#you don’t get the full story with One perspective and it’s cool!

[fisherrprince]

You have made me interested in balloon smp but I feel so old and of touch because I cannot find the past streams on twitch. Cannot figure out where and in which order to watch...can I ask where you've been watching the videos/streams?

ok, so, there’s ~36 people all doing it concurrently, which is a lot. But! Here is the list of players, if you know someone you like on that list pick them and just watch sequentially day 1->finale. if you don’t know Anyone on there and you want a point to start at for just. Getting most of the plot, pick someone from A B or C. Or E. Team F has a really great plot but they stay a bit out of the overarching plot until the last weeks, and I haven’t gotten to team D yet so I don’t know what they know im sorry team d 🥺

Many of the players have VOD channels up on YouTube or playlists of balloon vods specifically, lots of people who don’t have the streams in their twitch archives somewhere (like, “past broadcasts” usually), look for player vod channels. Some don’t have saved archives and some didn’t stream it! I know for certain sophie robby skull kuu gibson buggle and jame have up to date vod channels because I’ve seen them… woops and skullvolver are making edited videos rn but theyre Both team a… and im not sure who else is planning on it!

tldr, pick someone and watch them in order and peek in on other peoples’ vods from time to time when something Happens because sometimes seeing it from another angle is cool. Also, sometimes seeing it from another angle is Important because there’s Lore no one else got to see. Search “playername vods” on YouTube and it should direct you to the right place.

more specifics that kinda get into spoilers:

Here’s some plots of interest that certain people see and others don’t (ONLY BASED ON WHAT I KNOW I am not a lore master I don’t have 36x8x32… uh… good gravy 576 possible hours. of content. I DONT HAVE 576 HOURS TO SIT AND WATCH STREAMS someone was going to put together a lore doc somewhere though):

woops: tries to keep track of lore, goes on ghost knight swordquest

sophiebaybey: unwitting accessory to world murder, sees WAY more of PG and balloons lore than most people on account of The Events.

skullvolver/socksbx: revenant revengequest x2 and soul link plot, also socks is a mod and they get up to some funny business. poke in and watch one of them for the end of day 14 trust me 🫵

robbydude: doomer gnome made me cry but that’s not important. ghostquest continues upon the holy land even if we DONT WANT IT TO. jerry mouse is there

jame7t: sees kind of all of it from a distance, good coverage, citadel time (I like building streams)

shinigamieater: it’s possession clues. What if you were 15 ants of dubious morality in a human body

padabana: instigates the end of the world, once if you’re realistic twice if you’re being pedantic. it’s paranoia clues

kaoiji: there’s time travel, and it gets worse from there but I can’t FIND their vods so im redirecting you to robbydude

renobee: GOD??????????

[softly-and-suddenly]

I just watched the 2011 Wuthering Heights film and it was so apathetic?? I don’t get it

[herenvibing]

cr3 is gonna end and the pc’s still feel like the same people to me :|

(crcritical content in the tags feel free to skip)

[heretherebeturtles-comic]

Hello! Many people have said this but ill say it too, I LOVE YOUR COMIC SO MUCH ( ´ ▽ ` ).｡ｏ♡

I really wanted to ask you about how you do the backgrounds? (Something i struggle with) whats the process? Like from start to finish, also, to do the rise backgrounds do you use reference from the show and generally real photo of ny? Or do you come up with them? And last question- The shadow and light on the background- Like HOW

i know it’s a lot of questions but i’m just so curious qwq and wanna learn to be better, thank you again in case you read this and respond, in case you don’t, i hope you have a nice day and a wonderful life uwu keep up the great work! (≧◡≦) ♡

Backgrounds are a really broad subject and I'm always a little overwhelmed when asked this question. Just like drawing the human body, backgrounds take time, repetition, and practice!

My answer got a bit long, so it's going under a read more :) but if you digest info better in video format I found this on youtube

It pretty much goes over everything I wanted to say, but in a much better way. I wish I had found it before writing all this out lol

ok, first of all, I'm not a teacher nor was I built to be one of those cool helpful art tutorial people who do a full coloured tutorial filled with illustrations. This is just going to be a messy "how I do backgrounds / environment layouts from start to finish." kinda thing.

... lets start with a sight tangent.

Sketch from Life!!!

If you want to get better at backgrounds I recommend doing some sketching out in the real world!

When I was first getting into doing backgrounds I went to cafes and parks to just sketch the buildings and objects. Sketch rocks, flowers, clumps of grass, garbage cans, bottles, tables, street signs, etc. If you are drawing a tree observe how the trunks twist, how the bark flows, or how the leaves are bunched.

If you can't leave the house the same still applies! Sketch the interiors of your house, the walls, or common objects like chairs and bookshelves. How are objects stacked? items on the floor?

If you aren't comfortable with drawing outside or in public you can take some photos to draw from! They are good for practice and you can use them again as references later. Alternatively you can find pictures online of buildings and objects to sketch as practice.

All spaces have objects in them, it becomes easier to draw those kinds of spaces when you already have spent time observing and sketching them.

ALSO! They don't have to be good sketches! It's just to build out your mental catalogue and strengthen your perception of perspective.

now the actual thing...

BACKGROUNDS

(the pictures used for this are my own. I dug them out of my 2022 folder)

Backgrounds have slightly different rules based on what you are making them for. Videogame Environment Concept Art vs Animation Layouts vs Comic Backgrounds vs Illustration backgrounds.

They all follow the same basics, which I will go over here, but the intention and function of those designs are going to be different. It's all about how you set up the scene and what it's purpose is!

Brainstorming and Thumbnailing

I like to think about a location as though it is a character. An abandoned old house with creaky sagging floorboards is very different from a futuristic space ship with sharp metal floor panels. A gas station has a very different feeling from a library.

I usually start by asking what is this location's story? Why was it built and for what purpose? What kinds of things does this room need to fulfill that purpose? You don’t need solid answers, but its good to be thinking about it while you are working.

Next, sketch some ideas for how this place is going to look. For me, this usually involves drawing the idea from multiple angles and then making lists & small sketches of the objects I think should be filling the space.

Example: The main character of my original work is a Wanderer. They collect a lot of things on their travels, but those items have to be small enough to be easily carried in a backpack. I wanted his room to be in the corner of an attic, walled off by curtains, and filled with trinkets. You can see some of my brainstorming above.

References

I only look for references after I've done some sketching and planning; this is to solidify my idea first so that I don't accidentally copy anyone else's work. I will make a moodboard with pictures of lighting, colours, items, rooms with specific ceiling beams, old chairs, etc. basically whatever I feel fits the vibe.

Honestly, I don't use references as much as I should. For ROTTMNT fanart I look at backgrounds and screenshots from the series to study the style. I also reference actual photos of NYC to get a feel for how Rise condenses the visual information.

In general, it's good to have references of real life objects/locations, because there are so many details like cracks in pavement, stickers on polls, crowning on buildings, fancy fencing, weird chair legs, etc. that you might not think of. It's the imperfect details that can make a location feel more alive.

Perspective

Once you have your chosen sketch we move to.... the infamous perspective boxes. Doing backgrounds is just learning to be comfortable drawing So Many boxes and carving items out of them.

Many better artists than myself have made videos on perspective, vanishing points, and all the technical bits. Videos like THIS ONE and THIS ONE are helpful (this post is great too!!). There are probably a lot of classes to be found on Skillshare or Schoolism. I learned a lot of this in my college art course, so I can't give you a specific video which helped me.

