#this is probably the kind of thing shanks is dreading honestly

[goingbuggy]

I know this will never happen in OP but can you imagine if shanks was ever forced to actually stop buggy? And had to attack him for real? Maybe kill him? The new era is everything to shanks, he sacrificed so much, and wants to help luffy the most. How could this play out? Am I weird to think that?

You're not weird to think that; I'm curious myself as to how Shanks will handle his inevitable clash with Buggy in the future. I'm not sure who knows currently that Buggy is making his move for the One Piece -- 1082 was a spur of the moment decision. I think the news will spread soon enough, but the window is still potentially open for Buggy to take some enemies off guard simply because they don't know he's gunning for Laughtale yet. Will Shanks find out before then? Does he even have a contingency plan for Buggy? We don't know.

Personally, I hope he doesn't find out until they are face-to-face, because I think that heightens Shanks' internal conflict in the midst of an external one (what he wants for himself alone vs what he knows he must do for the sake of the world). Remember what he said in the very first chapter of One Piece?

How funny, to think that he might be forced into a position where he will have to hurt a friend. And not just any friend -- his oldest friend. Likely the very first and very best friend he had. Think of THE DRAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!

The good news is that Buggy doesn't seem to want to fight anybody, let alone Shanks. But I doubt that his idealistic version of events will come true -- these two will probably be forced to clash soon enough. And the best part about it is that neither of them really want to be at odds with each other. That is the best kind of fight, in my opinion. There's so much at stake for them. If they both want to accomplish their goals, they have no choice but to confront each other. What a cruel twist of fate!!!!!

[darkdevasofdestruction]

Oh okay, good to know! I was actually wanting to ask for some platonic friendship headcanons for Maokai and Malphite, probably with someone who’s a bit of a stubborn smartass but will shank any bitch who messes with their tree/mountain friend? Thank you! ❤️

Okay, I’ve never thought I’d write for Mr. Tree or Mr. Mountain, but this is gonna be pretty fun! And it also made me read up a bit on their lore, and honestly, I thought their temperaments were completely opposite from what they actually are!

---MAOKAI

Poor Maokai had to witness everything and everyone around him be corrupted into undead, while only he remain alive and still sane, thanks to the water of life that was infused into his heartwood.

Witnessing the irresponsibility of humankind messing with the sacred reservoir of life and magic, even as much as destroying it...Needless to say, he now holds a never-ending grudge on humanity, who robbed him of a home.

When he met you, he wanted to kill you, but he quickly judged that you were no threat to him or to nature, and while yes, he was still wary of you, he decided to let you live.

Time passed, and for some reason, he still didn’t kill you, and despite how much your cheekiness and impertinence annoyed him. 

Honestly, who did you think you are? A puny human like you, so stubborn, so sassy, defying him like that?

No, actually, nevermind that - 

You keeping true to yourself, not afraid to speak up your mind even when faced with such a scary creature like him, that could kill you in the blink of an eye actually amused him greatly.

Very well, human, you have the friendship of Maokai.

He would let you stay on his shoulder while saplings jump all over you.

He would feel rather flattered when you ask him to tell you stories from his life, and you would actually pay attention to him. 

It was great o finally not feel such deep anger, at least for a few moments.

The moment he fully began trusting you was when some rude humans started berating the Tree, and you got in their face, cursing them, berating them and beating them up, because nobody dares to mess with your Tree friend!

Don’t expect him to thank you, but expect him to become incredibly powerful of you.

You are now his human and he will protect you with every fiber of his being.

Now he’s thanking himself for being in a good mood and not killing you, because you’re the only light in his rageful life.

---

MALPHITE

Malphite isn’t a being filled with dread and hatred like Mr. Tree is, and rather said, he’s just incredibly old and powerful and all he’s doing is trying to find a reason to live, to keep on going -

He wants to be useful to someone, but it has to be someone, some cause, that’s worth fighting for, as he is the last being of his kind, and not every request is worth his time, obviously.

An ancient being is still an ancient being, after all, even if he’s just a Mountain...Rock...Golem...

Something.

You meet each other when you sought him out to make your request, and your determination and resolve intrigues him enough to accept being your companion in your quest.

With time, he got to see how you would sass out and beat every enemy that stood in your way with no regret or hesitation, which made him even more convinced that yes, you were the one worthy of his strength and wisdom.

Malphite would start slow, by giving you cryptic advice, warnings, riddles, sayings, and if you understood them, then you get to the next level -

You get to hear stories from his life that somehow can be tied to your adventure, be it with the things that you should learn from other’s mistakes or findings, or how you should go around feelings, or trickery and many others.

If even then, he sees that you’re listening to his teachings, then you are worthy to be considered his little mortal friend.

Once he finds someone brainless enough to insult him, and you step in to kick him the hell out of the place, scolding him for being a fuckass who doesn’t deserve shit, and nobody is allowed to mess with ‘YOUR FRIEND, MR. MOUNTAIN’, he kinda lost it from both amusement and content.

From then on, you get a privilege that nobody ever got to live, and that is to have him as their life-long friend.

