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starry-bi-sky · 4 months ago

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Stillborn? No, still born au -- Dani Phantom! Clone girl herself. :]

She can't exist in this au. And it's not that I don't want to add her -- although I'll be blunt, I don't, I'll be the first to admit that I think she's more often than not nothing more than a narrative deadweight used to prop up Danny and I don't like adding characters as props -- but her existence quite literally goes against and muddies the Vlad and Danny dynamic I have for this au. Ellie's existence in canon itself states that she was created -- and Danny's other clones too -- because Vlad gave up on trying to convert him to his side and decided to just make a son instead.

Something that just, doesn't happen in the stillborn-still born au. See, for folks who are only just hearing about this au or didn't see my post about Vlad in this au, he and Danny have a complicated love-hate relationship where they mutually want to adopt each other, but their morals and way of doing things -- mainly Vlad's insistence on getting revenge against the Fentons -- gets in the way of them being able to do that in full.

Vlad knows Danny wants him to adopt him, and is only fighting him on it because he refuses to let Vlad kill the Fentons for essentially killing the both of them. He's succeed in 50% of his goal. Canon Vlad never even made it to 1%. With that in mind, stillborn Vlad has no reason and sees no reason to clone Danny, he has his son. He just needs to convince him to let him avenge them both.

Dani simply has no place in the stillborn-still born au. And in fact, if Vlad did decide to clone Danny -- for whatever reason, -- it would damage his relationship with Danny damn near beyond repair. That's because Danny would view it the same way he views Damian's existence; as a replacement for himself. He would become beyond furious and hurt, and not for the typical 'I can't believe you cloned me, you creep!' reason, but for a 'I can't believe you cloned me, you said I was your son!' reason.

I am not pulling any punches here when I say Danny wants Vlad to be his dad just as much as Vlad wants Danny to be his son, there's just a lot of factors getting in the way. They are, as the french say, ✨mentally unwell.✨ Danny has a ton of abandonment and trust issues due to his experiences in foster care. He would immediately become jealous, insecure, and incredibly furious and hurt. He'd despise her on principal and want nothing to do with her, or Vlad for that matter. He'd just fucking haaate her. It's not her fault she was made but Danny doesn't really care, he's lashing out and pushing people away because he's been betrayed yet again.

The only way they could get along or for Danny to actually like her in any capacity would be if it was his idea to clone himself. Which is like, kinda obvious but considering most clone plots tend to be non-consensual it's kinda gotta be said. He has to have a hand in creating her, that's the only way I can see him liking her in any way. Or if someone other than Vlad created her. If Vlad clones him though, all bets are off the table and he'll despise her.

TL;DR: Dani can't exist in this au because she goes against the narrative I've got for the two most fucked up half-dead could-be-father-son duo in existence, but if she did exist Danny would despise her.

#dpxdc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dpxdc crossover #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpdc #danyal al ghul au #stillborn? no still born au #stillborn danny #danyal al ghul #dpxdc au #vlad masters #dani phantom #he's what the french like to call 'emotionally unstable' <3. vlad is a possessive parent thats obvi but DANNY is a possessive son #he is SO not mentally okay. he's a good kid! but he's also mentally unwell and incredibly traumatized <3 #he doesnt play nice with his biological siblings unfortunately :((#danny as a default pushes his people away from him and flinches away from most conventional affection bc he thinks its insincere #and it takes a while to convince him that yes you do actually care about his well being and you're not going to hurt him.#he really is just a traumatized cat that you have to coax into letting you pet it. he clings onto the people he trusts like a terrified cat #have you ever tried pulling a cat down from something when their claws are dug into it and the only way you can get them down is by hurting #them a little because you have to yank them off? yeah that's danny.#if dani DID exist and Danny and her DID get along she'd spend a lot of time also convincing him to let vlad kill the fentons. danny keeps #trying to tell her murder is wrong. dani just says 'but they got you and dad killed' and unfortunately she is as stubborn as her brother an #dad. she gets to be a little evil. as a treat <3. she also doesnt like damian but that's because she too is a possessive sister #who doesnt like to share and damian already *has* a bunch of older brothers. he doesn't *need* danny. and also he's a replacement #we love complicated family dynamics <33 THE most dysfunctional half-dead not-family ever.

