#who else up rotating they blorbos

[desperatepleasures]

also re my previous labru shitpost I think it'd be really funny if kabru was like "well I need to know if I'm sexually compatible with him before I make a move" so he tries jerking off to a variety of monster-based scenarios and well. that's the story of how kabru conditions himself to be into furry porn. bonus points if he also accidentally works through some of his monster-related trauma in the process

[mantisgodsdomain]

Very fun to be an dormant Homestuck in 2023. We saw a post with an aside about the mid-to-highblood bias present in the fandom and we took a moment to think "wait, what?" before remembering how much people posted about Mallek, Lanque, and Marvus. Obviously no one asked our opinion on the matter but we think that a lot of the bias here may just be because fandom people will jump at any vaguely conventionally attractive male character who can say something angsty, and we don't see 99% of this effect because we rapidly get fatigued with any character who is overly present in the fandom and any ship that has overrepresentation in the sample size and start blocking tags.

Very highly effective approach, admittedly, but it leaves us a bit out of the loop. We only really start encountering Issues with that approach in smaller fandoms when blocking any given popular ship will instantly shrink our mutual circle to Just Us and maybe, like, one guy who we dragged in here ourself, so we have to relax blocking standards somewhat and just make it "blocked for a week" or something similar.

[birbhouse-doodles]

Being super extra about painting a particular d&d character part 2: electric boogaloo

[clanoffelidae]

my predictions for the ice ghost

arakie: -hits foot- OW FUCK-

lynx: this is so sad quancee play despacito

~~~

quiller: over two-thirds of the sealion people that you knew are now dead

lynx: NOT poggers :'(

~~~

arakie: time for your final exam. what is tik tok?

lynx: a song by ke$ha

arakie: you've done well. there is nothing left for me to teach you. my time has come. -disappears in a flurry of snow-

lynx: -playing a bad recorder version of 'my heart will go on'-

[bloominglegumes]

hey!! you’re one of my favorite artists and your stuff has gotten me really interested in transformers but i have no idea where to start watching the series :,) do you have any recommendations mayhaps?

aw thanks <33

every time i'm asked for a recommendation, i say Transformers Animated first just because it was my first experience with transformers as a kid and it holds a special place in my heart ,,heads up tho it really messed around with previously existing transformers canon so moving between this show and others might feel a bit 'woah thats different' but it's lots of fun to spot the references later on :)

if you want something that has a bit of a darker tone, i'd say Transformers Prime is super duper excellent!! strong story, deep characters + relationships, great quality overall, i'm sure many ppl would say its truly top tier transformers show :))

the g1 cartoon (just search transformers g1 itll work) is also a fun place to start if you rlly just want to know where everything else stems from,, its got a massive rotating cast of characters getting into a lot of 80s-cartoon-typical antics, obv sort of gimmicky sometimes and the quality of the show itself is actually pretty dubious fjdhfh but it adds to the charm imo,, its rlly silly and fun and there's an obscure blorbo for everyone :)

these three are all fully available to watch on the official transformers youtube channel !! so theyre like.some of the most accessible transformers things out there rn !! :)

there's also the new movie that came out recently, Transformers One!! its an origin story, so i feel it works totally fine by itself, and the quality of the writing, visuals, score, fjdhd everything is pretty awesome and i have a couple friends who watched with no prior knowledge on transformers and they report enjoying it so :)) i highly recommend checking it out if youre able to!!

[imshymorph]

Gather around everyone, here’s some soft!Gaz headcanons. Idk if it's a blorbo or me ranting and fangirling but i need to share the brain rot. another post today cause fuck it, i’ve been thinking about it for a while. also this was like a constant stream of thought and not proof read.

I truly don’t understand why this man gets ignored so much and I never will. He literally has everything you could ever want, saying he’s a ten doesn’t cut it. And yet I barely see people talking about him. (Except the gaz nation pookies, I see you).

This man absolutely bags the hottest significant other, doesn’t even know how. Don’t get me wrong, he 100% has rizz but he’s also just naturally attractive and inviting so i feel like by the time he starts to flirt on purpose it’s been two hours of pure smoothness. He’s also absolutely whipped but plays it off really smoothly.

- - - - -

Not only does he bag the hottest and meanest pookie aka you, but he also absolutely knows he did. And he’ll let right about everyone else know. I do think he’s more private about his life than say Soap, so it’s not like he’ll stop a random recruit and tell him about you (which i truly believe Johnny would do). But he has absolutely followed Price around base while he tells him about the two weeks leave he took to be with you.

