#there were SO many other characters i could have done too but these were the ones to come to mind first! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

naughtyneganjdm · 3 days ago

Text

Love's Second Chance: A Holiday Reunion - Chapter 1

Summary: Christmas time is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, but for Y/N it has become a lonely holiday now that she is a divorced mother. This Christmas, she gets looped into a love triangle with two lovers from her past, Joel Miller and Negan Smith, where the holiday brings all of them back together.

Characters: (in chapter 1) Joel Miller, Negan Smith (mentions), the reader (OC), Rosita Espinosa, Carol Peletier, Tommy Miller (mentions), etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60501985/chapters/154453672

Warnings: Alternate universe, swearing, angst, third person reader, female reader, reader is a mother, reader is divorced, reader was a teenage mother, reader is in her 30s, Joel and Negan have both been de-aged, etc. There is a mix of both TLOU and TWD characters. Please be sure to check the overall warnings on AO3, so you know what to expect!

Notes: I'm a fool for Christmas stories, so I'm back at it again this year. This time having a story featuring both Joel and Negan. Apparently my favorite duo! I will be updating this story three times a week until Christmas!

Remember Y/N means your name or whatever name you choose.

The warmth of a crackling fire. The scent of gingerbread, peppermint or a freshly put-up Christmas tree. It was amazing how many things could really start reminding you of Christmas. It was a time where those who celebrated would start to get excited for the festivities that were to come. Radio stations were playing Christmas music. Stores would be full with people shopping for both presents and food for their holidays. Christmas was always certain to draw out many emotions from people. Whether it was the excitement of the holiday, the events that you could go to, getting together with your family or just the whole genre all together.

Sometimes baking, decorating, planning and enjoying the overall atmosphere of Christmas could be a good distraction for someone who was going through a hard time. Right now that was the primary focus for Y/N. It was toward the end of her workday. Luckily, she got to work remotely from home so that meant she could also do other things at home when she had her breaks. Right now, the smell of gingerbread and sugar cookies were filling her home and she knew the timer would be going off any moment now. She was in the middle of a video call with her boss Carol and her best friend Rosita who had gotten her this job so many years ago when she was in need of one. What was supposed to be a rundown of the work they were getting done when Y/N went on vacation had become a talk between friends instead. Each person going over what they would be doing for the holiday.

“You seem distracted,” Rosita noted with Y/N looking back over her shoulder. Forcing herself to look back at the screen, Y/N realized that she must have checked on the timer too much. Rosita wasn’t one to pick up on things like that easily, so it had to have been a lot. “What are you up to now?”

“I’m just baking some cookies before the children get home,” Y/N was honest with the two. There was no reason for her to lie. She got her work done fast. In fact, she was the best worker in the business. Not that it was a great job or something entirely too complicated. It was just a data entry job that she had gotten when she was younger so that way she could help cover the bills. It wasn’t her dream job, but Y/N had gotten pregnant when she was seventeen and had her daughter when she was eighteen. That led to her not being able to get a degree until years later and it was just an associate degree from the local community college. At the time she got the job, she was desperately in need of a job that allowed her to be home with the baby and this one just happened to work out. Thankfully, Carol understood at the time because she had children as well and this job worked for her. Y/N always told herself that she would get a different job eventually. One that was better, but now her daughter was seventeen and she also had a son that was thirteen. She just got comfortable in the job that she was in and stayed. It wasn’t something to brag about, but at least she liked the people she worked with. And she got to stay home except for going into the office a few times a month. She couldn’t really complain. Especially when she got to be home to raise the children. “Their dad picked them up from school and they were supposed to be going out to eat with him.”

“I don’t know how you do it girl,” Rosita declared with a long sigh, adjusting her Bluetooth earphones that she was using over the video. “It’s super hard with just having Coco running around the house now. Yet, here you are baking cookies, decorating the house, being the amazing PTO mom for your children.”

“It’s a little different having teenage children than it is a toddler,” Y/N reminded her friend with a hesitant laugh. “I remember the days of Elizabeth and Peter being that age and it was hard. Sleep was not a normal thing during those days.”

“And suddenly I’m very happy that Sophia and Benjamin are in college and Henry is about to graduate,” Carol spoke up with a half-smile, throwing her hands up in the air when she spoke. “Kids are cute, but if I could do it all over again, I’m not sure I would.”

“Carol!” Rosita laughed making Y/N smile when her over the top boss continued to make a very dramatic expression. “I doubt Ezekiel would be happy hearing you say that.”

“What Ezekiel doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Carol placed her hand to her chest, and, in that moment the sound of the timer for the cookies was going off. “Alright ladies. We can sign off now so you can get to the rest of your day. Enjoy your holiday vacation, Y/N.”

Signing out of work and closing up her laptop, Y/N pushed back her chair and headed into the kitchen. It had been a few years since Y/N had really taken time off for herself. In the past she would have taken vacation time a lot, but not so much lately. That’s why she had taken it all at once. She had to take it, so it just made sense to do it at Christmas time. It gave her more time to focus on the children and enjoy the holiday.

Taking her cookies out of the oven, she set them out onto a rack to cool them. Preparing the frosting, she knew that the kids often liked to help so she was getting things ready for them. Likely, she would start the decorating of the cookies and they would help her finish. While the cookies continued to cool, she made her way around the house cleaning things up. The fireplace was on which gave a nice aura to the room that matched the lights that went with the heavily decorated tree in the corner of the living room. At the bottom of the tree was a toy train that her family had been collecting multiple pieces for since she was eighteen years old. It was a tradition to put it out every year. And each year they would try to add pieces to it. For Christmas, she had always tried to go out of her way to make it magical for her children. Being such a young mom, she wanted to do her best to make the holiday feel special for her children. At first, they didn’t have much, so she had to find ways to make things special and decorating was really the easiest way to do that.

Moving over toward the front window, there was a nook that was dawned with a Christmas village with extensive buildings and figurines that she had been collecting since she was younger as well. Each year she would buy one piece to add to it and it always looked really neat setting it up every year and lighting it up in the front window. Turning that on, she knew this was a daily thing. She got into the routine of things and it was just normal for her. Stockings were hanging in front of the fireplace and it just felt cozy for anyone that may have enjoyed Christmas.

Heading back into the kitchen, she started decorating the sugar cookies first. There were various shapes of candy canes, Santa hats, sleighs, stuffed bears, snowmen, reindeer and snowflakes. Those she figured her children would be less interested in decorating. It was usually the gingerbread men and women they had the most fun with.

The sound of the front door pushing open was heard and it made her smile when her son calling out to her followed, “Mom? Where are you?”

“In the kitchen kiddo,” she responded, raising her voice just enough. It was probably obvious where she was, but her son was very dramatic and liked to make his presence known. Hearing the sound of footsteps, she gasped when she felt a pair of arms wrapping around her and hugging her firmly from behind. Looking over her shoulder, she saw her son cuddling into her and it made her smile. “Hey Peter. How was school?”

“It was the last day before vacation, so great,” Peter offered up a big smile, his long eyelashes fluttering to an open. Y/N turned on her heel, brushing her fingers through her son’s dark hair and he gave her a weak smile. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but dad got me a big peppermint chocolate shake today at the diner. It was huge! It had sprinkles too.”

“Good job at keeping a secret,” Y/N heard the sound of her daughter coming into the kitchen. Elizabeth’s dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her dark eyes connecting with her mother’s when she dropped her backpack down in the corner of the kitchen. “No one is going to trust you with a secret ever. I hope you know that.”

“I have a hard time lying,” Peter explained, moving in beside his mother to see all the cookies she had already decorated. “I’m going to be on such a sugar high tonight.”

“Maybe you don’t deserve to eat those cookies since you told on me,” a voice spoke up from the entrance of the kitchen making Y/N look back. “Ellie had my back. You on the other hand…”

“Liz. I want to be called Liz, dad,” Elizabeth corrected her father making him groan out in frustration, reaching out to pull his daughter in closer to him. A frustrated sound fell from Elizabeth with how hard her father was hugging her to his chest. “Dad! Come on!”

“You know she wants to be called Liz now, Joel,” Y/N corrected with a long sigh. It had the color flooding into Elizabeth’s face since both her parents weren’t really latching onto the whole Liz nickname. “I’m also aware of it, but I’m still having a hard time not calling her Elizabeth.”

“I reckon I’m never going to be able to remember this whole Liz thing,” Joel’s southern drawl lingered, his dark eyes narrowing when he lifted his hand to give Y/N a small wave. It had her returning the gesture watching Joel lean down to press a kiss against Elizabeth’s temple. Looking between the three of them, she let out a long sigh. The older the children got, the more they looked like their father. Joel’s genes were strong in both Elizabeth and Peter. They had his eye color, skin tone and hair color. The trio looked gorgeous on her daughter and her son looked like a mini version of Joel. Pretty close to what she remembered when she first met Joel. “You’re always going to be my Ellie. You should know that. No matter how old you get, or how uncool it is to call you that. I’ve been calling you Ellie since before you could walk.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Elizabeth pat her father on the stomach playfully. Pulling out from beneath Joel’s arm, Elizabeth moved over to look at the cookies. Almost instinctively she reached for some of the decorating icing to start helping. Following in his sister’s footsteps, Peter started to help as well.

“I always loved this day,” Joel stammered, walking across the kitchen to step in behind Y/N. Lowering his head in beside hers, Joel let his breath linger against the side of her neck. The closeness of him surprised her as he stretched his arm out to grab one of the sugar cookies that hadn’t been decorated yet. Instead of pulling away, Joel turned in to press a kiss against her cheek and it had her eyes coming to a tight close. Once the warmth of him left, her eyes opened and she saw him resting back against the counter. Tipping his head back, he dropped the cookie into his mouth and groaned at the way it tasted. “Your cookies were always top notch.”

“And you always stole a ton of them before they were done being decorated,” Y/N reminded Joel with a tiny chuckle causing him to shrug dramatically. Reaching for another cookie had her huffing out and he gave a wicked smirk.

Seeing Peter do the same made her scoff and shake her head. Wanting to be as much like his father as possible, Peter would often mimic the things that Joel would do. Which meant he plowed back two sugar cookies as well.

“How big was this shake?” Y/N wondered which had Joel shrugging and shaking his head. Obviously not wanting to give the answer.

“Gigantic,” Peter explained with a mouthful of the last cookie that he shoved into his mouth.

“You’re not helping buddy,” Joel grunted under his breath, swallowing down the last of his sugar cookie. “I need some milk.”

“You know where it is,” Y/N nodded toward the cabinet where the glasses were. With a sigh, Joel moved across the kitchen and grabbed four glasses setting them out on the counter. Heading over to the fridge, Joel pulled out the milk and started pouring a glass for everyone. “I guess it’s a good thing he is going to be with you tonight. Because you know how he gets when he has this much sugar.”

“I’m thirteen mom, I’m not six anymore,” Peter snickered, nudging his mother playfully with his hip and it had her smiling. “I can handle being on a sugar high. I’m a big boy.”

“Still my baby,” Y/N claimed with a wink, lowering down to press a kiss over the top of Peter’s head. “Did the two of you pack last night?”

“I did,” Elizabeth replied with a gaze down at her brother seeing him swallow down his last bit of cookie. “He did not.”

“Sellout,” Peter retorted under his breath, working to decorate the next cookie he grabbed from the rack. “I got…distracted. I was playing a game and before you know it, it was really late and I knew I had school…”

“Maybe you should have stopped playing the game?” Elizabeth suggested with a tip of her head, drawing Peter to grumble something under his breath.

“I really don’t understand why we can’t just have dad stay over,” Peter blurt out making Joel clear his throat. It had Y/N looking back at him and she could see that tension that filled Joel’s body while he was drinking the milk that he had poured for himself. “It’s Christmas. We should have things be the way they used to be.”

“That’s not how things are done when your parents are divorced,” Elizabeth stated with a roll of her eyes making Y/N’s heart skip a beat with her children talking about her and Joel. “We’re lucky that our parents get along. Some of my friends, their parents hate each other. Fight over them just to make the other mad. And it’s never about them, it’s always for personal reasons. It makes them miserable because the parents are more so focused on hurting the other one instead of loving them.”

“I’m just saying,” Peter kept up with his previous statement setting aside the decorated cookie and reaching for another. “I remember things being really fun when we did this. I miss that. I wish we could just go back to the way things were. Dad could move back in and we could do what we did every year.”

“Bud?” Joel spoke quietly which had Peter looking over his shoulder at his father. Joel shook his head and Peter’s tanned flesh went pale.

This was the fourth Christmas that the two of them had spent separated. It was three years since they had been divorced. Joel was her high school sweetheart. Both of them had big dreams. She wanted to travel the world and be a journalist. Live in the big city. Joel wanted to be either a football player or a professional singer. But when she got pregnant? That didn’t exactly work out for either one of them. It meant she never left her hometown. Neither did he.

Joel’s parents died tragically when he was eighteen which left him taking care of his little brother Tommy. Tommy was five years younger than Joel and because Joel didn’t want Tommy going into the system, he also adopted Tommy. So not only was he taking care of his little brother, but Joel had gotten Y/N pregnant not long after. That meant an incredible amount of stress had been thrown on him.

At first? Everything was okay between them. Joel married Y/N right after Elizabeth was born. They moved into Joel’s parents’ house and he was a great dad. He never stopped being a great dad. Joel took on his father’s business of being a contractor since he had helped his dad when he was a teenager while she stayed home taking care of both Elizabeth and Tommy. Four years after Elizabeth was born, they had Peter. Originally, it wasn’t too hard because Tommy helped out with the children and around the house, but when Tommy turned eighteen he decided that he wanted to make a difference in the world and joined the army. That alone stressed Joel out to the extreme.

By the time she was twenty-one and Joel was twenty-three they had been through a lot. More than most people their age had been. They weren’t making much money and they were doing their best just to get by. Thankfully, she got her job soon after that which helped with the bills and she got to stay home to take care of the children. It was a few years more before they moved out of Joel’s parents’ home and got one of their own. Even though she thought they had the perfect life, Joel was unhappy. And each day that became more and more clear. He was still an amazing father, but they started bickering. A few fights here and there led to nights where they would verbally fight all night long, sometimes leading their fights into the middle of the day.