Malphite vows to always be there for you whenever you need him, no matter the request.

When he hears that all you need is his friendship, his ancient heart flutters in happiness.

Perhaps he found a cause worthy of him, and the treasure he got was all that he needed anymore.

[nelllraiser]

quiet riot | layla & nell

TIMING: mid july. LOCATION: the mime funhouse at the carnival. PARTIES: @laylacooke and @nelllraiser​. SUMMARY: a trying time in the mime house leads to something even more unexpected. CONTENTS: parental abuse mention.

Nell hadn’t realized it was a Mime Fun House when she handed her tickets to the attraction attendant, having blissfully walked up the ramp to the entrance of it. Immediately, she’d realized her mistake upon entering, and tried to backtrack. Unfortunately, it seemed like that wasn’t an option. Now, she was walking along the black and white and striped hallways of the cursed house, regarding every mime painting on the wall with squinted eyes, as if on high alert should any of them suddenly somehow jump to life. As always, her knives were still in her boots, and it was taking every ounce of her self control not to draw them when she was surrounded by who she thought to be the enemy. Suddenly, movement caught her eye, and she tensed. If there were fucking mime actors in this house she was going to lose her god damned mind. “If you fucking touch me I’ll shank you in places you didn’t even know existed on your body,” she threatened to the shadow, not willing to have any sort of mime fuckery today.

Why Layla had come back to this thing was something she couldn’t explain. She had just been drawn in. Every night, since the carnival had come to town, she could hear the music floating all over White Crest and the excitement it brought out in her was like a kid in a toy shop around Christmas time. But how she had found herself in the Mime Fun House was beyond her. Maybe it had been some innate instinct to want to take the muted monsters out. Or maybe it was the doing of magic. Regardless, she entered through the narrow doorway and now she was stuck. And with each step forward, she could feel her heart racing just a little harder. Her werewolf senses had been on high alert, but luckily her claws hadn’t come out yet. At least not until she noticed she wasn’t alone and heard the creaking of the rickety old floor. A low growl, she inched closer, now feeling claws jutting out of her finger tips, until she heard the voice. Letting out a huff of relief, Layla stepped forward with her hands up, claw tips still protruding, “Whoa! Hold up! It’s me! It’s me, Layla...I’m not gonna hurt you!” She had already been stabbed once, and she prayed it wouldn’t happen again in a damn house full of mime fuckery.

It wasn’t strange for Nell to return to the carnival more than once. After all, she’d done much of the same growing up in White Crest every year, and every summer. Still, The Mime Fun House was decidedly...the very opposite of fun. And after her encounter with the Hall of Mirrors, she wouldn’t put it past this cursed place to make some sort of attempted murder or otherwise. Whether it was intentional or not. Nell herself had drawn a knife in reflex, not looking to get attacked by any sort of mime today...or ever. But as Layla stepped forward into the wan light, her shoulders lost some of their tension. “Oh, it’s you.” She hadn’t seen the wolf since their encounter at the lake, and before that, her attempt on Layla’s life in the forest. “Fuck this fucking house, honestly,” Nell cursed as her knife hand relaxed as well, though she didn’t sheathe the weapon back into its hiding spot. “Mimes are the worst part of White Crest. I’ll never get why the freaks here love them.”

When Layla saw Nell relax, it gave her some relief. She still didn’t trust the woman after their past two meetups. In fact, she would have rather been in the Mime Fun House with anyone, but Nell. Okay, maybe not anyone, but at least someone that didn’t want to kill her, “Well, we’ve got one thing in common I guess. We both fucking hate mimes.” Her claws remained out from fear of anything else that might be lurking just around the corner, but it didn’t stop her from asking Nell to put her knife away, “And hey, little suggestion, but maybe put your knife away or go in front of me, because I don’t trust you. Not after having that thing at my throat and then having you and your little hunter friend threaten to kill me repeatedly if I didn’t save this Godforsaken shithole of a town.” Hearing a noise, she jumped; claws jutting out further, until she realized it was just someone walking around above them on a different floor.

Trust was a two way street, and unfortunately it seemed that neither Layla nor Nell had even begun to pave that road in hopes of traversing it. Of course, with Nic’s word backing Layla, Nell was now less inclined to be suspicious of the wolf. Unfortunately, that still left her with the problem of what to tell Layla’s parents, as well as what to do with the redhead standing in front of her. “That’s because anyone who’s half sane hates mimes.” It was the closest thing to nice that Nell seemed to be able to say for the moment. With a hearty roll of her eyes, and slight flick of her knife, the witch was quick to reply. “First off, I’d never even met anyone there besides you before the ritual at the lake, so no- I barely know Athena. Secondly, we literally never threatened to kill you at the lake. Third of all, you should have wanted to fucking save it in the first place, cause that’s what any decent person would do.” Despite her words, she went in front of Layla to lead the way, shoulders squared against whatever mimes might pop out at them, knife lowered, but still drawn. “And put your claws away if you don’t want someone else seeing you and trying to hunt you.” 

