#they'd probably 'sanitize' the whole thing

[rmorde]

Was willing to give the new A:TLA live action a chance... But then they decided to ruin Sokka's character by removing the starting point of his character arc.

Yeah. Not gonna watch.

Reading some articles about it. Yeah. I don't fucking trust it one bit when it seems like they are going to make Ozai sympathetic - sanding down everything that makes him so evil.

Disgusting.

[inbabylontheywept]

Would you mind sharing the psalm and why you felt that person was the most humanist Mormon? I'm not religious at all but I find these sort of things very interesting.

In exchange I could offer the reason for my url ?

I'm warning you, this is kind of a mega essay, and it's fucking unhinged. Click at your own risk.

(Alright. You clicked.)

Psalms 137

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

———

Mormonism has layers. Different cores of believers, cultures within itself. The largest group of Mormons also dominate its image within the larger culture. You know them as the nerdy, cheerful, bubbly dorks on South Park, or the hopelessly naive childlike weirdos from the Book of Mormon musical. Strangely sanitized, "wholesome" people that are, clearly, unwhole. Missing some essential part of the human experience.

(Pain, maybe?)

I think that embracing this image is letting Mormonism view itself as what it wishes it was. A group with all its rough edges sanded off, all its raw and desperate humanity scrubbed away. A clean and godly and slightly unsettling image of joy.

That isn't how it started.

Now, most people know the story of Joseph Smith. Fourteen year old farm boy starts a cult because the whole world if full of idiots, I won't repeat it because you've probably already got it from South Park. But at some point that weirdo cult did become a religion, and I would point to that moment as the Mormon War of 1838.

I don't know how far after the founding that was. Enough that Joseph Smith was a grown man. Enough that the Mormons had around 15-25 thousand members. They'd moved to the Illinois-Missouri area and were establishing settlements.

(They creeped the locals out. Of course they creeped the locals out.)

Eventually, they got pushed out of the county they'd claimed. Jackson County, it was. The state couldn't actually take that county from the people that expelled them, so to try and make the Mormons "whole" for the land they'd bought (ignoring the houses and farms they'd already set up) it gave them a new county.

Next election that came around, that county was sieged. Voting was blocked. Now, the people of the state were terrified that this weirdo voting block was going to take them over. They probably weren't wrong. Some former Mormons had straggled in from the county revealing a frankly corrupt land dealthat the early church had used to transfer resources to itself, and that served as a tipping point. To prevent their state from becoming a religious basketcase, a mob sieged the Mormon county during the next election.

The state tried to return order by sending the militia in to break up the siege, but the militia mutinied. They joined the siegers. A ground of strange, extremist violent Mormons known as the Danites rode out and attacked local settlements that were known to house the families of the militia members.

The Governor at the time - Lilburn Boggs - sent out an executive decree. The Mormons were traitors, and were to be killed on sight. It is the only religion in the US to have ever had such an order made against it.

The Mormons surrendered their county and went to Nauvoo, Illinois. There were again expelled from that city in 1846, and traveled west.

They died in great numbers and they never forgot the homes they lost.

———

I tried to tell the story as sympathetically to the people of Missouri as I could. The Mormons made messes wherever they went, and they unsettled everyone they interacted with. But they were attacked as well, and had a history of violence against them. It should not be totally surprising that they became insular and strange.

Many (most?) Mormons that learn all of their history wind up leaving the religion. It has twists and turns and knots and it is incredibly, overwhelmingly human. I think that's where the facade of Mormon perfectionism comes from - the shame of that. The desire to be something else. But being human is all I've ever wanted. And occasionally, there are people faithful in the church - layers upon layers deep - that know their history.

And they are angry about it.

I think it's more common than people realize. Did you know that until 1930 Mormons swore literal religious oaths of vengeance against the US government for the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith?

I always felt like these were, in some way, the real Mormons. They knew their history, and they loved their church, and they hated what it had suffered all those years ago.

They scared me, those people. But they seemed complete. More complete than the people that had carved out everything that didn't make them smile. They'd walked into the mirror, and touched their shadow, and danced with. Melded with it.

And I knew a few like that. I was taught by one. And he didn't convince me, but he interested me. Gave me some respect for the people I left behind.

———

In the game Fallout: New Vegas, there is a character named Joshua Graham. He's a Mormon. Not like the silly children in adult bodies that they always use on TV. He has gravitas. He has put away his moral compass before, to pursue the dream of one powerful man. Poured his soul into it, helped that man conquer the whole west in piecemeal. He's a somewhat on the nose analogy of the Mormon people themselves, following Joseph Smith. And when he finally failed, when he fought a battle he could not win on the gates of the Old World Hoover Dam, he was lit on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon to die.

But he did not die.

He says he survived because the fire in him burned brighter than the fire around him. And it seems that way when you speak with him in game. There is something compellingly bright to him. Not shiny like a new toy, or a Utah teenager that hasn't seem just how grim the world can be. He's something blinding, compelling.

But that brightness casts shadows.

He is vicious. He was saved in the canyon by the family he left, the old Mormons of a new world. And he's trying to find that part of him again, regain the soul he lost pursuing someone else's vision. But that old vicious animal part of the covenant is with him. I see Joshua Graham and I see the animal that the Mormons became to survive the West.

And in the game, there is eventually a choice given.

You can lead the tribe Joshua has joined up with out of their Zion. Their Jackson County Missouri. Peacefully and perfectly and inhumnanly transcendant, the way the Mormons wish they actually were about everything. You can give him the chance to be what Mormonism has always wished it could be. Or you can fight with them and help them reclaim their paradise, but get your hands stuck deep in the muck of this world.

Joshua Graham knows his history. He knows all the homes his people lost. And whatever brightness he's trying to regain, whatever soul he's trying to win back from the world that takes and takes and takes and takes - he wants to give it all up again to let these people keep their home.

He knows his past and he is angry.

And as the player, you help him make peace with one of two things: Being human by being fallen, or keeping his soul at the cost of reliving the ancestral trauma of losing Zion yet again.

Both were pretty visceral decisions for a Mormon teenage Babylon to make.

(Tagging @boonebignaturals in this because I need a witness to my madness.)

[cryptidmads]

hi venture mains im here to tell you personally that their first legendary is going to be ugly as SIN and that is a GOOD thing actually.

queer people have been synonymous with dressing loud and garish and ugly for centuries at this point. its practically a form of communication for us, and its something that we have to continue to embrace to avoid being sanitized as a whole by society bc thats a fate worse than death if you ask me. and sloan "dirt-fucker" cameron is not someone who goes well with the word "sanitized".

its entirely and incredibly in character actually. they geek out at the very mention of anything historical. their default fit is a jacket thats like three sizes too big for them. they have a pet rock with a purple mohawk. they were associated with nothing but rock eating for like six months. they eat ice cream for dinner and call people "doofus". you're telling me someone like that wouldnt voluntarily choose to dress in the goofiest shit you can think when their whole shit is being a goofball?

they've lived in probably at least half a dozen small towns in the province of nova scotia (they are not from the city bc city kids don't grow up playing in the dirt), meaning i can say with every ounce of personal experience that 90% of their shit is thrifted and they consider something "nice" if its cheap and isnt covered in stains when they pull it off the rack. they'd wear a flannel over a hoodie on a windy day and 10 degrees celsius is t-shirt weather. they dont care about how they dress day-to-day bc nobody else they know does either, and that can translate to both casuality and confidence in flawless fashion.