You can get by and be a good artist without learning this stuff. There are quite a few successful artists who have admitted they never bothered to learn perspective (one of these people even made a whole graphic novel series).

I personally avoided properly learning this stuff until I was in my 20s because I thought it would be boring and difficult to do. tbh I really wish I had learned it earlier because it's so much fun to make those silly little boxes imo. It looks scary and complicated but, just like drawing humans, it just takes time, repetition, and practice to develop the knowledge and skills.

Cleanup

You have your boxes and lines! Cool! Now to make a scene out of it. Fill in the details, get everything placed were you want it! Generally, the lines of each item will point back towards the horizon line, but they can have different perspective points.

Generally you would want to clean it up and get your room completely sketched before doing the lineart. I tend to combine the steps (not recommended)

Lineart

I've mentioned how I do this before. Closer objects have thicker lines and more detailed inside. Further objects have thinner lines and less detail. I didn't quite achieve that balance with the image below, but it's close enough.

Colours and Shading will have to be a separate post. In the meantime, I highly recommend the book "Color and Light" by James Gurney. I used to borrow it from my local library and a good chunk of my knowledge was learned from it :)

[ceratedfish24]

realised recently that all the amazing takes on scott are ALL from YOU‼️‼️‼️ /pos

as an avid scott fan and watcher it makes me really happy to see so many more things about scott that don't label him as abusive or completely remove/ignore him entirely

thank you for all the rarepair posts as well i am RABID over scott rarepairs

please please if you wish you can use this ask to go off about any scott rarepairs or mainstream (??) ships that you want!!!! i will sit and listen happily like a child listening to their favourite story being told to them because your takes are so right and cool

Aw I’m so happy to hear that! Thank you so much <3 It always brightens my day to hear that my posts can be a little light in a sea of hypocrisy and/or unnecessary negativity surrounding literally one of the nicest people in the life series.

I ADORE Scott rarepairs! He just has such great chemistry with everyone, and I love to dig a little deeper into why specifically they like about each other.

Majorwood – I’m honestly not entirely sure if this is a rarepair or a mainstream? I feel like a lot of people know of it but don’t see it unless they naturally watched Martyn or Scott’s Limited Life perspective, whereas a lot of people watched Jimmy and Scott’s 3rd Life FOR Flower Husbands or watched Martyn or Ren’s 3rd Life FOR Treebark. It’s in a sort of liminal space between mainstream and rarepair.

Anyways, I love these two so much if only because they were so at odds with each other for so long only to thrive once they put their differences aside and learned to appreciate what makes them individually such a force to be reckoned with. I think that their attraction towards each other was a very slow thing, something quiet and natural, and then Martyn having to bring Scott to yellow was the final puzzle piece that fell into place. Martyn’s possessiveness and protectiveness over Scott truly meant so much to me. He had so much respect and affection for Scott, that any betrayal or offense against Scott was an insult to Martyn, too.

In fact, I think Martyn may have had too much respect for Scott. I have always felt as though Martyn attacked Scott before he attacked Impulse because he knew that Scott’s reaction time was just so much better than Impulse’s and that Scott would have remained relatively calm, which would make him dangerous, whereas Impulse was caught off guard and panicked. However, I also think that, had Martyn killed just Impulse, Scott would have given himself over to Martyn willingly. I believe that that had always been Scott’s intentions, hence why he was so at peace with Martyn taking the last of his time. Sacrifice is not something that Martyn understands very well, especially not a sacrifice as significant as the last. I think Martyn respected how skilled Scott is to the point of fear, and it led him to underestimate the extent of Scott’s loyalty. Don’t get me wrong, I think Martyn made all of the right decisions. Eliminating Scott first ensured that there was no chance that Scott, who – no offense, Impulse – is definitely the more practiced PVPer between him and Impulse – we all saw him kill Impulse like 4 times back to back – wouldn’t fight back. I was screaming and cheering with delight and excitement when I saw that play. What a brilliant and fitting end to such a violent, starving series. Limited Life was definitely my favorite season until Wild Life.

Scottho – Speaking of Wild Life, OH MY GOSH WILD LIFE SCOTTHO MY BELOVED?? Something about how Etho was always so comfortable around Scott despite how little we’ve gotten to see them interact with one another always really spoke to me, but this season? The way Scott was so quick to embrace Etho into the Gs, even if it was a secret alliance, was so full of trust. There was no suspicion on Scott’s end that this was some kind of trick, that Etho had alternate motives for agreeing to join their team even though it had been Etho’s own idea.

There’s been quite a few accidental final kills in the Life Series, but Etho is known for picking whatever team will take him in the moment. The fact that Etho’s first reaction to accidentally killing Scott was “I was aiming for Joel!” was very unusual. Gem was right there, loudly excited that Etho had killed Scott. Gem and Joel were Etho’s strongest alliance, but he chose to make sure that everyone knew that he honored his promise to Scott above all, regardless of who it would put him at odds with.

Etho has affection for so many people in the Life Series, but affection is of little consequence in the Life Series. He’s said it himself. “Do you think I have a soft spot for anyone right now?” What Etho has for Scott is more than affection. It’s respect. He genuinely has so much respect for Scott’s playstyle, and you can tell that he was so surprised to hear that the Gs’ approach towards their teammates is not based on worth but on loyalty, especially what with how the Tuff Guys’ approach towards their teammates was so very strictly based on worth.

On top of that, Etho is very close to Cleo and Gem, who are both pretty similar to Scott in terms of humor. From there, he has absolutely zeroed in on Scott’s humor, just absolutely cross referenced the life out of how Scott’s brain works and hit the nail on the head. Absurd of him, in my opinion.

On a less evidence based note and a more delusion based note, Etho’s relationship with Scott is the kind that makes him want to kiss Scott’s knuckles and all the way up his arm until he reaches Scott’s jaw. Those two slow dance in their kitchen in the morning. Scott is the only person who can get Etho to get sappy. Scott is just so earnest and kind, and it makes Etho want to hold him in his arms and keep him safe and sound. Etho hates drinking coffee if it wasn’t made by Scott. It’s not the taste that bothers him; it’s just the principle of the thing. Scott loves Etho because Etho is a constant comfort who also knows when and how to make him laugh. Etho loves Scott because, though he may tease, Scott would never judge him for being vulnerable. They’re each other’s safe space. Etho would simply be the most gentlemanly partner to Scott, and it would totally work on Scott.

Unlike Joel and Bdubs, Scott is entirely neutral about horses. This frustrates Bdubs, who was hoping that Etho’s new boyfriend would at least be on his side in the horse conflict between Bdubs and Joel. Scott has been monitoring this horse war and reporting back to Etho about it as soon as Etho gets home. This is how Etho learns what “spilling the tea” means.

I may be writing about them celebrating the holidays pretty soon.

Scott/Doc – Hear me out hear me out hear me out. I know they’ve never talked even once, but hear me out. Big, strong, stoic engineer working in his lab all day + suave pretty boy who sits on Doc’s desk and is a general safety hazard the whole time. Doc getting frustrated with Scott, because how is he supposed to work when there’s a pretty boy flirting with him in his lab all day? Scott also has to make sure that Doc eats and sleeps and drinks water, and he uses all of these as excuses to flirt with Doc. He spoons food into Doc’s mouth while Doc’s working and asks Doc to make eye contact with him during it. He holds the glass up to Doc’s lips. He drags Doc to bed and complains that he’s so cold without Doc next to him. It works on Doc every single time, because it’s Scott. Doc isn’t about to say “no” to him. There’s few things Scott loves as a big, strong, competent man who only shows his soft side around certain people and is easily annoyed by literally 4 people. Additionally, the sum of the pettiness between the two of them? Oh heavens.