The words cut to the bone, and as Nell moved forward, Layla let the sting of hot, silent tears release. Telling the teenager she wasn’t a decent person sent her mind back to her parents and the harsh words they used to say to her. So much pressure put on a child, and, now, Nell was doing the exact same fucking thing. And unfortunately for Layla, putting her claws back in wasn’t as easy as a non-werewolf assumed. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she shoved her hands in her pockets to hide her fingers and pushed past Nell taking the lead again, “You don’t know a fucking thing about me. And telling me I’m not a decent person, because I didn’t automatically want to play hero and save the fucking world at nineteen years old, doesn’t make you any better than me.” Her voice was low, and instead of waiting for Nell, the teenager moved through the cursed fun house at a quicker pace ignoring anything that managed to pop out as she walked further into the maze of halls and rooms.

Looking over her shoulder, Nell wasn’t sure what to make of Layla crying. Sure, she wasn’t the werewolf’s biggest fan, but she didn’t want her to cry. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, I just meant it’s safer if you hide them.” Did that not show how Nell didn’t want Layla to get hurt? However, she had less sympathy for Layla’s lack of drive to help people in need or the town. It wasn’t something Nell could entirely understand. But the way Layla phrased the words was enough to make Nell think back to her own conversation with Alain, and how she wished he would have responded to her, rather than the way he did. “I know I don’t. And I don’t think I’m better than anyone, so it’d probably be better to not make assumptions about me in return. I know you’re young, but unfortunately the world we live in isn’t a merciful one. And sometimes those choices just need to be made. That’s just the reality of it. And you probably would have gone down along with the town, and Frankie, too. Isn’t that worth saving, at least?” She rolled her eyes where Layla couldn’t see it as the werewolf walked away, trodding after her and glaring at anything that so much as came close to her. The maze was a bit trickier, though. It seemed that...no matter what way they moved, they always came to a dead end, even when Nell was certain they’d tried every direction. It was enough to put a sinking feeling of dread in her gut. What were the mimes planning?

Layla’s astute hearing had picked up on everything Nell had said. Yes, she wanted Frankie to be safe. No, she didn’t want the town to end, or the world, but why was this shit on her shoulders? From the day she was born, Layla’s life had been planned out for her, and when those plans didn’t turn out the way her parents had wanted, it was determined that the teenager had to die. So she ran, but her life still hadn’t been her own. It now belonged to that of the creature that bit her, forcing her into one of its kind and then leaving her for dead. She had just wanted a chance at a normal life. Sure, watching Buffy Summers save the world looked cool, but it was a tv show. Layla Cooke didn’t want to save the world. She wanted to live in it. And thrive. And have a family with the woman she loved. And as she made her way into yet another dead end, she could feel her anger welling up. So much so that she slammed her balled fist into the striped wall leaving a hole in return. A growl came from deep within her chest, before she fell to her knees defeated. Of all the places to be stuck, she had to be stuck in this hell hole with a bounty hunter that was so determined to hate her, that Layla just didn’t have any fight to go on, “Why don’t you stupid fucking mimes just come out and take me already! What do you want from me?!”

As Layla collapsed to the ground, Nell instinctively lurched forwards to try and lift the girl back to her feet. “I wouldn’t do that, I don’t trust these mimes not to do something fucking cursed. And I know a mime that stabbed someone, once.” As soon as she’d said the words, the stillness of the house seemed to break, and mimes began to crawl towards them from all angles, stripes and sharpened grins surrounding them from every side as they advanced quickly, crab-walking all the way. “Back the fuck off!” Nell yelled, magic instinctively pooling in her hands. She was not going to be attacked by mimes. Not today, not ever. The one who got closest to her earned a reflexive punch to the face from Nell’s clenched fist. Promptly, the mime’s face crumpled in on itself, momentarily disfigured before a striped finger was brought to his lips, like a baby sucking their thumb. Instead, his cheeks began to puff out, as if he were trying to re-inflate himself. And it worked. Slowly, the mime’s face pushed back into its original place. That was when Nell decided she’d had enough of the mime house. “Come on!” Nell called out to Layla, reaching to grab the girl’s hand in her to give it a tug so they could run for it. Her hand burst forward, releasing the magic and cracking the wall before them in two.

As soon as Nell spoke, the mimes had made their move. Eyes wide and back on her feet from the woman’s assistance, Layla backed into the wall frantically. It was the grip of a white gloved hand on her shoulder that caused her to scream, and without hesitating, she jerked away from the cursed creature. They were coming from everywhere, and without thinking, the redhead found herself slashing and clawing off mimes. Heightened hearing allowed her to pick up on the walls and just how many of the damned creatures were really lurking. Hearing Nell, she latched onto the spellcaster’s hand and started moving. Not stopping even as the wall in front of them exploded. Layla had just wanted to get out of there. Everything had started to close in on them as more mimes poured from the shadows, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to cause a mime shit-show!” She yelled out to the Vural sister while she swiped, clawed, and dodged her way through a black and white nightmare.