"ugly" isn't an option we should be immediately disparaging of anyways. there is no separating "good" ugly from "bad" ugly in design, as any form of ugly can be made good looking despite what the adjective's conotations might have you believe. you look at the roadhog skin in the s13 battle pass and tell me its not so ugly that it wraps back around into being adorable. ugly should be approached with an open mind rather than being shunned bc its not what you wanted

tldr venture's first legendary deserves to be adorably and atrociously ugly for all the right and most in-character reasons you can think of and thats exactly what its going to be! i cant wait to see it <3

[starshower1215]

AOT Veterans: Modern AU HCs

Hange would learn a lot about engineering and building stuff. They'd have the messiest garage full of tools for metal fabrication, welding, woodworking. They'd also have the oldest car to have ever existed, a comically unreliable one in fact, and perhaps one that they'd bought cheap and fixed up themself.

The oldest car and then a motorcycle they share with Mike. The motorcycle is probably old, too, though.

Erwin would work as a private investigator. He has the intelligence and intuition for such things, and I think he would truly enjoy the challenges of analyzing clues and fitting pieces of information together. He'd be able to utilize his ability to be one step ahead very thoroughly.

Hange probably went to university or is in university, studying something crazy cool like astrobiology. I think they would love astrobiology, actually, considering the incredible number of layers of science you'd need to learn to major in something so complicated.

Erwin loves to sit down with Hange and listen to them drone on and on about what they're learning. He is probably the only one who does, but he just loves the idea that they aren't alone on Earth, that life could be out there somewhere even if we don't see or know it yet. They love theorizing about aliens, wondering late at night if they have eyes or if they have senses that humans don't, if they can detect dark matter or not. The two of them can stay up the whole night like this.

In all universes, Levi works in a cafe. He likely didn't attend school, or didn't pay attention much because his family was in debt due to his mother's medical bills. He had bigger problems, but he does enjoy his life in a cafe.

Nanaba works as a hairdresser. She just really loves the feeling when she brings out an entirely new side of a person, or encourages them be more like themselves. She finds it to be a very caring job, and she loves when her customers leave the shop satisfied with a fresh new style.

She struggles with money a little bit because she gave up wealth in favor of pursuing something she likes.

Nanaba definitely does not accept help when it comes to finances, though, no matter how much her friends offer it to her. She's stubborn, and everyone knows it. So some days, Mike will invite her out to eat with him to spare her the trouble of dinner. It's a win-win, too, because he likes her a lot.

Levi only takes taxis. He doesn't like to drive or bike or take the bus, especially not the bus due to its unclean environment. He also carries sprayable hand sanitizer around, along with a tube of Lysol wipes. He offers Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer for free at his cafe because he always appreciates when they have such things available in public. They just sit on the counter, ready for usage.

Hange is always studying at Levi's cafe on the weekends. Sometimes they drag Nanaba along to sit there with them. Levi gives Nanaba a free muffin purely out of bias, then makes Hange pay for whatever they want to eat.

But he secretly gives them a discount.

Maybe Mike works as a health coach. Not sure where this one came from, but he has the motivation and the attitude for it. He's the therapy friend of the group, but with less emphasis on emotion and more emphasis on finding the solutions.

Mike always wears athletic clothes.

The five of them have a five-way dinner date type of thing, where they meet up at the end of every week, at one of their houses usually, to cook together, eat food, play music and games, watch movies, and just unwind and have a fun time. A lot of weeks, they'll make a party out of it. The five of them will invite the others: Nifa, Moblit, Petra, Oluo, Eld, Gelgar, and other obscure characters.

It is here that Levi, Petra, and Nanaba often don their matching sweatpants (there's another post about this)

The veterans may also get drunk, depending on who it is. It's a given for Gelgar, but Levi has shown preferences for tea.

Usually, they all sleep on the floor together, or split the house into the bedrooms and the sofas. Erwin and Mike are big, so they hog beds all to themselves. The rest of them make do; Nanaba and Eld make pillow forts on the carpet and camp there while Hange sprawls out to the side, and Levi and Petra stuff themselves into the crevices because they're small.

[kyliafanfiction]

One of the things I like to do sometimes is imagine the canon - any canon - as the fanfic, with all the tropes and changes that implies, and try to imagine what the notional canon of that would be.

And one of my many fic ideas is a little write up of what the notional canon for what was the 'source media' for Worm would be. It's actually a crossover between three things:

a novel centered around Eidolon and the Triumvirate, includes Scion and the Endbringers,

a fairly dark, aimed at like college-aged people graphic novel series about New Wave (and especially Amy and Vicky) that really delves into how fucked up having superhero parents and them being open about it could really be (like what Worm/Ward canon does with them),

and a cartoon about the Undersiders that's like, aimed at 12-15 year olds. And it would get a little more serious with each season, as the initial audience got older or something. Though obviously not as much as Worm canon did. Vaguely 'saturday morning cartoon network superman/batman/etc' vibes perhaps.

And the idea would be that Worm is a crossover fic between all three media, taking bits and pieces of all three and combining them into one surprisingly cohesive fanfic world.

And the Undersiders cartoon idea just really sticks with me.

Like, I envision the Undersiders cartoon being about them as like, friendly neighborhood supervillains, they rob sure, but it's mostly harmless and they usually go up against supervillians (like sanitized versions of Bakuda and Lung) most of the time in their robberies anyway.

Coil could still be their boss, but he'd be played for laughs, probably regularly exasperated in a comedic way by the Undersiders antics. Armsmaster would the hapless superhero who keeps trying to bring the Undersiders in but eventually has to accept they're not actually that bad (because of course that would be an arc of the cartoon, them becoming heroes of a sort).

I have this image of Piggot being a police captain or something that keeps having to not prioritize the Undersiders or something, and at one point she lectures and scolds them like a principal. Just seems like a funny mental image and fitting for the medium/genre/target audience there.

The show would start with Taylor joining the team. There'd probably be a lot more chance of the Trio getting punished, maybe near the end of the first season, and some of what they do would be toned down. Sophia being a hero who bullies in her civilian life could be kept. Taylor's power would probably not be exploited to the fullest in the cartoon, but I think they could make it work. Rachel couldn't be called Bitch, of course, and Regent and Heartbreaker, etc, would need to be toned down some, but I think you could keep the broad strokes and put it on implication.

Uber and Leet would probably be in the cartoon, and they'd probably be more the mostly fun and friendly version of them some fics paint them as, rather than the jerky assholes who also beat up hookers just for the bit version they are in canon.

I hardly have the whole idea worked out, and the notional fic Idea would probably be like, an outline of the 3-4 season show (and related summaries of the other two media) focusing on what Worm took in from the media and how the 'OG' version differs, etc. All in good fun. No idea if I'll ever write it, but the idea of an Undersiders Cartoon is just an alluring notion that I can't get out of my head.