Poor Price on his desk, dealing with the paperwork that comes as a necessity after Ghost and Soap blew something up during a drill that didn’t involve explosives at all. Not only is he having to fill out like fifteen different forms and reports, but he has Gaz sitting across from him, scrolling through his gallery and showing pictures of the place he took you out to on your Friday dinner date. Not only that but if Price just pretends to look but doesn’t actually pay attention Kyle will know and insist until the captain actually looks at the slideshow.

He doesn’t hammer your dates' knowledge onto Soap and Ghost as much, but he’ll definitely do subtle flexes. He chest the time on his phone instead of his watch so they’ll see the picture of you he has as a background. If someone brings up a weekend plan he’ll say how he can’t because he’s already going out with his darling. Subtly will tell anyone that will listen how you got him his new shirt, pants, cap, whatever it is tbh.

He also knows every single product that you prefer, doesn’t matter what kind it is. Makeup, skincare, cologne, fabric softener, snacks, beverages, food places, clothing brands. He doesn’t care, he knows all of them by heart. It’s like he has a six sense too, every time you’re close to running out of them he’ll randomly stop in the store on his way back to you from base and get them.

While i headcanon that Johnny gets into skin care after his darling introduces him to it (which you can read here, if you want). I believe Kyle absolutely has his own routine and that he is the one who first brings up the idea of having a spa night once a week. He’s the one to get the products, he even goes all out and does them themed, like by scent or colour or something.

Has a bunch of hoodies in rotation (or any other clothing piece you might steal from him) always making sure to wear at least one of them for a few days before “forgetting” it at yours or “forgetting” to take it to base once you’ve moved in together. He knows how much you love wearing them and how important it is that it smells like him. So he dutifully makes sure you always have a fresh Kyle™ piece of clothing available. Also it absolutely works for him too because he takes back the one you’ve had with you meanwhile. The mix of your cologne, body wash and fabric softener his favourite scent for sure.

And last but not least of my Gaz is the perfect boyfriend agenda (for today) is the fact that i know he just gives the best back massages. You don’t even have to ask for it, he’ll just come to the living room, lightly pat your shoulder so you move forward. He fits himself between the couch and your back and just gives you the massage of your life. He just laughs it off when you tell him he could be a masseuse if he ever retires from the military.

It takes less than 5 minutes to have you absolutely melting, and when he’s pleased with how comfortable and relaxed you look he just pulls you back against his chest. His arms wrap around your waist and his chin rests on your shoulder as you sit between his legs, the both of you watching a random show he saw good ratings of.

[strangefellows]

okay because i've been rotating it in my head while i have a cold and a fever and why the fuck not babble about this now!

my thoughts on ayin and angela under the cut because i have a LOT of them!

so i want to preface this with a very important disclaimer

NO MATTER WHAT ELSE I SAY HERE, AS A HUGE FAN OF AYIN (as you might notice he's my #1 projmoon blorbo), what Ayin did to Angela was wrong, and cruel, and unjustifiable, and she is 100% within her rights to hate him and resent him and have complicated feelings towards him and do everything she did in Ruina. No matter what I say about my thoughts on why he did it, I don't intend it to be an excuse or justification because it's not. He owes her an apology at the bare minimum and she does NOT owe him forgiveness or anything of the like if she doesn't feel like it. He was a total asshole and she deserved better.

THAT SAID

at the same time i don't think that ayin did what he did out of 100% outright malice and genuine hatred. i think he did what he did because he was extremely fucking traumatized, definitely probably autistic, and has the communication and emotional skills of a wet sock.

do i think he genuinely cared about angela? yes.

for what it's worth he LITERALLY CREATED A LIFE. LITERALLY. FROM SCRATCH. there's no way he didn't care about her on some level even if just as a creation because do you know how much work would have had to go into that? at some point even if he was doing it for selfish carmen related reasons he still had to care about her for her own sake on some level

(vaguely related but the fact that ayin did do this - plus just all of how lobcorp works as a wing - makes me think his background is in compsci or computer engineering or smth of that nature, with ben similarly in those fields / headcanon wise i run with he was originally compsci but after An Incident in which his own dreams were shattered he shifted to abnormal psych)

do i think he did not react well to the consequences of his actions when she finally woke up and he had to process he gave his creation the face of his dead crush + angela was completely trusting and obedient to him and even acted almost in love with him? also yes

is this justified for him? no. is it his own fucking fault for being selfish and stupid? yes.

do i think some of his cruelty towards her was not just out of lashing out via trauma and horror at what he'd done, but pushing her away the more she acted trusting/obedient bc he knew what he was setting her up to do via the script and felt tremendously guilty that he was doing this to someone who trusted him so implicitly? yes.

was, again, it justified? no.

