#the dialogue when you get temporal.........................

[pac1fythehunger]

they told me the game has an old man in armor,,

[iscopeee]

my null playlist is finished yayayayay

(warning for loud and glitchy sounds through most of these songs. it's NULL what did you except lol)

yapping about my song choices/reasonings for way too long under the cut

ok as a preamble a lot of my song choices here are for the interpretation that NULL is a real person trapped inside the game, which for some reason seems to be a controversial take for some people from what I've seen, so I feel the need to explain why I think that (also i'm just using this as an excuse to infodump lol). skip this next paragraph for the song reasonings if you dgaf

so basically i've seen a lot of people being like "UM well NULL licherally says he ISN'T a person trapped in a game, so of course he isn't, duhhhh 🤓" which. I don't wanna be too harsh considering how much of this game's fanbase is literal children but characters are in fact capable of being untruthful. the way I see it the fact that NULL randomly says apropo of nothing "oh nooo I'm TOTALLY not a real person trapped in a game haha, that'd be RIDICULOUS lol" (suspiciouslyspecificdenial tvtropes dot com) immediately followed by explaining that he "can't talk normally" and has to be "vague intentionally" because "some stuff is classified" combined with other hints he gives of his speech being censored by the game in later dialogue makes it clear that he obviously can't directly say what he is. the fact that he's using reverse psychology to get around the game's censorship seems pretty clear to me. (there's also the specific word choice of him calling the idea of being trapped inside a game "ridiculous" when he also describes himself as "ridiculous" earlier in his monologue but that's a bit of a stretch lol). The lake image clearly showing NULL standing by a lake in the real world is another obvious hint to NULL originally being a real person as well. his pain is neverending LOLLLLLLL (this isn't shitting on ppl who have different interpretations of NULL obviously!!! in his own words he's "vague intentionally". this is just my thoughtz :3)

ANYWAY onto da music YAY

UZUMAKI - Machine Girl -

very erratic/glitchy sound obviously. also themes of cycles, feeling trapped in negative spirals, hopelessness.

hand crushed by a mallet (N0THANKY0U remix) - 100 gecs -

any version of this song probably would have worked but I chose the N0THANKY0U remix for the compressed sound which seemed the most fitting. the themes of grief could tie into NULL's longing for his old life but I mainly chose it for these lyrics which are very NULLcore methinks

"I don't want you to think I got bad intentions/Never wanted you inside, you made it your mission, yeah/Didn't wanna hurt no one/But you just went and made it fun"

"I'll never go, I'll haunt your studio/You won't think of words when you write at all/You'll just hear me singing this song/You'll think that's okay, you'll just sing along"

i love this song ^_^

Final Transmission (The Living Tombstone remix) - Temporal Walker & [voodoopony] -

more glitchy electronic sound, as well as the lyrics being about a man getting in over his head and stranded away from his old life. regret as he realizes he's beyond the point of no return. maybe being trapped inside videos game is just like suffocating to death in space.

maybe he knew something that we didn't/staring at the mirror with a different kind of vision

Couture - Epsyle -

he's stuck on this fucking planet. he's stuck on this god damn earth. not much else to say for this one

The Mind Electric - Miracle Musical -

maybe a cliche choice for a character playlist but idc :P picked the distorted version for obvious reasons.

this pick is mainly about the power the game (?) holds over NULL (the whole censorship thing i mentioned in the preamble and the mentions of things being "classified" and "not being allowed" to do certain things in his dialogue) and the impact this must have on his mental state.

Child Protective Services Theme Song and Action Winter Journey - Nero's Day at Disneyland -

lumping these two together because both lack lyrics for me to go over. both have a very erratic, almost desperate feel to me. as the glitching which goes without saying at this point

BTSTU - Jai Paul -

WATER IMAGERY 🎉 also feelings of angry determination and of feeling lost

Cabinet Man - Lemon Demon -

i fully admit this one is a stretch buuut it's Guy Trapped In Video Game. I kinda had to lol

computer vision - sunsetcorp -

a gentle nostalgic sound is quickly cut short by dizzying electronic noise. the imagery is obvious i think

TIME STAND STILL - sunsetcorp -

feeling trapped in time. forced to stay in one place and reflect on the past endlessly by being trapped in an outdated game (I'm looking back) and being unable to progress forward and make meaningful change by destroying it and escaping (but I want to look around)

angel - sunsetcorp -

the death imagery appearing at the end of the playlist. The end of NULL style is approaching. more feelings of being trapped in the past.

END OF LIFE ENTERTAINMENT SCENARIO #1 - sunsetcorp-

the death imagery is even more blatant now. the past is looping in on itself. Escape is impossible now.

NULL tries in vain to calm himself to stop the worst from happening. One, two, three, four...

cemetary 4 - osno1 -

It's too late.

[tinfoil-jones]

Gravity Falls: For Your Own Good, Ch. 12

Summary: A few years after moving to Gravity Falls and having his lab built, Stanford Pines happens upon his estranged twin brother, Stanley. He mentally prepared himself to be suffocated by his brothers neediness all over again - what he wasn't prepared for was Stanley walking right past him like he didn't even notice him.

Rating: M for language, violence, and adult implications

Preface: Dialogue only, but some actions will be annotated for clarity. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here

First - Prev - Next

CH.12 

“Are you working on another one of your ‘conceptual’ death ray schematics, Fiddleford?”

“I didn’t have the easiest time with Psych as a subject because of its abstract nature, I thought that if I could connect it to something more tangible maybe I could understand it better.”

“So you made a psychology gun?”

“Conceptually, think of it more as a memory gun. Most of our memories are stored in our hippocampus and temporal lobe - if I could create a device that interacted exclusively with those structures, and only for memories…”

“You could restore them?”

“Right now I’m focusing on the opposite - destruction.”

“What, Fiddleford, we’re-.”

“Don’t blow a gasket. I’m not intending to erase any more of your brother's memories. This is reverse-engineering, in a way. If I can understand how memories can be suppressed in the first place, I could perhaps understand how to bring them back.”

“Okay…”

“I know, in your own emotionally constipated way, you’re just worried about him. I’d be worried about my family too if any of them up and forgot everything. But I promise you, I’m not trying to harm either of ya’ll.”

“I trust you.”

“I’m glad to hear that, I know it ain’t easy for you.”

“Any breakthroughs during your sessions?”

“I can only possibly isolate an event happening about a year ago, but he can’t specify what type of event it was. He may have been suffocating in some way? All he could say was that he couldn’t breathe.”

“...”

“Stanford, do not go into your own head about this. What happened- whatever happened, it wasn't your fault.”

“Yes… I suppose you are right, old friend.”

“In fact, I had a question about y'all's upbringing.”

“What about it?”

“Did you two share a room growing up?”

“Yes, our home was very small because our family was low income. We shared a room until he was- until he left. Why?”

“I checked your security feed and noticed something peculiar about his sleeping pattern.”

