to the sidelines, except when they pop up - often suddenly in a queer pairing of their own - to benignly cheerlead the male couple.

and i think it's good that this is challenged - as i also think it's good that the heteronormative vibes of a lot of slash are challenged - and that we, as a fandom, are increasingly interested in female-centric works [whether focused on a romantic pairing or otherwise] and discussions. i hope these continue to take up fandom space.

but i have also noticed that the way female characters are written and talked about in these context is - as i've said - quite #girlboss in its approach. the focus is on women as clever and competent and feisty and unruffled and brave.

[including female villains, there are a lot of girlboss bellatrixes knocking around...]

and great! it should be! - but from what i've seen this also comes accompanied by a resistance to the idea that women can also be boring, unintelligent, self-infantilising, vain, arrogant, ignorant, talentless, meek, domestic, rude, dislikable, conservative, incurious, complicit in their own victimisation, plain wrong, and so on, and not only still be worthy of exploration, but be worthy of these characteristics not being automatically considered bad things for someone to possess and it not being seen as letting down the sisterhood to explore a woman who possesses them.

and, sure, hermione cannot be described as many of these things - but she is...

self-righteous; cruel; petty; from a privileged class background in the muggle world which blinkers her understanding of the class structure of the wizarding one; stubborn; terrible under pressure; shown by the text to be intelligent largely due to an ability to rote learn; a people-pleaser with a tendency towards a slightly hagrid-ish blind loyalty; extremely deferential to authority and willing to tolerate cruel treatment from authority figures [i.e. snape]; the most childlike of the trio [she takes her schoolbooks on the run and reads through them for comfort! she's an enormous animal lover!]; interested in one of form of stereotypical femininity [knitting! wearing pretty dresses!] even if she rejects the form of stereotypical femininity liked by e.g. parvati and lavender [and anyone who thinks she's not going to get along with her mother-in-law because molly's a housewife is dead wrong - she's having the time of her life helping put together a sunday lunch at the burrow]; possessed of a filthy sense of humour [i will never understand why emma watson said that the key to playing her was to be prim...]; someone who obviously wants to be liked and to be loved; and so on...

[and also, by the end of the pre-epilogue narrative, eighteen. she's often written in fics in a way which makes her sound like she's seen a lot of life - especially if the fic wants to claim she's "too mature" to bother with men her own age... but she hasn't - she's a teenager, and the reason she's so unpolished and abrasive is because literally all teenagers are unpolished and abrasive. it's just one of the mortifying agonies of growing up.]

we should love this. it makes her thorny and messy and mixed-up and human - and i am perfectly delighted by explorations of her character which delve into unravelling this tangle.

i just like her less as someone who is there to be right and beloved and uncriticised.

unless it's by ron. everyone should be uncomplicatedly adored by their wife guy.

[swashbucklery]

Out of curiosity why do you ship sabine and shin ?

Okay anon so I am trying to figure out how to approach this ask because I know that this fandom has a real problem with bad-faith actors looking to troll Wolfwren shippers and I do not have the patience to deal with that, but also I do want to talk about them because they're lovely.

So. If you are asking because you're a troll, the answer is that I'm a big mean lesbian who likes ruining Star Wars and gets off on making innocent fanboys cry, #sorrynotsorry, it's part of my Terrible Queer Ruining Agenda and I am going to be doing it every second Tuesday until society as you know it has crumbled into gay dust.

If you're not a troll: because they hit this very particular combination of Trope Buttons that makes me ever so happy, anon!

Because it's about - like, there are ships that I love because they are a type of loving partnership that entrances me, where I see myself or see the type of love that speaks to my soul and want to enjoy the process of rolling around in it like a cat in nip. Then there are ships that I love because I'm attached to a particular character where like - this blorbo deserves the world and that includes a healing love, a warm love, a love that cultivates a space for them to rest after the harsh world around them has bruised them ever so.

THEN there are ships where - the dynamic fascinates me and I want to dig deeper into it. Where it's not about cultivating love as much as it is taking what's on screen to its gayest and most extreme possible endpoint, and that's where Sabine/Shin really gets me.

It's about the deep obsession of nemeses and the way that can feel inherently queer. It's about the ways that they are both mirrors and opposites. The way that Sabine carries so much anger and self-loathing and shame and guilt in her little heart and constantly pretends that she doesn't. The way that limits her throughout the series is riveting to me.

It's the idea of Shin, who in may ways is a more successful Jedi but in other ways is a sad, lonely little weirdo who has no community except for this weird old man and pretends that she's fine with it but can't be.

The way that they are both successes and failures in ways that mirror each other, the way that they orbit each other as nemeses and fight constantly but in their darkest moments have a weird little glimmer of - not love, but the beginnings of compassion.

And I have seen lots of writers and artists who look at that glimmer and see it as the beginning of a 200k slowburn story where they bicker and argue and slowly tenderize each other into being people who can be vulnerable, who learn to soften their prickly edges to fit around each other. And that's wonderful, and that's a beautiful way to ship Sabine & Shin.

For me, it's more about digging into that weird, fucked up little place of what if they didn't. What if they stayed fucked up and didn't soften but those orbits got closer and closer together. What if it wasn't toweringly romantic what if the orbit was the path of a comet colliding with a moon. What if that was somehow what each of them needed even though they both hated needing it. What does it feel like to confront the fact that sometimes our desires and what we want our desires to be don't align? What would it be like to envelop that in the complex ten-dimensional web of denial that both of them embody; desiring but pretending not to desire, indulging but pretending not to indulge. How far could that go before it hit a crisis point? What would that crisis point be?

There are so many stories there and that's fascinating and a thing that I find fun to explore in fiction, anon. If that's not for you, that's totally alright but there might be other dimensions that I described above where they ping with your interests more.

Or, they might just not be for you, and that's also okay.