[robertseanleonardthinker]

Tell me your pandemic house MD thoughts please!!

omg yes absolutely ty for asking

this isn't everyone but anyone is free to add their own thoughts

ok so some ppl on that post that inspired this were saying they didn't think house would wear a mask and that is just. absolutely not true. he's a stubborn ass who does what he wants but he's not stupid. he's a doctor, a doctor with a specialty in infectious diseases at that. he'd wear a mask, he'd just do the absolute bare minimum with it. like, for example, if he went to the grocery store he'd put his mask on the second he enters and take it off the second he leaves. but he'd abuse the fuck out of social distancing. he'd constantly use it as an excuse to stay home. he'd do most of his work over zoom doing whatever the fuck in his apartment all day. he'd call in saying he was exposed to covid all the time (said exposure being he went inside the hospital and yk, there's covid patients somewhere in there, so). cuddy would be so annoyed by it but she'd have to take it seriously every time because she doesn't have much of a choice.

wilson would follow every single guideline to a t. he's an oncologist, a lot of his patients are bound to be immunocompromised. he'd wear masks constantly, even in his office alone. i think he would also have a spare one on him at all times, along with a little bottle of hand sanitizer. he'd see as many of his patients over zoom as he possibly can. he wouldn't enjoy it, he prefers that face to face experience, but he'll do whatever for the safety of his patients.

cuddy would be very strict about it. she herself would of course do what she needs to do, but she'd also have very strict guidelines in place for the whole hospital. she'd be masking and social distancing and hounding others on it too. she'd especially be on house's ass about it. she'd also be pretty anxious about it too because she has a kid at home. she doesn't wanna bring it home to rachel and she'll do everything in her power to make sure she doesn't.

i don't have much to say about kutner except that he'd have fun fabric masks. he'd wear a different one everyday. they'd be star wars themed and stuff.

cameron would be like wilson. she cares so much about other people and it would make her so upset to see people ignoring the mask mandates and stuff.

taub would do what he needs to when he's out of the house, like at work and stuff, but i think he'd still be out doing his taub thing. he'd be out with women regularly. he'd justify it by saying they were both careful, but he'd probably end up getting it and everybody would know why.

[a-oct0]

How do think things would've been different if Gen was Agent/Captain 3 instead of her brother (forgot his name sorry)?

If Gen was Agent/Captain 3 instead of Adam? (Three's name btw lol) Hmm... Well for one she would be much more stoic and strict than he is, Adam takes being Agent/Captain 3 seriously but Gen would take it to the next level, it would completely consume her considering this would be a world where Adam is instead the more talented one at Rank. She would be more reckless and less willing to question things. Unlike Adam who has a goodish relationship with Camri (Agent 4) and is a lot more slack with her, Gen would not. She would be very cold and distant, both as a way to try and get Camri to stop being an agent (doesn't work) and because she doesn't want to coddle her. Camri and Gen normally have an okay relationship, they get on but not much more. With Gen as Agent/Captain 3 Camri would absolutely despise Gen- finding her to be arrogant and just a straight up asshole. Again unlike Adam who- while it does bother him, doesn't really correct Camri on calling him Three even on duty, Gen would not let that slide and reprimand Camri anytime she calls Gen anything other than Captain. Gen would have a similar reaction to the whole partial sanitization as Adam did however Gen would not be disowned by her parents like Adam was. Oh Adam and Eight probably would still meet as Eight would still end up as Camri/Four's roommate but if they'd be anything more than just friends? Who knows.

[beevean]

Imagine watching the show as it came out

Imagine ending S3 hating the fuck out of Lenore but spending time talking and theorizing about her implied nuances in spite of the writing flaws and how she could be improved as a villain

....and then S4 comes out

I have a feeling you should consider yourself and your sanity lucky

ngl, I would have so fallen for the copium that S4 was going to have Hector breaking himself free and taking revenge on all the people who hurt him 😔 perhaps even that Isaac would slowly become his beautiful cunty game self 😔

I keep thinking of this post:

This is a wonderfully written post. They make many good points, like how Lenore always finds a way to relieve herself of responsibility when she abuses Hector ("you hurt me and that's why I beat you", "Striga wants you to wear the leash, not me", "the others are planning to use mercenaries"), which is scarily realistic. Or the part where she asks Hector if she can visit him again, as if he had any choice in the matter. I commend this person for picking up so many details, some of which I had missed or forgotten myself. I don't agree with everything, as I believe they overestimated Hector's characterization and ignored how blatant Lenore's lie of "I want to run away with you" is, but I can feel how passionate they are and invested in this potentially novel narrative about how subtle abuse can be.

And I keep thinking about all of this got squandered in S4. How this disturbing depiction of abuse got flattened into dick jokes and "you're the only one who listens to me 🥺" and Lenore blithely dismissing the one time Hector dared to be annoyed at her "solving his problem" which got treated with the same levity as Greta making a cheating joke out of Alucard's own rape.

"Also, she's a female predator, which are rarely presented without sympathy in fiction. Which, I think, is part of why it's hard for the fanbase to realize how evil she is. If the genders were reversed, some people would probably still find the whole rape by deception and magical enslavement romantic because, well, people, but they'd probably sympathize more with the victim than the predator because they'd be easier to identify through our cultural shorthand."

I wonder how they reacted when S4 comes out and the show does exactly what they have criticized, sanitizing Lenore because she is a cute woman and suddenly showing her fake, superficial kindness as genuine and a valid reason Hector would love her, not with the love of an abused dog but real genuine affection.

And he definitely had real feelings for Lenore, however falsely they were invoked. It's possible they still exist after his enslavement. I'm hoping not, but it would be an interesting conflict to see play out. Loving and hating someone who's been alternately kind and cruel to you is a tough spot to be in.

This is what really depresses me about the Lenector story. It is not impossible that Hector would still have feelings for Lenore, because he has such low standards that things like "actually keeping her promise of giving him free roam of the castle" and "going to him to vent about her issues" would be taken as signs of love, and confuse his abused brain. Hector crawling back to Lenore as his only reason to live? It makes sense! It's awful, but it makes sense for someone like him! He has nothing left, he thought he'd be killed but he was given another chance at life, and his first instinct is to cling to his only certainty in his miniscule world.

It should not have been the emotional climax of his arc! Not in a season that is so deadset of giving everyone happiness that they fucking brought Dracula back and allowed him to go on a honeymoon with his bae!