“Were you really watching my brother sl-.”

“Don’t you start now. I sped the footage up. You spend an awful lot of time down there, right?”

“Of course, it is my laboratory after all.”

“And he sleeps a bit, you’ve noticed? Quite soundly?”

“It is not that different from when we were younger.”

“Here’s the interesting bit. The other times he sleeps - when you aren’t in the lab, he doesn’t get high quality or quantity of sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“I expected this - he’s been in unsafe, unstable environments for the past decade. He has difficulty falling and staying asleep; he wakes up frequently throughout the night, and when he is asleep he looks like he has nightmares, because he tosses and turns, and panics himself awake sometimes.”

“I didn’t know that…”

“Of course you wouldn’t. If he falls asleep while you happen to be in the lab, it doesn’t happen. At first, I wondered if being alone put him out of ease. But one night I was down there running a few tests, and he was still waking up hyperventilating every other hour.”

“I do not understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“Stanford, what I find most interesting about this; he does not sugarcoat that you abducted him. He has stated multiple times that he believes you are out of your mind, and that your ‘real twin’ is dead and you can’t accept that. But in spite of these things that he says, in spite of all of that; in his most vulnerable, inoffensive state, he subconsciously associates you with safety. Stan says you’re just a stranger to him, but he feels completely safe and at ease with you.”

“...”

“It may seem like we’re hitting a lot of brick walls with him, because ya’ll are just as stubborn as each other. But he remembers you, just not with his waking mind.”

“...I need to write this down in my journal.”

“I know you’re just burying your face into that thing to hide your tears.”

“I believe I have gotten ink into my eyes."

“O’ course you did.”

To be continued…

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s7 ep10: Shattered

I love this one!! After the past few eps, this one is like water after a drought. It has all of the things I love: character driven dialogue, a time travel plot, actual continuity from previous episodes, literary references- heck, even Seska showing up is kind of refreshing again after all this time. And it's actually fun! I had so much fun watching this!

It's also a feast for the J/C shippers, it's literally an entire episode of Janeway and Chakotay flirting. Yes, there is a plot- Voyager runs into an anomaly that splits the ship into different time frames, and only Chakotay is able to pass through them to bring them back into synch- but the flirty banter is front and center the entire time.

Naturally, when Chakotay gets sent back to Voyager's past, he enlists the help of Captain Janeway, who doesn't know him yet, but is nonetheless strangely drawn to this mysterious Maquis captain who claims he knows her. (How is this not a romance novel plot?? This is so a romance novel plot!) They're forced to work together to save the ship, and Chakotay has to fill her in on what's happened to the ship in each of the timeframes without breaking the temporal Prime Directive by giving away too much. Janeway is understandably horrified by all the crazy stuff Voyager goes through in the Delta Quadrant, and wants to change history to avoid it, but Chakotay convinces her how great Voyager's journey through the Delta Quadrant actually is, because the crew becomes like a family. Janeway doesn't seem entirely convinced, but she's clearly got it bad for mysterious future Chakotay, despite still being very engaged to Mark at that point.

I'd like to say she's convinced that history shouldn't be changed because of all the good Voyager does in the future, but really, I think it's because she's just hoping she and Chakotay will get to bang in the future, lmao. I mean, she literally asks him if they did! That's what she's interested in?? Not even if like, the ship got home okay?? Just how far their relationship went?? Captain!! Ma'am!!! You are illegal levels of horny for your first officer!! But to be fair, he's encouraging her- they do nothing but flirt, and make eyes at each other, and share little smiles the whole time, and it's like ohmygod, how can they not be canon?? J/C shippers, you are gods strongest warriors, because I didn't even really get invested in them until Prodigy, but y'all have been sailing this ship for almost thirty years- how do you survive?? I'm not even that into them, and yet I'm sitting here like, "Dammit, just let them kiss!!!" This episode is insane!!

But anyway, apart from the shippyness, there's a lot of other good stuff here- it's like a nostalgic trip back through past Voyager eps.

We get an alternate timeline Tuvok death scene, with Janeway at his side. Even though I know it'll be retconned by the end of the ep, I still get a little misty over it. Their friendship is everything!! There's also a nice moment where Chakotay asks past Maquis B'Elanna to trust him when he shows up with Janeway, which she does. It's a nice little nod to the strength of their friendship, which had pretty much been entirely forgotten by the writers by this point in the show.

We also get a bit of Dr. Chaotica silliness when they have to go through the holodeck to get to an access panel (though why there's an access panel in the holodeck, idk! Just gonna go with it cause the vibes are fun!)

There's some cute stuff with Naomi and Icheb playing a board game in the beginning of the ep, which gets a nice callback later when we meet grown up versions of them in one of the future time frames.

Then they have to defeat Seska again in one of the timelines- I think she might be the dead character who makes the most appearances after their death, lol. She's a considerably better villain on her own than being second fiddle to an idiot like Cullah, so her appearance here works well. We get a delightful scene of all the crewmembers from various timeframes teaming up to retake engineering from her, plus an inspiring speech from Janeway.

And though Chakotay declares in this ep that he and Janeway always stay just friends, the ep still ends with them having yet another one of their romantic dinners in her quarters, complete with him bringing a bottle of alcohol, so it seems like maybe they won't be 'just friends' forever. While I would've preferred if they'd have actually talked more directly about their feelings, or discussed how they arrived at their weird situationship arrangement, there's no way anyone could deny they have romantic feelings going on after this one. (Even though the writers sure tried to sweep that under the rug later. But I'm trying to block out the insane writing choices that happen later in the season for the sake of my peace and sanity. I'll cross that godforsaken bridge when I come to it, and just focus on the good stuff while I'm here.) It ends with the two of them being all cute and flirty, and I don't think anyone could fail to like this ep. Everything about it is just *chef's kiss*

Tl;dr: A smart and fun time travel story, which takes time to explore Janeway and Chakotay's characters and relationship in between saving the ship from a cool time anomaly. The kind of episode that has me happily twirling my hair and kicking my feet the entire time I watch it. Good stuff!

[ratasum]

Let's Talk About Thaumanova!

This is undoubtedly going to get long, as I want to dig into a few things, including the potential name of the city that was destroyed in the meltdown, how much was/is known about the reactor, and theories/wild mass guessing. So it goes under a cut.

So for reference if you somehow don't know, most people know Thaumanova as one of two things:

A named area within Metrica Province where the Fire Elemental world boss spawns. There's a great deal of magical temporal displacement that takes place in this location, and NPCs can be found that refer to the disaster.

The fractal that encompasses the timeframe roughly one year before the beginning of the Personal Story that shows the events of the reactor meltdown that destroyed the city far above it.

According to in game dialogue from a researcher you can talk to at the entrance to the named area, the location was formerly an asuran city. Research the Inquest was conducting far below the city caused a chain reaction/meltdown that caused the reactor to go critical and level the area, leaving the city a ruin.