[joltning]

@fishfingersalad it’s almost 2am but i can’t sleep and ts probably only going to be seen by like 5 people anyway so let it rip

this au started out as a self indulgent pocket sized au that I ignore as all my aus do…..then I couldn’t sleep and started imagining things im good at that. it started as an au I could do ship focus on and well I love lore I guess. despite all this the main story still focuses on my blorbos. maybe I will make a storyline for the main cast, if I can imagine things again

one day, all across (abridged) America (this is why I made that carolina/puerto rico/dc post btw), 50 children, each for 1 state, pop up at the same time, with varying ages, mostly tween years but with some variation up and down. while some are humanoid creatures, others are completely monstrous and lack sentience. however, they all share one common factor: a tag identifying what state they came from. The majority of the sentient ones assume this is their name, and that’s why they run with it.

conspiracy theorists and cryptid fans nationwide take notice of a bunch of shit happening overnight and develop “The 50” list. depending on if it’s commonly agreed upon what monster you are and if it’s commonly agreed upon what state you’re from, you’ll be ranked higher or lower on the list, with, of course, the highest ranking being the most sought after and hidden. Most of the higher tiered creatures are humanoid; it’s easier to blend in if you don’t look out of place

i forgot to mention Btw it’s like. myths and legends and shit too. i mentioned york being the pied Piper I also think the implication that the pied Piper is a monster is funny. also only one monster per person and

ofc my blorbos…….Everyone run now!!!! Ohio has just moved to a new city yay go girl But her coworkers are fucked up!!! There’s this bitch Sherry that she may or may not have a crush on and like her two little friends who absolutely know that. but Watch out there’s a freaky green man It’s Georgia her old friend Georgia. they were their first freelancer friends but geo Loves making deals for souls slash servitude slash their power slash take over the world slash he doesn’t know what souls are and neither do I. but they gotta be normal and not fight in the office.!!! And fight outside of a Walmart at 2 instead. he’s kinda bad at it though which is why only Ohio cares.

anywya Sherry keeps running into Ohio and Georgia fighting and you know Ohio’s kind of like. well if you see her when she’s not masking you’ll probably go insane huh. so Ohio has to keep wiping her memories and Sherry’s getting CRAZY deja vu.

this is so stressful Good thing Ohio’s got her trusty friends Iowa and Idaho!!! They’re causing chaos somewhere else but she’s always texting them and video chatting. hopefully they can meet up again soon!!

Utah is a paranormal investigator and currently georgia’s only the only person who’s currently made a deal with him. he’s made past deals but Ohio scared them off by ‘Do Not Be Afraid’ing them. it’s either that or they have to get killed lest the green fuck get too powerful and Ohio would rather not do that thanks. utah doesn’t even get anything in return he just wants to know wtf is going on tbh. Georgia stays at his apartment because he’s a squatter I guess

well That’s too bad I guess I can’t share any more because they’re just plotpoints. hey do you wanna know what the other freelancers are

Ohio: Angel (duh. So low because when she spawned she was literally in the middle of a bunch of people and blinded them with her corporeal form)

Georgia: Demon (the devil but literally this time. manages to be a little higher due to being able to teleport short distances. Stayed a little too close to home base, though.)

Iowa: Harpy (kept flying in the air like a dumbass everyone fucking saw him. denialists claim it to be a big bird. and they’re right.)

Idaho: Werewolf (he didn’t know until a full moon came out. oops.)

Carolina: Siren (keeps the bad singing voice.)

York: pied piper….

Wash: Shapeshifter

Florida: Alien (when he came on the fated day he rode in on a meteor instead of plopping in, breaking off the state from the rest of the US. its highly debated on whether or not the meteor itself was the creature.)

Maine: Bigfoot (but he shaves his whole body every day so he just looks like a big guy)

Connie: Kitsune

Wyoming: Fairy (despite being obvious, no one fuckinh lives in wyoming so he just flew far away immediately. fucks up the rankings of others by being spotted far away from his state.)

North: The Sandman (Both spawned across from eachother at the 2 state’s borders. They immediately declared eachother twins.)

South: Mare/Dream Eater (Their high ranking is very dependent on the confusion on which twin is which, since they work together to sleep and then feast.)

Tex: Ghost

you may see here I did not include Utah Did I forget No No No (kinda) I have an idea for what he is but i don’t intent to reveal it ever really. idk how id incorporate that. jsut know I searched really hard to find a creature that wasn’t a ghost that disrupted electromagnetic fields so that every time he went ghost hunting the machines would go off causing him to assert there was a ghost there. but no alas I did not find that

ok tahts it I think. for now. maybe. if you have any ideas for this background fucks wise or rnbs wise I would like them. for meThanks goodnight im gonna pass blout Out Out

[msmargaretmurry]

i’ve been on transit all day and have been marinating my blorbos (haw!matthew and leon) and just in case you’re still answering asks: how does matthew react to leon’s true lovey-dovey affectionate self once they’re a bit more settled and emotions aren’t running as high anymore? does he bite leon if he tries to slow dance with matthew in front of their friends? does he get bashful about it? does he love it? thank you so much i hope you have a great day

i am always answering asks for you, my friend!! and oh, he loves it, but it takes him ages to get used to it. matthew is an affectionate guy, too, once he gets past his traumas and agonies. he's definitely more conservative about pda than leon, but not opposed to it; he's probably never going to be a big fan of it in public public, but amongst friends and family he just needs time to get used to it. there is a pretty long stretch where he gets embarrassed and sheepish about it (and maybe bites leon once or twice 😂) but, like, he wants that kind of affectionate relationship. like with everything else, it's mostly just a question of letting himself have it. leon is pretty understanding about it -- he mostly gets that if matthew squirms away it's not personal. they have a couple of small tiffs about it (the first few times they hang out with friends who know they're together, matthew is super jumpy about leon touching him -- in front of people?? people who care about them and know they love each other?? mortifying!) but since they've learned how to use their words now it never blows up into a huge thing.

the thing that's hardest for matthew is figuring out how to act with leon in front of his family, because obviously they're the most important to him, and he's so nervous about how his relationship with leon will look to them and fit into their lives. it takes him forever to get comfortable being affectionate with leon in front of them, even when all the other tkachuks are like, buddy, please, it's FINE. and leon gets this part, he really does, he lets matthew call all the shots on the touching front when they're around keith and chantal. deep in the gdocs somewhere i have a snippet of a scene that's set, like, six or seven years in the future, where matthew is facetiming with brady and he still turns the phone away when leon gets home and comes to give him a kiss hello, even though it's very obvious that he's getting kissed hello and brady has known for years that they're together.

a while back on twitter i was doing one of those "give me a pairing and a one-word prompt and i'll write a little snippet" writing games and someone gave me matthew/leon + "photo" -- i wrote this tiny soft scene set after the first time leon comes to visit matthew and his family in the summer, and i am feeling self-indulgent this morning so please enjoy:

Matthew is over at his parents' house for one last big family dinner before Taryn heads back to Charlottesville for the fall when Taryn corners him in the foyer and presses the photo into his hands.

