#yknow... the guy who enslaved him

[itslilacokay]

CHOSENWEEK FINALE : CELEBRATION / HEALING

happy birthday bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /silly

anyways thats all the days compleeete! now i can finally say this..

ChosenWeek will officially come to a close on [November 6 at 12 AM GMT+8].

why that time specifically? welllll im aware that people have different timezones, like for example it could be november 5 for me but its still the 4th for some others which means its still chosenweek for that part of the world

so me setting it at november 6 will at least have me make sure that its at least near or exactly november 5 for all of us!

dw i have it already scheduled so when it comes up then it. comes up yeah

[suffarustuffaru]

"i-it's not like i like you or anything but we're FRIENDS NOW. youre my friend. BUT ID STILL LEAVE YOU THE MOMENT THIS COMPANY FAILS OKAY ITS NOTHING PERSONAL" and proceeds to like clean up corpses for this guy on the down low. (Otto bdsm post)

I just find that last part so funny to compare pride if Otto with. Pride If "Otto was forced into destroying the kingdom for Subaru" vs Envy If "Otto was stopped from destroying the empire for Subaru" I'd love for those two to be able to talk.

haah i love how you quoted my own otto bdsm post... HAH (it is once again funny to me that ive opened pandoras box on this blog man........ now i get bdsm asks.... literally a dream come true and none of my mutuals will let me live it down BHAHA)

anyway!!! yeah yeah pride if otto vs envy otto are soo soo funny to compare <3 pfft i think ive seen you around in the comment section of my pride otto multichapter fic (ty once again for the nice comments and cool asks :O !!) but no yeah like pride and main otto are really funny. but the parallels too are super interesting..... you summarized them really well pfft.

like.... the way pride otto is Forced to do these things for pridebaru. like of course pride otto barely gets any screentime but theres stuff implied yknow? like he has to meet with subaru often, hes the messenger boy of sorts between subaru and russell fellow, otto also delivers the poison that kills julius, otto also dies somehow off screen before the climax of pride if.... and then main otto over here Choosing repeatedly to follow subaru and die for subaru and do all these sorts of things for subaru HAH - the contrast is really really strong!!

like of course wrath if otto is also a debt slave like pride if otto, but pride if otto's his own flavor of unique just bc hes forced to stay in proximity to subaru when he either may not want to or he feels similar to subaru (who goes "maybe in another life we couldve made good friends, but this Isnt that life")!! seeing how jaded and empty pride if otto is is super fascinating, bc you can kind of see the origins of it in main otto's tendency for cynicism and ruthlessness !!

but also on another level i feel like pride otto would be soooo confused and disgusted hearing about main otto. pride otto might be out here like "so not only are you friends with this guy but youre his boytoy too???? lmfao you loser" HAH

but yeah i think itd be fun for them to meet. pride if otto, the otto who never made friends and only learned to harden his heart and be forced to be an accomplice to horrible crimes...... main otto, the otto who made friends and is so so painfully devoted but it drives him to do drastic things some times.... crimes in the name of love versus being forced to assist in it.... like main otto learned how to make friends, learned the power of friendship with other people, but his loyalty is "poisoning" him while pride otto supplied the poison that kills julius...... ough......... and pride otto dies at the end...... all alone.... poisoned by other people, poisoned by what he had to do.....

but also i think my favorite bit of pride otto trivia is that word of god thing that pride otto took advantage of the fire and went to go kill russell fellow before he died.... specifically to avenge frufoo, his ground dragon.... like. ough. pain. absolute pain. pride ottos last act was to kill his main abuser??? to avenge his one and only friend????? im gonna bawl my eyes out HAHHA. but it seems that the power of friendship may have briefly won for a second there.... :,))) like im sure ottos most definitely killing russell fellow also bc thats Literally the guy that enslaved him but - the way its specifically noted that ottos main reason was Frufoo. im sobbing on the floor.

anyway i completely forgot where i was going with this but in conclusion pride otto is such a guy. 20 seconds of screentime??? dude stomped over my heart in 20 seconds. and if he met main otto i think he'd either go "wtf is wrong with you why would you do all of this for subaru??? him??? that CLOWN???? why???" or pride otto would wanna strangle main otto for being so lucky HAH. pride otto learns frufoo is still alive and well in main route and pride otto instantly launches himself at main otto like a feral cat -

[lavellane]

.........also 30-33 for deia or all three of them if u want!!🥺🤲

30. What is Rook’s class? Did they choose it?

deia and evander are both rogues, matthas is a warrior!

31. What specialization does Rook pursue? What called them to it?

deia is an archer (veil jumper i fucking guess 🙄 just minus all the magic and flare lol) and evander is.... idk. a saboteur i guess but only insofar as it relates to dirty fighting. mostly hes a dual wielding daggers guy. evander taught deia everything she knows abt the rogue trade when she was a kid after years of begging to come with her brothers on missions, but INSISTED she never fight in close combat hence why she took up the bow. shes good at being sneaky and staying out of sight, because that was the only reason her brothers agreed to take her anywhere exciting lmao. as for evander. knives are fun, easily concealed, and make him look cool at parties.

for matthas, he really subscribes to the archetype of a protector so a sword and shield fit him naturally. i also think he really looked up to people like cassandra and cullen in skyhold, who likely taught him a great deal of what he knows now.

32. How would a desire demon tempt Rook?

honestly a desire demon IS tempting deia through the entirety of veilguard and his name is solas <3 DFGJKHGJFDK ik solas is pride but. yknow.

really it would look a lot like alistair's dream during the broken circle questline of origins; she wants her family back, whole and happy again. everything she does in veilguard is motivated by the singular wish that she could have that by the end of it.

evander wants his family also, but he dreams of a life of wealth, comfort and complete freedom for them and himself. a world without authority or rules. a world where he's in control of his own destiny and can actually bond with his family instead of feeling like they might only want him around for what he can provide.

matthas would desire being ashara's second in command, back with the inquisition, in power and respected and, most importantly, loved.

i genuinely think at the start of veilguard they would be corrupted so, SO easily by desire. like if u think getting duped 4 times in a row by solas was embarrassing i just know it wouldve been way worse if he was a desire demon lol. but by the end of it....... no i dont think so. by the end of veilguard all they want is to walk out alive, with each other.

33. What do fear demons look like to Rook?

hmmmm GOOD QUESTION. its kind of tricky for deia bc i cant rly say a person/creature/animal like i can for all my other protags. but i know if she was in presence of a fear demon it would absolutely utilize her fear of water. she nearly drowned the day she was saved by the inquisition and has had a fear of deep water ever since.

evander is claustrophic and scared of being restrained, stemming from very early memories of being enslaved. but im not sure if he neccesarily fears slavers, since he's gotten very good at killing them during his time with the shadow dragons lol. so i'll have to think on that one!

matthas..... hm. can i be real i think a part of him is scared of ashara LOL. her disappointment, her ire, the magnitude of what she means to him and how very little he unfortunately means to her. i do think he would maybe see her. but he would also see her as a desire demon! so thats fun! mark him down and scared AND horny!

i think he's also afraid of orlesian harlequins. just for something fun <3 JKJFGKJFGKJ

[icharchivist]

Veilguard Spoilers (& bit tmi)

also now that i'm fully on my "i think they did Solas super dirty" ranting mood, i genuinely hated in the game when """""Varric"""" (so what? Rook's own mind? no fucking wonder i suppose) was constantly talking about "Solas loving to hear himself talk" and especially all those "he thinks he has to handle everything alone bc he doesn't know how to rely on people uwu" while completely refusing to acknowledge that Solas has been betrayed a lot and like. the whole abusive relationship with Mythal??? like also not really talking about Mythal having enslaved people and, yknow, not being a super good person in general.

but anyway i digress but i found it needlessly cruel how often they were poking at Solas' own isolation as if it was a personal failing of his due to pride and not something due to extreme trauma.

and also something kinda manifactured by Veilguard bc they decided to remove Solas' full agents network??? yknow??? the fact he was working with other people????

and i think it kinda hits me hard bc i'm talking about it a lot in therapy in the way it's so hard and alienating to come back from a pure isolation mode where you feel like you can't TALK to anyone about what caused your isolation, so it leads to even more isolation and it's suffocating, you can't reach out for help when your normal mode by default is overwhelming.

and idk i think i saw a lot of the personal loneliness and weight Solas had in DAI as something i could identify to in just how completely inescapable it can be and all, how you'd give anything for someone to just listen for a second but even when you find someone just sharing the depth of everything so deeply wrong is so soulcrushing all you can do is burn bridges instead when things go wrong and just. *takes deep breath* i have issues!!!! sorry to say that but i relate to Solas heavily in DAI and if you think it's a bad thing, welcome to my twisted mind or whatever!!!!

and like i get that the whole point is that friendship is magic or whatever but they are SO needlessly cruel about it while refusing to acknowledge any of the reasons Solas may think loneliness is safe

and when i could brush up "well it's Varric he is the guy who can't function without his friends" but it's not just Varric saying those things, and in the end it's not even Varric. it's not even Varric!!!!! i would have been okay with it if it was just Varric but it's not even Varric!!!