Doc really values loyalty, and there’s none as loyal as Scott. Grian would go to Scott to ask for secrets he can use to further annoy Doc, but Scott would not give anything up. We’ve seen before that Scott does not let up information about those he loves even if it’s just for a prank. The only person who Scott allows to prank Doc is Cleo, but only if Scott is also involved.

Thank you for the ask and for giving me an opening to yap about some of my favorite rarepairs!! I hope you enjoyed my opinions and headcanons!🩵🩵🩵

[howtofightwrite]

I love picking at plot holes like scabs so i want my fight scenes to be as realistic as possible. However. There’s a creature in my head that says a buster sword is SICK AS HELL. What modifications would it need to be even remotely wieldable while still keeping its central appeal (huge sword big blade cool and sexy) intact?

You’ve made a mistake. You mistook suspension of disbelief for realism. This is a common problem that gets in the way of a lot of fantasy and sci-fi authors. So, don’t worry. It isn’t just you. However, realism vs believability is where your hangup is. Stories don’t need to be realistic to be believable.

The quick and dirty (and possibly unhelpful) answer is to create a world that justifies your buster sword, not a buster sword that’s trying to justify itself in a world that doesn’t want it. You step back from the sword itself and away from a world where reality dictates that it’s too heavy, too clumsy, too slow, and ask yourself: “in what type of world does this thing make sense?” And there’s about a billion different ways to create that.

The hangup with the realistic argument is that all of fiction is a lie. Good or bad, that’s what stories are. They can be very compelling, addicting, manipulative, feel incredibly good, and still be fake. The goal of a creator isn’t just to create stories that are believable, but for your audience to want to believe in them. Storytelling is always a joint venture between you and your reader. You are the salesperson asking your audience to come along for the ride. To keep their attention, you’ve got to spin up a good yarn. Build trust. The world has to feel right, but it doesn’t have to be right. Reasonable, not right. The goal is to take a cool idea and work backwards to how your society got here so that when seen from an outside perspective, the choice ultimately looks like a reasonable conclusion given the surrounding context. One of the better ways to build your reasonable conclusions is by studying the history of technological invention from the beginning to the midpoint rather than starting with the end point—the results.

History is full of weird, wacky, wild attempts and failures at creation. You’re not the first person to look at a human sized sword and wonder if it could, in fact, hit good. Or, really, better than swords that currently exist. Or, fulfill a battlefield role the sword was currently not occupying. Or, as we like to say, have real battlefield applications. The Claymore, the Zwhihander, the Zhanmadao are all real weapons that saw real, if not necessarily extensive, use. Like all weapons, they were specialized tools meant for particular battlefield uses. In this case, mainly as anti-cavalry support.

Ask yourself, why? Not just, why would I want it? Ask, why would I use it?

What actual purpose does the big cool blade serve beyond looking big and cool? What function does it fill on the battlefield? Why use the big cool blade instead of other weapons? What does it do better? What are some offsets which might account for the massive size? Technology? Superhuman enhancements, mystical or otherwise? Gravitic fields? Magic? Why is the big cool blade better suited to ensuring a character’s survival? What advantages does it provide? What is its practical value to warriors within your setting?

The initial defensive reaction is that we don’t need a reason because we have the Rule of Cool. That could be the reason, but I challenge you to go deeper. Go deeper than, “this was the weapon my character was trained to use.” The followup question is: why were they trained to use it?

In the real world, we can answer these questions both from a personal and from a larger social perspective. We may not be able to answer whether we’d use a gun, but we understand why humanity developed guns, why we use guns, and the purpose they serve both for personal protection and in their military applications. The answers don’t necessarily need to be good or smart. What matters is that an answer exists to feed your audience. When your reader starts struggling to believe, they begin to ask questions, they pick at the fabric of the narrative trying to figure out why their mind has rejected the story they were previously enjoying. What we, the writer, want to create is a chain of logic underpinning the narrative and its world. This way, when questions are asked, a reasonable answer is ready and waiting. While we won’t win over everyone, trust that your audience wants to believe. Trust that they’re smart enough to figure it out without being spoon fed. That way, you won’t fall into the trap of infodumping.

Worldbuilding always involves a lot more happening under the surface than ever makes it onto the page. Your characters will be the ones to demonstrate and act on the internal logic that’s been created for them without needing a billion questions to lead us from Point A to Point B.

If we look at human history in a wide view, we find that weapons are a fairly steady march forward that matches a civilization’s technological growth. We keep what works and discards what doesn’t. The crossbow replaced the bow as the main form of artillery in martial combat, but we still kept the bow. The bow still had practical applications. Guns eventually replaced the crossbow just like they replaced the sword, but it actually took a very long time. We had functional firearms in the Middle Ages.

Ease of Use

Ease of Training

Lethality

From a military standpoint, these are the three most important aspects for widespread adoption of any weapon. Easy to use. Easy to train. Lethal. The longer it takes to train a soldier on a weapon the more time your army is losing out on using that soldier and the more effective the weapon needs to be in order to justify its expense. Why give your soldier a big cool sword if they’ll never get close enough to reach the forward line to make the assault? Why have them use the big cool sword if operating the laser cannon is more efficient, effective, and keeps them alive longer? In the coldness of battlefield calculus, it’s often better to have cheap, efficient units rather than more expensive ones that might be more lethal but take longer to produce. No matter how good they are, you’re eventually going to lose them. Therefore, easy replaceability becomes a factor.

If you can answer those questions (and the myriad of other similar ones) you won’t just have a weapon, you’ll have a world. You’ll have more than a justification, you’ll have battlefield strategy, tactics, and a greater understanding of how the average layman characters in your setting beyond your main character approach warfare and possibly a technological history. You might even have several functional armies.

Ultimately, this is a game of value versus cost. Most settings that use big cool swords sacrifice ease of use and ease of training to amp up lethality. The weapon having a specialized function or only being usable by a specialized unit helps if that unit’s battlefield effectiveness is justified. Or, you could just have a weird technological outlier where its effectiveness doesn’t quite justify its cost even if the individual warrior is effective. A good example of this is in shounen anime where one character has a specialty that no one else has, a really cool, effective weapon that never appears anywhere else, because the length of training, high skill floor, and finicky nature of its use make it difficult to justify widespread adoption.

The danger is assuming there’s a right answer. There isn’t one. The value in learning the rules of real world violence is so you can break them. This way you can tell the difference between the vital rules necessary for suspending disbelief and don’t accidentally break the ones you needed to keep your audience invested.

-Michi

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[s1i9d]

I hope you don't mind, but now that I've finally found someone who's listening to Magnus Protocol but hasn't listened to Magnus Archives I will be studying you like a bug under a magnifying glass. I've been dying to know how the show hits from a non archives perspective. So in that vein, if you don't mind me questioning you, what are your overall thoughts on the show so far? Also what's it like seeing the fandom response from people who have listened to archives? Have you been successful in avoiding spoilers?

Honestly I’ve been loving Protocol.

I’m not 100% sure what to translate since I don’t know what Archives context I’m missing, but I can try to tell you what I really like about Protocol.