"I took this when Leon was here. I thought you might want it," she says. "Don't be mad at me."

It's a picture clearly taken from inside the house, looking out at the back porch. There's no zoom on Taryn's Polaroid camera, which has been getting a workout as she tries to get enough good shots to fill her dorm room walls, so Matthew and Leon are slightly distant and a little blurry, but still recognizable. They're leaning on the railing, bare-footed, close together, their backs to the camera. Matthew, then, is pressing a kiss to Leon's shoulder. Now, Matthew's heart turns over with a kind of weird, happy longing.

"Why would I be mad at you?" he asks.

"Because you're super weird about PDA," Taryn says. "I wasn't spying or anything. The window was literally wide open."

"Yeah, no, it's fine," Matthew says, still looking at the picture. It was only a few weeks ago, but it feels way too far away already. He lifts his arm, and Taryn tucks herself under it, squeezing him around the waist. Matthew kisses the top of her head. "Thank you."

He texts Leon a picture of the photo later. Gift from Taryn, he types along with it.

Cute, Leon texts back. Then, Missing that

Missing you, Matthew texts. Sure you don't want a 2nd missouri vacation this summer?

Next summer were doing mallorca or something, Leon says, but just a few seconds later, Tell me whens good and ill buy a ticket.

[lunastarhawk]

Behold my stuff and things

Rhaella made me do it.

I write and I fixate on things. That's it that's the blog.

This started off as an Arcana blog, to share my fanfiction and scroll through fanart of my favourite fictional people, but has since grown into a place for me to collect stuff I like. An interweb scrapbook, if you will. A little castle in a sandbox where I vibe with my favourite things. And you can sit with me if you like :) but I'm old, tired and socially inept. She/her, if it matters.

I ask minors to please be cautious, this is not a SFW blog. Like, at all. If in doubt please don't follow me. Stay safe out there.

I exist on AO3 as LunaStarhawk and on reddit as u/lunastarhawk.

Tags, links and whatnot...

Writings:

(please assume all my writing is Explicitly NSFW unless stated otherwise)

The Arcana Fanfic - is what it says on the tin. Encompasses all my works, including reader insert and Julian x MC.

Tides of Memories - specific to my ongoing longlonglongfic.

Tides Moodboard - references, inspo and general vibes relating to ToM.

Julian x Altheia - all things specific to Julian and my oc.

I'm screaming but I'm having fun <- that's a writing tag. It do be like that sometimes.

OC Tags

The Arcana - Altheia Featherstone

I have a separate blog for my Julian-romancing Arcana OC, Altheia, which is a themed blog based on stuff she likes, outside of the Arcana. She, er. She likes boats. And the sea. But I post Arcana-related bits here under her tags Altheia Featherstone, Altheia aesthetic and Altheia moodboard.

Her own blog in her own right is at @altheia-featherstone (Rhaella made me do it)

Dragon Age: Inquisition - Favian Trevelyan

I don't write DA fics (yet?) but I am obsessed with do have a handsome Dorian-romancing Inquisitor, Favian. I do nothing but stick screenshots of him and my Inquisition playthrough to my scrapbook here on tumblr dot com. Peak self-indulgence. His tags are Inquisitor Favian, and Dragon Age Shenanigans.

A separate blog exists for him but I haven't decided yet how I'll use it @inquisitor-favian (Rhaella made me do it)

Rhaella - belongs to @rhaella-rhavelli but I love her and will squirrel her away into my pocket any chance I get.

Fixations

Other fandom things I reblog a lot for my scrapbook, putting this here mainly as an index for myself:

FF7 - Sephiroth and Vincent Valentine mostly.

Loki - series, MCU, comic and Lady Loki. I ship Lokius.

The Arcana - Julian Devorak, Julian x Altheia. I avoid anything Asrian like the Red Plague.

Dragon Age - Dorian Pavus, Emmrich Volkarin, Lucanis Dellamorte, Alistair, da:o, da:i, da:v

Music - Julian and Altheia's greatest hits, music for my blorbos is soothing my soul, Friday night jams, tune Tuesday.

#beloved :)

AO3 Links (LunaStarhawk)

Julian x Altheia (Female OC)

Tides of Memories - current WiP. A continuation of Julian's route's upright ending and my prologue story, with my OC, Altheia.

Between the Deep Blue Sea and the Devil - Self-indulgent rewrites of a selection of scenes from Julian's route, specific to him and Altheia, as referenced in ToM. Ongoing as and when the mood takes me.

Past the Midnight Sun - Self-indulgent smut and fluff between Julian and Altheia. I love them, you see. Ongoing as and when the mood takes me.

Gender Neutral Reader Insert

The Memories We Lost - A sort of prologue to the Arcana, this is my take on Julian and MC's time during the Red Plague. Complete.

'He Was Mine' - Reimagined Reminiscences - My first fic series, a collection of mostly smutty rewrites of some of Julian's route scenes. Complete.

Domestic Daydreams - Julian and spouse do Mundane Things. Very unlikely I will add to this.

Female Reader Insert

Post-Route Shenanigans - smut with Julian and his girlfriend.

Violet - that one time I wrote Asra smut.

Male Reader Insert

Post-Route Henanigans - like shenanigans but with a He. I think I'm funny. Smut with Julian and his boyfriend.

I think that's everything, enjoy your stay :)

[lonepower]

Oh, I am so curious about Forspoken because I've only heard negative things about it. Would you mind talking about more of your thoughts about it? What's it like, and would you reccomend it?

Nonny, I am not surprised, and it is a continual source of raging frustration for me because this hate is absolutely unwarranted in every possible way!! I can't even track the tag here because, despite the small but absolutely wonderful fandom, it is so full of people hating on it that it clogs out nearly everything else.