Like everytime they were particularly insulting Solas about this i was always feeling a bit slapped in the face, and with now the ending being "Solas is tied into a prison for all of eternity, alone (unless your inquisitor romanced him in which case they abandon the world together)" it makes it genuinely so depressing to me.

mopes.

[storm-driver]

ep 20 : AH YES, THE FREAKSHOW EPISODE. im fairly certain i only saw this episode once as a kid, because the plot beats of the episode took me by surprise on rewatch. but i do remember something about danny with the red eyes and almost getting himself in hot water constantly. maybe this episode left that kinda impact on me that i never wanted to watch it again, im unsure.

i know i saw reality trip a lot more bc i can just...remember the name of it off the top of my head. but i have to wonder why this guy was chosen as the season finale villain twice, considering he NEVER shows up in any other episodes besides these finales. or if he does, i just didnt pay attention oops

okay immediately i think i remember why i didnt like this episode that much, it was the designs of the ghosts that freakshow had enslaved. im not really sure, none of them are particularly bad. but they're really bland outside of the tattoo ghost girl. and even then, i was staring at her design thinking "wait, this is a kids show right"

i know showing skin isnt inherently sexual by nature, but she's literally wearing a corsette that barely covers her chest from the waist up, and she doesnt have ANY pants on. she still looks cool though, im just an adult and can now see things i did not see as a child.

sam's family gets properly introduced in this episode, and it's interesting to see them semi-respect her choices in lifestyle. like, yeah, they still want to pamper their daughter into being more pastel and happy vibes. but they let her darken her room and dress it however she'd like, which is nice. they only really question her choices bc danny looks really sus hanging out with her sometimes LMAO. which is funny cause danny is probably the most chill dude surface-wise to just have as a friend, if the ghost powers weren't involved. he's just unfortunately walking into the room at the worst time.

i appreciate that her grandmother is more open to sam's antics, it's nice to see an older portrayal of an adult not be senile and rude. she's a fun-having woman who only wants the best for her granddaughter, but also wants her granddaughter to just have fun. it's v cute and sweet.

so yknow those comics that people make about how danny just transforms blatantly in the open sometimes bc the animators are tryna show off of a little. this is probably one of the most show-off-my-powers one yet. he literally jumps on top of a truck while STILL HUMAN, leaps off the back of it and transforms midair, and then launches himself up. which is BEYOND extra when you consider there's police literally coming down the road as he does this.

the goth dude walking up to danny and spray-painting his shirt black, then proudly saying "you're one of us now" was so fucking real, that was GENUINE. this episode has so many fucking one-liners that got me laughing so hard. the fentons getting antsy over being mocked for wearing jumpsuits, which are admittedly cool af (thank you evangelion for teaching me that). the smash cut from sam saying "lancer let us out" to lancer trapped in the closet screaming "LET ME OUT."

i really would like to know if the staff freakshow uses has some sorta of ties to the ghost zone, or if it was just the episode macguffin. bc lorewise, what if pariah dark used this shit or something in the past? or idk, it links back to the origins of the ghost zone? any they introduce artifacts that can interact with ghosts, i just wanna know WHERE it came from. what's THE LORE.

THEY LITERALLY GOT A RESTRAINING ORDER IN PLACE FOR A 14-YEAR OLD TO STAY AWAY FROM THEIR DAUGHTER, WHAT THE FUCK DUDE, thanks danny phantom for making me google if that's even a thing (yes it is, but there's gotta be legitimate reasons)

this episode ends up diminishing phantom's reputation with the town since he gets forced into committing crimes against both vendors and literal police in broad daylight (or moonlight). i suppose that's supposed to explain away why people backtrack on trusting him, but even so, i find it odd that previous alliances dont get brought up again.

sam's grandmother calls sam 'bubeleh,' which iirc is a Jewish term of endearment for someone you cherish? it's nice to see a subtle nod towards Jewish family and beliefs, it's a really cute lil detail that i love.

i really wish this show had been preserved in something higher than 360p, because there's shots and sequences in here that look fantastic, and im sure would be GORGEOUS in 480p or higher. the shot of sam falling off the train while danny dives to save her, despite still being under the influence of the crystal, it'd be nice to see that in any higher resolution. because this is what it looks like at 360p.

maybe my source just doesnt have the DVD uploads and this was recorded from somewhere else? i dunno

this episode almost feels like it could be a season finale if it had been given a 1 hour block treatment maybe? like the makings are all there, and danny ruining his reputation for the forseeable future has potential in the episode itself. there's literally a line where danny says "hey what if we stayed behind to explain to authority what happened to us" and the other ghosts just run bc they dont wanna. so danny has to just forgo apologizing to the public for his actions and leave the broken glass where it lies. i could imagine a sequence of danny walking out of the train and trying to explain what happened to overbearing and hateful figures, with a good chunk of people believing him and others dont. but this is once again me writing a fanfic in my own rewatch, so dont mind my rambles

freakshow is a fine villain, far from a favourite. it's weird how he's almost like a ghost despite being human. his family was supposedly controlling ghosts for centuries using the crystal artifact, which just leads to more questions as to where they got it, how long has it existed, did his family know about ghosts and for how long, etc. more lore for the graphic novel to exploit im sure teehee

fun episode, banger jokes, good sequence at the end of danny redeeming himself by saving sam, her grandmother kicks ass.

yknow what I'm cataloging my feelings as i rewatch every danny phantom episode, here we go

[deepest-dope]

OCs as Companions - Cave Mann Fallout New Vegas

Basic info:

Race*: Human

Gender*: Male

Affiliation: None but likes the Kings, the Great Khans and the Followers of the Apocalypse

Role: Weird Ex-Raider mom friend or guy who carries a swiss army knife, lighter and first aid kit at all times

Location: Nipton on a cross on first meeting, squatting in the Bison Steve hotel if dismissed but not sent to the lucky 38

Base SPECIAL: S 8 P 1 E 9 C 3 I 8 A 6 L1

Tagged skills: Medicine Survival Unarmed

Perks: Cannibal, Ghastly Scavenger

The Courier will meet Cave at Nipton, angrily screaming and cursing out legionaries, he’s been crucified and you have to cut him down and help him get his weapons out of a stash just outside of town. With a couple speech checks he’ll share some stuff from his stash with you, and with no speech required he’ll help you kill Vulpes and his dogs with his grenade rifle. After that he’s basically ready to go!

Companion Perk: Pack Animal, Cave is used to being the reliable one out of any group he runs with, and he’s more then willing to help you out. Rank 1 you can give him the items needed for any recipe and he’ll make them for you at any campfire. Rank 2 all consumables are 20% stronger while he’s with you. Rank 3 Crafting items while he’s with you will give you extra items. Rank 4 Talking to him with certain dialogue options now let you use him to craft stuff like food, chems, and healing items.

Cornered Animal: If the player has Cannibal or Ghastly Scavenger choosing certain dialogue options will lead him to teach you about “soft spots” on bodies you can attack to bring your opponent down easier when you’re in a hard spot. It’s An Unarmed technique that you can use at low health or when crippled. The attack is rushing forward to bite your enemy’s throat.

Companion Comments:

Use Melee: “Sure, one sec, gotta tape my hands.”/”I can and do hold my own with nothing but hand to hand, if you’re worried about that”

Use Ranged: “Alrighty then just be careful about getting too close to any grenades yeah?”/”Uh should we get your ears checked? I have been blasting them.”

Open inventory: “Don’t worry man I’m used to being Designated Pack Brahmin”[giving him any chem or sugary thing]”You’re a real sweetheart you know that? wait I CAN have this right?”[giving him fixer, cigarettes or alcohol] “......uh thanks...I’m not ungrateful but... uhh... yknow never mind really thank you”

Overburdened: “Buddy I don’t think I’ve got room in my bag or in my pockets to put anything else in unless you’re suggesting we shove it somewhere sun don’t shine”

Stay close: “What? Cold? I’d give you my coat but all my craps in it”

Keep distance: “Aight, just watch you’re ass so I don’t end up blowing your limbs off on accident”

Be Passive: “I’m gentle as a bighorner lamb”

Be Aggressive: “Kay, stay out of the blast radius if you don’t like gore”

Wait here: “Wait? For how long? HEY! FOR HOW LONG?!?!”

Follow me: “Finally! what were you even doing?!”

Sneaking: “Good old fashioned ambush, alright!”

“Let’s travel together”: “Sure, don’t got anything better to do yet”

“Let’s travel together” (already have a companion): “Not that I’m saying you got bad taste in friends but your pal doesn’t seem like the kinda person I like to take trips with, understand?”

Leaving companion at the Lucky 38: “Wait around in an air conditioned room for an undetermined length of time? Hell yeah, go ahead and take your sweet time coming back for me too”

“I wanted to ask you some questions”: “Bout what?”

