#truly she is the worst!!

[outeremissary]

The framing of "what if our guys met and interacted" as "OC playdates" is very cute and sweet and makes me smile, but it also just instills such a sense of "sorry my kid can't come over today she's in trouble for biting again" in me when I think about Carmen. You couldn't have her around for cute, casual interactions because she uh. Changes the tone of things around her quite a bit and is often very unpleasant to be around.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael still has beef with Ennard in FNAF…

[vaguely-concerned]

I understand and agree with a lot of the frustrations about the shortcomings of Inquisition as a story. but sometimes when I hear people complain about the chosen one narrative in it I do want to just be like... you know it's a deconstruction of the concept more than anything, right. the inquisitor isn't actually chosen by anything except stumbling into the wrong (right?) room at the right (wrong?) time because they like, heard a noise or whatever. or if you think they are chosen, as many do in-universe, that's something you have to take on faith, the maker-or-whoever moves in mysterious ways indeed-style. the Inquisitor isn't actually a Destined Chosen One, they're a Just Some Guy in a fancy hat, self-delusions of grandeur to taste as you'd prefer.

a running thread that goes through all of the personal quests of the companions is the concept of a comforting lie vs. an uncomfortable truth, upholding old corrupt structures vs. disrupting them, and the role of faith in navigating that. (blackwall the warden vs. thom rainier the liar and murderer. hissrad vs. the iron bull, or is that the other way around? cassandra and the seekers -- do we tell the truth about what we find, even if it means dismantling the old order of the world? and so on.) and your inquisitor IS at the same time a comforting lie (a necessary one, in dark times? the game seems to ask) and an uncomfortable truth (we are the result of random fickle chance, no protective hand is held over the universe, it's on us to make a better world because the maker sure as hell won't lift a divine finger to help anyone, should he against all odds exist). faith wielded for political power... where's the point that it crosses the line into ugliness? is it before it even begins? what's the alternative? will anyone listen to the truth, if you tell it?

interesting how you also get a mix of companion agency in this -- you have characters like dorian who ALWAYS choose one side of the comforting lie vs. uncomfortable truth dichotomy. he will always make up his own mind to go back to tevinter and try to dismantle the corruption of the old system no matter what you say, or how you try to influence him. meanwhile iron bull is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum -- so psychologically trapped and mangled, caught in an impossible spiritual catch-22, that his sense of identity is left entirely to you and your mercy. you cannot change dorian in any way that matters; you can be his friend or not, support him or not, but he is whole no matter what. you are given incredible and potentially destructive-to-him power over bull's soul. it's really cool (and heartbreaking) to think about.

this is a game about how history will eat you even while you're still alive, and shape you into whatever image it pleases to serve it, and for all your incredible power right now you are powerless in the face of the gravitational force of time -- of more than time, of History. you won't recognize yourself in what History will make of you, because you belong to it now. you don't belong to yourself anymore and you never will again. the further you were from what it needs from you to begin with, the more you will find yourself distorted in its funhouse mirror. (why hello there inquisitor ameridan, same hat!)

and to me this is so much the core of what Dragon Age is about right from the Origins days -- how and by whom history gets written, the inherent unreliable narration of it all. I hope you like stories, Inquisitor. You are one now.

I do think it's probably still the weakest of the games narratively, and it's hampered by its structure and bloated systems. but I also find it disingenous to say that there's nothing deeper or actually interesting going on with it, thematically. if you're willing to engage with it there is Some Real Shit going on under the high fantasy-tinted surface.

[bixels]

vague-posting about this here cuz i don't feel comfortable yapping about my su takes on twitter, but after everything that's happened the most interesting thing about the su fandom to me is that so many are 100% there for applying the "everyone can change and deserves a second chance" message to everyone, even the diamonds. except for one ☝️ she doesn't count. cuz she's dead.