First off: YES, I WOULD ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND IT. PLAY THIS GAME. THAT IS A THREAT. 🔪🔪🔪🔪 

The tl;dr of my feelings about Forspoken are in line with that one excellent Jupiter Ascending review that I can't find for the life of me now, where the author is like, "is this what guys feel like all the time?" because the movie is just plucked straight from her 14-year-old self's wish fulfillment fantasies. Like, is it a deep, brooding, erudite Auteur Piece? Well, no, but... so what? It's self-indulgent to the max and so earnestly not-shy about it that it's just an absolute joy to play. It's fun. Like... it's just fun. Have we all just forgotten the sensation of joy??? 

(This got quite long, so full review under the cut:)

The game is a pretty straightforward changeling fantasy/isekai—heroine with a mysterious troubled past gets sucked into a magical world and just happens to be the exact thing needed to save it from impending doom—and it isn't shy about its own tropeyness. Like, it's not trying to be clever or subversive with its premise, and if you're used to the HBO theory that '"'"good"""(/heavy sarcasm) storytelling is completely unpredictable twists at every turn, then yeah, you're gonna find it predictable. (I called 2 of the 3 major reveals within seconds of their first being foreshadowed, but I love being right more than anything, so that was more of a bonus for me!) 

With that being said: It is absolutely excellent at doing what it sets out to do. It's not Complicated or Psychological or Edgy because that's not what it wants to be: It wants to be a fun, glittery, self-indulgent, richly detailed, joyfully tropey fantasy game, and by god it does that fantastically. It's got really deep, extensive lore and some subtler worldbuilding than I expected, it's a lot better written than people give it credit for, it's fun, it's rewarding to play. Frey is such a good protagonist, she's the epitome of "pathetic wet cat poor little meow meow blorbo from my shows" etc etc etc, and I feel like the only reason people aren't realizing this is because she's a Black woman with poor social graces who spends the majority of the game in extreme crisis mode. Water is wet 🙄

Is the dialogue cringy at times? Yeah, honestly there were a couple moments that made me go 😬, but from what I hear about other square enix games that's really nothing new. I will also die on the hill that yes, the banter is a little Whedony, BUT: 1) Whedon banter (esp. pre-2012 firefly/buffy/resurrection banter) is NOTHING like what "marvel dialogue" has become, and the Whedony bits of Forspoken are much more like Firefly than like the written-by-committee shit that marvel spits out now; 2) Joss Whedon is actually really fucking good at writing witty, funny banter, and it's just that he's so unpleasant in his ideals that we're all sick of hearing about him. I have LOTS of problems with the guy but his dialogue is Not one of them. And the banter in this game is one of the main draws for me. I fucking love banter because I am a brilliant bitch with excellent taste who will never change 💁‍♀️

Additionally—and crucially, because it indicates that 99% of the game's detractors haven't even gotten out of the first hub area—only two characters in the game talk like that, and they are explicitly seen as off-putting and not that funny (Frey) and extremely, maddeningly annoying (Cuff) by everyone else around. Frey is a homeless kid with no friends and Cuff has been trapped in a bracelet in an antique store for decades, so it's literally in-universe canon that they have no social skills. Everyone else in the game talks normally. They're both just huge dorks.

The gameplay itself is also really, really good too—this actually seems to be the One Thing that Gamers™ have decided is acceptable to not outright froth with rage over, so I'm putting it closer to the end, but yeah, it's awesome! It's one of three (3) games that I completed on Normal rather than story/casual/Idiot Weenie Baby difficulty (the others being Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn), but it also has a lot of really excellent accessibility modifiers so you can customize your playstyle extensively. It's heavily focused on mobility and versatility, so you get better rewards and XP and stuff for combos, switching power sets, being fast & evasive, etc. The open world is also very well-designed: it's one of the only games where I actually really enjoy dicking around in the postgame doing sidequests and killing monsters (rather than just immediately starting the main story over), because parkouring around with your flashy cape and your awesome flaming spear is just that much fun. VISORIA MY BELOVED.

Also, you can pet every cat. They'll even follow you around and pick up items for you! GOTY for that alone tbh.

I have very few complaints about the game—the music not being quite up to par is one, and some of the lore/backstory could've been presented a little bit more clearly in my opinion, especially in the DLC, but that's not a problem that everyone had. I know there are also some valid criticisms from Black players on the way Frey is presented, but I'm not 100% sure what the specifics are, and obviously googling "what's wrong with Forspoken" or w/e is absolutely not going to be helpful. (I can guess, as an Extremely White person; for one, her having a criminal backstory is maybe not the best look, although I will say that in the very first minute of the game I saw "left on a doorstep" and "compulsive theft" and my immediate thought was "oh, she is some kind of changeling for sure." I wasn't...entirely wrong? (Spoilers!) So that seems more like two separate factors combining in an unfortunate way than any actual stereotypes the writers were playing into. (Again, I am Very White, so I defer any interpretation to those who actually know what they're saying and would like to weigh in!!! 😅))

In summary, I think a combination of misogynoir and Gamer Brain Rot have just created the perfect unfair storm against this game, because I genuinely do not understand how else it could be so poorly received. It's genuinely one of my favorite games. Please play Forspoken.

[thetrashbagswasteland]

Hit me we you'd eat carrion, wouldn't you for the ask game? Pretty please?

hhokay so to summarise, this is a tentative foray into @sparatus back yard to steal blorbos - specifically kidnapping desabrudas for the purpose of a not-quite-hatefuck for sinmas. Anyhow, this is set in my nebulous no-reapers verse where nothing bad ever happens except for the audience's amusement. Context: no-reapers crustyverse desolas retires when his daughter's born to become a gleefully self-indulgent stay-at-home dad, abrudas sticks it out for a few more years yet however. Anyways, without further ado, here's a snippet!