As Nell barreled through the wall, she did her best to pull Layla after her. They stepped into the light of the outside world, and strangely the mimes seemed to go no further than the perimeter of the house they’d been residing in. There they were, simply staring with unblinking eyes at the pair of girls, huddled around the jagged edges of the house. Nell stared back for a long moment before flipping them off, and soon the voice of the attraction operator could be heard, yelling in their direction. “Hey! What the hell?! You just ripped a hole in my mime house! I’m calling the cops!” Her head whipped towards the man that was red in the face, and coming towards them before she said, “Get a less shitty house!” Nell’s heart hadn’t stopped pounding since the mimes had attacked, but the mood was shifting from dire to something lighter as she once again yanked on Layla’s hand. “Run! Keep running!” As her strides carried her away from the mime house, she began to laugh, the utter ridiculousness of the situation getting the better of her. 

Bursting into freedom away from the Little Mime Shop of Horrors, Layla felt instant relief. Already, she could feel her eyes changing back to normal and her fangs and claws retracting. They had found the mimes weakness: the outside world. And as she listened to Nell and the owner exchange words, the teenager couldn’t help but bend over in the hopes of catching her breath. The word ‘cops’ floating through the air didn’t seem to make things better, and when Nell told her to run, she resumed her sprint forward and away from all the chaos of the carnival, “What the fuck was that?!” She heaved as she spoke and finally stopped running when the pair had made it into the woods away from all the insanity. Collapsing to the ground, Layla took in long slow gasps of air, “I can’t get arrested again, Nell!” She wiped the sweat off of her brow listening closely to see if they had been followed, but she couldn’t hear anything.

Once the angry carnival worker had faded into the distance, Nell stopped to catch her breath, her laughs growing stronger as the chaotic nature of the situation set in. “Oh, come on,” she teased in a lighthearted tone, the relief and rush of making a break for it pulling her lips into a grin. “Getting arrested isn’t that bad.” She’d lost count of how many times the cops had brought her in, though she always managed to get out of it— whether it was with the help of her mother’s connections, magic, or sheer, dumb luck. Of course, she supposed it depended what you were being arrested for. Either way, she was just glad to be out of that mime hell hole. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.” But now that the carnival was far behind them, and her mood had been brightened by a good escape, Nell chewed on her bottom lip, readying herself to do something she hated doing, and something she didn’t do all that often. “Look- I really don’t mean any ill will towards you. And it was shitty of me to try and kill you.” That was the best apology she could manage.

Layla wanted to rip Nell a new one. She wanted to go off of her so badly, but she refrained. Their relationship was like nails on a chalkboard, and she cringed every time she thought of all the ways they would dig at each other. Yet, instead of speaking, she simply rolled her eyes while she strived to breathe in air and find a normal heart rate. It was the words that seemed to come out of Nell’s mouth towards the end that had genuinely surprised her though. Did she just apologize? Taking one final deep breath, the teenager wanted to hear it again, but knew that wouldn’t be an option. However, she did let the words play on repeat for a moment, before she spoke, “Did you just apologize to me? I mean, yeah. It was shitty, considering I didn't do a damn thing to you, but I guess I accept your apology. If that’s what that was.” She glanced around, before looking back to Nell, “I know we’re probably never going to be friends, but I mean, yeah. I appreciate what you just said.” It felt awkward. It was awkward, but she had accepted it, knowing that was probably all she was going to get.

Nell didn’t make eye contact as Layla asked for confirmation, and all the witch could offer her was the subtlest of nods. “At least my version of one.” She wouldn’t apologize for her line of work, but it was obvious that she’d been wrong to try and kill Layla, an innocent werewolf rather than one of the nastier ones out there. “It wasn’t personal, you know that.” Because it hadn’t been. It had been as personal as a barista handing a coffee to someone in their cafe while they waited for the clock to strike four, so they could get off work and go home. As for friends, it was difficult to tell if that was an option. Even aside from the whole attempted murder thing, Nell couldn’t help but feel that there were just some things the pair of them didn’t see eye to eye on. But now, at least they’d be able to ease off each other’s throats. “Great. Now let’s get out of here.”

[theharellan]

RP POSITIVITY MEME

DAY 14: FREE DAY!

so this whole week i’ve kept myself from mentioning joly when possible. i promo joly on my dash every day. my very existence is a joly promo. it was mostly a way to make sure that i gave other people attention, and also b/c i saw the last day was a free day and wanted to use it to write about how much i love joly’s characters.

if it weren’t for joly i doubt i’d still be here. that’s not to say that i didn’t love rping solas beyond what i have with joly, but after my hiatus it was the desire to rp with joly again that really brought me back. and i’m so thankful for that b/c it’s allowed me to meet ppl like merc and lisa and kae, ppl who either weren’t around or i didn’t know before. also just when i was having a rough time last year and whenever i’ve had a rough time since then joly’s been there for me. they’re a really special person, who deserves even more kind words written about them than their characters do. but if i keep going i’ll probably make myself cry.

suffice to say if you like my blog, then you have joly to thank. not just for me being here, but how their ocs have shaped my solas. i cannot recommend joly’s blogs enough. they don’t have as much time as they did to write, but it doesn’t make them any less dedicated to their characters as someone who posts a dozen things a day.

