Also, The Way That Danny Is Seen As A Bad Parant Are The Sort Of Things People Are Used To Seeing As

Honestly this is one of the reasons Bloodborne's rally mechanic works so well. Oh, you hit me cause I got greedy. Fuck that, I'm going to hit you again and keep hitting you after you fall dead to the ground. Wonderful combination of game mechanics and in-lore flavour.

the only mistake I make in elden ring and other soulslike games is not being unable to dodge or block in time, it is quite simply that I got fucking greedy.

i want that bitch dead and I can't help trying to get an extra hit in even though they rock my shit and punish me every time.

I will not apologize nor will I ever stop.

Jack Slash goes full barber only to accidentally summon Barbatorem. The two have a standoff, it doesn't end well.

the only thing to complete jack slash's aesthetic would be scissors

Finally, an exuse to fuse some of my favorite pieces of media. I would drop Taylor, Blake and Sylvester in to Slay the princess. It's a visual novel dealing with both body and cosmic horror. Of course, it is also a love story. To save time, the gang will enter the story all at once, taking on differnt roles. Heavy spoilers will follow.

In the story of Stp, a man desperate to save the world from ending imprisons the consept/god of change and splits it in two pieces. One of these pieces is the player character, a bird-man like creature, and one is a princess. The man, known as the Narrator, will attempt to persuade the player into killing the princess, to stop the end of the world.

Taylor will take the role of the Narrator. She is comfortable with "the ends justify the means" rhetoric and will complain constantly about how this all would be so much easier if everyone just worked together. As the Narrator, she can lightly change the environment or at times take control of the player, wich is very fitting for our dear queen administrator.

Blake is the player character. Not only is it his nature to be active and force the world to react, he is once again in conflict with a piece of himself, that is nearly doomed to end in violence. At least he is in a bird themed body from the start. Although Blake is canonically hot, his drive to move forward, slay the bigger monsters and bad Karma will make it easier fir Taylor to push him into a fight with the Princess. They struggle and both die in their first encounter.

The princess herself is an eldritch being, whose form and personality change based on the watcher's perspection of her. Very Stranger. In the base game, when you die, you awake in a new world, with a new voice in your head, and the princess has changed based on your actions. Enter Sylvester!

This time, Blake wakes up with Sylvester's voice in his head. A devastating time for Taylor as well. In this version, as Blake struggles and fights with the Princess, Sylvester tries to shake the box, possibly flirting with the Princess in the process. Sy's dynamic with her resembles either his relationship with Mary or Mauer, depending on Blake and Taylor's reactions.

In the end, when all is revealed, Blake' s empathy and Sy's desire for freedom will win out, and the two will escape Taylor's prison with the Princess, who possibly joins the Lambs in a faraway universe. Thank you for anyone who has read this far, clearly I have fanfiction I need to write. This was a fun prompt and I highly recommend anyone curious to give Slay the Princess a try, it is a wonderful story. Each of Wildbow's protagonists fit the game like a glove filled with glass shards.

Since people liked the last question I asked, here's round 2 for y'all

Each Wildbow Protag is dumped into the last romantic-comedy you've watched/read/played (visual novels are allowed).

How badly do they ruin the romance?

i don't understand why it's even a question whether sauron was reaching for galadriel or nenya.

i think it's obvious that sauron's desire to possess nenya is a metaphor for his desire to have galadriel. nenya = galadriel.

if nenya just represented a ring and all sauron wanted was that ring, he would have snatched that thing away from galadriel the moment he saw it, and he had many opportunities to take it away. he wanted galadriel to give him nenya herself, bc that meant her giving in to him as well.

he was so desperate and teary while asking galadriel to give him nenya after stabbing her bc he hurt her far worse than he wanted to, trying to bring her to the point where she would give in, but she kept resisting and i believe he just didn't want to keep on hurting her. yet he would continue until she willingly gave him what he wanted. that is why he was so relieved and the most overjoyed we have seen him when he thought she finally believed he wanted to heal the middle-earth (+her) and was about to give him nenya (=herself).

the whole thing was so obviously a psychological game sprinkled with morgoth tactics sauron played on galadriel in a desperate hope of breaking her defenses down till she willingly gave herself to him.

and he changed the position of his hand to reach for her wrist, that way he would have been able to pull her back. if he had just reached for the ring, he would have tried to reach from below of her hand (where his hand was already positioned) to open her palm and quickly snatch the ring.

