Reblog If You’ve Read Fanfictions That Are More Professional, Better Written Than Some Actual Novels.

Redemption by Proxy

When my best friend informed me what the Dark Urge in Baldur's Gate 3 is, my brain screamed, SUIKOTSU.

Mind you, my brain defaults to the Band of Seven more than I like to admit, because sue me, but I love almost all of them. (Mukotsu can die in a fire and I have no attachment to Kyoukotsu because we meet him for all of five minutes, but I honestly love the rest of them, all of them, as of late.)

When I first watched Inuyasha, I fell for the poor unfortunate soul but I understood he had to die. I was about 20 and never thought beyond this.

Cue the pandemic, and I binged Inuyasha for the first time after way back when. Of course I still loved Suikotsu, but I also sort of started liking Kikyou and how she grows. From someone who has learned (been told and adapted to that logic) that she cannot live among humans to someone who sees that ... she could? Because this guy, this dead guy, he has no idea he's a corpse, but he's here, helping, for no reward. Purest, softest, altruism, the way she offered before being ousted by an overzealous monk. And when later, he has a clear moment and begs for death, she wants to save him instead.

Of course, she can't. Not because Jakotsu is faster. Because in the Middle Ages there is no helping a man with severs dissociative PTSD. And of course, because the only thing keeping him and her alive is a jewel shard they won't be able to hold on to. But adult me thought, please just let them leave. Let them go away, far away out of Naraku's reach and just find peace somewhere together, giving all the love and warmth they have to offer to poor people with no-one else bothered to help them. It was never an option, but oh how I wanted that.

And along comes BG3 and when halfway through my first run I understood what the Dark Urge is and what Shadowheart is, I knew I can give them exactly that arc through those proxies. I have no idea what the Dark Urge is exactly, I only started a couple of days ago. The casualty I couldn't avoid so far was a squirrel, and I fear this will get a lot worse before it gets better. But I'll keep resisting and trying to make this work. I know the redemption is possible and I'll fight tooth and claw for it.

This is him, by the way. I picked a Drow over a human, but apart from that, I think the visuals check out.

Dye Their Flowers With My Blood - Offices Of Tenderness

... And sometimes the answers are the people we left behind.

Nothing Sweeter Than His Peace

I threatened to post a Huaibao fic, didn't I? Well, my lovely beta returned it to me, so here we go: One canon-compliant oneshot.

We successfully rescued a tiefling child from harpies ...

... recruited the Blade of Frontiers ...

... and got abducted by a devil.

We also freed Sazza successfully,

... adopted a dog ...

... and found Karlach!

Then, wisely, we went after those paladins she's after. Those are level 5. I'm level 3. BUT ... it worked out. Maybe using a guide would spare me my nerves.

We also got very poisoned in the cellar afterwards (tends to happen when the person who can disarm traps is staying home), but we've grabbed all we could carry and ... that will have to do for today.

CBR

10 Best BL Anime Couples, Ranked

Couples like Ash and Eiji from Banana Fish and No. 6's Nezumi and Shion showcase the best examples of LGBTQ+ relationships in anime.

Look who's first! Come on, they deserve more than 12 episodes at a time where they couldn't even show their kiss without an arm getting in the way.

Oooh this is interesting. When I write gay couples (in fan fiction or in original fiction), I usually depict them as an egalitarian's wet dream. (I'm shamelessly borrowing that wording from somewhere, but I cannot for the life of me remember where.) Hold on, my couples are always like that, but with straight couples I sometimes feel like I have to make more of an effort to make this evenness seen, if that makes sense.

Now I've read a bunch of YOI fan fiction, some very recent one, among them, only a couple of months ago, that depicts Yuuri as the sole provider of household chores. With one particular creator, that became so glaring that to me Yuuri seemed to be more a glorified maid with benefits than a partner, and I wondered, what on earth is Viktor doing while you slave away? Sleep? How did he survive before? Yuuri, of course, is completely grateful that he's allowed in Viktor's life and of course he's doing what seems to be his tasks by default.