I really do love the format of Protocol. It’s mostly an office drama story, which on its own is appealing, but the statements from FR3-D1 put in each episode gives the story this underlying horror aspect to it. So when I listen to an episode, often times if the statement portion feels lacking, the office drama really brings up the episode and the vice versa.

Then things start to get a lot more creepier when the two intersect (The Magnus Institute, Mr. Bonzo, Lady Mowbray, the Drowning Victim, the Archivist, etc.) and by this point in the story, we’re so close to having a full merge.

Since this is my first real dive into horror podcasts, I do want to engage with the fan community, but it’s hard to balance being spoiler-free at the same time. I do know some general spoilers that I haven’t updated in a while, but is mostly still accurate. I don’t know what an Archivist is, but I am aware that AU versions of Archives characters have made their debut here.

I am aware that Protocol is going a lot faster than Archives. From what I understand of Archives, it has a lot more slow build up rather than Protocol which I has a pretty good pace. Might be because Protocol has less than half the episodes as Archives.

It’s really interesting how the fandom keeps losing their minds over stuff that I’m just like “yeah cool let’s see where that goes”. Like E26 where the Archivist was named, I felt like I took on the perspective of Alice/Gwen/Sam where I’m like “okay… and this means what?” while the rest of the fandom is taking the Celia perspective of “OH NO”.

Or even this recent episode where this Minister Trevor Herbert dude was. Like I have no idea what this dude is and why everyone is absolutely screaming, crying, throwing up that he’s here, and that is fascinating.

It’s been pretty interesting when I bring up something that felt weird or off that just went nowhere, and my friends revealing some info. I’m like “WHAT” and they’re just like “oh thats not common knowledge?” And I’m just there like “huh?!?” Which turns out, the Hilltop Centre was actually important.

I mostly wish the fandom would tag archives spoilers with #tma /#the Magnus archives / #tma vague just so that spoilers could be tagged a little bit better, but to be fair I am one of the rare people that doesn’t intersect the Venn diagram between archives and protocol.

But overall, I really am loving Protocol. I don’t know when I’ll listen to Archives (probably after Protocol’s three seasons are over) but I will listen to it eventually. Feel free to send more asks my way.

[velteris]

I’ve seen a fair amount of posts complaining about this arc in Frieren and… we are all entitled to our own opinions etc which is why I will be launching into a Defense of Frieren’s Exam Arc :) Keeping it manga spoiler free since it seems like most of these complaints are from anime-only viewers.

For me the main draw of this arc is the world building. We’ve spent all this time with Frieren and Fern as our main perspectives on magic. Because it’s Frieren, the magics we’ve been hearing about have mostly been a little silly and sweet. But now we’re finding out that 1) “mage” is largely still a combat designation, and 2) Frieren and Fern are actually incredibly jack-of-all-trades when it comes to their magic repertoire. The “magic is visualisation” part is starting to be really leant into and we’re seeing more humans as well who seem to specialise in one magic (steel flowers, rocks, clones, ice and water…) It’s cool!! It’s objectively cool! I love being able to see this range that we wouldn’t have had otherwise! Also it’s fucking fantastic to see how much of a BEAST Fern really is when compared to other human mages. And she doesn’t even seem that aware of it.

Coupled with that is being able to see different people’s philosophies toward magic. I think a lot of viewers are kind of down about the sudden huge influx of side characters who they don’t really care about. But these philosophies—Land’s maximum wait-and-watch, Wirbel and Ubel’s vastly different approaches to killing—keep expanding the world and highlighting Frieren and Fern’s own perspectives. It’s soooo good seeing them react to situations not of their own making and people not of their own kind.

We get to see human society that isn’t a village in the middle of nowhere! We get to see Frieren being forced to socialise! We get to see Fern away from her emotional support elf! We get to see how society has changed since the demon king was defeated! I love that Himmel and co ushered in an era of peace, which it is, and yet the world is still full of conflicts. Truly the story continues after the hero is finished.

To address a few specific complaints I’ve seen brought up:

Frieren isn’t about all these nonstop shounen fights.

Agreed! Which is why it’s cool as hell that Frieren’s main badass shounen strategy is “sit very still for 10 hours”. That aside? There actually hasn’t been much actual fighting. You could probably count up the minutes in which actual spells are being cast and it’ll be something like 2 minutes max in the latest ep20. And that’s because it’s not about who beats who, it’s about the philosophies, the worldbuilding, the ways of thinking about magic. This is not a power-measuring contest, much as Genau would like to make it. And the random lucky draw-ness of the Stilles only plays further into that. It is possible to pass this exam without coming into conflict with others, and certainly without battles to the death. It hasn’t ever been about the shounen fights.

The good part of the show was about the delicate melancholy and that’s totally missing here.

I agree that it’s one of the strong points. But the thing with the melancholy is that it only works when juxtaposed against other moments. A story that’s composed of a bunch of unlinked wistful slice-of-life episodes will eventually fall apart because it has no momentum, no driving force. And ten years to Ende is too long to go without at least some conflict. Also, again, ten-hour bird meditation session?

Anyway, there’s melancholy, but how sad it would be if there was nothing but introspection and wistfulness. Frieren is bringing the memories of Himmel forward with her into the future. That means she has to be moving forward, forging new relationships with unrelated people, going into situations that she hasn’t been in before. A Frieren stuck in the past would be against the themes of the show, of remembering and yet moving on.

Why should I care about them spending ages trying to catch a bird?

You don’t like Stille? 🐤 fweet?

Actually I care lots about this funky thing. Indestructible and goes supersonic fast. That’s fucking hilarious. Bird that simply cannot be contained. Genau is a dick for setting up this kind of exam when, Your Honour, my client Stille does not deserve to be imprisoned.

Too many irrelevant side characters who it’s hard to care about, and they’re gonna be thrown away at the end anyway.

Again, it’s the worldbuilding. And also, mild spoilers for stuff that won’t be covered in the anime, but at least one of these side characters does come back and we get more delicious main character development as a result. Though frankly many of these characters are deeply compelling and interesting to me so I don’t rly get this complaint. Give me more Lawine.

Where’s Himmel? What do these exams have to do with the hero party? Frieren is good because of the links to the past.

Frieren is good because of the links to the past, which affect how Frieren responds to the present. The whole point of Frieren is that Frieren’s life continues. And through her new experiences, she comes to understand and reconnect to the emotions she didn’t realise she felt about her past. I don’t care what Himmel would think of the mage exams, I care what Frieren thinks of them now. And the answer is that she doesn’t really give a damn but she’s in here anyway because Fern strongarmed her into it, and then she was forced to adopt two more kids along the way, and all of that is something she never would have done if she was still hermiting in the Central Lands. Somehow we are still getting Himmel flashbacks anyway? So? He’s still haunting the narrative guys. Just because Frieren isn’t saying “that’s what Hero Himmel would do” out loud in these circumstances doesn’t mean his ghost isn’t here.

Even so, Frieren clearly recognises the name Serie. Do not fear. There is going to be more about links to the past.

I miss Stark.

Fair enough. It’s okay, he’s just on vacation rn. Having an appy juice.

It’s taking too long. The arc is too slow.

It’s only been three episodes… I’ve seen people going “it’s already been three episodes!” but what? Really? Is that considered an excessive amount of time now?? Given the amount of story covered I think it’s quite reasonable? There’s still 8 episodes to go in which we cover the remaining exam stages. Have some patience like Frieren. The payoffs are being set up; they’ll resolve before the end of the mage exam arc. In the meantime, let’s enjoy theorising about the soft magic system and hollering for full auto Fern.