The implication provided here is that the location we're in is a city high above where the Thaumanova Reactor actually was located, where the Inquest was doing its research with Scarlet. He provides no details of what transpired here, nor does he name the reactor or the city itself.

It's implied that basically an entire city was wiped off the map, but NOT that the city itself was Inquest. The city was a simple asuran city cube, and the Inquest research was apparently secret... until the year before the PS.

On the other hand, nearby, you can visit a camp with survivors. It can be hard to get the applicable dialogue here, as there is a repeating event chain where Inquest from the Inner Complex will attempt to or have succeeded in kidnapping survivors from the city/reactor meltdown.

Gliga is a peacemaker you can speak with at the encampment.

She has some interesting dialogue regarding the reactor that contradicts (somewhat) what the researcher above spoke in regards to.

Gliga seems to indicate some knowledge of the reactor, but while she mentions the reactor itself, no name for the city itself is given. I have theories on this! But we'll come back to that in a moment.

Next up is Refugee Ejint. He was in the city when the reactor melted down and destroyed it. He's one of the lucky survivors, and gives us some clues on what happened to people in the city who weren't lucky enough to make it out.

Yikes!

This does go along with the thought, however, that a number of people did die- probably a significant number. If they didn't die, they were transmuted into Something Else. I'd also like to theorize that being displaced from reality or tossed into the mists is also a possibility, considering you can see animals being popped in and out of existence in the reactor (and in Brisban and the Iron Marches!).

There aren't any other refugees or survivors we can speak to here, but this is a good start. (Note: if you try to speak to other refugees, they'll cough, start crying, moan, or mutter things like "oh no no no.")

I won't get into the reactor itself too much, as it doesn't give us much more detail into the city itself, and we mostly know what transpired there.

(It is interesting to note that Dessa clearly knew two researchers, but didn't quite recognize them, stating they changed... but Dessa's fractal echo appears to be from about 20 years prior, so my general theory for that is one: her friends aged 20 years, and two: they're Inquest where they may not have been before. She also has dialogue from LWS1's initial drop that mentions knowing about the Thaumanova lab itself! Which is interesting! But we don't really get anymore detail on that.)

That being said... on to the Brisban Wildlands!

The reactor's explosion had far reaching effects, and the nearest location we can see that is in the Brisban Wildlands. The most notable of which is the Toxal Bog. Here, you can see the remnants of a ton of magical residue, and creatures that pop in and out of existence. My guess is the reactor's meltdown affected this area significantly.

Also in Brisban is the Thaumacore Inquiry Center POI and hero point. It appears the core of the reactor was eventually removed by the Inquest, though there's no indication as to when. It's possible this may also be what affected the Toxal Bog, but there's no way to know for certain.

I sometimes wonder if the orb you see at the end of the Thaumanova fractal isn't the power source seen here, but that's neither here nor there.

The final spot (that I'm immediately aware of) on our Thaumanova Tour is the Iron Marches! This is an interesting one, since we learn that the reactor's explosion didn't just affect the city and the immediate area... it also affected the location the crystals used in the Inquest facility were mined in: the Chaos Crystal Cavern Jumping Puzzle.

And the effects of the chaos rifts are varied indeed.

So with all this information in hand, what can we conclude?

It's time for theories!

In general, we know painfully little. We know there was a reactor called the Thaumanova Reactor, and there was (at one time) a city above it. We know there was a loss of life, be it from people dying, being transfigured, or a variety of other things that may have affected them (displaced, yeeted out of existence, etc).

We also know that the reactor meltdown happened in a lab deep below the city, not in the city itself.

My general theory is that the reactor was in the city, or at least underneath it, and WAS a known item. I do think the Thaumanova Reactor was what powered the city cube that was there at one time. I don't think, however, that they shared a name. Large asuran settlements have very standard naming principles, as seen with the known examples below:

Quora Sum

Rata Pten

Rata Novus

Rata Arcanum

Rata Sum

Rata Primus

I do think it may have been something like Rata Thauma or Rata Nova (though Rata Nova is a stretch... it's very close to Rata Novus, which may a) have the implication of bad luck and b) call to mind Zinn, who was pretty unpopular, to say the least).

My guess in this regard, since no one was aware the lab was under the city, was that the laboratory didn't even have a name, or at the very least if it was named for the reactor, it was sold to the people in the city as not actually being down below so as to allay any fears the citizenry may have about having a giant Inquest laboratory right under their feet.

(I am aware that Dessa mentions the Thauma lab, and that she was aware it was "a nasty place to work," but it's the only line that exists and iirc it was ONLY in the og LWS1 drop, so it's equally possible she didn't know exactly what it was or what research was taking place there. I could be wrong, though, and if anyone has screens of that dialogue, please feel free to add them on! That said, we do know from the researcher the lab was not known about prior to the reactor meltdown. That fact is, at least, solid.)

So what happened to the city cube?

My personal theory is that the city cube is the Uncategorized Fractal. Having Dessa's former partner (supposedly) there doesn't disprove this, either: we know Dessa in the fractal echo is from roughly 20 years prior. Her being so hesitant about the empty city doesn't necessarily mean that she was aware of the reactor meltdown. If sh e and her partner had a falling out, or if she's seen this loop enough to know what's at the end...

It could elicit the same response. And we know things can be ripped OUT of the mists, so why not placed into the mists as well? The Raving Asura's dialogue also pairs neatly with some ambient dialogue from a survivor in the Survivors Encampment.

(My Gyazo busted and I didn't catch the dialogue in a screenshot, but you can read it here at this link... it's the first piece under At the Survivor Encampment, and there's other interesting dialogue below!)

Obviously Your Mileage May Vary, but it's REALLY fu n to speculate and think about this place. It's a great place to look to for information if you want a LOT of trauma for your asura's backstory, be it by being a survivor, losing family while they were away, being an Inquest researcher who escaped, or maybe even by being distorted by the shifts in reality when the reactor melted down.

I jokingly say the Thaumanova city cube is my Roman Empire, and genuinely, I talk about it because people who aren't playing asura may not even realize it was there.

But I hope this provides some neat information on a little known/talked about piece of asura lore!