“Tell me about yourself”: “I...don’t really LIKE talking about myself though...”[speech check] “Aw fine I guess it couldn’t hurt, I was born in a vault out east but I don’t really remember much from it, got kidnapped age 6 by legion and enslaved, escaped legion slavery with one of the other slaves, had a shit time on the run till we met up with his family who turned out to be Jackals that didn’t like me much, got kicked out by the old man’s son eventually, tooled around for a while until I got arrested, and then escaped with the powder gangers to nipton and now I’m here with you”

“What do you think of the NCR?”: “They act like they’re better then the legion but they aren’t, just called slavery a different name, NCRCF was as much a hellhole as the Slave camp I grew up in”

“What do you think of the Legion?”: “I think they’re a bunch of stupid evil cunts who’ve gotten way too lucky so far and are due for an ass kicking. If I could crush Little Caesar and his roman themed raider gang out of existence I fucking would. I grew up in one of their slave camps and the shit they did to me there isn’t something I can ever forgive”

“What do you think of Mister House?”: “That cunt who kicked the Khans outta Vegas? He needs to get out more, specifically pull his head out of his ass, this ain’t the old world and it won’t ever be, playing dressup with the gangs that bent the knee isn’t making anything better for anyone”

“What do you know about Benny?”: “I think he’s one of the casino owners in New Vegas but thats about it”

“What do you know about the platinum chip?”: “Besides what you’ve told me? Sweet fuck all.”

Death: Before his personal quest “...Finally”/After “No no no no not now not after I-”

Trivia and additional information: Yeah I unfortunately don’t have anything I can even try to draw him with so putting a description of him here: He’s a 5′3 albino dude in raider badlands armor with a real loose trenchcoat over it and a prewar bonnet on his head to keep the sun off, and though it wouldn’t show up in game he has sharp ass teeth, I’m talking double canines here. He has anisocoria which along with the albinism makes him sensitive to light. He also has frequent nosebleeds from a multitude of problems such as being dry as the mojave itself because he does not drink enough water in the desert, eating way too much sugar on the rare occasion he does eat of his own volition, high blood pressure from stress, and the occasional punch to the face when he gets into a fight.

You may have noticed the cannibalism up there and yeah he has eaten people before but it isn’t something he likes doing, he was raised for the latter part of his childhood by a hardcore jackal survivalist though so his opinion is essentially “you gotta eat and if it’s all you have then don’t waste it” he wouldn’t risk kuru if he had any other options but a childhood of malnutrition and food insecurity has given him some impulse control problems to put it politely. If you imply do it because you like eating it you will fail the dialogue that gets him to teach you Cornered Animal. He thinks cook-cook is fucked up in general but is especially insane for cooking people when he has other options.

Cannibalism aside he has some problems with disordered eating and general lack of appetite. He’s so used to barely eating he just hardly ever notices hunger at this point. He also has a somewhat hard time eating regular meat but he can’t really afford to be picky. He tries to remember to keep himself fed to prevent,, unfortunate accidents from happening though hes not too good at it.

He’s an actually damn good cook when he’s cooking for other people though, which is one of the things he used to do for his old gang along with making chems and patching people up when needed. He likes the job too! He loves collecting recipes he can feed other people later, I like to think there’d be a dialogue option to give him your bloatfly slider recipe since the player seems to be the only one who makes those in game and in return he gives you his recipe for desert stirfry. Also stealing Cook-cooks fiends stew recipe in his quest.

Unmarked Quest: Straighten up and Fly Right: Help or hinder Cave’s attempts to quit chems by putting any chems available or fixer and optionally bubblegum into his inventory. The fixer being for withdrawal symptoms and bubblegum to help him build up a new habit to replace chems with.

Personal Quest: Why don’t you do right?

Quest Triggers: Walking into Fiend territory, specifically Driver Nephi and Violet’s areas or taking Three card bounty from Major Dhatri. Cave will initiate dialogue and tell the courier that he has friends in the fiends who joined after he got arrested  and sent to NCRCF and his chapter of the Jackals completely fell apart. He’ll have an extra line asking you to try and spare Nephi and Violet if you took Three card bounty.

Quest Description: He’ll tell you about how for a brief time after the death of the old man the leader of their chapter of the Jackals tried to kill him, causing a split in the gang and ending in Cave briefly becoming leader of it. In this time he met and befriended escaped mormon Nephi and one of the few surviving free hangdog tribe members Violet, allowing them to join his gang, that they weren’t originally fiends and probably only joined after his incarceration for their own safety. He’s sure if you just get them away from cook-cook and motor-runner they’ll be able to recover! (like him if you did his unmarked quest)

You can either let him talk to them both, helping him figure out what to say to convince them to leave the fiends and get help, or talk to them yourself with some high speech or medicine checks, and sending them to either the mormon fort or the great khans depending on how hard you want to press for getting violet to quit chems or Nephi to join a faction. Maybe even get Dhatri to get their bounties taken down.

Violet has the easier speech checks, being quickly convinced to abandon the fiends for her dogs safety, or medicine checks to convince her that psycho is affecting her ability to care for her dogs. The have Cave talk to her dialogue is essentially [Speech 50 Just tell her you care about her dumbass]. She can also be convinced along with Nephi to help you deal with Cook-cook and Motor-runner to still get some rewards off Dhatri. After this you can send her and her dogs to one of 3 locations after talking to one of the leaders, The Thorn to train dogs for Red Lucy, Red Rock Canyon to join the Great Khans, or the old mormon fort with Julie to guard the place.

Nephi is the harder to convince of the two, requiring higher speech checks to convince him of your good intentions. He’s just paranoid as shit about getting sucked into another cult after leaving mormonism. you need high as shit medicine or speech to get him to go to the followers or the great khans, though the check for getting him to help you fight cook-cook and motor-runner is comparatively low. The Cave option is actually easier here as Nephi already trusts him. I imagine you’d need 75 in medicine to convince him to get therapy to you know recover from leaving a cult. It’d take 80 speech to get him to join the Great Khans as you need to convince him its nothing like a cult. The lowest check is probably the one that gets him to go to the Thorn where he’d become champion fighter.

After get them to leave the fiends and optionally help you kill Cook-cook and motor runner after theyre dead you can do some optional things, like if queenie and Motor-runners dogs survive the fights you can also send them to any of the options you sent Violet, her dogs and Nephi to, with dialogue heavily implying you just lead the animals into the fort/camp/underground fighting arena handed the leads to someone and left without explaining anything.

Outcomes: Obviously you fail the quest if you kill either violet or nephi and lose Cave as a follower but if you got them to leave the fiends and go somewhere else they’ll be where you sent them, wearing wastelend wanderer outfits if in the fort or khan armor in red rock, keeping the fiend outfits if in the thorn. BoneGnash, Ghashbone and Queenie will also be seen in these places if you sent them there.

Endings

He hates basically everything but Independent Vegas lol. I’ve been writing all day so just going to give short summaries instead of trying to write anything that sounds like it could be read aloud by Ron Pearlman

NCR endings: If you don’t help him quit chems or do his personal quest and kill his friends he gets deeper into chems before eventually committing suicide by NCR soldiers. If you help him with his chem problem but don’t do his personal quest or kill Nephi and Violet he dies getting shot down trying to convince them to leave the fiends. If you do both his unmarked and personal quests and sent them to the followers he ends up joining them and getting an actual practicing medical license before getting arrested along with Nephi and Violet when the Followers are pushed out of Vegas. If Nephi and Violet joined the Khans he goes with them to Idaho. For the Thorn they just stay there laying low, fighting in matches waiting for the NCR to find them.

Caesar’s Legion endings: No matter what you did for him before he tries to kill you if you let the Legion take vegas

House endings: If you don’t do either of his quests he joins the fiends attack on Camp Mccarran and dies fighting a securitron. If you help him but not his friends he goes to Freeside after they die to securitrons alongside the Kings. If you help him and his friends out and sent them to the fort he becomes a legit doctor and doesn’t get arrested by the NCR though he isn’t quite happy under House’s rule. If with the Great Khans he either goes with them for their last stand at the Dam or follows them to Wyoming, living a decently happy life where he doesn’t have to deal with house running things. In the Thorn he becomes a Champion fighter alongside Nephi eventually taking over with Violet when she expresses dissatisfaction with how Red Lucy treats her dogs

Independent Vegas: Doing neither of his quests causes him to follow Violet and Nephi there taking over the camp even if Motor-runner is dead, becoming their designated chem guy before eventually dieing of an overdose. If he successfully quits chems but his personal quest isn’t done he ends up joining the Kings, spending most of his free time outside of that trying to get Violet and Nephi to come to freeside to. Both quests complete and his friends are at the Thorn you get the same ending as House basically. If they’re with the followers he ends up dragging Nephi and Violet through a crash course on medicine and getting them to help the Followers with him and is unbothered by the influx of patients mostly happy neither the NCR or Legion won. He still leaves with the Khans if thats where Nephi and Violet are.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

OOOH. N IN HISUI SEES INGO??? OO??