[unnaturalequilibrium]

Capítulo 12

- Mafin rewatch (Sueños de Libertad)

Here we go. It’s the photographer. I don’t know if I’m ready for this yet, I haven’t even found the seatbelt yet, but we’re already taking off.

Marta wanting something modern, but knowing very well not to try to be too transgressive. A quiet kind of revolution that sneaks up on you is to be preferred. She wants a campaign ad that plays on a woman’s own agency though. I don’t know how to tell her, but that’s still a pretty hot topic no matter how much traditionalism you try to steep it in. I approve though. Sisters doing it for themselves, so to speak.

Hihi, her shocked eyebrows when he notices the perfume she’s wearing.

Oh honey. You clueless little inexperienced puppy. I can’t unsee my own perspective or hindsight, but I wonder to what extent we were supposed to believe that something might happen between her and the photographer. I assume most straights did, but even for them - I mean that opening credit. 

Either way, Marta being a clever business woman and a closeted feminist is nice. Smart and smart. Hits my spot.

Fina mocking Claudia as the lavender triplets are having coffee together is cute. She also catches on to Carmen’s sadness and ask if it’s in relation to Voldemort. Carmen reveals she’s not able to tell if she should do the right thing with Tasio or follow her heart. Fina deadpans and tells her the heart is a treacherous mistress. She is the lesbian friend every straight and bisexual woman needs.

The photographer is a bit creepy though. It’s not cool going around photographing women without their knowledge or consent. Especially not when you have a moustache, that just makes it twelve times as creepy. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.

Carmen covering Tasio’s gambling ass. You hate to see it.

Marta for the first time on this show getting truly excited about something. Excited about her idea of selling their latest perfume through a more relatable woman than your standard model. The joy she expresses when the photographer comes back with a whole portfolio full of pictures of the shop girls is fucking pure. This isn’t just an ice queen, this is a woman trying really fucking hard to make a difference in her own way. She has a vision and I honestly don’t think it’s only about the cashflow. I do think she wants a different world for herself and for other women too.

This scene also hits with one of those lines that are pretty fundamental to her as a character, even though she likes what he’s done, she tells him she won’t make a decision “hot”. She needs to let the emotions land and turn it all over in peace. This is Marta at her core. Everything about her as an emotional being can be narrowed down into this. She did the exact same thing with Petra. She gathered the data, went away, made a case for herself and then returned with a plan of action. If you want Marta’s cheat code, then it’s this behaviour. Pretty much everything else about her will fall into place when you understand this. And the best way of breaking her is to force a reaction out of her before she’s had a chance to digest in silence.

Yeah, even if we ever were meant to think something was about to happen with the photographer they also made sure to be pretty fucking unsubtle about the real direction they were taking this story in.

[justin-chapmanswers]

Justin my boy, if I may ask, what happened to Candle between III 18 and 19? ‘Cause at the end of 18 she seemed pretty hurt, but at the beginning of 19 she seemed fine. Could we get any insight into that?

Can’t wait to see you at the meetup my dude!!

Okay sooo Candle, right? What's the deallll with Caaaaandddleee.

Okay so 18 and 19 were written as one script. And in that script, the mindset for that element of Candle was: "okay so after she fights the Unvitationals, Silver's hurt feelings will lead the Inner-Flame to consume him, and he'll fight her and knock her out. She'd be knocked out and unable to help fight against the Unvitationals, and then she and Silver would chat when she wakes back up later, after Silver has realized his wrongs and wins the day with Thinker'ing as opposed to utilizing the Inner Flame power in a way that Candle wasn't approving-of.

Buuut then once the episode split into two, the story paused at a point when Candle had just passed out, and it became common speculation that she was straight-up *dead* n all. But that was never the intentional takeaway. The assumption was not big deal would be made of it since we've seen Candle's flame go out a couple times before without issue (granted, not the Inner Flame, specifically, going out) and MePhone didn't like explode right after Candle collapsed (she didn't need full recovery, just a nap, but laying this out for the purpose of getting into the viewer's perspective of not being sure on which). But hey, that interpretation of events happened, and that's that.

Not even the first time this happened, actually! Oh boy did I watch a lot of reaction videos of s2e14 "Hatching the Plan" where people would see Microphone carrying Fan's knocked-out body (granted, his x-eyes definitely gave the wrong idea away) and exclaim "omg did he die forever?" Whoopsy! Sometimes you get so lost in constructing a specific moment that you don’t think about alternate interpretations of that moment. Allll a learning experience.

Tldr - Candle was knocked out for a little bit. zzzzzz. Which ofc was still not cool on Silver's part, but it was never meant to be interpreted as anything worse.

(And yay, excited to see you too! Meetup incoming!)

[mysterycitrus]

Thinking about Jim, do you think he also gets this good cop good father protection because of Barbara Gordon's admiration of him? Reading it from Barbara's perspective like all her stories have Jim Gordon as the best dad and her wanting to be a cop or as a child being the gcpd little cheerleader. Like trying to tie that with her role as Oracle but then even thinking of like The Hill where Jim shot and killed a teenager and his response to the mother was that the kid was armed like... it is hard to think that she would have that blind admiration of him. I also think she is more willing to work with morally questionable characters since she has a history of working with those types of characters. What do you think DC needs to do with Barbara Gordon to get actual interest in her again?

the solution for babs is simple — she needs to be oracle again.

no ifs whens or buts — babs being batgirl again is such a spectacular downgrade from her time as oracle it’s almost unreal. babs as a character, her growth after being shot, her rediscovery and pursuit of her own autonomy, her vindictiveness, her need for control, her relationships with the birds and wendy and cass and steph, make her an infinitely richer and more interesting character than when she wears the cowl. that’s even ignoring the ableist rhetoric behind her “reclaiming” her power by getting an implant and leaving her chair, which like, vom, because it’s a whole other can of worms.

unlike batwoman where there’s a completely different identity and mantle that’s seperate from bruce, batgirl is unequivocally the subordinate to batman. the girl denotes her lack of authority. cass and helena come the closest to shaking this off, but it’s still a very deliberate character dynamic that dc upholds. batgirl 2009 also successfully orients the mantle around babs and steph, but a large part of that is that bruce isn’t present in the story.

babs was at least two years older than dick in the original canon. she was a librarian who had a life outside of the community. she was a support for other disabled women. she’d tell bruce to shut the fuck up to his face. she was singularly the most important resource to the league and all other hero teams. she was a complicated person with a lot of trauma, not the cool girlfriend archetype. i also dislike that she’s dating dick while he’s nightwing and she’s still batgirl. imagine if they made dick robin again and had him date babs as oracle. it’d be so weird!

wrt jim gordon— a lot of babs’s unequivocal support of him comes from dc’s general inability to admit that he’s a deeply flawed human being in a position of power. the narrative rarely actually criticises him over his decisions. however, i also think people forget that like…. a lot of babs’s politics is tied up with the police. she’s essentially a one woman surveillance state, and she historically struggles with boundaries around the people she loves. she does work with people that the other bats wouldn’t — isley, waller, etc, but i don’t think that necessarily separates her from the police because often the police or armed forces do the same thing. her modus operandi is also very similar to bruce in a lot of ways too.

in saying that tho, i do appreciate that she’s willing to just say fuck it, full throttle and getting a god damned law degree to bust bruce out of a murder charge. she’s an icon. let her be cunty again!!

