u/theshiningstarship

In two weeks, I'm taking a two week (forced) break from Marvel Rivals while I move since I have to put my PC into storage. So, I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands that I want to spend writing. I'm accepting writing requests for ships (romantic or platonic) of the playable heroes, with two restrictions:

1. No romantic Peni because she's just an aged up minor and I don't feel comfortable with that. (Platonic Peni is fine though).
2. I'll do M/M smut, but no female smut. (I'm a gay man and lack the awareness needed).

But other than that go wild, and I'll do my best to write the vision. When I'm done with a request, I'll post it on AO3 and drop a link.

(I'm posting this now since I'm slow at outlining. If requests come in I'll want to outline them in advance so when I'm on 8+ hours of trains I can just put on my headphones and write)

Forgive me if this is inappropriate, but even as a gay man I've noticed how every time if there are gender segregated spaces it is always men and then women + non-binary or another similar variation.

You go on a dating app, there's the gay men section, then the women and sapphic section. Why is the 'and' always for women? Why do lesbians not get the privilege of their own space to date other women. People loudly will try and change lesbian to meaning "non-men loving non-men" but they wouldn't dare do the same to gay men. The only time I've ever seen anything remotely similar be tried about gay men is a university lecture where the straight white lecturers were promoting the idea homosexuality for both sexes was liking "similar genders". (I don't see how that statement is in any way related to my course about esports coaching but go on).

It feels like the concept of a woman is being used as a dumping ground for "non-male" identities in this context and it is disgustingly misogynistic. But if you say anything about how the idea of being a woman is being diluted like this you're transphobic. But gay men have nothing like this. The idea of a man can be preserved just fine so why can't women have the same privilege. Why can't non-binary genders just be classified as what they are rather than as a pseudo-extension of women.

And it feels like a large percentage of gay men don't even think to question or challenge this kind of erasure since it's not impacting them in spite of lesbians being willing to show support when it's called for. Lesbians are probably the biggest allies to gay men and yet so many of then give 0 craps about the lesbians and it's so disappointing. I've never spoken to another gay man in real life or over a call who has been any amount aware of the kind of treatment lesbians experience, or their only perception of lesbians has been male obsessed "fakebians".The whole point of the LGBT movement was about standing against injustices like these but there doesn't seem to be a lot of that happening here.

I'm sorry for the rant but I was just thinking about this and needed it out.

People on both sides of this debate have been acting insane and it is very disappointing.

First off, people who believe Netease have no racial bias in their favouritism of characters are just being ignorant at this point. I'm not saying Netease are blindly racist and hate black people, but to deny there being any bias is just wrong. This likely comes from the fact that China has a history of anti-black racism due to how much of a minority black people are in China and not a place of intentional hate. (Anyone who is uncomfortable acknowledging that fact needs to reflect on why that is, because being unable to have objective conversations about particular groups participating in negative behaviour is not normal).

It's not just about a swimsuit. It's all of the individual incidents that happen. Storm being excluded in the Egypt theme, Storm being excluded from the summer event screenshot, her placement in tug of war photo, her portrayal in her MVP compared to other summer skins, just as some examples. Individually these things aren't racist, but when you put it together it starts to come across in that way and not being able to see that is an issue.

BIG HOWEVER. The people harassing the devs and sending death threats for them being "intentionally racist" are acting in a far worse way. The whole point of being liberal is being inclusive and loving of other people, so at what point did that become sending people death threats for not following your ideals. Educating people about and calling out racial bias (intentional or not) is good and is what is going to make progress towards equality. To anyone defending the death threats / harassment - congratulations for discovering your extremist identity, you're just as bad as the extreme right wing.

I'm just going to conclude by saying the devs clearly are making efforts to be better towards their black characters and these efforts should also be acknowledged:

• They're finding more ways to incorporate Moon Girl into the game
• They're fixing Storm's summer skin to be in line with the other female skins
• They've mentioned they're making more effort with Storm cosmetics
• They made the Junteenth spray

The Zodiarchy is genuinely just pure RNG is this run and I don't have the time to get lucky when it takes 2 hours to get back to the boss every time I lose. Up to this point every fight was tough but fair, however this was just plain unfair due to the many kinks in the combat and praying to get lucky.