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mixelation · 3 months ago

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there should be a ninjacon panel where 'experts' debate if fictional jutsu could be accomplished in real life or not

#the difference between tori and itachi is that #itachi will tell you your wrong at a much lower threshold of wrongness than tori #but he won't think it's worth telling you unless you're already engaging with him because he does not actually care #meanwhile tori is AT the audience questions mic #she IS ranting about something you don't understand #and she IS being very aggressive #the only reason she doesn't get escorted out is that she's 17 and the height of a large child #reborn au #toriverse #on the flip side imagine you are some schmuck ninja from like. hot water country #your village doesn't even exIST anymore #the only high rank jutsu you ever do is sometimes you use clones for cleaning #you make your living doing demeaning interviews as a ninja expert #and you look out into the audience. and the actual hatake kakashi there. watching #the next year he's with the. the actual hokage #what do you even do

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july-19th-club · 2 years ago

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i know for a fact i have made this post before but for me it's very important that bbc merlin is a pointless tragedy. it wouldn't be good (it's frequently not good anyway but it would be a lot further away from good) if it wasn't a pointless tragedy! it's simply not arthuriana if it doesn't go past the high point of the heroic/legendary/high medieval romance stuff and end with detailed rundowns of exactly how everybody got betrayed and died like that is what makes it real arthuriana to me and not just a silly show about a wizard

#'why did he die at the end! why did they make us miserable? why can't we have nice things!'#BECAUSE IT'S ARTHURIANA OKAY .that's what HAPPENS #if you're doing arthuriana you're not doing it right unless when you finally get to the end of this endless string of knight adventures #the main guy is like. dead and you're like well . what am i supposed to do now #like when i first read the great illustrated classic abridged king arthur in third grade and got to the end ofi t #and guinevere had been sent to a nunnery and half the nights had died in this battle or that one and merlin had been stuck in a cave #and then arthur dies and bedivere chucks his sword in a lake and then the book just ENDS #and i sat there consumed with emotions id never felt before. well i would've been disappointed if the end of bbc merlin had #NOT made me feel those emotions again #but it did. to me that is in fact its greatest success #merlin #q #like. dont get me wrong i like a fixfic as much as the next guy and in fact i plot them out all the time #but you cant DO that if the original material is. like. already happy #or meant to be

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vellichorom · 9 months ago

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almost 2 years into post-ultra deluxe stanley parable fandom & i think we've all beyond lost the plot

#twinkie talks #like everything i could say right now has already BEEN said & i'm not going to sit here & point fingers & go ' you're wrong you're wrong '#because obviously who am i to say especially when i too have deviated from the main plot by this point. right #interpretation can carry you the farthest from the source material that sometimes just happens #but i'm spending tonight looking back on FRESHLY sparked UD fandom & even further back 2013-2018 fandom #& we are so far from where we were #i do miss old fandom though i'm going back #i'm going INTO the game tonight fellas <- i don't even own it #// tbd

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alongtidesoflight · 19 days ago

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so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

