#{Hear... feel... think.} (musings)

[bogkeep]

it fascinates me how often a choice of first or - gasp - second person storytelling can create so much derision and discourse. having preferences is fine obviously, and as a writing choice it Does matter, because all writing choices matter. i don't really... notice?? anymore??? or like, i DO notice, but more in a "what information will the narrative give me access to" kind of way.

i know second person especially can be jarring if you're not used to it, because it's "he would not fucking say that" but for yourself. but it's also like... so many song lyrics have "you" and "i" and to me they're just. a story that exists separate from me. (to the degree lyrics exist to me at all as something other than Sounds that are part of a music piece, but that's the audio processing disorder/'did not grow up with english as a first language and never bothered to decode lyrics' of it all speaking)

i suspect a lot of derision towards first person narratives comes from a derision towards the genres in which it is a staple, rather than that it's somehow uniquely bad. there's really not much difference between a first person perspective and limited third person perspective??

[mad-hunts]

so, i think i don't talk about one of the reasons why jack is my favorite kid in the mathis family enough (or at all until now, more like LOLLL) and this reason is that he can play the electric guitar. because i honestly it's kind of funny to imagine barton questioning why he allowed him to practice it in the house despite it being... you know, cool.

and this is because it's loud OFC — but then all of that changing with barton because he almost instantly forgets about his annoyance towards it after jack reveals he learned how to play poker face by lady gaga by doing so for his dad 💀 like THIS is a man who knows what he likes. what can i say, y'all LMAO

[ratatatastic]

do you write fic on ao3?

unfortunately for everyone involved i do!

[aparticularbandit]

The way Nagito is asked Can you hear me? when you switch into his POV in Case 4.

The way Hajime is asked the same thing by Chiaki when you return to his.

The way that Monika has one of the hidden poems that only says CAN YOU HEAR ME in all caps, and the way that the first thing she says when you are able to hear her is Can you hear me? even though she has no way of knowing if you ever will or not.

The way the Narrator in The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe says It's different when you press the skip button. You'd think it wouldn't be because I'm still rambling, but I need you to be listening, I need you to hear me. It's how I know that I'm not fiction.

[remyfire]

I've had a lot of really lovely experiences in this fandom, but I do think one of my favorites has been the amount of people who used to dislike or be ambivalent toward Beje, but who are now quite fond of him just because they've enjoyed spending a lot of time with me. Every time someone tells me that, I know I've got to be doing something right, at least

[itspileofgoodthings]

.

[snickerdoodlles]

there's a lot of things people blame for why fandoms feel like ghost towns these days, but no one's really talked about the way discord's contributing to it

[quietlyblooms]

" sylus sounds like he's 60 years old " has to be the funniest thing i've read today but also that's so rude stopppp

[94erz]

Moved on to j-hope's MAMA performance and my heart aches for 2022, nothing will ever top what Jack In The Box did for me. I don't think I'll ever get to experience a genuine thrill quite like that entire era from him.

Not that I think he peaked there just that it was just such a specific time and experience that I don't think anything will ever be like that again.

[starpros-sunshine]

I have no personality and am entirely uninteresting and I am most definitely too mentally well to be considered fascinating which brings me to the question of how do I become less of a nothingburger of a person

[racke7]

I was re-reading "In Flight" (because I have literally nothing better to do, stuck at home sick), and I started to think.

Like, gabriel_blessing's Shirou Emiya is an... interesting character. He's not a very good "Shirou Emiya", but he's an interesting character who happens to share that absolutely unhinged lunatic's name.

I can't even entirely blame the author for it, because Shirou is a... very complicated character to do right by. It's a knife's-edge of trying to balance "too traumatized to consider themselves human", and "thinks that this is normal", and trying to fit that into an entertaining (and not trauma-focused) narrative is... not easy.

But. Looking at a character who's called "Shirou Emiya" behaving in ways that don't mesh with "Shirou Emiya"? It's weird. And it sometimes makes me step back and go: "what the fuck kind of Sekirei-story could you write with the actual Shirou Emiya?"

Pre-War Shirou? He's basically just a traumatized nice guy with the ability to make a crowbar a little bit tougher. He kind of disappears into the background, is what I'm saying.