Your movement gets stopped when nix or piercing gaze happens, but the enemies can just swarm you in the cutscene. I'm forced to hope Cassiopia doesn't just get unluckily stunned when she tries to cast and that when she does cast it's falling star and not nix. Oh, and the enemies can also just teleport after chaos, so you can just randomly die to that too.

The fight is possible under the right conditions, but I have better things to do with my life than hope I get good luck with the AI. It's a shame because the run was very satisfying up to this point, but this fight triggers my anxiety problems because of the length and stress of the battle.

If you were to change Mantis to keep her out of ban jail, and keep her out of triple support jail, what changes would you want for this to happen? I bring this up out of curiosity because I (as I am sure others here have too) saw the whole damage boost debacle with Mercy in Overwatch and now Mantis.

What I would do is take away head shots restoring leaves, but make the leaves restore more quickly. I would also get rid of the speed boost on the damage eaves. In exchange, she could get an ability that gives an AOE speed boost with a small burst heal on cast. To keep her aim skill expression, they could make this ability cool down tied to critical hits.

I would also completely change the Star-Lord team-up. It could bring partially back head shot leaf restoration and have the enhancement buff be hitscan (or a temporary powered up hitscan mode since perma hitscan would be very OP).

I'm just spit-balling ideas here though, I don't think this is the one objective fix for this character's unfortunate design. I don't have a lot of hours on Mantis so I'm morbidly curious what people who play her a lot more think.

https://preview.redd.it/6tr7civgzyeh1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a74a90a17e46314124af6a8a45e01b7c62f7542

This is a quick update on my hard mode challenge run. This fight was one of the only fights I was concerned about being completely impossible (The other one before this was Cap'n Crossbones because of the life steal, it's only possible due to the blazing blade in Yule.

I played conservatively with my green healing items and revives up until this point because of the Eternal Knight. The boss can walk on the AI cancelling their defends and downing them in 2 shots. They don't have enough defence to be considered high health by the Adamant badge to avoid the down a lot of times. This fight is also very difficult without the AI up as the boss doesn't give out a lot of glims so I was relying on the drops from defending onslaught to get MP and burn it down between its uses of Dark Aegis.

Currently working on my hard mode challenge run and wow, did I underestimate Mummy's Tummy. That entire area is an absolute pain and I spent over an hour fighting the boss (In one attempt, it took that long to die). Confusion is very strong, the boss can swarm with adds and it has an almost insta-down knockdown combo (though you can defend when you get thrown down which helps).

Hello, so I love doing crazy challenge runs of Wrath of the White Witch and finding a way to use what the game gives me to win against seemingly impossible odds. So, when I saw a hard mode mod was available, I came up with possibly the most brutal run idea yet:

Minimum encounters. I have to run away from any optional encounters. I did this before and beat the White Witch at level 37. However, to balance for the extra difficulty of hard mode, I am making the bounty hunts mandatory so I have access to more exp. I can attempt them in any order but they must all be done before the final boss.

No buying or selling provisions, familiar treats and alchemy ingredients. I can use any that I source from quests, stealing or any other means, but I cannot buy them (this includes the casino) or sell them for money.

No Marcassin. He will be overleveled compared to my party, making the challenge largely obsolete. I can use his familiar, though I must metamorphose it instantly.

I must redeem and release the familiar tickets I start with, but any other familiars I can get are fair game, though I cannot have duplicates.

I can do any errands I want to, as long as it is possible within the constraints of the challenge.

As a bonus challenge, I will avoid picking up Spirit Medium until it is mandatory to progress in the main story, to see if the game triggers unique dialogue.

Someone made a thread about this 3-ish months ago and I'm bringing it back up because at least to me, music is a super fun part of shipping as someone who likes to write fanfiction.

I like Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol for Steve / Bucky.

I don't have super extensive knowledge of Marvel Lore but I tried my best.