YOU GET ME

i'm thinking that N, unlike ingo & the canon protag, arrives with all his memories in this au. this is a younger N, pre- the events of b/w, and probably before he's even been allowed out of his room at all, so he's never questioned the things ghetsis has taught him. (he's also like, fucking terrified, bc to him being out in the vast wilderness of hisui is like being an abandoned kid again, the feeling of being able to move freely is not associated with happiness for him.) but he sees ingo, In Person for the first time ever, and just, goes through several stages of grief bc this is the guy who Ruined Trains. this is the Evil Subway Boss. this is- real? he's here? am i gonna die? oh shit he's being Polite, oh shit i have to talk to him, oh no-

(not sure yet how N feels about the concept of wardens, or whether he gets dropped pre- or post-ingo becoming sneasler's warden. we'll get back to that later)

but they get to talking, and N isn't exactly trying to hide that he remembers where he came from, but the unova he remembers is, yknow, very skewed. and as far as people here know, what he says is the truth: he came from an evil future place where people enslaved pokemon for their own desires, and where the existence of pokeballs has ushered in a dystopia, and, he points with honest fear in his eyes, ingo is One Of The Worst.

ingo, not remembering anything, is just like wow, i was a fucking asshole in the past-future i guess. that doesn't feel like me, but okay. i guess i'll, idk, try to atone?

(and then over time N encounters the galaxy team, and sees more people working alongside pokemon, and gets to know ingo better (and maybe some of ingo's own memories come back to contradict his), and starts to realize that... maybe... what ghetsis was saying was kind of fucked up. and maybe it wasn't actually the greatest thing that he was kept under lock and key for years? maybe he's gotta. rethink some stuff.)

[gender-luster]

AND IF, after all of that, i didn't blow up the town, but instead- OH! BY THE WAY: my dad's life is also fucking tied to my own somehow and so he cannot die unless i also die. oh, and after that whole monologue my dad did about how he's hated me my whole life, he leaves to go and, one by one, kill everyone i've ever considered family.

so i Don't blow up the town. because there are people (my son, grandson, and girlfriend) there that i still care about and want to be safe and happy. so instead, i hunt down my father, who's about to kill them, and i take the magical dagger i'm bound to, and i plunge it through both of our chests, sacrificing myself, and killing us both, and thus saving all the people i care about.

and that's the end for me. i die killing my father, holding him, and giving him a kiss on his cheek. because after all of that. after all he did to me. i still cared about him. i just wanted to be loved. the end.

Actually, it's not. because an indeterminate amount of time later, i rematerialiaze and wake up, to find my son in front of me, dying. as he has just been tricked into sacrificing his own life to resurrect me. by this woman, who i have a hostory with, by the way, but we're not getting into all that right now. but anyways, my son, my beautiful son, who i adore, who i RIPPED WORLDS APART to get back, is dying in my arms. and i am NOT having it. so i absorb him into myself. his spirit and consciousness now reside in me. which is great! because he's not dead. but it also sucks, because it gets kind of crowded and hard to pars when you have more than one person in you.

so yeah, my son's not dead, but no time to focus on that, because yknow that woman i mentioned earlier? the one i have a history with? yeah, so she has that magic dagger of mine, the one that i'm bound to. but not only am i bound to it, if you are in possession of it, you have full control over my every action. so she takes that dagger and basically just makes me her thrall for the next year and a bit. and over the next year in my enslavement to this wicked witch, where she keeps me in a cage btw, i'm basically just going insane as this whole housing two souls in one body business actually terrible

so terrible, in fact, it gets to the point where my body keeps shifting and morphing into my son's body and switching who's in control. and my son realizes that the best shot we have at defeating the witch, involves me, (super powerful sorcerer guy) being one body and one mind and not this tortured mess of consciousnesses. so what does he do? he separates us. the thing is, though, i can't be alive without his death. a life for a life. and so he dies. again. in my arms. for real this time. in the middle of the woods. and the only other person around is my grandson's mother, but she has to go and tell all the other main characters what just happened. so she goes, leaving me alone, with the body of my dead son, in the woods. and you'll never guess who shows up after that...

yup, it's the wicked witch who's still keeping me her slave. she disrespects my son's corpse, and then drags me off to continue doing her evil deeds for her so i can't even fucking mourn.

so anyways, a bunch of bullshit happens, (like my son's funeral, which i cannot go to, because once again i am a thrall being kept in a cage.) and the wicked witch is defeated (yayyyy) except, unlike with all the previous villains, the protagonists suddenly decide to take up a hard 'no killing rule.' like. "yeah, sorry we know that this woman killed your son, yeah, the ONE THAT YOU RIPPED WORLDS APART TO GET BACK TO, and also removed all your autonomy, keeping you as her slave that she kept in a cage for a little over a year. however, none of that actually matters to any of us, and you're not allowed to do anything about it. sucks to be you."

yeah. if that was me. if i was the guy who went through all that. that'd be it for me. I AM NUKING THAT FUCKING TOWN. my son, who was the person i cared about most in this, or any world, who i sacrificed my life to fucking protect isn't even there anymore. because, again, that witch fucking killed him. so yeah, no more storybrooke. no more stupid fucking fairytales. just fire and blood. the end

i get it that rumple was like. the literal actual worst. a lot of the time. but i gotta be honest, if i were him, i would be soooooooo much worse sometimes. like.

if my father, who raised me alone for the first several years of my life, before abandoning me when i was like. 9 years old. so that he could have eternal youth and power. years later, showed up again and tried to take MY son away from me (oh, you couldn't keep me with you on your fun magical timeless island, but you can take my son?? children can't have children, that's too unbelievable for you?? but you can hang out with your grandson?? that's totally fine?? explain that to me you dumb fucking cunt) then later, when i was not around or there for my son (for uh. reasons.) he DOES manage to kidnap him. and then keep him hostage for like. a century a two. and i didn't even learn about that until years after the fact. and then years after that, he kidnaps and tries to kill my grandson (his great grandson) so that he can continue to have eternal youth and power. and then after we stop him from doing all that, he enacts a curse, one of the ingredients of which is The Heart Of The Thing You Love Most. and whose is that heart, you ask? not mine, oh no, certainly not. it's the heart of some RANDOM FUCKING SIXTEEN YEAR OLD that he also just like. kidnapped? or something along the way.

and then. after all of that. we come face to face again, and he goes on this whole monologue about how he hates me and he never loved me, ever since i was a baby he hated me, and i ruined his life and he hated being my father... like. i already knew all that. but.

that'd just be it for me. i'd blow up the whole fucking town. no more storybrooke. no more fairytale bullshit. just fireball fireball fireball. i've had enough

[whocalledhimannux]

oyou know what, fuck it. I’m drunk on a Tuesday night and I’ve been talking about Jews in an old fandom for the last couple of days so I’m going to make my case for Jewish Relius, in full acknowledgement of the fact that it makes no sense in canon

so the maps of the QT world seem to sort of imply that this is a world where Turkey/possibly parts of Iran and Iraq share a land bridge with Africa, cutting out most of the Sinai peninsula including Eretz Yisrael. which would make the existence of Judaism (or Christianity or Islam for that matter).... difficult. but not totally impossible! because Avraham Avinu is said to be from Ur, which historically was on the Persian Gulf which is roughly analogous to the QT great southern ocean. so it’s totally possible to sub one of those Three Cities or Hemet in for a fictional QT Jerusalem.

and it’s then real easy to make a fictional diaspora in the Hephestian Peninsula because of all that imperialism in the Mede region (am I making Immakuk an antisemite in this au? hope not. he can be that fucking dude. what’s his face. Cyrus? the one who ended the babylonian exile), and the Greek Jewish diaspora is one of the oldest in the world, going back a solid 2100 years, well within the QT-equivalent era.

and yknow, by Gen’s time people are pretty lackadaisical towards the gods, which is Good for the Jews, because we tend to do Not Great in times of strong nationalistic  religion and cultural hegemony.

anyway that’s my argument for Jewish QT characters in general

now let’s move on to my boychik Relius

I am aware that this could play into stereotypes given that Relius is a very Suspicious Slippery character who ~Betrays his Country~ and has a voracious sexual appetite but consider this