After years of that, it led to them separating four years ago and eventually to their divorce three years ago. Neither of the children took it well. They both really loved their dad. And rightfully so. Joel was a good father. There was something about Joel that they were drawn to. She was with them all the time growing up and Joel was always the parent that was gone long nights and was working really hard, so he was the parent they wanted the attention of the most. And when he was home? He gave it to them. So it was safe to say they mostly blamed her for the divorce. They tried to hide it more now, but when the separation first happened neither Elizabeth nor Peter were happy with her. It made her happy that after this long, there were no more fights and even though there was an occasional comment made here or there, they seemed to be happy with her.

Joel and Y/N had shared custody of the children. Which meant they were pretty open with things. They were supposed to be with her half the month and with him half the other, but they never stopped the children from seeing them if they wanted. Joel had moved back into his parents’ old home with Tommy which was only a few blocks away so they still spent a lot of time together.

Honestly? Y/N never really got over the divorce. Her feelings for Joel were just as strong as the day she met him. Joel’s family had moved to town when she was young and she immediately had a crush on him. They were just kids then though.

Their divorce was hard on her. It wasn’t like anyone cheated. It was just the tension of it all. Joel had become cold. He wasn’t a very affectionate lover. And it was always inherently clear how unhappy he was when he was married to her. Being married became lonely. Which was vastly different from how Joel was when they were younger. Joel was very affectionate in the beginning. Very loving. Now? They got along as much as they could for the children. Which meant she had to push down a lot of her feelings. But it was worth it for the children to be happy and grow up in a stable environment.

“I know, I’m not supposed to talk about the divorce,” Peter finally spoke up after the uncomfortable silence flooded the room with the three of them still decorating the cookies while Joel stayed in the back of the kitchen. “I just really miss how things used to be. That’s all.”

“I do too,” Elizabeth agreed quietly, but Y/N didn’t know what to say so she kept her mouth shut. Of course she missed the way things used to be.

“I can help decorate,” Joel offered, setting his glass of milk down on the counter. Moving over toward the gingerbread cookies, he pulled one of them off the rack and set up his area to start decorating. “We always used to decorate cookies as ourselves every year. So why not do that again?”

“This could take a while,” Y/N suggested, but Joel look to her with his dark eyes and shrugged. “Tess won’t get mad that you are here?”

“They aren’t together anymore,” Elizabeth was quick to answer and it had a rush of color flushing into Joel’s face. When his eyes connected with Elizabeth’s she shrugged her shoulders dramatically just like Peter had done earlier. “Well, you aren’t.”

“How long has that been?” Y/N looked to Joel noticing that he got uncomfortable when they brought up his ex-girlfriend. Tess and Joel had started dating a few months after their divorce finalized, so she was surprised to hear they weren’t together. Joel bobbed his head about with Peter adjusting his spot at the counter to move in next to his father to start decorating his gingerbread cookie.

“A while,” Joel grumbled under his breath, bringing his fingers up to suck off the icing that was at the tips of them. It had his dimples showing and he could see that Y/N was staring at him. “I don’t really pay attention to time with how busy I’ve been with work.”

“Months,” Elizabeth spoke again for her father keeping her focus on the cookies that were there.

“I’m glad you know more about my dating life,” Joel rumbled reaching for one of the sugar cookies to shove another one into his mouth.

“I just pay attention,” Elizabeth pointed out realizing that she was making her father uncomfortable talking about Tess. “When the two of you were together, she was always texting me. Making plans with Peter and me. Since you two broke up? I haven’t heard from her.”

“I thought you liked Tess,” Y/N recalled what the children had told her when she talked about the woman that Joel had been with.

“We did,” Peter replied back, his voice now muffled since he copied his father again in grabbing another cookie.

“It’s just strange that she drops us the moment they break up. You work so hard to build this relationship with us because you’re dating our father and then you cut us off completely when the two of you break up?” Elizabeth legitimately seemed bothered by the fact that Tess stopped interacting with them. “It’s messed up.”

“So how about these cookies? Huh?” Joel tried to come up with a distraction, going to reach for another one, but Y/N reached out to place her hand over his wrist to stop him. Instead of listening to her urgings, Joel grabbed one of the snowman cookies and bit off the head of it. “They taste really good.”

“I wouldn’t know. I was trying to finish helping mom decorate them first,” Elizabeth smirked back at her father, giving him a shake of her head. He finished off the cookie before going back to decorating. When they finished off the sugar cookies, the girls went to decorating their gingerbread women. Joel had moved on to working on other cookies, but Peter was pretty dedicated to making his gingerbread man perfect. By the time they were done, Peter was still working on that single cookie. “What’s taking you so long Peter?”

“You’re being lazy,” Joel moved in behind Peter to pick him up in his arms, pulling him away from the counter. The two of them wrestled while their laughter filled the kitchen. Finally, Y/N grabbed herself one of the finished sugar cookies that she had made while watching the two of them. “Making the three of us do all the work.”

“I just wanted mine to be good,” Peter jumped on Joel’s back, hooking his arms around Joel’s shoulders. It had Elizabeth rolling her eyes and grabbing a cookie with her mother. “You see what I mean? We shouldn’t have to go be with just dad and uncle Tommy. We should be together. Dad can just grab his stuff. Come over and we can pretend like we’re a family again. The four of us have the most fun when we’re all together.”

“Are we going to keep the gingerbread family like we did when we were younger?” Elizabeth looked to Y/N for confirmation. Nodding, she reached for a serving platter to first put down Joel’s cookie which he decorated in a green plaid shirt, work boots and a beard with dark hair. On his cookie, he gave himself a Santa hat. Then she set Elizabeth’s down next to Joel’s. Elizabeth had decorated hers in a softball outfit which made sense since Elizabeth was on her softball team and loved it. Reaching for Peter’s cookie, she could see that he decorated what she assumed to be an ugly Christmas sweater for his cookie and then Y/N placed her cookie at the far end. It was just a generic gingerbread woman with her hair color. Maybe hers was the saddest of the whole crew since it had the least amount of personality of the four. “You know your cookie is supposed to go next to dad’s.”

Elizabeth moved in beside Y/N to move the cookies together. It had a warmth flooding Y/N’s body when she sighed. In the past they would dry out the cookies by leaving them out before displaying them. Elizabeth seemed proud of herself when Joel finally let out a long exhale.

“Your Uncle Tommy has a big night planned of movie watching, so we better get ready to go,” Joel announced moving for his milk to finish it off. Setting the glass in the sink made Y/N’s head lower as Joel pointed upstairs. “Better go get packed buddy. You too Ellie.”

“Yes dad,” Elizabeth sighed knowing that she wanted to correct her father again, but instead she just accepted that he was still going to call her the lifelong nickname that he gave her.

It was almost as if their children were sulking as they dragged their feet out of the kitchen to head upstairs to grab their belongings to go be with their father. Once they were gone, Joel stepped in beside her and folded his arms in front of his chest. “It’s like Christmas brings out the inner child in them. Instead of being our teenagers full of teenage angst, they become young again. I like it.”

“They still are young,” she reminded Joel with a playful nudge before heading back for a container. “I’ll pack you some cookies for home.”

“And they will likely be all gone by tonight,” Joel declared with a snicker, placing his hand in over the soft part of his abdomen. It had her rolling her eyes and shaking her head while she gathered the cookies. “I always loved when you did the Christmas baking. All the cookies, cupcakes, pies…”

“You’re always welcome to take what you want,” she packed one container of sugar cookies and then moved to the gingerbread cookies to pack another. “So…who broke things off between you and Tess?”

“Uh…” Joel inhaled sharply, leaning against the counter again. Curling his fingers around the countertop, he shrugged his shoulders and didn’t seem to have a good response. “It was a little bit of both, I guess.”

Neither one of them spoke after that. It was awkward talking to Joel about his girlfriend. Tess was a very blunt person. It didn’t mean that Y/N didn’t like her. She did her best to like Tess, but Tess was very domineering. Which was hard since her and Joel shared children together.

“So…” Joel started, his thick fingers brushing through his hair drawing attention to his curls at the back of his neck. “What are you going to be doing while they are with me?”

“Tomorrow morning I’m putting decorations up around town. Helping out,” she explained, knowing that she needed things to do in order to keep herself distracted. It had Joel’s eyebrows bouncing up, his hands settling at his hips while he stared out at her.

“That sounds like you,” Joel commented, biting at his bottom lip having a hard time thinking of something else to say to her.

“You’re welcome to join if you want,” she offered and Joel let out a sarcastic laugh. When they were together she would always drag him along with her to do that so they had things they did together. Toward the end? Joel complained constantly and made it clear he hated it. “I’m just saying. Tommy is coming to help.”

“Well, good for Tommy,” Joel retorted with a long sigh, folding his arms in front of his chest when she shifted back and forth on her feet. “Unfortunately, I have to turn you down. I made an appointment with the children to go get photos with Santa. I know they are older now, but they seem to get a bigger kick out of it now than they did as children. It’s less scary and more so funny. I think Ellie calls it cringe, yet they still find it super funny.”

“Oh,” her face went hot when she thought about the idea of them getting photos. That was something she started as a tradition. One she was no longer included in. “That’s nice.”

“After that, I promised to take them shopping for their gifts,” Joel looked toward the exit of the kitchen toward the stairs. “And mine.”

“Last minute shopping. Totally still you,” she couldn’t help but throw that out at him since he used a similar line earlier. It had Joel smirking, his dimples showing when he shook his head.

“I guess I should go help them,” Joel pointed toward the stairs, backstepping toward the exit of the kitchen. “Make sure little man doesn’t forget anything.”

“I’ll clean up,” she barely had time to get that out before Joel was already making his way out of the kitchen.

Maybe that was too quick of a leave. It had Joel stopping at the bottom of the stairs to steal a quick look back at Y/N. Her head was tipped down and Joel felt tension in his body. Until that moment? She had actually looked happy. But now that she was alone in the kitchen to herself, she looked sad.

Considering his next move, Joel grasped tightly onto the railing of the stairway. Part of him thought he should go help her clean up. But he was never very good at that in the first place. It was one thing they used to bicker about when they were together. Joel always left dishes in the sink and his clothes all over the place. Which meant she was picking up after him all the time. They had more fights about it than he cared to admit.

Instead of helping, he let the other part of him win out and he started heading up the stairs. It was strange how even though he had been gone from the house four years, how much everything still felt like home. Y/N still decorated the same way. Just added a few more things here and there. Lights were wrapped around the railing leading up the stairs brightening the stairway. The photos were still up the way they were when they were together. With a few school photos added to the walls. The only ones that were down were the ones of their wedding or from when they were younger taking trips together.

The first bedroom on the right was Peter’s and he could hear the extensive shuffling. Standing in the doorway, Joel outstretched his arms and rest them against the doorframe, “You need help there kid?”

“No, I got it,” Peter insisted shoving a few of his clothes into his bag messily. “Thanks though dad.”

“I’ll check on your sister,” Joel pointed back toward Elizabeth’s room and Peter waved his hand about. Going to move for Elizabeth’s room, Joel backstepped when he saw the door to the room he used to share with Y/N was open. Looking to the stairs, Joel swallowed down hard and moved quietly into the bedroom. Even that didn’t look any different. The only difference is that his things weren’t thrown all over the place. His exercise equipment was gone along with his dresser. Instead there was a small sitting area there.

On the center of the bed was a robe that Joel assumed Y/N had been wearing earlier in the day. Reaching out, he caressed his fingers over the soft material before bringing it up to his nose to smell it. The scent of her perfume lingered over it and it made Joel smile. That was something he always loved. Her perfume. It had been a while since he had been close enough to her to actually smell it.

Setting the robe back on the bed, Joel looked to her dresser to see that two of the photos she had taken down that were originally in the hallway were now sitting on top of it. Stepping in closer to the dresser, Joel bit at his cheek when he saw the first one was their wedding photo. It was the two of them together with Elizabeth dressed in her flower girl outfit. Because they were just kids themselves, they had a backyard wedding at his parents’ home, but they were happy enough at that time. They had each other and that was enough.

Placing that photo back, Joel reached for the photo of them on their last anniversary that they shared. Tommy had made them reservations that Tommy was really proud of at an expensive local restaurant. It was something that Tommy had saved up for as a thank you to them for all they did for him growing up. It was completely out of Joel’s scene. All throughout dinner he felt awkward. It was one of those places that had multiple courses already chosen for you. Since Tommy pre-paid for it, Joel forced himself through it, but he hated it. And he really let Y/N know how much he hated it. Having to dress up nice was not something that Joel enjoyed. He was uncomfortable the whole time. When they got home, Tommy had taken the photo of them. It was Joel sitting in a chair with Y/N in his lap while Joel was holding onto the gift she had gotten him. Y/N got him a really nice acoustic guitar that he had told her he wanted when they first started dating. It was something he would go to the store and play all the time. It was something she was really proud of. In the photo she looked really happy. And at that moment? She was.

It was after Tommy left when their fighting started again. Instead of appreciating the guitar that she got him, he told her to return it since it was stupid to waste the money. Especially since in the time that they had been together he had learned how to do wood carvings and he knew how to make acoustic guitars himself. Back then? He didn’t understand the meaning behind the gesture. He just saw it as a waste of money. Especially since he lost out on his dreams of actually becoming a singer.

They also fought over the fact he bought her nothing other than flowers. Grand gestures were something that Y/N was big on. Even when they didn’t have money, she always tried to do things special. That anniversary, he just bought her flowers and gave her them when he got home from work. She didn’t complain, he just could see that she was disappointed. Which led to them fighting about her needing to be honest with him about things. That night they didn’t get intimate together. Not once. It ended with him sleeping on the floor in Elizabeth’s room.

The guitar put a big wedge between them because she told him if he hated the guitar he could return it to get the money back. Not wanting to look bad because it was a small town they lived in, Joel just let it sit and collect dust. Until they got separated and he took it with him. Now he played it occasionally and realized why she was upset because it was actually a really romantic gift.