The resolution of this story about abuse is that Hector needed to grow up and let his abuser find freedom in death! A freedom that is specifically framed as Lenore freeing herself of... herself, basically, of everything she has done and might do, not out of guilt but out of despair that she lost all the power she had and might go insane eventually. Not him finding another place to live now that he is free, not him realizing he is worth more as a human being, bro barely even cares about his new life as Isaac's consort or whatever the fuck he is for him now. No, it is never about Hector. He wanted Lenore, Lenore didn't want to stick with him because she's depressed, and we are meant to find oh so tragic that the two star crossed lovers will not have a meaningful touching relationship after

SHE RAPED HIM INTO SLAVERY BY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HIS FEELINGS AND MOCKED HIM IN FRONT OF HER SISTERS AND THEN REJECTED HIS PROTESTS ON THE GROUNDS THAT HE ENJOYED THE SEX SO HE HAS NO REASON TO COMPLAIN

THE LATTER HAPPENS IN SEASON 4 WHEN WE ARE MEANT TO ROOT FOR THEM. WHEN THE STORY REALLY WANTS TO CONVINCE US THAT LENORE REALLY IS A GOOD PERSON DEEP DOWN AND NEVER WANTED TO HARM HECTOR AND ONLY CARED ABOUT HIM

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE FUCKING CARING TO YOU YOU STUPID HACKS

All that carefully woven abuse for what? For fucking what? For the puppy fetish?? To tell the audience that you should forgive people who hurt you if they give you the bare minimum of human decency because it is the MATURE thing to do, you stupid manchild who only wants to be loved and will never have that because you are too stupid to be loved?!

god I am mad! I'm sorry this makes me mad! I don't even imagine how furious I would be if I had to wait one year to see this shit!

[emily84]

like, bringing this up again is the last thing I wanted, but some of you on this hellsite truly need to go outside and touch some grass

this isn't one of your tv shows, the rich people on the tin can weren't going to "slowly dehydrate and die", like so many of you have written, the horrors of human psychology in the face of an indiscriminate death that doesn't bow to human hubris the only intellectual exercise you guys are capable of making.

if the tin can hasn't collapsed under the deep sea pressure at the bottom (which tbh sounds like the quickest, most humane option), one day in they'd have been pissing and shitting themselves, and probably earlier too, there would have been panic attacks in that fucking darkness, or heart attacks, or worse, scratching their hands bloody to try and get out, to not give in to the instinct to try and get up in a place that only allows you to squat at best; i could go on. it'd have been fucking messy and not the sanitized version you have in your head to justify their having earned it.

that is a fucking horrific death that dozens, hundreds of people have met and are currently meeting every day in the Mediterranean Sea, but nobody gives a shit because they're just brown and black immigrants that nobody wants.

the answer is to dismantle the billionaire class and push for fucking large-scale regulations, to push for systemic change, not start discussions on whether a teenager is over or under the line of being considered a human being, or type on your little phone like some sort of gotcha to them. there aren't any points to be given for missing the entire fucking point of this whole fucking thing

[gaymarasov]

Finished DA:V last night, spoilers and thoughts under the cut:

Positive/Neutral:

All in all, really fun game. Understand why they made it so that choices from previous games didn't matter as much/weren't really relevant but also it was a bummer. I would have liked to see more of my old friends and Morrigan's role was... Weird? Someone who knows Dragon Age more than me can probably explain better what I'm feeling about her place in the story but I digress.

Romance was fun but whoever said this was "the most romantic" Dragon Age game needs to face... Consequences. I haven't decided what they should be yet. That said I loved Davrin so much, I fell in with him immediately, he snatched me away from Neve which is impressive because I wanted her since I first saw her but. He was just so charming. And Assan... My son...

Taash's arc was fine, if a little on the nose. I think it was great to see representation like this in a AAA game. I understand why people thought it was cringe but ultimately to me that's more reflective of internal shame and embarrassment than any reflection on Taash or their story. Taash reads as young to me, probably early 20's, and let me just say, I know at least 3 Taash's IRL. That's just how some people are, especially coming into their identities when born into restrictive backgrounds. There's nothing wrong with it. It was sweet.

Taash's final companion mission where they lose their mom went hard, as did the final series of missions, BUT all of that was so tonally dissonant from the rest of the game (and in Taash's case, even tonally dissonant throughout the mission! What the fuck!!). Which is a problem I had with most of the game tbh.

Negative now:

It had this very careful, very sanitized vibe for 98% of its playtime and then every now and then it'd just be like "HAHA I bet you thought you were SAFE!" and it would do some truly crazy shit, which is NOT what I really enjoy in Dragon Age or video games in general. I feel like if you want there to be life or death stakes you should establish them early and let the dread hang.

What I feel like I got instead was a cheery buddy cop Marvel movie with animal companions where every now and then they'd give the villains a gun with one bullet (1) and let them blow a beloved character's brains out on screen, just so that they could say "See? We take our story seriously!"

Harding died in my playthrough and believe it or not, having characters say "whatever it takes" like ten times before embarking on a dangerous mission does not suffice to establish a sense of urgency or dread in any meaningful way. There had already been so many death fakeouts and the game had already showed me what felt like upwards of ten times that it wasn't willing to hurt its main characters in meaningful, lasting ways that her death came as a surprise, but not a shock. It felt like the whole mission they kept taking me by the shoulders and going "We are going to kill Lace Harding" and it was like. Ok. Ok. I get it. Can't you just let me experience this on my own.

Ultimately the story was very hand-hold-y. I understand having to make things accessible for new players, but at the same time, it's like... The game really treated me throughout as if I was dumb, not just regarding knowing Dragon Age lore (which would have been... fine, or more forgivable) but regarding like, playing video games in general. Which is wild. Do they really think their main audience is stupid? Who do they think is playing this game?

Over-All, gotta be like, 7 or 8 out of 10. Really really fun game and I can forgive most of its sins. Definitely going to replay!!

[a-buncha-bad-ideas]

general take on side order which could be WAY off but who cares. theory time

side order is, obviously, what happens when order won instead of chaos. it aint a dream or anything, just an au

i assume kamabo has something to do with this. given everything from kamabo sided w/order and said "they'd make a perfect world" if they won (and the whole white, sterilized facility, dead things coming back to life, all that; also weird for dedf1sh to just Be There if it isn't)

dedf1sh either is on your side (half-sanitized, she's probably more calm because of that, also) or ISN'T and will backstab you (more likely if marina does end up the antagonist)

Marina will probably end up evil in some way im betting? bc in this AU she won order v chaos, and yk the whole callie v marie thing (she's also an engineer and everything seems pretty high tech)

[altruistic-meme]

[settling back down, feet kicking in the air] okie tell me about Erik and fanon :>

hi milo :'] i wrote half of this sporadically while at work today. and now it's 1200 words of me ranting about Erik bc i have 0 self control :']

you ask and i DO have Thoughts but it's so funny cus like. there's barely even a canon to compare him to. so it's not like I can really do my normal thing and compare his specific behavior in canon to what can be seen in fanon cus he's only in like 4 scenes and he doesn't even talk in one of them djajfjjajd I've also 100% spoken about this before!!

that said, the Thoughts persist. 

