#this isn't a rewrite

[sunflowersunite]

about parenting

Grisha screwed up big time by passing on his titan to Eren. It was a bad move, period. He condemned his son and the world.

"yeah but Eren would have died so much sooner if Grisha hadn't given him the titan. Eren is always doomed to die, with or without a titan, Grisha just delayed it. He did good even if it was morally questionable."

*pulls you closer* no. Do you know what would have happened if Grisha hadn't given Eren his titan? Eren wouldn't have watched Carla die, therefore not join the Scouts and not die in episode 7. And why is that? I'm glad you asked. Because Eren was the one who guided Dina away from Berthold and towards Carla in the first place. Eren, through the power of the titan. Had Grisha made the choice to listen to the visions and not give the titan to Eren, Dina would have eaten Berthold instead.

And what would have happened then?

She'd have turned human, be taken to Erwin and explain to everyone the mystery of the titans and Marley. Three seasons squeezed into two episodes and aot would've been an entirely different story. Chaos. The Survey Corps would've been reorganised, they'd have gathered a tome of information so quickly it would be almost comical.

Eren wouldn't have his titan, he'd have both his parents and minor trauma, so we need a new protagonist. Someone Grisha can pass the titan onto (with the army's permission) because he can't keep it anymore, the 13 years are waning and Paradis needs it, they can't let it get away.

How about Hange? That's a great choice. Hange gets the Attack Titan, I bet she'd love that. Hange is our new protagonist, EMA are her apprentices, Levi and Mikasa are her Ackerman bodyguards and they all make a trip to Marley to kindly complain about their little pest problem.

Look what we could've had, Grisha.

[sacrificethemtothesquid]

Spent six hours yesterday hammering out Very Important plot points on the novel rewrite. Went to bed feeling energized and excited.

Got up this morning to look at the notes. Apparently yesterday’s genius included a large scribbled-out paragraph replaced by a single “WHY THE BIRDS? HE JUST LIKES BIRDS”

The curtains, ladies and gentlemen, are apparently blue. 

[gingerswagfreckles]

So much of this boils down to white guilt and the desperate desire to shift that guilt onto some other racial group that they can label as Even Worse Than The Whites and therefore be absolved of ever having to think critically about their own actions and privilege ever again.

[garrywantspasta]

Part 1

Yes, there's more to this... I just... I just needed to.. I needed this. ��

Idk If Agatha just dressed up for Wanda, or If it's an AU where Wanda somehow went back in time or met a variant, but what MATTERS IS THAT 90's Rock n'roll/Punk Agatha needs to be seen 👌(by Wanda...)

[utilitycaster]

I feel like a lot of people mistake comic relief or goofiness for lack of effort or caring by the creator, and that belies a real lack of understanding of like, writing and humor and art in general.

[erinwantstowrite]

hey chapter 15, why are you at 10,000 words when i've only written the first scene? hey chapter 15??? hello??

[kurithedweeb]

Laurance cries the first time he feels the rain after the Nether and stands out there so long in the cold and the wet that he gets sick.

[scarapanna]

Small TW for

Bright lights

Injury

[hypertranced]

you know what I wouldve loved? in act 1 instead of isha being involved at all it was vi who protected jinx from caitlyn. them fighting and vi's heart clearly not really being in it. vi not wanting to be the one to land the final blow, but wanting to at least be there for her sisters final moments.

caitlyn lines up the shot, it'll be said and done soon. but when caitlyn pulls the trigger vi's instincts kick in. she moves without thinking, sprinting and launching herself at jinx, her shield activating as she tackles her. jinx looking at her with confusion and a little love as vi protects her with her body once the shield goes down.

caitlyn gets pissed and starts to aim her gun at vi, angering jinx who sets off the gas attack on piltover. jinx tries to grab vi as the air blows viciously around them but she can't get a proper grasp, sending vi and cait into the pipes as jinx screams for vi.

caitlyn in a rage at the fact that vi would go against her to protect her sister with vi being like well what the hell did you expect? you want to kill her for your mom. I saved her because she's my sister. the caitvi fallout would be much more interesting if it was because vi simply couldn't go along with caitlyns wants the way she thought she could. vi choosing her family at the risk of losing the connection with the woman who freed her.

cait could still hit her with her rifle and leave but instead of vi crying on the ground like a kicked puppy she writhes for a bit, cursing caitlyn out with misty eyes as she flees. vi gets angry, at caitlyn for even daring to aim at her after vi ignored her morals and convictions for her, at herself for even doing so in the first place. how could she ever think some piltie would matter more to her than her sister?