[folklorianhaze]

I'm sorry but the way people are acting like Taylor cancelled because of a little rain or something and purposefully told all her fans to fuck off is just so baffling to me. There was a threat of a literal terrorist attack???? HELLO??? She and her band and dancers were also victims and could have been seriously hurt if it hadn't been discovered in time. What happened in Vienna was truly terrible and I am so truly sorry swifties going that weekend didn't get their shows and I understand how gut-wrenching that must feel. But it's not as simple as her just making a little statement on Instagram. If you're hearing radio silence from everyone on her team — Taylor, her dancers, her band, Paramore — there is very likely a good reason for that. Chances are she's been advised not to say anything to prevent the risk of copycat attacks. She doesn't need to log on and perform her emotions for you on social media to prove that they exist.

[diamonds-at-y11]

Mel was really having the worst time of her entire life this season. Almost dies. Watches her friend die and is then promptly kidnapped. Well at least she gets to reunite with her brother— WRONG. Finds out she’s a child of an affair. Whatever’s going on with her and LeBlanc. Has to come to terms with having magical mage powers suddenly. Finally returns from magical backrooms. The world is on fire. Boyfriend’s lab partner has ascended to godhood and is now taking over the world. Boyfriend yells at you for manipulating him. You have to kill your mother because she teamed up with magic Jesus. Boyfriend sacrifices himself and lives in the cosmos for the rest of eternity with his lab partner. At least she got cool powers ig.

[ilooklikeapencil]

not even being hyperbolic when i say harper stern is one of the greatest characters of all time. just sheer insanity running through her brain at all times. love to watch her win love to watch her lose. i have never supported a woman’s wrongs harder in my life, just absolutely delicious

[fumifooms]

What if we were both magic prodigies and it otherized us in different ways and we devoted ourselves to protecting a family member who has general other goals & priorities. What if we both did self-sacrifical devotion in opposite ways.

What if we were dark mirrors of each other and where I've grown overcontrolling you've grown complacent. What if, bought as a servant into a pretty loving home, ownership and control is what love looks like to me, and to you neglected and lonely growing up, love is gratefully taking any scraps of it you’re lent.

By belonging to someone, even if she comes back injured or fails at finding Delgal, she feels like she belongs and is cherished, by owning someone he feels safe in them not leaving him.

She’s what’s tethering him do you see… And he’s the only thing giving her direction and purpose in her state. She needs a compass and he needs a support.

They’re both so out of it 😭 It’s the weirdly intense and unearned mutual trust and reliance on each other?? They’re each other’s weird little comfort codependent teddy bear. Or at least they were headed towards that before SHE DIED THEN HE DIED THEN THEY BOTH FORGOT ABOUT EACH OTHER AND NEVER MET EVER AGAIN. Though she’s also the guard attack hound keeping him safe… And vice versa he heals her and can rewrite her very being with just one wave of his hand. They’re both so so mentally and physically vulnerable both but they cling onto each other. They can’t perceive things accurately but despite it all someway somehow they stumble into something closer to resembling companionship just before they both die. Falin is just that kind and Thistle is just that lonely. Overworked. We both haven’t lived for ourselves in a very long time, haven’t we.

They both have a similar devotion to the people they love but again the difference is that Thistle starts overtsepping while Falin is self-effacing. The other difference between them is that people care about Falin <3 People have given up on Thistle long ago, and he has given people reasons to, while people refuse to give up on Falin. Yaad has a mini arc about it dw about it it’s ok he’s not all alone in the end 😭😭 He reached out for Marcille’s hand but they already all wanted to help him, they just had to be given the chance to, Yaad just had to be given the chance to, it’s okay I’m okay

Hey what if we learned to get in touch with our own identity and the world around us and living in the present again through being in the worst codependent situationship ever.

Falin and Thistle sitting in a tree, sucking on flowers together because they’re h-u-n-g-r-y 💕💕💕

I bet he’s only ever thought of flowers as useless ornaments. Weak weeds. But she shows him they’re tasty and useful and good and pretty in their own right too and deserve existing without proving their worth and waaa <33 Thistles…... Did you know thistles taste sweet if you remove the thorns and eat them?