but again, the bottom line is that while what he did was wrong and cruel, i don't think he hates her truly or that he harbored any malice towards her. i think he cared, and felt horribly guilty for what he did to her and continued to do to her, but again, trauma and 'tism and the emotional capabilities of a soggy cardboard box.

he owes her one hell of an apology at the LEAST for all he's done tbh

but another thing: i think that the reason he left the script blank for her after everything was finished was because he short-sightedly thought he was "freeing her" to make her own choices by leaving it blank not thinking for a goddamn second she would misinterpret it given his terrible behavior towards her up til that point. again, not out of malice but out of selfishness and idiocy and not knowing how to communicate At All

i also do think by the end of things after all those loops as X with her as one of the only anchors, he softened a lot towards her as he processed better how they were both trapped in an endless hell of his past self's making, and there's a lot to be said about how their feelings about each other are stupidly complicated due to all his interactions w her as X without his memories of what he'd done, and as he went thru the loops dying/committing suicide/suffering with her as the only witness. i like to think that though she hates him and has every right to and to not forgive him, it's extremely complicated and there's definitely a level of....something, having seen him suffering, but she's flawed and human and wonderful and stubbornly holding onto her hate and resentment and she's valid.

idk how much sense any of this makes but tldr ayin fucked up and treated his daughter like absolute shit and she's entirely in the right to hate/resent him and never forgive him but i don't think he truly hated her, i think he's just a fucked up idiot who made stupid choices out of trauma etc etc etc

tune in next time when i talk about how despite ayin's shitty life choices being his own shitty choices carmen absofuckinglutely gaslit the goddamn hell out of him and that deserves to be talked about! or when i talk about how ayin's shitty actions towards trapping the sephirah in the brainboxes AS sephirah was probably out of a misguided and selfish attempt to "save" them using the seedling of light process because he had regrets and cared about them and loved them and did all of that shit re: them out of coping badly with trauma mental illness and autism! (tho this is ostensibly explicitly canon imho).

holds up ayin. this is a traumatized autistic depressed mess of a man and he did so many stupid shitty things but he's not evil he's just a flawed human and ALL OF THIS is why dantayin theory (u knew it'd come up) because nobody LEAST OF ALL ANGELA truly got closure with this dumbass and they deserve that as much as he deserves a proper ending

[endoyamato]

can't stop thinking about yamato endo he's my biggest blorbo rn so have some thoughts i told friends under the cut. manga spoilers below

HES SO INTERESTING bc hes fully aware takiishi is abusive to him but seems to really love it , and to me they're equals because takiishi is a blazing uncontrollable forest fire. and without endo directing things for him and setting things up and scheming, he'd run out of stuff to do/people to beat up super fast, but doesn't in any way acknowledge it or probably even consider it 😭?!

and endo needs him too! like silent king who needs an adviser to control him & jester clown who needs the king to ground him otherwise he wold spiral into nothing. endo needs direction/reason to live, and he fully loves takiishi as he is (for better or worse).

he also admits that takiishi is abusive and "a mess". he recognizes he has issues but because he loves the takiishi he first met - blazing fire, violent monster - he enables him over and over and over. anyone else would not put up with this but endo LOVES it, it FEEDS him. he doesn't like getting in his way and he acknowledges that things sometimes aren't HIS fault (like, he says takiishi often hits him even when it's over something endo can't control at all) but he enables him because he likes takiishi the inferno monster. he likes the forest fire, but he likes controlling it just as much. it's not JUST the fighting he likes - it was obvious that he also liked doing or proposing mundane activities to takiishi too: fishing, buying him (or stealing?lol) clothes, manicures, new foods, etc. if takiishi is there, endo is happy.

and i just! need to know! why! i need to know what happened to endo to make this his bright light. is he a foil to sakura? is this what sakura could have become had umemiya been like takiishi?

i love endo so much i need to put him in a jar and rotate him in my brain for eternity i need to know why he's like this, what makes him tick, why takiishi had such an impression on him at the time, why he loves getting burned... if he bought takiishi all those expensive clothes that means endo is LOADED. maybe there's something there?

i need to know.more . and would he accept a takiishi that doesn't fight? how will their arc end? will takiishi give up fighting and endo will spiral out of control, or will endo ask to stop and takiishi try to kill him? will they part ways in the end? AHJGHHGH

[oc-poll-tournament]

OC Poll Tournament Round 1 Poll 6

Propaganda below the cut:

Eddie Alfaro (she/her) @calicohyde: Eddie Alfaro, she/her. Eddie is the third person narrator of my horror WIP Curse The Messenger, about her and her sibling Fred using their clairvoyant abilities to solve a paranormal murder. Eddie has premonitions in her sleep, where she dreams from the point of view of someone else as they die. She has severe PTSD and Survivor's Guilt from this! Because of that, and because of her grief for her missing parents, she struggles with alcohol dependence.

