

Mouth Powers
give me a character and I will talk about what mine thinks of yours


Mouth Powers
time get my brain back in shape rp-wise, this is like stretches

Mouth Powers
or smth

omnomivore
Pietro?


Lady Stardust
IRIS and pick one pls

Mouth Powers
OKAY, so, legit, Anya expected to love Pietro kind of inspite of himself, and that turned out not to be the case at all

swoleregard
anya and your choice

Mouth Powers
he's an asshole but his paranoia (especially re: people not caring, there must be a reason for nice things) reminds her a lot of how she used to be

Mouth Powers
she feels kind of at a loss sometimes though, because she recognizes his bone-deep pessimism and she doesn't know how to reach or change that

Mouth Powers
even when she was alive and hated literally everyone she was very determined to fight and accomplish things

Mouth Powers
anyway: she thinks it's not even that he has ~potential~ although he does, she thinks he's stronger and smarter and kinder already right now than he thinks he is/will let himself be

omnomivore
Ugh Anya. Stop being right about everything.

Mouth Powers
and she thinks part of it is that he won't try until he knows he's going to win, knows he's the strongest person in the room, because that's what Magneto demanded

Mouth Powers
but like that's just statistically unreasonable as a standard

🐍 mamushi 🐍
touko c:

Mouth Powers
and she ALSO gets that more than she'd like, still, wanting to be SURE and in control

Mouth Powers
anyway she wants to help with that

Mouth Powers
Lady Stardust
OKAY SO THERE WAS THIS HORRIBLE TERRIBLE THING ASLAN WAS SAVING UP

Mouth Powers
for a long time

Lady Stardust
Ooooh

Mouth Powers
about how like, yeah, she runs around being chaotic good and not being in charge of things and power corrupts or whatever but

Mouth Powers
at least he tries to stay and do right by things and

Mouth Powers
she's unreliable and that's why everyone leaves her

Lady Stardust
...ow

Lady Stardust
it's true, too

Mouth Powers
and like he never did get to say it now he can't anymore because she's the only friend he has left? that isn't barbara, who has a job to do

Mouth Powers
and it's not that he expects her to be around forever, but he....relies on her

Mouth Powers
to understand things about him no one else does

Lady Stardust
good, because she would agree with him, she wouldn't even raise her voice

Lady Stardust
but it would hurt her like hell

Mouth Powers
yeah that is why he was saving it, because he's an asshole who knew exactly how bad it would hurt

Mouth Powers
anyway he has - I think mostly subconsciously - finally grokked that their are different ways of being reliable? different things you can trust someone for ?

Mouth Powers
in a rough paraphrase of that one asofterworld strip

Mouth Powers
he can trust her to do what it is her nature to do, and that nature is mostly good

Mouth Powers
(whereas he lets the perfect be the enemy in too much)

Mouth Powers
anyway ;_; he thinks she's aggravating and bright and wise and a little brittle and great

Lady Stardust
best bb brother <3 <3

Mouth Powers
PARDON ME WHILE I CRY ON MY CAT

Mouth Powers
okay
swoleregard
I think the most interesting thing is that like, right now, recently, Anya is coming to understand how much she really doesn't know Omar?

swoleregard
ooh yes tell me about this

swoleregard
I literally just chinhands...ed

Mouth Powers
like, her entire time on the barge, right from the beginning, she has tended to start relationships with moments/circumstances of strong emotional intuition

Mouth Powers
and for the most part that's served her well, and for the most part she's then gotten to know people more mundanely over time

Mouth Powers
but she had that initial I get this person with Omar forever ago, but she didn't know him other than ideas about kingship and fairness

Mouth Powers
which they were cobbling together in a pretty imprecise joint archetype language

Mouth Powers
and then he vanished, and she changed a lot, and he came back, and her instinct was to reconnect on that same level immediately, because she had so many protective/respectful powerful dudes that mostly fit

Mouth Powers
her mental version of the archteype in the meantime

Mouth Powers
but Omar isn't Bruce/Erik/Sokolov/whoever, and he's also from a very different world than most of the people she HAS had a longer chance to get to know

Mouth Powers
and one that she never knew either

Mouth Powers
it's not that she's entirely been treating him like an ideal, because one of her strengths is very much that she listens to what people actually say, and Omar picks his words carefully, and she respects

Mouth Powers
very much the amount of him that she has seen since he got back

Mouth Powers
but she's realizing that she's been filling in the gaps with her own assumptions and thinking that'd be fine until he confirmed stuff and that didn't happen

Mouth Powers
and she's aware of it now and really - I think, more than anything, at this point, curious and excited about getting to know someone who's surprised her

Mouth Powers
and also pleased that he apologized

Mouth Powers
that goes a long way with her, that he's also looking at himself

swoleregard
she can like 90% thank Ricki for that but she's also responsible for most of the remaining 10%

Mouth Powers
Ricki is responsible for many good things tbh

swoleregard
lol zero impetus to change in any way before he fell into caring for people who are actually asking him to

swoleregard
which is hard and frustrating for him because he's really very rarely had personal relationships that demanded anything out of him, or at least like... the demands were familiar ones he knew how to meet

swoleregard
he was very comfortably coasting with those

Mouth Powers
I'm so pleased with this

swoleregard
like no wonder he thinks he's better than everyone when he mostly surrounded himself with people he was smarter and stronger than