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

wip ask/tag game, i would like to know about your "Pure Trash" wip. for fun:3

from this wip ask game

okay so idk why i called the doc "Pure Trash" because it's actually a pretty solid concept even if it would take so long to write that it'll probably never come into fruition but the idea is a re-write of new who where Romana was the last of the Time Lords instead of the Doctor (not an original concept by far but still fun to think about).

i only really outlined s1 but essentially the conceit is that Romana (still Romana II), much like Nine, is convinced that she didn't deserve to live through the end of the War but ends up finding the Doctor's TARDIS and starts to play as the Doctor to remember how to be a hero and get away from all of her War-related guilt but the lies she's told to both herself and Rose start to unfurl around The End of the World where she's recognized as the former President of Gallifrey and really crumble during Dalek and The Parting of Ways where it's revealed that she helped start this horrific War she's always alluding to.

i don't have much properly written (and what i do have written isn't the best quality because it's a few years old), so it's mostly just vague planning and a few pieces of dialogue, but i'd imagine her relationship to Rose would be a little different – playing into Romana's tendency to emotionally shut down and be a lot more numb to death and more willing to make hard calls than the Doctor while Rose is a lot less willing to trust her after finding out how much of Romana's heroism comes down to pretending to be someone else.

i'd also think Romana, like the Doctor, is still exasperated with Jack but more because he treats temporal intervention so cavalierly and less because of the romantic jealously (Romana and Rose still have the kiss in The Parting of Ways but their relationship in general is much less romantic than Rose & the Doctor). but they end up both gaining mutual respect for each other more than Jack & the Doctor ever really did (and Romana does not abandon him at the end of the season! though i have yet to work out the implications of that.)

anyways the one bit i have worked out that i'm still happy with is Romana confronting the Dalek Emperor at the end of The Parting of Ways because it's such a wonderful pairing with Romana's character all throughout Gallifrey and would be a wonderful way for Romana II's story to end:

EMPEROR: BECOME A DALEK. THE LAST OF THE TIME LORDS IS TO BECOME THE GREAT EXTERMINATOR. ROMANA: [quietly] The Destroyer of Worlds. EMPEROR: SO WHAT TO YOU DECIDE? COWARD OR KILLER? MADAM PRESIDENT. ROMANA: [grips the device and still speaks quietly] If I press this button, it will be far from the worst thing I have done in the name of peace. You speak of godhood… I’ve killed so many others who have claimed that title. I’ve also killed innocent people and innocent worlds to bring peace. And I’ve seen what the Daleks are capable of first hand. I think one planet is such a small cost to end you forever. EMPEROR: YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH. ROMANA: Oh so many times. I’ve tried to sacrifice my life in the name of peace more than I can remember. But… I think it was chosen for me. It was chosen by you when you claimed me as your prisoner and death has haunted me ever since. You really would be getting the fate you deserve because you pushed me to do this. Before Etra Prime, or even before the war, I would never have done this – this cold blooded murder.  EMPEROR: EVEN YOU ADMIT DALEK SUPREMACY. I MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE. ROMANA: And that is why I would never press that button again. [drops the device] You did make me a killer. You made me the person who ended the Time War. But I will deny you ownership of me. I am not Unit 117. I am not a killer. I am Romanadvoratrelundar and I say no. I make my own future.

[scribz-ag24]

your grovyle and dusknoir pieces matter so much to me because you capture the very essence of how much the green gecko bastard and his 7.11ft tall ass ghost-guy-that-was-sent-to-kill-him-but-whoops-something-happened matter to each other and just how they change the other while still being all awkward at certain times because they are in a situation that involves feelings in which they are both not used to (grovyles emotional tendencies where he pushed down things and thoughts that would otherwise doom the mission he was on and dusknoir just being completely foreign to them because he strives from a world where kindness and love is seen as a vulnerability so he just strayed far from things that will inevitably stab him in the back) and how they try to navigate it while having to bear the annoyances of the other but still viewing them in high regard nonetheless. i dont go here too much but i figured i may as well say it because i think you're cool and because you draw those two annoying little studs so well. have a good day scribz

Waaaa thank you!! I appreciate you stop by here to be so lovely! This made my entire week 🥹🥹 I always love to see you when you tag, youre so thorough in everh post you reblog, it's a delight to see ^^

They are sooo important to each other, I don't think we appreciate enough how pivotal they are to each other's development, especially grovyle to dusknoir's. Still cant believe the ghost's parting word and thought was a a most thankful message to his old enemy, thanking him for giving his life meaning, for helping him not regret having truly *lived*, not just survived. I wish Dusknoir got some more dialogue after coming back to life, but those being his last words, in addition to him constantly referencing grovyle's speech, just goes to show how far he's internalized grovyle's words.

And the way Grovyle genuinely sees and reaches towards Dusknoir's inner goodness, *while* he's actively being betrayed, is beyond words. Grovyle loves his friends deeply and by this point he's clearly gone far enough to consider Dusknoir close to that status. Maybe Dusknoir protecting him from a blow hit too close to home and changed the dynamic in his eyes from "temporal ally" to just "ally". It can't be a coincidence that Grovyle opens up and explains his motives and ideas after Dusknoir takes the attack for him.

You just can't get one without the other in my mind, it's how they contrast and mirror each other, it's how the game switches the tables and flips their alignment so seamlessly. The thief-captor dynamic turning on its head once you see their true colors. How dusknoir appears more mature and put together thanks to his charm and social skills, only for him to end up learning and looking up to Grovyle, whose more developed life philosophy and selfless objective end up convincing Dusknoie to fight for something beyond himself.

Special Episode 5 is one of rhe best pmd chapters/story out there, and it's the most basic premise of Grovyle and Dusknoir working together. The writers developed them so well in conjuction that they can't be separated in my head.

But even then their contrasting personalities makes them so fun to put them into situations, despite the ares wjere they might overlap. they're both great but they belong together. And celebi just adds even more flavour to the mix by adding someone so radically different from them in her view and approach to things (seeing as shes one of the onlu characters explicitly in love, maybe even in priorities outside world-ending cataclysms xD). Future trio in post-canon is simply too rich, even the crumbs from PSMD links them together and that's enough for me.

(And also just in general the vibes are so good, we make fun of dusknoie for the "looking nervous having your back exposed to me" but grovyle's "you cling to me beyond expectation" and "i surrender, do with me as you will". BESIDES ALREADY THINKING ABOUR DUSKNOIR WAY MOEE THAN ANYONE ELSE.

he goes up to partner during the sunrise and goes "thinking about dusknoir?" whilw it turns out partner is thinking of how much they love the beach and their friend 😭😭 and then grovyle says in his letter "hey watch out for dusknoir bc he WILL BE BACK I KNOW HIM" and hero and partner jusr go "oh yeah that guy. remember that guy??" like THEY DONT REMEMBER WHO TRIED TO KILL THEM A DAY AGO?? 😭😭 why they dgaf lmao)

So yeah. I care about them a normal amount xD.

[themcomicsofficial]

Welcome Home next Theory Idea

So now we know about the next update of Welcome Home from Clown Illustration's update on twitter.

So here are my thoughts on what will happen:

The main page starts out fresh and new this time it has Spring features like flowers, a bright beautiful, clear blue sky and of course--Wally!!

As the user scrolls down we see the cast--but wait, WHERE'S EDDIE?? (The neighbors are wearing spring attire with a banner that says "Welcome!" however Eddie Dear is no where to be found)

The Neighborhood page:

The user goes the neighborhood page as usual...