before i get to their actual blogs, i want to talk about the npcs or characters that no longer have rp blogs.

first, deshanna. i’ve loved how they made a mother who is flawed and sympathetic, and who i don’t feel 100% good about solas disliking her in modern. it’s my secret desire to be able to rp in a thread where she’s npc’d one day, either in modern or batb. next, layne. what a piece of shit. i don’t know TOO much about layne, and i’m in this position where i want to know more but also i dread it. hoping one day solas and mio can shank him. and then, june. june had a blog (and may again one day??) and he was a fuckin hermit mamma’s boy that was too boring for fen to want to have anything to do with. joly’s recently been toying with some ideas for his character that i think only strengthen what they have, and i’m excited.

@ancientimpudence -

mio is petty. mio is mean. mio is stand-offish. mio is loyal. mio is driven. mio is honest. i love mio.

if you want a character who is flawed and not always nice, you’ll love mio. they’re a really good example of how you can make a character not always be a very pleasant person, but still get plenty of rp mileage off of them and develop meaningful relationships. how two characters’ relationship can somehow be incredibly deep and yet broken. i love what joly and i have built for mio and solas, two ancient friends who aren’t always the best friends.

i could really talk about about their relationship. solas goes through a period where he becomes very empathetic and in-tune with the problems of everyone around him, but mio’s somehow always escape him. i love the gap, and i love how it’s both not his fault b/c mio hides how they feel, but also he needs to do better by them. i love how mio wants what’s best for solas and their cause, while simultaneously suggesting things that actually wouldn’t be best for solas, because mio isn’t omnipotent and is also, to an extent, still trying to keep solas as he was.

i love how mio doesn’t like ian but is still there to help him. i love how mio expresses themself in ways not everyone understands. i love how modern mio has purse dogs and brings vher food b/c they spent all weekend playing the sims.

and vher / mio?? one of those ships that just kinda happened. one of the best things about talking to joly about characters is how often two just kinda cling to one another. vher is aro and can’t return the romantic feelings mio feels for them (and open enough to be accepting when mio finds romantic love elsewhere) but they still care for mio so much. everything about mio that i listed above, even the petty and vain stuff, vher loves. also sometims vher decides they wanna kiss mio and i can only imagine what it does to the poor child.

basically, what i’m getting at here is, joly lets mio be flawed but also shows how those flaws can still lead to positive interactions. joly lets mio be unadmirable at times, but still likeable and lovable. joly introduced some extra diversity in background to the rebellion and i’m eternally thankful tbh.

@betterthanmaps​ -

harding is one of those characters everyone adores, and so it makes sense that joly, one of the most adorable ppl on the planet, chose to write her. i love seeing characters with stable and normal backstories. harding is just such a steady influence, and i’ve loved seeing her contrasted with the sad backstories most canons and ocs possess. which i wanna be clear isn’t a criticism of sad backstories! i merely mean that it’s also nice seeing variety. not everyone has had a past that has made them cruel or kind, some people were raised by caring parents and lived simple lives until they heard the call to adventure. those people are just as interesting and worthy of telling stories about.

joly’s harding reminds me somewhat of tolkien’s hobbits, i suppose, now that i’m writing this out. and they’re some of my fave characters in literature. only w/ harding we also get fun dragon age dwarfy lore-- someone who is as un-dwarfy as varric but not quite so loud about it and we get actual queer representation.

@spiritualjourneys​ - 

i adore spirits? i do not adore how the fandom treats spirits. things like treating human cole as superior to spirit cole, rather than a person making different choices, both paths making them happy, even if one is for reasons we can’t all understand. pinning everything wrong with anders in da2 on justice. assuming lord woolsey, an innocent spirit-ram who has done nothing but help, has always been a rage demon (even tho the ways in which he has been shown to help the family that adopted him aren’t typical rage-related qualities) but ANYWAY.

the point is, spirits are given something of a raw deal by the fandom and are almost always judged by their ability to conform to human standards. joly’s spirit multi is fuckin fantastic and making spirits different and complex and alien, while also familiar and very much people rather than set pieces in the stories of others. though all of them started out as npcs created by either joly (love, sincerity), myself (joy), or bioware (wisdom) it took joly no time at all to establish their stories. love and joy especially...

what i appreciate about love is the path they took to get where they are. how they weren’t always love, how they focus upon a specific kind of love, how they can’t always see when love is best working past. though i’ve only just started rping peace, i’m in love (get it) with the dynamic the two of them have formed. how they balance one another out and keep one another from straying too far into their own interests, and thereby corrupting themselves. it’s a dynamic that i wasn’t expecting at all when i made peace as an au to my zenyatta blog, but i think that’s the amazing thing about writing with joly. something falls into place and then it grabs you and the idea just won’t let go.

and as for joy, it’s probably the least developed of the spirits, having no form that’s recognisably alive nevermind a person. but it demonstrates well, i think, how “humanity” in elvhenan wasn’t defined by shape. when solas says he dislikes when people see him as just a pair of pointed ears, and that he doesn’t necessarily identify much with modern elves, the idea is expressing multiple things. one of them, i think, is that being an elf sometimes meant being a physical body with pointed ears, but sometimes you could just be bubbles and you’d still be considered a valid member of elvhen society. joy doesn’t exist as we do. joy forgets, joy prefers to never touch the earth, and it exists in a state of cycles to keep itself from becoming something like despair. joly depicts the beauty and the drawbacks of existing in this state and i’m just??? so glad they decided to write joy. b/c they do it more justice than i ever could.