It surprised him that she kept that photo considering how bad that night went. Setting the photo back where it was, Joel moved back over to the bed. Dropping back onto it had him staring up at the ceiling feeling an ache at his chest. Crawling over to the side of the bed that was his, Joel reached for her pillow and wrapped it up in his arms. Burying his face against it, he closed his eyes and realized how much more comfortable this whole set up actually felt than it did back at his place with Tommy.

After a few minutes, he forced himself to get up since he realized that it was probably creepy what he was doing. This wasn’t his house anymore. It was just a vague memory of how things used to be. That’s it.

Leaving the room, he headed over to Elizabeth’s room to see that she was sitting at her desk doing something on her laptop and he smirked. Leaning against the doorframe, he tipped his head to the side and cleared his throat causing her to jump.

“Getting in trouble?” Joel watched her shake her head when she showed him that she was writing her best friend in a chat. Taking a quick look, he sighed and moved over to her dresser to grab the softball that was there. Dropping back on her bed, he started throwing the ball up in the air catching it repeatedly.

“You know, Peter’s not wrong. Things were better when it was the four of us,” Elizabeth stressed hearing her father sigh loudly and she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t see what the problem is. You’re not with Tess anymore. So why not spend time with mom? She’s hot, right?”

“What?” Joel chuckled at his daughter saying that about her mother.

“Listen, I’ve seen the moms at my school. I know mom is a catch,” she suggested to Joel hearing him laugh before going back to throwing the ball. “Why don’t you want to spend time with the four of us?”

“Hey! I didn’t see your mom jumping at the idea when Peter was talking about it,” Joel fumbled the ball, letting out a groan when it rolled across the floor. Pressing up onto his shoulder, Joel scoffed out when his eyes fell upon one of the posters that she had hanging up. It was one that was new and it made him roll his eyes. “I still can’t believe you’ve had a crush on that man since you were fourteen.”

“Everyone has celebrity crushes dad,” she looked back over her shoulder at the poster that he dramatically groaned over. Giving her father her attention back, she saw him throw his head back into the pillows.

“Sure. But most girls your age have crushes on twinks from a boy band,” Joel declared hearing his daughter laugh at the description of the kind of boys that he thought she would like. “Instead, you like a professional baseball player that’s my age. Do you know how creepy that is?”

“Most women here have a crush on Negan Smith,” she stood up from her chair to head over to point at the poster that was on the back of her door. “He’s the hometown hero. Rookie of the year when he started. One of the greatest baseball players of our time.”

“Do you know how old you were when he won rookie of the year?” Joel’s eyebrow arched up in curiosity, dramatically turning his head to stare out at her. It had her cheeks flushing over with red and he let out a hesitant laugh. “I think I need to stress here that he’s my age.”

“You were young when you had me,” she pointed out, heading over to the edge of her bed to sit down with him.

“Not that young,” Joel countered finding it creepy that his daughter’s celebrity crush was Negan Smith who was probably the most popular player for their state’s professional baseball team. “What about that boyband kid that you liked when you were eight?”

Tipping his head back, Joel eyed over the magazine cutouts that she had plastered over her ceiling and he felt his heart skip a beat when his eyes fell onto one of the photos. Hopping up onto the bed had her gasping out when he snatched the photo from the collage of photos she had up there.

“The hell is this?” Joel’s dark eyes almost seemed angry when he held the magazine page out in front of her face.

“Uhm? Negan Smith?” Elizabeth flashed him an innocent smile with Joel looking over the photo. “It was a photoshoot he did in order to bring attention to the sexism in sports magazines. It was him making a statement.”

“He’s naked,” Joel sneered, looking over the photo. It had the baseball star holding a baseball glove over his groin and he had a baseball bat thrown over his shoulder. They had covered him in dirt and he had eye black under his eyes. “Why in God’s name do you have this photo over your bed? Why do you have this at all? Does your mother let you put these up here?”

“First of all, he’s not naked. Everything is covered,” she reached for the magazine pull out and he tugged it away from her. “Second, mom doesn’t know that that’s there. She actually kind of gives me my privacy. So, there is that.”

“You’re seventeen,” Joel scoffed looking over the pullout feeling like the room was spinning around him. “This is way too sexual for you. I went to school with this guy. He was one of my best friends. This is another level of creepy.”

“Dad, you’re being a little hypocritical. I know you and mom were having sex at my age. A magazine pull out is not the end of the world. It’s not even porn,” Elizabeth fought back trying to reach for it, but Joel yanked it back away from her again. “I used my babysitting money to buy that dad. It’s a few years old and it’s hard to find.”

“How much did you pay for it?” Joel scoffed seeing the confusion in her eyes. “How much?”

“Like thirty dollars,” she explained and he felt his blood boiling. “What?”

“Thirty dollars for this?” Joel’s eyebrows furrowed and he grunted out looking it over. “Can’t you just find a photo of it on the internet and print it out? Why waste the money?”

“Because it’s authentic and an original. It would probably be worth more too because he just announced that he was retiring because of his most recent injury. Do you remember when that one guy purposely hurt him when we were watching that game?” she brought back a memory of when he was still living here and they’d watch games together. “Well, he came back from that injury, but it still made his leg weak and he hurt it really bad. So bad that he has to retire. He’s only doing one more season. People are going crazy over his stuff,” she reasoned with Joel who reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet. Pulling out thirty dollars, he tossed it on the bed beside him and rolled up the poster causing her to gasp out. “You’re going to bend it dad!”

“Good. It doesn’t belong in my…” Joel stopped realizing he was about to say it didn’t belong in his house, but this wasn’t his house anymore. “It doesn’t belong in my seventeen-year-old daughter’s bedroom. I paid you back for it. I don’t care if it’s worth a hundred dollars. Spend your money on something better than some naughty ass photo of someone I used to be best friends with.”

“Oh come on, all of that’s bullshit dad,” she bickered with her father, throwing her hands up in the air and he dramatically shrugged his shoulders. “I know you say you two were best friends and I know you were on the same baseball team, but other than that? I think you’re pushing it with the best friend thing. If the two of you were best friends, why have I never met him? Why do I see no photos of the two of you together?”

“Because in our last year of high school we kind of…went different ways,” Joel explained, still clinging onto the magazine pullout that he had stolen from his daughter. “Him, your mother, me and Uncle Tommy were the closest of friends. We were since I moved here. Honestly? I reckon he was probably better friends with your mother. But we all considered each other best friends. We were together all the time. And back then he didn’t have a single tattoo on him.”

Joel reached up to pinch up at the bridge of his nose, “And as far as photos? We probably have loads of them upstairs in the attic. I can prove it right now. I still haven’t cleaned out that thing since we moved in here and I doubt your mother did either because she always asked me to clean things up, but I didn’t.”

“Prove it,” she frowned, folding her arms in front of her chest reminding Joel of what he looked like when he was angry.

Urging her to follow him, Joel set the magazine pullout down on the table that was in the hallway. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Elizabeth was reaching for it and he snapped his fingers at her to get her to stop, “Ellie! Don’t think about it!”

“You are so infuriating sometimes,” Elizabeth frowned realizing that she had officially lost part of her collage. Joel hopped up to pull at the hatch to get it opened and get the stairs down to go into the attic. Motioning her to go up first, Joel knew that if he turned his back on his daughter that she would likely grab what he had set aside. Color rushed into her face, her eyes rolling when she moved up the steps. Joel followed her not far behind. When they got up there, Elizabeth let out a dramatic cough and he huffed. “It’s dusty.”

“It’s not that bad,” Joel suggested taking a look around. A long time ago, Joel started to remodel the attic for Y/N, but he never finished it. Half of it was done and the other half just looked like a normal attic. Moving across the way, Joel cleaned off the bench that was at the far end where the nook he designed was. Holding his hand out, he motioned Elizabeth to take a seat. She eyed it over with disgust before slowly lowering down. “Give me a few minutes.”

“So,” Elizabeth began, her curiosity growing while Joel started going through boxes. “What was he like when he was younger?”

“Arrogant,” Joel stammered, his whole face scrunching up when he thought about Negan. “Everyone loved Negan. We were the two most popular guys in school by our senior year. He played baseball and basketball. I played baseball and football. We had a bit of a feud going on that last year. He was a smartass.”

“But you were friends?” her eyebrow arched in curiosity. Pausing, Joel looked over his shoulder at his daughter. Taking a second to think it over, Joel nodded and cleared his throat. “What did you like about him?”

“He was funny. He could really get under some of the teachers’ skin,” Joel responded, setting aside some of the boxes letting out a sigh when he dug through them. “He was really smart. He could look at a book and just memorize everything. He was a class clown so it always infuriated the teachers when they tried to embarrass him and he would come back with the answer. Negan either had people really loving him or hating him because he was so good at reading people. He could have people eating out of the palm of his hand.”

Smirking, Joel opened one of the boxes to see on top of the box was some photos of him and Elizabeth when she was a baby. Holding out the photos, he saw her smile when she reached for the photos accepting them to look them over.

“Maybe I’ll come over here and finish the attic up for your mom. Clear up some things and go through the photos,” Joel offered appreciating the smile that Elizabeth was giving when she looked at the photos of them together. “It’s been a long time since I had a clean-shaven face.”

“You look so young,” Elizabeth commented holding a photo up of Joel holding Elizabeth on his shoulders at a football game together. “You were such a jock back then.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joel waved his hand in the air, getting down on the ground to make it easier for him to go through the boxes. After looking through a few boxes, Joel stopped when he found photos of Y/N and him from high school. With a smirk, he grabbed a handful of the photos of them at his prom. Holding them out to Elizabeth, he allowed her to look them over while he dug through the photos. When he realized this was the box that he wanted, he headed over to the bench to sit down beside her. “That was a fun night.”

“Please don’t go into details,” Elizabeth groaned causing Joel to roll his eyes. “I know what happens on prom night.”

“I just mean we had a fun time at prom, then a few of the kids were throwing a party at their parents’ house. It was right off the water, it was awesome,” Joel explained with a long sigh, his eyes narrowing when he cleared his throat. “It was right before your grandparents passed away.”

Elizabeth gave Joel a sideways glance before continuing through the photos, smiling when she saw a photo of a young Joel kissing Y/N on the cheek with her mom laughing, “You two looked so happy together.”

“We were. We were so in love. All that mattered to me back then was her,” Joel admitted, his breathing growing uneven when he thought back to that time. “I just wanted to be with her all the time. I was afraid to let her go. I was supposed to be going off to college and she still had two more years left at school. I was so worried someone else was going to swoop in and take her. I guess the world solved that problem for me though. College was just never meant to happen.”

“You still could have gone,” she thought aloud and it had Joel taking a moment to break from looking at the photos to gaze out at her. “You could have. You had a full ride. You could have made it work. Mom eventually went to college.”

“I couldn’t. I had to take care of Uncle Tommy or else he would have been put into the system. And then your mom got pregnant with you,” Joel recalled his younger years, shifting uneasily knowing that Y/N had been pregnant at seventeen which was how old Elizabeth was now. “I couldn’t do that to Tommy. And I couldn’t do that to you and your mom.”

It looked like Elizabeth wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She just went back to looking at the photos. Seeing a photo of Negan training with him when they were on the baseball team, he handed it over to Elizabeth and she snickered.

“I know the two of you were on the team together dad. I’ve seen the team photo in the hallways of the high school,” she reminded her father hearing Joel grunt. “That doesn’t mean you were best friends. He looks so different without the facial hair.”

“Not as big of a babe,” Joel mocked the way a teenage girl would talk. It had her reaching out to hit him in the chest and he chuckled. “That was before he got that scar on his face over his eyebrow.”

“You know how he got that scar, right?” Elizabeth was eager to tell the story, but Joel hushed her.

“Everyone knows that story. He told it all the time when he first started becoming popular,” Joel pointed out feeling a bit of jealousy at how much this town loved Negan Smith. Stopping on one of the photos, he tossed it to Elizabeth and heard the surprised sound that followed. It was a photo of him, Negan and Y/N sitting on the couch that was in his parents’ basement. A young Tommy was laid out across their lap and they were all laughing. “Told you. That’s at your grandparents’ home.”

Noticing that all the photos were starting to include Negan, Joel handed piles of photos to her and could see the awe that came from her looking at the photos, “See. I’m not a liar. I’ve always been a very honest person.”

“Holy shit,” she held up a photo of Joel and Negan together. Negan had his arm wrapped around Joel’s shoulders. Negan was curling his lip up in a ridiculous pose with Joel wearing a backwards baseball cap. Elizabeth clung to the photo before reaching for the next. It was a photo of Y/N between both Joel and Negan. Both of them were kissing her cheek and it had Elizabeth laughing. “So many people would be jealous of mom with this one.”

“Yeah, I know. I was really cute,” Joel knew that Elizabeth was talking about Negan, but he was being a smart ass. Elizabeth rolled her eyes before continuing through the photos. There were a lot of photos of Y/N and Negan which had Elizabeth shocked. There was an extremely young photo of Negan and Y/N that was in that box leaving Joel to shrug when Elizabeth held it up. “I told you those two were closer. Negan was my age, but they knew each other pretty much her whole life. They were neighbors. Together all the time.”

“Why doesn’t mom talk about him?” Elizabeth stammered, stopping on a photo of her mom sitting on Negan’s lap with her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

“Uhm,” Joel considered what to say next before clearing his throat. “Because when he stopped talking to me, he stopped talking to her. The woman he ended up getting married to showed up at the school the last year. Really pretty girl. Negan was hooked on her. Your mother wanted him to be your godfather…”

“No shit,” she gasped, clinging to the photo of Negan with her mother. “What the hell happened? Could you imagine if Negan Smith was my godfather?”

“He just stopped interacting with the two of us all together. Your mother tried to reach out to him multiple times, but then she just stopped trying,” Joel cleared his throat, rubbing at the side of his face before sighing loudly. “I think it hurt too much, so she just wrote him off. Didn’t want to think about it since the two of them were so close.”

“How did I never know this?” Elizabeth seemed upset that this was a part of her parents’ lives that she didn’t know. “So you just were friends with Negan Smith?”