instead of vi's pitfighter era she has a vigilante era. her prowling the streets protecting those who are in desperate need of a helping hand. utilizing her shield instead of her fists. looking everywhere she can for jinx, unaware that jinx has been doing the same thing.

jinx hears rumors of a girl with heavy gauntlets on the streets of zaun and knows immediately who it is. she stalks her, confirming for herself that the rumors are true, vi has gone back to her roots of being a protector. the vi and jinx reunion arc would flow much nicely in this case

[simplydnp]

There’s something so beautifully heartbreaking about the man who’s so anti fate/destiny being forced to believe in those things bc he has someone that loves him so deeply and unbelievably 🥺🥺🥺🥺

see, i don't think it's just that someone loves his whole, authentic self. i think it's that he loves them back. equally. it's that they're in this together and it feels like they always have been. it's how life never started for him before this. it's that love is nebulous and unfathomable and unreachable, and yet, he's gotten a taste. it's that, when the universe was created, every single neutron in existence was formed. and all the ones that eventually became you and me, were together. what explanation do you have for praying to a god that's not listening to fix you, to take this all away, to make you better--and someone offers you a hand. and a smile. and sure they help you up but you climbed out of there goddammit. you put this work in, side by side. you've fought every battle together. faced every crowd. sacrificed. and you're coming up on spending more life on earth with them than without. and without thinking or asking; you've already got the next twenty planned. how can you rationalize the fact that you were on the same planet, at the same time, in the same place, if it wasn't meant to be? there's billions of people here and there's been billions before. but your person knows you better than you know yourself. and you love them more than anything. how can you ignore that they're your perfect half--from interests to opinions to humour. how do you miss the way a room lights up with both of you there. how it feels like magic. and no one else will ever understand. how can you stop the feeling in your chest. of when you know in every universe, you'd end up here.

you can't.

[pigeonstab]

Ink and Dream designs for the college au!

So. This had like 5 paragraphs written that tumblr just ate up. So I'll try to rewrite them.

If you want info on the au it's just under 'college au' on my blog or you can go through the specific character tags

So in this Dream, like Nightmare is a Vampire and Ink is what I call a cryptid! Basically you have werewolves, Vampires and literally all the other stuff. Those are cryptids, obviously there are specific species but there aren't enough of each to be on the same scale as werewolves or vampires.

His antlers are also reminiscent of a celtic deity, called Cerunnos or Carnonos, Nightmare being a Celtic pagan he is like half sure this little gremlin thing might just be one of the deities he believes in, he has lots of respect for Ink and reveres him a bit, meanwhile Ink is tiny, has no clothes without paint stains and likes sneaking up on people and playing pranks. I like their dynamic a lot, especially cause Nightmare is more of a wise and calm (well depends) figure.

Dream unlike his brother really likes wearing modern clothes and would rather stay in his pajamas all day. He likes having lots of jewelry and doodads, I also gave him a sort of tree branch from out of his eye bc I would like there to be a sort of catastrophe between the brothers (maybe not with Nightmare as the catalyst, I need to think about it) and instead of being turned into stone he became a tree.

[kg-day]

I genuinely want to know what show the people who say that Aang never respected Katara are watching. "Aang never let Katara feel anything other than what he wanted her to feel" "He idealized her" "He didn't care about her feelings" "He didn't support her the way she supported him". WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS FROM??? That's a rhetorical question because I already know what episodes/moments they're using to make those assertions (The Southern Raiders and the kiss in Ember Island Players), and even then, THEY'RE WRONG.

Let's start with TSR. This episode gets so misinterpreted it's not even funny. First off, Aang was never even upset with Katara in this episode, he's just warning her against killing someone??? He never gets mad at her or berates her. He just talks to her with a level head??? He openly acknowledges that he knows and understands how much rage and pain Katara is in, and he never tells her that she shouldn't feel it, he just advises her not to act rashly because of it??? Where is the lack of respect? Where is he ignoring her feelings or getting upset with her for not acting the way he wants her to? He lets her take Appa and even tells her that he understands that this is a journey she needs to take and supports her doing so, he just doesn't want her to kill someone. Honestly Aang shows more respect for Katara by knowing who she is as a person and not enabling her in her revenge than Zuko who is only going on this trip with her so that she'll forgive him, not because he actually cares that she's upset over the death of her mother (and this is not Zuko slander before people take it as such, I love Zuko, but it's not even subtext that his motivations in this episode are selfish and not about Katara).