Now I can totally see Viktor having a cleaning service. I can also see Yuuri saying that this is really frivolous and unnecessary and they can do it bloody well themselves. I can see Viktor saying, yeah, great, knock yourself out. But I can't see him letting his partner do everything without lifting a finger like Yuuri is his demure wife in some male boomer's utopia.

I was aware of this entire uke/seme division and that there are people who see a clear divide there, but I have dismissed it because it's completely ridiculous to think that the preference towards being receptive or active in bed equals personality traits and what the person is expected to do in the household. This is not how people work, pure and simple, it's dated, it's harmful, and above all those, it is plain false.

Now かっこいい is probably the exact word I'd have used for Viktor. It's the word Yuuko uses for Viktor in the flashback. In the anime, however, Viktor has several moments, where I think かわいい is much more fitting a descriptor for him. (Where he's fallen asleep against Yuuri on the plane, for example.) In YOI, both characters can be assertive and cautious and foolish and kind and harsh and soft. Just like people in real life. Reducing them to this flawed uke/seme duality does them a huge disservice. It makes them so much less human.

Of course this is just a 0730 opinion that deviates miles from the original post and not any sort of deep wisdom or insight.

Today's translation #460

Go Yuri Go!!!, Yuri!!! on ICE official fanbook, Jun'ichi Suwabe interview

Part 4.

-- Please tell us about a scene, in which you had trouble playing Victor.

S: The honest answer would be "all the scenes", but if I have to pick up some, then I will say it was the beginning of the show, episodes 1~3, I think? It was really tough for me, trying to understand the nature of Victor Nikiforov. It seemed to me that I didn't have enough information to create the character as one realistic, living human being - well, one reason was that it is an original anime. I don't usually have to worry a lot about how I should express emotions of characters I play, but as I've mentioned before, in case of Victor, I often was asked to play him in a completely different, almost opposite, way to what my image of the character was. It was me, who played the role, but I don't really feel that I did. Probably because often I was expressing [in my performance] different emotions than those of Victor that lives inside me.

-- What the directing was like during voice-over recording?

S: If I played the character going based on the context of the lines I was saying and additional information written in the screenplay, Victor would become a cool (かっこいい) character. But I think that the directors wanted Victor to be, first and foremost, not so much a "cool character", but "a genius that don't fit the standard". I think it was like a trial and error method for us to get that right. I was often asked to do multiple takes like: "It wasn't bad, but lets try something different".

-- Victor's "Vkusno!" was so cute. Was that you who came with the idea to say in that way?

S: I said it that way during a test recording and I wasn't told anything about it, so I said it in the same way during the actual recording.

[Notes: I must have stop reading this interview on the Makkachin vs. Yuuri answer, because it really surprised me that he has said that Victor wasn't supposed to be a "cool character"...

A large part of YoI fandom in Jp were fujos absolutely obsessed with gender norms and who is seme who is uke blah blah... (I've ranted about this before).

Seme should be cool (かっこいい) and uke should be cute（かわいい）period... And based on that cute Victor arts were according to them "against canon".

It's really interesting, because before this guidebook was published uke-Yuuri fujos had a massive meltdown over the art that was drawn for it, with Yurio in the center and no rings.... It was then slightly redrawn (but Victor still has gloves, so "no ring").

There was so much anti-fujos dog-whistling in YoI, and reading this interview I wonder if maybe this "Victor not cool, but cute" and the weird, slightly anti-Yuuri answers (the Makkachin vs. Yuuri etc.) were because of that... It would take me a lot of time to summarize for you the whole history of this behavior from Avex&co., but one day I'll do that 💀]

What in the demisexual erasure is that take anyway?

"having sex with your friends is basically incest" is a take of all time

The only point of contention I have is that if Jiggy ascended, they wouldn't need Ling Wen so very desperately.

WHY TF IS JIN GUANGYAO IN THE TGCF MANHUA

For starters, talk to him like a normal person. Someone should have tried that some time. (Yes, I know a total amount of two (2) people did that - and those don't include Minshan because hero-worship is not normal.)

.

He's in your room what do you do.

Sorry I didn't know what to do with this photo.

Dye Their Flowers With My Blood - That Untravell’d World

A mental exercise to purge concern.