“Yeah. When your Uncle Tommy and I moved to town, there was this boy that kept picking on your Uncle Tommy. All the time. He was smaller for his age. It was during the summer and this boy would knock him off his bike. Push him down. Do what bullies do. One day, I was outside and I saw this boy hit your Uncle Tommy. Your mother and Negan were outside playing hockey. We all saw it happen. I was heading over to whoop the bully’s ass, but she beat me to it. Hit the boy with the hockey stick that she had. Then she beat his ass,” Joel explained with a laugh mimicking a few punches drawing Elizabeth to laugh. “She kicked that boy’s ass so bad that he refused to tell his parents. He didn’t want the whole school knowing that he had his ass kicked by a girl. But yeah, you’re mother had a crush on me from the first moment I met her, but I’m pretty sure that day is the day she fell in love with me. That was the day we first started hanging out.”

“She fell in love with you? Not the other way around?” she was surprised to hear that and Joel tipped his head from side to side. “How couldn’t you fall in love with her after that?”

“She kind of scared the shit out of me, but in a good way,” Joel claimed, his hand placing in over the center of his chest. “So yes. For your mother it was love at first sight. For me? It took until I was about seventeen.”

“What are you two doing up here?” a voice made them both jump and they looked to the stairs to see that Y/N was moving into the attic.

“Your daughter has like the biggest crush ever on Negan Smith,” Joel once again teased his daughter, talking in a stereotypical way that had her pushing into Joel’s chest. A loud laugh fell from his throat when he pointed toward the photos. “She didn’t believe that we were best friends back in the day. So I had to prove it.”

“Why’d you never tell me?” Elizabeth was curious when Y/N moved forward to look at the photo that Elizabeth had of her with Negan and Joel kissing her cheeks. “I’ve had the biggest crush on him forever and you never said anything.”

“It was a long time ago,” she reasoned, shrugging her shoulders as Joel started pulling himself up from the bench that he was seated on with Elizabeth. Talking about Negan didn’t seem to appeal much to her when she waved her hand about. “I have all the cookies packed up and I made a pie the other day that I’m sending with you.”

“How I remained skinny when we were together blows my mind. I like your food way too much,” Joel reached down to pat his stomach realizing now that he was older, it was harder to stay in shape for him. “Come on Ellie. We have to get home. Uncle Tommy is probably waiting.”

Elizabeth didn’t really want to, but she accepted her father’s hand when he helped her up. They moved down the stairs and onto the second level. Joel had Elizabeth going back to her room for her stuff before reaching for the poster he snatched from Elizabeth’s room. Handing it out to Y/N had her looking down and unrolling the photo. Once she realized what it was, her eyes grew wide.

“I guess her and her mother have the same type,” Joel sneered and it had Y/N lifting her eyes up at Joel slowly. “That was on her wall. Our daughter should never have anything like that on her wall. Maybe pay a little more attention to the things that she is getting her hands on.”

“Yes sir,” Y/N almost seemed offended when she rolled the photo back up and felt a warmth flooding into her face. The look that Joel gave her almost looked angry, but she couldn’t say anything else because the two children were walking out with their bags.

Seeing them out to say her goodbyes, Y/N cleaned things up before heading back upstairs. Noticing that the stairs were still pulled out for the attic, Y/N went to close them up before thinking things over. Going up into the attic, she headed over toward the box of photos. Lowering down on the bench that Joel and Elizabeth were on earlier. Pushing through the photos, there was a sense of sadness that ate her up inside seeing some of her photos of when she was pregnant with Elizabeth. Joel was so loving and sweet back then. And he looked so happy. Stopping on a photo had her heart racing. In that pile was a photo of a much younger version of her and Negan kissing. Clearing her throat, she pushed the photo into her back pocket. That was the last thing her daughter should be seeing and she knew that.

Closing up the attic, she headed to bed and pulled out the photo she snatched along with the magazine pull out that Joel had given her. Taking a look at it, she shook her head and tossed both of them into the top drawer of her dresser. For so long Y/N had pushed away her past. It almost felt like she had forgotten her past. Right now, she was just living and working to get through every day. And that was enough.

----

Tags: @chainsawsangel @fancypeacepersona @violent-darkness @negansbestie @elegantfanficluv

@sanctuaryforthelost

#Joel Miller #Pedro Pascal #Joel Miller fanfiction #Joel Miller x reader #Negan #Negan Smith #The Last of Us #The Walking Dead #Jeffrey Dean Morgan #The Walking Dead fanfiction #The Last of Us fanfiction #Negan fanfiction #negan x reader #negan x you #Joel Miller x you #tlou fanfiction #twd fanfiction

86 notes · View notes

danwhobrowses · 2 days ago

Text

Since Critical Role's big endgame battle has begun (as of ep. 113) and looks to give us a fair handful of Lv. 20 combat across the board with VM and later the Nein - and also since the Omen Archive are yet to do a level up overview for Bell's Hells to Lv. 15 like I expected them to do after ep. 112 - I find myself optimistically and curiously wondering how Bells Hells would shape up should they reach Lv. 20.

Admittedly, I do remain worried about how underleveled they are; I know it's intended since the Hells are the 'underdogs not meant to be in this position' group but still, for comparison Essek debuted at Lv. 15 in C2 and Vox Machina ended their campaign at Lv. 18 when the stakes were slightly lower than what we have with Ludinus, the Vanguard, the Imperium, and Predathos. Still, with nothing we can do but pray they make it out alive - and I hope they do - I've decided to indulge that rare bout of optimism and deep dive into what would their Lv. 20 state look like? While also considering what they may add during this final arc should they level up in between like they did the last time they were on Ruidus.

We're gonna go through each character one by one for this, so I'll start with my favourite (aka the one I wanna talk/ramble the most about).

Ashton is perhaps the easiest endgame build to tell class-wise, it's likely Tal will have them go the full 20 since Grog has already done the Fighter dip and there's not many other multiclasses that can be of a greater benefit to them; the intrigue however with Ashton focuses on the ASI they get at levels 16 and 19, the first one particularly if there's still a level up mid-battle. The obvious route for the first ASI is to get back the CON they lost in the shard incident - which I still find an unfair penalty since they gained nothing from surviving the bold and deemed impossible action, 'your reward is you get to live' doesn't stick with me given that the 10 rolls (well, 9 plus the resurrection ring) are proof of survival anyway - and absorbing Dusk Hunger sadly didn't give back, adding to their DEX instead - which, also kinda stubborn of Matt, adding 1 AC isn't exactly worthy of absorbing a legendary item especially compared to what Orym got with Ishta, they were better off trying to dual wield it if Matt's not gonna give stats that'll suit Ashton's wheelhouse, STR and CON, and let the tank be a tank - so it will likely fall into Tal's hands to get Ashton's stats to where they want them to be. Either way, Ashton's STR and CON are going up if they hit Lv. 20 as pure Barbarian, Primal Champion adds 4 to both and increases their max to 24, so without ASI Ashton will have 22 STR and 20 CON by Lv. 20 anyway, with ASI however Ashton can go 24/22 in either direction - and we can't rule out more absorption in the future, since Legendary loot may be yielded from this endgame battle plus Otohan's Backpack, Zathuda's storage cloak and maybe any other armour from the two could be Legendary items just gathering dust among the group, but if Ashton were to take any of them they'd have to wait a day since the Harness only grants 1 permanent and 1 temporary buff per person, and each person who uses it on the same day risks it breaking by 20%. However, we also can't rule out Ashton taking a feat instead of ASI, it's a slim chance but there are some feats that can be of use for Ashton in general or specifically vs Ludinus; Mage Slayer, Strike of the Giants (Hill or Stone Strike, of the two I'd go for Hill because of it causing the prone condition, which will help Ashton and allies, like Orym with that 1d6 extra Force Damage, stack critical damage), and Great Weapon Master could be powerful if they don't focus on ASI. The Tough feat is always good for being tanky too, but such a feat would likely only be used at the Lv. 19 ASI/Feat domain to get the most out of it. The only other places Ashton can get major potential buffs - outside of any new enchanted items that aren't armour - are from Dunamancy and their Titan powers, but neither have provided a clear opening for improvement as of yet. Ashton hit their final Dunamancy path at Lv. 14, where they got Mark of the Messy End (which compared to Essek getting access to stuff like Reality Break doesn't seem to balance out but I guess Wizards are glass cannons so Dunamancy does more with them), but there is a quiet, lingering mystery over how Potions of Possibility and Luxon Beacons will behave if Ashton and their Dunamancy brain interacts with them, given how they have many potions on hand, in general and gifted to them by the Kryn Dynasty before they met with the Nein, and Ludinus using Luxon Beacons as power sources, there is potential for Ashton's Dunamancy to increase that way - or simply through Matt adding an extra Dunamancy path in place of an ASI/Feat, a Dunamancy-based feat, or swapping Primal Champion with something else. The Titan Form could also improve by level, and I kinda hope it does, it's powerful but given the time limit and Exhaustion it's still below the level of Grog's Titanstone Knuckles in terms of utility, if more power or less limitations are imposed the higher their level it could scale Ashton up further in a similar manner to having a Vestige or, in Orym's case, a Relic of the Red Solstice.

Speaking of Orym, you'd assume that he'll also go for the clean 20, but this is Liam O'Brien we're talking about - he gave Vax a Druid level for his love of Keyleth, so you can't put it past him to add a level in Bard for Dorian. Like Ashton, Orym has 2 ASI waiting for him at levels 16 and 19, due to maxing his DEX - and absorbing Ishta overclocking it (a DEX increase that actually makes sense as a Finesse blade Fighter, adding +1 to AC and attack rolls and a higher DC for enemies to save against superiority die attacks) - Orym has already dipped into feats a lot but could always find room for more. Great Weapon Master, Shield Master, Mage Slayer, and Tough again at level 19 are viable options for Orym and his build, but there's also a unique option of, instead of taking a level in Bard, Magic Initiate: Bard in lieu of Dorian; taking the feat lets him gain the 4th attack Lv. 20 Fighter yields while adding some handy Bard magic such as Friends, Thunderwave, Command, Bane or Cure Wounds - all of which are Level 1 Bard spells. While adding a level in Bard would be a nice gesture, the Magic Initiate feat would probably work better for Orym's build if he wanted to reference his connection to Dorian this way, since he doesn't need 4 extra 1st level spells and he already has a lot of proficiencies and bonuses to cover his rolls anyway, plus he still carries the sending stone if he doesn't want to do either. If he went for ASI, Orym could try to rival Ayden's passive perception by buffing his WIS, but I doubt anybody would hold it against him to be less perceptive than a god. Regardless of ASI and feats, a pure 20 in Fighter does up Orym's lethality immensely, getting a potential 12 attacks with two Action Surges - the second gained in Lv. 17 - in one round (16 attacks if hastened and 17 if hastened and a Time Rage Mark of the Messy End - which I believe allows you to attack with Bonus Actions - is used on an enemy), which would make him an extra efficient killer and protector for combat, which suits his character as well. While multiclassing is an uncommon trait to reference a partner, in Orym's case it's probably moreso cute but unnecessary flavouring.

Adding an element of their partner into their build is something Imogen has done already with decent effect, however. Imogen is another pure 20 likelihood; she has 2 ASI, a Metamagic choice, her final Origin Feature - Warping Implosion: essentially you teleport and anyone within 30 feet will be caught in a gravity fissure - and Sorcerous Restoration - 4 sorcery points restored per short rest - waiting for her at the full 20. As alluded, she already has Laudna influences in the Shadow Touched feat and a vial of her blood in her equipment so she needn't use a feat or a multiclass in further reference to her, which means it comes down to what options she chooses for her ASI/Feats and future skills. With her CHA maxed out already, the two ASI would need to go elsewhere or to feats; War Caster could be used to help her concentration spells, such as the reskinned Hunger of Hadar, Telekinesis, and Investiture of Lightning, unused spells such as her mother's Reverse Gravity, Hold Person, or Globe of Invulnerability, or future 8th-9th level spells such as Dominate Monster, Gate, and Mass Polymorph (turn them all into horses!). Otherwise using one of those ASI to add 1 to INT and WIS will add to saving throws of those stats (+1 for INT and +2 for WIS), she can also remove all her stat negatives by adding an ASI to her STR in place of a feat. Imogen also has options with choosing a final Metamagic from Sorcerer; she has Quickened, Distant, and Twinned Spell already, so the next one needs to also be helpful in combat; the potential of Extended and Transmuted Spell are decent, but Heightened Spell may be the best fit for her - spending 3 Sorcery points to impose disadvantage on a spell save can be very useful when using Imogen's spells such as Psychic Lance, especially against powerful magic users like Ludinus. Going a little extra meta with things, Imogen at Lv. 20 is only going to exist in one-shots or guest appearances - which means short rests aren't likely to faze her as much, also recovering 4 out of a total of 20 Sorcery Points per short rest isn't a lot when you get all of them back after a Long Rest. If Imogen were to pull a swerve and multiclass she could simply sacrifice an ASI for an 18/2 split or just take a 19/1 dip without it doing any negative effect to her current build. Of the multiclassing options, I find that the Tempest Cleric could gel pretty well with her build; connecting her lightning magic and her storm analogies (and her attempt to reach out to the Stormlord) from a narrative perspective, while combat-wise she'd get to use Wrath of the Storm to damage anyone that attacks her (as many times as her WIS, so 1-3 depending on her ASI usage) and, if she goes for the 18/2 split, she can use the class' Channel Divinity to max out a spell's lightning damage - which if used on a 9th Level Lightning Bolt is 76 damage without enhancements! - she also gets some minor healing to add to her repertoire, and with a group without a pure Cleric you can't really have a shortage of players who can heal even if it's a little bit. I can't see any other dip doing her as much benefit, so the full 20 is more likely, even if the maxed out Lightning Bolt would work wonders.