[equiz923]

Please don’t crucify me for this, but I really do not like how dunmeshi ended. Spoilers for the ending of the manga under the cut (obv this is all my opinion but if you have a diff one and you wanna chat im v open to that)

Ending things is hard, ending great stories is even harder but I just finished rereading the manga in full and it makes it so apparent how rushed the ending feels.

With Laios specifically, him running a kingdom Does Not make sense. It feels too storybook ending. ESPECIALLY with what the winged lion showed him during his dream- the idyllic world where he runs a monster kingdom but figures it all out. I thought that this was kind of clear with how dream falin had to shoo him away from his actual duties to make the idea more palatable. It was a clear manipulation by the winged lion to try make it something Laios would actively want to do, an appeal to his greater sense of morality to try convince him that he was the good guy, especially because we all know he just deep down wanted to be a super epic monster.

With this in mind, the manga actually ending with him running the kingdom is insane. We as an audience have already found out and understood that he actually does not want to do that shit, and that there is no way that the kingdom would prosper under him. I personally really don’t like the way that the winged lion’s curse is pretty much thrown in as a joke on the final page, because the idea is really really interesting from a character perspective. From what we know of Laios, would he not clearly break at some point and try to chase after the monsters? Go insane? Both? Also him always being hungry is such a genuinely cool idea that gets another throwaway line, that has such interesting character implications. It is fine to add that as a footnote at the end, but it’s not treated with the gravity it should have.

Another character I think really got rushed toward the end is Marcille. Her character resolution of after the banquet being okay with Falin’s death is crazy. Her calling her time with the winged lion a tantrum is insane. Her extending of others life may be something that she now sees the consequences of, but there is not payoff for that realisation. We do not see it happen, it apparently occurs offscreen.

There’s a lotta other little things that feel off to me but those are my two main examples. I found in reading it again there were times that the story didn’t show or explain things properly (Kabru in magic handcuffs is something I only found out about when he broke them, I genuinely cannot find where itsumi found that doll of Yadd). You can make the argument that’s a reading comprehension error on my end, that’s fine but there were enough small things that I don’t think I’m the only one that missed small half panel cues. Chekov’s gun only works if you let the audience actually see and note the gun.

Again, please don’t take this as a hate rant, I genuinely love dunmeshi. It’s a really good story. But the best stories are the ones that need to be critiqued. The basic happy ending just does not fit at all, to the point that it feels completely wrong.

Idk, hi if you actually read this whole thing, you’re a legend. Please tell me your opinions id love to hear them

[dallasgallant]

Gone with the wind |

Made a meta a while ago combining a few themes within the novel to Great Expectations, a novel Pony mentions reading for school. So I’ve decided to read Gone with the Wind too.

This meta is somewhat easier than Great Expectations as the book outright tells you why it’s important to the story and just what Pony and Johnny take out of it! The traits of “them southern boys” as they find themselves having to uphold similar standards of masculinity. Their gentle traits internal to the outward standard, though with less pressure to some degree due to class.

In the book it mentions ‘riding into battle. Gallant men’ and the movie draws two paragraphs a couple hundred pages apart. One on bodies sprawled in the sun during the siege of Atlanta(?) and then ‘those who refused to recognize defeat who road into sure disaster because they were Galant.’

Southern honor:

A sense of self tied to perception and status, often tied to adherence to tradition and independence.

It is an incredibly interesting historic concept which was delved into a lot in a class I took on the Old South, it’s been a semester and I will look through my notes but please forgive this for being a little more rambly then distinct. There’s going to be a loss of nuance here just because this isn’t a full lecture lol. The concept is a duel thing as on one hand, having honor and pride is not inherently bad but it’s the headstrong refusal to accept any other view that leads to self and societal destruction. Something to note is that the particular brand from Gone with the wind and that tends to be talked about the most academically is of the “large planter” variety, a class of people so rich and powerful and few they’d essentially become a aristocratic group of hyper elites. It’s interesting to look into but not the point of this meta, just setting the stage. The novel goes into even the aftermath the old views don’t die, there’s no adapting or accepting- just festering in confusion and hate… to be so headstrong is both remarkable and incredibly stupid. An analogy would be the emperor’s clothes caught fire but he walks around as if he is still clothed. Gone with the Wind is a really fascinating book to be told from the Uber rich perspective, the views of society and war from that class and Homefront perspective and its criticisms. Apparently, the movie is not nearly as analytical and more pretty dress gone how sad, but it’s not what we’re here for.

That’s more me rambling than proper analysis, it may be bare bones without some background but I’m going to tie it together now.

As the type of Southern honor they’d admire while reading is more the base concept of it, they’d relate far more to some conscripted “white trash” than the elite. This honor did defuse a bit across the society, though like any poorer people aren’t subject to half as many social rules and have their own variation but the base remains.

Greasers have their own similar sense of honor.

They’re brash and quick to fight and get angry. They’re defiant. Their duty to protect their own and what’s theirs, to help, fight to maintain appearance in their own little circles. They’re loyal and bound to help each other. They have dignity. They’re tied to anger and masculinity and the confusion of youth. The same goes for being gallant, their loyalty and duty to each other and their bravery shown in a rumble or just facing the day to day struggle with a stone face. Staying cool in the face of it all. That’s tuff. That’s gallant. That’s Greaser honor.

Similar to the concept of southern honor it also depends greatly upon others perception of you than your own, it is putting up a grand tough facade. It is doing everything to protect the image you fought so hard to maintain.

It’s easy to see why Johnny latches onto and recognizes Gallant behavior. They focus more on the tough and cool and strong parts because they do in lives all the time.

Another connection is the loss of innocence, Pony has his life forever altered by the events of the book. Pony can’t go back to who he was when he left the movie house just as Scarlett can’t go back to a Belle who never knew want. The change to his person is not as drastic but it is too a loss of a place in time. When the gang was all together, happy and simple. That too is… Gone with the wind.

—

Thinking about how Pony would stop and explain civil war stuff to Johnny because he didn’t know much about it, which is so sweet not only reading aloud but explaining. But also thinking about if pony got stuck on some big old words and they just went “I dunno” and moved on.

Also unrelated but I went out of my way to find a blue cover copy because I’m a nerd. Don’t have the second copy from the Hospital giftshop though, it was a hardcover and we never get a good look.

Props to them for getting half way in 4-5 ways this book is like 800+ pages, oh my God. I’m still not completely through (have 100 or so pages) and it’s been months 🫡

[starkeysprincess]

Went down the season 2 Rafe rabbit hole today and I’ve never loved a hot psycho more and it gave me suchhh a good idea. It’s not everyone’s thing but erotic torture/dubcon would toooootally be his.

Like maybe before his life got so complicated, you were friends with the pogues, and while Rafe didn’t necessarily like it, he didn’t care as long as you were happy and came back to him at the end of the day.

I’d imagine you’d be introduced to this side of him when one late and stressful night, you get caught right in the crossfire of him and them, just tagging along with your friends, because Rafe always told you whatever he was up to was nothing to worry about. So you weren’t that concerned about them finding the treasure, and your friends hadn’t told you about Rafe yet. He’d get furious and be dragging you home, telling you he needs you safe and protected and ends up taking his frustration out on your frightened little self. Every time you saw him unfathomably angry after that, you knew what was to come.