Fate-Route Shirou? You put a Sekirei in front of a man who's sworn his heart to another? You try to steal him away from his beloved Saber, who he must always search for until his dying day? Jail! Jail for the author for a thousand years!

(I could see him being good friends with Miya or Kazehana, who both know what it's like to love and lose. But he didn't really lose, did he? She's still waiting for him, even now.)

UBW Shirou? Do you really think that Rin would ever give up on a promise she made? Her promise to watch over him and guide him away from Archer's path? Rin would rather try to raze the Clock Tower to the fucking ground, than give up. And Zelretch would probably think that that's too fucking hilarious to not reward, so trying to split them up is just... very much a long-shot.

HF Shirou? He's already happily married, dude. He's not gonna fuck your aliens, he's too busy being satisfied with his life.

It just-... There's just no Shirou that really meshes well with Sekirei, because he's already made his choices by the end of the Routes, and those choices don't include ecchi-aliens.

BUT

But, there's one idea that struck me.

HF Rin comes back from London, and stumbles across a young boy desperately searching for his little sister. A boy who is clearly not human, and whose sister is very likely to be targeted sexually (because Sekirei-Ashikabi are romantic bonds).

HF Rin who knows some of those horrors from the suffering of her own little sister? Of fucking course she helps. She'll turn the entirety of Shin Tokyo upside-fucking-down if it means she can track down that girl faster and make sure that she isn't being hurt.

Which made me think about "how would she track Kusano down?". And the answer to that is blatantly obvious: "Shirou is a goddamn blood-hound for magic, and he'll probably owe her like half-a-dozen favors at this point".

And if we'll be involving Shirou by calling him over from Fuyuki in order to track down someone's little sister? I feel like we need to up the absurdity-value of Shirou's entrance.

So, rather than calling a young man who looks very friendly and reliable, Shiina's new Ashikabi calls a tiny little girl with pink hair.

That's right, Emilya von Einzbern is dragged into this mess, and Sakura (who absolutely refuses to have her senpai out of her sight for longer than five minutes) comes with her (and Rider plays chaperone, as always).

So now, we have a very pretty tiny little girl with pink hair. A tall and very sexy-looking (almost unnaturally so) onee-san with glasses. And a young woman with very sizable... tracts of land.

Of course they're going to be mistaken for a group of unwinged Sekirei.

(And then Sakura murders the poor Ashikabi who tried to flirt with her cute senpai.)

As for the rest of the story? I have no clue. But like... what a fucking entrance.

[mad-hunts]

i like how barton went from being like... a hippie in terms of how he viewed sex in his early twenties, then kind of abstained from it for a few years / became sexually repressed, which... definitely isn't such a good thing. BUT then he became even more of a freak (and i do mean that in the good way this time LOL) around the time he started residency because WOW is that shit stressful. though that was also unfortunately around the time when he really started to spiral as well 😬 but we don't need to talk about that ahahhh

like the way this man learned how to express his sexuality REALLY came full circle in the end considering he was like 'yeah, back in the early days that i was in college, i was a freak. but now i'm not anymore... though do you want to see me do it again anyway?' like 💀 JSJSJ if he weren't so demented, i'd almost be inclined to say good for him, y'all LMAO feeling comfortable with your sexuality and perhaps even having a bit of fun with it (though maybe too much in barton's case, because he literally weaponizes it in order to lure in his victims. BUT once again, we don't need to talk about that right now psshhh. i actually fully intend on talking about that in the tags NGL) is more often than not a good thing after all

[kerorowhump]

[aparticularbandit]

Yes, I did go back to the cosplay cafe episode. Just for the cosplay cafe scene. Just to hear the character voice switching from Konata to Haruhi and back again.

Like that's seriously impressive and voice actors are amazing and Lucky Star is a treasure.

[emerson-grimes-apologist]

Happy Deep Thoughts Thursday! I'm bored and thought this would be fun.

[glorious-blackout]

Just back from Arctic Monkeys and....yeeeeah my prediction that seeing them so soon after Muse would put them at a disadvantage turned out to be correct 😂

I will say though that the songs from TBHC and The Car sounded soooo fucking good that I'm honestly offended there weren't more of them in the setlist. I need them to do a theatre tour one day where they play both albums in full...