@paragoninexile -

tam’s new blog isn’t fully set up but i wanna talk about her anyway. tam is a good hero and a good person, and in many ways sort of made to be a hero. when i found out about tam i was rly excited simply b/c she was very much like my warden, only with so much more care and thought put into her that now she’s basically replaced my canon warden in my heart.

i think my favourite thing about tam is how much of a front she puts up for everyone. crowning bhelen, even if it meant the death of another father figure. recruiting loghain, even if it meant losing her friend or possibly lover. it shows that even neutral good heroes still have to make decisions that could be considered ruthlessly practical. bhelen is not necessarily the better choice morally, especially not as an aeducan (especially especially not as an aeducan who doesn’t kill trian). i imagine tam knows that crowning him will have dire consequences not just for harrowmont, but the entire harrowmont line. she does it anyway, not because she wants to, but because for orzammar it’s the best choice.

i’ve loved finally having a chance to write one of my fave dragon age ships: gorim/aeducan. i have a weakness for ships who have been together since they were only young, and the progression they take in the au is so good?? being able to find freedom for their love in a life that is literally killing tamar, and the reason they only get 12 or so happy years together rather than 50. but tam is so good that i’m honestly proud to be able to give her those twelve years with gorim. one day i’m gonna make joly hurt w/ thoughts about the kid gorim adopts after tam dies and who he tells them all about. 8)

@cadashsmash -

cadri i think was the first joly character i interacted with, though i believe i remember ian from way way back when i tried rping merrill and couldn’t quite get a foothold like i did with solas and thora.

i’m in love with dwarves u all should know this, so ofc i’m in love with cadri. i love how rough around the edges she is, how she tries to do the right thing, and how doing so can lead to some messed up shit like killing abelas. the work joly’s done with reaver lore is perfect, working with how dirty and raw the specialisation is without making it too hardcore for an inquisitor to ever hope to specialise in it (stop assuming all reavers are cannibals fandom smh). one of my fave threads on thora continues to be the post-battle thread where both are recovering from the drawbacks of their own specialisations and clash because of them. it’s just a really unique idea that is what makes writing with joly so... rounded? like i’m never just writing one thing with joly. they push me as a writer in the best possible way.

overall cadri is just a rly excellent character who, like tam and harding, do credit to dwarves that the series doesn’t always. i’ve loved exploring how differently her and thora react to their position in life, i’ve loved seeing cadri’s anger or indifference towards dwarven society. it’s so valid and realistic and good. i’ve loved exploring the specific ways in which she bucks the presumptions solas has about dwarves, how even in universes where she’s not inquisitor her individuality is still nothing he expects from her kind and how she changes him anyway. i also will always be fond of this being their friendship song.

cadri: hey solas, what d’you call a flower before it opens? solas: a bud. cadri: I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BUD. solas: UGHH.

@dalishfreckles -

it’s really hard to not write a post just about ian, honestly. all of joly’s characters are special to me, but i won’t deny ian is my favourite and has a very important place in my heart. if i were to truthfully answer those top 5 fave characters questions, ian would be on there no question.

as someone who goes through some of the same struggles as ian, he’s inspirational. seeing him struggle to keep surviving, to keep loving, to keep helping even when everything inside him is screaming to stop. i love seeing him make mistakes, honest ones or ones born of anxiety. b/c anxiety is more than just hating yourself or having trouble talking to people, although that is very real. sometimes anxiety can cause you to project some really terrible things onto people, things that aren’t really fair to them.

when i see ian doing things like... projecting his own feelings of worthlessness onto solas, assuming he must think the same rather than giving solas a chance to explain? it’s realistic, and it’s not good. it’s trying to pull people into the same destructive game you do to yourself. it’s also realistic, esp since in the thread i’m referring to solas fucked up and has shit to apologise for. idk, it’s just really comforting to see ian pull the same shit that i do, but knowing he’s still a good person and that i love him is an act of self love.

ian’s an important character for so many reasons, that i could probably write a 20 page thesis on him and his development / how much he means to me. i’m proud of him so much. i’m proud when he finds the strength to tease solas, i’m proud when he stands up for himself, even when he’s standing up against the people he loves. especially when, tbh. how as he grows he can see inara’s faults but doesn’t hate her for them, and tries to help her, when he’s under no obligation to. how he still tries to connect with solas after solas coldly brushes him off the first time ian admonishes him. and i love how joly shows it’s not easy. none of it is. and that ian has to keep choosing to be good, it makes everything he does that much more meaningful.