"Even as a chimera, her kind nature remains" you can’t suppress her in the way that matters. You can’t soothe him in the way that matters. It’s doomed. You’re doomed. It’s all doomed. Save me.

[trappedinafantasy37]

POV: Your girlfriend has finally returned from her assignment. But, she has grown a will of her own and she despises you. And it pains you to see that she is so much happier without you. If only you were smarter and never handed her over to Ketheric. Maybe she would still love you because she was the only one in this world who ever did, even if it wasn't real.

[khaotunq]

[leslieseveride]

i know sooner or later it's gonna dawn on eloise just how genuinely in love colin and pen really are with each other, but it still kills me nontheless that she's so vehemently against them being together atm.

[mamayura]

One of the most frustrating things about the London special for me is that the way Marinette defeated the new Butterfly didn't actually solve anything. Like, at all.

Not only did Marinette for literally no reason only care about taking her own name out of the notebook, meaning all the other dozens of crucial informations the Butterfly gathered are still in there

But also that neither Marinette nor Alix gave a damn to even try and make sure that the Butterfly won't do something like this again just in an improved and even smarter way.

The reason why Alix was alarmed in the first place was because Cerise defeated Marinette at her first attempt and had to be stopped in the nick of time by a time travel hero from going through with the wish. Marinette's identity being found was NOT the event that alarmed Alix. It was the WISH. Marinette herself barely held any relevance beyond having been the one to conveniently wear both the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous in that night for Cerise to steal.

So all Marinette and Alix accomplished is that the Butterfly won't immediately go for the wish and Ladybug's identity again without an even better clever plan. That's it.

Cerise can still have used the rest of the summer break as prep time to find out every heros identity, especially Chat Noir's, every secret in all this, and even Marinette's identity again.

Cause again, what Cerise did "wrong" was immediately going all out. Not that she found out major information at all.

It is so unbelievably stupid to have Marinette and Alix act so brainless. At least don't praise them as the greatest and smartest heros of all time if you have them be this fucking incompetent.

Marinette doesn't even consider Chat Noir worthy of the information that a new Butterfly already exists, how smart they are, and that they would have already won at day 1 if it hadn't been for ALIX.

Every second that passes is Marinette now being willing to sacrifice Chat Noir's safety and life because she doesn't wanna have a conversation that isn't about her comfort.

Marinette herself would have been royally fucked if it hadn't been for BUNNIX and the Butterfly having made the wish, but she herself was utterly helpless.

Not to mention that Cerise barely even bothered with Maribug.

She didn't say a word. Didn't make a show out of her plan, didn't wake her up to rub it in. Nothing. She was already gone and making the wish before Marinette even woke up.

Maribug canonically has no reason to believe that the new Butterfly won't just adjust the plan and go for Chat Noir and the entire rest of the team first (that Marinette now made into targets again, lets hope her modifications of the Miraculous were safety precautions). Marinette was even explicitly written to be AWARE that whoever is underneath the Akuma mask won't remember shit about any of their interactions, so its not like Marinette has any reason to delude herself into believing the Butterfly is only after HER bc they formed this "life-altering rivalry" in battle.

The Butterfly literally barely paid Maribug any fucking mind. From Marinettes perspective, new Butterfly was on a mission and that was all the way through all they cared about. What excuse is there for Marinette to abandon everyone at the Butterfly's mercy now just because Alix is HER safety net? Especially Chat Noir who Marinette has no reason to not believe wont be the Butterfly's new target number one since they are after the wish?

Non of this adds up whatsoever. It is probably one of the worst displays of leadership and self-centeredness Marinette was ever written to act on on everyone's expense. And that says alot.