You know who also knows Lightning Bolt? Well, a fair amount of players and NPCs but also Dorian! Let's talk our Boy in Blue - no I did not say 'Blue in Boy' in my head when typing, shush! - he's our last PC likely to be a pure 20 of the group, also because the rest have already multiclassed, but like Imogen there is also the opening for a little bit of multiclassing. The ASI in levels 16 and 19 are probably best put into maxing his CHA stat that's currently at 16, DEX could also go up to 20 for additional Gambolcleft damage but the sword is pretty powerful as it is - it depends if Robbie wants Dorian to focus on Spell or Melee output for stats, but casting is probably the better way to go. Not many feats would help Dorian outside of maybe Tough and War Caster, perhaps Slasher but they do seem like minor additions he can go without, so ASI is likely the best route to take for him. Unlike with Orym where a dip in Bard wouldn't do much good mechanically, Dorian could easily take a dip in Fighter and have it be a solid investment; the Bard's Lv. 20 ability Superior Inspiration only helps if you've used up all of your Inspiration, and as said with Imogen that probably won't come up in a one-shot scenario where Lv. 20 Dorian would likely appear, but by Lv. 19 he will already have added spells from any magic class via his final dip into Magical Secrets - and honestly I have no clue what one he could take because like, all of the spells! Wish is probably the go-to one but Dorian doesn't want anything from the gods so maybe not? - and he'll already have a 9th level spell slot from earlier levels. A 1-level dip in Fighter can give Dorian Second Wind for some self-healing and another Fighting Style to choose from: either Superior Technique - like Orym has - or Duelist would suit best, and if Robbie sacrifices an ASI he can go up to a 2nd level for Action Surge, which is handy should he focus on melee. There aren't many other 1-level dips that would suit Dorian narratively, there was probably Warlock potential in EXU: Prime when the crown was in play but since, again, the group lacks a pure healer, Dorian is probably better off investing his stats and skills towards Bard spells - which in turn bolsters DPS as well as healing.

From one Bard/DPS healer to another, Braius debuted with some pretty high stats to begin with, with only WIS being a negative modifier. As a 12/3 multiclass he can go a few different directions - much like his character arc and selection of deity - but it leaves him at a crossroads - also like his character arc. The 12 levels in Oath of the Ancients Paladin means he's locked out of getting Bard's Magical Secrets, if he maxes out his remaining levels in Bard he gets 2 ASI, a College of Tragedy feature (make crits be at rolls 18, 19 and 20 after an ally is hit with a crit plus a '+10 on a roll but a -10 penalty on the next' skill), Countercharm, and his Bardic Inspiration dice will go up to 1d8, but all of those are kinda covered by Dorian's higher level Bard class and Ashton's Mark of the Messy End while in Luck Rage to a higher or better extent. The 3 levels in Bard however has locked Braius out of Paladin's Aura improvements and the big Elder Champion buff, which is a big loss, if maxed out in Paladin they'll get Cleansing Touch - end a spell on yourself or anyone you can touch as many times as your CHA, one ASI, a 5th level spell slot (handy for Banishing Smite, Circle of Power, Destructive Wave, and Summon Celestial), and Undying Sentinel - which is just a once-a-long-rest Relentless Rage with no CON save. Build-wise, it would be best for Braius to go one of three different paths; either go for a 15/5 split - so no 5th level spell but he gets 1 ASI, Undying Sentinel, and Font of Inspiration for the 1d8 inspiration - a 14/6 split - where we swap Undying Sentinel for the college feature, or go the unique path and add a third class - while the 5th level spell slot has powerful spells Braius' combat is much more melee-based so it is a less likely option. A 14/3/3 triple split sacrifices his ASI/feats but 3 levels in Fighter gives him another Fighting Style, Action Surge, Second Wind, and a Fighter subclass to add to his combat prowess. One unlikely Fighter subclass that could suit Braius is the Rune Knight; with 3 levels Braius will have access to 2 runes, which can be tied to his character's artistry, to add to his gear - the Fire and Cloud Runes being the most useful to him from what I see - they would also get Giant's Might as a skill for an extra 1d6 of damage once per turn. Fighter isn't the only class Braius can benefit from though; he would only need to dip 2 levels in Cleric or Druid to gain their subclass-based abilities; a Shepherd Druid would give the group a slight benefit with the Hawk Spirit skill, using a reaction to attack with advantage and having advantage on perception checks, but similar to Imogen he'd probably benefit a bit more from dipping into Cleric - particularly Grave, War, Ambition, and Peace Domain Clerics, who each have abilities that can further empower him. A dip in Barbarian would be handy for Danger Sense - not so much Rage because you can't use spells - maybe opting for the Zealot path subclass, which also suits narratively, for an extra 1d6 damage, or a dip in the Monster Hunter Ranger to aid in picking out weaknesses. A 12/4/4 split could also work, forgoing Cleansing Touch to grant Braius 2 ASI or feats if Sam wanted them; with that they can balance their WIS to 10 and then max out their CHA and another +1 elsewhere, or just do a feat like Fey Touched - since he was touched plenty by a Fey Hag all across her manor - to max the CHA and gain a spell like Hunter's Mark to aid in combat.

Speaking of Hunters, Chetney may not have been designed to survive the campaign but with Travis rolling the fatal 0 when playing as Grog that old man is still, somehow, kicking. If Travis doesn't pull a Bertrand and allows him to continue defying the odds and live to Lv. 20, Chetney would be in a similar position to Braius - having gone the Tealeaf route and locked himself out of the full 20 in Blood Hunter by having a dip in Rogue - in being in a crossroads of classes. If he invests his remaining levels in Blood Hunter to 19, he still gets a lot from the class; 2 Order Features (advantages on bloodlust saving throws and on any branded creature, then unlimited hybrid transformations on the next feature), 2 ASI, and an extra Blood Maledict. Chetney's 1-level dip in Rogue however means he could also invest into any Rogue subclass for a 17/3 split (or a 16/4 split if he sacrifices a Blood Maledict for 2 ASI over one) instead; Assassin would help his damage output especially since he likes going Invisible, but the Revived subclass would be funny implying that he died but miraculously came back and no longer needed to risk dying in his sleep because he doesn't need to sleep anymore. Chet could also triple class like we suggested with Braius; 3-5 levels in Artificer - since he's a toymaker his toys can be infused beyond the enchanted distractions, going for the Armorer subclass can also be handy for the Thunder Gauntlets ability too, 2 levels in Fighter - for Action Surge, 2-4 levels in Monk - which has decent potential if his chisel is made a dedicated weapon plus the possible boons from Kensei, Mercy, or Open Hand paths, or even 3 levels in Ranger - where Hunter, Gloom Stalker, and Monster Slayer subclasses each have skills that could help Chet in combat, can all be seen as options, but it can also run the risk of being overcomplicated. Despite a Feat sidestepping Chet losing control in his Hybrid Form, logic says that Chet would likely stick with the 19/1 route since the feat only imposes a disadvantage against losing control and he can still do collateral damage, character-wise he'd likely want to keep his Lycanthropy on lock as much as he can. Plus, going to 19 Blood Hunter levels yields unlimited transformations and the second ASI hits at Lv. 19; with the two ASI - which he cannot get from triple classing - he can max out his STR and buff up his CON, DEX, and/or CHA for any additional bonuses, he has no negative stats so any are fair game. I don't see any feats that'd be too helpful, but outside of AC or DC boosts from increasing CON or DEX, upping CHA could also help with persuasion and being persuasive and tricksy.

Persuasive and Tricksy are some of many words you can use to define Fearne, who is also a Rogue multiclass. Her current 10/5 with Wildfire Druid as the majority allows her some wiggle room for her to go a few different directions. The 5 levels in Rogue have locked her out of a second ASI in Druid, the timeless body (not really a big deal for a fey), additional Wild Shape perks, and the 9th Level Spell Slot though, but if she invests only into Druid levels for the full 15 she does still gain one ASI and her Wildfire Feature 'Blazing Revival' - where once per long rest Mister can sacrifice himself (I don't think it's a permadeath sacrifice just like an 'off the board until resummoned' sacrifice) to revive her to half HP if she's downed - alongside a 6th, 7th and 8th level spell slot. If she goes for an even spread of 10 levels each with Rogue's Arcane Trickster however, she gains 2 ASI, 2 more proficiencies, Evasion, Magical Ambush, and a few more lower level spells. Both have valid directions - and as much as Fearne is a 'collector' I think a third class probably won't suit her and will perplex Ashley further - for her character even with mixing the level splits; a 12/8 split will grant her 2 ASI and a 6th level spell slot, while a 14/6 split grants one ASI, a 6th and 7th level spell slot, the Blazing Revival, and 2 proficiencies. Since Fearne doesn't do many sneak attacks and uses her Rogue abilities more for pickpocketing, it would probably be sensible to lean more towards Druid; a 15/5 split if she wants that 8th level spell slot for Sunburst, Incendiary Cloud, or Feeblemind, but a 14/6 split if she can do without - Plane Shift could narratively be on her radar so she can travel to the Feywild as she pleases, but Fire Storm is still a mighty 7th level spell that can be additionally buffed by her titan form which as mentioned with Ashton could also potentially scale up with levels - would give her more stuff to work with, plus extra Druid Levels buffs up Mister's health so he could be looking at 75-80 total HP (5+(Druid Level x 5)) depending on whether Fearne goes level 14 or 15. Since Fearne took War Caster already from her last level and her WIS is already maxed out, ASI to CON could be looked into to add health, AC, and DC, while also improving her chances at holding concentration for her saving throws, alternatively she can up her DEX to improve her pickpocketing so she can finally claim one of those eggs, since she's tragically 0-2 on that. Feat-wise, there is still the Elemental Adept: Fire feat to bypass enemy resistances to Fire too, lots of enemies will have Fire Resistance after all, so if she doesn't want to use ASI there is still that to use it on. So level-wise there is some wiggle room but class-wise she is better off picking one to focus on.

Our final member of the Hells Laudna has already picked her focused class; on a 12/3 Sorlock with her patron bound to a soul anchor - get fucked Delilah - she has implied to go pure Sorcerer from herein. Marisha has previously stated that she saw no gain in any more Warlock levels even when Delilah was still active and while a 6th level in Warlock would grant her an ASI at Lv.4 and unlocks Grave Touched - change damage to Necrotic plus 1 extra damage die when in Form of Dread, which is pretty solid - it does indeed suit narratively for Laudna to avoid more Warlock levels. The 3 levels she has gained from Warlock though have (war)locked her out of her final Sorcery feature of Umbral Form - which would've made her resistant to everything but Force and Radiant Damage, so like Braius' Primal Champion it's quite the loss - but she still looks to get Shadow Walk which aids her mobility, providing that there's darkness or shadows in the vicinity, as well as one ASI and another Metamagic option by continuing the Sorcerer's path, not to mention a dangerous 9th level spell slot. Unlike Imogen, Laudna opted for Empowered Spell in her current Metamagics alongside Quickened and Twinned, doing Heightened or Transmuted probably wouldn't suit Laudna like it does her partner though. Instead, Careful Spell could be a good choice for Laudna since her CHA is maxed out, so she could pick 5 creatures to auto-succeed a saving throw to a spell she sends, but since she doesn't have many AoE spells Extended Spell may be the better fit to keep up concentration on spells like Animate Objects, Mirror Image, or any future powerful concentration spells she'll have access to like Eyebite, Globe of Invulnerability, Reverse Gravity, or Blade of Disaster - which Delilah used pretty effectively in Aeor - ongoing. Even so, the one ASI remains; the Amulet of Health puts her CON to a fixed 19 so if she added one CON it'd be 16 without attunement, which is still pretty good but worthless if she just keeps using the amulet, she could put +1 in her woeful STR so it's a -2 rather than -3, or opt for feats such as War Caster - for those powerful concentration spells - or another Eldritch Invocation with Eldritch Adept, such as Armor of Shadows or Eldritch Spear, which may be more fitting for her fun scary nature.

And that's all of them, for a TL/DR I expect Ashton, Orym, Dorian and Imogen to do the pure 20 for their classes, while Chetney will go 19/1, Braius and Fearne go 14/6, and Laudna goes 17/3. But if it were me, the only ones I'd adjust from those would be Dorian (19/1, adding Fighter), Imogen (18/2, adding Tempest Cleric), and Braius (14/3/3, adding Rune Knight Fighter) just from a meta/fun perspective. Either way I'll just be happy to see them make Level 20, so fingers and every other digit I have stay crossed for whichever route they choose.

#critical role #bells hells #cr spoilers #cr speculation #c3 spoilers #spoilers up to c3e113 #ashton greymoore #fearne calloway #orym of the air ashari #dorian storm #imogen temult #laudna #chetney pock o'pea #braius doomseed #matthew mercer #taliesin jaffe #ashley johnson #liam o'brien #robbie daymond #laura bailey #marisha ray #travis willingham #sam riegel #yes I'm still miffed Ashton got a DEX increase from Dusk Hunger it just feels like they got something an enchanted uncommon item would give #the 3d6 fire damage per short rest and +1 AC doesn't balance vs Orym's +1 attack +1 AC +1 Maneuver DC and +1d6 Force damage on Proned foes #Orym can trip attack 6 times per rest to get prone but Ashton only gets to add fire damage (which resistance drops to 1/2-9 damage) once #the shipper in me definitely looked into shared dips/feats for Ashton and Fearne but Barbarians can't do spells while raging so sadly not #they still have the titan form though - which I do hope improves by level we're still yet to see a titan combo attack #2 levels of tempest cleric for Imogen though is so out of pocket I know but somehow it works pretty well #and 3 levels of Rune Knight Braius would still be pretty awesome he and Imogen were my deep dives into multiclassing

64 notes · View notes

unluckiestmember · 3 days ago

Note

Hello ♥️ I hope I am not bothering you but can I Please please have a imagine for steb from arcane like a steb was completely caught off gaurd by the reader who is from the undercity and a tall intimidating individual. Reader who just walk up to him while steb was undercover in a bar and reader bluntly flirted at him and ended up dating him in only 5 weeks. I don't know I just found it a little bit funny.... This fish guy had me on a freaking choke hold!!!! Aaaaaaaaaa!!!!! His only their for a few minutes on screen and I am in love with him!

P. S not my first language and I hope it isn't too confusing.

Thank you! And have a wonderful day! ✨

Coming right up!

Steb x Zaunite! Reader

Characters: Steb, Maddie Nolen and Violet "Vi"

Warning: One cuss word, but outside of that SFW.