He’d be into chaining you to his bed or tying you up tight enough to give you rope burn on your most sensitive parts. He’d say the most evil shit imaginable and do everything to make you cry from edging to the most intense overstimulation and not having any limit or remorse for how far he’ll push you. No, you’re gonna take anything and everything from your daddy. He likes to fuck your ass without prep and plugs his cum in it with dildos while he deals with your other holes. I have a visceral feeling he’d be into clamping your nipples, but more than anything your clit, knowing that’s where he can be the most sinful because it’s your most sensitive part. He’d tie a vibrator to your leg and leave it on your pinched little pearl for hours in the highest and just watch and taunt and degrade you, maybe getting up to cum in or on you or use his fucking machine or spank or torture your ass again to guttural screaming and sobs full of begs that fall on deaf ears, maybe even threatening to get out the knife if you don’t shut the fuck up. Or he’d do it himself, choking you so hard that since you don’t even recognize the Rafe in front of you, you genuinely fear he won’t know when to stop. He would be the most sadistic and unhinged version of a Greek god you’ve ever seen, and would absolutely break you, his toy, his property, his little slut who he needs by his side just as much because otherwise he’d break himself.

I feel like there’s so many ideas in here this is more short story material but queen I thought it and I knew you’d know what to do with it so do what you see fit, I neeeeed ur perspective. I love psycho Rafe <3

I’m sorry that this isn’t super detailed, i went more with a small rundown cause everything you said was 🙂‍↕️

i definitely think he gets off on the fact that you’re scared of this side of him, he genuinely enjoys seeing you tremble in fear when you realize what’s to come

when he ties you to his bed, he wouldn’t give a shit if the ropes are burning into your flesh because to him, it shows that you’re his and his only and that he has control over you

his favorite thing to do, in my opinion, is keeping your wrists and legs tied as he’s holding a vibrator against your sensitive clit, he’d tease and edge you for as long as he feels like and he’ll either stop, leaving you crying for more or keep going until you’re squirting and making a mess all over his sheets

also yeah this man is def into knife play, like he’d drag the cool metal down your body, running the flat blade against your nipples, watching them harden, hell—he may even carve his initials into your skin

he will manhandle you and when he’s being too rough, he doesn’t even show remorse as he’s turning you into nothing but his perfect little fucktoy of a girlfriend because in some sort of aspect in his mind, this is his way of showing you he loves you

because no matter how scared you are when he gets like this, he knows you love him too much to leave him

[urfavlarry]

Alastor being in deep denial about caring (platonically or other your choice) about hazbin hotel gang before ending up saving them from something or other

Preferably if he is Complaining like he has a chance to escape before he groans and turns to save em anyway?

Love thy work *🌊* Mao

-Mew

i inserted a reader in this cuz why not! :3 And im glad you enjoy my work<3

warnings: swearing, mentions of bl00d, bad grammar

genre: angst ??? maybe fluff at the end

——————————————————————————

The hotel was fairly peaceful, everyone just chatting and having a good time on a Saturday night. You and Niffty were baking, well you were baking and Niffty just cleaned after you. You didn’t mind the crazy little demons company. She rambled on and on about different topics and you just listened, commenting on her stories here and there. Angel Dust vcomes over and leans on the counter; “Heya toots, whatcha bakin’ ?” He says and leans his chin on your shoulder. You smile softly; “Oh just some brownies, here have some!” You point to the tray with cooled off brownies and the spider demon is quick to snatch some off the tray, munching on them as if they were the last brownies on earth. “I gotta give to ya sugar, these are hella good brownies!” He says and eats the last one going to grab another. You smack his arm away; “Nuh uh you can grab some later, leave some for the others.” You smile as the Angel sticks his tongue out and leaves the hotels kitchen. You finish baking and put them all on a big tray and take them to the living room, which was kind of apart of the lobby where all the others are. You set the tray down on a coffee table and sit down next to Alastor munching on your brownie. Alastor eyes the demons, rolling his eyes slightly, as in his perspective this was quite a boring evening and was hoping for more.. entertainment. He stands up and walks away from the bunch, going to the balcony where he spends his time whenever there is a time like this.

You chat with the rest of the demons, laughing and joking around when all of a sudden you hear a loud “bang” from outside the hotel. You switch glances with Charlie and stand up, grabbing a spear you managed to steal after the angelic extermination. You head out and see a group of one of the many gangs in hell. You’ve dealt with demons like them, this time there was just.. a bigger group of them. Vaggie takes out her own spear and mutters swears under her breath and you just glare at the demons before you.

You smirk and greet the bunch; “Well, well, well who do we have here? You got the fucking balls to come to the princess’ door step and look for a fight? Well lucky for you you’ve attracted the right people to fight.” You say and smirk at the leader of the gang, who was trying to keep is composer. “Ya think you scare us? Two against a big group? You don’t stand a chance against us!” He yells, stumbling over his words. You smirk and launch at one of the members, slicing his head straight off, blood splattering on your clothes. “Aw that was my favorite shirt, too bad.” You smile innocently as you launch at another group of demons and kill them in a swift movement of your spear, Vaggie and Angel joining in. You suddenly get pulled back by your hair you yelp, kicking and thrashing around. You look up and see the gang leader looking down at you with a smirk, Angel and Vaggie yelling your name and cussing at the demon holding you hostage.

You elbow his ribs and he groans grabbing a fist full of your hair and punches you straight in the nose. You scream in pain and breathe heavily, anger bubbling up inside of you. “Not so confident now are we?” He says and laughs maniacally and holds a gun to the back of your head, threatening to kill you for some large amount of money or the hotel.

While this was all happening Alastor watches from his place on the balcony, amused and entertained by the show before him. He sips on his tea and sets it down, walking closer to the rails, watching the scene unfold. He watches you trying to get out of the demons grip and smiles sinisterly. “Well this just got interesting.” He laughs and leans on the rails of the balcony. You notice Alastor and nod towards him and Vaggie yells at Alastor; “Alastor help us you fucking..” Vaggie starts cursing at him and you just drown out the sound, a faint buzz playing over and over in your head as you watch the scene unfold and accept your fate.

Alastors eyes widen slightly, but his smile never drops, contemplating what he should do, I mean he could just get out of there and leave you guys to deal with it and seem heartless, or he could just have a free meal and tear up the gang members. It wouldn’t be because he wanted to save you, right? His ears fall back slightly as he sees the leader hits you on the head with the gun and yells; “Where is the fucking money? You’re running out of time.” He pushes the gun to your head agressively and you groan, cussing him out under your breath.

Alastor sighs in frustration and stands up from his seat, drinking the rest of his coffee and sets it down. “Well haven’t you gotten yourselves in a bit of a pickle.” He smirks at Vaggie and disappears into the shadows, appearing beside Vaggie and Angel, smirking sinisterly. “Well I hoped you three would’ve gotten out of this situation but it seems you can’t.. without my help that is.” He smirks and twirls his cane around with his slinder fingers and looks at the leader with an unbothered smile. “Well if you really value your souls you either let the poor demon go or I’ll just have to remind you not to mess with the radio demon.” He says as his voice gets more staticy at the end of his sentence, his eyes turning into radio dials. “Well go on~ Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tear you limb from limb right this second.”The demon stumbles over his words but pushes you forward, putting his hands up in defense and backs away. “Oh don’t think i’ll let you go so easily. You did endanger this lovely establishment and the residents so I just can’t let you go.” You quickly rush to get up and run over to Angel, taking him into a bone crushing hug. Angel pats you on the back and hushes you, trying to comfort you as best as he can even though he was a bit shaken by the situation as well.