He just about managed to arrange his face to what he hoped was ignorant innocence before the doorway was filled by the broad shoulders and deeply unimpressed scowl of one Valis Abrudas. “Hey.” He chirped nonetheless, stretching out with a warm and affectionate rumble. Her eyes narrowed, mandibles dropping low to show teeth. “You.” It was said like an oath, one he met with continued innocence, blinking up at her as he let his subvocals waver towards cheeky questioning. From how she sucked in a deep breath, it was the wrong move. “Don’t you fuckin’ hey me, Desolas Arterius. Forget something, did we?” Had he? Feigning ignorance still, he took his time to act as if he had absolutely no idea what the hell she was on about. “Don’t think so?” He ticked the days events off on his fingers. “I did the laundry, washed the kitchen floor, dealt with the trash, cooked breakfast and dinner for kiddo. What more was there?” “What did we agree?” Her eyes bored into his, daring him to do exactly what he had planned - holding her gaze insolently just to see how far he could push her. “C’mon, it’s not difficult, what was the one thing we agreed on when you decided it was time to retire?” Ah, yeah. “Don’t remember.” He shrugged it off specifically for the grinding of teeth it earned him and reached forwards to grab the vid screen remote off the coffee table in front of him. “You know how bad my memory is, Val. Anyways, did’ya see the news? They’re going with that asari design for the council fleet flagship- the one that looks like a vertebrae? No great surprise I guess, it’s just so ugl-” His upcoming ramble-rant was cut short by the delightfully large hand that wrapped itself around his throat and made it very hard to find air to do more than end in a squeak. “Do you ever shut up?” She huffed, thumb catching under his jaw and pushing his head up so he was forced to make eye contact with her once more. And Desolas allowed himself a moment to appreciate just how fast and how silently she could move when she felt it necessary. A moment to really appreciate it even. The only thing he enjoyed more than watching her take overconfident little shits by surprise was being the overconfident little shit she took by surprise and wound up towering over. “Or d’you just like the sound of your own voice that much?” They both knew the answer to that one was a resounding yes; and, hey, if he’d been able to open his mouth to point out that she too liked the sound of his voice, he’d have done so. Pre-empting this though, her other hand had clamped over his mouth, keeping him from opening his jaws to remind her just how she loved it when he got going. Well, liked it usually. 

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

I'm on a cruise right now so of course I'm thinking about my blorbos going on a cruise too. Idk why maybe there's wraith demons aboard a particular ship and the company is trying to cover it up. The point is: Nuns on a Boat. I'm sure the Vatican forks over the necessary funds, probably for a week-long trip, enough time to investigate, plan, execute, and clean up. The original plan was to send a small team of two or three, but Ava probably pesters the new Pope into paying for the whole gang to go (she definitely plays the Jesus card).

It goes like this: the official OCS sisters enter as a group of 4 (Mother, Camila, Yasmine, and Dora) while the remaining 4 split into 2 pairs, Avatrice undercover as newlyweds on a honeymoon (it's good practice for the real thing, Bea!) and Mary riding as a solo passenger (hiding Lilith in her room). They probably have a contact in the ship's crew that sneaks them keycards and pass codes to restricted areas and makes arrangements for them to be in the right place at the right time for recon purposes. I don't know what the demons are doing, maybe planning some kind of mass possession within an enclosed space, but whatever it is will require asskicking through overpriced shops and probably flinging several pool chairs around to solve.

Assorted ideas:

1. The list of shore excursions has to be pried from Ava's hands by Mary because The Second Coming of Christ canNOT be trusted with them. Not because she doesn't know what she's doing, but because if they let her go unchecked she'll have their days booked 6 ways to the Sabbath with several activities overlapping each other. Baby girl wants to do EVERYTHING, time constraints be damned!

2. Beatrice is a little nervous about their cover story, not because she doesn't love Ava or doesn't see them getting married eventually, but because she's still battling some shame about being affectionate in public. This is, of course, in stark contrast to Ava, who is ecstatic over the chance to be shamelessly close to Bea with the tacit excuse of the mission. She drags them to every couple-y event aboard the ship and has no qualms about basically climbing her girlfriend whenever she can get away with it.

3. The God Squad is properly outfitted for just about every situation that could come up, and that includes swimming. For the actual nuns in the party, this means tasteful one-pieces that still earn respectful wolf whistles from Ava and the requisite number of sexy nun jokes. Ava wears a predictably tiny bikini that drives the boys and girls wild while Bea wears a more modest two-piece that drives Ava wild. Mary draws all the attention in her suit that shows off her killer arms and excellent abs. Lilith has to be coaxed into her suit because she's self-conscious. Jillian has probably come up with some way to either reverse or hide her scales, but the result is probably a lot of burn tissue that is difficult to conceal. Ava buys her a long-sleeve swim shirt with some silly design that Lilith threatens her life over but wears anyway.

4. Circling back to the excursions, an argument breaks out about which they should do, and whether they should stick together or split up. It gets a little heated until Mother shuts it down with "We will be doing the dolphin swim and that's final." "But why that one?" "Because I want to do the dolphin swim."

5. Ava is banned from the ship buffet after the third time she tries to dispense ice cream directly into her mouth

6. Camila gets a lot of attention from the fellas, and she gets permission from a quietly proud Mother to indulge them so long as she gets more information for the mission

7. Yasmine sweeps the trivia contests, winning all manner of silly knickknack prizes that she cherishes.

8. We don’t know much about Dora but I'm going to assume that she’s a prodigy in mini golf and collects a following of children who ooo and aaa every time she hits a hole-in-one. She and Mary clown on the competition in shuffleboard

9. Some guy sees Ava by herself (Bea is probably getting them ice cream since she's not banned) and attempts to shoot his shot. It's Ava, unfairly charming and distressingly cute, so he's practically bewitched two sentences into the conversation, but Ava's just being her normal, puppy self. Bea sees them and starts getting jealous, threatening to crush her ice cream cone to bits, but when Ava sees her coming back, she lights up with a "heeeyyy Boo-Bear, there you are! I missed you!" And immediately abandons the dude to press against her girlfriend. The guy makes brief eye contact with Bea before wisely choosing to walk away. Better luck next time, bro.

10. The tables turn when Beatrice is lounging in the sun while Ava is away (probably pestering Lilith) and an interested lady sits next to her and starts making small talk. Beatrice is extremely polite and doesn't quite pick up on the fact she's being flirted with, but Lilith has to punch Ava in the arm to stop her lighting up like an angry glowstick at the sight. Ava does march over there though and turns the puppy energy up to 11, wrapping her arms around Beatrice, nuzzling their cheeks together and pressing in until she's basically in Bea's lap. Bea is flustered and embarrassed, but the lady catches on to what's what and gracefully makes her exit. Ava drags Bea to their room for some quality time while Lilith does her best to look like she doesn't know them.