Normally, Eddie and Fred only solve the typical kinds of Private Investigator cases - theft, infidelity, etc. They are mistrusted in their community because of their gifts, as other witches tend to think clairvoyants are mentally unstable and dangerous. In the novel, they get their first - and only - murder case when Jessica Hase, a secular (non-magical) femme fatale, brings them the very weird case of her girlfriend's death. Throughout the novel, Eddie falls in love with Jessica, starts attending an alcoholics' support group, learns to use her gift to see the positive aspects of death, and tentatively starts to repair her strained relationship with Fred. And solves the murder, of course.

Eddie is Latina, 24 years old, and a butch lesbian. She likes sporty punk fashion, cuts her own hair, and doesn't shave or wear makeup. Her favorite color is red and her favorite flavor is cinnamon.

Chess (she/her) @concealeddarkness13 (the picture for her is made by the wonderful @drabbleitout, and she is the person on the left with the prosthetics in the picture): Chess is a special character, and I hope to show how special and awesome she is! She’s extremely distrustful, but she’ll trust people who even treat her with an ounce of decency, and she’ll protect the people she cares about with her life. She’s flirty and confident, but underneath, she has an abysmal amount of self esteem and thinks she’s a monster that will never have love or friendships. She is my blorbo who has been rotating in my mind for the past two years, and I hope you can love her as well! Someone described her in one of the AUs I’ve done as oscillating “between being a poor, wet little meow meow and a fierce feral protective lioness being held back by the scruff of her neck because she is still little”. (credits to @ratracechronicler)

She did start out with a loving family, but like all good protagonists, her parents were murdered when she was 10, and she was left alone. Especially because the society she lives in ignores violent crimes and the victims of those crimes, erasing them all from society as if they never existed. So, she technically didn’t exist in society’s eyes, so she couldn’t get a job or own property or anything. The people around her helped her for a few years until she was old enough to take care of herself, and then she learned to steal.

At twenty years old, she was kidnapped and forced into prosthetics experiments that gave her fire magic that hurts her, from her prosthetic right arm and left leg now. She has a magic fire in her lungs that flares up during physical or mental stress and burns her throat and makes her cough up smoke. Aeflin, the person running the experiments, believed her to be very strong (because she snarked at Aeflin so much and didn’t let her see her pain as much as possible), so she decided to make Chess into her weapon.

She changed her name (since Chess’s original name was Ezra) to Chess, and she put her through even worse torture. Finally, Naivi, the other person running the experiments, got Chess her own team and sent her out into the world to do what the experiments were for and to get her away from Aeflin.

Chess tried to escape that, but a random person found her and took away her memories and brought her back into the enclosure, where most humans are trapped. And she realized right away that the humans inside the enclosure found she was from the experiments and hated her and hurt her and called her a monster because God forbid women do anything (just trying to survive). She learned that the only way that she could get a warm place to sleep (not an alley) was to make herself attractive to people and flirt. She liked sleeping with people, but she mostly did it to have a warm and somewhat safer place to sleep. And even then, she’d have to stay alert because her partner could wake up and try to hurt her.

That’s where she is at the start of her story! She will get a found family and someone or someones to love! She’s pansexual and polyamorous and flirty, and she loves physical touch! She just wants people to treat her decently, and if she has to, she’ll fight to protect her boundaries. And she loves punching jerks in the face with her prosthetic! And we love a woman who loves to fight, right? Thanks for reading!

[antimony-medusa]

honestly yeah u make a really good point in ur mcyt rpf post. i was Also the person bemoaning how mcyt defaults into vbrpf tags and that there isn't a separate set, but then i realized like. i spent Years writing fic about the roosterteeth crew, which all fell in a very similar gray area like mcyt. like looking at shit like fake ah crew fic, the characters written about there are very obviously separate from the real life people, but also they are intrinsically linked. the characters don't exist without the people. and even though we were all in fandom talking and writing about them like playing with dolls, it was still like... yeah okay this fits under the rpf umbrella still. i never questioned it then, or was bothered about it not being a separate tag set, because it didn't feel necessary. which is really the same situation with mcyt!! its just that for any number of reasons, mcyt fandom in particular tends to have a very loud and very vehement group that think rpf as a whole is abhorrent and doesn't even want to be clocked anywhere close to it. which like honestly thats a personal issue at that point, thats not on everyone else to deal with, and certainly not on ao3 to sort out.