A/N: I'm surprised by how many people really love Steb! I was not expecting that, but I'm loving every second of it!

When Steb was sent on a mission to the undercity undercover to bring down an illegal business, he expected to get his job done.

And he did! But he didn’t expect to get a lover in the midst of it all.

When you first met him, outside of catching your gaze on a handsome fishman, you quickly realized he was a man of little words.

But what he lacked in dialogue he made up for in body language.

Especially when he blushed at your advances.

He could try his damnest to play coy with you, but there was no point.

The more you pointed out how beautiful his scales were and how his eyes held the ocean within them, the more he fell for you.

The attraction at first was mainly fueled out a lust, your time together only being colored by rendezvouses and sneaky links.

But before you both knew it, lust turned into a genuine bond.

And the genuine bond turned into love.

In the beginning of your relationship, Steb tried to keep you at arms length from his duties in Piltover.

It wasn’t that he was ashamed of you- Not by a long shot!

He was just scared that if his friends and close acquaintances in the enforcer unit found out you were a Zaunite they could hurt you.

So the both of you kept your love under wraps, embarking on dates in secret.

It was fine at first, but after a while, Steb could tell it was killing you to watch other couples show their lovers off with pride while he had to walk on eggshells.

Luckily a pep talk from Maddie and the other enforcers in addition to yourself gave him the courage to declare without fear that you were his beloved.

Hell, even Vi is a huge fan of you two! She never would've pegged Steb to be with a Zaunite, but she loves the sight regardless!

Now the both of you hang around Zaun and Piltover, hand in hand, being the cutest couple in the twin cities.

Also the sexiest, but that’s a story for another time.

If you got any requests for Arcane, send them my way!

Likes and retweets are always appreciated! I love you all, stay hydrated and have a good day! <3

84 notes · View notes

to-be-a-dreamer · 15 hours ago

Text

Okay so I'm from the Newsies fandom which means I know how to make character backstories out of literally nothing and I'm done with my "This makes no sense what were the writers thinking?" stage of grief after the BuckTommy breakup and it's time to go to work and start asking "What could have happened to make this make sense?".

Because regardless of what you think about Tommy, it's very clear that the writers have characterized him (in the current stage of his life) as someone who has put in a lot of work to become a better person, is a very steady figure, and feels very confident in himself and his identity. We've also been told and shown that he and Buck care for each other a lot and neither of them wanted this relationship to end. So the question is, what happened in Tommy's past that could have caused this very confident, mature person to realize he's falling in love with his partner and then choose to leave?

"I'm your first, not your last."

How many times has Tommy been someone's first? How many times has he shown another man this new side of himself, taught them what it means to be queer and how to love yourself for it, and been left behind once they figured themselves out? How many times has he been someone's first and had a whirlwind romance, only to be left brokenhearted because his partners had a whole new world opened up to them only to realize they didn't want Tommy to be a part of that world?

Does Tommy think of himself as the guy people have fun with, not the guy they want to marry? Does Tommy think there's something wrong with him, that there's a reason no one ever sees a future with him? Do you think he's always told himself that he would keep trying, that it's worth the potential heartbreak to find out if this next guy might be the one who stays?

Did the way Buck was talking about their relationship being transformative for him just sound too familiar? Did he think Buck liked him because he was showing him something new, not because he could ever actually love someone like Tommy? Do you think he could never imagine Buck liking him anywhere near as much as Tommy liked him?

Do you think he realized he was falling in love with Buck, and the idea of losing him like all the others was just too much? Do you think he knew the potential heartbreak of someone as incredible as Buck deciding he didn't want Tommy in his future wasn't worth it this time? Do you think he was afraid of falling in love with Buck, of falling so deeply in love that he wouldn't be able to recover when Buck left him like all the others? Do you think he decided it was better to break things off with Buck before he could finish falling in love with him?

Do you think they could come back from this? That maybe, just maybe, if Tommy told Buck about all of his fears that he could convince Tommy that it is worth it to find out if they could make it?

"I'm not the guy people decide to spend their life with. They- you'll finish figuring yourself out and realize you don't want a future with me. And that's okay, I just... I don't want to let myself finish falling in love with you first because I won't survive losing you after that."

"Do you think that little of me? That I'm just using you for my own personal gain and that I'll leave you in the dust as soon as I get what I want?"

"I... No. No, I don't think you would do that."

"Then give us a chance. Let me show you that this is more than just an awakening for me. Let me prove that I want to finish falling in love with you too."

Because I think that's what Tommy's afraid of. He's a person who's spent a lot of time self-reflecting and he knows himself so well, especially his faults. I think he’s afraid of Buck seeing all of those faults and realizing he doesn’t love Tommy as much as he thought he did. Loving someone means you see every part of them and want to be with them anyways.

I think Tommy is terrified of falling in love with someone because he can't imagine anyone loving him back.

#i kinda want to write a fic about tommy being a victim on a call #therfore forcing him and buck to have a come to jesus moment about all this #but we shall see #anyways i think tommy is a facinating character and i will never forgive toxic fans with no imagination for ruining his potential #give me characters with shitty origins who put in the work to become better people #give me characters who are allowed to grow and change and become more than just products of their upbringing #tommy's storyline could have been so incredible if we'd been allowed to see how he got from where he started to where he is now #alas i'll just have to do it myself i guess #tommy kinard #evan buck buckley #buck buckley #bucktommy #buck x tommy #tevan #911 spoilers #911 abc #911 show

64 notes · View notes

frozen-snowflakesandsunflowers · 14 hours ago

Text

Jared Bush says Frozen 3 will surprise people | Latest Updates

In an interview during D23, last weekend in Brazil, Jared Bush, the recently appointed CCO, gave away some teases about Moana 2, Zootopia 2 and the future of Encanto, but he also mentions a bit about Frozen 3.

He says:

“Yeah, yeah, Frozen 3 is coming. And from what I've seen so far [of the film] I think people are going to be surprised. I can’t give away too many spoilers, other than to say that Jennifer Lee is leading the charge and that the story and the direction that she’s taking these characters, what they’re facing, what they’re going to go through, I think is going to surprise a lot of people but it's also going to deliver on everything that people love about Frozen.”

So surprised is the word he uses to describe how we'll react to Frozen 3. That's given because as Jen has said recently that the concept art that was shown during this year's first D23 is just a glimpse of what we could see in the movie. Apart from what we make from that concept we have no clue what Frozen 3 is about and tbh I have to give it to the team for not spilling a single detail about the movie. I know we want to know more but imo I think they're saving all that content for the end of 2026 and into 2027. Maybe a few teases or better insight of the story by the end of 2025, but who knows. Probably also because they're still working on it so whatever they would have told us about the film so far, could have changed and form opinions in our heads about it which they really don't need at this current stage of production. I don't think the cast have even got the script yet as the story is still developing!

Bush also mentions that Frozen 3 is going to deliver on everything that people love about Frozen. Now that's the only real piece of information given - the focal point being on what we want to see. That's what the questions on the first D23 event were about - what we would like to see, what we feel is left to tell. We love the characters, the story, the individual arcs of those characters, the dynamics, the settings, the potential, the mystery, and so much more and so I'll take this a positive sign. That's all of what I make of it.

I know nothing major was revealed in this interview, but I still thought I'd share for those who do take into consideration these little hints and teases. Since Frozen 3's date has been pushed back from 2026 to 2027, most of the content will be given the year of the release and some the year before base done the previous two films promotion (it could be different as this movie is a two parter). I know that's quite long to think about (😭) especially with the honest disappointment that Frozen Winter Festival was not a short film or an official short series but rather just a YouTube series (which is cute nonetheless and good to see they're feeding the younger fans of the franchise), but now moving into 2025 we have 2 and bit years left so we should get more teases in interviews and events here and there.

But regarding FWF, I don't blame them too much because all their focus is on the Frozen 3 and 4 as it is being made back to back, then I'm certain it'll be worth the wait. We can still hope for some kind of Frozen content soon as we do have a couple more years to go so let's see. 🤷🏽‍♀️

P.s I have some Frozen edits I'd love to share so I'll post those if you need something new regarding Frozen. ❄️

#disney frozen #frozen #frozen 3 #frozen 4 #jared bush #wdas #jenifer lee #jen lee

29 notes · View notes

icarusflewsworld · 1 day ago

Text

Rhysand & Cassian & Azriel X OC

Hello, here is the chapter 3 of a fanfiction on the world of Acotar where our three favorite Batboys are the mates of a single woman.

I hope you like it! Don't hesitate to let me know if you prefer the OC to become y/n and/or gender neutral.

Also, I apologize for any mistakes you might find, I'm just a French girl doing her best with Google Translate and her average score of 5 in English classe.

! Don't forget to read the previous chapters ! : Here

Happy reading!

Chapter 3

The servants had been kicked out of the house within hours. Nesta and Elain waited by the window in the large dining room, while Feyre went to open the door to the Faes. She led them through the house.

Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel were burning with barely concealed excitement at the prospect of seeing their mate again, whom they had only caught a glimpse of earlier. But they still had many questions and doubts. Was she really their soulmate? Did she have character? Was her hair silky? Was her skin soft? Would she like them?

So, when they arrived in the dining room accompanied - unfortunately for them - by Tamlin and Lucien, they were more than disappointed not to see the young woman.

Feyre had the reflex to say to herself that she had done well to choose the dining room with the high ceiling when she saw the imposing stature of the five faes in front of her sisters. They looked extremely intimidating, and the fear on Elain and Nesta's faces only confirmed her hypothesis. Feyre quickly introduced her sisters to the faes.

Nesta stood in front of Elain in a protective gesture, while Elain kept herself from fainting.

“And where's your other sister? Luxiana,” asked Rhysand, trying to sound as detached as possible.

Feyre squinted for a moment. Rhysand was looking at every corner of the room and had used a peculiar tone as if he were asking the question out of curiosity, but she had clearly seen how Cassian and Azriel had frozen and strained their ears waiting for the answer.

Her best friend was beautiful and she knew it. In other circumstances, knowing she'd made a great impression on these three faes might have made her smile if it weren't for those three evil faes over there.

“She's not my sister, she's my best friend,” replied Feyre. “And she makes sure the last member of house staff has left. She shouldn't be… long.”

Feyre had barely finished her sentence when the pretty blonde entered the room. She froze at the sight of the faes, but there was no reaction on her face. It was as if she'd expected or was used to seeing such handsome and imposing creatures.

Luxiana's expression was cold and serious, that said, and though she tried to hide it, she was tired from the tears she'd shed all afternoon and which were still glistening on her cheeks.

This realization could have torn the hearts of the three Illyrians apart, but they were just far too caught up by the beauty of their soul mate and the dozens of strange sensations stirring in their chests to pay any more attention to anything else. Perhaps it was simply due to their mating bond, but they could have sworn that the room and the atmosphere around them had become brighter and more colorful when she entered.

Luxiana was in no way intimidated when she first laid her eyes on Azriel, slowly detailing him from head to toe. A shiver ran down her spine. He seemed cold and intimidating. It occurred to her that he was the most dangerous in the room.

Azriel had squinted in surprise and his heart had started pounding like mad in his chest when the blonde's electric blue eyes landed on him. She'd seen him first. Nobody usually saw him first, especially not when he was trying, as he was now, to blend into the shadows to be less intimidating. No, people, even the most experienced faes, usually only saw him when he decided to be seen, or just by chance out of the corner of their eye. But she had set her eyes directly on him. Without knowing why, though, the shadows that always surrounded him had gone to hide behind his back, as if it was intimidated by the young woman and her light. That said, Azriel could hear them whispering from here. ‘Our mate’, ‘Our’, ‘Mine’, they kept repeating, or perhaps it was Azriel's inner voice.

Luxiana then slid her gaze to Rhysand and detailed him in the same way. He seemed arrogant and pretentious. He tilted his head with a smirk. He seemed confident, but a flash of playfulness shone in his eyes and Luxiana loved to play. She could only return his expression, but squinted in an attempt to see through him.

Rhysand was trying to make a good impression. He almost prayed to the cauldron that the blonde's eyes would land on him too, and when they had, he was intrigued by her reaction to him. He almost collapsed. Fortunately, he recovered so quickly that no one sawn it, but he almost fell to the ground because of the blonde that was so fucking breathtaking. In fact, that's what happened to him, he was breathless by the mere fact that this girl noticed him, and he was thanking the cauldron he was a good actor when all he wanted to do was throw himself on his knees in front of her and beg her to touch him.

Then Luxiana set her eyes on Cassian without leaving the smirk she stole from Rhysand. The last Illyrian was the most imposing of them all, the most muscular and should look the most dangerous, yet Luxiana just had the impression that he was the least intimidating. Her smile widened to the point of sympathetic mockery. She just wanted to pinch his cheeks.

When the blonde laid eyes on him, Cassian was dead. He died at least three or four times, his heart having stopped beating, then bursting violently against his chest before stopping again. He stared at the woman in front of him and could do nothing but admire her beauty. He was doing his best not to think about the obscene things he wanted to do to her lips or that irresistible urge to plunge his tongue into her dimple that had formed on his cheek at her smirk. A smile Cassian was more than eager to make her lose by kissing her until she forgot to breathe.

Although the scene and Luxiana's analysis were unfolding rapidly, time seemed to stand still and the world to stop to contemplate the encounter between the three faes and the blonde.

When their mate's eyes fell on Lucien at their side, a feeling of anger and jealousy gripped the guts of the three Illyrians. They didn't like the idea of their betrothed setting her eyes on anyone other than the three of them. It was an intense jealousy that none of them had ever felt, and it burned through their entire bodies, forcing them to clench their fists. They tried to reassure themselves that they certainly wouldn't overreact to a simple glance, but the only thing they wanted was to rip Lucien's skin off.

Then Luxiana's gaze fell on Tamlin and she lost her smile. Her expression regained the gravity with which she had entered the room. Her eyebrows furrowed and her teeth clenched. She was annoyed. She recognized him. He was in the spring court high lord's palace when she infiltrated to find Feyre, because he was the spring court high lord. It was because of him that her best friend had ended under the mountain and had to go through all those atrocities. He did nothing to save her, and perhaps he could have done nothing other than what he'd already done to protect her, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn't enough for Luxiana.