[the rest is under a cut bc. like i said. 1200 words.]

and i think where it comes from is how real and flawed and varied the other characters in the show are and like. the fandom loves to make Erik this perfect older brother who is always 100% there for Wille and will keep his secrets and will support him in being with Simon and will stand up to the Royal Court if they ever say anything mean about Wille or propose anything other than exactly what Wille asks them to do. but I genuinely just cannot see that being an accurate portrayal of Erik. it’s such a sanitized character compared to the rest of the characters in the series and it is such a disservice.

a lot of the small things we DO know about Erik show that he is definitely flawed and is certainly not the perfect person that he's often written to be, ex. laughing at August's joke about Felice and pushing the ideals of the court on Wilhelm (re: both when Wille first starts at Hillerska and when they're talking on the phone in Parents Day). and further, he's not even the perfect prince, re: the scandal with the OnlyFans girl! 

the thing with this one though is that I completely understand WHY people write Erik this way. like, i get. i do. we almost only ever see Erik through Wilhelm’s tinted glasses. Wilhelm thought Erik was perfect, so we see all of his perfections and none of his flaws. he was the perfect prince, he never got in trouble, he was amazing at what he did, he didn't need help, he was a natural, etc. 

but we learn slowly, from other people, that this was NOT the case! Erik was in a big scandal of his own (OnlyFans), Erik went to therapy, Erik struggled too. Not everything was easy for him the way Wilhelm seems to believe (and thus the way that we are usually framed to see it as well). we learn about his scandal from Stella and Fredrika and we learn about the therapy from Nils (at the same time Wilhelm does!). we never really have Wilhelm showing these flaws, or at least not in a way that makes them out to be flaws of Erik, but rather simply flaws of being royal (again, in reference to Erik pushing ideals of the court on Wilhelm). 

and this characterization goes even further than just the text: even knowing Erik wasn't perfect isn't enough, because the next issue is that people still want him to be perfect FOR Wilhelm. people are so desperate for Wilhelm to have someone who is part of his family who is on his side no matter what* that they'll ignore any hint that Erik WASN'T the Perfect Brother™ because it means they'd have to examine his relationship to Wilhelm and the comments he's made in favor of the Royal Court and face the idea that maybe Erik WOULDN'T have been on Wilhelm’s side at all, or at least not as strongly as they wish he was. which defeats the purpose that they are using him for. 

*(we're ignoring the Queen Kristina Thoughts for this cus that is a WHOLE OTHER RANT and i want to keep this on topic lmao)

but it makes no sense to me, personally, to see Erik portrayed this way!! because what evidence do we have to support it? yes, i believe Erik was probably a really good brother, but that doesn't mean he was without flaws or that he'd be on Wilhelm's side or support him 100% without question. and these are not actually contradicting statements. 

i have siblings. i've been emotionally and mentally abused by one of my siblings. i’ve been offered a place to hide when things at home were tense, a place to live if i needed it, by one of my siblings. i know what it's like to have siblings who are BAD siblings and GOOD siblings. and i know that humans as a category can't ACTUALLY be divided into good and bad so easily. my sibling who abused me is also the only one who will genuinely let me rant about my fandoms and actually listen and give a shit about what I'm saying. my siblings who would take me in if something happened have said some of the most hurtful things, and have made comments that still upset me to even think about for more than 2 seconds. 

so i believe Erik was a good brother. but i still don't think he would've been fully on Wilhelm's side, especially during the video scandal. and again these are not actually contradicting statements. 

i think it would have been hard for Erik to be torn between the clear pain Wilhelm was in and his duty, but Erik is probably a lot more like the Queen than people want to admit, and i think in the situation, they would have had similar thoughts. (ie. denying that it was him would be the best approach)

so to see almost every fic have him immediately disregard every piece of training he would've gone through, ignore protocol, cover up things and not report potentially HUGE problems to his mother, i don't know. i read them, and Ii still love them, but there will always be that sense of a disconnect from reality that i'll have to have in order to. because what do we really know of Erik?

he was a good brother. he was a good crown prince. he followed along with protocol, got into scandals of his own, covered them up. he was close with August, laughed at his sexist jokes, seemed to get along well with the people at Hillerska in general. he tells Wilhelm to suck it up and put on a fake face, “pretend to be someone else”, and do his duty.

idk. like i said, i have so many thoughts on the portrayal of Erik in fanon, but even then so much of what i say is also just my own personal thoughts and biases because we never really got to understand him as a character the way we have the others. so genuinely take this with a grain of salt, because i can say all i want to say but at the end of the day, it’s just my own opinion on how i think he would be. and i don’t really have much canon material to look at and pull from. so again, this isn’t really like my other “fanon vs. canon” thoughts where i’m just interested in comparing the changes. this is more of a… frustrated rant at what i perceive to be mischaracterizations.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

so i've been low key pondering over what is it about gunter that twigged my 'dude, you are a freak nasty kinky fuck (solidarity 🤝)' radar from day one.

ergo, have an old school ~*krad does a character analysis essay*~

under the cut for kink talk and also sheer length !

introduction

why would I want to lead into this reading?

gunter is honestly, to me, an extremely cool subversion of his own FE archetypes on top of (imo) what types of characters are "allowed" to be kinky. a good chunk of FE characters, particularly jeigan archetypes tend to be one note about their devotion to their lords and/or country, and a little stuffy/uptight. when they do have a personality, they still tend to be pretty "safe" nurturing caretaker type of archetypes (eg, titania, and i say that loving her as a character).

of course, nothing wrong with liking said archetype; my tastes just happen to run differently.

gunter is explicitly both those things (could be read as uptight and a caretaker) and still, fascinatingly -- has his darker sides. you don't have a whole-ass ingame cgi and arc of going ham as the possessed yandere villain with a pretty consistent sexual undertone and still keep a ~purely wholesome~ reputation.

so what's the in-game canonical nods that started pinging the radar?

point one: i'm still not over the whip reference in his corrin supports

the tl;dr of his fcorrin C-A support is they pick up an old game of theirs since her northern fortress years -- playing catch with an old leather ball. it isn't until the A support that you hear gunter made the ball from a whip that garon handed to him to whip corrin as discipline.

this assumes several things: (1) gunter knows his way around whips (2) to the point of most likely whipping somebody in discipline before, otherwise why would garon be so convinced he'd follow through? and then

(3) nintendo why the fuck would you add something like this if you didn't intend on us reading some kind of vibe here LMAO. the fact that treehouse kept this line while "sanitizing" most other deeply horny fates scripts makes me inclined to think they knew they'd be breaking gunter's entire characterization if they'd tried to bowderize it, or they just didn't give a shit, thinking that they could probably get away with it since he's not niles-popular. (both can be true).

while it doesn't mean everyone with a passing interests in leather and whips is automatically some flavor of kinkster. just. speaking from IRL experience, the crossover between the groups is also a wee bit higher than the background population. either they tend to be a younger man looking to be "badass" like indiana jones, or their job involves some flavor of implement or ... yeah.

point two: mcorrin/fcorrin script differences & gunter harboring feelings for fcorrin (always has been.jpg)

additional script differences cost money. companies like nintendo hate spending money especially when there's a finite budget, and doubly so for non-popular characters.

so ime, when there's a clear difference between scripts in a non-obvious spot, and it's there in both the JP/EN versions like gunter's final revelation talk with mcorrin and fcorrin, i pay attention. that's nintendo more often than not underlining something and saying "hey, this matters to characterization".

cue this bit after you bring gunter back from the brink of being possessed and talking some sense into him:

Corrin: Whatever your motivations, you stayed by my side and helped me. Your intentions may have been dark, but you were still good to me. (If Corrin is male) Corrin: And that's what you'll always be—my friend. (If Corrin is female) Corrin: You'll always be important to me. Gunter: But, I... I killed Scarlet... Corrin: I know, but you were under the control of Anankos. You weren't you. If you truly wish to atone for what you've done, you must live. Live for Scarlet's sake. Live for the family that was taken from you. I need you to help me fight Anankos. To protect all the people he could still hurt. (If Corrin is male) Corrin: Let's go. Our final battle awaits. (If Corrin is female) Gunter: ... Corrin: Let's go. Our final battle awaits.

now obviously, with a literal "dot dot dot" line, you by definition have to read into the sentiment. one could just as easily argue that here....