However, when the user clicks on Eddie Dear they get a proclaimer that will say; "Due to technical difficulties, the audio recording of Eddie Dear has been temporality compromised. We will fix it up soon."

When the user clicks on the dialogue of Eddie. It shows warbles and--quite disturbing sounds with groaning and moaning--then record scratch!

The Merchandise page:

Since Julie Joyful is centered around this. The WHRP have recovered a story called "Sing-A-Long, Spring-A-Along!" Where it centers around Julie trying to make the flowers bloom from her singing. As we reach--I dunno the 15:50-16:05, Frank asks where's Eddie--Then it warbles with disturbing noises and a woman screaming in the end.

However, the story cuts back to the story with Julie all happy that her singing made the flowers bloom! And they live happily ever after!

As we scroll in the Merchandise page more

The WHRP say they have recovered a Julie Joyful stuffed animal commercial audio where it "protects you from the dark" and "make you see her in "eyes"...

Away from Prying Eyes:

W once again talks to us about how Welcome Home is still difficult to find, the Question Answer sent him complaints on how every each search result makes no sense. W talks about the toy phone again but this time...he presses the pink button...(Julie Joyful) as he tells us that JULIE can hear him as well...Telling him why isn't W playing with her as he recalls of seeing her in a flower field and a woman with a blood stained hammer attacked him in a dream.

Footage:

Unlike with the Commercials from "Homecoming", W tells us he found the illustrated, storybook segments in a supposed episode of Welcome Home.

It's a continuation of the story with Julie Joyful taking care of the flowers, Sally Starlet tells her about Eddie Dear's sudden disappearance...Then we get the climax...Julie says "Who's Eddie?" Sally looks her dumbfounded and yells at her on how come she doesn't remember Eddie at all. Julie believes that Sally is playing a game, Sally begins to panic to have a anxiety attack on what's going here in the neighborhood loudly, asking what's going here...Then the screen goes black with Sally in the dark with Julie looking down...

Sally: J-Julie?

Sally sees her holding a bloody hammer with blood covered on hands...

Julie Joyful: You should've played with me...

A beating is heard offscreen where blood is splashed on the walls...

The camera goes down we see a pink flower as it opens an eye...

W says in the final description that he couldn't recall on what he heard...All he can hear was the illustrated story segments and that's it but the one thing he can recall that merchandise of Sally Starlet was fatality damaged...

So this means Sally is gone as well...

Man, I had a lot of fun writing this!

Lemme know what you think!

Welcome Home is owned by Clown Illustrations

[dextraicarus1994]

When you think you've seen it all, it turns out there's more than meets the eye.

This will show spoilers from Captain Laserhawk manga Crushing Love and also it will brings some Splinter Cell lore, so watch out if you don't want to get spoiled.

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This little discovery had showed me a different take of the Captain Laserhawk lore and probably will be answering some questions (or create more *I am creating more questions than ever and the anxiety to know*).

It looks like Anna Grimsdöttir got a role in Dolph past

For some that are not familiar who Anna Grimsdöttir is, she was an ally of Sam Fisher during The Splinter Cell games and books, she was the Communications Lead later Chief Technical Analyst for Third Echelon and then became Technical Operation Officer during her Fourth Echelon era. She provided Sam with technical support during his field work also adressing any high - technology issues and a skilled hacker.

In this panels we see how Dolph tells his story with Alex (Grim was the only lady who could Boss Alex and he would not complaint, that means the situation was bigger than anything) and suddenly Marcus is surprised by seeing Ana and mentions that she was part of the war (I assumed he was mentioning about the Wastelands War), who provided Intelligence and saved Sam and Marcus many times and after they Lost, she went missing, not knowing about her whereabouts...

Now with this little revelation, It looks like there more than meets the eye, I can't tell everything yet because It looks like I need to read the rest of the manga, but how the things are going, there will be many revelations that could unite the missing links of the series' lore and this could be a twist to some questions that are unaswered.

Remember the last episode where a Rayman was send a message about going to see Bullfrog? Some assume many characters that would had sent that messege, but now with seeing this revelation about Grim, I can believe she could have been the one who send it. It looks like Anna was willing to stop Eden, too and the reason why she and Alex were working together, also there is something curious about a dialogue of Alex telling Grim if Dolph is not able to do his part he could talk to the Arms Dealer Andy (some that are not familiar with the Splinter Cell lore would past it unnoticed, but if I am correct, or I am assuming many things, Alex would had been referring to Andriy Kobin, an arms dealer who was enemy of Sam Fisher during Splinter Cell Conviction, then a temporal ally in Splinter Cell Blacklist).

So... Here it is this little discovery and man, there is a lot to be reveal and to see this, brings me a Big joy to know that more Splinter Cell characters are around the Captain Laserhawk serie, meaning that that maybe Sam will have a bigger part in Dolph's role in Season 2 (I really hope so). 🥺🥺🥺💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤

Oh!!! Almost forgot, Anna design in the manga looks like the design from Blacklist more than anything.😁😁😁😁💞💞💞💞💞💞

[leohtttbriar]

i think the biggest mistake an audience can make (i.e. me) with a time-paradox story is to try to make sense of it. like there's the surface-level logic here that sisko can be a "chosen one" of sorts because, well, he always was. if you can look down on the fourth dimension of time and see it all laid out in the same way we can look down a two-dimensional square, then everything always is and verb-tenses mean nothing and the layout of What Is is. but that's just so so abstract. (!)

what ends up being implied by the idea of extra-dimensional beings like the prophets is determinism. which doesn't. like. make sense. not from our perspective at least. the universe is just too much for us to be able to see a character like sisko able to interpret the space between what the prophets say and what he should then decide. the prophet above is saying "you need to rest now" and the prophets said that sisko has a path he is "meant" to walk--so was he always going to decide to both marry kasidy and "learn" among the prophets in the wormhole? if his decision-making has no power, why would the prophets tell him what to do to begin with? he says he's already done all the things he is going to do, sort of, so what is his relationship with spacetime? how can someone exist in between non-linear beings and linear time? what makes sisko special--is it his decision-making or his determined life?

i get the feeling this ending for the character was supposed to provoke these sorts of questions but i can't get past how it makes very little sense to me. which i guess is my own reaction to time-paradox stories: arrival and interstellar and even the "children of time" episode of ds9, none successfully convince me of the know-ability of time. even kasidy asking in the prophet vision "is anyone here?" makes my brain hurt, because, like, yeah is anyone there? where do these creatures exist? where and when and how? and in what ways can they contribute to the fabric of a mutable and constantly morphing or expanding and evolving universe?

obviously, it's not like a few sci-fi writers are going to do what only theoretical physicists can only imagine, but something about the tone of this episode, the design and the dialogue, suggests something answer-able. "meant to" and "alone" and "rest" and "ben? is that you?" are temporal and, in the logic of this story, are determined? there are ways to suggest more ambiguity, to lean into the logic of paradoxes--using color and music to imply that nothing here is figured out, that sisko is just a man invited into a perspective that we haven't yet been able to understand. a star trek-y "how mysterious, how weird" sort of answer that emphasizes that tying-up loose ends isn't the best narrative resolution sometimes.

this conclusion for sisko is a bit ambiguous but also not. and i sort of wish kasidy had gone with him. what does pregnancy look like where everything already was and is and yet to come? what is a romance undefined by the progressive beats of relationships and intimacy? what would their relationship say about the ongoing-ness of love?