finally, ian isn’t a hero, necessarily. he’s not the sort of person people tell stories about, which is one reason i love the solas/ian pairing so much. it’s really all about the person for solas, and ian is just so much about what solas loves about people. it’s not always about battles and heroes, sometimes it’s just about a person who has the patience and love in them to make a tree grow in the middle of a desert alienage. sometimes the most wonderful things about people are the little, radical things they do for themselves and those they love rather than how they change the world.

this has gotten to be very long, and probably rambling, but to be fair to me this is like two weeks of joly-positivity i’ve been holding in.

i’ll probably be doing one more free day tomorrow, even if today is the last day, just to do a v general positive post for those i follow. but i wanted to take at least one day to credit the person who has inspired me with their words and characters. like. this was just their characters? i didn’t even get a chance to go into the ways joly’s prose shines, how it’s descriptive and yet never difficult to comprehend. how many different types of plots they’re here for.

but to make a long story short, joly is an incredibly talented writer. i’ve said this before, but i can look back on things i’ve written years ago with joly and still like what i wrote (as well as what they wrote but that should go w/o saying), which is a rare feeling, simply b/c joly lets me access the best writer in me. we often here in the rpc use “muse” as a shorthand for “character we write that inspires us” and i’ve found it a difficult word to rly use-- simply b/c joly and their characters are as much my muses as my own characters. at least in the sense that thinking about them inspires me to write.

tl;dr- pls follow and write with joly. b/c the only thing i love as much as writing with joly is reading what they write with other people.

[godzillamendoza]

YouTube Is Failing. I don’t know if I can keep this up forever.

I think its time I gave some of my take on this whole thing going on lately. If you’re unaware, YouTube is striking content for very silly reasons, some of which it refuses to explain. Videos get demonetized for no reason now because YouTube’s AI is biased to pick on certain channels, and the whole thing is trying to push a more family friendly, ant-controversy feeling. A lot of people are talking about the way the system works now, how creators are effected, and how there’s not much hope of fixing it. I decided that I wanted to talk about how its affecting me on an emotional level, having this anvil on a string above my head with “not suitable for all advertisers” written on it. 

As per usual, here’s a stream of consciousness rant about where I feel like all this is going for myself personally. Some of this I wrote down while texting a friend on the subject and then realizing that these points were probably important to share on a broader scale. 

I love making videos on this platform, but I feel like we're running on borrowed time. ​Its only a matter of time before this is not long financially viable and I have to drop all hopes of using it as a career. I've wanted to make it as a YouTuber since I started watching the site in 2008 and made my own channel in 2010. Now it feels like right when I'm making progress and have an audience, I'm only weeks out from getting shanked by the system and left to bleed in a gutter while my loving followers stand in a circle and panic while they fail to close the wound. Then I’ll be left to start over in some other entertainment field that's far less accessible than YouTube once was. All my life I’ve wanted to be a public persona and an entertainer. Ever since I was a kid. I felt it most when I became isolated and alone in middle school. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

A lot of people begged me to start the Patreon as a last ditch effort to keep a steady flow of revenue before the bot inevitably notices all the times I committed to dark comedy and swear words in my videos.  Now, the thing is, Patreon and stream donations are entirely dependent on the kind of audience loyalty I have.  ​If I can't continue to grow as a channel, that audience stagnates.  ​If I can't keep providing videos for that audience, they will stop caring, regardless of how loyal they are right now.  They can't keep donating to someone who isn't posting videos anymore. Its a waste of their money and I don’t think they should do that. ​The paradox is that if I can't keep producing in a way that narrowly slips past the censors and bots, I will implode, but the more content I produce, the closer I get to being unable to make more content.  I need a steady stream of content going�� or else I'll be forgotten. I can't keep a steady stream if YouTube is kneecapping creators in favor of whoever gets them the most cash. If the money doesn’t keep flowing, I’ll have to get a normal job and then have even less time to make videos, meaning that I’ll just get closer and closer to having to quit entirely because its going back to being a profitless hobby that’s distracting me from being responsible and working for a living. 

I’ve heard others tell me that I can get by if I just go PG with the whole thing. That’s more difficult than it may seem.  ​I'd be unable to put out a lot of gameplay videos because games are almost always violent and Kyle and I almost always cuss because that’s how my friend and I communicate. That’s our normal banter. Censoring that to fit the guideline and talking to each other with restrictions becomes disingenuous and its more clear that I’m trying to do the video to appease YouTube than to have fun. However,  ​I can avoid cussing in reviews. In fact, in the Marvel nemesis review I said "shit" once and zero f-words.  That wasn't even intentional honestly, I just didn't have a reason to swear that much. I think in my scripted material, I can exercise self control and avoid more adult oriented language and material, but that sort of limits the tone and humor people have come to expect from me and like about my channel. 