As for the kiss in EIP, yes, it was not okay. Yes, it was a mistake. Yes, he shouldn't have done it after Katara laid a clear boundary, but he recognizes that immediately. After Katara- rightfully- gets upset with him, he gets upset with himself. We also see that he never repeats that mistake again and is fully okay with letting Katara lead after that. Which is why it's Katara who initiates the final kiss on the balcony. And if you still don't think he learned anything from it, he starts to ask for her consent in the comics before kissing her, showing that he absolutely DID grow from that mistake. So, we're really going to let one moment where a 12-year-old boy made a mistake dictate the entire show and negate everything that came before it??? That's coocoo banana's behavior.

I also think that those assertions are completely baseless because when does Aang idealize Katara? When does he hate her rage? When does he not support her? Is it when he laughed with her after she stole from pirates? Or in that same episode where he constantly reaffirms her skills as a waterbender- first by saying that he's able to pick it up so easily because she's a great teacher and then later when he refers to her as a waterbender which makes her so fucking happy? Is it when he gets so upset that Pakku refuses to teach Katara how to waterbend that he tries to walk away from his own waterbending training? Is it when he goes behind Pakku's back to teach her anyway? Or when he stands by actively cheering her on when she's raging against the patriarchy and fights Pakku? Is it when he calls her Sifu Katara because she expressed that he referred to Toph that way but not her? Is it when he helped her commit ecoterrorism and told her she was a hero for helping the people in that Fire Nation village? Is it when he holds her after she breaks down because she learned how to bloodbend? Is it when he comforts her after Jet's death? Is it... you get the point, don't you?

Aang recognizing Katara as someone who is strong and capable is not him idealizing her. Him not enabling her committing murder is not him hating when she feels rage. Aang actively supports Katara's rage on multiple occasions, he just doesn't enable her when he knows she's acting out of character. If you don't ship Kataang, that's fine, but please don't make up baseless accusations to try and tear them down just because you're mad that a ship that had no basis in canon (potential is not evidence) wasn't canon.

[buttfrovski]

when i need to study but the gods keep telling me to make south park characters in dress to impress

[harukamitsuki]

man. spinner and shoji were two characters that i really enjoyed and wanted to see more of... until i did get to see more of them and horikoshi stomped on my dreams...

spinner goes from being one of the best characters to being ridiculously one-dimensional. the heroes don't do jack shit, until it's revealed at the last second that they did, meaning that everything the 'bad guys' did was ultimately useless. kurogiri being in a hospital made no sense; the guy is a high-ranking villain who is far too useful to the villains to give up, he should be in a highly secure location like tartarus. shoji goes from being someone who i really enjoyed to being someone with ignorant beliefs, despite him accusing his friends of being such people.

seriously, shoji's rant on how the 'people from the city' wouldn't understand because they 'had it easy'. NEWSFLASH: discrimination happens everywhere. yes, it's a lot more rampant outside of cities, but it still exists within a city. heck, i had someone scream racial slurs at me while i was walking home, and i live in a big city. to say that someone had it easy just because you had it worse is a horrible thing to say, especially when it's coming from someone who is supposed to be empathetic.

this is not shoji's beliefs. this is horikoshi's beliefs. he could have easily had shoji say something like 'you have had it hard. that being said, people are more willing to turn to extremes outside of the city'.

also, shoji's whole 'violence to get what you want never works out!!' is wrong. i'm not saying from a moral standpoint - that's perfectly fine. but it's historically wrong. yes, there are such a thing as peaceful protests, but they have never worked out as well as those that fight violence with violence. blm riots, for example, were the thing to force the government to take a closer look at why people were rioting and do things to prevent more property damage.

another thing i found troubling was how the mutants became enraged at a person of colour, specifically black, for trying to intervene and empathise with them, screaming that he could not understand. it's supposed to imply that racism wasn't a concern after quirks emerged, as people found other things to discriminate.

which is... very idealistic. if that were something people would really do, then racism wouldn't be a thing after sexism came to light. and neither of them would exist after the lgbt or the neurodivergent. but that's not what happened.

if someone else arises that people could discriminate upon, people would just add that to the list of things to discriminate on.

horikoshi could have drawn anyone for the mutants to yell at. he chose to use a person of colour. it comes off as very tone-deaf and it was just another sign that the mini-arc would screw up.

spinner losing his mind was bad. as in bad-bad. as in, there were so many ways to write this fight, and he chose this? instead of being a battle of ideaologies, it's shoji convincing the rest to step down, then trying to beat a mind-less spinner.

it could have been one of the best fights, with shoji's belief that using violence to solve your issues will only make it worse, and spinner arguing that using violence is the only way to do it with the state of their society.

no matter who won, in that case, it would be ultimately up to the readers to decide who truly won. who had the stronger argument, who made the more sense, all that jazz...

instead, shoji yells at a bunch of people about how 'destroying property isn't good' and 'violence is never the answer', all the while using violence to subdue him.