I Can Do Anything I Want

setting aside the sex stuff because sex is Good actually and all my favorite people are LGBTQ Jews

gross stereotypes very often have their roots in something Real but misconstrued

we see this in QT itself. very, very, very frequently, characters resort to trickery and lies and underhandedness because they are members of an underclass and therefore do not have the luxury of above-board measures--Pheris weaponizes ableism, Irene weaponizes sexism (moreso than Helen, who tends to defy it outright). Relius and Kamet are a bastard and an enslaved person, respectively (and okloi as a matter of course) and that shapes their personalities to a POWERFUL degree

so too the Jews. for a significant portion of European history, Jews were legally okloi as a class, pushed into trade because they were forbidden for owning land. being non-landowners deprived them of most of the legal rights afforded subjects/citizens, but in some ways also was beneficial, in that they were more mobile and had more avenues for success and stability if something like, say, a war or a flood or what-have-you bankrupted farmers and landowners. at various points, various European nations also employed Jews as the enforcers of the state financial apparatus. Christians and Jews alike are forbidden from charging interests to their in-group, but without interest, nobody is fckig giving loans to anyone, and if no one can get a loan, that’s a significant damper on the economy. so, the king puts Jews in charge of banks, because Jews can charge Christians interest. the king puts Jews in charge of collecting taxes. “court Jews” do the bidding of the monarchy because putting themselves under the king’s protection gives them access to wealth and power they would otherwise be barred from, AND ALSO protects them from outbursts of religiously or politically motivated antisemitic violence because fucking No One likes the tax collectors or the bank’s loan officers

which is to say - Shylock was the tragic hero of Merchant of Venice, actually

and Relius can fit a stereotype and still be Good Jewish Representation if he is written with all the love and sensitivity and historical nuance I hold in my heart

side note: all the Tolkien fans who were mad at me for writing Jewish Dwarves because I was ~stereotyping them~ when I was just trying to add nuance to Tolkien’s blatant “they were meant to be Semitic” bullshit can still fuck right off

where was I going with this

okay so

Judaism is matrilineal and Relius is raised by his mother and his father is a steward but doesn’t acknowledge him and he’s sort of three-times stereotyped as a bastard, an okloi, and an Outsider, barely Attolian tbh, doesn’t acknowledge the old gods or the new

and he learns how to manipulate people as a matter of survival and he thrives and there’s some kind of parallel to be made between Mordechai and Esther and Relius and Irene, I’m pretty sure--

Mordechai is the uncle of a young woman who becomes the queen of Babylon or Persia or something and he helps her get there and there’s this whole Thing where an evil advisor is going to kill the Jews and Mordechai is like “perhaps it is for this moment that you have become queen?” and Esther becomes a hero and we have a whole holiday about getting drunk and eating food in the shape of the evil guy’s hat/fingers/ears

the way he guilts Kamet in that Thick as Thieves scene. very Jewish.

the fact that he’s in love with Teleus, who is Extremely Goyish. reminds me of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, when Sammy falls in love with a blond named Bacon. the Intellectual loves the Jock. shocking.

my god, the fact that he’s always poking his nose into other people’s business. because of national security? no. because he NEEDS to be the most well-informed gossip at Kiddush after Shabbat services. prior to her marriage, all of his reports to Irene were made over a dixie cup of wine, while clutching a plate from the buffet, looking across the room at the people they were talking about

the short velvet cape he affects even in summer? actually a tallit. Costis, too, is the most hopelessly goyishe man who’s ever existed and just forgot to mention the fringes.

he’s into history (Jews fucking love history) and astronomy (because he has that sphere thing--and you know, astronomy is useful for a lunar calendar), and he plays the flute. you know why there are no Jewish piano players? because you can’t flee the country with a piano. but a flute fits the bill.

oh man, his lessons with Pheris could be ripped straight out of any Jewish-American Eastern-European immigrant story about a cheder. Jews Love education and don’t fully give a shit about not scaring children in the process.

that’s the proof, and may I add the headcanons:

Relius enjoying a very long, leisurely meal on Friday evenings for Shabbat, drinking wine, singing/enjoying music, discussing grammar/translation, poetry, and philosophy with his dinner guests (Kamet, Gen, Irene, Pheris. Teleus and Costis mostly there for eye candy.)

Relius in the beginning of his career being more cautious, and then becoming more comfortable in his position and being like actuallyyyyy, I will keep kosher and keep the Sabbath, thanks, and if I’m a workaholic who writes spy reports on Saturdays that’s None of Your Business. I will get mad at people who expect me to work on the sabbath anyway.

got a lil silver hamsa pendant with a sapphire evil eye he wears all the time.

favorite holiday is Pesach. what can I say, Greek Jewish boy loves a symposium.

in conclusion: if you understood this post, the most niche post I have ever created in my life, please dm me so we can be friends. Relius’s Hebrew name is Reuven in honor of the fact that that would be my Hebrew name if I were a man. good night.

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

Sorry about ypur dickhead brother, my older brother was starting to go right wing a few years ago, thought Trump wasnt too bad and everyone in Me Too movement were lying bitches, thought the whole gay rights movement was bullshit. But he's okay now, met a nice partner, had a baby and calmed down. He wants to see my next drag king performance, i'm doing I am the Walrus, chucking eggs everywhere of course 😄 Hopefully your brother turns out alright, sorry you have to put up with it!

Im glad you’re brother grew up anon :) and I think him finding a partner and calming down is key - like istg most people who are right wing (and have been raised in pretty leftist households) literally do just have to meet and speak to people irl, and then they’ll calm tf down yknow.

Honestly, my brother whose a bit right wing is annoying but I don’t give a shit if he’s gonna call me a “mentally enslaved moron”, cause its just funny to me to be honest, and I can laugh it off. But he’s such a cynical, miserable guy that it just makes me sad for him. Like he spends all day at his computer, he has no friends in real life, he doesn’t know how to make friends and he’s too scared to start a conversation with anyone; he had a girlfriend when he was maybe 16 or so, but since then nothing (I suspect he might be confused about his sexuality, but its not something weve ever talked about), he just eats junk food all day, he lives alone, he never goes out cause he doesn’t drink or smoke or anything etc.

I guess his issue is that he has aspergers (although im not sure if that’s considered a diagnosis anymore?) so that can make socialising difficult, but also, my dad was especially harsh on him growing up. Like my dad was a dick to everyone, cause he’s asshole, but theres something about my incel brother that he always especially despised. But when he was a kid, my brother used to be very outgoing and funny and cheeky, so its just sad having watched him retreat into himself, becoming more isolated and insecure, every year until he’s gotten to this point, where he’s at university, and he’s got no friends. None of this is a judgement on him btw, like I just think its sad tho because ive had similar points in my life where ive had absolutely no friends, and I understand how difficult and demoralising that experience can be. So I think the issue was that he has aspergers, but that didn’t condemn to a life of isolation, but more so he just never had any support and instead our dad just made him feel weird and belittled.

And I really think if he just went out and spoke to real people, he’d realise that most people are pretty okay. Even the vegetarians and vaccinators (did I mention he’s vehemently anti-vax and anti-lockdown and anti-mask? 🤦‍♂️). But its just like, where do you start? If you have friends and relationships already, its pretty easy to become mates with their mates etc. But if you have no one to begin with, and you think you’re entirely unlikable and don’t know how to talk to people, its gonna be very hard to make friends irl.

Anyway, I hope he’s able to work through some of his shit, because I always just want him to go out and Live His Life - and im fairly sure he wants some mates and a girlfriend (or boyfriend maybe?) hence his occasional misogyny. But how he’s gonna get to that point, I just don’t know.

[tfw-no-tennis]

animorphs!!!

ok I read animorphs when I was 10 or 11 I think? and I only read it once, along w/the spinoffs and stuff, and I've always meant to revisit it...SO HERE I AM....

and oh MAN I forgot how good this series is. like I knew it was good but some things from your childhood don't hold up yknow? especially books aimed at younger audiences

but oh boy does animorphs hold up. they're easy to read and perfectly balance the line between dark/adult topics and more kid-friendly lessons. excellent 

so yeah I'm loving it so far. I forgot how fast some stuff happens lmao, like I forgot that tobias gets trapped as a bird in the FIRST BOOK 

also I just adore how realistically disorganized/confused the animorphs are. like, they got the elevator pitch version of the conflict from elfangor before my mans got eaten, and also they're middle schoolers. of course they’re always just like ‘wtf do we even do’ 

so like...their plans mostly don't work. and even when planning they run into tons of logistical issues w/morphing, traveling, communicating etc. 

and I love how they clearly need to maintain their normal lives as well in order not to raise any suspicion 

and I like the little details like them not spending all their time together at school because they didn’t before so that would be suspicious

oh man and I love the different family dynamics in the series. you have jake, whose family seems pretty normal until we find out that tom is a controller, and rachel, whose parents are divorced, and who has to deal w/the complications of that. and then cassie, who is an only child (I like that we have a mix, with rachel and jake having siblings), and of course marco...

iirc marco was one of my favs (if not my fav, but its hard to choose) back in the day, and I forgot how reluctant he was to participate in the animorphs thing...and the fact that he was about to quit the team and then runs into visser 1.....

another fucked up little moment I liked - when they morphed dolphin and marco had to morph back to human bc he gets injured and he was like ‘I cant swim, and my mom drowned, I don't want to die like she did’ I was like oooof

also on that topic I adore how little the animorphs know about how anything works. like they once wondered if there's a limit to how many morphs they can acquire and they were basically like ‘idk guess we’ll find out’ 

and then when marco got injured as a dolphin and they were like ‘morph back I guess and hopefully you'll be okay?’ like damn luckily that worked 

basically these books do The Most Excellent Job showing that these are just kids. like they're literally in jr high which is 90s speak for middle school....they're like 13???? at most???

and the narrative reflects that perfectly!! all of them, even rachel who is pretty much the most gung-ho about fighting and stuff, have nightmares and all these terrible experiences bc they don't have basically any guidance 

and even with ax, it’s immediately obvious that he’s also just a kid, even though he’s this deadly alien....