Yeah like I think RPF has a bad reputation because of some very obvious bad actors who've behaved badly in the past that the whole internet knows about, and especially because MCYT was kind of the butt of the joke and hatred for a lot of social media sites, a lot of people were eager to emphasize that they weren't behaving like that, it was fine, they were being totally normal (and they had the creator's permission, hence the boundaries discourse and the twitter cancellations for anything "weird"), and nobody should hate them cause they totally weren't like those weirdos.

And that's a really understandable reaction to try and do, I also have gone into the comments of bracket polls and seen hate, but that also ignores that the vast majority of RPF is a) not actually hurting anyone b) is not any more egregious in its content than any other fandom c) Is not inherently weirder to the creators than anyone who avidly follows their social media and shows up at their meet and greet and like— tts them stuff. We've all seen people TTS stuff that should NOT have been said in view of the creators, but the vast majority of it is perfectly fine. I very much think we shouldn't be showing RPF to the creators, and because the boundary is thin for MCYT I extend that to thinking that there's a WHOLE bunch of stuff that we shouldn't be showing to the creators— from gore to shipping to nsfw to aging down family dynamics to stuff about people they've lost— but I don't think that reacting with a horrified gasp to anyone saying "oh yeah rpf" is actually necessary. Or heck, if you were watching twitchcon vids and you want to straight up write tagged-as-RPF, go with god, I don't think that's inherently any weirder than people who go to twitchcon to meet streamers. You like them a lot and you want to rotate them mentally and get a picture with them, that's like, fine. As long as we keep it in fandom spaces and don't make the streamers feel weird cause we're showing them it, you're just doing what people who got really into polygon videos over the pandemic did, or historians who write historical RPF about their ancient blorbos, or whatever. it's fine.

Particularly cause what I write is mostly aus, I've had to wrestle with the question of if what I'm writing is RPF, and I think it's (usually) not, I can tell in my head when I'm thinking streamers or when I'm thinking characters, but like, we're talking *really* fine distinctions at points. If someone thinks that it's RPF it's not an insult to me, I can tell how they get there, and me reacting like it IS an insult is kind of rude to my fandom neighbours who are writing Gamechanger RPF where they design their own challenges cause they just have so much fun with the show, you know?

Some of this is just that I'm in my 30s and I'm tired of fandom policing, I can coexist with a lot of shit if you just tag it appropriately so I can filter it if I need to. For the holiday exchange last year we had no RPF as a rule not because I had an issue with it, but because the form to get the information for it would have been literally two hundred checkboxes long and I didn't want to do that to my spreadsheets.

I kind of drifted from your point there, but yeah, I think MCYT is legitimately in a blurry spot when it comes to if it's RPF or not, but that's not something I think we need to get all up in arms about, and we certainly don't need to, as I saw someone recommend we all do, file a ticket with Ao3 to remove MCYT tags from Video Blogging RPF.

[nczaversnick]

Writerly Questionnaire

Thanks to @willtheweaver for the tag!

How long have you had you’re writing tumblr/writblr? A fast and loose estimate is fine!

I’ve been here only, like, two months I think? Which is kinda crazy honestly.

What led you to create it?

I find it’s so much easier to get excited about my writing when other people are excited too. Besides I’m the face of this operation for Project Gemini and after years of failure on Instagram I gave up for several years until my roommate pointed out that I might actually like being on tumblr and I figured it deserved a fair try.

What’s your favorite thing about the community?

I love how excited everyone is about everyone else’s projects. It kinda blows my mind

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

I will answer literally any question to the best of my ability.

Also, to those of you who are big fans of specific characters (I’m talking about you @honeybewrites and @the-letterbox-archives ), I fucking love that you have a favorite. Mine and Rachelle’s favorite is Adrian, her second favorite is Iris and my second favorite is the guards talking about chili cheese fries in the middle of the big climax of Book 1. They don’t have names but they’re in every draft

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

Nothing comes to mind

WIP

Which WIP are you noodling about lately?

Well, I’ve only got the one, Project Gemini. We’re working on detailing the outline to break down what happens in each chapter. But while that’s been happening, while I’m at work I’ve been pondering what Adrian would be like in the Arc of a Scythe universe

How long have you been working on them?

I had the initial idea roughly.. 15 years ago I think? The first draft was written 10 years ago. I’m currently on draft 5 or, really, draft 1 of version 3

Do you remember what inspired them/ what got you started?

When I was 8 years old a friend of mine on the playground offhandedly made a comment some kind of magical being that was half ice and half fire. And it just stuck.

When someone asks “what do you write about?” What do you say?

Queer people overthrowing the government what else would I write about?