that could have been could, if it was commented on. if there were some sort of self-awareness.

but it's not and there is none. it went from being an arc i was really looking forward to reading, to something i can no longer stand.

shoji. spinner. you were both done so dirty

[bayetea]

to be honest I think the fact that a very significant proportion of people found jason/his povs to be uniquely boring is more evidentiary of a writing flaw than something being wrong with the readers who felt that way

[asharaks]

minrathous-treviso choice: part one

The choice to save either Minrathous or Treviso, knowing that the other will suffer without your intervention, is actually Great; it’s a strong, bold move that establishes a sense of urgency and the scale of the threat you’re facing, with lasting consequences both for the settings and the companions tied to them. That said. The vision for Minrathous vs Treviso is this: 

First of all there’s a warning before you take the quest that will trigger this plot on completion, telling you to go back and finish everything you want to before taking it because some quests and progression may be unavailable afterwards. Also, tying Davrin’s recruitment to this choice is a mistake — he’s the only Black companion in a game with a pretty racist player base, and a situation in which you Can’t recruit him until you’ve advanced significantly with three other companions disadvantages him further as a companion. Also, he’s a warrior, and the early game doesn’t have any warriors. So instead, Davrin is recruited early (you seek out a Warden as soon as you realise you’re dealing with Blight!), and given a few quests to clear up in the Wetlands, and Harding’s (re-)recruitment is moved back to trigger this scene — she’s an associate of yours who was out gathering information during the early portion of the game, and she’s run into trouble. As a fan favourite returning character, she comes into the game with goodwill that levels the playing field between her and the early game companions, and as a rogue she isn’t mechanically indispensable until her recruitment on higher difficulties since Lucanis is also recruited early. 

When you return with Harding, Lucanis’s and Neve’s calls for help in their hometowns play out as normal, but in deciding where you go, two things are emphasised: 1) you’re splitting up your team of six into equal teams. The choice is not to Only Save One, but to decide who goes where, and which team you place yourself on; and 2) you bear the responsibility for this choice and how it shakes out, moreso than Lucanis and Neve who each insist on protecting their homes, because in Varric’s absence (more on this later) you are the leader, and your team does what You say. The overwhelming nature of the choice is emphasised; there is no way to distribute resources such that everyone is perfectly covered. There’s just too much. 

The key to the choice is that both cities are complicated, often brutally hostile places marked deeply by inequality and oppressive rule, and both cities are the homes of millions of people. As a shadow dragon or a crow, do you have a responsibility to your home town; as the leader of the veilguard, is it fair to place that responsibility over your responsibility to protect All of Thedas against the blighted gods? Is it fair, as someone unattached to either place, to decide on the toss of a coin which millions will suffer and die? At this point, you’ve taken quests in both places, fighting slavers, cultists and magisters in Minrathous and navigating fractured crow rulership, unrest among fledgelings, and the encroachment of the Chantry in Treviso. The cities parallel each other and the problems facing other locations; complicated homes, where people lead complicated lives, towards which any rook can have complicated feelings. 

The quests themselves still each have their blighted dragon, which is still unbeatable here as it flies away at half damage, but they aren’t commanded by their gods — the gods are almost trailing in their wake, Elgar’nan in Minrathous and Ghilain’nan in Treviso. They can be seen here for the first time, enormous, awe-inspiring, and undeniably in blinding agony, infected all the way through with blight. you can’t interact with the gods at all, they don’t even register your presence. But once the dragon fight is over, your work isn’t done — there are longer, more involved quests to finish. In Minrathous the Venatori have staged a coup and the templars have been mobilised en masse to take them; if you don’t intervene, then the city will either fall to the venatori or to the draconian measures they give the magisterium plausible justification to enforce. You have to help Neve and the Dragons shepherd panicking civilians to safety within the Shadow Dragon sanctum (or make it a choice: do you send them to a less secure location and keep the Shadow Dragons secret? or do you guarantee their protection but make the Dragons vulnerable?), destroy Venatori, provide aid for Dorian and Mae in the inner city. In Treviso, the mass outbreak of Blight has pushed the Chantry and the Crows into open conflict, and the city is threatened by Blight and by violence if you don’t get it under control. You have to close locks in the drowned district to contain the Blight in the canals, while fighting back darkspawn and ghouls; help civilians to safety either in ambassadorial buildings, turning to the Qunari presence for help, or in the chantry, which is markedly easier but results in turmoil and distrust in Qunari presence down the line. You find the dagger obtained at the ritual site instrumental in warding off the Blighted dragons and their gods; this is why Rook’s presence is the deciding factor in the outcome for each city.

(next - minrathous-treviso choice part two)

(previous - minrathous)