also oh mannnn I love so much how we’re introduced to the andalites as this heroic race and how that slowly changes over the course of the story 

like, when elfangor introduces himself as ‘prince’ you assume he’s part of the andalite monarchy - but later we find out that ‘prince’ is a military rank, and the andalites are a lot more militaristic than we would assume at the beginning 

its so fantastic how it starts off as a fairly black and white conflict of andalites = good guy aliens and yeerks = bad guy aliens

and you even have some background stuff going on w/the taxxons being controllers by choice, and the hork-bajir being enslaved 

but as the story goes on, all of those lines get blurred in different ways...

also ooof the poor hork-bajir. I always felt so bad for them. it’s crazy that even in the first book, the animorphs are killing their enemies - at least I inferred that in book 1, but it becomes way more overt later on...the tough situation of them knowing that the hork-bajir are unwilling hosts but that they’re so dangerous that not killing them could be fatal to the good guys

and ngl this time around I have a lot more sympathy for the yeerks, even tho they don't really deserve it (at least in the early parts of the story where I am rn)

like...they're just these blind helpless slug creatures, but they're also fully sentient and intelligent? like, that's so fucked up. imagine yourself as you are now, but you're just a sensory deprived slug swimming in a pool. that's pretty fucked. and then the fact that the yeerks are biologically made to be parasites...its kinda no wonder that they ended up the way they are (and it also makes stuff like the yeerk peace movement really compelling)

also wow I kinda forgot about all the body horror w/the morphing. like ik that's one of the things that animorphs is known for but like. I forgot how much it happens and how creative the horrifying descriptions are. I love it

and omfg so when I first read this series the ellimist stuff confused me a lot bc I didn't read the books That closely (I mostly wanted to see what would happen next) but I loooove time travel bullshit so I’m really enjoying it so far

even tho tbh I think even if I had paid more attention as a 10 yr old I still would've been confused bc the ellimist stuff is kinda just inherently confusing lmao 

ok and I just love the characters,,,I love that the books switch perspectives, and KAA did such a masterful job of portraying differing and realistic reactions to their situation....like, all the animorphs react so differently to their circumstances, but their reactions are all so grounded in realism and also their personalities 

like man I love rachel. she was one of my favs as a kid too bc I always loved female characters and she was just so cool. and she still is, and so excellently written too 

liiiike the fact that even though she’s so tough and brave, she’s still a kid and has plenty of moments when she’s scared or uncertain...

and I just really like the fact that she out of all of them is the one who’s tough and loves to fight...and the fact that she also unapologetically loves shopping and stuff like that...its about the multifaced characters

just like how marco is the ‘funny guy’ but they make it very clear from the beginning that this is his way of coping w/shit like his family falling apart, and then alien BS 

and also marco is really smart? I kinda forgot abt that (sorry marco) but I like that bc that's uncommon to see with ‘funny’ characters

oh mannnn and ax. I love ax. I forgot a whole bunch about the early stuff w/him and how conflicted he was w/keeping secrets from the other animorphs

KAA did such a fantastic job w/ax - he really comes across as the perfect mix of ‘fish out of water alien’ and ‘young teen/tween’ and ‘alien from a strict militaristic society who is in training to become a soldier like his famous older brother’ 

n that was so sad n fucked up when he called the andalite home world and had to tell everyone (including his parents) that elfangor died, and then the elders or w/e forced ax to take blame for elfangor breaking their laws in order to preserve elfangor’s postmortem reputation, even at the cost of ax’s career/life :( 

and man I loved the part where ax is like ‘well, we didn't help the hork-bajir even tho we could have and now they're all enslaved. I'm not letting that happen to the humans’ and the council or w/e is like ‘well you should let it happen, don't interfere’ and ax basically realizes oh shit sometimes adults are wrong 

basically I love the conflict there, where the andalites are the ones who gave the yeerks the technology that led to them spreading across the galaxy like a disease, and now fight to stop them due to their guilt, but also refuse to directly help the less advanced species who are being invaded by the yeerks for fear of making a similar mistake like w/the yeerks....

ooooof and the part where ax is like ‘guess I have to go fight visser 3 and die’ :( he’s just a babyyyy

and augh when alloran asks them to kill him....geeeez there’s so much fucked up stuff already and I'm not even in the double digits yet 

oh my god and the brutally awful fact that any freed controller will just get tracked down by the yeerks and murdered so the secret invasion stays secret...and the animorphs think that by destroying the kandrona they've freed a bunch of controllers but really they just signed their death warrants - what a catch 22

oh and I love how even early on the yeerks aren't a completely unified force - we have the obvious rivalry w/visser 1 and visser 3, with visser 1 even arranging the animorphs release from visser 3′s prison bc of this, and that yeerk who told ax where to find visser 3 because he was pissed that his yeerk gf got killed by visser 3 - even though the reason she was killed was due to kandrona rationing, which was caused by the animorphs...i love the layers 

ok what else. oh yeah I love tobias sm, he was one of my favs as a kid too, his whole story is so deeply tragic but also interesting and we haven't even gotten into all the stuff w/his parents yet

the part where he’s freaking out as a hawk and he’s gonna fly into the windows even tho he knows it’ll probably kill him...christttt

also tobias and rachel are so romance aughhhh

ok also jake - he was never my favorite when I was younger bc I felt like he had Basic Protag Man Syndrome but now I can appreciate his character a lot more. like, he basically got elected the leader and he’s kinda like ‘guess I have to do this now.’ and that of course ends up fucking him up majorly in the long run bc even tho he’s more serious and responsible, he’s still just a kid too

and I loooove the horror of finding out that tom is a controller, and jake having to contend w/the fact that it’s very likely that he’ll have to fight and/or kill his brother someday 

also the book where jake gets infested w/a yeerk was one of my favs and still is. so fucked up and interesting. the fact that that yeerk was previously tom’s made it even more fucked, w/the yeerk taunting jake the whole time

and then the yeerk dying in jakes head...so messed up

omg and cassie too. I love cassie. I didn't appreciate her as much when I was younger bc I was a straightforward kid who liked action, and cassie is all about pacifism when possible and compassion, which I love a lot now that I Get it more. 

cassie being such a gentle person but still fighting in this fucked up war bc doing nothing would be worse is super compelling. plus the conflicts with her having to figure out where she and humanity fit in the circle of life and whatnot is great

I loved the contrast of her being very aware of how nature works bc of working w/her parents and all these injured animals, but also being so compassionate that it still bothers her to see death and especially participate in it 

like her feeling awful about killing the termite queen even tho its ‘just a bug’ and stuff

basically what makes the series great isn't that it’s got all these fucked up moments and horror elements and is overall quite dark - it’s that all of it comes together to make the point that war is hell, and child soldiers are gonna end up traumatized pretty much no matter what happens

it’s a very strong message, and the story never feels like it’s being dark just for the sake of being dark, but rather never letting the reader forget how awful things are

TL;DR: anirmorphs is to the YA genre what hunter x hunter is to the shounen genre

in animorphs, the heroes of the story are kids who get cool powers and get to fight aliens - in any other YA story they would have a bunch of fun adventures and come out on top most/all the time - things might get darker towards the end, but good would prevail. the evil yeerks would be stopped, and the main couples would get married and have kids and live happily ever after. 

however, war isn't like that, especially when the soldiers are kids. so instead we get animorphs, and it’s brutally realistic. they barely ever get to enjoy their powers - on the rare occasion that they get to, something usually goes horribly wrong

compare to hxh - it seems like a regular shounen story about kids participating in a fantastical mostly-adult world and being able to match the adults bc they're Special - but as the story wears on it becomes clear that the kids are just very traumatized. this all leads to gon’s berserker collapse in the chimera ant arc, which is led up to masterfully w/a bunch of adults treating gon as an adult even though he’s a child.

essentially the same thing happens in animorphs - with jake being shoved into the leader role and becoming a military general as a kid, which leads to him committing horrific war crimes because he’s been put in a position no child should ever have to be in

similarly, kurapika has what would be a very straightforward revenge plotline in any other story - but this is hxh, so the bad guys aren't just 2-dimensional evil caricatures, and the road to revenge just leads kurapika to ruin. we root for kurapika to win bc they’re a character we like, but it becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on that getting revenge is not the path kurapika should be taking

nothing is ever as straightforward as we want it to be, basically. and the same applies to animorphs. so many times they're faced with conflicts that seem to have an obvious answer, only for it to be revealed later that the choices they made led to other unforeseen awful consequences

ok i need to stop rambling this is already super long. basically: animorphs good. I’ll probably do another post like this semi-soon as I continue reading (I'm partway thru book 10 now)

[fluxedbuds]

can you go off about lalnable

ugly bitch idiot becomes a serial killer instead of going to therapy

But seriously, my take with Lalnable has always been more on the ‘fuck this guy’ side than the ‘poor sympathetic monster’ side. I don’t like seeing this guy woobified, especially because it tends to go some really concerning directions. I won’t get into it, because that’d be like slapping a label that says ‘come have discourse at me’ on my face, but let it be known, this guy ain’t got any excuses.