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

I think I was pretty clear the first time lol

Let’s rotate Blorbos

Name any character you’ve created, and I mean any:

Listen I’ve been writing for over a decade. There’s no way I’ll get everyone. So here’s several:

Caspian, Adrian, Aurelia, Iris, Mason, Quinn, Athena, Lucia, Resin, Filick, Nic, Weston, Atlas, Flynn, Jacob, Lily, Audrey, Micah, Ikaris, Faldris, Helvar, Mara, Flynn, Atlas’s, Dimitri, Cyrus, Jaron, Abraxis

Who’s the most unhinged:

Good lord who even knows?

Who comes most naturally to write:

Definitely Nic or Adrian, as they’re both the oldest

Do you ever cringe at them:

Sometimes, especially those early versions of Adrian

How much control do you feel you have over them? Aka do they ever “write themselves” or refuse to cooperate or do thing you don’t expect? To what degree? Are some less cooperative than others?

Oh I don’t have any. Rachelle doesn’t understand when I say things like “I won’t know the answer to that until the little Iris in my brain bother to tell me”

Some are more cooperative than others, I feel like Aurelia is always around sometimes. Mason is impossible. He’s uncooperative both in my head and in the story, which unfortunately is very on brand for him. But it also means I know basically nothing about him right now.

To get around this I tend to write snippets that sort of circle around the actual question I want answered until I manage to get it

Do you enjoy people asking about your characters? And do you have a preferred method of receiving said questions?

Do I enjoy what is probably my favorite kind of interaction of all time?

And no I don’t have a preference.

On Writblr Engagement

What makes you want to follow another writeblr account?

Good vibes. I usually check out anyone who follows me anyway

What makes you decide against following?

Besides the obvious answer of discrimination and bigotry, the answer is also vibes. If you fail the vibe check, I won’t follow.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

Oh yeah all the time. I keep forgetting that some people are mutuals and some aren’t lol

Tagsss:

@honeybewrites @wyked-ao3 @kittrrrr @zackprincebooks @fractured-shield @theverumproject @the-letterbox-archives @the-golden-comet @poppycat-writes @davycoquette @moltenwrites @finickyfelix @kuebiko-writing @illarian-rambling @yourpenpaldee

[deramin2]

Bell's Hells are so stupidly reckless and refuse to communicate even though they're breaking down from the stress and have all decided their lives aren't worth living so they'll fatally gamble for the cause. But also they love each other very much from the trauma bonding of the last 81 days and if any of them died the others worried destroy the world in their grief. They are walking disasters who should not be relied on to make cookies for a pot luck but have just been tasked with one of the riskiest and most critical scouting missions in history that could be the only thing that stops or mitigates a second Calamity. They might end up fighting each other to the death.

I love them so much. They are each my blorbos that I endlessly rotate around my brain. I'm having fun with seeing where this goes precisely because it feels unpredictable. Or like Uncut Gems where the whole appeal is that the main character is digging himself into a deeper and more dangerous hole with every decision and you're just curious how far he's going to get. And because it feels so real.

Love my representation for people that are mentally ill in very realistic ways where you really do just continually sabotage yourself and suffer through it but that always feels like what you deserve in the moment. The desperate need to prove your worth while feeling like you've lied to anyone who deems you worthy and they're going to figure it out any second now and everything's going to come crashing down. It NEEDS to come crashing down. But like, it doesn't and all that does is dump all your baggage all over the floor and some of it breaks and is sticky.

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity was fun because three explicit premise was the heroes were going to fail and the world would be destroyed because of it.

Campaign 3 is between Calamity and Vox Machina. Vox Machina were chaotic but it was a deeply heroic fantasy story where good is supposed to triumph over evil. There was always the risk they could fail, but that wasn't the favored option. Calamity they were doomed to failure and couldn't win.

But Bell's Hells feels like there is 50/50 odds on whether they win. It's far more challenging and urgent to stop Ludinus. And crucially the CHARACTERS are meant to be more challenging to have win. They are getting in their own way as real people do. They're all teetering on three edge of a corruption arc.

Corruption is what doomed The Ring of Brass. Covering up experiments. Trusting the wrong god because of incredible hubris. Manipulating the truth. Enabling others to do the same. They were so focused on their own ambition that they ignored or minimized the risks in their calculations.

Bell's Hells' greatest weakness is they're all self-sacrificing and willing to embrace dangerous powers to make themselves stronger at whatever cost to themselves or each other. They don't think they're good enough but they desperately need to be because there is no one else. Chetney voiced what they all believe: that their biggest asset right now is they're expendable.

And that's not really something you talk about with your friends because it sucks when you verbalize it like that. Your friends (of they are friends) are going to try to talk you out of that line of thinking even if they're deeply empathetic about why you're feeling that way. Just voicing their fears was a lot. Imogen feeling disappointed with Fearne because she didn't take the shard was really that Fearne was more afraid of sacrificing herself (and giving into corruption) than everyone else.