Marinette just completely abandons Chat Noir in particularly to get targeted by the new Butterfly however they please. There is no logical reason for why Marinette shouldn't expect the new Butterfly to do that beyond Marinette at this point being pretty much incapable of thinking about anyone or anything but primarily herself in her plans which makes her the worst possible person in her role, no matter how well she hits people.

They literally found HER identity at day fucking 1 and that situation being saved was entirely thanks to ALIX. Marinette herself was helpless and fucked. And now Marinette just leaves Chat Noir, Alya, and the entire rest of the team at fate's mercy for approximately 3 months of summer break because... well, I guess Madame "Ladybug will decide for the world what the truth is" hasn't authorized yet that reality is real, so she's for less than 0 reasons just being writing to think that the Butterfly must ask for her permission first to do exactly the same extremely clever and effective planning Marinette already witnessed, just that Marinette is the only one who has Bunnix privilege so everyone else will be doomed.

Well, that sure doesn't sound familiar at all. Doesn't remind me one bit of how Marinette in Kuro Neko just ignored Chat Noir's absence for who knows how long, telling herself "she selflessly allowed him vacation" instead of caring for 2 seconds about his safety, because I guess there too Marinette just decided that ShadowMoth has to ask for her permission first to have done something to Chat Noir behind her back...

... right after Ephemeral, the episode where ShadowMoth in fact did NOT ask for Maribug's girlboss permission first to have found and done something to Chat Noir behind her back.

Looks like History is predictably repeating itself in the worst way possible and Marinette continues proofing that she never learned anything. How wonderful.

I actually hope that Cerise used the summer break to just already find out about everything beforehand, besides Ladybug's identity, and just didn't act on the grand open plan yet because she did all the prepping first. Since those were the only two aspects that she would have learned to tackle last.

Sure would suck for everyone involved, especially ADRICHAT, but it might be the only way Marinette could actually start learning from her mistakes and be able to be a good hero again. With a villain that just does the obvious and smart moves instead of the writing continuing to dumb the villains down to pathetic degrees because somebody having a brain cell would be "mean" to Marinette who apparently can't consider anyone in anything anymore, no matter how obvious it should be.

[rosehippiefield]

I don't really like Reko's deaths but demise from her own copy is ironic and bitter. I saw posts somewhere that her doppelganger killing her ties into her arc of starting as rough and becoming kinder and I see the appeal

Like that's her past, who Reko was (not to say she was a horrible person, it's just that she was a bit more selfish and harsh on people, she had flaws she worked on and grew as a person). She changed for better, mellowed out, reflected on her worldview. Reko knows her mistakes, she moved on more or less, she's a different person now! Let past be the past...

But in this case her past literally comes back and kills her. Someone that she no longer is. With flaws she no longer has. As if life hasn't forgotten about how selfish Reko was. It's not like it was irredeemable of fake Reko to kill the real one because the former had identity crisis and a threat of death. But it still chases our Reko down as a reminder of her past rough personality

[viric-dreams]

What's Ellie been up to?

Turns out that spending 40 years being the second-in-command of a major organisation... sets you up very well to be the second-in-command of a major organisation. Having offered to look over the employment contract of a new friend of hers, Eliie'd ended up headhunted herself by Jin Huan, getting involved managing the day-to-day of his business schemes, criminal or otherwise. She's currently pursuing a venture on the docks, expanding his interests into shipping and smuggling.

And for every piece of good luck, there must be a balance. A few weeks back, a motorised cab speeding out of control would've sent her directly to the slow boat, had her new friend (@zeebreezin's Drifter) not intervened. Now the pair of them owe a very irritated rich man a lot of money. Money that their current salaries will not cover. Taking advantage of Ellie's spectacular head for numbers and ability to count cards, the two have been hitting up casinos in an attempt to make up the balance.

[cryptiduni]

“white mourning.”

[bumblingbabooshka]

Neelix x Tuvok au where they're part of a frat house and Neelix CANNOT tell if Tuvok's hazing him or not.