I’m not touching Lalnable’s potential childhood, because THATS a whole mess with no canon answer, but I do think he started out as pretty much a regular Lalna. Keep in mind, even the nicest, softest Lalna, FB Lalna, thought it was completely fine to repeatedly dunk a live bird in molten metal, because it didn’t die. And I think it’s pretty much still the state he’s in when he gets hired into Yoglabs.

Now, this is where you might start to think, ‘well gee, tumblr user Fluxed Buds, wouldnt it be easy for Yoglabs to twist that lack of moral understanding into something worse? wouldnt it mean its not his fault?’ And you’d be like, five percent right! The thing is, though, even Bird Torturer Lalna wouldn’t be any kind of okay with the kind of shit Lalnable ends up doing- there’s no boiling the frog situation possible, because there’s NO easy transition point into being the kind of person Lalnable becomes. At least one Lalna has quit Yoglabs because it was too evil, theres no reason Lalnable wouldn’t have been able to do the same, or at Least escape somehow. What I think happened is Yoglabs provided an environment where Lalnable could get away with doing horrible things extremely personally, and Lalnable took that and RAN.

There’s no evidence that Honeydew, Xephos, or any of the testificate scientists end up doing the shit Lalnable does. This isn’t an environment that’s forcing people to become like Lalnable, it just doesn’t provide many roadblocks. So, like Xephos lying about Lalnable being a clone, he’s lying about why he got locked up. Employee death is just an inconvenience. Lalnable got locked up for disagreeing with how cloning should work. I’ve had a post about this in the works for a while, but my theory is that Lalnable thought clones should be a brainless workforce, mostly because he Absolutely Could Not Handle the idea of another him running around without being under his control. Which, yknow, isn’t super weird of a hangup, pretty much every Lalna has it, and I’d wager a lot of real people would have similar objections. The problem is, Lalnas are stubborn little fucks, and when Xephos wouldn’t listen, Lalnable went ballistic and started fucking Everything up. So, stick him in a cage, pry him for info until you don’t need him, then put him in stasis for stable DNA.

So, the one thing Lalnable is justified about is being pissed about all that, because Xephos was a jerk and betrayed him, and also fuck Yoglabs. And thats one of three times Lalnable has ever been right in his whole life!

So, yknow, once he’s out of Yoglabs, he’s super got no excuse to kill/kidnap/enslave entire towns and whatnot, so any chance of him being sympathetic is long gone. Dude’s a piece of shit and won’t wash his goddamn clothes. But he does have some interesting psychology I can pry apart at this point!

So, first off- the name and aesthetic change, the color contacts, the voice changer- He’s trying to force control over the clone situation. He knows he doesn’t have any hope of controlling his clones, so he tries to fix it for himself by trying to make it so there aren’t copies of him running around, because he’s now different from all of them. But that sort of evolves into hatred of his original self, his real voice and name and appearance. So, that’s a little sympathetic, but he could’ve decided to be like properly goth or something so I don’t feel bad for him he looks like an idiot

Lalnable doesn’t care about justifying his actions, which does mean he’s a lot more powerful than some other yogs villains. He’s got nothing holding him back, his only setbacks are directly caused by other people fucking with him. Lalnable is legitmately a scary threat! It’s easy to forget that when we get to see so much of him being a complete failure idiot, but he’s good at what he does, and what he does is crimes and evil.

He’s also excessively focused on revenge, which I think is kind of why he ends up abandoning it in the end. He was so focused on the concept that he didn’t even realize how generally impossible and ill-advised it is. Besides the obvious issues of time loops, after he creates Five, if he actually succeeded, he’d delete Five. And for once, he doesn’t Want to destroy someone. FB4 really skipped over so goddamn much of his development, and thats REALLY annoying, but it doesn’t seem like a wholly illogical endpoint. He’s kind of driven by an impossible goal- control over everything about how the world sees him. At some point, he probably realizes that destroying every single one of his clones wouldn’t bring him any more joy than just torturing the shit out of some rando! Or, at least, it’s not worth more to him than Five.

I enjoy the Lalnable-Five father daughter dynamic a lot (because it’s literally canon Lalnable says he’s her father dont TRY me), but it takes a while to really get to that point. When he first makes Five, he’s making her like any other clone he’d make for spying. She’s just another tool, a frail attempt to steal Nano from a clone who doesn’t deserve to know her.

Oh yeah, the second thing Lalnable has ever been right about! He seriously thinks Nano is cool as FUCK. Which she is! It’s not a romantic interest for sure, I’m pretty sure Lalnable hasn’t thought about romance in like 10 years, it’s more of a fascination. I don’t think he’s really interested in friendship, but he wants that kind of power on his side, he wants to see how it works, and most of all, he doesn’t want some clone getting to even be near it. Five offering the side-switch deal to Nano was something both the Baddies agreed on.

Anyways, back to Five. While she starts out as a tool, they do end up growing closer, and for once, Lalnable isn’t a total bitch idiot about it. Unfortunately, he does spend a lot of time pointing out how Five is better than Nano because he made her, and through that making Five obsessed with Staying better than Nano, because if she’s not, Lalnable might abandon her. So, he’s Dad, but he starts out as a truly awful dad that should be dropkicked. I think Five’s confusion and fear over how absolutely focused he is on destructive and impossible revenge is part of what makes him reconsider too, although I guess we’ll never know for sure. They’re both still comfortably evil as all hell, but it’s settling into a weird sort of manageable space for the buddies, and thats probably the best we’re gonna get. Lalnable has no desire to be a good person and he never will.

The last thing Lalnable is ever correct about, is loving and appreciating Five for who she is as herself.

And then he wears those sunglasses and he stops being correct for the rest of his life.

TL;DR: serial killer develops identity issues, gives daughter identity issues, trades identity issues for a second daughter and disgusting sunglasses

[iheartsunset]

Can you give me headcanons of my favorite character Roy?

Papa Louie Roy HCs

-Roy Bianchi is 21 years old, lives in Tastyville with his uncle and older sister, and was enslaved-I mean coerced-I mean given the grand opportunity to run a pizza shop by his dear uncle. Roy is going to night school in order to obtain an animation degree so that he could become a world renowned animator. Papa Louie actually supports this dream and allows Roy to design some cute posters to attract more customers.

-Is basically besties with Olivia, Allan, and Hacky Zak. Olivia and Zak always invite him to go party or club with them or just hang out and watch TV. He and Allan just vibe and dance together to old songs on the jukebox, although he used to be scared of Allan because of his tough personality. He gets along well with Taylor and Chuck, too, and maybe he can have a nice conversation once in a while with Rita and Mitch. He’s nice to Koilee since she’s both a fellow worker and Olivia’s beloved cousin, but he’s scared of her since he witnessed most of her previous delinquent behavior firsthand. But he did warm up to Allan, so maybe it won’t be long before he and Koilee become good friends.

-He and Joy were super close as kids, but his jealousy of her success in gymnastics and her distancing herself from him (because of both school and being a vigilante) have lead to them growing apart. Despite Papa Louie being a garbage human being, Roy seems to be the only person he actually cares about (minus the whole “run the restaurant while I’m gone” schtick). Roy cares very much for his uncle in return, but often worries about Papa’s multiple schemes.

-Roy had lots of friends from middle school to high school, but he quickly realized that they were only friends with him is that they could be closer to Joy, who was really popular back then. Joy found out about these friendships multiple times and told them off, but didn’t have the guts to beat them up for fear of losing a scholarship. If she hadn’t been his sister, he probably would’ve been bullied relentlessly. That’s why he has so many trust issues now. But he met Olivia and Allan back in middle school and they didn’t even care about Joy, so he found comfort in them.

-Guy Mortadello is secretly his and Joy’s father and Papa Louie’s older brother. Only Papa Louie knows about this.

-His most watched TV channel is Food Network. His favorite shows on there are basically all of them, but he mostly loves Diners Drive-Ins And Dives, Cupcake Wars, The Pioneer Woman, and Barefoot Contessa.

-Roy’s mostly quiet and reserved, but does come out of his shell around his friends and the other workers. Roy is also quite strict about workplace policies and uniforms. He likes to use a little bit of sarcasm here and there. He likes to draw pictures of others for his night school assignments so that he could feel closer to them. He’s just very adorkable and oddly charming.

-He loves Undertale and other RPG maker games. He goes on streams with Tohru sometimes to play some classic RPG maker games (like Misao and The Witch’s House) and some Deep Sea Prisoner games (mostly Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea).

-Roy is over protective of his truck, which he nicknamed Felicity. That’s why he can’t fully forgive James and Willow for double t-boning it, but he’s slowly starting to at least not be very mad about it.

-Roy knows that Joy is Ninjoy and that Moe is Dynamoe and that Perri is Perri The Platypus. He knows this because Joy hates the news like Ninjoy does, Moe because he realized Moe has terrible plans, and because Perri and Platypus girl both ride bikes. Yknow, he just ignores that their names are literally in their superhero names and that he they all look like their civilian selves and have the same voices.

-Roy is a king we stan.