What if the heroes weren't heroic? What if they were in touch with their feelings on the surface but struggled to ever talk about it or change? (This is a theme in a lot of queer media.) What if they aren't good enough? What if they could be but there's no guarantee. Everyone agrees in advance that failure is just as interesting and pleasurable and fun here as succeeding. Just to watch the world change as a result of your actions. It's a very different tone.

Three Mighty Nein were nobodies who largely stayed nobodies even though they had a profound impact on the world. Bell's Hells are nobodies getting a crash course in becoming somebodies caught up in a nightmarish struggle, and they're crumbling under the weight of it. That's the story that rarely gets told even though it's far truer than heroism.

This is in line with the kinds of stories being told in Candela Obscura where mortality and heroism are more troubled in the face of unending nightmares. D&D's Epic fantasy is just a rarer setting to tell that story than horror. Personally I find that more mature and nuanced storytelling. Equally enjoyable but here there's more room to say something less often said and progressively more exploded than power fantasies.

This is like an evil campaign where every one of them is a mostly good person that has the capability to do great harm that others will curse their name for. They're desperately trying to pull out of that nose dive while the winds of change push down on them.

Tybee point isn't to make optimal decisions, it's to make interesting decisions. Press the big red button just to see what happens. Be brave enough to fail and see what happens when your character falls down. As Travis said her plays by following intrusive thoughts.

I'm having a lot of fun with this one because I get to follow why the characters made a decision and by what twisted logic that felt like a good idea even though it's very likely to blow up in their face. It's juicy. It's dramatic. It reflects a mindset I struggle with. It's different.

[literalite]

sunny (he/him gay trans man)

do i even need to introduce him. he's the yellow among us tictac

28 when canon starts

flirty and silly and stupid a hardened criminal, haunted by guilt, a war criminal, a child soldier, a slut. has killed children would again. character assassinated by the narrative at birth basically. but above all sexy as fuck

highest bodycount of these three guys. yes i do mean in both ways

yall know him i didnt shut up about him like all last year

vinny (he/him ssssomething? mlm cis man)

if you've been around for any amount of time you know. you know. protagonist of meet me in the woods, caleb vatore's husband. dead dilf dom. i won't him find as he'll

ages like fine fucking wine

devout catholic, as a result pretty tormented generally. blood on his hands but the only blood that has ever mattered to him was that of his younger brother who died, in his eyes, due to his own negligence. passionate despite it all and tries to be a good man. would move heaven and earth and strike down immortals for those he loves. also he's 6'9. i don't believe in heaven but he does so i hope he made it there but i also keep digging up his body to slut him out so uh. sorry vin

boobs

nayef (he/him ssssomething? queer? trans man)

newest blorbo of the roster, coprotagonist of the project violent affairs that me and @lucidicer are doing. he like speedclimbed the ranks in my mind on sheer cunt alone. rotates him in my head like a chicken

a perfectionist above all else. love is a thing to be worked for and earned rather than sometime to be given freely, and he doesn't trust it or even acknowledge it when it is. a romantic! one of my few ocs without a hint of parent issues. basically a michelin star level chef but he got all his experience by just trekking around europe, north africa and west asia for like a decade and working wherever he could

oh yeah he eats people. did i mention that he eats people

statement from olli:

LETS FUCKING GO!

[karliahs]

okay i have a couple of fic concepts for royal that I don't know if I'm ever actually going to write so I'm getting them out here

i feel like you could do a lot of interesting stuff with actualization and ren's parents. one concept is the gang are prepping for infiltration and ren's phone keeps buzzing but he never answers it and is all tense and cagey when asked about it.

everyone else is curious but respects his privacy. akechi steals his phone, sees it's his parents calling and starts needling him about it. bc of who he is as a person

tense convo ensues. one of the other PTs guesses that ren doesn't want to answer bc it might be one of maruki's wishes. ren is like yeah. if it wasn't one of maruki's wishes they wouldn't be calling at all. big oof.

and that in itself is kind of a self-contained idea, or could be continued with ren eventually either answering or listening to a voicemail of them offering forgiveness and love he knows isn't real

BUT I also imagine him eventually picking up just to tell them to stop calling at least. and then everyone watches as his face goes totally still. they weren't calling to apologise, it's ren's mother calling bc his dad is sick and doesn't have a lot of time left so they want him to come home

and ren gets maddddd. won't talk to anyone until he tracks down maruki, who allows himself to be tracked down for what he thinks might be a successful round of Convince Ren to Accept This Reality

ren is furious. maruki insists he had nothing to do with this, this was always going to happen. but of course. he would certainly be happy to use actualization to return ren's father to good health. or even bring him back if it came to that. expressing what seems like genuine sorrow for ren and this "needless tragedy" but also shamelessly using his family as a bargaining chip to blackmail this child

so, maruki asks, will ren accept this reality? I don't think ren says anything at all, just calls a persona and launches his most powerful attack at maruki, who's vanished before it can hit

and after they leave the palace the gang is like...we need to talk about this. ren says there's nothing to talk about, nothing has changed.