[sequence-trotter]

after really not liking it after the initial switch i've come to enjoy argenti's new english VA performance more. where the last VA sounded extremely sincere and slightly ethereal, i interpret the new english argenti as a guy who is still kind of like that but is also consciously performing Being A Knight as a cover for a real intense faith bordering on fervor that he hides because he knows people find it difficult. there's the slightest ragged edge to some of his lines, a bit of throatiness that hints at some darkness under there. his take of the "for idrila" full ult line takes it from a whispered devotion to an almost pained invocation. a little less "i offer this victory up in the name of beauty" and the slightest hint more of "i shed this blood in the name of god."

and i think that's actually kind of nice, because it speaks to an aspect of argenti's characterization that's present in his character stories and dialogue but which i think gets often overlooked in favor of "argenti is your biggest bro" and "argenti is a beautiful perfect bishonen knight" and "argenti is a walking comedy bit about extolling the beauty of random objects" (all of which i think are fun interpretations!). the thing is that the knights of beauty live completely insane dark fantasy protagonist existences where they are constantly dying in the pursuit of beauty because they can only almost see idrila when bleeding out and near death, and they must resist temptation in a spiritual trial every time they do lest they become nascent malformed emanator/aeon monsters. spoilers through hsr 2.3 follow.

argenti's level 60 and 80 character stories lay it out: being a knight of beauty means constantly facing violent battle to protect and pursue beauty while also resisting the whispering of demons (literal or not? less clear) offering you temporal pleasures and power and remembering your own potential for evil, because if you succumb, you will become a full-on nightmare bloodborne monster.

when he pulls you aside to pitch his "i'll stay behind and almost die to the giant sting while you guys get out of here" plan, argenti is pretty clear: this is extremely non-metaphorical. for the knights of beauty, seeking Beauty means constantly getting yourself nearly killed while protecting beautiful things, which will enable you to come ever nearer to glimpsing idrila. constantly almost dying to get closer to THEM is his vow as a knight.

(hey also "journey of argenti" is such a pointed phrasing. what's that about. if nothing else it's another thing suggestive of performance, in that he slips into talking about himself like a character)

in fact, when he returns in 2.3, argenti brings this up again, and even references the friend from his character stories who turned into a monster. in doing so, he suggests that this "omen of evil" monstrous form is something akin to sunday's form in his boss fight...which is interesting, considering Sunday's boss form is him first taking on the powers of an Emanator (Harmony's Emanators possess people, Harbinger "assuming direct control"-style, and his first form is sunday subverting and reshaping THEIR emanator Dominicus, the Harmonious Choir, to suit Order's ends and remake the world), then becoming a being that it's implied could have become an Aeon ("Embryo of Philosophy").

(also, that last bit. sorry about your dead friend/lover, argenti. damn. also, not only does this suggest the depths of his grief, it also suggests his endless quest is indeed difficult to bear, despite his outward projection of stoic endurance)

what we've gotten is both very straightforward and tantalizingly scant in terms of detail and process. one plausible if very literal read: assuming argenti's experience is typical, the knights of beauty come extremely metaphysically close to Beauty by dying repeatedly, but if they fall to the desire for power and pleasure while doing so, they become a terrible monstrous thing a lot like what sunday was, which could h ave been a newly-forming aeon and was definitely at least an emanator-type thing. so the knights of beauty either become sort of nascent aeons/emanators of Beauty in themselves or (my read) sort of malformed pathstriders of things which are almost but not quite Beauty, in much the same way that Sunday's desire was not actually for Order and turned him into an embryonic Something of Philosophy. But, y'know, that's probably not nearly as powerful and dangerous a transformation if you aren't backed by a Stellaron and a hive mind/psycho-spiritual network formed from 107,336 individual lives which are threatening to push you over into actual Aeonhood.

what's interesting about this to me is that the general omission of this information from anywhere except argenti's character story and dialogue suggests to me that it's not common knowledge in universe. it doesn't show up in the in-game databank, the xianzhou alliance's primer on aeons, or pom-pom's out of game lore drop.

himeko, generally a pretty knowledgeable character who gets treated by the express as an authoritative source of knowledge, doesn't mention it at all in her summary of them.

in fact, one neat aspect of the trailblazer's relationship with argenti is that as far as we know he has confided this whole "dying to get closer to idrila" deal to the trailblazer and only to the trailblazer, not any of the other members of the express or e.g. velite or boothill.

i like to think it's because, as he says, he sees the trailblazer as already traveling the path of beauty. and like we're...not NOT fighting giant monsters and almost dying in the pursuit of something, y'know? if we fell unconscious after a fight and almost glimpsed Beauty that'd be totally unsurprising to me. Harmony gave us the look just for wearing a cool hat!

that technically makes this a little piece of cool Aeon lore that the Trailblazer has been made privy to in-universe which most other characters wouldn't know! Unclear if they would even recognize that, though. Of course, I suppose in some ways Simulated/Divergent Universe mean knowing things we shouldn't about Aeons is a big part of the Trailblazer's deal (even if they'll never let us mention it in-story).

Anyways, wrapping back around to the original point, I think this angle makes the new va's performance work for me. new Argenti sounds a little like a guy doing a Knight Voice because he kind of is. who he really is, the person he has shown only to the Trailblazer so far, is a man whose devout and unflinching pursuit of Beauty is inextricably tied to terrible violence and death, both his own and that of others. The Knights of Beauty are heroes, and he'll play the role in public and for others, but underneath that is something much darker, wearier, and more zealous than outward appearances suggest.

[sirenadeillustrationcomics]

Thanks @raycatz !

1, How many works on ao3? 12

2. Total ao3 wordcount? 90 071 (hey, it’s actually a lot, I didn’t noticed before!)

3. Top 5 Fics by Kudos?

Some fanarts: my fanarts in the universe of SSSS!

Mad Mask: a Linked Universe fic, the Chain meets Fierce Deity and it goes bad.

Midnight ghost story: a midnight episode for SSSS, the crew is stuck in the tank, Lalli is missing and dark being lurk outside.

The last seeds: my first fanfic, a cross-over between the book series Silo and SSSS. The crew wakes up in a strange bunker underground and none of them can remember their past life.

Sleeping beauty: wait, what? Why is it here? It’s, uuuuuuh… a shameless smut thing between Lalli and Emil. Totally not Gen. I don’t put the link for this one, but you can look for it if you’re curious.

