Grief @ Mach5

unhappy side effect of "morally ambiguous" being treated as the pinnacle of writing is that you will often be made to experience what a not so talented writer with big aspirations thinks is morally ambiguous

Both options convey that he's horny

How dare you be funnier than me on my own post

he transformed... magical pot...

@randomitemdrop

Item: Urn of Cat Transmogrification; a cat placed into the urn will come out a different color

Game where the ancient hero is awakened from the deathless sleep of centuries in the hour of their people's greatest need, only to find that civilisation is thriving and there are no obvious threats on the horizon; the game then becomes a fish-out-of-water detective sim as they try to figure out what woke them up, and also solve other, smaller mysteries along the way.

It's never too late to escape from the secret underground government facility you were raised and go on a telekinetic rampage across the city before mysteriously disappearing into the woods

okay actually shout out to the one person who tagged this post Mewtwo, everyone else can go home

arranged political marriage narratives are for me similarly fraught to unplanned pregnancy in that they tend to skew towards a conservative, anti-choice sentiment regardless of the author's intentions or ideology, because the end goal is typically the realisation of an apparently empowering and subversive romantic fantasy where the characters involved experience compellingly turbulent and sexually charged conflict between normative expectations and their own desires, but ultimately find themselves fulfilled in and even healed by the acceptance of undeniably important and worthwhile but conventional (and oppressively gendered) roles like that of the loving husband and wife or parental figures. which is a shame because i Do think that there's some interesting and worthwhile commentary to be explored through these kinds of kinky fantasies that reflect the anxieties surrounding very real and enduring sociopolitical issues regarding autonomy and consent, but when that tension is ultimately resolved by settling into a role that's always been what's expected of you, even if it does allow you to manipulate certain social power dynamics in your favour, it just rings kind of hollow. all of which is a very long-winded way of saying that i wish there were more arranged marriage narratives where the participants never fall in love, but still come to care for and respect one another, and perform the marital duties expected of them out of that affection and desire to both help each other advance their sociopolitical countermoves to subvert the status quo and to survive, using the legal and social trappings that come with their marital status to their advantage to protect each other.

like i really Cannot stress enough how imperative it is that they never feel anything like romantic love for one another - nor are they really friends, although they may like each other's company and even actively prefer it to anyone else's. rather their relationship is comparable to that of two people covering each other's backs in a fight, or two prisoners in the same cell, and there's as much of the beauty of human connection to that as there is tragedy that those are the circumstances that brought them together. and they can absolutely have sexual tension and even consummate a sexual relationship and enjoy it, but it will be unavoidably dubiously consensual at best by design. no flinching from it.

arranged marriage where you love each other so much that you'd both shove the other person through a crack in the wall the moment it opened up in front of you while screaming at them to go, go now, run, and don't you dare look back