.....

nope, i got nothing, lol. m!corrin gets a very pointed "you're my friend" line, and if nintendo wanted to dissuade from the romantic/sexual subtext, they could have awkwardly tried to stick to their more neutral "you're my mentor/father figure/etc" guns which read way more platonic, especially if you kept it the same for both.

that script change is only for f!corrin, and gunter has a few other script mentions where f!corrin gets something extra from him. this combined with f!corrin's particularly sexual-subtext-ladened support chain with the whip-ball (versus m!corrin's pretty platonic "feed the poor kid") vibe hints that he's always held a flame for f!corrin, which leads into asking some pretty interesting questions about his tastes.

it's some kinda vibes all right!

imma also be honest: (possessed!)gunter gets a little sexually subtextual in general. there's other revelation quotes like this during the confrontation --

Gunter: I would tear every last bit of innocence away from you.

(dude) (wow)

-- and the gothic horror camera angle/framing of certian scenes with him alone with corrin, most pointedly when corrin's alone with him, anankaos channels himself through gunter, the screen goes white, and corrin wakes up with him leaning right over her, practically on top of her. all of these add up to one hell of a sexual subtext in the last three chapters.

i could break this down further into shot by shot visual analysis since that's my field as a design manager, but this essay's long as is (and I'll cover this in the current revelation liveblog anyway).

point three: there's a suspicious amount of nohrian characters that have explicit kinks

there's xander with his JP crossdressing supports. niles with his ... nearly everything in his quotes, bless him. and camilia too on the ladies side what with her sadisim and S/M behavior, more blatant in the JP script side which is (ime) the more faithful one.

I'm probably missing an example here (garon also felt weirdly sexual for a FE dad/final boss, somewhat usually lampshaded in the comments of the 'azura dances for him' cgi movie), and that's not even mentioning the faceless which -- i don't know about you, but i've seen actual folsom BDSM gear less kinky than that enemy design.

clearly: nintendo's not exactly afraid to lay some sexual subtext with nohrian characters. hoshidos generally don't get this treatment, this often.

is it likely part and parcel of how they intended to "villain code" nohrian characters, since adding kinks to an antagonistic faction has a long history in media to make them feel more "othered" and dangerous? most likely!

regardless, i absolutely get why they'd layer in that vibe with gunter especially in revelation's route when he's one of the final bosses. adding an edge of sexual menace is an easy if cheap way to butter on that foreshadowing, and it separates him from the "nice(r) guy gunter" in the conquest married route.

sort of.

to which ...

point four: there is no polite way to get around the incesty caretaker daddy vibe in their married route so imma just say it lmao

[ just gestures wildly at his A-S support chain with fcorrin ]

somebody who is completely vanilla is not uhhh, going to have that love conversation/confession right after a literal 'father figure' mention :'D

people are entitled to their own tastes, and while i'm the type to bounce in when people bounce out "because it got too creepy", i do think it's pretty telling that there's a hell of a lot of people that got twigged out of their support and don't generally pursue it unless if they're completion fanatics. even if I'm reading way the hell into this -- they're responding to something, that's for darn sure.

one more thing to point out with the supports --

Gunter: And since you missed, you must answer a question I have for you. Corrin: All right, ask away. Gunter: Is there anyone in camp that you have particularly strong feelings for? Corrin: Wh-what? Why would you ask that? Gunter: Ah, I'm the one who is asking questions.

by itself, that last line could read fairly platonically. but with everything else.... whew. this is a man who's very aware of power dynamics. speaking of --

point five: just trust me bro

call it uhhhh prurient interest, but there has been quite a few times when i've nailed a (IRL) person's interest in kink by that version of a gaydar :P just a little too many times for it to be coincidence.

if you're asking me, the tell-tale hints are usually :

(a) a hyper-awareness of power dynamics compared to normies,

and

(b) hints of adjacent interest/sub-cultural aesthetics. (eg, goth and alt-fashion, common kink implements that can be hidden in plain sight like handcuffs, whips, boots, leather as a fashion).

and obviously we're talking about a fictional character which changes the conversation (characters being built from the ground up to serve a plot. rather than a fleshed out autonomous human being with their own set of preferences that can change over time), but listen, mate -- if my kink radar was a geiger counter, gunter here lit up like fucking chernobyl. :P

all I have to do is point at the whip bit to (5b), and regarding point (5a) ... well. you know the interesting thing about kinksters is that in addition to power dynamics, some of them have a particular thing about titles?

you know who else has a whole very specific thing about titles?

in conclusion

now, all that said, could it be wish fulfillment? absolutely. and it does need to be said -- i dig the character a lot for many other reasons! but i'm focusing on this kink angle in this essay as frankly, it's not a popular topic to talk about in fandom, and it's a fascinating itch to scratch at.

there's the sense in wider media these days that anyone over the age of 40-50 isn't allowed to have a sex life much less something as edgy as kinks unless if they're a complete monster, which is both as untrue as it is unfair. shame never helped anyone -- and i've always been partial to my messy favorite characters who never apologized for what they were. once a villainfucker, always a villainfucker.

either way, there are distinctly too many coincidences for me to write him as anything but, and I'm having fun in this sandbox ~

thanks for reading!

[dandelion-wings]

Whyyyyy won't you write the test subject au!?

I am literally so hooked already, I need more than just scraps of information about it.

Don't get me wrong, I do love using my own imagination and can very much just expand upon this au in my own mind, but there's just something more relaxing about getting to read about it.

I by no means aim to pressure you into writing it! I accept that if you really can't be asked, but please just answer me these, dearest Tumblr user dandelion-wings.com:

- please describe what they did to him at the Akademiya. I sound like a sadist when I say this (I promise I'm not) but I love reading about the torture characters go through because it helps me understand their pain and trauma better.

- does Kaeya meet Diluc again? In the first part you did say Kaeya ran away to Sumeru age 11, so I assume that follows canon event, which means he had been in the Ragnvindr household for some time before capture. So does he recognise Diluc when he sees him again? I've imagined this whole emotional ass scene where they see eachother again for the first time in six-ish years and it made me tear up.