[bnnuy-wabbit]

HAAIIIIII you can call me Lago, im 21 (i dont know how EITHER), im just some guy*. this is my main blog and where i throw funny things that makes my brain produce juices and also random ass personal poasts.

one of those he/shes they never warned you about (pathogenic variant they have yet to make any vaccines to protect you from)

my art tag is #feral art tag.

there will be adult things in this blog because im an adult. follow at your own risk etc. were horny in here towards men occasionaly.

I'm brazilian. From Brazil. As in born here, living here and stuck here for the foreseeable future. é nois 🤙

Everybody says I'm really nice! I am Unable to hit people up first though, but if you'd like to be friends, send me an ask and I'll give you my discord!!!!

i have many interests (mostly music and nerd shit) and funny things that I'll be putting under the read more lest this post get Unbearably Big. There are flashing blinkies down there by the way.

OK SO INTERESTS. I like MANY things! and i have favorite things! I think it's really cool of me to have favorites. i decided I'm going to wear them on my sleeve. anyways Here's some things i Like.

MUSIC!!! its one of my favorite things ever. I play the guitar and a bit of bass. heres stuff in no particular order of favoriteness. Just stuff i care enough right now to remember.

Linkin Park (meteora, hybrid theory <3)

My Chemical Romance

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Mindless Self Indulgence

scalene

Rammstein

Ft-rj (listen to it or i am going to chase you with a broom)

francisco el hombre (i recommend the rasgacabeza album)

danny bond

2000-10s pop!!! fuck it, lady gaga, britney spears, kesha, katy perry, black eyed peas, that sorta jazz.

Every single Homestuck song there is. i have listened to all of them multiple times. My favorite albums are colours and mayhem and also the beforus fan album.

Dad rock (acdc, queen, talking heads, nirvana, judas priest, Some pink floyd etc)

Industrial and Adjacent. I've been listening to code:redcore a lot and some grammostola actaeon lately. processor also fucks.

OTHER THINGS I ENJOY

Eragon (the books)

Disco elysium.

ADVENTURE TIME. I AM OBSESSED.

How to train your dragon (the books. specifically.)

Animated movies!!! Specially the hand drawn ones.

My horrible little OCs (@honsebeasts just go there but also Beware.)

Worldbuilding. I do aliens and monster speculative biology. Most of my thoughts on it are on the Above mentioned blog though.

Real life physiology and anatomy also

MEN (and like 3 fictional women.)

HORSES!!!!!!!!!!!

stranger things

Pokemen (i do not know a single thing after gen 6 though.)

Dungeons and dragons, sometimes

Traditional art like watercolors and oil pastels

Drawing my blorbos in the same side facing pose or just standing there.

Drawing in General actually! Designing characters is my passion

Fictional fathers

sewing and felting and sculpting and painting and singing and playing

COLORS. i love colors. i love looking at them. i love playing with them. i would like to eat them if i could. i love warm palettes.

Hiveswap (pissing screaming CRYING)

MONSTERS!!!!!! They're really cool and gay and hot.

Portal (the games. all of them. glafos........ kissing her)

Half Life.

y2k and 80s-90s vibes. i think its awesome.

I am afflicted by the human condition and also a few other funnier conditions. my brain and my body dont work right.

If you want to know the brunt of the brain ones: autism adhd avpd. they all impact heavily how i interact with people with people. Sorry in advance if i can't keep conversation going.

I'm some sort of queer thing. If we need to get really specific, id say "bisexual aromantic bigender femme", mostly into men and butches, but Queer will do just fine. I'm a self entitled part time pretty fag and ugly dyke in my free hours. Intersex it turns out.

[finalskies]

Heir’s favorite posts of 2022

It’s that time of year again: the end. So I get to talk about my favorite things I posted. It’s funny, I feel like I really didn’t draw that much more than last year, and I certainly didn’t get any better. If anything, I’ve probably regressed. But even then, in these past few months I’ve probably felt more joy about drawing than I have in a long time. In a way, it feels like I’ve removed all my expectations for myself and I just... I just get to draw whatever I want, and it doesn’t matter if it looks sucky to me. “Face didn’t come out right? That’s fine, it still looks cute. It doesn’t look as good as it used to? No worries, you’ve done it before and you’ll do it once more. And even if you don’t, you can still have fun with it and make people happy.”

Maybe I’m just finally done with being mean to myself about my drawings. Maybe I just wanna draw cute/silly stuff for my friends. Because, as I’ve said before, you don’t have to be great and powerful to make something that makes a great and powerful difference in someone’s day. Anyway...

Ol’ Reliable Applejack. This is one of the first drawings I made with my new tablet, and the first one that made me think “Okay... I can still do this.” Even before my bestest most favorite tablet broke, I hadn’t been feeling the whole “drawing” thing in awhile. As simple as this looks, it felt like a real turning point.

.

Internet Fuzz Queens. As a very young child, I had this idea in my head that all my favorite cartoon characters lived in a community together and they would hang out and stuff. This is was an extremely self-indulgent comic that required specific knowledge of four different fandoms, and I want to do more like it. I love my blorbos and I want to see them hang out together.

.

Angel Byrd. My OC turned space kangaroo in my Scum and Villainy campaign. I’m glad I got to give her a little more pizzazz. I forgot to mention it in the original post, but the reason her dress has a tummy window is because she’s planning on smuggling museum artifacts in her pouch lol. We’re actually doing the second part of the heist tomorrow, wish us luck!

.

Kaysee Cadet! A character I made for a dnd Humblewood campaign. I really love how this came out. Ultimately I did settle on the orange fur, but maybe I’ll do something with that black fur design at some point. Gawd I’ve grown really attached to this character. They’re autistic, and they’re not native to the setting of the campaign, so “common” isn’t their first language. It’s been really difficult for them to navigate the world, and some people have been quite cruel to her, including her own family. All she wants is love, and they try SO HARD to help people despite everything, and we’re getting to the part in the campaign where the party transitions from “ragtag group of weirdos forced together” to “found family.” But tragedy struck in the last session of the year, and now it’s more of a “darkest hour” moment. And I’m just... I love my blorbos, especially the ones I made up ;_;

.

Give Trans Girls Swords. Winter is this lovely artist’s sheep fursona. I’d been wanting to draw them for awhile, she has such an appealing design. This was so fun to draw, I love making things for friends and also giving trans girls swords.

I really want to make my own fursona one of these days...

.