You head inside and let Alastor handle it, getting cleaned up and put on a fresh pair of clothes. You decide to have a sleepover with Angel since tou dont really want to sleep alone after that. You settle down in Angels room and chat for a bit, telling jokes and stories to keep your minds off of todays events when you suddenly hear a knock.

Angel stands up and grumbles but opens the door and talks to someone you can’t really hear. Angel nods his head and looks back at you; “Y/N someone wants to speak to you.” You look at him with curiosity and stand up from the bed, head out of the room and closing the door behind you only to find Alastor right in front of you. “Hello my dear I wanted to ask you if you were doing alright after that terrible incident today?” He says emphasizing the word ‘terrible’, his grin never leaving his face though his eyes have a more softer look to them then usual. You look at him with a raised brow since you’ve never really seen him be concerned or worried for anyones well being but you replied since you thought it would be rude to just leave him without an answer. “Oh i’m quite alright Al, I am a bit shaken up and a few bruises here and there. I would as if you were fine but that would be a stupid question wouldn’t it?” You say and chuckle awkwardly, scratching the back of your neck. Alastor lets out a laugh, staring you dead in the eyes; “Oh dear you don’t need to worry about me! I’m an overlord after all!” He says and his grin widens, if that’s even possible. “Well i’m glad you were worried and asked but if that’s all you needed i’ll be heading back. Good night Al.” You wave and go to close the door, noticing Alastors cheeks slightly redden and his ear’s drooping just a bit and he says a quick “Good night cher” and turns away quickly, going his own way.

You chuckle and lay down next to Angel, getting comfortable and try to sleep off today’s events. Alastor was pacing on the balcony, rethinking his choices growls in frustration. “Why did I save their asses? I should have left them to die and just let them handle it.” His eyebrows furrow yet his smile never leaves. “Me? Worried? How hilarious! Who do they think they are? Telling me, the radio demon, that I was worried. Of course I wasn’t, I just didn’t want Charlie on my back if I didn’t.” He says and nods to himself, agreeing with his statement. “Yes that’s it I just didn’t want Charlie to get angry with me. I mean as if it would bother me but I just wouldn’t have any entertainment anymore if she kicked me out of this establishment.” He sighs and sits down on a chair on his balcony and looks at the view of pentagram city, a quiet peaceful night even though it was a friday night.

He looks up at the red sky and sighs, his face softening and some quiet jazz plays in the background as he sips on the tea that had long went cold.

“Maybe I finally found the right people I could get accustomed to.”

[barbwritesstuff]

1/?

Ashdhdhsg ok if you don’t mind my Chris obsession in your inbox, here’s some more!

Some disclaimers:

1) this is going to get. um. pretty granular.

2) I'm code diving for the sake of optimizing my Comparative Chris Studies.

3) My analysis going to be filtered through the lens of my own playthroughs and emotional reactions.

4) I will be asking lots of questions, mostly rhetorical - I am simply enchanted by the possibilities of the text. Please don’t answer any of them unless you really feel like it - I don’t want to bombard you!!

5) This is already pretty lengthy and I'm far from done -_-; I'm numbering these asks to avoid confusion.

Beginning from the beginning: Chris suing for everything is sooo awful I love them. The later reveal that they’re a lawyer is insane context for the first divorcee scene:

“there is no going back once there are lawyers involved. There is no hope for a reunion, or even an amiable end. Lawyers mean two things. Pain and paper. That's the only way this can end now. Pain and fucking paper.”

Jesus Christ mc, tell me how you really feel. The way this frames their perception of the entire relationship as doomed from the beginning, even if it's just subconscious? The way it frames their perception of Chris as a person? ouch.

Early Chris is so interesting from meta perspective. In these early scenes, your reading of their character changes pretty drastically with your assumptions about the relationship and the character/personality of your own mc. You can totally play as an mc who justifies this kind of treatment and is as uncommunicative, unreliable, and unable to let things go as Chris later accuses them of being and has imploded the relationship on the strength of their own bad behaviour, but if you interpret the relationship as ending more from mutually terrible communication skills and regular stressful life stuff? Going scorched earth like this can’t be seen as self protective in the same way - it’s so extreme. It's fun to ponder on Chris containing all of these messy and intricate possibilities regardless of worldstate. This is the kind of thing I love about interactive fiction as a medium, and you handle it so precisely and delicately here, leaving so much room for the player to build their own character while remaining grounded in the story.

The line that’s been stuck in my head since the first time I read it was this one:

“You got Spaghetti before you even met that lying arsehole.”

The mc is either accusing Chris of being a liar in general (which strikes me unlikely from the sense of the character that we get later) or of being a liar within this specific scenario, the divorce. So what did they lie about? Are they not honouring a prenup? or was there no prenup, only a verbal agreement to split things fairly and lovingly in the impossibly unlikely event of a divorce? Is the mc upset specifically about the breaking of marriage vows? Chris clearly has gotten their ducks in order before serving the mc with the divorce papers (another revealing fragment of character that I obsess over. what was up with that). Is it the fact that they must have been planning to break up for a while and instead of navigating it mutually decided instead to blindside the mc? How do you go from wanting to raise a child with someone to coming right out of the gate with a litigious divorce within a few months?

I want to live inside their walls. who said that.

Copy + Paste:

2/?

Side note 1: that waitress seems really sweet cool and genuinely concerned over the mc :(

Side note 2: vampires flush when sated 👀

Side note 3: 911 calls are generally recorded and can often be accessed after the fact with freedom of information requests. Could Chris have unearthed it during their later search for mc? How creepy, if they did. Heavy, panicked breathing, the crunch of broken glass, the call just disconnects. Confirmation of something awful but beyond understanding.

They way you get me immediately into full breakup mode with one line:

"Come back in the morning," Chris says in that slow, specific way, as if speaking to a very young, very stupid child.

IRL that would be an instant blind rage button for me lmao. How dare you speak to me that way. And again! From Chris’s perspective this is a pretty reasonable boundary! but they way they lay it out is so. IDK. Unbecoming. Unworthy of them. plain mean.

There’s this real sense I get from both sides of the relationship of “I’m not sure I ever even really knew this person” the love WAS there and it was real but in the fog of bitterness and anger they both lose sight of it and each other. There's a through line in this part of the game of the way high emotion can mess with your perception of reality and rational decision making.

“It wasn't all bad, was it? There were times you were happy together. Not that anyone would believe it, reading this.”

I interpret this line as the MC doubting Chris's fundamental intentions and affections. Coupled with Chris's lack of concern over the mc's disappearance (put a pin in it) it's just so INTERESTING to be the way that these two have come to see each other almost as strangers, which is really scary and alienating! Neither can give the other an inch of grace or benefit of the doubt. the cognitive dissonance is so compelling to me.

You've had all of these intimate moments, potentially a CHILD (a grandchild, a whole lifetime), with a person you now cannot recognize, who's actions you cannot understand. Of course Chris isn't going to let mc into their house, they could have been anywhere, doing anything, for two months now! the thought that it might not have been by anything but MC's own volition is anathema.

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I'm living for this Chris deep dive that landed in my inbox.

However, I really don't know if i can say anything without spoiling the game... so I'm sharing without comment. 💙