Mouth Powers
yep

swoleregard
his initial impulse was to be like "well eff this then" re: needing to tone down his ego/control freakishness but he's come around on the idea that he has benefited from having his horizons expanded

swoleregard
now he has to do the less fun part of that :/

Mouth Powers
and he could coast with anya a BIT because she is v used to letting people underestimate her and usually okay with it

swoleregard
honestly Ricki let him coast for ages too

swoleregard
he was genuinely blindsided when Ricki hit back at him

Mouth Powers
but she has grown and, like, shined enough on the boat that it did not last when she had a no good very bad week

Mouth Powers
ricki is ALSO used to letting things go along smoothly I think - it seems like a useful spy talent

Mouth Powers
it's one of the ways they understand each other

Mouth Powers
talent/reflex/mode of interacting

Mouth Powers
talent makes it sound more manipulative than it is or means to be

Mouth Powers
I MEAN RICKI MAKES PLENTY OF FUSS NOWADAYS BUT LIKE you get what I mean

swoleregard
it's one of the reasons it's so hard for him to grok them sometimes because he's like "...why"

swoleregard
but, again, that's what happens when you basically just do the same thing over and over again

Mouth Powers
/pats omar

swoleregard
and it's the thing you're awesome at

Mouth Powers
yeah

swoleregard
also /pings
undrwo

undrwo
This is all lovely

undrwo
And I will ask for Ricki!

Mouth Powers
🐍 mamushi 🐍
I think Anya's feelings about Touko right now are mostly just like

Mouth Powers
a gif of an excited puppy

Mouth Powers
Touko has come through so much, has always been so pessimistic and had so many reasons for it, she's so sharp and fierce and clever and ridiculous and like

Mouth Powers
Anya waited so long while Touko distrusted her and resented her

Mouth Powers
and then she graduated and poofed and while that isn't a surprise I think Anya did expect a different transition than actually happened

Mouth Powers
and now she gets to actually be friends with graduated Touko who is still sharp and cynical and ridiculous but less closed off and doom-focused and she's just like YES YES YES HOW DO I TEEN GIRL FRAND

Mouth Powers
anyway they should braid each other's hair, it's the one slumber party thing they're actually good at

Mouth Powers
talking about boys would probably go hilariously awry

Mouth Powers
but they should attempt it

🐍 mamushi 🐍
surprise I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

Mouth Powers


🐍 mamushi 🐍
talking about boys would be horrible and amazing at the same time


🐍 mamushi 🐍
"...my favorite boy was you when you were a dude"

Mouth Powers
haha SHE WAS TRYING A LOT TO COMPARTMENTALIZE THAT


Mouth Powers
more vodka

🐍 mamushi 🐍
SAME.

Mouth Powers
undrwo
much belated but Anya thinks Ricki is just

Mouth Powers
splendid in all fourteen theoretical dimensions

Mouth Powers
she is aware that she needs to like

Mouth Powers
not actively enable the worst parts of him even though she loves those too

Mouth Powers
she worries that she's not being proactive enough and maybe now that I'm less failboat she will try to work more on his incendiary restlessness but like

Mouth Powers
maybe not, because she respects that it comes from a very legitimate place

Mouth Powers
and he needs that acknowledged so badly

Mouth Powers
some people never aim for graduation - like Erik, like Touko iirc

Mouth Powers
and Anya wasn't like that, she very much wanted to do the thing, but she knows people don't have to like the system

Mouth Powers
but she thinks people do need to find their own reasons for wanting to do better

Mouth Powers
reasons other than just 'to get out'

Mouth Powers
for her, first and foremost it was Wanda, for Erik it was his family and the future, for Zane it was his new family and for himself

Mouth Powers
she thinks Ricki is going to find his reasons but she can't force it

Mouth Powers
the carnival pushed him a bit, shoving the worst of him at his friends

Mouth Powers
but it has to be more than that, too

Mouth Powers
idk if any of that was coherent

undrwo
That is very coherent!

undrwo
And she's right, as usual.

Mouth Powers
anyway what she probably ought to be doing more of is like, making sure he doesn't back himself into a corner with his temper before he gets there

Mouth Powers
so I will noodle on that

undrwo
He is planning to blow up the bar largely because he knows he needs to get better, weirdly, but he's so damn mad he's getting in his own way. He'll explain to her after it happens- right now it just feels like

undrwo
he can't begin to work on it because he will never, ever have put up a fight, he'll have gone down with just a whimper

undrwo
But like, once something has been blown up? Okay.

undrwo
Okay, time to begin getting better.

Mouth Powers
she will take it fairly well I think

Mouth Powers
this makes perfect sense to her

swoleregard
speaking of which should we move ahead with the OOC post now that 4wd is over

Mouth Powers
ALSO he should definitely actually ask her about Alex

Mouth Powers
because the thing is, Alex is a Genuinely Good Person who basically stopped wardening because he couldn't be part of the barge shenans anymore

Mouth Powers
and seeing him again she's having a lot of thoughts and feelings about it

Mouth Powers
(I mean: also player burnout, but that was partly caused by character burnout because Alex was so fed up with all the horrors and compromises)

Mouth Powers
IIRC

undrwo
Definitely definitely we should!