 Miss Pie’s Monsters. It was... so nice to see the monster gang again. MPM is absolutely one of those projects that I never stopped thinking about, never lost hope that I could finish it one day, even those it’s been years since its last real update. I’m happy with myself for sticking to the update schedule I promised, even if I was calling it close sometimes lol. I hope people liked seeing them again. And to the people that I know liked seeing them again: first, I love u, I hope I can continue to update it in the coming year. I can’t wait to reveal who the Captain of the guard really is.

Stay fantastic, I hope we all have a better 2023. Or at the very least, make it through it together. <3

[magnuficent76]

Quick! I need a comprehensive guide to all of your OCs right now or I'm going to start biting soon <– a guy totally not possessed by a werewolf

OUHHGHOOHOHOHH indulging me ..... OKAY theres a lot of them, BUT here's the basics ! It's written very informally but it should give you an idea for who everyone is !

[Solar Years] {This is the longest story I have written, and it has many other substories going on within it simultaneously. Big ole’ universe with tons of stuff going into it, not always connected to the main thing. High fantasy and Gods and all that jazz happening in the background of a slice of life story.}

★ Baltazar (They/He) is the protagonist of Solar Years and also my favourite little blorbo of all time. He's very big, a farmer (ex professional sports player), and also an immortal being that's been coming back to earth for 3 million years and counting, which are all normal things to say in succession. They have no sense of self preservation and desperately need to give themselves some grace for once <3

♤ Luis (He/Him) is the co-protagonist of the story, adopted from another story as a way to honour someone I greatly care about. In terms of personality, he's very much Baltazar's opposite, but ironically enough they've been coexisting for their entire lives. A long time ago, he accidentally cursed himself (through power of sheer rage and spite alone) into being immortal by falling into the Void, and nowadays he makes that Literally Everyone's problem. 

Some other characters in this story include Lazarus (She/He/They), Marsh (He/They), Andromeda (Any pronouns), Anastasia, Anne (Both she/her),  The Void Gang, and many many others. 

[Caede Tales] {Fan-story for Borderlands focusing on my ocs, which are essentially background characters to the main story, and exploring a little bit of what happens to just the regular people of Pandora. It's mostly meant to be a comedy but there's also The Horrors <3.}

♥︎ Jonah (He/it) and M3PH1ST0 (Mephisto) (They/It/He) are the same guy but a few arcs apart, also one of these eats people. One of Three protags, his side of the story focuses more on personal struggle of wanting to do better in a world that is inherently hostile to kindness, and how it slowly becomes more and more like its environment the more he realises the whole being nice thing isn't going anywhere. He's Normal (lie)

♣︎ Melaine (She/Ze) is a doctor from Promethea who came to Pandora to help the locals, and is also a direct parallel to Jonah in many ways. Her morals slooowly get more and more muddled as the story goes on and she loses a big part of herself in service of her work and the legacy she wants to leave behind, until it all culminates in her mutating herself to be a big bug. She's my everything.

◇ Archer (He/Him) is Jonah's brother and possibly the most repressed man   in all of history. He goes from a bandit to a famous rich businessman in a stroke of sudden luck, and has to grapple with his identity and everything he's leaving behind by going to another planet to do so. Local White Man. 

Some other characters in this story include Mary (She/Her), Lucio/Lucifer (Don't refer to this guy (He/Him)), Salt (He/They), Penelope and Cassandra (both She/her… for now.) Several Coworkers and many others.

[Gaslighting Fires] {Gaslighting Fires is all about Eris, a true businesswoman (stand in for criminal) at heart, and her many antics as she climbs her way to the top of the food chain. Dramedy if it was Cool (can you tell its my favourite genre)

♡ Eris (She/Her) is the protagonist and she Sucks So Fucking Bad. Girl who is gonna doom everyone else in the narrative and not take any responsibility for it. It's okay though she's awesome and gorgeous and I love drawing her so her crimes are forgiven. Lots of focus on her personal struggle in doing what she does and the relationships she accidentally keeps building with people. Whoopsies ! Your stupid ass got attached to the people you were planning on manipulating didn't it !! Cringe

♤ Lilith (She/He) is the Antagonist ! Generally speaking, her morals are still extremely questionable, but she's still a pretty decent person compared to whatever Eris got going on. His whole deal is that he's supposed to stop Eris, but due to Situations the only way to do that is to become worse than her, involving him in tons of other unrelated cases that lead into further spiralling into crime. And then they kiss and it's awesome. Don't worry about the spiralling into crime bit its enriching for her.

Other characters in this include Pandora (It/She), Jinx (They/It), Raque (She/Her)l, Gabe (He/him), Snappy (the turtle), Mallory (He/Her), Ophelia (She/Her) and some others !

[Computing Legacy] {Story set in a (dangerously close) future where Things are going to Shit so we're gonna create the matrix. Except creating the matrix actually helped a lot of people and it delayed the apocalypse a lot because of all the scientific breakthroughs it caused. Awesome ! Sure hope we don't have Repercussions Of Creating The Matrix in here or something !} 

♧ William (He/Him* for now.) is the protagonist and he sucks. Hate this guy <- loving. My horrible no good son who NEEDS to shut the fuck up more often but whom I adore nonetheless. His deal is that he's a hacker and programmer who's WAY over his head, and needs someone to get him out of there because it's making him lonely and depressed as shit. Guy who's probably nonbinary but is also in university so he Really Can't Worry About It Right Now.

♥︎ Althea (She/They) is the Co-protagonist and Queer-Platonic interest, love this girl <3 She's Will's opposite in every way, and for a while she's antagonised for it, but it's okay they get over it. They're also a very talented programmer, even though it wasn't their original career path (more of an artist), and they're trying Really Hard to make it through this world normally without exploding or disappointing their family. She's very nice to her own detriment and this gets a lot of focus in the story and how she slowly but surely becomes more ruthless thanks to their Horrible No Good Situation so people stop trying to take advantage of her <3

Some of the other characters in this include Ubel (He/It), Fox (She/It), Ferdinand (He/him), Autumn (She/Her), Randy (He/They), Mariana (She/Her), Stanford (He/Him), Ezra (She/Her) and many more.