#datv #datv spoilers #dragon age: the veilguard #oh wow i hit a limit typing this #anyway to tie this up a bit: the good and bad to the environmental design being that well-known architecture like minrathous and dwarven #ruins look fire and remind me a lot of the previous games #but newly added locations are very... generic... very bland #i was very excited for rivain. i thought we'd get to see ships. not a bunch of ruins and a fighting pit and that's it #and why did i say to ignore a certain guy's review? bro because he was complaining about taash being ace and that taking up their screentim #and them being too up in your face about their identity. he did all this while she/her'ing them constantly #but my man they're trans. nb. not ace.#y'all need to be careful about bad reviews. they're coming from people who are upset about gender identity being handled as a topic in this #game. meanwhile they have no clue what they're even talking about. i don't think matty knows the difference between ace and trans #and neither do the hundreds of people who are one star rating this game currently #i liked this game. it's not top tier. it's not something i'll sink hours and hours and hours of my life into #it has tonal issues and it's moving away from what made dragon age stand out for me #but i do think that it's a genuinely fun play and people who are very invested in dragon age will squeeze joy out of it wherever they can #i had a hard time warming up to the new characters (taash and lucanis being the exception because they have an older bioware air about them #but solas's and varric's story (and don't get me wrong that's what veilguard is about) is GOOD. that is how bioware used to be.#and i wish they'd given us that energy all over the game. that direness. that grit. serious and mature writing.#that consistency is lacking #and whether you're gonna enjoy this game or not is entirely dependant on what you came here for and how well the game delivers on it #i think their weakest points are ironically the thing they advertised the most: the new companions and their writing #you won't find nuanced and good enemies here (i already reblogged something about this. you can go scroll around a bit and catch up on that #really the only thing that had me super invested and emotional was the main quest.#so make of that what you will. ultimately i was more frustrated with the game than i got enjoyment out of it. i was close to just put it #aside for now... until i went to minrathous to end ghila'nain's and elgar'nan's ritual. that all blew me away. still on a high off of it.#anyway yeah that review got cut short by the character limit maybe i'll add more to it tomorrow but rn... i am heading to bed #thanks for coming to my ted talk. also i'm sorry. zevran REALLY isn't in this.#dragon age

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sleepy-crypt1d · 1 month ago

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The belief of "if you like [insert ship] then you dont understand the characters" is baffling to me.

Because that's not what shipping is about.

I don't want to see these characters making out on screen, I don't want them to be made canon, I have no interest in the main story being changed just for a relationship to work. What I DO want to see is the what-if scenarios of how these people would end up together.

That's what shipping is, the what-ifs, the possibilities, the understanding that of course this is never gonna happen but what would it take for them to cross the line? What needs to happen to make him say that, y'know?

You can understand a character perfectly, can know them more than you're own brain and have never once strayed from their canon and still find the possible dynamic of them and a character interesting.

You can still imagine scenarios of 'what if he said this instead?' 'what if this went differently?' 'what would it take for them to mesh just right?' and you can do it ENTIRELY in character.

People explore ships and enjoy ships because they are a way to mess with different dynamics and ideas, not because it's what they want to see on screen, and not because they think it makes complete or perfect sense. They simply find the dynamic and 'what if they kissed' ideas enticing. That's all it is.

Fandom is for having fun, it's for relaxing and playing with digital dolls and writing fanfiction about if the dolls had trauma, and this weird elitism of 'well you don't get them like I do so therefore YOUR interpretation is wrong' is just. . . mean?

Trust me, I get not liking certain ships or HCs, I do that all the time but I also know that I don't live in that person's head. I don't know the dynamic they see, doesn't matter if they're 'in-character' or not. There are plenty of ships I have seen and haven't liked at first but then after seeing a person's AU or fic, I change my mind based on that interpretation.

Making the claim that 'you don't really understand these characters or the story' based on someone having fun with the source material is so strange to me. Not everything has to be serious 100% of the time. People will see things differently than you, and saying that they're 'fake fans' or 'don't get it' because of that feels so silly to me.

No one is lesser of a fan because they ship something.

I am so sorry for such a long post, I am just very passionate about this subject.

TLDR; people are still on their 'real fans vs fake fans' trip and I'm tired of it.

#borderlands #handsome jack #rhack #rhys strongfork #fandom #i have so much more i could say i have so many examples of this in other fandoms and so many thoughts #but this is already too long #so you're getting the bare bones argument #it just reminds of the whole 'mary sue' 'if u have an alicorn oc ur a fake fan' type shit from early fandom #and im tired of it #there is so right or wrong way to interpret or play with fandom- leave people alone #dont even get me STARTED when it comes to self-inserts and ocs people are terrible when it comes to that #also this post is not an attack on anyone please do not see it that way i am simply tossing in my two cents on the matter

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