Explosive anger bubbled in the blonde's chest. She clenched her fists as she took long strides towards Tamlin.

“You,” she spat, pointing at him.

Tamlin winced, raising both hands in the air and rolling his eyes. This human was driving him out of his mind uncontrollably and he would love to shut her up, but she was the person Feyre cared about the most so he had to try and calm things down.

“Listen,” he began, only to be interrupted by a monstrous slap from Luxiana.

Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel were initially surprised by the anger that emerged on the pretty blonde's face. Firstly, because they found her even sexier that way, but also because she seemed far too sweet, affectionate and innocent to feel that kind of negative emotions. So when she fearlessly slapped the high lord of the spring court, they could only admire the bravery of this human girl who just provoked a powerful fae almost twice her size in length and breadth.

Tamlin, who looked as if his ego was bruised by being slapped by a human, was wide-eyed at first, before turning his murderous gaze on Luxiana. Without waiting, she wanted to slap him again, but Tamlin fiercely grabbed her wrist before she could reach his cheek.

Tamlin let out a menacing growl which snapped the three brothers out of their contemplation. How dare he touch her ? If he just thought a second of hurting her, the three Illyrians knew that anything would stop them for tearing him to pieces, no matter what that meant for the Spring Court or the Night Court. The three of them were about to throw themselves between him and her to protect their mate from the bastard, but before they could even move, she gave him an impressively forceful calf kick to his genitals.

Tamlin fell to his knees as he released her, hands between his thighs as he groaned in pain with such power it sounded like he could cry.

Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel froze, then exploded with laughter. Admiring to see so much anger and courage in such a small body as Luxiana's.

Rhysand laughed. He was laughing, and he hadn't laughed in fifty years.

The blonde didn't even give them any attention, far too focused on killing Tamlin with her eyes.

“It's all your fault!” she shouted at the kneeling blond. “Feyre has suffered because of you!”

“Luxiana,” Feyre called out, grabbing her by the arm and trying to pull her back.

Feyre knew that Luxiana was angry and that she thought Tamlin was responsible for everything that had happened to her, and although a part of her had relished the beating her best friend had given to her lover, she knew she was entirely to blame. She had decided to go into the mountains to save him, even though he had kept her away to protect her. She still had nightmares about it, but it was in no way Tamlin's fault.

Luxiana knew all that, she understood it. But she needed to throw her hatred and guilt on someone other than herself. She was the only one who failed to protect Feyre. She would have died under that mountain if Rhysand hadn't been there.

So Luxiana gently extricated herself from Feyre's grip and moved closer to Tamlin. The latter stood up abruptly, growling, anger distorting his face. He towered over Luxiana.

“Tam, stop,” Lucien advised worriedly.

“I am a high lord,” Tamlin hissed through clenched teeth, ignoring his friend, ”I forbid you to disrespect me like that.”

The scene had the merit of calming Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel, who regained their seriousness. Their fists clenched until their knuckles turned white.

“Oh, you poor thing,” scoffed Luxiana.

“I could snap your neck like a twig,” threatened Tamlin with a glare as she took a step towards her.

Azriel growled an animal sound far more violent than the one Tamlin had uttered, Cassian took a step forward to grab Luxiana by the elbow and place her behind him and Rhysand took a step forward.

“I'd advise you to be extremely careful about what you say and who you threaten if you don't want me to rip out your tongue and give it to that girl as an apology trophy,” Rhysand growled in a deep voice with a threatening cold face.

Luxiana opened her mouth wide as she detailed the three imposing Illyrians who had stood in front of her to protect her from the high lord of the spring court. She had no need of protection, but she loved the fact that they protected her without even knowing her, and she loved even more the hatred that burned in their eyes as they looked at Tamlin. These faes seemed to hate Tamlin as much as she did, which made them Luxiana's best allies.

Tamlin petrified, but an angry grimace twitched his nostrils and distorted his expression. Luxiana noticed that he had tensed up and was clenching his fists. He seemed to be afraid of the violet-eyed high lord who had just come to her defense, which meant that this fae was more powerful than Tamlin. Everything lit up in Luxiana's mind.

The blonde was well aware of the animosity that reigned between the lords of the courts, but she sensed that the three brown haired males were just waiting for a good reason to attack Tamlin. They had now irrevocably become her best allies and were, above all, faes capable of hurting Tamlin more than she was, especially as she didn't want to cause her best friend's husband too much pain, even though she was dying to do it.

Luxiana shifted slightly from Cassian's body to put her head between the Illyrian's imposing wings and the violet-eyed fae's body.

Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel heard her move and turned to look at her.

“Yeah, watch your mouth or they'll beat the shit out of you,” said Luxiana haughtily.

The blonde's words made the three Illyrians smile uncontrollably, their chests lifting with pride as they raised their heads. There was no doubt that they loved what their soulmate was implying: that she felt safe with them and that they looked stronger and more intimidating than Tamlin.

The high lord of the spring court glared menacingly at Luxiana and growled a warning.

Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel's blood ran cold. How dare he look at her again? Rhysand unleashed his power without warning. Tamlin collapsed.

“Tamlin,” cried Feyre, throwing herself on top of her husband.

“He's not dead,” said Rhysand disinterestedly, without even looking at Feyre. “He's just asleep. And it'll be better for everyone that he remains until tomorrow.”

She glared at Rhysand, who didn't even calculate her, then at Luxiana.

“What? You heard him, he'll get over it,” the blonde huffed, rolling her eyes.

Feyre wasn't really surprised by her best friend's behavior. She'd always had guts and a fiery attitude. She was impulsive and always regretted her actions afterwards, that said, she didn't like seeing the man she loved down, unconscious because of her best friend.

Feyre huffed. Her face was contorted with worry as she tenderly stroked Tamlin's hair.

The three Illyrians turned to Luxiana, who was staring at Tamlin's body with pursed lips and a mocking expression. When she realized they were looking at her, she detailed them in turn for a moment, crossing her hands behind her back and smiling innocently with all her teeth. They were beautiful, and Luxiana only noticed it now as she detailed the three of them again quickly. They were the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. Ever.

The blonde returned her gaze to the pointy-eared fae, and the instant her blue pupils plunged into his violet eyes, Rhysand was electrified from head to toe.

“You're the high lord of the night court, aren't you?” asked Luxiana, squinting her eyes to detail him further.

She was asking, but she had no doubt. In any case, there was only one high lord who terrified all the others, and that was him.

Rhysand nodded with a smirk and an air of pride. He loved the idea of this woman knowing him.

“You're the one who helped Feyre under the mountain,” she added.

Rhysand lost his smile at the memory and the surprise. He hadn't expected her to bring up the subject. He nodded, not sure what else to do.

“Helping is a big word,” Feyre grumbled, laying her lover's head on her lap.

Luxiana smiled without taking her eyes off Rhysand.

“Don't pay any attention to what she says,” she rolled her eyes and smiled. “I understand that without you, Feyre would be dead.”

She held out her hand with a gentle, sympathetic smile that made Rhysand swallow loudly.

“My name is Luxiana and thank you,” she added. “Thank you for saving my best friend.”

Rhysand had no reason to take this woman's hand, no merit in doing so, yet he couldn't resist touching her. He reached out to squeeze the blonde's palm and was far too disturbed by the simple contact, which electrified him entirely.

He leaned towards her to bring his face closer to the blonde's, trying to ignore the pleasant sensation of her slender hand in his.

“I didn't do it for her,” he whispered.

Luxiana chuckled, lowering her head. “It doesn't matter who you did it for, you did it, and that's what counts. It may not mean much to you, but you saved the life of the person I love most. I owe you a lot for that. I sincerely do. Thank you.”

Rhysand straightened in surprise. He had unknowingly saved the person his soulmate loved the most? She seemed sincere, and he wasn't sure why, but her thanks lifted a heavy weight from his shoulders and allowed him to take a deep, invigorating breath. Suddenly, everything that had happened under the mountain didn't matter that much if it meant he could receive the thanks of his mate. If it prevents his soul mate from suffering. If it allows him to meet his soul mate.

“A human may not be able to give you much, but if one day you do need something,” she continued, leaning towards him with a smile, “oh great and powerful high lord of the night court Rhysand, and I will do my best to help you.”

Rhysand laughed. He knew exactly what he'd like to ask her, but had no idea how to do it without sounding indecent or forcing her to do something.

“Only my enemies call me Rhysand, call me Rhys,” demanded the high lord, keeping Luxiana's hand in his, impossible to tear himself away from her touch.

Luxiana smiled with all her teeth, bringing out two dimples that drove Rhysand mad and incoherent. Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on the blonde's hand to try to regain composure and not pounce on her, doing things to that mouth that would even make Azriel blush.

Realizing that her hand was still into the lord's one, the blonde extricated herself from his grip. Rhysand had to fight the unpleasant feeling that a piece of himself was being torn away when she retrieved his hand, and had to grit his teeth to keep from taking it back.

“Very well, oh high lord of the night court Rhys,” she teased him. “Don't hesitate.”

Cassian laughed and Azriel and Rhysand smiled.

“Mocking a fae lord,” remarked Cassian, ”you've really got guts. Do you know who we really are and how powerful we are?”

Unconcealed pride swelled the Illyrian's chest as Luxiana laughed and looked back at him. He loved it when she looked at him.

“I've got an idea,” declared Luxiana. “You're Cassian, the commander of the armies.”

She returned her gaze to Azriel, who froze from head to toe, trying not to appear tense.

“And you're Azriel, the spy master.”

She returned her gaze to the Illyrian with the red siphon.

“I've heard about you,” she continued.

And it was true. She had heard of them. The strongest Illyrians and the lord of the night court. All the rumors about them weren't very nice to hear.

“Rumors say you're terrifying, that your people are unhappy and that you even torture children.”

A muscle twitches in Rhysand's jaw. Normally, these rumors about him making his people miserable didn't bother him and that's why he didn't waste his time contradicting them - it served his interests too well against his enemies - but today, he hated the idea of this woman thinking of him in this way.

“And you believe them?” asked Rhysand with a sudden cold voice.

Luxiana smirked.

“I don't know yet, but to tell you the truth,” she replied, “you're not as intimidating as the rumors say. In fact, you're not at all.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow in astonishment. This little piece of woman didn't find them intimidating, even though she was probably as small as Amren and a fragile human with no powers. Did she have guts or simply no instinct for self-preservation?

“Well, except him,” she continued, pointing at Azriel, “he's intimidating. Well, a little bit.”

Azriel squinted. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He certainly liked the fact that he appeared more intimidating than his brothers and would be harping on them for a long time, but he certainly didn't like the fact that he was scaring the one who was undoubtedly his soul mate. He almost cursed himself that this was the case, but it wasn't fear that trailed in the blonde's blue eyes when she set them on him, but intrigue. If Azriel intimidated her, she loved it, and this realization could only make him smile. He loved having that effect, especially on this woman.

“What's he got that we don't?” vexed Cassian, directly wounded in the ego.

Not that he'd like the idea of intimidating his mate, but that normally shouldn't be the case for all three of them.

Luxiana smiled, hilarious in anticipation of what she was about to say and knowing full well what it meant to Illyrians.

“He got bigger wings.”

Cassian and Rhysand made big eyes at Azriel, who burst out laughing.

“What?” gasped Cassian. “No, he did not.”

Luxiana pursed her lips to keep from laughing and had to lower her head so they wouldn't notice.

“That's enough,” raged Nesta, “enough wasted time. The cook has left us a meal. Let's eat so it'll be over quicker.”

24 notes · View notes

carlzy-berryz · 23 hours ago

Text

Neo 3 ^^

Ref sheet done, lol. This took forever ahhh!! Ik it's not the neatest, but it gets the job done XD.

I'll go into more detail under the cut.. (lore)

Everleigh used to live in Inkpolis Plaza but her family had to move to the Splatlands a couple years back, to take care of her grandma. Her life kinda changed from then XD. The treatment for her grandma was expensive and turf war just wasn't cutting it anymore... so her parents suggested Salmon Run (Everleigh had no idea what this was at the time) but she agreed, nonetheless, after all if it pays well it can't be that bad, right?

Well this is where she developed weird "attachment issues" to the salmonids, she thought they were cute (especially smallfry), and wondered why so many people wanted to take their eggs, they didn't deserve that... So she started slacking off, not getting quota on purpose, giving eggs to snatchers, not reviving teammates ect... nobody ever suspected her though..

How she met Waffle..

One day at the end of a shift, Everleigh noticed an injured Smallfry near the shore, struggling to move, she went to help him but she could hear the helicopter about to leave, so she put him in her bag and scrambled back. She looked after him for weeks and weeks, feeding him, giving him a place to sleep, going on morning runs all to get his strength back! It wasnt easy though, as she had to hide him from everbody, she even took him to work (while bribing him with food as a reward, lol) he just stayed in her bag the whole time!

Eventually he was back to his bubbly self and fully recovered which meant Everleigh had to return him to the sea... She had always intended this, but she had grown far too attached to him, she couldn't stomach the thought of a co-worker killing him.. so she decided to keep him and named him Waffle!

The day she became an agent...

As usual she was on her way to work with Waffle, she was about to walk up the stairs when she heard a voice, it was coming from a manhole, she looked over and a strange old man was signaling her to walk over, he disappeared down the manhole and they follow him...

*I'll spare you the whole story mode Alterna plot you already know what happens XD*

After defeating Mr Grizz she knew for a fact she couldn't work for him anymore. She told her parents that she wanted to quit but they wouldn't let her, they said it was too much money to give up, then they started guilt tripping her saying things like "you really don't want to help your grandma..?" This made her feel terrible and she reluctantly continued working for a few more weeks... until she just couldn't take it anymore, she stomped into grizzco, slammed her things on the desk and shouted "I quit!" and she never set foot in there again. She traded the gold scales she'd earned over the years to a random octoling for money, (she sure wouldn't need those anymore) and managed to pay for her grandma's treatments! She now lives with her grandma and Waffle in a small apartment and works full time as an agent, getting paid now by the captain! She rarely speaks to her parents and will leave the apartment when they visit.