My goal from day one was to be a comic channel that can have fun and isn’t quite as rigid or sterile as the others. Other comic channels do two things. They look at the material as something to be taken too seriously and avoid having any kind of humor towards it, often functioning as a sort of fanboy echo chamber to perpetuate safe and sterile opinions on this material without having a sense of identity or memorability. The other thing they do is become this sort of manufactured and dishonest figure, by really jumping on the train to make easy money and ride the sudden popularity of the medium that sprang up in the past decade. They report on and commentate on comics, but they often feign interest in it or turn their nose up at it with a subtlety that says to me, “I secretly think this is ridiculous and people who like this are more so, but they give me money so whatever lol Spider-Man radiation semen in Spider-Man Reign, remember that?????? I’ve never even read that story but I bring it up constantly for the lulz” I honestly fucking despise both. I felt like most comic channels (with exceptions of course) gave this medium a bad name by taking it too seriously or not seriously enough. I thought the thing that made me unique was by staying in the middle and making jokes where appropriate, but also expressing my genuine love and fascination at others. And it was working. People were noticing and I was picking up steam. Now in the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve been unable to increase my audience. I can’t seem to gain subscribers in the pace I used to, and even my comic book related videos are under-performing. I don’t think this is the fault of my current audience, I think they’re more excited than ever. I think its that the system is becoming increasingly hostile towards creators and making it harder to get noticed and build upon an established audience unless it was ALREADY massive. Channels with 2 million+ subs get promoted more and more, while channels with only a few thousand are either getting dismantled by the robot or just struggling to ice-skate uphill and get more views. Some mothafuckas’ always trying to ice skate uphill.  So in addition to being worried about being unable to keep making things the way I do without losing financial stability, I’m also worried that I won’t be able to keep growing with the safe and sterile content I’d have to make to keep being financially stable, and the way I’m making things currently is also being actively ignored by YouTube because I don’t spam 15 videos a day to stay relevant in the eyes of the promotion bot. Its a 3 pronged problem. You can almost turn it into some kind of complex equation. But the end result is that I’m getting stuffed from 3 different angles and its looking more grim as I go. In all honesty, I don’t see my channel surviving past the end of 2018. I can already imagine myself making a teary eyed video explaining that I can’t do this anymore because I can’t afford to pay my bills.

Honestly, this is very stressful for me. The thing I love doing most, the thing that I felt like gave my life meaning for the past 3 years... its being taken away little by little. I used to get made fun of for the things I liked. People actively avoided me in school for the comic books and video games because those weren't cool things to them. Now people respect me for liking those things and think I'm cool for knowing so much about both. I took my weakness and made it a strength.  I have this legion of amazing people that treat me like I'm important now and I feel like once I can't provide entertainment for them anymore, they'll forget about me. And then I'll just have to work at the grocery store and never express my ideas and opinions. I'll just get set back to being a face in the crowd that barely anyone talks to. I don’t know what to do anymore. Best I can hope for is to just keep making things for my small but respectable audience. I’ll keep making them laugh and making them think and then when I can’t do it anymore, we’ll part ways and I’ll find a new way to entertain. And I’ll just pray to whatever’s out there that those fans will remember the times I made them laugh or made them think, and they’ll smile and ask “whatever happened to GodzillaMendoza?” And hopefully they’ll find me in whatever new corner of the world I’m in trying to make a living being creative, and they’ll support that new dumb endeavor. I really feel like I have something to give to the world as a creator. Its just hard to do that sometimes, but generations before mine had it harder. Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter and pre-scumbag-George Lucas all had their own uphill battles becoming household names. They had to fight to put their ideas out there in a vacuum. The sad reality is, for a short time in society, it became super easy to be a big name creative type, no matter what you looked like, what you were into, and where you were from. For a time, anyone could have made it to the big-time. I’m trying my best, and maybe through some sheer accident I can be one of those people. But as it is now, it looks like I may have hopped on just a few years too late. It won’t be easy anymore. It’ll go back to being this infinite struggle to be heard or noticed. Both as a person, and as a creative voice. I dread that feeling, but I suppose deep down, I’m ready for it. 

Being me was never meant to be easy. With every personal struggle, every abusive father, every financial hurdle, every cheating girlfriend and broken heart, every lie I’ve been told by someone I trusted, every cruel school bully, every time I had to fall back on a handful of pills to make it through the day without collapsing... with all of that plus run-on sentences-- I’ve gotten used to fighting to simply exist. Maybe this is just part of that. I can’t exist without art. Videogames, comics, movies, books, every other kind. It all makes me who I am, and its all I feel like I can give to the world. I’ll keep trying to give that until there’s nothing left of me. I never wanted to be rich and famous. I just wanted to live comfortably and stress-free doing the things that make me happy. Being an adult for a year and being responsible for myself taught me there’s no such thing as living comfortably or stress-free. Its always a battle with the world and yourself. So fuck it, I guess I’ll just keep going anyway. Live through the despair with blind hope and just pretend that I’m not freaking out constantly. This is going to get a lot worse and might not ever get better, but I can’t give up. I’m not particularly handsome. I can’t be some innovative inventor that will fix society’s problems. I don’t have the influence to reshape society and make the world more peaceful with a silver tongue. 

All I can do is try to make living on Earth a little more fun for other people with this warped imagination of mine. Without sharing my creativity, I really have nothing left. I won’t live through that.