If Amy actually did this she would instantly become one of my favorite characters. Insanely good take right here.

Now, being a healer cape is extremely exhausting, just, in general. Mentally, and also physically, because I am not in great shape, and I suspect I never will be. And, uh, being a healer that can heal pretty much anything (except brain stuff), it pretty much quadruples the pressure. You ask me how I cope?

Well, I, personally, sneak around town and turn people into vampires.

But Panacea, you say. That's unethical! And vampires are evil!

And I say you are a fucking moron. One, vampires are entirely sapient creatures, so they are inherently morally neutral. Two, have you seen Brockton Bay? This city has shape-shifting metallic nazis, dragon gangsters and Brandish. What do the normal people have? Nothing, exactly. Regeneration, speed, no aging, cool fangs and ability to climb walls like a gecko for some mild rash in the sunlight is a fucking bargain. And people shouldn't be entering people's homes uninvited anyway, that's just good manners. And a precaution against assholes.

Ultimately my opinion has shifted a bit, Danny was more in the wrong than I recalled at first. However, in the interest of discussion, I think it should be accounted for how opposite their goals here are.

If Taylor got her way, she would keep sneaking out, throwing herself into life threatening situations. Possibly without telling Danny anything. She definately wasn't going to quit even if he communicated his concern more properly.

And if Danny got his way, she would likely have to stop her crusade, tell him about her powers and accept moving schools or some other temporary solution, removing her from her most important source of support, the Undersiders.

There was no way this could have been solved without something blowing up in their faces, as ended up happening.

can you fucking believe there are people who voted that danny is a good parent in that one poll a while back

Musings on Haladriel/Saurondriel after the season finale fight. I thought the fight itself was excellent! This more clearly matched my expectations for how Sauron and Galadriel would interact after the reveal. Adrenaline filled combat, with unresolved tensions that could be cut with a sword. Clark and Vickers were both amazing and despite the expected direction, I found myself at the edge of my seat!

Sauron clearly has a peculiar relationship with pain, as he described to Celebrimbor. His closest model for intimacy, Morgoth, made him see pain as a game, to prove whose will is greater. In that context, it's interesting how the closest emotional bonds he is shown to have are with those who push through the pain, and continue to defy him.

Both Galadriel and Celebrimbor score victories in their "contest of wills", Galadriel through turning him down again, and Celebrimbor resisting until his death. All this to say, Sauron has a type, and playing hard to get seems to work on him!

I don't think Sauron hurting Galadriel in that sense means he is unable to love her or it was purely deception. People can hurt the ones they love all the time, after all. :) What struck out to me was that after Galadriel is wounded, he doesn't try to stab her hand or otherwise take away Nenya by force. Even through their game, even though he is twisted, he wants Galadriel to choose him, to hand over her ring of her own free will. And that both leads to her escape and is agonizingly sweet!

A lot of Thoughts about Enver Gortash and the text of Richard III

Ok so William Shakespeare's character of Richard of Gloucester is very much the archetype for the Tyrant in western literature and I just have SO MANY THOUGHTS about the way Enver Gortash wears that particular crown... (Not to mention how the fangirl in me just loves some of Richard's dialogue and could easily see it coming out of Gortash's mouth, and I'm trying so hard NOT to write a whole ass fic just so I can get Gortash to say, "I am not made of stone.")

WHO IS RICHARD III?