Side effects of becoming an agent..

.She doesn't have much time to do things anymore as she's always busy doing missions

.Her hair now looks a little fluffy, this is due to all the fuzzy ooze she fell in..

.She kinda developed ptsd from fighting her way through the missions.

.Feels like she can't meet Waffle's needs and doesn't want to overwork him.

These are just a few things, but she can't say she regrets anything, after all, it was her release from everything. She made new friends, defeated Grizz, participates in turf and anarchy again (with the other agents) and best of all she's happier now, that's what really matters!

That's about it really, sorry for the long story, 😭 I just wanted to get it out there since she didn't have much character development before, so if you made it here,thank you so much for reading the whole thing, I appreciate you!! ^^ I apologise if it didn't really make sense...

Here's a close up of Waffle as a reward XP

🫶

#ill design her grandma eventually im still trying to think of her name i got no ideas #splatoon #neo 3 #splatoon agent ocs #smallfry #backstory #carlzy rambling hopelessly #nah but i really did ramble lol #my art #my oc art #splatoon 3 #artists on tumblr #nintendo

23 notes · View notes

pumpkinsy0 · 2 days ago

Note

if papercut met in college i wonder what soda and darrys first reactions to curly would be (in this au curly wouldnt have grown up in tulsa) soooo hcs for that?

lets say curly was grew up in nyc cause im still rockin w my shepards lore here and many haitians moved to nyc and i will add as many self projections onto these characters as i can, i promise u that much

•ok look I KNOOOWWWW i made a post on what i think all the shepards could get a degree in AND IT TOOK A WHILE TO FIND IT BUT I DID ITS RIGHT HERE IF U WANNA SEE, id def fix some of these a bit but whatever, immmm gonna go w curly as an engineering degree kinda guy

•soda and darry def have way bigger respect for curly, MOSTLY bc they dont know how curly rlly acts and havent grown up w him, but also bc hes acheiving something darry and soda themselves cant, getting a college diploma

•SUPER rare soda and darry papercut shippers perchance??? its not 100% there, but everytime pony comes home they ask about “that boy mate of urs”

•but thats only for the first year of college, the rest of em??? we r getting back into the good ole curtis family and curly dynamic, bc pony tells them stories about what curlys done, plus they can hear curly in the background when their calling pony

•theyve talked to him before too!!!they dint get what hes on about half the time, but hes not THEE worst person theyve ever talked to, they like talking about where curly grew up, his stories r a lil fucked up but they like hearing a different pov!!!

•pony always sends pics home so darry and soda arent too surprised seeing pony grow and its curly who hels take em!! pony feels bad just having him take it thi so chances r they WILL see curly there too and curlys just on the curtis fridge

•thats actually how soda and darry kept catching on that they had a thing for each other, bc the way they were looking and touching each other in those photos??? darry knows that look,,,,,

•curly got bonus points for being pretty family oriented (especially from soda for being the middle child, ts aint easy)

•dare i say,,,,they finally see curly as somewhat as a good influence,,,,its about timmeee🙄🙄🙄, pony mentions how curly makes pony get to class, pony doesnt mention the times curly pulls pony away from his studies however and he never will

•i promise if curly was in college for entomology, theyd thing hes so odd for that, but they cant say much about it bc at the end if the day, hes doin things they aint, BUTTT bc here hes getting an engineering degree, soda (especially again) will ask him a lot if questions about it and how pony tends to surround himself w ppl who build/fix things, they all tease pony for that

#curly shepard #ponyboy curtis #purly #PaperCut ship #darrel curtis #darry curtis #sodapop curtis

19 notes · View notes

icewindandboringhorror · 3 months ago

Text

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

#wax seal #crafts #wax stamp #stationery #Window one is kind of stinky.. I was imagining like a swirly night sky sort of looking thing so it would be a surreal contrast of a night #sky with a window in the middle that shows a daytime sky - but the silver and purple wax kind of mixed too much together #with the black and it just looks very plain black and not all that starry or anything hjbhj.. Of course the eye is probably my favorite #since all I ever do is draw eyes and still like eye imagery for some reason. The four leaf clover is very lumpy and skrunkty but also it wa #the smallest in size out of all of them so was easier to do multiple stamps of just to try it out.#The heart with eyes wax is actually more swirly in person. I wanted it to be a mix of light pink and red and white. and the wax #did kind of all blend together but in person you can definitely see MORE of the intentional swirlyness. in this it just looks plain pink.#I was going to do one eye in the heart but it looked weird. but now two seems too plain. i could have done 3?? in a pattern.. hmm #alas. I wish I could make actual metal ones. With the clay i have to paint them in a thin layer of olive oil before stamping because #otherwise the wax just kind of gets stuck in the grooves of the clay and then you can't pull it up. Very wacky ''unprofessional'' looking #set up where I'm hot gluing circles of sculpey clay to short stumps of a wooden dowel that I sawed apart with a serrated bread knife #and then using an old paintbrush to put olive oil on them whilst holding a spoon over a yankee candle flame hjbjh #ANYWAY.. I think if I were middle class/rich/etc. this would be one of the main things in my crafting room is like.. SO many colors #of wax. and all different custom made stamps designed by me. which could be much more elaborate in actual metal.. muahaha.... >:)c #RHGghhh... I actually don't want to talk much about it since (this is probably just my Obsessed With My Own World Artist Delusions) I #think I have a really cool idea for a game that could genuinely be successful if i ever get to make it and I don't want to give #everything away and spoil the whole plot/concept in hopes that one day I can actually do it - BUT - a game that I'd like to make after the #visual novel I'm making now has partially to do with the main character working as a sort of writer/scribe/artist assistant in an elven #city (set in my world/with my worldbuilding species and versions of elves and etc) and I was thinking of maybe incorporating #somehow being able to collect little writing type items like these like.. you can get different wax seal patterns or pens or etc. when I do #stuff like this in Real Life it always makes me think of that like.. ouh... this is good research.. what it shall be like to be a littol #elf collecting wax seals and such.. indeed... GRR i need to be finished with my current game NOWWW... i MUST work on other #thingss... aughh... ANYWAY.. yay. accomplishment to do One Single Thing other than Sit In The Summer Heat And Rot #though also hilarious as this was the first cool-ish day that was below 80F in a while hgvh #waking up like 'wow.. i actually feel okay today?? like I could do things?? how mysterious.. I wonder why..?? :0'' Its The Weather You Fool #Tis Always The Weather

191 notes · View notes

corntired · 3 months ago

Text

Fanfiction is so goated actually

No monetary incentive, just writing in one's free time. Some incentive for like kudos and comments, because who doesn't want to hear that someone else enjoyed what they wrote. Just writing a story that is good and/or enjoyable, no real-life pressure to keep it going because god forbid you and other people are depending on it financially.

Writing a story because you want to write a good story, so you can write what they want the way you want, at a pace that is realistic for you, with exactly the plot pacing you want there to be.

#c*rny posts #thinking about this after the my h*ro academia leaks lmao #i have read barely a few chapters of the manga and then kept up with it through tumblr osmosis #i was interested in how its gonna end #and after reading the leaks i was like 'well its up to the fanfic writers to write a good ending now'#cause. it was kind of underwhelming. like some stuff made sense and some things were just done badly #which is realistic considering h*rikoshi is apparently burned out to hell #and i was thinking. man. if i had to write AND illustrate a story for like ten years straight. because its my bread and butter #and there are other people depending on the story doing well to make money #it would 100% get to me. i would rather end it all lmao #which is why i think fanfic is so great #just writing a story that you want. that makes sense to you. that has elements you want. that is exactly as long as you want.#and there isnt even a possibility of really monetizing it so there is no drive to make is 'succeed' or make it as long as possible #this could be applied to just writing a 'regular' story also that is not intended for publishing #also kinda makes me think about h*ikyuu #i kinda do feel the timeskip and the ending were a bit rushed #but like. if it was me. i would have rushed it too lmao #after so many years of working on one thing and one thing only i would have been so done. just so done #and h*ikyuu ending to me wasnt even bad. it was good with good resolution of everything. with characters evolving and achieving their dreams #not necessarily volleyball related (like tenma)#the progress made realistic sense #but it did feel a bit rushed #anyway #fanfic and writing for yourself is great #and manga authors face way too much pressure from people dependent on them. from fans. even from society in general

117 notes · View notes

potionwine · 3 months ago

Text

Thinking about Margrace as Joshua's name post-Phoenix Gate.

Mar-grace.

In FFXVI the Undying choose their own names (Cyril explains this in-game), and many of them have names drawn from Final Fantasy XII, including their leader 'Margrace' himself, from Al-Cid Margrace. The page for Al-Cid notes that Margrace is likely an alternate form of the title 'margrave', an old title for military commanders on the border.

That aside. This is the name chosen (by the boy himself?) for the boy who should have rightfully been known henceforth as 'Your Grace', 'His Grace'.

Grace (style of address), from the Oxford English Dictionary:

With a possessive adjective: a title of respect, esp. for a person of royal or noble rank. Frequently (in 'your Grace') as a form of address. Now archaic or historical. Formerly (in England until the reign of Henry VIII and in Scotland until 1707) used for a monarch or prince; now replaced by Majesty or Highness. Even so, "Majesty" for the sovereign of England was not used exclusively; it arbitrarily alternated with both "Highness" and "Grace", even in official documents, until "Majesty" finally became the official style to the exclusion of others (source).

Grace (other meanings):

1. Divine favour, benevolence, or providence bringing about worldly benefit or advantage. 2. A person's lot, destiny, or fate; luck, fortune. 3. The quality of being pleasing; attractiveness, charm; esp. (in later use) refined elegance of manner, expression, form, or movement, esp. regarded as natural or effortless; gracefulness.

Whatever the etymology of margrave, the name Margrace in-game is probably meant to call to mind the meaning of 'mar' as in damaged, spoiled, ruined. All the grace that ever belonged to his family, his home, his birthright—marred, of course.

Mar+Grace, the last heir of the oldest unbroken ruling dynasty in the Twins at the time of the opening events of the game**.

The living ghost, carrying the desecrated corpse of his legacy in his new name. Introducing himself by his humiliation: "Hello, I am Margrace", "Hello, I am the ruined dignity of my house." "Call me Margrace", "Call me the wreckage of one fallen from divine favour." "My name is Margrace", "My name is blemished fortunes and diminished nobility".

It's appropriately brutal and dramatic for such a character, especially since the game is frustratingly silent on how Joshua personally feels about the loss of his duchy which is a rant for next time.

**Footnotes:

In the Year 860 (Prologue year/Phoenix Gate), Rosaria is about 260 years old (est. Y600). Older, if you count from the time of the Rose Alliance (est. Y550). The Rosfields have been on the Rosarian throne since the inception of the duchy in Y600, and prior to that House Rosfield was already known to be the chief of/the preeminent house of the Seven High Houses that united to found the duchy. House Rosfield has held ruling power for 260-310 years at a minimum.

For reference, England's longest-reigning dynasty was the Plantagenets, who held on for 300+ years. Rosfields aren't doing half bad!

Veldemarke would have been older had it not been overthrown by Barnabas; therefore Waloed is the youngest nation state at the time of the prologue (only 17 years old). Also we do not know much about the governance of Veldemarke, although as a 'kingdom' it was likely some type of monarchy.

Sanbreque was formed 100 years after Rosaria, and at any rate is not actually a hereditary monarchy. The Holy Emperor is voted into office by his fellow Cardinals, likely the five who form the Council of Elders. We are also explicitly told that Sylvestre 'won his throne' in 865; there is no indication either way that his predecessor emperor was a Lesage. The wording suggests the throne is not Sylvestre's by lineage or birthright. How this is supposed to relate to the concept of Sanbreque having a 'crown prince' (Dion) is unclear and contradictory, since an emperor by election should probably not have the authority to unilaterally decide on the succession of the throne, and his issue—legitimate or no—should not automatically be in the line of succession.

Dhalmekia is a republic with elected officials.

The Iron Kingdom apparently has a royal family, but nothing else is known apart from it being impotent and sidelined by their state religion.

The Northern Tribes likely do have hereditary rule, and Jill is referred to as a princess, but once again little is known.

Ergo—and I am ceaseless in this propaganda—Clive and Joshua are really, properly posh! Absolutely baffling that Anabella would allow anyone to put down the pedigree of her sons when they are so blue-blooded precisely because she is! For someone with such entrenched ideas of blood purity she should not stand for it, no matter how she feels about her eldest.

#sure i'll accept the game just gave josh this name because al-cid was from rozarria #but i like it to have additional meaning because it gives joshua depth #every time you say his name you call him a failure and a stain on his family's proud history!#how long is it until he can accept being called by his proper title #how long before it means something beyond a painful mockery or a reminder of weakness #i rather vehemently thought ffxv could have done more to showcase noctis' feelings as a king in exile #but ffxvi somehow manages to do bugger all for joshua #sorry xv i was too harsh on you #please stop creating royalty if there is no interest in exploring how that character relates to sovereignty and leadership #don't say oh but xvi did explore that with clive because yes i know they did but consider this clive is not rosaria's sovereign #ffx had no sovereigns in the main party and every relationship was solidly crafted #it's such a frustrating business because we literally know how so many other side characters feel about their kingship #yes you barnabas you made benna and sleipnir do all the talking at the consult where you were bored out of your mind lol #yes you elwin ready to send your 10-year-old into war for your people #yes you sylvestre you don't give a shit about the replaceable riffraff #we even know how martha and l'ubor feel about leading their little towns ffs #but we have only the tightly clenched fists and the cold shaking hands of a boy who died at ten #okay okay okay okay i'm not salty #ffxvi #final fantasy xvi #joshua rosfield

27 notes · View notes

rxttenfish · 6 months ago

Note

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom #asks #vanillabeenflower #this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts #this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that #i have more complaints like #how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters #which it already had but gets even worse in the later games #which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all #where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people #instead of whats probably the intended read which is #more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends #and ofc theres the whole miranda rant #i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie #just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead #we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters #and how they feel about this and whats going on for them #no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead #im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it #i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage #for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives #this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag #i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself #what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us #because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted

31 notes · View notes