[jooniyah]

ok but yknow when Y/N stabbed Taehyung with the pencil she was using to sketch Yoongi, that Yoongi helped imbue that pencil with the power to strike the hit.😤 i could feel the energy! also who wants to bet Ha Neul is gonna grow up and pull some anime-style revenge on the guy who killed her father and enslaved her mother🗡

Aww🥺 I like your idea that she drew her power from Yoongi 💗 Maybe she did, because her love for him is literally the driving force that makes her stand up to Taehyung.

Ha Neul. Lovely cute baby girl. She's the sweetest girl in the world. I can't think of her being anything but strong and bad ass, coupled with Yoongi's sincerity and cuteness. Man, she's gonna be a force to reckon with.

[doomednarrative]

If you reblog artfrom frogforest that means you are supporting the hate they are spreading across the fandom: heterophobia, kinshaming, ship hating, bullying.

Haha so the trolls finally found me. Lets address your points here because I'm in a great mood and honestly I just found getting this ask funny:

1. Heterophobia doesnt exist nor does @frogforest support that (cause yknow. I'm actually friends with him so of course I told him you sent this so he can laugh at it.)

2. Shaming people who kin Handsome Jack (you know, the megalomaniacal facist tyrant who tried to kill a whole damn planet and enslaved and abused his daughter) is not a crime,

3. Having legitimate critisisms/being upset over an abusive ship like Rhack or Jackothy also isnt a crime,

And 4. Bucky doesnt Bully people. Bucky called out shit on his private accounts, which hes ALLOWED TO DO, because he was legitimately bothered by it, as are a lot of our other friends too. He got harassed, and I mean Legitimately Harassed, over speaking his mind, so if yall wanna claim the bullying highground, maybe yall should stop bullying him first.

And just. Dude its a fucking Fandom. Go outside and have a real life and learn that internet bullshit isnt worth it. You guys just make yourselves a laughing stock when you send shit like this.

[isa-ghost]

OH I JUST SAW THE ANNIVERSARY BUNKER QUESTION THING AND I WANNA KNOW MORE ABOUT THE LORE AROUND THE BOSSES!!!!! LIKE WHO ORGANIZED THE RESISTANCE AND HOW ITS ORGANIZED AND HOW THEY FOUND/MADE THESE BUNKERS AND WHAT THE EARLY YEARS OF TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THAT SYSTEM WAS LIKE PLS

Oh god I dunno how in-depth this’ll be but here we go xD

————

The resistance was formed not long after Anti launched his first few days of chaos with his newly cultivated puppet army. His violence made it clear it was gonna be Like That, so naturally opposing parties rose up. Its unclear who officially founded the resistance, but the group all had a common goal: Stay by Jack’s side no matter what, and one day gain the strength to save him, wherever Anti may have him. They affectionately started calling themselves the Bosses after Jack’s “LIKE A BOSS!” line in his outro. But that’s about all that blossomed from the start. Why would a bunch of small rural town people- not all of which even knew what the hell was going on or who Jack or Anti were -know how to fight on a warlike scale? It took a lot of struggle and mass communication throughout the zone but a majority agreed it was only natural to lowkey militarize. Ranks, soldiers, the typical.

They started with the sensible; find a hiding/meeting place, get more numbers, get supplies, get connections. All went smoothly, including the connections. To this day, the ONWR has connections to outside the zone because they managed to establish them before Anti’s (at the time) weak barriers confining what was and wasn’t currently the zone was guarded by stupidly large masses of puppets. Its after he figured out they were receiving outside help that he tried to stop it, but none of his efforts (growing stronger over time, outlining the entire perimeter with numbers from his army, turning the barrier into a harmful thing to touch if you’re trying to go out, just to name a few) stopped the ONWR. It pissed him off then and still pisses him off now, but he’s relented on the issue for now because he’s got better plans for his playground. Besides, he was a hypocrite about outside help anyway; the bastard kidnapped a good handful of puppets straight from their homes outside the zone- some not even in the US.

These outside connections are how the ONWR gets some of their food, communication, and more from outside the zone aside from raiding abandoned buildings in downtown Axel Creek. Social media is obviously another large factor in resistance affairs and it’s one they will never lose because Anti can’t afford to cripple his main source of spreading his influence. The entire zone still has all its resources like power, plumbing etc, because Anti can’t afford to cut it off or just doesn’t see enough gain in blocking it. So luckily for the ONWR, between what they have inside and outside the zone, especially now that Cali’s level and quick-thinking head is in charge, they’re still going strong. Obviously they distribute these supplies and such to the bunkers and whatnot besides amongst themselves. And the bunkers conduct their own raids too. Balance is hard to maintain, but the ONWR makes it work.

Interestingly enough, the other creators of the AU and I discovered (can’t remember how BUT one of our friends lives in TN so might’ve been them xD) there were already bunkers in Tennessee from nuclear scares back in the day. These bunkers were cleaned up by the ONWR and other non-puppets in the zone and taken refuge in. Many have expanded and even decorated these bunkers to feel more homey. And more bunkers aside from the ones that already exist have been built. Some are underground, some aren’t, some are both. However not everyone lives in a bunker- some fortified their homes, took shelter in downtown apartments, and live other places too.

As for the rest of the history of the ONWR, they didn’t start calling themselves the Overnight Watch until of course, Anti conducted that fun little night. It was a massive night for recruiting puppets for him as well as a learning opportunity for the ONWR. After that night, the Bosses finally had a good name to unite their side. Boss became a general term for “good guy” and “Overnight Watch Resistance” became the term for “actively fighting against Anti.” There’s not really a difference, but most of the ONWR has some sort of job at the headquarters even if they don’t live near or even in HQ, whereas Bosses might not.

Over time after December 2017, things started getting.. messy. The kind of messy you don’t pick up on until it’s too late. Best described as neutrals, a bunch of idiot (surprise surprise) middle-aged men thinking they could use the ONWR for a position of power for themselves squeezed their way into the upper ranks under A Lot of Somehow Successful Bullshitting despite it being painfully obvious that they didn’t know a lick of shit’s worth about Jack or anything else going on, and their pretending to care about saving him was mediocre at best. A lot of the present resistance is still wondering why and how the hell anyone let them get to where they did. Their meddling completely fucked up the ONWR and its reputation. Just to name a few things- They permitted completely unethical scientific experiments to be conducted on other people to “help the fight” (psst that’s bullshit!) if they even revealed any of what they were doing at all. Many, many people in the zone were fucked over and up by these experiments and Cali is trying her best to turn the damage into something useful and less traumatic. Besides these inhumane activities, these fakers also wrongfully arrested and punished the lieutenant general of all fucking people just for trying to defect and get away from their monstrous behavior, and sentenced her to DEATH (though that didn’t happen). Not to mention they were KILLING puppets, yknow, UNWILLINGLY BRAINWASHED AND ENSLAVED TEENAGERS AND ADULTS, instead of detoxing them and turning them against Anti! MORONS. OH, AND they threatened the EGOS THEMSELVES countless times!

Lets not even get started with the ONWR members like Markos Allen who defected from the ONWR to start a group JUST FOR KILLING PUPPETS, Markos ya dead sack of shit. TLDR; after the Puppet Breakers ran for a good while (some might not be dead even still), before Markos was murdered rightfully by Lieutenant General Dawn for trying to use her daughter AKA Patient Zero (Isa), Anti’s first puppet, for some more enabling of the fucked up secret ONWR experiments before trying to kill her for his own personal revenge reasons. His dying body was then reanimated by Anti and used to infiltrate HQ, where he planted bombs and proceeded to blow the entire place to shit. And Anti had a whooole nightmare of plans with that involving Jackieboy Man, but that’s not really relevant to the ONWR.

After scraping up as much surviving resource as they could, the ONWR rebuilt itself in a new location and that’s where it operates present day. But the bad eggs weren’t wiped out in the explosion unfortunately, and the unethical secret bullshit and fucked up power system continued. That is, until One Very Fucking Angry Henrik von Scheeplestein broke into HQ with Jackieboy and some of their Bunker #88720 family members and proceeded to destroy EVERYTHING they had with some homemade viruses and do some other much-needed attitude adjusting.

This enabled Cali to rise up from the ranks, expose all of the horrific things the fakers had been doing, and promptly plant their stupid asses in the HQ’s prison block, where they currently rot until Cali decides on something to do with them. Its taken a lot of work and will still take a lot more, but Cali has done absolute wonders to restore the ONWR to what it was when it was born and has gotten the ethics of the resistance back on track. She’s given the entire Boss side of the zone transparent communication about all affairs; publicly explained anything and everything she found in all of the ONWR’s records, databases and whatever was discovered in the secret operations places. She’s strictly enforced that NO puppets be killed- they are to be taken one way or another to HQ and detoxed in what WAS the secret labs but is now a MASSIVE detox department. She also appointed the five egos as the highest authority and keeps close and constant communication with them. Besides all of that, she’s also gradually remaking each department bigger and better than before and contacting defected ONWR members and soldiers to try and bring them back to the resistance now that it’s under new leadership. She’s currently going through records and such again to track, locate and imprison all of the doctors and other staff involved in the unethical activities that have been going on over the last few years. She’s doing everything she can to cleanse and rehabilitate the ONWR and repair relationships with anyone that was victimized by the fakers. So far so good!