- does Crepus live in this au? (listen. I am a sucker for ragbros and their family, okay!) I assume the Ragnvindr household reacted in some way when Kaeya went missing, seeing as he was a somewhat major part of their lives. Maybe Diluc's birthday plans were different and he never died to the delusion and Ursa the Drake. Perhaps he is still alive and Kaeya recognises him and then Crepus promises to bring hell upon whoever left his son in that state.

- I assume Kaeya makes a good recovery. Does he still join the Knights? I'm not sure they'd let him in with only one arm with missing fingers, but then again it is the nation of freedom so who knows. What does he end up doing?

Many thanks, I love the au,

Friend of the stars <3

Mostly because I have so many WIPs and AUs already (including an entirely different one where someone removes Kaeya's fingers), and I work too jobs, I cannot write all of them! "I'm not going to write this" is a mantra against things I do not have the time to write even though I want to. XD;; It may well go into the warm-ups rotation, tbh. The other reason is that it's a lot darker and iddier than I usually post on main and I always get very anxious about idfic/kinkfic stuff (if I hadn't been so compelled to try and exorcise it with the Compressed Version that totally did not make me stop thinking about the Longer Version I probably would not have posted about it at all). Like, I spent a very serious five minutes looking at this ask thinking, "man, this is going on main, should I sanitize it any" before deciding that the of-questionable-taste parts are essential to my enjoyment and, so, well. I am not going to.

Which means that the rest of this is under a cut and trigger warnings for that first answer include, along with the requisite medical experimentation, dismemberment/mutilation, suicidal thoughts/actions, and sexual abuse/trauma.

The highlights of the research team's activities:

To start with before anything else because this is ongoing and general: confinement, obviously, constant restraint (growing increasingly severe over time, c.f. the shock-collar, which is movement-sensitive and just kept getting turned up over the years), and a caloric intake just barely sufficient for continued functioning, because it is harder for a starving person to fight back. Also, at least once the curse was induced, they did not at any point use anesthesia/pain relief because "pain response is an important scientific datapoint."

I haven't decided how they eventually did manage to induce the curse, but initial attempts were straight-up torture, in the hopes that sufficient negative emotion and/or fear for his life would trigger it. You can insert whatever you like here, but I personally am a perennial fan of waterboarding and near-drowning.

When it did finally trigger, it was first visible in his right eye, which promptly got removed for analysis. Fortunately for him, Anatoli wanted to see if it would spread to the left (it has, thus far, not).

It then started manifesting in his right hand, spreading up his arm (if this sounds a lot like the specifics of Cursed Transformation: I went with very similar mechanisms, why build from the ground up when I've already done some thinking about it), and as soon as it was established above his right wrist, he lost the last two fingers on both hands for a side-by-side comparison. It continued to spread, both up the arm and, once it reached the shoulder, appearing patchily elsewhere on his body. There were more tissue samples taken consistently over the next four years; most of them were smaller than whole fingers, but some were fairly significant chunks (he is probably also short a toe or two but Anatoli had his extremity data at that point, he wanted a variety of sites).

Despite the starvation diet, he did hit puberty in here. At which point both the sexual abuse and additional mutilation show up, because Anatoli's chief research assistant and second-in-command decided to "conduct tests of his sexual response as the curse progressed," which was 100% a "if you write it down you can call it science" excuse for rape. Which, because he was being very consistently dehumanized here (it is significantly easier for most people to carve into a terrified child if you convince yourself they're a monster, not a person), she pulled off in part by treating him more like a person than anyone else in the lab, which did not help him trust Lisa later on.

Concurrently he was both hitting a growth spurt and developing actual powers to go with the curse, and Anatoli was already considering castration with the hope that it would, as in animals, make him more docile. Discovering her 'research' made him decide, not that maybe he should fire his chief research assistant, but instead that he didn't really want to risk being accused of breeding monsters, and. so.

(One of my guilty pleasures in whump-rescue fic is the Rescuee, with no idea what their rescuer is getting out of this, offering them sexual favors as 'repayment,' and this is my idfic so that 100% happens here. And then Lisa's rebuff fucks Kaeya up in its own way because he associated the chief assistant leaving off, some time afterwards as he got too old for her tastes, and immediately dropping all pretense of seeing him as a person, with further advancement of his curse moving him from the 'human, thus desirable' to 'inhuman, thus no longer desirable' category. So at least initially it read to him as, Lisa talks a good game, but clearly she doesn't think he's human enough to touch like that anymore either.)

Incidentally 'I am no longer human enough to even be worth being touched (in ways I didn't like but that I've nonetheless been taught to associate with humanity)' was the main trigger for the first of the three suicide attempts in Anatoli's custody. Others followed, because every time the curse intensified there were more tissue samples, and more restraints on him, and horrible tests of his powers and general physical capabilities, and so on.

At some point they made him kill animals and, later, hilichurls (and Kaeya knows exactly what hilichurls are) to see what he was capable of. A lot of the power-testing was Bad in general because he didn't want to help, and so the efforts made to overcome his sullenness on the subject were very much of the 'push him until he loses control' variety. He still has a lot of Issues around handling animals. :)

Taking most of his right arm off was actually not for Anatoli's research. Anatoli and his team were all Spantamad; he was acquainted with an Amurta researcher who wanted a sample. That Kaeya was starting to grow claws on the remaining fingers of that arm, and that the Cryo veining was most vivid there and the Abyssal powers were clearly linked directly to it, and that those powers were growing stronger and threatened to eventually overwhelm the wards they were capable of, were... significant contributing factors. Half the reason Anatoli allowed Lisa onto the team, despite her associations with her very anti-human-experimentation mentor, was because she had a Vision and was significantly better at magical wards than anyone else interested. And it looked like they were going to need that sooner or later.

To answer the second and third questions together, I honestly have not thought tremendously far past the return-to-Mondstadt part of the plot, but we have determined that he does not meet Diluc at that time, because things in Mondstadt progress as in canon, including Crepus' death. And the timing is such that, after Kaeya has chosen Mondstadt (Lisa wanted Mondstadt, but gave him options because it seemed clear that he needed to feel like he'd made a choice) in large part because he has fond memories and a desperate hope that Crepus might have some sympathy, Lisa and Kaeya arrive in Stone Gate in time to hear that that Dawn Winery is closed because it's in mourning for Crepus, and its young master has recently passed through going the other way. :>

Though the household did react to Kaeya going missing those six years ago! Crepus spent months upon months in Sumeru hiring everyone he could to scour the place, and Kaeya knows that because Anatoli went out of his way to wipe out his test subject's trail in terror that Crepus might have the leverage to get the Akademiya to make him give him up. Which is why he'd hoped Crepus might, at the very minimum, give them shelter and/or give Lisa some money, despite the whole 'Abyssal taint' thing. He was banking very, very hard on 'even if I can't repay Lisa for getting me out myself, Crepus can afford to.' Finding out that he'd just died, that Kaeya had just missed seeing him alive, was devastating and triggered suicide attempt #5.