4. What fandoms do you write for? Mainly Stand Still Stay Silent, my beloved, and I started writing LU recently.

5. Do you respond to comments? Always.

6. Fic with the Angstiest Ending: maybe “Last words”, the hero dies in the end.

7. Fic with the happiest ending: “The end of summer”, Emil and Lalli go together live a happy life at Emil’s old house in the mountains and Reynir takes a boat to find Onni. Mikkel and Sigrun make pastries.

8. Do you get hate? Don’t think so?

9. Do you write smut? Sometimes when I’m bored.

10. Do you write crossovers? The Last seeds count as one because it’s heavily Silo-coded, and some of my fanarts mix the fandoms.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not as far as I know...

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I write in French, all my fics are translated by myself (I can’t think in English, too much brain work)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic? Kind of, I had the help of my Beta for all my fics and for me it counts as co-writing.

14. All-time favorite ship? Emil/Lalli, forever.

15. WIPS you want to finish but doubt you ever will? The fanarts WIP. I won’t ever end it, except if I come to the point I don’t like the draw them any more, and it’s not likely to happen.

16. Writing strengths? People seems to enjoy my jokes. Only half of them are intentional.

17. Writing weaknesses? I don’t know how to write conflict, it makes my plots a little weak.

18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue? It’s the main part of the fun for SSSS, because language issues are a big theme in the original work. In LU, I don’t know, it’s funny to see fics where the Chain doesn’t have the same language due to temporal gaps between them.

19. First Fandom you ever wrote for? SSSS, and it was very funny!

20. Favorite Fic you've ever written? Maybe “On his own”, a self-indulgent whump where Onni get hit by a big branch and has to walk to safety just with ghost-Tuuri help. Not my best but it was great to write the dynamic between these two.

@darkcherrylemondrop

@chocoborane

@wavewright62

If you want to play too.

[cuz-reasons]

13 and 18!

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

Depends on the fic really! At the very least, I try to have some sort of idea of how I want the story to go in its entirety before actually writing. Even if that's the most barebones "character goes here, says something like this, does that, etc" type thing.

Of course as is common with fics, things don't always go to plan and things get changed as it gets written, esp with longer fics, but I like to have a general "goal" or scene I wanna write around.

Longer fics tend to get more fleshed out plans by their very nature of being long. Each chapter gets their own goals, whether it's big topics or small things that hint at later stuff. Temporal Mistake currently has the most detailed plan due to its nature and I had to physically map it out with pen and paper lmao. Once that fic is finished being posted, I'll post a pic cuz I think it's funny

18. What's one of your favourite lines you've written in a fic?

This is a tough one and I will be giving the first few I thought of without going through all my work!

"No, holdeth on," [Arceus] said, "Thou hast Pokemon, correct?"

This bit from Here Comes Emmet With A Steel Chair! never fails to crack me up. I'm pretty sure the use of "holdeth" is technically grammatically incorrect (I think it should be "holdst"), but it was too funny not to use -eth here.

The man rushed ahead, encouraging Ingo to keep going. Higher, higher, higher! Until you can reach the stars! Come on, we’re almost there!

The whole of ch3 of The Track Through the Clouds Lead Home, Then Further Still holds a special place in my heart, but this bit in particular I really like. I always love when stuff bleeds into narration. Since "the man" in question is just a half-formed mental image of Emmet, I thought having the encouragement in the narration and not as actual dialogue would be good.

“But I’m an adult,” Emmet whispered.

“That doesn’t make you any less my kid.”

Looooove this little exchange from Day at the Lake. Sometimes being reminded of obvious stuff, in this case for Emmet that his Dad's there for him and loves him, can really hit something deep. Neither man in this exchange is much of a talker, but that isn't always necessary. Sometimes you just gotta say it straight.

[elvenmother]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @ghostofaboy

1 - How many works do you have on AO3? 21 total

2 - What’s your total AO3 word count? 102,006… not too bad

3 - What fandoms do you write for? I've written for a few over the years but more recently has been The Mandalorian, Kingsman, The Mentalist and We Can Be Heroes

4 - Top five fics by kudos Gonna miss off my actual number one cos it's an original fic

De Tempore - The Mandalorian Context and Perspective - We Can Be Heroes (Marcus Moreno/F!Reader) Shattered - Kingsmen (Jack Daniels/F!Reader) The Art of Crossed Wires - The Mentalist (Marcus Pike/F!Reader) Fascination - The Mandalorian

5 - Do you respond to comments? Yes, I love getting comments and always try to thank people for them.

6 - What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Shattered. Hands down the angstiest thing I've every written.

7 - What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Both Context and Perspective and The Art of Crossed Wires have happy endings. I'm a sucker for fluffy happiness.

8 - Do you get hate on fics? Thankfully no, that's not something I've ever had to deal with.

9 - Do you write smut? Only a couple of times but it's something I hope to get better at.

10 - Craziest crossover? I've not really written any crossovers. I guess Shattered, because I had Marcus Pike joining Statesmen.

11 - Have you ever had a fic stolen? No, thank goodness.

12 - Have you ever had a fic translated? No and I'd love it.

13 Have you ever co-written a fic before? No but it's something I'd love to do.

14 - All time favorite ship? I love Dinncobb, hands down my fave.

15 - What’s a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I've got tons of wips that will never get finished, but most of them are original stuff rather than fics.

16 - What are your writing strengths? I think dialogue as well as internal dialogue.

17 - What are your writing weaknesses? Action. Keeping track of everything in an action scene can be tough.

18 - Thoughts on dialogue in another language? I've never done it as my Spanish isn't good enough and I'd hate to insult native speakers. But when it's done well I think it can really enhance a fic.

19 - First fandom you wrote in? The very first fandom I wrote for was Re-Animator. A god awful self insert when I was about 14.

20 - Favorite fic you’ve written? Context and Perspective. I loved picking the world apart and getting under the hood of what would make the Heroics tick. It's by far the longest thing I've ever written too.

no pressure tags: @just-here-for-the-moment, @novemberrain-writes, @wyn-n-tonic, @defira85, @ltleflrt

[thevikingwoman]

Author Interview

tagged by @galadrieljones thank you!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

57

2. what's your total AO3 word count?

197,188

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Dragon Age, Uprooted (Naomi Novik), Wayfarer IF, Final Fantasy XIV.

only the latter two in the past year.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

Temporal Arrangements (Dragon Age Inquistion, Solavellan, E) Time Travel canon-divergent AU

Home (Uprooted - Naomi Novik, Sarkan/Agnieszka, T) Canon coda

Ar Lath Ma (Dragon Age: Inquisition, Solavellan, T)  Post canon fix it fix

Pies (Uprooted - Naomi Novik, Sarkan/Agnieszka, M ) post happily ever after domestic fluff

Temerity (Dragon Age: Inquisition, Solavellan, E) post canon enemies/not really enemies bdsm smut

5. do you respond to comments?