[HELLBREAKER] {Very much still a work in progress. This one is more of an ambition project so I don't wanna share too much, but basically: It's set in hell and the protagonist Really Has To Escape. Kinda like OFF if it was made by a guy who's fascinated with religion purely aesthetically.}

☆ Maria (She/Her) is the protagonist, and she just went to hell babyyy. Well, not technically: She lands in purgatory, and is given the choice to either do her time in there or to traverse through all the layers of the underworld in order to ascend to Heaven. And based on the name of this project you can guess which she chose.

And the other characters, The Sins, Lucifer, and the many characters you find along your journey to help you !

[heartfulselkie]

Fanfiction Writing Asks: 38, 46, and 61 (for Penumbra)

Thank you for the ask!

38. What is your most self-indulgent posted story?

I think all of my fics are each a little self indulgent in their owns ways! List of things I love to include in a fic as a little treat for myself is: - There Was Only One Bed trope - Dancing (especially ballroom) - Flower language and symbolism - Angst, Hurt/Comfort, More Angst

Really fic writing is me just indulging myself as I drag the blorbos through The Horrors™.

46. If you could only write one type of AU for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Oh wow that's a really hard one. I think my favourite kind of AUs are fairytale/fantasy AUs and I could easily come up with numerous fics based around that!

61. In [Penumbra], what’s your favorite scene that you wrote?

Another hard one lol oof there were nemerous scenes in Penumbra that I really loved in the end. This scene is one of the smaller ones, but ones of my favourites as it's really where Adrien's arc started to move forwards in a positive way.

For the first time since he’d woken up, Adrien felt the consuming black waters that flooded his mind calm a little. They were still there and ready to drown him with one misstep, but as he sat there on the couch with Marinette a short space away from him he felt the effects of her soothing presence. He liked how excitable she would get over how good the pizza was or the bizarre visuals of the film. He was Adrien and not Chat Noir currently, but her attitude towards him wasn’t all that different to how it would be otherwise. He felt guilty that she was probably trying so hard for his sake. But even with the lingering questions between them, she’d told him that she could wait again. She was there with him and she didn’t expect anything of him than to just be there also. Maybe just a little longer… he thought. He could keep Adrien’s existence just a little longer.

-Penumbra, Ch. 29

Fanfiction Writing Ask Game

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

The way you write Ingo and Akari's interactions with each other never fails to warm my heart. And after seeing how he is with Rei in oop, I'm so excited to see how Emmet interacts with Akari. And let's not forget how your Cyllene is with Rei, and how she considers him Her Boy. I just love the intergenerational relationships you have going on. Kids deserve to have good adults in their lives, especially ones like Akari and Rei who have had it so rough.

There are... a lot of things I don't like about many interpretations of Emmet in fandom, but one I especially dislike is when he's overly rude or dismissive towards the kids. You avoid that trap neatly, though that's no surprise because the way you write him is one of my all time favorites. That's maybe a bit beside the point though.

In any case, I loved the little prompt snippets you wrote yesterday about Ingo with both Akari and Rei. The one you wrote with Rei was both cool and heartbreaking with how his dedication and care was the only thing keeping him going, all so Rei might have the chance to live. And the one Akari was so sweet and heartwarming, with how gentle his love for her was. She doesn't know it, but Ingo's home isn't a place, like her it's the people he cares about, and she's included in that too now. In this au where he's so close to her, it wouldn't be complete without her there.

WAAAAH THIS IS SUCH A NICE ASK?? THANK YOU?? thank you so much... i'm gonna cry this is so sweet. thank youuuu... i uh rambled a lot about characters and relationships so i'm going to put the rest of that under. a cut i think. contd:

anyway. YEAH re: kids deserving Good Adults. tbh whenever i see a kid on their own in fiction it activates some kind of primal pack bonding instinct in me to protect them, so this is like, vicarious parenting. and i just REALLY like characters who are Good With Kids, it's like one of my fav character traits that makes me instantly love them. and i love all the different ways that can come through, like, like you said, cyllene who isn't so great at saying how she feels but has SO adopted these two. so. yes. this is primarily self indulgent. it all comes back to my love of picking apart character motivations lol

also WHO is making emmet not nice to kids. i'll fight them. i'll duel them in the street right now. why is everyone else so WRONG about my BLORBO. i think- not to Also get sidetracked, lol, but- i think emmet is someone who's extremely straightforward with everything he says, and doesn't back down, but the critical thing is that all that blunt directness and stubbornness is backed by an intense motivation to help and protect others. so that's what i'm trying to channel when he's with rei or anyone else—specifically because he doesn't try to hedge his words or anything, it is so obvious at all times that he Cares and wants to Help. which can be like, intensely validating/reassuring/trust-building. like short and direct and not good at subtlety don't have to be negative asshole-building character traits!! ...but uhh anyway what were we talking about again

ingo ficlets right. YEAHH THANK YOU... i think in comparison to emmet ingo is like. actually good with people, in the sense that he can read peoples' emotions from their words and actions much better, and is very understanding and patient. and obviously he's also driven by that same compassion. trying really hard not to just make this about comparing how i characterize them both ANYWAY. and i am giving him the Parenting Instincts, lol, which, i think he has an immediate reaction of "oh i need to help you" when he sees anyone who's lost/hurt/confused, but it's stronger with kids bc they obviously tend to have less ability to support themselves. so with akari in the adoption fic i keep gesturing towards and Not Finishing, and rei in the ficlet who got separated from his usual crew, he just adopts them very quickly lol. (there's also something to be said there for how i usually write amnesiac-ingo as having a kind of busted self-perception, as we've covered, so he's outsourcing his motivation and desire to continue living to others, which is sort of a Not Great aspect of this, but uhh that's getting sidetracked again)

anyway YEAH!! his home is his loved ones!! yessss exactly!! you have it spot on, i think in that snippet after akari brings it up he does have that thought of, all he has to judge his "home" by is a vague vibe that it was good and he misses it. what if it isn't as perfect as his non-memory thinks it is? what if it can't/won't make space for akari? in which case i think that despite how much he misses it, he would be fully prepared to walk out of it for her. because like you said, his home isn't a place, it's the people!! so if akari can't belong there, then it isn't his home, either. (not that it would ever come to that in reality)

so. yes. as you can probably tell i could go on about this subject forever. just adhd tangent after tangent about kids, and the ways they get treated, and what it says about characters, and character motivations in general, and bitching about how my blorbo gets misinterpreted. but. my point is. this was a very nice ask i am going to print it out and tape it in my diary thank you