Honestly This Is One Of The Reasons Bloodborne's Rally Mechanic Works So Well. Oh, You Hit Me Cause I

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.

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

LIKE ON A RAFT

"It was a good ship, sister." STILL FLOATING

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'd consider this worth it. Now if only we got to see apes with rocket launchers...

What made me like the Emperor is the perspective that he acts in a lot of ways more like a "player" than a character. He is more removed from the direct action, creates an avatar to interact with the others in the world, and ends up getting more attached to his "tools" than he would have thought.

As a person before the tadpole, from what we see, Balduran was an architypical adventurer, someone who valued his freedom above all else. This likely resonates with a lot of "main character" Tavs.

In-game it is an interesting mystery to what degree the Emperor has maintained his personality post-ilithid form, and is a perspective on what might happen to Tav. It leaves a lot up to interpretation about his past and Tavs future.

I get that he is quite divisive, but Emps is a really fun character to engage with out of game, with interesting themes and questions in-game. Not every character would/should wibe with him, but personally I find him oddly likeable!

Next playthrough I gotta figure out a way to like the Emperor... what do so many people see in him... he feels like a simulator for dating a 36-year-old when you're 19

Okay, Danny's failure comes from not providing Taylor with proper support and not getting her away from her hostile school environment. That I can agree with.

However, Taylor being uncomfortable when he is confronting her about her possibly criminal behaviour doesn't make it inherently cruel. What Taylor wants to do in that situation itself is something a responsible parent should try to stop. Linking it as a response to his previous behaviour is unfair. This is him trying to be more involved, not just give her 'space' in a way that doesn't help.

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

Also, the way that Danny is seen as a bad parant are the sort of things people are used to seeing as byproducts of the genre Worm takes place in. He fundamentally lacks control over Taylor, to such an extent that he can't stop her from sneaking out to rob banks or fight in a gang war.

He shares these traits with a lot of parant figures in media, who are often not portraited as moral failures. People are rarely mad at Aunt May for negligence over Peter Parker, after all.

When it comes to him confronting Taylor, he is pretty much out of options. The readers also know Taylor actually holds all the power in their relationship, even if she doesn't want to use it. Thus him wanting her to really tell him what's going on, and stopping her from leaving unitil she does, isn't seen in such a bad light.

Danny is written as a flawed person, but we know from both his and Taylor's thoughts, that they care about each other. Danny's flaws both allow the story to happen and create interesting conflict for Taylor, without framing him as a bad person. As a story parent, I would say he is alright.

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

Contessa/Eidolon where Eidolon is hyperparanoid the entire time because what if her path to victory really does work on me and this has all been a setup lasting decades and Contessa is hyperparanoid the entire time because her path to victory really doesn't work on him and what if he's gone crazy like Manton did and he's luring me in to kill me and ruin humanity's chance of survival. It would be incomprehensibly bad for both of them. I would read 1.6 million words of it.