In real life, he was the last Plantagenet king of England, and a controversial figure, but I'm just talking about how he's depicted as a character in William Shakespeare's play Richard III (and to a lesser degree in Henry VI) . In Shakespeare's plays he is written as the quintessential scheming, backstabbing, duplicitous tyrant who will stop at nothing to gain and keep power. He concocts a massive plan in which he will manipulate the whole of the English aristocracy into crowning him king, by creating a situation in which they will be so desperate and angry at an imagined enemy that they will beg him to assume power over them. Sound familiar?

"Since I cannot prove a lover (...) I am determined to prove a villain." They have different backgrounds, but with both Richard of Gloucester and Enver Gortash there's a driving current of otherness compared to the ranks of the nobility that they're manipulating. Gortash is from a working class family but clawed his way up to join the ranks of the well-bred elite through cunning and ingenuity (and lots of crime). Richard was born into a noble family, but is physically disabled and is often mocked or insulted for it. In context, Richard uses the phrase 'since I cannot prove a lover' less as a complaint about his love life and more as a general example of how he has doesn't fit in with his peers. Basically, "You don't accept me? I'll make that everyone's problem."

"How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown..." Both of them survived trauma and violence, which was directed at them by people against whom they were powerless at the time. Gortash was sold to Raphael as a child and spent years as a target of every kind of abuse his master deigned to throw at him. Richard saw his father and brother brutally tortured, then murdered by the queen of their country, while he could do nothing to stop it. In both cases they internalized at a young age that violence = power = safety.

"Was ever woman in this humour won? (...) I, that kill'd her husband and his father, to take her in her heart's extremest hate (...) and yet to win her, all the world to nothing!" Both Richard and Gortash are platinum-tier smooth-talkers, who are skilled at getting other people to act the way they want through use of charming words. Richard shoots his shot with Anne despite the fact that she knows full well he murdered her last husband and she literally spent the first half of the scene wishing death on him. But by the end of the scene he's convinced her to marry him. Gortash, similarly, can talk the player character around to siding with him against the Elder Brain in spite of having just spent the first 2 act of the games trying to unravel his evil plots. Why? Because they're both just. that. smooth. They both have a way of manipulating others with a smile and good cheer - they sound so reasonable, even when you KNOW you shouldn't listen to them.

"Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? Fool, fool! thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself." Both of them have are underestimated partly because of their ability to be charming, and partly because of their status as outsiders. Gortash because of his working class background, and Richard because of his disabilities. In both cases, there are people who find them repulsive but generally toothless (Queen Elizabeth and Ulder Ravengard respectively) who live to regret it. In both cases there are also people who ring the alarm bell that this creep is up to no good, but who aren't heeded soon enough.

"And thou unfit for any place but hell." "Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it." "Some dungeon." "Your bed-chamber." They both have a little bit of that freak in them and seem to get off on trying to fuck people who want them dead. See: Richard with Anne. Durgetash in general.

"I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, and entertain some score or two of tailors." Gortash and Richard are both exceptionally well-dressed, to the point of vanity. Gortash is described as handsome in the game, but even fans who dig him can admit that he has a very unconventional style of attractiveness. His teeth are discolored, his skin is blotchy, he's pushing late middle age, and he's got the sort of flat features that other fans have pointed out are typical of boxers and other people who've gotten punched in the face a lot. Similarly, Richard is described as hunchbacked and with features so deformed that 'dogs bark at (him) as (he) passes by'. Yet, despite not being conventionally pretty, both of them seem to spend a lot of money on their clothes. ... this is getting long, so I'm going to end this here. Might do a part 2 later if the brainrot is still upon me.