TBH I am not sure he makes a 'good' recovery per se! It depends on your definition, but like, while he does spend a good few years getting help unpicking his trauma, he still has plenty by the time of game start. I don't think he joins the Knights directly, as a knight; I don't know exactly how things wrap up (theabysscomeshome and I have talked through to the Dramatic Final Confrontation of what would be the second fic if I was writing it, but not the aftermath), but while Lisa becomes Ordo Librarian once the risk of extradition to Sumeru is cleared up, if Kaeya joins at all it's in some kind of auxiliary role.

Lisa does get him a catalyst early on, and he learns eventually how to channel his Cryo through it so he can disguise the source, and thus is fighting-capable, but in all honesty this may be another AU where he joins Benny's Adventure Team, because he fucking loves Bennett. Whenever he says something that he thought was normal and everyone else looks horrified by, Bennett blithely responds with some almost-as-horrifying anecdote of a bad-luck incident. Bennett lets him help with his chores and equipment maintenance, and whenever Kaeya fumbles things because he has all of three fingers, Bennett blames his own bad luck and apologizes for it. Bennett, all of twelve years old at the time, full-on attempted to fight the celebrated Captain Jean Gunnhildr for the sake of Kaeya's freedom. Kaeya mostly gives up on killing himself as a solution to every problem because he realizes it's entirely possible that Bennett will blame himself, and that would be intolerable.

(Bennett's reaction to Diluc, when he returns, is way more similar to Kaeya's initial reaction to Razor than Kaeya thought he was actually capable of.)

So, yeah! I don't know entirely where it goes, but I don't think he's a standard Knight in this AU at any point. (Among other things, he flat-out refuses to fight or kill hilichurls.) He may end up being on-call for them in some capacity, he may become an adventurer with Bennett and just drop any useful info he picks up into Lisa's ear to share with Jean, he may end up a library assistant, I'm not sure. And he does, regardless, do the same 'using his linguistic knowledge/Abyss associations to gather information on the Abyss Order's movements' thing for them. But even with the catalyst he honestly doesn't meet physical-capability standards, and he doesn't want to be directly within a command structure, so I don't think the Knights are right for him.

[gmaxgrimmsnarl]

for the story ask thing: 1 (but you have to do this one as poorly as possible), 4, 5, 6, 13, 16, 18, and 20

YAY this will focus mostly on bird of prey since thats the. the comic being worked on yis but i think some stuff can apply to the rest of tamaverse

long post so uhhhhh

1.) how would you describe the world your story takes place in?

uhhhhh idk how poorly i can describe it 😭 like uh. hell. but not actually hell its hell in the sense that its new york

4.) what would you say is the message, if there is one.

honestly i dont think there is a message 💔 just kinda doing whatever the fuck i want at this point...

5.) pick a theme song for the tv adaptation.

for bird of prey specifically ive wanted to make a silly op with this but more realistically??? probably the song i named the whole thing after

or scooter - fire hfkjsdhfk

6.) speaking of tv adaptations, why would yours get cancelled? (other than capitalism)

homophobia probably 💀 or maybe like ppl screaming about the Toxic™️ people/relationships... i think chase himself is a good enough reason to put "dni if you like this" on ur carrd JSGDGHSJSJKD

13.) how long have you been working on this project? what has changed from the outset?

2016ish... kare was gonna be a minor character that shows up like One Time in another story! but then i kept developing him n chase and they kinda. split off n became their own protags whoops

also the fact it was gonna be REALLY SHORT but i kept adding things and now idk where we are lolllll

16.) imagine the entire story takes place but in the meantime the characters all also have tumblr. what kind of (terrible) tumblr posts would happen?

kare's relatively normal he just tries promoting his music :)

chase gets a new callout post every ten minutes and he celebrates this, makes another account, and reblogs it calling op a slur. rinse and repeat

18.) what aspect of the story would get you #canceled on twitter?

Chase.

like even before any depictions of Unhealthy Relationships hes just insufferable BDHDHJS

20.) your ocverse just got a movie trilogy a la hunger games style. how have they horribly mangled your message/theme so that the movies are now a showcase of what the original was condemning?

hm. i think the absolute worst possible thing ever would be to make kare and chase an actual healthy couple...... the entire dynamic is kare being so nice and trusting and naive, oblivious to the Evils of this world and the dude that seduced him day one. i feel like they'd Sanitize chase and just. make him an entirely different person. and the thought of chase being Normal terrifies me

[astercontrol]

You remember this is why Tumblr stopped allowing nsfw? Because of the app store taking it down?

I mean-- there was more to it than that, but ALL of it is connected to the reason why sites everywhere are getting more and more sanitized.

i.e.

the app store (if I recall correctly) removed the tumblr app because of concerns about underage nudes on the site. Tumblr already did not allow sexual photos of underage kids, of course, but its enforcement of that rule had not caught everything. And this was unacceptable from the app store's viewpoint.

But then they faced the question of... how do we bring the enforcement any closer to perfect?

Allowing porn used to be a really good thing for a new medium. It's how VHS and Blu-Ray succeeded where Betamax and HD-DVD failed. But that was then.

It's harder now (when nearly everyone of any age has access to internet-connected camera phones) than it was before (when you took pictures with a film camera, and got them developed at a public shop, and could usually only distribute them to others by making physical prints and mailing them out).

Makes it really easy to break rules.

As long as your terms of service say "go nuts, show nuts," there will probably be some people showing nuts that belong to someone too young, or otherwise not properly consenting. You'd have to have someone looking at every picture of nuts and trying to detect any sign that these were perhaps not the nuts of a willing adult.

And in many cases this cannot be proven without demanding identification! This is why there was that whole attempt to pass a law requiring all sites with sexual content to make every member submit proof of age and signed forms of consent for everyone appearing in any image posted. This was why OnlyFans seriously considered going no-porn.

I'm not saying that it's easy to enforce a no-porn rule either. I'm not saying it's easy or even possible to write a perfect, always-valid definition of "sexual content."

But to have a moderator look at something and decide "that's sexual" is much easier than to have a moderator look at something and decide (with confidence they can stake the company's legal future on) that the people in the image are definitely of legal age and gave enthusiastic consent to be there.

I don't know what a solution would be. This is a problem everywhere on the internet, a systemic problem bigger than anyone's individual actions, and there might not BE any really good options.

AO3 still allows smut, and has few enough rules that moderation is somewhat manageable. But I'm pretty sure AO3 only avoids this legal issue by not actually hosting any images, just text and links to images hosted elsewhere.

It's harder for anyone to argue that someone was hurt or exploited by imageless text.

But not impossible.

And you can bet that if AO3 was trying to qualify for the App Store, they'd be getting those accusations a LOT.

the worst thing that could possibly happen to ao3 is it being put on the app store so please stop asking for it because you don't understand what would happen if that went through. ao3's whole deal is it archives EVERYTHING, while the apple app store's whole deal is keeping everything clean and safe. so if ao3 were to have an app all of the 'bad' stuff, including nsfw in general, would have to be censored at best or would be purged at worse. the google play store is more lax but who fucking knows what GOOGLE would police if they got their hands on the archive. do not ask for an app. do not use third party apps. it's on mobile browser functioning perfectly, just fucking use that before you ruin everything for everyone please.