I try to respond to all of them! I love getting comments and when I comment I love getting replies on comments myself.

I may forget though, and I'm sorry! I love comments

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

God Slayer (Solavellan, T) I really like this one.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics have happy endings, though I really like them with a tinge of uncertainty or bittersweetness.

the most straight up happily ever after is probably Hay, (Solavellan, E) which is just a very self-indulgent little happy fic.

8. do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I ever had?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

I do write smut! I love writing smut, it's such a good challenge and it makes me happy. I love characterization through smut - and it's such an interesting way to do characterization. That said, sometimes I'm just thirsty and I want to see two characters smash. I'm not pretentious about it. I'm here to have fun and I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to read or write porn.

I write all sort of smut? I do love playing with power dynamics in sex scenes.

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?

The closest I've written is Comfort, a Solavellan vampire fic, which uses some BtVS lore? It's not crazy tho!

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of either. I think I'd be a little apprehensive.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

nope. I'm not sure how i'd do that? writing feels like a solitary thing, even when asking for feedback and input.

The closest is a shared timeline/ideas where my OC interact with another person's OC and both of us wrote in the same continuity.

14. what's your all-time favourite ship?

hmmm. Once I've not written for and probably never will, Spike/Buffy.

if it's writing for, I'd say it's still Solavellan.

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I think if I want to finish it, I will? I have some old WIPs, but the reason I'm not finishing them is lack of want? Do or do not kinda thing I think.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I've told I've had good pacing. I think I write pretty good smut.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions? I tend to not want want to describe things. I'm also not great at moving characters through space - he went to the door, he looked out etc? I tend to slip into passive voice when writing characters moving around unless it's combat action or sex.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

nope.

"Hello," he said in Spanish

is perfectly valid.

A few short words like endearments - where the speaker would use a specific term in a different language than what's spoke is fine. Items that are specific and not translatable and would typically be borrowed words in a different language are fine too (kimono. computer. kayak)

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Dragon Age

20. favourite fic you've written?

This is SO hard. I was just looking at some old fics I really really love?

but I think right now, I'll pick my newest fic, Passing Through (wol/Tansui, E) because I love it very much and I had so much fun with it.

tagging @myreia @roguelioness @coldshrugs @allaganexarch @bearlytolerant @buttsonthebeach @scionshtola @galadae @wickedwitchofthewilds @redinkofshame @ellstersmash and @kittlesandbugs and anyone else who wants to! tag me!

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

I know you said you weren't watching Loki Season 2 (and trust me, you're better off not doing it), but I DID watch it, and I need to get my thoughts straight and describe how it ended, and I can think of no better way than by telling you.

So... how to put this down concisely in a way that won't make me look insane?

OK, I think I got it.

Loki has somehow gained the ability to transfer his consciousness to any point in his time-stream. What happens to the past version of him when he takes control? Don't know. But ignore that, the story purpose of this is so he can Doctor Strange himself and continually repeat the process of trying to modify the TVA's Temporal Loom before it overloads and destroys all of reality. [In case you don't know, the Temporal Loom apparently "takes raw time and weaves it into the Sacred Timeline", but now that the multiverse is free it can't account for so many new branches, so they want to expand it's output.]

Now you might be thinking "well, the multiverse is infinite, so how can anything quantify it?" And you'd be right, because when Loki finally manages to expand the loom, it still overloads because there is just too many branches. Why did it take him thousands of years to realize it was fruitless? Because this show's Loki is a fucking idiot.

Anyway, at first Loki thinks the solution is to stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains so the timelines aren't freed (I think the writers forgot that the timelines started branching before HWR died), so by going back along his time-stream he is able to talk with HWR, who tells him... get this... that the Temporal Loom has a fail-safe where if it overloads, it blows up to destroy everything except for the Sacred Timeline, and then it's rebuilt. So that puts Loki back to where he was at the end of Season 1 both narratively and literally; either protect one timeline and only one timeline by wiping out quintillions of lives, or let everything burn completely.

Right now you're probably thinking "killing quintillions of people to save a few trillion doesn't feel like a good tradeoff" and you'd be right. Loki thinks so too, because he tells Sylvie that he doesn't think it's worth keeping one timeline alive at the cost of all the others. So what does he do?

... to be honest, I don't fully grasp it, so stay with me here.

He does back to the moment before the Temporal Loom was destroyed, and somehow uses his powers to rip it apart himself and contain the explosion so it doesn't incinerate anything.... I think, because after that there are millions of little strands that I guess are supposed to represent timelines. And then.... I still can't believe what I saw... Loki reaches out and starts grabbing as many strands/timelines as he can, and weaves them into what I think is supposed to be the Tree of Yggdrasil, and at the end of the sequence he sits down on a throne at the center of the "tree".

How does any of this work physically? How can Loki do any of this? Fuck you, that's how!

What does any of it mean? I haven't the faintest clue. The best I can figure, the Tree of Yggdrasil is quite literally a physical representation of the multiverse and Loki is holding it together by sheer force of will, so he did in fact get out of HWR's puzzle box.

The cynic in me initially thought the opposite was true, and the tree represented just the Sacred Timeline, so we were back to square one and free will doesn't exist. And in my defense, there isn't any dialogue denying that. In the final scene we're back at the TVA, which seems to just be looking out for Kang variants now (Mobius briefly mentions the term "616", implying they are cataloguing timelines now I guess), but... as we've talked about many times, trying to turn a Nazi organization into something better, with ALL of the same people (minus Renslayer) to boot, will inevitably crash and burn. AND ALSO, the Tree is still a finite thing, so how is it accounting for literal infinite timelines? I dunno, it just is.

Written out I'm realizing how wildly incoherent this seems, but I swear I'm being as concise as I can. This show is just a nonsensical disaster.

Okay, that was the wildest ride I've been in a while. I don't know how to thank you because I genuinely loved that 👌

So... Loki can grab timelines now? 😂😂 See, this is what I meant with my review of The Marvels, the powers range in these new phases is all over the place. We have so many characters who are widely OP for no freaking reason, it is not explained, they just have that ability out of nowhere and the writers don't care about what that might mean in upcoming movies and series. Just like Wanda in MoM: if you give her such overarching powers, when we see her throwing a punch here and there it seems comical. Ridiculous, even.

Anyway, if I understand correctly then the timelines are still controlled, just by Loki this time instead of HWR? And the TVA still exists? So how is that a good thing? God, what happened to Marvel that they went from "Hydra, Shield, it all goes" to "Let's keep the TVA alive, they can do some good". Did they show the agents actually learning that all the shit the TVA taught them was wrong? Otherwise they will cause the same problems all over again. The problem wasn't HWR, the problem was that those agents believed in what they were doing. If they don't have a change of heart, they will repeat it all over again.

And character-wise, did Loki learn anything about himself? Or was it all talk about timelines and him taking over? Ugh, I'm so glad I didn't watch it...