rest of the gang is like. I mean we're not telling you to accept his deal but something has changed. we should at least talk about the fact that he's threatening us more directly now, do we believe him that he had nothing to do with ren's father getting sick? (reluctantly yeah, that doesn't seem to fit within their understanding of maruki's powerset)

someone asks if maruki could even use actualization to cure a disease. (theoretically yeah, if ren's father wants to see himself as healthy than maruki could grant that wish.)

ren says again that it doesn't matter. how would they ever be able to know for sure that maruki actualized that by actually removing the physical disease - he could just make it that nobody noticed the symptoms anymore. and if he dies, maruki can just spring up another one

ren says he's not going to let maruki get away with turning real people in his life into puppets created to please him (the idea of being a puppet who only exists to please other people hits v close to home for this boy). he appreciates what the PTs are trying to do but he could never accept that and it makes him furious that maruki would even try

and akechi is just sitting there like i feel nothing about any of these statements. nobody look at anything my face is doing against my will

there's a lot I'd need to figure out to actually write this (whose pov is it even in for instance) and I want to tackle some more WIPs first. but I am just rotating it in my mind. partly just as another venue for exploring like...let ren get mad at maruki. let him have a feeling. maruki used him and I don't think we ever really get to dig into that

I have another WIP trying to explore similar concepts but it involves writing a lot of akechi and I'm weirdly nervous about it lol. he's so many people's primary blorbo you know. not sure I'll do it justice. tbh the more I think about the above idea the more I like it in akechi pov, which would be a big challenge for me but an interesting one maybe. hmmm

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

didnt want to turn op's post into a blorbo discussion but @wearfinethingsalltoowell im just trying to make a silly joke why you gotta add angst to it :(

no but they definitely both do it but the difference is that ed is trying (cut to late-night brainstorming sessions with a very tired and very long-suffering lucius. after a week lucius is like "please let me sleep" and it turns into a rotating cast of crew members who are hearing way more about their captains' sex lives than they wanted to know). but stede??

stede does this shit on accident. he doesn't even need to think about it. you might think having very little sexual experience would put stede at a disadvantage but if anything it just means he has no expectations of good what sex looks like and no practical knowledge of how sex actually works to hold back his imagination.

like, ed invents some bizarre position for them that they end up enthusiastically using three days in a row and ed thinks he can get a lot of mileage out of this one but then stede comes to him on the fourth day like "i thought of something else we could try!" and while ed does cum like 8 times that night he falls asleep panicking in his head because how the fuck is he supposed to keep up with this guy.

[blue-disco-lights]

✨ Weekly Tag Wednesday ✨

Hello incredible group of people who tagged me today - thank you! @suzy-queued @jrooc @skylerwinchester @francesrose3 @mmmichyyy @creepkinginc @dynamic-power @guinguin1984 @lingy910y @energievie @ian-galagher @such-a-barbarian @deedala

Name: Julia

Last song you listened to: this gorgeous song & @galladrabbles prompt chosen by @silvanshadow this week

Artist on Spotify giving you the feels: i mostly listen to ambient music at work, and this one’s been on heavy rotation lately. Otherwise, I’ll be on Spotify catching up on the South Side Rules podcast:

Favorite blorbo moment?  (among others)

Guilty pleasure snack: strawberry licorice from trader joe’s 

What food are you craving today? we talked a lot about bread pudding in this tag game last week, and now i’d love some bread pudding

Last fanfic tab you opened? The final chapter of “Going Off Script” by @mzshko

Favorite fic project you've created? @galladrabbles, my love. hard to pick my favorite but i love a meet-cute/ugly (“Childhood Comfort”)

Next tattoo you want? something small and floral maybe

What's living in your head rent-free? We’re all thinking about every single piece of Kinktober art that amazing artists like @darthvaders-wife @heymrspatel @michellemisfit gifted us last month right?? (#gallavich kinktober ‘23)

Tagging everyone I've tagged ⬆️ plus @mybrainismelted @palepinkgoat @depressedstressedlemonzest @look-i-love-u @tanktopgallavich @crossmydna @stocious @callivich @gallawitchxx @bawlbrayker @softmick @darlingian @sleepyfacetoughguy and anyone else who'd like to play!