Danny not confronting Lisa's authority really sells how little confidence he has on himself as a parent. The guy just keeps making mistakes.

you know what. im going to follow my heart so we can move on with the wormread and just copy-paste what i said about danny in chapter 6.9 on discord with some minimal editing because it's not pretty but the general thesis is there and i don't feel like making it into proper paragraph form

okay so the thing thats fucking killing me abotu 6.9 is that danny is literally like. he tries to call taylor a nickname only her mom called her once he realizes he's fucked up bad and is trying to recover whichi s insane [because it's obviously going to be upsetting to her by reminding her of her mom being gone, and it also indicates that his fall-back for something going wrong w/ taylor is to try to appeal to her by poorly copying someone else's parenting style] and he also randomly tells her about how her mom wanted to move her a grade ahead but he wanted her to stay in school with emma to make her happy. and he's been Stewing On That despite knowing it's objectively not his fault (and i am reminded of how in his interlude he spends time Stewing about how he wishes annette were there to give advice) and he also cops up to the fact that that the whole thing about "being her parent and not her ally" (<- demented thing to say for obvious reasons) wherein he locks her in a room and demands emotional vulnerability from her even as she's becoming visibly upset & compares his actions to emma's was her grandmother's idea and then. here's the real kicker. once lisa shows up and prepares to take taylor away there are any number of actions a parent confident that they're doing the right thing for their child would normally do in response--not, like, Good actions, but things that a parent would be likely to pull. threatening to call the cops bc blah blah you're my daughter, wanting to speak to lisa's parents, any form of power move pulled over these two teenage girls but instead he speaks to lisa like she's an equal authority over taylor and seriously asks if she's "okay with this" (i should remind you of the concussion chapter where lisa is doing some insane power move shit over taylors dad covertly establishing herself as more competent at caring 4 her than him lmao) which is just like. it's so glaringly wildly obvious how this guy has Zero confidence in himself as a parent so he generally does nothing and then while he's doing nothing he oscillates btwn rationalizing it to himself as allowing her privacy/dignity, getting angry at himself/calling himself a coward, or getting mad at TAYLOR and blaming HER for not being the one to take initiation to be vulnerable with him and, like. he literally does make functional decisions prior to this for a bit! he's good and supportive at the meeting with the school board about the bullying!!! but it doesn't immediately solve literal years of distance between them that have led to taylor having to take decisionmaking for her wellbeing entirely into her own hands w/o being able to tell him about it [& having literally no route for human connection or support other than the undersiders] so he just completely crumbles on his own calls and seeks out/takes completely shit advice from taylor's grandma instead so i very much think what's insinuated here is like. especially given that he knows he has anger issues and never wants to Be Scary with them. he might have frequently leaned on annette for parenting decisions before she died and/or is really fucking haunted by the time(s) he didn't listen to her and it went wrong and now that she's gone he's just kinda floundering and trying to toss the baton for parental decisionmaking onto anyone else, including, at one point, the literal teenage girl who shows up to help taylor run away from his house. insane ! also. thinking about how taylor says her grandma (maternal) never liked her dad. that man would literally rather talk to the mother of his dead wife, who hates him, and take her advice than go 'yeah ithink im gonna keep using my own judgement for compassion towards my daughter' fucking worst anyones ever done it this guy has the spine of a twizzler it's great

...and then doing All That & severely triggering taylor's trauma from the bullying in the process completely shatters any trust he had built with her, catalyzing her realization that she wants to be able to have meaningful relationships with the undersiders & leading to her running away to leave with them! i don't think anyone can say for sure whether or not danny Not doing this would have led to taylor turning the undersiders in before realizing that she would regret it, but oh fucking boy does he make SURE she doesn't go thru with it. and it would be bad to call the cops on a bunch of systematically neglected traumatized teenagers regardless of how much crime they're doing so you know what maybe we should actually thank danny for his Shit Parenting stopping taylor from being a narc

getting other people into rarepairs is so hard. wtf am i supposed to show them?? the 30k+ multichapter fic… written by ME?? the multiple pieces of fullbody fanart… ALSO by me?? the 12hr long spotify playlist… curated by ME?? i don’t think so. nuh-uh. no sir.